Category: Urban

Persil Factory, Warrington

Persil factory

When I travelled around the country drawing and writing my Richard Bell’s Britain natural history sketchbook, I found that pages including manmade objects in a natural landscape – such as an abandoned forestry lorry on a track through a pine plantation – often worked best.

Persil Factory, Warrington

The Persil factory had made an impression on me as I passed through Warrington on the train.

It appeared as a thumbnail sketch on one of the maps in Britain and when my editor Robert MacDonald suggested a sequel, focussing on industrial Britain, I returned to draw it.

I did more drawings closer to home, one series documenting the last coal barges to operate between British Oak, near Crigglestone, and Thornhill Power Station.

Clouded Hills

The Persil Factory made it onto the cover of the dummy of the proposed book, but the project never got off the ground, however I did sell the original pen and watercolour at one of my one-man shows a few years later. I was quite honoured that my French teacher from Grammar School days, Miss Deacon bought it.

This mock-up of the cover is a hand-coloured photocopy, as this was long before the days when I would have a scanner in my studio.

Heaton Junction

Heaton Junction

‘Britain’s Biggest Model Railway’, the 200ft-long Heaton Junction layout, on show at the Old Market Hall this weekend, evokes the railway that I remember from school cross country runs in winter. The River Calder was often the colour of the resin used in the model, occasionally tinted dull indigo, probably when they were dying textiles upstream at Dewsbury.

The construction team have gone to great lengths to capture the sights and sounds of the Calder Valley in the post-British Railways era but fortunately they haven’t added the smell of the local sewage works.

The discarded Tesco bag is perfect for the period.

The wintry feel and rusty, oily ambience is just as I remember it. I’m looking forward to the Heaton Junction layout moving on to stage 2 as their next project is to recreate a marshalling yards based on Healey Mills, which lay at the foot of the slope alongside a section of the river that had been diverted to allow the construction of the yards. Scale models of the lighting towers will be included.

S’mores Kronut

Drawing the dogs and trying the s’mores kronut, a cross between a croissant and a donut, at the ØL cafe in Horbury this morning.

dogs

The dogs took so much interest in their surroundings that they soon wound their leads around table legs and chair legs.

The Boulevards of Harrogate

Pump room, Harrogate
The Pump Room, Harrogate
Drawn from Farrar’s Palm Court Cafe.

With summer temperatures and autumn colour, there’s a feeling of being in a continental city today in Harrogate. There are the now-redundant grand gates of Harlow Carr, which remind me of the walk from the top of the Spanish Steps to the Villa Medici in Rome and some solid stone-built arches near the station which reminded me of the ruins around the Forum but, as you can see from my photograph of the street guide with his tour group by the Pump Room, it was mainly Paris that came to mind. To add to the resemblance, there are several Paris-style Morris Column advertising pillars dotted around the town centre.

gunnera

The giant rhubarb leaves of gunnera add a tropical feel to the Valley Gardens.

blackbird bathing

A male blackbird bathes enthusiastically in a small puddle in The Pinewoods as we walk down from Harlow Carr. On our return walk a black spaniel pauses to lap up water from the puddle.

Horbury High Street

High Street

Much as we like our homemade bread it doesn’t keep long at this time of year so while the wood pigeon tucked into that (see the greatest hits from of the 103 selfies it took of itself on my new trail cam in my next post), we enjoyed the roast Mediterranean veg sandwich at the Cafe Capri.

The storks in their natural habitat

While we’re in Horbury, we check out my Addingford display in the Redbox Gallery in the old telephone box on Queen Street. I’m pleased that the foamboard artwork isn’t buckling too much under the summer sun and that I can see the Addingford Steps artwork and map so well on the back wall, then I realise that the reason that I can see them is because the two stork cut-outs, suspended on fishing line, have fallen down behind Joby’s riverbank.

I’ll reinstate them, but I’ll draw the birds again at half the size, so they don’t blot out the display at they did previously.

Dandelions and Double Yellows

Oxford ragwort

Helen Thomas’s paintings at the opening of her Dandelions and Double Yellows show at Wakefield Cathedral celebrate street flowers, such as the willowherb, sow thistle and Oxford ragwort that I spotted at Bank House on Burton Street.

Professor Mike Collier introduces Helen Thomas’s ‘Dandelions and Double Yellows’.

We were on our way to the Museum at Wakefield One to take a look at another inspiring exhibition, also opening this weekend, which brings to life the letters of Charles Waterton in a suitably Victorian combination of paper craft and magic lantern show, with narration and readings by Sir David Attenborough, Sir Michael Palin, Chris Packham, Liz Bonnin and Waterton Discovery Centre countryside ranger, Dave Mee.

Helen Thomas
Helen Thomas

Boxed In

mock-up of phone box display

This morning we took a look at a gardening display in the old telephone box at Horbury Bridge, which included a small selection of items – a tomato plant, a pair of gardening gloves and a trowel – to tell its story. It made me realise that the simpler and bolder my display for the Redbox Gallery, the better.

My main characters were always going to be Joby and his dad from Stan Barstow’s novel and I realise that including historical characters, such as railway and canal engineers, will overload the display.

Watching the closing scene of Yorkshire Television’s 1975 production of Joby on YouTube, I’ve found a perfect exchange of dialogue which will work as the keynote for my show. I’d been thinking of phrases to sum up Addingford such as ‘just ten minutes walk from this phone box’ and ‘Horbury’s unofficial nature park’, which would be fine but I don’t want too many text boxes. People often skip reading labels but dialogue is more compelling.

As we’re trying to get people to stop briefly and peer into the box, we need something eye-catching – like the pocket cartoon amongst the articles in a newspaper – to hook passers by.

Green Park

honesty

Green Park, South Ossett, 10.45 am, 10℃, 50℉, sunny

A jingling orrent of song from a dunnock in an adjacent garden. Three blow flies gather around a tiny naked chick that has been taken from its nest. A male blackbird perches on a tangle of honeysuckle stems cascading from a larch lap fence.

A robin perches on a branch, watching intently, then spots something and swoops down to the ground to pick it up.

Apart from a few quick sketches in the co-op car park, I’m out of practice for drawing on location, so I decided that I had to be kind to myself this morning and not to worry if, for instance, I get the flowers of the honesty out of proportion with the rest of the plant.

Skelton Lake Flowers

flowers

Flowers by Skelton Lakes motorway services, near Leeds. The chamomile and sowthistle may officially be weeds but they work well alongside the prairie-style planting. The gorse at the edge of the woodland is full bloom.