In the late ’60s or early ’70s, when handwritten balance sheets were becoming a thing of the past, my dad brought home this surplus-to-requirements 20-ounce (more than half a litre!) bottle of Parker Super Quink permanent red ink, ‘the only ink containing SOLVE-X for better pen protection’.
Ever since, I’ve been wondering how I might use it. Could a palette of black and red evoke the calm sophistication of Chinese calligraphy? No, it reminds me of the artwork for Roger the Dodger in The Beano, printed in two-colours on newsprint in the 1960s.
A random act of inkiness, so inky that I’ve photographed it rather than scanned it as the Winsor & Newton vermillion and Pelikan Special Blue will take a while to dry. Drawn with a scratchy dip pen with De Atramentis Document Ink Black.
Have you noticed that in each random composition there are three drawing inks banded together and one stamp-pad ink lurking in the background?
I was at ‘The Towers’ working for Doctor Fred Walker. He had a surgery out at the other side of the road, some distance away. As kitchen maid I didn’t get out much. The housemaid used to take the child out, so she got out more.
I had a weekend off each month and then I’d go back home. No, I don’t think there were any trams. The doctor had a pony and trap and a groom to look after it.
No, I haven’t seen Upstairs, Downstairs . . . the people next door say I ought to look at it.”
My Grandma, Jane Bell, 7 March, 1974
I’ve finally tracked down the house in Wakefield where my Grandma Bell, then Jane Bagshaw, worked as a kitchen maid, probably around the turn of the century – 1899 or 1900 – when she’d be aged 20.
Although Tower House is so striking, it’s easy to miss as you drive past as it’s slightly tucked away at the end of a row of Victorian villas on Bond Street. The property is currently being converted into flats.
I asked if I could photograph the work in progress in the entrance hall. As a kitchen maid grandma probably never used this front entrance.
The kitchen may have been literally below stairs – in the basement ground floor beneath that imposing flight of steps at the front entrance – or perhaps somewhere around the back of the building.
Current refurbishments at Tower House
I would have loved to explore the house from cellar up to what were probably the servants’ rooms on the top floor. I guess there would have been back stairs for the servants.
The Walker Family must have been as impressed as I was as a child at Jane’s homely, hearty cooking skills as when she moved on to be a kitchen maid in Sheffield, they employed her younger sister, Edith, who is recorded there on the 1901 census. Edith worked as their housemaid.
The Bagshaw family were based at Ranskill, Nottinghamshire, so for Jane and Edith heading back there on their monthly weekend off would probably have involved walking down to Westgate Station and travelling on the Great Northern Railway.
From my sketchbook (and diary) from 50 years ago today, Thursday, 23 August, 1973:
Mother and I visited Grandma (in excellent form). Such a fine afternoon that I took a walk out to the Gravel Pits that I haven’t visited since I was so high (well a little higher than that perhaps).
A rich hedgerow was suffering from the dust of gravel lorries.
81 coots (mainly & a few tufted) 15 lapwing
Common Persicaria, Pollygonum persicaria, is typical of disturbed and damp ground such as there was about the gravel workings. The leaves often have a dark blotch. Also known as Redshank.
One explanation of the dark patch is that the Devil once pinched the leaves and made them useless as they lack the fiery flavour of water-pepper.
Shetlanders used to extract a yellow dye from it.
Yes, this was a potato – the gravel pit seems to have been partly filled by rubbish.
In Search of a Lost Museum
Mother and I stopped off in Barnsley on our way to Grandma’s. According to The Naturalist’s Handbook there is a museum there.
“This building was the Harvey Institute, many years ago, and there was a museum here, which was in what is now the Junior Library.”
Fifty years ago today after lunch I was off on my bike on a research trip to Thornhill for my natural history of Wakefield sketchbook.
I was going for a wide perspective. In the morning I’d made my first attempt at painting our galaxy – with Wakefield marked towards the end of one of the spiral arms.
For my theme about our place in the landscape, the ‘Very Celtic Decorations’ and runes on the early Christian grave stones appealed to me.
Church – 1495 window best viewed through 10×50 binoculars
My diary, 22 August 1973
This expedition was mainly as a break from work on the book. I didn’t intend doing much drawing but made these notes of the plants.
Typical wasteland plants on the track by Healey Mills Marshalling Yards; Rose Bay, Tansy.
But it wasn’t all work. Before I set out I’d watched the Oliver Postgate/Peter Firmin children’s programme Pogles Wood. I loved Firmin’s relaxed illustrations and the homemade feel of the stop action animation and I envied them their Smallfilms studio, a converted barn in the Kent countryside.
A few more sketches from 1973. I’d been hand lettering my Sketchbook of the Natural History of the Country Round Wakefield and I was worried about my shaky hands:
. . . `I didn’t get very much work done on the book. It’s the energy flow chart I’m doing. But my hands are so shaky when I try to do letter forms. I have to practice quite a bit to get it right, but it’s so maddening; a real curse. Depending on how this book goes I think that I shall have to give up hand lettering for good; or have the operation for Parkinson’s Disease . . . or try a different pen or pen nib.
When I’ve calmed down and don’t worry too much about each letter and curve I can produce readable lettering . . . it’s like walking – if you start thinking about each step you soon trip up
My diary for Wednesday, 15th August, 1973
Fifty years later I’m still hand lettering and still worrying about my shaky hands, although it’s nothing to do with Parkinson’s Disease, it’s just the regular Essential or Familial Tremor (which can be controlled by drinking red wine!)
It wasn’t all agonising about artwork though: I recorded ‘!! SEVEN REDSHANK !!’ on the Wyke and 3 sandpipers on the river.
As I weeded the path behind the raised bed, one of the garden snail shells I spotted this morning was smashed, probably by a thrush; another was occupied, so I popped it into a crevice and a third was empty, a good subject to try out some Procreate illustration techniques on as I get back into my course.
