Monthly Archives: December 2013

Castle that’s not a castle

Leave a Reply
Nottingham Castle

Nottingham Castle

When is a castle not a castle?  For many visitors, Nottingham Castle comes as a surprise, because it doesn’t have battlements or a drawbridge.  It did, of course, at one time, but the medieval fortress that guarded the crossing of the River Trent that is now a famous cricket ground disappeared after the English Civil War.

Nottingham was the place where King Charles I first raised his standard, signalling his military opposition to the forces of Parliament and triggering the conflict that led to his execution.  The old castle was “slighted”, that is, rendered indefensible, by order of Parliament in 1651, and its ruins and the park around it were bought after the Restoration by William Cavendish, a prominent Royalist and the first Duke of Newcastle.

He swept away the remains of the old castle and – well into his eighties – began a completely new, extremely modern classical palace that was completed, three years after his death, in 1679.  It cost £14,000.  (Curiously, the 8th Earl of Rutland, a Roundhead, had built a similarly splendid baroque palace in place of his slighted castle, beginning in 1654.  All that remains of this is a model, now displayed in the nineteenth-century replacement Belvoir Castle [http://www.belvoircastle.com].)

The seventeenth-century Nottingham Castle was little used in the decades that followed, and was virtually empty when in 1832 it was set alight by Reform Bill rioters.  Its then owner, the 4th Duke of Newcastle, was anything but popular:  in an election in 1830 he had evicted tenants who wouldn’t vote as he wished, saying, “Is it not lawful for me to do what I please with my own?”

Eventually, in 1876, Nottingham Corporation bought the Castle from the 6th Duke and commissioned the local architect Thomas Chambers Hine to rebuild the interior as the first municipal museum of art in England.

Now it is the Castle Museum [http://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1036], centrepiece of a cultural quarter that also includes a fascinating series of caves, including Mortimer’s Hole, and, at the foot of the cliff on which the Castle stands, the Museum of Nottingham Life at Brewhouse Yard.

It may not look like a castle, but you can spend an entire day in and under it without getting bored.

 

Apocalyptic visions

Leave a Reply
York Minster: west front

York Minster: west front

John St John Long, the quack doctor who is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery, could have had an alternative, much less dangerous career.

One of his oil paintings, ‘The temptation in the wilderness’ (1824), belongs to the Tate Britain collection [http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=13062&searchid=25174].  Apparently, he spent the early 1820s as a painter of biblical subjects before turning to medicine.

His tutor was the apocalyptic painter, John Martin (1789-1854), a fascinating character who took time out of a commercially successful artistic career to support his eldest brother William’s career as an inventor, to join in the controversy over how to solve London’s sewage problem, and to care for his demented elder brother, Jonathan (1782-1838).

Jonathan Martin witnessed the murder of his sister, a trauma which he never overcame. At his confirmation he was “astonished at the wonderful size of the bishop”, and took to an abusive correspondence with clergymen, who tended to exclude him from their churches because of his antics.  He was for a time a Wesleyan minister, and was locked up for threatening to assassinate the Bishop of Oxford.

One missive began, “Blind Hypocrits, You serpents and vipers of Hell, you wine-bibbers and beef-eaters, whose eyes stand out with fatness…” and another made the more sinister prophecy, “You whitent sea pulkirs…your Gret Charchis and Minstairs will cume rattling down upon your Gilty Heads.”)

Perhaps someone should have kept a closer eye on Jonathan Martin.  On February 1st 1829 during evensong at York Minster he was apparently distressed by a buzzing in the organ, and concealed himself inside the building.  He started a fire, before escaping through a window, and succeeded in burning down the entire east end.  One of the bystanders remarked that the spectacle reminded him of one of John Martin’s canvases, not realising that the sight was the result of the artist’s brother’s work as an arsonist.

Jonathan Martin was committed to an asylum for the second time in his life, and remained there until his death.

York Minster suffered further fires in 1840, when a workman’s lamp set fire to the south-west tower, sending the bells to the ground “with a deep hollow sound” and gutting the nave, and again in 1984 when lightning set alight the roof of the south transept.

The south transept was restored by 1988.  Now there is a major campaign once again to safeguard the east end of the Minster.  See http://www.yorkminster.org.

