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## Pages
### [Welcome to Engole](https://engole.info/)
**Published:** June 16, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Our home page.
**Content:**
We are an AI hallucination-free resource for the general reader, and a starting point for those seeking to find out more, by providing reliable sources for further research; written by humans, for humans. We are *not* a Wikipedia mirror, we do *not* allow anyone to edit, and about twenty per cent of our content has no equivalent on Wikipedia.
**Some articles from our collection; click on any image to see more**
Death photography
Death photography
Two young girls posing with their dead mother[](#)
Gas Light
Gas Light
1938 play which gave rise to the term “gaslighting”
Jack Sprat
Jack Sprat
Nursery rhyme first recorded in 1670
The Singing Butler
The Singing Butler
Banksy’s reimagining of the original by Jack Vettriano
Inspiration
Inspiration
World land-speed record holder for a steam-powered car
The Hooper
The Hooper
Mysterious cloud of mist that often hovered over the Cowloe Rock, near Sennen Cove in Cornwall
Eton Mess
Eton mess
No, not Boris Johnson, a dessert
Metrovick 950
Metrovick 950
Early British transistorised computer, built in 1956
Lady Lovibond
Lady Lovibond
Ghost ship said to be sailing in British waters
Witch’s Broomstick
Witch’s Broomstick
Broomsticks smeared with flying ointment were believed to give witches the power of flight
Ruby Cycle Company
Ruby Cycle Company
British mtorcycle manufacturer 1909–1922
Penrose triangle
Penrose triangle
Visual representation of a triangular frame that could not exist in three-dimensional space
Lilias Adie
Lilias Adie
Reconstructed face of an alleged Scottish witch exhumed in 1852
Boids
Boids
Computational model of flocking
Plastic classroom
Plastic classroom
First fully structural plastic building in England, completed in 1974
Eilean Mòr Lighthouse Mystery
Eilean Mòr Lighthouse Mystery
Disappearance of three lighthouse keepers in 1900
Dorothy Levitt
Dorothy Levitt
First British woman racing driver
The Room in the Tower
The Room in the Tower
Horror story by E. F. Benson, first published in 1912
Brown Lady of Raynham Hall
Brown Lady of Raynham Hall
Most famous ghost photograph ever taken
Cottingley Fairies
Cottingley Fairies
Five photographs taken by Elsie Wright (1901–1988) and Frances Griffiths (1907–1986)
Rhubarb Triangle
Rhubarb Triangle
Area of West Yorkshire that once produced 90% of the world’s winter forced rhubarb
Cheese rolling
Cheese rolling
Painting by Charles March Gere, 1948
Bagpuss
Bagpuss
Children’s television series about a saggy old cat
Ordsall Hall
Ordsall Hall
15th-century manor house in which the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 may have been hatched
Drawing Hands
Drawing Hands
Lithograph by M. C. Escher showing two hands creating each other
Site last updated on 08/08/2026 @ 8:51 pm
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b, c, d, e, f var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 2 )/3
---
### [DRK (car)](https://engole.info/drk-car/)
**Published:** June 21, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** The DRK is a three-wheeled kit car produced by DRK Kits of Ellesmere Port, England, between 1987 and 1998.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/DRK_3_Wheel_Kit_Car_-_Flickr_-_mick_-_Lumix.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
The DRK is a three-wheeled kit car produced by DRK Kits of Ellesmere Port, England, between 1987 and 1998.{{sfnp|DCE67UVR}} The car was introduced at the Cheshire Kit Car show in May 1986, where its positive reception prompted the formation of the company to build it.{{sfnp|Q2YKBSDM}}\[a\]The name DRK is derived from the first names of the three designers of the car: **D**erek Callister, **R**obert Callister and **K**eith Hamer.{{sfnp|Q2YKBSDM}}
The car has a two front wheels, one rear wheel configuration, with front-wheel drive. Its wooden body is encased in 20 swg aluminium, secured to a steel chassis.{{sfnp|Q8VKBMK5}} The mechanical components needed to complete the DRK could come from a Renault 4, 5 or 6, which gave a choice of engines from 845 cc (51.6 cu in) to 1300 cc (79 cu in) turbo. Kits were available from about £2400, but most customers had the mechanical components fitted by the factory.{{sfnp|B3ZT6TM5|63}}
In 1990 DRK Kits was sold to a firm of body repairers, Callister & Roscoe; until then building the cars had been a part-time hobby for its designers. Derek and Robert Callister became full-time partners in the new venture, building customised DRKs to order.{{sfnp|Q2YKBSDM}} The Callister brothers decided to retire in 1998 and production ended, by which time 59 cars had been built.{{sfnp|Q8VKBMK5}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The name DRK is derived from the first names of the three designers of the car: **D**erek Callister, **R**obert Callister and **K**eith Hamer.{{sfnp|Q2YKBSDM}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2564
## External links
- [YouTube video of a DRK on the road](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za4XAKuFTbw&index=2&list=PLpP6DO35oaCPH9_Vm24xP613GVbF7E_fy)
**Categories:** Three-wheeler
---
### [Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross](https://engole.info/ride-a-cock-horse-to-banbury-cross/)
**Published:** September 21, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/Finelady.jpg/1280px-Finelady.jpg[/pimage]English nursery rhyme, the earliest known version of which appears in 1784.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/Finelady.jpg/1280px-Finelady.jpg)Statue of the “fine lady” at Banbury Cross, in Banbury, Oxfordshire
Wikimedia Commons
There are several English nursery rhymes beginning with the line “Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross”. Probably the best known today is:{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|76-77}}
> Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
> To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
> Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
> And she shall have music wherever she goes.
The earliest surviving version of the rhyme, published in *Gammer Gurton’s Garland or The Nursery Parnassus*, (1784), replaces the “fine lady” with an “old lady”; a 1790 version has her with “a ring on her finger, A bonnet of straw”. The “fine lady” has been popularly identified with Queen Elizabeth I and Lady Godiva.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|76-77}}
The folklorists Iona and Peter Opie have pointed to the difficulty of determining the age of the nursery rhyme, but the “bells on her toes” may suggest a 15th-century origin, when bells were worn on the long tapering end of each shoe. Certainly, the cross at Banbury was reported as having been destroyed by Puritans in a “furious zeal” some time around 1600.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|76-77}} The present-day cross in the centre of Banbury, designed by the architect John Gibbs, was erected in 1859.{{sfnp|94JIPMZX|235}}{{sfnp|WY8H5BQF|437}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23190
**Categories:** Nursery rhyme
---
### [Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance](https://engole.info/mr-humphreys-and-his-inheritance/)
**Published:** October 12, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/humphreys.png[/pimage]Ghost story by M. R. James, first published in 1911, about a strange maze and temple on a recently inherited estate in Wiltshire.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/humphreys.png)Screenshot from 1976 ITV adaptation
YouTube
“Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance” is a ghost story by the English medievalist and author M. R. James (1862–1936), first published in his [*More Ghost Stories*](https://engole.info/more-ghost-stories) (1911). In his preface, James remarks that he wrote the story to “fill out the volume”.{{sfnp|HBW773GA}}
The story is written as a third-person narrative and concerns a young man, Mr Humphreys, who has recently inherited an estate in Wilsthorpe, Lincolnshire from his deceased uncle, James Wilson, whom he had never met.
## Synopsis
The story begins as Mr Humphreys is alighting from the train at Wilsthorpe station, where he is met by his bailiff, Mr Collins. Over lunch with Collins and his family, the bailiff apprises Humphreys with his estate and its staff. The bailiff’s daughter, Miss Collins, mentions the existence of an old temple and a maze in a part of the gardens that no one has been allowed to visit. Humphreys promises to show her over the maze once he has learnt the way.
After lunch the bailiff shows Humphreys around his new estate, until finally they come across the entrance to the maze. Humphreys expresses an interest in exploring the maze, but the bailiff does not have a key to the padlocked iron gate, and so returns to the house to look for one, leaving Humphreys alone. A Latin inscription over the entrance reads *Secretum meum mihi et filiis domus meae*, which translates as “My secret \[is\] for me and the sons of my house”. Humphreys give the gate an irritated kick, upon which the locks falls at his feet. He ventures into the overgrown maze and without any difficulty reaches its centre, where he finds a stone column about {{convert|4|ft|r=1|spell=in}} high, topped with a metal globe.
The following day Humphreys orders his gardeners to clear a path through the maze, and invites Miss Collins and her mother to join him in exploring the maze that afternoon. But he finds himself completely unable to retrace his steps of the previous day, and the party is forced to abandon its effort to reach the centre. “Vexed and ashamed” at what he considers to be a fiasco, Humphreys resolves to make a plan of the maze, but that evening, in his irritation, he revisits the maze and once again reaches its centre without putting a foot wrong.
The next morning Humphreys completes his plan of the maze. He also receives a letter from a neighbour, Lady Wardrop, who is preparing a book of mazes, and wishes to include the Wilsthorpe Maze; it is agreed that she visit the following day. With Humphreys, Lady Waldrop is confidently able to navigate the maze, which she dates to about 1780, but is struck by the singularity of the globe at its centre, unique in her experience. But she expresses some unease at a feeling of being watched, with something waiting to pounce, commenting “I don’t care how soon we are outside the gate”.
That evening Humphreys begins work on tracing a copy of the plan for Lady Waldrop. On comparing the original with his copy, he notices a black dot, about the size of a shilling, which seems to his tired eyes to resemble a hole that not only goes through the paper but the table on which it lies, down to even “infinite depths”, from which slowly emerges a burnt human face. In his horror Humphreys throws himself backwards and strikes his head against a lamp, concussing himself.
When Humphreys is sufficiently recovered, he orders the globe at the centre of the maze to be opened. It is found to be half full of ashes, probably those of a cremation, and perhaps those of James Wilson, from whom he had inherited Wilsthorpe.
## Adaptions
“Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance” was adapted for television as part of the ITV Schools educational strand, and first broadcast on 21 June 1976.{{sfnp|WUBGNLA5}}
## See also
- [List of works by M. R. James](https://engole.info/m-r-james-bibliography)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25637
## External links
- [Full text of “Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance”](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9629) at Project Gutenberg
- [ITV adaptation on YouTube](https://youtu.be/wWoH-_U7x1I)
**Categories:** Ghost story, M. R. James
---
### [The Man in the Moone](https://engole.info/the-man-in-the-moone/)
**Published:** December 14, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Fliegende_Wandersmann_1659.jpg[/pimage]Novel by the English divine and Church of England bishop Francis Godwin (1562–1633), describing a "voyage of utopian discovery".
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Houghton_STC_11943.5_-_The_Man_in_the_Moone%2C_title.jpg)Title page of first edition
Wikimedia Commons
*The Man in the Moone* is a novel by the English divine and Church of England bishop Francis Godwin (1562–1633), describing a “voyage of utopian discovery”.{{sfnp|EIN3UG2C}} Long considered to be one of his early works, it is now generally thought to have been written in the late 1620s. It was first published posthumously in 1638 under the pseudonym of Domingo Gonsales. The work is notable for its role in what was called the “new astronomy”, the branch of astronomy influenced especially by Nicolaus Copernicus. Although Copernicus is the only astronomer mentioned by name, the book also draws on the theories of Johannes Kepler and William Gilbert. Godwin’s astronomical theories were greatly influenced by Galileo Galilei’s *Sidereus Nuncius* (1610), but unlike Galileo, Godwin proposes that the dark spots on the Moon are seas, one of many parallels with Kepler’s *Somnium sive opus posthumum de astronomia lunari* of 1634.
Gonsales is a Spaniard forced to flee the country after killing a man in a duel. Having made his fortune in the East Indies, he decides to return to Spain, but falls ill on the voyage home and is set off on the island of St Helena to recover. There he discovers the gansa, a species of wild swan able to carry substantial loads, and contrives a device that allows him to harness many of them together and fly around the island. Once fully recovered, Gonsales resumes his journey home, but his ship is attacked by an English fleet off the coast of Tenerife. He uses his flying machine to escape to the shore, but once safely landed he is approached by hostile natives and is forced to take off again. This time his birds fly higher and higher, towards the Moon, which they reach after a journey of twelve days. There Gonsales encounters the Lunars, a tall Christian people inhabiting what appears to be a utopian paradise. After six months of living among them, Gonsales becomes homesick and concerned for the condition of his birds, and sets off to return to Earth. He lands in China, where he is immediately arrested as a magician, but after learning the language manages to win the trust of the local mandarin. The story ends with Gonsales meeting a group of Jesuit missionaries, who arrange to have a written account of his adventures sent back to Spain.
Some critics consider *The Man in the Moone*, along with Kepler’s *Somnium*, to be one of the first works of science fiction.{{sfnp|C62A2K8B|57}} The book was well known in the 17th century, and even inspired parodies by Cyrano de Bergerac and Aphra Behn, but has been neglected in critical history. Recent studies have focused on Godwin’s theories of language, the mechanics of lunar travel, and his religious position and sympathies as evidenced in the book.
## Background and context
Godwin, the son of Thomas Godwin, Bishop of Bath and Wells, was elected a student of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1578, from where he received his Bachelor of Arts (1581) and Master of Arts degrees (1584); after entering the church he gained his Bachelor and Doctor of Divinity degrees in 1594 and 1596 respectively. He gained prominence (even internationally) in 1601 by publishing his *Catalogue of the Bishops of England since the first planting of the Christian Religion in this Island*, which enabled his rapid rise in the church hierarchy.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|13-14}} During his life, he was known as a historian.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|14-15}}
## Scientific advances, lunar speculation
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Kopernikus%2C_Gilbert%2C_Galilee%2C_Kepler.jpg)Clockwise, from top left: Copernicus, Gilbert, Kepler, Galileo
Wikimedia Commons
Godwin’s book appeared at a time of great interest in the Moon and astronomical phenomena, and of important developments in celestial observation, mathematics and mechanics. The influence particularly of Nicolaus Copernicus led to what was called the “new astronomy”; Copernicus is the only astronomer Godwin mentions by name, but the theories of Johannes Kepler and William Gilbert are also discernible.{{sfnp|EIN3UG2C}} Galileo Galilei’s 1610 publication *Sidereus Nuncius* (usually translated as *The Sidereal Messenger*) had a great influence on Godwin’s astronomical theories, although Godwin proposes (unlike Galileo) that the dark spots on the Moon are seas, one of many similarities between *The Man in the Moone* and Kepler’s *Somnium sive opus posthumum de astronomia lunaris* of 1634 (*The Dream, or Posthumous Work on Lunar Astronomy*).{{sfnp|EIN3UG2C}}
Speculation on lunar habitation was nothing new in Western thought, but it intensified in England during the early 17th century: Philemon Holland’s 1603 translation of Plutarch’s *Moralia* introduced Greco-Roman speculation to the English vernacular, and poets including Edmund Spenser proposed that other worlds, including the Moon, could be inhabited. Such speculation was prompted also by the expanding geographical view of the world. The 1630s saw the publication of a translation of *Lucian’s True History* (1634), containing two accounts of trips to the Moon, and a new edition of Ariosto’s *Orlando Furioso*, likewise featuring an ascent to the Moon. In both books the Moon is inhabited, and this theme was given an explicit religious importance by writers such as John Donne, who in *Ignatius His Conclave* (1611, with new editions in 1634 and 1635) satirised a “lunatic church” on the Moon founded by Lucifer and the Jesuits. Lunar speculation reached an acme at the end of the decade, with the publication of Godwin’s *The Man in the Moone* (1638) and John Wilkins’s *The Discovery of a World in the Moone* (also 1638, and revised in 1640).{{sfnp|DZZPIV9F}}
## Dating evidence
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Godwin_man_in_the_moone.jpg)Frontispiece and title page of the second edition (1657), now with the pseudonym replaced by “F.G. B. of H.” (“Francis Godwin, Bishop of Hereford”)
Wikimedia Commons
Until Grant McColley, a historian of early Modern English literature, published his “The Date of Godwin’s Domingo Gonsales” in 1937, it was thought that Godwin wrote *The Man in the Moone* relatively early in his life – perhaps during his time at Christ Church from 1578 to 1584, or maybe even as late as 1603. But McColley proposed a much later date of 1627 or 1628, based on internal and biographical evidence.{{sfnp|4N9H2DGF}} A number of ideas about the physical properties of the Earth and the Moon, including claims about “a secret property that operates in a manner similar to that of a loadstone attracting iron”, did not appear until after 1620. And Godwin seems to borrow the concept of using a flock of strong, trained birds to fly Gonsales to the Moon from Francis Bacon’s *Sylva sylvarum* (*Natural History*), published in July 1626. All this evidence supports McColley’s dating of “1626–29, with the probable years of composition 1627–28”, which is now generally accepted.{{sfnp|4N9H2DGF}}{{sfnp|KVFRDQXM}}
William Poole, in his 2009 edition of *The Man in the Moone*, provides additional evidence for a later dating. Godwin, he argues, most likely got his knowledge of the Jesuit mission in China (founded in 1601) from a 1625 edition of Samuel Purchas’s *Purchas his Pilgrimage*. This book contains a redaction from Nicolas Trigault’s *De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu* (1615) (*Concerning the Christian expedition to China undertaken by the Society of Jesus*), itself the redaction of a manuscript by the Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|18-19}} Poole also sees the influence of Robert Burton, who in the second volume of *The Anatomy of Melancholy* had speculated on gaining astronomical knowledge through telescopic observation (citing Galileo) or from space travel (Lucian). Appearing for the first time in the 1628 edition of the *Anatomy* is a section on planetary periods, which gives a period for Mars of three years – had Godwin used William Gilbert’s De Magnete (1600) for this detail he would have found a Martian period of two years.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|19-20}} Finally, Poole points to what he calls a “genetic debt”: while details on for instance the Martian period could have come from a few other sources, Burton and Godwin are the only two writers of the time to combine an interest in alien life with the [green children of Woolpit](https://engole.info/green-children-of-woolpit/), from a 12th-century account of two mysterious green children found in Suffolk.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|20-22}}
One of Godwin’s “major intellectual debts” is to Gilbert’s *De Magnete*, in which Gilbert argued that the Earth was magnetic,{{sfnp|C62A2K8B|62}} although he may have used a derivative account by Mark Ridley or a geographical textbook by Nathanael Carpenter.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|23-24}} It is unlikely that Godwin could have gathered first-hand evidence used in narrating the events in his book (such as the details of Gonsales’s journey back from the East, especially a description of Saint Helena and its importance as a resting place for sick mariners), and more likely that he relied on travel adventures and other books. He used *Trigault’s De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas* (1615), based on a manuscript by Matteo Ricci, the founder of the Jesuit mission in Beijing in 1601, for information about that mission. Details pertaining to the sea voyage and Saint Helena likely came from Thomas Cavendish’s account of his first circumnavigation of the world, available in Richard Hakluyt’s *Principal Navigations* (1599–1600) and in *Purchas His Pilgrimage*, first published in 1613.{{sfnp|KVFRDQXM}} Information on the Dutch Revolt, the historical setting for the early part of Gonsales’ career, likely came from the annals of Emanuel van Meteren, a Dutch historian working in London.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|27}}
## English editions and translations
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Fliegende_Wandersmann_1659.jpg)Frontispiece of *Der Fliegende Wandersmann nach dem Mond*, 1659
Wikimedia Commons
McColley knew of only one surviving copy of the first edition, held at the British Museum{{sfnp|4N9H2DGF}} (now British Library C.56.c.2), which was the basis for his 1937 edition of *The Man in the Moone* and *Nuncius Inanimatus*, an edition criticised by literary critic Kathleen Tillotson as lacking in textual care and consistency.{{sfnp|GKEXQTPR}} H. W. Lawton’s review published six years earlier mentions a second copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, V.20973 (now RES P- V- 752 (6)), an omission also noted by Tillotson.{{sfnp|G2AWV7HG}}
For the text of his 2009 edition, William Poole collated a copy in the Bodleian Library Oxford (Ashm. 940(1)) with that in the British Library.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|63}} The printer of the first edition of *The Man in the Moone* is identified on the title page as John Norton, and the book was sold by Joshua Kirton and Thomas Warren. It also includes an epistle introducing the work and attributed to “E. M.”, perhaps the fictitious Edward Mahon identified in the Stationers’ Register as the translator from the original Spanish.{{sfnp|C62A2K8B|66}} Poole speculates that this Edward Mahon might be Thomas or Morgan Godwin, two of the bishop’s sons who had worked with their father on telegraphy,{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|58}} but adds that Godwin’s third son, Paul, might be involved as well. The partial revision of the manuscript (the first half has dates according to the Gregorian calendar, the second half still follows the superseded Julian calendar) indicates an unfinished manuscript, which Paul might have acquired after his father’s death and passed on to his former colleague Joshua Kirton: Paul Godwin and Kirton were apprenticed to the same printer, John Bill, and worked there together for seven years. Paul may have simply continued the “E. M.” hoax unknowingly, and/or may have been responsible for partial revision of the manuscript.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|58-60}} To the second edition, published in 1657, was added Godwin’s *Nuncius Inanimatus* (in English and Latin; first published in 1629). The third edition was published in 1768; its text was abridged, and a description of St Helena (by printer Nathaniel Crouch{{sfnp|4N9H2DGF}}{{sfnp|HCG5R629}}) functioned as an introduction.{{sfnp|G2AWV7HG}}
A French translation by Jean Baudoin, *L’Homme dans la Lune*, was published in 1648, and republished four more times.\[a\]Bürger lists publications from 1651, 1654, 1666, and 1671.{{sfnp|UMIP23RX|146}} This French version excised the narrative’s sections on Lunar Christianity,{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|41} as so do the many translations based on it,{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|49-50}} including the German translation incorrectly ascribed{{sfnp|UMIP23RX|138-140}} to Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, *Der fliegende Wandersmann nach dem Mond*, 1659.\[b\]The German translation of The Man in the Moone was published in 1660 and 1667 with two texts by Balthasar Venator, one of which also a lunar travel narrative; Grimmelshausen had written an appendix to The Man in the Moone for the 1667 edition (apparently to fill up 13 empty pages at the request of his regular printer, Johann Jonathan Felßecker). Since then, his name has become associated with The Man in the Moone, although the appendix was not reprinted in his collected works. According to Bürger, the German translator of The Man in the Moone may have been Hieronymus Imhof (1606–1668) of Wolfenbüttel, a tutor to the princes at the court of Augustus the Younger, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg;{{sfnp|UMIP23RX|138-140}} the incorrect ascription to Grimmelshausen was cited as recently as 1945.{{sfnp|UCE4WHY8}} Johan van Brosterhuysen (c. 1594–1650) translated the book into Dutch,{{sfnp|H4H33CRN|121}} and a Dutch translation – possibly Brosterhuysen’s, although the attribution is uncertain{{sfnp|QYSNTJ4Q|157-172}} – went through seven printings in the Netherlands between 1645 and 1718. The second edition of 1651 and subsequent editions include a continuation of unknown authorship relating Gonsales’ further adventures.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|49}}{{sfnp|TVH6Z8ZB|127-128}}\[c\]W. H. van Seters notes that in 1651 two Dutch publishers, Jacob Benjamin in Amsterdam and I. G. van Houten in The Hague, published different continuations of the narrative, both bound with the second edition of Godwin’s book; Benjamin’s continuation is signed E. M., the initials of Godwin’s fictional narrator. The continuation by van Houten exists in only one printing, but he had apparently planned for a third volume, a sequel to the sequel.{{sfnp|QYSNTJ4Q|157-172}}
## Plot summary
The story is written as a first-person narrative from the perspective of Domingo Gonsales, the book’s fictional author. In his opening address to the reader the equally fictional translator “E. M.” promises “an essay of Fancy, where Invention is shewed with Judgment”.{{sfnp|4R72YEB4|67}} Gonsales is a citizen of Spain, forced to flee to the East Indies after killing a man in a duel. There he prospers by trading in jewels, and having made his fortune decides to return to Spain. On his voyage home he becomes seriously ill, and he and a negro servant Diego are put ashore on St Helena, a remote island with a reputation for “temperate and healthful” air.{{sfnp|DPA8FFD2|4}} A scarcity of food forces Gonsales and Diego to live some miles apart, but Gonsales devises a variety of systems to allow them to communicate.\[d\]Remote signalling was one of Godwin’s “personal obsessions”.{{sfnp|C62A2K8B|65}} Eventually he comes to rely on a species of bird he describes as some kind of wild swan, a gansa, to carry messages and provisions between himself and Diego. Gonsales gradually comes to realise that these birds are able to carry substantial burdens, and resolves to construct a device by which a number of them harnessed together might be able to support the weight of a man, allowing him to move around the island more conveniently. Following a successful test flight he determines to resume his voyage home, hoping that he might “fill the world with the Fame of \[his\] Glory and Renown”.{{sfnp|DPA8FFD2|15}} But on his way back to Spain, accompanied by his birds and the device he calls his Engine, his ship is attacked by an English fleet off the coast of Tenerife and he is forced to escape by taking to the air.\[e\]At the time the book was written England was at war with Spain.
After setting down briefly on Tenerife, Gonsales is forced to take off again by the imminent approach of hostile natives. But rather than flying to a place of safety among the Spanish inhabitants of the island the gansas fly higher and higher. On the first day of his flight Gonsales encounters “illusions of ‘Devils and Wicked Spirits'” in the shape of men and women, some of whom he is able to converse with.{{sfnp|DPA8FFD2|21}} They provide him with food and drink for his journey and promise to set him down safely in Spain if only he will join their “Fraternity”, and “enter into such Covenants as they had made to their Captain and Master, whom they would not name”.{{sfnp|DPA8FFD2|22}} Gonsales declines their offer, and after a journey of twelve days reaches the Moon. Suddenly feeling very hungry he opens the provisions he was given en route, only to find nothing but dry leaves, goat’s hair and animal dung, and that his wine “stunk like Horse-piss”.{{sfnp|DPA8FFD2|28}} He is soon discovered by the inhabitants of the Moon, the Lunars, whom he finds to be tall Christian people enjoying a happy and carefree life in a kind of pastoral paradise.{{sfnp|TRHY8IWH|154}}\[f\]Godwin proposes that as the Earth is magnetic,{{sfnp|EIN3UG2C}} only an initial push is necessary to escape its magnetic attraction, a push provided by the gansas.{{sfnp|TRHY8IWH|153-154}} Gonsales discovers that order is maintained in this apparently utopian state by swapping delinquent children with terrestrial children.\[g\]Godwin cites the [green children of Woolpit](https://engole.info/green-children-of-woolpit/) as an example of Lunar children sent to Earth. The Lunars call their god Martinus, which might reflect the name of the green children’s home, St Martin’s Land.{{sfnp|T7FW5FCN}}
The Lunars speak a language consisting “not so much of words and letters as tunes and strange sounds”, which Gonsales succeeds in gaining some fluency in after a couple of months.{{sfnp|DPA8FFD2|36}} Six months or so after his arrival Gonsales becomes concerned about the condition of his gansas, three of whom have died. Fearing that he may never be able to return to Earth and see his children again if he delays further, he decides to take leave of his hosts, carrying with him a gift of precious stones from the supreme monarch of the Moon, Irdonozur. The stones are of three different sorts: Poleastis, which can store and generate great quantities of heat; Macbrus, which generates great quantities of light; and Ebelus, which when one side of the stone is clasped to the skin renders a man weightless, or half as heavy again if the other side is touched.
Gonsales harnesses his gansas to his Engine and leaves the Moon on 29 March 1601. He lands in China about nine days later, without re-encountering the illusions of men and women he had seen on his outward journey and with the help of his Ebelus, which helps the birds to avoid plummeting to Earth as the weight of Gonsales and his Engine threatens to become too much for them.\[h\]Gonsales speculates that his return journey was two days shorter than his outward journey because of the eagerness of his gansas to return to their home, or the Earth’s greater magnetic attraction.{{sfnp|DPA8FFD2|43}} A modern mathematician, Andrew Simoson, has pointed out that the discrepancy can also be explained by the gansas flying directly towards where they could see the Moon to be on their outward journey. Therefore rather than travelling in a straight line they flew in a pursuit curve, attempting to catch up with the Moon as it orbited the Earth. But as the Earth orbits the Sun more slowly than the Moon orbits the Earth, the pursuit curve for the return journey was correspondingly shorter, and hence the journey home quicker.{{sfnp|TKS7TVQM}} He is quickly arrested and taken before the local mandarin, accused of being a magician, and as a result is confined in the mandarin’s palace. He learns to speak the local dialect of Chinese, and after some months of confinement is summoned before the mandarin to give an account of himself and his arrival in China, which gains him the mandarin’s trust and favour. Gonsales hears of a group of Jesuits, and is granted permission to visit them.\[i\] He writes an account of his adventures, which the Jesuits arrange to have sent back to Spain. The story ends with Gonsales’s fervent wish that he may one day be allowed to return to Spain, and “that by enriching my country with the knowledge of these hidden mysteries, I may at least reap the glory of my fortunate misfortunes”.{{sfnp|DPA8FFD2|47}}
## Themes
### Religion
The story is set during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a period of religious conflict in England. Not only was there the threat of a Catholic resurgence but there were also disputes within the Protestant Church. When Gonsales first encounters the Lunars he exclaims “Jesu Maria”,{{sfnp|DPA8FFD2|29}} at which the Lunars fall to their knees, but although they revere the name of Jesus they are unfamiliar with the name Maria, suggesting that they are Protestants rather than Catholics;{{sfnp|WYLBNTXB}} Poole is of the same opinion: “their lack of reaction to the name of Mary suggests that they have not fallen into the errors of the Catholic Church, despite some otherwise rather Catholic-looking institutions on the moon”.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|41}} Beginning in the 1580s, when Godwin was a student at Oxford University, many publications criticising the governance of the established Church of England circulated widely, until in 1586 censorship was introduced, resulting in the Martin Marprelate controversy. Martin Marprelate was the name used by the anonymous author or authors of the illegal tracts attacking the Church published between 1588 and 1589. A number of commentators, including Grant McColley, have suggested that Godwin strongly objected to the imposition of censorship, expressed in Gonsales’s hope that the publication of his account may not prove “prejudicial to the Catholic faith”.{{sfnp|WYLBNTXB}}{{sfnp|DPA8FFD2|10}} John Clark has suggested that the Martin Marprelate controversy may have inspired Godwin to give the name Martin to the Lunars’ god, but as a bishop of the Church of England it is perhaps unlikely that he was generally sympathetic to the Martin Marprelate position.{{sfnp|WYLBNTXB}} Critics do not agree on the precise denomination of Godwin’s Lunars. In contrast with Clark and Poole, David Cressy argues that the Lunars falling to their knees after Gonsales’s exclamation (a similar ritual takes place at the court of Irdonozur) is evidence of “a fairly mechanical form of religion (as most of Godwin’s Protestant contemporaries judged Roman Catholicism)”.{{sfnp|DZZPIV9F}}
By the time *The Man in the Moone* was published, discussion on the plurality of worlds had begun to favour the possibility of extraterrestrial life.{{sfnp|DZZPIV9F}} For Christian thinkers such a plurality is intimately connected to Christ and his redemption of man: if there are other worlds, do they share a similar history, and does Christ also redeem them in his sacrifice?{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|41}} According to Philipp Melanchthon, a 16th-century theologian who worked closely with Martin Luther, “It must not be imagined that there are many worlds, because it must not be imagined that Christ died or was resurrected more often, nor must it be thought that in any other world without the knowledge of the son of God, that men would be restored to eternal life”. Similar comments were made by Calvinist theologian Lambert Daneau. Midway through the 17th century the matter appears to have been settled in favour of a possible plurality, which was accepted by Henry More and Aphra Behn among others; “by 1650, the Elizabethan Oxford examination question *an sint plures mundi*? (‘can these be many worlds?’ – to which the correct Aristotelian answer was ‘no’) had been replaced by the disputation thesis *quod Luna sit habitabilis* (‘that the moon could be habitable’ – which might be answered ‘probably’ if not ‘yes’)”.{{sfnp|DZZPIV9F}}
### Lunar language
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Fliegende_wandersmann_music.jpg)Transcription of lunar language, from the 1659 German edition
Wikimedia Commons
Godwin had a lifelong interest in language and communication (as is evident in Gonsales’s various means of communicating with his servant Diego on St Helena), and this was the topic of his *Nuncius inanimatus* (1629).{{sfnp|KVFRDQXM}} The language Gonsales encounters on the Moon bears no relation to any he is familiar with, and it takes him months to acquire sufficient fluency to communicate properly with the inhabitants. While its vocabulary appears limited, its possibilities for meaning are multiplied since the meaning of words and phrases also depends on tone. Invented languages were an important element of earlier fantastical accounts such as Thomas More’s *Utopia*, François Rabelais’s *Gargantua and Pantagrue*l and Joseph Hall’s *Mundus Alter et Idem*, all books that Godwin was familiar with.{{sfnp|MIQ23Z8P}} P. Cornelius, in a study of invented languages in imaginary travel accounts from the 17th and 18th centuries, proposes that a perfect, rationally organised language is indicative of the Enlightenment’s rationalism.{{sfnp|AX55ZI5D}} As H. Neville Davies argues, Godwin’s imaginary language is more perfect than for instance More’s in one aspect: it is spoken on the entire Moon and has not suffered from the Earthly dispersion of languages caused by the fall of the Tower of Babel.{{sfnp|MIQ23Z8P}}
One of Godwin’s sources for his Lunar language was Trigault’s *De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas*.{{sfnp|MIQ23Z8P}} Gonsales provides two examples of spoken phrases, written down in a cipher later explained by John Wilkins in *Mercury, or The Secret and Swift Messenger* (1641).{{sfnp|337QN5DS}} Trigault’s account of the Chinese language gave Godwin the idea of assigning tonality to the Lunar language, and of appreciating it in the language spoken by the Chinese mandarins Gonsales encounters after his return to Earth. Gonsales claims that in contrast to the multitude of languages in China (making their speakers mutually unintelligible), the mandarins’ language is universal by virtue of tonality (he suppresses it in the other varieties of Chinese). Thus the mandarins are able to maintain a cultural and spiritual superiority resembling that of the Lunar upper class, which is to be placed in contrast with the variety of languages spoken in a fractured and morally degenerate Europe and elsewhere.{{sfnp|MIQ23Z8P}} Knowlson argues that using the term “language” is overstating the case, and that cipher is the proper term: “In spite of Godwin’s claims, this musical ‘language’ is not in fact a language at all, but simply a cipher in which the letters of an existing language may be transcribed”. He suggests Godwin’s source may have been a book by Joan Baptista Porta, whose *De occultis literarum notis* (1606)\[i\]A Jesuit mission was set up in Beijing in 1601 by Matteo Ricci and Diego de Pantoja.{{sfnp|G2AWV7HG}} contains “an exact description of the method he was to adopt”.{{sfnp|KVFRDQXM}}
## Genre
The book’s genre has been variously categorised. When it was first published the literary genre of utopian fantasy was in its infancy, and critics have recognised how Godwin used a utopian setting to criticise the institutions of his time: the Moon was “the ideal perspective from which to view the earth” and its “moral attitudes and social institutions,” according to Maurice Bennett.{{sfnp|VK7TQ6QW}} Other critics have referred to the book as “utopia”,{{sfnp|7ELPMLWS}} “Renaissance utopia” or “picaresque adventure”.{{sfnp|MRLZ8Q3H}} While some critics claim it as one of the first works of science fiction,{{sfnp|C62A2K8B|57}}{{sfnp|WG3NIFIS}} there is no general agreement that it is even “proto-science-fiction”.{{sfnp|MRLZ8Q3H}}
Early commentators recognised that the book is a kind of picaresque novel, and comparisons with *Don Quixote* were being made as early as 1638. In structure as well as content *The Man in the Moone* somewhat resembles the anonymous Spanish novella *Lazarillo de Tormes* (1554); both books begin with a genealogy and start out in Salamanca, featuring a man who travels from master to master seeking his fortune. But most critics agree that the picaresque mode is not sustained throughout, and that Godwin intentionally achieves a “generic transformation”.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|26-28}}
Godwin’s book follows a venerable tradition of travel literature that blends the excitement of journeys to foreign places with utopian reflection; More’s *Utopia* is cited as a forerunner, as is the account of Amerigo Vespucci. Godwin could fall back on an extensive body of work describing the voyages undertaken by his protagonist, including books by Hakluyt and Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, and the narratives deriving from the Jesuit mission in Beijing.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|28-31}}
## Criticism and influence
*The Man in the Moone* was published five months after *The Discovery of a World in the Moone* by John Wilkins,{{sfnp|F76AFDCE}} later bishop of Chester. Wilkins refers to Godwin once, in a discussion of spots in the Moon, but not to Godwin’s book.{{sfnp|G2AWV7HG}} In the third edition of *The Discovery* (1640), however, Wilkins provides a summary of Godwin’s book, and later in *Mercury* (1641) he comments on *The Man in the Moone* and *Nuncius Inanimatu*s, saying that “the former text could be used to unlock the secrets of the latter”.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|48}} *The Man in the Moone* quickly became an international “source of humour and parody”: Cyrano de Bergerac, using Baudoin’s 1648 translation, parodied it in *L’Autre Monde: où les États et Empires de la Lune* (1657);{{sfnp|MRLZ8Q3H}}{{sfnp|GRQ24ENJ}} Cyrano’s traveller actually meets Gonsales, who is still on the Moon, “degraded to the status of pet monkey”.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|51}} It was one of the inspirations for what has been called the first science fiction text in the Americas, *Syzygies and Lunar Quadratures Aligned to the Meridian of Mérida of the Yucatán by an Anctitone or Inhabitant of the Moon* … by Manuel Antonio de Rivas (1775).{{sfnp|97XAT89M}} The Laputan language of Jonathan Swift, who was a distant relation of Godwin’s, may have been influenced by *The Man in the Moone*, either directly or through Cyrano de Bergerac.{{sfnp|MIQ23Z8P}}
*The Man in the Moone* became a popular source for “often extravagantly staged comic drama and opera”,{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|52}} including Aphra Behn’s *The Emperor of the Moon*, a 1687 play “inspired by … the third edition of \[*The Man in the Moone*\], and the English translation of Cyrano’s work”,{{sfnp|MRLZ8Q3H}} and Elkanah Settle’s *The World in the Moon* (1697).{{sfnp|N8X6LUYT}} Thomas D’Urfey’s *Wonders in the Sun, or the Kingdom of the Birds* (1706) was “really a sequel, starring Domingo and Diego”.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|52}} Its popularity was not limited to English; a Dutch farce, *Don Domingo Gonzales of de Man in de maan*, formerly considered to have been written by Maria de Wilde, was published in 1755.{{sfnp|ARI733Q6|223-224}}
The book’s influence continued into the 19th century. Edgar Allan Poe in an appendix to “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall” called it “a singular and somewhat ingenious little book”.{{sfnp|VK7TQ6QW}} Poe assumed the author to be French, an assumption also made by Jules Verne in his *From the Earth to the Moon* (1865), suggesting that they may have been using Baudoin’s translation.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|53}} H. G. Wells’s *The First Men in the Moon* (1901) has several parallels with Godwin’s fantasy, including the use of a stone to induce weightlessness.{{sfbp|36LVQYSW|54}} But *The Man in the Moone* has nevertheless been given only “lukewarm consideration in different histories of English literature”,{{sfnp|MRLZ8Q3H}} and its importance is downplayed in studies of Utopian literature. Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel’s *Utopian Thought in the Western World* (winner of the 1979 National Book Award for Nonfiction) mentions it only in passing, saying that Godwin “treats primarily of the mechanics of flight with the aid of a crew of birds”, and that *The Man in the Moone*, like Bergerac’s and Wilkins’s books, lacks “high seriousness and unified moral purpose”.{{sfnp|YZY899UH|219}}
Gonsales’s load-carrying birds have also left their mark. *The Oxford English Dictionary*‘s entry for gansa reads “One of the birds (called elsewhere ‘wild swans’) which drew Domingo Gonsales to the Moon in the romance by Bp. F. Godwin”. For the etymology it suggests ganzæ, found in Philemon Holland’s 1601 translation of Pliny the Elder’s *Natural History*.{{sfnp|B5CUK59A}} Michael van Langren (“Langrenus”), the 17th-century Dutch astronomer and cartographer, named one of the lunar craters for them, Gansii, later renamed Halley.{{sfnp|36LVQYSW|49}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Bürger lists publications from 1651, 1654, 1666, and 1671.{{sfnp|UMIP23RX|146}} b The German translation of The Man in the Moone was published in 1660 and 1667 with two texts by Balthasar Venator, one of which also a lunar travel narrative; Grimmelshausen had written an appendix to The Man in the Moone for the 1667 edition (apparently to fill up 13 empty pages at the request of his regular printer, Johann Jonathan Felßecker). Since then, his name has become associated with The Man in the Moone, although the appendix was not reprinted in his collected works. According to Bürger, the German translator of The Man in the Moone may have been Hieronymus Imhof (1606–1668) of Wolfenbüttel, a tutor to the princes at the court of Augustus the Younger, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg;{{sfnp|UMIP23RX|138-140}} the incorrect ascription to Grimmelshausen was cited as recently as 1945.{{sfnp|UCE4WHY8}} c W. H. van Seters notes that in 1651 two Dutch publishers, Jacob Benjamin in Amsterdam and I. G. van Houten in The Hague, published different continuations of the narrative, both bound with the second edition of Godwin’s book; Benjamin’s continuation is signed E. M., the initials of Godwin’s fictional narrator. The continuation by van Houten exists in only one printing, but he had apparently planned for a third volume, a sequel to the sequel.{{sfnp|QYSNTJ4Q|157-172}} d Remote signalling was one of Godwin’s “personal obsessions”.{{sfnp|C62A2K8B|65}} e At the time the book was written England was at war with Spain. f Godwin proposes that as the Earth is magnetic,{{sfnp|EIN3UG2C}} only an initial push is necessary to escape its magnetic attraction, a push provided by the gansas.{{sfnp|TRHY8IWH|153-154}} g Godwin cites the [green children of Woolpit](https://engole.info/green-children-of-woolpit/) as an example of Lunar children sent to Earth. The Lunars call their god Martinus, which might reflect the name of the green children’s home, St Martin’s Land.{{sfnp|T7FW5FCN}} h Gonsales speculates that his return journey was two days shorter than his outward journey because of the eagerness of his gansas to return to their home, or the Earth’s greater magnetic attraction.{{sfnp|DPA8FFD2|43}} A modern mathematician, Andrew Simoson, has pointed out that the discrepancy can also be explained by the gansas flying directly towards where they could see the Moon to be on their outward journey. Therefore rather than travelling in a straight line they flew in a pursuit curve, attempting to catch up with the Moon as it orbited the Earth. But as the Earth orbits the Sun more slowly than the Moon orbits the Earth, the pursuit curve for the return journey was correspondingly shorter, and hence the journey home quicker.{{sfnp|TKS7TVQM}} i A Jesuit mission was set up in Beijing in 1601 by Matteo Ricci and Diego de Pantoja.{{sfnp|G2AWV7HG}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 12281
**Categories:** Novel, Science fiction
---
### [Servant's Magazine](https://engole.info/servants-magazine/)
**Published:** August 1, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Published monthly in England from 1838 until 1869. Priced at one penny, its mission was to provide "improving reading for servant girls".
**Content:**
The *Servant’s Magazine* was published monthly in England from 1838 until 1869. Priced at one penny, its mission was to provide “improving reading for servant girls”. Probably bought more by the mistress of the house for distribution to her servants than by the servants themselves, its tone was “patronizing and austerely evangelical”. Among the advice contained within its pages was that servants should never read novels, should study the Bible regularly, and should be faithful to their employers, not seeking employment elsewhere “unless the Lord tells you it will be for your soul’s good”.{{sfnp|CHNDJWW3|568}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 4309
**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [The Butterfly (magazine)](https://engole.info/the-butterfly-magazine/)
**Published:** August 19, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/661092.jpg[/pimage]Literary magazine published from 1893 until 1900, with a gap from 1894 to 1899.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/661092.jpg)Cover of the March 1899 edition
Bridgeman Images
*The Butterfly* was a literary magazine that ran for two series: the first ten issues from May 1893 to February 1894 and the second twelve from March 1899 to February 1900. Edited by L. Raven-Hill and Arnold Golsworthy, it was similar in content to [*The Idler*](https://engole.info/the-idler),{{sfnp|7JSWYK9C|247}} a “glossy, irreverent, humorous journal”,{{sfnp|EUXN5ALC}} with an emphasis on art and fun.{{sfnp|7JSWYK9C|247}}
Between 1894 and 1899 Raven-Hill experimented with a weekly, *The Unicorn*, which lasted for only three issues, and *The Minster*, before returning for the second series of *The Butterfly*.{{sfnp|7JSWYK9C|247}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24869
**Categories:** Magazine
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Lancashire and Cheshire Coalfield](https://engole.info/lancashire-and-cheshire-coalfield/)
**Published:** May 19, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/British.coalfields.19th.century.jpg[/pimage]The Lancashire and Cheshire Coalfield in North West England was one of the most important British coalfields. Its coal seams were formed from the vegetation of tropical swampy forests in the Carboniferous period more than 300 million years ago.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/British.coalfields.19th.century.jpg)
The Lancashire and Cheshire Coalfield in North West England was one of the most important British coalfields in the 19th and 20th centuries. Its coal seams were formed from the vegetation of tropical swampy forests in the Carboniferous period, more than 300 million years ago.
The Romans may have been the first to use coal in Lancashire, and its shallow seams and outcrops were exploited on a small scale from the Middle Ages and extensively after the start of the Industrial Revolution. The coalfield was at the forefront of innovation in coal mining, prompting the country’s first canals, use of steam engines and creating conditions favourable for rapid industrialisation.
Pits on the coalfield were at their most productive in 1907, when more than 26 million tons of coal were produced; by 1967 just 21 collieries remained. Parkside Colliery in Newton-le-Willows, the last deep mine to be sunk on the coalfield, was closed in 1993.
## Geology
The geology of the coalfield consists of the coal seams of the Upper, Middle and Lower Coal Measures, layers of sandstones, shales and coal of varying thickness, which were laid down in the Carboniferous period more than 300 million years ago.{{sfnp|7VMXUTGP|10}} The coal seams were formed from the vegetation of tropical swampy forests.{{sfnp|JPIV9DQA|4}} The coal in Lancashire is bituminous, with 30–40% volatile matter varying in hardness from seam to seam.
The Coal Measures are more than {{convert|1200|m}} thick, of which coal accounts for about 4%.{{sfnp|MRCPXN6Z|112–116}} They were subjected to folding, which accounts for the dip towards the south and west. The coalfield is crossed by several major faults that generally run in a north and south direction; the most significant easterly fault throws the strata down to the east. It was worked from Fairbottom in Ashton-under-Lyne across the River Medlock to Oldham and onwards to the west of Rochdale. The Red Rock Fault skirts the north-west extremity of the North Staffordshire coalfield towards Macclesfield and Poynton Colliery in Cheshire. The [Irwell Valley or Pendleton Fault](https://engole.info/pendleton-fault/) passes Clifton and Kearsley, where it throws the coal measures down to the north-east.{{sfnp|MRCPXN6Z|112–116}} It has a throw of 3000 feet (900 metres) and the area is still geologically active and subject to earth tremors.{{sfnp|CXRBGQJ9|7}} A fault with a large horizontal but small vertical throw is found at Tyldesley.{{sfnp|MRCPXN6Z|112–116}} In the deep mines\[a\]In Lancashire a coal seam is referred to as a mine and the coal mine as a colliery or pit. at the southern edge of the coalfield, the Plodder mine in Leigh and the Arley mine in Tyldesley were hot: the miners worked in temperatures of more than {{convert|100|F|abbr=on}}.
Five substantial faults affect the Wigan Coalfield. They run almost parallel to and equidistant from each other. The Great Haigh Fault begins near Bickershaw Colliery and passes northward through Hindley, Kirkless Hall, Haigh, and Arley to the west of Adlington Park. The Great Standish or St Catherine’s Fault has a downthrow to the east and passes under St Catherine’s Church at Ince. The Giant’s Hall Fault passes by Abram, west of Ince Hall Colliery, west of Gidlow and under Giant’s Hall Farm to Standish Church. The Great Shevington Fault passes by Hawkley Hall and east of Kirkless Hall. The Great Pemberton Fault is a downthrow, and passes Pemberton, Orrell and to the west of Shevington. Further west are the Great Upholland Fault, the Lathom Fault the Great Boundary Fault stretching from Bickerstaffe to about {{convert|2|mi|spell=in}} east of Ormskirk.{{sfnp|MRCPXN6Z|112–116}}
## Geography
The coalfield on the western side of the Pennines is separated by the Rossendale anticline. To the north-east is the [Burnley Coalfield](https://engole.info/burnley-coalfield/) and to the south is the much larger South Lancashire Coalfield, which comprises, from west to east, the St Helens, Wigan, [Manchester](https://engole.info/manchester-coalfield/), and Oldham Coalfields. The Oldham Coalfield extends to the south and becomes the Cheshire Coalfield. The coalfield covers around {{convert|550|sqmi}} extending from Stalybridge in the southeast to Ormskirk in the northwest and from Rainhill in the southwest to beyond Burnley in the northeast.{{sfnp|96MVVRWG}} The south eastern part extends well into Cheshire, where significant mining took place around Poynton and Dukinfield. The area of the coalfield became heavily industrialised as new industries developed, attracted by the availability of fuel.{{sfnp|EIFDS9EM|16}} A small area around Todmorden in West Yorkshire is geologically part of the coalfield.{{sfnp|CQ5EQP3R}} The redrawing of administrative county boundaries in 1974 resulted in almost all the South Lancashire Coalfield lying outside the modern-day boundaries of Lancashire. A quite separate and much smaller coalfield is situated in the Wenning Valley in the northeast of the county but is part of the Ingleton Coalfield, the main part of which is in North Yorkshire.{{sfnp|BUMJQTK6}}
## History
The Romans may have used coal in Lancashire, but the earliest written record of “minera” was made in 1246 when Adam de Radcliffe stole coal belonging to Adam son of Alexander. Small amounts of coal were dug during the Middle Ages, but wood was plentiful and turf was preferred to coal, which was inferior in quality. Coal was used for lime burning and by smiths.{{sfnp|ASW7YVVA|9}} Coal was got in Shakerley in 1429 when a dispute over the stealing of “seacoals” was recorded. Pits were small and shallow and Wigan and its neighbourhood were noted for numerous [cannel](https://engole.info/cannel/) pits that could be accessed from under property.{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|25}} John Leland visited Haigh in 1538 and observed that “Mr Bradshaw … hath founde moche Canel like Se coal in his grounde very profitable to him.”\[b\]Mr Bradshaw has found much cannel coal in his land which was very profitable. Mining was not a full-time occupation: frequently the work was seasonal and combined with other occupations such as farming or weaving.{{sfnp|ASW7YVVA|17}}
During the Elizabethan era pits were sunk throughout the coalfield, at Haslingden, Padiham, Ightenhill and Trawden.\[14\]{{sfnp|ASW7YVVA|10}} More than 50 small pits operated around Rochdale where coal was got in the 1580s at Falinge, Cronkeyshaw and near Littleborough. Shallow pits at [Bradford](https://engole.info/bradford-colliery/), a little over a mile from Manchester town centre, produced enough coal for the town in the early 1600s.
Different areas of the coalfield expanded and contracted at different times. The Wigan area, with coal relatively close to the surface, was important by the 18th century, fuelling the brass and pewter industries; and after the onset of the Industrial Revolution, cotton and heavy engineering. The coalfield around St Helens developed from the mid-18th century supplying the copper, glass and chemical industries that developed close to the Sankey Canal.{{sfnp|ASW7YVVA}}
In the 1770s records show there were pits in Wigan, Bolton, Oldham, Ashton-under-Lyne and Dukinfield. From the 16th and 17th centuries some landowners began to develop the industry, and dynasties of coalowners emerged included the Bradshaws and Earls of Crawford and Balcarres of Haigh Hall, the Hultons of Hulton Park, the Fletchers, the Knowles and the Duke of Bridgewater and his successors the Bridgewater Trustees. Companies that emerged during the 19th century included Richard Evans and Company of [Haydock Collieries](https://engole.info/haydock-collieries/), which originated in 1830. Pearson and Knowles Coal and Iron Company was formed in 1874 in Ince. Colonel John Hargreaves began a company with pits in Burnley, and George Hargreaves owned pits in Accrington and Rossendale. James Lees’ Chamber Colliery Company owned pits in Oldham.{{sfnp|U4R2PQGK}}
## Developments
In 1600 coal was dug from outcrops and shallow bell or ladder pits where roof falls were common. Drainage was a problem and many workings were abandoned. Roger Bradshaw dug the [Great Haigh Sough,](https://engole.info/great-haigh-sough/) a 1,120 yards (1,020 m) long tunnel, under his [Haigh Hall](https://engole.info/haigh-hall/) estate to drain his pits into a nearby stream between 1653 and 1670.{{sfnp|FGYRWCAP}} Other soughs were dug, including one in 1729 to drain the [Worsley mines](https://engole.info/worsley-navigable-levels/) and another from Standish Colliery to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Crooke. A waterwheel was used from 1720 to lift water from the workings of the Plumbe Street Mine in Burnley using an endless chain of buckets, and James Brindley installed a waterwheel at the Wet Earth Colliery in the Irwell Valley.{{sfnp|EIFDS9EM|126}}
The invention of steam engines, first in 1698 by Thomas Savery and then in 1711 by Thomas Newcomen, provided an alternative method of draining wet mines and winding men and coal from deeper pits.{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|23}} A Newcomen-type atmospheric engine installed at Bardsley Colliery in Ashton-under-Lyne in about 1760 was known as [Fairbottom Bobs](https://engole.info/fairbottom-bobs/).{{sfnp|CXRBGQJ9|16}}
In 1720 the River Douglas near Wigan and the Rivers Irwell and Mersey were made navigable, providing a more efficient and cheaper method of transporting coal. The Sankey Canal was constructed in 1755 and by 1760 Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater was constructing the Bridgewater Canal, providing a direct link from the [Worsley Navigable Levels](https://engole.info/worsley-navigable-levels/) into Manchester. More canals were constructed including the Leeds and Liverpool and Manchester Bolton & Bury Canals.{{sfnp|ASW7YVVA|15}}{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|24}}
The [Bolton and Leigh Railway](https://engole.info/bolton-and-leigh-railway/), Lancashire’s first public railway, opened in 1828 to carry coal and cotton. It passed to the west of William Hulton’s estate and gave his pits at Chequerbent access to Bolton and Liverpool. In the following 20 years the main lines of the railway system were constructed, linking the increasingly industrial towns in Lancashire with the rest of the country.{{sfnp|IKA4HN3I|21–22}} Access to transport, the steam engine, the development of the textile industry with raw cotton imported through the Port of Liverpool and associated industries led to increased demand for coal and larger, deeper mines.
## Conditions
At the turn of the 19th century demand for coal increased rapidly for domestic and industrial consumption. Miners worked in intolerable conditions, coal was got by hewers using picks and shovels in mines lit by candles. Children as young as five sat in complete darkness opening ventilation doors for “hurriers”, the women and boys who hauled tubs of coal to the shaft bottom. Some coalowners used the bond system to enforce discipline and prevent workers from joining together to fight for better pay and conditions.{{sfnp|ASW7YVVA|20}} The [Combination Acts](https://engole.info/combination-acts/) of 1799 made unions illegal. Some coal owners paid their miners with tokens that could only be redeemed in their company shops, a practice outlawed by the Truck Act 1831.{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|26}} The Duke of Bridgewater paid eight shillings (40p) for a six-day working week with shifts of 12 to 15 hours and fined those who were late half a crown.{{sfnp|ASW7YVVA|18}} The wages amounted to a few pence more than Poor Law relief and miners worked to keep out of the [workhouse](https://engole.info/workhouse/). [William Hulton](https://engole.info/william-hulton/) reputedly paid the poorest wages in Lancashire and was hostile to permitting his workforce the right to free assembly.{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|35–36}}
The [Mines Act of 1842](https://engole.info/mines-and-collieries-act-1842/) prohibited women and girls and boys under the age of ten from working underground in coal mines. After 1842 women continued to work on the surface, sorting coal from dirt on the coal screens, as [pit brow lasses](https://engole.info/pit-brow-women/).{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|58}}
## 20th century
In 1907 coal was produced largely by hand in the coalfields 358 collieries and and pit ponies used for haulage. The highest annual tonnage, more than 26 million tons was produced in 1907.{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|25}} During the first quarter of the 20th century an average of nearly 20 million tons of coal was produced annually by a workforce of 100,000 men. Conditions became increasingly difficult as the best, most easily won coal was worked out. In the Burnley area output from the thin seams towards the north of the coalfield was small. Despite its higher price Lancashire coal remained important. Consumption was largely for the local market but some was shipped abroad. Manchester was the centre of a vast industrial district and there was a great demand for coal from the cotton industry, engineering, iron and chemical works, and other industries. Demand for coke in the foundries had led to coke-ovens being built next to some collieries. Steam coal was required for cotton mills, chemical works, engineering works, and locomotive fuel, house coal had a large market in a heavily populated area.{{sfnp|U4R2PQGK}}
In 1927 there were 222 working collieries belonging to 125 owners. The 18 pits in Cheshire had 15 owners. Most companies were small: more than 100 pits had fewer than 200 workers while 60 pits employed more than 200, 14 employed between 1,000 and 2,000, and 18 more than 2,000 workers.{{sfnp|U4R2PQGK}}
The Mining Industries Act of 1925 attempted to stem the post-war decline and encouraged independent companies to merge in order to modernise and better survive the prevailing economic conditions. Robert Burrows of Atherton’s [Fletcher Burrows Company](https://engole.info/fletcher-burrows-company/) proposed merging several companies operating to the west of Manchester and in March 1929, [Manchester Collieries](https://engole.info/manchester-collieries/), the largest such company on the coalfield was formed.{{sfnp|KLZ5HVNI|373}}
## Nationalisation
On the vesting date, 1 January 1947, the country’s coal mines were nationalised and the service contracts of the employees transferred to the [National Coal Board](https://engole.info/national-coal-board/) (NCB).{{sfnp|25WYVJWA|36}} The coalfield’s 86 collieries were nationalised and the coalfield divided into four areas, Manchester with 20 pits, Wigan had 26, St Helens 22 and 18 in [Burnley](https://engole.info/burnley-coalfield/) but the number of collieries declined as reserves became exhausted.{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|31}}
To maximise coal output, short-life drift mines including Fence Drift and Wood End Drift near Burnley and Seneley Hall Drift at Standish and Dairy Pit at Haigh opened in the early 1950s. At the same time, the NCB embarked on extensive programmes of boring to prove the reserves of coal and modernised collieries. In the late 1950s smaller collieries were closed in the Wigan and Burnley areas as was Deane Colliery in Bolton.{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|32}}
Production at the reopened Agecroft Colliery resumed in 1960, and by 1962 major investment at Mosley Common Colliery turned it into a “superpit” at a cost of £7.5 million. The last shafts to be sunk on the coalfield were at Parkside Colliery in Newton-le-Willows. Sinking to the Crombouke and Lower Florida seams at a depth of 886 yards started in 1957 and production began in 1964.{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|32}}
In the 1960s the NCB began closing collieries, some with workable coal reserves, by setting impossible production targets and by 1967 just 21 pits remained. The Mosley Common superpit closed in 1968{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|33}} and Astley Green closed in 1970, both had huge reserves of coal. The remaining collieries closed after the 1984 miners’ strike, Bold Colliery in St Helens closed in 1985, Agecroft in 1991 and the Bickershaw, Golborne, Parsonage complex a year later. Parkside Colliery, the last deep mine on the coalfield, closed in 1993 without exhausting its coal reserves.{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|32}}
## Disasters
Gassy coal seams, poor ventilation and the use of candles meant the coalfield was prone to [explosions and disasters](https://engole.info/list-of-mining-disasters-in-lancashire/) and, between 1851 and 1853, Lancashire had the highest mortality rate of any British coalfield. In 1850, 16 men and boys died at Bent Grange Colliery in Oldham, 36 died at Coppull Colliery in 1852 and in two disasters within a year at Ince Hall Colliery, 58 died in 1853 and 89 men died in 1854.{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|28}} In 1883 some 68 men and boys were killed and 53 were injured at Moorfield colliery near Accrington. In 1859 there were 68 fatal accidents in Manchester district and 57 in Wigan and St Helens. The third worst mining disaster in the country was at [Hulton Colliery Company’s](https://engole.info/hulton-collieries/) Pretoria Pit in 1910 when a faulty lamp caused an explosion killing 344 miners.{{sfnp|7LHH8UH3|161}} In 1962, 16 men died and 21 were injured at Hapton Valley Colliery near Burnley. The last disaster was at Golborne Colliery in March 1979, when three men died instantly in an explosion of methane caused by an electric spark and seven men later died of their injuries.
The Lancashire and Cheshire Coal Owners Association decided to provide a [mines rescue](https://engole.info/mines-rescue/) station at [Howe Bridge](https://engole.info/howe-bridge-mines-rescue-station/) in Atherton to attend accidents and disasters in their pits in 1908.{{sfnp|HTZMM86S|133}} It was replaced by [Boothstown Mines Rescue Station](https://engole.info/boothstown-mines-rescue-station/) close to the East Lancashire Road in 1933. It replaced four smaller stations and was permanently staffed by two rescue teams who attended emergencies across the entire coalfield.{{sfnp|HTZMM86S|134}}
## Unions
Colliery owners fended off the formation of unions until well into the 19th century and trade unionism was slow to take a hold on the coalfield. Employers arbitrarily fined men for minor reasons, disallowed wages on false pretexts and victimised perceived radicals. Bonds were used to enforce discipline. Miners protested about poor wages in 1757 when bread prices rose and some marched from Kersal towards Manchester in protest but were turned back. When trouble flared, the Home Secretary ordered troops to be ready to quell the unrest. Long strikes were unsustainable as the miners had no organisation or finances to back them up. The first miners’ association, the “Brotherly Union Society” was formed in Pemberton in 1794. It was described as a friendly society to avoid prosecution under the Combination Acts; by the early 19th century there were twenty-one such societies in central Lancashire.{{sfnp|ASW7YVVA|20–22}} The [Lancashire and Cheshire Miners’ Federation](https://engole.info/lancashire-and-cheshire-miners-federation/) (LCMF) was founded in 1881 after a bitter and often violent [seven-week strike](https://engole.info/1881-lancashire-miners-strike/) and after the formation of the National Union of Mineworkers in 1945, the LCMF became its Lancashire area. Though not considered militant, the union was involved in several strikes, including the national strikes of 1926, 1972, 1974 and 1984.{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|33}}
## Legacy
There can be no doubt that coal mining substantially changed the landscape. The Victoria County History has several disparaging descriptions of the Wigan area in the early 20th century.
Hindley lies in the centre of the great Lancashire coalfield, and consists of a level-surfaced country dotted over with collieries and black pit-banks. A close network of tramways and railways covers the face of a singularly dreary stretch of country, where the pastures are scanty and blackened. Frequent pools of water lie between the collieries, indicating subsidences of the earth caused by mining. What trees remain standing appear as dead stumps, with leafless branches reflected weirdly in the “flashes” of water.{{sfnp|QZF59XLC|106–111}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a In Lancashire a coal seam is referred to as a mine and the coal mine as a colliery or pit. b Mr Bradshaw has found much cannel coal in his land which was very profitable.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 19837
## External links
- [Map from c. 1836 by Elias Hall](https://www.digitalcollections.manchester.ac.uk/view/PR-SC-13407-C/1)
**Categories:** Coal mining
---
### [The Schoolgirl](https://engole.info/the-schoolgirl/)
**Published:** August 1, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/schoolgirl.jpeg[/pimage]Story paper for girls published from 1922 until 1940.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/schoolgirl.jpeg)Cover page of the first issue
Amalgamated Press
The initial incarnation of *The Schoolgirl*, a story paper for girls, was published by Shurey’s Publications of London. It ran for only 56 weekly issues from 21 February 1922 until 13 March 1923, but the title was revived by Amalgamated Press in August 1929. The comic continued until May 1940, when paper rationing introduced during the Second World War resulted in its merger with *Girls Crystal*. During its run of 564 issues *The Schoolgirl* itself had merged with *Schooldays* in May 1931 and [*The Schoolgirls Own*](https://engole.info/schoolgirls-own/) in May 1936.{{sfnp|DLEZ6NW2}}
Most stories centred on the girls and staff of Cliff House School, a fictional establishment in Kent, on a cliff top overlooking the sea. Cliff House was the sister school of Greyfriars, where Billy Bunter was educated, and had its own equivalent, his sister Bessie Bunter. Many of the titles were written by Charles Hamilton, under the pen name of Hilda Richards.{{sfnp|DLEZ6NW2}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 4314
**Categories:** Comic
---
### [John Nevison](https://engole.info/john-nevison/)
**Published:** September 6, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/John-Nevinson.webp[/pimage]One of Britain's most notorious highwaymen, executed on 4 May 1684.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/John-Nevinson.webp)Wikimedia Commons
John Nevison (died 4 May 1684) was one of Britain’s most notorious highwaymen. A gentleman rogue, (sometimes known as William Nevison or Nevinson), he was supposedly nicknamed Swift Nick by King Charles II after a renowned {{convert|200|mi|adj=on}} dash from Kent to York established an alibi for a robbery he had committed earlier that day. The story inspired [William Harrison Ainsworth](https://engole.info/william-harrison-ainsworth/) to include a modified version in his novel *Rookwood*, in which he attributed the feat to [Dick Turpin](https://engole.info/dick-turpin/).
## History
Little is known about Nevison’s early life, but he was probably born in the parish of Wortley in present-day South Yorkshire, and may have been baptised in 1648.{{sfnp|QQI2JPL7}} He ran away from home at the age of 13 or 14, and may have ended up in London. Fleeing to Holland to evade the authorities, he enrolled in the Duke of York’s army and took part in the 1658 Battle of Dunkirk. After his discharge he returned to England and took care of his father for several years before adopting the same profession as many of his contemporary ex-soldiers, that of a highwayman. Basing himself around Newark-on-Trent, he targeted travellers on the Great North Road between Huntingdon to the south and York to the north.{{sfnp|ULLNSNIP}}
In the mid-1670s Nevison’s activities were under investigation and he was associated with men named Edmund Bracy, Thomas Wilbore, Thomas Tankerd, John Bromett, and William (or Robert) Everson and John Brace or Bracy, which may have been his alias. The robbers used safe houses at Tuxford and Wentbridge near Pontefract and divided their spoils at the Talbot Inn at Newark.{{sfnp|QQI2JPL7}} Nevison developed a reputation as a gentleman highwayman, never using violence against his victims, always polite, and only robbing the rich.{{sfnp|ULLNSNIP}}
Nevison’s famous ride from Kent to York took place in 1676, after he had robbed a traveller at Gad’s Hill, near Rochester in Kent. Nevison escaped, using a ferry to cross the Thames and galloped via Chelmsford, Cambridge and Huntingdon to York some 200 miles (320 km) from the scene of the crime. He arrived at sunset and ensured he met the city’s Lord Mayor, entering into a wager on a bowls match. When he was arrested and tried for the Gad’s Hill robbery, he produced the Lord Mayor of York to support his alibi and was found not guilty.{{sfnp|SZTZNT6V}}
The Three Houses, from *The Inns of Old England* by Charles G. Harper
Nevison was tried and convicted for the theft of a horse and highway robbery at York assizes in 1677. On offering to inform against his accomplices he was pardoned and imprisoned in York Castle to await transportation. In 1681 he was taken from gaol to be enlisted in a company of soldiers bound for Tangier but escaped. A reward of £20 was offered for his recapture.{{sfnp|QQI2JPL7}}{{sfnp|CN96M8TK}} He was not captured until 6 March 1684, when he was arrested at the Three Houses Inn in Sandal Magna, near Wakefield. He was tried for the murder of Darcy Fletcher, a constable who had earlier tried to arrest him near [Howley Hall](https://engole.info/howley-hall/) near Soothill in Batley.{{sfnp|QQI2JPL7}}{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|460}} Nevison was taken to York where, because he had breached his pardon, was told “he must dye, for he was a terrour to the country”. Nevison was hanged at the Knavesmire on 4 May 1684 and is buried in an unmarked grave in St Mary’s Church, Castlegate.{{sfnp|QQI2JPL7}}{{sfnp|5ATLU2E9|78–79}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 5429
**Categories:** Highwayman
---
### [The Diary of Mr Poynter](https://engole.info/the-diary-of-mr-poynter/)
**Published:** November 25, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Poynter.jpg[/pimage]Ghost story by M. R. James, first published in 1919, about an apparently possessed scrap of chintz, said to be a memorial to the hair of a 17th-century nobleman.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Poynter.jpg)Howling Frog Books
“The Diary of Mr Poynter” is a ghost story by the English medievalist and author M. R. James (1862–1936), first published in his [*A Thin Ghost and Others*](https://engole.info/a-thin-ghost-and-others) (1919).{{sfnp|2MZHGS9V|loc=5909}}
The story is written as a third-person narrative and concerns an apparently possessed scrap of [chintz](https://engole.info/chintz), said to be a memorial to the hair of a 17th-century nobleman, an example of what James called “the malice of inanimate objects”.{{sfnp|ARJD6LCD}}
## Synopsis
A couple of years before the story proper begins, Rendcomb Manor had been destroyed by fire. Its owner, James Denton, has just completed the construction of a new manor house, and is visiting London at the behest of his unmarried aunt, with whom he shares the property, to procure furnishings for the new house. After completing his errands, and having some time on his hands before his train back home, he visits a book sale, thinking that he may find some volumes on the history of his local area.
Denton comes across a four-volume set of the diaries of Mr Poynter, dated from about 1710. His bid is successful, and a few days later he receives delivery of the books, written by William Poynter, Squire of Accrington, about four miles away. But much to the displeasure of his aunt, Denton had forgotten to order the [chintzes](https://engole.info/chintz) while in London.
On examining the diaries, Denton finds a scrap of cloth pinned to one of the pages, the design of which fascinates his aunt, who comments that its rippling, vertical lines remind her of hair. They agree to commission a firm to reproduce the pattern for their chintzes.
A month later Denton visits the chosen firm to view some samples, on which the vertical lines have been brought together at the top, as per his instructions. He asks if the fabric might be popular if it were made generally available, and is told probably not, and that it was certainly not popular with the craftsman who made the block, who seemed to sense that there was something evil in the design.
Six months later the chintz is delivered and the new mansion is finally furnished, with the new curtains put up in certain rooms, including Denton’s. Despite his initial satisfaction with the design, he does begin to regret having the vertical lines joined at the top, as the effect makes him feel that someone keeps peeping out from between the curtains. The following night, after having dozed off in a chair in his room, Denton begins to wonder where the spaniel that usually slept in his room might be. On moving his hand that is dangling over the side of the chair, he feels something hairy, and at first believes it to be his dog. But it doesn’t feel quite right, so he looks over the side of the chair to be met by the sight of what appears to be a rising human figure, with no discernable face, only hair.
Denton flees from his room and vacates the mansion the following day, taking the four volumes of Mr Poynter’s diaries with him to his temporary seaside lodgings. On examining again the page to which the scrap of chintz had been pinned, he comes across two pages that had been pasted together. He has no trouble in steaming the pages apart, and discovers that they contain an entry made in 1707 revealing the mysterious hair-like slithering creature to be a young nobleman, Everard Charlett, “a very beautiful person, and constantly wore his own hair, which was very abundant”.\[a\]It was fashionable in England to wear a wig from the late 17th until the late 18th century.{{sfnp|NFKAQU9E}} But he led a life of debauchery, and when he was found dead in the town ditch he was hairless, as if the hair had been plucked from his head.
Charlett was buried the following day, but was exhumed two years later so that his body could be moved to his country estate. During the process of transportation the coffin was accidentally broken, and was found to contain no trace of Charlett’s body, only hair.
The diary entry ends by observing it was said that Charlett had been so proud of his hair that he had commissioned the chintz fabric, the scrap of which had been pinned to the page, as a memorial to his hair. “The money spent upon the curtains \[by Denton\] might as well have been thrown into the fire, as they were”.
## Adaptations
“The Diary of Mr Poynter” was adapted for BBC1’s children’s television as one of three readings by Michael Bryant, first broadcast on 12 December 1980.{{sfnp|2MZHGS9V|loc=16055-16070}}\[b\]The other two readings were “[The Mezzotin](https://engole.info/the-mezzotint)t”, broadcast on 21 November, and “[A School Story](https://engole.info/a-school-story)“, broadcast on 28 November.{{sfnp|2MZHGS9V|loc=16055-16070}}
## See also
- [List of works by M. R. James](https://engole.info/m-r-james-bibliography)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a It was fashionable in England to wear a wig from the late 17th until the late 18th century.{{sfnp|NFKAQU9E}} b The other two readings were “[The Mezzotin](https://engole.info/the-mezzotint)t”, broadcast on 21 November, and “[A School Story](https://engole.info/a-school-story)“, broadcast on 28 November.{{sfnp|2MZHGS9V|loc=16055-16070}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25740
## External links
- [Full text of *A Thin Ghost and Others*](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20387) at Project Gutenberg
- [Reading by Michael Hordern on YouTube](https://youtu.be/1mo6FDWQulI)
**Categories:** Ghost story, M. R. James
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Howley Hall](https://engole.info/howley-hall/)
**Published:** June 9, 2023
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Ruins_of_Howley_Hall%2C_the_archway_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3507802.jpg[/pimage]Ruined Elizabethan country house in Morley, West Yorkshire, designated a scheduled monument in 1997.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Ruins_of_Howley_Hall%2C_the_archway_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3507802.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/MiSLiKmEK686ScbXA}}
Ruins of Howley Hall
Howley Hall is a ruined Elizabethan country house in Morley, close to its border with Batley in West Yorkshire. It was designated a scheduled monument in 1997. The scheduled monument contains the ruins and below ground remains of the hall, and the earthwork remains of its gardens.
Sir John Savile built the hall probably between 1585 and 1590, and the Savile’s retained ownership until 1671. The hall passed to the Brudenell family, under whose ownership it deteriorated before being demolished between 1717 and 1730. The hall was the site of fighting during the English Civil War in 1643.
Howley Hall was built for John Savile, 1st Baron Savile of Pontefract, and completed in 1590. Savile was part of the protestant elite that emerged from the English Reformation. He showed his status by building an impressive country house probably designed by a local architect, Abraham Ackroyd. The hall was built in an Elizabethan style reminiscent of the work of Robert Smythson. The Saviles owned the hall for just under a century. When John Savile died in 1630 his son, Thomas Savile, 1st Earl of Sussex inherited the property.{{sfnp|ZIJL3EMN}}
Sir John Savile of Lupset, a Parliamentarian, took charge of the hall during the English Civil War (1642–1651). It was the base for Thomas Fairfax during the Parliamentary capture of Wakefield in May 1643. In retaliation the Earl of Newcastle’s Royalist forces launched a retaliatory attack on Bradford and marched to Howley Hall, where after a short siege it was surrendered. Newcastle then used Howley Hall as his base before the Battle of Adwalton Moor, which gave the Royalists control of Yorkshire.{{sfnp|ZIJL3EMN}}
The hall sustained little damage during the siege, and was returned to the Saviles when Sussex defected to the Parliamentarians. He retired to Howley in 1646 and made significant additions to the building. In 1661 his son James Savile inherited the estate. When he died without issue in 1671, Frances, his sister who was had married a son of Robert Brudenell, 2nd Earl of Cardigan inherited the property. It passed to the Brudenell family, who lived elsewhere.{{sfnp|ZIJL3EMN}}
After James Savile’s death the hall was rented to tenants, and its deterioration began. By 1711 locals were reusing the stone in other buildings, furnishings were sold to the Old Presbyterian Chapel in Bradford in 1719, and others ended up in the Chief Bailiff’s House and other places in the area. Howley Hall was demolished using gunpowder in 1730 by order of the Earl of Cardigan, and the park, comprising nearly {{convert|1000|acre}}, returned to agriculture.{{sfnp|ZIJL3EMN}}
## Structure
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/howley-hall-as-it-was.jpg)
Howley Hall was built on a spur on top of a steep south-west, facing sandstone escarpment. The hall and its gardens, were designed on a symmetrical plan typical of Elizabethan country houses. It had four towers, a grand entrance, and was built around an open courtyard with passages leading to entrances on the north, west and south sides. Earthworks indicate that the hall was about {{convert|56|m}} square and the central courtyard was {{convert|25|m}} square. Entrances in the west and north ranges provided access into the central courtyard. The main entrance in the west range projects from the façade.{{sfnp|ZIJL3EMN}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25385
**Categories:** Yorkshire
---
### [The English Review](https://engole.info/the-english-review/)
**Published:** April 21, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/The_English_Review.jpg[/pimage]Literary magazine published from 1908 until 1937.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/The_English_Review.jpg)Cover page of 1908 edition
Wikimedia Commons
*The English Review* was a literary magazine published in London from 1908 until 1937, which at its zenith published some of the leading writers of its day.
The magazine was founded in 1908 by Ford Madox Hueffer, later Ford Madox Ford, said to be because of his “rage” at discovering that the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy was unable to find a journal willing to publish his poem “A Sunday Morning Tragedy”. The first issue, published in December 1908, contained original work by Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, John Galsworthy, W. H. Hudson, R. B. Cunninghame Graham and H. G. Wells. Hueffer maintained that level of quality in subsequent issues, publishing the early work of Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence and Wyndham Lewis.
Despite its literary excellence, the venture was not a financial success. Issued as a monthly magazine of approximately 175 pages, and sold for half a crown, equivalent to about £14 as at 2021,\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} the magazine’s circulation never exceeded 1000 during Hueffer’s editorship,{{sfnp|IITTLEHM}} and as result, after fourteen issues, he sold the magazine to the financier and Liberal politician Sir Alfred Mond in 1909, who appointed the literary editor and drama critic of the *Daily Mail*, Austin Harrison, as its new editor.{{sfnp|DJNCKF39}} Hueffer did however continue to contribute to the publication.{{sfnp|932UQU39}}
Under Harrison’s leadership the magazine’s circulation jumped to 18,000, aided by reducing the magazine’s price in 1912 by more than half to one shilling, equivalent to about £5 as at 2021,\[b\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} allowing Harrison to buy out Mond in 1915.{{sfnp|DJNCKF39}}
The magazine went into decline following the end of the First World War. Harrison sold it to Ernest Remnant in 1923, who gave the magazine a less literary and “intensely Conservative slant”, trebling its circulation almost overnight.{{sfnp|HU9YZRAE}} In 1937 the magazine was absorbed by another right-wing magazine, [*The National Review*](https://engole.info/the-national-review).{{sfnp|RX4FSRRC}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25260
**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [Rhubarb Triangle](https://engole.info/rhubarb-triangle/)
**Published:** July 21, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Rhubarb_Shed.jpg[/pimage]Forced rhubarb growing area in West Yorkshire, England between Wakefield, Morley and Rothwell.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Carlton-rhubarb.jpg)Carlton village is in the Rhubarb Triangle
Wikimedia Commons
The Rhubarb Triangle covers {{convert|9|sqmi|spell=in}} of West Yorkshire, England between Wakefield, Morley and Rothwell, and is famous for producing early forced rhubarb. The area includes Kirkhamgate, East Ardsley, Stanley, Lofthouse and Carlton.{{sfnp|6GJLQC2B|118}} The Rhubarb Triangle was originally much bigger, covering an area between Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield.{{sfnp|F8LZEWF4}} From the first decade of the 20th century to 1939 the rhubarb industry expanded, and at its peak covered an area of about {{convert|30|sqmi|spell=in}}.{{sfnp|8YJDUWRE}}
Rhubarb, a native of Siberia, thrives in the wet cold winters in Yorkshire. West Yorkshire once produced 90 per cent of the world’s winter forced rhubarb from the forcing sheds that were common across its fields.{{sfnp|GAW5ULG4}}
In February 2010, Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb was awarded Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status by the European Commission’s Protected Food Name scheme after being recommended by Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).{{sfnp|TKJB7TWG}}
## Cultivation
The cultivation method for forced rhubarb was developed in the early 1800s.{{sfnp|6Y3A5P4Q}} The fields were fertilised with large quantities of horse manure and night soil\[a\]Night soil is a commonly used euphemism for human excreta from the nearby urban areas and woollen waste from [mungo and shoddy](https://engole.info/shoddy-and-mungo/) mills in the [Heavy Woollen District](https://engole.info/heavy-woollen-district/).{{sfnp|WXWN9BXI|12}}{{sfnp|NACUVWHR}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Rhubarb_Shed.jpg)Typical rhubarb forcing shed
Wikimedia Commons
The rhubarb plants spend two years out in the fields without being harvested. While in the fields the plants store energy from the sun in their roots as carbohydrates. The roots are subjected to frost before being moved into sheds in November where they are kept in complete darkness. The sheds are long low buildings which are heated; originally with coal, which was plentiful and relatively cheap in the area but has been replaced by diesel.{{sfnp|W2AWF7WG}} In the sheds the plants begin to grow in the warmth and the stored carbohydrate in the roots is transformed into glucose resulting in forced rhubarb’s sour-sweet flavour.{{sfnp|6XRNXWNQ}}
Forced rhubarb grown in the sheds is more tender than that grown outdoors in summer. Without daylight the rhubarb leaves are an anaemic green-yellow, and the stalks, measuring up to two feet (60 cm), are smooth textured and crimson. Traditionally the pickers pull the stalks in candlelight as any exposure to strong light will stop the growth. By the end of March the harvest is over and the root stock is totally exhausted and used for compost.{{sfnp|W2AWF7WG}}
## History
Growing and forcing rhubarb was originally done by many hundreds of small farmers, smallholders and market gardeners. In later years some growers expanded and owned many thousands of roots and extensive forcing sheds.{{sfnp|8YJDUWRE}} In the late 19th century early forced rhubarb was sent to Spitalfields and Covent Garden markets in London in time for Christmas and was sent to Paris for the French market. A special express train carrying rhubarb was run by the Great Northern Railway Company from Ardsley station every weekday night during the forced rhubarb season from Christmas until Easter. Up to 200 tons of rhubarb sent by up to 200 growers was carried daily at the peak of production before 1939.{{sfnp|6Y3A5P4Q}} In 1962, a rail strike caused the growers to look for alternative transport and the service ended shortly after.{{sfnp|8YJDUWRE}} Rhubarb became less popular after the Second World War when more exotic fruits became more available.{{sfnp|GAW5ULG4}}
The Oxford English Dictionary dates the name “rhubarb triangle” to a 1965 textbook mentioning pre-war trains, rhubarb specials, that ran from the West Riding to London and it was mentioned in the Guardian newspaper in 1986.{{sfnp|PTIELAC8}}{{sfnp|W3B69NMU|128}}
## EU recognition
Twelve farmers who farm within the Rhubarb Triangle applied to have the name “Yorkshire forced rhubarb” added to the list of foods and drinks that have their names legally protected by the European Commission’s Protected Food Name scheme.{{sfnp|E7YBLVM3}} The application was successful and the farmers in the Rhubarb Triangle\[b\]The Rhubarb Triangle’s geographical area in EU law is ” from Ackworth Moor Top north along the A628 to Featherstone and Pontefract. Then on to the A656 through Castleford. It then goes west along the A63 past Garforth and West Garforth. Head north passing Whitkirk, Manston and on towards the A6120 by Scholes. Follow the A6120 west, round to pass Farsley which then leads south west via the A647 onto the A6177. Pass Dudley Hill to pick up the M606 south. At junction 26 take the M62 south to junction 25 head east along A644 toward Dewsbury, passing Mirfield, to pick up the A638 towards Wakefield. At Wakefield take the A638 south to Ackworth Moor top.{{sfnp|YTS2UUWQ}} were awarded Protected Designation of Origin status (PDO) in February 2010. Food protected status accesses European funding to promote the product and legal backing against other products made outside the area using the name. Other protected names include Stilton cheese, Champagne and Parma Ham. Leeds Central MP, Hilary Benn, was involved in the Defra campaign to win protected status.{{sfnp|YTS2UUWQ}}{{sfnp|VWDYCARS}}
## Culture
Wakefield Council holds an annual Rhubarb Festival in February, celebrating the area’s links and promoting the surviving rhubarb industry. A Farmers’ Market, cookery demonstrations, walks and tours of the forcing sheds are among the attractions.{{sfnp|6GJLQC2B|118}}{{sfnp|CG8JZPIG}} In 2005 Wakefield council erected a sculpture depicting a rhubarb plant in Holmfield Park Wakefield.{{sfnp|AX4KSX8J|28}} Rhubarb growing and the “Rhubarb Express” are featured in Wakefield Museum.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Night soil is a commonly used euphemism for human excreta b The Rhubarb Triangle’s geographical area in EU law is ” from Ackworth Moor Top north along the A628 to Featherstone and Pontefract. Then on to the A656 through Castleford. It then goes west along the A63 past Garforth and West Garforth. Head north passing Whitkirk, Manston and on towards the A6120 by Scholes. Follow the A6120 west, round to pass Farsley which then leads south west via the A647 onto the A6177. Pass Dudley Hill to pick up the M606 south. At junction 26 take the M62 south to junction 25 head east along A644 toward Dewsbury, passing Mirfield, to pick up the A638 towards Wakefield. At Wakefield take the A638 south to Ackworth Moor top.{{sfnp|YTS2UUWQ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3833
**Categories:** Yorkshire
---
### [Mines rescue](https://engole.info/mines-rescue/)
**Published:** September 11, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Mines_rescue_gear_and_Howe_Bridge_certificate.JPG[/pimage]Specialised job of rescuing miners and others who have become trapped or injured in underground mines because of accidents, roof falls or floods and disasters such as explosions caused by firedamp.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Mines_rescue_gear_and_Howe_Bridge_certificate.JPG)Mines rescue gear and Howe Bridge certificate
Wikimedia Commons
Mines rescue is the specialised job of rescuing miners and others who have become trapped or injured in underground mines because of accidents, roof falls or floods and disasters such as explosions caused by [firedamp](https://engole.info/damps/#firedamp).
## Background
Mining laws require trained, equipped mines rescue personnel to be available at all surface and underground mining operations. Mines rescue teams are trained in the procedures used to rescue miners trapped by hazards, including fire, explosions, roof falls, toxic gas, smoke inhalation, and water. Most mines rescue teams are composed of miners who know the mine and are familiar with the machinery they may encounter, the layout of workings and geological conditions and working practices.
## Rescuers and equipment
The first mines rescuers were colliery managers and volunteer colleagues of victims of explosions, roof falls and other accidents underground. They looked for signs of life, rescued the injured, sealed off underground fires so it would be possible to reopen the pit, and recovered bodies while working in dangerous conditions sometimes at great cost to themselves. Apart from safety lamps to detect gases, they had no special equipment{{sfnp|HTZMM86S|134}} Most deaths in coal mines were caused by the poisonous gases caused by explosions, particularly afterdamp or carbon monoxide. Survivors of explosions were rare and most apparatus taken underground was used to fight fires or recover bodies.
Early breathing apparatus derived from under-sea diving equipment was developed and a crude nose and mouthpiece and breathing tubes was tried in France before 1800. Gas masks of various types were tried in the early-19th century: some had chemical filters, others goat skin reservoirs or metal canisters, but none eliminated carbon dioxide rendering them of limited use.{{sfnp|CXRBGQJ9|80}} Theodore Schwann, a German professor working in Belgium, designed breathing apparatus based on the regenerative process in 1854 and it was exhibited in Paris in the 1870s but may never have been used.{{sfnp|CXRBGQJ9|81}}{{sfnp|P6Z5SH2K}}
Henry Fleuss developed Schwann’s apparatus into a form of self-contained breathing apparatus in the 1880s and it was used after an explosion at Seaham Colliery in 1881.{{sfnp|CXRBGQJ9|81}} The apparatus was further developed by Siebe Gorman into the Proto rebreather. The Proto apparatus was chosen in a trial of equipment from several manufacturers to select the most efficient apparatus for use underground when [Howe Bridge Mines Rescue Station](https://engole.info/howe-bridge-mines-rescue-station/) opened in 1908 and became the standard in rescue stations set up after the Coal Mines Act of 1911.{{sfnp|HTZMM86S|133}} An early use of the breathing apparatus was in the aftermath of an explosion at the Maypole Colliery in Abram in August 1908. Six trained rescuers from Howe Bridge trained men at individual collieries in the use of the equipment, and at the time of the Pretoria Pit Disaster in 1910, several hundred trained men participated in the operation.{{sfnp|HTZMM86S|134}}
## British mines rescue stations
Altofts Colliery manager, W.E. Garforth suggested using a “gallery” to train rescuers and test rescue apparatus in 1899. One was built at his pit in Altofts, West Yorkshire at a cost of £13,000.{{sfnp|CXRBGQJ9|81}} Garforth also suggested the idea of a network of rescue stations.{{sfnp|CXRBGQJ9|82}} The first British mines rescue station opened at Tankersley in 1902. It was commissioned by the West Yorkshire Coal Mine Owners Association.{{sfnp|I9CVP6YD}} Its building survives and is grade II listed.{{sfnp|YHFRBRWF}} The Lancashire coal owners built Howe Bridge Mines Rescue Station in 1908.
A series of disasters in 19th century Britain brought about Royal Commissions which developed the idea of improving mine safety. The Coal Mines Act of 1911 made the provision of rescue stations compulsory. By 1919 there were 43 stations in the UK but as the coal industry declined from the last quarter of the 20th century many were closed, leaving six as of 2013, at Crossgates in Fife, Houghton-le-Spring in Tyne and Wear, Kellingley at Beal in North Yorkshire, Rawdon in Derbyshire, Dinas at Tonypandy in Glamorgan and at Mansfield Woodhouse in Nottinghamshire.{{sfnp|SAA257RL}}{{sfnp|547HVE3A}} The MRS Training centre at Houghton-le-Spring opened in 1913 is one of the six surviving British rescue stations which are operated by MRS Training and Rescue.{{sfnp|XAYW5FKX}} It is a Grade II listed building.{{sfnp|G8ANP2S5}}
In Britain, mines rescue teams may be called to investigate holes in the ground that have appeared because of land surface subsidence into old mineshafts and mine workings.
Mines rescue featured in the 1952 film *The Brave Don’t Cry*, which was a testimony to the Knockshinnoch disaster. Mine rescuers have often been recognised in Britain by the award of gallantry medals.{{sfnp|YLSCFECD}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 5878
**Categories:** Coal mining
---
### [Chorlton Poor Law Union](https://engole.info/chorlton-poor-law-union/)
**Published:** June 24, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/Old_Withington_hospital_-_geograph.org.uk_-_54894.jpg[/pimage]Founded in January 1837, representing 12 parishes in south Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/Old_Withington_hospital_-_geograph.org.uk_-_54894.jpg)Withington Workhouse, opened in 1855, was renamed Withington Hospital in 1915; shown here in 2005.
Wikimedia Commons
The Chorlton Poor Law Union was founded in January 1837 in response to the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, also known as the New Poor Law.{{sfnp|I9NY77BR}} It was overseen by an elected board of 19 guardians representing the 12 parishes in the area it served: Ardwick, Burnage, Chorlton-upon-Medlock, Chorlton with Hardy, Didsbury, Gorton, Hulme, Levenshulme, Mosside, Rusholme, [Stretford](https://engole.info/stretford), and Withington, all in south Manchester, England.{{sfnp|M6WVCUDN}}
## Background
The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 placed a legal responsibility on parishes to take responsibility for the poor in their areas by organising into poor law unions, each of which was to have at least one workhouse. The act discouraged the provision of poor relief except through entry into workhouses,{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|242}} and signalled the construction of more than 500 across England and Wales during the next 50 years.{{sfnp|F2PX2A3Y|63-64}}
## Early history
The union’s first workhouse, the Stretford Road Workhouse, offered accommodation for 300 inmates, with segregated living areas for various categories of paupers, such as children, lunatics, the elderly, and the sick; female inmates were housed in the west of the building and males in the east, separated by a central communal dining hall and chapel.{{sfnp|M6WVCUDN}} The population of the area served by the Chorlton Poor Law Union had been 46,465 at the time of the 1831 census, but as it rapidly increased during Manchester’s industrialisation it became clear that the capacity of the Stretford Road Workhouse was inadequate for the demands placed on it. As the Stretford Road site offered no scope for expansion the guardians decided to commission the construction of a second workhouse, the Withington Workhouse. Opened in 1855,\[5\] and costing £53,000 to build, the new workhouse was able to accommodate up to 1500 inmates.{{sfnp|M6WVCUDN}} The site also included a new cemetery to serve the union’s area, the Chorlton Union Cemetery, which remained in use until 1920.{{sfnp|K9FHQB24}}
Emmeline Pankhurst was a member of the Board of Guardians.{{sfnp|QS5C5QDJ}}
## Later developments
In 1910 the Chorlton Union was consolidated into the South Manchester Township,{{sfnp|FIFLXS6Q|136}} which in turn became part of a unified Manchester Union in 1915, and the workhouse was renamed Withington Hospital.{{sfnp|M6WVCUDN}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2801
**Categories:** Poor Law Union
---
### [Hartley Bank Colliery](https://engole.info/hartley-bank-colliery/)
**Published:** January 16, 2022
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/hbc1938.jpg[/pimage]Former colliery in Netherton, West Yorkshire, opened in 1841 and closed in 1968.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/hbc1938.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/pCBYSgsLu3DuLM5w6}}
Hartley Bank Colliery{{sfnp|8JPNIRZD}}|Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Hartley Bank Colliery, near the south bank of the [Calder and Hebble Navigation](https://engole.info/calder-and-hebble-navigation/) in [Netherton](https://engole.info/sitlington/), West Yorkshire, was started in 1841 by Messrs Parkinson of Bradford. It was acquired by J & J Charlesworth who sold it to the Flockton Coal Company Ltd in 1872. The colliery became part of the [National Coal Board](https://engole.info/national-coal-board/) in 1947 and closed in 1968. The shafts were capped and the shallow coal seams were open-casted before the site was restored for agriculture.
## Beginnings
The completion of the Horbury Cut on the Calder and Hebble Navigation and the arrival of the Leeds and Manchester Railway provided impetus for deep mining in Netherton where shallow coals had been got for centuries. Messrs Parkinsons leased coal on the northern edge of Netherton in 1841 and sank two shafts to the Flockton Thin coal, {{convert|130|yd}} from the surface. The brick-lined drawing shaft was 11 feet six inches (3.5 m) in diameter and the {{convert|9|ft|adj=on|spell=in}} upcast ventilation shaft had a furnace at the bottom. Coal production started in 1843, when coal was wound to the surface by [horse gin](https://engole.info/horse-gin/), until a winding engine was installed in 1849. It was then transported to the navigation along a short tramway.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|260}}
## Change of owners
By 1872 the colliery was owned by J & J Charlesworth, who sold it to the Flockton Coal Company. The company leased the mineral rights from several local landowners and began significant developments, including shaft deepening to the Old Hards seam, from which excellent house coal was produced; Buckingham Palace was a customer during the reign of Queen Victoria. A third shaft, {{convert|12|ft|r=1}} in diameter, was sunk to the New Hards seam at {{convert|198|yd}}, and the other shafts were deepened in the late 1870s. The ventilation furnace was replaced by a Guibal fan at the top of the new shaft, and four Lancashire boilers provided power.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|260}}
Richard Sutcliffe was a manager in the pit during the 1880s and 1890s. He developed coal-cutting machinery and pioneered underground conveyor belts, which were subsequently made at Sutcliffe’s Universal Works in Horbury.{{sfnp|MQWRT4YE|26}} By 1895 the pit had 170 underground workers and 33 on the surface.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|260}}
## Twentieth century
In 1901 the management decided to mine the shallower seams that had been worked before the pit was sunk by small concerns, but water ingress made progress slow and the scheme was abandoned as unworkable in 1903. In 1913 the colliery was short of workers after a large number of men enlisted into the army at the outbreak of the First World War. The pit was not only short of manpower, outdated plant made the problem worse, but its coal was still in high demand. Benjamin Elliott and his sons joined the company in 1914 and were able to change the colliery’s fortunes.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|261}}
The company deepened the No. 2 shaft to access Wheatley Lime coal at {{convert|230|yd}}, connected the ventilation to No. 3 shaft and started producing coal using the longwall system in 1917. In 1920 a screening plant was installed. The colliery employed 600 men in 1923, 520 of them underground and electric coal cutters were introduced the following year. Underground conveyor belts were introduced in 1927.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|261}}
The colliery employed more than 600 men in the 1930s getting coal from the Flockton Thin, Wheatley Lime and had proved the presence of the Blocking seam. Pit head baths were built in 1933 but were not fit for purpose, and new ones opened in 1938. More than half the pit’s output was sold within {{convert|10|mi|r=1|spell=in}} of the colliery, and about a third was sold to public utilities.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|262}}
The Elliotts bought all the colliery shares in 1940 and set about modernising the colliery, completely electrifying it using power from the Elliott Colliery Company. The Beeston seam was proved in 1944. The wooden heapstead and old wooden head stocks were replaced with concrete and steel structures in 1946.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|262}}
## Nationalisation
On 1 January 1947 the colliery became part of the National Coal Board’s Barnsley Area. It employed 560 men, 460 of them underground working the Flockton Thin, New Hards and Wheatley Lime seams. Output was 250,000 tons per annum and the pit had an expected life of at least 40 years. The NCB set about developing the Beeston seam and by 1951 the colliery was completely modernised.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|262}} In 1960 the pit had 600 employees.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|263}} By 1967 the Beeston seam was proving difficult to work, and Hartley Bank closed the following year with a loss of 478 jobs. Many men transferred to other pits in the Barnsley Area. After salvage the surface plant was demolished and the shafts were capped. Shallow unworked coal was opencasted and the site was returned to agricultural use. The unworked Beeston seam was mined by Denby Grange Colliery after 1989.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|264}}
## Transport
The company had a coal staithe on the Calder and Hebble Navigation where coal was loaded into barges and built a short mineral line that crossed the navigation and the River Calder to sidings by the mainline at Horbury where it also had a landsale depot. Before Nationalisation about 40% of coal was transported by rail, 20% on the navigation and the rest by road via Balk Lane.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|264}}
By 1963 miners had to travel underground by paddy train for a mile to their place of work. 34 % of the coal was moved by canal, mostly to power stations, and 42% was moved by rail. Industry used 41% of the pit’s output, power stations used 42%, 12% was coking coal and 5% was for domestic use.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|264}}
## Incidents
On 23 May 1924, when coal was being undercut from a face in the Old Hards seam, an outburst of methane was ignited by a spark from the electric cutter. Four men were asphyxiated by the [afterdamp](https://engole.info/damps/#afterdamp), and two were injured.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|261}}
In 1960 James Gillan, the pit manager, was awarded the George Medal for the rescue of an undermanager who had been overcome by [firedamp](https://engole.info/damps/#firedamp).{{sfnp|A54GW64P|263}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24348
**Categories:** Coal mining
---
### [Walter Arnold](https://engole.info/walter-arnold/)
**Published:** March 3, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** First person in the UK to be fined for speeding.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/SC20CY2040KKMBC2UTRH-1-300x252-1.jpg)1896 Arnold Benz Motor Carriage, the vehicle that Walter Arnold was driving.{{sfnp
B9EIAMJV
Walter Arnold has the distinction of being the first person in the UK to be fined for speeding, after being caught driving through the village of Paddock Wood in Kent at {{convert|8|mph|abbr=on}} on 28 January 1896.{{sfnp|9MZIKPZZ}} Under the provisions of the Locomotive Act of 1865,\[a\]Powered passenger vehicles were at the time known as light locomotives, as they were invariably powered by steam. Gottlieb Daimler’s first patents for an internal combustion engine suitable for use in a motor vehicle date from 1884, but it was not until 1889 that his engines began to be produced in any great quantity.{{sfnp|A3QDUTJT|6}} commonly known as the Red Flag Act, the speed limit was {{convert|4|mph|abbr=on}} in the country, reduced to 2 mph in built-up areas.{{sfnp|U2WEV8TT|223}}
Arnold was spotted by a local policeman who pursued him on his bicycle, finally catching up with him after a {{convert|5|mi|adj=on}} chase.{{sfnp|VSNFZQP2}} Arnold appeared before a local magistrate on 30 January, facing four charges in contravention of the [Locomotive Acts](https://engole.info/locomotive-acts):{{sfnp|PXBY6R55}}
- Using a locomotive without a horse on a public road
- Allowing said locomotive to be operated by fewer than three persons
- Travelling at a greater rate than two miles per hour
- Failing to clearly display his name and address on the locomotive
Arnold was found guilty on all counts and fined a total of £4 7s, equivalent to about about £535 as at 2021,{{sfnp|9MZIKPZZ}}\[b\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} having rejected the alternative offer of seven days hard labour.{{sfnp|B9EIAMJV}} On the charge of speeding, he was fined one shilling plus nine shillings costs, equivalent to about £62 as at 2021.{{sfnp|PXBY6R55}}\[c\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
Arnold’s “daredevil ride” down Paddock Wood High Street may have been a publicity stunt, intended to promote his own company, the Arnold Motor Carriage Company, which began to market the Arnold Motor Carriage – a locally built variant of the Benz design – shortly after the trial.{{sfnp|9MZIKPZZ}} The company was short-lived, operating only from 1896 until 1898, but of the dozen or so vehicles believed to have been built in that time, two are known to have survived.{{sfnp|GTM8G2PY}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Powered passenger vehicles were at the time known as light locomotives, as they were invariably powered by steam. Gottlieb Daimler’s first patents for an internal combustion engine suitable for use in a motor vehicle date from 1884, but it was not until 1889 that his engines began to be produced in any great quantity.{{sfnp|A3QDUTJT|6}} b, c Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25173
**Categories:** Legal history
**Tags:** Facebook post, Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Buttock Mail](https://engole.info/buttock-mail/)
**Published:** March 22, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/Repentance_stool_and_branks%2C_Holy_Trinity_Church%2C_St._Andrews.JPG/330px-Repentance_stool_and_branks%2C_Holy_Trinity_Church%2C_St._Andrews.JPG[/pimage]Fine payable to the ecclesiastical courts for the crime of fornication, as an alternative to a session on the stool of repentance.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/Repentance_stool_and_branks%2C_Holy_Trinity_Church%2C_St._Andrews.JPG/330px-Repentance_stool_and_branks%2C_Holy_Trinity_Church%2C_St._Andrews.JPG)Stool of repentance and [branks](https://engole.info/branks), Holy Trinity Church, St. Andrews
Wikimedia Commons
Buttock mail, or buttock hire,{{sfnp|I9U875XG}} was the colloquial term for a fine imposed by the ecclesiastical courts in Scotland as a punishment for sexual intercourse outside of wedlock. It could be paid to the church as an alternative to the public humiliation of being confined to the [cucking stool](https://engole.info/cucking-stool), or stool of repentance, which was the usual punishment for fornication.{{sfnp|3UVBWT56|206}}
*Buttock* was a Scottish term for a prostitute;{{sfnp|CQB6LZQJ|64}} the word *mail*, in the sense of a tribute or rent, derives from the old Scandinavian word *mál*, meaning “speech, agreement”, or “payment” in Old English.{{sfnp|AL8QWIXL}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25214
**Categories:** Uncategorized
---
### [Mermaid of Zennor](https://engole.info/mermaid-of-zennor/)
**Published:** August 10, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/The_Mermaid_of_Zennor.jpg[/pimage]Mermaid who enticed a chorister from the local parish church to live with her in the sea.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Zennor_Mermaid_Chair.JPG)15th-century carving of a mermaid
Wikimedia Commons
The legend of the mermaid of Zennor, a village and [civil parish](https://engole.info/civil-parish/) in Cornwall, was first recorded by the Cornish folklorist William Bottrell in 1873.{{sfnp|AYPCS952}} Its inspiration is a carving on a 15th-century bench end in the [parish church of St Senara](https://engole.info/st-senaras-church-zennor/), depicting a mermaid with her fish tail, long hair, and mirror. In one version of the legend a mermaid falls in love with a chorister, Matthew Trewhella, whose singing was so beautiful that she swam up a little stream from the shore and persuaded him to join her in the sea.{{sfnp|VIDPGCC7|327}}
In another version a beautiful, richly dressed woman was an occasional visitor to the church. Half the young men in the village fell in love with her, but nobody knew where she came from. Determined to find out, Mathey Trewella, one of the choristers, decided to follow her along the cliffs after she left the church, never to be seen again.{{sfnp|UYQUSK7L|112-113}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/The_Mermaid_of_Zennor.jpg)*The Mermaid of Zennor*,
by John Reinhard Weguelin (1900)
Wikimedia Commons
Years later, a ship dropped anchor off Pendower Cove, near Zennor. The captain was standing on deck when a beautiful mermaid approached. She asked him if he would be so kind as to lift his anchor, as it was blocking the doorway to her house, and she was anxious to get back to her husband Mathey and their children. The captain did as she requested in some alarm, as mermaids were believed to bring bad luck to sailors. He told the people of Zennor of Mathey’s fate, and as a warning to other young men they had the mermaid figure carved into the bench.{{sfnp|UYQUSK7L|112-113}} It is said that the carving is on the very bench occupied by the beautiful, mysterious woman.{{sfnp|VIDPGCC7|327}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22966
**Categories:** Mythical creature
---
### [Bell-cote](https://engole.info/bell-cote/)
**Published:** August 21, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/193px-StAlbanTheMartyr_Oxford_bellcot.jpg[/pimage]Shelter containing one or more bells.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/193px-StAlbanTheMartyr_Oxford_bellcot.jpg)Bellcote on the parish church of St Alban the Martyr, Charles Street, Cowley, Oxford.
Wikimedia Commons
A bell-cote or bell-cot is a shelter containing one or more bells suspended within arched openings. They are often set over the east wall of a church’s [nave](https://engole.info/nave/), or the structure’s west wall.{{sfnp|S3VNDAJF}} The suffix –*cote* is Old English, meaning a small house or shelter.{{sfnp|759G2DCR}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23745
**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Phantom traffic jam](https://engole.info/phantom-traffic-jam/)
**Published:** August 8, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Traffic_Wave.gif?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled[/pimage]Traffic holdups occurring when a small perturbation with no obvious cause results in a chain of cars increasing in local density, also known as traffic waves.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Traffic_Wave.gif?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)Animation depicting how a “shock wave” caused by a single vehicle slowing down (red car) can travel downstream, causing a traffic slowdown.
Wikimedia Commons
Phantom traffic jams, also known as traffic waves, occur when a small perturbation with no obvious cause results in a chain of approximately equidistant moving vehicles increasing in local density.{{sfnp|LN9JHGKL}} The waves travel backwards relative to the cars themselves,{{sfnp|7EKI62ID}} and their underlying cause is that traffic flow is inherently unstable at higher densities.{{sfnp|LN9JHGKL}}
Such traffic “shock waves” were first described by Lightman and Whitman in 1955.{{sfnp|NHLC43CP}}{{sfnp|JFG6CANP}} The following year Paul Richards independently published a similar model.{{sfnp|H5YN9DGQ}} Both papers were based on fluid dynamics, and the model is known as the Lighthill–Whitham–Richards model.{{sfnp|WBU55QWK}}
The Lighthill-Whitham-Richards model, and similar first order models, model flow as a static function of the density.{{sfnp|WBU55QWK}} In more mathematically sophisticated second order models, such as Payne-Whitham and Aw-Rascle, traffic flow is modeled by the evolution of a continuous vehicle density function and a continuous velocity function, rather than individual vehicles.{{sfnp|LN9JHGKL}}
## See also
- [Boid](https://engole.info/boids/)s
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30315
## External links
- [Professor Hannah Fry’s explanation on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/reel/4511063812515565)
**Categories:** Mathematics
---
### [Catholic Church of St Oswald and St Edmund Arrowsmith](https://engole.info/catholic-church-of-st-oswald-and-st-edmund-arrowsmith/)
**Published:** August 8, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/St-Oswald-and-St-Edmund-Arrowsmith.webp[/pimage]Grade II* listed Catholic church in Ashton-on-Makerfield, Greater Manchester, shrine of the holy hand of St Edmund Arrowsmith.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/St-Oswald-and-St-Edmund-Arrowsmith.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/rJdLTSwRxCGWzWNU6}}|Historic England
St Oswald and St Edmund Arrowsmith, in Ashton-in-Makerfield, Greater Manchester, is an active Roman Catholic church in the Deanery of Wigan and Leigh, and the Archdiocese of Liverpool.{{sfnp|8QTEZ3AP}}
The church was built in 1925–1930, and houses the shrine of the holy hand of St Edmund Arrowsmith,\[a\]St Edmund Arrowsmith is one of the Forty Blessed Martyrs of England and Wales. a locally born Jesuit priest who was martyred for his faith in 1628, and canonised in 1970; the reliquary is now housed in the Lady Chapel. Designed in the French Romanesque style, the church is “considered the masterwork of J. Sydney Brocklesby”.{{sfnp|ZBT8BGXK}}
St Oswald and St Edmund Arrowsmith was designated a Grade II [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1988, upgraded to Grade II\* in 2026 owing to its its “remarkable architectural and historic significance”.{{sfnp|ZBT8BGXK}}{{sfnp|FMPPFJN2}} The [presbytery](https://engole.info/presbytery) and church gates are separately listed as Grade II structures.{{sfnp|L8UT8LNI}}{{sfnp|99GV37HN}}
## Architecture
The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner has described St Oswald and St Edmund Arrowsmith as “totally outdated” but “ambitious” and “impressive”.{{sfnp|R98UUQ33|66}}
The church is built of pink and buff Darley Dale and Parbold stone, with concrete domes and vaults. Its plan consists of a [nave](https://engole.info/nave), an [apsidial](https://engole.info/apse) [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) and [ambulatory](https://engole.info/ambulatory), a south-west tower, and north and south [chapels](https://engole.info/chapel) to the nave.{{sfnp|ZBT8BGXK}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/St-Oswald-Stained-Glass.webp)Wikimedia Commons
There are nineteen stained-glass windows by the Dublin-born artist Harry Clarke, some completed after his death.{{sfnp|ZBT8BGXK}}{{sfnp|FMPPFJN2}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a St Edmund Arrowsmith is one of the Forty Blessed Martyrs of England and Wales.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30318
## External links
- [Official web site](https://stoswaldandstarrowsmith.org.uk/)
**Categories:** Catholic, Church, Greater Manchester
---
### [Presbytery](https://engole.info/presbytery/)
**Published:** June 5, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Binnenchor.svg/1920px-Binnenchor.svg.png[/pimage]Part of the chancel in a Christian church housing the altar, or a residence for Roman Catholic priests.
**Content:**
The presbytery, also known as the sanctuary,{{sfnp|WG6CK2RR}} is the part of the [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) in a Christian church housing the altar, for the exclusive use of the officiating clergy, and is often raised above floor level.{{sfnp|Q8SCS357}}
The term is also applied to the residence of, in particular, Roman Catholic priests.{{sfnp|YMRF7M7V}}
**Plan of a large Latin cross church with chancel highlighted**[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Binnenchor.svg/1920px-Binnenchor.svg.png)[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9d/Langhaus%2C_Chor.svg/1920px-Langhaus%2C_Chor.svg.png)Strict definition
Wikimedia Commons
Broader definition
Wikimedia Commons
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24732
**Categories:** Religious architecture
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Boids](https://engole.info/boids/)
**Published:** October 6, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://img.youtube.com/vi/eakKfY5aHmY/hqdefault.jpg[/pimage]Computational model of flocking developed by the computer graphics specialist Craig Reynolds in 1986.
**Content:**
Boids, a shortened version of “bird-oid object”,{{sfnp|KMGLC6MW}} is a computational model of flocking behaviour proposed by the computer graphics specialist Craig Reynolds in a paper published in 1987, which he first demonstrated in 1986.{{sfnp|UQWK2DHX}} Reynolds formally defined flocking as “polarised, non-colliding, aggregate motion”, and his fundamental idea was that rather than scripting the behaviour of each bird in a simulated flock – or fish in a shoal, or animal in a herd – their overall behaviour would emerge if every individual followed three simple rules, without anything in overall control:{{sfnp|UQWK2DHX}}
- **Separation**: steer to avoid crowding local flockmates
- **Alignment**: steer towards the average heading of local flockmates
- **Cohesion**: steer to move towards the average position of local flockmates
Murmuration of starlings, the type of behaviour that boids was designed to simulate
YouTube
Reynolds’ approach was a significant step forward from the traditional techniques previously used in computer animation. The first film created using his new algorithm was *Stanley and Stella in: Breaking the Ice* (1987), followed by Tim Burton’s film *Batman Returns* (1992), with computer-generated bat swarms and armies of penguins marching through the streets of Gotham City.{{sfnp|YNBH4FQW}}
Flocking, or Particle Swarm Optimization as it is now more formally known, has since become an area of study in several fields of research, including statistical physics, control theory and robotics.{{sfnp|TBJAV34L}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24928
## External links
- [Demonstration of the boids algorithm](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbUPfMXXQIY)
**Categories:** Computing
---
### [Murder Act 1752](https://engole.info/murder-act-1752/)
**Published:** January 23, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of parliament of England and Wales to increase the horror of being executed for murder by expediting the process and denying the right to a decent burial.
**Content:**
Wikimedia Commons
The Murder Act 1752 (25 Geo 2 c. 37)\[a\]The full title is “An act for better preventing the horrid crime of murder”.{{sfnp|MXTQ2FA9}}
Owing to complications associated with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in Britain in 1750 and the start of the legal year, some sources refer to the Murder Act 1751. was passed into law in England and Wales during a time of unprecedented moral panic about crime rates in London, largely fuelled by the popular press. Several homicides had occurred in the capital during late 1751 and early 1752, and the press was predicting that many more would surely follow. So parliament ordered Sir William Yonge and Sir George Lyttleton to table a bill “for the better preventing the horrid crime of murder”, which they did on 10 February 1752.{{sfnp|JPJQZHYR|89}}
Murder was already a capital offence, but the aim of the new Act was to increase the terror of the punishment and distinguish the horror of homicide from the many other crimes that also carried the death penalty during the era of the [Bloody Code](https://engole.info/bloody-code/),{{sfnp|JPJQZHYR|90}}\[b\]In 1688 there were 50 offences on the statute book punishable by death, but that number had almost quadrupled by 1776.{{sfnp|NYACLWPR|139}} such as the theft of goods worth more than 12 pence.{{sfnp|HU2B7ZSR|322}} This it did by legislating that:{{sfnp|JPJQZHYR|99-100}}
- The bodies of hanged criminals were to be denied a decent burial, instead to be either dissected by anatomists or publicly hung in gibbets and left to rot.
- The sentence of death was to be delivered immediately following the guilty verdict, thus limiting any opportunity for appeals or bargaining to obtain a more lenient sentence.
- The execution was to take place two days after sentencing, except if that would be a Sunday, in which case the sentence was to be carried out on the following Monday.
- Those awaiting execution were to be kept in solitary confinement, and fed only bread and water. Visitors were limited to members of the clergy.
Those using force in an attempt to rescue any prisoner convicted of murder were themselves guilty of a felony punishable by death, without [benefit of clergy](https://engole.info/benefit-of-clergy/); attempting to recover the body after execution was punishable by transportation.{{sfnp|MXTQ2FA9}}
The Murder Act had the somewhat beneficial side effect of increasing the legal supply of cadavers for anatomical research, by allowing judges to substitute the public display of executed criminals with dissection – a fate generally viewed with horror.{{sfnp|RVJY22LU|53}} It remained on the statute book until 1832, when key clauses were repealed.{{sfnp|JPJQZHYR|90}}
## See also
- [Resurrectionists](https://engole.info/resurrectionists/)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The full title is “An act for better preventing the horrid crime of murder”.{{sfnp|MXTQ2FA9}}
Owing to complications associated with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in Britain in 1750 and the start of the legal year, some sources refer to the Murder Act 1751. b In 1688 there were 50 offences on the statute book punishable by death, but that number had almost quadrupled by 1776.{{sfnp|NYACLWPR|139}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23453
**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Zong Massacre](https://engole.info/zong-massacre/)
**Published:** October 25, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/Slave-ship.jpg/1280px-Slave-ship.jpg[/pimage]Massacre of more than 130 African slaves, thrown overboard when the ship carrying them ran out of drinking water.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/Slave-ship.jpg/1280px-Slave-ship.jpg)*The Slave Ship* (1840), J. M. W. Turner’s representation of the mass killing of enslaved people, inspired by the *Zong* killings.{{sfnp
DFRYPCES
The Zong massacre was the murder of more than 130 enslaved African people by the crew of the British slave ship *Zong* on and in the days following 29 November 1781.\[a\]The number of deaths is unknown, but James Kelsall, *Zong*‘s first mate, later said that “the outside number of drowned amounted to 142 in the whole”.{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM}} The William Gregson slave-trading syndicate, based in Liverpool, owned the ship as part of the Atlantic slave trade. As was common business practice, they had taken out insurance on the lives of the enslaved Africans as cargo. According to the crew, when the ship ran low on drinking water following navigational errors, they threw enslaved Africans overboard.
After the slaver ship reached port at Black River, Jamaica, Zong’s owners made a claim to their insurers for the loss of the enslaved Africans. When the insurers refused to pay, the resulting court cases (Gregson v Gilbert (1783) 3 Doug. KB 232) held that in some circumstances, the murder of enslaved Africans was legal, and that insurers could be required to pay for those who had died. The jury found for the slavers but at a subsequent appeal hearing the judges, led by Lord Chief Justice, the Earl of Mansfield, ruled against the slave-trading syndicate owners, owing to new evidence suggesting that the captain and crew were at fault.
Following the first trial, Olaudah Equiano, a freedman, brought news of the massacre to the attention of the anti-slavery campaigner Granville Sharp, who worked unsuccessfully to have the ship’s crew prosecuted for murder. Because of the legal dispute, reports of the massacre received increased publicity, stimulating the abolitionist movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; the *Zong* events were increasingly cited as a powerful symbol of the horrors of the Middle Passage, the transoceanic route by which enslaved Africans were taken to the New World.{{sfnp|33SL9SDS}}
The non-denominational Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded in 1787. The following year the UK Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act 1788, its first law regulating the slave trade, which limited the number of slaves per ship. In 1791 parliament prohibited insurance companies from reimbursing ship owners when enslaved Africans were murdered by being thrown overboard.
The massacre inspired works of art and literature, and was commemorated in London in 2007, among events to mark the bicentenary of the British Slave Trade Act 1807, which ended British participation in the African slave trade, although it stopped short of outlawing slavery. A monument to the murdered enslaved Africans on *Zong* was installed at Black River, Jamaica.
## Zong
*Zong* was originally named *Zorg*, meaning “Care” in Dutch, by its owners, the Middelburgsche Commercie Compagnie. It operated as a slave ship based in Middelburg, Netherlands, and made a voyage in 1777, delivering kidnapped Africans to the Dutch colony of Surinam in South America.{{sfnp|S7IQAUGL}} *Zong* was a “square stern ship” of 110 tons burthen.{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM}} The British 16-gun brig HMS *Alert* captured her during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War on 10 February 1781. On 26 February, *Alert* and *Zong* arrived at Cape Coast Castle, in what is now Ghana. Cape Coast Castle was maintained and staffed, along with other forts and castles, by the Royal African Company (RAC),{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM}} which used the castle as its regional headquarters.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|76-87}}
In early March 1781, the master of *William* purchased *Zong* on behalf of a syndicate of Liverpool merchants,{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM|360}} which included Edward Wilson, George Case, James Aspinall and William, James and John Gregson.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|217}} William Gregson had an interest in fifty slaving voyages between 1747 and 1780, and served as mayor of Liverpool in 1762.{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM}} By the end of his life, vessels in which Gregson had a financial stake had carried 58,000 Africans to slavery in the Americas.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|57}}
*Zong* was paid for with bills of exchange, and the 244 slaves already on board were part of the transaction,{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM}} but the ship was not insured until after it started its voyage.{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM}} The insurers, another syndicate from Liverpool, underwrote the ship and its slaves for up to £8,000, approximately half the potential market value of the slaves; the remaining risk was borne by the owners.{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM}}{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|70-71}}
## Crew
*Zong* was the first command of Luke Collingwood, formerly the surgeon on the *William*.{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM|358,360}} While Collingwood lacked experience in navigation and command, ship’s surgeons were typically involved in selecting captured Africans for purchase, so their medical expertise supported the determination of “commodity value” for a captive. If the surgeon rejected a captive, that individual suffered “commercial death”, being of no value and was liable to be killed by the African traders;{{sfnp|NMUZXU7H|409}} sometimes these killings happened in the presence of the surgeon. It is therefore likely that Collingwood had already witnessed the mass killing of slaves. The historian Jeremy Krikler has commented that this may have prepared him psychologically to condone the massacre that later took place on the *Zong*.{{sfnp|NMUZXU7H|409}}{{sfnp|UVAA59J3|31}}{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|52}} *Zong*‘s first mate was James Kelsall, who had also served on the *William*.{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM|358}}
The vessel’s only passenger, Robert Stubbs, was a former captain of slave ships. In early 1780 he was appointed by the African Committee of the Royal African Company as the governor of Anomabu, a British fortification near Cape Coast Castle in Ghana. This position made him also vice-president of the RAC Council of the Castle.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|76-76}} Owing to his ineptitude and enmity incurred with John Roberts, governor of the Castle, Stubbs was forced out of the governorship of Anomabu by the RAC Council after nine months.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|76-76}}{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM|359-360}} Witness statements gathered by the African Committee of the RAC accused him of being a semi-literate drunkard who mismanaged the fort’s slave-trading activities.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|82-83}} Stubbs was aboard to return to Britain, and Collingwood may have thought his earlier experience on slave ships could be useful.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|76-76}}
*Zong* had a 17-man crew when it left Africa, which was far too small to maintain adequate sanitary conditions on the ship.{{sfnp|NMUZXU7H|411}} Mariners willing to risk disease and rebellions on slave ships were difficult to recruit within Britain, and were harder to find for a vessel captured from the Dutch off the coast of Africa.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|45-48,69}} *Zong* was manned with remnants of the previous Dutch crew, the crew of *William*, and unemployed sailors hired from settlements along the African coast.{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM|361}}
## The Middle Passage
When *Zong* sailed from Accra with 442 enslaved people on 18 August 1781, it had taken on more than twice the number of people that it could safely transport.{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM|361}} In the 1780s, British-built ships typically carried 1.75 slaves per ton of the ship’s capacity; on the *Zong*, the ratio was 4.0 per ton.{{sfnp|S7IQAUGL}} A British slave ship of the period would carry around 193 enslaved people, and it was extremely unusual for a ship of *Zong*‘s relatively small size to carry so many.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|27}} After taking on drinking water at São Tomé, *Zong* began its voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to Jamaica on 6 September 1781. On 18 or 19 November the ship neared Tobago in the Caribbean, but failed to stop there to replenish its water supplies.{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM|362-363}}
It is unclear who, if anyone, was in charge of the ship at this point,{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|90}} as Luke Collingwood had been gravely ill for some time. The man who would normally have replaced him, first mate James Kelsall, had been suspended from duty following an argument on 14 November.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|87}} Robert Stubbs had captained a slave ship several decades earlier, and he temporarily commanded *Zong* during Collingwood’s incapacitation, but he was not a registered member of the vessel’s crew.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|77,88}} According to the historian James Walvin, the breakdown of the command structure on the ship might explain the subsequent navigational errors and the absence of checks on supplies of drinking water.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|89-90}}
### Massacre
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Zong_Massacre_map.png/1280px-Zong_Massacre_map.png)Map of the Caribbean, showing Tobago, Hispaniola (red) and Jamaica (blue)
Wikimedia Commons
On 27 or 28 November, the crew sighted Jamaica at a distance of 27 nautical miles (50 km; 31 mi) but misidentified it as the French colony of Saint-Domingue on the island of Hispaniola.{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM|363}}{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|92}} *Zong* continued on its westward course, leaving Jamaica behind. This mistake was recognised only after the ship was {{convert|300|mi}} leeward of the island.{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM|363}} Overcrowding, malnutrition, accidents and disease had already killed several mariners and approximately 62 Africans.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|89,97}} James Kelsall later claimed that there was only four days’ water remaining on the ship when the navigational error was discovered, and Jamaica was still 10 to 13 sailing days away.{{sfnp|6I4MZ86K|299}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Slaveshipposter.jpg/960px-Slaveshipposter.jpg)Plan of the slave ship *Brookes*, carrying 454 slaves. Before the Slave Trade Act 1788, *Brookes* had transported 609 slaves and was 267 tons burden, making 2.3 slaves per ton. *Zong* carried 442 enslaved people and was 110 tons burden – 4.0 slaves per ton.{{sfnp
IW5J9R73|27
If the enslaved people died onshore, the Liverpool ship-owners would have had no redress from their insurers. Similarly, if they died a “natural death” (as the contemporary term put it) at sea, then insurance could not be claimed. If some enslaved people were thrown overboard to save the rest of the “cargo” or the ship, then a claim could be made under “general average”,{{sfnp|S7IQAUGL|291}} the principle under which a captain who jettisons part of his cargo to save the rest can claim for the loss from his insurers; the ship’s insurance covered the loss of slaves at £30 per person.{{sfnp|2IE3LFRI}}
On 29 November, the crew assembled to consider the proposal that some of the enslaved people should be thrown overboard.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|97}} James Kelsall later claimed that he had disagreed with the plan at first, but it was soon unanimously agreed upon.{{sfnp|2IE3LFRI}}{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|97}} On 29 November, 54 women and children were thrown through cabin windows into the sea. On 1 December, 42 male slaves were thrown overboard and 36 more followed in the next few days. Another 10, in a display of defiance at the inhumanity of the slavers, chose to commit suicide by jumping into the sea.{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM|364}} Having heard the shrieks of the victims as they were thrown into the water, one of the captives requested that the remaining Africans be denied all food and drink rather than being thrown into the sea, but the request was denied.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|98,157-158}} In total, 142 Africans had been killed by the time the ship reached Jamaica. The account of the King’s Bench trial reports that one slave managed to climb back onto the ship after being thrown into the water.{{sfnp|NQ687VMF}}
The crew claimed that the Africans had been jettisoned because the ship did not have enough water to keep them all alive for the rest of the voyage. This claim was later disputed, as the ship had {{convert|420|impgal}} of water left when it finally arrived in Jamaica on 22 December.{{sfnp|2IE3LFRI}} An affidavit later made by Kelsall stated that on 1 December, when 42 enslaved people were killed, it rained heavily for more than a day, allowing six casks of water, sufficient for 11 days, to be collected.{{sfnp|2IE3LFRI}}{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM|366}}
### Arrival at Jamaica
On 22 December 1781, *Zong* arrived at Black River, Jamaica with 208 slaves on board, less than half the number taken from Africa.{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM|364}} The survivors were sold into slavery in January 1782{{sfnp|I77C2HW8}} at an average price of £36 per person. The Jamaican Vice-Admiralty court upheld the legality of the British capture of *Zong* from the Dutch and the syndicate renamed the ship *Richard of Jamaica*.{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM|365}} Luke Collingwood died three days after *Zong* reached Jamaica, two years before the legal proceedings that followed in 1783.{{sfnp|S7IQAUGL}}
## Legal Proceedings
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/William_Murray%2C_1st_Earl_of_Mansfield_by_John_Singleton_Copley.jpg/960px-William_Murray%2C_1st_Earl_of_Mansfield_by_John_Singleton_Copley.jpg)*William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield* by John Singleton Copley, in his parliamentary robes as an earl
Wikimedia Commons
When news of the *Zong* massacre reached Great Britain, the ship’s owners claimed compensation from their insurers for the loss of the slaves. The insurers refused to honour the claim and the owners took them to court.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|102-103}} *Zong*‘s logbook went missing after the ship reached Jamaica, two years before the hearings started. Consequently the legal proceedings provide almost all the documentary evidence about the massacre, although there is no formal record of the first trial other than what is referred to in the subsequent appeals hearing.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|140-141}} The ship’s insurers claimed that the log had been deliberately destroyed, which the Gregson syndicate denied.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|85-87,140-141}}
Almost all the surviving source material is of questionable reliability. The two witnesses who gave evidence, Robert Stubbs and James Kelsall, were strongly motivated to exonerate themselves from blame.\[b\]Stubbs gave evidence in court; Kelsall produced an affidavit in the Exchequer proceedings initiated by the insurers.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|85,115}} It is possible that the figures concerning the number of people killed, the amount of water that remained on the ship and the distance beyond Jamaica that Zong had mistakenly sailed are inaccurate.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|95}}
### First trial
Legal proceedings began when the insurers refused to compensate *Zong*‘s owners. The dispute was initially tried at the Guildhall in London on 6 March 1783, with the Lord Chief Justice, the Earl of Mansfield, overseeing the trial before a jury.{{sfnp|UVAA59J3|102-103}} Mansfield had previously presided as the judge in Somersett’s Case in 1772, which concerned the legality of enslaving people in Britain. He had ruled that slavery had never been established by statute in Britain and was not supported by common law.{{sfnp|UVAA59J3|39}}
Robert Stubbs was the only witness in the trial, and the jury found in favour of the owners, under an established protocol in maritime insurance that considered slaves as cargo.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|103,139,142}} On 19 March 1783, Olaudah Equiano, a former slave, told the anti-slave-trade activist Granville Sharp of the events aboard *Zong*, and a newspaper soon carried a lengthy account, reporting that the captain had ordered the slaves to be killed in three batches.{{sfnp|B6AF2QER}}{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|1,140}} Sharp sought legal advice the following day about the possibility of prosecuting the crew for murder.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|164}}
### King’s Bench appeal
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/Granville_Sharp_%28Hoare_memoire%29.jpg/330px-Granville_Sharp_%28Hoare_memoire%29.jpg)Granville Sharp, from a drawing by George Dance
Wikimedia Commons
The insurers applied to the Earl of Mansfield to have the previous verdict set aside, and for the case to be tried again.{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM|365-366}} A hearing was held at the Court of King’s Bench in Westminster Hall on 21–22 May 1783, before Mansfield and two other King’s Bench judges: Mr Justice Buller and Mr Justice Willes.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|138}} The Solicitor General, John Lee, appeared on behalf of the *Zong*‘s owners, as he had done previously in the Guildhall trial.{{sfnp|2IE3LFRI}} Granville Sharp was also in attendance, together with a secretary he had hired to make a written record of the proceedings.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|139}}
Summing up the verdict reached in the first trial, Mansfield said that the jury:
… had no doubt (though it shocks one very much) that the Case of Slaves was the same as if Horses had been thrown over board … The Question was, whether there was not an Absolute Necessity for throwing them over board to save the rest? The Jury were of opinion there was …{{sfnp
— IW5J9R73|153}}{{sfnp|UVAA59J3}}
Collingwood had died in 1781, and the only witness of the massacre to appear at Westminster Hall was again Robert Stubbs, although a written affidavit by first mate James Kelsall was made available to the lawyers.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|144,155}} Stubbs claimed that there was “an absolute Necessity for throwing over the Negroes”, because the crew feared all the slaves would die if they did not throw some into the sea. The insurers argued that Collingwood had made “a Blunder and Mistake” in sailing beyond Jamaica and that slaves had been killed so their owners could claim compensation.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|144}} They alleged that Collingwood did this because he did not want his first voyage as a slave ship captain to be unprofitable.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|144-145}}
John Lee argued that the slaves “perished just as a Cargo of Goods perished”, and were jettisoned for the greater good of the ship. The insurers’ legal team replied that Lee’s argument could never justify the killing of innocent people; each of the three addressed issues of humanity in the treatment of the slaves and said that the actions of *Zong*‘s crew were nothing less than murder. The historian James Walvin has argued that it is possible that Granville Sharp directly influenced the strategy of the insurers’ legal team.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|146}}
New evidence was presented that heavy rain had fallen on the ship on the second day of the killings, but still a third batch of slaves was killed. This led Mansfield to order another trial, because the rainfall meant that the killing of those people, after the water shortage had been eased, could not be justified in terms of the greater necessity of saving the ship and the rest of the slaves aboard.{{sfnp|UVAA59J3}}{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|155}} One of the justices in attendance also said that this evidence invalidated the findings of the jury in the first trial, as the jury had heard testimony that the water shortage resulted from the poor condition of the ship, brought on by unforeseen maritime conditions, rather than from errors committed by its captain.{{sfnp|6I4MZ86K|313-314}} Mansfield concluded that the insurers were not liable for losses resulting from errors committed by *Zong*‘s crew.{{sfnp|UVAA59J3}}
There is no evidence that another trial was held on this issue,{{sfnp|UVAA59J3}}{{sfnp|2IE3LFRI}} and despite Granville Sharp’s efforts, no member of the crew was prosecuted for murder.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|167}}
## Effect on the abolitionist movement
Granville Sharp campaigned to raise awareness of the massacre, writing letters to newspapers, the Lords Commissioners of Admiralty and the Prime Minister, the Duke of Portland;{{sfnp|2IE3LFRI}}{{sfnp|9E948IPG}} neither Portland nor the Admiralty replied.{{sfnp|9E948IPG}} Only one London newspaper reported the first *Zong* trial in March 1783,{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|1}} the first public report of the massacre.{{sfnp|VMUJ2AMK}} Little else about it appeared in print before 1787.{{sfnp|VMUJ2AMK}}{{sfnp|FQKFYZZR}}
Sharp’s efforts did meet with some success however. In April 1783, he sent an account of the massacre to William Dillwyn, a Quaker, who had asked to see evidence that was critical of the slave trade. The London Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends decided shortly afterwards to begin campaigning against slavery, and a petition signed by 273 Quakers was submitted to parliament in July 1783.{{sfnp|9E948IPG}} Sharp also sent letters to Anglican bishops and clergy, and to those already sympathetic to the abolitionist cause.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|170-171}}
The immediate effect of the *Zong* massacre on public opinion was limited, demonstrating – as the historian of abolitionism Seymour Drescher has noted – the challenge that the early abolitionists faced.{{sfnp|FQKFYZZR}} Following Sharp’s efforts, the *Zong* massacre became an important topic in abolitionist literature and the massacre was discussed in works by Thomas Clarkson, Ottobah Cugoano, James Ramsay and John Newton.{{sfnp|B6AF2QER}}{{sfnp|VMUJ2AMK}} These accounts often omitted the names of the ship and its captain, thereby creating, in the words of the historian Srividhya Swaminathan, “a portrait of abuse that could be mapped onto any ship in the Middle Passage”.{{sfnp|VMUJ2AMK}}{{sfnp|8MTTLQ7R}} The *Zong* killings offered a powerful example of the horrors of the slave trade, stimulating the development of the abolitionist movement in Britain, which dramatically expanded in size and influence in the late 1780s.\[80\]\[88\]\[89\] In 1787, the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded.{{sfnp|33SL9SDS}}
Parliament received numerous petitions against the slave trade, and examined the issue in 1788. With strong support from Sir William Dolben, who had toured a slave ship, it passed the Slave Trade Act 1788 (Dolben’s Act), which was its first legislation to regulate the slave trade. The Act restricted the number of slaves that could be transported, to reduce problems of overcrowding and poor sanitation. Its renewal in 1794 included an amendment that limited the scope of insurance policies concerning slaves, rendering illegal such generalised phrases that promised to insure against “all other Perils, Losses, and Misfortunes”. {{sfnp|6I4MZ86K|302,313}} The Act had to be renewed annually, and Dolben led these efforts, speaking frequently to parliament in opposition to slavery.{{sfnp|6UGXVIBU}} It was not until the passage of the Slave Trade Act 1799 that these provisions were made permanent.{{sfnp|HF38YF92}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The number of deaths is unknown, but James Kelsall, *Zong*‘s first mate, later said that “the outside number of drowned amounted to 142 in the whole”.{{sfnp|VUZZZIIM}} b Stubbs gave evidence in court; Kelsall produced an affidavit in the Exchequer proceedings initiated by the insurers.{{sfnp|IW5J9R73|85,115}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25678
This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmcloud.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Zong_massacre#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Massacre, Slavery
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in West Yorkshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-west-yorkshire/)
**Published:** August 6, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/West_Yorkshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-West_Yorkshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan County of West Yorkshire, split into the five metropolitan boroughs.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/West_Yorkshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-West_Yorkshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)West Yorkshire shown within England
Wikimedia Commons
The [ceremonial](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) and metropolitan county of West Yorkshire is made up of five metropolitan boroughs: Leeds, Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield.{{sfnp|SK8XWI24}}
The Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in West Yorkshire are shown in separate lists for each metropolitan borough. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
- Grade I listed buildings in Leeds
- Grade I listed buildings in Bradford
- Grade I listed buildings in Calderdale
- [Grade I listed buildings in Kirklees](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-kirklees)
- Grade I listed buildings in Wakefield
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30312
**Categories:** West Yorkshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Kirklees](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-kirklees/)
**Published:** August 6, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/Kirklees_UK_locator_map.svg/1920px-Kirklees_UK_locator_map.svg.png?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/Kirklees_UK_locator_map.svg/1920px-Kirklees_UK_locator_map.svg.png?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)Kirklees within West Yorkshire
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees is one of the five metropolitan boroughs that make up the Metropolitan County of West Yorkshire.{{sfnp|SK8XWI24}}
The borough contains ten of the Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in West Yorkshire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Banney Royd**Huddersfield
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2xso5xnwje7hK3WR9)Edgar Wood1900–1901[1134184](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1134184)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Banney-Royd.webp)Historic Houses
**Church of All Hallows**Kirkburton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/gb8B6NqzU8MHUPf19)c. 1200[1313318](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1313318)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/All_Hallows_Kirkburton.JPG/1920px-All_Hallows_Kirkburton.JPG?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Hallows**Almondbury
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/p9pXYz7sHsSZ6PN87)13th century[1225096](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1225096)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/All_Hallows_Church%2C_Almondbury_%28geograph_3777540%29.jpg/1280px-All_Hallows_Church%2C_Almondbury_%28geograph_3777540%29.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Batley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pVL1ZsNiaJx9biXx7)13th century[1134620](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1134620)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/All_Saints_Church_-_Stocks_Lane_-_geograph.org.uk_-_487166.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Michael**Emley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GJvNr2972KSiDD767)Early medieval[1135290](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1135290)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Picture_Postcard_Parish_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1298684.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Michael and All Angels**Thornhill
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/5BiDPRDhWk8Y1Lyy6)15th century[1200754](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1200754)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/St_Michael_and_All_Angels%2C_Thornhill_-_geograph.org.uk_-_517831.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)Wikimedia Commons
**Huddersfield Railway Station**Huddersfield
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/gnuHMjNCTWfW19aV8)J. P. Pritchett1846–1850[1277385](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1277385)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/Huddersfield_Railway_Station_%28RLH%29.jpg/1920px-Huddersfield_Railway_Station_%28RLH%29.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)Wikimedia Commons
**Lees Hall**Thornhill Lees
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/otsScXBY2HRhqbVC8)Early 15th century[1313642](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1313642)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Lees_Hall%2C_Thornhill_Lees%2C_Dewsbury_-_geograph.org.uk_-_362092.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)Wikimedia Commons
**Oakwell Hall Including Boundary Wall**Birstall
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/6mHnTbUAwqjtCZ4v5)Probably 1583[1134609](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1134609)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Oakwell_Hall.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)Wikimedia Commons
**Woodsome Hall**Fenay Bridge
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9uWPghy19LSj66vj7)Early 16th to mid-17th century[1184158](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1184158)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Woodsome_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_690504.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in West Yorkshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-west-yorkshire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30313
**Categories:** West Yorkshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in City of Kingston upon Hull](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-city-of-kingston-upon-hull/)
**Published:** February 20, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Kingston_upon_Hull_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Kingston_upon_Hull_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the unitary authority of City of Kingston upon Hull, in the ceremonial county of East Riding of Yorkshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Kingston_upon_Hull_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Kingston_upon_Hull_UK_locator_map.svg.png)City of Kingston upon Hull shown within East Riding of Yorkshire
Wikimedia Commons
The unitary authority of City of Kingston upon Hull in North East England is one of the two unitary authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of East Riding of Yorkshire.{{sfnp|3YGFCT5M}}
The authority contains 8 of the 111 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in East Riding of Yorkshire; Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St James and Boundary Wall**Kingston upon Hull
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/HwC5sNATHdUSyvag8)c. 1347[1293238](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1293238)wikipedia/commons/c/c7/St\_James%27\_Church%2C\_Sutton-on-Hull\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_691499.jpg"> **Hull Charterhouse and Attached Boundary Wall and Railings**Kingston upon Hull[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/os4f5ZMzYcSnK65v5)Joseph Hargrave1778–1780[1208200](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1208200)wikipedia/commons/d/de/The\_Charterhouse\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_23809.jpg"> **Hull Minster**Kingston upon Hull
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/TXtWMNxFb17LZF1V9)Mainly 1300–1425[1292280](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1292280)wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Holy\_Trinity\_Church%2C\_Hull\_%28by\_David\_Wright\_-\_2006\_09\_06%29.jpg"> **Hull Trinity House**Kingston upon Hull
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/dJGZ1hJpRmCvDDhW7)Joseph PageLate 18th century[1219563](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1219563)wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Trinity\_House%2C\_Hull\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1296344.jpg"> **Maisters House**Kingston upon Hull
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/kmBWEYycdyTCdoWY9)Joseph Page1743–1744[1283090](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1283090)wikipedia/commons/1/14/Maister\_House\_High\_Street\_Hull.jpg"> **Roman Catholic Church of St Charles Borromeo with attached presbytery and associated boundary walls and railings**Kingston upon Hull
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/os4f5ZMzYcSnK65v5)John Earle1829[1197723](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1197723)wikipedia/commons/3/3c/St\_Charles\_Borromeo\_Church\_Hull.jpg"> **Statue of King William III and Flanking Lamps**Kingston upon Hull
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/kXmv1iaYNyjGBFvs6)Peter
Scheemakers1734[1197697](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1197697)wikipedia/commons/7/77/King\_William%27s\_Statue\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_808050.jpg"> **Wilberforce House Museum and Attached Garden Wall**Kingston upon Hull
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/vBYqcVwVMK2byoLG8)Probably William Catylnc. 1590[](
**Categories:** Yorkshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in County Durham](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-county-durham/)
**Published:** February 20, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/County_Durham_UK_locator_map_2010.svg_.webp[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the ceremonial county of County Durham, split into the four unitary authorities making up the county.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/County_Durham_UK_locator_map_2010.svg_.webp)County Durham shown within England
Wikimedia Commons
County Durham is a [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) in the North East of England, comprised of three unitary authorities – Durham, Darlington and Hartlepool – and part of a fourth, Stockton-on-Tees.{{sfnp|78BD95WJ}}
The 117 Grade I listed buildings in the county are shown in separate lists for each unitary authority.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
- [Grade I listed buildings in Darlington](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-darlington)
- Grade I listed buildings in Durham
- [Grade I listed buildings in Hartlepool](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-hartlepool)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Stockton-on-Tees](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-stockton-on-tees)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27214
**Categories:** County Durham
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Redcar and Cleveland](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-redcar-and-cleveland/)
**Published:** February 13, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Redcar_and_Cleveland_UK_locator_map_%282023%29.svg/1280px-Redcar_and_Cleveland_UK_locator_map_%282023%29.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the unitary authority of Redcar and Cleveland, in the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Redcar_and_Cleveland_UK_locator_map_%282023%29.svg/1280px-Redcar_and_Cleveland_UK_locator_map_%282023%29.svg.png)Redcar and Cleveland shown with North Yorkshire
Wikimedia Commons
The unitary authority of Redcar and Cleveland in North East England is one of the four [unitary authorities](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of North Yorkshire, which also includes a small part of the unitary authority of Stockton-on-Tees, south of the River Tees.{{sfnp|UKVFNZWF}}
The authority contains 15 of the 364 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in North Yorkshire; Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Cuthbert**Kirkleatham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/yZpjrdqt6mkaRJpGA)Robert Corney1688[1139638](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1139638)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Kirkleatham_Church_of_St_Cuthbert_inside.jpg)**Entrance Screen Loggias Forts Flat and Outhouses to Sir William Turners Hospital**Kirkleatham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/BrFaEbUDRyAWJCeT6)Probably James GibbsLate 18th century[1329606](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1329606)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/60320_Kirkleatham_Loggias_West_2.JPG)**Gatepiers at Entrance to Drive of Kirkleatham Hall School**Kirkleatham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fG5vZQHJ7BUT2nQt8)Mid-18th century[1310744](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1310744)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/60325_Kirkleatham_Hall_Gatepiers_Right_Front.JPG)**Gatepiers at Entrance to Forecourt of Kirkleatham Hall School**Kirkleatham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/kKiXjgcxzxvtPnHu8)c. 1700[1329607](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1329607)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/60324_Kirkleatham_Gate_Piers_2.JPG)**Kilton Castle**Kilton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ioCm6tQaSy6E8Eaj6)12th century[1136489](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1136489)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Kilton_Castle.jpg)**Marske Hall**Saltburn, Marske and New Marske
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Cb4kTMG8wcxekp4A6)1625[1387553](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1387553)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/db/Marske_Cheshire_Home_1_by_Francis_Hannaway.jpg/1920px-Marske_Cheshire_Home_1_by_Francis_Hannaway.jpg)**Ormesby Hall, adjoining outbuildings and screen walls**Ormesby
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/VthYEwM18KPtc3Hu6)18th century[1311002](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1311002)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/OrmesbyHall%28JohnDavidson%29Sep2004.jpg)**Priory Dovecote, to West of St Mary’s Priory Ruins**Guisborough
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2SE7yAdijAEYiMVh6)14th century[1139766](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1139766)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c6/Guisborough_dovecote.jpg/1280px-Guisborough_dovecote.jpg)**Sir William Turner’s Hospital**Kirkleatham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/CLQ2Daq6cDLqxCv89)1674–1676[1310786](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1310786)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/60319_Kirkleatham_Turners_Hospital_Eastern_Wing.JPG)**Skelton Castle**Skelton and Brotton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/o9zVqhAXHVXz1rgS6)c. 1770[1262832](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1262832)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Skelton_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_92653.jpg)**St Mary’s Priory gatehouse**Guisborough
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/5PzLp7mGvwQb3SZMA)Late 12th century[1139765](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1139765)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/Gisborough_Priory_gatehouse.jpg/1280px-Gisborough_Priory_gatehouse.jpg)**St Mary’s Priory Ruins**Guisborough
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/44pqzQL8eKVjE8vK8)Founded 1119[1329543](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1329543)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Gisborough_Priory_east_view.jpg/1280px-Gisborough_Priory_east_view.jpg)**Stable block, stable house and coach house, 200 metres south east of Skelton Castle**Skelton and Brotton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/bQxLwkjKzCYj649M7)Sir John Soanec. 1800, altered in 1897[1250412](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1250412)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Skelton-Castle-Stable-House.webp)**Stableblock, Circa 80 Metres North-east of Ormesby Hall**Ormesby
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/bbC3hTh1cijJiSgRA)Possibly John CarrMid-19th century[1139662](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1139662)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Ormesby_Hall_stable_block.jpg)**Turner Mausoleum Adjoining Church of St Cuthbert**Kirkleatham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WBAbFDEGngz4Tudc6)James Gibbs1739/1740[1159896](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1159896)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/60309_Kirkleatham_Turner_Mausoleum_1.JPG)## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in North Yorkshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-north-yorkshire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 28381
**Categories:** North Yorkshire
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Sheffield](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-sheffield/)
**Published:** April 12, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Sheffield_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Sheffield_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Sheffield_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Sheffield_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Sheffield shown within South Yorkshire
media Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Sheffield is one of the four boroughs that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of South Yorkshire.{{sfnp|BZHEVPRQ}}
The borough contains five of the sixty-two Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in South Yorkshire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image**8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Abbeydale Works Museum**8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Abbeydale Road South
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/uTcr9ktntiXvqjL28)8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">First recorded in 17148c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1246418](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1246418)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Abbeydale_Industrial_Hamlet_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2425560.jpg)media Commons
8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary**8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Ecclesfield
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/4ySYkCPheY8YcWBU7)8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">c. 15008c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1192775](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1192775)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/Ecclesfield_Church.jpg/1280px-Ecclesfield_Church.jpg)media Commons
8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Nicholas**8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Bradfield
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/PSS29ZwSAjVFDreH7)8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">15th century8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1192617](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1192617)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Bradfield_Church_1.jpg/1280px-Bradfield_Church_1.jpg)media Commons
8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Sheffield Cathedral**8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Church Street
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Yc3TDvmpdknthVTf6)8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">c. 14308c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1247080](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1247080)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Cathedral_Church_of_St_Peter_and_St_Paul%2C_Sheffield_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1482120.jpg)media Commons
8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Sheffield Town Hall**8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Pinstone Street
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aRzXBH7kwFq2dhYv9)8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">E. W. Mountford8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">18978c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1246902](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1246902)[](
**Categories:** South Yorkshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Rotherham](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-rotherham/)
**Published:** April 15, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Rotherham_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Rotherham_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Rotherham_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Rotherham_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Rotherham shown within South Yorkshire
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham is one of the four boroughs that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of South Yorkshire.{{sfnp|BZHEVPRQ}}
The borough contains sixteen of the sixty-two Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in South Yorkshire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Chapel of Our Lady**Bridge Street
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/zEh4qUjCdPTcWGse9)1483[1132738](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1132738)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Chantry_Bridge_-_geograph.org.uk_-_684523.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Hallows**Harthill with Woodall
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/kiPSNpJoqA5neZr68)15th century[1132709](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1132709)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/All_Hallows_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1588900.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Aston cum Aughton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ERBPpqeHVy6fC19fA)15th century[1151917](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1151917)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/All_Saints%27_church%2C_Aston_-_geograph.org.uk_-_146514.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Laughton-en-le-Morthen
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Fs2Dq913WsmWeqUb6)14th century[1193267](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1193267)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/All_Saints_Laughton_-_geograph.org.uk_-_147658.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Church Street
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9xLzerC1qWfoAvoZ7)16th century[1132733](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1132733)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/Rotherham_Minster.JPG/960px-Rotherham_Minster.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Wath-upon-Dearne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7oHEi5qPhve1hUNm6)14th century[1132786](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1132786)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/23/All_Saints_Parish_Church%2C_Wath_upon_Dearne_%28geograph_2402907%29.jpg/1280px-All_Saints_Parish_Church%2C_Wath_upon_Dearne_%28geograph_2402907%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Helen**Treeton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/rwzto2BYkxRipE9F6)15th century[1132728](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1132728)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Treeton_St_Helen_2006-02-03.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St James**Anston
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/EYc3pAs9V5X52mQZ8)14th century[1192792](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1192792)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/St.James_church%2C_South_Anston_-_geograph.org.uk_-_84035.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St John**Dinnington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/535ekSumthxMGbai6)15th century[1132698](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1132698)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/St.John%27s_church%2C_Throapham_-_geograph.org.uk_-_146518.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter**Thorpe Salvin
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/bxi58nPeVfY3U83P9)14th century[1314667](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1314667)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Thorpe_Salvin_-_St._Peters_Church_View_-_geograph.org.uk_-_747094.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Rockingham Mausoleum including obelisks and railed enclosure**Wentworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/XnQzQFJ5j5hzagzs5)John Carr of York1784–1793[1286386](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1286386)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/The_Rockingham_Mausoleum_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1318188.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Rotherham Bridge**Bridge Street
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ut1MjP5w2FkUvjE28)15th century[1191884](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1191884)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Chantry_Chapel_of_Our_Lady_and_Rotherham_Bridge_%28geograph_2250176%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Sandbeck Park**Maltby
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/NYVRoRmDqhie5m3Z8)James Painec. 1760[1314665](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1314665)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/CS_p5.372_-_Sandbeck_Park%2C_Yorkshire_-_Morris%27s_County_Seats%2C_1880.jpg/1280px-CS_p5.372_-_Sandbeck_Park%2C_Yorkshire_-_Morris%27s_County_Seats%2C_1880.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Stable Block and Riding School**Wentworth Woodhouse
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/PMQJSfoVWgq24XwW8)John Carr of York1789[1203779](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1203779)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/The_Stables%2C_Wentworth_Woodhouse_%28geograph_3460773%29.jpg/1280px-The_Stables%2C_Wentworth_Woodhouse_%28geograph_3460773%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**The Glassworks Cone**Catcliffe
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZmDv6K6N8cUyoVBk7)c. 1740[1132732](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1132732)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Catcliffe_Glass_Cone_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1602249.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Wentworth Woodhouse**Wentworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9dbYyqPisM88EdWu5)Ralph Tunnicliffe, Henry Flitcroft and John Carr of York1734[1132769](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1132769)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Wentworth_Woodhouse_03.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in South Yorkshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-south-yorkshire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27358
**Categories:** South Yorkshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Doncaster](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-doncaster/)
**Published:** April 16, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/St._Lawrence%2C_Hatfield_from_the_south_east_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3275684.jpg[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster, South Yorkshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Doncaster_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Doncaster_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Doncaster shown within South Yorkshire
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster is one of the four boroughs that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of South Yorkshire.{{sfnp|BZHEVPRQ}}
The borough contains twenty-eight of the sixty-two Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in South Yorkshire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Brodsworth Hall**Brodsworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/E6bep5TRYNdefxfbA)Chevalier Casentini and Philip Wilkinson1861–1863[1191614](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1191614)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Brodsworth_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_925287.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Arksey
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/NCTvvvkKwHmzxj8r8)15th century[1191878](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1191878)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/All_Saints%27_church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_178113.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Hooton Pagnell
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/5Di6tJcjuHp48WCGA)14th century[1314808](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1314808)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Hooton_Pagnell%2C_All_Saints_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_234771.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Owston
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/s1NMbT4UaXwMUUYp7)15th century[1192336](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1192336)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Owston_-_All_Saints%27_Church.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Cuthbert**Fishlake
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fSv92LptffBTih2v7)15th century[1314801](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1314801)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/St.Cuthbert%27s_church%2C_Fishlake_-_geograph.org.uk_-_146507.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Helen**Burghwallis
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/bkhUc1ddZgYbkGry7)12th century[1151457](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1151457)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Burghwallis_1.JPG/1280px-Burghwallis_1.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Helen**Marr
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/K9RjF5yU8UZJ9tb67)14th century[1192644](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1192644)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/St_Helen%27s_Church%2C_Marr_-_geograph.org.uk_-_127775.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of Holy Trinity and St Oswald**Finningley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/s6ygmqZPjEC9Q1zS6)15th century[1286821](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1286821)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Holy_Trinity_church%2C_Finningley_-_geograph.org.uk_-_173907.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St John the Baptist**Mexborough
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WnmcGamdvPUegEoZ7)15th century[1151642](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1151642)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Mexborough_Parish_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_384781.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St John the Baptist**Wadworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/VD32k4KViXe86Zxk7)15th century[1151504](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1151504)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/St.John_the_baptist%27s_church%2C_Wadworth_-_geograph.org.uk_-_53008.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
[**Church of St Lawrence**](https://engole.info/church-of-st-lawrence-hatfield)Hatfield
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/RpEUH4JS4Q4ggT916)12th century[1192628](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1192628)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/St._Lawrence%2C_Hatfield_from_the_south_east_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3275684.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Sprotborough
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/P13g29GhFz65EKmZA)14th century[1192663](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1192663)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Sprotborough_Church._-_geograph.org.uk_-_536096.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Tickhill
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/qsLUnE6ZzwFJ9RYs6)14th century[1151698](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1151698)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/St.Mary%27s_church%2C_Tickhill_-_geograph.org.uk_-_59901.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary Magdalene**Campsall
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/NW9apvQxhfCoNfSv8)15th century[1151464](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1151464)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/StMaryMagdalenesChurchCampsall%28RichardCroft%29May2006.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Nicholas**Bawtry
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/4ZwoKjx6wbQvsJXP9)15th century[1314824](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1314824)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/St_Nicholas%27s_Church%2C_Bawtry_-_geograph.org.uk_-_4863466.jpg/1280px-St_Nicholas%27s_Church%2C_Bawtry_-_geograph.org.uk_-_4863466.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Nicholas**Thorne Stonegate
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/RMJcoxuY2wanNx9Q6)15th century[1193076](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1193076)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/St_Nicholas_Church%2C_Thorne_-_geograph.org.uk_-_740950.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter**Barnburgh
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/HiYWpePLKbP5NUQh8)15th century[1151675](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1151675)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Barnburgh%2C_St_Peter%27s_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_234704.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter**Conisbrough
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/kuXeySmcP5b4Trxd8)15th century[1192787](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1192787)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/St_Peter%27s_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_523041.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter**Edlington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/MAhckHBVaT6LArvB8)15th century[1286332](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1286332)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/St.Peter%27s_church%2C_Old_Edlington_-_geograph.org.uk_-_84029.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter and St Paul**Barnby Dun
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/RWB1StZd9ZZAqNWTA)15th century[1151488](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1151488)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/St.Peter_and_St.Paul%27s_church%2C_Barnby_Dun_-_geograph.org.uk_-_146718.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Wilfrid**Hickleton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/jZ45freGLfxcU5TQ8)16th century[1314784](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1314784)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Church%2C_Hickleton_-_geograph.org.uk_-_116865.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Conisborough Castle**Conisborough
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/zbMCkQibQBVbcsnAA)c. 1180[1192747](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1192747)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Conisbrough_Castle_Doncaster_winter_time.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Cusworth Hall**Sprotborough
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/CFdzJUog7KZGR8iS8)1740–1745[1192735](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1192735)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Cusworth_Hall_1.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Hatfield Manor House**Hatfield
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/XXrYKLKLoXsk2gKL9)12th century[1151589](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1151589)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Hatfield-Manor-House.webp)
**Minster Church of St George**Church Lane
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/31ubYuDXxgP5dqtK8)George Gilbert Scott1854–1858[1151447](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1151447)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/St_Georges_Doncaster.jpg/960px-St_Georges_Doncaster.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**The Mansion House and attached railings**High Street
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/moC1DUa6t9WbV2Wc6)1748[1151426](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1151426)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Doncaster_Mansion_House.JPG/960px-Doncaster_Mansion_House.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**The Old Rectory**Campsall
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/uRdgZ5k6cu1v1Gh18)c. 1400[1286761](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1286761)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/The-Old-Rectory-scaled.webp)Historic England
**Wadworth Hall and attached wing walls**Wadworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/hmUuv4jCy6yxpq3n8)James Painec. 1750[1314863](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1314863)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Wadworth_-_Wadworth_Hall.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in South Yorkshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-south-yorkshire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27361
**Categories:** South Yorkshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Barnsley](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-barnsley/)
**Published:** April 14, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b9/Barnsley_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Barnsley_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley, South Yorkshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b9/Barnsley_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Barnsley_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Barnsley shown within South Yorkshire
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley is one of the four boroughs that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of South Yorkshire.{{sfnp|BZHEVPRQ}}
The borough contains thirteen of the sixty-two Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in South Yorkshire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image**or="#abb8c3">**Administration building at Monk Bretton Priory**om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Abbey Lane
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xLkD66e6PPn8MzaS6)or="#abb8c3">om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 13th or early 14th centuryom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1151179](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1151179)or="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/Administrative_building%2C_Monk_Bretton_Priory.jpg/1280px-Administrative_building%2C_Monk_Bretton_Priory.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
or="#abb8c3">**Church of All Saints**om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Darfield
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KABzuqqqhSgYmbkx9)or="#abb8c3">om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">15th centuryom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1315015](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1315015)or="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Darfield%2C_All_Saints_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_234715.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
or="#abb8c3">**Church of All Saints**om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Darton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/3n69BN28iaqGFGms9)om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Thomas de Tykyllom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">16th centuryom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1286515](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1286515)or="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Darton%2C_All_Saints_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_234716.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
or="#abb8c3">**Church of All Saints**om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Silkstone
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/T32JXc4kRSEd4Dgi9)or="#abb8c3">om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">15th centuryom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1151740](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1151740)or="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/All_Saints_Silkstone.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
or="#abb8c3">**Church of St Andrew**om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Bolton upon Dearne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/trRsjqPLBDdu96ca7)or="#abb8c3">om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">14th centuryom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1191492](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1191492)or="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/The_Church_of_St_Andrew_the_Apostle_at_Bolton_upon_Dearne_%28geograph_4015650%29.jpg/1280px-The_Church_of_St_Andrew_the_Apostle_at_Bolton_upon_Dearne_%28geograph_4015650%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
or="#abb8c3">**Church of St John**om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Penistone
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/6uwXyBzUprHZXHBV7)or="#abb8c3">om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">15th centuryom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1314709](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1314709)or="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/St._John_the_Baptist_%2C_Penistone_-_geograph.org.uk_-_135449.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
or="#abb8c3">**Church of St John the Baptist**om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Royston
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/e9waNWjS7svZHeFT7)or="#abb8c3">om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">15th centuryom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1151127](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1151127)or="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/25/StJohnsRoyston.jpg/1280px-StJohnsRoyston.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
or="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary**om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Worsborough
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/PFS5Rik1nDAXHwR88)or="#abb8c3">om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">15th centuryom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1315083](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1315083)or="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Worsbrough_-_Saint_Mary%27s_Church.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
or="#abb8c3">**Gatehouse to Monk Bretton Priory**om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Abbey Lane
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pSWAz1kGBPVBZGee6)or="#abb8c3">om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 16th centuryom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1315023](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1315023)or="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/The_gatehouse%2C_Monk_Bretton_Priory_1.jpg/1280px-The_gatehouse%2C_Monk_Bretton_Priory_1.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
or="#abb8c3">**Gunthwaite Hall Barn**om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Gunthwaite
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GcGkfnQH3DQpERC37)or="#abb8c3">om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">c. 1800om-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](
**Categories:** South Yorkshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Ledston Hall](https://engole.info/ledston-hall/)
**Published:** December 20, 2023
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Ledston_Hall%2C_Ledston.JPG[/pimage]Grade I listed former country house in West Yorkshire, now divided into residences.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Ledston_Hall%2C_Ledston.JPG)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/A6RqRh1CEBHYDGQG6}}
Ledston Hall
Ledston Hall is a Grade I [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) country house, now divided into residences, in [Ledston](https://engole.info/ledston) in the City of Leeds district of West Yorkshire. Its origins are in a [grange](https://engole.info/monastic-grange/) and chapel built by the monks of Pontefract Abbey around 1200. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries it was acquired by the Witham family who incorporated it in a courtyard house. Thomas Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford added the south wing and subsequently Sir John Lewis added the north wing and extended the house to the north. Lady Elizabeth Hastings made alterations in the early 18th century and it became the property of the Wheler family and is now owned by the Wheler Trust.
## History
Ledston Hall’s origins are in a [grange](https://engole.info/monastic-grange) and chapel built by the monks of Pontefract Priory in about 1200.{{sfnp|A5CDHVNS}} The priory was founded by Robert de Lacy, whose family had been granted the manor of Ledston, and its endowment included the churches of [Ledsham, All Saints](https://engole.info/all-saints-church-ledsham/), Kippax, Darrington, and Silkstone.{{sfnp|XR2UZQWW|184-186}} The property was acquired by the Witham family, who held it for three generations.{{sfnp|V6ZDZ2KS}} They incorporated it into a “compact, quadrangular house”.{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|385}} During this time the Withams were associated with the alleged witch [Mary Pannell](https://engole.info/mary-pannell/).{{sfnp|VKHSIH5W}}{{sfnp|Z9VXMVJ8|277}}
Henry Witham, brother of [Mary Bolles](https://engole.info/mary-bolles/), sold the house to Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, who built the more grandiose south wing.{{sfnp|V6ZDZ2KS}} After his execution the house was acquired by Sir John Lewis who made his fortune as a merchant of the East India Company in around 1653.{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|385}}{{sfnp|Z9VXMVJ8|277}} He extended the original house to the north and added the north wing. The hall passed to his daughter Elizabeth, who married Theophilus Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon in 1672. Their daughter, also Elizabeth, inherited and made alterations to the interior and main façades in the early 18th century.{{sfnp|V6ZDZ2KS}} Elizabeth never married, and the house was inherited by her step-sister’s husband, Grenville Wheler, in whose family it remained. The Whelers owned other property in Kent, but retained Ledston. Part was converted to flats in the 1920s, but the hall became neglected despite its Grade I listing. The hall was renovated and converted to apartments in the 2020s by the Wheler Trust.
## Structure
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Neale%281818%29_p5.192_-_Ledston_Hall%2C_Yorkshire.jpg)Ledston Hall by John Preston Neale in 1818
Wikimedia Commons
The hall is built of local Magnesian Limestone, which has long been used for building stone to the east of Leeds.{{sfnp|NH3R5KJT|15}} It has two storeys over a basement and attics with Dutch gabled roofs, and the wings have corner turrets with [ogee](https://engole.info/ogee) caps. A string course marks the division between the basement and [piano nobile](https://engole.info/piano-nobile/), and the turrets have string courses on two levels.{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|386}} The main range is symmetrical, with eleven bays and a central doorway to the piano nobile approached by a straight flight of steps, with a wrought-iron handrail incorporating Lady Elizabeth Hastings’ initials.{{sfnp|V6ZDZ2KS}} The remains of the rectangular house built by the Withams project to the rear of the hall. It was formed of three ranges enclosing a small courtyard. Its south range contained the medieval chapel on the first floor, with an undercroft on the ground floor.{{sfnp|V6ZDZ2KS}}
The interior has been much altered. The front range of the 16th-century house has been altered to its present form, the main door accesses its hall, which had a massive chimney stack to its courtyard wall where the remains of a stone arched fireplace are hidden in a cupboard. The medieval chapel was converted to a parlour by the Withams, and became known as “Lady Betty Hastings’ parlour”.{{sfnp|V6ZDZ2KS}}
## Ledston Park
Ledston Hall, the gardens and North Park are on sloping land to the north and east of Ledston village. Ledston Park which is approached by a ride is to the north, to the north-west side Ledsham village.{{sfnp|A5CDHVNS}} In 1716 Charles Bridgeman produced a plan for Lady Elizabeth Hastings, with a hedged central walk and semi-circular grass terraces on the slope which were recreated in the 1960s.{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|388}} The parkland contains several listed structures including Ledston Lodge, a 17th-century hunting lodge built for Sir John Lewis in Ledston Park and the stable block near the hall, both built in Magnesian Limestone and Grade I listed.{{sfnp|A5CDHVNS}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25808
**Categories:** Country house, Yorkshire
---
### [Mary Bolles](https://engole.info/mary-bolles/)
**Published:** November 30, 2023
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** 17th-century Yorkshire woman uniquely created a baronetess in her own right.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Ledsham_Church_24_September_2022_%2826%29.jpg)Dame Mary Bolles monument in Ledsham Church
Wikimedia Commons
Mary Bolles (1579–1662) was born Mary Witham into a wealthy family at [Ledston Hall](https://engole.info/ledston-hall/), near Castleford in the West Riding of Yorkshire. She survived two husbands, bought the old hall in [Heath](https://engole.info/heath) near Wakefield, was uniquely created a baronetess in her own right in 1635, entertained Royalist officers during the English Civil War, and reputedly haunts the environs of her old home.
Mary’s father, William Witham, died when she was 14-years-old. Ten years later a local woman, [Mary Pannell](https://engole.info/mary-pannell/), was accused of having caused his death by witchcraft, and was tried and executed for the crime.{{sfnp|Z9VXMVJ8|277}}
Mary Witham married well; her marriage to Thomas Jobson of Cudworth produced two children, Thomas and Elizabeth. Her second husband was Thomas Bolles of Osberton in Nottinghamshire, by whom she had two daughters, Anne and Mary. Thomas Bolles died in 1635.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|623}}
Mary bought Heath Hall from the Kaye family\[a\]It was renamed Old Heath Hall when a new [Heath Hall](https://engole.info/heath-hall/) was built. in Heath near Wakefield after the death of her second husband, and was created a baronetess in her own right by Charles I in December 1635.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|623}}
In 1643, during the English Civil War, Wakefield was held by the Royalists. General Goring had defeated Lieutenant-General Fairfax’s Parliamentary army at Seacroft Moor at the end of March. Goring and his senior officers spent an evening in May drinking heavily at Heath Hall, and when summoned to the town’s defence proved incapable against an inferior force led by Fairfax.{{sfnp|2TBUNFJA|7}}
After her death on 5 May 1662 Mary’s bowels were interred at Kirkthorpe Church, but her body remained at Heath Hall for five weeks of mourning, for which she left £700 to entertain her “kindred, friends and servants and other persons ordinary and extraordinary”. Her embalmed body was buried at [Ledsham Church](https://engole.info/all-saints-church-ledsham/) on 16 June, and a life-size effigy, for which she left £400, was erected in the south aisle. Her will left the interest of £500 for poor children in Wakefield and £200 for poor children in Sandal to be bound apprentices.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|623}}{{sfnp|2TBUNFJA|6}}
Dame Mary also left instructions that the room in which she died should be walled up for ever.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|623}}{{sfnp|2TBUNFJA|6}} She was rumoured to have practised the dark arts.{{sfnp|QI9AQB3G|804}} The room remained sealed for fifty years, but after it was opened it is claimed that her ghost supposedly walked near Heath Hall until it was “conjured down a hole in the River Calder from which it occasionally emerges.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|623}}\[b\]The hole is a particularly deep part of the river below Old Heath Hall that was named Lady Bolles’ pit.
## Dame Mary Bolles’ Water Tower
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/image.jpeg) Dame Mary Bolles’ water tower
Wikimedia Commons
An unusual building associated with Mary Bolles is the Grade II\* listed water tower near the ruins of the old hall that she referred to in her will. A natural spring fed into a cistern inside the sandstone tower from which water flowed to power an {{convert|18|ft|adj=on}} water wheel that pumped some of the water to the top of the tower, from where it passed, probably via an overhead, lead-lined conduit, to the Old Hall, where a large storage cistern was housed in a similar building to supply water for the hall. The system may have survived until the 1830s.{{sfnp|4ZZK24M8}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a It was renamed Old Heath Hall when a new [Heath Hall](https://engole.info/heath-hall/) was built. b The hole is a particularly deep part of the river below Old Heath Hall that was named Lady Bolles’ pit.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25752
**Categories:** Female, Ghost, Yorkshire
---
### [Zodiac Man](https://engole.info/zodiac-man/)
**Published:** December 12, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Zodiac-Man.webp[/pimage]Illustration commonly found in medical and astrological texts, showing which parts of the body are related to the twelve signs of the zodiac.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Zodiac-Man.webp)Yale University Library
The Zodiac Man, also known as *Homo signorum*, meaning “Man of Signs”, is an illustration commonly found in medical and astrological texts and calendars It shows which parts of the body are related to the twelve signs of the zodiac,{{sfnp|6ANTGSN5}}{{sfnp|P5QCW2QB}} a “hallmark” of [astrological medicine](https://engole.info/astrological-medicine).{{sfnp|7B28PICW}}
Phlebotomy, or bloodletting, was one of the most common procedures in early modern medicine, and physicians used the Zodiac Man to determine the best times to bleed certain parts of the body. The position of the Moon in particular was crucial. It was believed that if it was not in the zodiacal sign corresponding to the body part being bled, the procedure was so dangerous that it could result in the patient’s death; “neither knife nor medication may be applied to the afflicted member if the Moon is in the sign governing said organ”.{{sfnp|7B28PICW}}
The idea that different body parts are related to the signs of the zodiac dates back to late Babylonian times, the 6th century BCE,{{sfnp|P5QCW2QB}} but the illustration of the Zodiac Man is first documented in the 11th century.{{sfnp|7B28PICW}}
## Table of correspondences
The association of body parts with the signs of the zodiac remained relatively consistent during antiquity and into the medieval period. The primary associations shown here are both the oldest and the most common.{{sfnp|P5QCW2QB}}{{sfnp|XAJ4GKG5}}
**Sign****Primary association****Secondary associations****Aries**Head``Eyes, adrenals, blood pressure``**Taurus**NeckThroat, shoulders, ears**Gemini**ShouldersLungs, nerves, arms, fingers**Cancer**ChestBreasts, sides, some bodily fluids and organs**Leo**SidesStomach, heart, spine, upper back, spleen**Virgo**BellyAbdomen, intestines, gallbladder, pancreas, liver**Libra**ButtocksHips, lower back, kidneys, endocrines**Scorpio**GenitaliaPelvis, urinary bladder, rectum**Sagittarius**ThighsLegs, hips, groin**Capricorn**KneesShin, bones, skin, sinew, nerve**Aquarius**Lower legAnkle, calf, some blood vessels**Pisces**FeetSole, extremity
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b, c var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 2 )/3
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27070
**Categories:** Astrology, Medical treatment
---
### [Calaminarian grassland](https://engole.info/calaminarian-grassland/)
**Published:** October 27, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Grassland growing on soil containing high levels of heavy metals.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Calaminarian-grassland-1.webp)Calaminarian grassland in the North Pennines
North Pennines AONB Partnership
Calaminarian grassland is named after *Viola calaminaria*, a plant found growing in grasslands on metal-rich soils in continental Europe, itself named after the zinc ore calamine. Although the violet itself is not found in the UK, the country contains almost 30 per cent of Europe’s calaminarian grassland.{{sfnp|DWG9ACD8}}
There are estimated to be about {{convert|109|ha|abbr=on}} of calaminarian grassland in the UK, almost half of it in the North Pennines. Most calaminarian grasslands are anthropogenic in origin, associated with heavy metal mining and in particular the disposal of contaminated mine waste.{{sfnp|L4ZZZE3G}} In a few places, mainly in the Scottish Highlands, they occur naturally where thin soil sits over rock containing exposed mineral veins.{{sfnp|DWG9ACD8}}
Species tolerant of high levels of heavy metals are known as metallophytes.{{sfnp|DWG9ACD8}} They include spring sandwort (*Minuartia verna*), field pennycress (*Thlaspi arvense*), and genetically adapted species such as thrift (*Armeria maritima*) and bladder campion (*Silene uniflora*). Other notable species include Young’s helleborine (*Epipactis youngiana*), forked spleenwort (*Asplenium septentrionale*), Cornish path-moss (*Ditrichum cornubicum*), western rustwort (*Marsupella profunda*), *Cephaloziella nicholsonii*, *Ditrichum plumbicola*, Scottish sandwort (*Arenaria norvegica*) and Shetland mouse-ear (*Cerastium nigrescens*).{{sfnp|G5MX9FMS}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26930
**Categories:** Landform
---
### [Haigh Foundry](https://engole.info/haigh-foundry/)
**Published:** November 20, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Haigh_Foundry_gateposts_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1034741.jpg[/pimage]Ironworks and foundry in Haigh near Wigan that was notable for the manufacture of steam engines.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Haigh_Foundry_gateposts_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1034741.jpg)Cast-iron gateposts at the entrance to the foundry
Wikimedia Commons
Haigh Foundry on Leyland Mill Lane in the Douglas Valley in Haigh near Wigan became notable for the manufacture of steam engines, early steam locomotives and a wide range of products in wrought and cast iron. The ironworks and foundry were founded by Alexander Lindsay 6th Earl of Balcarres, his brother Robert Lindsay and iron founder, James Corbett in 1790.
In 1835 the foundry was leased by E. Evans and T. C. Ryley. The company produced railway locomotives, and in the years up to 1856 produced more than a hundred of them. Birley and Thompson leased the foundry until 1884, when it closed.
## Lindsays
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Oberst_Alexander_Lindsay_-_Earl_of_Balcarres.jpg)Alexander Lindsay
Wikimedia Commons
The [Haigh Hall](https://engole.info/haigh-hall/) estate passed to Elizabeth Dalrymple, great niece of Sir Roger Bradshaigh, when the male line failed.{{sfnp|PXG4EKKG|115-118}} She married Alexander Lindsay, 6th Earl of Balcarres in 1787; the hall became his family seat and he became landlord of what was by then a delapidated estate.{{sfnp|GXQ5RNUM|318}}
Brock Mill Forge by the River Douglas, a mile from Wigan, was advertised for sale in a Liverpool newspaper in 1766 and again in 1775.{{sfnp|GXQ5RNUM|318}} In 1788 Alexander Lindsay, his brother Robert Lindsay and iron founder, James Corbett entered into partnership. They acquired the forge for £400 and set up furnaces at “Lalland Mill” as an ironworks and foundry in about 1790. It became known as the Haigh Foundry.{{sfnp|GXQ5RNUM|319}}
When the business was set up Alexander Lindsay was a serving soldier, and his brother Robert Lindsay was in India working for the East India Company, and reluctant to move to Haigh. The earl considered his brother’s expertise in business vital to their success, and persuaded him to join the venture.{{sfnp|GXQ5RNUM|320}} Meanwhile, Corbett started an ambitious expansion, setting up a boring mill to manufacture cannon, but his sudden death in 1790 left the work unfinished.{{sfnp|GXQ5RNUM|320}}
Alexander Lindsay next hired John Coward from ironworks in Dukinfield to take over the management, and his brother recruited moulders from Scotland. A casting house, accomodation for the workers, and stables were built, and the weir was repaired. The blast furnace and a boring mill had been constructed by September 1790.{{sfnp|GXQ5RNUM|321}}
Robert Lindsay left the business and Joseph von Baader, a young German engineer started work the following year. Baader was not a success and the ironworks performed poorly. Local coal and iron ore were unsuitable and Robert Lindsay had to return to sort out matters in 1796.{{sfnp|GXQ5RNUM|324}} The two blast furnaces were operated until 1815 and demolished in 1828.{{sfnp|EIFDS9EM|75}}
The ironworks was not a success but the foundry was, particularly after [Robert Daglish](https://engole.info/robert-daglish/) became chief engineer in 1804, and the works acquired a reputation for manufacturing winding engines and pumping equipment for the coal-mining industry. Daglish constructed the [*Walking Horse*](https://engole.info/the-walking-horse-locomotive/) locomotive for Orrell Collieries, and established locomotive manufacture at Haigh. The company made steam engines and rolling mills, and in 1818 exported a sugar mill to Haiti.{{sfnp|GXQ5RNUM|330}}
## Evans and Ryley
The foundry was leased by E. Evans and T. C. Ryley in 1835 for 21 years. The partners intended to produce railway locomotives, and were joined by a Mr Burrows.{{sfnp|GXQ5RNUM|332}} Between 1835 and 1856 the company manufactured more than 100 locomotives, some for railways in Lancashire, broad-gauge engines for the South Devon Railway, the War Department and others for export.{{sfnp|GF2R9ERV|509-511}} The foundry built a swing bridge for Liverpool’s Albert Dock in 1846.{{sfnp|EIFDS9EM|285}}
In 1855 Haigh Foundry and Brock Mill Forge were offered for lease. The foundry had manufactured some of “the largest pumping engines and the most powerful factory engines in the kingdom” in the previous decade. The iron works, on the bank of the River Douglas, consisted of a foundry, five cupola-furnaces,\[a\]A furnace with a dome leading to a chimney.{{sfnp|84C4RBPR}} three air-furnaces for making the largest castings, and another foundry for smaller pieces. Also on site were blacksmiths’ and pattern-makers’ shops, office, drawing shop, the foreman’s house, boiler yard and iron warehouse. A water-wheel driven by the river powered the machinery, line shafts and furnace blasts. The forge was powered by water and steam. Part of the works where spade making was carried out had Naysmyth steam hammers and a rolling mill. Also for lease was the firebrick and tile works, which used fire clay from a nearby pit and had a kiln, drying sheds and a steam-powered grinding wheels. The manager’s house and cottages for workers were part of the lease. A railway line connecting it to the Lancashire and Yorkshire and London and North Western Railways was being built.{{sfnp|VHRH3RW7}}
## Birley and Thompson
By 1857 the lessees were Birley and Thompson, who concentrated on heavy engineering. The company produced stationary engines for mines, collieries and cotton mills. Locomotive production ceased, and competition from other companies producing mining equipment led to its closure in 1884.{{sfnp|GXQ5RNUM|333}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a A furnace with a dome leading to a chimney.{{sfnp|84C4RBPR}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22351
**Categories:** Foundry, Lancashire
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Dudley](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-dudley/)
**Published:** July 22, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/DudleyMBC_UK_locator_map.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley, in the ceremonial county of West Midlands.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/DudleyMBC_UK_locator_map.png)Dudley shown within West Midlands
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Dudley is one of the seven that make up the [ceremonial](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) and metropolitan county of West Midlands.
The borough contains six of the Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in West Midlands. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St John the Baptist**Halesowen
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/The_Leasowes_%281765%29.jpg)Norman to Perpendicular[1063767](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1063767)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/35/Halesowen_Church_4_%284205849913%29.jpg/1280px-Halesowen_Church_4_%284205849913%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Dudley Castle**Dudley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/jdaqGRg7jmuVRjFt5)14th century[1343187](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1343187)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Dudley_Castle.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Dudley Priory**Dudley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/EX5JkBfr6RpjygPu7)1160[1343217](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1343217)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Dudley_Priory.JPG/1920px-Dudley_Priory.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Halesowen Abbey**Halesowen
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/nvkvahe9zUuxUUxA8)13th century[1063731](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1063731)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Halesowen_Abbey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2433248.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Parish Church of St Thomas**Stourbridge
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Ax6teDGNRtCY6pJZ7)1726[1343197](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1343197)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/St_Thomas%27s_Church%2C_Stourbridge_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1773148.jpg/1280px-St_Thomas%27s_Church%2C_Stourbridge_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1773148.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**The Leasowes**Halesowen
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/jYqfTmGZx3KqYGnKA)1776[1063761](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1063761)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/The_Leasowes_%281765%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [](
**Categories:** West Midlands
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Wolverhampton](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-wolverhampton/)
**Published:** July 21, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Wolverhampton_UK_locator_map.svg/1920px-Wolverhampton_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Wolverhampton, in the ceremonial county of West Midlands.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Wolverhampton_UK_locator_map.svg/1920px-Wolverhampton_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Wolverhampton shown within West Midlands
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Wolverhampton is one of the seven that make up the [ceremonial](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) and metropolitan county of West Midlands.
The borough contains two of the Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in West Midlands. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Peter**City of Wolverhampton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/wg3UPx2xdLgcNauQ9)Late 13th century[1282467](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1282467)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/St._Peter%27s_Collegiate_Church%2C_Wolverhampton_-_geograph.org.uk_-_374475.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Wightwick Manor**City of Wolverhampton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/S7U6jCej318ZTSzU9)1887="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1201902" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1201902[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Wightwick_Manor_02.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in West Midlands](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-west-midlands)
ck-citation">## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30186
**Categories:** West Midlands
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Solihull](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-solihull/)
**Published:** July 26, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Solihull_UK_locator_map.svg/1920px-Solihull_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, in the ceremonial county of West Midlands.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Solihull_UK_locator_map.svg/1920px-Solihull_UK_locator_map.svg.png)yle="font-size:12px; color:#5b5b5b">Solihull shown within West Midlands
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Solihull is one of the seven that make up the [ceremonial](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) and metropolitan county of West Midlands.
The borough contains twelve of the Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in West Midlands. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****936, Warwick Road**r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Solihull
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ewtq3UKDobuMo8Nn7)r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Sir John Soaner" data-border-color="#abb8c3">r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1203586](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1203586)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Barn_%C3%A0_la_Paestum_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1914191.jpg)x; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">yle="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Bakehouse at Castle Bromwich Hall**r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Castle Bromwich
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/g2KcsmC8QpaPYXEYA)r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 16th centuryr" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1343226](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1343226)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Bakehouse-at-Castle-Bromwich-Hall.webp)x; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">yle="font-size:12px; color:#5b5b5b">Historic England Archive
**Castle Bromwich Hall**r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Castle Bromwich
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/89quTj2Se6WUZMUC6)r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 16th or early 17th centuryr" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1366587](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1366587)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/Castle_Bromwich_Hall1.jpg/1920px-Castle_Bromwich_Hall1.jpg)x; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">yle="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of Saint Alphege**r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Solihull
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/bD3D2GPBY8G69kLY6)r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">14th centuryr" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1076693](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1076693)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/St_Alphege_Church_Solihull.jpg)x; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">yle="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St John the Baptist**r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Berkswell
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/emvppFgNajS9iq528)r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 12th centuryr" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1075974](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1075974)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Berkswell_Church.jpg)x; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">yle="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of Saint John the Baptist, Saint Lawrence and Saint Anne**r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Knowle
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/YiXuCngLVUp1eEC68)r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">15th centuryr" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1203309](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1203309)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Knowle_Church.jpg)x; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">yle="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary and St Bartholomew**r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Hampton in Arden
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aDLXx8mjyD7QXdQ7A)r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">12th centuryr" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1055777](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1055777)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Hampton_in_Arden_church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_50337.jpg)x; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">yle="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary and St Margaret**r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Castle Bromwich
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D3nyrNBSBGADCtTB6)r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">15th centuryr" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1075951](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1075951)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/St_Mary_and_St_Margaret_Parish_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_271560.jpg)x; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">yle="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter**r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Bickenhill
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/A9GbgJJbKqz7K6cg8)r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">12th centuryr" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1343224](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1343224)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Parish_Church_of_Saint_Peter%2C_Bickenhill_in_the_Birmingham_Diocese_-_geograph.org.uk_-_90351.jpg)x; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">yle="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Lawrence**r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Meriden
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/5GgFv2JdHUzoMB6H8)r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">12th centuryr" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1031828](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1031828)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Meriden_Church.jpg)x; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">yle="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Temple Balsall
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/53VSR31VoZkUTtYd8)r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">c. 1290r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1075995](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1075995)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Temple_Balsall_Church.jpg)x; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">yle="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Grimshaw Hall**Knowle
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzWoRd7qU8Rij3cm9)Early 17th century[1076714](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1076714)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Grimshaw-Hall.webp)x; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">yle="font-size:12px; color:#5b5b5b">Knowle Local Historical Society
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in West Midlands](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-west-midlands)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30201
**Categories:** West Midlands
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Sandwell](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-sandwell/)
**Published:** July 21, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/Sandwell_UK_locator_map.svg/1920px-Sandwell_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, in the ceremonial county of West Midlands.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/Sandwell_UK_locator_map.svg/1920px-Sandwell_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Sandwell shown within West Midlands
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell is one of the seven that make up the [ceremonial](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) and metropolitan county of West Midlands.
The borough contains three of the Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in West Midlands. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Galton Bridge Including Attached Railway Bridge Span, Roebuck Lane Birmingham Canal Birmingham Level**Smethwick
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/qP6hq7m22xArQcFN6)Thomas Telford1829[1214833](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1214833)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/Galton_Bridge_and_tunnel.jpg/1920px-Galton_Bridge_and_tunnel.jpg)-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Oak House**West Bromwich
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/zd5Uxiaa258wD266A)Late 16th century[1228226](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1228226)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6d/Oak_House_rear_%283215480435%29.jpg/1920px-Oak_House_rear_%283215480435%29.jpg)-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**West Bromwich Manor House**r" data-border-color="#abb8c3">West Bromwich
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/E2PrvDFSHNbwyjbk6)c. 1300, with 15th and 16th-century additions[1077111](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1077111)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/Manor_House_1_%283308438221%29.jpg/1920px-Manor_House_1_%283308438221%29.jpg)-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in West Midlands](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-west-midlands)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30187
**Categories:** West Midlands
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Mine boat](https://engole.info/mine-boat/)
**Published:** August 5, 2020
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Delph-Mine-Boats.webp[/pimage]Boats built to transport coal from the Duke of Bridgewater's pits in Worsley.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Delph-Mine-Boats.webp)Mineboats at the Delph
Mine boats or M boats, commonly known as starvationers, were built from 1759 to transport first spoil, and then coal, from the Duke of Bridgewater’s [underground levels](https://engole.info/worsley-navigable-levels/) in Worsley to Manchester via the Bridgewater Canal. They were legged\[a\]Leggers propelled boats through narrow canal tunnels by lying on their backs on a plank of wood placed across the boat, using their feet to walk along the tunnel wall. through the underground levels and towed by horses to Castlefield in Manchester.
The mine boats were open to the elements, double-ended with flat bottoms and parallel, vertical sides with exposed frame ribs. Their long, narrow design influenced the design of future narrow boats.
## Boats
Mine boats were built to transport coal direct from the coal faces inside the [Worsley Navigable Levels](https://engole.info/worsley-navigable-levels/) and along the Bridgewater Canal to market in Manchester.{{sfnp|IXFTU95X|105}} They were legged through the underground levels and towed by horses to Castlefield in Manchester. [Dry docks](https://engole.info/worsley-dry-docks/) were built on the canal in Worsley, where the mine boats were built and repaired.{{sfnp|FIPI6NWP}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Worsley-Canal.jpg)Mine boat at Worsley
Mine boats were built in several sizes, all similarly constructed, open to the elements, double ended with flat bottoms and paralled vertical sides. Their design is the forerunner of present-day narrow boats on British canals. They were typically between {{convert|46|ft}} and {{convert|55|ft}} long and {{convert|4.5|ft}} and {{convert|6|ft}} wide. They were strongly built with prominent internal ribs that gave them the nickname starvationers. The largest boats were used on the Main Level, they drew {{convert|28|in}} of water when loaded and {{convert|8|in}} when empty.{{sfnp|RHKNWMQC|33}} The largest could carry around 12 tons of coal or spoil.{{sfnp|IXFTU95X|105}}
Mine boats were numbered and allocated a code letter indicated their size. The 10-ton mine boats were letterered M and 7-ton boats were lettered T; small boats were called tub boats. In 1840 the fleet numbered 75 M boats, 75 T boats and about 100 tub boats.{{sfnp|RHKNWMQC|33}} The tub boats, about 30 feet in length and about 4 feet wide capable of carrying just 2 tons, were lowerered vertically down the shafts to access the Lower Level where the shaft bottoms were made elliptical to make the task easier. {{sfnp|RHKNWMQC|33}}
Each pit or branch had boatmen responsible for their operation.{{sfnp|RHKNWMQC|33}} Convoys of up to 20 mine boats may have been operated by one man, wearing a harness that hooked onto rings projecting from the tunnel walls. He lay on his back on a bench at the end of the boat and legged along the tunnel roof to propel the boat forward.{{sfnp|IKA4HN3I|149}} Minor repairs were carried out by carpenters from Worsley Yard while the boats were underground, but heavy repairs required a visit to the dry dock.{{sfnp|RHKNWMQC|33}}
Mine boats transported coal directly from deep inside the underground levels out onto the Bridgewater Canal without the need for transshipment. The navigable levels drained the coal measures and kept the Bridgewater Canal in water. A second entrance at the Delph was constructed to avoid congestion in the levels, and more levels were driven to access deeper seams. A subterranean inclined plane, completed in 1795, transported mine boats between levels. The mine boats transported coal until 1887, but were used until the underground levels were abandoned in 1969. A surviving mine boat is preserved at the National Waterways Museum in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire. It is {{convert|30|ft}} long and has a {{convert|3|ft|r=1|adj=on}} beam.{{sfnp|IXFTU95X|105}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Leggers propelled boats through narrow canal tunnels by lying on their backs on a plank of wood placed across the boat, using their feet to walk along the tunnel wall. b, c var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22951
**Categories:** Boat, Coal mining
---
### [Combermere Colliery](https://engole.info/combermere-colliery/)
**Published:** February 2, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Shakeley-CombermerePit.jpg[/pimage]Colliery sunk by the Tyldesley Coal Company on the Manchester Coalfield after 1867 in Shakerley, Tyldesley in Lancashire, England.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Combermere-1907.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/c2FhnnkCoXmerpAN6}}
Combermere Colliery 1907{{sfnp|SP52QJQM}}|Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Combermere Colliery was sunk by the [Tyldesley Coal Company](https://engole.info/tyldesley-coal-company/) on the [Lancashire Coalfield](https://engole.info/lancashire-and-cheshire-coalfield/) after 1867 in [Shakerley](https://engole.info/shakerley/), [Tyldesley](https://engole.info/tyldesley/) in Lancashire, England.
The colliery exploited the Middle Coal Measures of the [Manchester Coalfield](https://engole.info/manchester-coalfield/), laid down in the Carboniferous period, and where coal was mined from more than a dozen seams between the Crumbouke and Arley mines.\[a\]In this part of Lancashire a coal seam is referred to as a mine and the coal mine as a colliery or pit. The seams generally dip towards the south and west and are affected by small faults. The Upper Coal Measures are not worked in this part of the coalfield.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|39}}
The Tyldesley Coal Company sank two shafts just north of the Coxe or Wharton Hall Fault, which had a downthrow of some {{convert|225|ft}} to the north, and where the seams dipped at approximately 1 in 4.5 southwards.{{sfnp|ABN4J88Q}} The shafts intersected the Rams mine at {{convert|315|ft}} and the Black and White mine at {{convert|600|ft}}.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|63}} Coal was worked to the rise northwards from the shafts. Coal extraction ended in 1893, but the production of fireclay to supply the adjacent brickworks continued, as did pumping.{{sfnp|ABN4J88Q}}{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|62}} Coal and bricks transported on the [company’s tramway](https://engole.info/greens-tramroad/ "Green’s tramroad") towards Manchester Road.{{sfnp|XHVMJ3HW}}{{sfnp|KLZ5HVNI|306}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Shakeley-CombermerePit.jpg)Combermere Pit
The Rams mine was drained by a {{convert|12|in|adj=on}} ram pump that raised water to the surface in a single lift. Steam was supplied by three Lancashire boilers, {{convert|7|ft}} in diameter by {{convert|26|ft}} long, pressurised to 45 psi.{{sfnp|ABN4J88Q}}
The brickworks were revived after the Second World War, but the site was derelict by the early 1950s, by which time two Lancashire boilers and a small winch in the winding engine house were all that remained.{{sfnp|ABN4J88Q}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a In this part of Lancashire a coal seam is referred to as a mine and the coal mine as a colliery or pit.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 14215
**Categories:** Coal mining, Greater Manchester
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Ashfield](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-ashfield/)
**Published:** March 25, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Ashfield_District_Council_Offices_-_geograph.org.uk_-_6354115.jpg[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the district of Ashfield, Nottinghamshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Ashfield_District_Council_Offices_-_geograph.org.uk_-_6354115.jpg)Council offices, Kirkby-in-Ashfield
Wikimedia Commons
The non-metropolitan district of Ashfield in the East Midlands of England is one of the seven districts and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Nottinghamshire.{{sfnp|DFUAZLJK}}
The district contains 2 of the 146 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Nottinghamshire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Katharine**Teversal
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/N27q4677G54akUmt7)13th century[1234886](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1234886)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/St_Katherine%27s_church%2C_Teversal_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1564287.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Ruins of Church of All Saints**Annesley Park
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7rQ5oJRMqh5sesjq7)[1234999](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1234999)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Annesley_Old_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1830919.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## ock-list">
6. [Grade I listed buildings in Nottinghamshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-nottinghamshire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27297
**Categories:** Nottinghamshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Wirral](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-wirral/)
**Published:** February 16, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Wirral_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Wirral_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Wirral_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Wirral_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Wirral shown within Merseyside
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in North West England is one of the five metropolitan boroughs that make up the Metropolitan County of Merseyside.
The borough contains nine of the forty-two Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Merseyside. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Brimstage Hall and Tower**Brimstage
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/w42kroS6CQpdRbkN7)c. 1398[1183702](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1183702)imedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Brimstage\_Hall\_and\_Craft\_Centre\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_131919.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Andrew**Lower Bebington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/NGe2LSR5pjufHdfX9)12th century[1075462](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1075462)imedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/Bebington\_-\_DSC04560.JPG/1280px-Bebington\_-\_DSC04560.JPG"> Wikimedia Commons
**Numbers 1 to 18 (consecutive), Hamilton Square including railings to front**Birkenhead
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/jt936UyJwezf57S59)James Gillespie Grahamc. 1825[1201580](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1201580)imedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Hamilton\_Square%2C\_north\_side\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1002636.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Numbers 19 to 34[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/53VSR31VoZkUTtYd8) to front**Birkenhead
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/jt936UyJwezf57S59)James Gillespie Graham1839–1844[1292180](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1292180)imedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/19\_-\_34\_Hamilton\_Square%2C\_Birkenhead\_%281%29.jpg/1280px-19\_-\_34\_Hamilton\_Square%2C\_Birkenhead\_%281%29.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Numbers 35 to 51[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/53VSR31VoZkUTtYd8) to front**Birkenhead
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/jt936UyJwezf57S59)James Gillespie Graham1839–1844[1292148](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1292148)imedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/Hamilton\_Square\_buildings%2C\_Birkenhead\_2.JPG/1280px-Hamilton\_Square\_buildings%2C\_Birkenhead\_2.JPG"> Wikimedia Commons
**Numbers 52 to 57[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/53VSR31VoZkUTtYd8) to front**Birkenhead
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/jt936UyJwezf57S59)James Gillespie Grahamc. 1844[](
**Categories:** Merseyside
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Sefton](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-sefton/)
**Published:** February 15, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Sefton_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Sefton_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton in Merseyside.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Sefton_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Sefton_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Sefton shown within Merseyside
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Sefton in North West England is one of the five metropolitan boroughs that make up the Metropolitan County of Merseyside.
The borough contains two of the forty-two Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Merseyside. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Helen**Sefton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/RaTMqR1qJypBqJHy7)Early 14th century[1075852](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1075852)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/St_Helen%27s_Church%2C_Sefton.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Monica**Bootle
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/m9vZXkij7LTNfT9P6)Francis Xavier Velarde1936[1283647](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1283647)[](
**Categories:** Merseyside
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in St Helens](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-st-helens/)
**Published:** February 14, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/St_Helens_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-St_Helens_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens in Merseyside.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/St_Helens_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-St_Helens_UK_locator_map.svg.png)St Helens shown within Merseyside
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of St Helens in North West England is one of the five metropolitan boroughs that make up the Metropolitan County of Merseyside.
The borough contains one of the forty-two Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Merseyside. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Sankey Viaduct over Sankey Brook**Newton-le-Willows, St Helens
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/W4NYcvvoNwkV9dJHA)George Stephenson1830[1075927](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1075927)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/Sankey_viaduct.jpg/1280px-Sankey_viaduct.jpg)-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Merseyside](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-merseyside)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27199
**Categories:** Merseyside
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Knowsley](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-knowsley/)
**Published:** February 13, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/Knowsley_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Knowsley_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley in Merseyside.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/Knowsley_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Knowsley_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Knowsley shown within Merseyside
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley in North West England is one of the five metropolitan boroughs that make up the Metropolitan County of Merseyside.
The borough contains one of the forty-two Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Merseyside. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Mary**Prescot
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/UMxL8BNVb29NJbfB8)14th century[1199139](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1199139)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/St_Mary%27s_Church%2C_Prescot.jpg)aption-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Merseyside](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-merseyside)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27198
**Categories:** Merseyside
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Liverpool](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-liverpool/)
**Published:** February 19, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/Liverpool_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Liverpool_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Liverpool in Merseyside.
**Content:**
Liverpool shown within Merseyside
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Liverpool in North West England is one of the five metropolitan boroughs that make up the Metropolitan County of Merseyside.
The borough contains 29 of the 42 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Merseyside. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****[All Saints’ Church](https://engole.info/all-saints-church-childwall)**Childwall
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/94DgsrW6bdVXecrf6)14th century[1356299](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1356299)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/All_Saints_church%2C_Childwall_%283%29.JPG/1280px-All_Saints_church%2C_Childwall_%283%29.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Anglican Cathedral Church of Christ**Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ziqrTpZKUnFFEwcA9)Giles Gilbert Scott1904[1361681](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1361681)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0c/Liverpool_Anglican_Cathedral_central_nave.jpg/1280px-Liverpool_Anglican_Cathedral_central_nave.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Atlantic Pavilion**Albert Dock
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/piFMbSavyuK7tKbh9)J. Hartley1841–1845[1205175](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1205175)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Albert_Dock%2C_Liverpool_-_geograph.org.uk_-_847422.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
[Bank of England Building](https://engole.info/bank-of-england-building-liverpool)Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/1RNqfPUkTZYjtzkp7)Charles Robert Cockerell1845–1848[1205904](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1205904)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Former_Branch_Bank_of_England%2C_Castle_Street%2C_Liverpool_%28geograph_2847104%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Bluecoat Chambers**Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/EtcStjZftQyxJ9JB6)1717[1292322](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1292322)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/39/Bluecoat_Chambers_-_Liverpool.jpg/1280px-Bluecoat_Chambers_-_Liverpool.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Britannia Pavilion and the Colonnades**Albert Dock
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/3pXHmiSske18miMRA)J. Hartley1841–1845[1068409](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1068409)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e7/Rear_of_Edward_Pavilion%2C_Albert_Dock_2018.jpg/1280px-Rear_of_Edward_Pavilion%2C_Albert_Dock_2018.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Hallows**Allerton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fRrB7WQMpp8BcVHq8)G. E. Grayson1872–1876[1068414](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1068414)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/All_Hallows_Church%2C_Allerton._-_geograph.org.uk_-_1556071.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St. Agnes and St. Pancras**Toxteth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/64jq3NNpKPEDCZKW9)John Loughborough Pearson1883–1885[1359871](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1359871)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/Parish_of_Saint_Agnes_and_Saint_Pancras_Toxteth_Park_June_10_2010_043.jpg/1280px-Parish_of_Saint_Agnes_and_Saint_Pancras_Toxteth_Park_June_10_2010_043.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Clare**Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fjMZuiZ8rtHto4rV7)Leonard Stokes1888–1890[1205333](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1205333)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/Church_of_St_Clare%2C_Liverpool_June_10_2010_036.jpg/1280px-Church_of_St_Clare%2C_Liverpool_June_10_2010_036.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St George**Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/nqq4DD3bcmHLs5MH6)Thomas Rickman1812–1814[1075216](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1075216)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/St_George%27s_Everton_2019-2.jpg/1280px-St_George%27s_Everton_2019-2.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St John the Baptist**Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/tQcKafG78SHAREYH6)George Frederick Bodley1868–1870[1063778](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1063778)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5b/Church_of_Saint_John_the_Baptist%2C_Liverpool_2.jpg/1280px-Church_of_Saint_John_the_Baptist%2C_Liverpool_2.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Dock Traffic Office**Albert Dock
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KEvj6v74yG5g2zBy9)Philip Hardwick1846–1847[1356264](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1356264)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Albert_Dock2.JPG/1280px-Albert_Dock2.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Edwardian Pavilion**Albert Dock
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/rtLrxG9WbAKUBkfVA)J. Hartley1841–1845[1068410](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1068410)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/The_Albert_Dock_-_geograph.org.uk_-_7527.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Merseyside Maritime Museum and International Slavery Museum**Albert Dock
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/uYecbf8w464o3Des6)J. Hartley1841–1845[1280847](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1280847)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Kathleen_and_May_and_Leader.jpg/1280px-Kathleen_and_May_and_Leader.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King**Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/HEt6nL1QLuQm4JE5A)Frederick Gibberd1962–1967[1070607](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1070607)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/Liverpool_Metropolitan_Cathedral_Exterior%2C_Liverpool%2C_UK_-_Diliff.jpg/960px-Liverpool_Metropolitan_Cathedral_Exterior%2C_Liverpool%2C_UK_-_Diliff.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Oriel Chambers**Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Pki6T71R3Wm99pbu7)Peter Ellis1864[1291943](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1291943)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Oriel_chambers.jpg/960px-Oriel_chambers.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Philharmonic Hotel**Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/VFbvfss9Sgz1Ctb39)Walter W. Thomas1898[1207638](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1207638)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/Philharmonic_Dining_Rooms.jpg/1920px-Philharmonic_Dining_Rooms.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Princes Road Synagogue**Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/UY8dmjSJBSvuFV2B6)William James Audsley and George Ashdown Audsley1872–1874[1072969](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1072969)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/The_Synagogue_of_the_Liverpool_Old_Hebrew_Congregation_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1703408_crop.JPG/1280px-The_Synagogue_of_the_Liverpool_Old_Hebrew_Congregation_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1703408_crop.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Railings, gates and gate piers Old Bluecoat School**Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/cLrkxJSr8b2HZsebA)c. 1717[1073446](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1073446)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c6/Bluecoat_Jan_6_2010_1.jpg/1280px-Bluecoat_Jan_6_2010_1.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Royal Liver Building, iron railings and stone piers surrounding Royal Liver Building**George’s Pier Head
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DguJ7sPoa8tnnEDs5)Walter Aubrey Thomas1908–1910[1356370](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1356370)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/ba/Royal_Liver_Building.jpg/960px-Royal_Liver_Building.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Speke Hall**Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/8gH9mHnr9wQ8p3wk8)1540–1560[1359837](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1359837)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Speke_Hall%2C_Liverpool.jpg/1920px-Speke_Hall%2C_Liverpool.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**St George’s Hall**Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/z9gJtSnzKEDj1yD7A)Harvey Lonsdale Elmes1841–1845[1361677](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1361677)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/St_George%27s_Hall%2C_Liverpool_%282007%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**St Michael’s Church**Aigburth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/kUqusDyAXuPxbGYZ7)Thomas Rickman1814[1209945](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1209945)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/St_Michael%27s_Church%2C_Aigburth.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**The Oratory**Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2ZfN3wVVVAeUi2Jd6)John Foster1829[1063282](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1063282)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Liverpool_Oratory_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1021592.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Town Hall**Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/A2CYV4B7fV3zcJUg7)1749–1754[1360219](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1360219)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/LpoolTownHallOM.jpg/1920px-LpoolTownHallOM.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Toxteth Unitarian Chapel**Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WJZLW5qSqNtkRuig8)Post 1618[1072991](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1072991)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Ancient_Chapel_of_Toxteth_2018.jpg/1280px-Ancient_Chapel_of_Toxteth_2018.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Unitarian Chapel**Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GLiq5S5UemY6sR4d8)Thomas and Percy Worthington1898[1218227](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1218227)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5b/Ullet_Road_Unitarian_Church.jpg/1280px-Ullet_Road_Unitarian_Church.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Unitarian Church Hall**Liverpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ABQF9zRNLjA9PtDm6)Thomas and Percy Worthington1901[1359872](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1359872)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Ullet_Road_Unitarian_Church_Hall.jpg/1280px-Ullet_Road_Unitarian_Church_Hall.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Woolton Hall**Woolton, Liverpoool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/rBWA63uZtYHHvdwg9)1704[1217943](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1217943)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Woolton_Hall.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Merseyside](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-merseyside)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27208
**Categories:** Merseyside
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Salford Town Hall](https://engole.info/salford-town-hall/)
**Published:** August 6, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Salford_Town_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3606006_%28cropped%29.jpg/1920px-Salford_Town_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3606006_%28cropped%29.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail[/pimage]Grade II listed former town hall in Bexley Square, Salford, now converted into residential units.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Salford_Town_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3606006_%28cropped%29.jpg/1920px-Salford_Town_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3606006_%28cropped%29.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/tf8BtBtmq75Q8BMZA}}
Front of Salford Town Hall
Salford Town Hall, in Bexley Square, Salford, was built in 1825–1827 as a market hall. Designed by Richard Lane, his first big commission, it was used as the town hall for the County Borough of Salford from 1835 until that authority’s abolition in 1974. It was also used as a magistrates’ courthouse from 1840 until 2011.{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|619-620}}{{sfnp|7EW4CG2I}} Now known as X1 Town Hall, the building has been converted into 134 residential units.{{sfnp|FFJHYCSD}}
Salford Town Hall was designated a Grade II [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1952.{{sfnp|JCYR3YKQ}}
## Architecture
The town hall, designed in the Neoclassical style, is built of brick with stone dressings to the front. Extensions were added in 1862 and 1874–1875. It consists of two-storeys with a five-window range at the front; the central three bays, which project slightly, are [pedimented](https://engole.info/pediment) with outer square [pilasters](https://engole.infhttps://engole.info/pilaster).{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|619-620}}{{sfnp|JCYR3YKQ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30199
**Categories:** Town hall
---
### [Sandal Castle](https://engole.info/sandal-castle/)
**Published:** June 12, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Sandal_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_745625.jpg[/pimage]Ruined medieval castle in Sandal Magna, Wakefield in West Yorkshire, England. One of two castles built overlooking the River Calder, it was built by the Warrennes, the Earls of Surrey who were Lords of the Manor of Wakefield.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Sandal_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_745625.jpg)Sandal Castle
Wikimedia Commons
Sandal Castle is a ruined medieval castle in Sandal Magna, Wakefield, West Yorkshire. One of two castles overlooking the River Calder, it was built by the Warrennes, the Earls of Surrey, who were Lords of the Manor of Wakefield. It was a site of royal intrigue, and the setting for a scene in one of William Shakespeare’s plays.
## Castle
Castles built by the followers of William the Conqueror followers were self-sufficient strongholds, some of which were tax-gathering points. Others controlled larger towns, river crossings or passes through hills. Two castles were built near Wakefield: [Wakefield Castle](https://engole.info/wakefield-castle/) at Lowe Hill north of the Calder and Sandal to the south. Wakefield’s first castles were probably started and completed in the early 12th century by William de Warenne, 2nd Earl of Surrey, after Henry I granted him the Manor of Wakefield.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Sandal_Castle._-_geograph.org.uk_-_154925.jpg)Moat and earthworks
Wikimedia Commons
Sandal and Lowe Hill were motte and bailey earthwork castles with wooden towers on a mound and baileys with timber palisades and deep ditches. Sandal is built on a natural sandstone ridge, the Oaks Rock. Its motte was raised to {{convert|33|ft}} and had a {{convert|23|ft|adj=on}} deep moat surrounding it.{{sfnp|MEKXLTQQ|8}} Only Sandal survived, and during the 13th century the keep, curtain wall and other buildings were rebuilt in stone by either the sixth or seventh Earls Warenne.{{sfnp|LMPRVTS6|28}}{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|49}} Timber motte and bailey castles were often converted into stone if they were in use for long periods, and Sandal is a particularly good example.{{sfnp|ZPKSGFFE|57–58}}
The stone keep was circular with four towers each four storeys high; two of them close together formed a gatehouse, and the east tower contained a well that was {{convert|121|ft}} deep. The double-walled keep would have had guardrooms, storerooms and servants’ quarters on the ground floor, the main hall above and private apartments on the second floor. The tower rooms had garderobes\[a\]lavatories that discharged onto the outer walls of the keep.{{sfnp|LMPRVTS6|28}} The curtain wall was {{convert|20|ft}} high with a wall walk along its length; it enclosed the bailey and crossed the moat twice to reach the keep.{{sfnp|MEKXLTQQ|9}}
The barbican inside the bailey was a three-storey tower with a moat opposite two drum towers at the entrance to the keep, constructed in the early 1270s.{{sfnp|MEKXLTQQ|12}} The barbican with its own gate and portcullis added an extra line of defence between the main entrance gate and the keep. Attackers entering the barbican had to make a right-angled turn to enter the keep, which was protected by a drawbridge between the drum towers. A stairway from the barbican led to a sally port, a hidden entrance near the moat from which surprise attacks could be made.{{sfnp|MEKXLTQQ|21}}
The bailey lay to the south-east of the keep, with the main gatehouse on the north-east side. It was crescent shaped, about {{convert|233|ft}} long and {{convert|171|ft}} wide. Inside the bailey are a {{convert|39|ft|adj=on}} deep well and two privy shafts, one of which is {{convert|26|ft}} deep.{{sfnp|MEKXLTQQ|11}}
## Ruins
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Sandal_Castle_4_%284097652331%29.jpg)Castle ruins
Wikimedia Commons
The ruins were a source of stone for local building and became a place for locals to relax. They were depicted in the foreground of a drawing of Wakefield from the south by Samuel Buck in 1719 or 1722, and in 1753 an engraving was published of an Elizabethan survey drawing.
The ruins were excavated by the Yorkshire Archaeological Society in 1893. A more detailed project in summer 1964 was a partnership between Wakefield Corporation, Wakefield Historical Society and the University of Leeds. This project started as an experiment in adult education with more than a hundred volunteers. It grew into a complete and rigorous excavation that continued for nine years. Whilst excavating the bailey, archaeologists found remains of flint tools suggesting a Mesolithic encampment was there in about 5,000 BC.{{sfnp|MEKXLTQQ|10}}
The castle is a Scheduled Monument{{sfnp|9PD4ACQK}} which means it is a “nationally important” historic building and archaeological site which has been given protection against unauthorised change. It is also a Grade II\* listed building.{{snfp|7FZX5XWK}}
## Earls of Surrey and Warenne
William de Warenne, 2nd Earl of Surrey (1081–1138) was granted the Sandal estates in 1107.{{sfnp|LMPRVTS6|19}}{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|45}} He built the first Sandal Castle of timber. After supporting Robert Curthose against Henry I, he was banished from the kingdom for two years but was later given the Wakefield manor. William de Warenne, 3rd Earl of Surrey (1119–1148) spent little of his time at Sandal, having taken crusading vows and joined the Second Crusade. His only daughter, Isabel de Warenne, Countrss of Surrey (1137–1199), married William of Blois, son of King Stephen. He died in 1159 having no children. Isabel next married Hamelin (1129–1202), the son of Geoffrey of Anjou. He assumed the Warrene name on his marriage in 1164. Hamelin began to replace the wooden fortifications at Sandal with stone.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|50}}
William de Warenne, 5th Earl of Surrey (1166–1240) married Maud Marshal in 1225. He was loyal to his cousin, King John and is one of the four nobles whose name appears in the Magna Carta for John. On King John’s death in 1216 he supported Henry III.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|53}} Maud de Warenne, William’s widow, held the Wakefield Manor from 1240 until their son John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey (1231–1304) came of age in 1252. John married Alice de Lusignan in 1247.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|58}} In 1296 the 6th Earl was appointed warden for Scotland by Edward I and in 1299, the Earl and his royal master were triumphant over the Scots at the Battle of Falkirk.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|55}}
William de Warrene (1256–1286) was killed at a tournament in Croydon pre-deceasing his father.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|58}} His son John de Warenne, 7th Earl of Surrey (1286–1347) was born in the year of his father’s death. John married Joan of Bar but lived adulterously with Maud de Nereford who was from a village near Castle Acre in Norfolk.{{sfnp|LMPRVTS6|22}}{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|59}} In 1347, the 7th Earl died. His sons John and Thomas became Knights Hospitaller in the Holy Land and predeceased their mother and after her death, the lands passed to Edward III.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|61}}
## Dukes of York
In 1347, Edward III granted Sandal to his fifth son Edmund of Langley who was six years old. His elder brother John of Gaunt held Pontefract and Knaresborough Castles, Edmund was also granted Wark Castle near Coldstream in the Scottish Borders, and in 1377 Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire which was to become his home. The family spent little time at Sandal, leaving it to the management of constables or stewards. In 1385 Edmund was made Duke of York as a reward for his support for his nephew, Richard II. He was succeeded by his son, also Edward who campaigned in Ireland and died at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Edward was succeeded by his nephew, Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York.{{sfnp|LMPRVTS6|49}}
## Battle of Wakefield
Early in 1460, during the Wars of the Roses, Richard Plantagenet made a bid for the throne. He was initially not well-received, but an Act of Accord made in October 1460 recognised him as heir to the throne and named him Protector of the Realm. In December Richard went to Sandal Castle, either to consolidate his position or to counter Lancastrian dissent. He had an army of 3,000–8,000 men but on 30 December in the Battle of Wakefield, he was outnumbered and outmanoeuvred by Queen Margaret’s army, coming from nearby Pontefract. Richard suffered a crushing defeat and both he and his younger son Edmund, Earl of Rutland were killed. Just two months later Richard’s eldest son Edward became king.
## Richard III
The castle’s last brush with royalty came in 1483 when Richard’s eighth son (and twelfth child) Richard III chose it as his northern base and ordered some significant investment but he was killed in the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.{{sfnp|LMPRVTS6|55}} After his death, the castle was maintained a little, but gradually declined, and the building of Wakefield Prison in the 1590s left it even less useful.
## English Civil War
During the English Civil War Sandal Castle was Royalist. Although its neglected state mostly left it out of the major conflicts, in 1645 it was besieged at least three times by Parliamentarian troops. Butler recounts,”Having been assured that they would receive a safe passage to Welbeck House in north Nottinghamshire they surrendered the castle at 10 o’clock on 1 October 1645. The garrison was then 10 officers and 90 men, two of whom were called “seniors”, implying that they were professional soldiers rather than just non-commissioned officers. They also surrendered 100 muskets, 50 pikes, 20 halberds, 150 swords and two barrels of gunpowder: no pieces of artillery are mentioned. As a result of this capitulation only Bolton Castle in Wensleydale and Skipton Castle remained in Royalist hands in Yorkshire, but Sandal “was the most resolute of all the three northern garrisons” and its fall caused great rejoicing among the parliamentarian forces.{{sfnp|LMPRVTS6|89}}
By the end of the siege the castle was a ruin. The following year parliament ordered that it be made untenable.
## Literary references
Shakespeare’s play *Henry VI, Part 3* (Act 1, Scene 2) is set in Sandal Castle. It describes Richard’s sons urging him to take the crown before news is brought of Margaret’s approach. Act 1, scene 4 then depicts the death of Richard at the Queen’s hands. But this brief fictionalised account bears little resemblance to the history as it is understood today.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a lavatories
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 20808
**Categories:** Castle, Yorkshire
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Wigan](https://engole.info/__trashed/)
**Published:** January 22, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan in Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Wigan_Civic_Centre.jpg)Wigan shown within Greater Manchester
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Wigan in North West England is one of the 10 metropolitan boroughs that make up the Metropolitan County of Greater Manchester.
The borough contains 1 of the 48 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Greater Manchester. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|FU6NUSC9}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image**St. Wilfrid’s ChurchMarket Place, Standish
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/uonpsFx6Q2z2ruCi8)Lawrence Shipway (probably)1584[1287160](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1287160)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Standish_st_wilfrids.jpg/960px-Standish_st_wilfrids.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
-i-listed-buildings-in-greater-manchester" title="">Grade I listed buildings in Greater Manchester
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25955
**Categories:** Greater Manchester
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Rock Hall, Farnworth](https://engole.info/rock-hall-farnworth/)
**Published:** August 5, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/Rock_hall_visitor_centre_in_moses_gate_country_park.jpg/1920px-Rock_hall_visitor_centre_in_moses_gate_country_park.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail[/pimage]Grade II country house in Moses Gate Country Park in Farnworth, built in about 1807 for John Crompton.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/Rock_hall_visitor_centre_in_moses_gate_country_park.jpg/1920px-Rock_hall_visitor_centre_in_moses_gate_country_park.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/zHUfEQmZTexu8sSEA
Rock Hall, in the Moses Gate Country Park in Farnworth, Greater Manchester, is a country house built in about 1807 for John Crompton, a local paper manufacturer. He died before the house was completed, and it was occupied by his eldest son, also called John, who took over the management of his father’s Farnworth Paper Mill. The mill, established in about 1783, was demolished in the 1970s, and the area established as a country park, with Bolton Council taking ownership of Rock Hall.{{sfnp|CMV492G3}}
The hall was by then in “a considerable state of disrepair”. Renovation work was completed in 1982, and it was then opened as a visitor centre at the heart of the Moses Gate Country Park.{{sfnp|CMV492G3}} Rock Hall was used by Bolton Council’s countryside wardens until 2014, after which the building was significantly damaged by vandals.{{sfnp|FDKET8T8}}
The building is now managed on behalf of Bolton Council by the Lancashire Wildlife Trust, which plans to operate the hall as a community centre. In conjunction with the Trust, in 2026 Bolton Council secured a grant of almost £4.5m from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for the restoration of the hall.{{sfnp|FDKET8T8}}
Rock Hall was designated a Grade II [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1986.{{sfnp|6RMZAZXN}}
## Architecture
Rock Hall is a five-bay two-storey house built in brick on a stone base, and has a slate roof with gable-end stacks. The central three bays project outwards under a [pediment](https://engole.info/pediment).{{sfnp|6RMZAZXN}}{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|221}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30305
**Categories:** Country house, Greater Manchester
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Tunbridge Wells](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-tunbridge-wells/)
**Published:** July 5, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a0/Tunbridge_Wells_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Tunbridge_Wells_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
**Content:**
Tunbridge Wells shown within Kent
Wikimedia Commons
The local government district of Tunbridge Wells is one of the thirteen district authorities that make up the ceremonial county of Kent.{{sfnp|ZTG2GD2L}}
The borough contains 28 of the Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Kent. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Barn 60 Yards North of the West Range of Sissinghurst Castle**Cranbrook
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/b8CYhN6pr1CZU6NC8)Early 16th century[1099119](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1099119)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Barn\_in\_Sissinghurst\_Castle\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1499085.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Buildings of the service courtyard adjoining south of Groombridge Place including the walls of the Herb Garden**Speldhurst
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ND3t78wGizcJNzu66)c. 1660[1260883](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1260883)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f9/Groombridge\_Place\_2.jpg/1280px-Groombridge\_Place\_2.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Chapel of St John the Evangelist**Groombridge
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ivym37w8WeaF6Arj8)1625[1240708](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1240708)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f8/Chapel\_of\_St\_John\_the\_Evangelist%2C\_Groombridge\_Hill%2C\_Old\_Groombridge\_%28NHLE\_Code\_1240708%29.jpg/1280px-Chapel\_of\_St\_John\_the\_Evangelist%2C\_Groombridge\_Hill%2C\_Old\_Groombridge\_%28NHLE\_Code\_1240708%29.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Christ Church**Goudhurst
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KKni8cADnYMNbqUb7)1839–1841[1338690](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1338690)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Christ\_Church%2C\_Kilndown.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Capel
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/3L2YVARbMD6Va8s4A)Described as “lately rebuilt” in 1798[1261437](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1261437)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/All\_Saint%27s\_Church%2C\_Tudeley\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1738713.jpg/1280px-All\_Saint%27s\_Church%2C\_Tudeley\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1738713.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Dunstan**Cranbrook
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fNNzhJ9j2STN9zdq6)Late 13th century foundation, restored c. 1863[1099931](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1099931)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/St\_Dunstan%27s%2C\_Cranbrook%2C\_interior.JPG/1280px-St\_Dunstan%27s%2C\_Cranbrook%2C\_interior.JPG"> /caption\]
**Church of St Laurence**Hawkhurst
[https://maps.app.goo.gl/DVLzspWiLepzBtoAA" target="\_blank" rel="noopener">]()14th and mid-15th century[1120819](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1120819)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/St\_Laurence%27s\_Church%2C\_The\_Moor%2C\_Hawkhurst%2C\_Kent\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1208934.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Margaret**Horsmonden
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fWk16ZKPvf17jKDc8)14th century[1087022](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1087022)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/St\_Margaret%2C\_Horsmonden%2C\_interior.JPG/1280px-St\_Margaret%2C\_Horsmonden%2C\_interior.JPG"> Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Martin of Tours**Speldhurst
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fWk16ZKPvf17jKDc8)14th century[1074896](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1074896)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/67/St\_Martin\_of\_Tours%27\_Church%2C\_Ashurst\_Road%2C\_Ashurst.JPG/1280px-St\_Martin\_of\_Tours%27\_Church%2C\_Ashurst\_Road%2C\_Ashurst.JPG"> Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Goudhurst
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fWk16ZKPvf17jKDc8)13th to 15th century[1338671](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1338671)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/St\_Mary%2C\_Goudhurst%2C\_west\_front.JPG/1280px-St\_Mary%2C\_Goudhurst%2C\_west\_front.JPG"> Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Lamberhurst
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/W991YXCMt85MPaRC9)12th century[1084519](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1084519)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/Lamberhurst%2C\_St\_Mary.JPG/1280px-Lamberhurst%2C\_St\_Mary.JPG"> Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Thomas à Becket**Capel
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/PnrpRcP761b7sEXKA)Norman origins[1262867](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1262867)
[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Church_of_St._Thomas_a_Becket%2C_Capel_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1795312.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Finchcocks**Goudhurst Finchcocks
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/JKCqSpLUc3otZGhb6)1725[1318935](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1318935)
[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/Finchcocks_4.JPG/1280px-Finchcocks_4.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Garden Walls and Features of the Terraced Garden (Including Ivy Cottage) Approximately 30 Metres North of Groombridge Place**Speldhurst
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/v5Ub6rQVR52uB9J57)17th century[1240706](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1240706)
[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Groombridge_Place%2C_formal_gardens_2.jpg/1280px-Groombridge_Place%2C_formal_gardens_2.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Groombridge Place**Speldhurst
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/U8CQQGAU12Ur8za37)1652–1674[1260959](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1260959)
[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Groombridge_Place%2C_Groombridge_Hill%2C_Groombridge%2C_East_Sussex_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1435128.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Groombridge Place Moat, Walls and Bridge Including the West Gateway and Cottage on the North Bridge**Speldhurst
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fuocnwUa4CXcgZKr7)17th century[1260960](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1260960)
[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/Groombridge02.jpg/1920px-Groombridge02.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Matfield House**Matfield
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/U2TbRPKMii9x3QRJ9)1738[1250644](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1250644)
[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Matfield_House_and_Stables-geograph.org-1250647.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Old Church of St Peter**Pembury
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DDWSXQ2GGUcujHPm8)Norman[1254444](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1254444)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/St\_Peter%2C\_Pembury\_Old\_Church%2C\_Kent\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_323929.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Old Wilsley**Cranbrook
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xxnf3hMc2YjrS1X27)Late 14th and early 15th century[1338663](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1338663)ttps://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Old-Wilsley.webp"> Historic England
**Parish Church of All Saints**Brenchley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/tk13xQDsBV9xAiop9)13th century[1249609](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1249609)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/All\_Saints%2C\_Brenchley\_from\_south\_west.JPG/1280px-All\_Saints%2C\_Brenchley\_from\_south\_west.JPG"> Wikimedia Commons
**Scotney Castle with Courtyards and Garden Terrace**Lamberhurst
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DDWSXQ2GGUcujHPm8)1837–1844[1336699](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1336699)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ab/Scotney\_Castle\_with\_white\_wisteria.JPG/1280px-Scotney\_Castle\_with\_white\_wisteria.JPG"> Wikimedia Commons
**Somerhill**Capel
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iyLPZot6PzxsG7adA)1611–1613[1253489](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1253489)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Somerhill\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_191792.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Stable Block immediately North East of Matfield House**Matfield
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iACPiYLU9Tv9W6E27)1736[1250646](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1250646)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Matfield\_House\_and\_Stables-geograph.org-1250647.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**The Church of King Charles the Martyr**Tunbridge Wells
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/SQXayrPNtJ7Q7X9n6)1676–1684[1084478](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1084478)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/King\_Charles\_the\_Martyr%27s\_Church%2C\_Mount\_Sion%2C\_Tunbridge\_Wells.JPG/1280px-King\_Charles\_the\_Martyr%27s\_Church%2C\_Mount\_Sion%2C\_Tunbridge\_Wells.JPG"> Wikimedia Commons
**The Ruins of Old Scotney Castle**Lamberhurst
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/SQXayrPNtJ7Q7X9n6)1378[1085287](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1085287)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/The\_Ruins\_Of\_Old\_Scotney\_Castle.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Tower and Walls 30 Yards East of the West Range at Sissinghurst Castle**Cranbrook
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ACUh2GA4VLeAwNi8A)c. 1570[1084163](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1084163)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/52/Vita%27s\_tower.jpg/960px-Vita%27s\_tower.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Union Mill**Cranbrook
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ACUh2GA4VLeAwNi8A)1814[1356175](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1356175)ttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Cranbrook\_windmill\_1.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**West Range at Sissinghurst Castle**Cranbrook
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/LzJ1L5CMAnu85t8p8)c. 1490[1346285](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1346285)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Sissinghurst_Castle_%2820%29.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Kent](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-kent)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30128
**Categories:** Kent
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Thanet](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-thanet/)
**Published:** July 4, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Thanet_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Thanet_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Thanet, Kent.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Thanet_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Thanet_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Thanet shown within Kent
Wikimedia Commons
The local government district of Thanet is one of the thirteen district authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Kent.{{sfnp|ZTG2GD2L}}
The authority contains 11 of the Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Kent. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image**="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary**Minster
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/s3zDA1ZMZdNqYqTf6)11th century[1224116](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1224116)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/St_Mary_the_Virgin_Church%2C_Minster.jpg)p-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
="#abb8c3">**Church of Saint Mary Magdalene**Monkton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/s3zDA1ZMZdNqYqTf6)Late 12th century[1224791](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1224791)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Church_of_St._Mary_Magdelene%2C_Monkton.jpg)p-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
="#abb8c3">**Church of St Nicholas**St Nicholas at Wade
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xscnKAQsvV12ck9w6)12th century[1225043](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1225043)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/The_Church_of_St_Nicholas_-_geograph.org.uk_-_355117.jpg)p-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
="#abb8c3">**Church of St Augustine of England (Roman Catholic) with Cloisters Attached**Ramsgate
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/q9qwmaRqZwynGZCbA)="vertical-align:top;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1845–1851[1281779](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1281779)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Ramsgate_-_St_Augustine%27s_RC_church.jpg)p-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
="#abb8c3">**Church of St George**Ramsgate
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/r1Q6k23ByGGTCYgF7)Henry Hemsley1824–1827[1085430](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1085430)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/St_George%27s_Church%2C_Ramsgate.jpg)p-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
="#abb8c3">**Church of St Laurence**Ramsgate
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/gAqyYbPkCtSVG8j8A)11th century[1336662](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1336662)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/St-Laurence.webp)p-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Historic England
="#abb8c3">**Minster Abbey**Minster
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/N86myA73hvcBcEBk6)11th and 12th century[1223807](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1223807)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Minster-Abbey.webp)p-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Historic England
="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of St John the Baptist**Margate
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/J9yDJTFSH3vSJbnWA)Mid to late 12th century[1351103](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1351103)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/The_parish_church_of_St._John_the_Baptist%2C_Margate_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1209900.jpg)p-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
="#abb8c3">**St Edwards**Ramsgate
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/HhBdSvcboNFxFxhy5)="vertical-align:top;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1849[1086095](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1086095)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Ramsgate_-_St_Edwards.jpg)p-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
="#abb8c3">**The Grange**Ramsgate
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/oZsMjdXs2X15ZNeo9)="vertical-align:top;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1843–1844[1203285](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1203285)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/The_Grange%2C_Ramsgate_1.jpg/1280px-The_Grange%2C_Ramsgate_1.jpg)p-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**The Grotto**Margate
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/q9YigtPrpiTL1gnaA)Early 19th century[1341537](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1341537)[](
**Categories:** Kent
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Gravesham](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-gravesham/)
**Published:** July 4, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/Gravesham_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Gravesham_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Gravesham, Kent.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/Gravesham_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Gravesham_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Gravesham shown within Kent
Wikimedia Commons
The local government district of Gravesham is one of the thirteen district authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Kent.{{sfnp|ZTG2GD2L}}
The borough contains 10 of the Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Kent. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Mary**bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Higham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/W82JNPRHkqn8Ucr9A)bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Saxonbb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1350225](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1350225)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/The_Church_at_Church_Street_-_geograph.org.uk_-_48185.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Cobham College**Cobham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DwhQrspJAvEHS2wE6)Possibly Henry YveleLate 16th centurybb8c3;padding-top:6px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1096317](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096317)bb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Cobham_-_geograph.org.uk_-_429739.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Cobham Hall (including Kitchen and Stable Court)**bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Cobham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xqh97vWkPmXUKDnr6)bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1584 onwardsbb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1095053](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1095053)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/Cobham_Hall_9117.JPG/1280px-Cobham_Hall_9117.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Gadshill Place**bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Higham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/c1ZMkg2ywRe5uV2G8)bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1779bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1049037](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1049037)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Gadshillplace.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Luddesdown Court**bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Luddesdown
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KkdjhLGU5WEkqqvi6)bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Probably early 13th centurybb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1096343](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096343)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Luddesdown_Church_and_Luddesdown_Court_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1101848.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Nurstead Court**bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Meopham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/QvjengSv7GLmj7b98)bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">c. 1320bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1350239](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1350239)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Nurstead-Court.webp)Nurstead Court
**Parish Church of St Botolph**bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Northfleet
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/nbHmANwC95K3owRQ9)bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Early 14th centurybb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1054093](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1054093)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/St_Botolph%2C_Northfleet%2C_Kent_-_geograph.org.uk_-_326636.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Parish Church of St John the Baptist**bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Meopham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/qK7qz2RvjW4iQYck7)bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1320–1325bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1039866](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1039866)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Meopham_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_155181.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Parish Church of St Mary Magdalene**bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Cobham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZgmAXyhwijsuaY9M6)bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">c. 1200bb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1350259](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1350259)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/St_Mary_Magdalene%2C_Cobham.JPG/1280px-St_Mary_Magdalene%2C_Cobham.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**The [](https://maps.app.goo.gl/JKCqSpLUc3otZGhb6)rtical-align:top;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Cobham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/4giLJtKfWVcTGf7z8)**1783[1095055](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1095055)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/68/The_Darnley_Mausoleum.jpg/1920px-The_Darnley_Mausoleum.jpg)Wikimedia Commons[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/v5Ub6rQVR52uB9J57)"wp-block-heading">See also- [Grade I listed buildings in Kent](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-kent)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30121
**Categories:** Kent
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Dartford](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-dartford/)
**Published:** July 3, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Dartford_UK_locator_map.svg/1920px-Dartford_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Dartford, Kent.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Dartford_UK_locator_map.svg/1920px-Dartford_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Dartford shown within Kent
kgray;">Wikimedia Commons
The local government district of Dartford is one of the thirteen district authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Kent.{{sfnp|ZTG2GD2L}}
The borough contains 7 of the Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Kent. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St John the Baptist**Sutton-at-Hone and Hawley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WaGqnKpDC53bWRZo9)Early 14th century[1085811](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1085811)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/St._John_the_Baptist%2C_the_parish_church_of_Sutton_at_Hone_-_geograph.org.uk_-_966912.jpg)kgray;">Wikimedia Commons
[Church of St Margaret](https://engole.info/church-of-st-margaret-darenth/)Darenth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pU6kEuzHfPo3qi9G7)10th century[1085815](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1085815)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/St_Margaret%27s_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_194026.jpg)kgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Stone
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/jzJnzHqBekLrjHBc7)13th century[1085810](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1085810)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/The_church_of_St._Mary_the_Virgin%2C_Stone_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1409935.jpg)kgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Michael**Wilmington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/zKGTLzvEUtXJz1uE6)Pre-Conquest origins[1085789](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1085789)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/St_Michael_and_All_Angels_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1280509.jpg)kgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Nicholas**Southfleet
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/HqWaxSjiRBwWUBxM8)14th century[1337465](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1337465)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/St_Nicholas_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_145162.jpg)kgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of the Holy Trinity**Dartford
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/BvpftotpaCXPouH39)1220[1086029](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1086029)[](
**Categories:** Kent
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Trafford](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-trafford/)
**Published:** January 10, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Trafford_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Trafford_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford in Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Trafford_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Trafford_UK_locator_map.svg.png)nt-size:12px; color:#5b5b5b">Trafford shown within Greater Manchester
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Trafford in North West England is one of the ten metropolitan boroughs that make up the Metropolitan County of Greater Manchester.{{sfnp|W9CW4SJE}}
The borough contains six of the forty-eight Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Greater Manchester. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image**[**All Saints’ Church**](https://engole.info/all-saints-church-urmston)Urmston
[]()E. W.Pugin1867–1868[1067879](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1067879)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d4/All_saints_church_urmston.jpg/960px-All_saints_church_urmston.jpg)nt-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
[**Dunham Massey Hall**](https://engole.info/dunham-massey-hall)Dunham Massey
[](https://goo.gl/maps/5DeFqEPJ8HR2LbmPA)1732–1740[1356512](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1356512)al-align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Dunham_Massey_Hall_July_2013.png/1920px-Dunham_Massey_Hall_July_2013.png)nt-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
[**Dunham Massey carriage house**](https://engole.info/dunham-massey-hall)Dunham Massey
[](https://goo.gl/maps/5DeFqEPJ8HR2LbmPA)1721[1067942](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1067942)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Dunham_Massey_Carriage_Hall_July_2013.png/1920px-Dunham_Massey_Carriage_Hall_July_2013.png)nt-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
[**Dunham Massey stables**](https://engole.info/dunham-massey-hall)Dunham Massey
[](https://goo.gl/maps/5DeFqEPJ8HR2LbmPA)1721[1356495](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1356495)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/Dunham_Massey_Stables_July_2013.png/1920px-Dunham_Massey_Stables_July_2013.png)nt-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
[**Royd House**](https://engole.info/royd-house)Hale
[](https://goo.gl/maps/Sk5mvBPhxrkrpuvb8)al-align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Edgar Wood1916[1067922](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1067922)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/roydehousehale4.jpg)nt-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
[**St Werburgh’s Church**](https://engole.info/st-werburghs-church-warburton)Warburton
[](https://goo.gl/maps/agPFJMPfbWAK4EXL8)c. 14th century[1067865](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1067865)[](
**Categories:** Greater Manchester
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Pigeon Tower, Rivington](https://engole.info/pigeon-tower-rivington/)
**Published:** August 4, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Pigeon-Tower-Rivington.webp[/pimage]Grade II listed tower built in Rivington Gardens in Lancashire, presented by William Lever as a birthday present to his wife in 1910.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Pigeon-Tower-Rivington.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/mfeUPNAuSsiZ3CTv6}}|Hisroric England
The Gothic style Pigeon Tower in Rivington Gardens, Lancashire, originally known as the Lookout Tower and then Dovecote Tower, was built by R. Atkinson to a design by the landscape architect Thomas Mawson, for the soap magnate William Lever. Completed in about 1910, Lever is said to have given it to his wife Elizabeth Ellen as a birthday present. She supposedly used the top floor as a sewing room, while the lower floors housed ornamental doves and pigeons. The wall adjoining the tower was built to house white doves.{{sfnp|4CRU4C6A}}{{sfnp|YVAWE66L}}
Following Lever’s death in 1925, his Rivington estate was purchased by [John Magee](https://engole.info/magee-marshall-company), and after Magee’s death in 1939 was acquired by Liverpool Corporation. In 1974 the site passed to the North West Water Authority as a result of local government reorganisation, by which time the Pigeon Tower was little more than a “ruined shell”; it was renovated at a cost of £5,000 in 1975.{{sfnp|YVAWE66L}}
The Pigeon Tower was designated a Grade II listed building in 1987.{{sfnp|YVAWE66L}}
## Architecture
The tower is built in rock-faced gritstone with stone dressings, and has a steeply pitched stone slate roof. It is square in plan, with an attached semi-circular stair tower to its west. The three-storey tower has a basement entrance on its south side.{{sfnp|YVAWE66L}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30303
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Magee Marshall & Company](https://engole.info/magee-marshall-company/)
**Published:** June 26, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/CROWN-HOTEL-AND-MAGEES.jpg[/pimage]Brewery operating from the Crown Brewery in Bolton, Lancashire, England from 1888 until being taken over by Greenall Whitley in 1958.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/CROWN-HOTEL-AND-MAGEES.jpg)Crown Brewery and public house, 1938
bolton.worktown.co.uk
Magee Marshall & Company operated from the Crown Brewery in Bolton, Lancashire, England from 1888 until being taken over by Greenall Whitley in 1958.
Bolton-born David Magee was the proprietor of the Good Samaritan brewhouse in Derby Street in 1858. In about 1866 he moved to the Crown Hotel and founded the Crown Brewery on land at the junction of Derby Street and Cricket Street. David Magee died in 1875, after which the business was run by his sons Thomas, John and Joseph. The brewery was extended that same year. In 1885 the Magees took over Marshall’s Brewery in Bolton. Magee, Marshall & Company was established in 1888.{{sfnp|SEJZEC6V}}
In 1893 a new brewery designed by William Bradford{{sfnp|T33223NS|158}} was built in the “traditional brewery style”, with a five-storey section for gravity processing and an ornamental tower.{{sfnp|IKA4HN3I|83}} Until the 1950s the company transported water, high in dissolved calcium carbonate, in tankers by rail from Burton on Trent for the brewing process.{{sfnp|IB7TK3JP|16}}
The company bought the Wigan Brewery in 1894, and bought or built many public houses in holiday resorts including Blackpool and Southport. In 1910 the company acquired the Alexandra Brewery in Bolton from John Halliwell & Son.{{sfnp|SEJZEC6V}} In 1958 Magee, Marshall was taken over by Greenall Whitley of Warrington, who continued brewing at the Crown Brewery until 1970. The brewery was demolished in 1984.{{sfnp|SEJZEC6V}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2904
**Categories:** Brewery, Greater Manchester
---
### [Rivington Gardens](https://engole.info/rivington-gardens/)
**Published:** November 4, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/7_Arch_Bridge%2C_Rivington_-_8136491268.jpg[/pimage]Rivington Gardens cover about 45 acres of the steep west-facing slopes of Rivington Moor at the edge of the West Pennine Moors in Lancashire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/7_Arch_Bridge%2C_Rivington_-_8136491268.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/KERnXrE4XFHwUTYz6}}
Seven-arch bridge in Rivington Gardens
Rivington Gardens cover about {{convert|45|acre}} of the steep west-facing slopes of [Rivington](https://engole.info/rivington) Moor, at the edge of the West Pennine Moors in Lancashire. Above the gardens is the summit of [Rivington Pike](https://engole.info/rivington-pike/) and its landmark tower, and below is [Lever Park](https://engole.info/lever-park-rivington/), on the east bank of the [Lower Rivington Reservoir](https://engole.info/rivington-reservoirs/) in the valley to the west. The gardens are a historic designed landscape produced for William Lever by [Thomas Hayton Mawson](https://engole.info/thomas-hayton-mawson/) in the early 20th century.
The gardens have been designated Grade II by English Heritage for their importance as one of three private gardens by Mawson for William Lever. They are in a designed landscape that exploits the natural environment. Mawson worked alongside James Pulham & Son, landscape designers, to construct the Japanese-style garden, reflecting the fashion of the time; its remains contain several listed structures. After receiving a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the gardens are being restored.
## History
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Rivington_Gardens_design.jpg)Mawson’s plan for the gardens
Wikimedia Commons
The industrialist and philanthropist William Lever\[a\]Subsequently Lord Leverhulme bought the Rivington estate in 1899, and developed part of it next to the Lower Rivington Reservoir as Lever Park. The estate included the hall, which he leased to tenants, but for weekend visits and shooting parties in 1901 he built Roynton Cottage, a single-storey wooden bungalow on the hillside below the Pike tower. It was a prefabricated structure designed by an old school friend, [Jonathan Simpson](https://engole.info/jonathan-simpson/ "Jonathan Simpson"). The bungalow was destroyed in an arson attack in 1913 by Edith Rigby, a suffragette from Preston, but Lever rebuilt it in stone on a grand scale with a circular ballroom, a glass-roofed pergola and winter garden.{{sfnp|JF5KSG5B}}
Bolton brewer [John Magee](https://engole.info/magee-marshall-company/) bought the house and gardens after Lever’s death in 1925, and after Magee’s death in 1939 Liverpool Corporation – who owned the Rivington Reservoirs – acquired the house and gardens. The gardens were neglected and structures in the gardens fell into decay. In 1948 the bungalow and four entrance lodges around the estate were demolished and the gardens were opened to the public. In 1974 the site passed to the North West Water Authority, which was in turn succeeded by United Utilities. Rivington Gardens were added to the Historic Parks and Gardens Register at Grade II on 1 April 1986.{{sfnp|JF5KSG5B}}
## Development
The gardens, covering {{convert|45|acre}} on the hillside around Roynton Cottage, were developed after Lever met Mawson in 1905. Between 1906 and 1922 they collaborated on designs for three gardens.\[b\]The others are The Hill in Hampstead, London, begun in 1906, and Thornton Manor, Thornton Hough on the Wirral. Robert Atkinson drew illustrated plans of the gardens for the journal “Civic Art” in 1911. Others involved in the designs included Mawson’s son, Edward Prentice Mawson and James Pulham & Son.{{sfnp|JF5KSG5B}} The gardens were financed from Lever’s fortune from soap manufacture and their heyday was in the early 1920s.{{sfnp|FN8PBGRV}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Pigeon_Tower_in_Rivington_-_geograph.org.uk_-_501205.jpg)Pigeon Tower
Wikimedia Commons
The gardens, divided by Roynton Lane, conform closely to Mawson’s 1912 plan. Lever’s bungalow was built on level ground, with pleasure grounds on the west side where the steep hillside is planted with trees, and to the east is an area with lawns and lakes. The garden areas, shelters and classical-style pavilions are linked by terrace paths and stone steps. Several garden structures survive and many have listed status. The most prominent is the French Gothic-style [Pigeon Tower](https://engole.info/pigeon-tower-rivington) to the north-east of the bungalow site. A pair of stone staircases lead to two stone archways that connect with more steps down to where a former swimming pool/boating lake was situated north of the bungalow in the Italian Gardens. One side of the lake has rockwork cliffs and a waterfall overlooked by an arcaded loggia which has steps up to a rooftop viewpoint. A balustraded walk leads to steps up to a summer house and the remains of an arcaded pavilion. More steps lead eastwards to the Pigeon House. Other paths lead south along a terrace to the Great Lawn which is overlooked by a summer house with a balustraded viewing platform on the roof. A tennis court was built in 1906 along with another summer house. A flight of stone steps, the Long Walk, leads uphill connecting the lower terraces to the upper drive.{{sfnp|JF5KSG5B}}
Lake in the Japanese Garden before restoration
Wikimedia Commons
James Pulham & Son, landscape architects, were responsible for the Japanese Gardens between the kitchen garden and Roynton Lane in 1921. Its lake is fed by a waterfall and steep rockwork cliffs on its west side. The bases are all that remain of three Japanese-style pavilions or tea houses. The Ravine, a steep gorge at the southern end of the site, was also created in 1921 when streams were diverted to fill the lake in the Japanese Garden. They continue westward forming a series of cascades and waterfalls. West of Roynton Lane the steep wooded slope has paths running along terraces formed in the natural woodland. An ornamental arched footbridge designed by Lever crosses Roynton Lane.{{sfnp|JF5KSG5B}}
The kitchen garden has a glasshouse, a bothy, potting sheds, a store, small stable, fernery and a boiler room. Its compartments are separated by partially destroyed stone walls.{{sfnp|JF5KSG5B}}
## Restoration
A partnership of Groundwork Cheshire Lancashire and Merseyside, United Utilities and Rivington Heritage Trust was awarded £3.4 million by the Heritage Lottery fund for a restoration project to conserve the terraced gardens, which contain eleven listed structures. The project also aims to improve the wildlife habitats and provide a self-supporting visitor attraction.{{sfnp|FN8PBGRV}}{{sfnp|FFRJA782}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Subsequently Lord Leverhulme b The others are The Hill in Hampstead, London, begun in 1906, and Thornton Manor, Thornton Hough on the Wirral.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22338
**Categories:** Garden, Lancashire
---
### [Rivington](https://engole.info/rivington/)
**Published:** July 7, 2020
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Rivington_Village_Green_and_stocks.JPG[/pimage]Village in the Borough of Chorley, to the northwest of Bolton, on the fringe of the West Pennine Moors.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Rivington_Village_Green_and_stocks.JPG)map
https://goo.gl/maps/MX3jt1oHVrzXLk7S7}}
Village green and [stocks](https://engole.info/stocks)
Rivington, a village and sparsely populated [civil parish](https://engole.info/civil-parish/) in the Borough of Chorley, Lancashire, is at the foot of [Rivington Pike](https://engole.info/rivington-pike/) on the western fringe of the West Pennine Moors. The village is about {{convert|6|mi|r=1}} southeast of Chorley and about {{convert|8.5|mi}} northwest of Bolton.
Life in the Middle Ages centred on the families who owned the manor in what was an isolated rural community. Agriculture, hand-loom weaving, quarrying and mining occupied the few inhabitants until the middle of the 19th century. A chapel built before 1541 was replaced by the present church in 1666, and by 1703 Nonconformists had built a Presbyterian church, now the Unitarian Chapel. The grammar school was founded by charter of Queen Elizabeth I in 1556.
Construction of the [Rivington Reservoir Chain](https://engole.info/rivington-reservoirs/) for Liverpool Corporation in the mid-19th century led to a decrease in the population when farms were cleared, the valley flooded and property in the western part of the village demolished. William Lever bought the Rivington estate at the turn of the 20th century and used his wealth to renovate the old barns and create a large public park.
## Geography
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Rivington_Pike_from_Georges_Lane.jpg)Rivington Pike
Wikimedia Commons
Rivington covers {{convert|2538|acre}} of the [moorland](https://engole.info/moorland/ "Moorland") fringe between the high unenclosed moorland of [Winter Hill](https://engole.info/winter-hill/) in the West Pennine Moors and the fields below. The landscape is characterised by marginal pastures with isolated farmsteads, and disused coal mines and quarries scattered across the hillsides. An extensive network of footpaths provides public access.{{sfnp|49AYVI7W|47}} The reservoir valleys are dominated by expanses of water and the Victorian gothic architecture of the dams and embankments surrounded by woodland.{{sfnp|49AYVI7W|65}}
Rivington Pike rises to the east and to the west is the flatter land of the Lancashire Plain. Horwich and Bolton are to the south and [Anglezarke](https://engole.info/anglezarke/) Moor and Yarrow Reservoir to the north. To the west of the village is the wide shallow valley containing the Anglezarke and the Upper and Lower Rivington Reservoirs. The underlying geology is Millstone Grit overlaid with coal measures. Gritstone was quarried for building stone in the area. Around Rivington are chalybeate springs and in Dean Wood is a waterfall with a descent of {{convert|32|ft|r=1}}.{{sfnp|5U2RBDVB|676-679}} The River Douglas has its source on Winter Hill and flows in a southwesterly direction, forming part of Rivington’s southern boundary. The River Yarrow, the source of which is also on Winter Hill, forms the northern boundary.{{sfnp|SQ33CXE4|286–294}} The township covers {{convert|2768|acre}},{{sfnp|5U2RBDVB|676-679}} the reservoirs and filter beds occupy {{convert|275|acre}}.{{sfnp|WNKGFKHF|40}}
## Governance
Rivington was a [township](https://engole.info/township/) in the [ecclesiastical parish](https://engole.info/ancient-parish/) of Bolton le Moors, in the Salford [hundred](https://engole.info/hundred-shire-division) in Lancashire.{{sfnp|9DA2MQV2|235-243}} It became part of the Chorley Poor Law Union, formed in 1837, and took responsibility for the administration and funding of the Poor Law in that area.{{sfnp|3C7ACSTT}} In 1866 Rivington became a civil parish, and was part of the Chorley Rural Sanitary District from 1875 to 1894, and of Chorley Rural District from 1894 to 1974.{{sfnp|HKWYWF6K}}
Since 1974 the interests of the Rivington civil parish have been represented by its parish council,{{sfnp|WCBEKWU3}} and councillors who sit on Chorley Council{{sfnp|2JR6KXSW}} and Lancashire County Council.{{sfnp|BZMDCK66}} Rivington is in the Chorley Parliamentary constituency.{{sfnp|SJH4DWUX}}
## Demographics
{{census|E04005157}}
As at the 2011 Census, Rivington has a population of 109, with a median age of 48 years. The area occupies {{convert|1120.67|ha}}, giving a population density of 0.1 persons per hectare.
## History
Rivington’s name is made up of three elements: the first, *hrēof* is from the Old English meaning rough or rugged; the second, *ing*, is a placename forming suffix that has crept in over the years; the last is the Old English *tūn*, a farmstead, estate or settlement. Together they indicate a farmstead or settlement at the rough or rugged place.{{sfnp|9NW8JJFC|68–69}} Another suggestion is a place at the rowan trees.{{sfnp|GMBKIP5V|142}} Rivington was recorded as Rowinton, Rawinton, and Revington in 1202; Ruhwinton in 1212, Riuiton in 1226, Rowynton and Rouynton in 1278, Roynton in 1332, Rouyngton in 1400, Revyngton although rare, and Rovington and Ryvington from the 16th century.{{sfnp|SQ33CXE4|286–294}}{{sfnp|9NW8JJFC|68–69}}
The area has been occupied since at least the Bronze Age.{{sfnp|F7Z3MW2G|19}} Arrowheads, a flint knife, scrapers and the remains of cremations were excavated from a cairn at [Noon Hill](https://engole.info/noon-hill/) on Rivington Moor in 1958 and 1963–1964.{{sfnp|RMHDJ4ZF}} The name Coblowe on the eastern bank of the Lower Rivington Reservoir derives from the Old English *hlaw*, a hill, which denoted an ancient barrow or burial place.{{sfnp|GMBKIP5V|xv}} Evidence for an Anglo-Saxon settlement is found in the Rivington and Coblowe placenames.
### Manor
In 1212 Alexander de Pilkington held in thanage\[a\]Historical Anglo-Saxon term for land held by a thane (superseded by baron or knight), who held lands of the king by military service.{{sfnp|3FFN6KC6}} six [oxgangs](https://engole.info/oxgang/), most of the land in the Manor of Rivington. The village in 1290 was home to a junior branch of the Pilkington family, who held it until 1611.{{sfnp|SQ33CXE4|286–294}} Robert Pilkington extended the original [Rivington Hall](https://engole.info/rivington-hall/) in the 15th century. His son, Richard, rebuilt the chapel, and his son James, Bishop of Durham from 1560 to 1575, founded Rivington Grammar School.{{sfnp|F7Z3MW2G|19}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Rivington_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_96701.jpg)Rivington Hall
Wikimedia Commons
After the death of George Pilkington in 1597, the estate passed to his son, Robert who died in 1605, but by then it was in decline.{{sfnp|SQ33CXE4|286–294}} In 1611, the Pilkingtons sold the estate to Robert Lever and Thomas Breres. In 1729 John Andrews of Little Lever bought the Breres’ share. He was responsible for building the Pike Tower in 1733.{{sfnp|BMH98DH3}} His descendant, Robert Andrews, partially rebuilt Rivington Hall in red brick in the Georgian style in 1774.{{sfnp|GMBKIP5V|51–52}} After his death the property passed to his sister Hannah Maria Andrews who had married Robert Fletcher of Liverpool. Their daughter, Lucy, married Woodhouse Crompton in 1834 and their descendants remained resident at the hall until 1910. In 1900 the Cromptons sold their interest in the manor and estate of 2,169 acres to William Hesketh Lever.{{sfnp|SQ33CXE4|286–294}}
### Industry
Mill Hill and a water mill were mentioned in a grant in 1544.{{sfnp|SQ33CXE4|286–294}} A smithy and the foundations of what could have been a water mill and mill ponds, were shown on the 1848 first edition Ordnance Survey map.{{sfnp|ZN7HFPUK}} Handloom weavers occupied Mill Hill and Pall Mall Cottages.{{sfnp|F7Z3MW2G|19}}
The village grew around around the green but most of its inhabitants were employed in agriculture on scattered local farms, hand loom weaving in their own homes, working in the local quarries or the small coal mines on Winter Hill.{{sfnp|5U2RBDVB|676-679}}{{sfnp|SQ33CXE4|286–294}} Coal was mined on a very small scale. Nicholas Fish, Brooker and Company’s coal pit on Wilders Moor was recorded on the 1869 and 1880 mines lists.{{sfnp|Z42BN2RQ}}{{sfnp|CTWHL54H}} in 1896 the Rivington Moor Colliery employed two workers mining coal from the Mountain coal seam for their own or local use.{{sfnp|BSAN2YKP}} At Tiger’s Clough, in the River Douglas Valley, the Knoll Bleachworks and a calico-printing works were operating before 1800.{{sfnp|SQ33CXE4|286–294}}
### Reservoirs
In the 1850s the Rivington Reservoir Chain was built to provide Liverpool with safe, clean water.{{sfnp|F7Z3MW2G|19}} Thomas Hawksley designed five reservoirs, a water treatment works and the {{convert|17|mi|adj=on}} pipeline to storage reservoirs at Prescot. The Rake Brook and Lower Roddlesworth Reservoirs were connected to the lower reservoirs by the Goit, a man-made channel. The scheme was expanded to include High Bullough Reservoir, and further expanded by the Upper Roddlesworth Reservoir.{{sfnp|BZMI73BU|11}}{{sfnp|UT99RBST|221}} Yarrow Reservoir, on which work began in 1867, was designed by Thomas Duncan, the Liverpool Borough Engineer.{{sfnp|42FDZFBZ|44}}
In 1900 Liverpool Corporation attempted to acquire the area of the Rivington watershed to safeguard the water supply, and proposed demolishing the entire village. The Liverpool Corporation Act 1902 protected some buildings{{sfnp|8MMX4VRQ}} but others were acquired by compulsory purchase including the Black-a-Moors Head public house and New Hall, which were demolished between 1902 and 1905. The result was the small settlement that has remained largely unchanged.
### Lever era
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Pigeon_Tower_in_Rivington_-_geograph.org.uk_-_501205.jpg)Pigeon tower
Wikimedia Commons
In 1902 the estate was compulsory purchased by Liverpool Corporation to protect the reservoir scheme. Lever was allowed to build Roynton Cottage, a single-storey wooden bungalow high on the hillside below Rivington Pike. He used it for weekend visits and entertaining until it was destroyed in an arson attack by Edith Rigby, a suffragette from Preston, on 8 July 1913.{{sfnp|JF5KSG5B}}\[b\]Phoebe Hesketh lived at Fisher House on the village green. She wrote a biography, *My Aunt Edith*, about Edith Rigby the suffragette, several volumes of poetry and two partly autobiographical books, *Rivington: the story of a village* and *Rivington: village of the mountain ash*.{{sfnp|FDS9LRYD}}{{sfnp|RHUD2JXJ}} Lever rebuilt the bungalow on a grander scale in stone and [Thomas Mawson](https://engole.info/thomas-hayton-mawson/) designed its {{convert|45|acre|adj=on}} gardens between 1905 and 1922.{{sfnp|SQ33CXE4|286–294}} [Lever’s private gardens](https://engole.info/rivington-gardens/) contained terraces and a pool, a Japanese lake and pagoda, Italian-style gardens, a seven-arched bridge and the [Pigeon Tower](https://engole.info/pigeon-tower-rivington), with Lady Leverhulme’s sewing room on the top floor.{{sfnp|YLKHFGHF|77–81}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/7_Arch_Bridge%2C_Rivington_-_8136491268.jpg)Seven-arch bridge in Rivington Gardens
Wikimedia Commons
The artist Alfred East spent the summer of 1909 at Roynton Cottage, to fulfil Lever’s commission of a series of paintings of the surrounding landscape, reservoirs, country park, village and the pike.{{sfnp|HJXTF9Q3}} Lever gave fifteen paintings to Bolton Art Gallery and others to Bolton School, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and the Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight. East gave two water colours, *A glimpse of Rivington Water* and *In Rivington Park* to Kettering Museum and Art Gallery. East’s oil painting *\[From\] Rivington Pike* was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1913.{{sfnp|HJXTF9Q3}} The Walker Art Galley holds a painting, *Rivington Valley* (1857), by Frederick William Hulme.{{sfnp|K39U346K}}
After Lever’s death Roynton Cottage was acquired by the Bolton brewer, John Magee. During the Second World War it was requisitioned to billet troops, and nissen huts were erected in the grounds. After the war the site was acquired by Liverpool Corporation, who decided to demolish it.{{sfnp|JF5KSG5B}}
Lever’s legacy is [Lever Park](https://engole.info/lever-park-rivington/), the designed landscape between the open moorland and the reservoirs which incorporates the village into its overall design and is “one of the largest and most impressive examples of landscape design in Edwardian England”. Lever donated the {{convert|364|acre|adj=on}} park to the people of his native Bolton. Under the terms of Liverpool Corporation’s compulsory purchase order, Lever laid out the park at his own expense and maintained it during his lifetime.{{sfnp|DEKX4USS|41–42}} In 1974 the park and gardens passed to the North West Water Authority from Liverpool Corporation, and to United Utilities on privatisation. They are maintained as a public country park, protected by rights afforded by the 1902 Act ensuring “free and uninterrupted enjoyment by the public”.{{sfnp|JF5KSG5B}} In 2016 the Rivington Heritage Trust and Groundwork Cheshire Lancashire and Merseyside were awarded £3.4 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund to conserve, repair and protect Rivington Gardens and remaining Grade II listed structures.{{sfnp|FFRJA782}}
## Religion and education
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Rivington_Church.JPG)Rivington Church
Wikimedia Commons
Rivington was a [chapelry](https://engole.info/chapel-of-ease) in the [ancient parish](https://engole.info/ancient-parish/) of Bolton le Moors. Its church is built on the site of an earlier chapel that was named in a deed by Margaret Pilkington and her son Robert in 1476. The chapelry covered Rivington and the surrounding areas. In 1628 a chapel was built by the local population “upon a little toft and quillet of land”, where divine service had been celebrated “for many years of antiquity”.{{sfnp|SQ33CXE4|286–294}} This chapel was rebuilt as [Rivington Church](https://engole.info/rivington-church/) in 1666 and was altered and restored in 1861.{{sfnp|EYWC5FC9}} [Rivington Unitarian Chapel](https://engole.info/rivington-unitarian-chapel/) was built in 1703 for the Presbyterians; it became Unitarian in the late 18th century.{{sfnp|V4Y5HMZV}}
Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter to Rivington Grammar School in 1566. The school opened in 1575 and was rebuilt in 1714. Blackrod Grammar School merged with it in 1875 and in 1882, renamed Rivington & Blackrod Grammar School, it moved to a site on the boundary with Horwich. Now Rivington and Blackrod High School.{{sfnp|CVMX5583}} Rivington Foundation Primary School occupies the old grammar school premises.{{sfnp|BAPRLMY2}}
## Sport
The Rivington Pike Fell Race, held on Easter Saturday, started from the Horwich railway works in 1892, but since 1930 starts from the park entrance at Lever Park Avenue. It attracts around 400 runners. The course is 3.25 miles long and has a 700-foot ascent.{{sfnp|GNW6E9I5}} The 2002 Commonwealth Games mountain biking competition was held around Rivington and Anglezarke.{{sfnp|GN52S68S}} The area is well used by hikers and hillwalkers.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Historical Anglo-Saxon term for land held by a thane (superseded by baron or knight), who held lands of the king by military service.{{sfnp|3FFN6KC6}} b Phoebe Hesketh lived at Fisher House on the village green. She wrote a biography, *My Aunt Edith*, about Edith Rigby the suffragette, several volumes of poetry and two partly autobiographical books, *Rivington: the story of a village* and *Rivington: village of the mountain ash*.{{sfnp|FDS9LRYD}}{{sfnp|RHUD2JXJ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22650
**Categories:** Lancashire, Parish, Village
---
### [George Arthur Ferguson, 6th Laird of Pitfour](https://engole.info/george-arthur-ferguson-6th-laird-of-pitfour/)
**Published:** July 24, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** 6th and final laird of the Pitfour estate in Aberdeenshire, the Blenheim of the North
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/George-Arthur-Ferguson.jpeg)George Arthur Ferguson
Pitfour – The Blenheim of the North
George Arthur Ferguson (17 March 1835 – 15 December 1924) was the sixth and final laird of the [Pitfour estate](https://engole.info/pitfour-estate/) in Aberdeenshire. He served in the military, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, but retired from his military career at a young age. Like his father, he lived a life of indulgence despite facing financial difficulties. As his debts accumulated the substantial Pitfour estate was decimated in failed attempts to fund his lifestyle.
Ferguson was sequestrated in 1909,\[a\]Sequestration is the legal process by which the income from an estate is diverted from the owner to a third party.{{sfnp|ZMKHJLJZ}} and died in December 1924.
## Family
George Arthur Ferguson was the youngest child and only son of [George Ferguson](https://engole.info/george-ferguson-5th-laird-of-pitfour/), the 5th laird of Pitfour, and his second wife Elizabeth Jane Rowley, the eldest daughter of Clotworthy Rowley, 1st Baron Langford and a niece of the Duke of Wellington.{{sfnp|PHT2KVSC|261}}{{sfnp|32ZKBJWY|133}}{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|43}} He was born on 17 March 1835 while his parents were living in London.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|43}}\[b\]Buchan gives the year of birth as 1834 on page 43 but states 1835 on page 47;{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|43, 47}} a photograph of Ferguson’s tombstone shows 1835.
Information regarding his education is sketchy with some inaccurate details circulated. Newspaper articles claimed he attended Eton and Sandhurst but the only confirmed record is his attendance at Harrow for one year, January to December 1850. Most of his youth was spent at Pitfour.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|47}}
In February 1861 he married Nina Maria Hood (4 September 1841{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|48}} – June 1923{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|53}}), the eldest daughter of Alexander Nelson Hood, 1st Viscount Bridport.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|48}}{{sfnp|BWD4RV9F}} The couple were betrothed in 1860; the marriage ceremony took place at Windsor Castle in the Chapel Royal. A large dowry made up of money and shares was paid to Ferguson by Nina’s parents.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|48}}
Shortly after their marriage Ferguson was posted to Canada where the first two – both boys – of their six children were born in 1862 and 1863. Two children, a boy and a girl, were born in London in 1864 and 1867 followed by another boy and a girl at Pitfour in 1873 and 1877.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|48-49}}
The couple had an itinerant lifestyle living in several different London houses until Ferguson inherited the Pitfour estate after the death of his father in 1867.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|48}}
## Career
A newspaper article from 1929 indicates Ferguson acted as Queen Victoria’s aide at Buckingham Palace from 1855 until 1860; this is not supported by official records although he is known to have had connections with the Palace.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|48}} Ferguson served in the Grenadier Guards, rising to the rank of captain. Promotion to Lieutenant Colonel was secured on 18 July 1862 during his posting in Canada which dated from towards the end of 1861 until 1864 when they returned to London.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|48}}{{sfnp|BWD4RV9F}} He secured the rank of captain on 30 November 1855 after undertaking active service in Crimea. Queen Victoria presented him with the Crimea medal commemorating the siege of Sebastopol although this award was made to all soldiers who participated but the presentation was not usually personally made by the sovereign.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|47}}\[c\]During the 19th century, military credentials could be purchased.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|47}}
Like his father, he retired from the military while in his twenties to lead a life of leisure.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|123}} He officially resigned his commission on 7 August 1867 less than six months after he inherited Pitfour despite having knowledge of the dire financial straits his father had left the estate in.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|49}}
## Pitfour
At the height of its development the estate had occupied 50 square miles (130 square kilometres), and was valued at £30 million.{{sfnp|GIMN5RKN}} When the sixth laird inherited it the estate was mortgaged for £250,000, despite the sale of a number of the lands originally included in it.{{sfnp|DA4WNFW3|213}} Together with what remained of the estate Ferguson received a lump sum of £100,000 supplemented by an annual income of £4,000.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|49}}
The new owners visited the mansion soon after they inherited it then spent the next twelve months commissioning renovations before it gradually became the main family residence. At the end of 1875, dry rot was discovered in the mansion rendering it uninhabitable for a year while repairs were carried out. Assets continued to be sold off to fund extravagances like vacations in France in 1880 and to cover the couple’s lavish lifestyles and gambling habits. Relationships with local villagers soured as disagreements arose concerning increased rents and a lack of maintenance; farmland showed the signs of neglect and was in a bad state making it a poor prospect for anyone to rent at the excessive fees demanded by Ferguson so much of the land was unworked.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|49}}
By 1883 the estate was listed as being just over 23,000 acres (93 square kilometres) with an income of £19,938.{{sfnp|4LAYVC7N|161}} By 1905 the couple’s combined fortune was assessed at a total of less than £10,000. Debts were still mounting and by 1909 a trust deed was registered with the entirety of what remained of the estate put up for sale.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|52}} It remained unsold until after the First World War, eventually being purchased by a speculator in 1926.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|53}}
## Death and legacy
On 15 December 1924, Ferguson died in Sussex at the residence of his son-in-law. He is buried in the same grave as his wife, who pre-deceased him, at Luton.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|53}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Sequestration is the legal process by which the income from an estate is diverted from the owner to a third party.{{sfnp|ZMKHJLJZ}} b Buchan gives the year of birth as 1834 on page 43 but states 1835 on page 47;{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|43, 47}} a photograph of Ferguson’s tombstone shows 1835. c During the 19th century, military credentials could be purchased.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|47}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3925
**Categories:** Landowner, Male, Scottish
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Little Moreton Hall](https://engole.info/little-moreton-hall/)
**Published:** May 10, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/LittleMoretonHall.jpg[/pimage]Moated half-timbered manor house 4.5 miles (7.2 km) southwest of Congleton in Cheshire, England, the earliest parts of which date from about 1504–1508.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/LittleMoretonHall.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/rZvG2EADwsyePy1i8}}
Little Moreton Hall’s south range, constructed in the mid-16th century. The weight of the third-storey glazed gallery, possibly added at a late stage of construction, has caused the lower floors to bow and warp.
Little Moreton Hall is a moated half-timbered manor house {{convert|4.5|mi}} southwest of Congleton in Cheshire, England. The earliest parts of the house were built for the prosperous Cheshire landowner William Moreton in about 1504–1508, and the remainder was constructed in stages by successive generations of the family until about 1610. The building is highly irregular, with three asymmetrical ranges forming a small, rectangular cobbled courtyard. A National Trust guidebook has described Little Moreton Hall as being “lifted straight from a fairy story, a gingerbread house”.{{sfnp|29HEEYLM|19}} The house’s top-heavy appearance, “like a stranded Noah’s Ark”, is due to the Long Gallery that runs the length of the south range’s upper floor.{{sfnp|LPJUCEZZ|226}}
The house remained in the possession of the Moreton family for almost 450 years, until ownership was transferred to the National Trust in 1938. Little Moreton Hall and its sandstone bridge across the moat are recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building,{{sfnp|TNHKZ3GQ}}{{sfnp|HTV9SQNI}} and the ground on which Little Moreton Hall stands is protected as a Scheduled Monument.{{sfnp|HTV9SQNI}}\[a\]Little Moreton Hall is built on the site of a much earlier medieval building, the remains of which are believed to have survived in the ground under the present house.{{sfnp|HTV9SQNI}} The house has been fully restored and is open to the public from April to December each year.
At its greatest extent, in the mid-16th century, the Little Moreton Hall estate occupied an area of {{convert|1360|acre}} and contained a cornmill, orchards, gardens, and an iron bloomery with water-powered hammers. The gardens lay abandoned until their 20th-century re-creation. As there were no surviving records of the layout of the original knot garden it was replanted according to a pattern published in the 17th century.
## History
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Great_Hall%2C_Little_Moreton_Hall.jpg)The Great Hall, looking west towards the screens passage
Wikimedia Commons
The name Moreton probably derives from the Old English *mor* meaning “marshland” and *tune*, meaning “farm”, thus literally “a farm at a marsh”. The area where Little Moreton Hall stands today was named Little Moreton to distinguish it from the nearby township of Moreton-cum-Alcumlow, or Greater Moreton. The Moreton family’s roots in Little Moreton can be traced to the marriage in 1216 of Lettice de Moreton to Sir Gralam de Lostock, who inherited land there; succeeding generations of the de Lostocks adopted the name of de Moreton.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|28}} Gralam de Lostock’s grandson, Gralam de Moreton, acquired valuable land from his marriages to Alice de Lymme and then Margery de Kingsley. Another grandson, John de Moreton, married heiress Margaret de Macclesfield in 1329, adding further to the estate.{{sfnp|2WDVD243|177-178}} The family also purchased land cheaply after the Black Death epidemic of 1348.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|2}} Four generations after John de Moreton, the family owned sixteen messuages, a mill and {{convert|700|acre}} of land, comprising 560 acres of ploughland, 80 acres of pasture, 20 acres of meadow, 20 acres of wood and 20 acres of moss.{{sfnp|2WDVD243|179-179}} The Dissolution of the Monasteries in the mid-16th century provided further opportunities for the Moretons to add to their estate,{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|2}} and by the early years of Elizabeth I’s reign, William Moreton II owned two water mills and 1,360 acres (550 ha) of land valued at £24 7s 4d, including 500 acres of ploughland, 500 acres of pasture and 100 acres of turbary.{{sfnp|2WDVD243|180}}\[b\]Turbary is the legal right to cut turf or peat for fuel.
Little Moreton Hall first appears in the historical record in 1271, but the present building dates from the early 16th century.{{sfnp|HTV9SQNI}}\[c\]Many older sources, such as Pevsner & Hubbard (1971), suggest that building work began in c. 1450, or towards the end of the 15th century, but tree-ring analysis shows that the earliest parts of the house were built in the first decade of the 16th century.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|28}}{{sfnp|WZQQTVJ2|433}} The north range is the earliest part of the house. Built between 1504 and 1508 for William Moreton (died 1526), it comprises the Great Hall and the northern part of the east wing.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|9-15}} A service wing to the west, built at the same time but subsequently replaced, gave the early house an H-shaped floor plan.{{sfnp|WZQQTVJ2|433}} The east range was extended to the south in about 1508 to provide additional living quarters, as well as housing the Chapel and the Withdrawing Room.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|9-15}} In 1546 William Moreton’s son, also called William (c. 1510–1563), replaced the original west wing with a new range housing service rooms on the ground floor as well as a porch, gallery, and three interconnected rooms on the first floor, one of which had access to a garderobe.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|28}} In 1559 William had a new floor inserted at gallery level in the Great Hall,\[d\]The floor had been removed by 1807.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|9}} and added the two large bay windows looking onto the courtyard, built so close to each other that their roofs abut one another.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|9}}{{sfnp|S6ARWWQC|119-122}} The south wing was added in about 1560–1562 by William Moreton II’s son John (1541–1598).{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|4}} It includes the Gatehouse and a third storey containing a 68-foot (21 m) Long Gallery,{{sfnp|29HEEYLM|155}} which appears to have been an afterthought added on after construction work had begun.{{sfnp|W43KYIUP|201}} A small kitchen and Brew-house block was added to the south wing in about 1610, the last major extension to the house.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|29}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Elizabethan_Fireplace%2C_Little_Moreton_Hall.jpg)Fireplace in the Parlour with plasterwork overmantel displaying the royal arms of Queen Elizabeth I with [caryatids](https://engole.info/caryatid/) on either side
Wikimedia Commons
The fortunes of the Moreton family declined during the English Civil War. As supporters of the Royalist cause, they found themselves isolated in a community of Parliamentarians.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|40}} Little Moreton Hall was requisitioned by the Parliamentarians in 1643 and used to billet Parliamentary soldiers. The family successfully petitioned for its restitution,{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|37-38}} and survived the Civil War with their ownership of Little Moreton Hall intact, but financially they were crippled.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|40}} They tried to sell the entire estate, but could only dispose of several parcels of land. William Moreton died in 1654 leaving debts of £3,000–£4,000 (equivalent to about £12–16 million as at 2018\[e\]Using the GDP per capita calulator at Measuring Worth{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}), which forced his heirs to remortgage what remained of the estate.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|38}} The family’s fortunes never fully recovered, and by the late 1670s they no longer lived in Little Moreton Hall, renting it out instead to a series of tenant farmers. By 1847 most of the house was unoccupied, and the deconsecrated Chapel was being used as a coal cellar and storeroom.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|42}}
During the 19th century Little Moreton Hall became “an object of romantic interest” among artists;{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|42}} Amelia Edwards used the house as a setting for her 1880 novel *Lord Brackenbury*.{{sfnp|CGUWFP4P|329}} Elizabeth Moreton, an Anglican nun,\[f\]Elizabeth Moreton (1821–1912) had become a Sister of the Community of St John Baptist in 1853.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|42}} inherited the almost derelict house following the death of her sister Annabella in 1892. She restored and refurnished the Chapel, and may have been responsible for the insertion of steel rods to stabilise the structure of the Long Gallery. In 1912 she bequeathed the house to a cousin, Charles Abraham, Bishop of Derby, stipulating that it must never be sold.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|44}}\[g\]The house has never been sold throughout its 500-year history.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|2}} Abraham opened up Little Moreton Hall to visitors, charging an entrance fee of 6d, equivalent to about £9 in terms of average earnings as at 2018.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
Abraham carried on the preservation effort begun by Elizabeth Moreton until he and his son transferred ownership to the National Trust in 1938.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|45}} The trust has carried out extensive repair and restoration work, including re-roofing; restoration of elements of the hall’s original appearance, and removal of some painted patterning added during earlier restoration work.{{sfnp|S6ARWWQC|119-122}} The familiar black-and-white colour scheme is a fashion introduced by the Victorians; originally the oak beams would have been untreated and left to age naturally to a silver colour, and the rendered infill painted ochre.{{sfnp|RRYRA77Y|loc=Little Moreton Hall}} In 1977 it was discovered that the stone slabs on the roof of the south range had become insecure, and work began on a six-phase programme of structural repairs.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|46}} Replacement timbers were left in their natural state.{{sfnp|MF2I5D4Z|36}}
## House
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Little_Moreton_Hall_window_by_Richard_de_Dale.jpg)Section of the Withdrawing Room’s bay window, showing the patterning of the panes
Wikimedia Commons
The 100-year construction of Little Moreton Hall coincided with the English Renaissance, but the house is resolutely medieval in design,{{sfnp|WZQQTVJ2|433}} apart from some Renaissance decoration such as the motifs on the Gatehouse,{{sfnp|29HEEYLM|155}} Elizabethan fireplaces, and its “extravagant” use of glass.{{sfnp|XAFQERLN|90}} It is timber-framed throughout except for three brick chimney breasts and some brick buttressing added at a later date.{{sfnp|WZQQTVJ2|433}}
Simon Jenkins has described Little Moreton Hall as “a feast of medieval carpentry”,{{sfnp|XAFQERLN|69}} but the building technique is unremarkable for Cheshire houses of the period – an oak framework set on stone footings. Diagonal oak braces that create chevron and lozenge patterns adorn the façades.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|7}} The herringbone pattern with quatrefoils present at the rear, which can also be seen at Haslington and Gawsworth Halls, is a typical feature of 15th-century work, while the lozenge patterns, continuous middle rail and lack of quatrefoils in the front façade are typical of 16th-century early Elizabethan work.{{sfnp|MF2I5D4Z|search=p. 13. Fig. 27}} The south range containing the gatehouse, the last to be completed, has lighter timbers with a greater variety of patterns.{{sfnp|S6ARWWQC|119-122}} The timber frame is completed by rendered infill and Flemish bond brick, or windows.\[37\] The windows contain 30,000 leaded panes known as quarries, set in patterns of squares, rectangles, lozenges, circles and triangles, complementing the decoration on the timber framing.\[35\] Much of the original 16th-century glazing has survived and shows the colour variations typical of old glass.{{sfnp|S6ARWWQC|119-122}} Old scratched graffiti is visible in places.{{sfnp|2WDVD243|189}}\[h\]One inscription reads: “Man can noe more/know weomen’s mind/by kaire/Than by her shadow/hede ye what clothes/Shee weare”. The older parts of the roof frame are decorated,{{sfnp|MF2I5D4Z|9}} and the brickwork of some of the chimneys has diapering in blue brick.{{sfnp|2WDVD243|185}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Little_Moreton_Hall_courtyard.jpg)The courtyard, facing north toward the Great Hall
Wikimedia Commons
The house stands on an island surrounded by a {{convert|33|ft|adj=on}} wide moat.{{sfnp|HTV9SQNI}}\[i\]The site is marshy, which is at least in part why the oak beams of the house’s timber frame stand on sandstone blocks. The moat is kept filled by the high water table.{{sfnp|WDWK8HZY|21}} There is no evidence that the moat served any defensive purpose, and as with many other moated sites it was probably intended as a status symbol. A sandstone bridge leads to a gatehouse in the three-storey south range,{{sfnp|HTV9SQNI}} which has each of its two upper floors jettied out over the floor beneath.{{sfnp|DDUP3M2D}} As is typical of Cheshire’s timber-framed buildings the overhanging jetties are hidden by coving, which has a recurring quatrefoil decoration.{{sfnp|WZQQTVJ2|435}} The Gatehouse leads to a rectangular courtyard, with the Great Hall at the northern end. The two-storey tower to the left of the Gatehouse contains garderobes, which empty directly into the moat.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|21}} Architectural historian Lydia Greeves has described the interior of Little Moreton Hall as a “corridor-less warren, with one room leading into another, and four staircases linking different levels”. Some of the grander rooms have fine chimneypieces and wood panelling, but others are “little more than cupboards”.{{sfnp|W43KYIUP|201}} The original purpose of some of the rooms in the house is unknown.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|209}}
### Ground floor
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Little_Moreton_Hall_-_ground_floor_coloured.svg)Ground-floor plan.
Key: 1: Great Hall, 2: Parlour, 3: Garderobe, 4: Private staircase, 5: Withdrawing Room, 6: Exhibition Room, 7: Chapel, 8: Chancel, 9: Corn Store, 10: Gatehouse, 11: Bridge, 12: Garderobe, 13: Brew-house (now public toilets), 14: Shop, 15: Restaurant, 16: Screens passage, 17: Hall porch, 18: Courtyard, 19: Kennel.
Shaded areas are not open to the public.
Wikimedia Commons
The Great Hall at the centre of the north range is entered through a porch and screens passage, a feature common in houses of the period, designed to protect the occupants from draughts. As the screens are now missing, they may have been free-standing like those at Rufford Old Hall.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|10}} The porch is decorated with elaborate carvings.{{sfnp|S6ARWWQC|119-122}} The Great Hall’s roof is supported by [arch-braced trusses](https://engole.info/timber-roof-truss/#Arch-braced_truss),{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|9}} which are decorated with carved motifs including dragons.{{sfnp|2WDVD243|186}} The floor, now flagged, would probably originally have been rush-covered earth, with a central hearth. The gabled bay window overlooking the courtyard was added in 1559. The original service wing to the west of the Great Hall, behind the screens passage, was rebuilt in 1546,{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|9}} and housed a kitchen, buttery and pantry.{{sfnp|DDUP3M2D}} A hidden shaft was discovered during a 19th-century investigation of two secret rooms above the kitchen, connecting them to a tunnel leading to the moat, the entrance to which has since been filled in.{{sfnp|RJHZF4RH|270}} The west range now houses the gift shop and restaurant.
A doorway behind where the family would have sat at the far end of the hall leads to the Parlour, known as the Little Parlour in surviving 17th-century documents. Together with the adjoining Withdrawing Room and the Great Hall, the Parlour is structurally part of the original building.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|11}} The wooden panelling is a Georgian addition, behind which the original painted panelling was discovered in 1976.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|13}} The decoration consists of painted imitations of marble and inlay,{{sfnp|S6ARWWQC|119-122}} and Biblical scenes, some of which were painted directly onto the plaster and others on paper that was then pasted to the wall. “Crudely drawn” but nevertheless “elaborate”, the paintings tell the story of Susanna and the Elders from the Apocrypha,{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|13}} a “favourite Protestant theme”.{{sfnp|LPJUCEZZ|226}} The Moreton family’s wolf head crest and the initials “J.M.” suggest a date before John Moreton’s death in 1598. Similar painted decoration is found in other Cheshire houses of the late 16th and early 17th centuries.{{sfnp|S6ARWWQC|119-122}}
A private staircase between the Parlour and the Withdrawing Room leads to the first floor. The Withdrawing Room has 16th-century carved wooden panelling, and a wooden ceiling with moulded coffering, which probably dates from 1559 when the Great Hall ceiling was added.{{sfnp|S6ARWWQC|119-122}} The bay window in this room was also added in 1559, at the same time as the one in the Great Hall. The pair of windows bear the following inscription underneath their gables:
God is Al in Al Thing: This windous whire made by William Moreton in the yeare of Oure Lorde MDLIX. Richard Dale Carpeder made thies windous by the grac of God.{{sfnp
— V5X4MCME|29}}
The wolf head crest also appears in the late 16th-century stained glass of the Withdrawing Room.\[50\] The chimneypiece in this room is decorated with female caryatids and bears the arms of Elizabeth I; its plaster would originally have been painted and gilded, and traces of this still remain.{{sfnp|S6ARWWQC|119-122}}
William Moreton III used what is today known as the Exhibition Room as a bedroom in the mid-17th century; it is entered through a doorway from the adjoining Withdrawing Room. Following William’s death in 1654 his children Ann, Jane and Philip divided the house into three separate living areas. Ann, whose accommodation was in the Prayer Room above, then used the Exhibition Room as a kitchen. The adjoining Chapel, begun in 1508,{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|15}} is accessible by a doorway from the courtyard. The Chapel contains Renaissance-style tempera painting, thought to date from the late 16th century.{{sfnp|29HEEYLM|156}} Subjects include passages from the Bible.{{sfnp|S6ARWWQC|119-122}} The chancel was probably a later addition dating from the mid-16th century.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|15}} It is separated from the [nave](https://engole.info/nave/) by an oak screen and projects eastwards from the main plan of the house, with a much higher ceiling.{{sfnp|2WDVD243|186}} The stained glass in the east wall of the chancel is a 20th-century addition installed by Charles Abraham, the last private owner of Little Moreton Hall, as a parting gift on his transfer of ownership to the National Trust.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|17}}
The Corn Store adjacent to the Chapel may originally have been used as accommodation for a gatekeeper or steward. By the late 17th century it had been converted into a grain store by raising the floor to protect its contents from damp. Five oak-framed bins inside may have held barley for the Brew-house,{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|17}} which is now used as a toilet block.
### First floor
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Little_Moreton_Hall_-_first_floor_coloured.svg)First-floor plan.
Key: 1: Great Hall, 2: Prayer Room, 3: Chancel, 4: Guests’ Hall, 5: Porch Room, 6: Garderobes, 7: Guests’ Parlour, 8: Brew-house Chamber.
Shaded areas are not open to the public.
Wikimedia Commons
The Guests’ Hall and its adjoining Porch Room occupy the space above the entrance to the courtyard and the Gatehouse. They can be accessed either through a doorway from the adjacent Prayer Room or via a staircase at the south end of the courtyard leading to the Long Gallery on the floor above. The first-floor landing leads to a passageway between the Guests’ Hall and the Guests’ Parlour, and to the garderobe tower visible from the front of the house. A doorway near the entrance to the Guests’ Parlour allows access to the Brew-house Chamber, which is above the Brew-house. The Brew-house Chamber was probably built as servants’ quarters, and originally accessed via a hatch in the ceiling of the Brew-house below.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|21}}
In the mid-17th century the Guests’ Hall was referred to as Mr Booth’s Chamber, after the genealogist Jack Booth of Tremlowe, a cousin and family friend of the Moreton’s and a regular occupant.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|23}} Its substantial carved consoles, inserted not just for decorative effect but to support the weight of the Long Gallery above, have been dated to 1660.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|22}} What is today known as the Prayer Room, above the Chapel, was originally the chamber of the first William Moreton’s daughter Ann, whose maid occupied the adjoining room.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|23}}
The floors of the rooms on this level are made from lime-ash plaster pressed into a bedding of straw and oak laths, which would have offered some protection against the ever-present risk of fire.\[55\] All the first-floor rooms in the east range and all except the Prayer Room in the west range are closed to the public, some having been converted into accommodation for the National Trust staff who live on site.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|5}}{{sfnp|9EKV5BBA}} The Education Room in the east range, above what is today the restaurant, was in the mid-16th century a solar, and is now reserved for use by school groups.\[58\]
### Upper floor
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Long_Gallery%2C_Little_Moreton_Hall.jpg)The Long Gallery, looking west
Wikimedia Commons
Running the entire length of the south range the Long Gallery is roofed with heavy gritstone slabs,{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|6}} the weight of which has caused the supporting floors below to bow and buckle.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|44}} Architectural historians Peter de Figueiredo and Julian Treuherz describe it as “a gloriously long and crooked space, the wide floorboards rising up and down like waves and the walls leaning outwards at different angles.”{{sfnp|S6ARWWQC|119-122}} The crossbeams between the [arch-braced roof trusses](https://engole.info/timber-roof-truss/#Arch-braced_truss) were probably added in the 17th century to prevent the structure from “bursting apart” under the load.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|18}}
The Long Gallery has almost continuous bands of windows along its longer sides to the north and south, and a window to the west; a corresponding window at the east end of the gallery is now blocked.\[61\] The end tympana have plaster depictions of Destiny and Fortune, copied from Robert Recorde’s *Castle of Knowledge* (1556).{{sfnp|S6ARWWQC|119-122}}{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|18-21}} The inscriptions read “The wheel of fortune, whose rule is ignorance” and “The speare of destiny, whose rule is knowledge”.{{sfnp|2WDVD243|187}} The Long Gallery was always sparsely furnished, and would have been used for exercising when the weather was inclement and as a games room – four early 17th-century tennis balls have been discovered behind the wood panelling.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|21}}
The Upper Porch Room leading off the Long Gallery, perhaps originally intended as a “sanctuary from the fun and games”,{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|21}} was furnished as a bedroom by the mid-17th century. The fireplace incorporates figures of Justice and Mercy,{{sfnp|S6ARWWQC|119-122}} and its central panel contains the Moreton coat of arms quartered with that of the Macclesfield family, celebrating the marriage of John de Moreton to Margaret de Macclesfield in 1329.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|21}}\[j\]Margaret de Macclesfield was an heiress to the estate of John de Macclesfield.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|21}}
## Contents
Only three pieces of the house’s original furniture have survived: a large refectory table, a large cupboard described as a “cubborde of boxes” in an inventory of 1599, possibly used for storing spices, and a “great rounde table” listed in the same inventory.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|10-14}}{{sfnp|K3QXVXBU|133}} The refectory table and cupboard are on display in the Great Hall, and the round table in the Parlour, where its octagonal framework suggests that it was designed to sit in the bay window. Except for those pieces, and a collection of 17th-century pewter tableware in a showcase in the west wall of the Great Hall, the house is displayed with bare rooms.{{sfnp|W43KYIUP|201}}{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|10-14}}
## Gardens and estate
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Little_Moreton_Hall_garden_-_geograph.org.uk_-_433632.jpg)Replanted knot garden
Wikimedia Commons
By the mid-16th century the Little Moreton Hall estate was at its greatest extent, occupying an area of 1,360 acres (550 ha) and including three watermills,{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|28}} one of which was used to grind corn. The contours of the pool used to provide power for the cornmill are still visible, although the mill was demolished in the 19th century. The Moreton family had owned an iron bloomery in the east of the estate since the late 15th century, and the other two mills were used to drive its water-powered hammers. The dam of the artificial pool that provided water for the bloomery’s mills, known as Smithy Pool, has survived, although the pool has not. The bloomery was closed in the early 18th century, and the pool and moat were subsequently used for breeding carp and tench. By the mid-18th century the estate’s main sources of income came from agriculture, timber production, fish farming, and property rentals.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|27}}
The earliest reference to a garden at Little Moreton Hall comes from an early 17th-century set of household accounts referring to a gardener and the purchase of some seeds. Philip Moreton, who ran the estate for his older brother Edward in the mid-17th century, left a considerable amount of information on the layout and planting of the area of garden within the moat, to the west of the house. He writes of a herb garden, vegetable garden, and a nursery for maturing fruit trees until they were ready to be transferred to the orchard at the south and east of the house, probably where the orchard is today.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|24-25}}
During the 20th century the long-abandoned gardens were replanted in a style sympathetic to the Tudor period. The knot garden was planted in 1972, to a design taken from Leonard Meager’s Complete English Gardener, published in 1670.{{sfnp|29HEEYLM|155, 257}} The intricate design of the knot can be seen from one of the two original viewing mounds, common in 16th-century formal gardening, one inside the moat and the other to the southwest.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|24-25}} Other features of the grounds include a yew tunnel and an orchard growing fruits that would have been familiar to the house’s Tudor occupants: apples, pears, quinces and medlars.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|27}}
## Superstition and haunting
During the last major restoration work, eighteen “assorted boots and shoes” were found hidden in the structure of the building, all dating from the 19th century.{{sfnp|PIVIFJEB|180}} [Concealed shoes](https://engole.info/concealed-shoes/) were placed either to ward off demons, ghosts or witches, or to encourage the fertility of the female occupants.{{sfnp|PIVIFJEB|178-179}} Like many old buildings, Little Moreton Hall has stories of ghosts; a grey lady is said to haunt the Long Gallery, and a child has reportedly been heard sobbing in and around the Chapel.{{sfnp|4LZIUR5V}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Little Moreton Hall is built on the site of a much earlier medieval building, the remains of which are believed to have survived in the ground under the present house.{{sfnp|HTV9SQNI}} b Turbary is the legal right to cut turf or peat for fuel. c Many older sources, such as Pevsner & Hubbard (1971), suggest that building work began in c. 1450, or towards the end of the 15th century, but tree-ring analysis shows that the earliest parts of the house were built in the first decade of the 16th century.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|28}}{{sfnp|WZQQTVJ2|433}} d The floor had been removed by 1807.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|9}} e Using the GDP per capita calulator at Measuring Worth{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} f Elizabeth Moreton (1821–1912) had become a Sister of the Community of St John Baptist in 1853.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|42}} g The house has never been sold throughout its 500-year history.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|2}} h One inscription reads: “Man can noe more/know weomen’s mind/by kaire/Than by her shadow/hede ye what clothes/Shee weare”. i The site is marshy, which is at least in part why the oak beams of the house’s timber frame stand on sandstone blocks. The moat is kept filled by the high water table.{{sfnp|WDWK8HZY|21}} j Margaret de Macclesfield was an heiress to the estate of John de Macclesfield.{{sfnp|V5X4MCME|21}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 19393
**Categories:** Cheshire, Haunted, Manor house
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Mansfield](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-mansfield/)
**Published:** March 26, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Nottinghamshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Nottinghamshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the district of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Nottinghamshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Nottinghamshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png)Mansfield shown within Northamptonshire
Wikimedia Commons
The non-metropolitan district of Mansfield in the East Midlands of England is one of the seven districts and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Nottinghamshire.{{sfnp|DFUAZLJK}}
The district contains 3 of the 146 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Nottinghamshire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Augustine**Warsop
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/igEhuDz3nb1tNmfP7)Early 12th century[1262532](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1262532)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/St.Augustine%27s_church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_661642.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter and St Paul**Church Warsop
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/QXi86N8LbYfnKQAW7)11th century[1240271](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1240271)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/Warsop_-_Church.jpg/1280px-Warsop_-_Church.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter and St Paul**Mansfield
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DocDZ3sVGikK41UF8)style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1214166](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1214166)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Saint_Peter%27s_Church%2C_Mansfield_-_geograph.org.uk_-_11063.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-nottinghamshire "
**Categories:** Nottinghamshire
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Gedling](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-gedling/)
**Published:** March 28, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/Gedling_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Gedling_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the district of Gedling, Nottinghamshire.
**Content:**
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/qK7qz2RvjW4iQYck7)ns/thumb/0/0d/Gedling\_UK\_locator\_map.svg/960px-Gedling\_UK\_locator\_map.svg.png" class="kb-advanced-image-link">Gedling shown within Nottinghamshire
Wikimedia Commons
The non-metropolitan district of Gedling in the East Midlands of England is one of the seven districts and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Nottinghamshire.{{sfnp|DFUAZLJK}}
The district contains 6 of the 146 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Nottinghamshire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of All Hallows**>Gedling
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7ykqAhmJ7cnx9Sth8)>>13th century>[1235924](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1235924)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/qK7qz2RvjW4iQYck7)ns/d/d2/Gedling\_Church\_Steeple\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_510258.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Helen**>Burton Joyce
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D5UD3KgMM2vsSNTy5)>>13th century>[1227460](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1227460)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/qK7qz2RvjW4iQYck7)ns/b/ba/Saint\_Helen%27s\_Church\_and\_yard%2C\_Burton\_Joyce\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1107403.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Church of Holy Trinity**>Lambley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/SLbKYLtMBwUyRLw47)>>13th century>[1264623](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1264623)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/qK7qz2RvjW4iQYck7)ns/0/08/Lambley\_Church\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1538934.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St James**>Papplewick
>>14th century>[1264291](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1264291)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/qK7qz2RvjW4iQYck7)ns/d/d3/Church\_of\_St\_James%2C\_Papplewick\_%28geograph\_3830882%29.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Newstead Abbey and Adjoining[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/QDqQnRkdwsFXHyWK8)lign:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZgmAXyhwijsuaY9M6)>Papplewick
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WaeKPagqJENLwbw4A)**>>Established c. 1165>[1265325](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1265325)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/qK7qz2RvjW4iQYck7)ns/thumb/3/37/Newstead\_Abbey\_ML.JPG/1280px-Newstead\_Abbey\_ML.JPG"> Wikimedia Commons
**Papplewick Hall**>Papplewick
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KbJ1vvedeXnUtLb1A)>>c. 1785>[1265296](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1265296)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/qK7qz2RvjW4iQYck7)ns/2/22/Papplewick\_Hall\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1653210.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
## See also
gole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-nottinghamshire" title="">Grade I listed buildings in Nottinghamshire ## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27309
**Categories:** Nottinghamshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in City of Nottingham](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-city-of-nottingham/)
**Published:** March 29, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/Nottingham_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Nottingham_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the unitary authority of City of Nottingham, Nottinghamshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/Nottingham_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Nottingham_UK_locator_map.svg.png)City of Nottingham shown within Nottinghamshire
Wikimedia Commons
City of Nottingham is [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) which, along with seven district councils, in the East Midlands of England, makes up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Nottinghamshire.{{sfnp|DFUAZLJK}}
The authority contains 9 of the 146 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Nottinghamshire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Castle Museum and Art Gallery**City of Nottingham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/hGGPjayQM8hmgf3W9)Samuel Marsh of Lincoln1876–1878[1271188](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1271188)r:#abb8c3" data-border-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/q9YigtPrpiTL1gnaA)rg/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Armsottingham.jpg"> ; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**City of Nottingham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/y3SCuVa5dQUUNPeS8)op-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 14th century[1342118](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1342118)r:#abb8c3" data-border-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/q9YigtPrpiTL1gnaA)rg/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/St\_Mary%27s\_Church\_Nottingham\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_2877003.jpg"> ; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary the Virgin**Clifton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/4Vy536sRacwFsndn7)op-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 14th century[1270726](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1270726)r:#abb8c3" data-border-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/q9YigtPrpiTL1gnaA)rg/wikipedia/commons/d/de/St\_Mary%27s%2C\_Clifton%2C\_Nottingham\_%28geograph\_1336733%29.jpg"> ; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter with St James**City of Nottingham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/wtQ3XBK4tyfmsyvv9)op-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">15th century[1255013](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1255013)r:#abb8c3" data-border-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/q9YigtPrpiTL1gnaA)rg/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/StPetersNottingham.jpg/960px-StPetersNottingham.jpg"> ; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Clifton Hall**Clifton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nmf5SgE6ZWMWFqns9)op-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 16th century[1247639](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1247639)r:#abb8c3" data-border-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/q9YigtPrpiTL1gnaA)rg/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Clifton\_Hall\_from\_Beeston\_Marina.jpg"> ; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Nottingham Castle Gatehouse, Outer Bridge and Adjoining Gateway**City of Nottingham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nmf5SgE6ZWMWFqns9)op-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1252–1255[1247094](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1247094)r:#abb8c3" data-border-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/q9YigtPrpiTL1gnaA)rg/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Nottingham\_Castle\_Gatehouse.JPG/1280px-Nottingham\_Castle\_Gatehouse.JPG"> ; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Nottingham Castle Outer Bailey Wall and Towers**City of Nottingham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fyoXo1ayQXJ9fTxc8)op-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">c. 1280[1246765](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1246765)r:#abb8c3" data-border-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/q9YigtPrpiTL1gnaA)rg/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Robin\_Hood\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_54338.jpg"> ; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Statue of Captain Albert Ball**Nottingham Castle Gardens
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/k4WQ8CAUFcKSRSiN8)Edwin Alfred Rickards and Henry Poole1921[1246929](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1246929)r:#abb8c3" data-border-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/q9YigtPrpiTL1gnaA)rg/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Memorial\_to\_Albert\_Ball%2C\_VC\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1671290.jpg"> ; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Wollaton Hall**Wollaton Park
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DCHeqcZNftnDf6Ej8)op-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1580–1588[1255269](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1255269)rg/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Wollaton\_Hall%2C\_Nottingham\_%281%29.JPG/1280px-Wollaton\_Hall%2C\_Nottingham\_%281%29.JPG"> ; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
## ist">
6. [Grade I listed buildings in Nottinghamshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-nottinghamshire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27310
**Categories:** Nottinghamshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Broxtowe](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-broxtowe/)
**Published:** March 27, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Nottinghamshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Nottinghamshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the district of Broxtowe, Nottinghamshire.
**Content:**
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fyoXo1ayQXJ9fTxc8)ns/thumb/d/d8/Broxtowe\_UK\_locator\_map.svg/330px-Broxtowe\_UK\_locator\_map.svg.png" class="kb-advanced-image-link">Broxtowe shown within Nottinghamshire
Wikimedia Commons
The non-metropolitan district of Broxtowe in the East Midlands of England is one of the seven districts and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Nottinghamshire.{{sfnp|DFUAZLJK}}
The district contains 5 of the 146 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Nottinghamshire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Building D6 at Boots Factory Site**Beeston
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/3Kvoo2rxAjCmWmYFA)Sir Evan Owen Williams1938[1278028](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1278028)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fyoXo1ayQXJ9fTxc8)ns/9/93/Boots%2C\_Beeston\_-\_D6\_building\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_680837.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Building D10 at Boots Factory Site**Beeston
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GaBEyZxPH5N7AcRq6)Sir Evan Owen Williams1932[1247927](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1247927)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fyoXo1ayQXJ9fTxc8)ns/1/1e/Boots\_the\_Chemist\_-\_D10\_building\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_678655.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Strelley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/NxyS39rHkyMNvVNVA)13th century[1248224](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1248224)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fyoXo1ayQXJ9fTxc8)ns/0/09/All\_Saints\_Church%2C\_Strelley\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_930678.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary the Virgin**Attenborough
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/MncBKjpMWFTjk9XMA)12th century[1263869](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1263869)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fyoXo1ayQXJ9fTxc8)ns/th[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nmf5SgE6ZWMWFqns9)nborough.JPG"> 
**Published:** April 1, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/RushcliffeINNottinghamshire.svg/960px-RushcliffeINNottinghamshire.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the district of Rushcliffe, Nottinghamshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/RushcliffeINNottinghamshire.svg/960px-RushcliffeINNottinghamshire.svg.png)Rushcliffe shown within Northamptonshire
Wikimedia Commons
The non-metropolitan district of Rushcliffe in the East Midlands of England is one of the seven districts and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Nottinghamshire.{{sfnp|DFUAZLJK}}
The district contains 34 of the 146 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Nottinghamshire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Bunny Hall**Bunny
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7pEbYiEXvXH61UDKA)c. 1720[1249018](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1249018)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Bunny_Hall_-_the_tower_-_geograph.org.uk_-_748699.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Cotgrave
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pnoQgBpUAAm5ypek8)Late 14th century[1277792](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1277792)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/All_Saints_CotgraveRH.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Granby
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/TYXQ9z157cfGwJLq8)Pre-Conquest[1265230](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1265230)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/All_Saints%27_church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1045533.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of Holy Trinity**Wysall
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/oeVrHS5JBbwVCSHd6)12th century[1259980](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1259980)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Holy_Trinity_Church_Wysall_Nottinghamshire.jpg/1280px-Holy_Trinity_Church_Wysall_Nottinghamshire.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Andrew**Langar cum Barnstone
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/QzSL1zZpCumJ8P7m8)1712[1264793](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1264793)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d2/StAndrews_Church.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Augustine**Flintham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/3JC7C3AgssXLc6Vv8)12th century[1272726](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1272726)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/St.Augustine%27s_church%2C_Flintham_-_geograph.org.uk_-_413054.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Edmund**Holme Pierrepont
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aukLNBq24Z33Ue9g8)13th century[1249315](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1249315)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/St_Edmunds_Holme_Pierrepont.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St George**Barton in Fabis
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WCZ7t5cym5y51HhEA)1892[1248685](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1248685)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Church_of_St_George%2C_Barton_in_Fabis.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Giles**Cropwell Bishop
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/HzRr4NAY4bTMqcnDA)13th century[1045650](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1045650)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/St_Giles_Church%2C_Cropwell_Bishop%2C_Notts._%28geograph_3811953%29.jpg/1280px-St_Giles_Church%2C_Cropwell_Bishop%2C_Notts._%28geograph_3811953%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Helena**Thoroton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/y9jAoPPjgSTsV1qT7)14th century[1272720](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1272720)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/St.Helen%27s_tower_-_geograph.org.uk_-_946607.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St James**Normanton on Soar
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/yCXJRSjFFncQ9gBk9)13th century[1242162](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1242162)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Church%2C_Normanton_on_Soar_-_geograph.org.uk_-_6422.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St John of Beverley**Scarrington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/nKQVE2DUvXNNZS3y8)Early 14th century[1272713](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1272713)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/St.John_of_Beverley%27s_church%2C_Scarrington_-_geograph.org.uk_-_372261.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of Holy Trinity**Wysall
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/mGQFfmyEwxWCk9hNA)12th century[1259980](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1259980)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Holy_Trinity_Church_Wysall_Nottinghamshire.jpg/1280px-Holy_Trinity_Church_Wysall_Nottinghamshire.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St John the Baptist**Stanford on Soar
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9pUCHwG2D27zfq8d8)13th century[1242187](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1242187)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Stanford_on_soar_parish_church_2006-04-06_051web.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Lawrence**Gotham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/gDzSF5Ag4SWPANSb8)13th century[1260206](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1260206)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Gotham_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1293550.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Luke**Hickling
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/VJXhzszMCfSyZHTw8)14th century[1264986](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1264986)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Hickling%2C_St_Luke%27s_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_944617.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Luke**Upper Broughton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/uZMdVvaxuuDSFA8m9)c. 1200[1264583](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1264583)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Church_of_St._Luke%2C_Upper_Broughton_-_geograph.org.uk_-_908320.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Car Colston
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Q7qJSzZ8emiJB5y87)13th century[1045667](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1045667)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Saint_Mary%27s_Church%2C_Car_Colston_-_geograph.org.uk_-_84678.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**East Leake
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/NYiz24ZtYpB3YXmh9)12th century[1260244](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1260244)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/St_Marys_East_Leake.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Orston
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/BMaWx5rsaJLP3jer7)1766[1272710](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1272710)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Saint_Mary%27s_Church%2C_orston_-_geograph.org.uk_-_81706.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary and adjoining wall**Bunny
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/zm2oXpHVcbdF8viF8)14th century[1248713](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1248713)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Bunny_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_750329.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary and All Saints**Bingham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Jo8UoYYxKEL85o3V6)1225[1045660](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1045660)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/St_Mary_and_All_Saints%27_Church_and_Church_Street_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1758627.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary and All Saints**Willoughby on the Wolds
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/uUAh1ZsLfybDPha7A)13th century[1242526](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1242526)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/St_Mary_and_All_Saints%27_Church%2C_Willoughby_on_the_Wolds_%28Geograph_789810_by_Richard_Croft%29.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary Magdalene**Keyworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Qay5niuogFyugeAy7)Early 15th century[1039626](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1039626)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Church_of_St_Mary_Magdalene%2C_Keyworth_-_geograph.org.uk_-_88579.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter**East Bridgford
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Xm2SpSrBgVbNGieK9)11th century[1272697](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1272697)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Church_of_St_Peter%2C_East_Bridgford_-_geograph.org.uk_-_955876.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter**Sibthorpe
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KQpDbcS12U84tHpa7)13th century[1244670](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1244670)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Church_of_St._Peter%2C_Sibthorpe_-_geograph.org.uk_-_53851.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Wilfrid**Screveton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pVfAh26R6gzCKsWo9)15th century[1243811](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1243811)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Saint_Wifrid%27s_Church%2C_Screveton_-_geograph.org.uk_-_84699.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Winifred**Kingston on Soar
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/x9SVfJfZrwAQFBfC9)c. 1540[1242066](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1242066)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Saint_Wifrid%27s_Church%2C_Screveton_-_geograph.org.uk_-_84699.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Church of the Holy Trinity**Tithby
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AW7gU8KrqvT4ai5t7)14th century[1235979](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1235979)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Holy_Trinity_Church%2C_Tithby_%28geograph_2601374%29.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Flintham Hall and Adjoining Terrace Wall**Flintham Hall Park
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/mmZLGhvjMSN1VfH57)17th century[1272727](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1272727)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Flintham_Hall_%28geograph_2843189%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Holme Pierrepont Hall**Holme Pierrepont
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)Late 17th century[1249330](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1249330)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Holme_Pierrepont_Hall_Nottinghamshire.JPG/1280px-Holme_Pierrepont_Hall_Nottinghamshire.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Pigeoncote**Sibthorpe
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/XcuptRL8jRcFRXSF9)14th century[1243820](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1243820)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Sibthorpe_Dovecote_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1620583.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Remains of Church of St Mary**Colston Bassett
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/HHW88rLfnhaa3G5N7)12th century[1210576](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1210576)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f8/St_Marys_Church%2C_Colston_Bassett_%28geograph_3811055%29.jpg/960px-St_Marys_Church%2C_Colston_Bassett_%28geograph_3811055%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Thrumpton Hall and attached range of outbuildings**Thrumpton Hall Park
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/4BFKQHkiZXkGfy7Y7)1617[1242464](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1242464)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Thrumpton_Hall%2C_Nottinghamshire_%28geograph_1061761%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Nottinghamshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-nottinghamshire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27313
**Categories:** Nottinghamshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Denbighshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-denbighshire/)
**Published:** March 18, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Denbighshire_UK_location_map.svg/960px-Denbighshire_UK_location_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Denbighshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Denbighshire_UK_location_map.svg/960px-Denbighshire_UK_location_map.svg.png)Denbighshire shown within Wales
Wikimedia Commons
The [principal council](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) of Denbighshire in North Wales is one of the four that make up the [preserved county](https://engole.info/preserved-county) of Clwyd.{{sfnp|ATXICMSV}}
The council contains 28 of the Grade I listed buildings in Clwyd. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Bodrhyddan Hall**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Rhuddlan
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/5Gcc4JXLivxn2WwR7)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 16th/early 17th centurycenter" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=1361" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1361kipedia/commons/4/48/Bodrhyddan\_Hall\_parterre\_%28geograph\_5583322%29.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**Burgess Gate**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Denbigh
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KqgK5hjfuiWJ3g4R8)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1282–1294center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=1020" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1020kipedia/commons/d/d4/Burgess\_Gate%2C\_Denbigh\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1323661.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**Denbigh Castle**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Denbigh
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Wqi86eD1FkvYp5XJ9)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">First phase 1294, second phase 1311center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=968" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">968kipedia/commons/c/c0/Denbigh\_Castle\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_563477.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**Foxhall Newydd**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Henllan
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/TWdP9zgGU6nCAcSx9)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Begun in 1592, never completedcenter" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=1055" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1055kipedia/commons/d/d5/Foxhall\_Newydd\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_595437.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**Leicester’s Church (Remains)**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Denbigh
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Toi3KU2bsUpvAU1c6)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Begun in 1578, never completedcenter" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=970" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">970kipedia/commons/5/5c/Leicester%27s\_Church\_from\_Leicester\_Terrace.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**Llangar Church**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Llangar
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/qJ4rj2ryAhF2h5jz7)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">14th centurycenter" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=704" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">704kipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/All\_Saints%27\_Church%2C\_Llangar.jpg/1280px-All\_Saints%27\_Church%2C\_Llangar.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**Llangollen Bridge**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Llangollen
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/4aKdMzvhHE1AJ5Xq7)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Probably 1656center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=1080" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1080kipedia/commons/f/f8/Llangollen\_Bridge\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_710165.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**Nantclwyd y Dre
(Nantclwyd House)**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Ruthin
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/inVizWBq6MJae65n8)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">15th century, with 17th-century additionscenter" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=833" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">833kipedia/commons/thumb/f/fc/Nantclwyd-y-dre%2C\_Ruthin%2C\_exterior\_view\_front\_elevation.jpg/1280px-Nantclwyd-y-dre%2C\_Ruthin%2C\_exterior\_view\_front\_elevation.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**Pillar of Eliseg**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[Llantysilio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llantysilio)
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/8BQpTHWFq2UEY4ui9)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">9th centurycenter" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=19678" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">19678kipedia/commons/4/4d/Eliseg%27s\_Pillar\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_206975.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**Plas Uchaf**[Cynwyd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynwyd,_Denbighshire)
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ixeJ2jKsFGStzHM57)1435[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=663" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">663kipedia/commons/thumb/4/4e/Landmark\_Plas\_Uchaf\_south\_side.JPG/1280px-Landmark\_Plas\_Uchaf\_south\_side.JPG"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**Rhuddlan Castle**Rhuddlan
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/q4yqfzaJDPkqQxeVA)1277 – mid 1280s, with 14th-century additions[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=14977" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">14977kipedia/commons/thumb/9/9d/Rhuddlan\_Castle%2C\_May\_2012.jpg/1920px-Rhuddlan\_Castle%2C\_May\_2012.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**Rhug Chapel**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Corwen
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/jaihHg8L1xTp8PuPA)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1637center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=671" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">671kipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Rhug\_Chapel.JPG/1920px-Rhug\_Chapel.JPG"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**Ruthin Castle**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Ruthin
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/u4vic1mBcxvmHd9W8)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Started in 1277center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=825" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">825kipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/Castell\_Rhuthun\_-\_adfeilion\_y\_goresgynwyr\_%28wel\_o\_lia\_fe\_drion\_nhw%29\_27.JPG/1280px-Castell\_Rhuthun\_-\_adfeilion\_y\_goresgynwyr\_%28wel\_o\_lia\_fe\_drion\_nhw%29\_27.JPG"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**St Asaph Cathedral**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">St Asaph
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/vSCgyGPDpP8qdeyq5)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1143center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=1460" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1460kipedia/commons/1/1b/Eglwys\_Gadeiriol\_Llanelwy\_-\_St\_Asaph\_Cathedral.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**St Collen’s Church**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Llangollen
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/mLzKniPMcSM5aEez9)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">13th century, remodelled 1864–1867center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=1164" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1164kipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/St.\_Collen%27s\_Church%2C\_Llangollen.jpg/1280px-St.\_Collen%27s\_Church%2C\_Llangollen.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**St Cynhafal’s Church**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Llangynhafal
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/PzPcfXTrUfmXYNcb8)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">15th centurycenter" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=786" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">786kipedia/commons/c/c7/St\_Cynhafal%27s\_Church\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_135338.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**St Dyfnog’s Church**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Llanrhaeadr-yng-Nghinmeirch
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/vViLr6B4BLaMMciW9)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">13th centurycenter" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=792" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">792kipedia/commons/7/70/Almshouses\_and\_St\_Dyfnog%27s\_Church.\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1103474.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**St Garmon’s Church**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Llanarmon-yn-Iâl
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/PryTmif722nh1yxd6)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 15th centurycenter" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=735" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">735kipedia/commons/4/4e/Llanarmon\_yn\_I%C3%A2l\_Church\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_207928.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**St Hilary’s Chapel**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Denbigh
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KEkxTdhrsaWHMgwp9)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">14th centurycenter" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=969" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">969kipedia/commons/5/53/Tower\_of\_St\_Hilary%27s\_Chapel.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**St Marcella’s Church**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Denbigh
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/CNa2x1CPyuuVzpm9A)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">13th centurycenter" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=952" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">952kipedia/commons/7/76/St\_Marcella%27s\_Church%2C\_Eglwys\_Wen\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_265436.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**St Mary’s Church**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Derwen
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Lstr1i26UoZ1nbA1A)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">13th centurycenter" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=725" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">725kipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/St\_Mary%27s\_church%2C\_Derwen.jpg/1280px-St\_Mary%27s\_church%2C\_Derwen.jpg"> e="text-align:center;">/tr>**St Meugan’s Church**center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Llanrhydd
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/PmYHjMhLH38AfH7f8)center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">13th centurycenter" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzB6AN83PhdCyZW37)reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=739" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">739kipedia/c[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/mmZLGhvjMSN1VfH57)eograph.org.uk\_-\_569009.jpg"> 
**Published:** February 13, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/BNMsFr2643FroissartFol97vExecHughDespenser.jpg[/pimage]Statutory penalty in England from 1352 for men convicted of high treason, not repealed until 1870.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/BNMsFr2643FroissartFol97vExecHughDespenser.jpg)The execution of Hugh Despenser the Younger, as depicted in the Froissart of Louis of Gruuthuse
Wikimedia Commons
To be hanged, drawn and quartered was from 1352 a statutory penalty in England for men convicted of high treason, although the practice was first recorded during the reign of King Henry III (1216–1272). A convicted traitor was fastened to a hurdle, or wooden panel, and drawn by horse to the place of execution, where he was then hanged (almost to the point of death), emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered (chopped into four pieces). The traitor’s remains were often displayed in prominent places across the country, such as London Bridge. For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were instead burned at the stake.
The severity of the sentence reflected the seriousness of the crime. As an attack on the monarch’s authority, high treason was considered a deplorable act demanding the most extreme form of punishment. Although some convicts had their sentences modified and suffered a less ignominious end, over a period of several hundred years many men found guilty of high treason were subjected to the law’s ultimate sanction. They included many English Catholic priests executed during the Elizabethan era, and several of the regicides involved in the 1649 execution of Charles I.
Although the Act of Parliament defining high treason remains on the United Kingdom’s statute books, during a long period of 19th-century legal reform the sentence of hanging, drawing, and quartering was changed to drawing, hanging until dead, and posthumous beheading and quartering, before being abolished in England in 1870. The death penalty for treason was abolished in 1998.
## Treason in England
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Drawing_of_William_de_Marisco.jpg)As illustrated in Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora, William de Marisco is drawn to his execution behind a horse.
Wikimedia Commons
During the High Middle Ages those in England guilty of treason were punished in a variety of ways, including drawing and hanging. In the 13th century other more brutal penalties were introduced, such as disembowelling, burning, beheading and quartering. The 13th-century English chronicler Matthew Paris described how in 1238 “a certain man at arms, a man of some education (armiger literatus)”{{sfnp|G8XAGDGZ|54-58}} attempted to kill King Henry III. His account records in gruesome detail how the would-be assassin was executed: “dragged asunder, then beheaded, and his body divided into three parts; each part was then dragged through one of the principal cities of England, and was afterwards hung on a [gibbet](https://engole.info/gibbeting) used for robbers.”{{sfnp|QLTACDZL|139}} He was apparently sent by William de Marisco, an outlaw who some years earlier had killed a man under royal protection before fleeing to Lundy Island. De Marisco was captured in 1242 and on Henry’s order dragged from Westminster to the Tower of London to be executed. There he was hanged from a gibbet until dead. His corpse was disembowelled, his entrails burned, his body quartered and the parts distributed to cities across the country.{{sfnp|NR2M4F3D|234}} The punishment is more frequently recorded during Edward I’s reign.{{sfnp|Q2IMNUDJ|58}} Welshman Dafydd ap Gruffydd became the first nobleman in England to be hanged, drawn, and quartered after he turned against the king and proclaimed himself Prince of Wales and Lord of Snowdon.{{sfnp|LAXTK92S|11}} Dafydd’s rebellion infuriated Edward so much that he demanded a novel punishment. Therefore, following his capture and trial in 1283, for his betrayal he was drawn by horse to his place of execution. For killing English nobles he was hanged alive. For killing those nobles at Easter he was eviscerated and his entrails burned. For conspiring to kill the king in various parts of the realm, his body was quartered and the parts sent across the country; his head was placed on top of the Tower of London.{{sfnp|IPTVZDY6|23-26}} A similar fate was suffered by the Scottish leader Sir William Wallace. Captured and tried in 1305, he was forced to wear a crown of laurel leaves and was drawn to Smithfield, where he was hanged and beheaded. His entrails were then burned and his corpse quartered. His head was set on London Bridge and the quarters sent to Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling, and Perth.{{sfnp|7R988E2Y|147-149}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/King_Edward_III_from_NPG.jpg)Edward III, under whose rule the Treason Act 1351 was enacted. It defined in law what constituted high treason.
Wikimedia Commons
These and other executions, such as those of Andrew Harclay, 1st Earl of Carlisle,{{sfnp|T84RZTVW}} and Hugh Despenser the Younger,{{sfnp|ZDQTB7QB}} each of which occurred during the reign of King Edward II, happened when acts of treason in England, and their punishments, were not clearly defined in common law.\[a\]Treason before 1351 was defined by Alfred the Great’s Doom book. As Patrick Wormald wrote, “if anyone plots against the king’s life … \[or his lord’s life\], he is liable for his life and all that he owns … or to clear himself by the king’s \[lord’s\] wergeld.”{{sfnp|TBP92G8G|280-281}} Treason was based on an allegiance to the sovereign from all subjects aged 14 and over, and it remained for the king and his judges to determine whether that allegiance had been broken.{{sfnp|WYYRIS8V|375}} Edward III’s justices had offered somewhat over-zealous interpretations of what activities constituted treason, “calling felonies treasons and afforcing indictments by talk of accroachment of the royal power”,{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|9}} prompting parliamentary demands to clarify the law. Edward therefore introduced the Treason Act 1351. It was enacted at a time in English history when a monarch’s right to rule was indisputable, and was therefore written principally to protect the throne and sovereign.{{sfnp|WYYRIS8V|375-376}} The new law offered a narrower definition of treason than had existed before, and split the old feudal offence into two classes.{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|9-10}}{{sfnp|YZC4MWIW|25}} Petty treason referred to the killing of a master (or lord) by his servant, a husband by his wife, or a prelate by his clergyman. Men guilty of petty treason were drawn and hanged, whereas women were burned.{{sfnp|SMD525GJ|156-157}}\[b\]Women were considered the legal property of their husbands,{{sfnp|RYSU89BR|12-13}} and so a woman convicted of killing her husband was guilty not of murder, but petty treason. For disrupting the social order a degree of retribution was therefore required; hanging was considered insufficient for such a heinous crime.{{sfnp|QDV4S73V|84}}
### High treason
High treason was the most egregious offence an individual could commit. Attempts to undermine the king’s authority were viewed with as much seriousness as if the accused had attacked him personally, which itself would be an assault on his status as sovereign and a direct threat to his right to govern. As this might undermine the state, retribution was considered an absolute necessity and the crime deserving of the ultimate punishment.{{sfnp|GF3NH73Q|47-49}} The practical difference between the two offences therefore was in the consequence of being convicted; rather than being drawn and hanged, men were to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, while for reasons of public decency (their anatomy being considered inappropriate for the sentence), women were instead drawn and burned.{{sfnp|QDV4S73V|84}}{{sfnp|3JRBSU3H|9}} The Act declared that a person had committed high treason if they were: compassing or imagining the death of the king, his wife or his eldest son and heir; violating the king’s wife, his eldest daughter if she were unmarried, or the wife of his eldest son and heir; levying war against the king in his realm; adhering to the king’s enemies in his realm, giving them aid and comfort in his realm or elsewhere; counterfeiting the Great Seal or the Privy Seal, or the king’s coinage; knowingly importing counterfeit money; killing the Chancellor, Treasurer or one of the king’s Justices while performing their offices.{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|9}} The Act did not limit the king’s authority in defining the scope of treason. It contained a proviso giving English judges discretion to extend that scope whenever required, a process more commonly known as constructive treason.{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|10-11}}\[c\]“And because that many other like cases of treason may happen in time to come, which a man cannot think nor declare at this present time; it is accorded, that if any other case supposed treason, which is not above specified, doth happen before any justice, the justice shall tarry without going to judgement of treason, till the cause be shewed and declared before the king and his parliament, whether it ought to be judged treason or other felony.” Edward Coke{{sfnp|4A2HD8BV|20-21}} It also applied to subjects overseas in British colonies in the Americas, but the only documented incident of an individual there being hanged, drawn, and quartered was that of Joshua Tefft, an English colonist accused of having fought on the side of the Narragansett during the Great Swamp Fight. He was executed in January 1676.{{sfnp|8B7HR5QM}} Later sentences resulted either in a pardon or a hanging.{{sfnp|VLRWR4ST|56}}
Only one witness was required to convict a person of treason, although in 1547 this was increased to two. Suspects were first questioned in private by the Privy Council before they were publicly tried. They were allowed no witnesses or defence counsel, and were generally presumed guilty from the outset. This meant that for centuries anyone accused of treason was severely legally disadvantaged, a situation which lasted until the late 17th century, when several years of politically motivated treason charges made against Whig politicians prompted the introduction of the Treason Act 1695.{{sfnp|ETZB4C5X|6}} This allowed a defendant counsel, witnesses, a copy of the indictment, and a jury, and when not charged with an attempt on the monarch’s life, to be prosecuted within three years of the alleged offence.{{sfnp|IYNNXKHJ|6-7}}
## Execution of sentence
Once sentenced, malefactors were usually held in prison for a few days before being taken to the place of execution. During the early Middle Ages this journey may have been made tied directly to the back of a horse, but it subsequently became customary for the victim to be fastened instead to a wicker hurdle, or wooden panel, itself tied to the horse.{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|187}} The historian Frederic William Maitland thought that this was probably to “\[secure\] for the hangman a yet living body”.{{sfnp|ES8BCLCM|500}} The use of the word drawn, as in “to draw”, has caused a degree of confusion. One of the *Oxford English Dictionary*‘s definitions of draw is “to draw out the viscera or intestines of; to disembowel (a fowl, etc. before cooking, a traitor or other criminal after hanging)”, but this is followed by “in many cases of executions it is uncertain whether this, or \[to drag (a criminal) at a horse’s tail, or on a hurdle or the like, to the place of execution; formerly a legal punishment of high treason\], is meant. The presumption is that where drawn is mentioned after hanged, the sense is as here.”
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Traitors_heads_on_old_london_bridge.jpg)The spiked heads of executed criminals once adorned the gatehouse of the medieval London Bridge.
Wikimedia Commons
Some reports indicate that during Queen Mary I’s reign bystanders were vocal in their support: while in transit convicts sometimes suffered directly at the hands of the crowd. William Wallace was whipped, attacked and had rotten food and waste thrown at him,{{sfnp|LAXTK92S|12}} and the priest Thomas Pilchard was reportedly barely alive by the time he reached the gallows in 1587. Others found themselves admonished by “zealous and godly men”;{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|187}} it became customary for a preacher to follow the condemned, asking them to repent. According to Samuel Clarke, the Puritan clergyman William Perkins (1558–1602) once managed to convince a young man at the gallows that he had been forgiven, enabling the youth to go to his death “with tears of joy in his eyes … as if he actually saw himself delivered from the hell which he feared before, and heaven opened for receiving his soul.”{{sfnp|I4UQQ6DE|853}}
After the king’s commission had been read aloud, the crowd was normally asked to move back from the scaffold before being addressed by the convict.{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|191}} While these speeches were mostly an admission of guilt (although few admitted treason),{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|195}} still they were carefully monitored by the sheriff and chaplain, who were occasionally forced to act; in 1588, Catholic priest William Dean’s address to the crowd was considered so inappropriate that he was gagged almost to the point of suffocation.{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|191}}{{sfnp|FGNHC7P8|327}} Questions on matters of allegiance and politics were sometimes put to the prisoner,{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|193}} as happened to Edmund Gennings in 1591. He was asked by priest hunter Richard Topcliffe to “confess his treason”, but when Gennings responded “if to say Mass be treason, I confess to have done it and glory in it”, Topcliffe ordered him to be quiet and instructed the hangman to push him off the ladder.{{sfnp|FGNHC7P8|207}} Sometimes the witness responsible for the condemned man’s execution was also present. A government spy, John Munday, was in 1582 present for the execution of Thomas Ford. Munday supported the sheriff, who had reminded the priest of his confession when he protested his innocence.{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|194}} The sentiments expressed in such speeches may be related to the conditions encountered during imprisonment. Many Jesuit priests suffered badly at the hands of their captors but were frequently the most defiant; conversely, those of a higher station were often the most apologetic. Such contrition may have arisen from the sheer terror felt by those who thought they might be disembowelled rather than simply beheaded as they would normally expect, and any apparent acceptance of their fate may have stemmed from the belief that a serious, but not treasonable act, had been committed. Good behaviour at the gallows may also have been due to a convict’s desire for his heirs not to be disinherited.{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|199}}
The condemned were occasionally forced to watch as other traitors, sometimes their confederates, were executed before them. The priest James Bell was in 1584 made to watch as his companion, John Finch, was “a-quarter-inge”. Edward James and Francis Edwardes were made to witness Ralph Crockett’s execution in 1588, in an effort to elicit their co-operation and acceptance of Elizabeth I’s religious supremacy before they were themselves executed.{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|201}} Normally stripped to the shirt with their arms bound in front of them, prisoners were then hanged for a short period, either from a ladder or cart. On the sheriff’s orders the cart would be taken away (or if a ladder, turned), leaving the man suspended in mid-air. The aim was usually to cause strangulation and near-death, although some victims were killed prematurely, the priest John Payne’s death in 1582 being hastened by a group of men pulling on his legs. Conversely, some, such as the deeply unpopular William Hacket (d. 1591), were cut down instantly and taken to be disembowelled and normally emasculated – the latter, according to Sir Edward Coke, to “show his issue was disinherited with corruption of blood”.{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|202-204}}
A victim still conscious at that point might have seen his entrails burned, before his heart was removed and the body decapitated and quartered (chopped into four pieces). The regicide Major-General Thomas Harrison, after being hanged for several minutes and then cut open in October 1660, was reported to have leaned across and hit his executioner – resulting in the swift removal of his head. His entrails were thrown onto a nearby fire.{{sfnp|6HULIC3I}}{{sfnp|JPY345DW|158-159}} John Houghton was reported to have prayed while being disembowelled in 1535, and in his final moments to have cried “Good Jesu, what will you do with my heart?”{{sfnp|JPY345DW|161}}{{sfnp|BG7CXRFF}} Executioners were often inexperienced and proceedings did not always run smoothly. In 1584 Richard White’s executioner removed his bowels piece by piece, through a small hole in his belly, “the which device taking no good success, he mangled his breast with a butcher’s axe to the very chine most pitifully.”{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|204}}\[d\]In the case of Hugh Despenser the Younger, Seymour Phillips writes: “All the good people of the realm, great and small, rich and poor, regarded Despenser as a traitor and a robber; for which he was sentenced to be hanged. As a traitor he was to be drawn and quartered and the quarters distributed around the kingdom; as an outlaw he was to be beheaded; and for procuring discord between the king and the queen and other people of the kingdom he was sentenced to be disembowelled and his entrails burned; finally he was declared to be a traitor, tyrant and renegade.”{{sfnp|FWFHWYL6|517}} In Professor Robert Kastenbaum’s opinion the disfigurement of Despenser’s corpse (presuming that his disembowelment was post-mortem) may have served as a reminder to the crowd that the authorities did not tolerate dissent. He speculates that the reasoning behind such bloody displays may have been to assuage the crowd’s anger, to remove any human characteristics from the corpse, to rob the criminal’s family of any opportunity to hold a meaningful funeral, or even to release any evil spirits contained within.{{sfnp|4EEN5BKI|193-194}} The practice of disembowelling the body may have originated in the medieval belief that treasonable thoughts were housed there, requiring that the convict’s entrails be “purged by fire”.{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|204}} Andrew Harclay’s “treasonous thoughts had originated in his ‘heart, bowels, and entrails'”, and so were to be “extracted and burnt to ashes, which would then be dispersed”, as had happened with William Wallace and Gilbert de Middleton.{{sfnp|6VGLVDBX|127}} At his execution in January 1606 for his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot, Guy Fawkes managed to break his neck by jumping from the gallows, cheating the executioner.{{sfnp|CN5RRJEZ|91-92}}{{sfnp|T3UZ2TV5|283}}
### Quartering and distribution
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Execution_of_thomas_armstrong_1683.jpg)Engraving depicting the execution of Sir Thomas Armstrong in 1684
Wikimedia Commons
No records exist of how the corpse was quartered, although an engraving of the quartering of Sir Thomas Armstrong in 1684 shows the executioner making vertical cuts through the spine and removing the legs at the hip.{{sfnp|PW62XS4Z}} The distribution of Dafydd ap Gruffydd’s remains was described by Herbert Maxwell: “the right arm with a ring on the finger in York; the left arm in Bristol; the right leg and hip at Northampton; the left \[leg\] at Hereford. But the villain’s head was bound with iron, lest it should fall to pieces from putrefaction, and set conspicuously upon a long spear-shaft for the mockery of London.”{{sfnp|XH4QEVDX|35}} After the execution in 1660 of several of the regicides involved in the death of King Charles I eleven years earlier, the diarist John Evelyn remarked: “I saw not their execution, but met their quarters, mangled, and cut, and reeking, as they were brought from the gallows in baskets on the hurdle.”{{sfnp|7HTQRF3E|341}} Such remains were typically parboiled and displayed as a gruesome reminder of the penalty for high treason, usually wherever the traitor had conspired or found support.{{sfnp|JPY345DW|158-159}}{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|207-208}} Salt and cumin seed would be added during the boiling process: the salt to prevent putrefaction, and the cumin seed to prevent birds pecking at the flesh.{{sfnp|J72XHZ8I|318}}
The head was often displayed on London Bridge, for centuries the route by which many travellers from the south entered the city. Several eminent commentators remarked on the displays. In 1566 Joseph Justus Scaliger wrote that “in London there were many heads on the bridge … I have seen there, as if they were masts of ships, and at the top of them, quarters of men’s corpses.” In 1602 the Duke of Pommerania-Stettin emphasised the ominous nature of their presence when he wrote “near the end of the bridge, on the suburb side, were stuck up the heads of thirty gentlemen of high standing who had been beheaded on account of treason and secret practices against the Queen.”{{sfnp|JPY345DW|159-160}}\[e\]In 1534 a woman’s head adorned the bridge; Elizabeth Barton, a domestic servant and later nun who forecast the early death of Henry VIII, was drawn to Tyburn, and hanged and beheaded.{{sfnp|JPY345DW|160-161}} The practice of using London Bridge in this manner ended following the hanging, drawing, and quartering in 1678 of William Staley, a victim of the fictitious Popish Plot. His quarters were given to his relatives, who promptly arranged a “grand” funeral; this incensed the coroner so much that he ordered the body to be dug up and set upon the city gates. Staley’s was the last head to be placed on London Bridge.{{sfnp|LAXTK92S|22}}{{sfnp|8Q57G9W9}}
## Later history
Another victim of the Popish Plot, Oliver Plunkett the Archbishop of Armagh, was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn in July 1681. His executioner was bribed so that Plunket’s body parts were saved from the fire; the head is now displayed at St Peter’s Church in Drogheda.{{sfnp|BH674YBM}} Francis Towneley and several other captured Jacobite officers involved in the Jacobite Rising of 1745 were executed,{{sfnp|EYADJYDW|132}} but by then the executioner possessed some discretion as to how much they should suffer and thus they were killed before their bodies were eviscerated. The French spy François Henri de la Motte was hanged in 1781 for almost an hour before his heart was cut out and burned,{{sfnp|IGRINLAS|316-317}} and the following year David Tyrie was hanged, decapitated, and then quartered at Portsmouth. Pieces of his corpse were fought over by members of the 20,000-strong crowd there, some making trophies of his limbs and fingers.{{sfnp|HK2FXE65|76}} In 1803 Edward Despard and his six co-conspirators in the [Despard Plot](https://engole.info/despard-plot) were the last to be sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.{{sfnp|U5IPCQWA|13}} Before they were hanged and beheaded at Horsemonger Lane Gaol, they were placed on sledges attached to horses, and ritually pulled in circuits around the gaol yards.{{sfnp|IGRINLAS|317-318}} Their execution was attended by an audience of about 20,000.{{sfnp|PTYQUD3F}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Jeremiah_Brandreths_head.jpg)The severed head of Jeremiah Brandreth, one of the last men in England sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered
Wikimedia Commons
The burning in 1789 of Catherine Murphy, a counterfeiter,\[f\]Although women were usually burned only after they had first been strangled to death, in 1726 [Catherine Hayes](https://engole.info/catherine-hayes/)‘s executioner botched the job and she perished in the flames, the last woman in England to do so.{{sfnp|IGRINLAS|316-317}} was impugned in Parliament by Sir Benjamin Hammett. He called it one of “the savage remains of Norman policy”.{{sfnp|IGRINLAS|316-317}}{{sfnp|IRPEC8MC|88}} Amidst a growing tide of public disgust at the burning of women, Parliament passed the Treason Act 1790, which for women guilty of treason substituted hanging for burning.{{sfnp|IYNNXKHJ|5}} It was followed by the Treason Act 1814, introduced by Samuel Romilly, a legal reformer. Influenced by his friend, Jeremy Bentham, Romilly had long argued that punitive laws should serve to reform criminal behaviour and that far from acting as a deterrent, the severity of England’s laws was responsible for an increase in crime. When appointed the MP for Queensborough in 1806 he resolved to improve what he described as “Our sanguinary and barbarous penal code, written in blood”.{{sfnp|SZVLPVZ2|42}} He managed to repeal the death penalty for certain thefts and vagrancy, and in 1814 proposed to change the sentence for men guilty of treason to being hanged until dead and the body left at the king’s disposal. However, when it was pointed out that this would be a less severe punishment than that given for murder, he agreed that the corpse should also be decapitated, “as a fit punishment and appropriate stigma.”{{sfnp|KZQ4L6RG|xlvi}}{{sfnp|W3RNFXHY|105}} That was the fate of Jeremiah Brandreth, leader of a 100-strong contingent of men in the Pentrich rising and one of three men executed in 1817 at Derby Gaol. As with Edward Despard and his confederates the three were drawn to the scaffold on sledges before being hanged for about an hour, and then on the insistence of the Prince Regent were beheaded with an axe. The local miner appointed to the task of beheading them was inexperienced though, and having failed with the first two blows, completed his job with a knife. As he held the first head up and made the customary announcement, the crowd reacted with horror and fled. A different reaction was seen in 1820, when amidst more social unrest five men involved in the Cato Street Conspiracy were hanged and beheaded at Newgate Prison. Although the beheading was performed by a surgeon, following the usual proclamation the crowd was angry enough to force the executioners to find safety behind the prison walls.{{sfnp|JP73FCB4}} The plot was the last crime for which the sentence was applied.{{sfnp|JPY345DW|161-162}}
Reformation of England’s capital punishment laws continued throughout the 19th century, as politicians such as John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, sought to remove from the statute books many of the capital offences that remained.{{sfnp|SZVLPVZ2|51-58}} Robert Peel’s drive to ameliorate law enforcement saw petty treason abolished by the Offences against the Person Act 1828, which removed the distinction between crimes formerly considered as petty treason, and murder.{{sfnp|A4HHQJ2F|23}}{{sfnp|YZC4MWIW|27}} The Royal Commission on Capital Punishment 1864–1866 recommended that there be no change to treason law, quoting the “more merciful” Treason Felony Act 1848, which limited the punishment for most treasonous acts to penal servitude. Its report recommended that for “rebellion, assassination or other violence … we are of opinion that the extreme penalty must remain”,{{sfnp|FBYZ2CQI|134-135}} although the most recent occasion (and ultimately, the last) on which anyone had been sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered was in November 1839, following the Chartist Newport Rising – and those men sentenced to death were instead transported.{{sfnp|VGAJST5S|137-140}} The report highlighted the changing public mood toward public executions (brought about in part by the growing prosperity created by the Industrial Revolution). Home Secretary Spencer Horatio Walpole told the commission that executions had “become so demoralizing that, instead of its having a good effect, it has a tendency rather to brutalize the public mind than to deter the criminal class from committing crime”. The commission recommended that executions should be performed privately, behind prison walls and away from the public’s view, “under such regulations as may be considered necessary to prevent abuse, and to satisfy the public that the law has been complied with.”{{sfnp|RD3F6V9W|409}} The practice of executing murderers in public was ended two years later by the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868, but it did not apply to traitors. An amendment to abolish capital punishment completely, suggested before the bill’s third reading, failed by 127 votes to 23.{{sfnp|IGRINLAS|593}}{{sfnp|SZVLPVZ2|59, 72}}
Hanging, drawing, and quartering was abolished in England by the Forfeiture Act 1870. The Act limited the penalty for treason to hanging alone,{{sfnp|F98LLJCT}} although it did not remove the monarch’s right under the 1814 Act to replace hanging with beheading.{{sfnp|W3RNFXHY|105}} Beheading was abolished in 1973,{{sfnp|389VAYJH}} although it had long been obsolete. The death penalty for treason was abolished by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, enabling the UK to ratify protocol six of the European Convention on Human Rights in 1999.{{sfnp|JEYEMHNR|81n}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Treason before 1351 was defined by Alfred the Great’s Doom book. As Patrick Wormald wrote, “if anyone plots against the king’s life … \[or his lord’s life\], he is liable for his life and all that he owns … or to clear himself by the king’s \[lord’s\] wergeld.”{{sfnp|TBP92G8G|280-281}} b Women were considered the legal property of their husbands,{{sfnp|RYSU89BR|12-13}} and so a woman convicted of killing her husband was guilty not of murder, but petty treason. For disrupting the social order a degree of retribution was therefore required; hanging was considered insufficient for such a heinous crime.{{sfnp|QDV4S73V|84}} c “And because that many other like cases of treason may happen in time to come, which a man cannot think nor declare at this present time; it is accorded, that if any other case supposed treason, which is not above specified, doth happen before any justice, the justice shall tarry without going to judgement of treason, till the cause be shewed and declared before the king and his parliament, whether it ought to be judged treason or other felony.” Edward Coke{{sfnp|4A2HD8BV|20-21}} d In the case of Hugh Despenser the Younger, Seymour Phillips writes: “All the good people of the realm, great and small, rich and poor, regarded Despenser as a traitor and a robber; for which he was sentenced to be hanged. As a traitor he was to be drawn and quartered and the quarters distributed around the kingdom; as an outlaw he was to be beheaded; and for procuring discord between the king and the queen and other people of the kingdom he was sentenced to be disembowelled and his entrails burned; finally he was declared to be a traitor, tyrant and renegade.”{{sfnp|FWFHWYL6|517}} In Professor Robert Kastenbaum’s opinion the disfigurement of Despenser’s corpse (presuming that his disembowelment was post-mortem) may have served as a reminder to the crowd that the authorities did not tolerate dissent. He speculates that the reasoning behind such bloody displays may have been to assuage the crowd’s anger, to remove any human characteristics from the corpse, to rob the criminal’s family of any opportunity to hold a meaningful funeral, or even to release any evil spirits contained within.{{sfnp|4EEN5BKI|193-194}} The practice of disembowelling the body may have originated in the medieval belief that treasonable thoughts were housed there, requiring that the convict’s entrails be “purged by fire”.{{sfnp|YDGSWKII|204}} Andrew Harclay’s “treasonous thoughts had originated in his ‘heart, bowels, and entrails'”, and so were to be “extracted and burnt to ashes, which would then be dispersed”, as had happened with William Wallace and Gilbert de Middleton.{{sfnp|6VGLVDBX|127}} e In 1534 a woman’s head adorned the bridge; Elizabeth Barton, a domestic servant and later nun who forecast the early death of Henry VIII, was drawn to Tyburn, and hanged and beheaded.{{sfnp|JPY345DW|160-161}} f Although women were usually burned only after they had first been strangled to death, in 1726 [Catherine Hayes](https://engole.info/catherine-hayes/)‘s executioner botched the job and she perished in the flames, the last woman in England to do so.{{sfnp|IGRINLAS|316-317}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 15101
**Categories:** Capital punishment
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Fantasia Mathematica](https://engole.info/fantasia-mathematica/)
**Published:** January 31, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/64/FantasiaMathematica.jpg[/pimage]Anthology of stories, humour, poems, etc. on mathematical topics, published in 1958.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/64/FantasiaMathematica.jpg)First edition front cover
Wikimedia Commons
*Fantasia Mathematica* is an anthology compiled by Clifton Fadiman and published in 1958, containing stories, humour, poems, etc. on mathematical topics. The volume is organised into three sections – Odd Numbers, Imaginaries, and Fractions – and contains contributions by authors including Robert Heinlein, Aldous Huxley, H. G. Wells, and Martin Gardner.
In his 1998 review published in the journal *Endeavour*, J. V. Field suggested that some of the entries seemed rather dated, particularly those that rely on “wink and nudge attitudes to sex”. He did though conclude that the book would “make a suitable present for a person who is inclined to find mathematics fun”.{{sfnp|JZQ5FIC6}}
### Odd Numbers
This first section of the book contains seven stories, dialogues, or excerpts from novels by writers – with exception of Plato – who are not usually associated with mathematics.
- “Young Archimedes”, by Aldous Huxley
- “Pythagoras and the Psychoanalyst”, by Arthur Koestler
- “Mother and the Decimal Point”, by Richard Llewellyn
- “Jurgen Proves It by Mathematics”, by James Branch Cabell
- “[Peter Learns Arithmetic](https://engole.info/joan-and-peter/)“, by H. G. Wells
- “Socrates and the Slave”, by Plato
- “The Death of Archimedes”, by Karel Čapek
### Imaginaries
Imaginaries is the largest section, comprising sixteen science-fiction stories plus a commentary on one of them. “All of these stories actually have a certain amount of mathematical thinking in them; or else they make fun of mathematical thinking.”{{sfnp|58WK7WZE|xvi}}
- “The Devil and Simon Flagg”, by Arthur Porges
- “—And He Built a Crooked House”, by Robert A. Heinlein
- “Inflexible Logic”, by Russell Maloney
- “No-Sided Professor”, by Martin Gardner
- “Superiority”, by Arthur C. Clarke
- “The Mathematical Voodoo”, by H. Nearing, Jr.
- “Expedition”, by Fredric Brown
- “The Captured Cross-Section”, by Miles J. Breuer, M.D.
- “A. Botts and the Moebius Strip”, by William Hazlett Upson
- “God and the Machine”, by Nigel Balchin
- “The Tachypomp”, by Edward Page Mitchell
- “The Island of Five Colors”, by Martin Gardner
- “The Last Magician”, by Bruce Elliott
- “A Subway Named Moebius”, by A. J. Deutsch
- “The Universal Library”, by Kurd Lasswitz
- “Postscript to “The Universal Library”, by Willy Ley
- “John Jones’s Dollar”, by Harry Stephen Keeler
### Fractions
This final section “is simply an unsystematic assemblage of rhymes, jingles, serious short poems, fancies, jokes, fables and anecdotes that touch on mathematics. Many of them are pleasant trivialities and are intended to amuse, nothing more.”{{sfnp|58WK7WZE|xvii}}
- “A New Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens”, by Arthur T. Quiller-Couch
- “The Unfortunate Topologist”, by Cyril Kornbluth
- “There Once Was a Breathy Baboon”, by Sir Arthur Eddington
- “Yet What Are All…”, by Lewis Carroll
- “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”, by Ralph Barton
- “Mathematical Love”, by Andrew Marvell
- “The Circle”, by Christopher Morley
- “The Circle and the Square”, by Thomas Dekker
- “Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare”, by Edna St. Vincent Millay
- “Euclid”, by Vachel Lindsay
- “To Think That Two and Two Are Four”, by A. E. Housman
- “The Uses of Mathematics”, by Samuel Butler
- “Arithmetic”, by Carl Sandburg
- “Threes (To Be Sung By Niels Bohr)”, by John Atherton
- “Plane Geometry”, by Emma Rounds
- “He Thought He Saw Electrons Swift”, by Herbert Dingle
- “Fearsome Fable”, by Bruce Elliott
- “Bertrand Russell’s Dream”, by G. H. Hardy
- “For All Practical Purposes”, by C. Stanley Ogilvy
- “Eternity: A Nightmare”, by Lewis Carroll
- “An Infinity of Guests”, by George Gamow
- “∞”, by Sir Arthur Eddington
- “No Power on Earth”, by William Whewell
- “(x + 1)”, by Edgar Allan Poe
- “The Receptive Bosom”, by Edward Shanks
- “Leinbach’s Proof”, by Arthur Schnitzler
- “Problem from *The New Yorker*: “Talk of the Town””
- “A Letter to Tennyson from *Mathematical Gazette*“
- “A Fable from *Mathematical Gazette*“
- “There Was a Young Man from Trinity”, by Anonymous
- “There Was an Old Man Who Said, “Do”, by Anonymous
- “Relativity”, by Anonymous
- “There Was a Young Fellow Named Fisk”, by Anonymous
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24447
**Categories:** Mathematics
---
### [The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents](https://engole.info/the-stolen-bacillus-and-other-incidents/)
**Published:** January 19, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Collection of 15 short stories by H. G. Wells, first published in 1895.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7c/Wells_StolenBacillus%281st_edition%29.jpg)First edition cover
Wikimedia Commons
*The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents* is a collection of fifteen short stories written by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published by Methuen & Co. in 1895.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|54}} It was Wells’s first book of short stories, most of which had already been published in the [*Pall Mall Budget*](https://engole.info/pall-mall-budget/).
## Contents
Stories are shown in the order in which they appear in the book, which is not necessarily the order in which they first appeared in print.
