Day: January 5, 2020

The final section of my proposed Rhubarb Sketchbook animation is all about the pleasures of getting out and walking in the Rhubarb Triangle between Wakefield and Leeds.

Highlights include:

• a medieval deer park at Gawthorpe
• a rabbit warren on Lindale Hill
• the ‘world’s first railway’ at Middleton
• a Viking boat and a Victorian aqueduct at Stanley Ferry.

There’s a possible fourth section too: if time (and a little extra budget) allowed, I’d add a short animation featuring the three rhubarb recipes that proved such a popular feature in my booklet of Walks in the Rhubarb Triangle.

For the local history section of my proposed Rhubarb Sketchbook animation, I can draw on a host of colourful characters:

• Puritan plotters at Middleton
• bodysnatchers at East Ardsley
• Prophet Wroe’s ‘temple’ at Kirkhamgate
• John of Gaunt’s Manor House at Rothwell
• Robin Hood (and his dad, Adam Hood, a forester) in the Outwood
• plus a commercial break: from Ossett, John ‘Imperial Leather’ Cussons’ ‘Compound Rhubarb Pills’ (just don’t OD on them!).

Just dropping a few frames into my storyboard, I realise that I could easily devote a whole cartoon to the life and adventures of Prophet Wroe.