Category: History

Sabine’s Mission Impossible

Scapple NotesmissionI’ve been writing my Wild Yorkshire nature diary for the Dalesman for more than two years but the article that I’m working on now for the 150th anniversary of the hymn Onward Christian Soldiers is rather different and I’m struggling a bit to decide what approach I should use. I’ve used a program called Scapple to pull my ideas together. Scapple is like a looser version of Tony Buzan’s mind-mapping technique where you start with one idea and make all kinds of connections to it.

Baring GouldCertain aspects of the story stand out vividly for me; the encounter between Sabine Baring Gould (who wrote the hymn) and local tough guy ‘Old Nut’. Or the way meetings in the upstairs Mission room were sometimes interrupted by street urchins throwing stones or even dead cats through the window.

old nutI like the way that Baring Gould later used his literary talents to exact a fitting revenge on ‘Old Nut’s’ favourite pub, The Horse and Jockey. In his novel Through Fire and Flood, which is based on his experiences at the ‘Brig’, he has the pub swept away in a flood. He evidently derived so much satisfaction from this literary method of settling old scores that he introduced a thinly disguised version of The Horse and Jockey into a later novel, The Pennycomequicks, and, would you believe it, it too gets swept away again by the raging waters of the River Calder!

Links

Scapple, the mind-mapping program, seems very versatile. I printed out my mind-map and added the cartoons by hand.

 

Smeath House

Smeath HouseSmeath HouseSmeath House, Horbury, my home for twenty years, right through my school and art college days, went on the market today. Looking at Tim Baker’s photographs in the brochure, I can see that the ambience of the place had an effect on the way my work developed. Aged nine, I filled an exercise book with sketches and nature notes including a map of the birds I saw around the shrubberies and lawns.

I can see why I’ve always been fascinated by the Victorian period, surrounded as I was by so many period features. In the 1960s there were still people around, my grandparents for instance, who grew up in the last days of Victorian England. Our era seemed rather colourless and mundane compared with the world of Dickens and Thomas Hardy.

Grandma and Grandad Bell at Smeath. They met at the celebrations for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
Grandma and Grandad Bell visiting us at Smeath. They met at the celebrations for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

The house was built by the Baines family who were worsted spinners with mills in the valley below. There’s a box-shaped bay window on the west-facing corner of Smeath House which my brother imagines Richard Baines standing at early each morning to check that his foreman had stoked up the fire for the steam engine that drove the machinery.

We met Enid Baines, a daughter of the family, in the late 1950s or early 1960s when she revisited Smeath House. Her mum was then aged 100 but didn’t come with her. I would love to have seen any family photographs showing Smeath House in its Victorian heyday.

Links

Smeath House, Hodsons estate agents

Smeath House Flipbook looks so attractive, I wish that I could afford to make an offer!

Tim Baker Photography

Wood Street Roofline

roof windowA coffee break drawing from Marmalade, Cross Square, Wakefield of a Dutch or Flemish style attic window of the building at the end of Wood Street which for many years was a branch of Barclays Bank. There are impressive terra cotta panels on the facade and the dates 1810 and a later date (1870?) which must refer to a rebuild.

The Stables at ‘the Brig’

The long disused Crown Court at the top end of Queen Street is at last getting restored but it looks as if, for a humbler building back at Horbury Bridge, time is running out. A builder’s fence appearing just before a weekend around the old stables or barn next to the Ship Inn at Horbury Bridge might be a sign that they’re going to demolish it, to make way for a proposed convenience store.

It sounds a bit cynical but I always assume the worst because tree-felling and demolition of historic buildings often seems to take place over a weekend, sometimes a bank holiday weekend, when it’s impossible to get in touch with the local authority. I’m still waiting for a planning officer to get back to me, to clarify what might be going on*.

Horbury Bridge
Horbury Bridge

As I’m researching an article for the Dalesman about the first performance of the hymn Onward Christian Soldiers at Horbury Bridge, I’m interested in the history of the ‘Brig’. Local historian Christine Cudworth tells me that these stables have a unique kind of ladder in them. The land that they are built on formerly belonged to Horbury’s centuries old charity, The Common Lands Trust. The building has a slate roof so I’m guessing that it’s not as old as the Ship Inn next door which has a stone flagged roof.

I'm sorry that I missed photographing the old stables a couple of weeks ago. They've gone now unfortunately.
I’m sorry that I missed photographing the old stables a couple of weeks ago. They’ve gone now unfortunately.

Latest news; Wakefield planning department got back to me and explained that although the present scheme requests permission to demolish the stables, the developers had applied in 2014 for permission to demolish and, after due consideration, that was approved, so they didn’t need any further permission to proceed this weekend, even though their latest proposal has yet to be considered.

I vaguely remember seeing a planning notice last year but was so busy because of mum’s illness that I didn’t make any comments on the proposal. I’ll photograph what’s left of the stables – if there is anything by now – next time I pass.