- “[The Stolen Bacillus](https://engole.info/the-stolen-bacillus/)” (1894)
- “[The Flowering of the Strange Orchid](https://engole.info/the-flowering-of-the-strange-orchid/)” (1894)
- “[In the Avu Observatory](https://engole.info/in-the-avu-observatory/)” (1894)
- “[The Triumphs of a Taxidermist](https://engole.info/the-triumphs-of-a-taxidermist/)” (1894)
- “[A Deal in Ostriches](https://engole.info/a-deal-in-ostriches/)” (1894)
- “[Through a Window](https://engole.info/through-a-window/)” (1894)
- “[The Temptation of Harringay](https://engole.info/the-temptation-of-harringay/)” (1895)
- “[The Flying Man](https://engole.info/the-flying-man/)” (1895)
- “[The Diamond Maker](https://engole.info/the-diamond-maker/)” (1894)
- “[Æpyornis Island](https://engole.info/aepyornis-island/)” (1894)
- “[The Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes](https://engole.info/the-remarkable-case-of-davidsons-eyes)” (1895)
- “[The Lord of the Dynamos](https://engole.info/the-lord-of-the-dynamos/)” (1894)
- “[The Hammerpond Park Burglary](https://engole.info/the-hammerpond-park-burglary/)” (1894)
- “[The Moth](https://engole.info/the-moth/)” (1895)
- “[The Treasure in the Forest](https://engole.info/the-treasure-in-the-forest/)” (1894)
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23445
## External links
- *[The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12750)* at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Coventry](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-coventry/)
**Published:** July 23, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/Coventry_UK_locator_map.svg/1920px-Coventry_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Coventry, in the ceremonial county of West Midlands.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/Coventry_UK_locator_map.svg/1920px-Coventry_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Coventry shown within West Midlands
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Coventry is one of the seven that make up the [ceremonial](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) and metropolitan county of West Midlands.{{sfnp|W6IAH5EG}}
The borough contains twenty of the Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in West Midlands. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Bablake School**Hill Street
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/sYbrCPMgXHsX7niS8)14th century[1076616](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1076616)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2a/WTC_Wormova_Bablake_and_Bond.JPG/1280px-WTC_Wormova_Bablake_and_Bond.JPG)12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Cathedral of St Michael**City centre
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aN5aBYrGw4zw8HDv6)Sir Basil Spence1951–1962historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1342941" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1342941[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2d/Coventry_Cathedral_-from_above-8.jpg/1280px-Coventry_Cathedral_-from_above-8.jpg)12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Allesley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Lgdu1VRNrv2v9Tad9)13th centuryhistoricengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1342900" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1342900[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/WTC_Jez_Sutton_jez-10.jpg/1920px-WTC_Jez_Sutton_jez-10.jpg)12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Bartholomew**Binley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/SmDdxTwgUbTsZfUy8)1701–1703historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1076629" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1076629[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/WTC_Dumbledore%27s_Army_StBartholemew%27sChurch4.JPG/1920px-WTC_Dumbledore%27s_Army_StBartholemew%27sChurch4.JPG)12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St John the Baptist**Fleet Street
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/3dzry6MszjXcJyTz5)Founded in 1343historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1342889" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1342889[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ef/WTC_badgersruleok_e1.jpg/1920px-WTC_badgersruleok_e1.jpg)12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary Magdalene**Wyken
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9K2C86gjs2yFD8Ja7)12th centuryhistoricengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1076583" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1076583[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/St_Mary_Magdalen%2C_Wyken%2C_Coventry%2C_South_West_view.jpg/1280px-St_Mary_Magdalen%2C_Wyken%2C_Coventry%2C_South_West_view.jpg)12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**City Gate**Cook Street
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/y5ALNE7pKjC84WBb7)14th centuryhistoricengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1076640" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1076640[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/WTC_PC_WikiCov_Team_PC-35.jpg/960px-WTC_PC_WikiCov_Team_PC-35.jpg)12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Ford’s Hospital**Greyfriar’s Lane
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DEeqm457dy2FEsRGA)16th centuryhistoricengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1342891" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1342891[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/WTC_Ramblers_Ford%27s_Hospital.JPG/1280px-WTC_Ramblers_Ford%27s_Hospital.JPG)12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Holy Trinity Church**Trinity Lane
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/atti6pk92mkmTc5Z8)13th centuryhistoricengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1342893" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1342893[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/09/WTC_badgersruleok_a5-3.jpg/960px-WTC_badgersruleok_a5-3.jpg)12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**London Road Cemetery**London Road
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/3zrBPrXZa616WkPd9)1847historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1001205" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1001205[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Memorials%2C_London_Road_Cemetery%2C_Coventry_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1295673.jpg)12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Medieval Basement Below Site of 38 and 39 Bayley Street**Bayley Lane
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/nKQofkTfVFzKgbCB9)14th centuryhistoricengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1116387" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1116387[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Bayley_Lane_Medieval_Undercroft_8.JPG/1920px-Bayley_Lane_Medieval_Undercroft_8.JPG)12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Number 22 (Cellarage Only)**High Street
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/JTasrQG138JSSEa9A)15th centuryhistoricengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1076612" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1076612[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/21%E2%80%9322_High_Street%2C_Coventry.jpg/960px-21%E2%80%9322_High_Street%2C_Coventry.jpg)12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Remains of Caludon Castle**Wyken
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ogvpbAxi3FpSXrM9A)Late 12th centuryhistoricengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1076645" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1076645[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/WTC_Mum%27s_taxi_Caludon_Castle_1.JPG/1920px-WTC_Mum%27s_taxi_Caludon_Castle_1.JPG)12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Remains of the west front, nave and aisles of Coventry Priory**Priory Row
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/BeTwATjXT1mHUigR7)1043historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1076588" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1076588[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Priory_undercroft_excavations%2C_2001_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1009590.jpg)12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Ruined Cathedral Church of St Michael**City centre
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aN5aBYrGw4zw8HDv6)14th centuryhistoricengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1076651" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1076651[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/WTC_Mattley_DSC_0007.JPG/960px-WTC_Mattley_DSC_0007.JPG)12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**St Mary’s Hall**Bayley Lane
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/r5edK8B56s4Tw46Q6)14th centuryhistoricengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1116402" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1116402[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/St_Marys_Hall_-Coventry_-8o08.jpg/960px-St_Marys_Hall_-Coventry_-8o08.jpg)12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Swanswell Gate and City Wall to North of Swanswell Gate**Hales Street
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/1PhPY7LSz9Vjsm1U7)c. 1395historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1076649" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1076649[](
**Categories:** West Midlands
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Luton](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-luton/)
**Published:** April 18, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Luton_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Luton_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the unitary authority of Luton, Bedfordshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Luton_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Luton_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Luton shown within Bedfordshire
Wikimedia Commons
The [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) of Luton is one of the three authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Bedfordshire.{{sfnp|QIF8DWW5}}
The borough contains 1 of the 113 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Parish Church of St Mary**Church Street
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/wuF4C9XJCJB861h19)Predominantly 14th and 15th century[1114615](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1114615)[](
**Categories:** Bedfordshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Central Bedfordshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-central-bedfordshire/)
**Published:** May 4, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Central_Bedfordshire_UK_locator_map.svg/500px-Central_Bedfordshire_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the unitary authority of Central Bedford, Bedfordshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Central_Bedfordshire_UK_locator_map.svg/500px-Central_Bedfordshire_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Central Bedfordshire shown within Bedfordshire
Wikimedia Commons
The [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) of Central Bedfordshire is one of the three authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Bedfordshire.{{sfnp|QIF8DWW5}}
The borough contains 63 of the 113 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Archer Pavilion**Silsoe
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ob4x8r9bx69Arvw39)Thomas Archer1709–1711[1113807](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1113807)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Wrest_Park_Banqueting_House.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Basin Bridge**Woburn Park
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iAYo5rgdAAUAbaZC7)Sir William Chambersc. 1770[1114019](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1114019)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Basin_Bridge%2C_Woburn_Abbey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_6162454.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Chicksands Priory**Campton and Chicksands
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/N1t2wpoAHvEFN12i8)Founded c. 1150, surviving remains are 13th and 15th century[1137590](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1137590)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Chicksands_Priory.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Chinese Dairy and Adjoining Covered Ways**Woburn Park
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Z5vVz5jiUW4hY9NS8)Henry Hollandc. 1888[1321667](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1321667)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/68/Chinese_Dairy_%26_Adjoining_covered_ways_2.JPG/1280px-Chinese_Dairy_%26_Adjoining_covered_ways_2.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Chalgrave
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/LYodYC7ZMFs4YT4M8)Early 14th century[1321351](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1321351)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/All_Saints%2C_Chalgrave_%2C_Chequered_Stonework_-_geograph.org.uk_-_116127.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Eyeworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/EPzrvyB1ftKdb431A)14th and 15th century[1137817](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1137817)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/All_Saints_Eyworth_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1239943.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Houghton Conquest
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/sfkx8kovjvkjA31R8)Early 14th century[1113919](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1113919)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/All_Saints%27_parish_church%2C_Houghton_Conquest%2C_Beds_-_geograph.org.uk_-_180221.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Houghton Regis
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/oMspufMPgY2VkRMG9)14th century[1114707](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1114707)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Houghton_Regis.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Shillington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/FGBeM8NbLBtGFqCi6)14th century[1312508](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1312508)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/All_Saint%27s_Church%2C_Shillington_-_geograph.org.uk_-_171832.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Sutton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/hSiZkPUPikCK8Y4Z6)13th century[1138081](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1138081)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/All_Saints_Church%2C_Sutton_%283%29.JPG/1280px-All_Saints_Church%2C_Sutton_%283%29.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Tilsworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/oJWaE2dqr3HJgwuz6)13th century[1159512](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1159512)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/All_Saints_Church%2C_Tilsworth_-_geograph.org.uk_-_631936.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Andrew**Langford
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/gjt2oBdLiv6BYvJT8)13th century[1113840](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1113840)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/St_Andrew%27s%2C_Langford%2C_Beds_-_geograph.org.uk_-_168480.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St George**Edworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/VEPrZFgtvoktxMGs5)14th and 15th century[1113833](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1113833)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/St_George%27s_Church%2C_Edworth.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St George**Toddington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/HZk7YNF5HqguhwLv9)13th century[1159540](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1159540)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Toddington_%2C_Parish_Church_of_St._George_of_England_-_geograph.org.uk_-_579992.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Giles**Tottenhoe
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/CRoVmqbX1vAGieXG9)14th century[1159758](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1159758)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/St._Giles%2C_Totternhoe_-_geograph.org.uk_-_193383.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St John the Baptist**Cockayne Hatley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/y25amck138p7iwpF9)13th century[1114107](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1114107)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Cockayne_Hatley%2C_St_John.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St John the Baptist**Flitton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/6vRrM9NRS6p6bwTD6)15th century[1113903](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1113903)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Flitton_church.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St John the Baptist**Stanbridge
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/TS9p7eAnbeeFLsrn7)14th century[1321308](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1321308)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/St._John_the_Baptist%2C_Stanbridge%2C_Bedfordshire_%28geograph_2254203%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Margaret**Streatley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/TJvnd8YWnCgv2NFC6)14th century[1321310](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1321310)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/St_Margaret%27s_Church%2C_Streatley._-_geograph.org.uk_-_113926.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Eaton Bray
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/EWqkCPEM82QnCmMo6)[1321356](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1321356)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Eaton_Bray_-_Church_of_St._Mary_the_Virgin_-_geograph.org.uk_-_631861.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Everton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Tidjx2P658uF8Q3n8)[1114064](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1114064)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Everton_church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_131622.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Kensworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/tXLMmYBqVbFwnh1r7)[1159080](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1159080)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/Church_of_St_Mary%2C_Kensworth.jpg/1280px-Church_of_St_Mary%2C_Kensworth.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Linslade
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/BJV9tTFjnUUUjnNi6)[1114528](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1114528)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/St_Marys_Church%2C_Old_Linslade_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1286774.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Potton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/L91KG5v4Tx9N2K686)[1114528](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1114528)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/St_Mary%27s%2C_Potton_-_geograph.org.uk_-_198638.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Studham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2vHsgEtT9AFKcbGj7)[1159252](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1159252)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Church_of_St_Mary%2C_Studham.jpg/1280px-Church_of_St_Mary%2C_Studham.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Sundon
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/VpJCqQqFnghHwkYz9)[1159488](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1159488)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/St._Mary_the_Virgin%2C_Sundon_-_geograph.org.uk_-_225632.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary the Virgin**Gravenhurst
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/YT42AjvxBWoCwibk8)14th century[1311911](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1311911)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Lower_Gravenhurst_Church%2C_Beds_-_geograph.org.uk_-_62665.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary the Virgin**Harlington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ceUYMTMCPeeGAGta7)14th century[1321734](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1321734)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/St_Marys_C_of_E_Church_Harlington.jpg/1280px-St_Marys_C_of_E_Church_Harlington.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary the Virgin**Henlow
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iRWXGGfnRXTyxc768)12th century[1312654](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1312654)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/St_Marys_Henlow_%28geograph_3800871%29.jpg/1280px-St_Marys_Henlow_%28geograph_3800871%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary the Virgin**Salford
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/6fQXeB4Y5svrsEwB7)Substantially 13th century[1114035](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1114035)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/St_Marys_Church_Salford_%28geograph_3014721%29.jpg/1280px-St_Marys_Church_Salford_%28geograph_3014721%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Nicholas**Barton-le-Clay
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/wQfk7kLathzYdV3c7)12th to 15th century[1321346](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1321346)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/St_Nicholas%27s_Church%2C_Barton_in_the_Clay_-_geograph.org.uk_-_86211.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Nicholas**Hulcote
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ng9NcJq9LjgRAJA6A)c. 1590[1114036](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1114036)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Hulcote_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_368185.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Nicholas**Tingrith
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/A4cnerZALiNDLZheA)15th century[1113944](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1113944)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/St._Nicholas%2C_Tingrith_-_geograph.org.uk_-_220844.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter**Arlesey
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/4kqUH3kB8yCkbjrw9)12th century[1113817](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1113817)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Parish_Church_of_St_Peter_-_Church_End_Arlesey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_72466.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter**Millton Bryan
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/eHupdkk9W2id9TSN7)12th century[1138238](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1138238)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/St._Peter%2C_Milton_Bryan_-_geograph.org.uk_-_171945.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter**Wrestlingworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KiDrbj9xAnuLxAHN8)12th-century origins[1321637](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1321637)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/St_Peter%27s_church%2C_Wrestlingworth%2C_Beds_-_geograph.org.uk_-_171181.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter and All Saints**Battlesden
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/F5RdKmxLFz6RB7vSA)13th century[1311979](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1311979)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/St_Peter_and_All_Saints%2C_Battlesden_-_geograph.org.uk_-_183068.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter and St Paul**Cranfield
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DxZ7aFJdzRpEcTWf6)12th century[1114029](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1114029)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/SS_Peter_and_Paul%2C_Cranfield_-_geograph.org.uk_-_563906.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter and St Paul**Flitwick
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/qQtyRX5LZURa6UAs7)Late 12th and 14th century, early 16th and late 19th century[1137705](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1137705)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/SS_Peter_and_Paul%2C_Flitwick_-_Tower_and_Porch_-_geograph.org.uk_-_345258.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Garden Houses and Retaining Walls to Terraced Gardens at Luton Hoo**Luton Hoo Estate
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZAWgqDAkPQgXHHyS8)[1158944](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1158944)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/25/Luton_Hoo%2C_Bedfordshire%2C_England%2C_19_Sept._2010_-_Flickr_-_PhillipC_%281%29.jpg/1280px-Luton_Hoo%2C_Bedfordshire%2C_England%2C_19_Sept._2010_-_Flickr_-_PhillipC_%281%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Haynes Park**Haynes
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/MZddfjHUsUHscczGA)c. 1725[1321815](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1321815)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Hawnes%2C_Haynes_Church_End_%28geograph_3340940%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Leighton Buzzard Church of All Saints**Leighton Buzzard
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/M4NJUwdiz4JVxPe46)Medieval[1321404](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1321404)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Leighton_Buzzard%2C_All_Saints_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_96771.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Luton Hoo**Luton Hoo Estate
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/hU5j3Fr6V1yPEqR69)1760s[1321301](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1321301)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/Luton_Hoo%2C_Bedfordshire%2C_England%2C_19_Sept._2010_-_Flickr_-_PhillipC_%282%29.jpg/1920px-Luton_Hoo%2C_Bedfordshire%2C_England%2C_19_Sept._2010_-_Flickr_-_PhillipC_%282%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Moggerhanger House**Moggerhanger
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EdMeGCGaaA4EGJL9)18th century[1137422](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1137422)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Moggerhangerhouse.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Parish Church of St Andrew**Ampthill
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/niQmCLzMTXoBmZho6)c. 14th–15th century[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/St_Andrew%27s_C_of_E_Church_Ampthill_-_geograph.org.uk_-_632248.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Parish Church of St Edmund or St James**Blunham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xMcD23z5DzKUmB4z6)Early 12th century[1321759](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1321759)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8e/Blunham_church_tower_%28geograph_2813828%29.jpg/800px-Blunham_church_tower_%28geograph_2813828%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Parish Church of St Leonard**Old Warden
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/oUhwu8vTF4TeVwpL9)12th century[1274774](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1274774)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/The_Abbey_Church_of_St_Leonard.JPG/1280px-The_Abbey_Church_of_St_Leonard.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin**Marston Moretaine
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/3ZPanVc6bPhHMPqa6)Early 14th century[1114047](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1114047)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b2/Marston_church.JPG/1280px-Marston_church.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin**Northill
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/y3QipC2hxsTSNJmD7)1404–1547[1221856](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1221856)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/St_Mary%2C_Northill%2C_Beds_-_geograph.org.uk_-_329987.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Priory Church of St Peter**Dunstable
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)Norman[1114581](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1114581)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Priory_Church_of_Saint_Peter%2C_Dunstable_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1760514.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
Priory House GatewayDunstable
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)15th century[1321391](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1321391)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Exiting_Dunstable_Priory_%28geograph_2659933%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Ruins of Houghton House, Houghton Park**Ampthill
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9X51GNHCZRjnvLTFA)c. 1620[1321465](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1321465)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Houghton_House.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Sculpture Gallery, adjoining South Side of South Stableblock**Woburn Park
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/B7CF3LRkJ8gKo2Sv9)c. 1790[1158201](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1158201)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Sculpture_Gallery%2C_Woburn_Abbey-geograph-461893.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**South Stableblock approx 100 Metres East of Woburn Abbey**Woburn Park
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7Jd5ewT6NpFtKGSX7)c. 1750[1114011](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1114011)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Woburn_Abbey%2C_Bedfordshire_-_geograph.org.uk_-_916994.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Southill Park House**Southill
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/89kcpKPmkmvSCx2y9)17th century[1237988](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1237988)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Southill_Park_from_the_air_%28geograph_4661589%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**The Camelia House adjoining East End of Sculpture Galler**yWoburn Park
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/kXK26cX5XiGMVK8V8)Sir Jeffry Wyatville1822[1114012](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1114012)
**The De Grey Mausoleum adjoining Church of St John the Baptist**Flitton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/TpJPfAg8jmYteLSWA)1614[1113904](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1113904)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/De_Grey_M.JPG/1280px-De_Grey_M.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Tower Belonging to Church of St Mary the Virgin**Marston Moretaine
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/CvYRRPKWCQdddqTUA)14th century[1311714](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1311714)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/St_Mary_The_Virgin_Tower.JPG/800px-St_Mary_The_Virgin_Tower.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Warden Abbey**Old Warden
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/yz716X2EYmQVsYAu9)1135[1222165](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1222165)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Warden_Abbey_%28428017%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Woburn Abbey**Woburn
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/R65w6nNYJxPeKyaZ9)1747–1761[1114006](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1114006)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/WoburnAbbey01.JPG/1280px-WoburnAbbey01.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Wrest Park House and Service Block Comprising Pavilions, Clock Tower and the Dairy**Silsoe
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/YRBWayZEjh1koTQj6)1834–1839[1311484](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1311484)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3d/Wrest_Park_Clock_Tower_%26_Service_block.JPG/1280px-Wrest_Park_Clock_Tower_%26_Service_block.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Bedfordshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-bedfordshire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27376
**Categories:** Bedfordshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Bedford](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-bedford/)
**Published:** April 27, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a3/Bedford_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Bedford_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the unitary authority of Bedford, Bedfordshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a3/Bedford_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Bedford_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Bedford shown within Bedfordshire
Wikimedia Commons
The [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) of Bedford is one of the three authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Bedfordshire.{{sfnp|QIF8DWW5}}
The borough contains 49 of the 113 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Barford Bridge and Causeway**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Great Barford
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/m1nTDBtyDA6YjWM17)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">15th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1114887" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1114887rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Great_Barford_Bridge%2C_Great_River_Ouse1.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Bushmead Priory**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Staploe
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/mf9QGx1tnSwUbHCu8)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">13th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1146475" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1146475rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Bushmead-Priory.webp); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Historic England
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Church of All Saints**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Dean and Shelton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/6icvnCBZrxhqYgQV8)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">14th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1321269" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1321269rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/All_Hallows_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_163563.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Church of All Saints**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Kempston Rural
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/tbNKm9WTLMFKNWtH9)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Norman[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1114281" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1114281rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/All_saints_church_kempston.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Church of All Saints**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Little Staughton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iP1XB5yNoKnUgcx4A)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">13th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1114812" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1114812rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Little_Staughton_All_Saints_Church.jpg/1280px-Little_Staughton_All_Saints_Church.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Church of All Saints**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Riseley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AxUgkyMr724JPqLHA)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">12th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1137548" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1137548rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/Church_of_All_Saints%2C_Riseley%2C_Bedfordshire.jpg/1280px-Church_of_All_Saints%2C_Riseley%2C_Bedfordshire.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Oakley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/wjdSXxnH3JvZRMHS9)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 12th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1159864" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1159864rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/St_Marys_Church%2C_Oakley_%28geograph_3530825%29.jpg/1280px-St_Marys_Church%2C_Oakley_%28geograph_3530825%29.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary the Virgin**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Shelton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/CGzgdjGrtgGct1768)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 12th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1114802" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1114802rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Shelton_church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_891516.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary the Virgin**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Melchbourne and Yielden
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GwenRsc8H5uCGsYU8)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">13th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1137357" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1137357rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/St_Mary%27s_church%2C_Yelden.JPG/1280px-St_Mary%27s_church%2C_Yelden.JPG); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Michael and All Saints**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Farndish
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/hquAGNFyYR7mqXa19)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 12th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1114345" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1114345rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/The_Church_of_St_Michael_and_All_Angels_at_Farndish_-_geograph.org.uk_-_315509.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Nicholas**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Swineshead
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/3d2xjaP8Rx8aWgjc9)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">14th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1114834" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1114834rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Parish_church_of_St_Nicholas%2C_Swineshead%2C_Beds_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1553650.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Paul**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">St Paul’s Square
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/YhrXcMMzNJaet7bz9)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">14th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1321436" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1321436rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/StPaulsChurchBedford.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Peter**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Pertenhall
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ddLYgZ9ArY55SVjp7)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">14th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1114827" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1114827rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Pertenhall_Church_of_St_Peter.jpg/1280px-Pertenhall_Church_of_St_Peter.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Peter**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">De Parys Avenue
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D5dYNdqbyXqKN9ZG8)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">14th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1146340" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1146340rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/StPetersChurchBedford.JPG); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Thomas of Canterbury**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Clapham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WP1E6eGLkBGdGL386)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Saxon[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1114251">1114251rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Clapham_church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_81631.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Church St Mary the Virgin**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Bolnhurst and Keysoe
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7DXeJm55dsqkpq6X8)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 12th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1114778">1114778rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Keysoe_Church_of_St_Marys.jpg/1920px-Keysoe_Church_of_St_Marys.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Diocesan Youth Centre, St Nicholas Church**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Carlton and Chellington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/88AFs2jogCqemAib8)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">13th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1114239">1114239rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/The_Church_of_St_Nicholas_at_Chellington_-_geograph.org.uk_-_298027.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Dovecote of Former Manor House**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Willington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/RiT2GKLtJukBJWk77)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1535–1541[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1321578" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1321578rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Tudor_Dovecote_at_Willington.jpg/1920px-Tudor_Dovecote_at_Willington.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Former Parish Church of St Mary**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">St Mary’s Street
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/rBQ4oEALcsHg9P3X6)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">10th or 11th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1114516" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1114516rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/St_Mary%27s_Church%2C_Bedford_-_geograph.org.uk_-_646233.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Hillersdon Mansion**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Elstow
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/NnHi45PpgKx4k9aC8)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">14th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1321607">1321607rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Ancient_Monument_-_geograph.org.uk_-_406409.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Hinwick House**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Podington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9ZH8deNgpDWVgzNS6)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1708–1714[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1160476">1160476rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Hinwickhouse.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Milton Ernest Hall**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Milton Ernest
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2zXkPqPpUmc5Y1tEA)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1853–1858[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1310881">1310881rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d8/In_the_Mood_at_Milton_Ernest_Hall_%28geograph_3458855%29.jpg/1280px-In_the_Mood_at_Milton_Ernest_Hall_%28geograph_3458855%29.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of All Saints**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Cople
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/k4V5uw6rPUEMpuk76)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">15th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1114154">1114154rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/All_Saints%2C_Cople%2C_Beds_-_geograph.org.uk_-_330011.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of All Saints**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Milton Ernest
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/vgtzPv4uFDKY5pfr6)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Norman[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1321521">1321521rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Milton_Ernest_church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_78425.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of All Saints**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Odell
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/LKC8h4EyeWwt9Rgk7)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">15th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1310757">1310757rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Milton_Ernest_church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_78425.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of All Saints**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Ravensden
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/wHC2ApwXbNxCyGpy8)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 12th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1321235">1321235rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Ravensden_Church_of_All_Saints-3.jpg/1280px-Ravensden_Church_of_All_Saints-3.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of All Saints**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Renhold
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iKX26MYzwU2pjHzNA)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">14th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1138110">1138110rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Renhold_Church_of_All_Saints-1-2.jpg/1280px-Renhold_Church_of_All_Saints-1-2.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of All Saints**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Turvey
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/5PtQZFioCHFRpRJs9)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Medieval[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1039598">1039598rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/All_Saints_Church_Turvey.JPG/1280px-All_Saints_Church_Turvey.JPG); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of St Denys**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Colmworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GrUMvZdz4QjGFiP39)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">c. 1430[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1114867" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1114867rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Colmworth_St_Denys_Church_2.jpg/1280px-Colmworth_St_Denys_Church_2.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">
Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of St James**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Biddenham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/S3LitrTtBB2X5LhD6)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Norman[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1158130" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1158130rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/St_James_church%2C_Biddenham_%28geograph_3206650%29.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">
Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of St Lawrence**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Wymington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/UaByDANPapFJkxn5A)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Mid-14th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1249349" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1249349rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Wymington%2C_St_Lawrence.JPG); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">
Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of St Leonard**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Stagsden
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/wdrPyskDEBejAa1w6)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Norman[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1161056" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1161056rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/St_Leonard%27s_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_106685.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">
Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of St Margaret**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Knotting
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/qphFSmVq1fcuJRUC9)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">12th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1310943" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1310943rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/St_Margaret_of_Antioch%2C_Knotting.JPG/1280px-St_Margaret_of_Antioch%2C_Knotting.JPG); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of St Mary**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Carlton and Chellington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WSkmmTGBLyZQQuMh9)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Anglo-Saxon[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1114248">1114248rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Church_of_St._Mary_the_Virgin%2C_Carlton_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1806756.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of St Mary**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Felmersham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pKnHbZwAMJX9j9y69)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">13th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1321569" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1321569rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/StMary%27sChurch-Felmersham.jpg/1920px-StMary%27sChurch-Felmersham.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of St Mary**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Podington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/A6G5AyQr2GCRpbfB9)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Norman[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1321514" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1321514rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Podington%2C_St_Mary_the_Virgin_%28geograph_5472814%29.jpg/1920px-Podington%2C_St_Mary_the_Virgin_%28geograph_5472814%29.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of St Mary**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Stevington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9HbWtHNeTXPpFdH67)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Saxon[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1310202" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1310202rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/St_Mary_the_Virgin_Church%2C_Stevington_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1354914.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of St Mary and St Helena**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Elstow
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/nNYqRQqPTw7K9mq77)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Early 12th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1114168" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1114168rder-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/St_Mary_and_Helena_Parish_Church%2C_Elstow_-_geograph.org.uk_-_823352.jpg); border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of St Mary Magdalene**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Melchbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9ZDDCru2keQad6rw5)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iELQVZVnaHUoKYMx5)rder-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Medieval[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WfhfDaZDky7HE8ar5)bb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;border-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1312146" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1312146rder-color="#abb8c3">[](
**Categories:** Bedfordshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Stockton-on-Tees](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-stockton-on-tees/)
**Published:** February 23, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/Stockton-on-Tees%2C_Durham_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Stockton-on-Tees%2C_Durham_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/Stockton-on-Tees%2C_Durham_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Stockton-on-Tees%2C_Durham_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Stockton-on-Tees shown within County Durham
Wikimedia Commons
The Borough of Stockton-on-Tees in North East England is one of the four [unitary authorities](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of County Durham.
The borough contains 7 of the 117 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in County Durham. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Cuthbert**Billingham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7YTpN6sCmhphxXYz9)9th century[1139241](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1139241)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/St_Cuthbert%27s_Church%2C_Billingham_-_geograph.org.uk_-_360639.jpg)radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Cuthbert**Redmarshall
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/weXtsuVnYAr4ykGdA)Norman[1140001](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1140001)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/St_Cuthbert%27s_Church%2C_Redmarshall.jpg)radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St John the Baptist**Egglescliffe
Norman[1104901](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1104901)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Egglescliffeparishchurch.png)radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary the Virgin**Stockton-on-Tees
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/zLdSABnReUVs53j19)Early 11th century[1140012](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1140012)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/St_Mary%27s_church_tower_-_geograph.org.uk_-_483567.jpg)radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter**\[a\]Technically in North Yorkshire not County Durham, but included here with other listed buildings in Stockton-on-TeesHilton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/T6CRTjxBryXa4uAo9)Norman[1139229](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1139229)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/St_Peter%27s_Church%2C_Hilton_%28geograph_2040835%29.jpg)radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Thomas**Stockton-on-Tees
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/gYKYdtVMVBFHfBHT6)Medieval[1139977](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1139977)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Stockton_Parish_Church_of_St_Thomas_-_geograph.org.uk_-_487321.jpg)radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Ruins of a Church of St Thomas a Becket**Grindon
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/my4kCZ4ztKZBUQTg9)Late 12th century[1329821](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1329821)[ 
**Published:** February 21, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of Hartlepool, County Durham.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Hartlepool_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Hartlepool_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Hartlepool shown within County Durham
Wikimedia Commons
The Borough of Hartlepool in North East England is one of the four [unitary authorities](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of County Durham.
The borough contains 3 of the 117 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in County Durham. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Hilda**Headland
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Ts6oXJaALyXuPLCeA)Early 12th century[1263355](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1263355)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/St_Hilda%27s_church%2C_Hartlepool_-_geograph.org.uk_-_979761.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary Magdalene**Hart
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/UwXt2pgKZLDB6EaW7)Anglo-Saxon[1249898](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1249898)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/St._Mary_Magdalene%2C_Hart_Village._-_geograph.org.uk_-_24756.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Town Wall and Sandwell Gate**Headland
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/sknSYKNRH5HkJXVq6)Early 14th century[1250535](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1250535)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Town_Wall_at_Night_-_geograph.org.uk_-_38208.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [](
**Categories:** County Durham
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Darlington](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-darlington/)
**Published:** February 22, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of Darlington, County Durham.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0c/Darlington_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Darlington_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Darlington shown within County Durham
Wikimedia Commons
The Borough of Darlington in North East England is one of the four [unitary authorities](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of County Durham.
The borough contains 7 of the 117 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in County Durham. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Butler House and the Rectory**Haughton-le-Skerne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/tQXyLpftdKsW8fpw5)Mid-15th century[1121301](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1121301)"https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Butler-House.webp"> Historic England
**Church of All Saints**Sockburn
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/LVLaPgSAhzPUmTMo9)Pre-Conquest[1185947](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1185947)"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/Graveyard\_and\_east\_end\_of\_All\_Saints\_Church%2C\_Sockburn.jpg/1280px-Graveyard\_and\_east\_end\_of\_All\_Saints\_Church%2C\_Sockburn.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Andrew**Haughton-le-Skerne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Rqf4rsMvJdSox1xd6)c. 1100[1160229](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1160229)"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/St\_Andrews\_Haughton.jpg/1280px-St\_Andrews\_Haughton.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Cuthbert**Darlington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/1zqnWCsV7FAFDfLd7)Early 13th century[1121280](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1121280)"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/88/Darlington\_-\_Church\_of\_St\_Cuthbert\_-\_20220827181929.jpg/1280px-Darlington\_-\_Church\_of\_St\_Cuthbert\_-\_20220827181929.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Michael**Heighington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/6C5C55prijRmC8fv8)18th century[1322953](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1322953)"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c4/Hstm.jpg/1920px-Hstm.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Thornton Hall**High Coniscliffe
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/agjc4AP6eST5mVpw7)c. 1550 – c. 1630[1121221](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1121221)"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Thornton\_Hall\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_252731.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
**Walworth Castle**Walworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/vQown3B2QNnMdwUk9)c. 1600[](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1250535)"https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1121175" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1121175"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Walworth\_Castle\_Hotel.\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_150434.jpg"> Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in County Durham](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-county-durham)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27218
**Categories:** County Durham
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Welwyn Hatfield](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-welwyn-hatfield/)
**Published:** June 10, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/Welwyn_Hatfield_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Welwyn_Hatfield_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Welwyn Hatfield, Hertfordshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/Welwyn_Hatfield_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Welwyn_Hatfield_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Welwyn Hatfield shown within Hertfordshire
Wikimedia Commons
Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council is one of the ten local district authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Hertfordshire.{{sfnp|JTANMQ4A}}
The authority contains 6 of the Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Brocket Hall**Lemsford
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/hUq2KjwuzG1kuWEZA)c. 1760[1100987](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1100987)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d8/Brocket_Hall.jpg/1280px-Brocket_Hall.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Hatfield House**Hatfield Park
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Av8zGpAxdq8tZ4hs6)1607–1612[1173363](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1173363)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Hatfield_House.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**New Saint Lawrence Church**Ayot St. Lawrence
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AQBXzod8DMm7D8L29)1778[1348106](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1348106)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/New_St_Lawrence_Church%2C_Ayot_St_Lawrence_2020-07-20.jpg/1920px-New_St_Lawrence_Church%2C_Ayot_St_Lawrence_2020-07-20.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**North Mymms Park with Adjoining Garden Walls and Ha Ha**North Mymms
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/VDoprVM9EwBKHv8j6)c. 1600[1100946](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1100946)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/North_Mymms_-_June_2005_009.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Parish Church of St Etheldreda**Hatfield
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AWhgJNAPZhmtdgAW6)13th century[1348124](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1348124)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/Hatfield_St_Etheldreda.jpg/1280px-Hatfield_St_Etheldreda.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
="vertical-align:top;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Hatfield Park
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/NgaqiMsrcg41r1oY8)c. 1480[1348152](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1348152)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Hatfield_House_-_the_Old_Palace_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1839366.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Hertfordshir](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-hertfordshire)e
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30066
**Categories:** Hertfordshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Watford](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-watford/)
**Published:** June 8, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Watford_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Watford_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Watford, Hertfordshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Watford_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Watford_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Watford shown within Hertfordshire
Wikimedia Commons
Watford Borough Council is one of the ten local district authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Hertfordshire.{{sfnp|JTANMQ4A}}
The authority contains 2 of the Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Mary**Watford
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/whkB5bTMGNbC9LLs7)13th century[1101120](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1101120)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/St-Marys-Watford-scaled.webp)Historic England
**Holy Rood Church**Watford
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KgDUXS35Wo3iTbXt6)J. F. Bentley1879–1900[1101104](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1101104)[](
**Categories:** Hertfordshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Three Rivers](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-three-rivers/)
**Published:** June 8, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/Three_Rivers_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Three_Rivers_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Three Rivers, Hertfordshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/Three_Rivers_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Three_Rivers_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Three Rivers shown within Hertfordshire
Wikimedia Commons
Three Rivers District Council is one of the ten local district authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Hertfordshire.{{sfnp|JTANMQ4A}}
The authority contains 3 of the Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Lawrence the Martyr**Abbots Langley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/BJR1xq4yiGnyi9Tq8)Late 12th century[1296433](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1296433)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Abbots_Langley_-_The_Church_of_St_Lawrence_the_Martyr_-_geograph.org.uk_-_272827.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**The Orchard**Chorleywood
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/yjaKFjfxZq6XcJRH7)C. F. A. Voysey1899–1900[1348234](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1348234)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/The-Orchard-scaled.webp)Historic England
**Moor Park and Orangery/Stable Block**Rickmansworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/42Sm4cgTVE7QYJw16)Late 17th century[1173698](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1173698)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Moor_Park_Mansion.jpg)Wikimed[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AWhgJNAPZhmtdgAW6)## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Hertfordshir](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-hertfordshire)e
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30064
**Categories:** Hertfordshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Stevenage](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-stevenage/)
**Published:** June 8, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Stevenage_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Stevenage_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Stevenage, Hertfordshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Stevenage_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Stevenage_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Stevenage shown within Hertfordshire
Wikimedia Commons
Stevenage Borough Council is one of the ten local district authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Hertfordshire.{{sfnp|JTANMQ4A}}
The authority contains 2 of the Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Nicholas**Stevenage
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/FxauyEFiUUDXkK5BA)c. 1125[1176923](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1176923)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/86/St_Nicholas%27_Church%2C_Stevenage%2C_2013.JPG/1280px-St_Nicholas%27_Church%2C_Stevenage%2C_2013.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Rooks Nest House Howards**Stevenage
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/s6p95zS7BVQQQ8bGA)18th century[](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1176972)"#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Rooks_Nest_House%2C_Stevenage.JPG/1280px-Rooks_Nest_House%2C_Stevenage.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Hertfordshir](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-hertfordshire)e
[[references[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/VDoprVM9EwBKHv8j6)ed modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30060
**Categories:** Hertfordshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Hertsmere](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-hertsmere/)
**Published:** June 7, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Hertsmere_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Hertsmere_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Hertsmere, Hertfordshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Hertsmere_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Hertsmere_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Hertsmere shown within Hertfordshire
Wikimedia Commons
Hertsmere Council is one of the ten local district authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Hertfordshire.{{sfnp|JTANMQ4A}}
The borough contains 3 of the Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Giles**South Mimms
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/miRt5AFBNiEp9n1H6)13th century[1174342](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1174342)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/St_Giles%2C_South_Mimms%2C_Herts_-_geograph.org.uk_-_368014.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St John the Baptist**Aldenham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/YWmidJT3j8CexhZE6)12th century[1103642](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1103642)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Aldenham%2C_Church_of_St_John_the_Baptist_-_geograph.org.uk_-_93970.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Tyttenhanger House**Ridge
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/FFD8Q1MXqTEPBSS76)c3">Possibly P. Millsc. 1655[1174935](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1174935)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Tyttenhanger_House_-_geograph.org.uk_-_8615.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AWhgJNAPZhmtdgAW6)2> - [Grade I listed buildings in Hertfordshir](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-hertfordshire)e
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30058
**Categories:** Hertfordshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Broxbourne](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-broxbourne/)
**Published:** June 6, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2a/Broxbourne_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Broxbourne_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2a/Broxbourne_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Broxbourne_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Broxbourne shown within Hertfordshire
Wikimedia Commons
Broxbourne Council is one of the ten local district authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Hertfordshire.{{sfnp|JTANMQ4A}}
The borough contains 4 of the Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AWhgJNAPZhmtdgAW6);border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary**Cheshunt
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xA5yZ3jKqGHeTrzV6)1418–1448[1172977](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1172977)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/St_Mary_Cheshunt_Herts.jpg)iv style="text-align:center;">Wikimedia Commons[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AWhgJNAPZhmtdgAW6);border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Eleanor Cross**Waltham Cross
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Mak9VE8jFz6ahqA29)1291[1173222](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1173222)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Waltham_Cross.JPG)iv style="text-align:center;">Wikimedia Commons[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AWhgJNAPZhmtdgAW6);border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Parish Church of St Augustine**Broxbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/nUeW2vuXbh7oAcoL8)c. 15th – 16th century[1100545](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1100545)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/St_Augustine%2C_Broxbourne%2C_Herts_-_geograph.org.uk_-_472882.jpg)iv style="text-align:center;">Wikimedia Commons[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AWhgJNAPZhmtdgAW6)" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Wormleybury**Wormley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/udjyf933WNxiLfAi7)1734[1100541](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1100541)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Wormleybury_in_1816.jpg)iv style="text-align:center;">Wikimedia Commons## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Hertfordshir](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-hertfordshire)e
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30056
**Categories:** Hertfordshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in South Derbyshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-south-derbyshire/)
**Published:** May 15, 2026
**Author:** Legolas
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/South_Derbyshire_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-South_Derbyshire_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in South Derbyshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/South_Derbyshire_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-South_Derbyshire_UK_locator_map.svg.png)South Derbyshire shown within Derbyshire
Wikimedia Commons
South Derbyshire District Council is one of the eight district authorities and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Derbyshire.{{sfnp|U6LXDNIT}}
The authority contains 47 of the 147 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Aisled barn attached to north of stables at Melbourne Hall**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/rPKLBfnqhdgDH89f6) Early 18th century [1281386](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1281386)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Aisled-Barn-scaled.webp)Historic England
**Calke Abbey**Calke
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZKJD71Z8zgkqA44y5) 18th century [1031839](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1031839) [ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Calke_Abbey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1704721.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Aston-on-Trent
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/J8EyzBgmc8t4RXs68)12th century[1281625](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1281625)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Aston_on_Trent%2C_All_Saints.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Andrew**Radbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/LKnPcTqiLs4YRyBd9)13th century[1204062](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1204062)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/St_Andrew%2C_Radbourne.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Andrew**Twyford and Stenson
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/4DSVp99hutcbWgwe6)12th century[1039117](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1039117)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/St_Andrew%27s_Church%2C_Twyford_-_geograph.org.uk_-_680365.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Bartholomew**Elvaston
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/x8KJmnfn4W8o5aPc8)13th century[1096395](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096395)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Elvaston%2C_St_Bartholomew.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Helen**Etwall
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/U8U8ay6eaTt9nDMm6)Late 12th century[1096573](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096573)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Etwall%2C_St_Helen.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St James**Smisby
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/HmUUZBCRdshmEane7)13th century[1096467](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096467)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/31974970_c2951a7d29_o.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Marston on Dove
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/woYS1W8YmFeCjWG88)13th century[1334544](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1334544)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Marston_on_Dove%2C_St_Mary.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Weston-on-Trent
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/72z7unQ1qPQjvoL49)13th century[1205737](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1205737)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/St_Mary%27s_Church_at_Weston-on-Trent%2C_Derbyshire_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1621500.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Michael**Stanton by Bridge
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/uwiZ6RijFGW9TtYv5)[1088339](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1088339)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Stanton_by_Bridge%2C_St_Michael%2C_South_Derbyshire.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Michael and All Angels**Church Broughton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/poFZb6E62uxx4Ayz8)[1205179](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1205179)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Church_Broughton%2C_St_Michael.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Michael and St Mary**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/UDzsRvx2qUEtkiwC8)[1204556](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1204556)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/86/St_Michael_and_St_Mary%2C_Melbourne.jpg/1280px-St_Michael_and_St_Mary%2C_Melbourne.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Saviour**Foremark
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aeLuvzx5cURCq1nn9)[1045861](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1045861)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Foremark%2C_St_Saviour%2C_South_Derbyshire.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Wilfrid**Barrow-upon-Trent
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/1fMCwzvMwzsf2H8TA)[1096559](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096559)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/St_Wilfrid%27s_Church%2C_Barrow_upon_Trent_-_geograph.org.uk_-_679462.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Wystan**Repton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/sajWoCTFFbhCExwYA)[1334560](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1334560)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5b/Church_of_St_Wystan%2C_Repton.jpg/1280px-Church_of_St_Wystan%2C_Repton.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Covered seat to east of Fountain Pond in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AiEhLGGqDyXQLg4R7)[1096377](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096377)**Covered seat to west of Fountain Pond in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/n2boC3AAwijibrZq8)[1262770](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1262770)**Five flights of steps between terraces at Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/knjSxjBDy5gtBmWA9)[1096411](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096411)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Five-Flights-of-Steps-scaled.webp)Historic England
**Foremarke Hall**Foremark
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/qDQVeUD3F3r7GKbJA)[1096531](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096531)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Foremarke_Hall.jpg/1920px-Foremarke_Hall.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Garden walls attached to south front of Melbourne Hall with attached railings and wall to east**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/P3dHL7xkCGmaf3ReA)[1334648](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1334648)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Wall_and_Hedge%2C_Melbourne_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1537408.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Market Cross**Repton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Hgfwzu8gCjp4ZiYZ7)[1096537](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096537)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Repton%27s_Cross_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1251009.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Muniment Room in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/y6Uaw8q5h54SmMWF6)[1281353](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1281353)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Muniment-Room-scaled.webp)Historic England
**Pair of cherubs to north of statue of Mercury in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/n7CiDP9DeFef1pF1A)[1334595](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1334595)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/Pair_of_Cherubs_to_North_of_Statue_of_Mercury_in_Melbourne_Hall_Gardens.jpg/1920px-Pair_of_Cherubs_to_North_of_Statue_of_Mercury_in_Melbourne_Hall_Gardens.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Pair of cherubs to south of statue of Mercury in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/p8kEWkaScRA4gWqWA)[1096412](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096412)**Pair of pedestals supporting fruit bowl vase in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/FSDJcn51mETwThUh6)[1096409](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096409)**Pair of pedestals with lead slaves in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9DSoSiMwh1hmNJ2u5)Jan van Nostc. 1700[1334634](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1334634)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Lead-Slave.webp)Historic England
**Pedestal and Four Seasons Vase in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DviicNmXtikwxrqS6)[1281182](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1281182)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/The_Four_Seasons_Vase_in_Melbourne_Hall_gardens_%28geograph_3221823%29.jpg/960px-The_Four_Seasons_Vase_in_Melbourne_Hall_gardens_%28geograph_3221823%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Pedestal with statue of Andromeda in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/a2rnJV7md7sDZ1a58)[1334616](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1334616)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Statue_of_Andromeda_at_Melbourne_Hall_gardens_%28geograph_3211214%29.jpg/960px-Statue_of_Andromeda_at_Melbourne_Hall_gardens_%28geograph_3211214%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Pedestal with statue of Mercury in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/csNEXc4tmAHChKQk9)[1204240](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1204240)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Statue-of-Mercury-scaled.webp)Historic England\]
**Pedestal with statue of Perseus in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/R3jLfsSxSNTrfFMr6)[1096374](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096374)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Perseus-scaled.webp)Historic England
**Pedestal with vase to south-west of Fountain Pond in Melbourne Hall garden**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/jJfjoEAkFBopuPVP7)[1096378](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096378)**Priory Gateway, precinct walls, the tithe barn and the Lodge, Repton School**Repton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WJjLbSgTzom51wvN6)13th century[1055800](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1055800)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Arch_and_Old_Priory%2C_Repton_-_geograph.org.uk_-_273607.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Radbourne Hall**Radbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aB4HMKruHaMK2JJP7)c. 1865[1334517](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1334517)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Radbourne_Hall_1860s.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Remains of Priory Church and the Chapter Block, Repton School**Repton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/i1URhBX593d6wmeQ7)13th century[1096512](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096512)**Repton Hall with Prior Overton’s Tower, Repton School**Repton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/HU6kNKHqvZa7AvNf9)c. 1680[1057669](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1057669)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Repton-Hall-scaled.webp)Historic England
**Stone fountain to north of lower terrace in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Vur4jz2gyGuzbRkR6)c. 1704[1204272](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1204272)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Stone_Fountain_in_Melbourne_Hall_Gardens.jpg/1920px-Stone_Fountain_in_Melbourne_Hall_Gardens.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Stone fountain to south of lower terrace in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KaHoJ77nLRFYDpLe9)c. 1704[1204317](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1204317)**Swarkestone Bridge and Causeway**Stanton by Bridge
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2GWBgMZtATXSjxmW9)Late 13th or early 14th century[1088337](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1088337)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Swarkestone_Bridge.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Tea rooms to north of Melbourne Hall and attached walls**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/QwMkGSykFLSXFgPe9)Early 18th century[1334633](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1334633)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Courtyard_at_Melbourne_Hall_%28geograph_3197814%29.jpg/1280px-Courtyard_at_Melbourne_Hall_%28geograph_3197814%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**The Birdcage Arbour in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/y65BtF89ZUW5w2pd6)c. 1705–1710[1096375](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096375)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/The_Birdcage_-_geograph.org.uk_-_528330.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**The Grandstand, Cuttle and Gate 200 metres north of Swarkestone Hall**Swarkstone
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GQaX3BJf1SZyg32C8) c. 1630 [1088345](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1088345) [ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Swarkestone_Hall_Pavilion_2.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**The Old Priory, attached walls and gate piers, Repton School**Repton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/11wmdfL4VDnJP5mH9) Late 12th century [1055755](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1055755) [ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Arch_and_Old_Priory%2C_Repton_-_geograph.org.uk_-_273607.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Three pairs of vases flanking central path of upper terrace in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/1bdU4hoMvAksBj7b8) Early 18th century [1204146](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1204146) [ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Three-Pairs-of-Vases-scaled.webp)Historic England
**Two pairs of cherubs to north-west of the Grand Basin in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/VpKqTPprMC32LnzcA) c. 1700 [1096372](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096372) [ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Two_Pairs_of_Cherubs_in_Melbourne_Hall_Gardens.jpg/1920px-Two_Pairs_of_Cherubs_in_Melbourne_Hall_Gardens.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Two pairs of cherubs to south-west of the Grand Basin in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/533db3WfToDeAyJUA) c. 1700 [1334615](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1334615)**Vase and pedestal to north-west of the Four Seasons Vase in Melbourne Hall gardens**Melbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/mpeyhHNtBA3Kf4WM8) Late 18th century [1096380](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096380)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Vase-and-Pedestal-scaled.webp)Historic England
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Derbyshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-derbyshire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29997
**Categories:** Derbyshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in North East Derbyshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-north-east-derbyshire/)
**Published:** May 4, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/North_East_Derbyshire_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-North_East_Derbyshire_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the district council of North East Derbyshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/North_East_Derbyshire_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-North_East_Derbyshire_UK_locator_map.svg.png)North East Derbyshire shown within Derbyshire
a Commons
North East Derbyshire District Council is one of the eight district authorities and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the ceremonial county of Derbyshire.{{sfnp|U6LXDNIT}}
The authority contains 8 of the 147 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image**">**Church of All Saints**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/poFZb6E62uxx4Ayz8)">Ashover
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/bxMbQRsmqWGu6XD4A)">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/poFZb6E62uxx4Ayz8)">Late 13th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/poFZb6E62uxx4Ayz8)">[1291953](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1291953)">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Ashover_Parish_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_406845.jpg)a Commons
">**Church of All Saints**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/poFZb6E62uxx4Ayz8)">Wingerworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/EUQv4AtF8RRP158W7)">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/poFZb6E62uxx4Ayz8)">12th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/poFZb6E62uxx4Ayz8)">[1291897](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1291897)">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Wingerworth_-_The_Parish_Church_of_All_Saints_-_geograph.org.uk_-_585916.jpg)a Commons
">**Church of St John the Baptist**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/poFZb6E62uxx4Ayz8)">Dronfield
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZS3fXP7v3vUpKTUL9)">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/poFZb6E62uxx4Ayz8)">Late 13th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/poFZb6E62uxx4Ayz8)">[1187146](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1187146)">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Dronfield_Parish_Church_%28Geograph_2300937_by_Dave_Bevis%29.jpg/1280px-Dronfield_Parish_Church_%28Geograph_2300937_by_Dave_Bevis%29.jpg)a Commons
">**Church of St Lawrence**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/poFZb6E62uxx4Ayz8)">North Wingfield
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GU3RqqcneLbwYLqj7)">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/poFZb6E62uxx4Ayz8)">12th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/poFZb6E62uxx4Ayz8)">[1335463](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1335463)">[](
**Categories:** Derbyshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in High Peak](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-high-peak/)
**Published:** May 2, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Derbyshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Derbyshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of High Peak, Derbyshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Derbyshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Derbyshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png)Derbyshire shown within England
Wikimedia Commons
High Peak Borough Council is one of the eight district authorities and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Derbyshire.{{sfnp|U6LXDNIT}}
The borough contains 3 of the 147 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Peter**Hope
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/CNgTDhztg1aZUEpJA):top;text-align:center;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Early 14th century[1121945](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1121945)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/St_Peters_Parish_Church%2C_Hope.jpg/960px-St_Peters_Parish_Church%2C_Hope.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Peveril Castle curtain walls and fragmentary foundations**Castleton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/uSWbb3sjL27Bj8mp8):top;text-align:center;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 11th century[1250966](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1250966)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Peveril_Castle_keep%2C_2009.jpg/1280px-Peveril_Castle_keep%2C_2009.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**The Crescent**Buxton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/73zadSva44mGE84Q7):top;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1780–1788[1257876](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1257876)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Buxton%2C_The_Crescent.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [](
**Categories:** Derbyshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Erewash](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-erewash/)
**Published:** May 8, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/Erewash_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Erewash_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of Erewash, Derbyshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/Erewash_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Erewash_UK_locator_map.svg.png)-size:12px; color:#5b5b5b">Erewash shown within Derbyshire
Wikimedia Commons
Erewash Borough Council is one of the eight district authorities and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Derbyshire.{{sfnp|U6LXDNIT}}
The authority contains 10 of the 147 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Cat and Fiddle Mill**="#abb8c3">Dale Abbey
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/bLC8ZbbxuGxuV7759)="#abb8c3">1788="#abb8c3">/list-entry/1205307" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1205307[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Cat_and_Fiddle_Mill.jpg)-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Hgfwzu8gCjp4ZiYZ7):left;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of All Saints**="#abb8c3">Breadsall
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/dAh2kjEYMqQrS4YKA)="#abb8c3">12th century="#abb8c3">/list-entry/1328833" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1328833[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/All_Saints_Church%2C_Breadsall.jpg)-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Hgfwzu8gCjp4ZiYZ7):left;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of All Saints**="#abb8c3">Kirk Hallam
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/wjWJV2EUMPVzhmVt8)="#abb8c3">14th century="#abb8c3">/list-entry/1205580" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1205580[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Kirk_Hallam_Church.jpg)-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Hgfwzu8gCjp4ZiYZ7):left;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of All Saints**="#abb8c3">Sawley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/mhaSPMnSkTzWWprM6)="#abb8c3">11th century="#abb8c3">/list-entry/1204277" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1204277[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/All_Saints%27_Church%2C_Sawley_-_geograph.org.uk_-_162619.jpg)-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Hgfwzu8gCjp4ZiYZ7):left;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of All Saints and Vergers Farmhouse**="#abb8c3">Dale Abbey
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/UxiU8ebyvnFBay8VA)="#abb8c3">Late 12th century="#abb8c3">/list-entry/1140436" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1140436[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/All_Saints%2C_Dale_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1051903.jpg)-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Hgfwzu8gCjp4ZiYZ7):left;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Chad**="#abb8c3">Draycott and Church Wilne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/4KQQHRz6rNiCrkg67)="#abb8c3">Early 13th century="#abb8c3">/list-entry/1281336" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1281336[ 
**Published:** May 21, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/Derbyshire_Dales_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Derbyshire_Dales_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Derbyshire Dales.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/Derbyshire_Dales_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Derbyshire_Dales_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Derbyshire Dales shown within Derbyshire
Wikimedia Commons
Derbyshire Dales District Council is one of the eight district authorities and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Derbyshire.{{sfnp|U6LXDNIT}}
The authority contains 46 of the 147 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image**[Bakewell Bridge](https://engole.info/bakewell-bridge)Bakewell
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/NHf9ZodkGSLnZ5PT6) c. 1300 [1148112](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1148112) [ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Bridge_over_the_River_Wye_in_Bakewell_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1301.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Baslow Bridge**Baslow and Bubnell
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/R28cpmhqbBg143Cc9) Early 17th century[1088195](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1088195)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/Baslow_road_bridge_over_river_Derwent_%28geograph_3125886%29.jpg/1920px-Baslow_road_bridge_over_river_Derwent_%28geograph_3125886%29.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Bridge on main approach to Chatsworth House**Charsworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2m4L7wimRuMusrKk9)James Paine1759–1774[1049093](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1049093)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Chatsworth_Bridge_-_geograph.org.uk_-_112435.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Chatsworth House**Chatsworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/qA32UzytqG4NrHw89)1687–1689[1373871](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1373871)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/View_of_Chatsworth_House%2C_England.jpg/1280px-View_of_Chatsworth_House%2C_England.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Bakewell
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/MY2sU4kMmNG6zRYM8)18th century[1316489](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1316489)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Church_in_Bakewell_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1130117.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Bradbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/MwaqdBTR3vMVhtgHA)12th century[1109479](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1109479)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/All_Saints_Church%2C_Bradbourne_-_geograph.org.uk_-_155865.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Brailsford
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/e176fJijfmRBQLg78)12th century[1109734](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1109734)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Brailsford_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_488634.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Hassop
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/RyzRFzfYZzFtiqeU9)Joseph Ireland1816–1817[1253035](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1253035)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Catholic_church_in_Hassop_-_geograph.org.uk_-_583495.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**Youlgreave
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/oE4zJCsC3Lcm1ejP8)Late 12th century[1109853](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1109853)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Youlgrave_All_Saints_Church_%28geograph_2540443%29.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Andrew**Cubley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KtB9d6QR3fxmGVBp7)Late 15th century[1203949](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1203949)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/St._Andrew%2C_Cubley_1.jpg/1280px-St._Andrew%2C_Cubley_1.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Chad**Longford
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AkyPCyEawFqMfzkE9)15th century[1109790](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1109790)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/St_Chad_Longford_119021_dcf93963.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Cuthbert**Doveridge
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/egxz7rKp2rkb6MSe9)Late 12th century[1274523](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1274523)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/St_Cuthbert%27s_Church%2C_Doveridge_%28geograph_2001997%29.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Giles**Great Longstone
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GeiNDYgu49xCrowj9)13th century[1109899](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1109899)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Great_Longstone_church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1114300.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St John the Baptist**Tideswell
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/UxHZfXqXEg7meARAA)14th century[1215255](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1215255)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Tideswell_-_church_and_village_rooftops_-_geograph.org.uk_-_624016.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Leonard**Thorpe
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/4oBtmYrweZUJPcEm8)Early 12th century[1203690](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1203690)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/St_Leonards_Church%2C_Thorpe_%28geograph_1879765%29.jpg/1280px-St_Leonards_Church%2C_Thorpe_%28geograph_1879765%29.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Cromford
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/UxHZfXqXEg7meARAA)T. Gardner1792–1797[1248052](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1248052)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/St_Mary%27s_Church%2C_Cromford_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1285716.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**Wirksworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/4oBtmYrweZUJPcEm8)[1335090](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1335090)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/St_Marys_Wirksworth.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary and St Barlok**Norbury and Roston
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xvkxsbLuaTJaC3GKA)Early 15th century[1109764](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1109764)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Norbury_Church_Derbyshire.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Michael**Kniveton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/UM3mXXgWfSaUKHrm8)12th century[1146435](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1146435)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8e/Saint_Michael%27s_Church%2C_Kniveton%2C_Derbyshire.jpg/1280px-Saint_Michael%27s_Church%2C_Kniveton%2C_Derbyshire.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Michael**Taddington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AoYrpVhAUPokQA666)14th century[1109887](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1109887)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/St_Michael_%26_All_Angels_church%2C_Taddington.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Michael and All Angels**Hathersage
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/kGYz8zak5asrupM27)14th century[1109793](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1109793)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Hathersage_Church.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter**Edensor
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Spcwd8PedSC5URJc7)12th century[1088158](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1088158)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/St_Peter%27s_Church%2C_Edensor%2C_Chatsworth_Estate_-_geograph.org.uk_-_914382.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Churchyard cross 6 metres east of church porch**Eyam
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/5bTHkaYY9P91BAkZ7)Early 9th century[1100263](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1100263)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Celtic_cross_and_Eyam_church_tower_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1398136.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Conduit House, Cascade and adjoining statues**Chatsworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZYgKPEESVSvKnZyS6)Grilletc. 1696[1088181](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1088181)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/The_Cascade_Building_Chatsworth_House.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Cromford Mill**Cromford
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/XxWYtnoLvgcF62G26)1771[1248010](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1248010)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Cromford_1771_mill.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Cross situated 12 metres to south of porch of Church of All Saints**Bakewell
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/JAkdiCmH68KSA8MA8)Early 10th century[1316491](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1316491)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Saxon_cross_shaft%2C_All_Saints%27_Church%2C_Bakewell.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Ednaston Manor and attached walls and terracing**Brailsford
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/XkkpqZySn8BSnsvb8)Edwin Lutyens1912–1919[1109745](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1109745)**Egyptian statue behind the Dukes greenhouse 3 metres from the corner**Chatsworth
[](|https://maps.app.goo.gl/X6UXUq7XF1T6BVLC9)c. 1570–1304 BCE[1067714](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1067714)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Inside_Chatsworth_House-_Egyptian_sculpture_%28geograph_3614516%29.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Egyptian statue behind the Dukes greenhouse 9 metres from the corner**Chatsworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/X6UXUq7XF1T6BVLC9)c. 1570–1304 BCE[1334742](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1334742)**Former stables at Chatsworth House**Chatsworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/wVDQ548RGLi4LuQm9)James Paine1758–1763[1088184](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1088184)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Stable_block_Chatsworth.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Haddon Hall**Nether Haddon
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DQ5xBPffAhiTqWD18)Mainly 14th and 15th century[1334982](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1334982)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6d/Haddon_Hall.jpg/1920px-Haddon_Hall.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Holme Bridge**Bakewell
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/NZ8aTtdsjW9nh87b7)1664[1247518](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1247518)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/River_Wye_and_pack_horse_bridge_-_geograph.org.uk_-_29091.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Holme Hall**Bakewell
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/cysu2DeNrnorGGUW9)1626–1628[1246166](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1246166)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Bakewell_-_Holme_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_718489.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Holy Trinity Church**Kirk Ireton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aEnxQkJzL6QY61n96)12th century[1335168](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1335168)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Holy_Trinity_Church%2C_Kirk_Ireton.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Old Grammar School**Ashbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WavE6cDz7XP5HqdH8)1586[1207596](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1207596)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c4/Queen_Elizabeth_Grammar_School%2C_Ashbourne.jpg/1280px-Queen_Elizabeth_Grammar_School%2C_Ashbourne.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Padley Chapel**Upper Padley, Grindleford
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D8o2Migc8X7S6xc87)c. 14th and 15th century, with later alterations[1335033](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1335033)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Padley_House_or_Chapel_641954_6a41d1b7.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Parish Church of St Oswald**Ashbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Hx2X5UjmqtmnVeJ78)Mainly c. 1220[1207715](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1207715)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/St_Oswald%27s_Church%2C_Ashbourne_-_geograph.org.uk_-_51469.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Remains of Chapel of St Mary and St John the Baptist to south of Stydd Hall**Yeaveley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/XQu6BciU35UWy2tE8)Early 13th century[1109732](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1109732)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/91/Preceptory_near_Stydd_Hall-geograph.org.uk-4148932.jpg/1920px-Preceptory_near_Stydd_Hall-geograph.org.uk-4148932.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Series of herms and altars laid out in a Y to the east of the Ring Pond**Chatsworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mKdnpjS1d2uU9gy6)Probably William Kentc. 1730[1334743](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1334743)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Gardens_at_Chatsworth_%28geograph_3193858%29.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Snitterton Hall**Snitterton, South Darley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/g9VBDjad92uybhD56)Late 16th century[1248141](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1248141)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/Snitterton_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3903238.jpg/1280px-Snitterton_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3903238.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Somersal Herbert Hall**Somersal Herbert
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7) Early 16th century[1274325](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1274325)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Somersal_Herbert_Hall%2C_Derbyshire.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Sudbury Hall and attached stable block**Sudbury
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/TYSBzoz65bfVKqe17) 1660–1670[1273995](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1273995) [ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Sudbury_Hall_and_Childhood_Museum.jpg/1920px-Sudbury_Hall_and_Childhood_Museum.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**Temple of Flora**Chatsworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/yxNcp4PpZr2SC7RK6)Probably William Talman1693–1695[1088176](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1088176)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Chatsworth_House%2C_Derbyshire.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**The Great Cross and railed enclosure**Bakewell
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fWW9xJkhaDyykDc88) Early 9th century[1316492](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1316492)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/BakewellCross.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
**The Mansion including coach house wall**Ashbourne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/jHbWvBfc9gLJ5n2q9) c. 1685 [1335139](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1335139)
[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2a/The_Mansion%2C_Ashbourne.JPG/1280px-The_Mansion%2C_Ashbourne.JPG);">Wikimedia Commons
**The Old Manor and attached garden wall**Norbury Hollow
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/XT4qJLNhn4qhZkAt6) Late 17th century[1281200](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1281200)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Norbury_church_and_hall_046773_50c8b955.jpg);">Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Derbyshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-derbyshire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30021
**Categories:** Derbyshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in City of Derby](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-city-of-derby/)
**Published:** May 11, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Derbyshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Derbyshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the unitary authority of Derby City Council.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Derbyshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Derbyshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png)e="font-size:12px; color:#5b5b5b">Derbyshire shown within England
Wikimedia Commons
The [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) of Derby City Council is one of the eight district authorities and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Derbyshire.{{sfnp|U6LXDNIT}}
The authority contains 9 of the 147 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image**c3">**41 Friar Gate**c3">City of Derby
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/74rWVKB7Xz9wvEPX8)c3">c3">c. 177[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AkyPCyEawFqMfzkE9)nter;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xvkxsbLuaTJaC3GKA)c3">[1287620](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1287620)c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Pickford%27s_House_-_geograph.org.uk_-_561360.jpg)rder-bottom-right-radius:12px;">e="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
left;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xvkxsbLuaTJaC3GKA)c3">**Bakewell’s Gates at the Silk Mill Industrial Museum**c3">City of Derby
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/yvZnDQqBDm1hD4V57)c3">c3">1728c3">[1229981](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1229981)c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bb/Robert_Bakewell_Silk_Mill_Gates_4758169085_55ae5a896a_o.jpg/1920px-Robert_Bakewell_Silk_Mill_Gates_4758169085_55ae5a896a_o.jpg)rder-bottom-right-radius:12px;">e="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
left;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xvkxsbLuaTJaC3GKA)c3">**Cathedral Church of All Saints**c3">City of Derby
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GMSacfcV2VqmyC559)c3">c3">Early 16th centuryc3">[1228277](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1228277)c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Derby_Cathedral_%28geograph_3131484%29.jpg)rder-bottom-right-radius:12px;">e="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
left;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xvkxsbLuaTJaC3GKA)c3">**Church of St Mary**c3">Chaddesden
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/eDfc9LkCiwFSGDfr5)c3">c3">1357c3">[1215913](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1215913)c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/St_Mary%27s_Church_Chaddesden_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1099515.jpg)rder-bottom-right-radius:12px;">e="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
left;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xvkxsbLuaTJaC3GKA)c3">**County Hall**c3">City of Derby
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/vvdPprxVjmvL2QUCA)c3">c3">166[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AkyPCyEawFqMfzkE9)nter;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xvkxsbLuaTJaC3GKA)c3">[1279174](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1279174)c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Derby_Magistrates%27_Court.jpg)rder-bottom-right-radius:12px;">e="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
left;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xvkxsbLuaTJaC3GKA)c3">**Darley Abbey Mills (South Complex) Long Mill, Middle Mill, East Mill, West Mill, engine house and chimney, tollhouse, bobbin shop and drying shed**c3">Darley Abbey
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pdy1HSZSosDNtBMn8)c3">c3">Before 185[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AkyPCyEawFqMfzkE9)nter;bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xvkxsbLuaTJaC3GKA)c3">[1279399](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1279399)[](
**Categories:** Derbyshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Chesterfield](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-chesterfield/)
**Published:** May 1, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Derbyshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Derbyshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of Chesterfield, Derbyshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Derbyshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Derbyshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png)Derbyshire shown within England
n>
Chesterfield Borough Council is one of the eight district authorities and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Derbyshire.{{sfnp|U6LXDNIT}}
The borough contains 1 of the 147 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Mary and All Saints**Chesterfield
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/saQacepTG6PUxdmf7)Medieval[1334708](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1334708)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Crooked_spire_of_Chesterfield_Parish_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_341995.jpg)n>
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Derbyshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-derbyshire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29951
**Categories:** Derbyshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Bolsover](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-bolsover/)
**Published:** May 6, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b5/Bolsover_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Bolsover_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade 1 listed buildings in the district council of Bolsover.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b5/Bolsover_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Bolsover_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Bolsover shown within Derbyshire
ommons
Bolsover District Council is one of the eight district authorities and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Derbyshire.{{sfnp|U6LXDNIT}}
The authority contains 7 of the 147 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Barlborough Hall**rder-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Barlborough
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/LbCcP7G3Dngkubin6)rder-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1583rder-bottom-color:#abb8c3"[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/4oBtmYrweZUJPcEm8)toricengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1108972" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1108972[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Barlborough_Hall.jpg)align:center;">ommons**Bolsover Castle**rder-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Old Bolsover
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/LdEi1aSa1PdfsYbd6)rder-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">17th centuryrder-bottom-color:#abb8c3"[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/4oBtmYrweZUJPcEm8)toricengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1108976" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1108976[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Bolsover_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_205752.jpg)align:center;">ommons**Church of All Saints**rder-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Whitwell
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/TNtSZyQfvap3ymNS9)rder-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">12th centuryrder-bottom-color:#abb8c3"[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/4oBtmYrweZUJPcEm8)toricengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1366579" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1366579[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Steetley_Chapel_-_geograph.org.uk_-_608251.jpg)align:center;">ommons**Church of St John the Baptist**rder-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Ault Hucknall
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZXEWHndYsowVT77n7)rder-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">11th centuryrder-bottom-color:#abb8c3"[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/4oBtmYrweZUJPcEm8)toricengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1109001" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1109001[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Ault_Hucknall_St_John_the_Baptist_Church_043249_9500fe0c.jpg)align:center;">ommons**Church of St Lawrence**rder-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Whitwell
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/doypukhE1ZyXo8Nh7)rder-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">12th centuryrder-bottom-color:#abb8c3"[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/4oBtmYrweZUJPcEm8)toricengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1108938" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1108938[](
**Categories:** Derbyshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Amber Valley](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-amber-valley/)
**Published:** May 12, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Amber_Valley_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Amber_Valley_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Amber Valley.
**Content:**
>See also
**Categories:** Derbyshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Wigan](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-wigan/)
**Published:** January 10, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/Wigan_UK_locator_map.svg/500px-Wigan_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan in Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/Wigan_UK_locator_map.svg/500px-Wigan_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Wigan shown within Greater Manchester
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Wigan in North West England is one of the ten metropolitan boroughs that make up the Metropolitan County of Greater Manchester.{{sfnp|W9CW4SJE}}
The borough contains one of the forty-eight Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Greater Manchester. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image**[**Church of St Wilfrid, Standish**](https://engole.info/church-of-st-wilfrid-standish/)Standish
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/uonpsFx6Q2z2ruCi8)Lawrence Shipway (probably)1584[1287160](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1287160)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Standish_st_wilfrids.jpg/960px-Standish_st_wilfrids.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/gfPYv6UqNMQyTEds6)lso - [Grade I listed buildings in Greater Manchester](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-greater-manchester)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25906
**Categories:** Greater Manchester
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Tameside](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-tameside/)
**Published:** January 10, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Tameside_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Tameside_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Tameside in Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Tameside_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Tameside_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Tameside within Greater Manchester
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Tameside in North West England is one of the ten metropolitan boroughs that make up the Metropolitan County of Greater Manchester.{{sfnp|W9CW4SJE}}
The borough contains two of the forty-eight Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Greater Manchester. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image**[**St Anne’s Church**](https://engole.info/st-annes-denton)Denton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/uonpsFx6Q2z2ruCi8)J. & H. Medland Taylor1882[1309251](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1309251)[ ](https://media.acny.uk/media/thumbs/f5/dc/f5dc3911c9d938e926bfae68f41a4954.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**St Michael and All Angels’ Church**Ashton-under-Lyne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Seiprf2bSQDUJTTD6)15th century[1162800](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1162800)[](
**Categories:** Greater Manchester
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Stockport](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-stockport/)
**Published:** January 10, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Stockport_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Stockport_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, in Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Stockport_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Stockport_UK_locator_map.svg.png)" style="font-size:12px; color:#5b5b5b">Stockport within Greater Manchester
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Stockport in North West England is one of the ten metropolitan boroughs that make up the Metropolitan County of Greater Manchester.{{sfnp|W9CW4SJE}}
The borough contains seven of the forty-eight Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Greater Manchester. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number**Image**Bramall Hall**Bramhall
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2Vbafsv3fvFokzPB6)14th century[1260476](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1260476).wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Bramall\_Hall\_from\_west%2C\_2011.jpg"> " style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St George**Heaviley
Hubert Austin and Edward Graham Paley1897[1067194](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1067194).wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/St.\_George%27s\_Church%2C\_Stockport\_22\_April\_2009.JPG/960px-St.\_George%27s\_Church%2C\_Stockport\_22\_April\_2009.JPG"> " style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Thomas**Stockport
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KXsJgfanK5xYSsWb8)George Basevi1897[1067160](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1067160).wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/47/St.\_Thomas%27\_Church%2C\_Stockport\_04.jpg/1280px-St.\_Thomas%27\_Church%2C\_Stockport\_04.jpg"> " style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Marple Aqueduct**Marple
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/61zVV8qCW8Eh2XfL7)Benjamin Outram and Thomas Brown1794–1801[1242267](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1242267).wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Marple\_River\_Goyt\_0314.JPG/960px-Marple\_River\_Goyt\_0314.JPG"> " style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**St Elisabeth’s Church**Reddish
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/W5tWu4jtQXXVFQ9P9)Alfred Waterhouse1883[1356851](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1356851).wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7f/St\_Elisabeths.JPG/1280px-St\_Elisabeths.JPG"> " style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**St Mary’s Church**Cheadle
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9aWiC2vfy9HQKoWY7)Mainly 1520–1550[1241643](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1241643).wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/St\_Mary%27s\_Church%2C\_Cheadle.jpg"> " style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**St Mary’s Parish Church**Stockport
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KXsJgfanK5xYSsWb8)Lewis Wyatt[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Tb68F77gsVAJDxaR8):center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[1309701](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1309701).wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bf/St\_Mary%27s\_under\_reconstruction.jpg/1280px-St\_Mary%27s\_under\_reconstruction.jpg"> " style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [](
**Categories:** Greater Manchester
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Salford](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-salford/)
**Published:** January 10, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/Salford_UK_locator_map.svg/500px-Salford_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Salford, in Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/Salford_UK_locator_map.svg/500px-Salford_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Salford within Greater Manchester
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Salford in North West England is one of the ten metropolitan boroughs that make up the Metropolitan County of Greater Manchester.{{sfnp|W9CW4SJE}}
The borough contains six of the forty-eight Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Greater Manchester. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image**[**Ordsall Hall**](https://engole.info/ordsall-hall)Ordsall
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/evwTCeUeEG1KapHV8)16th century[1386169](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1386169)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d4/Ordsall_Hall%2C_entire_south-east_facing_side_of_east_wing_2009.jpg/1920px-Ordsall_Hall%2C_entire_south-east_facing_side_of_east_wing_2009.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Railway Bridge Over River Irwell to Former Liverpool Road Station**Salford
[](https://goo.gl/maps/5DeFqEPJ8HR2LbmPA)George Stephenson1830/historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1270603" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1270603[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f1/River_Irwell_Railway_Bridge%2C_Water_Street%2C_Manchester.JPG/1280px-River_Irwell_Railway_Bridge%2C_Water_Street%2C_Manchester.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**St Augustine’s Church**Pendlebury
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/NAk1i6fKYs6AyLbc9)George Frederick Bodley1874/historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1067508" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1067508[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Church_of_St_Augustine%2C_Pendlebury.jpg/1280px-Church_of_St_Augustine%2C_Pendlebury.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
[**St Mark’s Church**](https://engole.info/st-marks-church-worsley/)Worsley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Hw7XiWVvgSFwScqM6)George Gilbert Scott1846/historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1227895" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1227895[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/St_marks_worsley.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
rchEccles
[](https://goo.gl/maps/5DeFqEPJ8HR2LbmPA)13th century/historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1067498" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1067498[](
**Categories:** Greater Manchester
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Rochdale](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-rochdale/)
**Published:** January 10, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Rochdale_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Rochdale_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, in Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Rochdale_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Rochdale_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Rochdale shown within Greater Manchester
an>
The Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale in North West England is one of the ten metropolitan boroughs that make up the Metropolitan County of Greater Manchester.{{sfnp|W9CW4SJE}}
The borough contains five of the forty-eight Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Greater Manchester. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Edmund**Edmund Street, Rochdale
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/E6bSC9z9nnxFGzmS6)James Medland and Henry Taylor1873[1084273](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1084273)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/St_Edmund%27s_Masonic_Church%2C_Rochdale.jpg/960px-St_Edmund%27s_Masonic_Church%2C_Rochdale.jpg)an>
**Church of St Leonard**New Lane, Middleton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/E6bSC9z9nnxFGzmS6)1524[1162332](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1162332)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Middleton%2C_St_Leonard.jpg)an>
**Church of St Mary in the Baum**St Mary’s Gate, Rochdale
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/wpEDkH3qkivgNEry5);border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1911[1025294](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1025294)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/St_Mary_in_the_Baum%2C_Rochdale_1_%284743411218%29.jpg/960px-St_Mary_in_the_Baum%2C_Rochdale_1_%284743411218%29.jpg)an>
**Rochdale Cenotaph**The Esplanade, Rochdale
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/nKJ6NYCgeQSuq5vc6);border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1922[1084274](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1084274)[](
**Categories:** Greater Manchester
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Manchester](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-manchester/)
**Published:** January 10, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Manchester_UK_locator_map.svg/1920px-Manchester_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Manchester, in Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[**](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Manchester_UK_locator_map.svg/1920px-Manchester_UK_locator_map.svg.png)mmons/thumb/9/93/Manchester\_UK\_locator\_map.svg/1920px-Manchester\_UK\_locator\_map.svg.png" alt="See caption" class="kb-img"/> style="font-size:12px; color:#5b5b5b">Manchester shown within Greater Manchester
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Manchester in North West England is one of the ten metropolitan boroughs that make up the Metropolitan County of Greater Manchester.{{sfnp|W9CW4SJE}}
The borough contains fifteen of the forty-eight Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Greater Manchester. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****1830 warehouse, Liverpool Road railway station**ign:center;border-top-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Liverpool Road, City centre
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D6nfj2AsKihoeZ7p9)ign:center;border-top-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Thomas Haighign:center;border-top-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">c. 1830ign:center;border-top-color:#abb8c3" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/44HNEkLvUZFAcgVj9)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1282991" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1282991[ **](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/1830_warehouse%2C_Liverpool_Road_station_3.JPG/1280px-1830_warehouse%2C_Liverpool_Road_station_3.JPG)mmons/thumb/f/f2/1830\_warehouse%2C\_Liverpool\_Road\_station\_3.JPG/1280px-1830\_warehouse%2C\_Liverpool\_Road\_station\_3.JPG" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-botto[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZYgKPEESVSvKnZyS6)px;"> style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Albert Memorial**-color="#abb8c3">Albert Square, City centre
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KSndLRifmkuNWf7W7)-color="#abb8c3">Thomas Worthington-color="#abb8c3">1862–1865ign:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/44HNEkLvUZFAcgVj9)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1197820" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1197820[ **](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Albert-Square-MainStatue.jpg)mmons/9/95/Albert-Square-MainStatue.jpg" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-botto[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZYgKPEESVSvKnZyS6)px;"> style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Baguley Hall**-color="#abb8c3">Hall Lane, Baguley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/BrieQvkwLyxrdPC3A)-color="#abb8c3">14th century (probably)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1291962" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1291962[ **](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Baguley_Hall.jpg)mmons/9/9c/Baguley\_Hall.jpg" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-botto[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZYgKPEESVSvKnZyS6)px;"> style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Chetham’s Hospital and attached wall**-color="#abb8c3">Long Millgate, City centre
-color="#abb8c3">1422 (established)ign:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/44HNEkLvUZFAcgVj9)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1283015" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1283015[ **](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4e/Baronial_Hall_Chetham%27s.jpg/1920px-Baronial_Hall_Chetham%27s.jpg)mmons/thumb/4/4e/Baronial\_Hall\_Chetham%27s.jpg/1920px-Baronial\_Hall\_Chetham%27s.jpg" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-botto[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZYgKPEESVSvKnZyS6)px;"> style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of the Holy Name of Jesus**-color="#abb8c3">Oxford Road, Chorlton-on-Medlock
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/TWUgbqS9xbuJ8Ycs9)Joseph Hansom-color="#abb8c3">1867–1871 by Hansom; completed 1928 by A. G. Scottign:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/44HNEkLvUZFAcgVj9)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1271296" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1271296[ **](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Image-The_Holy_Name_of_Jesus%2C_Manchester-2.jpg/960px-Image-The_Holy_Name_of_Jesus%2C_Manchester-2.jpg)mmons/thumb/6/6e/Image-The\_Holy\_Name\_of\_Jesus%2C\_Manchester-2.jpg/960px-Image-The\_Holy\_Name\_of\_Jesus%2C\_Manchester-2.jpg" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-botto[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZYgKPEESVSvKnZyS6)px;"> style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Ann**-color="#abb8c3">St Ann’s Square, City centre
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/gF47t9V4FAFrbxjQ6)Christopher Wren (by tradition)-color="#abb8c3">1712ign:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/44HNEkLvUZFAcgVj9)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1247612" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1247612[ **](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b2/St_Ann%27s_Church%2C_Manchester.jpg/960px-St_Ann%27s_Church%2C_Manchester.jpg)mmons/thumb/b/b2/St\_Ann%27s\_Church%2C\_Manchester.jpg/960px-St\_Ann%27s\_Church%2C\_Manchester.jpg" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-botto[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZYgKPEESVSvKnZyS6)px;"> style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Former Bank of England**-color="#abb8c3">King Street, Deansgate, City centre
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/CKfjj9e5NbYBCorJ7)Charles Robert Cockerell-color="#abb8c3">1846ign:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/44HNEkLvUZFAcgVj9)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1291596" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1291596[](
**Categories:** Greater Manchester
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Bury](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-bury/)
**Published:** January 10, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/Bury_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Bury_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Bury, in Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/Bury_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Bury_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Bury shown within Greater Manchester
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Bury in North West England is one of the ten metropolitan boroughs that make up the Metropolitan County of Greater Manchester.{{sfnp|W9CW4SJE}}
The borough contains four of the forty-eight Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Greater Manchester. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****All Saints’ Church**Church Lane, Whitefield
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9Lzq7R2JBY5kwojo6)Charles Barry1826[1356818](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1356818)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/All_Saints_Church%2C_Whitefield.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary and St Bartholomew**Church Green, Radcliffe
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/HJFvgpDenS1S9t9Q7)14th century[1163125](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1163125)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Parish_Church_of_St_Mary%2C_Radcliffe.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin**Church Lane, Prestwich
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/HJFvgpDenS1S9t9Q7)15th century[1067252](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1067252)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Prestwich%2C_St_Mary%27s_Church.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Radcliffe Tower**Church Street East, Radcliffe
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GytEATFCoZTKV3og9)1403[1309271](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1309271)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/Radcliffe_tower_hdr.jpg/1280px-Radcliffe_tower_hdr.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-greater-manchester)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/gF47t9V4FAFrbxjQ6)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25899
**Categories:** Greater Manchester
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Bolton](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-bolton/)
**Published:** January 10, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/Bolton_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Bolton_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, in Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/Bolton_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Bolton_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Bolton shown within Greater Manchester
Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Borough of Bolton in North West England is one of the ten metropolitan boroughs that make up the Metropolitan County of Greater Manchester.{{sfnp|W9CW4SJE}}
The borough contains three of the forty-eight Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Greater Manchester. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****10 Firwood Fold**Firwood Fold, Bolton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y2Eqky99CzDNjv4t9)c. 16th century (probably)[1388038](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1388038)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/10_Firwood_Fold.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Hall i’ th’ Wood**Hall i’ th’ Wood Lane, Bolton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/jhmb7i92XZZ6Rc138)16th century[1388052](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1388052)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Hall_i_th_Wood_manor_house_front_view.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
[**Smithills Hall[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GytEATFCoZTKV3og9)top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Smithills Dean Road, Bolton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/bz3os7nhH7FchymW9)**](https://engole.info/smithills-hall)14th century[1388279](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1388279)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Smithills_Hall_in_2004.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-greater-manchester "
**Categories:** Greater Manchester
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Isle of Wight](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-isle-of-wight/)
**Published:** June 26, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Rutland_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Rutland_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the ceremonial county and unitary authority of Isle of Wight.
**Content:**
[](
**Categories:** Isle of Wight
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Wyre](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-wyre/)
**Published:** January 22, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/Wyre_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Wyre_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of Wyre, in Lancashire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/Wyre_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Wyre_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Wyre shown within Lancashire
Wikimedia Commons
The local government district of Wyre in North West England is one of the twelve local government districts and two unitary authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Lancashire. The borough contains two of the seventy Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Lancashire.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****St Helen’s Church**Churchtown
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/motKU53BtsA2ni3t7)15th century[1072874](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1072874)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/St.-Helens-Church.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**St Michael’s Church**St Michael’s on Wyre
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Qpg4ZH49CgK2myeE8)c. 1500[1281178](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1281178)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/St-Michaels-Church.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Lancashire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-lancashire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25947
**Categories:** Lancashire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in West Lancashire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-west-lancashire/)
**Published:** January 25, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/West_Lancashire_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-West_Lancashire_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of West Lancashire, in Lancashire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/West_Lancashire_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-West_Lancashire_UK_locator_map.svg.png)West Lancashire shown within Lancashire
Wikimedia Commons
The local government district of West Lancashire in North West England is one of the twelve local government districts and two unitary authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Lancashire. The borough contains six of the seventy Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Lancashire.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Burscough Priory**Burscough
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GaD2m4fA73a5gNL78)Late 15th century[1196625](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1196625)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Burscough_Priory%2C_August_2014.jpg/1280px-Burscough_Priory%2C_August_2014.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Thomas the Martyr**Upholland
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Z43om86qePCLydJZA)14th century[1201666](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1201666)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/The-Church-of-St-Thomas-the-Martyr.jpg)
Wikimedia Commons
**Rufford Old Hall**Rufford
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/JYkbo5dyWTG9AYcU9)Late 15th century[1374141](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1374141)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Rufford-Old-Hall.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Scarisbrick Hall**Scarisbrick
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fdR7PUMwY2Arr2N38)16th century[1038565](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1038565)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/Scarisbrick_Hall%2C_April_2015.JPG/1280px-Scarisbrick_Hall%2C_April_2015.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**St Cuthbert’s Church**Halsall
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/E3iVzSmJafUjJqLD9)Early 14th century[1073159](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1073159)[](
**Categories:** Lancashire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in South Ribble](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-south-ribble/)
**Published:** January 22, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/South_Ribble_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-South_Ribble_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of South Ribble, in Lancashire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/South_Ribble_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-South_Ribble_UK_locator_map.svg.png)South Ribble shown within Lancashire
Wikimedia Commons
The local government district of South Ribble in North West England is one of the twelve local government districts and two unitary authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Lancashire. The borough contains two of the seventy Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Lancashire.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Leonard the Less**Samlesbury
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/enfg6MxRVxrRYMs78)12th century remains, 16th and 19th-century additions[1073063](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1073063)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/St-Leonard-the-Less-Samlesbury.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Samlesbury Hall**Samlesbury
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/H4xfMuwsCbhQ5b2e6)14th and 16th centuries[1361389](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1361389)le15628529.ece/ALTERNATES/s810/0\_Salmesbury.jpg"> LancsLive
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Lancashire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-lancashire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
4928910 1 padding-top:7px; 50 default asc 1 25956 https://engole.info/wp-content/plugins/zotpress/
**Categories:** Lancashire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Ribble Valley](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-ribble-valley/)
**Published:** January 27, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Ribble_Valley_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Ribble_Valley_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of Ribble Valley, in Lancashire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Ribble_Valley_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Ribble_Valley_UK_locator_map.svg.png)5b5b5b">Ribble Valley shown within Lancashire
olor:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
The local government district of Ribble Valley in North West England is one of the twelve local government districts and two [ unitary authorities](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Lancashire. The borough contains eighteen of the seventy Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Lancashire.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image**op" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**All Hallows Church**op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Great Mitton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/b2SkHt25qWAxNDXx8)op" data-border-color="#abb8c3">op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 13th centuryop;text-align:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D8o2Migc8X7S6xc87)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1163432" target="\_blank" rel="noopener" title="">1163432[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/All_Hallows_Great_Mitton_-_geograph.org.uk_-_72288.jpg)m-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radi[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mKdnpjS1d2uU9gy6)an class="caption-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsop" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Browsholme Hall**op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Clitheroe
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/G2CcGnMXuQPaWHVk6)op" data-border-color="#abb8c3">op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Early 17th centuryop;text-align:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D8o2Migc8X7S6xc87)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1072272" target="\_blank" rel="noopener" title="">1072272[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Browsholme_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_829290.jpg)m-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radi[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mKdnpjS1d2uU9gy6)an class="caption-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsop" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Andrew**op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Slaidburn
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/yC9nqAe1BT8XFTYE6)op" data-border-color="#abb8c3">op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Early 15 and late 15th centuryop;text-align:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D8o2Migc8X7S6xc87)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1163738" target="\_blank" rel="noopener" title="">1163738[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/St_Andrews_Church%2C_Slaidburn_-_geograph.org.uk_-_402420.jpg)m-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radi[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mKdnpjS1d2uU9gy6)an class="caption-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsop" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary and All Saints**op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Whalley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/d7S3esnazFRTjDqv7)op" data-border-color="#abb8c3">op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">13th century, with 15th-century additionsop;text-align:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D8o2Migc8X7S6xc87)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1164684" target="\_blank" rel="noopener" title="">1164684[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/St_Mary%27s_and_All_Saints_Church_Whalley_-_geograph.org.uk_-_303376.jpg)m-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radi[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mKdnpjS1d2uU9gy6)an class="caption-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsop" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Clitheroe Castle**op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Clitheroe
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/BKKjfCdefNX9V1JdA)op" data-border-color="#abb8c3">op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">12th centuryop;text-align:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D8o2Migc8X7S6xc87)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1071553" target="\_blank" rel="noopener" title="">1071553[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Clitheroe_Castle.JPG/960px-Clitheroe_Castle.JPG)m-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radi[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mKdnpjS1d2uU9gy6)an class="caption-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsop" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Gisburne Park**op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Gisburn
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/BxMAz5z4hi5yenBR8)op" data-border-color="#abb8c3">op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1727–1736op;text-align:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D8o2Migc8X7S6xc87)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1317877" target="\_blank" rel="noopener" title="">1317877[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Gisburne_Park_-_geograph.org.uk_-_123600.jpg)m-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radi[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mKdnpjS1d2uU9gy6)an class="caption-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsop" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Hacking Hall with Wall Enclosing Garden to North West**op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Billington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZP2TvuH1TPQwNS2i6)op" data-border-color="#abb8c3">op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Early 17th centuryop;text-align:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D8o2Migc8X7S6xc87)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1072065">1072065[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4e/Hacking_Hall_Farm_%28geograph_2960648%29.jpg/1920px-Hacking_Hall_Farm_%28geograph_2960648%29.jpg)m-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radi[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mKdnpjS1d2uU9gy6)an class="caption-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsop" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Hesketh End**op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Chipping
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/mGAAEHzQtNdn7Sd17)op" data-border-color="#abb8c3">op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1591op;text-align:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D8o2Migc8X7S6xc87)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1072316" target="\_blank" rel="noopener" title="">1072316[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Hesketh_End_%28geograph_4581138%29.jpg)m-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radi[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mKdnpjS1d2uU9gy6)an class="caption-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsop" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**North West Gatehouse of Whalley Abbey**op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Whalley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fSRuJ9Sxp43jG5Qw5)op" data-border-color="#abb8c3">op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Early 14th centuryop;text-align:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D8o2Migc8X7S6xc87)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1362365" target="\_blank" rel="noopener" title="">1362365[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Gatehouse%2CWhalley_Abbey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1843216.jpg/1280px-Gatehouse%2CWhalley_Abbey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1843216.jpg)m-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radi[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mKdnpjS1d2uU9gy6)an class="caption-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsop" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Old St Leonard’s Church**op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Langho, Billington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/frxN6pDaKLq4Miww6)op" data-border-color="#abb8c3">op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">c. 1557op;text-align:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D8o2Migc8X7S6xc87)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1362341" target="\_blank" rel="noopener" title="">1362341[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/St_Leonards_Church_Old_Langho_-_geograph.org.uk_-_85352.jpg)m-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radi[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mKdnpjS1d2uU9gy6)an class="caption-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsop" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Sawley Abbey**op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Sawley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D8ovaKVoMePWHLrB8)op" data-border-color="#abb8c3">op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1147op;text-align:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D8o2Migc8X7S6xc87)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1072099" target="\_blank" rel="noopener" title="">1072099[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Sawley_Abbey_5.jpg/1280px-Sawley_Abbey_5.jpg)m-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radi[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mKdnpjS1d2uU9gy6)an class="caption-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsop" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Bolton-by-Bowland**op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Bolton-by-Bowland
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/SXWmWAcdD5kBFbLU9)op" data-border-color="#abb8c3">op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Mid-15th centuryop;text-align:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D8o2Migc8X7S6xc87)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1362287" target="\_blank" rel="noopener" title="">1362287[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/St_Peter_and_St_Paul%27s_Church%2C_Bolton-by-Bowland_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1924818.jpg)m-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radi[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mKdnpjS1d2uU9gy6)an class="caption-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsop" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**St Saviour’s Church**op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Stydd
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9vZJWc2H8bChLrUA9)op" data-border-color="#abb8c3">op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 12th centuryop;text-align:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D8o2Migc8X7S6xc87)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1147377" target="\_blank" rel="noopener" title="">1147377[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/St._Saviours%2C_Stydd_from_south-west.jpg/1280px-St._Saviours%2C_Stydd_from_south-west.jpg)m-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radi[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mKdnpjS1d2uU9gy6)an class="caption-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsop" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**St Wilfrid’s Church**op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Ribchester
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/SGd2voPzC77iwwV89)op" data-border-color="#abb8c3">op;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">13th century, with 14th and 15th-century additionsop;text-align:center" dat[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/D8o2Migc8X7S6xc87)cengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1147451" target="\_blank" rel="noopener" title="">1147451[](
**Categories:** Lancashire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Preston](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-preston/)
**Published:** January 22, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/Preston_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Preston_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of Preston, in Lancashire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/Preston_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Preston_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Preston shown within Lancashire
Wikimedia Commons
The local government district of Preston in North West England is one of the twelve local government districts and two unitary authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Lancashire. The borough contains four of the seventy Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Lancashire.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Harris Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery**Preston
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/XLnyMSktK7ohEyZW6)James Hibbert1882–1893[1207306](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1207306)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Harrris_Museum%2C_Preston_1-Oct-07_232-0021.jpg)2px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Old Lea Hall Farmhouse**Lea
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ayzTT8YPiSV3LNaz9)Late 17th or early 18th century[1361663](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1361663)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/abe5ace2-2e8b-4ff3-b0fa-a1e7a5a8d32b.jpg)2px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Historic England
**Preston War Memorial**Preston
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/5N7hthttFPkVWrh59)Sir Giles Gilbert Scott1926[1218458](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1218458)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Preston-Cenotaph.jpg)2px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Com[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/BKKjfCdefNX9V1JdA)l-align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**St Walburge’s Church**
Preston
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Lc9hAKJKAs29vjRj9)Joseph Hansom1850–1854[1207341](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1207341)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/St_Walburge%27s_Church_spire%2C_Preston_231-10.jpg)2px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Lancashire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-lancashire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25951
**Categories:** Lancashire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Pendle](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-pendle/)
**Published:** January 22, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Pendle_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Pendle_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of Pendle, in Lancashire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Pendle_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Pendle_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Pendle shown within Lancashire
Wikimedia Commons
The local government district of Pendle in North West England is one of the twelve local government districts and two unitary authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Lancashire. The borough contains three of the seventy Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Lancashire.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Mary Le Gill**Barnoldswick
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/is26krcddLbicMw36)Probably 15th and early 16th century[1073421](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1073421)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/St-Mary-le-Ghyll-Church-near-Barnoldswick.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**St Bartholomew’s Church**Colne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WE2pPtchho5K6n727)Early 16th century[1073414](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1073414)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/St_Bartholomew%27s_Church%2C_Colne.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**St Michael’s Church**Bracewell and Brogden
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GB76aZtBgG3Re1ZD9)15th or early 16th century[1259162](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1259162)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/St-Michael-Bracewell.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Lancashire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-lancashire)
tion">## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25948
**Categories:** Lancashire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Lancaster](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-lancaster/)
**Published:** February 16, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/86/Lancaster_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Lancaster_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of Lancaster, in Lancashire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/86/Lancaster_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Lancaster_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Lancaster shown within Lancashire
Wikimedia Commons
The local government district of Lancaster in North West England is one of the twelve local government districts and two unitary authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Lancashire. The borough contains twenty-four of the seventy Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Lancashire.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Ashton Hall**Thurnham, Lancaster
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/TcCiKUyNoHGtzHjF6)Early 14th century, largely rebuilt in 1856toricengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1071756" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1071756a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Ashton\_Hall%2C\_south\_tower\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1674506.jpg"> x; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/cysu2DeNrnorGGUW9)enter;">Wikimedia Commons**Ashton Memorial**Lancaster
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/NHVAESmM2R69gzSu6)John Belcher1905–1909, restored
1985–1987toricengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1288429" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1288429a href="h[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WavE6cDz7XP5HqdH8)4/Ashton\_Memorial\_front.jpg"> 
**Published:** January 21, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/Hyndburn_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Hyndburn_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of Hyndburn, in Lancashire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/Hyndburn_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Hyndburn_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Hyndburn shown within Lancashire
Wikimedia Commons
The local government district of Hyndburn in North West England is one of the twelve local government districts and two unitary authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Lancashire. The borough contains one of the seventy Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Lancashire.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Martholme**Great Harwood
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/sbD8t5cRHL4VQZEY6)Medieval[1205981](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1205981)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Martholme.webp)Historic England
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/NHVAESmM2R69gzSu6)> - [Grade I listed buildings in Lancashire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-lancashire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25939
**Categories:** Lancashire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Fylde](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-fylde/)
**Published:** January 21, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Fylde_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Fylde_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of Fylde, in Lancashire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Fylde_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Fylde_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Fylde shown within Lancashire
v>
The local government district of Fylde in North West England is one of the twelve local government districts and two unitary authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Lancashire. The borough contains one of the seventy Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Lancashire.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Lytham Hall**Lytham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/zZJc6iw7adL58Cvs8)John Carr1752–1764[1219078](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1219078)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/Lytham_Hall_front_entrance.jpg/1280px-Lytham_Hall_front_entrance.jpg)v>
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Lancashire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-lancashire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25937
**Categories:** Lancashire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Chorley](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-chorley/)
**Published:** January 24, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Chorley_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Chorley_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of Chorley, in Lancashire.
**Content:**
[**](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Chorley_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Chorley_UK_locator_map.svg.png)mmons/thumb/7/7a/Chorley\_UK\_locator\_map.svg/960px-Chorley\_UK\_locator\_map.svg.png" alt="See caption" class="kb-img"/>Chorley shown Lancashire
Wikimedia Commons
The local government district of Chorley in North West England is one of the twelve local government districts and two unitary authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Lancashire. The borough contains five of the seventy Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Lancashire.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Astley Hall**Chorley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/JF2RbjpJ7e7UuLPm7)16th and 17th centuries, with early 19th-century additions[1362068](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1362068)[ **](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/23/Astley_Hall_front_view.jpg/1920px-Astley_Hall_front_view.jpg)mmons/thumb/2/23/Astley\_Hall\_front\_view.jpg/1920px-Astley\_Hall\_front\_view.jpg" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/quJm7eeARpLvVBt68)-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Great Barn Circa 100 Metres West of Hoghton Toower at SD 621 264**Hoghton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/jG73qu92jGUqUYxN9)1692[1164490](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1164490)[ **](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/24/Hoghton_Tower_Great_Barn_%28front_view%29.JPG/1280px-Hoghton_Tower_Great_Barn_%28front_view%29.JPG)mmons/thumb/2/24/Hoghton\_Tower\_Great\_Barn\_%28front\_view%29.JPG/1280px-Hoghton\_Tower\_Great\_Barn\_%28front\_view%29.JPG" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/quJm7eeARpLvVBt68)-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Heskin Hall**Heskin
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/g9iiWizMMQDLbtgFA)1670[1164441](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1164441)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Heskin-Hall.jpg)-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Hoghton Tower**Hoghton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/whpGaYPckWHrSdR16)1562–1563[1072532](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1072532)[ **](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/23/Hoghton_Tower_2.jpg/1280px-Hoghton_Tower_2.jpg)mmons/thumb/2/23/Hoghton\_Tower\_2.jpg/1280px-Hoghton\_Tower\_2.jpg" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/quJm7eeARpLvVBt68)-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Mawdesley Hall**Mawdesley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/qqD8SgoxZFjb3Wq9A)Early 17th century[1164720](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1164720)[ **](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Mawdesley_Hall%2C_Lancashire.jpg)mmons/e/e4/Mawdesley\_Hall%2C\_Lancashire.jpg" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/quJm7eeARpLvVBt68)-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Lancashire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-lancashire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25966
**Categories:** Lancashire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Blackburn with Darwen](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-blackburn-with-darwen/)
**Published:** January 21, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a5/Blackburn_with_Darwen_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Blackburn_with_Darwen_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the unitary authority of Blackburn with Darwen, in Lancashire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a5/Blackburn_with_Darwen_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Blackburn_with_Darwen_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Blackburn with Darwen within Lancashire
Wikimedia Commons
The unitary authority of Blackburn with Darwen in North West England is one of the twelve local government districts and two [unitary authorities](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Lancashire. The borough contains two of the seventy Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Lancashire.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Pleasington Priory**Pleasington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/FYraGkKMBUFXYhk36)John Palmer1816–1819[1072419](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1072419)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/St_Michaels_and_All_Saints_Church%2C_Ashton-under-Lyne_2008.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
[**Turton Tower**](https://engole.info/turton-tower)Chapeltown
[](https://goo.gl/maps/74fBDGcCLc3fGqqz6)Late medieval[](
**Categories:** Lancashire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Burnley](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-burnley/)
**Published:** January 23, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Burnley_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Burnley_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of Burnley, in Lancashire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Burnley_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Burnley_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Burnley shown within Lancashire
Wikimedia Commons
The local government district of Burnley in North West England is one of the twelve local government districts and two unitary authorities that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Lancashire. The borough contains five of the seventy Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Lancashire.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Gawthorpe Hall and surrounding balustrade**Ightenhill
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/841bnmjWjFJ9B5rF8)1600–1605[1237626](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1237626)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/Gawthorpe_new.jpg/1280px-Gawthorpe_new.jpg)border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Great Barn Circa 100 Metres West of Gawthorpe Hall**Ightenhill
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/naHCKWX52u346WAq6)c. 1605[1237628](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1237628)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Gawthorpe_Hall_2016_001.jpg/1280px-Gawthorpe_Hall_2016_001.jpg)border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Queen Street Mill**Burnley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KihSsAvW3u6GMm6z7)1894[1416482](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1416482)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Queen-Street-Mill.jpg)border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[**Shuttleworth Hall**](https://engole.info/shuttleworth-hall)Hapton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/sAa4NNTpFf1cwRASA)Early to mid-17th century[1274420](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1274420)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Shuttleworth-Hall.jpg)border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
[**Towneley Hall**](https://engole.info/towneley-hall)Burnley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/31CTiZc7qEJH7mGSA)15th century[1247299](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1247299)[](
**Categories:** Lancashire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Blackpool](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-blackpool/)
**Published:** January 21, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/24/Blackpool_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Blackpool_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the unitary authority of Blackpool, in Lancashire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/24/Blackpool_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Blackpool_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Blackpool shown within Lancashire
Wikimedia Commons
The unitary authority of Blackpool in North West England is one of the twelve local government districts and two [unitary authorities](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Lancashire. The borough contains one of the seventy Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Lancashire.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Blackpool Tower**Blackpool
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/cgTwvbxDxxJag53NA)James Maxwell and Charles Tuke1891–1894[1205810](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1205810)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Blackpool_Tower_Buildings.jpg)ss="caption-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Lancashire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-lancashire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25936
**Categories:** Lancashire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Rutland](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-rutland/)
**Published:** January 28, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Rutland_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Rutland_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the ceremonial county and unitary authority of Rutland.
**Content:**
thumb/b/b1/Rutland\_UK\_locator\_map\_2010.svg/960px-Rutland\_UK\_locator\_map\_2010.svg.png" class="kb-advanced-image-link">![]()thumb/b/b1/Rutland\_UK\_locator\_map\_2010.svg/960px-Rutland\_UK\_locator\_map\_2010.svg.png" alt="See caption" class="kb-img"/>on-text" style="font-size:12px; color:#5b5b5b">Rutland shown within England
kgray;">Wikimedia Commons
The [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) and [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) of Rutland contains 28 of the more than 9,000 Grade I listed buildings in England.
Grade I designated structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image**align:[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aEnxQkJzL6QY61n96)**Burley House**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Burley-on-the-Hill
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/k39askmx1BFqCB4K6)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1694–1705[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;t[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WavE6cDz7XP5HqdH8)href="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1073792" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1073792[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Burley-on-the-Hill.webp)border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">on-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsalign:[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aEnxQkJzL6QY61n96)**Church of All Saints**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Oakham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iVafGbMMj5ucDQtR9)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Early 13th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;t[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WavE6cDz7XP5HqdH8)href="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1073305" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">10733057/78/Oakham\_Church\_perspective\_corrected.jpg"> ![]()7/78/Oakham\_Church\_perspective\_corrected.jpg" width="150px" style="bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DQ5xBPffAhiTqWD18)border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">on-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsalign:[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aEnxQkJzL6QY61n96)**Church of St Andrew**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Lyddington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/wqHKRuXrDjTYYz8D9)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Early to mid-14th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;t[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WavE6cDz7XP5HqdH8)href="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1236656" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">12366569/9a/St\_Andrews\_Church%2C\_Lyddington\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_163801.jpg"> ![]()9/9a/St\_Andrews\_Church%2C\_Lyddington\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_163801.jpg" width="150px" style="bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DQ5xBPffAhiTqWD18)border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">on-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsalign:[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aEnxQkJzL6QY61n96)**Church of St Andrew**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Stoke Dry
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/JyMBEV4Na8cVtNTt5)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Early 12th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;t[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WavE6cDz7XP5HqdH8)href="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1237061" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">12370612/2f/Stoke\_Dry\_Church\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_63340.jpg"> ![]()2/2f/Stoke\_Dry\_Church\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_63340.jpg" width="150px" style="bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DQ5xBPffAhiTqWD18)border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">on-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsalign:[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aEnxQkJzL6QY61n96)**Church of St Andrew**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Whissendine
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AVtDsGzvadhgxuPs5)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">13th to 15th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;t[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WavE6cDz7XP5HqdH8)href="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1295308" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1295308thumb/a/a5/Whissendine.jpg/960px-Whissendine.jpg"> ![]()thumb/a/a5/Whissendine.jpg/960px-Whissendine.jpg" width="150px" style="bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DQ5xBPffAhiTqWD18)border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">on-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsalign:[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aEnxQkJzL6QY61n96)**Church of St Edmund**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Egleton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/dujPiJnpF5JoYFWe6)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Norman period[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;t[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WavE6cDz7XP5HqdH8)href="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1073761" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">10737612/2b/Church\_of\_St\_Edmund%2C\_Egleton\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_4824963.jpg"> ![]()2/2b/Church\_of\_St\_Edmund%2C\_Egleton\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_4824963.jpg" width="150px" style="bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DQ5xBPffAhiTqWD18)border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">on-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsalign:[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aEnxQkJzL6QY61n96)**Church of St John**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Ryhall
[](ttps://maps.app.goo.gl/xCqogCLYsZnBXZCx9)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">c. 1200[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;t[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WavE6cDz7XP5HqdH8)href="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1320352" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">13203521/12/St\_John\_the\_Evangelist%2C\_Ryhall\_%28geograph\_3090892%29.jpg"> ![]()1/12/St\_John\_the\_Evangelist%2C\_Ryhall\_%28geograph\_3090892%29.jpg" width="150px" style="bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DQ5xBPffAhiTqWD18)border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">on-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsalign:[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aEnxQkJzL6QY61n96)**Church of St John the Baptist**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">North Luffenham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/zFqa61hRbgKFxadTA)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">12th to 15th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;t[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WavE6cDz7XP5HqdH8)href="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1073898[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/TYSBzoz65bfVKqe17)989/9d/St.\_John\_the\_Baptist%2C\_North\_Luffenham\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_946334.jpg"> ![]()9/9d/St.\_John\_the\_Baptist%2C\_North\_Luffenham\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_946334.jpg" width="150px" style="bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DQ5xBPffAhiTqWD18)border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">on-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsalign:[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aEnxQkJzL6QY61n96)**Church of St Mary**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Ashwell
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7nsxJt774Z3M9NbF7)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">12th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;t[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WavE6cDz7XP5HqdH8)href="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1073268" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1073268thumb/e/e2/Ashwell%2C\_St\_Mary%27s\_church\_%2840125211070%29.jpg/1280px-Ashwell%2C\_St\_Mary%27s\_church\_%2840125211070%29.jpg"> ![]()thumb/e/e2/Ashwell%2C\_St\_Mary%27s\_church\_%2840125211070%29.jpg/1280px-Ashwell%2C\_St\_Mary%27s\_church\_%2840125211070%29.jpg" width="150px" style="bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DQ5xBPffAhiTqWD18)border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">on-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsalign:[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aEnxQkJzL6QY61n96)**Church of St Mary**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Greetham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ur55QFZKvkcGLR937)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Norman period[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;t[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WavE6cDz7XP5HqdH8)href="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1073218" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1073218thumb/4/41/Greetham\_Oakham\_St\_Mary\_the\_Virgin.JPG/1280px-Greetham\_Oakham\_St\_Mary\_the\_Virgin.JPG"> ![]()thumb/4/41/Greetham\_Oakham\_St\_Mary\_the\_Virgin.JPG/1280px-Greetham\_Oakham\_St\_Mary\_the\_Virgin.JPG" width="150px" style="bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DQ5xBPffAhiTqWD18)border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">on-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsalign:[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aEnxQkJzL6QY61n96)**Church of St Mary**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Ketton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/o6iyRXMv9a3UYGMZ6)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">12th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;t[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WavE6cDz7XP5HqdH8)href="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1073856[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/TYSBzoz65bfVKqe17)56a/a9/St.\_Mary%27s\_Church%2C\_Ketton\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_738102.jpg"> ![]()a/a9/St.\_Mary%27s\_Church%2C\_Ketton\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_738102.jpg" width="150px" style="bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DQ5xBPffAhiTqWD18)border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">on-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsalign:[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aEnxQkJzL6QY61n96)**Church of St Mary**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Morcott
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Dn42EvR4jyueKEuu9)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">12th to 13th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;t[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WavE6cDz7XP5HqdH8)href="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1288037" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">12880374/4f/St\_Mary%27s\_Church\_Morecott\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_344452.jpg"> ![]()4/4f/St\_Mary%27s\_Church\_Morecott\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_344452.jpg" width="150px" style="bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DQ5xBPffAhiTqWD18)border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">on-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsalign:[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aEnxQkJzL6QY61n96)**Church of St Mary the Virgin**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Edith Weston
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fBFACTRQKxd1gVhf6)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">12th to 14th century, with 18th to 19th ce[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/wVDQ548RGLi4LuQm9)r:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px;t[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WavE6cDz7XP5HqdH8)href="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1073962" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">10739622/20/St.Mary%27s\_church\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1179084.jpg"> ![]()2/20/St.Mary%27s\_church\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1179084.jpg" width="150px" style="bord[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DQ5xBPffAhiTqWD18)border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">on-text" style="font-size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commonsalign:[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aEnxQkJzL6QY61n96)**Church of St Peter**[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Brooke
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9ibrHp8NpZdDZ31P7)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">12th century[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pZm7LuG7P7xdR55N7)align:top;padding-top:5px;t[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WavE6cDz7XP5HqdH8)href="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1215370" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1215370[](
**Categories:** Rutland
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Halton](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-halton/)
**Published:** January 9, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Grade I listed buildings in the borough of Halton, in the ceremonial county of Cheshire.
**Content:**
The Borough of Halton in North West England is one of the four [unitary authorities](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) comprising the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Cheshire, and a member of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority.{{sfnp|7R7V3T4D}}
The borough consists of the towns of Runcorn and Widnes and the [civil parishes](https://engole.info/civil-parish) of Daresbury, Hale, Halebank, Moore, Preston Brook, and Sandymoor.{{sfnp|A4WRXC2J}}
Halton contains 2 of the 142 Grade I listed buildings in Cheshire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Halton Castle**Halton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/M9pKYcwaybk2uaq87)1070 and later[1130460](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1130460)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Halton_Castle.jpg/1280px-Halton_Castle.jpg)-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Norton Priory**Halton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7LVbqE78b175xEPTA)1115 and later[1130433](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1130433)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Norton_Priory.jpg/1280px-Norton_Priory.jpg)-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Cheshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-cheshire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25896
**Categories:** Cheshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I Listed Buildings in Cheshire East](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-cheshire-east/)
**Published:** October 17, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/Cheshire_East_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Cheshire_East_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Cheshire East, in the ceremonial county of Cheshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/Cheshire_East_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Cheshire_East_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Cheshire East shown within Cheshire
Wikimedia Commons
The Borough of Cheshire East in North West England is one of the four unitary authorities comprising the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Cheshire.{{sfnp|N4L4GXAQ}}
The historic railway town of Crewe is the largest in the borough, which also includes the towns of Sandbach, Macclesfield, Congleton, Wilmslow, Nantwich, Poynton, Knutsford, Alsager, Bollington and Handforth.{{sfnp|BXQ4ZNHR}}
Cheshire East contains 48 of the 142 Grade I listed buildings in Cheshire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Adlington Hall**Adlington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GA1sxUm6cKFuK1Rw6)1505/the-list/list-entry/1234130" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1234130dia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Courtyard\_from\_the\_south-west.jpg/1280px-Courtyard\_from\_the\_south-west.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Brereton Hall**
Brereton Green, Brereton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/8DrhnNMkJeeqrVpd6)1585/the-list/list-entry/1229329" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1229329dia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2a/Brereton\_Hall\_2021.jpg/1280px-Brereton\_Hall\_2021.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[Brook Street Chapel](https://engole.info/brook-street-chapel-knutsford)
Adams Hill, Knutsford
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/feN7je5oVmUiptHB8)1689/the-list/list-entry/1388306" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1388306dia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/Knutsford\_Brook\_1.jpg/1280px-Knutsford\_Brook\_1.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Chapel of St Nicholas**
Cholmondeley Park, Cholmondeley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/yhwAarFyKF6CnLp79)Late 15th century/the-list/list-entry/1138593" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1138593dia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/St\_Nicholas%27\_Chapel%2C\_Cholmondeley.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Chorley Old Hall**
Ryleys Lane, Alderley Edge
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/6BkWSfYkThqbyDbp7)c. 1330/the-list/list-entry/1234539" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1234539dia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Chorley\_Old\_Hall.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Bartholomew**
Wilmslow
[](ttps://maps.app.goo.gl/rrJTh2Y9xbNhoHAc6)1898/the-list/list-entry/1222475" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1222475dia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/St\_Bartholomew%27s\_Church%2C\_Wilmslow.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Bertoline**
Barthomley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/RVCwkMx9GtqWvJr87)12th century/the-list/list-entry/1330063" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1330063dia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Church\_of\_St\_Bertoline%2C\_Barthomley.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Boniface**
Bunbury
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/U6CNbi7fusyEzYT6A)14th century/the-list/list-entry/1138626" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1138626dia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/59/St\_Boniface%27s\_Church%2C\_Bunbury.jpg/1280px-St\_Boniface%27s\_Church%2C\_Bunbury.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Christopher**
Pott Shrigley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/SpN1K4QxXdAbDXKu5)15th century/the-list/list-entry/1277234" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1277234dia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/St\_Christopher%27s\_Church%2C\_Pott\_Shrigley.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St James**
Stafford Street, Audlem
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pFzu1BAMS19Q1G9t5)Late 13th century/the-list/list-entry/1136872" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1136872dia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/St\_James%27\_Church%2C\_Audlem.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St James**
Gawsworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/zCQx5UHUa1SCH6Gc7)15th century/the-list/list-entry/1139497" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1139497dia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/St\_James%27\_Church%2C\_Gawsworth.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St James and St Paul**
Marton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/asEp2F3GFxYKAcGf7)c. 1370/the-list/list-entry/1139465" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1139465dia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Marton\_Church\_Cheshire.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Lawrence**
Peover Hall Park, Peover Superior
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nbs2WUhWtYgLKbGh9)1456/the-list/list-entry/1139274" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1139274dia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Over\_Peover\_6.jpg/1280px-Over\_Peover\_6.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[Church of St Luke](https://engole.info/st-lukes-church-holmes-chapel)
[Holmes Chapel](https://engole.info/holmes-chapel)
[](https://goo.gl/maps/SYhppoXNXQ2BgScY9)c. 1430/the-list/list-entry/1231322" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1231322dia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Holmes\_Chapel\_1.jpg/1280px-Holmes\_Chapel\_1.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary**
Nantwich
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/JvboydaDz5pY2vQbA)14th century/the-list/list-entry/1206059">1206059dia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/St\_Marys%2C\_Nantwich.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary**
Nether Alderley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/YyhNMmpQRYnf1p7j6)14th century/the-list/list-entry/1138849" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1138849dia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/St\_Mary%27s%2C\_Alderley.jpg/1280px-St\_Mary%27s%2C\_Alderley.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary**
Newbold Astbury
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/zYguXAY1jJrU9LoP7)12th century/the-list/list-entry/1138740" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1138740[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/St.-Marys-Astbury.jpg)td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary**
Rostherne
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7JHbxp6Q1fC8jdvP8)14th century/the-list/list-entry/1230301" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1230301dia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Rostherne\_-\_Saint\_Mary%27s\_Church.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary the Virgin**
Monks Lane, Acton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aA4aRFneqQ8FmobTA)13th century/the-list/list-entry/1330112" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1330112dia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/St\_Marys\_Church\_Acton\_Cheshire.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Michael**
Baddiley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/mScJn9Jx8sB1ECjd8)1308/the-list/list-entry/1138586">1138586dia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/St\_Michaels\_Baddiley.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Peter**
Congleton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/TCQf2u3yz9rNHr3V9)1740–1742/the-list/list-entry/1330322" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1330322dia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/St\_Peter%27s\_Church%2C\_Congleton.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Peter**
Prestbury
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/99hf5fCrMoUw5joJ8)Early to mid-13th century/the-list/list-entry/1221919" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1221919dia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/St\_Christopher%27s\_Church%2C\_Pott\_Shrigley.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Peter (at Tabley House)**
[Tabley Inferior](https://engole.info/parish-of-tabley)
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GouRDa7ujDdG85hR8)c. 1714/the-list/list-entry/1329685" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1329685dia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/85/Tabley\_Chapel\_1.jpg/1280px-Tabley\_Chapel\_1.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Wilfrid**
Mobberley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/XqYnhYHhuEo3nkqp8)14th–15th century/the-list/list-entry/1139554" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1139554dia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/St\_Wilfrid%27s\_Church%2C\_Mobberley.jpg"> td style="border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top;padding-top:5px" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[Churche’s Mansion](https://engole.info/churches-mansion/)
Hospital Street, Nantwich
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/M9pKYcwaybk2uaq87)1577/the-list/list-entry/1039605" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1039605dia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Churches\_Mansion\_left.jpg"> td style="padding-top:5px;padding-bottom:30px;vertical-align:top;padding-right:7px;border-bottom-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mezfCkvSnB8ku6W6)\#abb8c3">**Combermere Abbey**
r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Combermere Park, Dodcott cum Wilkesley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/tQf57v45vGEJVW9SA)\#abb8c3">Early 16th centuryr-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/89kcpKPmkmvSCx2y9)/the-list/list-entry/1136900" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1136900\#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Combermere_Abbey.jpg)td style="padding-top:5px;padding-bottom:30px;vertical-align:top;padding-right:7px;border-bottom-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mezfCkvSnB8ku6W6)\#abb8c3">**Crewe Hall**
r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Crewe Hall Park, Crewe Green
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/cUFpQk1pc7BN6zsa7)\#abb8c3">1615–1636r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/89kcpKPmkmvSCx2y9)/the-list/list-entry/1138666" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1138666\#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Crewe_Hall_%28front%2Bgate%29.jpg)td style="padding-top:5px;padding-bottom:30px;vertical-align:top;padding-right:7px;border-bottom-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mezfCkvSnB8ku6W6)\#abb8c3">**Crown Hotel**
r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">24 & 26 High Street, Nantwich
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)\#abb8c3">c. 1584r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/89kcpKPmkmvSCx2y9)/the-list/list-entry/1330054" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1330054\#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Crown_Hotel_Nantwich.jpg)td style="padding-top:5px;padding-bottom:30px;vertical-align:top;padding-right:7px;border-bottom-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mezfCkvSnB8ku6W6)\#abb8c3">**Cruck barn approximately 100 yards to west of Arley Hall**
r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Arley Hall, Aston By Budworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/yWeVWRJ3qwrCbJnn9)\#abb8c3">Early 16th centuryr-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/89kcpKPmkmvSCx2y9)/the-list/list-entry/1329696" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1329696\#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Arley_Cruck_barn_1.jpg/1280px-Arley_Cruck_barn_1.jpg)td style="padding-top:5px;padding-bottom:30px;vertical-align:top;padding-right:7px;border-bottom-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mezfCkvSnB8ku6W6)\#abb8c3">[Delves Hall](https://engole.info/delves-hall)
r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Doddington Park, Doddington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9h7ESzfqfDDjJq769)\#abb8c3">Late 14th centuryr-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/89kcpKPmkmvSCx2y9)/the-list/list-entry/1330165" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1330165\#abb8c3">[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Delves-Hall.webp)English Heritage
\#abb8c3">[Doddington Hall](https://engole.info/doddington-hall)r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Doddington Park, Doddington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Xf2ttdHjTPd2u19K6)\#abb8c3">1777–1798r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/89kcpKPmkmvSCx2y9)/the-list/list-entry/1136840" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1136840\#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Doddington31.jpg/1280px-Doddington31.jpg)td style="padding-top:5px;padding-bottom:30px;vertical-align:top;padding-right:7px;border-width:1px;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[Dorfold Hall](https://engole.info/dorfold-hall)
Dorfold Park, Acton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/yzQT73YUGWWp3wwr5)tom:100px;padding-top:5px;vertical-align:top;border-width:1px;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1616/the-list/list-entry/1312869" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1312869[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Dorford-Hall.webp)Historic England
**Gawsworth Old Hall**Gawsworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/hwkuDChTPjjCQh2E7)tom:100px;padding-top:5px;vertical-align:top;border-width:1px;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">15th century/the-list/list-entry/1139500" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1139500dia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Gawsworth\_Old\_Hall.jpg"> td style="padding-top:5px;padding-bottom:30px;vertical-align:top;padding-right:7px;border-width:1px;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Haslington Hall**
Holmshaw Lane, Haslington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/zyRQEmadKPcEExo5A)tom:100px;padding-top:5px;vertical-align:top;border-width:1px;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 15th century/the-list/list-entry/1136283" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1136283dia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Haslington\_Hall.jpg"> td style="padding-top:5px;padding-bottom:30px;vertical-align:top;padding-right:7px;border-width:1px;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[Highfields](https://engole.info/highfields-buerton/)
Woodhouse Lane, Buerton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/BrKUUjDb7eBr5yYb7)tom:100px;padding-top:5px;vertical-align:top;border-width:1px;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">1615/the-list/list-entry/1330162" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1330162dia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Highfields%2C\_Buerton.jpg"> td style="padding-top:5px;padding-bottom:30px;vertical-align:top;padding-right:7px;border-bottom-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mezfCkvSnB8ku6W6)\#abb8c3">[Little Moreton Hall](https://engole.info/little-moreton-hall)
r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Parish of Odd Rode
[](https://goo.gl/maps/rZvG2EADwsyePy1i8)\#abb8c3">Early 16th centuryr-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/89kcpKPmkmvSCx2y9)/the-list/list-entry/1161988" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1161988\#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/LittleMoretonHall.jpg/1280px-LittleMoretonHall.jpg)td style="padding-top:5px;padding-bottom:30px;vertical-align:top;padding-right:7px;border-bottom-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mezfCkvSnB8ku6W6)\#abb8c3">**Lovell Telescope**
r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Jodrell Bank, Goostrey
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y48mN5zr7i8aVd896)\#abb8c3">1952–1957r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/89kcpKPmkmvSCx2y9)/the-list/list-entry/1221685" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1221685\#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Lovell_Telescope_5.jpg/1280px-Lovell_Telescope_5.jpg)td style="padding-top:5px;padding-bottom:30px;vertical-align:top;padding-right:7px;border-bottom-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mezfCkvSnB8ku6W6)\#abb8c3">**Lyme Park**
r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Lyme Park Country Park, Lyme Handley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/kuFDKFE1m4tdjsrNA)\#abb8c3">c. 1570r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/89kcpKPmkmvSCx2y9)/the-list/list-entry/1231685" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1231685\#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Lyme_Hall_01.jpg)td style="padding-top:5px;padding-bottom:30px;vertical-align:top;padding-right:7px;border-bottom-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mezfCkvSnB8ku6W6)\#abb8c3">**Mark II (radio telescope)**
r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Jodrell Bank Observatory
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Pq9N9pe6y3xhN9JC8)\#abb8c3">1964r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/89kcpKPmkmvSCx2y9)/the-list/list-entry/1443087" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1443087\#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/Jodrell_Bank_Mark_II.jpg/1280px-Jodrell_Bank_Mark_II.jpg)td style="padding-top:5px;padding-bottom:30px;vertical-align:top;padding-right:7px;border-bottom-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mezfCkvSnB8ku6W6)\#abb8c3">[Moss Hall](https://engole.info/moss-hall-audlem)
r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Audlem
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/YEonHAUYCoyi1NtG7)\#abb8c3">Early 17th centuryr-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/89kcpKPmkmvSCx2y9)/the-list/list-entry/1138519" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1138519\#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Moss_Hall%2C_Audlem.jpg/1280px-Moss_Hall%2C_Audlem.jpg)td style="padding-top:5px;padding-bottom:30px;vertical-align:top;padding-right:7px;border-bottom-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mezfCkvSnB8ku6W6)\#abb8c3">**Old Hall Hotel**
r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Sandbach
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/tyKW5o7AaKDYz8fG6)\#abb8c3">1656r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/89kcpKPmkmvSCx2y9)/the-list/list-entry/1310849" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1310849\#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Old_Hall_Hotel%2C_Sandbach.jpg)td style="padding-top:5px;padding-bottom:30px;vertical-align:top;padding-right:7px;border-bottom-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mezfCkvSnB8ku6W6)\#abb8c3">**Peckforton Castle**
r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Peckforton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/NnYdW4Gxjkt6itpa8)\#abb8c3">1844–1850r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/89kcpKPmkmvSCx2y9)/the-list/list-entry/1135729" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1135729\#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/23/Peckforton_Castle_2014.jpg/1920px-Peckforton_Castle_2014.jpg)td style="padding-top:5px;padding-bottom:30px;vertical-align:top;padding-right:7px;border-bottom-co[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7mezfCkvSnB8ku6W6)\#abb8c3">[Sandbach Crosses](https://engole.info/sandbach-crosses)
r-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Sandbach
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pYbVVVMvF1ppixk46)\#abb8c3">Early 9th centuryr-width:1px;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/89kcpKPmkmvSCx2y9)/the-list/list-entry/1159937" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1159937\#abb8c3">[](
**Categories:** Cheshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Warrington](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-warrington/)
**Published:** February 21, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Cheshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/330px-Cheshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the borough of Warrington, in the ceremonial county of Cheshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f8/Warrington_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Warrington_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Warrington shown within Cheshire
Historic England
The Borough of Warrington in North West England is one of the four unitary authorities comprising the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Cheshire. It consists of the town of Warrington and 18 other [civil parishes](https://engole.info/civil-parish).{{sfnp|ANI73NA8}}
Warrington contains 7 of the 142 Grade I listed buildings in Cheshire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Eastern Outbuilding,
Town Hall**Warrington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/XcgidaqFWQ5jb4xd8)a-border-color="#abb8c3">1750[1329748](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1329748)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/4e96398c-70af-4634-832b-d16d73ea57eb.jpg)Historic England
**[Lymm Cross](https://engole.info/lymm-cross)**Lymm, Warrington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9DHdsZR2Ggm5Cdqq7)a-border-color="#abb8c3">Early to mid-17th century[1227014](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1227014)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Lymm_Cross.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Sankey Viaduct**Burtonwood and Westbrook, Warrington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9DHdsZR2Ggm5Cdqq7)George Stephenson1828–1830[1075927](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1075927)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Sankey_Viaduct_-_geograph.org.uk_-_217761.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**St Oswald’s Church**Winwick, Warrington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pDHGPtBtSarB8tzw7)a-border-color="#abb8c3">Early 13th century[1278428](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1278428)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/St_Oswald%27s_Church%2C_Winwick.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**St Wilfrid’s Church**Grappenhall and Thelwall, Warrington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/t8rmGgvEpT1FDuLV6)a-border-color="#abb8c3">12th century[1139320](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1139320)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/St_Wilfrid%27s%2C_Grappenhall.jpg/1280px-St_Wilfrid%27s%2C_Grappenhall.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Town Hall**Warrington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/LrVihBq3FxEKiHnBA)a-border-color="#abb8c3">1750[1329725](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1329725)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Warrington_Town_Hall.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
">**Western Outbuilding,
Town Hall**Warrington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AMnU61XnJ6groFcK7)1750[1261276](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1261276)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/a5f1b76c-6596-4d8d-9754-74a144889c35.jpg)Historic England
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Cheshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-cheshire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26023
**Categories:** Cheshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in South Tyneside](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-south-tyneside/)
**Published:** July 14, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/67/South_Tyneside_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-South_Tyneside_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in South Tyneside, Tyne and Wear.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/67/South_Tyneside_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-South_Tyneside_UK_locator_map.svg.png)South Tyneside shown with Tyne and Wear
Wikimedia Commons
The metropolitan borough of South Tyneside is one of the five that make up the ceremonial county of Tyne and Wear.{{sfnp|2F5E2LXG}}
The borough contains 4 of the 75 Grade I listed buildings in Tyne and Wear. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of St Nicholas**West Boldon
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WHqzP6TvqU36cyGf9)Early 13th century[1355070](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1355070)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/12/St_Nicholas%2C_West_Boldon_%28S_view_of_tower%29.jpg/500px-St_Nicholas%2C_West_Boldon_%28S_view_of_tower%29.jpg)d>
**Church of St Paul**Jarrow
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/vyBSdgdvvdYJrYLs5)681–682[1355091](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1355091)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Jarrow.jpg)d>
**Monastery of St Paul Ruins of Jarrow Monastery**Jarrow
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ViiQ8JpGM1Hu2j6S6)Post Norman[1025198](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1025198)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/St_Pauls_Monastery_Jarrow.jpg)d>
**Old Town Hall**South Shields
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/8iZtymzk66Y8NbMLA)1768[1232158](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1232158)[](
**Categories:** Tyne and Wear
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in North Tyneside](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-north-tyneside/)
**Published:** July 13, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/North_Tyneside_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-North_Tyneside_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in North Tyneside, Tyne and Wear.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/North_Tyneside_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-North_Tyneside_UK_locator_map.svg.png)North Tyneside shown with Tyne and Wear
Wikimedia Commons
The metropolitan borough of North Tyneside is one of the five that make up the ceremonial county of Tyne and Wear.{{sfnp|2F5E2LXG}}
The borough contains 2 of the 75 Grade I listed buildings in Tyne and Wear. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of Holy Cross**North Tyneside
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Dy9bPvr9f5v9Qab19)12th century[1299638](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1299638)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Holy_Cross_Church_and_Graveyard_-_geograph.org.uk_-_566235.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St George**Cullercoats
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/RTJMPYzTfyQFxkXeA)1882–1884[1355000](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1355000)[](
**Categories:** Tyne and Wear
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Sunderland](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-sunderland/)
**Published:** July 15, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Sunderland_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Sunderland_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear.
**Content:**
[](
**Categories:** Tyne and Wear
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Gateshead](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-gateshead/)
**Published:** July 14, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/Gateshead_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Gateshead_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear.
**Content:**
[![]()](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/Gateshead_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Gateshead_UK_locator_map.svg.png)ns/thumb/9/96/Gateshead\_UK\_locator\_map.svg/1280px-Gateshead\_UK\_locator\_map.svg.png" alt="See caption" class="kb-img"/>Gateshead shown with Tyne and Wear
Wikimedia Commons
The metropolitan borough of Gateshead is one of the five that make up the ceremonial county of Tyne and Wear.{{sfnp|2F5E2LXG}}
The borough contains 9 of the 75 Grade I listed buildings in Tyne and Wear. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image** data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Banqueting House about 500 Metres East and 300 Metres South of Gibside**Gibside
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/6tSVMkrw4JmGqWKy5)Daniel Garrett1751="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1355118" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1355118 data-border-color="#abb8c3">[ ![]()](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Gibside_Banqueting_House.jpg)ns/a/af/Gibside\_Banqueting\_House.jpg" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
 data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Chapel of St Edmund and Trinity Centre**Gateshead
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Av2ydfXVEjANjCev9) data-border-color="#abb8c3">Early 13th century="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1277874" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1277874 data-border-color="#abb8c3">[ ![]()](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/%C3%89glise_St_Edmund_Gateshead_1.jpg/1920px-%C3%89glise_St_Edmund_Gateshead_1.jpg)ns/thumb/d/d3/%C3%89glise\_St\_Edmund\_Gateshead\_1.jpg/1920px-%C3%89glise\_St\_Edmund\_Gateshead\_1.jpg" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
 data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of Holy Cross**Ryton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/kcfWXimNq2UqAPXm9) data-border-color="#abb8c3">13th century="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1025160" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1025160 data-border-color="#abb8c3">[ ![]()](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Holy_Cross_Church%2C_Ryton_-_geograph.org.uk_-_83165.jpg)ns/f/f7/Holy\_Cross\_Church%2C\_Ryton\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_83165.jpg" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
 data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary**Whickham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/HeApSq4qHKNt4swq9) data-border-color="#abb8c3">12th-century nave, 13th-century aisles and 14th-century porch="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1185359" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1185359 data-border-color="#abb8c3">[ ![]()](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Church_of_St_Mary_The_Virgin%2C_Whickham_-_geograph.org.uk_-_980051.jpg)ns/4/4e/Church\_of\_St\_Mary\_The\_Virgin%2C\_Whickham\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_980051.jpg" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
 data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary**Gateshead
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/QQ9rfuhB81T8mjFJ6) data-border-color="#abb8c3">Mainly 14th century="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1248544" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1248544 data-border-color="#abb8c3">[ ![]()](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Old_And_New_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1188996.jpg)ns/1/1a/Old\_And\_New\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1188996.jpg" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
 data-border-color="#abb8c3">**High Level Bridge**Gateshead
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/wMX5LnqNszjPeTeo8)Robert Stephenson1849="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1248568" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1248568 data-border-color="#abb8c3">[ ![]()](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/High_Level_Bridge_and_Swing_Bridge_-_Newcastle_Upon_Tyne_-_England_-_14082004.jpg)ns/4/47/High\_Level\_Bridge\_and\_Swing\_Bridge\_-\_Newcastle\_Upon\_Tyne\_-\_England\_-\_14082004.jpg" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
 data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Monument to British Liberty**Gibside
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/N9LnUG92WdmASaQv9)Daniel Garrett until 1753; then James Pained style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nbs2WUhWtYgLKbGh9)="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1025166" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1025166 data-border-color="#abb8c3">[ ![]()](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Gibside_Estate_Monument_-_geograph.org.uk_-_240856.jpg)ns/3/36/Gibside\_Estate\_Monument\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_240856.jpg" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
 data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Old Hollinside**Gateshead
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ij2XoSG2brTrkcWC9) data-border-color="#abb8c3">13th century="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1025137" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1025137 data-border-color="#abb8c3">[ ![]()](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Old_Hollinside_-_geograph.org.uk_-_853962.jpg)ns/4/4c/Old\_Hollinside\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_853962.jpg" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**The Chapel about 350 Metres West and 650 Metres South of Gibside Hall**Gibside
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/NNFpxNofDTHBNxgT8)James Paine1812="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1185345" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1185345[ ![]()](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Mausoleum_in_Gibside_Gardens_-_geograph.org.uk_-_952112.jpg)ns/e/e3/Mausoleum\_in\_Gibside\_Gardens\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_952112.jpg" width="150px" style="border:1px solid black; border-top-left-radius:12px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Tyne and Wear](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-tyne-and-wear)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Wo[](https://goo.gl/maps/SYhppoXNXQ2BgScY9)n-language-association" sortby="author" order="asc" target="new"\]
**Categories:** Tyne and Wear
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Emley Moor Colliery](https://engole.info/emley-moor-colliery/)
**Published:** July 5, 2023
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** Emley Moor Colliery refers to several sinkings and drift mines over a large area of Emley, towards the television mast, between Flockton to the north and particularly towards Skelmanthorpe to the south
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Yorkshire-Sheet-CCLXI.NE-1930.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/N7sUgKN8qBDLx4hUA}}
Emley Moor Colliery sites on Jaggar Lane 1930.{{sfnp|7VR9ZI3F}}|Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Coal mining around Emley in West Yorkshire has a long and complicated history from medieval times until the last colliery closed in December 1985. Emley Moor Colliery refers to several sinkings and drift mines over a large area of Emley, towards the television mast, between [Flockton](https://engole.info/flockton/) to the north and particularly towards Skelmanthorpe to the south. Coal was extracted from a widespread area around Emley village. The colliery was a major employer in the area and survived to be nationalised in 1947 and closed in 1985.
## Geography and geology
Emley Moor occupies high ground to the west of Emley village in the South Pennines. No major roads or railways pass through the village which is approximately midway between Huddersfield and Wakefield.
The underlying geology comprises the Lower Coal Measures and sandstones of the exposed area of the South Yorkshire Coalfield. [Tankersley ironstone](https://engole.info/tankersley-ironstone-bed/) occurs as thin seams and nodules of siderite in the mudstone above the Flockton Thick coal seam.{{sfnp|8UKJNJCN|11–12}}
## History
Evidence of small-scale medieval coal mining is found at the scheduled monument, Emley Day Holes, on the steep, scarp slope overlooking the Dearne Valley just to the south of Emley village. The various earthworks are where coal was mined from outcrops for use in iron forging. Drift mines were tunnelled into the hillside and spoil was deposited outside, building up level platforms along the hillside. These day holes are close to [Bentley Grange](https://engole.info/bentley-grange/) where the Tankersley ironstone bed was mined from bell pits.{{sfnp|MBQAM3CG}}
Coal was worked on Emley Moor in 1597 and from shallow shafts during the 17th century. The “Silver Pits” were recorded on a plan dated 1715. James Milnes who operated the [Flockton Collieries](https://engole.info/flockton-collieries/) owned coal pits on Emley Moor accessing the New Hards seam in the 1780s and Emley had four coal pits by 1822. John Bedford owned one and three belonged to the Jaggar family who became the pre-eminent coal owners in Emley.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|198}}
The Jaggars sank a pit close to where the Emley Moor television mast stands in 1819. It accessed the Wheatley Lime seam, and ten years later worked the Blocking seam. The underground workings were extensive, stretching north towards Flockton and east towards the Speedwell Fault. Other shafts were sunk, some more than {{convert|100|yd}} deep, as the workings extended away from the original shaft. The coal was worked until 1881.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|198}}
The Jaggars sank Park Pit to the Wheatley Lime seam south of Emley village in 1864. Water was a problem in the 61 feet deep shaft and the Benny Lane adit to dewater it was driven towards the north-west. Numbered ventilation shafts were sunk to the drift and No.2 Drift Pit was subsequently renamed Speedwell No.2 or Benny Lane Pit. No.3 Drift Pit became Emley Moor No.3 shaft and survived to be nationalised in 1947. When the adit was completed, water from the pits drained in to the River Dearne. Speedwell No.1 Pit’s two shafts were sunk in 1874 to access the Wheatley Lime and New Hards coal.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|198}}
The Jaggars opened Five Clogs Drift south of the village to access the coal via day holes in 1886. It was rumoured to have been driven by five men, one of whom had a wooden leg, hence five clogs. It was connected to Skelmanthorpe by a drift in 1892. The drift allowed all coal to be brought to the surface at Skelmanthorpe where it was screened for transport by rail.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|199}} The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway had opened its Clayton West Branch through Skelmanthorpe in September 1879.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|198}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Yorkshire-Sheet-CCLXI.SE-1948-Skel.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/JXNQbdxYPSkPCLQT7}}
Emley Moor Colliery sites at Skelmanthorpe 1949.{{sfnp|GDEGJUDZ}}|Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland.
The Jaggers opened Five Clogs Drift to access the coal via day holes in 1886. It was rumoured to have been driven by five men, one of whom had a wooden leg, hence five clogs. It was connected to Skelmanthorpe by a drift in 1892. The colliery was developed further and the pits interconnected so that coal from Emley No.3 could also be transported underground to Park Gate at Skelmanthorpe. By 1896 the pits employed more than 350 men and boys.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|199}}
In 1900 the Jaggar’s Emley Moor Collieries were amagamated with Stringer & Son’s Park Mill Colliery at Clayton West and a new company was created, Stringer & Jaggar. More development occurred and a coking plant was built at Park Gate. Two drifts and a shaft were constructed at Emley No.3.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|199}} Mechanisation was introduced in the form of conveyors. Speedwell No.2 Pit was sunk in 1910 and its ventilation shaft was one sunk before 1800 by James Milnes near Park Pit. By this time Emley Drift Pit employed 660 underground and 173 surface workers.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|199}}
The Jaggar family ended their mining ties in 1912 and Stringer and Son took over. Deeper seams were worked including the Blocking seam under Emley village. Drifts were driven towards the old [Lane End Colliery](https://engole.info/flockton-collieries/). Some older reserves were worked out by 1920.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|200}} Flooding caused by an inundation from Lane End occurred at Speedwell No.2 Pit in 1923.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|201}}
During the 1920s coal was worked towards [Shuttle Eye](https://engole.info/shuttle-eye-colliery/) and [Grange Ash](https://engole.info/grange-ash-colliery/) Collieries. In 1934 the screens at Skelmanthorpe were enlarged. Speedwell No.2 closed in 1937 but its drainage system was kept open. The Beeston seam was worked from 1937 to 1945. When the colliery was nationalised in 1947 it was employing 550 men. It became part of the NCB North Eastern No.6 Barnsley Area.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|201}}
An electric fan installed at Speedwell Pit in 1953 had insufficient capacity to ventilate the entire workings and coal faces in the New Hards seam were closed. A haulage adit was opened at Nineclogs to allow materials to be taken underground. Lane End Pit was dewatered in 1956 allowing reserves of coal to the north-east to be accessed and in 1959 a connection was made to the Grange Ash workings to improve drainage.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|202}}
Coal tubs were replaced by underground conveyors from the coal faces to Skelmanthorpe and an electric winding engine in was installed at Emley No.3 shaft for winding men and materials in 1963. In 1967 the colliery employed 290 men who produced 121,000 tons of coal from the Blocking and Beeston seams. Emley Moor was grouped with [Caphouse](https://engole.info/caphouse-colliery/), Grange Ash, Howroyd, Lepton Moor, Park Mill and Shuttle Eye Collieries in 1972.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|202}}
More underground developments took place in the 1970s, when the Beeston seam was most productive; 100,000 tons of coal were produced in 1978 by 319 men. The Beeston coal was exhausted in 1983, and the Whinmoor seam, less than {{convert|30|in}} thick, was then worked by hand filling methods. The Skelmanthorpe washery closed, and coal was washed at Woolley Colliery.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|203}}
Production was halted temporarily during the 1984–85 Miners’ Strike, and ceased entirely in December 1985. The sites were cleared and shafts were capped.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|203}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24809
**Categories:** Coal mining, Yorkshire
---
### [Witchcraft Acts](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts/)
**Published:** September 2, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Johann_Heinrich_F%C3%BCssli_019.jpg[/pimage]Series of Acts passed by the Parliaments of England and Scotland making witchcraft a secular offence punishable by death.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Johann_Heinrich_F%C3%BCssli_019.jpg)*The Three Witches*, 1783, by [Henry Fuseli](https://engole.info/henry-fuseli)
Wikimedia Commons
Exodus 22:18 states that “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”,\[a\]The Hebrew text refers not to a witch but to a diviner, a *kasaph*, someone able to see into the future. *Witch* was the preferred translation for the King James Bible, reflecting the reality of witchcraft in the consciousness of the Jacobean state.{{sfnp|8SJVQSX5|19}} but until the passage of Henry VIII’s Act of 1542 witchcraft was dealt with by the ecclesiastical courts rather being seen as a secular felony. It is unknown what triggered the perceived need for such legislation, but it undoubtedly suited Henry’s agenda of wresting power from the Catholic Church.{{sfnp|HQ5YYJAB|67-68}}
The difficulties of proving the crime of witchcraft in a court of law, which included the lack of eyewitness accounts, led to the development of a clarified foundation for the admissibility of circumstantial evidence to secure criminal convictions more generally.
## Witchcraft Act 1542
The Witchcraft Act of 1542 was the first in English law to define what was to be considered witchcraft, and to declare it a crime punishable by death.{{sfnp|TXFUAR7I}} It remained in force for five years before its repeal by Henry’s son King Edward VII in 1547, during which time there appear to have been no prosecutions under the Act.{{sfnp|AM9HF8JT|109}}
## Witchcraft Act 1563
A major trigger for the introduction of the 1563 Act was the [Waldegrave Conspiracy](https://engole.info/waldegrave-conspiracy/) two years earlier, a supposed plot to kill Queen Elizabeth I by the use of sorcery and reintroduce Catholicism to England.{{sfnp|LVBVJCGX|72}} Officially known as the *Act agaynst Conjuracons Inchantments and Witchecraftes*, it was passed by Queen Elizabeth I’s second Parliament.{{sfnp|HQ5YYJAB|67}} It was in some respects more merciful towards those found guilty of witchcraft than its predecessor, demanding the death penalty only if harm had been caused – [maleficium](https://engole.info/maleficium/); lesser offences were punishable by a term of imprisonment. The Act provided that anyone who should “use, practise, or exercise any Witchcraft, Enchantment, Charm, or Sorcery, whereby any person shall happen to be killed or destroyed”, was guilty of a felony without [benefit of clergy](https://engole.info/benefit-of-clergy/), and was to be put to death.{{sfnp|6N6MGC4W|3-4}}
[Elizabeth Lowys](https://engole.info/elizabeth-lowys) was the first person to be convicted under this Act, on 21 July 1564, but there is no firm evidence that she was actually executed.{{sfnp|XALMLRTR}} [Agnes Waterhouse](https://engole.info/agnes-waterhouse-witch/), or Mother Waterhouse, an elderly woman from Hatfield Peverel in Essex, is the first person known to have been convicted and executed under the 1563 Act, in July 1566.{{sfnp|5ZU9T7BW}}{{sfnp|KP9GLIKU|303}}
## Scottish Witchcraft Act 1563
Under the Scottish Witchcraft Act 1563 the practice of witchcraft and consulting with witches became capital offences in Scotland.{{sfnp|6N6MGC4W|7}} This Act remained on Scottish statute books until its repeal by the post-union Witchcraft Act 1735.{{sfnp|GPAZ2W6M|66}}
The wording of the Act is perhaps somewhat sceptical, speaking as it does of “the heavy and abominable superstition used by divers of the lieges of this Realm … and credence given thereto in time bygone … and for avoiding and away putting of all such vain superstition in times to come.” The Act was, in other words, a general legislative instrument against superstition, and did not result in any great increase in prosecutions for witchcraft.{{sfnp|GPAZ2W6M|66-67}}
## Witchcraft Act 1604
In 1604, the year following James’ accession to the English throne, the Elizabethan Act of 1563 was broadened to bring the penalty of death without [benefit of clergy ](https://engole.info/benefit-of-clergy) to anyone who invoked evil spirits or communed with [familiar](https://engole.info/witchs-familiar) spirits. The Act’s full title was An Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft and dealing with evil and wicked spirits, (1 Ja. I c. 12).{{sfnp|6N6MGC4W|5-6}} It was this statute that was enforced by [Matthew Hopkins](https://engole.info/matthew-hopkins/), the self-styled Witch-Finder General.
The occultist John Dee (1527–1609), who had been appointed court astrologer by King James’s predecessor, Elizabeth I, was convinced that the 1604 Act explicitly targeted him. So he petitioned James asking that he be “tried and cleared” before the King, the Privy Council or Parliament of the “perennial slanders” that he was a “Conjuror, or Caller, of Invocator of Devils”, but to no avail.{{sfnp|WDR45SX5|265-266}}
By making witchcraft a felony, the Acts of Elizabeth and James removed the accused from the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts, as Henry VIII had done with his Act of 1542. Those accused of witchcraft were thus subject to ordinary criminal procedure. Burning at the stake was retained only for cases of witchcraft that were also petty treason; most of those convicted were instead hanged. Any witch who had committed a minor witchcraft offence (punishable by one year in prison), and was accused and found guilty a second time, received the death penalty.
## Scottish Witchcraft Act 1649
The Scottish Witchcraft Act 1649 extended the scope of the 1563 Act to include the new crime of consulting with “Devils and familiar spirits”.{{sfnp|U5ZCWRUP|149-150}}
## Witchcraft Act 1735
{{main|Witchcraft Act 1735}}
The Witchcraft Act of 1735 marked a complete reversal in attitudes towards witchcraft, which by that time was considered to be an impossible crime by many influential figures. Penalties for the practice of witchcraft were replaced by those for the pretence of witchcraft. The Act also outlawed fortune telling, but as it necessitated a trial by jury it was not commonly used for that purpose.{{sfnp|6N6MGC4W|7}} Fortune tellers were instead usually tried summarily as vagrants by magistrates, and subject to fines and imprisonment.{{sfnp|PU7USHRX|148-149}} The Act applied to the whole of Great Britain, repealing the 1563 Scottish Act and the 1604 English Act.{{sfnp|6N6MGC4W|7}}
It would be mistake to conclude that the “learned disapproval” embodied in the Act somehow undermined the popular belief in magic however. Indeed, the English author and animal welfare campaigner Lady Rosalind Northcote argued in 1900 that advances in education actually increased the belief in witchcraft, as an increasingly literate population had access to the mass of cheap books and pamphlets dealing with all manner of occult topics.{{sfnp|NLTKWIFH|405}}
The Witchcraft Act of 1735 remained in force in Great Britain well into the 20th century, until its eventual repeal with the enactment of the Fraudulent Mediums Act of 1951. That Act was in turn repealed on 26 May 2008,{{sfnp|QUJP7ZR8|search=schedule 4}} by new consumer protection regulations following a European Union directive targeting unfair sales and marketing practices.{{sfnp|GRPP67YY}}
## Legacy in English law
Witchcraft, although considered to be a serious crime, was one that was very difficult to prove. There were typically no witnesses, and in England it was illegal to use torture to extract a confession. The courts therefore often had to rely on circumstantial evidence, such as the presence of [Devil’s marks](https://engole.info/witch-finding/#Marks). English law differed from that in Scotland and on the Continent, in that the accused could be convicted on circumstantial evidence alone, whereas in Scotland they had to confess to the crime, which often necessitated the use of torture.{{sfnp|F34HIATY|search=Circumstantial Evidence}}
Although witchcraft trials were not particularly common in England, they did focus legal minds on the problems of circumstantial evidence in general, which led to the development of a robust foundation for its admission.{{sfnp|F34HIATY|search=Circumstantial Evidence}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The Hebrew text refers not to a witch but to a diviner, a *kasaph*, someone able to see into the future. *Witch* was the preferred translation for the King James Bible, reflecting the reality of witchcraft in the consciousness of the Jacobean state.{{sfnp|8SJVQSX5|19}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 5313
**Categories:** Witchcraft
---
### [Elspeth Reoch](https://engole.info/elspeth-reoch/)
**Published:** May 26, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Yarrow_%28Achillea_millefolium%29.jpg[/pimage]Scottish woman who confessed to witchcraft and deceiving islanders by pretending she was mute.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Yarrow_%28Achillea_millefolium%29.jpg)The melefour herb was considered to have many magical properties, including curing illnesses and conferring second sight; Elspeth Reoch plucked petals from it while chanting to create magic spells.
Wikimedia Commons
Elspeth Reoch (died Kirkwall 1616) was an alleged Scottish witch. She was born in Caithness, but as a child spent time with relatives on an island in Lochaber before moving to the mainland of Orkney. At that time the Orkney archipelago was under the legal jurisdiction of Scotland, which with the implementation of the [Scottish Witchcraft Act of 1563](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts/#Scottish-Witchcraft-Act-1563) had made witchcraft a capital offence, therefore punishable by death.
The early years of the 17th century were a time of political turmoil on the islands, as the transition of power from Patrick Stewart, 2nd Earl of Orkney, to the staunchly episcopalian Bishop James Law took place. Once in control, Bishop Law instigated court reforms in 1614 that academics considered had a significant impact on witchcraft trials in Orkney. Any references to a fairy in statements given to interrogators by alleged witches were routinely changed to read devil or demon.
At her trial in Kirkwall on 12 March 1616 Elspeth confessed to charges of witchcraft and deceiving islanders by pretending she was mute. Asserting she had received instructions on how to acquire magical powers when she was twelve years old while she was staying with an aunt in Lochaber, she claimed to have clairvoyance abilities. She also professed to being able to induce or cure illness by reciting chants while plucking petals from the melefour herb. Her lifestyle was that of a wanderer or vagabond who used her magic to support herself.
Elspeth was found guilty and executed by strangulation; her body was burned that same afternoon.
## Background
The islanders of Orkney had a long tradition of belief in broadly construed forms of witchcraft, sorcery and supernatural creatures.{{sfnp|BRFU8MAR|333}} Magical powers were accepted as part of the general lifestyle and were not questioned.{{sfnp|P5A55XWK|644}} Witch hunts in Scotland began in about 1550;{{sfnp|P5A55XWK|644}} the parliament of Mary, Queen of Scots passed the Scottish Witchcraft Act in 1563,{{sfnp|BRFU8MAR|345}} making witchcraft convictions subject to capital punishment.{{sfnp|XQ3YWSPF|61}} Although the Orkney archipelago was officially under Norwegian law until 1611,{{sfnp|BRFU8MAR|347}} it had been held by Scotland from 1468{{sfnp|Q38C4BU9}} under the rule of Scottish earls.{{sfnp|9BJCH8SP|136}} Patrick Stewart, 2nd Earl of Orkney, known as Black Patie, had control of the islands in 1594 at the time of the initial witch trials{{sfnp|SL9PF4I3}} but the early years of the 17th-century were a period of political turmoil.{{sfnp|LU7HJZ3W|157}} Black Patie was incarcerated and eventually executed after he enraged King James who appointed James Law, a staunch Episcopalian, as Bishop of Orkney.{{sfnp|SL9PF4I3}} Law took on the role of sheriff and oversaw later trials.{{sfnp|LU7HJZ3W|154, 155}}\[a\]In the areas of northern Orkney outside of Law’s bishopric and all of Shetland, Sir James Stewart of Killeith, 4th Lord Ochiltree, was Lord Chamberlain and sheriff from 1613.{{sfnp|LU7HJZ3W|155}}{{sfnp|YT7BWQF8|105}} The historian Liv Helene Willumsen{{sfnp|GAEU3APM}} considers the court reforms instigated by Bishop Law around 1614 and the restoration of the bishops impacted significantly on the witch trials but failed to improve the neutrality of the proceedings.{{sfnp|LU7HJZ3W|158}}
## Personal life
Elspeth’s father, Donald Reoch, was a piper in the service of the Earl of Caithness.{{sfnp|JC2LP5FG}} She had a sister and a brother.{{sfnp|CHFQ9WRW|88, 89}} Although born in Caithness she stayed on an island in Lochaber, where at least two of her aunts lived, before arriving in Orkney.{{sfnp|JC2LP5FG}}{{sfnp|CHFQ9WRW|84, 86}}{{sfnp|E5QUT8G3|162}}
No clear records of Elspeth’s marital status exist, but she bore at least two children to two men.{{sfnp|CY6XBMCL|search=Reoch, Elspeth}} After the birth of her first child{{sfnp|WGHVEMID|91}} Elspeth maintained she was unable to speak.{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|84}} By this time her father had died leaving her brother as her most senior relative.{{sfnp|WGHVEMID|96}} She was violently beaten by him in his attempts to force her to talk.{{sfnp|WGHVEMID|96}} Using a form of torture that was similar to one later utilised by Graham of Claverhouse, he tightened a bowstring around her head;{{sfnp|FRTSXM8L|658-659}} he also used a [brank](https://engole.info/scolds-bridle/) with an iron bit to beat her.{{sfnp|WGHVEMID|96}} The beatings proved unsuccessful so he made her attend church with him to pray for help curing her;{{sfnp|WGHVEMID|96}} Elspeth however remained mute for a lengthy period.{{sfnp|VBNTMM2M|134}}
Orcadian historian [Ernest Marwick](https://engole.info/ernest-w-marwick/) describes her lifestyle as that of a wanderer, a person with nomadic tendencies or a beggar,{{sfnp|BRFU8MAR|376-377}} whose claims of extrasensory perception provided her with an income.{{sfnp|CY6XBMCL|search=Reoch, Elspeth}} He considered her to be “harmless”, a “poor deluded creature much abused by men whom she took to be fairies”.{{sfnp|BRFU8MAR|366}} She may have suffered from a type of sleep paralysis and also have been subjected to some form of trauma, possibly rape or incest, memories of which formed the basis of the story she relayed to her inquisitors.{{sfnp|VBNTMM2M|134, 138}} Historian Diane Purkiss speculates that Elspeth’s brother may have been her incestuous partner{{sfnp|WGHVEMID|96}} although this opinion is not shared by other academics.{{sfnp|NBTBHECC|162}}
## Charges and confession
Under interrogation Elspeth stated that when she was twelve years old{{sfnp|2CPBA69H|106}} she was staying in Lochaber with one of her aunts.{{sfnp|VABRJIRH|187-188}} While she was standing at the side of the loch, waiting for a boat,{{sfnp|CHFQ9WRW|85}} she was approached by two men, one dressed in black the other in a plaid of green tartan.{{sfnp|CHFQ9WRW|85}} The man in green told her he thought she was pretty; despite protests from his companion, who felt Elspeth would be unable to keep a secret, the man suggested he could tell Elspeth how to know anything she wanted.{{sfnp|CHFQ9WRW|85}} Keen to possess mystical powers, Elspeth pressed him to tell her what to do.{{sfnp|CHFQ9WRW|85}} He told her to boil an egg but she must not eat it.\[b\]Many folk tales incorporate instructions that fairy food should not be consumed, a stipulation hungry islanders might find difficult to abide by.{{sfnp|CHFQ9WRW|86}} Instead she was to use the condensation from cooking the egg to rub on her eyes with unwashed hands, which would give her the power to see and know everything she wanted.{{sfnp|CHFQ9WRW|86}}
She said the man dressed in green told her to go to the house of another one of her aunts who had a widow and her granddaughter either lodging or visiting.{{sfnp|CHFQ9WRW|86}} The family were unaware that the child, who was a similar age to Elspeth, was pregnant by a married man until Elspeth confronted her about it in front of them.{{sfnp|CHFQ9WRW|86}} After initially denying the accusation, the child pleaded with Elspeth to help abort the pregnancy but she refused, telling her to ask Allan McKeldow\[c\]McKeldow was the husband of Elspeth’s aunt.{{sfnp|VABRJIRH|187-188}} who also declined to become involved.{{sfnp|CHFQ9WRW|87}} Less than two years later,{{sfnp|CHFQ9WRW|87}} after Elspeth produced her own illegitimate child, one of the men appeared again at her bedside in her sister’s house.{{sfnp|2CPBA69H|106}}{{sfnp|CHFQ9WRW|87}} She admitted that she had sexual intercourse with the “Farie man”{{sfnp|VBNTMM2M|134}} after he had visited her on three nights in succession; this was the man who had been dressed in black when she first encountered them at the lochside.{{sfnp|CHFQ9WRW|88}} She claimed he was a relative named Johne Stewart, who had been fatally attacked, and that he informed her “he was neither dead nor alive but was forever trapped between heaven and earth”.{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|60}} He told her that to retain her magic skills “she should henceforth be dumb”.{{sfnp|VBNTMM2M|134}}
Elspeth confessed that by using her clairvoyance skills she had foreseen a group of men at an afternoon drinking session in the house of Edmond Callendar. These men included Patrick Traill, a man who she was pregnant by, and Robert Stewart, the illegitimate son of Black Patie; they all had ropes around their necks. The prediction had been made before the Earl of Caithness arrived in Orkney.{{sfnp|BRFU8MAR|366}}\[d\]Robert Stewart had been executed on 1 January 1615 after the Earl of Caithness had quelled the rebellion led by Stewart.{{sfnp|SL9PF4I3}}{{sfnp|LU7HJZ3W|157}} She also admitted creating a magic spell to cure illness by chanting “In nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti” while pulling the petals from the melefour herb between her thumb and finger.{{sfnp|927CCTR5}}\[e\]According to D. C. Watts in the Dictionary of Plant Lore the herb was considered “one of the greatest of magical and protective plants”; it could be used as a cure for many ailments, for protection against spirits and the leaves could bestow second sight.{{sfnp|XTJEP7AC|440-442}}
## Trial
In contrast to the Scottish mainland, where the Privy Council managed trials, there are no records of it having any involvement on Orkney where, from 1615, the Procurator Fiscal instigated hearings in the Sheriff Court or they were heard by the church elders.{{sfnp|BRFU8MAR|347}} It was common for inquisitors to transcribe the word devil or demon in place of any appellation for a fairy an alleged witch may have used in their statement.{{sfnp|R9PMW3YZ|324}} The charges were brought against Elspeth by Robert Coltart,{{sfnp|VABRJIRH|187}} the Procurator Fiscal appointed by Bishop Law.{{sfnp|LU7HJZ3W|158-159}} She was accused of deceiving the King’s subjects with her charade of being unable to speak and committing the “abominable and divilesch cryme of witchcraft”.{{sfnp|VABRJIRH|187}}
At her trial on 12 March 1616{{sfnp|Q24GERQ8|262}}\[f\]The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft Database incorrectly lists her execution date as 22 March 1616.{{sfnp|CY6XBMCL|search=Reoch, Elspeth}} in Kirkwall,{{sfnp|VABRJIRH|187}} Elspeth admitted to having had several rendezvous with the Devil, who had assumed the form of a fairy;{{sfnp|BRFU8MAR|350}} she said one of the meetings occurred on Halloween.{{sfnp|RTMXYMP5}} At one of their assignations he informed her that “Orkney was Priestgone, as there were too many ministers in it”.{{sfnp|BRFU8MAR|350}}\[g\]Priestgone is defined by Marwick as “Priest ridden”.{{sfnp|BRFU8MAR|350}}
Elspeth was found guilty and executed;{{sfnp|LU7HJZ3W|163}} she was strangled and her body was burned that afternoon.{{sfnp|VABRJIRH|191}}{{sfnp|H5CWD65M|839}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a In the areas of northern Orkney outside of Law’s bishopric and all of Shetland, Sir James Stewart of Killeith, 4th Lord Ochiltree, was Lord Chamberlain and sheriff from 1613.{{sfnp|LU7HJZ3W|155}}{{sfnp|YT7BWQF8|105}} b Many folk tales incorporate instructions that fairy food should not be consumed, a stipulation hungry islanders might find difficult to abide by.{{sfnp|CHFQ9WRW|86}} c McKeldow was the husband of Elspeth’s aunt.{{sfnp|VABRJIRH|187-188}} d Robert Stewart had been executed on 1 January 1615 after the Earl of Caithness had quelled the rebellion led by Stewart.{{sfnp|SL9PF4I3}}{{sfnp|LU7HJZ3W|157}} e According to D. C. Watts in the Dictionary of Plant Lore the herb was considered “one of the greatest of magical and protective plants”; it could be used as a cure for many ailments, for protection against spirits and the leaves could bestow second sight.{{sfnp|XTJEP7AC|440-442}} f The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft Database incorrectly lists her execution date as 22 March 1616.{{sfnp|CY6XBMCL|search=Reoch, Elspeth}} g Priestgone is defined by Marwick as “Priest ridden”.{{sfnp|BRFU8MAR|350}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 686
**Categories:** Female, Scottish, Witch
---
### [Stories of Men and Women in Love](https://engole.info/stories-of-men-and-women-in-love/)
**Published:** April 3, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Collection of four novels by H. G. Wells (1866–1946), published in 1933.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/H._G._Wells_Daily_Mirror.jpg)H. G. Wells, c. 1918
Wikimedia Commons
*Stories of Men and Women in Love* is a collection of four novels written by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), published in 1933. The collection begins with a specially written preface by Wells.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|54}}
## Contents
Novels are listed in the order in which they appear in the book.
- *Love and Mr. Lewisham* (1900)
- *The Passionate Friends* (1913)
- *The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman* (1914)
- *The Secret Places of the Heart* (1922)
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25234
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Novel
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Proscenium](https://engole.info/proscenium/)
**Published:** September 24, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/2011_Refurbishment_Everyman_Theatre_Cheltenham.jpg[/pimage]Part of a theatre stage in front of the curtain.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/2011_Refurbishment_Everyman_Theatre_Cheltenham.jpg)Proscenium arch at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham
Wikimedia Commons
The proscenium is that part of a theatre stage in front of the curtain, which separates the stage from the auditorium.{{sfnp|F7SPTTVC}}
The term was originally used in classical Greek theatre for the area in front of the scenery, but in Renaissance Italian theatre design it evolved to mean the draperies surrounding the stage, which created a frame for the performance. The idea of framing the stage in that way was introduced into England by the architect and artist Inigo Jones (1573–1652), for the staging of masques at the royal court.{{sfnp|J6T4CSSK}}
In later post-Restoration theatres the term proscenium was also used for a design in which the acting space was recessed behind an arch – the proscenium arch – thus creating what is sometimes called a “picture-frame” stage.{{sfnp|3M5UVQL7}} In English theatres during the 16th and 17th centuries an actor would often deliver a prologue on the proscenium, commenting on the play about to be enacted, after which the curtain would be raised and the performance would begin.{{sfnp|FY43YKWJ}} Although still common in theatre designs of the 19th and early 20th centuries,{{sfnp|8L3GCJQ8}} the proscenium arch is now considered to be a hinderance, restricting the audience’s view, and has led to alternative designs such as open stage and theatre-in-the-round in more modern theatres.{{sfnp|J6T4CSSK}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24914
**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Crantara](https://engole.info/crantara/)
**Published:** June 23, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/John_Lamont_Brodie_-_The_Fiery_Cross.jpg[/pimage]Fiery cross used by Scottish Highlanders to rally their clans to battle.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/John_Lamont_Brodie_-_The_Fiery_Cross.jpg)*The Fiery Cross* by John Lamont Brodie, depicting the old Scottish custom of summoning clansmen to war with a burning cross
Wikimedia Commons
The crantara or cran-tara, also known as a crosterie, from the Scottish Gaelic *cros-tàra* or *crann-tàra*, was a fiery cross used by Scottish Highlanders to recruit other clan members to battle, later adopted by the American Ku Klux Klan as an intimidating rallying signal.{{sfnp|99J7AT59}}{{sfnp|HYBIJZLE}}
During the period it was used in Scotland, the fiery cross was a small wooden structure carried in a relay by runners or riders from town to town. The last use of the crantara in Scotland was probably in the assembly of a force in excess of 22,000 Scots, who were defeated by the English at the Battle of Pinkie in 1547,{{sfnp|3CFLDPMU}}\[a\]Also known as the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh, after the area to the east of Edinburgh where it was fought.{{sfnp|Z5ZY9UCL}} the last pitched battle between Scotland and England before the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James VI of Scotland became James I of England.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/Cross_Lighting_2005.jpg/330px-Cross_Lighting_2005.jpg)Ku Klux Klan members at a cross burning in 2005
Wikimedia Commons
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Also known as the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh, after the area to the east of Edinburgh where it was fought.{{sfnp|Z5ZY9UCL}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25432
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Oculus](https://engole.info/oculus/)
**Published:** November 16, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7b/Sutton_Lodge%2C_Brighton_Rd%2C_SUTTON%2C_Surrey%2C_Greater_London_%284%29.jpg/1280px-Sutton_Lodge%2C_Brighton_Rd%2C_SUTTON%2C_Surrey%2C_Greater_London_%284%29.jpg[/pimage]Round window in a wall, or an opening in the top of a dome.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7b/Sutton_Lodge%2C_Brighton_Rd%2C_SUTTON%2C_Surrey%2C_Greater_London_%284%29.jpg/1280px-Sutton_Lodge%2C_Brighton_Rd%2C_SUTTON%2C_Surrey%2C_Greater_London_%284%29.jpg)*Oeil-de-boeuf* window in the Georgian Sutton Lodge, London.
Wikimedia Commons
An oculus is a round window in a wall, or an opening in the top of a dome;{{sfnp|ZNZ22DYH|124,223}} the name is borrowed from the Latin word for eye. Such windows are alternatively known by the French term *oeil-de-boeuf*, meaning “bull’s eye”.{{sfnp|69RZHBBK}}
The term *oculus* is also used to describe a decorative motif found on ancient pottery and in rock art, comprising a pair of circles or spirals resembling a pair of eyes.{{sfnp|69RZHBBK}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27004
**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Witch trials in Cheshire](https://engole.info/witch-trials-in-cheshire/)
**Published:** July 30, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/hanging-witches.webp[/pimage]Witch trials in Cheshire from 1589 until 1675.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/hanging-witches.webp)Convicted witches in England were executed by hanging
Wikimedia Commons
The English county of Cheshire did not experience the large‑scale witchcraft panics seen in neighbouring Lancashire, but there was a peak in prosecutions for witchcraft in the 1650s and 1660s, most of them presided over by the Chief Justice John Bradshaw (1602–1659).{{sfnp|KH7JK56Q}}\[a\]John Bradshaw has the distinction of presiding over the court that tried King Charles I, and ordered his execution.{{sfnp|968EM38Y}} Between 1589 and 1675 there were thirty-four people prosecuted for witchcraft in Cheshire, thirty-two of them women. Thirty-one of the thirty-four were charged under the [Witchcraft Act of 1604](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts/#Witchcraft-Act-1604), of whom eight were found guilty and executed, all of them women.{{sfnp|G4QEBHVL}}{{sfnp|PIX7ZSVL|413-422}}
## Legal process
The legal process in Cheshire mirrored the practice of the contemporary English criminal justice system, but with some variation owing to the county’s Palatine jurisdiction.{{sfnp|E4C4D474}}
The first phase of investigation was the examination of the accused by magistrates or senior church officials, which in Cheshire took place at the Common Hall of Pleas in Chester.{{sfnp|G4QEBHVL}} Unlike the rest of England, which since the 12th century had been divided into six judicial circuits, with Justices visiting twice a year to preside over assize courts, as a county Palatine, Wales and Chester had four circuits of Courts of Great Sessions.{{sfnp|E4C4D474}}
If it was considered as a result of the initial hearing that there was a prima facie case to answer, the indictments gathered at the preliminary hearing were presented before judges at the Court of Great Sessions, which usually met in the Common Hall of Pleas. A jury then decided on the guilt or innocence of the accused.{{sfnp|G4QEBHVL}}
## Executions
The 1604 Witchcraft Act had made causing harm by witchcraft a felony punishable by death. Those convicted of capital offences in Cheshire were hanged at the appropriately named Gallows Hill in Boughton, now known as Barrel Well Hill,{{sfnp|YY8F95S8}} and then buried in unmarked graves in a nearby ditch, close to Chester Castle.{{sfnp|KH7JK56Q}}
[Mary Baguley](https://engole.info/mary-baguley-witch) was the last person to be executed for witchcraft in Cheshire; the last person to have been executed for witchcraft in England is generally considered to be [Alice Molland](https://engole.info/alice-molland), in Exeter ten years later.{{sfnp|EASBDAX8}}
**Name and date of execution**{{sfnp|G4QEBHVL}}{{sfnp|PIX7ZSVL|413-422}}**Sibil Marcer**1631**Ellen Stubbs**1653**Elizabeth Stubbs**1653**Anne Stanley**1653[**Anne Osboston**](https://engole.info/boughton-witches)1656[**Anne Thornton**](https://engole.info/boughton-witches)1656[**Ellen Beech**](https://engole.info/boughton-witches)1656[**Mary Baguley**](https://engole.info/mary-baguley-witch)1675
## See also
- [Witch trials in Early Modern England](https://engole.info/witch-trials-in-early-modern-england)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a John Bradshaw has the distinction of presiding over the court that tried King Charles I, and ordered his execution.{{sfnp|968EM38Y}} b, c var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30212
**Categories:** Cheshire, Witch, Witch trial
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [The Tractate Middoth](https://engole.info/the-tractate-middoth/)
**Published:** October 14, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/tractate.png[/pimage]Ghost story by M. R. James, first published in 1911, about a disputed inheritance and the long-dead clergyman who guards his last will and testament.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/tractate.png)Screenshot from the 2013 BBC television adaptation.
BBC
“The Tractate Middoth” is a horror story by the English medievalist and author M. R. James (1862–1936), first published in his [*More Ghost Stories*](https://engole.info/more-ghost-stories) (1911) his second collection of ghost stories. In his preface James remarks that “the certain famous library” he had in mind for the setting of the story was Cambridge University Library.{{sfnp|HBW773GA}}
The story is written as a third-person narrative, and concerns the disputed inheritance of Bretfield Manor.
## Synopsis
The story begins as an elderly gentleman, John Eldred, enters a university library late one afternoon asking to borrow a particular book, the *Tractate Middoth*. A library assistant, Mr Garrett is sent to find the book, but returns empty-handed, saying that he has just seen what looked like an elderly clergyman in a cloak remove the book from the shelf. Impatiently, Eldred says that he will call again tomorrow, and would like to know who the elderly gentleman is.
Eldred returns the following day, and Garrett, having discovered the missing volume back on the shelf after checking later the previous evening, goes to retrieve it. But he fails to reappear, having fainted in shock after once again encountering the black-cloaked clergyman, this time smelling of mould and dust, with a head that appears to be enshrouded in cobwebs. Garrett is sent home to recover, and decides to recuperate at the seaside.
On the train to his destination, Burnstow-on-Sea, Garrett meets the elderly Mrs Simpson and her daughter, proprietors of a boarding house, who offer him lodgings. They confide in him that they are engaged in a losing a struggle with a rival heir to Bretfield Manor, formerly the estate of an eccentric clergyman named Dr Rant, who had died two decades earlier. The *Tractate Middoth* supposedly contains a hidden secret will that would supersede an earlier one, and Garrett, upon realising that Eldred is the rival heir, decides to help the Simpsons by preventing him from destroying the later will.
Mrs Simpson reveals that Dr Rant was her uncle, and chose to be buried in a rather peculiar way: “sitting at a table in his ordinary clothes, in a brick room that he’d had made underground in a field near his house”; and that locals claimed to have seen him around there in his old black coat.
Returning to work at the library, Garrett finds that the *Tractate* has been shipped to Eldred at the Rant estate. He arrives at the estate too late to stop Eldred from receiving the parcel at the railway station, but as he follows him back to the Rant mansion, he sees a dark form emerge from cobwebs at the side of the road, whereupon Eldred drops dead. An inquest finds black dust on the dead man’s face and in his mouth, but concludes that the cause of death is shock to a weak heart.
The inquest hears that Eldred had been tearing a page out of the *Tractate* when he died, the page containing the missing will. By its terms Mrs Simpson inherits the estate formerly possessed by Eldred. As Garrett is walking back to the station the following day he passes the site of Eldred’s death, and sees something dark lying there, a thick mass of black cobwebs, from which several large spiders run out when he pokes it with his stick.
There is no great difficulty in imagining the steps by which William Garrett, from being an assistant in a great library, attained to his present position of prospective owner of Bretfield Manor, now in the occupation of his mother-in-law, Mrs Mary Simpson.
## Adaptions
“The Tractate Middoth” has been adapted for radio as an episode of the BBC Radio 4 *M R James at Christmas* series, read by Derek Jacobi and first broadcast on 25 December 2007.{{sfnp|KQR5GPMB}}
Television adaptations include BBC 2’s version of the story, adapted by Mark Gatiss and first broadcast on 25 December 2013 as an episode of its *A Ghost Story for Christmas* series.{{sfnp|PA39W8AA}} Gatiss was evidently dissatisfied with the original story’s happy ending, and decided instead to add an element of suspense. As Garrett and Mrs Simpson’s daughter enter the hall after their marriage, an “ominous dusty shadow” is seen behind them, followed by a spider.
## See also
- [List of works by M. R. James](https://engole.info/m-r-james-bibliography)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25639
## External links
- [Full text of “The Tractate Middoth”](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9629) at Project Gutenberg
- [ITV adaptation on YouTube](https://youtu.be/wWoH-_U7x1I)
**Categories:** Horror story, M. R. James
---
### [Wee Willie Winkie](https://engole.info/wee-willie-winkie/)
**Published:** October 14, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Wee_Willie_Winkie_1940_poster.jpg/330px-Wee_Willie_Winkie_1940_poster.jpg[/pimage]Nursery rhyme about the best-known of the British sleep spirits, first published in 1841.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Wee_Willie_Winkie_1940_poster.jpg/330px-Wee_Willie_Winkie_1940_poster.jpg)1940 poster using Wee Willie Winkie to promote children’s libraries
Wikimedia Commons
“Wee Willie Winkie” is the best-known of the British sleep spirits, many of which were invented by the Glaswegian poet William Miller (1810–1872),{{sfnp|8LTUFE8K|429}} “the Laureate of the Nursery”. The nursery rhyme was first published in *Whistle-Binkie: a Collection of Songs for the Social Circle* in 1841.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|511}}
The rhyme consists of five verses, the first of which appears to be written in a different style to the rest,{{sfnp|8LTUFE8K|429}} so it seems likely that Miller used a traditional verse as a starting point and added the others, as he often did.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|512}}
Although there are no obvious Jacobite references in the nursery rhyme, “Willie Winkie” was a common nickname for King William III (1650–1702) in Jacobite songs.
## Poem
*Wee Willie Winkie rins through the toon,
Up stairs an’ doon stairs in his nicht-gown,
Tirlin’ at the window, crying at the lock,
“Are the weans in their bed, for it’s now ten o’clock?”*
*“Hey, Willie Winkie, are ye comin’ ben?
The cat’s singin grey thrums to the sleepin hen,
The dog’s speldert on the floor and disna gie a cheep,
But here’s a waukrife laddie, that wunna fa’ asleep.”*
*Onything but sleep, you rogue, glow’ring like the moon,
Rattlin’ in an airn jug wi’ an airn spoon,
Rumblin’, tumblin’ roon about, crawin’ like a cock,
Skirlin like a kenna-what, waukenin’ sleepin’ fock.*
*“Hey Willie Winkie, the wean’s in a creel,
Wamblin’ aff a bodie’s knee like a verra eel,
Ruggin’ at the cat’s lug and raveling a’ her thrums-
Hey Willie Winkie – see there he comes.”*
*Wearit is the mither that has a stoorie wean,
A wee, stumpie, stousie, that canna rin his lane,
That has a battle aye wi’ sleep afore he’ll close an e’e-
But a kiss frae aff his rosy lips gies strength anew to me.*{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|511–512}}
Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town,
Up stairs and down stairs in his night-gown,
Tapping at the window, crying at the lock,
Are the children in their bed, for it’s past ten o’clock?
Hey, Willie Winkie, are you coming in?
The cat is singing purring sounds to the sleeping hen,
The dog’s spread out on the floor, and doesn’t give a cheep,
But here’s a wakeful little boy who will not fall asleep!
Anything but sleep, you rogue! glowering like the moon,’
Rattling in an iron jug with an iron spoon,
Rumbling, tumbling round about, crowing like a cock,
Shrieking like I don’t know what, waking sleeping folk.
Hey, Willie Winkie – the child’s in a creel!
Wriggling from everyone’s knee like an eel,
Tugging at the cat’s ear, and confusing all her thrums
Hey, Willie Winkie – see, there he comes!”
Weary is the mother who has a dusty child,
A small short sturdy child, who can’t run on his own,
Who always has a battle with sleep before he’ll close an eye
But a kiss from his rosy lips gives strength anew to me.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24029
**Categories:** Nursery rhyme
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Number 13 (short story)](https://engole.info/number-13-short-story/)
**Published:** May 17, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Horror story by M. R. James, first published in 1904, about a hotel room that only exists during the hours of darkness.
**Content:**
“Number 13” is a horror story by the English medievalist and author M. R. James (1862–1936), written in 1899 and first published in [*Ghost Stories of an Antiquary*](https://engole.info/ghost-stories-of-an-antiquary) (1904).{{sfnp|EAL5HRIN}}
The story is set in the Danish town of Viborg, and is told as a third-person narrative by the cousin of the main protagonist, Mr Anderson.
## Synopsis
Anderson is engaged in researching the church history of Denmark, and is visiting Viborg because he has learned that in the Rigsarkiv of Viborg\[a\]Viborg’s records office. there are papers relating to the last days of Roman Catholicism in the country. When checking at the Golden Lion, one of the few buildings not destroyed in the great fire of 1726, Anderson explains to the landlord that as he expects to be spending two or three week in the establishment he needs a room large enough to serve as a study as well as a bedroom. At the landlord’s suggestion, he looks around the inn and chooses room 12.
After settling in, Anderson goes down to supper, where, as is the custom in Danish inns, there is a large blackboard displaying the room numbers and the names of the guests occupying them, but there is no room 13 on display. Some hours later, returning to what in the semi-darkness he believes to be the door to his room, the handle refuses to turn, and on glancing at the number he sees that it is 13. On entering his own room next door, he is struck by how much smaller it now appears in the dark.
Anderson asks the landlord why so many hotels in Denmark have no room 13, yet his does. The landlord replies that his hotel has never had a room 13. Anderson asks the inn-keeper to visit his room that night, to share a cigar and look at some photographs of English towns. While talking, they hear ominous singing in the room next door, before the occupant of room 14, Herr Jensen, bursts in, asking them to kindly desist. The three men go out into the corridor to investigate the source of the noise, and see that the door to room 13 has reappeared, and decide to break it down. While they are waiting for servants with crowbars to arrive, Jensen is standing with his back to the door of room 13, when it opens and an arm comes out, clawing at his shoulder: “It was clad in ragged, yellowish linen, and the bare skin, where it could be seen, had long grey hair upon it”.
As the servants set to work with their crowbars, the door disappears, and they strike plaster:
An early cock in the yard beneath was heard to crow; and as Anderson glanced in the direction of the sound, he saw through the window at the end of the long passage that the eastern sky was paling to the dawn.
The following morning a part of the floor of room 12 closest to room 14, is removed, revealing a small copper box containing a neatly folded vellum document containing about twenty lines of writing. But none of those present are able to decipher its contents, or even determine what language it is written in. The story ends with a hint that the document may have been an ill-advised contract with the Devil.
## Adaptations
“Number 13” has been adapted for television as an episode of the BBC’s *A Ghost Story for Christmas* series, starring Greg Wise and broadcast in 2006.{{sfnp|G7CHJXS8}}
## See also
- [List of works by M. R. James](https://engole.info/m-r-james-bibliography)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Viborg’s records office.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25324
## External links
- [Full text of “Number 13”](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8486/8486-h/8486-h.htm#chap05) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** Horror story, M. R. James
---
### [Alison Rough](https://engole.info/alison-rough/)
**Published:** August 15, 2020
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Alison-Rough.jpeg[/pimage]Edinburgh merchant and property investor convicted of murdering her son-in-law in 1535.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Alison-Rough.jpeg)Alison Rough and her daughter, Katherine, immediately after the crime was committed.
Tim Fitzpatrick, The Real Mary King’s Close
Alison Rough, Rouche, Rouch or Ruch (c. 1480 – 3 September 1535) was a 16th-century woman executed for murder. The affluent Edinburgh merchant and property investor, together with her daughter [Katherine](https://engole.info/katherine-mayne/), killed her son-in-law, Alexander Cant, following a family argument.
Both women escaped from custody but were quickly recaptured; Alison was executed by drowning on 3 September 1535 in Nor Loch; this type of execution is frequently believed to have been dispensed to those convicted of witchcraft, although research into Scottish witchcraft cases by specialist modern-day academics suggests it was rarely used in Scotland.
For six years after her death Edinburgh Council and King James V argued over which of them were entitled to her confiscated property and goods. The matter was finally settled after a statute was passed in 1542.
## Family and career
No records of Alison Rough’s – sometimes spelt as Rouche,{{sfnp|QDN6H7YV|11}} Rouch or Ruch{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|12}} – early life or her parents have been discovered except that she was born in about 1480. She married Jasper Mayne before 1507.{{sfnp|RPW4QDTM}} The couple’s lavishly furnished marital home was in Edinburgh; although they were not part of the city’s high society, they would be classified as within the upper level of middle class due to their property holdings.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|7}} They had four children: two girls, Katherine and Isobel;\[a\]Isobel is sometimes given as Isabel{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|10, 11}} and two boys, John and Adam.{{sfnp|RPW4QDTM}}
Despite being unable to write,{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|4}} Alison assisted her husband, a notary and burgess, in his property and merchant business. Records indicate he began to assign property plus rent receipts to their joint ownership on 6 September 1508. By 1512 some of their holdings and the resultant rents were assigned solely to Alison; King James IV gifted the couple a property in Edinburgh that year.{{sfnp|RPW4QDTM}}
Left a widow with a young family to support after her husband died at the Battle of Flodden on 9 September 1513, Alison took over the management of the business. Initially she maintained her late husband’s existing trading portfolio, but within three years she was well-established in her own right.{{sfnp|RPW4QDTM}} From 1517 she traded from a stall set in the prime merchant area, Anchor’s Close on the northern side of Edinburgh High Street; she sold cloth, millinery and general attire.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|7, 9}} Alison had a short-lived second marriage to Thomas Louranstoun; records do not specify any more information about him, nor do they reveal the precise dates of the couple’s relationship. A brief entry in the church court register indicates the granting of a divorce sometime between 1516 and 1520, but does not elaborate further. Another entry in the register from around 1517 mentions Alison successfully suing another widow for defamation; academic Elizabeth Ewan speculates this may be connected to the divorce.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|8}}
Alison’s business flourished, and she built up a substantial fortune from her extensive property portfolio.{{sfnp|QDN6H7YV|11}} Drawing on expertise learned while assisting her first husband, she had no qualms asserting her rights in the various courts, even against her own family when she considered it advantageous.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|6}} She had, however, ensured that as her children reached maturity, they were provided for. When Adam became a priest in 1528, two properties that had been held in his name since before his father’s death were transferred back to Alison and he instead received a life pension.{{sfnp|RPW4QDTM}}
Earlier in the same year, a lucrative marriage was arranged for her other son, John, to an affluent property-owning widow.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|10}} Alison also secured an advantageous marriage for her daughter, Katherine, to a prosperous merchant, Alexander Cant. Like John’s wife, Cant possessed several properties, although his liquid assets were minimal; he too had previously been married and was widowed twice.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|10}} Considerably older than his new wife, Alison lured Cant into the arrangement by promising a sizeable dowry of 400 merks in cash,{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|11}}\[b\]A Scots merk was equivalent to 13 shillings 4d.{{sfnp|JCVLV664|76}} enhanced with her merchant stall together with the two properties formerly held by Adam.{{sfnp|RPW4QDTM}} Her other daughter, Isobel – also known as Isobel Kerr{{sfnp|RPW4QDTM}} – was married by 1528; no further details are known about her except that John had publicly asserted she was not fathered by Jasper, something vehemently denied by their mother.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|10, 11}}
A property at Peebles Wynd, held by Adam then transferred to Katherine as part of her dowry, was home to Alison and her daughter prior to Katherine’s marriage to Cant.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|11}}\[c\]There are discrepancies surrounding the date of Katherine’s marriage: the ODNB entry sets it as “Shortly after 9 December 1530”;{{sfnp|RPW4QDTM}} *The new biographical dictionary of Scottish women* gives “late 1531”;{{sfnp|96ZRAABM|372}} *The Real Mary King’s Close* only states the year, 1531;{{sfnp|QDN6H7YV|12}} and the article in *Women’s History Magazine* reads “in late 1531 or early 1532.”{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|10}} After the marriage, Alison and Katherine lived in Cant’s large townhouse situated in the street known as Alexander Cant’s Close.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|10, 13}}\[d\]Alexander Cant’s Close became Craig’s Close.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|13}}
Despite being basically retired from her business enterprise and relying on the rents from her property investments for her main income, Alison’s litigious nature kept her returning to the courts to assert her rights. Together with her daughter, she was sued by Cant in March 1535 for failing to pay him Katherine’s dowry; acrimony also built up over the Peebles Wynd property, which had been sold but the purchaser took the trio to court concerning it. On 30 August, at a hearing in the central court, the decision was in favour of the buyer.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|10, 11}}
## Murder
The conflicts between Alison and her son-in-law reached a climax following the failed court action on 30 August 1535.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|11}}\[e\]Ewan gives 31 August in *The new biographical dictionary of Scottish women*,{{sfnp|96ZRAABM|372}} but 30 August in other accounts;{{sfnp|RPW4QDTM}}{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|11}} *A Diurnal of Remarkable Occurents that have passed within the Country of Scotland* states the penult day of August.{{sfnp|H8V76JUL|19}} Alison, together with her daughter and a female servant, murdered Katherine’s husband after a bitter argument at home that evening.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|11}}
After being arrested Alison and Katherine both managed to escape from custody but were quickly detained again.{{sfnp|QDN6H7YV|12}} The pair were convicted and sentenced to be executed on 3 September.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|11}}
## Execution and legacy
Katherine gained a stay of execution by pleading the belly\[f\]Pleading the belly or alternatively phrased as Benefit of the belly, has been likened by academics to [Benefit of clergy](https://engole.info/benefit-of-clergy), and was used by pregnant women to gain a stay of execution.{{sfnp|2ULQ8V8V|132}} – claiming to be pregnant – but Alison was drowned in Nor Loch on 3 September 1535.{{sfnp|QDN6H7YV|12}}\[g\]Nor Loch is now Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh.{{sfnp|QDN6H7YV|12}} Although this method of capital punishment is often stated to have been used for women convicted of witchcraft,{{sfnp|QDN6H7YV|12}} research into Scottish witchcraft cases by modern-day academic specialists suggest it was rarely used in Scotland.{{sfnp|ERWEVQ39|303}}
Alison’s properties and estate were forfeit with King James V claiming them for the crown.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|11}} The King gifted them to David Wood but the Edinburgh town council objected, claiming entitlement to the forfeiture.{{sfnp|9SH8K9CA|110-111}} The legal wrangle continued for six years, until a resolution was eventually reached when a decree was passed on 28 May 1542.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|11}}{{sfnp|9SH8K9CA|110}} The statute clarified that the council was entitled to the confiscated goods and property of murderers who were convicted in the town where the crime was perpetrated; the estate would, however, fall to the Crown if the perpetrator absconded, thereby being deemed an outlaw first. Alison’s properties remained allocated to the Crown.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|11}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Isobel is sometimes given as Isabel{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|10, 11}} b A Scots merk was equivalent to 13 shillings 4d.{{sfnp|JCVLV664|76}} c There are discrepancies surrounding the date of Katherine’s marriage: the ODNB entry sets it as “Shortly after 9 December 1530”;{{sfnp|RPW4QDTM}} *The new biographical dictionary of Scottish women* gives “late 1531”;{{sfnp|96ZRAABM|372}} *The Real Mary King’s Close* only states the year, 1531;{{sfnp|QDN6H7YV|12}} and the article in *Women’s History Magazine* reads “in late 1531 or early 1532.”{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|10}} d Alexander Cant’s Close became Craig’s Close.{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|13}} e Ewan gives 31 August in *The new biographical dictionary of Scottish women*,{{sfnp|96ZRAABM|372}} but 30 August in other accounts;{{sfnp|RPW4QDTM}}{{sfnp|IVK9SSAK|11}} *A Diurnal of Remarkable Occurents that have passed within the Country of Scotland* states the penult day of August.{{sfnp|H8V76JUL|19}} f Pleading the belly or alternatively phrased as Benefit of the belly, has been likened by academics to [Benefit of clergy](https://engole.info/benefit-of-clergy), and was used by pregnant women to gain a stay of execution.{{sfnp|2ULQ8V8V|132}} g Nor Loch is now Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh.{{sfnp|QDN6H7YV|12}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22852
**Categories:** Female, Murderer, Scottish
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Box pew](https://engole.info/box-pew/)
**Published:** September 11, 2020
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Chowbent_Chapel_interior.jPG[/pimage]Type of church seating with enclosed sides.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Chowbent_Chapel_interior.jPG)Box pews in [Chowbent Chapel](https://engole.info/chowbent-chapel)
Wikimedia Commons
Box pews are a type of church seating for the laiety in the [nave](https://engole.info/nave/), aisle or gallery of a church or chapel, enclosed by high panelled sides with a hinged door. They were installed in churches and chapels in England and other Protestant countries from the 16th to the early 19th century.{{sfnp|M4A33PZV|705}}{{sfnp|P7E5V78U}}
From the late 18th century pew-rent was paid for the exclusive use of a particular box pew, providing a source of income for churches and chapels.{{sfnp|43E6HSJ2}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23128
**Categories:** Religious architecture
---
### [Archie (search engine)](https://engole.info/archie-search-engine/)
**Published:** August 23, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/Archie_search_engine.png/1920px-Archie_search_engine.png[/pimage]Ancestor of all modern search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/Archie_search_engine.png/1920px-Archie_search_engine.png)Wikimedia Commons
Archie is considered to be the ancestor of all the internet search engines so familiar today, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.{{sfnp|CQ9FNC7B}} Developed in 1989 by Alan Emtage, it was a catalogue of files available for download from FTP servers around the embryonic internet.{{sfnp|5YSHPRD4}}\[a\]The file transfer protocol (FTP) is used to transfer files across the internet from one computer to another.{{sfnp|ZE4E8USZ}}
Emtage developed Archie, named for Archive (without the “v”), when he was a student and systems administrator at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.{{sfnp|5YSHPRD4}}
Archie is now of historical interest only.{{sfnp|CQ9FNC7B}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The file transfer protocol (FTP) is used to transfer files across the internet from one computer to another.{{sfnp|ZE4E8USZ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26704
**Categories:** Computing
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Witch trials in Early Modern Wales](https://engole.info/witch-trials-in-early-modern-wales/)
**Published:** August 12, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/gwenindictment.webp[/pimage]History of witch trials in Wales from the 15th to the 18th century.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/gwenindictment.webp)Indictment against Gwen ferch Ellis, the first person to be executed for witchcraft in Wales, in 1594
National Library of Wales
Compared to the other countries of Great Britain, there were markedly fewer witch trials or accusations of witchcraft in Wales during the early modern period. From the 16th to the mid-18th century there were thirty-seven witchcraft prosecutions in Wales, resulting in five executions: four women and one man.{{sfnp|TMRG4QSF}} By comparison, during the same period in neighbouring England there were up to two thousand people tried for witchcraft,{{sfnp|7SFNSCBK}} of whom almost a quarter were found guilty and executed.{{sfnp|DB6SXDFK|3}}
The corresponding figures for Scotland make for an even more stark contrast: an estimated four to six thousand prosecutions for witchcraft in that country,{{sfnp|UZD2PTIP|32}} and more than fifteen hundred executions.{{sfnp|XZBUEP6N|81}} These differences cannot be explained by population statistics. Wales was relatively sparsely populated during the period, with an estimated population one third that of Scotland,\[a\]The population of Wales is estimated to have been 390,000 in 1700,{{sfnp|APDYTY3T}} and that of Scotland about 1.2 million at about the same time.{{sfnp|JIA9E29X}} yet it was very far from having one third of the number of prosecutions or executions for witchcraft.
Several ideas have been proposed to explain this numerical discrepancy, including that the Welsh courts, although enforcing English law, still favoured the old Welsh practice of customary laws.
## Legal status
{{main|Witchcraft Acts}}
The Acts of Union from 1536 to 1543 brought Wales under English rule and imposed the English legal system.{{sfnp|P73AH84Y}} Witchcraft had not become a felony in England until the passage of Henry VIII’s short-lived Witchcraft Act 1542, although it had long been considered a crime by the Church, punishable in the ecclesiastical courts; but they had only limited powers to imprison, and could not impose fines or the death penalty.{{sfnp|AQUJ8WBF}}
The 1542 Act, repealed in 1547, had failed to define what witchcraft actually was. Its successor, the [Witchcraft Act of 1563](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts/#Witchcraft-Act-1563), demanded the death penalty for witchcraft, but only if harm had been caused.{{sfnp|6N6MGC4W|3-4}} The [Witchcraft Act 1604](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts/#Witchcraft-Act-1604) broadened the scope of the earlier legislation to include the death penalty for those who invoked evil spirits or communed with [familiar](https://engole.info/witchs-familiar) spirits.{{sfnp|6N6MGC4W|5-6}}
[The Witchcraft Act 1735](https://engole.info/witchcraft-act-1735) finally brought an end to prosecutions for alleged witchcraft in England after sceptical jurists, especially Sir John Holt (1642–1710), had already largely ended convictions of alleged witches under English law.
## Prosecutions and executions
Of the thirty-seven witchcraft prosecutions in Wales, only eight of the accused were found guilty, and only five received a death sentence.{{sfnp|TMRG4QSF}} There is no record of anyone in England or Wales having been prosecuted under the 1542 Witchcraft Act.{{sfnp|AM9HF8JT|109}}
The first prosecution for witchcraft in Wales under the 1563 Act was that of Gwen ferch Ellis, of Bettws, Denbighshire, in 1594.{{sfnp|EHHJM4UX}}\[b\]*ferch* is the Welsh for “daughter of”; *ap* is the Welsh for “son of”. It was alleged that she had left a charm in the form of a kind of poem written backwards in the home of a member of the local gentry, Thomas Mostyn, which was interpreted as a [spell](https://engole.info/spell-magical/), in an attempt to harm him and his family. Despite protesting her innocence, Gwen was found guilty and hanged.{{sfnp|EHHJM4UX}}
In 1622, in Caernarfon, a trio of siblings – Lowri ferch Evan, Agnes ferch Evan, and Rhydderch ap Evan – were found guilty of causing harm by witchcraft and executed. They were accused of killing the wife of a member of the local gentry, Margaret Hughes, and the bewitchment of her daughter Mary.{{sfnp|ZBCYXIHP}}
The last execution for witchcraft in Wales took place in 1655, in Beaumaris, Anglesey. Margaret ferch Richard was found guilty of having caused the death of another woman, Gwen Meredith, who had been ill prior to her untimely death.{{sfnp|ZBCYXIHP}}
## Welsh customary law
Among the suggestions as to why there were so few witchcraft prosecutions in Wales is the idea that during the early years of English rule the Welsh courts still favoured their country’s old customary laws, which emphasised compensation of the victim over punishment of the accused, to ensure a peaceful outcome and maintain harmony in the community.{{sfnp|P73AH84Y}}
The historian Richard Suggett has alternatively suggested that the Welsh courts were faced with dealing with a flood of cattle thieves and other felons, leaving little time for the “luxury” of witchcraft prosecutions.{{sfnp|EHHJM4UX}}
## See also
- [Witch trials in Early Modern England](https://engole.info/witch-trials-in-early-modern-england)
- [Witch trials in Early Modern Scotland](https://engole.info/witch-trials-in-early-modern-scotland)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The population of Wales is estimated to have been 390,000 in 1700,{{sfnp|APDYTY3T}} and that of Scotland about 1.2 million at about the same time.{{sfnp|JIA9E29X}} b *ferch* is the Welsh for “daughter of”; *ap* is the Welsh for “son of”.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27758
**Categories:** Welsh, Witch trial
---
### [Witch trials in Early Modern Scotland](https://engole.info/witch-trials-in-early-modern-scotland/)
**Published:** June 2, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/sws-logo-5.jpg[/pimage]Judicial proceedings in Scotland between the early 16th century and the mid-18th century concerned with crimes of witchcraft, part of a series of witch trials in Early Modern Europe.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/sws-logo-5.jpg)The North Berwick Witches meet the Devil in the local kirkyard, from a contemporary pamphlet, [*Newes from Scotland*](https://engole.info/newes-from-scotland/)
Survey of Scottish Witchcraft
Witch trials in Early Modern Scotland are the judicial proceedings in that country between the early 16th century and the mid-18th century concerned with crimes of witchcraft, part of a series of witch trials in Early Modern Europe. In the late Middle Ages there were a handful of prosecutions for harm done through witchcraft, but the passing of the [Witchcraft Act 1563](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts/#Scottish_Witchcraft_Act_1563) made witchcraft, or consulting with witches, capital crimes. The first major series of trials under the new Act were the [North Berwick witch trials](https://engole.info/north-berwick-witch-trials/), beginning in 1589, in which King James VI played a major role as “victim” and investigator. He became interested in witchcraft and published a defence of witch-hunting in his *Daemonologie* in 1597, but he appears to have become increasingly sceptical, and eventually took steps to limit prosecutions.
An estimated 4,000 to 6,000 people, mostly from the Scottish Lowlands, were tried for witchcraft in this period, a much higher rate than for neighbouring England. There were major series of trials in 1590–1591, 1597, 1628–1631, 1649–1650 and 1661–1662. Eighty-five per cent of the accused were women. Modern estimates indicate that more than 1,500 persons were executed; most were strangled and then burned. The hunts subsided under English occupation after the Civil Wars during the period of the Commonwealth led by Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s, but returned after the Restoration in 1660, causing some alarm and leading to the Privy Council of Scotland limiting arrests, prosecutions and torture. There was also growing scepticism in the later 17th century, while some of the factors that may have contributed to the trials, such as economic distress, subsided. Although there were occasional local outbreaks of witch-hunting, the last recorded executions were in 1706 and the last trial in 1727. The Scottish and English parliaments merged in 1707, and the unified British parliament repealed the 1563 Act in 1736.
Many causes have been suggested for the hunts, including economic distress, changing attitudes to women, the rise of a “godly state”,{{sfnp|B686IA7P|185-189}} the inquisitorial Scottish judicial system, the widespread use of judicial torture, the role of the local kirk, decentralised justice and the prevalence of the idea of the diabolic pact. The proliferation of partial explanations for the witch-hunt has led some historians to proffer the concept of “associated circumstances”, rather than one single significant cause.{{sfnp|H68STKT5|88-89}}
## Origins
### Legal
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Daemonologie1.jpg)Illustration of witches, perhaps being tortured before James VI, from his *Daemonologie* (1597)
Wikimedia Commons
For late Medieval Scotland there is evidence of occasional prosecutions of individuals for causing harm through witchcraft. High-profile political cases included the action against John Stewart, Earl of Mar for allegedly using sorcery against his brother King James III in 1479.{{sfnp|P5A55XWK|644-645}} Evidence of these political cases indicates that they were becoming rarer in the first half of the 16th century however.{{sfnp|UZD2PTIP|32}} Popular belief in magic was widespread in the Middle Ages, but theologians had been generally sceptical, and lawyers only interested in prosecuting cases in which harm from magic was evident. From the late 16th century attitudes began to change, and witches were seen as deriving their power from the Devil, with the result that witchcraft was seen as a form of heresy. These ideas were widely accepted by both Catholics and Protestants in the 16th century. In the aftermath of the initial Reformation settlement of 1560, Parliament passed the Witchcraft Act 1563, one of a series of laws underpinning Biblical laws{{sfnp|P5A55XWK|644-645}} and similar to that passed in England a year earlier, which made the practice of witchcraft itself, and consulting with witches, capital crimes.{{sfnp|UZD2PTIP|32}} The first witch-hunt under the Act was in the east of the country in 1568–1569 in Angus and the Mearns,{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|5}} where there were unsuccessful attempts to introduce elements of the diabolic pact and the hunt collapsed.{{sfnp|PFM3HARK|78}}
### Role of James VI
James VI’s visit to Denmark in 1589, where witch-hunts were already common, may have encouraged his interest in the study of witchcraft, and he came to see the storms he encountered on his voyage as the result of magic.{{sfnp|TSMJBKAM|26}} After his return to Scotland, he attended the North Berwick witch trials, the first major persecution of witches in Scotland under the 1563 Act and the first known to successfully involve the diabolic pact. Several people, most notably [Agnes Sampson](https://engole.info/agnes-sampson/) and the schoolmaster [John Fian](https://engole.info/john-fian/), were convicted of using witchcraft to send storms against James’ ship. James became obsessed with the threat posed by witches. He subsequently believed that a nobleman, Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell, was a witch, and after the latter fled in fear of his life, he was outlawed as a traitor. The King subsequently set up royal commissions to hunt down witches in his realm, recommending torture in dealing with suspects; James is known to have personally supervised the torture of women accused of being witches. Inspired by his personal involvement, in 1597 he published the *Daemonologie*, a tract that denounced the practice of witchcraft, and which provided background material for Shakespeare’s *Tragedy of Macbeth*, which contains probably the most famous literary depiction of Scottish witches.{{sfnp|4TQ6TFHG|556}}
James imported continental explanations of witchcraft.\[a\]Historian Christina Larner believed the King brought continental-type witch theory back from Denmark, but 21st-century academics have demonstrated that to be untrue. Jenny Wormald and Peter Maxwell-Stuart independently reached the conclusion that in this respect Larner’s excellent work was incorrect.{{sfnp|MQGRFCDW|68-69}} In the view of Thomas Lolis, James I’s goal was to divert suspicion away from male homosociality among the elite, and focus fear on female communities and large gatherings of women. He thought they threatened his political power, so he laid the foundation for witchcraft and occultism policies, especially in Scotland; a widespread belief in the conspiracy of witches and a witches’ Sabbath with the Devil deprived women of political influence. Occult power was supposedly a womanly trait, because women were weaker and more susceptible to the Devil.{{sfnp|RZJ7ZBXT|322-337}} James became more sceptical after the publication of *Daemonologie* however,{{sfnp|4TQ6TFHG|27}} and in the same year he revoked the standing commissions on witchcraft, limiting prosecutions by the central courts.{{sfnp|WLU3X7LI|168-169}}
## Nature of the trials
Despite the fact that Scotland probably had about one quarter of the population of England, it had three times the number of witchcraft prosecutions, at an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 over the entire period.{{sfnp|UZD2PTIP|32}} This was about four times the European average.{{sfnp|P5A55XWK|644-645}} The overwhelming majority were in the Lowlands,{{sfnp|WLU3X7LI|168-169}} where the Kirk had more control, despite the evidence that basic magical beliefs were very widespread in the Highlands.{{sfnp|H68STKT5|88-89}} Persecution of [witchcraft in Orkney](https://engole.info/witchcraft-in-orkney/) differed from the mainland with most trials taking place before 1650.{{sfnp|LU7HJZ3W|150}} Large series of trials included those in 1590–1591 and the Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597, which took place across Scotland from March to October. At least 400 people were put on trial for various forms of diabolism. The exact number of those executed as a result of these trials is unknown, but is believed to be about 200. Later major trials included hunts in 1628–1631 and 1649–1650. Probably the most intense witch-hunt was in 1661–1662, which involved some 664 named witches in four counties.{{sfnp|XHGHRI6M|169}}
False witch-pricking bodkins from Reginald Scott’s *Discovery of Witchcraft*, 1584
Wikimedia Commons
Most of the accused, about 85 per cent, were women, although some men were also executed as witches warlocks.{{sfnp|BREH7WDY|7}} Modern estimates indicate that more than 1,500 persons were executed.{{sfnp|XZBUEP6N|81}} Most were older women, with some younger women and men accused because they were related to an accused witch, usually as daughters or husbands. Some men were accused because they were folk healers who were felt to have misused their powers, although folk healers as a group were not targeted. Most were not vagrants or beggars, but settled members of their communities. The majority had built a reputation for witchcraft over years, which resulted in prosecution when a “victim” suffered ill fortune, particularly after a curse had been issued. The use of curses by some women as a means of acquiring social power may have made this process more likely to occur.{{sfnp|P5A55XWK|644-645}} Accusations against the elite, especially higher status women, were rare but occasional cases, such as those of [Euphame MacCalzean](https://engole.info/euphame-maccalzean/) and [Margaret Henderson, Lady Pittadro](https://engole.info/margaret-henderson-lady-pittadro/), are documented.{{sfnp|Z7E55R9Q|109}}
Almost all witchcraft prosecutions took place in secular courts under the provisions of the 1563 Act.{{sfnp|UABVBV4Q|87-89}} In 1649 the religiously radical Covenanter regime passed a new witchcraft act that ratified the existing act and extended it to deal with consulters of “Devils and familiar spirits”, who would now be punished with death.{{sfnp|U5ZCWRUP|149-150}} There were three main types of court in which accused witches could be tried. First was the Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, which took cases from all over Scotland, with a heavy bias to the local region. Next were the circuit courts, presided over by judges from the central courts and held in the various shires of the country. Finally, there were a series of ad hoc local courts, held under commissions by the Privy Council or Parliament and staffed by local landholders and gentlemen to try witches in the places where they were accused. Based on known outcomes, the execution rates for the local courts was much higher than the courts run by professional lawyers, with the local courts executing some 90 per cent of the accused, the Judiciary Court 55 per cent, but the circuit courts only 16 per cent.{{sfnp|UABVBV4Q|87-89}} After the revocation of the standing commissions in 1597, the pursuit of witchcraft was largely taken over by kirk sessions, disciplinary committees run by the parish elite, and was often used to attack “superstitious” and Catholic practices.{{sfnp|XZBUEP6N|81}} The central courts only launched a trial when the Privy Council issued a commission, although the council did not have full control over prosecutions in the Court of Judiciary.{{sfnp|H68STKT5|88-89}}
Scottish witchcraft trials were notable for their use of [pricking](https://engole.info/witch-finding/#Pricking),{{sfnp|P5A55XWK|644-645}} in which a suspect’s skin was pierced with needles, pins and bodkins as it was believed that they would possess a Devil’s mark through which they could not feel pain.{{sfnp|2LH6XYQP|52}} Professional prickers included [John Kincaid](https://engole.info/john-kincaid-witch-finder/) and John Dick, whose actions helped set off the outbreak of witch-hunting in 1661–1662, and whose exposure as frauds, and subsequent imprisonment, helped end the trials.{{sfnp|ZN5KW5SX|170}} Judicial torture was used in some high-profile cases, like that of [John Fian](https://engole.info/john-fian/), one of the witches accused of plotting the death of the King in 1590, whose feet were crushed in a shin press, known as the boots.{{sfnp|UABVBV4Q|74}} However, these cases were relatively rare. Confessions, considered the best evidence for conviction, were more usually extracted by “waking” the witch, keeping the suspect sleep deprived. After about three days individuals tend to hallucinate, and this provided some exotic detail in witchcraft trials.{{sfnp|P5A55XWK|644-645}} In Scotland, convicted witches were usually strangled at the stake before having their bodies burned, although there are instances where they were burned alive.{{sfnp|BREH7WDY|1}}{{sfnp|YS3LDET6|44}}
## Witch beliefs
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Daemonologie2.jpg)Illustration of Doctor Fian, from *Newes from Scotland*
Wikimedia Commons
The belief that witches could cause harm was common among all social groups in early modern Scotland. In 1701 in Anstruther, Elizabeth Dick had been turned away from the local mill when begging. She cursed the mill and several witnesses testified that the grain in the mill turned red. Only when one of the people who had refused her help ran after her and gave her alms did she bless the mill and everything returned to normal.{{sfnp|W9ETA6JS|48}} About half of accused witches had already gained a reputation for causing harm over a long period of time.{{sfnp|P5A55XWK|644-645}} The fact that only four per cent of recorded accused witches were involved in folk healing seems to indicate that healing skills were largely seen as different from witchcraft.{{sfnp|5LTESBRS|204}} The Aberdeenshire trials of 1596 reveal that spells could be purchased from folk magicians for success at fishing, to ensure a happy marriage, to prolong life and to affect the weather, but harmful spells were considered witchcraft. Many accusations included sexual fears. Margaret Bain, a midwife, it was claimed, could transfer the pains of childbirth to a woman’s husband and Helen Gray cast a spell on a man that gave him a permanent erection.{{sfnp|3EVUYBMJ|227}} Witches and other sorts of folk magicians could also carry out divinations. These included by reading the marks on the shoulder blade of a slaughtered animal, measuring a person’s sleeve or waist to see if they were suffering from a fever, or being able to find answers based on which way a sieve suspended from scissors or shears swung, as Margaret Mungo was accused of doing before the kirk session of Dingwall in 1649.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|25}}
It has often been stated that Scottish witchcraft was particularly concerned with the demonic pact. In the high court, Katherine Sands, who was one of four women accused of witchcraft at Culross in 1675, admitted to renouncing her baptism, receiving the Devil’s mark and having sex with the Devil, but in local trials these demonic elements were rarer. Stuart MacDonald notes that in trials from Fife the Devil was a relatively insignificant and indistinct figure and that a number of instances of covens meeting look like fairy revels, where the dancing fairies traditionally disappeared when a human broke the ring, rather than satanic gatherings.{{sfnp|W9ETA6JS|45}} Fairies were an important part of magical beliefs in Scotland. [Isobel Gowdie](https://engole.info/isobel-gowdie/), the young wife of a cottar from near Auldearn, who was tried for witchcraft in 1662, left four depositions, gained without torture, that provide one of the most detailed insights into magical beliefs in Britain. She stated that her coven met on nearby Downie Hill, that they could transform themselves into hares and that she had been entertained by the Queen of the Fairies in her home under the hill.{{sfnp|7XDHTSJU|3, 79, 138}} J. A. MacCulloch argued that there was a “mingling of beliefs” in Scotland, between popular belief in fairies and elite Christian ideas of demonic action.{{sfnp|W9ETA6JS|47}}
## Decline
In the seventeenth century there was growing scepticism about the reality of witchcraft among the educated elite.{{sfnp|P5A55XWK|644-645}} Scotland was defeated in the Civil Wars by the forces of the English parliament led by Oliver Cromwell and occupied. In 1652 Scotland was declared part of a Commonwealth with England and Ireland and the Privy Council and courts ceased to exist. The English judges who replaced them were hostile to the use of torture and often sceptical of the evidence it produced, resulting in a decline in prosecutions.{{sfnp|XHGHRI6M|166-180}} In an attempt to gain support among the landholding orders, Sheriff’s courts were re-established and Justices of the Peace returned in 1656. The result was a wave of witchcraft cases, with 102 in the period 1657–1659. The limitations on prosecutions were fully reversed with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and there was a flood of more than 600 cases{{sfnp|4H7CFW5I|286}} that alarmed the restored Privy Council, leading it to insist on the necessity of its commission for an arrest or prosecution, and banning judicial torture.{{sfnp|H68STKT5|88-89}}
Prosecutions began to decline as trials were more tightly controlled by the judiciary and government, torture was more sparingly used and standards of evidence were raised.{{sfnp|W9ETA6JS|47}} The exposure of prickers as frauds in 1662 removed a major form of evidence.{{sfnp|P5A55XWK|644-645}} The Lord Advocate George Mackenzie made efforts to make prosecutions ineffective.{{sfnp|H68STKT5|88-89}} There may also have been a growing popular scepticism, and, with relative peace and stability, the economic and social tensions that may have contributed to accusations were reduced, although there were occasional local outbreaks, like those in East Lothian in 1678 and in Paisley in 1697. The last executions in the records of the central courts were in 1706. The last trial was held in the court of a sheriff-depute at Dornoch in 1727, and was of questionable legality. The British parliament repealed the 1563 Act in 1736, making the legal pursuit of witches impossible.{{sfnp|XHGHRI6M|166-180}} Nevertheless, basic magical beliefs persisted, particularly in the Highlands and Islands.{{sfnp|H68STKT5|88-89}}
## Causes
Various reasons for the Scottish witch-hunt, and its more intense nature than that in England, have been advanced by historians. Older theories, that there was a widespread pagan cult that was persecuted in this period and that the witch-hunts were the result of a rising medical profession eliminating folk healers, have been discredited among professional historians.{{sfnp|P5A55XWK|644-645}} Most of the major periods of prosecution coincided with periods of intense economic distress,{{sfnp|WLU3X7LI|168-169}} and some accusations may have followed the withdrawal of charity from marginal figures, particularly the single women that made up many of the accused.{{sfnp|PFM3HARK|118}} The reformed Kirk that emerged from 1560 was heavily influenced by Calvinism and Presbyterianism, and may have perceived women as more of a moral threat.{{sfnp|H68STKT5|88-89}} As a result the witch-hunt in Scotland has been seen as a means of controlling women.{{sfnp|XZBUEP6N|81}} Christina Larner suggested that the outbreak of the hunt in the mid-sixteenth century was tied to the rise of a “godly state”, where the reformed Kirk was closely linked to an increasingly intrusive Scottish crown and legal system.{{sfnp|B686IA7P|184-185}}
It has been suggested that the intensity of Scottish witch-hunting was due to an inquisitorial judicial system and the widespread use of judicial torture. However, Brian P. Levack argues that the Scottish system was only partly inquisitorial and that use of judicial torture was extremely limited, similar to the situation in England. A relatively high level of acquittal in Scottish trials may have been due to the employment of defence lawyers in Scottish courts, a benefit not given accused witches in England. The close involvement of the Scottish Kirk in trials and the decentralised nature of Scottish courts, where local magistrates heard many cases (in contrast to England where most were before a small number of circuit judges), may have contributed to higher rates of prosecution.{{sfnp|A5RYDVPS|118}} The diabolic pact is often stated as a major difference between Scottish and English witchcraft cases, but Stuart Maxwell argues that the iconography of Satan may be an imposition of central government beliefs on local traditions, particularly those concerned with fairies, which were more persistent in Scotland than in England.{{sfnp|W9ETA6JS|34, 47-48}} The proliferation of partial explanations for the witch-hunt has led some historians to proffer the concept of “associated circumstances”, rather than one single significant cause.{{sfnp|H68STKT5|88-89}}
## See also
- [Witch trials in Early Modern England](https://engole.info/witch-trials-in-early-modern-england)
- [Witch trials in Early Modern Wales](https://engole.info/witch-trials-in-early-modern-wales)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Historian Christina Larner believed the King brought continental-type witch theory back from Denmark, but 21st-century academics have demonstrated that to be untrue. Jenny Wormald and Peter Maxwell-Stuart independently reached the conclusion that in this respect Larner’s excellent work was incorrect.{{sfnp|MQGRFCDW|68-69}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 20463
## External links
- **[Witch trials: The women accused of being ‘agents of Satan’ – BBC News](https://youtu.be/jKG07dEQlF4)**
**Categories:** Scottish, Witch trial
---
### [Witch trials in Early Modern England](https://engole.info/witch-trials-in-early-modern-england/)
**Published:** March 29, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/hanging-witches.webp[/pimage]History of witch trials in England from the 15th to the 18th century.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/hanging-witches.webp)Convicted witches in England were executed by hanging.
English Heritage
Witch trials were conducted in England from the 15th until the 18th century, during which time up to 2,000 people were tried for witchcraft,{{sfnp|7SFNSCBK}} of whom fewer than 500 were found guilty and executed.{{sfnp|DB6SXDFK|3}} Although it is certainly the case that most of the accused were female – an estimated 90 per cent overall in England{{sfnp|5ZU9T7BW}} – most of their accusers were also women.{{sfnp|7SFNSCBK}}
There was only one major witch-hunt in England, during the English Civil War (1642–1651), led by the self-styled Witchfinder General [Matthew Hopkins](https://engole.info/matthew-hopkins). Between 1644 and 1647 Hopkins and his associates were responsible for more people being hanged for witchcraft than in the previous 100 years,{{sfnp|D56JQV85|97-98}} more than 300 of them by 1646.{{sfnp|DB6SXDFK|3}} The historian John Callow has argued that the witchcraft trials and convictions following the Civil War were influenced by political and religious tension between nonconformist Whigs and the adherents of Anglican Toryism.{{sfnp|YG38ZQ5R|search=Chapters 8 and 9}}
## Legal status
{{main|Witchcraft Acts}}
Witchcraft did not become a felony in England until the passage of Henry VIII’s short-lived [Witchcraft Act 1542](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts/#Witchcraft-Act-1542), although it had long been considered a crime by the Church, punishable in the ecclesiastical courts; but they had only limited powers to imprison, and could not impose fines or the death penalty.{{sfnp|AQUJ8WBF}} The few witchcraft trials during the early Middle Ages were usually politically motivated, targeting the elite or those with ties to the elite,{{sfnp|AI6VYF3U|12}} such as [Eleanor Cobham](https://engole.info/eleanor-cobham), who in 1442 was sentenced to a lifetime of imprisonment.{{sfnp|AI6VYF3U|137-138}}
The 1542 Act, repealed in 1547, had failed to define what witchcraft actually was. Its successor, the [Witchcraft Act of 1563](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts/#Witchcraft-Act-1563), demanded the death penalty for witchcraft, but only if harm had been caused.{{sfnp|6N6MGC4W|3-4}} The [Witchcraft Act 1604](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts/#Witchcraft-Act-1604) broadened the scope of the earlier legislation to include the death penalty for those who invoked evil spirits or communed with [familiar](https://engole.info/witchs-familiar) spirits.{{sfnp|6N6MGC4W|5-6}}
[The Witchcraft Act 1735](https://engole.info/witchcraft-act-1735) finally brought an end to prosecutions for alleged witchcraft in England after sceptical jurists, especially Sir John Holt (1642–1710), had already largely ended convictions of alleged witches under English law.
## First prosecutions
There is no record of anyone having been prosecuted under the 1542 Witchcraft Act.{{sfnp|AM9HF8JT|109}} [Elizabeth Lowys](https://engole.info/elizabeth-lowys) was the first to be convicted under the 1563 Witchcraft Act, on 21 July 1564, but there is no firm evidence that she was ever executed.{{sfnp|XALMLRTR}} [Agnes Waterhouse](https://engole.info/agnes-waterhouse-witch/), an elderly woman from Hatfield Peverel in Essex, is the first person known to have been convicted and executed under the Act, in July 1566.{{sfnp|5ZU9T7BW}}{{sfnp|KP9GLIKU|303}}
## Decline
In the 17th century there was growing scepticism about the reality of witchcraft among the educated elite.{{sfnp|P5A55XWK|644-645}} Many influential figures even considered it to be an impossible crime,{{sfnp|6N6MGC4W|7}} and the judiciary were becoming increasing sceptical of the evidence being presented in witch trials. During the 1712 trial of [Jane Wenham](https://engole.info/jane-wenham) a witness alleged that Jane was able to fly, at which her judge, Sir John Powell, is said to have commented that flying was not against the law.{{sfnp|ZFL4BCTG|loc=8532}}
## Final prosecutions
[Alice Molland](https://engole.info/alice-molland) may have been the last person to be executed for witchcraft in England, in 1685, although no record remains of her trial or execution.{{sfnp|FGJ4L88N|58}} Better documented are the executions of the three Bideford witches three years earlier: Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles and Susannah Edwards.
Some sources claim that the last execution for witchcraft was that of Mary Hicks, in 1716. Her story is told in an eight-page pamphlet published that year, the [*Whole trial and examination of Mrs. Mary Hicks and her daughter Elizabeth*](https://engole.info/whole-trial-and-examination-of-mrs-mary-hicks-and-her-daughter-elizabeth/), but the story is considered by modern historians to be a journalistic invention.{{sfnp|FMNJS8QM|49}}{{sfnp|PIX7ZSVL|461}}
Jane Wenham was the last person to be sentenced to death for witchcraft in England, although her conviction was set aside. Her trial in 1712 is commonly regarded as the last witch trial in England,{{sfnp|FMNJS8QM}} but the last actually took place in 1717, ending with the accused being acquitted.{{sfnp|ZFL4BCTG|loc=8391-8403}}
## See also
- [Witch trials in Early Modern Scotland](https://engole.info/witch-trials-in-early-modern-scotland)
- [Witch trials in Early Modern Wales](https://engole.info/witch-trials-in-early-modern-wales)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26101
**Categories:** English, Witch trial
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Pendle witches](https://engole.info/pendle-witches/)
**Published:** April 27, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Nance_Redferne_%26_Chattox.jpg[/pimage]The trials of the Pendle witches in 1612 are among the most famous witch trials in English history, and some of the best recorded of the 17th century.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Nance_Redferne__Chattox.webp)Two of the accused women: Anne Whittle (Chattox) and her daughter Anne Redferne. Illustration by John Gilbert from the 1854 edition of William Harrison Ainsworth’s [*The Lancashire Witches*](https://engole.info/the-lancashire-witches).
Wikimedia Commons
The trials of the Pendle witches in 1612 are among the most famous witch trials in English history, and some of the best recorded of the 17th century. The twelve accused lived in the area surrounding Pendle Hill in Lancashire, and were charged with the murders of ten people by the use of witchcraft. All but two were tried at Lancaster Assizes on 18–19 August 1612, along with the [Samlesbury witches](https://engole.info/samlesbury-witches/) and others, in a series of trials that have become known as the Lancashire witch trials. One was tried at York Assizes on 27 July 1612, and another died in prison. Of the eleven who went to trial – nine women and two men – ten were found guilty and executed by hanging; one was found not guilty.
The official publication of the proceedings by the clerk to the court, Thomas Potts, in his [*The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster*](https://engole.info/the-wonderfull-discoverie-of-witches-in-the-countie-of-lancaster/), and the number of witches hanged together – nine at Lancaster and one at York – make the trials unusual for England at that time. It has been estimated that all the English witch trials between the early 15th and early 18th centuries resulted in fewer than 500 executions; this series of trials accounts for more than two per cent of that total.
Six of the Pendle witches came from one of two families, each at the time headed by a woman in her eighties: Elizabeth Southerns (a.k.a. Demdike\[a\]The appellation “Demdike” derives from “demon woman”, suggesting that she was “feared and loathed within the community”.{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|204}}), her daughter Elizabeth Device, and her grandchildren James and Alizon Device; Anne Whittle (a.k.a. Chattox), and her daughter Anne Redferne. The others accused were Jane Bulcock and her son John Bulcock, [Alice Nutter](https://engole.info/alice-nutter/), Katherine Hewitt, Alice Grey, and Jennet Preston. The outbreaks of witchcraft in and around Pendle may demonstrate the extent to which people could make a living by posing as witches. Many of the allegations resulted from accusations that members of the Demdike and Chattox families made against each other, perhaps because they were in competition, both trying to make a living from healing, begging, and extortion.
## Religious and political background
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Pendle_Hill_above_mist_235-0004.jpg)Pendle Hill from the northwest. On the right is the eastern edge of Longridge Fell, which is separated from Pendle Hill by the Ribble valley.
Wikimedia Commons
The accused witches lived in the area around Pendle Hill in Lancashire, a county which, at the end of the 16th century, was regarded by the authorities as a wild and lawless region: an area “fabled for its theft, violence and sexual laxity, where the church was honoured without much understanding of its doctrines by the common people”.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|5}} The nearby Cistercian abbey at Whalley had been dissolved by Henry VIII in 1537, a move strongly resisted by the local people, over whose lives the abbey had until then exerted a powerful influence. Despite the abbey’s closure, and the execution of its abbot, the people of Pendle remained largely faithful to their Roman Catholic beliefs and were quick to revert to Catholicism on Queen Mary’s accession to the throne in 1553.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|8-9}}
When Mary’s Protestant half-sister Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558 Catholic priests once again had to go into hiding, but in remote areas such as Pendle they continued to celebrate Mass in secret.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|8-9}} In 1562, early in her reign, Elizabeth passed a law in the form of An Act Against Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts (5 Eliz. I c. 16). This demanded the death penalty, but only where harm had been caused; lesser offences were punishable by a term of imprisonment. The Act provided that anyone who should “use, practise, or exercise any Witchcraft, Enchantment, Charm, or Sorcery, whereby any person shall happen to be killed or destroyed”, was guilty of a felony without benefit of clergy, and was to be put to death.{{sfnp|6N6MGC4W|3-4}}
On Elizabeth’s death in 1603 she was succeeded by James I. Strongly influenced by Scotland’s separation from the Catholic Church during the Scottish Reformation, James was intensely interested in Protestant theology, focusing much of his curiosity on the theology of witchcraft. By the early 1590s he had become convinced that he was being plotted against by Scottish witches.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|23}} After a visit to Denmark, he had attended the trial in 1590 of the North Berwick witches, who were convicted of using witchcraft to send a storm against the ship that carried James and his wife Anne back to Scotland. In 1597 he wrote a book, *Daemonologie*, instructing his followers that they must denounce and prosecute any supporters or practitioners of witchcraft. One year after James acceded to the English throne, a law was enacted imposing the death penalty in cases where it was proven that harm had been caused through the use of magic, or corpses had been exhumed for magical purposes.{{sfnp|ETUC56LF|96}} James was, however, sceptical of the evidence presented in witch trials, even to the extent of personally exposing discrepancies in the testimonies presented against some accused witches.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|23-24}}
In early 1612, the year of the trials, every justice of the peace (JP) in Lancashire was ordered to compile a list of [recusants](https://engole.info/act-of-uniformity-1558/) in their area, i.e. those who refused to attend the English Church and to take communion, a criminal offence at that time.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|7}} Roger Nowell of Read Hall, on the edge of Pendle Forest, was the JP for Pendle. It was against this background of seeking out religious nonconformists that, in March 1612, Nowell investigated a complaint made to him by the family of John Law, a pedlar, who claimed to have been injured by witchcraft.{{sfnp|DB6SXDFK|1-2}} Many of those who subsequently became implicated as the investigation progressed did indeed consider themselves to be witches, in the sense of being village healers who practised magic, probably in return for payment, but such men and women were common in 16th-century rural England, an accepted part of village life.{{sfnp|53Y2L6K4|67}}
It was perhaps difficult for the judges charged with hearing the trials – Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley – to understand King James’s attitude towards witchcraft. The king was head of the judiciary, and Bromley was hoping for promotion to a circuit nearer London. Altham was nearing the end of his judicial career, but he had recently been accused of a miscarriage of justice at the York Assizes, which had resulted in a woman being sentenced to death by hanging for witchcraft. The judges may have been uncertain whether the best way to gain the King’s favour was by encouraging convictions, or by “sceptically testing the witnesses to destruction”.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|24}}
## Events leading up to the trials
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/DemdikeFamily.png)Elizabeth Southerns’ family.{{sfnp
VXVTC2MB|12
One of the accused, Demdike, had been regarded in the area as a witch for fifty years, and some of the deaths the witches were accused of had happened many years before Roger Nowell started to take an interest in 1612.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|11}} The event that seems to have triggered Nowell’s investigation, culminating in the Pendle witch trials, occurred on 21 March 1612.{{sfnp|DB6SXDFK|1}}
On her way to Trawden Forest, Demdike’s granddaughter, Alizon Device, encountered John Law, a pedlar from Halifax, and asked him for some pins.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|9}} Seventeenth-century metal pins were handmade and relatively expensive, but they were frequently needed for magical purposes such as in healing – particularly for treating warts – divination, and for love magic, which may have been why Alizon was so keen to get hold of them and why Law was so reluctant to sell them to her.{{sfnp|RDVUAHWY|5, 19}} Whether she meant to buy them, as she claimed, and Law refused to undo his pack for such a small transaction, or whether she had no money and was begging for them, as Law’s son Abraham claimed, is unclear.{{sfnp|AXC9YLSE|83}} A few minutes after their encounter Alizon saw Law stumble and fall, perhaps because he suffered a stroke; he managed to regain his feet and reach a nearby inn.{{sfnp|RDVUAHWY|11}} Initially Law made no accusations against Alizon,{{sfnp|RDVUAHWY|23}} but she appears to have been convinced of her own powers; when Abraham Law took her to visit his father a few days after the incident, she reportedly confessed and asked for his forgiveness.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|10}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/ChattoxFamily.png)Anne Whittle’s family.{{sfnp
VXVTC2MB|12
Alizon Device, her mother Elizabeth, and her brother James were summoned to appear before Nowell on 30 March 1612. Alizon confessed that she had sold her soul to the Devil, and that she had told him to lame John Law after he had called her a thief. Her brother, James, stated that his sister had also confessed to bewitching a local child. Elizabeth was more reticent, admitting only that her mother, Demdike, had a mark on her body, something that many, including Nowell, would have regarded as having been left by the Devil after he had sucked her blood.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|11}} When questioned about Anne Whittle (Chattox), the matriarch of the other family reputedly involved in witchcraft in and around Pendle, Alizon perhaps saw an opportunity for revenge. There may have been bad blood between the two families, possibly dating from 1601, when a member of Chattox’s family broke into Malkin Tower, the home of the Devices, and stole goods worth about £1,{{sfnp|AXC9YLSE|80}} equivalent to about £100 as of 2008.{{sfnp|BVRXVCXZ}} Alizon accused Chattox of murdering four men by witchcraft, and of killing her father, John Device, who had died in 1601. She claimed that her father had been so frightened of Old Chattox that he had agreed to give her 8 pounds (3.6 kg) of oatmeal each year in return for her promise not to hurt his family. The meal was handed over annually until the year before John’s death; on his deathbed John claimed that his sickness had been caused by Chattox because they had not paid for protection.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|15}}
On 2 April 1612, Demdike, Chattox, and Chattox’s daughter Anne Redferne, were summoned to appear before Nowell. Both Demdike and Chattox were by then blind and in their eighties, and both provided Nowell with damaging confessions. Demdike claimed that she had given her soul to the Devil 20 years previously, and Chattox that she had given her soul to “a Thing like a Christian man”, on his promise that “she would not lack anything and would get any revenge she desired”.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|15}} Although Anne Redferne made no confession, Demdike said that she had seen her making clay figures. Margaret Crooke, another witness seen by Nowell that day, claimed that her brother had fallen sick and died after having had a disagreement with Redferne, and that he had frequently blamed her for his illness{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|17-19}} Based on the evidence and confessions he had obtained, Nowell committed Demdike, Chattox, Anne Redferne and Alizon Device to Lancaster Gaol, to be tried for [maleficium](https://engole.info/maleficium/) – causing harm by witchcraft – at the next assizes.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|16}}
### Meeting at Malkin Tower
The committal and subsequent trial of the four women might have been the end of the matter, had it not been for a meeting organised by Elizabeth Device at [Malkin Tower](https://engole.info/malkin-tower/), the home of the Demdikes,{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|19}} held on Good Friday 10 April 1612.{{sfnp|DB6SXDFK|2}} To feed the party, James Device stole a neighbour’s sheep.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|19}}
Friends and others sympathetic to the family attended, and when word of the meeting reached Roger Nowell he decided to investigate. On 27 April 1612, an inquiry was held before Nowell and another magistrate, Nicholas Bannister, to determine the purpose of the meeting at Malkin Tower, who had attended, and what had happened there. As a result of the inquiry, eight more people were accused of witchcraft and committed for trial: Elizabeth Device, James Device, [Alice Nutter](https://engole.info/alice-nutter/), Katherine Hewitt, John Bulcock, Jane Bulcock, Alice Grey and Jennet Preston. Preston lived across the border in Yorkshire, so she was sent for trial at York Assizes; the others were sent to Lancaster Gaol to join the four already imprisoned there.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|22}}
Malkin Tower is believed to have been near the village of Newchurch in Pendle,{{sfnp|DR3M4GJB|60}} or possibly in Blacko on the site of present-day Malkin Tower Farm,{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|286}} and to have been demolished soon after the trials.{{sfnp|DR3M4GJB|60}}
## Trials
The Pendle witches were tried in a group that also included the Samlesbury witches, Jane Southworth, Jennet Brierley, and Ellen Brierley, the charges against whom included child murder and cannibalism; [Margaret Pearson](https://engole.info/margaret-pearson/), the so-called Padiham witch, who was facing her third trial for witchcraft, this time for killing a horse; and Isobel Robey from Windle, accused of using witchcraft to cause sickness.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|2}}
Some of the accused Pendle witches, such as Alizon Device, seem to have genuinely believed in their guilt, but others protested their innocence to the end. Jennet Preston was the first to be tried, at York Assizes.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|23}}
### York Assizes, 27 July 1612
Jennet Preston lived in Gisburn, which was then in Yorkshire, so she was sent to York Assizes for trial. Her judges were Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|171}} Jennet was charged with the murder by witchcraft of a local landowner, Thomas Lister of Westby Hall,{{sfnp|53Y2L6K4|59}} to which she pleaded not guilty. She had already appeared before Bromley in 1611, accused of murdering a child by witchcraft, but had been found not guilty. The most damning evidence given against her was that when she had been taken to see Lister’s body, the corpse “bled fresh bloud presently, in the presence of all that were there present” after she touched it.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|179}} According to a statement made to Nowell by James Device on 27 April, Jennet had attended the Malkin Tower meeting to seek help with Lister’s murder.{{sfnp|53Y2L6K4|60}} She was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging;{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|177}} her execution took place on 29 July{{sfnp|XKBFRSTQ|20}} on the Knavesmire, the present site of York Racecourse.{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|149}}
### Lancaster Assizes
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Lancaster_Castle.jpg)Lancaster Castle, where the Lancaster Assizes of 1612 took place.{{sfnp
WZ8W8V7X|22
All the other accused lived in Lancashire, so they were sent to Lancaster Assizes for trial, where the judges were once again Altham and Bromley. The prosecutor was local magistrate Roger Nowell, who had been responsible for collecting the various statements and confessions from the accused. Nine-year-old Jennet Device was a key witness for the prosecution, something that would not have been permitted in many other 17th-century criminal trials. But King James had made a case for suspending the normal rules of evidence for witchcraft trials in his *Daemonologie*.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|28}} As well as identifying those who had attended the Malkin Tower meeting, Jennet also gave evidence against her mother, brother, and sister.
Nine of the accused – Alizon Device, Elizabeth Device, James Device, Anne Whittle, Anne Redferne, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, John Bulcock and Jane Bulcock – were found guilty during the two-day trial and hanged at Gallows Hill{{sfnp|CCJM7NLP}}\[b\]Gallows Hill is on the moors close to the site of present-day Williamson Park.{{sfnp|CCJM7NLP}} in Lancaster on 20 August 1612; Elizabeth Southerns died while awaiting trial.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|23}} Only one of the accused, Alice Grey, was found not guilty.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|29}}
### 18 August
Anne Whittle (Chattox) was accused of the murder of Robert Nutter.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|34}} She pleaded not guilty, but the confession she had made to Roger Nowell was read out in court, and evidence against her was presented by James Robinson, who had lived with the Chattox family 20 years earlier. He claimed to remember that Nutter had accused Chattox of turning his beer sour, and that she was commonly believed to be a witch. Chattox broke down and admitted her guilt, calling on God for forgiveness and the judges to be merciful to her daughter, Anne Redferne.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|27-28}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Alice_Nutter_Statue.png)Statue of Alice Nutter in Roughlee
Wikimedia Commons
Elizabeth Device was charged with the murders of James Robinson, John Robinson and, together with Alice Nutter and Demdike, the murder of Henry Mitton. Elizabeth Device vehemently maintained her innocence.{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|193}} Potts records that “this odious witch”{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|55}} suffered from a facial deformity resulting in her left eye being set lower than her right. The main witness against Device was her daughter, Jennet, who was about nine years old. When Jennet was brought into the courtroom and asked to stand up and give evidence against her mother, Elizabeth, confronted with her own child making accusations that would lead to her execution, began to curse and scream at her daughter, forcing the judges to have her removed from the courtroom before the evidence could be heard.{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|193}}{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|52}} Jennet was placed on a table and stated that she believed her mother had been a witch for three or four years. She also said her mother had a [familiar](https://engole.info/witchs-familiar/) called Ball, who appeared in the shape of a brown dog. Jennet claimed to have witnessed conversations between Ball and her mother, in which Ball had been asked to help with various murders. James Device also gave evidence against his mother, saying he had seen her making a clay figure of one of her victims, John Robinson.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|29}} Elizabeth Device was found guilty.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|55}}
James Device pleaded not guilty to the murders by witchcraft of Anne Townley and John Duckworth. However he, like Chattox, had earlier made a confession to Nowell, which was read out in court. That, and the evidence presented against him by his sister Jennet, who said that she had seen her brother asking a black dog he had conjured up to help him kill Townley, was sufficient to persuade the jury to find him guilty.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|65, 70}}
### 19 August
The trials of the three [Samlesbury witches](https://engole.info/samlesbury-witches/) were heard before Anne Redferne’s first appearance in court,{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|29}} late in the afternoon, charged with the murder of Robert Nutter. The evidence against her was considered unsatisfactory, and she was acquitted.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|27}}
Anne Redferne was not so fortunate the following day, when she faced her second trial, for the murder of Robert Nutter’s father, Christopher, to which she pleaded not guilty. Demdike’s statement to Nowell, which accused Anne of having made clay figures of the Nutter family, was read out in court. Witnesses were called to testify that Anne was a witch “more dangerous than her Mother”.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|33}} But she refused to admit her guilt to the end, and had given no evidence against any others of the accused.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|27-28}} Anne Redferne was found guilty.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|108}}
Jane Bulcock and her son John Bulcock, both from Newchurch in Pendle, were accused and found guilty of the murder by witchcraft of Jennet Deane.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|131}} Both denied that they had attended the meeting at Malkin Tower, but Jennet Device identified Jane as having been one of those present, and John as having turned the spit to roast the stolen sheep, the centrepiece of the Good Friday meeting at the Demdike’s home.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|29}}
Alice Nutter was unusual among the accused in being comparatively wealthy, the widow of a tenant yeoman farmer. She made no statement either before or during her trial, except to enter her plea of not guilty to the charge of murdering Henry Mitton by witchcraft. The prosecution alleged that she, together with Demdike and Elizabeth Device, had caused Mitton’s death after he had refused to give Demdike a penny she had begged from him. The only evidence against Alice seems to have been that James Device claimed Demdike had told him of the murder, and Jennet Device in her statement said that Alice had been present at the Malkin Tower meeting.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|34}} Alice may have called in on the meeting at Malkin Tower on her way to a secret (and illegal) Good Friday Catholic service, and refused to speak for fear of incriminating her fellow Catholics. Many of the Nutter family were Catholics, and two had been executed as Jesuit priests, John Nutter in 1584 and his brother Robert in 1600.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|29}} Alice Nutter was found guilty.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|116}}
Katherine Hewitt (a.k.a. Mould-Heeles) was charged and found guilty of the murder of Anne Foulds.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|124}} She was the wife of a clothier from Colne,{{sfnp|AXC9YLSE|75}} and had attended the meeting at Malkin Tower with Alice Grey. According to the evidence given by James Device, both Hewitt and Grey told the others at that meeting that they had killed a child from Colne, Anne Foulds. Jennet Device also picked Katherine out of a line-up, and confirmed her attendance at the Malkin Tower meeting.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|36}}
Alice Grey was accused with Katherine Hewitt of the murder of Anne Foulds. Potts does not provide an account of Alice Grey’s trial, simply recording her as one of the Samlesbury witches – which she was not, as she was one of those identified as having been at the Malkin Tower meeting – and naming her in the list of those found not guilty.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|29, 167}}
Alizon Device, whose encounter with John Law had triggered the events leading up to the trials, was charged with causing harm by witchcraft. Uniquely among the accused, Alizon was confronted in court by her alleged victim, John Law. She seems to have genuinely believed in her own guilt; when Law was brought into court Alizon fell to her knees in tears and confessed.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|37}} She was found guilty.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|139}}
## The Wonderfull Discoverie
{{main|The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Potts.png)Title page of the original edition published in 1613
Wikimedia Commons
Almost everything that is known about the trials comes from a report of the proceedings written by Thomas Potts, the clerk to the Lancaster Assizes. Potts was instructed to write his account by the trial judges, and completed the work by 16 November 1612, when he submitted it for review. Bromley revised and corrected the manuscript before its publication in 1613, declaring it to be “truly reported” and “fit and worthie to be published”.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|xli}}
Although written as an apparently verbatim account, *The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster* is not a report of what was actually said at the trial but is instead reflecting what happened.{{sfnp|A45RS9SG|48}} Nevertheless, Potts “seems to give a generally trustworthy, although not comprehensive, account of an Assize witchcraft trial, provided that the reader is constantly aware of his use of written material instead of verbatim reports”.{{sfnp|A45RS9SG|50}}
The trials took place not quite seven years after the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament in an attempt to kill King James and the Protestant aristocracy had been foiled. It was alleged that the Pendle witches had hatched their own gunpowder plot to blow up Lancaster Castle, although historian Stephen Pumfrey has suggested that the “preposterous scheme” was invented by the examining magistrates and simply agreed to by James Device in his witness statement.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|37-38}} It may therefore be significant that Potts dedicated *The Wonderfull Discoverie* to Thomas Knyvet and his wife Elizabeth; Knyvet was the man credited with apprehending Guy Fawkes and thus saving the King.{{sfnp|2W2F8QN8|139}}
## Modern interpretations
It has been estimated that all the English witch trials between the early 15th and early 18th centuries resulted in fewer than 500 executions, so this one series of trials in July and August 1612 accounts for more than two per cent of that total.{{sfnp|DB6SXDFK|3}} Court records show that Lancashire was unusual in the north of England for the frequency of its witch trials. Neighbouring Cheshire, for instance, also suffered from economic problems and religious activists,{{sfnp|DB6SXDFK|10}} but there only 34 people were indicted for causing harm by witchcraft between 1589 and 1675, of whom 8 were found guilty and executed.{{sfnp|G4QEBHVL}}
Pendle was part of the parish of Whalley, an area covering 180 square miles (470 km2), too large to be effective in preaching and teaching the doctrines of the Church of England: both the survival of Catholicism and the upsurge of witchcraft in Lancashire have been attributed to its over-stretched parochial structure. Until its dissolution, the spiritual needs of the people of Pendle and surrounding districts had been served by nearby Whalley Abbey, but its closure in 1537 left a moral vacuum.{{sfnp|27MMSCEJ|88-89}}
Many of the allegations made in the Pendle witch trials resulted from members of the Demdike and Chattox families making accusations against each other. Historian John Swain has said that the outbreaks of witchcraft in and around Pendle demonstrate the extent to which people could make a living either by posing as a witch, or by accusing or threatening to accuse others of being a witch.{{sfnp|AXC9YLSE|83}} Although it is implicit in much of the literature on witchcraft that the accused were victims, often mentally or physically abnormal, for some at least, it may have been a trade like any other, albeit one with significant risks.{{sfnp|AXC9YLSE|85}} There may have been bad blood between the Demdike and Chattox families because they were in competition with each other, trying to make a living from healing, begging, and extortion.{{sfnp|AXC9YLSE|80}} The Demdikes are believed to have lived close to Newchurch in Pendle, and the Chattox family about {{convert|2|mi|spell=in|r=1}} away, near the village of Fence.{{sfnp|DR3M4GJB|60}}
## Aftermath and legacy
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Pendle_Travel_Limited_2755_PJ05_ZWB_Jane_Bulcock.jpg)A “The Witch Way” bus
Wikimedia Commons
Altham continued with his judicial career until his death in 1617, and Bromley achieved his desired promotion to the Midlands Circuit in 1616. Potts was given the keepership of Skalme Park by James in 1615, to breed and train the king’s hounds. In 1618, he was given responsibility for “collecting the forfeitures on the laws concerning sewers, for twenty-one years”.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|38}} Having played her part in the deaths of her mother, brother, and sister, Jennet Device may eventually have found herself accused of witchcraft. A woman with that name was listed in a group of 20 tried at Lancaster Assizes on 24 March 1634, although it cannot be certain that it was the same Jennet Device.{{sfnp|LRYR6TEI|146-148}} The charge against her was the murder of Isabel Nutter, William Nutter’s wife.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|42}} In that series of trials the chief prosecution witness was a ten-year-old boy, Edmund Robinson. All but one of the accused were found guilty, but the judges refused to pass death sentences, deciding instead to refer the case to the king, Charles I. Under cross-examination in London, Robinson admitted that he had fabricated his evidence,{{sfnp|LRYR6TEI|146-148}} but even though four of the accused were eventually pardoned,{{sfnp|LRYR6TEI|151}} they all remained incarcerated in Lancaster Gaol, where it is likely that they died. An official record dated 22 August 1636 lists Jennet Device as one of those still held in the prison.{{sfnp|PIX7ZSVL|251}} These later Lancashire witchcraft trials were the subject of a contemporary play written by Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome, *The Late Lancashire Witches*.{{sfnp|LRYR6TEI|146}}
In modern times the witches have become the inspiration for Pendle’s tourism and heritage industries, with local shops selling a variety of witch-motif gifts. Burnley’s Moorhouse’s produces a beer called Pendle Witches Brew, and there is a Pendle Witch Trail running from Pendle Heritage Centre to Lancaster Castle, where the accused witches were held before their trial.{{sfnp|DB6SXDFK|1}} The X43 bus route run by Burnley Bus Company has been branded The Witch Way, with some of the vehicles operating on it named after the witches in the trial.{{sfnp|85N6B5TS}} Pendle Hill, which dominates the landscape of the area, continues to be associated with witchcraft, and hosts a hilltop gathering every Halloween.{{sfnp|DQ3AKG9Y}}
A petition was presented to UK Home Secretary Jack Straw in 1998 asking for the witches to be pardoned, but it was decided that their convictions should stand.{{sfnp|Q23E25IX}} Ten years later another petition was organised in an attempt to obtain pardons for Chattox and Demdike. It followed the Swiss government’s pardon earlier that year of Anna Göldi, beheaded in 1782, thought to be the last person in Europe to be executed as a witch.{{sfnp|RGC7W9DC}}
## Adaptations
William Harrison Ainsworth, a Victorian novelist considered in his day the equal of Dickens,{{sfnp|9UAN3UFR|166}} wrote a romanticised account of the Pendle witches published in 1849. *The Lancashire Witches* is the only one of his 40 novels never to have been out of print.{{sfnp|9UAN3UFR|166}} The British writer Robert Neill dramatised the events of 1612 in his novel *Mist over Pendle*, first published in 1951. The writer and poet Blake Morrison treated the subject in his suite of poems *Pendle Witches*, published in 1996, and in 2011 poet Simon Armitage narrated a documentary on BBC Four, *The Pendle Witch Child*.{{sfnp|5QSUAZXQ}}
## 2012 anniversary
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/lossy-page1-220px-Pendle_Hill_1612_painting.tif.jpg)Pendle Hill marked with the date 1612 on the 400th anniversary of the trials
Wikimedia Commons
Events to mark the 400th anniversary of the trials in 2012 included an exhibition, “A Wonderful Discoverie: Lancashire Witches 1612–2012”, at Gawthorpe Hall staged by Lancashire County Council.{{sfnp|XCG3V8LQ}} *The Fate of Chattox*, a piece by David Lloyd-Mostyn for clarinet and piano and taking its theme from the events leading to Chattox’s demise, has been featured in a BBC Radio 4 documentary.{{sfnp|WZ8GGNTG}}
A life-size statue of Alice Nutter, by sculptor David Palmer, was unveiled in her home village, Roughlee.{{sfnp|J8M235S5}} In August, a world record for the largest group dressed as witches was set by 482 people who walked up Pendle Hill, on which the date “1612” had been installed in 400-foot-tall numbers by artist Philippe Handford using horticultural fleece. The Bishop of Burnley, the Rt Rev John Goddard, expressed concern about marking the anniversary on the side of the hill.{{sfnp|XZBUZIRF}}
Publications in 2012 inspired by the trials include two novellas, *The Daylight Gate* by Jeanette Winterson and Malkin Child by Livi Michael. Blake Morrison published a volume of poetry on the events of 1612, which he named *A Discoverie of Witches*.{{sfnp|WMSWP4G9}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The appellation “Demdike” derives from “demon woman”, suggesting that she was “feared and loathed within the community”.{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|204}} b Gallows Hill is on the moors close to the site of present-day Williamson Park.{{sfnp|CCJM7NLP}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 18507
**Categories:** English, Female, Male, Witch
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Rainow witches](https://engole.info/rainow-witches/)
**Published:** August 1, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Redirected to Boughton witches.
**Categories:** Cheshire, Witch
**Tags:** Redirect
---
### [Boughton witches](https://engole.info/boughton-witches/)
**Published:** August 1, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Ellen Beech, Anne Osboston and Anne Thornton were three women convicted in separate trials at the Court of Sessions in Chester in 1656, executed together at Gallows Hill on 8 October 1656.
**Content:**
The Boughton witches were three women convicted in separate trials at the Court of Sessions in Chester in 1656, accused of causing harm by the use of witchcraft, and executed together on 8 October 1656. They were Ellen Beech and Anne Osboston of Rainow,\[a\]Anne Osboston is called Anne Osbalderton in the burial records of St Mary’s‑on‑the‑Hill, Chester.{{sfnp|UZT5DGSG}} sometimes known as the Rainow witches, and Anne Thornton of Eccleston.{{sfnp|G4QEBHVL}} The women are named after the site of their execution, Gallows Hill in Boughton, Chester, now known as Barrel Well Hill.{{sfnp|YY8F95S8}}
Ellen Beech was charged with having “consulted and covenanted with, entertayned, imployed, ffed and rewarded certayn evill and wicked spirits”, causing the death of Elizabeth Cowper. Anne Osboston faced a similar charge of bringing about the deaths of Barbara Pott, her husband John, and Anthony Booth, “a gentleman”.{{sfnp|YY8F95S8}}
Anne Thornton was charged with practising “divellish and wicked acts” to cause the death of the three-year-old son of Ralphe Frinchett, of Eccleston.{{sfnp|YY8F95S8}}
## See also
- [Witch trials in Cheshire](https://engole.info/witch-trials-in-cheshire)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Anne Osboston is called Anne Osbalderton in the burial records of St Mary’s‑on‑the‑Hill, Chester.{{sfnp|UZT5DGSG}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30238
**Categories:** Cheshire, Witch
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Donner Party](https://engole.info/donner-party/)
**Published:** June 6, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Truckee_Lake_camp.jpg[/pimage]Group of American pioneers who set out for California in a wagon train. Delayed by a series of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–1847 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada, where some of them resorted to cannibalism to survive.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/PatrickBreenDiaryPage28.jpg)The 28th page of Patrick Breen’s diary, recording his observations in late February 1847, including “Mrs Murphy said here yesterday that thought she would Commence on Milt. & eat him. I dont that she has done so yet, it is distressing.”
Wikimedia Commons
The Donner Party, sometimes called the Donner-Reed Party, was a group of American pioneers who set out for California in a wagon train. Delayed by a series of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–1847 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. Some of the emigrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, eating those who had succumbed to starvation and sickness.
The journey west usually took between four and six months, but the Donner Party was slowed by following a new route called Hastings Cutoff, which crossed Utah’s Wasatch Mountains and Great Salt Lake Desert. The rugged terrain, and difficulties later encountered while travelling along the Humboldt River in present-day Nevada, resulted in the loss of many cattle and wagons, and splits within the group.
By the beginning of November 1846 the emigrants had reached the Sierra Nevada, where they became trapped by an early, heavy snowfall near Truckee (now Donner) Lake, high in the mountains. Their food supplies ran low, and in mid-December some of the group set out on foot to obtain help. Rescuers from California attempted to reach the emigrants, but the first relief party did not arrive until the middle of February 1847, almost four months after the wagon train became trapped. Of the 87 members of the party, 48 survived to reach California.
Historians have described the episode as one of the most spectacular tragedies in Californian history and in the record of western migration.{{sfnp|A6968ILP|16}}{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|271}}
## Background
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Humboldt_River_Papa_2.jpg)An encampment of tents and covered wagons on the Humboldt River in Nevada, 1859
Wikimedia Commons
During the 1840s the United States saw a dramatic increase in pioneers, people who left their homes in the east to settle in the Oregon Territory and California. Some, such as Patrick Breen, saw California as a place where they would be free to live in a fully Catholic culture,{{sfnp|93JEMFTU}} but many were inspired by the idea of Manifest Destiny, a philosophy which asserted that the land between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans belonged to European Americans and they should settle it.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|11}} Most wagon trains followed the Oregon Trail route from Independence, Missouri to the Continental Divide, travelling at about {{convert|15|mi}} a day{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|18, 24, 45}} on a journey that usually took between four and six months.{{sfnp|447CKJ42|130}} The trail generally followed rivers to South Pass, a mountain pass in Wyoming, which was relatively easy for wagons to negotiate.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|48}} From there, wagon trains had a choice of routes to their destination.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|45}}
Lansford W. Hastings, an early immigrant from Ohio to the West, went to California in 1842 and saw the promise of the undeveloped country. To encourage settlers, he published *The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California*.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|47}} He described a direct route across the Great Basin which would bring immigrants through the Wasatch Mountains and across the Great Salt Lake Desert.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|69}} Hastings had not travelled any part of his proposed shortcut until early 1846 on a trip from California to Fort Bridger. The fort was a scant supply station run by Jim Bridger and his partner Pierre Louis Vasquez in Blacks Fork, Wyoming. Hastings stayed at the fort to persuade travelers to turn south on his route.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|47}} As of 1846, Hastings was the second of two men documented to have crossed the southern part of the Great Salt Lake Desert, but neither had been accompanied by wagons.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|69}}\[a\]There are no written records of native tribes having crossed the desert, nor did the emigrants mention any trails in this region.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|69}}
The most difficult part of the journey to California was the last 100 miles (160 km) across the Sierra Nevada. This mountain range contains 500 distinct peaks over {{convert|12000|ft}} high,{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|105}} and because of their height and proximity to the Pacific Ocean they receive more snow than most other ranges in North America. The eastern side of the range is also extremely steep.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|106}} After leaving Missouri to cross the vast wilderness to Oregon or California, timing was crucial to ensure that wagon trains would not be bogged down by mud created by spring rains, nor by massive snowdrifts in the mountains from September onwards, and also that their horses and oxen would have enough spring grass to eat.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|17}}
## Families
In the spring of 1846, almost 500 wagons headed west from Independence.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|33}} At the rear of the train,{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|18}} a group of nine wagons containing 32 members of the Reed and Donner families and their employees left on May 12.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|8}} George Donner, born in North Carolina, had gradually moved west to Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, with a one-year sojourn in Texas.{{sfnp|PZP4DGGM|32}} In early 1846 he was about 60 years old and living near Springfield, Illinois. With him were his 44-year-old wife Tamsen and their three daughters Frances (6), Georgia (4), and Eliza (3), and George’s daughters from a previous marriage: Elitha (14) and Leanna (12). George’s younger brother Jacob (56) also joined the party with his wife Elizabeth (45), teenaged stepsons Solomon Hook (14) and William Hook (12), and five children: George (9), Mary (7), Isaac (6), Lewis (4), and Samuel (1).{{sfnp|PZP4DGGM|20}} Also travelling with the Donner brothers were teamsters Hiram O. Miller (29), Samuel Shoemaker (25), Noah James (16), Charles Burger (30), John Denton (28), and Augustus Spitzer (30).{{sfnp|PZP4DGGM|22}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/JamesMargaretReed.jpg)James and Margret Reed
Wikimedia Commons
James F. Reed, a 45-year-old native of Ireland, had settled in Illinois in 1831. He was accompanied by his wife Margret (32), step-daughter Virginia (13), daughter Martha Jane “Patty” (8), sons James and Thomas (5 and 3), and Sarah Keyes, Margret Reed’s 70-year-old mother, who was in the advanced stages of consumption{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|181}} and died on May 28; she was buried by the side of the trail.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|23}} In addition to leaving financial worries behind, Reed hoped that California’s climate would help Margret, who had long suffered from ill health.{{sfnp|PZP4DGGM|32}} The Reeds hired three men to drive the ox teams: Milford (Milt) Elliot (28), James Smith (25), and Walter Herron (25). Baylis Williams (24) went along as handyman and his sister Eliza (25) as the family’s cook.{{sfnp|PZP4DGGM|21}}
Within a week of leaving Independence, the Reeds and Donners joined up with a group of 50 wagons nominally led by William H. Russell.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|18}} By June 16, the company had travelled {{convert|450|mi}}, with {{convert|200|mi}} to go before Fort Laramie, Wyoming. They had been delayed by rain and a rising river, but Tamsen Donner wrote to a friend in Springfield, “indeed, if I do not experience something far worse than I have yet done, I shall say the trouble is all in getting started.”{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|30}}\[b\]Tamsen Donner’s letters were printed in the *Springfield Journal* in 1846.{{sfnp|A6968ILP|24}} Young Virginia Reed recalled years later that, during the first part of the trip, she was “perfectly happy.”{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|26}}
Several other families joined the wagon train along the way. Levinah Murphy (37), a widow from Tennessee, headed a family of thirteen. Her five youngest children were John Landrum (16), Meriam (“Mary”, 14), Lemuel (12), William (10), and Simon (8). Levinah’s two married daughters and their families also came along: Sarah Murphy Foster (19), her husband William M. (30) and son Jeremiah George (1); Harriet Murphy Pike (18), her husband William M. (32) and their daughters Naomi (3) and Catherine (1). William H. Eddy (28), a carriage maker from Illinois, brought his wife Eleanor (25) and their two children James (3) and Margaret (1). The Breen family consisted of Patrick Breen (51), a farmer from Iowa, his wife Margaret (“Peggy”, 40) and seven children: John (14), Edward (13), Patrick, Jr. (9), Simon (8), James (5), Peter (3), and 11-month-old Isabelle. Their neighbour travelled with them, 40-year-old bachelor Patrick Dolan.{{sfnp|PZP4DGGM|19}} German immigrant Lewis Keseberg (32) joined with his wife Elisabeth Philippine (22) and daughter Ada (2); son Lewis Jr. was born on the trail.{{sfnp|PZP4DGGM|35}} Two young single men named Spitzer and Reinhardt travelled with another German couple, the Wolfingers, who also had hired driver “Dutch Charley” Burger. An older man named Hardkoop rode with them. Luke Halloran, a young man who seemed to get sicker with tuberculosis every day, was passed from family to family as none could spare the time or resources to care for him.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|21-22}}
## Hastings Cutoff
To promote his new route, Lansford W. Hastings sent riders to deliver letters to travelling emigrants. On July 12, the Reeds and Donners were given one of these letters.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|6-7}} Hastings warned the emigrants that they could expect opposition from the Mexican authorities in California, and advised them therefore to band together in large groups. He also claimed to have “worked out a new and better road to California”, and said that he would be waiting at Fort Bridger to guide the emigrants along the new cutoff.{{sfnp|UU7UMHM9}}
Jesse Quinn Thornton travelled part of the way with Donner and Reed, and in his book *From Oregon and California in 1848* declared Hastings the “Baron Munchausen of travelers in these countries”.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|20}} Tamsen Donner, according to Thornton, was “gloomy, sad, and dispirited” at the thought of turning off the main trail on the advice of Hastings, whom she considered “a selfish adventurer”.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|22}}
Map of the route taken by the Donner Party, showing Hastings Cutoff – which added 150 miles (240 km) to their travels – in orange.
Wikimedia Commons
On 20 July, at the Little Sandy River, most of the wagon train opted to follow the established trail via Fort Hall. A smaller group opted to head for Fort Bridger and needed a leader. Most of the younger males in the group were European immigrants and not considered to be ideal leaders. James F. Reed had been living in the U.S. for a considerable time, was older, and had military experience, but his autocratic attitude had rubbed many in the party the wrong way, and they saw him as aristocratic, imperious, and ostentatious.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|16-18}} By comparison, the mature, experienced, American-born Donner’s peaceful and charitable nature made him the group’s first choice.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|14}} The members of the party were comfortably well off by contemporaneous standards.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|17}} Although they are called pioneers, all but a few lacked specific skills and experience for travelling through mountains and arid land, and had little knowledge about how to interact with Native Americans.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|23-24}}
Journalist Edwin Bryant reached Blacks Fork a week ahead of the Donner Party. He saw the first part of the trail, and was concerned that it would be difficult for the wagons in the Donner group, especially with so many women and children. He returned to Blacks Fork to leave letters warning several members of the group not to take the shortcut.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|56}} By the time the Donner Party reached Blacks Fork on 27 July, Hastings had already left, leading the forty wagons of the Harlan-Young group.{{sfnp|UU7UMHM9}} Jim Bridger’s trading post would fare substantially better if people used the Hastings Cutoff, and he told the party that the shortcut was a smooth trip, devoid of rugged country and hostile Native Americans, and would therefore shorten their journey by {{convert|350|mi}}. Water would be easy to find along the way, although a couple of days crossing a 30–40-mile (48–64 km) dry lake bed would be necessary.
Reed was very impressed with this information, and advocated for the Hastings Cutoff. None of the party received Bryant’s letters warning them to avoid Hastings’ route at all costs; in his diary account, Bryant states his conviction that Bridger deliberately concealed the letters, a view shared by Reed in his later testimony.{{sfnp|UU7UMHM9}}{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|25-27}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|58}}\[c\]At Fort Laramie, Reed met an old friend named James Clyman who was coming from California. Clyman warned Reed not to take the Hastings Cutoff, telling him that wagons would not be able to make it and that Hastings’ information was inaccurate.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|47}} J. Quinn Thornton travelled part of the way with Donner and Reed, and in his book *From Oregon and California in 1848* declared Hastings the “Baron Munchausen of travelers in these countries”.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|20}}
On 31 July 1846 the party left Blacks Fork, after four days of rest and wagon repairs, eleven days behind the leading Harlan-Young group. Donner hired a replacement driver, and the company was joined by the McCutcheon family, consisting of 30-year-old William, his 24-year-old wife Amanda, two-year-old daughter Harriet, and a 16-year-old named Jean Baptiste Trudeau from New Mexico, who claimed to have knowledge of the Native Americans and terrain on the way to California.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|28}}
### Wasatch Mountains
Big Cottonwood Canyon, located several miles south of the Donner route in the heart of the Wasatch mountains of Northern Utah
Wikimedia Commons
The party turned south to follow the Hastings Cutoff. Within days, they found the terrain to be much more difficult than described, and the drivers were forced to lock the wheels of their wagons to prevent them from rolling down steep inclines. Several years of traffic on the main Oregon Trail had left an easy and obvious path, whereas the Cutoff was more difficult to find. Hastings wrote directions and left letters stuck to trees. On 6 August the party found a letter from Hastings advising them to stop until he could show them an alternative route to that taken by the Harlan-Young Party.\[d\]While Hastings was otherwise occupied, his guides had led the Harlan-Young Party through Weber Canyon, which was not the route that Hastings had intended to take.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|61}} Reed, Charles T. Stanton, and William Pike rode ahead to get Hastings. They encountered exceedingly difficult canyons where boulders had to be moved and walls cut off precariously to a river below, a route likely to break wagons. Hastings had offered in his letter to guide the Donner Party around the more difficult areas, but he rode back only part way, indicating the general direction to follow.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|31-35}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|61-62}}
Stanton and Pike stopped to rest, and Reed returned alone to the group, arriving four days after the party’s departure. Without the guide they had been promised, the group had to decide whether to turn back and rejoin the traditional trail, follow the tracks left by the Harlan-Young Party through the difficult terrain of Weber Canyon, or forge their own trail in the direction that Hastings had recommended. At Reed’s urging, the group chose the new Hastings route.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|64-65}} Their progress slowed to about a mile and a half (2.4 km) a day, and all the able-bodied men were required to clear brush, fell trees, and heave rocks to make room for the wagons.\[e\]The route that the party followed is now known as Emigration Canyon.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|28}}
As the Donner Party made its way across the Wasatch Mountains, the Graves family, who had set off to find them, reached them. The Graves family consisted of 57-year-old Franklin Ward Graves, his 47-year-old wife Elizabeth, their children Mary (20), William (18), Eleanor (15), Lovina (13), Nancy (9), Jonathan (7), Franklin, Jr. (5), Elizabeth (1), and married daughter Sarah (22), plus son-in-law Jay Fosdick (23), and a 25-year-old teamster named John Snyder, travelling together in three wagons. Their arrival brought the Donner Party to 87 members in 60–80 wagons.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|67-68}}{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|25}} The Graves family had been part of the last group to leave Missouri, confirming that the Donner Party was at the back of the year’s western exodus.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|68}}
It was 20 August by the time that they reached a point in the mountains where they could look down and see the Great Salt Lake. It took almost another two weeks to travel out of the Wasatch Mountains. The men began to argue, and doubts were expressed about the wisdom of those who had chosen this route, in particular James Reed. Food and supplies began to run out for some of the less affluent families. Stanton and Pike had ridden out with Reed but had become lost on their way back; by the time that the party found them, they were a day away from eating their horses.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|36-39}}
### Great Salt Lake Desert
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Butte_in_Great_Salt_Lake_Desert-750px.JPG)Great Salt Lake Desert
Wikimedia Commons
Luke Halloran died of tuberculosis on August 25. A few days later, the party came across a torn and tattered letter from Hastings. The pieces indicated that there were two days and nights of difficult travel ahead without grass or water. The party rested their oxen and prepared for the trip.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|70-71}} After 36 hours they set off to traverse a 1,000-foot (300 m) mountain that lay in their path. From its peak, they saw ahead of them a dry, barren plain, perfectly flat and covered with white salt, larger than the one which they had just crossed,{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|40-44}} and “one of the most inhospitable places on earth” according to Rarick.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|69}} Their oxen were already fatigued and their water was nearly gone.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|40-44}}
The party pressed onward on August 30, having no alternative. In the heat of the day, the moisture underneath the salt crust rose to the surface and turned the soil to a gummy mass. The wheels of their wagons sank into it, in some cases up to the hubs. The days were blisteringly hot and the nights frigid. Several of the group saw visions of lakes and wagon trains, and believed that they had finally overtaken Hastings. After three days, the water was gone, and some of the party removed their oxen from the wagons to press ahead to find more. Some of the animals were so weakened they were left yoked to the wagons and abandoned. Nine of Reed’s ten oxen broke free, crazed with thirst, and bolted off into the desert. Many other families’ cattle and horses had also gone missing. The rigors of the journey resulted in irreparable damage to some of the wagons, but no human lives had been lost. Instead of the promised two days journey over 40 miles, the journey across the 80 miles of Great Salt Lake Desert had taken six.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|44-50}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|72-74}}\[f\]In 1986, a team of archaeologists attempted to cross the same stretch of desert at the same time of year in four-wheel drive trucks and were unable to do so.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|71}}
None of the party had any remaining faith in the Hastings Cutoff as they recovered at the springs on the other side of the desert.\[g\]The location has since been named Donner Spring where the Donner Party recuperated, at the base of Pilot Peak.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|31}} They spent several days trying to recover cattle, retrieve the wagons left in the desert, and transfer their food and supplies to other wagons.\[h\]Reed’s account states that many of the travellers lost cattle and were trying to locate them, although some of the other members thought that they were looking for his cattle.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|74}}, Reed’s own account “The Snow-Bound, Starved Emigrants of 1846 Statement by Mr. Reed, One of the Donner Company”.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|190}} Reed’s family incurred the heaviest losses, and Reed became more assertive, asking all the families to submit an inventory of their goods and food to him. He suggested that two men should go to Sutter’s Fort in California; he had heard that John Sutter was exceedingly generous to wayward pioneers, and could assist them with extra provisions. Charles Stanton and William McCutchen volunteered to undertake the dangerous trip.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|75-76}} The remaining serviceable wagons were pulled by mongrel teams of cows, oxen, and mules. It was the middle of September, and two young men who went in search of missing oxen reported that another {{convert|40|mi|adj=on}} stretch of desert lay ahead.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|50-53}}
Their cattle and oxen were now exhausted and lean, but the Donner Party crossed the next stretch of desert relatively unscathed, and the journey seemed to get easier, particularly through the valley next to the Ruby Mountains. Despite their near hatred of Hastings, they had no choice but to follow his tracks, which were weeks old. On September 26, two months after embarking on the cutoff, the Donner Party rejoined the traditional trail along a stream that became known as the Humboldt River. The shortcut had probably delayed them by a month.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|54-58}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|78-81}}
## Rejoining the trail
### Reed banished
Along the Humboldt, the group met Paiute Native Americans, who joined them for a couple of days but stole or shot several oxen and horses. By now, it was well into October, and the Donner families split off to make better time. Two wagons in the remaining group became tangled, and John Snyder angrily beat the ox of Reed’s hired teamster Milt Elliott. When Reed intervened, Snyder turned the whip on him. Reed retaliated by fatally plunging a knife under Snyder’s collarbone.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|54-58}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|78-81}}
That evening, the witnesses gathered to discuss what was to be done. United States laws were not applicable west of the Continental Divide (in what was then Mexican territory) and wagon trains often dispensed their own justice.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|82}} But George Donner, the party’s leader, was a full day ahead of the main wagon train with his family.{{sfnp|IJHTMHRS|72}} Snyder had been seen to hit James Reed, and some claimed that he had also hit Margret Reed,{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|83}} but Snyder had been popular and Reed was not. Keseberg suggested that Reed should be hanged, but an eventual compromise allowed Reed to leave the camp without his family, who were to be taken care of by the others. Reed departed alone the next morning, unarmed,{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|59-65}}{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|36-37}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|83-86}}\[i\]In 1871, Reed wrote an account of the events of the Donner Party in which he omitted any reference to his killing Snyder, although his daughter Virginia described it in a letter home written in May 1847, which was heavily edited by Reed. In Reed’s 1871 account, he left the group to check on Stanton and McCutchen.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|191}} but his daughter Virginia rode ahead and secretly provided him with a rifle and food.{{sfnp|XQEVQFJS}}
### Disintegration
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Truckee_river.JPG)The Truckee River in winter
Wikimedia Commons
The trials that the Donner Party had so far endured resulted in splintered groups, each looking out for themselves and distrustful of the others.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|56}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|74}} Grass was becoming scarce, and the animals were steadily weakening. To relieve the load of the animals, everyone was expected to walk.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|87}} Keseberg ejected Hardkoop from his wagon, telling the elderly man that he had to walk or die. A few days later, Hardkoop sat next to a stream, his feet so swollen that they split open, and he was not seen again. William Eddy pleaded with the others to find Hardkoop, but they all refused, swearing that they would waste no more resources on a man who was almost 70 years old.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|38-39}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|87-89}}
Meanwhile, Reed caught up with the Donners and proceeded with one of his teamsters, Walter Herron. The two shared a horse and were able to cover 25–40 miles (40–64 km) per day.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|89}} The rest of the party rejoined the Donners, but their hardship continued. Native Americans chased away all of Graves’ horses, and another wagon was left behind. With grass in short supply, the cattle spread out more, which allowed the Paiutes to steal 18 more during one evening; and several mornings later, the Paiutes shot another 21.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|95}} So far, the company had lost nearly 100 oxen and cattle, and their rations were almost completely depleted. One more stretch of desert lay ahead. The Eddys’ oxen had been killed by Native Americans and they were forced to abandon their wagon. The family had eaten all their stores, but the other families refused to assist their children. The Eddys were forced to walk, carrying their children and miserable with thirst. Margret Reed and her children were also now without a wagon.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|95}}{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|67-74}} But the desert soon came to an end, and the party found the Truckee River in beautiful lush country.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|67-74}}
They had little time to rest, and the company pressed on to cross the mountains before the snows came. Stanton found the company (one of the two-man party who had left a month earlier to seek assistance in California), and he brought mules, food, and two Miwok Native Americans named Luis and Salvador.\[j\]The branch of Miwoks from the California plains region were the Cosumne, between where Stockton and Sacramento are located. Luis and Salvador, both Consumne, were Catholic converts employed by John Sutter. Historian Joseph King deduced that Luis’ given Miwok name was Eema, and he was probably 19 years old in 1846. Salvador’s given name was probably QuéYuen, and he would have been 28 years old the same year.{{sfnp|JQJ2Q2EU}} He also brought news that Reed and Herron, although haggard and starving, had succeeded in reaching Sutter’s Fort in California.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|75-79}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|91}} By this point, according to Rarick, “To the bedraggled, half-starved members of the Donner Party, it must have seemed that the worst of their problems had passed. They had already endured more than many emigrants ever did.”{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|101}}
## Snowbound
### Donner Pass
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Donner_Pass_kingp053.jpg)The 7088 feet (2160 m) high pass above Truckee Lake became blocked by early snow in November 1846 (here photographed in the 1870s). Both the pass and the lake are now called Donner.
Wikimedia Commons
Faced with one last push over mountains that were described as much worse than the Wasatch, the ragtag company had to decide whether to forge ahead or rest their cattle. It was October 20 and they had been told that the pass would not be snowed in until the middle of November. William Pike was killed when a gun being loaded by William Foster was discharged negligently,{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|43}} an event that seemed to make the decision for them; family by family, they resumed their journey, first the Breens, then Kesebergs, Stanton with the Reeds, Graves, and Murphys. The Donners waited and travelled last. After a few miles of rough terrain, an axle broke on one of the Donners’ wagons. Jacob and George went into the woods to fashion a replacement. George Donner sliced his hand open while chiselling the wood, but it seemed a superficial wound.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|81-83}}
Snow began to fall. The Breens made it up the “massive, nearly vertical slope” 1,000 feet (300 m) to Truckee Lake (now known as Donner Lake), {{convert|3|mi|r=1}} from the summit, and camped near a cabin that had been built two years earlier by another group of pioneers.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|108}}\[k\]The cabins were built by three members of another group of emigrants known as the Stevens Party, specifically by Joseph Foster, Allen Stevens, and Moses Schallenberger in November 1844.{{sfnp|GC5TYLRB|49-50}} Virginia Reed later married a member of this party named John Murphy, unrelated to the Murphy family who was associated with the Donner Party.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|262}} The Eddys and Kesebergs joined the Breens, attempting to make it over the pass, but they found 5–10-foot (1.5–3.0 m) drifts of snow, and were unable to find the trail. They turned back for Truckee Lake and, within a day, all the families were camped there except for the Donners, who were {{convert|5|mi}} below them – half a day’s journey. Over the next few days, several more attempts were made to breach the pass with their wagons and animals, but all efforts failed.
### Winter camp
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Map_of_Truckee_Lake_and_Alder_Creek.svg)Map showing the Truckee Lake and Alder Creek sites
Wikimedia Commons
Sixty members and associates of the Breen, Graves, Reed, Murphy, Keseberg, and Eddy families set up for the winter at Truckee Lake. Three widely separated cabins of pine logs served as their homes, with dirt floors and poorly constructed flat roofs that leaked when it rained. The Breens occupied one cabin, the Eddys and Murphys another, and Reeds and Graves the third. Keseberg built a lean-to for his family against the side of the Breen cabin. The families used canvas or oxhide to patch the faulty roofs. The cabins had no windows or doors, only large holes to allow entry. Of the 60 at Truckee Lake, 19 were men over 18, 12 were women, and 29 were children, 6 of whom were toddlers or younger. Farther down the trail, close to Alder Creek, the Donner families hastily constructed tents to house 21 people, including Mrs. Wolfinger, her child, and the Donners’ drivers: six men, three women, and twelve children in all.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|105-107}}{{sfnp|GC5TYLRB|60}} It began to snow again on the evening of 4 November – the beginning of a storm that lasted eight days.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|84-87}}
By the time the party made camp, very little food remained from the supplies that Stanton had brought back from Sutter’s Fort. The oxen began to die and their carcasses were frozen and stacked. Truckee Lake was not yet frozen, but the pioneers were unfamiliar with catching lake trout. Eddy, the most experienced hunter, killed a bear, but had little luck after that. The Reed and Eddy families had lost almost everything and Margret Reed promised to pay double when they got to California for the use of three oxen from the Graves and Breen families. Graves charged Eddy $25 – normally the cost of two healthy oxen – for the carcass of an ox that had starved to death.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|108-109}}{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|44}}
Desperation grew in camp and some reasoned that individuals might succeed in navigating the pass where the wagons could not. On 12 November the storm abated; a small party tried to reach the summit on foot, but found the trek through the soft, deep powder too difficult, and returned that same evening. Over the next week, two more attempts were made by other small parties, but both quickly failed. On 21 November a large party of about 22 persons made an attempt and successfully reached the peak. The party travelled about {{convert|1.5|mi}} west of the summit, but this trip too was aborted, and they returned to the lake on 23 November.
Artist’s rendering of the Truckee Lake camp based on descriptions by William Graves\[l\]This drawing is inaccurate in several respects: the cabins were spread so far apart that Patrick Breen in his diary came to call inhabitants of other cabins “strangers” whose visits were rare. This scene furthermore shows a great deal of activity and livestock, when the emigrants were weakened already by low rations and livestock began to die almost immediately. It also neglects to include the snow that met the emigrants from the day they arrived.
Wikimedia Commons
Patrick Breen began keeping a diary on 20 November. He primarily concerned himself with the weather, marking the storms and how much snow had fallen, but gradually began to include references to God and religion in his entries.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|145}} Life at Truckee Lake was miserable. The cabins were cramped and filthy, and it snowed so much that people were unable to go outdoors for days. Diets soon consisted of oxhide, strips of which were boiled to make a “disagreeable” glue-like jelly. Ox and horse bones were boiled repeatedly to make soup, and they became so brittle that they would crumble upon chewing. Sometimes they were softened by being charred and eaten. Bit by bit, the Murphy children picked apart the oxhide rug that lay in front of their fireplace, roasted it in the fire, and ate it.{{sfnp|A6968ILP|90}} After the departure of the snowshoe party, two-thirds of the emigrants at Truckee Lake were children. Mrs. Graves was in charge of eight, and Levinah Murphy and Eleanor Eddy together took care of nine.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|146}} Emigrants caught and ate mice that strayed into their cabins. Many of the people at Truckee Lake were soon weakened and spent most of their time in bed. Occasionally one would be able to make the full-day trek to see the Donners. News came that Jacob Donner and three hired men had died. One of them, Joseph Reinhardt, confessed on his deathbed that he had murdered Wolfinger.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|40}} George Donner’s hand had become infected, which left four men to work at the Donner camp.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|160-167}}
Margret Reed had managed to save enough food for a Christmas pot of soup, to the delight of her children, but by January they were facing starvation and considered eating the oxhides that served as their roof. Margret Reed, Virginia, Milt Elliott, and the servant girl Eliza Williams attempted to walk out, reasoning that it would be better to try to bring food back than sit and watch the children starve. They were gone for four days in the snow before they had to turn back. Their cabin was now uninhabitable; the oxhide roof served as their food supply, and the family moved in with the Breens. The servants went to live with other families. One day, the Graves came by to collect the debt owed by the Reeds and took the oxhides, all that the family had to eat.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|168-175}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|148-150}}
### “The Forlorn Hope”
The mountain party at Truckee Lake began to fail. Spitzer died, then Baylis Williams, a driver for the Reeds, more from malnutrition than starvation. Franklin Graves fashioned 14 pairs of snowshoes out of oxbows and hide. A party of 17 men, women, and children set out on foot in an attempt to cross the mountain pass.{{sfnp|A6968ILP|66-67}} As evidence of how grim their choices were, four of the men were fathers, and three of the women mothers who gave their young children to other women. They packed lightly, taking what had become six days’ rations, a rifle, a blanket each, a hatchet, and some pistols, hoping to make their way to Bear Valley.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|116-121}} The historian Charles McGlashan later called this snowshoe party the “Forlorn Hope”.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|49}}{{sfnp|A6968ILP|66}} Two of those without snowshoes, Charles Burger and 10-year-old William Murphy, turned back early on. Other members of the party fashioned a pair of snowshoes for Lemuel on the first evening from one of the packsaddles that they were carrying.{{sfnp|A6968ILP|67}}
The snowshoes proved to be awkward, but effective on the arduous climb. The members of the party were neither well-nourished nor accustomed to camping in snow {{convert|12|ft}} deep and, by the third day, most were snowblind. On the sixth day, Eddy discovered that his wife had hidden a half-pound of bear meat in his pack. The group set out again the morning of December 21; Stanton had been straggling for several days, and he remained behind, saying that he would follow shortly. His remains were found in that location the following year.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|122-125}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|136}}
The group became lost and confused. After two more days without food, Patrick Dolan proposed that one of them should volunteer to die in order to feed the others. Some suggested a duel, while another account describes an attempt to create a lottery to choose a member to sacrifice.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|136}}{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|52}} Eddy suggested that they keep moving until someone simply fell, but a blizzard forced the group to halt. Antonio the animal handler was the first to die; Franklin Graves was the next casualty.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|126-130}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|137}}
**Members of the “Forlorn Hope”**
**Name****Age**Antonio†23‡Luis†19‡Salvador†28‡Charles Burger\*30‡Patrick Dolan†35‡William Eddy28‡Jay Fosdick†23‡Sarah Fosdick21Sarah Foster19William Foster30Franklin Graves†57Mary Ann Graves19Lemuel Murphy†12William Murphy\*10Amanda McCutchen23Harriet Pike18Charles Stanton†30† died en route
\* turned back before reaching the pass
‡ estimated age.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|294-298}}
William H. Eddy
Wikimedia Commons
As the blizzard progressed, Patrick Dolan began to rant deliriously, stripped off his clothes, and ran into the woods. He returned shortly afterwards and died a few hours later. Not long after, possibly because 12-year-old Lemuel Murphy was near death, some of the group began to eat flesh from Dolan’s body. Lemuel’s sister tried to feed some to her brother, but he died shortly afterwards. Eddy, Salvador, and Luis refused to eat. The next morning, the group stripped the muscle and organs from the bodies of Antonio, Dolan, Graves, and Murphy and dried it to store for the days ahead, taking care to ensure that nobody would have to eat his or her relatives.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|131-133}}{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|53}}
After three days’ rest, they set off again, searching for the trail. Eddy eventually succumbed to his hunger and ate human flesh, but that was soon gone. They began to take apart their snowshoes to eat the oxhide webbing, and discussed killing Luis and Salvador for food, before Eddy warned the two men and they quietly left.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|55}} Jay Fosdick died during the night, leaving only seven members of the party. Eddy and Mary Graves left to hunt, but when they returned with deer meat, Fosdick’s body had been butchered.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|142}}{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|60}} After several more days – 25 since they had left Truckee Lake – they came across Salvador and Luis, who had not eaten for about nine days and were close to death. William Foster shot the pair, believing that their flesh was the group’s last hope of avoiding imminent death from starvation.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|62}}
On 12 January the group stumbled into a Miwok camp, looking so deteriorated that the camp’s inhabitants initially fled. The Miwoks gave them what they had to eat: acorns, grass, and pine nuts.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|62}} After a few days, Eddy continued on with the help of a Miwok to a ranch in a small farming community at the edge of the Sacramento Valley.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|142-148}}{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|63-64}} A hurriedly assembled rescue party found the other six survivors on 17 January; their journey from Truckee Lake had taken 33 days.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|142}}{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|149}}
## Rescue
### Reed attempts a rescue
James F. Reed made it out of the Sierra Nevada to Rancho Johnson in late October. He was safe and recovering at Sutter’s Fort, but each day he became more concerned for the fate of his family and friends. He pleaded with Colonel John C. Frémont to gather a team of men to cross the pass and help the company, in return for which Reed promised that he would join Frémont’s forces and fight in the Mexican–American War.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|193}} Reed was joined by McCutchen, who had been unable to return with Stanton, as well as some members of the Harlan-Young party. The Harlan-Young wagon train had arrived at Sutter’s Fort on 8 October, the last to make it over the Sierra Nevada that season.{{sfnp|LNNVMSFB|133}} The party of roughly 30 horses and a dozen men carried food supplies, and expected to find the Donner Party on the western side of the mountain, along the Bear River below the steep approach to Emigrant Gap, perhaps starving but alive. When they arrived in the river valley, they found only a pioneer couple, immigrants who had been separated from their company and were near starvation.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|95-100}}{{sfnp|A6968ILP|122-123}}
Two guides deserted Reed and McCutchen with some of their horses, but they pressed on farther up the valley to Yuba Bottoms, walking the last mile on foot. Reed and McCutchen stood looking up at Emigrant Gap, only {{convert|12|mi}} from the top, blocked by snow, possibly on the same day that the Breens attempted to lead one last effort to crest the pass from the east. Despondent, they turned back to Sutter’s Fort.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|101-104}}
### First relief
**Members rescued by first relief**
Much of the military in California were engaged in the Mexican–American War, and with them the able-bodied men. For example, Colonel Frémont’s personnel were occupied at that precise time in capturing Santa Barbara. Throughout the region, roads were blocked, communications compromised, and supplies unavailable. Only three men responded to a call for volunteers to rescue the Donner Party. Reed was laid over in San Jose until February because of regional uprisings and general confusion. He spent that time speaking with other pioneers and acquaintances, and the people of San Jose responded by creating a petition to appeal to the U.S. Navy to assist the people at Truckee Lake. Two local newspapers reported that members of the snowshoe party had resorted to cannibalism, which helped to foster sympathy for those who were still trapped. Residents of Yerba Buena, many of them recent emigrants, raised $1,300 ($35,000 in 2018) and organised relief efforts to build two camps to supply a rescue party for the refugees.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|150-159}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|180-181}}
A rescue party including William Eddy started on February 4 from the Sacramento Valley. Rain and a swollen river forced several delays. Eddy stationed himself at Bear Valley, while the others made steady progress through the snow and storms to cross the pass to Truckee Lake, caching their food at stations along the way so that they did not have to carry it all. Three of the rescue party turned back, but seven forged on.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|176-189}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|166-167}}
On 18 February the seven-man rescue party scaled Frémont Pass (now Donner Pass); as they neared where Eddy told them the cabins would be, they began to shout. Mrs. Murphy appeared from a hole in the snow, stared at them and asked, “Are you men from California, or do you come from heaven?”{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|191}} The relief party doled out food in small portions, concerned that it might kill them if the emaciated immigrants overate. All the cabins were buried in snow. Sodden oxhide roofs had begun to rot and the smell was overpowering. Thirteen people at the camps were dead, and their bodies had been loosely buried in snow near the cabin roofs. Some of the emigrants seemed emotionally unstable. Three of the rescue party trekked to the Donners and brought back four gaunt children and three adults. Leanna Donner had particular difficulty walking up the steep incline from Alder Creek to Truckee Lake, later writing “such pain and misery as I endured that day is beyond description.”{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|173}} George Donner’s arm was so gangrenous that he could not move. Twenty-three people were chosen to go with the rescue party, leaving twenty-one in the cabins at Truckee Lake and twelve at Alder Creek.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|190-196}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|170}}
The rescuers concealed the fate of the snowshoe party, informing the rescued immigrants only that they did not return because they were frostbitten.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|171}} Patty and Tommy Reed were soon too weak to cross the snowdrifts, and no one was strong enough to carry them. Margret Reed faced the agonising predicament of accompanying her two older children to Bear Valley and watching her two frailest be taken back to Truckee Lake without a parent. She made rescuer Aquilla Glover swear on his honour as a Mason that he would return for her children. Patty Reed told her, “Well, mother, if you never see me again, do the best you can.”{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|198}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|174}} Upon their return to the lake, the Breens flatly refused them entry to their cabin but, after Glover left more food, the children were grudgingly admitted. The rescue party was dismayed to find that the first cache station had been broken into by animals, leaving them without food for four days. After struggling on the walk over the pass, John Denton slipped into a coma and died. Ada Keseberg died soon afterwards; her mother was inconsolable, refusing to let the child’s body go. After several days’ more travel through difficult country, the rescuers grew very concerned that the children would not survive. Some of them ate the buckskin fringe from one of the rescuer’s pants, and the shoelaces of another, to the relief party’s surprise. On their way down from the mountains, they met the next rescue party, which included James Reed. Upon hearing his voice, Margret sank into the snow, overwhelmed.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|197-203}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|178}}
After these rescued emigrants made it safely into Bear Valley, William Hook, Jacob Donner’s stepson, broke into food stores and fatally gorged himself. The others continued on to Sutter’s Fort, where Virginia Reed wrote “I really thought I had stepped over into paradise”. She was amused to note that one of the young men asked her to marry him, although she was only twelve years old and recovering from starvation,{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|204-206}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|187}} but she turned him down.{{sfnp|A6968ILP|239}}
### Second relief
**Members rescued by second relief**
On 1 March a second relief party arrived at Truckee Lake. These rescuers were mostly experienced mountaineers who accompanied the return of Reed and McCutchen. Reed was reunited with his daughter Patty and his weakened son Tommy. An inspection of the Breen cabin found its occupants relatively well, but the Murphy cabin, according to author George Stewart, “passed the limits of description and almost of imagination”. Levinah Murphy was caring for her eight-year-old son Simon and the two young children of William Eddy and Foster. She had deteriorated mentally and was nearly blind. The children were listless and had not been cleaned in days. Lewis Keseberg had moved into the cabin and could barely move due to an injured leg.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|211-212}}
No one at Truckee Lake had died during the interim between the departure of the first relief party and the arrival of the second relief party. Patrick Breen documented a disturbing visit in the last week of February from Mrs. Murphy, who said that her family was considering eating Milt Elliott. Reed and McCutchen found Elliott’s mutilated body.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|213-214}} The Alder Creek camp fared no better. The first two members of the relief party to reach it saw Trudeau carrying a human leg. When they made their presence known, he threw it into a hole in the snow that contained the mostly dismembered body of Jacob Donner. Inside the tent, Elizabeth Donner refused to eat, although her children were being nourished by the organs of their father.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|191}} The rescuers discovered that three other bodies had already been consumed. In the other tent, Tamsen Donner was well, but George was very ill because the infection had reached his shoulder.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|215-219}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Donner_Lake_and_snow_sheds2.jpg)View of Truckee Lake from Donner Pass, taken in 1868 as the Central Pacific Railroad reached completion.
Wikimedia Commons
The second relief evacuated seventeen emigrants from Truckee Lake, only three of whom were adults. Both the Breen and Graves families prepared to go. Only five people remained at Truckee Lake: Keseberg, Mrs. Murphy and her son Simon, and the young Eddy and Foster children. Tamsen Donner elected to stay with her ailing husband after Reed informed her that a third relief party would arrive soon. Mrs. Donner kept her daughters Eliza, Georgia, and Frances with her.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|195}}
The walk back to Bear Valley was very slow; at one point, Reed sent ahead two of the men to retrieve the first cache of food, expecting the third relief to come at any moment, a small party led by Selim E. Woodworth. A violent blizzard arose after they scaled the pass. Five-year-old Isaac Donner froze to death, and Reed nearly died. Mary Donner’s feet were badly burned because they were so frostbitten that she did not realise she was sleeping with them in the fire. When the storm passed, the Breen and Graves families were too apathetic and exhausted to get up and move, not having eaten for days. The relief party had no choice but to leave without them.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|220-230}}{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|199}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|199-203}}
Three members of the relief party stayed, one at Truckee Lake and two at Alder Creek. When one, Nicholas Clark, went hunting, the other two, Charles Cady and Charles Stone, made plans to return to California. Tamsen Donner arranged for them to carry three of her children to California, perhaps for $500 cash, according to Stewart. Cady and Stone took the children to Truckee Lake but then left alone, overtaking Reed and the others within days.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|231-236}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|207-208}} Several days later, Clark and Trudeau agreed to leave together. When they discovered the Donner girls at Truckee Lake, they returned to Alder Creek to inform Tamsen Donner.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|216-217}}
William Foster and William Eddy, both survivors of the snowshoe party, started from Bear Valley to intercept Reed, taking with them a man named John Stark. After one day, they met Reed helping his children, all frostbitten and bleeding but alive. Desperate to rescue their own children, Foster and Eddy persuaded four men, with pleading and money, to return to Truckee Lake with them. Eleven survivors were huddled around a fire they had sunk into a pit. The relief party split, with Foster, Eddy and two others headed toward Truckee Lake. Two rescuers, hoping to save the healthiest, each took a child and left. But John Stark, refusing to leave the others, picked up two children and all the provisions, and assisted the nine remaining Breens and Graves to Bear Valley.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|237-246}}{{sfnp|5DXJDS5N|92-93}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|214-215}}
### Third relief
**Members rescued by third relief**
Foster and Eddy finally arrived at Truckee Lake on 14 March, where they found their children dead. Keseberg told Eddy that he had eaten the remains of Eddy’s son, and Eddy swore to murder Keseberg if they ever met in California.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|217-218}} George Donner and one of Jacob Donner’s children were still alive at Alder Creek. Tamsen Donner had just arrived at the Murphy cabin, and she could have walked out alone but chose to return to her husband, even though she was informed that no other relief party was likely to be coming soon. Foster and Eddy and the rest of the third relief left with four children, Trudeau, and Clark.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|247-252}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|219}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Donner_tree_stumps2.jpg)Stumps of trees cut at the Alder Creek site by members of the Donner Party, photograph taken in 1866. The height of the stumps indicates the depth of snow.{{sfnp
H7LVVTR2
Two more relief parties were mustered to evacuate any adults who might still be alive. Both turned back before getting to Bear Valley, and no further attempts were made. On 10 April, almost a month since the third relief had left Truckee Lake, the alcalde near Sutter’s Fort organised a salvage party to recover what they could of the Donners’ belongings. The belongings would be sold, with part of the proceeds used to support the orphaned Donner children. The salvage party found the Alder Creek tents empty except for the body of George Donner, who had died only days earlier. On their way back to Truckee Lake, they found Lewis Keseberg alive. According to him, Mrs. Murphy had died a week after the departure of the third relief. Some weeks later, Tamsen Donner had arrived at his cabin on her way over the pass, soaked and visibly upset. Keseberg said that he put a blanket around her and told her to start out in the morning, but she died during the night.
The salvage party were suspicious of Keseberg’s story, and found a pot full of human flesh in the cabin along with George Donner’s pistols, jewelry, and $250 in gold. They threatened to lynch Keseberg, who confessed that he had cached $273 of the Donners’ money at Tamsen’s suggestion, so that it could one day benefit her children.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|258-265 }}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|222-226}} On 29 April 1847 Keseberg was the last member of the Donner Party to arrive at Sutter’s Fort.
### Response
News of the Donner Party’s fate was spread eastward by Samuel Brannan, an elder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and journalist, who ran into the salvage party as they came down from the pass with Keseberg.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|276}} Accounts of the ordeal first reached New York City in July 1847. Reporting on the event across the U.S. was heavily influenced by the national enthusiasm for westward migration. In some papers, news of the tragedy was buried in small paragraphs despite the contemporary tendency to sensationalise stories. Several newspapers, including those in California, wrote about the cannibalism in graphic exaggerated detail.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|241-242}} In some print accounts, the members of the Donner Party were depicted as heroes, and California a paradise worthy of significant sacrifices.{{sfnp|F8JW5FH4|49050}}
A more revolting or appalling spectacle I never witnessed. The remains here, by order of Gen. Kearny collected and buried under the superintendence of Major Swords. They were interred in a pit which had been dug in the centre of one of the cabins for a cache. These melancholy duties to the dead being performed, the cabins, by order of Major Swords, were fired, and with every thing surrounded them connected with this horrid and melancholy tragedy, were consumed. The body of George Donner was found at his camp, about eight or ten miles distant, wrapped in a sheet. He was buried by a party of men detailed for that purpose.{{sfnp
— P3CJP62EEmigration to the west decreased over the following years, but it is likely that the drop in numbers was caused more by fears over the outcome of the ongoing Mexican–American War than by the cautionary tale of the Donner Party.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|241-241}} In 1846, an estimated 1500 people migrated to California. In 1847, the number dropped to 450 and to 400 in 1848. The California Gold Rush spurred a sharp increase, however, and 25,000 people went west in 1849.{{sfnp|F8JW5FH4|119-120}} Most of the overland migration followed the Carson River, but a few forty-niners used the same route as the Donner Party and recorded descriptions about the site.{{sfnp|GC5TYLRB|2}}
In late June 1847 members of the Mormon Battalion under General Stephen Kearny buried the human remains, and partially burned two of the cabins.{{sfnp|MMAF79UL}} The few who ventured over the pass in the next few years found bones, other artifacts, and the cabin used by the Reed and Graves families. In 1891, a cache of money was found buried by the lake. It had probably been stored by Mrs. Graves, who hastily hid it when she left with the second relief so that she could return for it later.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|276-279}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|235}}
Lansford Hastings received death threats. An emigrant who crossed before the Donner Party confronted Hastings about the difficulties they had encountered, reporting: “Of course he could say nothing but that he was very sorry, and that he meant well”.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|233}}
### Survivors
Of the 87 people who entered the Wasatch Mountains, 48 survived. Only the Reed and Breen families remained intact. The children of Jacob Donner, George Donner, and Franklin Graves were orphaned. William Eddy was alone and most of the Murphy family had died. Only three mules reached California; the remaining animals perished. Most of the Donner Party members’ possessions were discarded.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|271}}
I have not wrote to you half the trouble we have had but I have wrote enough to let you know that you don’t know what trouble is. But thank God we have all got through and the only family that did not eat human flesh. We have left everything but I don’t care for that. We have got through with our lives but Don’t let this letter dishearten anybody. Never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can.
— Virginia Reed to her cousin Mary Keyes, 16 May 1847A few of the widowed women remarried within months; brides were scarce in California. The Reeds settled in San Jose and two of the Donner children lived with them. Reed fared well in the California Gold Rush and became prosperous. Virginia wrote an extensive letter to her cousin in Illinois about “our troubles getting to California”, with editorial oversight from her father. Journalist Edwin Bryant carried it back in June 1847, and it was printed in its entirety in the *Illinois Journal* on 16 December 1847, with some editorial alterations.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|348-362}}
The Graves children lived varied lives. Mary Graves married early, but her first husband was murdered. She cooked his killer’s food while he was in prison to ensure that the condemned man did not starve before his hanging. One of Mary’s grandchildren noted that she was very serious; Graves once said, “I wish I could cry but I cannot. If I could forget the tragedy, perhaps I would know how to cry again.”{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|126-127}} Mary’s brother William did not settle down for any significant time.
Nancy Graves was nine years old during the winter of 1846–1847. She refused to acknowledge her involvement even when contacted by historians interested in recording the most accurate versions of the episode. Nancy reportedly was unable to recover from her role in the cannibalism of her brother and mother.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|230}}
Eddy remarried and started a family in California. He attempted to follow through on his promise to murder Lewis Keseberg, but was dissuaded by James Reed and Edwin Bryant. A year later, Eddy recollected his experiences to J. Quinn Thornton, who wrote the earliest comprehensive documentation of the episode, also using Reed’s memories of his experiences.{{sfnp|GC5TYLRB|3}}{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|8-9}} Eddy died in 1859.
Keseberg brought a defamation suit against several members of the relief party who accused him of murdering Tamsen Donner. The court awarded him $1 in damages, but also made him pay court costs. An 1847 story printed in the *California Star* described Keseberg’s actions in ghoulish terms and his near-lynching by the salvage party, reporting that he preferred eating human flesh over the cattle and horses that had become exposed in the spring thaw. Historian Charles McGlashan amassed enough material to indict Keseberg for the murder of Tamsen Donner, but after interviewing Keseberg he concluded that no murder occurred. Eliza Donner Houghton also believed Keseberg to be innocent.{{sfnp|5DXJDS5N|106}}
As Keseberg grew older, he did not venture outside, for he had become a pariah and was often threatened. He told McGlashan, “I often think that the Almighty has singled me out, among all the men on the face of the earth, in order to see how much hardship, suffering, and misery a human being can bear!”{{sfnp|A6968ILP|221-222}}
## Legacy
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Donner_Party_Memorial.jpg)Statue at Donner Memorial State Park; the top of the 22-foot (6.7 m) pedestal indicating how deep the snow was during the winter of 1846–1847.
Wikimedia Commons
The Donner Party episode was insignificant in comparison with the hundreds of thousands of emigrants to Oregon and California, but it has served as the basis for numerous works of history, fiction, drama, poetry, and film. The attention directed at the Donner Party is made possible by reliable accounts of what occurred, according to Stewart, and the fact that “the cannibalism, although it might almost be called a minor episode, has become in the popular mind the chief fact to be remembered about the Donner Party. For a taboo always allures with as great strength as it repels”.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|295}} The appeal is that the events focused on families and ordinary people, according to Johnson, writing in 1996, instead of on rare individuals, and that the events are “a dreadful irony that hopes of prosperity, health, and a new life in California’s fertile valleys led many only to misery, hunger, and death on her stony threshold”.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|1}}
The site of the cabins became a tourist attraction as early as 1854.{{sfnp|YCB3WXL8|43}} In the 1880s, Charles McGlashan began promoting the idea of a monument to mark the site of the Donner Party episode. He helped to acquire the land for a monument and, in June 1918, the statue of a pioneer family was placed on the spot where the Breen-Keseberg cabin was thought to have been, dedicated to the Donner Party.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|243-244}} It was made a California Historical Landmark in 1934.{{sfnp|YCB3WXL8|44}}
The State of California created the Donner Memorial State Park in 1927. It originally consisted of {{convert|11|acre}} surrounding the monument. Twenty years later, the site of the Murphy cabin was purchased and added to the park.{{sfnp|YCB3WXL8|45}} In 1962, the Emigrant Trail Museum was added to tell the history of westward migration into California. The Murphy cabin and Donner monument were established as a National Historic Landmark in 1963. A large rock served as the back end of the fireplace of the Murphy cabin, and a bronze plaque has been affixed to the rock listing the members of the Donner Party, indicating who survived and who did not. The State of California justifies memorialising the site because the episode was “an isolated and tragic incident of American history that has been transformed into a major folk epic”.{{sfnp|YCB3WXL8|39}} As of 2003, the park is estimated to receive 200,000 visitors a year.{{sfnp|YCB3WXL8|59}}
### Mortality
Most historians count 87 members of the party, although Stephen McCurdy in the Western Journal of Medicine includes Sarah Keyes – Margret Reed’s mother – and Luis and Salvador, bringing the number to 90.{{sfnp|N2F5SNSQ}} Five people had already died before the party reached Truckee Lake: one from tuberculosis (Halloran), three from trauma (Snyder, Wolfinger, and Pike), and one from exposure (Hardkoop). A further 34 died between December 1846 and April 1847: twenty-five males and nine females.{{sfnp|BUAFMNZJ}}\[m\]Grayson stated in his 1990 mortality study that one-year-old Elizabeth Graves was one of the casualties, but she was rescued by the second relief. Several historians and other authorities have studied the mortalities to determine what factors may affect survival in nutritionally deprived individuals. Of the fifteen members of the snowshoe party, eight of the ten men who set out died (Stanton, Dolan, Graves, Murphy, Antonio, Fosdick, Luis, and Salvador), but all five of the women survived.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|54}} A professor at the University of Washington stated that the Donner Party episode is a “case study of demographically-mediated natural selection in action”.{{sfnp|GC5TYLRB|113}}
The deaths at Truckee Lake, Alder Creek, and in the snowshoe party were probably caused by a combination of extended malnutrition, overwork, and exposure to cold. Several members became more susceptible to infection due to starvation,{{sfnp|GC5TYLRB|114}} such as George Donner, but the three most significant factors in survival were age, sex, and the size of family group that each member travelled with. The survivors were on average 7.5 years younger than those who died; children aged between 6 and 14 had a much higher survival rate than infants and children under the age of 6, of whom 62.5 per cent died, including the son born to the Kesebergs on the trail, or adults over the age of 35. No adults over the age of 49 survived. Deaths were “extremely high” among males aged between 20 and 39, at more than 66 per cent.{{sfnp|BUAFMNZJ}} Men have been found to metabolise protein faster, and women do not require as high a caloric intake. Women also store more body fat, which delays the effects of physical degradation caused by starvation and overwork. Men also tend to take on more dangerous tasks and, in this particular instance, the men were required to clear brush and engage in heavy labor before reaching Truckee Lake, adding to their physical debilitation. Those travelling with family members had a higher survival rate than bachelor males, possibly because family members more readily shared food with each other.{{sfnp|N2F5SNSQ}}{{sfnp|GC5TYLRB|131-132}}
### Claims of cannibalism
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/JeanBaptisteTrudeau.JPG)Jean Baptiste Trudeau, pictured here as an adult, gave conflicting accounts of cannibalism at Alder Creek.
Wikimedia Commons
Although some survivors disputed the accounts of cannibalism, Charles McGlashan, who corresponded with many of the survivors over a 40-year period, documented many recollections that it occurred. Some correspondents were not forthcoming, approaching their participation with shame, but others eventually spoke about it freely. McGlashan in his 1879 book *History of the Donner Party* declined to include some of the more morbid details – such as the suffering of the children and infants before death, or how Mrs. Murphy, according to Georgia Donner, gave up, lay down on her bed and faced the wall when the last of the children left in the third relief. He also neglected to mention any cannibalism at Alder Creek.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|307-313}}{{sfnp|A6968ILP|161}} The same year McGlashan’s book was published, Georgia Donner wrote to him to clarify some points, saying that human flesh was prepared for people in both tents at Alder Creek, but to her recollection (she was four years old during the winter of 1846–1847) it was given only to the youngest children: “Father was crying and did not look at us the entire time, and we little ones felt we could not help it. There was nothing else.” She also remembered that Elizabeth Donner, Jacob’s wife, announced one morning that she had cooked the arm of Samuel Shoemaker, a 25-year-old teamster.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|312}} Eliza Donner Houghton, in her 1911 account of the ordeal, did not mention any cannibalism at Alder Creek.
Archaeological findings at the Alder Creek camp proved inconclusive for evidence of cannibalism. None of the bones tested at the Alder Creek cooking hearth could be conclusively identified as human.{{sfnp|4NURBRG5}}{{sfnp|MCGQG4LZ}} According to Rarick, only cooked bones would be preserved, and it is unlikely that the Donner Party members would have needed to cook human bones.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|193}}
Eliza Farnham’s 1856 account of the Donner Party was based largely on an interview with Margaret Breen. Her version details the ordeals of the Graves and Breen families after James Reed and the second relief left them in the snow pit. According to Farnham, seven-year-old Mary Donner suggested to the others that they should eat Isaac Donner, Franklin Graves, Jr., and Elizabeth Graves, because the Donners had already begun eating the others at Alder Creek, including Mary’s father Jacob. Margaret Breen insisted that she and her family did not cannibalise the dead, but Kristin Johnson, Ethan Rarick, and Joseph King – whose account is sympathetic to the Breen family – do not consider it credible that the Breens, who had been without food for nine days, would have been able to survive without eating human flesh. King suggests Farnham included this into her account independently of Margaret Breen.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|139-168}}{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|164}}{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|213}}{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|134-135}}
According to an account published by H. A. Wise in 1847, Jean Baptiste Trudeau boasted of his own heroism, but also spoke in lurid detail of eating Jacob Donner, and claimed he had eaten a baby raw.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|134-135}} Many years later, Trudeau met Eliza Donner Houghton and denied cannibalising anyone, which he reiterated in an interview with a St. Louis newspaper in 1891, when he was sixty years old. Houghton and the other Donner children were fond of Trudeau, and he of them, in spite of their circumstances and the fact that he eventually left Tamsen Donner alone. The author George Stewart considers Trudeau’s accounting to Wise more accurate than what he had told Houghton in 1884, and asserted that he deserted the Donners.{{sfnp|P3CJP62E|217}} Kristin Johnson, on the other hand, attributes Trudeau’s interview with Wise to be a result of “common adolescent desires to be the center of attention and to shock one’s elders”; when older, he reconsidered his story, so as not to upset Houghton.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|133}} Historians Joseph King and Jack Steed call Stewart’s characterisation of Trudeau’s actions as desertion “extravagant moralism”, particularly because all members of the party were forced to make difficult choices.{{sfnp|REHZW4ML}} Ethan Rarick echoed this by writing, “more than the gleaming heroism or sullied villainy, the Donner Party is a story of hard decisions that were neither heroic nor villainous”.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|245}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a There are no written records of native tribes having crossed the desert, nor did the emigrants mention any trails in this region.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|69}} b Tamsen Donner’s letters were printed in the *Springfield Journal* in 1846.{{sfnp|A6968ILP|24}} c At Fort Laramie, Reed met an old friend named James Clyman who was coming from California. Clyman warned Reed not to take the Hastings Cutoff, telling him that wagons would not be able to make it and that Hastings’ information was inaccurate.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|47}} J. Quinn Thornton travelled part of the way with Donner and Reed, and in his book *From Oregon and California in 1848* declared Hastings the “Baron Munchausen of travelers in these countries”.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|20}} d While Hastings was otherwise occupied, his guides had led the Harlan-Young Party through Weber Canyon, which was not the route that Hastings had intended to take.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|61}} e The route that the party followed is now known as Emigration Canyon.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|28}} f In 1986, a team of archaeologists attempted to cross the same stretch of desert at the same time of year in four-wheel drive trucks and were unable to do so.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|71}} g The location has since been named Donner Spring where the Donner Party recuperated, at the base of Pilot Peak.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|31}} h Reed’s account states that many of the travellers lost cattle and were trying to locate them, although some of the other members thought that they were looking for his cattle.{{sfnp|57MTBNIX|74}}, Reed’s own account “The Snow-Bound, Starved Emigrants of 1846 Statement by Mr. Reed, One of the Donner Company”.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|190}} i In 1871, Reed wrote an account of the events of the Donner Party in which he omitted any reference to his killing Snyder, although his daughter Virginia described it in a letter home written in May 1847, which was heavily edited by Reed. In Reed’s 1871 account, he left the group to check on Stanton and McCutchen.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|191}} j The branch of Miwoks from the California plains region were the Cosumne, between where Stockton and Sacramento are located. Luis and Salvador, both Consumne, were Catholic converts employed by John Sutter. Historian Joseph King deduced that Luis’ given Miwok name was Eema, and he was probably 19 years old in 1846. Salvador’s given name was probably QuéYuen, and he would have been 28 years old the same year.{{sfnp|JQJ2Q2EU}} k The cabins were built by three members of another group of emigrants known as the Stevens Party, specifically by Joseph Foster, Allen Stevens, and Moses Schallenberger in November 1844.{{sfnp|GC5TYLRB|49-50}} Virginia Reed later married a member of this party named John Murphy, unrelated to the Murphy family who was associated with the Donner Party.{{sfnp|W5LXZIC4|262}} l This drawing is inaccurate in several respects: the cabins were spread so far apart that Patrick Breen in his diary came to call inhabitants of other cabins “strangers” whose visits were rare. This scene furthermore shows a great deal of activity and livestock, when the emigrants were weakened already by low rations and livestock began to die almost immediately. It also neglects to include the snow that met the emigrants from the day they arrived. m Grayson stated in his 1990 mortality study that one-year-old Elizabeth Graves was one of the casualties, but she was rescued by the second relief. n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25376
**Categories:** American, Cannibal
---
### [Wincle](https://engole.info/wincle/)
**Published:** July 28, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/St_Michael%27s_Church._Wincle.jpg[/pimage]Village and civil parish in East Cheshire.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Wincle.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/X3ejf7PT8BzFv7VF6}}|Parish of Wincle
Wincle is a [village](https://engole.info/village) and [civil parish](https://engole.info/civil-parish) in the local authority district of Cheshire East, part of the [ceremonial county]() of Cheshire, situated at the south-western edge of the Peak District National Park. The village is centred around the Grade II [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) [St Michael’s Church](https://engole.info/church-of-st-michael-wincle) and the adjacent village school.{{sfnp|SCYY2QWW}}{{sfnp|45HFMULL}}
## Geography
Occupying an area of {{convert|1129|ha}},{{sfnp|K7GF5K5E}} Wincle lies in the hills that rise out of the eastern edge of the [Cheshire plain](https://engole.info/cheshire-plain). The landscape of the parish is mixed, with farmland interspersed with deciduous woodlands along the sides of the River Dane valley; on higher ground that gives way to heather [moorland](https://engole.info/moorland).{{sfnp|TQZEBK5N}}
Although Wincle is considered by some to be “relatively isolated”, the towns of Macclesfield, Buxton, Congleton and Leek are all less than {{convert|8|mi|spell=in}} away, and Greater Manchester, Merseyside, the Potteries and Sheffield are all within an hour’s drive.{{sfnp|TQZEBK5N}} As well as the village of Wincle, the parish includes the hamlets of Allgreave, Allmeadows, Clewlow Cross, Danebridge, Greasley, and Lanehouse.{{sfnp|4IEYL64J}}
## History
Wincle is not listed in Domesday, but in 1291 a settlement known as Wynkehull or “Wineca’s Hill” was recorded. The Dane Bridge, crossing through the then hamlet, was a major route between Leek and Macclesfield, first recorded in 1190 when it was known as Scliderford, meaning slippery ford.{{sfnp|U88S8KTB}}
Before becoming a parish in 1866, Wincle was a [chapelry](https://engole.info/chapel-of-ease) in the parish of Prestbury, in the [hundred](https://engole.info/hundred-shire-division) of Macclesfield, in the county palatine of Chester.{{sfnp|4IEYL64J}}
## Governance
Wincle holds parish meetings rather than parish council meetings, which means that all registered electors are entitled to attend.{{sfnp|2BAJ8WDQ}}
In terms of national government, Wincle belongs to the Sutton Ward,{{sfnp|UD7K3JFT}} part of the constituency of Macclesfield, represented in the UK Parliament by one MP.{{sfnp|DFKF7I67}}{{sfnp|WQTZ9D23}}
## Demographics
The 2021 Census recorded Wincle as having a population of 198, a population density of 0.18 per hectare,{{sfnp|K7GF5K5E}} the lowest in the Peak District.{{sfnp|TQZEBK5N}} As at 2026, the electoral register shows 147 adults living in the parish.{{sfnp|4IEYL64J}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30213
**Categories:** Parish, Village
---
### [Mary Baguley, witch](https://engole.info/mary-baguley-witch/)
**Published:** January 17, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Woman found guilty of causing the death of the schoolteacher Robert Hall by the use of magic, executed in 1675.
**Content:**
Mary Baguley (died 1675) was an English woman from Wildboarclough, Cheshire, accused of having bewitched the schoolteacher Robert Hall living in the nearby village of [Wincle](https://engole.info/wincle), and causing his death by the use of magic.{{sfnp|RLCKZCGS|196}} Hall’s wife reported that her husband told her one night that Mary Baguley was “witching him to death”, and had “crushed his heart in pieces”. During the following last ten days and nights of his life, she could only look on as he spat blood and suffered fits of trembling, constantly bathed in sweat.{{sfnp|QNBRB2A7|85}}
Mary was tried and found guilty at Chester Assizes, and executed by hanging.{{sfnp|RLCKZCGS|196}}
Witch trials in Cheshire were at their height during the 1650s and 1660s, during which time 32 people were tried for witchcraft in the county.{{sfnp|KH7JK56Q}}\[a\]Thirty women and two men.{{sfnp|KH7JK56Q}} Mary was the last person to be executed for witchcraft in Cheshire, but the last person to have been executed for witchcraft in England is generally considered to be [Alice Molland](https://engole.info/alice-molland), in 1685.{{sfnp|EASBDAX8}}
## See also
- [Witch trials in early modern England](https://engole.info/witch-trials-in-early-modern-england)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Thirty women and two men.{{sfnp|KH7JK56Q}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27147
**Categories:** Cheshire, Female, Witch
---
### [Spandrel](https://engole.info/spandrel/)
**Published:** August 1, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Paris_-_Arc_de_Triomphe_du_Carrousel_-_PA00085992_-_034.jpg[/pimage]Roughly triangular space above and on either side of an arch.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Paris_-_Arc_de_Triomphe_du_Carrousel_-_PA00085992_-_034.jpg)Spandrels decorated with figures of winged victories, Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, Paris
Wikimedia Commons
A spandrel is the roughly triangular space above and on either side of an arch.{{sfnp|S3VNDAJF}} The wall above the arch, forming the spandrel, is known as the spandrel wall.{{sfnp|KS8MJHMT}}
In a building with more than one floor, the term spandrel is also used to describe the space between the top of the window in one storey and the sill of the window in the storey above.{{sfnp|K6RDUX5Y|8, 31}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22017
**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Moravec's paradox](https://engole.info/moravecs-paradox/)
**Published:** March 7, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Observation by the robotics researcher Hans Moravec that tasks which are easy for humans are difficult for machines to replicate, and vice versa.
**Content:**
Moravec’s paradox is the observation by the robotics researcher Hans Moravec, published in 1988, that tasks which are easy for humans to perform, such as walking or facial gesture recognition, are difficult for machines to replicate; and conversely that tasks which are difficult for humans, such as mathematical calculations or large-scale data analysis, are relatively easy for machines to accomplish.{{sfnp|AV4Y3I8L}}
It is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility”.{{sfnp
— 3ZCE79YT|15}}
Moravec went on to offer an explanation for his paradox in terms of human evolution:
Encoded in the large, highly evolved sensory and motor portions of the human brain is a billion years of experience about the nature of the world and how to survive in it … We are all prodigious Olympians in perceptual and motor areas, so good that we make the difficult look easy. Abstract thought, though, is a new trick, perhaps less than 100 thousand years old. We have not yet mastered it. It is not all that intrinsically difficult; it just seems so when we do it.{{sfnp
— 3ZCE79YT|15-16}}
The mathematician and artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Marvin Minsky had made a similar point two years earlier, suggesting that the most difficult human skills to reverse engineer are those below the level of conscious awareness: “In general, we’re least aware of what our minds do best … we’re more aware of simple processes that don’t work well than of complex ones that work flawlessly”.{{sfnp|YV6GV3XA|29}} The cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker wrote in 1994 that “the main lesson of thirty-five years of AI research is that the hard problems are easy and the easy problems are hard”.{{sfnp|X75JQFLW|190}}
Although AI approaches such as large language models (LLMs) can capture large amounts of data and apply it to new problems, they can only be trained on communications between humans. So nowhere can any such model find instructions on how to move an arm to clean a greasy pan or walk, for instance, because every human already knows how to do that. Robots lack the basic skills humans take for granted, such as how to hold a pencil, or pick up a knife.{{sfnp|IVKZYEXH}}
When a computer defeated the world champion at chess in 1996, it could select the best moves but needed a person to move the pieces. Twenty years later, when AlphaGo defeated the world champion in Go, it still could not move the pieces on its own. Today, LLMs can solve gold medal IMO [International Mathematical Olympiad] problems, but can’t write down the answer with a pencil.{{sfnp
— IVKZYEXH}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29446
## External links
- [AI struggles to solve Moravec’s paradox](https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1322483995763119)
**Categories:** Artificial intelligence, Paradox
---
### [Church of St Michael, Wincle](https://engole.info/church-of-st-michael-wincle/)
**Published:** July 29, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Church-of-St-Michael-Wincle.webp[/pimage]Grade II listed active Anglican church in the village of Wincle, East Cheshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/St_Michael%27s_Church._Wincle.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/sC8daypQs4nHNUVx6
St Michael’s is an active Anglican church in the [village](https://engole.info/village) of [Wincle](https://engole.info/wincle), in East Cheshire. It is in the Archdeaconry of Macclesfield, the Deanery of Macclesfield and the Diocese of Chester, and is one of the three churches in the [Benefice](https://engole.info/benefice) of Wincle, Wildboarclough and Bosley.{{sfnp|WGYNNNRH}}
The church occupies the site of a Neolithic burial ground. The original building, completed in 1647, was substantially restored by Edward Witts in 1882; there is a dated lintel from the original structure over the priest’s door. The tower dates from about 1820.{{sfnp|LAJL9MQN}}{{sfnp|HPPIP9TY}}{{sfnp|WZQQTVJ2|676}}
St Michael’s was designated a Grade II [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1984.{{sfnp|HPPIP9TY}} The southeast corner of the churchyard contains the grave of Private L. Belfield of the South Wales Borderers, who died fighting in the First World War.{{sfnp|ZAGA689S}}
## Architecture
The church is built in buff coursed rubble gritstone with [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) [quoins](https://engole.info/quoin), and has a roof of banded grey tiles. It is built to a plain rectangular pattern with five bays and no [aisles](https://engole.info/aisle-architecture), with a three-stage battlemented west tower; the bell openings have louvres of Kerridge stone.{{sfnp|HPPIP9TY}}
Historic England have described the interior as “unadorned”. The font is dated 1861.{{sfnp|HPPIP9TY}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30216
## External links
- [Official web site](https://winclechurch.org.uk)
**Categories:** Anglican, Cheshire, Church
---
### [Pilaster](https://engole.info/pilaster/)
**Published:** December 29, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/4843950_a329cc78.jpg[/pimage]Decorative architectural element used to give the appearance of a supporting column, to articulate an extent of wall.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/4843950_a329cc78.jpg)West front of Wentworth Woodhouse, near Rotherham, showing four fluted Corinthian pilasters
geograph
A pilaster is an architectural element used to give the appearance of a supporting column, intended to articulate an extent of wall. It consists of an addition to the main wall surface, usually designed to look like a column with a capital at the top and a plinth at the bottom. If lacking a base and capital, it is known as a pilaster strip, or lesene;{{sfnp|IJ63XMFZ}} when a pilaster appears at the corner intersection of two walls it is known as a canton.{{sfnp|ACIIILPB|266}}
In contrast to the supporting column it is intended to emulate, the pilaster is merely decorative, and has no structural function.{{sfnp|IJ63XMFZ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25842
**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [The Twentieth Century Society](https://engole.info/the-twentieth-century-society/)
**Published:** July 11, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/C20.webp[/pimage]Amenity society founded in 1979 to protect Britain's post-1914 architectural heritage.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/C20.webp)The Twentieth Century Society
The Twentieth Century Society, founded in 1979 as The Thirties Society, is a British charity that campaigns for the preservation of architectural heritage from 1914 onwards. It is one of the [National Amenity Societies](https://engole.info/amenity-society), in which capacity it is a statutory consultee on alterations to listed buildings within its period of interest if they involve any degree of demolition.{{sfnp|T5KQCMAZ}}{{sfnp|GY8RUCGM}}
The catalyst for the society’s formation was the proposal to replace Lloyd’s of London’s Classical-style 1928 headquarters with a new, modernist, Richard Rogers building. Marcus Binney (founder of Save Britain’s Heritage), John Harris (director of the RIBA drawings collection) and Simon Jenkins (editor of London’s *Evening Standard*) felt that the existing building “represented a whole body of important architecture of the period that deserved more sympathetic assessment”.{{sfnp|GY8RUCGM}} Ultimately the entrance to the 1928 building was retained and incorporated into Rogers’ 1986 design.{{sfnp|GMP3UK8M}}
The society’s original aim had been to protect the architectural heritage of the 1920s and ’30s, but as it became increasingly apparent that post-1939 structures were also at risk, it was decided in 1992 to change the society’s name to The Twentieth Century Society, to reflect its broadening interest.{{sfnp|GY8RUCGM}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27649
## External links
- [Official web site](https://c20society.org.uk/)
**Categories:** Society, Town and country planning
---
### [The Faraway Tree](https://engole.info/the-faraway-tree/)
**Published:** July 2, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Faraway-tree.jpg[/pimage]Series of four novels for children written by Enid Blyton. The stories are set in an enchanted wood in which a gigantic magical tree grows – the titular Faraway Tree.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Faraway-tree.jpg)Pinterest
The Faraway Tree is a series of four novels for children written by [Enid Blyton](https://engole.info/enid-blyton/): *The Enchanted Wood* (1939), *The Magic Faraway Tree* (1943), *The Folk of the Faraway Tree* (1946) and *Up the Faraway Tree* (1951).
The stories are set in an enchanted wood in which a gigantic magical tree grows – the titular Faraway Tree. The tree is so tall that its topmost branches reach into the clouds, and it is wide enough to accommodate small houses carved into its trunk. Jo, Bessie and Fanny, three siblings, discover the tree after their family moves into a house close to the wood. The Faraway Tree is inhabited by fairies, and its topmost branches lead to ever-changing magical lands, where the children’s adventures take place. The children are free to come and go as they please, but if they fail to leave before the land they are in moves on they are trapped until that same land returns to the Faraway Tree.
Notable lands include the Land of Birthdays, the Land of Goodies, the Land of Take-What-You-Want, the Land of Do-As-You-Please, and the Land of Dame Slap.
## Publication history
The first book of the main trilogy, *The Enchanted Wood*, was published in 1939, although the Faraway Tree and Moon-Face had already made a brief appearance in 1936 in *The Yellow Fairy Book*. A picture-strip book, *Up the Faraway Tree*, was published in 1951. The stories have been illustrated by various artists including Dorothy Wheeler, Rene Cloke, Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone, and Georgina Hargreaves.{{sfnp|9Q38N3XF}}
## Characters
The main characters are Jo, Bessie and Fanny, three siblings. Fanny is the youngest, Bessie is next in age and Jo is their big brother. They live near the enchanted wood and become friendly with the residents of the Faraway Tree. Other characters include:
- The Angry Pixie, who lives in a house with a tiny window and has a habit of throwing cold water or any liquid at hand over people who dare to peep inside.
- An owl lives in the house next to the Angry Pixie’s. He is a friend of Silky’s.
- Silky the fairy, named after her long, silky, golden hair. She is one of the children’s regular companions when they go up the Tree to other worlds.
- Mr. Watzisname cannot remember his name. He sleeps and snores all the time. During a particular story at the Land of Secrets, Mr. Watzisname discovers that his name is Kollamoolitumarellipawkyrollo. This is forgotten by the end of the story (even by the man himself) and he goes back to being Mr. Watzisname.
- Dame Washalot, who spends her time washing her clothes and throwing the dirty wash-water down the tree. If she has no clothes to wash she washes other people’s laundry, and even the leaves of the Faraway Tree.
- Moon-Face, named for his round face that looks like the moon. His house is similarly round, and is filled with curved furniture. He is the owner of the slippery-slip, a slide in the middle of his house which goes to the bottom of the Faraway Tree; given its obvious use as a means of gaining access to the tree, it has played an important role in some of the adventures in which others have sought control of the tree or its rooms.
- The Saucepan Man, who lives with Mr. Watzisname. Sometimes he cannot understand what his friends are saying because he is partially deaf, which is further aggravated by the noise from the pans and kettles he always carries. The Saucepan Man also appears in another lesser-known Blyton book, *The Book of Brownies* (aka *Brownie Tales*), helping the travellers on their journey.
- The Saucepan Man’s mother, who lives with Dame Washalot after *The Folk of the Faraway Tree*. She runs a cake shop.
- Dame Snap, who runs a school for bad pixies which, in some of the adventures, the friends accidentally land in.
## Revisions
In modern reprints, the names of some of the characters have been changed. Jo has become Joe, the more common spelling for males, and Bessie is now called Beth, the former name having fallen out of fashion as a nickname for Elizabeth. Fanny, whose name has come to carry unfortunate connotations to a modern reader, has been renamed Frannie. Dame Slap has become Dame Snap, and no longer practises corporal punishment, instead reprimanding her students by shouting at them.{{sfnp|5KDSLKTL}}
## Adaptations
Stories from the novels were adapted into ten-minute episodes for the 1997 BBC television series *Enid Blyton’s Enchanted Lands*.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3092
**Categories:** Children's literature
---
### [Agnes Finnie, witch](https://engole.info/agnes-finnie-witch/)
**Published:** April 13, 2024
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/The_Old_Tolbooth.jpg[/pimage]Edinburgh widow who was tried, convicted and executed for witchcraft.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/The_Old_Tolbooth.jpg)Old Tolbooth, Edinburgh, where Agnes Finnie was imprisoned in 1644
Wikimedia Commons
Agnes Finnie or Fynnie (c. 1596 – 6 March 1645) was a Scottish woman executed for witchcraft and sorcery in Edinburgh. A bitter and sharp-tongued widow, she was arrested and imprisoned in the city tolbooth in mid-1644. Her trial eventually took place in December that year, after she objected to being held for so long without any apparent further action. Twenty charges were levelled against her in the indictment; she was defended by two experienced defence advocates and the legal arguments were lengthy, so the jury were not sent out to deliberate until 19 December.
Verdicts in witchcraft cases were routinely given quickly, but the jury did not return its verdict until 8 February 1645; Agnes was found guilty and condemned to be strangled and burned. Again diverging from the usual conventions of almost immediate execution, she was not taken to Castlehill for the sentence to be carried out until 6 March 1645.
## Personal life
Born in about 1596,\[a\]Agnes was aged about 48 when she was tried in 1644.{{sfnp|EVLMWMQ4|149}} Agnes Finnie or Fynnie\[b\]Various spellings are used: Ffynnie; Fhinnie; Finney; or Phinnie.{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|889}} In Scotland and England at this time spelling was haphazard, leading to many words, places and names having several variations.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|15-16}} had married James Robertson; the couple had at least one child a daughter, Margaret.{{sfnp|2KM83BUV|142}} She had married by 1628,{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|627}} but despite leaving home she maintained an extremely close relationship with her mother.{{sfnp|DHGFPQ92|22}} Left a widow, Agnes lived in the area of Edinburgh known as Potterrow Port; she had a shop at her home selling basic food items.{{sfnp|EGN7M2ZA|10}} By the 1630s the residents and traders in the Potterrow were sliding into increasing poverty, but as a “prosperous commoner”,{{sfnp|EVLMWMQ4|149}} Agnes was able to supplement her income by lending money or extending credit to her customers. She also let out one of her rooms to an elderly odd-job man.{{sfnp|EGN7M2ZA|41-43}}
Sharp-tongued and vindictive, Agnes was frequently in bitter disputes with her clients and neighbours,{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|627}} although she evidently did try to be kind when she attempted to help the sick child of a neighbour.{{sfnp|LZCSSTRY|109}} Margaret inherited her mother’s bad-tempered characteristics.{{sfnp|2KM83BUV|142}}
## Arrest and imprisonment
Harry Morrison or Moriesoun, a Potterrow resident, met with the minister of Greyfriars Kirk to declare Agnes was a witch.{{sfnp|EGN7M2ZA|165}} Agnes was arrested by the Edinburgh Provost and bailies in June 1644;{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|628}}\[c\]Historian Mary Craig gives the date of Morrison’s complaint as 8 July 1644,{{sfnp|EGN7M2ZA|165}} the same date listed on the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft database as the case start date,{{sfnp|XF6FHN22}} yet James Irvine Smith and other academics state Agnes was arrested in June 1644.{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|628}} The discrepancy might simply be that 8 July is the date when the Presbytery authorised further action officially triggering a formal investigation. her house was searched for witchcraft paraphernalia such as wax figures but no such evidence was discovered there.{{sfnp|2KM83BUV|142}} Nevertheless Agnes was incarcerated in the Edinburgh Tolbooth.{{sfnp|EGN7M2ZA|172}} Conditions in the cells were harsh with some accused of witchcraft dying of starvation{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|154}} but Agnes was taken food by her daughter when she managed to occasionally visit her.{{sfnp|EGN7M2ZA|176-177}} By 6 November 1644 Agnes had been imprisoned for about eighteen weeks{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|628}} when she protested to the Privy Council that “her prosecutors would neither try her nor liberate her so that she is likely to die”.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|195}}
The ministers of the Kirk session in Edinburgh had however spent at least two days during July 1644 interviewing witnesses. It relayed its findings to the presbytery who gave permission for the matter to be pursued and a draft indictment collated. It was not until the Privy Council intervened following the complaint from Agnes that any further action was taken. The Council instructed that court action had to be initiated within two weeks from its interviews with Morrison, the Provost and bailies on 12 November.{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|628}}
## Trial
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/John_Nisbet%2C_Lord_Dirleton%2C_by_John_Scougall.jpg)Academics suggest that John Nisbet, who was later elevated to Lord Dirleton, was one of the advocates who defended Agnes at her trial.
Wikimedia Commons
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/George_Jamesone_1589-1590-1644_-_Sir_Thomas_Hope_d.1646_Lord_Advocate_of_Scotland_-_PG_953_-_National_Galleries_of_Scotland.webp)Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall led the case for the prosecution
Wikimedia Commons
Most witchcraft cases in Scotland were undertaken by unqualified local commissioners, owing to time and staff constraints on the main courts,{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|107,184}} but the proceedings for Agnes’s trial began on 11 December in the Edinburgh central justiciary court.{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|628}}{{sfnp|VBNTMM2M|127}}\[d\]James Irvine Smith gives 5 December in his comments on the case{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|628}} yet the original document transcript he reproduces shows 11 December;{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|636}} Mary Craig reports 11 December.{{sfnp|EGN7M2ZA|205}} She had secured the services of two skilled advocates, John Nisbet\[e\]James Irvine Smith indicates this was the same John Nisbet who was later elevated to Lord Dirleton, Lord Advocate;{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|911}} the Survey of Scottish witchcraft makes the same suggestion.{{sfnp|YY4Y29Z8}} and John Lawtie to defend her.{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|628}} Accomplished successful adroit lawyers were presenting the case for the prosecution: Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall assisted by John Oliphant.{{sfnp|EGN7M2ZA|209}}\[f\]Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall (1573–1646) was regarded by his contemporaries as “a remarkably talented and successful lawyer”;{{sfnp|2IC3T4NY}} he was prosecutor in 21 other witchcraft trials, all resulting in convictions.{{sfnp|EGN7M2ZA|209}}
At the commencement of the trial Nisbet and Lawtie complained they had not been allowed to interview Agnes, nor had they been informed of the exact charges levelled against her, so they successfully sought an adjournment;{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|628}} the court reconvened on 18 December.{{sfnp|EGN7M2ZA|205}}
### Charges
Twenty charges were listed in the indictment against Agnes, many involving quarrels concerning her money-lending activities or financial dealings from the sale of goods in her shop.{{sfnp|T8B6IGWN|190-191}} Petty grievances from up to 16 years earlier were given in the accusations made by “a motley collection: irate husbands; a deacon of one of the crafts, fond of drink and with an unhappy married life; a drunkard, ‘a poor drunken wobster’ ”;{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|628}} and other neighbours or customers who claimed to remember the precise words spoken many years beforehand.{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|628}} Allegations included that at least six people she cursed throughout the years became ill: a woman died two weeks after being cursed by Agnes following a dispute over the sale of fish; another fractured her leg in a fall; someone else was unable to speak and experienced right side paralysis; yet another curse resulted in a woman being blinded in one eye.{{sfnp|XEMSADEG|191-192}}
### Confession
The final allegation, article 20 of the indictment, makes a general charge that she fraternised with the Devil to evoke afflictions and illness as well as claiming she declared at an Edinburgh Kirk session that she had “bene commonlie callit ane rank witch thir XXVIII yeiris bygane or thairby”.{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|631-632}} The prosecution insisted this was a confession but this was challenged by the defence who maintained she had simply admitted others deemed her to be a witch.{{sfnp|EGN7M2ZA|218-219}} Agnes had not been named by any other witches and no details of any meetings with the Devil were given.{{sfnp|2KM83BUV|142}} Prosecutors argued that because no one had seen her with the Devil it simply established how guileful a witch she was as her meetings had been undetected.{{sfnp|EGN7M2ZA|213-214}}
## Verdict and execution
The selected jury comprised residents and neighbours of Agnes from the Potterrow area.{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|634}}
The jury returned its verdict on 8 February 1645; Agnes was guilty of “being in continual society and company of the Devil” and sentenced to death.{{sfnp|EGN7M2ZA|224}} In Scottish witchcraft cases, the death sentence was routinely carried out very quickly after the verdict was declared,{{sfnp|WY3X79NN|197}} usually within a few days.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|103}} Agnes was not taken to Castlehill to be strangled and her body burned until 6 March, almost four weeks after her conviction.{{sfnp|EGN7M2ZA|226-227}}
## Later interpretations
Writing in 1974 Sheriff James Irvine Smith QC\[g\]James Irvine Smith, QC, (1926–2016) was described as “one of Scotland’s leading criminal advocates” who also made “significant contributions to the history of Scots law.”{{sfnp|JWBQ3ULG}} Well known for his judgement in the 1974 trial of Rangers Football Club concerning the Ibrox disaster, he is described as having a “formidable insight into criminal law” and as “one of the most eloquent and knowledgeable criminal lawyers at the Scottish Bar”.{{sfnp|U8A63VPT}} described the documents of her trial as an “almost unique” detailed demonstration of witchcraft persecution and the legal pleadings used in the seventeenth century.{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|627}} It was standard practice for transcripts of witchcraft trials to reflect the bias of scribes but the words of the defence advocates in this case were accurately represented without any “metacommunication”.{{sfnp|EVLMWMQ4|151}}\[h\]Metacommunication: containing embroidered or additional commentary{{sfnp|4VK3ZAWC}}
Modern day academics have highlighted similarities between the legal arguments used in Agnes’ case and those of the earlier trial of [Isobel Young](https://engole.info/isobel-young-witch/) in 1629;{{sfnp|XEMSADEG|200}} Sir Thomas Hope acted as prosecutor in both cases.{{sfnp|XEMSADEG|187, 193}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Agnes was aged about 48 when she was tried in 1644.{{sfnp|EVLMWMQ4|149}} b Various spellings are used: Ffynnie; Fhinnie; Finney; or Phinnie.{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|889}} In Scotland and England at this time spelling was haphazard, leading to many words, places and names having several variations.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|15-16}} c Historian Mary Craig gives the date of Morrison’s complaint as 8 July 1644,{{sfnp|EGN7M2ZA|165}} the same date listed on the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft database as the case start date,{{sfnp|XF6FHN22}} yet James Irvine Smith and other academics state Agnes was arrested in June 1644.{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|628}} The discrepancy might simply be that 8 July is the date when the Presbytery authorised further action officially triggering a formal investigation. d James Irvine Smith gives 5 December in his comments on the case{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|628}} yet the original document transcript he reproduces shows 11 December;{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|636}} Mary Craig reports 11 December.{{sfnp|EGN7M2ZA|205}} e James Irvine Smith indicates this was the same John Nisbet who was later elevated to Lord Dirleton, Lord Advocate;{{sfnp|SSSJD43R|911}} the Survey of Scottish witchcraft makes the same suggestion.{{sfnp|YY4Y29Z8}} f Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall (1573–1646) was regarded by his contemporaries as “a remarkably talented and successful lawyer”;{{sfnp|2IC3T4NY}} he was prosecutor in 21 other witchcraft trials, all resulting in convictions.{{sfnp|EGN7M2ZA|209}} g James Irvine Smith, QC, (1926–2016) was described as “one of Scotland’s leading criminal advocates” who also made “significant contributions to the history of Scots law.”{{sfnp|JWBQ3ULG}} Well known for his judgement in the 1974 trial of Rangers Football Club concerning the Ibrox disaster, he is described as having a “formidable insight into criminal law” and as “one of the most eloquent and knowledgeable criminal lawyers at the Scottish Bar”.{{sfnp|U8A63VPT}} h Metacommunication: containing embroidered or additional commentary{{sfnp|4VK3ZAWC}} i, j, k 7px \* 2 )/3
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25614
**Categories:** Female, Scottish, Witch
---
### [There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe](https://engole.info/there-was-an-old-woman-who-lived-in-a-shoe/)
**Published:** August 28, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/There_Was_An_Old_Woman_Who_Lived_In_A_Shoe_-_WW_Denslow_-_Project_Gutenberg_etext_18546.jpg[/pimage]English nursery rhyme about a woman with many children.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/There_Was_An_Old_Woman_Who_Lived_In_A_Shoe_-_WW_Denslow_-_Project_Gutenberg_etext_18546.jpg)Illustration by W. W. Denslow, from a 1901 edition of *Mother Goose*
Wikimedia Commons
“There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe” is an English nursery rhyme. Debates over its meaning and origin have largely centred on attempts to match the old woman with historical female figures who have had large families, although King George II (1683–1760) has also been proposed as the rhyme’s subject. It is uncertain how old the rhyme is, but it may have its roots in a folklore tradition linking shoes to fertility.
## Lyrics
The most common version of the rhyme is:{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|522-524}}
> There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
> She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do;
> She gave them some broth without any bread;
> Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.
The earliest printed version, in Joseph Ritson’s *Gammer Gurton’s Garland* in 1794, has the coarser last line “She whipped all their bums, and sent them to bed.{{sfnp|VZEGHXJ7|27}}
Many other variations were printed in the 18th and 19th centuries.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|522-524}} Marjorie Ainsworth Decker published a Christian version of the rhyme in her *The Christian Mother Goose Book* published in 1978:
> There was an old woman
> Who lived in a shoe,
> She had so many children,
> And loved them all, too.
> She said, “Thank you Lord Jesus,
> For sending them bread.”
> Then kissed them all gladly
> and sent them to bed.
## Origin and meaning
Iona and Peter Opie point to the version published in *Infant Institutes* in 1797, which finishes with the lines:
> Then out went th’ old woman to bespeak ’em a coffin,
> And when she came back, she found ’em all a-loffeing.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|522-524}}
The term “a-loffeing”, they believe, was Shakespearean, suggesting that the rhyme is considerably older than the first printed versions. They then speculated that if this were true, it might have a folklore meaning and pointed to the connection between shoes and fertility, perhaps exemplified by casting a shoe after a bride as she leaves for her honeymoon,{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|522-524}} or tying shoes to the departing couple’s car.{{sfnp|UU739T26}} The archaeologist Ralph Merrifield has pointed out that in Lancashire it was the custom for females who wished to conceive to try on the shoes of a woman who had just given birth.{{sfnp|QPNJAG7R|134}}
Debates over the meaning of the rhyme have largely revolved around matching the old woman with historical figures, as Peter Opie observed “for little reason other than the size of their families”. Candidates include Queen Caroline, the wife of King George II (1683–1760), who had eight children, and Elizabeth Vergoose of Boston, who had six children of her own and ten stepchildren.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|522-524}}
Albert Jack has proposed a political origin for the rhyme. George II was nicknamed the “old woman”, because it was widely believed that Queen Caroline was the real power behind the throne.\[a\]The idea that George II was dominated by his queen is expressed in this contemporary verse:{{sfnp|UU739T26}}
You may strut, dapper George,
But it will be in vain;
We all know it is Queen Caroline
Not you that reign. According to this explanation, the children are the Members of Parliament (MPs) that George was unable to control, the whip refers to the political office of that name – the MP whose role is to ensure that members of his party vote according to the party line – and the bed is the House of Commons, which MPs were required to attend daily. The phrase “gave them some broth without any bread” may refer to George’s parsimony in the wake of the South Sea Bubble of 1721, and his attempts to restore his own and the country’s finances.{{sfnp|UU739T26}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The idea that George II was dominated by his queen is expressed in this contemporary verse:{{sfnp|UU739T26}}
You may strut, dapper George,
But it will be in vain;
We all know it is Queen Caroline
Not you that reign.
**Categories:** Nursery rhyme
---
### [Church of St Matthew,Walsall](https://engole.info/church-of-st-matthew-walsall/)
**Published:** July 27, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/South_aspect_of_St_Matthew%27s_Church_Walsall.jpg/1920px-South_aspect_of_St_Matthew%27s_Church_Walsall.jpg[/pimage]Grade II* designated active Anglican church in Walsall, West Midlands.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/South_aspect_of_St_Matthew%27s_Church_Walsall.jpg/1920px-South_aspect_of_St_Matthew%27s_Church_Walsall.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/DQjbWc94FMxQgaXv8}}
South aspect
St Matthew’s is an active Anglican church in Walsall, West Midlands. It is in the Archdeaconry of Walsall, the Deanery of Walsall, the Diocese of Lichfield, and the [Benefice](https://engole.info/benefice) of Walsall Saint Matthew.{{sfnp|N5KIV2N3}} The church was originally dedicated to All Saints, but has been known as St. Matthew’s since the 18th century.{{sfnp|3DNVW26Y}}
Occupying a prominent position overlooking the town centre, a church has existed on the site since at least 1200; the earliest part of the present-day church, the crypt, dates from the 12th century.{{sfnp|3DNVW26Y}}
St Matthew’s was designated a Grade II\* [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1951.{{sfnp|2ZGZIRRQ}} Its condition having been assessed as “poor” and “declining”, it has been added to Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register.{{sfnp|F89GIZSP}}
## Architecture
### Exterior
St Matthew’s comprises a [nave](https://engole.info/nave) with [clerestory](https://engole.info/clerestory), north and south [aisles](https://engole.info/aisle-architecture), [transepts](https://engole.info/transept), a south-west tower with spire, and a [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) with crypt and north organ chamber. The nave was rebuilt by Francis Goodwin in 1820–1821, when the exterior of the nave and tower was given a cladding of Bath stone. The late 15th-century [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) was restored by Ewan Christian in 1887–1880.{{sfnp|3DNVW26Y}}{{sfnp|2ZGZIRRQ}} Owing to it becoming twisted, the spire had to be replaced in 1779, and was restored in 1951. The tower clock was installed in 1865.{{sfnp|3DNVW26Y}}
### Interior
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/St-Matthews-chancel.webp)The chancel
Church of St Matthews
The interior has five-bay nave [arcades](https://engole.info/arcade) with iron piers on stone bases. The flat nave ceiling has a plaster fan vault with pendant bosses. The early 15th-century octagonal alabaster font has a lead lining dated 1712. The timber chancel screen, in the Arts and Crafts style, was installed in 1915.{{sfnp|3DNVW26Y}}{{sfnp|2ZGZIRRQ}}
The [sedilia](https://engole.info/sedilia) and [piscina](https://engole.info/piscina) are 19th-century restorations. The choir stalls incorporate some 15th-century woodwork, including a series of 18 [misericords](https://engole.info/misericord).{{sfnp|2ZGZIRRQ}}
## Bells
The peal of twelve bells includes four dating from before 1553, another before 1656 and another cast in 1674. Two more were added in 1863, and when all ten were recast by Taylor and Co. of Loughborough in 1928 another two bells were added. The front eight bells make a complete octave.{{sfnp|3DNVW26Y}}
## Organ
The organ was built by Samuel Green of London and installed in 1773. It was rebuilt and enlarged by J. W. Walker & Sons in 1953, using the old pipe work and some of Green’s stops. The organ was rebuilt and modified again in 1999–2000, retaining the Walker console but installing new solid-state transmission and piston capture systems, with some new pipework.{{sfnp|4M4S9UF3}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30208
## External links
- [Official web site](https://www.stmatthewswalsall.co.uk/)
**Categories:** Anglican, Church
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in West Midlands](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-west-midlands/)
**Published:** July 21, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/West_Midlands_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-West_Midlands_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the ceremonial and metropolitan county of West Midlands.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/West_Midlands_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-West_Midlands_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png)West Midlands shown within England
Wikimedia Commons
The [ceremonial](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) and metropolitan county of West Midlands is made up of seven metropolitan boroughs: Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall, and Wolverhampton.{{sfnp|W6IAH5EG}}
The Grade I [listed buldings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county are shown in separate lists for each borough, but there are no such structures in Walsall. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
- Grade I listed buildings in Birmingham
- [Grade I listed buildings in Coventry](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-coventry)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Dudley](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-dudley)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Sandwell](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-sandwell)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Solihull](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-solihull)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Wolverhampton](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-wolverhampton)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30184
**Categories:** West Midlands
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Witch of Berkeley](https://engole.info/witch-of-berkeley/)
**Published:** April 15, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Witchofberkeley.jpg[/pimage]Legendary 11th–century witch who tried and failed to prevent the Devil from claiming her body after her death.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Witchofberkeley.jpg)Illustration from the *Nuremberg Chronicle* of the Witch of Berkeley being carried off on horseback by the Devil.
Wikimedia Commons
The medieval chronicler William of Malmesbury, writing in the 1120s, tells how a woman living in Berkeley, Gloucestershire – “addicted to witchcraft … excessively gluttonous, perfectly lascivious” – had sold her soul to the Devil in return for his assistance in rescuing her from her “wretched circumstances”.{{sfnp|WYACT5J5|230}}
One day in 1065 the woman was warned by her pet jackdaw that her death was imminent.\[a\]The jackdaw may have been an early form of a [witch’s familiar](https://engole.info/witchs-familiar).{{sfnp|WSYSMNNT}} Knowing that she could not save her soul, she begged her family to at least protect her body, by sewing it up in a stag’s hide and laying it in a stone coffin fastened with three chains; after standing in a church for three nights, her body could then be safely buried. But each night demons entered and broke one of the chains. Finally the Devil dragged the woman out of the church and set her behind him on “a black horse … with iron hooks projecting over the whole of his \[the horse’s\] back … her pitiable cries … were heard for nearly the space of four miles”.{{sfnp|WSYSMNNT}}{{sfnp|WYACT5J5|231-232}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The jackdaw may have been an early form of a [witch’s familiar](https://engole.info/witchs-familiar).{{sfnp|WSYSMNNT}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24627
**Categories:** English, Female, Witch
---
### [The Penny Illustrated Paper](https://engole.info/the-penny-illustrated-paper/)
**Published:** October 1, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/The_Penny_Illustrated_Paper_and_Illustrated_Times_no._849_-_front_cover.jpg[/pimage]Daily newspaper published under various names from 1861 until 1913.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/The_Penny_Illustrated_Paper_and_Illustrated_Times_no._849_-_front_cover.jpg)Cover of 17 November 1877 issue
Wikimedia Commons
*The Penny Illustrated Paper* was a daily newspaper published from 12 October 1861 until 28 December 1907.{{sfnp|JK4IG262}} Published seven days a week, it was revived as *PIP: The Penny Illustrated Paper* from 1908 until 1913, when it was once again reborn, as *London Life: P.I.P*. for the last few months of its existence, from 5 April to 24 May 1913.{{sfnp|XS6UEZUW}}
## References
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## Works cited
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**Categories:** Newspaper
---
### [Making of Bread, etc. Act 1800](https://engole.info/making-of-bread-etc-act-1800/)
**Published:** June 21, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png[/pimage]The Making of Bread, etc. Act 1800 (41 Geo. III c. 16), also known as the Brown Bread Act or the Poison Act, was a British Act of Parliament that prohibited millers from producing any flour other than wholemeal flour.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Making of Bread, etc. Act 1800 (41 Geo. III c. 16), also known as the Brown Bread Act, was a British Act of Parliament that prohibited millers from producing any flour other than wholemeal flour. The Act was introduced as one of a series of measures to deal with a severe food shortage, caused at least partly by the poor wheat harvest of 1799. Labourers and their families at that time lived very largely on bread, the price of which could account for more than half of their weekly wages.{{sfnp|TDBEN6LI|189-193}} The Act proved to be very unpopular, and impossible to enforce.{{sfnp|LWSXA37K|339}} So concerned was the government by the civil unrest that resulted, the Act was repealed after less than two months. One account from Horsham, in Sussex, demonstrates the depth of public feeling:
A number of women … proceeded to Gosden wind-mill, where, abusing the miller for having served them with brown flour, they seized on the cloth with which he was then dressing meal according to the directions of the Bread Act, and cut it into a thousand pieces; threatening at the same time to serve all similar utensils he might in future attempt to use in the same manner.{{sfnp
— TDBEN6LI|189-193}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Married Women's Property Act 1870](https://engole.info/married-womens-property-act-1870/)
**Published:** October 22, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that allowed married women to be the legal owners of money they earned and to inherit property.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Married Women’s Property Act 1870 (33 & 34 Vict c 93) was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that allowed married women to be the legal owners of the money they earned and to inherit property.
Before 1870, a married woman forfeited the rights to any property she owned to her husband. Under the legal doctrine of coverture, the two persons were henceforth regarded as one, and “that one \[was\] the husband”.{{sfnp|Q7GKJASZ}} In addition, any property inherited by the woman, or money earned by her during the marriage, also legally belonged to her husband. Although ownership of all a husband’s property would normally revert to his wife on his death,{{sfnp|Q7GKJASZ}} the man was legally entitled to dispose of it as he wished during his lifetime, and even will it away to someone else. {{sfnp|4XPCBXM9}}
Beginning in the mid-19th century, women started to campaign for married and unmarried women to have equal legal rights, culminating in the unsuccessful introduction into parliament of the Married Women’s Property Bill in 1868.{{sfnp|KRP7X5GP}}
## Major provisions
- Money earned by a wife from any employment, occupation or trade, or her literary, scientific, artistic or other skills, were to be held by her for her own separate use, independently from her husband, as was the income from any investments made using that money.
- A wife was allowed to keep any property she inherited from her next of kin as her own, subject to that property not being bound in a trust. She could also inherit money up to £200, equivalent to about £130,000 as at 2021.\[a\]Calculated using average earnings.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
- A married woman was allowed to hold rented property in her own name and to inherit rented property.
- Married women were made equally liable with their husbands for the maintenance of their children.
