Category: History

Mario

Mario and my dad

For Remembrance Day I’ve looked out this slide of my dad, Robert Douglas Bell, meeting Mario, a policeman on duty at the entrance to the Vatican Museum in August 1963.

They got talking a discovered that they’d been on opposing sides at the Siege of Tobruk in 1941. The siege lasted 241 days, from 10 April to 27 November and was the longest in the history of the British Army.

Mario and Douglas
Mario and Robert Douglas Bell at the entrance to the Vatican Museum, August 1963

Mario remembered the big guns pounding away and I believe that he was taken prisoner. My dad never talked about his experience there but my cousins in Sheffield say that he was trapped behind enemy lines when he attempted to rescue a wounded comrade. The local Bedouin tribesmen helped him escape.

At the time he was in the Royal Engineers, along with his old friend Alf Deacon manning a Bofors anti-aircraft gun.

Mario and Robert Douglas Bell at the entrance to the Vatican Museum, August 1963
My mum, in the background with family friend and travelling companion Philippa, was the only one of us who actually stepped inside the Vatican Museum as she was determined to see the Sistine Chapel.

Palladian Bridge

Palladian bridge
Palladian Bridge, Wentworth Castle
fallow deer
Palladian bridge

A fallow stag bellows to bring his group of hinds together and soon sees off a young buck that is hanging around at the edge of the herd.

The red deer hinds have gathered in the lower corner of the park and some wander out of the wood as we approach. A group of 10 or 15 mallards have gathered under the oaks, probably browsing for acorns. Squirrels are busy, but they seem to be going for sweet chestnuts. Sadly, Sudden Oak Death has infected some trees up by Stainborough Castle and that area is currently being cleared prior to replanting.

We’re told that the resident red deer stag is called Bertie. If he’s the one with the hinds, he’s lost his antlers. He’s the one in the background in my photograph, on the far right.

red deer
View of High Hoyland from Hilary's cafe, Cawthorne.
View looking towards High Hoyland from Hilary’s cafe, Cawthorne.

Hilary’s

Hilary's, Cawthorne

Looking at Hilary’s cafe from the garden you can guess which was the original cottage and in what order the adjacent cottage, lean-to extensions and extensions of extensions were added.

Peasants from Flagey

peasants, after Courbet

For my werewolves project I need one or two French peasants who claim to have encountered a loup garou, so I’ve taken a look at Courbet’s Peasants from Flagey.

For the werewolf itself, I thought that the lean look of this wolf sculpture from Chatsworth might be the way to go.

Chatsworth

duck
Mallard from the Devonshire Tapestry, woven in Arras 1430-40, back at Chatsworth as they’re renovating the tapestry gallery at the V&A.

When we visited Chatsworth on Thursday, it was the first time that I’d set foot in the House since I was seven years old. I remember an exhibit of old documents in a glass case which I think was in a corner opposite the main stairs in The Painted Hall. My mum explained these were the calculations made by the ‘first man to work out how weigh the Earth (because he couldn’t put it on a pair of scales, as he hadn’t one that was big enough)’.

On Thursday, I mentioned this to one of the guides and she suggested these might have been papers from the Chatsworth archives relating to Henry Cavendish, 1731-1810, who devised a way of measuring the force of gravity. I’d be about seven at the time of our visit, so this would have been connected with International Geophysical Year, 1957-58.

Menagerie

With a possible Victorian werewolves project coming up, I soon got into the delights of the gothic decadence of the Menagerie Gardens at Nostell at the weekend.

This secluded corner beyond the Middle Lake with its gravel path, old holm oak, worn stone lion and gothic zookeeper’s lodge always reminds me of the small park on the hill top, adjacent to the Pope’s Palace in Avignon.

Turkeytail, Trametes versicolor, grew on a felled birch trunk used as path edging on the track at the lower end of the lake.

Old Ossett Wall

old wall

There’s an old sandstone wall, a possibly reused beam, some handmade bricks and modern brick: this old outbuilding on Station Road, South Ossett, evidently has quite a history. Part of it was formerly a small stable, later a garage.

The old fashioned toilet roll holder still fixed to the modernish brick wall on the left is another clue.

ducks
Ducks at Newmillerdam this morning.

Corinthian Capitals

Corinthian capital

John Carr’s Corinthian columns give Horbury’s parish church of St Peter & St Leonard’s an air of grandeur, in contrast to the old parish church, demolished in 1791, which, in his talk today, Keith Lister suggests may originally have been a timber building, like some surviving thousand-year old Scandinavian churches.

Father Christopher and Keith Lister

Keith’s talk as part of Horbury Heritage Weekend is ‘Horbury in the time of Baring-Gould, 1864-7’.

Rambling with the Nats, 1873

naturalists
Artists impression of Victorian naturalists, drawn on Clip Studio Paint (I’m trying out the Lasso filled-shape tool). It would be wonderful if a photograph of the Nats on a ramble in Victorian times ever turned up.

Wakefield Express- 31 May 1873

WAKEFIELD NATURALISTS’ SOCIETY

On Saturday last the members of this Society had a field-day at Nostell, Ryhill, and Wintersett. It was a beautiful day, and nature decked in her spring garb of ever-varying green, displayed that wonderful freshness with which no other part of the year can vie. After several hours’ enjoyment in the woods and lanes, the party met at the Angler’s Arms, Wintersett, where, after tea, the president (Mr Alderman Wainwright, F.L.S.) took the chair and subsequently named the plants about fifty species which had been collected during the afternoon. – Mr Taylor named the conchological specimens, of which fourteen species were exhibited, and Mr Sims named the geological specimens and made some interesting remarks on the geological formations of the neighbourhood. – Messrs. Parkin and Lumb, whose attention had been chiefly directed during the day’s excursion to the observation of the spring migrants, reported they had seen fifteen species of them, and that they had also noticed a Heron and a pair of Common Gull besporting themselves upon the reservoir. Messrs. Fogg and Heald exhibited the larvae of several species of geometae. Returning by way of Hawe Park, the party arrived back at Wakefield as the evening closed in, after spending a most enjoyable and delightful day.

My thanks to Lesley Taylor for spotting this.

Plain Portraits

Liz White

After my woodcut experiment in Adobe Illustrator, l’ve gone for more of a lithographic effect for these portraits, simplifying the tones in my original pen and wash drawings into ragged-edged blocks. You don’t get the texture of the original watercolour wash but it’s implied in those irregular edges.

This is Liz White in character as Fiona Grayson in Chris Lang’s ITV crime drama Unforgotten, drawn from a photograph in the Radio Times in March.

George Stephenson

George Stephenson
George Stephenson

It can be disappointing if you’ve painted a subtle watercolour and the nuances are lost on the printed page. A reduced tonal range might make for a more successful printed image. I’ll have to try it.

George Stephenson was all set to have a walk-on part in my current Addingford show at the Redbox Gallery, Horbury, but he was upstaged by Stan Barstow’s Joby, so perhaps I can use him in a print publication, looking suitably robust in the Image Trace treatment that I’ve given him in Illustrator.

Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth
Barbara Hepworth

I’m considering printing the series I drew of Wakefield Women in History and the graphic feel would work well as I’m trying to keep the subject brisk and lively, rather than making it archival and authoritative, like an illustrated Dictionary of National Biography.

Dame Mary Bolles

Dame Mary Bolles

Another Wakefield Woman in History, Dame Mary Bolles, the formidable Stuart-era lady of Heath Old Hall, also lends herself to this treatment. It’s easy for me to go for too much detail in a historical costume but what I want in this series is to sum up remarkable lives in broad brushstrokes.