The 44-page, A4 handbook for the 2009 Historic York tour, with text, photographs, and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £7.50 including postage and packing.  To view sample pages click here. To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Lapidary description

1 Reply
Tomb of Dr John St John Long, Kensal Green Cemetery, London

Tomb of Dr John St John Long, Kensal Green Cemetery, London

Dr Johnson remarked that “In lapidary descriptions a man is not upon oath”.

But how do you frame an epitaph when the life of the deceased has been marked by scandal?

Dr John St John Long (1793-1834) lies beneath a tomb in Kensal Green Cemetery that is a masterpiece of lending dignity to a remarkable man who is, perhaps, remarkable for unfortunate reasons.

Long is usually described as a quack doctor.  In fact he practised from a Harley Street surgery, though he “had not been regularly educated as a surgeon”.  On at least two occasions the deaths of his patients led to manslaughter charges:  in the first instance he was fined £250;  on the second, though the coroner’s jury returned a manslaughter verdict “on the ground of gross ignorance, and on other considerations”, Long was exonerated at the Old Bailey and “several ladies, elegantly dressed, remained with the prisoner in the dock throughout the day, to whom this verdict appeared to give great satisfaction”.

Nevertheless, he received glowing testimonials from patients who felt they had benefitted from his treatments – among them the Countess of Buckingham and the radical politician, Sir Francis Burdett, who recommended Long to the Marquess of Anglesey for a treatment for tic doloureux.

His tomb at Kensal Green carries a lengthy and delicately poised inscription:

It is the fate of most men to have many enemies, and few friends.  This monumental pile is not intended to mark the career but to shew how much its inhabitant was respected by those who knew his worth and the benefits derived from his remedial discovery.  He is now at rest and far beyond the praises or censures of this world.

Stranger as you respect the receptacle for the dead as one of many who must rest here, hear the name of John St John Long without comment.

Most commentators quote only the final paragraph – which has a more terse effect.

Of the “benefits derived from his remedial discovery” nothing further was heard after Long’s death.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Victorian Cemeteries, please click here.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2015 Cemeteries and Sewerage:  the Victorian pursuit of cleanliness tour, with text, photographs, maps, a chronology and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Equestrian genii

Leave a Reply
Tomb of Andrew Ducrow, equestrian, Kensal Green Cemetery, London

Tomb of Andrew Ducrow, equestrian, Kensal Green Cemetery, London

Probably the most bombastic monument in Kensal Green Cemetery is that to Andrew Ducrow (1793-1842), the equestrian owner of Astley’s Amphitheatre in Lambeth.

Ducrow’s entry in Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Ducrow] likens his stage act to the modern-day Chippendales, because he and his sons dressed in flesh-coloured body stockings and posed on the backs of white stallions.

Even though Astley’s burnt down three times, Ducrow was clearly worth something.  His plot in Kensal Green Cemetery is in a prestigious location near to the Duke of Sussex, and his monument cost £3,000.  Built initially for Mrs Ducrow, its design by George Danson is a ponderous mix of classical and Egyptian motifs, originally coloured and surmounted by a statue of Hygieia, goddess of health, cleanliness and sanitation.

The inscription, which Ducrow clearly wrote, declares that the tomb was “erected by Genius for the reception of its own remains”.  It was described in the contemporary periodical The Builder as “ponderous coxcombry”.

The real genius of Astley’s Amphitheatre was, of course, its founder, Philip Astley (1742-1814).  In many ways he is the originator of the modern circus, because he was the first professional trick-rider to perform in a circle, though he never used the Latin term “circus” or the English “ring”, but called it a “ride”.  He introduced clowns and acrobats into his show to extend and vary the performance.

Most significant of all, he determined that the diameter for the circus ring, as we now call it, should be 42 feet, for that caused a cantering horse to lean at the optimum angle for a man to stand on its bare back.

Now that‘s genius.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Victorian Cemeteries, please click here.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2015 Cemeteries and Sewerage:  the Victorian pursuit of cleanliness tour, with text, photographs, maps, a chronology and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Leah’s Yard

1 Reply
Sheffield Retail Quarter: Leah's Yard [foreground]; St Matthew's Church, Carver Street [background] (2006)

Sheffield Retail Quarter: Leah’s Yard [foreground]; St Matthew’s Church, Carver Street [background] (2006)

Cambridge Street typifies the heart of Sheffield’s city centre:  at the top end, one side is occupied by the 1960s former John Lewis store;  opposite is an abbreviated string of pubs and restaurants – Yates, ASK Italian, and a Wetherspoon’s called the Benjamin Huntsman.  Others have disappeared in the turmoil of redevelopment – the utterly unreconstructed Sportsman pub and another bar called the Cutler, and at the next corner Henry’s.