The Act did not apply retrospectively, only to marriages after its passage into law.{{sfnp|D9DURHQV}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using average earnings.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [The Woodentops](https://engole.info/the-woodentops/)
**Published:** March 25, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/TheWoodentops.jpg[/pimage]BBC children’s television programme that ran from 1955 until 1957 as the Friday programme in the weekly cycle of Watch With Mother.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/TheWoodentops.jpg)Opening titles
Wikimedia Commons
*The Woodentops* is a children’s television series first broadcast on BBC Television in 1955. Created by Freda Lingstrom and Maria Bird, it featured on the Friday edition of *Watch with Mother*.{{sfnp|VGI86F9Z}} The main characters are the members of a family living on a farm.{{sfnp|9U6CHS75}}
Every episode began by introducing the wooden string-puppets sitting in front of a curtain: Mummy and Daddy Woodentop, Baby Woodentop, the twins Jenny and Willy, and Spotty Dog, joined by the domestic servant Mrs Scrubbitt and Sam, who works on the farm.{{sfnp|9U6CHS75}}
Episodes were made in a “tin shed” at the BBC’s Lime Grove studios. Unlike other puppet shows in the *Watch with Mother* series, such as the mute Andy Pandy, the narration was minimal, with the puppets largely appearing to speak for themselves.{{sfnp|VGI86F9Z}} The last of the 26 episodes was recorded in 1958, but the series was repeated until 1973.{{sfnp|VGI86F9Z}}{{sfnp|4HEV8E69}}
The introductory music is an excerpt from the 22nd of the set of 25 Norwegian folk songs and dances for piano, Opus 17 by Edvard Grieg, *So lokka me over den myra* (*Calling the Cows Home*).{{sfnp|4HEV8E69}}
The puppets, preserved by the BBC, were stolen in 1983. They were discovered a year later in Phillips’ auction room in London,{{sfnp|VGI86F9Z}} and are now in the collection of the Museum of London.{{sfnp|6Q63SMMN}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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## External links
- [Episode of *The Woodentops* from 1958](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKwlYAk1RDw)
**Categories:** Children’s, Television programme
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Rag, Tag and Bobtail](https://engole.info/rag-tag-and-bobtail/)
**Published:** July 12, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Rag-tag-and-bobtail.png[/pimage]BBC children’s television programme that ran from 1953 until 1965 as the Thursday programme in the weekly cycle of Watch With Mother.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Rag-tag-and-bobtail.png)YouTube
*Rag, Tag and Bobtail* was a BBC children’s television programme that ran from 1953 until 1965 as the Thursday programme in the weekly cycle of *Watch With Mother*.{{sfnp|7IWIHNKH}} The scripts were written by Louise Cochrane,{{sfnp|SEFLNUBK|146}} and the series was produced by Freda Lingstrom and David Boisseau. Narration was by Charles E. Stidwell, David Enders, and James Urquhart. The three main characters were Rag, a hedgehog; Tag, a mouse; and Bobtail, a rabbit; five baby rabbits also appeared occasionally.{{sfnp|7IWIHNKH}} All the characters were glove puppets, created and operated by Sam and Elizabeth Williams.{{sfnp|REGFJ7KZ|33}}
Each 13-minute episode was filmed using a camera that scanned slowly along a simple countryside set, with no close-ups or cutaways. Twenty-six episodes were made, of which two were never broadcast. One surviving episode gives the flavour of a typical storyline: Tag is divining for water using a hazel twig, and discovers a muddy pool. He moves on to look for more water, and the pool is discovered by the babies, who are out playing in the sunshine. They jump into the mud and splash about, having a great time, until Bobtail comes along and sees that the mud has turned them all black. Bobtail has no water to clean the babies with, but Tag saves the day when he discovers a hitherto unknown stream of fresh, clean water.{{sfnp|7IWIHNKH}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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## External links
- [Complete episode on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSBeQ6We5ic)
**Categories:** Children’s, Television programme
---
### [Hertfordshire clanger](https://engole.info/hertfordshire-clanger/)
**Published:** July 27, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Redirected to Bedfordshire clanger.
**Categories:** Food
**Tags:** Redirect
---
### [Whirligig (TV series)](https://engole.info/whirligig-tv-series/)
**Published:** September 1, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/whirligig.png[/pimage]BBC television programme for children broadcast from 1950 until 1956.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/whirligig.png)Humphrey Lestocq with Mr. Turnip
Nostalgia Centrol
*Whirligig* was a BBC television programme for children broadcast from 1950 until 1956.{{sfnp|387WDTP5}} It was the first children’s programme to be broadcast live from the BBC’s Lime Grove Studios, at 5:00 pm on alternate Saturdays.{{sfnp|LM6939Y3}}
The first presenter was Humphrey Lestocq,{{sfnp|LM6939Y3}} joined by Cliff Michelmore, who had recently made the switch from producing television programmes to presenting them.{{sfnp|387WDTP5}} Lestocq acted as a stooge for the obnoxious puppet Mr. Turnip, voiced by Peter Hawkins;{{sfnp|5AS9TWE8}} his catchphrase was “Goody, Goody Gumdrops”, and Mr. Turnip’s was “Lawky, Lawky, Lum”.{{sfnp|E9K8LCBW}}
Rolf Harris made his TV debut on the programme with Willoughby, his animated drawing board. Peter Ling, who went on to create the soap *Crossroads* with Hazel Adair, was among the show’s writers. Programmes took the form of individual serials, including the science fiction series *Stranger From Space*, *The Adventures of Hank* and *The Sooty Show*, with Harry Corbett;{{sfnp|LM6939Y3}} *Stranger from Space* was the first science-fiction series on British television. The plot revolved around Ian Spencer and his Martian friend Bilaphodorus, who had crashed his spacecraft on Earth.{{sfnp|E9K8LCBW}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Children’s, Television programme
---
### [Graveyard poets](https://engole.info/graveyard-poets/)
**Published:** January 16, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Term applied to those 18th-century poets who wrote melancholy, reflective works, often set in graveyards, on the theme of human mortality.
**Content:**
Graveyard poets is a term applied to those 18th‐century poets who wrote melancholy, reflective works, often set in graveyards, on the theme of human mortality.{{sfnp|NIMIA5WX}} Prominent among them were Thomas Gray, Edward Young, Robert Blair and Thomas Parnell. Their work is generally considered to be a significant influence on the later development of the genre of Gothic literature.{{sfnp|HZU26K86}}
The earliest poem attributed to the Graveyard School is Thomas Parnell’s *A Night-Piece on Death* (1721),{{sfnp|YA8Q9HGG|10-11}} in which King Death gives an address from his kingdom of bones:
> When men my scythe and darts supply
> How great a King of Fears am I!
Perhaps the best remembered example of the genre today is Thomas Gray’s *Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard*, published in 1751.{{sfnp|QKRIQX54|392,401}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27142
**Categories:** Poetry
---
### [Highclere Park](https://engole.info/highclere-park/)
**Published:** July 26, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/Basingstoke_and_Deane_-_Highclere_Park_%28geograph_5411116%29.jpg/1920px-Basingstoke_and_Deane_-_Highclere_Park_%28geograph_5411116%29.jpg[/pimage]Biological Site of Special Scientific Interest and Grade I designated parkland east of Highclere, in Hampshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/Basingstoke_and_Deane_-_Highclere_Park_%28geograph_5411116%29.jpg/1920px-Basingstoke_and_Deane_-_Highclere_Park_%28geograph_5411116%29.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Giurmy3Jag72QMTB6
Highclere Park is a {{convert|67.7|ha|adj=on}} biological Site of Special Scientific Interest and [ Grade I designated](https://engole.info/listed-building) park east of Highclere, in Hampshire. A former medieval deer park, it consists of an extensive open parkland of unimproved grassland with mature trees, pasture woodland and lakes, and is the earliest documented estate in Hampshire, granted to the church at Winchester in AD 749.{{sfnp|BJPKE8SI}}{{sfnp|UMF354AY}}
The park was landscaped by Capability Brown in about 1770. The mature trees have a rich and diverse lichen and moss flora, with many species typical of ancient woodland. The two lakes, Milford Lake and Duns Mere, were originally fishponds belonging to the Bishop of Winchester, and are bordered by areas of swamp and fen. The site is notable for its rich invertebrate populations, which include notable species such as the dragonfly ruddy darter (*Sympetrum sanguineum*), the hoverfly (*Anasimyia contracta*), and the snail-killing flies *Psacadina verbekei* and *Pherbina coryleti*.{{sfnp|BJPKE8SI}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Hampshire, SSSI
---
### [The Love Potion](https://engole.info/the-love-potion/)
**Published:** April 25, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/The_Love_Potion.jpg/960px-The_Love_Potion.jpg[/pimage]Oil painting by the English artist Evelyn de Morgan, created in 1903.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/Evelyn_De_Morgan_-_The_Love_Potion_%281903%29_-_Google_Cultural_Institute.jpg/1920px-Evelyn_De_Morgan_-_The_Love_Potion_%281903%29_-_Google_Cultural_Institute.jpg)Oil on canvas
104 cm × 52 cm (41 in × 20 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Love Potion* is an oil painting by the English artist Evelyn De Morgan, created in 1903. It makes use of several of the medieval themes and stylistic devices favoured by the [Pre-Raphaelites](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood), and can be seen as one of her series of allegorical paintings on the individual’s spiritual progression towards enlightenment.{{sfnp|XDTI5BGV}}
“The “dark, dangerous woman” was a particularly popular theme in late 19th-century art and literature,{{sfnp|A7R4NWTC|164-166}} but Evelyn portrays her sorceress as a scholarly, learned woman, surrounded by leather-bound volumes that point to her status as an alchemist.{{sfnp|H2HVIHLE}}
Although [black cats](https://engole.info/black-cat), such as the one sitting by the sorceress’s feet, are widely associated with witches, they were just one of the many animals that appear as [familiars](https://engole.info/witchs-familiar) in confessions, and in this case it may be the colour black itself that is significant.{{sfnp|H2HVIHLE}} Among the volumes on display are works by Paracelsus and Agrippa Von Nettesheim, both 16th-century alchemists.{{sfnp|XDTI5BGV}} In the colour symbolism of alchemy, as promoted by Paracelsus, four colours – black, white, red and yellow – mark the progress of the spirit towards ultimate enlightenment. In *The Love Potion* these colours are arranged in a “tonal spiral” beginning with the black cat, representing the initial state of sin, guilt and death, followed by the white cloth behind the sorceress, the red of the potion being poured into the chalice, the cushion and her shoes and finally the yellow/gold of her gown, marking her as having reached the highest stage of spiritual development.{{sfnp|H2HVIHLE}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/alchemists-daughter.png)*The Alchemist’s Daughter*, by William De Morgan
Evelyn was a committed Spiritualist, and these alchemical stages mirror Spiritualist ideas regarding the development of the spirit, culminating in the union of opposites as represented by the couple seen embracing through the window.{{sfnp|XDTI5BGV}} She was also a passionate feminist, and *The Love Potion* may have been inspired by her husband William de Morgan’s earlier painting of *The Alchemist’s Daughter*, transforming the female apprentice into a highly skilled practitioner in her own right.{{sfnp|HRXYY6QX|107}}
As at 2022 *The Love Potion* is in the collection of the De Morgan Museum in Barnsley, South Yorkshire.{{sfnp|XDTI5BGV}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24642
**Categories:** Painting
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Wilderhope Manor](https://engole.info/wilderhope-manor/)
**Published:** May 8, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Wilderhope_Manor_and_Youth_Hostel_-_geograph.org.uk_-_687216.jpg[/pimage]16th-century manor house in Longville in the Dale, Shropshire, now owned by the National Trust and used as a youth hostel since 1937.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Wilderhope_Manor_and_Youth_Hostel_-_geograph.org.uk_-_687216.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/JWgDbdTg37wJQcVa6
Wilderhope Manor is a 16th-century Elizabethan manor house in Longville in the Dale, Shropshire, {{convert|7|mi|spell=in}} southwest of Much Wenlock, on the limestone escarpment known as Wenlock Edge.
The Grade I listed building, now in the ownership of the National Trust,{{sfnp|JXIVG9SP}} has been used as a youth hostel since 1937, managed by the Youth Hostel Association. The adjoining stable block is Grade II listed.{{sfnp|NZVBA4KN}}
The house was built for Francis Smallman, whose initials can be seen in cartouches in the hall ceiling.{{sfnp|JXIVG9SP}} The manor remained in the family until 1734, when the estate including the neighbouring Wilderhope farm was sold to Thomas Lutwyche. It is believed that the manor house was not subsequently used as a main residence, and fell into a poor state of repair.{{sfnp|EU4QXD26}} Restored by John Cadbury in 1936,{{sfnp|IAUBICDG}} it was donated to the National Trust the following year, to be used as a youth hostel.{{sfnp|FKTX4WE7}}
## Architecture
The manor house is in limestone with dressings in gritstone, [quoins](https://engole.info/quoin), hood moulds, copings and [finials](https://engole.info/finial) on the front, and a stone-slate roof. There are two storeys and attics, and an approximately H-shaped plan. The entrance front has six bays and four unequal gables, three of them over projecting bays, in the left of which is a porch. The windows are mullioned and transomed, and at the rear there is a semicircular stair turret with a conical roof.{{sfnp|JXIVG9SP}}{{sfnp|YD8CACQ2|702}}
The stables, now used as a field-study centre, are in brick with a storey band, and have tile roofs with parapeted gables. They have a single storey and lofts, and a U-shaped plan with a main range of three bays. The windows are casements with segmental arches, and there are doorways and loft openings.{{sfnp|NZVBA4KN}}{{sfnp|YD8CACQ2|702}}
### Interior
Most walls have exposed square panelled framing and decorative plastered ceilings. The parlour ceiling is particularly elaborate, with star-shaped ribs and motifs, and is dated 1601. The hall has a large Tudor-arched fireplace, and the upper rooms also contain fireplaces.
## Major’s Leap
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/wenlock-edge.webp)Wenlock Edge
Flickr
During the English Civil War (1642–1651) the manor was home to the Royalist supporter Major Thomas Smallman. Forced to flee from Oliver Cromwell’s approaching Parliamentarian troops, he escaped on horseback and took a do-or-die plunge down a steep slope at Wenlock Edge. His horse was killed, but Smallman survived thanks to an apple tree breaking his fall. Since then the ghosts of Smallman and his horse are said to appear in an area now known as Major’s Leap, and have reportedly been seen at the manor.{{sfnp|88K8T6W9|102}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26232
**Categories:** Haunted
---
### [Lych gate](https://engole.info/lych-gate/)
**Published:** September 16, 2021
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/St_Wulfran%27s_Church%2C_Ovingdean_04.JPG[/pimage]Roofed-over gateway into a churchyard.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/St_Wulfran%27s_Church%2C_Ovingdean_04.JPG)Wooden lych gate at St Wulfran’s Church, Ovingdean
Wikimedia Commons
A lych gate, lich gate or corpse gate is a roofed-over gateway into a churchyard, a liminal place between consecrated and unconsecrated ground. Lych derives from the Old English *līċ* meaning corpse.{{sfnp|CX5DVJNC}}
Some corpses had to be be transported over long distances along lych or [corpse roads](https://engole.info/corpse-road/) to a place of burial in consecrated ground.{{sfnp|K7EJ85PJ}} The original purpose of the lych gate was to provide a place in which to rest the shrouded body, provide shelter for the funeral party and a place to meet the priest before entering the church or graveyard.{{sfnp|97VHFCK6}} Benches inside the lych gate could used by the mourners who had brought the corpse for burial.
Lych gates are known to have been built in the 7th century, but were more common in medieval times, after which their use declined. The 1549 *Book of Common Prayer* begins the Order for the Burial of the Dead with the words:
The priest metyng the Corps at the Churche style, shalt say:
Or els the priestes and clerkes shalt sing, and so goe either into the Churche, or towardes the grave\[a\]The Priest and Clerks meeting the corpse at the entrance of the Church-yard, and going before it, either into the Church, or towards the grave, shall say, or sing
Some lych gates had a stone on which to rest the corpse before it entered the churchyard. Coffins were uncommon, and only for the rich; most bodies were buried in shrouds until the late 1700s. In the 1600s [woollen shrouds were made compulsory](https://engole.info/burying-in-woollens-acts/) to support the wool producers.{{sfnp|K7EJ85PJ}}{{sfnp|6TYJIBTX}}
Lych gates were originally simple shelters built of wood, with a spreading tiled or thatched roof and gabled ends;{{sfnp|97VHFCK6}} few early examples survive. The Victorians revived the practice of building lych gates, some as memorials, and largely built them in stone.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The Priest and Clerks meeting the corpse at the entrance of the Church-yard, and going before it, either into the Church, or towards the grave, shall say, or sing
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Eastbourne manslaughter](https://engole.info/eastbourne-manslaughter/)
**Published:** February 13, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/article-0-01D4E39A0000044D-202_233x3291.jpg[/pimage]1860 legal case concerning the death of 15-year-old Reginald Cancellor at the hands of his teacher, Thomas Hopley.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/article-0-01D4E39A0000044D-202_233x3291.jpg)Victorian Calendar
The Eastbourne manslaughter, formally known as *Regina v. Hopley*, is an 1860 legal case concerning the death of 15-year-old Reginald Cancellor – some sources give his name as Chancellor{{sfnp|44Y4LDQ2|5-13}} and his age as 13 or 14{{sfnp|FZSUL26D}} – at the hands of his teacher, Thomas Hopley. Hopley used corporal punishment with the stated intention of overcoming what he perceived as stubbornness on Cancellor’s part, but instead beat the boy to death.
An inquest into Cancellor’s death began when his brother, a clergyman, requested an autopsy. As a result of the inquest Hopley was arrested and charged with manslaughter. He was found guilty at trial and sentenced to four years in prison, although he insisted that his actions were justifiable and that he was not guilty of any crime. The trial was sensationalised by the Victorian press and incited debate over the use of corporal punishment in schools. After Hopley’s release and subsequent divorce trial, he largely disappeared from the public record. The case became an important legal precedent in the United Kingdom for discussions of corporal punishment in schools and reasonable limits on discipline.
## Background
Thomas Hopley, aged 41 at the time of the incident,{{sfnp|9NNDHQIU}} was a schoolmaster in Eastbourne who ran a private boarding school from his home at 22 Grand Parade.{{sfnp|YNWZKEC2}} He was well educated and from a middle-class family, the son of a Royal Navy surgeon and brother of artist Edward Hopley, author Catherine C. Hopley, and editor John Hopley. His household was fairly well off, and he and his wife kept several servants.{{sfnp|H2KQGFZM}}{{sfnp|ETZDIW2Y}} He had two children, the first of which had brain damage – “popular rumour” blamed this on “his unconventionally bracing notions of neonatal care”.{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}} Hopley was described by writer Algernon Charles Swinburne as “a person of high attainments and irreproachable character”.{{sfnp|XP6Q7JGB}} He expressed “utopian” educational ideals shared by many Victorian educational theorists.{{sfnp|H2KQGFZM}} He wrote pamphlets on education topics{{sfnp|XP6Q7JGB}} which included “Lectures on the Education of Man”, “Help towards the physical, intellectual and moral elevation of all classes of society”, and “Wrongs which cry out for redress” advocating the abolition of child labour.{{sfnp|7HXFSLQM}}
In October 1859,{{sfnp|YNWZKEC2}} Hopley was offered £180 a year{{sfnp|CKGDQLEG}} to teach Reginald Channell Cancellor, a “robust” boy who had been “given up as ineducable”.{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}} Reginald was the son of John Henry Cancellor (1799–1860), a master of the Court of Common Pleas and a “man of fair position” from Barnes, Surrey.{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}}{{sfnp|JGKJIG32}} The boy had previously been a student at a private school in St. Leonards and under a private tutor.{{sfnp|CK3PIFV4}} He was not a good student; contemporary sources suggest that he “had water on the brain”, and describe him as “stolid and stupid”.{{sfnp|JGKJIG32}} Hopley attributed Cancellor’s failure to learn to stubbornness. On 18 April 1860 he asked the boy’s father for permission to use “severe corporal punishment” to obtain compliance,{{sfnp|44Y4LDQ2}} and it was granted two days later.{{sfnp|MXACSFGY}} Hopley did not possess the cane traditionally used to administer corporal punishment to students, so instead he used a skipping rope and a walking stick.{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}}
## Death
Cancellor was found dead in his bedroom on the morning of 22 April 1860. His body was covered, with long stockings over his legs and kidskin gloves on his hands. The only visible part of the body was his face. A medical man of Hopley’s acquaintance named Roberts pronounced that the boy had died of natural causes.{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}} When questioned, Hopley suggested that Cancellor died of heart disease and argued that he should be buried immediately.{{sfnp|JGKJIG32}} He wrote to the boy’s father requesting the body’s immediate removal and interment.{{sfnp|H2KQGFZM}} After viewing his son’s dressed body, Cancellor’s father accepted Roberts’ assertion for the cause of death and agreed to the burial.{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}}
Rumours began to circulate among the Hopleys’ servants, suggesting that Hopley’s wife had spent the night prior to the body’s discovery cleaning up evidence of her husband’s beating of the boy.{{sfnp|JGKJIG32}} Reginald’s older brother, Reverend John Henry Cancellor Jr. (1834–1900),{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}} arrived in Eastbourne from Send, Surrey, on 25 April. He noticed discrepancies in the reports of his brother’s death and requested an autopsy.{{sfnp|H2KQGFZM}} Hopley asked prominent physician Sir Charles Locock, an acquaintance of the Cancellor family and an obstetrician to the Queen, to examine the body and verify death by natural causes; Locock believed that Hopley was responsible for the death.{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}}
A complete inquest into Cancellor’s death was initiated. His body was taken for autopsy on 28 April and was found to be covered in blood under the gloves and stockings. His thighs were “reduced to a perfect jelly” and his body was covered in bruises and cuts, including two inch-deep holes in his right leg,{{sfnp|JGKJIG32}} deep enough to allow the medical examiner, Robert Willis, to touch the bone underneath. Willis reported that other than these injuries, the boy was healthy and his internal organs (including the heart) were free of disease.{{sfnp|VAQMH9G5}} He thus concluded that Cancellor had not died of natural causes, as Hopley had suggested, and noted that the boy had obviously been beaten shortly before his death.{{sfnp|H2KQGFZM}}{{sfnp|VAQMH9G5}} A female servant named Ellen Fowler, when questioned by investigators, reported that she had heard Cancellor screaming and being beaten from 10 pm until midnight and that, shortly thereafter, he abruptly fell silent.{{sfnp|JGKJIG32}} She also noted traces of blood in the house and on Hopley’s candlestick, which was left outside Cancellor’s bedroom, and evidence that Cancellor’s and Hopley’s clothes had been washed soon before the former was pronounced dead.{{sfnp|YNWZKEC2}} Two other servants testified in the inquiry and gave similar accounts.{{sfnp|JUPBFH9Y}}
The inquest was unable to determine Cancellor’s exact cause of death, but noted several inconsistencies in Hopley’s explanation of events. He had failed to summon a doctor immediately and, upon questioning, had given outlandish excuses for his failure to do so. Hopley attempted to explain away the blood on the candlestick by attributing it to a broken blister on his hand, but did not offer an explanation for Cancellor’s injuries.{{sfnp|YNWZKEC2}{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}} Hopley aroused further suspicion when he asked journalists present at the inquest not to include details of the corporal punishment in their stories, “in order to spare the feelings of the deceased family as of my own”. Cancellor’s family was deeply affected by the case, as they had been “disinclined” to see Cancellor beaten; his father died shortly after the inquest of a “broken heart.”{{sfnp|H2KQGFZM}}
## Trial
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/William_Ballantine_Vanity_Fair_5_March_1870_%28crop%29.jpg)Caricature of Hopley’s barrister, William Ballantine
Wikimedia Commons
Hopley was arrested in early May and, after a seven-hour preliminary hearing,{{sfnp|KYXNWX8U}} was released on 16 June on a £2,000 bail. He and his then pregnant wife spent the period between the initial hearing and the trial at Uckfield.{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}} Hopley was confident that he would be found not guilty. He began composing a pamphlet titled *Facts Bearing on the Death of Reginald Channell Cancellor*, to be published after the trial; it was published by an associate of Hopley’s after his conviction and detailed Hopley’s explanation of Cancellor’s death and his justification for his treatment of the boy.{{sfnp|H2KQGFZM}}{{sfnp|SXWU82NR}} The press was extremely hostile, calling for a murder charge to be laid against him, and he received a great deal of hate mail from anonymous members of the public.{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}}
Hopley’s trial took place at Lewes Assizes on 23 July 1860, before the Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench Sir Alexander Cockburn and a jury. The prosecutors were John Humffreys Parry and William Jerome Knapp;{{sfnp|CK3PIFV4}} Hopley was defended by the serjeant-at-law William Ballantine, who subsequently described Hopley as “distorted”.{{sfnp|H2KQGFZM}}{{sfnp|JGKJIG32}} Throughout his trial, Hopley described himself as reluctant to use corporal punishment. In describing the events preceding Cancellor’s death, Hopley stated that he started crying while beating Cancellor, after which Cancellor presented his lesson and “Hopley took his head on his breast and prayed with him”.{{sfnp|XP6Q7JGB}} Hopley presented testimonials from past students who described him as “kindly” and who noted an infrequent use of violence. Hopley claimed to be a paedagogical follower of John Locke, who had decried the use of corporal punishment except in cases of extreme obstinacy on the part of the student. He argued that, through the application of this theory, the beating that killed Cancellor had been a necessary one.{{sfnp|H2KQGFZM}}
Robert Willis testified at the trial that there was no possibility that Cancellor’s death had been a result of natural causes.{{sfnp|VAQMH9G5}} He presented a detailed description of the boy’s injuries, suggesting that they had been sustained over several hours.{{sfnp|FZSUL26D}} He also revealed that Cancellor’s skull cavity contained six to eight ounces of fluid, attributing to this fluid the boy’s seeming inability to learn as described by Hopley, but rejected any suggestions that it may have contributed to Cancellor’s death.{{sfnp|F3B7BDPV}} Cancellor’s brother, Fowler, and Locock all testified against Hopley; Locock’s testimony was particularly hostile, suggesting that Hopley’s incompetent response to interviews was “tantamount to an admission of guilt”.{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}} Other witnesses included the Hopleys’ laundress, Roberts, three members of the coastguard who had seen lights on in the house late at night, a local constable, and the town registrar.{{sfnp|CK3PIFV4}}
Chief Justice Alexander Cockburn
Wikimedia Commons
Ballantine’s conduct during the trial was flawed, and he believed Hopley was insane. Although he promoted the testimonials of former students and argued that a schoolmaster was unlikely to “so lightly jeopardize his ambitions”, he congratulated Locock on the accuracy of his testimony in open court. Ballantine did not call key witnesses such as Edward Philpott, another student of Hopley’s who had been at the house that night. Philpott slept in the bedroom beside Cancellor’s and had reported hearing no unusual noises or screams from Cancellor’s room on the night of his death. Neither did Ballantine call Professor John Eric Erichsen of University College Hospital, who had conducted a second autopsy on Cancellor on 11 May and suggested that “the misleading appearance of the body was attributable to an undiagnosed blood condition akin to haemophilia”.{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}} In his memoir *Some Experiences of a Barrister’s Life*, published in 1883, Ballantine offered a highly sensationalised account of Cancellor’s death: “the wretched half-witted victim of a lunatic’s system of education was deliberately mangled to death”.{{sfnp|CXTMQDM6|329}}
Hopley was convicted of manslaughter, not murder, because of his position as a schoolteacher “endowed with parental authority”.{{sfnp|44Y4LDQ2|5-13}} Sir Alexander Cockburn, the Chief Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench, presented a summary of the decision:
By the law of England, a parent or a schoolmaster (who for this purpose represents the parent and has the parental authority delegated to him), may for the purpose of correcting what is evil in the child, inflict moderate and reasonable corporal punishment, always, however, with the condition, that it is moderate and reasonable. If it be administered for the gratification of passion or of rage, or if it be immoderate or excessive in its nature or degree, or if it be protracted beyond the child’s powers of endurance, or with an instrument unfitted for the purpose and calculated to produce danger to life and limb: in all such cases the punishment is excessive, the violence unlawful, and if evil consequences to life or limb ensue, then the person inflicting it is answerable to the law, and if death ensues it will be manslaughter.
— Sir Alexander Cockburn{{sfnp|44Y4LDQ2|5-13}}
Cockburn further suggested that Hopley should have realised Cancellor’s cognitive deficiencies and taken these into account in his treatment of the boy.{{sfnp|F3B7BDPV}}
Hopley was sentenced to four years of penal servitude, and was incarcerated in Portsea and Chatham.{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}}{{sfnp|JGKJIG32}} After being indicted, he wrote of himself that “while anguish shook the frame, the conscience suffered not one pang. I searched and searched among the deepest secrets of my soul, and could not blame myself … I could look up tranquilly into the face of heaven who knew me to be Not Guilty.”{{sfnp|44Y4LDQ2|5-13}} He believed that his actions were justifiable because he had undertaken them in his duty as schoolteacher.{{sfnp|44Y4LDQ2}} He portrayed himself as a victim of public opinion, claiming that “a mournful accident was swelled up into a bloody midnight murder, and how it has been brought about that my unfortunate name has been branded, not simply through the United Kingdom, but through the civilised world, as one of the most execrable monsters or of madmen.”{{sfnp|H2KQGFZM}} He published a pamphlet arguing that Locock had perjured himself and had conspired with Fowler to influence the outcome of the trial.{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}}
## Reaction and aftermath
The trial was sensationalised by contemporary media. The press derided Hopley as “monstrous”, and criticised schoolteachers in general and private schoolteachers in particular. Newspapers published graphic accounts of Cancellor’s injuries and autopsy and further exaggerated the early rumours surrounding his death. Cancellor’s was the first death by corporal punishment to have received broad public interest. To prevent overcrowding, the court issued tickets for admission to the public gallery during the trial;{{sfnp|H2KQGFZM}} the courtroom was full an hour before the trial began.{{sfnp|9NNDHQIU}} After Hopley’s conviction, he issued at least two pamphlets on model education from gaol, which were poorly received by the public.{{sfnp|XP6Q7JGB}} Hopley’s fame was short lived; a month after his conviction, the press turned its attention to another case of corporal punishment, that of Caroline Lefevre, whose arms were allegedly burnt by her teacher.{{sfnp|H2KQGFZM}}
Following Hopley’s release from prison, he became immediately embroiled in a sensationalised divorce trial. His wife, Fanny, had petitioned for divorce on the grounds that he was “unloving” and had mistreated her. She claimed that Hopley had married her as an “educational experiment”, presenting Hopley’s educational theories as evidence of his “lunacy”.{{sfnp|H2KQGFZM}} She had been 18 years old to Hopley’s 36 at the time of their marriage in 1855. According to her statements during the trial, Hopley frequently criticised her writing and insisted that the couple’s three children should be raised as “second Christs”. She accused him of physically abusing her from the time of her first pregnancy,{{sfnp|NQBKSDMU}} beating their first child only days after its birth (the child was later found to be “brain-damaged”),{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}} and suggesting that during his prison sentence she should be confined to a workhouse. Hopley responded by claiming that he set rules only to ensure the maintenance of his household and the wellbeing of his family, and produced a set of romantic letters he had received from Fanny during his incarceration as evidence of her unforced affection for him.{{sfnp|NQBKSDMU}}
The jury found Hopley guilty of cruelty in July 1864, but suggested that Fanny had condoned his treatment of her.{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}}{{sfnp|NQBKSDMU}} The judge therefore ruled that her case was insufficient to grant a divorce. The verdict sparked outrage among the public, who believed that “a great injustice had been done”, and that Fanny should not be forced to remain married to an abusive convicted killer.{{sfnp|H2KQGFZM}} Fanny left England shortly afterwards, allegedly to avoid having to continue living with Hopley.{{sfnp|NQBKSDMU}}
Hopley largely withdrew from the public eye after the trial, becoming a private tutor in London and publishing pamphlets on [Spiritualism](https://engole.info/spiritualism) in the late 1860s. He died at University College Hospital on 24 June 1876.{{sfnp|CIE6ECVN}} A retrospective editorial published in *The Times* in 1960 concluded that Hopley was not “the villain which some persons pictured him to be”; it noted that at the time of his arrest Hopley had been planning the construction of a “model school” in Brighton, and that he had examined architect’s drawings of the school after beating Cancellor.{{sfnp|ETZDIW2Y}}
In 1865, Cancellor’s death was used in a medical journal article discussing adult hydrocephalus. Despite Willis’ statement that Cancellor had no pre-existing medical condition that would have caused or contributed to his death, author Samuel Wilks suggested not only that Cancellor had hydrocephalus, but that he was consequently more susceptible to physical injury as a result. He pointed to the autopsy finding of fluid in Cancellor’s brain to support his assertions and argued that this effusion would have caused physical weakness.{{sfnp|F3B7BDPV}}
According to the professor of education Marie Parker-Jenkins, *Regina v. Hopley* is “the most quoted case of the 19th century involving the issue of corporal punishment”.{{sfnp|44Y4LDQ2}} Hopley’s defence, known as “reasonable chastisement”, became a frequently used response to charges of corporal punishment and was incorporated into the Children and Young Persons Act 1933.{{sfnp|FZSUL26D}} Cockburn’s requirement for “moderate and reasonable” punishment was established as a legal limit to corporal punishment and is still employed in modern legal scholarship.{{sfnp|FN43QUV7}}{{sfnp|B4MQGKBG}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22608
**Categories:** Corporal punishment
---
### [Boobrie](https://engole.info/boobrie/)
**Published:** July 14, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Wormius%27_Great_Auk.jpg[/pimage]Shapeshifting entity of the lochs of the west coast of Scotland
**Content:**
A great auk, which may be the source for descriptions of the boobrie
Wikimedia Commons
An inhabitant of the lochs of the west coast of Scotland, the boobrie is a mythological shapeshifting entity. It commonly adopts the appearance of a gigantic water bird resembling a cormorant or great northern diver, but it can also materialise in the form of various other mythological creatures such as a [water bull](https://engole.info/water-bull/).
A generally malevolent entity, the boobrie typically preys on livestock being transported on ships, but it is also fond of otters, of which it consumes a considerable number. In its manifestation as a water horse the creature is able to gallop across the top of lochs as if on solid ground. During the summer months it is seen infrequently as a large insect, sucking the blood of horses.
Folklorist Campbell of Islay has speculated that descriptions of the boobrie may be based on sightings of the great auk. The bellowing sound made by the boobrie, more like a bull than a bird, may have its origin in the strange call of the common bittern, which was a rare visitor to Scotland.
## Etymology
*Boobrie* may derive from *boibhre*, meaning cow giver or cow bestowing.{{sfnp|BYLCGZ34|373}} Edward Dwelly, a Scottish lexicographer, lists *tarbh-boidhre* as “Monster, demon” and “God capable of changing himself into many forms”; *tarbh-aoidhre* is given as a northern counties variation.{{sfnp|TTJSPX88|934}} The simpler component of *tarbh* as a single word is defined by Dwelly as “bull.”{{sfnp|TTJSPX88|933}} Transcribers of the tale have used several differing spellings of the second component, some even adopting inconsistent variations throughout their own renditions.{{sfnp|BYLCGZ34|373}} George Henderson for instance, a folklorist and Celtic scholar, used five alternatives: *bo’eithre*; *boidhre*; *bo-oibhre*; *eithre*; and *fhaire*.{{sfnp|BYLCGZ34|373}} Spelling variations employed by other writers include *aoidhre*; *baoighre*; *baoidhre*; *boidhre*; *eighre*; and *oire*.{{sfnp|BYLCGZ34|373}}
## Folk beliefs
### Description and common attributes
Investigation into folklore, especially Celtic oral traditions, began in the 19th-century, and several “bizarre” and less familiar beasts were identified, including the boobrie.{{sfnp|QTAHMPH5}} It is a generally malevolent entity,{{sfnp|UPV6XWMS|xcvii}} with the ability to materialise in the form of various mythical creatures.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|135}} It commonly preys on animals being transported on ships,{{sfnp|T6DCSI8P|64}} preferably calves, but will also happily eat lambs and sheep,{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|136}} carrying its prey away to the deepest water before consuming it.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|136}} It is also extremely fond of otters, which it consumes in large quantities.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|137}}
In its favoured bird manifestation{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|135}} the boobrie resembles a gigantic great northern diver{{sfnp|RJ6VDCRW|56}} or cormorant, but with white markings.{{sfnp|PTX8477K|373}} According to folklorist Campbell of Islay, a detailed account of its dimensions provided by an authoritative source claims that it is “larger than seventeen of the biggest eagles put together”.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|136}} It has a strong black beak about 11 inches (280 mm) wide and 17 inches (430 mm) in length, the final 5 inches (130 mm) of which taper like that of an eagle. The creature’s neck is almost 3 feet (0.91 m) long with a girth of a little under 2 feet (0.61 m). Short black powerful legs lead to webbed feet with gigantic claws. An imprint of a boobrie’s foot left in some lakeside mud equalled “the span of a large wide-spreading pair of red deer’s horns”.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|136}} It bellows noisily with displeasure, sounding more like a bull than a bird.{{sfnp|RJ6VDCRW|56}} The design of its wings is more conducive to swimming rather than for flight.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|136}} Its evil powers when in the form of a bird were said by Campbell of Islay to have “terrified a minister out of his propriety”.{{sfnp|UPV6XWMS|xcvii}} The boobrie’s insatiable appetite for livestock posed a threat to local farmers, as they relied on their animals as a means of providing income and food.{{sfnp|ET6LXXXB|53}}
Although sea lochs are the boobries’ natural home{{sfnp|UPV6XWMS|xcvii}} they will shelter on land in overgrown heather.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|135}} Accounts are inconsistent as to the extent of the boobrie’s habitat. Campbell of Islay claims that it is specific to the lochs of Argyllshire,{{sfnp|UPV6XWMS|xcvii}} as does Emeritus Professor of English James MacKillop.{{sfnp|KH5HEE89|47}} The writers Katharine Briggs and Patricia Monaghan on the other hand consider the creature’s range to be the broader Scottish Highlands,{{sfnp|ET6LXXXB|53}}{{sfnp|ENSMVPSC|82}} although Briggs does sometimes specify Argyllshire.{{sfnp|ENSMVPSC|269}} Campbell of Islay’s undated manuscript notes the boobrie had not been seen for several years probably due to the widespread burning of heather in the area of its habitat.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|135}}
### Alternative manifestations
When manifested as a water horse the creature is able to gallop across the surface of lochs; the beating noise of the creature’s hooves on the water is the same as if it were galloping on solid ground.{{sfnp|T6DCSI8P|64}}
Henderson reproduced parts of Campbell of Islay’s manuscripts when writing *Survivals in belief among the Celts* (1911). Among them is a story listed as “boobrie as tarbh uisge”.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|138}} The tale starts by detailing how a man named Eachann fed a colossal black bull when he discovered it writhing in pain and possibly close to death at the side of Loch nan Dobhran, on the west coast of Argyll. Some months later, Phemie, Eachann’s girlfriend, is occasionally disturbed by elusive shadows she senses on the loch, which make her think of Murdoch, her former paramour. While she sat dreaming of Eachann one evening when staying at a sheiling near the loch, she sensed the flicker of a shadow behind her, except this time it was Murdoch. He promptly overpowered her by enveloping her in a blanket and tying her hands. At that point, a water bull came to Phemie’s rescue by knocking Murdoch to the ground. The bull then knelt down allowing Phemie to get on its back, before transporting her at the speed of light back to the home of her mother.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|139}} The bull disappeared never to be seen again but a “voice was heard in the air calling out loudly”. The verse heard was in Gaelic, and translates as:
> I was assisted by a young man
> And I aided a maid in distress;
> Then after three hundred years of bondage
> Relieve me quickly.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|140}}
It is then asserted that the tale “reveals the persistence in folk-belief of the idea of transformation, the boobrie being the abode of a spirit”.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|140}}
The boobrie can also manifest itself in the form of a large insect that sucks the blood of horses.{{sfnp|ET6LXXXB|53}} Henderson refers to it as a “big striped brown *gobhlachan* or ear-wig”{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|140}}\[a\]Dwelly defines *gobhlachan* as, among other things, *daddy long legs*, *crane-fly* and various fish, etc.{{sfnp|FZN4R3YG|512}} with “lots of tentacles or feelers”.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|140-141}} It was infrequently seen in this form, usually only at the height of the summer, during August and September.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|140}}
### Capture and hunting
A farmer and his son were ploughing a field on the Isle of Mull using a team of four horses beside Loch Freisa, but work stalled after one of the horses lost a shoe and was unable to continue.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|137}} Noticing a horse grazing nearby they decided to try using it as a replacement. Once harnessed to the wooden plough the horse appeared to be familiar with the task, and initially worked steadily. As it began to work towards an area closest to the loch, it became restless and the farmer gently used a whip to encourage the animal to continue. It reacted by immediately transforming into a gigantic boobrie, giving out a loud bellow and diving into the loch, pulling the plough and the other three horses with it. The frightened farmer and his son watched as the creature swam to the centre of the loch then dived underwater, taking the other horses and plough with it. Seven hours later there was still no sign of the three horses.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|138}}
In a story transcribed by John Campbell of Kilberry, a hunter attempted to shoot a boobrie after he spotted it in its bird-like manifestation on a sea loch one chilly February day. The man paddled into the loch until the water was up to his shoulders, but when he was about 85 yards (78 m) from the creature it dived under the water. The hunter maintained his position for forty-five minutes before returning to the shore, where he remained for a further six hours waiting unsuccessfully for the boobrie to resurface. No clear indication is given of the loch’s whereabouts.{{sfnp|XMKMMENJ|337-338}}
## Origins
Campbell of Islay speculates that the boobrie may have originated from sightings of the great auk.{{sfnp|XMKMMENJ|344}} He noted he had been told stories of the creature by various people, and regarded it as having “a real existence in the popular mind”.{{sfnp|XMKMMENJ|338}} He considered the tale of the boobrie in its water horse manifestation resembled the Norse myth of “the ploughing of the Asa”.{{sfnp|XMKMMENJ|420}} Referring to Forbes’ 1905 dictionary of “Gaelic names of beasts” in which *bubaire* is defined as a common bittern,{{sfnp|V6SYFAX5|21}} and a detailed description given by scholar James Logie Robertson of the bull o’ the bog (an alternative name for a bittern) in *The Scotsman* in 1908,{{sfnp|ZPXI4277}} Henderson hypothesises that the boobrie may stem from the bittern.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|143-144}} Referring to the bittern’s “strangely weird sound”{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|144}} and highlighting its “weird hollow cry”{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|144}} during the night and throughout the evening, he describes it as resembling quietly bellowing cattle, particularly during the bird’s breeding season.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|145}} Records indicate that the bird was rare in Scotland but had been sighted in the first decade of the 20th century,{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|146}} although catching sight of a bittern was believed to be a harbinger of death or disaster.{{sfnp|Q4WU3J4T|144}}{{sfnp|P79S8HN3}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Dwelly defines *gobhlachan* as, among other things, *daddy long legs*, *crane-fly* and various fish, etc.{{sfnp|FZN4R3YG|512}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3600
**Categories:** Mythical creature
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [The Inchcape Rock](https://engole.info/the-inchcape-rock/)
**Published:** July 6, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Bell_Rock_Lighthouse_01.jpg[/pimage]Ballad written by the English poet Robert Southey. Published in 1802, it tells the story of a 14th-century attempt by the Abbot of Arbroath (“Aberbrothock”) to install a warning bell on Inchcape, a notorious sandstone reef about 11 miles (18 km) off the east coast of Scotland.
**Content:**
“The Inchcape Rock” is a ballad written by the English poet [Robert Southey](https://engole.info/robert-southey/). Published in 1802, it tells the story of a 14th-century attempt by the Abbot of Arbroath (“Aberbrothock”) to install a warning bell on [Inchcape](https://engole.info/inchcape/), a notorious sandstone reef about 11 miles (18 km) off the east coast of Scotland. The poem tells how the bell was removed by a pirate, who subsequently perished on the reef while returning to Scotland in bad weather some time later.
Although “The Inchcape Rock” describes a supernatural event, as do many of Southey’s ballads, its basic theme is that those who do bad things will ultimately be punished accordingly and poetic justice done.
## Biographical background and publication
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Bell_Rock_Lighthouse_01.jpg)Bell Rock Lighthouse was built on the Inchcape reef in the early 19th century, and is named after the legend of the abbot’s bell.
Wikimedia Commons
Southey wrote the poem between 1796 and 1798{{sfnp|VP2QTZBM}} for *The Morning Post*,{{sfnp|WR438VLC|xi}} but it was not published until 1802.{{sfnp|VP2QTZBM}} His inspiration was the legend of a pirate who removed a bell on Inchcape placed there by the Abbot of Arbroath to warn mariners of the reef.{{sfnp|WR438VLC|146}} The poem was reprinted in the *Edinburgh Annual Register* for 1810, published in 1812. In a letter to his maternal uncle Herbert Hill, dated 16 August 1812, Southey tells how “The Inchcape Rock” had “lain uncorrected among my papers for the last ten years”, until “some unknown person … thought proper to touch \[it\] up & transmit \[it\] for insertion”.{{sfnp|9BPGRHV9}}
The poem is included in the third volume of Southey’s *The Poetical Works of Robert Southey* (1823), volume 3, where it is prefaced by a quotation from John Stoddart’s *Remarks on Local Scenery and Manners in Scotland* (1801), which begins “An old writer mentions a curious tradition that may be worth quoting” before going on to the relate the tale. Southey added a footnote suggesting that his own source may have been a *Brief Description of Scotland* (1633), written by someone identified only as J. M.\[a\]Stoddart identifies J. M. as probably being Monypenny.{{sfnp|VP2QTZBM}}
## Poem
The poem consists of 17 quatrains written in rhyming couplets. It begins by describing how the bell installed by the abbot was attached to a buoy, so it only rang when the Inchcape Rock was under water and the buoy was floating.
> The worthy Abbot of Aberbrothok
> Had placed that bell on the Inchcape Rock;
> On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung,
> And over the waves its warning rung.
>
> When the Rock was hid by the surge’s swell,
> The Mariners heard the warning Bell;
> And then they knew the perilous Rock,
> And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok.
The bell is cut down by a pirate known as Sir Ralph the Rover and dropped into the sea, for reasons the poem does not explain.{{sfnp|LVKSJ4FL|76}} After its removal Ralph says, “The next who comes to the Rock, Won’t bless the Abbot of Aberbrothok”. Some time later Ralph’s own ship founders on the rock while he is attempting to negotiate his way back to Scotland in bad weather, laden with booty. In classic 19th-century Romantic style, the ship sinks dramatically as Ralph hears the Devil summoning him to Hell by ringing the bell he had removed:
> Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair,
> He curst himself in his despair;
> The waves rush in on every side,
> The ship is sinking beneath the tide.
>
> But even in his dying fear,
> One dreadful sound could the Rover hear;
> A sound as if with the Inchcape Bell,
> The Devil below was ringing his knell.
## Themes
Many of Southey’s ballads describe supernatural events, and “The Inchcape Rock” is no exception.{{sfnp|LVKSJ4FL|75-76}} Bernhardt-Kabisch has argued that Southey’s supernatural ballads “seemed purposed to objectify Southey’s demons and to exorcise them by ridicule”.{{sfnp|LVKSJ4FL|75}}
The poem’s basic theme is that bad things happen to those who do bad things. In 1851, while discussing a plan to place bells across the country to help lost shepherds, Thomas De Quincey suggested that “The Inchcape Rock” should be used to discourage those who might seek to destroy the warning bells: “And every child might learn to fear a judgment of retribution upon its own steps in case of any such wicked action, by reading the tale of him, who, in order ‘To plague the Abbot of Aberbrothock,’ removed the bell from the Inchcape rock.”{{sfnp|DY5K32NW|98-100}}
## Critical reception
Writing in 1873 Joseph Devey expressed his view that in this poem “Having small canvas for his picture, Southey at once seizes upon the salient features of the subject, and discards the fatal prolixity which mars most of his heavier productions. The ‘Maid of the Inn’, the ‘Well of St. Keyne’, the ‘Battle of Blenheim’, the ‘Inchcape Rock’, place Southey at the head of the ballad, while his ‘Madoc’ and his ‘Roderic’ place him very nearly at the tail of the epic poets of his country.”{{sfnp|92KGWWAF|134}} “The Inchcape Rock” is included in the 10-volume *The World’s Best Poetry* collection edited by Bliss Carman and others, published in 1904.
In his 1947 English translation of *Don Quixote* by Miguel de Cervantes, J. M. Cohen refers to “The Inchcape Rock” as having a style he wishes to avoid in his rendering of the ballads by Cervantes.{{sfnp|IVC2IK5W|20}}
## Legacy
There was no warning device on Inchcape Rock in modern times until 1810, when Robert Stevenson and John Rennie completed construction of the Bell Rock Lighthouse,{{sfnp|CRZHFPLI|173-175}} but Southey’s poem popularised the legend of the bell.{{sfnp|CRZHFPLI|173}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Stoddart identifies J. M. as probably being Monypenny.{{sfnp|VP2QTZBM}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3282
## External links
- [Full text of “The Inchcape Rock”](https://allpoetry.com/Inchcape-Rock) at All Poetry
**Categories:** Poem
---
### [Perranarworthal](https://engole.info/perranarworthal/)
**Published:** November 13, 2021
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Perranarworthal_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_160508.jpg[/pimage]Mostly rural parish in West Cornwall.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Perranarworthal_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_160508.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/Prcdv65vBCGCdoLx6}}
St Piran’s Church
Perranarworthal is a mostly rural [civil parish](https://engole.info/civil-parish/) in West Cornwall. It covers about {{convert|1250|acre}} from Bissoe, where an ancient bridge crosses the [Carnon River](https://engole.info/carnon-river/), its western boundary; its southern boundary follows the [River Kennall](https://engole.info/river-kennall/). The parish’s population of 1550 is spread between clusters in Churchtown, Perran Wharf, Perranwell and Tarrandean (Perranwell Station).
The river valleys were the site of great industrial activity during the late 18th and 19th centuries. Tin and gold were found in the river, and an arsenic factory provided work for the locals. The [Perran Foundry](https://engole.info/perran-foundry/) manufactured steam engines for local mines and for export.
In recognition of the area’s industrial past, part of the parish is in the World Heritage site that includes the Gwennap Mining District with Devoran, Perran & Kennall Vale.{{sfnp|DCSMFJDD}}
## Geography
Perranarworthal covers less than {{convert|3|sqmi|r=1|spell=on}} of land that rises from sea level in the south-east to {{convert|308|ft}} above sea level at its highest point. Most of the area is gently rolling farmland at the head of the Fal estuary. The Carnon and Kennall Rivers which form the eastern and southern boundaries flow into the estuary. Trewedna Water flows between them, west to east, through Perranwell to the Carnon Valley.{{sfnp|TEFTI5XN|13}} Streams flowing through the mineral rich mining area around Gwennap feed into the Carnon River were rich in tin that settled in the deep alluvial deposits laid down in its valley and into the estuary.{{sfnp|97FK93ZA}} The [Great County Adit](https://engole.info/great-county-adit/), which dewaters numerous mines in the area and discharges into the river above Bissoe.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cf/Perranarworthal_%283460458256%29.jpg/1920px-Perranarworthal_%283460458256%29.jpg)Perranwell post office
Wikimedia Commons
The main areas of settlement are Perranwell, Greenwith, Tarrandean or Perranwell Station, [Churchtown](https://engole.info/cornish-churchtowns/) and Perranwharf with a combined population of 1550.{{sfnp|TEFTI5XN|13}}
The A39 Truro to Falmouth road runs south-west along the southern boundary and the A393 Redruth to Falmouth road passes along the west where it is joined by the minor road through Perranwell from Carnon Downs. The line through Perranwell Station is on the Maritime Line between Truro and Falmouth. The parish has a primary school, village hall, post office and village shop and two public houses.{{sfnp|TEFTI5XN|14}}
## History
Perranarworthal means [St Piran’s](https://engole.info/st-pirans-church-perranarworthal/) (church) beside the marsh. St Piran was a Welsh or Irish saint who became the patron saint of tinners. Ar worthal\[a\]*ar* is Middle Cornish meaning before, facing or beside and *gothel*, Middle Cornish meaning watery ground was the name of the manor which faced the marshy ground beside the River Kennall.{{sfnp|FDVIF5XB}}
### Industry
Deep alluvial deposits laid down in the Carnon River between Bissoe and [Devoran](https://engole.info/devoran/) sustained the most important [tin stream works](https://engole.info/tin-streaming/) in Cornwall in the 18th century.{{sfnp|97FK93ZA}} Evidence of the tin industry from the early Bronze Age is scant, but William Jory Henwood (1805–1875) described a discovery made in March 1823. Workers at the stream works uncovered a Bronze Age human skeleton in the tin–bearing sediment about {{convert|22|ft}} below high water in the Carnon Valley.{{sfnp|BNDN2B9I|57-69}} Alongside the tin, small amounts of gold were also found in the sediments. A large nugget was found in 1808, now displayed in the Royal Cornwall Museum.{{sfnp|2BXG3DN6}}
In 1769 George Fox leased the wastelands in the bottom of the Kennall Valley on the Mylor (south) side of the river from Lord Mount Edgcumbe where Perranwharf was established an where his sons established the [Perran Foundry](https://engole.info/perran-foundry/) in 1791.{{sfnp|NET4AZHG|4}} Perran was largely dependent on orders from the Gwennap mines, but copper production declined rapidly after 1860 because the mines were becoming worked out and competition from abroad.{{sfnp|NET4AZHG|13}} Perran closed in March 1879 with the loss of 400 jobs, causing great distress in the parish.{{sfnp|33BNJ6RU}}
Arsenic, a contaminant that affected copper and tin production in Cornwall, was burned off until mine owners realised that it was of value. Cornwall’s first refinery to recover arsenic from mine waste was set up at Tarrandean in 1817.{{sfnp|2VJ7BPR6|2}}
### Transport
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Perranwell_Railway_Station_-_geograph.org.uk_-_147984.jpg)Perranwell Station
Wikimedia Commons
The road through Perranwell Station is the old turnpike road leading over the Carnon Bridge and up Old Carnon Hill through Carnon Downs to Truro, constructed in 1754. It was the first and largest in Cornwall, linking Falmouth with London. A new turnpike road, now the A34, was constructed in 1828, taking the route over a new causeway at Devoran then following the creek past the Perran Foundry. Its construction was overseen by William McAdam, under instruction from his father, John Loudon McAdam, who had moved to Falmouth.{{sfnp|CDTVI6SS}}
The Cornish Railway opened Perranwell Station on its heavily engineered main line from Plymouth to Falmouth in August 1863. Built as a broad-gauge single-track line, the line from Truro approached Perranwell Station over the original wooden viaduct over the Carnon River and headed towards Falmouth over the short Perran Viaduct before passing through the {{convert|374|yd|adj=on}} Perran Tunnel. When the line to Penzance was constructed, the Truro to Falmouth section became a branch line, now marketed as the Maritime Line.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a *ar* is Middle Cornish meaning before, facing or beside and *gothel*, Middle Cornish meaning watery ground
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24082
**Categories:** Cornwall, Parish
---
### [Exorcism in the Church of England](https://engole.info/exorcism-in-the-church-of-england/)
**Published:** September 12, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/medium-shot-young-priest-holding-cross-scaled.webp[/pimage]History of exorcism in the Church of England.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/medium-shot-young-priest-holding-cross-scaled.webp)
Exorcism is the practice of expelling demons or evil spirits from a person or area that is believed to be possessed.{{sfnp|S24BDJBM}} The word is derived from the Late Latin *exorcismus*,{{sfnp|M7WNL5CV}} which in turn was derived from the Ancient Greek *exorkizó*, meaning to swear an oath.{{sfnp|ZJ8IMCHA|1}}
In Ancient Greek culture, swearing an oath involved invoking a deity to punish the oath-taker if the oath was not kept. That invocation of a deity by “powerful oaths” to perform a specific task lies at the heart of the idea of exorcism.{{sfnp|ZJ8IMCHA|1}}
The historian Francis Young has suggested that exorcisms are probably more widespread in contemporary England than at any other time in the country’s history.{{sfnp|ZJ8IMCHA|1}} A 2017 report by the Christian thinktank Theos warned of an “astonishing increase” in the “booming industry” of exorcisms, not all of which were performed by Church of England ministers.{{sfnp|S6GR5GXN}}
## Early history
The Church of England in its present form, as the established church with the monarch as its Supreme Governor, was established by the Act of Supremacy 1559 (1 Eliz. 1. c. 1).{{sfnp|ZJ8IMCHA|6}} Medieval England had no tradition of clerical exorcisms, despite the belief in demonic possession being as strong among the general population as in other Christian countries,{{sfnp|ZJ8IMCHA|19}}\[a\]Those who believed themselves to be possessed would make pilgrimages to the shrines of saints, such as St Bartholomew’s Hospital in Smithfield, London.{{sfnp|ZJ8IMCHA|19}} although there was a longstanding tradition of clerical ghost-laying.{{sfnp|ZJ8IMCHA|20}}
Exorcism was introduced into the Church of England in the 1560s;{{sfnp|ZJ8IMCHA|17}} the earliest recorded exorcism was carried out in Chester in February 1564, that of Ann Mylner. She was walking home when she was “sodaynlye taken wyth great feare, and thoughte that she saw a whyte thing compassing her round about”. She subsequently found herself sore all over, and began to go into fits and trances. John Lane, the rector of Alford and later a canon of Chester Cathedral, successfully performed the exorcism, which involved blowing vinegar into Ann’s nostrils.{{sfnp|ZJ8IMCHA|26-28}}
Canon 72, passed at the Convocation of Canterbury on 29 February 1604, forbade excorcism without an episcopal licence, and there is no evidence that any such licence was ever granted by an English bishop.{{sfnp|ZJ8IMCHA|9,14}}
## Gilbert Shaw
The arrival of [Spiritualism](https://engole.info/spiritualism) in England in 1852 marked a “watershed” in the Church of England’s attitude to demonology, although it was not until the 1920s that an Anglican priest in England, Gilbert Shaw, began to conduct exorcisms of places. Exorcisms of persons remained unknown until 1943, when Shaw conducted the first such exorcism by an Anglican priest in England in modern times.{{sfnp|ZJ8IMCHA|14}}
Shaw soon established a reputation as an authority on exorcism, and during the 1950s acted as an advisor to the Archbishop of Canterbury on paranormal matters. Shaw was largely responsible for the section on exorcism in a report on healing produced by the church in 1958.{{sfnp|ZJ8IMCHA|14}}
## York Report
Until 1969 exorcisms were permitted under canon law, provided that permission had been obtained from the diocesan bishop. The release of the film *The Exorcist* in 1973 resulted in an “epidemic” of reported possessions, and provoked a resurgence of interest in the topic within the Church of England. As the Bishop of Exeter, Robert Mortimer set up an exorcism commission, which published its report in 1973.{{sfnp|ZJ8IMCHA|130}}{{sfnp|8QC9M42G}}
The York Report envisaged a future in which frequent exorcisms would become the norm, and proposed that they should be delegated to licensed lay ministers rather than the clergy. There is no evidence that any lay ministers were so licensed.{{sfnp|ZJ8IMCHA|130}}
## Present day
In 1974 the Church of England set up the Deliverance Ministry, which resulted in every diocese in the country being equipped with a team trained in exorcism and psychiatry. According to the ministry’s representatives, most cases brought before it have conventional explanations, and actual exorcisms are quite rare; blessings though are sometimes given to those with psychological conditions.{{sfnp|MGRX3YXC}}
The Church of England’s “definitive publication on exorcism”, *Deliverance: Psychic Disturbances and Occult Involvement* (2012), was compiled by Michael Perry, a former Archdeacon of Durham Cathedral.{{sfnp|RUYQTUXE}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Those who believed themselves to be possessed would make pilgrimages to the shrines of saints, such as St Bartholomew’s Hospital in Smithfield, London.{{sfnp|ZJ8IMCHA|19}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27722
**Categories:** Religious practice
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Pearlin Jean](https://engole.info/pearlin-jean/)
**Published:** July 25, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Goost of a female reputed to have haunted the old mansion of Allanbank at Edrom, in Berwickshire, Scotland.
**Content:**
Pearlin Jean is the ghost of a female reputed to have haunted the old mansion of Allanbank at Edrom in Berwickshire, Scotland. She is said to be the spirit of a beautiful 17th-century French girl named Jeanne, accidentally killed by her lover Sir Robert Steuart, the laird of Allanbank.{{sfnp|UVGUA2YW|search=Pearlin Jean}}
Jeanne and Steuart met in Paris at the conclusion of his Grand Tour in the 1670s, and they fell passionately in love. As the laird was leaving his lodgings in Paris for the last time, to return to Scotland, he was confronted at the door of his carriage by a distraught Jeanne, But unmoved, he ordered his coachman to drive on; Jeanne was knocked to the ground and killed by the rear wheel passing over her head.{{sfnp|3WBCKD7P}}
Steuart may have been called back to Scotland by his family to marry the daughter of Sir John Gilmour.{{sfnp|N7JJ3FMB|268}} When he arrived back at his estate with his new wife, he was welcomed by the sight of his ex-lover sitting on top of the entrance, with blood covering her head and shoulders. Seven local ministers from the Church of the Reformed Faith were subsequently persuaded to perform an [exorcism](https://engole.info/exorcism-in-the-church-of-england/), but to no avail.{{sfnp|N7JJ3FMB|274}} The ghost was said to slam doors, open windows and walk throughout the house at all times of the day and night.{{sfnp|J3K6NSKX|94}} As time progressed, Pearlin Jean’s ghostly figure became that of a skeleton in Pearlin lace, rather than the figure seen by the first laird, dripping with blood.{{sfnp|N7JJ3FMB|275}}
There have been no reported sightings of Pearlin Jean since the old Allanbank House was replaced by a new building in 1848, itself demolished in 1969.{{sfnp|3WBCKD7P}}
## See also
- [Stone tape theory](https://engole.info/stone-tape-theory)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30196
**Categories:** Ghost
---
### [H. G. Wells bibliography](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
**Published:** May 18, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/H_G_Wells_pre_1922.jpg[/pimage]List of publications written by H. G. Wells during the more than fifty years of his literary career.
**Content:**
One of the most prolific writers of modern times, the English author H. G. Wells’s writing career spanned more than fifty years.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|xi}} During that time he produced thirty novels, the same number of scientific romances, and more than seventy short stories, along with many non-fiction works on history, science, education, politics and sociology. His output exceeds that of Dickens and Shakespeare combined.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|xi, 3}}
Works are listed in order of their date of first publication in the lists shown below.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/H_G_Wells_pre_1922.jpg)H. G. Wells (1866–1946)
Wikimedia Commons
Novels
- *The Time Machine* (1895)
- *The Wonderful Visit* (1895)
- *The Island of Doctor Moreau* (1896)
- *The Wheels of Chance* (1896)
- *The Invisible Man* (1897)
- *The War of the Worlds* (1898)
- *When the Sleeper Wakes* (1899)
- *Love and Mr. Lewisham* (1900)
- [*The First Men in the Moon*](https://engole.info/the-first-men-in-the-moon) (1901)
- *The Sea Lady* (1902)
- *The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth* (1904)
- *Kipps* (1905)
- *A Modern Utopia* (1905)
- *In the Days of the Comet* (1906)
- *The War in the Air* (1908)
- *Tono-Bungay* (1909)
- *Ann Veronica* (1909)
- *The History of Mr Polly* (1910)
- *The Sleeper Awakes* (1910) – revised edition of *When the Sleeper Wakes* (1899)
- *The New Machiavelli* (1911)
- *Marriage* (1912)
- *The Passionate Friends* (1913)
- *The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman* (1914)
- *The World Set Free* (1914)
- *Bealby: A Holiday* (1915)
- *Boon (1915)* (as Reginald Bliss)
- *The Research Magnificent* (1915)
- *Mr Britling Sees It Through* (1916)
- *The Soul of a Bishop* (1917)
- [*Joan and Peter: The Story of an Education*](https://engole.info/joan-and-peter/) (1918)
- *The Undying Fire* (1919)
- *The Secret Places of the Heart* (1922)
- *Men Like Gods* (1923)
- *The Dream* (1924)
- *Christina Alberta’s Father* (1925)
- *The World of William Clissold* (1926)
- *Meanwhile* (1927)
- *Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island* (1928)
- *The Autocracy of Mr. Parham* (1930)
- *The Bulpington of Blup* (1932)
- *The Shape of Things to Come* (1933)
- *The Croquet Player* (1936)
- *Brynhild* (1937)
- *Star Begotten* (1937)
- *The Camford Visitation* (1937)
- *Apropos of Dolores* (1938)
- *The Brothers* (1938)
- *The Holy Terror* (1939)
- *Babes in the Darkling Wood* (1940)
- *All Aboard for Ararat* (1940)
- *You Can’t Be Too Careful* (1941)
Short stories
- “A Tale of the Twentieth Century” (1887)
- “[A Talk with Gryllotalpa](https://engole.info/a-talk-with-gryllotalpa)” (1887)
- “A Vision of the Past” (1887)
- “The Chronic Argonauts” (1888)
- “[The Devotee of Art](https://engole.info/the-devotee-of-art)” (1888)
- “[Æpyornis Island](https://engole.info/aepyornis-island/)” (1894)
- “[A Deal in Ostriches](https://engole.info/a-deal-in-ostriches/)” (1894)
- “A Family Elopement” (1894)
- “[The Diamond Maker](https://engole.info/the-diamond-maker/)” (1894)
- “The Great Change” (1894)
- “[The Flowering of the Strange Orchid](https://engole.info/the-flowering-of-the-strange-orchid/)” (1894)
- “[The Hammerpond Park Burglary](https://engole.info/the-hammerpond-park-burglary/)” (1894)
- “How Gabriel Became Thompson” (1894)
- “[In the Avu Observatory](https://engole.info/in-the-avu-observatory/)” (1894)
- “[In the Modern Vein: An Unsympathetic Love Story](https://engole.info/in-the-modern-vein/)” (1894)
- “[The Jilting of Jane](https://engole.info/the-jilting-of-jane/)” (1894)
- “[The Lord of the Dynamos](https://engole.info/the-lord-of-the-dynamos/)” (1894)
- “[The Man With a Nose](https://engole.info/the-man-with-a-nose/)” (1894)
- “A Misunderstood Artist” (1894)
- “[The Stolen Bacillus](https://engole.info/the-stolen-bacillus/)” (1894)
- “[The Thing in No. 7](https://engole.info/the-thing-in-no-7/)” (1894)
- “[Through a Window](https://engole.info/through-a-window/)” (1894)
- “[The Thumb Mark](https://engole.info/the-thumb-mark/)” (1894)
- “[The Treasure in the Forest](https://engole.info/the-treasure-in-the-forest/)” (1894)
- “[The Triumphs of a Taxidermist](https://engole.info/the-triumphs-of-a-taxidermist/)” (1894)
- “[The Argonauts of the Air](https://engole.info/the-argonauts-of-the-air/)” (1895)
- “[A Catastrophe](https://engole.info/a-catastrophe/)” (1895)
- “[The Cone](https://engole.info/the-cone/)” (1895)
- “[The Flying Man](https://engole.info/the-flying-man/)” (1895)
- “How Pingwill Was Routed” (1895)
- “Le Mari Terrible” (1895)
- “[The Moth](https://engole.info/the-moth/)” (1895)
- “Our Little Neighbour” (1895)
- “[Pollock and the Porroh Man](https://engole.info/pollock-and-the-porroh-man/)” (1895)
- “[The Reconciliation](https://engole.info/the-reconciliation/)” (1895)
- “[The Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes](https://engole.info/the-remarkable-case-of-davidsons-eyes/)” (1895)
- “[The Sad Story of a Dramatic Critic](https://engole.info/the-sad-story-of-a-dramatic-critic/)” (1895)
- “[The Temptation of Harringay](https://engole.info/the-temptation-of-harringay/)” (1895)
- “[Wayde’s Essence](https://engole.info/waydes-essence)” (1895)
- “[The Apple](https://engole.info/the-apple/)” (1896)
- “[In the Abyss](https://engole.info/in-the-abyss/)” (1896)
- “[The Plattner Story](https://engole.info/the-plattner-story/)” (1896)
- “[The Purple Pileus](https://engole.info/the-purple-pileus/)” (1896)
- “[The Rajah’s Treasure](https://engole.info/the-rajahs-treasure/)” (1896)
- “[The Red Room](https://engole.info/the-red-room/)” (1896)
- “[The Sea Raiders](https://engole.info/the-sea-raiders/)” (1896)
- “[A Slip Under the Microscope](https://engole.info/a-slip-under-the-microscope/)” (1896)
- “[The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham](https://engole.info/the-story-of-the-late-mr-elvesham/)” (1896)
- “[Under the Knife](https://engole.info/under-the-knife/)” (1896)
- “[The Crystal Egg](https://engole.info/the-crystal-egg/)” (1897)
- “[The Lost Inheritance](https://engole.info/the-lost-inheritance)” (c. 1896)
- “Mr Marshall’s Doppelganger” (1897)
- “A Perfect Gentleman on Wheels” (1897)
- “[The Presence by the Fire](https://engole.info/the-presence-by-the-fire/)” (1897)
- “[The Star](https://engole.info/the-star/)” (December 1897)
- “A Story of the Stone Age” (1897)
- “[Jimmy Goggles the God](https://engole.info/jimmy-goggles-the-god/)” (1898)
- “[The Man Who Could Work Miracles](https://engole.info/the-man-who-could-work-miracles/)” (1898)
- “[Miss Winchelsea’s Heart](https://engole.info/miss-winchelseas-heart)” (1898)
- “[Mr. Ledbetter’s Vacation](https://engole.info/mr-ledbetters-vacation/)” (1898)
- “[The Stolen Body](https://engole.info/the-stolen-body/)” (1898)
- “[Mr. Brisher’s Treasure](https://engole.info/mr-brishers-treasure/)” (1899)
- “A Story of the Days to Come” (1899)
- “[A Vision of Judgmen](https://engole.info/a-vision-of-judgement/)t” (1899)
- “[A Dream of Armageddon](https://engole.info/a-dream-of-armageddon/)” (1901)
- “[Filmer](https://engole.info/filmer/)” (1901)
- “[Mr. Skelmersdale in Fairyland](https://engole.info/mr-skelmersdale-in-fairyland/)” (1901)
- “[The New Accelerator](https://engole.info/the-new-accelerator/)” (1901)
- “[The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost](https://engole.info/the-story-of-the-inexperienced-ghost/)” (1902)
- “The Loyalty of Esau Common” (1902)
- “[The Land Ironclads](https://engole.info/the-land-ironclads)” (1903)
- “[The Magic Shop](https://engole.info/the-magic-shop/)” (1903)
- “[The Truth About Pyecraft](https://engole.info/the-truth-about-pyecraft/)” (1903)
- “[The Valley of Spiders](https://engole.info/the-valley-of-spiders)” (1903)
- “[The Country of the Blind](https://engole.info/the-country-of-the-blind/)” (1904)
- “[The Empire of the Ants](https://engole.info/the-empire-of-the-ants)” (1905)
- “[The Door in the Wall](https://engole.info/the-door-in-the-wall/)” (1906)
- “[The Beautiful Suit](https://engole.info/the-beautiful-suit/)” (1909)
- “Little Mother Up the Mörderberg” (1910)
- “My First Aeroplane” (1910)
- “The Story of the Last Trump” (1915)
- “The Wild Asses of the Devil” (1915)
- “[Peter Learns Arithmetic](https://engole.info/joan-and-peter)” (1918)
- “[The Grisly Folk](https://engole.info/the-grisly-folk)” (1921)
- “[The Pearl of Love](https://engole.info/the-pearl-of-love/)” (1925)
- “[The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper](https://engole.info/the-queer-story-of-brownlows-newspaper/)” (1932)
- “[Answer to Prayer](https://engole.info/answer-to-prayer/)” (1937)
- “[The Country of the Blind](https://engole.info/the-country-of-the-blind/) (revised)” (1939)
- “The Haunted Ceiling” (2016) Probably written in about 1895, but unpublished during Wells’s lifetime.{{sfnp|4PURBPEY}}
Essays
- “[The Man of the Year Million](https://engole.info/the-man-of-the-year-million)” (1893)
- “[The Extinction of Man](https://engole.info/the-extinction-of-man/)” (1894)
- “[The Book of Curses](https://engole.info/the-book-of-curses/)” (1894)
- “[The Shopman](https://engole.info/the-shopman/)” (1894)
- “[Incidental Thoughts on a Bald Head](https://engole.info/incidental-thoughts-on-a-bald-head/)” (1895)
- “[Mind at the End of its Tether](https://engole.info/mind-at-the-end-of-its-tether)” (1945)
Collected works
- [*The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents*](https://engole.info/the-stolen-bacillus-and-other-incidents/) (1895)
- [*Select Conversations with an Uncle (Now Extinct), and Two Other Reminiscences*](https://engole.info/select-conversations-with-an-uncle/) (1895)
- [*Certain Personal Matters*](https://engole.info/certain-personal-matters/) (1897)
- [*The Plattner Story and Others*](https://engole.info/the-plattner-story-and-others/) (1897)
- [*Thirty Strange Stories*](https://engole.info/thirty-strange-stories/) (1897)
- [*Tales of Space and Time*](https://engole.info/tales-of-space-and-time/) (1899)
- [*Twelve Stories and a Dream*](https://engole.info/twelve-stories-and-a-dream/) (1903)
- [*The Country of the Blind and Other Stories*](https://engole.info/the-country-of-the-blind-and-other-stories/) (1911)
- [*The Door in the Wall and Other Stories*](https://engole.info/the-door-in-the-wall-and-other-stories/) (1911)
- *The Complete Short Stories of H. G. Wells* (1927)
- [*Stories of Men and Women in Love*](https://engole.info/stories-of-men-and-women-in-love) (1933)
- [*The Happy Turning*](https://engole.info/the-happy-turning) (1945)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 19771
**Categories:** Bibliography
---
### [A Talk With Gryllotalpa](https://engole.info/a-talk-with-gryllotalpa/)
**Published:** July 24, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Short story by H. G. Wells, first published in 1887, exploring humanity's place in the vastness of the universe.
**Content:**
“A Talk With Gryllotalpa” is a short story by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published in the *Science Schools Journal* in February 1887 under one of his early pen names, Septimus Browne.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|55}}{{sfnp|F4RUB7AM}}\[a\]Wells founded the *Science Schools Journal* in 1886, with the help of his friend and fellow student William Burton, and was its first editor.{{sfnp|ASUSTQJ9|13}}
The story, told in the form of a conversation between the narrator and his friend Gryllotalpa, explores humanity’s place in the vastness of the universe, and one’s duty to one’s neighbours.
## Synopsis
The story begins with the narrator pondering on an illustration he has seen in John Bunyan’s *Pilgrim’s Progress*, depicting Christian going through the dark valley where he meets Apollyon, the “foul fiend”, who is blocking his path.\[b\]Apollyon is one of the names for the Devil.{{sfnp|TIQIQBCD}} The picture is full of drama, with lightning, falling stars and hellish colours, while Christian and Apollyon are shown as “two of the littlest figures conceivable near the middle of the picture”.{{sfnp|US53XJ8W|293}}
As the narrator is contemplating the scene, his friend Gryllotalpa arrives,\[c\]Gryllotalpa, the name of the mole cricket,{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|55}} symbolises his burrowing into scientific knowledge. and expresses his profound admiration for the picture, illustrating as it does humanity’s “infinitesimal littleness” in the face of infinite space and evolutionary time.{{sfnp|US53XJ8W|293}}
The narrator responds by arguing that perspective defines our world; a sun may be enormous, but in the human frame of reference, humanity is still “the biggest thing” in its world.{{sfnp|US53XJ8W|293}} He concludes by admitting that although the scientific efforts such as those advocated by his friend to aid in the development of humanity is a “vast thing”, the more immediate duty is to serve your neighbour.{{sfnp|US53XJ8W|294}}
I will not tell what Gryllotalpa said, because I ever love to have the last word. And, in truth, I hardly fancy I could tell, for it was strange sayings, concerning “truth in the absolute” and the like (to me) incomprehensible things.{{sfnp
— US53XJ8W|294}}
## See also
- [H. G. Wells bibliography](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Wells founded the *Science Schools Journal* in 1886, with the help of his friend and fellow student William Burton, and was its first editor.{{sfnp|ASUSTQJ9|13}} b Apollyon is one of the names for the Devil.{{sfnp|TIQIQBCD}} c Gryllotalpa, the name of the mole cricket,{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|55}} symbolises his burrowing into scientific knowledge.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30197
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Redcap](https://engole.info/redcap/)
**Published:** December 3, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Grandtully_Castle_%28geograph_3890325%29.jpg[/pimage]Evil fairies said to live in the peel towers and castles of the Scottish border with England.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Grandtully_Castle_%28geograph_3890325%29.jpg)Grandtully Castle in Perthshire, Scotland, reputedly home to the only benign redcap
Wikimedia Commons
Redcaps are goblin-like evil fairies said to live in the ruined peel towers and castles in the Border country between Scotland and England, particularly those associated with slaughter or other wicked deeds.{{sfnp|XN26B2QX|136}} According to tradition, the foundations of such towers and castles, supposedly built by the Picts, were sprinkled with the blood of a human or animal sacrifice, and the redcaps are the spirits of those victims. The similar but less malevolent [dunters](https://engole.info/dunter/) are also said to be the spirits of those sacrifices.{{sfnp|8LTUFE8K|115}}
Usually only one redcap inhabits a building. The name comes from their habit of dyeing their hats red with the blood of their victims. In appearance they have been described as resembling a powerfully built old man wearing iron boots and carrying a pikestaff, with long sharp teeth and nails like an eagle’s talons. No human can physically withstand a redcap, but one can be frightened away by quoting from the Bible,{{sfnp|XN26B2QX|136}} or by holding a cross towards them. Once so confronted the redcap vanishes with a shriek, leaving behind one of its fang-like teeth.{{sfnp|VIDPGCC7|226}}
Grandtully Castle in Perthshire\[a\]Given as Grantully Castle in some sources. is reputedly home to a redcap who breaks the mould, one whom it brings fortune to see. Legend has it that he lives alone in a room at the top of the castle.{{sfnp|XN26B2QX|136}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Given as Grantully Castle in some sources.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23310
**Categories:** Mythical creature
---
### [A Mermaid](https://engole.info/a-mermaid/)
**Published:** January 26, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/John_William_Waterhouse_A_Mermaid.jpg[/pimage]Painting by John William Waterhouse, completed in 1900, now in the collection of the Royal Academy of Arts.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/John_William_Waterhouse_A_Mermaid.jpg)Oil on canvas
96.5 cm × 66.6 cm (37.9 in × 26.2 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*A Mermaid* is an oil on canvas painting by the English artist [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse) (1849–1917), completed in 1900. Waterhouse was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1885, and in return he presented *A Mermaid* to the academy; it was displayed at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1901.{{sfnp|XF454ZR8}}
Waterhouse is known primarily for his depictions of women set in scenes from myth, legend or poetry.{{sfnp|SKW9QAVY}} *A Mermaid* may have been inspired by Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem *The Mermaid* (1830), which includes the lines:{{sfnp|XF454ZR8}}
> Who would be
> A mermaid fair,
> Singing alone,
> Combing her hair
Mermaids were traditionally considered to be sirens who lured sailors to their deaths by singing to them. Beside the mermaid in this painting is a shell filled with pearls, each formed from the tears of a dead sailor.{{sfnp|XF454ZR8}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25091
## External links
- [Waterhouse’s *A Mermaid*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QZvc6sASLU), video from the Royal Academy of Arts
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [George Marsh](https://engole.info/george-marsh/)
**Published:** April 14, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/George_Marsh_%28martyr%29_monument_Deane.jpg[/pimage]Protestant priest who became a martyr, after his execution in 1555 as a result of the Marian Persecutions during the reign of Queen Mary I.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/George_Marsh_%28martyr%29_monument_Deane.jpg)Saxon cross memorial
Wikimedia Commons
George Marsh, a Protestant priest who became a martyr, was born in the parish of Deane near Bolton in 1515. He died at Boughton, Chester, on 24 April 1555 as a result of the Marian Persecutions carried out against Protestant reformers and other dissenters during the reign of Queen Mary I. His death is recorded in Foxe’s *Actes and Monuments*, popularly known as Foxe’s *Book of Martyrs*, and he is remembered by memorials in St Mary’s Church in Deane, Bolton and in Chester.
## Life
George Marsh was born and lived most of his life in the parish of Deane, near Bolton. He was a farmer who married at the age of twenty-five. After his wife’s death he left his children in the care of his parents and entered Cambridge University. There he associated with advocates of the reformed faith and in particular Lawrence Saunders. Marsh from Catholic Lancashire, probably became a Protestant while at Cambridge. Nicholas Ridley, the Bishop of London ordained him deacon in 1552 and the following year he became the curate at Church Langton in Leicestershire and the Church of All Hallows Bread in Street, London where Lawrence Saunders was the incumbent.{{sfnp|IGWVV72I}}
Marsh was said to be a tall man who had a clever way with words and was a popular preacher. He was for a time employed by the king, but fell out of favour during the reign of Queen Mary I. After Saunders was arrested in 1554 George Marsh went north and continued preaching the Protestant faith in the parishes of Deane, Eccles and elsewhere in Lancashire.{{sfnp|IGWVV72I}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Georgemarsh_Footprint2.jpg)“Footprint” at Smithills Hall
Wikimedia Commons
A warrant was issued for Marsh’s arrest for heresy by Edward Stanley, 3rd Earl of Derby. Justice Barton of [Smithills Hall](https://engole.info/smithills-hall/) in Bolton sent servants to arrest him at his mother’s house, but Marsh gave himself up at the hall. After being questioned at Smithills, according to local tradition, Marsh stamped his foot so hard to re-affirm his faith that a footprint was left in the stone floor.{{sfnp|VK7E3EME}}
## Trial and death
While being questioned at Lathom House by the Earl of Derby it was thought that he could be made to conform and he was held in reasonable comfort. Marsh, however resisted efforts to make him submit and when he refused to recant was taken to Lancaster Gaol where he was brought for trial at the Quarter Sessions. For nearly a year, Marsh remained in Lancaster Gaol where he read from the Bible and prayed with townsfolk gathered outside his window until George Coates, the Catholic Bishop of Chester intervened. Sympathisers offered support and priests tried to convert him. When statutes against heresy were enacted by parliament Marsh was taken to the gaol at Northgate, Chester.He stood trial under Bishop Coates in the Lady Chapel of Chester Cathedral.{{sfnp|IGWVV72I}} Marsh refused to convert to Roman Catholicism, despite being given one last chance to recant while being tied to the stake at which he was about to be burned.{{sfnp|W52NS69C|1191}} His imprisonment is documented in Foxe’s *Actes and Monuments*. Marsh’s follower and brother-in-law Geoffrey Hurst, a nail maker from Shakerley, was also imprisoned at Lancaster but was saved from execution by Queen Mary’s death.{{sfnp|IGWVV72I}}
Marsh was executed in April 1555 on the north side of the road in Boughton, about a mile from Chester city centre. He had been sentenced to be burned to death at the stake at the traditional execution ground.{{sfnp|IGWVV72I}} After his death, his ashes were collected by his friends and buried in Saint Giles’ Cemetery. There is no grave marker just a footnote on an inscription:
When Protestant martyr George Marsh was burned at the stake on gallows hill close by his ashes were collected by his friends and buried here.
## Memorials
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/Georgemarsh.jpg)Memorial in Chester
Wikimedia Commons
St Mary’s Church in Deane has two memorials, the inscribed base of an ancient Saxon cross from which early Christian preachers taught in the churchyard that originally stood half a mile to the west of the church. Inscriptions on its base record his martyrdom and the erection of the memorial in 1893.{{sfnp|7NE85XKJ}} A window was dedicated to him in 1897 depicting Faith, Charity and Hope.{{sfnp|C7DTKSGC}}
In Chester, there are memorials in St John the Baptist’s Church and a granite obelisk erected in 1888 by the side of a road in Boughton, which has the inscription:{{sfnp|4Q3FYCIB}}
George Marsh born Dean Co. Lancaster. To the memory of George Marsh martyr who was burned to death near this spot for the truth sake April 24th 1555.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 18240
**Categories:** Martyr
---
### [The Old Straight Track](https://engole.info/the-old-straight-track/)
**Published:** February 16, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Ley-Line-Map-of-Britain.webp[/pimage]Book by the amateur archaeologist Alfred Watkins, published in 1925, the first to document and map alleged ley lines in Britain.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Ley-Line-Map-of-Britain.webp)Ley-line map of Britain
Pinterest
*The Old Straight Track: Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones* is a book by the amateur archaeologist Alfred Watkins, first published in 1925. It was the first to document and map alleged ley lines in Britain, primarily in southern England. According to a review in *The Geographical Journal* of the Royal Geographical Society, Watkins sought to prove that “mounds, moats, beacons and markstones fall into straight tracks, i.e. sighted lines, throughout Britain, with fragmentary evidence of trackways on the alignments”. The review ends by describing Watkins as “a bold, painstaking, and ingenious trafficker in coincidence”.{{sfnp|XFPPB6WF}}
Another archaeologist, O. G. S. Crawford, refused to accept advertisements for *The Old Straight Track* in the journal *Antiquity*.{{sfnp|42HI7FXB|132}} The fundamental criticism of Watkins’ ley line theory is that given the high density of historic and prehistoric sites in Britain and other parts of Europe, finding straight lines that “connect” sites is trivial and ascribable to coincidence. A statistical analysis of ley lines concluded: “the density of archaeological sites in the British landscape is so great that a line drawn through virtually anywhere will ‘clip’ a number of sites”.{{sfnp|2ECQ7PJ3|5}}
Although discounted by archaeologists, the rise of New Age ideas in the 1960s led to a resurgence of interest in the book and its promotion of the idea of ley lines.{{sfnp|CKJ3V3ZJ|52}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 28385
**Categories:** Archaeology
---
### [The Ghost of a Flea](https://engole.info/the-ghost-of-a-flea/)
**Published:** January 26, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/William_Blake_002.jpg[/pimage]One of William Blake's strangest and most bizarre works.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/William_Blake_002.jpg)*The Ghost of a Flea*, c. 1819–1820. [Tempera](https://engole.info/tempera) mixture panel with gold on mahogany, 21.4 cm × 16.2 cm (painting), 38.2 mm × 32.4 mm × 5.0 mm (frame)
Wikimedia Commons
William Blake’s *The Ghost of a Flea* is one of his more “bizarre” paintings,{{sfnp|S52SD45A|135}} as well as one of his smallest, at just 21.4 cm by 16.2 cm. Painted in about 1819–1820, it has been described by the art critic Alan Riding as “quite his strangest and certainly most Gothic work”.{{sfnp|QPJNNVMF}} There are certain similarities between the muscular, almost reptilian flea and the evil imp in [Henry Fuseli](https://engole.info/henry-fuseli)‘s [*The Nightmare*](https://engole.info/the-nightmare/) (1781), which may have been one of Blake’s inspirations.{{sfnp|9NPDESZG}}
The painting is almost certainly a bit of fun at the expense of Blake’s friend the landscape artist and astrologer John Varley, but it was also meant as a damning indictment of the worst aspects of human nature,{{sfnp|S52SD45A|136}} an amalgamation of man and beast.{{sfnp|9P4K4TPB}} In the words of the poet Stanley Moss,
> Blake drew a giant flea
> inhabited by the soul of man,
> “bloodthirsty to access,”
> usually “providentially confined”
> to the size and form of a flea.{{sfnp|LRXZZ8P5|search=The Ghost of a Flea}}
*The Ghost of a Flea* was donated to Tate Britain by W. Graham Robertson in 1949, where it remains as at 2019.{{sfnp|USJ7PS5C}}
## Description
The painting is done in [tempera](https://engole.info/tempera) heightened with gold on a mahogony panel. The ghost, in the form of a muscular naked man, is striding across what appears to be a stage, with heavy curtains to either side and a starry backdrop. He is staring into the bowl held in his left hand, his reptilian tongue flicking out from between his lips. His right hand is behind his back, holding a large thorn. The painting is dark, suggesting that the flea is a shadowy figure illuminated only briefly by a shooting star that is hurtling by.{{sfnp|S52SD45A|136-137}}
Blake sought to represent the flea as “a monsterous creature whose bloodthirsty instinct was imprinted on every detail of its appearance, with ‘burning eyes which long for moisture’, and a ‘face worthy of a murderer’.”{{sfnp|F9EWKQ2H}}
## John Varley
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/John_Varley_by_William_Mulready.jpg)John Varley portrayed by William Mulready, 1814
Wikimedia Commons
Blake struck up a friendship with John Varley, who was thirty years his junior. The two shared a belief in Johan Caspar Lavater’s theory of physiognomy, the idea that an individual’s appearance was an expression of their true character. In addition, Varley believed that Blake was a visionary, in the sense that the historical figures he painted were representations of something that appeared before the artist. One evening, in his own words, Varley found Blake “to be more than usually excited”.{{sfnp|S52SD45A|136}}
He told me he had seen a wonderful thing – the ghost of a flea! … He looked earnestly into a corner of the room, and then said, “here he is – reach me my things – I shall keep an eye on him. There he comes, his eager tongue whisking out of his mouth, a cup in his hand to hold blood, and covered with a scaly skin of gold and green, as he described him, so he drew him.{{sfnp
— S52SD45A|136}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 13769
**Categories:** Painting, William Blake
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Monday's Child](https://engole.info/mondays-child/)
**Published:** February 10, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/St._Nicholas_%28serial%29_%281873%29_%2814596944999%29.jpg/330px-St._Nicholas_%28serial%29_%281873%29_%2814596944999%29.jpg[/pimage]Nursery rhyme supposed to foretell a child's character or future from their day of birth.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/St._Nicholas_%28serial%29_%281873%29_%2814596944999%29.jpg/330px-St._Nicholas_%28serial%29_%281873%29_%2814596944999%29.jpg)Illustration from *St. Nicholas Magazine*, 1873
Wikimedia Commons
“Monday’s Child” is a nursery rhyme supposed to foretell a child’s character or future from their day of birth. The earliest known version was published in A. E. Bray’s *Traditions of Devonshire* (1838).{{sfnp|XXPUVGDA|loc=1235}}
The common modern version is:
> Monday’s child is fair of face,
> Tuesday’s child is full of grace.
> Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
> Thursday’s child has far to go.
> Friday’s child is loving and giving,
> Saturday’s child works hard for a living.
> And the child born on the Sabbath day
> Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|364-365}}
In some early versions of the rhyme, including that reproduced in *Traditions of Devonshire*, Christmas Day is substituted for the Sabbath day. A few others begin with Sunday, but have the character attributes in the same order. The rhyme is somewhat at odds with other beliefs about days of the week, {{sfnp|XXPUVGDA|loc=1235}} such as that Friday was considered to be particularly unlucky, as it was the day of Christ’s crucifixion.{{sfnp|ZFL4BCTG|loc=11522-11566}}
## See also
- [Chime hours](https://engole.info/chime-hours)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25129
**Categories:** Nursery rhyme
---
### [The Devotee of Art](https://engole.info/the-devotee-of-art/)
**Published:** July 23, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Short story by the English author H. G. Wells, first published in 1888, about an artist who dreams that he has neglected his dying wife in pursuit of creating the perfect picture.
**Content:**
“The Devotee of Art” is a short story by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published in 1888 under one of his early pen names, Sosthenes Smith, in the *Science Schools Journal*, issues 24–25.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|52}}\[a\]Wells founded the *Science Schools Journal* in 1886, with the help of his friend and fellow student William Burton, and was its first editor.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|52}}{{sfnp|ASUSTQJ9|13}}
The story, told as a third-person narrative, tells of an artist who dreams that he has neglected his dying wife in an effort to create the perfect picture.
## Synopsis
While painting in his studio, Alec hears his wife Isabel begin to play the piano. He lays down his brushes and goes to join her. He sits down and distractedly listens to the music, until his wife accuses him of dropping off to sleep, which he denies. In an attempt to convince her, “he opens his eyes as wide as possible and fixed them unblinkingly on her face”, to which Isabel responds by saying “I don’t want you to stare like a hairdresser’s wig block”.{{sfnp|US53XJ8W|711-712}}
Alec begins to suspect that marriage is a mistake for an artist, and that Isabel is a life force antagonistic to art; his supreme love is to be found in his dimly lit studio, to which he retreats. He is working on a picture of a knight keeping vigil, but try as he might, the face retains a curiously sinister expression. In a “flash of passion”, he swipes bright red paint across the canvas, at which point the image becomes animated and wipes the colour off its face with its hand, saying “That was rather hasty of you”.{{sfnp|US53XJ8W|715}}
Unmoved, Alec begins to debate with the picture about his lack of inspiration, which Alec attributes to his being married. He begins to paint over the figure in the picture, and an idea develops. He stays up all night painting, and by morning the picture is largely complete, already beautiful. There is a knock on the studio door. It is the maid, Lizzie, telling Alec that Isabel slipped on the stairs last night and is ill, but he is set on completing his picture.
Days pass, until Alec learns from her doctor that Isabel is dying from internal injuries caused by her fall. But he is hell bent on getting his painting to the Royal Academy, and gets into a cab to take him to Burlington House, clutching his precious picture. But slowly the work he has painted over begins to reemerge, and the diabolical figure reappears.
The cab crashes. Alec comes to in a hospital ward, and learns that his hand is to be amputated. Standing over him is the red-eyed man of his painting, who stretches something black over Alec’s eyes, making him feel as if he is being sucked into an infinite, dark void. Then he hears his wife’s voice: “Alec, wake up!”. He finds himself sitting in the old velvet-covered armchair beside the piano, with his wife bending over him. She explains that when she saw him going to sleep again she stopped playing and left him, and she was surprised he did not wake when Lizzie dropped the tray downstairs.
“You are very affectionate tonight,” his wife said presently, as they went downstairs together.
“I am repenting, dearest, of a sin against you, of letting an idle dream come between us.”{{sfnp
— US53XJ8W|725}}
## Commentary
The motif of an image coming to life and criticising the artist’s work is repeated in Wells’s later short story “[The Temptation of Harringay](https://engole.info/the-temptation-of-harringay)“, published in 1895.
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Wells founded the *Science Schools Journal* in 1886, with the help of his friend and fellow student William Burton, and was its first editor.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|52}}{{sfnp|ASUSTQJ9|13}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30191
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [The Temptation of Harringay](https://engole.info/the-temptation-of-harringay/)
**Published:** July 18, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/maxresdefault.jpg[/pimage]Short story by H. G. Wells, published in 1895, about an artist who paints a man's head that comes to life and criticises his work.
**Content:**
“The Temptation of Harringay” is a short story by H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published in the 9 February 1895 edition of the *St. James’s Gazette* and subsequently in [*The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents*](https://engole.info/the-stolen-bacillus-and-other-incidents/) (1895).{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|55}} It tells of an artist, Harringay, who paints a man’s head that comes to life and criticises his work.
## Synopsis
The story is told in the third-person by a narrator who is evidently dubious about the truth of the account he is about to relate: “It depends entirely on the word of R. M. Harringay, who is an artist”.
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/maxresdefault.jpg)YouTube
About 10 o’clock one morning Harringay goes into his studio to complete the portrait of an Italian organ-grinder he had started the day before. Dissatisfied with his work, he begins to dab at the painting, slightly altering an eyebrow, adding a little to the lobe of an ear, but still the portrait does not feel right, if anything becoming more satanic. Accidentally retouching the eye with vermillion when he had meant to use brown, it seems to Harringay that the now red eye rolls in its socket and glares at him. In a moment of panic he strikes the brush full of bright red across the painting, at which the face smiles and says “That was rather hasty of you”.
“Don’t go hitting me with paint again”, the face continues, “Really, you haven’t an idea what your picture ought to look like … you *never* have with your pictures.” The devil, who has taken possession of the painting, explains to Harringay that a painting must flow from inspiration, not experiment and chance, as is Harringay’s way. “The true artist”, says the devil, “is always an ignorant man. An artist who theorises about his work is no longer artist but critic.”
The devil offers Harringay a deal, his soul for two masterpieces, but the artist refuses, and attempts to paint over the face. The devil resists, wiping off the paint as fast as Harringay can apply it. Having run out of paint he rushes to his wife’s boudoir to fetch a large tin of enamel, Hedge Sparrow’s Egg Tint, and a brush.\[a\]Women used enamel for cosmetic purposes during the late Victorian period.{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|450}} Just before Harringay paints over the last of the canvas the devil ups his offer to five masterpieces, but to no avail; all that remains is a small canvas enamelled a pale green. The narrator ends by observing that Harringay “never has produced a masterpiece, and in the opinion of his intimate friends probably never will.”
## Commentary
The devil offers Harringay the composer Richard Wagner as an example of an artist who, wrongly, chose to theorise.{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|449}} The story is an obvious reworking of Wells’s earlier short story ” The Devotee of Art”, published in 1888.
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Women used enamel for cosmetic purposes during the late Victorian period.{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|450}} b, c var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 21860
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [The Door in the Wall and Other Stories](https://engole.info/the-door-in-the-wall-and-other-stories/)
**Published:** January 20, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Collection of eight short stories by H. G. Wells, first published in 1911.
**Content:**
Amazon
*The Door in the Wall and Other Stories* is a collection of eight short stories written by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published in 1911.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|41}}
## Contents
Stories are shown in the order in which they appear in the book, which is not necessarily the order in which they first appeared in print.
- “[The Door in the Wall](https://engole.info/the-door-in-the-wall/)” (1906)
- “[The Star](https://engole.info/the-star/)” (1897)
- “[A Dream of Armageddon](https://engole.info/a-dream-of-armageddon)” (1901)
- “[The Cone](https://engole.info/the-cone/)” (1895)
- “[A Moonlight Fable](https://engole.info/the-beautiful-suit/)” (1909)
- “[The Diamond Maker](https://engole.info/the-diamond-maker/)” (1894)
- “[The Lord of the Dynamos](https://engole.info/the-lord-of-the-dynamos/)” (1894)
- “[The Country of the Blind](https://engole.info/the-country-of-the-blind/)” (1904)
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24375
## External links
- *[The Door in the Wall and Other Stories](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/456/456-h/456-h.htm)* at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** Short story
---
### [Triangulation pillar](https://engole.info/triangulation-pillar/)
**Published:** December 11, 2021
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** Pillars erected by the Ordnance Survey to allow more accurate maps of Great Britain to be produced.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Trig_Point_on_Blackstone_Edge._-_geograph.org.uk_-_570401.jpg)Trig pillar on [Blackstone Edge](https://engole.info/blackstone-edge/)
Wikimedia Commons
Triangulation pillars, trig pillars or trig points were erected by the Ordnance Survey (OS) when it began the retriangulation of Great Britain. Surveyors erected the first white concrete pillar in a field in Cold Ashby in April 1936. Before then map making was based on the Principal Triangulation, piecemeal observations made between 1783 and 1853, but as the country developed rapidly in the 20th century, the system could not support the changes that accurate mapping required.{{sfnp|J3CMNGXV}}
Brigadier Martin Hotine, head of the Trigonometrical and Levelling Division at OS, planned the retriangulation in 1935. It created the OSGB36 datum and the National Grid, which are still in use creating a network covering the whole country that unified mapping from county projections into a national system. He designed the trig pillar as a base for the theodolites used by survey teams, who located sites and carried the materials to build them.{{sfnp|J3CMNGXV}}
Triangulation works by measuring angles to known points at either end of a fixed baseline to determine the location of a point. The known points were more than 6,500 trig pillars that were erected. A theodolite was fastened to the mounting plate on top of the pillar and levelled so that it was directly over a brass bolt. Angles were measured from the pillar to surrounding trig points. Trig pillars have since been superseded by technology.{{sfnp|J3CMNGXV}}
Many trig pillars are on hill peaks, but the lowest, at Little Ouse in Norfolk, is {{convert|3|ft|r=1|spell=in}} below sea level.{{sfnp|BCKRR2XD}} Many trig pillars have been lost, but most survivors are the standard Hotine design. A few are made of stone, and in Scotland are some taller, cylindrical concrete pillars or Vanessas.{{sfnp|J3CMNGXV}} The Ordnance Survey is responsible for maintaining the pillars.{{sfnp|BCKRR2XD}}
Most trig pillars are no longer used, but around a thousand have been refurbished with bolts and rivets and accurately measured using GPS (Global Positioning System) technology to form the “Passive Station” network. Thirty “active stations” also transmit positional information which can be received by survey-quality GPS receivers.{{sfnp|6IK38MFC}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24208
**Categories:** Cartography
---
### [Myrmecoleon](https://engole.info/myrmecoleon/)
**Published:** September 25, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Myrmecoleon_1491.jpg[/pimage]Usually considered to be a mythical creature of legend, it has also been identified as a rock hyrax.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Myrmecoleon_1491.jpg)Illustration from the *[Hortus Sanitatis](https://engole.info/hortus-sanitatis)*, 1491
Wikimedia Commons
The myrmecoleon, or ant-lion, is usually considered to be a mythical creature of legend, although it has also been identified as a rock hyrax. The uncertainty stems from the fact that various sources have used the term *ant-lion* – the name myrmecoleon was attached to it later – to refer to two different animals: one a mammal and the other an insect.{{sfnp|S8SJPA9X|127}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 6467
**Categories:** Mythical creature
---
### [Hortus Sanitatis](https://engole.info/hortus-sanitatis/)
**Published:** September 23, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Hortus-Sanitatis.webp[/pimage]First natural history encyclopedia, published by Jacob Meydenbach in Mainz, Germany in 1491.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Mandrake.webp)Entry for the [mandrake](https://engole.info/mandrake)
Wellcome Collection
The *Hortus Sanitatis* (also written *Ortus*, Latin for *The Garden of Health*), was the first natural history encyclopedia, published by Jacob Meydenbach in Mainz, Germany in 1491.{{sfnp|RV42IRMF}} It describes species in the natural world together with their medicinal uses and modes of preparation.{{sfnp|F2V456Z4}}
It is in part an extended Latin translation of the German *Herbarius*, the *Gart der Gesundheit* of Peter Schöffer, published in 1485, but unlike that earlier work also deals with animals, birds, fish and stones.{{sfnp|IIL49PHE|28}} The author does not restrict himself to dealing only with real creatures, but also includes accounts of mythical animals such as the dragon, harpy, hydra, [myrmecoleon](https://engole.info/myrmecoleon/), phoenix, and [zitiron](https://engole.info/zitiron/).{{sfnp|IIL49PHE|34-35}}
## Publication history
A second edition of the *Hortus Sanitatis* was published in 1491 and a third in 1497. A French edition by Antoine Vérard was printed in Paris in about 1500, under the title *Ortus sanitatis translate de latin en francois*.{{sfnp|IIL49PHE|35}} The last complete copy of *Hortus Sanitatis* appeared in about 1539, printed by Phillipe le Noir and sold in Paris under the title of *Le jardin de sante*.{{sfnp|IIL49PHE|36}}
An English version of extracts from the *Hortus*, the *Noble lyfe & natures of man, of bestes, serpentys, fowles & fisshes*, was produced in 1491 by Laurence Andrew (fl. 1510–1537). A facsimile edition was published in London in 1954 by B. Quaritch.{{sfnp|4Y7YK7I3}}
## Contents
The book is divided up into sections as follows:
- Tractatus De Herbis (“Treatise on Herbs”)
- Tractatus De Animalibus (“Treatise on Animals”)
- Tractatus De Avibus (“Treatise on Birds”)
- Tractatus De Piscibus (“Treatise on Fish”)
- Tractatus De Lapidibus (“Treatise on Stones”)
- Tractatus De Urinis (“Treatise on Urine”)
- Tabula super tractatu (an alphabetic index of medicinal uses for the species in each section)
- Tabula Generis (an alphabetic list of the included species)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 6425
**Categories:** Encyclopedia
---
### [Castrovalva](https://engole.info/castrovalva/)
**Published:** July 19, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Castrovalva.webp[/pimage]Lithograph produced by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898–1972), created in 1930, depicting the landscape around the Italian hamlet of Castrovalva.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Castrovalva.webp)Lithograph
53 × 42 cm (21 × 16.5 in)
Wikimedia Commons
Castrovalva is a lithograph produced by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898–1972), created in 1930.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|7}}
The picture is a representation of the [hamlet](https://engole.info/hamlet-place) of Castrovalva, in the Abruzzi region of southern Italy, overlooking the nature reserve of the Gorges de la Sagittario. The viewer’s eye is led along a winding pathway towards distant settlements in the valley below, above which voluminous clouds loom in the sky.{{sfnp|M59ZFGV9}}{{sfnp|ZUA9E8H4}}
At first sight the lithograph appears to be a realistic representation of the landscape, but closer inspection reveals several tricks used by the artist to intensify the illusion of depth. For instance, the plants in the bottom left foreground are unnaturally large, making everything else in the picture seem further away than it actually is.{{sfnp|M59ZFGV9}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30179
**Categories:** Lithograph
---
### [Church of St Wilfrid, Standish](https://engole.info/church-of-st-wilfrid-standish/)
**Published:** July 20, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Standish_st_wilfrids.jpg/960px-Standish_st_wilfrids.jpg[/pimage]Grade I listed active Anglican Church in the village of Standish, Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Standish_st_wilfrids.jpg/960px-Standish_st_wilfrids.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/kEX2eCbjSeHMMsUS9
St Wilfrid’s is an active Anglican Church in the former pit-village of Standish, Greater Manchester. It is in the Archdeaconry of Blackburn, the Deanery of Chorley and the Diocese of Blackburn, and is a member of the [Benefice](https://engole.info/benefice) of Standish.{{sfnp|YNSDJEWM}}
The church is believed to have been built between 1582 and 1584, and was probably designed by Laurence Shipway. It has been described as “one of the most interesting churches in Lancashire”,{{sfnp|TI829R7U|590}}\[a\]Until 1974, and the implementation of the Local Government Act 1972, Standish was in the county of Lancashire. and a “rare example” of a 16th-century church. St Wilfrid’s was designated a Grade I listed building in 1966.{{sfnp|GFXU2APN}} The gatehouse to the church is separately listed as a Grade II structure.{{sfnp|U3RV2CL6}}
## Architecture
### Exterior
St Wilfrid’s is built largely of yellow-black gritstone, except for the grey-black [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) tower.{{sfnp|QI9AQB3G}} It consists of a five-bay [nave](https://engole.info/nave), [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel), [aisles](https://engole.info/aisle-architecture), north and south [chapels](https://engole.info/chapel), west tower and east [vestry](https://engole.info/sacristy). The west tower was added in 1867, and the east vestry in 1913–1914 by Austin and Paley.{{sfnp|GFXU2APN}}
### Interior
Wikimedia Commons
The nave and chancel [arcades](https://engole.info/arcade) have pointed arches on Tuscan columns with plinths, believed to be the earliest use of the order in England.{{sfnp|GFXU2APN}} The architectural historian Simon Jenkins has described St Wilfrid’s as having “the finest roof in Lancashire”.{{sfnp|QI9AQB3G}}
St Wilfrid’s was placed on the Heritage at Risk Register by Historic England in 2025, following the discovery of an infestation of deathwatch beetles in the timber roof.{{sfnp|KNB2JIST}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Until 1974, and the implementation of the Local Government Act 1972, Standish was in the county of Lancashire.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30182
**Categories:** Anglican, Church, Greater Manchester
---
### [Battle of Mons Badonicus](https://engole.info/battle-of-mons-badonicus/)
**Published:** January 22, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/Arthur_Leading_the_Charge_at_Mount_Badon.png/330px-Arthur_Leading_the_Charge_at_Mount_Badon.png[/pimage]Battle reportedly fought between the Celtic Britons and invading Anglo-Saxons, possibly in 516.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/Arthur_Leading_the_Charge_at_Mount_Badon.png/330px-Arthur_Leading_the_Charge_at_Mount_Badon.png)Arthur leading a cavalry charge at Mount Badon, in an 1898 illustration for *Idylls of the King*
Wikimedia Commons
The Battle of Mons Badonicus, also known as the Battle of Badon, was reportedly fought between Celtic Britons and Anglo-Saxons in Britain in the late 5th or early 6th century.{{sfnp|JAQT7FDP|295-298}} It was credited as a major victory for the Britons, halting the encroachment of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms for a generation.{{sfnp|DECGSDZF|30-31}}
The earliest references to the battle, by the British monk Gildas, date to the 6th century. It is chiefly known today for the supposed involvement of King Arthur, whose claim to a historical existence rests almost entirely on a tradition that first appeared in the 9th-century *Historia Brittonum* (The History of the Britons), usually attributed to the Welsh monk Nennius.{{sfnp|IYVZSW66|3}}\[a\]Nennius is almost certainly not the true author of the *Historia Brittonum*.{{sfnp|CUF2D9U8}} There is considerable uncertainty about the location of the battle, but a set of Welsh annals appended to the *Historia* place it as having been fought in 516.{{sfnp|DECGSDZF|31}}
## Historical background
The historian Sir Frank Stenton has described the story of the Battle of Badonicus as either an epilogue to the history of Roman Britain or a prologue to the history of Saxon England.{{sfnp|IYVZSW66|2}} The earliest mention of the battle appears in Gildas’s *De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae* (“On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain”), written in the early to mid-6th century, “a work of exhortation and bitter reproach”.{{sfnp|IYVZSW66|2}}
Following the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain in 410, the country was subject to various attacks by unnamed barbarians. The British rulers appealed to the commander of the Roman forces in Gaul, Aetius, for military assistance, but receiving none were forced to undertake their own defence. One particular barbarian, often identified as Vortigern,\[b\]Vortigern was a 5th-century British war lord whose existence has been disputed by some scholars; Vortigern may even have been a title rather than a personal name.{{sfnp|DECGSDZF|29}} introduced a large force of Saxon mercenaries into Britain, and in time they proceeded to ravage the country “as far as the western sea”. Eventually a Roman still ruling somewhere in the country, Ambrosius Aurelianus, organised the British defence, culminating in a decisive victory at a now unidentified place called Mons Badonicus.{{sfnp|IYVZSW66|2-3}}
## Location
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Liddington_Castle%2C_Liddington%2C_Swindon_-_geograph.org.uk_-_624639.jpg)Liddington Castle is one of the suggested sites for the battle. The ramparts of the Iron Age hill fort can be seen at the highest point of the skyline.
Wikimedia Commons
Historians and archaeologists including Susan Hirst, Geoffrey Ashe and Michael Wood have argued for the site of Liddington Castle on the hill above Badbury (Old English: Baddan byrig) in Wiltshire. This site commands The Ridgeway, which connects the River Thames with the River Avon and River Severn beyond.{{sfnp|VP4EZJ35}}{{sfnp|JAQT7FDP|162-164}}{{sfnp|66P7VE8X|219-220}}
The similarly named Badbury Rings in Dorset have also been suggested as the location of the battle.{{sfnp|EY3YJ4QJ}} The archaeologists Tim and Annette Burkitt have proposed the site of Bath, Somerset on the basis of the Welsh annals, as well as archaeological and toponymic evidence.{{sfnp|AI9KNULB}}{{sfnp|9HYG5WHI}}\[c\]A toponym is the name of a place, often derived from its geographical features.
More recently the philologist Andrew Breeze has argued that *Badon* must be etymologically Brittonic rather than English (thus eliminating Bath from consideration as its name is entirely Germanic), and that the toponym as given by Gildas (Badonici Montis) is a misprint of Bradonici Montis, based on known Celtic place names in Wales and Cornwall. Breeze suggests Ringsbury Camp near Braydon in Wiltshire as the location of the battle.{{sfnp|IPKUEZUB|6-7}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Nennius is almost certainly not the true author of the *Historia Brittonum*.{{sfnp|CUF2D9U8}} b Vortigern was a 5th-century British war lord whose existence has been disputed by some scholars; Vortigern may even have been a title rather than a personal name.{{sfnp|DECGSDZF|29}} c A toponym is the name of a place, often derived from its geographical features.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23450
This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Battle_of_Badon#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Battle, Somerset
---
### [Pitfour estate](https://engole.info/pitfour-estate/)
**Published:** July 22, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Pitfour_House%2C_side_view.jpg[/pimage]Estate in the Buchan area of north-east Scotland, home to James Ferguson of Badifurrow, the first Laird of Pitfour, and two generations of his family.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Pitfour_House%2C_side_view.jpg)Side view of Pitfour House, c. late 19th century
Wikimedia Commons
The Pitfour estate, in the Buchan area of north-east Scotland, was an ancient barony encompassing most of the extensive Longside Parish, stretching from St Fergus to New Pitsligo. It was purchased in 1700 by [James Ferguson](https://engole.info/james-ferguson-1st-laird-of-pitfour/) of Badifurrow, who became the first Laird of Pitfour.
The estate was substantially renovated by Ferguson and the following two generations of his family. At the height of its development, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the {{convert|50|sqmi|adj=on}} property had several extravagant features including a two-mile racecourse, an artificial lake and an observatory. The original mansion house was extended before being rebuilt. The surrounding parklands were landscaped, major renovations were undertaken, and [follies](https://engole.info/folly) such as a small replica Temple of Theseus were constructed, in which George Ferguson, the [fifth laird](https://engole.info/george-ferguson-5th-laird-of-pitfour/), was thought to keep alligators in a cold bath.
The first three lairds transformed the estate into a valuable asset. [Lord Pitfour](https://engole.info/james-ferguson-lord-pitfour/), the second laird, purchased additional lands including Deer Abbey and Inverugie Castle. Pitfour’s son, [James Ferguson](https://engole.info/james-ferguson-scottish-politician/), who became the third laird, continued to improve and expand the estate by adding the lake and bridges, and establishing planned villages. The third laird died a bachelor with no children, so the estate passed to the elderly [George Ferguson](https://engole.info/george-ferguson-lt-governor-of-tobago/), who was only in possession of the property for a few months. George was already a wealthy man, owning lands in Trinidad and Tobago, but despite not directly improving the Pitfour estate he added considerable value to the inheritance passed to his [illegitimate son](https://engole.info/george-ferguson-5th-laird-of-pitfour/). The extravagant lifestyles of the fifth and [sixth](https://engole.info/george-arthur-ferguson-6th-laird-of-pitfour/) lairds led to the sequestration of the estate, which was sold off piecemeal to pay their debts.
What remained of the estate was sold after the First World War. The mansion house was demolished in about 1926, and its stone used to build council houses in Aberdeen. In more recent times some of the remaining buildings, including the temple, the bridges and the stables, have been classified as at high risk by Historic Scotland because their condition has become poor. The chapel was fully renovated and converted to a private residence in 2003; the observatory was purchased and restored by Banff & Buchan District Council (now Aberdeenshire Council) and can be accessed by the public. The racecourse has been forested since 1926, and the lake is used by members of a private fishing club.
## Early history
The Pitfour estate in Mintlaw extended from St Fergus to New Pitsligo and encompassed most of the extensive Longside Parish.{{sfnp|EKRAH99J}}{{sfnp|DA4WNFW3|210}} The meaning of *Pitfour* is given in the 1895 records of the Clan Fergusson as “cold croft”,{{sfnp|PHT2KVSC|573}} but the historian John Milne{{sfnp|3BWFUMD4}} breaks the name into two parts and indicates the meaning as *Pit* being place and *feoir* or *feur* being grass.{{sfnp|4RXYFUVQ|261}} The Pitfour estate is shown on old maps as Petfouir or Petfour.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|4}} It was formerly one of Scotland’s largest and best-appointed estates and was referred to as “The Blenheim of Buchan”, “The Blenheim of the North” and “The Ascot of the North” by the architectural historian Charles McKean.{{sfnp|IR33ZPGQ}}{{sfnp|746WVX84|91-92}}{{sfnp|EQ9T7NA9}}
Scant early records exist of the lands but Alexander Stewart (Alexandro Senescalli), the natural son of King Robert II of Scotland, was given the Pitfour lands together with those of Lunan by his father in 1383.{{sfnp|FGT33DQC|34}}{{sfnp|SCLSK87G|235}} However, writing in 1887 Cadenhead states the lands were sold to Stewart by Ricardus Mouet, also known as Richard Lownan.{{sfnp|4KJ3DGUA|31}} During the next three centuries the lands had several different owners. Transactions show it passed to a burgess of Aberdeen in 1477 from Egidia Stewart; Walter Innes of Invermarkie gained feudal superiority to all Pitfour lands in 1493; and in 1506 the land was purchased by Thomas Innes, who died the following year. His son, John, inherited the property. It remained in the possession of the Innes family until at least 1581, when it was owned by James Innes and his wife Agnes Urquhart.{{sfnp|FGT33DQC|34-35}} Between 1581 and 1667 the lands were bought by George Morrison.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|4}} His son William inherited the property in 1700, and immediately sold the estate to James Ferguson, who became the first Laird of Pitfour.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|4}}
The lands purchased by Ferguson were recorded in 1667 in a charter granted by Charles II and were stated as encompassing “the lands and Barony of Toux and Pitfour in the Parish of Old Deer and Sheriffdom of Aberdeen including the towns and lands of Mintlaw, Longmuir, Dumpston in the Parish of Longside, and County of Aberdeen.” Several other lands, including “the Barony of Aden with the Tower, Fortaliss, Mains and Manor Place therof and pertinents of the same called Fortry, Rora Mill thereof, Croft Brewerie, Inverquhomrie and Yockieshill” were individually listed.{{sfnp|DA4WNFW3|212}} State papers from the reign of Queen Anne in the 18th century record the lands in favour of James Ferguson.{{sfnp|TD33EV7F}}
## Lairds and further development
### 1st laird
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Pitfour_House_map.png)19th-century map showing Pitfour House
Wikimedia Commons
[James Ferguson – ](https://engole.info/james-ferguson-1st-laird-of-pitfour/)known as the Sheriff, reflecting the post he held, recognised by the Society of Advocates – bought the Pitfour estate after selling the lands of Badifurrow.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|6}} He had inherited Badifurrow after demanding that his uncle Robert Ferguson should appear in court if he wished to contest the inheritance. Robert, nicknamed the Plotter, was in hiding to avoid charges of treachery,{{sfnp|6WNVRKBV|376}} and after his non-appearance in court James Ferguson’s inheritance was confirmed in mid-June 1700.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|4}} At that time the estate contained only a small country house.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|71}}{{sfnp|85S6U76M}}
### 2nd laird
James was laird until his death in 1734, after which the estate passed to his eldest son, also called [James](https://engole.info/james-ferguson-lord-pitfour/), who was born at Pitfour soon after it was purchased.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|5}} A solicitor like his father, he was promoted to the bench in 1764 and became Lord Pitfour. He continued to expand and improve the estate until his death in 1777,{{sfnp|IR33ZPGQ}} and set up the planned village of Fetterangus in 1752.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|86-87}}
Lord Pitfour purchased the lands of the last Earl Marischal, George Keith, which were adjacent to Pitfour, in 1766. They were considered the Earl Marischal’s most significant property\[a\]Inverugie Castle was the main residence of the Earl Marischal after Dunnottar Castle was used to house rebels but became ruinous after being forfeited in 1715.{{sfnp|GLIY35GG|76}} and had been forfeited when the Earl Marischal fell out of favour. He had bought it back from the York Buildings Company for £31,000, but Pitfour only paid £15,000 for it. The {{convert|8000|acre|sqkm}} of land included Deer Abbey and Inverugie Castle, but consisted predominantly of peat bogs, woods and uncultivated land. This addition made the Pitfour estate the largest in the area, at more than {{convert|30000|acre|sqkm}} stretching from Buchanhaven to Maud along the course of the River Ugie.{{sfnp|85S6U76M}}{{sfnp|FGT33DQC|22}}{{sfnp|DA4WNFW3|211-212}}{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|82}}
### 3rd laird
The [third laird](https://engole.info/james-ferguson-scottish-politician/), also named James, inherited the estate in 1777; he was usually referred to as the Member to differentiate him from previous generations. Like his forebears, he was an advocate but also became a Member of Parliament.{{sfnp|32ZKBJWY|133}} He too continued to expand and improve the estate; he constructed a lake and a canal, and built the new mansion.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|76}} He also expanded and altered Longside at the start of the 1800s, founded Mintlaw in 1813, assisted in the extension of New Deer and extended Buchanhaven.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|86-87}}
The Member died unmarried, childless and intestate in 1820. In normal circumstances his brother Patrick would have been his heir, but he died in battle in October 1780.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|22}}
### 4th laird
In 1820 the estate was inherited by the Member’s younger brother, [George Ferguson](https://engole.info/george-ferguson-lt-governor-of-tobago/), who was by then in his seventies. He was known as the Governor, reflecting his appointment as Lieutenant Governor of Tobago. He was laird from September 1820, but died in December that year. The Governor had spent most of his life in Trinidad and Tobago, where he was a principal landowner, and had inherited the Castara Estate on Tobago from Patrick. George was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Tobago in 1779, and after a battle with the French in 1781 surrendered the island to the French on 2 June. The Governor returned to Britain, although the terms of the surrender meant he still owned the Castara estate and all the slaves who worked on it. George had illegitimate children with an unknown woman. He continued to buy estates in the Caribbean and returned there in 1793, staying until 1810.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|33-38}}
### 5th laird
The estate started to deteriorate after it was inherited by the Governor’s illegitimate son [George Ferguson](https://engole.info/george-ferguson-5th-laird-of-pitfour/), known as the Admiral because of his naval career. He was already heavily in debt when he became the fifth laird in 1821, but he still enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and undertook much extravagant construction on the estate, including the erection of follies. To cover his substantial gambling debts, he began to sell parcels of estate land, and upon inheriting Pitfour he began selling furniture, books, farm equipment and other items, realising more than £9,000.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|42}}
### 6th laird
After the Admiral’s death in March 1867, the estate passed to his son, [George Arthur Ferguson](https://engole.info/george-arthur-ferguson-6th-laird-of-pitfour/), the sixth and final laird. He served in the Grenadier Guards and eventually became a captain. He married Nina Maria Hood, the eldest daughter of Alexander Nelson Hood, 1st Viscount Bridport, in February 1861.{{sfnp|BWD4RV9F}}{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|48}} Later that year Captain Ferguson was posted to Canada, where he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and where his first two sons, Arthur and Francis William, were born. His eldest son, Arthur, became Inspector of Constabulary for Scotland. Returning to Britain in 1864, the family had a nomadic lifestyle, but the sixth laird and his wife were extravagant and habitual gamblers. A trust deed was registered in June 1909, and what remained of the estate was put on the market.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|52}} After large parts of the land had been sold under the ownership of the sixth laird the estate was listed by Bateman in 1883 as being just over {{convert|36|sqmi}} with an income of £19,938;{{sfnp|4LAYVC7N|161}} at the height of its development the estate had occupied {{convert|50|sqmi}}, and was valued at £30 million.{{sfnp|GIMN5RKN}}
The last laird died in 1924 and is buried in Luton.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|53}}
Following its 20th-century decline the estate changed hands several times until local farmer Hamish Watson purchased it in December 2010.{{sfnp|J58XKR7Q}}{{sfnp|5JDATJEQ}} The local historian Alex Buchan summed up the demise of the estate: “They thought the estate was here to provide them with money, to gamble, to travel, to simply fritter away and very quickly, within a couple of decades, they had wasted the whole lot.” He added, “Eccentricity amounted to just squandering money.”{{sfnp|GIMN5RKN}}
## Mansion house
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Pitfour_House%2C_Aberdeenshire%2C_side_view_-_the_%27Blenheim_of_the_North%27.jpg)Pitfour House in about the late 1800s
Wikimedia Commons
The original small country house was first altered during the early 18th century. In 1809 the Sheriff’s grandson James Ferguson, the third laird, employed the architect [John Smith](https://engole.info/john-smith-architect/) to design new accommodation. The resulting three-storey house, {{convert|98|ft}} square and {{convert|33|ft}} high, is reputed to have had 365 windows. When the fourth laird, George (the Governor), died in 1820, the estate was worth £300,000 with almost £35,000 of moveable assets.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|39}} George Ferguson, the fifth laird (the Admiral) added a large, glazed gallery when he inherited the house.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|76}} The Admiral had a lavish lifestyle and despite having a healthy income accrued heavy debts.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|49}}
When the Admiral died after 46 years of managing the estate it was mortgaged for £250,000, despite the sale of a number of the lands originally included in it.{{sfnp|DA4WNFW3|213}} The house fell into disrepair under the ownership of George Arthur, the sixth and final laird, who had inherited his father’s lifestyle.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|49}} The entire estate was put on the market in September 1909 but remained unsold until after the First World War; the house and what remained of the estate were finally purchased by a speculator, Edgar Fairweather, from London in 1926.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|53}} Fairweather bought several other Scottish estates, including those nearby at Auchmeddan and Strichen; he habitually reduced the estates into smaller holdings that he then sold on or rented out.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|53-54}}{{sfnp|FH46PYWL}} The house was sold to an Aberdeen building company and was demolished sometime between 1927 and 1930.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|53}}{{sfnp|63VHH49T}} After demolition, the mansion’s veranda was installed at the front of Kinloch Farmhouse in St Fergus. Other remains from the mansion have been discovered at the farmhouse, including a crest above the conservatory door and tiles inscribed with the Ferguson of Pitfour family crest.{{sfnp|746WVX84|92}}{{sfnp|UMFMFM5H}} The stone from the mansion was transported to Aberdeen and used in the construction of council houses.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|124}}
## Chapels
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Pitfour_Chapel%2C_cropped.jpg)Pitfour Chapel in 2013, after modernisation
Wikimedia Commons
The Fergusons were Episcopalian, and in 1766, the second laird, Lord Pitfour had a small Qualified Chapel built on the estate at Waulkmill. It was a large, plain building that could accommodate up to 500 people.{{sfnp|7I9Z9XEP}} Saplinbrae, a house that was initially used as a coaching inn after it was built under instruction from Lord Pitfour in 1756, was used as the minister’s manse for the first chapel.{{sfnp|85S6U76M}}{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|75}}{{sfnp|3ALA86Z6}}
A more modern chapel was built in 1850 after the Admiral had an argument with the Reverend Arthur Ranken, the minister at Old Deer.{{sfnp|4D8I8Y3N|533}} This was a small, private chapel for the use of the Pitfour estate.{{sfnp|JXPFBUFZ}} It was built in the Gothic style from rubble but was recast in 1871. A 60-foot (18-metre) tower with a battlemented top is at its western end. The chapel fell into disrepair, and by the 1980s it was a roofless ruin.{{sfnp|D7MIP5VL}}{{sfnp|DIAKDM9A}}
In 1990 Historic Scotland said that Kinloch Farmhouse, in St Fergus featured a bench and chair salvaged from the Pitfour Chapel.{{sfnp|UMFMFM5H}} In 2003, the second chapel was renovated and converted to a private residence.{{sfnp|U5J82HD4}} The chapel restoration won a “Highly commended” award for craftsmanship from Aberdeenshire Council in 2010; the council said the craftsmanship “allowed for the retention of the ecclesiastical spirit and integrity to remain prevalent both internally and externally.” It was also “Highly Commended” in the conservation category.{{sfnp|5SNLIJKY}}
## Stables and riding school
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Pitfour_stables%2C_cropped.jpg)The stables at Pitfour is a listed building and deemed to be at high risk by Historic Scotland.
Wikimedia Commons
The stables were built in 1820, during the early part of the Admiral’s ownership of the estate, based on a design by John Smith;{{sfnp|746WVX84|92}} the buildings are sited to the rear of the mansion house.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|80}} Built in a horseshoe-shape, neo-classical design, the two-storey building was constructed in pinned rubble with granite dressings;\[b\]Pinned rubble is a common traditional building technique in Scotland. Small stones, referred to as pinnings, are used to secure large rubble stones in place.{{sfnp|FXMJ82DQ|3}} grey granite was used for the parapet and [quoins](https://engole.info/quoin/). The main buildings were originally harled. A corrugated asbestos hipped roof was at some point substituted for the original slate roof. It features a columned rotunda above a timber clock tower, which has a finial and domed copper roof. The pedimented centrepiece of the symmetrical front elevation is a segmental arch and has three panels set back between columns. Each side is bordered by wings of three bays with single-bay pavilions.{{sfnp|63VHH49T}}
The stables are connected to an adjoining two-storey house.{{sfnp|63VHH49T}} They provided accommodation for ten horses and included four loose boxes, a harness room and a coachman’s house; six bedrooms above were for servants. Two coach houses were later used as garages.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|81}} The stables building was marketed in 1997 for approximately £70,000.{{sfnp|RL2J6F72}} Charles McKean describes the stables as “straddling the skyline like a palace”.{{sfnp|746WVX84|92}} The stables are listed by Historic Scotland as being at very high risk,{{sfnp|63VHH49T}} and were described by local historian Alex Buchan in 2008 as “rather dilapidated” and “in a poor condition”.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|80}} By 2019 the clock tower had fallen to the ground.{{sfnp|ZEUIL5TL|83}}
An indoor riding school slightly to the north-west of the stables measured {{convert|98|ft}} by {{convert|49|ft}}. It was used to entertain guests when the facilities at the mansion house were not large enough. More than two hundred local farmers and other landowners celebrated the wedding of George Arthur, the sixth laird, in the riding school in 1861. In 1883 it was again used to entertain; on that occasion it was decorated with flags and Chinese lanterns, and pine flooring was laid. Later, it was used as indoor tennis courts before being demolished.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|81}}
## Canal and lake
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Pitfour_Lake_showing_island.jpg)View across Pitfour Lake showing the central island
Wikimedia Commons
James Ferguson, the third laird, owned the estate during the Industrial Revolution in Britain. He began work on a canal between Pitfour and Peterhead in 1797, despite fierce opposition from adjoining landowners. The canal was proposed to cover about ten miles following the course of the River Ugie.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|95-96}} Pitfour’s canal is sometimes called the St Fergus and River Ugie Canal.{{sfnp|XTBSB2BD|176}} Ferguson had thought about building the canal since 1793, but it was never completed because of “difficulties in effecting the necessary arrangements with neighbouring heritors.”{{sfnp|XTBSB2BD|176}} Objections were raised by the Merchant Maiden Hospital, which owned the land on the south side of the Ugie. Despite being advised to take out an interdict to prevent the work, in January 1797 the hospital thought its case was not strong enough. The hospital applied for an interdict four months later however, when {{convert|2|mi|r=1|spell=in}} of the canal had been dug to the point where the north and south Ugie joined; it was granted in July 1797.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|96}}
A few years after starting work on the canal, Ferguson had a lake built on flat land to the front of the mansion house. The landscape gardener William S. Gilpin was carrying out work on the adjacent Strichen estate at about the same time, and it is assumed he helped with the work at Pitfour. The lake extends to almost {{convert|50|acre}} and is {{convert|174|ft}} above sea level.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|76-77}} Designed in the same style as the lake in Windsor Great Park, the lake was stocked with trout, both rainbow and brown; there were three bridges and four islands.{{sfnp|7ADXVQ6S}} The siting of the lake meant the driveway had to be moved, and ornate bridges were constructed to cross the water. Built from granite, the northern bridge has three arches with ashlar starlings, the southern bridge has a single arch and the third, smaller bridge crosses a large stream that drains into the lake.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|77}}
The neighbouring Russell family of Aden were concerned their land would be flooded when the lake was built, and their animosity was fully demonstrated when a bridge had to be jointly constructed by the two landowners over the River Ugie. It was wide enough for carriages on the Pitfour side but too narrow on the Russells’ half.{{sfnp|EY59UDX2|186}}
## Theseus temple
Alongside the lake was a six-bay Greek Doric temple, a small replica styled after the Temple of Theseus. Its exact date of construction is unknown; it may have been built during the time of James Ferguson, the third laird, or under the instruction of George Ferguson, the fifth laird.{{sfnp|UW46HBC5}} The local historian Alex Buchan attributes it to James, the third laird;{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|77}} according to Historic Scotland, it was built “probably circa 1835”.{{sfnp|LVP68QYE}} Like the mansion house, the temple is credited to the architect John Smith.{{sfnp|LVP68QYE}} Measuring 8 metres (26 ft) by 16 metres (52 ft), it has six columns at both ends and thirteen columns down each side. It had a flat roof with an ornate wooden entablature and contained a cold-water bath in which George, the fifth laird was believed to have kept alligators.{{sfnp|GIMN5RKN}}{{sfnp|UW46HBC5}}{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|78}}{{sfnp|746WVX84|93}} As of 2013 the temple is in a ruinous state; it has been held up by scaffolding since 1992 and is listed by Historic Scotland as being in critical condition.{{sfnp|LVP68QYE}} Further deterioration to the temple was noted by a local writer in 2019 and that at that time no restoration work had been undertaken.{{sfnp|ZEUIL5TL|83}}
## Racecourse and observatory
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Observatory_at_Drinnie%27s_Wood.jpg)Drinnie’s Observatory was built by the fifth laird, George Ferguson, and has been renovated by the local council.
Wikimedia Commons
George Ferguson (the Admiral) had a racecourse about 2.2 miles (3.5 kilometres) long and 52 feet (16 metres) wide built near White Cow Woods, an area which is quite flat.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|81}} This led to the estate being called the “Ascot of the North”.{{sfnp|GIMN5RKN}}
In 1845 the Admiral had an observatory built, again designed by the architect John Smith. It is an octagonal tower with a crenellated parapet and is symmetrical in design. The observatory stands at the top of a hill 396 feet (121 m) above sea level. The tower is 50 feet (15 m) high and is more than half a mile (1 kilometre) from the racecourse. It has three storeys with square windows on the upper floor, and was fully renovated by Banff & Buchan District Council (now Aberdeenshire Council) in 1983.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|81}}{{sfnp|5LNKZA5Z}}{{sfnp|NYLHTECH}}
## Twentieth century
Sales of country estates became common around the 1920s. The annual tax payable had spiralled and was twenty times greater than in 1870 resulting in the break-up of many larger land-holdings. Pitfour was no exception and the dispersal of the estate continued piecemeal after the sequestration of George Arthur, the sixth laird.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|123}} The main estate policies\[c\]The definition of policies as used in Scots land terminology given in the OED is: “The enclosed (and often ornamental) grounds, park, or demesne land surrounding a large country house.” including the lake and other land were purchased by Bernard Drake in November 1926 when he bought Saplinbrae, the former minister’s house. Drake was a partner in the electrical engineering company, Drake and Gorham.{{sfnp|YYPJX6CW}}{{sfnp|VREI79XR}}
Sixty years later, in 1986 the BBC Domesday Project does not give any ownership details but indicates many of the buildings are in poor condition. Other surviving structures are used for storage by a farmer who also “manages the land”.{{sfnp|FWRRMLKX}}
## Recent times
At the end of 2012 Aberdeenshire Council gave the go-ahead for the present owner’s planned restoration work on the temple and bridges, which he hoped would enhance existing facilities at nearby Drinnies Wood surrounding the Observatory, White Cow Woods and Aden Country Park.{{sfnp|5JDATJEQ}}{{sfnp|RVJMKRMJ}}\[d\]Large areas of the former Pitfour lands are incorporated into the Forest of Deer; this includes the site of the Observatory within Drinnies Wood and the Racecourse. The oldest parts of the woods were established in 1926 when the Forestry Commission purchased {{convert|1200|acre|sqkm|r=1}} of Pitfour land.{{sfnp|N693VCZQ|68}}{{sfnp|USK5TWFS}} The lake is used regularly by local fishermen, and a fishing club with about 120 members was established in 2011.{{sfnp|IEBA3Q9A}} The rest of the estate is seldom used by local residents, many of whom are completely unaware of it.{{sfnp|5JDATJEQ}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Inverugie Castle was the main residence of the Earl Marischal after Dunnottar Castle was used to house rebels but became ruinous after being forfeited in 1715.{{sfnp|GLIY35GG|76}} b Pinned rubble is a common traditional building technique in Scotland. Small stones, referred to as pinnings, are used to secure large rubble stones in place.{{sfnp|FXMJ82DQ|3}} c The definition of policies as used in Scots land terminology given in the OED is: “The enclosed (and often ornamental) grounds, park, or demesne land surrounding a large country house.” d Large areas of the former Pitfour lands are incorporated into the Forest of Deer; this includes the site of the Observatory within Drinnies Wood and the Racecourse. The oldest parts of the woods were established in 1926 when the Forestry Commission purchased {{convert|1200|acre|sqkm|r=1}} of Pitfour land.{{sfnp|N693VCZQ|68}}{{sfnp|USK5TWFS}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3870
**Categories:** Country estate, Scottish
---
### [Ambrose Barlow](https://engole.info/ambrose-barlow/)
**Published:** April 14, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Saint-ambrose-edward-barlow.jpg[/pimage]English Benedictine monk, venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Saint-ambrose-edward-barlow.jpg)Ambrose Barlow
Wikimedia Commons
Ambrose Edward Barlow (1585 – 10 September 1641) was an English Benedictine monk, venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church. He spent much of his priesthood ministering to [recusant](https://engole.info/act-of-uniformity-1558/) Catholics in the Parishes of Leigh and Eccles in south-east Lancashire. After being apprehended at [Morleys Hall](https://engole.info/morleys-hall/) in Astley at Easter 1541, Barlow was taken for trial to Lancaster Castle, where he was executed.
Barlow is one of the group of saints known as the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, all of whom were canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1970.
## Early life
Edward Barlow was born at Barlow Hall in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, near Manchester in 1585. He was the fourth son of the nobleman Sir Alexander Barlow and his wife Mary. His older brother was the Benedictine monk William (Rudesind) Barlow (1584–1656).{{sfnp|BNVGTPC2}} The Barlow family had been reluctant converts to the Church of England following the suppression of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales. Barlow’s grandfather died in 1584 whilst imprisoned for his beliefs and two-thirds of Sir Alexander Barlow’s estate was confiscated for refusing to conform to the new established religion. On 30 November 1585, Barlow was baptised at Didsbury Chapel; his baptism entry reads “Edwarde legal sonne of Alex’ Barlowe gent’ 30”. Barlow adhered to the Anglican faith until 1607 when he converted to Roman Catholicism and took the name Ambrose.{{sfnp|ITHR8T92}}
Barlow travelled to Douai in northern France to study at the English College before attending the Royal College of Saint Alban in Valladolid, Spain. In 1615, he returned to Douai where he became a member of the Order of Saint Benedict, joining the community of St Gregory the Great (now Downside Abbey), and was ordained as a priest in 1617.{{sfnp|BNVGTPC2}}
## Mission
After his ordination, Barlow returned to his father’s house, before taking up residence at the home of Sir Thomas Tyldesley, [Morleys Hall](https://engole.info/morleys-hall/) in Astley.{{sfnp|5V652YGV}} Tyldesley’s’ grandmother arranged for a pension for Barlow which allowed him to carry out priestly duties amongst the poor Catholics in the parish of Leigh. He offered daily Mass and recited his Office and Rosary for 24 years. To avoid detection by the Protestant authorities, he devised a four-week routine in which he travelled throughout the parish for three weeks and remained at Morleys for one. He visited his cousins, the Downes, at Wardley Hall and conducted Mass for the gathered congregation.{{sfnp|BNVGTPC2}}
## Arrest and execution
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Lancaster_Castle.jpg)
Lancaster Castle
Wikimedia Commons
King Charles I signed a proclamation on 7 March 1641 decreeing that all priests should leave the country within one calendar month or face arrest and imprisonment or death as traitors. Barlow’s parishioners implored him to flee or go into hiding but he refused. A stroke had resulted in the 56-year-old priest being partially paralysed. “Let them fear that have anything to lose which they are unwilling to part with”, he told them.{{sfnp|BNVGTPC2}}
On Easter Day, 25 April 1641, Barlow and around 200 people were surrounded at Morleys Hall by either the Vicar of Leigh or the Vicar of Eccles and an armed mob of some 400. Barlow surrendered, and his parishioners were released after their names had been recorded. The priest was taken on horseback with a man behind him to prevent his falling, and escorted by a band of sixty people to the Justice of the Peace at Winwick, before being taken to Lancaster Castle.{{sfnp|BNVGTPC2}}{{sfnp|G68FJZX7}}
Wardley Hall
Wikimedia Commons
Barlow appeared before Justice Sir Robert Heath, on 7 September when he professed his adherence to the Catholic faith and defended his actions. On 8 September, he was found guilty and sentenced to be executed. Two days later, he was taken from Lancaster Castle, drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, and [hanged, drawn and quartered](https://engole.info/hanged-drawn-and-quartered);{{sfnp|BNVGTPC2}}{{sfnp|G68FJZX7}} his head was afterwards displayed on a pike.{{sfnp|ITHR8T92}} His cousin, Francis Downes, Lord of Wardley Hall, a devout Catholic rescued his skull and preserved it at Wardley where it remains.{{sfnp|G68FJZX7}}
## Canonisation
Barlow was venerated by a decree of martyrdom on 8 December 1929 and was beatified,\[a\]Beatification is elevation to rank of Blessed. together with other martyrs, by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929.{{sfnp|HNQQFCLD|19}}
On the evidence of a single miracle said to be performed by one of the Forty Blessed Martyrs of England and Wales,\[b\]Curing a cancerous tumour in the shoulder-blade of a young mother.{{sfnp|HNQQFCLD|20}} of which Barlow was a member, the entire group was canonised by Pope Paul VI on 25 October 1970.{{sfnp|HNQQFCLD|20}}\[c\]Canonisation is promotion to the rank of Saint.
## Relics
Barlow’s jaw bone is held at the Church of St Ambrose of Milan, Barlow Moor, Manchester; one of his hands is preserved at Stanbrook Abbey,{{sfnp|BNVGTPC2}} and the other is at Mount Angel Abbey in St. Benedict, Oregon. His skull is preserved on the stairwell at Wardley Hall in Worsley, the one time home of the Downes family, and now the home of the Catholic Bishop of Salford.{{sfnp|G68FJZX7}}
## See also
- [Screaming skull](https://engole.info/screaming-skull)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Beatification is elevation to rank of Blessed. b Curing a cancerous tumour in the shoulder-blade of a young mother.{{sfnp|HNQQFCLD|20}} c Canonisation is promotion to the rank of Saint.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 18253
**Categories:** Martyr, Saint
---
### [A Detection of Damnable Driftes](https://engole.info/a-detection-of-damnable-driftes/)
**Published:** October 17, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** Sixteenth-century pamphlet describing prominent Chelmsford witchcraft trials against Elizabeth Francis and others
**Content:**
Title page
British Library
“A Detection of Damnable Driftes” is an octavo pamphlet from 1579 describing the contemporary trials of witches held at Chelmsford in Essex.
Printed in London shortly after the trial, it provides information on four women accused of witchcraft. Three were convicted and hanged, the fourth was released on a technicality. The main focus is on [Elizabeth Francis](https://engole.info/elizabeth-francis-witch/), who was convicted and, this time, sentenced to the death penalty. She was also the primary subject of the first English witchcraft pamphlet published thirteen years earlier in 1566 covering the first of her three trials; on that occasion her punishment was imprisonment for a year, during which time she was placed in the [stocks](https://engole.info/stocks).
The introduction, which shows the shifting attitude towards witchcraft, is followed by the details of the women; with the exception of Elizabeth’s, these are given in a narrative style, paraphrased by the pamphleteer.
## Production
Published in 1579 and featuring two illustrations,{{sfnp|PIX7ZSVL|152}} the octavo pamphlet’s full title is “A Detection of Damnable driftes practized by three Witches arraigned at Chelmisford in Essex, at the late Assizes there holden, whiche were executed in Aprill, 1579”.{{sfnp|43CPW4XK|171}}{{sfnp|JJVWJV27|41}} Despite the title, it records details of four women:{{sfnp|JJVWJV27|42}}\[a\]The academic Marion Gibson speculates this discrepancy may have arisen due to extra material being added or be a reflection of “hasty editing”.{{sfnp|JJVWJV27|42}} [Elizabeth Francis](https://engole.info/elizabeth-francis-witch/); Ellen or [Elleine Smithe](https://engole.info/elleine-smithe-witch/); Alice Nokes; and Margery Stanton or Staunton. All were convicted then hanged except Stanton, who was released.{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|93}}
By Edward White, it was printed by John Kingston, whom White had employed to produce a similar publication earlier that year. The principle character, Elizabeth Francis, was also central to the 1566 chapbook, entitled “[The Examination and](https://engole.info/examination-chensforde/) [Confession of Certaine Wytches at Chensforde](https://engole.info/examination-chensforde/)“.{{sfnp|JJVWJV27|41}} As both pamphlets concentrate principally on Elizabeth, despite being almost thirteen years apart and the work of different printers, they may stem from the same source.{{sfnp|JJVWJV27|41}} Academic Timothy Scott McGinnis speculates the informant may have played a role in the trials, but concedes verification is impossible.{{sfnp|S4UCY5FG|115}}
In contrast to other European countries, where several cities would have printing facilities, all Elizabethan publishing took place in London. Print runs may have been for up to a thousand copies, depending on how many the pamphleteer felt could be sold; it was more profitable to do another run if necessary than to be left with a surplus.{{sfnp|Q24GERQ8|327-328}} The only extant copy of the pamphlet is held at the British Library.{{sfnp|6FYBDN49}}
## Introduction
In the same manner as the 1566 publication, the information concerning the accused is prefaced by an introduction,{{sfnp|43CPW4XK|172}} possibly written by a member of White’s staff.{{sfnp|YYCGAW6X|166}} It urges the audience to be cautious against dealing with Satan, advocating that prayer should be employed as a defence against the Devil’s exploits.{{sfnp|43CPW4XK|172}} Whereas the epistle prefacing the Examination pamphlet was a kindly sermon railing against morality and sin with magic as a minor secondary discourse, the theme this time demonstrates the changed attitude towards witchcraft; it is now firmly interpreted as malevolent with direct instruction given to readers to shun and prosecute witches.{{sfnp|YYCGAW6X|166}}
## Elizabeth Francis
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Detection-dog-illustration.jpeg)The second illustration in the pamphlet depicted a shaggy dog, Elizabeth’s familiar that helped her kill Alice Poole.
*Witchcraft in England, 1558–1618*
Elizabeth’s details are the first to be given following the introduction; the format deviates from that used in the earlier pamphlet, shaping it as a confession,{{sfnp|43CPW4XK|172}} while previously the legal documents covering her examination were reproduced without amendment.{{sfnp|JJVWJV27|10}} An inconsistency occurs in the printed version concerning Elizabeth’s victim, Alice Poole: the date of Alice’s death is recorded as 1 November 1578, but it could be inferred Elizabeth spoke with her around the time of the trial months later. The historian James S. Cockburn blames the pamphleteer for the error but academic Marion Gibson, believing it to be a faithful transcription, argues the anomaly could be attributed to a legal clerk and that, instead of being written after the assizes, it records Elizabeth’s statement when she was first arrested at the time the charge against her was causing Alice to be ill rather than responsible for her death. The original court documents have not survived, making any form of verification impossible,{{sfnp|YYCGAW6X|55}} although lists of the very basic indictments, which only provide minimal information, are extant.{{sfnp|WGBGDIHD|81-82}} The scholar Alan Macfarlane highlights the disparity between Elizabeth being quoted as stating the incident with Alice took place “about Lent last” whereas the indictment shows a date at the end of June.{{sfnp|WGBGDIHD|85}}
## Other accused women
The pamphlet only records evidence presented against the other three women.{{sfnp|43CPW4XK|172}} The first of these, Ellen or [Elleine Smithe](https://engole.info/elleine-smithe-witch/), was convicted of bewitching and causing the death of Susan, the four-year-old daughter of the widow Goodwife Webbe.{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|93}}{{sfnp|43CPW4XK|173}} Those who supplied the evidence are nameless with the text written in the narrative style of storytelling. Although given in the format of an itemised list, which is the standard presentation adopted for formal documents, the use of adjectives throughout the text indicates the pamphleteer amended and paraphrased for ease of reading and to make the story flow.{{sfnp|YYCGAW6X|39}}
Similar imprecision arises in the penultimate narrative covering Margery Stanton or Staunton as her first name is not included, she is simply referred to as Mother Staunton.{{sfnp|YYCGAW6X|40}} The modern-day academic Barbara Rosen describes her as “the most genuinely malicious of the group”.{{sfnp|877W99Z3|92}} Eleven incidents are listed as evidence against her,{{sfnp|43CPW4XK|174}} but the specific charge documented was deemed inadequate, plus her alleged misdemeanours did not include killing any persons by witchcraft, only the fatal bewitching of livestock.{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|93}}
Alice Nokes, the fourth and last of the women included, was convicted on the charge of using witchcraft to kill but this detail is omitted by the pamphleteer.{{sfnp|5ZU9T7BW}} The indictment shows she caused the instant death of another Lambourne resident, Elizabeth Barfoot, by bewitching her.{{sfnp|NERMXCSB|137}} Described by Gibson as “clearly an imaginative account”,{{sfnp|YYCGAW6X|46}} as in the narratives of the other women, the evidence against Alice presented in the pamphlet is vague on specific detail.{{sfnp|YYCGAW6X|46}} The complaints regarding the other accused women were based on incidents surrounding villagers not complying with their requests for money or charity, whereas the tales of Alice’s misdemeanours leaned more towards insolence and argumentativeness, together with infidelity and adultery.{{sfnp|WGBGDIHD|85}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The academic Marion Gibson speculates this discrepancy may have arisen due to extra material being added or be a reflection of “hasty editing”.{{sfnp|JJVWJV27|42}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22307
**Categories:** English, Pamphlet, Witchcraft
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Howroyd Colliery](https://engole.info/howroyd-colliery/)
**Published:** November 15, 2023
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** Name for a number of day holes and drifts that worked the coal at the outcrop.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Howroyd.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Qu8vohdrrnHhArze6}}
Howroyd Colliery 1938.{{sfnp|QP455BE2}}|Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Howroyd Colliery off Howroyd Lane in [Whitley Lower](https://engole.info/whitley-lower/) near Thornhill in the West Riding of Yorkshire was the name for a number of day holes and drifts that worked the coal at the outcrop. Howroyd Colliery was started in 1905 by members of the Jaggar family who had run the coal mining operations around [Emley](https://engole.info/emley/) from 1819. The small colliery survived to be nationalised in 1947 and closed in 1962. The colliery was in a rural area with no rail access and coal was moved by road.
The surface screens were opposite the Woolpack public house on Whitley Road. Coal was hauled to the screens via a short tramway from the drift mouth in the valley of the Howroyd Beck which, along with two footpaths, were the only means of access.{{sfnp|QP455BE2}}
## History
Three Jaggar brothers, William, Wilson and Joseph, leased two coal seams, the Green Lane and Blocking, under Briestfield in 1905 and drove an adit from Whitley Lower to access them. At the end of 1907, a deeper seam, the Wheatley Lime under the same area, was also leased and a second drift was started in 1908 to access the coal. The coal was worked by pillar and stall methods and hand filled into tubs. The Green Lane seam was abandoned in 1926 and the 1908 drift (Howroyd Old) lasted until 1929. The difficult Blocking seam lasted until 1941. More leases were acquired before 1920 by Jaggar and Co which was run by Joseph and Fred Jaggar and employed 92 men.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|288}}
Leases for the New Hards seam that outcropped in Whitley Lower were negotiated in 1925 and 1927. Howroyd New was driven in 1931 to access the New Hards which was also worked by pillar and stall methods. The company had 45 underground and 12 surface workers in 1945 by which time the New Hards was exhausted.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|288}}
Howroyd New Colliery was nationalised in 1947 and a new drift was developed to replace Howroyd New which was closed. The new drift, Howroyd New Mine, worked the Blocking seam and some mechanisation was introduced. In 1955 the colliery had 50 employees was grouped with [Caphouse](https://engole.info/caphouse-colliery/), [Grange Ash](https://engole.info/grange-ash-colliery/) and [Shuttle Eye](https://engole.info/shuttle-eye-colliery/). In 1962 the colliery closed, its 40 employees transferred to other local nearby pits.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|288}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25725
**Categories:** Coal mining, Yorkshire
---
### [Samuel Linley](https://engole.info/samuel-linley/)
**Published:** December 26, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Gainsborough%2C_Thomas_-_Samuel_Linley_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg[/pimage]Oboist, singer and junior naval officer. A member of the musically talented Linley family fathered by Thomas Linley, Samuel first performed on stage in 1766.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Gainsborough%2C_Thomas_-_Samuel_Linley_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)Samuel Linley in his midshipman’s uniform, by Thomas Gainsborough
Wikimedia Commons
Samuel Linley (1760–1778) was an oboist, singer and junior naval officer. A member of the musically talented Linley family fathered by [Thomas Linley](https://engole.info/thomas-linley/), he first performed on stage in 1766, dancing the hornpipe.
Probably taught to play the oboe by William Herschel, Samuel began singing in his father’s concerts as a young teenager during 1774 and 1775. Unlike his siblings he did not wish to follow a professional musical career, and opted instead to pursue a nautical life. [Thomas Gainsborough](https://engole.info/thomas-gainsborough/), artist and close family friend, completed a portrait of Samuel dressed in his midshipman’s uniform immediately before Samuel’s departure on his first voyage aboard HMS *Thunderer* in 1778.
Along with several other crew members, Samuel contracted a cholera-like disease, and the ship returned to Portsmouth; he was in a feverish state when his father collected him at the port to return him back to the family home in London. Despite intensive nursing by a teenage maidservant, the infection was fatal; his death was registered on 6 December 1778.
## Life
Samuel Linley was the second son of [Thomas Linley](https://engole.info/thomas-linley/) and Mary Johnson, one of the couple’s eight musical siblings. Born when the family were living in Bath, Somerset, during 1760,{{sfnp|7QK7FEUU|87}} he was baptised on 23 June that year.{{sfnp|BCSF6HHW|10}} His first public performance was dancing the hornpipe for a production of *King John* in Bristol when he was six years old. He sang in his father’s concerts during 1774 and 1775, and played the oboe, an instrument he was probably taught to play by William Herschel.{{sfnp|7QK7FEUU|87}}
In a departure from the musical life undertaken by other members of the family, in 1778 Samuel was eager to pursue a naval career. Encouraged by his father’s friend, Captain Walsingham, he became a midshipman on HMS *Thunderer.*{{sfnp|DM2A85UF|95}} [Thomas Gainsborough](https://engole.info/thomas-gainsborough/) had been a close friend of the Linley family since his arrival in Bath in 1759, and he painted several portraits of them.{{sfnp|7C2NA5GR|61}} He captured a likeness of Samuel dressed in his midshipman’s outfit just prior to him joining the vessel for his first voyage. The artist completed the painting in 48 minutes.{{sfnp|7QK7FEUU|87-88}}
## Death
Thomas Linley had moved his family from Bath to a house on Norfolk Street in London by 1778. In December the family were at home mourning the sudden loss of their eldest son, also named Thomas, who aged twenty-two years, had died in a boating accident during August. Linley was notified that the *Thunderer* was returning to Portsmouth as the crew, including Samuel, were infected with a cholera-like disease. He travelled to the port, collected Samuel, who was in a feverish state, and returned with him to Norfolk Street.{{sfnp|7C2NA5GR|202}}
Emma Hart, who went on to become Lady Hamilton and the mistress of Horatio, Lord Nelson, was employed by the Linley family as a maid servant.{{sfnp|AC9BDV2L}} She nursed Samuel during his illness, but was distraught when he died a few days later, immediately leaving the house; the register of his burial is dated 6 December 1778.{{sfnp|BCSF6HHW|147}}. Henry Angelo, one of the pallbearers, recalled in his memoirs that “no entreaties could prevail upon her to remain, not even a day”.{{sfnp|796IZDTE|240-241}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 12659
**Categories:** English, Male, Musician, Singer
---
### [The Star](https://engole.info/the-star/)
**Published:** August 31, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/TheStarByH.G.WellsIllustrationFromTheGraphic565.jpg[/pimage]Short story by H. G. Wells published in 1897, about a near collision between a comet from outer space and the Earth.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/TheStarByH.G.WellsIllustrationFromTheGraphic565.jpg)Illustration from [*The Graphic*](https://engole.info/the-graphic/)
Wikimedia Commons
“The Star” is a short story by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published in the Christmas 1897 edition of [*The Graphic*](https://engole.info/the-graphic/), and subsequently reprinted in [*Tales of Space and Time*](https://engole.info/tales-of-space-and-time/) (1899), [*The Country of the Blind and Other Stories*](https://engole.info/the-country-of-the-blind-and-other-stories/) (1911) and [*The Door in the Wall and Other Stories*](https://engole.info/the-door-in-the-wall-and-other-stories/) (1911).{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|53}} The story describes a near collision between Earth and a large comet from outer space.
## Synopsis
Told as a third-person narrative, the story begins on the “first day of the new year”, presumably 1898 given its publication date. News is reported that the motion of the planet Neptune has become erratic, and a “faint speck of light” has been observed in the planet’s vicinity. Although initially the discovery is only of interest to astronomers, eventually the world media announce that the speck of light is a star on a collision course with Neptune.
After consuming Neptune, the rogue star proceeds towards the planet Jupiter, the gravitational attraction of which alters its trajectory towards the Earth. As the star approaches closer, its luminosity lights the night sky and the European winter softens into a thaw; tides are the highest they have ever been, and all of America is convulsed by earthquakes. The heat from the star causes jungle fires to erupt across Asia, and the ice at the poles to melt. But those who forecast the imminent end of the world are met with the common-sense objection that there is no precedent for a star striking the Earth, so it must be impossible. Newspapers also report that the apocalypse had been predicted before, in 1000 AD.
As the star passes close by the Earth, pulling the Moon out of its orbit, the surviving inhabitants see the star plunge towards the Sun, and over the following few months peace returns to the Earth. The only lasting effect of the encounter is that the planet has become hotter towards the poles, so areas such as Greenland are now “green and gracious”.
The story concludes with the observations of a Martian astronomer:
Considering the mass and temperature of the missile that was flung through our solar system … it is astonishing what a little damage the Earth, which it missed so narrowly, has sustained. All the familiar continental markings and the masses of the seas remain intact, and indeed the only difference seems to be a shrinkage of the white discoloration (supposed to be frozen water) round either pole.
## Commentary
Wells returns to the theme of a near miss between a planetary body and the Earth in his 1906 novel *The Days of the Comet*.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|66}}
## See also
- [H. G. Wells bibliograhpy](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22142
## External links
- [Full text of “The Star”](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11870/11870-h/11870-h.htm#link2H_4_0021) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [The Shopman](https://engole.info/the-shopman/)
**Published:** February 5, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Essay by H. G. Wells published in 1894, about a visit to a draper's shop and an infuriating shop assistant.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/H._G._Wells_Daily_Mirror.jpg)H. G. Wells, c. 1918
Wikimedia Commons
“The Shopman” is an essay by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946) first published in [*The Pall Mall Gazette*](https://engole.info/the-pall-mall-gazette/) on 23 November 1894 and subsequently in [*Certain Personal Matters*](https://engole.info/certain-personal-matters/) (1897).{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|53}} Told as a first-person narrative, it concerns the author’s vexation with a certain type of shop assistant.
## Synopsis
The narrator begins by explaining that if he were sufficiently wealthy he would hire a private secretary, so that he would never again have to go into a shop, or in extremis try to persuade his wife Euphemia to do his shopping. But today he finds himself forced to visit a draper’s shop to buy a pair of gloves.
Hating as he does incomplete sentences, his hackles are immediately raised when he is met by an assistant asking “What can I have the pleasure?” The narrator’s reply “gloves” is met by a second question: “Calf – kid – dogskin?”; and then a third: “About what price, sir?”
Having no idea of the price of gloves, the narrator ventures to say “elevenpence-halfpenny”, but it is clear that he has underestimated the market price when the assistant tells him rather snootily that the shop does not stock them. In frustration the narrator tells the assistant just to get him some gloves, but is uncertain about his size when further interrogated. The narrator having in desperation hapzardly selected a pair of gloves, the shop assistant then goes on to try and entice him into add-on purchases: collars, cuffs, tie-holders.
The narrator ends by musing “Some day these shopmen will goad me too far … is killing a salesman murder, like killing a human being?”
## Commentary
“The Shopman” is in part autobiographical, as Wells himself was apprenticed to a draper early in his life.{{sfnp|7HXIN55Q}}
*Euphemia* is “usually thought to be a portrait of Jane \[Catherine\] Wells,\[a\]Wells’s second wife, also known as Amy. though the figure may have some traits of Isabel \[Wells’s cousin and first wife\] as well.”{{sfnp|QQBTDLET|35}}\[b\]Wells was married twice: to Isabel Mary Wells from 1891 until their divorce in 1894, and to Amy Catherine Robbins – later known as Jane – until her death in 1927.{{sfnp|EM3H64XW}}
## See als
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Wells’s second wife, also known as Amy. b Wells was married twice: to Isabel Mary Wells from 1891 until their divorce in 1894, and to Amy Catherine Robbins – later known as Jane – until her death in 1927.{{sfnp|EM3H64XW}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24457
## External links
- [Full text of “The Shopman”](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/17508/pg17508-images.html#Page_80) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** Essay, H. G. Wells
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Grange Moor](https://engole.info/grange-moor/)
**Published:** August 17, 2020
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Grange_Moor_-_geograph.org.uk_-_86939.jpg[/pimage]Tract of moorland more than 700 feet above sea level gave its name to this Yorkshire village.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Grange_Moor_-_geograph.org.uk_-_86939.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/sJs9yj2WEpa3Enfh7}}
Grange Moor
Grange Moor, a tract of [moorland](https://engole.info/moorland/) more than {{convert|700|ft}} above sea level, gave its name to the village that developed during the Industrial Revolution. Since 1974 the village has been in the Kirklees district of West Yorkshire, England, {{convert|6|mi|spell=in}} from Huddersfield and {{convert|9|mi|spell=in}} from Wakefield. The moorland was granted to the monks of Byland Abbey in medieval times and used for sheep grazing. The village, a product of the Industrial Revolution, started to grow when the underlying coal was mined from shallow pits and a deep pit, [Shuttle Eye Colliery](https://engole.info/shuttle-eye-colliery), was sunk in the 1850s.
An unusual landmark is the Dumb steeple, the village’s oldest structure. The east window of St Bartholomew’s Church, which was built in 1898, was damaged by bombs during the Second World War.
## Geography
Grange Moor, on the road from Huddersfield to Wakefield, is situated on hilly land to the north of crossroads where the A642, A637 and B6118 roads meet. The village is {{convert|6|mi|spell=in}} from Huddersfield and {{convert|9|mi|spell=in}} from Wakefield. The B6118 connects it to Kirkheaton, the A637 to [Flockton](https://engole.info/flockton/) and Barnsley. The village is more than {{convert|700|ft}} above sea level.{{sfnp|N8E6KWFC}} Coal mining and quarrying were once significant industries in Grange Moor.
## History
The monks of Byland Abbey in North Yorkshire were granted land at Denby Grange in around 1200. In medieval times [granges](https://engole.info/monastic-grange/) were part of the outlying landholdings held by the monastery for sheep grazing. Grange Moor was named at this time. The monks had left by the 14th century and after the dissolution of the monasteries the land was sold and sheep farming continued until the late 18th century.{{sfnp|NMT4KESD}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Dumb_Steeple%2C_Grange_Moor.jpg)Dumb steeple
Wikimedia Commons
The village’s oldest standing structure is a curious [folly](https://engole.info/folly/), the Dumb steeple, which according to the plaque was re-built in 1776 by landowner, Richard H Beaumont Esquire of Whitley Beaumont.{{sfnp|3SUFJQB2}\]
A failed attempt at uprising took place on Grange Moor in 1820, a time of mistrust in the political system, unrest and unemployment after the Napoleonic Wars and [Peterloo](https://engole.info/peterloo-massacre/). On 1 April about 2000 men in Huddersfield marched intending to take the town from the garrison, but dispersed when expected reinforcements did not arrive. On 12 April about 400 men with flags and arms from Barnsley, Dodworth and Monk Bretton, believing they were part of a postponed uprising, marched to Grange Moor expecting to be joined by others but found only 20 men from Huddersfield. Believing they had been betrayed the men fled and troops sent to confront them arrested 17 men.{{sfnp|46WXECXM}}
In 1820 Grange Moor was still open land.{{sfnp|46WXECXM}} The village was established after coal was discovered, and shallow mining began in the 19th century.{{sfnp|NMT4KESD}} Clough Gate, Brown Hill and Square Pit were among the small coal pits and day holes that accessed the shallow seams.{{sfnp|WPEXIQKK}} The largest pit, [Shuttle Eye Colliery](https://engole.info/shuttle-eye-colliery/), was started in 1837, and its deep shafts were sunk in the 1850s by Benjamin Lockwood, the licensee of the Blacksmiths Arms public house at the crossoads.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|513}}
Grange Moor Brass Band was formed in 1854, possibly in connection with Shuttle Eye Colliery. The village school was established in 1879.{{sfnp|NMT4KESD}}
St Bartholomew’s Church was built as a mission to Kirkheaton Parish Church in 1898, after services had been held in the village;{{sfnp|WCBP3U4C}} the first took place in the dressmaker’s cottage in 1894. Whitley Upper Urban District Council approved plans for the church building in 1897.{{sfnp|NMT4KESD}} Several pieces from the church’s east window were blown out when a German bomber dropped its bombs during the Second World War.{{sfnp|WCBP3U4C}} Methodists had worshipped in Chapel Row from 1848 until 1878 when the Methodist Chapel on Briestfield Lane was built. It closed in 1996.{{sfnp|NMT4KESD}}
## Governance
Grange Moor was in the [township](https://engole.info/township/) of [Whitley Upper](https://engole.info/whitley-upper/) in the [ancient parish](https://engole.info/ancient-parish/) of Kirkheaton in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The township covered {{convert|1955|acre}} of fertile land and the [hamlets](https://engole.info/hamlet-place) of Whitley Upper and [Denby Grange](https://engole.info/denby-grange/). The Beaumonts of Whitley Hall, descendants of a Knight Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem, were granted the manor in the reign of Henry III. Also in the township was [Denby Grange](https://engole.info/denby-grange/), seat of the Lister Kayes.{{sfnp|QKH846BP}}
Whitley Upper [Urban District](https://engole.info/urban-district/) was established in 1894 and abolished on 1 April 1938 to become part of Kirkburton Urban District.{{sfnp|I9XT9XRT}}{{sfnp|E78IFWW7}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Village, Yorkshire
---
### [Hickory Dickory Dock](https://engole.info/hickory-dickory-dock/)
**Published:** November 25, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Hickety_Dickety_Dock_1_-_WW_Denslow_-_Project_Gutenberg_etext_18546.jpg[/pimage]English nursery rhyme the earliest known version of which appears in 1784, probably a counting rhyme.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Hickety_Dickety_Dock_1_-_WW_Denslow_-_Project_Gutenberg_etext_18546.jpg)Illustration by William Wallace Denslow, from a 1901 Mother Goose collection
Wikimedia Commons
“Hickory, dickory, dock” is an English nursery rhyme, probably derived from the counting numbers used by Westmoreland shepherds, in which “hevera”, “devera” and “dick” refer to eight, nine and ten respectively.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|244}} The best known version today is:{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|244}}
> Hickory, dickory, dock.
> The mouse ran up the clock.
> The clock struck one,
> The mouse ran down,
> Hickory, dickory, dock.
The earliest recorded version of the rhyme appears in *Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book*, published in about 1744, with the opening line “Hickere, Dickere Dock”. Other early versions have “Dickery, Dickery Dock” and “Dimity, dimity, dock”.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|244}}
The [astronomical clock](https://engole.info/exeter-cathedral-astronomical-clock/) at Exeter Cathedral has been suggested as an alternative source for the nursery rhyme.{{sfnp|HLGGTYDU|loc=401-414}} The door below the clock has a round hole near its base, which legend has it was cut in the early 17th century, to allow entry for the bishop’s cat to deter vermin that were attracted to the animal fat used to lubricate the clock mechanism.{{sfnp|46XHTAQ5}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23210
**Categories:** Nursery rhyme
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Cumbria](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-cumbria/)
**Published:** July 21, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Cumbria_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Cumbria_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the ceremonial county of Cumbria.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Cumbria_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Cumbria_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png)Cumbria shown within England
Wikimedia Commons
The [ceremonial](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) county of Cumbria is made up of two unitary authorities: Cumberland, and Westmorland and Furness.{{sfnp|D2UAYY6F}}
The Grade I [listed buldings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county are shown in separate lists for each authority. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
- Grade I listed buildings in Cumberland
- Grade I listed buildings in Westmorland and Furness
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30185
**Categories:** Cumbria
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Greater Manchester](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-greater-manchester/)
**Published:** April 13, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/Greater_Manchester_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Greater_Manchester_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Metropolitan County of Greater Manchester, split into its constituent metropolitan boroughs.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/Greater_Manchester_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Greater_Manchester_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png)Greater Manchester shown within England
Wikimedia Commons
The [ceremonial](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) and metropolitan county of Greater Manchester is made up of ten metropolitan boroughs: Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, and Wigan.{{sfnp|W9CW4SJE}}
The forty-eight Grade I listed buildings in the county are shown in separate lists for each metropolitan borough.\[a\]There are no Grade I listed buildings in Oldham.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
- [Grade I listed buildings in Bolton](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-bolton)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Bury](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-bury)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Manchester](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-manchester)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Rochdale](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-rochdale)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Salford](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-salford)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Stockport](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-stockport)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Tameside](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-tameside)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Trafford](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-trafford)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Wigan](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-wigan)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a There are no Grade I listed buildings in Oldham.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27354
**Categories:** Greater Manchester
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Royd House](https://engole.info/royd-house/)
**Published:** May 12, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/roydehousehale4.jpg[/pimage]Designed by the architect Edgar Wood, and considered to be one of the most advanced examples of early 20th-century domestic architecture.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/roydehousehale4.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/Sk5mvBPhxrkrpuvb8}}|manchesterhistory.net
Royd House is a Grade I [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Hale, Greater Manchester, one of the [six such structures](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-trafford) in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford. Designed by the architect Edgar Wood as his own home, it was built between 1914 and 1916, and is considered to be one of the most advanced examples of early 20th-century domestic architecture.{{sfnp|4WMBKKN2}}
The concave façade of the two-storey, y-shaped building is faced in Portland red stone and Lancashire brick. The flat roof is of concrete.{{sfnp|4WMBKKN2}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25296
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Residential building
---
### [Arsenic Act 1851](https://engole.info/arsenic-act-1851/)
**Published:** June 22, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg.png[/pimage]The Arsenic Act 1851 (14 & 15 Vict c. 13) was passed by the United Kingdom Parliament in 1851, during the reign of Queen Victoria in response increasing public concern over accidental and deliberate arsenic poisonings.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Arsenic Act 1851 (14 & 15 Vict c. 13) was passed by the United Kingdom Parliament in 1851, during the reign of Queen Victoria. Arsenic was at the time widely used as a pigment and in agricultural products such as sheep dressings; the Act was introduced to address increasing public concern over accidental and deliberate arsenic poisonings.{{sfnp|2YTST4KR|116}}
The definition of arsenic for the purposes of the Act included “Arsenious Acid and the Arsenites, Arsenic Acid and the Arseniates, and all other colourless poisonous Preparations of Arsenic”. The act required those selling such products to maintain a written and signed record of those to whom they had sold arsenic, including the quantity and its stated purpose. It also required that unless the arsenic was to be used for a purpose that would make such treatment unsuitable, for example in medical or agricultural applications, it had to be coloured with either soot or indigo.{{sfnp|TVSHS73R}} The maximum penalty for breaching the terms of the Act, or providing false information, was £20,{{sfnp|MCDLFIFZ|103}} equivalent to about £13,000 as of 2014.
The Act did not restrict who was allowed to sell arsenic, as until the 1868 Pharmacy Act there was no legal definition of a pharmacist.{{sfnp|CDJBL58K|23}} The case of the [1858 Bradford Sweets Poisoning](https://engole.info/1858-bradford-sweets-poisoning/) shows that the Act was not altogether effective in its aim of preventing arsenic poisonings; it was repealed by the Pharmacy and Poisons Act 1933.{{sfnp|EF5AQUFX|106}}.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2577
**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Euphame MacCalzean](https://engole.info/euphame-maccalzean/)
**Published:** January 29, 2020
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Witch_Burning.jpg[/pimage]Wealthy Scottish heiress and member of the gentry convicted of witchcraft. A key figure in the North Berwick witchcraft trials of 1590–1591.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Witch_Burning.jpg)Euphame MacCalzean was tied to a stake and burned alive on 25 June 1591.
Wikimedia Commons
Euphame MacCalzean (born before 9 November 1558 – died 25 June 1591) was a wealthy Scottish heiress and member of the gentry convicted of witchcraft. A key figure in the [North Berwick witchcraft trials](https://engole.info/north-berwick-witch-trials/) of 1590–1591, among the charges brought against her were using witchcraft to perform acts of treasonable conspiracy against King James VI and attempting to murder others, including her own husband, by magic.
After a trial lasting several days, Euphame was declared guilty on ten items of consulting with witches, using witchcraft, murder and attending conventions with treasonable intentions, for which she was sentenced to death. In Scotland, convicted witches were usually strangled before their bodies were burned, but Euphame was tied to a stake and burned alive. Her execution took place at Edinburgh’s Castle Hill on 25 June 1591.
## Personal life
Born out of wedlock sometime before 9 November 1558, Euphame MacCalzean’s\[a\]The spelling of her name in contemporary sources has many variations: Effie Mccalÿan, Ewfame Mcalÿane, Ewphame Mccalÿeane, Euphame Maccaillion or Effe Machalloun.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|16}} In Scotland and England during the sixteenth century spelling was haphazard leading to many words, places and names having several variations. Modern-day texts often use an anglicised version, in this case MacCalzean.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|15-16}} exact date of birth is unknown; her father, Lord Cliftonhall (Thomas MacCalzean) had her birth recognised as legitimate in November 1558.{{sfnp|I3Q5HT4M}} Lord Cliftonhall was an influential advocate with a vast fortune;{{sfnp|Z7E55R9Q|107}} Euphame was his only child and sole heir.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|216}}
During 1570 Euphame and her father faced court action initiated by Archibald Ruthven, son of Patrick, the third Lord Ruthven, and the brother of William, the fourth Lord Ruthven and first Earl of Gowrie. Ruthven was seeking action regarding a breach of promise concerning his marriage to Euphame.{{sfnp|DXIF5HAY|54-55}} Evidently the action proved unsuccessful, as Euphame married Patrick Moscrop that year.{{sfnp|I3Q5HT4M}} He was the son and heir of a friend of Lord Cliftonhall, fellow advocate John Moscrop and his wife Katherine Litill, the heads of another eminent and wealthy family.{{sfnp|Z7E55R9Q|107}}{{sfnp|DXB45NIB|247-248}} Under the terms of their marriage agreement, her husband, who was also a prominent member of the legal fraternity, assumed the MacCalzean surname.{{sfnp|I3Q5HT4M}}{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|31, 145}}
The couple’s marriage was unhappy from the outset.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|160-161}} Contemporary accounts portray Euphame as a belligerent and quarrelsome woman who leaned towards being a shrew-like harridan. According to the indictment and later commentators, she attempted to poison her husband less than a year after their marriage.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|111}} Her efforts were not as successful as she hoped; the potion she administered caused him to break out in spots all over his face and body but, due to his overall youthful vigour, the toxin was quickly eliminated from his system.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|161}} She continued to make home life miserable for her husband, so he moved to France to get some temporary respite. But Euphame’s feelings towards him remained unchanged after his eventual return to the family residence, so she resumed her efforts to be rid of him, resulting in her husband being seriously ill for several months.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|161}}
The couple’s affluence enabled them to employ several servants including a nurse to tend to their needs.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|217}} When Joseph Douglas, the Laird of Pumpherston, became the focus of Euphame’s extramarital affections, she had her servants take him valuable gifts in an attempt to lure him away from his fiancée. Changing tack after her advances were rejected, she again used servants as intermediaries, sending them to convince the Laird’s intended spouse that she should not marry him, because he was infected with a venereal disease.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|161}}
Despite the couple’s turbulent relationship, Euphame bore five children to her husband: two boys who died in infancy and three daughters.{{sfnp|DXB45NIB|248}}\[b\]One of the boys was named Thomas; the girls were Martha, Elizabeth and Euphame.{{sfnp|DXB45NIB|248}} The births of the boys were not easy, so Euphame despatched her nurse to get help in relieving her pain and the discomforts of childbirth from a well-established midwife and [cunning woman](https://engole.info/cunning-folk), [Agnes Sampson](https://engole.info/agnes-sampson/).{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|265-266}}
Euphame’s quarrels were not restricted to those she had with her husband; she also clashed with her extended family and members of the local elite.{{sfnp|I3Q5HT4M}} Conflicts arose with her uncle, Henry MacCalzean, who had hoped that as he was Lord Cliftonhall’s brother he would inherit her father’s substantial fortune; after Euphame acceded to the estate following the death of her father in 1581 she continued to have bitter exchanges in the courts over the estate and lands with her uncle.{{sfnp|Z7E55R9Q|107}}
Further acrimony existed with her brother-in-law, David Seton,\[c\]Some sources use an alternate spelling of his name, Seaton. who was an appointed magistrate of Tranent. Seton was married to Katherine Moscrop, Euphame’s husband’s sister.{{sfnp|Z7E55R9Q|107}} In 1584 when the Moscrop’s mother died, she left 3,400 merks to the already affluent Euphame and Patrick while the Setons, who were always in severe financial difficulties, received 560 merks.{{sfnp|Z7E55R9Q|107, 115}}\[d\]A Scots merk was equivalent to 13 shillings 4d.{{sfnp|JCVLV664|76}}
## Witchcraft accusations
In November 1590, David Seton questioned his young maidservant, [Geillis Duncan](https://engole.info/geillis-duncan-witch/), as he suspected she was involved in witchcraft. After being tortured Geillis confessed and went on to name several others, triggering what was to become known as the North Berwick witch trials, the first major Scottish witch-hunt and the inaugural large witchcraft trial under criminal law.{{sfnp|I3Q5HT4M}}{{sfnp|E36IBUY8|250}}
Sometime after her initial questioning, Geillis implicated Euphame,{{sfnp|I3Q5HT4M}} although the suggestion of Euphame’s connection with witchcraft does not appear in the official records until the pre-trial examination of Agnes Sampson during January 1591.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|129}}\[e\]The precise date of the document is unknown, only that it was January 1591; it must have been before 27 January.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|154}} In the final days of January sworn statements were taken from several people, including Euphame’s servants; they claimed she was present at witch gatherings held at Acheson’s Haven and North Berwick the previous year. Donald Robson, Janet Stratton and Geillis Duncan alleged she handled a waxen image of King James there while she hinted that a new sovereign would be the Earl of Bothwell,{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|158-159}}\[f\]A first cousin of the King,{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|39}} Francis Stewart, the Earl of Bothwell, was previously declared guilty of treason in 1589 but treated leniently by the sovereign for it.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|103}} King James continued to maintain his distrust of the Earl.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|35-36}} with whom she had close connections.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|39}} Euphame was in attendance when the statements were transcribed so was personally identified by the witnesses; she vehemently denied any involvement.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|158-159}}
Contemporary sources indicate that investigations were ongoing although official documents covering the start of February until 4 May 1591 have not survived.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|130}} Robert Bowes, the English diplomat who was Ambassador for Scotland from 1577 until 1583,{{sfnp|NVM55PSB}} noted that another of the accused witches, [Robert Grierson](https://engole.info/robert-grierson-witchcraft/), was tortured and died on 15 April.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|127, 131}} The diplomat’s correspondence also shows earnest moves to further connect the Earl of Bothwell’s involvement in treasonable acts of witchcraft during April after statements taken from a known associate of Bothwell, [Ritchie Graham](https://engole.info/richard-graham/), a well-established magician and [necromancer](https://engole.info/necromancy/) who had been imprisoned since November 1590, implicated him to a greater extent.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|131}}{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|155}} The Earl was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle by the Privy Council on 15 April;{{sfnp|NIJGC6BC|130}}{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|37}} Euphame’s affiliations with Bothwell were progressing her towards facing charges of treasonable witchcraft.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|131}}
By 7 May records indicate Euphame was incarcerated; together with her servants she was being quizzed about letters and food she sent to others involved while they were held in custody.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|131}}
## Trial and execution
Euphame’s trial started on 9 June 1591.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|219}} In contrast to the earlier hearings against others tried in this series of cases, such as [John Fian](https://engole.info/john-fian/) and Agnes Sampson that were each heard in one day, Euphame’s was argued for several days through to 11 June with six eminent advocates presenting her defence.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|203, 219}} On 12 June the panel of notable landed gentry declared her guilty of ten of the twenty-eight charges listed in her indictment including that of “being a well-known witch”.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|219}}{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|160}} She was also convicted on two counts of attending meetings of witches.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|160}}
The sentence of death by being burned alive and the forfeiture of all her estates was handed down on 15 June.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|219}} In Scottish witchcraft cases, the death sentence was routinely carried out very quickly after the verdict was declared,{{sfnp|WY3X79NN|197}} usually within a few days;{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|103}} often this was on a specific day of the week – in some areas of Scotland Wednesday was a particularly popular day – as officials wished to draw large crowds to witness the event.{{sfnp|WY3X79NN|202}} Euphame’s execution was however delayed as she tried to adopt the same tactic employed by [Barbara Napier](https://engole.info/barbara-napier-witch/), that of claiming pregnancy to stave off the death penalty;{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|219}} nevertheless Euphame was transported to Castle Hill, tied to a stake and burned alive on 25 June 1591, still maintaining her innocence.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|112}}
## Aftermath
On 4 July, less than a fortnight after Euphame’s execution, Donald Robson and Janet Stratton recanted their assertions that she had attended the witch meetings or had anything to do with the waxed effigy. Robson further clarified that he had not seen, nor had any knowledge of Euphame, until he encountered her when making his previous statement.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|133}} Similarly, six months later, at the time of their execution on 4 December 1591, Geillis, together with another of the alleged witches named in her first statement, Bessie Thomson, both made lengthy statements retracting their accusations against Euphame and Barbara Napier of being involved in witchcraft.{{sfnp|WY3X79NN|202-203}} When questioned as to why they lied in their confessions both declared they were forced into it by David Seton, his son and others whose names were not revealed.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|198}}
After Patrick MacCalzean paid 5,000 merks to recover the lands,{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|218}} King James eventually reversed the forfeiture of Euphame’s property and estates to the Crown by passing an act in June 1592, returning her lands to her daughters.{{sfnp|DXB45NIB|248}} The Cliftonhall estate was specifically excluded from the properties reinstated; after the forfeiture the sovereign had gifted it to Sir James Sandilands and it remained in his ownership.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|220}}\[g\]Sir James Sandilands, a favourite of King James,{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|220}} was the brother of the Laird of Pumperston’s fiancée, Mary Sandilands, by marriage as the pair had wed on 15 July 1586 despite Euphame’s efforts to prevent it. Academic Peter Maxwell-Stuart suggests the King may have felt allowing the Sandilands to retain possession of the estate was “a form of poetic justice”.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|161-162}}{{sfnp|Z7E55R9Q|108}}
At a later Edinburgh witchcraft trial, that of [Isobel Young](https://engole.info/isobel-young-witch/) from East Barns near Dunbar on 5 February 1629, prosecutors argued that Euphame’s trial had set a precedent. They maintained women and *socii criminis* were permitted to provide evidence in witchcraft cases.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|214}}{{sfnp|GPAZ2W6M|178, 180}}\[h\]Isobel Young (born in the 1560s) was found guilty of witchcraft and executed in February 1629.{{sfnp|F3RSWLU7|67, 73}}
## Modern interpretations
The narrative constructed in Euphame’s indictment characterises her as a spiteful, disrespectful wife;{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|217}} in the mid-twentieth century, the medical historian Meredith H. Armstrong Davison{{sfnp|5R6RBPL3}} described Euphame as a “thoroughly vicious woman”,{{sfnp|6RAFJD8R|182}} and others used similar descriptors, such as “strong-minded shrew”.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|111}} The belief that witches could cause harm was common among all social groups in early modern Scotland;{{sfnp|W9ETA6JS|48}} the scholar Peter Maxwell-Stuart highlights that once the suspicion of witchcraft was directed towards someone, minor deeds, such as Euphame patting a child’s face with a small cloth, in the indictment was transformed into an accusation of having caused the girl’s death because she later died following a fall near Euphame’s house.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|162}}
The academics Lawrence Normand and Gareth Roberts conclude that the statements given by Robson and Stratton recanting their previous testimony, which were both taken on the same day by David Ogilvy, Euphame’s son-in-law,\[i\]David Ogilvy was married to Martha MacCalzean, Euphame and Patrick’s eldest daughter.{{sfnp|DXB45NIB|248}} were to elicit the return of her wealth from the crown to the family.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|133, 191}} They also suggest the possibility of it being a move towards exonerating Bothwell.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|46}}
Historian Louise Yeoman has suggested a pattern of how many of the wealthy women accused of witchcraft may have a basis in feuds over money or property with relatives or other interested parties. Maxwell-Stuart advocates that whilst David Seton may have welcomed the chance to implicate Euphame to his personal benefit, it is a side issue and “a long way from saying he engineered a sub-plot … and used the treason trials as a cover for personal pursuit of financial gain.”{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|159}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The spelling of her name in contemporary sources has many variations: Effie Mccalÿan, Ewfame Mcalÿane, Ewphame Mccalÿeane, Euphame Maccaillion or Effe Machalloun.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|16}} In Scotland and England during the sixteenth century spelling was haphazard leading to many words, places and names having several variations. Modern-day texts often use an anglicised version, in this case MacCalzean.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|15-16}} b One of the boys was named Thomas; the girls were Martha, Elizabeth and Euphame.{{sfnp|DXB45NIB|248}} c Some sources use an alternate spelling of his name, Seaton. d A Scots merk was equivalent to 13 shillings 4d.{{sfnp|JCVLV664|76}} e The precise date of the document is unknown, only that it was January 1591; it must have been before 27 January.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|154}} f A first cousin of the King,{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|39}} Francis Stewart, the Earl of Bothwell, was previously declared guilty of treason in 1589 but treated leniently by the sovereign for it.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|103}} King James continued to maintain his distrust of the Earl.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|35-36}} g Sir James Sandilands, a favourite of King James,{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|220}} was the brother of the Laird of Pumperston’s fiancée, Mary Sandilands, by marriage as the pair had wed on 15 July 1586 despite Euphame’s efforts to prevent it. Academic Peter Maxwell-Stuart suggests the King may have felt allowing the Sandilands to retain possession of the estate was “a form of poetic justice”.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|161-162}}{{sfnp|Z7E55R9Q|108}} h Isobel Young (born in the 1560s) was found guilty of witchcraft and executed in February 1629.{{sfnp|F3RSWLU7|67, 73}} i David Ogilvy was married to Martha MacCalzean, Euphame and Patrick’s eldest daughter.{{sfnp|DXB45NIB|248}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22489
**Categories:** Female, Scottish, Witch
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Telford and Wrekin](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-telford-and-wrekin/)
**Published:** May 16, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Shropshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/330px-Shropshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the Borough of Telford and Wrekin in Shropshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/Telford_and_Wrekin_UK_locator_map.svg/960px-Telford_and_Wrekin_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Telford and Wrekin shown within Shropshire
Wikimedia Commons
The Borough of Telford and Wrekin in the West Midlands of England is one of the two unitary authorities comprising the ceremonial county of Shropshire.
The borough contains 12 of the 131 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Shropshire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Abbey Wall South East of Lilleshall Abbey**Lilleshall, Lilleshall and Donnington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/wQE1N98BxiZMF9UL8)Medieval[1038252](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1038252)[ ](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/6105f9e4-56e5-4020-b70b-ad9c72c87934.jpg)x; bord[](https://goo.gl/maps/SYhppoXNXQ2BgScY9)radius:12px; border-bottom[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nbs2WUhWtYgLKbGh9)"border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St James**Stirchley, Stirchley and Brookside
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/EGDtmSsMZ3yg2ePD9)12th century[1352002](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1352002)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/St_James%2C_Stirchley_%28geograph_3257095%29.jpg/1280px-St_James%2C_Stirchley_%28geograph_3257095%29.jpg)x; bord[](https://goo.gl/maps/SYhppoXNXQ2BgScY9)radius:12px; border-bottom[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nbs2WUhWtYgLKbGh9)"border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Michael and All Angels**Lilleshall, Lilleshall and Donnington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/APDd6jkNhsMMaY6G9)Late Norman[1038247](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1038247)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Lilleshall%2C_Church_of_St._Michael_and_All_Angels_-_geograph.org.uk_-_119012.jpg)x; bord[](https://goo.gl/maps/SYhppoXNXQ2BgScY9)radius:12px; border-bottom[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nbs2WUhWtYgLKbGh9)"border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Michael and Remains of Churchyard Cross**Lilleshall, Lilleshall and Donnington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/W9JXAMkry7U4pQYa7)Early Medieval[1038604](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1038604)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/High_Ercall_Parish_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_31067.jpg)x; bord[](https://goo.gl/maps/SYhppoXNXQ2BgScY9)radius:12px; border-bottom[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nbs2WUhWtYgLKbGh9)"border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Peter**Edgmond
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ejQycUHoaZBprEND9)18th century[1054183](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1054183)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/St._Peter%27s_Church%2C_Edgmond%2C_Shropshire_-_geograph.org.uk_-_220047.jpg)x; bord[](https://goo.gl/maps/SYhppoXNXQ2BgScY9)radius:12px; border-bottom[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nbs2WUhWtYgLKbGh9)"border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Peter**Wrockwardine
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7oQ6mKoSWBJdpt8BA)12th century[1030939](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1030939)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Wrockwardine_Church_01.jpg/1280px-Wrockwardine_Church_01.jpg)x; bord[](https://goo.gl/maps/SYhppoXNXQ2BgScY9)radius:12px; border-bottom[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nbs2WUhWtYgLKbGh9)"border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Gatehouse South West of Madeley Court**Madeley
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nyx75Er2Q6cmEUue6)Late 16th century or early 17th century[1292950](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1292950)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Madeley_Court_-_geograph.org.uk_-_173588_-_edited.jpg)x; bord[](https://goo.gl/maps/SYhppoXNXQ2BgScY9)radius:12px; border-bottom[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nbs2WUhWtYgLKbGh9)"border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Longdon Aqueduct (aqueduct on the Shrewsbury Canal)**Shrewsbury Canal, Rodington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/iS2t1yHV2YtgaJfq7)Thomas TelfordBefore 1795[1037006](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1037006)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Aqueduct%2C_Longdon-on-Tern_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1067495.jpg)x; bord[](https://goo.gl/maps/SYhppoXNXQ2BgScY9)radius:12px; border-bottom[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nbs2WUhWtYgLKbGh9)"border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Preston Hospital including Screen and Gates in front**Preston upon the Weald Moors
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/yPwS7sbhY2c1ZL2Z8)18th century[1292617](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1292617)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/The_Hall%2C_Preston_Trust_Homes%2C_Preston_upon_the_Weald_Moors_-_geograph.org.uk_-_101653.jpg)x; bord[](https://goo.gl/maps/SYhppoXNXQ2BgScY9)radius:12px; border-bottom[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nbs2WUhWtYgLKbGh9)"border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Remains of Lilleshall Abbey**Lilleshall, Lilleshall and Donnington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/NEV4CMnDMvGFTp4g9)12th century[1293216](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1293216)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Lilleshall_Abbey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1313407.jpg)x; bord[](https://goo.gl/maps/SYhppoXNXQ2BgScY9)radius:12px; border-bottom[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nbs2WUhWtYgLKbGh9)"border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;vertical-align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**The Iron Bridge**Ironbridge, The Gorge
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/1GToMPtEkUp1FHsAA)1779[1038659](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1038659)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/Ironbridge_e.JPG/1280px-Ironbridge_e.JPG)x; bord[](https://goo.gl/maps/SYhppoXNXQ2BgScY9)radius:12px; border-bottom[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nbs2WUhWtYgLKbGh9)"vertical-align:top" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**The Old Furnace at Coalbrookdale Ironworks**Coalbrookdale, The Gorge
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ycQCVBbGnFn1YCpA7)1638[1054135](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1054135)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/Darby_furnace_UK.jpg/1920px-Darby_furnace_UK.jpg)x; bord[](https://goo.gl/maps/SYhppoXNXQ2BgScY9)radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Shropshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-shropshire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26392
**Categories:** Shropshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Northbrook Madonna](https://engole.info/northbrook-madonna/)
**Published:** July 19, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/Possibly_by_Alfani_-_The_Virgin_and_Child_%28Northbrook_Madonna%29%2C_about_1505.jpg/960px-Possibly_by_Alfani_-_The_Virgin_and_Child_%28Northbrook_Madonna%29%2C_about_1505.jpg)Oil on panel
51× 36 cm (23 × 17 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Virgin and Child*, commonly known as *The Northbrook Madonna* after the Northbrook Collection in England, is a painting by the Italian artist Timoteo Vitian (1469–1523), dated to about 1505; it has previously been attributed to Domenico Alfani. The painting is in the permanent collection of the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA, to which it was bequeathed in 1940.{{sfnp|G89ELFR5}}
The picture shows the seated Virgin wearing a red blouse and a dark blue skirt, supporting the naked Christ Child with her right arm, who is standing on her knee holding one of her fingers.{{sfnp|RN48LI7Z}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30181
**Categories:** Painting
---
### [Lilias Adie, witch](https://engole.info/lilias-adie-witch/)
**Published:** November 16, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Lilias_1.png[/pimage]Elderly Torryburn woman who died after confessing to witchcraft; her face was reconstructed from photos of her skull.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Lilias_1.png)3D virtual sculpture of Lilias’s face by the forensic artist Christopher Rynn
BBC News
Lilias Adie, sometimes given as Lillias, Lilly, Addie or Eddie, was an elderly Scottish woman from Torryburn in Fife who confessed to the accusations of witchcraft levelled against her by fellow villagers in 1704. Some accounts mistakenly suggest that she was convicted then her body burned, as was the usual punishment for Scottish witches, but she died – possibly by suicide – while incarcerated in a Dunfermline jail before she could be tried. Her remains were buried on the shoreline at Torryburn Bay, and a large stone slab placed over her grave to prevent her [rising from the dead](https://engole.info/revenant/).
Lilias was exhumed in 1852 by some Torryburn locals, and her skull presented to the local antiquarian [Joseph Neil Paton](https://engole.info/joseph-neil-paton/), who had an interest in phrenology. The present whereabouts of Lilias’s skull are unknown, but her grave was rediscovered by Fife Council archaeologist Douglas Spiers in 2014.
## Personal life
Other than that she was a resident of the small village of Torryburn, little is known of Lilias’s life; the only surviving official documents concerning her are the minutes of the Kirk session for 1704 covering the quarter from July to September.{{sfnp|2DMD2XFN}} Modern-day academics and historians such as the archaeologist Douglas Spiers surmise that at the time of her death she was a vulnerable spinster or widow of low status, elderly, anywhere between her late fifties to seventies,{{sfnp|2DMD2XFN}} but most likely in her seventies according to the academic Louise Yeoman.{{sfnp|53JVXN3P}}
Lilias was poor{{sfnp|53JVXN3P}} but had been strong and, at around {{convert|6|ft|spell=in|r=1}} in height, was as tall as a man.{{sfnp|AM5TL6PP}} Despite her age, she had an almost complete set of white teeth,{{sfnp|AM5TL6PP}} with very prominently protruding upper incisors.{{sfnp|53JVXN3P}} Her nose was short, her forehead narrow and receding backwards.{{sfnp|AM5TL6PP}} It is possible she could read,{{sfnp|Q24GERQ8|798}} and possessed intelligence and imagination,{{sfnp|I38GV6FV}} but age was causing her eyesight to fail so, coupled with other adverse age-related mobility problems, she may have been more or less housebound in the time before her imprisonment.{{sfnp|P7F3LTEY}}
## Accusations
The minister at Torryburn, Allan Logan, was a zealous disciplinarian whose sermons castigated witchcraft; he had a reputation for being able to easily identify witches.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|222}}{{sfnp|CJZD9GA4|loc=5041}}{{sfnp|Q24GERQ8|800}} It came to his attention that a rumour was being propagated in the area concerning one of his constituents, Jean Bizet, being tormented by the Devil. He called a special meeting of the Kirk session on 30 June 1704 where statements were taken from several of those involved although not from Jean herself.{{sfnp|CJZD9GA4|loc=2877-2906}}{{sfnp|Q24GERQ8|797}}
The statements from the witnesses called to the session give minor variations on precisely what happened and what was said during the events leading up to the accusations.{{sfnp|W9ETA6JS|44}} The main thrust of the witness narratives revolved around an inebriated Jean Bizet screaming out alerts to others that Lilias was a witch.{{sfnp|CJZD9GA4|loc=2878}} Some of the villagers indicated that Jean may have been ill, which contradicted the views expressed by Jean’s husband, James Tanochie, who volunteered to beat her into sobriety.{{sfnp|Q24GERQ8|797}}
Another woman, Jean Neilson, also maintained that Lilias “dreadfully tormented” her.{{sfnp|HGSMIH73|227}} As a result of that second allegation,{{sfnp|CJZD9GA4|loc=2906}} Lilias was arrested and imprisoned on the evening of 28 July.{{sfnp|PFNYB6P6|134}}
## Confession
The meeting of the Kirk Session on 29 July, the first time Lilias was questioned, and further subsequent Sessions discussing the case were held in the prison to allow her to be questioned there.{{sfnp|Q24GERQ8|797}} Over the course of the next four weeks, Lilias was interviewed seven times and taken to church twice to make confessions.{{sfnp|2DMD2XFN}}
After pledging to tell the truth, at her first interrogation when asked if she had given an undertaking to the Devil, Lilias readily divulged she had committed herself to him. Her initial contact with him was just before some witches were executed in the village;{{sfnp|PFNYB6P6|134}} numerous encounters throughout the locality followed, perhaps more than one hundred. At their second tryst, they engaged in sexual intercourse.{{sfnp|Q24GERQ8|797}} She went on to describe the Devil, adding that he wore a hat and as he walked away from her after their coupling, she noticed his feet were cloven like those of cattle.{{sfnp|PFNYB6P6|135}}
Over the course of her evidence Lilias continued to elaborate on her meetings with the Devil; she offered the names of Agnes Currie and Elspeth Williamson as two other attendees she recognised.{{sfnp|HGSMIH73|227}} The last meeting or Sabbat that Lilias claimed she took part in was during August 1701.{{sfnp|Q24GERQ8|800}}
## Death and burial
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Torry_Bay_-_geograph.org.uk_-_140137.jpg)Torryburn Bay, where Lilias was buried
Wikimedia Commons
Lilias died while she was being held in jail. Official records show that she was interviewed by the Kirk session on 29 August 1704;{{sfnp|Q24GERQ8|801}} the minutes of that interrogation state that it took place “some hours before her death”.{{sfnp|PFNYB6P6|142}}
The usual fate of a convicted witch in Scotland was to be burned, but Lilias had died before she could be tried so was instead buried on the beach at Torryburn,{{sfnp|53JVXN3P}} in a “humble wooden box”.{{sfnp|5LTIILKH}} Situated between the high and low tide marks, it is the only known witch’s grave of its type in Scotland. To prevent her body from being possessed by the Devil and [rising again](https://engole.info/revenant/), Lilias’s grave was covered by a large flat slab. The location of her burial, in unconsecrated ground, suggests the possibility that she comitted suicide, a heinous crime in the early 18th century.{{sfnp|53JVXN3P}}
## Exhumation and later history
In 1852 a party from Torryburn decided to dig up Lilias’s remains, “stimulated by a desire of gratifying a celebrated local antiquarian”, [Joseph Neil Paton](https://engole.info/joseph-neil-paton/), by presenting him with her skull.{{sfnp|AM5TL6PP}} Paton maintained a museum in his cottage at Wooer’s Alley containing the possessions of others accused of witchcraft,{{sfnp|U3FS3LQI}} and had an interest in phrenology, the idea that the shape and size of the cranium somehow determine character and mental abilities.{{sfnp|LHIFIEM6}} A contemporary report in the *Fife Herald* describes Lilias’s skull as being “rather below than above a middle size, with the animal preponderating very much over the intellectual or moral region”.{{sfnp|AM5TL6PP}}
On Joseph Neil Paton’s death, the collection in his museum was inherited by his son, Sir [Joseph Noel Paton](https://engole.info/joseph-noel-paton/).{{sfnp|U3FS3LQI}}{{sfnp|EWZNR3C4|823-824}} He passed Lilias’s skull on to the Fife Medical Association, which in turn gave it to the University of St Andrews.{{sfnp|5LTIILKH}} It was last seen in public at the 1938 Empire Exhibition at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow, but its present whereabouts are unknown.{{sfnp|LHIFIEM6}}
lilias-adie-skull-photo-taken-in-1904
Lilias_2
Lilias’s face has been reconstructed from photographs of her skull taken in 1904.
CBC, BBC News
In 2017 the forensic artist Christopher Rynn from Dundee University reconstructed Lilias’s face based on photographs taken of her skull while it was in the possession of the University of St Andrews, using 3D virtual sculpture.{{sfnp|I38GV6FV}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22329
**Categories:** Female, Scottish, Witch
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Chantry Chapel of St Mary the Virgin](https://engole.info/chantry-chapel-of-st-mary-the-virgin/)
**Published:** July 20, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Chantry_Bridge.JPG[/pimage]Usually known as Wakefield Chantry Chapel, part of the medieval bridge over the River Calder in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Chantry_Bridge.JPG)Wakefield’s medieval bridge and chantry chapel
Wikimedia Commons
The Chantry Chapel of St Mary the Virgin, commonly known as Wakefield Chantry Chapel, is part of the medieval bridge over the River Calder in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England. The bridge chapel is designated a Grade I [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) by English Heritage.{{sfnp|N986NIYP}} The chapel has had three west fronts; the original medieval façade was removed to Kettlethorpe Hall.{{sfnp|CAFKF466}} The medieval bridge is a scheduled ancient monument.{{sfnp|SBV5HSNG}}
## Background
Wakefield had four [chantry chapels](https://engole.info/chantry-chapel), three of which dated from the 13th century. They were built outside the medieval town on the roads leading to Leeds, Dewsbury, York and Doncaster. The Chantry of St John the Baptist was on Northgate, the road to Leeds, where Wakefield Grammar School stands today.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|217}} The Chapel of St Mary Magdalene was on Westgate where it crossed the Ings Beck on the road to Dewsbury.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|223}} St Swithun’s Chantry Chapel, on the York road, was near Clarke Hall.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|225}} The 14th-century Chantry Chapel of St Mary the Virgin was built on the medieval bridge across the River Calder on the road to Doncaster and the south. It is the only survivor of Wakefields four chantry chapels and the oldest and most ornate of the surviving bridge chapels in England.{{sfnp|9LYDMEK4}} Others are at St Ives in Cambridgeshire, Rotherham and Bradford-on-Avon.
## History
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Wakefield_the_chapel_on_the_bridge_by_Samuel_Hieronymus_Grimm_1773.jpg)Chapel on the bridge at Wakefield by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm
Wikimedia Commons
Wakefield’s medieval nine-arched bridge is 320 feet (98 m) long. It was built in stone between 1342 and 1356 to replace an earlier wooden structure on the site of an ancient ford.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|228}} The chapel on the bridge was licensed in 1356. The Battle of Wakefield was fought about a mile south of the bridge in 1460 and the Earl of Rutland was killed near the bridge while attempting to escape.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|233}}
The chapel was used for worship until the Reformation and Abolition of Chantries Acts when all Wakefield’s chantry chapels were closed.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|241}} The bridge chapel survived because it is a structural element of the bridge. After closure it has been used as a warehouse, library, office and cheese shop and survived bridge widening in 1758 and 1797.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|245}} The bridge and its chapel were painted by artists including J.M.W. Turner whose watercolour dates from 1793.{{sfnp|SEFNXWF9}}
## Restoration and rebuilding
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Chantry_Chapel_of_St_Mary_Wakefield.jpg)Chantry chapel’s third west front
Wikimedia Commons
The chapel was transferred to the Church of England in 1842 and the Yorkshire Architectural Society, influenced by the Oxford Movement, was persuaded to undertake its restoration. The society, keen to restore medieval ecclesiastical remains, adopted designs by George Gilbert Scott. Restoration costing approximately £2,500 (equivalent to £220,000 in 2016) was carried out, resulting in the complete reconstruction of the chapel above pavement level. The new west front differed slightly from its medieval predecessor.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|246}} Scott made two errors: the first was replacing the old west front, and the second was having the new façade carved from Caen stone, which crumbled in the polluted urban atmosphere. The original richly carved medieval façade was moved to Kettlethorpe Hall, where it became the frontage to a boathouse [folly](https://engole.info/folly/). Scott’s façade was replaced in gritstone by ecclesiastical architect Sir Charles Nicholson in 1939.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|246}}
The chapel opened for Anglican worship in 1848 and was used as the parish church of the newly formed ecclesiastical district of St Mary until a church was built in 1854. The bridge chapel became its chapel-of-ease and services were held irregularly. St Mary’s merged with St Andrew’s, Eastmoor in the 1960s and the impoverished parish struggled with the chapel’s upkeep. In the 1980s it seemed likely the chapel would be declared redundant by the Church of England but in January 2000 a parish boundary change brought the chantry into the care of Wakefield Cathedral.{{sfnp|FCHTI6N8|21}}
## Structure
The chapel, which projects onto the east side of the bridge, is built into a small island in the river and its base is a structural element of the bridge.{{sfnp|N986NIYP}} Rectangular in plan, the chapel measures 50 feet (15 m) by 25 feet (8 m). It is 36 feet high (11 m) to the top of the battlements at the eastern end. It is built of [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) sandstone, possibly from a quarry at Goodybower. The chapel entrance is at street level and a lower chamber, the sacristy, is accessed by a spiral staircase at the east end.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|234}}
### Exterior
The chapel has octagonal corner pinnacles and at the north-eastern corner there is a small embattled octagonal turret with a small bell tower which originally contained two bells.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|237}} Its west front has buttresses at either end and three narrow doorways. Its façade is divided into five elaborately carved panels. The panels originally represented the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Resurrection, the Ascension and the Coronation of the Virgin but the fifth panel was replaced by the Descent of the Holy Ghost when it was restored.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|236}} Its three bays have square-headed windows with “flamboyant” tracery.{{sfnp|N986NIYP}}
### Interior
In the north-east corner a newel staircase leads to the roof.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|237}} A spiral staircase descends to a small crypt in the basement of the building. Four of the seven traceried windows, the east window, two south windows and one north window, have stained glass.{{sfnp|2UJKS3CP|246}}
## Friends of Wakefield Chantry Chapel
The “Friends of Wakefield Chantry Chapel” was formed in 1991 by members of the Wakefield Historical Society, Wakefield Civic Society and members of St Andrew’s Church to raise funds to repair the chapel roof and re-point the stonework. A programme of conservation work has since been carried out with the approval of English Heritage. The work included roof repairs, re-wiring and the installation heating.{{sfnp|FCHTI6N8|21}} Renewal to the external stonework carried out by William Anelay Ltd cost £30,000. Six carved stone heads were made for the south side of the chapel. At the suggestion of architect David Greenwood, the Bishop of Wakefield, Lady St Oswald of [Nostell Priory](https://engole.info/nostell-priory/), the Rt Hon Walter Harrison and Canon Bryan Ellis allowed their features to be sculpted by stonemason John Schofield. The fifth head is that of a founder of the Friends, Ray Perraudin, and the sixth one of Anelay’s workmen. The friends have conserved the internal stone heads whose age is unknown.{{sfnp|9LYDMEK4}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3824
**Categories:** Anglican, Chantry chapel, Church, Yorkshire
---
### [Cheshire cat](https://engole.info/cheshire-cat/)
**Published:** December 17, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Tennel_Cheshire_proof.png[/pimage]Fictional character that appears in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Tennel_Cheshire_proof.png)John Tenniel’s illustration from the 1865 edition of *Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland*
Wikimedia Commons
The Cheshire cat is a fictional character that appears in Lewis Carroll’s *Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland* (1865). It is able to disappear and reappear at will, and even to disappear in sections; at one point Alice is left with only the cat’s smile. When Alice asks the cat’s owner, the Duchess, “Please, would you tell me why your cat grins like that?” she is told that it is a Cheshire cat, as if that explains everything.
The poet T. S. Eliot may have had the Cheshire cat in mind when writing the last two lines of “Morning at the Window”:{{sfnp|AEAWDSUX|74}}
> An aimless smile that hovers in the air
> And vanishes along the level of the roofs.
## Origins
The phrase “to grin like a Cheshire cat” predates *Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland*; one of the earliest recorded uses of the phrase appears in John Wolcot’s *Works*, (1812). It was well known in Carroll’s time, but its origin is obscure.{{sfnp|FC62N55U}}
One suggestion is that a signwriter in Cheshire painted smiling lions on the signboards of inns in the area. Another is that Cheshire cheeses were at one time moulded in the shape of a grinning cat. Yet another suggestion is that it may derive from the waning of the Moon, when it turns into a smile-shaped crescent before disappearing.{{sfnp|AEAWDSUX|73-74}}
## Scientific phenomena
The Cheshire Cat effect is the name given to a form of binocular rivalry in which a moving object seen by one eye renders invisible a stationary object in the same region of the visual field of the other eye.{{sfnp|F8D65C7N}} The same name has been given to a quantum mechanical effect in which the property of a particle, such as its spin, can be separated from its position.{{sfnp|L9SB7QM9}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 12401
**Categories:** Cat, Fictional character
---
### [Sebastian Pether](https://engole.info/sebastian-pether/)
**Published:** July 17, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Landscape-by-Moonlight.webp[/pimage]English landscape painter (1790–1844) who specialised in moonlight views and nocturnal conflagarations.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Landscape-by-Moonlight.webp)*Landscape by Moonlight*, c. 1825–1840
Art UK
Sebastian William Thomas Pether (1790–1844)\[a\]Pether was baptised on 31 August 1794 at St Luke’s, Chelsea,{{sfnp|GC7JCEQZ}} which has led some sources to believe that he was born in 1793. was an English landscape painter, the eldest son of Abraham Pether (1756–1812), also a landscape painter, and his wife Elizabeth. He was taught by his father, and like him specialised in moonlight views, nocturnal conflagrations and other landscapes in which light effects were important.{{sfnp|GC7JCEQZ}}{{sfnp|JBW4W7YT}}
Pether exhibited at the Royal Academy and Suffolk Street in London from 1812 to 1832.{{sfnp|JBW4W7YT}} But he married young and had a large family to support, forcing him to sell to dealers who bought his pictures cheaply to be copied, and so his work was rarely seen at exhibitions.{{sfnp|GC7JCEQZ}} It was also frequently copied, and thus many works are incorrectly attributed to him.{{sfnp|JBW4W7YT}} The landscape painter Henry Pether (1828–1865), whose works are frequently confused with those of Sebastian, is thought to be his son.{{sfnp|GC7JCEQZ}}{{sfnp|ZXNUKP3D}}
Pether died of tuberculosis in Battersea on 14 March 1844, and a subscription was raised to support his family.{{sfnp|GC7JCEQZ}}{{sfnp|ZXNUKP3D}} In a November 1876 issue of *The Times* newspaper, charitable donations were solicited for Pether’s surviving daughter, who was said to be destitute after ruining her eyesight working as a needlewoman.{{sfnp|RKILD84I|105}}
## Gallery
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/The-Bay-of-Naples.webp)
*The Bay of Naples*
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Moonlit-River-Landscape.webp)
*Moonlit River Landscape*
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Lake-Scene.webp)
*Lake Scene*
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Moonlit-Landscape-with-a-Gothic-Ruin.webp)
*Moonlit Landscape with a Gothic Ruin*
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/River-Scene.webp)
*River Scene*
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/A-River-Landscape-with-a-Castle-at-Sunrise.webp)
*A River Landscape with a Castle at Sunrise*
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Pether was baptised on 31 August 1794 at St Luke’s, Chelsea,{{sfnp|GC7JCEQZ}} which has led some sources to believe that he was born in 1793.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30167
**Categories:** English, Painter
---
### [Day and Night](https://engole.info/day-and-night-2/)
**Published:** July 16, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Day-and-Night.webp[/pimage]Woodcut by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, created in 1938, one of his most popular prints.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Day-and-Night.webp)Woodcut
39 cm × 69 cm (15.3 in × 27.2 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Day and Night* is a woodcut produced by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898–1972), created in 1938.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|8}} Printed from two blocks, it became one of Escher’s most popular prints; he himself produced more than 600 during his lifetime.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|8}}{{sfnp|3K4MALX4}} A blue variant of the print sold for $94,062.50 in Los Angeles in 2022.{{sfnp|SQCP4QCH}}
The picture shows white and black birds flying over a Dutch landscape. The white birds are flying to the right, through the night, from where the black birds emerge, flying to the left into the day. At the point where the birds meet, they gradually transform in a tessellation into the fields that make up the landscape.{{sfnp|3K4MALX4}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30165
**Categories:** Woodcut
---
### [Twelve Stories and a Dream](https://engole.info/twelve-stories-and-a-dream/)
**Published:** January 24, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/H._G._Wells_Daily_Mirror.jpg[/pimage]Collection of 13 short stories by H. G. Wells, first published in 1903.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/H._G._Wells_Daily_Mirror.jpg)H. G. Wells, c. 1918
Wikimedia Commons
*Twelve Stories and a Dream* is a collection of thirteen short stories written by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946) between 1898 and 1903, first published in 1903.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|56,68}}
## Contents
Stories are shown in the order in which they appear in the book, which is not necessarily the order in which they first appeared in print.
- “[Filmer](https://engole.info/filmer/)” (1901)
- “[The Magic Shop](https://engole.info/the-magic-shop/)” (1903)
- “[The Valley of Spiders](https://engole.info/the-valley-of-spiders)” (1903)
- “[The Truth About Pyecraft](https://engole.info/the-truth-about-pyecraft/)” (1903)
- “[Mr. Skelmersdale in Fairyland](https://engole.info/mr-skelmersdale-in-fairyland/)” (1901)
- “[The Inexperienced Ghost](https://engole.info/the-story-of-the-inexperienced-ghost/)” (1902)
- “[Jimmy Goggles the God](https://engole.info/jimmy-goggles-the-god/)” (1898)
- “[The New Accelerator](https://engole.info/the-new-accelerator/)” (1901)
- “[Mr. Ledbetter’s Vacation](https://engole.info/mr-ledbetters-vacation/)” (1898)
- “[The Stolen Body](https://engole.info/the-stolen-body/)” (1898)
- “[Mr. Brisher’s Treasure](https://engole.info/mr-brishers-treasure/)” (1899)
- “[Miss Winchelsea’s Heart](https://engole.info/miss-winchelseas-heart)” (1898)
- “[A Dream of Armageddon](https://engole.info/a-dream-of-armageddon/)” (1901)
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24421
## External links
- [*Twelve Stories and a Dream*](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1743) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Frank Harris Fulford](https://engole.info/frank-harris-fulford/)
**Published:** December 27, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** Canadian-born entrepreneur, art collector and businessman
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Headingley_Castle_14_July_2018_2.jpg)Headingley Castle was the Fulford family’s main residence from 1909.
Wikimedia Commons
Frank Harris Fulford was a Canadian-born art collector and businessman. Educated in Germany, he returned to Canada where he was able to take advantage of his love of music. A skilled viola player, he initially pursued a career as a music dealer, but re-located to England in 1902 to manage the British arm of his younger brother’s manufacturing business, which manufactured patent medicines.
## Early life and family
Born in Canada in 1868, Fulford was educated in Leipzig before returning to Brockville, a city in Eastern Ontario, where he worked as a dealer in music. He married sometime before 1902 and had three children.{{sfnp|P89RLRAP}} An older brother to Charles Edward Fulford, he moved to Leeds, in England, during 1902 to manage the British division of Charles’s manufacturing business, C. E. Fulford Limited.{{sfnp|88TFA8WC}} He purchased Headingley Castle, Leeds, in 1909 and it became the family’s main residence.{{sfnp|P89RLRAP}}
## Career
C. E. Fulford Limited produced patent medicines, manufacturing products including [Bile Beans](https://engole.info/bile-beans/) and [Zam-Buk](https://engole.info/zam-buk/) ointment, and was first established in the UK in 1899 after achieving success in Australia.{{sfnp|MV589S9H}} The company undertook an unsuccessful court action, and a later appeal, against an Edinburgh pharmacist in 1905 but it continued to trade and prosper despite the judge opining that the business was “founded on, and conducted by fraud”.{{sfnp|3MZN6YFG}} A year later, after the sudden death of his wealthy brother, Charles, Fulford took up the reins of the family business.{{sfnp|P89RLRAP}}\[a\]Charles Fulford died in 1906, aged 36 years, leaving an estate valued at £1.3 million,{{sfnp|5GDJ8MCS}}{{sfnp|YB6SNMUB}} around £128 million today.{{sfnp|JDRTKHJX}}
A love of music remained a constant factor in Fulford’s life; he had been a skilled viola player from a young age and he composed the music for the Bile Bean March, part of the marketing campaign of the company, in 1898.{{sfnp|P89RLRAP}} While studying in Leipzig he began collecting modern and classical chamber music from all over the world; the collection was donated to the library at Leeds University in 1936{{sfnp|88TFA8WC}} after ill health meant he was unable to play instruments.{{sfnp|P89RLRAP}}
A founder member of Leeds Art Collections Fund, Fulford was also a collector of Chinese jade and other objet d’art. He donated several items to be displayed in the Blue Drawing Room at the Temple Newsam museum in 1939.{{sfnp|88TFA8WC}}
## Death
Fulford died at Headingley Castle, Leeds, in August 1943.{{sfnp|88TFA8WC}} His wife, Lily,{{sfnp|BXUVZ24B}} and a daughter, Frances,{{sfnp|L2NXG6WQ}} survived him;{{sfnp|88TFA8WC}} his estate amounted to more than £198,000,{{sfnp|A4YM4FW3}} equivalent to almost £10 million as at 2021.\[b\]Using the retail price index measure of inflation.{{sfnp|JDRTKHJX}} A son, Jack, predeceased him in 1940.{{sfnp|88TFA8WC}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Charles Fulford died in 1906, aged 36 years, leaving an estate valued at £1.3 million,{{sfnp|5GDJ8MCS}}{{sfnp|YB6SNMUB}} around £128 million today.{{sfnp|JDRTKHJX}} b Using the retail price index measure of inflation.{{sfnp|JDRTKHJX}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 12682
**Categories:** Industrialist
---
### [Calder and Hebble Navigation](https://engole.info/calder-and-hebble-navigation/)
**Published:** August 30, 2020
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Calder_and_Hebble_Navigation_Warehouse_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1531524.jpg[/pimage]Constructed between 1758 and 1834, the navigation makes the River Calder navigable between Sowerby Bridge and Wakefield in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Calder_and_Hebble_Navigation_Warehouse_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1531524.jpg) Calder and Hebble Warehouse in Wakefield
Wikimedia Commons
The Calder and Hebble Navigation, which made the River Calder navigable between Sowerby Bridge and Wakefield in the West Riding of Yorkshire, was constructed between 1758 and 1834. It is {{convert|27|mi}} long and had two branch canals, the extant Dewsbury arm and another to Halifax that is now disused. The navigation begins at Fall Ings Lock in Wakefield, where it connects with the Aire and Calder Navigation at the start of Fall Ings Cut,\[a\]A cut is a man-made channel for a river or other waterway. and ends in Sowerby Bridge, where it meets the Rochdale Canal.
Halifax was connected to the main line after a branch canal from Salterhebble was authorised in 1825. It opened in 1828, and was abandoned in 1942.
## Background
The River Calder rises in the Pennine hills above Todmorden, and flows in an easterly direction towards Sowerby Bridge and onwards through Elland, Brighouse, Mirfield, [Thornhill Lees](https://engole.info/thornhill/), Dewsbury, Horbury and Wakefield to Castleford, where it joins the River Aire. The Calder is joined by the Hebble Brook from Halifax at Salterhebble and the River Colne at Cooper Bridge. The Calder was made navigable from Castleford to Wakefield by the Aire and Calder Navigation in 1702.{{sfnp|BJXPU6BI|7}} The Calder and Hebble Navigation was planned to facilitate trade in the developing manufacturing towns upstream of Wakefield.{{sfnp|7WK6SPCB|120–126}}
## History
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Calder_and_hebble.jpg)Calder and Hebble at Sowerby Bridge
Wikimedia Commons
An attempt to obtain an Act of Parliament to create a river navigation between Halifax and Wakefield was made in 1740. The route was surveyed by John Eyes of Liverpool using the Calder, the River Hebble and the Halifax Brook. It required the construction of twenty-one locks on the Calder and three on the Hebble and nearly {{convert|10|mi}} of cuts, including one of {{convert|2|mi|r=1}} at Horbury. The bill was defeated by opposition from landowners, mill owners and several turnpike trusts, who were intending to build roads along a similar route.{{sfnp|VY3KLF7Z|44–45}}
In September 1756, after a meeting in Halifax, John Smeaton was asked to survey a route. In 1757 he produced a scheme to dredge shoals, make nearly {{convert|6|mi}} of cuts, build 26 locks to overcome the rise of 178 feet between Wakefield and the Halifax Brook and construct a reservoir at Salterhebble Bridge. A committee raising finance for the planned Rochdale Canal insisted the navigation shold be extended to Sowerby Bridge where their canal would terminate. Despite opposition from the Halifax committee, the Act received Royal Assent.{{sfnp|VY3KLF7Z|45–47}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Double_Lock%2C_Lock_Street%2C_Dewsbury_-_geograph.org.uk_-_377808.jpg) Double Lock at Thornhill
Wikimedia Commons
“An Act for extending the Navigation of the River Calder to, or near to, Sowerby Bridge, in the Parish of Halifax: And for making navigable the River Hebble, Halig, or Halifax Brook, from Brooksmouth to Salter Hebble Bridge in the County of York” passed in 1757.{{sfnp|7WK6SPCB|120–126}} In the early 1770s the waterway was completed to Sowerby Bridge.{{sfnp|BJXPU6BI|7}}
A branch canal links Double Locks at [Thornhill](https://engole.info/thornhill/) to a basin at Savile Town in Dewsbury. Another branch canal from Salterhebble linked the main line to Halifax.{{sfnp|BJXPU6BI|14}} The canal is also connected to the Huddersfield Broad Canal at Cooper Bridge.{{sfnp|BJXPU6BI|6}} Trade in heavy cargoes such as [Elland flags](https://engole.info/elland-flags/) from quarries opened at Cromwell Bottom and Elland Edge was facilitated by the navigation and coal was carried by rail on the [Flockton tramway](https://engole.info/flockton-collieries/) for transhipping to east Yorkshire and beyond after 1770.{{sfnp|7WK6SPCB|124}} When completed, boats of 25 tons capacity could travel upstream from Wakefield to Sowerby Bridge.{{sfnp|7WK6SPCB|120–126}} Trade flourished and in 1804 the Rochdale Canal opened from Sowerby Bridge to cross the Pennines to Manchester.{{sfnp|BJXPU6BI|7}}
The company was most successful before the Manchester and Leeds Railway opened between 1839 and 1841. Its line parallels the Calder & Hebble and the Rochdale Canal. The railway company agreed to lease the canal for £40,000 per year for 14 years from March 1843 but the Aire and Calder Navigation objected and in April 1847 it was ruled it illegal. The Aire and Calder then offered to lease the canal from the September.{{sfnp|VY3KLF7Z|202–206}} After that lease expired in 1885, the Navigation Company again took charge, rebuilt many bridges and established the Calder Carrying Company. Shareholders received dividends until the canal was nationalised in 1948, and the canal was used by commercial traffic until 1981.{{sfnp|4HRVNXGY|40–41}}
Although commercial traffic had mostly ceased by 1955, apart from coal which was carried to Thornhill power station until 1981, the Calder and Hebble remained open for leisure use. The re-opening of the Rochdale Canal to Manchester in 2002 increased traffic along the navigation which is part of the South Pennine Ring.{{sfnp|B3RS4SUL}}
## Construction
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Fall_Ings_Lock_-_Calder_and_Hebble_Navigation_-_Doncaster_Road_-_geograph.org.uk_-_747532.jpg)Fall Ings Lock in Wakefield
Wikimedia Commons
Construction started in November 1759,{{sfnp|VY3KLF7Z|48}} with Smeaton as engineer.{{sfnp|4HRVNXGY|40}} The navigation was open to Brighouse, {{convert|16|mi}} from Wakefield by November 1764. James Brindley took over from Smeaton in 1765 and the scheme was almost completed when serious floods in October 1767 and February 1768 caused serious damage. The Commissioners re-appointed Smeaton in 1768, to complete the work. Banks were repaired and floodgates built at the start of some cuts. Just as work was completed, another flood caused so much damage that the navigation had to close.{{sfnp|VY3KLF7Z|48–53}} The commissioners had spent £64,000, most of which had been borrowed, and a second Act of Parliament was required to complete the work. The Act was obtained in April 1769. It created the Company of Proprietors of the Calder and Hebble Navigation. All the loans from 81 people who had subscribed to the original scheme were converted into £100 shares. More shares could be issued, and the company was able to borrow up to £20,000 using future tolls as security.{{sfnp|7WK6SPCB|120–126}} Construction of the initial phase was finished in 1770,{{sfnp|4HRVNXGY|40}} at a total cost of around £75,000.{{sfnp|VY3KLF7Z|54}}
## Developments
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Salterhebble_Lock_Keeper%27s_Cottage_-_Calder_and_Hebble_Navigation_-_geograph.org.uk_-_714506.jpg)Lock keeper’s cottage at Salterhebble
Wikimedia Commons
Problems with the water supply to the Sowerby Bridge pound were addressed by Smeaton who suggested a tunnel from Hollins Mill and construction began in June 1772, and completed in March 1794.{{sfnp|VY3KLF7Z|55}} A new cut between Shepley Bridge and Mirfield was started in December 1775 supervised by William Jessop, and water levels were raised to allow boats to carry additional cargo in 1776. A new cut at Brighouse was made in 1780 and two staircase locks at Salterhebble and the single lock at Brooksmouth were replaced by three new locks in 1782.{{sfnp|VY3KLF7Z|56–57}} A long cut at Thornhill to bypass Dewsbury was made in 1798 but a wharf and warehouse at Savile Town Basin in Dewsbury was not made until 1877. A cut and a lock were made near Brighouse at Brookfoot between 1805 and 1808, and the Elland cut was extended to the Sowerby cut in 1815.{{sfnp|VY3KLF7Z|189–190}} Fall Ings Lock was replaced and Fall Ings Cut and a pair of locks opened in 1812. The work was jointly funded by the Aire and Calder Navigation Company in 1806.{{sfnp|VY3KLF7Z|190–191}}
The company continued making longer cuts to bypass more sections of river and when the Aire and Calder Company rebuilt its main line, the Calder and Hebble sought another Act of Parliament to effectively abandon the river. The plans were opposed and modified and the Act of 1834 authorised larger new cuts and new locks of 70 feet by 18 1⁄2 feet. The Huddersfield Broad Canal pressed for the locks to be extended.{{sfnp|VY3KLF7Z|199–200}} The new Horbury Cut between Broad Cut and the Figure of Three locks included two large locks and a new large lock beside the old one at Thornes opened in 1838, but little more was done, despite the Rochdale Canal also pressing for longer locks.{{sfnp|VY3KLF7Z|202}} [Hartley Bank Colliery](https://engole.info/hartley-bank-colliery/) was sunk south of the Horbury Cut in 1841 and staithes were built to move coal.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|260}}
## Locks
Most locks on the navigation above Broad Cut Lock are 57 feet 6 inches long and 14 feet wide.{{sfnp|GRMSZXAA}} The lock gates require a special handspike to operate the paddle gear. Some original paddle gear has been replaced but several locks cannot be operated without a hand-spike. They can be made from a three feet long piece of 4″ x 2″ or 3″ x 2″ hardwood and tapered to about 2¼” x 1¾” or bought at local boatyards.{{sfnp|76SF5SCM}} The maximum size for boats that can navigate the Calder and Hebble is 54′ 2″ long with a 14′ 2″ beam, 4′ 11″ draught and 8′ 7″ in height.{{sfnp|WBTXV79E}}
## Halifax Branch
Halifax was reached after another Act of Parliament was obtained in March 1825 to raise £50,000{{sfnp|7WK6SPCB|120–126}} to construct the {{convert|1.75|mi|adj=on}} branch along the Hebble, from Salterhebble to near the railway station.{{sfnp|B3RS4SUL}} Halifax is {{convert|100|ft}} higher than the navigation at Salterhebble,{{sfnp|VY3KLF7Z|197}} and the branch had 14 locks.{{sfnp|DSS8LCK9|262–263}} It was supplied with water via a {{convert|1170|yd|adj=on}} long tunnel from Salterhebble to a pit near the top lock, from where a steam engine pumped water to the top pound.{{sfnp|7WK6SPCB|120–126}} The branch opened in 1828, having cost £58,741,{{sfnp|VY3KLF7Z|197}} and was abandoned in 1942.{{sfnp|DSS8LCK9|262–263}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a A cut is a man-made channel for a river or other waterway.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23056
**Categories:** Yorkshire
---
### [Dream (Escher)](https://engole.info/dream-escher/)
**Published:** July 16, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Dream.webp[/pimage]Woodcut by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, created in 1935.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Dream.webp)Woodcut
32 × 24 cm (12.6 × 9.4 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Dream* is a woodcut produced by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898–1972), created in 1935.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|7}}
The picture shows a large praying mantis standing on the chest of a bishop who is either asleep or dead, lying on what may be a marble sarcophagus. The two figures are drawn in a vaulted space reminiscent of a church, which contains a second, separate vault and a third building. The ground on which these structures rest suddenly gives way to darkness in the background, suggesting an infinite emptiness.{{sfnp|LFPTRPCR}}
Combining as it does architectural elements with fantasy, *Dream* can be characterised as belonging to the genre of capriccio.{{sfnp|WXPSXYZ3}} It was created during the period in Escher’s artistic career when he was gradually shifting his focus from interpretations of Italian landscapes towards something more surreal.{{sfnp|LFPTRPCR}} He poses the question of whether the bishop is dreaming about the praying mantis, or whether the entire picture is a dream of the artist.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|7}} Writing in 1964, Escher said that:
The print *Dream* combines three distinct elements: first the architecture, a reminiscence of a curious little twelfth-century church in southern Italy. It consisted of loose cross vaults under an overhanging rock. Secondly, the marble sarcophagus with the recumbent figure of a bishop, which I saw in the crypt at Saint Peter’s in Rome. And thirdly, an insect common in southern Italy, a praying mantis … My only intention was to suggest an impression of three-dimensionality, of endless depth.{{sfnp
— LFPTRPCR}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30161
**Categories:** Woodcut
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Relativity (Escher)](https://engole.info/relativity-escher/)
**Published:** July 16, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a3/Escher%27s_Relativity.jpg[/pimage]Lithograph by the Dutch Artist M. C. Escher, created in 1953.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a3/Escher%27s_Relativity.jpg)Lithograph
28 × 29 cm (11 × 11 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Relativity* is a lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898–1972), created in 1953.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|14}} One of his most popular works, it depicts a series of staircases connected in an impossible way, in a shape known as the [Penrose triangle](https://engole.info/penrose-triangle).{{sfnp|GJFXW6L6}}
The picture shows human beings occupying three different planes of existence, each with different conceptions of what is horizontal and what is vertical. But without any knowledge of the other’s existence, they are able to share the use of the same staircase.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|14}}
*Relativity* has influenced many other artistic endeavours, including the films *Labyrinth* (1986) and *Inception* (2010).{{sfnp|PDTFSHJP}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30160
**Categories:** Lithograph
---
### [St Mark's Church, Worsley](https://engole.info/st-marks-church-worsley/)
**Published:** September 20, 2020
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/St_marks_worsley.jpg[/pimage]Active Anglican parish church in Worsley, Greater Manchester with an unusual thirteen-striking clock.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/St_marks_worsley.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/9KTp3WR5eoZmuwj56}}
St Mark’s Church
St Mark’s Church is an active Anglican parish church in Worsley, Greater Manchester. The parish, taken out of the ancient parish of Eccles in 1863, is smaller than the Worsley [township](https://engole.info/township/). It included Worsley village and its old and [new halls](https://engole.info/worsley-new-hall/), Roe Green and Wardley Hall, [Ellenbrook](https://engole.info/ellenbrook/) and its chapel and Boothstown.{{sfnp|KC5KD8VS|603}} The church is part of a team ministry with [St Mary’s in Ellenbrook](https://engole.info/st-mary-the-virgins-church-ellenbrook/) and St Andrew in Boothstown. The church is in the Eccles deanery, the archdeaconry of Salford and the diocese of Manchester.{{sfnp|MLAKY9LD}} The church was granted Grade I [listed status](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1966.{{sfnp|M42UM5NM}}
The church was designed by George Gilbert Scott for the Earl of Ellesmere, who paid for it to be built and whose memorial is inside the Ellesmere Chapel. Its tall spire is a local landmark and its clock strikes thirteen at 1 o’clock after a device from the Bridgewater estate yard in Worsley village was moved to the church in 1946.
## Background
The church’s founding is bound up with the emergence of Worsley as a cradle of the Industrial Revolution at the hands of the Egerton family. The Earl of Ellesmere, heir of the Duke of Bridgewater who built the Bridgewater Canal, commissioned George Gilbert Scott to design the church which was built between 1844 and 1846 and cost £20,000. Lord Egerton’s eldest son, George, laid the foundation stone on 15 June 1844, his 21st birthday. Specimen coins were placed in a cavity in the stone. The church was consecrated on 2 July 1846 by the Bishop of Chester.{{sfnp|APXJZQJ8}}
The site chosen for the church was the prominent {{convert|10|acre|adj=on|spell=in}} site once known as Cross Field on Worsley Brow. The field was named from a traveller’s cross at the junction of the Leigh and Walkden roads. The extensive churchyard is bounded by stone walls with [lych gates](https://engole.info/lych-gate/) on the west and south sides; the M60 motorway passes to the east, and there is woodland to the north. The church spire is a landmark for many drivers who pass it on the motorway that bisects the parish.
## Structure
The church is constructed from hard snecked sandstone with roofs in slate from the Delabole quarries in Cornwall. Much of the hidden leadwork has been replaced with stainless steel. The church plan is of a five-bay [nave](https://engole.info/nave/), a [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel), north and south aisles and a west tower. The base of the west tower forms the west porch. The tower has richly carved corner pinnacles with flying buttresses to the spire and numerous carved gargoyles. The spire rises to {{convert|185|ft}}.{{sfnp|M42UM5NM}}{{sfnp|STQMD3H5}}
Inside, the nave has an oak [hammer-beam roof](https://engole.info/timber-roof-truss/) and the chancel is flanked by the vestry and organ chamber on the north side and the Ellesmere Chapel on the south. The north aisle was added in 1852 and shortly after that the Ellesmere Chapel was altered by the addition of a family vault below and extended to the east. The chapel was re-ordered in the 1920s.{{sfnp|M42UM5NM}}
### Fittings and furniture
The ring of bells was increased to ten in 1934. The church clock strikes thirteen at 1 o’clock by means of a device invented by the Duke of Bridgewater to prevent his workforce returning late from their lunch hour. The device was transferred from the estate yard to the church in 1946.{{sfnp|STQMD3H5}}
When built the church had sittings for 800 people, of which 200 were free.{{sfnp|KC5KD8VS|603}} The fittings are of the highest quality and include the original oak pews, a pulpit fashioned by Scott from carved panels acquired on his travels, a richly decorated limestone font and the tomb of Francis Egerton and brasses and memorials to later members of the family in the Ellesmere Chapel. Twelve windows depicting saints were acquired by Scott from France, Belgium or Italy, two others were made by the studios of Edward Burne-Jones, and the aisle windows are Powell’s cast glass.{{sfnp|STQMD3H5}}
Additions made in the 1880s include an ornate Italian marble and mosaic [reredos](https://engole.info/reredos/), paving in the choir and sanctuary, carved choir stalls by R. Knill Freeman. A vestry was added when choral services were introduced. In 1894 a lectern designed by John Douglas was installed.{{sfnp|XREMLPCM|264}}
The church was one of the earliest of 470 churches designed by George Gilbert Scott, who according to his grandson, Giles Gilbert Scott, regarded it as one of his most successful and purest essays in the geometrical Decorated Gothic style of the late 13th and early 14th century.{{sfnp|STQMD3H5}} It was granted Grade I Listed status in 1966.{{sfnp|M42UM5NM}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23185
**Categories:** Anglican, Church, Greater Manchester
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Tyne and Wear](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-tyne-and-wear/)
**Published:** July 12, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Tyne_and_Wear_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Tyne_and_Wear_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Tyne and Wear.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Tyne_and_Wear_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Tyne_and_Wear_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png)Tyne and Wear shown within England
Wikimedia Commons
The [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Tyne and Wear comprises five metropolitan boroughs: Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne, Sunderland, North Tyneside and South Tyneside.{{sfnp|2F5E2LXG}}
The county contains 75 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building), which are listed separately for each metropolitan borough. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
- [Grade I listed buildings in Gateshead](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-gateshead)
- Grade I listed buildings in Newcastle upon Tyne
- [Grade I listed buildings in Sunderland](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-sunderland)
- [Grade I listed buildings in North Tyneside](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-north-tyneside)
- [Grade I listed buildings in South Tyneside](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-south-tyneside)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30152
**Categories:** Tyne and Wear
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [All Saints Church, Odell](https://engole.info/all-saints-church-odell/)
**Published:** January 25, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/AllSaints-Odell.jpg/960px-AllSaints-Odell.jpg[/pimage]Grade I listed active Anglican church in the Bedfordshire village of Odell.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/AllSaints-Odell.jpg/960px-AllSaints-Odell.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/NDqB5iW9xqx2qMjZ7
All Saints’ Church in the [village](https://engole.info/village) and [civil parish](https://engole.info/civil-parish) of Odell, Bedfordshire is an active Anglican parish church in the archdeaconry of Bedford and the diocese of St. Albans. It dates back to the 15th century, and as the incumbent’s records date back to 1220, probably occupies the site of an earlier church.{{sfnp|267NKKYN}}
The church is built on a prominent site opposite Odell Castle, and was designated a Grade I [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1964. Built of coursed limestone rubble, it has a double-aisled [nave](https://engole.info/nave), a west tower and a two bay [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) with [sedilia](https://engole.info/sedilia) and [piscina](https://engole.info/piscina).{{sfnp|BNMYECIM}} The interior has tall arcades, an original 15th-century [rood screen](https://engole.info/rood-screen) and a diamond-patterned floor in the nave and aisles.{{sfnp|I2TZYBTC|273}}
According to local legend, five marks on the church porch were left by the Devil as he attempted to claim the soul of Sir Rowland Alston, who is buried in the church. It is said that Sir Rowland’s ghost appears every century on a black horse, when the year ends with the number 44.{{sfnp|HZU5ANLG|273}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27157
**Categories:** Anglican, Bedfordshire, Church
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Nottinghamshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-nottinghamshire/)
**Published:** March 25, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Nottinghamshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Nottinghamshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire, split into the seven district councils plus the unitary authority of City of Nottingham.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Nottinghamshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Nottinghamshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png)Nottinghamshire shown within England
Wikimedia Commons
Nottinghamshire is a [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) in the East Midlands of England, comprised of seven districts run by the district councils of Ashfield, Bassetlaw, Broxtowe, Gedling, Mansfield, Newark and Sherwood, and Rushcliffe,{{sfnp|INAXLEI7}} plus the [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) of City of Nottingham.{{sfnp|UBLA9JSJ}}
The 146 Grade I listed buildings in the county are shown in separate lists for each local government authority.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
- [Grade I listed buildings in Ashfield](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-ashfield)
- Grade I listed buildings in Bassetlaw
- [Grade I listed buildings in Broxtowe](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-broxtowe)
- [Grade I listed buildings in City of Nottingham](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-city-of-nottingham)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Gedling](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-gedling)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Mansfield](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-mansfield)
- Grade I listed buildings in Newark and Sherwood
- [Grade I listed buildings in Rushcliffe](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-rushcliffe)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27295
**Categories:** Nottinghamshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [St Kenneth's Chapel](https://engole.info/st-kenneths-chapel/)
**Published:** November 11, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Ruined chapel and Scheduled Monument on the island of Inch Kenneth in Argyle and Bute, Scotland.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Inchkenneth_Chapel_20120418_view_from_southwest.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/J2kC2BXzBC6qw6P18}}
View from the southwest
St Kenneth’s is a ruined [chapel](https://engole.info/chapel) on the island of Inch Kenneth, at the entrance to Loch na Keal in Argyll and Bute, Scotland, probably dating from the 13th century; the church and island derive their name from St Cainnech of Aghaboe, a contemporary of St Columba. The church probably ceased to be used as a place of worship during the mid-16th century, although it was still used for burials, and remains in use for that purpose today.{{sfnp|JDRFMWPB}}
The chapel was designated a Scheduled Monument in 1928, a [listing](https://engole.info/listed-building) that includes its graveyard and associated funerary and monumental sculpture.{{sfnp|M7PNJ86S}}
## History
The earliest surviving written record of St Kenneth’s is from 1380, from which along with another reference from 1549, it is known that it served as a parish church. By the 16th century at the latest, St Kenneth’s came under the control of Iona Nunnery, an Augustinian establishment. Probably as a result of the abolition of the nunnery in 1547, the chapel ceased to be used and was left to decay.{{sfnp|JDRFMWPB}}
## Description
The church measures approximately {{convert|12|m|abbr=on}} by {{convert|6|m|abbr=on}}. It features heavy corner buttresses in front and has four pointed windows; two [lancet windows](https://engole.info/lancet-window) are on the east wall, and there are two smaller windows on the north and south side of the chancel. A step divides the [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) and the [nave](https://engole.info/nave). The main entrance to the church lies at the west end of the north wall.{{sfnp|JDRFMWPB}}{{sfnp|M7PNJ86S}}
The cemetery to the south of the chapel remains in occasional use today. Inside the church there are eight cross slabs, which probably date between the 14th and 16th centuries; there are also graves from the 17th and 18th centuries. The slate high cross in the southwest corner of the enclosed area was placed there in 1926, but was probably made between 1500 and 1560.{{sfnp|JDRFMWPB}}
## Gallery
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Inchkenneth_Chapel_20120418_nave.webp)
Nave
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Inchkenneth_Chapel_20120418_chancel.webp)
Chancel
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26984
**Categories:** Chapel, Scottish
---
### [Four Feather Falls](https://engole.info/four-feather-falls/)
**Published:** April 27, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/FourFeatherFalls.jpg[/pimage]Children's' television show about a cowboy with magic guns, the third puppet television show produced by Gerry Anderson for Granada Television, and the first to use an early version of Anderson's Supermarionation puppetry.
**Content:**
*Four Feather Falls* was the third puppet television show produced by Gerry Anderson for Granada Television. It was based on an idea by Barry Gray, who also wrote the show’s music. The series was the first to use an early version of Anderson’s [Supermarionation](https://engole.info/supermarionation/) puppetry. Thirty-nine 13-minute episodes were produced, broadcast by Granada from February until November 1960.
The setting is the late 19th-century fictional Kansas town of Four Feather Falls, where the hero of the series, Tex Tucker, is a sheriff. The four feathers of the title refers to four magical feathers given to Tex by the Indian chief Kalamakooya as a reward for saving his grandson: two of the feathers allowed Tex’s guns to swivel and fire without being touched whenever he was in danger,\[a\]The swivelling guns solved the problem of how a puppet cowboy could be quick on the draw without looking as if he had gone into a spasm when one of his wires was suddenly yanked.{{sfnp|C7B75WVT}} and the other two conferred the power of speech on Tex’s horse and dog. Tex’s own speaking voice was provided by Nicholas Parsons, and his singing voice by Michael Holliday.
Opening sequence
YouTube
The series has never been repeated on British television, but it was released on DVD in 2005.{{sfnp|88XADTJ7}}
## Production
American Western television shows such as *Wagon Train* and *Gunsmoke* were popular with British audiences, therefore Gerry Anderson and his business partner Arthur Provis decided to make a cowboy series, based on an idea offered to them by Barry Gray.{{sfnp|C7B75WVT}} Anderson considered the puppets with static heads, made by Christine Glanville for his earlier productions, to be unacceptable because the viewer could not tell which character was talking unless its puppet moved up or down. Anderson’s aim was to make the puppets look as realistic as possible, the beginning of the Supermarionation puppetry process, although that term was not coined until his next series, *Supercar*.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|35-64}}
The puppets’ papier-mâché heads were replaced by interchangeable hollow glass fibre heads with internal rods that could move the eyes from side to side. The heads also contained sound-activated solenoids, which allowed the puppets’ lips to move automatically in synchronisation with the dialogue.{{sfnp|IJ8APSS4}} The electronics of the day required more space than would be available in a human-scale head, therefore all the puppets in *Four Feather Falls* had oversized heads.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|35-64}}
Except for the pilot episode, which was made in AP Films’ studios at Islet Park,{{sfnp|SXGT5Y86}} the series was produced in a converted warehouse in the Slough Trading Estate.{{sfnp|IJ8APSS4}} The cast assembled to record each script without seeing the puppets, much like recording a radio series; synchronisation of each character’s speech with the movement of its puppet’s mouth was performed later.{{sfnp|T729HTBC}} The show was filmed in black and white. {{sfnp|SXGT5Y86}} Its tight budget precluded the use of sophisticated special effects, and less-costly alternatives were used. For example, to achieve the effect of muzzle flashes, small specks of black paint were applied to the 35 mm negatives so they would appear as white flashes on the finished prints. The wires used to control the puppets were {{convert|8|ft|spell=in|r=1}} long and made of tungsten, an improvement on the curtain wire used in the two earlier series, and were only 1/200 of an inch thick. Being shiny, the wires had to be blackened. The puppets were made one-third life size with the puppeteers on a bridge eight feet above the set. The horses moved by being pulled along on a trolley, which meant the viewer never saw their feet when they were moving.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|35-64}}
## Plot
The series is set in the fictitious late 19th-century Western town of Four Feather Falls, Kansas, and features the adventures of its sheriff, Tex Tucker. In the first episode, Grandpa Twink relates the story of how it all began to grandson, Little Jake. Tex is riding up from the valley and comes across a lost and hungry Indian boy, Makooya and saves him. Tex is given four magic feathers by the boy’s grandfather, chief Kalamakooya, as a reward for saving his grandson. Two of the feathers allow his guns to swivel and fire automatically (often while Tex’s hands are raised), and the other two allow his horse, Rocky, and his dog, Dusty, to speak. As Tex, his horse, and dog are very thirsty, Kalamakooya also makes a waterfall where there had been no water before, and so when the town was built it was named after Tex’s feathers and the waterfall.
The characters of the town are Grandpa Twink, who does little but rest in a chair; his grandson Little Jake, the only child in town; Ma Jones, who runs the town store; Doc Haggerty; Slim Jim, the bartender of the Denison saloon; Marvin Jackson, the bank manager; and Dan Morse, the telegraphist. Other characters appeared from time to time for only one episode, often just visiting town. The villains included Pedro, who was introduced in the first show and Fernando, who first appeared in the second episode as a sidekick and someone Pedro could blame when things went wrong, as they always did. Big Ben was another villain who appeared from time to time, as did Red Scalp, a renegade Indian. Other villains only appeared in single episodes.
## Music
The show’s music and song lyrics were composed by Barry Gray. Michael Holliday provided Tex’s singing voice, and Tommy Reilly performed the harmonica pieces.{{sfnp|C7B75WVT}} The best known song to come out of the series was “Four Feather Falls”, sung in some episodes by Michael Holliday in the style of Bing Crosby and sometimes incorrectly described as the theme song to the series; the closing theme song was “Two Gun Tex of Texas.” Holliday was paid £2,000 for his singing work on the pilot episode, equivalent to about £44,000{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}\[b\]Comparing the value of £2000 in 1959, the year of the first episode, to 2017 using the retail price index as of 2017, a significant part of the show’s £6,000 budget. In all, Holliday recorded six songs for the series: “Four Feather Falls”, “The Phantom Rider”, “The Rick-Rick-A-Rackety Train”, “Happy Hearts and Friendly Faces”, “My Home Town”, and “Two Gun Tex of Texas”.{{sfnp|SXGT5Y86}}
Four Feather Falls sung by Michael Holliday
YouTube
## Cast
- Nicholas Parsons – Sheriff Tex Tucker (speaking voice){{sfnp|C7B75WVT}} / Telegraph Operator Dan Morse{{sfnp|SXGT5Y86}} / Various
- Michael Holliday – Sheriff Tex Tucker (singing voice){{sfnp|C7B75WVT}} / Various
- Kenneth Connor – Dusty the Dog / Rocky the Horse / Pedro the Bandit / Big Chief Kalamakooya / Bank Manager / Marvin Jackson{{sfnp|C7B75WVT}} / Doc Haggerty / Saloon Owner Slim Jim Denison{{sfnp|SXGT5Y86}} / Various
- David Graham – Grandpa Ebenezer Twink / Fernando the Bandit{{sfnp|C7B75WVT}} / Big Ben the Horse Rustler Bandit / Red Scalp the Renegade Indian{{sfnp|SXGT5Y86}} / Various
- Denise Bryer – Martha “Ma” Jones / Little Jake{{sfnp|C7B75WVT}} / Makooya the Little Indian Boy / Various Denise Bryer had worked with Anderson on *The Adventures of Twizzle*, and he wanted her to play some of the voices in *Four Feather Falls*. Anderson visited Bryer at her home with some scripts and asked her husband, Nicholas Parsons, to help by reading some of the other parts, including the sheriff Tex Tucker. Anderson liked Parsons’ interpretation and offered him the job of providing Tex’s speaking voice.{{sfnp|T729HTBC}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The swivelling guns solved the problem of how a puppet cowboy could be quick on the draw without looking as if he had gone into a spasm when one of his wires was suddenly yanked.{{sfnp|C7B75WVT}} b Comparing the value of £2000 in 1959, the year of the first episode, to 2017 using the retail price index
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 18457
**Categories:** Children’s, Television programme
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Melton](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-melton/)
**Published:** March 20, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/Melton_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Melton_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the district of Melton, Leicestershire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/Melton_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Melton_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Melton shown within Leicestershire
Wikimedia Commons
The non-metropolitan district of Melton in the East Midlands of England is one of the seven districts and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Leicestershire.{{sfnp|DFUAZLJK}}
The district contains 26 of the 93 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Leicestershire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Belvoir Castle**Belvoir
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Hqj9wV4sv5BgAwhY8)Norman[1360870](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1360870)rg/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c5/Belvoir\_Castle\_Leicestershire.jpg/1280px-Belvoir\_Castle\_Leicestershire.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of All Saints**Asfordby
14th century[1360866](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1360866)rg/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Asfordby\_church.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of All Saints**Hoby with Rotherby
13th century[1075004](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1075004)rg/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/All\_Saints\_Church%2C\_Hoby\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1240711.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of All Saints**Pickwell
13th century[1360851](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1360851)rg/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Pickwellweb.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of All Saints**Somerby
12th century[1177777](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1177777)rg/wikipedia/commons/9/95/All\_Saints%27\_Church%2C\_Somerby%2C\_Leicestershire\_01.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Andrew**Coston
11th century[1061273](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1061273)rg/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Coston\_parish\_church.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Andrew**Twyford and Thorpe
12th century[1307264](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1307264)rg/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/St\_Andrews%2C\_Twyford.jpg/1920px-St\_Andrews%2C\_Twyford.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Denys**Eaton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/jvce7uvBuGQVhiz29)13th century[1075022](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1075022)rg/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/52/Eaton\_St\_Denis\_2.jpg/1280px-Eaton\_St\_Denis\_2.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Denys**Goadby Marwood
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/WDuYT572yVc5anxp6)13th century[1360902](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1360902)rg/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Goadby\_marwood.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St James**Burton and Dalby
Late 12th century[1360836](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1360836)rg/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Burtonlazarsweb.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St John the Baptist**ta-border-color="#abb8c3">Buckminster
ta-border-color="#abb8c3">13th centuryta-border-color="#abb8c3">[1061281](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1061281)rg/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Buckminster%2C\_Leicestershire\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_38228.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St John the Baptist**ta-border-color="#abb8c3">Cold Overton
ta-border-color="#abb8c3">13th centuryta-border-color="#abb8c3">[1075150](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1075150)rg/wikipedia/commons/0/06/St\_John\_the\_Baptist\_Church\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_760864.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Luke**ta-border-color="#abb8c3">Gaddesby
ta-border-color="#abb8c3">12th centuryta-border-color="#abb8c3">[1307542](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1307542)rg/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Gaddesby\_church\_from\_South\_East.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary**ta-border-color="#abb8c3">Ashby Folville
ta-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 13th centuryta-border-color="#abb8c3">[1061267](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1061267)rg/wikipedia/commons/2/27/St.\_Mary%2C\_Ashby\_Folville\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_118984.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">[Church of St Mary](https://engole.info/st-marys-church-bottesford)ta-border-color="#abb8c3">Bottesford
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7zKmmDhnDX8RPPbh6)ta-border-color="#abb8c3">13th centuryta-border-color="#abb8c3">[1075095](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1075095)rg/wikipedia/commons/4/41/St\_Mary%2C\_Bottesford\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1738300.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary**ta-border-color="#abb8c3">Freeby
ta-border-color="#abb8c3">Early 14th centuryta-border-color="#abb8c3">[1360855](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1360855)rg/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/88/Freeby\_St\_Marys\_NE\_aspect.JPG/1280px-Freeby\_St\_Marys\_NE\_aspect.JPG"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary**ta-border-color="#abb8c3">Garthorpe
ta-border-color="#abb8c3">Early 13th centuryta-border-color="#abb8c3">[1307476](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1307476)rg/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/St.Mary%27s\_church\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_1276827.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary Magdalene**ta-border-color="#abb8c3">Freeby
ta-border-color="#abb8c3">1699ta-border-color="#abb8c3">[1360859](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1360859)rg/wikipedia/commons/6/65/St\_Mary\_Magdalene%2C\_Stapleford%2C\_Leics\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_385040.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary Magdalene**ta-border-color="#abb8c3">Waltham
ta-border-color="#abb8c3">Normanta-border-color="#abb8c3">[1188847](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1188847)rg/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Waltham.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Michael**ta-border-color="#abb8c3">Edmondthorpe
ta-border-color="#abb8c3">13th centuryta-border-color="#abb8c3">[1075128](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1075128)rg/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Church\_of\_St\_Michael\_and\_All\_Angels%2C\_Edmondthorpe\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_77175.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Peter**ta-border-color="#abb8c3">Kirby Bellars
ta-border-color="#abb8c3">13th centuryta-border-color="#abb8c3">[1261717](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1261717)rg/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Church\_of\_St\_Peter%2C\_Kirby\_Bellars\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_337081.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Peter**ta-border-color="#abb8c3">Wymondham
ta-border-color="#abb8c3">13th centuryta-border-color="#abb8c3">[1177844](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1177844)rg/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Church\_of\_St.\_Peter%2C\_Wymondham\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_73815.jpg"> 2px; border-bottom-right[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/2EXvMgzThroDAT7A8)">td style="vertical-align:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Thomas of Canterbury**ta-border-color="#abb8c3">Frisby on the Wreake
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/uds2BwTo8xEF3q4B6)ta-border-color="#abb8c3">12th centuryta-border-color="#abb8c3">[1360878](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1360878)rg/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Church\_of\_St\_Tho[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9h7ESzfqfDDjJq769)aph.org.uk\_-\_523734.jpg"> 
**Published:** December 20, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Mistress_Mary%2C_Quite_Contrary_2_-_WW_Denslow_-_Project_Gutenberg_etext_18546.jpg[/pimage]English nursery rhyme that may be about Queen Mary I.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Mistress_Mary%2C_Quite_Contrary_2_-_WW_Denslow_-_Project_Gutenberg_etext_18546.jpg)Illustration by William Wallace Denslow
Wikimedia Commons
“Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” is an English nursery rhyme that may have a religious background, but the possible meanings of which are disputed.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|355}}
> Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
> How does your garden grow?
> With silver bells and cockle shells,
> And pretty maids all in a row.
The oldest known version was published in *Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book* (1744) with the final line “And so my Garden grows”.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|355}}
The “Mary” who is the subject of the rhyme is often suggested to be the Catholic Queen Mary I of England (1516–1588), also known as Bloody Mary for her ruthless persecution of Protestants. The gardens are seen as graveyards where the increasing number of executed Protestants were buried, the “silver bells and cockle shells” as instruments of torture,{{sfnp|E8TIPHTI}} and the “pretty maids all in a row” a reference to her miscarriages.{{sfnp|PDUP849U|33-34}}
Another popular tradition has it that “Mary” refers to Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587), and that the “pretty maids all in a row” are her ladies-in-waiting, the “Four Marys”. Somewhat mitigating against both explanations however, is the lack of evidence that the rhyme was known before the 18th century.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|355}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24257
**Categories:** Nursery rhyme
---
### [Portwey Hospital](https://engole.info/portwey-hospital/)
**Published:** April 14, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Former_Union_Workhouse_and_Portwey_Hospital%2C_Weymouth%2C_Dorset.jpg/1280px-Former_Union_Workhouse_and_Portwey_Hospital%2C_Weymouth%2C_Dorset.jpg[/pimage]Grade II listed former workhouse and hospital in Weymouth, Dorset, redeveloped in the early 1990s for residential use.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Former_Union_Workhouse_and_Portwey_Hospital%2C_Weymouth%2C_Dorset.jpg/1280px-Former_Union_Workhouse_and_Portwey_Hospital%2C_Weymouth%2C_Dorset.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/cWxr4vWkrCdwtMgq5}}
The former workhouse and hospital seen in 2014
Portwey Hospital is a Grade II listed former [workhouse](https://engole.info/workhouse) and hospital in Weymouth, Dorset.{{sfnp|MDPEQW8Y}} Following the establishment of the Weymouth Poor Law Union in January 1836, work began that year on the construction of the Weymouth Union workhouse, later known as the Weymouth Poor Law Institution. The building was designed using standard plans by Sampson Kempthorne of the Poor Law Commissioners, modified by Thomas Dobson and Thomas Hill Harvey of the Weymouth Board of Guardians.{{sfnp|YZHJ4ZS6}}
The workhouse became Portwey Hospital after 1939,\[a\]The Local Government Act 1929 gave local authorities the power to take over workhouse infirmaries as municipal hospitals, but outside of London few chose to do so.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|346}} That same Act also abolished the workhouse system in England and Wales, but many workhouses were simply rebranded as Public Assistance Institutions and continued as before, although then under the control of local county councils rather than a board of guardians.{{sfnp|2FRJBURE|155}} and a maternity unit was added in 1948.{{sfnp|YZHJ4ZS6}} Following its closure in 1987 the site was left derelict, until in 1992–1993 it was redeveloped for residential use; now known as Union Court,{{sfnp|YZHJ4ZS6}} the development received an award from the Weymouth Civic Society in 1994.{{sfnp|QXBPCNST}} English Heritage, in its survey of the building before its redevelopment, described it as “somewhat austere” but with a “simple dignity”, enhanced by the economical use of Portland stone”.{{sfnp|MDPEQW8Y}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The Local Government Act 1929 gave local authorities the power to take over workhouse infirmaries as municipal hospitals, but outside of London few chose to do so.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|346}} That same Act also abolished the workhouse system in England and Wales, but many workhouses were simply rebranded as Public Assistance Institutions and continued as before, although then under the control of local county councils rather than a board of guardians.{{sfnp|2FRJBURE|155}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26136
**Categories:** Hospital, Workhouse
---
### [Greystead Bridge](https://engole.info/greystead-bridge/)
**Published:** July 14, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Suspension_Bridge_over_the_River_North_Tyne_%28geograph_3260449%29.jpg[/pimage]Grade II pedestrian suspension bridge across the River North Tyne at Greystead, Northumberland, built in 1862.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Suspension_Bridge_over_the_River_North_Tyne_%28geograph_3260449%29.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Q5tNH2SUK7Gzio4U8
Greystead Bridge is a pedestrian suspension bridge across the River North Tyne at the [hamlet](https://engole.info/hamlet-place) of Greystead, Northumberland. It was completed in 1862 to connect communities on the south bank of the river to Thorneyburn Railway Station.{{sfnp|ZAXVHJ9I}}{{sfnp|ILU9W8TH}}\[a\]Thorneyburn Railway Station closed in 1956.{{sfnp|TYRA5XEK|419}}
The supporting steel cables are suspended from stone towers. There are steps up to the bridge at either end, and there is a gate at the south end. Round-arched passages through each tower allow access to a wooden walkway with wooden railings.{{sfnp|ZAXVHJ9I}}{{sfnp|ILU9W8TH}}
The bridge was designated a Grade II [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1988,{{sfnp|ZAXVHJ9I}} and was refurbished that same year.{{sfnp|ILU9W8TH}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Thorneyburn Railway Station closed in 1956.{{sfnp|TYRA5XEK|419}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30156
**Categories:** Bridge
---
### [Sale, Greater Manchester](https://engole.info/sale-greater-manchester/)
**Published:** July 13, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Sale_Town_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1749852.jpg/1280px-Sale_Town_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1749852.jpg[/pimage]One of the four major urban areas in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Sale_Town_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1749852.jpg/1280px-Sale_Town_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1749852.jpg)Sale Town Hall
Wikimedia Commons
Sale is one of the four major urban areas in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford in Greater Manchester, the other three being Altrincham, [Stretford](https://engole.info/stretford) and Urmston.{{sfnp|PY284UDD}} It sits on the south bank of the River Mersey, {{convert|2|mi|r=1|spell=in}} south of Stretford, {{convert|3|mi|r=1|spell=in}} northeast of Altrincham, and {{convert|5|mi|spell=in}} southwest of Manchester. As at the 2021 Census, the [built-up area](https://engole.info/built-up-area) of Sale has a population of 57,471.
The Bridgewater Canal reached the town in 1765, stimulating Sale’s urbanisation. The arrival of the railway in 1849 triggered Sale’s growth as an important town and place for people who wanted to travel to and from Manchester, leading to an influx of middle-class residents; by the end of the 19th century, the town’s population had more than tripled. Agriculture gradually declined as service industries boomed.
## Geography
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/TraffordAreasSale.webp)The Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, highlighting Sale in red
Sale lies in the Mersey Valley, about {{convert|100|ft}} above sea level on generally flat ground. The River Mersey, which runs just north of the town,{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|9}} is prone to flooding during heavy rains, so the [Sale Water Park](https://engole.info/sale-water-park), close to the town’s northern boundary, acts as an emergency flood basin.{{sfnp|ESABA8P5}}
Sale’s local drift geology consists of sand and gravel deposited about 10,000 years ago, during the last ice age. The bedrock is Bunter sandstone in the west and Triassic waterstone in the east.{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|1-3}}
## History
### Founding
A flint arrowhead discovered in Sale suggests a prehistoric human presence,{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|9}} but there is no further evidence of activity in the area until the Roman period. A 4th-century hoard of forty-six Roman coins was discovered in Ashton upon Mersey, one of four known hoards dating from that period discovered within the Mersey basin.{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|4}}{{sfnp|C2Z2RIWG|59,75}} Sale lies along the line of the Roman road which runs between the fortresses at Chester (Deva Victrix) and York (Eboracum), via the fort at Manchester (Mamucium);{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|4}} the present-day A56 follows the route of the road through the town.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|9}}
Some local field and road names,{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|12}} and the name of Sale itself, are Anglo-Saxon in origin, which suggests that the town was founded in the 7th or 8th century. The Old English *salh*, from which “Sale” is derived, means “at the sallow tree”,{{sfnp|FKP6GXWH|4}} and Ashton upon Mersey means “village or farm near the ash trees”.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|12-13}} Although the townships of Sale and Ashton upon Mersey were not mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, that may be because only a partial survey was taken.{{sfnp|SISDWEVU|18}} The first recorded occurrences of Sale and Ashton upon Mersey are in 1199–1216 and 1260 respectively.{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|32,38-39}} The settlements were referred to as townships rather than manors, which is further evidence of their Anglo-Saxon origins, as townships were developed by the Saxons.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|11}}
### Early history
The manor of Sale was one of thirty held by William FitzNigel, a powerful 12th-century baron in north Cheshire. He divided it between Thomas de Sale and Adam de Carrington, who acted as Lords of the Manor on his behalf. On de Sale’s death his land passed to his son-in-law, John Holt; de Carrington’s land passed into the ownership of Richard de Massey, a member of the Masseys who were Barons of Dunham.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Historic_Dovecote_at_Walkden_Gardens%2C_Sale%2C_Cheshire_-_geograph.org.uk_-_526310.jpg)Sale Old Hall’s dovecote in Walkden Gardens.
Wikimedia Commons
Sale descended through the Holt and Massey families until the 17th century, when their respective lands were sold.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|20}} Sale Old Hall was built in about 1603 for James Massey, probably to replace a medieval manor house, and was one of the first buildings in northwest England to be made of brick.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|22}}{{sfnp|CFWFN6YS|61}} It was rebuilt in 1840 and demolished in 1920, but two buildings in its grounds have survived: its dovecote, now in [Walkden Gardens](https://engole.info/walkden-gardens), and its lodge, the latter now occupied by Sale Golf Club.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|22}}
The extension of the Bridgewater Canal to Runcorn was completed as far as Sale by 1765, and transformed the town’s economy by providing a quick and cheap route into Manchester for fresh produce.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|44}} Farmers who took their wares to market in Manchester brought back night soil to fertilise the fields.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|47}} Not everyone benefited from the canal however; several yeomen claimed that their crops were damaged by flooding from the [Barfoot Aqueduct](https://engole.info/barfoot-aqueduct) crossing the River Mersey.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|44-45}}
The village of Cross Street was first referred to in 1586, and is believed to have originated around that time.{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|56}} A 1777 map shows Cross Street, on the site of the road now of the same name, divided between the townships of Sale and Ashton upon Mersey. The map also shows that Sale was spread out, mainly consisting of farmhouses around Dane Road, Fairy Lane, and Old Hall Road.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|40}}
About {{convert|300|acre}} of “wasteland” known as Sale Moor was enclosed in 1807, to be divided between the landowners in Sale. This was part of a nationwide initiative to begin cultivation of common land to lessen the food shortage caused by the Napoleonic Wars.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|51-52}} Records of poor relief in the town start in 1808, a time when the region was in the grip of an economic depression.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|61-62}} In 1829 Samuel Brooks acquired {{convert|515|acre}} of land in Sale – about a quarter of the township – from George Grey, 6th Earl of Stamford, the area now known as Brooklands.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|59}}{{sfnp|IISCTWZT|111}}
### Development
The Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway opened in 1849,{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|97}} and led to the middle classes using Sale as a commuter town, a residence away from their place of work.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|85}} This resulted in the town’s population more than tripling by the end of the 19th century.{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|87}} The land in Sale Moor was the cheapest in the town because the soil was poor and difficult to cultivate, which was partly why the area had been common land until the early 19th century. But when the railway opened, Sale Moor was close to the station and became the most expensive area in the town.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|91}}
Sale’s shopping centre was redeveloped during the 1960s, as part of the town’s post-war regeneration. In 1973, the shopping precinct in the town centre, which had grown up in the mid-19th century, was also redeveloped and pedestrianised in an attempt to increase trade.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|134}} The construction of the M63 motorway (subsequently renamed the M60) in 1972 led to the creation of [Sale Water Park](https://engole.info/sale-water-park). To minimise the risk of flooding, the motorway was built on an embankment, for which the necessary gravel was extracted from what is today an artificial lake and water-sports centre.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|135-136}}
## Governance
### Civic history
Arms of the former Sale Urban District Council
Civic Heraldry
Sale was a township in the ancient parish of Ashton upon Mersey, which formed part of the Bucklow Hundred of Cheshire. In 1836 the township also became part of the Altrincham Poor Law Union.{{sfnp|FLPL4FYY}}{{sfnp|ME9I7UJU}}
The Sale township was made a local government district in 1867;{{sfnp|QSX7JF4Y|24}} such districts were reconstituted as urban districts under the Local Government Act 1894.{{sfnp|FBY6D8YZ|541-542}}{{sfnp|6GLY2BGV}} The council was granted a coat of arms in 1920, with the motto *Salus et felicitas* (health and happiness).{{sfnp|UKB9D2GP}}
Sale Urban District was enlarged in 1930 to take in neighbouring Ashton upon Mersey,{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|119}} and in 1935 Sale Urban District was incorporated to become a municipal borough.{{sfnp|TMI79894|15}} The borough of Sale was abolished in 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972, and became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford in Greater Manchester.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|134}}
### Political representation
Sale was historically part of the parliamentary constituency of Altrincham, created in 1885 as a result of the Redistribution of Seats Act that year,{{sfnp|Z5C4PQ5M}} which introduced the concept of equally populated constituencies.{{sfnp|JZQBUJT8|199}} Altrincham was split into two seats in 1945, and Sale became part of the Altrincham and Sale constituency.{{sfnp|A433P7ZE}} That constituency was abolished for the 1997 general election, when Sale was split between the new constituencies of Altrincham and Sale West, and Wythenshawe and Sale East.{{sfnp|RAA8YTLH|187}}
Since 2023 Sale has been divided between the Trafford local government wards of Ashton upon Mersey, Brooklands, Manor, Sale Central, and Sale Moor.{{sfnp|DRD8KNEW}} Each ward is represented by three local councillors, elected in thirds on a four-yearly cycle.{{sfnp|92GXAFMZ}}
## Demographics
As at the 2021 Census, the [built-up area](https://engole.info/built-up-area) of Sale has a population of 57,471, occupying an area of {{convert|1249|ha}}, giving a population density of 46 persons per hectare.{{sfnp|UJSLUNYN}}
## Economy
During the medieval period most of the land was used for growing crops and raising livestock such as cattle.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|15}} The produce from arable farming would have been sufficient to support the local population, but the cattle would have been sold to the ruling classes.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|14,16}} Agriculture provided the main source of employment for Sale’s residents until the mid-19th century. Industry was slow to develop in the area, as in most of what would become Trafford, partly because of the reluctance of the two main land owners in the area, the Stamfords and the de Traffords, to invest.{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|85-86,88-91}} Although weaving was common in Sale during the late 17th and early 18th century, by 1851 only 4% of the population was employed in that industry.{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|89-90}}
Along with the rest of the region, Sale’s economy during the early 19th century was weak, a state of affairs which persisted until the arrival of the railway in the middle of the century.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|68}} Despite the previous dominance of agriculture, by 1901 fewer than 20% of Sale residents were employed in agriculture.{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|86}}
## Education
Along with the rest of Trafford, Sale maintains a selective education system assessed by an 11-plus examination.{{sfnp|M4A3IMKB}} Of the twenty-seven secondary schools in Trafford,{{sfnp|MK44DC8V}} four are in Sale, one of which – Sale Grammar School – operates the selective system.{{sfnp|GEPV3D5B}}
## Religion
At the 2021 UK census, 49.3% of Sale residents reported themselves as Christian, 4.8% Muslim, 2.7% Hindu, 0.4% Jewish, 0.4% Buddhist and 0.3% Sikh. A further 36.4% had no religion, and 0.5% had an alternative religion.{{sfnp|UJSLUNYN}}
Sale is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Shrewsbury,{{sfnp|XPI8A5N5}} and the Church of England Diocese of Chester.{{sfnp|2T9TIA6J}} The church buildings were mostly constructed in the late 19th or early 20th century in the wake of the population boom created by the arrival of the railway in 1849.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|76}} Two of the three Grade II\* listed buildings in the town are churches. The [Church of St Martin](https://engole.info/st-martins-church-ashton-upon-mersey) in Ashton upon Mersey, which was probably originally an early 14th-century timber-framed structure, was rebuilt in 1714 after it had been destroyed in a storm.{{sfnp|254ZT5CR|22-24}} The Church of St John the Divine was built in 1868, to the design of Alfred Waterhouse.{{sfnp|XAUH3NV2}}
## Transport
Originally built in wood, Sale station was rebuilt in brick in the late 1870s.{{sfnp
GIJHK2TF|89
The main A56 road through the town follows the line of a Roman road connecting the forts at Chester, Northwich and Manchester.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|9}} The M60 motorway, which encircles Manchester, can be accessed via junction 7, just to the north of Sale.
The present-day Sale Metrolink stop was built in the 1870s as a rail station for the Manchester South Junction and Altrincham Railway; Brookland station was built in 1859.{{sfnp|GIJHK2TF|89}} Both are now stops on the Altrincham to Manchester Metrolink line operated by Bee Network. Local bus services are also operated by Bee Network.{{sfnp|MRIGZTAB}}
Manchester Airport, the busiest in the UK outside the wider London area, is {{convert|4|mi}} to the south of Sale.{{sfnp|2JDKFTCX}}
## Sport
The semi-professional rugby union side Sale F. C. has been based in the area since 1861, and at its present Heywood Road ground since 1905. One of the oldest rugby clubs in the world, its 1865 Minute Book is the oldest existing book containing the rules of the game.{{sfnp|2GCFMLLI}}
The professional Sale Sharks team was originally part of Sale F. C., but split from it in 2003. Sale Sharks now play their matches at Salford Community Stadium, although they retain the use of the Heywood Road ground for training and for the staging of home games involving their reserve team, Sale Jets.{{sfnp|BPEM89VT}}
Sale Harriers Manchester athletics club was formed in 1910, and still has its historical home at Crossford Bridge, a site shared with Sale United Football Club and Old Altrinchamians.{{sfnp|AWFS5Y6M}}{{sfnp|DPI6RZ9F}} The club has produced successful athletes, including Olympic gold medallist Darren Campbell and Commonwealth Games gold medallist Diane Modahl.{{sfnp|CX8M2YEY}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Town
---
### [Ingham Colliery](https://engole.info/ingham-colliery/)
**Published:** June 25, 2024
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** Former colliery to the north of the village of Thornhill in West Yorkshire.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot-2024-03-05-212147.png)Cromwell Pit in 1851.{{sfnp
E924RFFH}}|Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Ingham Colliery, to the north of the [village](https://engole.info/village) of Thornhill in West Yorkshire, was sunk by the Ingham family in 1875. It survived until [nationalisation](https://engole.info/national-coal-board/) in 1947, when it was amalgamated with Combs Colliery.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|560}}
The Inghams, who owned Cromwell Pit on the hillside above Thornhill Lees, decided to sink a new pit adjacent to it in 1875. The new Ingham Colliery was sunk near the Cromwell Pit on the opposite side of the hill, {{convert|1330|yd}} west of their Combs Colliery and {{convert|1|mi|r=1|spell=in}} from Thornhill railway station. It had two brick-lined shafts; No. 1 downcast was {{convert|13|ft}} in diameter and the No. 2 upcast was {{convert|14|ft}} in diameter. They accessed the Low Moor Black Bed seam at a depth of {{convert|276|yd}}.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|557}} The shafts had wooden headstocks and the winding gear was supplied by Pigott and Farrar of Barnsley.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|558}}
In 1883 the pit was linked to the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway by a {{convert|1.5|mi|adj=on}} long mineral line worked by a locomotive that replaced the inclined planes. After 1888 the Beeston seam was worked from No. 2 shaft. Only coal was brought to the surface; dirt was packed underground and slack was sent to the coking ovens. Ingham was linked to the Combs pit for ventilation. Inghams commissioned new coking ovens in 1891, and bought another steam locomotive.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|558}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Coal mining, Yorkshire
---
### [To a Louse](https://engole.info/to-a-louse/)
**Published:** January 2, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Poem by the Scottish poet Robert Burns, first published in 1786.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/PG_1063Burns_Naysmith.jpg/330px-PG_1063Burns_Naysmith.jpg)Portrait of Burns by Alexander Nasmyth, 1787
Wikimedia Commons
“To a Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church” is a poem written by Robert Burns (1759–1796), first published in 1786.
The poet notices a lady in church with a louse that is crawling around in her bonnet, of which she is blissfully unaware. Chastising the louse for not recognising how distinguished its host is, he muses on how horrified the woman would be if she knew that she was harbouring a common parasite in her hair.
Consisting of eight verses, the poem is written in the style known as the Burns stanza,\[a\]So-called because Burns used it frequently in his poetry.{{sfnp|32X3N4FT}} or Standard Habbie after the Scottish piper Habbie Simpson, although it originated in medieval France;{{sfnp|7A8D48RS}} each verse is six lines long, and rhymes AAABAB.{{sfnp|VQ4RRZMR}}
The moral of the poem is expressed in the final stanza:
> O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
> To see oursels as others see us!
## Poem
Ha! whare ye gaun, ye crowlan ferlie! Your impudence protects you sairly: I canna say but ye strunt rarely, Owre gawze and lace; Tho’ faith, I fear ye dine but sparely, On sic a place.
> ***• ferlie***: vermin{{sfnp|8G99J4RC}}
Ye ugly, creepan, blastet wonner, Detested, shunn’d, by saunt an’ sinner, How daur ye set your fit upon her, Sae fine a Lady! Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner, On some poor body.
> • ***wonner***: a nasty, unpleasant, mischievous or insignificant creature{{sfnp|9GYI6RIE}}
Swith, in some beggar’s haffet squattle; There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle, Wi’ ither kindred, jumping cattle, In shoals and nations; Whare horn nor bane ne’er daur unsettle, Your thick plantations.
> ***• haffet***: part of the head above and in front of the ears{{sfnp|9GYI6RIE}}
Now haud you there, ye’re out o’ sight, Below the fatt’rels, snug and tight, Na faith ye yet! ye’ll no be right, Till ye’ve got on it, The vera topmost, towrin height O’ Miss’s bonnet.
> ***• fatt’rels***: loose pieces of trimming.{{sfnp|SD42HRFY}}
My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out, As plump an’ gray as onie grozet: O for some rank, mercurial rozet, Or fell, red smeddum, I’d gie you sic a hearty dose o’t, Wad dress your droddum!
> ***•*** ***grozet***: gooseberry{{sfnp|C4AJXYI6}}
> ***• rozet***: resin{{sfnp|EH4ZMJMG}}
> ***•*** ***droddum***: backside, posterior{{sfnp|9E3A8M4V}}
I wad na been surpriz’d to spy You on an auld wife’s flainen toy; Or aiblins some bit duddie boy, On ’s wylecoat; But Miss’s fine Lunardi, fye! How daur ye do ’t?
> ***•*** ***flainen***: flannel{{sfnp|J8FZR4TM}}
> ***•*** ***duddie***: ragged, tattered.{{sfnp|MA3C4WFD}}
O Jenny dinna toss your head, An’ set your beauties a’ abread! Ye little ken what cursed speed The blastie’s makin! Thae winks and finger-ends, I dread, Are notice takin!
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us An’ foolish notion: What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us, And ev’n Devotion!
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a So-called because Burns used it frequently in his poetry.{{sfnp|32X3N4FT}} b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Poem, Robert Burns
---
### [Mariana](https://engole.info/mariana/)
**Published:** November 14, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/John_Everett_Millais_-_Mariana_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/960px-John_Everett_Millais_-_Mariana_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg[/pimage]Painting by the Pre-Raphealite John Everett Millais, depicting a character from William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/John_Everett_Millais_-_Mariana_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/960px-John_Everett_Millais_-_Mariana_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)Oil on panel
60 cm × 50 cm (24 in × 20 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Mariana* is an oil painting on a mahogany panel by the English artist John Everett Millais (1829–1896), completed in 1851. The image depicts the solitary Mariana from William Shakespeare’s play *Measure for Measure*, who has been abandoned by her fiancé, Angelo, after her dowry was lost in a shipwreck. It shows her pausing to stretch her back while working at her embroidery.{{sfnp|NY2SRLRJ}}{{sfnp|W6LWLFK7}}
When the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1851 it was accompanied by a quotation from Tennyson’s 1830 poem of the same name:{{sfnp|NY2SRLRJ}}
> She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
> He cometh not,’ she said;
> She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,’
> I would that I were dead!’
The stained-glass windows in front of Mariana depict the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, which Millais copied from the window of the Chapel of Merton College, Oxford. The heraldic design to her right, with the Latin motto *In coelo quies*, meaning “In Heaven there is rest”, reflects Mariana’s wish to be dead.{{sfnp|NY2SRLRJ}}
The painting was accepted by the UK government in lieu of inheritance tax payable on the estate of Roger Makins, 1st Baron Sherfield, who died in 1996. It was valued at £5 million, and was allocated to the Tate Gallery in 1999.{{sfnp|W6LWLFK7}}{{sfnp|4D7CNLES}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** John Everett Millais, Painting
---
### [Ambulatory](https://engole.info/ambulatory/)
**Published:** July 22, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Ambulatory.png[/pimage]General term for a covered walkway, and more specifically for the walkway linking the two chancel aisles behind the high altar.
**Content:**
Ambulatory highlighted
Wikimedia Commons
Ambulatory is a general term for a covered walkway such as a [cloister](https://engole.info/cloister), and more specifically for the walkway linking the two [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) aisles behind the high altar in a Christian church.{{sfnp|IRRURV79}}
The feature originated in France as a processional passage around a shrine accommodated within a crypt, as seen at Chartres Cathedral, and was subsequently widely adopted in the design of Romanesque churches.{{sfnp|KYCL6F44}}
The term *ambulatory* derives from the Latin *ambulatorium*, meaning a place to walk, especially a covered one.{{sfnp|AN9TAQG6}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Windsor witches](https://engole.info/windsor-witches/)
**Published:** September 30, 2022
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** Four women from Windsor executed for witchcraft in 1579.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Windsor-witches-title-page-woodcut.jpeg)Woodcut that appears on the title page of the pamphlet *A Rehearsall both straung and true*
Wikimedia Commons
The Windsor witches were four women convicted at the Abingdon Assizes in Oxfordshire in 1579 of using witchcraft to cause the deaths of several prominent local citizens. They were all residents of Windsor, hence the eponym, and were executed on 26 February 1579.{{sfnp|AZ2ZRAW9}}
There are two surviving contemporary pamphlets about the case. The first, *A Rehearsall both straung and true*, registered in March 1579, is based on the confession given by one of the women, Elizabeth Style alias Rockingham, her surname before her marriage to John Style on 1 September 1572;{{sfnp|AZ2ZRAW9}} the other three women are named as Mother Dutton, Mother Devell and Mother Margaret. Shortly afterwards a second pamphlet was published, *A brief treatyse conteyninge the most strange and horrible crueltye of Elizabeth Sule\[sic\] alias Rockingham\[sic\] and hir confederates executed at Abington upon Richard Galis*. Although an apparently first-person account of being tormented by witches, it was probably at least in part written by the son of one of the alleged victims after his father’s death.{{sfnp|JJVWJV27|33, 50}}
## Background
Richard Galis senior was a prominent local resident. He had been elected Mayor of Windsor three times, and from 1563 to 1567 was the MP for Windsor. All four of the accused women were by comparison poor and elderly, living on charity in slum dwellings.{{sfnp|AZ2ZRAW9}}
According to *A Rehearsall both straung and true*, shortly after some kind of disagreement with Mother Dutton, Galis and his fifteen-year-old brother James fell ill, and James subsequently went mad. So convinced was Galis that Mother Dutton had bewitched him and his brother that in 1572, after his recovery, he dragged her to a prison in Windsor and demanded that she be incarcerated until she had been seen by magistrates. But the jailer refused, having received no instructions to receive the prisoner, and Mother Dutton was released.{{sfnp|AZ2ZRAW9}}
Six years later, in1578, three female wax images with bristles stuck in their hearts were discovered in London, believed to represent Queen Elizabeth I and two of her privy councillors. Similar images having been found in the possession of the Windsor witches, Sir Henry Neville, a local Justice of the Peace and the Dean of Windsor, was tasked by the Privy Council to investigate whether the women were plotting to secure the Queen’s death by the use of magic.{{sfnp|AZ2ZRAW9}}
## Confession, trial and execution
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/richard_galis.jpg)Richard Galis leading Elizabeth Style through the streets of Windsor to the lockup
Berkshire Local History Association
Richard Galis senior personally delivered the four women – Elizabeth Style, Mother Devell, Mother Dutton and Mother Margaret – to Windsor Castle, where they were questioned about their religious beliefs and ordered to attend the parish church the following day to “publikly in presence of all men be set under the pulpit during the time of the service.” They were then sent to Reading to await trial.{{sfnp|AZ2ZRAW9}}
Each of the women was accused of keeping a familiar, a sure sign of witchcraft in Elizabethan England: Mother Dutton a toad, which she fed with her blood; Mother Devell a [black cat](https://engole.info/black-cat) called Jill, Mother Margaret a kitten named Jenny, and Elizabeth Style a rat called Philip. Once incarcerated, Elizabeth, a 65-year-old widow, confessed to the crimes she claimed to have committed against local citizens by the use of witchcraft, including the murders of two butchers and the tormenting of Richard Galis. The other women made no confessions, but all four were convicted on the basis of Elizabeth’s statement and sentenced to death by hanging, which they were on 28 February 1579.{{sfnp|AZ2ZRAW9}}
## Modern interpretation
The historian Marion Gibson has described the *Brief treatyse* pamphlet as “highly unusual”, being apparently a first-person account written by the victim of a witch-attack. She goes on to describe it as a “reasonably unified … narrative by a single author”.{{sfnp|JJVWJV27|50}} But Richard Galis senior died in 1574,{{sfnp|AZ2ZRAW9}} and the pamphlet was not published until 1579 in response to *A Rehearsall both straung and true* published earlier that same year, which incorporates text from that earlier pamphlet.{{sfnp|JJVWJV27|50}} The most likely scenario is that Richard Galis senior began the work, and his son continued it after his father’s death in an effort to expose the culpability of the local authorities in 1572, when they had refused to bring the four women to trial despite the urging of his father.{{sfnp|AZ2ZRAW9}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** English, Female, Witch
---
### [There Was a Crooked Man](https://engole.info/there-was-a-crooked-man/)
**Published:** December 30, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/There-Was-a-Crooked-Man.webp[/pimage]English nursery rhyme that first appeared in print in 1842.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/There-Was-a-Crooked-Man.webp)Illustration from *Gems from Mother Goose* (1899)
Free Vintage Illustrations
“There Was a Crooked Man” is an English nursery rhyme that first appeared in print in James Orchard Halliwell’s *The Nursery Rhymes of England* (1842).{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|340}}
> There was a crooked man and he went a crooked mile,
> He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
> He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
> And they all liv’d together in a little crooked house.
It has been suggested that this nursery rhyme was inspired by the distorted half-timbered houses in the once prosperous wool merchant’s village of Lavenham, in Suffolk. One house in particular, [The Crooked House](https://engole.info/the-crooked-house-lavenham), is often cited as the inspiration for the rhyme.{{sfnp|8FIKBRC6}}
The crooked man is reputed to be the Scottish military officer Sir Alexander Leslie (1580–1661), signatory to a covenant securing religious and political freedom for Scotland during the reign of King Charles I. The “crooked style” is said to represent the border between England and Scotland, and the “crooked house” the uneasy relationship between the English and the Scottish.{{sfnp|626YSTXE|loc=523}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Nursery rhyme
---
### [Piece Hall](https://engole.info/piece-hall/)
**Published:** July 17, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Piece_Hall%2C_Halifax_%2836239750242%29.jpg[/pimage]Rare example of a large-scale cloth hall – an exchange for trading woollen and worsted cloth "pieces" – that is largely intact.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Piece_Hall%2C_Halifax_%2836239750242%29.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/mB328Xy94XjeaBsp7}}
Piece Hall, 2017
The Piece Hall or Manufacturers’ Hall in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England is a rare example of a large-scale cloth hall that is largely intact. The hall was an exchange or market for trading the woollen and worsted cloth “pieces” that were woven by clothiers\[a\] Clothiers, from the Middle English *clother*, are people who make or sell cloth.{{sfnp|8B28G8PV}} in towns and villages in the area. It opened in 1779 to a design attributed to Thomas Bradley. The scale of the structure demontrates the wealth generated by the woollen and worsted trade in the town.
The Piece Hall flourished for about forty years, before declining as the textile industry became more industrialised. In the 1860s it was given to Halifax Corporation, and for 100 years housed the town’s wholesale market. It was restored in the 1970s, and again between 2014 and 2017.
## History
### Background
Before a hall was built to sell finished cloth, pieces were sold to merchants in the early morning in the butchers’ shambles or the old marketplace before the general market opened.{{sfnp|2S6XIMKS|372-379}} Pieces were lengths of finished cloth measuring 27 inches by 24 yards (0.7 m × 22 m).{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|276}} Halifax was one of the earliest towns to build a hall to sell pieces or lengths of woollen or worsted cloth; a cloth hall was mentioned in records from 1572, and was rebuilt in 1708.{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|275}} The cloth would have been brought to town by packhorse over rough tracks from outlying farms and settlements. The trade in cloth overwhelmed the 1708 manufacturers’ or cloth hall, and by 1774 the manufacturers were considering building new premises to compete with [cloth halls in Leeds](https://engole.info/leeds-cloth-halls/), [Wakefield ](https://engole.info/tammy-hall/)and Bradford.{{sfnp|M2IE56FR|3}}
A meeting in the Talbot Hotel in the Woolshops in Halifax, for those interested in building a new cloth hall was announced in the *Leeds Mercury* in 1774. The meeting ended in agreement that a cloth hall was required, but disagreement as to its site: Talbot Close or Cross Field.{{sfnp|M2IE56FR|3}} Talbot Croft owned by John Caygill, a wealthy merchant, near Woolshops was chosen.{{sfnp|2S6XIMKS|372-379}}{{sfnp|2PI36FV7}} Thomas Bradley, an engineer for the [Calder and Hebble Navigation](https://engole.info/calder-and-hebble-navigation/),{{sfnp|M2IE56FR|4}} is possibly the architect. The other contenders, Samuel and John Hope from Manchester were the experienced main contractors and builders{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|275}} and John Carr who was associated with the leading promoters, including Caygill’s wife’s family.{{sfnp|2PI36FV7}}
Money for the hall, more than £9,000, was raised by subscriptions from individual weavers and larger manufacturers who paid £28.4s. entitling the subscriber to a standard {{convert|12|ft}} by {{convert|8|ft}} room in the new hall. Merchants were excluded.{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|275}} Work began in 1775.{{sfnp|2PI36FV7}}
### Opening
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Halifax_Piece_Hall_02.JPG) Opening date
Wikimedia Commons
In December 1778 the hall was ready. The committee decided to hold an opening ceremony on 1 January 1779 which was a holiday. Crowds gathered in the town from distant villages, many travelled on foot. Bands played and a procession walked through the town which had been decorated with banners. A firework display was held in the evening in the courtyard.{{sfnp|M2IE56FR|7}}
Business started the following day, Saturday the usual market day.{{sfnp|2PI36FV7}} The north gate was opened by a silver key, and a song was written for the opening ceremony.{{sfnp|M2IE56FR|8}}
### Operation
Trading in the hall was managed by a committee appointed by the occupiers who drew up strict regulations. The porter opened the hall gates at 8 o’clock on Saturday morning for pieces to be brought in. He rang a bell at 10 o’clock to admit the buyers and merchants. At 5 to 12 the bell was rung again and continued until noon when trading ended. Should buyers enter before the appointed time, the porter forfeited 5 shillings for each person. Occupiers who sold pieces before 10 o’clock were fined 1 shilling per piece as were those who sold after the noon bell; the gates closed at 3 o’clock.{{sfnp|M2IE56FR|6}}
### Decline
The Piece Hall flourished but after 1815 signs of decline were evident. The Industrial Revolution changed the way cloth was produced, the domestic system gave way to more industrialised ways of production and buyers bought directly from the millowners. Demand for rooms gradually diminished. In 1868 the hall was given to Halifax Corporation and three years later it was the town’s wholesale market for fish, fruit and vegetables. By this time the building was blackened by industrial pollution, lean-to structures and three large brick buildings occupied the courtyard.{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|276}}{{sfnp|M2IE56FR|8}} The market lasted for more than 10 years, and probably saved the Piece Hall from demolition.{{sfnp|M2IE56FR|12}}
## Structure
The Piece Hall is built of local, finely grained sandstone and has stone slate roofs.{{sfnp|2PI36FV7}} It is a massive rectangular structure, {{convert|300|ft}} in length and {{convert|273|ft}} wide, surrounding a courtyard that is {{convert|10000|sqyd}} in area.{{sfnp|2S6XIMKS|372-379}} It is built on a sloping site with three storeys and a cellar on the east side and two storeys on the west. The north and south sides taper to two storeys to accommodate the slope.{{sfnp|M2IE56FR|4}} The exterior walls built of coursed rubble sandstone are mainly blank apart from the entrances and blind arcades on the north wall, where the main entrance faced the town.{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|275}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Halifax_Piece_Hall_12.JPG)Corner stairwell
Wikimedia Commons
Inside, is a large, open rectangular courtyard. The lower storey or “Arcade” level on the east side and part of the north and south sides has an arcade of massive square piers supporting semi-circular Romanesque arches behind which is sheltered access to the trading rooms.{{sfnp|2PI36FV7}}{{sfnp|M2IE56FR|5}} Above it, the middle or “Rustic” level encircling the building has columns made from square blocks with incised V joints and square Tuscan capitals supporting the flagged deck of the “Colonnade” level with its cylindrical columns. Cast-iron balustrading fills the spaces between the columns and pillars of the upper levels. The interior perimeter walls are of [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) blocks with alternating doors and twelve-pane windows.{{sfnp|2PI36FV7}} The levels are linked by stone staircases at each corner and by the western entrance.
Weavers sold their pieces from the building’s 315 rooms, which had a window and door opening onto the gallery. The rooms measured {{convert|12|ft}} by {{convert|8|ft}} providing privacy for conducting business and storage. Some rooms were shared by two or three weavers who produced small quantities of finished cloth. Few original rooms survive as most have been combined into larger spaces.{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|276}} While in use as a wholesale market, some rooms were combined to make larger shop units. The south pedestrian gate was enlarged for vehicular access, and ornamental iron gates costing £120 by George Smith’s Sun Foundry in Glasgow were installed. The north, east and south walls in the Arcade level were altered to form wider archways.{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|276}}
## Restorations
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Halifax_Piece_Hall_4.JPG) Piece Hall in 2009
Wikimedia Commons
The Piece Hall was stone cleaned in the 1970s and the council decided to relocate the wholesale market and develop the site. After demolishing the buildings in the courtyard, repairs and restoration were carried out, and the Piece Hall was transformed into an industrial textile museum, gallery, craft shops and an open-air market. The changes took place in 1975 and the Piece Hall was promoted as a tourist attraction.{{sfnp|M2IE56FR|13}} At the official reopening festival the courtyard was used for a range of public events and exhibitions, Morris dancers, puppet shows and family entertainment.{{sfnp|M2IE56FR|13}}
A second major restoration by LDN Architects started in 2013.{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|276}} The project received funding from the Heritage Lottery-fund. Calderdale Council and LDN have provided a new gateway that leads into a wider regeneration of the town centre incorporating a new Central Library, the Square Chapel and reopened Industrial Museum. The courtyard has been landscaped incorporating a cascading water features and the Piece Hall is now a cultural and community focus for the Halifax borough. The Piece Hall re-opened in 2017.{{sfnp|WCBF63ID}}
## Recognition
The Piece Hall was scheduled as an ancient monument in 1928. Historic England considers the building, which was Grade I listed in 1954, to be of “considerable architectural interest due to its dramatic design with tiers of classically detailed gallery arcades overlooking a large courtyard, whilst also demonstrating a high degree of craftsmanship and use of the highest-quality materials in its construction.”{{sfnp|2PI36FV7}}
The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described Piece Hall as “not only the most noteworthy architectural monument in Halifax but one of England’s greatest Georgian commercial buildings.”{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|275}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Clothiers, from the Middle English *clother*, are people who make or sell cloth.{{sfnp|8B28G8PV}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 21847
**Categories:** Yorkshire
---
### [Holloway Brooch](https://engole.info/holloway-brooch/)
**Published:** September 17, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Awarded to women imprisoned in Holloway for militant suffragette activity, by the Women's Social and Political Union.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9e/Photo_of_Holloway_brooch.jpg)Holloway brooch, from the UK Parliamentary Collections
Wikimedia Commons
The Holloway brooch, also known as the Holloway Prison brooch and the Victoria Cross of the Union, was presented by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) to women who had been imprisoned in Holloway for militant suffragette activity.{{sfnp|936CJWMC}}
Holloway prison was originally built as a mixed-sex prison in 1852, but in 1902 it became the first female-only prison in England,{{sfnp|ES3XKWGK}} and the largest in Europe.{{sfnp|QSXANKZC}} Initially, suffragettes convicted of minor acts of public protest were bound over to keep the peace and a promise not to re-offend, but as their activism escalated to criminal damage the punishments became more severe, resulting in the first suffragette being sent to Holloway in 1906.{{sfnp|QSXANKZC}}
The brooches were given to suffragettes upon their release from Holloway,{{sfnp|QSXANKZC}} the first of them presented at a mass demonstration organised by the WSPU in the Albert Hall on 29 April 1909.{{sfnp|5FFY4RS2}}
## Description
The Holloway brooch was designed by Sylvia Pankhurst, daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, and depicts the portcullis symbol of the House of Commons, with a superimposed broad arrow, a symbol of conflict. Made of silver, it is decorated with purple, white, and green enamel, the colours of the WSPU.{{sfnp|936CJWMC}}
## See also
- [Hunger strike medal](https://engole.info/hunger-strike-medal)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25586
**Categories:** Women's suffrage
---
### [Church of St. Philip and St James, Alderley Edge](https://engole.info/church-of-st-philip-and-st-james-alderley-edge/)
**Published:** July 6, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fc/Alderley_E_Philip_2.jpg/1280px-Alderley_E_Philip_2.jpg[/pimage]Active Anglican church in the village of Alderley Edge, Cheshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fc/Alderley_E_Philip_2.jpg/1280px-Alderley_E_Philip_2.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/DegKpAfrdwZddoef6
St Philip and St James is an active Anglican church in the [village](https://engole.info/village) of Alderley Edge, Cheshire. It is in the Archdeaconry of Macclesfield, the Deanery of Knutsford, and the Diocese of Chester, and is one of the two churches in the [Benefice](https://engole.info/benefice) of Alderley Edge with Birtles.{{sfnp|B79M2HT2}}
St Philip’s was designed by the Manchester architect J. S. Crowther, his first independent work. The [nave](https://engole.info/nave), south [aisle](https://engole.info/aisle-architecture) and the [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) were built in 1851–1852, and in 1856–1857 the north aisle, a further bay on the west of the church, and a steeple to the south of the church were added.{{sfnp|WZQQTVJ2|90}} A [vestry](https://engole.info/sacristy) was added in 1903 to a design by F. P. Oakley.{{sfnp|QDQGBY4T}}
The church was designated a Grade II\* listed building in 1984.{{sfnp|QDQGBY4T}}
## Architecture
### Exterior
The church is built in hammer-dressed sandstone rubble with [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) dressings. The slate roof is in bands of three colours;{{sfnp|QDQGBY4T}} its architectural style is Decorated.{{sfnp|WZQQTVJ2|90}} The plan of the church consists of a six-bay nave with north and south aisles, each under its own ridge, a three-bay chancel, a hexagonal vestry, and a southwest tower with a spire. The tower is in four stages with angle buttresses, and the spire has three levels of [lucarnes](https://engole.info/lucarne).{{sfnp|QDQGBY4T}}
### Interior
In the north wall of the chancel is a [sedilia](https://engole.info/sedilia), and in the south wall is a [piscina](https://engole.info/piscina). The carved [reredos](https://engole.info/reredos) of 1903 depicts the Last Supper. The panelled choir stalls, pulpit and organ screen, all dated 1907, were designed by Percy Worthington.{{sfnp|WZQQTVJ2|90}}{{sfnp|QDQGBY4T}} In the south aisle is a stained glass window made by Morris & Co. dating from 1873;{{sfnp|QDQGBY4T}} other windows by Powells date from 1933 to 1935.{{sfnp|WZQQTVJ2|90}}
The three-manual organ, built by Wadsworth of Manchester, was rebuilt in 1962 by Jardine and Company, also of Manchester.{{sfnp|5PMRH7WJ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30130
**Categories:** Anglican, Cheshire, Church
---
### [Lucarne](https://engole.info/lucarne/)
**Published:** July 12, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/West_Park_URC_Harrogate%2C_17_July_2020_%286%29.JPG/960px-West_Park_URC_Harrogate%2C_17_July_2020_%286%29.JPG?_=20200720103911[/pimage]Small gabled opening in a roof or spire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/West_Park_URC_Harrogate%2C_17_July_2020_%286%29.JPG/960px-West_Park_URC_Harrogate%2C_17_July_2020_%286%29.JPG?_=20200720103911)Lucarnes in the spire of West Park United Reformed Church, Harrogate
Wikimedia Commons
A lucarne is a small gabled opening in a roof or spire. It is borrowed from the French *lucarne*, meaning a dormer or skylight.{{sfnp|2DF6G3SI|80}} Unlike dormer windows, however, which are normally of light construction, the front of a lucarne is usually built of the same material as the wall of the building’s main façade.{{sfnp|PNRBDJJK}}
In industrial architecture a lucarne is a feature of warehouses, mills, factories or the like in which a window, opening or housing high up on an exterior wall supports a hoist above doors on the floors below.{{sfnp|B27G8SMY|62}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30151
**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Charnwood](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-charnwood/)
**Published:** March 9, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/Charnwood_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Charnwood_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the district of Charnwood, Leicestershire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/Charnwood_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Charnwood_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Charnwood shown within Leicestershire
Wikimedia Commons
The non-metropolitan district of Charnwood in the East Midlands of England is one of the seven districts and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Leicestershire.{{sfnp|DFUAZLJK}}
The district contains 12 of the 93 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Leicestershire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image**gn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of All Saints**gn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Loughborough
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Tn5ELp49EwKHWKvB9)gn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">gn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">14th centurygn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abbhref="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1320400" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1320400href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/91/Church\_of\_All\_Saints\_2013-10-05\_08-34-29.jpg/1280px-Church\_of\_All\_Saints\_2013-10-05\_08-34-29.jpg"> px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
gn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Bartholomew
and Farnham Chapel**gn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Quorn
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/bJWJ4zrMfDzcq9fK7)gn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">gn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">c. 12th to 14th centurygn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abbhref="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1278876" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1278876href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Quorn\_Parish\_Church.jpg/1280px-Quorn\_Parish\_Church.jpg"> px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
gn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Botolph**gn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Shepsed
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/t6D5aZXPxCEuho6v5)gn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">gn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">13th centurygn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abbhref="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1236177" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1236177href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Shepshed\_Parish\_church\_2006-04-06\_013web.jpg"> px; border-top-right-radius:12px; border-bottom-left-radius:12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
gn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">**Church of St Mary**gn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Barkby
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/fJwAwjJ359kG4iuL7)gn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3" data-border-color="#abb8c3">gn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abb8c3">Late 13th centurygn:top;border-top-color:#abb8c3;border-bottom-color:#abb8c3;text-align:center" data-border-color="#abbhref="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1074500" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1074500href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Barkby%2C\_near\_Leicester\_-\_gorg.uk\_-\_42131.jpg"> 
**Published:** March 3, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Blaby_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Blaby_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the district of Blaby, Leicestershire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Blaby_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Blaby_UK_locator_map.svg.png)Blaby shown within Leicestershire
Wikimedia Commons
The non-metropolitan district of Blaby in the East Midlands of England is one of the seven districts and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Leicestershire.{{sfnp|DFUAZLJK}}
The district contains 3 of the 93 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Leicestershire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of All Saints**Blaby
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/bHVMvakvZEk1BAbw8)Late 13th century to early 14th century[1074757](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1074757)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/Blaby_Parish_Church.JPG/960px-Blaby_Parish_Church.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter**Whetstone
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/STScRcybsKrwK9Vu6)13th century[1245457](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1245457)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/St_Peter%27s_Church%2C_Whetstone_near_Leicester_-_geograph.org.uk_-_164927.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Kirby Muxloe Castle**Kirby Muxloe
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/JU35HDCsoRk3hPMH9)/td>[1177213](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1177213)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d8/Kirby_Muxloe.jpg/1280px-Kirby_Muxloe.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Grade I listed buildings in Leicestershire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-leicestershire)
citation">## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27241
**Categories:** Leicestershire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Narthex](https://engole.info/narthex/)
**Published:** July 25, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Narthex.png[/pimage]Vestibule before the main entrance to a Christian church, less sacred than the church proper.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Narthex.png)Plan of a Christian cathedral, with the narthex in the shaded area at the western end.
Wikimedia Commons
The narthex, also known as a galilee, is a porch or vestibule at the opposite end of a Christian church to the altar, separated from the [nave](https://engole.info/nave).{{sfnp|KXL86MA6}}\[a\]Christian churches are usually laid out with the altar at the eastern end. The term is sometimes used more loosely to refer to the western part of the nave.{{sfnp|2XKHD7J6}}
Although part of the church building, the narthex was considered less sacred than the church proper, and thus allowed those ineligible for admittance into the general congregation, particularly [catechumens](https://engole.info/catechumens) and penitents, to observe and take part in the service.{{sfnp|KXL86MA6}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2a/Galilee_Porch_-_geograph.org.uk_-_634406.jpg/330px-Galilee_Porch_-_geograph.org.uk_-_634406.jpg)Galilee porch at Lincoln Cathedral
Wikimedia Commons
In later use the narthex was often reserved for women, or was a place where monks were allowed to meet their female relatives.{{sfnp|2XKHD7J6}}
It was the custom in [villages](https://engole.info/village) in England from the 17th to the late 19th century, for parishioners to sit in the church porch on [St Mark’s Eve](https://engole.info/st-marks-eve). Those sitting had to keep silent between the bell tolling at 11:00 pm until it struck again at 1:00 am. It was said that the [wraiths](https://engole.info/wraith) of those destined to die during the year would be seen passing into the church.{{sfnp|INZTC3YS}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Christian churches are usually laid out with the altar at the eastern end.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25512
**Categories:** Religious architecture
---
### [John Blenkinsop](https://engole.info/john-blenkinsop/)
**Published:** January 5, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** Mining engineer at Charles Brandling’s Middleton Collieries who patented a rack and pinion system for a steam locomotive and commissioned the first practical railway locomotive from Fenton, Murray and Wood’s Round Foundry in Holbeck, Leeds in 1811.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/The_Collier_aquatint_by_Robert_Havell_1814.jpg)*The Collier*, an aquatint by Robert Havell, shows Blenkinsop’s *Salamanca* on the Middleton Railway.
Wikimedia Commons
John Blenkinsop (1783 – 22 January 1831) was a mining engineer and inventor who became steward and agent for Charles Brandling’s coal pits at Middleton near Leeds. He patented a rack and pinion system for a steam locomotive and commissioned the first practical railway locomotive from Fenton, Murray and Wood’s [Round Foundry](https://engole.info/round-foundry/) in Holbeck, Leeds in 1811.
## Career
John Blenkinsop, the son of a stonemason, was born in Felling near Gateshead in County Durham. He was apprenticed to his cousin, John Straker, the coal viewer for Charles John Brandling’s Felling Colliery. On 1 October 1808 Blenkinsop began work as agent for Brandling’s pits on the Middleton estate near Leeds in Yorkshire. Brandling had offered him a salary of £400, five times what his other experienced colliery workers earned. At the time the Middleton pits were “capable of the greatest Improvement” and that was Blenkinsop’s task. From then until his death, Blenkinsop lived at Middleton Hall,{{sfnp|6AEFZHX6|15}} the Brandling’s former home on Town Street which was built in the 17th century.
In addition to managing the Middleton Collieries, Blenkinsop was the consulting engineer for Sir John Lister Kaye of Denby Grange, owner of [Caphouse Colliery](https://engole.info/caphouse-colliery/) in the 1820s.{{sfnp|EHELB4UK|8}} As a viewer, he was hired by other colliery owners to examine their collieries and report on such vital matters as expected future production, and to make suggestions as to how their operation and production could be improved.{{sfnp|6AEFZHX6|17}}
In 1825 Blenkinsop was one of the first rescuers to enter Middleton’s Gosforth Pit after an explosion of [firedamp](https://engole.info/damps/), possibly a contributary factor in his death at 47 years of age. He died in Leeds in 1831 after a “tedious illness” and is buried at Rothwell Parish Church.{{sfnp|6AEFZHX6|31}}{{sfnp|NTA3WBWF}}
## Locomotives
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Blenkinsop%27s_rack_locomotive%2C_1812_%28British_Railway_Locomotives_1803-1853%29.jpg)Blenkinsop and Murray’s rack locomotive, *Salamanca*
Wikimedia Commons
Blenkinsop patented a rack and pinion system for a locomotive in 1811.(Patent No 3431) The locomotive was designed and built by [Matthew Murray](https://engole.info/matthew-murray/) of Fenton, Murray and Wood in Holbeck.{{sfnp|6AEFZHX6|17}}{{sfnp|NTA3WBWF}} *[Salamanca](https://engole.info/salamanca/)*, the Murray/Blenkinsop engine, weighed five tons and hauled trains weighing 90 tons. The first locomotive, Salamanca was built in early 1812, another was built later in 1812, the next in 1813 was sent to the Kenton and Coxlodge Waggonway, where it was named Willington, and the last in 1815. [Robert Daglish](https://engole.info/robert-daglish/) built the [*Walking Horse locomotive*](https://engole.info/walking-horse-locomotive/) under licence from Blenkinsop at Haigh Foundry, and another was built by Matthew Murray for the Kenton and Coxlodge Collieries.{{sfnp|NTA3WBWF}} Two more locomotives were made by the Royal Iron Foundry in Berlin.
The Murray/Blenkinsop locomotives had the first double-acting cylinders, they drove a geared wheel which engaged with the rack beside one rail. One of the geared locomotives was described as having two 8 inch x 20 inch cylinders that drove the wheels through cranks. The piston crossheads worked in guides, rather than being controlled by parallel motion like most early locomotives. The engines saw more than twenty years of service.{{sfnp|UILHLBJZ}}
George Stephenson observed a “Leeds engine” at Coxlodge Colliery in September 1813, before building his first locomotive, *Blucher*, which was designed along the lines of the Blenkinsop pattern.{{sfnp|NTA3WBWF}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 12921
**Categories:** Engineer
---
### [Brig o' Doon](https://engole.info/brig-o-doon/)
**Published:** August 1, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Brig_o%27_Doon%2C_Alloway_2017-05-17.jpg[/pimage]Late medieval bridge in Ayrshire, Scotland, best known as the setting for the final verse of Robert Burns's poem Tam o' Shanter.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Brig_o%27_Doon%2C_Alloway_2017-05-17.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/cKXm1AdTXcJ5xx6J7
The Brig o’ Doon, sometimes called the Auld Brig or Old Bridge of Doon, is a late medieval bridge in Ayrshire, Scotland, and a Category A structure.{{sfnp|L5L59WZW}} *Brig* is a Scots word for “bridge”, hence the Brig o’ Doon is the “Bridge over the River Doon”.{{sfnp|7XWG2Y3F}}
The Brig o’ Doon’s single arch crosses the River Doon near Alloway, once a village but now a suburb of the town of Ayr. It has a dressed-stone arch ring and rubble [spandrels](https://engole.info/spandrel/). The structure has been repaired many times, and as a result much of the stonework does not match. The deck of the bridge is paved with cobbles.{{sfnp|W5MLY4NR}}
Writing in 1840, James Paterson suggested that the bridge was built by James Kennedy, Chancellor of Scotland, who died in 1466,{{sfnp|BUQJ42EP|390}} but its existence is not mentioned in any records before 1512.{{sfnp|ARE6YPJW}} Described as “ruinous” in 1593,{{sfnp|W5MLY4NR}} the bridge is best known as the setting for the penultimate verse of Robert Burns’s poem [*Tam o’ Shanter*](https://engole.info/tam-o-shanter/), as Tam is being chased by the witches he has disturbed on his way home from the tavern:
Now, do thy speedy-utmost, Meg,
And win the key-stone o’ the brig;
There, at them thou thy tail may toss,
A running stream they dare na cross.
The B7024 public road is carried over the River Doon by the New Bridge of Doon, a single-arch stone bridge built downstream of the old one in 1816 to cope with increasing traffic.{{sfnp|W5MLY4NR}}{{sfnp|R5ENLQSS}} The old bridge was sold to the builders of the new one as a quarry for material, but money was raised to re-purchase it, and the trustees of the new bridge decided to quarry elsewhere.{{sfnp|BUQJ42EP|390}}
The Brig o’ Doon is used only as a footbridge today, and is part of the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum.{{sfnp|B6KSNFD9}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22016
**Categories:** Ayrshire, Bridge
---
### [Chorlton Library](https://engole.info/chorlton-library/)
**Published:** May 19, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Chorlton-Library.webp[/pimage]Built in 1914, one of the 660 libraries funded in Britain by the Scottish-American steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Chorlton-Library.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/BVPEis6NzgoCmGxs5}}|Historic England
Chorlton Library, in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, was built in 1914 to the designs of Henry Price, Manchester City Architect. It was funded by a £5000 donation from the Scottish-American steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, equivalent to about £606,000 as at 2023.{{sfnp|4Z3BY6MQ}}\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} It is one of 660 such libraries he funded in Britain.{{sfnp|BPJCAEDR}}
The library was designated a Grade II [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 2013, in recognition of its largely intact Edwardian Baroque architecture.{{sfnp|4Z3BY6MQ}}
## Architecture
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Chorlton_with_ballustrade_and_main_door_at_handover__1_.webp)Entrance as seen from the mezzanine gallery
Manchester City Council
Chorlton Library is built of red brick with Portland stone dressings, on a triangular plot of land. The single-storey structure has a flat roof, with a large octagonal dome rising above and behind the front elevation.{{sfnp|4Z3BY6MQ}}
The library was closed in 2024 for substantial restoration, which included the removal of a false floor to expose the dome in the library entrance along with the mezzanine gallery – both of which had been concealed for decades – and the removal of internal walls to reveal the original octagonal interior of the atrium space. It was reopened in April 2025.{{sfnp|ZNTW2B98}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27441
## External links
- [Virtual tour of refurbished interior](https://youtu.be/GcLqjB6mUxQ)
**Categories:** Library
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [The Penny Magazine](https://engole.info/the-penny-magazine/)
**Published:** July 2, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/1832_PennyMagazine_Oct27_London.png[/pimage]Illustrated British magazine aimed at a working-class readership, published from 1832 until 1845.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/1832_PennyMagazine_Oct27_London.png)Cover page of 27 October 1832 edition
Wikimedia Commons
*The Penny Magazine* was an illustrated British publication aimed at a working-class readership, published every Saturday from 31 March 1832 to 31 October 1845, and described by the English poet and critic Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) as a “ramble-scramble” of literary, artistic and scientific knowledge. It was created by Charles Knight for the [Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge](https://engole.info/society-for-the-diffusion-of-useful-knowledge), the purpose of which was to publish cheap and accessible works on science and the arts.{{sfnp|S7DP52QF}}
The magazine was initially extremely successful, achieving sales of 200,000 copies per week shortly after its launch,{{sfnp|S7DP52QF}} with an estimated one million readers.{{sfnp|2X238SHN}} In 1841 the format of the magazine was changed to make it less of a “ramble-scramble”, and “to present to a public which had been advancing in education, a Miscellany of a higher character than the first series”. A major innovation was a 45-part series on a tour of Victorian factories, published from 1841 until 1844.{{sfnp|S7DP52QF}}
A significant factor in the magazine’s early success was its extensive use of illustrations, as in 1841 more 30 per cent of males and almost 50 per cent of females were illiterate.{{sfnp|D9772CFA}} But the cost of producing these woodcut illustrations soon began to have a negative impact on the publication’s finances; by 1833 the magazine was spending more than £20,000 a year for its illustrations, and as a result the price of the magazine was raised to 4d.{{sfnp|3B3N3I5X}}
But ultimately *The Penny Magazine* failed because it was seen as being too dry, as unlike its competitors it did not carry any fiction. Knight believed that the working-class thirst for fiction was “unimproving”, unlike his contemporary the novelist Charles Dickens, who wrote to Knight in 1854 that:
The English are, so far as I know, the hardest worked people on whom the sun shines. Be content if in their wretched intervals of leisure they read for amusement and do no worse. They are born to the oar and live and die at it.{{sfnp
— 3B3N3I5X}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25447
**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [Ascending and Descending](https://engole.info/ascending-and-descending/)
**Published:** July 11, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Ascending-and-Descending.webp[/pimage]Lithograph created by the Dutch Artist M. C. Escher in 1960, one of his depictions of impossible buildings.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Ascending-and-Descending.webp)Lithograph
38 × 28.5 cm (15 × 11.2 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Ascending and Descending* is a lithograph created by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898–1972) in 1960, generally considered to be one of his most “iconic” works.{{sfnp|53JCAPGQ}} The central motif of the picture is a never-ending stairway inspired by the [Penrose staircase](https://engole.info/penrose-staircase). The stairway sits at the top of a central courtyard.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|15}}
The building seems to be inhabited by monks of some unknown sect. They are walking in two endless processions on the stairway, one group perpetually ascending, the other perpetually descending, yet each ends up at the same level at which they started.{{sfnp|IW9ADBCG}} Perhaps it is their rutual duty to climb these stairs for a few hours each day, and when they tire of the climb they are allowed to turn around and go down the stairs instead of up.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|15}}
*Ascending and Descending* is one of the three of his works that Escher characterised as impossible buildings. The two others are [*Belvedere*](https://engole.info/belvedere) and [*Waterfall*](https://engole.info/waterfall-escher).{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|15}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30143
**Categories:** Lithograph
---
### [Waterfall (Escher)](https://engole.info/waterfall-escher/)
**Published:** May 18, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e8/Escher_Waterfall.jpg[/pimage]Lithograph by M. C. Escher, depicting an impossible perpetual motion machine.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e8/Escher_Waterfall.jpg)Lithograph
38 cm × 30 cm (15 in × 12 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Waterfall* is a lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898–1972), first printed in 1961.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|16}} It shows a perpetual motion machine, in which water from the base of a waterfall appears to run downhill along the water path before reaching the top of the waterfall. The watercourse is constructed of square beams resting upon each other at right angles. In the words of the artist,
If we follow the various parts of this contruction one by one we are unable to discover any mistake in it. Yet it is an impossible whole because changes suddenly occur in the interpretation of distance between our eye and the object.{{sfnp
— 36KSMR4C|16}}
The visual paradox is achieved by the incorporation of three [Penrose triangles](https://engole.info/penrose-triangle) into the depiction of the corners of the watercourse, an impossible object formally described by Lionel and Roger Penrose in 1958.{{sfnp|EUATL9ZJ}}
The two towers appear to be the same height, despite the one on the right being a storey lower than the one on the left.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|16}} Below the mill is a garden of bizarre, giant plants, a magnified view of a cluster of moss and lichen that Escher drew in ink as a study in 1942.{{sfnp|74JDN5YR|146}}
*Waterfall* is one of the three of his works that Escher characterised as impossible buildings. The two others are *[Ascending and Descending](https://engole.info/ascending-and-descending)* and *[Beldevere](https://engole.info/belvedere)*.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|15}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30016
**Categories:** Lithograph
---
### [Belvedere](https://engole.info/belvedere/)
**Published:** July 9, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Belvedere.webp[/pimage]Lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, created in 1958.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Belvedere.webp)Lithograph
46 × 29.5 cm (18 × 12 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Belvedere* is a lithograph created by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898–1972) in 1958. It shows an at first sight plausible-looking belvedere that would be impossible to build, modelled after the Necker cube shown drawn on the piece of paper lying in the lower left foreground.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|15}}\[a\]A belvedere is a turret room, at the top of a house or tower, providing distant views across the countryside. The name is derived from the Italian *belvedere*, meaning “fair sight”.{{sfnp|CDK4ZJLZ}}{{sfnp|7DYTJ2AI}}
As with the Necker cube, *Belvedere* illustrates a drawing of an object that displays a different reality when viewed from above or below, and in particular front and back simultaneously, which would be impossible in the three-dimensional world being depicted. Two people are climbing a ladder on the floor of the lower platform, but when they reach the top they find themselves outside the building, and having to re-enter. The man sittting at the foot of the building holds an impossible cube, which he appears to be constructing from the diagram at his feet, apparently oblivious to the fact that the belvedere behind him has been built in the same impossible style.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|15}} The woman about to climb the steps of the building is copied from Hieronymus Bosch’s *The Garden of Earthly Delights*.{{sfnp|IFBRIIHP}}
*Belvedere* is one of the three of his works that Escher characterised as impossible buildings. The two others are *[Ascending and Descending](https://engole.info/ascending-and-descending)* and *[Waterfall](https://engole.info/waterfall-escher)*.{{sfnp|49BHCR9V}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a A belvedere is a turret room, at the top of a house or tower, providing distant views across the countryside. The name is derived from the Italian *belvedere*, meaning “fair sight”.{{sfnp|CDK4ZJLZ}}{{sfnp|7DYTJ2AI}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30138
**Categories:** Lithograph
---
### [Alice Nutter](https://engole.info/alice-nutter/)
**Published:** September 26, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Alice_Nutter_Statue.png[/pimage]One of the 11 men and women found guilty of causing harm by witchcraft in the Pendle witch trials of 1612, unique among the accused in being a respectable wealthy widow.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Alice_Nutter_Statue.png)Statue in Alice Nutter’s home town of Roughlee, by local artist David Palmer
Wikimedia Commons
Alice Nutter (died 1612) was one of the ten [Pendle witches](https://engole.info/pendle-witches/) found guilty of [maleficium](https://engole.info/maleficium/) – causing harm by witchcraft – and executed by hanging.\[a\]There were 12 accused, of whom one died in prison and another was acquitted. She was the wealthy widow of Richard Nutter, a local landowner, and unique among the accused by being of a “middling sort”; Thomas Potts, the clerk to the court, describes her as “a rich woman; \[with\] a great estate, and children of good hope: in the common opinion of the world, of good temper, free from envy or malice”.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|32}}
Alice’s relative prosperity posed a problem for the trial judges, Sir James Altham\[b\]Sir James Altham had recently been accused of a miscarriage of justice at the York Assizes, which had resulted in a woman being executed for witchcraft.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|24}} and Sir Edward Bromley, as the common motivation for participating in witchcraft was considered to be “great miserie and povertie”, added to which the public was becoming increasingly sceptical of convictions for respectable people.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|32-33}}
Almost everything we know about Alice Nutter comes from the official account of the Lancashire witch trials of 1612 written by Thomas Potts, and published under the title of [*The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster*](https://engole.info/the-wonderfull-discoverie-of-witches-in-the-countie-of-lancaster/).
## Background
Alice Nutter of Roughlee was a native of Lancashire, a county regarded by the authorities as a wild and lawless region, “where the \[Church of England\] was honoured without much understanding of its doctrines by the common people”.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|5}} In early 1612, the year of her trial, every justice of the peace (JP) in Lancashire was ordered to compile a list of [recusants](https://engole.info/act-of-uniformity-1558/) in their area, i.e. those who refused to attend the English Church and to take communion, a criminal offence at that time.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|7}} Many of those living around Pendle, including Alice Nutter, remained faithful to their Roman Catholic beliefs and had been quick to revert to Catholicism on Queen Mary’s accession to the throne in 1553.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|8-9}}
Roger Nowell of Read Hall, on the edge of Pendle Forest, was the JP for Pendle. It was against this backdrop of seeking out religious nonconformists that, in March 1612, Nowell investigated a complaint made to him by the family of John Law, a pedlar, who claimed to have been injured by witchcraft.{{sfnp|DB6SXDFK|1-2}}
## Events leading to arrest
As a result of his investigations into Law’s accusations, Nowell arrested several members of the Demdike and Chattox families, the heads of which were both women in their eighties and widely believed to have been witches for many years. They were taken to Lancaster Gaol to await trial,{{sfnp|88FWII9K|16}} and there the matter might have rested had it not been for a meeting organised by Elizabeth Device at [Malkin Tower](https://engole.info/malkin-tower/), the home of the Demdikes,{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|19}} held on Good Friday 10 April 1612.{{sfnp|DB6SXDFK|2}}
Friends and others sympathetic to the family attended the meeting at Malkin Tower, and when word of it reached Roger Nowell he decided to investigate. On 27 April 1612, an inquiry was held before Nowell and another magistrate, Nicholas Bannister, to determine the purpose of the meeting, who had attended, and what had happened there. As a result of the inquiry, Alice Nutter and seven others were arrested and sent to join those already awaiting trial in Lancaster Gaol.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|22}}
## Accusations and trial
Alice Nutter was tried at Lancaster Assizes on 19 August 1612, in front of Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley. She made no statement either before or during her trial, except to enter her plea of not guilty to the charge of murdering Henry Mitton by witchcraft. The prosecution alleged that she, together with Demdike and Elizabeth Device, had caused Mitton’s death after he had refused to give Demdike a penny she had begged from him. The only evidence against Alice seems to have been that James Device claimed Demdike had told him of the murder, and Jennet Device in her statement said that Alice had been present at the Malkin Tower meeting.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|34}} Jennet was about nine-years-old at the time, and her evidence would not have been permissible in many other 17th-century criminal trials. King James however, had made a case for suspending the normal rules of evidence for witchcraft trials in his *Daemonologie*.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|28}}
Found guilty, Alice Nutter was hanged at Gallows Hill{{sfnp|CCJM7NLP}}\[c\]Gallows Hill is on the moors close to the site of present-day Williamson Park.{{sfnp|CCJM7NLP}} in Lancaster on 20 August 1612.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|23}} According to Potts’ account she “died very impeninent”.{{sfnp|5YU83GZU}}
## Modern interpretations
Alice Nutter may have called in on the meeting at Malkin Tower on her way to a secret (and illegal) Good Friday Catholic service, and refused to speak for fear of incriminating her fellow Catholics. Many of the Nutter family were Catholics, and two had been executed as Jesuit priests: John Nutter in 1584 and his brother Robert in 1600.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|29}}
William Harrison Ainsworth in his fictional novel [*The Lancashire Witches*](https://engole.info/the-lancashire-witches/) (1849) portrays Alice Nutter as a powerful witch and the leader of the Pendle witches. A central theme of the story is a boundary dispute between her and the magistrate Roger Nowell, which may be close to the truth of why Alice was prosecuted. Eighteen years earlier the Nutter family believed themselves to be the victims of witchcraft following a dispute with some tenants in Pendle Forest, resulting in the mysterious death of Christopher Nutter and his son Robert. There is no suggestion that Roger Nowell was involved in the events eighteen years earlier,{{sfnp|5YU83GZU}} but there is evidence to suggest that he was involved in a lawsuit with the Nutter family, in which he was the loser.{{sfnp|QDJYWE4Y|182}} So it seems at least a possibility that Nowell had a conflict of interest when he decided to prosecute Alice Nutter.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a There were 12 accused, of whom one died in prison and another was acquitted. b Sir James Altham had recently been accused of a miscarriage of justice at the York Assizes, which had resulted in a woman being executed for witchcraft.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|24}} c Gallows Hill is on the moors close to the site of present-day Williamson Park.{{sfnp|CCJM7NLP}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 6559
**Categories:** English, Female, Witch
---
### [As I was going to St. Ives](https://engole.info/as-i-was-going-to-st-ives/)
**Published:** December 3, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Nursery rhyme in the form of a puzzle, to which the correct answer is open to debate.
**Content:**
“As I was going to St. Ives” is a nursery rhyme in the form of a puzzle, the earliest version of which was published in 1730. Depending on how the question in the final line is interpreted, the answer is either zero or one. If the question is “How many kits, cats, sacks, and wives were going to St. Ives?” the answer is none, as the only one identified as going to St. Ives is the “I” of the narrator.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|448}}
> As I was going to St. Ives,
> I met a man with seven wives,
> Each wife had seven sacks,
> Each sack had seven cats,
> Each cat had seven kits,
> Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
> How many were there going to St. Ives?
It is generally considered that the rhyme refers to St Ives in Cornwall, although it has been argued that it was St Ives in Cambridgeshire, an ancient market town and therefore perhaps an equally plausible destination.{{sfnp|LEKT2ATE|131}}
The rhyme adopts the form of a geometric progression,\[a\]A geometric progression is a sequence of non-zero numbers where each term after the first is found by multiplying the previous one by a fixed, non-zero number, in this case seven. seen earlier in the Ancient Egyptian Rhind Mathematical Papyrus,\[b\]Named after the Scottish lawyer A. H. Rhind who acquired the papyrus in Thebes, now Luxor, in about 1858.{{sfnp|4SBK6IWI}} a probable mathematics textbook dating from about 1550 BCE,{{sfnp|4SBK6IWI}} containing a very similar puzzle:{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|448}}
> In a village there are seven houses,
> And each house has seven cats,
> And each cat kills seven mice,
> And each mouse would have eaten seven grains of corn,
> And each grain of corn would have produced seven hekats.\[c\]The hekat is an Ancient Egyptian measure of volume, equivalent to about 4.8 litres.{{sfnp|VIGBE35K}}
> What is the total of all these?
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a A geometric progression is a sequence of non-zero numbers where each term after the first is found by multiplying the previous one by a fixed, non-zero number, in this case seven. b Named after the Scottish lawyer A. H. Rhind who acquired the papyrus in Thebes, now Luxor, in about 1858.{{sfnp|4SBK6IWI}} c The hekat is an Ancient Egyptian measure of volume, equivalent to about 4.8 litres.{{sfnp|VIGBE35K}} d, e var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25003
**Categories:** Nursery rhyme
---
### [Dun (fortification)](https://engole.info/dun-fortification/)
**Published:** August 31, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/D%C3%B9n_An_Achaidh%2C_Coll.jpg[/pimage]Scottish and Irish Gaelic word for a small fortress, or fortified dwelling place.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/D%C3%B9n_An_Achaidh%2C_Coll.jpg)Dùn an Achaidh on the Inner Hebridean island of Coll, c. 1900
Wikimedia Commons
*Dùn* is a Scottish and Irish Gaelic word for a small fortress, or fortified dwelling place.{{sfnp|VPVJTZRK}} Often hillforts,{{sfnp|64VNCFZH}} dùns usually consist of a stone wall surrounding a large house and its associated outbuildings. They seem to have arrived in the British Isles with the Celts in the second half of the 1st millennium BCE.{{sfnp|CWSY3H2J}}
The Gaelic word *dùn* appears as part of many place-names, sometimes separately as in Dún Scaith, and at other times joined, especially when anglicised.{{sfnp|VPVJTZRK}} Dunkeld, the Gaelic name for Dùn Chailleann, meaning “fort of the Caledonians”, is one example of the latter.{{sfnp|34WT5BEK}}
Some anglicised place-names may be derived from a Brittonic cognate of the Welsh form *din* in Northern England and Southern Scotland, where substitution of the Brittonic form by its Gaelic equivalent may have been widespread.{{sfnp|64VNCFZH}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26732
**Categories:** Fort
---
### [Penrose triangle](https://engole.info/penrose-triangle/)
**Published:** May 16, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Penrose-dreieck.svg/1280px-Penrose-dreieck.svg.png[/pimage]Visual representation of a triangular frame that could not exist in three-dimensional space.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Penrose-dreieck.svg/1280px-Penrose-dreieck.svg.png)Penrose triangle
Wikimedia Commons
The Penrose triangle, also known as an impossible triangle or tribar, is a visual representation of a triangular frame that could not exist in three-dimensional space. It is named after the English psychologist and geneticist Lionel Penrose and his son the mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, who published a version of it in the February 1958 issue of the *British Journal of Psychology*.{{sfnp|PBA7QQ92}}{{sfnp|EUATL9ZJ}}
Unknown to the Penroses, however, the tribar had been earlier depicted as an impossible arrangement of nine cubes by the Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd (1915–2001) in 1934.{{sfnp|PBA7QQ92}}
Three-dimensional solid shapes can be constructed which, when viewed from a certain angle, appear to be Penrose triangles, such as the public sculpture Impossible Triangle, unveiled in Perth, Western Australia in 1999.{{sfnp|YXHWZRMA}}
Impossible Triangle
Wikimedia Commons
## See also
- [Penrose staircase](https://engole.info/penrose-staircase)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30010
**Categories:** Perceptual illusion
---
### [Penrose staircase](https://engole.info/penrose-staircase/)
**Published:** July 10, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Penrose-staircase.webp[/pimage]Impossible figure based on a staircase in the form of a continuous loop that seems to rise endlessly.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Penrose-staircase.webp)Penrose staircase
Wikimedia Commons
The Penrose staircase, also known as the staircase illusion, is an impossible figure based on a staircase in the form of a continuous loop that seems to rise endlessly. Each step appears to be higher than the previous one, yet anyone completing a circuit of the staircase will end at the same level as they started at. The illusion is named after the English psychologist and geneticist Lionel Penrose and his son the mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, who published a version of it in the February 1958 issue of the British Journal of Psychology.{{sfnp|2949TS5P}}{{sfnp|EUATL9ZJ}} Unknown to the Penroses, however, the impossible staircase had previously been depicted by the Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd (1915–2001) in 1937.{{sfnp|ANLWA795}}
In their 1958 article the Penroses noted that “each part of the structure is acceptable as representing a flight of steps but the connections are such that the picture, as a whole, is inconsistent: the steps continually descend in a clockwise direction.”{{sfnp|J6YKDAPX|72}} The Penrose staircase was the inspiration for what is generally considered to be one of the Dutch artist M. C. Escher’s most “iconic” works, *Ascending and Descending*, created in 1960.{{sfnp|53JCAPGQ}}{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|15}}
## See also
- [Penrose triangle](https://engole.info/penrose-triangle)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30141
**Categories:** Perceptual illusion
---
### [A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery](https://engole.info/a-philosopher-lecturing-on-the-orrery/)
**Published:** February 6, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Wright_of_Derby%2C_The_Orrery.jpg[/pimage]1766 painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, depicting a lecturer giving a demonstration of an orrery.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Wright_of_Derby%2C_The_Orrery.jpg)*A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery*, 1766
oil on canvas
1473 mm × 2032 mm (58 in × 80 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery*, full title *A Philosopher giving that Lecture on the Orrery in which a lamp is put in place of the Sun*, is a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby depicting a lecturer giving a demonstration of an orrery\[a\]An orrery is a clockwork model of the solar system. to a small audience. It was first exhibited in London in 1766.{{sfnp|2U3H8SGD}}
*The Orrery* was the second of Wright’s candlelit masterpieces. The first, *Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight*, was painted in 1765, and shows three men studying a small copy of the “Borghese Gladiator”. It was greatly admired, but *The Orrery* caused a greater stir, as it replaced the classical subject at the centre of the scene with a scientific one.{{sfnp|JIXWT7PU|178}} Wright may have been inspired by his having attended the presentations of James Ferguson, a travelling science lecturer who visited Derby in 1762.{{sfnp|K28AL6ZB}}
## Composition
Wright’s depiction of the awe produced by scientific “miracles” marked a break with previous traditions in which the artistic depiction of such wonder was reserved for religious events;{{sfnp|JIXWT7PU|178}} to Wright, the marvels of the technological age were as awe-inspiring as the subjects of the great religious paintings.{{sfnp|43LZ9S7W|40}} But more than that, the domestic setting seems to suggest that natural philosophy – what we would today call science – is open to all, “men and women, young and old”.{{sfnp|48Z42WUQ|loc=2832}}
The lamp representing the Sun allows Wright to make extensive use of [chiaroscuro](https://engole.info/chiaroscuro/) for dramatic effect,{{sfnp|43LZ9S7W|40}} and the shadows cast on the observers’ faces can be seen to correspond to the phases of the moon: new moon, half moon, gibbous moon and full moon.{{sfnp|MVYCQDIA|36}}
## Provenance and portraits
Figures thought to be portraits of the mathematician and artist Peter Perez Burdett and Washington Shirley, 5th Earl Ferrers, a keen amateur astronomer, feature in the painting.{{sfnp|SMZRVQYU}} The picture may have been painted speculatively in the hope that the Earl would buy it, which he did;{{sfnp|48Z42WUQ|loc=2842}} it is now in the Derby Museum and Art Gallery’s collection.{{sfnp|2U3H8SGD}}
Benedict Nicolson, in his 1968 biography of Wright, argued that the clockmaker and scientist John Whitehurst was the model for the lecturer;{{sfnp|43LZ9S7W}} another commentator has observed that Wright “appears to have modelled his philosopher on \[Isaac\] Newton”.{{sfnp|2U3H8SGD}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a An orrery is a clockwork model of the solar system.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22585
**Categories:** English, Painting
---
### [Burial Act 1852](https://engole.info/burial-act-1852/)
**Published:** April 18, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of parliament to prohibit burials in the metropolis of London.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
A Royal Commission established in 1842 to investigate the cholera epidemic of 1831 concluded that London’s burial grounds were so overcrowded that it was impossible to dig a new grave without cutting through an existing one. It also reported that gravediggers throughout London were obliged to shred bodies in order to cram the remains into the limited space available.{{sfnp|LRGT3JZJ|115}} Bodies had had to be stacked in heaps awaiting burial, and even relatively recent graves had to be exhumed to make way for new burials.{{sfnp|LRGT3JZJ|111,114}} To address further public health concerns following the cholera epidemic of 1848, which resulted in the deaths of a further 60,000 people, the government passed a series of Burial Acts between 1852 and 1857 prohibiting almost all burials within the built-up area of the city of London.{{sfnp|XCKIWAEH}}\[a\]Exceptions were allowed for at the favour of the monarch in St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey,{{sfnp|XCKIWAEH}} and for Quakers and Jews.{{sfnp|355F5XG9}}
The first of the Burial Acts, passed in 1852, was *An Act to amend the Laws concerning the Burial of the Dead in the Metropolis* (13 & 14 Vict. c. 52.), given the short title Burial Act 1852. It specified that no new burials were to take place in cemeteries within the metropolis, defined as “the Cities and Liberties of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and the Parishes, Precincts, Townships, and Places mentioned in the Schedule (A.) to this Act.”{{sfnp|355F5XG9}} All future burials were to take place in one of the seven large cemeteries recently opened a short distance from London, one of which, the {{convert|2200|acre|adj=on}} Brookwood Cemetery in Brookwood, Surrey opened in 1849 by the London Necropolis Company, had space for 240,000 graves.{{sfnp|LRGT3JZJ|161,163}} Connected to London by the London Necropolis Railway in 1854, it was at the time the world’s largest cemetery;{{sfnp|LRGT3JZJ|166}}\[b\]Dedicated trains took mourners and coffins from the London Necropolis Railway’s London terminus on Westminster Bridge Road directly into the cemetery.{{sfnp|LRGT3JZJ|165}} it was projected that, on the basis of one body per grave with each grave being reused after ten years, it could accommodate London’s dead forever.{{sfnp|LRGT3JZJ|163}}
The legislation was so well received throughout the country that in 1853 the government introduced a further Act *To amend the Laws concerning the Burial of the Dead in England beyond the limits of the Metropolis* (16 & 17 Vict. c. 134.).{{sfnp|3ZLIWX23|3}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Exceptions were allowed for at the favour of the monarch in St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey,{{sfnp|XCKIWAEH}} and for Quakers and Jews.{{sfnp|355F5XG9}} b Dedicated trains took mourners and coffins from the London Necropolis Railway’s London terminus on Westminster Bridge Road directly into the cemetery.{{sfnp|LRGT3JZJ|165}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24630
**Categories:** Legislation
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Sanctuary ring](https://engole.info/sanctuary-ring/)
**Published:** November 9, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/The_Sanctuary_knocker%2C_Durham_Cathedral_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1759573.jpg[/pimage]Church door ornamentation, the grasping of which granted sanctuary to fugitives.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/The_Sanctuary_knocker%2C_Durham_Cathedral_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1759573.jpg)Sanctuary ring on the north door of Durham Cathedral
Wikimedia Commons
Sanctuary was the right of any fugitive from justice who took refuge in a church to avoid being apprehended by the authorities. Those claiming sanctuary sometimes had to touch a specific object in the church before sanctuary was granted, often the altar in earlier times, or a sanctuary ring as at Durham Cathedral.{{sfnp|RSJCFIPY}}
Although often called sanctuary knockers, as at Durham it was necessary only for the fugitive to touch the ring. A monk stationed above the door would then ring a bell, to announce that sanctuary had been granted.{{sfnp|G3SM85QG}}
In 1540 King Henry VIII limited the right to sanctuary to seven cities: Wells, Westminster, Northampton, Manchester, York, Derby, and Launceston. Sanctuary for criminal offences was abolished in 1623, but it lingered on for civil processes for another hundred years.{{sfnp|RSJCFIPY}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 28091
**Categories:** Religious architecture
---
### [Astley and Bedford Mosses](https://engole.info/astley-and-bedford-mosses/)
**Published:** June 20, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Moss_Brook_-_geograph.org.uk_-_55611.jpg[/pimage]Areas of peat bog south of the Bridgewater Canal and north of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in Astley and Bedford, Leigh, England.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Moss_Brook_-_geograph.org.uk_-_55611.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/HV2eKLkdj4pHRsiR9}}
Moss Brook
Astley and Bedford Mosses are areas of peat bog south of the Bridgewater Canal, north of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in [Astley](https://engole.info/astley/ "Astley") and [Bedford](https://engole.info/bedford-leigh/ "Bedford, Leigh"), Leigh in North West England. They are among the last remaining fragments of [Chat Moss](https://engole.info/chat-moss/), the raised bog that once covered a large area of south Lancashire north of the River Mersey. Astley Moss was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in 1989.{{sfnp|LWNTDN9Q}} Astley and Bedford Mosses, along with Risley Moss and [Holcroft Moss](https://engole.info/holcroft-moss), are part of Manchester Mosses, a European Union designated Special Area of Conservation.{{sfnp|2JS5SK2D}}
## Ecology
Astley and Bedford Mosses are adjacent to the Liverpool to Manchester railway and bordered by agricultural land. They are a fragment of Chat Moss, the {{convert|25|sqm|adj=on}} lowland raised mire\[a\]Mire is an alternative name for a bog. that developed over tills and glacial flood gravels that overlie Triassic sandstones.{{sfnp|8HNVT2TF}} The lowland raised bog, formed after the last ice age about 10,000 years ago on the site of a shallow glacial lake to the north of the River Mersey. Fen peat formed in an area colonised by reeds and rushes. Sphagnum mosses then colonised the area causing a change from fen to bog peat which became elevated forming a dome, the raised bog. Sphagnum mosses increase the acidity of the water resulting in highly specialised plant species, many found nowhere else.{{sfnp|TW6MCS3Z}}
Most of Chat Moss has been drained and reclaimed for agriculture or cut for peat. Astley and Bedford Mosses are higher than the surrounding land and retain a considerable depth of peat.{{sfnp|8HNVT2TF}}
The habitats found on the mosses are modified mire, heathland, woodland and acidic grassland that have grown above the the cut peat surface. Areas of mire are dominated by common and hare’s-tail cottongrasses. Bog mosses are scarce but five types of sphagnum grow in patches in the cottongrass and in and alongside some ditches. Drier peat has attracted a monospecific sward of purple moor grass and birch has become established over a large part of the site. Heather is scattered throughout and dominates an area of heathland on the north eastern edge where cranberry is also found.{{sfnp|8HNVT2TF}}
The mosses are attractive to wintering raptors such as hen harrier, short-eared owl and merlin and are breeding sites for curlew and long-eared owl. Nightjars may also breed.{{sfnp|8HNVT2TF}}
In 2019 the Wildlife Trust started a project with Chester Zoo to release the Manchester Argus butterfly into the Manchester Mosses. Also known as the large heath, it had been locally extinct for more than 150 years.{{sfnp|3KH7BWXR}} As part of the reintroduction project, in 2018, about 20 strands of lesser bladderwort, one of the UK’s few carnivorous plants, were planted in ponds at Astley Moss. It had been extinct for more than 100 years but by October 2019 between 4,000 and 5,000 strands were established in a ditch. The project also aims to reintroduce sundew and white beaked sedge.{{sfnp|QZ4ICHD6}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Mire is an alternative name for a bog.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2480
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Landform, SSSI
---
### [Keuper Marl](https://engole.info/keuper-marl/)
**Published:** April 24, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/300px-P210568.jpg[/pimage]Now deprecated term for multiple layers of mudstone and siltstone that occur beneath parts of the English Midlands and beyond.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/300px-P210568.jpg)Mercia Mudstone Group
Bristol and Gloucester Regional Guide
Keuper Marl is a now deprecated term for multiple layers of mudstone and siltstone of Triassic age which occur beneath parts of the English Midlands and neighbouring areas. In modern nomenclature it is included within the Mercia Mudstone Group.{{sfnp|H2CDICRT}}
Typically red, occasionally green or grey, these strata can range up to thicknesses of {{convert|1350|m}}, as found underlying the [Cheshire Plain](https://engole.info/cheshire-plain).{{sfnp|H2CDICRT}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25265
**Categories:** Geology
---
### [Concealed shoes](https://engole.info/concealed-shoes/)
**Published:** June 2, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Concealed_shoes_from_East_Anglia.jpg[/pimage]Shoes hidden in the fabric of a building have been discovered in many European countries, as well as in other parts of the world, since at least the early modern period.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Concealed_shoes_from_East_Anglia.jpg)Concealed shoes from East Anglia
Wikimedia Commons
Concealed shoes hidden in the fabric of a building have been discovered in many European countries, as well as in other parts of the world, since at least the early modern period. Independent researcher Brian Hoggard has observed that the locations in which these shoes are typically found – in chimneys, under floors, above ceilings, around doors and windows, in the roof – suggest that some may have been concealed as charms to protect the occupants of the building against evil influences such as demons, ghosts and witches, a form of magic known as [apotropaic](https://engole.info/apotropaic-magic/). Others may have been intended to bestow fertility on a female member of the household, or been an offering to a household deity.
Concealed shoes have been found in many types of building, including country houses, public houses, a Benedictine monastery and a Baptist church. The earliest yet reported was discovered behind the choirstalls in Winchester Cathedral, which were installed in 1308.
Northampton Museum maintains a Concealed Shoe Index, which by 2012 contained 1900 reports of discoveries, mostly from Britain and almost half from the 19th century. The overwhelming majority have been worn, and many have been repaired. Most finds are of single shoes, about half of them belonging to children.
The custom of concealing shoes in the structure of a building appears to have more or less died out some time during the 20th century.
## Background
Since at least the early modern period it was a common custom to hide objects such as written charms, dried cats, horse skulls, and witch bottles in the structure of a building, {{sfnp|PIVIFJEB|167}} but concealed shoes are by far the most common items discovered.{{sfnp|PIVIFJEB|178}} Archaeologist Brian Hoggard has observed that the locations in which these shoes are found suggest that at least some were concealed as magical charms to protect the occupants of the building against evil influences.{{sfnp|PIVIFJEB|167}} Archaeologists refer to such places of ritual concealment as spiritual middens if they are left unsealed to allow further items to be added over time, as opposed to a one-time concealment if they are inaccessible.{{sfnp|9XHENMVH}}
Northampton Museum maintains a Concealed Shoe Index,\[a\]Northampton was once a major shoemaking centre.{{sfnp|5LAVLDQX}} which by 1998 contained more than 1100 reports of concealed shoes, mostly from Britain but some from as far away as Canada.{{sfnp|PIVIFJEB|179}} By 2012 it had increased to 1900 entries,{{sfnp|9K7EUQPD}} of which almost half date from the 19th century.
The custom of concealing shoes in the fabric of a building appears to have more or less died out some time during the 20th century, although not entirely.{{sfnp|PIVIFJEB|179}} The shoe manufacturer Norvic incorporated a pair of their women’s high-leg boots in the foundations of their new factory built in 1964, and an even more recent account comes from Knebworth House, where in 1991 an estate worker’s shoe replaced an “old court shoe” that had been discovered behind some panelling.{{sfnp|GR8LAVWT}} Nevertheless, only 50 post-1900 instances of concealed shoes have been recorded.{{sfnp|PIVIFJEB|179}}
## Location of finds
Concealed shoes have been discovered in several European countries,{{sfnp|9K7EUQPD}} as well as in North America{{sfnp|DQICFTV9|ii}} and Australia.{{sfnp|KNHHHK5S}} Although deposits have been found throughout the United States they are concentrated in New England and the northeastern United States, the latter of which was first colonised by immigrants from the East Anglia region of England.{{sfnp|DQICFTV9|353}}\[b\]There were relatively few witch trials and executions in England compared to other European countries, but East Anglia did experience one of the most intense witch hunts in the country.{{sfnp|DQICFTV9|353}}
An analysis of the Concealed Shoe Index maintained by Northampton Museum, conducted by June Swann and published in 1996,{{sfnp|GR8LAVWT}} reveals that the most common place of concealment is the chimney, fireplace or hearth (26.2 per cent), followed by under the floor or above the ceiling (22.9 per cent), and almost as many concealed in the roof. Shoes have also been found around doors and windows, under the stairs, and among the foundations. Concealed shoes have been discovered in many types of building: country cottages, town houses, manor houses, hospitals, workhouses, factories, public houses, and two Oxford colleges, St John’s and Queen’s. They have even been found in ecclesiastical buildings, including a Benedictine monastery in Germany and a Baptist church in Cheshire, England.{{sfnp|GR8LAVWT}}
The earliest concealed shoe yet reported was discovered behind the choirstalls in Winchester Cathedral, which were installed in 1308.{{sfnp|GR8LAVWT}}
## Characteristics
Most of the concealed shoes found to date are made of leather, but wooden clogs and rubber galoshes have also been reported, among others. The overwhelming majority (almost 98 per cent) have been worn, and many show signs of repair. All ages are represented in the shoe sizes, from babies to adults, but there is little difference in the ratio of adult male to female shoes, at 21.5 per cent and 26.5 per cent respectively. Most finds are of single shoes, but some pairs have also been discovered.{{sfnp|GR8LAVWT}} About half of the shoes so far discovered belonged to children.{{sfnp|CLPWNVJ5}}
Apart from their significance to folklore, concealed shoes give an important insight into what ordinary people have historically worn on their feet.{{sfnp|9K7EUQPD}}
## Explanations
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Old_Woman_who_lived_in_a_shoe-Kronheim.jpg)Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, by Joseph Martin Kronheim, c. 1875
Wikimedia Commons
Several theories have been advanced to account for the incorporation of shoes into the fabric of a building, one of which is that they served as some kind of fertility charm. There is a long-standing connection between shoes and fertility, perhaps exemplified by the nursery rhyme, “[There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe](https://engole.info/there-was-an-old-woman-who-lived-in-a-shoe/)“, and the custom of casting a shoe after a bride as she leaves for her honeymoon,{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|522–524}} or attaching shoes to the departing couple’s car.{{sfnp|UU739T26|search=There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe}} Archaeologist Ralph Merrifield has observed that in the English county of Lancashire women who wished to conceive might try on the shoes of a woman who had just given birth,{{sfnp|QPNJAG7R|134}} a custom known as smickling.{{sfnp|CCA8K7MD}}
Another theory, and the one favoured by most scholars, argues that shoes were concealed to protect against evil influences such as demons, ghosts, witches, and familiars. Witches were believed to be attracted by the human scent of a shoe, and after entering one find themselves trapped, as they are unable to reverse.{{sfnp|3NEUY6PU}} Merrifield has suggested that an unofficial 14th-century English saint, John Schorne, may have been the source of the belief that shoes had the power to protect against evil. Schorne was said to have succeeded in trapping the Devil in a boot, a legend that may have its origin in a more ancient folk belief,{{sfnp|PIVIFJEB|179}} which the Church was attempting to convert into an “approved Christian rite”.{{sfnp|DQICFTV9|352-353}}
Archaeologist and architectural historian M. Chris Manning has proposed that the immurement of shoes, garments, and other objects may be related to the belief in a household deity or helpful spirit found throughout northern Europe from Ireland to western Russia.{{sfnp|DQICFTV9|350-351}} According to Manning, Schorne’s use of a shoe to capture or repel a troublesome spirit may have called upon an existing belief in the power of shoes and other garments to attract, repel, or “lay” such spirits. The brownie and hob, domestic fairies found in England and Scotland, could be driven off by a gift of clothing. In Russia, it was said that the domovoi, a helpful domestic spirit, could be attracted to a home with an old boot or bast shoe placed under the stove or hung in the yard. The belief in household spirits is closely tied to the concept of the familiar, which in turn is linked to the belief in demons and other harmful spirits.
