Hard to believe that it’s now six years since I last saw Kate Taylor, Wakefield historian. On Saturday mornings, she and archivist John Goodchild used to treat themselves to breakfast at the Cottage Tearooms in Horbury then call in atthe Rickaro Bookshop on the High Street. Barbara worked there at the time.
In the 1970s Kate wrote articles on history and architectural heritage for the Wakefield Express, so it was a big thing for me when she called to interview me when my first book A Sketchbook of the Natural History of the Country Round Wakefield was published. It meant a lot to me that she took my work seriously.
I liked Kate’s uncompromising support for architectural conservation and always felt that she had an air of quizzical scepticism about her and a twinkle of mischief. She was force to be reckoned with and I couldn’t finish my Wakefield Women in History month without including her.
Chiwetel Ejiofor directed and starred in his 2019 film The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind and wrote the adaptation of William Kamkwamba & Bryan Mealer’s tale, which was based on a true story. For his role he learnt Chichewa, the local Bantu language of Malawi.
As with the Sherlock drawing, this is from a photograph in this week’s Radio Times.
“A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.”
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Henry Lloyd-Hughes‘ Sherlock Holmes in Tom Bidwell’sThe Irregulars, appears to have indulged in stronger stimulants than ‘a sandwich and a cup of coffee’ on his journey to ‘violin-land’.
My thanks again to the Netflix team, including costume designer Edward K. Gibbon for the ruffled, threadbare portrait in this week’s Radio Times. The magazine is stuffed with beautifully turned-out, well-scrubbed celebrities, but obviously Holmes after an overdose of his seven-per-cent solution is more appealing to draw with my Lamy Vista and De Atramentis Document Ink.
We’re getting towards the end of Women in History month but I couldn’t miss out Lady Kathleen Pilkington of Chevet Hall. A visitor in 1913 described her as ‘a fearless rider’ with the Badsworth Hunt and ‘a splendid rifle shot’.
She is fond of racing and is specially devoted to birds and her collection of foreign birds is one of the best in England.”
Charlton Jemmett-Browne, The French Bulldog, USA, September 1913
Lady Kathleen Mary Alexina Milborne-Swinnerton-Pilkington (Cuffe) (1872-1938), appeals to me as a character to draw because she spans the era of Sherlock Holmes – she’d be the plucky young gel who Doctor Watson would fall for – right through to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction when, with her champion French Bulldog, Chevet Punch, she’d be the formidable matriarch in an Agatha Christie country house party murder mystery.
I’m grateful to the Wakefield Historical Appreciation Site (WHAS) on Facebook: thanks to Keith Wainwright for posting the photograph of the Pilkington family in 1906, about to set out on a bicycle ride around the Chevet Estate. Lady K. is wearing her hunting pink complete with top hat!
Chevet Punch & Daisy
MINIATURE BULLDOGS “Champion Chevet Punch” & “Chevet Daisy” Owned by Lady Kathleen Pilkington Painting by Maud Earl, 1910
Lady K. was so renowned for her Champion French Bulldogs (and who could resist Chevet Punch and Chevet Daisy?!) that American short story writer and poet Bret Harte once requested a puppy from her in verse:
"Which I have a small favour to ask you,
As concerns a bull-pup, and the same,—
If the duty would not overtask you,—
You would please to procure for me, game;
And send her express to the Flat, Miss,—
For they say York is famed for the breed,
Which, though words of deceit may be that, Miss,
I'll trust to your taste Miss, indeed."
Bret’s ‘Flat’ was at 72/74 Lancaster Gate, Bayswater, so the bull-pup was going to a good home: Kensington Gardens is just five minutes walk away.
Leopold Harrison Osterfield), Bea (Thaddea Graham) and Jessie (Darci Shaw)
Sherlock Holmes’ streetwise Baker Street Irregulars were adept at making discrete searches of riverside wharves and back alleys and the new gang in Tom Bidwell’sThe Irregulars, launching tomorrow on Netflix, shouldn’t have any problems blending seamlessly into the crowd, provided they’re making their enquiries during the height of London Fashion Week.
Royce Pierreson’s ever-discrete Watson has dug out his old service revolver – perfect for undercover work – while Billy (Jojo Macari) walks softly and carries an enormous drumstick. Spike (McKell David), a character who appears to be as moody as Heathcliff but who dresses like Harpo Marx, favours a large blunderbuss.
The cast in costumes designed by Edward K. Gibbon appear in this week’s Radio Times, as does Sherlock (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) himself, who doesn’t appear until several episodes into the series.
Lloyd-Hughes looks very much as I picture the original Sherlock. Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes also features in the article.
As does the actor who appeared in more screen adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories than anyone else, Jeremy Brett. We were lucky to get to see Brett alongside Edward Hardwicke as Dr Watson in The Secret of Sherlock Holmes at Bradford’s Alhambra Theatre. The Irregulars have a tough act to follow, but it looks as if it will be a lot of fun.
There’s trade war with France, the pandemic is peaking on the continent and Scotland is making a bid for independence.
Yes, we’re going back 650 years for today’s Wakefield Woman in History, the formidable Annabel Grenehod. She could certainly put over a convincing case at the Manor Court which was in the middle of town, right opposite the main entrance to the parish church (now the cathedral) on the site now occupied by the former BHS store.
