Tag: Wakefield

No Mow May

daisies

The daisies are hardly bothering to open up on such a cool dull morning but at least I don’t get a spot of rain until the end of my brief sketching session as Barbara and her brother John make their three-circuit – one mile – exercise walk around the park. A man, accompanied by his young son on a bike, has set himself the target of four miles: twelve times around Illingworth Park.

It rains properly in the afternoon, which our garden really needs after such a dry April. Hopefully we’ll now get a bit of warmth and things will burst into life.

Every Flower Counts . . .

No Mow May

Leave your lawn unmown for the month of May and let the flowers bloom on your lawn. Then, at the end of the month, find out how many bees your lawn can feed with our Every Flower Counts Survey.

Plantlife Every Flower Counts survey

Well that’s all the persuasion that I need, it’s got to be worth a try, although we might need a mown path across our back lawn to get to the veg beds and to hang out the washing.

I am of course a bit biased and I even think of garden weeds as wild flowers, however troublesome, so I’m not the one to judge when it comes to a dilemma between tidy management and wild & free.

Spray or Strim?

spray

“What do you think of the change from strimming to using herbicides?” I ask a couple from the allotments alongside the park.

The man with the barrow isn’t convinced: “They’ve gone along the fence, but we’ve got bindweed down there, you think that was what needed doing.”

“We used to grow a blackberry along the fence,” adds the woman, “so people could pick the berries on the other side, but they said that we’d be liable if anyone was ill, so they’ve taken it out.”

footpath
Foothpath to the park and allotment sfence.

At first when I saw rings of dead grass around posts and litter bins, I blamed the local dogs, but it’s the result of the council making the change to spraying as an alternative to the expensive business of strimming around obstacles – which can be damaging to young trees.

I know how long it takes me to edge the lawn and to try and stop the chicory in our little meadow area taking over the paths and veg beds in the immediate vicinty, so I can imagine the scale of the problem of keeping things tidy over the whole Metropolitan District.

Plantlife is celebrating the way Wakefield and eight other councils are leading the way in better managing their road verges for wildlife, so I’m sure that the strimming versus herbicides dilemma has been carefully thought out, but however environmentally friendly the herbicide is that they’re using, there’s a lot of it being applied and inevitably there must be some impact on biodiversity.

Link

Every Flower Counts, Plantlife

Women in History

Women in History title page

For a cover illustration for Wakefield Women in History, I’ve gone for three of the more dynamic characters which, of course, includes my dynamic mother-in-law Betty.

women in history

I’ve drawn twelve subjects, which should fit into the format and length of my booklet.

Mary Creagh

Mary Creagh

Mary Creagh was Wakefield’s first woman MP, elected in 2005, so she’s one of my local Women in History. She’s invariably more upbeat than in my drawing but this is from a still from a Channel 4 interview, live from the Palace of Westminster, in December 2019, a week after she lost her seat to Imran Nasir Ahmad Khan, our current MP, who was literally parachuted in – yes, really, landing on a school playing field – to stand for the Conservative Party.

In the interview she reflected that the then Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn had been guilty of ‘preening narcissism’, so here she reminds me of a distraught character in a Samuel Beckett play or as Cordelia, banished by the folly of her father, in King Lear.

Mary Creagh has always taken a keen interest in environmental issues and during her time at Westminster she was chair of the Environmental Audit Select Committee. She’s now chief executive of the national walking charity Living Streets.

Link

Living Streets the UK charity for everyday walking

Annabel Grenehod

Annabel Grenehod

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.

Barbara Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth

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.

Betty Ellis

on her wartime Christmas Cake adventure

While chatting to my mother-in-law, Betty Ellis, in the spring of 2010, when the whole country had snow, and she said ‘It was snowing when John was born.’

‘Was it? – I never knew that.’ I said, and she told me the story and I asked her to write it down, just as she’d told me, so here, in Betty’s own words, is the story of 80 years ago, in March 1941.

Although they’d called her in unexpectedly, she ended up in Manygates Maternity Hospital longer than she expected.

When I was pregnant with John, I was 19 years old, I didn’t have much knowledge of that side of life.

I went to Manygates . . . but my mother having ill health, could not go with me, so a neighbour went with me. We went on the bus, while I was sitting there all I could think was, when I come home again I shall be a mother. It was the most wonderful and exciting thought.

Anyway, I was there about a week and when the Sister who came round the ward every day came and I heard her say “I think we can send her home, but first we will try castor oil” – and it worked John was born I think round 8 in the evening.

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.

Christmas Cake

Betty as I knew her, still baking

It’s typical of Betty that when the bombs were dropping around her, she was thinking of other people who were having a harder time.

I think this last little story really sums up Betty’s character as it involves a bit of an adventure, a touch of mischief and, of course, baking.