Thirteen of the shoes in Swann’s analysis (only a small fraction of the thousands of concealed shoes reported worldwide) were buried in the foundations of a building. She has alluded to a possible connection with the Carthaginian practice of putting human babies in the foundations of their buildings, and suggested that the shoes may have acted as a substitute for the person.{{sfnp|GR8LAVWT}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Northampton was once a major shoemaking centre.{{sfnp|5LAVLDQX}} b There were relatively few witch trials and executions in England compared to other European countries, but East Anglia did experience one of the most intense witch hunts in the country.{{sfnp|DQICFTV9|353}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 1046
**Categories:** Apotropaic, Magic
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Autointoxication](https://engole.info/autointoxication/)
**Published:** July 7, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/Soapsuds_Enemas.jpg/960px-Soapsuds_Enemas.jpg[/pimage]Outmoded view that ill health can be caused by toxins generated in the gut.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/Soapsuds_Enemas.jpg/960px-Soapsuds_Enemas.jpg)Enema equipment used for colon cleansing
Wikimedia Commons
Autointoxication is the outmoded view that illness can be caused by toxins generated in the gut.{{sfnp|39F99PK4}} The underlying idea is that the body cannot fully dispose of its waste products and toxins, which then accumulate in the intestine, thus requiring colonic cleansing.{{sfnp|L4E7D9C2}}{{sfnp|GD9PQA8K}} The term literally means self-poisoning, derived from the Greek *autos* mean “self”, and the Latin *intoxicare*, meaning “to poison”.{{sfnp|8XYAM335}}
The Ancient Egyptians associated feces with decay, and were liberal in their use of laxatives.{{sfnp|L4E7D9C2}} As a result of early bacteriological studies during the 19th century, the idea that toxins accumulating in the gut could lead to premature death began to gain credence within the medical establishment. The Russian zoologist Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (1845–1916) was a prominent advocate of this view.{{sfnp|GD9PQA8K}}
It seemed to make sense therefore, that the flow of waste through the colon should be as rapid as possible, which led to some radical surgeries.{{sfnp|8MN2EX94}} The eminent English surgeon Sir William Arbuthnot-Lane, for instance, claimed to have identified an area of the colon where the flow of waste slowed down, and developed a surgical procedure to remove it, known as “Lane’s kink”, “which he performed on hundreds unfortunate enough to seek out his services”.{{sfnp|36KT56HQ|136}}
Around the turn of the twentieth century many physicians accepted the concept of autointoxication, but it was abandoned after scientific observations proved it wrong. In 1919 and 1922, it was clearly demonstrated that symptoms of headache, fatigue, and loss of appetite that accompanied fecal impaction were caused by mechanical distension of the colon rather than by production or absorption of toxins.{{sfnp
— L4E7D9C2}}
But despite the lack of supporting evidence, the practice of colon cleansing experienced a resurgence in the 1990s.{{sfnp|AXWQZPND}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30132
**Categories:** Medical condition
---
### [King's Evil](https://engole.info/kings-evil/)
**Published:** April 16, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Queen_Anne_%22curing%22_scrofula_by_touch.gif[/pimage]Name given in medieval times to scrofula, a swelling of the lymph nodes in the neck caused by tuberculosis.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Queen_Anne_%22curing%22_scrofula_by_touch.gif)18th-century print of Queen Anne touching [Dr Johnson](https://engole.info/samuel-johnson) as a boy to cure his scrofula
Wikimedia Commons
The King’s Evil was the name given in medieval times to scrofula (Tuberculous lymphadenitis),{{sfnp|UE57YGP6}} a swelling of the lymph nodes in the neck caused by tuberculosis. It was believed that a touch from royalty could heal the disease, a practice that began with King Edward the Confessor in England (1003/4–1066) and Philip I (1052–1108) in France. The last English monarch to perform the ceremony of the royal touch was Queen Anne, who died in 1714, but French monarchs continued the practice until the death of Charles X in 1825.{{sfnp|GW7CP9VJ}}
The popularity of the ritual grew rapidly; by the end of the 13th century Edward I was touching 1000 sufferers each year, and over his twenty-year reign it is estimated that Charles II touched more than 90,000. Not all monarchs were equally happy to carry out the ritual however, perhaps notably Elizabeth I and James I. Elizabeth began to use it following her excommunication from the Catholic Church by Pope Pius V in 1570, to demonstrate the legitimacy of her claim to the English throne. James I, a formidable witch hunter, was fundamentally opposed to the practice of magic, and it was only with great difficulty that his advisers succeeded in persuading him to perform the ceremony.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|10-11}}
## Ceremony of touching
The form of the ceremonial touching was laid down by Henry VII. Supplicants approached the throne one by one. The monarch would then touch them on the face while a chaplain read aloud a verse from the Gospel of St Mark: “They shall lay hands on the sick and they recover”. A white ribbon was then placed around their neck, from which hung a gold coin, a talisman against evil.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|10}}
## Valentine Greatrakes
The logic of the ritual derived from the monarch’s consecration with holy oil at their consecration, which underlined their sacred status and that they derived their power from God.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|10}} But royalty did not have a monopoly on the claim to be able to cure the King’s Evil. Prominent among other spiritual healers was Valentine Greatrakes (1628–1683), who claimed that a “divine impulse” told him that he also could cure the disease by touching. His reputation for healing was such that he was championed by the scientist Robert Boyle among others, but he returned home to Ireland following an unsuccessful demonstration of his powers to Charles II in May 1666.{{sfnp|85KBCENQ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 18273
**Categories:** Medical condition
---
### [Extrasensory perception](https://engole.info/extrasensory-perception/)
**Published:** July 8, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/Cartas_Zener.svg/1920px-Cartas_Zener.svg.png[/pimage]Supposed ability to recieve information about the world independently of the use of the recognised senses.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/Cartas_Zener.svg/1920px-Cartas_Zener.svg.png)Zener card designs, now known as ESP cards.{{sfnp
82HCPZM2
Extrasensory perception (ESP) is the supposed ability to receive information about the world independently of the use of the recognised senses.{{sfnp|HUBVYQ3S}} The term was coined by the Duke University botanist J. B. Rhine in 1934 to characterise psychic abilities such as telepathy, psychometry, clairvoyance and precognition.{{sfnp|82HCPZM2}}{{sfnp|36KT56HQ|159}}
The scientific study of paranormal communication began in the late 19th century, with the foundation in 1882 of the [Society for Psychical Research](https://engole.info/society-for-psychical-research) to “examine without prejudice or prepossession and in a scientific spirit those faculties of man, real or supposed, which appear to be inexplicable on any generally recognized hypothesis”. The “Census of Hallucinations”, published in 1886, reported that of the 17,000 respondents asked whether they had ever seen or felt something not attributable to any physical cause, revealed a far greater number who had than would be expected by chance, and in particular of those who claimed to have experienced a hallucination of someone within 12 hours of that person’s death.{{sfnp|82HCPZM2}}
Early investigations into ESP involved an agent who drew a picture, and a percipient who attempted to reproduce it. But various confounding factors made the statistical analysis of the results of such experiments impossibly difficult. So in the 1930s J. B. Rhine began to design experiments using a set of black and white cards known as Zener cards bearing the symbols circle, square, wavy lines, cross, and star, with five of each type of card in a pack of twenty-five.{{sfnp|YIPYUR6A}} In a typical telepathy experiment the “sender” looked at a series of randomly selected cards while the “receiver” guessed the symbols.{{sfnp|82HCPZM2}}
Rhine published the results of his ESP experiments in his 1934 book *Extrasensory Perception*, in which he claimed to have found “overwhelming” evidence for the existence of ESP. In more than 100,000 guesses made by a large number of subjects, he reported that they averaged 7.1 correct identifications compared to the 5 expected by chance.{{sfnp|82HCPZM2}}{{sfnp|36KT56HQ|161}} That led other researchers to try and replicate his findings, which none were able to do.{{sfnp|82HCPZM2}} Rhine’s experiments were ultimately discredited owing to the realisation that sensory leakage or cheating could account for all his results, such as the subject being able to read the symbols from the back of the cards and being able to see and hear the experimenter to note subtle clues.{{sfnp|7XT4EHUZ}}{{sfnp|26GYG6SB}}{{sfnp|QPH795SG|122}}
Surveys in many countries show that over 50 per cent of the population believes in the paranormal, especially telepathy … if ESP really existed it would be of enormous importance to science. Thousands of experiments have therefore been carried out and many scientists involved. However, it has proved extremely hard to get positive results, let alone develop and test theories, and very little progress has been made. ESP is either extremely rare and elusive, or it does not exist.
— Susan Blackmore{{sfnp|82HCPZM2}}
## See also
- [British Premonitions Bureau](https://engole.info/british-premonitions-bureau/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30133
**Categories:** Parapsychology
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Kent](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-kent/)
**Published:** July 2, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Kent_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Kent_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the ceremonial county of Kent.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Kent_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Kent_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png)Kent shown within England
Wikimedia Commons
The [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Kent consists of the district authorities of Ashford, Canterbury, Dartford, Dover, Folkestone, Gravesham, Maidstone, Medway, Sevenoaks, Swale, Thanet, Tonbridge and Malling, and Tunbridge Wells.{{sfnp|ZTG2GD2L}}
The Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest, are shown in separate lists for each authority.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
- Ashford
- Canterbury
- [Dartford](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-dartford)
- Dover
- Folkestone
- [Gravesham](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-gravesham)
- Maidstone
- Medway
- Sevenoaks
- Swale
- [Thanet](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-thanet)
- Tonbridge and Malling
- [Tunbridge Wells](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-tunbridge-wells)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30118
**Categories:** Kent
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Satire on False Perspective](https://engole.info/satire-on-false-perspective/)
**Published:** July 4, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Satire-on-False-Perspective.webp[/pimage]Work by the English artist and printmaker William Hogarth (1697–1764).
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Satire-on-False-Perspective.webp)Wikimedia Commons
*Satire on False Perspective* is a work by the English artist and printmaker William Hogarth (1697–1764) in 1754, created for his friend Joshua Kirby’s pamphlet on linear perspective. Titled “Dr. Brook Taylor’s Method of Perspective Made Easy, Both in Theory and Practice”, usually abbreviated to “Kirby’s Perspective”, a print from an engraving produced by the Irish artist Luke Sullivan was published in the frontispiece.{{sfnp|IK8VMEFU}}{{sfnp|CG5HKXJ4}}
The lesson Hogarth is attempting to convey to his fellow artists is clearly stated in the caption to the image:{{sfnp|UKYTU4SE}}
Whoever makes a Design without the Knowledge of Perspective will be liable to such Absurdities as are shewn in this Frontispiece.
Among the many “Absurdities” are a man lighting his pipe from a distant candle, a flock of sheep growing bigger as they recede round a corner, and a foreground tavern sign obscured behind a distant tree.{{sfnp|CG5HKXJ4}}
## See also
- [Penrose triangle](https://engole.info/penrose-triangle)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30126
**Categories:** Print
---
### [St Margaret's Church, Horsmonden](https://engole.info/st-margarets-church-horsmonden/)
**Published:** November 7, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/St_Margaret%27s_Church%2C_Horsmonden_%28Geograph_Image_1943989_dc28f63c%29.jpg[/pimage]Grade I listed Anglican church in Horsmonden, Kent.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/St_Margaret%27s_Church%2C_Horsmonden_%28Geograph_Image_1943989_dc28f63c%29.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/RmxQvJmaCdgcbRAMA}}
St Margaret’s as at 2010
St Margaret’s Church, in Horsmonden, Kent is a designated Grade I [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building),{{sfnp|JVPU2QYF}} an active Anglican parish church in the diocese of Rochester and the archdeaconry of Tonbridge.{{sfnp|4JKNGNAY}} Construction of the present building can largely be credited to Henry de Grofhurst, who became the second Rector of Horsmonden in 1311. Henry died in 1361 with the church still unfinished, and it was probably completed in about 1380.{{sfnp|TALKMAHE}}
The church was altered and extended during the 15th century, and restored by the architect T. H. Wyatt between 1864 and 1867.{{sfnp|JVPU2QYF}}
The Austen family, the most famous member of which is the novelist Jane Austen, were a wealthy Horsmonden family who made their money in the cloth trade. Such was their importance to the local economy that several of the Austens have memorials in the church and churchyard.{{sfnp|TALKMAHE}}
## Architecture
### Exterior
St Margaret’s is built of sandstone with slate roofs. The battlemented four stage tower is set on a plinth with triple offset diagonal buttresses. The timber north [porch](https://engole.info/narthex) sits on a sandstone base and has a shingled roof.{{sfnp|JVPU2QYF}}
### Interior
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/St_Margaret%2C_Horsmonden%2C_interior.JPG/1280px-St_Margaret%2C_Horsmonden%2C_interior.JPG)Interior, looking west
Wikimedia Commons
Memorials inside the church include a 14th-century stone coffin lid in the south chapel floor,{{sfnp|JVPU2QYF}} and a brass memorial in the [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) floor above the spot where Henry de Grofhurst was buried.{{sfnp|TALKMAHE}} There is also a memorial to John Read (1760–1847), a resident of Horsmorden who invented a significantly improved version of the stomach pump.{{sfnp|JUG2IESD}}\[a\]Some sources claim erroneously that Read invented the stomach pump.{{sfnp|JUG2IESD}}
The stained-glass windows date from the 19th century, except for the east and west windows by Rosemary Everett (1916–1998), in 1946 and 1948 respectively. The font is believed to be a 17th-century copy of the original.{{sfnp|JVPU2QYF}}
## Organ
The organ was installed in the South chancel chapel in 1837, by Flight & Robson. It was rebuilt and enlarged by Gray & Davison in 1860, and completely restored in 2009 by Martin K. Cross.{{sfnp|JYHLVXYP}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Some sources claim erroneously that Read invented the stomach pump.{{sfnp|JUG2IESD}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26972
## External links
- [Official web site](https://www.stmargaretshorsmonden.org.uk)
**Categories:** Anglican, Church, Kent
---
### [Church of St Margaret, Darenth](https://engole.info/church-of-st-margaret-darenth/)
**Published:** July 4, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/St_Margaret%27s_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_194026.jpg[/pimage]Active Anglican Church in the village of Darenth, Kent, believed to be the sixth oldest in the UK.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/St_Margaret%27s_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_194026.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/PS2PdXBvVsGQVcho8
St Margaret’s is an active Anglican church in the [village](https://engole.info/village) of Darenth, Kent. It is in the Deaconry of Dartford, the Archdeaconry of Rochester, the Diocese of Rochester, and is one of the three churches in the [Benefice](https://engole.info/benefice) of Darent Valley.{{sfnp|XU8GEXMG}}
Of 10th-century origin, the church is believed to be the third oldest in Kent and the sixth oldest in the UK. It was designated a Grade I listed building in 1967.{{sfnp|9D3UVWM6}} The architectural historian John Newman has described the church as “important, but visually rather charmless”.{{sfnp|QWTA4GGA|254}}
## Architecture
St Margaret’s is built of flint with stone dressings, and has a tiled roof. The [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) and [nave](https://engole.info/nave) are late 10th or early 11th century. The south-west tower dates from the 13th century, and the [aisle](https://engole.info/aisle-architecture) from the 15th century; the [vestry](https://engole.info/sacristy) and [porch](https://engole.info/narthex) are modern. Inside there is a Norman font dating from about 1140.{{sfnp|9D3UVWM6}}
The church was restored by William Burges in 1866–1868.{{sfnp|QWTA4GGA|254}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30120
**Categories:** Anglican, Church, Kent
---
### [All Saint’s Church, Ledsham](https://engole.info/all-saints-church-ledsham/)
**Published:** December 17, 2023
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/All_Saints_Church%2C_Ledsham_-_geograph.org.uk_-_4444410.jpg[/pimage]Active Anglican church in Ledsham, West Yorkshire, possibly the oldest extant building in the county.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/All_Saints_Church%2C_Ledsham_-_geograph.org.uk_-_4444410.jpg)Ledsham Church
Wikimedia Commons
All Saint’s Church is an active Anglican church in Ledsham, West Yorkshire. It is in the [Benefice](https://engole.info/benefice) of Ledsham with Fairburn, the Deanery of Selby and the Archdeaconry and Diocese of York, and is a Grade I listed building.{{sfnp|6FI26WGK}} The church has Anglo-Saxon origins, and is possibly the oldest extant building in West Yorkshire.
It has been much altered, extended and restored, but retains ancient stonework from different phases of building and memorials to local dignitaries who lived at [Ledston Hall](https://engole.info/ledston-hall/) including [Dame Mary Bolles](https://engole.info/mary-bolles/) and Lady Elizabeth Hastings.{{sfnp|VKHSIH5W}}
## History
Ledsham Church has a very early foundation, possibly 700 AD, and it may have been “the monastery that lies in Elmet Wood” referenced by Bede in 731 AD, which make it the oldest extant building in West Yorkshire. The church has been altered and extended many times.{{sfnp|7CQ8N8AB}}
The Saxon church had a nave, a small [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel/), a two-storey west porch, a south, and probably a north, [porticus](https://engole.info/porticus). The west porch was raised into a tower in the 11th century, and the [belfry](https://engole.info/belfry) and steeple added in the 12th-century Norman style. The chancel was replaced in the 13th century, and the church was enlarged by the addition of a north [aisle](https://engole.info/aisle-architecture) in the Perpendicular style in the 15th century. In 1871 the church was restored by the Victorian architect Henry Curzon.{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|381}}
## Structure
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Ledsham_Church_24_September_2022_%2848a%29.jpg)West tower
Wikimedia Commons
The church is built from local Carboniferous sandstone and paler Cadeby Formation Dolomitic limestone, and has a stone slate roof.{{sfnp|SEHDSFPB}} Its plan consists of a [nave](https://engole.info/nave) with a north aisle and south porch, a chancel and a north chapel. The Saxon part of the tower is of sandstone rubble, and above it the Norman belfry is of Magnesian Limestone ashlar. On the south side is a Saxon doorway surrounded by a restored band decorated with a carved vine scroll and a small window with a head carved from a single stone. The belfry stage has louvred two-light windows on all sides, below a [corbel](https://engole.info/corbel) table and corner gargoyles, an embattled parapet with crocketed corner pinnacles, and an octagonal spire.{{sfnp|6FI26WGK}}
The three-bay nave has a gabled porch, made from the south porticus, between three-light Perpendicular windows. The north aisle has two windows each of three arched lights with hollow spandrels from the 15th century. The chancel has three [lancet windows](https://engole.info/lancet-window), a priest door, and a five-light east window. The north chapel has a Perpendicular east window of three cusped lights, with a traceried head.{{sfnp|6FI26WGK}}
Inside at the west end of the nave is a Norman round-headed tower arch, with an earlier round-headed window above it. At the east end is the restored Saxon chancel arch. On the north side is a Perpendicular aisle [arcade](https://engole.info/arcade) with octagonal columns with moulded caps supporting two-centred arches. Remains of Anglo-Saxon masonry are incorporated in the aisle’s north wall. The north chapel contains family monuments with life-sized effigies of Lady Mary Bolles recumbent on a tomb chest, Sir John and Lady Lewis reclining on a sarcophagus, and Lady Elizabeth Hastings reclining on a wall-mounted sarcophagus, all of them residents of nearby Ledston Hall.{{sfnp|6FI26WGK}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25792
**Categories:** Anglican, Church, Yorkshire
---
### [Hollingbourne Manor](https://engole.info/hollingbourne-manor/)
**Published:** July 2, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Hollingbourne_Manor_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2266486.jpg[/pimage]Grade I listed manor house in the village of Hollingbourne, Kent, built in about 1570.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Hollingbourne_Manor_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2266486.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/yTuzYLhzvtsGtsA99
Hollingbourne Manor is an Elizabethan manor house in the village of Hollingbourne, Kent. It was constructed in about 1570 in the familiar Elizabethan E-plan, but is incomplete. The north wing is variously described as only partly built or destroyed by fire, accounting for the present L-shaped plan.{{sfnp|H3Y8WPBH}}{{sfnp|3LSYIS7G}}
Hollingbourne Manor was designated a Grade I [listed building](https://engole.info/https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1952.{{sfnp|3LSYIS7G}}
## Architecture
The two-storey house, with attics, is built of red brick in English bond, and has a plain tile roof. Four broad brick stacks in English bond, each with three diagonally set flues, project from the gable end of the south wing.{{sfnp|3LSYIS7G}} The great hall, entered from the main entrance through screens, has a flat ceiling at the height of the ground-floor storey.{{sfnp|BIMQZ72F}} The interior of the house contains 18th-century panelling on the first floor, and early 20th-century panelling on the ground floor.{{sfnp|3LSYIS7G}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30114
**Categories:** Manor house
---
### [Eye (mezzotint)](https://engole.info/eye-mezzotint/)
**Published:** June 29, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Eye.webp[/pimage]Mezzotint by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first published in 1946.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Eye.webp)Mezzotint
15 × 20 cm (6 × 8 in)
WikiArt
*Eye* is a mezzotint by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898–1972), first published in 1946. The image is of the artist’s own eye, enlarged in a concave shaving mirror.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|13}}
But the reflection in the pupil is not that of Escher, it is instead the image of Death. Shortly after creating the mezzotint, Escher wrote that:{{sfnp|8SWSIX4Q}}
As the viewer always sees himself in the eye he is looking into, I decided to show a skull reflected in it … Because we are all forced to look at Death, whether we like it or not. Or He looks at us.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30110
**Categories:** Mezzotint
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Drawing Hands](https://engole.info/drawing-hands/)
**Published:** April 28, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Drawing-Hands.webp[/pimage]Lithograph by M. C. Escher, created in 1948.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Drawing-Hands.webp)Lithograph
28 × 13 cm (11 × 13 in)
EscherExplained
*Drawing Hands* is a lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898–1972), created in 1948. It depicts two life-sized hands apparently rising out of a sheet of paper, each drawing the other into existence.{{sfnp|W3JSVQVV}}
The lithograph is an example of Escher’s fascination with paradox and infinity, and invites the observer to contemplate on the interplay of art and reality.{{sfnp|RM9SUEBX}}
The cognitive and computer scientist Douglas Hofstadter has linked Escher’s work to Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, according to which it is possible to construct a proposition within any closed system that, while true, can neither be demonstrated or refuted within that same system. In similar vein, Escher shows that an image’s internal cohesion is no guarantee of its truthfulness.{{sfnp|4GIF3LCL}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29935
**Categories:** Lithograph
---
### [Three Spheres II](https://engole.info/three-spheres-ii/)
**Published:** June 28, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fc/Three_Spheres_II.jpg[/pimage]Lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first published in 1946.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fc/Three_Spheres_II.jpg)Lithograph
26 × 47 cm (10.2 × 18.5 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Three Spheres II* is a lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898–1972), first printed in 1946. It depicts three spheres of equal size placed next to each other on a shiny table. The one on the left is made of glass and is filled with water, so it is both transparent and reflecting. The right-hand sphere has a matt surface. The central sphere features a reflection of the artist in the act of drawing the picture, with the three spheres in front of him, surrounded by almost all of the area around him. The point between the artist’s eyes is at the absolute centre of the central sphere, so whichever way he turns, he remains at the centre.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|13}}
Escher was fascinated with the idea that a mirrored ball captures almost the full sweep of visual space in all directions, demonstrated in many of his other works such as *Still Life with Reflecting Globe*, *[Hand with Reflecting Globe](https://engole.info/hand-with-reflecting-globe)*, and *Dewdrop*.{{sfnp|QYJCH25K|275}} *Three Spheres II* achieves a “triple unity” in two ways: “not only does it \[the central sphere\] reflect its companions to left and right, but all three of them are shown in the drawing on which the artist is working.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|13}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30109
**Categories:** Lithograph
---
### [Hand with Reflecting Globe](https://engole.info/hand-with-reflecting-globe/)
**Published:** June 27, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/66/Hand_with_Reflecting_Sphere.jpg[/pimage]Lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first published in 1935.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/66/Hand_with_Reflecting_Sphere.jpg)Lithograph
32 × 21.5 cm (13 × 8 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Hand with Reflecting Globe* is a lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898–1972), first printed in 1935. It depicts the artist’s hand holding a reflective sphere in which can be seen most of the area around him, albeit compressed and distorted. The point between Escher’s eyes is at the absolute centre of the work, so whichever way he turns, he remains at the centre. “The ego is at the unshakable core of his world”.{{sfnp|36KSMR4C|13}}
Escher was fascinated with the idea that a mirrored ball captures almost the full sweep of visual space in all directions, demonstrated in many of his other works such as *Still Life with Reflecting Globe*, *[Three Spheres II](https://engole.info/three-spheres-ii)*, and *Dewdrop*.{{sfnp|QYJCH25K|275}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30108
**Categories:** Lithograph
---
### [Janet Douglas, Lady Glamis](https://engole.info/janet-douglas-lady-glamis/)
**Published:** March 26, 2022
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** Scottish aristocrat executed in 1537 for treason. Modern day academics highlight that earlier accounts declaring she was tried for witchcraft are inaccurate.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Lady-Jane-Douglas.jpg)Lady Glamis
Douglashistory.co.uk
Janet Douglas, Lady Glamis (c. 1504–1537), was a member of the Scottish nobility who was convicted and then burned at the stake for treason on 17 July 1537 in Edinburgh. A member of the powerful Douglas family, she was the highest ranking person to be executed during the personal rule of James V of Scotland.
Janet was summoned for trial on three earlier occasions: first in December 1528 for aiding her brothers; then in June 1531 her lands were forfeited; and thirdly, in January 1532 when she was accused of poisoning her first husband who had died almost four years earlier. The final accusation levelled against her in 1537 was that she attempted to cause the death of the King by poisoning.
Historians have questioned whether Janet was innocent, and her execution was simply the King issuing a warning to her family. Some early accounts intimate she was tried for witchcraft; modern day academics consider this to be unfounded, but suggest it indicates how assumptions and magical associations were too readily assumed then mistakenly perpetuated.
## Family
Janet or Jonet, born in about 1504,{{sfnp|CZZINJNS}} was one of the four daughters and three sons of George Douglas, Master of Angus and his wife Elizabeth Drummond.{{sfnp|XTKJRE7F|187-190}} The family was wealthy, powerful and held significant political sway.{{sfnp|KENPIA9L}} Janet was particularly devoted to her brothers: Archibald the sixth Earl of Angus, the stepfather of King James V of Scotland, whom he kept in close custody as a means to retain his power; and George Douglas of Pittendreich, master of the royal household.{{sfnp|KENPIA9L}}{{sfnp|3439M8CK|188}} The young King escaped Archibald’s control in 1528, but “came to loathe the Douglasses in general, \[… …\] with a fine and near hysterical fervour.”{{sfnp|KENPIA9L}}
John Lyon, sixth Lord Glamis, married Janet in 1520 when she was sixteen years old.{{sfnp|CZZINJNS}} During 1526 her support of her brothers clashed with her husband’s opinions, causing friction within their household.{{sfnp|PAVPCDD2|119}} The couple had four children by the time of the sixth Lord’s death on 17 September 1528;{{sfnp|CZZINJNS}} their eldest son, her husband’s heir, was a minor, being only seven years old at the time of his father’s death.{{sfnp|6CRDJ9SA}}
By July 1532 Janet had married her second husband, Archibald Campbell of Skipness.{{sfnp|CZZINJNS}} The younger brother of Colin, third Earl of Argyll, he had previously been married and had a daughter from that relationship.{{sfnp|XTKJRE7F|336}} His marriage to Janet did not produce any children.{{sfnp|CZZINJNS}}
## Court cases, conviction and execution
During 1528 the King’s animosity towards the family resulted in Archibald, sixth Earl of Angus facing a charge of treason then forfeiture. Together with his brother George, he resisted exile but eventually the pair capitulated, relocating to Berwick upon Tweed.{{sfnp|KENPIA9L}} Janet also became a target of the King’s displeasure. She was summoned to appear before the Scottish parliament in December 1528 and January 1529 to respond to a charge that during the last week of June 1528 she had aided and assisted her brothers in their plotting against the King.{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|268}} Three others were also summoned to the proceedings to face the same accusations: Hugh Kennedy of Girvanmains; John Hume of Blackadder; and Patrick Charteris of Cuthilgurdy;{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|268-269}} however at a third hearing on 22 January Janet is no longer mentioned.{{sfnp|3439M8CK|188}} Records show that on 20 September 1529 a licence permitting Charteris and Janet – who was referred to as “our lovittis Dame Jonat Douglas”{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|269}} – to undertake an overseas pilgrimage was issued, although it is unlikely she left Scotland as she was successfully pursuing legal action against a relative from October 1529 until March 1530.{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|269}}\[a\]Janet raised an action on behalf of herself and her children against John Lyon of Knockany, stating he assumed possession or management of the profits of Glamis lands. A verdict in her favour was made in March 1530.{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|269}}
Evidently another trial against Janet was being contemplated, as in June 1531 all her goods were gifted to a Gavin Hamilton by the Crown with her being labelled as a “fugitive fra the law and at the horne … for intercommonying with our soverane lordis rebellis”.{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|269}}{{sfnp|3439M8CK|188-189}} The historian Patrick Fraser Tytler considers a trial must have taken place, and a guilty verdict of treason reached at this time for the forfeiture of her goods to be made.{{sfnp|A5P3MKPR|445}}
By the end of January 1532 charges were brought against her alleging that she had poisoned her first husband in 1528. A trial to hear the case was set for early February then re-scheduled for a few weeks later, but on both occasions the lairds called to serve as jurors were fined for non-appearance; her prosecution on that charge then seems to have been abandoned. A few months later her rights as the widow of the sixth Lord Glamis to claim a pension from his estate were restored.{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|269-270}}
Janet spent the next five years, which coincided with the first years of her marriage to her second husband, free of any accusations being made against her. She is mentioned in court documents during this period but only for actions she raised against others to secure payments she claimed – usually successfully – were her legal entitlement.{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|270}}
The extant criminal records around this time are sketchy, giving no indication of events or actions made against Janet until she was tried on 17 July 1537. The indictment details only two charges against her: treasonably conspiring and imagining the death of the King by poison, and assisting and communicating with her brothers.{{sfnp|3439M8CK|189}} The jury of fifteen noblemen found her guilty, and she was sentenced to be executed by burning on Edinburgh’s castle hill;{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|270-271, 294}} the sentence was implemented the same day.{{sfnp|CZZINJNS}} Janet was the highest status person to be executed during James V’s personal rule of Scotland.{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|271}}
## Aftermath
Around a month before Janet’s execution, on 15 June 1537, the 16-year-old seventh Lord Glamis, her eldest son, was arrested and placed in custody in Edinburgh Castle.{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|270}} Her husband, Archibald Campbell of Skipness, together with a priest and a barber were also imprisoned.{{sfnp|A5P3MKPR|446}} The young Lord Glamis was tried on 18 July, the day after his mother’s execution; he was found guilty of concealing Janet’s conspiracy to poison James V.{{sfnp|6CRDJ9SA}} He was sentenced to be executed by [hanging and drawing](https://engole.info/hanged-drawn-and-quartered/), but as he was a minor he was instead kept imprisoned.{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|271}} His lands were forfeited and he remained incarcerated until the death of the King in December 1542.{{sfnp|6CRDJ9SA}}
Janet’s husband remained confined in Edinburgh Castle on the day of her execution. The following day, unaware that he was about to be freed, he tried to escape from his cell.{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|271}} The cord he used was either too short or snapped resulting in his death on the rocks below the castle.{{sfnp|Q2I9K6NM|317}}
On 22 August 1537 trials took place of two men, John Lyon of Knockany and Alexander Mackie, who were deemed Janet’s accomplices. Lyon was declared guilty of hiding her conspiracy against the King and was hanged then beheaded. Mackie had his ears cut off before being banished to Aberdeenshire for making and supplying poison and concealing Lady Glamis’ treason.{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|271}}{{sfnp|3439M8CK|202-203}}\[b\]The same John Lyon of Knockany Janet took court action against in 1529-1530{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|271}}
## Modern interpretations
Over the centuries, writers have regularly documented, speculated and offered varied opinions about the motivation behind Janet’s case and execution.{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|25, 32}} Her contemporary Adam Abell, a Franciscan monk, included brief facts in his manuscript “The Roit or Quheill of Tyme”.{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|25, 32}}\[c\]Adam Abell (1475/80?–1537?), Franciscan friar and chronicler based in Jedburgh, wrote the historical significant manuscript “The Roit or Quheill of Tyme”{{sfnp|WS9HNGPZ}} Early nineteenth-century Scottish antiquarian Robert Pitcairn asserts that Janet was innocent of all charges, maintaining she was a casualty of the King’s loathing of her brothers; his contemporary, Tytler, disagrees feeling her support of her brothers was treason and that she was “not exactly the injured and innocent woman”.{{sfnp|A5P3MKPR|444}} Tytler also feels that the extracts reproduced by Pitcairn lamenting Janet’s death “cannot be quoted as authentic evidence”.{{sfnp|A5P3MKPR|446}}\[d\]In a note Pitcairn does state: “These unpardonable errors show strongly how little is to be relied even on the most accurate of our old Historians in matters of this description. A mistake inadvertently made by was sure to run through all future Histories, without examination.”{{sfnp|3439M8CK|196}} Writing in 1992 Scottish historian Michael Lynch deems “the vindictiveness demonstrated in the execution … was almost unprecedented.”{{sfnp|4H7CFW5I|164}}
It was a common practice among early historians to repeat previously published details without checking the facts themselves, hence errors were continually perpetuated while gaining further credence.{{sfnp|3439M8CK|187,189}} The first account claiming Janet was convicted of witchcraft was written by David Hume of Godscroft. It appears in his *History of the House and Family of Douglas and Angus*, published in the middle of the 17th-century.{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|530}} Modern day academics and historians such as Peter Maxwell-Stuart and Jamie Cameron consider the accounts claiming Janet was a witch or that she was tried for witchcraft are erroneous, which reflects the earlier opinions of Pitcairn and Tytler.{{sfnp|3439M8CK|189}}{{sfnp|A5P3MKPR|444}} Maxwell-Stuart states that he includes brief details concerning Janet’s case in his book *The British Witch* simply because of the incorrect rumours of witchcraft associated with her conviction. Speculating as to why Hume assumed the charge against Janet was witchcraft, Maxwell-Stuart suggests it is indicative of how readily magical associations arose despite evidence to the contrary.{{sfnp|Q24GERQ8|221-223}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Janet raised an action on behalf of herself and her children against John Lyon of Knockany, stating he assumed possession or management of the profits of Glamis lands. A verdict in her favour was made in March 1530.{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|269}} b The same John Lyon of Knockany Janet took court action against in 1529-1530{{sfnp|CUR39X7P|271}} c Adam Abell (1475/80?–1537?), Franciscan friar and chronicler based in Jedburgh, wrote the historical significant manuscript “The Roit or Quheill of Tyme”{{sfnp|WS9HNGPZ}} d In a note Pitcairn does state: “These unpardonable errors show strongly how little is to be relied even on the most accurate of our old Historians in matters of this description. A mistake inadvertently made by was sure to run through all future Histories, without examination.”{{sfnp|3439M8CK|196}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24584
**Categories:** Female, Witch
---
### [Mark Sheridan](https://engole.info/mark-sheridan/)
**Published:** September 18, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Mark_Sheridan_%28comedian%29.jpg[/pimage]English music-hall comedian and singer, whose recording popularised the song "I do like to be beside the Seaside".
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Mark_Sheridan_%28comedian%29.jpg)Mark Sheridan
Wikimedia Commons
Mark Sheridan, born Frederick Shaw (1865/6 – 15 January 1918), was an English music-hall comedian and singer. He recorded more than fifty songs during his career, the most successful of which were “Here We Are! Here We Are! Here We Are Again!!!” (1914) written by Charles Knight and Kenneth Lyle, and described as the battle cry of the British army; “Who Were You with Last Night?” (1912) written by Sheridan and Fred Godfrey; and “I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside” (1909), written by John A. Glover-Kind.{{sfnp|SKN5SFBZ|123-124}}
Sheridan’s music-hall career declined in later years, and he turned his attention to revue. In 1917 he wrote and composed the musical burlesque, *Gay Paree*, but it was not universally well-received. During its opening performance at the Coliseum in Glasgow in early 1918 it was met with some whistling and booing from the audience; the following afternoon Sheridan’s body was found in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow, shot through the head, assumed to be suicide.{{sfnp|WSVW58C2}}{{sfnp|SKN5SFBZ|124-125}}
## Early life and career
Mark Sheridan singing “Who Were You With Last Night”
YouTube
Sheridan was born in Hendon, Tyne and Wear in 1865/6, and began working with his father, a sail maker, on Sunderland docks. He progressed from there to working in the back offices of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Theatre for four years between 1877 and 1881.{{sfnp|IM52SWLI|90}} After moving from amateur dramatics to the professional theatre, he decided to adopt the stage name of Mark Sheridan, taken from the first name of the American writer and humorist Mark Twain and his Irish mother’s maiden surname of Sheridan.{{sfnp|TVNP4DCG}} He honed his act not only in Britain but also in South Africa and Australia, and by 1914 he had become a “roaring success” in his trademark top hat and tails, popular in music halls across Britain.{{sfnp|WSVW58C2}}
## Later career and death
In 1915 Sheridan starred in the comic revue *Winkles*,{{sfnp|MQEKBHAR}} which later toured the northern provinces,{{sfnp|PVKXMBZS}} and as music hall was on the decline, Sheridan decided to concentrate on revue. But during his later years he believed that his popularity was waning, and he was plagued by deep insecurities and depression.{{sfnp|WSVW58C2}}
In 1917 Sheridan returned to Glasgow, where he had enjoyed some of his earliest successes. He had written and personally financed *Gay Paree*, a musical burlesque show based on the W. G. Wills West End favourite, *A Royal Divorce*.{{sfnp|WSVW58C2}} It cost Sheridan £2,000, and had a London company of forty people, including two of his children, Billy and Fred.{{sfnp|WSVW58C2}} On 14 January 1918 *Gay Paree* opened at the Coliseum in Glasgow, with Sheridan playing the part of Napoleon. The production received negative reviews from audiences and newspaper critics, and Sheridan’s own performance was criticised,{{sfnp|WSVW58C2}} which apparently resulted in his suicide the following day.{{sfnp|SKN5SFBZ|125}}
Ironically, *Gay Paree* was not the flop Sheridan had perhaps feared it to be, as it continued for five months under the direction of his widow,{{sfnp|WSVW58C2}} Ethel Maude Davenport, whom he had married in Wandsworth, south London on 16 March 1889.{{sfnp|SKN5SFBZ|124}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23175
**Categories:** Comedian, English, Male, Music hall, Singer
---
### [The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper](https://engole.info/the-queer-story-of-brownlows-newspaper/)
**Published:** April 28, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/H._G._Wells_Daily_Mirror.jpg[/pimage]Short story by H. G. Wells in which the protagonist receives a newspaper printed forty years in the future.
**Content:**
“The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper” is a short story by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published in [*The Strand Magazine*](https://engole.info/the-strand-magazine) in February 1932.{{sfnp|EL9TFU38|xvii}}
The story is narrated by a friend of the protagonist – known only as Brownlow – who rather teasingly ends by saying that “I am as convinced \[of the truth of the story\] as I am convinced that my own name is Hubert G. Wells. Can I say anything stronger than that?”\[a\]Wells’s first name was Herbert.
## Synopsis
The story begins with Brownlow arriving home to his flat at 49 Sussex Court “very definitely on the gayer side of sobriety”, after a dinner party with friends. Scattered on the floor he finds the evening’s mail, but to his annoyance no copy of his usual late edition of the *Evening Standard*. Instead, among his mail and in a pale green wrapper, he discovers a copy of the *Even Standrd,* apparently delivered by hand and addressed to a Mr Evan O’Hara, at Brownlow’s address. It seems to Brownlow that the paper’s contents are describing the affairs of another world, and when he looks at the date he discovers that it is forty years in the future, 10 November 1971.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/H._G._Wells_Daily_Mirror.jpg)H. G. Wells, c. 1918
Wikimedia Commons
The bulk of the remainder of the story is an account of the contents of the newspaper, which features colour photography throughout, with Wells taking the opportunity to issue some prophecies of what he felt 1971 might bring: lower birth rates, tapping geothermal energy, wider coverage of scientific news and inventions, simplified spelling of English, a 13-month reformed calendar, the extinction of gorillas, and hints at some form of world government.
One article in particular catches Brownlow’s eye, an account of a looming world timber famine for 1985. As he has investments in timber he wonders if it might be wise to increase his holdings, and so he tears out that article for safe keeping, leaving the rest of the newspaper in his sitting room. But when he awakes next morning it is gone, dispatched down the rubbish chute by his housekeeper; all he has left of it is the scrap of paper he had torn out and the wrapper in which the newspaper was delivered. By the end of the story the torn-out article has begun to fade, and the “paper” is turning into a powder, which analysis reveals to be a mixture of aluminium and some unidentified resin. The wrapper however, remains intact.
Wells ends the story with another prophecy:
I have an obstinate persuasion that on November 10th, 1971, the name of the tenant of 49, Sussex Court, will be Mr. Evan O’Hara. (There is no tenant of that name now in Sussex Court and I find no evidence in the Telephone Directory, or the London Directory, that such a person exists anywhere in London.) And on that particular evening forty years ahead, he will not get his usual copy of the Even Standrd: instead he will get a copy of the Evening Standard of 1931.
## Commentary
Wells’s prodigious early output of short stories had virtually ended with the publication of “The Door in the Wall” in 1906. In the remaining forty years of his life he wrote only nine more, of which “The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper” is one. Wells himself explained his switch to the novel as “a diversion of attention to more sustained and more exacting forms”.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|75}}
The story can be seen as a precursor to Wells’s scientific romance *The Shape of Things to Come*, published the following year; in his preface to the novel Wells explicitly references his earlier short story in his account of a “dream book”, ostensibly published in 2106 and entrusted to him by the late Dr Philip Raven, an alleged member of the Secretariat of the League of Nations.{{sfnp|E5G9F9H6|208}}
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Wells’s first name was Herbert. b, c var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 18373
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
---
### [Greyfriars Bobby](https://engole.info/greyfriars-bobby/)
**Published:** November 25, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Greyfriars-bobby-edin.jpg[/pimage]Skye Terrier who supposedly spent fourteen years guarding the grave of his owner in 19th-century Edinburgh, until his own death on 14 January 1872.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Greyfriars-bobby-edin.jpg)This life-size statue of Bobby at the corner of Edinburgh’s Candlemaker Row and George IV Bridge is a Category A listed building.\[a\]Designation LB27899{{sfnp
755U9CMP}}
Greyfriars Bobby was a Skye Terrier who supposedly spent fourteen years guarding the grave of his owner in 19th-century Edinburgh, until his own death on 14 January 1872. The story continues to be well known in Scotland, and has been the subject of several books and films.
The “cult” of Greyfriars Bobby began with a feature in the *Scotsman* newspaper dated 13 April 1867, which was re-published by other provincial and national newspapers.{{sfnp|3A57FB98|loc=63}}\[b\]Jan Bondeson has suggested that April 1867 was a slow news period, and had it not been very few would have heard of Greyfriars Bobby.{{sfnp|3A57FB98|loc=133}}
Although there is no doubt that Greyfriars Bobby really existed, some commentators have cast doubt on certain aspects of the story. One issue is that for the account to be true, Bobby would had have to have lived for between sixteen and eighteen years;{{sfnp|3A57FB98|loc=2097}} according to The Kennel Club, twelve years would be a good lifespan for the breed.{{sfnp|NRND3S2C}} This and other anomalies have led to the suggestion that the first Greyfriars Bobby died in 1867, following which the dog was replaced by a surrogate.{{sfnp|3A57FB98|loc=2097}}
## Traditional story
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Greyfriars_Bobby_%28cropped%29.jpg)Albumen print (c. 1865) thought to be of Greyfriars Bobby
Wikimedia Commons
The common version of the story originates from the account of a case in Edinburgh’s Burgh Court, published in *The Scotsman* newspaper on 13 April 1867. John Traill, owner of Traill’s Temperance Coffee House just outside Greyfriars Kirk, was accused under the Dog Duty Act of 1867 of harbouring an unlicenced dog, Greyfriars Bobby. Facing the penalty of a £5 fine,\[c\]The tax on a dog was an initial seven shillings followed by an annual payment of five shillings.{{sfnp|3A57FB98|loc=97}} Traill explained to the court that the dog was well known locally for his fidelity in remaining at his master’s grave, and that for many years Bobby had been visiting his premises daily looking for a meal. A witness for the defence, Thomas Cowan, the licencee of the Hole in the Wall public house opposite the kirkyard, stated that he also sometimes fed the dog.{{sfnp|3A57FB98|loc=121}}
The curator of Greyfriars, James Brown, described as “old and in poor circumstances”, stood up and offered to pay the dog tax himself, rather than have Bobby “put out of the way” as he described it.{{sfnp|3A57FB98|loc=121}}\[d\]The Dogs Act gave the authorities the right to euthanase unlicensed stray dogs.{{sfnp|3A57FB98|loc=121}}
## Memorials
The Greyfriars Bobby Fountain in Edinburgh includes a life-size statue of Greyfriars Bobby created by William Brodie. It was paid for by a local philanthropist, Baroness Burdett-Coutts, and unveiled on 15 November 1873.{{sfnp|IEG5JZ8U}}{{sfnp|WB78X2Z6|226}} Edinburgh’s smallest [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building), it stands near the south (main) entrance to Greyfriars Kirkyard. It had an upper fountain for humans and a lower fountain for dogs, but its water supply was cut off (together with Edinburgh’s other drinking fountains) in about 1975 owing to health scares.{{sfnp|IEG5JZ8U}} The monument was fully restored under the supervision of Edinburgh District Council in 1985. A plaque on the base reads:
A tribute to the affectionate fidelity of Greyfriars Bobby. In 1858, this faithful dog followed the remains of his master to Greyfriars Churchyard and lingered near the spot until his death in 1872. With permission erected by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts
Inscribed on the statue is “Greyfriars Bobby, from the life just before his death” and “W.H. Brodie Sc RSA 1872”.{{sfnp|IEG5JZ8U}}
A red granite monument was erected close to Bobby’s grave by The Dog Aid Society of Scotland and unveiled by the Duke of Gloucester on 13 May 1981.{{sfnp|755U9CMP}}{{sfnp|97FC59GB}} An insciption on the monument reads: “Greyfriars Bobby – Died 14 January 1872 – Aged 16 years – Let his loyalty and devotion be a lesson to us all”.{{sfnp|4TYRY4VD}}
Greyfriars Bobby’s collar and bowl are on display at the Museum of Edinburgh, formerly known as Huntley House Museum.{{sfnp|4NSTYCJQ}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Designation LB27899{{sfnp
755U9CMP}} b Jan Bondeson has suggested that April 1867 was a slow news period, and had it not been very few would have heard of Greyfriars Bobby.{{sfnp|3A57FB98|loc=133}} c The tax on a dog was an initial seven shillings followed by an annual payment of five shillings.{{sfnp|3A57FB98|loc=97}} d The Dogs Act gave the authorities the right to euthanase unlicensed stray dogs.{{sfnp|3A57FB98|loc=121}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 11522
**Categories:** Dog, Legend
---
### [Henley Bridge](https://engole.info/henley-bridge/)
**Published:** August 23, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Hanging_Bridge_1892.jpg[/pimage]Grade I listed road bridge over the River Thames at Henley-on-Thames, between Oxfordshire and Berkshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Henley_Bridge.jpg)The upstream side of the bridge at Henley-on-Thames, from near the Henley Royal Regatta headquarters on the Berkshire bank
Wikimedia Commons
The Grade I [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) Henley Bridge at Henley-on-Thames was built in 1786, over the River Thames between Oxfordshire and Berkshire. The road bridge, occupying the site of an earlier 12th-century bridge probably built by King Henry II in the 1170s, incorporates part of that earlier bridge’s easternmost span.{{sfnp|ASR27IY6}}
The earliest recording of a bridge at Henley is in the Patent Rolls of 1232. Built of timber on stone piers, it was carried away in the great flood of 1774.{{sfnp|KRGIMCE6|268-271}}
The present-day five-arched bridge was designed by William Hayward, who died in 1782 before work on its construction had begun.{{sfnp|ASR27IY6}} The bridge was built by the Oxford mason John Townesend,{{sfnp|TUZR7VFG|114}} at a cost of £10,000. A toll bar was installed on the Berkshire side of the bridge, where it remained for 100 years until the cost of the bridge’s construction had been recovered.{{sfnp|9THJB69A}}
The keystone sculptures of Isis and Thamesis, one on each side of the central arch, were created by Anne Seymour Damer (1748–1828).{{sfnp|75VESKCY|550-551}} Thamesis is an ancient name for the River Thames, and until relatively recently the name Isis was used for the Thames from its source in the Cotswolds until it merges with the River Thame at Dorchester-on-Thames. Today it is usually only that section of the Thames flowing through Oxford which is known as the Isis.{{sfnp|Y7Q9ESSB}}
Henley Bridge was the finishing line for the first Oxford and Cambridge university boat race in June 1829, won by Oxford.{{sfnp|WQ5Q3Y58}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26703
**Categories:** Bridge, English, Thames
---
### [Pearson's Magazine](https://engole.info/pearsons-magazine/)
**Published:** January 17, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Pearsons.png[/pimage]Monthly publication founded by Cyril Arthur Pearson, published 1896–1939, the first British periodical to include a crossword.
**Content:**
Cover of October 1902 edition
*Pearson’s Magazine* was a monthly publication founded by the English publisher Cyril Arthur Pearson (1866–1921), published from 1896 until 1939; an American version was launched in 1899,{{sfnp|YLZYV9NM}} but ceased publication in 1925.{{sfnp|PWKH4TUS}} Initially priced at sixpence,\[a\]2½p in decimal currency. the cost rose gradually to a shilling by 1918.{{sfnp|7JSWYK9C|168}} The magazine made history by being the first British periodical to publish a crossword puzzle, in February 1922.{{sfnp|7JSWYK9C|166}}\[b\]*The Daily Telegraph* was the first newspaper to include a daily crossword puzzle, in 1925.{{sfnp|V289GRKC}}
Unlike most of its competitors, each edition of the magazine featured a different portrait or illustration on its front cover, and the magazine made liberal use of coloured illustrations inside.{{sfnp|7JSWYK9C|163}} The magazine contained an eclectic mix of content, including readers’ contests, articles on self-improvement, on the rich and famous, and short stories and serials.{{sfnp|YLZYV9NM}} The first issue, with which Pearson himself was not entirely happy, opened with a feature on “Artists and Their Work”, a review of the work of recently prominent artists, which remained the lead feature in most issues for the following thirty years.{{sfnp|7JSWYK9C|159}} One of H. G. Wells’s best-known novels, *The War of the Worlds*, was serialised in the magazine from April to December 1897,{{sfnp|7JSWYK9C|161}} before being published in book form the following year.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|57}} The magazine also published the first Lord Peter Wimsey stories, by Dorothy L. Sayers.{{sfnp|7JSWYK9C|167}}
A significant factor in the magazine’s success, according to Pearson, was the fictional detective created by Cutcliffe Hyne, named Captain Kettle, who in his time was second only to Sherlock Holmes in his popularity with the reading public. Kettle appeared in almost every issue from 1897 until 1899, and remained a recurring character until well into the First World War.{{sfnp|7JSWYK9C|160}}
The birth of radio and television during the 1930s signalled the end for fiction magazines such as *Pearson’s*, and on the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 it was merged with *[The Strand Magazine](https://engole.info/the-strand-magazine)*.{{sfnp|7JSWYK9C|168}} According to the writer and researcher Mike Ashley:
The pleasure of Pearson’s over its entire life was that it never took itself seriously and was there for fun and escapism. It used its position, through stories and articles, to alert the public to the need for change, but it never sought to be pretentious …{{sfnp
— 7JSWYK9C|168}}
## Editors
Pearson claimed to be the magazine’s editor for the first four years of its existence, but the day-to-day management was carried out by Percy Everett, his editorial director.{{sfnp|7JSWYK9C|160,168}}
- Cyril Arthur Pearson (1896–1899)
- Percy W. Everett (1900–1911)
- Philip O’Farrell (1912–1919)
- John Reed Wade (January 1920 – April 1939)
- W. E. Johns (May 1939 – November 1939)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a 2½p in decimal currency. b *The Daily Telegraph* was the first newspaper to include a daily crossword puzzle, in 1925.{{sfnp|V289GRKC}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24364
**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in North West Leicestershire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-north-west-leicestershire/)
**Published:** March 4, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/North_West_Leicestershire_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-North_West_Leicestershire_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the district of North West Leicestershire, Leicestershire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/North_West_Leicestershire_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-North_West_Leicestershire_UK_locator_map.svg.png)North West Leicestershire shown within Leicestershire
Wikimedia Commons
The non-metropolitan district of North West Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England is one of the seven districts and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Leicestershire.{{sfnp|DFUAZLJK}}
The district contains 7 of the 93 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Leicestershire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Castle Ruins
(including 2 Isolated Towers at South East
and South West Angles of Outer Wall)**Ashby-de-la-Zouch
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/QqP4hcy7CWTVoTtK7)Late 15th century[1073591](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1073591)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d4/Ashby_de_la_Zouch_castle_main_buildings.JPG/1280px-Ashby_de_la_Zouch_castle_main_buildings.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Chapel of the Holy Trinity**Staunton Harold Park
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/gVDGcoWWmZT4Bx9z9)653–1665[1074386](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1074386)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Staunton_Harold_church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1177632.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary and St Hardulph**Breedon Hill
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/pJEvB2gojwjnuB1k8)9th or 10th century[1361364](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1361364)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Breedonchurch.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Nicholas**Lockington-Hemington
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/cZ9Z29a5aKP9W1gy6)c. 1200[1074178](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1074178)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/39/Parish_Church_of_St_Nicholas.JPG/1280px-Parish_Church_of_St_Nicholas.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Parish Church of St Helen**Ashby-de-la-Zouch
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Zn6s7ypGQqi4ag4R8)4th-century origins[1188344](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1188344)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/The_Parish_Church_of_St._Helen_-_geograph.org.uk_-_796695.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Staunton Harold Hall**Staunton Harold
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/j7rJEhkebeQ1tiAj8)c. 1700[117755](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1177552)[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/5Fv5JsGUcFEX1pqk8)ta-border-color="#abb8c3">[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Staunton_Harold_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_528240.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**The Sir John Moore
Church of England
Primary School**Apppleby Magna
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/q4uwSZbh8uvbX3LK6)697[1177850](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1177850)[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/The_Sir_John_Moore_Church_Of_England_School.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
## See also
e.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-leicestershire" title="">Grade I listed buildings in Leicestershire
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27246
**Categories:** Leicestershire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [English Mechanic](https://engole.info/english-mechanic/)
**Published:** December 15, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/English-Mechanic.jpg[/pimage]UK's first kit car, 1900.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/English-Mechanic.jpg)1904 English Mechanic
gracesguide.co.uk
The English Mechanic is almost certainly the UK’s first kit car. Designed by the engineer Thomas Hyler-White (1871–1930), the name is derived from the magazine in which the plans to build it were published in fifty-six parts from January 1900, *English Mechanic & World of Science & Art*. The car was based on a Benz Velo, and used a de Dion {{convert|1.75|bhp|adj=on|r=1|abbr=on}}, petrol or steam-powered, with three or four wheels.{{sfnp|GFZUCDMC|7}}
The number of cars built is unknown, but it is thought that at least two have survived.{{sfnp|GFZUCDMC|7}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 12319
**Categories:** Kit car
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [The Apparition of Mrs. Veal](https://engole.info/the-apparition-of-mrs-veal/)
**Published:** March 17, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Account of a ghostly visitation said to have occurred in Canterbury in 1705.
**Content:**
Title page of the first edition
Wikimedia Commons
*A True Relation of the Apparition of Mrs. Veal (the Next Day After Her Death) to Mrs. Bargrave* is an account of a ghostly visitation said to have occurred in Canterbury in 1705. A “rudimentary” ghost story and arguably a precursor to the Graveyard School of poetry, it was published anonymously in a pamphlet dated 1706, although it is generally considered to have been written by Daniel Defoe.
Stories of [revenants](https://engole.info/revenant/) – the spirit of a dead person come back to visit the living – have existed for thousands of years, but Defoe was writing in a time of some moral crisis. The materialistic philosophies of the time sought to banish the belief in any kind of afterlife, so the account of Mrs Veal’s apparition may have been a form of theological propaganda.
Alternatively, Sir Walter Scott, among others, has suggested that the pamphlet may have been intended to promote the sale of Charles Drelincourt’s *The Christian’s Defence Against the Fears of Death* (1651), which is recommended reading in the pamphlet;{{sfnp|DQ8INVQV|46}} Defoe was at the time a bookseller in London.
## Synopsis
The pamphlet tells the story of a Canterbury resident, Mrs Bargrave, who is visited by Mrs Veal, an old friend and former neighbour, who says that she would like to catch up before departing for a journey. Mrs Bargrave’s kiss of greeting is declined by Mrs Veal, who explains that she is unwell. The pair discuss books on death and friendship, before Mrs Veal asks her friend to write a letter to her brother concerning a number of gifts she would like him to make. She also discloses that her locked cabinet contains a purse filled with gold. Mrs Bargrave admires the dress worn by Mrs Veal and steps out to call her daughter, but on her return she finds that Mrs Veal has left the house and is standing in the street ready to leave. Mrs Veal says that she must be going and walks away, watched by Mrs Bargrave until she is out of sight. She subsequently looks for Mrs Veal, but is told by one of her friend’s relatives that she had died the day before her visit to Mrs Bargrave’s house.
## Genre
Written in the style of the literary Gothic, *The Apparition of Mrs Veal* anticipates in its structure many of the devices used to create an illusion of documentary authenticity in the later Victorian and Edwardian ghost stories by writers such as Algernon Blackwood.{{sfnp|DQ8INVQV|47}} According to the preface, the story is relayed to the publisher via “a gentleman, a justice of peace, at Maidstone, in Kent, and a very intelligent person, to his friend in London, as it is here worded; which discourse is attested by a very sober and understanding gentlewoman, a kinswoman of the said gentleman’s, who lives in Canterbury, within a few doors of the house in which the within-named Mrs Bargrave lives”.{{sfnp|KYK8PQTV|105-106}}
## Themes
The story of Mrs Balgrave’s visitation can be seen as representative of its time, and like other “apparation narratives” a response to the crisis in religious belief that had been provoked by the emergence of modern materialist philosophies. The authors of such apparition narratives sought to convince sceptics of the existence of the afterlife and divine providence through accounts of spiritual visitations. As such, they can be seen as works of “theological propaganda”, an outlook which later ghost stories, written purely for the purposes of entertainment, lacked.{{sfnp|FRL7PKE7|5}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 17067
**Categories:** Ghost story
---
### [The Bottle Conjuror](https://engole.info/the-bottle-conjuror/)
**Published:** March 25, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/An_Apology_To_The_Town%2C_For_Himself_And_The_Bottle.png[/pimage]18th-century hoax featuring an acrobat inserting his body into an empty wine bottle.
**Content:**
The Bottle Conjuror was the stage name of an anonymous performer advertised to appear at the Haymarket Theatre in England, on 16 January 1749. While on stage, the acrobat was to have inserted his body into an empty wine bottle, in full view of the audience. Following his non-appearance, the audience rioted and gutted the theatre.
The identity of the hoax’s perpetrator is unknown, but several authors consider John Montagu, 2nd Duke of Montagu, to have been responsible. While in the company of other noblemen, the duke was reported to have made a bet that, with an advertisement claiming that a man could “creep into a quart bottle”, he could fill a theatre.{{sfnp|K8TNHYR4|69}} The event was advertised in several London newspapers and became the talk of the town.{{sfnp|K8TNHYR4|476}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/An_Apology_To_The_Town%2C_For_Himself_And_The_Bottle.png)William Phillips as [Harlequin](https://engole.info/harlequinade/), in a representation of the Bottle Conjuror, English broadside dated 1748/9
Wikimedia Commons
## Performance
At the New Theatre in the Hay-market, on Monday next, the 16th instant, to be seen, a person who performs the several most surprising things following, viz. first, he takes a common walking-cane from any of the spectators, and thereon plays the music of every instrument now in use, and likewise sings to surprising perfection. Secondly, he presents you with a common wine bottle, which any of the spectators may first examine; this bottle is placed on a table in the middle of the stage, and he (without any equivocation) goes into it in sight of all the spectators, and sings in it; during his stay in the bottle any person may handle it, and see plainly that it does not exceed a common tavern bottle.
Those on the stage or in the boxes may come in masked habits (if agreeable to them); and the performer (if desired) will inform them who they are.{{sfnp
— K8TNHYR4In front of a huge audience, which included the king’s second son, the Duke of Cumberland,{{sfnp|7E6RPHUP|29}} the theatre lights were brought up at about 7 pm. With no music to keep them entertained, the crowd grew restless and began to voice their discontent. A theatre employee appeared from behind the curtain and told the audience that, if the performer did not appear, their money would be refunded. One member of the audience reportedly shouted that if the audience paid double, the conjurer would fit himself into a pint bottle.{{sfnp|K8TNHYR4|71-72}}
As the crowd grew more restless, someone threw a lighted candle onto the stage. Most of the audience – including the duke{{sfnp|7E6RPHUP|29}} – took this as their cue to leave, some “losing a cloak, others a hat, others a wig, and swords also”. A group of angry spectators stayed inside and gutted the theatre. Benches were ripped up, scenery was destroyed and boxes were demolished. Debris was dragged into the street and burnt on a bonfire.{{sfnp|K8TNHYR4|72}}
## Aftermath
Suspicion immediately fell upon the theatre’s manager, Samuel Foote, who claimed he knew nothing about the performance, but that he had warned the theatre’s owner, John Potter, that he suspected something was not quite correct. Potter himself fell under suspicion, but was apparently innocent, “a strange man” having dealt with all the arrangements that night.{{sfnp|2QMDZ9V4|477}}
The “Man in the Bottle” instantly became the target of newspapers and pamphlets, which published cutting satires about the conjurer’s non-appearance, and its consequences. Many satirical prints were produced, among them two caricatures published within the month: *The Bottle-Conjuror from Head to Foot, without equivocation*, and *English Credulity; or ye’re all bottled*.{{sfnp|PE99VC7V|233}}\[a\]The hoax was the inspiration for Isaac Cruikshank’s 1803 anti-Napoleon cartoon *Britannia blowing up the Corsican Bottle-Conjurer* One newspaper explained the non-appearance of the conjurer by claiming that he had been ready to perform on the night, but was asked for a private audience beforehand; whereupon receiving a demonstration of the trick, the viewer had “corked up the bottle, whipped it in his pocket and made off.”{{sfnp|2QMDZ9V4|477}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The hoax was the inspiration for Isaac Cruikshank’s 1803 anti-Napoleon cartoon *Britannia blowing up the Corsican Bottle-Conjurer* b, c var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 17681
**Categories:** Hoax
---
### [Jack Sprat](https://engole.info/jack-sprat/)
**Published:** April 3, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Jack_Sprat_and_his_wife_by_Frederick_Richardson.jpg[/pimage]English nursery rhyme first recorded in the form we know it today in 1670.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Jack_Sprat_and_his_wife_by_Frederick_Richardson.jpg)Jack Sprat and his wife, by Frederick Richardson
Wikimedia Commons
“Jack Sprat” is an English nursery rhyme, first recorded in the form it is known today by John Ray in 1670.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|280}}{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|280-281})
> Jack Sprat could eat no fat,
> His wife could eat no lean,
> And so between them both, you see,
> They licked the platter clean.
During the 16th and 17th centuries the term *Jack Sprat* was commonly used to describe a dwarf, or other small person.{{sfnp|XQMUDKMH}}
The American writer Katherine Elwes Thomas, in her efforts to root nursery rhymes in historical figures and events, has suggested that “Jack Sprat” is an allusion to King Charles I and his wife Henrietta Maria and their efforts to get funding from parliament to fund his naval war against Spain. Parliament refused to supply sufficient money for Charles’s military needs, leaving him “lean”, but with his queen consort Henrietta Maria he was free to “lick the platter clean” after he dissolved parliament in 1628 by imposing whatever additional taxes he chose.{{sfnp|IE98ISVV|209-210}} The historian Stanley Edgar Hyman has characterised Thomas’s work as an “absurd reading of nursery rhymes as hermetic political history”.{{sfnp|BECD6RPL}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24608
**Categories:** Nursery rhyme
---
### [The Burning Giraffe](https://engole.info/the-burning-giraffe/)
**Published:** April 6, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/The-Burning-Graffe.webp[/pimage]Oil painting by the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí, created in 1937.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/The-Burning-Graffe.webp)Oil on panel
35 cm × 27 cm (14 in × 11 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Burning Giraffe*, original title *Jirafa en llamas*, is an oil painting by the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí. It was created in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, and reflects his internal struggle with the events then taking place in his country.{{sfnp|S83MTG6R}}
The painting depicts two female figures with vaguely phallic shapes emerging from their backs. The open drawers protruding from the left leg and chest of the blue figure in the foreground is a reference to the Freudian idea of an “inner, subconscious within man”. Dalí was a great admirer of the psychoanalytic method developed by Sigmund Freud:{{sfnp|S83MTG6R}}
The only difference between immortal Greece and our era is Sigmund Freud who discovered that the human body, which in Greek times was merely Neoplatonical, is now filled with secret drawers only to be opened through psychoanalysis.{{sfnp
— 8GETNJPL}}
In the distance is a giraffe with its mane on fire. Dalí first used the burning giraffe image in his 1930 film *L’Âge d’Or* (*The Golden Age*), but it did not appear in his paintings until 1937. He believed that the 16th-century French astrologer and physician Nostradamus had predicted that the appearance of monsters pressaged the outbreak of war, and that “the flaming giraffe equals masculine cosmic apocalyptic monster”.{{sfnp|WMU9ZTLG|122-123}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27325
**Categories:** Painting, Surrealist
---
### [Bile Beans](https://engole.info/bile-beans/)
**Published:** June 23, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Bile_Beans.jpg[/pimage]Laxative and tonic first marketed in the 1890s. The product supposedly contained substances extracted from a hitherto unknown vegetable source by a fictitious chemist known as Charles Forde.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Bile_Beans.jpg)Ghost sign advertising Bile Beans, painted on the wall of 18 Lord Mayors Walk, just outside the city walls in York, England
Wikimedia Commons
Bile Beans was a laxative and tonic first marketed in the 1890s.{{sfnp|PZKKAKUK}}{{sfnp|P8Q8Q9BT|22}} The product supposedly contained substances extracted from a hitherto unknown vegetable source by a fictitious chemist known as Charles Forde.{{sfnp|QJ7IESJG}} In the early years Bile Beans were marketed as “Charles Forde’s Bile Beans for Biliousness”, and sales relied heavily on newspaper advertisements. Among other cure-all claims, Bile Beans promised to “disperse unwanted fat” and “purify and enrich the blood”.{{sfnp|9U55TRPN}}
Although the manufacturer claimed that the formula for Bile Beans was based on a vegetable source known only to Aboriginal Australians, its actual ingredients, which included cascara, rhubarb, liquorice and menthol, were commonly found in pharmacies of the period. A court case initiated in Scotland in 1905 found that the Bile Bean Manufacturing Company’s business was based on a fraud and conducted fraudulently, but Bile Beans nevertheless continued to be sold until the 1980s.
## Formulation and manufacture
Charles Edward Fulford (1870–1906) and Ernest Albert Gilbert (1875–1905) first sold Bile Beans in Australia in late 1897, marketed as “Gould’s Bile Beans”.{{sfnp|H728VQ3X}} Fulford was a Canadian who had travelled to Australia to sell Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People for his uncle, George Taylor Fulford.{{sfnp|32JTMSC6}}{{sfnp|FKGC74YA}}
Fulford and Gilbert established the Bile Bean Manufacturing Company in Leeds, England, in 1899. It was claimed that the formula for Bile Beans was created by an Australian scientist Charles Forde in 1898, based on research he had conducted on a vegetable source known only to Aboriginal Australians. In reality, Charles Forde did not exist; the name was used as an alias for Charles Fulford, who had no scientific training. The beans were initially manufactured in America by Parke Davis & Co. of Detroit, until the Bile Bean Manufacturing Company set up a production facility in Leeds, England,{{sfnp|MV589S9H}} trading under the name of C. E. Fulford Limited, which also sold other patent medicines, including the Zam-Buk ointment,\[a\] Zam-Buk was manufactured by the Zam-Buk Company of Leeds, another of Charles Fulford’s enterprises.{{sfnp|MV589S9H}} Pep pastilles and later Vitapointe hair conditioner.{{sfnp|PZKKAKUK}}\[b\]The principle production plant moved to Blyth, Northumberland in 1963.{{sfnp|4XKCT2ZK}}
The product sold by Fulford and Gilbert was not the first patent medicine marketed as “Bile Beans”. A different type of Bile Beans was invented by James F. Smith, a chemist from Texarkana, Texas, in the 1870s or 1880s, and J.F. Smith & Co traded out of St Louis, Mo. The firm also produced a product called “Smith’s Blood Beans”, claimed to “purify the blood” and was “put up in packages similar to Bile Beans” with “sugar coating blood red in color”, and a “wrapper … lithographed in red ink instead of black”.{{sfnp|MBZF9PSP|133}} In 1902 the Bile Bean Manufacturing Company acquired the trade mark of “J. F. Smith’s Bile Beans” in the UK, which had been registered in 1887.{{sfnp|6YCS3JNQ}}
According to a 1903 report published in the British Medical Journal, the chief ingredients of Bile Beans were cascara, rhubarb, liquorice and menthol, packaged as a gelatine-coated pill,{{sfnp|2KX6LSH3}} all ingredients commonly found in pharmacies of the period.{{sfnp|9AJFVLBA}} It was not until 1941 that English companies were legally required to disclose the active ingredients in their non-prescription drugs.{{sfnp|BL3MSN7N}} By the 1940s, the ingredients included various purgatives, cholagogues, and carminatives, including aloin (aloe), Podophyllum, cascara, scammony, jalap, colocynth, leptandrin, saponis (soap), cardamom, capsicum, ginger, peppermint oil, and gentian, mixed with liquorice, powdered gum (acacia or tragacanth) and glucose, coated with black charcoal or carbon powder to form ovoid pills.{{sfnp|L7GEFBEX}}
## Findings of fraud
In 1905 the Bile Beans Manufacturing Company initiated a passing off court case in Scotland against an Edinburgh chemist, George Graham Davidson, who sold “Davidson’s Bile Beans”, seeking to prevent him from selling any product using the name “bile beans” except that supplied by the company. The presiding judge, Lord Ardwall, rejected the case, as he considered that the plaintiff’s business was “founded on, and conducted by fraud”, there being no secret ingredient and no connection with any plant found in Australia.{{sfnp|9AJFVLBA}}{{sfnp|C77993WQ}} The Court of Session dismissed an appeal, because it considered that the Bile Bean Manufacturing Company had deliberately defrauded the public by making false factual statements about the product, concluding that it was not entitled to any legal protection against the use of the term “bile beans”.{{sfnp|6YCS3JNQ}}
## Marketing strategy
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Advert%3B_Medically_approved_Bile_Beans_Wellcome_L0044201.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
After setting up in England in 1899 the company spent about £60,000 a year in advertising its products,{{sfnp|MV589S9H}} and according to Birmingham University Professor of Medicine Robert Saundby,{{sfnp|2EIKGR9Q}} “created a demand by flooding the country with advertisements, placards, pamphlets and imaginary pictures.”{{sfnp|5G34GDEK|5}} Early newspaper promotions usually took the form of testimonials proclaiming “miraculous life changing cures”.{{sfnp|P89RLRAP}} Often illustrated, they included letters from customers cured of lost appetites, severe headaches, indigestion and biliousness.{{sfnp|BZXYZMHH}} A half-page advertisement in the *Sheffield Evening Telegraph* on 12 October 1900 featured a lady who had been cured by Bile Beans after ten doctors had failed to successfully treat her condition; copies of signed affidavits from neighbours were also printed.{{sfnp|G3W6ZSXC}} The level of advertising was not curtailed despite the adverse comments made by the judges in the court ruling.{{sfnp|NCAHQ66B}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/BileBeanMarch.jpg)Frontispiece to the sheet music for the “Bile Bean March”
Wikimedia Commons
Among the more unusual marketing promotions undertaken by the Bile Beans Manufacturing Company was the “Bile Bean March”, composed by Charles Fulford’s older brother [Frank Harris Fulford](https://engole.info/frank-harris-fulford/) and first published in 1898.{{sfnp|32JTMSC6}}{{sfnp|UVFQUG2E}} The music was described as “a bold, spirited composition” in a 1902 newspaper report.{{sfnp|W78LB2K5}} Readers could apply to receive a free copy of the sheet music by sending their address details to the company.{{sfnp|JBVAU5XM}} Another marketing ploy was the production of a cookery book,{{sfnp|UVFQUG2E}} which was also made widely available free of charge.{{sfnp|P89RLRAP}} A *Bile Bean Puzzle Book* was published during the early 1930s and also freely distributed.{{sfnp|6JIN3KQG}} By that time advertising for Bile Beans had become increasingly targeted at women, promising them health, bright eyes and a slim figure if taken regularly.{{sfnp|P89RLRAP}}
When Radio Luxembourg started longwave commercial radio broadcasts in English in 1933, its first advertisers were Fulford’s Bile Beans and Zam-Buk.{{sfnp|TTKFAUPF|47}}
During the 1940s newspaper advertising was supplemented by a poster campaign. Aimed at maintaining high levels of purchasing by women, the posters featured young ladies dressed to participate in various activities, including horse riding, swimming and hiking;{{sfnp|UVFQUG2E}} the designs were the work of S. H. Benson,{{sfnp|B9EBDZPT}} a London advertising agency whose clients included Bovril and Guinness.{{sfnp|74AQIGUV}} *The Bulletin of the North Carolina State Board of Health* hypothesised in 1916–17 that many provincial newspapers relied heavily on the revenues generated by advertisements from manufacturers of suspect remedies, and it speculated that editorial control had been applied to restrict extensive reporting of the Bile Beans court case.{{sfnp|ZVIMF8EP}} Similar suspicions had been raised almost ten years earlier by medical director Eric Pritchard,{{sfnp|BNFWJ2G5}} who went on to highlight a clause showing newspaper advertising contracts could be revoked if the publication carried any material considered “detrimental to the Company’s interest”.{{sfnp|UZKNKIHR|175}}
## Later history
Gilbert died in 1905 and Charles Fulford the following year in Australia, aged 36, after which the business was run by Charles’s older brother, Frank Harris Fulford.{{sfnp|32JTMSC6}}{{sfnp|UVFQUG2E}} Charles’s estate was valued at £1.3 million, around £128 million today. He made several bequests which included the gift of twenty per cent of the company shares to the British charity Barnardo’s, although this conditional donation sparked consternation.{{sfnp|5YP8QMRY}} The clauses stipulated the charity must set up a limited company that would only sell Bile Beans and patent medicines manufactured by Fulford’s businesses; additionally, Barnardo’s were forbidden to sell any of the shares. A writer in the *British Medical Journal* suggested that the bequest presented the charity with an ethical dilemma, as it enjoyed the patronage from medical and religious professions, and trading in products described by a judge as fraudulent would be perpetuating the deception.{{sfnp|HQ8KXP9S}} Initially Barnardo’s refused the gift but eventually accepted an unconditional lump sum.{{sfnp|UZKNKIHR|172-173}}
Despite the Bile Beans Manufacturing Company having lost the Scottish court case in 1906, Bile Beans remained popular through the 1930s, and continued to be sold until the 1980s.{{sfnp|P8Q8Q9BT|22}} The business was so successful that Frank Fulford was able to purchase Headingley Castle in Leeds in 1909, and donate artworks to the museum at Temple Newsam.{{sfnp|P89RLRAP}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Zam-Buk was manufactured by the Zam-Buk Company of Leeds, another of Charles Fulford’s enterprises.{{sfnp|MV589S9H}} b The principle production plant moved to Blyth, Northumberland in 1963.{{sfnp|4XKCT2ZK}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2630
**Categories:** Patent medicine
---
### [Hey Diddle Diddle](https://engole.info/hey-diddle-diddle/)
**Published:** March 31, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Hey_Diddle_Diddle_2_-_WW_Denslow_-_Project_Gutenberg_etext_18546.jpg/330px-Hey_Diddle_Diddle_2_-_WW_Denslow_-_Project_Gutenberg_etext_18546.jpg[/pimage]Best-known nonsense verse in the English language, which gave rise to the phrase "over the moon".
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Hey_Diddle_Diddle_2_-_WW_Denslow_-_Project_Gutenberg_etext_18546.jpg/330px-Hey_Diddle_Diddle_2_-_WW_Denslow_-_Project_Gutenberg_etext_18546.jpg)Illustration by William Wallace Denslow
Wikimedia Commons
“Hey Diddle Diddle” is perhaps the best-known nonsense verse in the English language, about which “a considerable amount of nonsense has been written”. The earliest known version appeared in print in *MG’s Melody* (c. 1756), although it seems possible that it had been in circulation since at least the 16th century.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|240-241}} The rhyme is considered to be the origin of the phrase “over the moon”, meaning “extremely happy”.{{sfnp|RRFGQDIF}}
The common modern version is:
> Hey diddle diddle,
> The cat and the fiddle,
> The cow jumped over the moon;
> The little dog laughed
> To see such sport,
> And the dish ran away with the spoon.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|240-241}}
The word “sport” at the end of the penultimate line is sometimes replaced with “fun” or “craft”, as it did in the 1765 version.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|240-241}} The melody commonly associated with the rhyme was written by the English composer and nursery rhyme collector James William Elliott, and published for the first time in his *National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs* (1870).{{sfnp|29XK5YG7|502}}
## Meaning
In the words of *A Dictionary of English Folklore*, “Nursery rhymes have suffered the indignity of having more nonsense written about them than any other folklore genre”,{{sfnp|EAHER84S}} and “Hey Diddle Diddle” is no exception.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|240-241}} Among the meanings ascribed to the rhyme is that it is a corrupted version of an ancient Greek chorus,\[a\]Almost certainly a hoax.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|240-241}} papist priests urging the labouring class to work harder, a reference to the worship of the ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor, or that it refers to Elizabeth, Lady Katherine Grey, and her relationships with the Earls of Hertford and Leicester. It has also been suggested that the expression “cat and the fiddle” refers to Katharine of Aragon, Katherine la Fidèle, the first wife of King Henry VIII, but all of these hypotheses are now largely discredited.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|240-241}}
The image of a cat playing a fiddle was popular in early medieval illuminated manuscripts,{{sfnp|75RDIH9Y|323}} and the “Cat and Fiddle” was a common name for inns, including one known to have been at Old Chaunge, London by 1587.{{sfnp|GBAP7HRJ|171}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Almost certainly a hoax.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|240-241}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25229
## External links
- [Performance by Little Baby Bum](https://youtu.be/sJiw-edttDY)
**Categories:** Nursery rhyme
---
### [John Henry Mole](https://engole.info/john-henry-mole/)
**Published:** April 24, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Disderi_-_British_Landscape_Artist_J._Henry_Mole_1880.jpg[/pimage]English artist (1814–1886) who became a professional miniature painter in 1835, later focusing on landscapes and portraits of children.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Disderi_-_British_Landscape_Artist_J._Henry_Mole_1880.jpg)John Henry Mole in 1880
Wikimedia Commons
John Henry Mole (1814–1886) was an artist from Alnwick, Northumberland, in the north of England. He worked as a solicitor’s clerk in Newcastle-upon-Tyne before becoming a professional miniature painter in 1835. He subsequently became a landscape painter, becoming an Associate Member of the New Society of Painters in Water-Colours (later the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours) in 1847 and a full member the following year; he became vice-president of the society in 1884. In 1847 he abandoned miniatures to concentrate on landscapes and portraits of children. Although he lived in London, his works primarily depicted Northumbria, the Lake District and Scotland. A number of his paintings are held in museums in London and the North of England.{{sfnp|YMZK4EUQ}}
Mole occasionally painted in oils, and in 1879 he sent an oil painting, *Carrying Peat*, to the Royal Academy. He died at his home in Russell Square, London, on 13 December 1886, and was buried in Brompton cemetery.{{sfnp|YMZK4EUQ}}
## Gallery
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/drying-the-nets.jpg)
Drying the Nets
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Gathering-Peat-in-the-Highlands.png)
Gathering Peat in the Highlands
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Mussel-Gatherers.png)
Mussel Gatherers
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Collecting-Firewood.png)
Collecting Firewood
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/cattle-at-a-watering-hole-1.jpg)
Cattle at a Watering Hole
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/The-Trysting-Place.png)
The Trysting Place
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/two-children-with-a-dog.jpg)
Two Children with a Dog on a Coastal Path in Devon
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23553
This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/John_Henry_Mole#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** English, Male, Painter
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Lancashire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-lancashire/)
**Published:** January 20, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/Lancashire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Lancashire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the ceremonial county of Lancashire, split into the fourteen authorities making up the county.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/Lancashire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Lancashire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png)Lancashire shown within England
Wikimedia Commons
The [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Lancashire is comprised of twelve local government districts and two [unitary authorities](https://engole.info/unitary-authority): Blackpool, and Blackburn with Darwen.{{sfnp|M5MP2F6L}}
The seventy Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county are shown in separate lists for each of its component authorities; Rossendale is the only authority in Lancashire with no Grade I listed buildings.{{sfnp|3754U8G8}}
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
- [Grade I listed buildings in Blackburn with Darwen](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-blackburn-with-darwen)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Blackpool](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-blackpool)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Burnley](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-burnley)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Chorley](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-chorley)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Fylde](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-fylde)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Hyndburn](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-hyndburn)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Lancaster](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-lancaster)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Pendle](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-pendle)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Preston](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-preston)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Ribble Valley](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-ribble-valley)
- [Grade I listed buildings in South Ribble](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-south-ribble)
- [Grade I listed buildings in West Lancashire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-west-lancashire)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Wyre](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-wyre)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25933
**Categories:** Lancashire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [All Saints' Church, Urmston](https://engole.info/all-saints-church-urmston/)
**Published:** June 2, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d4/All_saints_church_urmston.jpg/960px-All_saints_church_urmston.jpg[/pimage]Grade I listed Roman Catholic Church in Urmston, Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d4/All_saints_church_urmston.jpg/960px-All_saints_church_urmston.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/LRWqmeGi6QvQManchester Ship Canal.FY2d8}}
All Saints’ was built on wasteland on the western edge of [Trafford Park](https://engole.info/trafford-park), beside the [Manchester Ship Canal](https://engole.info/manchester-ship-canal).
All Saints’ Church is a Grade I [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) Roman Catholic parish church situated between Dumplington and Barton upon Irwell, near Urmston, in Trafford, Greater Manchester. It was designed by Edward Welby Pugin (1834–1875) in the Gothic Revival style,{{sfnp|965DYXPJ}}{{sfnp|9F4ADS7Q}} and is considered to be an example of his best work:{{sfnp|965DYXPJ}} according to Nikolaus Pevsner “the masterpiece of \[Pugin’s\] life, without any doubt.” It has been served by priests from the Friars Minor Conventual since 1928,{{sfnp|XAFQERLN|395}} and has been in their care since 1962.{{sfnp|ZDNEETX9}} The expanded [presbytery](https://engole.info/presbytery) and later buildings on the site are now a Franciscan Friary.{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|649}}
Building on the site began in 1863, with the de Trafford mortuary chapel; construction of the present-day church began in 1867.{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|649}} The cost of £25,000 was paid by Sir Humphrey and Lady Annette de Trafford, and the church was officially opened by Cardinal Henry Manning in June 1868.{{sfnp|ZDNEETX9}}
## Architecture
### Exterior
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/All_Saints_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1386504.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
The east end of the church, facing the road, has a high polygonal [apse](https://engole.info/apse). The west end is “dominated by a huge rose window with rather fussy details”, and a “flèche-like” bell tower, suggesting a French influence on the design.{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|649}} The rose window and the lancets below are filled with “bright, unlovely” late 20th-century glass, the only “jarring note” according to Pevsner.{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|650}}
The exterior also features gargoyles,{{sfnp|965DYXPJ}} a grotesque form in [apotropaic magic](https://engole.info/apotropaic-magic) meant to frighten away evil.{{sfnp|EAHXSUGM|72}}
### Interior
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/allsaints2.jpg)View towards the altar at the eastern end of the church
GENUKI
Pevsner has described the interior of the church as “splendid and dignified”. The [nave](https://engole.info/nave) comprises seven bays, with the [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) arch and the arcades striped in red Mansfield and buff Painswick stone. The very high roof is of [scissor](https://engole.info/timber-roof-truss/#Scissor_truss) and [arch-braced](https://engole.info/timber-roof-truss/#Arch-braced_truss) construction.{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|650}}
The church has timber pews and stained glass windows,{{sfnp|965DYXPJ}} those in the east made by Hardman & Co of Birmingham, damaged during the [Manchester Blitz](https://engole.info/manchester-blitz). There is a carved stone altar with a recumbent figure of Christ beneath, a “truly splendid” [reredos](https://engole.info/reredos) and a painting depicting Pugin in medieval robes holding a plan of the church.{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|650}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24723
**Categories:** Catholic, Church, Greater Manchester
---
### [St Thomas of Canterbury, Newport, Isle of Wight](https://engole.info/st-thomas-of-canterbury-newport-isle-of-wight/)
**Published:** January 2, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/St._Thomas_of_Canterbury_Catholic_Church_in_Newport.JPG/960px-St._Thomas_of_Canterbury_Catholic_Church_in_Newport.JPG[/pimage]Catholic church in Newport, Isle of Wight, the first Catholic church to be built following the Catholic Relief Act 1791.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/St._Thomas_of_Canterbury_Catholic_Church_in_Newport.JPG/960px-St._Thomas_of_Canterbury_Catholic_Church_in_Newport.JPG)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/UP8XadJPexB8drUt7}}
Front view
St Thomas of Canterbury is a Catholic church in Newport, Isle of Wight, in the Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth. Erected by the benefactress Elizabeth Heneage, and completed in 1792, it was the first purpose-built Catholic church constructed on the island after the Protestant Reformation, and is believed to be the oldest such Catholic church in the country.{{sfnp|T42ZSSL7}}{{sfnp|LUM7E4B8}}
The church was built immediately following the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1791 (31 Geo. 3. c. 32), which allowed Catholics to practice their religion, but with restrictions. Anything that made a building look too much like a church, such as steeples and bells, were forbidden, and as a result St Thomas’s has a very plain exterior more reminiscent of a Quaker Meeting House than a Catholic church.{{sfnp|T42ZSSL7}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27126
**Categories:** Catholic, Church
---
### [Patrick Milne of Crimonmogate](https://engole.info/patrick-milne-of-crimonmogate/)
**Published:** June 7, 2021
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** Wealthy Scottish merchant, politician, and landowner; commissioned Aberdeen architects to design two houses.
**Content:**
Patrick Milne (c. 1755 – 16 May 1820), a Scottish landowner, businessman and politician, commissioned the design of two houses, both called Crimonmogate, one in central Aberdeen the other on [his estate](https://engole.info/crimonmogate-estate/) in Lonmay, Aberdeenshire.
## Background
Milne was the eldest son of Alexander Milne of Crimonmogate, an Aberdeen merchant. His mother, Margaret, was the daughter of Patrick Bannerman, Lord Provost of Aberdeen from 1715 until 1716.{{sfnp|4X7G6VQI}} His father was a partner in the linen company Gordon, Barron & Co.{{sfnp|HM935C39|75}} and the Porthill Company that later became Milne, Cruden, & Company.{{sfnp|AQCHJSBF|192}} These companies had extensive factories in Aberdeen and Donside.{{sfnp|MF7QSQG3|214-216}} After the decline of the Porthill linen company, Milne’s father bought the Crimonmogate estate in Aberdeenshire,{{sfnp|4X7G6VQI}} which Milne subsequently inherited.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Monument_at_Crimonmogate_House.jpg)Monument at Crimonmogate House, Lonmay, erected by Charles Bannerman in memory of Patrick Milne
Wikimedia Commons
## Career
Milne had a healthy income from overseas business ventures,{{sfnp|PXBF86LL}} and tax records of 1797–1798 show he was levied various taxes on the number of clocks and watches,{{sfnp|6MG7TXKP}} dogs{{sfnp|6UY2LVHF}} and male servants he had.{{sfnp|883AISZ2}}
Several new settlements were established in the Buchan area after the mid-18th century, and that continued into the early 19th century, bringing more wealth to the area. Wealthy landowners, like Milne, began to invest profits in the construction of stylish mansions.{{sfnp|746WVX84|5}} In 1810 Milne commissioned the Aberdeen city architect [John Smith](https://engole.info/john-smith-architect/) to design a town house for him. This was sited on Union Street, Aberdeen; the house was called Crimonmogate, the same name as his estate in Lonmay.{{sfnp|SNCWTIMT}}\[a\]During 1959 initial submissions were made for the townhouse on Union Street to be demolished with the work finally carried out in 1963/1964.{{sfnp|SNCWTIMT}}
Milne was involved in “electoral chicanery” in 1807, when together with Alexander Crombie and William Garden, he bribed councilmen on behalf of his relative, William Keith Falconer, the 6th Lord Kintore, in an attempt to have them vote for the election of Sir Alexander Bannerman. This was unsuccessful and James Rae was appointed as delegate instead. Milne and Crombie continued trying to bribe Rae and confined him in Lord Kintore’s residence in the days prior to the election. The attempts were again ineffective as Rae did not change his vote, and Archibald Colquhoun was elected instead.{{sfnp|4X7G6VQI}}{{sfnp|QHME69XY}}
Lord Kintore died just before the elections in 1812, but was believed to support Milne as candidate for the Elgin burghs that year. Milne was duly elected as member of Parliament for Elgin Burghs on 30 October 1812, a position he held until 11 July 1818. He usually supported the government in votes throughout the 1812 parliament, and is recorded as continually being against Catholic relief.{{sfnp|4X7G6VQI}}{{sfnp|R4FQ848W}}
Milne commissioned Archibald Simpson, an Aberdeen architect in similar standing to John Smith, to design a new mansion for his Crimonmogate estate. This was in a Neo-Greek style and constructed of [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) granite. It has two storeys with a single-storey centre section.{{sfnp|84DX6C2A}} The initial construction was quoted as costing up to £10,000.{{sfnp|3SRNMS4N|214}} Although the work had been commissioned by Milne, he died in 1820 before the house was completed in 1825.{{sfnp|QTUU49FU}} It is a category A listed building.{{sfnp|84DX6C2A}}
## Legacy
Milne was unmarried and without issue.{{sfnp|4X7G6VQI}} He died at his Crimonmogate House, Union Street, Aberdeen on 16 May 1820 aged 65 years.{{sfnp|QTUU49FU}}{{sfnp|2S2S7RSI}} He bequeathed his property to Charles Bannerman, his first cousin once removed.{{sfnp|4X7G6VQI}} Bannerman had an obelisk monument erected in Milne’s memory in the garden at Crimonmogate in 1821, which was given a category B listing by Historic Scotland.{{sfnp|UAJ7X84R}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a During 1959 initial submissions were made for the townhouse on Union Street to be demolished with the work finally carried out in 1963/1964.{{sfnp|SNCWTIMT}} b, c var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23615
**Categories:** Industrialist, Landowner, Politician, Scottish
---
### [John Smith, architect](https://engole.info/john-smith-architect/)
**Published:** August 12, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Forglen_House_05.JPG[/pimage]John Smith (1781 – 22 July 1852) was a Scottish architect who contributed significantly to the architecture of Aberdeen.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Forglen_House_05.JPG)Forglen House, near Turriff, in 1839. An example of a country mansion designed by Smith.
Wikimedia Commons
John Smith (1781 – 22 July 1852) was a Scottish architect. His career started in 1805 and he was appointed as the official city architect of Aberdeen in 1807, the first person to hold that post. Together with Archibald Simpson, he contributed significantly to the architecture of Aberdeen, and many of the granite buildings that led to the city being nicknamed the Granite City, or the Silver City, are attributed to them.
Smith was the son of a successful builder and architect and his own son, William, continued the family tradition by also becoming an architect. After completing his training in London, Smith quickly became established throughout the north-east of Scotland. He secured private commissions to design, renovate or alter numerous country houses, parish churches and castles; his official capacity as city architect ensured he is also credited with several extensive public works. Towards the middle of his career around the 1830s, as his individuality developed he gained the nickname of Tudor Johnny, an indication that his designs were starting to favour a Tudor Gothic styling.
## Ancestry and early life
Smith was born in Aberdeen in 1781. His father was William “Sink-em” Smith (d. 1815\[a\]*The Dictionary of Scottish Architects* gives a death date of 1812,{{sfnp|53JZI8XC}} but Miller states 1815.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|59}}), also a successful builder and architect.{{sfnp|53JZI8XC}}{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|21}} The younger Smith attended Aberdeen Grammar School before serving an apprenticeship as a stonemason in his father’s building firm. He undertook further architectural design training in London, possibly under the tutelage of James Playfair, but as Playfair died in 1794, the offices of Robert Lugar seem more likely.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|21}}{{sfnp|TPG4E87T|36}} By the end of 1804 Smith had returned to Aberdeen, where construction and development was rapidly evolving.{{sfnp|53JZI8XC}}{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|22-23}}
## Career
One of Smith’s first major commissions was to design a town house for the merchant [Patrick Milne](https://engole.info/patrick-milne-of-crimonmogate/) in 1805.\[b\]There is variation as to the exact year as sources give years varying between 1805 through to 1810. Sited on Union Street, Aberdeen, Crimonmogate was a two-storey “Greek inspired country house” with a five-windowed frontage.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|27}}\[c\]Crimonmogate House was the Royal Northern Club from 1874–1955; it was demolished between 1959–1963 (again there are discrepancies in the sources as to the exact year).{{sfnp|SNCWTIMT}}{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|413}} He is next credited with the design of Footdee, an area within Aberdeen. Consisting of fifty-six [but and ben](https://engole.info/but-and-ben/) one-storey thatched houses arranged in two squares, the plans quickly received council approval and construction was completed by 1809. The new housing accommodated residents formerly living in condemned properties beside the harbour; the re-location of these tenants allowed the council to begin initial proceedings for Thomas Telford’s 1824 Aberdeen Harbour improvements, which Smith was also associated with.{{sfnp|53JZI8XC}}{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|30}}
Smith was appointed as the official architect for Aberdeen in 1807.{{sfnp|M9DWQ5EX|57}} He is credited with compiling the first map showing a correct outline of Aberdeen city in 1810 indicating present and planned improvements.{{sfnp|53JZI8XC}}{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|38}}{{sfnp|LQAQBZVM|2}}
Archibald Simpson returned to Aberdeen in 1813, establishing a business competing with Smith. Both firms were successful despite uncertainties due to the War and their careers were described by Miller as “destined to run remarkably parallel”.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|46}} Although at times rivals, Smith often collaborated with Simpson and between these two men their buildings became the nucleus of establishing the style of the heart of the Aberdeen city centre.{{sfnp|4UDXKTY9}}{{sfnp|ZF9M93QD}}\[d\]The note in the Historic Scotland list reads: “John Smith was the city architect of Aberdeen and along with Archibald Simpson, was largely responsible for the classicizing of Aberdeen city centre.” As the buildings were constructed from silver granite, the city gained the name of the Silver City or alternatively the Granite City.{{sfnp|CVHKBKM9}}{{sfnp|LQH2QZFP}}
Smith became known as “Tudor Johnny” as his later designs around the 1830s, particularly for mansions and churches, incorporated a Tudor-Gothic form.{{sfnp|M9DWQ5EX|57}}{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|10}} However, his civic designs in Aberdeen city remained in a neo-classical style.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|175}}
Miller designates Smith’s design for the North Church in Aberdeen as “generally considered to be his greatest building”{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|162}} and further states “Undisputedly by far the finest neoclassical church in the City of Aberdeen.”{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|166}} Sited on the corner of Queen Street and King Street the design gained approval from the Town Council in September 1828. The church opened in June 1831 but it was years later before sufficient funding was available to install clocks. A Greek Revival style was used in the construction of the 120 feet (37 m) by 62 feet (19 m) rectangular building with a circular pepper pot tower set upon a two-stage box tower. It was the tallest building in Aberdeen until its height was surpassed by the spire of the Triple Kirk designed by Simpson. Suitable to seat 1600 at services, congregation numbers declined and the church closed in 1954. It was used as the Aberdeen Arts Centre from the early 1960s.{{sfnp|ZF9M93QD}}{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|162-165}}
One of the last designs before his death was for Balmoral Castle; he initially did some work re-building the tower for Robert Gordon, 5th son of the 3rd Earl of Aberdeen, who was leasing Balmoral in 1830. Subsequently he was involved with drawing up the initial plans for the new castle, by this time owned by Queen Victoria and Price Albert after meeting Price Albert on Friday 11 September 1848.{{sfnp|ISI6SBL7}} After Smith died in 1852 the final designs and work were undertaken by his son William.{{sfnp|UMKA96LJ}}
## Works
With a career spanning the years from 1805 until his death in 1852, the list of works Smith was associated with, both in his official capacity as City Architect and private commissions, is lengthy; some examples are given below.{{sfnp|53JZI8XC}}
### Bridges
Captain Samuel Brown designed the [Wellington Suspension Bridge](https://engole.info/wellington-suspension-bridge/), which spanned the River Dee in Aberdeen at Craiglug; Smith competed against Simpson to win the contract to design the structures architectural sections. The bridge opened in May 1831 and featured arched granite pylons. Smith’s contract also included building three miles of approach road and he designed/built the toll house at the north-east end of the bridge.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|158-159}}{{sfnp|XUQ6VDPE}}
Smith’s design for the widening of the historic medieval Bridge of Dee in 1841 was described by Paxton and Shipway as “an exemplary widening of a historic bridge”.{{sfnp|HGSAR6ZS}}{{sfnp|ATV9EBHX|86}}
In 1837, Smith designed the St Devenick’s Bridge. It was also known as Morrison’s Bridge after Reverend George Morrison who commissioned its design and paid for the construction; another name was the Shakkin’ Briggie because it would shake whenever anyone walked over it. The bridge was 305 feet (93 m) long with a span of 185 feet (56 m) and followed the same style as the Wellington Suspension Bridge.{{sfnp|Z6L7NNZE}}
### Castles
In 1814–1815 Smith was commissioned to design modifications to Brucklay Castle including remodelling the main entrance hall and frontage; this was in the neoclassical style.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|55}} Work was also undertaken on the second and third storeys of the north elevation.{{sfnp|TE9DTXCD}} Returning in 1820, Smith extended the old stable block in a mainly one and a half-storey Gothic style with a central pyramid roofed two-storey tower.{{sfnp|8PDHIIHD}}{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|86}} That year he also began work on an extensive enlargement of [Cluny Castle](https://engole.info/cluny-castle/) for [Colonel John Gordon](https://engole.info/colonel-john-gordon/). Originally a Z-plan castle built c. 1604,{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|93-94}} the later extensions were described by architectural historian H. Gordon Slade{{sfnp|GRCBFKSE}} as “the most shocking mis-use of architectural effort and granite in the north east of Scotland.”{{sfnp|YBT8UGJM|454}} Smith also worked on nearby Castle Fraser constructing an access stairway between the great hall on the first floor and the rear courtyard entrance. The two-storey building it was housed within had a glazed [cupola ](https://engole.info/cupola)at its centre under a lead roof. Two crow stepped gatehouses were constructed between an arched gateway entrance and various access passages joined the first floor wings.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|130}} He was also responsible for the library design.{{sfnp|4Z6RYPXN}}
Roof repairs carried out at Craigievar Castle were essential in the 1820s as the structure had fallen into decay. The owner, Sir John Forbes, had considered demolishing the tower but Smith advised against it stating it was: “one of the finest specimens in the Country of the age and style in which it was built.”{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|129}} The work lasted two years and involved the re-construction of almost all of the top floor. The windows, external harling and pointing were replaced and it is likely Smith also designed the gardener’s cottage.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|130}}{{sfnp|Z7XYG45X}}
Although Drumtochty Castle was built to the designs of James Gillespie Graham with further extensions c. 1815, the actual work of the extensions was undertaken by Smith. Miller speculates Gillespie Graham could have had a dispute with the owner, George Drummond, but considers Smith’s closer proximity to the site is a more plausible scenario.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|56-58}}
The rugged cliff tops to the north of Cruden Bay were the setting for Slains Castle where, in 1836, Smith was engaged by William Hay, 18th Earl of Erroll and Lord Lieutenant of Aberdeenshire to renovate his existing courtyard house into a stylish residence suitable for a person of his standing. Smith’s design enveloped the previous building, encasing it in a new structure of pink Peterhead granite and featured round towers.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|239-240}}{{sfnp|AA227FU5}}
### Churches
The construction, restoration, renovation or alteration to several parish churches throughout Aberdeenshire, Angus and Kincardineshire are credited to Smith.{{sfnp|53JZI8XC}} One of his first rural church designs was at Fintray, Aberdeenshire in 1821; later that year he also designed Udny Parish Church. These formed the basis of designs that Smith would evolve and develop in future years for other parish churches. Udny Parish Church was the first of Smith’s Tudor-Gothic ecclesiastic designs. A box tower above the main entrance features a crenellated top with louvred pointed panels, [belfry](https://engole.info/belfry) and clock incorporated in the front (south) gable with walls of rough granite. The main church is a basic rectangle with a slated roof.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|100-101}}
The north aisle of St Machar’s Cathedral was restored to Smith’s designs in 1832 and the entrance lodges and gateway were re-built. A new session house was also added. He also undertook work at Skene Parish Church in 1840{{sfnp|53JZI8XC}} and constructed the parish church in Longside in 1835.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|237}}
### Country houses
Smith undertook considerable work for the Fergusons at their [Pitfour estate](https://engole.info/pitfour-estate/) in Aberdeenshire. Starting in 1809, the third laird of Pitfour, [James Ferguson](https://engole.info/james-ferguson-scottish-politician/) commissioned him to design a new house. This was a three-storey house, 98 feet (30 m) square by33 feet (10 m) high, with 365 windows.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|76}} There were Greek pediments included on top of the side elevations, stone margins set into the rendered walls and it conveyed an impression of northern Italy.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|33}} Over the following years, Smith designed several other structures within the policies\[e\]The definition of policies as used in Scots land terminology given in the OED is: “The enclosed (and often ornamental) grounds, park, or demesne land surrounding a large country house.” at Pitfour. These included: the horseshoe-shape, neo-classical two-storey riding stables to the rear of the mansion during the time of the [fifth laird](https://engole.info/george-ferguson-5th-laird-of-pitfour/) in 1820; gatehouses and bridges;{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|35}} a small replica six-bay Greek Doric temple, styled after the Temple of Theseus;{{sfnp|UW46HBC5}} and the Observatory, an eight-sided crenellated three-storey tower.{{sfnp|GSHG7FKF|81}}
Among other country houses featuring Smith’s designs was the Neo-Greek style [Dunecht House](https://engole.info/dunecht-house/) in 1820. Comprising two storeys and a full basement, it was constructed from granite. A low parapet hid the slate, low pitched roof. The original Smith designed house was later extensively expanded by William, his son.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|82-83}} Work was undertaken at Haddo House on the kitchens and peripheral buildings in 1843. He returned there in 1845 and built the gate houses at the North and South entrances. Constructed in a rough coarse granite, these single-storey buildings are in a Tudor style.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|348}} Sometime before 1830 William Rickart Hepburn commissioned Smith to design Rickarton House in Kincardineshire.{{sfnp|53JZI8XC}} [Forglen House](https://engole.info/forglen-house/) near Turriff was designed by Smith for Sir Robert Abercromby.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|299}} The new mansion house was described by architectural historian Charles McKean as an “Elizabethan Gothic confection”.{{sfnp|746WVX84|58}}
### Other works
The re-construction of the front of King’s College, Aberdeen was undertaken by Smith in 1825. The work incorporated other renovations as the building had fallen into a ruinous condition. Designs were drawn up for the section named Cromwell’s Tower and its original six storeys were replaced with four modern levels and included a ground floor flat for the housekeeper with classrooms above. Predominantly in a Tudor style, some of the extensive designs were not enacted; however, eventually the joining of the Chapel, Cromwell’s Tower and the old Crown Tower was achieved. The work was one of Smith’s earlier Tudor-Gothic designs.{{sfnp|53JZI8XC}}{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|133-139}}
Smith completed a contract started by William Burn to the back and west boundary walls of Robert Gordon’s College with extra wings and other alterations continued from 1830 until 1833.{{sfnp|53JZI8XC}} During the same years (1830–1833) the “Ionic Screen” at the front of Kirk of St Nicholas on Union Street, Aberdeen was installed. Featuring a triumphal arch with paired Ionic columns set to each side, the columns were originally supposed to be of cast iron.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|161}}
## Death and legacy
Smith married Margaret Grant, a daughter of George Grant of Auchterblair. Most of their eight children died at an early age but their fourth child, William, joined his father in business and also became city architect in Aberdeen. The couple also had a daughter, Margaret Grant Smith.{{sfnp|53JZI8XC}}{{sfnp|UDNMGIMP}}
Having suffered a lengthy, painful illness, Smith died in 1852 at the home he inherited from his wife’s father.{{sfnp|53JZI8XC}} There is a plaque to commemorate him sited at the Kirk of St Nicholas in Union Street, Aberdeen.{{sfnp|6ZYTXDTK}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a *The Dictionary of Scottish Architects* gives a death date of 1812,{{sfnp|53JZI8XC}} but Miller states 1815.{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|59}} b There is variation as to the exact year as sources give years varying between 1805 through to 1810. c Crimonmogate House was the Royal Northern Club from 1874–1955; it was demolished between 1959–1963 (again there are discrepancies in the sources as to the exact year).{{sfnp|SNCWTIMT}}{{sfnp|V2MEV59E|413}} d The note in the Historic Scotland list reads: “John Smith was the city architect of Aberdeen and along with Archibald Simpson, was largely responsible for the classicizing of Aberdeen city centre.” e The definition of policies as used in Scots land terminology given in the OED is: “The enclosed (and often ornamental) grounds, park, or demesne land surrounding a large country house.”
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 4710
**Categories:** Architect
---
### [Rumpelstiltskin](https://engole.info/rumpelstiltskin/)
**Published:** June 4, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/Rumpelstiltskin.jpg/960px-Rumpelstiltskin.jpg[/pimage]Rumpelstiltskin is a fairy tale popularly associated with Germany, one of those collected by the Brothers Grimm in the 1812 edition of Children's and Household Tales. It tells of an imp able to spin straw into gold, and the price he demands for his service.
**Content:**
*Rumpelstiltskin* is a fairy tale popularly associated with Germany, where it is known as *Rumpelstilzchen*.\[a\]Despite efforts to decode the derivation of Rumpelstiltskin’s name, it is essentially meaningless.{{sfnp|5YS9ABJQ}} The tale is one of those collected by the Brothers Grimm in the 1812 edition of *Kinder- und Hausmärchen* (*Children’s and Household Tales*).
The Brothers Grimm believed that the folktales they collected dated back thousands of years, predating the birth of the modern Indo-European languages, although later researchers tended to suggest the unlikelihood of such folktales having survived through oral tradition alone. There is some evidence, however, that the Brothers Grimm may have been correct, and that the story of *Rumpelstiltskin* may in some form be between 2500 and 6000 years old.
*Rumpelstiltskin* has an Aarne–Thompson–Uther (ATU) type of 500: *The Name of the Supernatural Helper*, a type of folktale common among the the main European language families.{{sfnp|IT6GJJ6D|797}}
Illustration from Andrew Lang’s *The Blue Fairy Book* (1889)
Wikimedia Commons
## Plot
There are many variants of the story, but in the most common a boastful miller, in an effort to impress the king, claims that his daughter can spin straw into gold. The king calls for the girl, shuts her in a tower room filled with straw and a spinning wheel, and demands she spin the straw into gold by morning or he will cut off her head.
When she has given up all hope, an imp-like creature appears and spins the straw into gold in return for her necklace. When next morning the king takes the girl to a larger room filled with straw to repeat the task, the imp once again spins, in return this time for the girl’s ring.
On the third day the girl is taken to an even larger room filled with straw, and told by the king that he will marry her if she can fill this room with gold or execute her if she cannot. But the girl has nothing left with which she can pay the imp, so he extracts from her a promise that she will give him her firstborn child, before spinning the straw into gold for a final time. In some versions the little man appears and begins to turn the straw into gold, paying no heed to the girl’s protests that she has nothing to pay him with; when he finishes the task, he states that the price is her first child, and the horrified girl objects because she never agreed to this arrangement.
The king keeps his promise to marry the miller’s daughter, and when their first child is born, the imp returns to claim his payment. The girl offers him all the wealth she has not to take the child, but the imp has no interest in her riches. He does though finally agree to give up his claim if she can guess his name within three days (some versions have the imp limiting the number of daily guesses to three and hence the total number of guesses allowed to a maximum of nine).
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Rumplestiltskin_-_Anne_Anderson.jpg)Illustration by Anne Anderson from *Grimm’s Fairy Tales* (1922)
Wikimedia Commons
The girl’s many guesses are incorrect, but before the final night, she wanders into the woods in search of the imp; in some versions she sends a servant into the woods instead of going herself, to allay the king’s suspicions. She comes across his remote mountain cottage, and watches unseen as the imp hops about his fire singing “tonight tonight, my plans I make, tomorrow tomorrow, the baby I take. The queen will never win the game, for Rumpelstiltskin is my name”.
When the imp comes to the queen on the third day, after initially feigning ignorance, she reveals his name to be Rumpelstiltskin, and he loses his temper, blaming the Devil for having given his name to the queen. In the 1812 edition of the Brothers Grimm tales, Rumpelstiltskin then “ran away angrily, and never came back”.
The ending was revised in later editions to a more gruesome conclusion, in which Rumpelstiltskin drives his foot so hard that his leg goes into the earth. In a passion to release himself, he seizes his other foot with both hands and tears himself in two. Other versions also have Rumpelstiltskin driving his foot into the ground, but after some effort to free himself he stomps off to the mocking jeers of the court.{{sfnp|TB4HPMQI}}
## Origins
The Brothers Grimm believed that many of the stories they helped to popularise were rooted in a shared cultural history dating back to the birth of the Indo-European language family some 2500–6000 years ago, although the stories were not written down until the 16th and 17th centuries. Later scholarship tended to suggest that the tales were unlikely to have survived for thousands of years in oral form alone, but recent research has provided evidence to suggest that the Brothers Grimm may have been correct, and that these folktales were originally “probably told in an extinct Indo-European language”.{{sfnp|THUFDALR}}{{sfnp|2TDWAX68}}
## Variations
The tale appears in slightly different forms in almost all European countries, and the 1812 version published by the Brothers Grimm was itself an amalgam of four different versions found in the German state of Hesse. In British variations, the imp goes by names which include Terrytop, Whuppity Stoorie, and Tom Tit Tot.{{sfnp|5YS9ABJQ}}{{sfnp|TB4HPMQI}}
The original 1812 version of *Rumperstiltskin* makes no mention of a spinning wheel, and no explanation of how the little man was able to transform straw into gold; the spinning wheel was introduced in the 1857 version of the story.{{sfnp|5YS9ABJQ}}
## Other uses
The queen’s gain of control over Rumpelstiltskin by knowing his name has its correspondence in the psychological condition in which sufferers attempt to give an impression of understanding something by naming it, known as the Rumpelstiltskin phenomenon.{{sfnp|F5UGFEHF}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Despite efforts to decode the derivation of Rumpelstiltskin’s name, it is essentially meaningless.{{sfnp|5YS9ABJQ}} b, c var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22733
**Categories:** Fairy tale
---
### [Corpse road](https://engole.info/corpse-road/)
**Published:** August 21, 2021
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Corpse_Road_on_Ling_Fell_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2247575.jpg[/pimage]Roads that once provided the means of transporting the dead to churchyards for burial.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Corpse_Road_on_Ling_Fell_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2247575.jpg)Corpse road in Allerdale, Cumbria
Wikimedia Commons
Corpse roads, coffin roads or church paths, also called bier roads, lych ways\[a\]from the Old English *lic* meaning body and church ways,{{sfnp|UGTTSTCU}} once provided the means of transporting the dead to churchyards for burial. Once common throughout the country, some survive particularly in rural and remote places.
In medieval times [ecclesiastical parishes](https://engole.info/ancient-parish/) were large, often encompassing several [townships](https://engole.info/township/). A single parish church, the mother church, served the entire population for all ritual baptisms, marriages and burials, and only it held burial rights. Some parishioners had to make long journeys to visit the mother church and the deceased had to be transported long distances for burial. Their corpses were carried along the corpse roads or paths left unploughed.{{sfnp|UGTTSTCU}}
When daughter churches were built and granted burial rights, corpse roads became obsolete. Many have disappeared or are footpaths the original purpose has been forgotten, but fields crossed by such paths might have names mentioning the church or kirk. Some are marked on old maps and some survive.{{sfnp|ZW9EPWSU|124}}
## Superstition
Folklore and superstition emerged in various localities from the early modern period until the 18th and 19th centuries.{{sfnp|IFK36ZP4}} They attracted tales of ghosts, wraiths and spirits. While transporting a corpse for burial it was considered bad luck to use alternative routes to the cemetery. Corpses were moved with their feet facing away from their houses to prevent their spirits returning to haunt the living.{{sfnp|ZW9EPWSU|126}}
An early literary mention in Shakespeare’s “*A Midsummer Night’s Dream*” alludes to the spiritual plane they inhabit, in the words of Puck:{{sfnp|UGTTSTCU}}{{sfnp|4B2Z4QUX|127}}
Now it is the time of night, That the graves all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite, In the church-way paths to glide. William Shakespeare
## Examples
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Coffin_Stone_at_Town_End_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1767270.jpg)Stone on the funeral way from Rydal to Ambleside, on which coffins were rested.
Wikimedia Commons
Before 1580, when the church was built in Muker, the deceased from remote Swaledale were carried many miles to Grinton. The corpse road is now a bridleway across the flanks of Kisdon Fell between Keld and Muker. At Ivelet Bridge is a flat stone on which coffins were rested and a local legend tells of a headless black dog that has been seen here.{{sfnp|SA43XHWT}}
In the Middle Ages the parish of Lydford included much of Dartmoor. Locals who lived in remote places had to walk across the [moorland](https://engole.info/moorland/ "Moorland") to St Petroc’s Church. The 12-mile Lych Way from Bellever crosses over the the moor and ancient woodland to the church.{{sfnp|SA43XHWT}}
Several coffin routes cross the Lakeland fells, part of the Buttermere to Lamplugh corpse road passes above the western shore of Loweswater and Holme Force waterfall.{{sfnp|SA43XHWT}}
In Scotland, St Dubhthach’s Church at the eastern end of Loch Duich, was the burial place of people from Glen Strathfarrar. A six-mile length of the coffin route through Dorusduain Wood and Bealach na Sròine pass the Falls of Glomach. The former coffin road from Glen Falloch to the old church in Balquhidder, where the 18th-century Scottish outlaw Rob Roy is buried, passes over difficult terrain and is more than {{convert|9|mi|spell=in}} long.{{sfnp|ECT5GVVN}} In South Wales, the Beacons Way follows a coffin route past the Bronze Age burial cairn at Carnau’r Garreg Las.{{sfnp|SA43XHWT}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a from the Old English *lic* meaning body
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23686
---
### [Seely wights](https://engole.info/seely-wights/)
**Published:** October 14, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Fairy-like creatures at the centre of a shamanistic Scottish cult that existed in the 16th century. Members claimed to be able to enter into a trance which allowed them to fly out at night on swallows, and join with the seely wights.
**Content:**
The seely wights were fairy-like creatures at the centre of a Scottish cult that existed in the 16th century. The term has been used to describe both the creatures themselves and members of the cult. The term *seely* derives from the Old English for “lucky”, so a literal translation would be “blessed beings” or “magical beings”. Robert Chambers’ collection of Scottish rhymes, first published in 1826 contains the following lines:
> If you call me fairy,
> I’ll cause you much trouble;
> If you call me good neighbour,
> Then good neighbour I will be;
> But if you call me seely wight,
> I’ll be your friend both day and night.
The cult members – mostly but probably not exclusively women – believed that while in a trance they were able to fly out at night on swallows and join with the seely wights. They could then use the magical powers they gained from the association in their everyday crafts of healing or fortune telling.{{sfnp|YM4G2HRM}}
## Modern interpretation
Julian Goodare, an established historian on early modern Scotland,{{sfnp|5BCDJ28M|217}} speculates that [Janet Boyman](https://engole.info/janet-boyman/)‘s trial records may indicate the existence of a Scottish cult-like group centred on the seely wights, fairy-like nature spirits similar to the Sicilian *donas de fuera* or the *benandanti* of north-eastern Italy.{{sfnp|YM4G2HRM|198-219}} Unlike when the scribes were taking notes about the Devil, it is credible that details of the nature spirits were correctly transcribed, so the information included in the confessions concerning them is more likely to have come from the accused.{{sfnp|PFSQ9V59|103}} The indictments of several witches, including the case of [Isobel Gowdie](https://engole.info/isobel-gowdie/), who was executed in 1662 at Auldearn,\[a\]According to the historian Ronald Hutton, the scholar Emma Wilby classified Isobel as “a service magician and storyteller inspired by visionary encounters with spirits, real or not.”{{sfnp|5BCDJ28M|216}} “Service magician” is the term Hutton adopts for cunning folk like healers.{{sfnp|LRAUQARG}} and Janet Boyman, give details of meetings with nature spirits that can be classed as visionary encounters, with Janet being able to summon the spirit at times of her choosing.{{sfnp|PFSQ9V59|108}} In modern terms, these experiences are similar to those reported by some under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs.{{sfnp|PFSQ9V59|105-106}} Writing in 2017, the historian Ronald Hutton states that debate among academics concerning shamanistic visionaries, cults and seely wights is in its infancy, with further literature still to be published.{{sfnp|5BCDJ28M|217}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a According to the historian Ronald Hutton, the scholar Emma Wilby classified Isobel as “a service magician and storyteller inspired by visionary encounters with spirits, real or not.”{{sfnp|5BCDJ28M|216}} “Service magician” is the term Hutton adopts for cunning folk like healers.{{sfnp|LRAUQARG}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 7111
**Categories:** Witchcraft
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May (1908)](https://engole.info/gather-ye-rosebuds-while-ye-may-1908/)
**Published:** June 21, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Gather-Y-Rosebuds-While-Ye-May-1908.webp[/pimage]Painting in the Pre-Raphaelite style by John William Waterhouse (1849–1917), the first of two paintings he produced with the same title.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Gather-Y-Rosebuds-While-Ye-May-1908.webp)Oil on canvas
62 cm × 47 cm (24 in × 19 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May* is an oil painting in the [Pre-Raphaelite](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood) style by [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/) (1849–1917), created in 1908 and exhibited at the Royal Academy that year. It was the first of two paintings he produced with the same title,{{sfnp|ENTDWPC9}}{{sfnp|CTBLD7WQ}} inspired by the poem “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” by Robert Herrick (1591–1674), which begins:{{sfnp|Z5YAKVIU}}
> Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
> Old Time is still a-flying;
> And this same flower that smiles today
> Tomorrow will be dying.
Waterhouse associated women with the beauty and decay of flowers, as both are vessels for the seeds of new growth. Between 1908 and 1914 this idea was a recurring theme in his series of “flower women”, which along with *Gather Ye Rosebuds* included [*The Bouquet*](https://engole.info/the-bouquet) and *The Soul of the Rose*.{{sfnp|Z5YAKVIU}}
The painting was purchased from the artist in 1909 by the barrister Sir Frederick M. Fry. It remained in Fry’s possession until his death, after which his estate was dispersed at Christie’s in 1943. Waterhouse was by then unfashionable, and so the painting, offered for sale under the title *A lady, in green dress, holding a bowl of roses*, was sold for only 18 guineas, equivalent to about £1,100 as at 2024.{{sfnp|Z5YAKVIU}}\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
*Gather Ye Rosebuds* was again offered for sale at Christie’s in 2003, where it sold for £966,000. It is now in the hands of a private collector.{{sfnp|Z5YAKVIU}}
## See also
- [Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May (1909)](https://engole.info/gather-ye-rosebuds-while-ye-may-1909)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27546
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
---
### [Jean Weir](https://engole.info/jean-weir/)
**Published:** June 23, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Scottish woman tried for witchcraft and incest, executed on 12 April 1670.
**Content:**
Jean Weir, sometimes Jane, Janet or Grizel, was a Scottish woman tried for witchcraft and incest in 1670. Found guilty only of incest, she was executed in Edinburgh on 12 April 1670.{{sfnp|4VAP7CWQ|453}}\[a\]Incest became a capital offence in Scotland as a result of the [Incest Act of 1567](https://engole.info/incest-act-1567). Although more than sixty-five years old at the time of her death, all that is known of her comes from the testimonies gathered during the last few days of her life.{{sfnp|5HSFQ67C|48}}
Jean was the daughter of Thomas Weir of Kirkton, near Carluke in Lanarkshire, and a sister of the [covenanter](https://engole.info/national-covenant-1638) and reputed sorcerer Major Thomas Weir.{{sfnp|EFYDJLDR}} Jean and her brother became one of the most “notorious” couples in Scottish history owing to their incestuous relationship, which began when she was aged ten.{{sfnp|5HSFQ67C|49–51}}
During a meeting at his house on 4 April 1670 Thomas Weir, then in his seventies and in poor health, confessed to his many sexual crimes, including incest, adultery and bestiality. Those present included his other sister Margaret and Anna Ker, the wife of a local bookbinder and “a friend to the major”. The bailies were summoned, Thomas repeated his confessions, and as a result he was taken to Edinburgh’s tolbooth for trial before the justiciary court; it appears that Jean was also placed in the tolbooth that same day. The authorities initially regarded Thomas as mad, but after being examined by physicians he was judged to be sane.{{sfnp|EFYDJLDR}}{{sfnp|5HSFQ67C|51}}
## Confessions
Jean corroborated Thomas’s confession by admitting to the charge of incest, and that their sister Margaret had once discovered her and Thomas in the act, which Margaret confirmed. Jean said that Thomas had first attempted to have sex with her when she was ten, although he did not succeed in doing so until six years later, and that he had continued to have “carnall deal” with her for forty years.{{sfnp|EFYDJLDR}}{{sfnp|5HSFQ67C|51}}
But Jean introduced a diabolical element in her statement, claiming that she had seen the [Devil’s mark](https://engole.info/witch-finding/#Physical-signs) on her brother’s shoulder. She also added an apparently unrelated story that some years earlier, when she was keeping a school in Dalkeith, she had been visited by two “mysterious women” on consecutive days, the first offering to intercede on her behalf “vis-à-vis the queen of fairy and the Devil”, and the second giving her the power to spin wool at an inhuman speed.{{sfnp|C6H9VJY9|264}} The prosecutors interpreted that as Jean having made a pact with the Devil, and so the charge of witchcraft was added to that of incest. The historian Michael Graham has suggested that the “Devil” Jean referred to might actually have been her brother.{{sfnp|5HSFQ67C|53}}
## Execution
Thomas Weir was executed on 11 April 1670, and Jean was hanged in the Grassmarket the following day.{{sfnp|EFYDJLDR}} The traditional script for public executions such as Jean’s was that the assembled crowd would be warned against emulating the crimes of the convicted, and those about to be executed might ask for the crowd’s forgiveness, and reassure the hangman that they bore him no ill will. But Jean had other ideas.{{sfnp|5HSFQ67C|59}} As she was placed on the scaffold, she began to tear off her clothes as the rope was around her neck,{{sfnp|C6H9VJY9|265}} “so she might die with all the shame she could”.{{sfnp|EFYDJLDR}} The hangman attempted to stop her, but she punched him in the face as he tried to kick the ladder from under her, but eventually she was subdued and hanged.{{sfnp|C6H9VJY9|265}}
## Modern interpretation
Thomas Weir’s biographer, David Stevenson, has suggested that “the confessions of Thomas and Jean Weir \[in old age\] may have exaggerated their misdeeds, but they may be accepted as basically truthful … the expression of long suppressed guilt which became intolerable”.{{sfnp|EFYDJLDR}}
Jean did not sign her statement to the authorities, although she was obviously an educated woman who could have done so. It may be that as a victim of sexual abuse she considered it to be a witness statement against her brother, rather than a confession.{{sfnp|5HSFQ67C|52-53}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Incest became a capital offence in Scotland as a result of the [Incest Act of 1567](https://engole.info/incest-act-1567).
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30091
**Categories:** Female, Scottish, Witch
---
### [Incest Act 1567](https://engole.info/incest-act-1567/)
**Published:** June 24, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%28black_and_white%29.svg/1280px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%28black_and_white%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of the Parliament of Scotland, the basis of incest laws in that country to the present day.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%28black_and_white%29.svg/1280px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%28black_and_white%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Incest Act of 1567 is an Act of the Parliament of Scotland, the first piece of Scottish legislation to criminalise incest, and the basis of incest laws in that country to this day.{{sfnp|9BEFLBN7|1}} Incest is defined as “penile-vaginal penetration between two members within the specified degrees of relationship”.{{sfnp|MU3DGMCE}}
In the late 16th and 17th centuries, in response to pressure from the clergy to create “a godly society”, the Scottish parliament passed a number of Acts classifying a variety of sexual offences as crimes that could be tried in the secular courts.{{sfnp|VKFLQVCD}} In order of perceived seriousness they were:{{sfnp|VKFLQVCD}}
- Fornication, punishable by a fine or imprisonment
- Adultery, punishable by death, although rarely enforced
- Incest, punishable by death
- Sodomy, punishable by death
- Bestiality, punishable by death
- Rape, punishable by death, but the female victim could also find herself liable to prosecution
The Incest Act of 1567 is based on the Biblical Book of Leviticus 18:6–17 which lists the forbidden degrees of [consanguinity](https://engole.info/consanguinity), and affinity – specifically Leviticus 18:20 which prohibits carnal knowledge of a neighbour’s wife – for sexual relations between a man and a woman. It was not however restricted to the relations specified in Leviticus, insofar as where the relationship between a man and a woman is expressed, the corresponding relationship between a woman and a man is also implied.{{sfnp|VKFLQVCD}}{{sfnp|9BEFLBN7|2}}
It proved difficult to prosecute under the Incest Act of 1567, owing to its vagueness, which was remedied by the Incest Act of 1649, which contained a detailed list of prohibited degrees.{{sfnp|9BEFLBN7|4}} That Act was repealed in 1661, and did not in any event address the vexed question of which version of the Bible was to be considered authorative by the courts. The Solicitor General decided in 1913 that the Geneva Bible of 1562, a copy of which was held by the National Library of Scotland, was the authorative version when the Act was passed in 1567.{{sfnp|MU3DGMCE}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30095
**Categories:** Legislation
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Off the Dole](https://engole.info/off-the-dole/)
**Published:** December 12, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Off-the-Dole.webp[/pimage]1935 British film starring George as an unemployed man forced to become a private detective when his dole money is stopped, because he has not been looking for work.
**Content:**
*Off the Dole* is a 1935 British film starring George Formby. He plays the character John Willie, a stage personna originally developed by his father, George Formby, Sr. Formby Jnr’s wife Beryl also appears in the film.{{sfnp|SCPHZEGH}} *Dole* is the colloquial term in the UK for unemployment benefit, now known as Jobseeker’s Allowance; to be “on the dole” is to be unemployed.{{sfnp|TY2LQXDF}}\[a\]The original meaning of *dole* was a donation to charity.{{sfnp|TFI6LBFJ}}
After John Willie has his unemployment benefit withdrawn for moonlighting and not trying to find legitimate work, he takes over his uncle’s detective agency. After various mishaps, Willie succeeds in apprehending a local criminal.{{sfnp|SCPHZEGH}}
John Willie being told that his unemployment benefit has been stopped
YouTube
## Cast
- George Formby as John Willie
- Beryl Formby as Grace, Charm and Ability
- Constance Shotter as Irene
- Dan Crisp as The Inimitable Dude
- James Plant as Crisp and Debonaire
- Stan Pell as The Most Inoffensive Parson
- Stan Little as Little Jack
- Tully Comber as Measured for his Part
- Clifford McLaglen as A Villain and Proud of It
- Wally Patch as Revels in his Part
## Production
Directed by Arthur Mertz and produced by the [Mancunian Film Corporation](https://engole.info/mancunian-film-corporation),{{sfnp|SCPHZEGH}} *Off the Dole* cost £3,000 to make, and earned £80,000 at the box office.{{sfnp|R2L75C4I|198}} As with Formby’s previous film, *Boots! Boots!* (1934) it adopted a revue format encompassing music, dance and sketches, and showed Formby playing the role of John Willie on stage.{{sfnp|P23ALAZI}} According to Formby’s biographer, the cultural historian Jeffrey Richards, the two films “are an invaluable record of the pre-cinematic Formby at work”.{{sfnp|P23ALAZI|196}}
## Critical reception
The film critic Leslie Halliwell has described *Off the Dole* as an “artless comedy shot on a minuscule budget”, but it nevertheless helped to make George Formby a star. Another has described it as a “string of quite disparate sketches”, lacking any cohesion, but despite its “crudeness” offering many enjoyable moments, particularly the songs, notably “With my Little Ukele in my Hand”.{{sfnp|XW7Q7RQN}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The original meaning of *dole* was a donation to charity.{{sfnp|TFI6LBFJ}} b, c var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25027
**Categories:** Film
---
### [Witch-Finding](https://engole.info/witch-finding/)
**Published:** January 23, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Martin_van_Maele_-_La_Sorci%C3%A8re_04.jpg[/pimage]Methods used to identify witches, once believed to provide sufficient evidence to achieve a conviction in a court of law.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/The-Witches-Weigh-house-in-Oudewater.png)19th-century wood engraving depicting
*The Witches’ Weigh*–*house in Oudewater* by H. Merté after R. Bonceva
*Cultures of Witchcraft in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present*
The concept of a witch, as it would be understood today, did not take form until the early Middle Ages. There had been practitioners of various forms of magic since time immemorial, but recourse to the occult was seen largely as a rational alternative when more conventional approaches such as religion or medicine had failed to achieve a satisfactory outcome. Such secular or ecclesiastical legislation as existed tended to be focused on the actions of the accused rather than the means by which they obtained the power to perform them.{{sfnp|36XESPPK}}
But the Roman Catholic church had a problem. Many saw it as inconsistent to permit and even encourage prayers for a good harvest, for instance, while at the same time condemning a pagan ritual intended to achieve the same outcome;{{sfnp|36XESPPK}} the common people saw little or nothing to distinguish God’s miracles (*miracula*) from demonic illusions (*mira*).{{sfnp|8SJVQSX5|16}} The inevitable result was that paganism and magic came to be seen as representing an alternative theology, a heresy that displaced the one true Christian God; its practitioners had to be rooted out, as heresy could not be tolerated. Pope Eugenius IV’s papal bull of 1437 makes it clear that in the view of the Church anyone practising magic or making pacts with evil spirits had to be punished. So far as witches were concerned, the pre-Christian demons had been re-interpreted as evil spirits from whom witches derived their magical powers by entering into a pact with them. Thus the scene was set for an era of witch-hunts, during which individuals such as [Matthew Hopkins](https://engole.info/matthew-hopkins/), [John Kincaid](https://engole.info/john-kincaid-witch-finder/) and [Margaret Aitken](https://engole.info/margaret-aitken-the-great-witch-of-balwearie/) were able to make a living by fraudulently claiming to be able to identify witches by various means.{{sfnp|36XESPPK}}
Many different tests were employed over time to determine if there was any evidence of guilt. As they were all intended to provide evidence to secure a conviction for witchcraft in a court of law, they can usefully be categorised by their legal status: supernatural, circumstantial or testimonial. Supernatural evidence required the action of some supernatural entity, such as the spirit of water in the case of swimming, or the influence of heavenly bodies in the case of astrology.
## Supernatural
### Astrology
Witchcraft, magic, and astrology were inextricably linked. Many, such as George Carleton, Bishop of Chichester, who described astrology as “the mate of witchcraft” in his *Astrologomania* (1623), thought of it as being “demonically inspired”. What was known as natal or genethliacal astrology was used to calculate a person’s character, and likely course of their life, based on a chart of the heavens as they appeared at the time of that person’s birth, conception, or other significant date.{{sfnp|JG29PR48}}
The 17th-century astrologers Richard Saunders and Joseph Balgrave declared that astrology was the only sure way to identify witches.{{sfnp|ZFL4BCTG|loc=11762-11768}} Some even claimed to be able to determine whether a particular affliction was caused by witchcraft. Christopher Hall was consulted in 1654 on behalf of a woman with breast cancer. From his astrological charts he concluded that her condition was caused by one of the three witches in her home village of Hillington.{{sfnp|B7Q26UJP|loc=11778}}
### Ordeal by bread
Ordeal by bread in Anglo-Saxon times was known as the *corsned*. Prayers were said over a small piece of bread, and the test was to see whether the accused was then able to swallow it without choking. Anyone unable to do so was pronounced guilty.{{sfnp|38CGLET7|93}} The early Christian Church adopted the practice and applied it as a way for clerics to clear themselves of accusations made against them,{{sfnp|9K6WXRCF|33}} and subsequently as a means to identify witches, as in the case of the [Belvoir witches](https://engole.info/witches-of-belvoir).{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|137}}
### Ordeal by water
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Ordeal_of_water.jpg)During the swimming test, if a witch floated she was guilty
Wikimedia Commons
Water in a pail might shimmer when a witch walked by,{{sfnp|8SJVQSX5|53}} but the spirit of water was more commonly invoked by the ordeal of swimming, *judicium aquae frigidae.* It appears in English law and statutes from the 10th century, but by the 13th century such ordeals had become illegal in England. The test was used not only to identify witches, but also in cases of theft, adultery, and homicide.{{sfnp|F34HIATY|158}} Subjects were bound in a particular way\[a\]They were bound left toe to right thumb, and right toe to left thumb, with a rope passed under their armpits.{{sfnp|JBMRVPFH|54}} and thrown into a pond; if they sank they were innocent, but if they floated they were guilty. The rationale is described by King James I in his *Daemonologie* (1597):
so it appears that God hath appoynted (for a super-naturall signe of the monstrous impietie of the Witches) that the water shal refuse to receiue them in her bosom, that haue shaken off them the sacred Water of Baptisme, and wilfullie refused the benefite thereof.{{sfnp
— F34HIATY|160}}
The swimming test was barely used in Scotland except by the special commission established at the time of the [Margaret Aitken](https://engole.info/margaret-aitken-the-great-witch-of-balwearie/) incident in 1597, and was discontinued thereafter.{{sfnp|7P5XFHE5|25}}
Testing by water has a very long history; the Babylonian Hammurabi’s code,\[b\]Hammurabi was the ruler of Babylon from 1792 to 1750 BCE dating back to about 1754 BCE, has perhaps the earliest record of its use in detecting witches:{{sfnp|EJQYUDWU|82-83}}
If a man has placed an enchantment upon a man, and has not justified himself, he upon whom the enchantment is placed to the Holy River shall go; into the Holy River he shall plunge. If the Holy River holds him he who enchanted him shall take his house. If, on the contrary, the man is safe and thus innocent, the wizard loses his life, and his house.
## Circumstantial
In a typical case of witchcraft there were no eyewitnesses, and since torture was not a standard measure in English criminal trials, confessions were not always easy to obtain. The results of the tests described here, while not providing incontrovertible proof of witchcraft, would nevertheless weigh heavily against the accused in the absence of alternative explanations.
### Burning
Bewitching a person was believed to create a magical link between the victim and the witch responsible. The application of fire to anything associated with the bewitched person would therefore cause the witch intense pain: the burning of the victim’s excrement for instance, or of a [witch bottle](https://engole.info/witch-bottle) containing some of the victim’s urine, hair, or nail clippings.\[c\]Burying the witch bottle was also believed to be effective.{{sfnp|2L69N6KX|57}} The malefactor would thus be revealed when he or she came to find the source of their affliction.{{sfnp|2L69N6KX|57}}
### Physical signs
In Scotland during 1597, Margaret Aitken, the Great witch of Balwearie, claimed to be able to recognise witches by a special mark she was able to detect in their eyes. Conveyed from town to town throughout the country for three to four months, she was responsible for the conviction and execution of hundreds of women before being exposed as a fraud.{{sfnp|V7XHBW66|8}} Identifying witches by looking for marks in their eyes was discontinued in Scotland after 1597.{{sfnp|7P5XFHE5|25}} There are however records indicating that more than a century later, a minister who was ordained in 1697 and an ardent pursuer of witches, Archibald Marshall, used the services of a witch finder from Wigtown, a woman who claimed to be able to identify a witch simply by looking at them. She stood beside Marshall as members of the congregation entered, signalling which of them were witches by applying pressure to his toes.{{sfnp|QQ4SWPWW|67}}
On the Continent, Pierre de Lancre, a judge and staunch Counter-Reformation Catholic, was mandated by King Henry IV of France to investigate witchcraft in the Labourd region in 1609.{{sfnp|2L69N6KX|168}} Despite not being able to detect a mark himself, his records include testimony from a girl declaring witches could be identified by a mark shaped like a toad’s foot present in their left eye. Confessions from other witches in the same area provided corroboration of the characteristic.{{sfnp|8MFMBHSH|48}} A few years later, in 1612, two teenage boys were involved in an investigation in the Basque region. The boys claimed they could detect witches by looking in their eyes; the younger boy, a fourteen-year-old from France, eventually admitted he had lied. The other teenager, sixteen-year-old Pedro de los Reyes, was arrested and detained under suspicion of fraud for making similar claims.{{sfnp|8MFMBHSH|99}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Martin_van_Maele_-_La_Sorci%C3%A8re_04.jpg)Suspected witches were intimately searched to locate any minor blemishes that might be declared as a mark from Satan
Wikimedia Commons
Accused witches who did not readily confess to undertaking witchcraft would be stripped and their bodies intimately searched for a mark.{{sfnp|D56JQV85|81}} Routinely in Europe and Britain, the heads and bodies of suspects were shaved to permit a thorough examination of their entire anatomy.{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|468-469}} Often the stripping, shaving and searching of the accused took place in public.{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|136}} Any minor blemishes, spots, scars or lumps found could be deemed as the Devil’s mark, a symbol left by Satan indicating the accused had entered into a pact with him.{{sfnp|TIL9BX57|201}} Alternatively, and particularly common in Britain, an abnormality was declared as a witch’s mark. In early modern and contemporary works the two terms are used synonymously, but the correct definition of the latter is the spot on the body used by a [witch’s familiar](https://engole.info/witchs-familiar) to suckle milk or blood. A common factor with both types was that no bleeding, pain or sensory reaction occurred when the mark was punctured, usually with a needle.{{sfnp|TIL9BX57|206}} During the 15th century the mark was not considered to be sufficient proof of witchcraft,{{sfnp|VL5TH6H5|275}} although persecutors in the following centuries accepted either type of mark as adequate evidence of guilt.{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|135}}
### Prayer
A witch was reputedly unable to recite scriptures without faltering. [Jane Wenham](https://engole.info/jane-wenham/) was considered guilty of witchcraft in 1712, as despite a search failing to reveal a Devil’s mark followed by the refusal of her request for a swimming test, she had floundered when asked to deliver a perfect rendition of the Lord’s prayer.{{sfnp|BKVWFWPS}} It was a common method of detection at the time of the Salem witch trials during 1692 in colonial America, but although the condemned minister George Burroughs was able to recite the Lord’s Prayer without faltering after protesting his innocence on the gallows, the death penalty was still carried out.{{sfnp|A5VK8I8J|12-13}}
### Pricking
The ritual pricking of suspected witches served a two-fold purpose: if no immediately discernible stamp from Satan was detected, the body would be pricked to find any invisible marks or to test whether any of the blemishes discovered did not bleed or elicit pain.{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|399}} Pricking was in common use throughout Europe,{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|400}} although it was never used by the Inquisition.{{sfnp|LFGBXMPG|931}} No qualifications were required, the task being undertaken by ministers, court officials, executioners or sometimes specially commissioned physicians. Occasionally women were appointed, but the role was normally assumed by men.{{sfnp|LFGBXMPG|930}} Some, including [Matthew Hopkins](https://engole.info/matthew-hopkins/) from East Anglia and the Scotsman [John Kincaid](https://engole.info/john-kincaid-witch-finder/), became professional prickers and made a lucrative income from the work.{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|399}} Fraud was rife, and several prickers were eventually prosecuted;{{sfnp|LFGBXMPG|931}} Kincaid admitted employing deception when testing for signs of witchcraft after his arrest.{{sfnp|GPAZ2W6M|76}}
The body of the blindfolded suspect was stabbed with needles of varying lengths that were anything from {{convert|1|in|r=1|spell=in}} to {{convert|3|in|r=1|spell=in}} or longer. As the intention was to identify areas that experienced no pain, the procedure was not classified as judicial torture.{{sfnp|LFGBXMPG|930-931}}
### Scratching
Scratching a suspected witch and drawing blood to prove innocence or guilt persisted in England from the 13th until the 19th century, although it was rarely used on the Continent. If whatever symptoms the victim was suffering from were relieved by the scratching, that was evidence that the suspect was guilty, and was to that degree a form of counter-bewitchment.{{sfnp|F34HIATY|search=Scratching}}
The rationale for the supposed efficacy of scratching – also known as “scoring above the breath”, as the suspected witch was scratched above the nose{{sfnp|VIDPGCC7|266}} – is unclear. Modern historians have suggested that perhaps the blood served as an offering to the devil supposedly possessing the witch, which temporarily granted some respite to the victim in return, or that while suffering pain the witch was “unavailable” to inflict pain on others.{{sfnp|F34HIATY|search=Scratching}}
### Weeping
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/image_crying-face-drawing-51.jpg)Witches were believed to be unable to shed tears
Get Drawings
The influential *Malleus Maleficarum*, published in 1486, specifically stated that witches were unable to shed tears; interrogators were advised to particularly look for this characteristic during the questioning and torture of suspects.{{sfnp|6KL55K3A|1109}} In the case of [Margaretha Horn](https://engole.info/margaretha-horn-witch/), an elderly woman accused of witchcraft in Rothenburg during 1652, the inability to weep was given as one of the indications she was a witch. Physicians claimed a human’s heart was surrounded by fluids that exited the body as tears when the person was in an emotional state. A failure to weep while incarcerated demonstrated that the accused lacked the proper feelings of someone in that predicament, suggesting that they were controlled by the Devil rather than by God.{{sfnp|4BN4SBRQ|181, 188}}
### Weighing
As the Bible was believed to be the word of God, it was reasoned that it must outweigh all the work of the Devil. So if the Bible outweighed the accused, then he or she was assuredly a witch; but if the accused was heavier than the Bible, then innocence had been proven.{{sfnp|UUYLSTJV}}
More generally, suspects who weighed less than would normally be expected for their build could be declared a witch based on the premise that those not abnormally light would be unable to fly.{{sfnp|TIL9BX57|206}} Officials in the town of Oudewater in the Netherlands used the scales in the public buildings to certify people who fell within their expected weight range.{{sfnp|TIL9BX57|77}} The administrators at Oudewater were highly regarded for their accuracy: records in German archives allude to the test.{{sfnp|PPEGWGQ5|114}} Mostly performed to allay local gossip, those seeking the paid-for test at Oudewater mainly originated from areas where the swimming ordeal was accepted.{{sfnp|423RDR88|109-110}} Prior to any test, authority was required from city officials. Females would then be undressed and intimately searched by the midwife to ensure no heavy items were secreted inside their body; a *gerechtsbode* (sheriff’s officer) checked males. Two aldermen and other dignitaries then witnessed the person’s weight being measured.{{sfnp|PPEGWGQ5|104-105}} Afterwards a signed certificate bearing the town seal was provided that detailed the results together with identifying particulars such as name, relatives, age, where the person lived and noting any physical characteristics.{{sfnp|PPEGWGQ5|103}}
## Testimonial
A confession from the accused was first-class evidence of guilt, but not always easy to obtain. In England in particular, where it was illegal to use torture to secure a confession, the courts relied heavily on circumstantial evidence. The situation was reversed in Scotland and on the Continent however, where the law did not normally permit the presentation of circumstantial evidence in criminal trials; special rules had to be adopted to admit it, and confessions extracted under torture were admissible.{{sfnp|F34HIATY|search=Circumstantial Evidence}}
### Admission of guilt
There is at least one case of an accused witch who, apparently believing in her alleged power, did freely confess. Alizon Device, one of the [Pendle witches](https://engole.info/pendle-witches/) executed in 1612, when confronted by her alleged victim at her trial fell to her knees in tears and confessed.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|37}} More commonly though torture of some form was required.
### *Tormentum insomniae*
Despite the English legal position, Matthew Hopkins developed a technique that would certainly be considered to be torture today. A team of watchers would keep the accused under constant observation, depriving her – it was usually a woman – of sleep and forcing her to march up and down constantly. It was claimed that the watchers were waiting for her imps or familiars to arrive to suckle from her Devil’s mark, but the practical outcome was that, confused and physically exhausted, the woman would confess to anything to end her torment. After three nights of such treatment, for instance, Elizabeth Warne confessed that “pride and lustfulness had brought her to this place, and … she had the devill w\[i\]thin”.{{sfnp|QACTZV9W}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a They were bound left toe to right thumb, and right toe to left thumb, with a rope passed under their armpits.{{sfnp|JBMRVPFH|54}} b Hammurabi was the ruler of Babylon from 1792 to 1750 BCE c Burying the witch bottle was also believed to be effective.{{sfnp|2L69N6KX|57}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 13244
**Categories:** Witchcraft
**Tags:** Facebook post, Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Jamie Fleeman](https://engole.info/jamie-fleeman/)
**Published:** July 28, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/JamieFleeman.jpg[/pimage]Probably the last Scottish family jester, better known as "the Laird of Udny's Fool" or "the Laird of Udny's Fule".
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/JamieFleeman.jpg)Jamie Fleeman, the Laird of Udny’s Fool, one of the last family jesters in Scotland.
Wikimedia Commons
Jamie Fleeman or Fleeming (1713–1778), better known as “the Laird of Udny’s Fool” or “the Laird of Udny’s Fule” in the Scots language, was probably the last family jester in Scotland.
Although described as a fool, Fleeman had a reputation for his clever, witty repartee, and many anecdotal tales of his actions were re-capped. He was specifically mentioned in the 1845 Statistical Accounts of Scotland, and characterised in novels.
Fleeman is associated with the Countess of Erroll, and was used by her to carry messages to Jacobite rebels.
## Early life
Fleeman was born in Longside,{{sfnp|6MLJWZ4W|190-191}} Aberdeenshire in 1713, one of three children. His precise date of birth is not given but he is recorded as being baptised on 7 April 1713. Few details are known about his father except he was a crofter who was also named James Fleming. There is also scant information about his mother other than that she drowned in a deep pool beside the Bridge of Ludquharn. The pool became known as “Fleeman’s Pot”. Fleeman’s sister, Martha, was a Presbyterian and often conversed by quoting Psalms and had the reputation of being demented. Fleeman’s brother is believed to have died aboard HMS *Serapis*.{{sfnp|9FGM7BSX|2-5}}{{sfnp|HNB26CDB|6-7}}
Fleeman is described as having a large round head with dull hair that stood on end giving the impression he had been “scared out of his wits”, broad shouldered and possessing formidable strength. He often went barefoot and wore basic clothing of sack-cloth or serge material.{{sfnp|9FGM7BSX|4}}{{sfnp|HNB26CDB|9}}
The home of Sir Alexander Guthrie near Ludquharn was where Fleeman spent his childhood days but he was already being favoured by other local gentry for his ready wit and amusing remarks.{{sfnp|HNB26CDB|8}} Most of his life was then predominantly spent as a part of the Laird of Udny’s household although Fleeman still roamed wherever he chose.{{sfnp|9FGM7BSX|10}}
## Career
Fleeman was employed by the Laird of Udny and was dependent on him. His primary function was to provide amusement to the family but he also worked as a farm labourer tending cows and geese.{{sfnp|IFVN5FP2|5}} Although Fleeman has been described as a fool or a family jester,{{sfnp|BWYPMXZ9}} he was listed as a pauper in the statistical accounts. He is specifically mentioned by Reverend John Imray of Longside Parish under Section II, eminent characters of the New Statistical Account of Scotland 1845, where it states:{{sfnp|DQDZ4SF3}}
No offence is meant by introducing here the name of an individual who had a county (if not a national) reputation, and whose printed memorabilia have gone through several editions. This was Jamie Fleeman (or Fleeming), “the Laird of Udny’s fool,” who flourished here about the middle of last century. His name appears frequently in the session’s list of paupers and his sayings and doings have been a theme of wonderment to a generation or two.
In 1734 Fleeman was with the Laird of Udny and his family at Knockhall Castle. The castle was destroyed by fire and Fleeman is credited with saving the lives of the family.{{sfnp|QUGPTTLJ}} He was said to have been woken by a dog who was his companion and after discovering the fire, first woke his friends before throwing a large oak chest through a window; normally the weight of the chest meant it needed three men to lift it. Initially Fleeman did not attempt to rouse anyone he disliked, including a bad-tempered domestic servant who he felt generally treated him badly. It was only after he was begged by other staff that he went back into the castle and woke the woman.{{sfnp|HNB26CDB|28}} The family returned to living at [Udny Castle](https://engole.info/udny-castle/) after the fire.{{sfnp|VGNT24L6}}
Fleeman is described as a “protector and confidante” of the Countess of Erroll{{sfnp|MABYVXRG|281}} who was a fervent Jacobite supporter.{{sfnp|HCHRGU5D|27}} He was able to move around the area without being questioned or suspected of any illicit activity and she used him to deliver messages when she was mustering support for the Jacobite rebellion.{{sfnp|MABYVXRG|281}} She also used him to convey messages to Lord Pitsligo when he was in hiding at Auchiries.{{sfnp|HNB26CDB|21}}
His notoriety extended to Fleeman’s name being included in one of Bram Stoker’s Dracula stories. In the collection of works entitled *Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories*, first published after Stoker’s death, in the tale called “Crooken Sands”, Mr Markham has asked his companion if he saw someone else dressed in the same manner as his own. The reply given was that there had not been any such fool since the time of Jamie Fleeman, the Laird of Udny’s Fool.{{sfnp|GLEK4N5E|136}} The fictional character of Davie Gellatley who appears in the 1814 novel *Waverley* by Sir Walter Scott is thought to be based on Fleeman.{{sfnp|MZEDMFGH|189}} Gellatley is characterised as an ‘innocent’ and a ‘fool’.{{sfnp|8LBX998M|101}}
Some of Fleeman’s remarks and actions were also recapped in a newspaper article in a significant weekly publication in New Zealand in 1889.{{sfnp|VMPQ5BTV}}{{sfnp|7CQF5ZA4}}
Fleeman is attributed as the last of the “family jesters in Scotland” and is better known than the laird who employed him.{{sfnp|MZEDMFGH|189}}{{sfnp|HNB26CDB|4}}
## Anecdotes
Several of Fleeman’s anecdotes are published. One frequently quoted is the tale of Fleeman approaching a minister with a horse shoe he had found on the road. He asked the minister what it was and received the reply “Why Jamie, any fool would know that it is a horse shoe”; Fleeman’s response was “Ah, what it is to be wise – to ken it’s no a meer’s shoe.”{{sfnp|3LC3ET3J|211}} On another occasion a rather droll but superior gent condescendingly asked Fleeman “Whose fool are you?” and Fleeman answered “I’m Udny’s feel. Wha’s feel are ye?”{{sfnp|HNB26CDB|36-37}}\[a\]The meanings of some of the less common words are: beast – cow, horse, sheep or ox; dinna – do not; feel or fule – fool; ken – know; meer’s – mare’s; {{sfnp|ZWLJUH73}}
## Death
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Jamie_Fleeman%27s_grave%2C_Longside_-_geograph.org.uk_-_261867.jpg)Jamie Fleeman’s grave, Longside
Wikimedia Commons
During a summer evening in 1778, Fleeman became soaked in a heavy rain storm. He quickly developed a fever, which then turned to jaundice. He received no offers of help and spent time wandering between different houses but no one was willing to give him shelter. Fleeman’s weakened state caused him to rapidly become emaciated and lose his strength. He eventually found shelter in a barn at Little Ardiffery, in the parish of Cruden. He secured the barn door with a piece of planking and fell asleep. A short while later, some farm labourers, unaware that Fleeman was sleeping behind the door, forced it open causing the plank to strike Fleeman’s head. The severity of his injury was not discovered until some hours later; he was then taken to the kitchen and his wound attended to. Fleeman insisted he wanted to return to Longside, some {{convert|8|mi|r=1|spell=in}} distant. He took a whole day to walk back to his sister’s cottage in Kinmundy. Two days later, Fleeman died. Two versions of his last words are given: they were either “I’m of a gentle persuasion, dinna bury me like a beast”, or “I’m a Christian, dinna bury me like a beast.”{{sfnp|HNB26CDB|72}}{{sfnp|AFQE7A57|235}}
Fleeman’s grave is at Longside and a monument to mark his grave was erected in 1861.{{sfnp|F9ZRUTBC}}{{sfnp|VWCTBLKN}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The meanings of some of the less common words are: beast – cow, horse, sheep or ox; dinna – do not; feel or fule – fool; ken – know; meer’s – mare’s; {{sfnp|ZWLJUH73}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 4119
**Categories:** Jacobite, Jester, Male, Scottish
---
### [Trafford Park](https://engole.info/trafford-park/)
**Published:** May 11, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Trafford-Park.webp[/pimage]First planned industrial estate in the world, and still the largest in Europe.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Aerial_photograph_of_Manchester%2C_Salford_and_Trafford.jpg)Aerial view over Manchester city centre (top) and Trafford Park (bottom) south of the Manchester Ship Canal.
Wikimedia Commons
Trafford Park is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, opposite Salford Quays on the southern side of the [Manchester Ship Canal](https://engole.info/manchester-ship-canal), {{convert|3.4|mi}} southwest of Manchester city centre and {{convert|1.3|mi}} north of [Stretford](https://engole.info/stretford). Until the late 19th century it was the ancestral home of the Trafford family, who sold it to financier [Ernest Terah Hooley](https://engole.info/ernest-terah-hooley/) in 1896. Occupying an area of {{convert|4.7|sqmi}}, it was the first planned industrial estate in the world,{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|xii}} and remains the largest in Europe.{{sfnp|HXF5Y8UX}}
Trafford Park is almost entirely surrounded by water; the Bridgewater Canal forms its southeastern and southwestern boundaries, and the Manchester Ship Canal, which opened in 1894, its northeastern and northwestern. Hooley’s plan was to develop the Ship Canal frontage, but the canal was slow to generate the predicted volume of traffic, so in the early days the park was largely used for leisure activities such as golf, polo and boating. British Westinghouse was the first major company to move in, and by 1903 it was employing about half of the 12,000 workers then employed in the park, which became one of the most important engineering facilities in Britain.
Trafford Park was a major supplier of materiel in the First and Second World Wars, producing the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines used to power both the Spitfire and the Lancaster. At its peak in 1945, an estimated 75,000 workers were employed in the park. Employment began to decline in the 1960s as companies closed in favour of newer, more efficient plants elsewhere. By 1967 employment had fallen to 50,000, and the decline continued throughout the 1970s. The new generation of container ships was too large for the Manchester Ship Canal, which led to a further decline in Trafford Park’s fortunes. The workforce had fallen to 15,000 by 1976, and by the 1980s industry had virtually disappeared from the park.
The Trafford Park Urban Development Corporation, formed in 1987, reversed the estate’s decline. In the eleven years of its existence, the park attracted 1,000 companies, generating 28,299 new jobs and £1.759 billion of private-sector investment. As at 2022 there were an estimated 1400 companies within Trafford Park, employing 40,000 people.
## History
## Pre-industrial
Until the industrial development of the park began in the late 19th century, much of the area now known as Trafford Park was a “beautifully timbered deer park”.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|3}} Its {{convert|1183|acre}} comprised flat meadows and grassland, and an inner park containing a tree-lined avenue leading from an entrance lodge at Barton-upon-Irwell.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|66-67}} It was the ancestral estate of the de Trafford family, one of the most ancient in England, and then one of the largest landowners in Stretford. The family acquired the lands around Trafford in about 1200, when Richard de Trafford was given the lordship of Stretford by Hamon de Massey, 4th Baron of Dunham.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|65-66}} Some time between 1672 and 1720, the de Traffords moved from the home they had occupied since 1017, in what is now known as Old Trafford, to what was then called Whittleswick Hall, which they renamed Trafford Hall.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|9}}
Trafford Park contained the hall, its grounds, and three farms: Park Farm, Moss Farm, and Waters Meeting Farm.{{sfnp|JAQ48KUD}} In 1761 a section of the Bridgewater Canal was built along the southeast and southwest sides of Trafford Park. The canal along with the River Irwell, which marked the estate’s northeast and northwest boundaries, gave the park its present-day “island-like” quality.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|10}}
A meeting held in 1882 at the Didsbury home of engineer Daniel Adamson began the estate’s transformation, with the creation of the [Manchester Ship Canal](https://engole.info/manchester-ship-canal) committee. Sir Humphrey de Trafford was an implacable opponent of the proposed canal,{{sfnp|P5H97XWW}} objecting that, amongst other things, it would bring polluted water close to his residence, interfere with his drainage, and render Trafford Hall uninhabitable, forcing him to “give up his home and leave the place”. Despite Sir Humphrey’s opposition the Ship Canal Bill became law on its third passage through parliament, on 6 August 1885. Construction began in 1888, more than two years after Sir Humphrey’s death,{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|13}} although a wall {{convert|9|ft}} high (2.7 m) wall was built between the canal and the park, so as to block it off from view. Two wharves were also built, for the exclusive use of the de Traffords.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|68}}
The opening of the ship canal in 1894 made Trafford Park a prime site for industrial development.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|23-24}} The deer were initially allowed to continue roaming free, but as the park’s industrialisation gathered pace they were considered inappropriate and were killed, the last of them in 1900.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|42}} Trafford Hall survived until its demolition following the Second World War.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|99}}
## Early development
On 7 May 1896 Sir Humphrey Francis de Trafford put the estate up for auction, but it failed to reach its reported reserve price of £300,000.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|16}} There was much public debate, before and after the abortive sale, as to whether Manchester Corporation ought to buy Trafford Park, but the corporation could not agree terms quickly enough, and so on 23 June [Ernest Terah Hooley](https://engole.info/ernest-terah-hooley/) became the new owner of Trafford Park for the sum of £360,000,{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|22}} equivalent to about £40.3 million as at 2018.\[a\]Calculated using the GDP deflator at Measuring Worth.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}\[b\]Later in life Hooley said of himself “My great business was to buy something without the money to pay for it, sell it for as much as I could, and get out with the profit … I was never one to concern myself with whatever happened afterwards.”{{sfnp|6MTJUCL7|search=The Grappler}}
Hooley formed Trafford Park Estates Ltd on 17 August 1896, transferring his ownership of the park to the new company – of which he was the chairman and a significant shareholder – at a substantial profit. The initial plans for the estate included a racetrack, exclusive housing and a cycle works, along with the development of the ship canal frontage for “all types of trade including timber”. By that time the ship canal had been open for two years, but the predicted traffic had yet to materialise.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|24}}
The company initially chose not to construct buildings for letting, and instead leased land for development. But by the end of June 1897 less than one per cent of the park had been leased,{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|131}} and so the park’s existing assets were put to use until more tenants could be found. Trafford Hall was opened as a hotel in 1899, to serve prospective industrialists considering a move to the park, along with their key employees. It had 40 bedrooms, available to “Gentlemen only”.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|29,42}} The hall’s stables and some other outbuildings were used for stock auctions and the sale of horses from 1900 to 1902,{{sfnp|CBWT3T8Q|128}} and the ornamental lake was leased to William Crooke and Sons, for use as a boating lake, initially on a five-year lease.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|28-29}} A polo ground was set up in the park in 1902,{{sfnp|CBWT3T8Q|128}} and {{convert|80|acre}} of land near the hall were leased to The Manchester Golf Club, which laid out a {{convert|3|mi|adj=on|spell=in}} long course,{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|30}} but fearing that its lease might not be renewed, the club moved to a new site at Hopwood Park in 1912, where it remains today.{{sfnp|I83835A7}}
## Industrialisation
Hooley met with [Marshall Stevens](https://engole.info/marshall-stevens), the general manager of the Ship Canal Company, and both men recognised the benefit that the industrial development of Trafford Park could offer to the ship canal, and the ship canal to the estate. In January 1897 Stevens became the managing director of Trafford Park Estates,{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|24}} and he remained with the company, latterly as its joint chairman and managing director, until 1930.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|112}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/The_Employment_of_Women_in_Britain%2C_1914-1918_Q28248.jpg/500px-The_Employment_of_Women_in_Britain%2C_1914-1918_Q28248.jpg)Female workers stacking asbestos sheets at the Turner Bros. Asbestos Factory, Trafford Park, September 1918
Wikimedia Commons
In 1908 the Estates Company decided to reverse its earlier policy of only leasing the land, and began to construct what were known as Hives, 25-foot (7.6 m) wide subdivisions of a longer single building that could be internally reconfigured for each tenant’s needs. A series of 19 were built initially, available to rent at £80 per annum, equivalent to about £10,600 as at 2023.\[c\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}. Brooke Bond was one of the companies to use the Hives, before moving to its purpose-built factory on the park in 1922. The Estates Company also built large reinforced concrete warehouses known as Safes. These buildings were fitted with sprinkler systems and were considered fireproof, which reduced insurance costs to 25 per cent of those of comparable warehouses elsewhere in the area. Each Safe had a capacity of {{convert|778000|cuft}}, sufficient to hold 50,000 bales of cotton.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|54-55}}
Among the first industries to arrive was the Manchester Patent Fuel Company, in 1898. The Trafford Brick Company arrived soon after, followed by J. W. Southern & Co. (timber merchants), James Gresham (engineers), and W. T. Glovers & Co. (electric cable manufacturers). Glovers also built a power station in the park, on the banks of the Bridgewater Canal. Most of these early developments were built on the eastern side of the park, while the rest of it remained largely undeveloped.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|32}}
The first American company to arrive was Westinghouse Electric, which formed its British subsidiary – British Westinghouse Electric Company – in 1899, and purchased {{convert|130|acre}} on two sites. Building work started in 1900, and the factory began production of turbines and electric generators in 1902. By the following year, British Westinghouse was employing about half of the 12,000 workers in Trafford Park. Its main machine shop was {{convert|899|ft}} long and {{convert|440|ft}} wide; for almost 100 years Westinghouse’s Trafford Park works was the most important engineering facility in Britain.{{sfnp|8Q5CI5AV|88}} Westinghouse was sold to the Vickers Company in 1919 and renamed Metropolitan-Vickers, often shortened to Metrovicks.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|75}}
In 1903 the Cooperative Wholesale Society (CWS), bought land at Trafford Wharf and set up a large food-packing factory and a flour mill.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|56, 135}} Other companies arriving at about the same time included Kilverts (lard manufacturers), the Liverpool Warehousing Company, and Lancashire Dynamo & Crypto Ltd.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|35}}
The second major American company to set up a manufacturing base in Trafford Park was the Ford Motor Company, in 1911. Initially Ford used its factory as an assembly plant for the Model T, although other vehicles were assembled there in later years, before moving to a new factory at Dagenham, Essex, in 1931.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|63-65}} By 1915, 100 American companies had moved into the park, peaking at more than 200 by 1933.{{sfnp|CBWT3T8Q|129}} When the cotton industry began to decline in the early 20th century, Trafford Park and the Manchester Ship Canal helped Manchester – and to a lesser extent the rest of south Lancashire – to weather the economic depression from which the rest of Lancashire suffered.{{sfnp|MTHHN9JW|185}} During the First World War the park was used for the manufacture of munitions, chemicals and other materiel. Most firms at Trafford Park succeeded in avoiding bankruptcy during the Great Depression, unlike the rest of Lancashire.{{sfnp|MTHHN9JW|185-186}} Ford moved to Dagenham in 1931, but returned temporarily to Trafford Park during the Second World War.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|80, 103}}
Metropolitan Vickers set up Manchester’s and one of the UK’s first radio stations at their factory in 1921. The station’s first broadcast took place on 17 May 1922. In October that year the company was one of six who formed the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), which started broadcasting from the Metrovicks studio under the call sign 2ZY on 15 November 1922. Much of the station’s content was musical, but news, plays, and children’s programmes were also transmitted. Conditions in the small 30-by-16-foot (9.1 m × 4.9 m) studio were cramped, and the BBC moved the station to larger premises outside the park in 1923.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|76-77}}
### Westwards expansion
Sir Humphrey de Trafford had retained {{convert|1300|acre}} of land on the western side of the ship canal after his sale of Trafford Park. Hemmed in as it was between the canals and “an increasingly urbanised Stretford to the east”, as the industrialisation of the park neared its completion the Estates Company started to acquire parcels of the remaining de Trafford land, then in the control of family trustees, as did the Canal Company. In 1924 the Estates Company bought a half share in Dumplington Estates Ltd., a company set up to administer {{convert|38|acre}} of land bought from the de Trafford Trustees on which it was intended to build a garden village. In 1929 the Ship Canal Company acquired Dumplington Estates, and in return gave the Estates Company land to the south of Barton, the Trafford Park Extension. The Canal Company recognised the potential for a new dock on the land, giving the area its name of Barton Dock Estate, although no dock was ever built. The Barton Docks area was developed during and after the Second World War, but the land belonging to Dumplington Estates remained largely undeveloped until the construction of the Trafford Centre, which opened in 1998.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|70-72}}
### Second World War
Trafford Park was largely turned over to the production of war materiel during the Second World War, such as the Avro Manchester and Avro Lancaster heavy bombers, and the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines used to power the Spitfire, Hurricane, Mosquito and the Lancaster. The engines were made by Ford, under licence. The 17,316 workers employed in Ford’s purpose-built factory had produced 34,000 engines by the war’s end. The facility was designed in two separate sections to minimise the impact of bomb damage on production.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|103-104}} The wood-working factory of F. Hills & Sons built more than 800 Percival Proctor aircraft for the RAF between 1940 and 1945, which were flight tested at the nearby Barton Aerodrome.{{sfnp|8S8S95YJ|227}} Other companies produced gun bearings, steel tracks for Churchill tanks, munitions, Bailey bridges, and much else. ICI built and operated the first facility in the UK able to produce penicillin in quantity.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|101}}
As an important industrial area, the park suffered from extensive bombing, particularly during the [Manchester Blitz](https://engole.info/manchester-blitz) of December 1940. On the night of 23 December 1940, the Metropolitan-Vickers aircraft factory in Mosley Road was badly damaged, with the loss of the first 13 MV-built Avro Manchester bombers in final assembly.{{sfnp|LRDYQ7EU|56}} The new Ford factory producing aircraft engines was bombed only a few days after its opening in May 1941.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|103-104}} Trafford Hall was severely damaged by bombing, and was demolished shortly after the war ended.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|99-100}}
At the outbreak of war in 1939 there were an estimated 50,000 workers employed in the park. By the end of the war in 1945 that number had risen to 75,000,{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|130-133}} probably the peak size of the park’s workforce; Metropolitan-Vickers alone employed 26,000.{{sfnp|8Q5CI5AV|117}}
### Decline and regeneration
During the 1960s employment in the park began to decline as companies closed their premises in favour of newer, more efficient plants elsewhere.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|118}} Ellesmere Port and Runcorn at the western end of the Manchester Ship Canal were in the ascendency industrially and they overtook Trafford Park in economic importance. In 1967, employment had fallen to 50,000 and there was a further decline in the 1970s.{{sfnp|MTHHN9JW|186}} In 1971, Stretford Council responded by setting up the Trafford Park Industrial Council (TRAFIC), membership of which was open to any firm in Trafford Park. One of TRAFIC’s early initiatives was to encourage businesses in the park to address the general air of decay, by improving their own areas through landscaping and other environmental improvements.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|123}} The park’s decline was exacerbated by the decreasing use of the Manchester Ship Canal during the 1970s, which was unable to accommodate the newer, larger container ships then entering service.{{sfnp|MTHHN9JW|186}} By 1976, the workforce had fallen to 15,000,{{sfnp|MTHHN9JW|187}} and by the 1980s industry had virtually disappeared.{{sfnp|MTHHN9JW|188}}
On 12 August 1981, {{convert|483|acre}} of Trafford Park – along with Salford Quays – were declared an Enterprise Zone by the UK government, in an attempt to encourage new development within the estate. The new status did little to reverse the park’s fortunes however; during a 1984 House of Commons debate, Member of Parliament for Stretford, Tony Lloyd, described the area’s decline as “spectacular and disastrous”. The target had been to create 7000 new jobs over 10 years, but by 1986 only 2557 had been created, not even enough to compensate for the ongoing job losses caused by closures within the park.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|135-140}} On 10 February 1987 the Trafford Park Development Corporation was formed to assume responsibility for a {{convert|3130|acre|adj=on}} Urban Development Area that included not only Trafford Park but also parts of Stretford, Salford Quays, and the former steelworks at [Irlam](https://engole.info/irlam/), now known as Northbank.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|141, 147}} Of the four redevelopment schemes undertaken by the corporation one, Wharfside, included {{convert|200|acre}} of the eastern end of the park as well as part of the ship canal docks and the area around Manchester United F.C.’s Old Trafford football ground to the east of the Bridgewater Canal. The intention was to build “a flagship site” containing prestigious accommodation for offices, shops, and “hi-tech” industries, capitalising on the area’s proximity to Manchester city centre and mirroring the earlier success of the redevelopment at nearby Salford Quays.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|147-151}}
Between 1987 and 1998 the development corporation attracted 1000 companies, generating 28,299 new jobs and £1.759 billion of private sector investment.{{sfnp|HXF5Y8UX}} The setting up of the corporation was intended to be a temporary measure, terminating on 31 March 1997, but it was extended for a further year until March 1998, when responsibility for Trafford Park’s development passed to Trafford Council.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|165}} As at 2025 there were 1400 companies within the park, employing an estimated 40,000 people.{{sfnp|PY284UDD}}
## Governance
### Civic history
The eastern area of the park, where the first developments took place at the end of the 19th century, was then under the local government control of [Stretford Urban District](https://engole.info/municipal-borough-of-stretford); the west was controlled by the urban district of Barton-upon-Irwell.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|49}} Tensions soon began to emerge between the Estates Company and Stretford Council over the provision of local services and infrastructure. In 1902, W. T. Glover & Co, a cable manufacturing company that had moved to the park from nearby Salford, built a power station next to their works to supply electricity to the rest of the park; the Estates Company had previously approached Manchester Corporation, but Stretford would not allow another local authority to supply electricity within its area.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|35}}
In 1901 Manchester Corporation formally proposed a merger with Stretford UDC, on the basis that Stretford’s growth was due in large part to Trafford Park, the growth of which in turn was largely due to the Manchester Ship Canal. Manchester Corporation had provided one-third of the capital needed to build the ship canal, for which it had doubled its municipal debt, despite having also increased rates by 26 per cent between 1892 and 1895.{{sfnp|CBWT3T8Q|11}} Stretford and Lancashire County Council opposed the merger, which was rejected following a government inquiry.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|59}} In 1969 Pevsner wrote: “That \[neighbouring\] Stretford and Salford are not administratively one with Manchester is one of the most curious anomalies of England.”{{sfnp|Y4PDHZAL|265}}
The tensions between Stretford and the Estates Company began to come to a head in 1906, when in response to complaints in the press about the state of one particular road in the park, Trafford Park Road, Stretford issued formal notices demanding that all premises with frontage onto the road pay for its improvement. Further disputes over the standard of roads in the park followed until, in 1907, the Estates Company presented a petition to Lancashire County Council demanding that Trafford Park should be an urban district in its own right, independent of Stretford. The county council dismissed the petition, but later that year, following a petition organised by the Trafford Park Ratepayers Association, a new local government ward, Park Ward, was created within Stretford, The new ward did not include the western part of the park however, which remained under the control of Barton-upon-Irwell.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|60-61}}
As a consequence of the Local Government Act 1972, the borough of Stretford was abolished and Trafford Park has, since 1 April 1974, formed part of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford.{{sfnp|4CX8XQIG}} Most of the park is now in the Trafford ward of Gorse Hill & Colnbrook;{{sfnp|PJN6GYS9}} a small area to the west is in the Lostock & Barton ward.{{sfnp|8HHCV577}} The entire park is in the parliamentary constituency of Stretford and Urmston.{{sfnp|VDI5KNCF}}\[d\]In 2023 the Boundary Commission for England reviewed every constituency, and concluded that Stretford and Urmston should remain unchanged. So the UK Parliament site’s claim that the constituency of Stretford and Urmston ceased to exist in 2024 is misleading.{{sfnp|G2D9LL3W}}
## Geography
The topography of Trafford Park is either flat or gently undulating, about {{convert|144|ft}} above sea level at its highest point.{{sfnp|QC54S2VZ}} The local bedrock is Triassic Bunter Sandstone, overlaid by sand and gravel deposited during the last ice age, around 10,000 years ago. There are some areas of peat bog in the west of the park, in the area formerly known as Trafford Moss.{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|xii, 3}} William Roscoe began work on reclaiming the bog in 1793, and by 1798 that work was sufficiently advanced for him to turn his attention to the task of reclaiming the much larger [Chat Moss](https://engole.info/chat-moss/) in nearby Salford, also owned by the Trafford family.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|5-6}}
The park occupies an area of {{convert|4.7|sqmi}}, and is almost entirely surrounded by water. The Bridgewater Canal forms its southeastern and southwestern boundaries, and the Manchester Ship Canal forms its northeastern and northwestern boundaries.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|1}} Trafford Park is the most northerly area of Trafford,{{sfnp|C7742WII}} and faces Salford across the Manchester Ship Canal. Stretford lies to the south and east, and Urmston to the west.
## Trafford Park Village
In 1898 a large plot of land was sold to Edmund Nuttall & Co. for the construction of 1200 houses. The houses were never built, but the land later became the site of Trafford Park Village, known locally as The Village.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|38-40}} The announced arrival of the Westinghouse factory acted a spur to development, and in 1899, Trafford Park Dwellings Ltd was formed, with the aim of providing housing for the anticipated influx of new workers. Nuttall’s land was acquired, and by 1903 more than 500 houses had been built, rising to more than 700 when the development was completed in 1904. In 1907 it was estimated that the population of the Village was 3060. The development was laid out in a grid pattern, with the roads numbered instead of being named; avenues numbered 1 to 4 run north–south, streets numbered 1 to 12 run east–west.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|40}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/St_anthonys_church_trafford_park.jpg)St Antony of Padua, reclad in 1994.{{sfnp
BC9QKKED
The Village was almost completely self-contained, with its own shops, public hall, post office, police station, school, social club, and sports facilities.{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|133}} Three [corrugated iron churches](https://engole.info/tin-tabernacle) were built: a Methodist chapel in 1901, St Cuthbert’s (Church of England) in 1902, and the Roman Catholic [St Antony’s](https://engole.info/st-antony-of-padua) in 1904.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|40}} Only St Antony’s remains. It contains the altar and a stained glass window from the chapel at Trafford Hall, donated by Lady Annette de Trafford.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|150}} The Village’s design attracted criticism from the start; the streets were narrow, with few gardens, and the whole development was close to the pollution of neighbouring industries. In that respect it resembled the terraced properties in the surrounding areas, many of which were condemned as slums in later years. By the 1970s The Village was also considered by Stretford Council to be a slum area, and unsuitable for residential housing. In the first phase of clearance, during the mid-1970s, 298 houses were demolished. A further 325 houses were demolished in the early 1980s, leaving only the largest 84 houses remaining.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|130-132}}
## Landmarks
### Imperial War Museum North
{{main|imperial War Museum North}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Imperial_War_Museum_2008cropped.jpg)View from across the ship canal
Wikimedia Commons
The Imperial War Museum North, opened on 5 July 2002, is in Trafford Wharf, on the southern edge of the ship canal looking over towards Salford Quays. An example of deconstructivist architecture, it was the first building in the United Kingdom to be designed by Daniel Libeskind. The structure consists of three interlocking sections: the air shard, the earth shard, and the water shard, representing a world torn apart by conflict. Entrance to the museum is via the air shard, which is deliberately disorienting and open to the elements.{{sfnp|WYUBVANA}}
### Trafford Ecology Park
{{main|Trafford Ecology Park}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Trafford_ecology_park.jpg)Remains of Trafford Park boating lake
Wikimedia Commons
The {{convert|11|acre|adj=on}} Trafford Ecology Park is what remains of Trafford Park’s ornamental boating lake. Trafford Council bought the land in 1983, but government spending restrictions delayed the park’s restoration and conversion, and it was not fully opened to the public until 1990.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|143-147}}
The present lake is about one-third of its original size, but although now relatively small it supports a wide variety of wildlife. It is also a designated Site of Biological Importance, and a [Local Nature Reserve](https://engole.info/local-nature-reserve).{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|143-147}}{{sfnp|S855F336}}
### Entrance to Gorse Hill Park
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Trafford_ecology_park.jpg)Entrance to Gorse Hill Park
Wikimedia Commons
The Old Trafford entrance lodge and gates to Trafford Park were moved from their original location opposite what is now the [White City](https://engole.info/white-city-stretford) retail park to become the entrance to Gorse Hill Park in 1922, and are Grade II [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building).{{sfnp|E49SR25P}}{{sfnp|JP3DJ7KW}}
## Transport
### Historic
At the end of the 19th century there were no public transport routes in, and few running close to, Trafford Park. Its size meant that the Estates Company was obliged to provide some means of travelling around the park, and therefore a gas-powered tramway was commissioned, intended to carry both people and freight. The first tram ran on 23 July 1897, but after a few days of operation there was an accident in which a tramcar was derailed, and the service was suspended until the following year.{{sfnp|NWHFV52H}} The tram’s maximum speed was {{convert|12|mph}}, and their distinctive exhaust smell quickly earned them the nickname “Lamp Oil Express”. The service was operated by the [British Gas Traction Company](https://engole.info/british-gas-traction-company), which paid a share of its takings to the Estates Company, but by 1899 the company was in serious financial difficulty, and entered voluntary liquidation. Salford Corporation then refused to provide any more gas for the trams, and the service was once again suspended until the Estates Company bought the entire operation for £2,000 in 1900.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|35}} A separate electric tramway was installed in 1903, and was taken over and operated by Manchester and Salford Corporations in 1905.\[86\] The takeover did not affect the gas trams however, which continued to run until 1908, when they were replaced by steam locomotives.{{sfnp|NWHFV52H}} Between 1904 and 1907 the Estates Company also operated a horse-drawn bus for the use of gentlemen staying at Trafford Hall, then a hotel. The service, available 24 hours a day, was replaced by a motor car in 1907.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|48}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Trafford_park_railway.jpg)Trafford Park’s railway system was closed in 1998, although much of its infrastructure remains.
Wikimedia Commons
Under an 1898 agreement between the Estates Company and the Ship Canal Company, the latter committed to carry freight on their dock railway between the docks and the park and to the construction of a permanent connection between the two railway networks. The West Manchester Light Railway Company was set up the following year to take over the operations of the tramway and to lay additional track.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|36}} In 1904 responsibility for all of the parks roads and railways passed to the Trafford Park Company, as a result of the Trafford Park Act of that year. The railway network could subsequently be extended as required, without the need to seek additional permissions from Parliament.{{sfnp|NWHFV52H}} The network was also connected to the Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway near Cornbrook.{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|131}} At its peak, the estate’s railway network covered {{convert|26|mi}} route miles, handling about 2.5 million tons of cargo in 1940. Like the rest of the park, it fell into decline during the 1960s, exacerbated by the increasing use of road transport, and it was closed in 1998.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|84}}
[Trafford Park Aerodrome](https://engole.info/trafford-park-aerodrome/) was Manchester’s first purpose-built airfield, laid out on a site between Trafford Park Road, Mosley Road, and Ashburton Road.{{sfnp|8S8S95YJ|212}} The first aircraft landed there on 7 July 1911, flown from Liverpool by Henry G. Melly.{{sfnp|8QFRS4YT|26}} The aerodrome was in use until the early years of the First World War, and possibly until 1918,{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|61-63}} when it was replaced by the newly completed Alexandra Park Aerodrome.{{sfnp|8S8S95YJ|214}}
### Current
Trafford Park is served by several bus routes, all of which since 5 January 2025 are operated by Bee Network.{{sfnp|MRIGZTAB}}
Trafford Park railway station, to the east of the area, is served by trains between Liverpool Lime Street and Manchester Piccadilly.{{sfnp|YN8G24KI}} The Metrolink tram line from Pomona to the Trafford Centre was opened in March 2020, with stops at Wharfside, Imperial War Museum North, Village, Parkway, Barton Dock Road and the Trafford Centre.{{sfnp|89IQGX44}}
The Trafford Park Euroterminal rail freight terminal, which has the capacity to deal with 100,000 containers a year, was opened in 1993, at a cost of £11 million.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|161}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the GDP deflator at Measuring Worth.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} b Later in life Hooley said of himself “My great business was to buy something without the money to pay for it, sell it for as much as I could, and get out with the profit … I was never one to concern myself with whatever happened afterwards.”{{sfnp|6MTJUCL7|search=The Grappler}} c Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} d In 2023 the Boundary Commission for England reviewed every constituency, and concluded that Stretford and Urmston should remain unchanged. So the UK Parliament site’s claim that the constituency of Stretford and Urmston ceased to exist in 2024 is misleading.{{sfnp|G2D9LL3W}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 19523
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Industrial estate
---
### [National Covenant (1638)](https://engole.info/national-covenant-1638/)
**Published:** June 20, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/National-Covenant-1638.webp[/pimage]Document signed in Scotland in 1638, in response to King Charles I's attempt to unify the Churches of England and Scotland.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/National-Covenant-1638.webp)The WS Society
The National Covenant of 1638 was a document produced by Scottish Presbyterians in response to the efforts of King Charles I and William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, to force the Scottish church to adopt English liturgical practice and church governance; a particular bone of contention was the introduction of the new Prayer Book the previous year.{{sfnp|5SNTR3DY}}
The Covenant was drawn up by the Edinburgh lawyer Archibald Johnson and Alexander Henderson, the Presbyterian minister of Leuchars, in Fife. It was first signed on 28 February 1638 in Edinburgh’s Greyfriars Church, and attracted widespread support from all levels of Scottish society. Supporters of the Covenant, known as Covenanters,{{sfnp|5SNTR3DY}} believed that they were preserving a divinely ordained form of religion, which Charles was seeking to alter.{{sfnp|GKIKBR4K|204}}
## Background
When James VI of Scotland also became the King of England in 1603, he envisaged a unified Church of England and Scotland as the first step in creating a centralised, unionist state.{{sfnp|DGYQKKEU}} But although both churches shared much of the same Protestant doctrine, Scottish Presbyterians generally regarded many of the Church of England’s practices as little better than Catholicism.{{sfnp|P8W3WJEG|75-76}}
## Content
The National Covenant starts by repeating the Negative or King’s Confession, signed in 1581 as an anti-Catholic statement by James VI.{{sfnp|5SNTR3DY}}{{sfnp|NAA6NAL9|45}} This is followed by a list of parliamentary statutes defining the polity and liturgy of the church in Scotland.{{sfnp|5SNTR3DY}} It concludes with a bond committing the signatories to stand together to maintain the nation’s religion and oppose any changes to it. Signatories were also committed to upholding the king’s authority, although it was understood that did not include obedience to an ill-advised king.{{sfnp|NAA6NAL9|45}}
The Covenant had the appearance of working within constitutional precedent, contributing to its appeal to all levels of Scottish society by drawing on a sense of patriotic outrage at the rule and policies of Charles as an absentee monarch. It was also sufficiently vague to avoid any populist backlash, for example by implicitly supporting Presbyterianism without explicitly condemning episcopacy, a hierarchical form of church governance.{{sfnp|5SNTR3DY}} The historian Roger Mason has described the Covenant as “rehetorically unispiring”, and a “masterpiece of studied ambiguity”; while supporting Presbyterianism, it condemns “recent innovations in worship” without ever saying what they are.{{sfnp|5SNTR3DY}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30087
---
### [Acoustic mirror](https://engole.info/acoustic-mirror/)
**Published:** June 19, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Denge_acoustic_mirrors_-March2005.jpg[/pimage]Early method of detecting approaching aircraft, superseded by radar in the 1930s.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Denge_acoustic_mirrors_-March2005.jpg)Acoustic mirrors at RAF Denge, Kent
Wikimedia Commons
Faced with air raids from German Zeppelins and aircraft during the First World War, the first of them on Great Yarmouth, Sheringham and King’s Lynn in Norfolk, on 19/20 January 1915,\[a\]The Kaiser initially forbade attacks on London, fearing that his relatives in the British Royal family might be injured.{{sfnp|SWK7DE99|117}}{{sfnp|DIIAJKPU|24}} The first raid on the city took place on 31 May 1915.{{sfnp|237RQEFA}} the recently formed Royal Air Force began to experiment with methods of detecting approaching aircraft at distances of up to {{convert|15|mi}}.{{sfnp|SWK7DE99|117}}{{sfnp|DIIAJKPU|24}}{{sfnp|DHGJUDVF|403}}
Major William Sansome Tucker proposed a network of acoustic mirrors, also known as sound mirrors, the development of which continued until the mid-1930s, when radar made them obsolete.{{sfnp|XMZIK9GL}} The first acoustic mirror was constructed at Dover in 1917.{{sfnp|DHGJUDVF|403}}
Acoustic mirrors were concrete bowls or lengths of concave wall. A microphone was moved about in front of the mirror while an observer listened to the sound of an approaching aircraft through headphones. The position of the microphone where the sound was loudest allowed the direction and height of the aircraft to be calculated.{{sfnp|DHGJUDVF|403}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The Kaiser initially forbade attacks on London, fearing that his relatives in the British Royal family might be injured.{{sfnp|SWK7DE99|117}}{{sfnp|DIIAJKPU|24}} The first raid on the city took place on 31 May 1915.{{sfnp|237RQEFA}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30081
**Categories:** Military installation
---
### [Sound mirror](https://engole.info/sound-mirror/)
**Published:** June 19, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Redirected to Acoustic mirror.
**Categories:** Military installation
**Tags:** Redirect
---
### [Saddleworth](https://engole.info/saddleworth/)
**Published:** October 19, 2020
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/The_Square%2C_Dobcross_-_geograph.org.uk_-_848233.jpg[/pimage]Civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham in Greater Manchester, in Yorkshire until government reorganisation in 1974.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/The_Square%2C_Dobcross_-_geograph.org.uk_-_848233.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/qony3eEURB6zU6rMA}}
Dobcross in Saddleworth
Saddleworth is a [civil parish](https://engole.info/civil-parish/) and former [township](https://engole.info/township/) in the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham in Greater Manchester. Until local government boundaries were reorganised in 1974, Saddleworth was in the West Riding of Yorkshire. It is about {{convert|12|mi|spell=in}} from Manchester and the same from Huddersfield on the edge of the moorland in the South Pennine hills. There is no village, but the civil parish is comprised of several villages, of which Delph, Dobcross, Denshaw, [Diggle](https://engole.info/diggle/), Uppermill and Greenfield are the largest, and several [hamlets](https://engole.info/hamlet-place). Saddleworth is at a major [Pennine crossing ](https://engole.info/standedge-crossings/) point where road, canal and railway link the Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire connurbations.
The Romans built a fort at Castleshaw on their military road from Manchester to York, and after the Norman Conquest Saddleworth became a manor and a [chapelry](https://engole.info/chapel-of-ease) dependent on the parish church in Rochdale after 1200. The textile industry developed in domestic homes until mills powered by Pennine streams were built at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Trade between towns on both side of the Pennines increased after the Wakefield to Austerlands turnpike road was completed, and developed further after the Standedge tunnels for canal in 1811, and railways after 1840, were completed.
## Geography
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Hillside_towards_Greenfield_Reservoir_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1496881.jpg)Rocks and moorland above the Greenfield Valley
Wikimedia Commons
Saddleworth civil parish in the South Pennine hills is about {{convert|12|mi|spell-in}} from Manchester and 12 from Huddersfield. It covers more than 20,000 acres of hilly land, about seven miles long and about five wide, of which 6000 acres are the unenclosed moorland of Saddleworth Moor. Streams emerging in the moorland drain into tributaries of the River Tame and once provided power for the many textile mills that were built alongside them.{{sfnp|M5IDDEEU|1-4}} Moorland in the south eastern part of Saddleworth is in the Peak District National Park.
Saddleworth is comprised of several villages, Delph, Dobcross, Denshaw, [Diggle](https://engole.info/diggle/), Uppermill and Greenfield and many more hamlets. Uppermill is the largest village.{{sfnp|NHNSS8BF|100}} Dobcross, at the cross-roads at the end of Harrop Edge that separates the Delph and Diggle valleys, was once the most important village.{{sfnp|NHNSS8BF|101}} Delph, at the confluence of the River Tame and the Hull Brook, is surrounded by hills. Diggle’s scattered farmsteads in the valley below the moors developed in the late 19th century, when rows of Victorian terraced houses were built.{{sfnp|NHNSS8BF|102}}
The moorland is a valuable water catchment area and twelve reservoirs have been constructed in Saddleworth, eight, the Upper and Lower Strinesdale Reservoirs, Readycon Dean, Crook Gate, Dowry, New Year’s Bridge and the Lower and Upper Castleshaw, by Oldham Corporation and the four [Dovestone Reservoirs](https://engole.info/dovestone-reservoirs/) in the valley of the Greenfield Brook by Ashton, Stalybridge and Dukinfield Waterworks (ASDW); the ASDW supplied about two thirds of the civil parish and Oldham Corporation supplied the rest.{{sfnp|Z2J7J4F3|13,15}} Diggle Dam is a summit level reservoir to feed the Hudderfield Narrow Canal.
Three roads cross Saddleworth from west to east, the A640 Rochdale to Huddersfield, the A62 Huddersfield to Manchester and the A635 Ashton-under-Lyne to Holmfirth roads.{{sfnp|M5IDDEEU|1-4}} The A62 via Standedge was the major trans-Pennine route until the M62 motorway was constructed. The Hudderfield Narrow Canal and the Manchester to Huddersfield Railway pass through Saddleworth west to east via the Standedge tunnels.{{sfnp|NHNSS8BF|97}}
## Governance
Saddleworth cum Quick was a detached parochial [chapelry](https://engole.info/chapel-of-ease) of the [ancient parish](https://engole.info/ancient-parish/) of Rochdale\[a\]Rochdale was in the Salford Hundred in Lancashire but was in the West Riding of Yorkshire. In the 17th century, the chapelry was divided into four constablewicks, Friermere was to the north, inside its boundaries are Denshaw, Delph and the Castleshaw valley to Standedge. Quickmere, the most westerly, included Grasscroft, Springhead, Grotton, Austerlands, Scouthead, Highmoor and Strinesdale. Ill-defined Shawmere was the land on either side of the River Tame. Lordsmere, the largest, covered the east of the township including Dobcross, Diggle, Uppermill Greenfield and all of Saddleworth Moor.{{sfnp|V5VH46SW|34-35}}
Saddleworth belonged to a Gilbert Union which was dissolved in 1853 and in accordance with the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act became a Poor Law Township. It had a [workhouse](https://engole.info/workhouse/) on Running Hill Lane. In 1894 the township joined with Springhead and Uppermill to form a Poor Law Union using the old workhouse. Control passed to the West Riding County Council in 1930.{{sfnp|C5ET5VC6}}
Saddleworth was part of the Agbrigg [wapentake](https://engole.info/wapentake/) in the West Riding of Yorkshire until 1974 when it was incorporated into the Borough of Oldham in Greater Manchester.{{sfnp|C5ET5VC6}}
In the local government reorganisation in 1974, Saddleworth Parish Council was formed with boundaries similar to those of the Saddleworth Urban District Council and the medieval township.{{sfnp|AIFQC6Z3}} It is represented on Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council by councillors from three wards, Saddleworth North, Saddleworth South and Saddleworth West and Lees.{{sfnp|XQD7U5EQ}} In the House of Commons of the UK Parliament, Saddleworth is represented by the Member of Parliament for Oldham East and Saddleworth.{{sfnp|P34A55PC}}
## History
Saddleworth’s name is derived from the Old English *sadol* meaning saddle, particularly as a col, a saddle-shaped dip in the hills and *worð* an enclosure.{{sfnp|PV5RNII6}}
The Romans established a fort at Castleshaw in the Hull Brook Valley around AD 79. It guarded the Chester to York military road as it climbed to cross the hills at Standedge at about {{convert|1450|ft}} and on towards the fort at [Slack](https://engole.info/slack-roman-fort/).{{sfnp|NHNSS8BF|95}}
### Manor
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Saddleworth_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_5217.jpg)Saddleworth Church
Wikimedia Commons
At the Conquest, Saddleworth became a manor. Lord of the manor, William de Stapleton founded a [chapel of ease](https://engole.info/chapel-of-ease), Quick Chapel, dependent on the St Chad’s Church in Rochdale in 1215.{{sfnp|M5IDDEEU|1-4}} Throughout the Middle Ages the whole area of Saddleworth was referred to as Quick.{{sfnp|V5VH46SW|46}}
The Stapleton’s portion of the manor, Friermere, descended to the Warrens of Scargill who granted the whole of Friermere, then called Hill-bright-hope, to Roche Abbey in 1314. The abbey held it until the Dissolution when Henry VIII gave it to Arthur Assheton of Rochdale. In 1551 Friermere was divided between Assheton and Roger Gartside, the moieties were called, the “Light Side” and the “Dark Side” of the Mere. The lands have since passed to other families, except for Woodbrow, which remained with the Gartsides; the rest of the manor, purchased by the Ramsdens, was divided into small freeholds.{{sfnp|M5IDDEEU|1-4}}
### Roads
Lanes passed along the hillsides and pack horse trails were established when hand-loom weaving was developed. Gritstone farmhouses and weavers cottages with stone roofs and mullioned windows were built in clusters along the lanes in the 17th century.{{sfnp|NHNSS8BF|95}} The trans-Pennine turnpike roads built in the 18th century increased trade and industry and the settlements grew. The turnpike climbed steeply over Standedge to Marsden and Huddersfied and was improved to take a less steep route that became the A62, the main road between Manchester and Huddersfield until the M62 motorway opened in the 1970s.{{sfnp|NHNSS8BF|97}} The A635 crosses Saddleworth Moor west to east between Greenfield and Holmfirth and the A640 Rochdale to Huddersfield road passes through Denshaw.{{sfnp|M5IDDEEU|1-4}}
### Industry
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Mill_Workers_Cottages_Greenfield_-_geograph.org.uk_-_381806.jpg) Mill and workers’ cottages in Greenfield
Wikimedia Commons
On the banks of the River Tame and its tributaries at least a hundred mills were built by merchants who traded with America and the continent. The Royal George Mills produced cotton, linen and woollen cloth and had machinery for manufacturing paper and woollen-rope. Messrs. John and R. H. Buckley’s cotton-mill, for spinning and weaving, employed 500 hands and a mill producing coarse paper was established in Greenfield. There were quarries producing freestone for building, and small coal mines.{{sfnp|M5IDDEEU|1-4}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Rochdale was in the Salford Hundred in Lancashire
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23246
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Parish
---
### [Cornice](https://engole.info/cornice/)
**Published:** November 3, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/cornice.webp[/pimage]Horizontal moulding crowning a building or part of a building, such as over a door or window, or at the junction of an interior wall and ceiling.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/cornice.webp)Art History Glossary
A cornice is a horizontal moulding that crowns a building or part of a building, such as over a door or window, around the top edge of a pedestal, or at the junction of an interior wall and ceiling, when it is also known as a crown-moulding.{{sfnp|U6TRK4MA}} The term is derived from the Italian *cornice*, meaning “ledge”.{{sfnp|P9DHLZK3}}
An external cornice is a horizontal projection the primary purpose of which in classical buildings is to prevent rainwater from running down the face of a wall.{{sfnp|XPRSMKPH}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26956
**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Hermia and Lysander](https://engole.info/hermia-and-lysander/)
**Published:** December 15, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Simmons-Hermia_and_Lysander._A_Midsummer_Night%27s_Dream.jpg[/pimage]Watercolour painting created in 1870 by the English illustrator and miniature portrait painter John Simmons.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Simmons-Hermia_and_Lysander._A_Midsummer_Night%27s_Dream.jpg)Watercolour
89 cm × 74 cm (35 in × 29 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Hermia and Lysander* is a watercolour painting created in 1870 by the English illustrator and miniature portrait painter [John Simmons](https://engole.info/john-simmons-artist/), based on a scene from Act II, scene II of William Shakespeare’s comedy play *A Midsummer Night’s Dream*.{{sfnp|FWY34IX8}}
[Paintings of fairies](https://engole.info/fairy-painting) had a resurgence in popularity during the 19th century, many of them based on scenes from *A Midsummer Night’s Dream*; Simmons produced several pieces in this genre.{{sfnp|77V275TX}} According to Christopher Wood, an expert in Victorian art,{{sfnp|ZEL7H9BI}} the details included in Simmons’ fairy paintings were “executed with an astonishing clarity” and gave the impression they had been painted on a glass surface.{{sfnp|J8B2NF32|124}} The majority of Simmons’ depictions of fairies were of naked females, which Wood considered them to be the “bunny girls of the Victorian era”.{{sfnp|J8B2NF32|126}}
A watercolour painting using [gouache](https://engole.info/gouache),{{sfnp|2NS2SVII}} the artwork shows Hermia with her lover Lysander when they are lost in an enchanted wood. The couple are surrounded by a community of fairies; some are pictured in flight using their delicate wings, others are transported in chariots shackled to mice. The couple are tired and disorientated, appearing unaware of the crowds of animals and fairies around them. Lysander is seated and touching Hermia’s fingers with one hand while indicating the soft forest moss with his other hand. It is the point in the tale of *A Midsummer Night’s Dream* when he invites her to rest, saying:{{sfnp|FWY34IX8}}
> One turf shall serve as pillow for us both;
> One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth.{{sfnp|FWY34IX8}}
The painting achieved a sale price of £42,470 when auctioned in New York by Sotheby’s in May 2012, a record price for work by this artist.{{sfnp|YHGC8GYA}} It had previously been auctioned by Sotheby’s in London on 19 June 1984 and a decade later by Sotheby’s, New York, on 25 May 1994, when it was wrongly attributed to Julius Simmons.{{sfnp|FWY34IX8}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 12333
**Categories:** Painting
---
### [A Winter Scene with Skaters Near a Castle](https://engole.info/a-winter-scene-with-skaters-near-a-castle/)
**Published:** November 8, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Hendrick_Averkamp_A_Winter_Scene_with_Skaters_near_a_Castle.jpg[/pimage]Oil-on-oak painting undertaken between 1608 and 1609 by the Dutch artist Hendrick Avercamp (1585–1634).
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Hendrick_Averkamp_A_Winter_Scene_with_Skaters_near_a_Castle.jpg)*A Winter Scene with Skaters near a Castle*, 1608–1609
oil on oak
40.7 cm × 40.7 cm (16.0 in × 16.0 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*A Winter Scene with Skaters near a Castle* is an oil on oak painting undertaken between 1608 and 1609 by the Dutch artist Hendrick Avercamp (1585–1634).{{sfnp|UV6GBAIS}}
As with a number of Avercamp’s works, the picture is part of the Flemish tradition of painting “the harmony of human activity and the cycle of nature”.{{sfnp|DSRVKELS|173}} He was influenced in his subject by the Little Ice Age, particularly the cold winter of 1607–1608,{{sfnp|FUT5VIHV}} and was the first of the Dutch painters to specialise in snow scenes.{{sfnp|FXZDZDR4|182}}
The painting was acquired by the National Gallery in London in 1891 and remains in its collection, as at 2020.{{sfnp|UV6GBAIS}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23276
**Categories:** Dutch, Painting
---
### [Stretford Library](https://engole.info/stretford-library/)
**Published:** June 16, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Stretford-Library.webp[/pimage]Opened in 1940 and badly damaged a month later during the Manchester Blitz. Rebuilt in 1953, and now a Local Heritage Asset.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Stretford-Library.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/fH6J1mnYRLgTzUDd7}}
Stretford Library, 2015|Google Maps
Stretford Library, on King Street, Stretford, Greater Manchester, was opened on 26 November 1940. It replaced the first free lending library in Stretford that had been established at the [Stretford Public Hall](https://engole.info/stretford-public-hall) in nearby Dorset Street, established in 1883 by the cotton mill owner and philanthropist [John Rylands](https://engole.info/john-rylands).{{sfnp|Z9C7K3C9}}
The library was designed by the Manchester architect Percy Howard. Shortly after its completion the library was badly damaged during the [Manchester Blitz](https://engole.info/manchester-blitz) of December 1940, and its books were removed to the Art Gallery for the remainder of the Second World War.{{sfnp|Z9C7K3C9}}{{sfnp|S7N53APH}}
Plans to rebuild the damaged areas of the library were approved in 1951, and two years later, on 28 January 1953, the library was reopened.{{sfnp|Z9C7K3C9}} Stretford Library was added to the [Local Heritage List](https://engole.info/local-heritage-list) in 2023.{{sfnp|3XQM7ZD7}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30079
**Categories:** Library
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building/)
**Published:** May 15, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/LittleMoretonHall.jpg[/pimage]Structure of particular architectural and/or historic interest deserving of special protection.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/LittleMoretonHall.jpg)[Little Moreton Hall](https://engole.info/little-moreton-hall), built in the early 16th century, is a Grade I listed building in Cheshire
Wikimedia Commons
In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural and/or historic interest deserving of special protection.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}} Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England, [Historic Environment Scotland](https://engole.info/historic-environment-scotland), Cadw in Wales, and the Historic Environment Division of the Northern Ireland Department for Communities.
A listed building may not be demolished, extended, or altered without permission from the local planning authority. In England, a national [amenity society](https://engole.info/amenity-society) must also be notified of any work to be done on a listed building that involves any element of demolition.{{sfnp|8CPB5LIE}}
## Background
The extensive damage caused by German bombing during the Second World War prompted efforts to list and protect buildings that were deemed to be of particular architectural merit, and to determine whether they should be rebuilt.{{sfnp|RS6V8VTD}}
The scheme was formalised after the war by the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 covering England and Wales, and the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1947; listing was introduced into Northern Ireland under the Planning (Northern Ireland) Order 1972. The listing process has since developed slightly differently in each country of the UK.
## England and Wales
In England, the authority for listing under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 rests with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS),{{sfnp|FU6NUSC9}} advised by Historic England, a non-departmental public body which manages the National Heritage List for England on behalf of the DCMS.{{sfnp|GM3BECP7}}
In Wales, responsibility for the listing process has been devolved to Cadw, part of the Welsh Government’s Arts and Sport Department.{{sfnp|TYBDQXXT}}\[a\]*Cadw* is a Welsh word meaning “to keep”, or “to protect”.{{sfnp|TYBDQXXT}}
Buildings are listed in England and Wales under three grades:{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
- Grade I: buildings of exceptional interest
- Grade II\*: particularly important buildings of more than special interest
- Grade II: buildings that are of special interest.
In general, all buildings constructed before 1700 and surviving in anything like their original condition are likely to be listed, as are most of those built between 1700 and 1850.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
## Scotland
Responsibility for the listing process in Scotland has been devolved to Historic Environment Scotland, an executive agency of the Scottish government, under the terms of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Act 1997.{{sfnp|Q2NIE3JK}}
The classification scheme is:{{sfnp|5Z3L6R8R}}
- Category A: “buildings of special architectural or historic interest which are outstanding examples of a particular period, style or building type.”
- Category B: “buildings of special architectural or historic interest which are major examples of a particular period, style or building type.”
- Category C: “buildings of special architectural or historic interest which are representative examples of a period, style or building type.”
## Northern Ireland
In Northern Ireland, where the responsibility for the listing of buildings is a function of the Department for Communities,{{sfnp|YZZQDKLU|4}} the classification scheme is:{{sfnp|YZZQDKLU|17–18}}
- Category A: “buildings of greatest importance to Northern Ireland”
- Category B+ : “high quality buildings that because of exceptional features, interiors or environmental qualities are clearly above the general standard set by grade B1 buildings”
- Category B1: “good examples of a particular period or style”
- Category B2: “special buildings that meet the test of the legislation”
## See also
- [Local Heritage List](https://engole.info/local-heritage-list)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a *Cadw* is a Welsh word meaning “to keep”, or “to protect”.{{sfnp|TYBDQXXT}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26389
**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Circe](https://engole.info/circe/)
**Published:** March 22, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/John_William_Waterhouse_-_Circe%2C_1911.jpg[/pimage]Circe is the title given to two oil on canvas sketches by the English artist John William Waterhouse; he worked on both during the final years of his career from 1911 to 1914.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/John_William_Waterhouse_-_Circe%2C_1911.jpg)Oil on canvas
86.3 cm × 77.2 cm (34 in × 30.4 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Circe* is the title given to two oil on canvas sketches by the English artist [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/); he worked on both during the final years of his career from 1911 to 1914.{{sfnp|SFUJ476P|182-183}} Waterhouse had previously depicted Circe, daughter of the Greek sun god Helios,{{sfnp|X5C2FT66}} in his paintings [*Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses*](https://engole.info/circe-offering-the-cup-to-ulysses/) in 1891 and [*Circe Invidiosa*](https://engole.info/circe-invidiosa/) in 1892.
Both sketches show Circe, seated at a marble table, surrounded by her magical accoutrements.{{sfnp|SFUJ476P|182-183}} She sits despondently contemplating Odysseus – known as Ulysses to the Romans – encountering the sirens.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|216}}
Oil on canvas, occasionally referred to as *The Sorceress*
76 cm × 110.5 cm (29.9 in × 43.5 in)
Wikimedia Commons
The rectangular-shaped painting, which is occasionally given the alternative title of *The Sorceress*, bears the inscription Circe on the back. This sketch includes leopards, an allusion to the myth of Circe transforming her victims into wild animals.[\[4\]](https://engole.info/circe/#citation_4) She grips a magic wand in her hands, a prop which does not appear in the larger sketch, although both have her posed with her chin resting against her hands.[\[1\]](https://engole.info/circe/#citation_1)
## Depictions of Circe
YouTube
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b, c var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 2 )/3
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 17363
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Astley](https://engole.info/astley/)
**Published:** July 2, 2023
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Bridgewater_Canal_and_Astley_Green_Pithead.JPG[/pimage]Village in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, formerly a coal-mining area, but now part of a commuter belt for the nearby city of Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Bridgewater_Canal_and_Astley_Green_Pithead.JPG)map
https://goo.gl/maps/WhYHuzEKyax3NTan6}}
Bridgewater Canal and Astley Green Pithead
Astley is a [village](https://engole.info/village) in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, Greater Manchester. Within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire, it is crossed by the Bridgewater Canal and the A580 East Lancashire Road. Contiguous with [Tyldesley](https://engole.info/tyldesley/), it is equidistant from Wigan and Manchester, both 8.3 miles (13.4 km) away.
Astley’s name is Old English, indicating an Anglo-Saxon settlement. Throughout the Middle Ages, Astley constituted a [township](https://engole.info/township/) in the [ancient parish](https://engole.info/ancient-parish/) of Leigh and hundred of West Derby. Astley appears in written form as Asteleghe in 1210, when its lord of the manor granted land to Cockersand Abbey.
Medieval and Early Modern Astley is distinguished by the occupants of [Damhouse](https://engole.info/damhouse/), the local manor house around which a settlement expanded. The Bridgewater Canal reached Astley in 1795, and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830. The Industrial Revolution introduced the factory system when the village’s cotton mill was built in 1833.
Coal mining became an important industry but mining subsidence and a decline in coal production led to a reduction in the industry in the mid-20th century, its cotton mill closed in 1955, and the last coal was brought to the surface in 1970. Astley has grown as part of a commuter belt, supported by its proximity to Manchester city centre and inter-city transport links. Astley Green Colliery Museum houses collections of Astley’s industrial heritage.
## Geography
Astley is on the northern side of the [Chat Moss](https://engole.info/chat-moss/) bog, about {{convert|75|ft}} above sea level.{{sfnp|XIBAE5KR|273}} It forms a continuous urban area with [Tyldesley](https://engole.info/tyldesley) to the north. Astley encompasses smaller, suburban and semi-outlying areas, including Blackmoor, Astley Green, Gin Pit and Cross Hillock. The isolated hamlet of terraced houses at Gin Pit was built by the Astley and Tyldesley Collieries Company. Peace Street, Lord Street and Maden Street were named after directors of the company.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|96}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/A572-scaled.jpg)Astley village
Astley is {{convert|8.5|mi} west-northwest of Manchester city centre, and {{convert|0.75|mi}} north of the Bridgewater Canal, which straddles the village’s southern hinterland from east-to-west. Astley is crossed east-to-west by the A572 and A580 roads. Astley Green lines a straight road leading southwards through Chat Moss, to the former Astley railway station on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway which is 2 miles south of the village.{{sfnp|TI829R7U|132}}
Astley spans an area of 2,685 acres, of which 1,000 acres is peat bog.{{sfnp|CYDVLQ27|445–449}} [Astley and Bedford Mosses](https://engole.info/astley-and-bedford-mosses/) is one of the last surviving fragments of Chat Moss, most of which has been drained for agriculture or lost through peat removal. It occupies a 33-hectare site between Astley and the railway. It has been a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) since 1989.{{sfnp|3RQNEUN5}} Astley Moss is crossed by the Astley Brook and Moss Brook, tributaries to the Glaze Brook that feeds into the River Mersey.{{sfnp|KKSICGT4|25}}
The underlying geology consists of the Permo-Triassic New Red Sandstone in the south, and the Middle Coal Measures of the [Manchester Coalfield](https://engole.info/manchester-coalfield/ "Manchester Coalfield") to the north. The upper soils are a mixture of clay and sand, with a subsoil of clay.{{sfnp|CYDVLQ27|445–449}}
## Demographics
{{census|E05000843}}
At the 2011 Census the Astley Mosley Common Ward had 11,270 usual residents. The average age of residents was 40.3 years The ward area occupies 1,688.25 hectares giving a population density of 6.7 persons per hectare.{{sfnp|GFB2SQ43}}
## Governance
Astley formed part of the Hundred of West Derby, a judicial division of southwest Lancashire.{{sfnp|R4UZ5KSH|580–583}} It was one of six townships or vills that made up the ancient ecclesiastical parish of Leigh. The townships existed before the parish.{{sfnp|CYDVLQ27|445–449}}{{sfnp|AAK9NSUU}} Under the terms of the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, the [Leigh Poor Law Union](https://engole.info/leigh-poor-law-union/) was established on 26 January 1837, comprising the whole of the ancient parish and part of Winwick. Workhouses in Pennington, Culcheth, Tyldesley and Lowton were replaced by the workhouse at Atherleigh in the 1850s.{{sfnp|TFS7BVFL}} In 1894 the civil parishes of Astley, Culcheth, Kenyon and Lowton became part of Leigh Rural District which was dissolved in 1933 and Astley was incorporated into the [Tyldesley Urban District](https://engole.info/tyldesley-urban-district/).{{snfp|ZX9PXUV5|689}}
The urban district was abolished in 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972, and Astley became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, a local government district of the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester.{{sfnp|LME5VWCB|239}} The Astley electoral ward was formed in 2022 and elects three councillors to the 75-member metropolitan borough council.{{sfnp|6PZRD85A}}
Astley was part of the Leigh parliamentary constituency at the 2010 United Kingdom general election.
## History
Astley is of Old English derivation, and means either “east (of) Leigh” or *ēastlēah* the “eastern wood or clearing” , a reference to its position in relation to Leigh. Leigh is derived from *lēah*, meaning a “wood”, a “clearing” or a “meadow”.{{sfnp|HLPY5IWM|10}} The earliest written record of Astley was in documents dated 1210 when it appeared as the Middle English Asteleghe. Other archaic spellings include Asteleye (1292) and Astlegh (14th and 15th centuries).{{sfnp|CYDVLQ27|445–449}} Evidence for the presence of Anglo-Saxons in the sparsely populated, heavily wooded and isolated region is provided by place names incorporating the Old English suffix lēah, such as in Leigh, Tyldesley, Shakerley and Astley.{{sfnp|HLPY5IWM|405}}
### Manor
Astley emerged during the Early Middle Ages as a township in the parish of Leigh. It was mentioned in documents in 1210, when Hugh of Tyldesley, Lord of the Manors of Tyldesley and Astley, granted land to the religious order of Premonstratensian canons at [Cockersand Abbey](https://engole.info/cockersand-abbey/ "Cockersand Abbey"). In 1212, he was recorded as tenant of Astley Hall, the manor house for both Astley and Tyldesley, located just inside the Tyldesley township. After his death, his son Henry inherited the manors. He was succeeded by his son, another Henry, who, when he died in 1301, divided the lands between three of his six sons. It is from this division that the manors of Astley and Tyldesley were separated. Tyldesleys lived at the Astley manor house until April 1353 when Richard Radcliff bought it for 100 marks.{{sfnp|KKSICGT4|6}} The Radcliffs remained there until 1561 when William Radcliff died childless and the land passed to his half-sister Anne, who married Gilbert Gerard.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|7}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Dam_House_Doorway_and_inscription.JPG)Damhouse doorway and inscription
Wikimedia Commons
In 1606 Adam Mort bought the manor house and land in Astley.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|16}} He was a wealthy man who built the first [Astley Chapel](https://engole.info/st-stephens-church-astley/) as a [chapel of ease](https://engole.info/chapel-of-ease) for the [parish church in Leigh](https://engole.info/st-mary-the-virgins-church-leigh/). The chapel was consecrated in 1631, the year that he died. He built a grammar school that stood for over 200 years until 1833, when it was demolished and rebuilt. Adam Mort’s grandson, also Adam, rebuilt Damhouse in 1650 and his initials are carved in the plaque over the front door.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|31}} The stone and timber structure was named from the stream which was dammed to supply water to a water wheel powering a corn mill near the house. It is possible the hall was once surrounded by a moat.{{sfnp|KKSICGT4|6}}{{sfnp|CV2WWM23}}
Adam Mort’s descendants continued to support the chapel and school and remained at Damhouse until 1734 when it was bought by Thomas Sutton.{{sfnp|KKSICGT4|11}} After Sutton’s death in 1752 the house was inherited by Thomas Froggatt of Bakewell who contributed to rebuilding the chapel in 1760. Froggatt’s descendants owned Damhouse until 1800 when it was leased to tenants, one of whom was George Ormerod, owner of the Banks Estate in Tyldesley.{{sfnp|KKSICGT4|113}} In 1839 the house became the property of Captain Adam Durie of Craig Lascar by marriage to Sarah Froggatt.{{sfnp|KKSICGT4|5}} Damhouse was dilapidated when the Duries moved in. Captain Durie gave land to build a school on Church Road. After his death in 1843 his widow, Sarah, married Colonel Malcolm Nugent Ross. The Ross’s Arms public house at Higher Green was named in his honour.{{sfnp|KKSICGT4|14}} The Durie’s daughter Katharine, who married first, Henry Davenport and second Sir Edward Robert Weatherall, became lady of the manor after her mother’s death but the family was in financial difficulties and the house and estate sold in November 1889.{{sfnp|KKSICGT4|20}}
The Leigh Hospital Board bought Damhouse in 1893 for use as a sanatorium dealing with cases of diphtheria, scarlet fever and, in 1947, poliomyelitis. Two bombs fell close to the hospital during the Second World War. It became a general hospital in 1948 dealing with chronically ill and geriatric patients and closed in 1994.{{sfnp|KKSICGT4|25}}
### Morleys Hall
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/The_Moat_at_Morley%27s_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_56434.jpg)Morleys Hall
Wikimedia Commons
[Morleys Hall](https://engole.info/morleys-hall/) lies on part of the lands donated to Cockersand Abbey by Hugh Tyldesley in 1210. It was owned by the Morleys until 1431, then subsequently by the Leylands. In 1540 it was described as being largely built of timber on stone foundations and surrounded by a moat.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|5}} IThe hall was rebuilt in 1804, but parts of it survive.{{sfnp|9WHCL256}} Edward Tyldesley of Wardley Hall married Anne Leyland and inherited Morleys in 1564.{{sfnp|PJBY8QXA|26}} Their granddaughter, [Elizabeth Tyldesley](https://engole.info/elizabeth-tyldesley/), became abbess of the [Convent of Poor Clares at Gravelines](https://engole.info/convent-of-poor-clares-gravelines/) in the Spanish Netherlands.{{sfnp|TJBFKADE}} The Tyldesleys allowed the martyr, [Ambrose Barlow](https://engole.info/ambrose-barlow/) to offer secret masses at Morleys where he was eventually arrested.{{sfnp|5V652YGV}} Sir [Thomas Tyldesley](https://engole.info/thomas-tyldesley/) was the most famous of this line of the family, having been a Cavalier commander and supporter of Charles II during the English Civil War. He died in the Battle of Wigan Lane.{{sfnp|EM9W9W42}} The hall passed through the Legh and Wilkinson families until it was sold to [Tyldesley Urban District Council](https://engole.info/tyldesley-urban-district/ "Tyldesley Urban District") and the land used for a sewage works. The hall is a private residence.{{sfnp|CYDVLQ27|445–449}}
### Industrial Revolution
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Arrowsmiths-Mill-Astley-Green.jpg)Arrowsmith’s Mill
Wikimedia Commons
Astley became more industrialised during the early 19th century, but not so much as neighbouring Leigh, Tyldesley and Boothstown. A factory was built by James and Robert Arrowsmith on Peel Lane at Astley Green, near the Bridgewater Canal in 1833. Until then, agriculture and cottage spinning and weaving had been the main economic activities.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|76}} Fustians, muslins and, after 1827, [silk](https://engole.info/leigh-silk-industry/), were woven in the area. Handloom weaving declined after the cotton factory was built. Arrowsmith’s factory lasted until 1955, when mining subsidence damaged its foundations and it was demolished, ending Astley’s link with the textile industry.{{sfnp|KKSICGT4|5}}
Astley on the edge of the [Lancashire Coalfield](https://engole.info/lancashire-and-cheshire-coalfield/) had several coal mines within its boundaries.{{snfp|ZZKJDYGW}} On a map of 1768, a lane leading to Nook and Gin Pit Collieries was called the Coal Road and later North Coal Pit Lane. Gin Pit’s name alludes a method of coal mining, raising coal using a [horse gin](https://engole.info/horse-gin/). An early colliery at Cross Hillock was abandoned in 1886 because of flooding.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|90}} Samuel Jackson developed the mines that became [Astley and Tyldesley Collieries](https://engole.info/astley-and-tyldesley-collieries/) between Astley and Tyldesley. Peat works were opened close to Astley railway station by the Astley Peat Moss Litter Company Limited in 1888.{{sfnp|KKSICGT4|25}}
On 7 May 1908 the [Pilkington Colliery Company](https://engole.info/clifton-kersley-coal-company/) started sinking No 1 Shaft of Astley Green Colliery near the Bridgewater Canal.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|68}} The colliery closed in 1970. It’s headframe still stands and the site is occupied by the Lancashire Mining Museum.
## Transport
By 1795, the Bridgewater Canal from Worsley to Manchester had proved an economic success, prompting the Duke of Bridgewater to seek powers to extend its route to Leigh via Astley. The plans were approved, despite opposition from the local population. Canal traffic brought trade to Astley Green where the Hope and Anchor Inn (now the Boathouse) was built with stabling for horses that pulled the barges.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|73}} The original canal bridge that connected Lower and Higher Green lasted until 1904, when it was replaced. The second bridge was replaced in 1920 by an iron bridge, which could be raised to counter the effects of mining subsidence.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|95}} A boatyard was established by Lingard’s Bridge.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|65–66}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Astley-Station.jpg)Astley Station
Wikimedia Commons
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway of 1830 crosses Astley Moss. It was built on a raft of branches and cotton bales to prevent the track sinking into Chat Moss. The early engines reached speeds of 25 mph and the first passengers told the driver where they wished to alight until Astley railway station was built in the mid-1840s.{{sfnp|3BQYPFI7}} The railway was distant from the village and early travellers came on horseback or in carriages.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|73}}
A tramway ran to a wharf on the canal at Marsland Green and a mineral railway linked Gin Pit Colliery to the Tyldesley Loopline at Jackson’s sidings and Bedford Colliery and Speakman’s Sidings.{{sfnp|JPQW393H|333}}
## Religion
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Astley-Church-and-Vicarage.jpg)St Stephen’s Church
Adam Mort built the first Astley Chapel which was consecrated 3 August 1631.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|24}} When it was rebuilt in 1760, Thomas Froggatt of Damhouse contributed towards the cost.{{sfnp|KKSICGT4|12}} The chapel had a small chancel and its embattled western tower contained a single bell.{{sfnp|CYDVLQ27|445–449}} It was dedicated to Saint Stephen and was destroyed by arson on 18 June 1961. It was too severely damaged to restore and the present church was built on a nearby site.
St Ambrose Church and school in the village bear his name.{{sfnp|PJBY8QXA|12}} The St Ambrose Barlow parish was formed in 1965 and the church was built in 1981.Two Methodist churches were built in Astley but one in Lower Green closed in 2009. Astley Unitarian Chapel was demolished and the site built on. Gin Pit School doubled as a chapel for Wesleyan Methodists.
## Education
Adam Mort established a grammar school near his chapel in 1631 that was used until 1833. Children from poor families were admitted free and those who could afford to pay covered the costs.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|24}} Mort’s School closed in 1894.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|94}} In 1832 children were taught in a barn at the vicarage, the curate, Alfred Hewlett, improved it and the chapel was used as a classroom. A national school built by subscription on land donated by Captain Durie of Damhouse opened in November 1841.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|78}} Meanleys Infant School was opened at Gin Pit in 1904 to serve the mining community that had grown up there.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|96}} Other schools were built at Ellesmere Street and Marsland Green.{{sfnp|KKSICGT4|12}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25438
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Village
---
### [Doctrine of signatures](https://engole.info/doctrine-of-signatures/)
**Published:** September 20, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/hommedia.png[/pimage]Observation that the form of a medicinal plant in some way resembles the organ or disease it can be used to treat.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/hommedia.png)Illustration showing the resemblance of the eye to eyebright, a plant used to treat eyesight problems
Science Museum
The doctrine of signatures, originally advocated by the Roman naturalist and natural philosopher Pliny, is the observation that the form of a medicinal plant in some way resembles the organ or disease it can be used to treat, an idea that became common during the medieval period.{{sfnp|SBYU89U2}} The Swiss physician and alchemist Paracelsus (1493–1541) advocated strongly for the notion, writing that “Nature marks each growth … according to its curative benefit”; the term *doctrine of signatures* comes from Jakob Böhme’s 1621 book *The Signature of All Things*. A theological rationalisation was provided by botanists such as William Coles (1626–1662), who believed that God would have wanted to show men what plants would be useful for.{{sfnp|AK28USN9}}
Belief in the doctrine of signatures was very widespread, not only in classical antiquity or medieval Europe: “All American tribes entertain a profound belief in the doctrine of signatures”.{{sfnp|YN2QITCJ}}
## Scientific foundation
The doctrine of signatures is often dismissed as primitive superstition or pseudoscience, but ethnobiologist Badley C. Bennett argues that the theory has been much maligned by modern scholars, who have attempted to provide untestable post hoc explanations for why any given plant is used to treat certain conditions. There is no evidence that an analysis of a plant’s morphological properties ever led to the identification of a disease process for which it might prove to be an effective treatment. Instead, the doctrine is almost certainly best thought of as a useful mnemonic for herbalists, particularly in preliterate societies.{{sfnp|YN2QITCJ}}
## Signatures of selected plants
The concept of signatures is reflected in the common names of many herbs:{{sfnp|YN2QITCJ}}
**Common name****Species****Signature****Medical use**aconite*Aconitum napellus*eye-like fruitocular problemsbloodroot*Sanguinaria canadensis*red-orange latexbloodfoxglove*Digitalis purpurea*heart-shaped leavescardiac problems[mandrake](https://engole.info/mandrake/)*Mandragora officinalis*human-shaped rootspanaceasaxifrage*Saxifraga*breaks rock as it growskidney stonessnakewort*Aristolochia serpentaria*leaf shape resembles a snake’s headsnake bitestonecrop*Sedum acre*leaf shapekidney stoneswild comfrey*Cynoglossum virginianum*fruits cling to skinmemorywillow*Salix*supple branchesrheumatic joints## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Pseudoscience
---
### [Historic Environment Scotland](https://engole.info/historic-environment-scotland/)
**Published:** September 17, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Longmore_House_-_geograph.org.uk_-_452617.jpg[/pimage]Executive non-departmental public body responsible for investigating, caring for and promoting Scotland's historic environment.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Longmore_House_-_geograph.org.uk_-_452617.jpg)Longmore House in Edinburgh, headquarters of Historic Environment Scotland
Wikimedia Commons
Historic Environment Scotland (Scottish Gaelic: *Àrainneachd Eachdraidheil Alba*) is an executive non-departmental public body responsible for investigating, caring for and promoting Scotland’s historic environment. It was formed in 2015 from the merger of government agency Historic Scotland with the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.
Among its other duties, Historic Environment Scotland maintains more than 300 properties of national importance including Edinburgh Castle, Skara Brae and Fort George.
## History
The responsibilities of Historic Environment Scotland were formerly split between Historic Scotland, a government agency responsible for properties of national importance, and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, which collected and managed records about Scotland’s historic environment. Under the terms of a Bill of the Scottish Parliament published on 3 March 2014,{{sfnp|SMI39I4G}} the pair were dissolved and their functions transferred to Historic Environment Scotland on 1 October 2015.{{sfnp|Y3GCWPJF}}
Historic Environment Scotland is a non-departmental public body with charitable status, governed by a board of trustees appointed by Scottish Ministers. The body is charged with implementing “Our Past, Our Future”, Scotland’s historic environment strategy, and has responsibility for buildings and monuments in state care, as well as national collections of manuscripts, drawings and photographs. Beyond these collections, Historic Environment Scotland provides funding and guidance for conservation works and education across Scotland.{{sfnp|CFGR82R6}}
Canmore was an online database maintained by Historic Environment Scotland until 2025, when it was replaced by Trove.{{sfnp|C7JECTC5}} It was until then maintained by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. The National Collection of Aerial Photography is also now a sub-brand of Historic Environment Scotland.{{sfnp|V7ZAETH6}} The collections are primarily stored in John Sinclair House. Plans for a new collection centre, Archive House in Bonnyrigg, were announced in July 2023 with an anticipated completion date of 2026, but were suspended in July 2024 owing to escalating costs.{{sfnp|JN7W7V9I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmcloud.org/pageinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Historic_Environment_Scotland#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Public body
---
### [Nostell Colliery](https://engole.info/nostell-colliery/)
**Published:** March 12, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** Former colliery on the South Yorkshire Coalfield, about four and a half miles south east of Wakefield, on the Nostell Priory estate.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Yorkshire-Sheet-CCXLIX.SW-1949.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/rEWRzecKUrUMdcr76}}
Nostell Colliery{{sfnp|XVUSCHSW}}|Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Nostell Colliery on the South Yorkshire Coalfield was about four and a half miles (7.2 km) south-east of Wakefield, between Foulby and Wragby on the [Nostell Priory](https://engole.info/nostell-priory/) estate. Coal was got at Nostell from the 9th century, and the industry was developed by the Winns of Nostell Priory from the 1700s.
The modern deep colliery was started in 1860 by the Winn family who still owned the estate.
## History
Coal was dug from the outcropping Shafton seam in the 9th century in the area in which St James’ Hermitage was founded on what became the Nostell estate. The priory, founded in 1121, was granted permission to mine coal. When the outcropping coal was exhausted in the late 1300s, bell pits were sunk. The Winn family bought the {{convert|300|acre|adj=on}} estate, which included coal mines, in 1654.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|396}} At first the Winns leased the coal rights to others and mining was on a very small scale, the small pits worked by a couple of miners.{{sfnp|VNBHCF9I|4}} In 1700, Wragby housed “9 Colliers along with other workers of the estate”. In 1742 the Winns bought more land with mineral rights from The Earl of Westmoreland{{sfnp|VNBHCF9I|5}} and by 1760 had installed a Newcomen engine to drain the workings.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|396}} In 1779 between five and fifteen men were employed in the collieries at any one time.{{sfnp|VNBHCF9I|6}} Profits for the year were £206. Shallow bell pits were superceded by two {{convert|27|yd}} shafts to the Shafton seam in 1821. Fourteen such shafts were sunk on the estate. In 1865 when the new colliery was ready for production the 1821 shafts were filled and capped.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|397}}
The modern colliery was started in 1860 when two shafts were sunk. They were lined with bricks from Purston. One of the shafts was {{convert|10|ft}} in diameter and the other {{convert|12.25|ft}}. They both had steam winding engines, pumping engines, headgear and cages. The pit was ventilated by mechanical fan and had a coal screening plant. The owners bought 72 sets of workmen’s tools and acquired six pit ponies.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|398}}{{sfnp|VNBHCF9I|14}}
More than 26,000 tons of coal was raised from the new colliery in its first six months giving the Winns nearly £8,000 in profit from the pit that was now capable of producing 100,000 tons a year.{{sfnp|VNBHCF9I|15}}
A brickworks was opened at the colliery in 1875.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|397}} It was equipped with a Bradley and Craven brick press capable of producing 10,000 bricks per day.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|398}}
In 1901 the colliery employed 638 underground workers and 132 on the surface. They produced 200,000 tons of coal. The colliery [rescue team](https://engole.info/mines-rescue/) was formed in 1917. In 1918 Nostell Colliery Company Limited was incorporated. The company was obliged to supply Nostell Priory with up to 1,000 tons of coal a year and free electricity.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|398}}
In 1923 the colliery used cutting machines and employed 641 men underground. In the 1930s a smokeless fuel plant opened. The colliery was nationalised in 1947 when 700 men were employed. The National Coal Board developed the colliery and opened up new seams when others were exhausted. A surface drift was driven to access the Sharlston Top, Low and Yard seams.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|399}}
## Welfare
In 1860 the Winns started building the first ten terraced houses at Long Row. It was completed with 40 more terraced houses. The family was considered to be a generous employer, compensating victims of accidents and providing coffins for miners killed at work. In 1880 more houses were built at New Crofton, known as “Cribbins Lump”, they had no running water. The company built houses until 1926 but they were all demolished in 1983.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|397}}
Six cottages for officials were built in the colliery boundary.{{sfnp|VNBHCF9I|14}} The Winns built a school midway between Wragby and the new houses at Nostell for worker’s children in 1876.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|397}}{{sfnp|VNBHCF9I|15}} Pit head baths, with no hot water, opened in 1932.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|398}} Hot water was provided by the NCB in 1955.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|399}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Coal mining, Yorkshire
---
### [St James and St Paul, Marton](https://engole.info/st-james-and-st-paul-marton/)
**Published:** December 31, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Marton_Church_Cheshire.jpg[/pimage]Grade I listed active Anglican church in the Cheshire village of Marton, founded in 1343, and possibly the oldest church building of its type still in use today.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Marton_Church_Cheshire.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/aovST88E1Yj3Pu6u5
St James and St Paul is an active Anglican church in the Cheshire [village](https://engole.info/village) of Marton. It is in the Deanery of Congleton, the Archdeaconry of Macclesfield and in Diocese of Chester, and is one of the six churches in the [Benefice](https://engole.info/benefice) of Rural Daneside Churches. The church was founded in 1343, and unusually for Cheshire is timber-framed; it is thought to be the oldest church building of its kind still in use in Europe.{{sfnp|B422VTDA}}
The church was designated a Grade I [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1967;{{sfnp|WAGWWF8Q}} a 14th or 15th-century cross in the churchyard is separately listed at Grade II.{{sfnp|BUL28DFG}}
St James and St Paul was founded and endowed in 1343 by Sir John de Davenport and his son Vivian;{{sfnp|K3QXVXBU|151}} additional land was donated by the family in 1370. The [belfry](https://engole.info/belfry) was added in about 1540,{{sfnp|SN4IFAJB}} and the roof was lowered in 1804.{{sfnp|254ZT5CR|229-231}} The parish registers begin in 1563.{{sfnp|254ZT5CR|229-231}}
Restorations were carried out by J. M. Derick in 1850 and William Butterfield in 1871.{{sfnp|WAGWWF8Q}} Derick replaced two-light windows with windows of three lights. Butterfield tidied some of the timbers in the tower.{{sfnp|97F5HB2D|51}} At that time, the existing entrance at the west end was also added. Further restoration was carried out in 1930–1931, including renewal of some wall panels, rafters and belfry shingles.{{sfnp|SN4IFAJB}} A brick extension to the chancel was constructed in the 20th century.{{sfnp|WAGWWF8Q}}
## Architecture
### Exterior
The timber frame features close studding with a middle rail. It rests on a stone plinth, the infill is rendered brick and the roof is of slate. At the west end is a shingled square tower with a shingled broach spire ending in a weather cock. This is surrounded by lean-to roofed [aisles](https://engole.info/aisle-architecture) on the north, west and south sides. The tower has a western arched door with a 20th-century door which incorporates 17th-century iron strap hinges.{{sfnp|WAGWWF8Q}} The body of the church consists of a three-bay [nave](https://engole.info/nave) with north and south aisles, a two-bay [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) and north and south [chapels](https://engole.info/chapel) at the ends of the aisles, and a south [porch](https://engole.info/narthex).{{sfnp|97F5HB2D|51}} The former Principal Historic Buildings Officer for Cheshire County Council described the exterior as “disappointing” and considered that 19th-century alterations “have tended to detract from its external medieval appearance”, but noted that “internally it has a great deal of character and interest.”{{sfnp|MF2I5D4Z|45-46}}
### Interior
The timber piers are octagonal in shape. Two damaged stone effigies of 14th-century knights are in the belfry;{{sfnp|97F5HB2D|51}} the heads rest on the Davenport crest, suggesting that the figures might depict the church’s founders, John and Vivian de Davenport. The pulpit carries a coat of arms and dates from 1620;{{sfnp|SN4IFAJB}} other features include an Elizabethan parish chest.{{sfnp|K3QXVXBU|151}} There are three surviving bells in the present-day ring of six, the oldest of which is inscribed “God Save the Queen and Realme 1598”.{{sfnp|SN4IFAJB}} The organ was built in 1894 by A. Worral.{{sfnp|AZ5MK6S9}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmcloud.org/pageinfo/en.wikipedia.org/St_James%27_and_St_Paul%27s_Church,_Marton#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Anglican, Cheshire, Church
---
### [The Unwelcome Companion: A Street Scene in Cairo](https://engole.info/the-unwelcome-companion-a-street-scene-in-cairo/)
**Published:** March 28, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/John_William_Waterhouse-_The_Unwelcome_Companion_-_a_Street_Scene_in_Cairo.JPG[/pimage]Early painting by John William Waterhouse, predating his adoption of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood‘s style and subject matter from the 1880s.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/John_William_Waterhouse-_The_Unwelcome_Companion_-_a_Street_Scene_in_Cairo.JPG)Oil on canvas
59 cm × 49.5 cm (23 in × 19.5 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Unwelcome Companion: A Street Scene in Cairo* is an early painting by [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse), predating his adoption of the [Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood)‘s style and subject matter from the 1880s. Completed in about 1872, it was exhibited at the gallery of the Society of British Artists.{{sfnp|7AJ7X7AQ|12,16-17}}{{sfnp|LKS6MDQ3|15-17}}{{sfnp|SKW9QAVY}}
The picture shows a young woman adorned in “vibrant, culturally detailed attire” standing in front of an architectural backdrop in Cairo.{{sfnp|MYT6R76K}}
The painting was donated to the Towneley Hall Art Gallery and Museum in Burnley by Mrs P. Oldman in 1951.{{sfnp|47MWID35}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting
---
### [Unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority/)
**Published:** August 14, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/Royal_coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281952%E2%80%932022%2C_variant_1%29.svg/960px-Royal_coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281952%E2%80%932022%2C_variant_1%29.svg.png[/pimage]Local government administrative unit in the UK.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/Royal_coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281952%E2%80%932022%2C_variant_1%29.svg/960px-Royal_coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281952%E2%80%932022%2C_variant_1%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Local Government Act 1972, implemented in 1974, set up a two-tier structure of local government across most of England and Wales. Functions were divided between the tiers depending on how they could be carried out most efficiently. County councils were given the responsibility for services including waste disposal, social services, libraries and strategic planning, whereas local authority districts were responsible for local planning, housing, local highways, environmental health, refuse collection and cemeteries.{{sfnp|KAJQRKPD}}
Local government was reorganised again during the 1990s in the wake of the Local Government Commission for England (1992) report, the key recommendation of which was the introduction of single-tier unitary authorities with responsibility for all areas of local government. In essence they were to provide a single authority for small counties where division into districts would be impractical, but the two-tier system was retained in much of the country.{{sfnp|KAJQRKPD}}
The Local Government (Wales) Act 1994 divided Wales into 22 unitary authorities, known as principal councils,{{sfnp|VHVAKMTT}} and the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 determined that from 1 April 1996 Scotland would also be divided into unitary authorities, known simply as councils.{{sfnp|WX2LXHJC}} As of March 2025, there are 62 unitary authorities in England, 22 in Wales and 32 in Scotland.{{sfnp|72TQ2Y43}}
Despite the name, a unitary authority may not be the only administrative authority in its area, which may contain one or more [civil parishes](https://engole.info/civil-parish/) with responsibility for maintaining local assets such as village halls and leisure facilities, and the maintenance of public footpaths. [Holmes Chapel](https://engole.info/holmes-chapel/), for instance, is a civil parish within the unitary authority of Cheshire East.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Local government
---
### [The Diverting History of John Gilpin](https://engole.info/the-diverting-history-of-john-gilpin/)
**Published:** October 29, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Randolph_Caldecott_collection-page_0066_crop-balance-cenhance.jpg/1920px-Randolph_Caldecott_collection-page_0066_crop-balance-cenhance.jpg[/pimage]Comic poem by the English poet William Cowper, first published in 1782.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Randolph_Caldecott_collection-page_0066_crop-balance-cenhance.jpg/1920px-Randolph_Caldecott_collection-page_0066_crop-balance-cenhance.jpg)Illustration by Randolph Caldecott.
Wikimedia Commons
“The Diverting History of John Gilpin” is a comic poem written by the English poet and hymn writer William Cowper (1731–1800), first published anonymously in the *Public Advertiser* in 1782 and subsequently under the title “The Task” in the same publication in 1785.{{sfnp|FCIVCQGX}}
The poem is based on the real-life story of a linen-draper named Beyer,{{sfnp|AF8KJ6ZL}} as told to Cowper by his friend Lady Austen.{{sfnp|FCIVCQGX}} For a time it was the “most popular poem in England”, owing at least in part to the readings delivered by the acclaimed actor John Henderson, at Freemasons’ Hall in 1785.{{sfnp|WHLXNQAG}}
## Poem
This is a condensed version, in which some verses are omitted; a link to the text of the full poem can be found at the end of this article.
> John Gilpin was a citizen
> Of credit and renown,
> A train-band captain eke was he
> Of famous London town.
>
> John Gilpin’s spouse said to her dear—
> Though wedded we have been
> These twice ten tedious years, yet we
> No holiday have seen.
>
> To-morrow is our wedding-day,
> And we will then repair
> Unto the Bell at Edmonton
> All in a chaise and pair.
>
> My sister, and my sister’s child,
> Myself, and children three,
> Will fill the chaise; so you must ride
> On horseback after we.
**…**
A train-band was a county-based militia formed by Queen Elizabeth I, largely replaced by a standing army during the 18th century;{{sfnp|NEDYPD45}} “eke” tells us that Gilpin was frugal, as in eking out his resources, which perhaps explains why his wife considers their twenty years of marriage to have been “tedious”.
> John Gilpin at his horse’s side
> Seized fast the flowing mane,
> And up he got, in haste to ride,
> But soon came down again;
> So down he came; for loss of time,
> Although it grieved him sore,
> Yet loss of pence, full well he knew,
> Would trouble him much more.
As Gilpin is mounting his borrowed horse, he sees three customers entering his shop, so he goes back to serve them.
**…**
> Now Mistress Gilpin (careful soul!)
> Had two stone bottles found,
> To hold the liquor that she loved,
> And keep it safe and sound.
As he is finally ready to leave, Gilpin realises that their wine has been left behind, so he loops the bottles around his belt and finally sets off.
**…**
> But finding soon a smoother road
> Beneath his well-shod feet,
> The snorting beast began to trot,
> Which galled him in his seat.
>
> So, ‘Fair and softly,’ John he cried,
> But John he called in vain;
> That trot became a gallop soon,
> In spite of curb and rein.
>
> So stooping down as needs he must
> Who cannot sit upright,
> He grasped the mane with both his hands,
> And eke with all his might.
Gilpin sets out cautiously on the paved road, but as the path becomes smoother the horse gets faster and faster, until he is just hanging on, completely out of control.
**…**
> The dogs did bark, the children screamed,
> Up flew the windows all;
> And every soul cried out, ‘Well done!’
> As loud as he could bawl.
>
> Away went Gilpin—who but he?
> His fame soon spread around;
> ‘He carries weight! He rides a race!’
> ‘’Tis for a thousand pound!’
Onlookers, seeing Gilpin galloping by with the wine bottles attached to his belt cheer him on, believing him to be in a race.
**…**
> At Edmonton his loving wife From the balcony spied Her tender husband, wondering much To see how he did ride. ‘Stop, stop, John Gilpin!—Here’s the house!’ They all at once did cry; ‘The dinner waits, and we are tired;’— Said Gilpin—‘So am I!’
Gilpin’s bolting horse races past his waiting wife in Edmonton, on towards the house of its owner, further down the road in Ware.
**…**
> ‘But let me scrape the dirt away
> That hangs upon your face;
> And stop and eat, for well you may
> Be in a hungry case.’
>
> Said John, ‘It is my wedding day,
> And all the world would stare,
> If wife should dine at Edmonton,
> And I should dine at Ware.’
Eventually the horse pulls up outside the house of Gilpin’s friend, who had lent him the animal. Seeing Gilpin’s disheveled state the friend offers him some hospitality, but Gilpin resolves that he must meet his wife at Edmonton without further delay, and sets off again on the horse.
**…**
> And now the turnpike gates again
> Flew open in short space;
> The toll-men thinking, as before,
> That Gilpin rode a race.
>
> And so he did, and won it too,
> For he got first to town;
> Nor stopped till where he had got up
> He did again get down.
>
> Now let us sing, Long live the King!
> And Gilpin, long live he!
> And when he next doth ride abroad
> May I be there to see!
But the horse is once again spooked, this time by a braying ass, and bolts back to where it had started from, outside Gilpin’s shop, once again racing past Gilpin’s waiting wife in Edmonton.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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## External links
- [Full text of the poem](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11979/11979-h/11979-h.htm) from Project Gutenberg.
**Categories:** Poem
---
### [Fachan](https://engole.info/fachan/)
**Published:** August 19, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Monstrous creature of the Scottish Highlands.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Fachan.png)Illustration from *Popular Tales of the West Highlands*, Vol. IV
The fachan of Glen Etrive in the Scottish Highlands, *Direach Ghlinn Eitidh*, is a monstrous creature described as having one leg, a single eye, and a hand protruding from the centre of its chest. The folklorist John Francis Campbell has drawn a comparison with the nesnas of Arabic tradition, which he describes as having half a head, half a body, and one leg, on which it hops about.{{sfnp|XMKMMENJ|325-327}} The Irish academic and politician Douglas Hyde has noted the existence of a similar monster in Irish tradition, and has suggested that both creatures are forged from a common Gaelic tradition, and that *fachan* may be a diminutive of the Irish *fathach*, meaning giant.{{sfnp|BPA747EB|xx-xxii}}
The fachan may be a vestigial memory of the way that Celtic priests were said to have performed certain rituals, with one eye closed, standing on one leg, and one arm outstretched.{{sfnp|VIDPGCC7|90}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Mythical creature
---
### [The Political Register](https://engole.info/the-political-register/)
**Published:** May 13, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Radical newspaper founded by William Cobbett in 1802, and published weekly until his death in 1835.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Political_Register.jpg)Front page of the 19 January 1828 edition
Wikimedia Commons
*Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register*, commonly known as *The Political Register*, was a weekly newspaper founded in 1802 by the journalist, politician and farmer William Cobbett (1763–1835), and published until his death.{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2|468}}
The paper initially pursued a “fiercely right‐wing anti‐French stance” in support of the Tory government,{{sfnp|CEW4BHYP}} but by 1804, concerned about the growing national debt and the numerous government awards he considered to be “unmerited sinecures”, Cobbett’s position was becoming increasingly Radical; by 1807 the paper was lending its support for parliamentary reform. The gridiron in the newspaper’s masthead reflects Cobbett’s obsession with the national debt. By the 1820s he was convinced that it could never be paid off in specie – coins rather than notes, which he distrusted – without defaulting, and vowed to roast himself on a gridiron if it was ever done.{{sfnp|8ECL4EUT}}
From 1816 Cobbett published two different editions of the newspaper: a full-price version and a cheaper one that avoided stamp duty by carrying opinion pieces but no news. Although dismissed as “twopenny trash” by its critics it built a large circulation, and was probably the main periodical read by working-class people at the time.{{sfnp|CQ96APQA}} In its first month alone it sold 44,000 copies, and its popularity so alarmed the government that it rushed through the [Six Acts](https://engole.info/six-acts) of 1819 in an attempt to stem public support for parliamentary reform.{{sfnp|8ECL4EUT}} The new legislation closed the tax loophole Cobbett had exploited to avoid stamp duty, but he did later bring out a cheaper monthly version that adopted the name *Twopenny Trash*.{{sfnp|CQ96APQA}}
## *Hansard*
*The Political Register* included accounts of proceedings in parliament, but not of the debates themselves, which Cobbett published separately every six months as part of *Cobbett’s Annual Political Register*, first published in 1804. The *Register* was printed by Thomas Curson Hansard (1776–1833), who following Cobbett’s bankruptcy bought him out, thus creating the *Hansard* still in publication today.{{sfnp|8ECL4EUT}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26381
**Categories:** Newspaper
---
### [Crewe's Act 1782](https://engole.info/crewes-act-1782/)
**Published:** July 1, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of Parliament to disenfranchise all government officials involved in the collection or management of statutory duties.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
Crewe’s Act 1782 (22 Geo. 3. c. 41), full title *An Act for better securing the Freedom of Elections of Members to serve in Parliament, by disabling certain Officers, employed in the Collection or Management of his Majesty’s Revenues, from giving their votes at such Elections*, was a United Kingdom Act of Parliament passed in 1782 during the reign of King George III. Those disenfranchised by the Act were employees of the departments of customs, excise, stamps, salt, windows\[a\]Windows were first taxed in 1690, although that was quickly repealed, but a [glass tax](https://engole.info/glass-tax) had been reintroduced in 1746. and houses, and the post office, excluding those engaged in foreign mail services.{{sfnp|LKPWHY6M}}
The common name of the Act comes from John Crewe (1742–1829), first Baron Crewe, who championed its passage through parliament.{{sfnp|SEZGLTT7}} It was one of a number proposed by opposition groups clamouring for economic reform as a result of the increasing tax burden imposed to pay for the American War of Independence (1775–1783), such as the Rockingham group of which Crewe was a member. Others included Clerke’s Bill to exclude contractors from the House of Commons, and Burke’s Establishment Bill, which abolished many offices and sinecures, and limited the power of the monarch to grant royal pensions.{{sfnp|PH7T74MN}} The primary purpose of such movements was to reduce the power of the executive in parliament, and in particular to curtail the influence of the monarch.{{sfnp|ZGRRJ23H}}
Crewe’s Act was repealed by the Revenue Officers’ Disabilities Act 1868 (31 & 32 Vict. c. 73).
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Windows were first taxed in 1690, although that was quickly repealed, but a [glass tax](https://engole.info/glass-tax) had been reintroduced in 1746.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25443
**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [The Orphan (painting)](https://engole.info/the-orphan-painting/)
**Published:** February 20, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/90/Sir_William_Allan_%281782-1850%29_-_The_Orphan_-_RCIN_401189_-_Royal_Collection.jpg/960px-Sir_William_Allan_%281782-1850%29_-_The_Orphan_-_RCIN_401189_-_Royal_Collection.jpg[/pimage]1834 genre painting by the Scottish artist William Allan, a lament for the loss of his friend Sir Walter Scott.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/90/Sir_William_Allan_%281782-1850%29_-_The_Orphan_-_RCIN_401189_-_Royal_Collection.jpg/960px-Sir_William_Allan_%281782-1850%29_-_The_Orphan_-_RCIN_401189_-_Royal_Collection.jpg)Oil on panel
85.7 cm × 72.4 cm (33.7 in × 28.5 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Orphan* is an 1834 [genre painting](https://engole.info/genre-painting) by the Scottish artist William Allan, a lament for the loss of his friend and supporter the novelist and historian Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832).{{sfnp|RN48LI7Z}} It depicts the dining room of Scott’s home, Abbotsford, in southern Scotland. Scott’s daughter Anne leans mournfully against her father’s empty carved oak chair.{{sfnp|4H866IRV|98}}
The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition of 1834, and was probably acquired by William IV or his wife Queen Adelaide soon afterwards. It remains in the Royal Collection today.{{sfnp|RN48LI7Z}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27213
**Categories:** Genre painting
---
### [Enid Blyton](https://engole.info/enid-blyton/)
**Published:** March 5, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/ODNB-Enid-Blyton.jpg[/pimage]English children's writer whose books have been among the world's best-sellers since the 1930s, selling more than 600 million copies.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/ODNB-Enid-Blyton.jpg)Enid Blyton with her daughter Imogen, 1949
*Oxford Dictionary of National Biography*
Enid Mary Blyton (11 August 1897 – 28 November 1968) has been among the world’s best-selling writers of children’s fiction since the 1930s, selling more than 600 million copies. Her books are still enormously popular, and have been translated into ninety languages; her first, *Child Whispers*, a 24-page collection of poems, was published in 1922.{{sfnp|PI5373S3}} Blyton wrote on a wide range of topics including education, natural history, fantasy, mystery, and biblical narratives but is best remembered today for her Noddy, Famous Five, Secret Seven and Malory Towers series.
Following the commercial success of her early novels such as *Adventures of the Wishing-Chair* (1937) and *The Enchanted Wood* (1939), Blyton went on to build a literary empire, sometimes producing fifty books a year in addition to her prolific magazine and newspaper contributions.{{sfnp|2LC7QUZQ}} Her writing was unplanned and sprang largely from her unconscious mind; she typed her stories as events unfolded before her.{{sfnp|VWSBSXRJ|loc=3412-3418}} The sheer volume of her work and the speed with which it was produced led to rumours that Blyton employed an army of ghost writers, a charge she vigorously denied.{{sfnp|VWSBSXRJ|loc=2625-2645}}
## Early life
Enid Blyton was born on 11 August 1897 in East Dulwich, South London, the oldest of the three children, to Thomas Carey Blyton (1870–1920), a cutlery salesman, and his wife Theresa Mary (née Harrison; 1874–1950). Enid’s younger brothers, Hanly (1899–1983) and Carey (1902–1976), were born after the family had moved to a semi-detached villa in Beckenham, then a village in Kent.{{sfnp|J6GVW3DJ}} A few months after her birth Enid almost died from whooping cough, but was nursed back to health by her father, whom she adored.{{sfnp|HR5CTJSQ|5}} Thomas Blyton ignited Enid’s interest in nature; in her autobiography she wrote that he “loved flowers and birds and wild animals, and knew more about them than anyone I had ever met”.{{sfnp|NKV5CUMP|54}} He also passed on his interest in gardening, art, music, literature and the theatre, and the pair often went on nature walks, much to the disapproval of Enid’s mother, who showed little interest in her daughter’s pursuits.{{sfnp|XZ849I4C}} Enid was devastated when he left the family shortly after her thirteenth birthday to live with another woman. Enid and her mother did not have a good relationship, and she did not attend either of her parents’ funerals.{{sfnp|BNXTAXAL|77}}
From 1907 to 1915 Blyton attended St Christopher’s School in Beckenham, where she enjoyed physical activities and became school tennis champion and captain of lacrosse.{{sfnp|K426S74L|9}} She was not so keen on all the academic subjects but excelled in writing, and in 1911 she entered Arthur Mee’s children’s poetry competition. Mee offered to print her verses, encouraging her to produce more.{{sfnp|J6GVW3DJ}} Blyton’s mother considered her efforts at writing to be a “waste of time and money”, but she was encouraged to persevere by Mabel Attenborough, the aunt of school friend Mary Potter.{{sfnp|XZ849I4C}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Seckford_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1000225.jpg)Seckford Hall in Woodbridge, Suffolk, was an inspiration to Blyton with its haunted room, secret passageway and sprawling gardens.
Wikimedia Commons
Blyton’s father taught her to play the piano, which she mastered well enough for him to believe that she might follow in his sister’s footsteps and become a professional musician.{{sfnp|K426S74L|9}} Blyton considered enrolling at the Guildhall School of Music, but decided she was better suited to becoming a writer.{{sfnp|PI5373S3}} After finishing school in 1915 as head girl, she moved out of the family home to live with her friend Mary Attenborough, before going to stay with George and Emily Hunt at Seckford Hall near Woodbridge in Suffolk. Seckford Hall, with its allegedly haunted room and secret passageway provided inspiration for her later writing.{{sfnp|J6GVW3DJ}} At Woodbridge Congregational Church Blyton met Ida Hunt, who taught at Ipswich High School, and suggested that she train as a teacher.{{sfnp|VWSBSXRJ|loc=377}} Blyton was introduced to the children at the nursery school, and recognising her natural affinity with them she enrolled in a National Froebel Union teacher training course at the school in September 1916.{{sfnp|PI5373S3}}{{sfnp|KH32NHH3}} By this time she had almost ceased contact with her family.{{sfnp|J6GVW3DJ}}
Blyton’s manuscripts had been rejected by publishers on many occasions, which only made her more determined to succeed: “it is partly the struggle that helps you so much, that gives you determination, character, self-reliance – all things that help in any profession or trade, and most certainly in writing”. In March 1916 her first poems were published in Nash’s Magazine.{{sfnp|AV3L8JI2}} She completed her teacher training course in December 1918, and the following month obtained a teaching appointment at Bickley Park School, a small independent establishment for boys in Bickley, Kent. Two months later Blyton received a teaching certificate with distinctions in zoology and principles of education, 1st class in botany, geography, practice and history of education, child hygiene and class teaching and 2nd class in literature and elementary mathematics.{{sfnp|J6GVW3DJ}} In 1920 she moved to Southernhay in Hook Road Surbiton as nursery governess to the four sons of architect Horace Thompson and his wife Gertrude,{{sfnp|PI5373S3}} with whom Blyton spent four happy years. Owing to a shortage of schools in the area her charges were soon joined by the children of neighbours, and a small school developed at the house.{{sfnp|J6GVW3DJ|loc=552}}
## Writing career
### Early work
In 1920 Blyton relocated to Chessington, and began writing in her spare time. The following year she won the *Saturday Westminster Review* writing competition with her essay “On the Popular Fallacy that to the Pure All Things are Pure”.{{sfnp|VWSBSXRJ|loc=624-630}} Publications such as *The Londoner*, *Home Weekly* and *The Bystander* began to show an interest in her short stories and poems.{{sfnp|J6GVW3DJ}}
Blyton’s first book, *Child Whispers*, a 24-page collection of poems, was published in 1922.{{sfnp|VWSBSXRJ|loc=624-630}} Also in that year Blyton began writing in annuals for Cassell and George Newnes, and her first piece of writing, “Peronel and his Pot of Glue”, was accepted for publication in *Teachers’ World*. Blyton’s educational texts were quite influential in the 1920s and ’30s, her most sizeable being the three-volume *The Teacher’s Treasury* (1926), the six-volume *Modern Teaching* (1928), the ten-volume *Pictorial Knowledge* (1930), and the four-volume *Modern Teaching in the Infant School* (1932).{{sfnp|SB8ZXPAL|112}}
In the 1930s Blyton developed an interest in writing stories related to various myths, including those of ancient Greece and Rome; *The Knights of the Round Table*, *Tales of Ancient Greece* and *Tales of Robin Hood* were published in 1930.{{sfnp|WFDA7B82|25}} *The Adventures of Odysseus*, *Tales of the Ancient Greeks and Persians* and *Tales of the Romans* followed in 1934.{{sfnp|4AXTKZ9C|57}}
### New series: 1934–1948
The first of twenty-eight books in Blyton’s Old Thatch series, *The Talking Teapot and Other Tales*, was published in 1934, the same year as the first book in her Brer Rabbit series, *Brer Rabbit Retold*;{{sfnp|VWSBSXRJ|loc=3910}}\[a\]Brer Rabbit originally featured in the Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris her first serial story and first full-length book, *Adventures of the Wishing-Chair*, followed in 1937. *The Enchanted Wood*, the first book in the Faraway Tree series, was published in 1939.{{sfnp|PI5373S3}} These fantasy books typically involve children being transported into a magical world in which they meet fairies, goblins, elves, pixies and other mythological creatures.
Blyton’s first full-length adventure novel, *The Secret Island*, was published in 1938, and featured the characters of Jack, Mike, Peggy and Nora.{{sfnp|QLRVTHD2}} Described by *The Glasgow Herald* as a “Robinson Crusoe-style adventure on an island in an English lake”, *The Secret Island* was a lifelong favourite of Blyton’s daughter Gillian, and spawned the Secret series.{{sfnp|2ECBZUV7}} The following year Blyton released her first book in the Circus series{{sfnp|VWSBSXRJ|loc=4096}} and her initial book in the Amelia Jane series, *Naughty Amelia Jane!*{{sfnp|VWSBSXRJ|loc=4102}} According to Gillian the main character was based on a large handmade doll given to her by her mother on her third birthday.{{sfnp|2ECBZUV7}}
During the 1940s Blyton became a prolific author, her success enhanced by her “marketing, publicity and branding that was far ahead of its time”.{{sfnp|AE7J5GKF}} She published two books in 1940 – *Three Boys and a Circus* and *Children of Kidillin* – under the pseudonym of Mary Pollock (her middle name plus first married name),{{sfnp|V5TILD88|209}} in addition to the eleven published under her own name that year. So popular were Pollock’s books that one reviewer was prompted to observe that “Enid Blyton had better look to her laurels”. But Blyton’s readers were not so easily deceived and many complained about the subterfuge to her and her publisher,{{sfnp|VWSBSXRJ|loc=1937-1944}} with the result that all six books published under the name of Mary Pollock – two in 1940 and four in 1943 – were reissued under Blyton’s name.{{sfnp|BI7GM3MB}}
## Writing style and technique
Blyton worked in a wide range of fictional genres, from fairy tales to animal, nature, detective, mystery, and circus stories, but she often “blurred the boundaries” in her books, and encompassed a range of genres even in her short stories.{{sfnp|LHSUEVWC|260}} In a 1958 article published in *The Author*, she wrote that there were a “dozen or more different types of stories for children”, and she had tried them all, but her favourites were those with a family at their centre.{{sfnp|VWSBSXRJ|loc=2439}}
In a letter to the psychologist Peter McKellar,\[b\]McKellar had written to Blyton in February 1953 asking for the imagery techniques she employed in her writing, for a research project he had undertaken. The results of his investigation were published in *Imagination and Thinking* (1957).{{sfnp|VWSBSXRJ|loc=3390}} Blyton describes her writing technique:
I shut my eyes for a few minutes, with my portable typewriter on my knee – I make my mind a blank and wait – and then, as clearly as I would see real children, my characters stand before me in my mind’s eye … The first sentence comes straight into my mind, I don’t have to think of it – I don’t have to think of anything.{{sfnp
— VWSBSXRJ|loc=3412-3418}}
In another letter to McKellar Blyton describes how in just five days she wrote the 60,000-word book *The River of Adventure*, the eighth in her Adventure Series,{{sfnp|VWSBSXRJ|loc=3552}} by listening to what she referred to as her “under-mind”,{{sfnp|VWSBSXRJ|loc=3452}} which she contrasted with her “upper conscious mind”.{{sfnp|VWSBSXRJ|loc=3432}} Blyton was unwilling to conduct any research or planning before beginning work on a new book, which coupled with the lack of variety in her life\[c\]In her leisure time Blyton led the life of a typical suburban housewife, gardening, and playing golf or bridge. She rarely left England, preferring to holiday by the English coast, almost invariably in Dorset,{{sfnp|K426S74L|29}} where she and her husband took over the lease of an 18-hole golf course at Studland Bay in 1951.{{sfnp|VWSBSXRJ|loc=2154}} according to Druce almost inevitably presented the danger that she might unconsciously, and clearly did, plagiarise the books she had read, including her own.{{sfnp|K426S74L|29}}
## Critical reception
From the 1930s to the 1950s the BBC operated a de facto ban on dramatising Blyton’s books for radio, considering her to be a “second-rater” whose work was without literary merit.{{sfnp|RV22W6VV}}{{sfnp|5NJ8TMWN}}\[d\]Blyton submitted her first proposal to the BBC in 1936.{{sfnp|5NJ8TMWN}} The children’s literary critic Margery Fisher likened Blyton’s books to “slow poison”,{{sfnp|PI5373S3}} and Jean E. Sutcliffe of the BBC’s schools broadcast department wrote of Blyton’s ability to churn out “mediocre material”, noting that “her capacity to do so amounts to genius … anyone else would have died of boredom long ago”.{{sfnp|2MTQ6AWP}}
Some librarians felt that Blyton’s restricted use of language, a conscious product of her teaching background, was prejudicial to an appreciation of more literary qualities. In a scathing article published in *Encounter* in 1958, the journalist Colin Welch remarked that it was “hard to see how a diet of Miss Blyton could help with the 11-plus or even with the Cambridge English Tripos”,{{sfnp|PI5373S3}} but reserved his harshest criticism for Blyton’s Noddy, describing him as an “unnaturally priggish … sanctimonious … witless, spiritless, snivelling, sneaking doll.”{{sfnp|LHSUEVWC|265}}
Blyton’s range of plots and settings has been described as limited and continually recycled,{{sfnp|K426S74L|29}} and her books assessed by teachers and librarians as unfit for children to read.{{sfnp|PI5373S3}} Responding to claims that her moral views were “dependably predictable”,{{sfnp|K426S74L|213}} Blyton commented that “most of you could write down perfectly correctly all the things that I believe in and stand for – you have found them in my books, and a writer’s books are always a faithful reflection of himself”.{{sfnp|NKV5CUMP|104}}
## Controversy
Blyton’s work became increasingly controversial among literary critics, teachers and parents from the 1950s onwards, because of the alleged unchallenging nature of her writing and the themes of her books, particularly the Noddy series. Some libraries and schools banned her works, which the BBC had refused to broadcast from the 1930s until the 1950s because they were perceived to lack literary merit. Her books have been criticised as being elitist, sexist, racist, xenophobic and at odds with the more liberal environment emerging in post-war Britain, but they have continued to be best-sellers since her death in 1968.
## Charitable work
Blyton felt she had a responsibility to provide her readers with a strong moral framework, so she encouraged them to support worthy causes;{{sfnp|4AXTKZ9C}} through the clubs she set up or supported, she organised them to raise funds for animal and paediatric charities.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Brer Rabbit originally featured in the Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris b McKellar had written to Blyton in February 1953 asking for the imagery techniques she employed in her writing, for a research project he had undertaken. The results of his investigation were published in *Imagination and Thinking* (1957).{{sfnp|VWSBSXRJ|loc=3390}} c In her leisure time Blyton led the life of a typical suburban housewife, gardening, and playing golf or bridge. She rarely left England, preferring to holiday by the English coast, almost invariably in Dorset,{{sfnp|K426S74L|29}} where she and her husband took over the lease of an 18-hole golf course at Studland Bay in 1951.{{sfnp|VWSBSXRJ|loc=2154}} d Blyton submitted her first proposal to the BBC in 1936.{{sfnp|5NJ8TMWN}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 16230
**Categories:** English, Female, Writer
---
### [Church of St Edward the Confessor, Romford](https://engole.info/church-of-st-edward-the-confessor-romford/)
**Published:** October 2, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/St_Edward_the_Confessor_Church_Romford_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1778228.jpg[/pimage]Place of worship in Romford, in the London Borough of Havering, an Anglican church in the Diocese of Chelmsford.
**Content:**
The Church of St Edward the Confessor (in full, the Parish Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Edward the Confessor{{sfnp|NV5E9T94}}) is a place of worship in Romford, in the London Borough of Havering. It is an Anglican church in the Diocese of Chelmsford. The building, dating from 1849–1850, replaced an earlier church that was demolished in the mid-19th century; there has been a religious building on the site since the end of the 14th century. The current church was completed to a Victorian Gothic design by the English architect John Johnson,{{sfnp|732PMUZ4}} and was designated a Grade II\* listed building by English Heritage in 1952.
## History
Romford’s earliest known place of worship was a small chapel, dedicated to Saint Andrew (after its then parish church, the local priory of St Andrew, Hornchurch), in Old Church, an area of the borough that still exists. The chapel, established in 1177, was built near to the River Rom, from which Romford takes its name. The chapel existed into the late 14th century, but fell into ruin and was demolished. Oldchurch, which is inside Romford’s ring road, takes its name from the Old Church of 1177.{{sfnp|NV5E9T94}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/St_Edward_the_Confessor_Church_Romford_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1778228.jpg)St Edward the Confessor, Market Place, Romford
Wikimedia Commons
A replacement church was built on the site of the present building towards the end of the 14th century, and completed in 1410. The grounds were consecrated by Henry Chichele, Bishop of St David’s, on 23 March that year, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary and St Edward the Confessor. The church had a [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel), a [nave](https://engole.info/nave/), an extended north aisle – which was longer than its predecessor by {{convert|28|ft}} and wider by {{convert|14|ft}} – and featured a brick tower housing a ring of five bells. A gallery was later built within the western part of the building, in which a charity for orphaned children was later founded.{{sfnp|NV5E9T94}}
By 1710 the orphanage had become the St Edward’s School and moved to a separate building in Romford’s Market Place in 1728. Almost 30 years later a replacement weight-driven clock was installed, and three bells were added to the peal. The building remained in use until 1844 when work on a new church to the east of the Market Place (now the war memorial in Main Road) was started.{{sfnp|NV5E9T94}}
The new building in Main Road was designed by Edward Blore as a chapel, only. Halfway through construction the planners decided to relocate the town’s church back to Market Place.{{sfnp|HANCTFXJ|196-197}} The last services were held at the old church in Market Place in 1849 before it was demolished.{{sfnp|NV5E9T94}} Blore’s chapel in Main Road continued as a burial ground, hence the current collection of c. 19th-century headstones at the back of the park; it was demolished in 1953.{{sfnp|HANCTFXJ|196-197}}
## Current building
The current building in Market Place was designed by the English architect John Johnson,{{sfnp|NN39DCAW}} who designed the Alexandra Palace and its associated buildings in 1874;{{sfnp|JS8ZQ67M}} the contractor was John Kelk, with whom Johnson often worked. The foundation stone was laid on 14 July 1849 by the Conservative politician Thomas William Bramston, who was then member of parliament for Romford.{{sfnp|NN39DCAW}} The church was consecrated on 19 September 1850 by George Murray, Bishop of Rochester.{{sfnp|NV5E9T94}} To pay for its construction, £2,500 was borrowed from financiers, £1,000 was given by New College, Oxford, and the remainder was raised by grants and private subscription. The building work cost £8,000,{{sfnp|NN39DCAW}} equivalent to almost £1 million as at 2019.\[a\]Using the GDP deflator calculation at MeasuringWorth.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
Johnson’s designs were in the gothic style of the 14th century. It was built using Kentish Ragstone with Bath stone dressings. Some of the materials came from John Nash’s Quadrant in Regent Street, London, which was at that time being demolished. This may account for the many carved [corbels](https://engole.info/corbel) depicting the heads of kings, queens, bishops, the Green Man, a veiled woman and sundry other heads with unusual head dresses.{{sfnp|NV5E9T94}} The stained glass window on the east of the building is by Charles Edmund Clutterbuck, and the three in the south chapel are by [William Wailes](https://engole.info/william-wailes).{{sfnp|NN39DCAW}} The wall that separates the churchyard from the Market Place may be contemporary, and could date to around the time of the building of the second church in the 14th century.{{sfnp|IZ8R9MFQ}}
The church sustained some minor damage during the Second World War. During the renovations a year later, in 1944, an electric clock and chime bells were installed,{{sfnp|NV5E9T94}} perhaps to replace the bells that had been requisitioned for the war effort.{{sfnp|QEY7VP3Q}} The church was recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II\* listed building on 4 July 1952.{{sfnp|NN39DCAW}} By 1965 the school had moved to London Road, and become a secondary school. A new organ was installed in the west gallery of the church in 1979, and five years later the Church House was restored. A major renovation took place in 1988, which included the installation of under-floor heating and the conversion of the fixed pews to free-standing ones.{{sfnp|NV5E9T94}}
## Interior
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Cooke_Memorial_at_the_Church_of_St_Edward_the_Confessor%2C_Romford.jpg)Memorial dedicated to Sir Anthony Cooke
Wikimedia Commons
The church consists of a nave of five bays with clerestory, north and south aisles, chancel, Lady Chapel and west gallery; two vestries were added in 1885. The south wall in the chancel features a monument to George Hervey, and on the north wall there is a memorial to Sir Anthony Cooke, an eminent humanist scholar who died in 1576.{{sfnp|YAV9VQD6}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Using the GDP deflator calculation at MeasuringWorth.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} b, c var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23213
**Categories:** Anglican, Church
---
### [Witches of Belvoir](https://engole.info/witches-of-belvoir/)
**Published:** May 26, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/The_two_sons_of_Francis_Manners%2C_St_Mary%27s_church%2C_Bottesford_%28geograph_2736171%29.jpg[/pimage]Mother and her two daughters accused of causing the deaths by witchcraft of two young nobles, Henry and Francis Manners.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/The_two_sons_of_Francis_Manners%2C_St_Mary%27s_church%2C_Bottesford_%28geograph_2736171%29.jpg)Memorial to Henry and Francis Manners, the heirs to the 6th Earl and Countess of Rutland, whom the Witches of Belvoir were believed to have killed
Wikimedia Commons
The Witches of Belvoir, also known as the Bottesford witches, were a mother – Joan Flower – and her two daughters Margaret and Phillipa, believed to have caused the deaths by witchcraft of two young nobles. Henry (died 1613) and Francis Manners (died 1620) were the only male heirs to Francis Manners, 6th Earl of Rutland, whose seat was at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire. Joan Flower died on her journey to Lincoln Castle, where she and her daughters were to be incarcerated before their interrogation and trial, after demanding that she be tried by [ordeal](https://engole.info/witch-finding/#Ordeal-by-bread).
The only record of the trial of Margaret and Phillipa Flower in early March 1619 is that contained in a contemporary pamphlet, *The Wonderful Discoverie of the Witchcrafts of Margaret and Phillippa Flower, Daughters of Joan Flower*; the records of the Lincoln assizes have been lost.
Margaret and Phillipa were executed at Lincoln Castle on 11 March 1619. A new and influential manual for the use of judges, magistrates and anyone else involved in bringing alleged witches to trial was published eight years later, clearly influenced by the trial of the Flower women. The historian Tracey Borman has suggested that the Flowers women may have been framed by a favourite of King James I, George Villiers, the Marquess of Buckingham.
## Flower family
The Flower family had been connected to the earls of Rutland since at least the mid-16th century, and in their heyday the Flower women had acted as ladies-in-waiting to the countesses of Rutland, and even retained servants of their own. Joan Flower herself was almost certainly in the employ of the Manners family in 1603, and her social position seems to have been comfortable until 1611, when she appears to have fallen on hard times, probably owing to the death of her husband. By the time records reveal anything other than the sketchiest details of her life, Joan was looking after her daughters Margaret and Philippa on her own.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|64-65}}
The famously generous Earl and Countess of Rutland evidently felt some responsibility for the Flower women, as it is recorded that they “dayly founde reliefe” from the castle. Joan and her daughters were offered employment at the castle in 1612 as day servants, possibly to assist with preparations for the visit of King James I in August that year, but they remained in service long after the King had left.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|64}} Joan was a particular favourite with the earl, and the pair spent many hours discussing natural remedies; Joan was a well-known local [cunning woman](https://engole.info/cunning-folk), and the earl solicited her advice on many occasions.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|82}}
## Events leading up to the trials
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Belvoirmorris_edited.jpg)Belvoir Castle in the late 19th century
Wikimedia Commons
The Flower women were evidently not popular with the other members of the earl’s staff, and rumours of their misconduct soon began to spread, culminating in 1613 when the servants lodged a formal complaint with Cecelia, the countess of Rutland. Margaret was accused of stealing provisions, and all three women of entertaining “certaine deboist \[debauched\] and base company at their house”, at all hours of the night.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|82-83}} Margaret was dismissed, but with “an extremely generous parting gift” of 40 shillings – about one year’s pay – a bolster and a wool mattress.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|84}} Both Margaret and her mother were reportedly furious at Margaret’s dismissal, and Joan cursed the earl’s family. The earl and the countess were subsequently “many times subject to sicknesse and extraordinary convulsions”,{{sfnp|VE8RWXI2|181}} and in late summer 1613 their eldest son, Henry, Lord Ros, “sickened very strangely”. Henry died in September, and to add to his parent’s grief his brother Francis, their last surviving male heir, shortly afterwards fell ill with the same symptoms as his brother.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|90-92}}
The earl employed several eminent physicians in an attempt to restore his son to health, one of whom, Richard Napier, believed passionately that witchcraft was at the heart of many illnesses.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|114-116}} Rumours abounded among the servants and local villagers that the Flower women were evil witches, and it seems that the earl and the countess gradually began to be swayed to that opinion.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|128}} The conventional wisdom of the time among many was that victims of bewitchment could only be healed if the witch could be forced to confess or by the death of the witch, both of which were matters for the law, and so in either late 1618 or early 1619, the Flower women were arrested and accused of witchcraft, probably at the instigation of the countess of Rutland.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|130-132}} Their arrest excited much interest, as it was very unusual for such a distinguished family as the Manners – one of the richest and noblest families in England – to be involved in a witch trial.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|136}}
## Ordeal by bread
The three women were committed to be tried at Lincoln castle, a {{convert|40|mi|adj=on}} journey from where they were being held in Bottesford, in the depths of winter. Stopping off at the village of Ancaster, worn down by her treatment, and very likely terrified – mistakenly – of the prospect of being burned alive,\[a\]There are no recorded cases of witches being burned alive in England, they were routinely hanged.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|137}} Joan demanded that she be subjected to an ordeal to prove her innocence, an [ordeal by bread](https://engole.info/witch-finding/#Ordeal-by-bread).{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|137}}
The Earl of Rutland’s chaplain, the Reverend Samuel Fleming, was among the party accompanying the women to Lincoln, and he may have blessed the bread before Joan broke off a piece and put it in her mouth. Immediately she “fell donne and dyed … with a horrible excruciation of soule and body”. The historian Tracey Borman has suggested that such a convenient death may have been an invention by the authorities to cover up the reality that the real cause of Joan’s death was the hardships she had been forced to endure at the hands of her captors.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|137-139}}
## Confessions
Margaret and Phillipa were subjected to a series of interrogations from 22 January until 25 February 1619.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|158}} Margaret was the first to crack, and on 4 February admitted that she, her mother and her sister had conspired to bring about the death of the earl’s eldest son, Henry, with the help of her mother’s [familiar](https://engole.info/witchs-familiar/), a cat named Rutterkin. Phillipa appears to have been made of sterner stuff, and consistently refused to confess to having caused the boy’s death, admitting only that she had used magic to make him sick. But she did otherwise confirm Margaret’s story about their mother casting a spell on him.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|160}}
According to the account published in *The Wonderful Discoverie of the Witchcrafts of Margaret and Phillippa Flower*, the Devil took advantage of the fury felt by Margaret and her mother on her dismissal from the earl’s service by promising to help them wreak revenge on the family, in return for their souls. After sealing their pact with “an exchange of blood and ‘abominable kisses’ ”, the two women wasted no time in using their new powers to torment their victims.{{sfnp|VE8RWXI2|181}}
Phillipa on the other hand was madly in love with a local man, Thomas Simpson, it was claimed, and she succumbed to the Devil’s offer to make him love her in return, once again at the cost of her soul. Thomas did indeed fall in love with Phillipa, but the romance ended with him testifying against her, claiming that he must have been bewitched, as “hee had no power to leave her”.{{sfnp|VE8RWXI2|182}}
## Trial and execution
Margaret and Phillipa stood trial in early March 1619\[b\]The court records have not survived; the only extant record of the proceedings are contained in the Belvoir witch pamphlet.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|174}} at Lincoln assizes, in front of Sir Edward Bromley and Sir Henry Hobart, both eminent legal figures;{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|173-175 }} Bromley had been one of the presiding judges at the [Pendle witch trials](https://engole.info/pendle-witches/) of 1612.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|28}} As was customary for such trials at the time, no defence lawyers were allowed, as it was feared that they would be aided by the Devil, so the judges made their decision based on the written testimonies presented to them, and any witness statements. The only witness recorded as giving evidence was the Earl of Rutland himself, but as the law required there to be at least two witnesses there must presumably have been others.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|178-180 }}
Margaret and Phillipa were found guilty under the terms of the [Witchcraft Act of 1604](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts/#Witchcraft_Act_1604), and duly executed on 11 March 1619; their bodies were buried in unconsecrated ground in a corner of Lincoln Castle.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|187, 189}} The boy they had been accused of bewitching, Francis Manners, died almost a year later, on 5 March 1620.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|198}}
## Aftermath and legacy
Three known associates of the Flower women – Anne Baker, Joan Willimot and Ellen Green – were arrested a few days after the executions; Margaret and Phillipa may have implicated them in their own confessions.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|193}} Despite all three admitting to having used witchcraft, but not to any involvement in the Flower’s conspiracy against the Manners family, there is no record of any legal proceedings being taken against them.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|196}}
The earl and countess remained so convinced that their sons had been killed by witchcraft that they had it inscribed on their monument at [Bottesford church](https://engole.info/st-marys-church-bottesford). The only reference to witchcraft in an English church,{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|search=Preface}} it reads, in part:{{sfnp|TGIWPDRP}}
In 1608 he married ye lady Cecila Hungerford, daughter to ye Honorable Knight Sir John Tufton, by whom he had two sons, both of which died in their infancy by wicked practises and sorcerye.
A new manual for the use of judges, magistrates and anyone else involved in bringing alleged witches to trial was published eight years after the execution of the Flowers women. Titled *A Guide to Grand Jury Men*\[c\]In early 17th-century English jurisprudence, all indictments were initially submitted to a grand jury, whose task was to decide whether there was a prima facie case against the accused before the prisoners were taken into the courtroom to be tried by the petty jury, the forerunner of the modern jury.{{sfnp|A45RS9SG|48-49}} and written by Richard Bernard, it was clearly influenced by the Belvoir witch trial, and became “one of the most influential tracts on witchcraft”.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|209-210}}
## Modern interpretations
Tracey Borman has suggested that the Flowers women may have been framed by a favourite of King James I, George Villiers, the Marquess of Buckingham. Villiers was certainly able to profit from the death of the the Earl of Rutland’s last male heir by marrying the earl’s daughter Katherine and thus securing the title, which he did on 16 May 1620.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|200, 216}}
Villiers employed a cunning man by the name of John Lambe, who was known to concoct various potions and poisons. Even at the time, doubts were expressed in some circles about the guilt of the Flowers women. The letter writer John Chamberlain for instance, reported that Francis had died “by witchcraft (as some will have yt) but in all likelihood of the falling sickness to which he was much subject and a weake child”.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|209}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a There are no recorded cases of witches being burned alive in England, they were routinely hanged.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|137}} b The court records have not survived; the only extant record of the proceedings are contained in the Belvoir witch pamphlet.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|174}} c In early 17th-century English jurisprudence, all indictments were initially submitted to a grand jury, whose task was to decide whether there was a prima facie case against the accused before the prisoners were taken into the courtroom to be tried by the petty jury, the forerunner of the modern jury.{{sfnp|A45RS9SG|48-49}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22184
**Categories:** English, Female, Witch
---
### [Manchester Blitz](https://engole.info/manchester-blitz/)
**Published:** July 23, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Air_Raid_Damage_in_Britain-_Manchester_HU49833.jpg[/pimage]Heavy bombing of the city of Manchester and its surrounding areas in North West England during the Second World War by the Nazi German Luftwaffe.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Air_Raid_Damage_in_Britain-_Manchester_HU49833.jpg)Firefighters putting out a blaze at a bomb site in Manchester city centre
Wikimedia Commons
The Manchester Blitz (also known as the Christmas Blitz) was the heavy bombing of the city of Manchester and its surrounding areas in North West England during the Second World War by the Nazi German Luftwaffe. It was one of three major raids\[a\]A major raid is one in which 100 or more tons of high explosive are dropped.{{sfnp|APD9LDF6}} on Manchester, an important inland port and industrial city; [Trafford Park](https://engole.info/trafford-park/) in neighbouring [Stretford](https://engole.info/stretford/) was a major centre of war production.
## Raids on Manchester
Air raids began in August 1940, and in September 1940 the Palace Theatre on Oxford Street was bombed. The heaviest raids occurred on the nights of 22/23 and 23/24 December 1940, killing an estimated 684 people and injuring more than 2000. Manchester Cathedral, the [Royal Exchange](https://engole.info/manchester-royal-exchange/) and the [Free Trade Hall](https://engole.info/free-trade-hall/) were among the large buildings damaged. On the night of 22/23 December, 272 tons of high explosive were dropped, and another 195 tons the following night. Almost 2000 incendiaries were also dropped on the city over the two nights.{{sfnp|APD9LDF6}} The aircraft spread fanwise and adopted the by then familiar tactic of dropping flares followed by incendaries and high explosives with later waves targeting the fires caused by the earlier attacks. There were other less intensive bombing raids across Britain,{{sfnp|RA4QN4HI}} and two German aircraft were reported to have been lost over the British Isles on 24 December; one crashed in the sea near Blackpool and the other, loaded with incendaries and flares, crashed in flames near Etchingham, Sussex with no survivors.{{sfnp|MTV33HZ6}}
## Stretford and Salford
Neighbouring Salford, [Stretford](https://engole.info/stretford) and other districts were also badly damaged by the bombing. It is estimated that more than 215 people were killed and 910 injured in Salford, and more than 8000 homes were damaged or destroyed.{{sfnp|APD9LDF6}} Seventy-three were killed in Stretford, and many more were injured.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|156}} The following month Old Trafford was hit during an air raid that lasted for three hours. In June 1941 German bombs damaged the original Salford Royal Hospital on Chapel Street at the junction with Adelphi Street, killing 14 nurses.{{sfnp|E435S74N}}
## Further raids
On 11 March 1941 Old Trafford football stadium, the home of Manchester United F.C., was hit by a bomb that completely destroyed the main stand and badly damaged the pitch and parts of the terracing.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|141}} The stadium was rebuilt after the war and reopened in 1949, until which time United played at Manchester City’s Maine Road stadium.{{sfnp|ZQHQGV34|search=The Facts}}
In June 1941 German bombs damaged the police headquarters. Manchester continued to be bombed by the Luftwaffe throughout the war, and was in some danger of being hit by V-1 flying bombs. On Christmas Eve 1944, Heinkel He111 bombers flying over the Yorkshire coast launched 45 flying bombs at Manchester. No V-1s landed in Manchester itself, but 27 people in neighbouring Oldham were killed by a stray bomb. Another 17 were killed elsewhere and 109 wounded. RAF De Havilland Mosquitos shot down one German bomber over the North Sea and severely damaged another, causing it to crash land in Germany.{{sfnp|PDSMTFVI}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a A major raid is one in which 100 or more tons of high explosive are dropped.{{sfnp|APD9LDF6}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3936
**Categories:** Greater Manchester
---
### [Stretford Public Hall](https://engole.info/stretford-public-hall/)
**Published:** November 30, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Stretford_public_hall.jpg[/pimage]Public hall built in 1878 by the Manchester's first multi-millionaire John Rylands.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Stretford_public_hall.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
Stretford Public Hall was built in 1878 by [John Rylands](https://engole.info/john-rylands/).{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|83}} It was designed by N. Lofthouse, and is on the western side of the A56 Chester Road, opposite the [Longford Cinema](https://engole.info/longford-cinema/). [Stretford](https://engole.info/stretford)‘s first public lending library was established in the building in 1883.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|118}} Following Rylands’ death in 1888, his widow placed the building at the disposal of the local authority for a nominal rent; after her own death in 1908 the building was bought by Stretford Council for £5,000.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|83}}
Public baths were built to the rear of the building, accessed via Cyprus Street. In 1940 the new Stretford Library was opened on King Street, and the public hall was rendered surplus. The building re-opened in March 1949 as the Stretford Civic Theatre, with a well-equipped stage for the use of local groups. After the Stretford Leisure Centre opened in 1977 – now Stretford Sports Village – the Cyprus Street Baths wing fell into disuse, and was demolished. The remainder of the building began to fall into disrepair, despite being designated a Grade II listed structure in 1987,{{sfnp|IAUFW6SL}} until Trafford Council refurbished and converted the hall to serve as council offices in the mid-1990s. It was re-opened in 1997, once again named Stretford Public Hall.{{sfnp|7VPGTZCU}}
In 2014 Trafford Council announced that they planned to dispose of the building, and the following year the Friends of Stretford Public Hall, a charitable Community Benefit Society, secured the freehold. Their aim is to return it to being a hub at the heart of the local community.{{sfnp|APTIPIFS}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 11798
## External links
- [Official web site](https://stretfordpublichall.org.uk/)
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Public building
---
### [John Rylands](https://engole.info/john-rylands/)
**Published:** November 30, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/John-Rylands.jpg[/pimage]English entrepreneur and philanthropist (1801–1888), owner of the largest textile manufacturing concern in the United Kingdom, and Manchester’s first multi-millionaire.
**Content:**
Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library, volume 75, no 2
John Rylands (7 February 1801 – 11 December 1888) was an English entrepreneur and philanthropist. He was the owner of the largest textile manufacturing concern in the United Kingdom, and Manchester’s first multi-millionaire.
After learning to weave, Rylands became a small-scale manufacturer of linen for the home hand-loom trade, while also working in the draper’s shop which his father had opened in St Helens. In partnership with his two elder brothers he expanded into the wholesale trade, and so successful were they that in 1819 Ryland’s father merged his retail business with theirs, creating the firm of Rylands & Sons. At its peak, the company employed a workforce of 15,000 in 17 mills and factories, producing thirty-five tons of cloth each day.
## Personal life
Rylands was the third son of Joseph Rylands, a manufacturer of cotton goods, of St Helens, Lancashire, and his wife Elizabeth (née Pilkington). He was educated at St Helens Grammar School. After leaving St Helens Grammar School, in 1817 he followed in the family tradition and became a manufacturer of linen for the home hand-loom trade.{{sfnp|P9WGMTRH}}
From 1857 Rylands lived at Longford Hall in [Stretford](https://engole.info/stretford), an Italianate mansion he built on the site of an earlier house.{{sfnp|28Y9USUU}} He married three times: first, in 1825, Dinah, daughter of W. Raby of Ardwick, Manchester (by her he had six children, none of whom survived him); secondly in 1848, Martha, widow of Richard Carden; and thirdly in 1875, Enriqueta Augustina, the eldest surviving daughter of Stephen Cattley Tennant.{{sfnp|P9WGMTRH}}
In 2009 the local council placed a blue plaque at the site of Longford Hall to commemorate John and Enriqueta Rylands.{{sfnp|WEWJ4W3I}}
## Business career
Ryland’s aptitude for trade quickly manifested itself; before the age of eighteen he had entered into partnership with his elder brothers Joseph and Richard. Their father joined them in 1819, when the firm of Rylands & Sons was established.{{sfnp|RGCIZ5VM|7}} Based in Wigan, the company manufactured ginghams, checks, ticks, dowlases, calicoes and linens.
John, the youngest partner, was in charge of sales until 1823, when he opened a warehouse for the firm in Manchester. Business increased rapidly, and in the course of a few years extensive properties at Wigan, along with dye works and bleach works, were purchased. Valuable seams of coal were discovered under these properties, and proved to be a great source of wealth for the Rylands.{{sfnp|FFEX95N3}}
In 1825 the firm became merchants as well as manufacturers, and at about the same time they erected a new spinning mill. The Ainsworth mills, near Bolton, and other factories were subsequently acquired. Joseph and Richard retired in about 1839, and the death of their father in July 1847 made John Rylands sole proprietor. The business continued to expand and in 1849 a warehouse was opened in Wood Street, London.
A great fire occurred at the Manchester warehouse in 1854, but the loss, although very large, was speedily made good. By 1864 the warehouses were seven storeys high and extended all the way along New High Street (now High Street) in Manchester: “they had become the summit of the firm’s hierarchical organization, the seat of its central power and the goal of all ambitious employees”.{{sfnp|P9WGMTRH}}
In 1873, Rylands converted his business into a limited company, but he retained sole management control. The extra capital thus acquired led to the purchase of more mills, and the company opened up new worldwide markets. With a capital value of £2 million, the firm became the largest textile manufacturing concern in the UK,{{sfnp|FFEX95N3}} and made Rylands Manchester’s first multi-millionaire. The 15,000 employees in his 17 mills and factories produced 35 tons of cloth a day.{{sfnp|JPTGERL4|123}}
Rylands was a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Curriers.{{sfnp|4LYPFTQB|362-364}}
## Public works
Rylands was retired and reserved except in the company of his friends,{{sfnp|FFEX95N3}} and always shrank from public office of any kind, although he was not indifferent to public interests. He was politically liberal in his enterprises. When the [Manchester Ship Canal](https://engole.info/manchester-ship-canal) was mooted, and there seemed a doubt as to the ways and means for the enterprise, he took up £50,000 worth of shares, increasing his contribution when the project appeared again to be in jeopardy. Rylands was a Congregationalist, with leanings to the Baptist form of faith. He was of an ecumenical spirit and hoped that sectarian differences would tend to decrease:{{sfnp|RGCIZ5VM|36}} a number of Union Chapels (including one in Stretford{{sfnp|RGCIZ5VM|89}} and two in Manchester) were supported by him.{{sfnp|RGCIZ5VM}}\[a\]The chapels in Manchester were at Oxford Road, Chorlton-on-Medlock, and Wellington Road, Fallowfield. His charities were numerous but unobtrusive. Among other benefactions he established and maintained orphanages, homes for aged gentlewomen, a home of rest for ministers of slender means, and he provided a town hall, public baths, library and a coffee house in his home town of Stretford. He also built an institute for the benefit of the villagers of Havenstreet on the Isle of Wight, where Rylands passed some of his later years from 1882, having built a house named Longford there after his mainland estate. His donations to the poor of Rome were so generous as to induce the king to decorate him in 1880 with the Order of the Crown of Italy.{{sfnp|FFEX95N3}}
For many years he employed the Rev. F. Bugby, John Gaskin, and other scholars to prepare special editions of the Bible and religious works, which he printed for free distribution. These included:{{sfnp|FFEX95N3}}
- *The Holy Bible*, arranged in numbered paragraphs, 1863, 4to, 1272 pages, with an index in a separate volume of 277 pages. Two subsequent editions were printed in 1878 and 1886.
- *Diodati’s Italian Testament*, similarly arranged and indexed, printed for distribution in Italy.
- *Ostervald’s French Testament*, arranged on a similar plan.
- *Hymns of the Church Universal, with Prefaces, Annotations, and Indexes*, Manchester, 1885, pp. 604, royal 8vo; a selection from a collection made by Rylands of sixty thousand hymns.
## Death and memorials
Tomb of John Rylands and his wife Enriqueta in Southern Cemetery
Wikimedia Commons
Rylands died at his home, Longford Hall, on 11 December 1888, at the age of 87. He was buried in the Southern Cemetery, Manchester; a large tomb was erected over the vault, in which his widow was also buried following her death in 1908.{{sfnp|FFEX95N3}} The tomb was designed by C. H. Heathcote and completed in 1892. The tomb’s elaborate superstructure, which included four angels, was taken down in 1927 after being vandalised, and the bronze railings were stolen in 1967.{{sfnp|RGCIZ5VM|search=plates 21-23}}
Rylands’s widow erected a permanent memorial to her husband in the form of the John Rylands Library, inaugurated on 6 October 1899, when she received the Freedom of the City of Manchester;{{sfnp|FFEX95N3}} the library was officially opened on 1 January 1900. A posthumous grant of arms to John Rylands was granted in 1893, in which the arms of Tennant – his wife’s family – are impaled with those of Rylands.{{sfnp|RGCIZ5VM|search=fig 25}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The chapels in Manchester were at Oxford Road, Chorlton-on-Medlock, and Wellington Road, Fallowfield.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 11776
**Categories:** Industrialist, Philanthropist
---
### [The Life and Death of Harriett Frean](https://engole.info/the-life-and-death-of-harriett-frean/)
**Published:** June 15, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Harriett-Frean.webp[/pimage]Novel by the English author May Sinclair (1836–1946) an account of the life of a female raised to be the perfect Vicorian woman.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Harriett-Frean.webp)Amazon
*The Life and Death of Harriett Frean* is a novel by the English author May Sinclair (1836–1946), first published in 1922.{{sfnp|H2SX9RPG}} Praised as a “small, perfect gem of a book” by the literary critic Jonathan Coe, it is an account of the life of a female child raised to be the perfect Victorian woman, but who disasterously rejects the man who loves her, leading to her “moral degenaration”.{{sfnp|QAUNMZHJ}}
## Synopsis
Harriett Frean is born into a comfortable middle-class family in a London suburb. When a young woman she attends a boarding school, where she meets Priscilla Heaven, and falls in love with Priscilla’s fiancé, the charming artist Robin Lethbridge. But true to her ingrained sense of duty, she rejects him when he proposes to her, a decision that haunts her subsequent years.
Following her parents’ financial ruin and deaths, Harriett settles into a monotonous routine in a modest Hampstead cottage, trying to convince herself that she did the right thing in rejecting Robin’s proposal. Meanwhile, Priscilla becomes paralysed, and increasingly dependent on the ministrations of her husband, Robin. As Harriett sees Robin lift Priscilla out of her wheelchair one evening, her face “had a queer, exalted look of pleasure and triumph”.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30076
## External links
- Full text of [The Life and Death of Harriett Frean](https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/9298) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** Novel
---
### [Select Conversations with an Uncle](https://engole.info/select-conversations-with-an-uncle/)
**Published:** January 26, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/H._G._Wells_Daily_Mirror.jpg[/pimage]Collection of 12 humorous conversations between George and his uncle, and two reminiscences, by H. G. Wells, first published in 1895.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/H._G._Wells_Daily_Mirror.jpg)H. G. Wells, c. 1918
Wikimedia Commons
*Select Conversations with an Uncle (now Extinct) and Two Other Reminiscences* is a collection of humorous essays written by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), published in 1895. It consists of reports of twelve conversations between George and his witty uncle – a man who, “by the purest accident”, has acquired a “certain affluence” while in South Africa – and two reminiscences: “A Misunderstood Artist” and “[The Man with a Nose](https://engole.info/the-man-with-a-nose/)“.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|53}} All the essays had previously been published in the [*Pall Mall Gazette*](https://engole.info/the-pall-mall-gazette/).{{sfnp|WGC8MDMN|95,105}}
## Contents
Stories are shown in the order in which they appear in the book, which is not necessarily the order in which they first appeared in print.
- “Of Conversation and The Anatomy of Fashion” (1894)
- “The Theory of The Perpetual Discomfort of Humanity” (1894)
- “The Use of Ideals” (1893)
- “The Art of Being Photographed” (1893)
- “Bagshot’s Mural Decorations” (1894)
- “On Social Music” (1894)
- “The Joys of Being Engaged” (1893)
- “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” (1894)
- “On a Tricycle”(1894)
- “An Unsuspected Masterpiece” (1894)
- “The Great Change” (1894)
- “The Pains of Marriage” (1894)
- “A Misunderstood Artist” (1894)
- “[The Man With a Nose](https://engole.info/the-man-with-a-nose/)” (1894)
## Commentary
The character of the uncle appears to be based on Wells’s own uncle, Alfred Williams, for whom Wells worked briefly as a pupil-teacher at Wookey village school.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|53}}
Wells’s “uncle” character had been “very well received” in the *[Pall Mall Gazette](https://engole.info/the-pall-mall-gazette/)*,{{sfnp|QQBTDLET|36}} but this collected edition received less favourable attention. One reviewer in the *Athenaeum* described it as “a dreary and foolish assemblage of commonplace ideas expressed in stilted phraseology.”{{sfnp|NY6N55Q3|102}}
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24434
## External links
- [*Select Conversations with an Uncle*](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29472) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
---
### [Predictions of Isaac Bickerstaff](https://engole.info/predictions-of-isaac-bickerstaff/)
**Published:** May 21, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/AN00222347_001_l.jpg[/pimage]Pseudonym used by the satirist Jonathan Swift in a hoax predicting the "infallible" death of John Partridge, a well-known 18th-century astrologer and almanac maker, on 29 March 1708.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/AN00222347_001_l.jpg)Engraving by John Surt, 1710
British Museum
Isaac Bickerstaff was a pseudonym used by the satirist Jonathan Swift in a hoax predicting the “infallible” death of John Partridge, a well-known 18th-century astrologer and almanac maker. In his almanacs, Partridge predicted the deaths of well-known people throughout the coming year; Swift’s idea was that publishing a prediction about Partridge’s own death would be a way to express his displeasure with Partridge’s attack on the “infallible church” in the 1708 issue of his *Merlinus Almanac*.
Pretending to be an astrologer himself, in his “Predictions For The Year 1708” Bickerstaff writes:{{sfnp|PB8ZXWMP|6}}
My first prediction is but a trifle, yet I will mention it, to show how ignorant those sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own concerns. It relates to Partridge the almanack-maker; I have consulted the stars of his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly die upon 29th of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging fever; therefore I advise him to consider of it, and settle his affairs in time.
Partridge responded by publishing a “blustering and labored attempt” to laugh off Bickerstaff’s prediction, which only succeeded in keeping the joke alive in the public imagination. He ended with a couplet that may have determined Swift to continue with his hoax:{{sfnp|55XWX8KK}}
> His whole Design was nothing but Deceit,
> The End of March will plainly show the Cheat.
Within hours of Partridge’s predicted death on 29 March, Swift published a letter under the title of “The Accomplishment of the First of Mr. Bickerstaff’s Predictions”, in which he writes not as Bickerstaff but as a former officer in the Revenue Service and a friend of Partridge’s, confirming that the latter had died, preceded by his “Elegy” which begins:{{sfnp|55XWX8KK}}
> Here, five Foot deep, lies on his Back,
> A Cobler, Starmonger, and Quack;\[a\]Before becoming an astrologer Partridge had worked as a cobbler, and he had also practised as a quack doctor.{{sfnp|73J7C54R}}{{sfnp|73J7C54R}}
> Who to the Stars in pure Good–will,
> Does to his best look upward still.
> Weep all you Customers that use
> His Pills, his Almanacks, or Shoes;
And there the matter may have ended, had Partridge recognised Bickerstaff’s attack for what it was, an April Fools’ joke – of which Swift was very fond – and decided instead to respond by publishing his “Squire Bickerstaff detected; or, the astrological impostor convicted”.{{sfnp|55XWX8KK}} In his final pronouncement as Isaac Bickerstaff, Swift ends the hoax by attempting to prove that Partridge must indeed be dead whatever he might say to the contrary, and may even have practised [necromancy](https://engole.info/necromancy/) on himself:
Without entering into criticisms of chronology about the hour of his death, I shall only prove that Mr. Partridge is not alive … Mr.Partridge pretends to tell fortunes, and recover stolen goods; which all the parish says he must do by conversing with the devil and evil spirits. And no wise man will ever allow he could converse personally with either, till after he was dead.{{sfnp
— PB8ZXWMP|28-29}}
Bickerstaff goes on to airily dismiss the fact that Partridge apparently continues to write almanacs after his death by saying:
But this is no more than what is common to all that profession: Adbury, Poor Robin, Dove, Wing, and several others, do yearly publish their almanacs, though several of them have been dead since before the Revolution … Time, whose registers they are, gives them a lease in reversion, to continue their works after death.{{sfnp
— PB8ZXWMP|30}}
## Aftermath
As a result of Partridge’s reported death, the Company of Stationers applied to the Lord Chancellor for the exclusive right to continue publishing a Partridge’s Almanac, which they were granted despite Partridge himself subsequently appearing in court in an attempt to restore his trade name;{{sfnp|73J7C54R}} “as an almanac-maker \[he was\] truly ‘dead’ ”.{{sfnp|55XWX8KK}} By 1710 Partridge was thoroughly discredited as an astrologer and physician.{{sfnp|55XWX8KK}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Before becoming an astrologer Partridge had worked as a cobbler, and he had also practised as a quack doctor.{{sfnp|73J7C54R}}{{sfnp|73J7C54R}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 9491
**Categories:** Hoax, Satirist
---
### [Amenity society](https://engole.info/amenity-society/)
**Published:** December 1, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Organisation tasked with monitoring the planning and development of listed structures.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Gosfield_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2075477.jpg)Gosfield Hall, Essex was the first building to be listed as being of special architectural interest, on 1 August 1946.
Wikimedia Commons
In England and Wales, an amenity society is an organisation which monitors the planning and development of listed buildings and other structures, tasked with preserving historic art and architecture. The Scottish Civic Trust and the Scottish Architectural Heritage Society fill a similar role in Scotland.{{sfnp|QPH7CIEF}}
In particular, any work to a listed building that involves an element of demolition must by law be notified to the relevant amenity societies.{{sfnp|NDECSSVP}}\[a\]The Town and Country Planning Act 1968.{{sfnp|QPH7CIEF}}
Known formally as The National Amenity Societies, to distinguish them from local interest groups, they are:{{sfnp|QPH7CIEF}}
- The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings
- The Ancient Monuments Society, since 2021 operating under the working name Historic Buildings & Places
- The Council for British Archaeology
- The Georgian Group, concerned with buildings and planned landscapes dating from between 1700 and 1840
- The Victorian Society, concerned with buildings built from 1837 to 1914 (also covering Edwardian architecture)
- [The Twentieth Century Society](https://engole.info/the-twentieth-century-society), concerned with buildings dating from 1914 onwards
- The Garden History Society, concerned with the protection and conservation of historic parks, gardens and designed landscapes
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The Town and Country Planning Act 1968.{{sfnp|QPH7CIEF}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25757
**Categories:** Town and country planning
---
### [My Second Sermon](https://engole.info/my-second-sermon/)
**Published:** October 17, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/My-Second-Sermon.webp[/pimage]Fancy picture by the English artist John Everett Millais, created in 1864, depicting a young girl who has fallen asleep while listening to a church sermon.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/My-Second-Sermon.webp)Oil on canvas
97 cm × 72 cm (38 in × 28 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*My Second Sermon* is an oil painting by the English artist John Everett Millais (1829–1896), painted in 1864. It is a sequel to *[My First Sermon](https://engole.info/my-first-sermon)*, which he created the previous year. A [fancy picture](https://engole.info/fancy-picture), it depicts a young girl who has fallen asleep while listening to a sermon in church. As with the earlier picture, the model was Millais’ own daughter Effie.{{sfnp|LSUFHQRS}}
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Longley, speaking at the 1865 Royal Academy banquet, stated that he considered the image of the sleeping child to be “a warning of the evil of lengthy sermons and drowsy discourses”.{{sfnp|LSUFHQRS}}
The picture is now in the collection of the Guildhall Art Gallery in the City of London, having been bequeathed by the art collector Charles Gassiot in 1902.{{sfnp|EHKX3AJ6}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 28032
**Categories:** Fancy picture, John Everett Millais, Painting
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Municipal Borough of Leigh](https://engole.info/municipal-borough-of-leigh/)
**Published:** August 3, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** Local government district in Lancashire, England, created in 1899 and abolished in 1974.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Leigh_town_Hall.jpg)Leigh Town Hall
Wikimedia Commons
The Municipal Borough of Leigh, a local government district in Lancashire, England, was created in 1899 and abolished in 1974. The borough was made up of the [townships](https://engole.info/township/) of Pennington, Westleigh, [Bedford](https://engole.info/bedford-leigh/ "Bedford, Leigh") and part of the township of Atherton.{{sfnp|J2HVX5UL}}
In 1875, Leigh Local Board of Health\[a\] Local boards were set up to improve the sanitary condition of towns in England and Wales by placing responsibility for the supply of water, sewerage, drainage and so on under a single body. was formed comprising the townships of Bedford, Pennington and Westleigh, all members of the Leigh Poor Law Union.{{sfnp|J2HVX5UL}} The area of the local board was created an [urban district](https://engole.info/urban-district/) by the Local Government Act 1894.{{sfnp|TJHH5H2A|266}}
Leigh Urban District was granted a charter of incorporation on 2 August 1899 and the municipal borough, named after the [ancient ecclesiastical parish](https://engole.info/ancient-parish/), was created. The borough was divided into eight wards and governed by a mayor, eight aldermen, and twenty-four councillors.{{sfnp|BHSPSXWA|413-421}} A minor boundary change was made with with Golborne Urban District in 1969.{{sfnp|WESXQFGT}} In 1974 the borough was abolished by the Local Government Act 1972 and its former area was combined with others to form the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan in the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester.{{sfnp|J2HVX5UL}}
The market town of Leigh was its administrative centre until its dissolution in 1974. The borough council commissioned local architect, [J. C. Prestwich](https://engole.info/j-c-prestwich/), to build [Leigh Town Hall](https://engole.info/leigh-town-hall/) which was completed in 1907.{{sfnp|B5TXMRHA}}
## Arms
Arms were granted to the Municipal Borough of Leigh on 23 December 1899. They comprise a shield of four quarters each representing a local family who was involved with a township that became part of the borough. Westleigh is represented by the spear head of the Urmstons, Pennington, the five-point star (mulet) of the Bradshaws, the Shuttleworths of Bedford are represented by the shuttle and the Athertons of [Atherton Hall](https://engole.info/atherton-hall/) by a sparrowhawk. The bear’s paw on the crest is taken from the crest of Lord Lilford. Its motto, “AEQUO PEDE PROPERA” is translated as “Progress with sound steps” or “Hasten steadily”.{{sfnp|B5TXMRHA}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Local boards were set up to improve the sanitary condition of towns in England and Wales by placing responsibility for the supply of water, sewerage, drainage and so on under a single body.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22027
## External links
\*Boundary map 1933
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Lancashire
---
### [The Daily News (London)](https://engole.info/the-daily-news-london/)
**Published:** April 30, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Joseph_Clayton_Clark_A_Reader_of_The_Daily_News.jpg[/pimage]Liberal UK national daily newspaper founded by Charles Dickens, published from 1846 until 1930.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Dailynews-cover.jpg/330px-Dailynews-cover.jpg)Front cover of 1858 edition
Wikimedia Commons
*The Daily News* was a UK national daily newspaper published from 1846 until 1930, a total of 34,700 issues.{{sfnp|NHC2Z6UJ}} It was founded as a Liberal rival to the *Morning Chronicle* by the author Charles Dickens, who acted as its editor for the first seventeen issues before handing over to the barrister and journalist John Forster (1812–1876).{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2|186}} Although by then in ill health, Dickens continued to contribute an occasional “Italian Letter”.{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2|250}} Harriet Martineau, Douglas Jerrold, Sir Edward Strachey and G. K. Chesterton were among other leading reformist writers who wrote for the newspaper during its heyday.{{sfnp|NHC2Z6UJ}}
Priced at 5d, the newspaper was initially a commercial failure, despite halving its price to 2½d. But its circulation gradually increased from 1849, and the abolition of [newspaper taxes](https://engole.info/taxes-on-knowledge) allowed the price to be reduced to 1d in 1868.{{sfnp|NHC2Z6UJ}}
Among the causes championed by the newspaper were the North in the American Civil War (1861–1865), the cause of Italian independence during 1859–1860, and the emancipation of Bulgaria from Turkish rule from 1876–1880.{{sfnp|JARM4E9G}} By the end of the 19th century the paper was able to boast “the largest circulation of any Liberal Paper in the world”, with a peak circulation of 93,000 copies in 1890.{{sfnp|NHC2Z6UJ}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Joseph_Clayton_Clark_A_Reader_of_The_Daily_News.jpg)“A Reader of The Daily News”, by Joseph Clayton Clark, c. 1900
Wikimedia Commons
*The Daily News* was bought in 1901 by the Quaker and chocolate manufacturer George Cadbury. Disgusted by the imperialist policy of the Unionist Government dominated by Joseph Chamberlain, he used the paper to campaign against the Boer War (1899–1902), sweatshop labour, and for old-age pensions.{{sfnp|AUKKBC7V|110}} The newspaper did however refuse to condemn the force-feeding of suffragettes in 1909, which resulted in the resignation of the campaigning journalist H. N. Brailsford, a founding member of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage.{{sfnp|9Q2TFTJP|453}}
In 1912 *The Daily News* was merged with the *Morning Leader* to form the *Daily News and Leader*. Following that publication’s merger with the *Westminster Gazette* in 1928 it was renamed *The Daily News and Westminster Gazette*, which two years later was amalgamated with the *Daily Chronicle* to form the *News Chronicle*.{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2|186}}
## Editors
- 1846: Charles Dickens
- 1846: John Forster
- 1849: Eyre Evans Crowe
- 1851: Frederick Knight Hunt
- 1854: William Weir
- 1858: Thomas Walker
- 1869: Edward Dicey
- 1870: Frank Harrison Hill
- 1886: Sir Henry Lucy
- 1887: Sir John Richard Robinson
- 1896: Edward Tyas Cook
- 1901: Rudolph Chambers Lehmann
- 1902: Alfred George Gardiner
- 1921: Stuart Hodgson
- 1926: Tom Clarke
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26213
**Categories:** Newspaper
---
### [St Lawrence, Denton](https://engole.info/st-lawrence-denton/)
**Published:** November 29, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/St-Lawrence-Denton.jpg[/pimage]Grade II* listed church in Denton, Greater Manchester, one of only 29 surviving timber-framed churches in England.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/St-Lawrence-Denton.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/theNAgrssQnZh2aS8}}|St Lawrence Church
The Grade II\* listed St Lawrence’s Church in Denton is one of only twenty-nine surviving timber-framed churches in England.{{sfnp|6FFVLV6P}} It is known locally as Th’owd Peg, owing to the wooden pegs used to hold the timber frame together.{{sfnp|ZPYSDLUZ}}
The church was established as a [chapel of ease](https://engole.info/chapel-of-ease) in about 1530, originally dedicated to St James, but following the discovery of medieval glass depicting St Lawrence,{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|197}} it was re-dedicated to that saint in 1839; it became a parish church in 1854.{{sfnp|ZF3RKG7A|31,46,78}} It is now in the Church of England diocese of Manchester, in the archdeaconry of Rochdale.{{sfnp|ZNLKE6MZ}}
Some “sensitive” extensions, were carried out in 1872 by the firm of J. Medland & Henry Taylor. New pews were installed in 1859.{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|197-198}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25753
**Categories:** Church, Greater Manchester
---
### [Ferry Bridge](https://engole.info/ferry-bridge/)
**Published:** December 16, 2023
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/image-1.jpeg[/pimage]Historically important crossing over the River Aire in North Yorkshire, designed by John Carr.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/image-1.jpeg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/tBX7pnbiY7PdW2Mz7}}
Ferry Bridge
Ferry Bridge is a historically important crossing over the River Aire on the Old Great North Road, opened in 1804. It linked Ferrybridge in West Yorkshire and Brotherton in North Yorkshire. The village of Ferrybridge is named from the stone bridge over the Aire that replaced an ancient ferry. The current bridge was designed by [John Carr](https://engole.info/john-carr/), a former bridgemaster for the West and North Ridings of Yorkshire.{{sfnp|XZCKXKR4}}
The bridge was designated a Grade I [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1967.{{sfnp|PM3ACVG2}}
## History
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/image.jpeg) Carr’s bridge
Wikimedia Commons
The Close Rolls of April 1228 record that a bridge built in 1198 collapsed and several crusaders or pilgrims were drowned. It was not replaced until the late 14th century when a bridge with seven pillars and a chantry chapel at one end was constructed. In the 17th century, the bridge carried traffic on the Great North Road, the major coaching route between London, York and Edinburgh. As traffic increased, a competition for a new bridge was announced in the *Leeds Mercury* of 21 January 1797. John Carr of Horbury was judged the winner, and Bernard Hartley was appointed surveyor and builder; the bridge was opened in 1804.{{sfnp|3EJ8ET5K}}
## Structure
The bridge is constructed from millstone grit [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar). It has eight round-headed arches, four on land on the Ferrybridge side, one on land on the Brotherton side and three larger arches above the river. Canted cutwaters between the river arches are surmounted by refuges in the bridge parapet. The three-course parapet has a vase balustrade to the central section and splayed ends with rounded caps to three ends. The bridge has plaques inscribed “JOHN CARR ESQUIRE OF YORK ARCHITECT 1797”, “FERRYBRIDGE BROTHERTON” and “BERNARD HARTLEY OF PONTEFRACT BUILDER 1804”. It was restored in the 20th century.{{sfnp|PM3ACVG2}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25801
**Categories:** Bridge, Yorkshire
---
### [Tickle Cock Bridge](https://engole.info/tickle-cock-bridge/)
**Published:** July 23, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Tickle_Cock_Bridge_April_2017.jpg[/pimage]Pedestrian underpass in Castleford, England, under a railway line originally built by the York and North Midland Railway between York and Normanton.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Tickle_Cock_Bridge_April_2017.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/drLz3ubDy2J2}}
Tickle Cock Bridge
Tickle Cock Bridge is a pedestrian underpass in Castleford, England, under a railway line originally built by the York and North Midland Railway between York and Normanton. Built in 1890, the thoroughfare now connects the town’s main residential area with the Carlton Lanes Shopping Centre, and is used by 50,000 pedestrians each week. The original Victorian structure, described by the shopping centre’s manager as “small, narrow, very low and gloomy” and “frightening to walk through”, was replaced in 2008 as part of an urban regeneration scheme.{{sfnp|2J7C3GZH}}
The replacement bridge was initially renamed Tittle Cott. After a protest organised by a local over-50s group, Wakefield Council reversed its decision and a plaque bearing the original name of Tickle Cock was installed.
## Etymology
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Tittle_Cott_Bridge_-_geograph.org.uk_-_11129.jpg)Original 1890 structure
Wikimedia Commons
The word cock was first recorded in use as a vulgar term for the penis in 1618, perhaps deriving from one of the word’s other meanings “a spout or short pipe serving as a channel for passing liquids through”.{{sfnp|2A7PNIES}} It was once common in England for areas to be given names that reflected their function or the activity taking place within them.{{sfnp|HQ4YE2CF|204–205}} Local historian Brian Lewis believes that may be the explanation for the name that locals gave to the bridge during the late 19th or early 20th century: “\[the underpass\] would function in the same way as any ‘monkey run’, where you paraded up and down to find a boyfriend or girlfriend”.{{sfnp|YG5EJHFZ}}\[a\]“Monkey run” was a British slang term for streets “where groups of young people paraded up and down, usually at weekends, in the hope of ‘clicking’ with somebody”.{{sfnp|GD9EXJHL|38}}
## Replacement
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/TickleCockBridge.jpg)Prefabricated tunnel installed and waiting to be landscaped, 2005
Wikimedia Commons
The new underpass was designed by architects Deborah Saunt and Sam Potter of DSDHA (Deborah Saunt David Hills Architects) in collaboration with Brian Lewis and artist Martin Richman. Funding for the project was provided jointly by Wakefield Council, the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, Network Rail, and the Arts Council England, Yorkshire.{{sfnp|EC3PG3FB}}
After a competition in 2003, design and planning work continued until 2007.{{sfnp|H3AFGCB7}} The Victorian underpass was replaced by a prefabricated concrete tunnel, twice the width and 2 feet (0.61 m) taller than the original, by construction engineers Jane Wernick Associates in December 2005. As the installation took place under a live railway line that was supported by the underpass, work was planned to cause the minimum disruption to train services; the line had to be closed for only two days – Christmas Day and Boxing Day 2005.{{sfnp|2J7C3GZH}} The bridge’s surroundings were improved in 2008, with better lighting, a new green space, and an angular seating shelter facing south-west to catch the sun in the evening.{{sfnp|2J7C3GZH}} Richman worked on the lighting scheme,{{sfnp|H3AFGCB7}} and the designers decided to line the walls of the underpass with a tactile red flock material, as an allusion to its “colourful history”.{{sfnp|2J7C3GZH}} It has since been replaced by a smooth blue surface and a mural with fishes, as if walking under water.
The new bridge was opened on 27 June 2008 by Councillors Denise Jefferey and Mark Burns Williamson.{{sfnp|FM7IU6RA}} *The Times* newspaper described the £200,000 structure as a “piece of sophisticated concrete geometry”. Saunt commented that it “is about cheering up those spots planning usually forgets about”.{{sfnp|IURQGKIT}}
The replacement of the underpass was one of twelve elements in the Castleford Regeneration Project, originally proposed in 2001. It was featured in a four-part television series, Kevin McCloud and the Big Town Plan, broadcast by Channel 4 in August–September 2008.{{sfnp|2J7C3GZH}}
## Naming controversy
The council decided to name the new underpass Tittle Cott, a move that was met with dismay by local residents. The Castleford Area Voice for the Elderly, an over-50s group, organised a campaign to have the name Tickle Cock restored. The group’s chairman, Margaret Shillito, was quoted in the press as saying “the old plaque was wrong, it had the wrong name on and we were offended by it”. Brian Lewis was quoted as saying “I feel we should never alter names and Tickle Cock has a very clear message behind it”. A public meeting was held at which a “large majority” voted in favour of reverting to the original name, a decision that persuaded the council to replace the bridge’s plaque with one bearing the legend Tickle Cock.{{sfnp|CRS3AL2W}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a “Monkey run” was a British slang term for streets “where groups of young people paraded up and down, usually at weekends, in the hope of ‘clicking’ with somebody”.{{sfnp|GD9EXJHL|38}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3941
**Categories:** Bridge, Yorkshire
---
### [Lever Park, Rivington](https://engole.info/lever-park-rivington/)
**Published:** November 26, 2021
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Great_House_Information_Centre.JPG[/pimage]Grade II listed country park between Rivington in Lancashire and Horwich in Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Great_House_Information_Centre.JPG)map
https://goo.gl/maps/376UbZxYucrSB2kf6}}
Lever Park Visitor Centre
Lever Park, a Grade II listed country park between [Rivington](https://engole.info/rivington/) in Lancashire and Horwich in Greater Manchester, was donated to the people of Bolton in 1904 by Lord Leverhulme. The park covers about {{convert|160|ha}} on the east bank of the [Lower Rivington Reservoir](https://engole.info/rivington-reservoirs/) and contains several [listed structures](https://engole.info/listed-building) including a [folly](https://engole.info/folly) that is a scale model of Liverpool Castle, two ancient barns and Rivington Hall. The park is accessed by Rivington Lane, which runs north/south between Rivington and Horwich, bisecting the park. It is separated from Lever’s [Rivington Gardens](https://engole.info/rivington-gardens/) by meadowland.
## History
When the Rivington estate was offered for sale to Liverpool Corporation, owners of the Rivington reservoir chain, in 1899 the corporation declined to buy it. Instead William Lever bought the estate, and in 1901 financed a country park as a gift to the people of his hometown, Bolton, and maintained it during his lifetime. The park, still then unfinished, was opened in 1904 and completed in 1911.{{sfnp|6VK95V38}}
The park was opened to the public on 18 May 1904 despite objections from Liverpool Corporation, who feared the water would become contaminated. Lever invited the town councils of Liverpool and Bolton to a luncheon to diffuse friction. Mr W. Mason, an old schoolmaster from Bolton declared the park open, music was played and trees were planted. Luncheon for the dignitaries was served in the restored old barn.{{sfnp|A98KRQRS}} Lever again entertained local dignitaries in October 1911 when he opened a museum of Georgian art in Rivington Hall. By then the avenues of trees were planted and the parkland had been stocked with deer.{{sfnp|SURUMIAA}}
The park was added to Historic England’s Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in 1986,{{sfnp|6VK95V38}} and contains several listed structures.
The Grade II\* listed [Rivington Hall](https://engole.info/rivington-hall/) in the park’s north-east corner was restored. Bolton architect [Jonathan Simpson](https://engole.info/jonathan-simpson/), a school friend of Lever, restored and altered Rivington Hall Barn to provide shelter for visitors. The cruck barn is now Grade II listed. Simpson also altered Great House Barn, also Grade II listed, on the west side of Rivington Lane. Great House Farmhouse and Cottage to the south of the barn were converted to provide visitor facilities in the late 20th century.{{sfnp|6VK95V38}}
## Country park
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Rivington_Country_Park_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1907012.jpg)Country park
Wikimedia Commons
Lever commissioned [Thomas Mawson](https://engole.info/thomas-hayton-mawson/) to design Lever Park to incorporate the area’s natural [moorland](https://engole.info/moorland/ "Moorland") topography and water features. The parkland, between the east side of the Lower Rivington Reservoir and [Rivington Pike](https://engole.info/rivington-pike/), is part of the water catchment for the Rivington Reservoir chain built by Liverpool Corporation in the 1850s. The parkland is divided by Rivington Lane, the road that connects Rivington and Horwich. The parkland consists of open grassland, woodland and avenues of native trees. Some property was demolished and existing woodland was augmented with native trees. New planting took place around Great House Barn and to the east of Rivington and Blackrod High School at the south end of the site.{{sfnp|6VK95V38}}
Immediately to the south of Rivington Hall is a small informal garden surrounded by mature trees. A small lake about {{convert|60|m}} to the southwest is crossed by a bridge leading to an avenue that runs south-west across Rivington Lane to Great House Barn and the reservoir. Several interconnected paths pass through woodland and parkland. Mawson planned five avenues radiating from the hall, but a less formal approach was used. Simpson designed a [folly](https://engole.info/folly/), a reconstruction of [Liverpool Castle](https://engole.info/rivington-castle/) on a promontory overlooking the reservoir. It was started in 1912, but not completed. A footpath along the reservoir passes through woods and round Top o’th’ Hill Farm.{{sfnp|6VK95V38}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24170
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Park
---
### [Number Seven, Queer Street](https://engole.info/number-seven-queer-street/)
**Published:** June 14, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Margery-Lawrence.webp[/pimage]Collection of supernatural detective short stories by the English writer and illustrator Margery Lawrence (1889–1969), first published in 1945.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Margery-Lawrence.webp)Arkham House Archive
*Number Seven, Queer Street* is a collection of supernatural detective short stories by the English writer and illustrator Margery Lawrence (1889–1969), first published in 1945. The stories, about Margery’s London-based occult detective Miles Pennoyer, were reprinted in 2003 as *The Casebook of Miles Pennoyer: Volume One*.{{sfnp|94IBC9YQ}}{{sfnp|M5ICT9Y2}}
## Contents
- “The Case of the Bronze Door”
- “The Case of the Haunted Cathedral”
- “The Case of Ella McLeod”
- “The Case of the White Snake”
- “The Case of the Moonchild”
- “The Case of the Young Man with the Scar”
- “The Case of the Leannabh Sidhe”
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30073
**Categories:** Short story
---
### [The Country of the Blind and Other Stories](https://engole.info/the-country-of-the-blind-and-other-stories/)
**Published:** January 18, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Collection of 33 short stories by H. G. Wells, first published in 1911.
**Content:**
*The Country of the Blind and Other Stories* is a collection of thirty-three short stories written by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published by T. Nelson & Sons in 1911. In his introduction, Wells writes that the book is a collection of “all the short stories by me that I care for anyone to read again.” Twenty-eight of the stories were reprinted from earlier collections; the remaining five – [“A Vision of Judgement”](https://engole.info/a-vision-of-judgement/), “[The Empire of the Ants](https://engole.info/the-empire-of-the-ants)“, [“The Door in the Wall”](https://engole.info/the-door-in-the-wall), [“The Country of the Blind”](https://engole.info/the-country-of-the-blind/) and [“The Beautiful Suit”](https://engole.info/the-beautiful-suit/) – appeared in book form for the first time.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|40}}
Stories are listed in the order in which they appear in the book, which is not necessarily the order in which they first appeared in print.
- [The Jilting of Jane](https://engole.info/the-jilting-of-jane/)” (1894)
- “[The Cone](https://engole.info/the-cone/)” (1895)
- “[The Stolen Bacillus](https://engole.info/the-stolen-bacillus/)” (1894)
- “[The Flowering of the Strange Orchid](https://engole.info/the-flowering-of-the-strange-orchid/)” (1894)
- “[In the Avu Observatory](https://engole.info/in-the-avu-observatory/)” (1894)
- “[Aepyornis Island](https://engole.info/aepyornis-island/)” (1894)
- “[The Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes](https://engole.info/the-remarkable-case-of-davidsons-eyes/)” (1895)
- “[The Lord of the Dynamos](https://engole.info/the-lord-of-the-dynamos/)” (1894)
- “[The Moth](https://engole.info/the-moth/)” (1895)
- “[The Treasure in the Forest](https://engole.info/the-treasure-in-the-forest/)” (1894)
- “[The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham](https://engole.info/the-story-of-the-late-mr-elvesham/)” (1896)
- “[Under the Knife](https://engole.info/under-the-knife/)” (1896)
- “[The Sea Raiders](https://engole.info/the-sea-raiders/)” (1896)
- “[The Obliterated Man](https://engole.info/the-obliterated-man/)” (1895)
- “[The Plattner Story](https://engole.info/the-plattner-story/)” (April 1896)
- “[The Red Room](https://engole.info/the-red-room/)” (1896)
- “[The Purple Pileus](https://engole.info/the-purple-pileus/)” (1896)
- “[A Slip Under the Microscope](https://engole.info/a-slip-under-the-microscope/)” (1896)
- “[The Crystal Egg](https://engole.info/the-crystal-egg/)” (1897)
- “[The Star](https://engole.info/the-star/)” (1897)
- “[The Man Who Could Work Miracles](https://engole.info/the-man-who-could-work-miracles/)” (1898)
- “[A Vision of Judgment](https://engole.info/a-vision-of-judgement/)” (1899)
- “[Jimmy Goggles the God](https://engole.info/jimmy-goggles-the-god/)” (1898)
- “[Miss Winchelsea’s Heart](https://engole.info/miss-winchelseas-heart)” (1898)
- “[A Dream of Armageddon](https://engole.info/a-dream-of-armageddon/)” (1901)
- “[The Valley of Spiders](https://engole.info/the-valley-of-spiders)” (1903)
- “[The New Accelerator](https://engole.info/the-new-accelerator/)” (1901)
- “[The Truth About Pyecraft](https://engole.info/the-truth-about-pyecraft/)” (1903)
- “[The Magic Shop](https://engole.info/the-magic-shop/)” (1903)
- “[The Empire of the Ants](https://engole.info/the-empire-of-the-ants)” (1905)
- “[The Door in the Wall](https://engole.info/the-door-in-the-wall/)” (1906)
- “[The Country of the Blind](https://engole.info/the-country-of-the-blind/)” (1904)
- “[The Beautiful Suit](https://engole.info/the-beautiful-suit/)” (1909)
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23437
## External links
- *[The Country of the Blind and Other Stories](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11870)* at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
---
### [Tales of Space and Time](https://engole.info/tales-of-space-and-time/)
**Published:** January 20, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Collection of three short stories and two novellas by H. G. Wells, first published in 1899.
**Content:**
*Tales of Space and Time* is a collection of three short stories and two novellas written by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published by Doubleday & McClure Co. in 1899.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|55}}
Stories are listed in the order in which they appear in the book, which is not necessarily the order in which they first appeared in print.
- “[The Crystal Egg](https://engole.info/the-crystal-egg/)” (1897)
- “[The Star](https://engole.info/the-star/)” (1897)
- “A Story of the Stone Age” (1897)
- “A Story of the Days to Come” (1899)
- “[The Man Who Could Work Miracles](https://engole.info/the-man-who-could-work-miracles/)” (1898)
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23448
## External links
- *[Tales of Space and Time](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27365 "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27365")* at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
---
### [The Stolen Body](https://engole.info/the-stolen-body/)
**Published:** August 13, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Short story by H. G. Wells, first published in 1898, about two paranormal researchers one of whom loses his body to an evil spirit.
**Content:**
“The Stolen Body” is a short story by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published in [*The Strand Magazine*](https://engole.info/the-strand-magazine) in November 1898 and subsequently reprinted in [*Twelve Stories and a Dream*](https://engole.info/twelve-stories-and-a-dream/) (1903).{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|54}} The story concerns two amateur paranormal researchers, one of whom loses his body to a spirit while he is experimenting with astral projection.
## Synopsis
The story, as told by an unidentified narrator, concerns a pair of amateur paranormal researchers, Mr Bessel and Mr Vincey. Their particular interest is in astral projection, the possibility of projecting an apparition of one’s self through space. At a pre-arranged hour, Bessel and Vincey, who live about two miles apart, each fix their minds on the other, in an attempt to project themselves as a “phantom of the living”. Nothing happens until, on the fifth or sixth night, Vincey imagines that he sees an image of Bessel standing in the room with him, wearing an anxious expression and with his hair disheveled.
Elated, Vincey rushes round to Bessel’s apartment to tell him the good news, but is alarmed to find the place in a shambles; the porter tells him that Bessel had, at about the time of the apparition, rushed out of the apartment block like a madman, shouting “Life”!
*Amazing Stories*, January 1928
Returning home, Vincey retires to his bed, but is woken by a vivid dream that convinces him that Bessel is in danger. He dresses and goes out in search of his friend, only to discover that he is being chased around London after perpetrating a series of increasingly violent attacks on passersby. Vincey seeks the aid of a medium, who directs him to an excavated shaft at a building site, at the bottom of which Bessell is lying with a broken arm, leg, and two ribs.
Once he is recovered, Bessel explains that in sending his apparition to Vincey he had entered “into a world beyond this world, a world undreamt of, yet lying so close to it and so strangely situated with regard to it that all things on this earth are clearly visible both from without and from within, in this other world about us.” This world is inhabited by spirits, one of which took possession of Bessel’s body while his consciousness was absent from it, thus explaining his apparent insanity. But once the spirit had damaged Bessel’s body and learned “the lesson of pain”, it returned to its own world, allowing him to take possession of his own body once again.
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22057
## External links
- [Full text of “The Stolen Body”](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1743/1743-h/1743-h.htm#link2H_4_0010) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
---
### [Jack Be Nimble](https://engole.info/jack-be-nimble/)
**Published:** June 13, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Jack-Be-Nimble.webp[/pimage]Nursery rhyme first published in 1844.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Jack-Be-Nimble.webp)Flickr
“Jack Be Nimble” is a nursery rhyme first recorded in a manuscript of about 1815, and first published by James Orchard Halliwell in his *The Nursery Rhymes of England* (1844).{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|267-268}}
> Jack be nimble,
> Jack be quick,
> Jack jump over
> The candle stick.
Jumping candlesticks was a form of fortune telling that survived until the early 20th century. Good luck was said to be signalled by clearing a candle without extinguishing the flame.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|267-268}} The folklorist Mary Baker records that on the evening of St Catherine’s Day,\[a\]St Catherine’s Day is 25 November. St Catherine is probably a fictional martyr, but who nevertheless became the patron saint of lace-makers, spinners, rope-makers, wheelwrights, carpenters, young women, and female students.{{sfnp|AL648SA4}} in Wendover in Buckinghamshire, the girls “drew up their skirts and played the old game of leap-candle, jumping back and forth for luck over a lighted lace-maker’s candle set upon the floor”.{{sfnp|ZIKGQRKP|132}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a St Catherine’s Day is 25 November. St Catherine is probably a fictional martyr, but who nevertheless became the patron saint of lace-makers, spinners, rope-makers, wheelwrights, carpenters, young women, and female students.{{sfnp|AL648SA4}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30071
**Categories:** Nursery rhyme
---
### [Protocols of the Elders of Zion](https://engole.info/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion/)
**Published:** June 12, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Protocols-of-Zion.webp[/pimage]Antisemitic hoax and forgery, arguably the most damaging fraud in human history.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Protocols-of-Zion.webp)Cover of an English edition
Holocaust Encyclopedia
*The Protocols of the Elders of Zion* is an antisemitic hoax and forgery, arguably the most damaging fraud in human history, and an example of conspiracy theory literature. It purports to be the proceedings of a conference of Jews plotting world domination, and details the methods by which a group of Jewish elders were proposing to use their control over the media and finance to undermine traditional authorities, destroy Christianity, and ultimately establish a Jewish theocracy.{{sfnp|7MAAQL27}}{{sfnp|3NIQ5HB9}}
The *Protocols* was first published in tsarist Russia in 1905, and following the Russian Revolution of 1917 was translated and published in the West, first in Germany in 1919, and in Britain and the United States the following year.{{sfnp|7MAAQL27}}
In 1921 two British journalists, Lucien Wolf and Philip Graves, exposed the *Protocols* as having been plagiarised from Maurice Joly’s *Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu* (1864) (Dialogue in the Underworld between Machiavelli and Montesquieu), a political satire of Napoleon III that contained no antisemitic themes.{{sfnp|MZU97YCS}} The pamphlet was nevertheless promoted by the American auto magnate Henry Ford, and in particular the Nazi Party and Fascist groups in Italy and South America. They exploited its “superficially compelling argument” of a “hidden hand” responsible for perceived societal ills,{{sfnp|7MAAQL27}} which resulted in the Nazi policies of extermination, and pogroms in Russia and the Ukraine.{{sfnp|3NIQ5HB9}}\[a\]Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Nazi Germay, wrote that “I believe that *The Protocols of the Elders of Zion* is a forgery”, but continued “I believe in the inner, but not the factual, truth of *The Protocols*“.{{sfnp|87UF7RU8}} The historian Svetlana Boym has observed that the logic of the *Protocols* is inverted projection, allowing the perpetrators of violent crimes to present themselves as victims.{{sfnp|3NIQ5HB9}}
## Origins
The *Protocols* masquerades as an anonymous book discovered and translated by Sergius Nilus, a Russian religious mystic. But the overwhelming body of evidence, including Russian archive material, points to the real author as being an agent of the Okhranka, the tsarist secret police, then under the leadership of Peter Ivanovich Rachkovsky. He was responsible for countering Russian revolutionary groups, and in an attempt to discredit their activities he asserted that all revolutionaries were Jews, and orchestrated the first major antisemitic campaign in Russia. Rachkovsky also planned to use the *Protocols* to destabilise Western democracies, and make them “more like Russia”.{{sfnp|7MAAQL27}}
## Legacy
The novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco has described the importance of the *Protocols* as:
… lying in its permitting antisemites to reach beyond their traditional circles and find a large international audience, a process that continues to this day. The forgery poisoned public life wherever it appeared; it was “self-generating; a blueprint that migrated from one conspiracy to another.”{{sfnp
— 6KJWNTL6|409}}
The *Protocols* continues to be widely available, and remains influential in contemporary conspiracy literature.{{sfnp|87UF7RU8}}{{sfnp|HMLK2B9T}} ## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Nazi Germay, wrote that “I believe that *The Protocols of the Elders of Zion* is a forgery”, but continued “I believe in the inner, but not the factual, truth of *The Protocols*“.{{sfnp|87UF7RU8}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30067
**Categories:** Forgery, Hoax
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Hertfordshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-hertfordshire/)
**Published:** June 5, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Hertfordshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Hertfordshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in Hertfordshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Hertfordshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Hertfordshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png)Hertfordshire shown within England
Wikimedia Commons
The [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Hertfordshire consists of the district authorities of Broxbourne, Dacorum, East Hertfordshire, Hertsmere, North Hertfordshire, Stevenage, St Albans, Three Rivers, Watford, and Welwyn Hatfield.{{sfnp|JTANMQ4A}}
The Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest, are shown in separate lists for each authority.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
- [Broxbourne](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-broxbourne)
- Dacorum
- East Hertfordshire
- [Hertsmere](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-hertsmere)
- North Hertfordshire
- [Stevenage](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-stevenage)
- St Albans
- [Three Rivers](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-three-rivers)
- [Watford](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-watford)
- [Welwyn Hatfield](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-welwyn-hatfield)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30054
**Categories:** Hertfordshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Million Lottery](https://engole.info/million-lottery/)
**Published:** September 15, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Thomas_Neal%27s_Million_Bank.jpg[/pimage]First English state lottery, launched in 1694 to help finance King William's War with France.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Thomas_Neal%27s_Million_Bank.jpg)Million Bank lottery ticket chest
The National Archives
The Million Lottery or Million Adventure was the first English state lottery, launched by the government in 1694 to raise finance for King William’s War with France (1688–1697). It was organised by the Master of the Royal Mint, Thomas Neale, and offered 100,000 tickets for sale, priced at £10 each. Each ticket had a 1 in 20 chance of winning a prize ranging from £10 to £1,000, along with an interest payment of £1 per year until 1710, guaranteeing a minimum return over the period of £16.{{sfnp|X4L3CDM6|194}}
The lottery was very profitable for Neale, who kept ten per cent of the proceeds, but less so for the government, which found it increasingly difficult to pay the interest on top of the prizes. By 1697 the lottery had a shortfall of £250,000, and was forced to suspend all payments until the following year.{{sfnp|X4L3CDM6|195}}
## Draw
Managers were appointed by [letters patent](https://engole.info/letters-patent) to produce books of numbered tickets, which were sold by Treasury-appointed Receivers. One part of the ticket was delivered to the purchaser, and the rest – signed by the buyer – was returned to the lottery managers along with an account for the money received.{{sfnp|YXQ5WHYT}}
The draw itself featured two locked boxes, one containing a second part of each ticket sold and the other a matching number of tickets divided into blanks and prizes. Tickets were drawn alternately from the first and second boxes and paired off. Holders of tickets from the first box drawn immediately before a prize or “fortunate” ticket from the second box were allotted the corresponding prize.{{sfnp|YXQ5WHYT}}
The draw took place in November 1694, but as even losing tickets still yielded £1 per annum for sixteen years they remained a tradeable commodity. From 1694 to 1701 the price fluctuated between £5 and £8.{{sfnp|LMERAUYT}}
## Million Bank
The Bank on Tickets of the Million Adventure, or Million Bank, was established in 1695 to invest in Million Lottery tickets. The company’s strategy was to persuade investors to sell their tickets to the bank at a discount, in return for which it offered a slightly smaller annual dividend than the Million Lottery but payable over a longer term. The bank made its money by investing the difference between what it received from its tickets and what it paid out in dividends to buy the reversion of government-issued single-life annuities, which could be converted into ninety-five year annuities, thus transforming a short-term investment into a long-term one for its subscribers.{{sfnp|LU28DSVR}}
By 1796 all of the bank’s annuities had expired, and it was wound up.{{sfnp|LU28DSVR}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26767
**Categories:** Lottery
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Nantwich Workhouse](https://engole.info/nantwich-workhouse/)
**Published:** June 3, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Workhouse_Nantwich.jpg[/pimage]Grade II listed building and former workhouse in Nantwich, Cheshire, England, built in 1779–1780 to accommodate up to 350 paupers.
**Content:**
Nantwich Workhouse, also known as Nantwich Union Workhouse, Nantwich Union House and Nantwich Institution, is a Grade II listed building and former [workhouse](https://engole.info/workhouse/) in Nantwich, Cheshire, England.{{sfnp|ME38N43W}} It was built in 1779–1780 to accommodate up to 350 paupers.
Nantwich Poor Law Union took over the workhouse in 1837, serving 86 local parishes and [townships](https://engole.info/township/). The building remained in use as a workhouse until 1930, when the workhouse system was abolished by the Local Government Act of 1929, giving local authorities the power to take over workhouse infirmaries as municipal hospitals;{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|346}} Nantwich Workhouse then became part of the Barony Hospital.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Workhouse_Nantwich.jpg)Nantwich Workhouse, Barony Hospital
Wikimedia Commons
## History
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/George_Wilbraham_%28Batoni%29.jpg)George Wilbraham, a shareholder in the workhouse
Wikimedia Commons
A building at the end of Beam Street, formerly the town house of the Mainwaring family, was used as Nantwich’s first [workhouse](https://engole.info/workhouse/) and house of correction from 1677 to 1748; it stood on the site of the present Crewe Almshouses.{{sfnp|F4ATGZP7|124, 199, 207}}{{sfnp|74W35XCC|28-33, 41}} By 1748 the residential workhouse had been replaced by three cottages on Queen Street (off Pillory Street), which housed up to 30 people in 1777.{{sfnp|74W35XCC|28-33, 41}}{{sfnp|F4ATGZP7|226}}{{sfnp|FCAXEVHI}} The correctional function of the Beam Street workhouse had by then been assumed by a gaol house on Pillory Street, which was in existence by 1739. A poor rate of 6 pence in the pound was first recorded as being levied in Nantwich in 1732 for the support of the poor in the workhouse and in their homes; the rate was collected up to five times a year.{{sfnp|74W35XCC|28-33, 41}}
The present building was constructed in 1779–1780 at the Barony on Beam Heath – then a common outside the town – on 11½ acres (4.7 ha) of land donated by the Marquess of Cholmondeley. A total of £450 towards the cost was raised from several existing charities; the remainder was funded by shares taken out by 31 local men, including Sir Robert Salusbury Cotton and George Wilbraham of Delamere. The new workhouse opened in June 1780.{{sfnp|F4ATGZP7|227-228}} It was designed to accommodate 350 people, and took men, women and children.{{sfnp|74W35XCC|28-33, 41}} It was administered by a governor, the first being George or Charles Shrimpton; the governor’s income in 1784 was £35 per year.{{sfnp|74W35XCC|28-33, 41}}{{sfnp|F4ATGZP7|227-228}}
Shortly after its foundation, the new workhouse is recorded as having a farm, dairy and gardens in which food was grown.{{sfnp|74W35XCC|28-33, 41}} Alvaston Farm (now demolished) stood immediately to the north of the workhouse, and might have provided food for the inhabitants.{{sfnp|8F9CBBFV|120-123}} Records of the Nantwich overseers of the poor for 1780–1785 survive, and show that meat, grain, vegetables, malt, wine, tobacco and snuff were all purchased. Children at the workhouse appear to have received some education at this time, as the purchase of copy and spelling books, easy readers, bibles and catechisms is also recorded.{{sfnp|74W35XCC|28-33, 41}} The prison reformer John Howard visited the workhouse on 1 August 1788, when it had only 44 residents,{{sfnp|F4ATGZP7|227-228}} and gave the following account of conditions:{{sfnp|F4ATGZP7|228}}
The house is visited weekly by the gentlemen of the town in rotation. It was clean, and great attention seems to be paid to the inhabitants. The rooms are too low, and the upper parts of the windows too far from the ceilings. Five shillings a month is allowed for tobacco and snuff, yet the use of tea, though purchased with their own money, is ordered to be punished by confinement in the dungeon.
After the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, Nantwich Poor Law Union, formed on 18 February 1837, took over the existing workhouse. It then served 86 parishes and townships, with an elected governing board of 88 guardians.{{sfnp|FCAXEVHI}} The workhouse building was expanded around this time, including the addition of a further storey. On 3 April 1881, there were 222 inhabitants.{{sfnp|F4ATGZP7|227-228}}
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, several associated buildings were constructed adjacent to the workhouse. A children’s home and school was built in 1879–1880 at a cost of £3,300, which accommodated 60 children.\[10\] In 1890–1891, an infirmary was built at a cost of around £4,500, which provided 70 beds for poor patients; a woman’s hospital was added in 1905 at a cost of £7,000, providing a further 70 beds.{{sfnp|7M6E9LVI}}
## Description
The former workhouse is a large three-storey building in red brick under a tiled roof. It has a U-shaped plan, with a long symmetrical front face and two long end wings which run away from the street.{{sfnp|ME38N43W}}{{sfnp|FCAXEVHI}} The front face has a slightly projecting central bay, topped by a [pediment](https://engole.info/pediment) bearing a clock face.{{sfnp|ME38N43W}}{{sfnp|3IPY5HXE|289}} The main entrance is to the central bay; it has a semicircular head with a fanlight, and is flanked by a pair of small windows. The front face has seven casement windows to the ground floor.{{sfnp|ME38N43W}} In about 1971, the central bay had two Venetian windows with a semicircular head; only the second-storey one remains.{{sfnp|3IPY5HXE|289}}{{sfnp|6EUIGCEI|38}} A bell tower and glazed porch to the main entrance have also been removed.{{sfnp|ME38N43W}}{{sfnp|6EUIGCEI|38}} Little of the original workhouse interior remains.{{sfnp|ME38N43W}}
## Barony Hospital
The Local Government Act of 1929 transferred the functions of workhouse boards to the local authority in 1930. The workhouse and its associated buildings were converted into a Public Assistance Institution, later known as Barony Hospital, with 124 beds, which treated poor people who were chronically sick. From 1935 the hospital was used for acute medical cases and as a maternity unit, and also housed some patients with chronic illnesses. After the outbreak of the Second World War, the hospital was extended with 240 beds in huts; in 1963 there were 264 beds in total. Between 1948 and 1962, it was also used as a mental hospital. In 1982 the hospital cared for geriatric and psychiatric patients, with 147 beds.{{sfnp|7M6E9LVI}}
Barony Hospital closed in 1994.{{sfnp|FCAXEVHI}} Most of the former hospital buildings are still standing, although some wards housed in wooden huts near Middlewich Road were demolished in the 1990s to make way for an industrial estate.{{sfnp|8F9CBBFV|120-123}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 20548
**Categories:** Workhouse
---
### [Kemerton Court](https://engole.info/kemerton-court/)
**Published:** June 4, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Kemerton_Court%2C_Kemerton_%28geograph_3386135%29.jpg[/pimage]Grade II* listed manor house in the village of Kemerton, Worcestershire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Kemerton_Court%2C_Kemerton_%28geograph_3386135%29.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/KfkgLfmb69E7qN2q8}}
Baroque west façade
Kemerton Court, formerly known as Lower Court, is a 17th-century manor house in the [village](https://engole.info/village) of Kemerton, Worcestershire. It was designated a Grade II\* [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1959.{{sfnp|M9CXFG4M}}{{sfnp|95SXN3ME}}
The house is set in {{convert|2.7|ha}} of ornamental gardens, adjacent to {{convert|30|ha}} of parkland, beyond which is a further {{convert|40|ha}} of ornamental woodland and a 20th-century arboretum.{{sfnp|95SXN3ME}}
The manor of Kemerton was granted to Sir Robert de Musgrove (Mucegros) by King Henry III in 1240, and it remained in the possession of Robert’s family and his descendants until its sale in 1918. In 1949 Colonel C. G. Darby bought Kemerton Court and its land, and in 1964 made it over to his son, the conservationist Adrian Darby, the owner as at 2026.{{sfnp|QYUB6IZM}}
## Architecture
The house is built of coursed dressed limestone rubble faced with limestone [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar), and has hipped slate roofs behind parapets, with large rendered brick ridge stacks. It consists of two storeys, plus cellar and attic with dormers. It was refronted in about 1720 by the addition of a 9-bay Baroque façade, and further additions and alterations were made in about 1830.{{sfnp|M9CXFG4M}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30053
**Categories:** Manor house
---
### [Tonbridge Castle](https://engole.info/tonbridge-castle/)
**Published:** June 4, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Tonbridge-Castle-scaled.webp[/pimage]Early Norman castle in Tonbridge, Kent.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Tonbridge-Castle-scaled.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/zmSgSMxsNyAWX8m99}}|Historic England
Tonbridge Castle, in Kent, was originally a motte and bailey castle erected by the Normans shortly after their invasion of England in 1066. It was built on land given by William the Conqueror to his kinsman Richard Fitzgilbert, and was initially a simple fort of earth and timber.{{sfnp|REIHBR9F}}{{sfnp|2RDZ236V}} The castle and the adjoining mansion were designated Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1950.{{sfnp|BHCEYIDX}}
The earliest mention of Tonbridge Castle appears in the *Anglo-Saxon Chronicle*. In an entry of 1088 it recounts a storming of the castle by Englishmen in support of King William II. The castle was defended by knights of the rebellious Bishop Odo, who claimed that Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy, was the rightful heir to the throne of England.{{sfnp|B6G6J9WG|307}}
Richard Fitzgilbert’s descendents gradually replaced the earth and timber structure with stone. Their final castle had a 13th-century curtain wall, in places almost {{convert|3|m|spell=in}} thick, and a “noble” square gatehouse built in 1230–1260, with four circular towers at each corner.{{sfnp|REIHBR9F}} The castle was unoccupied from 1521,{{sfnp|M2JTQSDW}} until it was strengthened and garrisoned by parliamentary forces during the English Civil War (1642–1651). It was subsequently ordered to be put beyond further military use and its defences dismantled.{{sfnp|REIHBR9F}}
The L-shaped house to the east of the gatehouse was built in 1793, using [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) stone taken from various parts of the castle.{{sfnp|BHCEYIDX}} After Tonbridge Urban District Council bought the site in 1899, the residence became the council chamber and offices.{{sfnp|REIHBR9F}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30050
**Categories:** Castle
---
### [Margaret Gere](https://engole.info/margaret-gere/)
**Published:** May 27, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/ff/Photo_of_Margaret_Gere.jpg[/pimage]English artist (1878–1965) who often worked in tempera on portraits, still lifes and narrative scenes.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/ff/Photo_of_Margaret_Gere.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
Margaret Gere (1878–1965) was an English artist who often worked in [tempera](https://engole.info/tempera) on portraits, still lifes and narrative scenes.{{sfnp|U6LSSEJB}} She was born in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, and was the half sister of [Charles March Gere](https://engole.info/charles-march-gere), under whom she studied at the Birmingham School of Art from 1897 before going on in 1905 to study at the Slade School of Fine Art.{{sfnp|XYX4SNNT}}{{sfnp|DUZAUEB4|473}}{{sfnp|GGPVHCA2}}
Like her brother Charles, Margaret was an original member of the Birmingham School of Painters and Craftsmen. She held her first exhibition with her brother at the Carfax Gallery in 1912.{{sfnp|DUZAUEB4|473}} She also had solo exhibitions at the Cotswold Gallery in 1922, and the Beaux Arts Gallery in 1929.{{sfnp|GGPVHCA2}}
In 1904 Margaret and Charles settled at Painswick, then a quiet village in the unspoilt Cotswolds.{{sfnp|XYX4SNNT}} She was elected a member of the New English Art Club in 1926.{{sfnp|U6LSSEJB}} A retrospective of Margaret’s work was held at Cheltenham Art Gallery in 1984.{{sfnp|DUZAUEB4|473}}
## Gallery
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/A-Bowl-of-Flowers.webp)
*A Bowl of Flowers*
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Miss-Katharine-Sturt.webp)
*Miss Katharine Sturt*, 1946
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Noahs-Ark.webp)
*Noah’s Ark*, c. 1909
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/The-Garden-of-the-Slothful.webp)
*The Garden of the Slothful*, c. 1901
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Whats-forPudding-Today.webp)
*What’s for Pudding today?*
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30035
**Categories:** Female, Painter
---
### [Church of St Peter, Reighton](https://engole.info/church-of-st-peter-reighton/)
**Published:** June 2, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Church-of-St-Peter-Reighton-scaled.webp[/pimage]Grade II* listed Anglican church in Reighton, North Yorkshire, parts of which date from the 12th century.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Church-of-St-Peter-Reighton-scaled.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/9UE4A5jXRo9Wk83K7}}|Historic England
St Peter’s Church in the [village](https://engole.info/village) of Reighton, North Yorkshire, is an active Anglican parish church in the diocese of York, the archdeaconry of East Riding and the Deanery of Bridlington, and is one of the five churches in The Headland [Benefice](https://engole.info/benefice).{{sfnp|8DAZJF8G}} It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II\* listed building.{{sfnp|EQ644TMD}}
The original church dates from the 12th century, and parts of it were incorporated into the rebuilding of 1897–1905 carried out by Brodrick, Lowther and Walker, chiefly the [arcade](https://engole.info/arcade) and the [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel).