On Thursday, 18th November, 1350, there were more than a dozen cases for the attention of for R. (Robert?), son of John the Steward, including debt, trespass, a runaway servant, straying animals and the theft of a crop of oats. First up was Elizabeth Pellesondoghter, who was fined for not prosecuting a trespasser, but in the next case Annabel proved more determined. The Wakefield Court Rolls record that:
John del Rode failed to make the law which he waged against Annabel Grenehod, executrix of the will of John Grenhod chaplain: therefore it is judged that she should recover against the said John del Rode 1 stone of wool which she claimed against him in the preceding court, and he is amerced (fined).
Wakefield Court Rolls, Thursday, 18th November 1350
At that previous court on the 21st October, Annabel had claimed 2 stones of wool, price 8s, against John del Rode. Eight shillings would be about about £230 today, enough to buy a cow or a quarter of a ton wheat. John had admitted to owing one stone of wool but had disputed the second.
That seemed to be the case settled, so presumably Annabel reclaimed the rest of her wool, but it wasn’t the end of her legal tussles because at the next court, on 18th November, she was chasing Robert de Bothe for a debt of sixpence (£14 or £15, the daily wage of a skilled tradesman). Again she won the case.
Unusually, the Lord – or Lady? – of the Manor of Wakefield at the time was the equally feisty Matilda de Neirford, Countess de Warenne, who had been in a long term relationship with the late John, Earl de Warenne, but their children were considered illegitimate, so he was the last of his line of the Norman Lords of the Manor of Wakefield.
A Stone of Wool
From, ‘The Statutes at Large’, Owen Ruffhead, 1761, available as an eBook from Google Books
In the year that Annabel’s case came up, Edward III turned his attention to weights and measures, insisting that the Stone – which he specified as 14 pounds weight – should be used as a measure of wool, using a ‘Beam of the Balance’, rather than the Auncel, a balance scale with a movable weight, which made it easy for a merchant to falsify the weight.
Wool was so important to the kingdom’s economy that Edward insisted that his Lord Chancellor should sit on a bale of wool – the Woolsack – a tradition that continued in the House of Lords until 2006. The tradition continues to this day with the Lord Speaker now sitting on ‘The Woolsack’.
One of the reasons that Edward III’s ‘Hundred Year War’ got started was to protect England’s wool trade routes. Battle of Crécy in 1346 gave Edward an early victory.
More March birthdays. This first one is totally unfair to Uncle Bill and to the innovative ‘funky grooves, 80s synth and jazzy piano a go-go’ sounds of Tom’s brother’s indie rock band but the ‘Scotsman playing Baker Street on the trombone’, was an actual incident at a wedding in Edinburgh, which I remember it well: very difficult to forget, actually!
The big birthday recently has been my brother-in-law John. For the past year because of restrictions, he’s been grounded in South Ossett, so Illingworth Park has been his regular exercise walk. Three times around the park is one mile, so during that time we calculate that he’s walked about 300 miles around the park and another 300 getting to and from it, so the full distance of the Pennine Way and back again, with just about enough mileage left over to complete The Dales Way too.
My first version of John’s card included the regular dog walkers and the occasional mums and children who we see in the park, but I thought the numbers would make more of an impact if the park was empty. I added ink washes to establish the tones but this dulled the watercolour wash that I put over it, so I drew the card again.
Ali is brilliant at sewing and was able to run up some stylish face masks in the early days of lockdown when they were in short supply.
It’s been a busy month for birthday cards, this one inspired by my niece, Sarah, who in real life really appreciates the bad boids visiting her feeders.
We generally used to go into the Church yard, and look with some awe at the Nun’s graves, the earliest of which were already there, the Old Hall at Heath being the Nunnery : this brings to mind an incident some years later, when the youth and beauty of the Nuns of Heath excited a good deal of interest in the neighbourhood. One sultry summer’s afternoon my cousin Ben and I, took a boat from Wakefield down the river, and coming under the shelter of the wood at Heath, made fast our boat and strolled in the grounds. We had not been long there before we heard footsteps, and concealing ourselves behind a tree, saw a long line of Nuns, two and two, approaching us, preceded by the Lady Abbess. We were very much struck by the youthful and beautiful appearance of the young ladies, and my cousin unable to repress some slight exclamation, we were at once discovered by the Lady Abbess, and at a signal from her, each beautiful face was instantly concealed, by the drawing down of a veil, and a retrograde motion immediately commenced by all except the old lady, who came forward in great indignation, speaking angrily in French, of which neither of us understood a word. We of course remained silent. She then broke out, and rated us soundly, in English, in good set terms too, and we retired, making the best excuses we could, the object for which we had really gone, having been obtained.
Henry Clarkson, Memories of Merry Wakefield, 1887
At the east end of Kirkthorpe Church, a row of plain headstones mark the graves of Benedictine nuns who fled the French Revolution to live in exile at Heath Old Hall between 1811 and 1821. The inscriptions give only initials and dates but one records a name, perhaps she had yet to take her vows;
Emilia Monteiro Born at Lisbon Died July 3rd 1816 Aged 15
When Barbara Hepworth graduated from the Royal College of Art, her tutors felt that her drawing was strong but that she wasn’t going to make it as a sculptor. Sculpture at the time typically involved building up a figure as a framework and swathing it in plaster, before casting it in bronze, so it started with a modelmaking process. Barbara preferred to take a block of wood or stone and carve into it.
During her childhood and teenage years in Wakefield, she got the chance to visit the gritstone crags and tors of the Yorkshire moors, carved by natural processes during ice ages and interglacials. On holidays around Robin Hood’s Bay, she saw landforms sculpted by coastal erosion.