Betty had met Bill at a birthday party. She’d gone with her friend from work, Kitty Hornby, who was going out with Bill’s elder brother Charlie at the time.

Bill Ellis

That was the beginning of our lives together. I didn’t see him for a few years when he went overseas, but we wrote each other, we were able to get married while he was still in this country.

I would go and visit him when I got chance which wasn’t very often. It was Christmas and I baked Xmas cake, he was near Sheffield so I went and took a Christmas Loaf, but when I got there it was all railed off, and was getting dark, but there was a soldier going round on guard, so I went and called him over and asked if I could see Bill, so he went to find out, but he said he couldn’t, anyway Bill when he knew I was there he came out although he wasn’t allowed to, so I gave him the Cake through the rails, and I had to leave in case some officer saw us.

It wasn’t very pleasant being alone in the dark and the blackout, in a strange place but I made it home okay.

Betty Ellis, writing in spring, 2010

Ann Hurst

Ann Hurst

According to the blue plaque erected by Wakefield Civic Society this week:

Ann Hurst
(1772-1832)

Wakefield’s first female newspaper owner and proprietor. (1823-1830) Played a leading role in the promotion of the abolition of Slavery and was an active supporter of early medical provision for women and the poor. Her paper ‘The Wakefield & Halifax Journal’ was distributed from this property at 56 Westgate

Wakefield Civic Society, 2021, with Dream Time Creative.
Ann Hurst

I’m not sure if a portrait exists of her, so I imagined her reading galleys from her paper. I’m guessing that to do all she did, she must have been quite a commanding figure, so I thought of Anne Reid’s character, Lady Denham, in the recent television version of Jane Austen’s Sanditon. Hopefully Ann Hurst wasn’t quite so intimidating.

Jane Bagshaw, Kitchen Maid

kitchen maid

I was at ‘The Towers’ working for Doctor Fred Walker. He had a surgery out at the other side of the road, some distance away. As kitchen maid I didn’t get out much. The housemaid used to take the child out, so she got out more.

I had a weekend off each month and then I’d go back home. No, I don’t think there were any trams. The doctor had a pony and trap and a groom to look after it.

No, I haven’t seen Upstairs, Downstairs . . . the people next door say I ought to look at it.”

Jane Bell, 7 March, 1974

This was my grandma on her 91st birthday, when we visited her at Sutton-cum-Lound in Nottinghamshire on Thursday, 7 March 1974, reminiscing about the brief period in her life when she worked in Wakefield. I’d been showing her Harold Speak and Jean Forrester’s book of photographs of Old Wakefield. From what she said, it’s hardly surprising that she didn’t have more memories of the city at that time.

By the time of the 1901 census she’d moved up to being cook, for a family in Sheffield, so her time in Wakefield must have been towards the end of the 1890s or 1900.

diary
Extract from my diary for 7 March 1974. I’d travelled up on the train from my student accommodation near the Royal College of Art that morning.

John Lennon in Wakefield

It would have been John Lennon’s 80th birthday this week, on the 9th, so I’ve dug out this four-second snippet, filmed in very shaky Standard 8 cine from our black-and-white television, when John and Yoko were appearing on a chat show, probably The Eamonn Andrews Show in the spring of 1969.

I was surprised when my friend Hilary told me that in the early 1960s she’d been at the Saturday morning ABC Minors’ matinee at the ABC Regal cinema in Wakefield when The Beatles made an appearance. About twenty years ago I met a woman who had worked at the Regal at the time and who remembered telling off John when, after the performance, he offered her young daughter a cigarette.

My painter friend Jill told me that one of her tutors at art college (this would have been Manchester, 1969-1972) had previously been a tutor at Liverpool and had caught the young Lennon urinating down the lift shaft.

Finally, as a teenager, my brother’s daughter Hannah learnt the drums from at musician who’d been on the northern circuit in the early 1960s. His group had appeared on the same bill as The Beatles (possibly in Doncaster?), so after the show he’d approached John to say how much he liked their music.

“I especially like Yesterday“, he enthused.

“One of McCartney’s.” said John, and turned away.

Laurel & Hardy in Wakefield

Almost a decade before The Beatles performed at the Regal, Laurel & Hardy made a brief appearance, again at a children’s matinee. My friend Richard Knowles was taken by his uncle and remembers two elderly men coming onto the stage and waving at everyone, although at the time he didn’t know who they were.

Coffee Shop Sketches

Scouring Mill, Horbury Bridge
The Old Scouring Mill, Horbury Bridge, from Di Bosco Coffee, Christmas Eve.

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.

sketching at Costa Coffee

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.

Cineworld, Wakefield
Cineworld, Wakefield. They’ll soon have competition; Reel Cinema have plans to open a five-screen cinema in the Ridings Centre in May.