I’m delighted to have my Robin Hood artwork featured in an exhibition, closing next Friday, at Huddersfield University alongside – amongst others – Louis Zansky’s comic strip version. It was first published in 1942 in what was then the ‘Classic Comics’ series so, not surprisingly, there’s more than a hint of Errol Flynn’s 1938 Technicolor movie, The Adventures of Robin Hood.
Dr Todd Borlik and students in the School of Arts and Humanities have examined Robin Hood in history and literature, especially in the early ballads set in Yorkshire locations such as Sayles and Barnsdale near Pontefract.
My Walks in Robin Hood’s Yorkshire tours locations mentioned in the ballads and follows the career of a Robert Hode who features in the Manor Court Rolls of Wakefield. It’s likely that he was outlawed after fighting on the side of the rebels – led by Thomas of Lancaster, the Lord of the Manor of Wakefield at the time – at the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322.
Robin Hood and Little John at Kirklees Priory and my map from the Hartshead walk in ‘Walks in Robin Hood’s Yorkshire’.
Kirklees Priory is the scene of the story of Robin Hood’s death at the hands of his cousin, the Prioress and her lover Roger of Doncaster, who, according to a caption in the exhibition, may actually have been a ‘Roger of Huddersfield’.
The story gets a sumptuous Victorian gothic makeover in a stained glass window designed by Chance & Co. of Birmingham.
Robin Hood in literature from Piers Ploughman to lavish Edwardian children’s books.
It’s likely that this albaster effigy of a cross-legged knight in Pickering church is Sir William Bruce (c.1295-c.1345) who founded a chantry chapel there on the Feast of St John the Evangelist Saturday 27 December 1337.
He’s said to have fought at the Battle of Boroughbridge (or possibly at a tournament held there). His family home was at Beck Isle, Pickering, where there’s now a museum of rural life.
My favourite photograph of great grandad George Swift, sneakily taken, I’m guessing, by a teenage photography enthusiast: my grandad Maurice (I bet that’s his thumb print from when he developed the plate negative). George was a third generation spring knife maker in Sheffield but times were hard in the 1880s so he and Sarah Ann opened a corner shop as a sideline (note the Peek Freans ad, board). Must have been an exhausting business.
What do you do in a family crisis? Yes, bake scones. Here’s my mum-in-law Betty Ellis in a sketch of mine from the 1980s in her kitchen baking at her fold-out Formica-topped table. She once told me about cycling 25 miles through the black out to deliver a Christmas cake to husband-to-be Bill at his temporary camp in Sheffield when he enlisted in the army in 1939. So glad that I persuaded her to write it down.
The Nation’s Family Album
I’m submitting these images to The Nation’s Family Album: the National Portrait Gallery and Ancestry.co.uk are creating a special display at the gallery in 2023, so hope that Betty and George will be featured.
Dr Todd Borlik and an online Dr Alex Brown were the speakers at The Yorkshire Robin Hood talk and discussion at Huddersfield University yesterday.
Todd, a Shakespeare scholar with a special interest in Renaissance Ecocriticism put the tradition of Robin Hood’s death and burial in Kirklees into context. He mentioned that shortly before Shakespeare wrote As You Like It, set in the Forest of Arden, a Robin Hood play had been performed in the Rose Theatre, just across the road from the Globe.
Brown and Borlik
In his talk Riding the Wheel of Fortune with Robin Hood, Alex looked at how the fear of downward social mobility in post pandemic medieval England is taken up in some of the earliest surviving Robin Hood ballads, particularly in the story of the poor knight Sir Richard of the Lee in A Lyttell Geste of Robyn Hode.
Margaret Nortcliffe, our guide at Kirklees Priory and Robin Hood’s Grave
In the afternoon we got a chance to visit Robin Hood’s Grave and the gatehouse of Kirklees Priory, recently restored as a private home.
Once known as Four Lane Ends, this is the view as it was in 1967 from Tithe Barn Street looking across Westfield Road to Jenkin Road, with Arnold Tattersfield’s newsagents on the left, Lee & Briggs ironmongers on the right. The fourth ‘lane’ on the near right is Manor Road.
