Category: History

Taxi Rank

taxi rank

At first I thought that one of these top-hatted figure on the left was reaching into his inner coat pocket to pay his fare for a Hanson cab ride into town.

taxi rank

It’s a small detail in a photograph of the top end of Westgate, Wakefield, taken, I guess in late Victorian times.

cabman's shelter

They’re standing by the cabmen’s shelter. My thanks to Graham Cass for posting the photograph on the Wakefield Historical Appreciation Facebook page.

Drawn in Clip Studio Paint on my iPad Pro using the Real G-Pen, the Lasso Fill Tool and a bit of virtual Charcoal.

Ancient History

Ancient history school exercise book

In my grammar school days, Ancient History, with it’s epic battles and larger than life characters, always had more appeal for me than the serious, grown-up Social and Economic History from 1750-1865 that we were obliged to study for our O-level with its sober politicians and reformers and its Corn Laws, Factory Acts and Reform Bills.

Hannibal

I couldn’t remember the litany of dates, I still couldn’t tell you when the Metropolitan Commissioner for Sewers was appointed and despite my enthusiasm for history in general, it turned out to be the one subject that I failed.

Battle of Salamis

In Ossett we were surrounded by the tail end of the Industrial Revolution with plenty of textile mills, steam railways and coal mines with five miles of the school but there was no hands-on element to the course it was all classroom based and all taking place elsewhere than on our local patch, which actually had its own local luddites, reformers and innovators.

Horatio and the bridge

Unfortunately, to judge from the length of my school exercise book, we got just one term of Ancient History with our class teacher Miss Eaves. I’m still enthusiastic enough about the subject to have taken the University of Reading’s FutureLearn course on Ancient Rome twice, once before our visit there three years ago and, again, to recap after.

Battle of Marathon

Cascade Bridge

cascade

It was good to see water flowing on the Cascade between the Middle and Lower Lakes at Nostell this morning. We haven’t seen it in action for years. The sluice was restored but because of leakage issues the water has been diverted through a sluice and through a pipe for the last five or six years.

Stable block at Nostell, drawn as we waited in the queue for coffee.

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.