Scratch the surface, though, and it all becomes much more interesting:  the ironwork front to part of the Benjamin Huntsman pub is all that’s left of a coachbuilder’s works of 1878;  the  shopfront to the former John Lewis annex hides an imposing gabled Primitive Methodist chapel of 1835;  the Cutler occupied that chapel’s brick, gabled Sunday School.

Sitting right in the middle of this block, next to the Sportsman pub, is a façade which is the key to the history of the street and the area.

Leah’s Yard dates from the second half of the nineteenth century, originally known as the Cambridge Street Horn Works (presumably making handles for table cutlery) and later named after Henry Leah, who made die stamps here from 1892.  It’s an intact example of a Sheffield “Little Mesters” works, brick workshops with generous windows for light and external stairs on a long narrow site running back from the street.

Cambridge Street was originally Coalpit Lane, when Sheffield’s craftsman trades crowded into the town centre.  Yet even in its heyday this area was not uniformly industrial:  the Bethel Chapel and its Sunday school are only a few doors down;  across the road, the John Lewis site was occupied by the Albert Hall, Sheffield’s most imposing concert hall.

This place witnesses the rich, vibrant diversity of life in Victorian industrial towns.  The phrase “cheek-by-jowl” doesn’t begin to express it.  Ruth Harman & John Minnis, Pevnser Architectural Guides:  Sheffield (Yale University Press 2004), pp 98-100, contains a description of Leah’s Yard, pointing out that the eighteen workshops in Leah’s Yard were occupied by a dram-flask manufacturer, hollow-ware and silver buffers, a palette-knife hafter, a steel-fork manufacturer, a silver-ferrule maker, brass and german-silver turners, an electroplate manufacturer and a cutler.  This is how it looked at the end of the twentieth century:  Leah’s Yard Sheffield: 10 photos looking back at famous city centre site at heart of major development | The Star.

Leah’s Yard stood empty and gradually decaying for a couple of decades.  It’s listed Grade II* and has figured on the English Heritage Buildings at Risk register.  From the street it looked not so much tired as exhausted.  Various schemes for sympathetic regeneration of this precious survival came to very little.

Planning permission to demolish the entire street, and much else, to build a new retail quarter was replaced by a redevelopment scheme which was completed in the summer of 2024.

In the meantime, thanks to Sheffield’s admirable e-newspaper, The Tribune, here is a link to drone footage showing the state of progress in the summer of 2023:  The countdown is well and truly on! The frame for the new-build section of Leah’s Yard is up and all around us The Heart of The City is… | Instagram.

Update: This well-written article in the online Sheffield Tribune puts the redevelopment of Leah’s Yard in context as the surrounding improvement scheme comes to fruition: Can Heart of the City bring life back to Sheffield city centre? (sheffieldtribune.co.uk).

Silversmiths

Leave a Reply

Former George Ellis (Silversmiths) Ltd, Arundel Street, Sheffield (2010)

Former George Ellis (Silversmiths) Ltd, Arundel Street, Sheffield (2010)

Sheffield’s proud cutlery industry is based on the work of the “little mesters”, small – often one-man – crafts businesses that divided up the multiplicity of tasks involved in creating tableware, kitchenware and cutting tools.  Some of these businesses prospered and grew, sometimes into very large, ultimately world-famous enterprises such as Mappin & Webb [http://www.mappinandwebb.com/content.asp?coid=27].

Around the original town centre there remain tall tenement blocks, often now converted to apartments or offices, which bear the names of long-gone enterprises which imprinted the phrase “Made in Sheffield” as a mark of quality on the best cutlery in the world.  These are areas very like the better known Birmingham Jewellery Quarter.  There is an excellent account of these characteristic Sheffield buildings in Nicola Wray, Bob Hawkins & Colum Giles, One Great Workshop: The buildings of the Sheffield metal trades (English Heritage 2001) [http://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Great-Workshop-Buildings-Conservation/dp/1873592663/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353486144&sr=8-1].

One such was George Ellis (Silversmiths) Ltd.  George Ellis (1863-1944) began working in 1895 in a little mesters’ shop in John Street, gained his own hallmark from 1912 and formed a limited company in 1932.  The works on Arundel Street – in what was originally an eighteenth-century house – ceased trading around 1971.