I drew the little sketch that it’s based on while sitting at the Tithe Barn Street back entrance to the old Congregational Chapel (extreme left) while working as a teller when my dad was standing for Horbury Urban District Council. I had to politely ask every voter as they walked in for their number on the electoral roll. Towards the end of the day the local ‘independents’ (really Conservatives) would go around rounding up anyone who had promised to support them but hadn’t yet turned up.
The original of linocut was black on white but I like this reversed version, made by going for the wrong keyboard shortcut in Photoshop (Control+I instead of Control+Alt+I. After all these years I still get that wrong when I’m resizing an image). I’m currently re-scanning drawings of Horbury for a reprint of my local guide to the historic buildings of the town.
I was influenced by Daily Mail cartoonist Trog’s bold pen and ink drawings in the paper’s long-running cartoon strip Flook.
Two more of our candidates in the Wakefield by-election: Christopher Jones, Northern Independence Party and Jordan Gaskell, UKIP. If Jordan gets elected on Thursday he’ll be the first Gaskell to represent Wakefield since Daniel Gaskell, who represented the borough as a radical independent from 1832 to 1837.
The villainous Sir Roger de Doncaster and the Prioress of Kirklees, drawn by Sebastian Evans, M.A.
“Robin Hood being sore smitten with fever, betook himself to the prioress of Kirklees, his own cousin and one cunning in leechcraft, to let blood, the which false and cruel woman, being thereunto set on by her infamous favourite Sir Roger of Doncaster, having blooded him in the arm, would by no means staunch the same, but so left him.
Robin and Little John at Kirklees Priory
“He in a while, finding himself like to die, sounded feebly a blast on his bugle-horn; whereat Little John, his fellow and most trusty friend, doubting that his gentle master had fallen into some grievous strait, speedily made way into the chamber where he lay, and perceiving the truth of the matter, would incontinently have set fire on the house; but Robin would not that he should do any violence, and calling for bow and arrow, let fly through the window, bidding Little John to bury him wheresoever he should find the arrow; and straightway there he died.”
The Robin Hood Window Chance & Co., Birmingham, mid-Victorian c.1850-60
Portions of the old ballad of Robin Hood relating to the subject are introduced on a scroll at the base of the subject, and run as follows:-
“Yet he was beguiled, I wis, By a wicked woman, The prioress of Kirkleys, That nigh was of his kin. For the love of a knight, Sir Roger of Doncaster, That was her own special.
“Give me my bent bow in my hand, And a broad arrow I’ll let flee; And where this arrow is taken up, There shall my grave digged be. Lay me a green sod under my head, And another at my feet; And lay my bent bow at my side, Which was my music sweet.”
Another verse of an old ballad is inscribed on the flag across the canopy-work:-“Gentles and yeomen all, comely, courteous, and good, one of the best that ever bore bow, his name was Robin Hood;” and on the other side, ” God have mercy on Robin Hood, and save all good yeomanry.”
The collar round the greyhound’s neck has the suggestive motto, “Fidèle à la mort.”
The grotesque figures about the canopies and the cabinet, the serpent strangling the eagle, which supplies the place of one of the crockets; the tapestries in the background, on one of which is represented Jael about to drive the nail into the head of Sisera; and other details, are all arranged so as to carry out the general idea of the artist, who, we would add, has produced a very excellent and original work, which, owing to its unfortunate position in the building, could not be properly appreciated.
The design and cartoons for the Robin Hood window were drawn entirely by Sebastian Evans, Esq., M.A., at a time when he was manager of the artistic department of the Messrs. Chance’s glass-works, but who has since entered into business on his own account. The glass was manufactured at the establishment under his superintendence.
“THE high reputation of the Messrs. Chance as glass-manufacturors is so widely extended that further eulogium on our part would be quite superfluous. On referring to the official Report of the Jury, Class 34, we find the following remarks :
Messrs. Chance Brothers & Co. are large exhibitors in the English department, of crown-glass, sheet-glass of all descriptions, coloured pot-metal, and flashed glass of all colours, patent plate, patent rolled plate, stained and embossed glass, and stained windows. Mr. Chance having kindly consented to act as one of the Jurors in this class, is thus prevented from receiving a medal, to which he is so well entitled. The report made by the experts upon the glass exhibited by Messrs. Chance & Co. places it, in most respects, without a rival.
