Kippax: from the Old Norse ‘Cippa’s Ash Tree’.
Happy birthday (yesterday) to soon-to-be Kippaxian Olivia.
Kippax
Author: Richard
Ducks and Doves
A drake mallard stood resting by the duck pond in Thornes Park this morning. This was the only bird that didn’t move much during the whole time that I was there but I still found it difficult to draw get the correct proportion of head to body. With each drawing I started with the head but by the time I’d drawn the body I’d find myself coming back to redraw the head.
I couldn’t resist adding colour, which immediately made my sketches more mallard-like.
I drew birds in our back garden in the afternoon and, as with the mallard, added colour to each one as I went along.
The stock dove was an unusual visitor, smaller than the wood pigeon but quite capable of chasing it off, reaching out as if threatening to peck it. By the time they’d got down to the edge of the pond the wood pigeon gave up and flew away, leaving the stock dove to return to foraging beneath the bird feeders.
Ferns and Fossils
Mahonia, otherwise known as Oregon Grape; croziers of unfurling ferns with matching wrought ironwork; cross-bedding in magnesian limestone and dryad’s saddle fungus at Brodsworth this morning.
Heuchera
A group of these plants were growing on the riverbank and on a rubbly bank at the side of the riverside path behind industrial units. It looks like a relative of water avens but doesn’t have the drooping flowerheads of that species. Most of the flowers were yellowish green but some plants had flowers midway down the stem with magenta petals. A garden escape?
Next day we spotted this plant amongst the ferns at Brodsworth Hall and Gardens. It’s a Heuchera, a member of the saxifrage family from North America, so definitely a garden escape.
Washington Wildfowl Trust
Taking a break on our return from Northumberland at Washington Wildfowl and Wetland Trust.
Colour Sketches
I drew the buildings from the Seed Room at Overton recently but added the colour later. I thought about taking a photograph as colour reference but decided it would be a better exercise for my memory and imagination to recreate my impression of the colour.
I added the colour later to the sycamore from Ossett (left) but had a few minutes to add a quick wash when I drew the sycamores bursting into leaf at Newmillerdam last week (below).
Pied Wagtail
Cats and Dogs
Perhaps this card for basketball player and cat lover Alex was inspired by seeing Benedict Cumberbatch in The Electric Life of Louis Wain last autumn.
Also celebrating a birthday recently, and the arrival of a new puppy in the house, was Annabel.
Newt Party
Happy birthday last Friday to Connie, who enthusiastically organised a memorable newt survey of our garden pond last summer.
The final count of smooth newts was 22, of which only 5 were female, so in this sample less than a quarter of the population is female. This is despite the fact that on the occasions that I’ve seen a newt caught by a blackbird at the pond I’ve often spotted the bright orange belly of the male.
1921
Where was my mum, Gladys Joan Swift, one hundred years ago today on Monday 25th April 1921?
Thanks to the 1921 Census records now available on Find My Past, I’ve been able to track her down. She was just three years old at the time, living at 77 Nether Edge Road, Sheffield.
Maurice Swift
Her father Maurice describes himself as a Cabinet Manufacturer and Undertaker, the employer at his firm Swift and Goodison Ltd.
His signature seems to fit with what I know of his character, bold with a bit of a flourish.
Maurice Junior
But there was another Maurice Swift, Maurice T. Swift, cabinet maker at number 77. This was my uncle, then aged 16 who was employed as a Cabinet Case Apprentice at Maurice Senior’s workshop on Headford Street.
Giving your son your own Christian name and training him up in your business isn’t without its risks and after a falling out with his father, Maurice junior set up his own funeral business, resulting in confusion when people turned up to pay their bills. Maurice senior had to resort to placing a notice in the local paper pointing out there was no connection between the two businesses.
Sarah Ann
I checked out 79 Nether Edge Road because I knew that my great grandma, Maurice’s mum, Sarah Ann Swift (nee Truelove) was living there at the time of Sheffield Blitz but she hadn’t yet moved in a hundred years ago today.
A search of the census shows that, aged 70 and a widow, she was supporting herself as a boarding house keeper at 33 Cemetery Road.
Her boarders were a Singer Sewing Machine Salesman, James Pemberton, aged 50, and Mantle Shop Manager, John Robert Preston, aged 46.
She was born in 1851 so her signature is Victorian copperplate. I’m intrigued that she ran the Sarah and Ann together, signing herself as Sarahann Swift.