You wouldn’t want to meet Joe Earnshaw on a dark night, but if you’d been prowling around the mill yard at Arkwright’s in Baring-Gould’s novel Through Flood and Flame, you’d find it hard to avoid him as he’s the resident night watchman.
Joe Earnshaw
Tag: Horbury Bridge
Baring-Gould Werewolf Slayer
During his time at the Mission at Horbury Bridge, from 1864 to 1867, the newly-ordained Sabine Baring-Gould wrote the hymn Onward! Christian Soldiers, met and fell in love with mill girl Grace Taylor and wrote The Book of Werewolves (1865), which Bram Stoker considered the definitive account of lycanthropy (Bram Stoker had heard rumours that there was to be a sequel on vampires, but sadly that didn’t happen).
There is no evidence that Sabine had to fight any werewolves during his time as a curate, working alongside Canon Sharp, but how could I resist him as a subject for the latest challenge from Swedish cartoonist Mattias Adolfsson in my Art of Sketching online course. We were asked to show aspects of a character’s biography through tattoos.
The Donkey’s Stable
We walked past the empty stable at the back of the Bingley Arms, Horbury Bridge, on Christmas Day. The fresh straw echoed the Christmas Crib currently on display at Di Bosco Coffee, the former Ship Inn, at the opposite end of the bridge across the Calder. In recent years, the Bingley, like many pubs, struggled to retain its popularity but there are now ambitious plans to restore the grade II-listed Georgian building.
The donkey that occupied this stable has now moved on, along with the landlord and landlady of the pub. I once tried to take a photograph of the donkey in its little stable yard but as soon as she saw my camera she put her head back down and resumed feeding. You’d often see the landlady of the Bingley out letting the donkey graze on the green triangles of grass at the road junctions at Horbury Bridge and the bottom of Sandy Lane.
I enjoyed the process of tracing the drawing, or as we illustrators call it, using visual reference, on the iPad in the ProCreate drawing program. As I tried to create a sense of three dimensions by cross-hatching the shadowy areas of the stable, I remembered the techniques I once used for books illustrated in black and white line. I’d dab on a little Tippex, which was typewriter correction fluid, to create a narrow white halo around an object which was supposed to be in the foreground, like the vertical posts that serve as a frame for this illustration.
The fine white-on-black line that you can get with the eraser tool in an iPad drawing reminded me of experimenting with scraperboard, which gave an effect sometimes described as ‘poor man’s wood engraving’. The subject matter – an everyday scene of a slightly unkempt outbuildings – reminded me of some of the early etchings of my tutor Derek Hyatt and of the urban back gardens celebrated by the etcher Janis Goodman.
Link
Coffee Shop Sketches
It’s such a pleasure to return to pen and watercolour after all the iPad drawing. However natural the feel of virtual pen, however nuanced the wash produced by virtual watercolour, they’ll never have quite the variety that is possible with real-world media. I can respond to the feel of the grain of the cartridge paper as I draw.
Besides, my iPad is A4 size and sometimes I only want to take a pocket-sized A5 sketchbook with me. This is my new Cremede Art, landscape A5 sketchbook, drawn with the B nib Lamy Safari pen and the most compact of my water brushes. But I’m fascinated by iPad drawing, so I’ll definitely continue with that.
Beat the Barrista
Barbara bought the coffees at Costa in Wakefield this morning, which gave me the challenge, as I waited at the table, of drawing the rather uninspiring view of Cineworld while she waited to be served. I added the colour after I’d eaten my chocolate tiffin. No-one ever claimed that drawing from cafe tables would be a good way to get back into shape after the excesses of Christmas. Fun though.
The Old Scouring Mill
I’ve drawn the old scouring mill at Horbury Bridge several times this year, not because I’m particularly interested in the old buildings but because of the attraction of overlooking the mill, scribbling in my sketchbook as we wait for coffee and croissants at Di Bosco, just across the road.
Overlooking and scribbling . . . (with apologies for that terrible link) . . .