* I’m impressed that Wakefield planning department got back to me on the Sunday afternoon.

The Woman over the Window

caryatidThere are carved heads on keystones above the entrance and the windows of this Venetian palace style branch of the Wakefield and Barnsley Union Bank (now occupied by Barclays) built in Ossett in 1870. The Santa Claus lookalike above the door seems to be a portrait, perhaps of the first manager, but this woman over the window has classical proportions and probably represents a mythological figure.

The man in a winged helmet over another window is probably Mercury but it would be nice to think that he was Osla the Viking, who, according to one interpretation of the town’s name, settled at ‘Osla’s seat’ or ‘Osla’s ridge camp’ a century and a half before the Battle of Hastings.

Eothen

eothenI remember as a child coming across this 1932 Methuen’s English Classic edition of Eothen by Alexander William Kinglake in the bookcase amongst my parents’ old books. It looked rather impenetrable but it’s actually a colourful traveller’s tale of a tour of the Middle East in 1834.

This copy is peppered with pencilled notes, underlined passages and notes for revision but with, no name inscribed on the endpapers, I was beginning to wonder if it really had belonged to my father. Then I spotted ‘R.D.BELL’ pencilled in block capitals across the bottom of the book.

It was destined for the charity shop but because of the family connection I’ll hang on to it. Perhaps some day I’ll read it.

snooker sketchsnookerIn 1932 my father would have been thirteen or fourteen years old and attending what is now High Storrs School in Sheffield. He didn’t always have his mind on English literature. Two drawings seem to indicate that at times he would rather have been playing snooker. As far as I know these two doodles are the only drawings of his that survive.

Whenever he decided to draw for us it was always the same thing; a cup and saucer with the light shining from the left. I’ve since discovered that there’s a connection between John Ruskin and that perennial favourite cup and saucer drawing of my dad’s. Ruskin was involved in setting up educational institutions in Sheffield. He believed that we would all benefit from drawing every day but far from that being a mad half hour of creativity he believed that we should learn the skills that would help us depict the world around us. The cup and saucer drawn in a sidelight was one of the exercises that he recommended.

In 1932 there would still have been teachers around who were part of that Ruskinian educational initiative.

The Old Bazaar in Cairo

Revision listThis list of revision notes on the front endpapers of Eothen is poignant. Ten years later, as a military policeman, my dad’s beat around Cairo as a special investigations officer included the pyramids (and, less glamorously, the Sweet Water Canal). I still have the pass that allowed him leave to visit Jerusalem and the Dead Sea.

The bazaar must have been familiar to him. Prior to his transfer to the military police, when travelling in the desert, his Bofors gun anti-aircraft unit in the Royal Artillery acquired a reputation for fair trading amongst the Arabs so they always had the first offers of provisions – such as fresh eggs – from the locals.

He brought a pebble back from the Dead Sea which I vaguely remember being kept in the top ‘secret drawer’ of the chest of drawers in our bedroom. What happened to it, I’m not sure, although father believed that we children had lost it when playing with it. If we came across it now, I’m not sure how we would recognise it as anything special.

When Waterton Banned the Badger

Waterton letter

Charles Waterton always regretted his decision to evict the badgers from Walton Park when setting up his nature reserve in 1826. He feared that they might undermine the ‘poacher proof’ wall that he’d built at a cost of £10,000.

I’m using a quotation from a letter he wrote to Alfred Ellis in May 1864 as the basis for a comic strip. My aims are;

  • to experiment with developing Waterton as a comic strip character for a project that I’m working on for Wakefield Museum
  • to see what the possibilities of comic software Manga Studio Ex4 are
  • to use my Wacom Intuos 4 graphics tablet to produce artwork

 

rough

Comparing the initial pen and ink ideas and the blue graphics pad roughs which I produced in Manga Studio, you can see that pen and ink works best for me but I want to follow the process through. Manga Studio is versatile enough for me to incorporate scanned drawings if that’s what I prefer to do. For now I’m working through the quick start guide chapter of Doug Hills’ Manga Studio for Dummies. I’ve been through it before years ago but never got back to the program since.

Waterton

Here’s my first attempt at the first frame of Waterton in penitent reflection. It’s been drawn using the graphics tablet with the default pen tool, the ‘G’ nib. For the hands I used the PhotoBooth program on my iMac and photographed myself in the pose. I might have been overacting a bit!

Roofina the Gargoyle

 Blacker Hall Farm Shop Cafe

gargoyle Blacker Hall farm cafe

gargoyle Blacker HallYou ask me why the stony face?
Well, you’d look like that in my place;
I sit at table 23
But no one seems to notice me.
Five hundred years at Blacker Hall
And now I’m stuck here in this wall!
Most gargoyles have a tusk or horn,
No wonder I feel so folorn;
They gave me something else instead,
A bloomin’ ridge-tile on my head!

gargoyle sketchesgargoyleI hadn’t spotted this small carving in the converted barn at Blacker Hall until we happened to sit at table 23 in the farm shop cafe.