Now, after some encouragement from Gordon Ramsay, the building is Silversmiths [http://www.silversmiths-restaurant.com] , a very modern restaurant with an emphasis on regional food, which in Sheffield includes the resolutely local Henderson’s Relish, the work of another kind of Sheffield “little mester”, Henry Henderson.

My friend Paul, who suggested we visit, was present when Gordon Ramsay gave his encouragement.  This apparently involves lots of cameras, lights and theatricals.

We happened upon Pie Night, with Yorkshire pudding served – as it should be – as a starter with Henderson’s Relish gravy.  The pies were excellent, with chips like miniature house-bricks.  And there was gooseberry fool.

The inimitable Yorkshire journalist, Stephen McClarence, had a less favourable experience of Silversmiths, so – much as I admire Steve’s writing – I’ll draw a veil over his review.  You can find it if you know where to look.

Changing trains in the middle of nowhere: Miller’s Dale Station

1 Reply

Miller's Dale Station, Derbyshire (1970)

Miller’s Dale Station, Derbyshire (1970)

Miller’s Dale Station was one of the sites on the Waterways & Railways across the Derbyshire Peak tour in June 2010.  It’s a parking place on the Monsal Trail which utilises the trackbed from just west of Bakewell through to Blackwell Mill, a couple of miles from Buxton town centre.

The whole line is an astonishing piece of engineering, carved through the dales of the River Wye in the 1860s to the fury of John Ruskin, who complained that it destroyed an idyllic landscape so that “every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton”.  The rapid succession of viaducts, cuttings and tunnels led the railwaymen to call this line “the flute”.

Travellers gaze at the huge expanse of the former station, and wonder why the Midland Railway built a five-platform station on a shelf halfway up a remote cliff-face.  The reason was to provide a connection between the dead-end branch line to Buxton and the fast trains between Derby and Manchester, and – from 1905 – to allow expresses to overtake the heavy goods trains that struggled up the grade from Rowsley.

Ironically, when the line closed in 1968, there was uproar at a plan to demolish the Monsal Dale Viaduct, and in the 1980s the Peak Park Planning Board concluded that it was far cheaper to repaint the magnificent iron and steel Miller’s Dale Viaducts than to dismantle them.

This means that it remains possible for PeakRail to bring train services back to Miller’s Dale, one day.  When this plan becomes a reality, I suspect there will be an outcry from nature-lovers at the destruction of wildlife on the trail, and once again every fool in Buxton can swap places with every fool in Bakewell if they wish.

There’s a detailed account with a collection of images of Miller’s Dale Station at ttp://www.disused-stations.org.uk/m/millers_dale/index.shtml, and Graeme Bickerdike provides an informative update on the physical condition of the engineering structures along the line at http://www.forgottenrelics.co.uk/bridges/monsal.html.

At present, Miller’s Dale Station has nothing to offer but public lavatories.  The nearby café, known as the Wriggly Tin, is now a house.  But according to a recent press report, this situation may shortly improve:  http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/localnews/3m-visitor-centres-hopes-for.6349207.jp.

Rails across the Peak

2 Replies

Peak Rail, Rowsley South Station

Peak Rail, Rowsley South Station

Peak Rail is a steam-railway project with a huge future.

The present is relatively modest.  Trains operate along a four-mile stretch of the Derbyshire Derwent valley.  Most of the resident locomotives are diesel, though trains are often steam-hauled.  The catering staff do an excellent line in Sunday lunch, afternoon tea and cream tea.  There is a regular roster of events to bring in special-interest groups.

The next major development will be running trains into the Network Rail station at Matlock.  For a long time the Peak Rail line terminated at a temporary station, Matlock Riverside, which is within walking distance of the town centre.  Now that Peak Rail trains stand on the adjacent track to the railcars from Nottingham and Derby, it’s easier for passengers to make use of the line, and a restored direct rail link enables steam tours from afar to travel up to Rowsley, and for Peak Rail excursions to head south on to the national network.

But the big agenda is the vision that started the whole project in 1975.  When the main line through Matlock to Manchester closed in 1968 the trackbed remained largely intact and much of it eventually passed to the respective local authorities, Derbyshire County Council and the Peak Park Planning Board.  The Peak Railway Association exists to support Peak Rail with proposals to restore train services up the Wye valley west of Rowsley, bringing visitors to Bakewell, Monsal Dale, Miller’s Dale and eventually Buxton.