The church is built of rock-faced sandstone, and has a roof partly of tile and partly of slate. It consists of a [nave](https://engole.info/nave), a north [aisle](https://engole.info/aisle-architecture), a south [porch](https://engole.info/narthex), a chancel and a west tower. The tower has two stages, with diagonal buttresses, two-light bell openings, and a coped parapet. The porch has a round-arched opening, and the south door has Norman jambs. The interior contains a “magnificent” Norman square font.{{sfnp|EQ644TMD}}{{sfnp|A8LDAWZM}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30047
**Categories:** Anglican, Church, Yorkshire
---
### [St Martin's Church, Ashton upon Mersey](https://engole.info/st-martins-church-ashton-upon-mersey/)
**Published:** May 23, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/St_martins_ashton_upon_mersey.jpg/1280px-St_martins_ashton_upon_mersey.jpg[/pimage]Grade II* listed church in Sale, Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/St_martins_ashton_upon_mersey.jpg/1280px-St_martins_ashton_upon_mersey.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/fX8fBioUSBEFe2sZ9}}
St Martin’s Church, Ashton upon Mersey, from the southwest
St Martin’s Church in Ashton upon Mersey, a district of Sale, Greater Manchester, is an active Anglican parish church in the diocese of Chester, the archdeaconry of Macclesfield and the deanery of Bowdon.{{sfnp|LX53GJG8}} It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II\* [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building).{{sfnp|PQJH7WIQ}}
The first church, probably timber-framed, was built in 1304 on the site of an old Saxon burial place. In 1704 it was destroyed by a storm.{{sfnp|254ZT5CR|22-24}} A new church was built in 1714 for Joshua Allen. In 1874 a baptistry by W. H. Brakspear was added. In 1886, the turret and clock were removed and the following year a new tower was built, it was designed by George Truefitt for Sir Williams Cunliffe Brooks.{{sfnp|PQJH7WIQ}}{{sfnp|V8MEFT4G}} In the same year a ring of thirteen bells was installed and a new [lych gate](https://engole.info/lych-gate) was built.{{sfnp|254ZT5CR|22-24}}
## Architecture
### Exterior
The church is built in Lymm sandstone,{{sfnp|254ZT5CR|22-24}} with slate and tile roofs. Its plan consists of a wide [nave](https://engole.info/nave) of four bays, a south porch, a north baptistery, and a [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) with an adjoining tower containing a vestry to the south. The tower is square, with a timber-framed top stage. It contains a clock face to the south, gables on each side and an elaborate weather vane. The baptistry is octagonal with a pyramidal roof.{{sfnp|PQJH7WIQ}}
### Interior
At the west end is a gallery. The roof is double [hammer beam](https://engole.info/timber-roof-truss/#Hammer-beam_truss) in type. The chancel walls are panelled with the ends of former [box pews](https://engole.info/box-pew). One font dating from the 16th century on a 20th-century shaft is wrongly dated 1304. Another font dates from the 18th century.{{sfnp|PQJH7WIQ}} The parish chest is long and narrow, and is dated 1706. On the walls are a number of memorial tablets. The parish registers date from 1631, but are incomplete and in part difficult to decipher.{{sfnp|254ZT5CR|22-24}} The stained glass in the east window was donated by James Occleston in 1862.{{sfnp|V8MEFT4G}}
## External features
An early 19th-century sundial in the churchyard, in stone with a copper dial and gnomon, is listed at Grade II.{{sfnp|EH2QSV5B}} Also listed at Grade II is the lych gate dated 1887 designed by George Truefitt. It is timber-framed with a pyramidal clay tile roof on a brick plinth. Two sides have large semicircular arches; the other two sides are vertically studded. All sides have pierced roundel bands just below the eaves. The gates are cast iron.{{sfnp|USI85D6C}} The churchyard contains the war graves of sixteen service personnel, eight of the First World War and eight of the Second.{{sfnp|HXAINNK5}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24702
**Categories:** Anglican, Church, Greater Manchester
---
### [Kneeler](https://engole.info/kneeler/)
**Published:** March 23, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/kneeler-scaled-1.webp[/pimage]Masonry at the foot of a gable. Also the piece of furniture used for resting in a kneeling position during Christian prayer.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/kneeler-scaled-1.webp)Whitaker Stone
A kneeler, also known as a knee-stone, is the angled, approximately triangularly faced masonry at the foot of a gable, cut to carry the gable coping.{{sfnp|F4P3FZD8}}{{sfnp|CPDPUYNM}}
The term is also used to describe the piece of furniture used for resting in a kneeling position during Christian prayer. In recent times it has also been applied to cushions intended to protect the knees during kneeling.{{sfnp|ZBZYW382}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29522
**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Chancel](https://engole.info/chancel/)
**Published:** June 4, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Binnenchor.svg/1920px-Binnenchor.svg.png[/pimage]Part of a church containing the altar, used by the officiating clergy.
**Content:**
**Plan of a large Latin cross church with chancel highlighted**[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Binnenchor.svg/1920px-Binnenchor.svg.png)[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9d/Langhaus%2C_Chor.svg/1920px-Langhaus%2C_Chor.svg.png)Strict definition
Wikimedia Commons
Broader definition
Wikimedia Commons
The chancel is the part of a Christian church used by the clergy and others officiating at a service. Usually situated at the eastern end of the church, it houses the altar and perhaps the choir.{{sfnp|Q2KZWSZK}} The part of the chancel housing the altar is known as the [presbytery](https://engole.info/presbytery).{{sfnp|CYK9WXZG}}
In smaller churches the chancel may be separated from the [nave](https://engole.info/nave), the part of the building used by the congregation, by a chancel arch, altar rails, or a series of steps. In larger churches and cathedrals, particularly those with a monastic past, the demarcation between nave and chancel may be a stone screen with a central door, known as a pulpitum,{{sfnp|TV2FZUML}} perhaps supporting a gallery or loft.{{sfnp|Q2KZWSZK}}
The term *chancel* is derived from the Latin *cancellus*, meaning a screen.{{sfnp|TV2FZUML}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24729
**Categories:** Religious architecture
---
### [Eleanor Cobham](https://engole.info/eleanor-cobham/)
**Published:** March 19, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Humphrey_%26_Eleanor.jpg[/pimage]English noblewoman forcibly divorced from her husband and sentenced to life imprisonment for treasonable necromancy.
**Content:**
Eleanor Cobham (c. 1400 – 7 July 1452), Duchess of Gloucester, was in 1441 forcibly divorced from her husband Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and sentenced to life imprisonment for treasonable [necromancy](https://engole.info/necromancy), consulting astrologers to cast the king’s horoscope.{{sfnp|QHIUYSWL}}\[a\]It did not become an offence to use astrology or divination to predict the death of the monarch until the [1581 Statute of Silence](https://engole.info/statute-of-silence-1581).
But as in Eleanor’s case, doing so could give rise to the suspicion that those involved might feel encouraged to fulfil the prophecy themselves.
In about 1422 Eleanor became a lady-in-waiting to Jacqueline d’Hainault, who, on divorcing John IV, Duke of Brabant, had fled to England from Hainault – a territorial lordship straddling the present-day border between Belgium and France – in 1421. In 1423 Jacqueline married Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the youngest son of King Henry IV.{{sfnp|QHIUYSWL}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Humphrey_%26_Eleanor.jpg)Eleanor and Humphrey in a 1431 illustration
Wikimedia Commons
After unsuccessfully invading Hainault to assert his wife’s claims to the territory, Humphrey returned to England in March 1425, and Eleanor became his mistress. When in January 1428 his marriage with Jacqueline was pronounced invalid he married Eleanor.{{sfnp|QHIUYSWL}}
## Downfall
Perhaps having become obsessed with the possibility of her husband succeeding King Henry VI, Eleanor began consulting astrologers to try to divine the future. The astrologers Thomas Southwell and Roger Bolingbroke “unwisely” predicted that Henry VI would suffer a life-threatening illness in July or August 1441. When rumours of the prediction reached the authorities they also consulted astrologers, who could find no such future illness in their predictions and were thus able to reassure the King. Following the rumours to their source, they interrogated Southwell, Bolingbroke and John Home, Eleanor’s personal confessor, and subsequently arrested Southwell and Bolingbroke on suspicion of [necromancy](https://engole.info/necromancy) and heretical practices in July 1441.{{sfnp|QHIUYSWL}} Bolingbroke was displayed on a scaffold at St Paul’s Cross in London, wearing a paper crown and surrounded by his instruments of necromancy, and publicly confessed to all that “he doon and wrought by the devyll and his powere”, even though no formal charges had yet been brought against him.{{sfnp|AI6VYF3U|124-125}}
## Sanctuary
On hearing news of what had happened to Bolingbroke, Eleanor “wisely” decided to seek sanctuary in Westminster Abbey, which may well have saved her life.{{sfnp|AI6VYF3U|125-126}} Under interrogation by the King’s Council, Bolingbroke claimed that Eleanor had asked him to prophesy whether she would obtain any higher position than that which she currently held. But as the wife of the heir to the throne, the only higher position she could possibly hold would be queen. Southwell, then being held in the Tower of London, was further accused of celebrating a heretical mass to aid Roger in conspiring for the death of the King.{{sfnp|AI6VYF3U|126}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b6/A_Chronicle_of_England_-_Page_392_-_The_Duchess_of_Gloucester_Does_Penance.jpg/330px-A_Chronicle_of_England_-_Page_392_-_The_Duchess_of_Gloucester_Does_Penance.jpg)The public penance of Eleanor Cobham from *A Chronicle of England*, illustrated by J. W. E. Doyle 1864
Wikimedia Commons
Eleanor, subject only to ecclesiastical jurisdiction while in sanctuary, was examined by a panel of bishops, and denied most of the charges against her. She did however confess to obtaining potions from [Margery Jourdemayne](https://engole.info/margery-jourdemayne/), “the Witch of Eye”, explaining that they were potions to help her conceive.{{sfnp|AI6VYF3U|129}}{{sfnp|FPVHK6J8|43}} It certainly seems to have been the case that Eleanor and Humphrey had a problem with fertility. A note from Humphrey’s physician advises him that “your loins and genitals are being weakened by the unrestrained frequency of your love-making, as the wateriness and scarcity of your semen indicate”, and suggests a change of diet.{{sfnp|NLTKWIFH|71}}
Eleanor was found guilty of using witchcraft, and a penance was imposed on her of having to walk hoodless carrying a wax taper to three separate London Churches on three separate days: St Paul’s Cathedral, Christchurch and St Michaels.\[b\]Witchcraft did not become a crime in England until the [1542 Witchcraft Act](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts/#Witchcraft-Act-1542), but it was considered by the Church to be heretical. She was also forcibly divorced from Humphrey, possibly because she admitted to having used love magic, suggesting that Humphrey may not have freely consented to the marriage.{{sfnp|AI6VYF3U|136}}
## Life imprisonment
A King’s Council had already found Bolingbroke, Southwell, Home and Margery Jourdemayne guilty of treason, a case in which Eleanor had been named as an accessory.{{sfnp|AI6VYF3U|131-132}}. Margery was burnt at Smithfield on 27 October 1441, Bolingbroke was [hanged drawn and quartered](https://engole.info/hanged-drawn-and-quartered/) on 18 November, and Southwell escaped the same fate by dying “of sorrow” in the Tower of London;{{sfnp|AI6VYF3U|131-132}} the historian Jessica Freeman has speculated that he committed suicide.{{sfnp|NLTKWIFH|73}} John Home was pardoned, suggesting that perhaps the allegations had been fabricated.{{sfnp|AI6VYF3U|131-132}}
It was politically unacceptable that Eleanor should simply be turned free and thus be allowed to escape the charges of treason levelled against her so-called accomplices. And so on 19 January 1442 King Henry VI signed a Letter of Warrant condemning Eleanor to a lifetime of imprisonment.{{sfnp|AI6VYF3U|137-138}}
Eleanor was initially confined in Chester Castle, then in 1443 moved to Kenilworth Castle.{{sfnp|QHIUYSWL}} The move may have been prompted by fears that Eleanor was gaining sympathy among the common people, for just a few months earlier an unnamed Kentish woman had met with Henry VI at Black Heath and scolded him for his treatment of Eleanor, saying he should bring her home to her husband;{{sfnp|AI6VYF3U|142-143}} the woman was punished by execution. In July 1446 Eleanor was moved to the Isle of Man, and finally in March 1449 to Beaumaris Castle in Anglesey, where she died on 7 July 1452.{{sfnp|QHIUYSWL}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a It did not become an offence to use astrology or divination to predict the death of the monarch until the [1581 Statute of Silence](https://engole.info/statute-of-silence-1581).
But as in Eleanor’s case, doing so could give rise to the suspicion that those involved might feel encouraged to fulfil the prophecy themselves. b Witchcraft did not become a crime in England until the [1542 Witchcraft Act](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts/#Witchcraft-Act-1542), but it was considered by the Church to be heretical.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26080
---
### [Margery Jourdemayne](https://engole.info/margery-jourdemayne/)
**Published:** June 1, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Margery-Jourdemayne-scaled.webp[/pimage]English woman burnt at the stake for heretical witchcraft in 1441.
**Content:**
Margery Jourdemayne, known as the Witch of Eye, or the Witch of Eye next Westminster, was an English woman who in 1441 was executed by being burnt at the stake after having been found guilty of heretical witchcraft, conspiring with others to bring about the death of King Henry VI through the use of sorcery.{{sfnp|NLTKWIFH|70-73}}{{sfnp|BB9ANRZN}}{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|49}}
Witchcraft was not a crime punishable by death in England until 1542.{{sfnp|TXFUAR7I}} But under the 1401 law of *[de heretico comburendo](https://engole.info/de-heretico-comburendo)*, convicted heretics were to be “burned before the people in a prominent place”;{{sfnp|B5PVX758|148}} in Margery’s case that was Smithfield, in London.{{sfnp|QEB7ET5G|49}}
Margery’s husband, William, was a manorial official on Westminster Abbey’s Ebury (Eye) estate, and came from a prosperous Middlesex yeoman family.{{sfnp|BB9ANRZN}} Margery seems to have first come to the attention of the authorities in 1430, when in November that year she was arrested and imprisoned in Windsor Castle, accused of sorcery.{{sfnp|NLTKWIFH|70}} It may be that Margery was one of the seven witches arrested in London in 1430, accused of plotting the death of King Henry.{{sfnp|BB9ANRZN}} Margery was released in May 1432, on condition that she would never again use “sorcery or witchcraft”.{{sfnp|NLTKWIFH|70}}
## 1441 conspiracy
But Margery appears nevertheless to have continued her work in charming “fiends and fairies”.{{sfnp|B7Q26UJP|loc=11324}} She again fell foul of the authorities when in 1441 she was charged with supplying [Eleanor Cobham](https://engole.info/eleanor-cobham), the Duchess of Gloucester, with “medicines” and drinks intended to make the duke fall in love with her and marry her, which he did, and of making a wax image of the King, to be used to bring about his death. The duchess had been arrested at the end of June 1441, and initially maintained that the image was to help her to conceive, but eventually admitted to having asked Roger Bolinbroke to cast her horoscope to see if she would become queen, interpreted by the prosecution as an attempt to discover when the King would die.{{sfnp|NLTKWIFH|70-73}}\[a\]It did not become an offence to use astrology or divination to predict the death of the monarch until the [1581 Statute of Silence](https://engole.info/statute-of-silence-1581). But doing so could give rise to the suspicion that those involved might feel encouraged to fulfil the prophecy themselves. Henry VI was at the time unmarried and childless, so if he were to die, then Eleanor’s husband, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, would have become king.{{sfnp|NLTKWIFH|71}}
After Bolinbroke testified that everything he had done was at Eleanor’s direction, she fled to Westminster Abbey for sanctuary.{{sfnp|NLTKWIFH|70-73}} She had previously admitted to using love magic provided by Margery, thus making Margery a relapsed heretic in the eyes of the church, for which there was only one punishment, death.{{sfnp|AI6VYF3U|131-132}} At Eleanor’s second trial in October, Margery claimed in her defence, as Bolinbroke had done, that Eleanor had asked her to create the wax image, but to no avail; Margery was executed as a heretic and a witch on 27 October 1441.{{sfnp|NLTKWIFH|70-73}}
From a modern perspective, it seems likely that Margery Jourdemayne found herself caught up in a political intrigue surrounding the declining influence of the Duke of Gloucester, uncle of King Henry VI, who was becoming increasingly unpopular owing to his stance against peace negotiations with France.{{sfnp|BB9ANRZN}}
## Literary representations
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Margery-Jourdemayne-scaled.webp)Illustration of Act 1 Scene IV of *Henry VI, Part 2*, by John Opie, 1796
Wellcome Collection
Margery appears in William Shakespeare’s *Henry VI, Part 2*, as Margery Jourdain, conjuring up a spirit to reveal the results of competing claims to the throne of England.{{sfnp|E8QLHPMT}}
## See also
- [Witchcraft Acts](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts)
- [Burning of women in England](https://engole.info/burning-of-women-in-england/)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a It did not become an offence to use astrology or divination to predict the death of the monarch until the [1581 Statute of Silence](https://engole.info/statute-of-silence-1581). But doing so could give rise to the suspicion that those involved might feel encouraged to fulfil the prophecy themselves. Henry VI was at the time unmarried and childless, so if he were to die, then Eleanor’s husband, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, would have become king.{{sfnp|NLTKWIFH|71}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30043
**Categories:** English, Female, Witch
---
### [Ryhope Engines Museum](https://engole.info/ryhope-engines-museum/)
**Published:** May 28, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Ryhope_Pumping_Station.jpg[/pimage]Former water pumping station in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Ryhope_Pumping_Station.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/AjKrvMamNge7daNj6
The Ryhope Engines Museum is housed in the Grade II\* [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) former Ryhope Pumping Station in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, which provided water for domestic and industrial purposes pumped from the water table below. It was designed by Thomas Hawksley and built in 1866–1869, and was operational until 1967. The building is also a Scheduled Ancient Monument.{{sfnp|HWB2RL6K}}{{sfnp|3Y5U58QL}}
The pumping station was constructed by the Sunderland and South Shields Water Company, founded in 1852; the building is now owned by their successor, Northumbrian Water.{{sfnp|RZF7VTP8}} It is “loosely” Jacobean in style, with curving Dutch gables and a tapering octagonal brick chimney. The historian of British industrial architecture Hubert Pragnell has called it a “cathedral of pistons and brass set within a fine shell of Victorian brickwork with no expense spared”.{{sfnp|QWQG3269|238}}
The interior contains the original pumping equipment with two massive {{convert|100|bhp|abbr=on}} beam engines by R & W Hawthorne, and three Lancashire boilers of 1908, two of which are in regular use. There is also a blacksmith’s forge, a waterwheel, numerous other steam engines, pumps, and various other devices associated with the water distribution industry. The beam engines are maintained by volunteers from the Ryhope Engine Trust, and are periodically demonstrated working, although the water they pump no longer enters the public supply.{{sfnp|HWB2RL6K}}{{sfnp|3Y5U58QL}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30042
**Categories:** Museum
---
### [Charles March Gere](https://engole.info/charles-march-gere/)
**Published:** May 26, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/53/Charles_March_Gere%2C_%27The_Lady_of_Grey_Days%27.jpg/960px-Charles_March_Gere%2C_%27The_Lady_of_Grey_Days%27.jpg[/pimage]English painter, book illustrator, and stained glass and embroidery designer (1869–1957).
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/53/Charles_March_Gere%2C_%27The_Lady_of_Grey_Days%27.jpg/960px-Charles_March_Gere%2C_%27The_Lady_of_Grey_Days%27.jpg)*The Lady of Grey Days*, 1897
Wikimedia Commons
Charles March Gere (5 June 1869 – 3 August 1957) was an English painter, book illustrator, and stained glass and embroidery designer. He became known as a painter of landscapes with figures in oil, [tempera](https://engole.info/tempera), and watercolour, and was for a time associated with William Morris’s arts and crafts movement.{{sfnp|XYX4SNNT}}
Gere was born in Gloucester, the only child of the American Edward Williams Gere and his second wife Emma; Edward Williams Gere had moved to the UK from Massachusetts following the death of his first wife. Charles Gere won scholarships to Birmingham School of Art, where he studied and taught under Edward Taylor, who did much to sustain the arts and crafts movement.{{sfnp|XYX4SNNT}} Gere worked with William Morris at the Kelmscott Press and later at the Ashendene Press, and was instrumental in making the Birmingham School a centre of excellence for book design, arguing that illustrations and type should be complementary.{{sfnp|DUZAUEB4|472-473}}
Gere’s half-sister, [Margaret](https://engole.info/margaret-gere), herself a distinguished painter, studied under him at Birmingham School of Art from 1897, and was with him an original member of the Birmingham School of Painters and Craftsmen.{{sfnp|XYX4SNNT}}{{sfnp|GGPVHCA2}} In 1904 he and Margaret settled at Painswick, then a quiet village in the unspoilt Cotswolds, ushering in the best period of his art in the small landscapes inspired by the Cotswold countryside.{{sfnp|XYX4SNNT}}
Gere was a member of the New English Art Club and the Royal Watercolour Society, and exhibited with the Royal Academy, of which he was elected an associate in 1934 and a Royal Academician in 1939. He never married, and died at the Royal Hospital in Gloucester on 3 August 1957.{{sfnp|XYX4SNNT}}
## Gallery
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Holcombe-House.webp)
*Holcombe House, Painswick, Gloucestershire*, 1926
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Cheese-Rolling.webp)
*Cheese Rolling on Cooper’s Hill, Gloucestershire*, 1948
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Dawn.webp)
*Dawn*, 1945
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Infant-St-George.webp)
*The Finding of the Infant St George*, 1892–1893
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30029
**Categories:** Illustrator, Painter
---
### [Household Words](https://engole.info/household-words/)
**Published:** May 25, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Household-Words.webp[/pimage]Weekly literary magazine "conducted" by Charles Dickens, published from 1850 to 1859.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Household-Words.webp)Cover page of first issue, dated 30 March 1850
Smith College Libraries
*Household Words* was an English weekly literary magazine “conducted” by Charles Dickens from 1850 until 1859.{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2|320}} It took its name from the line in Shakespeare’s *Henry V* declaration to each survivor of Agincourt (1415) that the names of his King and leaders would ever be “familiar in his mouth as household words”.{{sfnp|PITMC86K}} The magazine was also issued as bound annual volumes.{{sfnp|CIY4LB8H}}
The magazine appeared every Wednesday, with a publication date of the following Saturday, and cost twopence, equivalent to about £1.20 as at 2025.\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} It was entirely unillustrated. Contributors inluded such well-known names as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Wilkie Collins, Mrs Gaskell and T. A. Trollope, but all items were unattributed, except for those written by Dickens himself. The dramatist and journalist Douglas Jerrold refused to contribute to the magazine, on the basis that “although theoretically anonymous, all good items in the journal would in practice be ‘mononymous’, and attributed to Dickens”, as his name appeared on every page.{{sfnp|PITMC86K}}
The magazine did not concern itself solely with “literary entertainment”. It also included articles on a wide range of scientific subjects, and about a third of its content dealt with social issues such as the need to improve urban sanitation, and the establishment of free schools for the poor.{{sfnp|PITMC86K}}
*Household Words* was produced in partnership with the publisher Bradbury and Evans, who had been Dickens’ publisher since 1844. In the 12 June 1858 edition of *Household Words*, Dickens published a statement defending his separation from his wife Catherine in response to accusations of his adultery, expecting that it would be reprinted in *Punch*, another Bradbury and Evans publication. Furious when it was not, Dickens founded a new magazine, *All The Year Round*, which he decided would be editorially independent of any publisher. Bradbury and Evans responded by founding *[Once a Week](https://engole.info/once-a-week-magazine)*, which although also a literary weekly, differentiated itself from Dickens’ offering by including illustrations from some of the best artists and engravers available.{{sfnp|HL6BPGCX}}
The final edition of *Household Words* appeared on 28 May 1859.{{sfnp|PITMC86K}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30027
**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [Once a Week (magazine)](https://engole.info/once-a-week-magazine/)
**Published:** May 22, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Once_A_Week_-_Pg.1_Vol.1_No.1_%28July_1859%29.jpg[/pimage]British weekly illustrated literary magazine published from 1859 to 1880.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Once_A_Week_-_Pg.1_Vol.1_No.1_%28July_1859%29.jpg)Page 1 of first edition, published on 2 July 1859
Wikimedia Commons
*Once A Week* was a British weekly illustrated literary magazine published by Bradbury and Evans from 1859 to 1880.{{sfnp|GR59QNPC|32}} According to the academic and author John Sutherland, “historically the magazine’s main achievement was to provide an outlet for \[an\] innovative group of illustrators \[in\] the 1860s.”{{sfnp|L9MADCR7|479-480}}
The magazine was founded as the result of a dispute between Bradbury and Evans and Charles Dickens. Bradbury and Evans had been Dickens’ publisher since 1844, and he was in partnership with them in publishing his magazine *[Household Words](https://engole.info/household-words)*.{{sfnp|L9MADCR7|479-480}}{{sfnp|HL6BPGCX}} In the 12 June 1858 edition of *Household Words*, Dickens announced his formal separation from his wife Catherine, expecting that the announcement would be reprinted in *Punch*, another Bradbury and Evans publication. Furious when it was not, Dickens founded a new magazine, *All The Year Round*, which he decided would be editorially independent of any publisher. Bradbury and Evans responded by founding *Once a Week* under the leadership of Samuel Lucas, which although also a literary weekly, differentiated itself from Dickens’ offering by including illustrations from some of the best artists and engravers available.{{sfnp|HL6BPGCX}}
In its first six months alone, *Once a Week* illustrated forty-two of its fifty-three original poems. with Lucas adamant that the artwork should illustrate the textual content.{{sfnp|HL6BPGCX}} Serial fiction was also a central feature of the magazine; among other works, it published Charles Reade’s *A Good Fight*, George Meredith’s *Evan Harrington* and Charles Felix’s *The Notting Hill Mystery*, an early detective novel.{{sfnp|L9MADCR7|479-480}}{{sfnp|I3RZ94NG|51}}
Following Lucas’s death in 1865, he was succeeded as editor by his assistant Edward Walford. But although the magazine had strong sales it was probably under-priced, and was in decline.{{sfnp|L9MADCR7|479-480}} *Once a Week* was purchased by James Rice in 1869, and then by George Manville Fenn in 1873.{{sfnp|TM8XARA2}} But it had become “a shadow of its former self”, and publication ceased in 1880.{{sfnp|L9MADCR7|479-480}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30022
**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [Bakewell Bridge](https://engole.info/bakewell-bridge/)
**Published:** May 24, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/River_WyeBakewell_Bridge%2C_Derbyshire.jpg/1280px-River_WyeBakewell_Bridge%2C_Derbyshire.jpg[/pimage]14th-century bridge over the River Wye in Bakewell, Derbyshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/River_WyeBakewell_Bridge%2C_Derbyshire.jpg/1280px-River_WyeBakewell_Bridge%2C_Derbyshire.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Yhpo1YGwZdovy3A77}}
Bakewell Bridge over the River Wye
Bakewell Bridge is a five-arched stone bridge carrying the A619 road over the River Wye in Bakewell, Derbyshire. Built in about 1300, it is a Grade I [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) and a Scheduled Monument.{{sfnp|KCX74Y49}}{{sfnp|M6EUSK6B}} During its early history, the bridge formed part of a well-used pack horse way towards Sheffield and Chesterfield.{{sfnp|VELIVE9U}}
Widened in the 19th century, the bridge is constructed of [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) sandstone. The five pointed arches have ribbed soffits and triangular cutwaters, which serve as pedestrian retreats at the road level. There is the base of a cross on the apex of the downstream cutwater west of the central arch.{{sfnp|KCX74Y49}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30025
**Categories:** Bridge
---
### [Claude Duval](https://engole.info/claude-duval/)
**Published:** July 6, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/William_Powell_Frith_Claude_Duval.jpg[/pimage]Highwayman who, according to popular legend, showed courtesy to his victims and chivalry to their womenfolk, thus spawning the myth of the romantic highwayman.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/William_Powell_Frith_Claude_Duval.jpg)*[Claude Duval](https://engole.info/claude-duval-painting)* (1860), by William Powell Frith
Wikimedia Commons
Claude Duval (died 21 January 1670), also known as Claude Du Vall, was a highwayman in Restoration England. According to popular legend he abhorred violence, showing courtesy to his victims and chivalry to their womenfolk, thus spawning the myth of the romantic highwayman.
Little is known of Duval’s early life. Following his execution in 1670 two biographies were published, one of which suggested that he was born in 1643 in Domfront, Normandy, the son of Pierre Du Vall, a miller, and his wife Marguerite de la Roche, a tailor’s daughter. The other biography claims no more than that Duval was born of French parents. The reality is that the figure of Duval is more a literary invention than a historical figure; the few verifiable facts of his life come from the sparse records of the authorities who eventually brought him to justice.{{sfnp|6KS4KFYW}}
The more substantial of the contemporary biographies, *The Memoires of Monsieur Du Vall*, claims that Duval went to England in the service of a “person of quality”, probably Charles Lennox, duke of Richmond, when large numbers of exiled royalists returned home at the restoration of Charles II in 1660. But very quickly he turned his attention to highway robbery, earning himself a reputation as a gentleman highwayman with an eye for the ladies.{{sfnp|6KS4KFYW}}
In his most famous exploit, Duval held up a lady’s coach knowing that there was £400 on board. But he took only £100, allowing the lady to keep the rest on condition that she danced a courante with him on the heath.{{sfnp|JBTSSIKH}}
## Capture, trial and execution
Duval was captured by the bailiff of Westminster on Christmas Eve 1669, while celebrating a successful hold-up, and was committed to Newgate, accompanied by his wife. The *London Gazette* reported that the King “excluded him \[Duval\] from all hopes of pardon upon what intercession soever”, which perhaps lends credence to the account in the *The Memoires* of Duval receiving many female visitors, some of whom petitioned the King for a pardon.{{sfnp|6KS4KFYW}}
At his trial on 17 January 1670 at the Old Bailey, Duval was found guilty of six charges of robbery. He was sentenced to death and hanged at Tyburn on 21 January.{{sfnp|6KS4KFYW}} According to the *The Memoires*, Duval was given a “splendid” funeral at St Paul’s, Covent Garden, where he was buried beneath a plain white marble stone in the middle aisle, but it is now known that that he was buried at St Giles-in-the-Fields.{{sfnp|6KS4KFYW}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26578
**Categories:** Highwayman
---
### [Claude Duval (painting)](https://engole.info/claude-duval-painting/)
**Published:** May 23, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Claude_Duval_%28painting%29.png[/pimage]History painting by William Frith, created in 1860, depicting the gentleman highwayman Claude Duval holding up a coach.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Claude_Duval_%28painting%29.png)Oil on canvas
108.8 cm × 153 cm (42.8 in × 60 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Claude Duval* is a [history painting](https://engole.info/history-painting) by the English artist William Powell Frith, created in 1860 and exhibited in the Royal Academy that year.{{sfnp|DJALVVQD}} It depicts the 17th-century gentleman highwayman, [Claude Duval](https://engole.info/claude-duval), holding up a coach on a heath.
The subject is taken from *The History of England* by Thomas Babington Macaulay.{{sfnp|7KAJZ9YH|56}} Frith began making sketches for it while he was on holiday in Weymouth in 1858. The central female character depicted is Lady Aurora Sydney.{{sfnp|7AAK2W58|18}} Reputedly, Duval gallantly asked her to dance a courante with him rather than rob her, which they appear to be in the act of doing.{{sfnp|JBTSSIKH}} Behind them in the carriage is the slumped figure of a young woman who has fainted.{{sfnp|XDX9V6LF}}
The painting was donated to the Manchester Art Gallery by James Gresham in 1917, and remains in their collection today.{{sfnp|94DRA5W8}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30023
**Categories:** History painting
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Derbyshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-derbyshire/)
**Published:** May 1, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Derbyshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Derbyshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the ceremonial county of Derbyshire, split into the eight district councils and one unitary authority.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Derbyshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Derbyshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png)Derbyshire shown within England
Wikimedia Commons
The [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Derbyshire is made up of the [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) of City of Derby and the district councils of Amber Valley, Bolsover, Chesterfield, Derbyshire Dales, Erewash, High Peak, North East Derbyshire, and South Derbyshire.{{sfnp|U6LXDNIT}}
The 147 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest, are shown in separate lists for each authority.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
- [Amber Valley](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-amber-valley)
- [Bolsover](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-bolsover)
- [Chesterfield](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-chesterfield)
- [City of Derby](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-city-of-derby)
- [Derbyshire Dales](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-derbyshire-dales)
- [Erewash](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-erewash)
- [High Peak](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-high-peak)
- [North East Derbyshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-north-east-derbyshire)
- [South Derbyshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-south-derbyshire)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29950
**Categories:** Derbyshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [The Grand Old Duke of York](https://engole.info/the-grand-old-duke-of-york/)
**Published:** May 20, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** English nursery rhyme the lyrics of which have become proverbial for futile action.
**Content:**
“The Grand Old Duke of York” is an English children’s nursery rhyme, the lyrics of which have become proverbial for futile action. It is almost certainly an offshoot from a song referred to in 1640 as “Old Tarlton’s Song” after the stage clown [Richard Tarlton](https://engole.info/richard-tarlton) (1530–1588), which featured King Henry IV of France’s assembly of an army of 40,000 men for some unknown purpose in 1620. The earliest print version of that rhyme appears in *King Pippin’s Delight* (c. 1780).{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|206-207}}
A modern version of the rhyme is:{{sfnp|AIEEKGGA}}
> Oh the Grand old Duke of York
> He had ten thousand men
> He marched them up to the top of the hill
> And he marched them down again
> And when they were up they were up
> And when they were down they were down
> And when they were only halfway up
> They were neither up nor down.
The eponymous Duke of York has been argued to be a number of the bearers of that title, and others including Napoleon, but in particular Prince Frederick Augustus, Duke of York and Albany (1763–1827), commander of the British army in Flanders from 1793 until 1795, despite there being no event in his military career resembling the jingle.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|206-207,533}}{{sfnp|8SA7HTGK}} Other suggested candidates, based only on their ducal titles and military background are:
- Richard, Duke of York (1411–1460), who was defeated at the Battle of Wakefield on 30 December 1460. Richard’s army, some 8,000 strong, was waiting for reinforcements at Sandal Castle in Wakefield when he was surrounded by a much larger Lancastrian force. He chose to sally forth to fight, and was killed in a pitched battle at Wakefield Green, together with between one third and one half of his army.{{sfnp|TYIUVRTQ|149}}
- James II (1633–1701), formerly Duke of York, who in 1688 marched his troops to Salisbury Plain to resist the invasion from his son-in-law William of Orange, only to retreat and disperse them as his support began to evaporate.{{sfnp|PDUP849U|44}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 30017
**Categories:** Nursery rhyme
---
### [Stretford](https://engole.info/stretford/)
**Published:** May 4, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Trafford_Town_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_5360059.jpg/1920px-Trafford_Town_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_5360059.jpg[/pimage]One of the four major urban areas in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Trafford_Town_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_5360059.jpg/1920px-Trafford_Town_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_5360059.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/p5weFQsUYfo98X5v5}}
[Trafford Town Hall](https://engole.info/trafford-town-hall), Stretford
Stretford is one of the four major urban areas in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford in Greater Manchester, the other three being Altrincham, Sale and Urmston.{{sfnp|PY284UDD}} It occupies flat ground between the River Mersey to the south and the Manchester Ship Canal in the north, {{convert|3.8|mi}} south of Manchester city centre and {{convert|3|mi|r=1}}, south of the City of Salford, bisected by the Bridgewater Canal.
The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner remarked that “Stretford is part of Manchester functionally and visually and the boundary … is nowhere noticeable”.{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|647}} Within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire, in the 19th century Stretford was an agricultural village known locally as Porkhampton, owing to the large number of pigs produced for the Manchester market.\[a\]A local dish known as Stretford Goose consisted of pork stuffed with sage and onions.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|20}} It was also an extensive market-gardening area, producing more than 500 tons of vegetables each week for sale in Manchester by 1845. The arrival of the [Manchester Ship Canal](https://engole.info/manchester-ship-canal) in 1894, and the subsequent development of the [Trafford Park](https://engole.info/trafford-park) industrial estate, accelerated the industrialisation that began in the late 19th century.
Stretford has been the home of Manchester United Football Club since 1910,{{sfnp|KKVCQCNQ|44}} and of Lancashire County Cricket Club since the club’s formation in 1864.{{sfnp|KWA2E383}}
## Geography
Stretford occupies an area of {{convert|4.1|sqmi}}, just north of the River Mersey, at 53°26′48″N 2°18′31″W (53.4466, −2.3086). The area is generally flat, sloping slightly southwards towards the river valley,{{sfnp|W98NIK7I}} and is approximately {{convert|150|ft}} above sea level at its highest point.{{sfnp|QV2HUKH9}} The most southerly part of Stretford lies within the flood plain of the River Mersey, and so has historically been prone to flooding. A great deal of flood mitigation work has been carried out in the Mersey Valley since the 1970s, with the stretch of the Mersey through Stretford canalised to speed up the passage of floodwater.{{sfnp|R4H48GTX}} Emergency floodbasins have also been constructed, [Sale Water Park](https://engole.info/sale-water-park) being a prominent local example, lying immediately to the south of Stretford.{{sfnp|ESABA8P5}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/TraffordAreasStretford.png)The Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, highlighting Stretford in red
Wikimedia Commons
Stretford comprises the local areas of Old Trafford, Firswood, Gorse Hill and Trafford Park, and represents the northeastern tip of Trafford. Its built environment developed in two sections along the A56 road, the principal road through the town, corresponding to the two original manors. The area in the south, near to the border with Sale, grew around the church of St Matthew, while the northern part of Stretford was centred on Old Trafford, the two separated by undeveloped countryside; the sections merged during the 19th century.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|20-21}}
## History
The origin of the name Stretford is “street” (Old English *strǣt*) on a ford across the River Mersey.{{sfnp|CTC45K9B|177}} The A56 Chester Road, follows the line of the old Roman road from Deva Victrix (Chester) to Mamucium (Manchester), crossing the Mersey into Stretford at Crossford Bridge, built at the location of the ancient ford.{{sfnp|W98NIK7I}} The earliest evidence of human occupation comes from Neolithic stone axes found in the area, dating from about 2000 BCE. Stretford was part of the land occupied by the Celtic Brigantes tribe before and during the Roman occupation, and lay on their border with the Cornovii on the southern side of the Mersey.{{sfnp|3YF75NL8|6}}
By 1212 there were two manors in the area now called Stretford. The land in the south, close to the River Mersey, was held by Hamon de Mascy, while the land in the north, closer to the River Irwell, was held by Henry de Trafford.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|12}} In about 1250 a later Hamon de Mascy gave the Stretford manor to his daughter, Margery. She in turn, in about 1260, granted Stretford to Richard de Trafford at a rent of one penny. The de Mascy family shortly afterwards released all rights to their lands in Stretford to Henry de Trafford, the Trafford family thus acquiring the whole of Stretford, since when the two manors descended together.{{sfnp|W98NIK7I}}
The de Trafford family leased out large parts of the land, much of it to tenants who farmed at subsistence levels. Although there is known to have been a papermill operating in 1765, the area remained largely rural until the early 20th-century development of [Trafford Park](https://engole.info/trafford-park) in the Old Trafford district in the north of the town.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|13}} Until then Stretford “remained in the background of daily life in England”, except for a brief cameo role during the Jacobite rising of 1745, when Crossford Bridge was destroyed to prevent a crossing by Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army during its abortive advance on London; the bridge was quickly rebuilt.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|15}}
Until the 1820s one of Stretford’s main cottage industries was the hand-weaving of cotton. There were reported at one time to have been 302 handlooms operating in Stretford, providing employment for 780 workers, but by 1826 only four were still in use, as the mechanised cotton mills of nearby Manchester replaced handlooms.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|38}} As Manchester continued to grow, it offered a good and easily accessible market for Stretford’s agricultural products, in particular rhubarb, once known locally as Stretford beef.{{sfnp|INVDX994|39,57}} By 1836 market gardening had become so extensive around Stretford that one writer described it as the “garden of Lancashire”;{{sfnp|VBALQRFH|97}} in 1845 more than 500 tons of vegetables were being produced for the Manchester market each week.{{sfnp|VBALQRFH|105}} Stretford also became well known for its pig market and the production of black puddings, leading to the village being given the nickname of Porkhampton. A local dish, known as Stretford goose, was made from pork stuffed with sage and onions. During the 1830s, between 800 and 1000 pigs a week were being slaughtered for the Manchester market.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|19-20}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Entrance_to_White_City%2C_Stretford.jpg/330px-Entrance_to_White_City%2C_Stretford.jpg)Original gateway to the Manchester Botanical Gardens, 2012
Wikimedia Commons
Situated on the border with Manchester, Stretford became a fashionable place to live in the mid-19th century.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|23}} Large recreation areas were established, such as the Royal Botanical Gardens, opened in 1831. The gardens were sited in Old Trafford on the advice of scientist John Dalton, because the prevailing southwesterly wind kept the area clear of the city’s airborne pollution.{{sfnp|22C85FXW}} In 1857 the gardens hosted the [Art Treasures Exhibition](https://engole.info/manchester-art-treasures-exhibition-1857), the largest art exhibition ever held in the United Kingdom.{{sfnp|M2J8E4SR}} A purpose-built iron and glass building was constructed at a cost of £38,000 to house the 16,000 exhibits.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|107}} The gardens were also chosen as a site for the [Royal Jubilee Exhibition of 1887](https://engole.info/royal-jubilee-exhibition-manchester), celebrating Queen Victoria’s 50-year reign. The exhibition ran for more than six months and was attended by more than 4.75 million visitors.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|107-110}} The gardens were converted into an entertainment resort in 1907, and hosted the first speedway meeting in Greater Manchester on 16 June 1928.{{sfnp|ZD6FHBXX|129}} There was also greyhound racing from 1930, and an athletics track. The complex was demolished in the late 1980s, and all that remains is the entrance gates, close to what is now the [White City Retail Park](https://engole.info/white-city-stretford). The gates were designated a Grade II listed structure in 1987.{{sfnp|5DHKX9HH}}
### Industrialisation
The arrival of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894, and the subsequent development of the Trafford Park industrial estate in the north of the town – the first planned industrial estate in the world{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|xiii}} – had a substantial effect on Stretford’s growth. The population in 1891 was 28,59791, but by 1901 it had increased by 70% to 40,686 as people were drawn to the town by the promise of work in the new industries at Trafford Park.{{sfnp|PVPWJEMW}}{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|24}}
During the Second World War Trafford Park was largely turned over to the production of matériel, including the Avro Manchester heavy bomber and the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines used to power both the Spitfire and the Lancaster.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|103-104}}\[b\]The Rolls-Royce Merlin engine was made by Ford, under licence. The factory produced 34,000 engines, and employed 17,316 people.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|103-104}} That resulted in Stretford being the target for heavy bombing, particularly during the [Manchester Blitz](http://https@//engole.info/manchester-blitz) of 1940. On the nights of 22/23 and 23/24 December 1940 alone, 124 incendiaries and 120 high-explosive bombs fell on the town, killing 73 people and injuring many more. Among the buildings damaged or destroyed during the war were Manchester United’s Old Trafford football ground, All Saints’ Church, St Hilda’s Church, and Stretford Girls’ High School.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|139-141}} Smoke generators were set up in the north of the town close to Trafford Park in an effort to hide it from enemy aircraft,{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|97}} and 11,900 children were evacuated to safer areas in Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, and Staffordshire, along with their teachers and supervisors.{{sfnp|MJ2GUFHL|54}}
### Transport history
Stretford’s growth was fuelled by the transport revolutions of the 18th and especially the 19th century: the Bridgewater Canal reached Stretford in 1761, and the railway in 1849. The completion of the Manchester South Junction and Altrincham Railway (MSJAR) in 1849, passing through Stretford, led to the population of the town nearly doubling in a decade, from 4,998 in 1851 to 8,757 by 1861.{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|25}}
Because Stretford is situated on the main A56 road between Chester and Manchester many travellers passed through the village, and as this traffic increased, more inns were built to provide travellers with stopping places. One of the earliest forms of public transport through Stretford was the stagecoach. The main setting-down and picking-up points were the Angel Inn and the Trafford Arms, both now demolished.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|58}} Horse-drawn omnibuses replaced the stagecoach service through Stretford in 1845.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|36,40}} The [Manchester Carriage Company](https://engole.info/manchester-carriage-company)‘s tramway from Manchester to Stretford was built in 1879, terminating at the Old Cock Hotel on the A56 road, next to which a small depot was built to house the cars and horses.{{sfnp|5SMBTJRF|63-65}} A 1900 timetable shows that trams left for Manchester every ten minutes between 8:00 am and 10:15 pm.{{sfnp|5SMBTJRF|122}} The horse-drawn trams were replaced with electric trams in 1902,{{sfnp|UVJHUMP4}} and after the Second World War the trams were replaced by buses.{{sfnp|BJI2WIJ3}}
The MSJAR railway line through Stretford was electrified in 1931 and converted to light rail operation in 1992, when it became part of the Manchester Metrolink tram network.{{sfnp|U6TX25P5}}
## Governance
### Civic history
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/96/Stretford_Borough_Council_arms.jpg)Arms of the former Municipal Borough of Stretford
Wikimedia Commons
Stretford was part of the [ancient parish](https://engole.info/ancient-parish) of Manchester, within the historic county boundaries of Lancashire.{{sfnp|UJ2XB9Q2}} Following the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, a national scheme for dealing with the relief of the poor, Stretford joined the Chorlton Poor Law Union in 1837, one of three such unions in Manchester,{{sfnp|QWZJNHAW}} before transferring to the Barton-upon-Irwell Poor Law Union in 1849.{{sfnp|VY9KQBFQ}} In 1867 Stretford Local Board of Health was established, assuming responsibility for the local government of the area in 1868.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|88-89}} The board’s responsibilities included sanitation and the maintenance of the highways, and it had the authority to levy rates to pay for those services. The local board continued in that role until it was superseded by the creation of Stretford Urban District Council in 1894,{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|89}} as a result of the Local Government Act 1894.{{sfnp|3N4DPPRE}}
Stretford Urban District became the [Municipal Borough of Stretford](https://engole.info/municipal-borough-of-stretford) in 1933,{{sfnp|2XHSPQ7E}} giving it borough status in the United Kingdom, and was granted its arms on 20 February 1933.{{sfnp|B5TXMRHA}} In 1974, as a result of the Local Government Act 1972, the Municipal Borough of Stretford was abolished and Stretford has, since 1 April 1974, formed part of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, in Greater Manchester. [Trafford Town Hall](https://engole.info/trafford-town-hall) – previously Stretford Town Hall – is now the administrative centre of Trafford.{{sfnp|4CX8XQIG}}
### Political representation
The parliamentary constituency of Stretford was created in 1885 as a result of the Redistribution of Seats Act that year,{{sfnp|Z5C4PQ5M}} which introduced the concept of equally populated constituencies.{{sfnp|JZQBUJT8|199}} It existed until 1997, when it was replaced by the present constituency of Stretford and Urmston, which has been represented by the Labour Party since its creation.{{sfnp|JS8RXM3V}}
The area historically known as Stretford, between the River Irwell in the north and the River Mersey in the south, has since 2023 been divided between the Trafford local government wards of Gorse Hill and Cornbrook, Longford, Lostock and Barton, Old Trafford, and Stretford and Humphrey Park.{{sfnp|HSCWSMZF}} Each ward is represented by three local councillors, elected in thirds on a four-yearly cycle.{{sfnp|92GXAFMZ}}
## Demographics
As at the 2021 Census, the [built-up area](https://engole.info/built-up-area) of Stretford has a population of 28,012, occupying an area of {{convert|441.2|ha}}, giving a population density of 63.5 persons per hectare.{{sfnp|VTCK2LW6}}
## Economy
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/StretfordTownCentre.jpg/330px-StretfordTownCentre.jpg)Stretford’s town centre, showing the former Stretford Mall in the midground
Wikimedia Commons
Until the end of the 19th century Stretford was a largely agricultural village. The development of the Trafford Park industrial estate in the north of the town, beginning in the late 19th century, had a significant effect on Stretford’s subsequent development. At its peak in 1945 the park employed an estimated 75,000 workers,{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|130-133}} and housing and other amenities had to be constructed on what had previously been agricultural land.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|43}} Trafford Park remains a very significant source of employment, containing an estimated 1,400 companies and employing about 40,000 people.{{sfnp|PY284UDD}}
Stretford Mall, described in Pevsner’s *The Buildings of England* series as a “dispiriting 1970s shopping centre”,{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|647}} is the main commercial and retail centre, opened in 1969 as the Stretford Arndale,{{sfnp|4CWAV3PP}} and subsequently renamed.{{sfnp|GPZW4PEC}} The mall was built on the site of the town’s original shopping centre in the former King Street. The Mall closed in February 2026 prior to its demolition, as part of Trafford Council’s regeneration of the area.{{sfnp|KYVU5MS8}} The Trafford Centre, a large shopping and leisure complex opened in September 1998,{{sfnp|DN23J3RE}} lies about {{convert|2.5|mi}} to the northwest of Stretford.
## Landmarks
### Imperial War Museum North
{{main|Imperial War Museum North}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/ImperialWarMuseumNorth02Trim.jpg)Entrance at the base of the Air Shard Tower
Wikimedia Commons
Designed by the Berlin-based architect Daniel Libeskind and opened in July 2002,{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9}} the Imperial War Museum North is one of five branches of the Imperial War Museum and the first to be located in the north of England.{{sfnp|A3W5NDSU}} Overlooking the Manchester Ship Canal in Trafford Park, the museum explores the impact of modern conflicts on people and society. The building represents a globe shattered into fragments and then reassembled. Each of the three interlocking fragments – representing earth, air and water – form a functionally distinct part of the museum.{{sfnp|XHFDXN3W}}
### Longford Cinema
{{main|Longford Cinema}}
Designed by the architect Henry Elder, Longford Cinema was the height of Art Deco fashion when it was opened by the Mayor of Stretford in 1936. Its unusual “cash register” frontage was intended to symbolise the business aspect of show business.{{sfnp|9W3XXVLP|55}}
Vacant since 1995 despite Trafford Council’s repeated efforts to bring the building back into active use, the council has proposed its redevelopment as part of the masterplan for the area.{{sfnp|GPZW4PEC}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/LongfordCinema2007640.jpg)Longford Cinema, May 2007
Wikimedia Commons
### Cenotaph
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Cenotaph640.jpg/330px-Cenotaph640.jpg)Stretford Cenotaph
Wikimedia Commons
Stretford Cenotaph, opposite the Chester Road entrance to Gorse Hill Park, was built as a memorial to the 584 Stretford men who lost their lives in the First World War. Their names and regiments are listed on a large bronze plaque on the semi-circular {{convert|36|m|adj=on}} wall behind the cenotaph. It was formally unveiled in 1923 by the Earl of Derby, Secretary of State for War.{{sfnp|8PJCH4AF}}
The cenotaph, made of Darley Dale stone by the sculptors J. and M. Patterson, is {{convert|7.9|m}} high and {{convert|3.3|m}} wide at its base.{{sfnp|8PJCH4AF}} It cost £2,000 to build, raised by public subscription and a donation from the Stretford Red Cross.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|131}} The memorial bears the legend “They died that we might live” on one side, and “In memory of the heroic dead” on the other. It is a Grade II listed structure.{{sfnp|K7Y6VXQV}}
### Stretford Cemetery
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/Stretford_Cemetery_%28geograph_2240634%29.jpg/330px-Stretford_Cemetery_%28geograph_2240634%29.jpg)Stretford Cemetery
Wikimedia Commons
Stretford Cemetery was designed by John Shaw and opened in 1885. Its chapel is in the Decorated style, designed by architects Bellamy & Hardy, and quite elaborate.{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|652}} In 1948 a memorial to the casualties of those residents of Stretford killed during the [Manchester Blitz](https://engole.info/manchester-blitz) of December 1940, including seventeen unidentified persons, was erected over their communal grave.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|156}}
### Stretford Public Hall
{{main|Stretford Public Hall}}
Stretford Public Hall was built in 1878 by [John Rylands](https://engole.info/john-rylands), Manchester’s first multi-millionaire and a local benefactor.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|83}} It was designed by N. Lofthouse and is on the western side of the A56 Chester Road, opposite the Longford Cinema.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|118}} On the death of Rylands in 1888, his widow placed the building at the disposal of the local authority for a nominal rent; on her own death in 1908 the building was bought by Stretford Council for £5,000.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|83}}
The building re-opened in March 1949 as the Stretford Civic Theatre, with a well-equipped stage for the use of local groups, but fell into disrepair despite being designated a Grade II listed structure in 1987.{{sfnp|IAUFW6SL}} Trafford Council refurbished and converted the hall to serve as council offices in the mid-1990s. It was re-opened in 1997, once again named Stretford Public Hall,{{sfnp|7VPGTZCU}} and is now in the possession of Friends of Stretford Public Hall, a charitable Community Benefit Society.{{sfnp|APTIPIFS}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Stretford_public_hall.jpg)Stretford Public Hall
Wikimedia Commons
### Trafford Town Hall
{{main|Trafford Town Hall}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Trafford_Town_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_5360059.jpg/1920px-Trafford_Town_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_5360059.jpg)Trafford Town Hall
Wikimedia Commons
Trafford Town Hall stands in a large site at the junction of Talbot Road and Warwick Road, directly opposite the Old Trafford Cricket Ground. It was designed in the Neo-classical style by the architects Bradshaw Gass & Hope of Bolton.{{sfnp|4CX8XQIG}}
The town hall officially came into use as Stretford Town Hall on the granting of Stretford’s charter, on 16 September 1933. In 1974, on the formation of the new Trafford Metropolitan Borough, Stretford Town Hall was adopted as the home of the new council and renamed Trafford Town Hall; it was designated a Grade II listed building in 2007.{{sfnp|4CX8XQIG}}
### The Great Stone
{{main|The Great Stone, Stretford}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/GreatStone640.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
A Grade II listed [glacial erratic](https://engole.info/glacial-erratics) now situated at the Chester Road entrance to Gorse Hill Park. It may have been a marker on the Roman road between Northwich and Manchester, or some kind of boundary marker.{{sfnp|BFNPFYXM}} It is also thought to have been the base of an Anglo-Saxon cross shaft,{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|87}} and may have been used as a [plague stone](https://engole.info/plague-stones),{{sfnp|GPJBAMJR|86}} during the succession of plagues in Manchester from the 14th century onwards.{{sfnp|VTDM2N3J}}
### Union Baptist Church
{{main|Union Baptist Church, Stretford}}
Grade II listed church opened in 1867 by its patron, the textile magnate and philanthropist [John Rylands](https://engole.info/john-rylands).{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|652}} It was converted into office accommodation in the late 20th century, but reverted to its intended religious use following its purchase in 2012 by the Iglesia ni Cristo.{{sfnp|K8WECZ5M}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/cfd2cb49-c360-4ce8-b7f7-22b4c0fbca37.jpg)
## Transport
Stretford Metrolink station is part of the Manchester Metrolink tram system, lying on the Altrincham to Bury line.{{sfnp|U6TX25P5}} The nearest main-line railway station is Trafford Park on the edge of the industrial estate, on the Liverpool to Manchester line, operated by Northern.{{sfnp|RVM9WH36}} The {{convert|20|acre|adj=on}} Trafford Park Euroterminal rail freight terminal, opened in 1993, is in the Gorse Hill area of Stretford. It cost £11 million and has the capacity to deal with 100,000 containers a year. Containers are handled by two huge gantry cranes, the noise from which has led to complaints from some local residents.{{sfnp|GPJBAMJR|161}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/StretfordMetrolink.jpg/330px-StretfordMetrolink.jpg)Stretford Metrolink station
Wikimedia Commons
The town has good access to the motorway network. Junction 7 of the M60 is just to the north of Stretford’s boundary with Sale, and the A56 road gives easy access to the south as well as to Manchester city centre in the other direction.
Existing cycle paths throughout Stretford and [Salford Quays](https://engole.info/salford-quays) are being extended as part of Greater Manchester’s Bee Network.{{sfnp|H492GYE4}}
Manchester Airport, the busiest in the UK outside London,{{sfnp|2JDKFTCX}} is about {{convert|9|mi|spell=in}} to the south of Stretford.
## Education
Along with the rest of Trafford, Stretford maintains a selective education system assessed by the 11-plus examination.{{sfnp|M4A3IMKB}} Of the twenty-seven secondary schools in Trafford,{{sfnp|MK44DC8V}} four are in Stretford, one of which – Stretford Grammar School – operates the selective system.{{sfnp|AD38YP9D}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/University_Academy_92_%28UA92%29.jpg/330px-University_Academy_92_%28UA92%29.jpg)University Academy 92 (UA92) campus
Wikimedia Commons
University Academy 92, opened in 2019,{{sfnp|CPE2XFWC}} is a higher education institution co-founded by Lancaster University and members of the Class of ’92, the Manchester United football players who won the 1992 FA Youth Cup,{{sfnp|8GYQ3QEV}}\[c\]Gary Neville, Phil Neville, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt.{{sfnp|8GYQ3QEV}} with the aim of attracting students who might otherwise not go on to higher education.{{sfnp|SBW23BM8}} The main campus in Old Trafford is close to Manchester United’s football stadium and Lancashire County Cricket Club’s ground, both of which clubs the university has partnerships with.{{sfnp|SBW23BM8}}
## Religion
At the 2021 UK census, 43.7% of Stretford residents reported themselves as Christian, 14.0% Muslim, 2.6% Sikh, 0.8% Hindu, 0.4% Buddhist and 0.2% Jewish. A further 32.7% had no religion, and 0.3% had an alternative religion.{{sfnp|VTCK2LW6}}
Stretford is in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salford,{{sfnp|8V26F28E}} and the Anglican Diocese of Manchester.{{sfnp|DA5VM4DJ}} The date of the first church to be built in Stretford is unrecorded, but in a lease dated 1413, land is described as lying next to a chapel.{{sfnp|W98NIK7I}} Methodism was a significant influence in 19th-century Stretford,{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|11}} and the Catholic mission in the town was begun in 1859, in a small chapel on Herbert Street.{{sfnp|INVDX994|126}}
There are two Grade II listed churches in Stretford: the [Church of St Ann](https://engole.info/st-anns-stretford){{sfnp|N7PVYZKQ}} and the [Church of St Matthew](https://engole.info/st-matthews-stretford).{{sfnp|GCQCNDPF}} St Ann’s is a Roman Catholic church, built in 1862–1867 by Edward Welby Pugin for Sir Humphrey and Lady Annette de Trafford.{{sfnp|N7PVYZKQ}} It was officially opened by Bishop William Turner on 22 November 1863, and was consecrated in June 1867.{{sfnp|INVDX994|127}} Features include a historic organ built by Jardine & Co (1867) and a good number of fine stained glass windows by Hardman & Co of Birmingham. St Matthew’s was built in 1842 by W. Hayley in the Gothic Revival style, with additional phases in 1869, 1906 and 1922.{{sfnp|GCQCNDPF}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/St_anthonys_church_trafford_park.jpg)St Antony of Padua, built in 1904 and reclad in 1994.{{sfnp
8AW3BUXW
St Antony of Padua, on Eleventh Street in Trafford Park, is a rare surviving example of a [tin tabernacle](https://engole.info/tin-tabernacle),{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|651}} a type of prefabricated building constructed from sheets of corrugated iron.{{sfnp|SESEI52A}} The only survivor of three built in the park,{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|40}} it contains the altar and a stained glass window from the chapel at Trafford Hall, donated by Lady Annette de Trafford.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|150}}
## Sport
Stretford Metrolink station is part of the Manchester Metrolink tram system, lying on the Altrincham to Bury line.{{sfnp|U6TX25P5}} The nearest main-line railway station is Trafford Park on the edge of the industrial estate, on the Liverpool to Manchester line, operated by Northern.{{sfnp|RVM9WH36}} The {{convert|20|acre|adj=on}} Trafford Park Euroterminal rail freight terminal, opened in 1993, is in the Gorse Hill area of Stretford. It cost £11 million and has the capacity to deal with 100,000 containers a year. Containers are handled by two huge gantry cranes, the noise from which has led to complaints from some local residents.{{sfnp|GPJBAMJR|161}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/Old_Traford.jpg/330px-Old_Traford.jpg)Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium
Wikimedia Commons
Old Trafford was originally the home of Manchester Cricket Club, but became the home of Lancashire County Cricket Club in 1864 upon that club’s formation. The ground is on Talbot Road, Stretford, where it has been since 1856. Similar to its counterpart, one end of the Old Trafford cricket ground is called the Stretford End. It has been a Test venue since 1884 and has hosted three World Cup semi-finals.{{sfnp|TNBE5JN8}}
Stretford Sports Village consists of three centres, offering a 25-metre swimming pool, gyms and other sports facilities. They are the Chester Centre, formerly known as Stretford Leisure Centre, the Talbot Centre at Stretford High School, and the Sports Barn in Old Trafford.{{sfnp|X8GYFSAX}}
Longford Park Stadium, adjoining Longford Park, is the home of Trafford Athletic Club, founded in 1964 as Stretford Athletic Club.{{sfnp|FDCWEDRS}} Members have included the Olympic sprinter Paula Dunn, the hurdler Shirley Strong, Olympic silver medallist in 1984,{{sfnp|MARBBKSY}} and Craig Wheeler, who holds the record for the fastest mile ever run.{{sfnp|FDCWEDRS}}\[d\]Wheeler set a time of 3:24.00 in 1993,{{sfnp|FDCWEDRS}} but that record has not been officially recognised because the course was downhill.{{sfnp|AMDYRV6G}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a A local dish known as Stretford Goose consisted of pork stuffed with sage and onions.{{sfnp|TW9W8T3S|20}} b The Rolls-Royce Merlin engine was made by Ford, under licence. The factory produced 34,000 engines, and employed 17,316 people.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|103-104}} c Gary Neville, Phil Neville, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt.{{sfnp|8GYQ3QEV}} d Wheeler set a time of 3:24.00 in 1993,{{sfnp|FDCWEDRS}} but that record has not been officially recognised because the course was downhill.{{sfnp|AMDYRV6G}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24648
## External links
- [Historical documentary on the Borough of Stretford, including footage of the 1933 Charter Day celebrations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_Ejq_VhYC8)
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Town
---
### [Mines and Collieries Act 1842](https://engole.info/mines-and-collieries-act-1842/)
**Published:** March 18, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Child_trapper_in_UK_coal_mine.png[/pimage]Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting all females and boys under ten years of age from working underground in coal mines.
**Content:**
Children worked alone in the darkness to open and close ventilation doors.
Wikimedia Commons
The Mines and Collieries Act 1842 (5 & 6 Vict. c. 99), usually known as the Mines Act 1842, was passed in response to the working conditions experienced by children as revealed in the Children’s Employment Commission (Mines) 1842 report, produced by a body headed by Lord Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. It prohibited all females and boys under ten years of age from working underground in coal mines.{{sfnp|H47N5ZU4}}
At the beginning of the 19th century methods of coal extraction were primitive, and the workforce – men, women and children – laboured in dangerous conditions. In 1841 about 115,000 men, 41,000 boys under the age of 20, and 4,000 females were employed in coal and iron mines. Most pits were small but the number is not known but twelve years later there were about 2,500. Explosions were common and increasing in number and workers died in everyday incidents.{{sfnp|J45TFPPM|210}} Women and children worked underground for 11 or 12 hours a day for smaller wages than men.{{sfnp|H47N5ZU4}} The public became aware of conditions in the country’s collieries in 1838 after a [disaster at Huskar Pit](https://engole.info/huskar-pit-disaster/) near Silkstone, Barnsley. A stream overflowed into the pit’s ventilation drift after violent thunderstorms. The inundation of water caused the death of 26 children; 11 girls aged from 8 to 16 and 15 boys between 9 and 12 years of age.{{sfnp|I25Z2WK9|67}} The disaster came to the attention of Queen Victoria, who ordered an inquiry.{{sfnp|H47N5ZU4}}
In 1840 Lord Ashley-Cooper headed the Royal Commission that investigated the conditions of workers, especially children, in coal mines. Commissioners visited collieries gathering information, sometimes against the mine owners’ wishes. The report, illustrated by engraved illustrations and the personal accounts of mineworkers, was published in May 1842. Victorian society was appalled to discover that children as young as five or six worked underground as trappers, opening and shutting ventilation doors, before becoming hurriers, pushing and pulling coal tubs.{{sfnp|JMWNCE4G|17}} Until the impact of these harsh conditions on women and children who worked underground was brought to the public notice, nothing was done because coal mining was unregulated.{{sfnp|J45TFPPM|215}} Lord Ashley-Cooper deliberately appealed to Victorian prudery, focusing on girls and women wearing trousers and working bare-breasted in the presence of boys and men, which “made girls unsuitable for marriage and unfit to be mothers”. Such an affront to Victorian morality ensured the bill was passed.{{sfnp|H47N5ZU4}}
After the Act was passed, females of any age were banned from working underground, as were boys under 10 years old. The Act also prescribed a minimum age of 15 for winding-engine men and prohibited employers from paying wages in public houses.{{sfnp|J45TFPPM|211}} The Home Office appointed a single Inspector of Mines[, Hugh Tremenheere](https://engole.info/hugh-tremenheere/), to oversee compliance with the Act. When the Act was passed, 2,400 women in Scotland and 800 in Lancashire were working underground. In 1845 there were still 200 in each place, and isolated prosecutions continued up to 1858.{{sfnp|J45TFPPM|215}} Some women found work on the surface as [pit brow women](https://engole.info/pit-brow-women/).
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 17173
**Categories:** Coal mining
---
### [Bolton and Leigh Railway](https://engole.info/bolton-and-leigh-railway/)
**Published:** December 17, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** Lancashire's first public railway, promoted as a mineral line in connection with William Hulton's coal pits to the west of his estate at Over Hulton.
**Content:**
The *[Lancashire Witch](https://engole.info/lancashire-witch-locomotive)*
Wikimedia Commons
The Bolton and Leigh Railway (B&LR), Lancashire’s first public railway, was promoted as a mineral line in connection with [William Hulton](https://engole.info/william-hulton/)‘s coal pits to the west of his estate at Over Hulton. On 31 March 1825, the company obtained an Act of Parliament to build a railway line from Bolton to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Leigh. George Stephenson was appointed the company’s chief engineer, and its construction was overseen by [Robert Daglish](https://engole.info/robert-daglish/), a mechanical engineer and colliery manager.
The first section of the single-track railway opened between Derby Street in Bolton and Hulton’s coal pit at Pendlebury Fold near Chequerbent on 1 August 1828. The railway was completed to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal in Leigh in March 1830. The line was operated by steam locomotives and its two rope-hauled inclined planes were equipped with stationary steam engines. The railway opened as a freight line but on 13 June 1831 the first passenger services were run. Stations started to be closed to passengers in the early 1950s but freight traffic lingered into the mid 1960s. The line and its stations have been dismantled and few traces remain.
## Background
Schemes to link the canals in Bolton and Leigh by railway were proposed in the early 1820s. Bolton was on the Manchester Bolton and Bury Canal. The Leigh arm of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal was connected end-on to the Bridgewater Canal at Leigh in 1820.{{sfnp|7WK6SPCB|79-80}} Canal transport was slow, congested, and as demand for transportation increased so did the cost.{{sfnp|ABFHHN6L}} William Hulton, owner of Hulton Park and [several collieries](https://engole.info/hulton-collieries/) on or near his estate, recognised that a railway would be the best way to transport his coal to markets in Bolton and access the Port of Liverpool via the canal in Leigh which would facilitate bringing in raw materials particularly cotton.{{sfnp|7WK6SPCB|81}} By 1 October 1824, a committee of more than 60 businessmen had been formed to promote the scheme.{{sfnp|ABFHHN6L}} On 31 March 1825, the company obtained an Act of Parliament to build the railway line from Bolton to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Leigh.
Hugh Steel surveyed routes for the railway.{{sfnp|ABFHHN6L}} George Stephenson, who was surveying the route of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR), was consulted. The line was estimated to cost £43,143.{{sfnp|RZZSCSHA|7}}
## Construction
Hulton was appointed company chairman and Stephenson was the railway’s chief engineer. Robert Daglish, an engineer and colliery manager who had built the [*Walking Horse* locomotive](https://engole.info/the-walking-horse-locomotive/) for Orrell Collieries,{{sfnp|RZZSCSHA|1}} supervised the railway’s construction.{{sfnp|RZZSCSHA|7}} Work started at the Bolton end to lay out the line to Chequerbent via Daubhill where a 50 horse power stationary steam engine was installed to work the rope-hauled incline. Three types of rail, fish-bellied weighing 35lb per yard, T-section at 63lb per yard and bridge-section at 43lb per yard were laid on stone block sleepers ballasted with small coal.{{sfnp|35K6W4AX}}
The line was continued to the west of Hulton Park towards Leigh where there was a second inclined plane between Chequerbent and Chowbent. In 1827 the company prepared a second Parliamentary Bill, which passed on 26 March 1828, to accommodate changes to the original plan. It authorised raising £25,000 and specifed the track gauge of 4 ft 8 1/2 in.{{sfnp|7WK6SPCB|79-80}}
## Official opening to Pendlebury Fold
On 1 August 1828, the section between Derby Street Bolton and William Hulton’s coal pits at Pendlebury Fold near Chequerbent in Westhoughton was opened. At 12.15 an 0-4-0 locomotive supplied by the Robert Stephenson Company departed from Pendlebury Fold with a train of 13 wagons and a coach carrying the railway directors, dignitaries and a band. At Daubhill the engine was detached and departed to nearby colliery and returned with a loaded coal train{{sfnp|35K6W4AX}} after which Mrs Hulton hung a garland of flowers on the chimney before declaring , “No one can observe without admiration this beautiful engine, I therefore beg leave to name it after an object universally attractive – The *[Lancashire Witch](https://engole.info/lancashire-witch-locomotive/)*.”{{sfnp|59GZ5JJ6|148}}. The dignitaries’ train was then lowered down the Daubhill Incline before it proceeded to Bolton where celebrations continued at the Commercial Inn.{{sfnp|35K6W4AX}}
## Chequerbent to the canal
After the official opening , work continued on the line past Hulton Park towards Leigh. A 20 hp stationary steam engine was installed on the second inclined plane between Chowbent and Chequerbent. In 1827 the company had prepared a second Parliamentary Bill, which passed on 26 March 1828, to accommodate changes to the original plan. It authorised raising £25,000 and specified the track gauge of 4 ft 8 1/2 in.{{sfnp|7WK6SPCB|79-80}} The line was completed to the canal at Leigh by end of March 1830 and the line opened for freight traffic.
## Operations
In 1829 the [Kenyon and Leigh Junction Railway](https://engole.info/kenyon-and-leigh-junction-railway/ "Kenyon and Leigh Junction Railway") (K&LJR) was incorporated to link the B&LR to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway at Kenyon Junction creating a through line to Liverpool.{{sfnp|ABFHHN6L}} After the line had been extended to Kenyon, the company ran its first passenger service, a special train for “Gentlemen” from Bolton to Newton Races on 2 June 1831.{{sfnp|RZZSCSHA|8}} Passenger trains began running the {{convert|28.5|mi}} from Bolton to Liverpool on 13 June 1831.{{sfnp|I7A8ZPRX|83}} The journey took an hour and forty minutes {{sfnp|47JC3EWW}} The K&LJR and B&LR worked closely as trains ran over both lines to access the Liverpool and Manchester line. When the service started, two passenger trains daily ran in each direction between Bolton and Liverpool one in the morning and the other in the afternoon, each train providing inside covered accommodation and outside wooden seats in open wagons.{{sfnp|RZZSCSHA|8}}
In 1834 the B&LR leased operation of the railway to John Hargreaves, an established carrier in Bolton. He was granted running rights over the K&LJR and the L&MR using his own engines and rolling stock.{{sfnp|ABFHHN6L|9}} By the mid-1830s Hargreaves had about 200 wagons.{{sfnp|RZZSCSHA|8}}
On 8 August 1845 the railway lost its independence when together with the K&LJR and the L&MR, it was absorbed into the Grand Junction Railway (GJR){{sfnp|I7A8ZPRX|78}} The GJR terminated Hargreaves’ leases on 31 December 1845.{{sfnp|RZZSCSHA|8}} The GJR was amalgamated with others into the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR) on 16 July 1846 .{{sfnp|I7A8ZPRX|78}}
## Stations
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Bolton_%28Great_Moor_St.%29_Station%2C_entrance_remains_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1845122.jpg)“The second Great Moor Street station
Wikimedia Commons
“The B&LR had stations at Bolton (renamed Bolton Great Moor Street), Bag Lane in Chowbent and Leigh (subsequently renamed Westleigh). They were very basic. Bolton station had a single platform protected by a shed. The company built a goods station to its south at Crook Street. Bag Lane station was a simple cottage-type structure on the east side of the single line where it crossed Bag Lane. It served the community around [Fletcher’s](https://engole.info/fletcher-burrows-company/) pits. Gibfield Colliery was sunk nearby in 1829.{{sfnp|LQA6BGDF}} Leigh station was a basic cottage-style building on the east side of the line north of Twiss Lane (A578). It was about a ¼ mile north of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal where goods were transhipped onto canal boats. {{sfnp|SJEN3TIT}} Stations were opened at Daubhill{{sfnp|DBH8YYPH}} and Chequerbent, a halt for Hulton Park sometime before 1846.{{sfnp|WEIB75MC}}
In 1871 Bolton Great Moor Street station was closed by the LNWR for reconstruction, and a temporary station opened at Crook Street from 1 August 1871 to 28 September 1874 when the new station opened. Great Moor Street was rebuilt on its original site but on an embankment some {{convert|12|ft|spell=in}} above its original level.{{sfnp|8PVXM26E}}
In the 1880s, the LNWR removed the inclines at Daubhill and Chequerbent. At Daubhill, a new alignment with a short tunnel and station were constructed. The original line was retained for freight at each end, but severed in the middle. The new Daubhill station opened on 2 February 1885 and was renamed Rumworth & Daubhill on 28 April.{{sfnp|FHBS2B8L}} Chequerbent also required a new alignment and station, but the original line remained to serve the Chequerbent Pits.{{sfnp|EBI5K75D}} Atherleigh station was opened by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway on 14 October 1935 to serve housing developments.{{sfnp|VLCYQBIA}}
## Closures
Daubhill and Chequerbent’s original stations were closed on 2 February 1885 when their replacements opened on the new alignments.{{sfnp|FHBS2B8L}}{{sfnp|EBI5K75D}} Until 1939, passenger services between Atherton and Bolton ran half-hourly. After the Second World War just six trains being ran daily in each direction. Chequerbent and Rumworth & Daubhill closed to passengers on 3 March 1952.{{sfnp|FHBS2B8L}}
All other stations closed to passengers on 29 March 1954, with Atherleigh,{{sfnp|VLCYQBIA}} and West Leigh{{sfnp|SJEN3TIT}} closing completely. Some rugby and holiday specials served Great Moor Street until 1958.{{sfnp|8PVXM26E}} Atherton Bag Lane closed to freight on 7 October 1963, Chequerbent closed to freight on 27 February 1965{{sfnp|EBI5K75D}} and Rumworth & Daubhill closed to freight on 29 March 1965. The date of closure of Bolton Great Moor Street station to freight is not recorded, but the rails were lifted in 1969.{{sfnp|8PVXM26E}}
## Locomotives
*Sans Pareil*
Wikimedia Commons
Robert Stephenson and Company in Newcastle built the railway’s first locomotive, a development of George Stephenson and Timothy Hackworth’s *Locomotion No. 1* that they built for the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825. Originally destined for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and known as the *Liverpool Travelling-engine*, it was transferred to the B&LR, which was nearer completion. At the opening ceremony it was named the *Lancashire Witch*.{{sfnp|59GZ5JJ6|148}} Hackworth’s *Sans Pareil* which competed in the Rainhill Trials was used on the B&LR until 1844 when it was sold to Coppull Colliery for use as a stationary engine. In 1863 it was presented to the Patent Office Museum (Science Museum) by John Hick.{{sfnp|WNT7S566|17}} By 1831 the railway owned three other locomotives: *Union,* built in 1830 by Rothwell, Hick and Rothwell of Bolton, and *Salamander* and *Veteran*, which were built by Crook and Dean in Bolton.{{sfnp|RZZSCSHA|8}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 12382
**Categories:** Transport
---
### [Christopher Saxton](https://engole.info/christopher-saxton/)
**Published:** October 6, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Saxton%27s_Frontispiece.jpg[/pimage]English cartographer who produced the first county maps of England and Wales.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Saxton%27s_Frontispiece.jpg)Frontispiece to Saxton’s *Atlas of the Counties of England and Wales*
Wikimedia Commons
Christopher Saxton (c. 1542 – c. 1610) was an English cartographer who produced the first county maps of England and Wales. He was born at Sowood near Wakefield and his family moved to Dunningley, a [hamlet](https://engole.info/hamlet-place) near Woodkirk in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He was a student at Cambridge University and learned cartography from the Vicar of Dewsbury and [Thornhill](https://engole.info/thornhill/), John Rudd.
Saxton began his survey of England in 1574 and Wales in 1577. The first county plates were engraved by 1574 and completed in 1578. They were made into an atlas. In later life Saxton surveyed several local estates and at least twenty-five estate maps and fourteen written surveys are known. He produced surveys in Southwark and for private landowners in Yorkshire and Lancashire.
## Life and family
Saxton was probably born at Sowood in Ossett in the parish of Dewsbury, in the West Riding of Yorkshire in either 1542 or 1544. His family subsequently moved to the hamlet of Dunningley near Tingley in the parish of Woodkirk where the Saxton name is recorded in 1567.{{sfnp|ARB2JEVQ|1}} It is speculated that Saxton may have attended the predecessor school to Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield and also speculated that he was a student at Cambridge University but neither is corroborated.{{sfnp|ARB2JEVQ|5}} It is most likely that John Rudd, the vicar of Dewsbury and Thornhill, a keen cartographer, passed his skills on to Saxton.{{sfnp|ARB2JEVQ|6}}
Saxton married and had three children. Robert, born in 1585, was his father’s assistant in 1601 and drew a map of Snapethorpe in Wakefield when it was surveyed by his father. Robert was commissioned to survey Sandal Magna in 1607.{{sfnp|ARB2JEVQ|3}} Christopher Saxton died in either 1610 or 1611.{{sfnp|ARB2JEVQ|2}} He may be buried at Woodkirk in Yorkshire, not far from his birthplace.{{sfnp|4CGK6JK5}}
## Career
Map-making developed rapidly in the reign of Elizabeth I, made possible by advances in surveying technology and printing from engraved copper plates. Accurate mapping of the whole country became increasingly important. Lord Burghley was instrumental in ensuring that a court official, Thomas Seckford of Woodbridge, Suffolk, financed the commission of a survey of the English and Welsh counties.{{sfnp|GUTGZ8Z8}} In 1574 Saxton began the survey of England.{{sfnp|ARB2JEVQ|7}} In consideration of the expenses involved, Queen Elizabeth granted him a lease on lands at Grigstone Manor in Suffolk. The Welsh survey began in 1577.{{sfnp|ARB2JEVQ|11}} Surveying the country was a significant undertaking but the first plates were engraved by 1574 and in 1578 the survey was complete;{{sfnp|ARB2JEVQ|9}} as the task was finished in a short timespan, Saxton may have used some of John Rudd’s earlier work.{{sfnp|GUTGZ8Z8}} Individual county sheets were issued before the completed survey was issued as an atlas in 1579. The proofs were presented to Lord Burghley, who compiled them into an atlas of his own.{{sfnp|ARB2JEVQ|9}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Cornwall_-_Christopher_Saxton%2C_1579%2C_5_-_BL.jpg)Saxton’s map of Cornwall
Wikimedia Commons
The maps were reproduced in the *Atlas of the Counties of England and Wales*, published in 1579, the first atlas of any country. It contained thirty-five maps, each bearing the arms of Elizabeth I and Thomas Seckford, Saxton’s patron. The maps show hills and mountains but do not provide precise information as to their location or altitude. A variety of symbols show buildings and settlements.{{sfnp|ARB2JEVQ|9}} All the maps are dated except for Northumberland. Five counties, the Cornwall, Essex, Hertfordshire, Suffolk and Norfolk maps show the division into [hundreds](https://engole.info/hundred-shire-division).{{sfnp|ARB2JEVQ|10}} The atlas was a commercial success, prompting other cartographers including John Speed, John Norton, and Michael Drayton to attempt similar enterprises, adding to and adapting Saxton’s work.{{sfnp|4CGK6JK5}}
The maps drawn by Saxton were engraved by Augustine Ryther, Remigius Hogenberg, William Hole, William Kip, Leonard Terwoort of Antwerp, Nicholas Reynold of London, Cornelius Hogius, and Francis Scatter. The engravers were of Dutch or Flemish origin.{{sfnp|GUTGZ8Z8}} There is no evidence on the maps that Saxton engraved them himself, but according to one account, he engraved those of the Welsh counties and Herefordshire. Saxton obtained a license to sell the maps for a term of ten years.{{sfnp|4CGK6JK5}}
Saxton surveyed several local estates in his later years. At least twenty-five estate maps and fourteen written surveys have survived. He produced surveys for the governors of St Thomas’s Hospital in Southwark and private landowners. In 1598 he surveyed Old Byland in Yorkshire for evidence relating to a boundary dispute.{{sfnp|4CGK6JK5}} John Dee, warden of the Manchester’s Collegiate Church,\[a\]Manchester Cathedral employed him to survey Manchester’s parish boundaries in 1596, but no copy has survived.{{sfnp|DL2XKJGP}} Chetham’s Library in Manchester has a copy of the atlas.{{sfnp|CJTXP7M8}}
Saxton’s maps put English cartography at the forefront of European map making. Other mapmakers soon adopted his outline of Britain; his county maps were revised by John Norden, and influenced the maps made by John Speed. Saxton’s maps were the “master geographical representation” of England and Wales until the Ordnance Survey published one-inch maps in 1801.{{sfnp|4CGK6JK5}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Manchester Cathedral
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 6907
**Categories:** Cartographer, English
---
### [John Atkinson Grimshaw](https://engole.info/john-atkinson-grimshaw/)
**Published:** November 9, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/A-Yorkshire-Lane-in-November.webp[/pimage]English landscape painter best known for his depictions of moonlight urban scenes and damp, autumnal lanes often featuring a lonely house and a single figure.
**Content:**
John Atkinson Grimshaw (6 September 1836 – 13 October 1893) was an English landscape painter best known for his depictions of moonlight urban scenes and damp, autumnal lanes often featuring a lonely house and a single figure.{{sfnp|H6NJQ4NB}}{{sfnp|HTEG6T7M|84}}
Most of what is known about his early life comes from the research done by his grandson, Guy Ragland Phillips, whose mother Elaine Grimshaw was Atkinson Grimshaw’s daughter,{{sfnp|HTEG6T7M|8}} one of his fifteen children of whom six survived to adulthood.{{sfnp|H6NJQ4NB}}
## Early life
Atkinson Grimshaw was born in a [back-to-back house](https://engole.info/back-to-back-house/) in Park Street, Leeds to David Grimshaw, a policeman, and his wife Mary.{{sfnp|H6NJQ4NB}}{{sfnp|2AXLE8K2}} By 1852 he was employed as a clerk with the Great Northern Railway Company, and despite apparently never having received any formal training as an artist had begun to paint by the late 1850s.{{sfnp|H6NJQ4NB}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/A-Yorkshire-Lane-in-November-812x1024.webp)*A Yorkshire Lane in November*, 1873
Wikimedia Commons
On 24 October 1856 Atkinson Grimshaw married his cousin Frances Theodosia (1835–1917), daughter of James Dibdin Hubbard, editor of the *Wakefield Journal*, and in 1861 he gave up his job with the railway to become a full-time painter.{{sfnp|H6NJQ4NB}}
## Career
Atkinson Grimshaw’s initial work mainly consisted of landscape and still-life studies, which he first exhibited at Leeds Town Hall in 1862. By the following year his work began to exhibit the influence of the [Pre-Raphaelite](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood) style of landscape.{{sfnp|HTEG6T7M|17-21}}
By the late 1860s Atkinson Grimshaw had switched his attention to the depiction of moonlight scenes, which became his trademark genre.{{sfnp|H6NJQ4NB}}
The 1870s were Atkinson Grimshaw’s most successful decade artistically and financially, when he was represented by Thomas Agnew & Sons of Bond Street, London, who bought his paintings between 1871 and 1880 and displayed them for resale at their London and provincial galleries.{{sfnp|H6NJQ4NB}}
## Personal life
Atkinson Grimshaw and his family settled in the 17th-century Knostrop Old Hall, {{convert|2|mi|r=1|spell=in}} east of Leeds town centre, in 1870, and remained there until his death on 31 October 1893. He was buried on 4 November at Woodhouse Cemetery, Leeds.{{sfnp|H6NJQ4NB}}
## Gallery
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Spirit-of-the-Night.webp)
*Spirit of the Night*, 1879
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Evening-Knostrop-Old-Hall.webp)
*Evening, Knostrop Old Hall*, 1870
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Dame-Autumn-has-a-Mournful-Face.webp)
*Dame Autumn has a Mournful Face*, 1871
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Canny-Glasgow.webp)
*Canny Glasgow*, 1887
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Moonlight.webp)
*Moonlight*, 1882
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/A-Wintry-Moon.webp)
*A Wintry Moon*, 1886
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Theodisia.webp)
*Portrait of the artist’s wife, Theodosia, as Ophelia*, 1863
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Stapleton-Park-near-Pontefract-Sun.webp)
*Stapleton Park near Pontefract Sun*, 1877
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26973
**Categories:** English, Male, Painter
---
### [Wainhouse Tower](https://engole.info/wainhouse-tower/)
**Published:** September 20, 2023
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Wainhouse_Tower_%2823165415582%29.jpg[/pimage]Landmark folly and Grade II* listed building in King Cross, Halifax, West Yorkshire.
**Content:**
map
https://goo.gl/maps/vDZ3kJXbjnYBWED87}}
Wainhouse Tower
Wainhouse Tower is a landmark [folly](https://engole.info/folly/) and Grade II\* [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in King Cross, Halifax, West Yorkshire.\[a\]Wainhouse Tower is considered a folly because it was never used for its original purpose, but during the Second World War it was used as an observation post.{{sfnp|DDZQUVCC}} It was built between 1871 and 1875 and is {{convert|275|ft}} tall. The structure has a square base, and its shaft is octagonal in plan. Its elaborate top, reached after 403 steps, has a bracketed gallery and two-stage lantern, the upper stage open with [ogee](https://engole.info/ogee) cap. It was intended as a curiosity and a very prominent landmark.{{sfnp|DDZQUVCC}}{{sfnp|27EANQDD}}
John Edward Wainhouse inherited the Washer Lane Dyeworks in 1854. Smoke pollution was a problem in the town, and the dyeworks was part of the problem, so Wainhouse decided to build a beautiful chimney connected to the dyeworks by an underground flue. Architect Isaac Booth started its construction using local stone in 1871, but left the project following a dispute.\[b\]The dispute was between Wainhouse and Sir Henry Edward, who complained that the tower would be tall enough to overlook his nearby estate at Pye Nest.{{sfnp|HYJP2AF6}} Richard Dugdale took his place, taking on responsibility for the elaborate upper section. The tower was completed in September 1875, at a cost of £15,000,{{sfnp|DDZQUVCC}} equivalent to about £1.75 million as at 2021.\[c\]Calculated using the GDP deflator.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
After Wainhouse’s death the tower, which had never been used as a chimney, was offered for sale by auction. It had several owners until 1918, when the *Halifax Courier* organised fundraising to enable its purchase by Halifax Corporation; ownership passed to the corporation in May 1919.{{sfnp|DDZQUVCC}} As a result of the reorganisation of Local Government in 1974, ownership of Wainhouse Tower passed to Calderdale Council.{{sfnp|HYJP2AF6}}
The building was closed to the public in 2008 to allow for extensive renovations.{{sfnp|HYJP2AF6}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Wainhouse Tower is considered a folly because it was never used for its original purpose, but during the Second World War it was used as an observation post.{{sfnp|DDZQUVCC}} b The dispute was between Wainhouse and Sir Henry Edward, who complained that the tower would be tall enough to overlook his nearby estate at Pye Nest.{{sfnp|HYJP2AF6}} c Calculated using the GDP deflator.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25599
**Categories:** Folly, Yorkshire
---
### [Inchcape](https://engole.info/inchcape/)
**Published:** July 6, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Bell_Rock_Lighthouse_01.jpg[/pimage]Reef about eleven miles (18 km) off the east coast of Angus, Scotland, near Dundee and Fife, occupied by the Bell Rock Lighthouse.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Bell_Rock_Lighthouse_01.jpg)Bell Rock Lighthouse
Wikimedia Commons
Inchcape, or the Bell Rock, is a reef about {{convert|11|mi|spell=in}} off the east coast of Angus, Scotland, near Dundee and Fife, occupied by the Bell Rock Lighthouse. The name Inchcape comes from the Scottish Gaelic *Innis Sgeap*, meaning “Beehive isle”, probably comparing the shape of the reef to old-style skep beehives.{{sfnp|5EG964C7}} According to legend, probably folk etymology, the alternative name Bell Rock derives from a 14th-century attempt by the abbot from Arbroath (“Aberbrothock”) to install a warning bell on the reef; the bell was removed by a Dutch pirate who perished a year later on the rocks, a story that is immortalised in “[The Inchcape Rock](https://engole.info/the-inchcape-rock/)” (1802), a poem by [Robert Southey](https://engole.info/robert-southey/).
Bell Rock Lighthouse was built on the Inchcape reef in the early 19th century, and is named after the legend of the abbot’s bell. The main hazard the reef presents to shipping is that only a relatively small proportion of it is above water, but a large section of the surrounding area is extremely shallow and dangerous.
The rock was featured in a one-hour episode of BBC’s *Seven Wonders of the Industrial World*, which told the story of the Bell Rock Lighthouse’s construction. Work began in 1807 and was largely completed by 1810.
## Geology
Inchcape is formed of the Old Red Sandstone exposed in the nearby coastal areas, and of which Arbroath Abbey is built. The main body of the rock is about {{convert|427|ft}} long and {{convert|230|ft}} wide, but the south-western part extends for another {{convert|1000|ft}} or so. Robert Stevenson, the engineer who designed and built the lighthouse on the rock, estimated that the “greatest length, therefore, of the Bell Rock, which may be said to be dangerous to shipping, is about 1427 feet (435m), and its greatest breadth is about 300 feet (91.4m).”{{sfnp|L85MKYC3}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3275
**Categories:** Lighthouse, Reef, Scottish
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Harborough](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-harborough/)
**Published:** March 17, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Harborough_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Harborough_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the district of Harborough, Leicestershire.
**Content:**
commons/thumb/6/6e/Harborough\_UK\_locator\_map.svg/1280px-Harborough\_UK\_locator\_map.svg.png" class="kb-advanced-image-link">Harborough shown within Leicestershire
Wikimedia Commons
The non-metropolitan district of Harborough in the East Midlands of England is one of the seven districts and one [unitary authority](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) that make up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Leicestershire.{{sfnp|DFUAZLJK}}
The district contains 22 of the 93 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Leicestershire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Church of All Saints**3">Lubenham
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/MqVNetxw3Nv3e4q16)3">3">Late 12th century3">[1061473](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1061473)commons/8/80/All\_Saints\_Lubenham\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_224730.jpg"> :12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**3">Peatlington Magna
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/DwYh4dBiDiVc9xhk9)3">3">13th century3">[1061529](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1061529)commons/e/e0/PEATLING\_MAGNA%2CLEICESTERSHIRE.jpg"> :12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**3">Scraptoft
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/PpBSdvBbcqtdquLJ6)3">3">c. 13th – c. 15th century3">[1188364](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1188364)commons/6/69/Church\_of\_All\_Saints%2C\_Scraptoft\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_559844.jpg"> :12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of All Saints**3">Theddingworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/VSoeoQNhYLt59Zua7)3">3">12th century3">[1188196](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1188196)commons/a/ad/View\_to\_Theddingworth\_Church.\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_415036.jpg"> :12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Andrew**3">Owston
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/6kR6F6g272gWxM7W6)3">3">c. 11613">[1074871](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1074871)commons/thumb/1/1f/St\_Andrew%27s\_Church%2C\_Owston.jpg/1280px-St\_Andrew%27s\_Church%2C\_Owston.jpg"> :12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Dionysius**3">Market Harborough
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/a9mDnyDE2UyjCDHd7)3">3">Early 14th century3">[1074439](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1074439)commons/thumb/4/42/Market\_Harborough\_Church.jpg/1280px-Market\_Harborough\_Church.jpg"> :12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St John the Baptist**3">King’s Norton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/r9bsjDm6tsn1i3Rt7)3">John Wing the Younger, of Leicester3">1757–17753">[1360627](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1360627)commons/3/39/St.\_John\_the\_Baptist%2C\_King%27s\_Norton\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_500584.jpg"> :12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**3">Lutterworth
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/AAkhApPkSXv4dzAM7)3">3">19th century3">[1211040](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1211040)commons/thumb/0/07/Lutterworth\_St\_Marys.jpg/1280px-Lutterworth\_St\_Marys.jpg"> :12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary**3">Nevill Holt
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KEfRKdpEu3JujSNN7)3">3">c. 13th – c. 15th century3">[1188359](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1188359)commons/4/4b/Nevillholthallandchurch.jpg"> :12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Michael and All Angels**3">Hallaton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/M71aqRcBBY9wyroC8)3">3">c. 12th – c. 13th century3">[1360624](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1360624)commons/thumb/8/83/Hallaton\_St\_Michael%2C\_Jan\_2014.JPG/1280px-Hallaton\_St\_Michael%2C\_Jan\_2014.JPG"> :12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter**3">Claybrooke Parva
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/4oZsM32PnNu7oc8s6)3">3">12th century3">[1209153](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1209153)commons/c/c1/St\_Peter%2C\_Claybrooke\_Parva\_-\_geograph.org.uk\_-\_386630.jpg"> :12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter**3">Stockerston
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/3MgaXXgemqMsokTK9)3">3">c. 13th – c. 15th century3">[1360696](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1360696)commons/a/ac/Stockerston.jpg"> :12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter**3">Tilton on the Hill
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/qnSkFs4NbgXWn1xV9)3">3">c. 12th – c. 15th century3">[1074839](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1074839)commons/thumb/8/8f/Church\_of\_St\_Peter%2C\_Tilton\_on\_the\_Hill.jpg/1280px-Church\_of\_St\_Peter%2C\_Tilton\_on\_the\_Hill.jpg"> :12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Peter and St Paul**3">Great Bowden
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Fx4goARvzW9UT48m7)3">3">c. 13th – c. 15th century3">[1061277](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1061277)commons/9/93/Greatbowdenchurchweb.jpg"> :12px; border-bottom-right-radius:12px;">Wikimedia Commons
**Fortrey Tomb
at Churchyard
of St John the Baptist**3">King’s Norton
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Tuy8MDtQaq498pUU9)3">3">Mid-18th century3">[1360628](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1360628)[](
**Categories:** Leicestershire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Newgate calendar](https://engole.info/newgate-calendar/)
**Published:** January 2, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Hunter_murdering_children.JPG[/pimage]Genre of publications chronicling the crimes and punishments of notorious criminals.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Hunter_murdering_children.JPG)Illustration of child murderer Thomas Hunter (executed August 1700) from the *Newgate Calendar* (1774)
Wikimedia Commons
The *Newgate Calendar* was a genre of publications much like the True Crime publications popular during the 1930s and ’40s, chronicling the crimes and punishments of notorious criminals.{{sfnp|L989RFKX|search=Introduction}} The first books carrying the title appeared in 1774,\[a\]Some accounts say 1773.{{sfnp|UEJV82U6}} a five-volume series dealing with crimes from 1700 onwards, each entry accompanied by “crude” woodcuts illustrating the crime or the execution. The lawyers Andrew Knapp and William Baldwin published a second *Newgate Calendar* in four volumes in 1824, and the six-volume *New Newgate Calendar* in 1826. C. Pelham’s *Chronicles of Crime: or, The New Newgate Calendar* (1886) was the last of the series.{{sfnp|JGYB5ZI5}}
Critics feared that books such as *The Newgate Calendar* would inspire copycat crimes, and glamorise crime as a way of life. Indeed certain featured characters such as the highwayman [Dick Turpin](https://engole.info/dick-turpin/) and the notorious burglar [Jack Sheppard](https://engole.info/jack-sheppard/), remain familiar today.{{sfnp|9JGJGKU2}} The novelist William Makepeace Thackeray was one of the genre’s most vehement critics; in a letter to his mother, dated December 1839, he wrote that at one theatrical adaptation of Jack Sheppard he had seen people in the lobby selling “Shepherd-bags”, containing “a few picklocks … a screwdriver and iron lever”, adding that “one or two young gentlemen have already confessed how much they were indebted to Jack Sheppard who gave them ideas of pocket-picking and thieving \[which\] they never would have had but for the play”.{{sfnp|V5X38KB7|47}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Some accounts say 1773.{{sfnp|UEJV82U6}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24314
---
### [The Victory of Faith (painting)](https://engole.info/the-victory-of-faith-painting/)
**Published:** October 4, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/George_Hare_-_Victory_of_Faith.jpg/1920px-George_Hare_-_Victory_of_Faith.jpg[/pimage]Painting by the Irish artist Saint George Hare, depicting two sleeping nude women, apparently Christian martyrs, sentenced to be devoured by beasts.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/George_Hare_-_Victory_of_Faith.jpg/1920px-George_Hare_-_Victory_of_Faith.jpg)Oil on canvas
123 cm × 200 cm (48 in × 79 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Victory of Faith* is a painting by the Irish artist Saint George Hare (1857–1933), completed in 1891.\[a\]1891 is cited by most sources, but the National Gallery of Victoria also gives 1890 as a possibility.{{sfnp|WGJ79WCB}} It depicts two sleeping nude women, one shackled, apparently Christian martyrs sentenced to death by beasts (*damnatio ad bestias*).{{sfnp|MF7JKQV2|223-224}}
The women are lying asleep on some straw, behind them a lion’s cage, through the bars of which the animals are glaring at their victims.
A contemporary article in *The Homiletic Review* of 1894 called the painting an “impressive depiction of Christian faith and steadfastness”, and described the two women as being in a “sisterly embrace”.{{sfnp|RI23NMMG}} A more modern assessment by the art historian Kobena Mercer considered the work to be a depiction of an interracial lesbian couple, likening it to *Les Amis* by Jules Robert Auguste.{{sfnp|BQY29UDG|138}}
*The Victory of Faith* was exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1891, and at the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893.\[b\]A celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World in 1492. It is currently in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, having been donated to the gallery anonymously in 1905.{{sfnp|WGJ79WCB}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a 1891 is cited by most sources, but the National Gallery of Victoria also gives 1890 as a possibility.{{sfnp|WGJ79WCB}} b A celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World in 1492.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26848
This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmcloud.org/pageinfo/en.wikipedia.org/The_Victory_of_Faith_%28painting%29#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Painting
---
### [Doggerel](https://engole.info/doggerel/)
**Published:** March 9, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Clumsy and awkward verse often employed for comic effect.
**Content:**
Doggerel is “tediously inept”,{{sfnp|H5QRIQDP}} clumsy and rhythmically awkward verse, often expressing shallow sentimentality, as in greeting cards; the form is often used for comic effect.{{sfnp|3RB2Y57M}} One of the earliest uses of the term *doggerel* appears in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340s – 1400), who described his “Tale of Sir Thopas”, one of the stories in *The Canterbury Tales*, as “rym doggerel”.{{sfnp|CE6N53VA}}
The “giftedly bad” Scottish poet William McGonagall (1825–1902) was an accomplished writer of doggerel, as evidenced in his “The Tay Bridge Disaster”,\[a\]The Tay Bridge, over the Firth of Tay in Scotland, collapsed during a violent storm as a train was passing over it on the evening of 28 December 1879, with the loss of all on board. one of the best-known of his poems, which ends:{{sfnp|2B33RGC5}}
> It must have been an awful sight,
> To witness in the dusky moonlight,
> While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
> Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
> Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
> I must now conclude my lay
> By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
> That your central girders would not have given way,
> At least many sensible men do say,
> Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
> At least many sensible men confesses,
> For the stronger we our houses do build,
> The less chance we have of being killed.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The Tay Bridge, over the Firth of Tay in Scotland, collapsed during a violent storm as a train was passing over it on the evening of 28 December 1879, with the loss of all on board.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25190
**Categories:** Poetry
---
### [Lady Rachel Workman MacRobert](https://engole.info/lady-rachel-workman-macrobert/)
**Published:** June 26, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/LadyMacRobert1.jpg[/pimage]Geologist, cattle breeder, an active feminist and creator of the MacRobert Trust, a charity that supports the RAF and others
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/LadyMacRobert1.jpg)Lady MacRobert
Wikimedia Commons
Rachel Workman MacRobert, Lady MacRobert (23 March 1884 – 1 September 1954), commonly known as Lady Rachel Workman MacRobert,\[a\]As the wife of a baronet she was not strictly entitled to this style, which is reserved for the daughters of earls, marquesses, and dukes. was a geologist, cattle breeder and an active feminist. Born in Massachusetts to an influential family, she was educated in England and Scotland. She was elected to Fellowship of the Geological Society of London, one of the first three women admitted. Her scientific studies included petrology and mineralogy in Sweden and her first academic paper was published in 1911. She married [Sir Alexander MacRobert](https://engole.info/sir-alexander-macrobert/), a Scottish self-made millionaire, with whom she had three sons. He was endowed with a knighthood in 1910 and a baronetcy in 1922, but died later that year. Lady Rachel’s sons all pre-deceased her – the eldest in a flying accident in 1938; the other two died in action during the Second World War, serving with the Royal Air Force. On the death of her husband she became a director of the British India Corporation, the conglomerate he had founded.
To commemorate her sons, Rachel paid for a Short Stirling bomber named MacRobert’s Reply, and four Hawker Hurricanes. In 1943 she created the MacRobert Trust, a charity that continues to support the RAF among other institutions.
## Background and early life
Born on 23 March 1884,{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|137}}\[b\]Haines gives c.1883{{sfnp|G2CCL9IX|192}} for year of birth whereas Rachel’s headstone at Douneside reads 23 March 1884,{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|137 (photo on opposite unnumbered page)}} the same year stated by the MacRobert Trust.{{sfnp|KKZMAVE5}} in Worcester, Massachusetts, Rachel was the eldest child of Fanny Bullock Workman and her husband William Hunter Workman; the couple also had a son, Siegfried, born in 1889.{{sfnp|HEHIYAUZ|34}} Fanny and William were well educated and from prominent, wealthy New England families.{{sfnp|HEHIYAUZ|34}} Fanny received a large inheritance when her father, Alexander,\[c\]Pauly describes Bullock as one of the wealthiest persons in Massachusetts following receipt of the dowry from his wife,{{sfnp|WGUSFEWU}} Elvira Hazard, the daughter of Augustus George Hazard, the gunpowder manufacturer.{{sfnp|B6AM2X3Y|17}} died in 1882 and the family fortune was further boosted by a significant bequest from William’s father in 1885.{{sfnp|HEHIYAUZ|34}}{{sfnp|B6AM2X3Y|16, 19}} The family moved to Dresden when Rachel was five-years-old in 1889 claiming it would be beneficial to William’s “debilitating” health issues.{{sfnp|HEHIYAUZ|34}} Following the move, he made a prompt return to good health and the couple escalated their interests in travelling and exploring the world.{{sfnp|HEHIYAUZ|34}} Rachel and her brother were left in Dresden to be cared for by nurses during their parents’ frequent trips away.{{sfnp|HEHIYAUZ|34-35}} Siegfried died on 26 June 1893{{sfnp|NT93IDK5}} after contracting pneumonia.{{sfnp|HEHIYAUZ|36}} Fanny’s preference for travelling over the responsibilities of motherhood intensified a few months after the funeral{{sfnp|HEHIYAUZ|36}} and Rachel was despatched to England to be educated at The Cheltenham Ladies’ College.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|83}}
After Cheltenham, Rachel attended Royal Holloway College, an institution founded to provide a university education for women.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|83}} In 1911 she graduated with a second class Honours degree in geology having spent a year, 1907 until 1908, undertaking a special study of the subject at the University of Edinburgh.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|83}}{{sfnp|B2W7UF4C}} Rachel remained in contact with her parents and while returning to England from a trip to India with them in 1909 she met Sir Alexander MacRobert.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|82}} Commonly referred to as Mac, he was born in Aberdeen to working class parents.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|14}} He left school when he was twelve but continued his education by attending evening classes.{{sfnp|QMVNZ8GC}} Thirty years older than Rachel, he was born in 1854; when they met he was a widower who had already made a significant fortune building up woollen mills in Cawnpore, or Kanpur as it is now known,{{sfnp|QMVNZ8GC}} where he had worked since early 1884.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|20}} MacRobert received a knighthood in the New Year’s Honours list in 1910 by which time the pair had an established relationship; Rachel refused to attend the ceremony with him at Buckingham Palace declaring: “I will bow to no man.”{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|84}}{{sfnp|RU4I2SNT|100}}
## Marriage and family
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/MacRobert%27sReply.jpg)Propaganda poster showing crew embarking on a Short Stirling bomber “MacRobert’s Reply” : an aircraft sponsored by Lady Rachel Workman MacRobert in memory of her three sons killed in RAF service.
Wikimedia Commons
Rachel and MacRobert married on 7 July 1911 at a Quakers Meeting House in York.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|85}}{{sfnp|PLCE2NLT}} Neither of Rachel’s parents attended the ceremony.{{sfnp|HEHIYAUZ|66}}\[d\]Pauly infers the marriage was in 1912;{{sfnp|HEHIYAUZ|66}} the ceremony was reported in the New York Times in 1911.{{sfnp|PLCE2NLT}} Marriage did not prevent her continuing her studies, as she attended the Imperial College in London.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|83}} While there she undertook research into petrology and mineralogy in Scotland and Sweden,{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|83}} publishing papers on the subject in 1911.{{sfnp|G2CCL9IX|192}} She further enhanced her education by attending the Christiania Mineralogisk Institutet, undertaking a post-graduate research course.{{sfnp|77ZV7SJZ}} Her husband devoted most of his time continuing to build his conglomerate in India but eventually Rachel would not live there and referred to it as “that nasty land”.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|87}} While she was in India she continued her geological research at the Kolar Gold Fields.{{sfnp|77ZV7SJZ}} She soon predominantly divided her time between her studies, European travel and managing the estate at Tarland in Aberdeenshire,{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|87}} which Sir Alexander had acquired in 1905{{sfnp|DWAKSITU}} to complement the small farm he bought nearby in 1888.{{sfnp|QMVNZ8GC}} Rachel did reluctantly travel to India to attend ceremonial events like the Delhi Durbar in mid-December 1911.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|87-88}}{{sfnp|3QUPK6LB|4-5}}
The couple had three children, all boys: Alasdair, the eldest was born on 11 July 1912; Roderic on 8 May 1915; and the youngest, Iain, on 19 April 1917.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|88}} The birth of the children did not curtail Sir Alexander’s commitment and time spent in India resulting in Rachel being left to care for the children alone.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|88}} Despite this, she managed to continue her scientific investigations undertaking research at the Eildon Hills in the Scottish borders which was published in 1914.{{sfnp|G2CCL9IX|192}}
Rachel’s mother was a strong proponent of women’s rights and the suffragette movement,{{sfnp|ATH7B7SF|52}} an advocacy Rachel shared.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|84}} Invitations to garden parties in support of the National Union of Women Workers, or the National Council of Women of Great Britain as it is now known,{{sfnp|RGBECQNM}} were readily accepted and Rachel hosted luncheon parties for suffragette coordinators.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|84}} When suffragettes were involved in violent protests in Aberdeen during 1913 against the conditions imposed on women Rachel justified actions like explosives being thrown by stating: “Girls have no sort of life under present social conditions and the wickedness of men at large”.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|90}}
## Middle years
Sir Alexander was raised to a baronet at the beginning of 1922, choosing to be named Sir Alexander MacRobert of Cawnpore and Cromar of the County of Aberdeen.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|114}} He returned to Scotland in April that year but was in poor health;{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|117-118}} he had a fatal heart attack on 22 June 1922 at Douneside.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|118}}{{sfnp|2L3XHSAG}}\[e\]It was when the baronetcy was awarded that Sir Alexander changed the spelling of McRobert to MacRobert.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|9}} Rachel was left a widow, albeit a rich one, with three boys aged five, seven and ten.{{sfnp|QMVNZ8GC}} Legal difficulties arose over the settlement of Sir Alexander’s will due to unrest in India combined with a lengthy acrimonious disagreement with tax inspectors in the UK.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|122}} His British assets after the payment of death duties amounted to £264,000,{{sfnp|ARL3E2VG}} the equivalent of over £13.7 million as of 2016.{{sfnp|SFZWGZAM}} By 1920 Sir Alexander had built up a portfolio of six companies; he had amalgamated these to form the British India Corporation.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN}} After his death Rachel assumed the role of director,{{sfnp|77ZV7SJZ}} a position she held until her eldest son, Alasdair, became chairman in 1937.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|128}} The three boys did not enjoy robust health;{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|124}} this led to Rachel founding a herd of Friesian dairy cattle at Douneside to produce better quality milk for them.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|125}}
## Additional contributions to geology
During her academic career Rachel took a particular interest in glacial geomorphology and petrology. She studied the occurrence of calcite in the igneous rocks on the Alno Island of southern Norway, and also studied the petrography of Eildon Hill, Scotland.{{sfnp|YUA7X66Y|829}} Soon after her time at Imperial College, Rachel published her first paper in 1911, “Calcite as a Primary Constituent of Igneous Rock”.{{sfnp|G2CCL9IX|192}} Active within the geology research community, Rachel attended the International Geological Congress in 1910 and 1913. At her attendance in 1913 at the Annual General Meeting of the Royal Geological Society an attempt was made to eject her; it did not succeed. As one of the many women to make great academic and social strides in the field of geology, Rachel played a key role in the formal integration of women as Fellows of the Geological Society of London in 1919.{{sfnp|RHZE7FNC|395}} In 1938 she was elected as a life fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.{{sfnp|B2W7UF4C}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a As the wife of a baronet she was not strictly entitled to this style, which is reserved for the daughters of earls, marquesses, and dukes. b Haines gives c.1883{{sfnp|G2CCL9IX|192}} for year of birth whereas Rachel’s headstone at Douneside reads 23 March 1884,{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|137 (photo on opposite unnumbered page)}} the same year stated by the MacRobert Trust.{{sfnp|KKZMAVE5}} c Pauly describes Bullock as one of the wealthiest persons in Massachusetts following receipt of the dowry from his wife,{{sfnp|WGUSFEWU}} Elvira Hazard, the daughter of Augustus George Hazard, the gunpowder manufacturer.{{sfnp|B6AM2X3Y|17}} d Pauly infers the marriage was in 1912;{{sfnp|HEHIYAUZ|66}} the ceremony was reported in the New York Times in 1911.{{sfnp|PLCE2NLT}} e It was when the baronetcy was awarded that Sir Alexander changed the spelling of McRobert to MacRobert.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|9}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2864
**Categories:** American, Female, Feminist, Geologist
---
### [Certain Personal Matters](https://engole.info/certain-personal-matters/)
**Published:** January 21, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6f/CertainPersonalMatterHGWells.jpg[/pimage]Collection of 39 mainly humorous essays and articles by H. G. Wells, first published in 1897.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6f/CertainPersonalMatterHGWells.jpg)First edition cover
Wikimedia Commons
*Certain Personal Matters* is a collection of 39 mainly humorous essays and articles written by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published by William Heinemann in 1897.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|38-39}} The essays are written from a consistent first-person perspective, but only one describes an identifiable event in Wells’s life – how he responded to being diagnosed with tuberculosis in late 1887. For the others, the author adopts the playful persona of an aspiring young writer living in modest circumstances with a wife, Euphemia, who is only sketchily and obliquely described.
The tone of the essays reflects the demands of the market in London magazines for “short essays, or short stories, often with a twist, which can be read in half a dozen minutes, but which will pique a reader’s attention and ultimately allow him to think, ‘How true. I have done that myself’, or to make some similar remark.”{{sfnp|QQBTDLET|35}} Half a dozen of them deal with scientific themes, especially natural selection and evolution, and in “[The Extinction of Man](https://engole.info/the-extinction-of-man)” Wells shows that he is contemplating themes that would be elaborated on in his next novel, *The War of the Worlds*: “Even now, for all we can tell, the coming terror may be crouching for its spring and the fall of humanity may be at hand.”
## Composition
The essays in *Certain Personal Matters* rely on stock characters that Wells developed in his early days as a writer. This vein was inspired by his reading of *When a Man’s Single*, an 1888 novel by J. M. Barrie, in which a character explains that saleable articles can be devised from everyday things like pipes, umbrellas, and flower pots.{{sfnp|WGC8MDMN|95}} According to biographer David C. Smith, one character is “probably based on his father (and perhaps partly on his older brothers), another based on his mother apparently (although the character is always referred to as an ‘aunt’, which may be somewhat symbolic), and a third character, ‘Euphemia’. This last is usually thought to be a portrait of Jane \[Catherine\] Wells, though the figure may have some traits of Isabel \[Wells’s cousin and first wife\] as well.”{{sfnp|QQBTDLET|35}}
## Contents
Essays are shown in the order in which they appear in the book, which is not necessarily the order in which they first appeared in print elsewhere.
- “Thoughts on Cheapness and My Aunt Charlotte”
- “The Trouble of Life”
- [“On the Choice of a Wife](https://engole.info/on-the-choice-of-a-wife)“
- “The House of Di Sorno: A Manuscript Found in a Box”
- “Of Conversation: An Apology”
- “In a Literary Household”
- “On Schooling and the Phases of Mr. Sandsome”
- “The Poet and the Emporium”
- “The Language of Flowers”
- “The Literary Regimen”
- “House-Hunting as an Outdoor Amusement”
- “Of Blades and Bladery”
- “Of Cleverness: Apropos of One Crichton”
- “The Pose Novel”
- “The Veteran Cricketer”
- “Concerning a Certain Lady”
- “[The Shopman](https://engole.info/the-shopman/)“
- “[The Book of Curses](https://engole.info/the-book-of-curses/)“
- “Dunstone’s Dear Lady”
- “Euphemia’s New Entertainment”
- “For Freedom of Spelling: The Discovery of an Art”
- “[Incidental Thoughts on a Bald Head](https://engole.info/incidental-thoughts-on-a-bald-head/)“
- “[Of a Book Unwritten](https://engole.info/the-man-of-the-year-million/)“
- “[The Extinction of Man](https://engole.info/the-extinction-of-man/)“
- “The Writing of Essays”
- “The Parkes Museum”
- “Bleak March in Epping Forest”
- “The Theory of Quotation”
- “On the Art of Staying at the Seaside: A Meditation at Eastbourne”
- “Concerning Chess”
- “The Coal-Scuttle: A Study in Domestic Aesthetics”
- “Bagarrow”
- “The Book of Essays Dedicatory”
- “Through a Microscope: Some Moral Reflections”
- “The Pleasure of Quarreling”
- “The Amateur Nature Lover”
- “From an Observatory”
- “The Mode in Monuments: Stray Thoughts in Highgate Cemetery”
- “How I Died”
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23449
## External links
- *[Certain Personal Matters](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17508)* at Project Gutenberg
This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Certain_Personal_Matters#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Essay, H. G. Wells
---
### [Act of Supremacy 1534](https://engole.info/act-of-supremacy-1534/)
**Published:** December 7, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Coat_of_Arms_of_Henry_VIII_of_England_%281509-1547%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_Arms_of_Henry_VIII_of_England_%281509-1547%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of Parliament acknowledging King Henry VIII as the supreme leader of the Church of England.
**Content:**
Wikimedia Commons
The Act of Supremacy 1534 (26 Hen. 8 c. 1) acknowledged the leadership of the Church of England as being vested in King Henry VIII and his heirs, declaring Henry to be the “supreme head on earth of the Church of England”. The Act was carefully worded to avoid the impression that it was granting that title to the King, which would have implied that it could also be revoked by parliament, instead of merely formally confirming the status quo.{{sfnp|RLPDAW3K}}
Soon after the Act was passed, Henry devolved the authority now formally granted to him over the Church’s spiritual and doctrinal issues to a spiritual vicegerent, the layman Thomas Cromwell.{{sfnp|RLPDAW3K}}
The primary motivation behind the Act of Supremacy was Henry’s desire to produce a male heir. He had been trying for years to have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled, and had convinced himself that God was punishing him for marrying his brother’s widow.{{sfnp|7Y2ETBCV|179}}\[a\]Henry had needed a dispensation from Pope Julius II to allow his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, which was granted after she testified that her marriage to Henry’s brother, Arthur, had never been consummated.{{sfnp|LAVDJWKE|34}} But Pope Clement VII was refusing to grant an annulment because, according to Roman Catholic doctrine, a validly contracted marriage is indissoluble until death.\[b\]The Pope may not have been entirely unbiased in the matter, as Catherine of Aragon was his aunt.{{sfnp|WU44IVA9|20}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Henry had needed a dispensation from Pope Julius II to allow his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, which was granted after she testified that her marriage to Henry’s brother, Arthur, had never been consummated.{{sfnp|LAVDJWKE|34}} b The Pope may not have been entirely unbiased in the matter, as Catherine of Aragon was his aunt.{{sfnp|WU44IVA9|20}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Legislation
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Skyhooks (Trafford Park)](https://engole.info/skyhooks-trafford-park/)
**Published:** June 13, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/sky-hooks-trafford-park.webp[/pimage]Pair of 18-metre high statues at the northern entrance to Trafford Park, erected in 1995 to mark the area's regeneration.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/sky-hooks-trafford-park.webp)map
https://goo.gl/maps/vBVexpa1sfsVMH2a9}}|brianfell.org.uk
Skyhooks is a pair of {{convert|18|m|adj=on}} high statues created by the English artist Brian Fell,{{sfnp|BPZ9KSJ2}} erected at the northern entrance to the [Trafford Park](https://engole.info/trafford-park) industrial estate in 1995 to mark the area’s regeneration.{{sfnp|WSRZUXK4}} They were intended as a reference to the common practical joke of sending new apprentices in factories or workplaces to ask for impossible items such as tartan paint, or sky hooks.{{sfnp|BPZ9KSJ2}}
The statues were removed and put into storage in 2019 to allow further redevelopment in the area to take place, and were restored to their present locations two years later.{{sfnp|WSRZUXK4}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25394
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Sculpture
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Penny reading](https://engole.info/penny-reading/)
**Published:** October 29, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Penny_Reading_1871.jpg[/pimage]Form of popular entertainment that arose in the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Penny_Reading_1871.jpg)Penny reading for the 71st (Highland) Regiment of Foot at Aldershot, 1871
Wikimedia Commons
A penny reading was a form of popular public entertainment that arose in the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century, consisting of readings and other performances, for which the admission charged was one penny.{{sfnp|53XI2HBC|20-21}}
The Public Reading Society, established by Charles John Plumptre and Serjeant Edward William Cox in the 1850s, was the first to provide penny readings for the public.{{sfnp|XFYXBCHH}} An 1887 handbook for parish priests suggests a programme of around fifteen items, “instrumental pieces, songs, glees, recitation, and readings”, recommending variety. It notes that “Comic songs should, as a rule, be avoided”.{{sfnp|4JCEBUYJ|182}}
Penny readings were at the height of their popularity in the 1860s, but by 1871 a book review in *The Literary World* lamented that:{{sfnp|N4K53SWK|117}}
As conducted by their originators, Penny Readings were unquestionably useful and attractive without being frivolous: as conducted by some of those gentlemen’s imitators, they [have] run riot and become farcical, and have lost almost every philanthropic or praiseworthy element they at first possessed.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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---
### [Barn Hill Meadows](https://engole.info/barn-hill-meadows/)
**Published:** May 14, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Festuca.rubra.2.jpg[/pimage]Biological Site of Special Scientific Interest In the East Riding of Yorkshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Festuca.rubra.2.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/VHevfkdfSD9sYz3B7}}
Red fescue is the dominant grass on the site.
Barn Hill Meadows is an {{convert|8.6|ha|adj=on}} biological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in the East Riding of Yorkshire, just west of the town of Howden.{{sfnp|KCK96IHR}}
The site lies on the flood plain of the Old Derwent river, and is important for its herb-rich, unimproved, neutral grassland. It comprises seven fields, which have been traditionally managed for hay, and some of which have retained their original ridge and furrow features. The dominant grasses are red fescue (*Festuca rubra*) and sweet vernal-grass (*Anthoxanthum odoratum*), but there is also an abundance of great burnet (*Sanguisorba officinalis*), along with pepper saxifrage (*Silaum silaus*) and meadow cranes bill (*Geranium pratense*).{{sfnp|KCK96IHR}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29995
**Categories:** SSSI, Yorkshire
---
### [Allard Specials](https://engole.info/allard-specials/)
**Published:** June 13, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Allard-Special.webp[/pimage]Series of one-off competition cars produced between 1934 and 1939, the first of which was CLK 5.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Allard-Special.webp)CLK 5 taking part in the 1936 Land’s End Trial
Wikipedia
Sydney Herbert Allard (1910–1966) was the designer and manufacturer of a series of one-off competition cars produced between 1934 and 1939, the first of which was CLK 5.{{sfnp|KQK7XYTY|18-21}} Twelve Specials were built before the outbreak of the Second World War.{{sfnp|KQK7XYTY|24}}
## Background
Allard had exhibited a keen interest in motor cars from a young age, and had taught himself how to drive by the age of sixteen. On completing his secondary education Sydney was found a job at F. W. Lucas Ltd., a garage and motor dealership, at first as a helper and then as a motor mechanic. He attended evening classes at Battersea Polytechnic and took a correspondence course in engineering, eventually becoming a member of the Institute of Automobile Engineers. Recognising his son’s determination to pursue a career in motor engineering, Arthur Allard purchased a building in Keswick Road, Putney, and helped him to setup in business with Alf Brisco, who had been the head mechanic at F. W. Lucas.{{sfnp|KQK7XYTY|19}}
Allard’s first competitive motor race had been with his brother Dennis at Brooklands in 1929, driving a Grand Prix Morgan three-wheeler in a three-lap handicap race, which they won.{{sfnp|49PV3R37}} He subsequently converted the Morgan to four wheels in an attempt to increase its stability, but ultimately its low ground clearance made it unsuitable for trialling, one of Allard’s great interests. Adlards Motors,\[a\]The building bought by Arthur Allard had belonged to a building and roofing company called Robert Adlard, and it was decided to retain the name Adlards, hence Adlards Motors. The new company occupied the ground floor and there was a block of flats above.{{sfnp|4VUKVI5E}} as the new business was called, provided the workshop space to allow Allard to begin serious work on his competition specials. But Sydney’s father disapproved of his son’s competition activities, regarding them as a distraction from Adlard’s regular garage work, so the specials sometimes had to be hidden from view under canvas at the back of the workshop.{{sfnp|BL3UZUQM}}
Each of the Allard Specials is identified by its registration number.
## CLK 5
CLK 5 was the first of Allard’s specials, built almost entirely from a damaged 1934 Model 40 Ford V8 except for the bodywork, which came from a two-seater Bugatti. The steering box and column, and the petrol tank, were also cannabilised from the Bugatti. With a ground clearance of more than 9 inches (23 cm) and plenty of low-speed torque from the 3.29-litre (201 cu in) Ford flathead V8 engine, CLK 5 was ideally suited for its role as a trials machine.{{sfnp|KQK7XYTY|21}}
So successful was CLK 5 that two more similar Allards were built.{{sfnp|49PV3R37}}
## FGP 750
FGP 750 was the first of two CLK 5 copies. Like its sister car, it had the same – although slightly elongated – imitation Bugatti-type tail as CLK 5, and was fitted with Ford steel disc wheels. Holes were drilled in the car’s chassis to reduce its weight.{{sfnp|4VUKVI5E}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The building bought by Arthur Allard had belonged to a building and roofing company called Robert Adlard, and it was decided to retain the name Adlards, hence Adlards Motors. The new company occupied the ground floor and there was a block of flats above.{{sfnp|4VUKVI5E}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2060
**Categories:** Automobile, British
---
### [The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James](https://engole.info/the-collected-ghost-stories-of-m-r-james/)
**Published:** August 25, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9b/The_Collected_Ghost_Stories_of_M._R._James.jpg[/pimage]Collection of all but four of the ghost stories written by the English medievalist and author M. R. James, first published in 1931.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9b/The_Collected_Ghost_Stories_of_M._R._James.jpg)First edition cover
Wikimedia Commons
*The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James* is a compendium of stories by the English medievalist and author M. R. James (1862–1936) first published in 1931, which gathers together all but four of his ghost stories which had not yet been published:
- “The Experiment”
- “The Malice of Inanimate Objects”
- “[A Vignette](https://engole.info/a-vignette)“
- “The Fenstanton Witch”
Despite the book’s title, James’s stories veer more towards horror than ghostly apparitions, embellished by his inclusion of footnotes and genuine bibliographical references, lending an aura of authenticity.{{sfnp|753HMMNJ}}
## Contents
- “[Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book](https://engole.info/canon-alberics-scrap-book)“
- “[Lost Hearts](https://engole.info/lost-hearts)“
- “[The Mezzotint](https://engole.info/the-mezzotint)“
- “[The Ash Tree](https://engole.info/the-ash-tree)“
- “[Number 13](https://engole.info/number-13-short-story)“
- “[Count Magnus](https://engole.info/count-magnus)“
- “‘[Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’](https://engole.info/oh-whistle-and-ill-come-to-you-my-lad)“
- “[The Treasure of Abbot Thomas](https://engole.info/the-treasure-of-abbot-thomas)“
- “[A School Story](https://engole.info/a-school-story)“
- “[The Rose Garden](https://engole.info/the-rose-garden)“
- “[The Tractate Middoth](https://engole.info/the-tractate-middoth)“
- “[Casting the Runes](https://engole.info/casting-the-runes)“
- “[The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral](https://engole.info/the-stalls-of-barchester-cathedral)“
- “[Martin’s Close](https://engole.info/martins-close)“
- “[Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance](https://engole.info/mr-humphreys-and-his-inheritance)“
- “The Residence at Whitminster”
- “[The Diary of Mr Poynter](https://engole.info/the-diary-of-mr-poynter)“
- “[An Episode of Cathedral History](https://engole.info/an-episode-of-cathedral-history)“
- “The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance”
- “[Two Doctors](https://engole.info/two-doctors)“
- “[The Haunted Dolls’ House](https://engole.info/the-haunted-dolls-house)“
- “[The Uncommon Prayer-Book](https://engole.info/the-uncommon-prayer-book)“
- “[A Neighbour’s Landmark](https://engole.info/a-neighbours-landmark)“
- “A View from a Hill”
- “[A Warning to the Curious](https://engole.info/a-warning-to-the-curious)“
- “An Evening’s Entertainment”
- “Wailing Well”
- “There Was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard”
- “[Rats](https://engole.info/rats)“
- “After Dark in the Playing Fields”
## See also
- [List of works by M. R. James](https://engole.info/m-r-james-bibliography)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25565
**Categories:** Ghost story
---
### [Corn Exchange, Fakenham](https://engole.info/corn-exchange-fakenham/)
**Published:** October 31, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Grade II listed former corn exchange in Fakenham, Norfolk, now used as a cinema.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Central-Cinema.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/W7fQdaWWX9fTfvQQ7}}
Southwest corner|Historic England
The Corn Exchange is a Grade II [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Fakenham, Norfolk, currently used as a cinema.{{sfnp|ML6VI86Y}} Completed in 1855, it was built by a group of local businessmen who in 1844 founded the Fakenham Corn Exchange and Public Rooms Company.{{sfnp|HGJDBTRJ}} Prominent among the investors was Thomas Coke, 2nd Earl of Leicester, whose seat was at nearby Holkham Hall.{{sfnp|SMMERK3U|62}}
The site selected for the construction of the corn exchange, in the centre of the Market Place, had been occupied by a market cross and sessions hall dating back to 1649, but which had been demolished in 1801.{{sfnp|33RIVRH8}}
The exchange was designed by John Brown of Norwich and cost £4,000.{{sfnp|33RIVRH8}} It is built of brick with stuccoed dressings, and its rounded corners have brick [quoins](https://engole.info/quoin).{{sfnp|ML6VI86Y}} As well as the main hall used by traders, there was a magistrates’ courtroom and a library.{{sfnp|33RIVRH8}}
The building was converted into a 700-seat cinema in 1932,{{sfnp|33RIVRH8}} which closed in 1976. It was subsequently used as a bingo hall until the latter half of the 1990s.{{sfnp|2MGDDLTE}} After lying vacant and disused for a couple of years the exchange was restored as closely as possible to its original design and reopened as a cinema in 2000, known as the Central Cinema since 2017.{{sfnp|33RIVRH8}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26939
---
### [Cornish tin stamps](https://engole.info/cornish-tin-stamps/)
**Published:** December 27, 2021
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Geevor_waterwheel_stamps.jpg[/pimage]Large machines for crushing tin and copper ore.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Geevor_waterwheel_stamps.jpg)Restored 19th-century tin stamps and waterwheel at Geevor Tin Mine in Cornwall
Wikimedia Commons
Stamps were large machines that crushed tin or copper ore, pulverising small lumps into a sand-like material. Each stamp was made from heavy timber with an iron head at the bottom. A rotating axle with cams raised the head and dropped it onto the ore, and water washed it into a box beneath. The heads, weighing between 4 and 8 cwt (200–400 kgs) each, were arranged in sets of four in timber frames. Small stamps could be powered by water wheels and larger ones by steam engines. Before the stamps were used, the work was done manually by women known as bal-maidens. The stamps used in Cornwall in the early 19th century were usually water powered.{{sfnp|Z956CE5Z}} Steam power was first used to drive the stamps in 1813 at Wheal Fanny on Carn Brae.{{sfnp|DNMD6CP8|25}}
Californian stamps were introduced in America during the gold rush of the late 1840s. They differed from the Cornish stamps design in having five circular, not four square heads. After 1857 better-performing Californian stamps began to be used in Cornwall. Stamps were manufactured locally by Harvey’s of Hayle and the [Perran Foundry](https://engole.info/perran-foundry/).{{sfnp|DNMD6CP8|25}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24268
**Categories:** Cornwall
---
### [Glen Loy Aqueduct](https://engole.info/glen-loy-aqueduct/)
**Published:** May 9, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Glen_Loy_Aqueduct%2C_Caledonain_Canal_%28geograph_3285838%29.jpg[/pimage]Category A designated aqueduct carrying the Caledonian Canal over the River Loy in Inverness-shire, Scotland.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Glen_Loy_Aqueduct%2C_Caledonain_Canal_%28geograph_3285838%29.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/uTmz2sdAh72jYuVL9
The Glen Loy Aqueduct, also known as the River Loy Aqueduct, carries the Caledonian Canal over the River Loy in Inverness-shire, Scotland.{{sfnp|BQ6CW9XV}}
Built in 1806, the bridge consists of three parallel tunnels. The central span, through which the river flows, is of {{convert|7.6|m|r=0}}. The two outer tunnels, spanning {{convert|3|m}} and {{convert|76|m}} in length, for pedestrian or animal use, are paved with large cobbles.{{sfnp|BQ6CW9XV}}{{sfnp|5SF2VFBN|159}}
The Glen Loy Aqueduct was designated a Category A [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1977.{{sfnp|BQ6CW9XV}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29977
**Categories:** Aqueduct
---
### [The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke](https://engole.info/the-fairy-fellers-master-stroke/)
**Published:** February 26, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/Image-Dadd_-_Fairy_Feller%27s.jpg/960px-Image-Dadd_-_Fairy_Feller%27s.jpg[/pimage]Painting by the English artist Richard Dadd (1817–1886), considered to be his masterpiece.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/Image-Dadd_-_Fairy_Feller%27s.jpg/960px-Image-Dadd_-_Fairy_Feller%27s.jpg)*The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke*, 1864
oil on canvas
54 cm × 39.5 cm (21 in × 16 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke* is a painting by the English artist [Richard Dadd](https://engole.info/richard-dadd) (1817–1886), generally considered to be his masterpiece, although Dadd believed it to be unfinished.{{sfnp|5RUJ8V2C}} It was begun in 1855 and worked on until 1864, while Dadd was incarcerated in the criminal lunatic asylum attached to Bethlem Hospital,\[a\]Known as Bedlam. where he was confined after murdering his father in 1843.{{sfnp|AIQMI7JN}}
The painting was commissioned by George Henry Haydon, who was head steward of the hospital at the time. Dadd signed the back of the canvas with the inscription: “The Fairy-Feller’s Master-Stroke, Painted for G. H. Haydon Esqre by Rd. Dadd quasi 1855–64”.{{sfnp|QZ7F9N43|61}} According to Dadd’s biographer Patricia Allderidge, *quasi* “may mean that it was set aside during that period or that it took a long time to start”.{{sfnp|L4AC2ZFQ|31}} The end date, 1864, coincides with Dadd’s transfer to the newly built Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire, the asylum where he spent the remaining 21 years of his life.{{sfnp|L4AC2ZFQ|33}}
## Composition
The Fairy Feller, the main focus of the picture, is standing with his back to the viewer, with his axe raised ready to split a large chestnut, to be used in the construction of Queen Mab’s new fairy carriage.\[b\]Queen Mab is a fairy referred to in William Shakespeare’s play *Romeo and Juliet*, where “she is the fairies’ midwife”. Later depictions have typically portrayed her as the Queen of the Fairies. He is waiting for the signal to strike from the white-bearded patriarch in the centre of the picture, whose right hand is raised. The rest of the fairy band is looking on in anticipation, anxious to see whether the Fairy Feller will succeed in splitting the nut with a single stroke.{{sfnp|5RUJ8V2C}}
The tiny apothecary brandishing a mortar and pestle in the top right of the picture is a portrait of the artist’s father Robert Dadd,{{sfnp|5RUJ8V2C}} whom Dadd had murdered in 1843 believing him to be the Devil in disguise.{{sfnp|PNC75H6Y}}
In 1865 Dadd wrote a “long and rambling poem” titled *Elimination of a Picture & its subject – called The Feller’s Master Stroke*, in which he attempted to explain some of the imagery in *The Fairy Feller*.{{sfnp|5RUJ8V2C}} The art historian Nicholas Tromans has commented that there is a “curious sense of disavowal” in the poem, “as if saying who is in it is all he can do, their significance being beyond his explanation”.{{sfnp|BUWAIS2G}}
In 1974 Freddy Mercury, of the rock group *Queen*, used some quotations from Dadd’s poem in the lyrics to a song that took its title from the painting.{{sfnp|PRDIG4T4}}
## Provenance
The painting passed from Haydon to the collector Alfred Morrison, whose daughter gave it to the war poet Siegfried Sassoon on his marriage to her daughter in 1933.{{sfnp|BUWAIS2G}}
Sassoon had befriended three brothers while fighting in the trenches of the First World War, grandsons of Richard Dadd’s elder brother. Two of them died during the conflict, and a third, Julian Dadd, committed suicide in 1937.{{sfnp|PRDIG4T4}} Sassoon decided in 1963 to donate *The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke* to the Tate, “in memory of his friend and fellow officer Julian Dadd, a grandnephew of the artist, and of his \[Julian’s\] two brothers \[Stephen Gabriel and Edmund\] who gave their lives in the First World War”.{{sfnp|5RUJ8V2C}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Known as Bedlam. b Queen Mab is a fairy referred to in William Shakespeare’s play *Romeo and Juliet*, where “she is the fairies’ midwife”. Later depictions have typically portrayed her as the Queen of the Fairies.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26044
**Categories:** Fairy, Painting
---
### [William Hulton](https://engole.info/william-hulton/)
**Published:** January 23, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Wm-Hulton.jpg[/pimage]Landowner who lived at Hulton Hall in Lancashire, notorious for his part in the Peterloo Massacre.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Wm-Hulton.jpg)William Hulton
William Hulton (23 October 1787 – 30 March 1864) was a landowner and magistrate who lived at Hulton Hall near Westhoughton in Lancashire, the estate his family had owned since the late 12th century. His family wealth was built on the coal under the estate that was developed particularly after the construction of the [Bolton and Leigh Railway](https://engole.info/bolton-and-leigh-railway/).
Hulton became notorious for two events: the execution of four Luddites who set alight a factory in Westhoughton and as Chairman of the Lancashire and Cheshire Magistrates who ordered the local yeomanry to disperse the crowd at a reform meeting that caused the deaths of fifteen people in what became known as the [Peterloo Massacre](https://engole.info/peterloo-massacre/).
## Life
William Hulton was the second son of William Hulton and Jane (née Brooke). His father, who enjoyed hunting and horseracing at Kersal Moor, was High Sherrif of Lancashire in 1789. When his father died in 1800, William Hulton was 12 years old.{{sfnp|BZZZAQKU|9}} He matriculated in 1804 and proceeded to Brasenose College, Oxford where he was awarded M. A. in 1807. On attaining his majority in 1808, Hulton took charge of the estate and married his cousin, Maria Ford. Together they had thirteen children, ten of whom survived to maturity.{{sfnp|BZZZAQKU|10}}
Hulton died on 30 March 1864 at Leamington Priors in Warwickshire and was buried on 5 April 1864 at St Mary’s Church in Deane, not far from his estate near Bolton.
## Politics, Luddites and Peterloo
Politically, Hulton was a Tory whose hero was William Pitt the Younger. In 1811, aged 24, Hulton was appointed High Sheriff of Lancashire and was made a Justice of the Peace.{{sfnp|BZZZAQKU|10}} The following year Luddites, English textile workers who, between 1811 and 1816, destroyed the machinery in cotton and woollen mills that they believed was threatening their jobs, set fire to Rowe and Dunscough’s Mill in Westhoughton. Twelve protesters were arrested. Hulton testified that one, aged 15, was honest and industrious and was acquitted but four who were sent for trial including a boy aged twelve, were hanged outside Lancaster Castle. It is likely that his colleague, Colonel Fletcher of Bolton, may have taken advantage of Hulton’s inexperience at his “grim introduction” to the Justiceship.{{sfnp|BZZZAQKU|13–14}}
In 1819 Hulton was made chairman of the Lancashire and Cheshire Magistrates, a committee set up to deal with the civil unrest endemic in the area. It was Hulton who summoned the local Yeomanry to deal with the large crowd in St Peter’s Square in Manchester on 16 August 1819 that had gathered to hear the radical political agitator Henry Hunt.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|166–167}}
Hulton, watching from a house on the edge of St Peter’s Field, saw the enthusiastic reception Hunt received on his arrival. He issued an arrest warrant for Hunt, Joseph Johnson, John Knight, and James Moorhouse. The Chief Constable said that the press of the crowd surrounding the hustings would make military assistance necessary. Hulton then wrote two letters, one to Major Thomas Trafford, commanding the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry Cavalry, and the other to the military commander in Manchester, Lieutenant Colonel Guy L’Estrange. The contents of both notes were similar:{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|166–167}}
Sir, as chairman of the select committee of magistrates, I request you to proceed immediately to no. 6 Mount Street, where the magistrates are assembled. They consider the Civil Power wholly inadequate to preserve the peace. I have the honour, & c. Wm. Hulton.{{sfnp
— MNS42M6Q|167}}
— Letter sent by William Hulton to Major Trafford of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry Cavalry
The Yeomanry, on horseback with sabres drawn, forced their way through the crowd to allow Hunt to be arrested. Hulton perceived the events as an assault on the yeomanry, and when L’Estrange and his hussars arrived, he ordered them to disperse the crowd with the words: “Good God, Sir, don’t you see they are attacking the Yeomanry; disperse the meeting!” Fifteen people died from sabre and musket wounds or trampling and 400 to 500 were injured.{{sfnp|BZZZAQKU|219}}
Lord Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, conveyed the kings’s satisfaction at Hulton’s “prompt, decisive and efficient measures” but his reputation was forever tainted among the working classes who nicknamed him, “old Peterloo”.{{sfnp|9Q9IFU6U}} Hulton was vilified by the local population and was obliged to decline a safe parliamentary seat offered to him in 1820. The bad feeling continued and in 1841 Hulton and his family were attacked during an election campaign in Bolton.{{sfnp|9Q9IFU6U}}
Hulton’s great-great-great grandson, the Conservative peer and screenwriter, Julian Fellowes, considers that his ancestor was “was clearly terrified of any overthrow of the established social order.” He describes Hulton’s heavy-handed response to the events at St Peter’s Field as a total misreading of the situation. “It was only the barest of beginnings for any kind of workers’ movement, but Hulton immediately went into some kind of overdrive, attacking a group that included a group of many women and many children – a lot of whom hadn’t done anything.”{{sfnp|NSD67UUG}}
## Coal
Hulton’s message to his striking colliers in 1831
Wikimedia Commons
The Hulton fortune was built on coal under the Hulton Park estate and Hulton who owned mineral rights in surrounding townships developed the collieries.{{sfnp|9Q9IFU6U}} Hulton only ceased paying his workforce with tokens or vouchers that could only be redeemed in his company shop in 1831, when the practice was outlawed by the passing of the Truck Act.{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|26}}
In 1831 Hulton’s colliers struck for the right to be members of a union and demanded an increase in wages. Hulton’s response was to issue a handbill explaining that the men were “amply rewarded” and that they had “wantonly injured” him “in his purse”. {{sfnp|ASW7YVVA|36}}
David Swallow, general secretary of the Miners’ Association, said in 1843 that Hulton’s colliers were the poorest paid in Lancashire. When Swallow visited Westhoughton, Hulton and other local coal owners persuaded the local publicans to prevent him. from holding meetings in their premises and paid for beer to keep their miners away from the union. Hulton threatened Swallow with prison if he held an outdoor meeting.{{sfnp|ASW7YVVA|35}} Hulton still did not wish to see free assembly of working men.{{sfnp|ASW7YVVA|36}}
In 1858, in partnership with Harwood Walcot Banner, Hulton founded the [Hulton Colliery Company](https://engole.info/hulton-collieries/). From 1868 onwards the company traded under the Hulton name. It became a limited liability company in 1886 when the Hultons relinquished direct control.{{sfnp|9Q9IFU6U}}
## Bolton and Leigh Railway
Hulton was a major supporter and promoter of the Bolton and Leigh Railway, the first public railway in Lancashire. It passed close to the west of his estate and enabled him to sell coal from his pits to Bolton, Manchester and Liverpool. George Stephenson stayed at Hulton Hall for several months while the railway way being planned and built. The northern section of the line was opened on 1 August 1828, witnessed by 40,000 people.{{sfnp|9Q9IFU6U}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 13556
**Categories:** English, Lancashire, Landowner, Male
---
### [Barfoot Aqueduct](https://engole.info/barfoot-aqueduct/)
**Published:** May 10, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Barfoot-Aqueduct.webp[/pimage]Grade II designated aqueduct carrying the Bridgewater Canal over the River Mersey at Stretford, Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Barfoot-Aqueduct.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/tZ3iULPBQS4iZnzJA
The Barfoot Aqueduct carries the Bridgewater Canal over the River Mersey at [Stretford](https://engole.info/stretford), Greater Manchester. Built by J. Gilbert and J. Brindley c. 1776, it was designated a Grade II [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1987.{{sfnp|G28SVTZ2}}
The single segmental-arched bridge is contructed of dressed stone and brick. The arch is constructed in brick with a band of stone and two continuous bands above. The west parapet has been rebuilt in brick, concrete and steel, but the east side retains its stone-coped brick parapet wall. Each side is {{convert|823|m} long and {{convert|5.2|m}} high The ground on both sides of the bridge is boggy, so timber supports on an earth embankment lined with puddled clay were used to support the structure.{{sfnp|G28SVTZ2}}{{sfnp|JLTHAX6P|17}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29985
**Categories:** Aqueduct
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Lady Godiva's Prayer](https://engole.info/lady-godivas-prayer/)
**Published:** May 13, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Edwin_Henry_Landseer_%281802-1873%29_-_Lady_Godiva%27s_Prayer_-_VA.1955.0431_-_Herbert_Art_Gallery_and_Museum.jpg[/pimage]History painting by Edwin Landseer, completed in 1865, depicting Lady Godiva preparing for her apocryphal ride through Coventry.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Edwin_Henry_Landseer_%281802-1873%29_-_Lady_Godiva%27s_Prayer_-_VA.1955.0431_-_Herbert_Art_Gallery_and_Museum.jpg)Oil on canvas
143 cm × 112 cm (56 in × 44 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Lady Godiva’s Prayer* is a [history painting](https://engole.info/history-painting) by the English artist Edwin Landseer (1802–1873), begun in the 1840s and completed in 1865.{{sfnp|FDVG8FU5}} Following its display at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, it was criticised for its historical anachronisms, such as the incongruous costume of the servant, more reminiscent of the 17th century than the late Anglo-Saxon period.{{sfnp|9XSB7HSD|109}}{{sfnp|STHWQZF9|77-78}} The painting nevertheless sold for £3,360 at auction in 1873, equivalent to about £412,000 as at 2025.{{sfnp|STHWQZF9|77}}\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
The painting depicts Lady Godiva, the noblewoman famous for her apocryphal nude ride through the streets of Coventry in protest against the oppressive taxation that her husband had imposed on his tenants. She is shown mounted on horseback sidesaddle, saying a prayer before she begins. An elderly serving woman stands nearby with her eyes closed.{{sfnp|STHWQZF9|77-78}}
*Lady Godiva’s Prayer* was donated to the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in Coventry by W. H. Bassett-Green in 1948.{{sfnp|FDVG8FU5}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29991
**Categories:** History painting
---
### [History painting](https://engole.info/history-painting/)
**Published:** August 15, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/Titian_-_Diana_and_Actaeon_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/1280px-Titian_-_Diana_and_Actaeon_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg[/pimage]Artistic genre characterised by its depiction of a moment in a story usually taken from Greek or Roman mythology, or the Bible, in an elevated and morally edifying manner.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/Titian_-_Diana_and_Actaeon_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/1280px-Titian_-_Diana_and_Actaeon_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)*Diana and Actaeon* by Titian, 1556, a typical history painting.
Wikimedia Commons
History painting is an artistic genre characterised by its idealised depiction of a moment in a story usually taken from Greek or Roman mythology or the Bible,{{sfnp|3BF9IJVY}} presented in “an elevated and morally edifying manner”.{{sfnp|KU4AXJH7}} Once considered to be the highest form of art, the term is derived from the Italian *istoria* (“story”), and essentially means “story painting”.{{sfnp|3BF9IJVY}}
History painting can be distinguished from historical painting by the latter’s depiction of an actual historical event, the public appetite for which became “voracious” during the 19th century.{{sfnp|Q9KRWDZU}} The English artist Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) suggested that *history painting* ought to be renamed *poetical painting*, “as it undoubtedly is”.{{sfnp|DXH9A5MW|391-394}\]
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26683
**Categories:** Artistic genre, Painting
---
### [Robert Kirk](https://engole.info/robert-kirk/)
**Published:** August 30, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Church of Scotland minister, Gaelic scholar and folklorist.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Balquhidder_Church_Feb_2004.jpg/1280px-Balquhidder_Church_Feb_2004.jpg)Robert Kirk was minister at Balquhidder, Perthshire from 1664 until 1685, when he took over his father’s old parish.
Wikimedia Commons
Robert Kirk (9 December 1644 – 14 May 1692) was a Church of Scotland minister, Gaelic scholar and folklorist, best known for *The Secret Commonwealth*, a treatise on fairy folklore published posthumously in 1815.{{sfnp|9BLR55CJ}} In the book, considered by the folklorist Stewart Sanderson to be one of the most important European historical texts dealing with fairy belief, Kirk defends not only the reality of fairies, but also of witchcraft and ghosts.{{sfnp|9ZVRT589}}
Kirk was probably born at Aberfoyle, Perthshire, the seventh and youngest son of James Kirk (died 1658), minister there, and his wife, Elizabeth Carkettle (died 1681). After studying at Edinburgh University and St Andrews, on 8 November 1664 Kirk was appointed the minister of Balquhidder, Perthshire. On 14 January 1678 he married Isabel, daughter of Sir Colin Campbell of Mochaster (1616–1668) and Margaret Menzies (died 1681). They had two sons, one of whom died an infant; Isabel died in 1680 at the age of twenty-five and was buried at Balquhidder.{{sfnp|9BLR55CJ}}
Kirk’s parish was entirely Gaelic speaking,{{sfnp|9BLR55CJ}} and he undertook to produce the first complete translation of the Scottish metrical psalms into Gaelic, published at Edinburgh in 1684 as *Psalma Dhaibhidh an Meadrachd*, &c. (Psalms of David in Metre, &c.).{{sfnp|76XRCQIA}} He spent eight months of 1689 in London, supervising the printing of *An Biobla Naomhtha*, a Gaelic Bible that had been published in 1685 and written under the direction of Bishop William Bedell. The original version was printed using Irish characters, unfamiliar to Scottish Gaelic readers, so Kirk proposed that it should be transliterated into roman characters; the cost of the project was borne by the scientist Robert Boyle. The new version, which became known as Kirk’s Bible, completed in April 1690, also contained a short Gaelic vocabulary of 464 “difficult words”, predating future Gaelic dictionaries.{{sfnp|9BLR55CJ}}
Kirk’s second wife, Margaret Campbell of Fordie, a cousin of his first wife Isabel, was pregnant with their second child when he died on 14 May 1692 at Aberfoyle, his father’s old parish, to which he had been appointed minister in 1685; he was buried in the old kirkyard. Kirk had had a long-standing interest in recording Highland folklore, and stories began to circulate that he had not died, but had been “taken” by the fairies whose secrets he had betrayed.{{sfnp|9BLR55CJ}} Stewart Sanderson reported that Kirk
… was in the habit of taking a turn in his nightgown on summer evenings on the fairy hill beside the manse, in order to get a breath of fresh air before retiring to bed: and one evening in 1692 – 14 May – his body was found lying, apparently dead, on the hill.{{sfnp
— 9ZVRT589}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23755
**Categories:** Folklorist
---
### [Montezuma's Daughter](https://engole.info/montezumas-daughter/)
**Published:** June 6, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/MontezumasDaughter.jpg[/pimage]Novel by H. Rider Haggard published in 1893, the last of his best work.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/MontezumasDaughter.jpg)Cover of first edition
Wikimedia Commons
*Montezuma’s Daughter*, first published in 1893, is a novel written by the Victorian adventure writer H. Rider Haggard.{{sfnp|JASKVVEX}} First serialised in [*The Graphic*](https://engole.info/the-graphic/) between 1 July and 11 November 1893,{{sfnp|JBNXYRX5}} it is narrated in the first person by Thomas Wingfield of Ditchingham, an Englishman who is purportedly writing an account of his adventures when caught up in Hernán Cortés’s invasion of the Aztec capital Tenoctitlan, at the express command of Queen Elizabeth I. He is writing as an old man, very near the end of his life.
The plot is constructed from three interlocking storylines: Cortés’s victory over the Aztec Empire in what is modern-day Mexico in 1519–1521; Wingfield’s participation in the struggle, fighting with the Aztecs against the Spanish; and Wingfield’s personal relationships with Lily Bozard, his English fiancée, Don Juan de Garcia, his mother’s murderer, on whom he is seeking revenge, and his Aztec wife Princess Otomie.
## Plot summary
Wingfield’s adventures begin with the revenge killing of his Spanish mother. Many years earlier she had fled an arranged marriage to the Spaniard Juan de Garcia to marry Wingfield’s father, and de Garcia has not forgiven her. Leaving behind his fiancée Lily, Wingfield pursues his mother’s murderer back to Spain, where he witnesses the Inquisition’s execution of a young pregnant nun on de Garcia’s evidence, even though he was the one responsible for her condition. Wingfield takes passage on a ship from Spain to Hispaniola, which is destroyed in a storm. He takes to one of the small boats and is picked up by a nearby slave ship, on board which is de Garcia, who despite claiming that Wingfield is an English spy who deserves to die, is persuaded to allow the other sailors to sell him into slavery. Wingfield escapes by throwing himself overboard and succeeds in reaching the shore of what he learns is Mexico. Captured by natives, he is taken to the city of Tobasco, to be sacrificed to the gods.
Wingfield is saved at the last minute, as his pale skin persuades his captors that he may be a child of Quetzal, the god to whom he is to be sacrificed. Learning of the new arrival, Montezuma, king of the Aztecs, sends his nephew, Guatemoc, to escort Wingfield to his capital, Tenoctitlan. There he is worshipped as the embodiment of the Aztec god, Tezcat, and becomes a ceremonial figurehead for a year, before being married to four sacrificial virgins including Otomie, Montezuma’s daughter.\[a\]Otomie is a fictitious character. Montezuma had many wives, and a correspondingly large family. According to a Spanish chronicler, by the time he was taken captive, Montezuma had fathered 100 children, the names of most of whom are lost to us.{{sfnp|YJV2R2NX}} Lying with Otomie on the sacrificial altar awaiting their fate, the pair are saved by the arrival of the Spanish, who have been fighting to take the city for some time. To their mutual astonishment, Wingfield’s rescuer is de Garcia, who has joined Cortés’s invasion force. Wingfield and Otomie succeed in making their escape from the Spaniards, and Wingfield joins forces with the Aztecs in their struggle against the conqistadors.
The fight goes badly for the Aztecs, and Wingfield is seized by the Spaniards and tortured to reveal the whereabouts of Montezuma’s treasure. He and Otomie are helped to escape, and they flee to the City of Pines, where they live peacefully for many years until the Spanish decide to besiege the city. Under Wingfield’s leadership the population resists, but in their final madness many of the women begin to sacrifice humans. Wingfield and a few others manage to rescue five Spaniards who are chained up waiting their turn on the sacrifical altar, prompting their commander to offer pardons to everyone not involved in the sacrifices if the defenders surrender, which they are forced to do; Wingfield, Otomie and their son, are thus released.
Once again de Garcia has been in the attacking Spanish force, but he slips away before Wingfield can confront him, after killing Wingfield’s son. Wingfield sees de Garcia making his escape towards the slopes of Xaca, an active volcano, and catches him at its summit. The pair fight, and de Garcia falls to his death into the fiery crater. “Thus then did I accomplish the vengeance that I had sworn to my father I would wreak upon de Garcia”.
Grieving at the death of her son and the knowledge that Wingfield’s true love is Lily, his fiancée back in England, Otomie commits suicide. Wingfield takes passage on a ship to Cadiz and thence to London, taking with him the “collar of great emeralds” given to him by Guatemoc. He returns to Ditchingham, where he is reunited with Lily, who has waited faithfully for his return; they kiss again for the first time in eighteen years, a year to the day since Otomie died.
## Autographical background
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/716934_da7f9b99.jpg)Ditchingham House
Geograph
While in Mexico in 1891 researching for the book, Haggard received news that his only son, Jock, had died, which dealt him a lasting blow and badly affected his health.{{sfnp|6FEEE8HJ|254}}
Haggard wrote *Montezuma’s Daughter* in Ditchingham House, where Wingfield writes his memoirs in the book. Haggard’s wife had inherited the estate in 1880, and in 1891 the family made it their permanent residence after Jock’s death. In the words of the literary historian Richard Pearson, the house represents “a symbolic link between *Montezuma’s Daughter* and Haggard’s personal life”.{{sfnp|JBNXYRX5}}
## Critical reception
A reviewer writing in the *New York Times* of 26 November 1893 complained that “oceans of gore are distasteful and Mr. Haggard revels in that kind of inundation”.{{sfnp|JBNXYRX5}} Haggard himself recognised that *Montezuma’s Daughter* was the last of his best work “for the rest was repetition so far as fiction was concerned”.{{sfnp|6FEEE8HJ|261}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Otomie is a fictitious character. Montezuma had many wives, and a correspondingly large family. According to a Spanish chronicler, by the time he was taken captive, Montezuma had fathered 100 children, the names of most of whom are lost to us.{{sfnp|YJV2R2NX}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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## External links
- [Full text of *Montezuma’s Daughter*](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1848) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** Novel
---
### [Turlington's Balsam](https://engole.info/turlingtons-balsam/)
**Published:** May 23, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/BalsomOfLifeBottles.jpg[/pimage]Turlington's Balsam of Life was a patent medicine developed by English merchant Robert Turlington, patented in 1744.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/BalsomOfLifeBottles.jpg)Front and back views of the tablet-shaped Turlington’s Balsam of Life bottles as represented in a brochure dated 1755–1757. All the text displayed is embossed into the glass.
Wikimedia Commons
Turlington’s Balsam of Life was a patent medicine developed by the English merchant Robert Turlington. He succeeded in obtaining a [royal patent](https://engole.info/letters-patent) from King George II in 1744, which gave him the right to pursue anyone attempting to pass off their own product as his,{{sfnp|B2I23HH3|98}} one of the earliest medicinal patents.{{sfnp|VVJHZK6S|124}}\[a\]The earliest medicinal patent was granted in 1698, for Epsom Salts.{{sfnp|VVJHZK6S|123}} In his patent application Turlington claimed that his balsam contained 27 ingredients, and was effective in the treatment of “kidney and bladder stones, cholic, and inward weakness”, a list of ailments he greatly expanded upon in a 46-page brochure printed shortly afterwards.{{sfnp|S7CHPGZG}} Turlington’s Balsam quickly became popular in England and the American colonies.{{sfnp|B2I23HH3|98}}
## **Packaging**
During the 17th and 18th centuries the manufacturers of patent medicines began to use packaging as a tool to differentiate their products from those of their competitors, as there was often little to visually distinguish between the medications themselves.\[b\]Patents only applied to the medication, not to its packaging, therefore competitors were free to copy a medication’s packaging in an effort to increase their sales at the expense of the patented product.{{sfnp|WXV4I3KR}} In Turlington’s case that resulted in his changing the shape of the bottle containing his balsam at least four times in the ten years following the granting of his patent, culminating in an elaborately embossed tablet-shaped bottle introduced in 1754.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The earliest medicinal patent was granted in 1698, for Epsom Salts.{{sfnp|VVJHZK6S|123}} b Patents only applied to the medication, not to its packaging, therefore competitors were free to copy a medication’s packaging in an effort to increase their sales at the expense of the patented product.{{sfnp|WXV4I3KR}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Patent medicine
---
### [The Laboratory (painting)](https://engole.info/the-laboratory-painting/)
**Published:** May 11, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/John_Collier%2C_1895_-_The_Laboratory.jpg[/pimage]Painting by John Collier (1850–1934), depicting a young woman acquirig poison from an alchemist.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/John_Collier%2C_1895_-_The_Laboratory.jpg)Oil on canvas
158 × 123 cm (62 × 48 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Laboratory* is an oil painting by the English artist John Collier (1850–1934), created in 1895, when it was exhibited at the New Gallery in London’s Spring Exhibition.{{sfnp|KEUKJEKF}}
The painting depicts a young woman acquiring a poison from an alchemist, which she intends to use to kill her rival in love.{{sfnp|KEUKJEKF}} The inspiration is Robert Browning’s 1884 poem of the same name, which centres on the true story of the French aristocrat Marie-Madeleine d’Aubray, executed in 1676 for poisoning her father and two brothers, and attempting to murder her husband.{{sfnp|QXCNLEKE}}
*The Laboratory* was acquired by the Arts of Imagination Foundation in 2023.{{sfnp|KEUKJEKF}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29989
**Categories:** Painting
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [The Storm (1704)](https://engole.info/the-storm-1704/)
**Published:** July 12, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Account by Daniel Defoe of the great storm of 1703, the first work of modern journalism.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/The_Storm_by_Daniel_Defoe_cover_page.jpg)Cover page
Wikimedia Commons
*The Storm or, a Collection of the most remarkable Casualties and Disasters which happen’d in the Late Dreadful Tempest, both by Sea and Land* (1704) is an account by the English author Daniel Defoe of the great storm of 1703 that hit southern England on 26 November,\[a\]7 December 1703 in the Gregorian calendar in use today. causing extensive and massive destruction.{{sfnp|5L43ENEJ|17-18}} It has been estimated that by the following morning between 8,000 and 15,000 people had been killed, many of them on ships sunk at sea;{{sfnp|AGPPSQM3}} the Royal Navy alone lost one-fifth of its personnel.{{sfnp|5L43ENEJ|18}}
Daniel Defoe travelled the countryside in the aftermath of what remains the worst storm ever to hit the British Isles assessing the damage, and his account, published as *The Storm* in 1704, is considered to be a landmark in the history of print journalism.{{sfnp|5L43ENEJ|17-18}} Although written as a first-person narrative, it is based on first-hand accounts of the events solicited from all over the country. Defoe placed advertisements in the *London Gazette* and [*The Daily Courant*](https://engole.info/the-daily-courant/) appealing for eyewitness to come forward:
To preserve the Remembrance of the late Dreadful Tempest, an exact and faithful Collection is preparing of the most remarkable Disasters which happened on that Occasion, with the Places where, and Persons concern’d whether at Sea or on Shore. For the perfecting so good a Work, ’tis humbly recommended by the Author to all Gentlemen of the Clergy, or others, who have made any Observations of this Calamity, that they would transmit as distinct an Account as possible, of what they have observed.
— London Gazette 3975, 13–16 December{{sfnp|5L43ENEJ|19}}
Where Defoe is unable to assess the credibility of his eyewitness accounts, he is at pains to point out that he is publishing second-hand testimony. He is an early example of the kind of eyewitness reporter so familiar today, “… out and about in the streets, dodging danger (in this case flying roof tiles) as he talked to people. He asked, he observed, he counted, he made projections from the statistics, and he apportioned blame.”{{sfnp|5L43ENEJ|24}} Although Defoe begins *The Storm* by relating some late 17th-century ideas about the physical causes of wind, he also suggests that God “may have \[had\] an overarching purpose in sending this particular one”, a punishment for wickedness and an attempt to prove his existence to atheists.{{sfnp|5L43ENEJ|25-26}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a 7 December 1703 in the Gregorian calendar in use today.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Journalism
---
### [Blackstone Edge](https://engole.info/blackstone-edge/)
**Published:** September 23, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Trig_Point_on_Blackstone_Edge_-_geograph.org.uk_-_617176.jpg[/pimage]Gritstone escarpment in the South Pennines rising to 1,549 feet (472 m) above sea level
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Trig_Point_on_Blackstone_Edge_-_geograph.org.uk_-_617176.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/tSbjrjBJBHx2vN4a6}}
Blackstone Edge
Blackstone Edge is a gritstone escarpment rising to {{convert|1549|ft}} above sea level in the South Pennine hills, surrounded by [moorland](https://engole.info/moorland/) on the boundary between Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire in northern England.
Once thought to be the location of a Roman road, the paved causeway is now considered to be a packhorse road or early turnpike road. The Pennine Way passes along the escarpment.
## Geology and geography
The area’s underlying geology comprises sandstones and shales of the Millstone Grit and Coal Measures, Carboniferous rocks formed 354–290 million years ago. They were deposited as sediments in large river deltas that extended into the shallow, tropical seas that covered much of Britain at this time. Continuing deposition and further building out of the deltas formed an extensive low-lying, swamp area in which the succeeding Coal Measures were deposited.{{sfnp|HSSBI2VP}} The sandstones and shales of the Millstone Grit group outcrop in the uplands of the South Pennines to the east of Manchester and north of Rochdale. Erosion in the layers of sandstone and shales has created the rolling moorland punctuated by cliff-like gritstone escarpments such as Blackstone Edge surrounded by heathland and blanket peat.{{sfnp|HSSBI2VP}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/The_Aiggin_Stone.jpg)[Hollingworth Lake](https://engole.info/hollingworth-lake/) viewed from the Aiggin Stone
Wikimedia Commons
Blackstone Edge is on the Greater Manchester / West Yorkshire boundary, south of the A58 Rochdale to Halifax road and north of the M62 motorway about mid way between the Blackstone Edge and Green Withens Reservoirs. The long-distance footpath, the Pennine Way passes along the escarpment. A [triangulation pillar](https://engole.info/triangulation-pillar/) at its summit records its height as {{convert|472.238|m|r=0}} above sea level.{{sfnp|5W3NBZPG}}
## History
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Looking_down_the_Roman_Road_-_geograph.org.uk_-_92590.jpg)Paved road over Blackstone Edge
Wikimedia Commons
Much of the surrounding area was within the [ancient parish](https://engole.info/ancient-parish/) of Rochdale.{{sfnp|LJI6U4HX|187–201}} In the English Civil War the Parliamentarians sent 800 men to fortify Blackstone Edge. John Rosworm came from Manchester to direct the construction of defences and it was successfully held against an attack by Royalist cavalry.{{sfnp|Y93M97DU|9}} In 1660 the churchwardens of St Chad’s Church in Rochdale paid 24 shillings for eight loads of “great stones from Blackstoneedge” for the church steps. Celia Fiennes travelled over Blackstone Edge in about 1700 and described her journey.{{sfnp|LJI6U4HX|187–201}} A meeting of Chartists attracted up to 30,000 people from the surrounding industrial towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire in 1846.{{sfnp|VDPYZCFZ}}
Passing the escarpment is Blackstone Edge Long Causeway, also known as Blackstone Edge Roman Road, a paved road once thought to be of Roman origin. After investigations by James Maxim it is now considered to be a 1735 turnpike or packhorse route.{{sfnp|U3JZV63J}} The Aiggin Stone, a seven foot long gritstone pillar, possibly a way-marker, stands alongside the packhorse route and marks the county boundary. The stone has a cross and the letters I and T cut into it. Its name is said to derive from the French *aiguille* for a needle or aigle for an eagle.{{sfnp|C3HHIJ7C}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Landform
---
### [Bubble Act 1720](https://engole.info/bubble-act-1720/)
**Published:** July 2, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png[/pimage]An Act of the Parliament of Great Britain to prohibit the formation of new joint-stock companies unless approved by royal charter.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Bubble Act (6 Geo. I, c. 18) was passed by the Parliament of Great Britain on 11 June 1720, at the height of the South Sea Bubble, two months before it burst.{{sfnp|MC3VF49Q}} Its full title is *An Act for better securing certain Powers and Privileges, intended to be granted by His Majesty by Two Charters, for Assurance of Ships and Merchandize at Sea, and for lending Money upon Bottomry; and for restraining several extravagant and unwarrantable Practices therein mentioned*.\[a\][Bottomry](https://engole.info/bottomry/) is an early form of maritime insurance. The term *Bubble Act* appears only rarely in 18th-century sources, and only became popular during the early 19th century.{{sfnp|U9RD2695}}
The Act prohibited the formation of joint-stock companies unless approved by royal charter or Special Act of Parliament.{{sfnp|MC3VF49Q}}\[b\]A joint-stock company is one which issues shares that can be bought and sold by members of the public. It remained in force for 105 years, but its effect on the development of the stock market was limited; there was only one prosecution under the Act during the 18th century, *Rex v. Caywood* in 1722.{{sfnp|U9RD2695}}\[c\]The lawyer and academic L. C. B. Gower has written that the case “decided nothing of importance”.{{sfnp|L2MSTHNB|31}}
Three main explanations have been put forward in the literature for the introduction of the Bubble Act: the desire to prevent the speculation that produced the contemporary South Sea Bubble; an attempt to prevent the formation of smaller, non-charter companies and so reduce the importance of parliament in regulating businesses; third and most likely, the South Sea Company wanting to prevent other bubbles from forming that might have competed with it for investment. In that latter respect the Act was unsuccessful in diverting significant capital into the South Sea Company.{{sfnp|U9RD2695}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a [Bottomry](https://engole.info/bottomry/) is an early form of maritime insurance. b A joint-stock company is one which issues shares that can be bought and sold by members of the public. c The lawyer and academic L. C. B. Gower has written that the case “decided nothing of importance”.{{sfnp|L2MSTHNB|31}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Summis desiderantes affectibus](https://engole.info/summis-desiderantes-affectibus/)
**Published:** November 26, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Innocent_VIII.JPG[/pimage]Papal bull regarding witchcraft issued by Pope Innocent VIII on 5 December 1484.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Innocent_VIII.JPG)Pope Innocent VIII
Wikimedia Commons
*Summis desiderantes affectibus*, (Latin for “Desiring with supreme ardor”), named after its opening words and sometimes abbreviated to *Summis desiderantes,* was a papal bull regarding witchcraft issued by Pope Innocent VIII on 5 December 1484. Traditionally seen as the beginning of the witch-hunts that plagued Europe from the 15th until the 17th century, it was issued to address the complaints of two Dominican inquisitors – Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger – that local ecclesiastical authorities in Germany were obstructing them in their mission to eradicate heretical witchcraft.{{sfnp|KP9GLIKU|177}}
The *Summis desiderantes* of 1484 was very similar to many earlier papal bulls, and so did not mark any kind of watershed in the church’s attitude to witchcraft. Its subsequent fame rather derives from its publication in Kramer and Spengler’s *Malleus maleficarum* of 1487, the best known of the various guides to witch hunting, which gave it wider circulation than it might otherwise have had.{{sfnp|KP9GLIKU|177}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Witchcraft
---
### [Cymon and Iphigenia (painting)](https://engole.info/cymon-and-iphigenia-painting/)
**Published:** January 16, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Lord_Frederic_Leighton_-_Cymon_and_Iphigenia_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg[/pimage]Undated oil on canvas painting by the English artist Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Lord_Frederic_Leighton_-_Cymon_and_Iphigenia_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)*Cymon and Iphigenia* by Lord Frederic Leighton
Wikimedia Commons
*Cymon and Iphigenia* is an undated oil on canvas painting by the English artist [Frederic Leighton](https://engole.info/frederic-leighton/), 1st Baron Leighton.
Depicting a scene from *The Decameron* by Giovanni Boccaccio, Leighton opted to introduce an autumnal setting rather than maintain the springtime scenario of the tale.
The painting was first exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 1884. The Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, purchased it at a Christie’s auction in London in 1976.
## Description
The overall dimensions of the undated oil on canvas painting are 163 by 328 centimetres (64 by 129 in).{{sfnp|DM4ATFR6}} Based on Giovanni Boccaccio’s{{sfnp|IT5FXT3P}} *The Decameron*, the painting depicts a scene from the first tale of day five; Iphigenia is sleeping in the woods and Cymon, a young nobleman, stands gazing at her beauty which fills him with inspiration.{{sfnp|IR25VXV2|99}} After seeing her, Cymon changes from a badly mannered lout to an ideal polymath.{{sfnp|IR25VXV2|101}} Nahum felt it “emphasised the transforming power of beauty.”{{sfnp|KIH6Q7BA}} Boccaccio set the story in the springtime; Leighton preferred the ambience of a more autumnal feel.{{sfnp|ZDKNJJVC|45}} The artist was very precise about the mood he wanted to reflect by describing the specific setting of the time of day as “the most mysteriously beautiful in the whole twenty-four hours”.{{sfnp|S37LCQBA|258}} He wished to capture the overall impression of drowsiness just before drifting to sleep especially on long hot days as night begins to fall.{{sfnp|ZDKNJJVC|45}} The painting is set when there is the “merest lip of the moon” showing on the horizon above the sea and the atmosphere is “haunted still with the flush of the after-glow from the sun already hidden in the west.”{{sfnp|S37LCQBA|258}}
Iphigenia lies with her face and torso pivoted slightly to her right, her arms are raised above her head.{{sfnp|KIH6Q7BA}} Her body is loosely covered by material{{sfnp|ZDKNJJVC|45}} and the depiction of her figure is described as “masterly” by a writer using the name of “Mentezuma” in his report included in the Art Amateur about the Royal Academy exhibition of 1884.{{sfnp|MARNC73N|51}} Other sleeping figures are Iphigenia’s servants{{sfnp|ZDKNJJVC|45}} and a dog.{{sfnp|MARNC73N|51}} According to Greenhough White, Leighton had the ability to show “the perfection of repose” and the “self-abandonment and unconsciousness of sleep” and it was utilised to full effect in this painting and his earlier work entitled *Summer Moon*.{{sfnp|KB4JLBYX|477}}
Featuring [Dorothy Dene](https://engole.info/dorothy-dene/) as the model for Iphigenia, the painting took eight months to complete;{{sfnp|NQTSL3DX}} a succession of line drawings were done first as Leighton tried to capture the position he wanted for the central figure,{{sfnp|KIH6Q7BA}} around 56 – including several of foliage and other elements of the piece – of these are known to exist.{{sfnp|A4Q8Z5MH}} The English art critic Peter Nahum describes the painting as “central among Leighton’s later works”,{{sfnp|KIH6Q7BA}} an opinion Mrs Russell Barrington considered was shared by Leighton.{{sfnp|S37LCQBA|258}} Leighton’s painting *Idyll* dating from a few years earlier has some similar elements but lacks the complexities of *Cymon and Iphigenia*. The two compositions each highlight the difference between the fair complexion of a female with a dark-skinned male; both feature a full-length woman reclining beneath a tree and similar lighting techniques are used.{{sfnp|IQSEUN7J|16}}
## Exhibitions and provenance
The the painting was first exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts was at the summer exhibition in 1884.{{sfnp|DM4ATFR6}} After viewing it at the exhibition an unnamed French critic reported that he could not recall “a more original effect of light and colour, used in the broad, true, and ideal treatment of lovely forms.”{{sfnp|ZDKNJJVC|45}} The following year, in 1885, it was exhibited in Berlin.{{sfnp|S37LCQBA|258}} It was again displayed at the Royal Academy in the winter of 1897, a memorial exhibition of his works as Leighton had died on 25 January 1896.{{sfnp|PNAPXWF3}} It was included in the Guildhall Art Gallery’s annual loan exhibition in 1897. Sir W.E. Cuthbert Quilter owned the painting until it was sold among his art collection in July 1909. It changed ownership a number of times in the UK, with owners including Leopold Albu, and Pamela Cavendish (mother of Hugh Cavendish, Baron Cavendish of Furness), before being purchased at auction by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia, in February 1976. It returned to the Royal Academy from mid-February to April 1996, in an exhibition devoted to the work of Leighton.{{sfnp|DM4ATFR6}} The Art Gallery of New South Wales also purchased a colour study of the painting, measuring 23.5 by 46.5 centimetres (9.3 by 18.3 in), in 1986.{{sfnp|CXI5CYX6}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Painting
---
### [The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania](https://engole.info/the-quarrel-of-oberon-and-titania/)
**Published:** December 15, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Sir_Joseph_Noel_Paton_-_The_Quarrel_of_Oberon_and_Titania_-_Google_Art_Project_2.jpg[/pimage]Oil on canvas painting by the Scottish artist Sir Joseph Noel Paton.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Sir_Joseph_Noel_Paton_-_The_Quarrel_of_Oberon_and_Titania_-_Google_Art_Project_2.jpg)*The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania*, 1849
oil on canvas
99 cm × 152 cm (39 in × 60 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania* is an oil on canvas painting by the Scottish artist Sir [Joseph Noel Paton](https://engole.info/joseph-noel-paton/). Painted in 1849, it depicts the scene from William Shakespeare’s comedy play *A Midsummer Night’s Dream*, when the fairy queen Titania and fairy king Oberon quarrel; Oberon was considered the king of the fairies in medieval and Renaissance literature. When exhibited in Edinburgh during 1850, it was declared the “painting of the season”.{{sfnp|58TLFJPK}}
The painting was acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland in 1897, having initially been bought by the Royal Association for Promoting the Fine Arts in Scotland during 1850. An earlier version of this painting was Paton’s diploma picture, which was submitted to the Royal Scottish Academy in 1846; they paid £700 for it.
## Description
The overall dimensions of the oil on canvas painting are 99 by 152 centimetres (39 by 60 in).{{sfnp|58TLFJPK}} Based on William Shakespeare’s comedy play *A Midsummer Night’s Dream*, it depicts a scene in which the fairy queen Titania and fairy king Oberon quarrel with each other. Oberon was considered the King of the fairies in medieval and Renaissance literature. The scene depicts Act II, scene i,{{sfnp|YXERQUGN}} put into an enchanting imaginary landscape when Oberon is arguing with Titania,{{sfnp|9J4JKKRT|30}} just as nightfall descends.{{sfnp|J8B2NF32|92}} The setting is the couple’s woodland home outside Athens and they are surrounded by a group of fairies.{{sfnp|9J4JKKRT|30}} According to Lewis Carroll, the author of *Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland*, 165 fairies are in the painting.{{sfnp|58TLFJPK|search=The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania}} The subject of the couple’s argument is the changeling boy,{{sfnp|J8B2NF32|89}} who is hiding behind Titania.{{sfnp|J8B2NF32|90}} A lily pond is at the front of the painting and the woodland setting is made up of leaves, flowers and aged twisted trees. Titania’s head is encircled by a group of fairies forming a bright crown of light. A statue of Pan with a set of pipes is placed to the right of the picture with several couples in a state of undress positioned beneath it. Goblins mingle with elves and imps that all cavort among the nude fairies;{{sfnp|J8B2NF32|90}} some other little, ugly figures are scattered throughout together with moths, beetles, spiders and snails.{{sfnp|J8B2NF32|91}}
Paton’s earlier work in 1847, *The Reconciliation of Oberon and Titania*, was considered by Paton to be “related yet self-contained”.{{sfnp|SM8W8BQS}}
## Exhibitions and provenance
First exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1850,{{sfnp|64QXY4PP}} where it was declared to be the “painting of the season”,{{sfnp|58TLFJPK|search=The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania}} the picture was purchased by the Royal Association for Promoting the Fine Arts in Scotland that same year.{{sfnp|58TLFJPK|search=The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania}} *The Quarrel* was later displayed at the Paris Exhibition in 1855,{{sfnp|YM4KDD7B}} being listed as “Representative of British Art”.{{sfnp|SDF7UHQZ}} It passed to the ownership of the National Galleries of Scotland in 1897.{{sfnp|58TLFJPK|search=The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania}} An earlier study of this painting was completed in 1846 and featured as Paton’s diploma picture at the Royal Scottish Academy that year.{{sfnp|SM8W8BQS}}{{sfnp|HK9EXDBX|search=The Reconciliation of Oberon and Titania}} The academy purchased the earlier work for £700,{{sfnp|YDNFKSSN}} equivalent to about £72,000 as at 2021.\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
According to Richard Schindler, Associate Professor of Art at Allegheny College,{{sfnp|9FBLS2RV}} the piece seems to have influenced by the works of the Swiss-born painter [Henry Fuseli](https://engole.info/henry-fuseli), an opinion shared by Carole Silver, a professor with a particular interest in the 19th-century fascination with fairies.{{sfnp|CMQ4XVUC|215}}{{sfnp|IT6GJJ6D|1158}} Christopher Wood, an expert in Victorian art,{{sfnp|ZEL7H9BI}} described Paton’s work as being “some of the most remarkable fairy pictures”.{{sfnp|J8B2NF32|286}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 12328
**Categories:** Fairy, Painting
---
### [Grim Tales](https://engole.info/grim-tales/)
**Published:** January 1, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Edith-Nesbit.webp[/pimage]Collection of short stories by Edith Nesbit, first published in 1893.
**Content:**
*Grim Tales* is a collection of seven short stories by the English writer and poet Edith Nesbit (1858–1924), first published in 1893. Five of the stories had already been published in *Longman’s Magazine*, *Temple Bar*, *The Argosy*, [*Home Chimes*](https://engole.info/home-chimes), and the *Illustrated London News*.{{sfnp|ILCS6TIC}}
Stories are shown in the order in which they appear in the book, which is not necessarily the order in which they first appeared in print.
## Contents
- “[The Ebony Frame](https://engole.info/the-ebony-frame)” (1891)
- “[John Charrington’s Wedding](https://engole.info/john-charringtons-wedding)” (1891)
- “[Uncle Abraham’s Romance](https://engole.info/uncle-abrahams-romance)” (1891)
- “[The Mystery of the Semi-detached](https://engole.info/the-mystery-of-the-semi-detached)” (1893)
- “[From the Dead](https://engole.info/from-the-dead)” (1893)
- “[Man-size in Marble](https://engole.info/man-size-in-marble)” (1887)
- “[The Mass for the Dead](https://engole.info/the-mass-for-the-dead)” (1892)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27125
**Categories:** Edith Nesbit, Short story
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Blue men of the Minch](https://engole.info/blue-men-of-the-minch/)
**Published:** July 6, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Little_Minch.jpg[/pimage]Mythological creatures who seek out sailors to drown and stricken boats to sink.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Little_Minch.jpg)The Little Minch, home to the blue men
Wikimedia Commons
The blue men of the Minch, also known as storm kelpies or in Scottish Gaelic *na fir ghorma, fear gorm* or *sruth nam fear gorm*, are mythological creatures inhabiting the stretch of water between the northern Outer Hebrides and mainland Scotland, looking for sailors to drown and stricken boats to sink. They appear to be localised to the Minch and surrounding areas, unknown in other parts of Scotland and without counterparts in the rest of the world.
Except for their blue colour, the mythical creatures look much like humans, and are about the same size. They have the power to create storms, but when the weather is fine they float sleeping on or just below the surface of the water. The blue men swim with their torsos raised out of the sea, twisting and diving as porpoises do. They are able to speak, and when a group approaches a ship its chief may shout two lines of poetry to the master of the vessel and challenge him to complete the verse. If the skipper fails in that task then the blue men will attempt to overturn the ship and capsize it.
Suggestions to explain the mythical blue men include that they may be a personification of the sea, or originate with the Picts, whose painted bodies may have given the impression of men raising themselves out of the water if they were seen crossing the sea in boats that might have resembled kayaks. The genesis of the blue men may alternatively lie with the North African slaves the Vikings took with them to Scotland, where they spent the winter months close to the Shiant Isles in the Minch.
## Etymology
The Minch, a strait that separates the northwest Highlands of Scotland and the northern Inner Hebrides from the northern Outer Hebrides, is home to the blue men.{{sfnp|7QIQHMX5|search=Minch}} According to lexicographer Edward Dwelly, in the Scottish Gaelic terms for the blue men – *na fir ghorma, fear gorm* and *sruth nam fear gorm* – the word *gorm* refers to any shade of blue and *fear* can be translated as “man”, *na fir* representing the plural “the men”.{{sfnp|FZN4R3YG|422-423}}
The blue men are also styled as storm kelpies.{{sfnp|T6DCSI8P|62}}{{sfnp|BCK92UNI|119}} The most common water spirits in Scottish folklore,{{sfnp|XJB4NPVY|364}} [kelpies](https://engole.info/kelpie/) are usually described as powerful horses,{{sfnp|7FYMS3XH|24}} but the name is attributed to several different forms and fables throughout the country.{{sfnp|XJB4NPVY|364}} The name *kelpie* may be derived from the Scottish Gaelic *calpa* or *cailpeach*, meaning “heifer” or “colt”.{{sfnp|TYZ3TSS8|search=kelpie, n.1.}}
## Folk beliefs
### Description and common attributes
The mythical blue men may have been part of a tribe of “fallen angels” that split into three; the first became the ground dwelling fairies, the second evolved to become the sea inhabiting blue men, and the remainder the “Merry Dancers” of the Northern Lights in the sky.{{sfnp|X56DS5E6|loc=1345}} The legendary creatures are the same size as humans but, as the name implies, blue in colour.{{sfnp|NNEE9QIA|200}} Writer and journalist Lewis Spence thought they were the “personifications of the sea itself” as they took their blue colouration from the hue of the sea.{{sfnp|XJB4NPVY|485}} Their faces are grey and long in shape{{sfnp|NNEE9QIA|200}} and some have long arms, which are also grey, and they favour blue headgear;{{sfnp|T6DCSI8P|62}} at least one account claims that they also have wings.{{sfnp|CJ3TAWF5|130}} The tempestuous water around the Shiant Isles 19 kilometres (12 mi) to the north of Skye, an area subject to rapid tides in all weathers,{{sfnp|7AU9DLBL|63-64}} flows beside the caves inhabited by the blue men, a stretch of water known as the Current of Destruction owing to the number of ships wrecked there.{{sfnp|UBG5RMX2|80}}
Although other storm kelpies are reported as inhabiting the Gulf of Corrievreckan,{{sfnp|BCK92UNI|117}} described by poet, writer and folklorist Alasdair Alpin MacGregor as “the fiercest of the Highland storm kelpies”,{{sfnp|BCK92UNI|117}} the blue men are confined to a very restricted area. According to Donald A. Mackenzie they have no counterparts elsewhere in the world or even in other areas of Scotland; such limited range is rare for beliefs in spirits and demons.{{sfnp|X56DS5E6|loc=1348}} Folklorist and Tiree minister [John Gregorson Campbell](https://engole.info/john-gregorson-campbell/) states that they were unknown in Argyll on the nearby coast of the mainland for instance,{{sfnp|NNEE9QIA|200}} although Church of Scotland minister John Brand, who visited Quarff in Shetland in mid-1700, recounts a tale of what may have been a blue man{{sfnp|XJB4NPVY|400}} in the waters around the island. In the form of a bearded old man it rose out of the water, terrifying the passengers and crew of a boat it was following.{{sfnp|EL734CGE|171}}
In traditional tales the blue men have the power to create severe storms, but when the weather is fine they sleep or float just under the surface of the water.{{sfnp|T6DCSI8P|62}} They swim with their torso from the waist upwards raised out of the sea, twisting and diving in a similar way to a porpoise.{{sfnp|UBG5RMX2|79}} To amuse themselves the creatures play shinty when the skies are clear and bright at night.{{sfnp|QY6SUZ86}} They are able to speak and converse with mariners and are especially vocal when soaking vessels with water spray, roaring with laughter as vessels capsize.{{sfnp|X56DS5E6|loc=1332}}
When the blue men gather to attack passing vessels their chief, sometimes named as Shony,{{sfnp|CJ3TAWF5|130}} rises up out of the water and shouts two lines of poetry to the skipper, and if he cannot add two lines to complete the verse the blue men seize his boat.{{sfnp|UBG5RMX2|81}} Mackenzie highlights the following exchange between the skipper of a boat and the chief of the blue men:{{sfnp|UBG5RMX2|82}}
> Blue Chief: Man of the black cap what do you say
> As your proud ship cleaves the brine?
> Skipper: My speedy ship takes the shortest way
> And I’ll follow you line by line
> Blue Chief: My men are eager, my men are ready
> To drag you below the waves
> Skipper: My ship is speedy, my ship is steady
> If it sank, it would wreck your caves.
The quick responses took the blue chief by surprise; defeated and unable to do any damage to the vessel, the blue men returned to their underwater caves, allowing the vessel free passage through the strait.{{sfnp|X56DS5E6|loc=1315}} The blue men may alternatively board a passing vessel and demand tribute from its crew, threatening that if it is not forthcoming they will raise up a storm.{{sfnp|CJ3TAWF5|130}}
## Capture and killing
No surviving tales mention attempts to kill the demons, but a Gregorson Campbell story tells of the capture of a blue man by sailors after he is discovered “sleeping on the waters”.{{sfnp|NNEE9QIA|200}} He is tied up on board their ship, but two fellow blue men give chase, calling out to each other as they swim towards the ship:
> Duncan will be one, Donald will be two
> Will you need another ere you reach the shore?{{sfnp|UBG5RMX2|83}}
On hearing his companions’ voices the captured spirit breaks free of his bonds and jumps overboard as he answers:
> Duncan’s voice I hear, Donald too is near
> But no need of helpers has strong Ian More.{{sfnp|UBG5RMX2|83}}
Sailors thus believed that all blue men have names by which they address each other.{{sfnp|UBG5RMX2|83}}
## Origins
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Touaregs_at_the_Festival_au_Desert_near_Timbuktu%2C_Mali_2012.jpg)The mythical blue men may have originated with the Tuareg people of the Sahara.
Wikimedia Commons
Mackenzie’s explanation of the legend of the blue men was based partly on research into the Annals of Ireland and goes back to the times of Harald Fairhair, the first Norse king, and his battles against the Vikings. The Scottish Gaelic term *fear gorm*, meaning “blue men”,{{sfnp|QSD9WTSN}}{{sfnp|KH5HEE89|183}} is the descriptor for a negro according to Dwelly.{{sfnp|FZN4R3YG|517}} Thus *sruth nam fear gorm*, one of the blue men’s Gaelic names, literally translates as “stream of the blue men”,{{sfnp|KH5HEE89|44-45}} or “river, tide or stream of the blue negro”.{{sfnp|TTJSPX88|895}} Around the 9th century the Vikings took Moors they had captured and were using as slaves to Ireland. The Vikings spent winter months near the Shiant Isles, and Mackenzie attributes the story of the blue men to “marooned foreign slaves”.{{sfnp|X56DS5E6|loc=1391}} He quotes an excerpt from historian Alan Orr Anderson’s *Early sources of Scottish history, A.D. 500 to 1286*:{{sfnp|X56DS5E6|loc=1379}}{{sfnp|4WQ5SNSB|294}}
These were the blue men [*fir gorma*], because Moors are the same as negroes; Mauritania is the same as negro-land [literally, the same as blackness].
More recent newspaper reports have repeated Mackenzie’s hypothesis.{{sfnp|AZX2LUQZ}} Historian Malcolm Archibald agrees the legend originates from the days Norsemen had North African slaves, but speculates that the myth may have originated with the Tuareg people of Saharan Africa, who were known as the “blue men of the desert”.{{sfnp|XJB4NPVY|485}}
The origin of the blue men of the Minch may alternatively lie with “tattooing people”{{sfnp|B94HEQKE}} specifically the Picts, whose Latin name *picti* means “painted people”. If they were seen crossing the water in boats resembling the kayaks of the Finn-men they may have given simple islanders and mariners the impression of the upper part of the body rising out of the water.{{sfnp|DMFTUXFF|loc=7068}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3254
**Categories:** Mythical creature
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Education Act 1496](https://engole.info/education-act-1496/)
**Published:** October 21, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/52/Royal_Coat_of_Arms_of_the_Kingdom_of_Scotland_%28Variant_1%29.svg/960px-Royal_Coat_of_Arms_of_the_Kingdom_of_Scotland_%28Variant_1%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of the Scottish Parliament to make education mandatory for the eldest sons of barons and freeholders.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/52/Royal_Coat_of_Arms_of_the_Kingdom_of_Scotland_%28Variant_1%29.svg/960px-Royal_Coat_of_Arms_of_the_Kingdom_of_Scotland_%28Variant_1%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Education Act 1496 was an Act of the Parliament of Scotland (1496 c. 87), requiring the eldest sons of barons and freeholders to be schooled in Latin, arts and law, intended to ensure that local government and the administration of justice would in future be vested in knowledgeable hands.{{sfnp|JBHD3YMU}}
The main provisions of the Act were that:{{sfnp|EUXUE5IP}}
- All barons and substantial freeholders shall put their eldest sons and heirs into school from the age of 8 or 9
- These shall remain in grammar schools under competent instruction until they have perfect Latin
- They shall next spend three years at the schools of art and law
Anyone found to be in breach of those provisions was subject to a fine of £20,{{sfnp|EUXUE5IP}} equivalent to about £18,000 as at 2025.\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25669
**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Clock Tower, Clevedon](https://engole.info/clock-tower-clevedon/)
**Published:** August 3, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Clevedon_clock_tower.jpg[/pimage]Presented to the town in 1898 by Sir Edmund Elton, to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Clevedon_clock_tower.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/z8mYVng9UiUZYop6A
The clock tower in the heart of the Triangle shopping centre in Clevedon, Somerset, was presented to the town in 1898 by the inventor and studio potter Sir Edmund Elton, to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria the previous year.{{sfnp|GGKSSGWS|147}} It was designated a Grade II [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1976.{{sfnp|5KGNNRIK}}
The tower is built of coursed rubble with [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) dressings, divided into three storeys by bands with coloured and patterned Elton Ware tiles.{{sfnp|GGKSSGWS|147}}{{sfnp|5KGNNRIK}} It has projecting eaves and a tiled pyramidal roof topped by a weathervane. There is a round clock face to each side of the upper storey, and a recessed arch at the bottom contains a drinking fountain.{{sfnp|5KGNNRIK}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27725
**Categories:** Clock tower, Somerset
---
### [Clifton Aqueduct](https://engole.info/clifton-aqueduct/)
**Published:** February 28, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/Clifton_Aqueduct_aerial_shot.jpg/1280px-Clifton_Aqueduct_aerial_shot.jpg[/pimage]Grade II listed aqueduct in Clifton, Greater Manchester, crossing the River Irwell on the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/Clifton_Aqueduct_aerial_shot.jpg/1280px-Clifton_Aqueduct_aerial_shot.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
Clifton Aqueduct is a Grade II [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) stone-built aqueduct in Clifton, Greater Manchester. The brick-lined three-arch structure was designed by Charles Roberts and John Nightingale, and constructed in 1796 to carry the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal across the River Irwell.{{sfnp|E4VZC8AY}}
The aqueduct is one of two remaining major structures on the canal, the other being the [Prestolee Aqueduct](https://engole.info/prestolee-aqueduct); a third major aqueduct, Damside Aqueduct, was demolished in the 1950s.{{sfnp|TJPGRY9K}}
The aqueduct has been filled in, and is not in water.{{sfnp|CPGHM2P5}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27229
**Categories:** Aqueduct
---
### [Prestolee Aqueduct](https://engole.info/prestolee-aqueduct/)
**Published:** February 27, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Prestolee_aqueduct_panorama.jpg/1920px-Prestolee_aqueduct_panorama.jpg[/pimage]Grade II listed aqueduct in Prestolee, Kearsley, Greater Manchester, crossing the River Irwell on the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Prestolee_aqueduct_panorama.jpg/1920px-Prestolee_aqueduct_panorama.jpg)Panorama of Prestolee Aqueduct
Wikimedia Commons
Prestolee Aqueduct is a Grade II [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) stone-built aqueduct in Prestolee, Kearsley in the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, Greater Manchester. The brick-lined four-arch structure was constructed in the 1790s to carry the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal across the River Irwell, and is topped with a brick parapet.{{sfnp|J837UZX3}}
The aqueduct is one of two remaining major structures on the canal, the other being the [Clifton Aqueduct](https://engole.info/clifton-aqueduct); a third major aqueduct, Damside Aqueduct, was demolished in the 1950s. Although the aqueduct still carries water it is not navigable, as adjoining sections of the canal are in need of restoration.{{sfnp|TJPGRY9K}} In particular, the nearby Prestolee Locks have been “derelict for decades”.{{sfnp|NXP756VF}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27228
**Categories:** Aqueduct
---
### [Stanley Ferry Aqueduct](https://engole.info/stanley-ferry-aqueduct/)
**Published:** June 27, 2021
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Stanley_Ferry_Aqueduct_-_geograph.org.uk_-_878958.jpg[/pimage]World's largest cast-iron aqueduct when it was built between 1837 and 1839.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Stanley_Ferry_Aqueduct_-_geograph.org.uk_-_878958.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/SthgzrdBkLbzkqZi7}}
Stanley Ferry Aqueduct
Stanley Ferry Aqueduct, between Wakefield and Castleford in West Yorkshire, carries the Calder Cut\[a\]A cut is a new channel for a river. over the River Calder. The aqueduct was built between 1837 and 1839 when the cut was made for the Aire & Calder Navigation to avoid a meandering stretch of river. A multi-span design with an iron trough by Thomas Telford was superseded by the single-span design of George Leather or his son John, of Leeds. The cast ironwork was supplied by William and Robert Graham of [Elsecar](https://engole.info/elsecar/) in Yorkshire.
The aqueduct has been restored and remains in commercial use. Thought when built to be the world’s largest cast-iron aqueduct, it is a scheduled ancient monument and Grade I listed structure.{{sfnp|DHCSRFDC}}
## Background
An Act of Parliament was granted in May 1699 to improve and make navigable the River Aire between the River Ouse at Airmyn and Leeds and the River Calder from the Aire at Castleford to Wakefield. The Act had powers to create weirs bypassed by short cuts with locks, a towpath and the right to buy and demolish mills and existing weirs. John Hadley was engaged as the engineer and by 1704 the original work was completed.{{sfnp|AI3JU99V|5}} Twelve locks were built on the Aire between Haddesley and Leeds and four were built on the Calder. The locks were 58 to 60 feet long (18 m) by 14.5 to 15 feet (5 m) wide and {{convert|3.5|ft}} deep over the sills.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Stanley_Ferry_Aqueduct%2C_Aire_and_Calder_Navigation_-_geograph.org.uk_-_827594.jpg)Looking north towards Wakefield
Wikimedia Commons
In the early 1830s a meandering section of the Calder between Castleford and Wakefield was bypassed by a cut for the Aire & Calder Navigation. It required an aqueduct to carry the navigation over the river at Stanley Ferry. The line of the cut was surveyed by Thomas Telford.{{sfnp|AI3JU99V|30}} The aqueduct is sited where a historic ford once crossed the Calder. When the river was deepened for navigation a ferry replaced the old ford and was in turn replaced by a road bridge in 1879.{{sfnp|P3IGIJUI|5}}
Telford designed a six or seven-span stone aqueduct with a cast-iron trough.{{sfnp|AI3JU99V|30}} In 1834 the design was changed to single-span to avoid flooding and damage when the river is in spate. George Leather (1786–1870) or his son son John Wignall Leather (1810–1887) of Leeds designed the single-span aqueduct.{{sfnp|AI3JU99V|31}} Hugh McIntosh (1768–1840) of Bloomsbury was awarded the contract to build the aqueduct and he subcontracted the cast iron work to Graham’s Milton Ironworks in Elsecar, Yorkshire.{{sfnp|5USWAGJH}}
Tom Pudding boats were loaded with coal from local collieries for transport via the navigation to Goole between 1863 and 1985. The historic boatyard to the north is the workshop is where lock gates are built. To the south a marina, boatyard and public house occupy the the canal basin.{{sfnp|P3IGIJUI|5}}
## Structure
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Stanley_Ferry_Aqueducts_%28geograph_5701945%29.jpg)New and old aqueducts
Wikimedia Commons
The aqueduct is constructed in a Greek Classical style.{{sfnp|5USWAGJH}} Two bow-spring girders, each spanning {{convert|155|ft}} and weighing 110 tons, support the aqueduct’s cast-iron water trough which is 8 feet 6 inches (2.6 m) deep, {{convert|165|ft}} long, {{convert|24|ft}} wide, and holds 940 tons of water.{{sfnp|AI3JU99V|31}} The trough’s outer sides have a colonnade of fluted Doric colonnettes.{{sfnp|DHCSRFDC}} The trough is suspended between the arches by wrought-iron hangers on each side. The structure sits on cast-iron cross beams. Its construction required 760 tons of wrought iron.{{sfnp|AI3JU99V|31}} Stone piers supporting the aqueduct on the river banks are masked by Doric facades in the style of the bridge columns.{{sfnp|P3IGIJUI|9}}
By 1970 the aqueduct was in need of repair. Fractures and twisting in one of the arches were reported, and in 1972 some hanger rods were re-tensioned. The trough was at risk of damage by larger, modern barges, and large objects could hit the trough when the river was high because of faulty rubbish-collecting screens beneath it. A trough failure would release more than seven million gallons (31.8 million litres) of water into the river, causing significant flooding and damage. To mitigate the risk, new screens were installed in the late 1970s. A second aqueduct, to the east side of the original, built in precast-reinforced concrete, was completed in 1981.{{sfnp|K8KRZ4BE}}
{{convert|7000000|impgal}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a A cut is a new channel for a river.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23350
**Categories:** Aqueduct
---
### [Barton Swing Aqueduct](https://engole.info/barton-swing-aqueduct/)
**Published:** February 8, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Barton_Swing_Aqueduct.jpg[/pimage]First and only swing aqueduct in the world, carrying the Bridgewater Canal across the Manchester Ship Canal, opened in 1894.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Barton_Swing_Aqueduct.jpg)The aqueduct in the closed position
Wikimedia Commons
The Barton Swing Aqueduct in Barton upon Irwell, Greater Manchester, England carries the Bridgewater Canal across the Manchester Ship Canal. The swinging action of the aqueduct allows large vessels using the ship canal to pass underneath and smaller craft, both narrowboats and broad-beam barges, to cross over the top. The aqueduct, the first and only swing aqueduct in the world,{{sfnp|JSCQWXSJ}} is a Grade II\* listed building, and considered a major feat of Victorian civil engineering.{{sfnp|R8AB2L76}} Designed by Sir Edward Leader Williams and built by Andrew Handyside and Company of Derby, the swing bridge opened in 1894 and remains in regular use.{{sfnp|IFLWYZ5R}}
## History
The Barton Swing Aqueduct is a direct replacement for the earlier [Barton Aqueduct](https://engole.info/barton-aqueduct/), a masonry structure crossing the River Irwell and completed in 1761. The construction of the Manchester Ship Canal in the 1890s necessitated the replacement of this structure, as the height of ships using the new ship canal was too great to pass under the old aqueduct.{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|135}} An alternative scheme involving the use of a double lock flight was rejected, because of the need to conserve water in the Bridgewater Canal above.{{sfnp|W8Q8FX6G|686}}
The new aqueduct was designed by Sir Edward Leader Williams,{{sfnp|R8AB2L76}} engineer to the Manchester Ship Canal Company, and was built by Andrew Handyside and Company of Derby. The first barge crossed the new aqueduct on 21 August 1893, and it opened to commercial traffic on 1 January 1894.{{sfnp|FE4VJCDP}}
## Construction
Construction work began in 1890, with the demolition of a Roman Catholic school on the south bank of the ship canal. The scale of the operation meant that the course of the River Irwell had to be temporarily diverted around the site, so that the central island could be built on dry land.{{sfnp|TCR7VRQ6|27-28}}
## Operation
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/BARTON_SWING_AQUEDUCT_3.JPG)Aqueduct in the open position
Wikimedia Commons
The aqueduct is a form of swing bridge. When closed, it allows canal traffic to pass along the Bridgewater Canal. When large vessels need to pass along the ship canal underneath, the 1450-ton{{sfnp|JSCQWXSJ}} and {{convert|330|ft|adj=on}} long iron trough{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|135}} is rotated about 73°\[a\]The aqueduct crosses the Bridgewater Canal at an angle, so does need to rotate a full 90° on a pivot mounted on a small purpose-built island. Gates at each end of the trough retain about 800 tons of water; additional gates on each bank retain water in their adjacent stretches of canal. The aqueduct originally had a suspended towpath along its length, about {{convert|9|ft|r=1}} above the water level of the Bridgewater Canal, which has now been removed.{{sfnp|TCR7VRQ6|45}}
The structure is adjacent to, and upstream of, the Barton Road Swing Bridge. Both bridges are operated from a brick control tower on an island in the centre of the ship canal. When in the open position, the aqueduct and road bridge line up along the length of the island, allowing ships to traverse each side.{{sfnp|W8Q8FX6G|686}} To avoid the risk of collision, the aqueduct is opened half an hour before traffic on the Manchester Ship Canal is scheduled to pass.{{sfnp|ZGYX39ZS|236}}
## Turning mechanism
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screenshot-49.png)Steel rollers supporting the aqueduct
theregister.co.uk
The turning mechanism built into the central island consists of a {{convert|27|ft|adj=on}} race plate embedded in granite blocks. Sixty-four tapered cast iron rollers sat on top of the race plate, held in position by a spider ring. On top of that an upper race plate supports the aqueduct and its circular gear rack.{{sfnp|JSCQWXSJ}}
To reduce the pressure on the turning mechanism, a hydraulic press was installed in the pivot. When water was admitted to the press it took up to half the weight. So successful was this system of hydraulic assistance that Leader Williams retrofitted it to several road swing bridges being built over the Ship Canal including the ones at Stockton Heath and Knutsford Road in Warrington.{{sfnp|JSCQWXSJ}}
The structure’s weight was at the limits of its design, which had become became apparent by 1927 when it was observed that the sixty-four {{convert|35.5|cm|abbr=on|r=0}} mean diameter hollow cast-iron rollers had started to deform. In 1928 they were replaced with steel rollers, since when the bridge has dropped by only {{convert|2.4|mm|abbr=on}}.{{sfnp|JSCQWXSJ}}
Hydraulic power was originally supplied by steam from two Lancashire boilers housed in a pumping station on the Eccles bank of the ship canal;{{sfnp|TCR7VRQ6|41-42}} a service culvert beneath the bed of the canal conveyed the water under pressure to the control tower on the island.{{sfnp|TCR7VRQ6|44}} In 1939 the original hydraulic engines were replaced by a pair of radial three-cylinder engines manufactured by the Hydraulic Engineering Company of Chester, and the following year a power house was built on the island to house two electrically driven pumps. The old steam pumping station was demolished after the Second World War.{{sfnp|TCR7VRQ6|45}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The aqueduct crosses the Bridgewater Canal at an angle, so does need to rotate a full 90°
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 14511
**Categories:** Aqueduct
---
### [Barton Aqueduct](https://engole.info/barton-aqueduct/)
**Published:** February 7, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Barton_aqueduct.jpg[/pimage]Designed by James Brindley and opened in 1761, carrying the Bridgewater Canal over the River Irwell at Barton-upon-Irwell.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Barton_aqueduct.jpg)Barton Aqueduct shortly before its demolition in 1893
Wikimedia Commons
The Barton Aqueduct, opened on 17 July 1761, carried the Bridgewater Canal over the River Irwell at Barton-upon-Irwell, in the historic county of Lancashire, England. Designed largely by James Brindley under the direction of John Gilbert,{{sfnp|TCR7VRQ6|14}} it was the first navigable aqueduct to be built in England, “one of the seven wonders of the canal age” according to the industrial archaeologist Mike Nevell.{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|135}}
Construction proceeded quickly, but disaster almost struck when the aqueduct was first filled with water and one of its three arches began to buckle under the weight. Remedial work took several months, but the aqueduct was still opened to traffic only fifteen months after the enabling Act of Parliament had been passed, on 17 July 1761. It remained in use for more than 100 years, until the construction of the [Manchester Ship Canal](https://engole.info/manchester-ship-canal) necessitated its demolition in 1893, when it was replaced by the [Barton Swing Aqueduct](https://engole.info/barton-swing-aqueduct/).
## Background
The original intention was for the Bridgewater Canal to reach Salford from the Duke of Bridgewater’s coal mines in Worsley, by remaining on the north bank of the Irwell. Work began in 1759, but it was quickly decided to alter the route by building a masonry aqueduct to carry the waterway over the Irwell at Barton, and terminate instead in Manchester, to the south of the river. A Bill to authorise the new route was presented to parliament on 13 November 1759, and in January the following year Brindley travelled to London to give evidence before a parliamentary committee in support of the proposal.{{sfnp|TCR7VRQ6|14-15}}
Although a gifted engineer Brindley had no formal education and rarely, if ever, committed his designs to paper.{{sfnp|BM7LGUDR|45}} When questioned by the parliamentary committee about the composition of the puddle he frequently referred to in his evidence, he had a mass of clay brought into the committee room. He then formed the clay into a trough and showed how it would only form a watertight seal if it had been worked with water to form puddle. “Thus it is” said Brindley “that I form a watertight-trunk to carry water over rivers and valleys wherever they cross the path of the canal.” Later, when asked to produce a drawing of the bridge or aqueduct he proposed to build, he replied that he had no representation of it on paper but would demonstrate his intention by use of a model. He then went out and bought a large round of Cheshire cheese, which he divided into two equal halves saying “Here is my model”. Then, to the amusement of the committee, he used the two halves of cheese to represent the semicircular arches and laid a long, rectangular object over the top to demonstrate the position of the river flowing under the aqueduct and the canal flowing over it.{{sfnp|BM7LGUDR|47}}
Although the duke had seen navigable aqueducts in use on canals when travelling abroad on his Grand Tour, the idea of an such a structure carrying a canal over a river was new to England and was ridiculed by contemporary engineers.{{sfnp|TCR7VRQ6|14-15}}{{sfnp|32A2NXMQ|21-24}} One brought in to review the plans, at Brindley’s request, commented in a report to the Duke of Bridgewater that “I have often heard of castles in the air, but never before saw where one was to be erected.”{{sfnp|TCR7VRQ6|15}} The necessary Act of Parliament was passed in March 1760, and was quite specific about the form the aqueduct had to take, to protect the viability of the Mersey & Irwell Navigation below. There was already a three-arch road bridge, Barton Bridge, passing over the Irwell, and the aqueduct was required not to restrict traffic on the river any more than the road bridge already did. It had to have the same number of arches, the foundations for which had to be fixed in the river bed, and the arches had to be at least as wide and high as those of the road bridge.{{sfnp|TCR7VRQ6|14-15}}
## Construction
At about {{convert|200|yd}} long, {{convert|12|yd}} wide and {{convert|39|ft}} above the river at its highest point, the aqueduct was, for its time, an enormous construction.{{sfnp|32A2NXMQ|22}} Early illustrations show the aqueduct’s piers to have been flat-faced, but an engraving of 1864 shows them to have pointed cutwaters extending beyond the spring of the arch;{{sfnp|TCR7VRQ6|20}} it is likely that the piers were refaced in the early 1820s.{{sfnp|TCR7VRQ6|21}} The arches were composed of several rings of brickwork, with masonry used for decorative keystones. All the masonry used in the structure was coursed [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar).{{sfnp|TCR7VRQ6|20}}
On the day it was first tested the water was allowed to flow in, but one of the arches began to buckle under the weight. Brindley, overcome with anxiety, retired to his bed at the Bishop Blaize tavern in nearby [Stretford](https://engole.info/stretford). Gilbert, realising that Brindley had placed too much weight on the sides of the arch, removed the clay and laid layers of straw and freshly puddled clay; when the water was allowed to flow in again the masonry held firm.{{sfnp|VU4CXRDF|65}} According to a statement by Francis Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater printed in 1820, his uncle, the duke, had told him that there was a distortion of one of the arches, and that Gilbert had addressed the problem by placing more weight on the crown of the arch and less on the haunches. The arch was then covered with straw and allowed to stand until the following spring, when the mortar was set and the arch had become stable, but its curve remained irregular.{{sfnp|TUZR7VFG|125}}
## Operation and legacy
The aqueduct was opened to traffic on 17 July 1761, only 15 months after the enabling Act had been passed,{{sfnp|TUZR7VFG|125-131}} and it was soon being used by the duke’s barges to carry coal to Manchester from his mines at Worsley.{{sfnp|32A2NXMQ|22}} The construction of the aqueduct excited great admiration, and writers of the day often remarked on the strange and novel sight afforded by the canal where it crossed the Irwell. The structure became one of the wonders of the age and crowds came from all over the country to view it, along with the drilling of the sough for the duke’s Worsley navigable levels.{{sfnp|VU4CXRDF|65-66}} Those who saw it were often struck by the advantages of still-water navigation when they saw ten or twelve men slowly hauling a single barge against the flow of the Irwell, while {{convert|40|ft}} above a horse, mule, or perhaps two men, could be seen hauling several linked barges across the still waters of the aqueduct.{{sfnp|BM7LGUDR|11}}
Although the aqueduct was {{convert|12|yd}} wide overall, the waterway it carried was only half that width. The Bridgewater Canal had been built to accommodate the Mersey flat boats then in common use, which had a beam of about 14 feet (4.3 m), making two-way traffic impossible. A signalling system was therefore installed to control access to the aqueduct. A pole {{convert|15|ft|r=1}} high in the centre of the arch at the Stretford bank supported a semaphore system with two arms on each side, operated by levers at ground level.{{sfnp|TCR7VRQ6|21}}
Although Gilbert later had to resurface the aqueduct, the structure remained in use for more than 100 years.{{sfnp|VU4CXRDF|66}} In the first volume of his Lives of the Engineers (1862) Scottish author Samuel Smiles said of the construction that “Humble though it now appears, it was parent of the magnificent aqueducts of Rennie and Telford, and the viaducts of Stephenson and Brunel”.{{sfnp|ZLBK4XK7|212-213}}
## Replacement
Barton Aqueduct’s fate was sealed with the passage of the Manchester Ship Canal Act 1885, which allowed for the construction of a navigable waterway large enough to accommodate ocean-going vessels from the estuary of the River Mersey the 36 miles (58 km) into Manchester, partly along the Irwell. As the arches of the aqueduct were too small to allow large ships to pass through it was demolished in 1893, and replaced by the Barton Swing Aqueduct still in use today.{{sfnp|TCR7VRQ6|36-37}} So solidly built was the old aqueduct that dynamite had to be used to expedite its demolition.{{sfnp|TCR7VRQ6|21}}
Some of the stonework of Brindley’s aqueduct has been preserved in the nearby Barton Memorial Arch, a monument to his “castle in the air”.{{sfnp|TCR7VRQ6|37}} A section of the aqueduct’s embankment and retaining wall, designated a Scheduled Monument in 2021, can be seen in the [Barton Aqueduct Pocket Park](https://engole.info/barton-aqueduct-pocket-park).{{sfnp|GBRNRTCM}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 14448
**Categories:** Aqueduct
---
### [Worthington Hall, Wigan](https://engole.info/worthington-hall-wigan/)
**Published:** August 3, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Worthington Hall is an Elizabethan farm house on Chorley Lane in Wigan, Manchester, England. An inscription on a lintel in the gabled porch dates the building to 1577.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/worthington-hall-3-exl.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/Mg4ZghSMro32}}|http://mylesstandish.info/
Worthington Hall is an Elizabethan farm house on Chorley Lane in Wigan, Manchester, England. An inscription on a lintel in the gabled porch dates the building to 1577.{{sfnp|S2NLVEMS}}
The house is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II\* listed building, first listed on 19 November 1951.{{sfnp|S2NLVEMS}}
## Architecture
The two-storey farmhouse with a jettied first floor has been dated to 1577; a lintel above the entrance in the gabled porch has the lettering “EO EDWARDE WORTHINGTON 1577/MO”. It is constructed of stone with a slate roof. The house has four windows to the front, the second of which has timber framing with decorative panels. The rear has exposed stone with [quoins](https://engole.info/quoin/). Inside, the larger of the two fireplaces has a bressummer. The attic has exposed timber trusses and wattle and daub infill panels,{{sfnp|S2NLVEMS}} as well as another small fireplace.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 4398
**Categories:** Greater Manchester
---
### [Renishaw Hall](https://engole.info/renishaw-hall/)
**Published:** July 1, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Renishaw_Hall_-_Derbyshire%2C_England_-_DSC02226.jpg[/pimage]Country house to the west of Renishaw village in Derbyshire England, home to the Sitwell family since the early 17th century.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Renishaw_Hall_-_Derbyshire%2C_England_-_DSC02226.jpg)Renishaw Hall
Wikimedia Commons
Renishaw Hall is a country house to the west of Renishaw village in the parish of Eckington in Derbyshire, England. The hall, a Grade I [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building), has been the home of the Sitwell family since the first house was built in about 1625. The early Sitwells were ironmasters.
The hall is much altered and enlarged, and surrounded by Grade II\* listed parkland and gardens that are open to the public. The hall and estate are still privately owned, and the house is open for booked guided tours.
## History
Sitwells were mentioned in records in 1301, when they lived at Ridgeway near Renishaw. They were living at Staveley Netherthorpe in the early 1500s. Robert Sytwell bought land at Renishaw in the mid 1500s and by 1600 it was the family seat. George Sitwell built the H-shaped manor house that is at the core of the hall. The Sitwells made their fortune as ironmasters and by the end of the 17th century their ironworks was the world’s largest producer of iron nails.{{snfp|N9H7G6X7|5}}
The next owner Francis Sitwell married Katherine Sachaverell who was succeeded by another George who left no living descendents. Francis the next owner died a bachelor after improving the house and gardens. He was succeeded by an older cousin William who had married Mary Reresby. Their sons never married but their daughter Catherine married Jonathan Hurt and the estate passed to their son, Francis Hurt, who changed his name to Sitwell in 1777.{{snfp|N9H7G6X7|6, 7}}{{sfnp|SWP599G3}} Their son was Sitwell Sitwell, whose first wife died two weeks after the birth of their only son, George.{{snfp|N9H7G6X7|8}}
Sir George Sitwell succeeded to the title in his infancy. He was succeeded by his son Reresby, who died aged 41, leaving the estate’s finances in a poor state. His widow could not afford the upkeep of the hall and moved to Scarborough. She did manage to turn around the estate for her son George. Coal was discovered deep under Renishaw reviving the family fortune.{{snfp|N9H7G6X7|9}} The house was little used, and furniture had been sold along with the silver.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Sargent_-_Familie_Sitwell.jpg) *Sir George Sitwell, Lady Ida Sitwell and Family*, by John Singer Sargeant
Wikimedia Commons
When George Sitwell inherited he married Lady Ida Denison.{{snfp|N9H7G6X7|10}} Sir George designed the gardens and parkland. Their children – Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell – were notable in the artistic and literary world in the 1920s and ’30s and were patrons of the arts.{{snfp|N9H7G6X7|11}} Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) was a poet and novelist, known for her eccentricity. Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969) wrote prose, poetry, short stories and novels, and Sacheverell Sitwell (1897–1988) was known for his work on art, architecture, ballet and travel. Osbert Sitwell commissioned John Piper, who became a frequent visitor, to paint Renishaw Hall in 1942 and to illustrate his autobiography. A collection of paintings by Piper hangs in the Front Hall.
Sir Osbert Sitwell inherited Renishaw, and Sacheverell inherited a property in Northamptonshire. Osbert Sitwell gave the house to his brother’s son, Sir Reresby Sitwell, 7th Baronet.{{snfp|N9H7G6X7|12}} In 2009 the house, but not the title, passed to Reresby’s daughter, Alexandra Hayward, whose family still occupy the hall.
## Hall
The Grade I listed hall was built in stages, beginning with the H-shaped house that George Sitwell built in 1625.{{sfnp|P2KEWYN5}} The Gothic-style house is constructed on an irregular plan in [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) and coursed coal measures sandstone rubble and has crenellated parapets and pinnacles. Mostly of two storeys, it has sash pane windows and pitched slate roofs. Substantial alterations and the addition of the west and east ranges were made to the house for Sir Sitwell Sitwell by Joseph Badger of Sheffield between 1793 and 1808. Further alterations were made in 1908 by Edwin Lutyens.{{sfnp|P2KEWYN5}}
The house has a seven-bay 17th-century central range, a late 18th-century east range and an early 19th-century west range with domestic offices at the western end. The Gothick single-storey entrance porch by Sir George Sitwell has a flat roof supported by square columns, with inset trefoil ended panels.{{sfnp|P2KEWYN5}}
### Interior
The Front Hall is entered by the only door on the south side. It occupies most of the ground floor of the original hall. It has a large open fireplace and retains oak tables, chairs and dressers made for the old hall. Work by John Piper is displayed on the walls and above the fireplace.{{snfp|N9H7G6X7|16}} The adjacent smaller Library and Ante-Dining Room are parts of the original house.{{snfp|N9H7G6X7|20}}
The elaborate Dining Room was added by Sitwell Sitwell. It was designed by Joseph Badger and a domed recess incorporates a former cockpit.{{snfp|N9H7G6X7|18}} Badger also designed the Great Drawing Room in 1803.{{snfp|N9H7G6X7|23}}
## Stables
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Old_Stables_at_Renishaw_Hall-geograph-2440600.jpg)Renishaw stables
Wikimedia Commons
Joseph Badger also designed the Grade II\* listed stables ranged around a courtyard about {{convert|100|m}} north-west of the hall. Built in 1795, the double courtyard stables are constructed from ashlar and coursed coal measures rubble sandstone. They have a moulded eaves [cornice](https://engole.info/cornice) and a slate roof. The entrance has a [pedimented](https://engole.info/pediment) [portico](https://engole.info/portico), and there are corner pavilions to the principal elevations.{{sfnp|EMK7B633}}
The stables now house small businesses, tea rooms, the Museum of Sitwell Memorabilia, a John Piper exhibition, a Costume Gallery and the Performing Arts Gallery.{{snfp|N9H7G6X7|29}}
## Park
The {{convert|100|ha|adj=on}} Renishaw estate is to the west of Renishaw village on land that slopes down towards the east. It is separated from the village by a railway line and Eckington is to the north-west. The gardens and parkland, which originated in the 17th century, were laid out by Sir George Sitwell (1860–1943) in the late 19th and early 20 centuries. The gardens are open to the public and the parkland is listed in the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens by England Heritage as Grade II\*.{{sfnp|SWP599G3}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/The_Old_Sawmill_Renishaw_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_28556.jpg)The Old Sawmill
Wikimedia Commons
Two man-made lakes occupy the valley to the east and south of the hall. The smaller lake is to the north and the southern lake, which is about {{convert|500|m}} long, has an island near its south-east shore.{{sfnp|SWP599G3}} They were created for Sir George Sitwell, MP for Scarborough, who constructed the lakes as work for unemployed fishermen from his constituency towards the end of the 19th century. The lakes provided a water supply for the house. Water was pumped uphill from the sawmill, originally a small power station driven by a turbine and then by the steam engine that has been restored and displayed in the stable yard.{{sfnp|6NE6NDDK|28}}
A golf course was created on parkland to the north in the early 20th century.{{sfnp|SWP599G3}} A vineyard was planted with Seyval Blanc grapes in the paddock in 1972; at the time it was the most northerly in the world. Red grapes are grown in glasshouses in the kitchen garden.{{sfnp|6NE6NDDK|28}}
## Gardens
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Statuary_and_fountain%2C_Renishaw_Hall-geograph-3583717-by-Peter-Barr.jpg)Clipped hedges, fountain and statuary
Wikimedia Commons
The hall was once surrounded by gardens laid out in geometrical patterns with quartering paths as evidenced by an 18th-century map. They were probably laid out by George Sitwell in about 1698. By 1875 most of the formal gardens had been removed and replaced by a lawn. A [ha-ha](https://engole.info/ha-ha) divided the gardens from the park.{{sfnp|SWP599G3}}
The present garden is the creation of Sir George Sitwell, and was begun in 1886. It incorporates statues and water features emulating gardens he had seen in Italy.{{sfnp|6NE6NDDK|3}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 21811
**Categories:** Country house, Derbyshire
---
### [The Plattner Story and Others](https://engole.info/the-plattner-story-and-others/)
**Published:** January 20, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Collection of 17 short stories by H. G. Wells, first published in 1897.
**Content:**
*The Plattner Story and Others* is a collection of seventeen short stories written by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published by Methuen & Co. in 1897.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|50}}
Stories are listed in the order in which they appear in the book, which is not necessarily the order in which they first appeared in print.
- “[The Plattner Story](https://engole.info/the-plattner-story/)” (1896)
- “[The Argonauts of the Air](https://engole.info/the-argonauts-of-the-air/)” (1895)
- “[The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham](https://engole.info/the-story-of-the-late-mr-elvesham/)” (1896)
- “[In the Abyss](https://engole.info/in-the-abyss/)” (1896)
- “[The Apple](https://engole.info/the-apple/)” (1896)
- “[Under the Knife](https://engole.info/under-the-knife/)” (1896)
- “[The Sea Raiders](https://engole.info/the-sea-raiders/)” (1896)
- “[Pollock and the Porroh Man](https://engole.info/pollock-and-the-porroh-man/)” (1895)
- “[The Red Room](https://engole.info/the-red-room/)” (1896)
- “[The Cone](https://engole.info/the-cone/)” (1895)
- “[The Purple Pileu](https://engole.info/the-purple-pileus/)s” (1896)
- “[The Jilting of Jane](https://engole.info/the-jilting-of-jane/)” (c. 1894)
- “[In the Modern Vein](https://engole.info/in-the-modern-vein/)” (1894)
- “[A Catastrophe](https://engole.info/a-catastrophe/)” (1895)
- “[The Lost Inheritance](https://engole.info/the-lost-inheritance/)” (c. 1896)
- “[The Sad Story of a Dramatic Critic](https://engole.info/the-obliterated-man/)” (1895)
- “[A Slip Under the Microscope](https://engole.info/a-slip-under-the-microscope/)” (1896)
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23447
## External links
- *[The Plattner Story and Others](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42989)* at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
---
### [Alice Glaston](https://engole.info/alice-glaston/)
**Published:** September 23, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Probably the youngest female to be legally executed in England, in 1546.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Much_Wenlock_%2C_Shropshire_%2C_The_Guildhall_%2C_April_2012_-_panoramio.jpg)Much Wenlock Guildhall, where Alice Glaston would have been imprisoned during her final days
Wikimedia Commons
Alice Glaston (c. 1535 – 13 April 1546) is probably the youngest female ever to have been legally executed in England, aged just eleven.\[a\]John Dean, hanged for arson in 1629, is the youngest known victim of the executioner, at the age of eight or nine.{{sfnp|7JK9RSPG}} She was executed at Much Wenlock, Shropshire probably by hanging, along with two other people. The court records have been lost, but it has been speculated that the crime of which she was found guilty was either murder or witchcraft.{{sfnp|BI7YQLV7|search=13 April 1546}}{{sfnp|V85XS4NN|211}}\[b\][The Witchcraft Act of 1542](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts/#Witchcraft_Act_1542) had declared witchcraft to be a crime punishable by death.{{sfnp|TXFUAR7I}} It remained in force for five years before its repeal by King Edward VII in 1547, during which time there appear to have been no prosecutions under the Act.{{sfnp|AM9HF8JT|109}}
Alice was buried at the local parish church, her burial recorded by Sir Thomas Butler, vicar of Much Wenlock.{{sfnp|LSN4IJU6|11}} Her story inspired the writer Paul Evans to create a speculative radio poem about her, *The Spirit Child*, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 27 October 2014.{{sfnp|H8GV8BS2}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a John Dean, hanged for arson in 1629, is the youngest known victim of the executioner, at the age of eight or nine.{{sfnp|7JK9RSPG}} b [The Witchcraft Act of 1542](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts/#Witchcraft_Act_1542) had declared witchcraft to be a crime punishable by death.{{sfnp|TXFUAR7I}} It remained in force for five years before its repeal by King Edward VII in 1547, during which time there appear to have been no prosecutions under the Act.{{sfnp|AM9HF8JT|109}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Uncategorized
---
### [Hush-a-bye Baby](https://engole.info/hush-a-bye-baby/)
**Published:** December 8, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/April_Baby_Hush-a-bye%2C_Baby.jpg[/pimage]Perhaps the best-known English lullaby, the earliest known version of which was published in about 1765.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/April_Baby_Hush-a-bye_Baby.webp)Illustration from *The April Baby’s Book of Tunes*, by Kate Greenaway
Wikipedia
“Hush-a-bye Baby” is perhaps the best-known [lullaby](https://engole.info/lullaby) in the English language, often sung to the tune of Henry Purcell’s 1686 quickstep *Lillibullero*. It first appears in print in John Newbery’s *Mother Goose’s Melody* (c. 1765), but its age is uncertain:{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|70}}
> Hush-a-bye, Baby, on the tree top,
> When the wind blows the cradle will rock;
> When the bow breaks the cradle will fall,
> Down will come baby, cradle, and all.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|70}}
Some later versions alter the opening words to “Rock-a-bye”, first recorded in Benjamin Tabart’s *Songs for the Nursery* (1805).{{sfnp|8ISARVPN|105}}
## Interpretations
In the words of *A Dictionary of English Folklore*, “Nursery rhymes have suffered the indignity of having more nonsense written about them than any other folklore genre”,{{sfnp|EAHER84S}} and “Hush-a-bye Baby” is no exception. Commenting that “imaginations have been stretched to give the rhyme significance”, the folklorists Iona and Peter Opie have reported several explanations of the meaning of the rhyme, without endorsing any of them.{{sfnp|36XTQ6UV|70}}
- the baby represents the Egyptian deity Horus
- the first line is a corruption of the French “*He bas! là le loup!*” (Hush! There’s the wolf!)
- it was written by an English *Mayflower* colonist who observed the way Native American women rocked their babies in birch-bark cradles, suspended from the branches of trees
- it is a lampoon of the British royal line in the time of James II
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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## External links
- [Traditionally sung by the Broadside Band on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJWy0t3lOFs)
**Categories:** Lullaby
---
### [Burying in Woollens Acts](https://engole.info/burying-in-woollens-acts/)
**Published:** December 23, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bf/Coat_of_Arms_of_England_%281660-1689%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_Arms_of_England_%281660-1689%29.svg.png[/pimage]There were three Burying in Woollens Acts passed during the 17th century, to support the domestic woollen trade in the face of increasing competition from foreign imports.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bf/Coat_of_Arms_of_England_%281660-1689%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_Arms_of_England_%281660-1689%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
There were three Burying in Woollens Acts passed during the 17th century, the first in 1666 (18 & 19 Cha. II c. 4 1666 ) and the second in 1678 (30 Car. II cap.3), which repealed the first. Their aim was to support the domestic woollen trade in the face of increasing competition from foreign imports and newer materials.{{sfnp|967BUYBE|136}} The Acts mandated that when a corpse was buried it should be dressed only in a shroud or garments made of wool;{{sfnp|6TYJIBTX}} the Woollen Acts are an early example of the state intervening in areas of life not usually considered to be criminal.{{sfnp|967BUYBE|136}}
And it is hereby enacted [that] noe Corps of any person or persons shall be buryed in any Shirt Shift Sheete or Shroud or any thing whatsoever made or mingled with Flax Hempe Silke Haire Gold or Silver or in any Stuffe … upon paine of the Forfeiture of Five pounds of lawfull Money of England to be recovered and divided as is hereafter in this Act expressed and directed.
The first Act of 1666 was considered ineffective, as it stipulated no financial penalty for any breach of the law, hence its replacement in 1678 with the Act that laid down a fine of £5,{{sfnp|6TYJIBTX}} about what an agricultural worker of the period might earn in three months.{{sfnp|5PBMCFT9}} That later Act did make an exception in the case of plague victims however, for whom the fine did not apply.{{sfnp|6TYJIBTX}} The Additional Act for Burying in Woollen Act of 1680 (32 Cha. II c. 1) extended those before whom an affadavit could be sworn that the corpse had been buried in wool to include parsons, vicars and curates.{{sfnp|VXDYUUNA}}
The Act stipulated that half of the fine imposed was to be used to support the poor of the parish where the burial took place, with the other half going to whoever informed the authorities that the deceased had not been buried in wool.{{sfnp|6TYJIBTX}} The rich were thus offered another avenue for the display of their wealth, partially subsidised by the state, as the family member of a deceased person could report the offence of not burying the dead in wool and collect half the fine to help pay for the funeral. Alexander Pope satirised the situation in his *Moral Essays Epistle 1* (1734):{{sfnp|967BUYBE|136}}
> “Odious! in woollen! ‘twould a saint provoke”
> (Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke);
> “No, let a charming chintz, and Brussels lace
> Wrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeless face:
> One would not, sure, be frightful when one’s dead –
> And–Betty–give this cheek a little red.”
The 1678 Act was repealed in 1814 by the Burying in Woollen Act (54 Geo. 3 c. 108).{{sfnp|SNCJGXZ9}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [The Lancashire Witches](https://engole.info/the-lancashire-witches/)
**Published:** August 8, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Nance_Redferne_%26_Chattox.jpg[/pimage]Novel by William Harrison Ainsworth, first published in 1848. Based on the true story of the Pendle witches, it is the only one of his forty novels that has never been out of print.
**Content:**
First edition title page
Wikimedia Commons
*The Lancashire Witches* is the only one of [William Harrison Ainsworth](https://engole.info/william-harrison-ainsworth/)‘s forty novels that has remained continuously in print since its first publication.{{sfnp|9UAN3UFR|166}} It was serialised in the *Sunday Times* newspaper in 1848; a book edition appeared the following year, published by Henry Colburn. The novel is based on the true story of the [Pendle witches](https://engole.info/pendle-witches/), who were executed in 1612 for causing harm by witchcraft. Modern critics such as David Punter consider the book to be Ainsworth’s best work.{{sfnp|9UAN3UFR|169}} E. F. Bleiler rated the work as “one of the major English novels about witchcraft”.{{sfnp|6NDX7AUB|3}}
Although featuring many of the characters involved in the Pendle witch trials, the novel’s plot is entirely fictional, centring as it does on [Alice Nutter](https://engole.info/alice-nutter/). Although she was convicted and executed for witchcraft, Alice’s only crime appears to have been that she was a Catholic in the wrong place at the wrong time.
## Biographical background and publication
The subject of the Pendle witches was suggested to Ainsworth by antiquarian and long-time friend James Crossley, President of the Chetham Society. During 1846 and 1847 Ainsworth visited all of the major sites involved in the story, such as Pendle Hill and [Malkin Tower](https://engole.info/malkin-tower/), home of the Demdikes, one of the two families accused of witchcraft. He wrote the story in 1848, when it was serialised in the *Sunday Times* newspaper. On completion of the work, Ainsworth was paid £1,000 and the copyright reverted to him.{{sfnp|9UAN3UFR|168}}
As was common practice at the time, the novel was published in a three-volume set known as a triple decker. The first edition was produced by Henry Colburn in 1849, with the subtitle “A Romance of Pendle Forest”. At £1 11s 6d, about the amount that a skilled worker could earn in a week, it was expensive. Routledge published an illustrated edition in 1854, reissued in 1878.{{sfnp|9UAN3UFR|168-169}} The twelve full-page illustrations were by John Gilbert.{{sfnp|QQYQDGT2|13}}
## Plot
Ainsworth based his story largely on the official account of the Lancashire witch trials written by the clerk to the court, Thomas Potts, first published in 1613 under the title [*The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster*](https://engole.info/the-wonderfull-discoverie-of-witches-in-the-countie-of-lancaster/). Potts himself makes an appearance in the book, as a “scheming and self-serving lawyer”.{{sfnp|WN3IYE4Y}}\[a\]In reality Potts was never a lawyer. The novel consists of four parts, each written as a third-person narrative.
## Introduction
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Pendle_Hill_and_the_Ribble_Valley_-_geograph.org.uk_-_72304.jpg)Pendle Hill
Wikimedia Commons
The ten chapters of the Introduction, subtitled “The Last Abbot of Whalley”, are set against the backdrop of the 1536 Pilgrimage of Grace, an uprising by northern Catholics against the English Reformation instituted by King Henry VIII.
It is late November 1536. Eight men, prominent among them John Paslew, Abbot of Whalley and the self-styled Earl of Poverty, are gathered together by a beacon at the top of Pendle Hill. An uneasy armistice has been declared in the Pilmigrage, and beacons have been built on high ground to act as a renewed summons to arms should they ever be lit; that is the signal the eight men are waiting for.
As dusk approaches the abbot and his party become aware of a tall dark man accompanied by a black hound standing close by, whom one of the party recognises as Nicholas Demdike, husband of Bess Demdike, “an approved and notorious witch”.{{sfnp|UWNASNYH|loc=262}} Demdike starts to sing, mocking the abbot and foretelling of his execution, which so enrages the abbot that he orders one of his archers to loose a shot at him. But Demdike merely laughs before disappearing down the hill, only pausing about half-way down to trace a circle in the grass and repeat some incantation.
In the growing darkness a signal fire is seen on a neighbouring hill, then another and another. Excitedly the abbot lights the beacon on Pendle Hill and prepares to ride to Whalley Abbey, to organise his forces in preparation for joining the main body of the rebel army the following day. But before he can leave, Demdike appears before him, to warn the abbot that if he proceeds with his plan his life will be forfeit. Demdike claims that he can save the abbot however, on one condition: that he baptise Demdike’s infant daughter. Meanwhile a party of Royalist soldiers is ascending the hill in search of the abbot and his men. Demdike conjures up a torrent of water from the spot where he had earlier traced the circle, and most of the soldiers are carried to their deaths. But still the abbot refuses to acquiesce to Demdike’s request for his daughter to be baptised.
### Capture and escape
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Abbot_of_Whalley_Confession.png)Borlace Alvetham hearing the abbot’s confession
Wikimedia Commons
The abbot is subsequently captured by Royalist forces, tried at Lancaster Castle, and sentenced to death by hanging. He is condemned to be executed outside his family home of Wishall Hall, close to the abbey, where he is taken the day before the sentence is due to carried out. As the abbot and his guards are entering the abbey he is once again confronted by Nicholas Demdike, this time accompanied by his wife Bess and their unbaptised infant. Demdike repeats his request to the abbot that he baptise the child, promising that if he does so then Demdike can still save him even at this late juncture. But the abbot continues to refuse, saying to Bess “I curse thee witch … May the malediction of Heaven and all its hosts alight on the head of thy infant … A thing accursed, and shunned by her fellows, shall thy daughter be – evil reputed and evil doing”.{{sfnp|UWNASNYH|loc=702}}
After a specially granted Midnight Mass, the abbot is overcome by remorse for his treatment thirty-one years earlier of a rival for the position of head of the abbey, Borlace Alvetham, and asks that a priest be sent to hear his confession. The abott confesses that he had contrived to have Alvetham falsely accused of witchcraft and bricked into a tiny cell from which the only escape was death. The priest then throws back his hood to reveal that he is Borlace Alvetham, and that he had succeeded in escaping from his tomb with the aid of a demon. He further reveals that the demon promised him vengeance against his enemy, the abbot, and that when he returned to the area of Whalley twenty-nine years after his escape he had adopted the name of Nicholas Demdike.
Following his revelations Demdike rushes out of the room shouting “To the gallows! – to the gallows!”,{{sfnp|UWNASNYH|loc=965}} leaving the abbot to his own thoughts. He is roused when Hal o’ Nabs, one of a group of men intent on rescuing the abbot, places a hand on his shoulder. But the abbot has given his word to his captors not to escape in return for being allowed to celebrate the Midnight Mass, and so refuses to follow the man down the ladder by which he had ascended. He is nevertheless tricked into escaping, and taken to the abbey mill. Inside he finds the miller’s wife with an infant on her knee. She explains that the child is not hers, but was brought to her by her husband following the death of Bess Demdike that afternoon, so distraught was she at the abbot’s curse. She shows the disfigured child to the abbot; one of its eyes is set lower than the other.
### Execution
The abbot is quickly recaptured, thanks largely to Demdike. Shortly before the time for the death sentence to be carried out the following morning, the appointed executioner and his assistants disappear, because, it is suggested, they are reluctant to put churchmen to death. Demdike offers to take the executioner’s place, and his offer is accepted. Moments before the appointed time, Demdike whispers to the abbot that he can spare him the indignity of a public execution by stabbing him to death if he would but retract the curse he had put on his daughter. The abbot’s response is “Never … thy child shall be a witch, and the mother of witches”.{{sfnp|UWNASNYH|loc=1275}} Following his execution the abbot’s body is entrusted to Demdike to be taken to the convent church. One of the abbot’s erstwhile rescuers, Hal o’ Nabs, has been warned that Demdike is impervious to all weapons forged by man, and so to wreak his revenge for the death of the abbot he secretes himself behind a great stone statue of St Gregory in the gallery of the church, waiting for Demdike to appear below it. When he does, Hal pushes the statue from its pedestal and it falls on Demdike, crushing him and killing him instantly.
## Book The First
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Alizon_Device_being_dressed_for_appearance_as_May_Queen.png)Alizon Device being dressed for her appearance as the Queen of May, while her sister Jennet looks on
Wikimedia Commons
In the ten chapters of the first book, subtitled “Alizon Device”, the novel has moved on more than sixty years.
The village of Whalley has been decorated for a May Day wake. In a cottage on the outskirts of the village, Alizon Device is being dressed as Maid Marion, Queen of May, ready to take her place of honour in the pageant which will soon be arriving at her door. She is a beautiful young woman, in stark contrast to her little sister Jennet, nine or ten years old, who is watching the preparations in a sullen silence. Jennet is small for her age, with sharp and cunning features. She also has several deformities, including a curvature of the spine and eyes that are positioned unevenly on her face. The two sisters are grandchildren of Nicholas and Bess Demdike’s unbaptised child, now known as Mother Demdike.\[b\]The Demdike family tree is poetic licence on Ainsworth’s part. The real Mother Demdike was Elizabeth Southerns; her nickname of Demdike is a derivation of “demon woman”.{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|204}} In the intervening years since the Abbot of Whalley’s curse she has indeed become a witch, feared throughout the district.
As the procession reaches the village green the usher announces the arrival of Sir Ralph Assheton and his party. He is the great-grandson of the Richard Assheton who had led the group of men up Pendle Hill to apprehend the Abbot of Whalley, and almost been killed by the torrent of water conjured up by Nicholas Demdike. Fourteen years after that November evening he had bought Whalley Abbey from the Crown. Among Assheton’s party are two of his cousins, Nicholas Assheton of Downham and Richard Assheton of Middleton. Richard, accompanied by his younger sister Dorothy, is about twenty-two years old and considered to be very handsome. Also among Sir Ralph’s guests are Alice Nutter and local magistrate Roger Nowell. Alice Nutter is dressed in mourning clothes for her husband Richard, who had been suddenly taken ill and died an unexplained death within three or four days. Richard Nutter was convinced that he had been bewitched, and some locals believed that Alice had picked up a wax image in her husband’s room, stuck with pins, and that when she had thrown it on the fire Richard had died. Alice has been persuaded from her secluded life at Rough Lee because she wishes to secure the help of Sir Ralph in a dispute she is having with her neighbour Roger Nowell over the boundary between their two estates. Sir Ralph, having been appointed umpire in the dispute, has already ruled in favour of Nowell, but as Alice has refused to accept his decision a lawyer has been summoned from London to give a final decision, Thomas Potts, who is also at the fair. Potts is also acting for another member of the local gentry, Sir Thomas Metcalfe, “a man of violent disposition”,{{sfnp|UWNASNYH|loc=1742}} who is claiming ownership of a neighbouring house and estate.
Alizon is formally presented to Sir Ralph and Lady Assheton, and asked to choose her partner for the evening’s dance to be held at the abbey. Blushing, she chooses Richard Assheton, who declares himself to be delighted by her choice, and asks if he may have the flower she is wearing as a token. Lady Assheton is quick to spot the mutual attraction between Alizon and Richard, which makes her a little uneasy. But the usher then leads Alizon to the maypole, where the festivities begin in earnest. Shortly thereafter Alizon becomes aware of a commotion some distance away, and on hearing that it is being caused by a swordfight between Richard and Sir Thomas Metcalfe, and fearful that Richard might be killed, she falls to the ground in a faint. But Richard is easily able to disarm his opponent, and, on the orders of Sir Ralph, Alizon is taken to the abbey to recover.
Meanwhile Alice Nutter and Nicholas have fallen into conversation about Mother Demdike. Nicholas is quite convinced that she is responsible for the death of Alice’s husband, but Alice disagrees, and goes so far as to say that she does not believe in the existence of witches. Nicholas is adamant however, claiming that “Pendle Forest swarms with witches … the terror of the whole country”.{{sfnp|UWNASNYH|loc=2006}} Their conversation is overheard by Thomas Potts, and it gives him the idea to search out the witches that Nicholas refers to, and by so doing gain favour with King James, who is well known to have an interest in witchcraft.
### Mother Chattox
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Nance_Redferne_%26_Chattox.jpg)Mother Chattox and her daughter Nan Redferne
Wikimedia Commons
The revellers make their way to the church. Richard Assheton goes in first, and unwittingly stands on the grave of John Paslew, the last Abbot of Whalley. His cousin Nicholas is much alarmed when he sees Richard in that position, reminding him of the common belief that any Assheton who stands on the grave will be dead within the year, but Richard is unconcerned.
Nicholas and Richard leave the church, and see the arrival of Mother Chattox – Mother Demdike’s “rival potentate in evil”{{sfnp|UWNASNYH|loc=2258}} – accompanied by her grand-daughter Nan Redferne. Under questioning from Nicholas, Mother Chattox admits that she hates all Asshetons. She places curses on both Nicholas and Richard, in the latter’s case that “the bloom shall shall fade from his cheek … the strength depart from his limbs. Sorrow shall be her portion who loves him”.{{sfnp|UWNASNYH|loc=2315}}
Unnerved by this encounter, Nicholas calls for the beagle to arrest Mother Chattox as a witch, but she has disappeared, and Nan is arrested instead, on the same charge. Potts appears on the scene, and insists that Nan be detained until she has been tested as a witch. She is placed on a set of scales and [weighed](https://engole.info/witch-finding/#Weighing) against a bible, but not satisfied with the result Potts insists on an [ordeal by swimming](https://engole.info/witch-finding/#Swimming). While she is being bound for her ordeal a mole is discovered on her breast, a witch’s mark according to Potts. Nance is thrown into the River Calder attached to two ropes, one on each bank. Initially she floats, but when the tension is eased out of the ropes she sinks to the bottom of the river like a stone, thus passing the test. But nobody attempts to save her from drowning until Richard Assheton dives in and rescues her.
Some time later Alizon Device and Richard Assheton’s sister Dorothy are strolling together through the grounds of the ruined abbey. Dorothy declares that she is so fond of Alizon that she would like her to come and stay with the Assheton family at their home in Middleton, but Alizon says that she must turn down the offer, as she feels a responsibility towards her mother and sister to encourage them back into the ways of the church. She goes on to say that she feels a particular responsibility towards her sister Jennet, and fervently hopes to be the agent of her salvation and save her soul. Dorothy then shares her fear that because Mother Demdike is widely believed to be a witch, the same accusation might be made about the members of her family, and that Alizon may suffer the same fate as Nan Redferne. She goes on to say that as Alizon is so different from the rest of her family that she and Richard both suspect that Alizon is not Elizabeth Device’s daughter, or related to any of the Demdike clan.
Just then Mother Chattox appears in front of the two young women and proclaims herself the enemy of all of Mother Demdike’s “accursed brood”.{{sfnp|UWNASNYH|loc=2792}} Chattox says that because of Jem Device’s treatment of her grand-daughter Nan Redferne during the trial by water she would have killed Alizon on the spot, had she not known that Alizon was indeed not Elizabeth Device’s daughter and therefore not a Demdike. Although Chattox claims to know the secret of Alizon’s birth, she says the time is not yet ripe for it to be revealed. Alice Nutter appears on the scene, demanding to know what Chattox has told the two girls. Chattox is evasive, but Alice is insistent that she reveals the identity of Alizon’s real mother and casts a spell over her. Alice clearly has considerable power over Chattox, but the latter manages to shuffle off behind a tomb before she is forced to reveal her secret.
After returning to the abbey Dorothy reveals to her brother, who has guessed that Alizon is not Elizabeth Device’s daughter, her surmise that Alizon is in reality Alice Nutter’s daughter. Nicholas Assheton then joins them, telling them that Potts has just told him that he suspects Alice of being a witch after overhearing a conversation she had had with Elizabeth Device.
### Alice Nutter
Meanwhile Alice Nutter has taken Alizon to her room in the abbey, so that they can have a private conversation. Alice reveals that she and her husband Richard had a very unhappy marriage, and that he had become exceedingly jealous, suspecting that Alice was having an affair with a family friend. Consequently, when Alice became pregnant Richard was convinced that the child was not his. Elizabeth Device, who at the time was employed as Alice’s lady’s maid, had given birth to her own child two months before Alice’s daughter, whom she named Millicent. One night shortly after Millicent’s birth Richard Nutter and Jem Device had burst into Alice’s bedroom, grabbed the baby and thrown it on the fire. But the child they had killed was Elizabeth’s, and not Alice’s, as Elizabeth had swapped the babies over. Millicent is sent to live with Elizabeth Device as her own child, and given the name Alizon.
Alice tells Alizon that she will be coming to stay with her at Rough Lee, and will not be returning to what until now had been her home with Elizabeth Device. By now it has become dark. Swiftly, Alice rises and makes a few passes of her hands over her daughter, at which Alizon falls back as though in a faint, yet still remains conscious. She becomes aware of the tall dark figure of a man emerging from the closet; the last thing she sees before losing consciousness is Alice prostrating herself before the sinister-looking figure.
Just before the evening’s dance is due to begin, Alice and Alizon join the main party in the abbey’s gallery. Alice announces that she intends to adopt Alizon, having no children of her own. Keen to bring as many wtches as possible to justice, Thomas Potts seeks out Jennet Device and promises her that she can make her fortune from the reward she will receive if she testifies against the other members of her family, including Alizon, and denounces them as witches. But before Jennet can give a proper reply Alice Nutter casts a spell over her, and she falls back faint.
### Witches’ Sabbath
Dorothy Assheton’s room, known as the Abbot’s Chamber, is next to that of Alizon and her mother. Having heard tales of ghostly apparitions, Dorothy is afraid to spend the night alone in her room, and begs Alizon to sleep with her, but Alizon dare not leave her mother. After a short time Alizon hears a tapping at her door. It is a white-faced Dorothy, who has been terrified by the sight of a monk dressed in white emerging from behind the wall hangings and gliding into the oratory. Alice tells Dorothy that she must be mistaken, and to return to bed. But as the clock strikes twelve Dorothy sees another figure behind the hangings, this time a woman dressed in white, and once again seeks refuge in the room next door. Entering without knocking, she finds the room in darkness and Alizon asleep in a chair, but no sign of Alice until the same figure of the woman dressed in white she had seen in her own room appears from behind a tapestry. Alice’s “livid and contorted countenance” horrifies Dorothy, who manages to hide in a closet.{{sfnp|UWNASNYH|loc=3899}}
Alice takes two bottles from a small box she is carrying. One contains a sparkling liquid, the other a greenish unguent. She drinks a few drops of the bright liquid before anointing her face and hands with the unguent, chanting “Emen hetan” repeatedly as she does so, before leaving the room.{{sfnp|UWNASNYH|loc=3907}} Curious about the liquid she had seen Alice take, Dorothy tries a few drops herself, and is instantly overcome by a “bewildering excitement”.{{sfnp|UWNASNYH|loc=3916}} Having felt the effect of the potion herself, and wondering if it might have the power to rouse Alizon from her sleep, she rubs a few drops on Alizon’s lips. Almost at once Alizon awakes, almost as excited as Dorothy. Together the pair make their way down to the garden and towards the ruined conventual church. When the girls get close to the church they hear the hubbub of a witches’ Sabbath, and hiding behind two columns to observe proceedings they learn that tonight a new witch is to be introduced into the group.
Alice Nutter appears to be in charge of proceedings, and is treated with great deference by the other witches present. The voice of a demon is heard as if coming from the bowels of the earth, demanding that if they want his help then the price to be paid is that a new witch is baptised. At that, Jennet Device is brought forward, but her mother Elizabeth rushes forward and strongly objects that Jennet is too young to be baptised a witch. Ignoring her mother, Jennet asks what she must do to become a witch. “You must renounce all hopes of heaven … and devote yourself to Satan” replies Alice Nutter.{{sfnp|UWNASNYH|loc=4128}} On hearing those words Alizon rushes from her hiding place and goes to Jennet, asking the child to leave with her and be saved. But the demon insists on having a new convert, so Alice calls for Dorothy Assheton, who, still under the influence of the potion she had taken earlier, scarcely knows what is happening to her. Alice asks her if she is willing to become a witch, and Dorothy agrees that she is. But before the formal ceremony can be performed Alizon rushes to her, and forcing her to her knees begins to pray. With that, the witches flee.
## Book The Second
The second book, subtitled “Pendle Forest”, consists of 17 chapters.
There is no sign of the events of the previous evening when the party assembles to visit the boundary between the estates belonging to Alice Nutter and Roger Newell to settle their dispute. They take a detour on their way to pick up Roger Nowell, which results in them having to pass through a narrow glen, where they are attacked by invisible foes. Pressing on, they reach the village of Sabden, which they find to be in a woeful state. The villagers complain that they have been bewitched by Mother Chattox and Mother Demdike because they had refused to supply the witches with poultry, eggs, milk and other things they had demanded. Taking a great interest in the case, Thomas Potts promises the villagers that they will soon be rid of “these pestilent witches”.{{sfnp|UWNASNYH|loc=4656}}
Continuing on their way, the party is joined by a man riding a powerful black horse. Much to their surprise he looks and sounds exactly like the lawyer Thomas Potts. He introduces himself as one of the reeves of the forest of Blackburnshire, sent by Alice Nutter as a witness to the boundary examination. To add to their amazement he says that his name is also Thomas Potts. After passing over one of the ridges of Pendle Hill they encounter an agitated cowherd, who tells them that a pedlar named John Law has collapsed in a fit and will die without their assistance. From the look of the pedlar, Nicholas Assheton believes him to have suffered from a paralytic stroke, but the man himself is convinced that he has been bewitched by Mother Demdike, because he had refused to give her the scissors and pins she had asked him for. After taking Law to a hostelry in the nearby village of Goldshaw, the party rests for a while and takes some refreshment.
Wandering around the village alone, Richard enters the churchyard and sees the sexton in conversation with Mother Chattox. He overhears Chattox ordering the sexton to bury a clay image of Alizon Device with the words “Bury it deep, and as it moulders away, may she it represents pine and wither”.{{sfnp|UWNASNYH|loc=4997}} Richard rushes forward and seizes the image, throwing it to the ground and smashing it, but Chattox succeeds in making good her escape before he can apprehend her.
### Boundary inspection
Pressing on, the party arrive at the boundary of Roger Nowell’s estate. He is armed with his own map while Sir Ralph Assheton has one provided by Alice Nutter. To Nowell’s increasing frustration, several large boulders and a stream marking the extremities of his property are not where he knows them to be, and as there are no signs of them having been moved he voices his suspecion that Alice Nutter has used witchcraft to win her boundary dispute with him.
Encouraged by Thomas Potts, Nowell determines to arrest Alice Nutter and the other alleged witches in the area – Mother Demdike and Mother Chattox along with their families. Richard and Nicholas Assheton baulk at Nowell’s accusation of witchcraft against Alice Nutter, as it seems to them to be based on Nowell’s bad grace in not accepting the evidence of his own eyes in his dispute with her. Consequently they leave the group and ride ahead to Alice Nutter’s home in Rough Lee to warn her and to help defend her against Nowell and his remaining men. When Nowell arrives at Rough Lee he finds Alice Nutter in defiant mood and the gates to her property locked. She refuses to allow the men to enter, so some of them climb over the wall, only to find themselves attacked by her dogs. They beat a hasty retreat, before Alice Nutter appears at the gate and proposes that she and Roger Nowell have a private meeting to see if they can come to a mutual understanding. Nowell agrees, and Alice leads him to a small room off the main hall of the house.
Once they are alone, Alice demands that Nowell retract his accusation of witchcraft against her and tell Sir Ralph Assheton that he was mistaken about the boundary between their land, in return for which she offers to give the disputed land to Nowell without charge. Suspecting some kind of trickery, Nowell at first does not agree. Alice then conjures up a double of the magistrate, telling him that if he persists then she will have him incarcerated for the rest of his life, and send the double out in his place. Realising now that he has no choice, Nowell agrees to Alice’s terms, to which she binds him by making him repeat the words “May I become subject to the Fiend if I fail in my promise”.{{sfnp|UWNASNYH|loc=5953}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a In reality Potts was never a lawyer. b The Demdike family tree is poetic licence on Ainsworth’s part. The real Mother Demdike was Elizabeth Southerns; her nickname of Demdike is a derivation of “demon woman”.{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|204}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22046
**Categories:** Historical novel, W. H. Ainsworth
---
### [Mystery at Witchend](https://engole.info/mystery-at-witchend/)
**Published:** August 13, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Mystery-at-Witchend.webp[/pimage]First in Malcolm Saville's series of Lone Pine books, chiefly concerned with the setting up of the Lone Pine Club.
**Content:**
*Mystery at Witchend*, first published in 1943, is the first in [Malcolm Saville](https://engole.info/malcolm-saville)‘s series of Lone Pine books. Set in rural Shropshire, it was written when his own children had been evacuated to that county from the family home in Hertfordshire during the Second World War. A further nineteen books followed in the Lone Pine series; the last one – *Home to Witchend* – was published in 1978.{{sfnp|AV4A77B5}}
## Synopsis
The Morton children, 15-year-old David and his 9-year-old twin siblings, Mary and Richard (Dickie) and their Scottie dog Macbeth (Mackie), have been evacuated from their home in Hertfordshire to Witchend in Shropshire, a cottage on the east flank of the Long Mynd. The cottage has been bought for that purpose by Mr Morton, a London solicitor called away to become a fighter pilot in the RAF.
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Mystery-at-Witchend.webp)Cover of 1945 edition
The Malcolm Saville Society
Much of the book is concerned with the Morton children’s setting up of the Lone Pine Club, together with their near neighbours Petronella (Peter) Sterling and Tom Ingles, an evacuee from London. Peter lives in nearby Hatcholt with her elderly retired father, and it is she who suggests forming a secret club, after coming across the Morton children while out riding her pony on the Long Mynd and rescuing Dickie from a bog he had fallen into. Mary discovers a gorse-surrounded clearing above Witchend containing a single tree, the inspiration for the name of their club. David is appointed Club Captain and Peter Vice-Captain.
It is decided that the objectives of the club are to explore, watch birds, and track strangers. Each member signs an oath “to be true to each other whatever happens always” in blood, which along with the rules is hidden in a salmon tin buried near the roots of the tree in their secret meeting place.
The club’s first adventure revolves around Appledore, a house on the other side of the Long Mynd belonging to the mysterious Mrs Thurston, who is eventually revealed to be a German spy. Strangers whom the members of the club keep encountering are in reality German saboteurs coordinated by Mrs Thurston, parachuted in at night with the aim of destroying the local reservoirs. David and Peter’s suspicions are raised when they see Mrs Thurston taking pictures of the reservoir and the damn, and share their unease with Peter’s father. But their concerns are not taken seriously until the twins go missing.
The twins have wandered off on their own and become lost in a fog on the Long Mynd, and end up at Appledore together with a parachutist who claims to be a British officer. They are rescued by a unit of the Home Guard out searching for one of the saboteurs, whom they eventually catch, but not before he has succeeded in damaging Hatchholt’s dam.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26681
**Categories:** Children's literature
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [The Apple](https://engole.info/the-apple/)
**Published:** August 4, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Apple.jpg[/pimage]Short story by H. G. Wells published in 1896, about a schoolmaster who comes into possession of an apple from the Tree of Knowledge.
**Content:**
“The Apple” is a short story by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published in [*The Idler*](https://engole.info/the-idler/) in October 1896 and subsequently in [*The Plattner Story and Others*](https://engole.info/the-plattner-story-and-others/) (1897). Told as a third-person narrative, it tells of a young schoolmaster who comes into possession of an apple from the Tree of Knowledge.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|36}}
## Synopsis
Mr Hinchcliff, recently graduated from London University, is travelling by train to take up his new post as a junior assistant at the prestigious Holmwood Grammar School in Sussex, when he falls into conversation with the only other passenger in his carriage. The man is at first muttering to himself, oblivious to his companion: “I must get rid of it … Why not give it away … Give it away! Why not?”
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Apple.jpg)Red Door Audiobooks
When the man becomes aware that he is not alone, he removes from his bag something round and wrapped in silver paper, “a small, very smooth, golden-yellow fruit”, which he shows to Mr Hinchcliff. He claims it is an apple from the Tree of Knowledge, and explains that he obtained it three months ago from an Armenian whose life he saved. The Armenian had been fleeing from his enemies the Kurds, and after three days had stumbled across a strange valley in the mountains, the Garden of Eden. Fearful, the Armenian retraced his steps back up the mountain, but in so doing stumbled against one of the bushes and a ripe fruit fell into his hand, the apple Mr Hinchcliff is now looking at, the Forbidden Fruit.
The man goes on to explain that even though Adam and Eve had already eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, we do not inherit their knowledge, only their sins. But he is reluctant to eat the apple himself as he originally intended, afraid that the “terrible lucidity” he might gain would rob him of his happiness, as “all the world became piteously clear”. So he has determined to give the apple to someone who does not share his fear. As Mr Hinchcliff is leaving the train on reaching Holmwood station, the man suddenly thrusts the apple into his hand and the train is gone.
Mr Hinchcliff finds a truck to take his luggage, and walks ahead of it to his new school. He is very self-conscious of the bulge created by the apple in his side pocket, spoiling the appearance of his jacket, and considers eating the fruit, but concludes it would be unseemly to be seen doing so in public. Round a bend in the road come two young girls, and fearing they might laugh were they to see him so discomfited by the apple, Mr Hinchcliff throws it over a stone wall into an orchard.
Later that night Mr Hinchcliff has a dream which convinces him that the fruit really was the Apple of the Tree of Knowledge. Late the next evening, after dark, he goes back to try and recover the apple from the orchard, but without success.
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22944
## External links
- [Full text of “The Apple”](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42989/42989-h/42989-h.htm#THE_APPLE) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Wallsuches Bleachworks](https://engole.info/wallsuches-bleachworks/)
**Published:** August 24, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Wallsuches_Bleach_Works.jpg[/pimage]Bleachworks that takes its name from an area of Horwich in Greater Manchester, England. The area is notable for the bleachworks started by Thomas Ridgway.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Wallsuches_Bleach_Works.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/pA8KrcmF2MpLK7bKA}}
Wallsuches Bleachworks
Wallsuches Bleachworks takes its name from an area north of Chorley Old Road to the east of Horwich in Greater Manchester, England. The area is notable for the bleachworks started by Thomas Ridgway in 1777. Wallsuches was developed at the start of the Industrial Revolution when Horwich was a small rural community, and was an important factor in the town’s growth at its eastern side.
## Background
The etymology of the place-name Wallsuches is unclear, but may be from the Old English *wella* meaning a stream and *soc* to soak because of the several streams running through the area. Before the Ridgway family started their works in the 1770s, Horwich was a small subsistence farming community where incomes were supplemented by handloom weaving.{{sfnp|DM4QR6D8}} The locally woven cloth was washed in stream water running off the moor. Bleaching required water, sour milk and urine and the cloth was then stretched on tenterhooks in the fields to dry in the sun.{{sfnp|KF6UEGQU}}
Thomas Ridgway came to Wallsuches after his bleach works in Bolton was destroyed in a fire in 1775. He chose the site on the road from Horwich to Bolton, Chorley Old Road, because of the availability of land with streams to provide water power.{{sfnp|5G44FZG8}} In 1777 Thomas Ridgway and Sons’ bleachworks opened bringing employment to Horwich and the surrounding villages. By 1780 other buildings had been added to the bleach works which was powered by six water wheels. Thomas Ridgway pioneered the chemical bleaching process using chlorine that was used on a large scale at Wallsuches.{{sfnp|EIFDS9EM|275}}
## Bleachworks
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Walsuches_bleachworks%2C_Horwich.jpg)Converted bleachworks buildings
Wikimedia Commons
Wallsuches was developed in stages starting in 1777, in 1828, and some buildings have date stones from 1840, 1858 and 1873. The oldest buildings are at the centre and north west of the site and later developments are on the south east. The bleachworks were built in coursed gritstone with [quoins](https://engole.info/quoin/) at the corners and had stone and slate roofs. Gingham House, a five-storey building built by Ridgway in 1798 was powered by a 10-horse power steam engine by Boulton and Watt that turned mangles and calendars.(hollow cylinders heated with irons for finishing the cloth).{{sfnp|5G44FZG8}}{{sfnp|EIFDS9EM|275}}
Water for bleaching was provided from reservoirs and filter beds on three sides of the site. Ponds to the north may date from the 1828 expansion. The1845 Ordnance Survey map records another Wallsuches site to the west, which was probably where chlorine gas and bleaching liquor were produced.{{sfnp|5G44FZG8}}
After Ridgway’s death in 1816, the business was continued by his sons, Joseph and Thomas. Thomas Bridson, who married Thomas Ridgway’s daughter, was a partner from 1818 until the early 1830s when he took over the Lever Bank Bleachworks. Charles and Christopher Howarth, former employees, took over in the mid 19th century and Joseph Howarth sold the business to The Bleachers’ Association in 1900.{{sfnp|5G44FZG8}}{{sfnp|EIFDS9EM|275}}
The bleachworks was one of the main industries in Horwich until 1933. After the works closed the site became derelict and run-down. Arcon Engineering took over part of the site in 1950{{sfnp|QQESG6BW|6}} and the North West Water Authority (United Utilities) took over the reservoir. The area has since been developed for housing by Redrow, incorporating the Grade II listed buildings.{{sfnp|5G44FZG8}}
## Industrial community
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Ridgmont_House%2C_Horwich.jpg)Ridgmont House
Wikimedia Commons
The Ridgways lived across the road from the works in a house called “Whitehouse”, which they renamed “Ridgmont House”.{{sfnp|QQESG6BW|9}} They were considered to be good employers, and also contributed to building the church school in 1793 and re-building the church in 1830.{{sfnp|QQESG6BW|12}} The industrial community associated with the works is known as the “Club Houses”. Rows of stone-built cottages were built near the church, after the Ridgways started a building club so that their employees could buy or rent their own homes.{{sfnp|KF6UEGQU}}{{sfnp|QQESG6BW|11}} In 1851 the community had 151 houses.{{sfnp|EIFDS9EM|275}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 5070
**Categories:** Greater Manchester
---
### [Babes in the Wood](https://engole.info/babes-in-the-wood/)
**Published:** March 2, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Babes-in-the-Wood.webp[/pimage]English fairy tale and pantomime subject, about two young children abandoned in the wood by their wicked uncle, in an attempt to steal their inheritance.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Babes-in-the-Wood.webp)Illustration by Randolph Caldecott, 1879
Wikimedia Commons
*The Babes in the Wood*, first published as a ballad in 1595 under the title *The Children in the Wood, or The Norfolk Gentleman’s Last Will and Testament*, is an English fairy tale and pantomime subject.\[a\]The ballad has been published under at least eleven different titles, including *Now Ponder Well*, the beginning of the opening stanza in some versions.{{sfnp|RMWRSIWG}} Various prose versions exist, some extending the original short tale by adding folk heroes such as Robin Hood to give the story a happier ending. In others the main characters are given Italianate names, perhaps echoing an earlier play that may have been the inspiration for the tale.{{sfnp|I6I37IMJ}}
The expression “babes in the wood” has become a familiar idiom for inexperienced people finding themselves in a situation requiring experience,{{sfnp|WQCBPTD8}} and has been used in reference to real child murder cases.{{sfnp|GGKQKL2M}}
The wood in the story is popularly associated with Wayland Wood in Norfolk.{{sfnp|U6WKENFJ}}
## Synopsis
A wealthy Norfolk gentleman and his wife fall sick and die simultaneously, leaving their children – a three-year-old boy and a younger girl – in the care of an uncle. When they come of age they will receive their inheritance, but if they should die before their uncle, then he will inherit. So the uncle hires two “ruffians” to murder the orphans. Believing they are being taken to visit London, the children set off with the men, but they so charm one of them that he is tempted to relent. A quarrel ensues, during which the harder-hearted man is killed; the other leads the children into a wood, but despite promising to return and bring them food, deserts them. The children wander, at first surviving on blackberries, before finally dying in each other’s arms.
> No burial these prettye babes
> Of any man receives,
> Till Robin-redbreast painfully
> Did cover them with leaves.
But things do not go well for the wicked uncle, owing to the “heavy wrath of God”. He loses his fortune and is forced to mortgage his property, arrested for debt, and dies in jail.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The ballad has been published under at least eleven different titles, including *Now Ponder Well*, the beginning of the opening stanza in some versions.{{sfnp|RMWRSIWG}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24547
## External links
- [Full text of the May Bell Series version](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/37690/37690-h/37690-h.htm) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** Fairy tale
---
### [Barbed Wire Act 1893](https://engole.info/barbed-wire-act-1893/)
**Published:** February 11, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of the UK Parliament to prohibit the use of barbed wire where it might pose a danger to those using the highway.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Barbed Wire Act 1893 (56 & 57 Vict. c. 32), full title *An Act to prevent the use of Barbed Wire for Fences in Roads, Streets, Lanes, and other Thoroughfares*, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.{{sfnp|IU4VM7ST}}
The Act provided that where barbed wire was placed adjoining a highway in such a manner as to pose a danger to people or animals using the highway, then the local authority was empowered to demand its removal. If the owner of the wire failed to remove it, the authority could apply for a court order, and ultimately was empowered to remove the wire and charge any expenses to the owner.{{sfnp|IU4VM7ST}}
The Barbed Wire Act was repealed by the Highways Act 1959 (7 & 8 Eliz. 2. c. 25).{{sfnp|3NV97HIW}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27194
**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Sacristy](https://engole.info/sacristy/)
**Published:** April 18, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/Sacristygennep.jpg/330px-Sacristygennep.jpg[/pimage]Room in Christian churches for the storage of liturgical vestments, sacred vessels and parish records.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/Sacristygennep.jpg/330px-Sacristygennep.jpg)Sacristy with a sacristy credens, a cabinet with wide and shallow drawers in which vestments and hangings are stored.
Wikimedia Commons
A sacristy, also known as a vestry, is a room in a Christian church for the storage of liturgical vestments, sacred vessels such as the chasuble, and parish records. The sacristy is usually an architectural part of the church, but it can also be an annex, or a separate building on either side of the [presbytery](https://engole.info/presbytery).{{sfnp|HBIE354U}}
The person responsible for the care of the vestments and liturgical vessels in the sacristy, and the maintenance of the church in general, is known as a sacristan.{{sfnp|HBIE354U}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25254
**Categories:** Religious architecture
---
### [Sophie's World](https://engole.info/sophies-world/)
**Published:** May 7, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/00/Sofies_verden.jpg[/pimage]Book by the Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder, following the events in the life of a teenage girl's introduction to philosophical thinking and the history of philosophy.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/00/Sofies_verden.jpg)Cover of Norwegian first edition
Wikimedia Commons
*Sophie’s World* is a book written by the Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder, first published in Norwegian in 1991 then in English in 1995.{{sfnp|9637942G}} It follows events in the life of Sophie Amundsen, a teenage girl living in Lillesand, Norway, and Alberto Knox, a middle-aged philosopher who introduces her to philosophical thinking and the history of philosophy.
The last philosophical school dealt with in the book is existentialism, a philosophy of choices defining reality, which is ultimately revealed to be the major theme of the novel; Sophie’s attempt to free herself from her creator, with the encouragement and help of Alberto Knox.
## Synopsis
Sophie Amundsen arrives home from school one day, and in the mailbox she finds a letter addressed to her. Inside is a slip of paper on which is written “Who are you?” As she stands with the letter in her hand, she suddenly feels like a doll “that had been brought to life by the wave of a magic wand”.{{sfnp|BNEV2FD3|4}} Shortly afterwards Sophie finds a second letter in the mailbox, just like the first, containing a slip of paper, posing the question “Where does the world come from?” Sophie ponders the idea that at some point something must have come from nothing:
They had learned at school that God created the world … But had he created himself out of nothing? … Even though God could create all kinds of things, he could hardly create himself before he had a “self” to create with.{{sfnp
— BNEV2FD3|7}}
Sophie goes back to the mailbox for a third time, and finds a postcard addressed to Hilde Møller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen, wishing Hilde a happy 15th birthday. The card is from Hilde’s father, and says that he is sending her a present that will help her to grow, but Sophie has no idea who Hilde Møller Knag is.
The following day Sophie once again checks the mailbox, and finds a large brown envelope addressed to her, on the back of which is written “Course in Philosophy. Handle with care.”{{sfnp|BNEV2FD3|11}} She begins to receive regular packages of philosophy lessons in her mailbox from a philosopher she comes to know as Alberto Knox.
Alberto’s final lessons, which he delivers to Sophie in person, concern the British empiricist philosophers, and in particular Bishop Berkeley, who suggested that our lives may exist only in the mind of God. Alberto then reveals to Sophie that they both exist only in the mind of Albert Knag, Hilde’s father, at which point the narrative switches to Hilde’s point of view.
On the day she turns 15, Hilde receives a present from her father, who is serving with UN forces in Lebanon. It is a large ring binder containing pages written by him, titled *Sophie’s World*. Hilde is enthralled by the story, and comes to think of Sophie as a real person. She reads that Alberto has a plan to escape from Hilde’s father’s mind, but to do so he and Sophie must complete the philosophy course, before Hilde’s father returns home. The idea begins to dawn on Sophie that just as she and Alberto Knox exist only in the mind of Albert Knag, then perhaps he and Hilde exist only in the mind of a higher author who is writing about them.
At the end of the final chapter of the story written by Hilde’s father, Sophie and Alberto disappear. They have escaped from Albert Knag’s mind and have a new spiritual existence, invisible to other people. Sophie becomes determined to interfere in the world of Hilde and her father, and as the book ends she is learning how to do so.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 14139
**Categories:** Novel, Philosophy
---
### [Crewe Chronicle](https://engole.info/crewe-chronicle/)
**Published:** August 22, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Crewe-Chronicle.webp[/pimage]UK weekly newspaper first published on 21 March 1874.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Crewe-Chronicle.webp)Front page of 22 October 2025 edition
Magzter
The *Crewe Chronicle*, now reusing its original title of the *Crewe and Nantwich Chronicle*, is a UK weekly newspaper first published on 21 March 1874.{{sfnp|DBCK9JA6|225}} It was founded by the editor of the *Chester Chronicle* as a Radical alternative to the Tory-biased *Crewe Guardian*.{{sfnp|X2PN77YD|140}}
Now owned by Reach, known as Trinity Mirror until 2018, the *Crewe and Nantwich Chronicle* is published in a tabloid format every Wednesday, cover price £3.25. As at 2024, the newspaper’s average circulation per issue is 1,496.{{sfnp|258GBHXA}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 5027
**Categories:** Newspaper
---
### [The North Briton](https://engole.info/the-north-briton/)
**Published:** September 14, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/John-Wilkes.webp[/pimage]Political weekly newspaper published between 1762 and 1771, notorious for one issue that resulted in charges of seditious libel against John Wilkes.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/John-Wilkes.webp)Caricature of John Wilkes by William Hogarth, 1763, showing the infamous issue 45 in the background
The National Archives
*The North Briton* was a political weekly newspaper published from June 1762 until 1771. It was launched by John Wilkes (1725–1797) as a radical alternative to Tobias Smollett’s (1721–1771) *The Briton*, which was seen as a mouthpiece of the Tory government led by Lord Bute.{{sfnp|SNJC3YHU}}{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2|440}} Britain was at the time engaged in the Seven Years War with France, which lasted from 1756 until 1763. Bute’s government was committed to ending the conflict, but Wilkes and others believed that the terms under which he was proposing to do so would only save “England from the certain ruin of success”, and believed that better terms could be reached by continuing to press the war.{{sfnp|STCLRYZP}}
In issue number 45 of *The North Briton*, published on 23 April 1763, Wilkes was very critical of a speech made by King George III in which the King praised the Treaty of Paris, which had been ratified by the British government on 10 February 1763, thus ending the Seven Years’ War. As a result Wilkes was charged with seditious libel and imprisoned for a short time in the Tower of London. Wilkes challenged the warrant for his arrest and seizure of his paper, eventually winning the case.{{sfnp|832YRXXA|18}}
Wilkes reprinted issue 45 later in 1763, which the government again seized. But before it could be burned, an assembled crowd rescued the text, and the ensuing events caused Wilkes to flee across the English Channel to France, and the courts to declare him an outlaw.{{sfnp|832YRXXA|18}} “Consumed by debt”, Wilkes had returned to England by 1768, and was once again imprisoned for seditious libel. He was released in April 1770, and went on to become a popular Lord Mayor of London in 1774.{{sfnp|STCLRYZP}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26762
**Categories:** Newspaper
---
### [Westminster Gazette](https://engole.info/westminster-gazette/)
**Published:** October 25, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/EqlEyhfXIAE6zkH.jpg[/pimage]London Liberal evening newspaper published from 1896 until 1928, distinctive for its green newsprint.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/EqlEyhfXIAE6zkH.jpg)31 December 1920 front page
British Newpaper Archive
*The Westminster Gazette* was a London evening newspaper launched by Sir George Newnes in 1893.{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2|591}} Printed on green newsprint, it was nicknamed the “pea-green incorruptible”.{{sfnp|Q886KN3N}} Staunchly Liberal throughout its 35-year history, it had only three editors during that time: Edward Tyas Cook (1893–1896); John Alfred Spender (1896–1922); and Joseph Burton Hobman (1922–1928).{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2|591}}
The *Gazette* continued as an evening newspaper until 5 November 1921, before two days later being relaunched as a morning paper. On 1 February 1928 it was merged with its leading Liberal rival, the *Daily News*.{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2|591}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24071
**Categories:** Newspaper
---
### [Ballingdon Hall](https://engole.info/ballingdon-hall/)
**Published:** February 2, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** 16th-century Grade II* listed manor house in Sudbury, Suffolk, which came to national attention when it was towed from its original site in 1972.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/pa1027SI-wpv_1080x.jpg)Ballingdon Hall, c. 1920s
Sudbury Photo Archive
Ballingdon Hall is a Grade II\* [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) manor house in Sudbury, Suffolk built by Sir Thomas Eden, the MP for Sudbury, in about 1593. The two-storey timber-framed building has attics, cellars and a tiled roof.{{sfnp|946GNN48}}{{sfnp|8J2XTR4H}}
The mansion was originally built to an H-shaped plan, but all that remains today is the north wing.{{sfnp|8J2XTR4H}}
## Relocation
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/414942817_329693879969119_4158115338979127167_n.jpg)Ballingdon Hall during its relocation in 1972
RuralHistoria
Ballingdon Hall was originally sited at the bottom of Ballingdon Hill, but in the early 1970s the land surrounding the house was sold to the developer Wimpy, who planned to build a housing estate. This prompted the then owners, John and Angela Hodges, to consider moving the house to land higher up the hill, which John had recently purchased.{{sfnp|8J2XTR4H}}
The original intention was to dismantle the hall and rebuild it, but as it was a listed building planning permission was only granted on condition that the house was moved intact.{{sfnp|629JGAWJ}} So it was supported by a steel frame, jacked up off its foundations, and put onto steel joists supported by 26 wheels, to be slowly towed up the hill. Thousands turned out to watch the move, charged 10p each, money which went to the local church. Engineers estimated that the move would be completed in a week, but in the event it took almost a year.{{sfnp|8J2XTR4H}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25981
## External links
- [Moving story: Elizabethan hall towed up a hill for better view goes on the market](https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2020-06-05/moving-story-elizabethan-hall-towed-up-a-hill-for-better-view-goes-on-the-market), ITV News report
**Categories:** Suffolk
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Small-Scale Experimental Machine](https://engole.info/small-scale-experimental-machine/)
**Published:** May 25, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/SSEM_Manchester_museum.jpg[/pimage]World’s first electronic stored-program computer; ran its first program on 21 June 1948.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/SSEM_Manchester_museum.jpg)Replica of the SSEM at the Museum of Science and Industry in Castlefield, Manchester
Wikimedia Commons
The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), nicknamed Baby, was the world’s first stored-program computer. It was built at the Victoria University of Manchester, England, by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill, and ran its first program on 21 June 1948.{{sfnp|XUFTL2PL}}
The machine was not intended to be a practical computer but was instead designed as a testbed for the Williams tube, an early form of computer memory. Although considered to be “small and primitive” by the standards of its time, it was the first working machine to contain all the elements essential to a modern electronic computer.{{sfnp|G5I9NAGI}} As soon as the SSEM had demonstrated the feasibility of its design, a project was initiated at the university to develop it into a more usable computer, the [Manchester Mark 1](https://engole.info/manchester-mark-1/). The Mark 1 in turn quickly became the prototype for the Ferranti Mark 1, the world’s first commercially available general-purpose computer.{{sfnp|9AJZX2L3}}
The SSEM had a 32-bit word length and a memory of 32 words (1 kilobit). As it was designed to be the simplest possible stored-program computer, the only arithmetic operations implemented in hardware were subtraction and negation; other arithmetic operations were implemented in software. The first of three programs written for the machine found the highest [proper divisor](https://engole.info/proper-divisor/) of 218 (262 144), a calculation that was known would take a long time to run and so prove the computer’s reliability.\[a\]Division was implemented by repeated subtraction of the divisor, therefore the program had to test every integer from 218 – 1 in descending order. The program consisted of 17 instructions and ran for 52 minutes before reaching the correct answer of 131,072, after the SSEM had performed 3.5 million operations (for an effective CPU speed of 1.1 kIPS).
## **Background**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Maquina.png)Artistic representation of a Turing machine
Wikimedia Commons
The first design for a program-controlled computer was Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine in the 1830s. A century later, in 1936, the mathematician Alan Turing published his description of what became known as a Turing machine, a theoretical concept intended to explore the limits of mechanical computation. Turing was not imagining a physical machine, but a person he called a “computer”, who acted according to the instructions provided by a tape on which symbols could be read and written sequentially as the tape moved under a tape head. Turing proved that if an algorithm can be written to solve a mathematical problem, then a Turing machine can execute that algorithm.{{sfnp|INK5XCSG}}
Konrad Zuse’s Z3 was the world’s first working programmable, fully automatic computer, with binary digital arithmetic logic, but it lacked the conditional branching of a Turing machine. On 12 May 1941, it was successfully presented to an audience of scientists of the *Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt* (“German Laboratory for Aviation”) in Berlin.{{sfnp|7SMJ3RXE}} The Z3 stored its program on an external tape, but it was electromechanical rather than electronic. The Colossus of 1943 was the first electronic computing device, but it was not a general-purpose machine.{{sfnp|W4JIY5AR|99-100}}
The ENIAC (1946) was the first machine that was both electronic and general purpose. It was Turing complete, with conditional branching, and programmable to solve a wide range of problems, but its program was held in the state of switches in patchcords, not in memory, and it could take several days to reprogram.{{sfnp|G5I9NAGI}} Researchers such as Turing and Zuse investigated the idea of using the computer’s memory to hold the program as well as the data it was working on,{{sfnp|X4YJHKLH}} and it was mathematician John von Neumann who wrote a widely distributed paper describing that computer architecture, still used in almost all computers.{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|7}}
The construction of a von Neumann computer depended on the availability of a suitable memory device on which to store the program. During the Second World War researchers working on the problem of removing the clutter from radar signals had developed a form of delay line memory, the first practical application of which was the mercury delay line,{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|1}} developed by J. Presper Eckert. Radar transmitters send out regular brief pulses of radio energy, the reflections from which are displayed on a CRT screen. As operators are usually interested only in moving targets, it was desirable to filter out any distracting reflections from stationary objects. The filtering was achieved by comparing each received pulse with the previous pulse, and rejecting both if they were identical, leaving a signal containing only the images of any moving objects. To store each received pulse for later comparison it was passed through a transmission line, delaying it by exactly the time between transmitted pulses.{{sfnp|9KIMHWVD|429}}
Turing joined the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in October 1945,{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|9}} by which time scientists within the Ministry of Supply had concluded that Britain needed a National Mathematical Laboratory to co-ordinate machine-aided computation.{{sfnp|7YS73IXI|23-30}} A Mathematics Division was set up at the NPL, and on 19 February 1946 Alan Turing presented a paper outlining his design for an electronic stored-program computer to be known as the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE).{{sfnp|7YS73IXI|23-30}} This was one of several projects set up in the years following the Second World War with the aim of constructing a stored-program computer. At about the same time, EDVAC was under development at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering, and the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory was working on EDSAC.{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|8-9}}
The NPL did not have the expertise to build a machine like ACE, so they contacted Tommy Flowers at the General Post Office’s (GPO) Dollis Hill Research Laboratory. Flowers, the designer of Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer, was committed elsewhere and was unable to take part in the project, although his team did build some mercury delay lines for ACE.{{sfnp|7YS73IXI|23-30}} The Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) was also approached for assistance, as was Maurice Wilkes at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory.{{sfnp|7YS73IXI|23-30}}
The government department responsible for the NPL decided that, of all the work being carried out by the TRE on its behalf, ACE was to be given the top priority.{{sfnp|7YS73IXI|23-30}} NPL’s decision led to a visit by the superintendent of the TRE’s Physics Division on 22 November 1946, accompanied by Frederic C. Williams and A. M. Uttley, also from the TRE.{{sfnp|7YS73IXI|23-30}} Williams led a TRE development group working on CRT stores for radar applications, as an alternative to delay lines.{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|5}} He had already accepted a professorship at the University of Manchester, and most of his circuit technicians were in the process of being transferred to the Department of Atomic Energy.{{sfnp|7YS73IXI|23-30}} The TRE agreed to second a small number of technicians to work under Williams’ direction at the university, and to support another small group working with Uttley at the TRE.{{sfnp|7YS73IXI|23-30}}
## **Williams-Kilburn tube**
Although early computers such as EDSAC made successful use of mercury delay line memory,{{sfnp|LZHD79HF}} the technology had several drawbacks; it was heavy, it was expensive, and it did not allow data to be accessed randomly. In addition, because data was stored as a sequence of acoustic waves propagated through a mercury column, the device’s temperature had to be very carefully controlled, as the velocity of sound through a medium varies with its temperature. Williams had seen an experiment at Bell Labs demonstrating the effectiveness of cathode ray tubes (CRT) as an alternative to the delay line for removing ground echoes from radar signals. While working at the TRE, shortly before he joined the University of Manchester in December 1946, he and Tom Kilburn had developed a form of electronic memory known as the Williams or Williams–Kilburn tube based on a standard CRT, the first random-access digital storage device.{{sfnp|8IELJVF7}} The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM) was designed to show that the system was a practical storage device, by testing that data held within it could be read and written at the speed necessary for use in a computer.{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|13, 24}}
For use in a binary digital computer, the tube had to be capable of storing either one of two states at each of its memory locations, corresponding to the binary digits (bits) 0 and 1. It exploited the positive or negative electrostatic charge generated by displaying either a dash or a dot at any position on the CRT screen, a phenomenon known as secondary emission. A dash generated a positive charge, and a dot a negative charge, either of which could be picked up by a detector plate in front of the screen; a negative charge represented 0, and a positive charge 1. The charge dissipated in about 0.2 seconds, but it could be automatically refreshed from the data picked up by the detector.{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|12}}
The Williams tube was initially based on the CV1131, a commercially available 12-inch (300 mm) diameter CRT, but a smaller 6-inch (150 mm) tube, the CV1097, was used in the SSEM.{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|12-13}}
## **Development and design**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/BabyArchitecture.png)Architectural schematic showing how the four cathode ray tubes (shown in green) were deployed
Wikimedia Commons
Following his appointment to the Chair of Electrical Engineering at Manchester University, Williams recruited his TRE colleague Tom Kilburn on secondment. By the autumn of 1947 the pair had increased the storage capacity of the Williams tube from one bit to 2,048, arranged in a 64 by 32-bit array,{{sfnp|FHH6X4UN|366}} and demonstrated that it was able to store those bits for four hours.{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|13}} Engineer Geoff Tootill joined the team on loan from TRE in September 1947, and remained on secondment until April 1949.{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|16}}
Max Newman had been appointed to the Chair of Pure Mathematics at Manchester University in 1945. During the Second World War he had worked as a cryptanalyst at Bletchley Park, and had led the team which in 1943 produced the first of the Colossus code-breaking computers. Although Newman played no active role in the development of the SSEM, or any of the subsequent Manchester computers, he was generally supportive and enthusiastic about the project, and arranged for the acquisition of war-surplus supplies for its construction, including GPO metal racks from Bletchley.{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|6-7}}
By June 1948 the SSEM had been built and was working.{{sfnp|FHH6X4UN|366}} It was 17 feet (5.2 m) in length, 7 feet 4 inches (2.24 m) tall, and weighed almost a ton. The machine contained 550 valves – 300 diodes and 250 pentodes – and had a power consumption of 3500 watts.{{sfnp|ZH4SN8P4}} The arithmetic unit was built using EF50 pentode valves, which had been widely used during wartime.{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|13}} The SSEM used one Williams tube to provide 32 by 32-bit words of random-access memory (RAM), a second to hold a 32-bit accumulator in which the intermediate results of a calculation could be stored temporarily, and a third to hold the current program instruction along with its address in memory. A fourth CRT, without the storage electronics of the other three, was used as the output device, able to display the bit pattern of any selected storage tube.{{sfnp|FHH6X4UN|367}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/SSEM_Manchester_museum_close_up.jpg)The output CRT is immediately above the input device, flanked by the monitor and control electronics.
Wikimedia Commons
Each 32-bit word of RAM could contain either a program instruction or data. In a program instruction, bits 0–12 represented the memory address of the operand to be used, and bits 13–15 specified the operation to be executed, such as storing a number in memory; the remaining 16 bits were unused.{{sfnp|FHH6X4UN|367}} The SSEM’s single operand architecture meant that the second operand of any operation was implicit: the accumulator or the program counter (instruction address); program instructions specified only the address of the data in memory.
A word in the computer’s memory could be read, written, or refreshed, in 360 microseconds. An instruction took four times as long to execute as accessing a word from memory, giving an instruction execution rate of about 700 per second. The main store was refreshed continuously, a process which took 20 milliseconds to complete, as each of the SSEM’s 32 words had to be read and then refreshed in sequence.{{sfnp|FHH6X4UN|366}}
The SSEM represented negative numbers using two’s complement,{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|14}} as most computers still do. In that representation, the value of the most significant bit denotes the sign of a number; positive numbers have a zero in that position and negative numbers a one. Thus the range of numbers that could be held in each 32-bit word was −231 to +231 − 1 (decimal: −2,147,483,648 to +2,147,483,647).
## **Programming**
The SSEM’s three-bit instruction set allowed a maximum of eight (23) different instructions. In contrast to the modern convention, the machine’s storage was arranged with the least significant digits to the left; thus a one was represented in three bits as “100”, rather than the more conventional “001”.{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|14}}
### Instruction set
**Binary code****Original notation****Modern mnemomic****Operation**000S, C1JMP SJump to the instruction at the address obtained from the specified memory address S\[b\]As the program counter was incremented at the end of the decoding process, the stored address had to be the target address −1. (absolute unconditional jump)100Add S, C1JRP SJump to the instruction at the program counter plus (+) the relative value obtained from the specified memory address S\[c\]As the program counter was incremented at the end of the decoding process, the stored address had to be the target address −1. (relative unconditional jump)010-S, CLDN STake the number from the specified memory address S, negate it, and load it into the accumulator110c, S`STO S`Store the number in the accumulator to the specified memory address S001 or 101\[d\]The function bits were only partially decoded, to save on logic elements.{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|15}}SUB SSUB SSubtract the number at the specified memory address S from the value in accumulator, and store the result in the accumulator011TestCMPSkip next instruction if the accumulator contains a negative value111StopSTPStopThe awkward negative operations were a consequence of the SSEM’s lack of hardware to perform any arithmetic operations except subtraction and negation. It was considered unnecessary to build an adder before testing could begin as addition can easily be implemented by subtraction,{{sfnp|FHH6X4UN|367}} i.e. x+y can be computed as −(−x−y). Therefore, adding two numbers together, X and Y, required four instructions:{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|15}}
```
LDN X // load negative X into the accumulator
SUB Y // subtract Y from the value in the accumulator
STO S // store the result at S
LDN S // load negative value at S into the accumulator
```
Programs were entered in binary form by stepping through each word of memory in turn, and using a set of 32 switches known as the input device to set the value of each bit of each word to either 0 or 1; the SSEM had no paper-tape reader or punch.{{sfnp|FHH6X4UN|366}}
### **First programs**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/CRT_memory.jpg)Output CRT
Wikimedia Commons
Three programs were written for the computer. The first, consisting of 17 instructions, was written by Kilburn, and so far as can be ascertained first ran on 21 June 1948.{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|16-17}} It was designed to find the highest proper factor of 218 (262,144) by trying every integer from 218 − 1 downwards. The divisions were implemented by repeated subtractions of the divisor. The SSEM took 3.5 million operations and 52 minutes to produce the answer (131,072). The program used eight words of working storage in addition to its 17 words of instructions, giving a program size of 25 words.{{sfnp|K4Z8P4LQ}}
Geoff Tootill wrote an amended version of the program the following month, and in mid-July Alan Turing – who had been appointed as a reader in the mathematics department at Manchester University in September 1948 – submitted the third program, to carry out long division. Turing had by then been appointed to the nominal post of Deputy Director of the Computing Machine Laboratory at the university,{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|16-17}} although the laboratory did not become a physical reality until 1951.{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|17}}
## **Later developments**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Kilburn_Williams_Plaque_cropped.jpg)A plaque in honour of Williams and Kilburn at the University of Manchester
Wikimedia Commons
Williams and Kilburn reported on the SSEM in a letter to the Journal Nature, published in September 1948.{{sfnp|XSCKT25H}} The machine’s successful demonstration quickly led to the construction of a more practical computer, the Manchester Mark 1, work on which began in August 1948. The first version was operational by April 1949,{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|17}} and it in turn led directly to the development of the Ferranti Mark 1, the world’s first commercially available general-purpose computer.{{sfnp|9AJZX2L3}}
In 1998, a working replica of the SSEM, now on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, was built to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the running of its first program. Demonstrations of the machine in operation are held regularly at the museum.{{sfnp|UQVBDZXZ}} In 2008, an original panoramic photograph of the entire machine was discovered at the University of Manchester. The photograph, taken on 15 December 1948 by a research student, Alec Robinson, had been reproduced in *The Illustrated London News* in June 1949.{{sfnp|KFFRD4TX}}{{sfnp|4ZBPVJ62}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Division was implemented by repeated subtraction of the divisor, therefore the program had to test every integer from 218 – 1 in descending order. b, c As the program counter was incremented at the end of the decoding process, the stored address had to be the target address −1. d The function bits were only partially decoded, to save on logic elements.{{sfnp|YG7KXVSL|15}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 549
**Categories:** Computer
---
### [St Piran's Church, Perranarworthal](https://engole.info/st-pirans-church-perranarworthal/)
**Published:** October 19, 2020
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Perranarworthal_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_160508.jpg[/pimage]Active Anglican church in Perranarworthal, dedicated to Cornwall's patron saint.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Perranarworthal_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_160508.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/SKE791Gh4DSTzcS18}}
St Piran’s Church
St Piran’s is an active Anglican church in [Perranarworthal](https://engole.info/perranarworthal/), Cornwall. It is part of the Eight Saints Cluster, made up of the parishes of Stithians with Perranarworthal and [Gwennap](https://engole.info/gwennap/){{sfnp|WZGA2KSU}} in the Diocese of Truro.{{sfnp|T7H5R52G}}
The church is dedicated to Saint Piran, whose Saints Day is on 5 March. Piran is considered to be the patron saint of tin miners and of Cornwall, along with St Michael and St Petroc.{{sfnp|T7H5R52G}}
The Grade II\* [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) church is built on an ancient site; the oldest part of the building is its 15th-century granite tower. The church was rebuilt and enlarged in 1882 by Piers St Aubyn. Its churchyard contains several listed tombs and headstones. Nearby is a holy well dedicated to St Piran.
## History
St Piran’s Church is built on a site that has been used for worship possibly since Norman times, as evidenced by the [tympanum](https://engole.info/tympanum-architecture) over the south door.{{sfnp|TWZTP2SB}} The 15th-century tower is all that remains of the church that replaced the Norman chapel after its [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) was rebuilt in 1842. The architect James Piers St Aubyn rebuilt the chancel in 1882, when the [nave](https://engole.info/nave), [aisle](https://engole.info/aisle-architecture) and porch were added. A [vestry](https://engole.info/sacristy) was added in the 20th century. The church was designated Grade II\* listed status in May 1967.{{sfnp|HG34KCJV}}
## Structure
The tower is built of granite [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar), and the rest of the church is constructed of killas\[a\]Killas is an important sequence of rocks underlying two-thirds of Cornwall formed from sediments metamorphosed by heat emanating from the granites.{{sfnp|5DQVB94L}} rubble with dressed granite details. It is roofed with Delabole slate.{{sfnp|HG34KCJV}}
The west tower has three stages divided by string courses and an embattled parapet with pinnacles at each corner. The [belfry](https://engole.info/belfry) has Perpendicular Gothic openings with slate louvres, quatrefoil tracery and have hood moulds with arches above them. Its four-centred doorway has a 19th-century door.{{sfnp|HG34KCJV}}
The nave and chancel are under the same roof. The south aisle has a vestry at its east end. Except for the tower, the windows are from the 19th-century rebuild in matching Perpendicular style. The north wall has a chancel window and four nave windows with three or two lights. At the east end is the aisle gable with a three-light window and the projecting chancel gable has a three-light traceried window. The south wall has a window to the left of the porch and four to the right; all but one have two lights. The aisle’s west gable has a three-light window. The 19th-century porch entrance and its inner doorway have pointed arches.{{sfnp|HG34KCJV}}
### Interior
The chancel’s six-bay [arcade](https://engole.info/arcade) has granite columns and pointed arches. The roof is [arch-braced](https://engole.info/timber-roof-truss/#Arch-braced_truss) and wind-braced. Above the doorway is a Norman tympanum decorated with the Lamb of God from an earlier building.{{sfnp|TWZTP2SB}}{{sfnp|HG34KCJV}}
The octagonal granite font is possibly of late-medieval date but was reworked in the 19th-century rebuild. The pulpit over a moulded granite base and the pews also date from the 1882 rebuilding.{{sfnp|HG34KCJV}}
The church displays a letter from King Charles I from 1643, which has a painted coat of arms on the reverse. Monuments include a Classical marble wall monument to Benjamnin Sampson, who died in 1840. The coloured glass in the east window is dedicated to John Jose of Mellingey, and coloured glass in a south aisle window to geologist William Jory Henwood, who died in 1875.{{sfnp|HG34KCJV}} The tower has a ring of six bells.
### Churchyard
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/St_Piran%27s_Well_%283460515542%29.jpg)St Piran’s Well
Wikimedia Commons
The churchyard wall is constructed of killas rubble with granite entrance gate piers, steps and copings and wrought iron railings. They were built in the 19th century and are Grade II listed structures.{{sfnp|8SHR39A7}} Within the churchyard are several Grade II listed headstones and chest tombs. They include a thin slate headstone from 1768 and a nowy-headed headstone from 1821.{{sfnp|UUVUHLFR}}{{sfnp|DHWYG5AM}} The graveyard also contains a group of five rectangular chest tombs: two are incised slate slabs on brick bases from 1789 and 1800, and a ground level slate slab is from 1789. An 1808 chest tomb has an incised slate slab on a granite ashlar base, and another from 1839 has panelled granite sides and lid with an incised slate insert. An 1845 headstone of white limestone encloses a panelled chest with an obelisk on a triangular [pediment](https://engole.info/pediment).{{sfnp|SRS8FXTF}} A square chest tomb from 1813 is made of white limestone. It has a plinth with a moulded top, panelled sides and is surmounted by an urn.{{sfnp|L29D36CJ}}
## St Piran’s Well
A short distance from the church is St Piran’s Well, an early to mid-19th century, Grade II listed structure on an ancient site. The well has a granite ashlar front and a granite lintel over the entrance and is roofed with granite lintels. Inside, the square shallow well, cut into the hillside, is fed by a natural spring.{{sfnp|QPVASWAA}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Killas is an important sequence of rocks underlying two-thirds of Cornwall formed from sediments metamorphosed by heat emanating from the granites.{{sfnp|5DQVB94L}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23250
**Categories:** Anglican, Church, Cornwall
---
### [The Golden Stairs](https://engole.info/the-golden-stairs/)
**Published:** April 21, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Edward_Burne-Jones_The_Golden_Stairs.jpg/500px-Edward_Burne-Jones_The_Golden_Stairs.jpg[/pimage]One of the best-known paintings by Edward Burne Jones (1833–1898).
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Edward_Burne-Jones_The_Golden_Stairs.jpg/500px-Edward_Burne-Jones_The_Golden_Stairs.jpg)Oil on canvas
269 cm × 117 cm
(106 in × 46 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Golden Stairs* is one of the best-known paintings by the English [Pre-Raphaelite](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood) artist Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898). It was begun in 1876 and was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1880.{{sfnp|DKWI2CKN|246-249}}{{sfnp|A4RWWXCX|88-89}} It is one of many paintings Burnes-Jones sketched out in 1872 following a trip to Italy, and was finished in great haste in April 1880, just days before the Grovesnor Gallery exhibition was due to open.{{sfnp|DKWI2CKN|247}}
The painting depicts a group of young women carrying musical instruments while descending a spiral staircase. They are dressed in classically inspired robes in tones of white, shading to gold and silver.{{sfnp|DKWI2CKN|247}} The work is not based on a story, unlike many of Burne-Jones’s other works, rather it is investigating a mood, but what it represents remains open to debate. One suggestion is that the staircase, without a visible beginning or end, represents continuous movement.{{sfnp|KBVFUVPV}}
Models for the painting have been identified as Frances Graham, daughter of Burne-Jones’s patron William Graham, and Mary Gladstone, daughter of the British Prime Minister, Wlliam Gladstone. Burne-Jones’s daughter, Margaret, is pictured at the top of the stairs.{{sfnp|KBVFUVPV}}
The painting was purchased by Cyril Flower (1843–1907), later Lord Battersea, a politician and art patron,{{sfnp|DKWI2CKN|246-249}}{{sfnp|A4RWWXCX|88-89}} and was presented by Lady Battersea to the Tate Gallery in 1924, in whose collection it remains.{{sfnp|KBVFUVPV}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29882
**Categories:** Painting
---
### [Witches at their Incantations](https://engole.info/witches-at-their-incantations/)
**Published:** November 27, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/N-6491-00-000018-wpu.jpg[/pimage]Painting by the Italian Baroque artist Salvator Rosa, completed in about 1646.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/N-6491-00-000018-wpu.jpg)Oil on canvas
72 cm × 132 cm (72 in × 52 in)
The National Gallery
*Witches at their Incantations* is a painting by the Italian Baroque artist Salvator Rosa (1615–1673), completed in about 1646. Rosa had become interested in the supernatural during the 1640s, and this painting depicts a scene reminiscent of a witches’ sabbath.{{sfnp|TWK4EEAY}}
The scene is dawn, with a hint of blue sky emerging above the distant hill. The central figure of a hanged man, one witch smoking the corpse while another cuts its toenails, is surrounded by a monster resembling a dinosaur skeleton, apparently being offered a swaddled infant, and another naked witch using a wax effigy to cast a love spell while yet another is stirring her cauldron. To the left is a shrouded figure looking over a skeleton being raised from its coffin by two men and forced to sign a document.
The art critic Jonathan Jones has described *Witches at their Incantations* as a “distillation of gloom”, and a representation of the practices attributed to the followers of Satan. But as he goes on to say, rather than being an expression of the 17th-century belief in witchcraft it may alternatively be a study of imagination, an early work of the Age of Enlightenment, which emphasised the pursuit of knowledge obtained by reason and the evidence of the senses.{{sfnp|2UV98LGD}}
*Witches at their Incantations* was acquired by The National Gallery in 1984.{{sfnp|TWK4EEAY}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24987
**Categories:** Painting, Witchcraft
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [The Piazza at Havanna](https://engole.info/the-piazza-at-havanna/)
**Published:** January 5, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Dominic_Serres_the_Elder_-_The_Piazza_at_Havana.jpg/1280px-Dominic_Serres_the_Elder_-_The_Piazza_at_Havana.jpg[/pimage]Painting by the French-born British artist Dominic Serres, depicting a scene from the British occupation of Havana in 1762.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Dominic_Serres_the_Elder_-_The_Piazza_at_Havana.jpg/1280px-Dominic_Serres_the_Elder_-_The_Piazza_at_Havana.jpg)Oil on canvas
84 cm × 122 cm (33 in × 48 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Piazza at Havana* is a landscape painting by the French-born British artist Dominic Serres. It depicts a scene from the last major operation of the Seven Years War (1756–1763), during the British occupation of Havana, Cuba. It was probably painted between 1765 and 1770.{{sfnp|9ZRRRC7I}}
British troops in red coats are shown parading in the Plaza Vieja, with British sailors in the foreground. Serres painted a series of fourteen works focusing on the taking of Havana, of which *The Piazza at Havana* is one, for the Keppel family, three of whom served in the British campaign.{{sfnp|9ZRRRC7I}}{{sfnp|TX92IW2V|113}}
*The Piazza at Havana* was acquired by the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, London in 1983, which also has another five of the paintings in the series in its collection.{{sfnp|9ZRRRC7I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27134
**Categories:** Painting
---
### [Manchester Madonna](https://engole.info/manchester-madonna/)
**Published:** June 16, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/MICHELANGELO_-_Manchester_Madonna_adjusted.JPG/960px-MICHELANGELO_-_Manchester_Madonna_adjusted.JPG[/pimage]Unfinished tempera on panel painting by Michelangelo.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/MICHELANGELO_-_Manchester_Madonna_adjusted.JPG/960px-MICHELANGELO_-_Manchester_Madonna_adjusted.JPG)*The Manchester Madonna,* c. 1494
[tempera](https://engole.info/tempera) on panel
105 cm × 76 cm (41 in × 30 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Manchester Madonna*, also known as*The Madonna and Child with St John and Angels*, is an unfinished [tempera](https://engole.info/tempera) on panel painting undertaken in c. 1494 by Michelangelo (1475–1564), and probably the earliest of his surviving paintings. Why the painting was never completed is unknown.{{sfnp|I8R7KA2G}}
The work, which had only recently been attributed to Michelangelo, caused much excitement when it was exhibited at the [Manchester Art Treasures exhibition of 1857](https://engole.info/manchester-art-treasures-exhibition-1857/), hence it being named the *Manchester Madonna*.{{sfnp|SR4Y3YZT}} It was acquired by the National Gallery in 1870.{{sfnp|I8R7KA2G}}
The two angels on the left are represented only by the lines marking the folds in their clothes, and areas of greenish underpainting traditionally used to balance the pinkish flesh tones that would be painted over them. Similarly, the black of the Virgin Mary’s cloak has not received its finishing coats of blue.{{sfnp|I8R7KA2G}}
## Composition
The figures are arranged as in a marble relief, filling almost the entire panel, reflecting Michelangelo’s training as a sculptor. The Virgin in the centre is sitting on a rock, next to the child Jesus and a young John the Baptist looking out of the picture, wearing his camel skin. The scene is framed by angels on both sides.{{sfnp|I8R7KA2G}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24753
**Categories:** Painting
---
### [The Incubus Leaving Two Young Women](https://engole.info/the-incubus-leaving-two-young-women/)
**Published:** September 17, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Henry_fuseli_the_incubus_leaving_two_young_women103537%29.jpg[/pimage]Oil painting by the Swiss-born Romantic artist Henry Fuseli, c. 1794, like much of his work exploring the relationship between sex and fear.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Henry_fuseli_the_incubus_leaving_two_young_women103537%29.jpg)*The Incubus Leaving Two Young Women*, c. 1794
oil on canvas,
86.4 × 110.5 cm
Wikimedia Commons
*The [Incubus](https://engole.info/incubus) Leaving Two Young Women* is an oil painting by the Swiss-born British Romantic artist [Henry Fuseli](https://engole.info/henry-fuseli), probably completed in about 1794. Like much of his work it explores the relationship between sex and fear, and can be seen as a counterpart to his earlier masterpiece [*The Nightmare,*](https://engole.info/the-nightmare) exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1782.{{sfnp|HTS9AJV5}}
Many have speculated that the sleeping woman depicts Anna Landolt, the niece of Fuseli’s friend the Swiss physiognomist Johann Kaspar Lavater,{{sfnp|HTS9AJV5}} and that the incubus may be a representation of Fuseli himself.{{sfnp|MC6D9WZI}}
Fuseli had fallen wildly in love with Anna, and his rejection appears to have resulted in a lasting bitterness.{{sfnp|HTS9AJV5}} He wrote of his fantasies about Anna to Lavater in 1779:{{sfnp|B5JGMMXJ}}
Last night I had her in bed with me – tossed my bedclothes hugger-mugger – wound my hot and tight-clasped hands about her – fused her body and soul together with my own – poured into her my spirit, breath and strength. Anyone who touches her now commits adultery and incest! She is mine, and I am hers. And have her I will.
## Description
In contrast to *The Nightmare*, which depicts the moment of assault, *The Incubus* shows the disoriented and anguished victim waking up, and the incubus fleeing on horseback through the window at the top left. Lying beside her is a resting female companion who has slept peacefully throughout the encounter.{{sfnp|HTS9AJV5}}
## Provenance
The painting may have been acquired from the artist by Theodor Falckeysen of Basel in 1794. After having been in the hands of a private collector since the late 19th century, it was sold at auction at Christie’s in London for $3.5 million in 2021.{{sfnp|HTS9AJV5}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26772
**Categories:** Painting
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Yard with Lunatics](https://engole.info/yard-with-lunatics/)
**Published:** May 19, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Courtyard_with_Lunatics_by_Goya_1794.jpg[/pimage]Small oil-on-tinplate painting by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya, produced between 1793 and 1794.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Courtyard_with_Lunatics_by_Goya_1794.jpg)Oil on tin-plated iron
429 x 314 mm (17 in × 12 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Yard with Lunatics* (Spanish: *Corral de locos*), also known as *Yard with Madmen*, is a small oil-on-tinplate painting by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya, produced between 1793 and 1794. Goya said it was informed by scenes of institutions he had witnessed as a youth in Zaragoza.{{sfnp|M56PNMSH}} *Yard with Lunatics* was painted at a time when Goya’s deafness and fear of mental illness were developing, and he was increasingly complaining about his health. Don Sebastian Martinez, who cared for Goya in his house in Cadiz, wrote in a letter that “the noises in his \[Goya’s\] head and deafness aren’t improving, yet his vision is much better and he is back in control of his balance.”{{sfnp|YN48I895|63}}
Goya had previously been preoccupied with commissioned portraits of royalty and noblemen, but this work is one of a dozen small-scale, dark images he produced independently. Uncommissioned, it was one of the first of Goya’s mid-1790s cabinet paintings, in which his earlier search for ideal beauty gave way to an examination of the relationship between naturalism and fantasy that would preoccupy him for the rest of his career.{{sfnp|WGHBEG6E}} Goya was at the time undergoing a nervous breakdown and entering a prolonged period of physical illness,\[a\]The cause of Goya’s maladies is uncertain. Theories range from polio to syphilis or lead poisoning, yet he lived until the age of 82. and admitted that the series was created to reflect his own self-doubt, anxiety and fear that he himself was going mad.{{sfnp|PK65GB4F}} He wrote that the works served “to occupy my imagination, tormented as it is by contemplation of my sufferings.” The series, he said, consisted of pictures which “normally find no place in commissioned works.”{{sfnp|R2VGD3HP}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Francisco_Goya_-_Casa_de_locos.jpg)Goya’s *The Madhouse*, 1812–1819
Wikimedia Commons
To the art historian Arthur Danto, *Yard with Lunatics* marks the point in Goya’s career when he moves from “a world in which there are no shadows to one in which there is no light”.{{sfnp|R2VGD3HP}} The work is often compared to the more mature but equally bleak *Madhouse* of 1812–1819. It has been described as a “somber vision of human bodies without human reason”,{{sfnp|WWUZDBTW|31}} a “deeply disturbing visions of sadism and suffering, that, to a 20th-century viewer’s mind, conjure up memories of concentration camp photographs”.{{sfnp|XNVE729C}}
Set in a lunatic asylum, *Yard with Lunatics* was painted at a time when such institutions were, according to art critic Robert Hughes, no more than “holes in the social surface, small dumps into which the psychotic could be thrown without the smallest attempt to discover, classify, or treat the nature of their illness.”{{sfnp|HCNAWYS7|139}} Goya’s yard is stark, showing shackled inmates enclosed by high walls and a heavy stone arch. Inmates fight and grin idiotically or huddle in despair, all bathed in an oppressive grey and green light, guarded by one man.
In a letter written to his friend Bernardo de Yriarte in 1794, Goya wrote that the painting shows “a yard with lunatics, and two of them fighting completely naked while their warder beats them, and others in sacks”.{{sfnp|CWQ879RW|194}} Goya’s words are usually seen as an indictment of the widespread punitive treatment of the insane, who were confined with criminals, put in iron manacles, and routinely subjected to physical punishment,{{sfnp|HCNAWYS7|139}} in ground sealed by masonry blocks and iron gate. Here the patients are variously staring, sitting, posturing, wrestling, grimacing or disciplining themselves. The top of the canvas vanishes with sunlight, emphasising the nightmarish scene below.
*Yard with Lunatics* is currently in the collection of the Meadows Museum in Dallas.{{sfnp|PZ7ZGZIU}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The cause of Goya’s maladies is uncertain. Theories range from polio to syphilis or lead poisoning, yet he lived until the age of 82.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22714
This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Yard_with_Lunatics#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Painting
---
### [The Enigma of Hitler](https://engole.info/the-enigma-of-hitler/)
**Published:** October 6, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/The-Enigma-of-Hitler.webp[/pimage]Painting by Salvador Dalí created in 1939, "celebrating" the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/The-Enigma-of-Hitler.webp)Oil on canvas
95 cm × 141 cm (37 in × 56 in)
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
*The Enigma of Hitler* is a painting by Salvador Dalí created in 1939,{{sfnp|HMBZXPCZ}} one of several he produced from 1937 “celebrating” the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, resulting in Dali’s alienation from his fellow Surrealists.{{sfnp|D2Z9U28W}}
The art critic Jonathan Jones has described *The Enigma* as “a ghostly farewell to the 1930s”. Hitler’s invasion of Poland had brought an end to the years of appeasement; the melting telephone, its cord cut, suspended over an image of the Führer, symbolises the breakdown in communication between the European powers. The few dry beans beside Hitler’s image on the plate reflect the barren diplomacy, and the dread of waiting for war. The almost transparent umbrella hanging from the broken branch may represent the then British prime minister Neville Chamberlain who,{{sfnp|JYETBX9J}} following the signing of the 1938 Munich Agreement with Germany, famously announced that it represented “Peace for our time”.
The painting is held in the collection of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, in Madrid, to which it was bequeathed in 1990.{{sfnp|HMBZXPCZ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26850
**Categories:** Painting, Surrealist
---
### [Girls Running, Walberswick Pier](https://engole.info/girls-running-walberswick-pier/)
**Published:** October 16, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/girls-running-walberswick.png[/pimage]Oil on canvas painting by the English impressionist artist Philip Wilson Steer (1860–1942).
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/girls-running-walberswick.png)Oil on canvas
62.9 × 92.7 cm (24.8 × 36.5 in)
Tate
*Girls Running, Walberswick Pier* is an oil on canvas painting by the English impressionist artist Philip William Steer (1860–1942).{{sfnp|2ZFLIVSN}}
Dated 1894, the painting was displayed in two exhibitions at the Goupil Gallery that year, in February and April, entered simply as *Girls Running*. Offered at a price of £45 at the artist’s first solo exhibition, it was purchased by Sir Augustus Daniel in April 1894.{{sfnp|2ZFLIVSN}}{{sfnp|SV9LN3BU|34}} It remained in his ownership until his death in 1950, following which his widow donated it, along with the rest of his art collection, to the Tate Gallery in 1951.{{sfnp|2ZFLIVSN}}
Steer, who trained at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris between 1882 and 1884, was inspired by the French Impressionist painters. He became a frequent visitor to friends in Walberswick, Suffolk where he painted the Impressionist seascapes and beach scenes that are considered to be his finest works.{{sfnp|GC72XFCE}} *Girls Running, Walberswick Pier* demonstrates the Impressionists’ influence on Steer as he captures the middle-class figures at the end of the pier and the two girls running towards the artist against a backdrop of sea and sky in the warm late-afternoon sunlight.{{sfnp|2ZFLIVSN}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24037
**Categories:** Painting
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [A Balloon Site, Coventry](https://engole.info/a-balloon-site-coventry/)
**Published:** November 7, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/A_Balloon_Site%2C_Coventry_%281943%29_%28Art._IWM_ART_LD_2750%29.jpg[/pimage]Oil on canvas painting by Laura Knight, portraying a group of people – mainly women – launching a barrage balloon.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/A_Balloon_Site%2C_Coventry_%281943%29_%28Art._IWM_ART_LD_2750%29.jpg)Oil on canvas
102.5 cm × 127 cm (40.4 in × 50 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*A Balloon Site, Coventry* is an oil on canvas painting undertaken in 1942 by the British artist Laura Knight. It portrays a group of people – mostly women – working to launch a barrage balloon in the outskirts of Coventry, an industrial city in the Midlands.
Coventry had been protected by barrage balloons since March 1939. From April 1941 women were used to operate the balloons, a crew of fourteen women replacing the ten men that had done so until then.{{sfnp|E33IGU3R}} Filled with hydrogen and anchored to the ground by steel cables, the balloons forced aircraft to fly higher than their preferred altitude, making their bombing less accurate and the bombers more vulnerable to ground-based anti-aircraft fire.{{sfnp|E33IGU3R}}{{sfnp|QIXHIQW2|search=Chapter 1}}{{sfnp|S7QQTGF9|47}}\[a\]The protection provided by the balloons was limited; on 14 November 1940 Coventry was the target of a German bombing raid, during which more than 10,000 incendiary bombs were dropped on the city.{{sfnp|QIXHIQW2|search=Chapter 1}}
In early 1942 Laura had painted *In for Repairs*, showing members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) repairing a damaged barrage balloon, which so impressed the Air Ministry that it requested she paint the WAAF in action. She was commissioned by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee (WAAC) and paid 100 guineas for the work,{{sfnp|JNNAR4GN|110}}{{sfnp|EHPQWT7I|210}} which was undertaken in July and August 1942.{{sfnp|XZMBZMVH}}
*A Balloon Site* was displayed at the 1943 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, along with *Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring* (1943).{{sfnp|XZMBZMVH}} As at 2020, the painting is held by the Imperial War Museum.{{sfnp|E33IGU3R}}
## Composition
*A Balloon Site* shows the launch of a barrage balloon on the outskirts of Coventry. In the middle distance are several damaged buildings,{{sfnp|B7R98JZ7}} with the partial ruins of Coventry shown in the background.{{sfnp|EHPQWT7I|210}} In the foreground two groups work on launching the balloon. The group in the foreground – composed of three women and one man – are under the leadership of Jean Brydon, a female sergeant. A second group is shown on the far side of the balloon.{{sfnp|B7R98JZ7}}{{sfnp|KWU9Y6Q4|130}}{{sfnp|RKZQWY5J|168}}
According to the art historians Teresa Grimes, Judith Collins and Oriana Baddeley, *A Balloon Site* and *In For Repairs* “are about activity, the concentration and absorption in work generated by a group endeavour are central to their composition”.{{sfnp|CMGNUZVG|44}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The protection provided by the balloons was limited; on 14 November 1940 Coventry was the target of a German bombing raid, during which more than 10,000 incendiary bombs were dropped on the city.{{sfnp|QIXHIQW2|search=Chapter 1}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23266
**Categories:** Painting
---
### [The Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches](https://engole.info/the-night-hag-visiting-lapland-witches/)
**Published:** October 20, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Lapland_witches.jpg[/pimage]Oil painting by Henry Fuseli, illustrating a passage from John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Lapland_witches.jpg)*The Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches*, 1796
Oil on canvas,
101.6 × 126.4 cm (40 × 49¾ in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches* is an oil painting by the Swiss-born British Romantic artist [Henry Fuseli](https://engole.info/henry-fuseli). Originally exhibited under the title of *Lapland Orgies*,{{sfnp|EKEFKZY6}} and sometimes known simply as *The Night-Hag*,{{sfnp|LXXB4UJQ}} it was first shown in 1799. It is an illustration of a passage from the epic poem by John Milton, (1608–1684) *Paradise Lost* (II, 622–66),{{sfnp|EKEFKZY6}} comparing the hellhounds surrounding Sin\[a\]In *Paradise Lost*, Sin is the guard at the gates of Hell.{{sfnp|LXXB4UJQ}} to those who:
> … follow the night-hag when, call’d
> In secret, riding through the Air she comes,
> Lur’d with the smell of infant blood, to dance
> With *Lapland* witches, while the laboring moon
> Eclipses at their charms..{{sfnp|EKEFKZY6}}
*Night-Hag* is a reference to the Greek goddess Hecate, who presided over witchcraft and other magical rituals.{{sfnp|EKEFKZY6}}
## Description
The thinness of the paint and damage by abrasion make some of the details of the painting difficult to discern, but the Night-Hag is depicted in the upper centre of the picture, as a demon mounted on horseback surrounded by nine infernal hounds, which the witch in the foreground is looking up at. In front of the seated and hooded witch – a frequent feature in Fuseli’s paintings – is a sleeping or drugged male child, with a hand offering up a dagger.{{sfnp|LXXB4UJQ}}
The Lapland witches are dancing in the right middle ground, to the beating of drums from the witches on the left; it was believed that the beating of drums during magic rituals was characteristic of the witches of Lapland, the last part of Europe to be converted to Christianity.{{sfnp|LXXB4UJQ}}
## Exhibition and provenance
Now in the possession of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, who purchased it for £22,000 in 1980, *The Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches* was first exhibited at the Milton Gallery in London in 1799,{{sfnp|EKEFKZY6}} one of forty-seven paintings Fuseli produced illustrating the life and works of John Milton.{{sfnp|LXXB4UJQ}}
Fuseli sold the the painting to his future biographer John Knowles in 1808, remarking that “the picture … is one of my very best-yet”. That opinion was evidently not shared by its later owners, the Boyd family of Penkill Castle in Girvan, Scotland, when in about 1920 Mrs Boyd gave the work to her maid, Mrs Smith, because she “couldn’t stand it”.{{sfnp|LXXB4UJQ}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a In *Paradise Lost*, Sin is the guard at the gates of Hell.{{sfnp|LXXB4UJQ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25665
**Categories:** Painting
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [The Singing Butler](https://engole.info/the-singing-butler/)
**Published:** March 3, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/The-Singing-Butler.webp[/pimage]Painting by the Scottish artist Jack Vettriano (1951–2025), reproductions of which make it the best-selling art print in the UK.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/The-Singing-Butler.webp)Oil on canvas
The Guardian
*The Singing Butler* is a painting by the Scottish artist Jack Vettriano, created in 1992. It sold at auction in 2004 for £744,500, the record at the time for any Scottish painting, and for any painting ever sold in Scotland. Reproductions of *The Singing Butler* make it the best-selling art print in the UK.{{sfnp|SKRKKUDG}}
The focal subject of *The Singing Butler* is based on an image of the actress Orla Brady, published in *The Illustrator’s Figure Reference Manual* (1987) as part of a series of photographic figure studies.{{sfnp|QHGJGHIY}}
In 1992 Vettriano submitted *The Singing Butler* to the Royal Academy for inclusion in its Summer Exhibition, but the painting was rejected.{{sfnp|B5PM6TF7}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/ebc63e10-f937-11ef-b5f1-abd941d42398.png.webp)BBC News
A “reimagining” of *The Singing Butler* by Banksy, first exhibited in 2005, was sold at Sotheby’s in London for £4.3 million, just a few days after Vettriano’s death.{{sfnp|EZX94UEZ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27238
**Categories:** Painting
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [The Awakening Conscience](https://engole.info/the-awakening-conscience/)
**Published:** July 23, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/56/Hunt-AwakeningConscience1853.jpg/500px-Hunt-AwakeningConscience1853.jpg[/pimage]Created by the English artist William Holman Hunt in 1853, the painting was for a time the most talked about of the century.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/56/Hunt-AwakeningConscience1853.jpg/500px-Hunt-AwakeningConscience1853.jpg)Oil on canvas
76 cm × 56 cm (30 in × 22 in)
Art UK
*The Awakening Conscience* is a painting created in 1853 by the English artist [William Holman Hunt](https://engole.info/william-holman-hunt), one of the founders of the [Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood). The model is Hunt’s girlfriend Annie Miller, an uneducated barmaid whom he met in 1850 when she was fifteen.{{sfnp|XB9DQZ6D}}
The painting depicts a gentleman who has installed his mistress in a house for their meetings, a *maison de convenance*. As they play and sing to Thomas Moore’s *Oft in the Stilly Night*, she rises from her lover’s lap and gazes into the sunlit garden beyond, reflected in the mirror behind her. The cat toying with the broken-winged bird under the table symbolises the woman’s plight, which she suddenly seems to have become aware of. A man’s discarded glove warns that the likely fate of a cast-off mistress is prostitution. A tangled length of yarn on the floor symbolises the web in which the girl is entrapped.{{sfnp|XB9DQZ6D}}
The Victorian art theorist John Ruskin praised *The Awakening Conscience* as an example of a new direction in British art, in which the narrative was created from the artist’s imagination rather than chronicling an event.{{sfnp|TVS5P3VE|96}} The painting appeared in many exhibitions from 1854 onwards, and for a time was one of the most talked about paintings of the century.{{sfnp|TYHXW8DJ}}
The painting was commissioned by the Manchester businessman Thomas Fairbairn, who paid Hunt 350 guineas, equivalent to about £50,000 as at 2024.\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} At Fairbairn’s request, Hunt repainted the woman’s face in 1856 and 1857, as Fairbairn considered it to be “too pained”.{{sfnp|JMUI4A8T}}
*The Awakening Conscience* was presented to the Tate gallery by Sir Colin and Lady Anderson in 1976.{{sfnp|2ASACBV7}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27689
**Categories:** Holman Hunt, Painting
---
### [The Alchymist](https://engole.info/the-alchymist/)
**Published:** February 16, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Joseph_Wright_of_Derby_The_Alchemist.jpg[/pimage]Oil painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, first exhibited in 1771.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Joseph_Wright_of_Derby_The_Alchemist.jpg)*The Alchymist*, 1771, reworked in 1795
oil on canvas
1270 mm × 1016 mm (50 in × 40 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Alchymist*, full title *The Alchymist, in Search of the Philosopher’s Stone, Discovers Phosphorous, and prays for the successful Conclusion of his operation, as was the custom of the Ancient Chymical Astrologers*, is an oil painting by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797). First exhibited in 1771 at the Society of Artists, Wright reworked it in 1795, shortly before his death.{{sfnp|SA9C9KQ6|27}}
The Philosopher’s Stone is a mythical substance with the power to turn base metal into gold, but the awestruck alchymist has instead discovered a new element, phosphorous, the glow from which is lighting the faces of him and his assistants.{{sfnp|PUREDNSL}}\[a\]Phosphorous exists in two main forms, white phosphorous, and red phosphorous. White phosphorous, first isolated in 1669, emits a faint glow when exposed to oxygen.
*The Alchymist* is one in a series of nocturnes – dramatic night scenes – which built Wright’s reputation as a significant artist. He took some care in the scientific detail, and probably consulted Pierre Joseph Macquer’s *Elements of the Theory and Practice of Chemistry*, translated into English in 1758. Wright’s friend, the cartographer and artist Peter Perez Burdett, was carrying out his own chemical experiments in Liverpool, and provided some sketches of the apparatus that would be required to extract phosphorous from urine.{{sfnp|SA9C9KQ6|28}}
## Composition
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Thomas_Wijck_-_An_Alchemist_-_WGA25742.jpg)*The Alchemist*, by Thomas Wijck
Wikimedia Commons
The art historian Benedict Nicolson has suggested that the overall layout of *The Alchymist* may have been inspired by Thomas Wijck’s painting *The Alchemist*, which also contains a confusion of objects and an assistant singled out by the light.{{sfnp|43LZ9S7W|52}} Burdett also appears to have had a hand in influencing the layout, as his sketches clearly show the vaulting and where the central figure should be placed, with the focus on the glass container.{{sfnp|43LZ9S7W|118}}
The Gothic arches, the costumes, and the overall setting of the painting suggest that Wright was depicting an actual historical event, the discovery of phosphorous one hundred years earlier.{{sfnp|2U3H8SGD}} The supplicant alchemist, his arms raised in prayer, reflects an engraving in an influential book of spiritual alchemy, the *Amphitreatrum Sapientae Aeternae* (*Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom*) (1602) by Heinrich Khunrath.{{sfnp|SA9C9KQ6|28-29}}
## Ownership
*The Alchymist* did not prove to be a commercial success, unlike Wright’s earlier work, and did not sell upon exhibition. He took it with him to Italy in 1773, where it also failed to sell, and it returned with him to England two years later. The painting remained in Wright’s studio for the remainder of his life, and after reworking it in 1795 he seems never to have offered it for sale again.{{sfnp|SA9C9KQ6|28}}
The painting is now in the Derby Museum and Art Gallery’s collection.{{sfnp|2U3H8SGD}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Phosphorous exists in two main forms, white phosphorous, and red phosphorous. White phosphorous, first isolated in 1669, emits a faint glow when exposed to oxygen. b, c var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22612
**Categories:** Painting
---
### [The Death of Cardinal Beaufort (1399–1447)](https://engole.info/the-death-of-cardinal-beaufort-1399-1447/)
**Published:** October 31, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Joshua_Reynolds_%281723-1792%29_-_The_Death_of_Cardinal_Beaufort_%281377%E2%80%931447%29_%28from_William_Shakespeare%27s_%27Henry_VI%27%2C_Part_II%2C_Act_III%2C_Scene_iii%29_-_486246_-_National_Trust.jpg[/pimage]Oil painting by Joshua Reynolds, illustrating a scene from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part II.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Joshua_Reynolds_%281723-1792%29_-_The_Death_of_Cardinal_Beaufort_%281377%E2%80%931447%29_%28from_William_Shakespeare%27s_%27Henry_VI%27%2C_Part_II%2C_Act_III%2C_Scene_iii%29_-_486246_-_National_Trust.jpg)Oil on canvas,
218.5 × 157.5 cm (86 × 62 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Death of Cardinal Beaufort (1399–1447)* is an oil painting by the English artist Joshua Reynolds, illustrating a scene from William Shakespeare’s play *Henry VI, Part II.*
Now in the possession of the National Trust, recent renovation work has revealed the presence in the picture of a demon lurking in the shadows. The presence of the fiend was controversial when the painting was first exhibited in 1789, as it was not considered proper to include an imaginary creature in such a painting, and over time, with some overpainting and revarnishing, the demon had gradually disappeared.{{sfnp|FIPZVR95}}
## Description
Detail from the restored version
BBC
The painting depicts the second part of William Shakespeare’s *Henry VI, Part II, Act III, Scene iii*, showing Cardinal Beaufort, Chancellor of England, on his deathbed, surrounded by his great nephew King Henry VI and the Lords Warwick and Salisbury.{{sfnp|FIPZVR95}} In the play, King Henry laments the cardinal’s imminent death, saying:{{sfnp|FE8Y6D72}}
> Look with a gentle eye upon this wretch;
> O! beat away the busy medling fiend
> That lays strong siege unto this wretch’s soul
> And from his bosom purge this black despair.
## Exhibition and provenance
The painting was first exhibited at the Shakespeare Gallery in 1789.{{sfnp|FIPZVR95}} It was bought in 1805 by the 3rd Earl of Egremont for £530.5s, equivalent to about £45,800 as at 2021,\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} and by descent came into the possession of Charles Henry Wyndham, 3rd Lord Leconfield, who died in 1952.{{sfnp|FE8Y6D72}}
The painting, along with many other items in the family’s collection, was accepted by HM Treasury in lieu of death duties on Leconfield’s estate in 1956, the first ever such agreement with HM Treasury, after which the painting was transferred to the National Trust. It is currently in the Trust’s collection at Petworth House in West Sussex.{{sfnp|49MA6Y5E}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25686
**Categories:** Painting
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [The Day Dream](https://engole.info/the-day-dream/)
**Published:** December 17, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_-_The_Day_Dream_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg[/pimage]Oil painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, which he considered to among the best of his work.
**Content:**
*The Day Dream*, or as it was initially intended to be named, *Monna Primavera*, is an oil on canvas painting by the [Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood/) founder Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The work was undertaken in 1880, and depicts his lover Jane Morris sitting on the bough of a sycamore tree. A small stem of honeysuckle is in her hand, a token of love in the Victorian era, which may be a hint of their secret affair. The artwork was left to the Victoria and Albert Museum by Constantine Alexander Ionides in 1900.
## Background
During 1878 Rossetti completed a chalk sketch of Jane Morris,{{sfnp|2P5F7IQ9|120}} his secret lover, whom he had met at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1857. She was the model for several of his well-known paintings, including *Proserpine*.{{sfnp|29VEDRBQ}} The drawing was displayed above the mantlepiece in Rossetti’s studio.{{sfnp|XA79EPWE}} Initially the painting was to be called *Monna Primavera*,{{sfnp|EW4CRCHV|140}} or *Vanna Primavera*, possibly inspired by *La Vita Nuova*,{{sfnp|HZ58MNN3|106}} a narrative that captivated Rossetti{{sfnp|8VF9VQQR}} and was the basis for earlier pieces of his works of art.{{sfnp|GR6QVGAD}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_-_The_Day_Dream_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)Oil on canvas
158.7 cm × 92.7 cm (62.5 in × 36.5 in)
Wikimedia Commons
Rossetti was also a poet, and wrote sonnets to accompany several of his paintings;{{sfnp|AJF7R9RB}} the last composition in his series, *Sonnets for Pictures*, is associated with this painting.{{sfnp|ULH8NCUB|140}} It reads:
The thronged boughs of the shadowy sycamore
Still bear young leaflets half the summer through;
From when the robin ‘gainst the unhidden blue
Perched dark, till now, deep in the leafy core,
The embowered throstle’s urgent wood-notes soar
Through summer silence. Still the leaves come new;
Yet never rosy-sheathed as those which drew
Their spiral tongues from spring-buds heretofore.
Within the branching shade of Reverie
Dreams even may spring till autumn; yet none be
Like woman’s budding day-dream spirit-fann’d.
Lo! tow’rd deep skies, not deeper than her look,
She dreams; till now on her forgotten book
Drops the forgotten blossom from her hand.{{sfnp
— EVZRSMR3}}
Rossetti had not initially been fully satisfied with the painting, and made several revisions.{{sfnp|ULH8NCUB|140}} He wrote to Jane apologising for copying the feet of another woman to the picture.{{sfnp|GEEJ3AXF}} An earlier painting of Jane, *The Salutation of Beatrice*, had similarly used a different model’s hands in the final version.{{sfnp|GR6QVGAD}}
## Description
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/DayDream_Rossetti2.jpg)The chalk sketch that *The Day Dream* was based on is held by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
Wikimedia Commons
Jane is posed in seated position on the bough of a sycamore tree. A small stem of honeysuckle is in her hand, a token of love in the Victorian era, and perhaps an indication of the secret affair the artist was immersed in with her at the time.{{sfnp|K572VNNQ}} Unusually for Rossetti’s work during this time – this is one of his last paintings – the model is portrayed full length;{{sfnp|HZ58MNN3|103}} it is signed “D. Rossetti 1880” on the lower right.{{sfnp|XA79EPWE}}
The scene is a representation of a young woman in a green silk dress, shaded by the arabesque of the winged sycamore tree’s leaves. Above her head and around her the tree branches are depicted almost embracing her, or as if she was emerging from the tree itself, almost as a dryad, or tree nymph. She is portrayed clad all in green, her dress is a romantic wide and loose silk robe, flowing in graceful folds down, blending in with the tree’s leaves, that connects the subject and its surroundings visually. She is immersed in her day dreams, turning her gaze downwards, away, towards something unseen or perhaps only perceived by her. The depiction of the young, elegant woman in her shelter surrounded by the branches, is adding to the secretive feeling of the painting, maybe indicating the furtiveness of the affair or a clandestine meeting place. In the shelter it is dark, but around her shoulder there is light, light blue compartments against a dark-green background, signalling that it is daytime.
## Exhibitions and provenance
The painting was left to the Victoria and Albert Museum by Constantine Alexander Ionides in 1900; he had commissioned Rossetti to undertake the work in 1879 for seven hundred guineas. Rossetti and Ionides corresponded throughout the duration of the work being undertaken on the painting; when it was almost completed on 18 March 1880 Rossetti wrote saying: “\[it\] will be beyond question as good a thing as I ever did.”{{sfnp|XA79EPWE}} He also gave explicit instructions as to where the picture was to be positioned, including details as to the height from the floor and the direction from which the light should hit it.{{sfnp|XA79EPWE}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 12373
**Categories:** Painting
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Allegory of Fortune](https://engole.info/allegory-of-fortune/)
**Published:** November 26, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/Salvator_Rosa_%28Italian%29_-_Allegory_of_Fortune_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg[/pimage] Allegory of Fortune, sometimes also named La Fortuna, is an oil painting on canvas that was created around 1658 or 1659 by the Italian baroque painter Salvator Rosa, which caused uproar when first exhibited publicly and almost got the painter jailed and excommunicated.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/Salvator_Rosa_%28Italian%29_-_Allegory_of_Fortune_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)Oil painting on canvas
200.7 cm x 133 cm (79.0 in x 52.4 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Allegory of Fortune*, sometimes called *La Fortuna*, is an oil painting on canvas created in about 1658 or 1659 by the Italian baroque painter Salvator Rosa, bearing initials but undated. It caused uproar when first exhibited publicly, and almost resulted in the painter’s incarceration and excommunication. Rosa was known for his landscape paintings, but also worked in the sphere of mythology, witchcraft, portraits, and satire.{{sfnp|VZQXB7KD}}
The painting depicts Fortuna, the goddess of fortune and personification of luck, pouring gifts from a cornucopia onto an array of undeserving animals. The donkey represents the pope, casting a shadow on the owl, a symbol wisdom; the whole composition expresses the artist’s bitterness at losing his papal patronage.
Since 1978 the painting has been in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California.
## Background
The painting was made at much the same time as Rosa wrote *Babilonia*, a satirical condemnation of the papal court of Alexander VII.{{sfnp|2RIVUFBK}}\[a\]*Babilonia* was the term Rosa used when referring to Rome.{{sfnp|QQ95993N}} According to the art critic Brian Sewell, the target of the satirical painting could not be misinterpreted.{{sfnp|2RIVUFBK}} After viewing it privately,{{sfnp|DCR2XES9|18}} Rosa’s friends warned him that the painting should not be displayed openly as it was a satirical attack on Alexander VII.{{sfnp|7P57JELS}} In 1659 the painting was exhibited at the Pantheon, Rome, which almost resulted in Rosa being jailed and excommunicated. Only the intervention of the pope’s brother, Don Marco Chigi, saved him from this humiliation.{{sfnp|DCR2XES9|18}}
Eventually Rosa was convinced of the need to offer an explanation of the picture; this he did under the rubric of Manifesto and, according to art writer James Elmes, “proved that his hogs were not churchmen, his mules pretending pedants, his asses Roman nobles, and his birds and beasts of prey, the reigning despots of Italy.”{{sfnp|AR936V95|92}}
An earlier painting of *Fortune* was undertaken by Rosa during the 1640s.{{sfnp|MYZDH8N8}}
## Description
The overall dimensions of the undated oil on canvas are 200.7 by 133 centimetres (79.0 in × 52.4 in) wide;{{sfnp|DSYDU2T3}} the initials “SR” inscribed on the book at the lower left represent the signature of the artist.{{sfnp|8UIZ3IFT}} The painting, sometimes referred to as *La Fortuna*,{{sfnp|J85SGLQ6|86}} depicts Fortuna, the goddess of fortune and personification of luck, pouring her gifts on an array of undeserving animals. Traditionally Fortuna has her eyes covered and the vessel containing her favours, the horn of plenty or Cornucopia, is shown in an upright position; Rosa has reversed this tradition in his rendition and portrays Fortuna completely acquainted with where and on whom she is bestowing her gifts from the upended cornucopia.{{sfnp|DSYDU2T3}}
Gemstones, coronets, a sceptre, gold coins, pearls, roses, together with grapes, cereal, and berries flow from the cornucopia onto the animals below.\[11\] In turn the animals are stamping on the symbols of education, the arts, and knowledge. The donkey, the symbol of the pope, wearing a cardinal’s red and gold coat as a drapery, is suppressing and casting a shadow on an owl, used here as the symbol for wisdom. The painting is expressing the artist’s feelings of bitterness about the fact he lost the papal patronage, and thus Rosa included personal references: a rose signifies Rosa’s name; a palette is placed on the book, and the book carries his initials. A pig stepping on a rose symbolises the same thing.{{sfnp|DSYDU2T3}}
## Exhibitions and provenance
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Dosso_Dossi_%28Giovanni_di_Niccol%C3%B2_de_Lutero%29_%28Italian_%28Ferrarese%29_-_Allegory_of_Fortune_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)Dosso Dossi’s *Allegory of Fortune*, showing the cornucopia depicted upright, as usual
Wikimedia Commons
After being displayed in 1659, the painting was acquired by Carlo de Rossi and on his death in about 1683 became the property of Antonio Vallori.{{sfnp|8UIZ3IFT}}
It moved from Italy to England after Vallori sold it to Henry Scudamore, 3rd Duke of Beaufort in 1727{{sfnp|MYZDH8N8|663}} for six hundred scudi.{{sfnp|8YEBSM5L|16}} The duke was completing a Grand Tour and purchased two Rosa paintings, the other one entitled, *Nursing of Jupiter*.{{sfnp|SHKLL5FF}} Passed down by inheritance, the *Fortune* painting remained in the possession of the various Dukes of Beaufort until sold by the tenth duke in 1957, when it was purchased by the Marlborough Gallery. It was acquired by J. Paul Getty from the gallery in 1971. Until it passed to the Getty Museum in 1978 it was only exhibited three times: from 21 May 1827 at the Bristol Institution; at the British Institution in 1859; and as part of the J. Paul Getty Collection exhibition in mid-1972 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Since 2000 it has been displayed as part of the *Bandits, Wilderness and Magic* exhibition firstly at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London during 2010 and at the Kimbell Art Museum in Texas from the end of December 2010 to March 2011.{{sfnp|8UIZ3IFT}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a *Babilonia* was the term Rosa used when referring to Rome.{{sfnp|QQ95993N}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 11639
**Categories:** Painting
---
### [Hadleigh Castle (painting)](https://engole.info/hadleigh-castle-painting/)
**Published:** March 8, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Hadleigh-Castle.webp[/pimage]Painting by John Constable.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f8/John_Constable_-_Hadleigh_Castle%2C_The_Mouth_of_the_Thames--Morning_after_a_Stormy_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/1280px-John_Constable_-_Hadleigh_Castle%2C_The_Mouth_of_the_Thames--Morning_after_a_Stormy_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)Oil on canvas
122 cm × 165 cm (48 in x 65 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Hadleigh Castle* is an oil painting by the English artist John Constable (1776–1837), exhibited at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1829.{{sfnp|FKDQU9RY}}
Constable visited Hadleigh Castle in Essex only once, in 1814, when he made a small pencil drawing which he subsequently developed into a full-sized oil sketch, probably about fifteen years later. The sketch is in the collection of the Tate Gallery, London, and the completed painting is part of the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art.{{sfnp|FKDQU9RY}}
According to the art historians Tammis Groft and Mary Mackay, the painting shows Hadleigh Castle as a decaying man-made structure succumbing to the elemental power of nature,{{sfnp|H6GL52CP}} an “ode to melancholy and ruin”.{{sfnp|6C8J438D}}\[a\]Constable’s wife, Maria, had died in 1827, leaving him with seven young children.{{sfnp|6C8J438D}} Other critics were perplexed by Constable’s brushwork, which combined with his use of the palette knife created a surface texture resembling chopped hay and whitewash.{{sfnp|6C8J438D}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Constable’s wife, Maria, had died in 1827, leaving him with seven young children.{{sfnp|6C8J438D}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25189
**Categories:** Landscape, Painting
---
### [Medea (Sandys painting)](https://engole.info/medea-sandys-painting/)
**Published:** October 24, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Medea_-_Frederick_Sandys_-_Google_Cultural_Institute.jpg/960px-Medea_-_Frederick_Sandys_-_Google_Cultural_Institute.jpg[/pimage]1868 oil painting by Frederick Sandys, controversially rejected for display in the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition that year.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Medea_-_Frederick_Sandys_-_Google_Cultural_Institute.jpg/960px-Medea_-_Frederick_Sandys_-_Google_Cultural_Institute.jpg)Oil on panel
61 cm × 46 cm (24 in × 18 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Medea* is an 1868 oil painting by the [Pre-Raphaelite](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood) painter Frederick Sandys. The painting was submitted to the Royal Academy of Arts for display in the Summer Exhibition of 1868 but was controversially rejected.{{sfnp|N2ADEIYU}} The picture was accepted the following year and reviewed very favourably in *The Times*, which commented pointedly on its previous failure to win a place.{{sfnp|QIKQQ8RI}}
In Greek mythology, Medea was a sorceress and the wife of Jason, leader of the argonauts. After Jason deserted her for Creusa, the daughter of King Creon of Corinth, she took revenge by killing Creon, Creusa, and her own children.{{sfnp|FA2VDA8A}} Sandys’ painting shows Medea concocting a poisonous potion.{{sfnp|N2ADEIYU}}
The picture is now in the collection of the Birmingham Museums Trust, to which it was donated by the Public Picture Gallery Fund in 1925.{{sfnp|N6YI2UFE}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 28053
**Categories:** Frederick Sandys, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
---
### [Clustering illusion](https://engole.info/clustering-illusion/)
**Published:** May 5, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Tendency to erroneously consider the inevitable "streaks" or "clusters" arising in small samples from random distributions to be non-random.
**Content:**
The clustering illusion is the tendency to erroneously consider the inevitable “streaks” or “clusters” arising in small samples from random distributions to be non-random. For instance, it strikes many as unexpected if, in a series of 20 coin flips, 4 heads come up in a row, but in reality the odds of that happening are almost 50%.{{sfnp|I75JV5MY77-78}}\[a\]46.2% using the binomial probability formula. The illusion is caused by the human tendency to underestimate the amount of variability likely to appear in a small sample of random or pseudorandom data; the law of averages only ensures that there will be the expected 50-50 split after a large number of coin tosses.{{sfnp|36KT56HQ|16-18}}
Some might perceive patterns in stock market price fluctuations over time,{{sfnp|MSXTBE64}} or clusters in two-dimensional data such as the impact locations of the Second World War V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets on maps of London. But despite the theories of many Londoners, a post-war statistical analysis of the data showed that the impacts of those weapons on London were a close fit to a random distribution.{{sfnp|36KT56HQ|16-18}}
The clustering illusion has much in common with the fallacy of division, the assumption that the characteristics of a large population will be replicated in all of its subsets.{{sfnp|I75JV5MY77-78}}
## See also
- [Sample size fallacy](https://engole.info/sample-size-fallacy)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a 46.2% using the binomial probability formula.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Falllacy
---
### [Chatterton Massacre](https://engole.info/chatterton-massacre/)
**Published:** March 18, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Picture7.webp[/pimage]Massacre of at least six protesters on 26 April 1826 by British soldiers, on the third and penultimate day of the Lancashire Rising.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Picture7.webp)Soldiers of the 60th Duke of York Own Rifles
The Open University
The Chatterton Massacre took place on the morning of 26 April 1826, the third and penultimate day of the [Lancashire Rising](https://engole.info/lancashire-rising-1826), outside Aitkens and Lords Mill in the [village](https://engole.info/village) of Chatterton, near Ramsbottom, east Lancashire. At least six people were shot dead by British soldiers of the 60th Duke of York Own Rifles.{{sfnp|SKBTIU9M}}
The Lancashire Rising took place in protest against the economic hardship suffered by traditional hand-loom weavers. After a period of prosperity in the 1810s, the textile industry suffered a serious slump in 1825. Weavers who had been employed to supplement production at local factories, which were increasingly making use of the much more efficient power looms, were the first to be hit.{{sfnp|4GX9I3RE}} Workers were being forced to accept reduced wages and short-time work or had become unemployed. But at the same time millowners were investing hugely in the machines that would allow them to reduce wages and their workforces even further.{{sfnp|E4F5QQTR}}
The intention of the protesters was to destroy all the power looms in east Lancashire, without the unnecessary destruction of property or any violence to the person.{{sfnp|SKBTIU9M}} They saw the power loom as “a real and symbolic manifestation of the loss of the weaver’s independence as well as a threat to their livelihood”.{{sfnp|E4F5QQTR}}
An estimated crowd of 3,000–4,000 from the adjacent towns of Haslingden and Rawtenstall headed towards the mill at Chatterton, where they found the local magistrate, William Grant, and British soldiers under the command of Colonel Kearney waiting for them. Kearney’s force was comprised of 15 cavalrymen from the Queen’s Bays, and 20 riflemen from the 60th Duke of York Own Rifles.{{sfnp|ZHDUVAR8}}
## Riot Act
Shortly before 11:00 am, Grant read a short extract from the Riot Act 1714, but the crowd refused to disperse.{{sfnp|SKBTIU9M}} The Act having been read, it was now legal for the soldiers to kill anyone in the crowd, and allow the mill owners to claim compensation for any damage done to their property.{{sfnp|ZHDUVAR8}}
Colonel Kearney then lined up his riflemen in two ranks of ten and ordered them to open fire on the protesters; during the next 15 minutes 600 shots were fired into the crowd. Although there is some evidence that many of the soldiers aimed to miss, four people were shot dead, and at least four others were seriously wounded.{{sfnp|ZHDUVAR8}}
## Victims
James Lord was the first to be killed, shot in the back of the head after throwing a stone at Colonel Kearney. John Ashworth and James Rothwell were shot shortly afterwards, both dying instantaneously. But undeterred, the crowd broke into the Aitkens and Mills factory and succeeded in destroying all of its power looms. The fourth victim, Richard Lund, was shot while attempting to make his escape through a factory window, and bled to death.{{sfnp|ZHDUVAR8}}
As the crowd eventually dispersed, the soldiers began hunting down those they believed had taken part in the protest. Their next victim was Mary Simpson, a 23-year-old woman who had arrived in Edenfield that morning to catch the coach to Manchester. But she had been delayed by the crowd, and the coach had left without her. While waiting for the next coach, she went down to see what was happening in Chatterton, and was shot in the thigh and bled to death.{{sfnp|ZHDUVAR8}}
The sixth victim, James Whatacre, had been at Dearden Clough Mill helping to remove some of the wraps of the power looms to prevent them from being destroyed. Having finished, he and his friend Richard Leech walked down to Chatterton and hid near the cottages opposite the Aitkens and Lords Mill. Whatacre apparently decided that it would be safer inside one of the cottages, and knocked on the door of No. 12 Chatterton Cottages, whereupon he was shot dead at close range by one of the soldiers.{{sfnp|ZHDUVAR8}}
The actual number of those shot and killed at Chatterton may well be in double figures; contemporary newspapers reports tell of additional bodies being recovered on 27 April.{{sfnp|SKBTIU9M}}
## Inquest
The official inquest into the six confirmed deaths was held the following day, 27 April; no members of the press were allowed to attend. The coroners court concluded that James Lord, John Ashworth, James Rothwell and Richard Lund, were “shot as part of the mob”. Mary Simpson’s death was ruled as “accidental”, and that of James Whatacre “murder by an unknown soldier”, despite some local people knowing who the soldier was.{{sfnp|ZHDUVAR8}}
A few weeks later the 60th Duke of York Own Rifles was deployed to Portugal, thus ending any further investigation into their actions.{{sfnp|ZHDUVAR8}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Massacre
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP)](https://engole.info/electronic-voice-phenomenon-evp/)
**Published:** May 5, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Sounds found on electronic devices, interpreted by some to be spirit voices, and by sceptics to be voices from radio or TV transmissions.
**Content:**
Sounds found on electronic recordings for which there is no readily indentifiable source, are interpreted by some to be spirit voices, and by sceptics to be voices from radio or TV transmissions picked up by the recording devices.{{sfnp|UVGUA2YW|Electronic Voice Phenomenon {EVP\]}} The idea of such recordings being a communication with spirits was popularised by the parapsychologist Konstantin Raudive in the 1970s, who described EVPs as being typically brief, usually a word or a short phrase.{{sfnp|JPISMYY2}} But he was not the first to suggest that sensitive recording devices might be a way to communicate with the dead.{{sfnp|I75JV5MY|118}}
EVP recorders are one of what the paranormal sceptic Kenny Biddle has called “paranormal gadgets”, popular with ghost hunters. The Ovilus is a similar device, designed to respond to electromagnetic field variations with words from a pre-programmed dictionary.{{sfnp|5LR3374H}}
## History
As the [Spiritualist](https://engole.info/spiritualism) movement gathered momentum in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, emerging technologies such as [photography](https://engole.info/spirit-photography) were employed in an effort to demonstrate contact with a spirit world. Thomas Edison was asked in a 1920s interview with *Scientific American* to comment on the possibility of using his inventions to communicate with spirits. He replied that if the spirits were only capable of subtle influences, a sensitive recording device would provide a better chance of spirit communication than the table tipping and [ouija boards](https://engole.info/ouija-board) mediums employed at the time.{{sfnp|I75JV5MY|118}}
The first EVP recording is alleged to have been made in 1952 by two Catholic priests, using a device they called a magnetophon.{{sfnp|76JVSJ34}}
## Natural explanations
Auditory pareidolia can result in an observer interpreting random noise on an audio recording as being the familiar sound of a human voice.{{sfnp|Q8BE4BMJ|78}} EVP voices are usually heard on playback, and are often of poor quality, with a few words embedded in background noise.{{sfnp|76JVSJ34}} The electronic musician and researcher Joe Banks has pointed out that a dead person speaking in studio quality would not be nearly as convincing as a voice one must strain to hear. It has been demonstrated experimentally that if in a passage of recorded speech every sixth of a second is replaced by silence it is very difficult to understand, but replacing it instead with white noise creates the illusion of continuous speech and makes it much more comprehensible.{{sfnp|WM7QKBJY}}{{sfnp|X4HFPC4T}}
Banks has coined the term Rorschach Audio to describe EVP; “… ambiguous sounds can provide a ‘blank canvas’, onto which, with repeated listening, the brain can impose sometimes vivid illusions of audible meaning”.{{sfnp|WM7QKBJY}}
Suggestibility may also play its part in EVP communications. Paranormal investigators, for instance, can create an expectancy of the response by asking a question such as “Would you like us to go?”, followed by the perceived response “Get out!”.{{sfnp|76JVSJ34}} Merckelbach and van de Ven (2001) asked university students to listen to an audio track containing only white noise, after suggesting that Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” could be present below the auditory threshold. Thirty-two per cent of participants then reported hearing it.{{sfnp|AT2SMTWR}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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---
### [Beware the Cat](https://engole.info/beware-the-cat/)
**Published:** July 28, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** First English novel, an anti-Catholic satire published in 1570.
