Tag Archives: england

Life at the bottom

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THE NATIONAL TRUST (‘NT’) maintains many buildings of great historic interest, and makes them accessible to the public. Most of the properties under the care of the NT are places where the well-off and the famous lived. Visitors to these homes and gardens can see finely decorated rooms. Often, the servant’s quarters are also displayed. This May (2023), we visited an unusual NT property in Nottinghamshire. Its distinctiveness lies in the fact that the buildings housed not the rich but the very poorest in society. Located at Southwell near Nottingham, it is the Southwell Workhouse.

The Workhouse was built in 1824 to house (usually temporarily) the poorest and most infirm people in the 49 parishes that made up Nottinghamshire’s Southwell Union, which financed the institution. Some of these people were impoverished during the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century. For example, many households in the area made a living by making knitwear in their homes. When factories opened with industrial knitting machines, many of these artisans were left without work and income.

The Southwell Workhouse admitted people following assessment of their condition by a parish’s local Relieving Officer. The rather bleak Workhouse was divided into several separated sections: for women with children less than two years old; for women, both abled and disabled; for men, both able and disabled; boys aged 7 to 15; girls aged 7 to 15; and for other children, aged between 2 and 7 years. The children received elementary schooling in the Workhouse classroom; this improved their chances of obtaining employment. There was no mixing between men and women. Women worked mainly in the kitchens, which are in the cellars of the building. To avoid contact with men, who worked in the institution’s vegetable gardens, produce required for cooking was passed into the kitchens through hatches.

Except for the extremely infirm, the idea was to make the Workhouse as uncomfortable as possible so that the able-bodied inmates had an incentive to leave as soon as they felt able. Consequently, the food provided was dull and meagre. All able-bodied inmates had to work. Some of this work was either meaningless, like breaking stones, or physically difficult, like picking oakum. The maintenance of the institution was also carried out by the inmates. The Workhouse was designed to provide food and shelter for the most destitute, but not to make it so comfortable that they had no incentive to leave. By pooling their resources, the parishes in the Southwell Union saved money because without the workhouse each parish would have had to conform to legal requirements to set up their own facilities for looking after those at the bottom of the social pile. The Southwell Workhouse was an example of an economy of scale.

The Southwell Workhouse was the brainchild of the Reverend John Thomas Becher (1770-1848). A friend of Lord Byron, who wrote poems to him, Becher not only established the Workhouse, but four years later wrote a pamphlet, “The Antipauper System”. In this publication, he explained how successful the Workhouse was in reducing the “poor rates” by 75%.  His work led to the establishment of other similar wirkhouses in the country following the passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 (‘The New Poor Law’).

With the establishment of the NHS in 1948, the Workhouse became an institution run by a local authority and many things relating to the care of the poor changed in Britain. Until the 1970s, the Workhouse, re-named Greet House (after the River Greet), housed the poor, but ins slightly more comfortable conditions than were available to its earlier inmates. The NT has done a beautiful job of restoring the Southwell Workhouse. Arrows guide the visitor though the whole building. All along the route, NT volunteers greet you and explain what each room was used for and provide other fascinating background information. Although the Workhouse is a fairly grim looking place, a visit to it is extremely interesting and a dramatic contrast to the often-glittering, resplendent places that can be seen in the majority of NT properties.

A Lincolnshire gentleman

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SLEAFORD IS A SMALL town in Lincolnshire. I do not think it is on many tourists’ itineraries, and I am not sure that I would recommend it highly. However, on a positive note, everyone we met there was extremely friendly. Southgate Street is a vibrant shopping district with plenty of charity shops and places to eat and drink. At the south end of this thoroughfare, there is a gothic revival monument that towers over its surroundings. Shaped a bit like an Eleanor Cross or a shabby version of London’s Albert Memorial, it commemorates Henry Handley (1797-1846).

Henry was the son of a local banker and attorney, Benjamin Handley. He was educated at Charterhouse, Eton, Oxford, and Lincolns Inn. He married Caroline Edwardes, daughter of William Edwardes, 2nd Baron Kensington in 1825. He neither graduated at Oxford nor practised as a barrister. Three years later, he inherited his father’s estate. He served as a Whig Member of Parliament for Heylesbury in Wiltshire from 1820 to 1826. In 1826, he left Parliament and became a gentleman farmer near Sleaford. So far so good, but why does Sleaford have such an imposing monument to remember him?