‘Scribbling Overlooker’
Arthur Pearson, a scribbling overlooker, worked in one of the woollen mills at Horbury Bridge until shortly before the start of World War I, when he started working for a large woollen cloth manufacturer in Freiburg, Bohemia. After getting into an argument about the Emperor and the Kaiser in the local barber’s, he was interned from March 1915 until December 1918, when he made his way back to Yorkshire.
Speaking to a reporter from the Leeds Mercury, he said that in Vienna ‘food and clothing were only purchasable by the very rich people; in fact, money at times could not buy food, and he had seen gold watches given in exchange for a loaf of black bread.’
Tea was selling at £2 per lb, salmon 30 shillings a tin, jam 25 shillings per jar and rice £2 per lb. A suit of clothes sold for anything from £80 to £120, but, Mr Pearson noticed, ‘the cloth was of very poor quality’.
Scribbling was the initial process of combing the wool prior to spinning it into yarn.
Casualty Lists
War Office Casualty lists for 8 October 1918, a little over a month before the end of hostilities, listed Private B Clark, 46532, of Horbury, who was serving in the Durham Light Infantry. In the previous month Private J Heald, 40981, of Horbury Bridge was listed as a casualty on the 10th.
In June two soldiers from Horbury Bridge had been listed as casualties, Private W H Osterfield, 48495, of the West Yorkshire Regiment and Private D Hall, 242319, of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.
Weaners
At Charlotte’s Ice Cream Parlour, the piglets are getting to the stage where they’d be better being separated from the sow. She’s getting increasingly irritated by the continual rough-and-tumble of her nine little porkers.
Rough-and-tumble except for the numerous occasions when they’re taking a break.
Rhea
Two of the rhea eggs in the incubator at Charlotte’s have hatched, although we haven’t yet had the chance to see the chicks as they have to stay in there for a while. Rhea eggs are large but, even so it’s surprising how large the chicks are – about a foot tall apparently – so, they must have been well folded up in there.
Quails
In the lovebird aviary, a female quail is being pursued by an insistent male. He keeps grabbing her by the feathers of her nape so she’s starting to look a little the worse for wear.
The View from the Café
On Sunday morning when I drew the old scouring mill at Horbury Bridge from the Di Bosco Café, the temperature was climbing to 81°F, 27°C, so it was good to have the shade of their well-ventilated conservatory to draw in.
Yesterday, Monday, afternoon, I drew a buddleia-dotted development site through the open doors of Create Café, Wakefield One. The hoarding advertises the adjacent Merchant Gate development of flats, steak house and offices as ‘diverse & striking’. They seem to have given up on the ‘vibrant hub’ slogan.
The Old Scouring Mill, Horbury Bridge
After sorting and blending, the first stage in preparing raw wool is scouring: washing in hot water. The old scouring mill at Horbury Bridge is a reminder of the Victorian heyday of the West Riding woollen industry, when there were several large woollen mills at Horbury Bridge.
The mill closed long ago and is divided into units, some of them workshops with the one facing the road housing an antiques and second-hand furniture store.
Di Bosco coffee & champagne bar
I drew it from a table in the conservatory in Di Bosco, the coffee and champagne bar, which opened yesterday. Workers from the scouring mill must have drunk here often but at that time it would have been ale and porter, as this building was originally The Ship Inn, which dated back to at least the time that Sabine Baring Gould wrote Onward Christian Soldiers at Horbury Bridge. In 1865 he set up his mission headquarters in a terraced house, which still exists, midway between the Ship and the Horse & Jockey.
He certainly entertained decidedly un-Christian thoughts towards these two public houses, in particular the Horse & Jockey which, in his novel Through Fire and Flood, he has washed away in flash flood of epic proportions which cascades down the Calder Valley like a CGI sequence from a disaster movie.
In reality it survived and it now has a good reputation for resident chef Michael Oldroyd’s traditional Yorkshire food and, sorry about this Sabine, the landlord’s traditional Yorkshire beers.