**Content:**
*Beware the Cat* is an anti-Catholic satire written by the playwright and printer William Baldwin (fl 1547) in 1553, but not published until 1570. It consists of three linked sections about a kingdom of talking cats, in the form of a debate about the ability of animals to reason, ridiculing the superstitions underlying Catholic beliefs. It is widely considered to be the first English novel, or at least “the earliest original work of longer fiction in English”.{{sfnp|BTMKT59R}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Novel
---
### [Keep the Home Guard Turning](https://engole.info/keep-the-home-guard-turning/)
**Published:** December 24, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/9780426063148-uk.jpg[/pimage]Comedy novel by Compton Mackenzie (1833–1972, portraying the exploits of the Home Guard on the fictional island of Todday during the Second World War.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/9780426063148-uk.jpg)Book cover
Amazon
*Keep the Home Guard Turning* (1943) is a comedy novel by the English writer Compton Mackenzie (1833–1972),{{sfnp|3BETRBRG}} portraying the exploits of the Home Guard\[a\]The Home Guard was an armed citizen militia raised to defend Britain against a German invasion, operational from 1940 until 1944.{{sfnp|ZPB7Z4DD}} on the fictional remote Scottish island group of Todday during the Second World War.
The novel’s characters and setting reappear in its more famous sequel, [*Whisky Galore*](https://engole.info/whisky-galore-novel) (1947), and Mackenzie’s Captain Waggett, local commander of Todday’s Home Guard, lives on in the character of Captain Mainwaring in the BBC comedy series *Dad’s Army*. Along with [*The Monarch of the Glen*](https://engole.info/the-monarch-of-the-glen-novel) (1941) and *Whisky Galore*, *Keep the Home Guard Turning* is one of Mackenzie’s best remembered works.{{sfnp|KHQGJ3YB}}
## Autobiographical elements
The setting of Todday is the first of Mackenzie’s “affectionate portrayals of Barra”, an island in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland where he had made his home in 1933.{{sfnp|NWTN7L6Z}} Mackenzie was himself appointed local commander of the Home Guard on Barra, with the rank of Captain.{{sfnp|KHQGJ3YB}}
## See also
- [List of works by Compton Mackenzie](https://engole.info/compton-mackenzie-bibliography)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The Home Guard was an armed citizen militia raised to defend Britain against a German invasion, operational from 1940 until 1944.{{sfnp|ZPB7Z4DD}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Novel
---
### [Witch Wood](https://engole.info/witch-wood/)
**Published:** December 1, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ef/Witch_wood.jpg[/pimage]Historical novel by the Scottish author John Buchan.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ef/Witch_wood.jpg)First edition dust jacket
Wikimedia Commons
*Witch Wood* is a 1927 historical novel by the Scottish author John Buchan, set in 1644, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
The story is written as a third-person narrative. In the prologue, the unnamed narrator muses on the rural parish of Woodilee in the Scottish Borders. Looking at its now-ruined parish kirk, he recalls a legend about its last minister, who had disappeared without trace three hundred years earlier. Locals believe that he was spirited away by the fairies, or by the Devil.
*Witch Wood* brings together many of Buchan’s interests: landscape, 17th-century Calvinism and the fate of Scotland.{{sfnp|NP9FZ4S2}}
## Background
*Witch Wood* was written while Buchan was researching *Montrose*, the revised version of his biography of James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, who appears as a minor character in the novel. His research had raised questions of religious tolerance which he wanted to explore. The story was originally known as *The Minister of Woodilee*, and was first serialised in *British Weekly* under the title *The High Places*.{{sfnp|NRPRDLXP|207}} According to the historian Ronald Hutton, it draws on ideas based on the Witch-cult hypothesis of the anthropologist Margaret Murray.{{sfnp|YSF62UPP|199}}
## Synopsis
The story opens in 1644 with the arrival of the young and newly ordained Church of Scotland minister David Sempill in the parish of Woodilee. The parish is firmly in support of the Covenanters in their dispute with the monarch over the limits of royal authority over how the Church is run. Although a Covenanter himself, Sempill helps a wounded follower of the king, Mark Kerr, by hiding him in the manse.
The manse is close to the Wood of Caledon, which some call the Black Wood. One night, while walking home through the wood, Sempill stumbles upon a circle of his parishioners wearing animal headpieces, and performing ceremonies around a pagan altar. He attempts to intervene, but is attacked, and wakes up back in the manse, badly beaten.
With the help of a local farmer, Reiverslaw, Sempill learns that the next pagan ceremony is to be held on Lammas Eve, and they form a plan to identify the ringleader by splashing him with a pungent aniseed oil that will stick to his clothing. The following day, the wife of a prominent elder of the Kirk, Ephraim Caird, is discovered burning clothes on a fire, which smells strongly of aniseed.
The plague comes to Woodilee. Sempill works to prevent its spread helped by a newcomer named Mark Riddel who, unknown to the locals, is the fugitive Mark Kerr. Nursing care is surreptitiously provided by a shadowy figure whom the locals take to be a fairy, but who is in fact Katrine Yester, niece of the local laird, to whom Sempill is secretly engaged. Katrine contracts the plague and dies.
Sempill presents his evidence of Ephraim Caird’s heresy to the Presbytery, the Kirk’s religious court, which rejects it as circumstantial and unreliable. In retaliation, Caird brings counter-charges against the minister for harbouring a fugitive, for associating with Mark Riddel (now publicly identified as Mark Kerr), and for keeping the company of an unknown woman. Sempill is found guilty and is excommunicated and ejected from his ministry.
On his way back from the hearing, Sempill meets Ephraim Caird near the Black Wood. He forces him to kneel before the pagan altar, and to make his choice between Christ and the Devil. The effort is too much for Caird, who runs off in demented terror and is killed in a fall. Sempill is never seen again.
In the epilogue, it is revealed that Sempill and Kerr had ridden to Leith and boarded the first available ship out of Scotland.
## Critical reception
Early critics were quick to recognise the significance of the novel, which has since come to be widely regarded as Buchan’s masterpiece. *The Spectator* called it a “powerful, charming and spiritually earnest novel which almost enables Mr Buchan to be called a modern and terse Walter Scott”, and the *Glasgow Herald* thought that it “must be adjudged the greatest of Mr Buchan’s published works. That it concerns the land and history of Scotland, that it makes brilliant use of braid Scots dialect and that it enshrines many aspects, both admirable and contemptible, of the Scottish character are features that must give satisfaction to Mr Buchan’s countrymen”.{{sfnp|NRPRDLXP|208}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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## External links
- *[Witch Wood](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVbhIBQeBts)*, from the *Saturday Night Play Theatre*
This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmcloud.org/pageinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Witch_Wood#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Historical novel
---
### [Ballet Shoes (novel)](https://engole.info/ballet-shoes-novel/)
**Published:** September 25, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c0/Noel_streatfeild.jpg[/pimage]One of the first career novels, written by the English author Noel Streatfeild and published in 1936.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c0/Noel_streatfeild.jpg)Noel Streatfeild, date unknown
Wikimedia Commons
*Ballet Shoes: A Story of Three Children on the Stage*, is a children’s novel written by the English author Noel Streatfeild. Published in 1936, it is one of the earliest career novels, a genre that emerged almost simultaneously in the USA and Britain.{{sfnp|VSXT8QTA}} The story concerns the discovery of the emerging talents of three young sisters, who are forced into becoming professional performers by financial necessity, even though one of them has no interest in, or talent for ballet, instead dreaming of working with aircraft.
The peak in popularity of the career novels in Britain was from the mid to late 1950s, when the variety of jobs open to female school-leavers was widening, and paid employment was beginning to be seen less as a stop-gap between leaving school and marriage. The career novels filled a niche in providing girls with information about alternatives to full-time domesticity, within a fictional narrative.{{sfnp|6HIMKSXR}}
In 2019 *Ballet Shoes* was included in a list of the 100 most influential novels chosen by a panel of curators, writers and critics commissioned by the BBC.{{sfnp|BUFHQIQ3}}
## Plot
The novel centres on the three adopted Fossil sisters:\[a\]The girls’ unusual surname was invented because their rescuer, “Gum”, is a fossil hunter.{{sfnp|5A2SVS9X}} Pauline, Petrova and Posy. Each of the girls is discovered as a baby by Matthew Brown (Great-Uncle-Matthew, known as “Gum”), an elderly, absentminded palaeontologist and professor, during his world travels, and sent home to his great-niece, Sylvia and her childhood nanny, Nana.
Gum embarks upon an expedition of many years and arranges for money to support the family while he is gone. But he does not return in the promised five years, and the money is almost gone. As they have no way to contact or track him down, Sylvia and Nana take in boarders to make ends meet, including Mr. Simpson and his wife, Dr. Jakes and Dr. Smith, a pair of tutors who take over the children’s schooling after Sylvia can no longer afford their school fees, and Miss Theo Dane, a dance teacher who arranges for the children to begin classes at the Children’s Academy of Dancing and Stage Training.
Pauline finds she has a talent and passion for acting, while Petrova discovers that she hates acting and dancing. Posy has a real talent for dancing. When she is about six, Madame Fidolia, a famous and retired Russian dancer, gives Posy private lessons, something she has never done before. As the children mature, they take on some of the responsibility of supporting the household. Much of the drama comes from the friction between the sisters, and from balancing their desire to help support the family financially against the laws limiting the amount of time they may spend on stage. When Pauline is picked for a lead part the early success goes to her head, because of which the producer replaces her with her understudy – although only for a single performance, not permanently as portrayed in the BBC’s 2007 adaptation. Pauline thus learns enough humility to balance her talent, and goes on to play many successful leading roles.
Posy is developing into a brilliant ballet dancer, but she clashes with her sisters, as she is so focused on dancing that she is insensitive about anything that gets in her way. Petrova is not interested in the performing arts, and has little talent for them, but must keep attending classes and performing to help support the family; she has her own dream of working with aircraft.
The book ends with Pauline going off to Hollywood to make a film, accompanied by Sylvia. Posy is going to a ballet school in Prague, accompanied by Nana. Petrova wonders what will become of her, as she is too young to live on her own and has no interest in dance or acting. At this moment, Gum arrives. He has been away for so long that he does not recognise who the three girls are at first, but after realising they are the three babies he left behind all those years ago, he decides he will take Petrova under his wing and help her achieve her dream.
## Critical reception
*Ballet Shoes* was an instant success, to the extent that Hatchard’s bookshop in Piccadilly, London decided to ration customers to one copy each. The book has never been out of print, and remains “a classic of 20th-century children’s fiction”.{{sfnp|5A2SVS9X}} Streatfeild herself though was less convinced of the quality of her work, recalling that “The story poured off my pen, more or less telling itself … I distrusted what came easily and so despised the book.”{{sfnp|HC6L84NN|220}}
## Adaptations
In 1975 the BBC broadcast a six-part children’s series based on the *Ballet Shoes*.{{sfnp|DEV8T3W4}} A feature-length adaptation followed in 2007, starring Emma Watson, Yasmin Paige and Lucy Boynton as the three sisters, Victoria Wood as Nana, and Emilia Fox as Sylvia.{{sfnp|EMW4LBZF}}
## See also
- [List of works by Noel Streatfeild](https://engole.info/noel-streatfeild-bibliography/)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The girls’ unusual surname was invented because their rescuer, “Gum”, is a fossil hunter.{{sfnp|5A2SVS9X}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Children's literature
---
### [The Green Child](https://engole.info/the-green-child/)
**Published:** September 28, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Bransdale_Mill_and_Hodge_Beck_-_2016-05-27_01.jpg[/pimage]Only completed novel by the English anarchist poet and critic Herbert Read, based on the 12th-century legend of two green children who mysteriously appeared in the English village of Woolpit.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/GreenChild.jpg)First edition cover
Wikimedia Commons
*The Green Child* is the only completed novel by the English anarchist poet and critic Herbert Read.{{sfnp|7BBV6AFP|100}} Written in 1934 and first published by Heinemann in 1935, the story is based on the 12th-century legend of two [green children](https://engole.info/green-children-of-woolpit/) who mysteriously appeared in the English village of Woolpit, speaking an apparently unknown language.{{sfnp|7BBV6AFP|102}} Read described the legend in his *English Prose Style*, published in 1931, as “the norm to which all types of fantasy should conform”.{{sfnp|SVM3KVAZ|716}}
Each of the novel’s three parts ends with the apparent death of the story’s protagonist, President Olivero, dictator of the fictional South American Republic of Roncador. In each case Olivero’s death is an allegory for his translation to a “more profound level of existence”,{{sfnp|7BBV6AFP|102}} reflecting the book’s overall theme of a search for the meaning of life. Read’s interest in psychoanalytic theory is evident throughout the novel, which is constructed as a “philosophic myth … in the tradition of Plato”.{{sfnp|SVM3KVAZ|715}}
The story contains many autobiographical elements, and the character of Olivero owes much to Read’s experiences as an officer in the British Army during the First World War. The novel was positively received, although some commentators have considered it to be “inscrutable”,{{sfnp|8KKRW2LY|170}} and one has suggested that it has been so differently and vaguely interpreted by those who have given it serious study that it may lack the form and content to justify the praise it has received.
## Biographical background and publication
Primarily a literary critic, poet, and an advocate for modern art, Read wrote his only novel, The Green Child, in about eight weeks during 1934, most of it in the summer house behind his home in Hampstead, London.{{sfnp|HZYRI924}} Hampstead was then a “nest of gentle artists” who included Henry Moore, Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson, and Barbara Hepworth.{{sfnp|7BBV6AFP|100}} Read was at that time interested in the idea of unconscious composition, and the first sixteen pages of the manuscript – written on different paper from the rest – are considered by some critics to look like the recollection of a dream.{{sfnp|7BBV6AFP|101}} Read claimed in a letter written to psychoanalyst Carl Jung that the novel was a product of automatic writing.{{sfnp|8KKRW2LY|170-171}} As of 2018, the original manuscript is in the possession of the University of Leeds Library; Read had been a student at the university.{{sfnp|HZYRI924}}
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 Read became a supporter of communism, believing it to offer “the social liberty of my ideals”, but by the 1930s his conviction had begun to waver. Increasingly his political ideology leaned towards anarchism, but it was not until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 that Read became confirmed in his anarchist beliefs and stated them explicitly.{{sfnp|UK9TJZQP|177}} *The Green Child* was therefore written at a time when Read’s political and philosophical ideas were in flux.{{sfnp|HZYRI924}}
Christian faith might have borne poorer fruits than this sense of unattainable glory lodged in the child’s brain on a Yorkshire farm forty years ago.
— Graham Greene{{sfnpThere have been six editions of the novel, the first from Heinemann in 1935, priced at 7 shillings and sixpence, the equivalent of about £24 in 2018.{{sfnp|XHNL6J3F}}{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} Ten years later a second edition was published by Grey Walls Press, with the addition of illustrations by Felix Kelly. A third edition, for which Graham Greene wrote an introduction focusing on the novel’s autobiographical elements, was published by Eyre and Spottiswoode in 1947. The first American edition was published in New York by New Directions in 1948, with an introduction by Kenneth Rexroth. Penguin Books published a fifth edition in 1979, which included the 1947 introduction by Greene. A sixth edition, published by R. Clark, appeared in 1989 and was reprinted in 1995, both containing Greene’s introduction.{{sfnp|7BBV6AFP|119}}
## Plot summary
The first and last parts of the story are told as a third-person narrative, but the middle part is written in the first person. The story begins in 1861 with the faked death of President Olivero, dictator of the South American Republic of Roncador, who has staged his own assassination. He returns to his native England, to the village where he was born and raised. On the evening of his arrival Olivero notices that the stream running through the village appears to be flowing backwards, and he decides to follow the water upstream to discover the cause.
The stream’s course leads Olivero to a mill, where through a lighted window he sees a woman tied to a chair, forced by the miller to drink the blood of a freshly slaughtered lamb. Instinctively, Olivero hurls himself through the open window, his “leap into the world of fantasy”.{{sfnp|UUREREHF|648}} The miller initially offers no resistance and allows Olivero to release the woman, whom he recognises by the colour of her skin to be Sally, one of the two green children who had mysteriously arrived in the village on the day he left, thirty years earlier; Olivero also recognises the miller as Kneeshaw, an ex-pupil at the village school where he had once taught. During a struggle between the two men Kneeshaw is accidentally drowned in the mill pond. The next morning Olivero and Sally continue on Olivero’s quest to find the stream’s destination, a pool in the moors high above the village. Paddling in its water, Sally begins to sink into the silvery sand covering its bed. Olivero rushes to her, and hand in hand they sink beneath the water of the pool.
The book’s second part recounts the events between Oliver leaving the village as its young schoolmaster and his return as ex-President Olivero. He travels to London initially, hoping to find employment as a writer, but after three years spent working as a bookkeeper in a tailor’s shop he takes passage on a ship which lands him in Cádiz, Spain. Unable to speak the language, and in possession of a book by Voltaire, he is arrested as a suspected revolutionary. Held captive for two years, he learns Spanish from his fellow prisoners and determines to travel to one of the liberated American colonies he has learned of, where the possibility exists to establish a new world “free from the oppression and injustice of the old world”.{{sfnp|MW2A8PRT|57}}
Freed in an amnesty following the death of King Ferdinand of Spain, Oliver makes his way to Buenos Aires. There he is mistaken for a revolutionary agent and taken to meet General Santos of the Roncador Army. Together they hatch a plot to seize the country’s capital city and assassinate its dictator. The plot is successful and “Don Olivero” finds himself leader of the Assembly, making him the country’s new dictator, a position he holds for 25 years. Eventually he realises that his style of government is leading the country into stagnation and “moral flaccidity”;{{sfnp|MW2A8PRT|118}} he begins to feel nostalgia for the English village where he was brought up, and resolves to escape. Wishing to avoid any suspicion that he is deserting Roncador, Olivero fakes his own assassination.
The final part of the book continues the story from when Olivero and Sally disappear under the water. A large bubble forms around them, transporting them to the centre of the pool and ascending into a large grotto, from where they proceed on foot through a series of adjoining caverns. Sally tells Olivero that this is the country she and her brother left 30 years ago. Soon they encounter her people, to whom Sally, or Siloēn as she is properly known, explains that many years ago she wandered off and became lost, but that she has now returned with one who “was lost too, and now wishes to dwell among us”.{{sfnp|MW2A8PRT|133}} Olivero and Siloēn are welcomed into the community, where life is ordered around a progression from lower to upper ledges: the first ledge teaches the pleasures of youth; on the second ledge the pleasure of manual work is learned; on the third of opinion and argument; and finally, on the upper ledge, the “highest pleasure”, of solitary thought.{{sfnp|MW2A8PRT|134}}
Olivero soon tires of the first ledge, and leaving Siloēn behind he moves to the second, where he learns to cut and polish crystals, the most sacred of objects in this subterranean world. Eventually he is allowed to move to the highest ledge of all, “the final stage of life”.{{sfnp|MW2A8PRT|148}} There he is taught the “basic principles of the universe”, that there is only Order and Disorder. “Order … \[is\] the space-filling Mass about them … Disorder is empty space”.{{sfnp|MW2A8PRT|143}} Disorder is caused by the senses, which, “being confined to the body … create the illusion of self-hood”.{{sfnp|MW2A8PRT|144}} Olivero selects a grotto in which to spend what remains of his life alone, contemplating the “natural and absolute beauty” of the crystals he accepts from the crystal-cutters.{{sfnp|MW2A8PRT|151}} Food and water is brought regularly, and he settles to the task of preparing his body for “the perfection of death”,{{sfnp|MW2A8PRT|152}} which when it comes he meets with a “peculiar joy”.{{sfnp|MW2A8PRT|154}} Removing Olivero’s body from the grotto the attendants encounter another group carrying Siloēn, who died at the same time as Olivero. The pair are laid together in a petrifying trough, to “become part of the same crystal harmony”,{{sfnp|MW2A8PRT|154}} as is customary when any of the Green people die.
## Genre and style
Richard Wasson, professor of English, has said that The Green Child is “defiant of classification”, complicated by its division into “three arbitrarily related sections”.{{sfnp|UUREREHF|645}} The first part of the novel adopts the style of a 19th-century Gothic fairy tale. The “fluid, seemingly unbroken hand” in which it is written has encouraged the notion that it was produced in a single sitting, followed by a break before the second part was begun. Part two is written as a “conventional political adventure”, in which Olivero tells in flashback the story of his rise to power as the dictator of Roncador. The final part of the novel continues the narrative where the first left off, in the “fantastical, subterranean world of the Green people”. So different in style is the first part from what follows that some critics regard it as an entirely separate work, or “the ‘true’ novel”.{{sfnp|HZYRI924}}
Olivero’s quest in the underground world is written as a reversal of Plato’s allegory of the cave as described in his Republic. In Plato’s allegory, prisoners confined in a cave and condemned to stare at a blank wall, with only the light from a flickering fire behind them, see just the shadows of what is real; the philosopher, on the other hand, is like someone released from the cave, able to see the true form of what is casting the shadows. Read turns the idea on its head; when Siloēn left her subterranean world she left behind the Platonic “eternal forms”, and Olivero has to follow her back to her “cave” to discover the “divine essence of things”.{{sfnp|SVM3KVAZ|718}}
When death came to Olivero, he felt with peculiar joy the gradual release of his limbs from the stream of blood and the agents of pain that had for so long kept possession … The beating of his heart was like the jumping of a flame in an empty lamp. Summoning his last vital effort, he stilled for all time that anxious agitation.{{sfnp
— MW2A8PRTIn the last few pages of the book, in which Olivero prepares for his death and petrification, Read describes Olivero’s final thoughts in a form adapted from Plato’s Phaedo, but in an almost mirror image.\[a\]In the manuscript, the final part of the story is prefaced by an extract from the *Phaedo*: “Wherefore, if ye desire of me a tale, hearken to the Tale of the things that be beyond upon the Earth under the Heaven”. It was omitted from the published version.{{sfnp|7BBV6AFP|10}} Socrates, whose thoughts on the afterlife Plato was describing, argued that death was the ideal home of the soul, but Olivero longs for his body to be free from the torments of the soul, to become part of the crystalline solidity of the universe. Olivero regards life, not death, as the destroyer, “for it \[life\] disrupts the harmony of inorganic matter”.{{sfnp|SVM3KVAZ|737}} Socrates’ suggestion, towards the end of the Phaedo, that our own world is but one of many, each a hollow in the earth connected by underground rivers, is a strikingly similar image to the subterranean land of the Green people that Read describes.{{sfnp|7BBV6AFP|113}} Read however was “almost certainly” influenced in his depiction of the world of the Green people by W. H. Hudson’s 1887 utopian novel *A Crystal Age*, a story in which people strive to “live above their own mortality”.{{sfnp|6V3W4A6D|40-41}}
## Themes
The novel’s overarching theme is “a dialectical search for the meaning of life, a search which involves a return to life’s source”.{{sfnp|SVM3KVAZ|716}} The Green people’s emphasis on achieving “a literal oneness with the material universe” by petrifying the bodies of their dead, although it has “repulsed” some readers, is a vehicle that allows Read to parody the “traditional Western religious notion of the soul aspiring to rise through air to a vaporous paradise”.{{sfnp|8KKRW2LY|181}}
The manuscript was originally entitled “Inland Far”, but at some point, perhaps during the gap between writing the first and subsequent parts, Read changed it to “The Green Child”, which suggests that the focus of the novel changed from Olivero’s quest for the source of the stream to the story of the green child herself.{{sfnp|HZYRI924}} The original title was an allusion to William Wordsworth’s ode “Intimations of Immortality”, which describes the “‘bright landscape’ of childhood that casts its spell over later life”.{{sfnp|7BBV6AFP|104}}
Read was interested in psychoanalysis, and employed psychoanalytic theory in his work,{{sfnp|6KL92UFV}} both Freudian and Jungian, although “more as machinery than as a key to meaning”.{{sfnp|SVM3KVAZ|723}} Olivero’s quest for the source of the stream has been described as “travelling allegorically across a landscape of the mind”, moving him “from the boundaries of the preconscious to the center of the id”. To Olivero, the miller Kneeshaw represents “the evil destructive instinct which lurks beneath the civilised conventions of society”, the Freudian id, whereas Olivero represents the ego.{{sfnp|SVM3KVAZ|720}} Thirty years earlier, Olivero had taught Kneeshaw at the local school, where he had seen the boy deliberately break a locomotive from a model railway that Olivero had brought into the school, by overwinding its clockwork mechanism. Unable to comprehend such wilful destruction, and already frustrated by the lack of opportunities offered by village life, Olivero left the next day.{{sfnp|8KKRW2LY|171-172}} “When that spring snapped, something snapped in my mind.”{{sfnp|MW2A8PRT|23}}
Olivero’s confrontation with Kneeshaw displays a Jungian psychoanalytic symbolism, as does the character of Siloēn, “the archetype of the anima, or Jungian ‘soul’, particularly in its function as intermediary between conscious and unconscious.” Kneeshaw represents “the shadow, the dark side of man’s nature, the primitive, animal part of the personality found in the personal unconscious”. Jung believed that the only way to face the shadow was to acknowledge it, not to repress it as Olivero had done 30 years earlier by leaving the village.{{sfnp|SVM3KVAZ|723-724}}
## Autobiographical elements
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Bransdale_Mill_and_Hodge_Beck_-_2016-05-27_01.jpg)Bransdale Mill on Hodge Beck, the inspiration for the stream Olivero follows uphill to its source
Wikimedia Commons
During the First World War Read served with the Green Howards, fighting in the trenches of France. He was awarded the Military Cross, promoted to the rank of lieutenant, and became “obsessively determined not to betray his own men through cowardice”.{{sfnp|MW2A8PRT|34}} The novel’s development of the “clearly autobiographical hero”{{sfnp|TDN9QEA8|27}} of Olivero owes a great deal to Read’s wartime experiences and the “resolute self-possession” they instilled in him.{{sfnp|2WH2UXWI|41}} The irony of Olivero overthrowing a dictator only to become one himself is perhaps consistent with a view Read expressed in the mid-1930s: “From certain points of view, therefore, I can welcome the notion of the totalitarian state, whether in its Fascist or Communist form. I am not afraid of the totalitarian state as an economic fact, an economic machine to facilitate the complex business of living in a community.”{{sfnp|7BBV6AFP|108}}
The son of a farmer, Read was born at Muscoates Grange, about {{convert|4|mi|spell=in|r=1}} south of the small North Yorkshire market town of Kirkbymoorside, to which he returned in 1949.{{sfnp|6KL92UFV}} One of his favourite walks was along the course of Hodge Beck, the inspiration for the stream followed by Olivero. Hodge Beck led to a mill, which Read called his “spiritual hermitage”.{{sfnp|7BBV6AFP|103}}
The crystals carved by the workmen on the second ledge of the Green people’s underground world, and contemplated by the sages on the highest ledge of all, symbolise Read’s ideas about the relationship of art to nature. He believed physical form to be the “underlying principle of the universe … the ultimate reality in a completely material cosmos. Therefore it is the quality of recurring forms that makes possible all beauty and value”.{{sfnp|8KKRW2LY|178}}
## Critical reception
In the words of historian David Goodway, Read’s “remarkable career and formidable output have generated a surprisingly limited biographical and critical literature”.{{sfnp|UK9TJZQP|5}} Richard Wasson has commented that The Green Child “though judged favorably by the few critics and scholars who give it serious study … is so vaguely and variously interpreted that it would seem to lack both the form and the content which justify such praise”.{{sfnp|UUREREHF|645}} The critic Richard E. Brown, writing in 1990, considered the work to be “an important attempt by one of \[the 20th-century’s\] most influential English critics to integrate his wide-ranging thoughts into a complex interpretation of experience”, but added that it divided commentators, appearing to some to be “fascinating but inscrutable”.{{sfnp|8KKRW2LY|170}} Reviewing the first American edition in 1948, Professor of English Robert Gorham Davis commented that the novel “baffled some English critics when it arrived in 1935”, but that it was “beautifully imagined and beautifully written”.{{sfnp|ILKFNJKI}}
A review published in *The Times* shortly after the book’s publication described it as a “very charming philosophical tale”,{{sfnp|UHYM5DRM}} and in his paper the historian and lecturer Bob Barker praised the novel for being “remarkable for its cool yet vivid style”.{{sfnp|7BBV6AFP|100}} Critic Orville Prescott, writing in The New York Times, although admitting that the novel was “beautifully written” and “a triumph of delicate and suggestive mystification”, nevertheless concluded that the story was “ridiculous” and “vexatious”. He ended his review with the words: “One feels constantly that shining truths are about to be revealed; that there is something important, something significant, hidden in these pages. But it is never made clear, while the ridiculous details remain all too conspicuously in view.” Prescott was just as critical of Rexroth’s preface to the first American edition, describing it as a “pretentious introduction of uncommon density”.{{sfnp|B5RMWDT7}} Writing in *The Independent* in 1993, shortly after the 100th anniversary of Read’s birth, critic Geoffrey Wheatcroft commented that Read may not have been a great novelist “but The Green Child is the kind of book to write if you are going to leave just the one novel behind: singular, odd, completely original”.{{sfnp|F3JQ6AP9}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a In the manuscript, the final part of the story is prefaced by an extract from the *Phaedo*: “Wherefore, if ye desire of me a tale, hearken to the Tale of the things that be beyond upon the Earth under the Heaven”. It was omitted from the published version.{{sfnp|7BBV6AFP|10}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Novel
---
### [The Monarch of the Glen (novel)](https://engole.info/the-monarch-of-the-glen-novel/)
**Published:** December 29, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ec/TheMonarchOfTheGlen.jpg[/pimage]Comedy novel by Compton Mackenzie (1833–1972), portraying life in the fictional Scottish Highland estate of Glenbogle during the 1930s.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ec/TheMonarchOfTheGlen.jpg)Cover of first edition
Wikimedia Commons
*The Monarch of the Glen* is a comedy novel by the English writer Compton Mackenzie (1833–1972), first published in 1941.{{sfnp|3BETRBRG}} The first of Mackenzie’s series of Highland novels, the story is set in the fictional 1930s Scottish Highland estate of Glenbogle.
Along with [*Keep the Home Guard Turning*](https://engole.info/keep-the-home-guard-turning) (1943) and [*Whisky Galore*](https://engole.info/whisky-galore-novel) (1947), *The Monarch of the Glen* is one of Mackenzie’s best remembered works.{{sfnp|KHQGJ3YB}} It was the inspiration for the BBC television series *Monarch of the Glen*, a heavily adapted and updated version of the original story; the only characters who transferred from the novel into the television series are Hector, Mollie and Kilwillie.{{sfnp|ASS8BPGI}}
## See also
- [List of works by Compton Mackenzie](https://engole.info/compton-mackenzie-bibliography)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Novel
---
### [Whisky Galore (novel)](https://engole.info/whisky-galore-novel/)
**Published:** December 22, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/31/WhiskyGalore.jpg[/pimage]Novel by Compton Mackenzie based on the real-life 1941 sinking of a ship carrying a large quantity of whisky, and the local residents' attempts to recover it and hide it from the authorities.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/31/WhiskyGalore.jpg)First edition cover
Wikimedia Commons
*Whisky Galore* is a novel by the English author Compton Mackenzie (1883–1972), first published in 1947.{{sfnp|3BETRBRG}} The story is based on a real-life incident that occurred in 1941 off the Hebridean island of Eriskay, when the SS *Politician* ran aground with a cargo that included 22,000 cases – 264,000 bottles – of Scottish malt whisky along with other trade goods and a substantial number of banknotes, headed for Jamaica and New Orleans.{{sfnp|9KZX4Q2K|42}}
Mackenzie wrote the novel while living on the Hebridean Isle of Barra, at the house he built in 1935 called *Suidheachan*, Gaelic for “sitting down place”; the novel’s fictional setting of Todday is one of his “affectionate portrayals of Barra”.{{sfnp|NWTN7L6Z}}
The book has sold several million copies, been reprinted several times,{{sfnp|9KZX4Q2K|149-150}} and has been adapted for the cinema twice under the title *Whisky Galore!,* in 1949 and again in 2016.{{sfnp|XDCX5T3P}}
## Plot summary
During the Second World War, the cargo vessel SS *Cabinet Minister* is wrecked off a remote fictional Scottish island group – Great Todday and Little Todday – with fifty thousand cases of whisky on board. Owing to wartime rationing, the thirsty islanders have almost run out of the “water of life”, and see the wreck as an unexpected godsend. They manage to salvage several hundred cases before the ship sinks, but the authorities, particularly in the shape of the pompous Home Guard Captain Waggett are determined to confiscate the whisky, if they can find it.
Although the wreck and the efforts to recover and conceal the whisky are central to the story, there is also much background detail about life in the Outer Hebrides, including culture clashes between the Protestant island of Great Todday and the Roman Catholic island of Little Todday. There are also various sub-plots, including those of two couples who are planning to get married.
Mackenzie’s prose captures the various accents of the area and includes much common Gaelic that was in use at the time. The book includes a glossary of the meaning and approximate pronunciation of the language.
## See also
- [List of works by Compton Mackenzie](https://engole.info/compton-mackenzie-bibliography)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Whisky_Galore_%28novel%29#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Novel
---
### [Guy Fawkes (novel)](https://engole.info/guy-fawkes-novel/)
**Published:** October 13, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Guy_Fawkes_1841_Frontis.jpg[/pimage]First of Ainsworth's seven Lancashire novels, first published in serialised form in 1840 and then as a three-volume set in 1841, based on the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Guy_Fawkes_1841_Frontis.jpg)George Cruikshank’s frontispiece illustration to the 1841 first edition
Wikimedia Commons
*Guy Fawkes; or, The Gunpowder Treason*, first appeared as a serial in [*Bentley’s Miscellany*](https://engole.info/bentleys-miscellany) from January until November 1840, and was subsequently published as a three-volume set in July 1841, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. The first of [William Harrison Ainsworth’s](https://engole.info/william-harrison-ainsworth) seven Lancashire novels, the story is based on the [Gunpowder Plot](https://engole.info/gunpowder-plot) of 1605, an unsuccessful attempt to blow up the House of Lords and introduce a Catholic monarch.
Ainsworth based his novel on historical documents describing the trial and execution of the conspirators, of whom Fawkes was one, but embellished his account. In particular, he invented the character of Viviana Radcliffe, daughter of the prominent Radcliffe family of [Ordsall Hall](https://engole.info/ordsall-hall), and introduced gothic and supernatural elements such as the ability of the alchemist John Dee to raise the spirits of the dead.
The novel’s popularity marked the beginning of Ainsworth’s 40-year career in historical romances, although it was not universally admired; the American author Edgar Allan Poe described Ainsworth’s style of writing as “turgid pretension”.{{sfnp|7Z5HWKPI|24}}
## Publication history
During 1840 Ainsworth simultaneously wrote [*The Tower of London*](https://engole.info/the-tower-of-london-novel) and *Guy Fawkes*, both first published as serials; *Guy Fawkes* was published in instalments in [*Bentley’s Miscellany*](https://engole.info/bentleys-miscellany) from January until November 1840.{{sfnp|7Z5HWKPI|228-231}} Ainsworth serialised the story again in his own publication, *Ainsworth’s Magazine*, between 1849 and 1850.{{sfnp|2CUQHTMI|7}}
The first edition in novel form was published by Richard Bentley, the owner of *Bentley’s Miscellany*, in July 1841, as a three-volume set illustrated by George Cruikshank;{{sfnp|7Z5HWKPI|228-231}} two American editions and a French one were published in the same year. Routledge published three further editions in 1842, 1857 and 1878.{{sfnp|2CUQHTMI|7}}
## Plot
The story begins in mid-1605, when a plot to blow up parliament and replace the Protestant monarch with a Catholic is being hatched. The first book begins with the execution of Catholic priests in Manchester. During their execution, Elizabeth Orton madly raves before being chased by an officer overseeing the executions. To avoid capture she leaps into the River Irwell, and is pulled out by [Humphrey Chetham](https://engole.info/humphrey-chetham), a Protestant member of the nobility, and [Guy Fawkes](https://engole.info/guy-fawkes), a Catholic. After her rescue she predicts the execution of both men.
The novel then transitions to Lancashire and the Radcliffe family. William Radcliffe is a supporter of the plot, and his daughter, Viviana Radcliffe, is revealed to be in love with both Chetham and Fawkes. Fawkes travels to John Dee, an alchemist who is able to call forth Orton’s ghost. The spectre repeats its warning, and Fawkes receives a vision from God that the plot will end in disaster. Meanwhile the Radcliffe family is exposed as hiding two priests,\[a\]Prominent Catholic families protected chaplains and itinerant priests from legal persecution during the late 16th and early 17th centuries by building [priest holes](https://engole.info/priest-hole) in their homes.{{sfnp|2PTQKEGL}} which provokes the destruction of their home by the British Army, following which the conspirators travel to London.
In the second book Fawkes and Viviana Radcliffe marry, and she tries to convince her new husband to abandon the plot, but Fawkes argues that he is bound to follow through with events. The book ends when the conspiracy to blow up parliament on 5 November 1605 fails, and Fawkes is arrested.
The third book deals with the trials of Fawkes and the other plotters, who have been held in the Tower of London. Viviana, who is by then dying, convinces Fawkes to repent, which he eventually he does as she dies, following which he is executed. The book ends with the execution of the last of the plotters, [Father Garnet](httpe://engole.info/henry-garnet).
## Themes
*Guy Fawkes* deals with British politics and history; the execution of Catholic priests and the plot to destroy parliament, titillated with the injection of gothic elements such as a cave linked to pagan worship and the desolate [Chat Moss](https://engole.info/chat-moss), a bog near Manchester.{{sfnp|7Z5HWKPI|235-237, 252}}
The use of prophecy by [necromancy](https://engole.info/necromancy) distinguishes Ainsworth from earlier authors, who incorporated Catholic superstition in their use of the gothic genre. Ainsworth instead has Christianity and the supernatural as elements of a unified entity, reflecting a view that magic, religion, and science were once different aspects of a single world view; the character John Dee, an alchemist, represents that unifying link.{{sfnp|7Z5HWKPI|235-237, 252}}
Ainsworth’s treatment of the women in his story is somewhat at odds with the independent females in his other novels. Vivian is obedient to her father, prepared to die for his cause, but unable to escape from what she knows to be hopeless because of her vows of marriage:
In Viviana Radcliffe I have sought to portray the loyal and devout Catholic, such as I conceive the character to have existed at the period … In Garnet, the subtle, and yet sincere, Jesuit. And in Fawkes, the gloomy and superstitious enthusiast.{{sfnp
— 7Z5HWKPI|249-250}}|William Harrison Ainsworth
## Critical reception
Guy Fawkes, along with *The Tower of London*, marked the beginning of Ainsworth’s 40-year career in historical romances.{{sfnp|7Z5HWKPI|232}} But although popular, the work was not universally admired. In 1841 the American writer Edgar Allan Poe wrote in a review that it was “… positively beneath criticism and beneath contempt”, going on to say that “The design of Mr. Ainsworth has been to fill, for a certain sum of money, a stipulated number of pages”.{{sfnp|EEPVUS8N}}
It was reported that Ainsworth was paid up to £1,500 for *Guy Fawkes*, equivalent to about £145,000 as at 2021.\[b\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} The Ainsworth biographer S. M. Ellis considered it to be “one of the best historical novels”,{{sfnp|WJJAK3A2|405}} but others have been less fulsome. A later biographer, George Worth, argued that “All is well during the first two of the three parts of Guy Fawkes … But in the third section … Ainsworth rather badly lets his audience down.”{{sfnp|Q9YNBNWK|58}} Yet another, Stephen Carver, stated his view that “Although critics are often scathing of this author, *Guy Fawkes* Book the Second is a reasonable history lesson”.{{sfnp|7Z5HWKPI}}
Whatever its literary merits, Ainsworth’s novel transformed Fawkes into an “acceptable fictional character”, and he began to feature in children’s books and [penny dreadfuls](https://engole.info/penny-dreadful).{{sfnp|JXYHZX98|128}}
## See also
- [List of works by William Harrison Ainsworth](https://engole.info/william-harrison-ainsworth-bibliography)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Prominent Catholic families protected chaplains and itinerant priests from legal persecution during the late 16th and early 17th centuries by building [priest holes](https://engole.info/priest-hole) in their homes.{{sfnp|2PTQKEGL}} b Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24940
## External links
- [Full text of *Guy Fawkes*](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37750) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** Historical novel, W. H. Ainsworth
---
### [The Tower of London (novel)](https://engole.info/the-tower-of-london-novel/)
**Published:** October 15, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/The_Tower_of_London.jpg/330px-The_Tower_of_London.jpg[/pimage]Novel by the English author William Harrison Ainsworth, first published in 1840, centred on the events following the death of King Edward VI and the subsequent nine-day reign of Lady Jane Grey as Queen of England.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/The_Tower_of_London.jpg/330px-The_Tower_of_London.jpg)Title page of the first edition
Wikimedia Commons
*The Tower of London* is a historical romance by the English writer [William Harrison Ainsworth](https://engole.info/william-harrison-ainsworth), first published in 1840. The story centres on the plots and counter-plots to win control of the English crown following the the death of King Edward VI, encompassing the very brief reign of Lady Jane Grey (c. 1537 – 12 February 1554), her imprisonment and execution in the Tower of London, and the restoration of the Catholic faith in England by her successor, Queen Mary I.
The novel is illustrated with forty engravings and fifty-eight woodcuts by George Cruikshank, depicting episodes from the story and architectural features related to the Tower.{{sfnp|7Z5HWKPI|241}} Its enduring image as a grim place of torture and imprisonment was largely shaped by the works of 19th-century authors, and in particular by Ainsworth’s novel.{{sfnp|ZXHMLJQU|36}}{{sfnp|XE5IV5YV|91}}
## Plot
The story begins with Lady Jane Grey, the wife of Lord Guilford Dudley and daughter-in-law to the Duke of Northumberland, entering the Tower of London on 10 July 1553. She had before then reigned as the Queen of England for nine days, after she and her husband were installed on the throne by Dudley’s father, the Duke of Northumberland. But shortly afterwards Mary I is able to take control of England, and sends the duke to be executed. In an attempt to regain the kingdom he has lost, Dudley mounts a rebellion, which ends in failure and the imprisonment of himself and his wife. Simon Renard, the Spanish ambassador to England, then arranges a marriage between Mary and Philip of Spain, restoring the Catholic faith in England.
The events of the book alternate between historical background and Lady Jane’s fate. In Book II, incidents throughout the history of England from William the Conqueror to the 1820 Cato Street conspiracy are mentioned. The novel then returns to Lady Jane busying herself with prayer as she awaits her execution, her only hope for freedom being to convert to Catholicism. There are conspiracies over Mary’s rule of England, from supporters of the imprisoned Lady Jane and those who wish to put Elizabeth, the Protestant daughter of Henry VIII, on the throne. But neither side is successful before the story ends, and Lady Jane is executed for high treason.
## Themes
In his preface, Ainsworth explains his purpose in writing the novel, based on showcasing three aspects of the Tower of London,{{sfnp|7Z5HWKPI|241}} its role as palace, prison and fortress.{{sfnp|FTUIB6MY|search=Preface}}
Desirous of exhibiting the Tower in its triple light of a palace, a prison, and a fortress, the Author has shaped his story with reference to that end; and he has also endeavoured to contrive such a series of incidents as should naturally introduce every reflect of the old pile – its towers, chapels, halls, chambers, gateways, arches, and draw-bridges – so that no part of it should remain unillustrated.”{{sfnp
— FTUIB6MY|search=Preface}}
The architectural descriptions within the novel tend to break up some of the aspects of the plot, but serve to show how the Tower has changed over time. This transcends the plot’s temporal bounds and links the Tower’s origins with the 19th century, when the novel was published. According to the literary critic George Worth, “Ainsworth seems constantly to be trying to remind his readers, living in an age of urbanization and industrialization in which historic old landmarks were being swept away or defaced or ‘restored’ beyond recognition, that they had a heritage, one very large vested in physical structures of one kind or another, and that the heritage … might soon be gone beyond recall.”{{sfnp|Q9YNBNWK|71-73}}
Catholics were generally viewed negatively by Ainsworth’s contemporary English audience, and the Catholic Queen Mary in particular, who earned the nickname Bloody Mary for the persecution of Protestants during her reign. Ainsworth was not a supporter of Catholicism, but he felt that it was part of an idealised English past, and sought to describe the religion and its adherents neutrally. Although many Catholics in the novel try to use Mary to promote Catholicism in a fanatical manner, Ainsworth attempts to treat her sympathetically, introducing Cardinal Pole as a moderating figure who tries to steer Mary from too extreme a position.{{sfnp|Q9YNBNWK|63-64}}
## Critical reception
It would be reasonable to suppose that the American author Edgar Allan Poe was no great fan of *The Tower of London*, given his critical review in which he wrote that “The authorship of this work does a little, and but a little, more credit to Mr. Ainsworth than that of ‘Jack Sheppard’.\[a\][Jack Sheppard](https://engole.info/jack-sheppard) was a notorious thief in 18th-century London, and the subject of Ainsworth’s last [Newgate novel](https://engole.info/newgate-novel), published in 1839. Ainsworth had until then been a rival to Charles Dickens, but his reputation never recovered from the public backlash against his glamourisation of a criminal. It is in no spirit cavilling that we say it is rarely our lot to review a work more utterly destitute of every ingredient requisite to a good romance”.{{sfnp|7Z5HWKPI|24}}
But other reviewers have been more positive. Writing in 1934 Malcolm Elwin stated his view that “… several of his \[Ainsworth’s\] novels – particularly *Tower of London* and *Old St. Paul’s*, in spite of the absurd antics of the hero of the latter – have undoubtedly the quality of durability. No writer could hope to surpass either as romantic histories of their particular subject.”{{sfnp|QW6XBRTP|175-176}}
The structure of the novel, dealing as it does with historical romance and architectural history, has also divided opinion among reviewers. Writing in 1972, George Worth considered that Ainsworth “spaces his \[architectural\] descriptions judiciously throughout the novel in such a way as to heighten the effect of the novel rather than detract from it.”{{sfnp|QW6XBRTP|69}} But in contrast, writing three years later, Nicholas Rance stated his view that *The Tower of London* is an “incongruous merging of historical romance and guide book”.{{sfnp|UMCFSMFK|41}}
## See also
- [List of works by William Harrison Ainsworth](https://engole.info/william-harrison-ainsworth-bibliography)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a [Jack Sheppard](https://engole.info/jack-sheppard) was a notorious thief in 18th-century London, and the subject of Ainsworth’s last [Newgate novel](https://engole.info/newgate-novel), published in 1839. Ainsworth had until then been a rival to Charles Dickens, but his reputation never recovered from the public backlash against his glamourisation of a criminal.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24943
## External links
- [Full text of *The Tower of London*](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/49850/49850-h/49850-h.htm) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** Historical novel, W. H. Ainsworth
---
### [Kidnapped](https://engole.info/kidnapped/)
**Published:** October 29, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/David-Balfour-1.webp[/pimage]Historical fiction adventure novel by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, written as a boys' novel and first published in the magazine Young Folks from May to July 1886.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/RLS_Kidnapped_1886_US.jpg)First American edition, New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1886
Wikimedia Commons
*Kidnapped* is a historical fiction adventure novel by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, written as a boys’ novel and first published in the magazine *Young Folks* from May to July 1886. The novel has attracted the praise and admiration of writers as diverse as Henry James, Jorge Luis Borges, and Hilary Mantel.{{sfnp|SPDGCI54}} A sequel, *Catriona*, was published in 1893.
The story is set around real 18th-century Scottish events, notably the “Appin murder”, which occurred in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745. Many of the characters are real people, including one of the principals, Alan Breck Stewart. The political situation of the time is portrayed from multiple viewpoints, and the Scottish Highlanders are treated sympathetically.
Written in English with some dialogue in Lowland Scots, the novel’s full title is *Kidnapped: Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: How he was Kidnapped and Cast away; his Sufferings in a Desert Isle; his Journey in the Wild Highlands; his acquaintance with Alan Breck Stewart and other notorious Highland Jacobites; with all that he Suffered at the hands of his Uncle, Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws, falsely so-called: Written by Himself and now set forth by Robert Louis Stevenson*.
## Biographical background, publication
*Kidnapped* was first published in the magazine *Young Folks* from May to July 1886, and as a novel by Cassell in the same year.{{sfnp|FY63YTPX}} Illustrations by W. Hole were added in an edition of 1887.{{sfnp|QVZ9KS54}}
## Plot
The central character and narrator is 17-year-old David Balfour.\[a\]Balfour is Stevenson’s mother’s maiden name.{{sfnp|372RRPIA}} His parents have recently died, and he is out to make his way in the world. He is given a letter by the minister of his home parish of Essendean, Mr. Campbell, to be delivered to the House of Shaws in Cramond, where David’s uncle, Ebenezer Balfour, lives.
David arrives at the ominous House of Shaws and is confronted by his paranoid Uncle Ebenezer, who is armed with a blunderbuss. His uncle is also miserly, living on “parritch” and small ale, and the House of Shaws itself is partially unfinished and somewhat ruinous. But David is allowed to stay, and soon discovers evidence that his father may have been older than his uncle, thus making David the rightful heir to the estate. Ebenezer asks David to get a chest from the top of a tower in the house but refuses to provide a lamp or candle. David is forced to scale the stairs in the dark and realises that not only is the tower unfinished in some places, but the steps simply end abruptly and fall into an abyss. David concludes that his uncle intended for him to have an “accident” so as not to have to give over his nephew’s inheritance.
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/David-Balfour-1.webp)Cover illustration by William Brassey Hole for the London edition published by Cassell and Company, 1886
Wikimedia Commons
David confronts his uncle, who promises to tell him the whole story of his father the next morning. A ship’s cabin boy, Ransome, arrives the next day and tells Ebenezer that Captain Hoseason of the brig *Covenant* needs to meet him to discuss business. Ebenezer takes David to a pier on the Firth of Forth, where Hoseason is waiting, and David makes the mistake of leaving his uncle alone with the captain while he visits the shore with Ransome. Hoseason later offers to take them on board the brig briefly, and David complies, only to see his uncle returning to shore alone in a skiff. David is then immediately struck senseless.
David awakens, bound hand and foot, in the hold of the ship, and learns that the captain plans to sell him into slavery in the Carolinas. But the ship encounters contrary winds, which drive her back toward Scotland. Fog-bound near the Hebrides, they strike a small boat. All of the small boat’s crew are killed except one man, Alan Breck Stewart, who is brought on board the *Covenant* and offers Hoseason a large sum of money to drop him off on the mainland. David later overhears the crew plotting to kill Alan and take all his money. David and Alan barricade themselves in the round house, where Alan kills the murderous Shuan, and David wounds Hoseason. Five of the crew members are killed outright, and the rest refuse to continue fighting.
Hoseason has no choice but to give Alan and David passage back to the mainland. David tells his tale to Alan, who in turn states that his birthplace, Appin, is under the tyrannical administration of Colin Roy of Glenure, the King’s factor and a Campbell. Alan, who is a Jacobite agent and wears a French uniform, vows that should he find the “Red Fox” he will kill him.
The Covenant tries to negotiate a difficult channel without a proper chart or pilot, and is soon driven aground on the notorious Torran Rocks. David and Alan are separated in the confusion, with David being washed ashore on the isle of Erraid, near Mull, while Alan and the surviving crew row to safety on that same island. David spends a few days alone in the wild before getting his bearings.
David learns that his new friend has survived, and David has two encounters with beggarly guides: one who attempts to stab him with a knife, and another who is blind but an excellent shot with a pistol. David soon reaches Torosay, where he is ferried across the river, receives further instructions from Alan’s friend Neil Roy McRob, and later meets a catechist who takes the lad to the mainland.
As he continues his journey, David encounters none other than the Red Fox (Colin Roy) himself, who is accompanied by a lawyer, a servant, and a sheriff’s officer. When David stops the Campbell man to ask him for directions, a hidden sniper kills the King’s hated agent.
David is denounced as a conspirator and flees for his life, but by chance reunites with Alan. The youth believes Alan is the assassin, but Alan denies responsibility. Alan and David then begin their flight through the heather, hiding from government soldiers by day. As the trek drains David’s strength, his health rapidly deteriorates; by the time they are set upon by wild Highlanders who are sentries for Cluny Macpherson, an outlawed chief in hiding, the lad is barely conscious. Alan convinces Cluny to give them shelter, and David is tended by a Highland doctor. He soon recovers, though in the meantime Alan loses all of their money at cards with Cluny, only for Cluny to give it back when David practically begs for it.
When David and Alan resume their flight in cold and rainy weather, David becomes ill again, and Alan carries him on his back down the burn to reach the nearest house, fortuitously that of a Maclaren, Duncan Dhu, who is both an ally of the Stewarts and a skilled piper. David is bedridden and given a doctor’s care, while Alan hides nearby, visiting after dark.
In one of the most humorous passages in the book, Alan convinces an innkeeper’s daughter from Limekilns (unnamed in Kidnapped but called “Alison Hastie” in its sequel) that David is a dying young Jacobite nobleman, despite David’s objections, and she ferries them across the Firth of Forth. There, they meet a lawyer of David’s uncle’s, Mr. Rankeillor, who agrees to help David receive his inheritance. Rankeillor explains that David’s father and uncle had once quarrelled over a woman, David’s mother, and the older Balfour had married her, informally giving the estate to his brother while living as an impoverished schoolteacher with his wife. This agreement had lapsed with his death.
David and the lawyer hide in bushes outside Ebenezer’s house while Alan speaks to him, claiming to be a man who found David nearly dead after the wreck of the Covenant and says he is representing folk holding him captive in the Hebrides. He asks David’s uncle whether Alan should kill David or keep him. The uncle flatly denies Alan’s statement that David had been kidnapped but eventually admits that he paid Hoseason “twenty pound” to take David to “Caroliny”. David and Rankeillor then emerge from their hiding places, and speak with Ebenezer in the kitchen, eventually agreeing that David will be provided two-thirds of the estate’s income for as long as his uncle lives.
The novel ends with David and Alan parting ways on Corstorphine Hill; Alan returns to France, and David goes to a bank to settle his money.
## Genre
Kidnapped is a historical romance, but by the time it was written attitudes towards the genre had evolved from an earlier insistence on historical accuracy to one of faithfulness to the spirit of a bygone age. In the words of a critic writing in *Bentley’s Miscellany*, the historical novelist “must follow rather the poetry of history than its chronology: his business is not to be the slave of dates; he ought to be faithful to the character of the epoch”.{{sfnp|A7F6CKWV|61}} Indeed, in the preface to *Kidnapped* Stevenson warns the reader that historical accuracy was not primarily his aim, remarking “how little I am touched by the desire of accuracy”.{{sfnp|A7F6CKWV|62}}
Stevenson presents the Jacobite version of the Appin murder in the novel,{{sfnp|MP5HDVGX}} but sets the events in 1751, whereas in reality the murder occurred a year later.{{sfnp|ZSE2K4E6|276}}
## Major themes
A central theme of the novel is the concept of justice, the imperfections of the justice system and the lack of a universal definition of justice. To David justice means the restoration of his inheritance, whereas for Alan it means the death of his enemy Colin Roy of Glenure.
Literary critic Leslie Fiedler has suggested that a unifying “mythic concept” in several of Stevenson’s books, including *Kidnapped*, is what might be called the “Beloved Scoundrel”, or the “Devil as Angel”, “the beauty of evil”.{{sfnp|YZITBTWG|15}} The Rogue in this instance is of course Alan, “a rebel, a deserter, perhaps a murderer … without a shred of Christian morality”.{{sfnp|YZITBTWG|17}} Good nevertheless triumphs over evil, as in David Balfour’s case.
## Literary significance and reception
Kidnapped was well received and sold well while Stevenson was alive. After his death many viewed it with scepticism, seeing it as simply a boys’ novel, but by the mid-20th century it had regained critical approval and study. While it is basically an adventure novel, it raises various moral issues, such as the nature of justice (discussed in the previous section) and the fact that friends may have different political viewpoints.
## James Annesley case
Since some of the earliest reviews of *Kidnapped* in 1886, it has been thought the novel was structured after the true story of James Annesley, a presumptive heir to five aristocratic titles who was kidnapped at the age of 12 by his uncle Richard and shipped from Dublin to America in 1728. He managed to escape after 13 years and return to reclaim his birthright from his uncle in one of the longest courtroom dramas of its time.{{sfnp|I3R98D76}}
As the Annesley biographer A. Roger Ekirch says, “It is inconceivable that Stevenson, a voracious reader of legal history, was unfamiliar with the saga of James Annesley, which by the time of *Kidnapped*‘s publication in 1886 had already influenced four other 19th-century novels, most famously Sir Walter Scott’s *Guy Mannering* (1815) and Charles Reade’s *The Wandering Heir* (1873).”{{sfnp|I3R98D76}}
## Edinburgh: City of Literature
As part of the events to celebrate Edinburgh becoming the first UNESCO City of Literature, 25,000 copies of *Kidnapped* were made freely available by being left in public places around the city in February 2007. Three versions were distributed in that way:{{sfnp|SSY82VXH}}
- A new printing of Barry Menikoff’s edition of the novel.
- A retelling of the tale for children.
- A 2007 graphic novel version created by Alan Grant and Cam Kennedy. Translations of the graphic novel were also published in Lowland Scots and Scots Gaelic.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Balfour is Stevenson’s mother’s maiden name.{{sfnp|372RRPIA}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 8700
**Categories:** Children's literature
---
### [Northgate, Chester](https://engole.info/northgate-chester/)
**Published:** May 4, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/North_Gate_%28seen_from_north%29.jpg/1920px-North_Gate_%28seen_from_north%29.jpg[/pimage]Archway in Chester, Cheshire, carrying the city walls over Northgate Street.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/North_Gate_%28seen_from_north%29.jpg/1920px-North_Gate_%28seen_from_north%29.jpg)Viewed from the north
Wikimedia Commons
The Northgate in Chester, Cheshire, is an archway carrying the city walls footpath over Northgate Street.{{sfnp|KJVP9ME2}} The present-day Northgate was built in 1810, to replace a medieval gatehouse that stood on the site of the original Roman entrance to Chester. The medieval structure consisted of a rectangular tower with a narrow gateway, and was used as the local gaol.{{sfnp|V3FAF22F|39}}
The Northgate was designated a Grade I [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1955.{{sfnp|KJVP9ME2}}
Designed by Thomas Harrison for Chester City Council, the Northgate is built of pale red sandstone [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar),{{sfnp|KJVP9ME2}} using “as few and as huge stones as possible”.{{sfnp|WZQQTVJ2|252}} It consists of a segmental arch with a coffered soffit which spans the carriageway. On each side of the arch is a rectangular portal for the pavement. On both sides of the portals are attached unfluted monolithic Doric half-columns at each corner. Across the top of the structure is a dentilled [cornice](https://engole.info/cornice) which carries a panelled parapet.{{sfnp|KJVP9ME2}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29964
---
### [Holy Trinity Church, Leamington Spa](https://engole.info/holy-trinity-church-leamington-spa/)
**Published:** May 3, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Holy-Trinity-Leamington-Spa.webp[/pimage]Grade II listed active Anglican church in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Holy-Trinity-Leamington-Spa.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/UfHNkt4fyZZZBWEV9}}|Historic England
Holy Trinity is an active Anglican church in the town of Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. It is in the Archdeaconry of Warwick, the Deanery of Warwick and Leamington, the Diocese of Coventry, and is a member of the [Benefice](https://engole.info/benefice) of Leamington Spa Holy Trinity.{{sfnp|DUPJ8CP8}}
Construction of the church began in 1825, and was completed in 1847. It was designed by Mitchell of Leamington Spa for the Revd Craig of Leamington Parish Church of All Saints, and cost £13,000 to build. Substantial additions and alterations were made in 1865, and the [transepts](https://engole.info/transept) were enlarged in 1881, when the [vestry](https://engole.info/sacristy) was added. The [porch](https://engole.info/narthex) and east [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) wall date from 1900, and further alterations were carried out in 1913–1914.{{sfnp|DUPJ8CP8}}
Holy Trinity was a proprietary church until 1899, when it became a parish church. It was designated a Grade II [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1970.{{sfnp|STUDQ55U}}
## Architecture
Built in the Gothic Revival style, the church has a four-bay aisled [nave](https://engole.info/nave), the south [aisle](https://engole.info/aisle-architecture) incorporating a porch, two-bay transepts, with an organ loft to the south and vestry to the north, and a single-bay chancel.
## Organ
The church has a large four-manual pipe organ dating from 1880. Originally by Forster and Andrews, it has been rebuilt and restored many times, most recently by Peter Spencer in 2011, after having been silent for ten years.{{sfnp|56LFNC8Q}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29962
**Categories:** Anglican, Church, Warwickshire
---
### [Astrological medicine](https://engole.info/astrological-medicine/)
**Published:** June 13, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Nicholas_Culpeper._Line_engraving%2C_1817._Wellcome_V0001385.jpg[/pimage]Medical treatment based on the notion that if plants or seeds are to be used for medicinal purposes then their planting and collection must be carried out with regard to the positions of the planets and other heavenly bodies, which are at the heart of the disease process.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Nicholas_Culpeper._Line_engraving%2C_1817._Wellcome_V0001385.jpg)Nicholas Culpeper, 1817
Wikimedia Commons
Astrological medicine, sometimes known as astrological botany, is based on the notion that if plants or seeds are to be used for medicinal purposes then their planting and collection must be carried out with regard to the positions of the planets and other heavenly bodies, which are at the heart of the disease process. For instance, herbs intended to be used on male patients should be gathered when the Sun and Moon are in one of the male signs of the zodiac such as Sagittarius or Aquarius, whereas those for the treatment of females should be gathered under a female sign such as Virgo.{{sfnp|IIL49PHE|260-261}} Astrological medicine was often used in conjunction with the [doctrine of signatures](https://engole.info/doctrine-of-signatures/), which held that the physical form of a plant reflected its medicinal use.{{sfnp|ULDNX26M|297}}
In the words of Agnes Arber, England became “badly infected” with astrological botany during the 17th century, when its most “notorious” practitioner was Nicholas Culpeper.{{sfnp|IIL49PHE|261}}
## Origins
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Imhotep-Louvre.jpg)Statuette of Asclepius, also known as Imhotep
Wikimedia Commons
According to the autobiographical introduction in *De virtubitus herbarum*, probably written between about 100–150 CE, its author Thessalos gained his knowledge of astrological medicine with the help of an old Egyptian priest he met in Thebes. While browsing the libraries of Alexandria, Thessalos had come across a book written by the Egyptian king Nechepso, which contained twenty-four treatments for medical conditions based on the use of stones and plants. But when he tried the remedies for himself they proved to be completely useless. Undaunted, Thessalos travelled to Egypt in the hope of finding someone who could explain what it was that he had not understood. Eventually he met a priest who claimed to be able to conjure up divine entities. Thessalos asked to consult with the god Asclepius,\[a\]Asclepius is the Greek name for the Egyptian god Imhotep, patron of medicine and healing who explained that because Nechepso had not obtained his knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants from the gods, he was ignorant of the importance of the time and place of picking the plants. Asclepius then revealed to Thessalos the twelve plants assigned to the zodiac, when to harvest them, and how to use them.{{sfnp|4RM8LUB9}}
## Mainstream medicine
Despite the existence of texts such as *De virtubitus herbarum,* what might be called mainstream medicine developed along the ideas put forward by the Ancient Greek physicians such as Hippocrates and Galen. The notion that ill health derived from an imbalance in the four humours making up the human body – blood, air, phlegm and water – lingered on until the medieval period.\[b\]Hippocrates is however credited with having said that “A physician without knowledge of Astrology has no right to call himself a physician”. By then a hierarchy of physicians had developed, at the head of which were those who had been academically trained, usually at a university. Below them were surgeons, barber-surgeons, specialists such as dentists, and midwives. Only the learned physicians could perform diagnoses, although actual treatment was often carried out by others,{{sfnp|8QLHMZIX|361}} including cunning folk or folk healers, some of whom found themselves accused of sorcery or witchcraft.
Paracelsus (1493/4–1541), widely credited as the father of modern medicine, rejected that received wisdom, arguing instead that sickness resulted in the body being attacked by external agents. But he was also an alchemist, who believed that remedies could not work if they were not in concordance with the stars, as “a remedy cannot act without the heavens, it must be directed by them”.{{sfnp|LD8RMJIX|75}}
## 17th-century resurgence
Herbals of the 17th century are marked by a return to the influence of the heavenly bodies on the plants used to treat medical conditions, but they reflected “a travesty rather than a reflection of the ancient astrological lore” according to the gardening historian Eleanour Sinclair Rohde. The most notorious of this new breed of astrological physician was Nicholas Culpeper (1616–1654).{{sfnp|QEM2NXAB|162}}
By the end of the 17th century astrological medicine was falling out of favour, as astrology itself came under increasing attack. The medical writer John Cotta may have expressed the changing sentiment best in his *A Short Discoverie of Several Sorts of Ignorant and Vconsiderate Practisers of Physicke in England*, first published in 1612. While agreeing that the motion of the stars has an effect on the human constitution, he argued that such an effect, although profound, was remote, and so physicians should focus their efforts on the immediate causes of diseases.{{sfnp|7VAZ2L66}} But what may ultimately have sounded the death knell for astrological medicine was the satirical attacks by writers including Jonathan Swift in England and Benjamin Franklin in America on what they saw as the quackery of the practice.{{sfnp|7VAZ2L66}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Asclepius is the Greek name for the Egyptian god Imhotep, patron of medicine and healing b Hippocrates is however credited with having said that “A physician without knowledge of Astrology has no right to call himself a physician”.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2088
**Categories:** Astrology, Medical treatment
---
### [Cucking Stool](https://engole.info/cucking-stool/)
**Published:** March 23, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/Repentance_stool_and_branks%2C_Holy_Trinity_Church%2C_St._Andrews.JPG/330px-Repentance_stool_and_branks%2C_Holy_Trinity_Church%2C_St._Andrews.JPG[/pimage]Chair used as a punishment for those accused of offences such as drunkenness, sexual impropriety or dishonest trading.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/Repentance_stool_and_branks%2C_Holy_Trinity_Church%2C_St._Andrews.JPG/330px-Repentance_stool_and_branks%2C_Holy_Trinity_Church%2C_St._Andrews.JPG)Stool of repentance and [branks](https://engole.info/branks), Holy Trinity Church, St. Andrews
Wikimedia Commons
The cucking stool was a chair in which those accused of offences such as drunkenness, sexual impropriety or dishonest trading were constrained and then publicly displayed as a punishment. It was in use since at least the time of the Saxons, who called it the *scealding*, or scolding stool.{{sfnp|LNXN2M8L}}
Analogous to the [pillory](https://engole.info/pillory) or [stocks](https://engole.info/stocks), it is often confused with the [ducking stool](https://engole.info/ducking-stool), in which the victim was subsequently immersed in water while still restrained in the chair.{{sfnp|8XV6RMFR}} The cucking stool’s use as a punishment for scolding women declined during the mid-16th century, replaced by the [scold’s bridle](https://engole.info/scolds-bridle), and a little later the ducking stool.{{sfnp|LNXN2M8L}}
Also known as the stool of repentance, particularly in Scotland, it took the form of an elevated seat in a church, to be occupied by those found guilty by an ecclesiastical court of fornication or adultery. Publicly forced to repent their sins in that way, the humiliation was evidently very real, as some victims were driven to suicide, and some pregnant women who had not conceived with their husbands attempted infanticide rather than face the congregation.{{sfnp|8UMMSEMH|454-455}} As an alternative, the church would accept a fine known as [buttock mail](https://engole.info/buttock-mail) to those who could afford to pay.{{sfnp|3UVBWT56|206}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25216
**Categories:** Corporal punishment
---
### [Isabella and the Pot of Basil (Holman Hunt)](https://engole.info/isabella-and-the-pot-of-basil-holman-hunt/)
**Published:** July 22, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/William_Holman_Hunt_-_Isabella_and_the_Pot_of_Basil%2C_1867.jpg[/pimage]Oil painting by William Holman Hunt, depicting a story in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/William_Holman_Hunt_-_Isabella_and_the_Pot_of_Basil%2C_1867.jpg)Oil on canvas
187 cm × 117 cm (74 in × 46 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Isabella and the Pot of Basil* is an oil painting in the [Pre-Raphaelite](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood) style by [William Holman Hunt](https://engole.info/william-holman-hunt) (1849–1917), created in 1868. It depicts a scene from John Keats’ poem *Isabella, or the Pot of Basil*, showing the heroine Isabella caressing the basil pot in which she has buried the severed head of her murdered lover, Lorenzo. Keats’ poem was itself inspired by a story in Giovanni Boccaccio’s *Decameron*, written in about 1350.{{sfnp|4KT9N7YE}}
In a letter Hunt wrote to his fellow artist Henry Wallis on 12 February 1868, he admitted that his treatment of Isabella owed much to Boccaccio, but for reasons of propriety did not wish to make that known publicly.{{sfnp|4KT9N7YE}}
The story on which the painting is based tells of Isabella, who is in love with Lorenzo, employed as a clerk for her two brothers. But they want her to marry a high-ranking nobleman, so they decide to murder Lorenzo and bury his body in the forest. Lorenzo appears to Isabella in a vision, and tells her where to find his corpse. She exhumes his head and hides it in a pot of sweet basil, sustaining the plant with her tears. On discovering her secret the brothers remove the pot, leaving Isabella to wither and die of grief.{{sfnp|NPR8GTYA}}
Hunt and his first wife Fanny married in December 1865, and the following year settled in Florence, where he began work on *Isabella*. But after Fanny’s death from miliary fever in December 1866, Hunt turned the painting into a memorial to his wife, and worked on it steadily in the following months. He returned to England in 1867, and finally completed the painting in January 1868.{{sfnp|4KT9N7YE}}
The painting was sold, together with a smaller version, to the art dealer Ernest Gambart in November 1867, before either had been completed and before he had even seen the smaller version. Gambart paid 1,800 guineas, equivalent to about £225,700 as at 2024.{{sfnp|4KT9N7YE}}\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
The full-size version of *Isabella and the Pot of Basil* is currently in the collection of the Laing Art Gallery, in Newcastle upon Tyne, donated by Dr Wilfred Hall in 1952.{{sfnp|RGRH7MUN}} The smaller version, about one-third the size of the original, was sold at auction in London in 2014 for £2.883 million, and is now in the hands of a private collector.{{sfnp|4KT9N7YE}}
## See also
- [Isabella and the Pot of Basil](https://engole.info/isabella-and-the-pot-of-basil-waterhouse/) by John William Waterhouse
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27687
**Categories:** Holman Hunt, Painting
---
### [The Magic Shop](https://engole.info/the-magic-shop/)
**Published:** January 28, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/51HND2GDVFL._SX258_BO1204203200_.jpg[/pimage]Short story by H. G. Wells first published in 1903, about a visit by a young boy and his father to a shop selling disturbingly realistic magical illusions.
**Content:**
“The Magic Shop” is a short story by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published in [*The Strand Magazine*](https://engole.info/the-strand-magazine) in 1903; it was subsequently reprinted in [*Twelve Stories and a Dream*](https://engole.info/twelve-stories-and-a-dream/) (1903) and [*The Country of the Blind and Other Stories*](https://engole.info/the-country-of-the-blind-and-other-stories/) (1911). The story is narrated by the father of a young boy named Gip, and tells of their visit to a shop selling disturbingly realistic magical illusions.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|46}}
## Synopsis
While walking down Regent Street in London with his father, Gip is drawn to the window of a magic shop. The boy’s fascination with the tricks on display leads the father and son to enter the shop, where they are met by a strange-looking assistant with one ear larger than the other. The father says that he wants to buy some simple tricks for his son. After a moment’s reflection the assistant draws a glass ball from his head, asking if that is the type of thing they are looking for. Gip goes to take the ball from the assistant’s hand, only to be told that it is already in his pocket. On being asked for the price of the trick, the assistant replies “We make no charge for glass balls. We get them free.”
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/51HND2GDVFL._SX258_BO1204203200_.jpg)Amazon.co.uk
The assistant stresses that this is a “Genuine Magic shop … absolutely no deception”, and that only the “Right Sort of Boy” is allowed to enter. The assistant then takes Gip and his father into the showroom, when the narrator discovers a wriggling little red demon clinging to his coat sleeve. The assistant deftly disposes of it, commenting “None of ours! Probably brought it with you”. Gip is shown many other wonders, including a Magic Toy Sword that renders the bearer invincible in battle against anyone under the age of eighteen, magic trains that run without steam or clockwork, and boxes of toy soldiers that come to life when a magic word is said. Gip’s father repeatedly asks the price of these wonders, but the assistant always ignores the question.
Gip’s father decides to buy the box of toy soldiers, at which point the assistant waves the box in the air and gives it to him wrapped in brown paper with Gip’s full name and address written on the paper. After being distracted by another shop assistant who is idly changing the shape and size of his nose, apparently for his own amusement, the narrator catches up with Gip and the first assistant, who is about to perform a final trick. Gip is standing on a small stool, and the assistant covers him with a big drum; when the drum is removed, Gip has vanished. The narrator advances on the assistant demanding to know where his son is, but the assistant evades him by pushing through an open door. On trying to follow, the narrator leaps into utter darkness, and finds himself back on Regent Street; Gip is standing close by, with four parcels in his arms. Three of the parcels contain boxes of toy soldiers, and the fourth a little white kitten.
The narrator reveals that the events he has recounted happened six months ago, and that to his relief “the kitten had only the magic natural to all kittens”. Tentatively he asks Gip if he would like it if his soldiers could come to life and march about. “Mine do,” says Gip. “I just have to say a word I know before I open the lid.” The narrator further reveals that he had since visited Regent Street looking for the magic shop, but it was nowhere to be found.
## Commentary
Wells’s eldest son George Philip, who became a zoologist, was nicknamed Gip.{{sfnp|EM3H64XW}} He was born two years before the publication of “The Magic Shop”, and may have been the hero of the story.{{sfnp|TSZ75NZI|90}}
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22536
## External links
- [Full text of “The Magic Shop”](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11870/11870-h/11870-h.htm#link2H_4_0030) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Huskar Pit disaster](https://engole.info/huskar-pit-disaster/)
**Published:** September 28, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Memorial_to_the_26_children_who_died_in_the_Huskar_Pit_Disaster_-_geograph.org.uk_-_890231.jpg[/pimage]Deaths of 26 boys and girls working underground, drowned by an overflowing stream.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Memorial_to_the_26_children_who_died_in_the_Huskar_Pit_Disaster_-_geograph.org.uk_-_890231.jpg)Huskar Pit disaster memorial in Nabbs Wood
Wikimedia Commons
The Huskar Pit disaster occurred on 4 July 1838, when twenty-six boys and girls who had been working underground were drowned by an overflowing stream. It had consequences far beyond the local community when it came to the attention of Queen Victoria, leading to a Royal Commission and a law prohibiting all females and boys under the age of ten from working underground in the pits.
## Background
The Huskar Pit in Silkstone near Barnsley in Yorkshire was owned by R. C. Clarke of Noblethorpe. The pit’s shaft was used to wind coal and workers to the surface using a steam engine, and a drift in Nabb Woods was used for ventilation. The pit was connected to Clarke’s nearby Moorend Colliery.{{sfnp|I25Z2WK9|67}}{{sfnp|ZNFDGD7N}}
## Disaster
On the afternoon of 4 July 1836, two to two-and-a-half inches (5–6 cm) of rain fell during a violent thunderstorm, extinguishing the fire for the steam engine’s boiler. A message was sent down the pit telling the miners to make their way to the pit bottom to wait; they had been underground for nine hours. Forty children decided to leave the pit through the ventilation drift in Nabbs Wood. They went through the ventilation door at the bottom of the drift but as they headed up towards the entrance, a stream that was dry for most of the year but had been swollen by the torrential rain overflowed down the drift. The children were swept towards the ventilation door and the water rose against it, trapping twenty-six of them who were drowned; the rest escaped along a slit into Moorend Colliery.{{sfnp|I25Z2WK9|67}}{{sfnp|ZNFDGD7N}}
The twenty-six children were taken to Thostle Hall before being taken to their homes in carts. Fifteen were boys; the youngest was 7, the oldest 16. The eleven girls were aged from 8 to 17.{{sfnp|I25Z2WK9|67}}{{sfnp|ZNFDGD7N}}
## Legacy
The disaster had consequences far beyond the local community. It came to the attention of Queen Victoria, who took an interest in the loss of so many children, and led to a Royal Commission to investigate the employment of women and children in coal mines. As a result parliament passed the [1842 Mines and Collieries Act](https://engole.info/mines-and-collieries-act-1842/) prohibiting women and boys under the age of ten from working underground in the pits.{{sfnp|5JEJAR8S}}
A memorial to the children who were victims of the disaster stands in Silkstone churchyard.{{sfnp|5J6E994J}} Another was erected in Nabbs Wood in 1988.{{sfnp|5JEJAR8S}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 6640
**Categories:** Coal mining, Disaster, Yorkshire
---
### [The Flashman Papers](https://engole.info/the-flashman-papers/)
**Published:** October 8, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Flashman.webp[/pimage]Series of novels and short stories by George MacDonald Fraser, about a cowardly British soldier who had been the school bully in the 1857 novel Tom Brown's Schooldays.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Flashman.webp)Cover of the first book in the series, *Flashman*, published in 1969
Amazon
*The Flashman Papers* is a series of novels and short stories written by George MacDonald Fraser, the first of which was published in 1969. The books centre on the exploits of the fictional protagonist Harry Flashman, a cowardly British soldier, rake and cad who is placed in a series of real historical incidents between 1839 and 1894. While the incidents and much of the detail in the novels have a factual background, Flashman’s actions in the stories are either fictional, or Fraser uses the actions of unidentified individuals and assigns them to Flashman.
Flashman originated as a character in the 1857 novel by Thomas Hughes, *Tom Brown’s School Days*; Hughes’ version of the character is a bully at Rugby School who is expelled for drunkenness. The character was developed by Fraser, and appeared in the 1969 novel *Flashman*. Fraser went on to write eleven novels and one collection of short stories featuring the character. During the course of the series, Flashman goes from his expulsion from school into the army. Although he is a coward who tries to run away from any danger, he is involved in many famous military episodes from the 19th century, often taking actions that influence subsequent events, such as the part his flatulence played in the Charge of the Light Brigade,\[a\]As a result of drinking inferior champagne after recovering from dysentery, Flashman suffers from flatulence. The noise of his eruptions startles his horse to such an extent that it bolts towards the Russian lines, speeding up the British advance.{{sfnp|CZWIJJMV}} or being the person who probably shot George Armstrong Custer.
When circumstances run against him and he is forced to fight, Flashman often does so bravely and capably. Despite his cowardice and his attempts to flee, he becomes a decorated war hero and rises to the rank of brigadier-general. He also meets people who were either notable at the time – such as Benjamin Disraeli and the Duke of Wellington – or became well-known after Flashman met them – such as Abraham Lincoln. Flashman either has, or tries to have, sex with most of the female characters; by the end of the ninth book he estimates that he has had sex with 480 women.
The publication sequence of the books differs from the fictional chronology, with the timeframe of some books overlapping. One novel, *Flashman and the Redskin*s, is in two parts: part one takes place in 1849–1850, and the second covers 1875–1876. Although the main series of stories finishes in 1894, Flashman lives on until 1915 and appears in his late 80s in another Fraser novel, *Mr American*.
## Context
The series consists of twelve historical fiction books written by the journalist, author and screenwriter George MacDonald Fraser, that were published between 1969 and 2005. The series consists of eleven novels and one collection of short stories, spanning from 1839 to 1894; they are the memoirs of the fictional character General Sir Harry Paget Flashman, VC, KCB, KCIE. Although Flashman is fictional, the settings and history of the events, and the people with whom he interacts are largely based around real historical events and individuals, although three contain elements of other novels.{{sfnp|QYCVW8RI}}\[b\]Royal Flash took elements from Anthony Hope’s 1894 novel *The Prisoner of Zenda*, in what *The Guardian* described as “a double literary conceit”;{{sfnp|QYCVW8RI}} *Flash for Freedom* ends with Flashman and a slave girl avoiding their pursuers by escaping over a frozen river, an event Flashman claims was later used in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel *Uncle Tom’s Cabin*;{{sfnp|VHWEKR5L|341}} and the short story “Flashman and the Tiger”, from the book of the same name, intertwines a Flashman story into the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Empty House”.{{sfnp|G52QBFCK}} Flashman first appeared in the 1857 semi-autobiographical novel *Tom Brown’s School Days* by Thomas Hughes as a bully at Rugby School, who persecutes Tom Brown and is expelled for drunkenness: Fraser’s series of novels starts with Flashman’s expulsion from school. A fictional explanatory note at the start of *Flashman* sets the context, and explains that the memoirs had been found in an auction house in Ashby, Leicestershire and had subsequently come into the possession of Fraser, who has acted in the role of editor.{{sfnp|7HQ775X7|7-8}} Fraser also included pages of notes and appendices at the end of each volume, providing the factual background for Flashman’s exploits.
Fraser was working as a journalist on *The Glasgow Herald* when he wrote the first novel, *Flashman*. Writing in the evenings after work, he took 90 hours to finish the story.{{sfnp|ERWN72QJ}}{{sfnp|HN2FKAPI}} After the book was published, he left journalism and took up writing novels.{{sfnp|ERWN72QJ}} When a break from writing was forced upon him by a broken arm, he abandoned the book until his wife read the manuscript and urged him to finish. He did not find a publisher for the novel for two years, until Barrie & Jenkins published it in 1969.{{sfnp|HN2FKAPI}} When the novel was published in the USA the same year, of the 34 reviews read by Alden Whitman of *The New York Times*, ten of them considered the book to be a genuine autobiography.{{sfnp|UCVSSV84}} Fraser researched each novel at Trinity College, Dublin.{{sfnp|L8SIAB9B}} From their first publication, the books were a commercial success,{{sfnp|ITMABWLS}} and new editions appeared on the best-sellers’ lists.{{sfnp|J7LLJQLV}}
## Flashman
Flashman is from a semi-aristocratic background; he recounted that his great-grandfather “made a fortune in America out of slaves and rum, and piracy, too, I shouldn’t wonder”.{{sfnp|7HQ775X7|16}} His father was “a dissolute former MP, living beyond the bounds of respectable society, and … his mother \[was\] born of the self-promoting Paget family”.{{sfnp|5PPWKV23}} Despite joining the army after being expelled from school, Flashman is a self-confessed coward with a false reputation for bravery earned at the expense of others, and despite his trying to avoid danger at all costs.{{sfnp|NJMZAEUF}} He is also “a scoundrel, a drunk, a liar, a cheat \[and\] a braggart”,{{sfnp|ERWN72QJ}} who was described by Fraser as “an unrepentant old cad” whose only positive features are “humour and shameless honesty as a memorialist”.{{sfnp|H6SU3RSU|139}}
FLASHMAN, Harry Paget, brigadier-general, V.C., K.C.B., K.C.I.E.: Chevalier, Legion of Honour; Order of Maria Theresa, Austria; Order of the Elephant, Denmark (temporary); US Medal of Honor; San Serafino Order of Purity and Truth, 4th class
— Biographical note, *Flashman on the March*.{{sfnpFlashman is 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m) tall, weighs 13 stone (180 lb; 83 kg) (12½ stone in the first book, fourteen stone in the last), has broad shoulders and is attractive to women.\[c\]In the first novel, Flashman describes himself as six feet tall and weighing 12 and a half stone:{{sfnp|7HQ775X7|31}} in Flashman and the Angel of the Lord he says he is six feet, two inches tall.{{sfnp|FNMNBWZW|127}} He was forced into marriage in the first book, after he “caddishly deflowered” Elspeth Morrison,{{sfnp|QYCVW8RI}} the daughter of a wealthy Scottish textile manufacturer with whom he had been billeted.{{sfnp|5PPWKV23}} Despite being married – and the fact he deeply loves his wife – Flashman is “a compulsive womaniser”{{sfnp|L8SIAB9B|361}} who has bedded 480 women by the tenth book in the series, which was set in 1859;{{sfnp|7HQ775X7|114}} Elspeth is also probably unfaithful to him on several occasions.{{sfnp|5PPWKV23}} Flashman himself notes that he has three “prime talents, for horses, languages, and fornication”;{{sfnp|B4R5SIZD|13}} he was described by the master-at-arms of the 11th Hussars as a strong swordsman,{{sfnp|W4I78FEY|130}} skilled with a lance, particularly at tent pegging.{{sfnp|7HQ775X7|72}} When it is necessary for him to control his fear, he will perform bravely, although is more adept at saving his own skin at the expense of others.{{sfnp|L8SIAB9B|361}}
In the course of the series Flashman is promoted to the rank of brigadier-general, and decorated numerous times by different countries. While the books cover some of his awards – such as being given the Victoria Cross for his actions during the sieges of Cawnpore and Lucknow{{sfnp|4XGG5C9D|365-366}} – some stories are left unexplained, including how and why he served on both sides of the American Civil War and how he won the Medal of Honor.{{sfnp|FNMNBWZW|400}}\[d\]Fraser had no intention of describing Flashman’s role in the American Civil War. In a 2002 interview he said, “to me, the American Civil War is a colossal bore. It was a rotten war, it’s been done to death and I’m not terribly interested. An American wrote to me urging me to write it, saying it had to be the high point of Flashman’s career. I wrote back saying: ‘Son, it’s a foreign sideshow. The Crimea, the Indian Mutiny, these were the important things in Flashman’s life. Your civil war? He was so disinterested that he fought on both sides’.”{{sfnp|WTYRDAAY}}
During his travels Flashman meets people who took part in 19th-century events, including Queen Victoria, Abraham Lincoln, Otto von Bismarck, Oscar Wilde and Florence Nightingale, and he is involved as a participant in some of the century’s most notable events, including the Indian Rebellion, the Taiping Rebellion, the charge of the Light Brigade, the Siege of Khartoum, John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry and the Battle of the Little Bighorn.{{sfnp|WKW4DV2L}}
Flashman died in 1915, but the details are unknown.{{sfnp|FNMNBWZW|376}}
## Works
**Title and time****Publisher****Date****Plot****Ref.***Flashman*
(1839–1842)Barrie & Jenkins1969Flashman’s expulsion from Rugby School for drunkenness leads him to join the British Army. He joins the 11th Regiment of Light Dragoons commanded by Lord Cardigan. After an affair with a fellow-officer’s lover, he fights a duel, but cheats. He is posted to Scotland because of the affair, and is billeted with the Morrison family; he takes advantage of one of the daughters, Elspeth. After a forced marriage, Flashman is required to resign his position in the Hussars and instead is gazetted into a position with the East India Company. After revealing his language and riding skills, Flashman is assigned to Afghanistan, where he is present at the retreat from Kabul, the last stand at Gandamak and the Siege of Jalalabad.{{sfnp|I7RWVQNL}}*Royal Flash*
(1842–1843 and
1847–1848)Barrie & Jenkins1970Fleeing from a police raid on a brothel he was visiting, Flashman meets Lola Montez and Otto von Bismarck. Some years later Flashman is tempted to Munich, where Bismarck has him abducted; he is blackmailed into imitating Prince Carl Gustaf, a fictional member of the Danish royal family. Gustaf is to be married to Duchess Irma, the ruler of the fictional Duchy of Strackenz; according to Bismarck the prince has contracted a sexually transmitted disease, which would be embarrassing if uncovered by his future wife. This turns out to be a lie and the prince has been imprisoned in Jotunberg Castle. Flashman is a doppelgänger of the prince and is trained to take his place until the prince is cured. Flashman is accompanied to Strackenz by Bismarck’s accomplices, Rudi von Starnberg, Detchard and de Gautet, and is married to the duchess. Shortly afterwards, while out hunting, Flashman finds out that Bismarck meant to double-cross him and kill him, but he turns the tables on his attacker and tortures the information out of him and kills him instead. He is then captured by Strackenzian nationalists and forced to help them storm the Jotunberg Castle. They are successful, but Flashman and von Starnberg fight in the dungeon, with Flashman narrowly escaping death before escaping back to England with the help of Montez, who robs him along the way.{{sfnp|MQ3I6TC7}}*Flash for Freedom!*
(1848–1849)Barrie & Jenkins1971Flashman is falsely accused of cheating at cards, and runs away from disgrace by accepting an offer of a berth on the slaving ship part owned by his father-in-law; the ship is captained by John Charity Spring, an ex-fellow of Oriel College, Oxford who quotes Latin and Greek at length. After sailing to Dahomey, Spring buys slaves from King Ghezo; the deal goes wrong and the crew are attacked by Gezo’s Amazons, resulting in the mortal wounding of the third mate, Mr Comber. Comber dies, but admits to Flashman that he is a spy for the navy, giving Flashman his papers to prove his identity. The ship makes its way to America but is captured by the United States Navy. Flashman assumes Comber’s identityand escapes, hiding in the brothel of Susie Willinck. He is abducted by the Underground Railroad and forced to assist in transporting a slave to freedom in Canada. He is accused of being an abolitionist and escapes, ending up employed as a slave driver on a plantation. Caught having sex with the owner’s wife, he is himself sold into slavery, but escapes with a slave, before being assisted to freedom by junior congressman Abraham Lincoln. He returns to New Orleans and demands passage to Britain from Spring.{{sfnp|D8G9NFLK}}*Flashman at the Charge*
(1854–1855)Barrie & Jenkins1973Flashman is ordered to protect and mentor William of Celle – a (fictional) cousin of Queen Victoria – during the Crimean War; William is killed. Flashman is subsequently involved in The Thin Red Line, the charge of the Heavy Brigade and the charge of the Light Brigade, where he surrenders. He is taken into Russia and placed in the custody of Count Pencherjevsky; he also meets his old schoolfellow Scud East, and Count Nicholas Pavlovich Ignatiev, a vicious Russian army captain. After overhearing plans for the Russian invasion of British India, Flashman and East escape, but Flashman is recaptured. He is taken by Ignatiev across central Asia as part of his plans to conquer India, but is subsequently rescued from prison by cohorts of Yaqub Beg. Tajik and Uzbek warriors attack and destroy the Russian fleet with the aid of Flashman, who had been drugged with hashish.{{sfnp|PCH4ZF8X}}*Flashman in the Great Game*
(1856–1858)Barrie & Jenkins1977Flashman is at Balmoral Castle as a guest of Queen Victoria; he meets Lord Palmerston, who recruits him to go to Jhansi in India and investigate rumours of a rebellion among the Sepoys. Flashman again encounters Nicholas Pavlovich Ignatiev, and the Russian tries to kill him while hunting. Once in Jhansi he meets the queen, Rani Lakshmibai. He listens to her grievances against the British Raj and attempts to seduce her. Shortly afterwards he is almost garroted by Thuggees. He assumes the disguise of Makarram Khan, a Hasanzai of the Black Mountain, and takes refuge in the native cavalry at Meerut. While there, the Sepoy Mutiny begins. Flashman survives the Siege of Cawnpore and the Siege of Lucknow, but ends up imprisoned in Gwalior after an attempt to deliver Lakshmi into British hands. He is released just in time to witness her death in battle. In the aftermath Flashman is awarded the Victoria Cross and is knighted; he is also given a copy of the recently published *Tom Brown’s School Days*, which describes him being a bully and a coward while at school.{{sfnp|F2SMVAWB}}*Flashman’s Lady*
(1842–1845)Barrie & Jenkins1977Flashman meets Tom Brown, a former acquaintance from Rugby School, and agrees to play cricket at Lord’s Cricket Ground for a team made up of Old Rugbeians. Following separate threats from a bookmaker and a duke, Flashman accompanies Don Solomon Haslam – a businessman from the East Indies – Elspeth and his father-in-law on a trip to Singapore. Once there, Haslam reveals himself to be the pirate Sulieman Usman, and he kidnaps Elspeth. Flashman reluctantly gives chase in the company of James Brooke to rescue her, but is himself captured by Usman. He escapes from Usman’s ship at Madagascar, but is captured and enslaved by the Malagasy, eventually becoming military advisor and lover to Queen Ranavalona I. He and his wife finally escape from the island during an Anglo-French naval attack.{{sfnp|GCHTVQHS}}*Flashman and the Redskins*
(1849–1850 and
1875–1876)William Collins, Sons1982The story immediately follows the end of *Flash for Freedom!*
**Part one** In his haste to leave New Orleans and avoid arrest, Flashman agrees to accompany Susie Willinck and her company of prostitutes westwards on the California Gold Rush; Willinck forces him into marriage before the journey. Despite being attacked by a band of Comanche on the journey, they reach Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Flashman absconds with $2,000 made from selling one of the prostitutes, Cleonie, to Navajos. Flashman falls in with a group of travellers but he discovers them to be scalp-hunters, when they attack a band of Apaches. Flashman joins in but refuses to take any scalps or rape captive women, and when the scalp-hunters are attacked by the remainder of the tribe, he is saved and marries Sonsee-Array, the daughter of chief, Mangas Coloradas. He eventually escapes and is saved by Kit Carson on the Jornada del Muerto.
**Part two** In 1875 Flashman returns to America with his wife, Elspeth. Later, in Washington DC, he meets George Armstrong Custer and Mrs. Arthur B. Candy, and travels to Bismarck, North Dakota, with Mrs. Candy to pursue a carnal relationship. She reveals herself to be the former slave Cleonie, and he is kidnapped by Sioux and kept captive at Greasy Grass. He escapes just in time to take part in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where he sees the defeat and death of Custer – possibly being the one who kills him. Flashman is captured, partly scalped and hidden by Frank Grouard, who reveals himself to be his illegitimate son from Cleonie. Grouard breaks a promise to his mother and decides not to kill Flashman, but instead takes him back to Deadwood, Dakota Territory.{{sfnp|2UDWJD36}}*Flashman and the Dragon*
(1860)William Collins, Sons1985While in Hong Kong, Flashman is reluctantly persuaded by an English vicar’s wife to escort a shipment of opium into Canton; en route he discovers that instead of opium he is carrying guns to the Taiping rebels. He is subsequently put onto the British embassy intelligence staff in Shanghai. He then travels to the mouth of the Peiho to join Lord Elgin’s staff for his march to Peking. During the course of the march he is captured by Qing imperial troops and becomes the prisoner and lover of Yehonala, the imperial concubine. He is finally freed when the British army arrives at Peking; he then witnesses the destruction of the imperial Summer Palace.{{sfnp|296FFR2F}}*Flashman and the Mountain of Light*
(1845–1846)William Collins, Sons1990Flashman is in India, and is dispatched by Major George Broadfoot to the Punjab, masquerading as a solicitor attempting to settle the Soochet legacy with Maharani Jind Kaur. After becoming entangled in the intrigues of the Punjabi court, Flashman is forced to flee at the outbreak of the First Sikh War, but becomes involved in plans by the Punjabi nobility to curb the power of the Khalsa. Returning to the relative safety of the British forces, Flashman arrives just in time to become an unwilling participant in the attack on Ferozepore. Injured, he attempts to avoid the rest of the war in a sick bed, but is called on by Jind Kaur to smuggle her son Duleep Singh and the Koh-i-Noor diamond out of the country.{{sfnp|U9JTKA3G}}*Flashman and the Angel of the Lord*
(1858–1859)HarperCollins1994While in South Africa Flashman has a chance meeting with John Charity Spring. Spring drugs Flashman and ships him to the US, where charges are still outstanding against him. Flashman avoids the authorities, but is found by Crixus, a leader of the Underground Railroad, who blackmails him into joining John Brown and taking part in his raid on Harpers Ferry. He is accompanied by one of Crixus’ followers, a black man named Joe Simmons, who actually works for the Kuklos, a forerunner of the Ku Klux Klan. The Kuklos also want Flashman to help Brown, but in order to start a civil war. The wife of the leader of the Kuklos works for Allan Pinkerton, who also wants Flashman to join with Brown, but to slow him down and prevent the raid into the South from ever happening. Despite Flashman’s attempts, the raid goes ahead and he is caught in the arsenal when the US Marines attack.{{sfnp|MSTJMIDM}}*Flashman and the Tiger*
(1878–1894)HarperCollins1999“**The Road to Charing Cross**” Flashman goes to Berlin with Henri Blowitz to help get a copy of the Treaty of Berlin and publish it in *The Times*. Five years later, he is trying to avoid being sent to Sudan with Charles George Gordon when a letter from Blowitz arrives inviting him to Paris. He rides the maiden journey of the Orient Express and is blackmailed by Bismarck into joining Rupert Willem von Starnberg (the son of the villain from Royal Flash). Flashman and Starnberg are instructed by Bismarck to save Emperor Franz Josef from assassination by Magyar nationalists, but Flashman is in turn tricked by Starnberg, who is one of the assassins.
“**The Subtleties of Baccarat**” Flashman is an observer of the Tranby Croft affair, which he discovers was caused by his wife.
“**Flashman and the Tiger**” Flashman meets “Tiger Jack” Moran in the aftermath of the Battle of Isandlwana; the pair escape to Rorke’s Drift. Years later Moran reveals he was the cabin boy on Captain John Charity Spring’s ship, the Balliol College (see Flash for Freedom!); he has been seeking revenge against the ship’s crew and was blackmailing Flashman’s granddaughter in order to sleep with her. While trying to kill him, Flashman is mistaken for a tramp by Sherlock Holmes, while the police arrest Moran for trying to kill Holmes (see “The Adventure of the Empty House”).{{sfnp|9DXXJ97H}}*Flashman on the March*
(1867–1868)HarperCollins2005While in Trieste, Flashman meets an old school friend, Jack Speedicut, who enlists him to escort a shipment of Maria Theresa thalers to General Robert Napier. Napier is based in Abyssinia, on a military expedition against King Tewodros II. On Flashman’s arrival in Abyssinia, Napier enlists him and despatches him on a secret undercover mission to recruit Queen Masteeat and her Galla people, who are opposed to Tewodros. Flashman succeeds in enlisting the assistance of Queen Masteeat, but is then captured by Tewodros’ forces. Flashman is held captive while Napier’s forces advance and then storm the capital Magdala, and is present when the King commits suicide.{{sfnp|3DP8UVGV}}## Notes\[+\]
Notes a As a result of drinking inferior champagne after recovering from dysentery, Flashman suffers from flatulence. The noise of his eruptions startles his horse to such an extent that it bolts towards the Russian lines, speeding up the British advance.{{sfnp|CZWIJJMV}} b Royal Flash took elements from Anthony Hope’s 1894 novel *The Prisoner of Zenda*, in what *The Guardian* described as “a double literary conceit”;{{sfnp|QYCVW8RI}} *Flash for Freedom* ends with Flashman and a slave girl avoiding their pursuers by escaping over a frozen river, an event Flashman claims was later used in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel *Uncle Tom’s Cabin*;{{sfnp|VHWEKR5L|341}} and the short story “Flashman and the Tiger”, from the book of the same name, intertwines a Flashman story into the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Empty House”.{{sfnp|G52QBFCK}} c In the first novel, Flashman describes himself as six feet tall and weighing 12 and a half stone:{{sfnp|7HQ775X7|31}} in Flashman and the Angel of the Lord he says he is six feet, two inches tall.{{sfnp|FNMNBWZW|127}} d Fraser had no intention of describing Flashman’s role in the American Civil War. In a 2002 interview he said, “to me, the American Civil War is a colossal bore. It was a rotten war, it’s been done to death and I’m not terribly interested. An American wrote to me urging me to write it, saying it had to be the high point of Flashman’s career. I wrote back saying: ‘Son, it’s a foreign sideshow. The Crimea, the Indian Mutiny, these were the important things in Flashman’s life. Your civil war? He was so disinterested that he fought on both sides’.”{{sfnp|WTYRDAAY}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23226
**Categories:** Fictional character, Historical novel
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### [The Coral Island](https://engole.info/the-coral-island/)
**Published:** December 11, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Coral_Island_1893.jpg[/pimage]Novel written by Scottish author R. M. Ballantyne. one of the first works of juvenile fiction to feature exclusively juvenile heroes.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Coral_Island_1893.jpg)Title page of the 1893 illustrated edition
Wikimedia Commons
*The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean* (1858) is a novel written by the Scottish author R. M. Ballantyne. One of the first works of juvenile fiction to feature exclusively juvenile heroes, the story relates the adventures of three boys marooned on a South Pacific island, the only survivors of a shipwreck.
A typical Robinsonade – a genre of fiction inspired by Daniel Defoe’s *Robinson Crusoe* – and one of the most popular of its type, the book first went on sale in late 1857 and has never been out of print. Among the novel’s major themes are the civilising effect of Christianity, 19th-century British imperialism in the South Pacific, and the importance of hierarchy and leadership. It was the inspiration for William Golding’s dystopian novel *Lord of the Flies* (1954), which inverted the morality of *The Coral Island*; in Ballantyne’s story the children encounter evil, but in *Lord of the Flies* evil is within them.
## Background and publication
In the early 20th century, the novel was considered a classic for primary school children in the UK, and in the United States it was a staple of high-school suggested reading lists. Modern critics consider the book’s worldview to be dated and imperialist, but although less popular today, *The Coral Island* was adapted into a four-part children’s television drama broadcast by ITV in 2000.
Born in Edinburgh in 1825, and raised there, Ballantyne was the ninth of ten children and the youngest son. Tutored by his mother and sisters, his only formal education was a brief period at Edinburgh Academy in 1835–1837. At the age of 16 he travelled to Canada, where he spent five years working for the Hudson’s Bay Company, trading with the Native Americans for furs.{{sfnp|BKJJB23N}} He returned to Scotland in 1847 and for some years worked for the publisher Messrs Constable,{{sfnp|F5DF6C6Y}} first as a clerk{{sfnp|BKJJB23N}} and then as a partner in the business.{{sfnp|W5XYGXYC|6}} During his time in Canada he had helped to pass the time by writing long letters to his mother – to which he attributed “whatever small amount of facility in composition \[he\] may have acquired”{{sfnp|W5XYGXYC|4}} – and began his first book.{{sfnp|W5XYGXYC|5}} Ballantyne’s Canadian experiences formed the basis of his first novel, *The Young Fur Traders*, published in 1856,{{sfnp|BKJJB23N}} the year he decided to become a full-time writer and embarked on the adventure stories for the young with which his name is popularly associated.{{sfnp|F5DF6C6Y}}
Ballantyne never visited the coral islands of the South Pacific, relying instead on the accounts of others that were then beginning to emerge in Britain, which he exaggerated for theatrical effect by including “plenty of gore and violence meant to titillate his juvenile readership”.{{sfnp|UCBZBFHG}} His ignorance of the South Pacific caused him to erroneously describe coconuts as being soft and easily opened; a stickler for accuracy he resolved that in future, whenever possible, he would write only about things he had personal experience of.{{sfnp|GMXGT932|167-168}} Ballantyne wrote *The Coral Island* while staying in a house on the Burntisland seafront opposite Edinburgh on the Firth of Forth in Fife. According to the Ballantyne biographer Eric Quayle, he borrowed extensively from an 1852 novel by the American author James F. Bowman, *The Island Home*.{{sfnp|MCVW5ZHM}} He also borrowed from John Williams’ *Narrative of Missionary Enterprises* (1837), to the extent that cultural historian Rod Edmond has suggested that Ballantyne must have written one chapter of *The Coral Island* with Williams’ book open in front of him, so similar is the text.{{sfnp|Q2K4EF5M|147}} Edmond describes the novel as “a fruit cocktail of other writing about the Pacific”,{{sfnp|Q2K4EF5M|146}} adding that “by modern standards Ballantyne’s plagiarism in *The Coral Island is startling*“.{{sfnp|Q2K4EF5M|148}}
Although the first edition is dated 1858 it was on sale in bookshops from early December 1857; dating books forward was a common practice at the time, especially during the Christmas period,{{sfnp|VBXRJEZV}} to “preserve their newness” into the new year.{{sfnp|7QKJYC5X|xviii}} *The Coral Island* is Ballantyne’s second novel,{{sfnp|L8QXQG6Z}}\[a\]*The Coral Island* is Ballantyne’s third book, but his first, *Hudson’s Bay; or, Every-day Life in the Wilds of North America* (1848) is a work of non-fiction.{{sfnp|L8QXQG6Z}} and has never been out of print.{{sfnp|A5YTNTQP}} He was an exceedingly prolific author who wrote more than 100 books in his 40-year career.{{sfnp|UEHQH3WG|61-62}} According to professor and author John Rennie Short, Ballantyne had a “deep religious conviction”, and felt it his duty to educate Victorian middle-class boys – his target audience – in “codes of honour, decency, and religiosity”.{{sfnp|ZZ2NW49A|163}}
The first edition of *The Coral Island* was published by T. Nelson & Sons, who in common with many other publishers of the time had a policy when accepting a manuscript of buying the copyright from the author rather than paying royalties; as a result, authors generally did not receive any income from the sale of subsequent editions.{{sfnp|6XYB7Q54|76}}\[b\]It was not until the 1880s that the modern system of paying authors an agreed percentage of the retail price of every book sold became commonplace in Britain.{{sfnp|6XYB7Q54|80}} Ballantyne received between £50 and £60,{{sfnp|KLVBT9XM|359}} equivalent to about £38,000 as of 2017,\[c\]Comparing average earnings of £55 in 1858 with 2017.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} but when the novel’s popularity became evident and the number of editions increased he tried unsuccessfully to buy back the copyright. He wrote bitterly to Nelsons in 1893 about the copyrights they held on his books while he had earned nothing: “for thirty-eight years \[you have\] reaped the whole profits”.{{sfnp|D22DPCNS|410}}
*The Coral Island* – still considered a classic – was republished by Penguin Books in 1995, in their Popular Classics series.{{sfnp|MCVW5ZHM}}
## Literary and historical context
Published during the “first golden age of children’s fiction”,{{sfnp|VBXRJEZV}} *The Coral Island* began a trend in boys’ fiction by using boys as the main characters, a device now commonplace in the genre. It preserves, according to literary critic Minnie Singh, the moralising aspects of didactic texts, but does so (and in this regard it is a “founding text”) by the “congruence of subject and implied reader”: the story is about boys and written retrospectively as though by a boy, for an audience of boys.{{sfnp|JJV4IQGQ}}
According to the literary critic Frank Kermode, *The Coral Island* “could be used as a document in the history of ideas”.{{sfnp|ZWKDPTWU|203}} A scientific and social background for the novel is found in Darwinism, of the natural and the social kind. For instance, although *The Coral Island* was published a year before *Origin of Species* (whose ideas were already being circulated and discussed widely), Charles Darwin’s 1842 *The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs* was one of the best-known contemporary accounts of the growth of coral.{{sfnp|SF85AVYJ}} Ballantyne had been reading books by Darwin and his rival Alfred Russel Wallace,{{sfnp|VBXRJEZV}} and in later publications he also acknowledged the naturalist Henry Ogg Forbes.{{sfnp|CXGMR8SP}} The interest in evolutionary theory was reflected in much contemporary popular literature,{{sfnp|IUYAVIAE}} and social Darwinism was an important factor contributing to the world view of the Victorians and their empire building.{{sfnp|9IGSJEAU}}
## Plot summary
The story is written as a first person narrative from the perspective of 15-year-old Ralph Rover, one of three boys shipwrecked on the coral reef of a large but uninhabited Polynesian island. Ralph tells the story retrospectively, looking back on his boyhood adventure: “I was a boy when I went through the wonderful adventures herein set down. With the memory of my boyish feelings strong upon me, I present my book especially to boys, in the earnest hope that they may derive valuable information, much pleasure, great profit, and unbounded amusement from its pages.”{{sfnp|PUTSBLD8|search=Preface}}
The account starts briskly; only four pages are devoted to Ralph’s early life and a further fourteen to his voyage to the Pacific Ocean on board the Arrow. He and his two companions – 18-year-old Jack Martin and 13-year-old Peterkin Gay – are the sole survivors of the shipwreck. The narrative is in two parts. The first describes how the boys feed themselves, what they drink, the clothing and shelter they fashion, and how they cope with having to rely on their own resources. The second half of the novel is more action-packed, featuring conflicts with pirates, fighting between the native Polynesians, and the conversion efforts of Christian missionaries.
Fruit, fish and wild pigs provide plentiful food, and at first the boys’ life on the island is idyllic. They build a shelter and construct a small boat using their only possessions: a broken telescope, an iron-bound oar, and a small axe. Their first contact with other humans comes after several months when they observe two large outrigger canoes in the distance, one pursued by the other. The two groups of Polynesians disembark on the beach and engage in battle; the victors take fifteen prisoners and kill and eat one immediately. But when they threaten to kill one of the three women captured, along with two children, the boys intervene to defeat the pursuers, earning them the gratitude of the chief, Tararo. The next morning they prevent another act of cannibalism. The natives leave, and the boys are alone once more.
More unwelcome visitors then arrive in the shape of British pirates, who make a living by trading or stealing sandalwood. The three boys hide in a cave, but Ralph is captured when he ventures out to see if the intruders have left and is taken on board the pirate schooner. He strikes up a friendship with one of the crew, Bloody Bill, and when the ship calls at the island of Emo to trade for more wood Ralph experiences many facets of the island’s culture: the popular sport of surfing, the sacrificing of babies to eel gods, rape, and cannibalism.
Rising tensions result in the inhabitants attacking the pirates, leaving only Ralph and Bloody Bill alive. The pair succeeds in making their escape in the schooner, but Bill is mortally wounded. He makes a death-bed repentance for his evil life, leaving Ralph to sail back to the Coral Island alone, where he is reunited with his friends.
The three boys sail to the island of Mango, where a missionary has converted some of the population to Christianity. There they once again meet Tararo, whose daughter Avatea wishes to become a Christian against her father’s wishes. The boys attempt to take Avatea in a small boat to a nearby island the chief of which has been converted, but en route they are overtaken by one of Tararo’s war canoes and taken prisoner. They are released a month later after the arrival of another missionary, and Tararo’s conversion to Christianity. The “false gods”{{sfnp|PUTSBLD8|332}} of Mango are consigned to the flames, and the boys set sail for home, older and wiser. They return as adults for another adventure in Ballantyne’s 1861 novel *The Gorilla Hunters*, a sequel to *The Coral Island*.{{sfnp|C6522KHS}}{{sfnp|K95LF2DL|158}}
## Genre and style
All Ballantyne’s novels are, in his own words, “adventure stories for young folks”, and The Coral Island is no exception.{{sfnp|ZZ2NW49A|163}} It is a Robinsonade, a genre of fiction inspired by Daniel Defoe’s *Robinson Crusoe* (1719),{{sfnp|EXX6IQQW|173}} one of the most popular of its type,{{sfnp|UCBZBFHG}} and one of the first works of juvenile fiction to feature exclusively juvenile heroes.{{sfnp|JJV4IQGQ}}{{sfnp|AIFFI5WF|36}} Susan Maher, professor of English, notes that in comparison to *Robinson Crusoe* such books generally replaced some of the original’s romance with a “pedestrian realism”, exemplified by works such as *The Coral Island* and Frederick Marryat’s 1841 novel *Masterman Ready, or the Wreck of the Pacific*.{{sfnp|JHL472Y6}} Romance, with its attention to character development, was only restored to the genre of boys’ fiction with Robert Louis Stevenson’s *Treasure Island* argues literary critic Lisa Honaker. *The Coral Island*, for all its adventure, is greatly occupied with the realism of domestic fiction (the domain of the realist novel); Ballantyne devotes about a third of the book to descriptions of the boys’ living arrangements.{{sfnp|C6522KHS}} The book exhibits a “light-hearted confidence” in its description of an adventure that was above all fun.{{sfnp|AIFFI5WF|38}} As Ralph says in his preface: “If there is any boy or man who loves to be melancholy and morose, and who cannot enter with kindly sympathy into the regions of fun, let me seriously advise him to shut my book and put it away. It is not meant for him.”{{sfnp|PUTSBLD8|search=Preface}} Professor of English M. Daphne Kutzer has observed that “the swift movement of the story from coastal England to exotic Pacific island is similar to the swift movement from the real world to the fantastic in children’s fantasy”.{{sfnp|8MSWV4QC|2}}
To a modern reader Ballantyne’s books can seem overly concerned with accounts of flora and fauna,{{sfnp|DMVSR8NL|54}} an “ethnographic gloss” intended to suggest that their settings are real places offering adventures to those who can reach them.{{sfnp|8MSWV4QC|2}} They can also seem “obtrusively pious”,{{sfnp|DMVSR8NL|54}} but according to John Rennie Short, the moral tone of Ballantyne’s writing is compensated for by his ability to tell a “cracking good yarn in an accessible and well-fashioned prose style”.{{sfnp|ZZ2NW49A|163}}
## Themes
The major themes of the novel revolve around the influence of Christianity, the importance of social hierarchies, and the inherent superiority of civilised Europeans over the South Sea islanders; Martine Dutheil, professor of English, considers the novel “a key text mapping out colonial relations in the Victorian period”.{{sfnp|MCVW5ZHM}} The basic subject of the novel is popular and widespread: “castaway children assuming adult responsibilities without adult supervision”, and *The Coral Island* is considered the classic example of such a book.{{sfnp|FBQNRER7}}
The supposed civilising influence of missionaries in spreading Christianity among the natives of the South Seas is an important theme of the second half of the story;{{sfnp|UEHQH3WG|61-62}} as Jack remarks to Peterkin, “all the natives of the South Sea Islands are fierce cannibals, and they have little respect for strangers”.{{sfnp|PUTSBLD8|172}} Modern critics view this aspect of the novel less benevolently; Jerry Phillips, in a 1995 article, sees in *The Coral Island* the “perfect realiz\[ation\]” of “the official discourse of 19th century Pacific imperialism”, which he argues was “obsessed with the purity of God, Trade, and the Nation.”{{sfnp|5PTD9BKS}}
The importance of hierarchy and leadership is also a significant element. The overarching hierarchy of race is informed by Victorian concepts, influenced by the new theories of evolution proposed by Darwin and others. In morals and culture, the natives are placed lower on the evolutionary ladder than are Europeans, as is evidenced in the battle over the native woman Avatea, which pits “the forces of civilization versus the forces of cannibalism”.{{sfnp|8MSWV4QC|6}} Another hierarchy is seen in the organisation of the boys. Although Jack, Ralph and Peterkin each have a say in how they should organise themselves, ultimately the younger boys defer to Jack,{{sfnp|8MSWV4QC|2-3}} “a natural leader”,{{sfnp|FBQNRER7}} particularly in a crisis, forming a natural hierarchy. The pirates also have a hierarchy, but one without democracy, and as a consequence are wiped out. The hierarchy of the natives is imposed by savagery. Ballantyne’s message is that leaders should be respected by those they lead, and govern with their consent.{{sfnp|8MSWV4QC|2-3}} This educational message is especially appropriate considering Ballantyne’s adolescent audience, “the future rulers of the world”.{{sfnp|JHL472Y6}}
Modern critics find darker undertones in the novel. In an essay published in College English in 2001, Martine Dutheil states that *The Coral Island* can be thought of as epitomising a move away from “the confidence and optimism of the early Victorian proponents of British imperialism” toward “self-consciousness and anxiety about colonial domination”. She locates this anxiety in what she calls the “rhetoric of excess” that features in the descriptions of cannibalism, and especially in the accounts of Fijian savagery provided by Bloody Bill (most notably that of the sacrifice of children to the eel gods) and the missionary, a representative of the London Missionary Society, an “emblematic figure of colonial fiction”.{{sfnp|MCVW5ZHM}} Others have also linked popular boys’ fiction of the period with imperialism; Joseph Bristow’s Empire Boys (1991) claimed to see an “‘imperialist manhood,’ which shaped British attitudes towards empire and masculinity.”{{sfnp|QDJZ3YTD}} The novel’s portrayal of Pacific culture and the effects of colonisation are analyzed in studies such as Brian Street’s *The Savage in Literature: Representations of ‘Primitive’ Society in English Fiction* (1975){{sfnp|EU49MW6E}} and Rod Edmond’s *Representing the South Pacific: Colonial Discourse from Cook to Gauguin* (1998).{{sfnp|CZNTWAIV}}{{sfnp|HWZP4TMD}} The domination imposed by “geographical mapping of a territory and policing of its native inhabitants” is an important theme in the novel both specifically and in general, in the topography of the island as mapped by the boys and the South Pacific’s “eventual subjugation and conversion to Christianity”, a topic continued in Stevenson’s *Treasure Island*.{{sfnp|EXX6IQQW|178}}
The exploration of the relationship between nature and evangelical Christianity is another typically Victorian theme. Coral connects the two ideas. Literary critic Katharine Anderson explains that coral jewellery, popular in the period, had a “pious significance”.\[d\]The Victorian love of coral jewellery was at its height from the 1840s to the 1850s, perhaps prompted by the coral ornaments presented by her husband to his royal bride, the Duchess d’Aumale, at their wedding in Naples{{sfnp|UWY4Z7Y4|18}}{{sfnp|SF85AVYJ}} in 1844.{{sfnp|RGTLIUTR}} The “enchanted garden” of coral the boys discover at the bottom of their island’s lagoon is suggestive of “missionary encounters with the societies of the Pacific Island”.{{sfnp|SF85AVYJ}} In Victorian society coral had been given an “evangelical framing”, and the little “coral insect” responsible for building coral reefs\[e\]“Coral insect” was a term commonly used in Ballantyne’s time to describe the coral polyps the remains of which form the coral; they were not considered to be literally insects.{{sfnp|YAFC37F6|4}} mirrored the “child reader’s productive capacity as a fundraiser for the missionary cause”; literary critic Michelle Elleray discusses numerous children’s books from the early to mid-19th century, including *The Coral Island*, in which coral plays such an educational role.{{sfnp|M5SMTSPZ}}
The novel’s setting provides the backdrop for a meditation in the style of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who promoted an educational setting in which lessons are provided by direct interactions with the natural world rather than by books and coercive teachers.{{sfnp|FK4JZX4T|103-105}} Singh points out that Rousseau, in *Emile, or On Education*, promotes the reading and even imitation of Robinson Crusoe;{{sfnp|JJV4IQGQ}} literary critic Fiona McCulloch argues that the unmediated knowledge the boys gain on their coral island resembles the “direct language for children” Rousseau advocates in *Emile*.{{sfnp|VBXRJEZV}}
## Critical reception
*The Coral Island* was an almost instant success, and was translated into almost every European language within fifty years of its publication.{{sfnp|7WKQGM6G|131}} It was widely admired by its contemporary readers, although modern critics view the text as featuring “dated colonialist themes and arguably racist undertones”.{{sfnp|UCBZBFHG}} Ballantyne’s blend of blood-thirsty adventure and pious imperialism appealed not just to his target juvenile audience but also to their parents and teachers.{{sfnp|DHZ4A6GV}} He is today mainly remembered for *The Coral Island*, to the exclusion of much of his other work.{{sfnp|XMU4I39R}}
The novel was still considered a classic for English primary school children in the early 20th century.{{sfnp|5Y9P4DDD}} In the United States it was long a staple of suggested reading lists for high-school students; such a list, discussed in a 1915 article in *The English Journal*, recommends the novel in the category “Stories for Boys in Easy Style”.{{sfnp|MNZ2ET3Q}} A simplified adaptation of the book was recommended in the 1950s for American 12–14 year olds.{{sfnp|V4NXDPRN}}{{sfnp|XQ6B4CK5}} Although mostly neglected by modern scholars{{sfnp|CXGMR8SP}} and generally considered to be dated in many aspects, in 2006 it was voted one of the top twenty Scottish novels at the 15th International World Wide Web Conference.{{sfnp|HWH43IYJ}}
## Influence
Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1882 novel *Treasure Island* was in part inspired by *The Coral Island*,{{sfnp|J3GR9W5G|33}} which he admired for its “better qualities”,{{sfnp|UCBZBFHG}} as was J. M. Barrie’s character Peter Pan; both Stevenson and Barrie had been “fervent boy readers” of the novel.{{sfnp|TMA69K7Q|37}} Novelist G. A. Henty was also influenced by Ballantyne’s audience-friendly method of didactism.{{sfnp|JJV4IQGQ}}
William Golding’s 1954 novel *Lord of the Flies* was written as a counterpoint to (or even a parody of){{sfnp|RJZFRYVG}} *The Coral Island*,{{sfnp|ENZHKYH6|219}} and Golding makes explicit references to it. At the end of the novel, for instance, one of the naval officers who rescues the children mentions the book, commenting on the hunt for one of their number, Ralph, as a “jolly good show. Like the Coral Island”.{{sfnp|LX2QYIT6|93}} Jack also makes an appearance in *Lord of the Flies* as Jack Merridew, representing the irrational nature of the boys. Indeed, Golding’s three central characters – Ralph, Piggy and Jack – are caricatures of Ballantyne’s heroes.{{sfnp|JJV4IQGQ}} Despite having enjoyed *The Coral Island* many times as a child, Golding strongly disagreed with the views that it espoused, and in contrast *Lord of the Flies* depicts the English boys as savages themselves,{{sfnp|ENZHKYH6|219}} who forget more than they learn, unlike Ballantyne’s boys.{{sfnp|UEHQH3WG|61-62}} Golding described the relationship between the two books by saying that *The Coral Island* “rotted to compost” in his mind, and in the compost “a new myth put down roots”.{{sfnp|ENZHKYH6|219}} Neither is the idyllic nature of Ballantyne’s coral island to be found on Stevenson’s treasure island, which is unsuitable for settlement “but exists merely as a site from which to excavate treasure, a view consistent with the late-Victorian imperial mission” according to Honaker.{{sfnp|C6522KHS}}
## Adaptations
*The Coral Island* was adapted into a children’s television series in a joint venture between Thames Television and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1980, first shown on Australian and British television in 1983.{{sfnp|5CFHDMQ8}} It was also adapted into a four-part children’s television drama by Zenith Productions, broadcast by ITV in 2000.{{sfnp|JYEY9CG4}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a *The Coral Island* is Ballantyne’s third book, but his first, *Hudson’s Bay; or, Every-day Life in the Wilds of North America* (1848) is a work of non-fiction.{{sfnp|L8QXQG6Z}} b It was not until the 1880s that the modern system of paying authors an agreed percentage of the retail price of every book sold became commonplace in Britain.{{sfnp|6XYB7Q54|80}} c Comparing average earnings of £55 in 1858 with 2017.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} d The Victorian love of coral jewellery was at its height from the 1840s to the 1850s, perhaps prompted by the coral ornaments presented by her husband to his royal bride, the Duchess d’Aumale, at their wedding in Naples{{sfnp|UWY4Z7Y4|18}}{{sfnp|SF85AVYJ}} in 1844.{{sfnp|RGTLIUTR}} e “Coral insect” was a term commonly used in Ballantyne’s time to describe the coral polyps the remains of which form the coral; they were not considered to be literally insects.{{sfnp|YAFC37F6|4}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 12145
**Categories:** Children's literature
---
### [Osculum infame](https://engole.info/osculum-infame/)
**Published:** September 30, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/CompendiumMaleficarumEngraving15.jpg[/pimage]Ritual of a witch paying homage to the Devil by kissing his genitals, anus or feet.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/CompendiumMaleficarumEngraving15.jpg)Witches and sorcerers performing a ritual kiss as depicted by the Italian demonologist Francesco Maria Guazzo
Wikimedia Commons
*Osculum infame*, also known as the *Kiss of Shame*, the *Obscene Kiss*, or the translation from Latin of the *Infamous Kiss*, is the name commonly given to the ritual of a witch paying homage to the Devil by kissing him. Usually performed at a gathering of witches, the Devil would assume the appearance of an animal, often a goat or a cat, then his adherents would kiss his genitals, anus or feet. Although most accounts of the kiss appear during the period of the witch trials, its origins can be traced back to literature of heretic hunters from the Middle Ages; associations have also been made to the late second-century treatise, *Octavius*.
Allegations of the performance of the *osculum infame* were included in charges against groups such as the Cathars, the Waldensians and the Knights Templar.
## History
The roots of the kiss might extend as far back as the late second century;\[a\]There is debate among scholars as to the exact publication date of *Octavius* but most accept 197. in *Octavius,* Minicius Felix describes the Christian veneration of a donkey’s head and their reverence to a priest’s genitals. In the Roman Empire, Jews and conspirators faced similar accusations.{{sfnp|F3MJECHY|37}}
A twelfth-century account of heretics holding clandestine meetings describes how a demonic [black cat](https://engole.info/black-cat/) was kissed on the genitals, beneath the tail and on the feet. Demons in the shape of cats and toads receiving kisses on their rumps and mouths as a form of worship from heretics were included in the works of William of Auvergne, a scholastic philosopher from medieval times.{{sfnp|2L69N6KX|156-157}} Propaganda documents against the Cathars\[b\]Cathars were an active European group from the tenth to the fourteenth century that the Catholic Church designated as witches.{{sfnp|AYEG4E2B|15}} and the Waldensians\[c\]Waldensians were a group of heretics established in the twelfth century. They were active until around the fifteenth century, by which time witchcraft was referred to in France as Waldensianism or Vauderie.{{sfnp|2L69N6KX|314}} carried details of the Devil as the recipient of the self-abasing homage.{{sfnp|F3MJECHY|37}}
The charges brought against the Knights Templar\[d\]Established between 1119–1188{{sfnp|EWXF4A7K|192}} the Knights Templar are described by scholar Malcolm Barber as “one of the most powerful monastic orders in Christendom”.{{sfnp|R5IZZFRS|1}} They had become very wealthy but, after the events initiated in 1307, by 1314 the dissolution of the Templars was complete.{{sfnp|423RDR88|37}} by King Philip IV in 1307 included that postulants were required to perform the *osculum infame.* During the ceremony the master would be kissed on the mouth, navel, posterior or genitals by the naked postulant; the ritual could also be reversed with the postulant being the recipient instead.{{sfnp|2L69N6KX|299}} A further charge was that they kissed the anus of a Satanic cat.{{sfnp|F3MJECHY|39}} Of the 138 confessions given under duress that survive from the trials held in Paris, only four did not fully admit the charges presented;{{sfnp|R5IZZFRS|301}} seventy-five per cent admitted some form of indecent kissing had been performed at their initiation ceremony.{{sfnp|ZJZ2IW9Q|91}}
## Witch trials
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Baldung_hexen_ca1514.jpg)Pen and ink drawing by Hans Baldung Gruen, 514; the woman looking between her legs is a reference to the Obscene Kiss.
Wikimedia Commons
Despite its long history, most accounts of *osculum infame* appear during the period of the witch trials.{{sfnp|XY786VJC|9}} Interpreted as a sign by which a witch was worshipping and paying homage to the Devil, accounts of some variation of the kiss feature in the majority of descriptions of gatherings of witches included in confessions, many of which were obtained by torture.{{sfnp|EWXF4A7K|191-192}} Although most common in Europe, no illustrations of it exist in the publications of English persecutions, possibly as torture was not regularly employed in the questioning of those accused. The pamphlet, [*Newes from Scotland*](https://engole.info/newes-from-scotland/), published in 1591, provided the first descriptions of the *osculum infame* to the English population.{{sfnp|F3MJECHY|40}} Covering details of the [North Berwick witch trials](https://engole.info/north-berwick-witch-trials/), *Newes* chronicles the *Kiss* as being demanded by the Devil as a penance for witches being late for a meeting.{{sfnp|EWXF4A7K|192}}
The *Malleus maleficarum* *–* a treatise published in 1486 that was pivotal in the pursuit of witches{{sfnp|33U5LZGZ|1}} – contains only a tangential reference to the *Kiss*. The authors were unsuccessful in securing a case against a suspected witch who at the end of a blessing given during a Mass added the phrase “Give me the tongue in the arse”.{{sfnp|F3MJECHY|39}}\[e\]In German: “Kehr mir die Zung im Arss umb”{{sfnp|F3MJECHY|57}}
The *Kiss* is generally regarded as an act of degradation; at the start of a witches’ meeting, the Devil would register the names of those present who would then each draw close to him – by crawling on their hands and knees or walking backwards – turn, bow and kiss his buttocks. It also formed part of a witches’ initiation ceremony. The banquet and merriment would then start. Occasionally the same homage had to be shown to demons of a lower status;{{sfnp|EWXF4A7K|192}} the role could also be reversed whereby the witch was the recipient of the kiss.{{sfnp|F3MJECHY|39}}
## Modern interpretations
Twenty-first century scholars such as Jonathan Durrant describe the *osculum infame* as “a parody of the kiss of peace in the Christian Eucharist”. It also provided an indicator of unacceptable sexual practices and furnished evidence of dishonourable behaviour.{{sfnp|8LYYZ9QR|611}}
The French theologian Alain de Lille wrote in his tract *Against the heretics of his times*\[f\]Published some time between 1179 and 1202{{sfnp|ZJZ2IW9Q|22}} that the name of the Cathars was derived from the Low Latin *cattus* or “cat” because the Devil appeared to the sect in that form to receive the obscene kiss. According to academic Norman Cohn that etymology was commonly accepted, but he adds that de Lille also included the correct version: “the name comes from the Greek *Katharoi*, ‘the pure ones’ ”.{{sfnp|ZJZ2IW9Q|22, 266}} A similar conclusion is reached by scholar, Jeffrey Burton Russell, who refers to de Lille’s *cattus* etymology as “one of the more amusing etymological blunders of the period”.{{sfnp|KRW2SI6I|131}}
Russell suggests the *Kiss* may denote a “kind of dark communion, an eating of the god, a total taking into oneself of the Devil.” He also considers it may have been an indirect reference to the Judas Kiss and a repudiation of Christianity.{{sfnp|KRW2SI6I|286}} In the case of the Knights Templar, he suggests that the aim of soliciting confessions of the performance of the *Kiss* was to augment the charges of homosexuality made against them;{{sfnp|KRW2SI6I|195}} academic Julian Goodare asserts: “There was no truth in the accusations”.{{sfnp|423RDR88|37}}
Several illustrations show demons with another face on the buttocks – the depositions of some witches from Savoy include admissions that they had kissed the second face of the Devil.{{sfnp|423RDR88|303}} The *Kiss* is a prominent feature in confessions from Basque witches; as a part of their initiation ceremony they were required to place a kiss below his tail and on his genitals.{{sfnp|2L69N6KX|157}} The court records of the witches tried in Eichstätt, however, contain hardly any references to the *Kiss*, which may be a reflection that, despite being subjected to torture, the alleged witches in Eichstätt would not allow themselves to be branded as dishonourable.{{sfnp|F3MJECHY|50-51}}
Records of witchcraft trials held between 1438 and 1528 in and around Lausanne indicate that the inquisitors used a fairly fixed set of leading questions when interrogating suspects. Routinely asked in the same sequence each time, the confessions tended to follow the same sequential order. One of the matters raised at the onset of these formulaic examinations concerned the witch paying homage to the Devil by performing acts such as the obscene kiss. This methodology generally achieved responses with the descriptions closely resembling each other.{{sfnp|4SVSNGYY|163-164}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a There is debate among scholars as to the exact publication date of *Octavius* but most accept 197. b Cathars were an active European group from the tenth to the fourteenth century that the Catholic Church designated as witches.{{sfnp|AYEG4E2B|15}} c Waldensians were a group of heretics established in the twelfth century. They were active until around the fifteenth century, by which time witchcraft was referred to in France as Waldensianism or Vauderie.{{sfnp|2L69N6KX|314}} d Established between 1119–1188{{sfnp|EWXF4A7K|192}} the Knights Templar are described by scholar Malcolm Barber as “one of the most powerful monastic orders in Christendom”.{{sfnp|R5IZZFRS|1}} They had become very wealthy but, after the events initiated in 1307, by 1314 the dissolution of the Templars was complete.{{sfnp|423RDR88|37}} e In German: “Kehr mir die Zung im Arss umb”{{sfnp|F3MJECHY|57}} f Published some time between 1179 and 1202{{sfnp|ZJZ2IW9Q|22}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 6530
**Categories:** Witchcraft
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [The Tale of Peter Rabbit](https://engole.info/the-tale-of-peter-rabbit/)
**Published:** August 23, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Peter_Rabbit_first_edition_1902a.jpg[/pimage]Children’s book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, following the mischievous and disobedient young Peter Rabbit as he is chased about the garden of Mr. McGregor.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Peter_Rabbit_first_edition_1902a.jpg)First edition cover
Wikimedia Commons
*The Tale of Peter Rabbit* is a children’s book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter that follows the mischievous and disobedient young Peter Rabbit as he is chased about the garden of Mr. McGregor. He escapes and returns home to his mother, who puts him to bed after dosing him with tea. The tale was written for five-year-old Noel Moore, son of Beatrix’s former governess Annie Carter Moore, in 1893. It was revised and privately printed by Beatrix in 1901 after several publishers’ rejections, but was printed in a trade edition by Frederick Warne & Co. in 1902. Multiple reprints were issued in the years immediately following its debut, and it has been translated into thirty-six languages.{{sfnp|RZUM78D8|33}}
Since its release the book has generated considerable merchandise targeted at children and adults, including toys, dishes, food, clothing and videos. Beatrix herself patented a Peter Rabbit doll in 1903, and followed it almost immediately with a Peter Rabbit board game.
## Biographical background
The story was inspired by a pet rabbit Beatrix had as a child, which she named Peter Piper.{{sfnp|RZUM78D8|35}} Through the 1890s, Beatrix sent illustrated story letters to the children of her former governess, Annie Moore. In 1900, Moore, realizing the commercial potential of Beatrix’s stories, suggested they be made into books. Beatrix embraced the suggestion, and, borrowing her complete correspondence (which had been carefully preserved by the Moore children), selected a letter written on 4 September 1893 to five-year-old Noel that featured a tale about a rabbit named Peter, to which she added some text and new black-and white illustrations. According to Beatrix Potter biographer Linda Lear, the additions added suspense and imparted a greater sense of the passage of time. Beatrix then copied the story into a stiff-covered exercise book, with a coloured frontispiece showing Mrs Rabbit dosing Peter with camomile tea.{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|142}}
## Publication history
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/1901_First_Edition_of_Peter_Rabbit.jpg)Cover of the privately printed 1901 edition
Wikimedia Commons
Beatrix initially submitted her manuscript to six publishers, including Frederick Warne & Co, who ten years earlier had expressed some interest in her artwork, but they all turned it down. Some wanted a longer book, others a shorter one, but most wanted colour illustrations instead of black-and-white; by the turn of the century colour printing had become popular and affordable.{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|143}}
Undaunted, in September 1901 Beatrix commissioned the printer Strangeways & Sons to produce 250 copies of what she had by then decided to call *The Tale of Peter Rabbit*, and Hentschel of London to print 500 copies of the coloured frontispiece in case she might want to reprint the book. Her privately printed edition was ready to be distributed to friends and family on 16 December 1901.{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|145}}
A family friend and sometime poet, Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, offered to make a final effort to help Beatrix get her manuscript published commercially. He turned Beatrix’s text into “rather dreadful didactic verse” and submitted it along with some of Beatrix’s illustrations once again to Frederick Warne & Co.{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|145}}
## Plot
The story focuses on a family of anthropomorphic rabbits. The widowed mother rabbit keeps her four rabbit children, Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter from entering the vegetable garden of a man named Mr. McGregor. Her triplets (Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail) obediently refrain from entering the garden, but Peter enters the garden to snack on some vegetables. Peter ends up eating more than what is good for him and goes looking for parsley to cure his stomach ache. Peter is spotted by Mr. McGregor and loses his jacket and shoes while trying to escape. He hides in a watering can in a shed, but then has to run away again when Mr. McGregor finds him, and ends up completely lost. After sneaking past a cat, Peter sees the gate where he entered the garden from a distance and heads for it, despite being spotted and chased by Mr. McGregor again. With difficulty he wriggles under the gate, and escapes from the garden, but he spots his abandoned clothing being used to dress Mr. McGregor’s scarecrow. After returning home, a sick Peter is sent to bed by his mother, and his triplet sisters receive a scrumptuous dinner of milk, bread and blackberries whilst Peter has a supper of chamomile tea.
## Critical reception
Writing in *Storyteller: The Classic that Heralded America’s Storytelling Revival*, in discussing the difference between stories that lend themselves well to telling and stories that lend themselves well to reading, Ramon Ross explains Peter Rabbit is a story created for reading. He believes Beatrix created a good mix of suspense and tension, intermixed with lulls in the action. He goes on to write that the writing style – “the economy of words, the crisp writing” – lends itself well to a young audience.{{sfnp|3Z2NENT2|210}}
Lear writes that Beatrix “had in fact created a new form of animal fable in: one in which anthropomorphic animals behave as real animals with true animal instincts”, and a form of fable with anatomically correct illustrations drawn by a scientifically minded artist. She further states Peter Rabbit’s nature is familiar to rabbit enthusiasts “and endorsed by those who are not … because her portrayal speaks to some universal understanding of rabbity behaviour.”{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|153}} She describes the tale as a “perfect marriage of word and image” and “a triumph of fantasy and fact”.{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|154-155}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/PeterRabbit15.jpg)Mr. McGregor tries to trap Peter under a garden sieve
Wikimedia Commons
According to Stuart Jeffries, “psychoanalytic critiques of her work have multiplied since her death in 1943.”{{sfnp|TWJR69ZJ}} Carole Scott writes in *Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit* that the reader cannot help but identify with rebellious little Peter and his plight as all the illustrations are presented from his low-to-the-ground view, most feature Peter in close-up and within touching distance, and Mr. McGregor is distanced from the reader by always being depicted on the far side of Peter. Scott explains: “This identification dramatically instills fear and tension in the reader, and interacts with the frequently distanced voice of the verbal narrative”, sometimes with contradictory effects.{{sfnp|RZUM78D8|22}} The moment when Mr. McGregor attempts to trap Peter under a garden sieve, for example, is presented in the narrative as a matter-of-fact, everyday occurrence, but the illustration presents the desperate moment from the terrified view of a small animal in fear of his life – a view that is reinforced by the birds that take flight to the left and the right.{{sfnp|RZUM78D8|22-23}}
In the illustration of Peter standing by the locked door, the narrative describes the scene without the flippancy evident in the moment of the sieve. The inability to overcome obstacles is presented with objective matter-of-factness and the statement, “Peter began to cry” is offered without irony or attitude, thus drawing the reader closer to Peter’s emotions and plight. The illustration depicts an unclothed Peter standing upright against the door, one foot upon the other with a tear running from his eye. Without his clothes, Peter is only a small, wild animal but his tears, his emotions, and his human posture intensifies the reader’s identification with him. Here, verbal narrative and illustration work in harmony rather than in disharmony.{{sfnp|RZUM78D8|26}} Scott suggests that *The Tale of Peter Rabbit* has encouraged many generations of children to “self-indulgence, disobedience, transgression of social boundaries and ethics, and assertion of their wild, unpredictable nature against the constrictions of civilized living.”{{sfnp|RZUM78D8|29}}
Frank Delaney notes “a self-containment” in Beatrix’s writing reflective of an uninterested mother and a lonely childhood spent in the company of pets.{{sfnp|DLXNGFMF}} John Bidwell, curator at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, observed “the sardonic humor that makes Beatrix Potter so much fun for kids and grown-ups.”{{sfnp|Z7MSM2VV}}
## Merchandising
Peter feasts on Mr. McGregor’s vegetables
Wikimedia Commons
Beatrix believed that her tales would one day be nursery classics, and part of the “longevity of her books comes from strategy”, writes the biographer Ruth MacDonald.{{sfnp|I73JHAYR|128}} Beatrix was the first to exploit the commercial possibilities of her characters and tales; between 1903 and 1905 these included a Peter Rabbit stuffed toy, an unpublished board game, and nursery wallpaper.{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|172-175}}
Considerable variations to the original format and version of *The Tale of Peter Rabbit*, as well as spin-off merchandise, have been made available over the decades. Variant versions include “pop-ups, toy theatres, and lift-the-flap books”. By 1998, modern technology had made available “videos, audio cassette, a CD-ROMs, a computer program, and Internet sites”, as described by Margaret Mackey writing in *The case of Peter Rabbit: changing conditions of literature for children*. She continues: “Warne and their collaborators and competitors have produced a large collection of activity books and a monthly educational magazine”. A plethora of other Peter Rabbit related merchandise exists, and “toy shops in the United States and Britain have whole sections of \[the\] store specially signposted and earmarked exclusively for Potter-related toys and merchandise”.{{sfnp|RZUM78D8|xxi–xxii}}
Unauthorized copying of *The Tale of Peter Rabbit* has flourished over the decades, including products only loosely associated with the original. In 1916, American Louise A. Field cashed in on the popularity by writing books including *Peter Rabbit Goes to School* and *Peter Rabbit and His Ma*, the illustrations of which showed him in his distinctive blue jacket.{{sfnp|WYXVVTLV|83}} In an animated movie by Golden Films, *The New Adventures of Peter Rabbit*, “Peter is given buck teeth, an American accent and a fourth sister Hopsy.” Another video “retelling of the tale casts Peter as a Christian preacher singing songs about God and Jesus.”{{sfnp|RZUM78D8|xxi–xxii}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22098
**Categories:** Children's literature
---
### [The Story of Miss Moppet](https://engole.info/the-story-of-miss-moppet/)
**Published:** August 24, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/The_Story_of_Miss_Moppet_cover.jpg[/pimage]Children’s story about teasing, featuring a kitten and a mouse. Written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, it was published by Frederick Warne & Sons for the 1906 Christmas season.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/The_Story_of_Miss_Moppet_cover.jpg)First edition cover
Wikimedia Commons
*The Story of Miss Moppet* is a children’s story about teasing, featuring a kitten and a mouse. Written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, it was published by Frederick Warne & Sons for the 1906 Christmas season. Beatrix was born in London in 1866, and between 1902 and 1905 she published a series of small-format children’s books with Frederick Warne & Sons.
Although *The Story of Miss Moppet* is considered by critics to be one of Beatrix’s lesser efforts, for young children it is valued as an introduction to books in general, and to the world of Peter Rabbit. The character of Miss Moppet was released as a porcelain figurine in 1954, and as a plush toy in 1973.
## Development and publication
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Beatrix_Potter%2C_Miss_Moppet%2C_wallet_interior.jpg)Wallet interior shows (left to right) the flap, title page, and first illustration
Wikimedia Commons
In 1906, as Beatrix was finishing *The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher*, she considered developing books for a younger audience. Three stories were the result: *The Story of Miss Moppet*, *The Story of A Fierce Bad Rabbit* and *The Sly Old Cat*. Inspired by George Cruikshank’s illustrations, she intended to have the stories published in “panoramic format in the style of Cruikshank’s *Comic Alphabet*“.{{sfnp|R4UM4957|129}} The panorama format consisted of “long strips of paper, on which the individual pages of pictures and text were arranged in order from left to right.”{{sfnp|I73JHAYR|50}}
Beatrix wrote Miss Moppet in 1906 while she was living at Hill Top, her recently purchased farm in the English Lake District. She borrowed the kitten that was the model for Miss Moppet from a local mason, but it proved to be an “exasperating model”. Beatrix wrote “I have borrowed a Kitten and I am rather glad of the opportunity of working at the drawings. It is very young and pretty and a most fearful pickle.”{{sfnp|R4UM4957|106-107}} Beatrix used the same kitten as a model for her next book, *The Tale of Tom Kitten*,{{sfnp|R4UM4957|111}} which she dedicated in 1907 “to all Pickles – especially those that get upon my garden wall”.{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|218}} Miss Moppet is one of Tom Kitten’s sisters,{{sfnp|W6EQBERI|22}} and appears as a character in both books featuring him: *The Tale of Tom Kitten* and *The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or The Roly-Poly Pudding* (1908).
Ten thousand copies of *The Story of Miss Moppet* were released in a panorama format priced at a shilling\[a\]Five new pence in decimal currency in November 1906, and another 10,000 copies in December 1906.{{sfnp|JFFL7HMA|426}} The strip folded accordion-fashion into a grey cloth wallet measuring 108 by 89 millimetres (4.3 in × 3.5 in). When opened, the panorama strip measured 108 by 2,492 millimetres (4.3 in × 98.1 in).{{sfnp|JFFL7HMA|426}} As Beatrix Potter biographer Lear writes, Potter “experimented with a panorama format of fourteen pictures on one long strip of paper which folded into a wallet tied with a ribbon”. But although the format was popular with readers it did not endear itself to booksellers , who found it difficult to keep them folded.{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|213}} Later in her life Beatrix admitted that the panorama format had been a bad idea: “Bad Rabbit and Moppet were originally printed on long strips – The shops sensibly refused to stock them because they got unrolled and so bad to fold up again”.{{sfnp|JFFL7HMA|183}}
## Plot
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Beatrix_Potter%2C_Miss_Moppet%2C_No_Mouse.jpg)Miss Moppet discovers that the mouse has escaped
Wikimedia Commons
The tale opens with an illustration of a wide-eyed kitten: “This is a Pussy called Miss Moppet, she thinks she has heard a mouse!” The following illustration depicts a mouse wearing a pink bowtie and green jacket “peeping out behind the cupboard, and making fun of Miss Moppet. He is not afraid of a kitten.” Miss Moppet darts at him, but misses and bumps her head on the cupboard. She hits the cupboard very hard and rubs her nose. The mouse scurries to the top of the cupboard and watches her.
Miss Moppet ties a duster about her head and sits before the fire on a red hassock. The mouse’s curiosity is piqued; he thinks she looks very ill and comes sliding down the bell-pull; “Miss Moppet looks worse and worse.” The mouse creeps nearer. Miss Moppet holds her head in her paws and peeks at the mouse through a hole in the duster. “The Mouse comes *very* close.” Miss Moppet jumps and snags him by the tail.
“And because the Mouse has teased Miss Moppet – Miss Moppet thinks she will tease the Mouse; which is not at all nice of Miss Moppet.” The kitten ties the mouse up in the duster then tosses him about like a ball. The mouse peeks from the hole in the duster. In the last illustration but one, Miss Moppet is seated upright on her rump and staring at the reader. The duster lies opened and empty in her paws. “She forgot about that hole in the duster”, and the mouse has escaped. He dances a jig safely out of Miss Moppet’s reach on top of the cupboard.
## Critical reception
James M. Redfield, a classics professor at the University of Chicago, in his article “An Aristotelian Analysis of Miss Moppet” finds the story follows the tenets of Aristotle’s *Poetics*, with a definite beginning (the unsuccessful attempt to catch the mouse), middle (Miss Moppet pretending to be hurt and catching the mouse), and end (Miss Moppet teasing the mouse and his escape). Redfield notes that Beatrix makes the outcome of the plot uncertain and creates parity between the characters, which are naturally predator and prey; Beatrix makes Miss Moppet “young, inexperienced, female, and a pet”, while the mouse is “mature, courageous, male, and independent”.{{sfnp|YHYIKPIW|36}} Redfield praises Beatrix’s skill as an author; she uses the hole in the duster twice – to allow Miss Moppet to catch the mouse, but then for him to escape her – and uses phrases particularly suited for a parent to read aloud to a child (“This is the mouse …”). Redfield concludes that while teasing is bad in the story – dangerous for the mouse, and cruel for the cat – Beatrix herself teases the reader in a good way, showing “us that teasing is a kind of loving when it is a kind of teaching. The poet plays with us, and by taking us through an unreal experience, teaches us what it is to live in the real world.”{{sfnp|YHYIKPIW|41}}
In her essay “Thoroughly Post-Victorian, Pre-Modern Beatrix” professor of English Katherine Chandler points out that Beatrix, unlike most Victorian writers of children’s books, wrote original stories based on the realism of animal behaviour. Chandler notes that she avoids moralising in her tales, making Miss Moppet nothing more than a story describing the natural behaviour of kittens. Beatrix’s anthropomorphised animals are in fact slightly naughty, yet in their naughtiness the punishment is never the moral of the tale. At the end of *Miss Moppet*, the kitten is not punished and the mouse dances on the cupboard. This leads Chandler to quote literary scholar of modernism Humphrey Carpenter, “there is nothing in \[Potter’s\] work that resembles the moral tale. In fact if might be argued that she is writing something pretty close to a series of immoral tales”. In addition Chandler notes that Beatrix’s economic use of prose presages modernism, comparing her writing to that of Ernest Hemingway.{{sfnp|WALA3UWA}}
Ruth K. MacDonald, English and children’s literature professor at New Mexico State University, agrees, writing in *Beatrix Potter* that *Miss Moppe*t demonstrates Potter’s ability to pare text and illustrations to essentials noting that she worked best with more complicated plots, more complicated characters, and stories with specific settings rather than generalized backgrounds. Miss Moppet is a vignette, she indicates, rather than the typical Beatrix tale of causality, extended plot, and variety of character, and depends upon the archetypal animosity between cat and mouse with the cat being the dominant character.{{sfnp|I73JHAYR|50-53}}
*Miss Moppet* was more successful than its companion piece *The Story of A Fierce Bad Rabbit* according to M. Daphne Kutzer, an English professor at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh and author of *Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code* (2003). Kutzer writes: “the illustrations are more fluid and the storyline more humorous and less moralistic”.Beatrix was never at her best when writing for a clearly defined audience, Kutzer observes, and in writing a Victorian moral tale about teasing, she failed to completely engage the reader’s imagination in either the story or the illustrations.{{sfnp|QL5BQLBY|129-130}} But, as MacDonald notes, *Miss Moppet* remains in the Beatrix Potter canon, and serves as a good entry to her literature.{{sfnp|I73JHAYR|50-53}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Five new pence in decimal currency
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22100
**Categories:** Children's literature
---
### [Dancing mania](https://engole.info/dancing-mania/)
**Published:** September 18, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Die_Wallfahrt_der_Fallsuechtigen_nach_Meulebeeck.jpg[/pimage]Social phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Die_Wallfahrt_der_Fallsuechtigen_nach_Meulebeeck.jpg)Dancing mania on a pilgrimage to the church at Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, a 1642 engraving by Hendrick Hondius after a 1564 drawing by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.
Wikimedia Commons
Dancing mania (also known as dancing plague, choreomania, St. John’s Dance and St. Vitus’s Dance) was a social phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. The mania affected men, women, and children who danced until they collapsed from exhaustion. One of the first major outbreaks was in Aachen, in the Holy Roman Empire, in 1374, and it quickly spread throughout Europe; one particularly notable outbreak occurred in Strasbourg in 1518, also in the Holy Roman Empire.
Affecting thousands of people across several centuries, dancing mania was not an isolated event, and was well documented in contemporary reports. It was nevertheless poorly understood, and remedies were based on guesswork. Generally, musicians accompanied dancers, to help ward off the mania, but this tactic sometimes backfired by encouraging more to join in. There is no consensus among modern-day scholars as to the cause of dancing mania.{{sfnp|RAISWKSJ}}
The several theories proposed range from religious cults being behind the processions to people dancing to relieve themselves of stress and put the poverty of the period out of their minds. It is speculated to have been a mass hysteria, in which physical symptoms with no known physical cause are observed to affect a group of people, as a form of social influence.{{sfnp|RAISWKSJ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 6218
**Categories:** Mania
---
### [David Gregory](https://engole.info/david-gregory/)
**Published:** July 28, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** Scottish physician and inventor accused of witchcraft. He inherited Kinnairdy Castle in Banffshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Kinnairdy_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_746908.jpg)21st-century photograph of Kinnairdy Castle, which was inherited by Gregory after his older brother was murdered.
Wikimedia Commons
David Gregory (20 December 1625 – 1720) was a Scottish physician and inventor. His surname is sometimes spelt as Gregorie, the original Scottish spelling. He inherited Kinnairdy Castle in 1664. Three of his twenty-nine children became mathematics professors. He is credited with inventing a military cannon that Isaac Newton described as “being destructive to the human species”. Copies and details of the model no longer exist. Gregory’s use of a barometer to predict farming-related weather conditions led him to be accused of witchcraft by Presbyterian ministers from Aberdeen, although he was never convicted.
## Ancestry and early life
Gregory, born on 20 December 1625, was the second-eldest son of John Gregorie (1598–1650 or 1652\[a\]*Records of the Family of Gregory* shows the year of his death as 1650;{{sfnp|XVGTBQJE|12}} papers at University of Aberdeen indicate 1652.{{sfnp|VW2IP8PV}}),{{sfnp|XVGTBQJE|12, 17}} minister at the small parish village of Drumoak in Aberdeenshire, where Gregory was born.{{sfnp|4TQ6TFHG|510}} The family surname is sometimes spelt Gregorie, as in the original Scottish.{{sfnp|F8SQL4A6}} His mother was Janet Anderson, whose father David was said to be exceptionally talented in the fields of medicine and mathematics. Gregory’s younger brother was James Gregory, the designer of the Gregorian telescope.{{sfnp|4TQ6TFHG|510}}{{sfnp|LBABGKM5}}
Gregory’s schooling was initially undertaken by his mother. His father then despatched him to the Netherlands to learn herring dealing, which was the predominant trade in Aberdeen. He returned to Aberdeen when he was in his early thirties in 1655 just after his father’s death. Gregory had never been enthusiastic about trading and ceased trading as soon as he returned to Aberdeen to concentrate on scientific and literary topics.{{sfnp|27LT6RUL|19}} From 1663 until 1669 he was employed by Marischal College Library as a librarian. At that time he also furthered his scientific interests by writing to other overseas and British scientists.{{sfnp|LBABGKM5}}
In February 1655 Gregory married Jean Walker, with whom he had fifteen children. When his elder brother Alexander died childless in 1664, Gregory inherited Kinnairdy Castle, just south of Aberchirder, Banffshire. Alexander had been murdered.{{sfnp|VW2IP8PV}}{{sfnp|ZQKCZU4B}} Jean Walker died in 1671 and Gregory remarried a few months later in early 1672. His second wife was Isabel Gordon. She bore him fourteen children. Twenty of his children reached adulthood and three, David (1659–1708), James (1666–1742) and Charles (1681–1754), were mathematics professors in the same period at British universities.{{sfnp|LBABGKM5}} David taught at the University of Oxford; James was based at Edinburgh University; and Charles at St Andrews.{{sfnp|2FSKVP32|376}} Thomas Reid was Gregory’s grandson, as Reid’s mother was Margaret, Gregory’s daughter. Reid’s father was Lewis Reid, a minister at Strachan, Aberdeenshire.{{sfnp|27LT6RUL|20}}{{sfnp|64EEGHEP|162}}
## Kinnairdy
Gregory moved to Kinnairdy Castle with his wife and children as soon as he inherited the estate and lands from his elder brother in 1664. The inheritance was substantial and made him a rich man. Although he knew nothing about farming, he settled well and helped others in the area, whether they were rich or poor, with his medical prowess and did not charge for his medical advice. He was the only person in the region to own a barometer and used it to predict the best time to harvest and for other farming related activities affected by weather conditions. As his predictions were usually accurate, this led to rumours that Gregory had “sold his soul to the Devil” and he was accused of witchcraft by a group of ministers from the Aberdeen presbytery. The ministers seemed to accept his explanation about the barometer and no further action was taken against him.{{sfnp|LBABGKM5}}{{sfnp|27LT6RUL|21-22}}{{sfnp|8B4ZW6UY}}
During 1690 Gregory passed the control of the castle and lands to his son David, who was by then the Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. This enabled Gregory and his wife to move back to Aberdeen.{{sfnp|27LT6RUL|24}}
## Legacy and death
Aided by an Aberdeen watchmaker, Gregory began designing a military cannon and showed the prototype to his son David. The model was then passed to Isaac Newton, who advised that it be destroyed; Gregory’s grandson, Thomas Reid, reported that Newton had considered it to be “destructive to the human species”.{{sfnp|LBABGKM5}} No records or details of the model have been found by historians.{{sfnp|4TQ6TFHG|510}}{{sfnp|LBABGKM5}}{{sfnp|27LT6RUL|23}}
To avoid the troubles of the Jacobite Rebellion, Gregory and his family went back to the Netherlands in 1715. They returned to Aberdeen a few years later. Gregory then worked on writing a journal, which was never published. He died aged ninety-five in 1720.{{sfnp|LBABGKM5}}{{sfnp|27LT6RUL|25}}{{sfnp|2FSKVP32|377}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a *Records of the Family of Gregory* shows the year of his death as 1650;{{sfnp|XVGTBQJE|12}} papers at University of Aberdeen indicate 1652.{{sfnp|VW2IP8PV}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 4127
**Categories:** Inventor, Male, Physician, Scottish
---
### [William Mumler](https://engole.info/william-mumler/)
**Published:** January 26, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/William_Mumler.png[/pimage]American amateur photographer, the first to make a lucrative business out of spirit photography.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/William_Mumler.png)William H. Mumler, from an engraving in *Harper’s Magazine*, May 1869
Wikimedia Commons
William Mumler (1832 – 16 May 1884) was a Boston jeweller and keen photographer, and the first to make a lucrative business out of [spirit photography](https://engole.info/spirit-photography).{{sfnp|6PFZ8VIF}}{{sfnp|T7ZXY3TK|loc=514}}{{sfnp|XAIIZFZD}} Despite being recognised as fakes, his photographs were widely circulated during the last quarter of the 19th century, marketed as objects of belief and visual curiosities, within and beyond the [spiritualist](https://engole.info/spiritualism) movement.{{sfnp|RLF6P8C6|147-149}}
Mumler’s first spirit photograph was apparently accidental, a self-portrait which, when developed, revealed the ghostly figure of a young girl floating by his side. He initially assumed that it had been a double exposure, but after his friends pointed out that the figure bore an uncanny resemblance to his dead cousin, and the story was picked up by the press, Mumler saw a business opportunity.{{sfnp|YW5PFP34|60}}
Mumler set himself up as full-time spirit photographer, continuing to work in Boston before moving to New York City, where his work was analysed by numerous photography experts, none of whom could find any evidence of fraud.{{sfnp|2RQTGSTS|22}} Spirit photography was a lucrative business thanks to the enormous death tolls that resulted from the American Civil War (1861–1865), during which an estimated 750,000 soldiers were killed,{{sfnp|CGQMQGFK}} as bereaved families attempted to communicate with the spirits of their lost relatives.{{sfnp|84H9BG57}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Barnum_lincoln.jpg/960px-Barnum_lincoln.jpg)P.T. Barnum hired Abraham Bogardus to fabricate this photo of him and the “ghost” of Abraham Lincoln, used as evidence in the court case.
Wikimedia Commons
Unfortunately for Mumler, some of his customers began to notice that the supposed spirits in their photographs looked remarkably similar to people who had attended his earlier sittings. Mumler was even accused of breaking into houses to steal photographs of the deceased, to incorporate into his spirit photographs.{{sfnp|YW5PFP34|60}} Critics of Mumler’s work included the showman P. T. Barnum, who claimed that Mumler was taking advantage of people whose judgment was clouded by grief. Barnum was just one of many in a chorus of voices accusing Mumler of staging ghosts of people who were in reality still alive.{{sfnp|2RQTGSTS|22}}
As the evidence began to accumulate, Mumler was charged with fraud and prosecuted in 1869. Although acquitted, he never recovered financially from the cost of defending the case, and the damage to his reputation, dying in poverty in 1884.{{sfnp|YW5PFP34|60}}
## Gallery
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Mumler_Dow.webp)
Moses A. Dow with the “ghost” of his assistant
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Mumler_unidentified.webp)
Unidentified subject with two “ghosts”
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Mumler_Conant.webp)
Fanny Conant with the “ghost” of her dead brother
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Mumler_French.webp)
Mrs French with the “ghost” of a dead child
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Mumler_Lincoln.webp)
Mary Todd Lincoln with the “ghost” of her dead husband
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 28341
**Categories:** Photographer
---
### [Queen Eleanor (painting)](https://engole.info/queen-eleanor-painting/)
**Published:** October 26, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a5/Anthony_Frederick_Sandys_-_Queen_Eleanor.JPG/960px-Anthony_Frederick_Sandys_-_Queen_Eleanor.JPG[/pimage]1858 oil painting by Frederick Sandys, depicting Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine on her way to kill her husband's mistress.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a5/Anthony_Frederick_Sandys_-_Queen_Eleanor.JPG/960px-Anthony_Frederick_Sandys_-_Queen_Eleanor.JPG)Oil on canvas
16 cm × 31 cm (24 in × 12 in
Wikimedia Commons
*Queen Eleanor* is an 1858 oil painting by the [Pre-Raphaelite](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood) painter Frederick Sandys, portraying Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, the wife of King Henry II. It was exhibited at the Spring Exhibition of the British Institution in 1860, and is one of Sandys’ first depictions of the “dark, dangerous woman” popular in late 19th-century art and literature.{{sfnp|F7Z9X9ZL}}{{sfnp|A7R4NWTC|164-166}}
The queen is reputed to have murdered Henry’s mistress, Rosamund de Clifford, known as the Fair Rosamund. Henry is said to have concealed his affair from Eleanor by conducting it within the innermost recesses of a complicated maze. Eleanor is depicted holding a poisoned cup and a dagger. The red cord in her left hand allowed her to find her way through the maze to Rosamund’s bower.{{sfnp|PFW2CNAC}}
The picture is now in the collection of the National Museum Cardiff, which purchased it from the Christopher Wood Gallery in 1981.{{sfnp|MTZB28HK}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 28055
**Categories:** Frederick Sandys, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
---
### [The Case of Lady Camber](https://engole.info/the-case-of-lady-camber/)
**Published:** December 15, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Play by the English writer Horace Annesley Vachell, first performed in 1915.
**Content:**
*The Case of Lady Camber* is a play by the English writer Horace Annesley Vachell, first performed in 1915. The play was a success in the West End, enjoying a lengthy run at the Savoy Theatre,{{sfnp|7HNH7A9Q|152}} but was not as well received in New York when it opened at the Lyceum Theatre in 1917.{{sfnp|BZ3P3ERZ|60}}
Following the death in mysterious circumstances of the retired music-hall star Lady Camber, her young nurse Esther Yorke is suspected of poisoning her so she can marry Lord Camber.
## Film adaptations
- *The Case of Lady Camber* (1920), a silent film directed by Walter West{{sfnp|BKWJWPQY}}
- *Lord Camber’s Ladies* (1933), directed by Benn W. Levy and produced by Alfred Hitchcock{{sfnp|P9CXFILX}}
- *The Story of Shirley Yorke* (1948), directed by Maclean Rogers{{sfnp|AWM8WDGX}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25038
**Categories:** Play
---
### [Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act 1907](https://engole.info/deceased-wifes-sisters-marriage-act-1907/)
**Published:** March 6, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281901%E2%80%931952%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281901%E2%80%931952%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of Parliament making it legal for the first time in the United Kingdom for a man to marry his dead wife's sister.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281901%E2%80%931952%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281901%E2%80%931952%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act 1907 (7 Edw. 7 c. 47) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that allowed a man to marry his dead wife’s sister, until then forbidden.
Until 1857 the law of marriage was administered by the ecclesiastical courts, according to the canon law, although secular courts had the ultimate authority.{{sfnp|WRLALH3W}} In particular, English law continued to prohibit marriages within the degrees of consanguinity – relationship by blood – following the rules laid out in the Old Testament Book of Leviticus, to guard against the dangers of incest.\[a\]Incest did not become a criminal offence in England and Wales until the passage of the [Punishment of Incest Act 1908](https://engole.info/punishment-of-incest-act-1908).{{sfnp|KIQ56HZU}} But the prohibited degree of kinship for marriage also included relatives by marriage, perhaps reflecting an analogous taboo, or the idea that a married couple were “one flesh”.{{sfnp|WRLALH3W}}
But the legal position was confusing, as there was nothing to prevent a man from marrying his deceased wife’s sister, except that such a marriage could be declared void by an ecclesiastical court if any concerned party objected, thus potentially rendering any offspring of that union retrospectively to be bastards.{{sfnp|WRLALH3W}} The Marriage Act of 1835 attempted to clarify the position by introducing an absolute ban on marriage between a widower and his deceased wife’s sister, but such a union was still recognised in the United Kingdom if it took place abroad, in a country where such a marriage was lawful. For example, the English painters [William Holman Hunt](https://engole.info/william-holman-hunt) and John Collier married the sisters of their deceased wives, in Switzerland in 1875 and Norway in 1889 respectively.{{sfnp|KSLIBNWN}}{{sfnp|XSM8EYAT}}
Campaigns to allow widowers to marry their sisters-in-law became the subject of particular agitation from the 1860s onwards. In the Gilbert and Sullivan opera *Iolanthe* (1882), the Queen of the Fairies sings “He shall prick that annual blister, marriage with deceased wife’s sister”.{{sfnp|7RZH3ENI|406-408}} Towards the end of Thomas Hardy’s novel *Tess of the d’Urbervilles* (1891), Tess suggests that after her death, her husband Angel should marry her younger sister Liza-Lu, which would have been illegal at the time.{{sfnp|YLL4HUGH}}
The Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act was repealed by the Marriage Act 1949, which redefined the prohibited degrees of relationship.{{sfnp|R7AVTGNN}}
## See also
- [Punishment of Incest Act 1908](https://engole.info/punishment-of-incest-act-1908/)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Incest did not become a criminal offence in England and Wales until the passage of the [Punishment of Incest Act 1908](https://engole.info/punishment-of-incest-act-1908).{{sfnp|KIQ56HZU}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25185
**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Denby Grange](https://engole.info/denby-grange/)
**Published:** July 7, 2023
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Denby-Grange.jpg[/pimage]Estate and mansion in Whitley Upper, between Huddersfield and Wakefield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, seat of the lister Kaye baronets.
**Content:**
Denby Grange was a {{convert|1000|acre|adj=on}} estate and mansion in [Whitley Upper](https://engole.info/whitley-upper/), between Huddersfield and Wakefield in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the seat of the Lister Kaye baronets; members of the Kaye, subsequently Lister Kaye family, were living at Denby Grange before 1700.{{sfnp|JPZNZHEW|78}} The title became extinct with the death of the 6th Baronet, but the title was renewed in 1812 for Sir John Lister Kaye, Baronet, of Denby Grange.{{sfnp|JPZNZHEW|78}}
The house, described as having “a central hall with five reception rooms and 21 bedrooms”, remained in the family until 1948, when the estate was sold by Sir Kenelm Arthur Lister-Kaye along with the house, which was in a dilapidated condition, having been stripped of its fixtures and fittings. Job Earnshaw Bros bought the estate for its woodland. The house was again sold in 1949, and demolished.{{sfnp|TJST8HKA}}
The Lister Kayes also owned the nearby [Caphouse Colliery](https://engole.info/caphouse-colliery).{{sfnp|QKH846BP}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25456
**Categories:** Mansion house
---
### [Whole trial and examination of Mrs. Mary Hicks and her daughter Elizabeth](https://engole.info/whole-trial-and-examination-of-mrs-mary-hicks-and-her-daughter-elizabeth/)
**Published:** January 11, 2021
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** Pamphlet purporting to tell the story of Mary Hicks, executed for witchcraft in 1716.
**Content:**
*Whole trial and examination of Mrs. Mary Hicks and her daughter Elizabeth* is a pamphlet printed in London during 1716. Labelled by historians and academics as a piece of journalistic invention, it tells the story of Mary Hicks, sometimes spelt as Hickes, and her nine-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, claiming that they were tried and convicted of witchcraft at Huntingdon Assizes and executed on 28 July 1716.
The writing style of the anonymous pamphleteer resembles that of two earlier tracts printed in 1705, both with fabricated narratives. These were signed by Ralph Davis, purportedly covering the trial of two witches, Elinor Shaw and Mary Phillips, at Northamptonshire.
## Narrative
Eighteenth-century authors of witchcraft tracts habitually began by attempting to thwart any disbelief or doubts readers may hold about the existence of the Devil and the black arts. This pamphlet is no exception, beginning by stating: “it hath been a great Controversie among Learned Men, about the possibility of Men and Women being Wizards Witches or no, some affirming such they may be, and others to the contrary”.{{sfnp|3X3SUA3W|41}}\[a\]Millar reproduces the quote from page 2 of the pamphlet.{{sfnp|3X3SUA3W|46}}
The narrative goes on to describe Mary Hicks and her nine-year-old daughter Elizabeth being accused by Mary’s husband – a farmer who was the father of the child – of selling their souls to the Devil.{{sfnp|PIX7ZSVL|461}} The accusations arose after he became suspicious of his daughter’s actions on a trip to Ipswich. According to her father, after she had noticed a small sailing craft out at sea, she began stirring a container of water to generate a storm in an attempt to sink the vessel. He was convinced if he had not stopped her, the boat would have sunk. Later, as they were heading home, Elizabeth declared she could “consume all this corn in the twinkling of an eye” when they travelled alongside a well grown cornfield. He challenged her to demonstrate that she was capable of performing her claim; he then witnessed the field full of stubble. When Hicks asked Elizabeth how she had acquired such magical skills, she asserted that she had been taught the methods by her mother.{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|379}}
According to the pamphlet, other evil deeds committed by the mother and daughter duo included inducing villagers to vomit pins, causing the death of neighbours by magic and destroying crops. They also conjured up a storm by removing their stockings.{{sfnp|PIX7ZSVL|461}}{{sfnp|6TE59V4J|418}}
## Comparison to other pamphlets fabricating witch trials
The full title is *The whole trial and examination of Mrs. Mary Hicks and her daughter Elizabeth, but of nine years of age, who were Condemned the last Assizes held at Huntingdon for Witch-craft, and there Executed on Saturday, the 28th of July 1716 . . . the like never heard before; their Behaviour with several Divines who came to converse with ’em whilst under their sentence of Death; and last Dying Speeches and Confession at the place of execution.* The author is unknown but the writing style resembles two earlier pamphlets from 1705. These were signed by Ralph Davis, purportedly covering the trial of two witches, Elinor Shaw and Mary Phillips, at Northamptonshire; like the Mary Hicks trial, both are fabrications. Printed in London during 1716, a copy of the Hicks tract is held at the Bodleian Library. Historian Wallace Notestein considers the same pamphleteer penned an earlier contrived tract dated 1700 narrating a tale supposedly recounting the details of a case of four witches condemned at Worcester.{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|375-376}}
Phrases and terminology not commonly found in authentic witchcraft pamphlets are used within the fabricated title pages and narratives. The Hicks report of 1716, the tract of 1700 and the second publication of 1705 include “verbal resemblances” which are “nothing less than remarkable.”{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|376}}
## Modern interpretations
Modern-day historians and academics, such as Owen Davies and Phyllis J. Guskin, state categorically that [Jane Wenham](https://engole.info/jane-wenham/) was the last person to be condemned for witchcraft in an English court when she was found guilty at Hertford in 1712.{{sfnp|BKVWFWPS}}{{sfnp|FMNJS8QM|48}}
For more than a century, specialist witchcraft researchers have concluded the pamphlet to be a fabrication stating the story of Mary Hicks and her daughter Elizabeth is a work of fiction. These include Notestein and Cecil L’Estrange Ewen, who according to Guskin undertook “the most detailed and accurate modern accounts” of Jane Wenham’s case. The evidence collated by Notestein concerning the narrative in the pamphlet led him to consider it “not substantiated”.{{sfnp|FMNJS8QM|49}} L’Estrange Ewen writing in *Witchcraft and Demonism* states: “1716. Huntingdonshire. A pamphlet generally regarded as spurious is entitled The Whole Trial and examination of Mrs Mary Hicks and her daughter ……” He goes on to add: “The convictions and executions, which would have led to an enormous outcry in the country, may be ruled out as journalistic invention.”{{sfnp|PIX7ZSVL|461}} Montague Summers considered it as “almost certainly spurious”.{{sfnp|GBSPGHZ8|337}} More recently, writing in 2021, the historian Owen Davies describes it as “likely bogus”.{{sfnp|XDDKRGE2|94}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Millar reproduces the quote from page 2 of the pamphlet.{{sfnp|3X3SUA3W|46}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23376
**Categories:** English, Pamphlet, Witchcraft
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Jinney Bingham, Mother Damnable](https://engole.info/jinney-bingham-mother-damnable/)
**Published:** June 21, 2020
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Portrait_of_the_Mother_Damnable%2C_a_witch_Wellcome_L0000661.jpg[/pimage]17th-century woman also known as Mother Red Cap and the Shrew of Kentish Town, suspected of being a witch, a murderer and poisoner.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Portrait_of_the_Mother_Damnable%2C_a_witch_Wellcome_L0000661.jpg)Portrait of Mother Damnable
Wikimedia Commons
Jinney, Jinny or Jennie Bingham (c. 1600 – c. 1680) was a fortune teller and healer suspected of witchcraft. She was also known as Mother Damnable, Mother Red Cap and the Shrew of Kentish Town.
The first of Jinney’s four male lovers or companions got her pregnant when she was sixteen, and was hanged for sheep rustling. Two others died in mysterious circumstances, and another simply vanished. Both of Jinney’s parents were convicted of witchcraft and hanged, and locals believed that she had inherited their powers, considering her to be a witch.
Jinney faced a charge of murder, but was acquitted; later she avoided being tried for causing death by poisoning, for lack of evidence.
Modern-day academics, folklorists and historians disagree about whether Jinney was a real person, semi-mythical, or a composite narrative based on tales of several individuals.
## Early life
Firm details of Jinney’s\[a\]sometimes her first name is spelt as Jinny{{sfnp|XIKNL58M|623}} or Jennie.{{sfnp|6Z2A22J2|200}} date and year of birth have not been established; born in around 1600, most likely at the beginning of that century, she was the only child of Jacob Bingham, an English brick maker and his Scottish wife.{{sfnp|NBZF3UXV|8-9}} Jinney’s father plied his trade in the area of Kentish Town before joining the army; during his military service he was posted to Scotland, where he met and married a pedlar’s daughter, Jinney’s mother.{{sfnp|ZIG5RQ2Y|235}}
When Jacob completed his army enlistment, he returned to his former trade in his local area. As a youngster Jinney accompanied her parents on occasional trips around the country when her father was peddling his merchandise further afield.{{sfnp|ZIG5RQ2Y|235}}
## Lovers and witchcraft
Jinney became pregnant at sixteen years of age by her boyfriend, “Gypsy” George Coulter.{{sfnp|ZIG5RQ2Y|235}} The couple lived in a cottage constructed by her father on a piece of rough land near Kentish Town.{{sfnp|NBZF3UXV|10}} Her dalliance with George was short lived;{{sfnp|2QVBAY9Z|186}} he was arrested and charged with stealing sheep from land at Holloway. After being declared guilty at an Old Bailey trial, he was hanged at Tyburn.{{sfnp|ZIG5RQ2Y|235}} Following the demise of Gypsy George, she had an affair with a drunkard named Darby. The relationship was tempestuous, punctuated with violence and arguments. Jinney sought advice from her mother after being subjected to an extremely violent confrontation with Darby. The drunk then promptly disappeared from her life; no one knew what happened to him or where he went,{{sfnp|ZIG5RQ2Y|235-236}} but his abrupt absence was never officially scrutinised.{{sfnp|NBZF3UXV|10}}
Shortly after Darby vanished, both Jinney’s parents were brought before the courts charged with witchcraft and causing the death of a young girl by magic. They were found guilty and executed by hanging.{{sfnp|ZIG5RQ2Y|236}} Deprived of the company of her parents, Jinney soon found consolation by taking another lover, a man named Pitcher. Like his predecessor, Pitcher suddenly disappeared, but the remains of his charred body were eventually found secreted inside an oven.{{sfnp|2QVBAY9Z|187}}
Murder charges were brought against Jinney, but after testimony was given stating Pitcher frequently sought refuge in the oven to escape the onslaught of Jinney’s ever-increasing nastiness and foul temper, she was acquitted.{{sfnp|ZIG5RQ2Y|236}} It was around this time her vicious tongue gained her the soubriquet “The shrew of Kentish Town”.{{sfnp|EWJPURGY}} She was also nicknamed “Mother Red Cap” and “Mother Damnable”.{{sfnp|ZIG5RQ2Y|235}}
After Pitcher’s disappearance, Jinney was alone for a long time. Locals were afraid of her and she became a recluse, only venturing from her home at night or when others were not around. No one knew how she supported herself.{{sfnp|ZIG5RQ2Y|236}}
Jinney was particularly active around the 1640s,{{sfnp|XIKNL58M|628}} when she was approached by a wealthy man seeking refuge during the English Civil War; he begged her to provide him with shelter and lodgings in her house to enable him to escape from his pursuers. His funds were extensive and he rewarded her handsomely; he stayed with her for many years.{{sfnp|ZIG5RQ2Y|236}} Moll Cutpurse, a notorious thief and highway robber, occasionally lodged with them during the Cromwellian era too.{{sfnp|H8453PIZ|20}}\[b\]Moll Cutpurse was the nickname given to Mary Frith (1584×9–1659).{{sfnp|ZD8EDTA8}}
Locals had long held the firm belief that Jinney, like her parents before her, was skilled in the black arts. She was frequently heard having vitriolic arguments with her companion, the unnamed fugitive benefactor. When he died, villagers were convinced she had brought about his death by poison. The claims were investigated but no evidence was detected at the inquest.{{sfnp|ZIG5RQ2Y|236}}
## Later life and death
Alone except for the company of her reputedly vicious [black cat](https://engole.info/black-cat/), Jinney occupied herself by telling fortunes and offering remedies or cures for ailments. Rumours that Jinney was a witch circulated for the rest of her life; the villagers blamed her for any misfortune or mishaps that they endured. They would gather around her cottage, loudly and sometimes violently, berating her; on any such occasions, she would respond by opening her window, leaning out to screech back at the crowd. If the unruly mob caught sight of her cat on the ledge beside her, which they considered to be her [familiar](https://engole.info/witchs-familiar/), they would quickly retreat.{{sfnp|2QVBAY9Z|187-188}}
At this stage of her life Jinney was a sullen and “ill-favoured creature”.{{sfnp|ZIG5RQ2Y|237}} Her usual attire was a large red cap that concealed her bald head yet her black eyebrows were thick, heavy and unkempt; she favoured a patched dark grey shawl that was normally wrapped around her shoulders. Unless observers were standing close to her, the patches on it “resembled flying bats.”{{sfnp|MEJ9IXCE|12}} Her wide mouth, set under a large nose, had flecks of dribble bubbling at each corner; the deep lines on her leathery cheeks matched those adorning her high forehead.{{sfnp|MEJ9IXCE|12}}
Her precise date of death is unknown although it is likely to be around 1680.{{sfnp|NBZF3UXV|8-9}} Jinney’s stiff body was found beside her fireplace; a teapot containing a herbal brew was on the fire. Her cat was still alive but two hours after it was given some of the contents of the teapot, its hair fell out then it died.{{sfnp|ZIG5RQ2Y|237}}
## Modern interpretations
In 1870 Samuel Palmer included what has become the customary version of the story of Mother Red Cap in his *History of St Pancras*. He supplies the name of Jinney Bingham but, other than a sentence around the midpoint of his narrative when he indicates his account is given in an old pamphlet, no further detail regarding his sources are given.{{sfnp|KCQZ5SAF|198}} An earlier tract, published in 1843,\[c\]Registered at Stationers’ Hall and itemised as received by the Bodleian Library during 1843 in its 1844 catalogue giving it the title *Mother Red Cap* under the categorisation of “Tales”.{{sfnp|RB7S9A7L|80}} claims to be a copy of correspondence to Charles Firebrace.{{sfnp|NBZF3UXV|11}} Sent by his associate Henry Foxhall from his Whitehall Chambers, the letter, dated 13 September 1666,{{sfnp|MEJ9IXCE|8}} reports details of an encounter with Mother Red Cap.{{sfnp|NBZF3UXV|11}}
Almost a century before Palmer’s publication, James Caulfield recorded in 1794 that Mother Red Cap’s real name was unspecified.{{sfnp|ZVSNBPKE|3}} He was the first to label her as an innkeeper,{{sfnp|KIG2Z8D4}} although if that was correct the likelihood is she would have hosted a far less reputable facility, an establishment more akin to a grog shop.{{sfnp|ZVSNBPKE|4}} Evidence exists the nickname Mother Red Cap was coined before the seventeenth-century; in 1595 a jestbook was produced incorporating the name in its title, and a play titled with the sobriquet was performed in 1597.{{sfnp|KCQZ5SAF|199}}\[d\]Academic Diane Purkiss suggests the play may be a reflection of the recent trial of [Alice Gooderidge](https://engole.info/alice-gooderidge/),{{sfnp|ZVSNBPKE|3}} who was found guilty of the bewitchment of Thomas Darling in 1596.{{sfnp|2L69N6KX|6}} During the 1600s it was a generic term used to describe an “ale-wife” or a female innkeeper; its conventional usage changed to a jocular reference to a witch by the mid nineteenth-century.{{sfnp|6Z2A22J2|199}} The phrase Mother Damnable was introduced later with a spate of examples in the middle of the seventeenth-century; a ballad in 1656 and a broadside from 1676 both use the terminology in their titles.{{sfnp|KCQZ5SAF|199}}
Museum curator and author Mark Aston\[e\]Mark Aston, author of *Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Hampstead, Holburn and St Pancras*, Islington Museum and Local History Centre Manager.{{sfnp|34AFPSXZ|53, 59-60}} poses the question “Did she \[Jinney\] indeed exist at all as thus described?”{{sfnp|NBZF3UXV|13}} Various schools of thought are presented by academics, folklorists and historians: folklorists such as Steve Roud and Jacqueline Simpson consider the narrative is a mixture about two or more – likely fictional – individuals.{{sfnp|KCQZ5SAF|199}}{{sfnp|6Z2A22J2|199}} Historian John Callow adopts a similar stance, pointing out that Mother Redcap was probably a “composite figure”{{sfnp|ZVSNBPKE|3}} while academic Kirilka Stavreva gives the designation of “semi mythical”.{{sfnp|GEF8FK9M|xvii}} Aston describes the 1843 tract as “Perhaps the most amusing but purely fictitious episode to emerge from Victorian desire to resurrect and re-establish the Mother Red Cap tale”.{{sfnp|NBZF3UXV|13}} Alicia Meyer from the University of Pennsylvania contributed an entry on Jinney in *A Biographical Encyclopedia of Early Modern Englishwomen, Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts, 1500–1650* under the classification of ‘Witches’;{{sfnp|XIKNL58M|628-631}} the book is a compilation of more than eight hundred entries giving short profiles of women who lived in the early modern period.{{sfnp|ZFG8CA7N|104}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a sometimes her first name is spelt as Jinny{{sfnp|XIKNL58M|623}} or Jennie.{{sfnp|6Z2A22J2|200}} b Moll Cutpurse was the nickname given to Mary Frith (1584×9–1659).{{sfnp|ZD8EDTA8}} c Registered at Stationers’ Hall and itemised as received by the Bodleian Library during 1843 in its 1844 catalogue giving it the title *Mother Red Cap* under the categorisation of “Tales”.{{sfnp|RB7S9A7L|80}} d Academic Diane Purkiss suggests the play may be a reflection of the recent trial of [Alice Gooderidge](https://engole.info/alice-gooderidge/),{{sfnp|ZVSNBPKE|3}} who was found guilty of the bewitchment of Thomas Darling in 1596.{{sfnp|2L69N6KX|6}} e Mark Aston, author of *Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Hampstead, Holburn and St Pancras*, Islington Museum and Local History Centre Manager.{{sfnp|34AFPSXZ|53, 59-60}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22776
**Categories:** English, Female, Witch
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball](https://engole.info/preparing-for-a-fancy-dress-ball/)
**Published:** April 20, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Preparing_for_a_Fancy_Dress_Ball_by_William_Etty_YORAG_2009_6.jpg/960px-Preparing_for_a_Fancy_Dress_Ball_by_William_Etty_YORAG_2009_6.jpg[/pimage]Oil on canvas painting by the English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1853.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Preparing_for_a_Fancy_Dress_Ball_by_William_Etty_YORAG_2009_6.jpg/960px-Preparing_for_a_Fancy_Dress_Ball_by_William_Etty_YORAG_2009_6.jpg)*Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball*
Wikimedia Commons
*Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball*, also known as *The Misses Williams-Wynn*,{{sfnp|YSYT8XSI|170}} is a 173 by 150 cm (68 by 59 in) oil on canvas by the English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1835 and currently in the York Art Gallery. Although Etty was then known almost exclusively for history paintings featuring nude figures, he was commissioned in 1833 by the Welsh Conservative politician Charles Watkin Williams-Wynn to paint a portrait of two of his daughters. *Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball* shows Williams-Wynn’s daughters, Charlotte and Mary, in lavish Italian-style costume: Charlotte, the eldest, is shown standing, helping the seated Mary decorate her hair with a ribbon and a rose. Etty put a good deal of effort into the piece, which took him much longer than usual to finish.
The painting was completed for and exhibited at the 1835 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. It was generally well received, even by critics usually hostile to Etty and his work. *Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball* demonstrated that Etty was capable of producing high-quality work and deserving of patronage by the English elite, and its success led to further commissions. The painting remained in the collection of Mary Williams-Wynn’s descendants, and other than an 1849 retrospective exhibition, was not shown publicly for 160 years. A private collector purchased the piece from the Williams-Wynn family in 1982, with whom it remained until its 2009 acquisition by the York Art Gallery. It now forms part of a major collection of Etty’s work there.
## Background
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Etty_Britomart_1833.jpg/960px-Etty_Britomart_1833.jpg)*Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret*, 1833. By the early 1830s Etty had become notorious for his use of literary and mythological scenes as a pretext for the depiction of nudity.
Wikimedia Commons
William Etty, the son of a York baker and miller,{{sfnp|3LT4CEXM}} began as an apprentice printer in Hull.{{sfnp|M54EBHPW|23}} On completing his seven-year apprenticeship he moved to London at the age of 18, with the intention of becoming a history painter in the tradition of the Old Masters.{{sfnp|9XSB7HSD|86}} Strongly influenced by the works of Titian and Rubens, he submitted paintings to the Royal Academy of Arts and the British Institution, all of which were either rejected or received scant attention when exhibited.{{sfnp|Z86YLX8Q|31}}
In 1821 the Royal Academy accepted and exhibited one of Etty’s works, *The Arrival of Cleopatra in Cilicia* (also known as *The Triumph of Cleopatra*).{{sfnp|Z86YLX8Q|31}} The painting was extremely well received, and many of Etty’s fellow artists greatly admired him. He was elected a full Royal Academician in 1828, ahead of John Constable.{{sfnp|HI8DH692|118}} He became well respected for his ability to capture flesh tones accurately in painting and for his fascination with contrasts in skin tones.{{sfnp|YYKL2J5B|198}} Between 1820 and 1829 Etty exhibited 15 paintings, of which 14 depicted nude figures.{{sfnp|Z86YLX8Q|32}}
Some nudes by foreign artists were held in private English collections, but Britain had no tradition of nude painting, and the display and distribution of nude material to the public had been suppressed since the 1787 Proclamation for the Discouragement of Vice.{{sfnp|RL2BZFYI|53}} Etty was the first British artist to specialise in the nude, and the reaction of the lower classes to these paintings caused concern throughout the 19th century.{{sfnp|RL2BZFYI|55}} Many critics condemned his repeated depictions of female nudity as indecent, although his portraits of male nudes were generally well received.{{sfnp|NMY4M6CQ|54}} (Etty’s male nude portraits were primarily of mythological heroes and classical combat, genres in which the depiction of male nudity was considered acceptable in England.){{sfnp|Z86YLX8Q|32-33}} From 1832 onwards, needled by repeated attacks from the press, Etty remained a prominent painter of nudes, but strove to reflect moral lessons in his work.{{sfnp|Z86YLX8Q|42}}
### Elizabeth Potts
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/Portrait_of_Miss_Elizabeth_Potts_by_William_Etty_YORAG_1311.jpg/960px-Portrait_of_Miss_Elizabeth_Potts_by_William_Etty_YORAG_1311.jpg)*Elizabeth Potts*, 1834
Wikimedia Commons
Although he was almost exclusively known at the time for painting nudes, Etty was commissioned in 1833 by Thomas Potts of Clapham Common to paint a portrait of his daughter Elizabeth.{{sfnp|Q9E3MQEE|195}}\[a\]Thomas Potts was a friend of Etty’s cousin Thomas Bodley. He was the early patron of William Edward Frost, who became one of Etty’s most devoted imitators.{{sfnp|YSYT8XSI|69}} Potts paid him 65 guineas (£68.25; about £6,500 in 2021 terms using the retail price index{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}) for the piece. Etty exhibited *Elizabeth Potts* at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1834 under the title of *A Portrait*, as the subject’s mother requested her identity be kept secret.{{sfnp|YSYT8XSI|169}} As he had been too ill to paint for much of the period preceding the exhibition he only exhibited one other picture there, *The Cardinal*.{{sfnp|XIBYCS3B|24}}
*Elizabeth Potts* was poorly received by critics. Etty’s admirers were angered by his apparent abandonment of history painting for the then poorly regarded field of portrait painting, while Etty’s critics felt he had demonstrated that he did not have the technical skills to produce high quality portraits, and was simply trying to use his name to make money in the more lucrative field of portraiture.{{sfnp|DZEMBY6N|236}} History paintings were generally sold at exhibition for no less than the asking price, and as a consequence often remained unsold. Portraits were commissioned by the subject or their family, providing a guaranteed source of income to the artist.{{sfnp|DZEMBY6N|237}} History painting was much more highly regarded as an art form; portrait painting was seen as reflecting nature whereas history painting involved more creativity and also gave the artist the opportunity to tell moral lessons.{{sfnp|DZEMBY6N|228}}
Etty retained close connections with York throughout his life.{{sfnp|Q9E3MQEE|192}} After Jonathan Martin’s arson attack on York Minster in 1829 caused major damage, Etty was prominent in the effort to restore the building to its original state.{{sfnp|Q9E3MQEE|197}} One of his colleagues in that campaign was Welsh politician Charles Watkin Williams-Wynn, the long-serving Conservative Member of Parliament for Montgomeryshire.{{sfnp|Q9E3MQEE|194}}
## Composition
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Etty_Venice_1831.jpg)The costumes in Etty’s *Window in Venice, During a Fiesta* (1831) closely resemble those in *Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball*.
Wikimedia Commons
In late 1833 Etty was commissioned by Williams-Wynn to paint a portrait of two of his seven children.{{sfnp|DZEMBY6N|239}}{{sfnp|7X6DVQD3}} *Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball* depicts Williams-Wynn’s daughters Charlotte and Mary, dressing up in lavish Italian-style costume.{{sfnp|YSYT8XSI|74}} Although their dress is generally described as Italian, Dennis Farr’s 1958 biography of Etty speculates that elements of the costumes were possibly intended to be Russian, based on Charlotte’s headdress.{{sfnp|YSYT8XSI|170}} The Italian-style clothing likely represents the high level of interest in Italian culture in early 19th-century England. The popularity of the style of music now known as *bel canto*, widely associated with Italy, was at its peak; likewise, the Italian plays of William Shakespeare had become extremely popular in the period.{{sfnp|DZEMBY6N|239}} Etty, who had spent a good deal of time in Venice and other Italian cities, would have been very familiar with Italian clothing designs,{{sfnp|Q9E3MQEE|99-105}} and the costumes worn by the Williams-Wynn sisters closely resemble those of women in Venetian scenes painted by Etty, such as 1831’s *Window in Venice, During a Fiesta*.{{sfnp|DZEMBY6N|239}} As the art historian Leonard Robinson points out, despite the title the sisters are not in fact shown preparing for the ball, but are fully dressed.{{sfnp|Q9E3MQEE|195}} The style of the work reflects that of Thomas Lawrence, who had been Etty’s teacher in 1807–1808,{{sfnp|QDXSH86K|157}} as well as that of Joshua Reynolds, of whom Etty was a great admirer and of whose works Etty had often made copies as an exercise.{{sfnp|TG7ZY4J7|68}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Etty_The_Lute_Player.jpg/960px-Etty_The_Lute_Player.jpg)The composition of *Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball* reflects that of Etty’s *The Lute Player*, exhibited in early 1835.
Wikimedia Commons
The sisters are depicted in three-quarter length portrait;{{sfnp|YSYT8XSI|74}} Charlotte, the eldest, stands and helps Mary, who is seated, to decorate her hair with a ribbon and a rose.{{sfnp|DZEMBY6N|239}} Their arrangement is similar to the positioning of the central female figures of Etty’s *The Lute Player*, painted around the same time, and Farr views *Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball* as a direct continuation of the theme of that work.{{sfnp|YSYT8XSI|74}}\[b\]*The Lute Player* was exhibited at the British Institution in early 1835 alongside Turner’s *The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons*, and was somewhat overshadowed by it. *The Spectator* commented that in comparison to the vibrant colours of the Turner, *The Lute Player* looked “as if mud had been the vehicle of the pigment”.{{sfnp|IC6E8MEY}}
The painting’s depiction of preparation for a fancy dress party would have been familiar to Etty’s generally wealthy audience. In both London and the English provincial cities, such balls and parties had become extremely fashionable by the 1830s. Although conservative in comparison to some costumes worn at contemporary fancy dress events, the richness of the design of the sisters’ dress indicates the high status of the Williams-Wynn family in fashionable circles.{{sfnp|DZEMBY6N|239}}
*Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball* took Etty longer to complete than his more usual work, and he apologised to the sisters for his “inability to render \[repeated sittings for him\] less tedious”. He justified the slowness of the process by saying that he was not simply trying to capture the Williams-Wynn sisters’ appearance, but “to make a fine work of Art as well as a resemblance”.{{sfnp|DZEMBY6N|239}}
I can only regret I had it not in my power to render it less tedious. A mere “likeness” may be manufactured in a few sittings. If it is desirable to make a fine work of Art as well as a resemblance, it becomes another affair. This has led me to extend my attention to it, beyond the limits usually assigned to Portrait. I am sure, if rightly viewed, the time will not be deemed uselessly employed. “What is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.”—”Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might!”
— From a letter Etty wrote to the Williams-Wynn family on the occasion of the sisters’ last sitting for their portrait.{{sfnp|M54EBHPW|360-361}}
## Reception
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/William_Etty_-_Venus_and_Her_Satellites.jpg/1280px-William_Etty_-_Venus_and_Her_Satellites.jpg)*Venus and her Satellites* was exhibited alongside *Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball* in 1835.
Wikimedia Commons
*Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball* was one of eight works exhibited by Etty at the 1835 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the others being *The Bridge of Sighs*, *Phaedria and Cymochles on the Idle Lake*, *Study from a Young Lady: A York Beauty, Study of the Head of a Youth*, *Venus and her Satellites*, *The Warrior Arming* and *Wood Nymphs Sleeping: Satyr Bringing Flowers*.{{sfnp|XIBYCS3B|24}} The art historian Sarah Burnage believes Etty’s choice of *Venus and her Satellites* may have been to draw attention to similarities with *Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball* and possibly to associate the Williams-Wynn sisters’ beauty with that of the legendary Venus.{{sfnp|DZEMBY6N|239}}
Even those reviewers usually hostile to Etty were generally positive about the work, and of Etty’s demonstration of his ability to paint a major piece depicting visual matter that did not depend on nudity or sensuality.{{sfnp|DZEMBY6N|239}} *Leigh Hunt’s London Journal* noted that they were “glad to see him turn his abilities into a channel acknowledgedly more profitable than others are apt to be, and we heartily wish him success in it”; the same reviewer did, however, savagely criticise *Venus and her Satellites* for its gratuitous nudity and a “total absence of soul”.{{sfnp|AYUAIQHZ}}
## Later history
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/Portrait_of_Mlle_Rachel_by_William_Etty_YORAG_988.jpg/960px-Portrait_of_Mlle_Rachel_by_William_Etty_YORAG_988.jpg)*Portrait of Mlle Rachel*, William Etty, c. 1841
Wikimedia Commons
Although Etty painted many private portraits of his friends and acquaintances, he produced very few publicly exhibited portraits, fewer than 30 of which were shown during his lifetime.{{sfnp|DZEMBY6N|229}} Portraiture was seen as a vulgar and generally worthless form of painting throughout much of the 19th century, and portrait painters continued to be disparaged as a greedy and unimaginative group who survived by feeding the vanity of the emerging middle class.{{sfnp|DZEMBY6N|228}} Other than *Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball*, critics generally disliked his portraits, preferring his history paintings in spite of reservations over his depictions of nudity.{{sfnp|DZEMBY6N|239}} *Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball* did however demonstrate that Etty could successfully paint works as commissions for the English elite, boosting his status and leading to further commissions.{{sfnp|DZEMBY6N|229}} Etty died in November 1849 and soon became unfashionable; by the late 19th century the value of all his paintings had fallen below their original prices.{{sfnp|Q9E3MQEE|440}} Charlotte Williams-Wynn became a noted letter writer and diarist;{{sfnp|DZEMBY6N|239}} Mary Williams-Wynn married Member of Parliament James Milnes Gaskell.{{sfnp|YSYT8XSI|170}} Charlotte and Mary both died in April 1869.{{sfnp|7X6DVQD3}}{{sfnp|VM6SWAWZ|202}}
*Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball* was exhibited in a major retrospective of Etty’s works at the Royal Society of Arts in June 1849, but after that was not exhibited publicly for 160 years.{{sfnp|YSYT8XSI|170}} Charlotte Williams-Wynn had died childless,{{sfnp|7X6DVQD3}} and the painting was inherited by the family of Mary Williams-Wynn.{{sfnp|YSYT8XSI|170}} In 1982 it was sold to a private collector by Mary Williams-Wynn’s great-granddaughter Mrs Lewis Motley. The York Art Gallery purchased the work in 2009 for £120,000 with the assistance of the Art Fund and the V&A/MLA Purchase Grant Fund,{{sfnp|7BHE8V76}} and it formed part of a major exhibition of Etty’s work at the York Art Gallery in 2011–2012.{{sfnp|DZEMBY6N|238}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Thomas Potts was a friend of Etty’s cousin Thomas Bodley. He was the early patron of William Edward Frost, who became one of Etty’s most devoted imitators.{{sfnp|YSYT8XSI|69}} b *The Lute Player* was exhibited at the British Institution in early 1835 alongside Turner’s *The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons*, and was somewhat overshadowed by it. *The Spectator* commented that in comparison to the vibrant colours of the Turner, *The Lute Player* looked “as if mud had been the vehicle of the pigment”.{{sfnp|IC6E8MEY}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23543
This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Preparing_for_a_Fancy_Dress_Ball#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Painting, Portrait
---
### [The Nightmare](https://engole.info/the-nightmare/)
**Published:** December 31, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/John_Henry_Fuseli_-_The_Nightmare.JPG[/pimage]Oil painting by Henry Fuseli, depicting an ape-like incubus crouching on a sleeping woman, first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1782.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/John_Henry_Fuseli_-_The_Nightmare.JPG)*The Nightmare*, 1781
oil on canvas,
101.6 × 127 cm
Wikimedia Commons
*The Nightmare* is an oil painting by the Swiss-born British Romantic artist [Henry Fuseli](https://engole.info/henry-fuseli), first exhibited in 1782. Like much of his work, it explores the relationship between sex and fear; the ape-like [incubus](https://engole.info/incubus/) crouched on the sleeping woman adds an element of demonic magic.
The painting seems to portray simultaneously a dreaming woman and the content of her nightmare. Its dreamlike and haunting eroticism made it a huge popular success following its exhibition at the 1782 Royal Academy of London.
Interpretations of the work vary, but it may be a personal portrayal of the erotic aspects of love lost, with Fuseli himself as the incubus.
## Description
*The Nightmare* simultaneously offers the image of a dream and a dream image, by portraying both the sleeping woman and her nightmarish vision.{{sfnp|RXSTXE2F|5-8}} The woman is draped over the end of a bed with her head hanging down, exposing her long neck. She is surmounted by an incubus that peers out at the viewer. The sleeper seems lifeless and, lying on her back, takes a position then believed to encourage nightmares.{{sfnp|F8YSGX8L|40-42}} Her brilliant coloration is set against the darker reds, yellows, and ochres of the background; Fuseli used a [chiaroscuro](https://engole.info/chiaroscuro/) effect to create strong contrasts between light and shade. The interior is contemporary and fashionable and contains a small table on which rests a mirror, phial, and book. The room is hung with red velvet curtains draped behind the bed. Emerging from a parting in the curtain is the head of a horse with bold, featureless eyes.
The work was probably inspired by the waking dreams experienced by Fuseli and his contemporaries, to whom these experiences were linked with folkloric beliefs such as the Germanic tales about demons and witches that possessed people who slept alone. In these stories, men were visited by horses or hags, giving rise to the terms “hag-riding” and “mare-riding”, and women were believed to engage in sex with the devil.{{sfnp|6Q3I85YJ}} But the etymology of the word “nightmare” does not relate to horses. Rather, the word is derived from *mara*, a Scandinavian mythological term referring to a spirit sent to torment or suffocate sleepers. The early meaning of “nightmare” included the sleeper’s experience of weight on the chest combined with sleep paralysis, dyspnea, or a feeling of dread.{{sfnp|MC6D9WZI}}
Fuseli had a broad knowledge of art history, allowing critics to propose sources for the painting’s elements in antique, classical, and Renaissance art. According to the art critic Nicholas Powell, the woman’s pose may derive from the Vatican’s *Sleeping Ariadne*, and the style of the [incubus](https://engole.info/incubus/) from figures at Selinunte, an archaeological site in Sicily.{{sfnp|6Q3I85YJ}} A source for the woman in Giulio Romano’s *The Dream of Hecuba* at the Palazzo del Te has also been proposed.{{sfnp|QFSH8HVG}} Powell links the horse to a woodcut by the German Renaissance artist Hans Baldung or to the marble *Horse Tamers* on Quirinal Hill, Rome.{{sfnp|F8YSGX8L|40-42}}{{sfnp|QFSH8HVG}} Fuseli may have added the horse as an afterthought, since a preliminary chalk sketch did not include it. Its presence in the painting has been viewed as a visual pun on the word “nightmare” and a self-conscious reference to folklore; the horse undermines the painting’s conceit and contributes to its Gothic tone.{{sfnp|RXSTXE2F|5-8}}
## Exhibition
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Thomas_Burke_The_Nightmare_engraving.jpg)Thomas Burke’s 1783 engraving
Wikimedia Commons
Now in the possession of the Detroit Institute of Arts, *The Nightmare* was first shown at the Royal Academy of London in 1782, where it “excited … an uncommon degree of interest”,{{sfnp|62UB6GQ7|64-65}} according to Fuseli’s early biographer and friend John Knowles.
It remained well-known decades later, and Fuseli painted other versions on the same theme. He sold the original for twenty guineas, equivalent to more than £30,000 in terms of average earnings as at 2018,{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} and an inexpensive engraving by Thomas Burke circulated widely from January 1783, earning publisher John Raphael Smith more than £500, equivalent to about £853,000 as at 2021.{{sfnp|62UB6GQ7|64-65}} The engraving was underscored by a short poem by Erasmus Darwin, “Night-Mare”:{{sfnp|NADH7S9U}}
So on his Nightmare through the evening fog
Flits the squab Fiend o’er fen, and lake, and bog;
Seeks some love-wilder’d maid with sleep oppress’d,
Alights, and grinning sits upon her breast.
## Interpretation
A few years before painting *The Nightmare*, Fuseli was besotted by Anna Landholdt, the niece of his friend, the Swiss physiognomist Johann Kaspar Lavater. Fuseli wrote of his fantasies to Lavater in 1779: “Last night I had her in bed with me – tossed my bedclothes hugger-mugger – wound my hot and tight-clasped hands about her – fused her body and soul together with my own – poured into her my spirit, breath and strength. Anyone who touches her now commits adultery and incest! She is mine, and I am hers. And have her I will .…”{{sfnp|B5JGMMXJ}}
Fuseli’s marriage proposal met with disapproval from Anna’s father, and his ardour seems to have been unrequited, as she married a family friend soon after. *The Nightmare* can therefore be seen as a personal portrayal of the erotic aspects of love lost; the art historian H. W. Janson suggests that the sleeping woman represents Anna and that the demon is Fuseli himself. Bolstering this claim is an unfinished portrait of a girl on the back of the painting’s canvas, which may portray Anna. The anthropologist Charles Stewart characterises the sleeping woman as “voluptuous”,{{sfnp|MC6D9WZI}} and one scholar of the Gothic describes her as lying in a “sexually receptive position.”{{sfnp|WUTXENVR|235}} In *Woman as Sex Object* (1972), Marcia Allentuck similarly argues that the painting’s intent is to show female orgasm. This is supported by Fuseli’s sexually overt and even pornographic private drawings (e.g. *Symplegma of Man with Two Women*, 1770–78).{{sfnp|6Q3I85YJ}} Fuseli’s painting has been considered representative of sublimated sexual instincts.{{sfnp|F8YSGX8L|40-42}} Related interpretations of the painting view the incubus as a dream symbol of male libido, with the sexual act represented by the horse’s intrusion through the curtain.{{sfnp|UYKMVKC6|81}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22481
**Categories:** Painting
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Agnes Sampson](https://engole.info/agnes-sampson/)
**Published:** November 23, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Witches-frolic-1830.jpg[/pimage]Scottish midwife, cunning woman and healer; central figure in the North Berwick witch trials.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Witches-frolic-1830.jpg)The pamphlet *[Newes from Scotland](https://engole.info/newes-from-scotland/)* included a description of Agnes Sampson confessing that together with many other witches she travelled the seas on individual sieves
British Museum
Agnes Sampson was a Scottish cunning woman, healer and midwife. She was already being held by the Haddington Presbytery under suspicion of witchcraft when she was named as an associate by [Geillis Duncan](https://engole.info/geillis-duncan-witch/), who was facing similar charges in a nearby parish. Transported to Edinburgh, Agnes was further interrogated, then eventually tried and convicted of witchcraft on 27 January 1591 as part of the [North Berwick witch trials](https://engole.info/north-berwick-witch-trials/); she was strangled and her body burned on Edinburgh’s Castle Hill the following day.
Agnes was a central figure in what became a major and significant series of trials; King James VI took a personal interest in the ensuing events after allegations were made the coven of witches of which she was a part was plotting against his life. The pamphlet, [*Newes from Scotland*](https://engole.info/newes-from-scotland/), printed in London while the trials were taking place but produced after she had been executed, gave an account of her interrogations and confessions; the narrative was sensationalised and some of the content is omitted from official records.
Modern-day scholars consider that from her recorded examinations of early December 1590, the inquisitors’ initial questioning of a cunning woman takes the route of transforming her into a witch.
## Background
A resident in a little village named Nether Keith just south of Haddington, East Lothian, Agnes Sampson, Samsoune or Samson, was commonly known as the wise wife of Keith or the “wyse wyff of Keyth”.{{sfnp|5K89YXG2|187}}{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|144}}{{sfnp|K4HEDKRS|53}}\[a\]In Scotland and England during the sixteenth century spelling was haphazard leading to many words, places and names having several variations. Modern-day texts often use an anglicised version.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|15-16}} Records do not precisely indicate her age; historian Peter Maxwell-Stuart describes her as middle-aged,{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|144}} whereas other scholars, including Brian Levack, refer to her as elderly.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|35}} She was a widow with children; following the death of her husband she was left in straitened circumstances.{{sfnp|E36IBUY8|251}}
Coached in some of the black arts by her father,{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|101}} midwifery, healing, making predictions and other skills associated with being a cunning woman formed the basis of Agnes’s career since at least 1585. She usually worked in the local area around Haddington; those availing themselves of her services came from a wide socio-economic status, ranging from minor gentry like Lady Edmiston, Lady Kilbaberton and Lady Roslin, through to servants, poor people as well as the spouses of skippers and the sheriff of Haddington.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|207-208}}
Matronly and solemn in character, her attempts at healing were not always productive with varying levels of success. Powders were administered to ease the discomfort of her customers when they were giving birth; she chanted prayers to determine whether someone’s malaise would be fatal – if she was able to recite a bastardised form of the Apostles’ Creed without faltering her patient would recover whereas any hesitation in her rendering was indicative of death.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|101}}
Agnes advocated the use of eggs soaked in vinegar and iris as methods to aid curing illness; a whisky embrocation applied to a patient’s back was another of her recommendations as a healing process.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|132}} Wax figurines were deployed as part of her repertoire when she was approached for assistance by [Barbara Napier](https://engole.info/barbara-napier-witch/); similar devices were given to [Euphame MacCalzean](https://engole.info/euphame-maccalzean/) as a means to help elicit the death of her client’s father-in-law.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|101}}
## Witchcraft accusations
An accusation of witchcraft was made against Agnes in early 1589; the Presbytery at Haddington investigated but when asked about it by the Synod in April, it reported it could find no grounds to substantiate the complaint. On 16 September, the Presbytery was again taken to task for not dealing with the matter; it was raised again on 5 May 1590 with the Synod being informed two days later that it was ongoing.{{sfnp|6TEU5BBB|5, 12, 17, 22}} The Synod appointed two members of the Dalkeith Presbytery, Adam Johnston and George Ramsay, to ensure assistance was given to the local ministers and elders undertaking the investigation.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|112}}
Six months later, in November 1590, a young maidservant, [Geillis Duncan](https://engole.info/geillis-duncan-witch/), was questioned by her employer as he suspected she was involved in witchcraft. After being tortured Geillis confessed and went on to name several others including Agnes,{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|144}} triggering what was to become known as the North Berwick witch trials, the first major Scottish witch-hunt and the inaugural large witchcraft trial under criminal law.{{sfnp|E36IBUY8|250}}{{sfnp|I3Q5HT4M}} Agnes had not initially been detained during the previous springtime enquiries, remaining at liberty until after Halloween;{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|113}} by November however she was incarcerated in the tolbooth at Haddington awaiting the outcome of the earlier investigation.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|84}} She was transported to Edinburgh for interrogation concerning the maidservant’s claims. The first statement by Agnes in Edinburgh, made in the days before 4 or 5 December, is a transcription of her answers to a series of specific questions put to her by her inquisitors.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|84, 135}}
## Confessions
Initially Agnes described being involved in a Devil’s convention held at Bara two years earlier.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|84}}\[b\]Bara or Baro was a small parish in East Lothian; in 1702 it conjoined with the adjacent parish of Garvald.{{sfnp|NHZIB8FG|70}} Naming several other attendees including Kate Gray\[c\]This name is sometimes given as Kate Graw or Katherine Gray.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|84}} and Davie Steel, both of whom had been executed between late 1588 and the end of 1590,{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|84}}\[d\]Both Kate Gray and Davie Steel were later named as attendees at the Halloween North Berwick convention in 1590 so their execution dates can be narrowed down to between 31 October and 4-5 December 1590; no documentation or details of local trials for them have yet been found.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|84}} she went on to recap details of her participation in the large convention of male and female witches held at North Berwick kirk on Halloween in 1590. Agnes, who travelled to the meeting on horseback, said the Devil was present; attired in a black hat and robe, he checked the names of attendees on a register who then paid homage to him by performing an [obscene kiss](https://engole.info/osculum-infame/).{{sfnp|SU4SIQ3K|34}} The convention drew to a close after they had all danced and been entertained by Geillis playing a Jew’s harp.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|148}}\[e\]A Jew’s harp is also known as a Jew’s trump or, especially in Scotland, as a trump.{{sfnp|KDUNKABV|349}} Agnes admitted being present at several sabbaths and, coupled with the testimony given in statements from other accused persons, attended at least eight meetings.{{sfnp|RTMXYMP5|377}}
During the course of her early examinations, Agnes fleetingly touched on conjuring poor weather at sea to thwart the King’s attempts to bring his new bride to Scotland. When she went on to elaborate that she had been informed by the Devil that ministers were plotting against James, the King became directly involved in the questioning.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|36}}
Among the deeds Agnes confessed to was the excavation of bodies for use in magical practices.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|70}} The powders she used in rituals were made from the joints of the corpses, using instructions she had received from the Devil. At the North Berwick convention, she participated in opening three graves then removing finger joints, the nose and toes from the bodies; other corpses had been dug up in Newton Kirk.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|392}}
## Execution
At her trial on 27 January 1591,{{sfnp|J3P8CEY4|312}} Agnes confessed to 58 of the 102 accusations laid against her.{{sfnp|KENFSFXI|215}} Declared guilty, she was transported to Castle Hill, Edinburgh, the following day where she was strangled and her body burned.{{sfnp|J3P8CEY4|312}} The costs recorded for her execution totalled £6 8s 10d Scots.{{sfnp|9BQBMRLZ|142}}\[f\]Prior to 1707 Scotland had its own currency, the pounds Scots; up until 1603 the exchange rate with the English pound sterling fluctuated as the rate was based on the bullion content of the coins.{{sfnp|6FW4FM3D|xv}}
### Newes from Scotland
In late 1591, the pamphlet *[Newes from Scotland](https://engole.info/newes-from-scotland/)* was produced.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|290}} Tailored specifically for an English audience,{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|37}} it recounts facets of the North Berwick witch trials,{{sfnp|Z67UT2E8|72}} some of which are not reflected in the official documentation.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|301, 303}} The narrator describes Agnes taking the King aside during his interrogation of her; she reportedly reveals to James words he exchanged in an intimate moment with his bride as evidence she is genuine about her magical powers.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|301}} Maxwell-Stuart speculates that as Agnes knew one of the King’s servants, who may have been in attendance in the royal newly weds bedchamber, the servant may have relayed to her the snippet of conversation she was able to tell the King to prove she was truthful.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|186}} This event is not recounted in any other documentation but scholars Lawrence Normand and Gareth Roberts note that “it seems unlikely that anyone would risk inventing it”{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|301}} while historian Julian Goodare suggests that the existence of the conversation “need not be taken literally” bearing in mind sections of the pamphlet are fanciful.{{sfnp|7KHQHLSD|376}}
People suspected of witchcraft were regularly subjected to informal and illegal cruelty and torture at the behest of their interrogators; by necessity official documentation does not reflect the practice. *Newes* relays lurid details concerning the Devil’s mark being discovered on Agnes’s “privaties”.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|302-303}}\[g\]The Devil’s mark is usually recorded as being found on the arm, neck or shoulders of those accused of witchcraft in Scotland; it is more commonly alluded to as secreted in more discrete areas of the body in Continental cases.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|150}}
## Modern interpretations
The cases involved in the North Berwick trials demonstrates the changing perspective, particularly of the elite classes, to witchcraft.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|96}} The accusations concerning Agnes chanting Catholic prayers while performing magical deeds reflects unease on the part of her questioners rather than indicating her religious denomination as no documentation survives to support her Catholicism.{{sfnp|3D6B4U32|114}}
An unusual item within her confessions was the excavation of bodies to use in magical practices, which is uncommon among Scottish witchcraft records; it does however appear in a handful of other cases, including the confessions of [Isobel Gowdie](https://engole.info/isobel-gowdie/) from Auldearn in 1662.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|70}}
Scholars Normand and Roberts note that Agnes’s examination and confession on 4 and 5 December shows the inquisitors transforming a “cunning woman into a witch”.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|141}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a In Scotland and England during the sixteenth century spelling was haphazard leading to many words, places and names having several variations. Modern-day texts often use an anglicised version.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|15-16}} b Bara or Baro was a small parish in East Lothian; in 1702 it conjoined with the adjacent parish of Garvald.{{sfnp|NHZIB8FG|70}} c This name is sometimes given as Kate Graw or Katherine Gray.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|84}} d Both Kate Gray and Davie Steel were later named as attendees at the Halloween North Berwick convention in 1590 so their execution dates can be narrowed down to between 31 October and 4-5 December 1590; no documentation or details of local trials for them have yet been found.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|84}} e A Jew’s harp is also known as a Jew’s trump or, especially in Scotland, as a trump.{{sfnp|KDUNKABV|349}} f Prior to 1707 Scotland had its own currency, the pounds Scots; up until 1603 the exchange rate with the English pound sterling fluctuated as the rate was based on the bullion content of the coins.{{sfnp|6FW4FM3D|xv}} g The Devil’s mark is usually recorded as being found on the arm, neck or shoulders of those accused of witchcraft in Scotland; it is more commonly alluded to as secreted in more discrete areas of the body in Continental cases.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|150}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22123
**Categories:** Female, Scottish, Witch
---
### [Sir John Brunner, 1st Baronet](https://engole.info/sir-john-brunner-1st-baronet/)
**Published:** June 30, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/John_Brunner.jpg[/pimage]British industrialist, philanthropist and Liberal Party politician who, with Ludwig Mond, created the chemical company Brunner Mond.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/John_Brunner.jpg)John Brunner in 1885
Wikimedia Commons
Sir John Tomlinson Brunner, 1st Baronet, DL (8 February 1842 – 1 July 1919) was a British chemical industrialist and Liberal Party politician. At Hutchinson’s alkali works in Widnes he rose to the position of general manager. There he met Ludwig Mond, with whom he later formed a partnership to create the chemical company Brunner Mond, initially making soda ash (sodium carbonate) using the Solvay process.
As a Member of Parliament (MP) Brunner represented Northwich, Cheshire in 1885–1886 and 1887–1910. He was a paternalistic employer, and as a politician supported Irish Home Rule, trade unions, free trade, welfare reforms and, leading up to the First World War, a more sympathetic stance towards Germany. Brunner was a prominent Freemason, and a generous benefactor to the towns in his constituency and to the University of Liverpool.
## Early life and career
John Tomlinson Brunner was born in Everton, Liverpool, the fourth child and second son of John Brunner (b. 20 June 1800), a Swiss Unitarian and schoolmaster, and Margaret Catherine Curphey (d. 8 September 1847), who originated from the Isle of Man, daughter of Thomas Curphey and wife Margaret Leece. His father established a school in Netherfield Road, Everton, known as St George’s House, to teach children along the lines advocated by Pestalozzi.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|3-6}} Brunner’s mother died in 1847, when he was aged five; his father married Nancy Inman in 1851. She had a shrewd business sense, and Brunner gave credit to her for teaching him skills in practical matters.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|7-9}} Brunner was educated at his father’s school and then, at the age of 15, he decided to follow a career in commerce.{{sfnp|K6MSET38}} He spent four years in a shipping house in Liverpool, but found it neither exciting nor lucrative, and so decided on a change of career.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|11-13}} In 1861 Brunner took a clerical post at Hutchinson’s alkali works in Widnes, where his older brother Henry was employed as technical manager.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|227}} There he rose to the position of general manager. Shortly after starting work at Hutchinson’s, Brunner met the German-born chemist Ludwig Mond.{{sfnp|K6MSET38}}
## Brunner Mond & Company
In 1873 Brunner formed a partnership with Mond and together they founded Brunner Mond & Company.{{sfnp|K6MSET38}} Their initial capital was less than £20,000 (equivalent to about £1.8 million in 2018{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}), most of which was borrowed.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|23}} In April 1872 Mond had been to Belgium to meet Ernest Solvay to negotiate terms to manufacture alkali by the process Solvay had developed. The Solvay process produced soda ash more cheaply than the established Leblanc process, from raw materials which were more easily obtainable, and produced fewer waste products.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|24}} Mond made a gentlemen’s agreement with Solvay to apportion the global markets, with Mond’s company having exclusive rights to the United States and to the British Isles.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|25}}
Brunner and Mond decided to build their factory at Winnington, near Northwich, Cheshire on land owned by Lord Stanley of Alderley. On the banks of the River Weaver, the site allowed for the transport of the raw materials and finished products to and from the works. As part of the deal, Lord Stanley insisted on selling the house, Winnington Hall, as well as the surrounding land. The purchase was completed in 1873, and for a time Mond and Brunner lived separately in the wings of the hall.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|27-29}} The early years were extremely difficult, initially in getting the plant to work efficiently and then in selling the soda ash. It was not until 1878 that success was achieved when they outsold their competitors and were producing their products more cheaply.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|30-31}} In 1881, the partnership was converted into a limited company with capital assets listed at £600,000, and the founders became managing directors for life.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|33-34}} In 1891 Brunner became the chairman and retained that position until April 1918, fourteen months before his death, by which time his duties were being increasingly performed by his son, Roscoe.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|46-47}}
After its slow start, Brunner Mond & Company became the wealthiest British chemical company of the late 19th century. On its merger with three other British chemical companies to form Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in 1926, it had a market capitalisation in excess of £18 million, equivalent to £1.03 billion in 2018.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} Brunner’s sobriquet, “Chemical Croesus”,\[a\]Croesus was the King of Lydia in Asia Minor from 560 BC to 546 BC, renowned for his wealth. was given to him by *The Times*.{{sfnp|K6MSET38}} He was a paternalistic employer who went to great lengths to improve the situation of his employees; shorter working hours, sickness and injury insurance, and holidays with pay were among the measures introduced by Brunner and Mond.{{sfnp|K6MSET38}}{{sfnp|8A379RXE|34-45}}
## Politics
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Northwich_-_John_Brunner_Statue.jpg)Statue of John Brunner in Winnington, Cheshire
Wikimedia Commons
During the years he was working at Hutchinson’s in Widnes, Brunner was also developing his political interests. He joined the Widnes chapter of the National Education League and became its secretary in 1872.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|17-18}} This gave him the opportunity to come into contact with Liberals from Liverpool and other parts of the country.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|47}} Soon after moving to Northwich Brunner became more practically involved with education locally, in particular with the British School in the town. He later served on its board of governors and also on the local sanitary authority.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|49}} As a result of the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 the parliamentary constituency of Northwich was created and Brunner offered himself as a candidate for the Liberal Party.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|49-50}} In his speech for the position he expressed support for the disestablishment of the Church of England, for reform of property laws, for Irish Home Rule and for compensation for those whose properties had been damaged by the pumping of brine from the salt mines in the area.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|54-55}} During the campaign he was heckled because he had a foreign-sounding name. He responded “My father was a Swiss, my mother was a Manx woman, I was born in Liverpool, my nurse was Welsh: is that Cheshire enough for you?”{{sfnp|8A379RXE|38}} At the general election on 1 December 1885 Brunner beat William Henry Verdin, his Conservative rival, with a majority of 1,028.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|67-68}}
The Liberal Party won more seats than any other party in the election, but insufficient to form a majority government, leaving the Irish Parliamentary Party holding the balance of power. It proved impossible to form a stable government, and so another general election was called in June 1886.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|68-69}} In the meantime, the Liberal Party had split, and the Liberal Unionist Party had been formed. Brunner’s opponent at the 1886 election was William Henry Verdin’s brother, Robert, standing as a Liberal Unionist.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|80-81}} The election was held on 13 July 1886, and Brunner was defeated by 458 votes.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|85}} In November 1886, Brunner embarked on a world tour, accompanied by his wife and his son Stephen. His return to Northwich on 2 July 1887 was greeted with great celebration, as he was extremely popular in the town, regarded as a kind and sympathetic employer and a generous benefactor.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|89-95}} Within three weeks of Brunner’s return, Robert Verdin died{{sfnp|8A379RXE|97}} and a by-election was called. Brunner’s opponent was Lord Henry Grosvenor, who was standing as a Liberal Unionist.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|98}} This time, at the election on 13 August, Brunner won with a majority of 1,129.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|107}}
At the 1892 general election Brunner’s opponent was a cotton manufacturer from Blackburn, George Whiteley, representing the Conservative Party; Brunner was returned with an increased majority of 1,255.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|172-174}} In the 1895 election he beat Thomas Ward, another Conservative, by 1,638 votes.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|178}} The 1900 general election was held during the Boer War, to which Brunner was opposed. He retained his seat, but with a reduced majority of 699.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|186-189}} In the 1906 general election, Brunner’s opponent was the Conservative Colonel B.N. North who had fought in the Boer War. Brunner increased his majority to 1,792.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|202}} He continued to be the Member of Parliament for Northwich until the general election in January 1910, when he decided not to stand again, partly because of his own health and also because of concern for his wife’s health.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|207-208}} Subsequently, he moved to Surrey, but continued to play a part in politics when he was elected to the Chertsey division of Surrey County Council.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|210}}
As a Liberal MP Brunner supported Irish Home Rule, trade unions, free trade and welfare reforms.{{sfnp|K6MSET38}} In the lead up to the First World War he argued that Britain should adopt a more sympathetic approach towards Germany, including naval disarmament.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|215-289}} When war did break out, Brunner was resolute in the opinion that it should be fought and won. In addition to the production of alkali, his factories made other chemicals for use in explosives, including a new facility to purify trinitrotoluene (TNT).{{sfnp|8A379RXE|273-275}}
## Philanthropy
Brunner was a generous benefactor whose gifts included the provision of schools, guildhalls and social clubs. In Northwich he provided a free library{{sfnp|K6MSET38}} and re-endowed Sir John Deane’s Grammar School.{{sfnp|7DD3EXJS}} In Runcorn he purchased a disused chapel and presented it to the town to be used by the trades unions and the Friendly Societies,{{sfnp|A7DSXJBW|217}} and in nearby Weston village he bought a disused school and gave it to the local community to serve as its village hall.{{sfnp|A7DSXJBW|189}} He also endowed the chairs of economics, physical chemistry and Egyptology (the Brunner Professorships) at the University of Liverpool.{{sfnp|2DMKU7RL|search=146ff}}
Abroad he gave gifts to the Landesmuseum in Zürich and provided a hospital, also in Switzerland.{{sfnp|K6MSET38}} In 1885 he became a Freemason and in 1900 founded the John Brunner Lodge at Over Winsford. The following year he was honoured with the brevet rank of Past Grand Deacon of England.{{sfnp|2DMKU7RL|search=146ff}}
In 1899 Brunner – who had by then been created a baronet – became chairman of the Runcorn and Widnes Transporter Bridge Company. He subscribed £25,000 (equivalent to £3.1 million in 2018{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}) towards its construction plus a loan of £12,000 together with a personal guarantee on a bank loan of £31,000. When the building of the bridge was complete in 1905 it was due to be opened by Edward VII, but the King was unable to attend, and so Brunner performed the ceremony himself.{{sfnp|A7DSXJBW|213-214}} By 1911 it had become apparent that the bridge would always operate at a loss, and Brunner assigned his interest in it to Widnes Corporation. *The Times* stated that this action amounted to a “virtual gift of £68,000”.{{sfnp|A7DSXJBW|217}}
## Personal life
Brunner believed that his success owed much to the “courage and independence of thought” that he derived from his Unitarian faith, and recalled the influence of visits to Renshaw Street Unitarian Chapel with his father as a child.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|7}} On 14 June 1864 Brunner married Salome Davies, the daughter of a Liverpool merchant, with whom he had six children. Salome died on 29 January 1874, and the following year Brunner married Jane Wyman, the daughter of a Kettering physician and the governess to his children.{{sfnp|K6MSET38}} From this marriage three more children, all daughters, were born. In 1891 the Brunners moved from Winnington Hall to Wavertree, a suburb of Liverpool.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|33}}
Amongst other offices held, he was Vice-President of the British Science Guild, Deputy Lieutenant for the County of Lancashire (from 1904) and Pro-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool.{{sfnp|2DMKU7RL|search=146ff}}{{sfnp|XJW2TIGL}} In 1895 he was made the Baronet of Druids Cross in the County of Lancashire, and in 1906 he became a member of the privy council, but declined offers of a peerage. Brunner died in 1919 at his home in Chertsey, Surrey. His estate amounted to more than £906,000 (equivalent to £41 million in 2018{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}). In addition, he had given generously to his five married daughters, and had transferred investments to his sons.{{sfnp|8A379RXE|289}}
Brunner’s descendants include, through his eldest son’s daughter (Joyce Brunner Worsley), Katharine, Duchess of Kent (born 1933), married since 1961 to a grandson of Britain’s King George V, and Shelagh Brunner (1902–1983), daughter of his younger son (Harold Roscoe Brunner), who morganatically married Prince Ferdinand of Liechtenstein (1901–1981) in 1925, a member of that principality’s reigning dynasty.{{sfnp|VEYE9C7N|311, 381}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Croesus was the King of Lydia in Asia Minor from 560 BC to 546 BC, renowned for his wealth.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 21706
**Categories:** English, Industrialist, Philanthropist, Politician
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in City of Leicester](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-city-of-leicester/)
**Published:** March 14, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cf/Leicester_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Leicester_UK_locator_map.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the unitary authority of City of Leicester, Leicestershire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cf/Leicester_UK_locator_map.svg/1280px-Leicester_UK_locator_map.svg.png)size:12px; color:#5b5b5b">City of Leicester shown within Leicestershire
Wikimedia Commons
City of Leicester is a [unitary authority]() which, along with seven district councils, in the East Midlands of England, makes up the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Leicestershire.{{sfnp|DFUAZLJK}}
The authority contains 14 of the 93 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Leicestershire. Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
**Name****Location****Architect****Completed****Entry number****Image****Abbey Ruins**Abbey Park
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/YJfr1X3qXtJzcXAg8)Founded 1143e-list/list-entry/1074051" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1074051[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f8/Leicester_Abbey_nave_and_cloister.jpg/1280px-Leicester_Abbey_nave_and_cloister.jpg)size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Abbot Penny’s Wall**Abbey Park
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ELMccfDLqZnrx9ep8)c. 1500e-list/list-entry/1361406" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1361406[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Abbot_Penny%27s_Wall_interior_2.jpg/1280px-Abbot_Penny%27s_Wall_interior_2.jpg)size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Margaret**Leicester
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/1SG5yTurFWtPNJKf9)Anglo Saxone-list/list-entry/1074072" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1074072[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/St_Margaret%27s_church%2C_Leicester.jpg/1280px-St_Margaret%27s_church%2C_Leicester.jpg)size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Mary de Castro**Castle Yard, Leicester
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aMndiewzMoGi7ogG9)Early 13th centurye-list/list-entry/1074070" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1074070[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/St_Mary_de_Castro_from_Castle_Yard.jpg/960px-St_Mary_de_Castro_from_Castle_Yard.jpg)size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Church of St Nicholas**St Nicholas Circle, Leicester
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/CvJCfTfKV5BPZM8w8)c. 880e-list/list-entry/1361046" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1361046[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Jewry_Wall_and_St_Nicholas.jpg/1280px-Jewry_Wall_and_St_Nicholas.jpg)size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Former Church of All Saints**High Cross Street, Leicester
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/nBpwQzsN3M6xxEPd9)12th centurye-list/list-entry/1074012" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1074012[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/All_Saints_Font_in_Leicester.jpg)size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Former County Court and remains of castle**Leicester
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/A2Dudki34EwBKwPA9)11th or 12th centurye-list/list-entry/1200622" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1200622[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/Leicester_Castle_Apr2010_crop.jpg/1920px-Leicester_Castle_Apr2010_crop.jpg)size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Guildhall**Leicester
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/6T822ckCePts5bFs6)Founded 1347e-list/list-entry/1361405" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1361405[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/Leicester_Guildhall.jpg/1280px-Leicester_Guildhall.jpg)size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Jewry Wall**r-color="#abb8c3">St Nicholas Circle, Leicester
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/VhPHFyffxdTypDRr6)r-color="#abb8c3">Romanr-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1074773" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1074773[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Jewry_Wall_%28closeup%29.jpg)size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Magazine Gateway**r-color="#abb8c3">Newarke
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/RBivAKiAWK9htTkf9)r-color="#abb8c3">Medievalr-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1184902" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1184902[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/Leicester_Magazine_Gateway_west.jpg/1280px-Leicester_Magazine_Gateway_west.jpg)size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
**Remains of Cavendish House**r-color="#abb8c3">Abbey Park
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/LX84zXkM74xzLByw7)r-color="#abb8c3">c. 1600r-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1074052" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1074052[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/68/Cavendish_House_3.jpg/1280px-Cavendish_House_3.jpg)size:9px; color:darkgray;">Wikimedia Commons
 Rooms and basement area railingsr-color="#abb8c3">Leicester
[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/ku9pgbLHsHi1pmPx6)J. Johnsonr-color="#abb8c3">1792r-color="#abb8c3">e-list/list-entry/1184114" target="\_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1184114[](
**Categories:** Leicestershire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Robert Southey](https://engole.info/robert-southey/)
**Published:** July 6, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Robert_Southey_by_Vandyke.jpg[/pimage] Robert Southey (12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the Lake Poets along with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and England's poet laureate for 30 years, from 1813 until his death in 1843.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Robert_Southey_by_Vandyke.jpg)Portrait by Peter Vandyke, 1795
Wikimedia Commons
Robert Southey\[a\]Southey’s biographer comments that: “There should be no doubt as to the proper pronunciation of the name: ‘Sowthey’. The poet himself complained that people in the North would call him ‘Mr Suthy’ ”{{sfnp|4UKY8J2C|9}} (12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the Lake Poets along with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and England’s poet laureate for thirty years from 1813 until his death in 1843. It was a time of great political and social upheaval, and saw Southey’s political attitudes hardening from republicanism to conservatism, which was reflected in his literary output. Many of his contemporaries perceived him as having sold out to the establishment, but he was unapologetic.
Southey has long been eclipsed by Wordsworth and Coleridge, although some of his shorter poems were familiar to many readers until the late 20th century. Probably his best-known work today is the children’s classic *The Story of the Three Bears*, the original Goldilocks story, first published in his prose collection *The Doctor* in 1837. Posterity has not been kind to Southey, whose reputation never really recovered after he was ridiculed by his fellow poet Lord Byron.
## Personal life
Robert Southey was born in Wine Street, Bristol, to Robert Southey and Margaret Hill. Margaret’s half-sister Elizabeth Tyler belonged to a family of minor gentry; she took responsibility for the young Robert, and he lived with her until the age of seven and she supported him throughout his teenage years.{{sfnp|9V3I6QGX}}
Southey was educated at Westminster School, London, from which he was expelled in 1792 for writing an article in *The Flagellant* condemning flogging, and Balliol College, Oxford.{{sfnp|9V3I6QGX}} Southey later said of Oxford, “All I learnt was a little swimming … and a little boating”,{{sfnp|FL5FUZMC|29}} which is perhaps unsurprising as he only spent two terms there.{{sfnp|Q2WI9AB3}} The intention was that after graduating he would be ordained into the church, but events took a different turn. Increasingly Southey began to reject the idea of becoming a clergyman, and started to devote more and more of his time to writing. But believing that he would not be able to make a career out of it he turned his attention to medicine and briefly to law, but he found neither to be any more to his taste than the church.{{sfnp|9V3I6QGX}}
Samuel Taylor Coleridge visited Oxford in June 1794, and he and Southey became instant friends. A month after meeting they had devised the idea of pantisocracy, an egalitarian community they proposed to establish in North America.
Their [the members of the community’s] wants would be simple and natural; their toil need not be such as the slaves of luxury endure; where possessions were held in common, each would work for all; in their cottages the best books would have a place; literature and science, bathed anew in the invigorating stream of life and nature, could not but rise reanimated and purified. Each young man should take to himself a mild and lovely woman for his wife; it would be her part to prepare their innocent food, and tend their hardy and beautiful race.{{sfnp
— FL5FUZMC|35-36}}
Their idealistic vision was doomed to failure, as neither Southey nor Coleridge had the money even to travel to Pennsylvania, much less set up a settlement. Southey’s financial difficulties increased when Elizabeth Tyler heard of his engagement to a mere seamstress, Edith Fricker, and she ceased her support. Southey and Edith married secretly on 14 November 1795, and five days later he set off to spend some time with his uncle in Portugal.{{sfnp|9V3I6QGX}}
Southey remained in Portugal, chiefly in Lisbon and with occasional trips to Spain, until May 1796. On his return to England, he and Edith set up home in rented accommodation and lived a somewhat itinerant lifestyle, frequently moving from lodging to lodging, until in 1802 Coleridge urged them to join him at Greta Hall in Keswick, in the Lake District. Coleridge’s wife Sara was Edith’s sister, and as Southey believed that it would be good for Edith to be with her sister, he overcame his initial misgivings about the climate. Greta Hall became his home for the next forty years.{{sfnp|9V3I6QGX}}
Coleridge’s marriage had long been under strain, and a few months after the arrival of the Southeys he left for Malta in the hope of finding a position in the government there, leaving his wife Sara and their three children to be supported by Southey on the small income he received from writing. He and Edith had eight children themselves, six daughters and two sons, and he derived great pleasure from his family; in *The Doctor* he writes “a house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment, unless there is a child in it rising three years old, and a kitten rising six weeks”.{{sfnp|9V3I6QGX}}
In 1813 Southey was appointed poet laureate after Walter Scott refused the post, a position he held until his death thirty years later.{{sfnp|9V3I6QGX}} He received an annual salary of £100 for the job, equivalent to about £6000 in 2017.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
Southey was awarded an honorary doctorate by Oxford University in 1820. The Whig politician Sir James Mackintosh, who was present at the ceremony, described him as “a good deal oldened … \[but\] in spite of a touch of affectation … very pleasant.{{sfnp|TIXJNCBN}} Edith died in 1838, and Southey remarried on 4 June 1839. His new wife, Caroline Anne Bowles, was also a poet{{sfnp|V9L33EUR}} whom Southey had known for twenty years. He had helped her to find publishers for her poetry, but by the time of their marriage he was suffering from the onset of senility and had already begun to lose his mind. Southey died on 21 March 1843 and was buried in the churchyard of Crosthwaite Church, Keswick.{{sfnp|9V3I6QGX}}
Towards the end of his life, in 1837, Charlotte Brontë asked Southey for his advice on some of her poems. He wrote back praising her talents, but discouraging her from writing professionally: “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life”. Brontë appears not to have taken Southey’s advice too seriously, as ten years later she published *Jane Eyre*.{{sfnp|AUJK7BN4}}
## Literary career
Southey had written his first poem at the age of eight or nine, a sequel to the *Orlando Furioso*, and while at Oxford had written the first version of *Joan of Arc*, but his stay in Portugal marked the true beginning of his literary career. While in that country he wrote *Letters Written during a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal* (1797), a miscellany of verse and prose which enjoyed some modest success.{{sfnp|9V3I6QGX}}
Southey was a prolific writer, working in a variety of genres as a historian, biographer, travel writer, translator, editor, pamphleteer, essayist, reviewer, social critic, story teller and poet. The volume of his work was aided by the discipline of his working day:
three pages of history after breakfast … then to transcribe and copy for the press, or to make my selections and biographies, or what else suits my humour, till dinner time; from dinner till tea I read, write letters, see the newspaper and very often indulge in a siesta … Well, after tea I go to poetry, and correct and re-write and copy till I am tired, and then turn to anything else till supper; and this is my life, which, if it be not a very merry one, is yet as happy as heart could wish.{{sfnp
— TIXJNCBN}}
He also wrote for periodicals including the somewhat conservative *Quarterly Review*, to which he contributed almost 100 articles.{{sfnp|TIXJNCBN}}
Southey’s knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese enabled him to undertake paid translation work such as *Amadis of Gaul* (1803), after the original by Vasco Lobeira, and inspired him to write a *History of Brazil,* part of his unfinished *History of Portugal*.{{sfnp|9V3I6QGX}} The *Chronicle of the Cid* (1803), a translation of the early 16th-century *Cronica del Cid,* is perhaps the best of his translations.{{sfnp|Q2WI9AB3}}
Much of Southey’s literary work explores the insecurity of the human condition, and the suffering which many are forced to endure.{{sfnp|9V3I6QGX}} Although for much of his early life Southey thought of himself primarily as a poet, by common consensus his prose is more accomplished than his verse. He developed what has been called a Georgian prose style, “pure and practical”, in contrast to the “ponderous solemnity” of earlier authors such as [Samuel Johnson](https://engole.info/samuel-johnson).{{sfnp|Q2WI9AB3}}
## Politics
Although Southey had been a supporter of the French Revolution, and even went so far as to consider himself a Jacobin, from the turn of the 19th century he began to lose some of his radical zeal and became unapologetically more conservative in his views; “I am no more ashamed of having been a republican, than I am of having been a boy”. He believed that the country needed strong leadership, and that parliamentary reform was the road to anarchy. He steadfastly opposed Catholic emancipation, believing Catholicism to be inherently intolerant, and that any concessions to Catholics “would threaten the whole fabric of the British constitution”.{{sfnp|9V3I6QGX}}
In some respects though Southey was ahead of his time. In his *Letters from England* published in 1808 under the pseudonym of Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella, he gives an account of a tour supposedly from a foreigner’s viewpoint. Through the mouth of his pseudonym Southey is critical of the disparity between the haves and have-nots in English society, arguing that a change in taxation policy would be needed to foster a greater degree of equity. He was an early critic of the evils brought to early 19th-century Britain by the new factory system and was appalled by the conditions of life in towns like Birmingham and Manchester, and especially by the employment of children in factories.{{sfnp|9V3I6QGX}} He sympathised with the pioneering socialist plans of Robert Owen, advocated that the state promote public works to maintain high employment, and called for universal education.{{sfnp|DULF93ZQ|7}}
Without his prior knowledge, the Earl of Radnor, an admirer of his work, had Southey returned as MP for the latter’s pocket borough seat of Downton in Wiltshire at the 1826 general election, as an opponent of Catholic emancipation. But Southey refused to sit in the House of Commons, causing a by-election in December that year, pleading that he did not have a large enough estate to support him through political life,\[b\]MPs were then unsalaried, and expected to treat voters at election times. did not want to take on the hours full attendance required, wanted to continue living in the Lake District, and preferred to defend the Church of England in writing rather than speech. He declared that “for me to change my scheme of life and go into Parliament, would be to commit a moral and intellectual suicide”; his friend John Rickman, a Commons clerk, noted that “prudential reasons would forbid his appearing in London” as a Member.{{sfnp|TIXJNCBN}}
In 1835 Southey declined the offer of a baronetcy, but did accept a life pension of £300 a year from the prime minister Sir Robert Peel.{{sfnp|TIXJNCBN}}
## Contemporary assessment
Southey was perhaps unfortunate to have occupied the position of poet laureate at a time of political turmoil and social disruption. Many saw his switch from republicanism to conservatism as hypocritical, selling out to the establishment; certainly his reputation among many of his contemporaries was generally low. The Whig politician Lord Holland gave it as his opinion that although Southey was “pleasant and amiable”,
… he was not only a credulous and almost silly historian, but a weak reasoner and tiresome poet, and neither in prose nor in verse captivated or warmed his reader, though he might occasionally surprise and divert him.{{sfnp
— TIXJNCBN}}
In 1821 Southey published *A Vision of Judgement*, an elaborate poem describing the entry into heaven of the recently deceased King George III. Rather unwisely, in the preface Southey identified those in political opposition as disciples of Satan, and launched an attack on what he called the satanic school of poetry. Although Byron was not referred to by name the diatribe was clearly directed at him, and he retaliated with *The Vision of Judgment*, a parody of Southey’s poem. Southey’s reputation never recovered from the ridicule heaped on him by Byron, who wrote that Southey had produced “much blank verse and blanker prose, And more of both than anybody knows.”{{sfnp|9V3I6QGX}}
## Selected works
- *Harold, or, The Castle of Morford* (an unpublished Robin Hood novel written in 1791).
- *The Fall of Robespierre* (1794)
- *Joan of Arc* (1796)
- *Icelandic Poetry, or The Edda of Sæmund* (1797)
- *Poems* (1797–1799)
- *Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal* (1797)
- *St. Patrick’s Purgatory* (1798)
- *After Blenheim* (1798)
- *The Devil’s Thoughts* (1799). Revised edition published in 1827 as *The Devil’s Walk*.
- *English Eclogues* (1799)
- *The Old Man’s Comforts and How He Gained Them* (1799)
- *Thalaba the Destroyer* (1801)
- [*The Inchcape Rock*](https://engole.info/the-inchcape-rock/) (1802)
- *Madoc* (1805)
- *Letters from England: By Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella* (1807), the observations of a fictitious Spaniard.
- *Chronicle of the Cid, from the Spanish* (1808)
- *The Curse of Kehama* (1810)
- *History of Brazil* (3 vols.) (1810–1819)
- *The Life of Horatio, Lord Viscount Nelson* (1813)
- *Roderick the Last of the Goths* (1814)
- *Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur* (1817)
- *Wat Tyler: A Dramatic Poem* (1817)
- *Cataract of Lodore* (1820)
- *The Life of Wesley; and Rise and Progress of Methodism* (2 vols.) (1820)
- *What Are Little Boys Made Of?* (1820)
- *A Vision of Judgement* (1821)
- *History of the Peninsular War, 1807–1814* (3 vols.) (1823–1832)
- *Sir Thomas More; or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society* (1829)
- *The Works of William Cowper* (15 vols.) (ed.) (1833–1837)
- *Lives of the British Admirals, with an Introductory View of the Naval History of England* (5 vols.) (1833–40); republished as *English Seamen* in 1895.
- *The Doctor* (7 vols.) (1834–1847). Includes *The Story of the Three Bears* (1837).
- *The Poetical Works of Robert Southey, Collected by Himself* (1837)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Southey’s biographer comments that: “There should be no doubt as to the proper pronunciation of the name: ‘Sowthey’. The poet himself complained that people in the North would call him ‘Mr Suthy’ ”{{sfnp|4UKY8J2C|9}} b MPs were then unsalaried, and expected to treat voters at election times.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3294
**Categories:** English, Male, Poet
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [James Burton](https://engole.info/james-burton/)
**Published:** June 16, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/James_Burton_%28Millowner%29_1784-1868.png[/pimage]James Burton (1784–1868) was the owner of several cotton mills in Tyldesley and Hindsford in the mid-19th century.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/James_Burton_%28Millowner%29_1784-1868.png)James Burton
Wikimedia Commons
James Burton (1784–1868) was the mid-19th century owner of several cotton mills in [Tyldesley](https://engole.info/tyldesley/) and Hindsford. Born in Clitheroe, Lancashire, Burton was the son of Oliver Burton and his wife Ann. His parents had a drapery business in Clitheroe’s marketplace.{{sfnp|HSVXKZDH}}
Burton worked Peel’s Calico Works at Church Bank near Accrington where he met John Thompson an industrial chemist. Burton was interested in “mechanisms” and with Thompson, the chemist and John Chippendale, a manufacturer set up the Primrose Printworks in 1810-1811. Burton left the company in 1827 with a payment of £10,000.{{sfnp|HSVXKZDH}}
The following year he moved to Tildsley Banks where he entered into partnership with John and Richard Jones at Tyldesley New Mill. The Jones brothers were more interested in silk weaving, and moved to Bedford New Mills in [Bedford](https://engole.info/bedford-leigh/), Leigh. By 1838 Burton owned many properties in the west end of the town, where he lived in Charles Street, and in Hindsford across the Hindsford Brook. In 1845 his firm was named Burton, Chippendale and Company, but that partnership was subsequently dissolved.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|114}}
Burton’s company, James Burton & Sons, was the biggest mill-owning business in the area in the middle of the 19th century. Burton built a cluster of cotton mills in Hindsford starting with Atherton Mill in 1839, followed by Lodge Mill in 1853, Field Mill in 1856, and Westfield Mill in 1860, all of which were supplied with water by the Hindsford Brook.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|114}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Burton-House-and-Burton-Mills-demolished-1926.jpg)Burton’s Mills and Burton House
Lunn (1953)
Politically, Burton was a Liberal. He represented Tyldesley on the Board of Guardians of the [Leigh Poor Law Union](https://engole.info/leigh-poor-law-union/). He died in 1868 and is buried in [St George’s](https://engole.info/st-georges-church-tyldesley/) churchyard.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|114}}
After his death, his sons, John, Oliver and Fred continued the business. A fire at the mills caused £15,000 damage in November 1883.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|114}} In 1891 Burton’s mills had 157,196 spindles and 570 looms.{{sfnp|673456E8}} The mills were stripped of machinery and were demolished in 1926.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|114}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2337
**Categories:** Industrialist
---
### [Thirty Strange Stories](https://engole.info/thirty-strange-stories/)
**Published:** January 14, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Collection of 30 short stories by H. G. Wells, first published in 1897.
**Content:**
*Thirty Strange Stories* is a collection of short stories written by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), published in the United States in 1897. Two of the stories included – “Le Mari Terrible” and “[The Rajahs Treasure](https://engole.info/the-rajahs-treasure/)” – never appeared in book form in Britain.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|55}}
## Contents
Stories are shown in the order in which they appear in the book, which is not necessarily the order in which they first appeared in print.
- “[The Strange Orchid](https://engole.info/the-flowering-of-the-strange-orchid/)” (1894)
- “[Æpyornis Island](https://engole.info/aepyornis-island/)” (1894)
- “[The Plattner Story](https://engole.info/the-plattner-story/)” (1896)
- “[The Argonauts of the Air](https://engole.info/the-argonauts-of-the-air/)” (1895)
- “[The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham](https://engole.info/the-story-of-the-late-mr-elvesham/)” (1896)
- “[The Stolen Bacillus](https://engole.info/the-stolen-bacillus/)” (1894)
- “[The Red Room](https://engole.info/the-red-room/)” (1896)
- “[The Moth](https://engole.info/the-moth/)” (1896)
- “[In the Abyss”](https://engole.info/in-the-abyss/) (1896)
- “[Slip Under the Knife](https://engole.info/under-the-knife/)” (1896)
- “[The Reconciliation](https://engole.info/the-reconciliation/)“
- “[A Slip Under the Microscope](https://engole.info/a-slip-under-the-microscope/)” (1896)
- “[In the Avu Observatory](https://engole.info/in-the-avu-observatory/)” (1894)
- “[The Triumphs of a Taxidermist](https://engole.info/the-triumphs-of-a-taxidermist/)” (1894)
- “[A Deal in Ostriches](https://engole.info/a-deal-in-ostriches/)” (1894)
- “[The Rajah’s Treasure](https://engole.info/the-rajahs-treasure/)“
- “[The Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes](https://engole.info/the-remarkable-case-of-davidsons-eyes/)” (1895)
- “[The Cone](https://engole.info/the-cone/)” (1895)
- “[The Purple Pileus](https://engole.info/the-purple-pileus/)” (1896)
- “[A Catastrophe](https://engole.info/a-catastrophe/)” (1895)
- “Le Mari Terrible”
- “[The Apple](https://engole.info/the-apple/)” (1896)
- “[The Sad Story of a Dramatic Critic](https://engole.info/the-sad-story-of-a-dramatic-critic/)” (1895)
- “[The Jilting of Jane](https://engole.info/the-jilting-of-jane/)” (1894)
- “[The Lost Inheritance](https://engole.info/the-lost-inheritance/)” (1896)
- “[Pollock and the Porroh Man](https://engole.info/pollock-and-the-porroh-man/)” (1895)
- “[The Sea-Raiders](https://engole.info/the-sea-raiders/)” (1896)
- “[In the Modern Vein: An Unsympathetic Love Story](https://engole.info/in-the-modern-vein/)” (1894)
- “[The Lord of the Dynamos](https://engole.info/the-lord-of-the-dynamos/)” (1894)
- “[The Treasure in the Forest](https://engole.info/the-treasure-in-the-forest/)” (1894)
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24357
## External links
- [*Thirty Strange Stories*](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59774) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Samlesbury witches](https://engole.info/samlesbury-witches/)
**Published:** June 6, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Lancaster_Castle.jpg[/pimage]Three women from the Lancashire village of Samlesbury accused by a 14-year-old girl, Grace Sowerbutts, of practising witchcraft. All three were acquitted.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Lancaster_Castle.jpg)Lancaster Castle, where the Samlesbury witches were tried in the summer of 1612
Wikimedia Commons
The Samlesbury witches were three women from the Lancashire village of Samlesbury – Jane Southworth, Jennet Bierley, and Ellen Bierley – accused by a 14-year-old girl, Grace Sowerbutts, of practising witchcraft. Their trial at Lancaster Assizes in England on 19 August 1612 was one in a series of witch trials held there over two days, among the most famous in English history.{{sfnp|DB6SXDFK|1}} The trials were unusual for England at that time in two respects: Thomas Potts, the clerk to the court, published the proceedings in his [*The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster*](https://engole.info/the-wonderfull-discoverie-of-witches-in-the-countie-of-lancaster/); and the number of the accused found guilty and hanged was unusually high, ten at Lancaster and another at York.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|23}} All three of the Samlesbury women were acquitted however.
The charges against the women included child murder and cannibalism. In contrast, the others tried at the same assizes, who included the [Pendle witches](https://engole.info/pendle-witches), were accused of [maleficium](https://engole.info/maleficium/) – causing harm by witchcraft.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|2}} The case against the three women collapsed “spectacularly” when the chief prosecution witness, Grace Sowerbutts, was exposed by the trial judge to be “the perjuring tool of a Catholic priest”.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|22}}
Many historians, notably Hugh Trevor-Roper, have suggested that the witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries were a consequence of the religious struggles of the period, with the Catholic and Protestant Churches determined to stamp out what they regarded as heresy.{{sfnp|QFH2TEPZ|86-87}} The trial of the Samlesbury witches is perhaps one clear example of that trend; it has been described as “largely a piece of anti-Catholic propaganda”,{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|32-33}} and even as a show-trial, to demonstrate that Lancashire, considered at that time to be a wild and lawless region, was being purged not only of witches but also of “popish plotters” (i.e. [recusant](https://engole.info/act-of-uniformity-1558/) Catholics).{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|35}}
## Background
King James I, who came to the English throne from Scotland in 1603, had a keen interest in witchcraft. By the early 1590s, he was convinced that Scottish witches were plotting against him.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|23}} His 1597 book, *Daemonologie*, instructed his followers that they must denounce and prosecute any supporters or practitioners of witchcraft. In 1604, the year following James’s accession to the English throne, a new witchcraft law was enacted, “An Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft and dealing with evil and wicked spirits”, imposing the death penalty for causing harm by the use of magic or the exhumation of corpses for magical purposes.{{sfnp|ETUC56LF|96}} James was, however, sceptical of the evidence presented in witch trials, even to the extent of personally exposing discrepancies in the testimonies presented against some accused witches.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|23-24}}
The accused witches lived in Lancashire, an English county which, at the end of the 16th century, was regarded by the authorities as a wild and lawless region, “fabled for its theft, violence and sexual laxity, where the church was honoured without much understanding of its doctrines by the common people”.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|5}} Since the death of Queen Mary and the accession to the throne of her half-sister Elizabeth in 1558, Catholic priests had been forced into hiding, but in remote areas like Lancashire they continued to celebrate mass in secret.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|8-9}} In early 1612, the year of the trials, each justice of the peace (JP) in Lancashire was ordered to compile a list of the [recusants](https://engole.info/act-of-uniformity-1558/) in their area – those who refused to attend the services of the Church of England, a criminal offence at that time.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|7}}
### Southworth family
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Samlesbury_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_150049.jpg)Samlesbury Hall, family home of the Southworths{{sfnp
VXVTC2MB|30
The 16th-century English Reformation, during which the Church of England broke away from the authority of the pope and the Catholic Church, split the Southworth family of Samlesbury Hall. Sir John Southworth, head of the family, was a leading recusant who had been arrested several times for refusing to abandon his Catholic faith. His eldest son, also called John, did convert to the Church of England, for which he was disinherited, but the rest of the family remained staunchly Catholic.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|30-32}}
One of the accused witches, Jane Southworth, was the widow of the disinherited son, John. Relations between John and his father do not seem to have been amicable; according to a statement made by John Singleton, in which he referred to Sir John as his “old Master”, Sir John refused even to pass his son’s house if he could avoid it, and believed that Jane would probably kill her husband.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|30-32}}{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|94}} Jane Southworth (née Sherburne) and John were married in about 1598, and the couple lived in Samlesbury Lower Hall. Jane had been widowed only a few months before her trial for witchcraft in 1612, and had seven children.{{sfnp|DUWZPC2G|93}}
## Investigations
On 21 March 1612 Alizon Device, who lived just outside the Lancashire village of Fence, near Pendle Hill,{{sfnp|DR3M4GJB|60}} encountered John Law, a pedlar from Halifax. She asked him for some pins, which he refused to give to her,{{sfnp|88FWII9K|9}} and a few minutes later Law suffered a stroke, for which he blamed Alizon.{{sfnp|AXC9YLSE|83}} Along with her mother Elizabeth and her brother James, Alizon was summoned to appear before local magistrate Roger Nowell on 30 March 1612. Based on the evidence and confessions he obtained, Nowell committed Alizon and ten others to Lancaster Gaol to be tried at the next assizes for maleficium, causing harm by witchcraft.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|16}}
Other Lancashire magistrates learned of Nowell’s discovery of witchcraft in the county, and on 15 April 1612 JP Robert Holden began investigations in his own area of Samlesbury.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|30}} As a result, eight individuals were committed to Lancaster Assizes, three of whom – Jane Southworth, Jennet Bierley, and Ellen Bierley – were accused of practising witchcraft on Grace Sowerbutts, Jennet’s granddaughter and Ellen’s niece.{{sfnp|4HCJLXAD}}
## Trial
The trial was held on 19 August 1612 before Sir Edward Bromley,{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|83}} a judge seeking promotion to a circuit nearer London, and who may therefore have been keen to impress King James, the head of the judiciary.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|24}} Before the trial began, Bromley ordered the release of five of the eight defendants from Samlesbury, with a warning about their future conduct.{{sfnp|4HCJLXAD}} The remainder – Jane Southworth, Jennet Bierley, and Ellen Bierley – were accused of using “diverse devillish and wicked Arts, called Witchcrafts, Inchauntments, Charmes, and Sorceries, in and upon one Grace Sowerbutts”, to which they pleaded not guilty.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|85}} Fourteen-year-old Grace was the chief prosecution witness.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|88}}
Grace was the first to give evidence. In her statement she claimed that both her grandmother and aunt, Jennet and Ellen Bierley, were able to transform themselves into dogs and that they had “haunted and vexed her” for years.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|86}} She further alleged that they had transported her to the top of a hayrick by her hair, and on another occasion had tried to persuade her to drown herself. According to Grace, her relatives had taken her to the house of Thomas Walshman and his wife, from whom they had stolen a baby to suck its blood. Grace claimed that the child died the following night, and that after its burial at Samlesbury Church Ellen and Jennet dug up the body and took it home, where they cooked and ate some of it and used the rest to make an ointment that enabled them to change themselves into other shapes.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|86-89}}
Grace also alleged that her grandmother and aunt, with Jane Southworth, attended sabbats held every Thursday and Sunday night at Red Bank, on the north shore of the River Ribble. At those secret meetings they met with “foure black things, going upright, and yet not like men in the face”, with whom they ate, danced, and had sex.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|90}}
Thomas Walshman, the father of the baby allegedly killed and eaten by the accused, was the next to give evidence. He confirmed that his child had died of unknown causes at about one year old. He added that Grace Sowerbutts was discovered lying as if dead in his father’s barn on about 15 April, and did not recover until the following day.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|93}} Two other witnesses, John Singleton and William Alker, confirmed that Sir John Southworth, Jane Southworth’s father-in-law, had been reluctant to pass the house where his son lived, as he believed Jane to be an “evil woman, and a Witch”.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|94-95}}
### Examinations
Thomas Potts, the clerk to the Lancaster Assizes, records that after hearing the evidence many of those in court were persuaded of the accused’s guilt. On being asked by the judge what answer they could make to the charges laid against them, Potts reports that they “humbly fell upon their knees with weeping teares”, and “desired him \[Bromley\] for Gods cause to examine Grace Sowerbutts”. Immediately “the countenance of this Grace Sowerbutts changed”; the witnesses “began to quarrel and accuse one another”, and eventually admitted that Grace had been coached in her story by a Catholic priest they called Thompson. Bromley then committed the girl to be examined by two JPs, William Leigh and Edward Chisnal.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|104-105}} Under questioning Grace readily admitted that her story was untrue, and said she had been told what to say by Jane Southworth’s uncle,{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|35}} Christopher Southworth aka Thompson, a Jesuit priest who was in hiding in the Samlesbury area;{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|31}} Southworth was the chaplain at Samlesbury Hall,{{sfnp|2W2F8QN8|139}} and Jane Southworth’s uncle by marriage.{{sfnp|DUWZPC2G|93}} Leigh and Chisnal questioned the three accused women in an attempt to discover why Southworth might have fabricated evidence against them, but none could offer any reason other than that each of them “goeth to the \[Anglican\] Church”.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|104-105}}
After the statements had been read out in court Bromley ordered the jury to find the defendants not guilty, stating that:
God hath delivered you beyond expectation, I pray God you may use this mercie and favour well; and take heed you fall not hereafter: And so the court doth order that you shall be delivered.{{sfnp
— BDJAFZ5Q|168}}
Potts concludes his account of the trial with the words:
Thus were these poore Innocent creatures, by the great care and paines of this honourable Judge, delivered from the danger of this Conspiracie; this bloudie practise of the Priest laid open.{{sfnp
— BDJAFZ5Q|106}}
## *The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster*
Title page of the original edition, published in 1613
Wikimedia Commons
{{main|The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster}}
Almost everything that is known about the trials comes from a report of the proceedings written by Thomas Potts, the clerk to the Lancaster Assizes. Potts was instructed to write his account by the trial judges, and had completed the work by 16 November 1612. Bromley revised and corrected the manuscript before its publication in 1613, declaring it to be “truly reported” and “fit and worthie to be published”.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|xli}} Although written as an apparently verbatim account, the book is not a report of what was actually said at the trial, but instead a reflection on what happened.{{sfnp|A45RS9SG|48}} Nevertheless, Potts “seems to give a generally trustworthy, although not comprehensive, account of an Assize witchcraft trial, provided that the reader is constantly aware of his use of written material instead of verbatim reports”.{{sfnp|A45RS9SG|50}}
In his introduction to the trial, Potts writes; “Thus have we for a time left the Graund Witches of the Forrest of Pendle, to the good consideration of a very sufficient jury.”{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|83}} Bromley had by then heard the cases against the three [Pendle witches](https://engole.info/pendle-witches) who had confessed to their guilt, but he had yet to deal with the others, who maintained their innocence. He knew that the only testimony against them would come from a nine-year-old girl, and that King James had cautioned judges to examine carefully the evidence presented against accused witches, warning against credulity.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|35}} In his conclusion to the account of the trial, Potts says that it was interposed in the expected sequence “by special order and commandment”,{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|107}} presumably of the trial judges. After having convicted and sentenced to death three witches, Bromley may have been keen to avoid any suspicion of credulity by presenting his “masterful exposure” of the evidence presented by Grace Sowerbutts, before turning his attention back to the remainder of the Pendle witches.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|35}}
## Modern interpretations
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/The_Lancashire_Witches_10.jpg)Illustration from William Harrison Ainsworth’s novel *The Lancashire Witches*, published in 1848. Flying was considered to be against the laws of nature, and so impossible according to the demonology of King James.{{sfnp
WZ8W8V7X|234}}\[a\]Far from being against the laws of nature, the first heavier-than-air flight by a European, [Eilmer of Malmesbury](https://engole.info/eilmer-of-malmesbury/), had taken place more than 600 years earlier.
Potts declares that “this Countie of Lancashire … now may lawfully bee said to abound asmuch in Witches of divers kinds as Seminaries, Jesuites, and Papists”,{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|153}} and describes the three accused women as having once been “obstinate Papists, and now came to Church”.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|101}} The judges would certainly have been keen to be regarded by King James, the head of the judiciary, as having dealt resolutely with Catholic recusants as well as with witchcraft, the “two big threats to Jacobean order in Lancashire”.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|31}} Samlesbury Hall, the family home of the Southworths, was suspected by the authorities of being a refuge for Catholic priests, and it was under secret government surveillance for some considerable time before the trial of 1612.{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|32-33}} It may be that JP Robert Holden was at least partially motivated in his investigations by a desire to “smoke out its Jesuit chaplain”, Christopher Southworth.{{sfnp|2W2F8QN8|139}}
The English experience of witchcraft was somewhat different from the European one, with only one really mass witchhunt, that of Matthew Hopkins in East Anglia during 1645. That one incident accounted for more than 20 per cent of the number of witches it is estimated were executed in England between the early 15th and mid-18th century, fewer than 500.{{sfnp|DB6SXDFK|3}} The English legal system also differed significantly from the inquisitorial model used in Europe, requiring members of the public to accuse their neighbours of some crime, and for the case to be decided by a jury of their peers. English witch trials of the period “revolved around popular beliefs, according to which the crime of witchcraft was one of … evil-doing”, for which tangible evidence had to be provided.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|28}}
Potts devotes several pages to a fairly detailed criticism of the evidence presented in Grace Sowerbutts’ statement, giving an insight into the discrepancies that existed during the early 17th century between the Protestant establishment’s view of witchcraft and the beliefs of the common people, who may have been influenced by the more continental views of Catholic priests such as Christopher Southworth.{{sfnp|DB6SXDFK|4}} Unlike their European counterparts, the English Protestant elite believed that witches kept [familiars](https://engole.info/witchs-familiar/), or companion animals, and so it was not considered credible that the Samlesbury witches had none.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|28}} Grace’s story of the sabbat, too, was unfamiliar to the English at that time, although belief in such secret gatherings of witches was widespread in Europe.{{sfnp|2W2F8QN8|138}} Most demonologists of the period, including King James, held that only God could perform miracles, and that he had not given the power to go against the laws of nature to those in league with the Devil.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|34}} Hence Potts dismisses Sowerbutts’ claim that Jennet Bierley transformed herself into a black dog with the comment “I would know by what means any Priest can maintaine this point of Evidence”. He equally lightly dismisses Grace’s account of the sabbat she claimed to have attended, where she met with “foure black things … not like men in the face”, with the comment that “The Seminarie \[priest\] mistakes the face for the feete: For Chattox \[one of the Pendle witches\] and all her fellow witches agree, the Devill is cloven-footed: but Fancie \[Chattox’s familiar\] had a very good face, and was a proper man.”{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|98}}
It is perhaps unlikely that the accused women would have failed to draw the examining magistrate’s attention to their suspicions concerning Grace Sowerbutts’ motivations when first examined, only to do so at the very end of their trial when asked by the judge if they had anything to say in their defence. The trial of the Samlesbury witches in 1612 may have been “largely a piece of anti-Catholic propaganda”,{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|32-33}} or even a “show-trial”,{{sfnp|4HCJLXAD}} the purpose of which was to demonstrate that Lancashire was being purged not only of witches, but also of “popish plotters”.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|35}}
## Aftermath
Bromley achieved his desired promotion to the Midlands Circuit in 1616. Potts was given the keepership of Skalme Park by King James in 1615, to breed and train the king’s hounds. In 1618 he was given responsibility for “collecting the forfeitures on the laws concerning sewers, for twenty-one years”.{{sfnp|WZ8W8V7X|38}} Jane Southworth’s eldest son, Thomas, eventually inherited his grandfather’s estate of Samlesbury Hall.{{sfnp|DUWZPC2G|93}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Far from being against the laws of nature, the first heavier-than-air flight by a European, [Eilmer of Malmesbury](https://engole.info/eilmer-of-malmesbury/), had taken place more than 600 years earlier.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 1366
**Categories:** English, Female, Witch
---
### [Witch ball](https://engole.info/witch-ball/)
**Published:** August 9, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Witch_Ball_%28988221009%29.jpg[/pimage]Glass ball coated with a reflecting material, used to ward off the evil eye of a passing witch.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Witch_Ball_%28988221009%29.jpg)Witch ball on display at Whitby vMuseum
Wikimedia Commons
A witch ball, alternatively known as a watch ball, is a glass ball coated with a reflecting material such as silver, gold or brightly coloured paint, or with a swirling multi-coloured pattern. Popular in the 19th century, they were hung in cottage windows to ward off the [evil eye](https://engole.info/evil-eye) of a passing witch, either by reflecting it back on her or confusing her with its pattern. Plain hollow spheres of glass filled with brightly coloured tangled threads were believed to be equally effective.{{sfnp|GUIIGZQN}}
Another suggested explanation for the popularity of witch balls is that they prevented a witch from being in a room, either because the witch had no reflection, or could not bear to see her reflection.{{sfnp|5HSZXEIM}}
The alternative name of *watch ball* derives from the belief that the ball grew dull in the presence of infection in the air, and so should be watched to warn of such.{{sfnp|GUIIGZQN}}
## See also
- [Aptropaic eye](https://engole.info/apotropaic-eye/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26668
**Categories:** Apotropaic, Magic
---
### [The Fair Toxophilites](https://engole.info/the-fair-toxophilites/)
**Published:** January 19, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/The_Fair_Toxophilites_%28or_English_Archers%2C_Nineteenth_Century%29_-_William_Powell_Frith_-_305_1976.png/960px-The_Fair_Toxophilites_%28or_English_Archers%2C_Nineteenth_Century%29_-_William_Powell_Frith_-_305_1976.png[/pimage]1872 painting by William Powell Frith, depicting his three daughters practising archery.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/The_Fair_Toxophilites_%28or_English_Archers%2C_Nineteenth_Century%29_-_William_Powell_Frith_-_305_1976.png/960px-The_Fair_Toxophilites_%28or_English_Archers%2C_Nineteenth_Century%29_-_William_Powell_Frith_-_305_1976.png)Oil on canvas
98 cm × 82 cm (39 in × 32 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Fair Toxophilites*, also known as *English Archers, Nineteenth Century*,{{sfnp|XHS8US5Q}}\[a\]Toxophily is a late-19th century term for the “practice of, or addiction to, archery”.{{sfnp|6HN7PF2I}} is an 1872 oil painting by the English artist William Powell Frith, depicting three young women practising archery. They are Frith’s fashionably dressed daughters Alice, Fanny and Louise, and reflect the Victorian-era craze for archery, referred to in the novel *Daniel Deronda* by George Eliot.{{sfnp|V5CIYRPC|400}}{{sfnp|B5XSCXPE|157}}
Frith exhibited the painting at the 1873 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, along with another feauturing women playing billiards. A review in *The Athenaeum* was critical of the work, but those in *The Art Journal* and *The Time*s were were more positive.{{sfnp|B5XSCXPE|157-159}}
The painting was purchased by the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, in Exeter, with support from the V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Sir Harry Veitch Bequest Trust Fund, and remains in the museum’s collection today.{{sfnp|XHS8US5Q}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Toxophily is a late-19th century term for the “practice of, or addiction to, archery”.{{sfnp|6HN7PF2I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 28321
**Categories:** Genre painting
---
### [The Country Choristers](https://engole.info/the-country-choristers/)
**Published:** June 6, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Edward_Bird_%281772-1819%29_-_Village_Choristers_Rehearsing_an_Anthem_for_Sunday_-_RCIN_405540_-_Royal_Collection.jpg/1280px-Edward_Bird_%281772-1819%29_-_Village_Choristers_Rehearsing_an_Anthem_for_Sunday_-_RCIN_405540_-_Royal_Collection.jpg[/pimage]1812 genre painting by the English artist Edward Bird, depicting "the essential God-fearing decency of the English working man and woman".
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/The_departure_to_London_2000_CSK_08692_0259_000%28124856%29.jpg)Oil on panel
63 cm × 93 cm (25 in × 37 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Country Choristers, or Village Choristers Rehearsing an Anthem for Sunday* as it was titled when displayed at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1810, is a [genre painting](https://engole.info/genre-painting) by the English artist Edward Bird.{{sfnp|C86ID25J}} Bird was a member of the Bristol School, and was known for his depictions of everyday life in Regency England.{{sfnp|TMP53XDW|26}}
The painting depicts a rough country pub full of old-fashioned furniture and a motley collection of patrons. The drinking and the mother and child being ejected are characteristic of scenes of drunken depravity, but in the foreground the verger is conducting a rehearsal for his church choir. Bird is depicting a “harmonious disorder expressing the essential God-fearing decency of the English working man and woman”.{{sfnp|C86ID25J}}
The painting was purchased for 250 guineas by George, Prince of Wales, on the advice of the President of the Royal Academy, Benjamin West.\[a\]Equivalent to about £25,000 as at 2023, calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} George then commissioned the Scottish painter David Wilkie to produce a companion piece, *Blind-Man’s Buff*.{{sfnp|C86ID25J}}{{sfnp|P3JAW4N9}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Equivalent to about £25,000 as at 2023, calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27493
**Categories:** Genre painting
---
### [The Departure to London](https://engole.info/the-departure-to-london/)
**Published:** June 5, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/The_departure_to_London_2000_CSK_08692_0259_000%28124856%29.jpg[/pimage]1815 genre painting by the English artist Edward Bird.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/The_departure_to_London_2000_CSK_08692_0259_000%28124856%29.jpg)Oil on panel
61 cm × 91 cm (24 in × 36 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Departure to London* is an 1815 [genre painting](https://engole.info/genre-painting) by the English artist Edward Bird.{{sfnp|CTUJBD8L|116}} Bird was a member of the Bristol School, and was known for his depictions of everyday life in Regency England. The painting was displayed at the 1815 Royal Academy Exhibition at Somerset House, and was praised by *The New Monthly Magazine* as “a happy expression of affectionate sentiment”.{{sfnp|TMP53XDW|26}}
The painting shows a young man taking leave of his family before travelling to London to try and make his fortune. By the window a young boy points excitedly at the arriving stage coach.{{sfnp|TMP53XDW|26}} The women on the left are packing food and belongings, and the father is handing over a letter of introduction to his son.{{sfnp|BKAJSPZG}}
In 2000 *The Departure to London* was sold at Christie’s in London for £18,400,{{sfnp|LCUAB8PV}} and since 2015 has been in the collection of the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.{{sfnp|BKAJSPZG}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27492
**Categories:** Genre painting
---
### [Ordsall Hall](https://engole.info/ordsall-hall/)
**Published:** January 24, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Ordsall_Hall_2014_01.jpg[/pimage]Large former manor house in the historic parish of Ordsall, Lancashire, England, now part of the City of Salford, in Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Ordsall_Hall-scaled.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/evwTCeUeEG1KapHV8}}
Ordsall Hall in 2014
Ordsall Hall is a large former manor house in the historic parish of Ordsall, Lancashire, England, now part of the City of Salford, in Greater Manchester. It dates back more than 750 years, although the oldest surviving parts of the present hall were built in the 15th century. The most important period of Ordsall Hall’s life was as the family seat of the Radclyffe family, who lived in the house for more than 300 years. The hall was the setting for [William Harrison Ainsworth](https://engole.info/william-harrison-ainsworth/)‘s 1842 novel [*Guy Fawkes*](https://engole.info/guy-fawkes-novel), written around the plausible although unsubstantiated local story that the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was planned in the house.
Since its sale by the Radclyffes in 1662 the hall has been put to many uses: a working men’s club, a school for clergy, and a radio station among them. The house was bought by Salford Council in 1959, and opened to the public in 1972 as a period house and local history museum.
Ordsall Hall is a Grade I [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building),{{sfnp|SBKGYULT}}
## History
Ordsall Hall is a formerly moated Tudor mansion, the oldest parts of which were built during the 13th century,{{sfnp|99I9GFY5|90}} although there has been a house on the site for more than 750 years. David de Hulton is recorded as the owner of the original hall, in 1251.{{sfnp|D6878RC7|125}} The manor of Ordsall came into the possession of the Radclyffe family in about 1335, but it was not until 1354 that Sir John Radclyffe established his right of inheritance. The manor was described in 1351 as a messuage, {{convert|120|acre}} (48.6 ha) of land, {{convert|12|acre}} of meadow and 12 acres of wood.{{sfnp|CG87JIM6}}
### Radclyffe family home
During the 1340s Sir John Radclyffe campaigned with Edward III in France, distinguishing himself at the battles of Caen, Crècy and Calais. As a reward for his service, the King allowed Sir John to take some Flemish weavers back to his Ordsall estate, where he built cottages for them to live in. English weaving skills at that time were poor, and textiles from Manchester were considered to be of particularly poor quality, so the Flemish weavers were employed in instructing the local weavers. They also started up a silk weaving industry, the foundation for Manchester’s later cotton industry.{{sfnp|XBMPWJF3|101-102}}
The Dutch humanist and theologian Erasmus stayed at Ordsall Hall in 1499, and described it thus:
… the floors are made of clay and are covered with layers of rushes, constantly replenished, so that the bottom layer remains for 20 years harbouring spittle, vomit, the urine of dogs and men, the dregs of beer, the remains of fish and other nameless filth …{{sfnp
— XBMPWJF3|90}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Ordsall_Hall%2C_Great_Hall%2C_high_end%2C_2009.JPG)The Great Hall. The corridor to the left of the staircase leads to the Star Chamber.
Wikimedia Commons
The original cruck hall was replaced by the present Great Hall in 1512, after Sir Alexander Radclyffe was appointed High Sheriff of Lancashire. The hall is typical of others built at that time in the northwest of England, although it is one of the largest, and is unusual for the period in having no wall fireplace. The hall has an elaborate roof structure, as in the similar Rufford Old Hall. There is a slightly later small room above the large oriel bay, which may be an early addition as at Samlesbury Hall.{{sfnp|CG87JIM6}}
Other alterations and additions were made during the 17th century, including a modest brick house added onto the west end in 1639, perhaps intended as a home for Sir Alexander’s bailiff, as he himself no longer used the hall as his main residence by that time. The house was built at 90° to the timber-framed building, to which it was later joined. During the Civil War Sir Alexander, as a Royalist, was imprisoned and suffered financial hardship. Reduced means eventually forced his heir, John Radclyffe, into selling the hall to Colonel John Birch in 1662, thus ending more than 300 years of his family’s occupation.{{sfnp|CG87JIM6}}
## Later use
At the time of the 1666 hearth tax survey, Ordsall Hall was the largest house in Salford, with nineteen hearths.{{sfnp|VBUQCPY6}} The Oldfield family of Leftwich, near Northwich, bought the estate at the end of the 17th century, and in 1704 it was sold again, to John Stock, a trustee of Cross Street Chapel. His family were probably the last owners to reside at the hall. The Stocks lived in the hall’s central section, comprising “a large hall, lounge dining room, a chapel, six rooms on a floor, with brewhouse, large courts, stable, etc”, while the two wings were leased tenants from about 1700. In 1756 the hall was sold to Samuel Hill of Shenstone, Staffordshire. Two years later, on Hill’s death, the house passed to his nephew, Samuel Egerton of Tatton.{{sfnp|CG87JIM6}}
The hall remained in occupation until 1871, the last residents being the descendants of John Markendale, who had taken over the lease of the building in 1814. The land surrounding the hall was used by the Mather family of cowkeepers and butchers for many years. During the last quarter of the 19th century Ordsall Hall became engulfed “in mean streets and industry”.{{sfnp|3KMF2URM|159}} From 1875 Haworth’s Mill rented the hall and used it as a working men’s club.{{sfnp|CG87JIM6}} The Great Hall was converted into a gymnasium after being cleared of the inserted floor and later partitions, and provision was made elsewhere for billiards, a skittle alley, and a bowling green. In 1883 the hall was bought by the Earl Egerton of Tatton, and restored during 1896–98 by the Manchester architect Alfred Darybshire at a cost of £6,000{{sfnp|3KMF2URM|159}} (equivalent to £630,200 in 2016\[a\]United Kingdom Gross Domestic Product deflator figures follow the Measuring Worth “consistent series” supplied in Thomas, Ryland; Williamson, Samuel H. (2018), “What Was the U.K. GDP Then?”, MeasuringWorth.). The restoration allowed the earl to found a clergy training school at the hall. Provisions for the school included the construction of a church dedicated to St Cyprian in the north forecourt, and a new servants’ wing on the south side. In 1908 the school was moved to Egerton Hall, changing its name to the Manchester Theological College. The men’s social club at Ordsall Hall survived until 1940. During the Second World War the hall was used as a radio station.{{sfnp|3KMF2URM|159}} In the 1960s the church and servants’ wing built for the clergy school were demolished.{{sfnp|CG87JIM6}}
Salford Corporation purchased Ordsall Hall from the executors of the Baron Egerton of Tatton in 1959. After major restoration work, it was opened to the public in April 1972, as a period house and local history museum.{{sfnp|CG87JIM6}}
In March 2007 the Extraordinary Ordsall Campaign applied for a grant of £5.1 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), to regenerate Ordsall Hall and secure its future.{{sfnp|46CGVDX5}} After supporters had raised £1 million by September 2008, the HLF provided the remaining £4.1 million. Only forty per cent of the building was then open to the public, but following restoration work further rooms were expected to be opened. The building closed for refurbishment in early 2009,{{sfnp|JITH763I}} and re-opened to the public on 15 May 2011.{{sfnp|2VRE3ACW}} In 2013 the newly restored building received a Bronze Award in the Small Visitor Attraction category organised by tourist body VisitEngland, one of 320 nominations from across the country.{{sfnp|YHR7K3QA}}
## Architecture
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Ordsall_Hall%2C_Star_Chamber_2009.jpg)The Star Chamber, which takes its name from the lead stars on its ceiling, leads off the Great Hall; it and the [solar](https://engole.info/solar-room) above – a private upper room that would have contained a bed – are the oldest remaining parts of the hall.{{sfnp
99I9GFY5|92
There are two separate elements to the present-day house: the timber-framed south range built in the 15th century, and the brick west range constructed in 1639. The hall was originally built around a central quadrangle, but the other wings making up that space are no longer present. Drawing on the earliest description of the house, from 1380, the Salford City Council describes how it comprised “a hall, five chambers, a kitchen and a chapel. It was associated with two stables, three granges, two shippons, a garner, a dovecote, an orchard and a windmill, together with 80 acres \[32.4 ha\] of arable land and six acres \[2.4 ha\] of meadow.”{{sfnp|CG87JIM6}}
Substantial alterations appear to have taken place during the early years of Samuel Egerton’s ownership in the mid-18th century. The canopy at the dais end of the Great Hall was destroyed – although part of it can still be seen in the north wall – when a floor was inserted and new rooms were formed with lath and plaster partitions. The east wing of the hall was probably demolished at about the same time, but certainly before 1812, the date of the earliest estate map.{{sfnp|CG87JIM6}}
There are believed to have been underground passages leading from the hall into Manchester. One, running under the River Irwell to the Hanging Bridge Hotel at the northern end of Deansgate, was described in 1900, following the rediscovery of the [Hanging Bridge](https://engole.info/hanging-bridge/) after it had been buried for 200 years:
I was shown a door in Hanging Bridge Hotel cellar where the arches could be seen and a door made up … it was the entrance to an underground passage under the Irwell, possibly to Ordsall Hall … the owner had not traversed the passage himself, but the previous owner had, but had to turn back because of bad smells …{{sfnp
— XBMPWJF3|103}}|Letter to the *Manchester Guardian*, April 1900
## Guy Fawkes
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/GuyFawkesStreet.jpg)Guy Fawkes Street runs down the eastern side of the hall.
Wikimedia Commons
[William Harrison Ainsworth](https://engole.info/william-harrison-ainsworth/), in his 1842 novel [*Guy Fawkes*](https://engole.info/guy-fawkes-novel), wrote about the local story that the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was planned by [Guy Fawkes](https://engole.info/guy-fawkes/) and Robert Catesby in Ordsall Hall’s Star Chamber. Fawkes is supposed to have escaped capture by the king’s soldiers by way of an underground tunnel from Ordsall Hall to an inn at the cathedral end of [Hanging Bridge](https://engole.info/hanging-bridge), at the northern end of present-day Deansgate. There is no firm supporting evidence, but the Radclyffes were prominent Roman Catholics and were acquainted with the Catesby family. The legend is remembered in the name of the modern road that runs to the east of the hall, Guy Fawkes Street.{{sfnp|XBMPWJF3|102}}
## Hauntings
Like many old buildings, Ordsall Hall has stories of hauntings. The White Lady who is said to appear in the Great Hall or Star Chamber is popularly believed to be Margaret Radclyffe, who died of a broken heart in 1599 following the death at sea of her twin, Alexander.{{sfnp|XBMPWJF3|104}} An episode of the television programme *Most Haunted* was filmed in the hall in 2004.{{sfnp|V7J9ILSE}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a United Kingdom Gross Domestic Product deflator figures follow the Measuring Worth “consistent series” supplied in Thomas, Ryland; Williamson, Samuel H. (2018), “What Was the U.K. GDP Then?”, MeasuringWorth.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 13669
## External links
- [Salford City Council’s web site for Ordsall Hall](https://ordsallhall.com/)
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Haunted, Manor house
---
### [Vagabonds and Beggars Act 1494](https://engole.info/vagabonds-and-beggars-act-1494/)
**Published:** April 13, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Coat_of_Arms_of_Henry_VII_of_England_%281485-1509%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_Arms_of_Henry_VII_of_England_%281485-1509%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of Parliament intended to suppress beggars and itinerant vagabonds.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Coat_of_Arms_of_Henry_VII_of_England_%281485-1509%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_Arms_of_Henry_VII_of_England_%281485-1509%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Vagabonds and Beggars Act 1494 (11 Henry VII c. 2) was an Act of Parliament passed during the reign of Henry VII. The Act determined that:
Vagabonds, idle and suspected persons shall be set in the [stocks](https://engole.info/stocks) for three days and three nights and have none other sustenance but bread and water and then shall be put out of Town. Every beggar suitable to work shall resort to the [Hundred](https://engole.info/hundred-shire-division) where he last dwelled, is best known, or was born and there remain upon the pain aforesaid.{{sfnp
— XESZV3JN|loc=6926-6938}}
*Vagabond* is an Old French word used to describe those who wandered from place to place, especially those without regular occupation or other obvious means of support.{{sfnp|VWJZQSVA}}
## Background
The Black Death of 1348–1349, during which an estimated 40−60 per cent of the population of England died,\[a\]Estimates vary from about 20 per cent up to more than 60 per cent. A 2016 paper by the archaeologist Carenza Lewis suggests that, in rural settlements in eastern England, the population declined by 45 per cent to 65 per cent.{{sfnp|J5RKAZIH}} had led to a severe shortage of labour, encouraging many workers to roam the country in search of the highest wages.{{sfnp|XESZV3JN|loc=6926}} That posed a problem for landowners, who were no longer able to reply on the ready availability of a cheap and tractable workforce.{{sfnp|4XTK3RPT}} So, beginning with the 1349 [Ordinance of Labourers](https://engole.info/ordinance-of-labourers-1349), a series of laws was introduced to re-establish the social order by suppressing the movement of workers and restricting the level of their wages, which can be seen as the earliest laws dealing with the poor.{{sfnp|XESZV3JN|loc=6926}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Estimates vary from about 20 per cent up to more than 60 per cent. A 2016 paper by the archaeologist Carenza Lewis suggests that, in rural settlements in eastern England, the population declined by 45 per cent to 65 per cent.{{sfnp|J5RKAZIH}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25245
**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Bedfordshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-bedfordshire/)
**Published:** April 18, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Bedfordshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Bedfordshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the ceremonial county of Bedfordshire, split into the three unitary authorities.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Bedfordshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-Bedfordshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png)Bedfordshire shown within England
Wikimedia Commons
The [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Bedfordshire is made up of three [unitary authorities](https://engole.info/unitary-authority): Bedford, Central Bedfordshire, and Luton.{{sfnp|QIF8DWW5}}
The 114 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county, structures considered to be of particular architectural interest, are shown in separate lists for each authority.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
- [Bedford](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-bedford)
- [Central Bedfordshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-central-bedfordshire)
- [Luton](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-luton)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27366
**Categories:** Bedfordshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Fetch](https://engole.info/fetch/)
**Published:** September 4, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_-_How_They_Met_Themselves_%281860-64_circa%29.jpg[/pimage]Apparition in the form of a double of a living person, often a portent of death.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_-_How_They_Met_Themselves_%281860-64_circa%29.jpg)*[How They Met Themselves](https://engole.info/how-they-met-themselves)* by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1864
Wikimedia Commons
A fetch, or fetich, is an apparition in the form of a living person,{{sfnp|VIDPGCC7|96}} featured in folk-tales from all over England; fetches are also known as swarths or waffs in the north of England.{{sfnp|VIDPGCC7|96}}{{sfnp|8LTUFE8K|173}} Their appearance is almost always ominous, particularly if seen at night, and may be a portent of the imminent death of the person whose double has appeared. The double may be of the person themselves, as in the case of the daughter of the Earl of Holland; while strolling in her father’s grounds in Kensington she met her own apparition, and died of smallpox a month later.{{sfnp|8LTUFE8K|173}} The medievalist William Sayers described the fetch as “a ghost in the making”.{{sfnp|LH9AUT9M}}
According to the *Oxford English Dictionary*, the term *fetch* in the sense of an apparition first appears in English in 1787, but its etymology is uncertain.{{sfnp|2WEA4FXZ}} Sayers has suggested that its linguistic root is the Old Norse *fylgja*, a word describing either a supernatural follower or a guardian spirit. He goes on to suggest that the fetch represents a cultural fusion between the Norse idea of an individual’s spirit emanation and the notion of a personal or family guardian spirit which appears at the onset of a change in fortunes, found in the folklore of Ireland and the Western Isles of Scotland.{{sfnp|LH9AUT9M}}
## See also
- [Wraith](https://engole.info/wraith/ "Wraith")
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23075
**Categories:** Mythical creature
---
### [St Mark's Eve](https://engole.info/st-marks-eve/)
**Published:** April 30, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Day before the Feast Day of St Mark, 25 April, when watchers could see the wraiths of those destined to die during the year.
**Content:**
St Mark’s Eve is the day before the feast day of St Mark the Evangelist. In liturgical Christian churches, the feast of St Mark is observed on 25 April, thus St Mark’s Eve is 24 April.{{sfnp|KISGPNCN}}
It was the custom in [villages](https://engole.info/village) in England from the 17th to the late 19th century, for parishioners to sit in the church [porch](https://engole.info/narthex) on St Mark’s Eve. Those sitting had to keep silent between the bell tolling at 11:00 pm until it struck again at 1:00 am. It was said that the [wraiths](https://engole.info/wraith) of those destined to die during the year would be seen passing into the church.{{sfnp|INZTC3YS}} The first record of the custom appears in 1608, when a woman in Walesbie, Nottinghamshire, was charged before a church court “for watching upon Saint Markes even at Nighte laste in the Church porche to presage by divelishe demonstraction the deathe of somme neighbours within this yeere”.{{sfnp|DDI7TVXW}}
Some accounts state that the watchers must be fasting, or must circle the church before taking up position. The wraiths of those who were soon to die would be the first to be observed, while those who would almost see out the year would not appear until almost 1:00 am Other variations of the superstition say that the watchers would see headless or rotting corpses, or coffins approaching. “If the person is to be drowned, his representative will come as if struggling and splashing in water, and so on for other cases of premature death.” There are several accounts of watchers who saw their own wraith, and died shortly afterwards.{{sfnp|DDI7TVXW}}
Another tradition held that a young woman could see the face of her future husband appear on her smock by holding it before the fire on St Mark’s Eve.{{sfnp|INZTC3YS}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29944
**Categories:** Superstition
---
### [Wraith](https://engole.info/wraith/)
**Published:** April 30, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Spectral appearance of someone still alive, usually considered to be a sign of that person's imminent death.
**Content:**
A wraith is the spectral appearance of someone still alive, usually considered to be a sign of that person’s imminent death.{{sfnp|V9TYPMWN}} To see one’s own wraith, known as a [fetch](https://engole.info/fetch), is regarded as a sure sign of death.{{sfnp|32ZZBU8N}} The tradition appears to have developed from the idea that a person’s soul is an exact copy of that person’s physical form, and it leaves the body when death is imminent.{{sfnp|UVGUA2YW|search=wraith}}
It was once widely believed that, usually on [St Mark’s Eve](https://engole.info/st-marks-eve) but sometimes at All Souls or Midsummer Night, anyone who watched in the church [porch](https://engole.info/narthex) from midnight until one o’clock would see the wraiths of those destined to die that year entering the church, usually in the order of their deaths.{{sfnp|32ZZBU8N}}
Perhaps the best-known example of a wraith is that of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), who reportedly saw his own wraith as he was boarding a boat to take him across the Bay of Spezia in Italy to meet Leigh Hunt and Byron, to make arrangements for a new journal, *The Liberal*. The boat was hit by a storm on the return trip, and Shelley was drowned.{{sfnp|UVGUA2YW|search=wraith}}{{sfnp|GFJA5N3H|319-327}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Ghost
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Act of Six Articles 1539](https://engole.info/act-of-six-articles-1539/)
**Published:** July 29, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Coat_of_Arms_of_Henry_VIII_of_England_%281509-1547%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_Arms_of_Henry_VIII_of_England_%281509-1547%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of Parliament introduced to curb excessive Protestant reform and to impose religious conformity.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Coat_of_Arms_of_Henry_VIII_of_England_%281509-1547%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_Arms_of_Henry_VIII_of_England_%281509-1547%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Act of Six Articles 1539 (31 Hen. VIII c. 14),{{sfnp|65AFVD4K}} also known as the “Whip with Six Strings” because of the harsh punishments it introduced for religious nonconformity,{{sfnp|2F5DFP8U}} was a set of “highly reactionary”{{sfnp|65AFVD4K}} statements interpreted by many to be intended as a curb on excessive Protestant reform.{{sfnp|2F5DFP8U}}
England was at the time in religious turmoil, following Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church and his excommunication in 1533. Impatient Protestants took it upon themselves to pursue further reforms; some priests began saying mass in English instead of Latin, and married without authorisation. English Protestants were divided between reformers who held Lutheran beliefs maintaining the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and radicals such as the Anabaptists who did not.{{sfnp|NVR7NS25|269-270}}
A new Parliament met in May 1539, and Lord Chancellor Audley told the House of Lords that the King desired religious uniformity. A committee of four conservative and four reformist bishops was appointed to examine and determine church doctrine.{{sfnp|NVR7NS25|273}} On 16 May the Duke of Norfolk noted that the committee had not agreed on anything, and proposed that the Lords examine six controversial doctrinal questions that became the basis of the Six Articles:{{sfnp|NVR7NS25|275}}{{sfnp|5LVWSAEZ|180}}
- Whether the Eucharist could be the true body of Christ without transubstantiation
- Whether it needed to be given to the laity under both kinds \[bread and wine\]
- Whether vows of chastity needed to be observed as part of divine law
- Whether clerical celibacy should be compulsory
- Whether private (votive) masses were required (legitimate) by divine law
- Whether auricular confession – confession to a priest – was necessary as part of divine law
All but the sixth point were put into law in June 1539; although auricular confession was considered to be “expedient and necessary to be retained”, it was not required by divine law.{{sfnp|NVR7NS25|275}}
The Act introduced harsh penalties: denial of transubstantiation was punishable by burning, without an opportunity to recant, and denial of any of the other articles was punishable by hanging or life imprisonment.{{sfnp|QK2NLXFN|153}} Married priests were allowed until 12 July to put away their wives, which was probably a concession granted to give Archbishop Cranmer time to move his wife and children out of England.{{sfnp|WJZ5K9MV}}
The Act was repealed in 1547 in the first Parliament of Henry VIII’s successor, Edward VI, the first Protestant English king.{{sfnp|X696YH7I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmcloud.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Thirty-nine_Articles#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Taxation Act 1722](https://engole.info/taxation-act-1722/)
**Published:** January 4, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of the Parliament of Great Britain, imposing a tax on the estates of all Catholics to reimburse the government for the expenses of suppressing recent conspiracies.
**Content:**
Wikimedia Commons
The Taxation Act 1722 (9 Geo. 1. c. 18), is an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain, enacted in response to the Jacobite [Atterbury Plot](https://engole.info/atterbury-plot) uncovered that year, a thwarted attempt to restore the Catholic Stuart dynasty to the British throne.{{sfnp|VS79HQT6}} It imposed an extraordinary tax on the estates of all Catholics, to reimburse the public purse for the “great expense occasioned by the late conspiracies”, which became known as the Papists Tax.{{sfnp|MRQ4U2KC}}
The Act was proposed by Robert Walpole, generally considered to be the first prime minister of Great Britain. Opponents argued that the “late conspiracies” had not been wholly Catholic,{{sfnp|MRQ4U2KC}} and indeed Bishop Atterbury himself was a senior Church of England clergyman.{{sfnp|HDQ683XE}}
## See also
- [Papists Act 1722](https://engole.info/papists-act-1722)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Legislation, Tax
---
### [Barton Aqueduct Pocket Park](https://engole.info/barton-aqueduct-pocket-park/)
**Published:** March 6, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Lower-Park.webp[/pimage]Small park in Barton upon Irwell, Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Lower-Park.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/oZUHGhvBnpa7Gi6z6}}
Remains of the retaining wall of James Brindley’s 1761 stone aqueduct, right of the path|Turley Heritage
Barton Aqueduct [Pocket Park](https://engole.info/pocket-park) occupies a small plot of land off Barton Road, next to the [Barton Swing Aqueduct](https://engole.info/barton-swing-aqueduct) in Barton upon Irwell, Greater Manchester. As well as being home to variety of wildlife, it contains the remains of the embankment for James Brindley’s [stone aqueduct](https://engole.info/barton-aqueduct) built in 1761 to carry the Bridgewater Canal over the River Irwell; the remains were designated a Scheduled Monument in 2021.{{sfnp|NPCPJXUI}}{{sfnp|GBRNRTCM}}
The park is open for pedestrian access only, 24 hours a day.{{sfnp|NPCPJXUI}} It is sometimes referred to as the Lower Pocket Park; the higher-level Upper Pocket Park, the former site of the canal itself, is inaccessible to the public, having been closed owing to “anti-social behaviour”.{{sfnp|SY57MCA8}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Park
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Pocket park](https://engole.info/pocket-park/)
**Published:** March 4, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Merchant-Square.webp[/pimage]Small area of green space within an urban environment, accessible and open to the general public.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Merchant-Square.webp)Floating pocket garden at Merchant Square, London
The Frustrated Gardener
Pocket parks are small areas of green space within urban environments, often utilising the “useless bits of ground left between streets”, the so-called Space Left Over After Planning (SLOAP).{{sfnp|TPX3BCUP}} They are defined in the UK as a piece of land up to {{convert|0.4|ha|}} which is unused, undeveloped or derelict, accessible and open to the general public.{{sfnp|JPFDATF9}}
The first pocket parks appeared in Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War.{{sfnp|JMT3RK9W}} As cities began to recover from bombing damage, limitations in capital, labour, and building materials necessitated cheap and easy ways to restore urban landscapes. In the 1950s the German landscape designer Karl Linn imported the idea of utilising vacant or abandoned lots to create urban refuges into the USA, where they are known as vest-pocket parks.{{sfnp|TKDK6DE7|103}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29437
**Categories:** Park
---
### [The Scots Magazine](https://engole.info/the-scots-magazine/)
**Published:** January 2, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Logo_The_Scots_Magazine.svg/500px-Logo_The_Scots_Magazine.svg.png?20231020102154[/pimage]Claimed to be the oldest magazine in the world still in publication, first published in 1739.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Logo_The_Scots_Magazine.svg/500px-Logo_The_Scots_Magazine.svg.png?20231020102154)Logo of the current incarnation of the magazine
Wikimedia Commons
*The Scots Magazine*, claimed to be the oldest magazine in the world still in publication – despite several breaks in the history of the title – was first published in 1739 as a current affairs journal. In that role it has covered the end of the Jacobite rebellion, the Napoleonic wars, two world wars and the establishment of the Scottish Parliament.{{sfnp|ESM3FME2}} It was intended as a rival to the London-based [*The Gentleman’s Magazine*](https://engole.info/the-gentlemans-magazine), in order that “our countrymen might have the production of every month sooner, cheaper and better collected than before”.{{sfnp|SV4IX4DD|search=Scots Magazine and General Intelligencer}}{{sfnp|W7DRIH6H}}
The first issue, dated Monday 9 February 1739, cost sixpence, and appeared in a blue cover with the Latin motto *Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat*, meaning “Don’t dare say anything false, don’t dare anything true”. Popular throughout the 18th century, it innovated a register of births, deaths and marriages, which other journals soon copied. From 1759 until 1765 it was edited by William Smellie, who went on to edit the first edition of the *Encyclopaedia Britannica*.{{sfnp|SV4IX4DD|search=Scots Magazine and General Intelligencer}}{{sfnp|W7DRIH6H}}
The Scottish publisher and bookseller Archibald Constable bought the magazine in 1801, and three years later amalgamated it with the *Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany*. But by 1826 rival magazines such as the *Edinburgh Review* and *Blackwood’s Magazine* had so eroded *The Scots Magazine*‘s readership that it ceased publication. Attempts to revive it as the *New Scots Magazine* in 1828 and the *Scots Weekly Magazine* in 1832 were unsuccessful.{{sfnp|SV4IX4DD|search=Scots Magazine and General Intelligencer}}{{sfnp|W7DRIH6H}}
The Dundee firm of D. C. Thomson & Co acquired the title in 1927, and have continued to publish it since then.{{sfnp|SV4IX4DD|search=Scots Magazine and General Intelligencer}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [Loch of Kinnordy](https://engole.info/loch-of-kinnordy/)
**Published:** December 28, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Loch-of-Kinnordy.webp[/pimage]Site of Special Scientific Interest in Angus, Scotland.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Loch-of-Kinnordy.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/enECKTQCgibJNYFb8}}|RSPB
The Loch of Kinnordy, a small shallow stretch of water about {{convert|1.5|km}} west of the town of Kirriemuir in Angus, Scotland, is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, a [Ramsar](https://engole.info/ramsar-convention) site and a Special Protection Area.{{sfnp|6HR8CCBL}}{{sfnp|TRXCGJ9G}}
The loch is eutrophic, high in nutrients providing the ideal conditions for plant life to thrive, and if left unmanaged would naturally turn from open water into woodland.{{sfnp|27DIBRGD}} Its importance lies in its diversity of wetland habitats, and the number and variety of birds that they support, including wintering greylag geese (*Anser anser*).
The present-day loch is a fraction of its original size, owing in part to a series of attempts to drain it to facilitate the removal of marl.{{sfnp|6HR8CCBL}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** SSSI
---
### [Frederick Hudson](https://engole.info/frederick-hudson/)
**Published:** January 21, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Wallace_Spirit_Photograph.png[/pimage]Victorian-era spirit photographer, well-known for faking his photographs by using double exposures and other tricks.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Wallace_Spirit_Photograph.png)Hudson’s spirit photograph of Alfred Russel Wallace and his deceased mother
Wikimedia Commons
Frederick Hudson was a Victorian-era [spirit photographer](https://engole.info/spirit-photography), active in his Kensington studio in London from 1872. He worked with the medium Georgiana Houghton,{{sfnp|BJM9AQEM|34}}{{sfnp|D8MJ4JLF|20}} and is credited as being the first spirit photographer in Britain.{{sfnp|MD6V8YVG|58}}
A fellow [spiritualist](https://engole.info/spiritualism), William Henry Harrison, exposed Hudson’s photographs as fraudulent, as did another who demonstrated “conclusively” that Hudson’s spirits “were faked by a simple process of double exposure.”{{sfnp|4MX3HREN|144}}
Nevertheless, in 1874 the naturalist and co-founder of the theory of evolution with Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, visited Hudson, resulting in a photograph of him with his deceased mother. Wallace declared the photograph genuine, declaring “I see no escape from the conclusion that some spiritual being, acquainted with my mother’s various aspects during life, produced these recognisable impressions on the plate.”{{sfnp|USI9SC8X|190-191}}
Hudson was known for staging his spirit photographs by dressing up as spirits or using double-exposure techniques. The psychic investigator Joe Nickell has noted that, in many instances, the sitter is positioned low in the frame to leave room for the “spirits” that Hudson had arranged to insert.{{sfnp|AWEUSG4K|301-302}}
The professional illusionist and psychic investigator Milbourne Christopher has written:
Hudson introduced spirit photography to Britain in 1872. He varied his methods through the years. Though frequently caught practicing deception, he was never arrested. Hudson at one time used a trick camera, made by a craftsman who sold conjuring apparatus. Harry Price described how the camera worked in his book, *Confessions of a Ghost-Hunter*, published in London in 1936. When the plate slide was inserted, this action brought the paper positive of the “ghost” up against the sensitive plate. When the shutter bulb was pressed, this image and the picture of the sitter were captured on the plate. Thus a single exposure on this plate carried both images.{{sfnp
— VCWX8R8M|115-116}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Photographer
---
### [Rudge (cyclecar)](https://engole.info/rudge-cyclecar/)
**Published:** January 23, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/RudgeCyclecar1912.jpg[/pimage]Cyclecar produced by the Coventry-based bicycle manufacturer Rudge-Whitworth between 1912 and 1913.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/RudgeCyclecar1912.jpg)Rudge as exhibited at the 1912 Olympia motor show
Wikimedia Commons
The Rudge is a [cyclecar](https://engole.info/cyclecar) produced by the Coventry-based bicycle manufacturer Rudge-Whitworth for just one year, from 1912 until 1913.{{sfnp|RPKFBUSB|1387}}{{sfnp|KDV2AR9C}}
The car was powered by an air-cooled 750 cc single-cylinder engine fitted with a Senspray carburettor. It was fitted with the same Rudge multi-speed transmission as used in the company’s motorcycles, with belt final drive.{{sfnp|RPKFBUSB|1387}}{{sfnp|KDV2AR9C}} It was priced at 135 guineas, equivalent to about £17,500 as at 2025.{{sfnp|KDV2AR9C}}\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 28327
**Categories:** Cyclecar
---
### [John Stearne](https://engole.info/john-stearne/)
**Published:** September 24, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/A_confirmation_and_discovery_of_witchcraft.jpg[/pimage]Associate of the self-styled Witchfinder General, believed to have been responsible for the conviction and execution of 300 witches between 1644 and 1646.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/A_confirmation_and_discovery_of_witchcraft.jpg)Title page of Stearne’s *A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft*, published in 1648
Wikimedia Commons
John Stearne (c. 1610 – 1670) was an associate of the self-styled Witchfinder General [Matthew Hopkins](https://engole.info/matthew-hopkins), who was active during the English Civil War of 1642–1651.{{sfnp|3SXJ5T9Q|x-xi}} He and Hopkins are believed to have been responsible for the conviction and execution of 300 witches between 1644 and 1646,{{sfnp|DB6SXDFK|3}} about 60 per cent of the fewer than 500 executions for witchcraft in England, in only 14 months.{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|195}}
Little is known of Stearne’s early life, other than that he was brought up in rural Suffolk, and was a Puritan. In 1645 he received a warrant from the Manningtree magistrates Sir Harbottle Grimstone and Sir Thomas Bowes to search suspected witches, and Hopkins volunteered to assist him.{{sfnp|3SXJ5T9Q|xi}}
As a result of Stearne’s accusations, a trial was held in Chelmsford in July 1645 for twenty-nine people accused of witchcraft and sorcery. Four of them died in prison before their trial,{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|123}} and fifteen or sixteen were subsequently hanged. Nine who had been convicted of conjuring spirits were reprieved.{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|173,403}}{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|129}}
Matthew Hopkins died in 1647,{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|263}} and the following year Stearne published his *A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft*.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Witch finder
---
### [Special Roads Act 1949](https://engole.info/special-roads-act-1949/)
**Published:** August 11, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281901%E2%80%931952%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281901%E2%80%931952%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that allowed for the construction of roads reserved for special classes of traffic, the forerunner of motorways.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281901%E2%80%931952%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281901%E2%80%931952%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Special Roads Act 1949 (12, 13 & 14 Geo. 6. c. 32) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that allowed for the construction of roads reserved for special classes of traffic, many later to become known as motorways;{{sfnp|8K52TP8G}} although all motorways are special roads, not all special roads are motorways.{{sfnp|KJJUBXEU}}
The Act defined nine classes of traffic:
- Cars, motorcycles and light vans with pneumatic tyres
- Goods vehicles and military vehicles
- Motor vehicles controlled by pedestrians
- Other motor vehicles
- Vehicles drawn by animals
- Vehicles drawn or propelled by pedestrians
- Bicycles
- Animals ridden or led
- Pedestrians
Subsequent legislation added a further two classes:
- Motorcycles under 50cc
- Invalid carriages
The Severn and Wye Bridges, now part of the M48, was one of the first roads to be designated a Special Road.{{sfnp|KJJUBXEU}} In 1955 the Ministry of Transport announced the construction of the first two Special Road Schemes, the Lancaster Bypass, and the Preston Bypass.{{sfnp|A7ZSYVDD}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Legislation, Transport
---
### [Tavern clock](https://engole.info/tavern-clock/)
**Published:** July 7, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Tavern-clock.webp[/pimage]Weight-driven wall clock with a large wooden, painted or lacquered dial, commonly installed in taverns and coaching inns.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Tavern-clock.webp)Early 19th-century tavern clock, made by George Bennett
Royal Museums Greenwich
A tavern clock, also known as an Act of Parliament clock, is a weight-driven wall clock with a large wooden, painted or lacquered dial. Commonly installed in taverns and coaching inns, they provided travellers with the correct time.{{sfnp|W8D7MCQT}}
Such clocks had been in existence since the 1720s, but following the introduction of a deeply unpopular [tax on clocks and watches](https://engole.info/duties-on-clocks-and-watches-act-1797) introduced by William Pitt the Younger in 1797, the clocks were erroneously said to have been developed in response to the tax, hence the name “Act of Parliament clock”.{{sfnp|W8D7MCQT}} The earliest known use of the term dates from 1899.{{sfnp|LLH9GPCI}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Horology
---
### [Stoll Picture Productions](https://engole.info/stoll-picture-productions/)
**Published:** September 22, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Baker-Street-Facade.webp[/pimage]British film production and distribution company of the silent era, founded in 1920 by Oswald Stoll.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Baker-Street-Facade.webp)Full-size Baker Street facade in Cricklewood Studios, 1921
Wikimedia Commons
Stoll Picture Productions was a British film production and distribution company of the silent era, founded in 1920 by the theatre impressario Oswald Stoll. He bought a former aeroplane factory in Cricklewood, and transformed it into the largest film studios in England;{{sfnp|INJ3AXWI|23-26}} its {{convert|27993|sqft}} of floor space allowed 15 sets to be erected simultaneously.{{sfnp|WF3YVXCX}}
Stoll produced a series of expensive films during the early 1920s, such as *The Four Feathers* and *The Prodigal Son*, which cost £37,000 – equivalent to about £2.6 million as at 2024\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} – and was at the time the most expensive British production ever.{{sfnp|PNUYJYSR|276}}
Stoll was slow to adopt the new “talkie” technology, and towards the end of the 1920s and into the 1930s, began to let studio production space to independent filmmakers. Cricklewood was sold to an aviation company in 1938, and the studios were demolished in the 1960s.{{sfnp|WF3YVXCX}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27952
**Categories:** Film studio
---
### [Ballechin Wood](https://engole.info/ballechin-wood/)
**Published:** January 12, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Forest_track_at_south_edge_of_Ballechin_Wood_-_geograph.org.uk_-_786364.jpg[/pimage]Part of a large coniferous forest in North East Perth and Kinross, probably best remembered today as the site of the most haunted house in Scotland.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Forest_track_at_south_edge_of_Ballechin_Wood_-_geograph.org.uk_-_786364.jpg)Track at the southern edge of the forest
Wikimedia Commons
Ballechin Wood is part of a {{convert|805|ha|adj=on}} coniferous forest in North East Perth and Kinross, Scotland, lying between the rivers Tay and Tummel.{{sfnp|PZRYZVQD}} The wood merges into Clunie Wood to the northwest and Logierait Wood to the southeast.{{sfnp|UG93GXDD}}
Ballechin Wood is probably best remembered today as the site of [Ballechin House](https://engole.info/ballechin-house), reputed to have been the most haunted house in Scotland.{{sfnp|7XHHBF5T}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 28313
**Categories:** Wood
---
### [Woolton pie](https://engole.info/woolton-pie/)
**Published:** November 6, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Woolton_pie_%284653443530%29.jpg/1280px-Woolton_pie_%284653443530%29.jpg[/pimage]Vegetable pie introduced during the meat rationing in Britain during the Second World War.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Woolton_pie_%284653443530%29.jpg/1280px-Woolton_pie_%284653443530%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
Woolton pie is a pastry dish with a filling of vegetables, widely served in Britain during the Second World War after meat rationing was introduced. The dish was created by François Latry, Maître Chef des Cuisines at the Savoy Hotel in London, and appeared on the Savoy menu as Le Lord Woolton Pie,{{sfnp|5RD4XZ5R}} named after Frederick Marquis, 1st Earl of Woolton (1883–1964), who became Minister of Food in 1940.{{sfnp|K9KI63WA}}
The official recipe was published in an April 1941 article in *The Times*, which described the pie as economical and wholesome.{{sfnp|YDUPP4L3}} The dish was topped with potato or wheatmeal pastry, and as the filling was comprised entirely of vegetables, the recipe could easily be adapted to whichever produce was in season.{{sfnp|UTF5A4PX|118}}
Woolton pie was not universally well-received. A 1944 editorial in *The Times* commented that:{{sfnp|B42JCEQB}}
When Woolton pie was being forced on somewhat reluctant tables, Lord Woolton performed a valuable service by submitting to the flashlight camera at public luncheons while eating, with every sign of enjoyment, the dish named after him.
Most wartime austerity dishes such as Woolton pie were quickly forgotten when conditions returned to normal.{{sfnp|R35J7Q3Q}}
## References
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## Works cited
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**Categories:** Food
---
### [Pennard Castle](https://engole.info/pennard-castle/)
**Published:** September 6, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Castell_Pennard_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1307870.jpg[/pimage]Early 12th century Welsh castle.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Castell_Pennard_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1307870.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Kb1Rhhej9UU8gUXv5}}
Exterior of gatehouse
Pennard Castle was built in the early 12th century, near the modern village of Pennard on the Gower Peninsula in South Wales. Its original timber curtain wall and gatehouse were rebuilt in stone at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries. Encroaching sand dunes soon afterwards caused the site to be abandoned, and the castle fell into ruin.{{sfnp|F8H9C69C}}
Restoration work was carried out during the 20th century; what remains of the castle was designated a Grade II\* [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1964.{{sfnp|F8H9C69C}}
## History
The Normans began to make incursions into South Wales from the late 1060s, pushing westwards from their bases in recently occupied England.{{sfnp|DAUID5VQ|110}} Their advance was marked by the construction of castles and the creation of regional lordships.{{sfnp|DAUID5VQ|110}}{{sfnp|BVLDQ6AJ|141}} Pennard Castle was built after Henry de Beaumont conquered the Gower Peninsula, and made Pennard one of his demesne manors.{{sfnp|598YGJGH|288}}
The castle was constructed on a limestone spur, overlooking the mouth of the Pennard Pill stream and Three Cliffs Bay, and was protected to the north and west by surrounding cliffs.{{sfnp|598YGJGH|289,291}}
By 1741 the castle’s south wall had mostly collapsed, but the remainder of the castle was apparently still generally intact. It was a popular subject for engravings, sketches and paintings from the 18th century onwards, with the view of the ruins from the east proving particularly popular. By 1879 large cracks had appeared in the southern tower of the gatehouse, which led to its partial collapse.{{sfnp|CJ5SDJWK}}
As at 2025 the castle sits in the site purchased in 1920 by the Pennard Golf Club, which is responsible for its maintenance.{{sfnp|QH3FV5M6}}
## References
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## Works cited
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**Categories:** Castle, Welsh
---
### [Duties on Clocks and Watches Act 1797](https://engole.info/duties-on-clocks-and-watches-act-1797/)
**Published:** July 6, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of the Parliament of Great Britain imposing a tax on the ownership of clocks and watches.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Duties on Clocks and Watches Act 1797 (37 Geo. 3. c. 108),{{sfnp|UTFHTVJL}} is an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain introduced by William Pitt the Younger, intended to help fund the Napoleonic war with France. Since the beginning of the conflict, Pitt had increased taxes by more than £1 million, but expenditure had risen to £20 million.{{sfnp|3HBY66YD}}
The legislation was an element in Pitt’s so-called Triple Assessment, the initial intention of which was to impose extra tax at a maximum of treble the amount of the assessed taxes paid in 1797. The heaviest duties were imposed on luxuries such as manservants and carriages. On other items such as houses, windows, dogs, and clocks and watches, the duties were somewhat more modest.{{sfnp|3HBY66YD}}
The Act imposed an annual charge of ten shillings per gold watch, equivalent to about £70 as at 2024.\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} For those made of silver or any other metal the charge was two shillings and sixpence. Each clock in or upon any building was subject to an annual duty of five shillings.{{sfnp|UTFHTVJL}} Owners of watches or clocks were required to make an annual return of the number and type of timepieces in their possession. The Act also required makers or dealers in watches and clocks to purchase an annual license, costing two shillings and sixpence in London and one shilling elsewhere.{{sfnp|HH5PVCHX|274}}
In response to the Act owners hid their clocks and watches to avoid payment,{{sfnp|QJG3CMPM}} and the reduced demand for clocks and watches deprived thousands of their livelihoods, and encouraged many to emigrate.{{sfnp|HH5PVCHX|274}} The subsequent public outcry forced Pitt to repeal the tax in 1798.{{sfnp|W8D7MCQT}}
It has been erroneously claimed that tavern-keepers commissioned clocks to meet the public need in the wake of the new tax, leading to [tavern clocks](https://engole.info/tavern-clock) – which had been in existence since the 1720s – often being known as Act of Parliament clocks.{{sfnp|W8D7MCQT}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Legislation, Tax
---
### [Dunoon Pier](https://engole.info/dunoon-pier/)
**Published:** July 12, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Dunoon_Pier_%28geograph_2412953%29.jpg[/pimage]Best surviving example of a timber ferry pier in Scotland, completed broadly in its current form in 1895.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Dunoon_Pier_%28geograph_2412953%29.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/zYZgDXuTXAsMyMEy5}}
Dunoon Pier in 2011
Dunoon Pier in Dunoon, Argyll and Bute, Scotland, was completed in broadly its current form in 1895, and is now owned by Argyll and Bute Council. Reaching out into the Firth of Clyde, the earliest parts of the pier date to 1835. It was designated a Category A [listed structure](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1980, as the best surviving example of a timber ferry pier in Scotland.{{sfnp|L3PUHPDS}}{{sfnp|RGD7QCF8}}
The first timber pier of 1835 was replaced by a more substantial structure in 1845, after tourism to the town had increased. This second incarnation was destroyed in a storm three years later. The pier was rebuilt the following year, and extended in 1867 by the Scottish architect Campbell Douglas.{{sfnp|RGD7QCF8}}
The pier was enlarged and a new waiting room constructed in 1867 to cater for the growth of paddle-steamer traffic, and a larger {{convert|400|ft|adj=on}} jetty was added in 1881. The pier was again rebuilt in 1895, resulting in the two-berth structure broadly as it exists today, with the exception of the modern roll-on/roll-off facilities for vehicles, which was added in 2005.{{sfnp|GXQ42NXR}}
Fleets of paddle steamers brought holidaymakers from Glasgow to Dunoon until the late 1960s. The pier was shortened in 2005 to allow the construction of a new breakwater, protecting it from storm surges. A new link span was installed alongside the breakwater at the same time, to allow the berthing and loading of roll-on/roll-off ferries instead of the side-loading ferries that used to serve the pier.{{sfnp|GXQ42NXR}}
Until June 2011 Caledonian MacBrayne ran a regular daily foot passenger and car-ferry service to Gourock. Since then they have operated a passenger-only service, and their use of the breakwater for berthing rendered the pier redundant, no longer having any transport function. By then, the pier buildings were in a sad state of repair, and it was generally assumed that they would be demolished.{{sfnp|GXQ42NXR}}
But instead, in 2014 Argyll and Bute council agreed to restore the pier as a tourist attraction, and committed more than £2 million towards the first phase of its restoration, which was completed in 2016.{{sfnp|GXQ42NXR}}
## References
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## Works cited
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**Categories:** Pier
---
### [Dado](https://engole.info/dado/)
**Published:** June 26, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/Wall.svg/500px-Wall.svg.png[/pimage]Architectural term for the lower part of an internal wall, below the dado rail and above the skirting board.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/Wall.svg/500px-Wall.svg.png)
Wikimedia Commons
Dado is an architectural term for the lower part of an internal wall, below the dado rail and above the skirting board, often decorated differently from the rest of the wall.{{sfnp|RLQN62KH}}
The term is borrowed from the Italian *dado*, referring to the cubical block forming a pedestal.{{sfnp|8TEFEBIB}}
## References
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## Works cited
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**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Bressumer](https://engole.info/bressumer/)
**Published:** May 27, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/IMG_1282-1536x1152.webp[/pimage]Horizontal load-bearing timber beam.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/IMG_1282.webp)Bressumer supporting a chimney in Tŷ-Mawr, Nantmor, North Wales
Discovering Old Welsh Houses Group
A bressumer, also bressummer or summer beam, is a horizontal load-bearing timber spanning part of a building and supporting a wall, or the ends of floor joists. When it supports a chimney above a fireplace it is also called a hearth beam.{{sfnp|MTQ7PL6V}}{{sfnp|M28H478Z}}
The term is a compound of *breast* + *summer*,{{sfnp|P6KIISDT}} the latter deriving from the obsolete English word *sumpter*, meaning a load carried by a packhorse.{{sfnp|NUA2ZR6U}}
## References
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## Works cited
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**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Tympanum (architecture)](https://engole.info/tympanum-architecture/)
**Published:** August 24, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5b/Tympanum%2C_Westminster_Abbey%2C_England%2C_July_20%2C_2023.jpg/960px-Tympanum%2C_Westminster_Abbey%2C_England%2C_July_20%2C_2023.jpg[/pimage]Area above the lintel of a dorway or the base of a pediment, often richly decorated.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5b/Tympanum%2C_Westminster_Abbey%2C_England%2C_July_20%2C_2023.jpg/960px-Tympanum%2C_Westminster_Abbey%2C_England%2C_July_20%2C_2023.jpg)Tympanum above the north entrance of Westminster Abbey
Wikimedia Commons
The tympanum is the area above the lintel of a doorway, or the base of a [pediment](https://engole.info/pediment), which is enclosed below an arch or below the segmental or triangular top of a pediment.{{sfnp|4WZYH732}}
Plain tympana were occasionally inserted to create a rectangular doorway within an arch. But tympana were essentially a decorative feature,{{sfnp|WAIXTARL}} and as such they were often decorated with sculptures.{{sfnp|K4QHLCE4}}
## References
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## Works cited
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**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Linenfold](https://engole.info/linenfold/)
**Published:** March 22, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Linenfold.webp[/pimage]Style of relief carving used to decorate wood panelling, resembling linen with vertical loose folds.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Linenfold.webp)Linenfold panelling, English, 1530–1560
V&A
Linenfold is a style of relief carving used to decorate wood panelling, resembling linen with vertical loose folds;{{sfnp|GB9B9L6J}} such panels are known as drapery panels.{{sfnp|EAWQP4J2}} The interior walls of houses first began to be panelled in wood in 15th-century Flanders, from where the style spread throughout northern Europe.{{sfnp|W9TIXAKU}} Linenfold is commonly encountered in English architecture of the Tudor period, and saw a revival during the 19th century.{{sfnp|GB9B9L6J}}
Parchemin is a 16th-century development of linenfold, incorporating additional elements such as vines and foliage.{{sfnp|P6KAVCW9}}
## References
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## Works cited
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**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Piepowder court](https://engole.info/piepowder-court/)
**Published:** February 15, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Image_taken_from_page_949_of_%27Old_and_New_London%2C_etc%27_%2811189785765%29.jpg/960px-Image_taken_from_page_949_of_%27Old_and_New_London%2C_etc%27_%2811189785765%29.jpg[/pimage]Courts attached to fairs and markets, to settle disputes between the itinerant merchants.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Image_taken_from_page_949_of_%27Old_and_New_London%2C_etc%27_%2811189785765%29.jpg/960px-Image_taken_from_page_949_of_%27Old_and_New_London%2C_etc%27_%2811189785765%29.jpg)A case before the court of Pie-Poudre, at the Hand and Shears public house during the Bartholomew Fair, from a drawing dated 1811
Wikimedia Commons
Piepowder courts were those attached to fairs and markets. When the king gave a town or community the franchise to hold a fair, he also granted the right to hold a court to settle disputes between the itinerant merchants in attendance, and to deal with crimes committed during the fair.
The name may be derived from the dusty feet (French: *pieds poudrés*) of the travelling merchants,{{sfnp|IRPD4UM9}} or of the court officials who wandered from mart to mart. Writing in 1768, the English jurist and judge William Blackstone described the piepowder courts as “the lowest, and at the same time the most expeditious, court of justice known to the law of England”.{{sfnp|QP6L48VB}}
The judges in piepowder courts were not professional lawyers, but usually local officials such as the town mayor or local merchants.{{sfnp|6YEED67U}}
Piepowder courts fell into decline during the late Middle Ages, but one was held in 1854 at St Bartholomew Fair in London, although it may have been ceremonial. A piepowder court was also held in Hemel Hempstead in 1898, but principally to collect tolls from stall holders.{{sfnp|6YEED67U}}
## References
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## Works cited
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**Categories:** Courts and tribunals
---
### [Prebend](https://engole.info/prebend/)
**Published:** November 21, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/39/Salisbury_Cathedral_Quire.jpg/1280px-Salisbury_Cathedral_Quire.jpg[/pimage]Form of benefice used to provide a fixed and independent income to those members of a cathedral's chapter known as prebendaries.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/39/Salisbury_Cathedral_Quire.jpg/1280px-Salisbury_Cathedral_Quire.jpg)Prebendal stalls in the choir of Salisbury Cathedral
Wikimedia Commons
A prebend is a form of [benefice](https://engole.info/benefice) used to provide a fixed and independent income to those members of a cathedral’s chapter known as prebendaries, from the Latin *praebere* meaning “to provide”.{{sfnp|EFWMIH7K}}
The endowed prebend was developed in the early 12th century, giving prebendaries financial independence from their bishops, and creating positions that appealed to the younger sons of the nobility.{{sfnp|6EIRIZZF|380-381}} Historically a prebend usually consisted of the revenue from one manor of the cathedral’s estates, but by the 19th century *prebendary* was almost exclusively an honorary title only, with no income attached.{{sfnp|EFWMIH7K}}
Prebends in their original sense no longer exist, but the territorial names can still be seen attached to the prebendal stalls in many English cathedrals.{{sfnp|EFWMIH7K}}
## References
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## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27012
**Categories:** Religious term
---
### [Highfields, Buerton](https://engole.info/highfields-buerton/)
**Published:** October 21, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Highfields%2C_Buerton.jpg[/pimage]Small Grade I listed country house in the civil parish of Buerton, Cheshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Highfields%2C_Buerton.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/BrKUUjDb7eBr5yYb7
Highfields is a small Grade I [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) country house in the [civil parish](https://engole.info/civil-parish) of Buerton, Cheshire.{{sfnp|JSKN4WA3}} The Highfields Estate is first documented in 1553, when it was in the possession of Hugh Chester of Shropshire. Since then it has passed through the hands of several local families. It is currently in the ownership of the Baker family, which has held the property on and off since 1736.{{sfnp|8NIJ8J8M}}
Dated 1615, Highfields was built for William Dod. It was added to by the architect William Baker in 1750, and again in 1897. The timber-framed house sits on an [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) plinth, with rendered infill and a plain tiled roof.{{sfnp|JSKN4WA3}}
The house consists of two storeys and an attic. The front elevation has five bays, arranged symmetrically with projecting gabled wings on both sides. Both floors have close-studded walling with a middle rail. The first floor is jettied, as are the gables of the two lateral wings.{{sfnp|JSKN4WA3}}
## References
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## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26922
**Categories:** Cheshire, Country house
---
### [Doddington Hall](https://engole.info/doddington-hall/)
**Published:** October 19, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Doddington31.jpg/1280px-Doddington31.jpg[/pimage]18th-century Grade I listed country house in Doddington, Cheshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Doddington31.jpg/1280px-Doddington31.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Xf2ttdHjTPd2u19K6
Doddington Hall is a Grade I [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) country house in Doddington Park in the [civil parish](https://engole.info/civil-parish) of Doddington and District, Cheshire. It was built for the Rev Sir Thomas Broughton between 1777 and 1798, to a design by Samuel Wyatt, replacing an older house a short distance to the north, of which the present-day [Delves Hall](https://engole.info/delves-hall) was a part.{{sfnp|3IPY5HXE|331-333}}
The three-storey house is constructed in the neoclassical style, using Keuper sandstone [ashlar.](https://engole.info/ashlar) It has a slate roof with lead flashings, and an entrance front of nine bays.{{sfnp|4HFQBHI6}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26916
**Categories:** Cheshire, Country house
---
### [Dorfold Hall](https://engole.info/dorfold-hall/)
**Published:** October 16, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Dorford-Hall.webp[/pimage]Grade I listed Jacobean mansion house in Acton, Cheshire.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Dorford-Hall.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/yzQT73YUGWWp3wwr5}}
Front façade|Historic England
Dorfold Hall is a Grade I [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) mansion in Acton, Cheshire,{{sfnp|TSB7DE3E}} considered by the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner to be one of the two finest Jacobean houses in the county.{{sfnp|3IPY5HXE|22}} The house dates from 1616, when it was built for Ralph Wilbraham.{{sfnp|TSB7DE3E}}
The name *Dorfold* is derived from the Anglo-Saxon *Deofold*, signifying a cattle enclosure or deer park.{{sfnp|SQCBBULG}}
## References
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## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26899
**Categories:** Cheshire, English, Mansion house
---
### [Letters patent](https://engole.info/letters-patent/)
**Published:** September 15, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Colchester.webp[/pimage]Official letters or instructions issued by or on behalf of the Crown.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Colchester.webp)Letters patent signed by Queen Elizabeth II three days before her death, declaring Colchester to be a city.{{sfnp
9SXB7T7K}}|BBC News
Letters patent, also known as Royal letters, are official letters or instructions delivered in open rather than sealed form, issued by or on behalf of the Crown and conferring upon individuals or corporate bodies a wide range of special privileges. Such privileges have included grants of land, titles, offices, pensions, rights to hold markets or fairs, monopolies, pardons and patents for inventions.{{sfnp|NIWZZHG9}}
Before 1733 letters patent were almost invariably written in Latin, except during the 1650s Commonwealth period in England, when the use of English was compulsory. The name derives from the Latin *litterae patentes*, denoting a message left open with the originator’s seal pendant rather than sealing the document, as in letters close.{{sfnp|NIWZZHG9}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Aedicule](https://engole.info/aedicule/)
**Published:** June 28, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/Skerton_Bridge%2C_Lancaster%2C_England_-_aedicula_detail.JPG/1280px-Skerton_Bridge%2C_Lancaster%2C_England_-_aedicula_detail.JPG[/pimage]Framing of a door, window or other opening to a building.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/Skerton_Bridge%2C_Lancaster%2C_England_-_aedicula_detail.JPG/1280px-Skerton_Bridge%2C_Lancaster%2C_England_-_aedicula_detail.JPG)Late 18th-century Doric aedicule on Skerton Bridge, Lancaster
Wikimedia Commons
The term *aedicule* is derived from the Latin *aedicula*, which described a small shrine set in a temple, containing a statue framed by columns. In modern usage it is generally used to describe the framing of doors, windows or other openings with columns or [pilasters](https://engole.info/pilaster) supporting other architectural elements such as gables, [pediments](https://engole.info/pediment) or lintels.{{sfnp|FBRWGF58}}
The overall effect is to create the impression of a miniature [dist](https://engole.info/portico)[yle](https://engole.info/pilaster) structure.{{sfnp|W65DEEUS}}
## References
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## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26565
**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Frieze](https://engole.info/frieze/)
**Published:** June 29, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Pulvinated-Frieze.webp[/pimage]Horizontal central band of an entablature, known as a pulvinated frieze if it has a convex profile.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Pulvinated-Frieze.webp)Pulvinated frieze above the doorcase in the Stone Hall at Holkham Hall, Norfolk
Flickr
A frieze is the horizontal central band of an entablature, below the cornice and above the architrave. It can be plain or enriched with sculptured reliefs; if it has a convex profile it is known as a pulvinated frieze. In interiors, the frieze of a room is the section of wall over the picture rail and below the [cornice](https://engole.info/cornice).{{sfnp|CCS5SSDT}}
The term is also used less formally to describe any distinct decorative band.{{sfnp|4MARAZT2}}
## References
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## Works cited
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**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Shropshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-shropshire/)
**Published:** May 15, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Shropshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/330px-Shropshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the ceremonial county of Shropshire, split into the two unitary authorities making up the county.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Shropshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/330px-Shropshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png)Shropshire shown within England
Wikimedia Commons
The [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Shropshire is comprised of two [unitary authorities](https://engole.info/unitary-authority): Shropshire, and Telford and Wrekin.
The 131 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county are shown in separate lists for each unitary authority.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
- Grade I listed buildings in Shropshire (unitary authority)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Telford and Wrekin](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-telford-and-wrekin)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26388
**Categories:** Shropshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Emily Addis Fawcett](https://engole.info/emily-addis-fawcett/)
**Published:** December 17, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Profile-Head-of-a-Bearded-Man.webp[/pimage]English sculptor (1852–1947).
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Profile-Head-of-a-Bearded-Man.webp)*Profile Head of a Bearded Man*, by Emily Addis Fawcett
V&A
Emily Addis Fawcett (3 April 1852 – 13 June 1947) was an English sculptor, born in Kensington, London. She was the daughter of Walter Thomas Fawcett, a stockbroker,{{sfnp|Z2UTZDYV}} and one of at least ten children in the family.{{sfnp|64UQ292M|498}}
Little is known of Emily’s life,{{sfnp|INQ2MZMH}} other than that she studied in London and Paris,{{sfnp|64UQ292M|498}} where she shared a studio with the French sculptor Camille Claudel, whom she met while they were both studying at the Academie Colarossi.{{sfnp|3KZWQ2WU}} On her return to London, where she remained for the rest of her life, Emily was based for a time at Cheniston Gardens Studios. She worked as a sculptor from at least 1880 into the 1900s;{{sfnp|64UQ292M|498}} in the 1901 Census she gave her occupation as “ ’Sculptor’ working on own account”.{{sfnp|Z2UTZDYV}}
Emily exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London between 1883 and 1896, where she displayed works in terracotta, marble and bronze. She also exhibited at the Society of Women Artists in 1895, 1896 and 1908, at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, and the Salon des Artistes Français in Paris.{{sfnp|INQ2MZMH}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27095
**Categories:** English, Female, Sculptor
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Pediment](https://engole.info/pediment/)
**Published:** June 16, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2d/Masonic_Temple%2C_Crown_Street%2C_Aberdeen%2C_first_floor_detail_main_facade%2C_Harbourne_Maclennan%2C_Jenkins_and_Marr%2C_1910.jpg/960px-Masonic_Temple%2C_Crown_Street%2C_Aberdeen%2C_first_floor_detail_main_facade%2C_Harbourne_Maclennan%2C_Jenkins_and_Marr%2C_1910.jpg[/pimage]Low-pitched gable above a portico or façade.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2d/Masonic_Temple%2C_Crown_Street%2C_Aberdeen%2C_first_floor_detail_main_facade%2C_Harbourne_Maclennan%2C_Jenkins_and_Marr%2C_1910.jpg/960px-Masonic_Temple%2C_Crown_Street%2C_Aberdeen%2C_first_floor_detail_main_facade%2C_Harbourne_Maclennan%2C_Jenkins_and_Marr%2C_1910.jpg)Open pediment above a first-floor window of the Masonic Temple in Aberdeen, Scotland
Wikimedia Commons
A pediment is a low-pitched gable above a [portico](https://engole.info/portico) or façade. Most pediments take the form of a flattened isosceles triangle.{{sfnp|JWSJ3UKY}} An open pediment is one in which the base of the triangle is missing; a broken pediment is one with its apex missing, replaced by a circular segment.{{sfnp|KMDINJT9}}
Pediments are found in ancient Greek architecture from as early as 580 BCE, as in the archaic Temple of Artemis, Corfu, which was probably one of the earliest.{{sfnp|WERIJC7D|113-114}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26525
**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [David Scougall](https://engole.info/david-scougall/)
**Published:** August 5, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Lady-Jean-Campbell.webp[/pimage]Scottish portrait painter (c. 1630 – 1685), the eldest of the Scougall family of portrait painters.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Lady-Jean-Campbell.webp)*Lady Jean Campbell*, c. 1654
Art UK
David Scougall (c. 1630 – 1685) was a Scottish portrait painter.{{sfnp|SDEC34LJ}} His parentage is unknown, but he was the eldest of the Scougall family of portrait painters.{{sfnp|UCIWNFDC}} There is only one known signed portrait by him, *Lady Jean Campbell*, now in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland, but many others have been attributed to him based on their style and quality.{{sfnp|GWK95EXW|207}}
From surviving accounts it appears that Scougall was as much in demand as a copyist as for his original compositions. Many of his portraits were “highly derivative”, such as that of William, first earl of Annandale, an exact copy of an earlier painting by the German artist Godfrey Kneller of the earl’s uncle, except for the head; the background for Scougall’s portrait of William, third earl of Lothian, is copied from a Van Dyck portrait of James, first duke of Hamilton.{{sfnp|UCIWNFDC}}
## Gallery
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Isabella.webp)
*Isabella, Wife of Kenneth Mackenzie, 3rd Earl of Seaforth*
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/James-Steuart-of-Coltness.webp)
*James Steuart of Coltness*
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Portrait-of-a-Lady.webp)
*Portrait of a Lady*
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Laird-of-Hatton.webp)
*Laird of Hatton (b.c.1589)*
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Archibald-Campbell.webp)
*Archibald Campbell \[MacCailein Mòr Gilleasbaig Fiar-shùileach\], 1st Marquess of Argyll, 1598 –661*, c 1661
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26654
**Categories:** Male, Painter, Portrait, Scottish
---
### [The Holborn Monthly Magazine](https://engole.info/the-holborn-monthly-magazine/)
**Published:** February 12, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/holborn_monthly_190304_n1.jpg[/pimage]Short-lived women's magazine published from April 1903 until April 1904.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/holborn_monthly_190304_n1.jpg)Cover of the first edition
All-Story Magazine (UK)
*The Holborn Monthly Magazine* was a short-lived women’s periodical first published in April 1903, priced at four pence;\[a\]Equivalent to £2.12 at 2022, calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} only thirteen issues were produced, the last in April 1904.{{sfnp|7JSWYK9C|89}}
The magazine was launched into what was becoming an increasingly crowded market for women’s magazines. Its unique selling point was that it was designed to be syndicated as an accompaniment to local newspapers, with the magazine retitled accordingly, as with *The Evesham Monthly Magazine*, on sale with *The Evesham Journal*.\[b\]Then known as *The Evesham Journal and Four Shires Advertiser*.{{sfnp|7CLLGTRE}} To make such syndication easier, the contents page was simply titled “Our Magazine”.{{sfnp|7JSWYK9C|89}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Equivalent to £2.12 at 2022, calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} b Then known as *The Evesham Journal and Four Shires Advertiser*.{{sfnp|7CLLGTRE}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26000
**Categories:** Magazine
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Early Closing Association](https://engole.info/early-closing-association/)
**Published:** February 9, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Ally_Sloper%27s_Half_Holiday%2C_1_octobre_1892%2C_couverture.jpg[/pimage]19th-century movement in support of the closure of shops on Saturday afternoons.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Ally_Sloper%27s_Half_Holiday%2C_1_octobre_1892%2C_couverture.jpg)Magazine featuring what Britain’s first comic-strip hero, [Ally Sloper](https://engole.info/ally-sloper), did on his half-holidays
Wikimedia Commons
The Early Closing Association was founded in England in 1843 to campaign for the early closure of shops on Saturdays. Its aim was “to liberate shopworkers for self-improvement”,{{sfnp|QPIXKWMI}} an early step towards the five-day working so familiar today.{{sfnp|YMDP5UHE}} But it was not until the passage of the Shops Act 1912 that shop assistants became legally entitled to at least one half-day a week off.{{sfnp|YTM6J2VC}}
As increasing numbers of employers adopted the Saturday “half-holiday” as it became known, a burgeoning leisure industry was quick to capitalise on the movement by offering reduced fares for day-trippers to the countryside on Saturday afternoons. But perhaps the biggest winner was the sport of football, which began to stage matches on Saturday afternoons as the Football Craze took hold in the 1890s.{{sfnp|YMDP5UHE}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25997
**Categories:** Uncategorized
---
### [Piscina](https://engole.info/piscina/)
**Published:** April 8, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/West_stoke_st_andrews_piscina.jpg/960px-West_stoke_st_andrews_piscina.jpg[/pimage]Small basin in a Christian church used to clean the priest's hands and the sacred vessels used at Mass.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/West_stoke_st_andrews_piscina.jpg/960px-West_stoke_st_andrews_piscina.jpg)Piscina at St Andrew’s church, West Stoke, West Sussex
Wikimedia Commons
A piscina is a small basin usually built in the wall on the south side of the altar in a Christian church, used for washing the priest’s hands and communion vessels at Mass; the plumbing that takes the water to the earth is called a sacrarium. There may sometimes be two piscinas, side by side, one for washing the priest’s hands and the other for the sacred vessels.{{sfnp|BXK6PCGG}}
Piscinas were introduced into churches by Pope Leo IV in the 9th century, and most surviving examples are medieval, some big enough to double as a font. The washing of communion vessels is now done in the [sacristy](https://engole.info/sacristy).{{sfnp|M9MYVBTM}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26130
**Categories:** Religious architecture
---
### [Curate's egg](https://engole.info/curates-egg/)
**Published:** February 6, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/True_humility.png[/pimage]English language idiom used in reference to something that is partly good and partly bad.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/True_humility.png)Right Reverend Host: “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad Egg, Mr Jones!”; The Curate: “Oh no, my Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent!”
*True Humility* by George du Maurier, published in *Punch*, 9 November 1895.
Wikimedia Commons
A curate’s egg is an English language idiom used in reference to something that is partly good and partly bad,{{sfnp|THIINPEM}} which may in reality be entirely bad.{{sfnp|RXLS88SE}}
In May 1895 the satirical British magazine [*Judy*](https://engole.info/judy-satirical-magazine) published a cartoon showing a timid curate and a fierce-looking bishop at breakfast in the bishop’s house. The bishop says, “Dear me, I’m afraid your egg’s not good!” The curate, desperate not to offend his host and superior, replies, “Oh, yes, my Lord, really – er – some parts of it are very good.”{{sfnp|UH6T3LDY}}
In November that same year, *Judy*‘s more successful rival, *Punch*, published a similar cartoon by staff illustrator George du Maurier. Titled *True Humility*, it also featured a timid-looking curate eating breakfast with his bishop, claiming that parts of his egg were “excellent”.{{sfnp|UH6T3LDY}}
But both cartoons are pre-dated by an anecdote in *Our Bishops and Deans* by the Reverend F. Arnold, as reported in an 1875 issue of *The Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art*:
Without pledging our credence, we could afford a grin to the story of the “young Levite” who at a bishop’s breakfast-table, was so ‘umble as to decline the replacement of a bad egg by a good one with a “No thank you, my Lord, it’s good enough for me.”{{sfnp
— UH6T3LDY}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25992
**Categories:** English, Idiom
---
### [Bawbee](https://engole.info/bawbee/)
**Published:** May 14, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Mary_bawbee_1542_127326.jpg/450px-Mary_bawbee_1542_127326.jpg[/pimage]Scottish coin minted from 1538, equivalent to an English halfpenny.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Mary_bawbee_1542_127326.jpg)Bawbee from the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots
Wikimedia Commons
A bawbee was originally a silver coin valued at six Scottish pennies, introduced by King James V in 1538. The name derives from the name of the laird of Sillebawby, master of the Scottish mint at the time of the coin’s introduction.{{sfnp|2AXSXFVV}}
Under the brief reign of Charles II (1649–1651) the coin was made of copper, but still valued at six Scottish pennies, or half an English penny.{{sfnp|EDT7WMSY}}\[a\]Following the union of the Scottish and English crowns in 1603,{{sfnp|2VJCQJ8P}} the Scottish pound was fixed at one-twelfth that of the English.{{sfnp|UHUZTBNL}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Following the union of the Scottish and English crowns in 1603,{{sfnp|2VJCQJ8P}} the Scottish pound was fixed at one-twelfth that of the English.{{sfnp|UHUZTBNL}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26387
**Categories:** Coins
---
### [Sandbach Crosses](https://engole.info/sandbach-crosses/)
**Published:** February 22, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Sandbach_crosses.jpg[/pimage]Two early 9th-century stone Anglo-Saxon crosses in the market place of Sandbach, Cheshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Sandbach_crosses.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/pYbVVVMvF1ppixk46}}
Sandbach Crosses
The Sandbach Crosses are two early 9th-century stone Anglo-Saxon crosses now in the market place of the town of Sandbach, Cheshire. Their original location is unknown,{{sfnp|HCT7Z6H8}} but they have always been a pair, and were carved by the same hand.{{sfnp|WZQQTVJ2|574-576}}
The crosses are unusually large and elaborate examples of their type, and are recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building,{{sfnp|5XZX884K}} and a scheduled monument.{{sfnp|R7T3XY2X}}
Sandbach was part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia, and at the time of the erection of the crosses lay at the centre of a large early Anglo-Saxon parish, possibly even the site of a [minster](https://engole.info/minster) church. The crosses were originally brightly painted and adorned with jewels and metalwork, powerful symbols of church authority.{{sfnp|7QKQA32I}}
The crosses are first documented as being in the market place in 1585,{{sfnp|7QKQA32I}} probably having been moved there during the late Middle Ages,{{sfnp|5XZX884K}} and soon after the town was granted a charter for two fairs and a weekly market. In the early 17th century the crosses were torn down by Puritans opposed to religious imagery, and the pieces dispersed. The shafts were reassembled in their present location by the Cheshire antiquarian George Ormerod in 1816, using similar sandstone to replace the missing sections.{{sfnp|7QKQA32I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26029
**Categories:** Cheshire, Cross, Monument
---
### [Catechumen](https://engole.info/catechumens/)
**Published:** July 25, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/Jules-Alexis_Muenier_-_La_Le%C3%A7on_de_cat%C3%A9chisme.jpg/1280px-Jules-Alexis_Muenier_-_La_Le%C3%A7on_de_cat%C3%A9chisme.jpg[/pimage]Someone undergoing instruction in preparation for their baptism into the Christian church.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/Jules-Alexis_Muenier_-_La_Le%C3%A7on_de_cat%C3%A9chisme.jpg/1280px-Jules-Alexis_Muenier_-_La_Le%C3%A7on_de_cat%C3%A9chisme.jpg)*The Catechism Lesson* (1890), by Jules-Alexis Meunier
Wikimedia Commons
A catechumen, from the Greek *κατηχούμενοι*, meaning “instructed ones”, is a person undergoing instruction in preparation for their baptism into the Christian church. In the early Church, catechumens were either assigned a special place during services or obliged to watch from the [narthex,](https://engole.info/narthex) but were dismissed before the eucharist proper began.{{sfnp|EDS7BK8M}}
The first part of the eucharist, which the catechumens were allowed to witness, has therefore been dubbed the Mass of the Catechumens, or the ante-communion.{{sfnp|QD733FQ6}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25515
**Categories:** Religious term
---
### [Eleanor Stewart](https://engole.info/eleanor-stewart/)
**Published:** September 10, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ab/Eleanor_Stewart.jpg[/pimage]Scottish trade unionist and political activist (born 1889).
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ab/Eleanor_Stewart.jpg)Eleanor Stewart in 1924
Wikimedia Commons
Eleanor Stewart (born 28 May 1889) was a Scottish trade unionist and political activist. Born in Denistoun, Glasgow, she was the daughter of Alexander Stewart, a journeyman brush maker, and his wife Mary Ann Rutter Smith. Little is known of Eleanor’s early life until her appointment as a delegate to the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) in 1916, and her subsequent appearance before a magistrate’s court alongside Helen Crawfurd, Willie Gallacher, and Emanuel Shinwell, for taking part in a demonstration against the wartime deportation of shop stewards.{{sfnp|4PRLRTHF}}
Eleanor was appointed the Women’s Organiser for the Workers’ Union in 1917, and a member of the executive committee of the Scottish area of the Labour Party. She was involved in the Scottish Committee on Women’s Training and Employment, and in 1920 she was the first Labour woman to be elected to Glasgow City Council, representing Maryhill, but she lost her seat the following year.{{sfnp|FDZPWVBK}} She stood in Edinburgh North at the 1924 and 1929 United Kingdom general elections, but was not elected.{{sfnp|4PRLRTHF}}
The Workers’ Union joined with the Transport and General Workers’ Union, but Eleanor continued as its Scottish women’s officer, remaining active at the STUC, where she promoted equal pay and the introduction of a minimum wage. She was a founder member of the STUC’s Women’s Advisory Committee,{{sfnp|4PRLRTHF}} which she chaired from 1933 to 1935, and from 1943 to 1948.{{sfnp|TULIEUVW}}
Eleanor was a member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party from 1933 until 1944, serving on a variety of government committees. She was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1947, but by 1954 her name had disappeared from the public record; even the date of her death is unknown, and no obituary was ever published: “Although she is now forgotten, in her lifetime Eleanor Stewart spoke up strongly on behalf of women.”{{sfnp|4PRLRTHF}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25576
---
### [Cist](https://engole.info/cist/)
**Published:** February 20, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/Drizzlecombe_kist_4.JPG/330px-Drizzlecombe_kist_4.JPG[/pimage]Prehistoric chamber used to contain the bodies of the dead.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/Drizzlecombe_kist_4.JPG/330px-Drizzlecombe_kist_4.JPG)Bronze Age cist at Drizzlecombe in Devon, showing the capstone
Wikimedia Commons
A cist, from the Latin *cista*, meaning “box” or “chest”, is a prehistoric chamber used to contain the bodies of the dead. It may have been excavated in the rock, or formed by stone slabs set on their sides, topped by one or more horizontal slabs.{{sfnp|EZFPPUGS}}
Cists are often concealed beneath a cairn,{{sfnp|YAZNRR72}} or barrow mound.{{sfnp|JLVWE3NM}} Among long barrows in northwestern Europe the chamber might be divided into a series of compartments, a type of structure known as a segmented cist.{{sfnp|XHFQU3CZ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25159
**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Transept](https://engole.info/transept/)
**Published:** January 24, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Querhaus.svg/1920px-Querhaus.svg.png[/pimage]Part of a Christian church crossing the area between the nave and the chancel, forming a characteristic cruciform shape.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Querhaus.svg/1920px-Querhaus.svg.png)Shaded area is the transept; the darker shaded area at the centre is known as the crossing
Wikimedia Commons
The transept is the part of a Christian church crossing the area between the [nave](https://engole.info/nave) and the [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) at right angles, forming a characteristic cruciform shape. Trransepts began to be introduced into Western church architecture in about the 5th century, and often provided space for additional chapels.{{sfnp|J6592ZQ2}} As the altar is usually at the eastern end of a Christian church, the transept extends to the north and south.{{sfnp|VQSJS53C}}
The term is also used more generally to describe any significant part of a building lying at right angles across the structure’s main axis.{{sfnp|22W4424A}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25098
**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [How Do You View?](https://engole.info/how-do-you-view/)
**Published:** December 18, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/How-Do-You-View.webp[/pimage]British television's first comedy series, broadcast between 1949 and 1952.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/How-Do-You-View.webp)Terry-Thomas with Peter Butterworth playing the role of his chauffeur
Television Heaven
*How Do You View?* was British television’s first comedy series,{{sfnp|86C4H4LN|loc=960}} broadcast by the BBC between 1949 and 1952.{{sfnp|NGVLTUYP|52}} It was based on the on-screen persona of the comedian and character-actor Terry-Thomas (1911–1990) as “a glamorous, mischievous and discreetly cash-strapped man-about-town”,{{sfnp|86C4H4LN|loc=1032}} who introduced a series of sketches in which he also appeared.{{sfnp|86C4H4LN|loc=960}} The programmes were broadcast live, and often included Terry-Thomas walking through the control rooms and corridors of the BBC’s Lime Grove and Alexandra Palace studios,{{sfnp|NGVLTUYP|54}}{{sfnp|86C4H4LN|loc=1115}} “the first show to acknowledge the context in which it existed”.{{sfnp|86C4H4LN|loc=1116}}
By the time of the fourth series, for which Terry-Thomas was paid 140 guineas for each appearance, equivalent to about £5,000 as at 2021,\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} he was having serious doubts about the show’s future. But the introduction of the young English blonde bombshell Diana Dors, as an atomic scientist named Cuddles, increased the show’s sex appeal and assured its continued success for another series.{{sfnp|86C4H4LN|loc=1106}}
The series has been described by the author and historian Mark Lewisohn as being “inventive … truly televisual and not just a radio programme in costume”.{{sfnp|TGEPUAQY|333}}
## Series history
- Series one: 26 October – 21 December 1949
- Series two: 5 April – 17 May 1950
- Series three: 8 November 1950 – 28 February 1951
- Series four: 19 September – 28 November 1951
- Series five: 2 April – 11 June 1952
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25049
**Categories:** Television programme
---
### [The Happy Turning](https://engole.info/the-happy-turning/)
**Published:** September 23, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/H._G._Wells_Daily_Mirror.jpg[/pimage]Collection of nine cheerfully optimistic essays written by H. G. Wells, published in 1945, describing his dreamworld.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/H._G._Wells_Daily_Mirror.jpg)H. G. Wells, c. 1918
Wikimedia Commons
*The Happy Turning,* subtitled *A Dream of Life*, is a collection of nine essays written by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), published in 1945.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|43}} The essays describe the author’s dreams, and the characters and events he experiences in his dreamworld. Generally cheerful and optimistic, these essays contrast sharply with another, “[Mind at the End of Its Tether](https://engole.info/mind-at-the-end-of-its-tether)” (1945), a darkly pessimistic prediction of the imminent extinction of humanity, written almost contemporaneously.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|131}}
The *happy turning* of the title refers to a dream in which Wells is standing at his front door about to set off on his usual daily walk, when he suddenly realises that before him is a turning he had never before noticed. He never takes the turning in his dreamworld, but recognises it as a “key to this delightful land of my lifelong suppressions, in which my desires and unsatisfied fancies, hopes, memories and imaginations have accumulated inexhaustible treasure.”{{sfnp|KBHCJF22|search=How I came to the Happy Turning}}
## Contents
Essays are listed in the order in which they appear in the book.