Between 1832 and 1841, he was the elected MP for Lincolnshire South. According to an online article in “Lincolnshire World”, during this period:

“Henry, a father of 10, was a budding entrepreneur and his interest in agricultural affairs was always to the fore. During his time as MP for S. Lincolnshire … Henry opposed corn imports, championed steam power, and supported steam railways rather than canals. In 1842, Henry became President of the Royal Agricultural Society.”

So, it appears that Henry worked well for improving the prosperity of Lincolnshire. He proposed and carried out projects that would have helped both the locals and his own agricultural endeavours. In these things, the local people rated him as being so successful that after his death, they raised more than £900 to pay for the construction of his 65-foot-tall memorial in Sleaford. It was designed by the Birmingham architect William Boyle, and it remains a remarkably immodest landmark in a pleasantly modest town.

A quaint market shelter

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Inside the Buttercross

THERE IS AN OLD octagonal building in the market place of Somerton in Somerset. According to a website about the town, this building is:

“… the octagonal shaped market cross; also known as the Buttercross. This was built by the Stawell family in 1673 and given the parish council in 1916 … The market place was a busy and noisy area during market day, and in extremely hot weather the dairy products such as cheese, butter and milk would soon go off. These goods would also be ruined in wet weather, and so a shelter was required that would shade and cover the products from the weather conditions. The Buttercross was the ideal solution, as it was both cool and dry. It is now listed as a Grade II ancient monument, and has been repaired on a couple of occasions during the last century.” (from: http://www.somerton.co.uk/virtual-tour/market-cross/)

It is not the only octagonal structure in Somerton. The tower of the mediaeval parish church is also octagonal.

Small but beautiful: deserves a visit

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WHEN PEOPLE CONSIDER picturesque places in the eastern English county of Suffolk, the following places usually spring to mind: Bury St Edmunds, Clare, Southwold, Lavenham, Long Melford, and Sudbury. All these places deserve their reputation as sites worth visiting. Kersey is another place, which is exceptionally attractive. I had never heard about it until someone in a museum (in Essex) told me about it recently. It is far less visited than those mentioned above.

Kersey, Suffolk, England

Kersey is about 9 miles west of Ipswich. The village lies on the steep slopes of the valley of a small stream, a tributary of the River Brett (which feeds the River Stour). The main road running through Kersey crosses the stream not over a bridge but by a ford (known as ‘The Splash’). The village’s name, Kersey, means a ‘wet area with cress’. It is likely that this refers to the part of the place around The Splash. The heyday of the village was long ago: it was during the 14th century when Kersey was important in the then flourishing woollen cloth production industry. The church overlooking the village, St Mary’s, dates from that prosperous era. Likewise, with many of the lovely half-timbered houses. Although their construction began in the 14th and 15th centuries, they have undergone modifications over the centuries. However, they have a picturesqueness that easily rivals that which has made the better-known places (listed above) so famous.

Apart from the church and the half-timbered Bell Inn (about 14th century), one building stands out in Kersey. This is a large building with an impressive 16th century two storeyed red brick entrance structure projecting from the rest of the edifice, which was constructed in the 15th century. Above the main entrance, there is an inscribed stone plaque set into the brickwork. It bears the following: “Ye Olde River House 1490”.

After the Black Death (1346-1353) and later the decline of the wool industry in that part of Suffolk (in about the 17th century), not much happened in Kersey between then and the present, so I was told by a local inhabitant. Nothing much replaced the textile trade, and this led to the village remaining much as it was during its best days. This is lucky for those, like me, who enjoy the charm of England’s older and eye-catching vernacular architecture. Neither I nor the inhabitant with whom I spoke could understand why Kersey, unlike places such as I mentioned at the start of this piece, is not as frequently visited by tourists. Although smaller than all the other places, it easily matches their beauty.

Docked in Dartmouth

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MOSES AND HIS followers crossed the Red Sea without difficulty. However, things were not so simple when a group of people were trying to cross the Atlantic to enjoy freedom to worship as they wished without persecution in North America in 1620 during the reign of England’s King James I. These travellers. the Pilgrim Fathers, were English Protestants, Puritans who had been living in the Low Countries in Leiden but felt that conditions there had become unfavourable for them. As they did not expect to live safely in England, they bravely set forth to sail to the New World.