Link
Giant Hogweed
A pair of mallards negotiate the rapids below the old weir at Horbury Bridge. The shady south bank of the river resembles a jungle with reed canary grass, giant hogweed, Japanese knotweed and sycamore forming a green screen in front of the embankment wall.
The giant hogweed is starting to come into flower. This introduced species is a native of the Caucasus Region and central Asia.
The only native amongst these four plants is the reed canary grass, Phalaris. It’s like a smaller version of common reed, Phragmites.
Germander Speedwell
On our front lawn, in the shade of the rowan, germander speedwell is in flower. I’m going to mow around it when I cut the lawn.
It’s considered a weed on lawns but I like it as much as the daisies.
Private Fishing
Horbury Bridge, May Day Bank Holiday Monday, 9.30 a.m.; a heron gets up from the edge of the old weir and flies downstream. The sober grey livery, black wing-tips and ‘wing light’ white patches on the leading edge of the wings give it the appearance of an RAF transport plane. The ‘black goggles’ eye-stripe makes it look determined. Will it fly over the bridge or under the arch?
It veers towards the arch on the Horbury side and disappears beneath. Then we realise why; a cormorant appears and flies off up the river. The pool below the weir is evidently private fishing.
Looking down on the action from such close quarters, we get a better view of a cormorant than any we had in Scarborough last week.
Heron and cormorant were birds from another world in my school days; spectacular images in the Observer’s Book of Birds in romantic, rugged settings.
The Brig Barn Mystery
Was this outbuilding at the Ship Inn at ‘the Brig’ (Horbury Bridge), a barn or a stables? As there is a pulley to the left of the upper door/hatch could it have been a warehouse? Perhaps it was connected with the woollen or rag trade?
The lean-to, if we can judge by that matching window, appears to be part of the original building but the extension at the back looks like a later addition.
Twenty or thirty years ago the upper storey was used as a loft for fantail pigeons. The entrance hatch and landing platform are still there in the middle of the upper door.
As I said the other day, there’s supposed to be a unique ladder or staircase inside but, from this side of the surrounding fence, I haven’t been able to spot it as the demolition continues.
I can see that the inner wall is modern-looking brick, the roof timbers sawn timber, so it is probably early twentieth century rather than early Victorian or Georgian. We can be sure that the stone-built, flag-roofed Ship Inn is at least 150 years old because it gets a mention (an unfavourable mention!) in Baring-Gould’s account of Horbury Bridge in 1864.
Middups and Shippon
What a shame that they’re demolishing this building that has been part of the townscape for so long. This was originally the rear of the inn, as you can see in the map below. The present main Wakefield to Huddersfield road through Horbury Bridge dates from the mid-twentieth century.
The field behind the Ship Inn was known as the Middups. Perhaps, like the place name Midhope this meant a secluded field in the middle of a valley.
It was in this field that local weaver and talented musician David Turton calmed a bellowing bull by tuning up his bass viol and playing a chorus from Handel.
The Ship sounds a likely name for an inn next to an inland waterway but alternatively it might refer to a shippon or cow shed.
Horbury Bridge 1906
My thanks to Paul Spencer who pointed out, via Twitter, that there was a blacksmith’s close to the old ‘barn’. He sent me a copy of the Ordnance Survey map of Horbury Bridge for 1906 which I’ve superimposed on a present day aerial view. The ‘barn’, which I’ve highlighted in yellow, isn’t shown on the 1906 map but its footprint doesn’t overlap the older building – long demolished – immediately to the north, so it could be a century old.
I’ve always wondered exactly how the Old Cut, abandoned and filled in during the twentieth century, fitted in to the layout of the Brig.
The river bridge of the early twentieth century was narrower than the modern version and crossed the river at a slightly different alignment.
Link; Account by Baring-Gould of the story of David Turton and the bull. This doesn’t mention that this took place in the field known as the Middups. My source for that was Horbury man Bernard Larrad, born (c. 1895-1980), who also told me that he had a photograph of himself as a baby sitting on Baring-Gould’s knee. Why he was so honoured wasn’t explained. As far as I remember, Bernard didn’t claim to be related to Baring-Gould.