- “How I Came to the Happy Turning”
- “Suppressions and Symbolism in Dreamland”
- “Compensation Beyond the Happy Turning”
- “The Holy Carnival”
- “Jesus of Nazareth Discusses His Failure”
- “The Architect Plans the World”
- “Miracles, Devils and the Gadarene Swine”
- “A Hymn of Hate Against Sycamores”
- “The Divine Timelessness of Beautiful Things”
## Commentary
The notion of an escape from everyday life into an altogether “lovelier world” is a recurring theme in Wells’s work, also seen for instance in the short story “[The Door in the Wall](https://engole.info/the-door-in-the-wall)” (1906) and the romance *Men Like Gods* (1923).{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|133}}
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24913
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Wayde's Essence](https://engole.info/waydes-essence/)
**Published:** December 31, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/H._G._Wells_Daily_Mirror.jpg[/pimage]Short story by H. G. Wells, about a prominent politician who learns that the drug he has been taking for the last 17 years to dispel all self-doubt is in reality distilled water.
**Content:**
“Wade’s Essence” is a short story by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published in the *New Budget* in April 1895.
The story is told as a third-person narrative and concerns Wayde, a prominent politician who in earlier life had suffered from “constitutional doubt”,{{sfnp|9I29TTQJ|loc=144658}} but had become successful owing to the effects of what he had believed to be a drug able to induce complete self-confidence, the “essence” of the title.
## Synopsis
The story begins with Wayde sitting before the fire with his doctor friend Manningtree. In his hand Wayde is holding a small bottle of a fluorescent lavender-tinted liquid, wondering what the essence that had so changed his life for the better, this “Water of Success”,{{sfnp|9I29TTQJ|loc=144628}} might contain. Manningtree, who had provided the essence, declines to say, commenting only that “You might wonder all day, and still be surprised … when I told you”.{{sfnp|9I29TTQJ|loc=144638}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/H._G._Wells_Daily_Mirror.jpg)H. G. Wells, c. 1918
Wikimedia Commons
The two men lapse into silence, and Wayde, a successful and rising politician, reflects on how much his life has changed over the past seventeen years, from being a conspicuous failure to where he is in life today. Wayde recalls the occasion seventeen or eighteen years earlier when he had first learned of the essence. He was playing billiards with Manningtree and missed an easy shot. After winning the game, Manningtree remarked that Wayde’s problem is the “disproprortion” of his character and mind: “You are always tripping yourself up. Some subtle doubt is always arising just at the wrong moment and spoiling your stroke.”{{sfnp|9I29TTQJ|loc=144668–144681}} Manningtree went on to admit that he himself used to suffer from similar self-doubts until he was introduced to a certain medication.
Wayde asked to try the medication, but Manningtree was evasive, claiming that he had very little remaining, and did not know how to make more. But Wayde persisted in his request over the following days, and eventually Maningtree relented, asking in return only that Wayde signs a note promising to pay Maningtree £7,000 when he becomes a cabinet minister. One week later Wayde took his first dose, and his life was transformed; for the first time he had absolute self-confidence.
Sitting with Wayde by the fire, Manningtree muses out loud on whether Wayde is now “fit to run alone”.{{sfnp|9I29TTQJ|loc=144727}} Wayde resists the idea of weaning himself off the elixir, but Manningtree goes on to tell him that it is simply distilled water, tinted to make it seem like a medication, and that he had effectively hypnotised Wayde by making the elixir seem difficult to obtain. Devastated by the revelation, Wayde hurls his bottle of elixir into the fire and makes to leave. Realising the error of his admission, Manningtree attempts to persuade Wayde that he was only joking, but the latter is unconvinced and storms out the room.
It was my [Manningtree’s] gas inflated him, anyhow … and anyhow he has had a very good time for seventeen years. But he is done for … What an arrant coward!{{sfnp
— 9I29TTQJ|loc=144794}}
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25024
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Chanters Colliery](https://engole.info/chanters-colliery/)
**Published:** March 30, 2023
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Chanters-Colliery.jpg[/pimage]Former colliery in Hindsford, Atherton where coal was mined from 1854 until 1966.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Chanters-Colliery.jpg)Chanters Colliery
Chanters Colliery in Hindsford, Atherton on the [Manchester Coalfield](https://engole.info/manchester-coalfield/) was started when John Fletcher sank a single shaft in 1854, in an area where coal had been mined for hundreds of years. It was developed by [Fletcher, Burrows & Company](https://engole.info/fletcher-burrows-company/) after 1872, [Manchester Collieries](https://engole.info/manchester-collieries/) after 1929, and the [National Coal Board](https://engole.info/national-coal-board/). As the colliery developed two more shafts were sunk and over time were deepened to the Arley mine, giving access to twelve workable seams. Chanters Colliery closed in 1966.
## Geology
Chanters was situated on the Middle Coal Measures of the [Manchester Coalfield](https://engole.info/manchester-coalfield) that were laid down in the Carboniferous period. The colliery had access to twelve workable seams between the Crumbouke and Arley mines.\[a\]In this part of Lancashire a coal seam is referred to as a mine and the coal mine as a colliery or pit The seams generally dip towards the south and west and are affected by small faults; the Upper Coal Measures were not worked in this part of the Lancashire Coalfield. Two coal seams outcropped close to the colliery: the Rams mine in the valley to the north; and the Brassey near Chanters Brook, close to the old Chanters Pit shaft.{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|103}}
## History
Coal had been mined in Hindsford for centuries from shallow ladder pits. One pit worked before 1800, the Gold Pit was named from the 17th-century coins and plates that were found at the bottom of its shaft. The deep pits were started by John Fletcher, who sank a shaft in 1854.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|40}} A twin-cylinder horizontal winding engine and a single-cylinder pumping engine manufactured by John Musgrave & Sons were installed in 1861. Steam for the colliery was supplied by three Lancashire boilers, the smoke from which was funneled through a {{convert|122|ft|adj=on}} tall chimney.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|40}}
During [Fletcher Burrow](https://engole.info/fletcher-burrows-company)s’ ownership the colliery was modernised after 1891, when a second shaft was sunk to the Trencherbone mine at {{convert|1121|ft}}. The shafts were deepened to the Arley mine at {{convert|1832|ft}} in 1896, both accessing twelve workable coal seams. {{sfnp|DC89GX5F|39}} No. 2 Pit, the upcast shaft, had a ventilation furnace at the shaft bottom. A twin-cylinder horizontal underground haulage engine with 20×48 inch (51×122 cm) cylinders by Greenhalgh & Company from their New Foundry in Atherton was installed near the top of No. 2 pit in 1888; its ropes passed down the shaft guided by sheave pulleys. Two {{convert|7|ft|adj=on}} diameter winding drums and an {{convert|11|ft|adj=on}} brake drum were fitted. Steam was supplied by four Cornish boilers.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|40}}
More development took place in 1904, when the boilers and winding engine at No. 1 shaft were replaced,{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|40}} and lattice steel headgear was installed. Coal screens and a coal washery were built at the same time. In 1926 the wooden headgear of No. 2 pit was replaced by Naylors of Golborne,{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|78}} and the colliery subsequently continued to be developed and modernised until its closure in 1966.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|39}}
The colliery’s training gallery was used by recruits from most of [Manchester Collieries](https://engole.info/manchester-collieries)‘ pits; 132 Bevin boys were trained at the colliery during the Second World War.{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|77}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a In this part of Lancashire a coal seam is referred to as a mine and the coal mine as a colliery or pit
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24490
**Categories:** Coal mining, Greater Manchester
---
### [Picquot ware](https://engole.info/picquot-ware/)
**Published:** January 15, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Picquot_ware.jpg[/pimage]Type of tableware made from a magnesium-aluminium alloy called magnailium.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Picquot_ware.jpg)Picquot ware set including milk jug, sugar bowl with lid, kettle and coffee pot.
Wikimedia Commons
Picquot ware is a type of tableware made from a magnesium-aluminium alloy called magnailium,\[a\]Magnailium consists of 5% magnesium and 95% aluminium. which has a silver-like look after polishing. It was produced in the Northampton factory of Burrage & Boyde from 1947 until 1980.{{sfnp|DRP27H57}}
Burrage & Boyde’s main business was the production of non-electric vacuum cleaners, marketed under the Newmaid label, the principal components of which were made from cast aluminium. In looking for additional products that could be made by taking advantage of their on-site aluminium foundry they decided on a range of high-class tableware, beginning with a {{convert|3|pt|r=1|adj=on}} kettle made from a single casting. The product was ready to be launched in 1939, but the outbreak of the Second World War resulted in the factory being diverted to the production of ammunition.{{sfnp|LYY38KRW}}
The kettle was finally launched at the British Industries Fair of 1946–1947, branded as Newmaid, and was well received. It was chosen for the 1951 British Can Make It exhibition in London, and later that year it was exhibited by the Design Centre, when the brand name was changed to Picquotware.\[b\]Some sources claim that the kettle was designed by Jean Picquot, for which there is no evidence whatsoever. Following its successful reception, other items of table ware were added to the range.{{sfnp|LYY38KRW}}
Burrage & Boyde went into receivership in 1980, and the Picquot brand name was sold to Metal Box.{{sfnp|LYY38KRW}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Magnailium consists of 5% magnesium and 95% aluminium. b Some sources claim that the kettle was designed by Jean Picquot, for which there is no evidence whatsoever.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25911
---
### [Merkin](https://engole.info/merkin/)
**Published:** December 21, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/merkin.webp[/pimage]Pubic wig, originally used to cover syphilitic pustules and gonorrheal warts in the genital area.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/merkin.webp)Pubic wig salesman displaying his wares, 1860, “Serving the discerning pudendum since 1827”
Pictures from the Past
A merkin is a pubic wig for females that first made its appearance in 1450, as a device to conceal syphilitic pustules and gonorrhoeal warts in the genital area. Merkins were frequently associated with prostitutes, many of them single mothers who had no other source of income, and had to continue working while infected.{{sfnp|YKPPESZE}}
Pubic lice were also a significant public health problem, highly contagious and easily spread through sexual contact. The merkin was seen as a solution, as it could be removed and washed regularly to prevent the spread of lice.{{sfnp|C97B2YY5}}
In more recent times the merkin has become a fashion accessory to alter the appearance of the female pubic hair, “which is usually, when left to its own devices, unruly, coarse, and shapeless”.{{sfnp|YKPPESZE}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25824
**Categories:** Fashion
---
### [Henry Fuseli](https://engole.info/henry-fuseli/)
**Published:** October 17, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/Henry_Fuseli_by_James_Northcote.jpg/330px-Henry_Fuseli_by_James_Northcote.jpg[/pimage]Swiss-born British Romantic artist (1741–1825), who established a reputation for his paintings depicting the horrifying and fantastic.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/Henry_Fuseli_by_James_Northcote.jpg/330px-Henry_Fuseli_by_James_Northcote.jpg)*Henry Fuseli* (1778), by James Northcote
Wikimedia Commons
Henry Fuseli (1741–1825) was a Swiss-born British Romantic artist, born Johann Heinrich Füssli at Zürich, Switzerland on 6 February 1741. He initially trained as a Zwinglian minister, and was ordained in 1761, but soon abandoned the priesthood,{{sfnp|8BWZKN6Y}} and in 1764 moved to England, where he met Sir Joshua Reynolds, who encouraged him to concentrate on becoming a painter.{{sfnp|FYHLQIZ5}}
Much of Fuseli’s work derives from his fascination with the horrifying and fantastic, exploring “the murky areas of the psyche where sex and fear meet”. His reputation was secured when [*The Nightmare*](https://engole.info/the-nightmare) was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1782, depicting a sleeping woman in the grip of a darkly erotic dream.{{sfnp|FYHLQIZ5}}
## Gallery
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/The-Sleepwalking-Lady-Macbeth.jpg)
*The Sleepwalking Lady Macbeth*, 1781–1784
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Johann_Heinrich_Fussli_011.jpg)
*Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent*, 1788
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Laying-Nude-and-Pianist.jpg)
*Laying Nude and Pianist*, 1799–1800
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Johann_Heinrich_Fussli_019.jpg)
*The Weird Sisters*, 1783
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Lapland_witches.jpg)
[*The Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches*](the-night-hag-visiting-lapland-witches), 1796
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/76ededf4f6a641324355d8df6aaff342-1-2.jpg)
*Prince Arthur and the Faerie Queen,* c. 1788
## See also
- [Fairy painting](https://engole.info/fairy-painting)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25643
**Categories:** Male, Painter, Swiss
---
### [Sample size fallacy](https://engole.info/sample-size-fallacy/)
**Published:** December 9, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Failure to consider sample size when estimating the probability of obtaining a particular value drawn from a known population.
**Content:**
The sample size fallacy is the failure to take sample size into account when estimating the probability of obtaining a particular value in a sample drawn from a known population. It was first reported by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in a 1972 article in the journal *Cognitive Psychology*. In their experiment participants were asked to estimate the probability of a group of people having an average height of more than {{convert|6|ft|r=1|spell=in}}.
The participants produced almost identical estimates for group sizes of 10, 100, and 1000, despite the probability of an usually high average being much greater in a small sample than a large one.{{sfnp|KTLUCS2E}}
In another example, subjects were asked the following question:
A certain town is served by two hospitals. In the larger hospital about 45 babies are born each day, and in the smaller hospital about 15 babies are born each day. As you know, about 50% of all babies are boys. However, the exact percentage varies from day to day. Sometimes it may be higher than 50%, sometimes lower.
The subjects were then asked which hospital, over the period of one year, they thought would report more days on which over 60 per cent of the babies born were boys. Fifty-six percent believed that the figures for both hospitals would be about the same, but the correct answer is that the smaller hospital would be likely to report more male births, as the sample size is smaller, and small sample sizes lead to greater variation.{{sfnp|QQ45WA7W}}
Tversky and Kahneman explained these results as being caused by what they named the representativeness heuristic, according to which people intuitively judge samples as having similar properties to their population, but do not consider whether those samples are really representative.{{sfnp|FY5XSNVB}} The gambler’s fallacy is a well-known variant on this heuristic.{{sfnp|KTLUCS2E}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25023
**Categories:** Falllacy, Mathematics
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Barratry](https://engole.info/barratry/)
**Published:** March 14, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** English common law crime of excessive litigation, particularly for the purposes of profit or harassment.
**Content:**
Barratry was the offence under English common law of too frequently taking disputes to the courts, particularly for profit or harassment,{{sfnp|2XKTHA2A}} or pressing weak or false legal suits.{{sfnp|YEK2DHMQ}} The offence emerged following the Statutes of Westminster in 1275, which forbade any defamation of the king or his magnates, and was soon extended to include anyone accused of “rabble-rousing”, or treacherous thoughts or speech.{{sfnp|YEK2DHMQ}}
Barratry was abolished as a criminal offence in England by the Criminal Law Act 1967.{{sfnp|3GQPMUTC}}{{sfnp|QD9X24AW|search=Part II: Obsolete crimes, section 13}}
The term *barratry* is also used to describe any act committed by the master or crew of a ship to the detriment of its owner or charterer, such as scuttling the vessel or any illegal activity that might lead to the ship’s forfeiture.{{sfnp|3GQPMUTC}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25201
**Categories:** Legal term
---
### [The Vote (newspaper)](https://engole.info/the-vote-newspaper/)
**Published:** September 11, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/The_Vote.jpg/330px-The_Vote.jpg[/pimage]Suffragette newspaper published from 1909 until 1933.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/The_Vote.jpg/330px-The_Vote.jpg)Front cover of 4 July 1930 issue
Wikimedia Commons
*The Vote* was a newspaper founded by the Women’s Freedom League (WFL), published from 1909 until 1933, initially published weekly.{{sfnp|F99WQSRC}}
*The Vote* became the WFL’s primary means of communication with the public, informing readers of campaigns, protests and events, but its ultimate purpose can summed up as follows:
We hope and believe that through its pages the public will come to understand what the Parliamentary Franchise means to us women. Now it will be both a symbol of citizenship and the key to a door opening out on such service to the community as we have never yet been allowed to render, and therefore it is our earnest hope that our paper will keep its place in the hearts of men and women long after the first victory has been won.{{sfnp
— B4HAS5CH|192}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25578
**Categories:** Newspaper
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Allard Clipper](https://engole.info/allard-clipper/)
**Published:** November 12, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bf/1954_Allard_Clipper.jpg/1920px-1954_Allard_Clipper.jpg[/pimage]Three-wheeled microcar produced from 1953 until 1955.
**Content:**
The Allard Clipper is a three-wheeled microcar designed by David Gottlieb, who commissioned the Allard Motor Company to produce two prototype chassis and a self-coloured fibre-glass body. It is powered by a rear-mounted Villiers 24B {{convert|346|cc}} single-cylinder two-stroke motorcycle engine connected by triple “V” belt drive to a Burman gearbox driving the left rear-wheel via a chain.{{sfnp|BH37JRJJ}}{{sfnp|B4I9A9K9}}
Production began at the Encon Motors workshop site in Fulham in 1954,{{sfnp|BH37JRJJ}} but the car’s weak transmission and cooling problems made it “woefully unreliable”. It was one of the first British-built vehicles to use a fibre-glass body,{{sfnp|B3ZT6TM5|23}} but the manufacturer, Hordern-Richmond, was inexperienced with the technology, resulting in rising costs and the cancellation of the project after only about twenty units had been produced.{{sfnp|BH37JRJJ}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bf/1954_Allard_Clipper.jpg/1920px-1954_Allard_Clipper.jpg)1954 Allard Clipper
Wikimedia Commons
**Manufacturer:**Allard Motor Company**Production:**1953–1955
20 made
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Allard-Clipper-01-1500x1000-1.jpg)Sales brochure. The five would be three in the front bench seat and two in the rear dickey seats.
Below the Radar
The motoring journalist Chris Rees has described the Allard Clipper as an “almost wilfully odd and desperately crude device”.{{sfnp|B3ZT6TM5|23}} It was probably one of the last cars to offer the option of a dickey seat, known in America as a rumble seat, in the rear boot.{{sfnp|B4I9A9K9}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25717
**Categories:** Microcar, Three-wheeler
---
### [Fernley Observatory](https://engole.info/fernley-observatory/)
**Published:** July 26, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Fernley-Observatory.jpg[/pimage]Victorian astronomical observatory in Hesketh Park, Southport.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Fernley-Observatory.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/MsmHxR1h9d8pK8TdA}}
Fernley Observatory, May 2007|geograph.org.uk
Fernley Observatory is a Grade II [listed structure](https://engole.info/listed-building) in Hesketh Park, Southport. It was originally built in the garden of the meteorologist and astronomer Joseph Baxendell’s home in Birkdale, in 1877. Its {{convert|6|in|adj=on}} refracting telescope, dated 1869, was manufactured by T. Cooke and Sons,{{sfnp|IPL357EV}} and donated by Baxendell’s friend the cotton manufacturer and politician Thomas S. Bazley.{{sfnp|YRZ59W45}} Following Baxendell’s death in 1887 his family donated the observatory to Southport Corporation,{{sfnp|IPL357EV}} and it was subsequently installed on top of a specially built brick structure in Hesketh Park in 1901.{{sfnp|YRZ59W45}}
The observatory is named after the philanthropist John Fernley (1796–1873), who had funded the construction of the nearby Fernley Meteorological Observatory,{{sfnp|K6QWH7YF}} also in Hesketh Park but no longer extant.{{sfnp|IPL357EV}}
The off-centre dome has two opening panels and is mounted on castors, allowing it to rotate. Baxendell was a devout Methodist, and had the first line from Psalms, chapter 19 (XIX-I, K.J.V) painted around the dome’s base:{{sfnp|IPL357EV}}
> THE HEAVENS DECLARE THE GLORY OF GOD, AND THE FIRMAMENT SHEWETH HIS HANDIWORK”
Fernley Observatory has been in the care of the Fernley Observatory Heritage Group since 2014, with the responsibility of restoring the structure and opening it to the public.{{sfnp|KGQSC65R}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24825
**Categories:** Observatory
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Scott Sociable](https://engole.info/scott-sociable/)
**Published:** December 27, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Scott_Sociable_1923_%2806%29.JPG/1280px-Scott_Sociable_1923_%2806%29.JPG[/pimage]British two-seat, three-wheeled automobile produced from 1921 to 1925 by the Scott Autocar Company, unusual for its offset front wheel.
**Content:**
The Scott Sociable, manufactured by the Scott Autocar Company from 1921 until 1925, began life as military vehicle. The Scott Motorcycle Company had been producing sidecar machine gun carriers since 1916, but in 1919 the company’s founder and designer, Alfred Angas\[a\]Sometimes recorded as Angus. Scott, decided to focus on the development of a three-wheeled automobile, and left to set up the Scott Autocar Company in 1919.{{sfnp|5GTNFJ3B|225}}
The design of Scott’s automobile clearly owes much to his experience with motorcycle sidecars, resulting in the vehicle’s unusual configuration of an offset front wheel, giving the impression that the other front wheel is missing. When the anticipated military orders failed to materialise, Scott decided to convert the vehicle to civilian use, the first version of which was introduced in 1921.{{sfnp|5GTNFJ3B|225}}
The automobile’s wooden body was mounted on a tubular, triangular steel frame, fitted with Scott’s own water-cooled {{convert|578|cc|adj=on}} twin-cylinder two-stroke engine. Drive was delivered to the offside rear wheel by a shaft via a three-speed gearbox; there was no reverse gear.{{sfnp|CSPVJMAK|search=Scott Sociable}}
When introduced in 1921 the Scott Sociable was priced at £215, equivalent to more than £10,000 as at 2021,\[b\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} but by 1923 the price had dropped to £135, about £8,000.\[c\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} Production ceased in 1925.{{sfnp|5GTNFJ3B|225}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Scott_Sociable_1923_%2806%29.JPG/1280px-Scott_Sociable_1923_%2806%29.JPG)Wikimedia Commons
**Manufacturer:**Scott Autocar Company**Production:**1921–1925
About 200 made
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Sometimes recorded as Angus. b, c Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} d, e var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25066
**Categories:** Three-wheeler
---
### [White Barrow](https://engole.info/white-barrow/)
**Published:** January 17, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Whitebarrow.jpg[/pimage]Neolithic long barrow on Salisbury Plain.
**Content:**
map
https://goo.gl/maps/k51XjbDaKt3q6uLY7
White Barrow is a Neolithic long barrow below the crest of Copehill Down on Salisbury Plain, just outside the village of Tilshead in Wiltshire, England. Now owned by the National Trust, it is about {{convert|90|m}} in length, {{convert|50|m}} wide and {{convert|2|m|r=1}} high.{{sfnp|VFJPENYE}} It has never been fully excavated, but dating material from a badger’s sett dug into the barrow,\[a\]The material includes flint tools and Neolithic pottery.{{sfnp|VFJPENYE}} suggests that it dates from about 3000 to 3500 BCE.{{sfnp|VFJPENYE}} A geophysical survey by English Heritage in 1997 found evidence of a possible burial chamber or mortuary cairn inside the barrow, and an arc of post pits at its eastern end. A former trackway crossing the site from southwest to northeast was also found.{{sfnp|BYQPMTIE}}
The excavating badger family was enticed away to a new home by honey-coated peanuts in 1998, and following the granting of a badger exclusion licence from English Nature the barrow was covered in chain-link fencing to prevent animals from burrowing into it again and destroying archaeological evidence.{{sfnp|VFJPENYE}}
White Barrow was the first piece of land that the National Trust acquired purely in the interests of archaeological conservation. Until then it had largely been concerned with open spaces, houses and gardens. The barrow, along with {{convert|2.75|acre}} of surrounding land, was purchased by subscription in 1909 for £60, at a time when the War Office was rapidly buying up land around it as part of the Salisbury Plain Training Area.{{sfnp|ZTBQBCX9|23}}
The barrow was designated a scheduled monument in 1960.{{sfnp|T9MJFTZR}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The material includes flint tools and Neolithic pottery.{{sfnp|VFJPENYE}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/White_Barrow#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Barrow, Wiltshire
---
### [Militia Ordinance](https://engole.info/militia-ordinance/)
**Published:** January 14, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/210px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of Parliament passed in 1642 allowing parliament to appoint military commanders without the king's approval.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Coat_of_arms_of_England_%281603%E2%80%931649%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_England_%281603%E2%80%931649%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Militia Ordinance was passed by the Parliament of England on 15 March 1642. By asserting the right to appoint military commanders without the king’s approval, it was a significant step in the events leading to the outbreak of the First English Civil War in August that year.{{sfnp|J2PFTXY7|38}}
The 1641 Irish Rebellion had led to widespread support in England for the raising an army to suppress it.{{sfnp|YJ9EI7S2|4}} But as relations between Charles I and parliament deteriorated, each side began to fear that such a force might be used against them.{{sfnp|TF6RQK8S|1-4}} After Charles was foiled in his efforts on 4 January 1642 to arrest the [Five Members](https://engole.info/five-members/) of parliament whom he had accused of treason, the King left London the following day and headed north to York; over the next few weeks he was joined by many Royalist members of the Commons and House of Lords. The exodus resulted in a parliamentary majority in the Lords, which approved the Militia Ordinance on 5 March 1642, while confirming that doing so was not a violation of the Oath of Allegiance.{{sfnp|62CJQN49|624-625}}
The bill was returned to the Commons for approval the same day, then passed to Charles for his royal assent, required for it to become a legally binding Act of Parliament.{{sfnp|TF6RQK8S|1-4}} When he refused, parliament declared on 15 March 1642 that “the People are bound by the Ordinance for the Militia, though it has not received the Royal Assent”.{{sfnp|AKU47ARN|645-646}} Charles responded to this unprecedented assertion of parliamentary sovereignty by issuing Commissions of Array, although these were little more than statements of intent, with little practical impact on the raising of armies.
Parliament continued to pass and enforce Ordinances throughout the 1640s, most of which were declared void after the 1660 Restoration of the Monarchy; an exception was the 1643 excise duty.{{sfnp|HQFENUMS|148}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Militia_Ordinance#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [The Empire of the Ants](https://engole.info/the-empire-of-the-ants/)
**Published:** August 20, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/ba/The_Empire_of_the_Ants%2C_opening_illustration_%282%29.png/960px-The_Empire_of_the_Ants%2C_opening_illustration_%282%29.png[/pimage]Short story by H. G. Wells first published in 1905, about a plague of large intelligent ants, which pose a threat to mankind's continued existence.
**Content:**
“The Empire of the Ants” is a short story by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published in the December 1905 edition of [*The Strand Magazine*](https://engole.info/the-graphic/) and republished in [*The Country of the Blind and Other Stories*](https://engole.info/the-country-of-the-blind-and-other-stories/) (1911).{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|41}} The story is told by an unnamed narrator who has heard the tale from Holroyd, the Lancashire engineer on a Brazilian gunship dispatched to investigate a plague of highly intelligent ants, and the risk they pose to humanity.
## Synopsis
Guerillo, the Brazilian captain of the gunship *Benjamin Constant*, is ordered up the Amazon to assist the inhabitants of the town of Badama against a plague of ants, accompanied by his English engineer Holroyd. Before reaching their destination they encounter a *cuberta*\[a\]A *cuberta* is a large canoe with two masts and sails, used for transporting goods on the Amazon.{{sfnp|MALVEISM|508}} with two mutilated dead men on board, infested with large black ants.
Illustration from *Amazing Stories* magazine, 1926.
Wikimedia Commons
Captain Gerilleau orders his second in command, Lieutenant da Cunha, to board the vessel. There they find a species of large black ant that has evolved advanced intelligence, and has used it to make tools and manufacture poison, which the larger ants carry on their backs. The ants attack da Cunha, but although he manages to escape back to his ship, he dies painfully, apparently poisoned, that night. The next day, after burning the *cuberta*, the *Benjamin Constant* arrives off Badama. The town is deserted, all its inhabitants dead or dispersed. Fearing the ants and their poison, Gerilleau contents himself with firing “de big gun”{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|loc=134741}} at the town twice, with minimal effect. He then demands “what else was there to do?”,{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|loc=134729}} variants of which phrase are used throughout the story when discussing the ants,{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|loc=134729}} and returns downstream for further orders.
A postscript to the story recounts that Holroyd has returned to England to warn the authorities about the ants, before it is too late. The narrator, to whom he told his story three weeks earlier, agrees that the ants are a serious pest, even “new competitors for the sovereignty of the globe”, and that by 1950 or ’60 they will have reached Europe.{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|loc=134761}}
## Commentary
“The Empire of the Ants” is an elaboration on a theme Wells introduced his 1894 essay “[The Extinction of Man](https://engole.info/the-extinction-of-man)“, in which he outlined what he perceived to be the various threats to man’s continued existence. As well as a plague of ants, those threats included an invasion of some as yet unknown sea creature, developed in “[The Sea Raiders](https://engole.info/the-sea-raiders)” (1896), and the prospect of some new disease.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|41-42}}
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a A *cuberta* is a large canoe with two masts and sails, used for transporting goods on the Amazon.{{sfnp|MALVEISM|508}} b, c var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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## External links
- [Full text of “The Empire of the Ants”](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11870/11870-h/11870-h.htm#link2H_4_0031) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** Short story
---
### [Hagioscope](https://engole.info/hagioscope/)
**Published:** August 2, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Squint_-_geograph.org.uk_-_525863.jpg/330px-Squint_-_geograph.org.uk_-_525863.jpg[/pimage]Obliquely cut opening in the chancel wall of a Christian church, allowing celebrants in the side chapels to suspend their own services when the parish priest at the high altar reached the point of consecrating the eucharist.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Squint_-_geograph.org.uk_-_525863.jpg/330px-Squint_-_geograph.org.uk_-_525863.jpg)Squint in the wall of the north [aisle](https://engole.info/aisle-architecture) chapel, St Nicholas’s Church, Walcot, Lincolnshire, with a view of the high altar in the chancel beyond.
Wikimedia Commons
A hagioscope, also known as a squint or *loricula*, is an obliquely cut opening in the masonry wall of a Christian church to allow a limited view of the high altar from side-chapels or aisles. Its purpose was to allow celebrants in the side [chapels](https://engole.info/chapel) to suspend their own services when the parish priest at the high altar reached the point of consecrating the eucharist, known as sacring, so that consecrations did not take place simultaneously.{{sfnp|34UGHXDT}}
It has often been suggested that the squint allowed lepers to view the Mass without mixing with the congregation in the [nave](https://engole.info/nave),{{sfnp|7WAM2MVN}} and with that purpose in mind it is sometimes called a lychnoscope.{{sfnp|EGUCRZ4A}} But during the medieval period the congregation would have been prevented from seeing the celebration of the Mass by a pulpitum, so the suggestion is almost certainly without merit.{{sfnp|DHGJUDVF|406-407}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Religious architecture
---
### [The Ladies Mercury](https://engole.info/the-ladies-mercury/)
**Published:** December 13, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ladies-mercury.png[/pimage]First English periodical targeted specifically at women, published in 1693.
**Content:**
Title page of first issue
Defining Gender
Despite its short print run of just four issues, the first published at the end of February 1693, the *The Ladies Mercury* occupies a unique position in literary history as the first English periodical specifically targeted at women. It was edited by a “dimly realised” Ladies Society, and adopted the form of an advice column, the editors answering queries sent in by readers{{sfnp|TL7RQQ5Q}} “with the zeal and softness becoming to the sex”.{{sfnp|LHAG9YBI}}
The *Mercury* promised to respond to “all the most nice and curious questions concerning love, marriage, behaviour, dress and humour of the female sex, whether virgins, wives, or widows”.{{sfnp|6BLGMZMI|13}} The first issue contains a letter sent in by a “young woman” who, having had an affair before her marriage, asks whether it was proper of her to feign her virginity on her wedding night. The Ladies Society reassures her by arguing that the affair was over before she had any moral obligation to her present husband. Another, from “a man of Honour”, asks whether as he is unable to divorce his adulterous wife, it would be sinful for him to take a mistress”.{{sfnp|TL7RQQ5Q}}
It is generally considered that the publisher and bookseller John Dunton (1659–1733), publisher of *The Athenian Mercury*, also published *The Ladies Mercury*, but the evidence is inconclusive. Certainly the latter positioned itself as a “companion” to *The Athenian Mercury*, and adopted the same question and answer style of its monthly ladies’ issues, but Dunton himself remained silent on the issue.{{sfnp|TL7RQQ5Q}} The literary historian Bertha-Monica Stearns has speculated that Dunton decided that the ladies’ issue of *The Athenian Mercury* scheduled for 25 February 1693 might as well stand on its own feet as *The Ladies Mercury,* but reluctant to acknowledge “so pitiful an enterprise”, chose to abandon the project after four issues.{{sfnp|9E2IRNGF}} Perhaps the best that can be stated with any degree of certainty is that Dunton was “amenable” to the project.{{sfnp|TL7RQQ5Q})
The final issue of the *The Ladies Mercury* was published on 17 March 1693.{{sfnp|TL7RQQ5Q}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [Nave](https://engole.info/nave/)
**Published:** September 11, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/Mittelschiff.svg/1920px-Mittelschiff.svg.png[/pimage]Central part of a church, used by the laiety.
**Content:**
**Plan of a large Latin cross church with nave highlighted**[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/Mittelschiff.svg/1920px-Mittelschiff.svg.png)[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Langhaus%2C_Hauptschiff.svg/1280px-Langhaus%2C_Hauptschiff.svg.png)Strict definition
Wikimedia Commons
Broader definition
Wikimedia Commons
The nave is the central part of a Christian church, used by the congregation. It stretches from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the [transepts](https://engole.info/transept), or in a church without transepts, to the [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel). If a church contains side aisles, the term *nave* strictly applies only to the central aisle. Until the Protestant Reformation during the 16th century, the nave was often separated from the choir and clergy by a screen,{{sfnp|STZ5M3G8}} known variously as a [rood screen](https://engole.info/rood-screen), a chancel screen, or a choir screen.{{sfnp|E52QYW59}} Maintaining the nave was traditionally the responsibility of the parishioners.{{sfnp|S94C2NKM}}
*Nave* is derived from the Latin *navis*, meaning “ship”, perhaps in reference to the [Barque of St Peter](https://engole.info/barque-of-st-peter/), the first pope, or Noah’s Ark; indeed, many naves are shaped like upside-down boats. Until the Reformation, when very long sermons became the norm, naves did not contain pews for the congregation to sit on. Instead there were stone benches set into the wall, which is the origin of the saying “the weakest go to the wall”.{{sfnp|2GED5TTW}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Religious architecture
---
### [The Obliterated Man](https://engole.info/the-obliterated-man/)
**Published:** September 24, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/H_G_Wells_pre_1922.jpg[/pimage]Short story by H. G. Wells first published in 1895, about a shy young man who becomes a drama critic, and the effect that decision has on his personality.
**Content:**
“The Obliterated Man” is a short story by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published in *New Budget* on 15 August 1895 under the title “The Sad Story of a Dramatic Critic”. It was subsequently included in [*The Plattner Story and Others*](https://engole.info/the-plattner-story-and-others/) (1897), and [*The Country of the Blind and Other Stories*](https://engole.info/the-country-of-the-blind-and-other-stories/) (1911).{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|52}} Told as a first-person narrative, it is an account of a shy young man who reluctantly agrees to become a drama critic, and the effect that decision has on his personality.
## Synopsis
The story is told by Egbert Craddock Cummins, the dramatic critic for the *Fiery Cross*, a shy young man with a slight stutter and a taste for grey clothes, who is engaged to a very nice girl named Delia. Pressed by his editor, Barnaby, he had reluctantly agreed to take on the role of the paper’s dramatic critic, despite never before in his life having attended any theatre. Barnaby thrusts four tickets into his hand for theatrical performances, the first due to start in twenty minutes.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/H_G_Wells_pre_1922.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
Cummins is struck by the “phenomenal unnaturalness of acting … the fantastic gestures, the flamboyant emotions, the weird mouthings, melodious snortings … and other emotional symbolism of the stage”. But the experience makes a deep impression on the young man, and he finds himself imitating some of the actors’ more exaggerated gestures. Over time a kind of “theatrical veneer” begins to “plate over” his personality, threatening to obliterate his own individuality. His fiancé Delia notices the change in his demeanour and does not approve; thinking that it makes the couple look ridiculous she ends their relationship.
Despite his detestation of actors, Cummins begins to find that it is only in their company that he can feel inconspicuous. He ends by wondering if the only course left open to him is to end his “self-effacement” and take to the stage himself, as it only there that he will once again be taken seriously.
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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## External links
- [Full text of “The Obliterated Man”](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11870/11870-h/11870-h.htm#link2H_4_0015) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Anne Bonny](https://engole.info/anne-bonny/)
**Published:** May 3, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Bonney%2C_Anne_%281697-1720%29.jpg[/pimage]Female pirate who operated in the Caribbean during the 18th century.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Bonney%2C_Anne_%281697-1720%29.jpg)Anne Bonny from a Dutch version of Charles Johnson’s book of pirates
Wikimedia Commons
Anne Bonny (1698–1782) was an Irish pirate who operated in the Caribbean, one of only a few female pirates in the historical record. The little that is known of her life comes largely from Captain Charles Johnson’s *A General Historie of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates*, (1724).\[a\]The author Angus Konstam has suggested that Johnson may have been an alias used by the English playwright Charles Johnson, the British publisher Charles Rivington, or the writer Daniel Defoe.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|1-2}}
Anne joined up with the flamboyant pirate known as Calico Jack Rackham, and became his pirate partner and lover. She was captured alongside Rackham and her fellow female pirate Mary Read,\[b\]According to witnesses at their trial, Anne Bonny and Mary Read were the fiercest members of the pirate crew.{{sfnp|YQX9CU3E}} and all three were sentenced to death in 1721. But as she was pregnant with Rackham’s child, the sentence was never carried out and she was reprieved. Anne went on to become a respectable married woman, dying at the age of eighty-four in South Carolina.{{sfnp|YQX9CU3E}}
## Early life
Anne was born near Cork, Ireland in 1698. Possibly the illegitimate daughter of the lawyer William Cormac and his maidservant, she was raised as a boy. But finding that his legal practice was affected by the child’s existence Cormac decided to leave Ireland, taking Anne and the maid with him. The family sailed to South Carolina, where he became a successful merchant and purchased a plantation.{{sfnp|YQX9CU3E}}
Anne appears to have had something of a temper as a young girl, allegedly killing a servant with a knife and beating an “over-amorous” suitor almost to death.{{sfnp|QQMSZCQX|loc=416}}
## Introduction to piracy
In 1718 Anne married James Bonny, a poor sailor and small-time pirate, which so upset her father that he disinherited her.{{sfnp|YQX9CU3E}}{{sfnp|QQMSZCQX|loc=416}} There is a story that Bonny set fire to her father’s plantation in retaliation, but there is no supporting evidence.{{sfnp|R7C7B4QJ}} It is known however that Anne and her husband moved to the island of New Providence in the Bahamas, a sanctuary for English pirates known as the Republic of Pirates.{{sfnp|R7C7B4QJ}} Following the arrival of Governor Woodes Rogers in the summer of 1718, James Bonny became an informer, supplying the governor with information about pirates in the area.{{sfnp|QCZBVHUL|139, 316-318}}
Anne began frequenting the waterfront taverns of the Bahamas without her husband, sometimes dressed in men’s clothes. There she met and was courted by the pirate John Rackam (d. 1720), whose distinctive striped pants had earned him the nickname Calico Jack.{{sfnp|QQMSZCQX|loc=416-426}} Anne’s husband may have attempted to [sell](https://engole.info/wife-selling/) her in a local tavern,{{sfnp|QQMSZCQX|loc=416}} or alternatively Calico Jack might have offered him money if he would divorce her. But in any event she was persuaded to leave her husband and go to sea with Rackham. She disguised herself as a man on the ship, and only Rackham and fellow female pirate Mary Read were aware that she was a woman until it became clear that she was pregnant;{{sfnp|H5Y6FWYQ}} she was landed at Cuba, where she gave birth to a son. She then rejoined Rackham and continued her life as a pirate, having divorced her husband and married Rackham while at sea. Bonny, Rackham, and Read stole the ship *William*, then at anchor in Nassau harbor, and put out to sea.{{sfnp|KMX8F7WV}} Rackham and the two women recruited a new crew, and spent years in Jamaica and the surrounding area.{{sfnp|96T23HXY}} Anne took part in combat alongside the men, and was named in a “Wanted Pirates” circular issued by Governor Rogers, published in *The Boston News-Letter*.{{sfnp|QCZBVHUL|139, 316-318}}
## Capture and imprisonment
In November 1720 Rackham and his crew were attacked by a heavily armed sloop captained by the privateer Jonathan Barnet. Most of Rackham’s pirates put up little resistance, as many were too drunk to fight; only Anne, Mary and one other pirate out of their ship’s crew of ten attempted to resist Barnet’s men.{{sfnp|QQMSZCQX|loc=473}} After being forced to surrender the crew was taken to Jamaica, where they were tried by an Admiralty court presided over by Sir Nicholas Lawes, governor of Jamaica. Rackham and all ten of the male members of his crew were convicted and sentenced to be hanged.{{sfnp|YQX9CU3E}} According to Johnson, Bonny’s last words to Rackham were: “Had you fought like a man, you need not have been hang’d like a dog”.{{sfnp|QQMSZCQX|loc=483}}
Anne and Mary were also found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, but both “pleaded their bellies” – asking for mercy because they were pregnant – and were reprieved. Mary died in prison, most likely from a fever from childbirth, and was buried on 28 April 1721.{{sfnp|YQX9CU3E}}
## Later life
There is some evidence to suggest that Anne’s father succeeded in having her released from prison and took her back to South Carolina, where she gave birth to Rackham’s second child. On 21 December 1721 she married a local man, Joseph Burleigh, with whom she had eight children. Anne died a respectable woman in South Carolina at the age of eighty-four, and was buried on 25 April 1782.{{sfnp|YQX9CU3E}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The author Angus Konstam has suggested that Johnson may have been an alias used by the English playwright Charles Johnson, the British publisher Charles Rivington, or the writer Daniel Defoe.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|1-2}} b According to witnesses at their trial, Anne Bonny and Mary Read were the fiercest members of the pirate crew.{{sfnp|YQX9CU3E}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Anne_Bonny#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Female, Irish, Pirate
---
### [Cannel](https://engole.info/cannel/)
**Published:** July 17, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Beads_of_Cannel_coal.JPG/1920px-Beads_of_Cannel_coal.JPG[/pimage]Type of bituminous coal.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Beads_of_Cannel_coal.JPG/1920px-Beads_of_Cannel_coal.JPG)Cannel coal beads
Wikimedia Commons
Cannel is a type of bituminous coal,{{sfnp|98XRFMW3}} also categorised as terrestrial-type oil shale.{{sfnp|WXPTZTGZ}}{{sfnp|YBBTL6ZC}}{{sfnp|RZ6KPD5G}} Owing to its physical morphology and low mineral content cannel is considered to be coal, but by its texture and composition of the organic matter it is also considered to be oil shale.{{sfnp|VJDEFQLR}} Although historically the term cannel coal has been used interchangeably with boghead coal, a more recent classification system restricts cannel coal to terrestrial origin, and boghead coal to lacustrine environments, sedimentary deposits formed at the bottom of ancient lakes.{{sfnp|WXPTZTGZ}}
Cannel coal commanded a premium price as a fuel for use in home fireplaces. It burned longer than wood, and had a clean, bright flame.{{sfnp|9FB3ERHR|35}} It has also been used as jewellery since the Neolithic period, with pieces appearing in Scotland (often alongside jet) dating from the centuries before 3500 BCE.{{sfnp|BH8MI5V6}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23676
This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Cannel_coal#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Coal mining, Geology
---
### [Screaming skull](https://engole.info/screaming-skull/)
**Published:** May 22, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Attacking_skull_in_The_Screaming_Skull_%2801.02.48%29.jpg[/pimage]Human skull that emits blood-curdling screams when anyone attempts to move it.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Attacking_skull_in_The_Screaming_Skull_%2801.02.48%29.jpg)Shot from the 1958 film *The Screaming Skull*
Wikimedia Commons
Most stories of screaming skulls, said to scream or to generate psychic phenomena if removed from their dwelling places, are of English origin.{{sfnp|KBUAGJ93|116}}{{sfnp|876LXNH6}} Typically the skull, which may have been handed down through the generations, is of an ancestor or an executed murderer. If anyone moves it, even to give it a decent burial, the following night will be rent by blood-curdling screams, and the skull will be back in its original resting place by dawn.{{sfnp|KBUAGJ93|116}}
The most famous of the screaming skulls is to be found at Bettiscombe Manor in Dorset.{{sfnp|876LXNH6}} The Bettiscombe screaming skull is attested at least as early as 1897 in *The Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain*. The book tells of an alleged visit to Bettiscombe in 1883 to investigate a skull which, according to legend, was of an African slave once owned by the owner of the house. The slave had supposedly died determined to be buried in his homeland, and any attempt to bury him elsewhere caused the skull to scream.{{sfnp|LF9TABED|342}} However, an examination of the artefact carried out in 1963 suggested that the skull was that of a European female, and could be at least 2000 years old, which has led to some speculation that it may originally have been venerated at a Celtic shrine.{{sfnp|876LXNH6}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23588
**Categories:** Paranormal
---
### [Chaddock Pit](https://engole.info/chaddock-pit/)
**Published:** March 8, 2020
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Chaddock-Pit-and-Chaddock-Level-1845.jpg[/pimage]Pit sunk in about 1820 by the Bridgewater Trustees that was connected to the Bridgewater Canal at Boothstown Basin by an underground canal.
**Content:**
map
https://goo.gl/maps/xwseBfPo4MvA4tef7}}
Chaddock Pit and the Chaddock Level in 1845.{{sfnp|4ZMHRBKS}}|Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Chaddock Pit’s shafts were sunk in about 1820 by the Bridgewater Trustees to the south of Chaddock Lane in Tyldesley on the [Manchester Coalfield](https://engole.info/manchester-coalfield/). The underground workings were connected to the Leigh arm of the Bridgewater Canal at Boothstown by the Chaddock Level, an extension of the [Worsley Navigable Levels](https://engole.info/worsley-navigable-levels/).
After the Duke of Bridgewater’s death, Robert Haldane Bradshaw bought land at Booths Hall in Boothstown and the Chaddock Hall Estate in Tyldesley in 1810, leasing the mineral rights to the Bridgewater Trustees. Beneath those estates, the Worsley Four Foot mine was accessible. It was decided to drive a level from the Leigh arm of the Bridgewater Canal near Boothstown Bridge to intercept the Chaddock workings, and the level was subsequently driven further westward to the Queen Anne and Henfold Pits in Tyldesley. The Chaddock system was about three and a half miles (5.6 km) in extent.{{sfnp|KLZ5HVNI|339}}{{sfnp|RHKNWMQC|39}}
Chaddock Engine Pit had a 70 hp steam engine for pumping and Chaddock Coal Pit had a 14 hp winding engine. The shafts were {{convert|121|ft}} deep. In 1837 Chaddock was the highest-rated coal mine in the Tyldesley [township](https://engole.info/township/).{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|111}} In 1840 the Chaddock Pits employed 54 colliers, 55 boys, 35 girls and 19 boatmen.{{sfnp|RHKNWMQC|12}} The extent of the navigable Chaddock Level in the Four Foot mine was {{convert|814|yd}} to the west and {{convert|1178|yd}} to the east, {{convert|1914|yd}} west to Henfold Pit and {{convert|902|yd}} west and {{convert|506|yd|}} east at Queen Anne Pit.{{sfnp|RHKNWMQC|66}} The pits worked from the Chaddock Level were closed by 1845.{{sfnp|RHKNWMQC|67}}{{sfnp|KLZ5HVNI|343}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22629
**Categories:** Coal mining, Greater Manchester
---
### [Pall Mall Budget](https://engole.info/pall-mall-budget/)
**Published:** February 10, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/714HMSH5ThL._AC_UL320_ML3_.jpg[/pimage]Weekly magazine published in London from 1868 until 1920.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/714HMSH5ThL._AC_UL320_ML3_.jpg)Vintage advertisement for the *Pall Mall Budget*
Amazon
The *Pall Mall Budget* was a weekly magazine published in London from 1868 until 1920.{{sfnp|XPD7AS6J}} Priced at sixpence, equivalent to about £2.20 as at 2018,\[a\]Comparing the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} it began as a weekly digest of articles from the [*Pall Mall Gazette*](https://engole.info/the-pall-mall-gazette/), an evening newspaper launched three years earlier.
In 1893, under the ownership of Lord Astor, the magazine was revamped to become an illustrated weekly under the leadership of the journalist and art historian Charles Lewis Hind (1862–1927).{{sfnp|9QJH9FEG}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Comparing the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22597
**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [A Catastrophe](https://engole.info/a-catastrophe/)
**Published:** October 18, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Short story by H. G. Wells first published in 1895 about a struggling shopkeeper saved from bankruptcy by an unexpected legacy.
**Content:**
“A Catastrophe” is a short story by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published in the *New Budget* on 4 April 1895 and subsequently reprinted in [*The Plattner Story and Others*](https://engole.info/the-plattner-story-and-others/) (1897).{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|38}} Told as a third-person narrative, it tells of a struggling shopkeeper who is saved from financial ruin by an unexpected legacy.
## Synopsis
Winslow is the owner of a small, struggling haberdashery shop, living on the premises with his wife Minnie. He has purchased stock that is proving difficult to sell, and is being undercut by his chief local rival, Bandersnatch. Winslow owes his sole wholesaler, Helter, Skelter, & Grab, the sum of £80, payable in three weeks time. But he has only £39 in the bank, and with his ill-chosen selection of goods for sale little chance of earning enough to settle his account on the appointed day.
Eventually Winslow confides in his wife, and together they explore various possible ways out of their predicament. Minnie suggests that if they could raise even £50, then perhaps Helter, Skelter, & Grab might extend their line of credit. But after an initial bout of euphoria at the prospect, Winslow falls into despair, wondering what they can sell of their household possessions to raise some cash.
Winslow resigns himself to the prospect of bankruptcy and then trying to find a position as an assistant in another shop, while Minnie, as stoically as she can, considers the prospect of going into service. She wonders if her well-off uncle might be prepared to offer some financial assistance, but Winslow knows the man does not like him, and did not approve of his marriage to Minnie.
A couple of days later Winslow opens the shop late, to find an envelope with a “deep mourning edge” lying on the floor, addressed to Minnie. He suspects it is news of her uncle’s death, and yet more expense.
The brutal cruelty of people dying! He saw it all in a flash – he always visualised his thoughts. Black trousers to get, black crape, black gloves – none in stock – the railway fares, the shop closed for the day.
Minnie reads the letter and collapses into a heap. Winslow picks it up to read:
Melchior’s chimney fell down yesterday evening right on the top of your uncle’s house, and every living soul was killed – your uncle, your cousin Mary, Will and Ned, and the girl – every one of them, and smashed – you would hardly know them. I’m writing to you to break the news before you see it in the papers.
Everything Minnie’s uncle owns passes to her, as the next of kin. Winslow tries to feel a sense of loss, but cannot think of anything other than the seven cottages Minnie now owns, each rented out at seven shillings a week, plus a timber yard and two villas; “Helter, Skelter, & Grab, had vanished out of his mind like the mists before the rising sun”. Out of a sense of propriety, the couple do not discuss the cottages until midday.
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24040
## External links
- [Full text of “A Catastrophe”](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42989/42989-h/42989-h.htm#A_CATASTROPHE) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Cheshire acre](https://engole.info/cheshire-acre/)
**Published:** September 15, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Anthropic_Farm_Units.png[/pimage]Historical measure of area equivalent to 8,562 m2, more than two statute acres.
**Content:**
Wikimedia Commons
A Cheshire acre is a historical measurement of area that was used in Cheshire and South Lancashire, particularly in the 19th century. It covers {{convert|10240|sqyd}}, more than two statute acres.{{sfnp|Z3VJUQ32|62}} Also known as a forest acre, it is equivalent to a Staffordshire acre.{{sfnp|SNGMTQG5}}
On the [Lancashire Coalfield](https://engole.info/lancashire-and-cheshire-coalfield/) the Cheshire acre was used almost exclusively for mineral leases, and was generally known as the customary acre.{{sfnp|RHKNWMQC|6}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22240
**Categories:** Unit of area
---
### [Ethel Beatty](https://engole.info/ethel-beatty/)
**Published:** May 3, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Ethel_%28nee_Field%29_Beatty%2C_portrait_1915.jpg[/pimage]Ethel Beatty was a socialite and member of the aristocracy.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Ethel_%28nee_Field%29_Beatty%2C_portrait_1915.jpg)Countess Beatty photographed in 1915 by H. Walter Barnett
Wikimedia Commons
Ethel Beatty, Countess Beatty (née Field) was a socialite and a member of the aristocracy. The daughter of American millionaire Marshall Field, founder of the American firm Marshall Field’s, she enjoyed a lavish lifestyle. Her mother was Field’s first wife, Nannie Douglas Scott, and she had one full brother, Marshall Field junior.{{sfnp|2H3NJVUH}}
## Marriages
Ethel married Arthur Tree, son of Lambert Tree, in an opulent ceremony held at the home of her parents, 1905 Prairie Avenue, Chicago, on 1 January 1891.{{sfnp|T5LZGG2N}} They had one child, Arthur Ronald Lambert Field Tree, commonly known as Ronald Tree, born in Eastbourne on 26 September 1897.{{sfnp|CGFY9LZV}}{{sfnp|XC6FWK4P}}
Ethel had a secret affair with David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty, whom she married on 22 May 1901, ten days after her divorce from Tree was made public. The couple had two children: David, born in Malta on 22 February 1905; and [Peter](https://engole.info/peter-beatty/), born on 2 April 1910.{{sfnp|QI97YAQM}}
According to Robert K. Massie, writing in *Castles of Steel*, Ethel was a poor mother, abandoning her son Ronald from her first marriage; she also left the children of her second marriage with her husband while she went on a gambling trip to Monte Carlo in 1912.{{sfnp|A3UTP4PT|90}}
## Death and legacy
Ethel Beatty died in her sleep on 17 July 1932.{{sfnp|5NMNXGSU}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 18880
**Categories:** English, Female, Socialite
---
### [The Monthly Packet](https://engole.info/the-monthly-packet/)
**Published:** December 12, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/MP-VI-XXVI-XXX.gif[/pimage]Monthly magazine aimed at young women between 15 and 25, published from 1851 until 1899.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/MP-VI-XXVI-XXX.gif)Cover page
*The Monthly Packet of Evening Readings for Younger Members of the Church of England* was a magazine targeted at girls aged between 15 and 25, “young girls, or maidens or young women, whichever you like to be called”. Published from 1851 until 1899, its aim was to help its readers incorporate religion into their daily lives,{{sfnp|YQGUN2EZ|25}} following an extended period of turmoil in the Church of England.{{sfnp|YQGUN2EZ|21-22}}
The Oxford Movement in particular, members of which were known as Tractarians,\[a\]Members of the Oxford Movement had put forward a series of 90 tracts, giving them their name.{{sfnp|YQGUN2EZ|21}} had put forward the view that Anglicanism was merely one branch of the Christian church, and many members of the clergy – notably John Henry Newman – had converted to Catholicism, which they saw as more compatible with the older traditions of faith. Even the most conservative of churchmen were forced to accept that the Church of England had become just one denomination among many, and that “religious behaviour was becoming, by definition, voluntary behaviour”.{{sfnp|YQGUN2EZ|21-22}}
The magazine was the inspiration of Mary Anne Dyson and her brother the Reverend Charles Dyson, who intended it as an alternative to the increasingly politicised *Churchman’s Companion*. Charlotte Yonge, an already established English novelist and long-standing friend, became the magazine’s first editor,{{sfnp|YQGUN2EZ|22}} a position she held until 1894 when she was replaced by Christabel Coleridge, in an effort to make the magazine more relevant to its *fin de siècle* audience and distance itself from its perceived mid-Victorian view of the world.{{sfnp|YQGUN2EZ|24}}
## Format and publication history
Early issues of *The Monthly Packet*, initially priced at 6d,\[b\]2½p in decimal currency. were 64 pages long, but by 1860 it had increased to 112 pages. The magazine never contained illustrations, marking it out as more of a book than the later illustrated girl’s periodicals, and it often contained poetry – usually of a religious nature – as well as stories and articles.{{sfnp|YQGUN2EZ|24}}
The print run was divided into four series, the first from 1851 to 1865. In 1866 the title was changed to remove the word *Younger*, and that second series continued until 1880. The third series was published from 1881 until 1890, and the fourth from 1891 until the magazine’s demise in 1899.{{sfnp|YQGUN2EZ|28}}
## Contributions
The first issue of *The Monthly Packet* was written almost entirely by Charlotte Tonge herself, but over time she carefully recruited other contributors able to produce work she considered suitable. Charlotte’s evident policy was to encourage and foster the careers of young women writers, and indeed most of her contributors were women,{{sfnp|ENVL25GB}} including Rosa Nouchette Carey, whose serialisation of her novel *Heriot’s Choice* appeared in 1879.{{sfnp|Z83624NU}}
The magazine was the first periodical to publish Lewis Carroll’s short stories, from April 1880 until May 1885, later compiled into *A Tangled Tale* (1885).{{sfnp|RVWL94HB|87-88}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Members of the Oxford Movement had put forward a series of 90 tracts, giving them their name.{{sfnp|YQGUN2EZ|21}} b 2½p in decimal currency.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23353
**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [Mathematical fallacy](https://engole.info/mathematical-fallacy/)
**Published:** June 14, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Series of steps which is seemingly correct but contains a flawed argument, or a spurious proof of an obvious contradiction such as that 1 = 2. Mathematical fallacies differ from simple mistakes in that there is an element of concealment in the presentation of the proof.
**Content:**
A mathematical fallacy is a series of steps which are seemingly correct but contain a flawed argument to prove an obvious contradiction or absurdity, such as that 1 = 2. Mathematical fallacies differ from simple mistakes in that there is an element of concealment in the presentation of the proof, perhaps hidden by the algebraic notation being used; not only do they lead to an absurd result, they do so in a deliberately deceptive way.{{sfnp|AGQUTA58|9}}
## Example
The following appears to prove that 1 = 2.
Let :
 (Multiply both sides by )
 (Subtract  from both sides)
 (Divide both sides by 
 (Since )
 (Divide both sides by )
The deception occurs in the fifth step of the “proof”, the division of both sides of the equation by . As the initial premise is that  then that is a division by zero, which is an undefined operation; .
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 20838
**Categories:** Falllacy, Mathematics
---
### [Pedrail Wheel](https://engole.info/pedrail-wheel/)
**Published:** May 28, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Pedrail_wheel.jpg[/pimage]Type of all-terrain wheel developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Bramah Joseph Diplock.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Pedrail_wheel.jpg)Advanced design pedrail wheel climbing stairs.
Wikimedia Commons
The pedrail is a type of all-terrain wheel developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Bramah Joseph Diplock. It consists of a series of “feet” (*pedes* in Latin) connected to pivots on a wheel. As the wheel travels, pressure exerted by springs within it increases the number of feet in contact with the ground, thus allowing the wheel to negotiate obstacles and uneven ground.{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|443}}
Although Diplock abandoned development of the pedrail wheel in 1910, in favour of wheels rotating inside a moving belt, much like the modern caterpillar track, Winston Churchill – then First Lord of the Admiralty – in 1915 ordered a number of “landships” using pedrails.{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|443-444}}
## See also
- [David Gordon Steam Carriage](https://engole.info/david-gordon-steam-carriage)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26444
---
### [A Vision of Judgement](https://engole.info/a-vision-of-judgement/)
**Published:** September 12, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/SABRDA0000693.jpg[/pimage]Short story by H. G. Wells published in 1899, about the Biblical day of judgement.
**Content:**
“A Vision of Judgement” is a short story by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published in the September 1899 edition of [*The Butterfly*](https://engole.info/the-butterfly-magazine) magazine and subsequently reprinted in [*The Country of the Blind and Other Stories*](https://engole.info/the-country-of-the-blind-and-other-stories/) (1911).
On the Biblical day of judgement all of mankind is summoned into the presence of God, each to give an account of their lives. God then shakes them out of his sleeve onto a different planet, in “new clean bodies”.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|57}}
## Synopsis
The narrator is woken in his grave by the sound of the Last Trump, which jerks him from his resting place “like a hooked minnow”. Glancing briefly at his monument, he is disappointed to see that it is “rather a mean little affair”. All around him he sees every human being who has ever lived. An angel is holding a book containing everyone’s names, and each in turn is asked to account for their lives before God, and then their own account is compared with what is recorded in the angel’s book.
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/SABRDA0000693.jpg)Audiobooks
Each person’s interview ends with them rushing up God’s sleeve in embarrassment, as “the shadow of their illusions” about what they had done with their lives is exposed. After everyone has been judged, God shakes out his sleeve and dumps “the enlightened souls of men in new clean bodies” on a planet orbiting Sirius, with the words “now that you understand me and each other a little better … try again”.
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22231
## External links
- [Full text of “A Vision of Judgement”](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11870/11870-h/11870-h.htm#link2H_4_0023) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
---
### [Chambers Book of Days](https://engole.info/chambers-book-of-days/)
**Published:** June 25, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/odnb-9780198614128-e-1004828-graphic-1-full.jpg[/pimage]Chambers Book of Days was the last major work produced by the Scottish writer and publisher Robert Chambers (1802–1871).
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/odnb-9780198614128-e-1004828-graphic-1-full.jpg)Robert Chambers (1802–1871)
by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson
Scottish National Portrait Gallery
*Chambers Book of Days* was the last major work produced by the Scottish writer and publisher Robert Chambers (1802–1871).{{sfnp|L3F35QCY}} Full title *The Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in Connection with the Calendar, Including Anecdote, Biography, & History, Curiosities of Literature and Oddities of Human Life and Character*, it was first published in 1864, a mammoth undertaking which, his family believed, hastened his death.{{sfnp|WXQYVXLY}}
In his preface, Chambers describes the contents of the book:
- Matters connected with the Church Kalendar, including the Popular Festivals, Saints’ Days and Other Holidays, with illustrations of Christian Antiquities in general
- Phenomena connected with the Seasonal Changes
- Folk-Lore of the United Kingdom – namely Popular Notions and Observances connected with the Times and Seasons
- Notable Events, Biographies, and Anecdotes connected with the Days of the Year
- Articles of Popular Archaeology, of an entertaining character, tending to illustrate the progress of Civilisation, Manners, Literature and Ideas in these kingdoms
- Curious, Fugitive, and Inedited Pieces
The book then continues with a series of articles on time, day, month, year and so on, before getting to its heart, a section for each day of the year preceded by a general article on the month itself. The article for January 1, for instance, lists the birth of Edmund Burke and the death of William Wycherley among others, and follows up with detailed articles on both. With about six or seven such articles for each day, the book contains more than 2000 entries, accompanied by illustrations.
## Updated edition
The publishing house that still bears Chambers’ name, Chambers Harrap, published an updated version of the original in 2004, written by Rosalind Fergusson. In his review for *The Guardian* newspaper, the critic Ian Sansom had this to say:{{sfnp|WXQYVXLY}}
The new Chambers tries hard but cannot of course compete with the sheer loveliness of the old book, where the words and illustrations were so tightly packed on the page as to closely resemble the inside of the mind of an Edinburgh polymath: the new Chambers looks like the inside of the mind of an underpaid and not very imaginative graduate in graphic design. But then all books now look rubbish compared with those published just 50, never mind nearly 150 years ago.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 21433
**Categories:** Almanac
---
### [A Little Bit of Cucumber](https://engole.info/a-little-bit-of-cucumber/)
**Published:** November 29, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/A-Little-Bit-of-Cucumber.webp[/pimage]Comedic music hall-song first performed by Harry Champion in 1915, about the types of food preferred by the cockney working classes.
**Content:**
“A Little Bit of Cucumber” is a comedic music-hall song written by T. W. Conner for the comedian and singer Harry Champion, who first performed it in 1915;{{sfnp|9GINVYH7}} it was published that same year by Francis, Day & Hunter.{{sfnp|LZSEAET2}} The song describes the types of food popular among the cockney working-class community of East London at that time.
Many of the songs in Champion’s repertoire featured items of food: pickled onions, hot meat pies, saveloys, trotters, tripe, onions, and baked sheep’s heart;{{sfnp|B8JBKDDN}} perhaps the best known today is “Boiled Beef and Carrots”.
Harry Champion singing “A Little Bit of Cucumber”
YouTube
The song’s lyrics conclude by declaring the cucumber to be the preferred delicacy of the cockney working-class community.{{sfnp|FAKF2H6V}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22382
**Categories:** Music hall, Song
---
### [Rag pudding](https://engole.info/rag-pudding/)
**Published:** December 8, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Rag_Pudding%2C_with_Chips_%26_Gravy.jpg[/pimage]Savoury dish once popular in the mill towns of northwest England.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Rag_Pudding%2C_with_Chips_%26_Gravy.jpg)Rag pudding with chips and gravy
Wikimedia Commons
Rag pudding is a savoury dish once popular in the mill towns of North West England;{{sfnp|RNKIAGF5|48}} the name does not refer to the contents of the dish but to the cloth in which it is cooked.{{sfnp|899BP8Q7|96}} Said to have originated in the mill town of Oldham, it consists of minced meat and onions wrapped in a suet pastry, which was in turn originally wrapped in scrap cloth from the local cotton mills; today cheesecloth is used instead. The whole is then boiled for about three hours.{{sfnp|RNKIAGF5|48}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22398
**Categories:** Food
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Piano nobile](https://engole.info/piano-nobile/)
**Published:** March 17, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Kedleston_Hall_20080730-06.jpg[/pimage]Main floor of a Palladian or Georgian building.
**Content:**
A piano nobile, from the Italian meaning noble or grand floor, is the main floor of a Palladian or Georgian building. Containing the most important rooms, it is usually on the first floor above a basement or ground floor with another floor above it. It is often accessed by a grand exterior staircase.{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|789}}{{sfnp|AN4V38SX}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Kedleston_Hall_20080730-06.jpg)Kedleston Hall’s piano nobile is placed above a rusticated ground floor, reached by an external grand staircase. The upper floor windows indicate their lower status.
Wikimedia Commons
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 17099
**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Bond Bug](https://engole.info/bond-bug/)
**Published:** March 11, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Bond_Bug_3_Wheeler_-_Flickr_-_mick_-_Lumix%281%29.jpg[/pimage]Small British two-seat, three-wheeled automobile, built from 1970 to 1974, with a disctinctive bright tangerine wedge-shaped body.
**Content:**
The Bond Bug is a small British two-seat, three-wheeled automobile, built from 1970 to 1974 by the Reliant Motor Company. Available only in bright tangerine, it is based on a modified version of the Reliant Robin chassis, with mechanical components from the Reliant Regal. The car’s distinctive feature is its wedge-shaped canopy, which tilts forwards to allow entry; the doors are replaced with sidescreens. The Bug was the last vehicle to be produced under the Bond marque.{{sfnp|B3ZT6TM5|38-39}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Bond_Bug_3_Wheeler_-_Flickr_-_mick_-_Lumix%281%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Manufacturer:**Reliant Motor Company**Production:**1970–1974
2269 made
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 16527
**Categories:** Three-wheeler
---
### [De heretico comburendo](https://engole.info/de-heretico-comburendo/)
**Published:** March 6, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Oldcastleburning.jpg[/pimage]Law passed in 1401 during the reign of King Henry IV, allowing heretics to be burned alive.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Oldcastleburning.jpg)The lollard John Oldcastle being burned for heresy and insurrection, 1413
Wikimedia Commons
De heretico comburendo (2 Hen. IV c. 15), “the burning of a heretic”, was a law passed in 1401 during the reign of King Henry IV. Its target was the new sect of lollardism, which was regarded by the established Church as a form of heresy.{{sfnp|JZREHCXV}} Condemning the “falsehood of a certain new sect”, the statute re-affirmed the bishops’ duty, through their ecclestiastical courts, to convict heretics and to hand them over to local secular authorities to be “burned before the people in a prominent place”.{{sfnp|B5PVX758|148}}
In 1555 the provisions of the statute also proved useful during the reign of Queen Mary I (1553–1558), permitting as it did the execution of Protestants by burning them alive.{{sfnp|TNFC9UKM|loc=461}} Mary’s father, Henry VIII, had transformed England into a Protestant nation, but she was a Catholic, and determined to restore the old religion.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 16269
**Categories:** Capital punishment
---
### [Frederic Leighton](https://engole.info/frederic-leighton/)
**Published:** March 2, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Frederic_Leighton%2C_Baron_Leighton_by_George_Frederic_Watts.jpg[/pimage]English painter, knighted in 1878.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Frederic_Leighton%2C_Baron_Leighton_by_George_Frederic_Watts.jpg)1881 portrait of Frederic Leighton by George Frederic Watts
Wikimedia Commons
The painter Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton, was born in Scarborough on 3 December 1830. His father, Frederic Septimus Leighton (d. 1892) was a physician, and together with his wife Augusta Susan (d. 1865) and young children moved to London in about 1832. Leighton’s attendance at University College School was patchy, as his mother’s ill health meant that the family had a nomadic lifestyle, frequently travelling around Europe, but he nevertheless matriculated when he was about eight-years-old. Tutored in drawing in Rome and Florence, he was a skilled linguist able to converse in Italian, French and German.{{sfnp|H5ZHCPQX}}
During the family’s stay in Frankfurt from 1846, Leighton was enrolled at the Städelsches Kunstinstitut. His studies there were interrupted by periods spent in Brussels and Paris owing to the political climate in Germany, but resumed in 1850 when he studied under Edward von Steinle.{{sfnp|H5ZHCPQX}}
Leighton’s first major work was *Cimabue’s Celebrated Madonna*, painted while he was in Rome. He sent it for exhibition at the Royal Academy in London during 1855, where it was almost universally admired. Contemporaries including John Ruskin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti expressed reservations, but Queen Victoria immediately purchased it. Leighton continued to send paintings to London for exhibition in the following years, but never replicated his initial triumph.{{sfnp|H5ZHCPQX}}
Leighton moved to London in 1859 where, despite his earlier success, he initially encountered suspicion and resentment, possibly because of his foreign training and overseas connections. His first attempt to become a Royal Academy associate in 1861 was rejected, although by 1878 he had been elected president, a position he held for eighteen years. Leighton received a knighthood in 1878 followed by a peerage in 1896. He died a bachelor at his home on 25 January 1896 with the actress [Dorothy Dene](https://engole.info/dorothy-dene/), who had modelled for many of his paintings, at his bedside.{{sfnp|H5ZHCPQX}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 16060
**Categories:** English, Male, Painter
---
### [Brick tax](https://engole.info/brick-tax/)
**Published:** February 14, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Wilkes_Gobs_oversize_bricks%2C_Measham.jpg[/pimage]Tax on bricks introduced in Great Britain in 1784 to help pay for the American War of Independence.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Wilkes_Gobs_oversize_bricks%2C_Measham.jpg)Wilkes’ Gobs oversize bricks in the wall of former Ashby Canal warehouse, alongside modern bricks of bridge parapet, High Street, Measham.
Wikimedia Commons
A tax on bricks was introduced in Great Britain in 1784 during the reign of King George III, to help pay for the American War of Independence. Bricks were initially taxed at 2s 6d per thousand.{{sfnp|AHKSVFZC}} To mitigate the effects of the tax, manufacturers began to increase the size of their bricks. Many buildings built by the English industrialist Joseph Wilkes in Measham, Leicestershire used bricks known as Wilkes’ Gobs, which were 9¼ in × 4¼ in × 4¼ in (230 mm × 110 mm × 110 mm).{{sfnp|AFA65HPW|43}}
The government responded in 1801 by limiting the dimensions of a brick to 10 in × 5 in × 3 in (254 mm × 127 mm × 76 mm) and doubling the tax on bricks that were larger. The level of taxation was raised regularly, until its peak of 5s 10d per thousand bricks in 1805.{{sfnp|NNGI73JB}} The tax was abolished in 1850, by which time it had come to be seen as a hindrance to industrial development.{{sfnp|YU3WDCV3|53}}
The brick tax affected construction in many areas, where builders returned to the use of timber and weatherboarding in house construction.{{sfnp|QUF5HKAH|40}}{{sfnp|8CHEM6PT|47}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 15181
**Categories:** Tax
---
### [Number of the beast](https://engole.info/number-of-the-beast/)
**Published:** January 22, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Revelation.jpg[/pimage]Hideous beast whose number is 666, introduced in the Book of Revelation, which many have seen as a description of the end of the world.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Revelation.jpg)Pinterest
The Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, refers to a tyrannical seven-headed beast that rises from the sea demanding to be worshipped, and poses an associated riddle: “He who has understanding, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666.” All we know about the author of Revelation is that his name is John, which some have assumed to be the apostle John, who wrote the Fourth Gospel. But the writing style of the two books is quite different, and the John of Revelation makes no claim to be an apostle, or even to have known Jesus.{{sfnp|9SG9IZ39}}
The number of the beast is given as 616 in some early manuscripts, including New Testament papyrus 115, dating from the late 3rd or early 4th century. It may be that 616 was originally introduced as a copying error and subsequently disseminated, but the current view of Biblical scholars favours the number 666.{{sfnp|TQIDTZ6H}}
## Eschatology or polemic
Historically, many Christians have believed the Book of Revelation to be a prophecy about the end of the world, but most modern Biblical scholars now consider it to be a polemic against the Roman empire, warning early Christians not to compromise with the Romans.{{sfnp|9SG9IZ39}}
## Popular imagination
The 1976 film *The Omen* popularised the idea that the number 666 would be a birthmark somewhere on the Antichrist, and established the notion that he would be the son of Satan, sent to wrest control of the world from Christ.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 13497
**Categories:** Christian demonology
---
### [Margaret Aitken, the great witch of Balwearie](https://engole.info/margaret-aitken-the-great-witch-of-balwearie/)
**Published:** January 18, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Daemonologie1.jpg/500px-Daemonologie1.jpg[/pimage] Pivotal figure in the great Scottish witchcraft panic of 1597.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Daemonologie1.jpg/500px-Daemonologie1.jpg)Suspected witches kneeling at the feet of James VI
Wikimedia Commons
Margaret Aitken or Atkin (died Fife c. August 1597), known as the great witch of Balwearie, was a pivotal figure in the great Scottish witchcraft panic of 1597. After being accused of witchcraft she confessed, and then identified hundreds of other women as being witches in an attempt to save her own life.
On the basis of Margaret’s claim that a convention of thousands of witches was to be staged in Atholl, King James VI approved the establishment of a special commission of prosecutors. They took her to towns throughout Scotland to identify those who were witches.
Margaret was exposed as a fraud a few months later, and was burnt at the stake. Her actions and false accusations effectively ended that series of witch trials.
## Background
Part of the parish of Abbotshall to the south-west of Raith and east of Kirkcaldy,{{sfnp|CJZD9GA4|loc=3805}}{{sfnp|A67GPEHN|153}} the small [hamlet](https://engole.info/hamlet-place) of Balwearie in Fife had long been associated with supernatural events.{{sfnp|6C8H5D8L|58}}
It is recorded that King James V had a nightmare in 1539 that the laird of Balwearie’s son, Thomas Scott, visited him “in the company of devils”.{{sfnp|6C8H5D8L|58}} The 13th-century physician, Sir Michael Scott of Balwearie, had long since entered folklore as being a wizard.{{sfnp|6C8H5D8L|59}}
## Great Scottish witch-hunt of 1597
Margaret Aitken or Margaret Atkin\[a\]Her surname is given as Atkin by academics Lizanne Henderson{{sfnp|489UKEGE|273}} and Stuart Macdonald.{{sfnp|CJZD9GA4|loc=1561, 1940}} was accused of witchcraft and arrested on suspicion of that crime in Fife around April 1597.{{sfnp|V7XHBW66|8}} Under the threat of extreme torture and to spare her own life,{{sfnp|6C8H5D8L|59}} during her confession she claimed to be able to recognise other witches,{{sfnp|AXNZ2IKC|228}} by a special mark in their eyes.{{sfnp|V7XHBW66|8}}
In May 1597 Margaret claimed to know of a convention of 2300 witches in Atholl. A special commission was formed as a result, with the approval of James VI,{{sfnp|V7XHBW66|8}} and prosecutors took her from town to town to detect witches.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|273}} During 1597 the only other witch finder used in witchcraft cases was Marion Kwyne who featured in the cases brought against two men and thirteen women in Kirkcaldy; academic Stuart Macdonald{{sfnp|BYKVW73G}} speculates this may have been Margaret under an assumed name.{{sfnp|CJZD9GA4|loc=3502}}
In addition to Margaret looking into the eyes of those accused of witchcraft, the commission also employed the [swimming test](https://engole.info/witch-finding/#Ordeal_by_water) – almost the only occasion this test was used in Scotland.{{sfnp|V7XHBW66|8}}
When Margaret reached Glasgow, the minister John Cowper condemned many innocent women to death on her testimony.{{sfnp|VAKCY4PJ}} Any woman suspected of witchcraft was cast into prison and subjected to torture – under which most of them confessed. They would then be brought to trial and executed.{{sfnp|W5NURT7M|329}} The exact number of executions carried out by the commission is unknown, but is thought to have run into hundreds.{{sfnp|V7XHBW66|8}}
Margaret’s short-lived success also led to imitators such as Agnes Ewing who, after identifying witches in large-scale witch hunts in Kirkcaldy, was loaned by the magistrates of that burgh to their contemporaries in Inverkeithing on condition that she was to return to her home area once her mission was accomplished.{{sfnp|6C8H5D8L|59-60}}
An English ambassador to Scotland wrote to Lord Burghley in August 1597 that the King was “much pestered with witches, who swarm in thousands”.{{sfnp|Q24GERQ8|239}}
## Death
Around 1 August 1597,{{sfnp|6C8H5D8L|59}} Margaret was exposed as a fraud.{{sfnp|AXNZ2IKC|228}} A sceptical prosecutor took some of those declared guilty and brought them back to Margaret the following day in different clothing. When she declared them innocent, her role as witch-finder was irretrievably undermined and the witch trials stopped.{{sfnp|V7XHBW66|8}}
Taken back to Fife, Margaret stood trial and affirmed that all she had said about herself, and about others, was false;{{sfnp|V7XHBW66|8}} she was burnt at the stake in August 1597.{{sfnp|AXNZ2IKC|228}}{{sfnp|W5NURT7M|329}}
Following Margaret’s execution, a copy of her final confession admitting the fraud but also highlighting the involvement of the minister John Cowper was obtained by a Glaswegian woman, [Marion Walker](https://engole.info/marion-walker/). Incensed that so many innocents had died Marion widely circulated copies to ensure the general population were aware of the miscarriage of justice perpetrated against the condemned women by Margaret and Cowper.{{sfnp|MCQK5T4S}} No copies of Margaret’s final confession have survived.{{sfnp|7P5XFHE5|24}}
## Legacy
After this disastrous episode, James VI revoked the existing commissions on 12 August 1597 via a proclamation by the privy council at Falkland.{{sfnp|6C8H5D8L|59}} The outcry over the Aitken affair meant that Scotland would not see another panic for another three decades,{{sfnp|VAKCY4PJ}} but James VI’s confidence in pursuing offenders was undiminished. The publication of his dissertation, *Daemonologie*, not long after shows how deeply concerned he was with the problem.{{sfnp|Q24GERQ8|239}}
The king had his mind only bent on the examination and trial of sorcerors, men and women.{{sfnp
— Q24GERQ8|239}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Her surname is given as Atkin by academics Lizanne Henderson{{sfnp|489UKEGE|273}} and Stuart Macdonald.{{sfnp|CJZD9GA4|loc=1561, 1940}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 13249
**Categories:** Female, Scottish, Witch, Witch finder
---
### [Monastic grange](https://engole.info/monastic-grange/)
**Published:** December 1, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Ruined_medieval_barn_at_St_Leonard%27s_Grange%2C_Beaulieu%2C_New_Forest_-_geograph.org.uk_-_60483.jpg[/pimage]Monastic granges were outlying landholdings held by monasteries independent of the manorial system. They could be of six known types: agrarian, bercaries (sheep farms), vaccaries (cattle farms), horse studs, fisheries or industrial complexes.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Ruined_medieval_barn_at_St_Leonard%27s_Grange%2C_Beaulieu%2C_New_Forest_-_geograph.org.uk_-_60483.jpg)Ruined medieval barn at St Leonard’s Grange, Beaulieu in the New Forest
Wikimedia Commons
Monastic granges were outlying landholdings held by monasteries independent of the manorial system.{{sfnp|BUGQH3AG|253}} The first granges were owned by the Cistercians, and other orders followed. Wealthy monastic houses had many granges, most of which were agricultural, providing food for the monastic community. A home grange might be established adjacent to the monastery, but others were established wherever it held lands, some at a considerable distance. Some granges were worked by lay-brothers belonging to the order, others by paid labourers.{{sfnp|BUGQH3AG|253}}
Granges could be of six known types: agrarian, bercaries (sheep farms), vaccaries (cattle farms), horse studs, fisheries or industrial complexes. Industrial granges were significant in the development of medieval industries, particularly iron working.{{sfnp|BUGQH3AG|254}} [Bentley Grange](https://engole.info/bentley-grange/) in West Yorkshire has the remains of one of Britain’s best preserved mining landscapes pre-dating the Industrial Revolution.{{sfnp|TN3NTIRC}}
## Description
Granges were landed estates used for food production, centred on a farm and out-buildings and possibly a mill or a tithe barn. The word grange derives via the French *graunge* from the Latin *granica* meaning a granary.{{sfnp|JRPGHA2L}} The granges might be located at some distance from the religious houses. They could farm livestock or produce crops. Specialist crops might include apples, hops or grapes to make beverages. Some granges had fish-ponds to supply Friday meals to the monastery. The produce could sustain the monks or be sold for profit. Although under monastic control, granges might be run by a steward and worked by local farm labourers, or perhaps lay brothers.{{sfnp|BUGQH3AG|254}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 11823
**Categories:** Religious architecture
---
### [Thomas Medland](https://engole.info/thomas-medland/)
**Published:** July 27, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Ben-Lomond.webp[/pimage]English engraver, draughtsman and painter (c. 1765 – 1833).
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Ben-Lomond.webp)*View of Ben Lomond from Cameron Wood*, 1780
Royal Academy
Thomas Medland (c. 1765 – 1833) was an English engraver, draughtsman and painter. He is best known today for his engravings of landscapes, but he also exhibited watercolours at the Royal Academy. Very little is known of his life or education, although his inclusion in a drawing by Alfred Edward Chalon titled *Students at the British Institution* (1807) suggests that he may have spent some time at that institution.{{sfnp|7G5I49U7}}
Medland lived in Westminster for much of his life, but moved near to Hertford after his appointment as the drawing and oriental-writing master at the East India Company’s newly founded Haileybury College in 1806.{{sfnp|7G5I49U7}}\[a\]The East India Company purchased the Haileybury estate in 1806, but the college did not open until 1809.{{sfnp|VNVA9T5A}}
Nothing is known of Medland’s wife, but at his death his estate was divided between his three children.{{sfnp|R6DFT8LG}} In his will, he bequeathed his household goods and furnishings to his unmarried daughter Anne, his clothing to his youngest son Henry, and the choice of a picture, drawing, book, or proof to his eldest son William.{{sfnp|7G5I49U7}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The East India Company purchased the Haileybury estate in 1806, but the college did not open until 1809.{{sfnp|VNVA9T5A}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26626
**Categories:** English, Engraver, Male, Painter
---
### [Tapputi](https://engole.info/tapputi/)
**Published:** November 27, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Tapputi-Belatekallim_Mesopotamian_tablet_1200_B.C.E..jpg[/pimage]Babylonian chemist and a royal perfume maker.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Tapputi-Belatekallim_Mesopotamian_tablet_1200_B.C.E..jpg)Mesopotamian tablet, 1200 BCE
Wikimedia Commons
Tapputi-Belatekallim (fl. c. 1200 BCE), also known as Taputti-belet-ekallim, was a Babylonian chemist and a royal perfume maker. Her name appears on a cuneiform text, in which she is described as an authority in her field. Little is known of Tapputi’s life, but one of her recipes has survived, a salve for the Babylonian king. Her description of how she used her still to refine her ingredients is the oldest known reference to such an apparatus, making her one of the earliest chemical engineers.{{sfnp|P5SNGEW3|140-141}}
The text is dated to the fifth regnal year of King Tukulti-Ninurta I. He is believed to have reigned from 1244–1208 BCE, which would mean that Taputti dictated her recipe to the scribe who created the tablet in 1239 BCE.{{sfnp|UPKHAY7H|220}}
Tapputi is not the only female chemist mentioned in the cuneiform tablets, but she is the only one whose full name appears. The first half of the name of another woman known only as \[-\]ninu has also survived.{{sfnp|P5SNGEW3|142}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 11675
**Categories:** Chemical engineering, Chemist, Female
---
### [Bedford Colliery explosion](https://engole.info/bedford-colliery-disaster/)
**Published:** October 21, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Bedford_Colliery_monument%2C_Leigh_Cemetery_-_geograph.org.uk_-_104528.jpg[/pimage]Explosion of firedamp on Friday 13 August 1886 which caused the deaths of 38 miners at Bedford No. 2 Pit in Leigh, on the Lancashire Coalfield.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Bedford_Colliery_monument%2C_Leigh_Cemetery_-_geograph.org.uk_-_104528.jpg)Bedford Colliery Memorial
Wikimedia Commons
The [Bedford Colliery](https://engole.info/bedford-colliery/) explosion occurred on Friday 13 August 1886, when [firedamp](https://engole.info/damps/#firedamp) ignited and caused the death of thirty-eight miners at Bedford No. 2 Pit in Leigh, on the [Lancashire Coalfield](https://engole.info/lancashire-and-cheshire-coalfield/).
Bedford Colliery, usually known as Wood End Pit, was sunk in [Bedford](https://engole.info/bedford-leigh/) by John Speakman between 1875 and 1878. The colliery had two shafts. The Seven feet mine\[a\]In this part of Lancashire a coal seam is referred to as a mine and the coal mine as a colliery or pit. was fiery and only safety lamps were allowed underground.{{sfnp|7LHH8UH3|136}}
## Explosion
On the day of the [disaster](https://engole.info/list-of-mining-disasters-in-lancashire/) 159 men and boys were underground working a shift that started at 6.00 am and would have ended mid-afternoon. The disaster took place at about 10.45 am in the Crombouke mine at a depth of about {{convert|530|yd}} and {{convert|700|yd}} from the pit bottom. Miners from other areas of the pit were wound to the surface after they became aware of the explosion when afterdamp spread into their workings. One man working at the seat of the explosion, John Woolley a dataller, (day wage man) survived, and though burned, managed to get to the bottom of the shaft. When the alarm was raised, the pit manager W. Horrobin, underlooker James Calland and the mine owner’s son, Harry Speakman led a rescue party to investigate but were impeded by the presence of afterdamp. According to Calland the afterdamp was “very strong and makes the men very dizzy. When they have this feeling they have to come up quickly to the fresh air”. The Mines Inspector, Joseph Dickinson of Pendleton was contacted by telegraph.{{sfnp|R4WZA4HS|1-3}}{{sfnp|PI4CI5AC|13-15}}
The explosion occurred before the formation of [mines rescue](https://engole.info/mines-rescue/) teams but assistance arrived from nearby collieries and an exploring party of men from Bickershaw Colliery, [Astley and Tyldesley Collieries](https://engole.info/astley-and-tyldesley-collieries/) and the Wigan Coal and Iron Company went underground but considered there would be no survivors. The underground fires were eventually extinguished and bodies brought to the surface.{{sfnp|R4WZA4HS|1-3}}
## Aftermath
News of the explosion travelled quickly and by 11 o’clock a crowd of women had arrived at the pit. In the evening a crowd, estimated to be between eight and ten thousand, gathered at the pit head. The burned and mutilated bodies of the 38 men who died were brought to the surface wrapped in tarpaulins and taken to the wheelwrights shop and the joiners shop which were used as a mortuary. The youngest victim was 15 years old and the oldest 65. The average age of those who died was 32 and 48 children were left fatherless. Some families lost more than one member.{{sfnp|R4WZA4HS|1-3}}{{sfnp|PI4CI5AC|13-15}}
The colliery subscribed to the [Lancashire and Cheshire Miners’ Permanent Relief Society](https://engole.info/lancashire-and-cheshire-miners-permanent-relief-society/) whose officials attended at the colliery.{{sfnp|7LHH8UH3|136}} A committee of local dignitaries was formed to raise monies for the “Relief of Widows, orphans and others placed in distress by the explosion” and an appeal advertised in The Times newspaper.
## Inquest
The coroner’s inquest was not heard until 23 September 1886 so that John Woolley, who had survived the explosion, could give evidence. The coalface where the explosion occurred was being worked on the retreating principle. Headings had been driven into the coal and a working face established between them. As the coal was worked back along the headings, waste material accumulated in the goaf behind it. Pit props were progressively removed and the roof was allowed to subside into the goaf a short distance behind the working face. Woolley was removing pit props when the fracturing roof released firedamp. The flame in Woolley’s Davy lamp turned blue indicating explosive gas. Instead of reporting it, work continued. A few minutes later the flame in the lamp of a nearby miner “fired”. The established procedure should this happen was “lowering his lamp to the floor \[firedamp is lighter than air\] and taking it steadily into the fresh air, avoiding jerks”. Instead the miner shook it and attempted to blow it out at which point the flame passed through the gauze and caused the explosion.{{sfnp|R4WZA4HS|1-3}}{{sfnp|PI4CI5AC|13-15}}
The verdict of the coroner’s jury was accidental death caused by an explosion of firedamp. The coroner commented that the fireman should spend more time examining the workings before the men went down the pit and that greater care should be taken examining the lamps. It was regretted that the gas was not reported by the prop-takers.{{sfnp|R4WZA4HS|1-3}}
After the explosion, the colliery owners bought 150 Masault safety lamps and 50 improved Clanny lamps, which had bonnets fitted.{{sfnp|R4WZA4HS|1-3}} The effect of the bonnet was to protect the gauze from draughts and reduce the risk of the flame passing through.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a In this part of Lancashire a coal seam is referred to as a mine and the coal mine as a colliery or pit.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 7916
**Categories:** Coal mining, Disaster
---
### [Witchcraft Act 1735](https://engole.info/witchcraft-act-1735/)
**Published:** August 19, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png[/pimage]Sometimes dated 1736, an Act of Parliament that repealed the statutes concerning witchcraft throughout Great Britain, including Scotland.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Witchcraft Act 1735 (9 Geo. II c. 5), sometimes referred to as the Witchcraft Act 1736 owing to dating complexities,{{sfnp|DCCVA5QT|1-2}} repealed the earlier statutes concerning witchcraft throughout Great Britain including Scotland, which had its own legal system. It reflected a change of emphasis towards the pretence of fortune telling, sorcery and witchcraft and away from their practice.{{sfnp|BJUEI323|7}} During the 18th century prosecutions under the new Act were rarely if ever undertaken in Scotland, as the facilities to implement the punishments laid down did not exist.{{sfnp|GPAZ2W6M|78}}
The case against [Jean Maxwell](https://engole.info/jean-maxwell-sorceress/), the Galloway sorceress, who was prosecuted and convicted under the Act in June 1805 at Kirkcudbright, is one of the first records of the statute being implemented in Scotland.{{sfnp|C2SBYKA7|230}} A [cunning woman](https://engole.info/cunning-folk), she was sentenced to be confined in the town tollbooth for a year, the maximum allowed for. During the term of her imprisonment she was to be taken to the market place every three months and put into the [jugs](https://engole.info/jougs) or pillory for an hour.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|291}}
The historian Malcolm Gaskill has described the conviction of [Helen Duncan](https://engole.info/helen-duncan), a Scottish-born medium who was tried under the Act in 1944, as the “most famous and influential of a handful of prosecutions”.{{sfnp|PU7USHRX|xi}} The eight-day trial at the Old Bailey commenced on 22 March with three other people accused of the same charge. Found guilty, Helen was sentenced to nine months imprisonment while her travelling companion was incarcerated for four months and the remaining two accused were bound over. Helen was released after serving six months.{{sfnp|6EY52L6R}}
Helen Duncan was the last person to be imprisoned under the Act,{{sfnp|8SJVQSX5|109}} but the medium [Jane Yorke](https://engole.info/jane-yorke/) was the last person to be convicted under it. She was arrested on 10 July 1944, but the Director of Public Prosecutions delayed the case against her until an appeal against Helen’s judgement was heard. The appeal being unsuccessful, Jane was convicted at the Old Bailey on 12 September, but perhaps because of her age – she was seventy-two years old and disabled – she was not imprisoned but bound over for three years.{{sfnp|PU7USHRX|323-324}}
The Witchcraft Act was repealed by the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951; witchcraft was no longer a crime for the first time since 1547, when King Edward VII had repealed his father’s Act of 1542.{{sfnp|HQ5YYJAB|67}}{{sfnp|PU7USHRX|346}}
## See also
- [Witchcraft Acts](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 4975
**Categories:** Witchcraft
---
### [Evelyn Manesta](https://engole.info/evelyn-manesta/)
**Published:** November 12, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Evelyn-Manesta.png[/pimage]Alias used by one of the three suffragettes arrested for damaging with hammers the glass of thirteen pictures in Manchester Art Gallery on 3 April 1913.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Evelyn-Manesta.png)Original photograph showing Evelyn Manesta being restrained by a prison warder on the left, doctored image on the right
*Daily Telegraph*
Evelyn Manesta was the name given by one of the three suffragettes arrested for damaging with hammers the glass protecting thirteen pictures in Manchester Art Gallery on 3 April 1913; the other two women were Annie Briggs and Lillian Forrester, the organiser of the Manchester Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). On being apprehended by the gallery staff Lillian explained that the women had no intention of damaging the pictures, but that they had broken the glass in protest at the imprisonment earlier that day of fellow suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst.{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=7027}}\[a\]Four of the paintings suffered some damage in the attack and all had to be reglazed. The cost of replacing the glass was £85, and repairs to two of the canvasses amounted to £25.{{sfnp|2SCUTPQS}}
The women had felt it was appropriate to make their protest in Manchester because that was the city where Pankhurst had founded the movement for women’s suffrage.{{sfnp|W6URT8HI}}
None of the women denied the charge of malicious damage, so they were not required to stand in the witness box at their trial on 22 April 1913. Each of them did however choose to address the jury. Evelyn declared that she was a political offender, protesting that the law did not apply equally to men and women, and in particular the divorce laws.{{sfnp|PCX5VF89}}
Evelyn claimed to be twenty-six years old and a governess. But other than this one incident nothing is known of her, leading to some speculation that the name was an alias used by an unknown suffragette.{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=7027}} As the undoctored picture of her head being held up by a prison warder shows, she certainly seems to have been reluctant to have her photograph taken.
For her part in the attack, Evelyn was sentenced to one month in prison. Annie Briggs was acquitted, but Lillian Forrester, as a repeat offender, was sentenced to three months imprisonment.{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=7041}}\[b\]As Lilian Forrester was pregnant, she did not serve her full term but was released early.{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=7041}}
## Motivation
Earlier on the day of the attack Emmeline Pankhurst had been sentenced to three years in prison for inciting an explosion at the house of Liberal MP David Lloyd George on 19 February 1903.{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=6999}}
Many of the pictures targeted by Evelyn, Lillian and Annie were idealised images of women. For them and for other suffragettes, it was an act of political symbolism to attack such images of women while real women suffered.{{sfnp|HYWZHKAC|165}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Four of the paintings suffered some damage in the attack and all had to be reglazed. The cost of replacing the glass was £85, and repairs to two of the canvasses amounted to £25.{{sfnp|2SCUTPQS}} b As Lilian Forrester was pregnant, she did not serve her full term but was released early.{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=7041}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 9811
**Categories:** English, Female, Suffragette
---
### [Socage](https://engole.info/socage/)
**Published:** November 25, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Reeve_and_Serfs.jpg[/pimage]Form of tenure under English feudal property law.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Reeve_and_Serfs.jpg)Depiction of socage on the royal [demesne](https://engole.info/demesne), in a miniature from the Queen Mary Psalter, c. 1310. British Library, London.
Wikimedia Commons
Socage, also known as sokemanry,{{sfnp|DHGJUDVF|402}} was a form of tenure under English feudal property law in which a tenant, known as a socager,\[a\]Also socman or sokeman.{{sfnp|DHGJUDVF|402}} was permitted to live on part of his lord’s land in return for agricultural services or money rent, as opposed to the military service required by knight tenure.{{sfnp|G6DRQABY}}
The modern concept of freehold originates with these feudal services “of a free and honourable kind rendered to a superior in return for an inheritable property.” By 1400 most men had become free as opposed to being serfs, and the freedom became attached to the land, which if it was worth at least 40 shillings a year allowed its tenant a vote in parliamentary elections after 1432.{{sfnp|Z8I7N68V|search=Freehold}}
Socage was abolished in 1660.{{sfnp|DHGJUDVF|402}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Also socman or sokeman.{{sfnp|DHGJUDVF|402}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23296
**Categories:** Legal term
---
### [Scoot-Mobile](https://engole.info/scoot-mobile/)
**Published:** September 19, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Scoot-mobile.jpg[/pimage]Three-wheeled motor vehicle the prototype for which was produced in 1947. The body was a modified aircraft fuel tank, and the wheels also came from an aircraft.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Scoot-mobile.jpg)*Popular Mechanics*, August 1947
The Scoot-Mobile is a three-wheeled motor vehicle the prototype for which was produced in 1947. It was the brainchild of designer and inventor Norman Anderson, assisted by Vernon Servoss and Lester Sworthwood, all of Corunna, Michigan.{{sfnp|PZPNXBFA|720}}
The body was a modified aircraft fuel tank, and the wheels also came from an aircraft. The two driven wheels at the front and the third wheel at the rear were all braked, and the car was fitted with an automatic transmission. Fuel consumption was 75 miles per gallon (3.8 L/100 km) and the claimed top speed was {{convert|40|mph|abbr=on}}.{{sfnp|8S464YJS|110}} It was planned to sell the car for $350, but whether it ever went into production is unknown.{{sfnp|B3ZT6TM5|176}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 6227
**Categories:** Three-wheeler
---
### [But and ben](https://engole.info/but-and-ben/)
**Published:** October 24, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/but-and-ben-inchkinloch.jpg[/pimage]Scots term describing the layout of a two-roomed cottage.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/but-and-ben-inchkinloch.jpg)geograph.co.uk
But and ben (or butt and ben) is a Scots term used to describe a small two-roomed cottage. In older structures the outside door opens into the *but*, beyond which through another door is the *ben*. The word *but* comes from the Old English *be-ūtan* or *būtan*, meaning “outside”, and *ben* from *binnen*, “inside”. {{sfnp|Q9PUV4N3}}
In more modern buildings the *but* generally describes the kitchen end of the cottage, and the *ben* is the parlour, separated by a passage in which is the outside door.{{sfnp|Q9PUV4N3}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24067
**Categories:** Residential building
---
### [Evil eye](https://engole.info/evil-eye/)
**Published:** August 10, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/extramission-theory.webp[/pimage]Belief that certain people can inflict disease or death simply by a glance.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/extramission-theory.webp)Illustration from *System der visuellen Wahrnehmung beim Menschen* (1687) depicting extramission theory
Wikimedia Commons
The belief that certain individuals can inflict disease or death simply by a glance was widespread during the medieval period. It was believed at the time that vision was an active process in which the eye emits rays – extramission theory – and that envy or anger makes those rays destructive. Francis Bacon, in his essay “Of Envy” (c. 1600), says that those emotion cause “an ejaculation or irradiation of the eye”, inflicting a “stroke or percussion” on the person envied.{{sfnp|3DT9JXI9}}
Use of the evil eye was called “overlooking”.{{sfnp|3DT9JXI9}} Although the power was generally considered to belong to witches, it was also believed that some innocent persons possessed it.{{sfnp|26R6IW62}} The English antiquarian John Aubrey (1626–1697) writes of a man who accidentally overlooked his own cattle, and there is an account of a man from Yorkshire who kept his eyes fixed on the ground to avoid harming anyone.{{sfnp|3DT9JXI9}} An archaic Polish folk tale tells of a man who cut out his own eyes rather than continue inflicting misfortune on his loved ones.{{sfnp|7UZYD3FV}}
Charms such as [witch balls](https://engole.info/witch-ball) used to protect against the evil eye were designed to attract, deflect or confuse a witch’s gaze.{{sfnp|3DT9JXI9}}
## See also
- [Apotropaic eye](https://engole.info/apotropaic-eye/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26669
**Categories:** Witchcraft
---
### [Stimson Sting](https://engole.info/stimson-sting/)
**Published:** June 24, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/280px-Stimson_Sting_02.jpg[/pimage]Three-wheeled motor vehicle designed by Barry Stimson, introduced into the UK in 2002, and produced until 2007.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/280px-Stimson_Sting_02.jpg)YouTube
The Stimson Sting is a three-wheeled motor vehicle designed by Barry Stimson. Available as a kit car, it was introduced into the UK in 2002 and continued in production until 2007, although only one was built during that time. The Sting has two wheels at the front and two seats, along with a conventional car steering wheel.{{sfnp|B3ZT6TM5|184}}
The Sting makes use of the 1157 cc (70.6 cu in) powertrain from the Suzuki Bandit 1200 motorcycle, giving it a 0–60 mph (97 km/h) time of less than four seconds.{{sfnp|B3ZT6TM5|184}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2706
**Categories:** Kit car, Three-wheeler
---
### [Harper Runabout](https://engole.info/harper-runabout/)
**Published:** June 20, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Harper_1923.JPG[/pimage]Three-wheeled motor vehicle designed by Robert Harper and manufactured from 1921 until 1926.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Harper_1923.JPG)
Harper Runabout, c. 1921. Museum of Science and Industry: Air and Space Hall.
Wikimedia Commons
The Harper Runabout is a three-wheeled motor vehicle designed by Robert Harper. It was manufactured in Manchester, England by A.V. Roe & Co. from 1921 until 1926, by which time about 500 Harpers had been produced.{{sfnp|5GTNFJ3B|8}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2491
**Categories:** Three-wheeler
---
### [Fuji Cabin](https://engole.info/fuji-cabin/)
**Published:** June 20, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/1955_Fujicabin_01.jpg[/pimage]Three-wheeled microcar produced by Fuji Toshuda Motors of Tokyo, Japan, from 1957 until 1958.
**Content:**
The Fuji Cabin is a three-wheeled microcar produced by Fuji Toshuda Motors of Tokyo, Japan, from 1957 until 1958.{{sfnp|B3ZT6TM5|77}} It was introduced at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1955.{{sfnp|63J92E84}} The car has two front wheels and one rear, and its two-seater body, with a distinctive single headlamp, is constructed of fibreglass.{{sfnp|B3ZT6TM5|77}}
The Cabin is powered by an air-cooled single-cylinder 2-stroke 121.7 cc (7.43 cu in) Gasuden engine, producing 5.5 bhp (4.1 kW) and giving the car a top speed of 37 mph (60 km/h).
Despite being one of the most successful cars of its type in Japan’s post-Second World War automobile market, only 85 units were built,{{sfnp|B3ZT6TM5|77}} owing to its relatively high price and the poor quality of its fibreglass body.{{sfnp|63J92E84}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/1955_Fujicabin_01.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Manufacturer:**Fuji Toshuda Motors**Production:**1957–1958
85 made**Top speed:**{{convert|37|mph|abbr=on}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2443
**Categories:** Microcar, Three-wheeler
---
### [Warrington Perambulating Library](https://engole.info/warrington-perambulating-library/)
**Published:** June 11, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/WarringtonPerambulatingLibrary.jpg[/pimage]Described by the historian Ian Orton as “one of the most revolutionary library advances of the nineteenth century”.
**Content:**
From *The Illustrated London News*, 1860
Wikimedia Commons
The Warrington Perambulating Library has been described by the historian Ian Orton as “one of the most revolutionary library advances of the nineteenth century”. Among the earliest mobile libraries in the UK,{{sfnp|2U9U5RPR|96}} it was set up by the Warrington Mechanics’ Institute in Cheshire, England in 1858. Keen to increase borrowing from its library, the institute determined in the summer of that year to raise money for the purchase of a one-horse van, which it planned to fill with books and send each week “to every door in Warrington and the vicinity”.{{sfnp|NNVJNWIF|167}}
The idea was taken up enthusiastically by local residents, who organised a flower show and bazaar, which raised £250 (equivalent to £25,700 in 2021\[a\]Using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}). An October 1858 account in the *Warrington Guardian* reported that:
Not only have many of our wealthy townsmen given their pounds, but women – some of them poor widows – have given their mites. Two hundred working men’s wives and daughters, at their homes, have stitched, darned or knitted articles for the Bazaar.{{sfnp
— NNVJNWIF|167}}
The perambulating library began touring the streets of Warrington on 15 November 1858 and was an immediate success; the number of books borrowed from the institute’s library increased from 3000 a year to 12,000.{{sfnp|NNVJNWIF|167}} The service continued until 1872.{{sfnp|SVIPZQFG}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 1863
**Categories:** English, Library
---
### [Zitiron](https://engole.info/zitiron/)
**Published:** June 4, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Zitiron.jpg[/pimage]Mythological creature with an upper body in the form of an armed knight, fused with the tail of a fish.
**Content:**
Zitiron as represented in an illuminated manuscript of Jacob van Maerlant’s poem “Der Naturen Bloeme”, c. 1350
Wikimedia Commons
A zitiron, or sea knight, is a mythological creature with an upper body in the form of an armed knight, fused with the tail of a fish.{{sfnp|BK5GIJ73|14}} The sea bishop and the sea monk are similar creatures that appear in Caspar Schott’s *Physica Curia* (1662).{{sfnp|QRCYFG6R|32}}
It was once believed that everything that exists on earth must have its equivalent in the sea.{{sfnp|BK5GIJ73|14}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 1195
**Categories:** Mythical creature
---
### [Stimson Storm](https://engole.info/stimson-storm/)
**Published:** May 30, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Stimson_Storm.png[/pimage]Three-wheeled motor vehicle designed by Barry Stimson and offered for sale as a kit car.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Stimson_Storm.png)YouTube
The Stimson Storm is a three-wheeled motor vehicle designed by Barry Stimson and offered for sale as a kit.{{sfnp|IPNUKW2D}} It was introduced into the UK in 2002 and continued in production until 2007, but only one was built during that time.{{sfnp|B3ZT6TM5|184}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 896
**Categories:** Three-wheeler
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Stimson Safari Six](https://engole.info/stimson-safari-six/)
**Published:** May 30, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Stimson_Safari_Six.png[/pimage]Mini-based six-wheeled pickup motor vehicle designed by Barry Stimson.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Stimson_Safari_Six.png)YouTube
The Stimson Safari Six is a Mini-based six-wheeled pickup motor vehicle designed by Barry Stimson. It was introduced into the UK market in 1972, when it was offered for sale by Design Developments at £800, equivalent to £11,200 at as 2021.\[a\]Based on the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} That price included a hood covering the entire vehicle from the rear to the windscreen, with a zip-up sidescreen that served as the driver’s door. The car was also available in kit form from £270, depending on its level of completion.{{sfnp|J4SNM3IR|108}} The Safari Six was in production for about a year before Design Developments went into receivership in 1974, having by then produced about 20 cars.{{sfnp|J4SNM3IR|109}}
## **Construction**
The vehicle’s glassfibre body is mounted on a steel tubular-frame chassis. It has a fold-down rear bench seat and a lockable underfloor boot.{{sfnp|J4SNM3IR|108–109}}
## **Engine and transmission**
The front-wheel drive Safari Six is powered by an 848 cc (51.7 cu in) Austin Mini engine and gearbox mounted on a Mini sub frame.{{sfnp|J4SNM3IR|108}}
## **Later developments**
The rights to the Safari Six were acquired by Automotive Services, who planned to convert the vehicle to use a Ford Fiesta or Peugeot engine and relaunch it as the Shikara, but that never materialised.{{sfnp|J4SNM3IR|108–109}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Based on the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 882
**Categories:** Kit car
---
### [Belfry](https://engole.info/belfry/)
**Published:** December 12, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/Belfry_%28PSF%29.jpg/330px-Belfry_%28PSF%29.jpg[/pimage]Structure in which bells are hung.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/Belfry_%28PSF%29.jpg/330px-Belfry_%28PSF%29.jpg)Belfry
Wikimedia Commons
A belfry is a structure in which bells are hung, often associated with churches and religious sites. Early examples were often free-standing, away from the church building, but since the 11th century more usually took the form of a bell tower incorporated into the main church structure.{{sfnp|S94C2NKM}} The openings to allow the sound to escape are usually louvred, to protect the bells from the weather. The term *belfry* is also sometimes used to describe the framework supporting the bells.{{sfnp|CIC6SQZF}}
A belfry was originally a movable wooden siege tower used in the Middle Ages by armies besieging a fortification, known as a *berfrei* in Old French.{{sfnp|KN9NNMST}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25795
**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Civil parish](https://engole.info/civil-parish/)
**Published:** March 27, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Parishes_in_England_map%2C_2021.svg/960px-Parishes_in_England_map%2C_2021.svg.png[/pimage]Smallest administrative unit in England.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Parishes_in_England_map%2C_2021.svg/960px-Parishes_in_England_map%2C_2021.svg.png)Map of civil parishes in England
Wikimedia Commons
A civil parish, also known simply as a parish, is the smallest administrative unit in England. The equivalent in Wales and Scotland is known as a community, but there is no such unit in Northern Ireland.{{sfnp|KAJQRKPD}} [Parishes](https://engole.info/ancient-parish/), as groups of villages and [hamlets](https://engole.info/hamlet-place) and their adjacent lands, over which a clergyman had civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, existed from pre-Norman Conquest times until the dissolution of the monasteries between 1536 and 1541.{{sfnp|QKAMHI3J}} Civil parishes were subsequently created to look after civil matters, and after 1845 the boundaries between civil and ecclestiastical parishes began to diverge.{{sfnp|MCS9DCED}}
The functions of modern civil parishes are limited to providing facilities such as village halls, war memorials, cemeteries, leisure facilities and playgrounds, and the maintenance of public footpaths. As at 2015 there were 10,449 civil parishes in England.{{sfnp|KAJQRKPD}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22653
**Categories:** Local government
---
### [Sir Alexander MacRobert](https://engole.info/sir-alexander-macrobert/)
**Published:** August 4, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/MacRobert-Georgina-2.jpeg[/pimage]Self-made millionaire from Aberdeen.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/MacRobert-Georgina-2.jpeg)MacRobert with Georgina, his first wife, in 1886
Cawnpore to Cromar
Sir Alexander MacRobert was a self-made millionaire from Aberdeen. He came from a working-class background and left school when he was twelve to start his working life sweeping floors in Stoneywood Paper Mill; his education was continued by attending evening classes and he gained several qualifications as his early career progressed. At the beginning of 1884 MacRobert travelled to India to take up employment in a woollen mill in Cawnpore, or Kanpur as it is now known. By 1920 he had built up a portfolio of companies enabling him to found the British India Corporation. He was raised to a baronet at the beginning of 1922, choosing to be named Sir Alexander MacRobert of Cawnpore and Cromar of the County of Aberdeen.
## Early life
MacRobert was born in Aberdeen on 21 May 1854;{{sfnp|U3RYXF3U}} his father, John, was a farmer from a Drumblade family who had married Helen, a farmer’s daughter from Banchory-Devenick.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|14, 19}} He left school when he was twelve and, like many other Aberdeen youngsters of the same age at that time, was employed at Stoneywood Paper Mill, initially sweeping floors.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|16}} Evening classes provided the opportunity to continue his education and he studied a wide variety of subjects.{{sfnp|QMVNZ8GC}} He went on to gain qualifications at the Aberdeen Mechanics’ Institute in seventeen disciplines including music theory, biology, history and psychology.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|17}} Later he lectured part-time at the institute in experimental physics.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|18}} Always seeking to better himself, he also became interested in chemistry, becoming so proficient in the subject that he soon gave lectures on it at Robert Gordon’s College.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|18}} In the meantime, his position at the paper mill had elevated to office work;{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|17}} shortly he gained more responsibility after being promoted to a different section of the Stoneywood conglomerate but he still returned to undertake audits at the mill every three months.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|19}}
During 1880 MacRobert undertook a trip to New Brunswick, Canada, to visit his parents and siblings – he had six sisters and a younger brother – who had emigrated and successfully become established as “pioneer farmers of the west.”{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|19}} He took another unpaid leave of absence in 1881 to study compound pendulums at the South Kensington Museum.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|20}}
## First marriage and India
On 31 December 1883 MacRobert married Georgina Porter, a factory worker who went on to work in a laundry.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|20}} At the time of their marriage she lived in Aberdeen with her mother, brother and two sisters.{{sfnp|QMVNZ8GC}}{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|20}} Within a few days of their marriage MacRobert travelled to India to start employment as a chemist with the Muir Mill in Cawnpore, or Kanpur as it is now known;{{sfnp|QMVNZ8GC}}{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|20}} Georgina remained in Aberdeen and did not travel to India until November 1885.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|20, 30}} When MacRobert arrived in India he was informed that the position had already been taken;{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|21}} the directors also managed the ailing Cawnpore Woollen Mill and, regretful that MacRobert had a wasted trip, offered him alternative employment as manager there instead, which he accepted.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|21-23}}{{sfnp|RU4I2SNT|100}} The mill was on the brink of bankruptcy and was very sparsely equipped.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|22}} MacRobert quickly changed the mill’s fortunes by hard work coupled with his general knowledge of manufacturing.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|25}} Three years after he had taken up his position the mill had transformed from an unprofitable enterprise with a small staff to a lucrative manufacturing company with diverse interests and over 2,000 employees.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|28}} He purchased shares in the mill when they were offered at a very low rate.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|46}} Gradually MacRobert began to purchase mills, adding the New Egerton Mill at Dhariwal and Elgin Mills to the one at Cawnpore.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|109}}
MacRobert was left a widower when his wife died of cancer aged 53 on 30 November 1905.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|71}} The couple had no children.{{sfnp|QMVNZ8GC}} Her death led to MacRobert, who by then was wealthy with a high status and influence,{{sfnp|5TMFH28L}} making a donation of £25,000 in 1906 to initiate research into the cause, prevention and cure for the disease to be undertaken in the Faculty of Medicine at Aberdeen University.{{sfnp|QMVNZ8GC}} Named the Georgina McRobert Fellowship, it was continued at the University until at least the last decade of the twentieth century.{{sfnp|QMVNZ8GC}} Over the following years, MacRobert donated more funds to the Fellowship.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|74}} He also commemorated her by establishing a community hospital in Cawnpore.{{sfnp|QMVNZ8GC}} James Meston, a fellow Aberdonian who at the time was serving as the Lieutenant-Governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, laid the foundation stone in 1916; the hospital was opened in 1920{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|76}} by Sir Spencer Harcourt Butler, who referred to MacRobert as “The King of Cawnpore”.{{sfnp|U3RYXF3U}} The mill and the surrounding area in Cawnpore is called McRobertganj.{{sfnp|4L6ZK7MA|79}}
## Later life
On a voyage back to Scotland from India in 1909, MacRobert met [Rachel Workman](https://engole.info/lady-rachel-workman-macrobert/),{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|82}} the eldest child of Fanny Bullock Workman and her husband William Hunter Workman, who were from prominent, wealthy New England families.{{sfnp|HEHIYAUZ|34}} Rachel and MacRobert married on 7 July 1911 at a Quakers Meeting House in York.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|85}}{{sfnp|PLCE2NLT}} The couple had three children, all boys: Alasdair, the eldest was born on 11 July 1912; Roderic on 8 May 1915; and the youngest, Iain, on 19 April 1917.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|88}} Rachel disliked India, and refused to live in the country, although MacRobert devoted most of his time to continuing to build his conglomerate there; she referred to it as “that nasty land”.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|87}}
MacRobert received a knighthood in the New Year’s Honours list in 1910.{{sfnp|RU4I2SNT|100}}{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|84}} By 1920 he had built up a portfolio of six companies; he amalgamated these to form the British India Corporation.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|109}} He was raised to a baronet at the beginning of 1922, choosing to be named Sir Alexander MacRobert of Cawnpore and Cromar of the County of Aberdeen.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|114}} It was at this time that he altered the spelling of his surname from McRobert to MacRobert.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|9}}
## Death and legacy
MacRobert returned to Scotland in April 1922, but was in poor health;{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|117-118}} he had a fatal heart attack on 22 June 1922 at Douneside.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|118}}{{sfnp|2L3XHSAG}} Georgina, his first wife, had been buried in Allenvale Cemetery, Aberdeen and he was interred beside her.{{sfnp|XU2V9XNB}} His British assets after the payment of death duties amounted to £264,000,{{sfnp|ARL3E2VG}} the equivalent of over £13.7 million as of 2016.{{sfnp|SFZWGZAM}} The inheritance went to Alasdair, his eldest son, who became the second of the MacRobert baronets, but he died in an aviation accident in 1938.{{sfnp|QMVNZ8GC}} A similar fate befell the two younger sons as both died in action in 1941 while serving as pilots in the Royal Air Force.{{sfnp|5TMFH28L}} The legacy was eventually bequeathed by Lady MacRobert to the MacRobert Trust, a charity with continuing connections with the military, the countryside and farming, who make charitable grants and operate the former family estate including Douneside House.{{sfnp|CUHS523H}}
Writing in 2015 modern day historian Veronica Strong-Boag described MacRobert as an “Aberdeen poor boy made good”{{sfnp|K3RCJGQT|305}} and a “Scottish millionaire”;{{sfnp|K3RCJGQT|202}} the Geological Society of London also refer to him as a “self-made millionaire”.{{sfnp|RHZE7FNC|393}} The British India Corporation was nationalised in 1981 but two of MacRobert’s original woollen mills, those at Kanpur and Dhariwal, remained operational during the 21st-century.{{sfnp|FAGRB7NN|189}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 4448
**Categories:** Industrialist
---
### [The Plattner Story](https://engole.info/the-plattner-story/)
**Published:** June 20, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Plattner.jpg[/pimage]Short story by H. G. Wells published in 1896, about a chemistry teacher who causes an explosion that propels him into another world.
**Content:**
Classroom after the explosion
Amazing Stories
“The Plattner Story”, written by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), was first published in the April 1896 edition of the *New Review* and subsequently reprinted in [*The Plattner Story and Others*](https://engole.info/the-plattner-story-and-others/) (1897) and [*The Country of the Blind and Other Stories*](https://engole.info/the-country-of-the-blind-and-other-stories/) (1911). It concerns a school teacher who causes an explosion during a chemistry experiment, which propels him into another world.{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|50}}
## Synopsis
The story is told by an unnamed narrator, who begins by describing a teacher at a small school in the south of England, Gottfried Plattner, all of whose organs and features have been transposed from right to left and vice versa; his heart is on the right side of his body for instance, and the symmetry of his facial features is the opposite of what it appears to be in old photographs The narrator suggests that this proves that Plattner “has moved out of our space into what is called the Fourth Dimension”.
One of Plattner’s duties is to teach chemistry, something he knows very little about having been trained in modern languages. One day a pupil brings in a bottle of some unidentified green powder he had found in a disused limekiln, and Plattner attempts to analyse it, finally deciding to apply a match to a substantial quantity of the powder, causing it to explode. None of the boys in the classroom is hurt, but their teacher has disappeared. At first Plattner believes that he is still in the classroom, but everything seems dark and faint, with only “dim, uncertain, grey shapes \[of the classroom\] around him. Then two of the boys walk straight through him, persuading Plattner that he must be dead, but then he wonders if it is the boys who are dead and he alone has survived the explosion.
Exploring the environment around him, Plattner finds himself on a rocky hillside, under a green sky, with the bottle of green powder still in his hand. Below him, he can see a number of “pallid, rounded pale-green figures emerging from a mausoleum-like building. Limbless, they drift towards him, human heads above tadpole-like bodies, but they seem to be unaware of him. Still faintly seeing the “real” world superimposed on this “Other-World”, Plattner notices that “to almost every human being in our world there pertained some of these drifting heads; that everyone in the world is watched intermittently by these helpless disembodiments”. The narrator calls them Watchers of the Living. “It may be … that, when our life has closed, when evil or good is no longer a choice for us, we may still have to witness the working out of the train of consequences we have laid.”
Plattner notices a room in a street near the school, where a dying man lies in bed; a woman in the room is looking for a document. Many Watchers of the Living, who seem to know the woman, are witnessing the event. When the woman finds what she seeks, perhaps a will, she burns it in the flame of a candle, while a shadowy arm stretches across to the man in the bed. Not daring to see the shadow behind the arm, Plattner runs and falls, smashing the bottle of green powder, which explodes; and so he returns to his former world nine days after he left it.
The narrator later finds that there was a death in a street near the school at the time of Plattner’s return. The widow, much younger than the deceased, soon married again. The narrator interviews her; although she contradicts Plattner’s account of events during her husband’s last moments, Plattner’s description of the room is “curiously accurate”.
## Commentary
The concept of a fourth dimension was popularised by the mathematician and writer Charles Howard Hinton in his 1880 essay “What is the Fourth Dimension?” Today the fourth dimension is commonly regarded as time, as in Albert Einstein’s idea of spacetime, but here it is treated as a further spatial dimension.{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|415}}
The description of the Watchers, with their human heads and tadpole-like bodies, is very similar to that of the Martians in Wells’s 1898 novel *The War of the Worlds*.{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|416}}
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 21146
## External links
- [Full text of “The Plattner Story”](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/42989/pg42989-images.html#THE_PLATTNER_STORY) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
---
### [Checker shadow illusion](https://engole.info/checker-shadow-illusion/)
**Published:** December 10, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/Checker_shadow_illusion.svg/330px-Checker_shadow_illusion.svg.png[/pimage]Perceptual illusion demonstrating that the visual system uses context as well as physical luminance to determine the lightness or darkness of an object.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/Checker_shadow_illusion.svg/330px-Checker_shadow_illusion.svg.png)The regions marked A and B are the same shade of grey
Wikimedia Commons
The checker shadow illusion is an optical illusion published by Edward Adelson, professor of vision science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in 1995.{{sfnp|TRJVX49F}}
The image of a chequer-board has an object casting a partial shadow over the light and dark squares, in which the square labeled A appears to be a darker colour than the one marked B, although they are actually both the same shade of grey. The illusion demonstrates that the perceived lightness or darkness of an object is determined not only by its physical luminance but also by its context and surroundings, in this case with the visual system discounting the shadow.{{sfnp|TRJVX49F}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/Grey_square_optical_illusion_proof2.svg/330px-Grey_square_optical_illusion_proof2.svg.png)Region of the same shade connecting A and B
Wikimedia Commons
The visual system is not very good at being a physical light meter, but that is not its purpose. The important task is to break the image information down into meaningful components, and thereby perceive the nature of the objects in view.
— Edward Adelson.{{sfnp|NU9NS7PL}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25794
**Categories:** Perceptual illusion
---
### [Arkley S/SS](https://engole.info/arkley-ss/)
**Published:** August 25, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/fs_ark9.jpg[/pimage]Re-bodied Austin Healey Sprite/MG Midget, launched in 1971 by John Britten Garages of Arkley, Hertfordshire.
**Content:**
The Arkley, essentially a re-bodied Austin Healey Sprite/MG Midget (Spridget), was produced by John Britten Garages of Arkley, Hertfordshire,{{sfnp|ZFTH72S4}} designed in association with the Lenham Motor Company. Launched in 1970, it was initially offered in two forms: the S model body kit fitted the standard wheels of the donor vehicle; the SS accommodated wider wheels, and eventually became the standard body type.{{sfnp|GFZUCDMC|27}}
The kit, which fits any post-1958 Spridget, comprises new fibreglass front and rear ends to be fitted to a donor car. The motoring journalist Bill Hartford described the end result as “a combination of the Morgan, Triumph TR series and Lotus Seven”.{{sfnp|DQL5K5E6}} John Britten produced the kits from 1970 until 1987, when Peter May Engineering acquired the manufacturing rights.{{sfnp|GFZUCDMC|27}} As at 2025 the company continues to supply the Arkley bodykit.
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/fs_ark9.jpg)Motorbase
**Manufacturer:**John Britten Garages, 1970–1987
Peter May Engineering, 1987–present**Production:**1100 approximately
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22101
**Categories:** Kit car
---
### [North Berwick witch trials](https://engole.info/north-berwick-witch-trials/)
**Published:** January 30, 2020
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Fian-and-witches.jpg[/pimage]Series of Scottish witch trials held between 1590 and 1593.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Fian-and-witches.jpg)[Doctor Fian](https://engole.info/john-fian/) and witches dancing around North Berwick Kirk
Wikimedia Commons
The North Berwick witch trials took place in the Lothian area of Edinburgh between 1590 and 1593. The first arrests occurred in November and December 1590, but the precise number of those detained is uncertain. As the examinations and then trials gained momentum, associations extending back to events surrounding the marriage of King James VI and Anne of Denmark began to be revealed.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|35}} The historian Malcolm Gaskill has described the North Berwick witch trials as “treason cloaked as witchcraft”.{{sfnp|8SJVQSX5|83}}
None of those convicted or associated with the events were residents of North Berwick. The appellation simply refers to the largest alleged gathering of the witches on Halloween 1590, at the Kirk yard in the village.
## Political background
King James VI of Scotland reigned over a country where in the second half of the sixteenth century all levels of society, from peasants through to the highest ranks of the nobility, had a firm belief in witchcraft.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|54}} Scotland was also going through a crisis of religious upheaval and reformation, with relationships between Catholics and Protestants tense across all strata of society.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|57}} Protestants were recasting the rudimentary beliefs held in particular by the lower classes as evil, by characterising them as superstition and witchcraft, thus providing a means to eliminate such beliefs in a move towards social and moral rehabilitation.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|71}} The academic Stuart Clark suggests that was an integral component at the core of the process of securing the changes over to their form of Christianity.{{sfnp|SZAAYENM|180-181}} From 1586 advocates of extreme Presbyterianism, such as the minister James Carmichael, began returning to Scotland to support the views of Andrew Melville, the leader of the Presbyterians.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|4}}
Scotland during the reign of King James was beset by political turbulence and political unease.{{sfnp|A62PPHXZ|22-24}} The overall plight of the kingdom was exacerbated by poverty among the lower classes, famine caused by recurring harvest failures, and several outbreaks of plague.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|56}}\[a\]Plague epidemics occurred in: 1568–1569; 1574; an especially protracted outbreak during 1584–1588; and 1597–1599.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|56}}{{sfnp|I3Q5HT4M}}
The King’s first cousin, Frances Stewart, fifth Earl of Bothwell,\[b\]Francis Stewart Hepburn (1562–1612);{{sfnp|5DNVBUYJ}} he is sometimes designated as the first Earl of Bothwell. was three years older than the King,{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|39}}\[c\]At the time of the North Berwick trials Bothwell and the King were in their twenties.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|39}} highly educated, wealthy and well-connected. From a noted family of Protestants, Bothwell had strong political ambitions and influence,{{sfnp|9N3FZ4NA|3}} and was recognised by the King as his heir in 1576.{{sfnp|KDUNKABV|352}} James frequently placed the earl in positions of trust, but Bothwell could be particularly troublesome and volatile;{{sfnp|9N3FZ4NA|3-4}} he is described by the modern-day scholar Peter Maxwell-Stuart as “the bane of James’s life and a person whose sinister influence on contemporary Scottish politics is difficult to under-estimate.”{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|145}}
## Royal marriage
In June 1589 agreement was reached that the King would marry the fourteen-year-old Danish princess, Anne of Denmark. The union was seen as politically and dynastically advantageous, as Denmark, which already had trade ties with Scotland, was also a Protestant country.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|29}} After a proxy marriage on 20 August 1589 in Copenhagen, at the beginning of September the bride attempted to join her groom in Scotland but her sea voyage was marred by storms and leaking vessels so the flotilla was forced to seek refuge in Norway. Later in the month the convoy of ships twice endeavoured to make the three-day journey but were again thwarted by storms and leaks.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|30-31}}{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|108}}
Scotland was also being ravaged by fierce storms during that autumn. A ferryboat transporting wedding presents for the King and his bride sank while attempting to cross the Forth between Burntisland and Leith; all of the consignment was lost and forty people on board died.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|35}} Among the fatalities was the courtier Janet Kennedy, whom the King had assigned to be one of his new wife’s ladies-in-waiting.{{sfnp|Z8MJUIQM|966-969}}\[d\]Janet Kennedy Melville (d. 1589), who is sometimes referred to as Jane, (Normand and Roberts use Jean Kennedy{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|31}}) had been one of the attendants of Mary, Queen of Scots, James’s mother, and was present at her execution two years earlier in 1587, having served her for almost twenty years. Janet’s husband, Sir Andrew Melville, was the master of the King’s household.{{sfnp|Z8MJUIQM|966-969}} Sir Andrew was one of the prosecutors in a case against William Downie, Robert Linkup and John Watson on 14 January 1590. The three Leith men were facing a charge of slaughter in respect of the lives lost in the ferryboat’s sinking, as they controlled a boat that ran into the sunken vessel.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|81}}
Despite the persistent bad weather the King decided that a fleet should be sent from Scotland to Denmark to fetch Anne and bring her to him. The Earl of Bothwell was initially instructed to undertake the journey, but the Chancellor, Lord Maitland,\[e\]John Maitland, 1st Lord Maitland of Thirlestane (1543 – 3 October 1595), appointed as vice chancellor in 1586 rising to chancellor from 1587 until 1595{{sfnp|EZQCHFL4}} declared Bothwell’s quote as excessive and advised James to make the journey himself.{{sfnp|NIJGC6BC|127}} Although the weather was still inclement, James heeded the advice given and set off for Norway on 21 October in a ship laden with provisions of food and wine accompanied by the chancellor, leaving mainly Bothwell to govern in their absence.\[f\]The King appointed Bothwell as deputy to the fifteen-year-old Duke of Lennox while Robert Bruce, an Edinburgh minister, provided guidance based on opinions from the Kirk.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|33}} The King met Anne in Oslo, and after a marriage ceremony there in November, the royal party continued on to Denmark, where they remained until early 1590.{{sfnp|NIJGC6BC|127}} The royal entourage departed from Copenhagen on 21 April but the voyage was again beleaguered by inclement weather and storms while at sea; the convoy did not dock at Leith until 1 May.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|109}}
### Trials in Denmark
While James was in Denmark several Danish women were rumoured to have conjured up the storms by using witchcraft.{{sfnp|KENFSFXI|210}} The allegations emanated from charges brought by Peder Munk, the admiral responsible for the fleet of ships used in the aborted voyages of the princess, against Christofer Valkendorf, the Governor of Copenhagen. Valkendorf, with whom Munk had a long-standing feud, was in control of the finances for maintaining the seaworthiness of the Danish Royal Navy. The admiral alleged that the ships were in a poor state of repair, rendering them unfit to cope with the ferocity of the weather encountered;{{sfnp|KENFSFXI|209-210}}{{sfnp|ZEFSBUAS|139-140}} Valkendorf countered the accusation claiming the difficulties were the result of witchcraft,{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|109}} a common scenario in Scandinavian countries where tumultuous seas were frequently put down to curses uttered by witches.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|36}}
After being subjected to torture, a confession of involvement in raising the storms by witchcraft was made by a local woman, Anna Koldings, who was already incarcerated as a suspected witch. Commonly known as “the Devil’s mother”, Koldings admitted that, working with several others, the group was seeking to stop the fleet arriving at its destination.\[g\]Koldings gave her interrogators the names of five associates.{{sfnp|4UHZT93N|38}} Confessions from two other women have survived in the official records. Little of the trial documentation is extant, but a series of trials took place commencing in April 1590. About thirteen people, including a mayor’s spouse, were executed; one woman hanged herself while imprisoned.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|109}}{{sfnp|ZEFSBUAS|140}} A vague suggestion began to circulate that there might have been an element of collusion with Scottish witches,{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|36}} although it was not until late in July that the rumours reached Scotland.{{sfnp|NIJGC6BC|129}}
### Return to Scotland
On its return to Scotland the royal party was preoccupied by organising Anne’s coronation and entertaining the Danish contingent, made up of 223 people including Peder Munk, to daily banquets.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|36}} Routine investigations, trials and executions for witchcraft were occurring in various parts of Scotland as far afield as Aberdeen and Ross-shire as well as East Lothian and Edinburgh.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|84}} The King was kept occupied until late autumn, showing little interest in witchcraft other than being mildly intrigued.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|109, 142}} Earlier his curiosity had been sufficiently piqued in Aberdeen during April 1589 for him to ask to see Marion MacIngaroch, who had reportedly cured a man.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|142}} He also interviewed a woman from Lübeck, Germany, allegedly a witch, who had arrived in Leith to see Queen Anne in July 1590. The woman claimed to have a prophecy for the King about future “noble deeds” he was going to perform, although his willingness to grant her an audience stemmed not from an interest in sorcery but from his curiosity about the introductory letter she carried.{{sfnp|KENFSFXI|213-214}}
The Earl of Bothwell’s stewardship of the country had been relatively smooth during the King’s absence.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|33}} But following a brief period of amicable relations after the royal entourage returned to Scotland, Bothwell was soon falling in and out of favour with James; several arguments and disputes occurred between them between May and the end of October, with the King becoming increasingly distrustful of, and irritated by, the earl.{{sfnp|KENFSFXI|214-215}}
## Suspicion of witchcraft
In November 1590, David Seton,\[h\]Alternative spellings of his name, for example Seaton, are sometimes used in sources. the magistrate at Tranent, became suspicious that one of his servants, [Geillis Duncan](https://engole.info/geillis-duncan-witch/), was involved in the use of witchcraft, as she had suddenly gained a reputation as a healer and was frequently absent from her quarters at night.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|144}} The magistrate, together with his son also named David, were known locally as keen witch-hunters.{{sfnp|I3Q5HT4M}} After being tortured, Geillis started to confess then proceeded to implicate others during later interrogations. These included [Agnes Sampson](https://engole.info/agnes-sampson/), an elderly midwife and healer from Nether Keith, near Haddington and [Doctor Fian](https://engole.info/john-fian/) (alias John Cunningham), a schoolmaster from Prestonpans.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|35}}{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|144}}\[i\]Doctor was the term used for a schoolmaster.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|144}}
In the typical style of an emerging extensive witch-hunt, there was a ripple or wave effect as other affiliated people were implicated.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|144}} By 11 November 1590, [Ritchie Graham](https://engole.info/richard-graham/), who had a well-established and long-standing reputation among the aristocracy as a magician and [necromancer](https://engole.info/necromancy/), was detained in the Edinburgh tolbooth.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|153, 155}} Initially other individuals compromised were, like Agnes and Fian, of a low social status. Very quickly however, members of a higher social stature began to be incriminated. Women like [Barbara Napier](https://engole.info/barbara-napier-witch/), a member of Edinburgh’s high society, and [Euphame MacCalzean](https://engole.info/euphame-maccalzean/), a prominent heiress and part of the city’s legal dynasty, both of whom had prior involvement with Geillis and Agnes, were named.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|144-145}}
## Early proceedings
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/f-armytage-north-berwick-witches-on-trial-before-king-james-geillis-duncan-plays-the-tune-she-played-to-satan_a-g-1861686-8880731.jpg)The only known illustration of Geillis Duncan is by F. Armytage; it shows her before King James demonstrating how she played a tune for the Devil.
Art UK
The King displayed a passing interest in the early proceedings against Geillis and Agnes.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|99}} After he was informed Agnes had confessed that Geillis had played a Jew’s harp at a witches convention in the North Berwick kirk on Halloween 1590, he insisted the young maidservant be brought to play the instrument for him.{{sfnp|KDUNKABV|354}} In an audience with the monarch, Agnes described her involvement in several exploits. Among these deeds were trying to cause him harm by casting a spell on a scrap of linen he had used; the summoning of stormy weather by magic to adversely upset the royal couples’ sailings; and her attendance with several others at witches meetings, the most important of which was held at North Berwick. The indictment levied against Agnes, like that of Fian (who was also interrogated by the King{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|142}}), did not deeply worry James as the escapades were not those of high conspirators or seriously treasonable;{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|102-103}} any qualms the King may have had regarding threats against his safety from those of the lower classes like Agnes were easily addressed by judiciary process then disposed of by execution.{{sfnp|KENFSFXI|217}} Fian was pronounced guilty of various points of witchcraft at his trial on 26 December 1590;{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|224}} Agnes was tried and declared guilty on 27 January 1591, then strangled and her body burned the following day.{{sfnp|J3P8CEY4|312}}\[j\]All dates in this article are given in the New Style (Gregorian), but at the time Scotland was still using the Julian calendar, so some sources give 16 December 1590 as Fian’s date of execution. Both the Julian and Gregorian calendars were in use throughout Europe between 1582 and 1752.{{sfnp|285KKP6S}} By this time, approximately forty people were in prison awaiting trial with around another eight already executed.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|103}}
Contemporary sources indicate that investigations were ongoing, although official documents covering the start of February until 4 May 1591 have not survived.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|130}} The Earl of Bothwell was mentioned fleetingly during the early interrogations, although his name did not feature in Agnes or Fian’s dittays.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|103}} The correspondence of Robert Bowes, the English diplomat who was Ambassador for Scotland from 1577 until 1583,{{sfnp|NVM55PSB}} shows earnest moves to further connect Bothwell’s involvement in treasonable acts of witchcraft during April after statements taken from Ritchie Graham implicated him to a greater extent.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|131}}{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|155}}\[k\]In 1593 Bothwell claimed the conspirators working with Ritchie Graham against him included nobles such as the Earl of Morton, the Chancellor, the King’s advocate and others.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|155}} Graham claimed that Bothwell was at the heart of plots to harm the King, that the pair had several meetings to plan how it could be accomplished, and they sought the help and advice of other witches. He elaborated that after the unsuccessful attempts to sink the King and his new bride’s vessels with storms, poisoning was the group’s next failed endeavour; later they attempted to elicit the monarch’s demise by bewitching a wax effigy of him.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|105}}
The earl was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle by the Privy Council on 15 April,{{sfnp|NIJGC6BC|130}}{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|37}} the same date on which, according to Bowes, another of the accused witches, [Robert Grierson](https://engole.info/robert-grierson-witchcraft/), died owing to the severity of torture inflicted on him.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|127, 131}} As the official documents began to be manipulated to form an eloquent account of treasonable acts committed by the group using witchcraft, particularly that of Bothwell’s deeper incrimination, the King began to take the matter seriously, worrying that his life might be at risk.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|37}}
## High society trials
While the Earl of Bothwell was incarcerated, trials of members of the Edinburgh elite began.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|42}} Barbara Napier, a known acquaintance of the earl,{{sfnp|I3Q5HT4M}} was tried on 8 May 1591;{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|165}} she was found guilty of consulting with witches – namely Ritchie Graham and Agnes Sampson{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|37}} – but exonerated on the charge of being present at a witches convention.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|22}} The jury was at first reluctant to apply the death sentence to her,{{sfnp|ZX65GENS|168}} but did so on 10 May.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|108}} The King was unwilling to accept the court findings, and wrote to the jury members insisting a guilty verdict be returned for all charges.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|22}} They were ordered to an audience with James on 7 June; he berated them at length, emphasising the error of their judgement.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|108-109}} It was at the trial of Barbara’s jurors that the allegations she was party to a conspiracy to harm the King unfolded; this had not been alleged at her own trial.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|38}} She gained a stay of execution by claiming that she was pregnant,{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|108}} but her ultimate fate is unclear. She was known to be alive but probably incarcerated in June 1591,{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|216}} but she may have been executed later that year, together with five others.{{sfnp|I3Q5HT4M}}{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|216}}
In the meantime, charges of conspiring treason with Barbara Napier and other witches were laid against the Earl of Bothwell;{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|167}} he vehemently denied the claims, threatening dire retribution against those making the assertions.{{sfnp|NIJGC6BC|130}} The King’s suspicions regarding the earl intensified,{{sfnp|NIJGC6BC|131}} but Bothwell remained popular among some members of the nobility, so any action against him would be difficult to enforce.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|104}}
A close affiliate of the earl, Euphame MacCalzean{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|39}} was in prison by 7 May, and being interrogated about letters and food she had sent to others held in custody.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|131}} Sworn statements had been taken during January from several people, including her servants, who claimed she was present at witch gatherings held at Acheson’s Haven and North Berwick the previous year. Donald Robson, Janet Stratton and Geillis Duncan alleged Euphame handled a waxen image of King James at the conventions, while she hinted that a new sovereign would be the Earl of Bothwell.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|158-159}} Euphame’s connections with Bothwell were leading her towards facing charges of treasonable witchcraft.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|131}} The focus of the indictment against her was clearly articulated as it was headed with: “Dilated of certain treasonable conspiracies, enterprised by witchcraft, to have destroyed our sovereign lord’s person and bereft His Majesty of his life.”{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|217}}\[l\]In this instance “enterprised” is interpreted as “attempted” by Normand and Roberts.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|261}}
Euphame’s trial started on 9 June 1591;{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|219}} six eminent advocates argued in her defence for several days.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|203, 219}} On 12 June the panel of notable landed gentry declared her guilty of ten of the twenty-eight charges listed in her indictment including that of “being a well-known witch”.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|219}}{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|160}} She was also convicted on two counts of attending meetings of witches.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|160}} The sentence of death by being burned alive and the forfeiture of all her estates was handed down on 15 June.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|219}} Her execution was delayed however, as like Barbara Napier she tried to claim pregnancy to stave off the death penalty.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|219}} Euphame was nevertheless transported to Castle Hill, tied to a stake and burned alive on 25 June 1591, still maintaining her innocence.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|112}}
## Proclamation
During the days of Euphame’s trial and execution, two other events took place. The King interviewed [Janet Kennedy](https://engole.info/janet-kennedy-visionary/), the witch of Redden, sometimes given as Reydon, on 14 June. She confirmed Ritchie Graham’s implications against Bothwell{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|167}}\[m\]Maxwell-Stuart refers to her as a witch from Redden but does not supply a name.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|167}} and, according to the scholars Lawrence Normand and Gareth Roberts, her deposition provides “the unique moment in the records when it is insinuated that Bothwell actually attended a convention.”{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|132}} A week later, three days before Euphame’s execution, the Earl of Bothwell escaped captivity during the night of 21/22 June through a hole cut into the roof of his room, claiming that there was “no hope of lyffe lefte to hyme”.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|113}}\[n\]Some academics, for instance Edward J. Cowan, quote 22 June;{{sfnp|NIJGC6BC|131}} Normand and Roberts state 2am on 21 June.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|23}} He had been informed hours beforehand that the King was considering releasing him on bail, but only on condition that he agreed to adhere strictly to certain conditions, which included his immediate banishment overseas.{{sfnp|KENFSFXI|220}}
On the day Euphame was burnt alive at the stake, a royal proclamation was issued against Bothwell.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|113}} The edict alleged that the fugitive employed witchcraft for political motives, and that he plotted with God’s enemies to subvert true religion in a conspiratorial manner involving treason against King and country.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|40}} Among other assertions, it stated that Bothwell consulted witches and toyed with necromancy; consulting with witches had been made a capital offence by the [Scottish Witchcraft Act of 1563](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts/#Scottish_Witchcraft_Act_1563).{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|42, 91}} The decree deemed that his escape from custody before he could be tried signified his guilt.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|113}} Thus declared an outlaw and traitor, the earl’s properties were forfeit.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|23, 42}}
## Aftermath
### Recantations and revocations
On 4 July, less than a fortnight after Euphame’s execution, Donald Robson and Janet Stratton withdrew their assertions that she had attended the witch meetings or had anything to do with the waxed effigy. Robson further clarified that he had not seen, nor had any knowledge of Euphame, until he encountered her when making his previous statement.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|133}} Similarly, six months later, at the time of their execution on 4 December 1591, Geillis, and another of the alleged witches named in her first statement, Bessie Thomson, made lengthy statements retracting their accusations against Euphame and Barbara Napier of being involved in witchcraft.{{sfnp|WY3X79NN|202-203}} When questioned as to why they lied in their confessions, both declared they were forced into it by David Seton, his son and others whose names were not revealed.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|198}}
After Patrick MacCalzean – Euphame’s husband – paid 5,000 merks to recover the lands,{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|218}} King James eventually reversed the forfeiture of Euphame’s property and estates to the Crown by passing an Act in June 1592, returning her lands to her daughters.{{sfnp|DXB45NIB|248}} The Cliftonhall estate was specifically excluded from the properties reinstated; after the forfeiture the sovereign had gifted it to Sir James Sandilands and it remained in his ownership.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|220}}\[o\]Sir James Sandilands, a favourite of King James,{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|220}} was the brother of the Laird of Pumperston’s fiancée, Mary Sandilands, by marriage as the pair had wed on 15 July 1586 despite Euphame’s efforts to prevent it. Maxwell-Stuart suggests the King may have felt allowing the Sandilands to retain possession of the estate was “a form of poetic justice”.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|161-162}}{{sfnp|Z7E55R9Q|108}}
### Earl of Bothwell
In the months following the earl’s escape from custody, he remained at large freely roaming the areas of Lothian and the Borders despite attempts to capture him.{{sfnp|5DNVBUYJ}} His escapades became legendary. Stories – some fact interspersed with fictional accounts – circulated about sightings of him ranging from the Hebrides, Caithness as well as the Merse.{{sfnp|NIJGC6BC|131, 132}}\[p\]The Merse is an archaic term used to describe Berwickshire particularly the area encompassing about {{convert|20|mi}} west of Kelso.{{sfnp|9BVJTZ38|92-92}} English correspondents likened him to a latter day Robin Hood;{{sfnp|NIJGC6BC|133}}{{sfnp|3C46ACDJ|137}} the twenty-first century academic Rob Macpherson describes the political situation in Scotland during that time as a “period of high farce”.{{sfnp|5DNVBUYJ}}
The King and Queen were in residence at Falkland Palace on 28 June 1592 when the earl made an unsuccessful attack on it, backed by four hundred armed men.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|46}} Face to face confrontations also took place between the two adversaries. The earl accosted James and Anne in their Holyrood chambers in December 1591, leading to the execution of his seven accomplices and a reward being posted for his capture. On 24 July 1593 Bothwell again managed entry to the King’s bedroom. Various versions of this encounter from contemporaries exist, but all have the same final result of a calming in the feud between the pair.{{sfnp|NIJGC6BC|131, 133}} The King yielded to his cousin’s request to be tried for the witchcraft charges made against him in April 1591; the trial took place on 10 August 1593.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|47, 281}} Ritchie Graham had been executed more than a year earlier, but his testimony was used as a key component in the charges against the earl.{{sfnp|TDGEZYXC|244}} At the time of his execution Graham continued to insist the statements he made about the earl’s involvement in a conspiracy against the King were true.{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|113}}
The verdict, rendered by an assize of seventeen noblemen,\[q\]The panel was made up of two earls, seven lords and eight barons.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|47}} was to acquit Bothwell on the charge of attempting to use witchcraft for regicide.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|47, 281}} It was reached during a period when the earl had increasingly strong political support in contrast to the falling level given to the monarch.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|221}} The balance of support swayed back to the King within a few weeks;{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|104}} Bothwell joined forces with the papist earls, but by March 1595, the King had secured agreement from the Edinburgh presbytery that the earl be excommunicated.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|49}} Exiled in late March or early April,\[r\]Some sources quote March{{sfnp|5DNVBUYJ}} whereas others give April{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|49}} for when he left Scotland he moved around Europe,{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|49}} continuing to plot against the King. Hatching schemes to mount attacks on Scotland or England that never came to fruition, there were also rumours that he dabbled in necromancy. His health was poor in later years, and he died destitute in Naples in 1612.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|49}}{{sfnp|NIJGC6BC|137-138}}
## Contemporary publications
### *Newes from Scotland*
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/sws-logo-5.jpg)A woodcut included in the pamphlet, showing some of the scenes described in the text
Survey of Scottish Witchcraft
In late 1591, at the height of the witch-hunt in North Berwick, *[Newes from Scotland](https://engole.info/newes-from-scotland/)*, the earliest Scottish or English printed document dedicated exclusively to covering witchcraft in Scotland, was published.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|290}} Tailored specifically for an English audience,{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|37}} the unsigned manuscripts are likely to have been written by James Carmichael, the minister of Haddington, who was involved in examining the accused witches.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|291, 297}}{{sfnp|65LCLHEU}} Details of the initial events leading up to the trials together with how each of the suspected witches were discovered and captured are documented, ending with the execution of John Fian.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|309-324}}
Described by the modern-day historians Lizanne Henderson and Edward Cowan as including “a good dose of titillation and gruesome detail”,{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|123}} it provided the first descriptions of the *[osculum infame](https://engole.info/osculum-infame/)*, also known as the *kiss of shame* or the *obscene kiss*, to an English audience.{{sfnp|F3MJECHY|40}} Lurid details of the violent torture inflicted – and the instruments used – on the accused, but not recorded in official documents, are catalogued.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|302}} Despite being published after suspicion turned towards the Earl of Bothwell,{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|306}} he is not mentioned anywhere within the text.{{sfnp|NIJGC6BC|129}}
### *Daemonologie*
King James started to draft a manuscript for a witchcraft treatise in the wake of the North Berwick events.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|42}} First published in 1597,{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|11-12}} *Daemonologie* incorporated details from 1590–1591 together with information derived from the Aberdeen witch-hunt of 1597.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|42}} Portions of the text closely resemble the pre-trial examinations and dittays collected during the North Berwick panic.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|329}} Later editions were produced, including in 1603 when he ascended to the English throne;{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|11-12}} a 1924 edition includes a copy of *Newes from Scotland*.{{sfnp|JUN52PBX}}
The compendium of three books covers magic, sorcery and witchcraft, and in the third book, the different types of spirits.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|332}} Giving a clear articulation of the King’s beliefs regarding witches,{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|42}} it takes the form of a conversation between Philomathes and Epistemon; the latter answers questions raised by the former.{{sfnp|3ZAJL6PE|85}} Two methods were advocated to be used for [witch-finding](https://engole.info/witch-finding/): pricking the suspects body to find the Devil’s mark, and swimming. Pricking was common practice in Scotland both before and after the publication of *Daemonologie*, but swimming was rarely used.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|44-45}}\[s\]The popularity of detecting witches by pricking led to professionals, such as [John Kincaid](https://engole.info/john-kincaid-witch-finder/), being commonplace in the next two centuries; swimming is only recorded as used once in Scotland, in Aberdeen during 1597, whereas it was common practice in England.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|45}}
## Modern interpretations
None of those convicted or associated with the events were residents of North Berwick;{{sfnp|I3Q5HT4M}} the designation of North Berwick witch trials or alternatively witches is applied as an umbrella term as the largest gathering of the witches, on Halloween 1590, was described in the confessions as being held in the Kirk yard at the village.{{sfnp|ERWEVQ39|303-304}} Some historians expand the appellation to include the outbreak in 1597 as the King became involved then too but the later prosecutions are a separate entity.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|41}}{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|2}}
Writing in the mid-twentieth century on events surrounding the witchcraft accusations and trials of North Berwick, the scholar Helen Stafford observed: “Thus the whole episode remains shrouded in doubts and uncertainties. The fragmentary records excite curiosity and speculation and offer no resolution.”{{sfnp|8Z6LDH4J|116}} Echoing that sentiment in 1973, historian Christina Larner commented: “Whether there was a genuine conspiracy to kill the king, a scare that snowballed, or a government conspiracy to incriminate the Earl of Bothwell, it is now impossible to say.”{{sfnp|Q24GERQ8|418}}\[t\]Quoted by Maxwell-Stuart in *The British Witch*, referenced to the posthumous publication of Larner’s essays in 1984; the original quote is from the chapter ‘James VI and I and Witchcraft’ appearing on page 79, by Larner within *The Reign of James VI and I*, published in 1973
Larner, a highly respected historian,\[u\]Julian Goodare describes Larner (1933 – 27 April 1983) as “the most important scholar that Scottish witchcraft had ever had”,{{sfnp|ERWEVQ39|301}} an opinion shared by other academics. published two books: *A Sourcebook of Scottish Witchcraft* (1977) and *Enemies of God* (1981);{{sfnp|TE8QMQX2|240}} her greatly acclaimed and influential work led to a lull in scholarly research as she had produced such a broad, in-depth coverage of the topic.{{sfnp|MQGRFCDW|65}} Investigations were however reinvigorated in the last decade of the twentieth century; new resources allowed opportunities to build on and refine Larner’s work as well as approaching the topic from a different perspective.{{sfnp|ERWEVQ39|301}} The scrutiny since the 1990s has identified some facets and long held assumptions that require revision.{{sfnp|MQGRFCDW|71}}
Twenty-first-century academics Jenny Wormald and Maxwell-Stuart independently reached the conclusion that King James did not bring continental type witch theory back from Denmark as originally suggested.{{sfnp|MQGRFCDW|68}} Wormald demonstrates that David Seton had knowledge of the demonic pact before James became involved, and highlights the incidence of diabolism in the earlier 1572 case of [Janet Boyman](https://engole.info/janet-boyman/).{{sfnp|ZX65GENS|174}} John Knox may have been familiar with the demonic pact as early as 1556.{{sfnp|ERWEVQ39|304}} Other aspects, such as “general commission for trying witches”{{sfnp|TDGEZYXC|241}} and the role of nobility, lairds and the church are still being debated.{{sfnp|MQGRFCDW|71}}
Maxwell-Stuart offers a theory that the descriptions given of the Devil at the conventions may have a basis in the interrogators desire to depict a similarity to the black gowns and hats sported by Catholic priests.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|146-147}} Fellow academic Joyce Miller notes that post-reformation priests dressed in the same fashion.{{sfnp|NBTBHECC|151-152}} According to Normand and Roberts, the examinations of those suspected of witchcraft influenced King James’s opinions while the nobility managed to shape the confessions into narratives of collusion and treason to suit their own political agendas.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|54}}
Political manoeuvring may also be the basis for speculation concerning the role of another member of elite women, [Jean Lyon, the Countess of Angus](https://engole.info/jean-lyon-countess-of-angus/). She was connected to several of the accused witches, including Barbara Napier and Euphame MacCalzean,{{sfnp|3RME8ZLV|35}} and was mentioned in the depositions given by Agnes Sampson in January 1591 and again in Janet Stratton’s examination later that month.{{sfnp|3RME8ZLV|43-44}} Archibald Douglas, the eighth Earl of Angus, the countess’s second husband, died on 4/5 August 1588,\[v\]The ODNB entry for the eighth earl gives 4 August{{sfnp|4N2AB2WH}} aged thirty-three; witchcraft was blamed for his illness and death.{{sfnp|3RME8ZLV|34}} The countess’s name continued to appear, including in the list of accusations levelled at Barbara during her trial in May. Despite this evidence that she consulted witches, Jean was never interrogated or arrested.{{sfnp|3RME8ZLV|36}} The academic Victoria Carr suggests that James “entertained the idea of Jean’s guilt for a few months.”{{sfnp|3RME8ZLV|44}} After 7 June, however, no further connections to Jean are made until the earl’s trial in 1593; she lived until the first decade of the 17th-century.{{sfnp|3RME8ZLV|45-46}}
In the view of historian Brian Levack, “politicization of witchcraft was James’s main contribution to Scottish witch-hunting”.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|41}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Plague epidemics occurred in: 1568–1569; 1574; an especially protracted outbreak during 1584–1588; and 1597–1599.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|56}}{{sfnp|I3Q5HT4M}} b Francis Stewart Hepburn (1562–1612);{{sfnp|5DNVBUYJ}} he is sometimes designated as the first Earl of Bothwell. c At the time of the North Berwick trials Bothwell and the King were in their twenties.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|39}} d Janet Kennedy Melville (d. 1589), who is sometimes referred to as Jane, (Normand and Roberts use Jean Kennedy{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|31}}) had been one of the attendants of Mary, Queen of Scots, James’s mother, and was present at her execution two years earlier in 1587, having served her for almost twenty years. Janet’s husband, Sir Andrew Melville, was the master of the King’s household.{{sfnp|Z8MJUIQM|966-969}} Sir Andrew was one of the prosecutors in a case against William Downie, Robert Linkup and John Watson on 14 January 1590. The three Leith men were facing a charge of slaughter in respect of the lives lost in the ferryboat’s sinking, as they controlled a boat that ran into the sunken vessel.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|81}} e John Maitland, 1st Lord Maitland of Thirlestane (1543 – 3 October 1595), appointed as vice chancellor in 1586 rising to chancellor from 1587 until 1595{{sfnp|EZQCHFL4}} f The King appointed Bothwell as deputy to the fifteen-year-old Duke of Lennox while Robert Bruce, an Edinburgh minister, provided guidance based on opinions from the Kirk.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|33}} g Koldings gave her interrogators the names of five associates.{{sfnp|4UHZT93N|38}} h Alternative spellings of his name, for example Seaton, are sometimes used in sources. i Doctor was the term used for a schoolmaster.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|144}} j All dates in this article are given in the New Style (Gregorian), but at the time Scotland was still using the Julian calendar, so some sources give 16 December 1590 as Fian’s date of execution. Both the Julian and Gregorian calendars were in use throughout Europe between 1582 and 1752.{{sfnp|285KKP6S}} k In 1593 Bothwell claimed the conspirators working with Ritchie Graham against him included nobles such as the Earl of Morton, the Chancellor, the King’s advocate and others.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|155}} l In this instance “enterprised” is interpreted as “attempted” by Normand and Roberts.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|261}} m Maxwell-Stuart refers to her as a witch from Redden but does not supply a name.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|167}} n Some academics, for instance Edward J. Cowan, quote 22 June;{{sfnp|NIJGC6BC|131}} Normand and Roberts state 2am on 21 June.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|23}} o Sir James Sandilands, a favourite of King James,{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|220}} was the brother of the Laird of Pumperston’s fiancée, Mary Sandilands, by marriage as the pair had wed on 15 July 1586 despite Euphame’s efforts to prevent it. Maxwell-Stuart suggests the King may have felt allowing the Sandilands to retain possession of the estate was “a form of poetic justice”.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|161-162}}{{sfnp|Z7E55R9Q|108}} p The Merse is an archaic term used to describe Berwickshire particularly the area encompassing about {{convert|20|mi}} west of Kelso.{{sfnp|9BVJTZ38|92-92}} q The panel was made up of two earls, seven lords and eight barons.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|47}} r Some sources quote March{{sfnp|5DNVBUYJ}} whereas others give April{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|49}} for when he left Scotland s The popularity of detecting witches by pricking led to professionals, such as [John Kincaid](https://engole.info/john-kincaid-witch-finder/), being commonplace in the next two centuries; swimming is only recorded as used once in Scotland, in Aberdeen during 1597, whereas it was common practice in England.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|45}} t Quoted by Maxwell-Stuart in *The British Witch*, referenced to the posthumous publication of Larner’s essays in 1984; the original quote is from the chapter ‘James VI and I and Witchcraft’ appearing on page 79, by Larner within *The Reign of James VI and I*, published in 1973 u Julian Goodare describes Larner (1933 – 27 April 1983) as “the most important scholar that Scottish witchcraft had ever had”,{{sfnp|ERWEVQ39|301}} an opinion shared by other academics. v The ODNB entry for the eighth earl gives 4 August{{sfnp|4N2AB2WH}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 11303
**Categories:** Scottish, Witch trial
---
### [Harrington Hall](https://engole.info/harrington-hall/)
**Published:** July 12, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Grade I listed country house in Harrington, Lincolnshire.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Harrington-Hall.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/FBHEEbqiXGBgrRar8}}[](https://maps.app.goo.gl/FBHEEbqiXGBgrRar8)|British Listed Buildings
Harrington Hall is a Grade I [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) country house in Harrington, Lincolshire. The original house was built in the late 16th century for the Copledykes, and was rebuilt in the late 17th century by Vincent Amcotts, who had purchased the estate in 1673.{{sfnp|MK8RJ28B}}
The surrounding park and gardens are separately designated as Grade II structures. As at 2024 the hall is privately owned and is not open to the public, although the gardens are occasionally throughout the year.{{sfnp|89EJATB2}}
## Architecture
Harrington Hall is built of red brick with a slate roof. It has two storeys plus attics, thirteen bays and a central three-storey porch. The north wing was added in the 18th century, and was rebuilt in 1902; the L-shaped stables immediately north-west of the hall were rebuilt at the same time. A fire in 1991 caused extensive damage,{{sfnp|89EJATB2}} leaving only the north wing intact. The hall was restored to its original condition in the early 1990s, an effort recognised by a diploma from the Europa Nostra Awards in 1995.{{sfnp|Z7QPU75P}}
## Park and gardens
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/Eleanor_Fortesque_Brickdale%27s_Golden_book_of_famous_women_%281919%29_%2814777464575%29.jpg/330px-Eleanor_Fortesque_Brickdale%27s_Golden_book_of_famous_women_%281919%29_%2814777464575%29.jpg)*Maud is Only Seventeen*, by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale
Wikimedia Commons
The {{convert|25|ha|adj=on}} park contains two formal gardens: a walled kitchen garden and a {{convert|0.25|ha|adj=on}} terrace garden.{{sfnp|89EJATB2}} The walled garden is said to be the one featured in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem *Maud* (1855),{{sfnp|JB98JGIQ}} which was adapted into the song “Come Into the Garden, Maud” (1857).{{sfnp|VKVL9NS8}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26583
**Categories:** Country house, Lincolnshire
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Thornhill, Derbyshire](https://engole.info/thornhill-derbyshire/)
**Published:** January 7, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Approaching_Thornhill_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3030002.jpg[/pimage]Village and civil parish in the district of High Peak, Derbyshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Approaching_Thornhill_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3030002.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/j7xArPXeoKZ4Pcmv6
Thornhill is a [village](https://engole.info/village) and [civil parish](https://engole.info/civil-parish) in the district of High Peak, in Derbyshire, England,{{sfnp|BB32INK9}} just south of the Ladybower Reservoir. It was incorporated as a civil parish in December 1866,{{sfnp|RFMUFZEE}} and is now jointly administered locally with its neighbouring civil parish of Bamford, under the auspices of the Bamford with Thornhill Parish Council.{{sfnp|BB32INK9}}
As at the 2021 Census, the population of Thornhill was 147, occupying an area of {{convert|24.63|ha}}, giving a population density of 5.97 per hectare.{{sfnp|D5C3FUUG}}
The parish contains three Grade II [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building), all farm houses or farm buildings:
- Chapel Farmhouse and attached Outbuildings.{{sfnp|8FNQ778K}}
- Barn to North of Ryecroft Cottage Farmhouse.{{sfnp|RHRDNDRE}}
- The Farm.{{sfnp|7L7TBZAW}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27135
**Categories:** Derbyshire, Parish, Village
---
### [The Screwtape Letters](https://engole.info/the-screwtape-letters/)
**Published:** November 15, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c2/Thescrewtapeletters.jpg[/pimage]1942 novel by C. S. Lewis, in the form of a series of letters between a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew Wormwood, who is tasked with securing the damnation of a British man known only as the patient.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c2/Thescrewtapeletters.jpg)First edition dust wrapper
Wikimedia Commons
*The Screwtape Letters* is a novel by the British author C. S. Lewis, first published in 1942. Written in [epistolarity style](https://engole.info/epistolatory-novel), it takes the form of a series of thirty-one letters from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew Wormwood, a junior tempter, who has been tasked with securing the damnation of a British man known only as the patient, by guiding him towards “Our Father Below”, Satan, and away from the “Enemy”, God.
The book is not written as a Christian theological defence of the literal reading of Biblical demons, but uses them to explore Christianity from the Devil’s point of view.{{sfnp|R528ES5N}} In his preface Lewis remarks that there are two errors humans can fall into with regard to devils: the first is is not to believe in them, and the second is to become obsessed by them, either of which outcomes please the demons equally.{{sfnp|55NJQHVV|9}}
## Synopsis
In his opening letter to his nephew, Screwtape warns against believing that rational argument will persuade the patient, as it will simply awaken the patient’s reason, with unforeseen consequences. Instead he advises the use of jargon, which the press and other media has already accustomed the patient to. In the second letter it is revealed that the patient has converted to Christianity, for which Screwtape warns that his nephew will not “escape the usual penalties”. But he also points Wormwood towards one of their great allies, the Church itself:
When he [the patient] gets to his pew and looks around him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided … Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be ridiculous.{{sfnp
— 55NJQHVV|16}}
As the plot develops, a striking contrast forms between Wormwood and Screwtape. Wormwood is depicted as being anxious to tempt his patient into extravagantly wicked and deplorable sins, often recklessly, while Screwtape advises a more subtle approach. In Letter XII Screwtape remarks that “the safest road to hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”{{sfnp|55NJQHVV|65}}
In Letter XXII, after several failed attempts to find a licentious woman for the patient “to promote a useful marriage,” and after Screwtape narrowly avoids a painful punishment for having divulged to Wormwood God’s genuine love for humanity – about which Wormwood had promptly informed the Infernal authorities – Screwtape notes that the patient has fallen in love with a Christian girl, and through her and her family has adopted a very Christian way of life.
The final letter reveals that the patient has been killed during the Second World War blitz, and has gone to Heaven. For his ultimate failure in letting a soul slip through his fingers, Wormwood is given to Screwtape to be consumed. In his final letter Screwtape describes his nephew as “as dainty a morsel as ever I grew fat on”,{{sfnp|55NJQHVV|156}} ending with “Your increasingly and ravenously affectionate uncle”.{{sfnp|55NJQHVV|160}}
## Sequel
Lewis wrote a short sequel to the *The Screwtape Letters*, first published as an article in *The Saturday Evening Post* in 1959, “Screwtape Proposes a Toast”.{{sfnp|KZB9EL7S}} It takes the form of an after-dinner speech given in Hell by Screwtape, to the graduating class of demons at the Tempters’ Training College.
## See also
- [List of works by C. S. Lewis](https://engole.info/c-s-lewis-bibliography)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24976
**Categories:** Novel
---
### [Morgan le Fay (painting)](https://engole.info/morgan-le-fay-painting/)
**Published:** October 25, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/db/Frederick_Sandys_-_Morgan-le-Fay_-_1925P104_-_Birmingham_Museum_and_Art_Gallery.jpg/960px-Frederick_Sandys_-_Morgan-le-Fay_-_1925P104_-_Birmingham_Museum_and_Art_Gallery.jpg[/pimage]1864 Pre-Raphaelite painting by Frederick Sandys, depicting the legendary witch and jealous half-sister of King Arthur.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/db/Frederick_Sandys_-_Morgan-le-Fay_-_1925P104_-_Birmingham_Museum_and_Art_Gallery.jpg/960px-Frederick_Sandys_-_Morgan-le-Fay_-_1925P104_-_Birmingham_Museum_and_Art_Gallery.jpg)Oil on panel
62 cm × 44 cm (24 in × 17 in
Wikimedia Commons
*Morgan le Fay* is an 1864 oil painting by the [Pre-Raphaelite](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood) painter Frederick Sandys, portraying the legendary witch and King Arthur’s jealous half-sister, Morgan le Fay. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1864.{{sfnp|JXHTSHI8}}
The painting shows Morgana standing in front of a loom on which she has woven an enchanted robe, designed to consume the body of King Arthur by fire. She is passing a flaming lamp back and forth as she chants her spell. The model for Morgan le Fay was Sandys’ mistress, the Romany woman Keomi Gray.{{sfnp|JXHTSHI8}}
The picture is now in the collection of the Birmingham Museums Trust, to which it was donated by the John Feeney Bequest Fund in 1925.{{sfnp|9G67V6S3}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 28054
**Categories:** Frederick Sandys, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
---
### [Nyetimber Mill](https://engole.info/nyetimber-mill/)
**Published:** May 29, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Nytimber_Mill.jpg[/pimage]Grade II listed former windmill in Pagham, Sussex, now part of a retirement complex.
**Content:**
map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/X8urDZCSEFeQ3c1N9}}
Nyetimber Mill in 2005
Nyetimber Mill is a Grade II [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) former windmill in Pagham, Sussex, built in about 1840.{{sfnp|CJ8SST89}} It was a four-storey brick tower mill with an ogee cap and four sails, winded by a fantail. The mill drove two pairs of millstones.{{sfnp|348ANZSV|81-82,191}}
The mill was in operation grinding corn until 1915.{{sfnp|348ANZSV|81-82,191}} Its last miller and owner, John Durman, blamed the government of the day for the mill’s closure; the mill ground corn for the consumption of cattle, but during the First World War the government decided that only grinding for human consumption should be permitted.{{sfnp|69ZIFURF}}
Durman sold the mill in 1960.{{sfnp|69ZIFURF}} It was burnt out in 1962,{{sfnp|348ANZSV|81-82,191}} and subsequently fell into disrepair.{{sfnp|348ANZSV|81-82,191}}{{sfnp|IIXC7NWX}}
As at 2025, Nyetimber Mill is part of a retirement complex of 52 flats and bungalows built in 1982.{{sfnp|65GAAWCZ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27471
**Categories:** Sussex, Windmill
---
### [Hidden Masters](https://engole.info/hidden-masters/)
**Published:** April 29, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Esoteric brotherhood of superhuman beings in the Tibetan Himalayas who, it is claimed, watch over the welfare of humanity.
**Content:**
According to the founder of the Theosophical Society, Helena Blavatsky, commonly known as Madame Blavatsky, there exists somewhere in the vastness of the Tibetan Himalayas an esoteric brotherhood of superhuman beings who watch over the welfare of humanity. Blavatsky revealed this insight in her book *Isis Unveiled*, published in 1877, in which she claimed to have met the Hidden Masters, and been chosen by them to bring news of their existence to the West.{{sfnp|UVGUA2YW|search=Hidden Masters}}\[a\]There is considerable doubt whether Blavatsky ever visited Tibet. Her biographer, Marion Meade, has commented on Blavatsky’s tales of Tibet and various other adventures by stating that “hardly a word of this appears to be true”.{{sfnp|QUAJFUHW|69}}
The concept of the world being in some sense regulated by hidden masters was not one invented by Blavatsky. She chose to focus on the beliefs of Eastern religions, in particular Hinduism,{{sfnp|RKVBSNUG}} but a similar Western tradition had emerged during the Renaissance, when the pamphlet *Fama fraternitatis* claimed to reveal the existence of a secret Rosicrucian brotherhood overseeing the welfare of Europe, and again with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the 19th century, which claimed that their leaders spent most of their time in spirit form.{{sfnp|UVGUA2YW|search=Hidden Masters}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a There is considerable doubt whether Blavatsky ever visited Tibet. Her biographer, Marion Meade, has commented on Blavatsky’s tales of Tibet and various other adventures by stating that “hardly a word of this appears to be true”.{{sfnp|QUAJFUHW|69}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29940
**Categories:** Religious term
---
### [Holne Woodlands](https://engole.info/holne-woodlands/)
**Published:** June 28, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Holne-Woodlands.webp[/pimage]Biological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) within the Dartmoor National Park, Devon.
**Content:**
Holne Woodlands, previously known as Holne Chase and Central South Dartmoor, is a {{convert|1007.5|ha|acre|adj=on|r=0}} biological Site of Special Interest (SSSI) within the Dartmoor National Park, Devon. It includes Holne Chase, a Nature Conservation Review site, and is part-owned by the National Trust.{{sfnp|T8N2D6TX}} It also includes Holne Chase Castle, a univallate Iron Age hillfort and Scheduled Monument.{{sfnp|4P8P3XBB}} The name “Holne” means “place abounding in holly”.{{sfnp|S79QKKD7}}
The site is important for its extensive area of ancient semi-natural oak woodland, which supports nationally important lichen communities and many species of breeding bird. Most of the woodland lies on Carboniferous slates and mudstones, which have been cut through by the fast-flowing River Dart and its tributaries to form a steep valley system, ranging in height from about {{convert|60|m|abbr=on}} to {{convert|300|m|abbr=on}}.{{sfnp|T8N2D6TX}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Holne-Woodlands.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/gjqtnzBHZumtPJGz9}}|Woodland Trust
## Flora and fauna
The woodland is dominated by sessile oak, with ash and wych elm trees occupying the wetter soils. Herbaceous plants include sanicle, woodruff, primrose and common cow-wheat. Fern species (particularly on the north-facing slopes) include scaly male-fern, broad buckler-fern, lady fern, lemon-scented fern (*Thelypteris limbosperma*), royal fern and Tunbridge filmy-fern.{{sfnp|T8N2D6TX}}
Lichens found on the site include *Lobaria pulmonaria*, *Lobaria laetevirens*, *Lobaria scrobiculata*, *Graphina ruiziana*, *Heterodermia obscurata*, *Parmeliella jamesii*, *Peltigera collina*, *Parmelia sinuosa* and *Sticta dufourii*.{{sfnp|T8N2D6TX}}
Bird species include raven, buzzard, great spotted woodpecker, wood warbler, pied flycatcher, redstart, stonechat and whinchat. Otters (*Lutra lutra*) have been seen traversing the site, and the water quality provides a suitable environment for the spawning of salmon (*Salmo salar*) and trout (*Salmo trutta*).{{sfnp|T8N2D6TX}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27595
**Categories:** Devon, SSSI
---
### [Statute of Silence 1581](https://engole.info/statute-of-silence-1581/)
**Published:** January 27, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%28black_and_white%29.svg/1280px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%28black_and_white%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of Parliament introducing a series of increasingly gruesome punishments for speaking or publishing anything that Queen Elizabeth I did not wish to hear.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%28black_and_white%29.svg/1280px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%28black_and_white%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Act against Seditious Words and Rumours (23 Eliz. Cap. II), also known as the Statute of Silence, was passed by the parliament of Queen Elizabeth I in January 1581. It introduced a series of increasingly gruesome punishments for speaking or publishing anything that the Queen did not wish to hear, ranging from the loss of an ear to capital punishment. An amendment to the the Act did however specify that all offences had to be committed maliciously to be subject to the law.{{sfnp|67RKHZBH|34}}
By the time of the Act there was an increasing fear of witchcraft and the occult in general. That concern was reflected in making it a capital offence to use astrology or divination to predict the Queen’s death, or to predict her successor,{{sfnp|KYDN5EQS|190}}{{sfnp|7PMZ84F6}} but astrology in general was not criminalised.{{sfnp|JG29PR48}}
Rather unusually the punishments set out for being found guilty of some of the new felonies defined by this legislation varied according to where the offence took place. For instance, if seditious rumours were spread in a market place or shire city, the offender would be punished by being being [pilloried](https://engole.info/pillory). But in a “Cittie or Town Corporate” the same offence was to be punished by cutting off both of the offender’s ears. The penalty for reoffending in both cases was death.{{sfnp|7PMZ84F6}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 13830
**Categories:** English, Statute
**Tags:** Facebook post, Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Quoin](https://engole.info/quoin/)
**Published:** July 15, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Quoin.jpg[/pimage]Any external angle or corner of a structure.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Quoin.jpg)Standard return quoin, with one long side over one short side
Designing Buildings Wiki
A quoin is any external angle or corner of a structure,{{sfnp|KK635TT3}} often decorated with quoins – brick or stonework that projects from the face of the wall.{{sfnp|6XAWCENP}} The term derives from the French *coin*, meaning “corner”.{{sfnp|A83JKCHK}}
Historically, the term *quoin* was also used by printers for a small expanding device that held the typeset firmly in place in a frame known as a forme.{{sfnp|NX893QBZ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23673
**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Electrum](https://engole.info/electrum/)
**Published:** March 9, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Ephesos_620-600_BC_FANEOS.jpg[/pimage]Naturally occurring amalgam of gold and silver used in the production of early coins.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Ephesos_620-600_BC_FANEOS.jpg)Electrum coin from Ephesus, 620–600 BCE
Wikimedia Commons
Electrum is a naturally occurring amalgam of gold and silver used in the production of coins in Lydia – present-day Turkey – during the 7th century BCE, the first known use of coinage in the West.{{sfnp|NCMLFLD7}} It was known by the Lydians as green gold, despite being slightly pale lemon in colour, owing to the trace amounts of copper and other elements it contains.{{sfnp|3SPFRYAY}}
Electrum was more suitable for coinage than gold, being harder and more durable, and techniques for refining gold were not widespread at the time. The gold content of naturally occurring electrum in modern western Anatolia ranges from 70–90 per cent, in contrast to the 45–55 per cent of gold in electrum found in ancient Lydian coinage in the same geographical area. This suggests that the Lydians had learned how to refine silver, and were adding refined silver to the local native electrum some decades before introducing pure silver coins.{{sfnp|ZWA75A6I|609-614}}
Variations in the composition of electrum made it difficult to determine the intrinsic worth of each coin, a hinderance to widespread trading that led to the introduction of coins of pure gold and silver.{{sfnp|82XGYPNZ|49-50}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26077
**Categories:** Coinage
---
### [Manchester Ship Canal](https://engole.info/manchester-ship-canal/)
**Published:** February 24, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Tanker_ship_canal.jpg[/pimage]36-mile-long (58 km) inland waterway in the North West of England linking Manchester to the Irish Sea.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Tanker_ship_canal.jpg)*Stolt Kittiwake* heading toward the Mersey Estuary, 2005
Wikimedia Commons
The Manchester Ship Canal is a 36-mile-long (58 km) inland waterway in the North West of England linking Manchester to the Irish Sea. Starting at the Mersey Estuary near Liverpool, it generally follows the original routes of the rivers Mersey and Irwell through the historic counties of Cheshire and Lancashire. Several sets of locks lift vessels about 60 feet (18 m) up to Manchester, where the canal’s terminus was built. Major landmarks along its route include the [Barton Swing Aqueduct](https://engole.info/barton-swing-aqueduct/), the only swing aqueduct in the world, and [Trafford Park](https://engole.info/trafford-park/), the world’s first planned industrial estate and still the largest in Europe.
The rivers Mersey and Irwell were first made navigable in the early 18th century. Goods were also transported on the Runcorn extension of the Bridgewater Canal (from 1776) and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (from 1830), but by the late 19th century the Mersey and Irwell Navigation had fallen into disrepair and was often unusable. In addition, Manchester’s business community viewed the charges imposed by Liverpool’s docks and the railway companies as excessive. A ship canal was therefore proposed as a way of giving ocean-going vessels direct access to Manchester. The region was suffering from the effects of the Long Depression, and for the canal’s proponents, who argued that the scheme would boost competition and create jobs, the idea of a ship canal made sound economic sense. They initiated a public campaign to enlist support for the scheme, which was first presented to Parliament as a bill in 1882. Faced with stiff opposition from Liverpool, the canal’s supporters were unable to gain the necessary Act of Parliament to allow the scheme to go ahead until 1885.
Construction began in 1887; it took six years and cost £15 million, equivalent to about £1.7 billion as at 2018.\[a\]Comparing project costs using the GDP deflator calculation at Measuring Worth.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} When the ship canal opened in January 1894 it was the largest river navigation canal in the world, and enabled the newly created Port of Manchester to become Britain’s third busiest port despite the city being about {{convert|40|mi}} miles (64 km) inland. Changes to shipping methods and the growth of containerisation during the 1970s and ’80s meant that many ships were now too big to use the canal and traffic declined, resulting in the closure of the terminal docks at Salford. Although able to accommodate a range of vessels from coastal ships to intercontinental cargo liners, the canal is not large enough for most modern vessels. By 2011 traffic had decreased from its peak in 1958 of 18 million tons of freight each year to about 7 million tons.
The canal is now privately owned by Peel Ports, whose plans include the construction of {{convert|4000000|sqft|spell=in}} of warehousing and logistics facilities,{{sfnp|VPRYCRHW}} as part of their Atlantic Gateway Project.{{sfnp|W6TIJ9MM}}
## History
### Early history
The idea that the rivers Mersey and Irwell should be made navigable from the Mersey Estuary in the west to Manchester in the east was first proposed in 1660, and revived in 1712 by the English civil engineer Thomas Steers.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|5}} The necessary legislation was proposed in 1720, and the Act of Parliament for the navigation passed into law in 1721.{{sfnp|M6L8FVQR|200}}{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|10}} Construction began in 1724, undertaken by the Mersey & Irwell Navigation Company.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|5}} By 1734 boats “of moderate size” were able to make the journey from quays near Water Street in Manchester to the Irish Sea,{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|3-4}} but the navigation was only suitable for small ships; during periods of low rainfall or when strong easterly winds held back the tide in the estuary, there was not always sufficient depth of water for a fully laden boat.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|7}} The completion in 1776 of the Runcorn extension of the Bridgewater Canal, followed in 1830 by the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, intensified competition for the carriage of goods. In 1825 an application had been made to Parliament for an Act to allow the construction of a ship canal between the mouth of the River Dee and Manchester at a cost of £1 million, but “the necessary forms not having been observed”, it did not become law.{{sfnp|G3Z2297U|279}} In 1844 ownership of the Mersey & Irwell Navigation was transferred to the Bridgewater Trustees, and in 1872 it was sold to The Bridgewater Navigation Company for £1.112 million.{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|16}} The navigation had by then fallen into disrepair, its owners preferring instead to maintain the more profitable canal;{{sfnp|WFQXATZT|277}} in 1882 the navigation was described as being “hopelessly choked with silt and filth”, and was closed to all but the smaller boats for 264 out of 311 working days.{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|16}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Ship_Canal_Cartoon_Punch.jpg)A cartoon published in the satirical magazine *Punch* in 1882, ridiculing the idea that Manchester could become a major seaport
Wikimedia Commons
Along with deteriorating economic conditions in the 1870s{{sfnp|M2W3WYEI|41}} and the start of a period known as the Long Depression, the dues charged by the Port of Liverpool and the railway charges from there to Manchester were perceived to be excessive by Manchester’s business community; it was often cheaper to import goods from Hull, on the opposite side of the country, than it was from Liverpool.{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|27}} A ship canal was proposed as a way to reduce carriage charges, avoid payment of dock and town dues at Liverpool, and bypass the Liverpool to Manchester railways by giving Manchester direct access to the sea for its imports and its exports of manufactured goods.{{sfnp|3QUA7P3I|173}} Historian Ian Harford suggested that the canal may also have been conceived as an “imaginative response to \[the\] problems of depression and unemployment”{{sfnp|M2W3WYEI|168}} that Manchester was experiencing during the early 1880s. Its proponents argued that reduced transport costs would make local industry more competitive, and that the scheme would help create new jobs.{{sfnp|M2W3WYEI|11}}
The idea was championed by Manchester manufacturer Daniel Adamson, who arranged a meeting at his home, The Towers in Didsbury, on 27 June 1882. He invited the representatives of several Lancashire towns, local businessmen and politicians, and two civil engineers: Hamilton Fulton and Edward Leader Williams. Fulton’s design was for a tidal canal, with no locks and a deepened channel into Manchester. With the city about {{convert|60|ft}} above sea level, the docks and quays would have been well below the surrounding surface. Williams’ plan was to dredge a channel between a set of retaining walls, and build a series of locks and sluices to lift incoming vessels up to Manchester.{{sfnp|JS8YQYDY|121-122}} Both engineers were invited to submit their proposals, and Williams’ plans were selected to form the basis of a bill to be submitted to Parliament later that year.{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|31}}
### Public campaign
To generate support for the scheme, the provisional committee initiated a public campaign led by Joseph Lawrence, who had worked for the Hull and Barnsley Railway. His task was to set up committees in every ward in Manchester and throughout Lancashire, to raise subscriptions and sell the idea to the local public. The first meeting was held on 4 October in Manchester’s Oxford Ward, followed by another on 17 October in the St. James Ward. Within a few weeks meetings had been held throughout Manchester and Salford, culminating in a conference on 3 November attended by the provisional committee and members of the various Ward Committees. A large meeting of the working classes, attended by several local notables including the general secretaries of several trade unions, was held on 13 November at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester.{{sfnp|M2W3WYEI|21-23}}
Regular night-time meetings were held across the region, headed by speakers from a range of professions. Harford suggests that the organisers’ choice of orators represents their “canny ability”{{sfnp|M2W3WYEI|24}} to choose speakers who might move their audiences to support their cause. By adopting techniques used by the Anti-Corn Law League, their strategy was ultimately successful: local offices were acquired, secretaries hired and further meetings organised. The weekly *Ship Canal Gazette*, priced at one penny,{{sfnp|M2W3WYEI|22}} was by the end of the year being sold at newsagents in towns across Lancashire.{{sfnp|M2W3WYEI|24-26}} *The Gazette* was part of a prolonged print campaign organised by the committee, to circulate leaflets and pamphlets, and write supportive letters to the local press, often signed with pseudonyms.{{sfnp|M2W3WYEI|23}} One of the few surviving leaflets, “The Manchester Ship Canal. Reasons why it Should be Made”, argued against dock and railway rates, which were apparently levied “with the object of protecting the interests of Railway kings, \[so that\] trade is handicapped, and wages kept low”.{{sfnp|M2W3WYEI|26}} By the end of 1882 the provisional committee comprised members from several of Manchester’s large industries, but notably few of the city’s wealthier inhabitants. The sympathetic *Manchester City News* reported that “the rich men of South and East Lancashire, with a few notable exceptions, have not rivalled the enthusiasm of the general public”.{{sfnp|M2W3WYEI|24}}
### Bills
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/BridgewaterCanalCheque.jpg)Cheque dated 3 August 1887, in the amount of £1,710,000, for the purchase of the Bridgewater Navigation Company. At the time it was the largest cheque ever presented.{{sfnp
8AQU3ZS2|43}}|Wikipedia
The Mersey Docks Board opposed the committee’s first bill, presented late in 1882, and it was rejected by Parliament in January 1883 for breaching Standing Orders. Within six weeks the committee organised hundreds of petitions from a range of bodies across the country: one representing Manchester was signed by almost 200,000 people. The requirement for Standing Orders was dispensed with, and the represented bill allowed to proceed. Some witnesses against the scheme, worried that a canal would cause the entrance to the Mersey estuary to silt up, blocking traffic, cited the case of Chester harbour. This had silted up owing to a man-made cut through the Dee estuary. Faced with conflicting evidence, Parliament rejected the bill.{{sfnp|JS8YQYDY|122}} Later mass meetings were held, including a large demonstration at Pomona Gardens on 24 June 1884. Strong opposition from Liverpool led the House of Commons Committee to reject the committee’s second bill on 1 August 1884.{{sfnp|M2W3WYEI|26-27}}
The unresolved question of what would happen to the Mersey estuary if the canal was built had remained a sticking point. During questioning, an engineer for the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board was asked how he would avoid such a problem. His reply, “I should enter at Eastham and carry the canal along the shore until I reached Runcorn, and then I would strike inland”,{{sfnp|MCKRRJ7P|108}} prompted Williams to change his design to include this suggestion.{{sfnp|JS8YQYDY|122}} Despite continued opposition, the committee’s third bill, presented in November 1884, was passed by Parliament on 2 May 1885, and received royal assent on 6 August, becoming the Manchester Ship Canal Act 1885. Certain conditions were attached: £5 million had to be raised, and the ship canal company was legally obliged to buy the Bridgewater Canal and the Mersey & Irwell Navigation within two years.{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|37}} The estimated cost of construction was £5.16 million, and the work was expected to take four years to complete.{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|31}}
### Financing
The enabling Act of Parliament stipulated that the ship canal company’s £8 million share capital had to be issued within two years, otherwise the act would lapse.{{sfnp|M2W3WYEI|14}} Adamson wanted to encourage the widest possible share ownership, and believed the funds should be raised largely from the working population. Richard Peacock, vice-chairman of the Provisional Manchester Ship Canal Committee, said in 1882:
No few individuals should be expected to subscribe and form a company for mere gain; it should be taken on by the public; and if it is not … I for one should say drop the scheme … unless I see the public coming forward in a hearty manner.{{sfnp
— M2W3WYEI|132}}
The Act forbade the company from issuing shares below £10 so, to make them easier for ordinary people to buy, they issued shilling coupons in books of ten so they could be paid for in instalments.{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|38-39}} The construction costs and expected competition from the Port of Liverpool put off potential investors; by May 1887 only £3 million had been raised. As a temporary solution Thomas Walker, the contractor selected to construct the canal, agreed to accept £500,000 of the contract price in shares, but raising the remainder required another Act of Parliament to allow the company’s share capital to be restructured as £3 million of ordinary shares and £4 million of preference shares.{{sfnp|M2W3WYEI|14}} Adamson was convinced that the money should be raised from members of the public and opposed the debt restructuring, resigning as chairman of the Ship Canal Committee on 1 February 1887. Barings and Rothschild jointly issued a prospectus for the sale of the preference shares on 15 July, and by 21 July the issue had been fully underwritten, allowing construction to begin.{{sfnp|M2W3WYEI|14}}{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|42-43}} The first sod was cut on 11 November 1887, by Lord Egerton of Tatton, who had taken over the chairmanship of the Manchester Ship Canal Company from Adamson.{{sfnp|CBWT3T8Q|4}}
The canal company exhausted its capital of £8 million in 4 years, when only half the construction work was completed. To avoid bankruptcy they appealed for funds to Manchester Corporation, which set up a Ship Canal Committee. On 9 March 1891 the corporation decided, on the committee’s recommendation, to lend the necessary £3 million, to preserve the city’s prestige. In return the corporation was allowed to appoint five of the fifteen members of the board of directors. The company subsequently raised its estimates of the cost of completion in September 1891 and again in June 1892. An executive committee was appointed as an emergency measure in December 1891, and on 14 October 1892 the Ship Canal Committee resolved to lend a further £1.5 million on condition that Manchester Corporation had an absolute majority on the canal company’s board of directors and its various sub-committees.{{sfnp|3QUA7P3I|174}} The corporation subsequently appointed 11 of the 21 seats,{{sfnp|HLS5H4WU|184}} nominated Alderman Sir John Harwood as deputy director of the company, and secured majorities on five of the board’s six sub-committees. The cost to Manchester Corporation of financing the Ship Canal Company had a significant impact on local taxpayers. Manchester’s municipal debt rose by 67 per cent, resulting in a 26 per cent increase in rates between 1892 and 1895.{{sfnp|3QUA7P3I|175}}
However well this arrangement served the corporation, by the mid-1980s it had become “meaningless”. Most of the company’s shares were controlled by the property developer John Whittaker, and in 1986 the council agreed to give up all but one of its seats in return for a payment of £10 million. The deal extricated Manchester Council from a politically difficult conflict of interest, as Whittaker was proposing to develop a large out of town shopping centre on land owned by the Ship Canal Company at Dumplington, the present-day Trafford Centre. The council opposed the scheme, believing that it would damage the city centre economy, but accepted that it was “obviously in the interests of the shareholders”.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|98-100}}\[b\]£7 million was paid in cash and £3 million invested in a joint venture company set up by Whittaker and the council, Ship Canal Developments. The object of the new company was to provide resources and development expertise for the regeneration of east Manchester.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|100}}
### Construction
*The Excavation of the Manchester Ship Canal: Eastham Cutting with Mount Manisty in the Distance* (1891), by Benjamin Williams Leader, brother of the canal’s engineer
Wikimedia Commons
Thomas Walker was appointed as contractor, with Edward Leader Williams as chief engineer and designer and general manager. The {{convert|36|mi|adj=on}} route was divided into eight sections, with one engineer responsible for each. The first reached from Eastham to Ellesmere Port. Mount Manisty, a large mound of earth on a narrow stretch between the canal and the Mersey northwest of Ellesmere Port, was constructed from soil taken from the excavations. It and the adjacent Manisty Cutting were named after the engineer in charge. The last section built was the passage from Weston Point through the Runcorn gap to Norton; the existing docks at Runcorn and Weston had to be kept operational until they could be connected to the completed western sections of the ship canal.{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|46-47}}
For the first two years construction went according to plan, but Walker died on 25 November 1889. The work was continued by his executors, but the project suffered setbacks and was hampered by harsh weather and several serious floods. In January 1891, when the project had been expected to have been completed, a severe winter added to the difficulties; the Bridgewater Canal, the company’s only source of income, was closed after a fall of ice. The company decided to take over the contracting work and bought all the on site equipment for £400,000.{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|53}} Some railway companies, whose bridges had to be modified to cross the canal, demanded compensation. The London and North Western Railway and Great Western Railway refused to cooperate, and between them they demanded about £533,000 for inconvenience. The Ship Canal Company was unable to demolish the older, low railway bridges until August 1893, when the matter went to arbitration. The railway companies were awarded just over £100,000, a fraction of their combined claims.{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|61-62}}
By the end of 1891, the ship canal was open to shipping as far as Saltport, the name given to wharves built at the entrance to the Weaver Navigation. The success of the new port was a source of consternation to merchants in Liverpool, who suddenly found themselves cut out of the trade in goods such as timber, and a source of encouragement to shipping companies, who began to realise the advantages an inland port would offer.{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|59-60}} Saltport was rendered useless when the ship canal was completely filled with water in November 1893. The Manchester Ship Canal Police were formed the following month,{{sfnp|G83D82RT}} and the canal opened to its first traffic on 1 January 1894. On 21 May, Queen Victoria performed the official opening,{{sfnp|CHWRXF92}} the last of three royal visits she made to Manchester. During the ceremony she knighted the Mayor of Salford, William Henry Bailey, and the Lord Mayor of Manchester, Anthony Marshall; Edward Leader Williams was knighted on 2 July by letters patent.{{sfnp|H6MQ39I9}}
The ship canal took six years to complete at a cost of just over £15 million,{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|3}} equivalent to about £1.7 billion as at 2018.\[c\]Comparing project costs using the GDP deflator calculation at Measuring Worth.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} It is still the longest river navigation canal{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|120}} and remains the world’s eighth-longest ship canal, only slightly shorter than the Panama Canal in Central America.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|6}} More than 54 million cubic yards (41,000,000 m³) of material were excavated, about half as much as was removed during the building of the Suez Canal.{{sfnp|CBWT3T8Q|3}} An average of 12,000 workers were employed during construction, peaking at 17,000.{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|89}} Regular navvies were paid 4 ½d per hour for a 10-hour working day, equivalent to about £20 per day as at 2018.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|34}}\[d\]Using the change in the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} In terms of machinery, the project made use of more than {{convert|200|mi}} of temporary rail track, 180 locomotives, more than 6000 trucks and wagons, 124 steam-powered cranes, 192 other steam engines, and 97 steam excavators.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|38}}{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|93}} Major engineering landmarks included the [Barton Swing Aqueduct](https://engole.info/barton-swing-aqueduct/), the first and only swing aqueduct in the world,{{sfnp|JSCQWXSJ}} and a neighbouring swing bridge for road traffic at Barton, both of which are now Grade II\* listed structures.{{sfnp|8IP2FRJI}} In 1909 the canal’s depth was increased by {{convert|2|ft}} to {{convert|28|ft}}, equalling that of the Suez Canal.{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|117-118}}
## Operational history
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Manchester_Ship_Canal_viewed_from_the_air.jpg)The ship canal alongside the Mersey between Stanlow and Runcorn, looking east
Wikimedia Commons
The Manchester Ship Canal enabled the newly created [Port of Manchester](https://engole.info/port-of-manchester/) to become Britain’s third-busiest port, despite the city being about {{convert|40|mi}} inland.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|6}} Since its opening in 1894 the canal has handled a wide range of ships and cargos, from coastal vessels to intra-European shipping and intercontinental cargo liners. The first vessel to unload its cargo on the opening day was the *Pioneer*, belonging to the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS), which was also the first vessel registered at Manchester; the CWS operated a weekly service to Rouen.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|25}}
[Manchester Liners](https://engole.info/manchester-liners/) established regular sailings by large ocean-going vessels. In late 1898 the *Manchester City*, at 7,698 gross tons, became the largest vessel to reach the terminal docks. Carrying cattle and general cargo, it was met by the Lord Mayor of Manchester and a large welcoming crowd.{{sfnp|763KLA47|19}} In 1968 Manchester Liners converted its fleet to container vessels only. To service them it built two dedicated container terminals next to No. 9 Dock.{{sfnp|QLWSBHVV|55}} The four container vessels commissioned that year, each of 11,898 gross tons, were the largest ever to make regular use of the terminal docks at Salford.{{sfnp|763KLA47|43}} In 1974 the canal handled 2.9 million tons of dry cargo, 27 per cent of which was carried by Manchester Liners.{{sfnp|NHRMETMI|35}} The dry tonnage was, and is still, greatly supplemented by crude and refined oil products transported in large tanker ships to and from the Queen Elizabeth II Dock at Eastham and the Stanlow Refinery just east of Ellesmere Port, and also in smaller tankers to Runcorn. The limitations imposed by the canal on the maximum size of container vessel meant that by the mid-1970s Manchester Liners was becoming uncompetitive; the company sold its last ship in 1985.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|118}}
**Tonnage handled by Manchester Ship Canal ports**1895190519151925193519451,358,8753,060,5165,434,0465,881,6916,135,0036,531,96319551965197519851995200518,563,37615,715,40914,816,1219,767,3808,751,9387,261,919
The amount of freight carried by the canal peaked in 1958 at 18 million tons, but the increasing size of ocean-going ships and the port’s failure to introduce modern freight-handling methods resulted in that headline figure dropping steadily, and the closure of the docks in Salford in 1984.{{sfnp|PD8ULRXQ|83}} Total freight movements on the ship canal were down to 7.56 million tons by 2000, and further reduced to 6.6 million tons for the year ending September 2009.{{sfnp|N2F7JBRP}}
The maximum length of vessel currently accepted is {{convert|530|ft|r=1}} with a beam of {{convert|63.5|ft|r=2}}{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2}} and a maximum draft of 24 feet (7.3 m).{{sfnp|763KLA47|43}} By contrast the similarly sized Panama Canal, completed a few years after the Manchester Ship Canal, was able to accept ships of up to {{convert|950|ft|r=1}} in length with a beam of {{convert|106|ft|r=2}}.\[71\] In comparison, the Panama Canal can handle vessels of {{convert|1201|ft}} in length with a beam of {{convert|161|ft}} and a draft of {{convert|50|ft}}.{{sfnp|5667RYL7}} Ships passing under the Runcorn Bridge have a height restriction of {{convert|70|ft}} above normal water levels.{{sfnp|W4G6DX3K|157}}
## Present day
The canal was completed just as the Long Depression was coming to an end,{{sfnp|SP8I24NV|188}} but it was never the commercial success its sponsors had hoped for. At first gross revenue was less than a quarter of expected net revenue, and throughout at least the first nineteen years of the canal it was unable to make a profit or meet the interest payments to the Corporation of Manchester.{{sfnp|8LJ2FEA3}} Many ship owners were reluctant to dispatch ocean-going vessels along a “locked cul-de-sac” at a maximum speed of 6 knots (11 km/h; 6.9 mph). The Ship Canal Company found it difficult to attract a diversified export trade, which meant that ships frequently had to return down the canal loaded with ballast rather than freight. The only staple imports attracted to the Port of Manchester were lamp oil and bananas, the latter from 1902 until 1911. As the import trade in oil began to grow during the 20th century the balance of canal traffic switched to the west, from Salford to Stanlow, eventually culminating in the closure of the docks at Salford. The historian Thomas Stuart Willan has observed that “What may seem to require explanation is not the comparative failure of the Ship Canal but the unquenchable vitality of the myth of its success”.{{sfnp|3QUA7P3I|179-190}}
Unlike most other British canals, the Manchester Ship Canal was never nationalised. In 1984 Salford City Council used a derelict land grant to purchase the docks at Salford from the Ship Canal Company,{{sfnp|WF2QRWBD}} rebranding the area as Salford Quays. Traffic on the canal’s upper reaches had by then declined to such an extent that its owners considered closing it above Runcorn.{{sfnp|FSDL6K7M}} In 1993 the Ship Canal Company was acquired by Peel Holdings,{{sfnp|TCPKJ3IT}} and is now owned and operated by Peel Ports, which also owns the Port of Liverpool.{{sfnp|VPRYCRHW}} The company announced an Atlantic Gateway plan in 2011 to develop the Port of Liverpool and the Manchester Ship Canal as a way of combating increasing road congestion and unlocking the area’s growth potential.{{sfnp|W6TIJ9MM}}
## Route
### Geography
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Manchester_Ship_Canal_map.svg)Route of the Manchester Ship Canal
Wikimedia Commons
From Eastham the canal runs parallel to, and along the south side of the Mersey estuary, past Ellesmere Port. Between Rixton east of the M6 motorway’s Thelwall Viaduct and Irlam, the canal joins the Mersey; thereafter it roughly follows the route the river used to take. At the confluence of the Mersey and the Irwell near Irlam, the canal follows the old course of the River Irwell into Manchester.{{sfnp|UT99RBST|264}}
### Locks, sluices and weirs
Vessels travelling to and from the terminal docks, which are 60 feet (18 m) above sea level, must pass through several locks. Each set has a large lock for ocean-going ships and a smaller, narrower lock for vessels such as tugs and coasters.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|72}} The entrance locks at Eastham on the Wirral side of the Mersey, which seal off the tidal estuary, are the largest on the canal. The larger lock is 600 feet (180 m) long by 80 feet (24 m) wide; the smaller lock is 350 feet (110 m) by 50 feet (15 m). Four additional sets of locks lie further inland, 600 feet (180 m) long and 65 feet (20 m) wide and 350 feet (110 m) by 45 feet (14 m) for the smaller lock;{{sfnp|CBWT3T8Q|132-133}} each has a rise of approximately 15 feet (4.6 m). The locks are at Eastham; Latchford, near Warrington; Irlam; Barton near Eccles and Mode Wheel, Salford.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|72}}
Five sets of sluices and two weirs are used to control the canal’s depth. The sluices, located at Mode Wheel Locks, Barton Locks, Irlam Locks, Latchford Locks and Weaver Sluices, are designed to allow water entering the canal to flow along its length in a controlled manner. Each consists of a set of mechanically driven vertical steel roller gates, supported by masonry piers. The original manually operated Stoney Sluices\[e\]A Stoney Sluice gate runs on bearings, reducing the friction caused by the weight of water on the gate. were replaced in the 1950s by electrically driven units, with automation technology introduced from the late 1980s. The sluices are protected against damage from drifting vessels by large concrete barriers. Stop logs can be inserted by roving cranes, installed upstream of each sluice; at Weaver Sluices, accessed by boat, this task is performed by a floating crane.{{sfnp|6RB7URFF}}
Woolston Siphon Weir, built in 1994 to replace an earlier structure and located on an extant section of the Mersey near Latchford, controls the amount of water in the Latchford Pond by emptying canal water into the Mersey. Howley Weir controls water levels downstream of Woolston Weir. Further upstream, Woolston Guard Weir enables maintenance to be carried out on both.{{sfnp|6RB7URFF}}
### Docks and wharves
Seven terminal docks were constructed for the opening of the canal. Four small docks were located on the south side of the canal near Cornbrook, within the [Borough of Stretford](https://engole.info/municipal-borough-of-stretford/): Pomona Docks No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, and No. 4. The three main docks, built primarily for large ocean-going vessels, were in Salford, to the west of Trafford Road on the north bank of the canal, docks No. 6, No. 7, and No. 8. In 1905, No. 9 Dock was completed on the same site.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|31}} Dock No. 5, known as Ordsall Dock, was part of Pomona Docks, but was dug on the Salford side of the river; it was never completed and was filled in around 1905.{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|80-82}}
Pomona Docks have also been filled in except for the still intact No. 3 Dock, and are largely derelict. A lock at No. 3 Dock connects it to the nearby Bridgewater Canal at the point where the two waterways run in parallel. The western four docks have been converted into the Salford Quays development; ships using the Manchester Ship Canal now dock at various places along the canal side such as Mode Wheel (Salford), Trafford Park, and Ellesmere Port.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|56}} Most ships have to terminate at Salford Quays, although vessels capable of passing under Trafford Road swing bridge (permanently closed in 1992) can continue up the River Irwell to Hunts Bank, near Manchester Cathedral.{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|124}}{{sfnp|BWMFURLJ}}
In 1893 the Ship Canal Company sold a parcel of land just east of the Mode Wheel Locks to the newly established Manchester Dry Docks Company. The graving docks were constructed adjacent to the south bank of the canal, and a floating pontoon dock was built nearby.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|82}} Each of the three graving docks could accommodate ocean-going ships of up to {{convert|535|ft|r=1}} in length and {{convert|64|ft|r=1}} in beam,{{sfnp|NHRMETMI|37}} equivalent to vessels of 8,000 gross tons. Manchester Liners acquired control of the company in 1974, to ensure the availability of facilities for the repair of its fleet of ships.{{sfnp|QLWSBHVV|57-58}}
### Trafford Park
{{main|Trafford Park}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/MSC_Latchford_Locks_1950_edited-2.jpg)An ocean-going liner passing through Latchford Locks near Warrington, bound for Eastham
Wikimedia Commons
Two years after the opening of the ship canal, financier [Ernest Terah Hooley](https://engole.info/ernest-terah-hooley/) bought the {{convert|1183|acre}}{{sfnp|KLWKJ354}} country estate belonging to Sir Humphrey Francis de Trafford for £360,000 (£42 million in 2020).{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|22}}\[f\] Hooley intended to develop the site, which was close to Manchester and at the end of the canal, as an exclusive housing estate, screened by woods from industrial units{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|24}} constructed along the {{convert|1.5|mi|adj=on}} frontage onto the canal.{{sfnp|CBWT3T8Q|114}}
With the predicted traffic for the canal slow to materialise, Hooley and [Marshall Stevens](https://engole.info/marshall-stevens/) (the general manager of the Ship Canal Company) came to see the benefits that the industrial development of Trafford Park could offer to the ship canal and the estate. In January 1897 Stevens became the managing director of Trafford Park Estates,{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|24}} where he remained until 1930, latterly as its joint chairman and managing director.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|112}}
Within five years Trafford Park, Europe’s largest industrial estate, was home to forty firms. The earliest structures on the canal side were grain silos; the grain was used for flour and as ballast for ships carrying raw cotton. The wooden silo built opposite No.9 Dock in 1898 (destroyed in the [Manchester Blitz](https://engole.info/manchester-blitz/) in 1940) was Europe’s largest grain elevator. The CWS bought land on Trafford Wharf in 1903, where it opened a bacon factory and a flour mill. In 1906 it bought the Sun Mill, which it extended in 1913 to create the UK’s largest flour mill, with its own wharf, elevators and silos.{{sfnp|JPTGERL4|128}}
Inland from the canal the British Westinghouse Electric Company bought 11 per cent of the estate. Westinghouse’s American architect Charles Heathcote was responsible for much of the planning and design of their factory, which built steam turbines and turbo generators. By 1899 Heathcote had also designed fifteen warehouses for the Manchester Ship Canal Company.{{sfnp|JPTGERL4|128}}
### Manchester Ship Canal Railway
A preserved Manchester Ship Canal Railway 0-6-0T locomotive, now on display at The Engine House in Highley{{sfnp
4642UB8X
During construction, a year after the death of Walker, the directors of the canal company and Walker’s trustee’s came to an agreement for the canal company to take ownership of the construction assets. These included the more than {{convert|200|mi}} of temporary rail track, 180 locomotives and more than 6000 trucks and wagons.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|38}}{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|93}} These formed the basis of the Manchester Ship Canal Railway, which became the largest private railway in the United Kingdom.
The construction railway followed the route of the former River Irwell. To bring in construction materials, the construction railway had a connection to the Cheshire Lines Committee (CLC) east of Irlam railway station. Every month this allowed more than 10,000 tons of coal and 8000 tons of cement to be delivered to sites along the canal excavation. All existing railway companies with lines along the route had been given notice that their lines had to either be abandoned by a given date or raised to give a minimum of {{convert|75|ft}} clearance with all deviation construction costs to be paid by the MSC. The CLC Glazebrook to Woodley mainline passed over the River Mersey at Cadishead and so they decided to build a deviation. Construction of the Cadishead Viaduct began in 1892, approached via earth banks, with two brick arches accessing a multi-lattice iron girder centre span of {{convert|120|ft}} in length. It opened to freight on 27 February 1893 and to passenger traffic on 29 May 1893.{{sfnp|FJURT936|143, 145}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Cadishead_Viaduct.jpg)The now closed Cadishead Viaduct
Wikimedia Commons
At the end of construction, the canal company left in place the original construction railway route, and eventually developed track along 33 miles (53 km) of the canal’s length, mainly to its north bank. Built and operated mainly as a single track line, the busiest section from Weaste Junction through Barton and Irlam, to Partington was all double tracked. The railway’s access to Trafford Park was over the double-tracked Detroit Swing Bridge, which after closure of the MSC Railway in 1988 was floated down the canal to be placed in Salford Quays.{{sfnp|TJ4SGR2J}} The only major deviation was to allow construction of the CWS Irlam soap works and the adjacent Partington Steel & Iron Co. works at Partington (both of which had their own private railways and locomotives), with the MSC Railway’s deviation route pushed south to run alongside the canal’s north bank and under the Irlam viaduct. The canal company also developed large complexes of sidings along the route, built to service freight to and from the canal’s docks and nearby industrial estates. Unlike most other railway companies in the UK it was not nationalised in 1948. At its peak, it had 790 employees,{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|101}} 75 locomotives, 2700 wagons and more than {{convert|230|mi}} of track.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|57}}
The MSC Railway was able to receive and despatch goods trains to and from all the UK’s main line railway systems, using connecting junctions at three points in the terminal docks. Two were to the north of the canal, operated by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and the London and North Western Railway. The third was to the south, operated by the Cheshire Lines Committee (CLC), where by the MSC Railway had taken over the old abandoned CLC route, giving it a monopoly on traffic to the new soap works and steel mill.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|101}}
The MSC Railway’s steam locomotives were designed to negotiate the tight curves of the sidings and industrial tracks on which they ran. Originally specifying 0-4-0 wheel arrangements, later 0-6-0 locomotives – purchased to cope with increasing traffic and loads – had flangeless centre axles, whilst the coupling rods had a hinged central section that permitted several inches of lateral play. A long-term user of Hudswell Clarke, from their steam through to diesel locomotives,{{sfnp|Z4SKLN37}} like many industrial railways later motive power was often provided by the purchase of refurbished former “big-four” operated types, with the advantage that crew were readily available to operate them. Post-war purchases included several war surplus Hunslet ‘Austerity’ 0-6-0 saddle tanks, the last steam locomotive types purchased for the MSC Railway. A fleet of diesel locomotives was bought between 1959 and 1966, including 18 0-4-0 diesels from the Rolls-Royce-owned Sentinel Waggon Works from 1964–1966.{{sfnp|D3EI2V5F}}
As trans-shipment costs increased, and unprocessed bulk cargoes decreased in volume, the economics of road transport led to a gradual decline in traffic on the MSC Railway system.{{sfnp|ZX2EQ38U|108}} Its last operational section, at Trafford Park, was closed on 30 April 2009.{{sfnp|Z6MUIKLR}}
### Other features on the banks
At Ellesmere Port the canal is joined by the Shropshire Union Canal, at a site now occupied by the National Waterways Museum. The area formerly consisted of a {{convert|7|acre|adj=on}} canal port linking the Shropshire Union Canal to the River Mersey. Designed by Thomas Telford, it remained operational until the 1950s. It was a “marvellously self-contained world” with locks, docks, warehouses, a blacksmith’s forge, stables, and cottages for the workers.{{sfnp|YML7XPJ3}} A few miles from Ellesmere Port, at Weston, near Runcorn, the ship canal also connects with the Weaver Navigation.{{sfnp|8AQU3ZS2|122-123}}
## Ecology
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Woolston_Eyes_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1530284.jpg)Woolston Eyes nature reserve, near Thelwall
Wikimedia Commons
The quality of water in the ship canal is adversely affected by several factors. The Mersey Basin’s high population density has historically placed heavy demands on sewage treatment and disposal. Industrial and agricultural discharges into the Irwell, Medlock, and Irk rivers are responsible for industrial contaminants found in the canal. Matters have improved since 1990, when the National Rivers Authority found the area between Trafford Road Bridge and Mode Wheel Locks to be “grossly polluted”. The water was depleted of dissolved oxygen, which in the latter half of the 20th century often resulted in toxic sediments normally present at the bottom of the turning basin in what is now Salford Quays rising to the surface during the summer months, giving the impression of solid ground. Previously, only roach and sticklebacks could be found in the canal’s upper levels, and then only during the colder parts of the year, but an oxygenation project implemented at Salford Quays from 2001, together with the gradual reduction of industrial pollutants from the Mersey’s tributaries, has encouraged the migration into the canal of fish populations from further upstream. The canal’s water quality remains low, with mercury and cadmium in particular present at “extremely high levels”.{{sfnp|WFQXATZT}} Episodic pollution and a lack of habitat remain problems for wildlife, although in 2005, for the first time in living memory, salmon were observed breeding in the River Goyt (a part of the Mersey’s catchment). In 2010 the Environment Agency issued a report concluding that the canal “does not pose a significant barrier to salmon movement or impact on migratory behaviours”.{{sfnp|G4W6FCIE}}{{sfnp|VWLWNB3P}}
Despite the canal’s poor water quality there are several nature reserves along its banks. Wigg Island, a former brownfield site east of Runcorn, contains a network of public footpaths through newly planted woodlands and meadows. A popular bird-watching site, it also supports a rich variety of native wildflowers, including the bee orchid.{{sfnp|ZQYNADQ7}} Further upstream, the Moore Nature Reserve comprises lakes, woodland and meadows. Open to the public, it contains bird hides from which native owls and woodpeckers may be viewed.{{sfnp|SAJ57GBW}} Near Thelwall, Woolston Eyes is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. It is used as a deposit for canal dredgings and is a habitat for many species of bird, including black-necked grebes, grasshopper warblers, blackcaps and common whitethroats. Great crested newts and adders are present, and local flora includes orchids and broad-leaved helleborines.{{sfnp|GQKZ9WNC|77}} Diving ducks are regular visitors to Salford Quays, where species including pochard and tufted ducks feed on winter nights.{{sfnp|FIXRW2AA}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, c Comparing project costs using the GDP deflator calculation at Measuring Worth.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} b £7 million was paid in cash and £3 million invested in a joint venture company set up by Whittaker and the council, Ship Canal Developments. The object of the new company was to provide resources and development expertise for the regeneration of east Manchester.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|100}} d Using the change in the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} e A Stoney Sluice gate runs on bearings, reducing the friction caused by the weight of water on the gate.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Canal
---
### [Delves Hall](https://engole.info/delves-hall/)
**Published:** October 19, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Delves-Hall.webp[/pimage]Grade I listed tower house in Doddington Park, Cheshire.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Delves-Hall.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/9h7ESzfqfDDjJq769}}|English Heritage
Delves Hall, also known as Doddington Castle, is a late 14th-century tower house in Doddington Park, to the north of Doddington Hall in the [civil parish](https://engole.info/civil-parish) of Doddington and District, Cheshire. Built for Sir John Delves, it is a designated Grade I [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building).{{sfnp|PMNCR384}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Cheshire, Tower house
---
### [Ragged school](https://engole.info/ragged-school/)
**Published:** September 12, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Ragged_School_Doorway.jpg/960px-Ragged_School_Doorway.jpg[/pimage]School that provided free education to destitute children in 19th-century Britain.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Ragged_School_Doorway.jpg/960px-Ragged_School_Doorway.jpg)Entrance to the Working Girls Home and ragged school in Dantzic Street, Manchester
Wikimedia Commons
Ragged schools were set up to provide free education to destitute children in 19th-century Britain. They were pioneered by philanthropic individuals such as John Pounds (1766–1839), who set up one of the first ragged schools in his home city of Portsmouth. The Ragged School Union, with the 7th earl of Shaftesbury as its president, was formed in 1844 to further Pounds’ aim: “to chase away ignorance, to relieve distress, and to teach the Gospel”. Soon most large towns had ragged schools.{{sfnp|XNV7LJBJ}}
But the idea of educating the poor was not without its critics, who feared that it might give the lower classes ideas above their station in life, or worse. The philanthropist and writer Hannah More (1745–1833), herself a teacher, was one such:{{sfnp|338N2534|111-112}}
In many schools, I am assured, writing and accounts are taught on Sundays. This is a regular apprenticeship to sin. He who is taught arithmetic on a Sunday when a boy, will, when a man, open his shop on a Sunday.
## Educational reform
The Education Act of 1870 finally acknowledged that education was a public service, and education boards were set up to establish new schools where the existing voluntary provisions were considered to be inadequate. There had long been an anomaly in that children living in [workhouses](https://engole.info/workhouse) received free education, but there was no such provision for the “merely poor”.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|125}}\[a\]Free primary education for all children was not provided in the UK until 1918.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|144–145}}
Following the 1870 Act, ragged schools merged with those set up by the new education boards, and by 1875 the process was almost complete. Lord Shaftesbury, president of the union, claimed that “the ragged schools, with very few exceptions, are extinct”, although there were almost a dozen left at that time, two of which remained operational until the early 20th century.{{sfnp|59DTHAKF}}
After 1870 the Ragged School Union switched its focus onto its Sunday schools.{{sfnp|XNV7LJBJ}} In 1887 its chairman observed that:{{sfnp|338N2534|121-122}}
The number of children who came to our ragged schools unable to read previous to the Education Act, was very large. Now almost every child is able to read the Bible or the Testament.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Free primary education for all children was not provided in the UK until 1918.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|144–145}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** School
---
### [Lancashire Rising 1826](https://engole.info/lancashire-rising-1826/)
**Published:** August 5, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/powerLoomSashing.webp[/pimage]Protests by hand loom weavers in 1826 in Lancashire, prompted by the economic hardship resulting from a slump in the textile industry, and focused on the destruction of the much more efficient power looms.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/powerLoomSashing.webp)Luddites smashing a power loom in 1812
Wikimedia Commons
The Lancashire Rising of 1826, also known as the power-loom riots, took place in protest against the economic hardship suffered by traditional hand-loom weavers, caused a suffered a serious slump in the textile industry in 1825 against a backdrop of the widespread introduction of the much more efficient power loom.{{sfnp|NNVJNWIF|63}} Protests broke out on 24 April and continued for three days, widely supported by the local population, who were sympathetic to the weavers’ plight.
The protests ended after twenty or so of the ringleaders were arrested. Some local manufacturers subsequently attempted to introduce a minimum wage for weavers, but were unable to obtain the support of the UK government to enforce it.
## Background
England suffered economically in the years immediately following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, and in the textile towns of the industrial north wages fell sharply as the factory system was developed.{{sfnp|9MZYQSDI}} After a period of prosperity in the 1810s, the textile industry suffered a serious slump in 1825. Weavers who had been employed to supplement production at local factories, which were increasingly making use of the much more efficient looms, were the first to be hit.{{sfnp|4GX9I3RE}} In Bolton alone, 1500 of the town’s 6000 hand-loom weavers were out of work in 1826, and 1500 were on half work. A weaver who in 1792 could have expected to earn six shillings a day was by 1826 earning less than six shillings a week for a sixteen-hour day, in a period when the price of staples such as bread, cheese and meat had almost doubled.{{sfnp|NNVJNWIF|64}}
## Course of events
Protests broke out in the east of Lancashire on 24 April 1826. The first of twenty-one mills to be attacked was the Higher Grange Lane Factory in Accrington. The protesters marched on to Blackburn on the second day. On the third and final day of the disturbances, the military were called upon to defend a mill in [Chatterton](https://engole.info/chatterton-massacre) against 3000 protesters, 6 of whom were shot and killed when the crowd refused to disperse after the Riot Act had been read to them.{{sfnp|NNVJNWIF|67-69}}
## Popular support
The protesters were widely supported locally, and not only by fellow hand-loom weavers. Amongst those arrested in Blackburn, for instance, were labourers, a farmer, a confectioner, a butcher and even power-loom weavers. An eye-witness to the rioting in Chorley noted that “there can be no doubt that a great multitude of the townspeople were their friends. The women supplied the rioters with stones, concealing the missiles under their aprons.”{{sfnp|HLPN38B7|69}}
Some of the soldiers sent to confront the protesters seemed sympathetic to their plight. One 16-year-old handloom weaver from Haslingden, Thomas Duckworth, records that the group he was marching with encountered a number of mounted soldiers approaching them with drawn swords. The officers in charge appealed to the crowd to disperse, warning of the consequences if they did not. In Duckworth’s own words:
Some of the old fellows from the mob spoke. They said “What are we to do? We’re starving. Are we to starve to death?” The soldiers were fully equipped with haversacks and they emptied their sandwiches among the crowd. Then the soldiers left and there was another meeting. Were the power-looms to be broken or not? Yes, it was decided, they must be broken at all cost.{{sfnp
— NNVJNWIF|68-69}}
## Suppression and aftermath
The protests ended after local magistrates swore in a large number of special constables to arrest about 20 of the ringleaders “in the dead of night”. During the course of the disturbances more than a thousand power looms were destroyed.{{sfnp|NNVJNWIF|67-69}} A number of manufacturers subsequently agreed to pay a standard rate to the weavers, but on their own admission it was a “starvation” wage. The manufacturers who stuck to the agreement found it difficult to compete with those who did not, and could therefore undercut them, prompting an appeal to William Huskisson, the President of the Board of Trade, to introduce a legally binding minimum wage. Huskisson’s response was dismissive, expressing his view that to introduce such a measure would be “a vain and hazardous attempt to impose the authority of the law between the labourer and his employer in regulating the demand for labour and the price to be paid for it”.{{sfnp|NNVJNWIF|70}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 4480
**Categories:** Uprising
---
### [Warburton Toll Bridge](https://engole.info/warburton-toll-bridge/)
**Published:** June 5, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Toll_Booth_-_geograph.org.uk_-_27250.jpg[/pimage]Privately owned statutory tolled undertaking which incorporates a public highway road length, one of the few remaining pre-motorway toll bridges in the UK.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Warburton-Toll-Bridge.webp)Warburton Bridge
Warrington Guardian
Warburton Bridge, officially known as Rixton and Warburton Bridge, is a privately owned statutory tolled undertaking which incorporates a public highway road length.{{sfnp|RVTCAZGZ}} The high-level cantilever bridge crosses the [Manchester Ship Canal](https://engole.info/manchester-ship-canal) on the B5159 road, connecting the A57 with the A6144, and was commissioned under the Rixton & Warburton Bridge Act 1863. That same Act also set a maximum charge of two shillings and six pence (12½p) for each crossing.{{sfnp|RHCWULH5}}\[a\]Following the decimal halfpenny ceasing to be legal tender in December 1984, the maximum that could be charged became 12p.{{sfnp|WKHLI3Y2}}
The original stone bridge spanned the River Mersey prior to its diversion into the Manchester Ship Canal and the construction of the present-day bridge.\[b\]The Manchester Ship Canal was opened in 1894. Warburton is one of the few remaining pre-motorway toll bridges in the United Kingdom,{{sfnp|E6D7HI4M|1}} and the only one in Greater Manchester.{{sfnp|GPJBAMJR|90}}\[c\]There are no such toll bridges in either Wales or Scotland.{{sfnp|RVTCAZGZ}}. Scotland abolished all its toll roads in 2008.{{sfnp|VJ437BDN}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Warburton-Bridge.webp)BBC News
Wikimedia Commons
The bridge is owned by the Manchester Ship Canal Company, part of the Peel Ports Group.{{sfnp|RHCWULH5}} Despite local objections, in 2023 the company was given permission by the Department of Transport to increase the toll charge to £1, to pay for “much-needed improvement works”.{{sfnp|7HJB7FWA}}
The increased charge was delayed until 5 November 2025, after the work had been completed.{{sfnp|4APGE48P}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Following the decimal halfpenny ceasing to be legal tender in December 1984, the maximum that could be charged became 12p.{{sfnp|WKHLI3Y2}} b The Manchester Ship Canal was opened in 1894. c There are no such toll bridges in either Wales or Scotland.{{sfnp|RVTCAZGZ}}. Scotland abolished all its toll roads in 2008.{{sfnp|VJ437BDN}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 20657
**Categories:** Bridge
**Tags:** Facebook post, Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Winstanley Hall](https://engole.info/winstanley-hall/)
**Published:** July 3, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Winstanley-Hall.webp[/pimage]Grade II* listed manor house in Wigan, Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Winstanley-Hall.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/xc6FFxD6hBQnoTCH9}}|Manchester Evening News
Winstanley Hall is a Grade II\* [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) late 16th-century manor house in Winstanley, in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, Greater Manchester, England. It was built in about 1573 by Thomas Winstanley.{{sfnp|N9GBERF9}}
The Winstanleys owned the hall until 1596, when the estate was sold to James Bankes, a London goldsmith and banker.{{sfnp|ABUFDRPW}} The hall was well-maintained until the 1960s, but has been unoccupied since the 1980s and has fallen into a state of disrepair.{{sfnp|RHIZLUTR}}
Historic England has included Winstanley Hall in its Heritage at Risk register, describing the building’s condition as “very bad”. They note in particular the extensive dry rot and roof leaks, which have resulted in the collapse of some stacks and internal floors.{{sfnp|2C5SI6WV}}
The last member of the Bankes family to live in the hall left in 1984.{{sfnp|LFUHV4JP}} The family retained ownership of the hall until its sale in 2000, along with {{convert|10|acre}} of land, to the property developer Dorbcrest Homes.{{sfnp|ABUFDRPW}}{{sfnp|ZMFL8DQV}} The hall is now owned by Kingswood Homes, who have announced their intention to restore the hall and its outbuildings and convert them into residential accommodation, subject to receiving approval from Wigan Council.{{sfnp|RHIZLUTR}}
## Architecture
Extensions and alterations were carried out by Lewis Wyatt from 1818 to 1819, and there were further extensions in the 1840s.{{sfnp|N9GBERF9}} The hall’s present symmetrical form of a central, projecting four-storey tower preceded by a single-storey porch, is entirely Wyatt’s work.{{sfnp|WMST6BL8}} The Doric porch to the entrance has Ionic entablature with a [pulvinated frieze](https://engole.info/frieze) and parapet.{{sfnp|N9GBERF9}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Manor house
---
### [Noon Hill](https://engole.info/noon-hill/)
**Published:** September 13, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/2181744_1d91b6f4.jpg[/pimage]Area of the West Pennine Moors in North West England. At its summit is a Bronze Age burial mound.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/2181744_1d91b6f4.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/knrqm4rkEijyg6AD7}}
Summit of Noon Hill|geograph
Noon Hill, near the border of the boroughs of Chorley, Blackburn with Darwen and Bolton in North West England, is part of [Rivington](https://engole.info/rivington) Moor in the West Pennine Moors. It is {{convert|380|m}} high, and at its summit is a Bronze Age burial mound listed as a Scheduled Ancient Monument, dating to somewhere between 2000 and 700 BCE.{{sfnp|RMHDJ4ZF}}
The burial mound has been excavated twice,{{sfnp|RMHDJ4ZF}} first in 1958 and then in 1963/4, by the Bolton and District Archaeology Society (now the Bolton Archaeology & Egyptology Society).{{sfnp|5ZBJXVB3}} Those excavations revealed the remains of three cremated people, interpreted as those of an adult male, an adult female and a child. The remains of several secondary cremations were also discovered, alongside flint tools including barbed and tanged arrowheads, scrapers and a knife.{{sfnp|RMHDJ4ZF}}
The cairn has survived reasonably well despite the excavations, and it is believed that further interments and associated grave goods may still exist within it, and on the old land surface beneath.{{sfnp|RMHDJ4ZF}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Lancashire, Landform
---
### [Ledston](https://engole.info/ledston/)
**Published:** January 10, 2024
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/The_White_Horse_Inn_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2301416.jpg[/pimage]Rural village in the City of Leeds district of West Yorkshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/The_White_Horse_Inn_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2301416.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/V5SXnQpskqSFi4Gd8}}
Ledston village
Ledston, formerly Ledstone, is a rural [village](https://engole.info/village) in the City of Leeds district of West Yorkshire. The village is {{convert|9|mi|spell=in}} east of Leeds and {{convert|2|mi|spell=in}} north of Castleford. The village history is closely connected to [Ledston Hall](https://engole.info/ledston-hall/) and its owners. It is notable for its association with three women, [Mary Bolles](https://engole.info/mary-bolles/) and the alleged witch, Mary Pannell and Lady Elizabeth Hastings.
In the 20th century, coal under the estate was mined from Ledston Luck Colliery outside the village where there is now a nature reserve and Enterprise Park.
## Geography and geology
Ledston is {{convert|2|mi|spell=in}} north of Castleford and the River Aire, just east of the A656, Roman Ridge Road, that links Castleford to [Aberford](https://engole.info/aberford/). Ledsham is to the north-east and Kippax is to the west. Much of the former [township](https://engole.info/township/), which covers nearly {{convert|2000|acre}}, is agricultural, parkland or woodland. Ledston Hall is situated on a hill surrounded by a parkland enclosed by a stone wall; the A1M passes to the east.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Main_Street%2C_Ledston_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1056295.jpg)Main Street and hall
Wikimedia Commons
Ledston is in undulating country on part of the Yorkshire coalfield and the limestone ridge to the to the east of Leeds where the Carboniferous sandstones of the Coal Measures are overlain by the younger Permian rocks of the Magnesian Limestone.{{sfnp|NH3R5KJT|16}} Historically Magnesian Limestone, quarried locally, was used to build Ledston Hall, nearby [Ledsham Church](https://engole.info/all-saints-church-ledsham/), farmhouses and cottages but brick became the predominant building material for modem residential, commercial and industrial development in the 20th century.{{sfnp|NH3R5KJT|15}} A colliery was sunk in 1911.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|311}}
## History
Ledston and neighbouring Ledsham share their etymology with Leeds which was mentioned by Bede in 731 as *Loidis*, a region in the Kingdom Of Elmet. Its name means farmstead or estate in the district of Leeds from the Old English *Ledes* and *tun*. It was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086.{{sfnp|HLPY5IWM|318}} A [grange](https://engole.info/monastic-grange/) with a chapel belonging to Pontefract Priory was built in around 1200.{{sfnp|A5CDHVNS}}. The priory was founded by Robert de Lacy, whose family had been granted the manor of Ledston with Ledsham, and its endowment included the churches at Ledsham and Kippax.{{sfnp|XR2UZQWW|184-186}}
### Hall
The Witham family acquired the grange and chapel after the dissolution of the monasteries and held it for three generations.{{sfnp|V6ZDZ2KS}} They incorporated the grange into a “compact, quadrangular house”.{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|385}} During the Witham’s tenure, Ledston was associated with withcraft when a local woman, Mary Pannell was accused of having caused the death of William Witham, father of Mary Bolles, and was tried and executed for the crime.{{sfnp|VKHSIH5W}}{{sfnp|Z9VXMVJ8|277}}
Witham’s son Henry sold the hall to Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford who extended the hall.{{sfnp|V6ZDZ2KS}} Sir John Lewis who made his fortune as a merchant of the East India Company acquired the hall in around 1653.{{sfnp|VSTMWKWC|385}}{{sfnp|Z9VXMVJ8|277}} He also extended the hall. The hall passed to his daughter Elizabeth, who married Theophilus Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon in 1672. Their eldest daughter, also Elizabeth, inherited and made alterations to the interior and main facades in the early 18th century.{{sfnp|V6ZDZ2KS}} Elizabeth never married, and the house was inherited by her step-sister’s husband, Grenville Wheler, in whose family it remained. It is now owned by the Wheler Trust.
### Coal
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Ledston_Luck_Villas_-_geograph.org.uk_-_122471.jpg)Miners’ housing at Ledston Luck
Wikimedia Commons
[Ledston Luck Colliery](https://engole.info/ledston-luck-colliery-2/), outside the village, was sunk after coal had been proved under the Ledston Hall Estate in 1909.The Micklefield Coal & Lime Company sank two shafts and by 1915 the colliery was in production.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|311}} Ledston Luck closed in 1986 and all that remains are the winding houses which were listed by English Heritage on the Enterprise Park.{{sfnp|3NX35SC3}} Part of the site is a nature reserve. As the colliery was in a rural area, the company built houses in Ledston for some of the workforce and villas and bungalows near the pit.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|312}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Village, Yorkshire
---
### [Pearson & Cox](https://engole.info/pearson-cox/)
**Published:** November 12, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Pearson-Cox_steam_car_%28Autocar_Handbook%2C_Ninth_edition%29.jpg[/pimage]British manufacturer of steam and petrol-powered cars and motorcycles, active from 1908 until 1916.
**Content:**
Pearson & Cox Torpedo 15 H.P. steam car, c. 1913
Wikimedia Commons
Pearson & Cox was a British automobile manufacturer based in Shortlands, Kent now part of Greater London. The founders, Henry Pearson and Percy Cox, had been apprentices at the General Engine and Boiler Company when they began to experiment with steam-powered vehicles.{{sfnp|QLESS5NV}} The company traded from 1908 until 1916,{{sfnp|CZKBX69V|search=Appendix A}} initially manufacturing steam-powered automobiles, but in 1912 they also began offering a steam-powered motorcycle. By 1913 they were producing both steam-powered vehicles and petrol-powered cyclecars.{{sfnp|CZKBX69V|search=Appendix A}}{{sfnp|MMMM3C6A|258-259}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Pearson_%26_Cox_3_hp_steam_bicycle%2C_1912._1937_0704.jpg)Pearson & Cox 3 H.P. steam bicycle, of 1912
Wikimedia Commons
Production of the steam-powered motorcycle only lasted until 1914, when Cox disposed of his manufacturing rights to the Steam Cycle and Motor Company of St Michael’s Road, Croydon.{{sfnp|QLESS5NV}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23280
**Categories:** British, Manufacturer, Motorcycle, Steamer
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928](https://engole.info/representation-of-the-people-equal-franchise-act-1928/)
**Published:** September 19, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281901%E2%80%931952%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281901%E2%80%931952%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of the UK Parliament that gave equal voting rights to men and women.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281901%E2%80%931952%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281901%E2%80%931952%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 (18 & 19 Geo. 5 c. 12) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that for the first time granted equal voting rights to men and women.{{sfnp|IVFMIT3P}}
The Representation of the People Act 1918 had allowed women over the age of thirty who met a property qualification to vote, but that still left more than four million women disenfranchised.\[a\]It has been estimated that there were about 12.8 million women in the UK at that time.{{sfnp|Q4PFGJYZ}} That same legislation had extended the vote to almost all men over the age of twenty-one, nineteen if serving in the military, creating a huge inequality between men and women.{{sfnp|Q4PFGJYZ}} That inequality perhaps became more glaring given that in the aftermath of the First World War, the estimated population of England and Wales in 1919, about 37.4 million, was composed of 1.8 million more females than males.{{sfnp|SXQXW9RC}}
The leader of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, Millicent Fawcett (1847–1929), who had long campaigned for women’s suffrage, attended the parliamentary session to see the vote take place. She wrote in her diary that night:
It is almost exactly 61 years ago since I heard John Stuart Mill introduce his suffrage amendment to the Reform Bill on 20 May 1867. So I have had extraordinary good luck in having seen the struggle from the beginning.{{sfnp|QZ29C6TN}}\[/quote The Act added five million women to the electoral roll, making them a majority of 52.7 per cent of the electorate in the 1929 general election,{{sfnp|QDEUKRWD|145}} sometimes as a result referred to as the [Flapper](https://engole.info/flapper) Election.{{sfnp|M98FTDRN}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a It has been estimated that there were about 12.8 million women in the UK at that time.{{sfnp|Q4PFGJYZ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Mary Bateman](https://engole.info/mary-bateman/)
**Published:** August 24, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/Mary_Bateman.jpg/960px-Mary_Bateman.jpg[/pimage]Poisoner and thief whose most audacious hoax was The Prophet Hen of Leeds.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/Mary_Bateman.jpg/960px-Mary_Bateman.jpg)Mary Bateman mixing poison
Wikimedia Commons
Mary Bateman (1768 – 20 March 1809), also known as the Yorkshire Witch, was a poisoner and thief born in Asenby, Yorkshire.{{sfnp|PCCPMF5M}} Her most audacious deception was the creation in 1806 of the hoax known as The Prophet Hen of Leeds, which played on the fears of those who believed that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent.{{sfnp|CVCWW9QE|9}}
Mary was the daughter of a farmer, Benjamin Harker, and his wife Ann, née Dunning.{{sfnp|CVCWW9QE|13}} She received a relatively good education for a girl of her social standing, and was proficient at reading and writing. At the age of thirteen she was sent into domestic service at Thirsk, and seven years later moved to York, where she learned dressmaking. But after only a year she was forced to flee to Leeds after being discovered during a robbery. For the next three or four years she worked as a mantua maker,\[a\]A mantua is a fashionable ladies over-gown.{{sfnp|CVCWW9QE|22}} and began to supplement her income by telling fortunes and making love potions.{{sfnp|CVCWW9QE|22}}
## Life of crime
Said to be “charismatic … charming and above all extremely adept at identifying the psychological weakness of the gullible”, Mary discovered that the poor and desperate of the industrial town of Leeds provided fertile ground for her schemes.{{sfnp|CVCWW9QE|8}} Although she was undoubtedly earning a good living from her magical activities, Mary displayed a “pathological need to steal.” She seems to have been none too careful to conceal her activities either, as she was caught several times, avoiding prosecution by buying off her victims. She married John Bateman, a wheelwright, in 1792, but there is no evidence that he was ever party to his wife’s robberies.{{sfnp|PCCPMF5M}}
### The Prophet Hen of Leeds
In 1806 Mary saw an opportunity to exploit the growing popularity of the self-proclaimed prophetess Joanna Southcott, who preached that the end of the world was approaching, and that Jesus Christ would be returning imminently. Joanna’s followers, known as Southcottians, were said to number in excess of 100,000, and Mary decided to become one of them. Joanna had in 1702 begun giving her followers a special token, to mark them out as one of the 144,000 who would be saved according to the Biblical Book of Revelation, and Mary, by whatever means, managed to get hold of one.{{sfnp|CVCWW9QE|51-52}} Like many housewives of the period she kept hens, and she reinforced her standing as one of those to be saved by announcing that one of them had laid a miraculous egg bearing the inscription “Crist is coming”. She further announced that the bird would lay thirteen more such eggs, the last of which would mark the beginning of the Apocalypse. Mary charged between a penny and a shilling each to the thousands who came to see the miraculous bird,\[b\]A shilling would be equivalent to about £4 as at 2019, using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} and began selling her own version of Joanna’s seal, guaranteeing the purchaser entry into heaven.{{sfnp|CVCWW9QE|53-54}}
Mary’s fraud was exposed by a suspicious local doctor, who while spying on her early one morning observed her etching the words into a newly laid egg with acid. He alerted the authorities, who discovered her in the act of reinserting the egg into the hen’s oviduct, to be laid again later. Mary appears to have avoided any punishment however, there being no police force in the modern sense in Yorkshire until the 1830s, but it did put an end to her hoax.{{sfnp|CVCWW9QE|54-55}}
## Downfall
Mary’s downfall came in October 1808, after a Leeds clothier named William Perigo accused her of murdering his wife, Rebecca, by poisoning.{{sfnp|PCCPMF5M}} Rebecca had begun to suffer from “chest palpitations” whenever she laid down, and been told by her physician, Dr Curzley, that was under some kind of spell, an “evil wish”. Rebecca’s niece suggested that Mary might be able to help.{{sfnp|CVCWW9QE|72-73}} After defrauding the Perigos of a great deal of cash and goods in return for her “help”, Mary decided that they had to be eliminated, either because they were running out of cash or she felt they were becoming suspicious, and so she provided Rebecca with six packets of poisoned powder, one to be mixed each day with their puddings, with strict instructions that the puddings should only be eaten by the Perigos themselves. Thus the couple conveniently poisoned themselves, and Rebecca died on 24 May 1807; William survived because he found the taste of the powder so foul that he did not eat as much of it as his wife.{{sfnp|CVCWW9QE|80-82}}
Mary was tried at the York assizes in March 1809 and found guilty of wilful murder.{{sfnp|PCCPMF5M}} She was sentenced to be hanged and her body given to surgeons to be dissected; the sentence was carried out the following Monday, 20 March.{{sfnp|CVCWW9QE|102-103}}
## Aftermath
Mary’s body was taken to Leeds General Infirmary, where it was put on display. Visitors were charged threepence admission to see it, from which the hospital raised about £30.{{sfnp|CVCWW9QE|114-115}} Tickets were also sold to spectators to watch her dissection, which raised another £80 14s, equivalent to about £5,900 as at 2019.{{sfnp|6G6LDSHS|loc=794-807}}\[c\]Using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
Two books were commissioned to be covered in Mary’s skin, a practice known as anthropodermic bibliopegy: Sir John Cheek’s *Hurt of Sedition: How Grievous it is to a Common Welth* (1569), and Richard Braithwaite’s *Arcadian Princess* (1635), now both lost. Small strips of Mary’s skin were sold as curios, and acquired a reputation for having the power to ward off evil spirits.{{sfnp|6G6LDSHS|loc=794-821}}
Mary’s skeleton was on display in the Thackray Museum in Leeds until 2015, but changing public attitudes led to it being returned to Leeds University’s Anatomy Department, where it remains in storage.{{sfnp|CVCWW9QE|130-132}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a A mantua is a fashionable ladies over-gown.{{sfnp|CVCWW9QE|22}} b A shilling would be equivalent to about £4 as at 2019, using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} c Using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23040
**Categories:** Hoax
---
### [Liverpool Road railway station warehouse](https://engole.info/liverpool-road-railway-station-warehouse/)
**Published:** November 2, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/1830_warehouse%2C_Liverpool_Road_station_3.JPG/1280px-1830_warehouse%2C_Liverpool_Road_station_3.JPG[/pimage]Grade I listed warehouse, part of the Liverpool Road railway station complex.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/1830_warehouse%2C_Liverpool_Road_station_3.JPG/1280px-1830_warehouse%2C_Liverpool_Road_station_3.JPG)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/fPrakVUSA2wqsv7e9
The 19th-century Grade I listed warehouse, on Liverpool Road, Manchester forms part of the Liverpool Road railway station complex. It was built in five months between April and September 1830, “almost certainly \[to the designs of\] the Liverpool architect Thomas Haigh”.{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|355-356}} Its construction has been attributed to George Stephenson and his son Robert.{{sfnp|SZEDC583}}
The processing of goods within the warehouse was originally a manual operation but “steam-powered hoists \[were\] installed within a year as the manual system could not cope with the volume of goods”.{{sfnp|2TTF9QV5|267}}
The restoration of the warehouse was undertaken in 1992–1996 by the Building Design Partnership.{{sfnp|2TTF9QV5|267}} The warehouse and the adjacent station building now form part of the Manchester Science and Industry Museum.{{sfnp|JNTQ26JS}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25690
This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmcloud.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/1830_warehouse,_Liverpool_Road_railway_station#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Greater Manchester
---
### [Kaye's Mineral Line](https://engole.info/kayes-mineral-line/)
**Published:** January 25, 2022
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** Standard gauge mineral line built to serve the pits owned by the Lister Kayes of Denby Grange in West Yorkshire.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Chimney.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/icemnkFe7AJW6YDBA}}
No. 1 boilerhouse chimney
Kaye’s Mineral Line, the Denby Grange Railway, was a standard gauge mineral line built to serve the pits that were owned by Sir John Lister Lister Kaye of Denby Grange in West Yorkshire. The pits, [Caphouse](https://engole.info/caphouse-colliery/), Prince of Wales, and the Victoria were linked by the railway and became the Denby Grange Collieries.
The line between Caphouse and Calder Grove, about {{convert|5|mi|r=1|spell=in}} long, was loco-hauled between Caphouse and Hope shafts, had four rope-worked inclines, two tunnels and two zigzags on the loco-hauled lower section below the Victoria Pit. The line was linked to the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway at Calder Grove and to coal staithes on the [Calder and Hebble Navigation](https://engole.info/calder-and-hebble-navigation/). The line was disused in the 1940s but the [National Coal Board](https://engole.info/national-coal-board/) and British Coal used part of the lower section at Calder Grove until 1993 as British Oak Disposal Point.
## Rail line
The shafts of the Lister Kay pits were close to the new line of the Wakefield to Austerlands turnpike (A642) in Overton which was built in 1830.{{sfnp|EHELB4UK|9}} Lister Kaye’s Denby Grange Collieries had no rail access to the Calder and Hebble Navigation even though Milnes’ [Flockton Collieries](https://engole.info/flockton-collieries/) tramway passed adjacent to Caphouse Colliery. No agreement was made to use the tramway, possibly because of competition between the companies.
John Marsden, a Wakefield lawyer who had considerable experience in managing the colliery interests of several landed estates, took over at Denby Grange in 1952. Coal traffic to the navigation passed toll bars at Overton and Horbury Bridge adding considerably to transport costs. Marsden entered into negotiations with the turnpike trustees to construct a tunnel under the road to facilitate a line to Calder Grove. He borrowed £12,000 to build a railway to the navigation, {{convert|5|mi|r=1|spell=in}} distant at Calder Grove and negotiated wayleaves and leased more coal under the land along the route.{{sfnp|EHELB4UK|12}} The venture would eventually cost about £30,000. The line was built to serve the current pits and others that would be built along the line.{{sfnp|MXBHSB3M|6}}
The first contracts to build the line were let in March 1853 and the railway was operational the following year. Two locomotives were bought for the line, an 0-4-0 engine *Solferino* and an 0-6-0 *Balaklava*.{{sfnp|EHELB4UK|15}} Most of the line closed in the 1940s,{{sfnp|MXBHSB3M|50}} and only the section at Calder Grove remained active.{{sfnp|EHELB4UK|23}}
### Route
The railway, in six sections, made use of locomotives and stationary engines to move coal from pithead to Calder Grove. The first section was where coal was loaded at Caphouse and drawn towards a shunting neck close to Hope Pit by locomotive.{{sfnp|MXBHSB3M|9}} Here the wagons were reversed and attached to rope haulage, before being pulled through the tunnel under the turnpike and uphill through a deep cutting, over an embankment, under Grange Lane and Hardcastle Lane and through a shallow cutting to the top of the first incline, where the first engine house was located.{{sfnp|MXBHSB3M|12}} The third section, also rope-hauled, was down a straight incline through the woodland towards the site of the future Prince of Wales Pit in Stonycliffe Wood.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|169}}\[a\]It was known locally as Wood Pit and in 1943 was renamed Denby Grange Colliery. From there, the next section, another rope-hauled, short but steep incline led to the second engine house.{{sfnp|MXBHSB3M|6}}
The last two sections took the line downhill towards the navigation. The fifth section passed through a quarter-mile long tunnel at Stocksmoor towards the Victoria Colliery which was being sunk in Little London near South Lane in Netherton in 1854. The gradient of the last section was eased by using reversing necks or zigzags so that locomotives could work the final stretch to the navigation coal staithes at Calder Grove or exchange sidings with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway’s Barnsley Branch.{{sfnp|EHELB4UK|12,13}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a It was known locally as Wood Pit and in 1943 was renamed Denby Grange Colliery.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Coal mining, Transport, Yorkshire
---
### [Whipping Tom](https://engole.info/whipping-tom/)
**Published:** April 25, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Name given to two sex offenders, one in London and the other in the nearby village of Hackney, active in 1681 and 1712 respectively.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Whipping_Tom.jpg)*Whiping Tom and Skiping Ione* (Joan), c. 1681\[a\]It is not known who “Skiping Ione” represents, and as there are no other references to her, it seems likely that she was invented by the artist as a rhyming partner for Whipping Tom.{{sfnp
ENMNK9TB}}
Whipping Tom was the nickname given to two sex offenders, one in London and the other in the then nearby village of Hackney. The first given this name was active in central London in 1681; his modus operandi was to approach unaccompanied women in alleys and courtyards and spank them on the buttocks before fleeing. The inability of the authorities to apprehend the offender resulted in complaints about the ineffectiveness of London’s constabulary, and prompted vigilante patrols in the affected areas. A local haberdasher and his accomplice were captured and tried for the attacks.
A second attacker nicknamed Whipping Tom was active in late 1712 in Hackney, then a rural village outside London. This attacker would approach lone women in the countryside, and beat them on the buttocks with a birch rod. Around seventy attacks were carried out before a local man named Thomas Wallis was captured and confessed to the attacks.
## Whipping Tom of 1681
The Whipping Tom of 1681 was active in the warren of small courtyards between Fleet Street, Strand and Holborn.{{sfnp|LN63JBVS|201}} He would wait in the narrow and dimly lit alleys and courtyards for an unaccompanied woman.{{sfnp|TA5AZ49T|276}} Having selected his victim, he would grab her, lift her dress, and slap her buttocks repeatedly before fleeing,{{sfnp|8HPGCI2I|107}} sometimes accompanying his attack with shouts of “Spanko!”{{sfnp|LN63JBVS|201}}
His first Adventure, as near as we can learn, was on a Servant Maid in New-street, who being sent out to look for her Master, as she was turning a Corner, perceived a Tall black Man\[b\]“A tall black man” is likely to refer to his clothing or hair colour, not his ethnicity. standing up against the wall, as if he had been making water, but she had not passed far, but with great speed and violence seized her, and in a trice, laying her cross his knee, took up her Linnen, and lay’d so hard up-on her Backside, as made her cry out most piteously for help, the which he no sooner perceiving to approach (as she declares) then he vanished.{{sfnp
— DHFUXFBRHe attacked many women,{{sfnp|WZQHHLEP|312}} and although he would often use his bare hand, he would occasionally use a rod;{{sfnp|LN63JBVS|202}} leaving some of his victims badly injured.{{sfnp|WZQHHLEP|312}} He would appear, carry out his attacks and vanish with such speed that some people attributed him with supernatural powers.{{sfnp|LN63JBVS|202}}{{sfnp|TA5AZ49T|280}} There was a great public outcry in response to the attacks, which prompted complaints about the ineffectiveness of London’s policing arrangements at the time.{{sfnp|VR25SIRP|23}} Women would carry “penknives, sharp bodkins, scissors and the like”,{{sfnp|TA5AZ49T|279}} and male vigilantes would dress in women’s clothing and patrol the areas where he was known to operate.{{sfnp|TA5AZ49T|280}}
A haberdasher from Holborn and an accomplice were captured in late 1681 and tried for the attacks,{{sfnp|D4BK7BGE|156}} but there is no surviving record of the trial or of their identities.{{sfnp|VR25SIRP|23}} An anonymously written book about the attacks, *Whipping Tom Brought to Light and Exposed to View*, was published in 1681.{{sfnp|LN63JBVS|202}}
## Whipping Tom of 1712
Between 10 October and 1 December 1712 a further series of similar attacks took place in fields near Hackney. This attacker, also nicknamed Whipping Tom,{{sfnp|8HPGCI2I|108}} would approach lone women and beat them with “a Great Rodd of Birch”.{{sfnp|VPXZRAGK|72}} About seventy women were assaulted before a local man, Thomas Wallis, was captured and confessed to the attacks.{{sfnp|8HPGCI2I|108}}{{sfnp|VPXZRAGK|72}} According to Wallis, he was “resolved to be Revenged on all the women he could come at after that manner, for the sake of one Perjur’d Female, who had been Barbarously False to him”. He claimed that his plan was to attack a hundred women before Christmas, cease the attacks during the Twelve Days of Christmas, then resume his vendetta in the new year.{{sfnp|VPXZRAGK|72}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a It is not known who “Skiping Ione” represents, and as there are no other references to her, it seems likely that she was invented by the artist as a rhyming partner for Whipping Tom.{{sfnp
ENMNK9TB}} b “A tall black man” is likely to refer to his clothing or hair colour, not his ethnicity.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22684
This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Whipping_Tom#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Uncategorized
---
### [Epworth Rectory](https://engole.info/epworth-rectory/)
**Published:** July 5, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Epworth_Rectory_Front_View.png[/pimage]Site of supposed paranormal events that occurred in 1716.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Epworth_Rectory_Front_View.png)Wikimedia Commons
Epworth Rectory in Epworth, Lincolnshire, also known as the Old Rectory, is the site of supposed paranormal events that occurred in 1716. The rectory was at that time the home of the Reverend Samuel Wesley, his wife Susanna and their 19 children,{{sfnp|B8PIYYGR|68}} one of whom, John Wesley, grew up to become a founder of the Methodist Church.
Suspicion has fallen on the Wesley’s oldest daughter Hetty for contriving the various disturbances that were reported to have occurred in the house, which is now owned by the British Methodist Church. The Queen Anne-style building, which was rebuilt in 1709 after a fire, now houses a museum.
## Haunting
The Epworth Rectory haunting, also known as the Wesley poltergeist, is one of the best-known English poltergeist claims.{{sfnp|Q28L9KRE|113-115}} From December 1716 until January 1717, the house is said to have been plagued by a series of regularly occurring mysterious loud noises and knockings, apparently caused by a ghost the eldest Wesley daughter Hetty nicknamed Old Jeffrey, who made his presence known to all on Christmas Day 1716. In Mrs Wesley’s words, “there was such a noise in the room over our heads, as if several people were walking, then running up and down stairs that we thought the children would be frightened”. According to the tale, as she and her husband searched the house in vain for the culprit, Old Jeffrey continued “rattling and thundering in every room, and even blowing an invisible horn at deafening decibels”.{{sfnp|Q28L9KRE|114}} Old Jeffrey supposedly disappeared in January 1717, just as suddenly as he had appeared.{{sfnp|Q28L9KRE|115}}
Addington Bruce (1908) noted that the earliest records that document the haunting have large discrepancies from later reports. According to Bruce the original records from the 18th century reduce the alleged haunting to nothing more than some creaking noises, knocks, footsteps or groaning sounds. Bruce commented that “we are, therefore, justified in believing that in this case, like so many others of its kind, the fallibility of human memory has played an overwhelming part in exaggerating the experiences actually undergone.” He suggested that Hetty had produced the phenomena fraudulently.{{sfnp|N38NDQ2Q|50-55}}
Trevor Hall in his book *New Light on Old Ghosts* (1965) also provides naturalistic explanations for the phenomena at the rectory.{{sfnp|SLEGYUV8|14-25}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3242
**Categories:** Haunted, Lincolnshire, Rectory
---
### [Britannia (cyclecar)](https://engole.info/britannia-automobile/)
**Published:** October 29, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/Brit_Cyclecar_1914.FZ200_%2814315382771%29.jpg/1920px-Brit_Cyclecar_1914.FZ200_%2814315382771%29.jpg[/pimage]Cyclecar produced from 1913 to 1914.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/Brit_Cyclecar_1914.FZ200_%2814315382771%29.jpg/1920px-Brit_Cyclecar_1914.FZ200_%2814315382771%29.jpg)1914 Britannia
Wikimedia Commons
The Britannia is a [cyclecar](https://engole.info/cyclecar) made from 1913 to 1914 by the Britannia Engineering Co., based in Nottingham.{{sfnp|FJHAAES8|196}}
As standard, the car was powered by an air-cooled, two-cylinder, two-stroke engine, but alternative engines could be fitted according to the customer’s choice. The rear wheels were driven by a four-speed gearbox via a belt final drive. The car was offered for sale at £85, equivalent to £10,500 as at 2024.{{sfnp|FJHAAES8|196}}\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 28061
**Categories:** Cyclecar
---
### [Flapper](https://engole.info/flapper/)
**Published:** September 28, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/Norma_Shearer_in_short_dress.jpg/330px-Norma_Shearer_in_short_dress.jpg[/pimage]Term used to describe a sub-culture of young women in the aftermath of the First World War, intent on pleasure and flouting conventional standards of behaviour.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/Norma_Shearer_in_short_dress.jpg/330px-Norma_Shearer_in_short_dress.jpg)The actress Norma Shearer, dressed in typical flapper style, 1927
Wikimedia Commons
Flapper was an American slang term for a sub-culture of young women that emerged following the First World War,{{sfnp|85BJNRKQ}} and especially during the 1920s. It was used to describe fashionable young women intent on enjoying themselves and flouting conventional standards of behaviour,{{sfnp|2D8N35HP}} including a sexual freedom that shocked the Victorian morality of their parents.{{sfnp|85BJNRKQ}}
The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of *The Great Gatsby*, characterised the flappers as “flat-chested lovelies in rolled-down hose, living it up at house parties and in the backseats of roadsters”.{{sfnp|CYAN78SZ}}
The flappers disappeared in the economic meltdown following the Wall Street crash of 1929, just as quickly as they had emerged.{{sfnp|CYAN78SZ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25612
**Categories:** Fashion
---
### [Roy of the Rovers](https://engole.info/roy-of-the-rovers/)
**Published:** January 20, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/19/Roy_of_the_Rovers_Annual.JPG[/pimage]British comic strip about the life and times of a fictional footballer named Roy Race, who played for Melchester Rovers.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/19/Roy_of_the_Rovers_Annual.JPG)1980 annual featuring title character Roy Race (centre) lifting the FA Cup
Wikipedia
*Roy of the Rovers* is a British comic strip about the life and times of a fictional footballer named Roy Race, who played for the fictional team of Melchester Rovers. The strip first appeared in the *Tiger* in 1954, before giving its name to a weekly (and later monthly) comic magazine, published by IPC and Fleetway from 1976 until 1995, in which it was the main feature.
The weekly strip ran until 1993, following Roy’s playing career until its conclusion after he lost his left foot in a helicopter crash. When the monthly comic was launched later that year the focus switched to Roy’s son Rocky, who also played for Melchester. This publication was short-lived, and folded after only nineteen issues. The adventures of the Race family were subsequently featured in the monthly *Match of the Day* football magazine, in which father and son were reunited as manager and player respectively. These strips began in 1997 and continued until the magazine’s closure in May 2001.
Football-themed stories were a staple of British comics for boys from the 1950s onwards, and Roy of the Rovers was the most popular.{{sfnp|GTL4ZDNP}} To keep the strip exciting, Melchester was almost every year either competing for major honours or struggling against relegation to a lower division; a normal, uneventful season of mid-table mediocrity was unknown at Melchester Rovers. The strip followed the structure of the actual English football season, thus there were several months each year in summer when there was no league football. By far the most common summer storyline saw Melchester touring a fictional country in an exotic part of the world, often South America, where they would invariably be kidnapped and held to ransom. The average reader probably stayed with the comic regularly for only three or four years, therefore storylines were sometimes recycled; during the first ten years of his playing career, Roy was kidnapped at least four times. He also made numerous appearances for England, depicted playing alongside actual players such as Malcolm Macdonald and Trevor Francis.
The stock media phrase “real ‘Roy of the Rovers’ stuff” is often used by football writers, commentators and fans when describing displays of great skill, or surprising results that go against the odds, in reference to the dramatic storylines that were the strip’s trademark.{{sfnp|UIYQNBBQ|190-191}}
## Publication history
Roy of the Rovers first appeared on 11 September 1954,{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|2}} as a weekly feature in the comic magazine *Tiger*, debuting on the front page of the first issue. After twenty-two years of continued popularity, the strip was judged successful enough to sustain its own weekly comic, the eponymous *Roy of the Rovers*, launched on 25 September 1976. The comic ran for 851 issues, until 20 March 1993,\[a\]The issues were unnumbered; the total of 853 issues is given in Duncan McAlpine’s Comic Book Price Guide 1996/97 Edition.{{sfnp|WJXFUP6U|748}} and included other football strips and features. At the peak of the comic’s success about 450,000 copies were sold each week.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|7}} There were also hardback annuals and holiday specials featuring a mix of reprinted and original content, and for a brief period, starting in 1986, Roy of the Rovers was serialised in the now defunct *Today* newspaper. These were all-new strips, focusing largely on the relationship between Roy and his wife Penny, rather than the action on the pitch.{{sfnp|3IC7WWNK}} Between 1988 and 1993, a *Best of Roy of the Rovers* monthly comic was published, reprinting older stories.
Following the closure of the weekly title in 1993,{{sfnp|UXD5N8JR}} the strip appeared in a relaunched monthly publication in September that year, with grittier storylines intended to attract teen and young adult fans who had read the weekly comic in their youth. Between January 1994 and January 1995, the monthly strips were mirrored by a weekly edition in *Shoot* magazine,{{sfnp|S88VAHMT}} which had in the late 1980s published a parody called Ray of the Rangers.{{sfnp|TNMJZTLS}}
The comic strip was resurrected in July 1997, printed as short (usually two-page) features in the BBC’s monthly *Match of the Day* magazine.{{sfnp|UIYQNBBQ|193}} These strips ran until the magazine’s demise in May 2001.{{sfnp|JW5CM5HT}} By then the strip’s wholesome tone, often espousing the virtues of fair play and strong moral character,\[b\]“Roy of the Rovers taught sportsmanship, etiquette and why a fractured ankle, a broken rib and an early case of Polio should never stand between a determined team captain and victory in the FA Cup.”{{sfnp|XMM4KVV8}} was beginning to seem old-fashioned. The editor of *Roy of the Rovers comic*, Barrie Tomlinson, has commented that “everyone seemed to be growing up a bit more quickly, and they wanted stories that were more realistic”.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|236}}
There has been no new material since 2001, but reprints of the strip have appeared online and in print. The *Roy of the Rovers* website has archived all of the *Match of the Day* years’ material, in addition to excerpts from other classic strips. In October 2007, Setanta bought the original strips, which they featured on their web site.{{sfnp|VSJ9KWA3}}
Then-rights holder, Egmont, published a 64-page “collectors edition” of the comic strip in April 2009,{{sfnp|XND4XXX6}} gathering together a number of 1980’s era Roy of the Rovers stories in addition to other backup strips from the comic. Two *Best of Roy of the Rovers* books, featuring successive runs of strips from the 1980s and 1970s, were published in June 2008 and 2009 respectively.
As of August 2016, Roy of the Rovers and the rest of the Fleetway comics library is owned by Rebellion Developments.{{sfnp|PTJW952E}}{{sfnp|LGEI8LFY}}
## Plot
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/86/Roy_of_the_Rovers_Tiger.png)The first ever appearance of a youthful Roy Race
Wikipedia
The story followed Roy Race, a striker for the fictional football team Melchester Rovers, based in a town of the same name in an unspecified part of England, where Roy lived with his family. In the first episode, a teenage Roy and his best friend, Blackie Gray, signed for the Rovers after being spotted playing for a youth club team.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|19}}{{sfnp|86Q834MU|11}} Eight months later, Roy and Blackie made their first-team debuts against Elbury Wanderers in a game that ended in a 3–3 draw in which Roy scored twice.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|28-29}}{{sfnp|86Q834MU|13}} He soon became a star, leading the team to either the Football League title or a cup almost every season. In January 1975 he was made player-manager,{{sfnp|86Q834MU|97}} a position he retained for most of the next twenty years. Although the strip followed the Rovers through nearly forty seasons, Roy did not age at the same rate and appeared to be at most in his late thirties by the time the weekly comic ended. This unrealistic longevity was never remarked upon by the weekly comic, although the monthly comic attempted to address the anomaly by explaining that more than one Roy Race had played for Melchester over the years.\[c\]The monthly stated that the Roy whose career ended in 1993 had been born in 1954 (the year the strip first appeared), and had debuted, aged 16, in the Rovers’ European Cup Final win of 1970 (which had actually taken place in 1969, not 1970, in the strip). All stories before then were implied to have featured his father, also named Roy.
Roy won a number of trophies during his career with Rovers, including nine league titles, eight FA Cups, three League Cups, three European Cups, one UEFA Cup, and four Cup Winners’ Cups,{{sfnp|FDPISSIR}} and he also made several appearances for England. He married club secretary Penny Laine at the end of the 1975–76 season,{{sfnp|UIYQNBBQ|186-187}}{{sfnp|86Q834MU|106}} with whom he had three children: Roy Jr. (later known as Rocky), Melinda, and Diana.{{sfnp|86Q834MU|111, 143}} Penny left Roy in the early 1980s, in a high-profile storyline that was covered on national television news.{{sfnp|VNJ9E87N}} The following year Roy was shot in his office by a mystery gunman, in an incident clearly mirroring the shooting of J. R. Ewing in the hit television series Dallas the previous year. Roy lay in a coma for several weeks. The culprit was eventually revealed to be Elton Blake, an actor who had been cast as Roy in a television series about the Rovers, but who blamed him for his dismissal.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|146-147}} In early 1983 Roy swapped Melchester Rovers for ambitious London side Walford Rovers after a fallout with the Melchester directors, but his stint away was short-lived and he was back at his spiritual home by the end of the year.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|154-157}} In July 1986 eight members of the Rovers team were killed during a club tour of the fictional Middle Eastern country of Basran, when terrorists accidentally crashed a bomb-laden car into the team bus. Roy escaped with a dislocated shoulder.{{sfnp|86Q834MU|166}} Author Mick Collins has commented that “Even as youngsters, we knew that this certainly bordered on bad taste, and probably overstepped the mark.”{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|164-165}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e1/ROTRBasran.jpg)The cover of the 19 July 1986 issue of the comic showed the aftermath of the “massacre” of the Melchester team in the fictional country of Basran. This storyline’s depiction of Middle Eastern terrorists caused controversy at the time of publication.
Wikipedia
The final incident of Roy’s playing career came in the closing pages of the last weekly issue, in March 1993, when he lost control of his helicopter and crashed into a field.{{sfnp|86Q834MU|214}} Thus the weekly strip ended its 39-year unbroken run on a downbeat and unresolved cliffhanger, as Roy was taken into hospital while fans, the media and his family awaited news on his condition.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|233-234}} The mystery of whether or not Roy had survived his crash was unresolved until the first issue of the new Roy of the Rovers Monthly in September 1993, in which readers discovered that the accident had resulted in the amputation of his famous left foot, ending his playing career and resulting in his move to Italy as the manager of Serie A side AC Monza (a fictional top-level Italian club, rather than the real club of the same name).{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|237-238}}
Reconciling the continuity of the monthly strip with the stories that preceded and followed it presented difficulties, forcing the story’s writers to alter its history in a number of ways, a technique known as retroactive continuity. Significantly, the strip rewrote various parts of Melchester’s history, and shortened Roy Sr.’s recorded playing career to a more realistic level.{{sfnp|UUQ2ZXDV}}
By the time the strip ended in March 1995 Melchester were in dire straits, on the verge of bankruptcy, and their long-term future far from certain.{{sfnp|NLGC9SYR}} When the strip returned in *Match of the Day* magazine in May 1997, much of the monthly comic’s new continuity was ignored, although the basic thread of the club having struggled against relegation and being severely in debt was continued. It was revealed in the first strip that in the intervening years, while Rovers had managed to survive the threat of bankruptcy, a bribery scandal had caused a mass exodus of players and eventual relegation to Division One. Rocky, meanwhile, was playing for fierce local rivals Melborough, after a bitter falling-out with his father over a car accident in Italy in which his mother, Penny, had been killed. Roy, who had quit football as a result, was blamed by some (including his son) for the accident, even though he had no memory of it, and the precise circumstances surrounding the event were never resolved.
Roy was persuaded to rejoin Melchester as manager and part-owner, backed by the unscrupulous Vinter brothers, and he arrived just in time to save the club from relegation. The following season, Roy and Rocky resolved their differences. Rocky rejoined Melchester, and the club was promoted back into the Premier League at the end of the year. When the magazine closed in 2001, Rovers were attempting to achieve a league placing that would secure them UEFA Champions League football, giving them financial security.{{sfnp|MXQDIWHC}} Although this storyline was never resolved, there was nevertheless a certain sense of closure as, shortly beforehand, Roy Sr. had wrested full control of the club from the Vinters, thus completing his 44-year progression from player to owner.
## Recurring characteristics
Over the years, the strip became famous for its employment of certain types of storyline and stylistic storytelling devices.{{sfnp|UIYQNBBQ|180-183}} For example, despite the fast-paced nature of a football match, exposition would be provided by members of the crowd apparently commenting to one another. Fans made lengthy comments in the short time it took the ball to travel through the air; as the ball was struck towards the goal a member of the crowd might be seen saying “Racey’s had a shot!”, followed by another responding “The ‘keeper won’t make it!”.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|4}} Nonetheless, loyal readers would usually suspend disbelief, a characteristic later parodied by *Viz* magazine’s Billy the Fish, a fish with a human head who plays in goal for Fulchester United.{{sfnp|CDT5TN4D|70}}
The portrayal of Rovers’ successive victories \[against foreign teams\] mirrors British postwar views on other nations: they are unfit, tactically unaware, lacking in nerve, and only approach victory by playing under blazing sunshine, or fielding physical mutants.{{sfnp
— UIYQNBBQn the interests of keeping the strip exciting, it seemed that no season for Melchester Rovers could ever consist of mid-table obscurity. Almost every year, the club was either competing for the major honours at the top of the domestic and European game, or struggling against relegation to lower divisions. Often, such spells of good and bad fortune and form would directly succeed one another – a Rovers team that won the European Cup one year could find itself struggling to stay in Division One the next.{{sfnp|UIYQNBBQ|182}}\[d\]In the original strip, the club was only relegated to the old Division Two once, and made a hasty return the following year. In the years between the end of the 1990s monthly comic and the Match of the Day strips, the club was relegated from the Premiership to the new Division One, spending two seasons there before being promoted under Roy’s guidance.
Storylines often centred on new signings who were unable to settle easily in the Melchester team, either because they refused to change their style of play and expected the Rovers to play around them, such as the uncomprisingly tough defender Duncan McKay, or had personal characteristics that made it difficult for the other players to accept them, such as ex-circus ball juggler Sammy Spangler.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|108-109}} As the average reader probably stayed with the comic for only three or four years, many storylines were recycled.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|91}} For instance, during the first ten years of his playing career Roy was kidnapped at least five times.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|61}}
When playing foreign teams, particularly in the European club competitions, the opposition would often cynically employ overt gamesmanship or downright dirty tactics. Continental sides were considered to be “sneaky”:{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|67}}
If they went ahead, they didn’t try to extend their lead, like proper footballers, but defended, like blackguards and cowards. It was, Roy always believed, something of a character defect, probably caused by the pencil-thin moustaches they wore, in order to distinguish themselves as foreign.{{sfnp
— 3XPINW3U|67}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1f/Roy_of_the_Rovers_Sky.png)Roy resigns as Rovers manager live on Sky in 1992
Wikipedia
The strip followed the structure of the football season, thus there were several months each year when the Rovers were not playing football, but the strip needed to depict something more exciting than the players going on holiday and then reporting for pre-season training. As a result, the players tended to spend their summers involved in activities such as competing in charity cricket tournaments,{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|110-111}} but by far the most common summer storyline saw the Rovers go on tour to a fictional country in an exotic part of the world, normally South America, where they would invariably be kidnapped and held to ransom.{{sfnp|86Q834MU|7-8}} “Melchester played more pre-season games at gunpoint deep in the jungle than they ever did in more mundane settings.”{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|60}} The summer would often also see Roy fending off lucrative offers to leave Melchester, as in 1978, when the Sheik of Basran, an oil-rich Middle-Eastern state, offered him £1 million to coach the national team.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|129}}
Especially during the 1980s, real-life personalities often made appearances. Former Division One stars Bob Wilson and Emlyn Hughes were brought out of retirement to play for Melchester in 1985, along with longtime fans of the strip Martin Kemp and Steve Norman, of the pop group Spandau Ballet.{{sfnp|CDW4H8CU}} Geoff Boycott served for several years as Melchester’s chairman,{{sfnp|UIYQNBBQ|193}} and Sir Alf Ramsey had briefly taken over as manager of Melchester in 1982, while Roy lay in his coma.{{sfnp|UIYQNBBQ|190-191}} Players such as Malcolm Macdonald and Trevor Francis would sometimes line up alongside Roy in England matches, despite the fact that the clubs they played for in real life were never featured in the strip.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|126}}
The concept of TV pundits and anchormen making appearances was a later development. When Roy announced his resignation as Rovers manager in 1992, he did so live on Sky Sports in front of shocked presenters Richard Keys and Andy Gray.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|232}}
## Creators
### Writers
Roy was created by the author Frank S. Pepper,{{sfnp|JNWFPHVU}} who had created the similar strip, Danny of the Dazzlers, but he only wrote four instalments of Roy of the Rovers, because of his commitments to another of his characters, Captain Condor. His role was taken by the strip’s first artist Joe Colquhoun, who used the pen-name “Stewart Colwyn”.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|22-23}} He was replaced after four-and-a-half years by Derek Birnage, the editor of *Tiger*, who had commissioned the strip. In 1960, in an attempt to whip up publicity, it was announced that the footballer Bobby Charlton had taken over as writer, although in reality it was still written by Birnage (who claimed that he did consult with Charlton occasionally for story ideas).{{sfnp|MW567LC6}} The longest-serving writer of the strip was Tom Tully, who began in 1969 on an intermittent basis and then continuously from 1974 until the end of the weekly comic in 1993. Ian Rimmer became the main writer for the strip during the *Match of the Day* years, until the magazine’s closure in May 2001.{{sfnp|JNWFPHVU}}
### Artists
After Joe Colquhoun departed, he was succeeded first by Paul Trevillion, then by Yvonne Hutton, who illustrated from 1967 to 1974, before David Sque{{sfnp|DKGGMZEN}} took over in 1975.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|80, 101}} Despite reportedly not being a football fan,\[e\]“They said, ‘This is football! You’re not interested in football’ and I said, ‘No I can draw anything.’ People are people, figures are figures – just put a football shirt on them or whatever! Now of course I was sworn to secrecy and couldn’t tell the Sunday papers that I didn’t like football when I was doing the national footballing hero in comics! Obviously I’ve played it, but I’m a doer not a watcher. I loved playing football at school and in later years.”{{sfnp|9Z3HHIXP}} he was responsible for one of the strip’s more definitive looks in its early ’80s period. He was replaced in 1986 by former *2000 AD* artist Mike White, who gave Roy a more muscular look and the strip a more modern feel.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|165-166}} Barrie Mitchell took over in 1992, with a style quite similar to White’s. A number of artists worked on the monthly comic, such as David Jukes, Sean Longcroft and Garry Marshall, in contrast to the lengthy tenures of the weekly strip’s creative team.{{sfnp|UUQ2ZXDV}} Tony Harding often illustrated Roy for the Roy of the Rovers annuals and also drew the Roy’s Action Replay strip that appeared in *All Action Monthly* in the late eighties (Fleetway). Mitchell returned in 1997 as the sole artist of the *Match of the Day* strips for all four years.{{sfnp|TLV8KS4W}}
Filmmakers Luke Dormehl and Tom Atkinson, released a documentary called *Roy* in 2008, featuring interviews with some of the key members of the Roy of the Rovers creative team. The film was shown at The End of the Pier International Film Festival in 2009, where it won the prize for Best Documentary Short.{{sfnp|Z2W82L8E}}
## Cultural impact
The phrase “Roy of the Rovers” has become a trope familiar to generations of British football fans and sports commentators, used to describe a memorable sporting achievement such as winning against the odds, or an unexpected comeback.{{sfnp|FTGYF625}} *The Guardian* newspaper of 10 April 1995, for instance, described future England captain Alan Shearer as “the classic working class sporting hero … everything legend demands an English centre-forward should be … As a striker he comes closer to fitting the Roy of the Rovers fantasy than anyone else lately admired by English crowds”. Shearer was at that time the leading goal-scorer for “unfashionable” Blackburn Rovers F.C., who were on the verge of winning the Premiership title.{{sfnp|UIYQNBBQ|194-195}}
Comparisons have been drawn between the fictional Roy Race and the captain of England’s 1966 World Cup winning team, Bobby Moore, whose playing career spanned a similar time-scale to that of Roy’s. Moore’s death in 1993, just days after the last edition of the *Roy of the Rovers* comic was published, produced a “literature of tribute”, framed around themes “remarkably similar to those at the center of the Roy Race fiction and ideology … there was a clear sense of mourning for the loss of an age”.{{sfnp|UIYQNBBQ|196-200}}
Reading *Roy of the Rovers* and reflecting on the response to the death of sporting heroes such as Bobby Moore, demonstrates how children’s popular cultural experiences, and the recollections of them in later life, traverse the boundaries of, and fuse, the fictional and the real … The world of representation in the comic strip is mobilized as an everyday trope, tapping into modes of thinking within the reality of football discourse; and in turn, football discourse draws upon the narratives, conventions, and myths of football fictions.{{sfnp
— UIYQNBBQ|200}}
## Spin-offs and merchandise
*Roy of the Rovers Annuals* were produced every year from 1958 until 1994,\[f\]Even before the establishment of the weekly comic, *Tiger* published Roy of the Rovers annuals every year from 1958 onwards. In 1958 the annual was simply known as the *Roy of the Rovers Football Annual*. For 1959 and 1960, the title changed to *Tiger Book of Roy of the Rovers*, and after that the titles would be *Tiger Roy of the Rovers Annual* (or slight variations thereon) until the last one in 1975, after which the *Roy of the Rovers Annuals* themselves would begin, to tie in with the standalone comic. The final three annuals of this iteration, however, would change their title to *Roy of the Rovers Yearbook*. and again in 2000. A number of tie-in books were also published, including a handful of paperback prose storybooks in 1977 and 1993, and two football quiz books in 1978 and 1979. Roy of the Rovers never made the leap from page to screen, although he did make an appearance on the BBC comedy sports quiz *They Think It’s All Over* in 1999, in the form of a cardboard cut-out.{{sfnp|96JGAPQ7}}
A *Roy of the Rovers* computer game was released, on the Commodore 64,{{sfnp|R76YSURP}} Amstrad CPC{{sfnp|I9EUCQTI}} and ZX Spectrum{{sfnp|TRXR74QS}} in 1988. It was split into two parts: the first an adventure game, in which – taking the role of Roy Race – the player had to find and rescue the kidnapped Melchester team, before then playing the second part, which consisted of a charity match to raise funds for the club. The fewer players recovered before the match began, then the smaller the team who could take part. In the extreme, Roy would be the only player for Melchester. The game received mixed reactions; the Spectrum version received 7/10 from Your Sinclair, but only 3/10 from Sinclair User.{{sfnp|TVJ3KLS6}}
A number of official Melchester Rovers Subbuteo teams were produced in the 1980s and 1990s. There was also an officially licensed board game in the 1980s, which saw players take on the role of Roy Race and manage the club.{{sfnp|MQJ3UXE6}} The Old Fashioned Football Shirt Company now makes officially licensed replica shirts.{{sfnp|MW567LC6}}
In 1990, “Roy Race” and footballer Gary Lineker released a single, “Europe United”, described in the comic as “a hot rocking heavy metal rap”, which failed to chart in the UK Top 40.{{sfnp|TNMJZTLS}} The confectionery company McCowans produced a pineapple-flavoured “Roy of the Rovers” chew bar in the 1990s.{{sfnp|3XPINW3U|220}}
## Collected editions
On 29 February 2008 it was announced that Titan Books had acquired worldwide book publishing rights to a range of Egmont’s comic strips, including *Roy of the Rovers*. The first of their compilations of Roy’s playing days, *The Best of Roy of the Rovers: The 1980s* was released in May 2008 and included the “Relegation” and “Who Shot Roy” story arcs. *The Bumper Book of Roy of the Rovers* was published in October 2008, and reprinted strips, articles, short stories and features taken from Roy annuals dated from 1957 to 1971. Two further titles were released in 2009, *The Best of the 1970s* and *The Second Bumper Book*, and a third *Best of*, focusing on the World Cup, was released in 2010. All five of the titles were edited and compiled by David Leach.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The issues were unnumbered; the total of 853 issues is given in Duncan McAlpine’s Comic Book Price Guide 1996/97 Edition.{{sfnp|WJXFUP6U|748}} b “Roy of the Rovers taught sportsmanship, etiquette and why a fractured ankle, a broken rib and an early case of Polio should never stand between a determined team captain and victory in the FA Cup.”{{sfnp|XMM4KVV8}} c The monthly stated that the Roy whose career ended in 1993 had been born in 1954 (the year the strip first appeared), and had debuted, aged 16, in the Rovers’ European Cup Final win of 1970 (which had actually taken place in 1969, not 1970, in the strip). All stories before then were implied to have featured his father, also named Roy. d In the original strip, the club was only relegated to the old Division Two once, and made a hasty return the following year. In the years between the end of the 1990s monthly comic and the Match of the Day strips, the club was relegated from the Premiership to the new Division One, spending two seasons there before being promoted under Roy’s guidance. e “They said, ‘This is football! You’re not interested in football’ and I said, ‘No I can draw anything.’ People are people, figures are figures – just put a football shirt on them or whatever! Now of course I was sworn to secrecy and couldn’t tell the Sunday papers that I didn’t like football when I was doing the national footballing hero in comics! Obviously I’ve played it, but I’m a doer not a watcher. I loved playing football at school and in later years.”{{sfnp|9Z3HHIXP}} f Even before the establishment of the weekly comic, *Tiger* published Roy of the Rovers annuals every year from 1958 onwards. In 1958 the annual was simply known as the *Roy of the Rovers Football Annual*. For 1959 and 1960, the title changed to *Tiger Book of Roy of the Rovers*, and after that the titles would be *Tiger Roy of the Rovers Annual* (or slight variations thereon) until the last one in 1975, after which the *Roy of the Rovers Annuals* themselves would begin, to tie in with the standalone comic. The final three annuals of this iteration, however, would change their title to *Roy of the Rovers Yearbook*.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 13402
**Categories:** Comic, Fictional character
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### [Witch's familiar](https://engole.info/witchs-familiar/)
**Published:** April 14, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Witches%27Familiars1579.jpg[/pimage]Demonic spirit who attends upon a witch, possessing magical powers that can be used for good or evil. Often taking the form of a small animal such as a cat.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Witches%27Familiars1579.jpg)Witch feeding her familiars
Wikimedia Commons
In Western demonology a familiar is a demonic spirit who attends upon a witch, possessing supernatural powers that can be used for either good or evil.{{sfnp|I4HS33CE}} [Isobel Gowdie](https://engole.info/isobel-gowdie/)‘s familiar, although it helped her to wither crops and kill a man, also taught her spells to cure fevers and heal broken limbs.{{sfnp|2CPBA69H|74}} In English witchcraft trials a familiar would commonly be described as having taken the form of a small animal such as a cat, mouse, toad or ferret,{{sfnp|I4HS33CE}} but even insects – particularly bees and flies – were also identified in witch trials.{{sfnp|7VCQZDVX}}
The historian James Sharpe has suggested that the familiar may be a “folklorised version of the demons and other denizens of the spiritual world, which the learned magicians of the Middle Ages were meant to be able to raise”. One significant difference though is that almost all 16th-century witches testified that their familiar appeared to them uninvited, whereas the spirits of the Middle Age magicians were conjured by them to appear.{{sfnp|IAKLA6F3|227}}
The link between witches and familiars was articulated in the [Witchcraft Act of 1604](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts/#witchcraft-act-1604), which imposed the death penalty for anyone who communed with familiar spirits. Accounts of familiars in witchcraft trials is an “almost uniquely English phenomenon”, for reasons which are unclear,{{sfnp|7VCQZDVX}} but they do also feature in some Scottish trials, where they may adopt a human form.{{sfnp|I4HS33CE}} [Elspeth Reoch](https://engole.info/elspeth-reoch/), at her trial in Kirkwall in 1616, admitted to having had several rendezvous with the Devil, who had assumed the form of a fairy.{{sfnp|BRFU8MAR|350}} It was common for Scottish inquisitors to transcribe the word devil or demon in place of any appellation for a fairy an accused witch may have used in their statement,{{sfnp|R9PMW3YZ|324}} and the historian Emma Wilby has suggested that regional variations in fairy belief may have played their part in the evolution of the familiar. She argues that familiars and fairies may not really have existed as separate phenomena, but instead as a “matrix of thought which underpinned the whole construct of the witch’s familiar in the popular mind”.{{sfnp|I4HS33CE}}
## First encounter
The familiar was sometimes given to a witch as in the case of Margaret Ley from Liverpool, who in 1667 claimed that her mother had bequeathed her familiar to her when she died.{{sfnp|2CPBA69H|60-61}} In other cases the spirit was described as having appeared out of the blue; Joan Prentice, one of the Essex witches, claimed during her interrogation in 1589 that she was “alone in her chamber, and sitting upon a low stool preparing herself to bedward” when her familiar first appeared to her.{{sfnp|2CPBA69H|60}} But most familiars were said to appear when the individual found herself in straitened circumstances, offering their magical powers to help, such as the case of [Agnes Sampson](https://engole.info/agnes-sampson/), struggling to provide for herself and her children after the death of her husband.{{sfnp|2CPBA69H|67}}
## Nature of the relationship
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Witchofberkeley.jpg)Illustration from the *Nuremberg Chronicle* of the [Witch of Berkeley](https://engole.info/witch-of-berkeley) being carried off on horseback by the Devil.
Wikimedia Commons
The relationship between a witch and her familiar could be long-lasting. Witches sometimes claimed that their familiars lived in or near their houses, similar to a domestic fairy or brownie. Other familiars would appear unbidden, but in most cases they came in response to some kind of request, although not usually an overt conjuration.\[a\]The Wiltshire cunning woman Anne Bodenham (1653), for example claimed that she could “raise spirits by reading books”.{{sfnp|2CPBA69H|78}} The Huntingdonshire witch Elizabeth Chandler claimed in 1646 that she had no control over when her two familiars, Beelzebub and Trullibub, appeared to her, and had prayed for God to “deliver her therefrom”.{{sfnp|2CPBA69H|77}}
The stereotypical pact between a witch and her familiar had two core elements: that she renounce her Christianity and that she pledge her soul to the Devil, to be handed over after a specified number of years or at death.{{sfnp|2CPBA69H|94,101}} She may also have been required to have sexual relations with the Devil, and allow herself to be marked as belonging to him.{{sfnp|2CPBA69H|94}} The mark could be a skin blemish or something that [witchfinders](https://engole.info/witch-finding) such as [Margaret Aitken, the Great witch of Balwearie](https://engole.info/margaret-aitken-the-great-witch-of-balwearie/), claimed to be able to recognise in a witch’s eyes.{{sfnp|V7XHBW66|8}}\[b\]During 1597 Margaret Aitken was was responsible for the conviction and execution of hundreds of Scottish women before being exposed as a fraud.{{sfnp|V7XHBW66|8}} Familiars sometimes demanded to be nourished with milk, bread, water, or the witch’s own blood.{{sfnp|7VCQZDVX}} If no immediately discernible stamp from Satan was detected, the accused witch’s body could be [pricked](https://engole.info/witch-finding/#pricking) to discover any blemishes or invisible marks that did not bleed or elicit pain when stabbed with a needle up to {{convert|3|in|spell=in}} long,{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|399}} considered to be a sure sign of the “teat” by which she fed her familiar. Torture was illegal under English law, but as the intention of pricking was to identify areas that felt no pain, the procedure was not classified as judicial torture, and so was permitted as a method of gathering evidence of witchcraft.{{sfnp|LFGBXMPG|930-931}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The Wiltshire cunning woman Anne Bodenham (1653), for example claimed that she could “raise spirits by reading books”.{{sfnp|2CPBA69H|78}} b During 1597 Margaret Aitken was was responsible for the conviction and execution of hundreds of Scottish women before being exposed as a fraud.{{sfnp|V7XHBW66|8}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Witchcraft
---
### [Hulme Arch Bridge](https://engole.info/hulme-arch-bridge/)
**Published:** August 2, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Close_view_of_Hulme_Arch.jpg[/pimage]Bridge in Hulme, Manchester, England, supporting Stretford Road as it passes over Princess Road, part of the regeneration of that area of Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Close_view_of_Hulme_Arch.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/LGyD2EoFetszzWjM8
The Hulme Arch Bridge in Hulme, Manchester, England, supports Stretford Road as it passes over Princess Road. The construction of the bridge formed part of the regeneration of the Hulme district of Manchester by re-establishing the route of Stretford Road, which had been bisected by the construction of Princess Road in 1969, and by providing a local landmark.
Replacing a footbridge in the same location, the bridge consists of a deck supported by cables from a single arch that spans the bridge diagonally. The design was selected in June 1995, and the bridge was constructed between May 1996 and April 1997.
## Background
Stretford Road, a key east–west access route for local residents, had been bisected in 1962 by the construction of Princess Road.{{sfnp|Q2MFPKJN}} A footbridge was subsequently constructed, crossing Princess Road at the point where the road had been divided.{{sfnp|V896YRMS}} As part of Hulme’s regeneration it was decided to construct a new bridge to rejoin the two sections of road, and provide a local landmark.{{sfnp|Q2MFPKJN}}
The design of the bridge was selected via a two-stage competition commissioned by Hulme Regeneration Ltd and Manchester City Council.{{sfnp|BF6XCTAH}} The first stage was held in March 1995, and had six entries. The winning design, from Chris Wilkinson Architects, was selected in June 1995; the structural engineer was Ove Arup & Partners.{{sfnp|BF6XCTAH}} The reference for the design of the bridge was Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, USA.{{sfnp|Q2MFPKJN}}
## Design
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Hulme-Arch-Bridge-at-Night.jpg)Hulme Arch Bridge at night
The bridge consists of a {{convert|50|m|adj=on}} deck of three 17 by 17 metre (56 by 56 ft) steel and concrete decking segments covered with tarmac.{{sfnp|BF6XCTAH}} The deck is supported by twenty-two steel cables originating from both sides of a {{convert|25|m|adj=on}} high arch.{{sfnp|R83ZAM9S}} The parabolic arch is made of six prefabricated trapezoid steel box sections, spanning the bridge diagonally.{{sfnp|BF6XCTAH}} The arch varies between 1.6 metres (5.2 ft) wide by 1.5 metres (4.9 ft) deep at the bases to 3 metres (9.8 ft) wide and 0.7 metres (2.3 ft) deep at the top.{{sfnp|W8Q8FX6G}} It is supported by a pair of 8.5 by 6.5 by 5.5 metre (27.9 by 21.3 by 18 ft) concrete blocks, which bear most of the bridge’s weight. The deck is supported by piled abutments, which incorporate areas for bearing and expansion joint inspection and maintenance. The arch is kept in shape by a number of internal stiffeners and diaphragms, and the top section is filled with concrete. To minimise internal rust, the lower sections of the arch were coated with a vapour corrosion inhibitor, with portholes with removable covers inserted into the arch so that the inside can have additional coats applied in the future.{{sfnp|Q2MFPKJN}}
## Construction
The three sections of decking were assembled on the broad central reservation of Princess Road, and were craned into position over a weekend when Princess Road was closed.{{sfnp|BF6XCTAH}} The decking was temporarily supported by trestles until the arch was ready.{{sfnp|Q2MFPKJN}} The six sections of the arch were welded together on site into two halves before being lifted into position during a second weekend.{{sfnp|BF6XCTAH}}
The bridge has been described by the structural engineers as “a perfect example of how imaginative design combined with leading-edge engineering technology can be used to create a landmark structure which captures the public’s imagination.”{{sfnp|Q2MFPKJN}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Bridge, Greater Manchester
---
### [Women's Suffrage Journal](https://engole.info/womens-suffrage-journal/)
**Published:** March 12, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Magazine founded by Lydia Becker and Jessie Boucherett in 1870, focusing on news of events affecting women's lives.
**Content:**
*The Women’s Suffrage Journal* was a magazine founded by Lydia Becker and Jessie Boucherett in 1870.{{sfnp|6WINLVFL|ix}} Initially titled the *Manchester National Society for Women’s Suffrage Journal*, that was changed within a year to reflect Lydia’s desire to extend the magazine’s influence beyond “Manchester’s radical liberal elite”.{{sfnp|778D2866|82-83}} It carried news of events affecting all areas of women’s lives, particularly focused on features that demonstrated the breadth of support among the general population for women’s suffrage in the United Kingdom. It also frequently published guidance on how to prepare a petition to be presented to the House of Commons.{{sfnp|MG8IMXZC|23-24}}
Publication ceased in 1890 following Lydia’s death. The final edition contained this note:
For twenty years and four months this *Journal* has received the impress of one hand and one mind, so that its long row of volumes forms one continuous work, and now when that careful hand is laid low and the energies of that far-seeing mind are carried beyond our mortal ken, it would seem the most fitting course to close these pages where Miss Becker left them.{{sfnp
— MG8IMXZC|64}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [The Yellow Book](https://engole.info/the-yellow-book/)
**Published:** February 4, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/The-Yellow-Book.webp[/pimage]Short-lived but influential quarterly illustrated magazine published in London from 1894 to 1897.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/The-Yellow-Book.webp)Cover of first edition
V&A
*The Yellow Book* was a short-lived but influential quarterly illustrated magazine published in London from 1894 to 1897.{{sfnp|5XM5F52G}} It contained a wide range of literary and artistic genres, including poetry, short stories, essays, book illustrations, portraits, and reproductions of paintings.{{sfnp|BYMRZ6IU}}
Aubrey Beardsley was the publication’s first art editor, which lent it a certain degree of notoriety, as he had previously illustrated Oscar Wilde’s *Salomé*, but nothing of Wilde’s work was ever published in the magazine.{{sfnp|BYMRZ6IU}}
The magazine supposedly took its name from the illicit French novels of the period, which were wrapped in yellow paper to warn potential readers of their lascivious content,{{sfnp|5XM5F52G}} an idea credited to Beardsley.{{sfnp|BYMRZ6IU}} Its cover price of five shillings is equivalent to £36 as at 2023,\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} but it differed from other periodicals of the time in containing no advertising, and being issued clothbound.{{sfnp|5XM5F52G}}
*The Yellow Book*‘s [mise-en-page](https://engole.info/mise-en-page) differed substantially from contemporary Victorian periodicals, with its “asymmetrically placed titles, lavish margins, abundance of white space, and relatively square page”.{{sfnp|2BULSGLK|121}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [The Queen (magazine)](https://engole.info/the-queen-magazine/)
**Published:** October 17, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/19/Queen_%28magazine%29_cover.jpg[/pimage]Weekly illustrated society magazine founded in 1861. Following a series of mergers over the years it survives in the form of the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/19/Queen_%28magazine%29_cover.jpg)1960s magazine cover
Wikimedia Commons
*The Queen* was an illustrated weekly society magazine founded in 1861 by the English publisher and journalist Samuel Beeton,\[a\]Samuel’s wife Isabella was the author of *Beeton’s Book of Household Management*.{{sfnp|AD9MDF6V}} with an emphasis on the proceedings of high society and the British aristocracy.{{sfnp|YYC9XELZ}} But the magazine also published some fictional material, including H. G. Wells’s short story
“[Miss Winchelsea’s Heart](https://engole.info/miss-winchelseas-heart)“,{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|47}} the theme of which is consistent with the publication’s focus on society and its fashions.
The lawyer and publisher Edward William Cox, known as Serjeant Cox, bought the title in 1862, along with the *The Queen*‘s rival publication, *The Ladies’ Paper*, the following year. In 1864 Cox merged the two into *The Queen: The Ladies Newspaper and Court Chronicle*, and appointed Elizabeth Lowe as its editor.{{sfnp|7FTL4VFV}}
The title was shortened to *Queen* in the 1950s, and the content “recalibrated to appeal to a younger readership” under the editorship of Beatrix Miller. *Queen* was sold to *Harper’s Bazaar UK* in the 1970s, and the title merged into *Harper’s & Queen*, before the “Queen” part was dropped for today’s title, *Harper’s Bazaar*, the well-known fashion magazine.{{sfnp|YYC9XELZ}}
## Caroline
Beatrix Miller had a very clear idea of the type of reader the magazine should be targeting, naming her Caroline. Beatrix produced a style guide issued to every contributor, to give them a vision of their intended audience:{{sfnp|YYC9XELZ}} “a twenty something, non intellectual who had left school at 16, and was a ‘good time’ girl”.{{sfnp|2R633EHQ}}
It is now “generally accepted” that Beatrix’s demographic inspired the name for the offshore Radio Caroline,{{sfnp|2R633EHQ}} which in 1964 began broadcasting pop music to the UK from a ship anchored in international waters, targeting the same audience.{{sfnp|BRJULZUS}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Samuel’s wife Isabella was the author of *Beeton’s Book of Household Management*.{{sfnp|AD9MDF6V}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24948
**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [The Idler](https://engole.info/the-idler/)
**Published:** August 7, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Idlera.jpg[/pimage]Illustrated monthly magazine published in London from 1892 until 1911.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Idlera.jpg)Cover for bound volumes of *The Idler*, February to July 1893
Wikimedia Commons
*The Idler* was an illustrated monthly magazine published in London from 1892 until 1911. Its founder, Robert Barr, recruited the humourist Jerome K. Jerome as co-editor with himself, and gave Jerome complete editorial control from 1895 until 1897. The magazine was considered to be a “glossy, irreverent, humorous journal” in its time. It included many short stories, and like other magazines of the period included serials intended to encourage the reader to buy the next issue.{{sfnp|EUXN5ALC}}
The Idlers Club was a regular feature of most issues, in which different writers offered their opinions on topics such as how to enjoy a honeymoon, or deal with women riding bicycles.{{sfnp|EUXN5ALC}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [The Car Illustrated](https://engole.info/the-car-illustrated/)
**Published:** July 9, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** British weekly automobile magazine founded in 1902.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Miss_Portman_on_her_Cl%C3%A9ment.jpg)Lady Mary Isabel Portman in a Clément car, from *The Car Illustrated*, January 1903
Wikimedia Commons
*The Car Illustrated. A Journal of Travel by Land, Sea, and Air* was a British weekly automobile magazine founded in 1902 by John Walter Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 2nd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu (1866–1929), who acted as its editor.{{sfnp|A3ZTBKT2|416}} Montagu retained ownership of the magazine for fourteen years, but made a profit in only five of those years.{{sfnp|IVNVGXZQ}}
Montagu employed a secretary, 22-year-old [Eleanor Thornton](https://engole.info/eleanor-thornton/), to help him run the magazine, and soon entered into a secretive romantic relationship with her. The magazine’s illustrator, Charles Sykes, used Eleanor as the model for the Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstasy bonnet mascot.{{sfnp|RGU7NKMU}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [The Burlington Magazine](https://engole.info/the-burlington-magazine/)
**Published:** June 18, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/The_Burlington_Magazine_1903.png/960px-The_Burlington_Magazine_1903.png[/pimage]Monthly publication covering the fine and decorative arts, the longest running art journal in the English language.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/The_Burlington_Magazine_1903.png/960px-The_Burlington_Magazine_1903.png)Wikimedia Commons
*The Burlington Magazine* is a monthly publication covering the fine and decorative arts of all periods. Established in 1903, it is the longest running art journal in the English language,{{sfnp|BUYG8662|3-10}} and was instrumental in the establishment of academic art history in Britain.{{sfnp|FPEIG835}} Since 1986 the magazine has been published by The Burlington Magazine, a non-profit-making company with independent charitable status, owned jointly by The Burlington Magazine Foundation, a UK charity, and The Burlington Magazine Foundation Inc., a not-for-profit corporation incorporated in the State of New York.{{sfnp|BX3BJ7U7}}
The magazine was established by a group of art historians and connoisseurs including Roger Fry, Herbert Horne, Bernard Berenson, and Charles Holmes. Its structure was loosely based on its contemporary British publication *The Connoisseur*, which was mainly aimed at collectors and had solid connections with the art trade. *The Burlington Magazine* added new elements of historical research to this late-Victorian tradition of market-based criticism, inspired by the leading academic German periodicals, creating a formula that has remained almost unchanged: a combination of archival and formalist object-based art historical research juxtaposed with articles on collectors’ items and private collections, enlivened with notes on current art news, exhibitions and sales.{{sfnp|WQY7BD7J|3-10}}
The first issues of the magazine were printed on high-quality paper using a typeface designed by Herbert Horne.{{sfnp|8EVHQDBF}} But its lavish production values resulted in financial problems almost from the start, so Fry embarked on an American tour in January 1905 in an attempt to attract sponsorship to ensure its survival.{{sfnp|GVKAQC3P}}{{sfnp|AEWP8844|213-234}} His efforts proved to be fruitful, and he became joint editor from 1909 until 1918, remaining on the magazine’s consultative committee until his death in 1934.{{sfnp|536SGSGF}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/The_Burlington_Magazine#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [Home Chimes](https://engole.info/home-chimes/)
**Published:** February 7, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** British magazine published from 1884 until 1894, precursor to popular fiction magazines.
**Content:**
*Home Chimes* was a British magazine published weekly from 2 January 1884 until 26 December 1885, and thereafter monthly until December 1894.\[a\]A total of 212 issues.{{sfnp|7JSWYK9C|255}} Edited by the novelist F. W. Robinson and published by Richard Willoughby, its main focus was on fiction, especially from younger, less-well known authors, a precursor of the popular fiction magazine. Robinson’s own work tended to be deeply religious, or set among the poor, but in contrast the magazine’s content was largely humorous and light-hearted.{{sfnp|7JSWYK9C|255}}
Notable contributors included Jerome K. Jerome, who was working as a clerk at twenty-five shillings a week when Robinson commissioned a series of essays from him that were subsequently collected in book form as *The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow* (1886); others were J. M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, and Edith Nesbit, author of *The Railway Children* (1906).{{sfnp|VL9HD4BC|54-55}}
As Robinson is reported to have said to one of his contributors, G. B. Burgin, “Though the magazine doesn’t pay, it helps you youngsters train on for a generation of readers I shall never see”.{{sfnp|VL9HD4BC|54-55}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a A total of 212 issues.{{sfnp|7JSWYK9C|255}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [Gentleman's Journal](https://engole.info/gentlemans-journal/)
**Published:** December 9, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Published between 1692 and 1694, precursor to the modern magazine.
**Content:**
*The Gentleman’s Journal*, or to give it its full title *The Gentleman’s Journal. Or the Monthly Miscellany. By way of a Letter to A Gentleman in the Country. Consisting of News, History, Philosophy, Poetry, Musick, Translation , Etc.*,{{sfnp|398WFQJX}} published monthly from 1692 until 1694, was the precursor to what evolved into the modern magazine. Edited by Peter Anthony Motteux, a Huguenot\[a\]Huguenots were French Protestants.{{sfnp|3CQM3B7V}} who fled to England to escape religious persecution, it contained news of the month together with prose and poetry.{{sfnp|R7T8P7VY}} The literary historian Margaret J. M. Ezell is among those who been been struck by how Motteux’s formatting and selection of materials during the *Journal*‘s thirty-three issues resembles that of 20th-century magazines aimed at a literary middle-class audience.{{sfnp|398WFQJX}}
The literary historian Walter Graham considers *The Gentleman’s Journal* to be “the most important serial publication of the seventeenth century”, as until its foundation there had been a strong prejudice against fiction and poetry in such publications, considered to be unsuitable for the perusal of “serious readers”.{{sfnp|398WFQJX}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Huguenots were French Protestants.{{sfnp|3CQM3B7V}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Magazine
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Chambers's Edinburgh Journal](https://engole.info/chamberss-edinburgh-journal/)
**Published:** August 21, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Weekly 16-page magazine started by William Chambers in 1832.
**Content:**
*Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal* was a weekly 16-page magazine started by William Chambers in 1832.{{sfnp|DQHA8TEQ|36}} The first edition was dated 4 February 1832,{{sfnp|ZTK2WSVZ}} and priced at one penny. Topics included history, religion, language, and science. William was soon joined as joint editor by his brother Robert, who wrote many of the articles for the early issues, and within a few years the journal had a circulation of 84,000.{{sfnp|X73UYM7L}} From 1847 to 1849 it was edited by William Henry Wills. In 1854 the title was changed to *Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art*,{{sfnp|6XBY79J2|74}} and changed again to *Chambers’s Journal* at the end of 1897.
The magazine was produced in Edinburgh until the late 1850s, by which time the author James Payn had taken over as editor, and production was moved to London. Serialised fiction from major authors, including Payn himself, became one of the journal’s major attractions following his arrival. Among its long-standing contributors was Camilla Dufour Crosland, until her death in 1895.{{sfnp|82WRD434|251}}
The journal continued to be published until 1956.{{sfnp|W67MNCDF|22-23}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [Bentley's Miscellany](https://engole.info/bentleys-miscellany/)
**Published:** May 13, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Bentley%27smisc_cover.jpg[/pimage]Illustrated monthly magazine published from 1837 until 1868.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Bentley%27smisc_cover.jpg)Cover of the March 1837 issue
Wikimedia Commons
*Bentley’s Miscellany* is an illustrated monthly magazine published from 1837 until 1868, founded by the publisher Richard Bentley, who had initially intended it to be called the *Wits’ Miscellany*. Under the editorship of Charles Dickens, who contributed *Oliver Twist* to early editions, the magazine was an immediate success.{{sfnp|TYNQEJU5|56}} But Dickens’s relationship with Bentley was apparently not altogether cordial, as he subsequently referred to him as the “Burlington Street Brigand”.{{sfnp|W6ELJPS9|85}}
[William Harrison Ainsworth](https://engole.info/william-harrison-ainsworth/) took over as editor in 1839, and his serialisation of *Jack Sheppard* proved to be even more popular than *Oliver Twist* had been; during Ainsworth’s tenure the magazine’s circulation reached almost 10,000. Another of the magazine’s attractions was the illustrations by George Cruikshank, who also illustrated *Oliver Twist* and *Jack Sheppard* when they appeared in novel form.{{sfnp|TYNQEJU5|56}}
Ainsworth left *Bentley’s* at the end of 1841 to begin his own publication, *Ainsworth’s Magazine*.{{sfnp|AZ7JVY74}} Richard Bentley then took over the editorship himself, presiding over a decline in quality such that by the mid-1840s it was “a shadow of its original self”.{{sfnp|TYNQEJU5|56}} Ainsworth returned to the magazine in 1854 as its proprietor, having purchased it for £1700.{{sfnp|AZ7JVY74}} George Bentley, Richard’s son, repurchased *Bentley’s* in 1868, merging it with the *Temple Bar* magazine.{{sfnp|TYNQEJU5|56}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [Buckland B3](https://engole.info/buckland-b3/)
**Published:** May 7, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Buckland_B3_%288716599237%29.jpg[/pimage]Three-wheeler car designed and built by Dick Buckland from 1985 until 1999.
**Content:**
The Buckland B3, designed and built by Dick Buckland of Newport, South Wales, made its first public appearance at the Stoneleigh Kit Car Show in 1985. Buckland had successfully raced a modified Morgan F Type for many years, and felt that he could improve on it with his B3.{{sfnp|B3ZT6TM5|42-43}}
The B3’s unusual glassfibre body is hinged upwards just behind the engine to allow access to the rear suspension, while the one-piece bonnet is hinged forwards to allow access to the engine and luggage area. The body tub is attached to a steel backbone chassis. The car uses a front-mounted 1300 cc Ford Kent engine delivering 95 bhp, and weighing only {{convert|880|lb}} it has a top speed of {{convert|130|mph}}. Drive to the single rear wheel is via a Ford Escort gearbox driving a propshaft and torque tube leading to a Reliant crown and pinion, and from there by sprocket and chain.{{sfnp|B3ZT6TM5|42-43}}
Buckland made only twelve cars before production ceased in 1999, but in its Series 2 slightly updated guise the car returned to the market in 2011, courtesy of Penguin Speed Shop.{{sfnp|B3ZT6TM5|43}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Buckland_B3_%288716599237%29.jpg)Series 2 car from Penguin Speed Shop
Wikimedia Commons
**Manufacturer:**Buckland Cars**Production:**1985–1999
2011 to date
33 made as at 2013**Top speed:**{{convert|130|mph}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 19116
**Categories:** Kit car, Three-wheeler
---
### [Cockatrice](https://engole.info/cockatrice/)
**Published:** January 30, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/img389.jpg[/pimage]Mythical heraldic beast hatched from a rooster's egg hatched by a toad, said to be able to kill with its stare.
**Content:**
Weasel attacking a cockatrice
The Medieval Bestiary
The cockatrice, or basilisk, is a mythical heraldic beast described in bestiaries as being hatched from a rooster’s egg by a toad, with a serpent’s head and tail.{{sfnp|QRCYFG6R|43}} The basilisk always has the body of a snake, but the cockatrice has the feet and wings of a cockerel.{{sfnp|KBUAGJ93|65}}\[a\]The cockatrice is sometimes depicted as having the wings of a dragon.{{sfnp|KBUAGJ93|65}} The creature’s most distinctive characteristic is its ability to kill with a stare; there are several tales in British folklore of cunning heroes overcoming a cockatrice by tricking it into looking at its own reflection.{{sfnp|QRCYFG6R|44}}
Late-medieval bestiaries claimed that the weasel is the only animal immune to the gaze of a cockatrice.{{sfnp|L5U8324B|89}} It was also said that a cockatrice would die instantly upon hearing a rooster crow.{{sfnp|6PIQ54K7|49}}
The *Oxford English Dictionary* gives a derivation from the Anglo-Norman word *cocatrice*, itself derived from the medieval Latin *calcatrix*, a translation of the Greek word *ichneumon*, meaning tracker, the name given to an animal revered by the Ancient Egyptians for destroying the eggs of the Nile crocodile.{{sfnp|6RIYJWYE}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The cockatrice is sometimes depicted as having the wings of a dragon.{{sfnp|KBUAGJ93|65}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23464
**Categories:** Mythical creature
---
### [Joseph Neil Paton](https://engole.info/joseph-neil-paton/)
**Published:** November 2, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Paton-damask-design.jpg[/pimage]Damask designer and antiquarian with large collection containing witchcraft objects, including the skull of Lilias Adie. Father of the artist Joseph Noel Paton.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Paton-damask-design.webp)One of Paton’s damask designs
Victoria & Albert museum, London
Joseph Neil Paton (1797–1874) was a damask designer and weaver based in Dunfermline. His wife, Catherine MacDiarmid, was related to the Scottish song writer [Carolina Nairne](https://engole.info/carolina-nairne/), and the couple’s children all went on to become well-known artists themselves. More than seven hundred of Paton’s designs were purchased by the Victoria and Albert museum following his death.
Deeply religious, Paton followed several denominations before adopting the doctrines of the Swedenborgians. He built a chapel beside his house, in which he delivered sermons.
Paton was a passionate collector of artefacts. Ranging from furniture connected to royal households through to a large selection of books, his extensive collection also included curiosities associated with witchcraft.
## Personal life
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Woorer-Alley.jpg)The family home in Dunfermline, Wooer’s Alley
*Atalanta*, Volume 6
Born in 1797,{{sfnp|T2DVM49T}} to a Unitarian father, Paton held strong religious beliefs throughout his lifetime. After initially dabbling with Presbyterianism, he turned to Methodism before embracing the doctrines of the Quakers. He married Catherine MacDiarmid, a folklorist from an old Highland family and a relation of [Carolina Nairne](https://engole.info/carolina-nairne/).{{sfnp|S8HAZ3N3|117}} The couple had three children: Amelia Robertson, born in 1820; her younger brother, [Joseph Noel](https://engole.info/joseph-noel-paton/) born a year later in 1821; and their youngest child, Waller Hugh, born in 1828. All three became notable artists.{{sfnp|T2DVM49T}}\[a\]Amelia was a sculptor who, at the age of forty-two, married David Octavius Hill (1802–1870);{{sfnp|AL4KH6B2}} Joseph Noel was an artist; and Waller Hugh, a landscape painter.{{sfnp|T2DVM49T}}
Paton became a Quaker before the birth of his first son, and all the children were tutored by a Quaker governess as youngsters. The family home, a cottage named Wooer’s Alley, in Dunfermline was built by Paton and, later when he turned to the Swedenborgian religious beliefs, he built a small chapel close to the house, in which he preached regularly. One of the ceilings in the cottage was decorated by Robert T. Ross, reflecting works by Old Masters such as Raphael.{{sfnp|S8HAZ3N3|117-118}}{{sfnp|H7HTD54R|805}}
## Career
Paton initially studied as a student of art at the Trustees Academy in Edinburgh.{{sfnp|H7HTD54R|805}} Returning to Dunfermline, he commenced weaving linen before returning to Edinburgh, where he served an apprenticeship as a bookbinder. Shortly afterwards he established his successful textile design business based in Dunfermline; his work attracted buyers from firms throughout the UK, but he is predominantly linked to Erskine Beveridge & Co, which in the 1850s became the largest company in the town.{{sfnp|JRHZ5ICB|118}}\[b\]The factory of Erskine Beveridge & Co was built in 1851; within twenty years it had a staff of fifteen hundred women.{{sfnp|J3Z2BZYR|420}}
In 1822 Paton won an annual prize for his work in the category for “Designs for table linen”.{{sfnp|JRHZ5ICB|119}}
## Antiquarian
An avid collector of antiquities, Paton maintained a museum in his cottage, Wooer’s Alley, to which he allowed the public access. Among the exhibits were a table dated 1310 that had belonged to Robert the Bruce plus other furniture and memorabilia from royal households. A [scold’s bridle](https://engole.info/scolds-bridle/) and the skull of [Lilias Adie](https://engole.info/lilias-adie-witch/), an elderly woman from Torryburn who died in prison while being interrogated on witchcraft charges, also formed part of the collection, along with the possessions of others convicted of witchcraft and sorcery.{{sfnp|U3FS3LQI}}{{sfnp|EWZNR3C4|823-824}}\[c\]In 2017 a forensic team from the University of Dundee reconstructed the face of Lilias Adie based on photographs taken of the skull before it went missing.{{sfnp|CGDBVGSK}}{{sfnp|G4ZCUFUJ}}
## Death and aftermath
Paton died in his home on 14 April 1874.{{sfnp|B8WVUCZJ|698}}{{sfnp|R8JQGSN6}} A selection of his collection of antiquities and books together with more than a thousand damask designs were offered for sale at Chapman’s auction in Edinburgh during November 1874.{{sfnp|8DRIY4WV}} The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, bought more than seven hundred of the designs.{{sfnp|JRHZ5ICB|118}}
The cottage was auctioned in early April 1875 with a reserve price of twelve hundred pounds. It was purchased by a local merchant.{{sfnp|MGPPW2B5}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Amelia was a sculptor who, at the age of forty-two, married David Octavius Hill (1802–1870);{{sfnp|AL4KH6B2}} Joseph Noel was an artist; and Waller Hugh, a landscape painter.{{sfnp|T2DVM49T}} b The factory of Erskine Beveridge & Co was built in 1851; within twenty years it had a staff of fifteen hundred women.{{sfnp|J3Z2BZYR|420}} c In 2017 a forensic team from the University of Dundee reconstructed the face of Lilias Adie based on photographs taken of the skull before it went missing.{{sfnp|CGDBVGSK}}{{sfnp|G4ZCUFUJ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22337
**Categories:** Collector, Male, Scottish
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in East Riding of Yorkshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-east-riding-of-yorkshire/)
**Published:** February 19, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/09/East_Riding_of_Yorkshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-East_Riding_of_Yorkshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in East Riding of Yorkshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/09/East_Riding_of_Yorkshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/960px-East_Riding_of_Yorkshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png)East Riding of Yorkshire shown within England
Wikimedia Commons
The [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of East Riding of Yorkshire is made up of the [unitary authorities](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) of City of Kingston upon Hull, and East Riding of Yorkshire.{{sfnp|3YGFCT5M}}
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}} The 111 Grade I [listed buildings](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the county are shown in separate lists for each unitary authority.
- [City of Kingston upon Hull](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-city-of-kingston-upon-hull)
- East Riding of Yorkshire
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 28393
**Categories:** Yorkshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Esther Kenworthy Waterhouse](https://engole.info/esther-kenworthy-waterhouse/)
**Published:** May 14, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/John_William_Waterhouse%2C_1885c_-_Esther_Kenworthy_Waterhouse.jpg[/pimage]English artist, specialist in flower painting; her husband was fellow artist John William Waterhouse.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/John_William_Waterhouse%2C_1885c_-_Esther_Kenworthy_Waterhouse.jpg)Portrait by John William Waterhouse c. 1885
Wikimedia Commons
Esther Kenworthy Waterhouse was an English artist, theatre reviewer and ceramics decorator. The subject matter of her paintings focused on flowers. She regularly submitted work to be displayed at the Royal Academy of Art exhibitions between 1881 and 1890.
The wife of fellow artist [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/), Esther did not exhibit again until submitting *Marigolds* to the society in 1925, when she was in some financial distress following the death of her husband in 1917.
## Personal life
Born on 5 October 1857 in Ealing, Esther Maria Kenworthy was one of the nine children of James Lees Kenworthy, an artist and teacher from Yorkshire. Together with his wife, Elizabeth, who was also a teacher, her parents ran a boarding school housing around six pupils at a time. Esther is not recorded as receiving formal training in art anywhere but, according to historian Peter Trippi, her father probably tutored her in the discipline.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|56, 239}}
She married fellow artist [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/) on 8 September 1883 at the parish church of St Mary in Ealing.{{sfnp|7AJ7X7AQ|31}} Historical convention within the Kenworthy family is that the couple may first have met via associations with her father in Yorkshire or, as suggested by Trippi, they possibly become acquainted when they were both exhibiting at the Academy.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|56}} They had no children;{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|57}} academic Anthony Hobson states that this was Esther’s choice, possibly because her own childhood had been spent in a house filled to capacity by the young boys boarding together with the large number of her siblings.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|111}}
## Career
Her debut in the art world came at the Royal Academy in 1881{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|56}} when she was living at Kerrison Lodge, Ealing; in that year and 1882, her exhibits were entitled *Wallflowers*.{{sfnp|IDILJILY|319}} Her paintings continued to feature flowers as their focal point which became her specialism. Throughout the 1880s she submitted one or two paintings to the Academy each year; works were also displayed at the Society of British Artists, galleries in Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, plus other recognised institutions. Without explanation, she abruptly stopped exhibiting in 1890, although further submissions may have been made under an alias; no examples of her artworks, or reviews of it, survive.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|56}} Esther did submit a further exhibit to the Academy in 1925, entitled *Marigolds*, when she was encountering financial difficulties.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|232}}
In tandem with producing floral paintings, Esther wrote theatrical reviews.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|111}} The later years of her life were spent decorating ceramic pieces.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|56}}
## Death and legacy
Following the death of her husband in 1917, Esther struggled financially; she sold many of his paintings from the studio in their home at 10 Hall Road, St John’s Wood.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|232}} Artworks were not achieving good prices during that period, and in an attempt to raise funds before prices further deteriorated she arranged for the remaining contents of the studio to be auctioned by Christie’s on 23 July 1926. By November 1933 the Hall Road house had been sold, and she was living in a hotel.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|233, 244}}\[a\]The house was purchased by the artist Lowes Dalbiac Luard who lived there with his daughter, Veronica Mary, a sculptor; a relative described the house as run-down when the family bought it.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|233}}
Esther died on 15 December 1944 in a Faversham nursing home; the cause of death was cerebral haemorrhage. She and her husband are interred at Kensal Green Cemetery. Doris May Somerville, who had helped care for her in later life, was the beneficiary of her estate, which had a net value of £582, equivalent to about £27,000 as at 2021.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|233, 244}}\[b\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The house was purchased by the artist Lowes Dalbiac Luard who lived there with his daughter, Veronica Mary, a sculptor; a relative described the house as run-down when the family bought it.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|233}} b Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 19585
**Categories:** English, Female, Painter
---
### [Manchester Martyrs](https://engole.info/manchester-martyrs/)
**Published:** January 20, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Manchester_Martyrs_02.jpg[/pimage]Three men executed for the murder of a police officer in Manchester, England, in 1867.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Manchester_Martyrs_02.jpg)Portraits of the Manchester Martyrs in a shamrock
Wikimedia Commons
The Manchester Martyrs – William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O’Brien – were three men executed for the murder of a police officer in Manchester, England, in 1867, during an incident that became known as the Manchester Outrages. The three were members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, also known as the Fenians, an organisation dedicated to ending British rule in Ireland, and were among a group of 30–40 Fenians who attacked a horse-drawn police van transporting two arrested leaders of the Brotherhood, Thomas J. Kelly and Timothy Deasy, to Belle Vue Gaol. Police Sergeant Charles Brett, travelling inside with the keys, was shot and killed as the attackers attempted to force the van open by blowing the lock. Kelly and Deasy were released after another prisoner in the van took the keys from Brett’s body and passed them to the group outside through a ventilation grill; the pair were never recaptured, despite an extensive search.
Two others were also charged and found guilty of Brett’s murder, Thomas Maguire and Edward O’Meagher Condon, but their death sentences were overturned – O’Meagher Condon’s through the intercession of the United States government (he was an American citizen), and Maguire’s because the evidence given against him was considered unsatisfactory. Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien were publicly hanged on a temporary structure built on the wall of Salford Gaol, on 23 November 1867, in front of a crowd of 8,000–10,000.
Brett was the first Manchester City Police officer to be killed on duty, and he is memorialised in a monument in St Ann’s Church. Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien are also memorialised, both in Manchester – where the Irish community made up more than ten per cent of the population – and in Ireland, where they were regarded by many as inspirational heroes.
## Background
The whole of Ireland had been under British rule since the end of the Nine Years’ War in 1603. The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) was founded on 17 March 1858 by James Stephens, with the aim of establishing an independent democratic republic in Ireland. The IRB was a revolutionary fraternal organisation, rather than an insurrectionary conspiracy; Stephens believed that a “thorough social revolution” was required in Ireland before the people could become republicans.{{sfnp|4PSXAMZV|15}} The Fenian Brotherhood was founded in New York in 1858 by John O’Mahony, ostensibly the IRB’s American wing.{{sfnp|EUFID243|6}}{{sfnp|JNPED8RK|317}} By 1865 the IRB had an estimated 100,000 members, and was carrying out frequent acts of violence in metropolitan Britain.{{sfnp|AC7X236T|16}} The Irish community in Manchester accounted for more than ten per cent of the population,{{sfnp|AC7X236T|22}} and one contemporary estimate put the number of Fenians and Fenian sympathisers living within fifty miles (80 km) of the city at 50,000.{{sfnp|AC7X236T|13}}
In 1867 the Fenians were preparing to launch an armed uprising against British rule, but their plans became known to the authorities, and several key members of the movement’s leadership were arrested and convicted. Two succeeded in evading the police, Thomas J. Kelly and Timothy Deasy, and travelled from Ireland to Britain to reorganise and raise the morale of the Fenian groups there in the wake of the failed uprising.{{sfnp|AC7X236T|16-17}} Both were Irish Americans who had fought with distinction in the American Civil War – Kelly achieving the rank of colonel and Deasy that of captain – and both had played important roles in the abortive uprising; Kelly had been declared the chief executive of the Irish Republic at a secret republican convention, and Deasy commanded a Fenian brigade in County Cork.{{sfnp|SP6XKDKA|193}}
During the early hours of 11 September 1867, police arrested two men found loitering in Oak Street, Shudehill, suspecting them of planning to rob a shop. Both were charged under the Vagrancy Act and held in custody. The Manchester police were initially unaware of their identities, until their colleagues in the Irish police identified them as Kelly and Deasy.{{sfnp|AC7X236T|17}}
## Rescue
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Fenian_ambush_location_manchester_martyrs.jpg)The scene of the attack, on Hyde Road, Manchester. This modern bridge has replaced the original “Fenian Arch”.
Wikimedia Commons
On 18 September 1867, Kelly and Deasy were being transferred from the courthouse to Belle Vue Gaol on Hyde Road, Gorton. They were handcuffed and locked in two separate compartments inside a police van escorted by a squad of 12 mounted policemen. The van contained six prisoners: a 12-year-old boy who was being taken to a reformatory, three women convicted of misdemeanours, and the two Fenians.{{sfnp|DK7SAV9N|337}} As it passed under a railway arch, a man darted into the middle of the road, pointed a pistol at the driver and told him to stop. Simultaneously, a party of about 30–40 men leaped over a wall at the side of the road, surrounded the van and seized the horses, one of which they shot.{{sfnp|SP6XKDKA|194}}{{sfnp|DK7SAV9N|338} The unarmed police were described by O’Meagher Condon, who organised the attack on the police van,{{sfnp|AC7X236T|32-35}} as “a miscellaneous lot, apparently embracing the long and short and the fat and lean of the Manchester force”; they offered little resistance and soon fled.{{sfnp|DK7SAV9N|340}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Fenian_ambush_plaque_hyde_road.jpg)Commemoration plaque at the site of the incident
Wikimedia Commons
The rescuers, after an unsuccessful attempt to force open the van with hatchets, sledgehammers, and crowbars, called upon Police Sergeant Brett, who was inside the van with the prisoners, to open the door. Brett refused, so one of the rescuers placed his revolver at the keyhole of the van to blow the lock, just as Brett looked through the keyhole to see what was happening outside. The bullet passed through his eye into his brain and killed him. The door was opened when one of the women prisoners took the keys from Brett’s pocket, and passed them through a ventilator to the Fenians outside,{{sfnp|DK7SAV9N|340}} allowing Kelly and Deasy to escape.{{sfnp|SP6XKDKA|193}} Brett was the first Manchester police officer to be killed on duty,{{sfnp|KFFTVL47|16}} in an incident that became known locally as the “Manchester Outrages”.{{sfnp|I7MKVUG8|174}}
## Investigation
The police suspected that Kelly and Deasy had been taken by their rescuers to Ancoats, considered at that time to be a Fenian area of Manchester. Anonymous letters alleged that the pair were being sheltered in a house on Every Street, but the fifty armed police who raided the premises found no signs of the fugitives. Despite a reward of £300 offered by the authorities, equivalent to about seven times a worker’s average annual earnings,\[a\] neither Kelly nor Deasy were recaptured. An article published in the 14 November edition of *The Times* newspaper reported that they had made their way to Liverpool, from where they had taken passage on a ship bound for New York.{{sfnp|AC7X236T|39-41}}
The police raided Manchester’s Irish quarters and brought “dozens of suspects, selected almost at random”, before local magistrates;{{sfnp|AC7X236T|42}} the raids have been described as a “reign of terror” for the Irish in Manchester.{{sfnp|REW8HQTL|72}} Amongst those arrested was Thomas Maguire, a young Royal Marine on leave who had been in the vicinity of the attack on the police van and was Irish. Such was the zeal of the police that one man with a strong Irish accent surrendered himself to the magistrates “as the only means I have of saving myself from being arrested over and over again wherever I go, as a Fenian”.{{sfnp|AC7X236T|42}}
## Commital proceedings
On 27 September 1867 committal proceedings were heard in front of a magistrate to establish whether there was a prima facie case against the 28 accused. The team of defence barristers included Chartist leader Ernest Jones, who had spent two years in prison for making seditious speeches, and W. P. Roberts, whose fee was paid by subscribers to a defence fund to represent nine of the men. Jones, representing Condon and O’Brien, clashed with the court almost immediately because the accused were handcuffed, saying “It appears to be discreditable to the administration of justice that men whom the law presumes to be innocent should be brought into Court handcuffed together like a couple of hounds.” Jones also objected to the presence of a number of soldiers in the courtroom, and when the magistrate refused to order the prisoners’ handcuffs to be removed he “marched dramatically” out of the courtroom saying “Then as a member of the Bar I decline to sit in any Court where the police override the Magistrate … I cannot disgrace the Bar by proceeding with the defence.”{{sfnp|AC7X236T|44-50}}
All but two of the accused – Allen and Larkin – claimed that they had witnesses who would testify that they were elsewhere when the police van was attacked. The defence argued that “the rescue was not illegal as the prisoners \[Kelly and Deasy\] were wrongly imprisoned”, and that there was no intention of “sacrificing human life”, as evidenced by only a single fatality despite the presence of so many guns and so many shots being fired. Nevertheless, 26 of the prisoners were sent for trial before a judge and jury at the next assizes; two were released because of “unsatisfactory identification”.{{sfnp|AC7X236T|44-50}}
## Trial
Proceedings began on 28 October 1867, in front of Mr Justice Blackburne and Mr Justice Mellor. Twenty-six appeared in court on the first day in front of a grand jury, which found that there was a prima facie case against all of the defendants for murder, felony, and misdemeanour. It was decided to charge the five “principal offenders” – Allen, Larkin, Gould (O’Brien), Shore (Condon), and Maguire – under one indictment. They were therefore brought back to the courtroom the following day, when their trial proper began,{{sfnp|AC7X236T|61-62}} despite none of them having fired the fatal shot.{{sfnp|HCE67HR8|289}}
Allen was a 19-year-old carpenter; Larkin was a tailor, the only married member of the group, and had five children. O’Brien, who had fought in the American Civil War, was a 30-year-old shop assistant from County Cork. O’Meagher Condon, born in Cork and 32 years old, had also fought for the Union side in the American Civil War. Thomas Maguire was a Royal Marine who had served for ten years and had just returned home on leave.\]{{sfnp|REW8HQTL|72-73}}
The jury retired at 6:15 pm on the fifth day and returned at 7:30 pm to give its verdict of guilty for each of the five defendants.{{sfnp|AC7X236T|62}} When asked if they had anything to say before sentence was passed, several of the convicted men made a closing speech. Allen stated his innocence, and that he regretted the death of Sergeant Brett, but that he was prepared to “die proudly and triumphantly in defence of republican principles and the liberty of an oppressed and enslaved people”.{{sfnp|DK7SAV9N|357-360}}
Larkin said he felt that he had received a fair trial, and that his counsel had done everything they could in his defence. He ended by saying: “So I look to the mercy of God. May God forgive all who have sworn my life away. As I am a dying man, I forgive them from the bottom of my heart. May God forgive them.”{{sfnp|DK7SAV9N|360-361}}
O’Brien claimed that all of the evidence given against him was false, and that as an American citizen he ought not to be facing trial in a UK court. He then went on at length to condemn the British government, the “imbecile and tyrannical rulers” of Ireland, until he was interrupted by the judge, who appealed to him to cease his remarks: “The only effect of your observations must be to tell against you with those who have to consider the sentence. I advise you to say nothing more of that sort. I do so entirely for your own sake.”{{sfnp|DK7SAV9N|361-364}}
O’Meagher Condon’s address to the court was considered by *The Times* to have “excelled all the other convicts in his zeal for the Fenian cause”. He admitted to having organised the attack on the police van in his role as leader of the north-west section of the movement, but claimed that he “never threw a stone or fired a pistol; I was never at the place \[where the attack took place\] … it is all totally false”. He went on to say that “had I committed anything against the Crown of England, I would have scorned myself had I attempted to deny it”. Towards the end of his speech he shouted, “God save Ireland!”,{{sfnp|AC7X236T|107-111}} a cry taken up by his companions in the dock.{{sfnp|DK7SAV9N|366-370}}
William Allen, Michael Larkin, Michael O’Brien, Thomas Maguire, and Edward O’Meagher Condon, were sentenced to death by hanging – the only punishment English law at that time allowed for murder{{sfnp|AC7X236T|62}} – again crying “God save Ireland” from the dock after sentence was pronounced.{{sfnp|JNPED8RK|24}} Maguire was subsequently pardoned and discharged, and O’Meagher Condon’s sentence was commuted on the eve of his execution.
The trial took place in what was described as a “climate of anti-Irish hysteria” by the weekly *Reynold’s Newspaper*, which described it as a “deep and everlasting disgrace to the English government”, the product of an ignoble panic which seized the governing classes. A yell of vengeance, it said, had issued from every aristocratic organ, and that before any evidence had been obtained the prisoners’ guilt was assumed and their executions had been demanded.{{sfnp|REW8HQTL|73}}
## Reprieves
In Thomas Maguire’s case the witnesses who had identified the prisoners and had testified that Maguire was in the forefront of the attack had their evidence shown to be transparently false. This resulted in over 30 English reporters sending an appeal to the Home Secretary to have him pardoned. With such widespread doubts about the conviction of Maguire the government yielded to the pressure to grant him a pardon. This led many to believe that the other four would not be hanged since they had been convicted on the evidence of the same witnesses who, according to Liz Curtis, had “blatantly perjured themselves in the case of Maguire”. While eminent lawyers tried through procedural means to halt the executions, leading figures such as John Bright, Charles Bradlaugh and John Stuart Mill appealed for clemency.{{sfnp|REW8HQTL|73}}
## Execution
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Salford_new_bailey_prison.JPG)New Bailey Prison at Salford, 1832
Wikimedia Commons
A crowd estimated at 8,000–10,000\[33\] gathered outside the walls of Salford Gaol on the evening of 22 November 1867 to witness the public execution of the three convicted men the following morning. A platform had been built about 30 feet (9.1 m) above ground, through the outside wall of the jail facing New Bailey Street, to support the gallows. The spectators were “well supplied by the gin palaces of Deansgate and the portable beer and coffee stalls”.{{sfnp|AC7X236T|10}} According to Father Gadd, one of the three Catholic priests who attended to the men:
A crowd of inhuman ghouls from the purlieus of Deansgate and the slums of the City … made the night and early morning hideous with the raucous bacchanalian strains of “Champagne Charlie”, “John Brown”, and “Rule Britannia”. No Irish mingled with the throng … They had obeyed the instructions of their Clergy. Throughout Manchester and Salford, silent congregations with tear-stained faces … assembled for a celebration of early Mass for the eternal welfare of the young Irishmen doomed to die a dreadful death that morning.{{sfnp
— AC7X236T|11}}
The authorities took considerable pains to discourage any rescue attempt. More than 2500 regular and special police were deployed in and around the prison, augmented by a military presence which included a detachment of the 72nd Highlanders and a squadron of the Eighth Hussars. All traffic in and out of the city was stopped.{{sfnp|AC7X236T|12}} *The Times* newspaper reported that by the time the hangings took place, shortly after 8:00 am, “the mob were quiet and orderly”, in contrast to the previous night and early morning.{{sfnp|EUFID243|77}}
The executioner, [William Calcraft](https://engole.info/william-calcraft/), was the most famous of the 19th century, but was reportedly nervous of executing Fenians, because of threats he had received. He was also “particularly incompetent”, and was “notoriously unable to calculate the correct length of rope required for each individual hanging; he frequently had to rush below the scaffold to pull on his victim’s legs to hasten death”.{{sfnp|YB4DDDC3}} Most accounts claim that Allen died almost instantaneously from a broken neck, but Larkin and O’Brien were not so fortunate. Father Gadd reported that:
The other two ropes, stretched taut and tense by their breathing twitching burdens, were in ominous and distracting movement. The hangman had bungled! … Calcraft then descended into the pit and there finished what he could not accomplish from above. *He killed Larkin*.{{sfnp
— AC7X236T|98}}
Father Gadd refused to allow Calcraft to dispatch O’Brien in the same way, and so “for three-quarters of an hour the good priest knelt, holding the dying man’s hands within his own, reciting the prayers for the dying. Then the long drawn out agony ended.”{{sfnp|AC7X236T|98}}
The bodies of the three men were buried in the New Bailey Prison graveyard, from which they were transferred to Strangeways Prison Cemetery when New Bailey Prison closed in 1868. In 1991 their remains were cremated and reinterred at Blackley Cemetery in Manchester.
## Aftermath
Most of the British press had demanded “retribution swift and stern”, not because the men were Irish, but because they were Fenians: “the public demand for the death penalty was not simply an expression of anti-Irish sentiment, but rather a product of the Fenian panic and popular feelings of insecurity and the desire for order.” The *Daily Telegraph*, for instance, although like most of its contemporaries describing Brett’s death as “a vulgar, dastardly murder”, nevertheless supported reform in Ireland: “we may hang convicted Fenians with good conscience, but we should also thoroughly redress those evils distinctly due to English policy and still supported by English power.”{{sfnp|XE259MNB|163}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/Grave_of_the_Invincible%E2%80%99s.jpg/1280px-Grave_of_the_Invincible%E2%80%99s.jpg)Monument to the Manchester Martyrs in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin
Wikimedia Commons
Many funeral processions were held in Ireland and even in a few British cities during the weeks following the executions, sometimes attracting crowds of thousands. These demonstrations of support for the three Fenians further outraged British public opinion, and “reinforced the prevailing sentiment that the Irish moral compass was somehow off-center”.{{sfnp|XE259MNB|164}}} The executions gave rise to an enormous groundswell of feeling among Irish communities the world over.{{sfnp|SP6XKDKA|202}} In New Zealand, for instance, seven men were convicted of unlawful assembly in a high-profile trial following a mock funeral to Hokitika cemetery; two of the seven, a newspaper editor and a priest, pleaded guilty to seditious libel, having published “a succession of very rabid articles about the Queen’s Government.”{{sfnp|IKGZZQLV}} The viceregal government declared the holding of a Manchester Martyr funeral procession illegal. Throughout Ireland Masses, even public ones, were said for the three,{{sfnp|J2YPNRJF|308}} although Bishop David Moriarty of Kerry prohibited celebration of Mass for them in his diocese.{{sfnp|SP6XKDKA|202}}{{sfnp|J2YPNRJF|308}} Archbishop John MacHale of Tuam, on the other hand, personally assisted at a High Mass for them,{{sfnp|2CRKH597|131}} and Cardinal Archbishop Paul Cullen of Dublin, while opposing public celebrations, instructed his priests to pray for the dead Fenians, and to say Mass privately for them.{{sfnp|J2YPNRJF|308}}
The day after the executions, Frederick Engels wrote to Karl Marx:
So yesterday morning the Tories, by the hand of Mr Calcraft, accomplished the final act of separation between England and Ireland. The only thing that the Fenians still lacked were martyrs. They have been provided by Derby and G Hardy. Only the execution of the three has made the liberation of Kelly and Deasy the heroic deed which will now be sung to every Irish babe in the cradle in Ireland, England and America … To my knowledge, the only time that anybody has been executed for a similar matter in a civilised country was the case of John Brown at Harpers Ferry. The Fenians could not have wished for a better precedent. The Southerners had at least the decency to treat J. Brown as a rebel, whereas here everything is being done to transform a political attempt into a common crime.{{sfnp
— XWKAZLKV}}
The cry of the condemned men was the inspiration for the song “God Save Ireland”, which became Ireland’s unofficial national anthem until officially replaced by “Amhrán na bhFiann” (“The Soldier’s Song”).{{sfnp|AC7X236T|111}} The executions were also “incalculable” in their influence on the “political awakening” of Charles Stewart Parnell.{{sfnp|AC7X236T|10}} Speaking in the House of Commons ten years later, Parnell told the House: “I wish to say as directly as I can that I do not believe, and never shall believe, that any murder was committed in Manchester.”{{sfnp|AC7X236T|116}}
## Monuments
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Manchester_martyrs_cross.jpg)Monument to the Manchester Martyrs in St Joseph’s Cemetery, Moston, Manchester
Wikimedia Commons
Monuments erected in honour of Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien stand in Tralee (County Kerry), Limerick, Kilrush (County Clare), Clonmel (County Tipperary), Tipperary Town (County Tipperary), Birr (County Offaly), Ennis (County Clare), Milltown Cemetery, Belfast, (County Antrim), Glasnevin Cemetery (Dublin), and in St Joseph’s Cemetery, Moston, Manchester.{{sfnp|C3HQAA9H|39}} The monument in St Joseph’s Cemetery was designed by J. Geraghty and unveiled in November 1898. Commissioned by the Manchester Martyrs Central Memorial Committee, it stands just over 20 feet (6 m) high and takes the form of a Celtic cross. On three sides of the pedestal are medallion portraits of the three men, originally surmounted by figures of the Irish Wolfhound, now removed. The site of this monument has been the scene of several disturbances, as it has been the tradition for Republican sympathisers to parade there on the anniversary of the deaths of those hanged. The monument has suffered several attacks to its structure, as well as acts of vandalism, and is listed as being “at risk” by the Public Monument and Sculpture Association National Recording Project.{{sfnp|5AV2JUKF}}
To commemorate the centenary of the men’s execution, the Manchester Connolly Association commissioned the artist Arthur Dooley to produce a memorial sculpture to stand on the site of New Bailey prison in Salford. There was opposition to the proposal, and it seems that the sculpture was never made, let alone installed.{{sfnp|8HQ7HHE5}} Dooley did however produce a foot-high maquette\[a\]A *maquette* is a small preliminary study or sketch. which now forms part of the collection of the Working Class Movement Library in Manchester. The maquette suggests that the memorial was to consist of a Wicklow granite base with three standing steel pillars with attached Celtic shields each bearing a martyr’s name and some detail of the event’s significance.{{sfnp|Z3NFRVJ6}} The maquette was donated to the WCML in 2011 by the family of Jud Cooper who had been given the maquette by Dooley.{{sfnp|8HQ7HHE5}}
Police Sergeant Brett was buried in Harpurhey Cemetery; the words “I will do my duty” are engraved on his tombstone. There is also a memorial tablet to him in St Ann’s Church, Manchester.{{sfnp|AC7X236T|128}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a A *maquette* is a small preliminary study or sketch.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 13432
**Categories:** Martyr
---
### [Elland flags](https://engole.info/elland-flags/)
**Published:** December 22, 2021
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** Sandstones interbedded with mudstones and siltstones in the Lower Coal Measures of West Yorkshire, once extensively quarried.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Old_quarry%2C_Tong_Royd%2C_Elland_-_geograph.org.uk_-_689420.jpg)Outcropping of stone
Wikimedia Commons
Elland flags are sandstones interbedded with mudstones and siltstones in the Lower Coal Measures of West Yorkshire. The flags were extensively quarried and mined in the Leeds, Bradford, Halifax area particularly around Elland, Brighouse and Hipperholme, where the best flagstones occur. The rocks are of lesser quality as they are tracked northwards towards Bradford, and more so towards Leeds.{{sfnp|UTPE4J5N|5,7}}
The best stone was flat-bedded sandstone used for roofing and flagstones for paving and monumental stone or ashlar. The poorer quality cross-bedded stone, ragstone, was used for walling.{{sfnp|UTPE4J5N|5,7}} Stone of the thinnest bedding was used for roofing, paving or fencing, and where it was thicker, it was split into blocks and used for walling, lintels, steps, columns or gateposts.{{sfnp|UTPE4J5N|7}} The earliest quarries produced stone for local use because of transport costs, but trade in flags from quarries at Cromwell Bottom and Elland Edge was facilitated by the [Calder and Hebble Navigation](https://engole.info/calder-and-hebble-navigation/) for transshipping to east Yorkshire and beyond after 1770.{{sfnp|7WK6SPCB|124}}
The flags were taken at first from outcrops and used for roofing slate for which a mention was made in 1314. By the 17th century flagstone was being quarried, and by 1850 stone was being mined from drift mines. Lifting and haulage was done manually until horse gins and hand cranes were introduced during the 19th century. Shaft mining started in the Hipperholme area in the 1850s and lasted for nearly a century.{{sfnp|UTPE4J5N|7}} Shafts were sunk by hand, usually circular and mostly less than {{convert|100|ft}} deep.{{sfnp|UTPE4J5N|9}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/The_Fleece_Inn%2C_Elland_-_geograph.org.uk_-_251206.jpg)Listed former farmhouse with flagged roof
Wikimedia Commons
Elland Flags were quarried around Halifax from the 12th century, but peak production was in the late-19th century. At least 40 flagstone quarries were being worked around Northowram, Southowram, Hipperholme and Brighouse in 1900. They provided stone walling, roofing slates and paving for Halifax, Huddersfield, Leeds, Bradford, and other local towns and villages and supplied paving stones to other parts of Britain, particularly London. The industry declined after the First World War.{{sfnp|SEHDSFPB|22}}
Most mines were small and had short lives;{{sfnp|UTPE4J5N|7}} the longest lasting were in the Brighouse area.{{sfnp|UTPE4J5N|9}} Longroyd Mine was the largest but was worked out by 1917. Southages in Rastrick, which employed 47 miners and 100 surface workers in 1902, lasted for 57 years.{{sfnp|UTPE4J5N|9}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24264
**Categories:** Geology, Yorkshire
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Church of St Mary the Virgin, Weston-on-Trent](https://engole.info/church-of-st-mary-the-virgin-weston-on-trent/)
**Published:** April 28, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0c/St_Mary_the_Virgin%27s_church%2C_Weston_on_Trent_16.jpg/1280px-St_Mary_the_Virgin%27s_church%2C_Weston_on_Trent_16.jpg[/pimage]Active Anglican church in the village of Weston-on-Trent, now used only as a Festival Church.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0c/St_Mary_the_Virgin%27s_church%2C_Weston_on_Trent_16.jpg/1280px-St_Mary_the_Virgin%27s_church%2C_Weston_on_Trent_16.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/zXDo6ZbgswjZ8qNz7
St Mary’s is an active Anglican church in the village of Weston-on-Trent, Derbyshire. It is the Archdeaconry of Derby City and South Derbyshire, the Deanery of Mercia and the Diocese of Derby, and is one of the seven churches in the [Benefice](https://engole.info/benefice) of Aston on Trent, Elvaston, Weston on Trent and Shar.{{sfnp|4K9293ZB}}
The earliest parts of the church date from the 13th century, with additions during the 14th and 15th centuries. The building was restored by Jolley and Evans in 1876–1877. As at 2026 St Mary’s is a Festival Church, meaning that services are held only at Christmas, Easter, Harvest and other occcasions.{{sfnp|T2I49QZP}}{{sfnp|D9V2Z42Z}}
St Mary’s was designated a Grade I listed building in 1967.{{sfnp|T2I49QZP}}
## Architecture
### Exterior
The church is constructed of [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) and coursed squared stone, plus some rubble. It has shallow leaded roofs and embattled parapets to the [nave](https://engole.info/nave), [aisles](https://engole.info/aisle-architecture) and the 15th-century two-stage tower.{{sfnp|T2I49QZP}}
### Interior
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Richard_Sale_Statue_set_at_Weston_on_Trent_Derbyshire_%281%29.jpg/1280px-Richard_Sale_Statue_set_at_Weston_on_Trent_Derbyshire_%281%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
Inside the church is an “unusual monument” with the life-sized figures of Richard Sale and his wife Dorothy, who died in 1625 and 1615 respectively, with the smaller figures of children behind, all kneeling in a row.{{sfnp|T2I49QZP}}\[a\]Richard Sale was the rector of St Mary’s from 1575 until 1625.{{sfnp|D9V2Z42Z}}
## Organ
The church contains an organ by Joseph Walker dating from 1816, which was formerly in All Saints’ Church, Aston-on-Trent. It was installed in St Mary’s by H. Cantrill in 1974.{{sfnp|4PQ5NXBN}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Richard Sale was the rector of St Mary’s from 1575 until 1625.{{sfnp|D9V2Z42Z}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29934
**Categories:** Anglican, Church, Derbyshire
---
### [Manchester Royal Exchange](https://engole.info/manchester-royal-exchange/)
**Published:** August 11, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Royal_Exchange_Building.jpg[/pimage]Former cotton exchange damaged by two bombs, now comprising a theatre and shopping centre.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Royal_Exchange_Building.jpg)Manchester Royal Exchange
Wikimedia Commons
The Manchester Royal Exchange is a Grade II listed building in Manchester, England. It is located in the city centre on the land bounded by St Ann’s Square, Exchange Street, Market Street, Cross Street and Old Bank Street. The complex includes the Royal Exchange Theatre and the Royal Exchange Shopping Centre.
The Royal Exchange was heavily damaged in the [Manchester Blitz](https://engole.info/manchester-blitz/) and in the [1996 Manchester bombing](https://engole.info/1996-manchester-bombing/). The current building is the most recent of several on the site that were used for commodities exchange, primarily but not exclusively for cotton and textiles.
## History
The cotton industry in Lancashire was served by cotton importers and brokers based in Liverpool, who supplied Manchester and surrounding towns with raw cotton to spin into yarn and produce finished textiles. The Liverpool Cotton Exchange traded in imported raw cotton. In the 18th century the trade was part of part the slave trade, in which African slaves were transported to America where the cotton was grown and then exported to Liverpool where the raw cotton was sold.{{sfnp|SA3VI87N}} Raw cotton was processed in Manchester and the surrounding cotton towns, and Manchester Royal Exchange traded in spun yarn and finished goods which were sold across the world. Manchester’s first exchange opened in 1729 but had closed by the end of the century. As the cotton industry boomed, the need for a new exchange was recognised.
Thomas Harrison designed the second exchange that was completed in 1809 at the junction of Market Street and Exchange Street.{{sfnp|SA3VI87N}} Harrison’s exchange, of two storeys above a basement constructed in Runcorn stone, was designed in the Classical style. The cost of £20,000, was paid for in advance by 400 members, who bought £50 shares and paid £30 each to buy the site. Its semi-circular north façade had fluted Doric columns. The exchange room where business was conducted covered {{convert|812|sqyd}}. The ground floor contained the members’ library with more than 15,000 books. The basement housed a newsroom lit by a dome and plate glass windows, its ceiling was supported by a circle of Ionic pillars spaced {{convert|15|ft|spell=in}} from the walls. The first-floor dining-room was accessed by a geometrical staircase. The exchange opened to celebrate of the birthday of George III in 1809. It also contained other anterooms and offices.{{sfnp|7463XWQ8}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Baines_1835-Exchange%2C_Manchester.png)The Exchange in 1835
Wikimedia Commons
As the cotton trade continued to expand, larger premises were required and an extension was completed in 1849. Queen Victoria granted the exchange the title Manchester Royal Exchange after a visit in 1851.{{sfnp|JPTGERL4|93}} The exchange was run by a committee of Manchester industrialists. From 1855 until 1860 the committee was chaired by Edmund Buckley.{{sfnp|X2HWPD9J}}
The exchange was replaced by a third designed by Mills & Murgatroyd between 1867 and 1874.{{sfnp|2TTF9QV5|155}} It was extended and modified by Bradshaw Gass & Hope between 1914 and 1931 to form the largest trading hall in England.{{sfnp|2TTF9QV5|155}}{{sfnp|JPTGERL4|142}} The trading hall had three domes and was double the size of the current hall.{{sfnp|IEAMAMYV}} The colonnade parallel to Cross Street marked its centre. On trading days merchants and brokers struck deals which supported the jobs of tens of thousands of textile workers in Manchester and the surrounding towns.{{sfnp|SA3VI87N}} Manchester’s cotton dealers and manufacturers trading from the Royal Exchange earned the city the name, [Cottonopolis](https://engole.info/cottonopolis/).{{sfnp|EIFDS9EM|24}}
The exchange was seriously damaged during the Second World War, when it took a direct hit from a bomb during a German air raid in the Manchester Blitz at Christmas in 1940. Its interior was rebuilt with a smaller trading area.{{sfnp|2TTF9QV5|155}}\[8\]{{sfnp|JPTGERL4|169}} The top stages of the clock tower, which had been destroyed, were replaced in a simpler form. Trading ceased in 1968, and the building was threatened with demolition.{{sfnp|2TTF9QV5|155}}{{sfnp|JPTGERL4|206}}
The exchange remained empty until 1973 when a theatre company moved in. The Royal Exchange Theatre was founded in 1976.{{sfnp|FDU42YDG}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Royal_Exchange_Arcade.jpg)Royal Exchange Arcade
Wikimedia Commons
The exchange was again damaged when an [IRA bomb](https://engole.info/1996-manchester-bombing/) exploded in Corporation Street less than {{convert|50|yd}} away on 15 June 1996. The blast caused the dome to move, although the main structure was undamaged.{{sfnp|JPTGERL4|257}} That the adjacent St Ann’s Church survived almost unscathed is probably due to the sheltering effect of the stone-built exchange. Repairs took more than two years and cost £32 million, a sum provided by the National Lottery.{{sfnp|FDU42YDG}} Whilst the exchange was rebuilt, the theatre company moved to in Castlefield. The theatre was repaired and provided with a second performance space, a bookshop, craft shop, restaurant, bars and rooms for corporate hospitality. The theatre’s workshops, costume department and rehearsal rooms were moved to Swan Street. The refurbished theatre re-opened on 30 November 1998 by Prince Edward. The opening production, Stanley Houghton’s *Hindle Wakes* was the play that should have opened the day the bomb was exploded.{{sfnp|JPTGERL4|257}}
## Architecture
The exchange has four storeys and two attic storeys built on a rectangular plan in Portland stone. It was designed in the Classical style. Its slate roof has three glazed domes and on the ground floor an arcade orientated east to west. It has a central atrium at first-floor level. The ground floor facade has channelled rusticated piers and the first, second and third floors have Corinthian columns with entablature and a modillioned [cornice](https://engole.info/cornice). The first attic storey has a balustraded parapet and the second attic storey has a mansard roof. At the north-west corner is a Baroque turret, and there are domes over other corners. The west side has a massive round-headed entrance arch with wide steps up, and the first and second floor windows have round-headed arches. The third floor and first attic storey have mullioned windows.{{sfnp|IEAMAMYV}}
## Theatre
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Royal_Exchange_theatre_pod.jpg)Royal Exchange theatre pod
Wikimedia Commons
Inside the Great Hall, the theatre occupies a seven-sided steel and glass module. It is a pure theatre in the round in which the stage area is surrounded on all sides and above, by seating.{{sfnp|2TTF9QV5}} Its unique design is intended to create a vivid and immediate relationship between actors and audiences. As the floor of the exchange was unable to take the weight of the theatre and its audience, the module is suspended from the four columns carrying the hall’s central dome. Only the stage area and ground-level seating rest on the floor. The 150-ton theatre structure opened in 1976 at a cost of £1 million amid some scepticism from Mancunians.{{sfnp|GLU46DH2}}
The theatre can seat an audience of up to 800 on three levels, making it the largest theatre in the round in the world. At ground level, 400 seats are in a raked configuration and above them are two galleries, each with 150 seats set in two rows. The 90-seat studio theatre with no fixed stage area and moveable seats, allows for a variety of production styles (in the round, thrust etc.) and is used by visiting touring theatre companies, stand-up comedians and performances for young people.{{sfnp|ZZWFJBW3}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 4692
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Theatre
---
### [The Lady of Shalott](https://engole.info/the-lady-of-shalott/)
**Published:** June 23, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/John_William_Waterhouse_-_The_Lady_of_Shalott_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg[/pimage]Oil painting by English artist John William Waterhouse; the first in his trilogy featuring The Lady of Shalott
**Content:**
*The Lady of Shalott* is the first in a trilogy of oil paintings capturing the English artist [John William Waterhouse’s](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/) interpretation of three different scenes from Lord Tennyson’s poem. Submitted by Waterhouse as his Royal Academy of Arts exhibit of 1888, it marked a turning point in his career as it began his series of themes based on romantic literature.