Drawing from the left side I assumed this was a clean-shaven man or a child. It was only when I drew the pencil sketches above from some photographs we’d taken that I realised, especially when seen from the right, that this looks more like gargoylea woman.

She reminds me of Tenniel’s drawing of the Queen of Hearts in the trial scene in Alice in Wonderland. A Wikipedia article suggests that Tenniel based his drawing on a stained glass window painting of of Elizabeth de Mowbray, Duchess of Norfolk (c. 1442-1507)

Tenniel's Queen of Hearts
Tenniel’s Queen of Hearts

which means that roof-shaped headpieces were in fashion towards the end of the Wars of the Roses. I’m sure that Blacker Hall dates back to that time and the weathering on the bedding in the sandstone suggests that the carving has been subject to the elements for hundreds of years.

gargoyle cartoon

I’ve been trying to imagine what kind of character ‘Roofus’, or as I now realise ‘Roofina’ would be.

We went to see the Aardman Animation movie Shaun the Sheep today and I thought that I’d try to work up the gargoyle into an Aardman style character. That’s not so easy as they make it look. If you do get to see the movie, it’s worth making the effort to sit out the credits as they’re illustrated with what look like production sketches of the characters.

gargoyle

RoofinaIf I had the time and enough Newplast modelling clay I’d try modelling her.

Developing Roofina as a medieval character didn’t seem to work. I think that it’s important that she remains a gargoyle (although I guess intended to be a fashionably dressed lady of the period, not anything scary).

RoofinagargoyleI imagined the male version of the character, Roofus, grumbling about his film career as a gargoyle extra;

‘I auditioned for The Lion in Winter and, would you believe it, they used French gargoyles for that title sequence! Talk about overacting! And a couple of them hadn’t even called in at make-up to get their cobwebs removed!’

 

 

Wakefield’s Old Park

  • Stanley Hall.

This walk, which starts and finishes at Wakefield cathedral and passes Pinderfields, the Old Park and the Chantry Chapel. There are a number of Robin Hood connections, including a sculpture of his sparring partner George-a-Green, the Jolly Pinder of Wakefield. On 25 January 1316 the maidservant of Robert Hode, was fined two pence for taking dry wood and green vegetation from the Old Park. This walk must pass very near the scene of the crime!

More about Robert Hode and the early Robin Hood ballads in my Walks in Robin Hood’s Wakefield, available in local bookshops, visitor centres and some farm shops. Also available online, post free in the UK, from Willow Island Editions, price £2.99.

The walk passes the site of St Swithen’s chantry chapel. Walk it while you can because there are plans for a relief road which it is proposed will go through the Old Park, later the site of Parkhill Colliery, linking with the roundabout near Wakefield Hospice at Stanley Hall.

The Baines Family, 1912

Baines family
The Baines family, c. 1912; George William (who would then have been 39), William (13), Edward Henry (5) and Mary Alice (37).

plaque2While researching the life of composer William Baines for a college project in 1972, I was lucky to be able to interview a number of his contemporaries including a friend of the family, Nora Naylor.

Mrs Naylor who lived at 45 Cooperative Street, Horbury gave me this photograph of the Baines family, sent as Christmas card c. 1912.

baines-xmas2

It looks to me as if William has written the Christmas message as I’m sure that I recognise that handwriting from his early manuscripts and possibly the ‘To Nora Radley’ (her maiden name) in pencil.

Born in 1908, Nora told me that she remembered William and his tragically early death on 6 November 1922. Just as she was telling me this, her aunt, then aged 96 walked in and said ‘I remember when his parents were married.’

In the 1911 census, Nora’s aunt, then 35, is listed as a yarn reeler at a worsted manufacturer. Nora’s father, a widower aged 34, was an iron turner at the railway wagon works.

baines-parents

I didn’t keep meticulous records but I’m pretty sure that this photograph of Alice and George William was also given to me by Nora. It might have been taken at a roadside or railway cutting somewhere near Horbury – or perhaps on an excursion to the coast?

In the 1911 census the Baines family were living at 16 Church Street, Horbury, since demolished. He described his occupation as ‘Grocer and Music Teacher’. Considering their modest circumstances, I was surprised that the family employed a domestic servant; Annie Elizabeth Bradbury, 17, who was born at New Whittington, Derbyshire.

William Baines

William evidently learnt his musical skills from his father but I get the impression that his creative side owed a lot to his mum.

From these photographs you can also see that William inherited a certain sense of style from his father. In the earlier photograph George William reminds me of Pagget’s illustrations of Doctor Watson in the Strand Magazine.