Bayards Cove

The Pilgrim Fathers and their families left Holland in the “Speedwell” (60 tons) and after crossing the North Sea, their ship was joined by the larger “Mayflower” (180 tons), which was carrying Puritans fleeing from London. While heading west, the boats headed into trouble. On about the 23rd of August 1620, the two ships slipped furtively into Dartmouth in Devon and lay at anchor near to the town’s Bayards Cove, close to where today a small ferry carries vehicles and pedestrians across the River Dart between Dartmouth and Kingswear. The secrecy was necessary because as Puritans, the passengers risked punishment in England.  They remained moored there until about the 31st of August while leaks on the “Speedwell” were being repaired.

After leaving Dartmouth to continue their voyage westwards, the “Speedwell” began leaking again. About 300 miles west-south-west of Lands’ End, the “Speedwell” had become almost unseaworthy. The boats returned to England, docking at Plymouth in Devon. There, the “Speedwell” was abandoned, and the “Mayflower” set sail for America with 102 passengers. The boat reached the harbour of Cape Cod in Massachusetts on the 21st of November 1620.

Although Plymouth is the place from which the Puritans finally left England, the point in the port from which they set off would now be unrecognisable to the Pilgrim Fathers were they able to see it. In contrast, although some of the buildings near Bayards Cove in Dartmouth have been built since the Pilgrim Fathers stopped there briefly, there remain sights that have not changed significantly since 1620.

Buried in Bath

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THE WALLS OF Bath Abbey are lined with memorials to the dead, many of whom are buried within the church. A remarkably large percentage of the funerary memorials commemorate the lives of people who worked in Britain’s colonies. There are monuments to people who lived and worked in the Caribbean, North America, and Asia, especially for the East India Company, which ‘ran’ and exploited India until 1858.

For example, Francis Mure Esq worked for many years in the civil service of “the Honourable the East India Company on the Bengal Establishment”. He died in Bath in 1810 aged 53. Henry Lynch Esq MD “of the island of Barbadoes” died in Bath in 1823, aged 49. Also from this place in the Caribbean was Benjamin Alleyne Cox Esq who died in Bath in 1802 aged 74.   In 1812, 78-year-old Rawson Hart Boddam also died in Bath, after having served as the Governor of Bombay in 1784. Robert Brooke Esq, who had served in the Bengal Civil Service died in 1843 aged 72 is also interred in Bath Abbey. Peter Read Cazalet, “of the Honourable East India Madras Civil Service”, who died in 1859, aged 37, is yet another old ‘India hand’, who is buried in Bath. Also in the abbey are the remains of Major General Sir Henry White KCB, part of whose inscription reads chillingly like some of the news bulletins in the current Ukraine crisis: “The judicious Position taken by his Division in the Attack on Agra Which accelerated its fall And the Reduction of The Strong Hill Fort at Gwalior By Siege Are Proofs of Zeal and Military Skill…” He died in 1822.

What puzzled me was why did so many of these men from the colonies ended their lives in Bath. Was it because they were sick and had come to the place to take the curative spa waters, which failed to cure them? Or had they retired to Bath? Or, as someone suggested, Bath is close to Bristol, which was in many ways involved with colonial affairs.

The answers to these questions must remain uncertain at present. However, I wondered why the wealthy American Senator William Bingham died in Bath in 1804, aged 49. He was involved with the Barings Brothers bank in London, which might have been a reason for him being in England at the time of his death. He left for England in 1801, when his wife was taken ill. What he was doing in Bath remains unclear.

Amongst the many fascinating memorials in the Abbey are several commemorating people who died abroad. Some of these people had been in India when their lives ended. An interesting example of this, which illustrates the hazards of warfare and the difficulties in subduing people, who have no wish to be colonized, is the monument to 1st Lieutenant George Dobson Willoughby, of the Bengal Artillery and the Commisary of Ordnance at Delhi, who died in 1857. His inscription includes the following details: “As a brave and zealous soldier he stood firm in the defence of the post intrusted to him, and when resistance failed blew up the Delhi Magazine on 11: May 1857 to prevent it falling into the hands of the mutineers and rebels. Burnt and wounded he subsequently fell a prey to the insurgents …”

Maybe, this is a lesson from which the dutiful Russian soldiers in Ukraine should take heed.

