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.
There are still a couple of candidates I haven’t drawn and it’s the Wakefield by-election tomorrow but here’s Mick Dodgson, standing for the Freedom Alliance and Paul Bickerdike of the Christian People’s Alliance.
I didn’t get around to drawing Therese Hirst, standing for the English Democrats, but here she is in a drawing I made when she was standing in the election for a Mayor for West Yorkshire a year or so ago.
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.
No, I’m afraid that Akef, Ashley and Chris aren’t the hosts of the latest hit podcast, although perhaps they should give it a try as there’d definitely be some lively banter.
Jamie Needle our Liberal Democrat candidate. Today we had another seven candidates’ leaflets drop through the letterbox, so we can’t complain that we’re not being given a choice.
Apologies to our Yorkshire Party candidate, David Herdson, in the upcoming Wakefield by-election, as I’ve made him look a bit like me, however Barbara thinks he does look a bit like me anyway. Sorry about that David!
Nadeem Ahmed and Simon Lightwood are our Conservative and Labour candidates for the Wakefield by-election, coming up a week next Thursday on the 23rd. I’ve got my work cut out if I’m going to draw all the candidates as there are 15 of them in total (and there are some great faces to draw amongst them).
There are plenty of smiling photographs of the Labour and Conservative hopefuls but these are from the only two photographs that I could find of them looking serious on Google. Perhaps a bit too serious: Nadeem’s expression reminds me of Peter Jones on Dragons Den when he’s grilling a would-be entrepreneur about shortcomings in a business plan and Simon reminds me of a headmaster telling the assembled pupils that they’ve not only let themselves down, they’ve let the school down too (yes, I’m afraid this did occasionally happen during my school days, but usually only once a term, I’m glad to say).
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.
I am working for my Pianoforte recital at Horbury (Nr. Wakefield) which is on the 16th of this month — how I look forward to these occasions. Oh! music — what a delight you are to me — it is one thread between man — & spirit.
For “bread money” — I play as “relief pianist” at the Electric Theatre (Picture House) (York) — hours 4.30 to 7 o’clock.
It does not take up too much of my time — what a blessing! !”
William Baines, 1899-1922, in his diary for Wednesday, 2 January, 1918
Baines biographer Roger Carpenter thought that William Baines’ 16 January 1918 recital would have been only the second public recital that the 18-year old composer gave. I’ve met people who remembered William playing at the Primitive Methodists’ Ebenezer Hall, so probably that was the venue.
Tomorrow lunchtime at a recital in Ripon Cathedral Robin Walker performs William’s Tides, two sea pieces for piano, The Lone Wreck and Goodnight to Flamboro’ in a program that also includes performances of William’s Five Songs.
Fifty years ago, for my ‘major project’ at Leeds School of Art I was organising a Baines exhibition and a biographical leaflet. Looking back through my file today I like the inky roughs that I produced on layout paper. Unfortunately the finished publication was in two colours only, so I didn’t take those any further.
My drawing, from an old postcard, of the cliffs at Flamborough, for Roger Carpenter’s 1977 biography of Baines, Goodnight to Flamboro’.
The sea stack known as Adam, since eroded away, at Flamborough. Drawn from an old postcard for Goodnight to Flamboro’.
Where was my mum, Gladys Joan Swift, one hundred years ago today on Monday 25th April 1921?
Thanks to the 1921 Census records now available on Find My Past, I’ve been able to track her down. She was just three years old at the time, living at 77 Nether Edge Road, Sheffield.
Maurice Swift
Maurice Swift
Her father Maurice describes himself as a Cabinet Manufacturer and Undertaker, the employer at his firm Swift and Goodison Ltd.
His signature seems to fit with what I know of his character, bold with a bit of a flourish.
Childhood drawing by Maurice Swift senior.
Maurice Junior
But there was another Maurice Swift, Maurice T. Swift, cabinet maker at number 77. This was my uncle, then aged 16 who was employed as a Cabinet Case Apprentice at Maurice Senior’s workshop on Headford Street.
Giving your son your own Christian name and training him up in your business isn’t without its risks and after a falling out with his father, Maurice junior set up his own funeral business, resulting in confusion when people turned up to pay their bills. Maurice senior had to resort to placing a notice in the local paper pointing out there was no connection between the two businesses.
Sarah Ann
I checked out 79 Nether Edge Road because I knew that my great grandma, Maurice’s mum, Sarah Ann Swift (nee Truelove) was living there at the time of Sheffield Blitz but she hadn’t yet moved in a hundred years ago today.
33 Cemetery Road, Sheffield, August 2020, copyright Google 2022.
A search of the census shows that, aged 70 and a widow, she was supporting herself as a boarding house keeper at 33 Cemetery Road.
1921 Census record, 33 Cemetery Road, Sheffield.
Her boarders were a Singer Sewing Machine Salesman, James Pemberton, aged 50, and Mantle Shop Manager, John Robert Preston, aged 46.
She was born in 1851 so her signature is Victorian copperplate. I’m intrigued that she ran the Sarah and Ann together, signing herself as Sarahann Swift.
