IT WAS UNUSUAL for my parents to take us on holidays at the seaside during my childhood. Mostly we went to cities, such as Bruges, Florence, and Delft, where there were plenty of artistic treasures to be viewed. Yet, one year when I was less than 10 years old, we spent a holiday at a hotel in a small place, Maidencombe, which is a few miles east of Torquay in Devon. All I can recall of this trip was staying in a country house hotel that had a beautiful flower-filled garden.
Yesterday (4 June 2025), my wife and I stopped at Maidencombe. I could not recognise anything, and I believe that the hotel where we stayed over 60 years ago has disappeared.
We followed signs to the Café Rio, which is reached down a winding staircase that clings to the slopes of a hillside overlooking a secluded cove surrounded by striated red rocks. The hillside is covered with luxuriant vegetation. The café is on a terrace above a small beach, where intrepid swimmers were enjoying the sea. We ate a light lunch on this terrace, and enjoyed the view.
I am pleased we visited Maidencombe but I can not stop wondering why my parents chose to go there instead of one of our usual culturally rich destinations. What or who influenced them to select Maidencombe? I will most probably never know.
THE FAMOUS SCULPTOR Elisabeth Frink (1930-1993) was a regular visitor to our family home in Hampstead Garden Suburb during the 1960s. During that period, I met her whenever she was invited home for dinner, but then I was too young to realise how famous an artist she had become. She was a good friend of my mother, Helen Yamey (1920-1980), who was also a sculptor. Elisabeth and my mother got to know each other when they were both creating art in the Sculpture Department of the St Martins School of Art, when it was in Charing Cross Road.
By Elisabeth Frink
Today (15th of November 2024), I was reminded of my mother’s friendship with Frink when we entered Christie’s auction house in Mayfair. We always enter this place when we are passing near it to see some of the works of art that are on display prior to being auctioned. You never know what gems you are likely to see. Today, there was a small collection of British art created during the past 100 years. Amongst the works on display were two by Elisabeth Frink. There were also some pieces by Henry Moore (1898-1986) and by Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975). One of the works by Hepworth was a painting, the other two were sculptures. Each of these artists has become some of the greatest of 20th century British artists.
During the first half of the 1960s, my mother’s sculptures were chosen to be exhibited in prestigious exhibitions, mainly in London. In these various exhibitions, her work was selected to be exhibited alongside the creations of the three artists mentioned above, as well as other artists, who have now achieved fame (e.g., David Hockney, Paula Rego, Michael Ayrton, and Bridget Riley). Despite this, my mother’s artistic work is now largely forgotten. In my recent book about her, “Remembering Helen: My Mother the Artist”, I describe her life, her character, and consider why her art, which was judged worthy of display with the best artists of the time, has faded into obscurity.
WHENEVER WE DRIVE to Cornwall, we make sure that we cross Dartmoor. Even if it means taking a detour along the narrow, challenging lanes of Devon, we always visit Combestone Tor. This geological formation, perched on the side of a hill commanding a panoramic view of well over 180 degrees, consists of several piles of enormous, weathered slabs of granite. Each pile has a few of these gigantic slabs piled one above the next. I have described how these impressive piles were formed in something I wrote a few years ago (https://adam-yamey-writes.com/2020/10/04/sculpted-by-nature/).
I cannot say why we find visiting Combestone Tor so satisfying. Is it the fine views over the moor and the countryside abutting it? Or is it the sculptural qualities of the rock formations? Could it be the peacefulness of the place? Even if there are other visitors at the Tor, one does not feel disturbed by them. Or is it the joy of seeing horses, sheep and cattle grazing near the stones? It is probably a combination of all of these, and other factors which affect one’s emotions, but are difficult to define. We have seen the Tor in appalling wind and rain and bright sunshine, and always feel glad that we have made the effort to reach the place.
MATTHEW KRISHANU WAS born in Bradford (UK) in 1980. His parents were Christian missionaries. His father was British, and his mother Indian. Their work took them to Bangladesh, where Matthew and his brother spent some of their childhood years. Matthew’s formal education in art took place at Exeter University, and then at London’s Central St Martin. Today, the 1st of June 2024, we viewed a superb exhibition of his paintings at the Camden Art Centre in Hampstead’s Arkwright Road. The exhibition continues until the 23rd of June 2024.
Many of the paintings on display include depictions of two young boys – the artist and his brother – often in a tropical setting that brings to mind places on the Indian Subcontinent. The paintings vary in size, but all of them are both pleasing to the eye and full of interest. His paintings of trees and other plants are impressionistic. Like many of the other pictures, they were inspired by the artist’s childhood in Bangladesh and later visits to India.
One room with several paintings contains works that must have been inspired by the artist’s memories of being brought up in a missionary family. The paintings in this gallery are depictions of the colonial legacy of Christianity in the Indian Subcontinent. Another indication of the artist’s upbringing in a Christian religious family setting is the appearance of small images of the Last Supper in several of the paintings, including those which are not specifically portrayals of religious environments.
Although, there is no doubt much that can be read into his paintings, Krishanu’s works are both approachable and engaging. I liked them immediately – as soon as I saw them. It is worth a visit to Arkwright Road to see this well laid-out exhibition.
THE TOWN OF HERTFORD is full of delightful old buildings. A house on the town’s Fore Street has a façade decorated with features that bring to mind Ancient Egypt. Known as the Egyptian House, it was built in about 1825 for the grocer JM Gilbertson, who was Mayor of Hertford in 1832. In many ways it resembles a building with an Egyptian style façade. which I have seen in Penzance (Cornwall), This was constructed in about 1835. Both of the house in Hertford and that in Penzance were built later than the now no longer existing Egyptian Hall London’s Piccadilly, which was built in 1812, and was the inspiration for the Egyptian Revival Style of the later edifices in Hertford and Penzance.
The Egyptian House in Hertford is colourfully painted, as is the building in Penzance. Sadly, the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly was demolished in 1905 to make space for the construction of a block of flats. The Egyptian Revival Style became fashionable during the time of the Egyptian campaigns (end of the 18th century) in the Napoleonic Wars.
Currently, Hertford’s Egyptian House is home to Anexo – a “tapas restaurant and charcuterie bar”. It serves fare that would have been unknown in Ancient Egypt. I wonder what the Pharaohs would have thought about a place like this.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
yamey 