To Mr. Evans also is due one of the best reviews on the glass department of the International Exhibition, which appeared in the «Practical Mechanic’s Magazine,” Parts VIII. and IX., 1862.
Both at the Exhibitions of 1851 and 1855, in London and Paris, the highest encomiums of the Juries were given to the window and optical glass of the Messrs. Chance; and the Jury of 1851 specially praised ” the magnitude and variety of operations undertaken by this firm, the merit of their works, the liberality, intelligence, and spirit of enterprise which they have manifested, at great cost and risk, in experiments tried for the purpose of introducing into this country branches of manufacture almost exclusively practised hitherto by continental enterprise.”
Acknowledgements
My thanks to L. Addyman of Brighouse for passing this Victorian print on to me. It was Chromolithographed and Published by Day & Son, London, ‘Lithographers to the Queen, J. B. Waring direx.’
These notes are adapted from a leaflet supplied with the print, which is numbered ‘Plate 262.’ There’s a French translation on the back of the page.
International Exhibition, 1862, Cromwell Road, South Kensington. It stood on what is now the site of the Natural History Museum. After demolition, the building materials were used in the construction of Alexandria Palace.
From the latest date mentioned in the notes and the comment: ‘a very excellent and original work, which, owing to its unfortunate position in the building, could not be properly appreciated’, my guess is that this was an exhibit in the International Exhibition of 1862.
John Haller (1909-1983) once told me that humorist Patrick Campbell (1913-1980) had produced a play The Vigil for our local drama group, the Horbury Pageant Players.
Patrick Campbell is probably best remembered today as Frank Muir’s opponent on BBC’s Call my Bluff but he was also well known as a journalist and drama producer.
In October 1955 John Haller succeeded Campbell, former head of B.B.C. northern drama programmes, as Chairman of the West Riding branch of the British Drama League, when Campbell accepted a post with the I.T.A., the Independent Television Authority, which had been created in the previous year.
The Vigil is a courtroom drama by Ladislas Fodor in which the gardener from the Garden of Gethsemane is accused by the Romans of stealing the body of Jesus.
It seems that the Pageants were disappointed that they hadn’t had more support from Horbury’s churches and chapels.
As it’s the Platinum Jubilee weekend I’ve dipped into a box of magazines that my mum saved. Eric Frazer drew the heraldic cover for the Radio Times Coronation Number.
Cecil Walter Bacon goes for a freer style for The Coronation Route map on the centre spread.
Twenty-eight years later I was lucky enough to work briefly right at the centre of this area when Collins the publishers were based at St James Place, tucked away behind The Ritz near the Piccadilly corner of Green Park. It’s there on C.W.B.’s illustration.
Equally impressive is Barbara Mary Campbell’s guide to the Coronation Procession in Picture Post. She’s included her signature ‘CAM, 1953’ on the cart that the street sweepers are trundling along at the tail end of the procession.
Cross-Stitch
If you didn’t want to have Eric Frazer’s artwork on display in your living room, this Clarice Cliff inspired (or perhaps even designed by her?) cross-stitch kit was available from Penelope (kit no. 3528). I don’t remember us using this but my mum was keen on embroidery, so I guess that this is her work.
Cross-Patch
I would have been just two years old at the time of the Coronation, so I don’t remember it but my sister has memories of it being the most boring of days. My parents had bought a 12 inch Bush television to watch the event and invited the neighbours round but the children had to play in the hall.
Worst of all, although there was a Dinky model of the Coronation Coach (I’m guessing that belonged to David next door) it was for admiring only and they were strictly forbidden from playing with it.
So my sister was very much in the situation of Betty and her friend Valerie in this Horlicks advertisement from the 6th June 1953 Coronation Souvenir Number of Picture Post.