Rhymes with freckles

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IT RHYMES WITH FRECKLES

THE HELPFUL FEMALE voice with a North American accent emitting from our mobile ‘phone was quite persistent in trying to direct us onto the A47 road, the most direct route from Swaffham to Norwich, but we chose to ignore the advice we were being given. Instead, we forced ‘her’ to change her instructions so that we could follow a far longer but more pleasant route via Watton and Old Buckenham. As we wound our way between the two last mentioned places, we spotted a church with a round tower, made with flint and mortar, topped with a newer octagonal structure. This was in a Norfolk village that rhymes with freckles: Breckles. The church is St Margarets in the parish of Stow Bedon.

Churches with round towers are a rare breed in England compared with those with square towers. There are only 186 of the rounded versions (www.roundtowers.org.uk/) and some of them are in ruins. Of all the examples of this kind of church, the greatest number can be found in East Anglia, 131 of them in Norfolk.  Church towers were built to house bells and sometimes the items used in services (e.g., church vessels). It is unlikely that they were built as part of the country’s defence against invaders because many of them were built after the last invasion of England (www.roundtowers.org.uk/about-round-tower-churches/).

But why were so many churches with round towers built in East Anglia and relatively few elsewhere? The following (from https://historyhouse.co.uk/articles/round_tower_churches.html) provides one possible answer:

“It has been suggested that the main reason was the lack of suitable local building material. Square towers require strong stone cut and dressed into blocks at each of the corners. But there is no suitable stone to be found in East Anglia and to transport stone from another county was very expensive for a small parish.

The only locally available stone was flint. Flint is a small, knobbly stone which, although creates strong walls when set in mortar, is not suitable for tower corners.”

The round tower of St Margarets was built in the 11th century (https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1248441), so could have been constructed either before or after 1066, when the Normans invaded. The octagonal structure on the top of the tower, the belfry, is late 15th century (www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/breckles/breckles.htm).  Restored in 1856, the nave and chancel were constructed in the 15th and 14th centuries, respectively.

The interior of St Margaret’s is attractively simple. The carved, probably highly restored,  wooden rood screen, separating the nave from the chancel, is one of the few decorative features in this small church. However, for me, the greatest attraction is the carved stone font, which is decorated with patterns and four carved figures standing in archways. The latter are carved in a simple, almost naïve or unsophisticated style, which made me wonder whether they date to pre-Norman times. Various sources describe it as being Norman.  Whatever it is, it is a lovely piece of carving. When we saw it, it was decorated with flowers and foliage as part of the church’s preparations for celebrating the harvest season.

Having seen this charming church, we were pleased that we did not obey the voice on our GPS app, but instead took a route that our electronic navigator was initially so dead against. The more round about route allowed us to find a lovely church with a round tower.

The first, the best, and the only

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DURING THE PENULTIMATE year of our daughter’s time at secondary school (i.e., high school), we, her parents, were invited to several early evening meetings to hear about options for her higher education. At one of these, representatives from three US universities gave talks about the delights and advantages of studying at universities in the USA. One of the Americans explained that when applying, you should only include things that you were the first to do; things that you were best at; and things that only you have done. She emphasised this by saying:

“You have to be the first, the best, and/or the only.”

Well, our daughter chose not not to move to the USA to study, but, chose to study at Cambridge University. Recently, we visited a country house managed by the National Trust, which can easily claim to be the first and the best, and maybe the the only. The property is in Norfolk and is called the Blickling Estate. Its last owner was Philip Henry Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian (1882-1940), who was instrumental in getting the National Trust Act passed by Parliament in 1937. At his death, he bequeathed the Blickling Estate to the National Trust. It was the FIRST large Jacobean house to become a property run by the National Trust.

Built in the 1620s for a wealthy London lawyer, Sir Henry Hobart (died 1626), who did not live long enough to see it completed, Blickling Hall is the BEST Jacobean building in the care of the National Trust. As for fulfilling the ONLY criterion, as advised by the above-mentioned lady from an American university, this is more difficult because like all other National Trust properties, Blickling Hall is unique; it is the only Blickling Hall.

However, apart from many things that makes Blickling Hall so special, there is one other aspect of it that gives it some extra kudos. Currently, it has the largest second-hand bookshop of all such outlets run by the Trust. But this is a place well worth visiting for its interiors, exteriors, and fine gardens, both formal and otherwise. I feel that it is one of the first places you should see in Norfolk, as well as being one of the best, but only you can judge whether I am right.