The practical impediments are, apparently, replacement of an overbridge at Rowsley and “difficulties” with Haddon Tunnel  [http://www.forgottenrelics.co.uk/tunnels/haddon.html].  Otherwise the obstacles are primarily economic:  http://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/images/derby-mancester-rail_main_report_full_tcm44-21359.pdf.  Repeated examinations of the plan have so far ruled out reinstatement, though the attractions of routing freight by rail across Derbyshire, relieving the heavily-used Hope Valley line from Dore to Chinley, may become more attractive in the years to come.

Details of Peak Rail’s services and events are at http://www.peakrail.co.uk/index.htm.

Open House Day at Harlaxton Manor

2 Replies

Harlaxton Manor

Harlaxton Manor

Harlaxton Manor is an exciting place to visit, yet most travellers only glimpse it as an astonishing vista to the south of the A607 Grantham-Melton Mowbray road.

Harlaxton is an exceptionally exciting building, designed between 1831 and 1837 by Anthony Salvin and William Burn for the eccentric bachelor Gregory Gregory (1786-1854), whose name is commemorated in Nottingham’s Gregory Boulevard, developed on one of his six landed estates.

Gregory Gregory’s intention in building such a huge house seems to have been first, to house his extensive art collection, and second to spite his heir, a distant cousin.  The result is a fascinating mixture of dramatic baroque interiors such as the Great Hall and Cedar Staircase and Victorian ingenuity – hidden doors so that the servants literally appeared out of the woodwork and an indoor railway viaduct to deliver coal by gravity to each floor.

In the spirit of the baroque theme, illusions abound.  The Cedar Staircase is nowhere near as high as it looks, and materials are not what they seem – wood turns out to be plaster, and what looks like solid plaster actually moves.  Room stewards will be available on Open House Day to explain the history of this strange building.

I’ve taken numerous groups to Harlaxton over the past twenty-three years, including one group of jaded teachers on a Friday-night near-the-end-of-term mystery tour.  As the coach trundled across the park in the summer evening, it seemed as if every window of the Manor glowed.  One lady (not a historian) thought she was at Disneyland.

Harlaxton Manor is well cared for by the University of Evansville, Indiana, who use it as their British campus.  The college website is at http://www.ueharlax.ac.uk/about_us/index.cfm.

Harlaxton Manor features in Mike Higginbottom’s lecture English Country Houses – not quite what they seem.  For further details, please click here.

The 40-page, A4 handbook for the 2010 tour Country Houses of Lincolnshire, with text, photographs, maps, a chronology and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £7.50 including postage and packing.  It contains chapters on Boothby Pagnell Manor House, Ellys Manor House, Belton House, Grimsthorpe Castle, Fulbeck Hall, Fulbeck Manor, Leadenham House, Harlaxton Manor and Stoke Rochford Hall.  To view sample pages click here. To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Royal relief

Leave a Reply

Gentlemen's lavatory, King William III statue, Market Place, Old Town, Hull

Gentlemen’s lavatory, King William III statue, Market Place, Old Town, Hull

Queen Mary’s advice to her eldest son was (reputedly) – “Take every opportunity to take the weight off your feet and to relieve yourself.”

It’s widely known in Hull that if you seek relief in the city centre it’s a good idea to head for a royal statue.

There are two, and they’re very fine indeed – one beneath the fine Scheemakers statue of King William III (1734) on the Market Place and the other beneath the H C Fehr’s 1903 monument to Queen Victoria in Queen Victoria Square.

Both are listed Grade II.  The King William III gents was designed by the City Engineer, W H Lucas, at a time when such creations were a matter of pride.  It has fittings by Finch & Co of Lambeth dating from c1900, including marble-and-glass cisterns, faience Ionic columns and original doors with leaded lights.  The Queen Victoria lavatories are later than the statue, dating from c1925 when the Ferens Art Gallery was under construction:  again the gents has its original earthenware fittings.

There’s an account of the local pride in these magnificent facilities, told by the people who care for them, at http://static.hullcc.gov.uk/hullinprint/archive/october2002/a_right_royal.php.

The Hull historian, Paul Gibson, includes in his website a lengthy account of the history of Hull’s public lavatories:  http://www.paul-gibson.com/history/public-toilets.php.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2016 ‘Humber Heritage’ tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.