So what could Betty’s cross-patch mum, Mrs Forbes, do about her ‘nerves, her brain and her whole personality’? She needed ‘complete relaxation’. Luckily this was in the early days of the National Health Service and her doctor had the answer:
Your rest should really reach down to your subconscious. Only then can you wake truly refreshed . . . my recommendation is Horlicks at bedtime.”
I remember my mum complaining of similar problems. If only we’d known about Horlicks at the time.
What does your child drink?
But supposing your children were getting ‘disappointing results in school-work’ caused by ‘poor concentration and lack of alertness’. Horlicks would be out of the question, inducing, as it does, ‘complete relaxtion’ right ‘down to your subconscious’. Luckily there’s Ovaltine: ‘in many homes the regular breakfast beverage for children’. A ‘wise choice’ because of its ‘nutritive properties, including vitamins’ needed for ‘satisfactory development’.
Sole Stories
So, completely rested, right down to her subconscious, and with children developing in a satisfactory way, how did the 1950s woman stay so smart? I associate Phillips ‘Stick-A-Soles’ with a strong smell of adhesive because occasionally my dad or mum would fit soles and heels to shoes. For more ambitious repairs, we’d take shoes to Mr Whitehead, the cobbler who had a lock-up hut on Cooperative Street, Horbury. Like most cobblers, he had a 12 inch tall bust of the wise old Phillips cobbler in his window.
Dads of the 1950s
But I know what you’re thinking: surely the dads of the 1950s, who sat around drinking tea (or was it Ovaltine?), pipe-smoking and reading the newspaper weren’t so good looking, with Brylcreemed hair and neat moustache. Well yes, and to prove it here’s my dad, Robert Douglas Bell relaxing (no tie) on the beach at Filey.
Sausages Milanaise
If you were snoozing after all those malty beverages, here’s a suggestion if you want to go Italian and wake up your appetite to the spicy taste of ‘prize, plump tomatoes, ripened in Mediterranean sunshine’.
I’d go for flat-leafed parsley rather than the curled variety, to give it that authentic Milanese vibe.
Mr Clunes
In an article on ‘The New Elizabethans’ in the Queen’s Birthday issue of Picture Post, 19 April 1952, I spotted a familiar face. But, no, it’s not Martin Clunes, this is his actor director father Alec: ‘mercurial yet stocky, mellow voiced yet passionate, a traditionalist and a bold experimenter . . . a gift for the gods’. So very like his son Martin (who we were once surprised to see running a used car business at Flamborough lighthouse. We never tracked down what he was filming for that day).
One of my favourite drawings is this Ronald Searle cartoon of humorist Patrick Campbell from an advertisement for Lilliput magazine in the April 1952 Picture Post.
Campbell once came to Horbury and produced a play. The Vigil, for the Pageant Players.
Barbara’s mum, Betty Ellis, would have been 100 years old today. Here she is in 2010 remembering the birth of he son John at Manygates Maternity Hospital during an air raid in 1941.
In some ways Europe hasn’t progressed much since then.
Betty delivering a Christmas cake to Barbara’s dad, William at his army camp in Sheffield.
Just after he was born the Air Raid Siren went, I asked where my baby was, they said he had been taken to the shelter, but I said could I go too, but they said no, as I had to stay in bed.
The [bomb] that dropped down Thornes when I was in Manygates Mum told me after, that it lifted her from her chair to the other side of the room.
We had a few bombs drop, one doodlebug dropped in Aunt Annie’s spare bedroom it did a bit of damage but not much, I used to go and clean for her and I didn’t like going in that room after.
Another dropped in Ossett, Mum and I had gone up to see Aunt Sarah Elizabeth and Uncle Wilson, Mum was in the kitchen with Aunt Sarah and I went into the garden with Uncle Wilson, we heard the Plane then we heard the Bomb coming down, I ran into the house, it knocked Uncle Wilson off his feet into the side of his shed, but he wasn’t hurt but we were all shaken up.
It made you realise what People in London and places [were going through] where they were getting that all the time.
Betty Ellis (1922-2012)
Betty and granddaughter Joanne
Barbara walked around Newmillerdam this morning with John, watching a tern, the first they’ve seen this year, hovering about near the outlet. I stayed by the car park and drew hogweed and curled dock.