Travelling abroad at last

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WE ARRIVED IN ENGLAND from India on the 27th of February 2020. Because of the covid outbreak, we had not left England until today, the 13th of September 2021. Some, especially those who live there, regard Cornwall as being another country, rather than part of England. We have visited that southwest county of what most people regard as England, since we arrived back from England. So, it would be pushing things if we said that we went abroad to Cornwall,

Today, we travelled abroad, leaving England for a few hours. To reach our destination we did not have to take covid tests or show evidence of double doses of vaccine or, even, show our passports. However, leave England we did. We crossed the River Severn to leave England and enter Wales. Crossing the Severn Bridge on the M48 did not require us to pay a toll as used to be the case, as the crossing is now free of charge. A few years ago, a toll was charged for crossing into Wales, but no longer; it has been abolished.

Tintern Abbey

Well, I hear you say, Wales is not exactly ‘abroad’, but when one has not left England for over 18 months, it will do as ‘abroad’. Wales has its own parliament and most signs, be they on the road or elsewhere, are bilingual (English and Welsh) and, if you are lucky, you will meet a speaker of the Welsh language. To us, crossing over into Wales, after so many moths without foreign travel, felt like going abroad.

We drove along the beautiful Wye Valley and stopped at the attractive ruins of the former Cistercian Tintern Abbey (Abaty Tyndyrn in Welsh), the first ever Cistercian foundation in Wales. At the ticket office, I expressed my joy at being abroad after so many months, and the cashier said to me in a gently Welsh accent:

“I like your style.”

We have visited Tintern Abbey (founded 1131) many times in the past and each time it has been a wonderful experience. Today was no exception. Set in a wooded valley, the ruins of the gothic buildings look great against the background of trees with dark green foliage. After spending about an hour in Tintern, we drove along roads which were mainly in Wales but occasionally crossed the border into England. When we reached Wrexham (Wrecsam in Welsh), we headed off north and east into England, our trip abroad having been completed.

Well travelled paints

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YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT you might find by chance. While sorting through possessions in our storage unit, or ‘go-down’ as it is called in Indian English, I came across a wooden case. It contains artists’ paint brushes; tubes of oil paint, already used; pencils sharpened with a knife rather than a sharpener; a portable palette stained with usage; a couple of glass bottles; a tin containing Fortis brand thumb tacks (made in the USA); and various other items used for creating oil paintings. One of the pencils is marked “sanguine”. Pencils of this type are like charcoal sticks but a little harder. They can be used to draw lines and are also smudgeable.  On the lid of the box, there is a label issued by the Union Castle shipping line. It informs us that the case was travelling Cabin Class in Cabin number 464 on the Pretoria Castle from Cape Town to South Africa.  The name of its owner is “BS Yamey”.

BS Yamey was my father, an art lover who never ever created an oil painting in the 101 years of his life. The box most likely belonged to my mother, HB Yamey, who was a trained artist, both a painter and later a sculptor. My mother left South Africa in early 1948 and married my father on March the 16th 1948 in London. No doubt, the artists’ case was amongst her belongings being shipped from South Africa to her new home in England.

The Pretoria Castle on which the artistic materials travelled had its maiden voyage, soon after my parents married, in July 1948 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretoria_Castle_(1947)). Constructed in Belfast, it was probably the only ship ever launched remotely. The wife of General Jan Smuts (1870-1950) launched the ship by sending a radio signal from her home in the Transvaal to the shipyard in Ulster (www.bandcstaffregister.com/page4349.html).

The dating of the launch means that the case travelled to England no earlier than July 1948. It is labelled with my father’s name and a cabin number. I assume that this means that it is likely that he travelled with it. As the ship was renamed in 1966, we can say that the case made the voyage before that year. Now, my parents spent most of 1950 in Montreal, Canada, and then returned to London by 1951. Possibly, my parents returned to South Africa for a visit between their marriage and my birth, but I have no evidence of this.  I was born in 1952, and as far as I can recall from what I have been told, my parents did not return to South Africa until 1955, when I was taken along as well. We travelled by sea, but I have no idea on which vessel we travelled and whether the artist’s case travelled with us. So, because my parents are no longer around to tell me about this case, the date of its journey from the southern to the northern hemisphere must remain a mystery.