Old Rhododendron at Temple Newsam this morning.
Rhododendron
Month: September 2022
King Henry VII Chapel
In June 1977 the Silver Jubilee Days on the Queen’s Official Birthday marked the 25th anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth II on 6 February 1952. Architect and designer Margaret Casson organised a small exhibit ‘The Graven Image’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum and invited me to take part.
In the April of that year I headed to London and decided to give myself a bit of a challenge and I drew the interior of the Chapel of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey.
I found a corner stall and settled down for a long session drawing with dip pen and Pelikan ink (the original drawing is in Pelikan Special Brown).
I hadn’t realised the significance of the rather elaborate end-of-the-row stall that I’d set myself up in.
Guides would come in and point to the ceiling, and their group would look up, suitably impressed; then the tomb of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York (the couple who effectively brought the Middle Ages to a close by uniting the Houses of York and Lancaster) and finally, to bring things up to date, the guide would point to Prince Charles’ seat in the corner . . . the stall where I was sitting, scribbling away. I got some curious looks.
I’m struggling to remember the other items in the ‘Graven Image’ show which was in a corner of the entrance hall to the V&A but as I brought in my framed sketchbook spread, a stone carver staggered in with a large block with a beautifully carved inscription, a suitably graven image.
Dell Studio xps
Until a few months ago I was falling back on my old PC, a Dell studio xps, to print some of my booklets but it finally failed to start and since then I’ve steadily reformatted my publications onto InDesign on my iMac.
Snatched Sketches
A couple of quick sketches from this weeks errands and appointments.
Fossil Raindrops
These dimples in the surface of a stone in the wall at Blacker Hall Farmshop Cafe look to me like fossil raindrops. Rain fell onto soft wet sand causing those little craters then another pulse of sediment covered them and the process of lithification started, turning the beds of sand into sandstone.
This is coal measures sandstone so this happened about 300 million years ago. At that time large river deltas extended across this part of Yorkshire.
The bed of sand must have been temporarily above water level for the raindrops to make their mark, so this would have been on the exposed upper surface of the sand. What appear to traces of bedding run across this block of sandstone, suggesting we’re actually looking at a side view of the bed of sand but I think the explanation for this might be that parallel bands of minerals have settled out as the sand gradually became dewatered and iron rich minerals were deposited.
Perhaps I need to take my pocket microscope next time we call at the cafe. The buckwheat pancake with strawberries, blueberries and Nutella makes that an attractive proposition for a geology field trip.
In Search of Uncle Joe
On the front page of the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, Monday 26 November 1860, between a notice about a Full Dress Assembly at the Bath Saloon and an invitation from the new landlord of the Newcastle Arms comes this notice from my great, great, great uncle Joseph Truelove that from that date forward he’s not going to be responsible for his wife Mary’s debts.
Joseph had a colourful life. He had married Mary Tinker twelve years earlier on Christmas Eve 1848 at Sheffield Parish Church. By 1860 they were both in their early thirties and evidently the marriage wasn’t going smoothly. Unfortunately things were going to get worse.
I don’t have a photograph of Joseph and Mary but here’s his elder brother, William, born 1825, my great, great grandfather.
A ‘Curious Charge of Assault’
By 1868 Joseph was away in America and Mary was, according to the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, living with George Baxter, a beerhouse keeper in Attercliffe. Bringing a charge of assault against him, Mary claimed that Baxter had assaulted her and had threatened to shoot her. A servant girl from the beerhouse and a woman who Mary called as a witness denied that George had ever used violence towards Mary.
As Mary had called the unnamed woman as a witness, presumably to back up her claims, I can’t help wondering if someone had persuaded the woman to change her story.
Attempted Murder
By Wednesday 26 October 1870 we know that Mary was back with Joseph in Allen Street near the centre of Sheffield. They were both ‘the worse for liquor’ and after a quarrel she attempted to murder him, stabbing him in the neck with a pair of decorator’s scissors. Pleading guilty, she was sentenced to penal servitude for life.
A condition of her release on 19 January 1881 was that she should remain in Lincolnshire but she immediately started to make her way back to Sheffield.
George had remarried, again to a woman called Mary. I’d love to know what happened next.
Joseph died in 1883, the same year that his new wife Mary gave birth to a daughter.
I’m hoping that some day I might come across a photograph of Joseph’s first wife, Mary Tinker, amongst her prison records.
Falconry at Brodsworth
Today Brodsworth Hall was the appropriate setting for a Victorian falconry (and hawking, there is a difference) display by Raphael Historic Falconry. Also featuring the equally impressive Cosmic the black Labrador, currently being trained as a falconry dog (falcons and hawks don’t have a sense of smell).
Link
Summer Sketchbook
Page layouts for my Summer eBook using a three-column grid in InDesign.
Barcode Safari
Happy birthday to Florence.
Barcode 5018 4453 isn’t as fierce as depicted; it’s from the top of a jar of Marmite.
Wookiees
Great Star Wars party at the weekend. Happy birthday today to Ruby. Or, as they’d say in Wookieespeak . . .