## Narrative
Waterhouse owned a copy of the 1885 publication, *The Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson Poet Laureate*,{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|241}} which contains the poem about the Lady of Shalott.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|89}} The narrative describes a maiden – or fairy Lady as she is referred to within the text{{sfnp|JRFG9RGY|38}} – trapped downstream of Camelot on the island of Shalott; she is cursed and must constantly work on a loom producing tapestries of events taking place outside her window. She is not, however, allowed to gaze straight out and must rely on what she views in a mirror.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|87, 89}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/John_William_Waterhouse_-_The_Lady_of_Shalott_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)Oil on canvas
153 cm × 200 cm (60 in × 79 in)
Wikimedia Commons
One day she notices Lancelot riding past the window and, enthralled by the sight of the handsome knight, she cannot resist looking directly at him through the window. It proves to be the catalyst that evokes the curse and she must face her death singing in a boat on the way to Camelot.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|87, 89}}
## Description
The painting, one of the largest produced by Waterhouse,{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|51}}\[a\]Academic Anthony Hobson notes that [*Mariamne*](https://engole.info/mariamne/), Waterhouse’s 1887 Royal Academy exhibit, is the only one of the artist’s works that is larger.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|51}} displays his interpretation of when the maiden is suspended for a brief period in time before the realisation of the curse after she left her former life of imprisonment in the tower.{{sfnp|9JL8D6PM|112}} It is the moment in the middle of the line in the poem that reads: “She loos’d the chain and down she lay”;{{sfnp|7AJ7X7AQ|41}} in the painting, the chain shackle tethering the boat to the riverbank is ready to be dropped from her hand.{{sfnp|9JL8D6PM|112}} Despite being aware viewers at the exhibition would be familiar with the poem, Waterhouse transcribed two earlier lines and a following line from it in the exhibition catalogue:{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|90}}
> And down the river’s dim expanse,
> Like some bold seër in a trance, …
> The broad stream bore her far away.
Where possible the artist remained true to the poet’s text;{{sfnp|HBWUI7QQ|57}} Tennyson did not however reveal any features of what the maiden looked like save that she was dressed in white, an element incorporated by Waterhouse;{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|90}} other details had to be procured from the artist’s imagination.{{sfnp|HBWUI7QQ|57}} Choosing the fashionable theme of a Celtic-type long-haired redhead, Waterhouse concentrates attention on her trance-like state, emphasising her eyes puffed from crying together with her parted, swollen, lips as she chants her final lament.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|90-91}} The sorceress in [*The Magic Circle*](https://engole.info/the-magic-circle/), Waterhouse’s painting of 1886, wore a heavy sash round her waist; a similar device is placed in a low-slung position to give a slight protuberance to the Lady of Shalott’s stomach, symbolic of her denied sensuality.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|90}}{{sfnp|2HIK6NWL|191}}
In the moment before lying down to face her destiny of death, she is seated on the tapestry she has woven during her enforced confinement; as it falls casually over the edge of the boat, glimpses of the reflected scenes she viewed as described earlier in the poem are visible on the fabric.\[b\]For instance, it depicts: “knights riding … two and two”; “An abbott on an ambling pad”; and “a funeral, with plumes and lights and music”.{{sfnp|9JL8D6PM|112}} The window of her prison can be seen in the top left of the painting; it is also depicted on the tapestry.{{sfnp|9JL8D6PM|112}}
Introducing a religious facet to the scene, at the front of the boat – which is carved with her name{{sfnp|2HIK6NWL|191}} – Waterhouse includes a trio of candles; two are already extinguished, the third flickers as a symbol of her impending death.{{sfnp|JRFG9RGY|45-46}} Other religious artefacts are a crucifix representing the abandonment of obligations and the death of a martyr; together with a rosary as a token of the maiden’s purity and characteristic of the Virgin Mary.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|90}}{{sfnp|2HIK6NWL|191}}
The rich hues employed for the key components at the centre of the picture are amplified by the muted tones of the surroundings.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|55}} Captured as night draws in and further dimmed by rain,{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|56}} the landscape has been crafted to convey a “quickly glimpsed impression”{{sfnp|2HIK6NWL|191}} and take it away from being a contrived studio setting.{{sfnp|JRFG9RGY|43}} Symbolism is also employed with the inclusion of willows, the representation of grief, and swallows, the emblem for salvation.{{sfnp|JRFG9RGY|45-46}}\[c\]The pair of swallows can be seen on the left of the painting.{{sfnp|JRFG9RGY|46}}
## Reception and legacy
First exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1888, it was purchased by Sir Henry Tate.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|183}}\[d\]Sir Henry Tate (1819–1899), sugar magnate, founded The National Gallery of British Art, which became the Tate Gallery.{{sfnp|3HN8LG73}} Records do not indicate the purchase price but Trippi speculates that, owing to the rising status of the artist, it would have been higher than the £900 paid when Tate bought [*Consulting the Oracle*](https://engole.info/consulting-the-oracle),{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|92}} Waterhouse’s 1884 Academy exhibit.{{sfnp|WSGNH3YY|98}}\[e\]Tate had agreed to pay £900 for the *Consulting the Oracle* painting prior to the 1884 exhibition;{{sfnp|WSGNH3YY|98}} he also purchased *St Eulalia* at the following year’s exhibition.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|182}} Art expert Robert Upstone suggests the figure may have been around a thousand guineas.{{sfnp|JRFG9RGY|47}} *The Lady of Shalott* was one of the sixty-five paintings Tate gifted to the National Gallery of British Art.{{sfnp|3HN8LG73}}
The painting marked a change in direction for Waterhouse;{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|51}} while he remained loyal to his favourite topic of mystical women, some being punished or facing violent deaths,{{sfnp|JRFG9RGY|38}} his themes changed to being based on romantic literature.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|87}} The artist had already displayed a penchant towards differing levels of trance-like consciousness, martyrdom, muted eroticism and using a harmony between women and water in his work so, according to art historian Peter Trippi, interpreting this particular scene was a natural progression.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|87}}
Described in modern times by art experts as being Waterhouse’s best known and most famous piece,{{sfnp|9JL8D6PM|112}}{{sfnp|JRFG9RGY|37}} it received mixed reactions from contemporary critics.{{sfnp|LKS6MDQ3|113}} Produced at a time when there was uncertainty, discontent and criticism levelled at the Royal Academy concerning the direction the British art world should be taking,{{sfnp|JRFG9RGY|38}} Waterhouse fused the style of the Pre-Raphaelites in his treatment of the central figure but embraced the naturalistic techniques of the French artist Jules Bastien-Lepage for the background and foliage.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|89, 92}} Upstone suggests the artist was attempting to demonstrate a means whereby some reconciliation could be achieved between the warring factions.{{sfnp|JRFG9RGY|43-44}} Critics like Marion H. Spielmann, editor of *The Magazine of Art*,{{sfnp|CEMKK4ZZ|7}} deemed the painting “a disappointment” adding that “…the French flatness of tones takes much of the quality out of the colour…”{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|55}} Younger artists greeted it with enthusiasm and The Academy committee had already acknowledged its approval by hanging it in a prominent position at the exhibition.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|92}}\[f\]The painting was positioned so it could be viewed as people used the grand staircase at Burlington House.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|92}}
Waterhouse went on to produce nine artworks based on, or in the style of, Tennyson’s narratives including the trilogy of paintings centred on The Lady of Shalott.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|89}} In 1894, he captured a different aspect of the titular character, at an earlier point in the tale when the maiden looked directly at the handsome knight.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|80, 82}}\[g\]The 1894 painting was also titled *The Lady of Shalott* but is generally referred to as *The Lady of Shalott Looking at Lancelot*. The final rendition of the Lady came in his 1916 Academy exhibit, *‘I am Half Sick of Shadows, said The Lady of Shalott*, where he shows her resting from her work on the loom but conveys her exasperation at her plight as she views the reflection of a pair of lovers in the mirror.{{sfnp|2HIK6NWL|191}}{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|137}}\[h\]The final painting in the trilogy was completed in, and dated, 1915.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|192}}
Writing in 1999, Lionel Lambourne, scholar and former curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum,{{sfnp|6W6IPK3Q}} indicated postcards produced by the Tate Gallery of the painting and those of *Ophelia* by Millais competed for the position of being its top-selling item.{{sfnp|B26T3G7F|459}} By 2003, according to Trippi, purchases of *The Lady of Shalott* postcard dominated the sales leader board.{{sfnp|Y52YELHC|129}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Academic Anthony Hobson notes that [*Mariamne*](https://engole.info/mariamne/), Waterhouse’s 1887 Royal Academy exhibit, is the only one of the artist’s works that is larger.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|51}} b For instance, it depicts: “knights riding … two and two”; “An abbott on an ambling pad”; and “a funeral, with plumes and lights and music”.{{sfnp|9JL8D6PM|112}} c The pair of swallows can be seen on the left of the painting.{{sfnp|JRFG9RGY|46}} d Sir Henry Tate (1819–1899), sugar magnate, founded The National Gallery of British Art, which became the Tate Gallery.{{sfnp|3HN8LG73}} e Tate had agreed to pay £900 for the *Consulting the Oracle* painting prior to the 1884 exhibition;{{sfnp|WSGNH3YY|98}} he also purchased *St Eulalia* at the following year’s exhibition.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|182}} f The painting was positioned so it could be viewed as people used the grand staircase at Burlington House.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|92}} g The 1894 painting was also titled *The Lady of Shalott* but is generally referred to as *The Lady of Shalott Looking at Lancelot*. h The final painting in the trilogy was completed in, and dated, 1915.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|192}} i, j var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 20737
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
---
### [Arthur John Lewis Gordon](https://engole.info/arthur-john-lewis-gordon/)
**Published:** October 10, 2020
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Arthur_John_Lewis_Gordon_%281847-1918%29_self.jpg[/pimage]Diplomat, artist and collector; owner of Ellon Castle from 1880s.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Arthur_John_Lewis_Gordon_%281847-1918%29_self.jpg)Self-portrait, c. 1875
Wikimedia Commons
Arthur John Lewis Gordon (1847–1918) was an artist and collector who acted as private secretary to his cousin, Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon, when the latter took up his post as the first British Governor of Fiji.{{sfnp|67MA92HD}}
While in Fiji, Arthur J L Gordon together with the Chief Medical Officer, Sir William MacGregor, amassed a large collection of Fijian objects such as pottery, *tabua*,\[a\]*tabua* – pronounced tambua – are teeth of sperm whales that are considered very valuable and used in ceremonies{{sfnp|FTGPIZ9N|4}} bowls, headrests, whalebone clubs and other items. These were later donated to the Aberdeen University Museums collections.{{sfnp|WD2CVUKF}}{{sfnp|PJAQSMP2}}
Born in Stockholm{{sfnp|67MA92HD}} on 19 March 1847, Arthur’s parents were George John Robert Gordon and Rosa Justina Young.{{sfnp|S8T2HGI4|6}} Educated at Radley College, he followed his father in a career in the diplomatic service. He was awarded a CMG in 1877 for his work involving the suppression of native tribes when they rebelled in Fiji.{{sfnp|Q2CBFDTS}} In 1885 he married Caroline Augusta Hamilton Gordon,{{sfnp|67MA92HD}} the governor’s niece.{{sfnp|NNVTTI2J|67}}
During the 1880s Arthur inherited the [Ellon Castle estate](https://engole.info/ellon-castle-and-gardens/) and took up residence in the mansion house built by his grandfather, Alexander Gordon. Arthur’s son, Cosmo Alexander Gordon, was born in Ellon in 1886. When the 7th Earl of Aberdeen was appointed as Governor General of Canada in 1893, Arthur served as his secretary.{{sfnp|NNVTTI2J|67}}
The Ellon estate was heavily mortgaged and in severe debt when Arthur inherited it; by 1913 it was being administered by trustees.{{sfnp|NNVTTI2J|67}}
Arthur died on 13 August 1918 in a London nursing home.{{sfnp|Q2CBFDTS}} The funeral and burial took place in Ellon on 21 August.{{sfnp|WFQHTC2M}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a *tabua* – pronounced tambua – are teeth of sperm whales that are considered very valuable and used in ceremonies{{sfnp|FTGPIZ9N|4}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23227
**Categories:** Collector, Diplomat
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Rivington Reservoirs](https://engole.info/rivington-reservoirs/)
**Published:** July 5, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/South_Over_Anglezarke_Reservoir_-_geograph.org.uk_-_309463.jpg[/pimage]The Rivington Reservoir Chain, or Rivington Pike Scheme, was built for Liverpool Corporation Waterworks between 1850 and 1857 by Thomas Hawksley.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/South_Over_Anglezarke_Reservoir_-_geograph.org.uk_-_309463.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/n4KmGaoz8a6T9VsdA}}
The Rivington Reservoir Chain
The Rivington Reservoir Chain, or Rivington Pike Scheme, was built for Liverpool Corporation Waterworks between 1850 and 1857 by Thomas Hawksley. He designed the impounding scheme for five reservoirs, a water treatment works on the western edge of the West Pennine Moors and a {{convert|17|mi|adj=on}} long pipeline to storage reservoirs at Prescot near Liverpool. Water from two higher level reservoirs, Rake Brook and Lower Ruddlesworth, was carried south in a channel, The Goit, to three larger reservoirs, Anglezarke, Upper Rivington and Lower Rivington. Treatment works were built at the south end of Lower Rivington and the water was taken to Liverpool via a cast-iron pipe. After 1857 more reservoirs were added to the chain. When built, the chain was the largest such scheme and became a model for schemes elsewhere.
## Background
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Rivington_Pike_Winter_1.jpg)Rivington Pike
Wikimedia Commons
In the first half of the 19th century Liverpool’s population grew rapidly, leading to a shortage of water.{{sfnp|8MMX4VRQ}} The supply from local wells was inadequate and Liverpool had to look further afield. A site on the edge of the West Pennine Moors below [Rivington Pike](https://engole.info/rivington-pike/) in Lancashire was chosen. In October 1847 Liverpool Corporation voted for the funding required to pass the Rivington Pike Scheme Bill through parliament{{sfnp|A66RU277}} and obtained the Act of Parliament to construct large reservoirs to collect water from the [moorland](https://engole.info/moorland/ "Moorland") in the same year.{{sfnp|BZMI73BU|7}} The Rivington catchment is about 10,000 acres and water is supplied by the River Yarrow, the River Douglas and the Roddlesworth and Rake Brooks.{{sfnp|GMBKIP5V|150–151}}
Although land was purchased, opposition to the Rivington Pike Scheme proposed by Thomas Hawksley was strong. The Pikeists, supporters of the scheme won through after a report by Robert Stephenson MP, who had been consulted by the corporation, favoured the scheme over the wells that had traditionally provided the growing town’s water. The works cost £900,000.{{sfnp|BZMI73BU|7}}
## Reservoirs
The Rivington Pike Scheme’s three main reservoirs occupy three shallow valleys below the [Rivington](https://engole.info/rivington) and [Anglezarke](https://engole.info/anglezarke/) Moors between Bolton and Preston. They were built to supply Liverpool with clean drinking water. The reservoirs are bound by embankments. Their combined high-water area is {{convert|465|acre}} and they hold a total volume 2.8 million gallons. All water from the reservoirs was filtered at works at the southern end of the Lower Rivington Reservoir. The Anglezarke, Upper and Lower Rivington Reservoirs appear to be in a single valley, but actually occupy three. Designed by Thomas Hawksley, his first impounding designs, they were constructed between 1850 and 1857 for Liverpool Corporation.{{sfnp|7CNDE67R}}
When construction started, a massive influx of workmen moved into the sparsely populated area for the duration of the work. Most were navvies who excavated and built the reservoirs, mostly by manual labour, but also stonemasons and others. They lived in shanty towns of temporary wooden huts near their work.{{sfnp|8MMX4VRQ}} Rivington’s only public house, the Black Lad was demolished to make way for the reservoir and the “Clog Inn” at Anglezarke was unable to cater for all the thirsty workmen, and unlicensed beer sellers made large profits from illicitly brewed ale.{{sfnp|8MMX4VRQ}}
### Anglezarke
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Anglezarke_Reservoir_%28South%29_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1526.jpg)Anglezarke Reservoir
Wikimedia Commons
Anglezarke Reservoir has an average depth of {{convert|19|ft}}. It has three embankments: Heapey at the northern end is {{convert|93|yd}} long and {{convert|32|ft}} high, Charnock on the western side is {{convert|850|yd}} long, {{convert|31|ft}} high and Knowsley at the southern end is {{convert|240|yd}} long and {{convert|46|ft}} high. Its cill level is 43 feet higher than the Upper and Lower Rivington Reservoirs.{{sfnp|7CNDE67R}} It covers the greatest area of all the reservoirs at {{convert|192|acre}} and holds 1019 million gallons.{{sfnp|BZMI73BU|11}} Anglezarke is fed by the River Yarrow, which previously ran through the gap filled by the Knowsley Embankment.{{sfnp|BZMI73BU|11}}
### Lower Roddlesworth and Rake Brook
The Lower Roddlesworth and Rake Brook Reservoirs to the north, on a tributory of the River Darwen, were built at the same time to supply Anglezarke via the Goit a {{convert|3.5|mi|adj=on}} long conduit or canal that is {{convert|21|ft}} wide at the bottom.{{sfnp|BZMI73BU|11}}{{sfnp|UT99RBST|221}}
### Upper and Lower Rivington
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Rivington_Reservoir_from_Liverpool_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_572745.jpg) Lower Rivington Reservoir
Wikimedia Commons
Water from Anglezarke feeds into the Upper and Lower Rivington Reservoirs which are essentially a single reservoir separated by the {{convert|293|yd|adj=on}} long Horrobin Embankment that carries the road that crossed the valley now occupied by the reservoirs. Combined, they cover {{convert|275|acre}} and contain 1841 million gallons (8369 million L) of water.
The Yarrow Embankment, {{convert|363|yd}} long, {{convert|40|ft}} high, contains the water on the west side of Upper Rivington Reservoir. Lower Rivington Reservoir is contained by the Millstone, {{convert|706|yd}} long, {{convert|40|ft}} high, and Horwich Embankments ({{convert|528|yd}} long, {{convert|60|ft}} high). The diverted River Douglas feeds into Lower Rivington via a paved channel in a deep cutting.{{sfnp|UT99RBST|221}}
### High Bullough
The double-ended High Bullough Reservoir {{sfnp|UT99RBST|221}} predates the Pike scheme. It was built by [John Frederick Bateman](https://engole.info/john-frederick-bateman/) for Chorley Waterworks to the east of Anglezarke. Liverpool Corporation took responsibility for Chorley’s water supply after taking over High Bullough in 1856.{{sfnp|7CNDE67R}}
### Yarrow
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Yarrow_reservoir_Anglezarke_-_panoramio.jpg)Yarrow Reservoir
Wikimedia Commons
The demand for water in Liverpool was still not satisfied and a Bill was passed by parliament in 1867 allowing the construction of another reservoir in the Yarrow Valley to the east of Anglezarke Reservoir, and two more filter beds at Horwich.{{sfnp|4X4F86Q5}} Yarrow Reservoir, designed by Thomas Duncan, Liverpool’s Borough Engineer, was started in 1867. Fed by the River Yarrow, it is second in capacity to Anglezarke. It covers {{convert|73|acre}} and is up to {{convert|90|ft}} deep with a capacity of 1000 million gallons.{{sfnp|42FDZFBZ|44}} It is located a short distance to the west and above the Anglezarke and Upper Rivington Reservoirs.{{sfnp|UT99RBST|221}}
Yarrow is contained by Turners Embankment, 690 yards long and 103 feet high, and the Leicester Vale or Yarrow Embankment, 181 yards long and 90 feet high. It has an impressive {{convert|90|ft|adj=on}} overflow cascade into Anglezarke.{{sfnp|BZMI73BU|11}}{{sfnp|UT99RBST|221}} Water is discharged into Anglezarke via a {{convert|250|yd|adj=on}} tunnel at the west end of the Leicester Vale Embankment not far from the Knowsley Embankment.{{sfnp|UT99RBST|221}}
### Other works
Six filter beds were constructed at the foot of the Horwich Embankment, each 300 feet by 100 feet and 10 feet deep. At their bases were two dry rubble drains above which was a layer of broken stone, layers of gravel and a {{convert|30|in|adj=on}} layer of sand. Water drained through the filters into clear water tanks capable of holding 12 million gallons.{{sfnp|BZMI73BU|17}} Water was then conveyed to Liverpool through a {{convert|44|in}} diameter cast iron pipe.{{sfnp|BZMI73BU|19}} The original sand filters have been replaced by a covered multi-stage treatment plant.{{sfnp|UT99RBST|221}}
## Completion
The Rivington chain became a model for water works all over the world.{{sfnp|4X4F86Q5}} Water from the reservoirs began to flow in August 1857. At first the water was brown-coloured when it arrived in Liverpool, caused by peat.{{sfnp|4X4F86Q5}}
Liverpool Corporation was expected to buy the Rivington Hall estate to protect the Rivington watershed when it was offered for sale in 1898. The corporation declined the owner’s offer and the estate was bought by William Lever, Lord Leverhulme who bought it, with manorial rights, for £60,000 in 1900. He offered a large part of the estate as a country park to the people of his home town of Bolton in 1901. Liverpool Corporation changed its mind about the purchase and applied to parliament for a Bill to allow them to acquire the whole Rivington estate to protect their water supply. Lever disagreed and parliament settled the dispute; Lever was allowed to stay in his home, where he developed the gardens, and [Lever Park](https://engole.info/lever-park-rivington/), which he developed and financed, was donated to the people of Bolton. The watershed moorland was sold to Liverpool Corporation and after arbitration, the corporation paid Lever £138,499 and costs of £10,000.{{sfnp|8MMX4VRQ}}
The area attracted walkers and tourists and became known by the sobriquet “little Lake District” in the years after the scheme was completed. {{sfnp|8MMX4VRQ}} The country park is run by United Utilities, the successors of Liverpool Corporation and North West Water, who own the reservoirs.{{sfnp|8MMX4VRQ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 21830
**Categories:** Lancashire, Reservoir
---
### [Act of Uniformity 1558](https://engole.info/act-of-uniformity-1558/)
**Published:** January 22, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/Coat_of_Arms_of_England_%281558-1603%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_Arms_of_England_%281558-1603%29.svg.png[/pimage]One of the Acts of Parliament collectively known as the Elizabethan Religious Settlement. It introduced a Common Book of Prayer, and obliged everyone to attend their parish church every Sunday and on holy days. Those who refused were known as recusants.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/Coat_of_Arms_of_England_%281558-1603%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_Arms_of_England_%281558-1603%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Act of Uniformity 1558 (1 Eliz 1 c 2)\[a\]The Act of Uniformity was passed on 28 April 1559,{{sfnp|52RZBLVZ|12}} but until the Acts of Parliament (Commencement) Act 1793 all Acts of Parliament came into effect on the first day of the parliamentary session. The first parliament of Elizabeth I met in January 1558, as the year 1559 did not begin until 25 March. Therefore, the Act of Uniformity was officially dated 1558 by the Statute Law Revision Act 1948. was one of the Acts of Parliament collectively known as the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, an attempt by Queen Elizabeth I to end the turmoil of the previous thirty years during which England had swung between Catholicism and Protestantism. The other key statute in the religious settlement was the Act of Supremacy, which established Elizabeth as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England.{{sfnp|LBJUX6IM|16}}
The Act of Uniformity obliged every person regardless of their religious beliefs to attend their parish church on Sundays and holy days or be subject to a fine of 12 pence,{{sfnp|RWJDIE6C|21-22}} the equivalent of about one day’s wages for a skilled tradesman.{{sfnp|BVRXVCXZ}} Anyone who refused to attend church became known as a recusant,{{sfnp|RWJDIE6C|21-22}} from the Latin *recusare*, meaning “to refuse”.{{sfnp|RWJDIE6C|3}} The Act also imposed a Book of Common Prayer and made it illegal to attend a Catholic Mass.{{sfnp|LBJUX6IM|15-16}}
## Observation and enforcement
The Act of Uniformity mandated the attendance at Church of England services, but did not require dissenting Catholics to participate. Sir Richard Shireburn, for instance, is reported to have conspicuously blocked his ears with wool whenever he attended church services. William Flamstead chose instead to read a book during the sermon. Others, such as the playwright William Shakespeare’s father John, excused themselves “for fear of process for debt”.{{sfnp|RWJDIE6C|45-46}}
Many Catholics, labelled church papists, observed public worship in their parish church but heard Mass secretly at home afterwards. Commonly only the men would go to church, as they were more vulnerable to the penalties imposed by the law than their wives.{{sfnp|RWJDIE6C|45}} But things became more difficult for recusants after the Council of Trent ruled in August 1562 that conformity with the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, even if only outwardly, was a sin in the eyes of the Catholic Church.{{sfnp|RWJDIE6C|46-47}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The Act of Uniformity was passed on 28 April 1559,{{sfnp|52RZBLVZ|12}} but until the Acts of Parliament (Commencement) Act 1793 all Acts of Parliament came into effect on the first day of the parliamentary session. The first parliament of Elizabeth I met in January 1558, as the year 1559 did not begin until 25 March. Therefore, the Act of Uniformity was officially dated 1558 by the Statute Law Revision Act 1948.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22528
**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [John Kincaid, witch finder](https://engole.info/john-kincaid-witch-finder/)
**Published:** August 12, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Witch-pricking_Needles00.gif[/pimage]Professional witch-finder or pricker of witches based in Tranent, East Lothian.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Witch-pricking_Needles00.gif)Illustration of the type of needles used to prick witches
Wikimedia Commons
John Kincaid, sometimes spelt Kinkaid, is invariably considered to be the best known of the Scottish witch prickers. Their claimed facility in being able to identify witches was largely responsible for an increase in the number of prosecutions and consequent executions for witchcraft in Scotland during the 17th century. Kincaid made a lucrative income from his trade and was a key witness in several of the major Scottish witch hunts of the period, despite being unable to write. He was based primarily in Tranent, a town in the East Lothian area of Scotland, but little else is known of his life.
Kincaid was eventually exposed as a fraud by the Privy Council and imprisoned in 1662, and subsequently admitted that he had used deception when identifying witches. Twenty-first century academics attribute Kincaid’s incarceration and that of another pricker, John Dick, as a significant factor in ending the practice of pricking witches.
## Personal life
Scant personal information is available about Kincaid; academic Peter G. Maxwell-Stuart speculates that the Kincaid family had its roots in Stirlingshire and he may have had relatives who had been charged with offences such as rape, incest and selling poison. A child named William, whose father is named as John Kincaid, was christened on 14 April 1635 in the same area as the pricker was known to reside, so Kincaid may have lived in Tranent for at least fourteen or fifteen years before coming to prominence.{{sfnp|8MFMBHSH|107}} Court documents are endorsed by his initials or a mark rather than a signature, an indication he was not literate.{{sfnp|8MFMBHSH|109}}
## Career
The earliest existing records naming Kincaid date from June 1649, although it is apparent that his status as a pricker was already established by then. He was summoned to Dirleton Castle near North Berwick to prick two people, Patrick Watson and his wife Menie Haliburton, who were accused of witchcraft. The suspects had asked for him to prick them, probably in the belief that he would confirm the charges against them were false. Kincaid gave a deposition indicating he had found the Devil’s mark on Watson’s back, just under his left shoulder; his wife was marked on her neck, again on the left hand side above her shoulder. When Kincaid subjected the blemishes to pricking, no reaction was displayed{{sfnp|8MFMBHSH|107-108}} and no blood flowed from the marks.{{sfnp|6TE59V4J|95}} Watson was executed and shortly afterwards Haliburton confessed that she had a sexual relationship with the Devil and supplied other information deemed to be witchcraft.{{sfnp|6TE59V4J|95}}{{sfnp|ES28AUZC|289}} She was also executed.{{sfnp|H5CWD65M|933}} Kincaid is identified in court documents as pricking witches on a regular basis in ensuing trials.{{sfnp|R48WUK3B|205}}
Kincaid predominantly plied his trade in the Lothian region but it was common for Scottish prickers to be employed in witchcraft cases in the north of England.{{sfnp|Q24GERQ8|295}} Maxwell-Stuart and George Riley Scott place Kincaid in Newcastle during 1649 where he was paid twenty shillings for each witch he identified.{{sfnp|Q24GERQ8|315}}{{sfnp|EB53ZIK5|99}}\[a\]In one of his other books, Maxwell-Stuart refers to the pricker in the Newcastle case as an “anonymous tryer” and does not specify him as being Kincaid;{{sfnp|8MFMBHSH|114-115}} the original deposition only refers to a Scotch man and declares that the witch-finder was later executed.{{sfnp|4BLW9MLP|114-116}} His services were also called upon by magistrates in Aberdeenshire.{{sfnp|ES28AUZC|265}} The parish at Dunfermline paid him twenty merks in 1649 for pricking Bessie Mortoun who was then convicted and executed; his accommodation and that of other prickers were also settled by the local officials. His earnings that year included a payment of £6 Scots from the Burntcastle estate for pricking Margaret Dunhome or Dunhame.{{sfnp|CJZD9GA4|loc=3527}}{{sfnp|WY3X79NN|197}} An additional payment of £3 Scots was made to him to cover the cost of his and his man-servant’s food and wine.{{sfnp|GPAZ2W6M|115}}
After Kincaid inserted a long pin into two blemishes he found on the back of Barbara Cochrane’s neck near her left shoulder on 27 April 1659 in Tranent she did not react so he declared them as Devil’s marks, proving her guilt. She immediately retaliated by shouting out in front of the magistrates: “Foul thief, thou hast deceived me! Now, thou hast deceived me now!” Maxwell-Stuart suggests this could be an indication she may have paid Kincaid to declare her innocent or alternatively a castigation against the Devil for stealing her soul.{{sfnp|8MFMBHSH|110}} Thirty-eight people were executed for witchcraft in 1659, eighteen of whom lived in East Lothian. Most had been pricked and records show that Kincaid undertook the task in a number of those cases.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|89}}
[Beatrix Leslie](https://engole.info/beatrix-leslie), an elderly midwife from Newbattle,{{sfnp|TAHHHTHA|37}} was accused of witchcraft and [malefice](https://engole.info/maleficium/) in 1661. Kincaid’s services were called upon and he inflicted two tests to secure her confession. He pricked her to find the Devil’s mark then, as causing the death of two children formed part of the accusation,\[b\]Two girls died after being struck by a section of roofing falling in a coal-pit; they had been in an argument with Leslie over the killing of her cat. The girls bodies bled when Leslie was taken to them.{{sfnp|TG46A3F6|119}}{{sfnp|P8BZ2D97|63}} he undertook a ritual called *bierricht*.\[c\]Also known as *cruentation,* ordeal by blood or corpse bleeds. The definition of the ritual given by the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft is: “corpse bleeds when touched by person who was guilty of the murder.{{sfnp|Q2QEZ3F2|34}} The octogenarian was declared guilty and executed on 3 September 1661.{{sfnp|ARLZZJV5|204}} During that year he was also pricking witches in Forfar; the local authorities rewarded him with the freedom of the burgh in appreciation of his securing so many positive outcomes.{{sfnp|R48WUK3B|208}}
## Arrest
The Privy Council received an application for Kincaid’s arrest on 9 January 1662 and, following an investigation, a report was submitted on 1 April recommending he be taken into custody. He was apprehended then incarcerated in the Edinburgh tolbooth.{{sfnp|8MFMBHSH|111}} Kincaid admitted he had employed deception when testing for signs of witchcraft.{{sfnp|GPAZ2W6M|76}} Writing in *The Scottish Historical Review*, W. N. Neill describes the accusation levied against Kincaid as being for his cruel behaviour.{{sfnp|R48WUK3B|208}} A little more than two months after he was imprisoned Kincaid appealed to the Justice-General to be released, on the grounds that he was elderly and so ill that he would not otherwise survive for long. He was given his freedom under a bail of £1,000 Scots on condition that he must not be involved in any unauthorised torture or pricking of witches.{{sfnp|8MFMBHSH|111}}
A similar fate befell Kincaid’s apprentice, David Cowan of Tranent, who was imprisoned in 1678. The Privy Council received a complaint from Katherine Liddell, an accused witch, who claimed that she had suffered “cruelly and barbarously torment and torture” and that the pricking had endangered her life.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|89, 139}} She was declared innocent and released, while Cowan was detained indefinitely at the Privy Council’s pleasure.{{sfnp|2J5FPMT8|509}}
## Modern interpretations
Described by modern-day academics and historians as “the most famous pricker”,{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|89}} “a famous pricker of witches”,{{sfnp|W9ETA6JS|35}} and “the most famous of all the prickers”,{{sfnp|GPAZ2W6M|111}} Kincaid and others known to ply the same trade – there were around ten prickers who worked in Scotland during the 17th century – have also been categorised as rogues, charlatans, cheats and of the lowest rank.{{sfnp|2J5FPMT8|509}} The prickers were especially active in Scotland from around 1648 until 1662;{{sfnp|8MFMBHSH|106}} Kincaid was a key figure in the major witch-hunt of 1661 to 1662{{sfnp|W9ETA6JS|35}} and that of 1649 to 1650.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|89}} The marked increase in the number of cases brought and death sentences issued was partly caused by their involvement.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|89}}
Historian Brian Levack attributes the Privy Council’s decision to incarcerate Kincaid and his fellow pricker John Dick\[d\]Dick was based in Tain{{sfnp|R48WUK3B|208}} for fraudulent and deceptive practises as a major factor to the ending of the 1661–1662 hunt.{{sfnp|3D6B4U32|177}} It also resulted in the trade of witch pricking being almost entirely stopped.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|94-95}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a In one of his other books, Maxwell-Stuart refers to the pricker in the Newcastle case as an “anonymous tryer” and does not specify him as being Kincaid;{{sfnp|8MFMBHSH|114-115}} the original deposition only refers to a Scotch man and declares that the witch-finder was later executed.{{sfnp|4BLW9MLP|114-116}} b Two girls died after being struck by a section of roofing falling in a coal-pit; they had been in an argument with Leslie over the killing of her cat. The girls bodies bled when Leslie was taken to them.{{sfnp|TG46A3F6|119}}{{sfnp|P8BZ2D97|63}} c Also known as *cruentation,* ordeal by blood or corpse bleeds. The definition of the ritual given by the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft is: “corpse bleeds when touched by person who was guilty of the murder.{{sfnp|Q2QEZ3F2|34}} d Dick was based in Tain{{sfnp|R48WUK3B|208}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 4565
**Categories:** Male, Scottish, Witch finder, Witch pricker
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Paignton Windmill](https://engole.info/paignton-windmill/)
**Published:** August 26, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Paignton_windmill.jpg[/pimage]Late 18th-century Grade II listed windmill in Paignton, Devon, partially ruinous but with planning permission to be converted into a single residence.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Paignton_windmill.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/YPXdnCt8zhTxJzF46
Paignton Windmill, also known as Fernicombe Windmill,{{sfnp|SJJBL4SH|14}} is a late 18th-century Grade II listed building on the outskirts of the town of Paignton, Devon. The now disused four-storey windmill is built of limestone rubble with locally sourced red breccia dressings.{{sfnp|WZUFRA9X}}
An illustration of 1833 shows the mill complete, but less than thirty years later it had fallen into disrepair, and was shown as disused on the 1887 Ordnance Survey map. During the Second World War (1939–1945) the windmill was used as an observation post.{{sfnp|SJJBL4SH|14}}
The windmill’s deterioration into a partially ruinous state, missing its original dome-shaped roof and with no internal floors,{{sfnp|WZUFRA9X}} resulted in it being included in Historic England’s Buildings at Risk Register.{{sfnp|QP8WEJRV}} In 2015 Torbay Council approved its conversion to a single residential unit, despite the objections of local residents who wanted to see it restored to a working windmill as a tourist attraction.{{sfnp|8SHSDGM4}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26714
**Categories:** Devon, Windmill
---
### [Edgeworth Manor](https://engole.info/edgeworth-manor/)
**Published:** April 26, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Edgeworth-Manor.webp[/pimage]Grade II* listed country house in the village of Edgeworth, Gloucestershire.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Edgeworth-Manor.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/EVypQW7SNTvMZ8Zx7}}|British Listed Buildings
Edgeworth Manor is a Grade II\* [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) country house in the [village](https://engole.info/village) of Edgeworth, Gloucestershire. The manor of Edgeworth was bought by Nathaniel Rider in about 1650, and the present-day house dates mainly from his rebuilding of the manor house in the late 17th century; fragments of the earlier building from the Tudor period have been found, particularly in the cellar. The south range was remodelled by Capel N. Tripp in 1882, and enlarged and remodelled again by Sir Ernest George in 1899.{{sfnp|DMNUCNHI}}{{sfnp|HIC7X8PQ}}
The stables and coach house at Edgeworth Manor are separately listed as Grade II buildings.{{sfnp|NLJVNFSH}}
The property was put on the market for £20 million in 2022, and was sold to a private buyer for £8.7 million in 2025.{{sfnp|HIC7X8PQ}}{{sfnp|DBMR8H85}}
## Architecture
The house is built of coursed rubble limestone with [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) dressings, and has a stone slate roof. It is of two stories, with basement and attic, and has a central staircase. The 19th-century south range consists of two rooms, and the west range of the same date has a large hall and an additional staircase. The north wing has been demolished.{{sfnp|DMNUCNHI}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29932
**Categories:** Country house, Gloucestershire
---
### [Pittenweem witches](https://engole.info/pittenweem-witches/)
**Published:** May 28, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Pittenweem_Parish_Church_and_Tolbooth.JPG[/pimage]Five Scottish women accused of witchcraft in the small fishing village of Pittenweem in Fife on the east coast of Scotland in 1704.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Pittenweem_Parish_Church_and_Tolbooth.JPG)Pittenweem Parish Church and Tolbooth, where some of the accused witches were held and tortured
Wikimedia Commons
The Pittenweem witches were five Scottish women accused of witchcraft in the small fishing village of Pittenweem in Fife on the east coast of Scotland in 1704. Another two women and a man were named as accomplices. Accusations made by a teenage boy, Patrick Morton, against a local woman, Beatrix Laing, sometimes spelt as Layng, led to the death in prison of Thomas Brown, and in January 1705 the murder of Janet Cornfoot by a lynch mob in the village.
Janet’s murder was investigated by members of the aristocracy appointed by the Privy Council two weeks after the killing. Four men were subsequently held in custody, and charges were to be brought against the burgh bailie. The release of the four accused men was authorised by Patrick Cowper, the local minister, who had been involved with the initial witchcraft allegations and the torture and confinement of the alleged witches. Despite instructions from the Privy Council that another committee should look into the events, no suspects were ever prosecuted for the murder.
Two of the accused women, Beatrix Laing and Nicolas Lawson, were imprisoned again in 1708–1709 after charges of witchcraft were levelled against them by Cowper and another local minister. They were released in April 1709 and pardoned after Queen Anne issued an Act of Indemnity. Another of the accused women, Janet Horseburgh, sued the bailies responsible for her incarceration; she received an apology and monetary recompense.
## **Events**
In early March 1704 Beatrix Laing approached Patrick Morton, a 16-year-old working in his father’s smithy, to ask if he would make her some nails. Morton refused as he was already assigned an urgent task making nails for a merchant’s ship in the harbour. Displeased, Beatrix left, threatening revenge on him. The following day Morton noticed a bucket filled with water and burning coal outside Beatrix’s house; he thought it was there to cast a [spell](https://engole.info/spell-magical/) on him.{{sfnp|DBWLKELJ|262}} Beatrix had a reputation as a witch having already appeared before the Kirk session in 1696 for charming.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|148}} Morton immediately felt weak and had difficulty standing or walking.{{sfnp|DBWLKELJ|262}} His health deteriorated;{{sfnp|CJZD9GA4|loc=4254}} he began to have fits and convulsions, his stomach became distended and his body was rigid and twisted.{{sfnp|HMQ6C79Z|170}} People claimed they could see marks left on his skin by fingernails where Morton said he had been pinched.{{sfnp|HMQ6C79Z|170}} He refused food, and his breathing was laboured.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|147}}
The *Sadducismus debellatus* pamphlets, written by Lord Cullen,{{sfnp|DP3F8NJZ|84-85}}\[a\]*Sadducismus debellatus* was the title of the London edition; a version entitled *A True Narrative of the Sufferings and Relief of a Young Girle* was published anonymously in Edinburgh during 1698.{{sfnp|HMQ6C79Z|176}} giving details about the demonic possession of Christian Shaw, the 11-year-old girl at the centre of the [Paisley witches](https://engole.info/paisley-witches/) trials, were in circulation at the time.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|147}} Patrick Cowper, the local minister who was intolerant of witches, had read the pamphlets to Morton just before his afflictions began.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|147-148}} The villagers’ suspicions were aroused that the Devil was implicated when no explanation could be given for Morton’s condition;{{sfnp|489UKEGE|215}} initially his seizures were described as unusual then as preternatural.{{sfnp|HMQ6C79Z|170}} Cowper continued to advise Morton about what happened in Paisley and encouraged him to name Beatrix as the person who had called upon the Devil to inflict his ailments.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|147}} In May 1704{{sfnp|DBWLKELJ|263}} Morton named Beatrix as a witch and, with further prompting from Cowper, accused four local women of being her accomplices: Isobel Adam; Janet Cornfoot; Nicolas Lawson; and Lillie Wallace.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|147}} Subsequent statements revealed that he identified another woman, Janet Horseburgh, as an accomplice.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|147}}
Like Beatrix Laing, Janet Cornfoot had a reputation for casting spells and threatened anyone she was quarrelling with; Lawson, a farmer’s wife, had previously been approached by other locals seeking advice about witchcraft.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|148}} Horseburgh, the widow of a seaman who had been a local magistrate,{{sfnp|489UKEGE|217}} was widely believed within the community to be a witch.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|148}} Academic Stuart Macdonald describes the stereotypical witch in Fife as a woman who was elderly and poor;{{sfnp|CJZD9GA4|loc=4243}} one 18th-century publication described Beatrix as a “very poor woman who had married meanly”{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|147}} but although she was by no means wealthy, her husband was a tailor and the treasurer in Pittenweem.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|147}} Likewise Horseburgh did not live in a state of poverty.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|147}}
## **Investigation**
After Morton named the women, Cowper and the local bailies immediately sought them out and imprisoned them{{sfnp|HMQ6C79Z|171}} in the tolbooth.{{sfnp|3EUFCPLX|68}} While they were incarcerated the women were tortured and beaten.{{sfnp|HMQ6C79Z|171}} They were forcefully kept awake – Beatrix Laing claimed it was for five days and five nights{{sfnp|CJZD9GA4|loc=4243}} – and constantly pricked by a group of men intoxicated by alcohol.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|150}} Cowper carried out some of the beatings, attacking Janet with a walking stick.{{sfnp|HGSMIH73|226}} The beatings were vicious and later described by one letter writer as “The ministers have used a great deal of barbarous severities to extort confessions from those poor unhappy creatures.”{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|150}} Beatrix finally confessed after the women were taken into Morton’s bedroom where, despite being blindfolded, he was able to identify and name them all as responsible for his ailments.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|149}}
Beatrix, who was charged with [maleficium](https://engole.info/maleficium/), confessed she had made spells with buckets of water and burning coals as well as stabbing needles into a wax model of her intended victim.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|216}} She met the Devil in the form of a black dog on Ceres Moor and made a bargain with him;{{sfnp|489UKEGE|216}} she knew he was the Devil as he had the ability to change shape{{sfnp|W9ETA6JS|44}} and had undergone a transformation in front of her.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|134}} Initially she offered him her daughter then her granddaughter, who was six years old.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|149}} The four other women were named as co-conspirators in her confession.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|150}}
Isobel Adam admitted to not only having a pact with the Devil but also having copulated with him and allowing him to brand her with his mark.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|150}} She confessed that she colluded with the others to kill a local man; the plot only failed because he had woken up and made the sign of the cross.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|150}} Her statement implicated a seventh person, Thomas Brown, as being involved as a witch;{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|152}} Brown was charged and incarcerated in the tolbooth but did not confess to any of the allegations.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|152, 154}} He died of starvation, a common occurrence among suspected witches who, like Brown, were confined for lengthy times.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|154}} Confessions were obtained from Cornfoot and Lawson with Cornfoot later adding that the Devil had visited her while she was imprisoned.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|150, 152}} She claimed he promised her that she would only be kept incarcerated for a short period providing she did not admit guilt but threatened to “tear her to pieces” should she confess.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|152}}
The four women who had confessed – Adam, Cornfoot, Laing and Lawson – were interviewed at the kirk session on 29 May, each re-affirming their statements and reiterating the names of others.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|151}} Horsefoot and Wallace were examined by the presbytery on 14 June but continued to proclaim their innocence of the witchcraft charges.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|151}}\[b\]Cowper was temporarily acting as moderator of the presbytery at the time.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|151}} The Privy Council was approached to obtain permission for a trial to be held locally but it ordered Sir James Stewart, the Lord Advocate, to arrange for the proceedings to take place in Edinburgh with the Privy Council bearing the transport costs.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|153}}\[c\]Levack speculates the underlying reason for wanting the trial to be held locally is probably because convictions were more likely.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|152}} The Earl of Rothes, who was the Sheriff of Fife, was instructed to oversee the transfer.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|153}} An anonymous essay entitled the *True and full relation of the witches at Pittenweem* was published while the women were incarcerated;{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|195, note 58}} using the pseudonym of “A Lover of Truth”,{{sfnp|489UKEGE|217}} the author attempted to rationalise the punishment of witches and reflected the Calvinist view on spirits.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|156}}
The costs of keeping the women imprisoned in the tolbooth at Pittenweem were becoming prohibitive; on 12 August, after payment of five hundred marks, all the women except Cornfoot were released on bail.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|153}} In September Morton was summoned to give evidence to the Privy Council but he had fully regained his health and displayed no symptoms of being possessed.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|153}} Adam was questioned by the Privy Council in October and freed.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|153}} In November, Laing, Lawson, Horsefoot and Wallace were released after paying a fine of £8 each;{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|154}} but the last of the accused,\[d\]By this time Thomas Brown had died.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|154}} Cornfoot, was kept in solitary confinement in the tolbooth by Cowper.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|154}} One of the prison guards, who perhaps felt sorry for her, put her in a cell with a window low enough for her to escape so she also gained her freedom.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|213-214}}
## **Lynching**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Giles_Corey_restored.jpg)Janet Cornfoot was killed in a similar manner to that used in the pressing of Giles Corey during the Salem witch trials.
Wikimedia Commons
After escaping, Janet made her way to the village of Leuchars, eight miles from Pittenweem, where she was either discovered by the minister, George Gordon,{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|154}} or had approached him for help.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|214}} For the reward of £10,{{sfnp|489UKEGE|214}} he arranged an armed guard of two men to return her to Cowper’s house on 30 January 1705.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|213}}{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|145}} Cowper was not at home when they arrived so she was taken to one of the bailies.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|145}} A mob of at least ten people forcibly removed her from the house, tied her up, beat her, then hauled her down to the harbour by her ankles, possibly with the intention of dunking her.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|213}}{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|145}} A rope was run from the top of the masthead on a ship back to the shore and she was dangled from it while the crowd threw stones at her as she swung backwards and forwards.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|145}} When they took her down, she was covered by a door that had heavy stones placed on top of it until she was crushed to death.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|145}}\[e\]This method of torture, called Peine forte et dure, was used in England but was not common in Scotland.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|145}} The villagers may have learned of it from the much publicised details of the Salem witch-trials.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|192}} A cart pulled by a horse was guided over her corpse more than once to ensure she was dead.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|213}} The crowd took her body to the home of her co-accused, Nicolas Lawson, with the intention of torturing her in the same manner but decided they had sufficient sport for the day.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|213}}
Janet’s lynching had taken place with unequivocal support from Cowper – members of his family had participated{{sfnp|489UKEGE|213}} – together with assistance from high-ranking members of the burgh; it would not have succeeded without their approval.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|145}} Public reaction in the immediate aftermath of Janet’s death was diverse.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|218}} An anonymous letter was published from an individual using the pen name of “A Gentleman from Fife”;{{sfnp|CJZD9GA4|loc=4248}} under the heading of *An Answer of a Letter from a Gentleman in Fife to a Nobleman* he opined that Morton was a fraud, the treatment of the women was “barbarous” and their incarceration “unwarrantable”.{{sfnp|PFNYB6P6|69}} He added that he considered Thomas Brown was murdered by starvation and that Brown and Cornfoot had been denied Christian burials.{{sfnp|PFNYB6P6|71-72}} The letter indicated responsibility for the events, including the lynching, was the fault of the minister and the bailies.{{sfnp|CJZD9GA4|loc=4280}} Details of Janet’s lynching were given by “A Gentleman from Fife” in a further pamphlet, dated 5 February 1705,{{sfnp|DBWLKELJ|268}} entitled *An Account of an horrible and barbarous murder*.{{sfnp|PFNYB6P6|73}} “A Lover of Truth” responded with another essay, *A Just Reproof to the False Reports and Unjust Calumnies in the Forgoing Letters*, asserting officials had not transgressed and challenging the claims made.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|217}}\[f\]The editor, David Webster, who collated and reproduced the various pamphlets in a book during 1820, noted his suspicion that Cowper was involved in the writing of the *Just Reproof* essay.{{sfnp|PFNYB6P6|86}}
The murder was investigated by a committee of five members of the aristocracy, including the Earl of Rothes, chosen by the Privy Council a fortnight later.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|157}} The Privy Council ordered Sir James Stewart to act on the committee’s report it received on 15 February and start legal proceedings against five people plus anyone else who had been involved in Janet’s lynching; they were to be tried in Edinburgh.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|158}} Charges were also to be levelled against the burgh magistrates for “suffering such tumults and rabbles and other such outrages to be committed within their burgh”.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|158}}
Four locals had been identified by the committee as witnessing Janet being killed and being involved in her mistreatment although the three main perpetrators, who had by then left the area, were an Orcadian, a man from Burntisland and a sea captain’s son. A schoolboy, two Englishmen and another person were also implicated but had absconded.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|157-158}} The committee determined that Bailie Cook, whose residence the mob had seized Janet from, should carry a significant amount of the blame.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|157}} Four males suspected of being present at the murder were held in custody but were released by Cowper in defiance of the Privy Council’s instruction for them to be taken to Edinburgh for trial.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|158}}
Laing moved away from Pittenweem for a short time, but returned to her home early in 1705. In May that year she described how she had been tortured during her incarceration and, fearing the villagers might subject her to violence similar to that enacted against Janet, asked the Privy Council to afford her some protection.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|158}} The burgh council and bailie refused to comply with the Privy Council’s instructions to provide a bond to safeguard her, claiming she might be attacked at night and they would be unaware of it.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|158}} The Privy Council also ordered that further investigations into the incidents surrounding Janet’s murder should be made, appointing a committee of three noblemen to undertake the task.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|158}} The committee failed to attend a scheduled meeting on 9 May and, despite being reminded five months later that a report was required, no records exist to show any further investigations were made.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|158}} None of the culprits were tried for Janet’s murder.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|219}}
## **Aftermath**
After the Privy Council was abolished by the Parliament of Great Britain in 1708{{sfnp|A7K3H35U|13}} a structure of circuit courts was established in the same year with the hearing of witchcraft cases becoming part of its remit.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|159}} So when Janet and the minister from the nearby parish of Anstruther East, William Wadroper, brought charges of witchcraft against Laing and Lawson again in October 1708, it was heard by the circuit court in Perth a few weeks later.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|159}} The two women were cautioned and released but the pair of ministers continued to bring prosecutions against them resulting in Laing and Lawson being imprisoned again in April 1709 until they could be tried on 20 May.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|160}} Queen Anne issued an Act of Indemnity following the Jacobite rising in 1708 that anyone due to stand trial for crimes committed before 19 April 1709 were to be acquitted, pardoned, released, and discharged so, along with hundreds of others accused of a diverse set of offences, Laing and Lawson were pardoned and set free.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|160}}
During 1710 Horseburgh raised an action for wrongful imprisonment against two of the bailies, William Bell and Robert Vernour.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|158}} An admission from Bell was issued on 28 October 1710 stating: “I am convinced of the rashness, illegality and unwarrantableness of our proceedings, having proceeded on idle stories;”{{sfnp|CJZD9GA4|loc=4280}} he also asked for forgiveness from God and Horseburgh, acknowledging he had maligned a guiltless person.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|159}} His apology included that he thought Morton had been “labouring under a melancholy distemper.”{{sfnp|CJZD9GA4|loc=4280}} Horseburgh was awarded monetary recompense.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|159}}
## **Modern interpretations**
The case was very similar to that of the [Paisley witches](https://engole.info/paisley-witches) in 1697 and another case in Glasgow during 1699.{{sfnp|HMQ6C79Z|169-170}} The first resulted in the last mass execution of witches in western Europe,{{sfnp|2L69N6KX|xxxix}} but in the second the Privy Council opined there was not sufficient evidence for a trial.{{sfnp|HMQ6C79Z|170}} Afflictions suffered by Morton and the adolescents making the accusations in those cases resembled ones seen in the children involved with the Salem witch trials;{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|146-147}} the academic, Brian P. Levack, stated that Morton’s ailments “followed a script that was part of late seventeenth-century Calvinist religious culture.”{{sfnp|489UKEGE|215}}
The historian Lizanne Henderson described the events surrounding the case of the Pittenweem witches as “one of the most extraordinary and truly horrific outbursts of witch persecution”.{{sfnp|489UKEGE|220}} It was the last significant spate of witch hunting in Fife.{{sfnp|CJZD9GA4|loc=4286}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a *Sadducismus debellatus* was the title of the London edition; a version entitled *A True Narrative of the Sufferings and Relief of a Young Girle* was published anonymously in Edinburgh during 1698.{{sfnp|HMQ6C79Z|176}} b Cowper was temporarily acting as moderator of the presbytery at the time.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|151}} c Levack speculates the underlying reason for wanting the trial to be held locally is probably because convictions were more likely.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|152}} d By this time Thomas Brown had died.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|154}} e This method of torture, called Peine forte et dure, was used in England but was not common in Scotland.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|145}} The villagers may have learned of it from the much publicised details of the Salem witch-trials.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|192}} f The editor, David Webster, who collated and reproduced the various pamphlets in a book during 1820, noted his suspicion that Cowper was involved in the writing of the *Just Reproof* essay.{{sfnp|PFNYB6P6|86}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Female, Scottish, Witch
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### [Sicilian Baroque](https://engole.info/sicilian-baroque/)
**Published:** August 11, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Catania_BW_2012-10-06_11-23-47.JPG[/pimage]Distinctive form of Baroque architecture which evolved on the island of Sicily, off the southern coast of Italy, in the 17th and 18th centuries that has given the island a unique architectural identity.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Catania_BW_2012-10-06_11-23-47.JPG)**Illustration 1**: Sicilian Baroque. Basilica della Collegiata in Catania, designed by Stefano Ittar, c. 1768
Wikimedia Commons
Sicilian Baroque is a distinctive form of Baroque architecture which evolved on the island of Sicily, off the southern coast of Italy, in the 17th and 18th centuries, when it was part of the Spanish Empire. The style is recognisable not only by its typical Baroque curves and flourishes, but also by its grinning masks and putti and a particular flamboyance that has given Sicily a unique architectural identity.
The Sicilian Baroque style came to fruition during a major surge of rebuilding following the massive earthquake in 1693. Previously, the Baroque style had been used on the island in a naïve and parochial manner, having evolved from hybrid native architecture rather than being derived from the great Baroque architects of Rome. After the earthquake, local architects, many of them trained in Rome, were given plentiful opportunities to recreate the more sophisticated Baroque architecture that had become popular in mainland Italy; the work of these local architects – and the new genre of architectural engravings that they pioneered – inspired more local architects to follow their lead. Around 1730, Sicilian architects had developed a confidence in their use of the Baroque style. Their particular interpretation led to further evolution to a personalised and highly localised art form on the island. From the 1780s onwards, the style was gradually replaced by the newly fashionable neoclassicism.
The highly decorative Sicilian Baroque period lasted barely fifty years, but perfectly reflected the social order of the island at a time when, nominally ruled by Spain, it was in fact governed by a wealthy and often extravagant aristocracy into whose hands ownership of the primarily agricultural economy was highly concentrated. Its Baroque architecture gives the island an architectural character that has lasted into the 21st century.
## Characteristics
Baroque architecture is a European phenomenon originating in 17th-century Italy; it is flamboyant and theatrical, and richly ornamented by architectural sculpture and an effect known as chiaroscuro, the strategic use of light and shade on a building created by mass and shadow.{{sfnp|LT7Z2RGJ|10}}{{sfnp|IHWK89WK|28}}
The Baroque style in Sicily was largely confined to buildings erected by the church, and palazzi, the private residences for the Sicilian aristocracy.\[a\]*Palazzo* (pl. *palazzi*) is any large building in a town, state or private (often much smaller than what the English term palace implies). While palazzo is the technically correct appellation, and postal address, no Sicilian aristocrat would ever use the word, instead referring to his or her own house, however large, as casa. Palazzo followed by the family name was the term used by officials, tradesmen, and delivery men.{{sfnp|ZSYE4SBH|15}} The earliest examples of this style in Sicily lacked individuality and were typically heavy-handed pastiches of buildings seen by Sicilian visitors to Rome, Florence, and Naples. But even at this early stage provincial architects had begun to incorporate certain vernacular features of Sicily’s older architecture. By the middle of the 18th century, when Sicily’s Baroque architecture was noticeably different from that of the mainland, it typically included at least two or three of the following features, coupled with a unique freedom of design that is more difficult to characterise in words:{{sfnp|36PH6NAU}}{{sfnp|KDZNN284}}
- Grotesque masks and putti, often supporting balconies or decorating various bands of the entablature of a building; these grinning or glaring faces are a relic of Sicilian architecture from before the mid-17th century (Illustrations 2 and 9).{{sfnp|36PH6NAU}}
- Balconies, often complemented by intricate wrought iron balustrades after 1633 (Illustrations 2 and 9), and by plainer balustrades before that date (Illustration 6).{{sfnp|36PH6NAU|55}}
- External staircases. Most villas and palazzi were designed for formal entrance by a carriage through an archway in the street façade, leading to a courtyard within. An intricate double staircase would lead from the courtyard to the piano nobile.{{sfnp|ZSYE4SBH|120}} This would be the palazzo’s principal entrance to the first-floor reception rooms; the symmetrical flights of steps would turn inwards and outwards as many as four times. Owing to the topography of their elevated sites it was often necessary to approach churches by many steps; these steps were often transformed into long straight marble staircases, in themselves decorative architectural features (illustration 19), in the manner of the Spanish Steps in Rome.{{sfnp|PBG26XFD|126}}
- Canted, concave, or convex façades (Illustrations 1 and 6). Occasionally in a villa or palazzo, an external staircase would be fitted into the recess created by the curve.{{sfnp|5V8GJDY3|168}}
- The Sicilian [belfry](https://engole.info/belfry). Belfries were not placed beside the church in a campanile tower as is common in Italy, but on the façade itself, often surmounting the central [pediment](https://engole.info/pediment), with one or more bells clearly displayed beneath its own arch, such as at Catania’s Collegiata (Illustration 1). In a large church with many bells this usually resulted in an intricately sculpted and decorated [arcade](https://engole.info/arcade) at the highest point of the principal façade (Illustration 3).{{sfnp|KDZNN284|18}} These belfries are among the most enduring and characteristic features of Sicilian Baroque architecture.{{sfnp|5Q7WRITM|388}}
- Inlaid coloured marble set into both floor and walls, especially in church interiors. This particular form of intarsia developed in Sicily from the 17th century (see the floor of illustration 14).{{sfnp|36PH6NAU|43-49}}
- Columns that are often deployed singularly, supporting plain arches and thus displaying the influence of the earlier and much plainer Norman period (Illustration 3). Columns are rarely encountered, as elsewhere in Europe, in clustered groups acting as piers, especially in examples of early Sicilian Baroque.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|12}}
- Decorated rustication. Sebastiano Serlio had decorated the blocks of ashlar in his rustication; by the end of the 16th century, Sicilian architects were ornamenting the blocks with carvings of leaves, fish-scales, and even sweets and shells; shells were later to become among the most prevalent ornamental symbols of Baroque design. Sometimes the rustication would be used for pillars rather than walls, a reversal of expectations and almost an architectural joke. (illustration 2){{sfnp|KDZNN284|14-15}}
- The local volcanic lava stone that was used in the construction of many Sicilian Baroque buildings, because this was the most readily available. Many sculptors and stone-cutters of the period lived at the foot of Mount Etna, making a diversity of objects, including balustrades, pillars, fountains and seats for buildings.{{sfnp|42RR4CC9|173}} Shades of black or grey were used to create contrasting decorative effects, accentuating the Baroque love of light and shade (chiaroscuro) as demonstrated in (illustration 2).{{sfnp|T3YR2MF7|19-20}}
- The Spanish influence. The architectural influence of the ruling Spanish (Illustration 13), although this was a milder influence than that of the Normans. The Spanish style, a more restrained version of French Renaissance architecture, is particularly evident in eastern Sicily, where, owing to minor insurrections, the Spanish maintained a stronger military presence. Messina’s 16th-century Porta Grazia (Illustrations 4), built as the entrance to a Spanish Real Cittadella, would not be out of place in any of the towns and citadels built by the Spanish in their colonies elsewhere.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|55}} The style of this arched city gate, with its ornate mouldings, scrolls and masks was widely copied all over Catania immediately following the earthquake, with many of its features becoming motifs of the Sicilian Baroque.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|16}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Catane_Universit%C3%A9.jpg)**Illustration 2**: University of Catania, designed by Vaccarini and completed by 1752, exemplifies typical Sicilian Baroque, with putti supporting the balcony, wrought iron balustrades, decorated rustication and two-tone lava masonry.
Wikimedia Commons
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Ragusa_Ibla_San_Giuseppe.jpg)**Illustration 3**: A Sicilian belfry crowns Rosario Gagliardi’s Church of San Giuseppe in Ragusa Ibla
Wikimedia Commons
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Porta_Grazia_%28Domenico_Biundo_and_Antonio_Amato%29.jpg/330px-Porta_Grazia_%28Domenico_Biundo_and_Antonio_Amato%29.jpg)**Illustration 4**: Messina’s Porta Grazia, with its mouldings, scrolls and masks was widely copied all over Catania immediately following the quake.
Wikimedia Commons
While these characteristics never occur all together in the same building, and none are unique to Sicilian Baroque, it is the coupling together which gives the Sicilian Baroque its distinctive air. Other Baroque characteristics, such as broken pediments over windows, the extravagant use of statuary, curved topped windows and doors and flights of external stairs are all emblematic of Baroque architecture, and can all be found on Baroque buildings all over Europe.{{sfnp|IHWK89WK|28}}
## Early Sicilian Baroque
Sicily, a volcanic island in the central Mediterranean, off the Italian peninsula, was colonised by the Greeks, and then ruled by the Romans, the Byzantines, the Ostrogoths, the Muslims, the Normans, the Hohenstaufen, the Angevins, and the Aragonese. It then became a province of the Spanish Empire and later was part of the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, before finally being absorbed into the Kingdom of Italy in 1860.{{sfnp|IV5C7TF5|175}} Thus, Sicilians have been exposed to a rich sequence of disparate cultures, which is reflected in the extraordinary diversity of architecture on the island.{{sfnp|4QAH5I7T}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b9/Sicilia_Palermo1_tango7174.jpg/330px-Sicilia_Palermo1_tango7174.jpg)**Illustration 5**: Piazza Pretoria, Palermo. The Fontana Pretoria (circa 1554) by Francesco Camilliani is a rare example of high Renaissance architecture in the capital city.\[21\] Behind the fountain is the Church of Santa Caterina (c. 1556), with its spectacular Baroque dome (which was added later).
Wikimedia Commons
A form of decorated classical architecture peculiar to Sicily had begun to evolve from the 1530s. Inspired by the ruined Greek architecture and by the Norman cathedrals on the island, this often incorporated Greek architectural motifs such as the Greek key pattern into late Norman architecture with Gothic features such as pointed arches and window apertures. The Sicilian Norman architecture incorporated some Byzantine elements seldom found in Norman architecture elsewhere, and like other Romanesque architecture it went on to incorporate Gothic features. This early ornate architecture differs from that of mainland Europe in not having evolved from Renaissance architecture; instead, it was developed from Norman styles. Renaissance architecture hardly touched Sicily; in the capital city of Palermo, the only remnant of the High Renaissance is the Fontana Pretoria, a water fountain originally made for Don Pietro di Toleda by Florentine artists Franscesco Cammilliani and Michelangelo Naccerino,{{sfnp|YKH684V7|21}} and brought to Sicily when it was already 20 years old (Illustration 5).{{sfnp|XPSPUTB7}}
Whatever the reason that Renaissance style never became popular in Sicily, it was certainly not ignorance. Antonello Gagini was midway through constructing the Church of Santa Maria di Porto Salvo in 1536 in the Renaissance style when he died; he was superseded by the architect Antonio Scaglione, who completed the building in a Norman style.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|12}} This style seems to have influenced Sicilian architecture almost up to the time of the 1693 earthquake. Even Mannerism passed the island by.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|13}} Only in the architecture of Messina\[b\]Messina, once Sicily’s second city, fell into poverty and obscurity following punitive measures against it by the Spanish following an uprising in 1626. Closely related for geographical reasons to mainland Italy, Messina once contained some of Sicily’s finest buildings. The combined effect of earthquakes in 1693, 1783 and 1908, and bombing raids in 1943, robbed the city of virtually all of these.{{sfnp|J9ZC335X}}{{sfnp|TLBKYKBC}}{{sfnp|DKX83ZV8}} could a Renaissance influence be discerned, partly for geographical reasons: within sight of mainland Italy and the most important port in Sicily, Messina was always more amenable to the prevailing tides of fashion outside the island. The town’s aristocratic patrons would often call on Florence or Rome to provide them with an architect; one example was the Florentine Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli, who established the Tuscan styles of architecture and sculpture there in the mid-16th century. However, these influences remained largely confined to Messina and the surrounding district. The patronage of the Roman Catholic Church, removed from the influences of Roman fashion, remained conservative in architectural taste and far-reaching in its power.{{sfnp|FWETMFVS|13-15}}
This is not to say that Sicily was completely isolated from trends elsewhere in Europe. Architecture in the island’s major cities was strongly influenced by the family of the sculptor Domenico Gagini, who arrived from Florence in 1463.{{sfnp|7ZWABGQD|286}} This family of sculptors and painters decorated churches and buildings with ornate decorative and figurative sculpture. Less than a century after his family had begun to cautiously decorate the island’s churches (1531–1537), Antonello Gagini completed the proscenium-like arch of the “Capella della Madonna” in the “Santuario dell’Annunziata” at Trapani.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|145}} This pedimented arch to the sanctuary has [pilasters](https://engole.info/pilaster) – not fluted, but decorated heavily with relief busts of the saints; and, most importantly in terms of architecture, the pediment is adorned by reclining saints supporting swags linked to the central shield that crowns the pediment. This ornate pediment, although still unbroken, was one of the first signs that Sicily was forming its own style of decorative architecture. Similar in style is the Chiesa del Gesù (Illustration 14), constructed between 1564 and 1633, which also shows early signs of the Sicilian Baroque.{{sfnp|PIHH6RRY}}{{sfnp|ACBU9L2P}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Palermo_Quattro_Canti.jpg)**Illustration 6**: Early Sicilian Baroque: Quattro Canti, Palermo, (circa 1610)
Wikimedia Commons
Thus, a particular brand of Baroque architecture had begun to evolve in Sicily long before the earthquake of 1693. While the majority of those buildings that can be clearly classified as Baroque in style date from around 1650, the scarcity of these isolated, surviving examples of Sicily’s 17th-century architectural history makes it hard to fully and accurately evaluate the architecture immediately before the natural disaster: the earthquake destroyed not only most of the buildings, but also most of their documentation. Yet more has been lost in subsequent earthquakes and severe bombing during the Second World War.{{sfnp|U8WU5DHP}}
The earliest example of Baroque on the island is Giulio Lasso’s Quattro Canti, an octagonal piazza, or circus, constructed around 1610 at the intersection of the city’s two principal streets.{{sfnp|9MR26QAV|198}} Around this intersection are four open sides, being the streets, and four matching buildings with identical canted corners. The sides of the four buildings are curved, further heightening the Baroque design of the buildings lining the circus. These four great buildings dominating the circus are each enhanced by a fountain, reminiscent of those of Pope Sixtus V’s Quattro Fontane in Rome. However, in Palermo the Baroque theme continues up three storeys of the buildings, which are adorned with statues in recessed niches depicting the four seasons, the four Spanish kings of Sicily, and the four patronesses of Palermo: Saints Cristina, Ninfa, Olivia, and Agata.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|31}}
While each façade of Quattro Canti is pleasing to the eye, as a scheme it is both out of proportion with the limited size of the piazza and, like most other examples of early Sicilian Baroque, can be considered provincial, naive and heavy-handed, compared with later developments.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|9,31}}
## Sicilian Baroque from 1693
### Earthquake and patrons
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Palazzo_Biscari.jpg)**Illustration 7**: Catania and the Palazzo Biscari, begun in 1702. Catania replaced Messina as Sicily’s second city after the revolt of 1686.
Wikimedia Commons
The great Sicilian earthquake of 1693 destroyed at least 45 towns and cities, affecting an area of {{convert|5600|sqkm}} and causing the deaths of about 60,000 people. The epicentre of the disaster was offshore, although the exact position remains unknown. Towns which suffered severely were Ragusa, Modica, Scicli, and Ispica. Rebuilding began almost immediately.{{sfnp|36PH6NAU}}{{sfnp|N9F2VQJI|25-29}}{{sfnp|EY74D53U}}
The lavishness of the architecture that was to arise from this disaster is connected with the politics of Sicily at the time: Sicily was still officially under Spanish rule, but rule was effectively delegated to the native aristocracy. This was led by the Duke of Camastra, whom the Spanish had appointed viceroy to appease the aristocracy, who were numerous.{{sfnp|36PH6NAU}}{{sfnp|N9F2VQJI|27-29}} The aristocracy was relatively concentrated compared to most of Europe, and a gentry class was missing. In the 18th century, one estimate held that there were 228 noble families, who provided Sicily with a ruling class consisting of 58 princes, 27 dukes, 37 marquesses, 26 counts, one viscount and 79 barons; the Golden Book of the Sicilian nobility (last published in 1926) lists even more.{{sfnp|ZSYE4SBH|8}} In addition to these were the younger scions of the families, with their courtesy titles of nobile or baron.{{sfnp|T3YR2MF7|26}}\[c\]Patrick Brydone, who travelled to Sicily in 1770, recorded his impressions of the local nobility in A Tour through Sicily and Malta, in a Series of Letters to William Beckford Esq., of Somerly in Suffolk: “One of the most common titles here is that of prince; though only created by Philip II of Spain, they take rank of all the other nobility, some of whom, particularly the counts, carry their origin as far back as the Normans, and look with great contempt on these upstart princes. The dukes and marquisses are not so old, so that the dignity of the Sicilian titles may be said to be in the inverse ratio of their antiquity”.{{sfnp|APXBSDQ4|230}}
Architecture was not the only legacy of the Normans. Rule over the peasants (there was no established middle class) was also enforced by a feudal system, unchanged since its introduction following the Norman conquest of 1071. Thus, the Sicilian aristocracy had at their command not only wealth but vast manpower, something that had by this time declined in many other parts of Europe. As in Southern Spain, the huge rural estates remained almost as concentrated as when they had been Roman latifundi. The Sicilian economy, though very largely agriculturally based, was very strong, and became more so during the 18th century as shipping became more efficient and the threat of Muslim piracy died away. The export markets for lemons{{sfnp|39Z6IP3U|33}} (for the great 18th century fashion for lemonade) and wines increased greatly, and Sicilian wheat remained, as it had been since Roman times, the backbone of the economy.{{sfnp|5CTD375I|24}} The disaster that was to give Sicily its modern reputation of poverty, namely the opening-up of the American Midwest to wheat-farming, was a century away. When it came, this permanently cut the price of wheat to less than half, and destroyed the old economy forever.{{sfnp|CD4DLUMV|118}}
The aristocracy shared their power only with the Roman Catholic Church. The Church ruled by fear of damnation in the next life and of the Inquisition in the present, and consequently both upper and lower classes gave as generously as they could on all major saints’ days. Many priests and bishops were members of the aristocracy. The wealth of the Church in Sicily was further enhanced by the tradition of pressing younger children of the aristocracy to enter monasteries and convents, in order to preserve the family estates from division; however, this was seldom a cheap option as expenses and an ongoing “onerous maintenance” had to be paid to the Church.{{sfnp|ZSYE4SBH|46}} Thus, the wealth of certain religious orders grew out of all proportion to the economic growth of any other group at this time. This is one of the reasons that so many of the Sicilian Baroque churches and monasteries, such as San Martino delle Scale, were rebuilt after 1693 on such a lavish scale.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|139}}
Once rebuilding began, the poor rebuilt their basic housing in the same primitive fashion as before. By contrast, the wealthiest residents, both secular and spiritual, became caught in an almost manic orgy of building. Most members of the nobility had several homes in Sicily.\[d\] For one thing, the Spanish viceroy spent six months of the year in Palermo and six in Catania, holding court in each city, and hence members of the aristocracy needed a town palazzo in each city. Once the palazzi in devastated Catania were rebuilt in the new fashion, the palazzi in Palermo seemed antiquated by comparison, so they too were eventually rebuilt. Following this, from the middle of the 18th century, villas to retire to in the autumn, essentially status symbols, were built at the fashionable enclave at Bagheria. This pattern was repeated, on a smaller scale, throughout the lesser cities of Sicily, each city providing a more entertaining social life and a magnetic draw for the provincial aristocrat than their country estate. The country estate also did not escape the building mania. Often Baroque wings or new façades were added to ancient castles, or country villas were completely rebuilt. Thus, the frenzy of building gained momentum until the increasingly fantastical Baroque architecture demanded by these hedonistic patrons reached its zenith in the mid-18th century.{{sfnp|CI529TS5}}
### New cities
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/59/Syrakus_BW_2012-10-06_14-43-38.JPG/1280px-Syrakus_BW_2012-10-06_14-43-38.JPG)**Illustration 8**: Piazza del Duomo, Syracuse. Andrea Palma’s Cathedral of Syracuse (see illustration 11 below) is flanked by Baroque palazzi.
Wikimedia Commons
Following the earthquake, a program of rebuilding was rapidly put into action, but before it began in earnest some important decisions were made that would permanently differentiate many Sicilian cities and towns from other European urban developments. The Viceroy, the Duke of Camastra, aware of new trends in town planning, decreed that rather than rebuilding in the medieval plan of cramped narrow streets, the new rebuilding would offer piazze and wider main streets, often on a rational grid plan.{{sfnp|7FAKF6ET|9}}{{sfnp|36PH6NAU|54}} The whole plan was often to take a geometric shape such as a perfect square or a hexagon, typical of Renaissance and Baroque town planning.{{sfnp|HLNUHBHF}} The city of Grammichele is an example of these new cities rebuilt to a hexagonal plan.{{sfnp|5Q7WRITM|448}}
This concept was still very new in the 1690s, and few new cities had had reason to be built in Europe – Christopher Wren’s city plan after the Great Fire of London in 1666 having been turned down because of the complexities of land ownership there.{{sfnp|YPA2LAAM}} There were some other examples such as Richelieu, and later Saint Petersburg. The prototype may well have been the new city of Terra del Sole, constructed in 1564. Another of the first towns to be planned using symmetry and order rather than an evolution of small alleys and streets was Alessandria in southern Piedmont. A little later, from 1711, this Baroque form of planning was favoured in the Hispanic colonies of South America, especially by the Portuguese in Brazil.{{sfnp|LC7W7JVU|16}} In other parts of Europe, lack of finance, complex land ownership and divided public opinion made radical replanning after disaster too difficult: after 1666, London was rebuilt on its ancient plan, though new extensions to the west were partially on a grid system. In Sicily, public opinion (that of anyone outside the ruling class) counted for nothing, and hence these seemingly revolutionary new concepts of town planning could be freely executed.{{sfnp|N9F2VQJI|27}}\[d\]Stephen Tobriner, in his study *The Genesis of Noto: An Eighteenth-Century Italian City*, describes the process leading to the drastic decision to “move” Noto.{{sfnp|N9F2VQJI|27-29}} In Sicily, the decision was taken not just for fashion and appearance but also because it would minimise the damage to property and life likely to be caused in future quakes.{{sfnp|N9F2VQJI|30}} In 1693, the cramped housing and streets had caused buildings to collapse together like dominoes. Although after the earthquake the avenues were broadened and the density of housing was lowered overall, cramped and narrow areas of housing still remained, posing a hazard for the poor.\[59\] Architecturally and aesthetically, the big advantage of the new order of town planning was that unlike many Italian towns and cities, where one frequently encounters a monumental Renaissance church squeezed terrace-fashion between incongruous neighbours, in urban Baroque design one can step back and actually see the architecture in a more conducive setting in relation to its proportions and perspective. This is most notable in the largely rebuilt towns of Caltagirone, Militello in Val di Catania, Catania, Modica, Noto, Palazzolo Acreide, Ragusa, and Scicli.{{sfnp|36PH6NAU}}
One of the finest examples of this new urban planning can be seen at Noto (Illustration 9), the town rebuilt approximately {{convert|7|km|spell=in}} from its original site on Mount Alveria.{{sfnp|N9F2VQJI|25}} The old ruined town now known as “Noto Antica” can still be viewed in its ruinous state. The new site chosen was flatter than the old to better facilitate a linear grid-like plan. The principal streets run east to west so they would benefit from better light and a sunnier disposition.\[e\]Travelling in Sicily in the early 1920s, the writer Sacheverell Sitwell recorded his astonishment: “It must have been in the winter of 1922–3 that I went to Noto. Its beautiful buildings were even more of a revelation than those of Lecce and I really believe that my brother and myself were the first persons of any nationality to take notice of them since they were built”.{{sfnp|BEG78GSA|29}} This example of town planning is directly attributable to a learned local aristocrat, Giovanni Battista Landolina; helped by three local architects, he is credited with planning the new city himself.{{sfnp|C3KB9KWZ|24}}{{sfnp|N9F2VQJI}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Via_Nicolaci_Noto-pjt.jpg/500px-Via_Nicolaci_Noto-pjt.jpg)**Illustration 9**: Via Nicolasi, Noto
Wikimedia Commons
In these new towns, the aristocracy was allocated the higher areas, where the air was cooler and fresher and the views finest. The church was placed in the town centre (Illustration 8), both for convenience to all and to reflect the church’s global and central position; round the pairing of cathedral and episcopal *palazzo vescovile* were built the convents. The merchants and storekeepers chose their lots on the planned wider streets leading from the main piazza. Finally, the poor were allowed to erect their simple brick huts and houses in the areas nobody else wanted. Lawyers, doctors, and members of the few professions including the more skilled artisans – those who fell between the strictly defined upper and lower class – and were able to afford building plots, often lived on the periphery of the commercial and upper class residential sectors, but equally often these people just lived in a larger or grander house than their neighbours in the poorer areas. However, many of the skilled artists working on the rebuilding lived as part of the extended households of their patrons. In this way Baroque town planning came to symbolise and reflect political authority, and later its style and philosophy spread as far as Annapolis and Savannah in English America,{{sfnp|DZ5LBCUM|50}} and most notably Haussmann’s 19th-century re-designing of Paris. The stage was now set for the explosion of Baroque architecture, which was to predominate in Sicily until the early 19th century.{{sfnp|FWETMFVS|285}}
Later, many other Sicilian towns and cities which had been either little damaged or completely untouched by the earthquake, such as Palermo, were also transformed by the Baroque style, as the fashion spread and aristocrats with a palazzo in Catania came to wish their palazzo in the capital were as opulent as that in the second city. In Palermo the Church of Santa Caterina, began in 1566, was one of many in the city to be redecorated inside in the 18th century in the Baroque style, with coloured marbles.{{sfnp|RN3XJWKW|179}}
### New churches and palazzi
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Il_duomo_da_Palazzo_Castro-Polara_Grimaldi.jpg/960px-Il_duomo_da_Palazzo_Castro-Polara_Grimaldi.jpg)**Illustration 10**: Cathedral of San Giorgio, Modica
Wikimedia Commons
Of Sicily’s own form of Baroque, post-1693, it has been said, “The buildings conceived in the wake of this disaster expressed a light-hearted freedom of decoration whose incongruous gaiety was intended, perhaps, to assuage the horror”.{{sfnp|T7ICXPBD}} While this is an accurate description of a style which is almost a celebration of *joie de vivre* in stone, it is unlikely to be the reason for the choice. As with all architectural styles, the selection of style would have directly linked to current fashion. Versailles had been completed in 1688 in a far sterner Baroque style; Louis XIV’s new palace was immediately emulated across Europe by any aristocrat or sovereign in Europe aspiring to wealth, taste, or power.{{sfnp|W2PHLMIJ|233}}
As the 18th century dawned, Sicilian architects were employed to create the new palazzi and churches. These architects, often local, were able to design in a more sophisticated style than those of the late 17th century. Many had been trained in mainland Italy and had returned with a more detailed understanding of the Baroque idiom, and their work inspired less-travelled Sicilian designers. Very importantly, these architects were also assisted by the books of engravings by Domenico de’ Rossi, who for the first time wrote down text with his engravings, giving the precise dimensions and measurements of many of the principal Renaissance and Baroque façades in Rome. In this way, the Renaissance finally came late to Sicily, by proxy.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|9}}
At this stage of its development, Sicilian Baroque still lacked the freedom of style that it was later to acquire. Giovanni Battista Vaccarini was the leading Sicilian architect during this period. He arrived on the island in 1730 bringing with him a fusion of the concepts of Bernini and Borromini, and introduced to the island’s architecture a unified movement and a play of curves, which would have been unacceptable in Rome itself. However, his works are considered of lesser quality than those which were to come.{{sfnp|KDZNN284}} Notable works which date from this period are the 18th century wings of the Palazzo Biscari at Catania and Vaccarini’s Cattedrale di Sant’Agata, also in Catania. On this building Vaccarini quite clearly copied the capitals from Guarino Guarini’s Architettura Civile. It is this frequent copying of established designs that causes the architecture from this period, while opulent, also to be disciplined and almost reined in. The style of Vaccarini, appointed City Architect in 1736, was to dominate Catania for the next decades.{{sfnp|FWETMFVS|288}}{{sfnp|KDZNN284|21}}
A second hindrance to Sicilian architects’ fully achieving their potential earlier was that frequently they were only rebuilding a damaged structure, and as a consequence having to match their designs to what had been before, or remained. The Cathedral of San Giorgio at Modica (Illustration 10) is an example. It was badly damaged in an earthquake of 1613, rebuilt in 1643 in a Baroque style while keeping the medieval layout, then damaged again in 1693. Rebuilding again began in 1702, by an unknown architect; Rosario Gagliardi oversaw the façade’s completion in 1760.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|150}}
There were also other influences at work at this time. Between 1718 and 1734 Sicily was ruled personally by Charles VI from Vienna, and as a result close ties with Austrian architecture can be perceived. Several buildings on the island are shameless imitations of the works of Fischer von Erlach, who had begun to rebuild Schönbrunn Palace in 1686 in a simple form of Baroque;\[{{sfnp|CEFHFNEL}} this form was later reproduced in Sicily in the final years of its Baroque era. The palace also had an external staircase (removed in 1746) similar to those that later evolved in Sicily. One Sicilian architect, the monk Tommaso Napoli, visited Vienna twice early in the century,{{sfnp|XNJ34EED|401}} returning with a store of engraving and drawings. He was later the architect of two country villas of the early Sicilian Baroque period, remarkable for their concave and convex walls and the complex design of their external staircases. One villa, his Villa Palagonia in Bagheria, begun in 1705,{{sfnp|HNNLJ539|312}} is the most complex and ingenious of any constructed in Sicily’s Baroque era:{{sfnp|XNJ34EED|401}} its double staircase of straight flights, frequently changing direction, was to be the prototype of a distinguishing feature of Sicilian Baroque.{{sfnp|I6IQ32VG|193}}
A new wave of architects who had mastered the Baroque sentiments, aware of [Rococo](https://engole.info/rococo) interior styles beginning elsewhere to gain an ascendancy over Baroque, went on to develop the flamboyance and “elastic conceptions of space” that are today synonymous with the term Sicilian Baroque.{{sfnp|FWETMFVS|285}}
## High Sicilian Baroque
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/SiracusaCathedral-pjt1.jpg/960px-SiracusaCathedral-pjt1.jpg)**Illustration 11**: Cathedral of Syracuse, Andrea Palma’s cathedral façade (begun in 1728). Based on the formula of a Roman triumphal arch, the broken masses within a columned façade create a theatrical effect.
Wikimedia Commons
Around 1730, the Baroque style gradually began to break away from the defined Roman style of Baroque and gain an even stronger individuality, for two reasons: the rush to rebuild was subsiding and construction was becoming more leisurely and thoughtful; and a new clutch of home-grown Sicilian architects came to the forefront. This new generation had watched the rebuilding in the Baroque, and studied the engravings and architectural books and treatises arriving ever more frequently from the mainland. However, they were not like their predecessors (the former students of the Romans), and consequently were able to formulate strong individual styles of their own. They included Andrea Palma, Rosario Gagliardi and Tommaso Napoli.\[f\]The art historian John Varriano notes Napoli’s four-flight double staircase in the Villa Palagonia, a building Varriano considers “one of the most striking in all of Italy”.{{sfnp|FWETMFVS|285}} While taking account of the Baroque of Naples and Rome, they now adapted their designs for the local needs and traditions. Their use of resources and exploitation of the sites was often wildly inventive. Napoli and then Vaccarini had promoted the use of the external staircase, which was now taken to a new dimension: hilltop churches would be reached by fantastical flights of steps evoking Vaccarini’s mentor Francesco de Sanctis’s Spanish Steps in Rome.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|22}}
Façades of churches often came to resemble wedding cakes rather than places of worship as the architects grew in confidence, competence, and stature.\[g\]Sir John Summerson describes Andrea Palma’s Syracuse cathedral façade as a “volatile interpretation” of Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola’s Church of the Gesù in Rome.{{sfnp|BFGXNID2|87}} Church interiors, which until this date had been slightly pedestrian, came especially in Palermo to be decorated in a riot of inlaid marbles of a wide variety of colours. Anthony Blunt has described this decoration as “either fascinating or repulsive, but however the individual spectator may react to it, this style is a characteristic manifestation of Sicilian exuberance, and must be classed amongst the most important and original creations of Baroque art on the island”.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|10}} This is the key to Sicilian Baroque: it was ideally matched to the Sicilian personality, and this was the reason it evolved so dramatically on the island. Nowhere in Sicily is the development of the new Baroque style more evident than in Ragusa and Catania.{{sfnp|Z5EPMZK8}}
### Ragusi
Ragusa was very badly damaged in 1693. The town is in two halves, divided by a deep ravine known as the “Valle dei Ponti”:{{sfnp|VULQ7J6A}} the older town of Ragusa Ibla, and the higher Ragusa Superiore.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Duomo_di_San_Giorgio_-_Ragusa02.jpg/960px-Duomo_di_San_Giorgio_-_Ragusa02.jpg)**Illustration 12**: Rosario Gagliardi’s Duomo of San Giorgio in Ragusa
Wikimedia Commons
Ragusa Ibla, the lower city, has an array of Baroque architecture, which includes the Duomo of San Giorgio by Rosario Gagliardi, designed in 1738 (Illustration 12); in the design of this church, Gagliardi exploited the difficult terrain of the hillside site. The church towers over a massive marble staircase of some 250 steps, a Baroque feature especially exploited in Sicily due to the island’s topography. The tower seems to explode from the façade, accentuated by the columns and pilasters canted against the curved walls. Above the doorways and window apertures, pediments scroll and curve with a sense of freedom and movement which would have been unthinkable to those earlier architects inspired by Bernini and Borromini. The neoclassical dome was added in 1820.{{sfnp|FWETMFVS|290}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Sicilia_Ragusa2_tango7174.jpg/330px-Sicilia_Ragusa2_tango7174.jpg)A balcony of the Palazzo Zacco
Wikimedia Commons
The Palazzo Zacco is one of the more notable Baroque buildings of the city, its Corinthian columns supporting balconies of wrought iron work, and supports of grotesques mock, shock or amuse the passerby. The palazzo was built in the second half of the 18th century by the Baron Melfi di San Antonio.{{sfnp|YLX2PJ4V}} It was later acquired by the Zacco family, after which it is named. The building has two street façades, each with six wide balconies bearing the coat of arms of the Melfi family, a frame of acanthus leaves from which a putto leans. The balconies, a feature of the palazzo, are notable for the differing [corbels](https://engole.info/corbel) which support them, ranging from putti to musicians and grotesques. The focal points of the principal façade are the three central balconies, divided by columns with Corinthian capitals. Here the balconies are supported by images of musicians with grotesque faces.{{sfnp|HW6PNXRI}}
The Ragusa Cathedral in Ragusa Superiore was built between 1718 and 1778.{{sfnp|6APVQ8LL|256}} Its principal façade is pure Baroque, containing fine carvings and sculptures. The cathedral has a high Sicilian belfry in the same style. The ornate Baroque interior is separated into three colonnaded aisles. Ragusa Superiore was replanned following 1693 around the cathedral and displays an unusual phenomenon of Sicilian Baroque: the palazzi here are peculiar to this town, of only two storeys and long, with the central bay only emphasised by a balcony and an arch to the inner garden. This very Portuguese style, probably designed to minimise damage in future earthquakes, is very different from the palazzi in Ragusa Ibla, which are in true Sicilian style. Unusually, Baroque lingered on here until the early 19th century. The last palazzo built here was in the Baroque form but with columns of Roman Doric and neoclassical balconies.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|29}}
### Catania
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Catania_Cathedral_msu2017-9550.jpg/330px-Catania_Cathedral_msu2017-9550.jpg)**Illustration 13**: Catania Cathedral. Giovanni Battista Vaccarini’s principal façade of 1736 shows Spanish architectural influences.
Wikimedia Commons
Sicily’s second city, Catania, was the most damaged of all the larger cities in 1693,{{sfnp|E6ALTNKV|6}} with only the medieval Castello Ursino and three tribunes of the cathedral remaining; thus it was replanned and rebuilt. The new design separated the city into quarters, divided by two roads meeting at an intersection known as the Piazza del Duomo (Cathedral Square). Rebuilding was supervised by the Bishop of Catania, and the city’s only surviving architect, Alonzo di Benedetto. Di Benedetto headed a team of junior architects called in from Messina, which quickly began to rebuild, concentrating first on the Piazza del Duomo. Three palazzi are situated here, the Bishop’s Palace, the Seminario and one other. The architects worked in complete harmony and it is impossible to distinguish di Benedetto’s work from that of his junior colleagues. The work is competent but unremarkable, with decorated rustication in the 17th-century Sicilian style, but often the decoration on the upper floors is superficial. This is typical of the Baroque of this period immediately after the earthquake.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|147}}
Vaccarini arrived in Catania arrived in Catania in 1730, appointed city architect, and immediately impressed on the architecture the Roman Baroque style.{{sfnp|6APVQ8LL|59}} The pilasters lose their rustication and support Roman type cornices and entablatures, or curved pediments, and free-standing columns support balconies. Vaccarini also exploited the local black lava stone as a decorative feature rather than a general building material, using it intermittently with other materials, and spectacularly for an obelisk supported on the back of the Catanian heraldic elephant, for a fountain in the style of Bernini in front of the new Town hall.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|19}} Vaccarini’s principal façade to Catania’s cathedral, dedicated to Santa Agata, shows strong Spanish influences even at this late stage of Sicilian Baroque. Also in the city is Stefano Ittar’s Basilica della Collegiata, built around 1768,{{sfnp|4R8G6WJM|166}} and an example of Sicilian Baroque at its most stylistically simple.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|23}}
## Church interiors
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/ChiesaGesu_entrance.JPG/960px-ChiesaGesu_entrance.JPG)**Illustration 14:** Chiesa del Gesù, Palermo (1564–1633), with abundant use of polychrome marble on the floor and walls
Wikimedia Commons
Sicilian church exteriors had been decorated in elaborate styles from the first quarter of the 17th century, with ample use of sculpture, stucco, frescoes, and marble (Illustration 14). As the post-earthquake churches were becoming completed in the late 1720s, interiors also began to reflect this external decoration, becoming lighter and less intense (compare illustration 14 to the later interior of illustration 15), with profuse sculpted ornamentation of pillars, cornices, and pediments, often in the form of putti, flora, and fauna. Inlaid coloured marbles on floors and walls in complex patterns are one of the most defining features of the style.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|32}} These patterns, with their roundels of porphyry, are often derived from designs found in the Norman cathedrals of Europe, again demonstrating the Norman origins of Sicilian architecture. The high altar is usually the pièce de resistance: in many instances a single block of coloured marble, decorated with gilt scrolls and festoons, and frequently inset with other stones such as lapis lazuli and agate. Steps leading to the altar dais are characteristically curving between concave and convex and in many cases decorated with inlaid coloured marbles. An example of this is in the church of St Zita in Palermo.{{sfnp|9L26R3GA|43-49}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Catane_San_Benedetto2.jpg)**Illustration 15**: The nun’s choir in the Church of San Benedetto, Catania
Wikimedia Commons
The building of Sicily’s churches was typically funded not just by individual religious orders but also an aristocratic family. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of Sicily’s nobility did not choose to have their mortal remains displayed for eternity in the Catacombe dei Cappuccini, but were buried quite conventionally in vaults beneath their family churches. It has been said, though, that “the funeral of a Sicilian aristocrat was one of the great moments of his life, and the luxury he had enjoyed in this life was to lead him into the next”.{{sfnp|ZSYE4SBH|49-50}} Funerals became extravagent shows of wealth; a result of this ostentation is that the stone memorial slabs covering the burial vaults today provide an accurate barometer of the development of Baroque and marble inlay techniques at any specific time. For instance, those from the first half of the 17th century are of simple white marble decorated with an incised armorial bearing, name, date, etc. From about 1650, small quantities of coloured marble inlay appear, forming patterns, and this can be seen developing until, by the end of the century, the coats of arms and calligraphy are entirely of inset coloured marble, with decorative patterned borders. Long after Baroque began to fall from fashion in the 1780s, Baroque decor was still deemed more suitable for Catholic ritual than the new, pagan-based neoclassicism.{{sfnp|T3YR2MF7|1}}
The Church of San Benedetto in Catania (Illustration 15) is a fine example of a Sicilian Baroque interior, decorated between 1726 and 1762, the period when Sicilian Baroque was at the height of its fashion and individuality. The ceilings were frescoed by the artist Giovanni Tuccari. The most spectacular part of the church’s decoration is the nuns’ choir (Illustration 15), created in about 1750, which was designed in such a way that the nuns’ voices could be heard during services, but the nuns themselves were still quite separate from, and unseen by, the less spiritual world outside.{{sfnp|7KSS7W87}}
## Palazzi interiors
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Palazzo_Gangi.jpg)**Illustration 16**: The ballroom at the Palazzo Gangi, Palermo
Wikimedia Commons
Frequently the interiors of the palazzi are less elaborate than those of Sicily’s Baroque churches. Many were finished with little ornate interior decoration because they took so long to build: by the time they were completed, Baroque had passed from fashion; in these cases, the principal rooms were frequently decorated in a neoclassical style influenced by the late 18th century Sicilian Anglomania and particularly an admiration of Robert Adam and Wedgewood pottery. But in true Sicilian style, even this more chaste style would often be embellished with Baroque *trompe-l’œil* figures and colourful Sicilian tiled floors, such as can be found at the Villa Spedalotto at Bagheria.{{sfnp|ZSYE4SBH|139}}
Often a fusion of the two styles is found, as in the ballroom wing of the Palazzo Ajutamicristo in Palermo, built by Andrea Giganti in 1763, where the ballroom ceiling was frescoed by Giuseppe Crestadoro with allegorical scenes framed by Baroque gilded motifs in plaster. This ceiling was already old-fashioned when it was finished, and the rest of the room was decorated in a far simpler mode.\[104\] When Baroque interior decoration did occur, as elsewhere in Italy, the finest and most decorated rooms were those on the piano nobile, reserved for guests and entertaining. Occasionally, however, the late date of completion means that the decoration can be described as Rococo – the flamboyant swan song of the Baroque era.{{sfnp|TI26VVDW|92}}
A further reason for the absence of Baroque decoration, and the most common, is that most rooms were never intended for public view and, therefore, expensive decoration. Many of the palazzi were vast, necessary because the household of a Sicilian aristocrat, beginning with himself, his wife and many children, would typically also contain a collection of poorer relatives and other extended family members, all of whom were allocated minor apartments. There were paid employees, often including a private chaplain or confessor, a majordomo, governesses, secretary, archivist, accountant, librarian, and innumerable lower servants, such as a porter to ring a bell a prescribed number of times according to the rank of an approaching guest.{{sfnp|ZSYE4SBH|16}} Often the servants’ extended families, especially if elderly, also lived in the palazzo. These everyday living quarters, even the bedrooms of “Maestro and Maestra di Casa”, were often simply decorated and furnished. Gérard Gefen states in his book *Sicily, Land of the Leopard Princes* that bedrooms were kept austere as they were rooms for fighting off temptation and sin as much as for sleeping.{{sfnp|ZSYE4SBH|17}}
Further rooms were required by the Sicilian tradition that it was a sign of poor breeding to permit even mere acquaintances to stay in local inns.{{sfnp|ZSYE4SBH|16}} Any visiting foreigner, especially from a distant European metropolis, was regarded as a special trophy and added social prestige. Hence the Sicilian aristocrat’s home was seldom empty or quiet.{{sfnp|ZSYE4SBH|19}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/db/Palazzo_Biscari_2017-04-26n.jpg/960px-Palazzo_Biscari_2017-04-26n.jpg)**Illustration 17**: The flamboyant staircase at the Palazzo Biscari
Wikimedia Commons
The rooms of the [piano nobile](https://engole.info/piano-nobile) were entered formally from an external Baroque double staircase: they consisted of a suite of large and small salons, with one very large salon being the principal room of the house, often used as a ballroom. Sometimes the guest bedrooms were sited here too, but by the end of the 18th century they were more often on a secondary floor above. If decorated during the Baroque era, the rooms would be profusely ornamented. Walls were frequently mirrored, the mirrors inset into gilded frames in the walls, often alternating with paintings similarly framed, while moulded nymphs and shepherdesses decorated the spaces between. Ceilings were high and frescoed, and from the ceiling hung huge coloured chandeliers of Murano glass,{{sfnp|E2NGQIY4}} while further light came from gilded sconces flanking the mirrors adorning the walls. One of the most notable rooms in this style is the Gallery of Mirrors in Palermo’s Palazzo Valguarnera-Gangi (Illustration 16), a building described as “Sicily’s most famous palazzo”.{{sfnp|2SGRN3NI}} This room with its frescoed ceiling by Gaspare Fumagalli is, however, one of the few Baroque rooms in this Baroque palazzo, which was (from 1750) extended and transformed by its owner Marianna Valguarnera, mostly in the later neoclassical style.{{sfnp|3XYAWC9Q}}\[h\]The room was used for the ballroom scene of Visconti’s *The Leopard*.{{sfnp|EPAI2XGZ}} Baroque interior decoration eventually reached such an exuberance that it became known as Rococo: this is exemplified by the internal staircase (Illustration 17) at the Palazzo Biscari, completed in 1763.{{sfnp|UF3D6ZSX}}{{sfnp|A3CYVFS5}}
Furniture during the Baroque era was in keeping with the style: ornate, gilded and frequently with marble used for tabletops. The furniture was transient within the house, frequently moved between rooms as required, while leaving other rooms unfurnished. Sometimes furniture was specifically commissioned for a certain room, for example to match a silk wall panel within a gilt frame. For the greater part of the 18th century furniture would always be left arranged against a wall, never in the later conversational style in the centre of a room, which in the Baroque era was always left empty: an arrangement which displayed the marble, or more often ceramic, patterned floor tiles.{{sfnp|9ZGWM25X}}
Common to both church and palazzi interior design was the stucco work. Stucco is an important component of the Baroque design and philosophy, as it seamlessly combines architecture, sculpture, and painting in three-dimensional form. Its combination with *trompe l’œil* ceilings and walls in Baroque illusionistic painting confuses reality and art. While in churches the stucco could represent angels and putti linked by swags of flowers,{{sfnp|38LQTP6E}} in a private house it might represent musical instruments or the owner’s favourite foods.{{sfnp|I6IQ32VG|188}}
Changing use over the past 250 years has simplified palazzo decor further, as the ground floors are now usually shops, banks, or restaurants, and the upper floors divided into apartments, their interiors lost or decayed.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|39}}
## Late Sicilian Baroque
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Palazzo_Beneventano_del_Bosco-pjt.jpg/330px-Palazzo_Beneventano_del_Bosco-pjt.jpg)**Illustration 18**: Palazzo Beneventano del Bosco (1779), Syracuse, designed by Luciano Alì in restrained late Sicilian Baroque. The wrought iron balconies and sweeping curves, however, keep the approaching neoclassicism at bay.
Wikimedia Commons
Baroque eventually went out of fashion. In some parts of Europe, it metamorphosed into the Rococo, but not in Sicily where the Rococo is only found internally. No longer ruled by Austria, Sicily, from 1735 officially the Kingdom of Sicily, was ruled by the King of Naples, Ferdinand IV. Hence Palermo was in constant association with the principal capital Naples, where there was architecturally a growing reversion to the more classical styles of architecture. Coupled with this, many of the more cultured Sicilian nobility developed a fashionable obsession with all things French, from philosophy to arts, fashion, and architecture. Many of them visited Paris in pursuit of these interests and returned with the latest architectural engravings and theoretical treatises.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Le_Jardin_botanique_de_Palerme_%287042395779%29.jpg/330px-Le_Jardin_botanique_de_Palerme_%287042395779%29.jpg)The “Entrance Temple” to the Orto botanico di Palermo
Wikimedia Commons
The French architect Léon Dufourny was in Sicily between 1787 and 1794 to study and analyse the ancient Greek temples on the island.{{sfnp|KDZNN284|44}} Thus Sicilians rediscovered their ancient past, which with its classical idioms was now the height of fashion. The change in tastes did not come about overnight. Baroque remained popular on the island, but now Sicilian balconies, extravagant as ever, would be placed next to severe classical columns. Dufourny began designing in Palermo, and his “Entrance Temple” (1789) to the Palermo Botanical Garden was the first building in Sicily in a style based on the Greek Doric order. It is pure neoclassical architecture, as established in England since 1760, and it was a sign of things to come.{{sfnp|6W3P3CME}}\[i\]Commenting on Dufourny’s “blatantly Neo-Classic” pavilion, John Varriano noted, “it would issue in the new age. But nowhere in Italy did the Baroque die so graceful and dignified a death”.{{sfnp|FWETMFVS|294}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f8/Palazzo_Belmonte_Riso_%28Palermo%29-msu-0536.jpg/330px-Palazzo_Belmonte_Riso_%28Palermo%29-msu-0536.jpg)**Illustration 21**: Palazzo Belmonte Riso (1784), restrained late Sicilian Baroque with more dominant neoclassical features. The upper windows have neoclassical pediments, while the piano nobile has Baroque pediments and a balcony with decorated corbels. The pilasters have decorated Baroque capitals, but are otherwise simple and unadorned.
Wikimedia Commons
It was Dufourny’s great friend and fellow architect Giuseppe Marvuglia who was to preside over the gradual decline of Sicilian Baroque. In 1784 he designed the Palazzo Belmonte Riso (Illustration 21), a good example of the period of architectural transition, combining both Baroque and neoclassical motifs, built around an arcaded courtyard providing Baroque masses of light and shade, or [chiaroscuro](https://engole.info/chiaroscuro).\[j\]The Palazzo, badly damaged by bombing during the Second World War, was restored in 2005 and is now a museum of contemporary art.{{sfnp|A2T57TYB}} The main façade, punctuated by giant pilasters, also had Baroque features, but the skyline was unbroken. The pilasters were undecorated, simple, and Ionic, and supported an undecorated entablature. Above the windows were classical unbroken pediments. Sicilian Baroque was waning.{{sfnp|A2T57TYB}}{{sfnp|RKBHJ8T7}}
By the closing years of the 18th century, impoverished Sicily was ruled from Naples by the weak Ferdinand IV and his dominant wife. In 1798 and again in 1806, the King was forced by the invading French to flee Naples to Sicily. The French were only kept at bay from Sicily by an expeditionary force of 17,000 British troops, and Sicily was now ruled by Britain in effect if not in name. King Ferdinand then in 1811 imposed Sicily’s first tax, at a single stroke alienating his aristocracy.{{sfnp|ZMVJKNZ4|200}}
But the British influence in Sicily was to provide Sicilian Baroque with one last flourish. Marvuglia, recognising the new fashion for all things British, developed the style he had first cautiously used at Palazzo Belmonte Riso in 1784, combining some of the plainer, more solid elements of Baroque with Palladian motifs rather than Palladian designs. The late Sicilian Baroque was similar in style to the Baroque popular in England at the beginning of the 18th century, popularised by Sir John Vanbrugh with such edifices as Blenheim Palace.{{sfnp|BFGXNID2|70-71}} An example is Marvuglia’s Church of San Francesco di Sales, which is almost English in its interpretation of Baroque. However, this was only a temporary success and the neoclassical style was soon dominant. Few aristocrats could now afford to build, and the new style was mainly used in public and civil buildings such as those at the Palermo Botanical Garden. Sicilian architects – even Andrea Giganti, once a competent architect in Baroque – now began to design in the neoclassical style, but in the version of the neoclassical adopted by fashionable France. An example is his Villa Galletti at Bagheria, inspired by the work of Ange-Jacques Gabriel. A contemporary traveller, the Comte de Borch, noted the French influence, describing the villa as “*décorée à la française, avec trumeaux, boiseries légères, etc.*“{{sfnp|78BEDZCF|401}}
## Decline
The decline of Sicilian Baroque was inevitable. Not only were tastes changing generally, but the aristocratic money was running out.{{sfnp|ZSYE4SBH|156}} During the 17th century, the aristocracy had lived principally on their landed estates, tending and improving them, and as a result their income also increased. During the 18th century, the nobility gradually migrated towards the cities, in particular Palermo, to enjoy the social delights of the Viceroy’s court and Catania. Their town palazzi grew in size and splendour, to the detriment of the abandoned estates, which were still expected to provide the revenue. The land agents left to run the estates over time became less efficient, or corrupt, often both. Consequently, aristocratic incomes fell.\[k\]The historian Denis Mack Smith, in his *A History of Sicily: Medieval Sicily, 800–1713*, noted: “The fact that the Sicilian aristocracy consumed a great deal and produced nothing was fundamental in explaining the problems of the island”.{{sfnp|FG48K882|291}} The aristocracy borrowed money using the estates as surety, until the value of the neglected estates fell below the money borrowed against them. Moreover, Sicily was by now as unstable politically as its nobility were financially.{{sfnp|TRNVGYXU|4-5}}
Ferdinand’s unpopular tax of 1811 was rescinded by the British in 1812, who then imposed a British style constitution on the island. One legal innovation of this time of particular consequence for the aristocracy was that creditors, who had previously only been able to enforce repayments of the interest on a loan or mortgage, could now seize property. Property began to change hands in smaller parcels at auctions, and consequently a land-owning bourgeoisie immediately began to flourish. Revolts against the Bourbons in 1821 and 1848 divided the nobility, and liberalism was in the air. These factors, coupled with the social and political upheaval of the following Risorgimento in the 19th century, meant the Sicilian aristocracy was a doomed class, having to live off their capital.{{sfnp|ZSYE4SBH|156}} Immediately following the Risorgimento, Sicily’s annexation to the new Italian state was economically disastrous for the island, in no small part due to the relaxation of foreign exchange, which was advantageous only to the more industrial north of the new kingdom, but forced the more agricultural south to compete in the North American commodity markets.\[129\] Furthermore, because of their neglect and dereliction of noblesse oblige, an essential element of the feudal system, the countryside was often ruled by bandits outside the enclosed villages, and the once grand country villas were decaying; the dominance of the Sicilian upper class was over.{{sfnp|TRNVGYXU|44-46}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/Palazzo_Ducezio-pjt.jpg/330px-Palazzo_Ducezio-pjt.jpg)**Illustration 19**: Palazzo Ducezio at Noto
Wikimedia Commons
As with the early days of Sicilian Baroque, the first buildings of the new neoclassical era were often copies or hybrids of the two styles. The Palazzo Ducezio (Illustration 19) was begun in 1746, and the ground floor with arcades creating play of light and shadow is pure Baroque. However, when a few years later the upper floor was added, despite the use of Baroque broken pediments above the windows, the neoclassical French influence is very pronounced, highlighted by the central curved bay. The Sicilian Baroque was gradually and slowly being superseded by French neoclassicism.{{sfnp|HH9IT63V|70}}
## Legacy
Sicilian Baroque is today recognised as an architectural style largely due to the work of Sacheverall Sitwell, whose *Southern Baroque Art* of 1924 was the first book to appreciate the style,{{sfnp|N9F2VQJI|11}} followed by the more academic work of Anthony Blunt in 1968.{{sfnp|N9F2VQJI|13}}
Most of the Baroque palazzi continued in private ownership throughout the 19th century, as the old aristocracy either married middle-class money or fell further into debt. There were a few exceptions and some of these still retain their ancestral palazzi today. Thanks to the continuing religious devotion of the Sicilian people, many of the Sicilian Baroque churches are today still in the use for which they were designed. Large parts of Messina, rebuilt after the 1783 earthquake, were destroyed by another in 1908.{{sfnp|XNJ34EED|401}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Sicily_2010_Palermo_88_%284535786011%29.jpg/960px-Sicily_2010_Palermo_88_%284535786011%29.jpg)**Illustration 20**: Palazzo Lampedusa in Palermo
Wikimedia Commons
Much of the responsibility for the decay and ruinous state of preservation of so many palazzi must fall not just on owners unwilling to accept change, but on the political agendas of successive socialist governments. Some of the finest Baroque villas and palazzi are still in ruins following the United States bombing raids of 1943. In many cases, no attempt has been made to restore or even secure them. Those that survived the raids in good repair, and also some of those that did not, including Palazzo Lampedusa, the Palermo home of the Princes of Lampedusa, are often sub-divided into offices or apartments, their Baroque interiors dismantled, divided, and sold.{{sfnp|N8TRH46M}}{{sfnp|W26ZS5T3}}
The remaining members of the Sicilian aristocracy who still inhabit their ancestral palazzi are unable to make opening their houses to tourism a major source of income, unlike some Northern, especially English, counterparts. The local equivalent of the National Trust is very small,{{sfnp|JU2KDGY2}} and there is much less local interest among the general population. The princes, marquesses, and counts of Sicily still living in their houses dwell in splendid isolation, surrounded often by beauty and decay. It is only today that both owners and the state are awakening to the possibility that if action is not taken soon it will be too late to save this particular part of the Sicilian heritage.{{sfnp|EPFDTGCA}}{{sfnp|FDXTK3AW}}
As Sicily now becomes a more politically stable, secure and less corrupt environment, the Baroque palazzi are slowly beginning to open their doors to an eager paying public, American and Northern European as much as Italian. In 1963, when the movie *The Leopard* was released, the Gangi Palace ballroom was almost unique in having been a film set, but today long unused salons and ballrooms are hosting corporate and public events. Some palazzi are offering a bed and breakfast service to paying guests, once again providing impressive hospitality to visitors to Sicily, the purpose for which they were originally intended.{{sfnp|2SGRN3NI}}{{sfnp|CDFRLP74}}{{sfnp|FGY9YVBC}}
In 2002 UNESCO selectively included Baroque monuments of Val di Noto into its World Heritage List as “providing outstanding testimony to the exuberant genius of late Baroque art and architecture” and “representing the culmination and final flowering of Baroque art in Europe”.{{sfnp|Z5EPMZK8}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a *Palazzo* (pl. *palazzi*) is any large building in a town, state or private (often much smaller than what the English term palace implies). While palazzo is the technically correct appellation, and postal address, no Sicilian aristocrat would ever use the word, instead referring to his or her own house, however large, as casa. Palazzo followed by the family name was the term used by officials, tradesmen, and delivery men.{{sfnp|ZSYE4SBH|15}} b Messina, once Sicily’s second city, fell into poverty and obscurity following punitive measures against it by the Spanish following an uprising in 1626. Closely related for geographical reasons to mainland Italy, Messina once contained some of Sicily’s finest buildings. The combined effect of earthquakes in 1693, 1783 and 1908, and bombing raids in 1943, robbed the city of virtually all of these.{{sfnp|J9ZC335X}}{{sfnp|TLBKYKBC}}{{sfnp|DKX83ZV8}} c Patrick Brydone, who travelled to Sicily in 1770, recorded his impressions of the local nobility in A Tour through Sicily and Malta, in a Series of Letters to William Beckford Esq., of Somerly in Suffolk: “One of the most common titles here is that of prince; though only created by Philip II of Spain, they take rank of all the other nobility, some of whom, particularly the counts, carry their origin as far back as the Normans, and look with great contempt on these upstart princes. The dukes and marquisses are not so old, so that the dignity of the Sicilian titles may be said to be in the inverse ratio of their antiquity”.{{sfnp|APXBSDQ4|230}} d Stephen Tobriner, in his study *The Genesis of Noto: An Eighteenth-Century Italian City*, describes the process leading to the drastic decision to “move” Noto.{{sfnp|N9F2VQJI|27-29}} e Travelling in Sicily in the early 1920s, the writer Sacheverell Sitwell recorded his astonishment: “It must have been in the winter of 1922–3 that I went to Noto. Its beautiful buildings were even more of a revelation than those of Lecce and I really believe that my brother and myself were the first persons of any nationality to take notice of them since they were built”.{{sfnp|BEG78GSA|29}} f The art historian John Varriano notes Napoli’s four-flight double staircase in the Villa Palagonia, a building Varriano considers “one of the most striking in all of Italy”.{{sfnp|FWETMFVS|285}} g Sir John Summerson describes Andrea Palma’s Syracuse cathedral façade as a “volatile interpretation” of Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola’s Church of the Gesù in Rome.{{sfnp|BFGXNID2|87}} h The room was used for the ballroom scene of Visconti’s *The Leopard*.{{sfnp|EPAI2XGZ}} i Commenting on Dufourny’s “blatantly Neo-Classic” pavilion, John Varriano noted, “it would issue in the new age. But nowhere in Italy did the Baroque die so graceful and dignified a death”.{{sfnp|FWETMFVS|294}} j The Palazzo, badly damaged by bombing during the Second World War, was restored in 2005 and is now a museum of contemporary art.{{sfnp|A2T57TYB}} k The historian Denis Mack Smith, in his *A History of Sicily: Medieval Sicily, 800–1713*, noted: “The fact that the Sicilian aristocracy consumed a great deal and produced nothing was fundamental in explaining the problems of the island”.{{sfnp|FG48K882|291}} l, m var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
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## Works cited
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**Categories:** Architect style
---
### [Tree of Jesse](https://engole.info/tree-of-jesse/)
**Published:** February 11, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Tree-of-Jesse.webp[/pimage]Artistic depiction of Jesus's family tree, establishing him as a descendent of King David, and therefore the rightful Messiah.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Tree-of-Jesse.webp)Tree of Jesse window at Dorchester Abbey, with the branches of the tree forming the tracery.{{sfnp
V7D4QQ38
The Tree of Jesse is an artistic depiction of the ancestry of Jesus beginning with Jesse, the father of David, King of Israel. Based largely on the genealogy of Jesus as described in the first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, it takes the form of a tree springing from Jesse’s loins.{{sfnp|QHARI8T9}} Jesus’s ancestry was important to early Christians, as the Old Testament prophet Isaiah had predicted that the Messiah would come from the House of David.{{sfnp|V7D4QQ38}}
The tree’s branches are labelled with the names of Jesse’s descendants, culminating with Jesus.{{sfnp|V7D4QQ38}} It first appeared in manuscripts during the medieval period,\[a\]The earliest known depiction of the Tree of Jesse dates from 1086.{{sfnp|G3XUNG8M}} and subsequently in stained glass, stone carving, embroidery, metalwork, and painting.{{sfnp|QHARI8T9}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The earliest known depiction of the Tree of Jesse dates from 1086.{{sfnp|G3XUNG8M}}
## References
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## Works cited
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**Categories:** Art term
---
### [Ogee](https://engole.info/ogee/)
**Published:** September 13, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Cyma_recta_et_reversa.png/960px-Cyma_recta_et_reversa.png[/pimage]Architectural or design element consisting of a continuous double curve, S-shaped in cross section.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Cyma_recta_et_reversa.png/960px-Cyma_recta_et_reversa.png)Wikimedia Commons
An ogee is an architectural or design element consisting of a continuous double curve, S-shaped in cross-section. If the upper part is concave and the lower part convex it is known as a cyma recta; if the reverse, it is known as a cyma reversa.{{sfnp|UIZU5GUV}}
The form first appeared in textiles during the 12th century, and it is characteristic of the various Gothic and Gothic Revival architectural styles.{{sfnp|AZVDDZ42}} Ogees are often used in the interior of buildings for capping a baseboard or plinth, or as a crown moulding trim piece where a wall meets a ceiling.{{sfnp|KZJI5764|129}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/Ogee-shaped_arch.svg/960px-Ogee-shaped_arch.svg.png)Ogee arch
Wikimedia Commons
The principal use of the term *ogee* in architecture is to describe an arch composed of two ogees, mirrored left-to-right and meeting at an apex.{{sfnp|92UZV2C9|318}}
## References
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## Works cited
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**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Prebendaries' Plot](https://engole.info/prebendaries-plot/)
**Published:** November 20, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Thomas_Cranmer_by_Gerlach_Flicke.jpg/960px-Thomas_Cranmer_by_Gerlach_Flicke.jpg[/pimage]Unsuccessful attempt by religious conservatives in 1543 to oust Thomas Cranmer from his office of Archbishop of Canterbury.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Thomas_Cranmer_by_Gerlach_Flicke.jpg/960px-Thomas_Cranmer_by_Gerlach_Flicke.jpg)Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556))
Wikimedia Commons
The Prebendaries’ Plot was an unsuccessful attempt by religious conservatives in 1543 to oust the reformist Thomas Cranmer from his office of Archbishop of Canterbury. During the English Reformation that brought the Church of England into existence in the reign of King Henry VIII, Cranmer was Henry’s chief architect in overthrowing papal supremacy and reforming the church in England. The plotters hoped that by discrediting Cranmer they might prevent further religious reforms.{{sfnp|P28T77GN}}
The plotters presented evidence to the King that Cranmer and his allies were promoting heresy, expecting that would result in Cranmer’s arrest. But Henry instead appointed Cranmer himself to investigate the charges against him, during which time Cranmer purged Catholics from positions of power in his diocese.{{sfnp|DLCDCRHI|198}}
The plot is named after the five [prebendary](https://engole.info/prebend) canons of Canterbury Cathedral who formed its core, but in the investigation that followed 240 other priests and 60 laymen were also among the accused, demonstrating the scale of the opposition to Cranmer’s reforms.{{sfnp|DLCDCRHI|200}}
## References
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## Works cited
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**Categories:** Plot
---
### [Freeth's Coffee House](https://engole.info/freeths-coffee-house/)
**Published:** October 13, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/John_Freeth_Bham.jpg/960px-John_Freeth_Bham.jpg[/pimage]Popular name for the Leicester Arms in Birmingham, which operated from 1736 until 1832, one of the most celebrated taverns of Georgian England.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/John_Freeth_Bham.jpg/960px-John_Freeth_Bham.jpg)John Freeth (1731–1808)
Wikimedia Commons
Freeth’s Coffee House was the popular name for the Leicester Arms, on the corner of Bell Street and Lease Lane in Birmingham, England, a tavern and coffee house that operated from 1736 until 1832.{{sfnp|ERX5IFU2|2,27}}
Freeth’s became one of the most celebrated taverns of Georgian England;{{sfnp|JATZLC28}} the premises were already known during the early 18th century as a respectable place for small businessmen and lawyers to conduct business.{{sfnp|VLJEECWJ|103}} During the second half of the century, when its landlord was the topical ballad-writer John Freeth, it was at the forefront of the emergence of popular political consciousness in Birmingham, as the host of radical groups such as the [Birmingham Book Club](https://engole.info/birmingham-book-club), and the focus for local opposition to the governments of Lord North.{{sfnp|VLJEECWJ|103-104}}
John Freeth had become landlord of the Leicester Arms by 1768, and remained there until his death in 1808. The work of running the tavern and its kitchen was undertaken by his wife and seven daughters, once they were old enough. Following Freeth’s death, the remaining five unmarried daughters took over the tavern’s licence and continued to trade until 1832, when the surviving four sisters retired.{{sfnp|JATZLC28}}
## References
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## Works cited
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This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmcloud.org/pageinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Freeth%27s_Coffee_House#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
---
### [Aumbry](https://engole.info/aumbry/)
**Published:** February 8, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Langford_StMatthew_Aumbry.JPG/960px-Langford_StMatthew_Aumbry.JPG[/pimage]Cupboard or recessed cabinet in the wall of a Christian church, used for storing holy oils or the reserved sacrament.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Langford_StMatthew_Aumbry.JPG/960px-Langford_StMatthew_Aumbry.JPG)Mid-13th century aumbry at St Matthew’s Church, Langford, Oxfordshire
Wikimedia Commons
An aumbry, or ambry, is a cupboard or recessed cabinet in the wall of a Christian church, used for storing holy oils or the reserved sacrament, a portion of the consecrated bread or wine retained after the Communion.{{sfnp|5G5BBS3C}} The reason for such reservations might have been to allow Communion to be taken to the sick and dying,{{sfnp|KB6IZAH8}} or to allow deacons and licensed lay ministers to officiate at Communion when there was no priest available. They do not have the authority to consecrate the bread or wine themselves, but may instead administer the reserved sacrament to the congregation.{{sfnp|Q8UZ3EXP}}
The use of aumbries for the reservation of the sacrament was forbidden in Roman Catholic churches in 1863, but the practice has been revived in recent years.{{sfnp|D6BEL572}}
## References
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## Works cited
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**Categories:** Religious architecture
---
### [Consanguinity](https://engole.info/consanguinity/)
**Published:** December 13, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Relationship between individuals descended from common ancestors.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/Table_of_Consanguinity_showing_degrees_of_relationship.svg/1280px-Table_of_Consanguinity_showing_degrees_of_relationship.svg.png)The number next to each box indicates the degree of relationship relative to the given person.
Wikimedia Commons
Consanguinity is the relationship between individuals descended from common ancestors, who are more likely to have specific mutant genes (alleles) in common than the general population.{{sfnp|7X6KEYW9}} People descended from two common ancestors, such as a brother and sister, are said to be of the whole blood; if they share only one ancestor, they are of the half blood.{{sfnp|ZQJFQR2R}}
In clinical genetics, a consanguineous marriage is defined as a union between two individuals who are related as second cousins or closer, with an inbreeding coefficient equal to or higher than 0.0156, or about 1 chance in 60.{{sfnp|EMGLI5KX}}\[a\]The coefficient of inbreeding (COI) is a measure of the probability that two alleles in each individual are identical by descent from a common ancestor of the two parents.{{sfnp|9RWAK3SC}}
It has been estimated that about one fifth of the global population live in communities with a preference for consanguineous marriages, mostly those in the Middle East, West Asia and North Africa, and their diaspora. Among those populations, one in three marriages are between cousins.{{sfnp|EMGLI5KX}}
In the UK, the [Marriage Act 1949](https://engole.info/marriage-act-1949) lays out the forbidden degrees of consanguinity for a marriage to be legally recognised, but does not concern itself with the legality of any sexual relationship between two related individuals.{{sfnp|NGFM2IK6}} That is dealt with by the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which in section 64(2) prohibits anyone from sexual activity with their parent, grandparent, child, grandchild, brother, sister, half-brother, half-sister, uncle, aunt, nephew or niece.{{sfnp|FV2Z9HZE}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The coefficient of inbreeding (COI) is a measure of the probability that two alleles in each individual are identical by descent from a common ancestor of the two parents.{{sfnp|9RWAK3SC}}
## References
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## Works cited
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---
### [William Wailes](https://engole.info/william-wailes/)
**Published:** December 18, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Gloucester_Cathedral_06_west_window_William_Wailes_crop.jpg/800px-Gloucester_Cathedral_06_west_window_William_Wailes_crop.jpg[/pimage]English 19th-century stained-glass artist, one of the most accomplished of his generation.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Gloucester_Cathedral_06_west_window_William_Wailes_crop.jpg/960px-Gloucester_Cathedral_06_west_window_William_Wailes_crop.jpg)West window of the 15th-century Gloucester Cathedral, reglazed by William Wailes in 1859.{{sfnp
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William Wailes (1808–1881) was one of the most accomplished stained-glass artists in England, and a partner in the internationally renowned firm of Wailes and Strang.{{sfnp|IWBYQ7S3}}
## References
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## Works cited
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**Categories:** Stained glass
---
### [Guy Fawkes Day](https://engole.info/guy-fawkes-day/)
**Published:** February 18, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Windsor_castle_guyfawkesnight1776.jpg/1920px-Windsor_castle_guyfawkesnight1776.jpg[/pimage]Annual celebration of the failure of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Windsor_castle_guyfawkesnight1776.jpg/1920px-Windsor_castle_guyfawkesnight1776.jpg)*Festivities in Windsor Castle* by Paul Sandby, c. 1776
Wikimedia Commons
Guy Fawkes Day, also known as Bonfire Night or Fireworks Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November primarily in Great Britain, involving bonfires and firework displays. Its history begins with the events of 5 November 1605, when [Guy Fawkes](https://engole.info/guy-fawkes), a member of the [Gunpowder Plot](https://engole.info/gunpowder-plot), was arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. The Catholic plotters had intended to assassinate the Protestant King James I and his parliament. Celebrating that the King had survived, people lit bonfires around London; months later, the Observance of 5th November Act mandated an annual public day of thanksgiving for the plot’s failure.
Within a few decades Gunpowder Treason Day, as it was known, became the predominant English state commemoration. As it carried strong Protestant religious overtones it also became a focus for anti-Catholic sentiment. Puritans delivered sermons regarding the perceived dangers of popery, while during increasingly raucous celebrations common folk burnt effigies of popular hate-figures, such as the Pope. Towards the end of the 18th century reports appear of children begging for money with effigies of Guy Fawkes and 5 November gradually became known as Guy Fawkes Day. Towns such as Lewes and Guildford were in the 19th century scenes of increasingly violent class-based confrontations, fostering traditions those towns celebrate still, albeit peaceably. In the 1850s changing attitudes resulted in the toning down of much of the day’s anti-Catholic rhetoric, and the Observance of 5th November Act was repealed in 1859. Eventually the violence was dealt with, and by the 20th century Guy Fawkes Day had become an enjoyable social commemoration, although lacking much of its original focus. The present-day Bonfire Night is often celebrated at large organised events.
## Origins and history
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Guy_Fawkes_effigy_by_William_Warby_from_Flickr.jpg/330px-Guy_Fawkes_effigy_by_William_Warby_from_Flickr.jpg)Effigy of Guy Fawkes, burned on 5 November 2010 at Billericay
Wikimedia Commons
Guy Fawkes Night originates from the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a failed conspiracy by a group of provincial English Catholics to assassinate the Protestant King James I of England and VI of Scotland and replace him with a Catholic head of state. In the immediate aftermath of the arrest of Guy Fawkes on 5 November 1605, caught guarding a cache of explosives placed beneath the House of Lords, James’s Council allowed the public to celebrate the King’s survival with bonfires, so long as they were “without any danger or disorder”.{{sfnp|T3UZ2TV5|207}}
The following January, days before the surviving conspirators were executed, Parliament, at the initiation of James I,{{sfnp|QNWVKS3Z}} passed the Observance of 5th November Act, commonly known as the Thanksgiving Act. It was proposed by a Puritan Member of Parliament, Edward Montagu, who suggested that the King’s apparent deliverance by divine intervention deserved some measure of official recognition, and kept 5 November free as a day of thanksgiving while in theory making attendance at Church mandatory.{{sfnp|JXYHZX98|78-79}} Little is known about the earliest celebrations. In settlements such as Carlisle, Norwich, and Nottingham, corporations (town governments) provided music and artillery salutes. Canterbury celebrated 5 November 1607 with 106 pounds (48 kg) of gunpowder and 14 pounds (6.4 kg) of match, and three years later food and drink was provided for local dignitaries, as well as music, explosions, and a parade by the local militia. Even less is known of how the occasion was first commemorated by the general public, although records indicate that in the Protestant stronghold of Dorchester a sermon was read, the church bells rung, and bonfires and fireworks lit.{{sfnp|JXYHZX98|87}}
## Early significance
According to the historian and author Antonia Fraser, a study of the earliest sermons preached demonstrates an anti-Catholic concentration “mystical in its fervour”.{{sfnp|T3UZ2TV5|352}} Delivering one of five 5 November sermons printed in *A Mappe of Rome* in 1612, Thomas Taylor spoke of the “generality of his \[a papist’s\] cruelty”, which had been “almost without bounds”.{{sfnp|JXYHZX98|88}} Such messages were also spread in printed works such as Francis Herring’s *Pietas Pontifica* (republished in 1610 as *Popish Piety*), and John Rhode’s *A Brief Summe of the Treason intended against the King & State*, which in 1606 sought to educate “the simple and ignorant … that they be not seduced any longer by papists”.{{sfnp|JXYHZX98|88-89}} By the 1620s the 5th was honoured in market towns and villages across the country, although it was some years before it was commemorated throughout England. Gunpowder Treason Day, as it was then known, became the predominant English state commemoration. Some parishes made the day a festive occasion, with public drinking and solemn processions. But concerned about James’s pro-Spanish foreign policy, the decline of international Protestantism, and Catholicism in general, Protestant clergymen who recognised the day’s significance called for more dignified and profound thanksgivings each 5 November.{{sfnp|FN7P7V4T|73}}{{sfnp|KLR9Q359|394-395}}
What unity English Protestants had shared in the plot’s immediate aftermath began to fade when in 1625 James’s son, the future Charles I, married the Catholic Henrietta Maria of France. Puritans reacted to the marriage by issuing a new prayer to warn against rebellion and Catholicism, and on 5 November that year effigies of the pope and the Devil were burned, the earliest such report of this practice and the beginning of centuries of tradition.{{sfnp|JXYHZX98|89}}\[a\]Nationally, effigies of Fawkes were subsequently joined by those of contemporary hate figures such as the pope, the sultan of Turkey, the tsar of Russia and the Irish leader Charles Stewart Parnell. In 1899 an effigy of the South African Republic leader Paul Kruger was burnt at Ticehurst, and during the 20th century effigies of militant suffragists, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Adolf Hitler, Margaret Thatcher and John Major were similarly burned.{{sfnp|FN7P7V4T|83-84}}{{sfnp|T3UZ2TV5|356-357}} In 2014, following Russian aggression against Ukraine, effigies of Vladimir Putin were burned.{{sfnp|27ZIU8P6}} During Charles’s reign Gunpowder Treason Day became increasingly partisan. Between 1629 and 1640 he ruled without Parliament, and seemed to support Arminianism, regarded by Puritans such as Henry Burton as a step toward Catholicism. By 1636, under the leadership of the Arminian Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud, the English Church was trying to use 5 November to denounce all seditious practices, not only popery.{{sfnp|JXYHZX98|90}} Puritans went on the defensive, some pressing for further reformation of the Church.{{sfnp|FN7P7V4T|73}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Lewes_photograph_by_heather_buckley_from_flickr.jpg)Revellers in Lewes in East Sussex, 5 November 2010
Wikimedia Commons
Bonfire Night, as it was occasionally known,{{sfnp|KLR9Q359|395}} assumed a new fervour during the events leading up to the English Interregnum. Although Royalists disputed their interpretations, Parliamentarians began to uncover or fear new Catholic plots. Preaching before the House of Commons on 5 November 1644, Charles Herle claimed that Papists were tunnelling “from Oxford, Rome, Hell, to Westminster, and there to blow up, if possible, the better foundations of your houses, their liberties and privileges”.{{sfnp|FN7P7V4T|74}} A display in 1647 at Lincoln’s Inn Fields commemorated “God’s great mercy in delivering this kingdom from the hellish plots of papists”, and included fireballs burning in the water – symbolising a Catholic association with “infernal spirits” – and fireboxes, their many rockets suggestive of “popish spirits coming from below” to enact plots against the king. Effigies of Fawkes and the pope were present, the latter represented by Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld.{{sfnp|JXYHZX98|92}}
Following Charles I’s execution in 1649, the country’s new republican regime remained undecided on how to treat 5 November. Unlike the old system of religious feasts and state anniversaries, it survived, but as a celebration of parliamentary government and Protestantism, not of monarchy.{{sfnp|KLR9Q359|395}} Commonly the day was still marked by bonfires and miniature explosives, but formal celebrations resumed only with the Restoration, when Charles II became king. Courtiers, High Anglicans and Tories followed the official line, that the event marked God’s preservation of the English throne, but generally the celebrations became more diverse. By 1670 London apprentices had turned 5 November into a fire festival, attacking not only popery but also “sobriety and good order”,{{sfnp|FN7P7V4T|75}} demanding money from coach occupants for alcohol and bonfires. The burning of effigies, largely unknown to the Jacobeans,{{sfnp|FN7P7V4T|70-71}} continued in 1673 when Charles’s brother, the Duke of York, converted to Catholicism. In response, accompanied by a procession of about a thousand people, the apprentices fired an effigy of the Whore of Babylon, bedecked with a range of papal symbols.{{sfnp|FN7P7V4T|74-75}}{{sfnp|JXYHZX98|96-97}} Similar scenes occurred over the following few years. On 17 November 1677, anti-Catholic fervour saw the Accession Day marked by the burning of a large effigy of the pope – his belly filled with live cats “who squalled most hideously as soon as they felt the fire” – and two effigies of devils “whispering in his ear”. Two years later, as the exclusion crisis reached its zenith, an observer noted that “the 5th at night, being gunpowder treason, there were many bonfires and burning of popes as has ever been seen”. Violent scenes in 1682 forced London’s militia into action, and to prevent any repetition the following year a proclamation was issued, banning bonfires and fireworks.{{sfnp|JXYHZX98|98-100}}
Fireworks were also banned under James II (previously the Duke of York), who became king in 1685. But attempts by the government to tone down Gunpowder Treason Day celebrations were largely unsuccessful, and some reacted to a ban on bonfires in London by placing candles in their windows, “as a witness against Catholicism”.{{sfnp|KLR9Q359|397}} When James was deposed in 1688 by William of Orange – who landed in England on 5 November – the day’s events turned also to the celebration of freedom and religion, with elements of anti-Jacobitism. Although the earlier ban on bonfires was politically motivated, a ban on fireworks was maintained for safety reasons, “much mischief having been done by squibs”.{{sfnp|KLR9Q359|395}}
Fireworks and bonfires were also been banned during periods of war, such as by the 1914 Defence of the Realm Act, preventing them from being used to send signals to the enemy.{{sfnp|PUAM8FHY}}
## Decline
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/6_november_bonfire_from_flickr_user_sjnikon.jpg)Spectators gathered around a bonfire at Himley Hall near Dudley, on 6 November 2010
Wikimedia Commons
The Observance of 5th November Act was repealed in March 1859, replaced by the Anniversary Days Observance Act, and the thanksgiving prayer of 5 November which had been added to the Anglican *Book of Common Prayer* was removed.{{sfnp|FN7P7V4T|82-83}}{{sfnp|T3UZ2TV5|354-356}}
Several times during the 19th century *The Times* reported that the tradition of Guy Fawkes Day was in decline, being “of late years almost forgotten”, but in the opinion of historian David Cressy, such reports reflected “other Victorian trends”, including a lessening of Protestant religious zeal – not general observance of the Fifth.{{sfnp|FN7P7V4T|79-80}} Civil unrest brought about by the union of the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland in 1800 resulted in Parliament passing the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, which afforded Catholics greater civil rights, continuing the process of Catholic Emancipation in the two kingdoms.{{sfnp|JXYHZX98|114-115}} The traditional denunciations of Catholicism had been in decline since the early 18th century,{{sfnp|JXYHZX98|110-111}} and were thought by many, including Queen Victoria, to be outdated.{{sfnp|KLR9Q359|401}}
One notable aspect of the commemoration of Guy Fawkes Day during the Victorian era was its shift from the centres of communities to their margins. Gathering wood for the bonfire increasingly became the province of working-class children, who solicited combustible materials, money, food and drink from their wealthier neighbours, often with the aid of songs. Most opened with the familiar “Remember, remember, the fifth of November, Gunpowder Treason and Plot”.{{sfnp|KLR9Q359|403}}
Organised entertainments became popular in the late 19th century, and 20th-century pyrotechnic manufacturers renamed Guy Fawkes Day as Fireworks Night. For many families, Fireworks Night became a domestic celebration, and children often congregated on street corners, accompanied by their effigies of Guy Fawkes.{{sfnp|JXYHZX98|157}} They was sometimes ornately dressed, and sometimes a barely recognisable bundle of rags stuffed with whatever filling was available. A 1981 survey found that about 23 per cent of Sheffield schoolchildren made Guys, sometimes weeks before the event. Collecting money was a popular reason for their creation, the children taking their effigy from door to door, or displaying it on street corners. But mainly, they were built to go on the bonfire, itself sometimes comprising wood stolen from other pyres – “an acceptable convention” that helped bolster another November tradition, Mischief Night.{{sfnp|UZ8L4NMM}} Rival gangs competed to see who could build the largest, sometimes even burning the wood collected by their opponents; in 1954 the *Yorkshire Post* reported on fires late in September, a situation that forced the authorities to remove collected piles of wood for safety reasons.{{sfnp|8ECSINEN|280-281}}
The custom of begging for a “penny for the Guy” has almost completely disappeared,{{sfnp|JXYHZX98|157}} but some older customs survive. In Ottery St Mary residents run through the streets carrying flaming tar barrels,{{sfnp|KLR9Q359|406-407}} and since 1679 Lewes has been the setting of some of England’s most extravagant 5 November celebrations, the Lewes Bonfire.{{sfnp|JXYHZX98|147-152}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Nationally, effigies of Fawkes were subsequently joined by those of contemporary hate figures such as the pope, the sultan of Turkey, the tsar of Russia and the Irish leader Charles Stewart Parnell. In 1899 an effigy of the South African Republic leader Paul Kruger was burnt at Ticehurst, and during the 20th century effigies of militant suffragists, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Adolf Hitler, Margaret Thatcher and John Major were similarly burned.{{sfnp|FN7P7V4T|83-84}}{{sfnp|T3UZ2TV5|356-357}} In 2014, following Russian aggression against Ukraine, effigies of Vladimir Putin were burned.{{sfnp|27ZIU8P6}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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---
### [Rhenish Tower, Lynmouth](https://engole.info/rhenish-tower-lynmouth/)
**Published:** November 15, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Lynmouth_%282020-09-17%29_04.jpg/960px-Lynmouth_%282020-09-17%29_04.jpg[/pimage]Grade II listed folly built on the sea front at Lynmouth, Devon in about 1860.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Lynmouth_%282020-09-17%29_04.jpg/960px-Lynmouth_%282020-09-17%29_04.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/yymTF73x74rnDEPx6
Rhenish Tower is a Grade II [listed structure](https://engole.info/listed-building) built in about 1860 on the pier at Lynmouth, in Devon, England. Its original purpose is unclear, and it is now generally considered to be a [folly](https://engole.info/folly). The balconies are a later addition, added because the original construction was considered to be an eyesore.{{sfnp|KDNXDFTU}}
The tower may have been built as a beacon to guide mariners, but the electric light is a later addition. It may alternatively have been used to store salt water to be supplied for sea baths, untroubled by the vagaries of the weather.{{sfnp|T8FCXKR7}}
Rhenish Tower acquired the name *Rhenish* because its design was said to have been copied from a tower on the River Rhine in Germany.{{sfnp|KDNXDFTU}} The structure was almost completely destroyed by flooding in 1952, and was rebuilt in 1954.{{sfnp|T8FCXKR7}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Devon, Folly
---
### [Anne Askew](https://engole.info/anne-askew/)
**Published:** July 30, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Hans_Eworth_Portrait_of_a_Lady_call_Anne_Ayscough.jpg/960px-Hans_Eworth_Portrait_of_a_Lady_call_Anne_Ayscough.jpg[/pimage]English writer and Protestant martyr, burnt to death in 1546.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Hans_Eworth_Portrait_of_a_Lady_call_Anne_Ayscough.jpg/960px-Hans_Eworth_Portrait_of_a_Lady_call_Anne_Ayscough.jpg)1560 portrait by Hans Eworth
Wikimedia Commons
Anne Askew (sometimes spelled Ayscough or Ascue), married name Kyme (1521 – 16 July 1546),{{sfnp|7HBPVTX4|xv,190}} was an English writer and Protestant martyr, executed for heresy during the reign of King Henry VIII. She was burnt at the stake in Smithfield, together with John Lascels, John Hadlam and John Hemley.{{sfnp|QNZLBAYB}}
Anne was probably born at her family home in Stallingborough, near Grimsby in Lincolnshire, the second daughter of Sir William Askew (1489–1541) and his first wife, Elizabeth Wrottesley. Sir William was knighted in 1513, and in 1521 he was appointed high sheriff of Lincolnshire; he also sat as MP for Grimsby in 1529,{{sfnp|QNZLBAYB}} and was a juror in the trial of Anne Boleyn’s co-accused in 1536.{{sfnp|BHE69GR8|339}}
Anne’s father had arranged that his eldest daughter, Martha, be married to Thomas Kyme. When Martha died, Sir William decided that to avoid any financial loss he would offer Anne, who was 15 years old at the time, as a replacement, “so that in the ende she was compelled agaynst her wyll or fre consent to marrye with hym”.{{sfnp|QNZLBAYB}}
## Religious controversy
A devout Protestant, Anne’s enthusiasm for her religion caused some controversy in Lincoln. After hearing from friends that if she appeared in the city, the feeling against her was so strong that she would be attacked by priests, she travelled to Lincoln, where she spent six days quietly reading her Bible in the cathedral. Her Catholic husband was so incensed by this episode that he threw her out of their family home. Anne arrived in London in 1544, perhaps hoping to obtain a legal separation in chancery. During her stay in the city she associated with other Protestants, including the Anabaptist Joan Bocher,{{sfnp|QNZLBAYB}}\[a\]Joan Bocher was executed in 1550.{{sfnp|QNZLBAYB}} and continued her preaching and study of the Bible.{{sfnp|2EV496G8|252-253}}
## First examination
On 10 March 1545 the aldermen of London ordered that Anne should be detained under the [Six Articles Act](https://engole.info/act-of-six-articles-1539), on the testimony of an unnamed woman. She appeared before an official heresy hearing at Sadler’s Hall, before being cross-examined by the lord mayor of London and the chancellor of the bishop of London, Edmund Bonner. She was questioned about a book she was found to be carrying, written by John Frith, who was burnt for heresy in 1533, and accused of subscribing to reformist beliefs concerning transubstantiation and the other sacraments. Whether she recanted her beliefs or not is uncertain, but after twelve days of imprisonment she was released.{{sfnp|QNZLBAYB}}
## Second examination and execution
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Anne_Askew_martydorm.jpg)Martyrdom of Anne Askew
Wikimedia Commons
On 24 May 1546 Thomas Kyme was requested to appear before the privy council with his wife within fourteen days, which he did on 19 June. But after Anne denied that he was her husband, Kyme returned home. Anne, on the other hand, was incarcerated and subjected to a two-day interrogation by the king’s council at Greenwich. Despite being tortured, she refused to recant, and was transferred to Newgate Prison in “extremyte of syckenesse”, to await her execution.{{sfnp|QNZLBAYB}}
On 16 July 1546 Anne was burned to death along with three others: John Lassells, Nicholas Belenian, also known as John Hemsley, and John Adams,{{sfnp|ABH5LFIE|xxii-xxiii}} in Smithfield, London; owing to the torture to which she had been subjected, she had to be carried to the stake on a chair.{{sfnp|QNZLBAYB}}
Anne’s writings were published posthumously by the reformist scholar John Bale.{{sfnp|QNZLBAYB}}
## See also
- [Burning of women in England](https://engole.info/burning-of-women-in-england)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Joan Bocher was executed in 1550.{{sfnp|QNZLBAYB}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmcloud.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Anne_Askew#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** English, Female, Martyr, Writer
---
### [Jougs](https://engole.info/jougs/)
**Published:** March 18, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/05/Jougs_on_the_weigh-house_at_Ceres%2C_Fife.jpg/960px-Jougs_on_the_weigh-house_at_Ceres%2C_Fife.jpg[/pimage]Metal collar formerly used as an instrument of punishment in Scotland.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/05/Jougs_on_the_weigh-house_at_Ceres%2C_Fife.jpg/960px-Jougs_on_the_weigh-house_at_Ceres%2C_Fife.jpg)Jougs hanging by the door of the weigh-house at Ceres, Fife
Wikimedia Commons
Jougs are iron collars formerly used as an instrument of punishment in Scotland. When locked around the victim’s neck they were analogous to the [pillory](https://engole.info/pillory), as the collar was attached by a chain to a wall or post; surviving examples can still be seen near the doors of some Scottish churches today.{{sfnp|ZTJ92BLQ}} But their use was not confined to churches; the Clachan Oak, an ancient sessile oak near Balfron in Stirlingshire, can still be seen bearing metal bands around its trunk, to which jougs were once attached.{{sfnp|3GRD8JL7|182}}
Used as a punishment for those considered to have sinned against the church and state, jougs also served as a warning to the rest of the community not to behave in a similar fashion.{{sfnp|EZ3HGS4X}} It seems that in some communities jougs were used quite frequently, as in the parish of Dundonald, which with a population of fewer than 1000 recorded 77 cases in 1605 alone, about 8 per cent of those living in the parish.{{sfnp|ENNKT6PC}}
The term *jougs* derives from the French *joug* or Latin *jugum*, meaning “yoke”.{{sfnp|33J4N6NC}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Corporal punishment
---
### [Careening](https://engole.info/careening/)
**Published:** February 27, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Method of exposing the hull of a ship for cleaning or repair by laying it on its side.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/An_Old_Whaler_Hove_Down_For_Repairs%2C_Near_New_Bedford.jpg)*An Old Whaler Hove Down For Repairs, Near New Bedford*, a wood engraving drawn by F. S. Cozzens and published in *Harper’s Weekly*, December 1882
Wikimedia Commons
Careening, also known as heaving down, is a method of exposing the hull of a ship by positioning the vessel on its side, thus avoiding the need for a dry dock. The term is derived from the Latin *carina*, originally meaning a “nutshell”, which came to be used for the hull of a ship.{{sfnp|SBJWUMVG}} Before wooden ship’s hulls were protected from marine growth by fastening copper sheets over their surface, fouling from barnacles and other marine life could seriously affect the sailing qualities of a ship by creating a significant amount of drag.{{sfnp|87VJK4RG|164}}
The ship would be laid ashore on a steeply sloping beach, parallel to the shoreline, and ropes attached to its mastheads to pull it over and expose one side of the hull. Once that side of the hull had been dealt with, the vessel was refloated on the incoming tide, and turned around to complete the operation on the other side; a beach favoured for careening was called a careenage. Today only small vessels are careened; large vessels are placed in dry dock.{{sfnp|X7UGW7V6}}
During the classic era of piracy in the Caribbean, from about 1650 until the mid-1720s,{{sfnp|M4F9XZYM}} having no access to dry docks, pirates would often careen their ships in secluded bays for necessary repairs or hull cleaning; such “safe havens” could be found throughout the Caribbean islands and beyond.{{sfnp|2KHXMNSR}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25169
**Categories:** Nautical term
---
### [Death of Kevin Gately](https://engole.info/death-of-kevin-gately/)
**Published:** May 11, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8b/Kevin-Gately-in-Red-Lion-Square-1974.jpg[/pimage]Student who died as the result of a head injury received in the Red Lion Square disorders in London in 1974.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8b/Kevin-Gately-in-Red-Lion-Square-1974.jpg)Gately, ringed, at the Red Lion Square demonstration at which he was fatally injured
Wikimedia Commons
Kevin Gately (18 September 1953 – 15 June 1974) was a second-year student of mathematics at the University of Warwick who died as the result of a head injury received in the Red Lion Square disorders in London; it is unknown whether the injury was caused deliberately or was accidental. Gately was not a member of any political organisation, and the march at Red Lion Square was his first.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|11}} He was the first person to die in a public demonstration in Great Britain for at least fifty-five years.
On 15 June 1974 the National Front, a far-right, fascist political party, held a march through central London in support of the repatriation of immigrants. The march was to end at Conway Hall in Red Lion Square. A counter-demonstration was planned by Liberation, an anti-colonial pressure group. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the London council of Liberation had been increasingly infiltrated by hard-left political activists, and they invited several hard-left organisations to join them in the march. When the Liberation march reached Red Lion Square, the International Marxist Group (IMG) twice charged the police cordon blocking access to Conway Hall. Police reinforcements, including mounted police and units of the Special Patrol Group, forced the rioting demonstrators out of the square. As the ranks of people moved away from the square, Gately was found unconscious on the ground. He was taken to hospital and died later that day. Two further disturbances took place in the vicinity, both involving clashes between the police and the IMG contingent.
A public inquiry into the events was conducted by Lord Scarman. He found no evidence that Gately had been killed by the police, as had been alleged by some elements of the hard-left press, and concluded that “those who started the riot carry a measure of moral responsibility for his death; and the responsibility is a heavy one”.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|11}} He did though find fault with some actions of the police on the day. The events in the square made the National Front a household name in the UK, although it is debatable if this had any impact on their share of the vote in subsequent general elections. Although the IMG was heavily criticised by the press and public, there was a rise in local support and willingness to demonstrate against the National Front and its policies. There was further violence associated with National Front marches and the counter-demonstrations they faced, including in Birmingham, Manchester, the East End of London (all 1977) and in 1979 in Southall, which led to the death of Blair Peach. After Peach’s death, the Labour Party Member of Parliament Syd Bidwell, who had been about to give a speech in Red Lion Square when the violence erupted, described Peach and Gately as martyrs against fascism and racism.
## Background
### Liberation and the National Front
Liberation, was formed in 1954 as the Movement for Colonial Freedom, an advocacy group focused on influencing British policy in support of anti-colonial movements in the British Empire.{{sfnp|3J57WAS3}} The president of the organisation was Lord Brockwell, and two Labour Party MPs acted as officers.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|3}} From the early-to-mid-1960s the organisation spent much of its energy in ensuring it was not taken over by members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), a party also dedicated to promoting anti-colonialism.{{sfnp|3J57WAS3}} According to the historian Josiah Brownell, despite the organisation’s efforts, the London Area Council was dominated by CPGB members by 1967, including Kay Beauchamp, Tony Gilbert, Dorothy Kuya and Sam Kahn.{{sfnp|3J57WAS3}}
The National Front was founded in 1967 as a far-right, fascist political party.\[6\] From its inception the organisation had four main issues on which they campaigned: opposition to Britain’s membership of the European Economic Community; Ulster; the trade unions and what the journalist Martin Walker calls “the post-immigration attack on black people born in Britain”.{{sfnp|H82GZ7B4|161}}\[a\]It is the last of these that is the ethos of National Front policies, according to the political historian Peter Shipley. He sees this as the doctrine “which permeate\[s\] every aspect of its thinking”.{{sfnp|UT2WYWSR}} The National Front had grown rapidly in the early 1970s, and by 1974 the membership was about 10–12,000.{{sfnp|UT2WYWSR}}{{sfnp|H82GZ7B4|9}}\[b\]Walker, in his study of the history of the National Front, describes the membership as “rather like a bath with both taps running and the plughole empty. Members pour in and pour out”.{{sfnp|H82GZ7B4|9}} Although there were 20,000 members in 1974, 10–12,000 was judged to be the stable figure at the time.{{sfnp|UT2WYWSR}}{{sfnp|H82GZ7B4|9}}
### Planning
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Conway_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_660271.jpg)The front of Conway Hall, the entrance through which the National Front were to enter
Wikimedia Commons
In mid-April 1974 the National Front booked the large theatre room at Conway Hall,{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|153}} a meeting house owned by the Conway Hall Ethical Society on Red Lion Square in central London.{{sfnp|C9KF4ZTL}} The meeting was on the subject “Stop immigration—start repatriation”,{{sfnp|8EUSMDFF}} and was in response to plans by the Labour government to repeal parts of the Immigration Act 1971, giving illegal immigrants leave to remain in the UK.{{sfnp|H82GZ7B4|161}} The National Front had booked the room for meetings during the previous four years; the meeting in October 1973 had been picketed by demonstrators, leading to scuffles, injuries and arrests. In early May the National Front sent their plans for their march and meeting to the Metropolitan Police. They allowed for 1500 members on 15 June from Westminster Hall to 10 Downing Street to deliver a petition to Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister, and then continue to Conway Hall for the meeting.{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|153}}
The London Area Council of Liberation was contacted by a journalist on 4 June and informed about the National Front’s plans.{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|153}} Two days later Liberation called a meeting to arrange a counter-demonstration; among those invited were several hard-left organisations, including the CPGB, International Socialists (IS; later known as the Socialist Workers Party), the Workers Revolutionary Party, Militant Tendency and the International Marxist Group (IMG). As with the National Front, these groups were prepared to use violence against their political opponents to gain an advantage;{{sfnp|UHEL7URZ|11-12}} Sir Robert Mark, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in 1974, described the coalition of groups as “not a whit less odious than the National Front”.{{sfnp|RKV3JXVY|167}} Liberation also booked the smaller assembly room at Conway Hall for 15 June, to coincide with the National Front meeting. The booking caused consternation among some members of Liberation, and with the National Union of Students (NUS), who asked Liberation to cancel the meeting.{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|153}}{{sfnp|UHEL7URZ|12}}
Liberation also planned a demonstration for 15 June, leaving the Embankment and marching to Red Lion Square to enter Conway Hall.{{sfnp|UHEL7URZ|13}} After discussions with the police, it was decided that entry to the hall for the Liberation meeting was to be by the back door on Theobalds Road. The police also agreed the organisation could hold a small open-air meeting in Red Lion Square, which they needed to access from Old North Road, which linked the square and Theobalds Road. Syd Bidwell, a Labour Party Member of Parliament was scheduled to address the meeting.{{sfnp|UHEL7URZ|12}}{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|156}} Liberation had not been involved in political violence, and police did not fear any violence.{{sfnp|UHEL7URZ|13}} What Liberation did not know, was that the IMG were determined to picket the front entrance of Conway Hall to deny the National Front access.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|8}}
## 15 June 1974
On 15 June 1974 the police on duty at Red Lion Square were under the control of Deputy assistant commissioner John Gerrard. He had allocated four foot police serials – 100 officers – to the National Front march and four to Liberation march.\[c\]When at full strength, a foot police serial comprises an inspector, three sergeants, twenty constables and a radio operator.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|51}} There were seven foot police serials in Red Lion Square, plus ten in reserve, two in Dane Street and eight in Bloomsbury Square. Also in reserve were four Special Patrol Group (SPG) units comprising 112 officers, held near Holborn police station.\[d\]An SPG unit consists an inspector, three sergeants and twenty-four officers.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|51}} Two mounted units were also on duty, both in Red Lion Square.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|51}} In total during the day there were 711 foot police and 25 mounted police;{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|5}} with additional support, traffic and CID officers, there were 923 police deployed to marshal the two marches.{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|159}}{{sfnp|UN8P4HJT}}
### Marches to Red Lion Square: first disturbance
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Map_of_Red_Lion_Square_disorders%2C_showing_key_points_of_interest.png)Map of Red Lion Square, showing the points of the key events on 15 June 1974
Wikimedia Commons
The National Front marchers – about 900 strong – moved off from their assembly point in Tothill Street at 14:59,{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|156}}{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|50}} making their way through Parliament Square and on through the West End of London, arriving at the junction of Vernon Place and Southampton Row at 15:53. They were held there until about 16:00, when they turned right, moved down Southampton Row, turned left into Fisher Street, and then along the south and east sides of Red Lion Square, arriving at the front entrance to Conway Hall at about 16:20.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|50}} Throughout the course of their march they used two groups as “defence parties”, ready to defend the column from attack from demonstrators emerging from side streets; the march was unmolested throughout the route.{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|156}} The Liberation march comprised between 1000 and 1500 people, most of whom were in their late teens and early twenties, many of them students. They left their assembly point on the Embankment at 14:48, making their way via the Strand and High Holborn to arrive at the rear entrance of Conway Hall at 15:33.{{sfnp|UHEL7URZ|13}}{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|5, 50}} Thirty people left the march at this point and entered the building to take part in the Liberation meeting.{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|156}} The remainder of the marchers continued to the junction with Old North Street, where they turned left and made their way to Red Lion Square, arriving there at 15:36.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|50}}
When the Liberation march arrived in the square, they found a police cordon blocking the way to the left preventing them from accessing the front entrance to Conway Hall. A section of mounted police was lined up behind the cordon. The leading 500 marchers turned to the right, heading towards where the open-air meeting was supposed to take place; as they did so, the IMG, who headed the remainder of the march, slowed their pace, allowing a gap to open with the lead marchers. The marchers at front of the IMG section linked arms and charged round the corner into the police cordon in what the subsequent inquiry called “a deliberate, determined and sustained attack”.{{sfnp|N89NP8WU|5-6}}{{sfnp|MG3JAFC5}} Several missiles and two smoke bombs were thrown at the police, and some of the demonstrators used the staves of their placards or poles of the banners as weapons against the police.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|8}}{{sfnp|F8DJTXG6|120}}{{sfnp|HWRZ5C77}} The cordon was bent out of shape, but remained intact. Gerrard called in the two squads of SPG who were on stand-by.{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|157}} Before they arrived, a second surge from the IMG briefly broke through the cordon, bringing marchers into contact with the mounted police. When the SPG arrived, they formed a V-shaped wedge and drove the crowd backwards so the cordon could be re-imposed. The wedge split the demonstrators in two, pushing some back up Old North Street, and some along the north side of the square. The square was cleared of rioters by 15:50, approximately 15 minutes after the first IMG charge on the police cordon, and the SPG continued to press demonstrators from Old North Street back to Theobalds Road.{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|157}}{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|8-9}}
During SPG’s surge, they came into contact with the peaceful demonstrators in the march, driving them apart, as had happened with the IMG contingent. During this action several demonstrators were left on the ground, one of whom was Kevin Gately.{{sfnp|UHEL7URZ|13}} Because of his height, his was caught on press photographs with fellow students from Warwick; they had been marching behind the IMG group. The last photograph of him alive shows him unscathed, facing up Old North Street and retreating with other students; the photograph was taken before the IMG’s second surge towards the police cordon. He was next seen separately by Gerrard and the journalist Peter Chippindale, lying unconscious on the ground as the retreating ranks of people stepped over him. There were no witnesses or other evidence to suggest what happened to Gately between the final photograph and him being on the ground.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|10-11}} Gately was picked up by the police and taken to a nearby St John Ambulance post, where he was treated before being taken to University College Hospital; he died four hours later.{{sfnp|UHEL7URZ|13}}{{sfnp|2SWUHERU}} Gately was the first death during a demonstration in Britain for 55 years.{{sfnp|UHEL7URZ|13}}{{sfnp|EGTE3R6X|53}}\[e\]The previous death had been in 1919, when two looters had been shot during a riot; the shooting was during the police strike and was by the army.{{sfnp|EGTE3R6X|56}}
### Southampton Row: second disturbance
Having been moved out of Old North Street, the IMG contingent made their way along Theobalds Road to the junction with Southampton Road. They were held at the crossroads as the National Front march had also arrived at the junction. A cordon of 120–140 police officers stood between the two groups. Twelve mounted police arrived at the spot just before 16:00, and fearing a clash between the two sides, they were ordered to drive the Liberation march back down Theobalds Road; the demonstrators were given no prior warning or opportunity to remove themselves before the police moved against them. The retreating demonstrators could not freely make their way back down the road as the police who had driven demonstrators out from Old North Street were blocking the path; blocked in, more violence ensued, with missiles thrown at the police, who used their truncheons freely. According to Richard Clutterbuck in his examination of political violence in Britain, “newspaper reporters were more critical of the way the police behaved here than in the earlier incident in Red Lion Square itself”.{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|158}}
### Boswell Street: third disturbance
A small group of IMG members, around 70 in total, formed in Boswell Street, just off Theobalds Road. They were seen by Chief Superintendent Adams who considered them militant and hostile because their arms were linked and appeared to be carrying stakes or batons. He instructed an SPG unit to clear them from the street. His opinion was challenged by several other observers, including two nearby journalists and one of the police sergeants in the SPG unit. The unit advanced into Boswell Street and there was a clash with the IMG members about halfway down the road. Eyewitnesses differ in their accounts as to who was the first of the two groups to offer violence. There were some arrests, which, according to Lord Scarman in his review of the events, “involve\[ed\] a considerable degree of force”.{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|158}}{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|17-18}}
At around this time of the Boswell Street clash, 16:20, the National Front had been led around the south and east sides of Red Lion Square and into Conway Hall. There was no trouble or contact between the main Liberation march – still having their open-air meeting in the square – and the National Front march.{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|158-159}}
Police arrested 51 people during the disturbances, all from the hard-left contingents.{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|159}} Fifty four people reported injuries, 46 of whom were police officers.{{sfnp|UN8P4HJT|201}} While the number of reported injuries was low, Scarman noted “many more must have suffered unpleasant injuries of greater or lesser severity which were never reported”.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|1}}
## Aftermath
That evening and in the following weeks, the media reported and commented on the events in the square. Nearly all the mainstream media agreed that the initial clash between marchers and the police was a deliberate attack by the IMG, while many blamed the police for the clash at the junction of Theobalds Road and Southampton Road. One of those newspapers that followed that line was *The Guardian*, whose headline reported “Left wing deliberately started violence”. The report, by the journalists Peter Chippindale and Martin Walker, said of the first surge by IMG marchers into the police cordon, “We are in no doubt at all that at this point the marchers around the banner deliberately charged the police cordon”.{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|156}}{{sfnp|MG3JAFC5}} The only journalistic sources that blamed the police for the violence were those from the hard-left newspapers; the *Socialist Worker* carried the headline “Murdered… By Police”.{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|156}}
The post-mortem took place on 16 June 1974, and was conducted by Iain West.{{sfnp|UZ63SXDG|366}} He noted some bruising on Gately’s face, and one behind the ear: “There was a small roughly oval bruise on the left side of the scalp about 1¼ inches behind and slightly below the middle of the back of the left ear, ¾ inch in diameter. The bruising extended through all the layers of the scalp.”{{sfnp|UZ63SXDG|366}} He concluded “Death has resulted from compression of the brain by a large subdural haemorrhage resulting from a head injury … The bruise … could have been caused by a blow by or against a hard object, resulting in the formation of a subdural haemorrhage.”{{sfnp|UZ63SXDG|368}} When later asked what could have caused the bruise, he said “It didn’t look particularly like a truncheon injury – it looked more like an object with a rougher surface. That appeared to be the only the only significant injury on his body … it seemed most likely to me that he’d been knocked over and struck his head on the curb or been hit by a piece of sawn timber”.{{sfnp|UZ63SXDG|369}}
On 17 June, Bidwell – who was also chairman of the London Council of Liberation – and John Randall, the president of the NUS, separately called for a public inquiry into the conduct of the police.{{sfnp|FLKCR6TI}} The police welcomed any inquest into the events that took place.{{sfnp|8EUSMDFF}}{{sfnp|9FRR6MTM}} Gately was buried on 21 June 2021 at St Raphael’s Church, Surbiton, where he had been baptised. The same day 500 students, all wearing black armbands, marched through Coventry, the home town of the University of Warwick.{{sfnp|LJCIUBCT}} To support the call for an inquest, the NUS held a silent march in London on 22 June 1974. The family asked that the marchers did not carry banners, so only one was shown, at the front of the march, that read “Kevin Gately was killed opposing racism and fascism”.{{sfnp|GN7F99ID}}{{sfnp|6SLAZPC9}} Eight thousand people took part in the march, which was described by the journalist Jeremy Bugler as “a dramatic contrast to last week’s battle. Almost completely silent, it was perfectly disciplined”.{{sfnp|CXZY56GA}}
The inquest into Gately’s death was opened on 19 June 1974 and adjourned until July. The full hearing took place on 11 and 12 July; because of the public interest in the matter, a jury was appointed. None of the witnesses saw Gately receive any blow to the head. One student told the inquest he saw Gately sink to the floor without being hit. “His eyes were closed. I assumed that he had fainted. He was totally unconscious before he hit the ground. He fell sideways as his knees buckled”. He tried to reach Gately to help, but was pushed away by the movement of the crowd. The jury reached a verdict of death by misadventure.{{sfnp|MD9CN7WG}}{{sfnp|SDY8DQ9N}}{{sfnp|RQF4JJR3}}
Eighty-two charges were brought against the fifty-one people arrested on the day.\[f\]There were 30 charges of “threatening or insulting words or behaviour”; 32 charges of assaulting the police; 14 charges of obstructing the police; 5 of possession of a weapon; and one charge of criminal damage.{{sfnp|UN8P4HJT|201}} Twenty-nine of the charges were dismissed, with fifty-three convictions. No-one was imprisoned, and the penalties were either conditional discharges, being bound over, a fine or a suspended sentence.{{sfnp|UN8P4HJT|201}}
On 28 June 1974 Roy Jenkins, the Home Secretary, appointed Scarman to conduct a public inquiry into the events in Red Lion Square “to consider whether any lessons may be learned for the better maintenance of public order when demonstrations take place”.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|54}} Jenkins determined that the inquiry would take place after the inquest had concluded.{{sfnp|N89NP8WU}}
### Scarman inquiry
Scarman’s inquiry into the events sat for 23 days between 2 September and 2 October; 57 witnesses gave evidence, comprising 19 police officers, 17 demonstrators, 12 journalists, 5 residents or by-standers and 4 others. The report was published in February 1975.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|54}} Scarman interpreted the breaching of the police cordon in Red Lion Square as a riot, from the legal definition of the term, which allowed the police a wider scope of possible responses to take, including the use of reasonable force.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|8}}{{sfnp|W27DZXZ8|123}} In regards to Gately’s death, he wrote:
There is no evidence that he was struck any blow by any policeman or injured in any way by a police horse: it is not even possible to say whether it was a blow, a fall, a kick or being trampled on which caused the superficially tiny injury that led to his brain haemorrhage.{{sfnp
— YEFZ3L2W|10}}
As the blame could not be applied to a specific action by the police or a demonstrator, he concluded “That is why, in my judgement, those who started the riot carry a measure of moral responsibility for his death; and the responsibility is a heavy one”.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|11}}
Scarman criticised the police on some of the tactics used in the day’s operation. The clearing of peaceful demonstrators at the junction of Theobalds Road and Southampton Road by mounted police was done without warning.{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|164-165}} He wrote “Public order is an exercise in public relations … It may have caused less … alarm if a warning had been given to the effect that the police required to disperse.”{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|31}} The situation was worsened by the presence of police behind those at the junction, which obstructed the avenue of retreat for those trying to avoid the police horses.{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|164}}
Scarman also criticised the police for allowing the two marches to get too close to each other. Clutterbuck observes that the police were probably reliant on an out-dated view of Liberation, which had not taken into account its takeover by hard-left elements.{{sfnp|CEW9UJ3B|164}}
In October 1975, after Scarman had finished taking evidence but before his findings were published, the NUS published the booklet “The Myth of Red Lion Square”. In it, they wrote Gately “died as a direct result of a police attack using batons and horses”.{{sfnp|N7XBMNM2}} Scarman thought the publication prior to his findings was “an affront to the inquiry”; he was troubled by the fact that William Wilson, the MP for Coventry South East, had provided an introduction for the book.{{sfnp|N89NP8WU}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a It is the last of these that is the ethos of National Front policies, according to the political historian Peter Shipley. He sees this as the doctrine “which permeate\[s\] every aspect of its thinking”.{{sfnp|UT2WYWSR}} b Walker, in his study of the history of the National Front, describes the membership as “rather like a bath with both taps running and the plughole empty. Members pour in and pour out”.{{sfnp|H82GZ7B4|9}} Although there were 20,000 members in 1974, 10–12,000 was judged to be the stable figure at the time.{{sfnp|UT2WYWSR}}{{sfnp|H82GZ7B4|9}} c When at full strength, a foot police serial comprises an inspector, three sergeants, twenty constables and a radio operator.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|51}} d An SPG unit consists an inspector, three sergeants and twenty-four officers.{{sfnp|YEFZ3L2W|51}} e The previous death had been in 1919, when two looters had been shot during a riot; the shooting was during the police strike and was by the army.{{sfnp|EGTE3R6X|56}} f There were 30 charges of “threatening or insulting words or behaviour”; 32 charges of assaulting the police; 14 charges of obstructing the police; 5 of possession of a weapon; and one charge of criminal damage.{{sfnp|UN8P4HJT|201}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23578
---
### [St Matthew's, Stretford](https://engole.info/st-matthews-stretford/)
**Published:** December 13, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/St-Matthews-Stretford.webp[/pimage]Active Anglican church in Stretford, Greater Manchester, built in 1841–1842.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/St-Matthews-Stretford.webp)Wikimapia
St Matthew’s is an active Anglican church on the A56, Chester Road, in [Stretford](https://engole.info/stretford), Greater Manchester; it is in the deanery of Manchester South and Stretford, in the Diocese of Manchester.{{sfnp|V595C6LJ}}
The church was built on a site donated by Sir Thomas de Trafford.{{sfnp|Q7IZ93TP}} Designed by W. Hayley and completed in 1842, it was enlarged in 1869, 1906 – when the [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) was added – and 1922.{{sfnp|GCQCNDPF}} It cost £2,700 to build, equivalent to about £337,000.00 as at 2021,\[a\]Calculated using the GDP deflator.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} £300 of which was donated by the Church Commissioners.{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|649}}
## Architecture
Built in the Gothic Revival style, St Matthew’s is constructed of brick with [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) dressings, and has a slate roof.{{sfnp|GCQCNDPF}} The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner comments that it has “the usual [lancets](https://engole.info/lancet-window) and thin buttresses”. The church’s crenellated parapet does not extend to the east side, which has a gable with a clock.{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|649}}
### Interior
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/stMatthewInterior.webp)Looking towards the altar
GENUKI
The galleries are supported on cast-iron quatrefoil columns,with the ceiling supported on shallow [arched Gothic braces](https://engole.info/timber-roof-truss/#Arch-braced-truss).{{sfnp|GCQCNDPF}} The carved timber fittings, including the pews, stalls and pulpit, date from the 1860s. The stained-glass window on the east side is by [William Wailes](https://engole.info/william-wailes).{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|649}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the GDP deflator.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25799
**Categories:** Anglican, Church, Greater Manchester
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [St Mary the Virgin's Church, Leigh](https://engole.info/st-mary-the-virgins-church-leigh/)
**Published:** September 9, 2020
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/St_Mary_the_Virgin_church%2C_Leigh%2C_Greater_Manchester_-_DSC09968.JPG[/pimage]Ancient parish church that served six townships.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/St_Mary_the_Virgin_church%2C_Leigh%2C_Greater_Manchester_-_DSC09968.JPG)map
https://goo.gl/maps/whQUm1ZWPrwTMi1g6}}
Leigh Parish Church
St Mary the Virgin is the Anglican parish church in Leigh, Greater Manchester. It is a member of the Leigh deanery in the archdeaconry of Salford, diocese of Manchester.{{sfnp|72JQQDL9}}{{sfnp|B325X2TC}} It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a Grade II\* [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building).{{sfnp|5CJBVZC6}}
The town-centre church has an early foundation. The Church of Westlay in Leigh was built straddling the ancient boundary between Westleigh and Pennington as the parish church for six medieval [vills](https://engole.info/vill/). [Chapels of ease](https://engole.info/chapel-of-ease) were built in the surrounding townships, the first in Astley in 1631 and the last in Pennington in 1854.
The [ancient parish](https://engole.info/ancient-parish/) church was probably rebuilt in the 15th century, its tower dates from 1500. Lancaster architects Paley and Austin rebuilt the church, apart from the tower in the Gothic Revival Perpendicular style between 1871 and 1873 and refaced the tower and built the [vestry](https://engole.info/sacristy) in 1910.
## History
St Mary’s is in the centre of Leigh next to the original market place opposite the town hall. The church was mentioned in 13th-century documents, but the date of its foundation is unknown. The first church on the site, dedicated to St Peter, was described as the *Church of Westlay in Legh*. Its dedication was changed to St Mary the Virgin at the end of the 14th century. The church straddled the ancient boundary between the townships of Westleigh and Pennington, the [nave](https://engole.info/nave/) and most of the churchyard in Westleigh, and the [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel) in Pennington.{{sfnp|BHSPSXWA|413–421}}
For several hundred years St Mary’s was the mother church for the six [vill](https://engole.info/vill)s that made up the ancient ecclesiastical parish: Westleigh, Pennington, Bedford, Astley, Atherton and Tyldesley.{{sfnp|BHSPSXWA|413–421}} For baptisms, marriages and funerals their populations had to travel to St Mary’s or churches that lay outside the parish boundary, such as St Mary’s Deane, All Saint’s in Wigan or St Mary the Virgin in Eccles. The first Astley Chapel was built as a [chapel of ease](https://engole.info/chapel-of-ease) and consecrated in 1631. A second chapel of ease dedicated to St John the Baptist at Chowbent was built in 1645 by John Atherton but not consecrated until 1723. A third daughter church, [St George’s](https://engole.info/st-georges-church-tyldesley/) in Tyldesley, was consecrated in 1825. St Thomas in Bedford was built in 1840 and Christ Church, Pennington in 1854.
Leigh was in the Diocese of Lichfield and Coventry until 1541, when it was transferred to the Diocese of Chester. In 1847 Leigh became the only parish in the Hundred of West Derby to be part of the new Diocese of Manchester. Leigh has had its own deanery since 1933. Until then it had been part of the deanery of Eccles, and earlier still Warrington.{{sfnp|BHSPSXWA|413–421}}{{sfnp|6582TMQV|2}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Tyldesley.jpg)Thomas Tyldesley (1612–1651)
Wikimedia Commons
The early history of the church was linked with the Lords of the Manor of Westleigh. John de Westleigh was parish priest in the reign of King John (1199–1216).{{sfnp|BHSPSXWA|413–421}} The church was probably rebuilt during the 15th century. The tower dates from about 1500. A chantry chapel dedicated to St Nicholas, known as the Tyldesley Chapel, occupied the east end of the north [aisle](https://engole.info/aisle-architecture), and the Atherton Chapel, dedicated to St Mary the eastern end of the south aisle. The tower was restored in 1721 and again in 1849. By the late 1860s the church had become unsafe.
In 1871–1873 the church, except for the tower, was rebuilt by the Lancaster architects Paley and Austin at a cost of £8,738 providing seating for 710 people.{{sfnp|GWNF4M6E|225}} James Fraser, Bishop of Manchester reconsecrated the building in February 1873. In 1890, the successors on the Lancaster practice, Paley, Austin and Paley, refitted the chancel, including the altar and [reredos](https://engole.info/reredos).{{sfnp|GWNF4M6E|238}} In 1909–1910 the same practice, then known as Austin and Paley, added a choir vestry to the north of the church, and recased the tower.{{sfnp|GWNF4M6E|247}}
During the 1871–1873 reconstruction the date 1616 was found on a roof beam, but it is thought the roof of the St Nicholas or Tyldesley Chapel, which was restored and reused, dates from about 1500. [ Sir Thomas Tyldesley](https://engole.info/thomas-tyldesley/) was buried here after his death in the Battle of Wigan Lane.{{sfnp|QDQFVAXX}}
The 18th-century boundary wall, gates and gate piers of the churchyard are designated as Grade II listed structures.{{sfnp|QEEM62DX}}
## Structure
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/St_Mary%27s_Church%2C_Leigh.jpeg)Church as rebuilt by Paley and Austin
Wikimedia Commons
The church was rebuilt on the foundations of the original church in hammer-dressed sandstone in the Gothic Revival Perpendicular style.{{sfnp|M4A33PZV|228–230}}\[a\] Brandwood et al. comment that this is an early use of the Perpendicular style in the Gothic Revival in such “a very conscious and very demonstrative use of the style”, and state that there is “no comparable example in England from about this time”.{{sfnp|GWNF4M6E|95}} The church has a six-bay nave and two-bay chancel under a continuous roof with a [clerestory](https://engole.info/clerestory) and crenellated parapet. The bays have three-light aisle windows with rectilinear tracery and hoodmoulds, the clerestory windows have two-light flat-headed arches. There are octagonal pinnacled piers at the east corners of the chancel, either side of the five-light east window. {{sfnp|5CJBVZC6}}
The tower, is also castellated and retains its 16th-century studded oak west doors beneath an elliptical arch.{{sfnp|5CJBVZC6}} The tower has weathered diagonal buttresses and a three-light west window. Below the clock faces are two-light [belfry](https://engole.info/belfry) openings on all sides. The north vestry dates from 1910. Nikolaus Pevsner describes the six-bay interior with octagonal piers as being “impressive in scale”. The roofline of the previous church is visible on the wall of the tower inside the church. The north aisle roof is re-used from the old church, and the nave has a [hammer-beam](https://engole.info/timber-roof-truss/#Hammerbeam_truss) roof.{{sfnp|M4A33PZV|228–230}}
### Fittings and furniture
The tower has a ring of eight bells. Six were cast in 1740 by Abel Rudhall of Gloucester, and the treble and second were cast in 1761, also by Rudhall’s. These bells replaced four others reputed to have been donated by Queen Elizabeth I. Two of the earlier bells were cast in Leigh in 1692 and 1705.{{sfnp|6582TMQV|7}}{{sfnp|ABWUUVQ4}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Leigh%2C_St_Mary_the_Virgin_interior_-_brass_chandelier.jpg/960px-Leigh%2C_St_Mary_the_Virgin_interior_-_brass_chandelier.jpg)18th-century brass chandelier
Wikimedia Commons
Pevsner describes Austin and Paley’s reredos and altar as “extremely handsome” and “gorgeously painted” in gold, red and green by Shrigley and Hunt.{{sfnp|M4A33PZV|228–230}} Stained glass windows installed between 1887 and 1933 in the Lady chapel, south aisle and several in north aisle are also by Shrigley and Hunt while others including the east window are by Charles Eamer Kempe.{{sfnp|5CJBVZC6}} The Speakman window is of local interest, as it depicts scenes from the industries on which Leigh was built; panels include weavers, engineers and colliers.{{sfnp|6582TMQV|5}}
The organ case of 1910 is by Austin and Paley, and from the old church there is a 1777 organ case by Samuel Green of London preserved on the vestry side.{{sfnp|M4A33PZV|228–230}} The three-manual organ was made in 1776–1778 by Samuel Green, and repaired between 1807 and 1877 by Vincent of Liverpool.{{sfnp|2A3M9DM9}} It was rebuilt in 1911 by Harrison & Harrison, using some original stops. In 1964 the pedal division was enlarged by the same company. The organ has been granted a Historic Organ Certificate Grade II\*.{{sfnp|BMF9CHG6}} Wooden fittings also saved from the earlier church include an altar table of 1705 by Thomas Naylor in the Lady Chapel, and oak canopies from the churchwardens seats of 1686.{{sfnp|5CJBVZC6}}
Over the nave near the tower is an 18th-century brass chandelier, “a cut above the norm” according to Pevsner, which was retained from the old church and converted to electricity.{{sfnp|M4A33PZV|228–230}}{{sfnp|6582TMQV|5}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Rectors_and_Vicars_of_St_Mary%27s_Leigh.JPG)Rectors and vicars of Leigh
Wikimedia Commons
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Brandwood et al. comment that this is an early use of the Perpendicular style in the Gothic Revival in such “a very conscious and very demonstrative use of the style”, and state that there is “no comparable example in England from about this time”.{{sfnp|GWNF4M6E|95}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23115
**Categories:** Anglican, Church, Greater Manchester
---
### [Eliza Armstrong](https://engole.info/eliza-armstrong/)
**Published:** August 18, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Young girl at the centre of a major prostitution scandal in 1885 that led to the age of consent for females being raised from 13 to 16.
**Content:**
Eliza Armstrong (born 1872) was at the centre of a major scandal in the United Kingdom when in 1885 she was supposedly bought for prostitution to expose the evils of white slavery. She was the daughter of Charles Armstrong, a chimney sweep, and Elizabeth, *née* Chivers, who were married in March 1874 and lived in Marylebone, London.{{sfnp|J7JAAT5U}}
While the case achieved its purpose in aiding the passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, raising the age of consent for females from 13 to 16,{{sfnp|TH9S3RUJ}} it also had unintended consequences for its chief perpetrator, W. T. Stead, editor of [*The Pall Mall Gazette*](https://engole.info/the-pall-mall-gazette), who was jailed for his part in the exposé.
## £5 virgin
Prostitution was commonplace in London,\[a\]In his *The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon* Stead claimed that there were 50,000 prostitutes on the streets of London.{{sfnp|R2VDFHZY|loc=119}} and Stead had been persuaded by luminaries including Benjamin Scott, Chamberlain of the City of London and anti-vice campaigner, that among the poor it was routine for mothers to sell their daughters to brothels.{{sfnp|R2VDFHZY|loc=1615}} To prove his case, he contacted Rebecca Jarrett, a reformed prostitute and brothel-keeper, and engaged her to “buy a girl in the market”, stipulating that she must be 13 years old and a virgin. Rebecca let it be known that she was looking for a servant girl, and of the applicants Eliza Armstrong was the only one of the right age. Eliza’s mother agreed to sell her daughter for £5,{{sfnp|J7JAAT5U}} equivalent to about £575 as at 2021.\[b\]Using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} Rebecca told the mother that her daughter was to serve as a maid to an old gentleman, but was of the opinion that Mrs Armstrong understood she was selling her daughter into prostitution.{{sfnp|R2VDFHZY|loc=456-462}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/66/Bramwell-booth-1881.jpg)Bramwell Booth, c. 1881
Wikimedia Commons
That same day Rebecca took Eliza to the home of Louise Mourez, a French midwife, who examined the girl, attested to her virginity and sold Rebecca a bottle of chloroform to dull the pain of Eliza’s first penetration. The girl was then taken to a brothel and lightly drugged to await the arrival of her purchaser, who was Stead.{{sfnp|R2VDFHZY|loc=503-520}} He entered Eliza’s room and waited for her to wake from her stupor. When she came to the girl screamed, and Stead quickly left the room, letting the scream imply he had “had his way” with her. Eliza was then handed over to Bramwell Booth, the first Chief of Staff of the Salvation Army, who spirited her away to France, first to Paris and then to Loriol-sur-Drome in the south of France.{{sfnp|J7JAAT5U}}
## *The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon*
On Saturday 4 July 1885, a “frank warning” was issued in the *Pall Mall Gazette*:
All those who are squeamish, and all those who are prudish, and all those who would prefer to live in a fool’s paradise of imaginary innocence and purity, selfishly oblivious to the horrible realities which torment those whose lives are passed in the London inferno, will do well not to read the *Pall Mall Gazette* of Monday and the three following days.{{sfnp
— WVFG9RZ8}}
The public’s appetite whetted sufficiently in anticipation, on Monday 6 July, Stead published the first instalment of *The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon*, the theme of which was child prostitution, and the abduction, procurement and sale of young English virgins to Continental “pleasure palaces”. The instalments were published anonymously by someone signing himself “Chief Director of the Secret Commission”, in reality Stead himself.{{sfnp|R2VDFHZY|loc=28-37}}
In the six-page first instalment Stead argued that while consensual adult behavior was a matter of private morality and not a law enforcement issue, there were five main areas where the law should intervene:{{sfnp|U5N9PUHY}}
- The sale and purchase and violation of children
- The procuration of virgins
- The entrapping and ruin of women
- The international slave trade in girls
- Atrocities, brutalities, and unnatural crimes.
In his rather “purple prose” style, Stead referred to Eliza as “Lily”, and omitted to disclose that he himself was her purchaser, referring to him only in the third-person.{{sfnp|U5N9PUHY}}{{sfnp|R2VDFHZY|loc=73}}
## Reaction
The “Maiden Tribute” was an instant hit, despite the refusal of W. H. Smith, who had a monopoly on all news stalls at the main railway stations, to sell the *Gazette* owing to what they perceived to be its obscene content.{{sfnp|R2VDFHZY|loc=80}} But the magazine had anticipated W. H. Smith’s ban and had recruited newsboys to take over distribution in the capital.{{sfnp|R2VDFHZY|loc=104}}
Stead’s revelations struck a chord with the public, and the government was soon on the defensive. Those members of parliament who had previously opposed legislative reform began to understand that further opposition would be seen as not only denying the existence of child prostitution, but condoning it. Many of them wanted to have the *Gazette* prosecuted under obscenity laws, but bowed to the inevitable, and the Criminal Law Amendment Act was passed into law on 14 August 1885.{{sfnp|J7JAAT5U}}
## Unintended consequences
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Wt-stead-uniform.jpg)W. T. Stead photographed in his prison uniform
Wikimedia Commons
Although Stead was supported in his investigation by the Salvation Army and religious leaders including Cardinal Henry Edward Manning,{{sfnp|R2VDFHZY|loc=623-630}} his plan backfired on him. Rival newspapers investigated the original “Lily” and found that Stead was the “purchaser”. Mrs Armstrong told police that she had not consented to put her daughter into prostitution, saying she understood that she was to enter domestic service. Reluctantly, Bramwell Booth chose to reveal Eliza’s whereabouts in France and she was brought back to London, where she was reunited with her mother on 24 August. Stead, who was on holiday in the Swiss Alps at the time, returned to London and stated that he alone was responsible for Eliza’s disappearance.{{sfnp|J7JAAT5U}}
Stead, Jarrett, Booth, Mourez and two others were tried at the Old Bailey in October 1885, charged with the abduction and indecent assault of Eliza Armstrong. The charges against Booth and the Salvation Army were dropped, but Stead, Jarrett, and the others were sentenced to a term of imprisonment;{{sfnp|J7JAAT5U}} Jarrett and Mourez were sentenced to six months and Stead was sentenced to three, all without hard labour.{{sfnp|R2VDFHZY|loc=1726}}
## Aftermath
The chief prosecutor at the Old Bailey, Harry Bodkin Poland QC, set up a fund to support Eliza and her parents. Some of the money was used to pay for her attendance at the Princess Louise Home in Wanstead, where she was trained for domestic service, but then she vanishes from the historical record. Stead claimed to have received a letter from her saying she was married and had children, but no copy has been found.{{sfnp|J7JAAT5U}}
The Stead biographer Gavin Weightman has concluded that “just about everything” in Stead’s account of the purchase of Eliza is either “fabricated or inaccurate”, an opinion shared by the playwright George Bernard Shaw, who despite being initially a supporter concluded that Stead’s story of a £5 virgin was “a put up job”.{{sfnp|R2VDFHZY|loc=39-51}} Shaw’s *Pygmalion*\[c\]*My Fair Lady* is the stage and film version. is a parody of Stead’s story;{{sfnp|R2VDFHZY|loc=63}} Eliza Armstrong is the model for the flower girl Eliza Doolittle, whose father, a dustman, agrees to sell his daughter to Professor Higgins for £5, as she is of little use to him.{{sfnp|R2VDFHZY|loc=2205}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a In his *The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon* Stead claimed that there were 50,000 prostitutes on the streets of London.{{sfnp|R2VDFHZY|loc=119}} b Using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} c *My Fair Lady* is the stage and film version.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Eliza_Armstrong_case#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Prostitution
---
### [Autoped](https://engole.info/autoped/)
**Published:** November 9, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Lady_Florence_Norman.jpg/960px-Lady_Florence_Norman.jpg[/pimage]One of the earliest motorised scooters.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Lady_Florence_Norman.jpg/960px-Lady_Florence_Norman.jpg)[Lady Florence Norman](https://engole.info/florence-norman/) using her Autoped in London in 1916
Wikimedia Commons
The Autoped was an early motorised scooter, developed and manufactured by the Autoped Company of Long Island City, New York,{{sfnp|62PVAUYQ}} from 1915 until 1921. It was also manufactured under licence by the German company Krupp from 1919 until 1922.{{sfnp|PT7PRMDB|22}}
The scooter is powered by an air-cooled 4-stroke engine mounted over the front wheel, driving the wheel via a circular clutch. The original American version uses a 155 cc engine, whereas the Krupp variant makes use of a slightly larger 191 cc unit.{{sfnp|PT7PRMDB|22}} The vehicle is controlled entirely through the steering column: pushing it forward engages the clutch; pulling it back operates the internal expanding brake on the front wheel; and twisting the left grip operates the throttle.{{sfnp|BTXSGL9B}}
The Autoped had a claimed top speed of {{convert|25|mph|abbr=on}} on a level road.{{sfnp|VTXK7T8R}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24125
**Categories:** American, Motorcycle
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Hogarth's Act 1735](https://engole.info/hogarths-act-1735/)
**Published:** June 26, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of the Parliament of Great Britain to give copyright protections to the producers of engravings.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
Hogarth’s Act 1735, formally known as the Engraving Copyright Act 1735 (8 Geo. 2 c. 13) is an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain passed on 25 June 1735, giving copyright protections to the producers of engravings. William Hogarth’s name became associated with the Act because of the painter and engraver’s lobbying of Parliament for greater legal control of the reproduction of his and other artists’ work after the success of his *A Harlot’s Progress* (1731–1732) resulted in the production of numerous pirated copies.{{sfnp|4YVSPISZ}}
The Engraving Copyright Act distinguished between those works that involved original designs and those that did not, making an implicit distinction between artists and “mere” craftsmen. Soon, however, parliament was persuaded to extend protection to all engravings, a logical progression that was mirrored a century later when copyright was again extended at first to “special” and then to all photographs.{{sfnp|754M8X2J}}
Hogarth’s Act was repealed by sections 36 and 37(2) of, and schedule 2 to, the Copyright Act 1911 (c.46).
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Benefit of Clergy Act 1575](https://engole.info/benefit-of-clergy-act-1575/)
**Published:** January 27, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/Coat_of_Arms_of_England_%281558-1603%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_Arms_of_England_%281558-1603%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of Parliament that removed the right of those charged with rape or burglary to claim benefit of clergy, and so to be tried in an ecclesiastical court.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/Coat_of_Arms_of_England_%281558-1603%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_Arms_of_England_%281558-1603%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Benefit of Clergy Act 1575 (18 Eliz. I c.7), long title *An Act to take away clergy from the offenders in rape and burglary, and an order for the delivery of clerks convict without purgation*, removed the right of those charged with rape or burglary to claim [benefit of clergy](https://engole.info/benefit-of-clergy/), and thus to be tried in a rather more lenient ecclesiastical court instead of a secular one. Anyone found guilty of either of those offences would henceforth be subject to the death penalty.{{sfnp|KYDN5EQS|63}}
The Act also made it illegal for anyone to have carnal knowledge of a female under the age of ten, again without benefit of clergy.{{sfnp|KYDN5EQS|63}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Jack Bologna](https://engole.info/jack-bologna/)
**Published:** September 27, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Italian actor and dancer who did much to popularise the role of Harlequin in Georgian pantomimes.
**Content:**
John Peter Bologna (1775–1846), stage name Jack Bologna, was an Italian actor and dancer, who spent much time in England popularising the role of Harlequin in Georgian pantomimes and [Harlequinades](https://engole.info/harlequinade/) in the early 1800s, at the Sadler’s Wells and Covent Garden Theatres.
After arriving in England with his performing family in 1787, Bologna made his London debut at the Covent Garden Theatre as Harlequin in the pantomime *Niobe; or, Harlequin’s Ordeal*. After playing in his family’s act throughout England, he starred in, and later choreographed, pantomimes and plays, including some notable successes at the Royal Circus, including *The Cloud King*, *The Sorceress of Strozzi*, *Black Beard*, and *Edwin of the Green*. In 1806 he, along with the famous Clown performer Joseph Grimaldi, performed in *Harlequin and Mother Goose; or, the Golden Egg*, Bologna’s biggest success. Bologna was also an amateur machinist, who often showcased his mechanical designs, using them on stage as part of his productions.
Bologna struggled financially after having mostly retired from the stage in 1820, and lived in extreme poverty throughout the remaining 26 years of his life before dying penniless aged 71.
## Early life
Bologna was born into a performing family. His father, Pietro Bologna, was an Italian clown performer, who became famous for his ability to play the flute through each nostril and to play the drum while tightrope walking. Bologna’s mother was an actress, and his siblings, Louis (d. 1808) and Barbara (1786–1804), performed with the family act.{{sfnp|FS3UBLFY|70}} Jack made his debut on the Italian stage at age 11, and soon afterwards moved to England in 1787, where he met the ten-year-old Joseph Grimaldi, who had begun performing in the pantomimes of his actor father Giuseppe. The two young performers formed a close friendship. From there, Bologna made his first appearance on the English stage with his family’s tumbling act, which initially toured the provincial theatres.{{sfnp|46P3CSQ7|190}}
The Bolognas became popular in the provinces, and took up an engagement at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London in 1792 where, among other actors, they appeared in *Medea’s Kettle; or, Harlequin Renovated* and La Tableau Chinois.{{sfnp|46P3CSQ7|190}} The Bolognas left London for Norwich to join a troupe called The Royal Circus in 1794. While there, Bologna learned the art of tightrope walking from his father and, at age 21, billed as “Bologna Jun”, he returned to London to star for the first time at the Covent Garden Theatre as Harlequin in the pantomime *Niobe; or, Harlequin’s Ordeal*, opening in July 1797.{{sfnp|46P3CSQ7|191}} The piece was a success, and the theatre’s proprietors engaged him in further productions.{{sfnp|FS3UBLFY|116}}
## Career
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Grimaldi_in_1819_by_J.E.T._Robinson.jpg)Bologna’s friend and frequent co-star Joseph Grimaldi
Wikimedia Commons
On 24 November 1797, Bologna opened in the part of Setric in the Christmas pantomime *The Round Tower*. In 1798 he returned briefly to Norwich, where he starred as Bertrand in *The Knights of Malta*. On 3 June 1800, he married Harriet Bath Barnewell, a dancer and vocalist, in Hanover Square, London. In 1801 Bologna choreographed the production *Rinaldo Rinaldini* at London’s Royal Circus, in which he played the title role. From 1802 he appeared at Sadler’s Wells as Harlequin, and with his brother Louis, starred in the burletta *Edward and Susan*, which Jack also composed. Also in the cast was Joseph Grimaldi, who played the part of Clown. Bologna and Grimaldi often collaborated professionally, and maintained a lifelong friendship until Grimaldi’s death in 1837.{{sfnp|46P3CSQ7|191}} With the Napoleonic War threatening England in 1803, Bologna enlisted in the volunteer corps and joined the rifle regiment of John Barber Beaumont in England, but left two years later.{{sfnp|FS3UBLFY|125}}
In 1805, Bologna succeeded James Byrne as Harlequin at the Covent Garden theatre and, the following year, along with Grimaldi, he starred in Thomas Dibdin’s Christmas pantomime *Harlequin and Mother Goose; or, the Golden Egg*. The show was a success and ran for 92 nights, selling 300,000 tickets.{{sfnp|FS3UBLFY|197}} So successful was Bologna’s partnership with Grimaldi that between 1807 and 1814, they earned £2,000 in various benefit performances. Between November 1805 and February 1806, he was engaged by Charles Dibdin to appear at the Amphitheatre in Dublin, and the following year he choreographed a number of successful pantomimes and plays at the Royal Circus, including *The Cloud King*, *The False Friend*, *The Mysterious Freebooter*, *The Sorceress of Strozzi*, *Black Beard*, *Moms and Mercury*, *Buenos Ayres*, *Werter and Charlotte* and *Edwin of the Green*.{{sfnp|46P3CSQ7|191}} Having seen Bologna in a performance of *Oscar and Malvina* in 1807,{{sfnp|46P3CSQ7|192} the actor John Philip Kemble said of him: “If that man could speak as well as he acts \[in\] pantomimes, I would never again appear on the stage”.{{sfnp|6Y54VQBD|295}}
On 8 July 1808, Bologna was hired to entertain guests at a masked ball at Burlington House. There, he met Lord Byron, who admitted to being such a fan of pantomime that he based his poem *Don Juan* on an afterpiece given by Delpini, a character from the harlequinade. So impressed was he at Bologna’s performance, that he asked Bologna to reserve him a seat at all of his future benefits.{{sfnp|FS3UBLFY|198}} Owing to the physical demands of performing, Bologna broke his collar bone during a performance of *Harlequin and the Swans* in 1813.{{sfnp|FS3UBLFY|218}} His wife Harriet, died in 1814, and Bologna remarried in 1816, to the dancer Louisa Bristow, his friend Grimaldi’s sister-in-law; Bologna had met Bristow in 1810 while she was playing Columbine during one of Grimaldi’s harlequinades. In 1815–1816, Bologna performed at the Covent Garden Theatre, but he left in 1817.{{sfnp|46P3CSQ7|192}}
After a ten-year absence from Sadler’s Wells, Bologna returned in 1819 to appear in the only pantomime that Grimaldi wrote, *The Fates; or, Harlequin’s Holy Day*, in which he played Harlequin. The piece was a flop, mainly because of its author’s ailing health and sudden departure from the production.{{sfnp|FS3UBLFY|251-252}} While engaged at the Pantheon Theatre in Edinburgh, Bologna secured himself a lucrative contract with the proprietors of London’s Theatre Royal, Drury Lane to appear in the 1819 Christmas pantomime, earning him more than £6 per week.{{sfnp|46P3CSQ7|192}}
## Designer and engineer
An amateur machinist, Bologna assisted in the design of many of the mechanical parts used in the 1801 Christmas production *Harlequin’s Tour* at Covent Garden, in which he also played Harlequin. In 1803 he showcased the design of a machine he devised while working at the Lyceum Theatre in London; Bologna called it a Phantoscopia. In 1807–1808 he received extra payments for his mechanical work in such productions as *Harlequin in his Element*. In 1810, in recognition of his works, Bolgna was given a licence to hold an exhibition of his mechanical contraptions at the Sans Pariel Theatre.{{sfnp|46P3CSQ7|191}} Charles Dibdin called Bologna’s mechanical exhibition “A very ingenious mechanical and philosophical exhibition”.{{sfnp|46P3CSQ7|192}}
## Later years and death
Bologna mostly retired from performing in 1820, returning only to play benefits for himself and Grimaldi. By 1840 his mechanical exhibitions no longer attracted any interest, and he briefly entered a workhouse. He emerged to teach choreography and was recruited in 1841 by a magician named Anderson to play his black-faced sidekick, Ebony, at public houses throughout the provinces. The Anderson and Ebony act was controversial and caused public outrage when they exhibited two disabled children whom they billed as the “Aztec Lilliputians”. Bologna remained in this act until his death.{{sfnp|FS3UBLFY|317}}
Bologna died penniless in Glasgow, Scotland, aged 71, of natural causes.{{sfnp|46P3CSQ7|192}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Actor, Dancer, Italian, Male, Pantomime
---
### [Metropolitan Houseless Poor Act 1864](https://engole.info/metropolitan-houseless-poor-act-1864/)
**Published:** August 13, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg.png[/pimage]Short-term piece of legislation that imposed a legal obligation on Poor Law unions in London to provide temporary accommodation for "destitute wayfarers, wanderers, and foundlings".
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Metropolitan Houseless Poor Act 1864 (27 & 28 Vict c. 116) was a short-term piece of legislation that imposed a legal obligation on Poor Law unions in London to provide temporary accommodation for “destitute wayfarers, wanderers, and foundlings”.{{sfnp|XESZV3JN|search=Art}} The Metropolitan Board of Works was given limited authority to reimburse the unions for the cost of building the necessary casual wards, an arrangement that was made permanent the following year by the passage of the Metropolitan Houseless Poor Act 1865 (28 & 29 Vict c. 34).{{sfnp|KBUJWJE7|233}}
Most provincial Poor Law unions followed London’s example, and by the 1870s, of the 643 then in existence, 572 had established casual wards for the reception of vagrants.{{sfnp|Z3TWQW5E}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [The Book of Curses](https://engole.info/the-book-of-curses/)
**Published:** January 27, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Essay by H. G. Wells first published in 1894, about Professor Gargoyle's regret for the decline in swearing.
**Content:**
“The Book of Curses” is an essay by the English writer H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published in [*The Pall Mall Gazette*](https://engole.info/the-pall-mall-gazette/) in 1894 under the title of “On Swearing”; it was subsequently reprinted in [*Certain Personal Matters*](https://engole.info/certain-personal-matters/) (1897).{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|37}} Told as a third-person narrative, it tells of Professor Gargoyle’s regret for the decline in swearing.
## Synopsis
Professor Gargoyle’s occupation is the study of swearing. He has a fairly complete collection of European curses, but has struggled with gathering a representative sample of the “tropical luxuriance” of swearing in Eastern countries. He gives as an example a man he employed in Calcutta, who after being refused his wages sat on the verandah of the professor’s home for almost four hours, “cursing in one steady unbroken flow … a perfect anthology of Bengali blasphemy”. Yet it was depressing, as his hand ached from recording the curses from this one man among six hundred million.
The professor points out that to be an effective collector of curses it is necessary to be unpopular, as one has to offend a man to get him to “disgorge his treasure”. He says that cursing has almost disappeared among Englishmen, but takes heart from the fact that women have adopted the use of certain “bad words”; indeed he says “if it were not for women there would be nothing in England that one could speak of as swearing at all”. Gargoyle considers swearing a “thoroughly moral and hygienic practice”, a means of relieving frustrations.
Finally the professor excuses himself, as he is engaged in travelling around London by taxi, only paying the cab drivers their legal due, in an effort to collect more material for the book of curses he is thinking of writing.
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23457
**Categories:** Essay, H. G. Wells
**Tags:** Facebook post, Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Privacy policy](https://engole.info/privacy-policy/)
**Published:** April 19, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Privacy policy,
last updated on 13 June 2020
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/castle-538722__340.jpg)
We do not share personal information with third parties nor do we store any information about your visit to this site other than to optimise your reading experience through the use of small text files that do not contain any personally identifiable data, known as [cookies](https://engole.info/cookie-policy-uk/).
You can turn off the use of cookies at any time by changing your specific browser settings, or by visiting our [cookie policy](https://engole.info/cookie-policy-uk/#7_Consent) page.
We are not responsible for republished content from this site on other websites.
This privacy policy is subject to change without notice and was last updated on 28 November 2019. If you have any questions feel free to [contact us](https://engole.info/comments-or-questions).
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Amy Robsart (painting)](https://engole.info/amy-robsart-painting/)
**Published:** April 25, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Amyrobsart.jpg[/pimage]Painting by the British artist William Frederick Yeames, depicting the suspicious death of Amy Robsart, wife of Robert Dudley, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Amyrobsart.jpg)Oil on canvas
282 x 189 cm (111 x 74 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Amy Robsart* is a painting by the British artist William Frederick Yeames (1835–1918), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1877, and at the Exposition Universelle in Paris the following year.{{sfnp|598LK87Z}}
The painting depicts Amy Robsart, the wife of Robert Dudley, lying dead at the foot of a flight of stairs. Dudley was a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603), and it was rumoured at the time that he had arranged for his servant, Anthony Forster, to kill Amy, leaving him free to marry the Queen. The scene shows Forster pretending to have discovered Amy’s body, having suffocated her and thrown her down the stairs, with his clearly horrified manservant looking on. Dudley and the Queen never married.{{sfnp|WWEVHNNH}}
The painting is now in the collection of the Tate, to which it was presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest in 1877.{{sfnp|WWEVHNNH}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29926
**Categories:** Painting
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Punishment of Incest Act 1908](https://engole.info/punishment-of-incest-act-1908/)
**Published:** March 11, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281901%E2%80%931952%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281901%E2%80%931952%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of Parliament making it illegal for the first time in England and Wales for a man to engage in sexual intercourse with any female he knew to be his grand-daughter, daughter, sister, half-sister, or mother.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281901%E2%80%931952%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281901%E2%80%931952%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Punishment of Incest Act 1908 (8 Edw. 7 c. 45) made it illegal for the first time in England and Wales for a man to engage in sexual intercourse with any female he knew to be his grand-daughter, daughter, sister, half-sister, or mother; incest had until then been regarded as an ecclesiastical offence, punishable by penance.{{sfnp|KIQ56HZU}} At least some feminist writers have seen this Act and others, including the Married Women’s Property Acts of [1870](https://engole.info/married-womens-property-act-1870) and 1882, as a shift in the authority of the man as father, “private patriarchies being ‘rolled back’ by public state legislation”.{{sfnp|FGUDFDF9|4}}
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the National Vigilance Association had been campaigning for a law to criminalise incest among adults since the 1880s, on the grounds that such abuse had almost always begun before the girl had reached the age of consent. The Punishment of Incest Act was some reward for their efforts, but there was also at the time growing concern to avoid any physical and moral degeneration of the population. There had been public outcry about the poor physical condition of those enlisted for recruitment to the army during the Boer War (1899–1902), so it seems at least a possibility that step-daughters, for instance, were excluded from the list of those adults with whom it was forbidden to have sexual relations because their lack of a common genetic heritage did not pose the same dangers of in-breeding.{{sfnp|SV8MWZJI|9-10}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 16574
**Categories:** Legislation
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Helen Duncan](https://engole.info/helen-duncan/)
**Published:** May 13, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c4/Portrait_of_Helen_Duncan.jpg/330px-Portrait_of_Helen_Duncan.jpg[/pimage]Last person to be imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act 1735, in 1944.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c4/Portrait_of_Helen_Duncan.jpg/330px-Portrait_of_Helen_Duncan.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
Victoria Helen McCrae Duncan (25 November 1897 – 6 December 1956) was a Scottish medium who in March 1944 was the last person to be imprisoned under the [Witchcraft Act of 1735](https://engole.info/witchcraft-act-1735),\[a\][Jane Yorke](https://engole.info/jane-yorke) was the last person to be convicted under the same Act, on 12 September 1944, but perhaps because of her age – she was 72 – she was bound over for three years rather than imprisoned.{{sfnp|PU7USHRX|323-324}} attributed by some to the fear that she might disclose secrets concerning the preparations for D-day.{{sfnp|6EY52L6R}} But the case is undoubtedly the only time a branch of the British military, in this case the Royal Navy, targeted a medium and deliberately attempted to silence her; their motivation may have been to put an end to what they saw as Helen’s exploitation of the widows and orphans of deceased servicemen.{{sfnp|CHC4KSTM|47-48}}
Helen was born in Callandar, Perthshire, the fourth child of Archibald MacFarlane, a slater, and his wife, Isabella Rattray.{{sfnp|6EY52L6R}} As a young girl, her tomboyish ways and claimed ability to speak to the dead earned her the nickname Hellish Nell.{{sfnp|XAG29DLX|loc=239}}
After leaving school Helen worked for a time as a hotel waitress, until she became pregnant in 1914. To avoid shaming her Presbyterian family she was sent to Dundee,{{sfnp|6EY52L6R}} where the first of her six children,{{sfnp|XAG29DLX|loc=343}} her daughter Isabella, was born in 1915. There she worked in the jute mills and as a nursing auxiliary, and in 1916 she married Henry Anderson Horne Duncan, an invalided soldier she claimed to have met in a dream. The family moved to Edinburgh, where Henry ran a cabinet-maker’s business, and the couple began to promote Helen as a psychic.{{sfnp|6EY52L6R}}
## Practising medium
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Helen_Duncan_fake_ectoplasm.jpg)Photographs of Helen Duncan taken during a seance in 1928, by Harvey Metcalfe
Wikimedia Commons
In 1926 the Duncans returned to Dundee, where Helen held séances, progressing from clairvoyance to materialisation, allegedly manifesting spirits of the dead by emitting [ectoplasm](https://engole.info/ectoplasm) from her body.{{sfnp|6EY52L6R}}
An early examination of pieces of Helen’s ectoplasm carried out by the [London Spiritualist Alliance](https://engole.info/the-college-of-psychic-studies) (LSA) concluded that it consisted of a mixture of cheesecloth, paper mixed with the white of egg, and lavatory paper. It was suspected that before her séances she would swallow some of the material, to be regurgitated later. To explore that possibility Helen was persuaded to swallow a tablet of methylene blue,\[b\]A salt used as a dye and in some medical applications. but when she did no ectoplasm manifested itself.{{sfnp|EE7T2NIU|144}}
In 1931 one of the leading psychical researchers of the day, Harry Price, conducted another investigation into Helen’s ability to materialise spirits via ectoplasm. He concluded that Helen was a fraud,{{sfnp|6EY52L6R}} and in an appendix to Price’s report the psychologist William McDougall, who attended two of her séances, pronounced Helen’s “whole performance fraudulent”.{{sfnp|6679GJRH}}
In January 1933 Helen was exposed at a séance in Edinburgh as using a stockinet vest to impersonate the spirit of a small girl; she was found guilty at the sheriff court of fraudulently procuring money from the public and fined £10.{{sfnp|6EY52L6R}}
## Second World War
Helen spent much of her time in Portsmouth during the war, an important Royal Navy base, where she continued to give séances. She predicted the sinking of the British battleship HMS *Hood* in 1941, with the assistance of her spirit guide Albert.{{sfnp|6EY52L6R}} But what seems to have alarmed the authorities was when in that same year the spirit of a sailor reportedly appeared at one of her seancés, announcing that he had just gone down with a ship called the *Barham*, which was not officially declared lost until several months later;{{sfnp|BXIBACRV}} the prime minister, Winston Churchill, had recently ordered that all British losses at sea were to be kept secret.{{sfnp|XAG29DLX|loc=803}}\[c\]So keen was the Admiralty to keep the loss of HMS *Barham* secret that they sent out Christmas cards with faked postmarks from deceased members of the crew.{{sfnp|XAG29DLX|loc=764}}
According to the researcher Graeme Donald, Helen could quite easily have found out about the sinking of HMS *Barham* off the coast of Egypt, as although news of the loss was suppressed, letters of condolence were sent to the families of the 861 dead, asking them to say nothing until after the official announcement. So it was at best an open secret, and Helen may simply have attempted to profit from some gossip she had picked up.{{sfnp|CHC4KSTM|48}}
## Investigation and arrest
By 1943 the authorities were increasingly prosecuting mediums for their exploitation of the bereaved.{{sfnp|6EY52L6R}} In 1944 the Royal Navy set up a sting operation involving two Navy personnel, Lieutenant Stanley Worth and Surgeon-Lieutenant Fowler, in concert with two police officers. They agreed to attend one of Helen’s séances and to pounce immediately when her ectoplasm appeared. They carried out their plan on the evening of 19 January 1944,{{sfnp|CHC4KSTM|49}} during a séance at the Master Temple Psychic Centre in Portsmouth.{{sfnp|6EY52L6R}} As soon as a floating form appeared one of the policemen, Rupert Cross, lunged forward and grabbed it, revealing it to be a “shamefaced” Helen and a quantity of cheesecloth.{{sfnp|CHC4KSTM|49}} Helen and three of her audience were arrested:{{sfnp|BXIBACRV}} Ernest and Elizabeth Homer, the Master Temple’s owners, and Frances Brown, Duncan’s agent and travelling companion.{{sfnp|6EY52L6R}}
The four were initially charged under the 1824 Vagrancy Act,{{sfnp|G5JNNR49}} which prohibited anyone from “pretending or professing to tell fortunes, or using any subtle craft, means, or device, by palmistry or otherwise, to deceive and impose on any of his Majesty’s subjects”,{{sfnp|G5JNNR49}} a relatively minor offence dealt with by a magistrate, which would probably only result in a fine if proven.{{sfnp|BXIBACRV}} But in view of Helen’s past record the magistrate referred them for jury trial at the Old Bailey, to be charged under the [1735 Witchcraft Act](https://engole.info/witchcraft-act-1735), which allowed for more stringent penalties.{{sfnp|CHC4KSTM|49}}\[d\]Despite its name, the Witchcraft Act of 1735 did not make witchcraft itself illegal, only the pretence of fortune telling, sorcery and witchcraft.
## Trial and imprisonment
Helen’s trial and that of the others arrested with her began at the Old Bailey on 22 March 1944 and lasted for eight days. Her defence team, funded by the Spiritualists’ National Union, argued that as a genuine medium she could not have acted fraudulently,{{sfnp|6EY52L6R}} and suggested that Helen’s credentials could be proven by holding a séance in the court, an offer the trial judge Sir Gerald Dodson declined.{{sfnp|XAG29DLX|loc=2451}}
Found guilty despite the testimony of forty-witnesses who claimed to have been reunited with their deceased relatives,{{sfnp|6EY52L6R}} Helen was sentenced to nine months imprisonment, but was released after serving six months in Holloway Prison. Francis Brown was sentenced to four months, and the Homers were bound over.{{sfnp|6EY52L6R}}\[e\]A device in English jurisprudence exercised in cases of minor misdemeanours in which the accused commits to being of good behaviour for a certain period of time in the future, subject to a penalty if that commitment is not honoured.
## Later life and death
Following her release from Holloway on 22 September 1944, Helen succeeded in steering clear of further attention from the authorities until November 1956, when police raided a séance being held in a house in Nottingham, having received information that she was practising again.{{sfnp|CHC4KSTM|50}} Helen subsequently exhibited “strange burns”, where it was suggested that ectoplasm had surged back into her body as the police broke up the séance. Helen fell ill, and was treated at hospital and at her Edinburgh home, where she died on 6 December 1956. The official causes of death were given as diabetes and cardiac arrest.{{sfnp|6EY52L6R}}
Contrary to what has been claimed by some [Spiritualists](https://engole.info/spiritualism), there was nothing strange or unusual about Helen’s death; nor was it caused by the police disturbing her “trance”. Her medical records show that she had a long history of poor health, and as early as 1944 was described as an obese woman who could move only slowly, as she suffered from heart trouble.{{sfnp|4MX3HREN|137-144}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a [Jane Yorke](https://engole.info/jane-yorke) was the last person to be convicted under the same Act, on 12 September 1944, but perhaps because of her age – she was 72 – she was bound over for three years rather than imprisoned.{{sfnp|PU7USHRX|323-324}} b A salt used as a dye and in some medical applications. c So keen was the Admiralty to keep the loss of HMS *Barham* secret that they sent out Christmas cards with faked postmarks from deceased members of the crew.{{sfnp|XAG29DLX|loc=764}} d Despite its name, the Witchcraft Act of 1735 did not make witchcraft itself illegal, only the pretence of fortune telling, sorcery and witchcraft. e A device in English jurisprudence exercised in cases of minor misdemeanours in which the accused commits to being of good behaviour for a certain period of time in the future, subject to a penalty if that commitment is not honoured.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24689
**Categories:** Medium
---
### [Pagan Federation](https://engole.info/pagan-federation/)
**Published:** April 25, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fa/Paganfedarationlogo.png[/pimage]Organisation founded in 1971 to raise public awareness of paganism, and eliminate discrimination against pagans.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fa/Paganfedarationlogo.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Pagan Federation is a charitable incorporated organisation originally founded in 1971 as the Pagan Front. Its stated aims are to:{{sfnp|EHLNFFTF}}
- Eliminate discrimination against pagans on the grounds of beliefs which are recognised and protected in law and consistent with the Equality Act 2010
- Raise public awareness of the beliefs and practices of pagans
- Cultivate a sentiment in favour of equality and diversity
The term “pagan” is derived from the Latin *pagus*, the smallest unit of land in a country district. Pagans were those who followed the beliefs and religions of the countryside rather than the officially recognised cults, even after the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as it official religion.{{sfnp|YEZKLHML}} Paganism comes in many different forms, such as Druidry, Witchcraft and Wicca, but what they all have in common is the belief in a divine force inherent in nature, with which humans need to form a relationship.{{sfnp|YSF62UPP|3-4,9-11}}
By 1981 the original Pagan Front had become infiltrated by right-wing extremist groups such as the National Front, and so in October that year the Pagan Front became the Pagan Federation.{{sfnp|YSF62UPP|371}}
## Pagan Dawn
*Pagan Dawn* is the Pagan Federation’s official magazine. Published quarterly, it was founded in 1968, three years before the foundation of the Pagan Front. It was originally titled *The Wiccan*, but its name was changed in 1993 to reflect its coverage of alternative pagan paths such as Druidry and Shamanism.{{sfnp|7N2RHS87}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29925
**Categories:** Uncategorized
---
### [Caphouse Colliery](https://engole.info/caphouse-colliery/)
**Published:** August 13, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Sitlington_-_National_Mining_Museum_at_Caphouse_Colliery.jpg[/pimage]Ex-colliery in Overton, near Wakefield, West Yorkshire, now the National Coal Mining Museum for England.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Sitlington_-_National_Mining_Museum_at_Caphouse_Colliery.jpg)Caphouse Colliery
Wikimedia Commons
Caphouse Colliery was a coal mine in [Overton](https://engole.info/sitlington/), near Wakefield, West Yorkshire. It is about {{convert|5|mi|spell=in}} from Wakefield and seven from Huddersfield next to the A642 road. It was situated on the Lister Kaye family’s [Denby Grange](https://engole.info/denby-grange/ "Denby Grange") estate, where coal was worked from at least the 18th century.
Coal mining at Caphouse has a complicated history of ownership and name changes, it was connected with the Lister Kayes and various other owners until 1943, when it was sold and renamed Caphouse Colliery. It remained open in [National Coal Board](https://engole.info/national-coal-board/) ownership until 1985. It reopened as the Yorkshire Mining Museum in 1988, and is now the National Coal Mining Museum for England.
## Background
Caphouse Colliery was sunk in an area where coal had been mined from shallow pits since 1515. Two shallow coal seams outcropped in the area, the Flockton Thin and the Flockton Thick. The Flockton Thick was worked by James Milnes who leased the mineral rights from Mary Wortley, the Countess of Bute in 1778. Milnes’ colliery had 17 shafts about {{convert|200|yd}} apart by 1791 and was worked out by 1803. No. 17 shaft became the Caphouse shaft. Milnes also mined coal at Old Flockton. Some coal was sold locally, but much more was sent to distant markets to the east of Pontefract via the Calder and Hebble Navigation after Milnes’ pits were linked to the [Calder and Hebble Navigation](https://engole.info/calder-and-hebble-navigation/) at Horbury Bridge by the [Flockton waggonway](https://engole.info/flockton-collieries/) .{{sfnp|EHELB4UK|9}}{{sfnp|A54GW64P|137}}
Timothy Smith leased the original Denby Grange Colliery north of neighbouring Flockton from Sir John Lister Kaye. Smith’s coal pits were under the control of Sir John Lister Kaye by 1817. When he died in 1827, his eldest son Sir John Lister Lister-Kaye took over.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|137}}{{sfnp|EHELB4UK|8}}
## Overton Colliery
Sir John Lister Lister-Kaye took over the lease for getting coal at Overton from the executors of James Milnes in 1827. He renegotiated the lease with Lord Wharncliffe who had succeeded to the estates of the Countess of Bute. He employed [John Blenkinsop](https://engole.info/john-blenkinsop/) of the Middleton Collieries as a consultant to oversee the enlargement of the enterprise.{{sfnp|EHELB4UK|8}} Four shafts, the Blucher, Waterloo, Croft and Nelson on the site were deepened to the Flockton Thin and were known as the Denby Grange Colliery after the nearby seat of the Lister Kayes. The Wellington shaft by the side of the turnpike road was deepened in 1828 and became the colliery’s main winding shaft.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Hope_Pit.JPG)Hope Pit
Wikimedia Commons
Hope Pit, {{convert|600|yd}} to the west, was sunk to the Old Hards seam and the Blossom Pit on the opposite side of the Wakefield to Austerlands turnpike road\[a\]Now the A642. was sunk by 1840. Hope Pit’s shaft descends {{convert|215|yd}} and produced coal after 1829. The coal was wound by horse gins until the 1920s.{{sfnp|SYGVPVYA}} The Inman Water Shaft was sunk to {{convert|97|yd}} in about 1840 to pump water from Hope Pit, and its beam engine house survives.{{sfnp|VIAKDSI5}} The shaft was later deepened to the New Hards Seam. The pits were originally ventilated by furnaces at the shaft bottoms.{{sfnp|MXBHSB3M|4}}
In 1850 new leases were negotiated with Lord Wharncliffe and in 1853 Sir John started his own mineral line to give access to more distant markets. [Kaye’s Mineral Line](https://engole.info/kayes-mineral-line/) opened in 1854, an unusual line, it used both rope and locomotive haulage to connect Caphouse to sidings by the Lancashire and Yorkshire’s Barnsley branch line and to staithes on the navigation at Calder Grove.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|137}}
The colliery was again developed in 1876 when the steam winding engine house, boiler yard, chimney, stone heapstead and ventilation shaft were completed for [Emma Lister-Kaye](https://engole.info/emma-lister-kaye/), the sole proprietor who had inherited the colliery from her father in 1871.{{sfnp|EHELB4UK|14}} She had the Caphouse shaft deepened to the New Hards seam at {{convert|141|yd}}. The winding engine was bought second-hand and power was supplied by two Lancashire boilers.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|138}} The headframe is built of pitch pine with steel braces, a late survivor of its type. The Caphouse shaft is {{convert|11|ft|r=1}} in diameter, and although it had been deepened and widened, may have been the oldest working mine shaft in the country in the 1980s.{{sfnp|SYGVPVYA}}
The New Hards seam was worked out at the Hope and Blossom Pits in 1885. Blossom Pit closed and Hope Pit was deepened to the Wheatley Lime seam at {{convert|129|yd}}.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|138}} Hope Pit and Caphouse were not connected until a roadway was driven through the fault that separated their workings in 1887. All coal was subsequently wound to the surface at the Caphouse shaft and a ventilation fan was fitted at the Hope shaft.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|138}}
In 1892 colliers were paid 4/6d. per day and 13/6d. in 1938.{{sfnp|EHELB4UK|17}} In 1901 the colliery employed 93 workers and this total rose to 206 in 1911, and 240 in 1918.{{sfnp|EHELB4UK|22}}
After Emma Lister-Kaye’s death in 1905, the Denby Grange Collieries, comprised of Caphouse and the Prince of Wales Colliery (locally known as Wood Pit) near Midgley, were managed by her executors. Percy Greaves, the manager, introduced machinery to undercut the coal by 1911. Greaves bought the colliery in 1917 and in 1922 his company was incorporated as Denby Grange Collieries Ltd. It had a workforce of 840 men. The company became Terry, Greaves and Lister-Kaye in 1928.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|139}} The pit
Pithead baths for 300 men and an administration block were built around 1937.{{sfnp|SYGVPVYA}} Caphouse Colliery was separated from the Prince of Wales and sold to Lockwood and Elliott who were working [Shuttle Eye Colliery](https://engole.info/shuttle-eye-colliery/) in 1943. The new company set about developing the Beeston seam via an inclined drift and the deepened Hope shaft. All coal was then moved out by road.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|139}}
The colliery became part of the [National Coal Board](https://engole.info/national-coal-board/) on nationalisation in 1947. The NCB replaced the back legs of the pitch pine headgear with rolled steel.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|139}} In 1960 an electric ventilation fan was installed at the Hope shaft, and after unsuccessful experiments with mechanising underground production using coal ploughs, mechanical shearers were introduced in the Beeston seam.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|140}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/NationalCoalminingMuseum%28IanM%29Aug2005.jpg)National Coalmining Museum
Wikimedia Commons
A surface drift to the Beeston seam opened in 1974 and winding coal ceased at the Caphouse shaft which was then used for pumping and ventilation.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|140}} In 1978 the colliery employed 230 men winning 4,000 tons of coal per week from the Beeston seam.{{sfnp|SYGVPVYA}} In 1981 the colliery was linked to the Prince of Wales Pit, by now named Denby Grange, by two 1¾ mile (2.8 km) underground roadways. In 1982 the Hope, and Caphouse shafts and the Caphouse drifts all became downcasts for Denby Grange Colliery and the winding engine was removed. In October 1981, the Caphouse workforce, 270 men, was transferred to the Denby Grange books.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|141}}
The Yorkshire Mining Museum trust was set up in 1983 and Caphouse opened as the Yorkshire Mining Museum in 1988.{{sfnp|VIAKDSI5}} The museum gained national status as the National Coal Mining Museum for England in 1995.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|141}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Now the A642.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22060
**Categories:** Coal mining, English, Museum, Yorkshire
---
### [Saltford Manor House](https://engole.info/saltford-manor-house/)
**Published:** December 22, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/saltfordManor1.webp[/pimage]Grade II* listed house in Saltford, Somerset, thought to be the oldest continuously inhabited private residence in England.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/saltfordManor1.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/RK9bYpSVHWzsA79A9}}
Saltford Manor House|
The Grade II\* [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) 12th-century Saltford Manor House in Saltford, Somerset is thought to be the oldest continuously occupied private residence in England.{{sfnp|XSETXCWI}}{{sfnp|NWWLQ426}}{{sfnp|5T8HV8E2}}
The house was built in about 1160 by Earl William of Gloucester, with major remodeling in the 17th century and some mid-20th century alterations and additions.{{sfnp|XSETXCWI}}
The architectural historian Anthony Emery believes that the three-storey house originally consisted of a large single room on each floor, with a vaulted chamber on the ground floor.{{sfnp|5AU4E9ED|30}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25826
**Categories:** Manor house
---
### [Inland Revenue Act 1880](https://engole.info/inland-revenue-act-1880/)
**Published:** August 15, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of Parliament to repeal the duties on Malt, to grant and alter certain duties of the Inland Revenue, and to amend the Laws in relation to certain other duties.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Inland Revenue Act 1880 (43 & 44 Vict. c. 20), also known as the Free Mash-Tun Act, full title *An Act to repeal the duties on Malt, to grant and alter certain duties of Inland Revenue, and to amend the Laws in relation to certain other duties*, was a United Kingdom Act of Parliament passed in 1880 during the reign of Queen Victoria.
Until the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer William Gladstone announced the new measure in his budget speech of 1880, breweries had been been taxed on the raw materials they used, mainly malted barley, which had been subject to taxation since 1660.\[a\]A similar tax on hops had been removed in 1870.{{sfnp|KEGKUDNL|376}} In a move that had implications for brewers for the next hundred years, they were henceforth to be taxed on the sugar content of their wort\[b\]Wort is the sweet liquid to which yeast is added to begin the fermentation process. based on a formula engineered by the Inland Revenue regardless of what raw materials were used and the amount or strength of the beer that was produced.{{sfnp|KEGKUDNL|376}}
The passage of the Beerhouse Act of 1830 had resulted in an explosion in the number of [beerhouses](https://engole.info/beerhouse/) and the brewers to supply them; *Baines Directory* of 1825 lists 27 breweries in Manchester and Salford, but by 1875 there were 75, a threefold increase. The effect of the Inland Revenue Act was to force many of the smaller and less efficient breweries out of business, as they were no longer able to compete with their larger brethren.{{sfnp|FATYVKSK|search=Introduction}}
The Act laid down a number of conditions that brewers were expected to adhere to, which proved to be too onerous for some breweries. All brewers had to purchase an annual licence, register their premises and the equipment used in their brewing process, and give 24 hours notice of their intention to brew.{{sfnp|KEGKUDNL|376}}
It was not until 1993 that the burden of taxation was shifted to the alcohol content of the finished beer.{{sfnp|KEGKUDNL|376}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a A similar tax on hops had been removed in 1870.{{sfnp|KEGKUDNL|376}} b Wort is the sweet liquid to which yeast is added to begin the fermentation process.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 4836
## External links
- [Full text of the Inland Revenue Act 1880](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1880/20/pdfs/ukpga_18800020_en.pdf)
**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Artificial Scotoma](https://engole.info/artificial-scotoma/)
**Published:** August 12, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Perceptual illusion in which an artificial blind spot is filled in by a twinkling background.
**Content:**
A scotoma is a blind spot, or area of reduced vision;{{sfnp|VGTNQRE7}} the grey square at the top left of the image represents an artificial scotoma, which is filled in by the twinkling background after staring at the centre of the image for a few seconds.
The phenomenon was first studied in detail by the psychologists Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Richard L. Gregory , and reported in a letter to the journal *Nature* in 1991.{{sfnp|VGTNQRE7}} In it they reported that the “filling in” seen in the illusion is an active process that may involve the creation of a neural representation of the surround, rather than merely ignoring the absence of information from the scotoma.{{sfnp|3ZJNX5Y4}}
Fixing your gaze on the centre of the image for a few seconds will result in the square being replaced by the twinkling dots
## See also
- [Troxler effect](https://engole.info/troxler-effect)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25547
**Categories:** Perceptual illusion
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Hagstone](https://engole.info/hagstone/)
**Published:** February 9, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Clitheroe_museum_hag_stone_8555.JPG[/pimage]Pebble pierced by a naturally occurring hole, believed to possess magical properties.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Clitheroe_museum_hag_stone_8555.JPG)Hagstone in the collection of the Clitheroe Castle Museum
Wikimedia Commons
Hagstones, also known as adder stones or witch stones, are pebbles pierced by a naturally occurring hole.{{sfnp|FIEWJS8I}} They are believed by some to be a protection against witchcraft, and an effective treatment for diseases caused by [spells](https://engole.info/spell-magical) or the [evil eye](https://engole.info/evil-eye), and in particular hag-riding, a phenomenon now known as [sleep paralysis](https://engole.info/incubus/#Modern_interpretation).{{sfnp|I3Q3CVTD}} Some believed that a hagstone only became effective once a cord had been threaded through the hole to hang it by.{{sfnp|XXPUVGDA|loc=22304}}
The occultist Aleister Crowley, dubbed “the wickedest man in the world” following the publication of his book *Diary of a Drug Fiend* in 1922,{{sfnp|ZBVXFPA9}} spent his final years in the seaside town of Hastings.{{sfnp|DAK8K7WQ}} He is alleged to have cursed the town’s inhabitants, compelling any who left it to return. The only means of a lasting escape was to always carry a hagstone taken from the beach at Hastings.{{sfnp|7HLH6GCL}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25128
**Categories:** Apotropaic, Magic
---
### [Horace Henry Cauty](https://engole.info/horace-henry-cauty/)
**Published:** April 23, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Tennis-Match.webp[/pimage]English painter of genre, landscape and historical scenes (c. 1846 –1909).
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Tennis-Match.webp)*Tennis Players*, 1885
flickr
Horace Henry Cauty (c. 1846 – 1909), also known as Horace Henry Canty, was an English painter who specialised in [genre](https://engole.info/genre-painting), landscape and historical scenes. Born in Southwark, London he exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Suffolk Street Gallery and the New Water-Colour Society from 1867.{{sfnp|8Y6D6ICG}}{{sfnp|CHRZARXQ}}
*Tennis Players*, completed in 1885 and probably Cauty’s best-known work today, was sold at auction to a private collector in London in 1979 for £1,200, equivalent to about £7,200 as at 2022.{{sfnp|8Y6D6ICG}}{{sfnp|CHRZARXQ}}\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26195
**Categories:** English, Male, Painter
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [London Mercury](https://engole.info/london-mercury/)
**Published:** November 28, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/Portrait_of_J._C._Squire.jpg/960px-Portrait_of_J._C._Squire.jpg[/pimage]Monthly literary magazine published from 1919 until 1939.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/Portrait_of_J._C._Squire.jpg/960px-Portrait_of_J._C._Squire.jpg)J. C. Squire, founder and editor from 1919 until 1934
Wikimedia Commons
*The London Mercury* was a monthly publication founded in 1919 by the English writer and editor John Collings Squire (1884–1958),{{sfnp|75RGRQ2Z}} who edited the magazine from its inception until 1934. Its ambition was to fill a gap in the literary magazines market, fostering the teaching of English and appreciation of the arts.{{sfnp|HUZSPKU9}}
Popular during much of the 1920s, the magazine’s circulation went into decline before its editorship passed to the journalist and literary critic Rolfe Arnold Scott-James (1878–1959) in 1934. Squire’s editorial stance had been rather conservative and very anti-Modernism, but Scott-James switched the magazine’s focus towards the work of more progressive authors such as Mervyn Peake and W. H. Auden.{{sfnp|75RGRQ2Z}}
The magazine purchased its smaller rival, *The Bookman*, in 1934, but ran into financial difficulties a few years later. The last issue of *The London Mercury* was published in April 1939, after which it was absorbed into *Life and Letters Today*.{{sfnp|HUZSPKU9}}
## Editors
- J. C. Squires (1919–1934)
- Rolfe Arnold Scott-James (1934–1939)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25750
**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [Cat Sith](https://engole.info/cat-sith/)
**Published:** February 5, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Cat-Sith.jpg[/pimage]Fairy cat of the Highlands of Scotland, black and as large as a dog.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Cat-Sith.jpg)Pinterest
The cat sith (also cait sith or cait shith) is a fairy cat of the Highlands of Scotland. It is described as being black and as large as a dog, with a white spot on its chest. Some considered it to be a transformed witch rather than a fairy.{{sfnp|KH5HEE89|search=cat sith}}\[a\]It was a commonly held belief that blacks cats were actually witches who had taken on the form of a cat, which they could do up to nine times.{{sfnp|VGCWWL2L|Black Cats}} The beast may have been inspired by sightings of [Kellas cats](https://engole.info/kellas-cat/) – a felid hybrid of domestic cats and Scottish wildcats.{{sfnp|5BDKG8R4|237}}
Coffins had to be guarded before burial to keep the cat sith at bay, as it was said to steal the souls of the recently deceased before they had been claimed by the gods.{{sfnp|YHZ3MCNZ}} Efforts were also made to distract the animal from its task by sprinkling catnip around the house and extinguishing the fire in the room where the body lay, to make it less welcoming for the sinister visitor.{{sfnp|NUXUB8CX}}
But the cat sith could also bring good luck if it drank from a saucer of milk left out for it on the Gaelic festival of Samhain, marking the beginning of winter.{{sfnp|NUXUB8CX}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a It was a commonly held belief that blacks cats were actually witches who had taken on the form of a cat, which they could do up to nine times.{{sfnp|VGCWWL2L|Black Cats}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 14265
**Categories:** Mythical creature
---
### [Psyche Entering Cupid's Garden](https://engole.info/psyche-entering-cupids-garden/)
**Published:** June 18, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Psyche-Entering-Cupids-Garden-.webp[/pimage]Painting in the Pre-Raphaelite style by John William Waterhouse (1849–1917), depicting Psyche attempting to catch a glimpse of her secretive lover
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Psyche-Entering-Cupids-Garden-.webp)Oil on canvas
143 cm × 105 cm (56 in × 41 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Psyche Entering Cupid’s Garden* is an oil painting in the [Pre-Raphaelite](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood) style by [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/) (1849–1917), painted in 1903.{{sfnp|6BB3KF8U}} Like many of his later works, the picture contains only a single figure, almost invariably female.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|118}}
In Roman mythology, Cupid was sent by his jealous mother, the goddess Venus, to punish Psyche for her beauty, but instead he fell in love with her. To keep his identity secret, he would only meet her after dark. The painting depicts Psyche attempting to catch a glimpse of her secretive lover in daylight.{{sfnp|6BB3KF8U}}
The garden represents Cupid’s domain, and the rose Psyche holds in her left hand symbolises love and beauty.{{sfnp|TYFDSBHH}}
The painting is now in the collection of the Harris Museum & Art Gallery in Preston, Lancashire.{{sfnp|6BB3KF8U}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27536
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Padderbury Top](https://engole.info/padderbury-top/)
**Published:** July 8, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Padderbury_Top_-_geograph.org.uk_-_171437.jpg[/pimage]Small Iron Age hillfort in Cornwall.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Padderbury_Top_-_geograph.org.uk_-_171437.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/aA7netS8oZUDc77p6
Padderbury Top is an Iron Age defended settlement – a small hillfort – about {{convert|2|mi|r=1|spell=in}} south-east of Menheniot, in Cornwall, England, named after the hill on which it is situated. It is a scheduled monument.{{sfnp|WDAI4S7U}}
The settlement survives as a roughly circular central enclosure about {{convert|73|m|yd}} in diameter, defined by an inner rampart bank up to {{convert|3|m}} in height externally and up to {{convert|1|m}} internally. It is concentrically surrounded by a closely-set second rampart up to a metre in height. There are entrances on the western and eastern sides.{{sfnp|WDAI4S7U}}{{sfnp|WEFAP969}}
Aerial photographs have revealed that there were originally up to four lines of defence, one between the two visible ramparts and an outer bank with a ditch. The outer earthworks have been ploughed, as has the interior of the settlement.{{sfnp|WDAI4S7U}}{{sfnp|WEFAP969}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27643
**Categories:** Cornwall, Hillfort, Monument
---
### [Judy (satirical magazine)](https://engole.info/judy-satirical-magazine/)
**Published:** February 6, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** British satirical magazine published from 1867 until 1907.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/Ib-and-little-christina.jpg/960px-Ib-and-little-christina.jpg)Cartoon from 27 November 1901 issue of *Judy*
Wikimedia Commons
*Judy: or, The London Serio-Comic Journal* was a British satirical humour magazine published from 1867 until 1907. The name “Judy” alluded to the Punch and Judy puppet show, and was chosen in direct reference to the magazine’s more established rival *Punch*, founded in 1841.{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2}}
In its 14 August 1867 issue *Judy* introduced [Ally Sloper](https://engole.info/ally-sloper), a character created by the magazine’s then editor Charles Ross. Ally Sloper became the first continuing comic-strip hero, and went on to become the first comic strip character to get its own regular weekly magazine, *Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday*, the first issue of which was published on 3 May 1884.{{sfnp|BHH5PIHE}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25994
**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [Ophelia](https://engole.info/ophelia/)
**Published:** July 1, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/JWW_Ophelia_1889.jpg[/pimage]Series of three paintings by John William Waterhouse, reflecting his interpretation of Ophelia, a character from Shakespeare's Hamlet
**Content:**
*Ophelia* is the title given to three different paintings by the English artist [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/).{{sfnp|XFEH4NZL|110}} He may have been planning to depict a fourth version of the character, as a drawing marked as *A Study for ‘Ophelia in the Churchyard’* was a lot in the 1926 auction at Christie’s of his remaining works. None of his artworks bear that title; the academic Anthony Hobson suggests that the drawing may alternatively have been a study for the 1910 version.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|174}}
The works reflect the artist’s interpretation of the character Ophelia from the Shakespearean tragedy, *Hamlet*. Ophelia is the young daughter of Polonius; she is in love with Hamlet but her affection is not reciprocated. As a consequence of Hamlet murdering her father she becomes insane with grief, spending her time chanting lewd, death-obsessed, songs while gathering flowers in a riverside meadow. As she sits at the waterside twisting the flowers into garlands, she slips into the water and drowns, continuing to sing as she dies.{{sfnp|YAQ67IS2}}
## 1889 version
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/JWW_Ophelia_1889.jpg)The first of Waterhouse’s trilogy of paintings of Ophelia
Oil on canvas 98 cm x 158 cm (38.5 in x 62 in)
Wikimedia Commons
The first of the Waterhouse *Ophelia* paintings, submitted as his Royal Academy exhibit for 1889,{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|183}} adopted the style of the naturalistic techniques of the French artist Jules Bastien-Lepage.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|95}} This painting, together with *[The Magic Circle](https://engole.info/the-magic-circle/)* and *[The Lady of Shalott](https://engole.info/the-lady-of-shalott/)*, are the only recorded works in which he presented an imaginary figure in this style.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|97}}
Waterhouse depicted Ophelia lying in a wanton unladylike manner within the meadow prior to her nearing the river which is shown in the background; her dark dishevelled hair is entwined with a band of daisies. Buttercups are held in one of her hands while her dress has wildflowers she collected laid on her lap. Swallows, a motif for salvation, flit above the grass. She stares hauntingly at the viewer.{{sfnp|JRFG9RGY|46}}{{sfnp|Y52YELHC|124}}{{sfnp|BZ62EINM|ix}}
According to historian Peter Trippi, she is “on the verge of sexual awakening posing provocatively among symbols of natural fecundity that will also fade.”{{sfnp|Y52YELHC|124}} The prostrate figure is similar to that used by John Everett Millais in his 1859 painting *Spring (Apple Blossoms)*, which Waterhouse viewed at the Grosvenor retrospective exhibition in 1886. Art expert Robert Upstone ponders that, as the figure has been reversed, the early sketches may have a degree of being traced.{{sfnp|JRFG9RGY|46-47}} The landscaping bears similarities to William Logsdail’s Academy exhibit of 1892, *Flower Gathering in the South of France*.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|51-52}}\[a\]Waterhouse and Logsdail had been close neighbours since 1889.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|52}}
The painting received mixed reviews from contemporary critics. Bernard Shaw\[b\]After 1876 George Bernard Shaw styled himself as Bernard Shaw.{{sfnp|NMV2XAI8|3-4}} thought the style used worked more successfully than when Waterhouse employed it in the previous year’s exhibit, *The Lady of Shalott*;{{sfnp|Y52YELHC|124}} the critic writing in *The Art Journal* of 1889 however declared that the artist “displays the mad maiden in no novelty of attitude”.{{sfnp|JRFG9RGY|47}} It was likely Waterhouse expected Henry Tate to purchase the work but it did not sell, staying in the artist’s possession;{{sfnp|JRFG9RGY|48}}\[c\]Waterhouse loaned the painting to the Academy for a spell while he was working on his Diploma picture.{{sfnp|Y52YELHC|124}} It was held by the Royal Academy from November 1895 until 1901.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|142}} a contemporary photograph of the painting indicates that the artist toned down the severity of Ophelia’s stare{{sfnp|Y52YELHC|124}} also reducing the intensity of her state of madness by adjusting her mouth and eyes.{{sfnp|GPI4QC8T|116}} *Ophelia* was eventually sold by the artist’s widow, [Esther](https://engole.info/esther-kenworthy-waterhouse/), in the sale at Christie’s on 23 July 1926.{{sfnp|Y52YELHC|129}} It was acquired by Gooden and Fox for £450 guineas, reflecting the fall from favour of the [work of Victorian painters](https://engole.info/victorian-painting/) at that time.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|183}}{{sfnp|Y52YELHC|129}} Appearing at Christie’s auction on 2 August 1956, it was purchased by Dent for 16 guineas. Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber added it to his art collection in 2001.{{sfnp|VVYKPUH5|308}}
## 1894 version
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/John_William_Waterhouse_-_Ophelia_%281894%29.jpg)The second Waterhouse depiction of Ophelia from 1894
Oil on canvas 73.6 cm × 124.4 cm (29 in × 49 in)
Wikimedia Commons
Returning more closely to his preoccupation with water and the demise of women, for his second version of *Ophelia* Waterhouse portrays the character in the moments before she slips to her watery death.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|133}} Posed sitting on the bough of a willow tree that stretches over a lily covered area of water within a darkened glade, her white opalescent, medieval-style robe is decorated with a golden royal lion. The branches of the tree form a frame around Ophelia with reeds growing in the foreground of the picture. Moving away from the intensity given to the gaze of the central figure in the 1889 version, this Ophelia has a softer appearance with only one eye shown to the viewer; the sense of her derangement and distress is given instead by her raised arms and self-absorbed expression. Her mouth is closed rather than open so she is not singing at that moment. Entwined with daisies and poppies, her long auburn hair trails down the length of her back; the poppies are a symbol of her imminent death.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|133, 135}}{{sfnp|GPI4QC8T|118}}
Proving to be the most popular of Waterhouse’s depictions of Ophelia, engravings of it were carried in *The Magazine of Art* in 1895 and repeated in *The Art Journal* of 1909.{{sfnp|GPI4QC8T|118}} Like the earlier version, it also received mixed reviews from contemporary critics. The reviewer in *The Magazine of Art* felt it was “pictorially a strong reading of character” whereas George Moore writing in *The Speaker* scathingly noted it as “a vulgarity of Tottenham Court Road manufacture.”{{sfnp|5ZD6ITWN|104}}\[d\]Art historian Angus Trumble states George Moore was known to dislike any paintings showing a French influence; Moore was also uncomplimentary about Waterhouse’s *[Circe Invidiosa](https://engole.info/circe-invidiosa/)* writing that “The colour scheme, the blue dress and the green water–how theatrical, how its richness reeks of the French Studio!”{{sfnp|5ZD6ITWN|104}}
Exhibited at both the New Gallery and the Liverpool Autumn exhibition in 1894, it was purchased from the artist by George McCulloch for around £700.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|233-234}}{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|186}}\[e\]George McCulloch (1848-1907), a Scottish businessman, was a multi-millionaire who made his fortune from investments and silver mining in Australia; he returned to Britain in 1893 and, over the next decade, amassed a large art collection of more than 300 pictures.{{sfnp|8MI89SUK}} During the next century the painting was auctioned several times; the prices achieved chart the decline and eventual return to fashion of Victorian art.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|233}} Following McCulloch’s death, his collection – which included this version of the painting{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|186}} – was controversially displayed at the winter exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1909 before being offered for sale by his widow at Christie’s in May 1913.{{sfnp|8MI89SUK}}\[f\]It was controversial as it was known that the collection was intended to be sold, resulting in claims of commercialism levied against the Academy.{{sfnp|8MI89SUK}} Purchased by Gooden and Fox via the Christie’s auction on 29 May 1913, the price for *Ophelia* had dropped to 450 guineas. The value fell even further on 21 December 1950 – again at Christie’s – when it changed hands from the late H W Henderson to Lord Hayter for 20 guineas. By the late 1960s,\[g\]Trippi quotes 1969{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|234}} whereas Hobson gives the auction date as 19 January 1968.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|186}} when it was sold by Lady Hayter, the market was beginning to show signs of a slight improvement as the price was £420. A short time later, on 5 March 1971, when it was bought by Clovis, its value had risen sevenfold to £3,000.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|233-234}}{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|186}} On 14 June 2000 it was sold at Phillips auction house for £1.6 million with intervening sale prices of £75,000 in 1982 and £419,500 in 1993.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|234, 244}} Writing in the *Historical Dictionary of Romantic Art and Architecture* in 2019 the academic Allison Lee Palmer records the painting as being part of the Schaeffer art collection.{{sfnp|7WEFFYSQ|317, 391}}
## 1910 version
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a3/John_William_Waterhouse_-_Ophelia_%281910%29.jpg/960px-John_William_Waterhouse_-_Ophelia_%281910%29.jpg)The third painting in the series
Oil on canvas 100 cm x 62 cm (39 in x 24 in)
Wikimedia Commons
Waterhouse may have been prompted to revisit featuring Ophelia as his heroine by the inclusion of his 1894 version within the 1909 exhibition of McCulloch’s collection.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|210}} Exhibited at the Royal Academy in the summer of 1910,{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|210}} the artist has moved away from the predominantly muted hues of white and green used in the two previous renditions, instead introducing vivid splashes of colour like cornflower blue, deep reds and yellows.{{sfnp|HBWUI7QQ|78}}
Presented in a dramatic stage-like but outdoor setting, Ophelia lacks the adolescence of the previous portrayals, rather she is depicted as a mature woman with a fully developed bust.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|210, 213}} Her outfit retains the medieval style decorated with an embroidered royal lion;{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|213}} she clasps a posy in her hand and her long hair is entwined with flowers.{{sfnp|GPI4QC8T|119}} Waterhouse conveys her delirium by the manic expression in her eyes coupled with the colouring of her cheeks and the out thrust angle given to her chin. Her intent gaze is fixed firmly on the viewer as she approaches them – or, alternatively, she is stepping out towards the water where she will meet her death.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|213}}{{sfnp|GPI4QC8T|119}}
Objects similar or common to the artist’s preceding versions include the framework of willow tree branches, the lily-covered water and reeds placed in the foreground of the picture.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|213}} A device not used in the series before is the inclusion of two bystanders witnessing the scene from a bridge set in the background; according to Trippi this addition increases the theatrical dynamics{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|213}} and academic Kimberley Rhodes considers it suggestive of a “stage audience”.{{sfnp|GPI4QC8T|119}}
Hobson documents the painting first appearing at the Sotheby’s sale of the art collection of Colonel Fairfax Rhodes on 11 July 1934 where it fetched £68 from Newman. Details are sketchy but he held it until 1937 when it passed to W. R. Fasey; by 1989 it was in the possession of Julian Hartnoll. It was acquired by Lord Lloyd Webber in 1994.{{sfnp|VVYKPUH5|308}}{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|190}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Waterhouse and Logsdail had been close neighbours since 1889.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|52}} b After 1876 George Bernard Shaw styled himself as Bernard Shaw.{{sfnp|NMV2XAI8|3-4}} c Waterhouse loaned the painting to the Academy for a spell while he was working on his Diploma picture.{{sfnp|Y52YELHC|124}} It was held by the Royal Academy from November 1895 until 1901.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|142}} d Art historian Angus Trumble states George Moore was known to dislike any paintings showing a French influence; Moore was also uncomplimentary about Waterhouse’s *[Circe Invidiosa](https://engole.info/circe-invidiosa/)* writing that “The colour scheme, the blue dress and the green water–how theatrical, how its richness reeks of the French Studio!”{{sfnp|5ZD6ITWN|104}} e George McCulloch (1848-1907), a Scottish businessman, was a multi-millionaire who made his fortune from investments and silver mining in Australia; he returned to Britain in 1893 and, over the next decade, amassed a large art collection of more than 300 pictures.{{sfnp|8MI89SUK}} f It was controversial as it was known that the collection was intended to be sold, resulting in claims of commercialism levied against the Academy.{{sfnp|8MI89SUK}} g Trippi quotes 1969{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|234}} whereas Hobson gives the auction date as 19 January 1968.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|186}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 21612
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
**Tags:** Facebook post, Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Shoddy and mungo](https://engole.info/shoddy-and-mungo/)
**Published:** November 20, 2021
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Machell_Bros_Ltd_-_Bradford_Road_-_geograph.org.uk_-_691175.jpg[/pimage]Manufacture of shoddy and mungo, an early form of recycling, was an important industry in the Heavy Woollen district of West Yorkshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Machell_Bros_Ltd_-_Bradford_Road_-_geograph.org.uk_-_691175.jpg)Machell’s Mill in Dewsbury
Wikimedia Commons
Shoddy and mungo manufacture was an important industry in the [Heavy Woollen District](https://engole.info/heavy-woollen-district/) of West Yorkshire in the mid-19th century. Both processes recycled used woollen rags to create fibres that could be made into new products.
Rag pickers sought out fabric made of cotton or linen that could be ground up to make paper. Anything containing wool was to be avoided as being worthless.{{sfnp|SCIDZ4Z3|314}} In London in the early 1800s rags containing wool were ground up in unpatented machines that produced fibrous material that was used by mattress makers or to stuff saddles. Benjamin Law of Batley saw the process in 1813 and decided to experiment with soft woollen rags made of worsted rags which were shredded by machine to make shoddy which could be spun with wool to produce yarn. Law was successful and produced cloth that also came to be known as shoddy.{{sfnp|SCIDZ4Z3|315}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/devil2.jpg)Rag grinding machine, commonly known as a “devil”
Samuel Parr was the first producer of mungo in 1834. He used old coats and trousers, tailors clippings, ground up to to produce shorter fibres than shoddy.{{sfnp|SCIDZ4Z3|315}}
Apart from rags obtained locally, bales of rags were brought to Batley to be first sorted by women.{{sfnp|SCIDZ4Z3|315}} The rags came from France, Germany, Holland and Belgium, Ireland and Scotland in various degrees of cleanliness. Pickers sorted the bales by quality and colour before they were sent to the grinding machine. Locally called the “devil”, the machine’s spiked drum turned speedily tearing the rags to shreds as they passed through.{{sfnp|SCIDZ4Z3|316}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Recycled_wool_pile.jpg)Shoddy
Wikimedia Commons
As the machinery was improved the number of teeth on the spinning drum increased to 12,000 and up to 15,000 for mungo. The drum revolved from 700 to 1500 times per minute and mechanical fans were added to extract the dust.{{sfnp|SCIDZ4Z3|316}} Nothing was wasted; seams from the rags were cut off and rotted down for conditioning soil as was the dust extracted by the fan. What was not used locally in the [Rhubarb Triangle](https://engole.info/rhubarb-triangle/) was sent to the hop fields of Kent. The dried dust was also used to make flock wallpaper.{{sfnp|SCIDZ4Z3|316}}
The object of using shoddy in woollen manufacture was to produce cheap, useful cloth in the most economical way. When not added in too great a proportion, shoddy cloth was cheaper than pure wool but equally serviceable. Adding too much shoddy produced cheap but inferior cloth and shoddy came to mean poor quality.{{sfnp|JRX2IRVR|2-4}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24155
**Categories:** Yorkshire
**Tags:** Facebook post, Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Peristyle](https://engole.info/peristyle/)
**Published:** July 28, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Roman_Baths_in_Bath_Spa%2C_England_-_July_2006.jpg[/pimage]Range of columns surrounding an architectural feature.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Roman_Baths_in_Bath_Spa%2C_England_-_July_2006.jpg)Peristyle surrounding the Roman Baths in Bath, Somerset
Wikimedia Commons
A peristyle is a range of columns surrounding a building, courtyard or other architectural feature.{{sfnp|CYK9WXZG}} The term is a borrowing from the French *péristyle*, itself derived from the Latin *peristylum*, referring to the colonnade surrounding the interior court of a building;{{sfnp|PF3X3TFM}} the court itself is known as the peristylium.{{sfnp|KS8MJHMT}}
The peristyle was an important feature of Greek and Roman architecture.{{sfnp|HK5JFXZS}} In the Christian ecclesiastical architecture that developed from the Roman basilica, a courtyard peristyle and its central space came to be known as a [cloister](https://engole.info/cloister).{{sfnp|GY5LUVPP}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24832
**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Black Drop](https://engole.info/black-drop/)
**Published:** May 2, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Black-Drop.webp[/pimage]Tincture of opium consisting of opium, verjuce, spices and sugar.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Black-Drop.webp)Hektoen International
Black Drop was a tincture of opium invented by the Quaker Edward Tunstall of Bishop Auckland in County Durham. It consisted of a mixture of opium, verjuce,\[a\]Verjuce is a vinegary juice squeezed from unripe green grapes.{{sfnp|P339KC4Y}} spices and sugar, presented as a dark-coloured syrup.{{sfnp|P339KC4Y}}
The patent medicine was recommended for the treatment of a wide range of conditions, including cancer, diabetes, travel sickness, hay fever, headache and depression, and even for soothing restless children. It was widely available from pharmacists, grocers, bakers, tailors, market vendors and country peddlers, until its sale was regulated by the Pharmacy Act of 1868.{{sfnp|BNJAU5EB}}{{sfnp|SF88GDD4}}
Black Drop was sold under various trade names, including Kendal Black Drop, Lancaster Black Drop, Quaker’s Black Drop and Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup.{{sfnp|BNJAU5EB}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Verjuce is a vinegary juice squeezed from unripe green grapes.{{sfnp|P339KC4Y}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27431
**Categories:** Patent medicine
---
### [Sedilia](https://engole.info/sedilia/)
**Published:** April 3, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Sedilia_-_geograph.org.uk_-_360852.jpg[/pimage]Seats for the officiating clergy found on the south side of an altar.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Sedilia_-_geograph.org.uk_-_360852.jpg)14th-century sedilia at St Andrew’s Church, Heckington, Lincolnshire
Wikimedia Commons
Sedilia (plural of Latin *sedīle*, “seat”) are seats, usually made of stone but sometimes wooden, found on the south side of an altar, often in the [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel), for use during Mass by the officiating priest and his assistants, the deacon and sub-deacon. An established feature in English churches by the 12th century, they are rarely found elsewhere in Europe.{{sfnp|9ZICXPTF}}
In more recent times, since 1964,\[a\]Following the Church of England’s Faculty Jurisdiction Measure, 1964. the sedilia has largely been replaced by a chair for the celebrant in the centre of the chancel.{{sfnp|K34CMJFL}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Following the Church of England’s Faculty Jurisdiction Measure, 1964.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26124
**Categories:** Religious architecture
---
### [Church of St Lawrence, Hatfield](https://engole.info/church-of-st-lawrence-hatfield/)
**Published:** April 24, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/St._Lawrence%2C_Hatfield_from_the_south_east_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3275684.jpg[/pimage]Active Anglican church in Hatfield, South Yorkshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/St._Lawrence%2C_Hatfield_from_the_south_east_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3275684.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/xDJugHLWZ6kvRiC66}}
Viewed from the south-east
The Church of St Lawrence is an active Anglican church in the town of Hatfield, in the [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of South Yorkshire. It is in the Archdeaconry of Doncaster, the Deanery of Snaith and Hatfield, the Diocese of Sheffield, and is a member of the [Benefice](https://engole.info/benefice) of Saint Lawrence Hatfield.{{sfnp|9ZL8Y99J}}
According to the Venerable Bede there has been a Christian church on the site since at least 633 AD,{{sfnp|ECIRV7NK}} but the oldest parts of the present-day church date from the 12th century. The [arcades](https://engole.info/arcade) were added in the 13th century, and the remainder of the church dates from the 15th century. Alterations were carried out by Thomas Jackson in 1872, and the church was restored by Edwin Dolby in 1882.{{sfnp|B887WW2Y}}
St Lawrence’s was designated a Grade I [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in 1966.{{sfnp|B887WW2Y}}
## Architecture
### Exterior
The church is built to a cruciform plan, with a {{convert|100|ft|adj=on}} tall central tower bearing the arms of the Savage family, one of whom was Archbishop of York from 1501–1507. It is built of pebble, rubble and [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) limestone, taken from Roche Abbey in Rotherham. The roofs are of lead and slate.{{sfnp|ECIRV7NK}}{{sfnp|B887WW2Y}}
### Interior
The font has a base dating from about 1300; the upper part is 19th century. The stained glass is mostly 19th century, designed by Charles Eamer Kempe, with a Millennium window added to the north [transept](https://engole.info/transept) in 2000. There is a dug-out chest made of bog oak, which is thought to date from the 12th century, and originally had ten locks. A suit of 16th-century armour formerly on display in the south chapel is now on long-term loan to the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds.{{sfnp|ECIRV7NK}}{{sfnp|B887WW2Y}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29922
**Categories:** Anglican, Church, Yorkshire
---
### [Duntrune Castle](https://engole.info/duntrune-castle/)
**Published:** October 3, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** 17th-century Grade B listed building on the shore of Loch Crinan, Argyll and Bute, in the west of Scotland.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/DuntruneCastle%28PatrickMackie%29Jun2006.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/P16APUQF2u7vFpHa6}}
View from the east
Duntrune Castle is a 17th-century Grade B [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) on the shore of Loch Crinan, Argyll and Bute, on the west coast of Scotland.{{sfnp|XJ6AWGYN}} It was the seat of the Campbells of Duntroon until 1792, when it was bought by the O’Challums (now anglicised to Malcolm), whose direct descendants still occupy the castle. Duntrune is generally accepted to be the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Scotland.{{sfnp|VPZNHXII}}
The castle is designed in a traditional L-shaped plan, and incorporates some walls of an earlier 13th-century castle. It is of two storeys and attics, and is built of rubble, with gabled slate roofs.{{sfnp|XJ6AWGYN}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27988
**Categories:** Castle, Scottish
---
### [Emery GT](https://engole.info/emery-gt/)
**Published:** August 26, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/1963-Emery-GT_02.jpg[/pimage]First Hillman Imp-based kit car.
**Content:**
The Emery GT, introduced in 1963, was the first kit car to be based on the Rootes Group’s Hillman Imp, also launched in the UK that year. The Emery’s glassfibre fixed-head coupé body was attached to a steel spaceframe chassis.{{sfnp|GFZUCDMC|85}}
The Imp engine was fitted at the rear, but a Ford engine was optional.{{sfnp|74UPCD35}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/1963-Emery-GT_02.jpg)allcarindex
**Manufacturer**:Paul Emery Cars**Production**:1963–1964
approximately 4 made
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22107
**Categories:** Kit car
---
### [The Tale of Benjamin Bunny](https://engole.info/the-tale-of-benjamin-bunny/)
**Published:** July 21, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/The_Tale_of_Benjamin_Bunny_cover.jpg[/pimage]Children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in September 1904. A sequel to The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902), it tells of Peter's return to Mr. McGregor's garden with his cousin Benjamin to retrieve the clothes he lost there during his earlier adventure.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/The_Tale_of_Benjamin_Bunny_cover.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
*The Tale of Benjamin Bunny* is a children’s book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in September 1904. A sequel to *The Tale of Peter Rabbit* (1902), it tells of Peter’s return to Mr. McGregor’s garden with his cousin Benjamin to retrieve the clothes he lost there during his earlier adventure. In *Benjamin Bunny*, Beatrix developed the rabbit universe she created in *Peter Rabbit*, and in doing so suggested that the rabbit world was parallel to the human world, but complete and sufficient unto itself.
*Benjamin Bunny* was an instant commercial and popular success, and thousands of copies were in print by the end of 1904. *The Times Literary Supplement* thought Beatrix’s illustrations “pencil perfect”,{{sfnp|R4UM4957|95}} but suggested that she engage a literary assistant for future productions. Beatrix created a nursery wallpaper tapping Benjamin’s image,{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|191}} and he returned as an adult rabbit in the *Flopsy Bunnies* and *Mr. Tod*. Benjamin Bunny was adapted in 1992 as an episode of the BBC animated television series *The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends*.
## Plot
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Benjamin_bunny_onions.jpg)Peter and Benjamin gathering onions for Mrs. Rabbit
Wikimedia Commons
When Mr. McGregor and his wife leave home in their gig, a light, sprung cart pulled by a single horse. Benjamin Bunny and his cousin Peter Rabbit venture into Mr. McGregor’s garden to retrieve the clothes Peter lost there in *The Tale of Peter Rabbit*. They find the blue jacket and brown shoes on a scarecrow, but Peter is apprehensive about lingering in the garden because of his previous experience. Benjamin delays their departure by gathering onions, which he wraps in Peter’s handkerchief, hoping to give them to his aunt, Peter’s mother. He then takes a casual stroll around the garden, followed by an increasingly nervous Peter.
Rounding a corner, they see a cat and hide under a basket, but the cat then sits on top of the basket for five hours, trapping the pair. Benjamin’s father enters the garden looking for his son. He knocks the cat away from the basket and locks her in the greenhouse, then rescues Benjamin and Peter. But he also punishes them for going to Mr. McGregor’s garden by whipping them with a switch he had brought. Once home, Peter gives the onions to his mother, who forgives his adventure because he has recovered his jacket and shoes. Following his return, Mr. McGregor is puzzled by the ridiculously small footprints, the scarecrow’s missing clothes and the cat locked in the greenhouse.
## Background
In 1901 Beatrix privately published *The Tale of Peter Rabbit*, and in 1902, Frederick Warne & Co. published a trade edition of the book, which was hugely successful. In 1904, she followed *Peter Rabbit* with its sequel, *The Tale of Benjamin Bunny*, and continued the rabbit saga in 1909 with *The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies* and in 1912 with *The Tale of Mr. Tod*. All the tales were in part inspired by Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus stories, which Beatrix illustrated as early as 1893 in an attempt to find a career direction. She was unable to successfully translate Harris’s characters to the English country garden, but she transformed the American author’s “lippity-clippity, clippity-lippity” to “lippity-lippity” in *Peter Rabbit*, and used his “rabbit tobacco” (lavender) in *Benjamin Bunny* and *Mr. Tod*. None of her rabbit characters were based on Br’er Rabbit; Harris’s rabbit wins by cunning, but Beatrix’s Benjamin and Peter win by pure luck. The Beatrix Potter scholar Ruth K. MacDonald has assessed Beatrix’s rabbit universe as a more pleasant place than that found in Harris’s stories.{{sfnp|I73JHAYR|23-24}}
## Composition and publication
Peter’s mother selling “herbs, and rosemary tea, and rabbit-tobacco”. The concept was cut from *Peter Rabbit*; here it suggests a rabbit world, parallel to the human one, and complete unto itself.{{sfnp
I73JHAYR|33-34
In July 1903, Beatrix suggested to her publisher Frederick Warne & Co. that the book to follow *The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin* and *The Tailor of Gloucester* ought to be something less complex than the two previous productions. She had several possible stories in mind and outlined them for the firm, but was anxious to settle on a choice as quickly as possible to guide her sketching while on holiday. It was decided between Beatrix and her publisher that one of the two books for 1904 would be *Benjamin Bunny*.{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|166-167}}{{sfnp|HVJIPW79|36}} Benjamin Bunny had been mentioned in the manuscript of the privately printed edition of *Peter Rabbit* but had been dropped as irrelevant to the tale. A picture of his father was included in the private edition although he has no part in the story.{{sfnp|I73JHAYR|33-34}}
Beatrix was sensitive to the beginnings and endings of her books and usually avoided the conventional at those key places. The publisher did not like the *Benjamin Bunny* ending, but Beatrix refused to alter it to their suggested “happily ever after” because such an ending in her estimation was “rather trite” and “inexact”. She suggested the last paragraph as it now appears in the book with the comment, “I would like the book to end with the word ‘rabbit-tobacco’, it is a rather fine word.”{{sfnp|I73JHAYR|36}} She rewrote several other passages including twice rewriting the passage depicting Mr. McGregor’s discovery of the cat locked in the greenhouse.{{sfnp|I73JHAYR|37}}
Summering at Fawe Park in Keswick, Cumbria with her parents, Beatrix filled her sketchbook with pictures of the estate’s several gardens including the kitchen garden and its greenhouses, cold frames, potting shed, and espaliered fruit trees. Her father photographed Fawe Park and Beatrix probably used his photographs (or her own) as an aid in her work.{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|167-168}} The picture of Old Mr. Bunny attacking the cat did not satisfy her publisher, and she redrew it as she did the picture of Benjamin and Peter standing on the garden wall.{{sfnp|I73JHAYR|38}} In *Peter Rabbi*t, Mr. McGregor’s garden was in Perthshire, but in *Benjamin Bunny* the rabbit clan and the garden setting were moved to the Lake District, where they remained for *The Tale of Mr. Tod*, the final book of the Peter Rabbit saga.{{sfnp|I73JHAYR|39}}
During her London winter,{{sfnp|HVJIPW79|115}} Beatrix developed her work, and, by the middle of June 1904, *Benjamin Bunny* was almost finished.{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|181}} Many of the sketches from her Fawe Park holiday were little altered in their migration to the book,{{sfnp|HVJIPW79|116}} and, upon completion of the work, Beatrix declared she was relieved to be finished with the rabbits.{{sfnp|LRGARG4R|85}}
The book was dedicated to “the children of Sawrey from old Mr. Bunny”.{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|181}}{{sfnp|LRGARG4R|100}} Beginnings and endings of tales were important to Beatrix, and she that specified *Benjamin Bunny* was to end with the words, “rabbit tobacco” – a term from Uncle Remus she had made her own.{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|181}}
Twenty thousand copies were published and released in September 1904. Within a month, reprints were ordered, and another ten thousand copies were printed at year’s end. Much to her embarrassment, Beatrix realized “muffettees” (a muff worn at the wrist) was misspelled, but the error was not corrected until the third printing.{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|182}}
## Illustrations
Beatrix borrowed a cat,{{sfnp|LRGARG4R|80}} and took a pet rabbit to Fawe Park as models. Her meticulous preparation before finalizing an illustration was noted in a letter to Warne: “I think I have done every imaginable rabbit background and miscellaneous sketches as well – about seventy! I hope you will like them, though rather scribbled.” Scribbled or not, the work is of the highest quality with the sketches of onions and red carnations (which were dropped as the frontispiece) being chief examples. The illustrations communicate her obvious appreciation and love for the humble pots, onions, and flowers of the garden. Many of the objects in the illustrations – the gate, the potting shed, the wall – have changed little over the years and are recognizable today from her illustrations.{{sfnp|HVJIPW79|115-117}} Aware the type of story she was writing was set primarily in colours of fawn, brown, and soft green, Beatrix wrote that, “the (red) handkerchief will make a good bit of colour all through the book.”{{sfnp|HVJIPW79|118}}
## Critical reception
The tale was well received by the *Scotsman*,{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|182}} but *The Times Literary Supplement* was not entirely enthusiastic:
Among the little books that have become as much a manifestation of autumn as falling leaves, one looks first for whatever Miss Beatrix Potter gives … In her new book … although there is no diminution in the charm and drollery of the drawings, Miss Potter’s fancy is not what it was. The story is inconclusive. Next year we think she must call in a literary assistant. We have no hesitation in calling her pencil perfect.{{sfnp
— R4UM4957|95}}
The Beatrix Potter biographer Linda Lear notes that none of the rabbit books subsequent to *Peter Rabbit* appealed to Beatrix with the passion she experienced for the original, but in *Benjamin Bunny* she successfully wrote a simple, didactic tale for very young children that was less complicated than *The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin* and *The Tailor of Gloucester*. But *Benjamin Bunny* lacked the vitality of her previous efforts, because it was made to order rather than allowed to flower from a picture letter to real children in the manner of *Peter Rabbit* and *Squirrel Nutkin*. The weak story line of *Benjamin Bunny* is evidence of her dwindling interest in continuing the *Peter Rabbit* saga, but the book displays a delight in place, a deep understanding of rabbit anatomy and behaviour, and beautifully miniaturized illustrations of vegetable gardens. *Benjamin Bunny* presented demands upon Beatrix she had not encountered in her previous three tales. She had depleted all her sketchbook backgrounds in the production of the other tales and was forced to create new ones, but the greatest challenge to Beatrix’s artistry was consciously working to satisfy her publisher’s demand for another commercial success and her public’s expectation of a tale as delightful as her others, while labouring under the pressure to produce a sequel to a work of genius.{{sfnp|A78V5SM5|182-184}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 21909
**Categories:** Children's literature
---
### [Salford Quays](https://engole.info/salford-quays/)
**Published:** October 25, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Salford_Quays_from_south_bank_of_MSC%2C_2008.jpg[/pimage]Area of Salford, Greater Manchester, England at the terminus of the Manchester Ship Canal. Previously the site of Manchester Docks, also known as Salford Docks, it became one of the first and largest urban regeneration projects in the United Kingdom following the closure of the dockyards in 1982.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Salford_Quays_from_south_bank_of_MSC%2C_2008.jpg)Salford Quays and the [Manchester Ship Canal](https://engole.info/manchester-ship-canal/) (looking west)
Wikimedia Commons
Salford Quays is an area of Salford, Greater Manchester, England at the terminus of the [Manchester Ship Canal](https://engole.info/manchester-ship-canal/). The area was previously part of Manchester Docks, which was made up of Pomona Docks\[a\]Pomona is the Roman goddess of fruit trees.{{sfnp|BJQQRETY}} – now largely abandoned – and the larger Salford Docks, both built by the Manchester Ship Canal Company. The docks were opened in 1894 by Queen Victoria,{{sfnp|WF2QRWBD}} and occupied {{convert|120|acre}} of water and {{convert|1000|acre}} of land.{{sfnp|6FQXEY4B}} At their height, the docks made Manchester the third busiest port in Britain, but after the introduction of large container ships too big to navigate the canal,{{sfnp|6FQXEY4B}} they were closed in 1982, resulting in the loss of 3000 jobs.{{sfnp|WF2QRWBD}} Salford Docks, now known as Salford Quays, subsequently became one of the largest urban regeneration projects in the United Kingdom.{{sfnp|6FQXEY4B}}
## Landmarks
### Imperial War Museum North
{{main|Imperial War Museum North}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/ImperialWarMuseumNorth02Trim.jpg)Entrance, at the base of the air shard tower
Wikimedia Commons
Designed by the Berlin-based architect Daniel Libeskind, and opened in July 2002, the Imperial War Museum North is one of the five branches of the Imperial War Museum. The building represents an interlocking of three fragments of a globe smashed apart and reassembled: earth, air and water, each forming a functionally distinct part of the museum.{{sfnp|XHFDXN3W}}
The museum occupies the site where the Hovis Grain Silos once stood, before being destroyed by bombing during the Second World War.{{sfnp|LHBQLQDF}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Pomona is the Roman goddess of fruit trees.{{sfnp|BJQQRETY}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23255
**Categories:** Greater Manchester
---
### [Grange Ash Colliery](https://engole.info/grange-ash-colliery/)
**Published:** August 21, 2021
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** Colliery that operated between 1871 and 1966, south of the A642 road east of Grange Moor crossroads.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Grange-Ash-Colliery-1894.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/RHHgnzfHwDGSFMym9}}
Grange Ash Colliery, 1894{{sfnp|ARVPQ64V}}|Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Grange Ash Colliery was sunk in fields to the north of [Flockton](https://engole.info/flockton/ "Flockton") village, just south of the Wakefield to Huddersfield Road (A642) between [Caphouse Colliery](https://engole.info/caphouse-colliery/) in Overton and [Shuttle Eye Colliery](https://engole.info/shuttle-eye-colliery/) at [Grange Moor](https://engole.info/grange-moor/) crossroads. It was sunk by Jesse Jaggar on open land opposite the Kaye Arms Inn on land leased from the Lister Kaye family who had already worked the shallow Flockton Thin seam at {{convert|10|yd}}, and the Old Hards seam at {{convert|44|yd}}. Production from the New Hards seam started in 1871.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|241}}
Jaggar leased the mineral rights to the New Hards seam at 96 yards and sank two {{convert|12|ft|adj=on}} diameter shafts, both of which had pitch pine headstocks and steam winding engines. The coal was worked by pillar and stall methods. The voids were backfilled by hand, so that no spoil was wound to the surface. Single-deck cages each raised two {{convert|8|cwt|adj=on|spell=in}} coal tubs, powered by four Lancashire steam boilers. The surface plant included blacksmith and fitting shops. Coal screens were erected near to the turnpike, connected to the colliery by a {{convert|200|yd|adj=on}} long tramway.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|241}}
The shafts were deepened to {{convert|150|yd}} to the Blocking seam in the 1880s, and production started in 1887. A steam-driven ventilation fan was installed at the No.2 shaft and an underground endless-rope system was powered by a steam engine.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|241}}
Jaggar was the sole owner until he formed a partnership with Benjamin Elliott, a part-owner of Shuttle Eye Colliery by 1896. They employed sixty-five underground workers and seven on the surface.{{sfnp|W6IMSJJW}} The New Hards seam was worked out by 1916 and the Green Lane seam was developed and wound from No. 2 shaft.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|241}} The colliery employed 104 underground workers and 18 on the surface in 1919.{{sfnp|W6IMSJJW}} Pithead baths were built in 1935. The Wheatley Lime seam was developed after 1938.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|241}} Grange Ash had 168 men underground in 1945 and 25 surface workers.{{sfnp|W6IMSJJW}}
In 1947 Grange Ash was nationalised and became part of the National Coal Board (NCB). The colliery employed 195 workers (170 underground and 25 surface) who produced 70,000 tons of gas and steam coal.{{sfnp|W6IMSJJW}} The colliery had limited reserves but the NCB modernised what was possible. A conveyor belt carried coal to the screens, electricity replaced steam power and coal cutting was mechanised where possible. The NCB opened up the Beeston seam.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|242}}
In 1957, 186 men produced 88,622 tons of coal and in 1959, Grange Ash was connected underground to [Emley Moor Colliery](https://engole.info/emley-moor-colliery/ "Emley Moor Colliery"). In 1964 the Beeston and Wheatley Lime seams were abandoned and the Blocking seam was approaching exhaustion. Half the workforce were transferred to other pits. The colliery closed in 1966 with the loss of 58 jobs. Surface demolition, shaft filling and capping took place in 1967 and the land was returned to agriculture; little evidence of the colliery remains.{{sfnp|A54GW64P|242}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23724
**Categories:** Coal mining, Yorkshire
---
### [Cailleach](https://engole.info/cailleach/)
**Published:** November 28, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/cailleach-bheure.jpg[/pimage]Ancient Celtic hag goddess who in her various guises shaped the land, controlled the forces of nature, and was responsible for the harsh nature of winter.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/cailleach-bheure.jpg)Cailleach Bheur
Eric Edwards Collected Works
The Cailleach is an ancient Celtic hag goddess who in her various guises shaped the land, controlled the forces of nature, and was responsible for the harsh nature of winter.{{sfnp|JRAPQE2D|loc=69-82}} The name Cailleach has also been associated with a possible Scottish priestess cult, the Cailleach Mhor Nam Fiadh, or Cailleachan.{{sfnp|JRAPQE2D|loc=257}}
There are many regional variants on the Cailleach in folklore, which opens up the possibility that rather than representing a single supernatural entity she actually represents a class of beings who share certain characteristics, one of which is their immense size, a common feature of Celtic divinities.{{sfnp|JRAPQE2D|loc=187, 243-257}}
## Regional variations
The Cailleach’s gigantic size appears in almost all the regional accounts, as does her ability to shape the land; her great age is another shared feature.{{sfnp|JRAPQE2D|loc=243-257}}
### Cailleach Bheur
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Biera.png)Biera with her magic hammer, drawing by John Duncan
*Wonder Tales from Scottish* *Myth and Legend*, p. 24
The Cailleach Bheur, or Beira, of the Scottish Highlands is a blue-faced hag, the spirit of winter,{{sfnp|XN26B2QX|43}} also known as the Gyre-Carline in Lowland Scotland. The folklorist Katharine Briggs has suggested that she may predate the Celtic entity bearing her name.{{sfnp|8LTUFE8K|58}}
According to the folklorist Donald Alexander Mackenzie, Beira was not only a goddess of winter, but also the “mother of all the gods and goddesses in Scotland” He describes her as having only one eye, a dull blue complexion, teeth as red as rust, and long white hair.{{sfnp|UBG5RMX2|22-25}} Beira was the daughter of Grianan, the winter sun.\[a\]The old Celtic calendar recognised two suns: the big sun that shone from Beltane until Halloween, and the little sun that shone from All Hallows to Beltane Eve.{{sfnp|8LTUFE8K|58}} At the beginning of spring each year the Cailleach would renew herself by drinking the waters of the Well of Youth on the mysterious Green Island of the West, where it is always summer. Revitalised, she would return to Scotland as a beautiful young woman and fall into a magical sleep. But she aged quickly, and her beauty was short-lived, so by the start of her reign over the land of Scotland from All Hallows until Beltane Eve\[b\]Beltane, halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, usually about the first day of May, is considered to be the start of summer in the Celtic calendar. she had become once again the withered old hag described by Mackenzie.{{sfnp|UBG5RMX2|24}}
Loch Ness
Wikimedia Commons
As well as her responsibility for the meteorology of the Scottish winter, Biera’s other task was to form the Scottish landscape, in which she was assisted by eight hags. With her magic hammer she would smash rocks and create the mountains, valleys and lochs of Highland Scotland. Perhaps the most prominent of the features she constructed was Loch Ness, named after Nessa, Biera’s maid, who as a punishment for neglecting her duties the Cailleach turned into that body of water.{{sfnp|UBG5RMX2|27-29}}
Biera grew older and more fierce as the winter progressed, until at last her strength was spent and she was forced to return to the Green Island once again to renew herself, thus paving the way for the arrival of Angus and Bride, the King and Queen of Summer and Plenty.{{sfnp|UBG5RMX2|31}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The old Celtic calendar recognised two suns: the big sun that shone from Beltane until Halloween, and the little sun that shone from All Hallows to Beltane Eve.{{sfnp|8LTUFE8K|58}} b Beltane, halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, usually about the first day of May, is considered to be the start of summer in the Celtic calendar.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 11704
**Categories:** Mythical creature
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [The Schoolgirls' Own](https://engole.info/schoolgirls-own/)
**Published:** September 28, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Schoolgirls-own.jpeg[/pimage]British weekly story paper aimed at girls, published from 1921 until 1936.
**Content:**
Cover page of the first issue
Comics UK
*The Schoolgirls’ Own* was a British weekly story paper aimed at girls. Published by Amalgamated Press, it was launched in February 1921 and ran for 798 issues until May 1936, when it was merged with [*The Schoolgirl*](https://engole.info/the-schoolgirl/).{{sfnp|DLEZ6NW2}}
The main feature centred on Morcove School, a “high class” girls’ boarding school for the daughters of the aristocratic and the rich, although the school did also accept some pupils from working-class backgrounds. Cookery and needlework were also featured regularly, as it was at that time “considered vital that young girls knew how to cook and sew”.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 6612
**Categories:** Comic
---
### [The Danaides](https://engole.info/the-danaides/)
**Published:** June 8, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/John_William_Waterhouse_-_The_Dana%C3%AFdes%2C_1906.jpg[/pimage]Oil on canvas painting by John William Waterhouse, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1906.
**Content:**
*The Danaides* is the only painting the English artist [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/) submitted to the Royal Academy exhibition in 1906. Capturing a scene from Greek mythology, it portrays the Danaides – the daughters of King Danaus – in Hades. A similar, smaller version, dated 1904, was found later, but the composition includes fewer figures.
## Description
The fifty daughters of King Danaus, or the Danaides as the nymphs were collectively termed, were forced or persuaded to marry the fifty sons of the King’s twin brother, Aegyptus, in a mass ceremony. The precise details of the myth are inconsistent but all the Danaides except one killed their bridegrooms, possibly with daggers, while the men slept. The victims were decapitated. The punishment conferred on the maidens for their crimes was to fruitlessly labour for eternity in Hades, endlessly replenishing a leaking container with water.{{sfnp|TXKZG6FI}} The painting depicts Waterhouse’s interpretation of the Danaides undertaking their penance in the underworld.{{sfnp|7AJ7X7AQ|101}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/John_William_Waterhouse_-_The_Dana%C3%AFdes%2C_1906.jpg)The larger 1906 version of *The Danaides*
163.3 × 128 cm (64 × 50 in)
Wikimedia Commons
Echoing a sketch of the Danaides used in *Smith’s Classical Dictionary*, a book the historian Peter Trippi implies the artist was familiar with, Waterhouse has the maidens pouring water into a pot. He has embellished the pot by transforming the hole where the water escapes into a scowling face and mounted it on clawed feet giving the pot an aura of menace. The overall effect is heightened by the sense of confinement produced by the rugged cliffs forming the background.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|192}} Above the cliffs, barely discernible below the frame, viewers are shown a fleeting glance of blue mountains under the skyline.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|125}}
Waterhouse previously used the magic number seven as the basis for how many figures to include; for instance, seven sirens appear in *Ulysses and the Sirens* (1891) and seven nymphs are included in [*Hylas and the Nymphs*](https://engole.info/hylas-and-the-nymphs/) (1896).{{sfnp|Q4A3724Q|164}} In *The Danaides*, he portrays seven of the fifty maidens each carrying a burnished pitcher. The same type of jug was used six years earlier in Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus; academic Elizabeth Prettejohn suggests that in both paintings the jugs represent severed heads.{{sfnp|Q4A3724Q|164}} Each of the figures have been styled using the same model.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|123}}
### Earlier version
Signed and dated 1904, this alternate oil on canvas rendition of The Danaides features five rather than seven figures. Writing in 1989, academic Anthony Hobson describes the painting as “recently discovered”.{{sfnp|7AJ7X7AQ|101}}\[a\]Hobson gives no further indication as to when or where it was discovered; the 1904 version is not mentioned in Hobson’s earlier 1980 work, The Art and Life of J W Waterhouse, and it does not appear in the Catalogue of Works included in that publication. The painting is reproduced in his 1989 book, J W Waterhouse (p. 106), acknowledging it is “Courtesy Christie’s New York”. The colour palette is less restrained than that of the later work.{{sfnp|HBWUI7QQ|159}}
## Exhibitions and provenance
The later version was Waterhouse’s only submission to the Royal Academy of Arts exhibition in 1906.{{sfnp|HBWUI7QQ|123}} Immediately purchased from the artist by James Murray,\[b\]James Murray (1850–1933), knighted in 1915, was the Liberal Member of Parliament for East Aberdeenshire, an artist with exhibits at the Royal Academy who went on to become a noted art collector;{{sfnp|NPQH5HE2}} Trippi further describes Murray as “the beef and tanning magnate”.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|213}} who owned it until he sold his collection on 29 April 1927 at Christie’s.{{sfnp|HBWUI7QQ|125}} Acquired by Aberdeen Art Gallery at the auction for £1000 guineas using funds received from the Macdonald bequest,{{sfnp|V68HGVBQ}} it remains part of the gallery’s collection.{{sfnp|D5AX677U}}
Early records do not indicate the 1904 version as being exhibited.{{sfnp|Q4A3724Q|164}} It was acquired by Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1995; no other provenance details are listed. In 2002 Lloyd Webber added a study for The Danaides to his collection; measuring {{convert|38.5|cm|in}} by {{convert|31|cm|in}}, it had been sold by the artist’s widow, [Esther Kenworthy Waterhouse](https://engole.info/esther-kenworthy-waterhouse/), at Christie’s on 23 July 1926.{{sfnp|VVYKPUH5|308}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/John_William_Waterhouse_-_The_Danaides_%281904%29.jpg)The smaller 1904 version
152.4 cm x 111.9 cm (60 in x 44 in)
Wikimedia Commons
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Hobson gives no further indication as to when or where it was discovered; the 1904 version is not mentioned in Hobson’s earlier 1980 work, The Art and Life of J W Waterhouse, and it does not appear in the Catalogue of Works included in that publication. The painting is reproduced in his 1989 book, J W Waterhouse (p. 106), acknowledging it is “Courtesy Christie’s New York”. b James Murray (1850–1933), knighted in 1915, was the Liberal Member of Parliament for East Aberdeenshire, an artist with exhibits at the Royal Academy who went on to become a noted art collector;{{sfnp|NPQH5HE2}} Trippi further describes Murray as “the beef and tanning magnate”.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|213}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 20439
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
**Tags:** Facebook post, Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Roger Hampson](https://engole.info/roger-hampson/)
**Published:** January 14, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** Painter, printmaker, teacher and a member of the group of post-war northern artists who developed the realist tradition established by L S Lowry and Harry Rutherford.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/roger-hampson-1.png)Artistic Horizons
Roger Hampson (1925–1996), painter, printmaker and teacher, was born in Tyldesley, Lancashire, England. He was a member of the group of post-war northern artists who developed the realist tradition established by L. S. Lowry and Harry Rutherford. He took his inspiration from the industrial town in which he lived, surrounded by collieries and dominated by Caleb Wright’s [Barnfield Mills](https://engole.info/barnfield-mills/). His work documents the people and the decline of industry as the collieries and cotton mills were closed.
## Life and career
Roger Hampson was born in Union Street and moved to Johnson Street when he was three. His father worked for the local building society and sent his son to Leigh Boys Grammar School, expecting him to settle into a similar job. But the Second World War intervened, and Hampson joined the Royal Navy, spending four years on convoy duty on board HMS *Garth* and HMS *Onslow*, and taking part in the D-Day landings. In spare moments he drew his shipmates, and encouraged by the ship’s officers, produced satirical daily cartoons about life on board ship.{{sfnp|QTSCHNT6|4}}
After the war Hampson enrolled at Manchester School of Art before becoming a teacher. After a brief time teaching in Hereford in the mid-1950s he returned to Manchester, where he worked as a graphic designer. He showed prints and paintings with the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts and was one of the group of artists that included Harold Riley who developed the realist art tradition started by L. S. Lowry. He began to establish himself as a northern artist at his first solo exhibition at Gibbs bookshop in the city centre, where he displayed oil paintings, drawings, lithographs and monoprints.{{sfnp|QTSCHNT6|7}} His sketchbooks were filled with rapidly drawn depictions of the people of his home town, drawn in the street, in pubs and on the train.{{sfnp|QTSCHNT6|5}}
Hampson moved to Bolton, where he was vice-principal of Bolton Art College between 1961 and 1967,{{sfnp|5H7WWKEC}} and was president of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts between 1968 and 1978. He was appointed principal of Bolton Art College, where he remained until 1975, when he moved to Loughborough to become principal of Loughborough College of Art and Design, until his retirement in 1986.{{sfnp|5H7WWKEC}}
Hampson died from leukaemia in 1996. A book, *Roger Hampson, a Lost Landscape* was published to coincide with a retrospective exhibition at the Gallery Oldham in 2009.{{sfnp|5H7WWKEC}}
## Gallery
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/back-vernon-street.jpg)
Vernon Street, Bolton
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/lune-street-tyldesley.jpg)
Lune Street, Tyldesley
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/GMII_SAHS_F12_1986-001.jpg)
Pub Entertainer
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/MER_SEC_1404-001.jpg)
Two Miners
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/dbdc2de155ecb8fa58df80c3cc9b5e65.jpg)
Street Football (Minerva Street, Bolton)
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/469abb4c-96f1-4740-b0bb-84273f08ef25_570.png)
Open Market and Flash Mills
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/the-tryst-ernon-st..png)
The Tryst, Vernon Street
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/roger-hampson-croal-valley-1.png)
Croal Valley
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/roger-hampson-the-demolition-of-musgrave-mill-bolton.png)
Demolition of Musgrave Mill
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 13197
## External links
- Roger Hampson at ArtUK
**Categories:** English, Male, Painter
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Insolvent Debtors (England) Act 1813](https://engole.info/insolvent-debtors-england-act-1813/)
**Published:** July 11, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c6/Coat_of_Arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281801-1816%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_Arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281801-1816%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act passed by the United Kingdom Parliament in 1813, in response to the demands on the prison system imposed by the numbers of those being incarcerated for debt, and some concern for their plight.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c6/Coat_of_Arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281801-1816%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_Arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281801-1816%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Insolvent Debtors (England) Act (53 Geo. 3 c 102) was an Act of Parliament passed by the United Kingdom Parliament in 1813, during the reign of King George III.
It was enacted in response to the demands on the prison system imposed by the numbers of those being incarcerated for debt, and some concern for their plight. The Act created a new Court for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors that remained in existence until 1861, under the jurisdiction of a newly appointed Commissioner. Those imprisoned for debt could apply to the court to be released – unless they were in trade or guilty of fraudulent or other dishonest behaviour – by reaching an agreement with their creditors that ensured a fair distribution of their present and future assets.{{sfnp|XJVM647M}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3494
**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Mathematical Bridge](https://engole.info/mathematical-bridge/)
**Published:** June 28, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Queens%27_College_-_Mathematical_Bridge.jpg[/pimage]Footbridge across the River Cam in Cambridge, England, connecting two parts of Queens' College, built using seven shorter lengths of straight timber to form an arch.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Queens%27_College_-_Mathematical_Bridge.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/tmSf5E2g9cW3bBLD9}}
View of the bridge, 2016
The Mathematical Bridge is a footbridge across the River Cam in Cambridge, England, connecting two parts of Queens’ College. The original was erected in 1749 to a design by William Etheridge (1709–1776), and built by James Essex (1722–1784).{{sfnp|CBGZIEDH}} The present bridge, a 1905 reconstruction, is a designated Grade II listed building.{{sfnp|GFHLCEVD}}
The bridge spans the {{convert|50|ft|adj=on}} river using seven shorter lengths of straight timber arranged in a series of tangents to a circle of radius of {{convert|32|ft}}, seated on stone abutments; radial trusses tie the tangents together and triangulate the structure, making it rigid and self-supporting.\[a\]A tangent is a straight line that just touches the curve at that point. The design results in the tangential timbers being subjected mainly to compression, which wood is much better at resisting than bending.{{sfnp|CBGZIEDH}}{{sfnp|J6RK8QGN}}
A similar technique was used to construct the arches of London’s original Westminster Bridge between 1739 and 1750, thus allowing ships to pass beneath during its construction.{{sfnp|J6RK8QGN}}
## Myths and falsehoods
According to the Queens’ College web site, “For a bridge whose history is so well-documented, it is curious that so many false stories have become associated with it.” The bridge has no “official” name. Early records refer to it as Essex’s Bridge, or the Essex Bridge, after its builder, but in guide books from 1803 onwards it began to be called the Mathematical Bridge, and later Newton’s Bridge, after the myth that it was designed by Isaac Newton.{{sfnp|CBGZIEDH}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a A tangent is a straight line that just touches the curve at that point.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 17131
**Categories:** Bridge
---
### [Lindow Woman](https://engole.info/lindow-woman/)
**Published:** November 21, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/Peat_workings_-_geograph.org.uk_-_61802.jpg/330px-Peat_workings_-_geograph.org.uk_-_61802.jpg[/pimage]Partial remains of a female bog body discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss, Cheshire in 1983.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/Peat_workings_-_geograph.org.uk_-_61802.jpg/330px-Peat_workings_-_geograph.org.uk_-_61802.jpg)Lindow Moss peat workings in 2005
Wikimedia Commons
Lindow Woman and Lindow I are the names given to the partial remains of a female [bog body](https://engole.info/bog-body) discovered in a peat bog at [Lindow Moss](https://engole.info/lindow-moss), near Wilmslow in Cheshire, England, on 13 May 1983 by commercial peat-cutters.{{sfnp|CKDLNNRB}} The remains were largely a skull fragment,{{sfnp|54U8AYZ2|180}} which was missing its jaw, but with soft tissue and hair attached. Radiocarbon dating eventually established that the remains dated back to the Roman occupation of Britain, 1700 years or so ago. They became known as Lindow I after the discovery of other human remains in the same bog, which were identified as Lindow Man or Lindow II in 1984, and Lindow III in 1987.{{sfnp|CKDLNNRB}}
The skull of Lindow Woman was initially assumed to belong to a local woman who had gone missing more than twenty years earlier, Malika de Fernandez. The police had long suspected her husband Peter Reyn-Bardt of her murder, but no body had been found.{{sfnp|RTYZU4DC}} Reyn-Bardt confessed to the crime as a result of the skull’s discovery and was convicted of his wife’s murder, despite attempting to withdraw his confession at his trial after the true age of the skull had been established.{{sfnp|CKDLNNRB}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24981
**Categories:** Bog body
---
### [Larmar](https://engole.info/larmar/)
**Published:** May 26, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/larmar.jpg[/pimage]World's narrowest car, manufactured from 1946 until 1951.
**Content:**
The rear-engined, rear-wheel drive Larmar has the distinction of being the world’s narrowest car at {{convert|28|in|spell=in}},\[a\]The Peel P-50, the world’s smallest car, is more than {{convert|12|in}} wider designed to be able to navigate through a standard English garden gate, {{convert|30|in|spell=in}} wide.{{sfnp|BWZTB2QJ}}
Manufactured by the Larmar Engineering Company of Brentwood, Essex,\[b\]The company was incorporated in 1942, and was declared insolvent in 2022.{{sfnp|46IYQ2H4}} the Larmar was initially targeted for women to use as a shopping car, but later models offered hand controls for physically disabled drivers.{{sfnp|BWZTB2QJ}}
The Larmar is powered by a BSA single-cylinder, 4-stroke, air-cooled, {{convert|246|cc}} motorcycle engine, and has four-wheel independent suspension.{{sfnp|BWZTB2QJ}}
A 1946 model, in rather poor condition, was auctioned at Sotheby’s in 2013 and achieved a sale price of $4,600, about £3,900.{{sfnp|GF5TWNHH}}\[c\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/larmar.jpg)
**Manufacturer:**Larmar Engineering**Production:**1946–1951{{sfnp|BWZTB2QJ}}**Top speed:**35 mph (56 km/h)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The Peel P-50, the world’s smallest car, is more than {{convert|12|in}} wider b The company was incorporated in 1942, and was declared insolvent in 2022.{{sfnp|46IYQ2H4}} c Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} d, e var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25353
## External links
- [YouTube video from Jason Drives](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhO0G3xpHSI)
**Categories:** Automobile, British
---
### [Broadspeed GT 2+2](https://engole.info/broadspeed-gt-22/)
**Published:** June 20, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** The Broadspeed GT 2+2 is a Mini-based fastback-styled motor vehicle designed by Tony Bloor, Broadspeed’s sales manager.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/1965BroadspeedGT.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
The Broadspeed GT 2+2 is a Mini-based fastback-styled motor vehicle designed by Tony Bloor, Broadspeed’s sales manager. It was introduced into the UK market in 1966 and continued in production until 1968, when Broadspeed’s factory in Birmingham was scheduled for demolition to make way for a new ring road. By then 28 cars had been built, 16 of them reportedly exported to Spain.{{sfnp|J4SNM3IR|search=Broadspeed GT 2+2}}
Broadspeed had become well known in the early 1960s for its successful BMC Mini racing team, and for producing a variety of road and race-tuning packages for BMC engines. The GT was the company’s first and only foray into car manufacturing.
## Construction
*Cars and Car Conversions* magazine characterised the car as “more the ultimate in conversion than a complete new car” after their test drive. The conversion was achieved by cutting off the rear section of a standard Mini and reducing the door pillars in height by about 2 inches (5.1 cm). Then a fibreglass fastback was bonded to the car in place of the missing rear section, adding about 4 inches (10 cm) to its overall length, and the engine tuned.{{sfnp|J4SNM3IR|search=Broadspeed GT 2+2}}
The interior was upgraded by the installation of a replacement fascia with additional auxiliary gauges and Restall bucket seats in the front. The new rear seat was designed to fold down to allow access to the boot, as there was no boot lid in the new rear end. The boot was significantly smaller than that of the standard Mini owing to the presence of two fuel tanks, giving the car a range of 300 miles (480 km).{{sfnp|EPDQLVVR}}
*Autocar* magazine described the end product of the conversion as “masquerading as a sort of scaled down DB6 Aston Martin”.{{sfnp|J4SNM3IR|search=Broadspeed GT 2+2}}
## Engine and performance
The Broadspeed GT was offered in four versions, with the lightweight GTS at the top of the range. There was a choice of three engines: 848 cc (51.7 cu in), 998 cc (60.9 cu in) Mini Cooper engine and 1275 cc (77.8 cu in) Mini Cooper S engine. Prices ranged from £799 for the basic 848 cc engined car to £1,500 for the 1275 cc version, equivalent to £25,600 in 2016.{{sfnp|EPDQLVVR}}
A road test of the 1275 cc Broadspeed GT published in *Motorsport* magazine in 1966 reported a top speed of {{convert|112|mph}} and a fuel consumption of 27.9 mpg‑imp (10.1 L/100 km; 23.2 mpg‑US).{{sfnp|EPDQLVVR}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2430
**Categories:** Automobile, British
---
### [Halifax Gibbet](https://engole.info/halifax-gibbet/)
**Published:** September 8, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/The_Halifax_Gibbet_-_geograph.org.uk_-_350422.jpg[/pimage]Early guillotine, or decapitating machine, used in the town of Halifax, West Yorkshire, England. It was probably installed during the 16th century as an alternative to beheading by axe or sword.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/The_Halifax_Gibbet_-_geograph.org.uk_-_350422.jpg)Replica of the Halifax Gibbet on its original site, 2008, with St Mary’s Catholic church, Gibbet Street, in the background
Wikimedia Commons
The Halifax Gibbet was an early guillotine, or decapitating machine, used in the town of Halifax, West Yorkshire, England. It was probably installed during the 16th century as an alternative to beheading by axe or sword. Halifax was once part of the Manor of Wakefield, where ancient custom and law gave the Lord of the Manor the authority to execute summarily by decapitation any thief caught with stolen goods to the value of 13½d or more, or who confessed to having stolen goods of at least that value. Decapitation was a fairly common method of execution in England, but Halifax was unusual in two respects: it employed a guillotine-like machine that appears to have been unique in the country; and it continued to be used to decapitate petty criminals until the mid-17th century.
The device consisted of an axe head fitted to the base of a heavy wooden block that ran in grooves between two {{convert|15|ft|adj=on|r=1}} tall uprights, mounted on a stone base about {{convert|4|ft|r=1}} high. A rope attached to the block ran over a pulley, allowing it to be raised, after which the rope was secured by attaching it to a pin in the base. The block carrying the axe was then released either by withdrawing the pin or by cutting the rope once the prisoner was in place.
Almost 100 people were beheaded in Halifax between the first recorded execution in 1286 and the last in 1650, but as the date of its installation is uncertain, it cannot be determined with any accuracy how many were dealt with by the Halifax Gibbet. By 1650 public opinion considered beheading to be an excessively severe punishment for petty theft; use of the gibbet was forbidden by Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, and the structure was dismantled. The stone base was rediscovered and preserved in about 1840, and a non-working replica was erected on the site in 1974. The names of 52 people known to have been beheaded by the device are listed on a nearby plaque.
## History
What became known as the Halifax Gibbet Law gave the Lord of the Manor of Wakefield, of which the town of Halifax was a part,\[a\]The manor of Wakefield was one of the largest in England, stretching well beyond the boundaries of the present-day town of the same name. It occupied an area of about {{convert|30|mi}} east to west and about {{convert|20|mi}} north to south.{{sfnp|EAEKGI42|19}} the power to try and execute any felon for the theft of goods to the value of 13½d or more:\[b\]In 1650, the year of the last execution, 13½d would have a labour value of about £122 as of 2017.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
If a felon be taken within their liberty or precincts of the said forest [the Forest of Hardwick], either handhabend [caught with the stolen goods in his hand or in the act of stealing], backberand [caught carrying stolen goods on his back], or confessand [having confessed to the crime] cloth or any other commodity to the value of 13½d, that they shall after three market days or meeting days within the town of Halifax after such his apprehension, and being condemned he shall be taken to the gibbet and there have his head cut off from his body.{{sfnp
— IZYCFHGX|284}}
17th-century engraving
Wikimedia Commons
The Gibbet Law may have been a last vestige of the Anglo-Saxon custom of infangtheof, which allowed landowners to enforce summary justice on thieves within the boundaries of their estates.{{sfnp|WQHJWCQS|lix}} Samuel Midgley in his *Halifax and its Gibbet-Law Placed in a True Light*,\[c\]Samuel Midgley died on 18 July 1695, imprisoned in Halifax Gaol for debt. While in prison he wrote *Halifax and its Gibbet-Law Placed in a True Light* in an effort to support himself, but he could not afford to have it published. The manuscript came into the possession of William Bentley, the Halifax parish clerk, who decided to publish it under his own name, perhaps with some additions. William’s son John produced a subsequent reprint under his own name, hence many sources refer to the book as John Bentley’s *Halifax and its Gibbet-Law*.{{sfnp|A3KUETJP|18-19}} published in 1761, states that the law dates from a time “not in the memory of man to the contrary”.{{sfnp|C8B48JNF|397}} It may have been the consequence of rights granted by King Henry III to John de Warenne (1231–1304), Lord of the Manor of Wakefield.{{sfnp|MFG7JJU5}} Such baronial jurisdiction was by no means unusual in medieval England and was described in the 11th-century legal text entitled *De Baronibus, qui suas habent curias et consuetudines* (Concerning the barons who have their courts of law and customs).{{sfnp|92NUY67X}} Neither was the decapitation of convicted felons unique to Halifax; the earls of Chester among others also exercised the right to “behead any malefactor or thief, who was apprehended in the action, or against whom it was made apparent by sufficient witness, or confession, before four inhabitants of the place”, recorded as the Custom of Cheshire.{{sfnp|C8B48JNF|432}}
A commission appointed by King Edward I in 1278 reported that there were at that time 94 privately owned gibbets and gallows in use in Yorkshire, including one owned by the Archbishop of York.{{sfnp|DEATR8YV|127-128}} What was unusual about Halifax was that the custom lingered on there for so long after it had been abandoned elsewhere.{{sfnp|MFG7JJU5}}
Suspected thieves were detained in the custody of the lord of the manor’s bailiff, who would summon a jury of 16 local men “out of the most wealthy and best reputed”, four each from four local townships.{{sfnp|C76NBAIN}} The jury had only two questions to decide on: were the stolen goods found in the possession of the accused, and were they worth at least 13½d.{{sfnp|EAEKGI42|22}} The jury, the accused, and those claiming that their property had been stolen, were brought together in a room at the bailiff’s house. No oaths were administered and there was no judge or defence counsel present; each side presented their case, and the jury decided on guilt or innocence.{{sfnp|C8B48JNF|417-423}}
The law was applied so strictly that anyone who apprehended a thief with his property was not allowed to recover it unless the miscreant and the stolen goods were presented to the bailiff. The goods were otherwise forfeited to the lord of the manor, and their previous rightful owner was liable to find himself charged with theftbote, or conniving in the felony.{{sfnp|MFG7JJU5}} Halifax’s reputation for strict law enforcement was noted by the antiquarian William Camden and by the “Water Poet” John Taylor, the author of the *Beggar’s Litany*: “From Hell, Hull, and Halifax, Good Lord, deliver us!”{{sfnp|8W5HJKHH|242}}\[d\]Felons were not decapitated in \[\[Kingston upon Hull|Hull\]\], but were tied to gibbets in the \[\[Humber|Humber estuary\]\] at low tide and left to drown as the sea returned.{{sfnp|4LEXRNF6|74}}
Before his execution a convicted felon was usually detained in custody for three market days,\[e\]Halifax at that time held three markets each week.{{sfnp|IZYCFHGX|285}} on each of which he was publicly displayed in the [stocks](https://engole.info/stocks), accompanied by the stolen goods.{{sfnp|IZYCFHGX|285}} After the sentence had been carried out a county coroner would visit Halifax and convene a jury of 12 men, sometimes the same individuals who had found the felon guilty, and ask them to give an account under oath of the circumstances of the conviction and execution, for the official records.{{sfnp|C76NBAIN}}
The punishment could only be meted out to those within the confines of the Forest of Hardwick, of which Halifax was a part. The gibbet was about {{convert|500|yd}} from the boundary of the area, and if the condemned person succeeded in escaping from the forest then he could not legally be brought back to face his punishment. At least two men succeeded in cheating the executioner in that way: a man named Dinnis and another called Lacy. Dinnis was never seen in Halifax again, but Lacy rather unwisely decided to return to the town seven years after his escape; he was apprehended and finally executed in 1623.{{sfnp|DEATR8YV|129}}
The earliest known record of punishment by decapitation in Halifax is the beheading of John of Dalton in 1286,{{sfnp|SJB66WZC}} but official records were not maintained until the parish registers began in 1538. Between then and 1650, when the last executions took place, 56 men and women are recorded as having been decapitated. The total number of executions identified since 1286 is just short of 100.{{sfnp|EAEKGI42|20}}
Local weavers specialised in the production of kersey, a hardwearing and inexpensive woollen fabric that was often used for military uniforms; by the 16th century Halifax and the surrounding Calder Valley was the largest producer of the material in England. In the final part of the manufacturing process the cloth was hung outdoors on large structures known as tenterframes and left to dry, after having been conditioned by a fulling mill. Daniel Defoe wrote a detailed account of what he had been told of the gibbet’s history during his visit to Halifax in Volume 3 of his A tour thro’ the whole island of Great Britain, published in 1727.{{sfnp|8W5HJKHH|242}} He reports that “Modern accounts pretend to say, it \[the gibbet\] was for all sorts of felons; but I am well assured, it was first erected purely, or at least principally, for such thieves as were apprehended stealing cloth from the tenters; and it seems very reasonable to think it was so”.{{sfnp|URA259SB}}
Eighteenth-century historians argued that the area’s prosperity attracted the “wicked and ungovernable”; the cloth, left outside and unattended, presented easy pickings, and hence justified severe punishment to protect the local economy. James Holt on the other hand, writing in 1997, sees the Halifax Gibbet Law as a practical application of the Anglo-Saxon law of infangtheof. Royal assizes were held only twice a year in the area; to bring a prosecution was “vastly expensive”, and the stolen goods were forfeited to the Crown, as they were considered to be the property of the accused.{{sfnp|EAEKGI42|23}} But the Halifax Gibbet Law allowed “the party injured, to have his goods restored to him again, with as little loss and damage, as can be contrived; to the great encouragement of the honest and industrious, and as great terror to the wicked and evil doers.”{{sfnp|C8B48JNF|404}}
The Halifax Gibbet’s final victims were Abraham Wilkinson and Anthony Mitchell.{{sfnp|DEATR8YV|130}}\[f\]Abraham Wilkinson’s brother John was also accused of involvement in the thefts, but although he admitted to being present when they were carried out he would not confess to having taken part in them, and he was consequently released.{{sfnp|C8B48JNF|422-423}} Several sources claim that it was John Wilkinson who was executed rather than his brother Abraham, but Midgley attributes this to an error in the parish register.{{sfnp|C8B48JNF|407}} Wilkinson had been found guilty of stealing {{convert|16|yd}} of russet-coloured kersey cloth, {{convert|9|yd|r=1}} of which, found in his possession, was valued at “9 shillings at the least”, {{sfnp|SJB66WZC}} and Mitchell of stealing and selling two horses, one valued at 9 shillings and the other at 48 shillings.{{sfnp|C8B48JNF|422-423}} The pair were found guilty and executed on the same day,{{sfnp|C8B48JNF|413}} 30 April 1650.{{sfnp|C8B48JNF|439}} Writing in 1834 John William Parker, publisher of *The Saturday Magazine*, suggested that the gibbet might have remained in use for longer in Halifax had the bailiff not been warned that if he used it again he would be “called to public account for it”.{{sfnp|C76NBAIN}} Midgley comments that the final executions “were by some persons in that age, judged to be too severe; thence came it to pass, that the gibbet, and the customary law, for the forest of Hardwick, got its suspension”.{{sfnp|C8B48JNF|417}}
Oliver Cromwell finally ended the exercise of Halifax Gibbet Law. To the Puritans it was “part of ancient ritual to be jettisoned along with all the old feasts and celebrations of the medieval world and the Church of Rome”. Moreover, it ran counter to the Puritan objection to imposing the death penalty for petty theft; felons were subsequently sent to the Assizes in York for trial.{{sfnp|SJB66WZC}}
## Mechanism
Print of the Halifax Gibbet in use, from Thomas Allen’s *A New and Complete History of the County of York* (1829)
Wikimedia Commons
It is uncertain when the Halifax Gibbet was first introduced, but it may not have been until some time in the 16th century; before then decapitation would have been carried out by an executioner using an axe or a sword. The device, which seems to have been unique in England,{{sfnp|EAEKGI42|20}} consisted of two {{convert|15|ft|adj=on|r=1}} tall parallel beams of wood joined at the top by a transverse beam. Running in grooves within the beams was a square wooden block 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 m) in length, into the bottom of which was fitted an axe head weighing 7 pounds 12 ounces (3.5 kg).{{sfnp|C76NBAIN}} The whole structure sat on a platform of stone blocks, {{convert|9|ft|r=1}} square and {{convert|4|ft|r=1}} high, which was ascended by a flight of steps.{{sfnp|SJB66WZC}} A rope attached to the top of the wooden block holding the axe ran over a pulley at the top of the structure, allowing the block to be raised. The rope was then fastened by a pin to the structure’s stone base.{{sfnp|C76NBAIN}}
The gibbet could be operated by cutting the rope supporting the blade or by pulling out the pin that held the rope. If the offender was to be executed for stealing an animal, a cord was fastened to the pin and tied to either the stolen animal or one of the same species, which was then driven off, withdrawing the pin and allowing the blade to drop.{{sfnp|C76NBAIN}}
In an early contemporary account of 1586 Raphael Holinshed attests to the efficiency of the gibbet, and adds some detail about the participation of the onlookers:
In the nether end of the sliding block is an axe keyed or fastened with an iron into the wood, which being drawn up to the top of the frame is there fastened by a wooden pin … unto the middest of which pin also there is a long rope fastened that cometh down among the people, so that when the offender hath made his confession, and hath laid his neck over the nethermost block, every man there present doth either take hold of the rope (or putteth forth his arm so near to the same as he can get, in token that he is willing to see true justice executed) and pulling out the pin in this manner, the head block wherein the axe is fastened doth fall down with such violence, that if the neck of the transgressor were so big as that of a bull, it should be cut in sunder at a stroke, and roll from the body by an huge distance.{{sfnp
— G852LGHK}}
An article in the September 1832 edition of *The Imperial Magazine* describes the victim’s final moments:
The persons who had found the verdict, and the attending clergymen, placed themselves on the scaffold with the prisoner. The fourth psalm was then played round the scaffold on the bagpipes, after which the minister prayed with the prisoner till he received the final stroke.{{sfnp
— MFG7JJU5}}\[g\]Psalm 4 contains the words “I will both lay me down in peace and sleep”.{{sfnp|EAEKGI42|21}}
In Thomas Deloney’s novel *Thomas of Reading* (1600) the invention of the Halifax Gibbet is attributed to a friar, who proposed the device as a solution to the difficulty of finding local residents willing to act as hangmen.{{sfnp|DEATR8YV|129}}
Although the guillotine as a method of beheading is most closely associated in the popular imagination with late 18th-century Revolutionary France, several other decapitation devices had long been in use throughout Europe. It is uncertain whether Dr Guillotin was familiar with the Halifax Gibbet, but its design was reported to have been copied by James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, in the production of a similar device that became known as the Scottish Maiden, now on display in the National Museum of Scotland. The Maiden was rather shorter than the Halifax Gibbet, standing only {{convert|10|ft}} tall, the same height as the French guillotine.{{sfnp|P9TU7BSU|90}}
## Restoration
The Halifax Gibbet was dismantled after the last executions in 1650, and the site was neglected until the platform on which the gibbet had been mounted was rediscovered in about 1840.{{sfnp|DEATR8YV|129-130}} A full-size non-working replica was erected on the original stone base in August 1974; it includes a blade made from a casting of the original, which as of 2011 was displayed in the Bankfield Museum in Boothtown on the outskirts of Halifax.{{sfnp|VXERJUSR}} A commemorative plaque nearby lists the names of the 52 people known to have been executed by the device.{{sfnp|SJB66WZC}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The manor of Wakefield was one of the largest in England, stretching well beyond the boundaries of the present-day town of the same name. It occupied an area of about {{convert|30|mi}} east to west and about {{convert|20|mi}} north to south.{{sfnp|EAEKGI42|19}} b In 1650, the year of the last execution, 13½d would have a labour value of about £122 as of 2017.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} c Samuel Midgley died on 18 July 1695, imprisoned in Halifax Gaol for debt. While in prison he wrote *Halifax and its Gibbet-Law Placed in a True Light* in an effort to support himself, but he could not afford to have it published. The manuscript came into the possession of William Bentley, the Halifax parish clerk, who decided to publish it under his own name, perhaps with some additions. William’s son John produced a subsequent reprint under his own name, hence many sources refer to the book as John Bentley’s *Halifax and its Gibbet-Law*.{{sfnp|A3KUETJP|18-19}} d Felons were not decapitated in \[\[Kingston upon Hull|Hull\]\], but were tied to gibbets in the \[\[Humber|Humber estuary\]\] at low tide and left to drown as the sea returned.{{sfnp|4LEXRNF6|74}} e Halifax at that time held three markets each week.{{sfnp|IZYCFHGX|285}} f Abraham Wilkinson’s brother John was also accused of involvement in the thefts, but although he admitted to being present when they were carried out he would not confess to having taken part in them, and he was consequently released.{{sfnp|C8B48JNF|422-423}} Several sources claim that it was John Wilkinson who was executed rather than his brother Abraham, but Midgley attributes this to an error in the parish register.{{sfnp|C8B48JNF|407}} g Psalm 4 contains the words “I will both lay me down in peace and sleep”.{{sfnp|EAEKGI42|21}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 5468
**Categories:** Capital punishment, Yorkshire
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [The Great Stone, Stretford](https://engole.info/the-great-stone-stretford/)
**Published:** March 5, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/GreatStone640.jpg[/pimage]Grade II listed structure in Stretford, Greater Manchester, probably the base of an Anglo-Saxon cross shaft.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/GreatStone640.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/Tk28qvr2bEQ8Cica9
The Great Stone in [Stretford](https://engole.info/stretford), Greater Manchester is a [glacial erratic](https://engole.info/glacial-erratics/) designated a Grade II listed structure,{{sfnp|AHEHLRXG}} after which the nearby Great Stone Road is named. It is rectangular in shape, {{convert|0.81|m|abbr=on}} high, {{convert|1.58|m|abbr=on}} long, and {{convert|0.41|m|abbr=on}} wide, with two rectangular slots cut into its upper surface, one {{convert|22|cm|abbr=on}} deep and the other {{convert|18|cm|abbr=on}}.{{sfnp|X9YG26CR}}
Several suggestions have been made for the history of the Great Stone. There was a succession of plagues in Manchester from the 14th century onwards,{{sfnp|VTDM2N3J}} and during the Great Plague of 1655–1656 the holes in the top of the stone were filled with vinegar or holy water, through which coins were passed in the belief that would halt the spread of the disease.{{sfnp|GPJBAMJR|86}} But the holes are probably too deep for that to have been the stone’s original purpose. The stone may have been a marker on the Roman road between Northwich and Manchester, or some kind of boundary marker.{{sfnp|BFNPFYXM}} It is also thought to have been the base of an Anglo-Saxon cross shaft.{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|87}}
A local legend had it that the stone is slowly sinking into the earth, and that its ultimate disappearance will mark the end of the world.{{sfnp|INVDX994|25}} An alternative story suggests that the stone was thrown by a giant called Tarquin from his castle in Manchester, and the holes in the top of the stone were to accommodate his fingers and thumb. Another 19th-century tradition, first recorded in 1903, says that if the stone was moved from the township then the local lords of the manor, the de Traffords, would lose their estates,{{sfnp|X9YG26CR}} by which time they already had; Sir Humphrey Francis de Trafford sold the family’s [Trafford Park](https://engole.info/trafford-park/) estate in 1896.{{sfnp|KMZLTI2P|22}}
When the Great Stone Road was widened in the late 19th century, the stone was moved back from the road slightly. In 1925, the stone was moved again, to its current location outside the North Lodge of Gorse Hill Park, about {{convert|100|m}} from its historical location.{{sfnp|AHEHLRXG}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24566
**Categories:** Geology
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Stimson Scorcher](https://engole.info/stimson-scorcher/)
**Published:** June 10, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Stimson_Scorcher_1976_-_Bentley_Wildfowl_and_Motor_Museum_-_Halland%2C_East_Sussex%2C_England_-_DSC05799.jpg[/pimage]Three-wheeled motor vehicle designed by Barry Stimson and first produced in the UK in 1976.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Stimson_Scorcher_1976_-_Bentley_Wildfowl_and_Motor_Museum_-_Halland%2C_East_Sussex%2C_England_-_DSC05799.jpg)1976 Stimson Scorcher
Wikimedia Commons
The Stimson Scorcher is a three-wheeled vehicle designed by Barry Stimson and first produced in the UK in 1976.{{sfnp|5GTNFJ3B|178}} The Scorcher was available preassembled or as a kit, sold by Noovoh Developments of Brighton for £385 (equivalent to £1500 in 2016).{{sfnp|CBILNZJ4|120}}
During its four-year production run, ending in 1980, thirty Scorchers were produced. There was an unsuccessful attempt to resuscitate the Scorcher project the following year.
## Construction
The glassfibre body is mounted on a steel tubular-frame chassis{{sfnp|CBILNZJ4|120-121}} and is completely open to the elements, offering the vehicle’s occupants no protection from the weather. Even the engine is exposed, unless the buyer purchased the optional plastic bonnet.{{sfnp|CBILNZJ4|120}}
The Scorcher has two wheels at the front and conventional car controls.{{sfnp|B3ZT6TM5|183}} Its unusual configuration of three seats with the driver and passengers sitting in line astride the machine meant that the UK’s licensing authority classified it as a motorcycle and sidecar combination, which had the consequence that one of the passengers was not required to wear a crash helmet.{{sfnp|CBILNZJ4|120}}
## Engine and transmission
The Scorcher is powered by an Austin Mini engine and gearbox of between 848 cc (51.7 cu in) and 1275 cc (77.8 cu in), mounted on a Mini sub frame at the front of the vehicle.{{sfnp|7BKJJCAM}} The car’s weight of only {{convert|560|lb}}{{sfnp|B3ZT6TM5|183}} allowed the 848 cc engine to deliver a top speed of {{convert|100|mph}}.{{sfnp|5GTNFJ3B|178}}
## Later developments
Scorcher production ended in 1980, but in 1981 the project was bought by Gerald Pickford of Clanfield. Pickford made some design changes to the lower front end, but by the end of 1982 only three of the new Scorchers had been produced.{{sfnp|5GTNFJ3B|178}} In a 2003 interview published in *The Daily Telegraph*, Stimson observed of the Scorcher that “It’s the worst seller of all my cars, but the most famous – I find that weird”.{{sfnp|GHLXDTPE}}\[a\]In reality the Scorcher was not Stimson’s worst-selling car; only one [Stimson Storm](https://engole.info/stimson-storm/) was sold during its five years of production. Motoring journalist and author Steve Hole has described the Scorcher as “one of the most bonkers kit cars ever made”.{{sfnp|GFZUCDMC|241}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a In reality the Scorcher was not Stimson’s worst-selling car; only one [Stimson Storm](https://engole.info/stimson-storm/) was sold during its five years of production.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 1849
**Categories:** Kit car, Three-wheeler
---
### [Thomas Tyldesley](https://engole.info/thomas-tyldesley/)
**Published:** April 13, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Tyldesley.jpg[/pimage]Supporter of Charles I and a Royalist commander during the English Civil War.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Tyldesley.jpg)1831 engraving of Sir Thomas Tyldesley by John Cochran, after an earlier painting
Wikimedia Commons
Sir Thomas Tyldesley (1612 – 25 August 1651) was a supporter of Charles I and a Royalist commander during the English Civil War. He was born on 3 September 1612 at Woodplumpton, the eldest of the six children of Edward Tyldesley (1582–1621) of [Morleys Hall](https://engole.info/morleys-hall/), Astley, in the parish of Leigh and his wife Elizabeth Preston of Holker Hall. Intending to follow a career in law, he entered Gray’s Inn before becoming a professional soldier and serving in the Thirty Years’ War in Germany. He married Frances, elder daughter of Ralph Standish, in 1634, with whom he had three sons and seven daughters {{sfnp|EM9W9W42}}
Tyldesley’s family were [recusants](https://engole.info/act-of-uniformity-1558/); his grandmother arranged a pension for priest, the Benedictine martyr, Ambrose Barlow, so that he could carry out priestly duties, offering masses in secret in the homes of Catholics in the Leigh parish. Barlow was arrested at Morleys Hall during such a service.{{sfnp|5V652YGV}} His aunt, [Elizabeth Tyldesley](https://engole.info/elizabeth-tyldesley/), was abbess of the [Poor Clares at Gravelines](https://engole.info/convent-of-poor-clares-gravelines/) in the Spanish Netherlands from 1610 to 1654. Thomas Tyldesley was extremely wealthy according to the lay subsidy rolls.{{sfnp|5V652YGV}} His annual landed income, mostly from tithes purchased from the Urmstons of Westleigh, was £2050 in 1641.{{sfnp|EM9W9W42}}
Tyldesley served King Charles I as lieutenant colonel at the Battle of Edgehill, after raising Regiments of Horse, Foot and Dragoons, and at the desperate storming of Burton-on-Trent over a bridge of 36 arches, received the honour of knighthood. Afterwards he served in all three Civil Wars as a commander of some importance. He was present with Prince Rupert of the Rhine at the Bolton Massacre in 1644. He was Governor of Lichfield and followed the fortune of the Crown through the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and never surrendered to the Parliamentarians. He was killed in action on 25 August 1651 commanding as Major General under the Earl of Derby during the Battle of Wigan Lane.{{sfnp|5V652YGV}}{{sfnp|2XGEW29J}} He was buried in the Tyldesley Chapel at Leigh Parish Church.{{sfnp|EM9W9W42}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 18186
**Categories:** English, Male, Soldier
---
### [Inchdrewer Castle](https://engole.info/inchdrewer-castle/)
**Published:** July 19, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Inchdrewer_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_494951.jpg[/pimage]16th-century tower house in the parish of Banff, Aberdeenshire, in the northeast of Scotland.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Inchdrewer_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_494951.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/hnp2qxffyqk
Inchdrewer Castle is a 16th-century tower house in the parish of Banff, Aberdeenshire, in the northeast of Scotland. Situated on a slight rise {{convert|3.5|mi}} southwest of Banff, it looks across to Banff Bay. Originally owned by the Currour family, it was purchased by the Ogilvies of Dunlugas in 1557 and became their main family seat. The Ogilvies were staunch Royalists, which resulted in the castle coming under attack from the Covenanters in 1640.
[George Ogilvy, 3rd Lord Banff](https://engole.info/george-ogilvy-3rd-lord-banff/), was murdered in 1713 and his body hidden inside the castle, which was then set on fire. The castle came under siege again in 1746, during the Jacobite rising of 1745–1746. At the start of the 19th century, following the death of the 8th Lord Banff, the property was inherited by the Abercromby of Birkenbog family, who leased it to a tenant. It became uninhabited after 1836 and the structure deteriorated.
Over the following century the neglect continued until some basic external renovation work was undertaken between 1965 and 1971, making the structure wind and water tight, although it remained unoccupied. The castle was again abandoned and left unmaintained. The condition of the building further declined, becoming derelict. It was in a ruinous state when marketed for sale in April 2013 after the death of Count Robin Mirrlees, who had owned it for about fifty years. At the end of that year it was purchased by the former model Olga Roh, who said she intended to restore it. Modern-day reports suggest that the spirit of the 3rd Lord Banff and that of a white dog haunt the castle, which is classified as a category A [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building).
## Early history
The castle’s exact construction date is unknown, but it was some time in the early to mid-16th century, during the reign of either James IV or James V.{{sfnp|ADILYP38|272}} Various spellings are used: Inch Druar (or Inchdruar as one word); Inchdruer; Inchdrewir; or Inchdrewr. Originally owned by the Curror (Currour) family, in 1557 it was purchased by Walter Ogilvy of Dunlugas (1509–58), and became the main family seat.{{sfnp|M7EILB7S}}{{sfnp|746WVX84|50}} James Currour was a notary in Banff and is linked with several of Dunlugas’ contracts and witnessing leases.{{sfnp|R8WWSSLE|201}}
During the late 16th century the Dunlugas Ogilvies undertook re-furbishment and extension work, including the addition of courtyard buildings and a distinctive circular tower that incorporated the hall into its first storey.{{sfnp|746WVX84|50}} An Act recording the lands in favour of George Ogilvy was ratified by King Charles I in late June 1633.{{sfnp|KHYCG2GR}} George was the son of Walter Ogilvy, and an ardent Royalist and supporter of the king against the Covenanters.{{sfnp|5A3BJTXC}} Inchdrewer Castle was left in ruins after being attacked by Covenanter forces led by General Robert Monro in 1640;{{sfnp|4DT3KIML|95}}{{sfnp|W6XZ4NCN|111}} another of the family properties, a town house, was also devastated.{{sfnp|FNCN84YV|17}} George Ogilvy was appointed a peer in 1642, becoming the first Lord Banff.{{sfnp|746WVX84|50}}{{sfnp|5A3BJTXC}}
George Ogilvy, 3rd Lord Banff, inherited the property when his father, the 2nd Lord Banff, died on 10 September 1668.{{sfnp|FNCN84YV|20}} He was murdered in 1713 and the castle destroyed by fire; his body had been concealed inside.{{sfnp|746WVX84|50}}{{sfnp|HUX6WPN4|151}}\[a\]McKean states: “It was burnt, Lord Banff within, in 1713”. Restoration work was once more undertaken.{{sfnp|Y7ZXNDCD|60}}\[b\]Details of the date and work undertaken are not specified: “Evidently it was again re-built …”
The castle came under attack by troops led by the Duke of Cumberland in 1746 in the course of the Jacobite rebellion.{{sfnp|M7EILB7S}} Yet more restoration work was carried out during the later part of the century.{{sfnp|Y5FQ62JJ}}
After William Ogilvy, 8th Lord Banff, died on 4 June 1803, the estate was inherited by his sister Jean (sometimes named Jane), who had married George Abercromby (Abercrombie) of Birkenbog.{{sfnp|FNCN84YV|25}} Her son, Sir Robert Abercromby succeeded her. Sir Robert was appointed member of Parliament for the Banff constituency in 1812{{sfnp|ALWLDMHU}} but four years later claimed financial difficulties prevented him seeking re-election. In 1820 he asked George IV to allow the Banff peerage, which had become dormant or extinct when the 8th Lord Banff died, to continue by declaring his mother Baroness Banff, or granting him the title of Lord Banff, but the request was denied.{{sfnp|FNCN84YV|25}}{{sfnp|J8MQMGHR}}
The main residence of the Abercromby’s was at [Forglen House](https://engole.info/forglen-house/), Turriff.{{sfnp|35D9JMLW|44}} The castle was in a sufficient state of repair to be leased to tenants until 1836.{{sfnp|W6XZ4NCN|111}}{{sfnp|Y5FQ62JJ}} MacGibbon and Ross refer to the castle as being in the ownership of Sir R. J. Abercromby of Birkenbog when writing about it in their architectural book published in 1887. The ground-floor plan given in the book shows two parts of the building as being “ruinous”.{{sfnp|JBKWBC4K|147-148}}
The castle was abandoned at the beginning of the 20th century,{{sfnp|C7SRMDDC}} and it soon became dilapidated.{{sfnp|Y5FQ62JJ}}
## Later history
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Inchdrewer_Castle_Floor_plan.svg)Layout of the ground floor of Inchdrewer Castle in 1887
Wikimedia Commons
The castle was purchased by Count Robin Mirrlees in 1962 or 1963.{{sfnp|K89YYTA2}}\[c\]Various dates of purchase by Mirrlees are given in different sources; Ballantynes{{sfnp|M7EILB7S}} and Shields give 1963{{sfnp|C7SRMDDC}} whereas the Buildings at Risk register shows 1971.{{sfnp|MEQFGXRN}} Renovation work was possibly undertaken in 1965 by architect Oliver Hill,{{sfnp|S2B2U5FN|328}} although his undated drawings may not have been fully implemented.{{sfnp|9PKFL6ZC}}{{sfnp|HCYVY5E4}} After visiting the property in 1966, Nigel Tranter, author and historian,{{sfnp|9L459AW8}} reported that work had begun on the structure but described it as a “ruinous shell of a house”.{{sfnp|Y7ZXNDCD|59}} Some structural restoration work was undertaken{{sfnp|3UHR6SWF}} and the castle was slightly repaired,{{sfnp|W3HDB768}} sufficient to have made it “wind and watertight” by 1971.{{sfnp|M7EILB7S}} But it was then abandoned again, and further deterioration occurred;{{sfnp|M7EILB7S}} it had been uninhabitable since 1836, and Mirlees never lived in it.{{sfnp|Y5FQ62JJ}}{{sfnp|33NBVPVB}} Internally, only basic work was undertaken. Local residents believed the only time the interior was used during this period was when a ceremony was held to site a plaque commemorating the completion of external work in 1971.{{sfnp|K89YYTA2}}
Historic Scotland designated Inchdrewer Castle a category A listed building in February 1972.{{sfnp|HCYVY5E4}} The poor condition of the property was highlighted in a report expressing concern by the Scottish Civic Trust in 1999.{{sfnp|Y5FQ62JJ}} Inspections by Aberdeenshire Council officials described it as “showing signs of a lack of maintenance” in February 2008, with all its windows broken. Further decline was noted in October 2010, and the castle was said to be “on the cusp of ruination”. Further deterioration was noted when the castle was visited in December 2012.{{sfnp|MEQFGXRN}}
Mirlees died on 23 June 2012{{sfnp|33NBVPVB}} and disinherited his son by leaving the property to his teenage grandson.{{sfnp|GL6BJEQX}} Together with the title of “Baron of Inchdrewer” the castle ruins were put up for sale in April 2013,{{sfnp|3UHR6SWF}} and purchased in November 2013 for about £400,000 by Olga Roh, former Valentino and Versace model and owner of Rohmir.{{sfnp|TRQGCJUV}}{{sfnp|FMJUZH74}}{{sfnp|Z86PGIZD}} Roh had never been to Scotland, and had not seen the castle before she bought it, but said she planned to restore it so it could be used for fashion shoots, as a film location, or as a residence. Other suggestions were use as a holiday destination for friends or a boutique hotel.{{sfnp|TRQGCJUV}}{{sfnp|P9DQ93MA}}
## Architecture
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Inchdrewer_Castle_plan_of_first_floor.svg)Layout of the first floor of Inchdrewer Castle in 1887
Wikimedia Commons
Starting as a basic L-shaped tower built from tooled [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) dressed rubble, the castle was extended in a southerly direction by the addition of a circular tower during the first alterations in the late 16th century. A staircase was inside the new tower and further structures were added to the south and north sides of the courtyard at this stage of the development. Replacement entrances were installed and the original first-floor doorway was closed off. Access on the west side was gained through a narrow round-headed entrance and a wider main doorway was incorporated in the south elevation.{{sfnp|W3HDB768}}
Some of the architectural features incorporated throughout the castle included: [corbelled](https://engole.info/corbel) battlemented wallheads on the towers; turrets set above first or second storey level; a large elongated aperture provided light in the first floor hall; and shot holes in the southwest tower.{{sfnp|W3HDB768}} The fenestrations on the wing added in the late 18th century differed from those used in earlier parts of the structure, being larger and more regular in appearance.{{sfnp|HCYVY5E4}}
The restorations completed in 1971 made the structure wind and water tight, added extra windows and installed fresh glazing,{{sfnp|M7EILB7S}} but as it was then abandoned again, weather elements exacerbated by vandalism{{sfnp|V39XZGU5}} led to further structural deterioration. The castle was in a ruinous condition in 2013 and unfit for habitation.{{sfnp|C7SRMDDC}}
## Superstition and haunting
Twenty-first century newspaper stories report that the ghost of the murdered George Ogilvy, 3rd Lord Banff, haunts the castle.{{sfnp|K89YYTA2}}{{sfnp|P9DQ93MA}} Nigel Tranter visited Inchdrewer again in the 1970s and a large white dog, which he speculated may have been a Samoyed, bounded out of the castle as he approached it with a local builder. Unable to explain how the dog could have been confined in the castle for seven days, he was later sent a copy of the magazine *Vogue*, in which it was stated that the castle was “haunted by a lady in the shape of a white dog”.{{sfnp|MMJJFPES|60-62}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a McKean states: “It was burnt, Lord Banff within, in 1713”. b Details of the date and work undertaken are not specified: “Evidently it was again re-built …” c Various dates of purchase by Mirrlees are given in different sources; Ballantynes{{sfnp|M7EILB7S}} and Shields give 1963{{sfnp|C7SRMDDC}} whereas the Buildings at Risk register shows 1971.{{sfnp|MEQFGXRN}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3797
**Categories:** Aberdeenshire, Haunted, Scottish, Tower house
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Katherine Harley](https://engole.info/katherine-harley/)
**Published:** November 10, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Katherine_Harley_-_Women_Wanted.jpg[/pimage]Suffragist who in 1913 organised the Great Pilgrimage, a march along six routes to converge on Hyde Park, London, where a rally in support of women's suffrage was held.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Katherine_Harley_-_Women_Wanted.jpg)Katherine Harley, c. 1917
Wikimedia Commons
Katherine Harley (3 May 1855 – 7 March 1917) was a suffragist who in 1913 organised the [Great Pilgrimage](https://engole.info/great-pilgrimage/), a march along six routes to converge on Hyde Park, London, where a rally in support of women’s suffrage was held.
Born in Kent, Katherine was the daughter of Margaret French, née Eccles, and her husband John French, a Royal Navy commander from Ireland. Katherine’s siblings included an older sister, Charlotte (later Charlotte Despard, born in 1844){{sfnp|J8HGI7TG}} and John (later John French, 1st Earl of Ypres, born in 1852).{{sfnp|JP73FCB4}} Katherine’s father died before she was born,{{sfnp|J8HGI7TG}} and her mother was confined to an asylum by 1867, leaving Katherine to be raised by relatives. She married Colonel George Harley, who was killed in the Second Boer War.{{sfnp|D7VQ8WJI|67}}
Katherine joined the NUWSS in 1910 and became the honorary treasurer of its Midland Region; she was made president of the society’s Shropshire branch in 1913.{{sfnp|9Q2TFTJP|275}} She was also a member of the Church League for Women’s Suffrage.{{sfnp|JGXZX4HX|151}}
In 1914, at the age of 61, Katherine volunteered to assist the war effort by serving as a nurse with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service in France, where she was awarded the Croix de Guerre.{{sfnp|KGPLMAWI}}{{sfnp|D7VQ8WJI|68}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/HarleyFuneral.jpg)Katherine Harley’s funeral procession
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Late the following year Katherine transferred to Greece, to nurse on the Balkan Front. She established a motorised ambulance unit which operated near the front line, often at night, despite explicit orders not to do so. She rented a house in Monastir, Serbia (now in the Republic of North Macedonia) after its capture, and it was there, on 7 March 1917, that she was killed by shellfire. As a civilian working for the Serbian forces, Katherine was not entitled to a military commemoration, but her funeral was nevertheless attended by General Milne – commander of the British forces in the Balkans – and George, Crown Prince of Serbia. Her grave is one of 1600 in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s Salonika (Lembet Road) Military Cemetery.{{sfnp|KGPLMAWI}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23277
**Categories:** English, Female, Suffragist
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Thomas Lyon-Bowes, Master of Glamis (born 1821)](https://engole.info/thomas-lyon-bowes-master-of-glamis-born-1821/)
**Published:** December 16, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Glamis_Morris.jpg[/pimage]Child rumoured to have been born horribly deformed, and raised in a secret room in Glamis Castle, the so-called Monster of Glamis.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Glamis_Morris.jpg)Glamis Castle
Wikimedia Commons
Thomas Lyon-Bowes (21 October 1821 – 21 October 1821) was the first child of Thomas Lyon-Bowes, Lord Glamis, and his wife Charlotte Lyon-Bowes née Grimstead, great-grandparents of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who became Queen Consort in 1936. Although Thomas is recorded in Robert Douglas’s *Peerage of Scotland* as “born and died, October 21, 1821”, rumours began to circulate during the late 19th century that the child had been born deformed, and had therefore been brought up in seclusion hidden away in Glamis Castle in Angus, Scotland, giving rise to the soubriquet of the Monster of Glamis, or the Horror of Glamis.
## Mystery of Glamis
Rumours of Thomas Lyon-Bowes’ survival, as recounted by James Wentworth Day in his 1967 book *The Queen Mother’s Family Story*, appear to have started in local villages as the result of an account by the midwife, whose name is unrecorded. The deformed child was alleged to have been in good health when the midwife left, causing suspicion when his death was announced a day or two later. The story was discussed during the latter half of the 19th century, when “Miss M. Gilchrist, writing in 1885, was not only confident that such a monster did actually exist, but even described him – half frog, half man!”, also claiming he was the rightful earl.{{sfnp|5WKA8GVE}} Details published about the mystery of Glamis during the reign of Queen Victoria scarcely mention a monster and are instead focused on the possibility of members of a rival clan dying while locked in the secret room.{{sfnp|VXXEKQ4I}} The earliest surviving reference dates from 1908, in which it was claimed that “in the Castle of Glamis is a secret chamber. In this chamber is confined a monster, who is the rightful heir to the title and property, but who is so unpresentable that it is necessary to keep him out of sight and out of possession”.{{sfnp|V9MHFBMP}}
The child Thomas has no gravestone, a matter which tends to support the initial rumours. (Thomas had been baptised as a Christian on birth.) This part of the story of Thomas did not become current until the 1960s, when reputed family accounts were first published. However, the fact that Thomas Lyon-Bowes, as a child who died in infancy, has no individual gravestone is in keeping with the funeral customs of the time, when – owing to high rates of infant mortality – usually only adults were commemorated in this way. While dedicated funerary monuments for children do exist, they are comparatively rare.
During a visit to Glamis the Queen Mother’s biographer Michael Thornton was allegedly told by the sixteenth Earl that the entrance to the chamber where Thomas lived had been bricked up after his death. Some accounts also came from singer and composer Virginia Gabriel, who stayed at the castle in 1870.{{sfnp|VXXEKQ4I}} According to Raymond Lamont Brown, a folklorist writing an account of tales associated with Glamis, while stories of a concealed chamber are likely to have a factual basis, he asserts the family emphatically refute rumours about a monster.{{sfnp|IPGKZPT7|89}}
Perhaps the truth is as David Lindsay, the Earl of Crawford, surmised. On a visit to Glamis in 1905 he noted in his diary that:
The Lyons talk freely about ghosts and invent stories to suit the idiosyncracies of each guest … As to the alleged secret, I soon fathomed the mystery. The secret is that there is *no* secret.{{sfnp
— VXXEKQ4I}}|David Lindsay
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22447
**Categories:** Male, Scottish
---
### [The Siren](https://engole.info/the-siren/)
**Published:** March 26, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/The_Siren.jpg[/pimage]Painting by John William Waterhouse.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/The_Siren.jpg)Oil on canvas
81 cm × 53 cm (32 in × 21 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Siren* is a painting by the English artist [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/) (1849–1917). Completed in about 1900, it depicts a pale-skinned maiden seated on a rock strumming a lyre as she gazes down at a drowning mariner.{{sfnp|JD8QHVU4|148}} Her shimmering fish-scale covered calves are speckled with seaspray; she watches him with an air of curiosity rather than the predatory portrayal of the subject favoured by Waterhouse’s European counterparts.{{sfnp|WWYBNCH3}} The mariner is almost submersed in calm waters, but there are hints of a recent storm. Waterhouse endows the sailor with a well-muscled masculine physique, although enigmatically he exhibits feminine characteristics in his face, his hairstyle and his wearing of an earring.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|123}}
Mermaids enticing seafarers to their demise was a popular theme among artists at the time. Waterhouse had just completed his Diploma Picture of *The Mermaid* in 1900, and this painting shares similar qualities. A common style is applied to both artworks in rendering the rocks and water. According to art historian Peter Trippi, work on *The Siren* was likely undertaken for “quick commercial sale”.{{sfnp|JD8QHVU4|148}} Commissioned by Thomas Agnew’s, an art dealers, it was purchased by James Gresham (1836–1914) for £450 on 1 February 1901.{{sfnp|WWYBNCH3}}\[a\]Gresham was an amateur artist and industrial engineer; he founded the manufacturing company Gresham & Craven.{{sfnp|WWYBNCH3}}
The painting follows the artist’s earlier formulations of connecting death, music and sex within his artwork, as seen in for instance his 1892 depiction of [*Circe Invidiosa*](https://engole.info/circe-invidiosa/).{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|123}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Gresham was an amateur artist and industrial engineer; he founded the manufacturing company Gresham & Craven.{{sfnp|WWYBNCH3}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 17361
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
---
### [The Magic Circle](https://engole.info/the-magic-circle/)
**Published:** March 21, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/John_William_Waterhouse_-_Magic_Circle.JPG[/pimage]Oil painting by John William Waterhouse, one of his earliest depictions of a classical sorceress.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/John_William_Waterhouse_-_Magic_Circle.JPG)Oil on canvas
88 cm × 60 cm (35 in × 24 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Magic Circle* is an oil painting in the [Pre-Raphaelite](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood) style by [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/) (1849–1917). Painted in 1886, it is one of his earliest depictions of a classical sorceress, a subject he turned to repeatedly throughout his career.{{sfnp|VGYY2LY2}}
The sorceress in the centre of the picture is wearing a long blue gown printed with figures of dancing pagan warriors. She carries a curved knife in her left hand, and with the wand in her right she is drawing a fiery circle around herself and her flaming cauldron.{{sfnp|VGYY2LY2}} Magic circles were widely associated with [necromancy](https://engole.info/necromancy/), and their purpose was to protect the magician from the demons or spirits that they raised.{{sfnp|Y49UEGKF|search=The Magic of Circles and Spheres}}
A group of crows and a toad – symbols associated with witchcraft – stand outside the circle, apparently excluded by her magic, and in the background she is being observed by two shrouded figures in a cave.{{sfnp|VGYY2LY2}} The whole serves to create the sense of dynamic tension between an individual and a group that Waterhouse so favoured in his work;{{sfnp|SKW9QAVY}} outside the circle the landscape is barren, but inside are things of beauty: flowers and the woman herself.{{sfnp|QW6PPWYJ}} A critic writing for the *Magazine of Art* in 1886 remarked that “Mr Waterhouse, in *The Magic Circle*, is still at his best – original in conception and pictorial in his results”.{{sfnp|7AJ7X7AQ|37}}
The picture is open to interpretation as to whether or not the sorceress is a witch in the modern sense of that word. Does she derive her power from a liaison with Satan and is therefore intending to harm someone or something, or is she performing white magic so as to bring about a good harvest or a love union? Waterhouse is silent on the matter.{{sfnp|VGYY2LY2}}
The picture was purchased in 1886 by the Trustees of the Chantry Bequest and presented to the Tate Gallery, in whose collection it remains today.{{sfnp|QW6PPWYJ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 17426
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [The Enchanted Garden](https://engole.info/the-enchanted-garden/)
**Published:** July 17, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Enchanted_garden_waterhouse.jpg[/pimage]Oil painting by John William Waterhouse depicting a story in Boccaccio's Decameron.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Enchanted_garden_waterhouse.jpg)Oil on canvas
Wikimedia Commons
*The Enchanted Garden* is an oil painting in the [Pre-Raphaelite](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood) style by [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse), unfinished at his death in 1917.{{sfnp|GVJSJG8C}} It was nevertheless displayed at the Royal Academy exhibition that year as a token of respect by his counterparts.{{sfnp|7AJ7X7AQ|117}}
The painting is an illustration of a story contained in the *Decameron* (c. 1350) by Giovanni Boccaccio, which concerns ten young people who escape the plague in Florence by fleeing to the countryside. To pass the time, they entertain each other with songs and storytelling; Waterhouse’s painting is an illustration of the fifth story told on the tenth day.{{sfnp|YZQFXXPB}}
The story tells of a young man, Ansaldo, who falls in love with Dionara, a married woman. Despite her best efforts to rebuff him, Ansaldo persists in pursuing her. Finally she tells Ansaldo that she will only become his lover if he will perform what she considers to be an impossible task: to produce a summer garden in the middle of winter. But with the help of a magician Ansaldo succeeds in the task, and sends Dionara fruit and flowers from the garden. She arranges with her companions to go and look at the garden, which is the scene depicted in *The Enchanted Garden*, showing the distraught Dionara on the left-hand side of the painting.{{sfnp|YZQFXXPB}}
William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme, probably bought *The Enchanted Garden* shortly after Waterhouse’s death. On Lever’s foundation of the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Wirral, Merseyside in 1922, named in memory of his deceased wife,\[a\]Lady Lever died in 1913.{{sfnp|SNGXAPLC}} he transferred the painting to the new gallery, where it remains today.{{sfnp|42J56KTK}}{{sfnp|6JNK8S3L}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Lady Lever died in 1913.{{sfnp|SNGXAPLC}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27670
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Sleep and his Half-Brother Death](https://engole.info/sleep-and-his-half-brother-death/)
**Published:** April 16, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Waterhouse-sleep_and_his_half-brother_death-1874.jpg[/pimage]Oil on canvas painting completed by John William Waterhouse in 1874
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Waterhouse-sleep_and_his_half-brother_death-1874.jpg)Oil on canvas
70 cm × 91 cm (28 in × 36 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Sleep and His Half-Brother Death* is an oil on canvas painting completed by [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/) in 1874. The subject matter, an allegory, was a deviation from Waterhouse’s previous representations in his career; it was also his first piece of artwork displayed at the Royal Academy. According to a review in *The Illustrated London News*, it was influenced by George Frederic Watts.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|28}}
Tuberculosis caused the death of Waterhouse’s mother [Isabella](https://engole.info/isabella-waterhouse/) in 1857,{{sfnp|YCJA8ENU}} and subsequently his two younger brothers, so it is likely the emotional devastation kindled by those events was the stimulus for the painting.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|29}}\[a\]Waterhouse’s younger brother, Charles, died 4 December 1871, aged 15 years;{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|239}} Edwin died earlier when he was an adolescent.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|25}} The work depicts two youths gradually blending into the shadowy background.{{sfnp|7AJ7X7AQ|20-21}} Bathed in light, the figure in the foreground characterises the Greek god, Hypnos, personifying sleep; lying next to him but receding into the shadows is another god, his twin brother Thanatos, symbolising death.{{sfnp|RE5ZM68J|438}}{{sfnp|NQE42R7I|5}}
The painting received favourable reviews in the 1874 exhibition; although its early provenance is uncertain, the likelihood is that it was immediately bought by John Aird.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|29}}\[b\]Aird, a civil engineer who is remembered for building the Aswan Dam in Egypt and the dismantling and repositioning of Crystal Palace, became a well known art collector; it is documented that he purchased at least four works by Waterhouse during the 1870s.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|23}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Waterhouse’s younger brother, Charles, died 4 December 1871, aged 15 years;{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|239}} Edwin died earlier when he was an adolescent.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|25}} b Aird, a civil engineer who is remembered for building the Aswan Dam in Egypt and the dismantling and repositioning of Crystal Palace, became a well known art collector; it is documented that he purchased at least four works by Waterhouse during the 1870s.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|23}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 18184
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
---
### [Penelope and the Suitors](https://engole.info/penelope-and-the-suitors/)
**Published:** May 27, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/JohnWilliamWaterhouse-PenelopeandtheSuitors%281912%29.jpg[/pimage]Oil on canvas painting by the English artist John William Waterhouse, commissioned by the Aberdeen Art Gallery and completed in 1912.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/JohnWilliamWaterhouse-PenelopeandtheSuitors%281912%29.jpg)Oil on canvas
129.8 cm × 188 cm (51.1 in x 74 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Penelope and the Suitors*, completed in 1912, was the last of [John William Waterhouse’s](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/) paintings on a mythological theme exhibited at the Royal Academy. Commissioned by Aberdeen Art Gallery, it was first displayed at its exhibition on New Year’s Eve 1911 before being returned to the artist for amendment and completion and then shown at the Royal Academy in the summer of 1912. The following year it was exhibited at the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts.
## Description
The setting of the painting has its roots in a scene from the final parts of Homer’s *Odyssey*, the narrative Waterhouse had previously drawn inspiration from for his 1891 depiction of Circe as portrayed in *[Offering the Cup to Ulysses](https://engole.info/circe-offering-the-cup-to-ulysses/)*. Echoing the work of Renaissance artist Pintoricchio,\[a\]*Penelope with the Suitors*, a fresco by Bernardino Pintoricchio from c. 1509, shows a similar scene; it was acquired by the National Gallery in 1874.{{sfnp|B2W6D76S|184}} Waterhouse depicts Penelope, wife of Odysseus – known as Ulysses to the Romans – sitting at a loom weaving a tapestry.{{sfnp|B2W6D76S|184}} Penelope thinks her husband, who has been absent for twenty years, is dead, and in an attempt to discourage her determined suitors, she devises the subterfuge of telling her amorous followers that she will only choose a new husband once the shroud she is working on is complete; she labours all day, but unravels her work every night.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|213}}
Waterhouse borrowed the style of Rossetti by having a central figure surrounded by onlookers who are placed at the extremities of the painting; he also employed the intense colour techniques favoured by third-generation Pre-Raphaelites.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|214}} Primarily composed using tones of red and brown, Waterhouse opted to use black for Penelope’s hair, whereas despite being based on the same model, the other two women sport the russet or red hair colouring fashionable with the Pre-Raphaelites, but in keeping with the tints throughout the rest of the painting.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|128}} Penelope shares a similar pose and hairstyle with that the artist used in his contemporary works of *[Circe](https://engole.info/circe/)*, providing a link between the faithful wife of Odysseus and his lover, the sorceress.{{sfnp|SFUJ476P|182-183}}
## Background
Committee members of Aberdeen Art Gallery approached Waterhouse in 1910 asking to be informed when he had a painting suitable to form part of its collection.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|213}} Shortly afterwards they were shown a canvas with some basic ideas of composition in place, which they looked favourably on.{{sfnp|7AJ7X7AQ|96}} Documentation and records of Waterhouse’s personal life and character are patchy{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|4}}\[b\]Modern day historians and academics including Trippi and Anthony Hobson believe that diaries, correspondence and journals were thrown out or destroyed; there is also only scant detail or mention of Waterhouse in the letters of his contemporaries.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|4}}{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|ix}} but some records are extant concerning this artwork.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|216}} Waterhouse and his wife, [Esther Kenworthy](https://engole.info/esther-kenworthy-waterhouse/), lived at 10 Hall Road in the St John’s Wood district of London from 1900,{{sfnp|R7PXZAT9|20}} and, like his contemporaries living in the capital, had to deal with the problems caused by adverse weather conditions. Oil paint was slow to dry; humidity and coal smoke combined to generate thick fog causing further difficulties during the darkest, dampest months of the year. On Christmas Day 1911, Waterhouse wrote to Percy Bate, the newly appointed director of Aberdeen Art Gallery, explaining that work on the painting was delayed owing to “dark weather”.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|216, 244}} He also sent a letter that day to James Murray, the Chairman of the Gallery, who was concerned the painting would not arrive in Aberdeen in time for its planned inclusion in the New Year’s Eve exhibition.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|216, 244}}\[c\]James Murray (1850–1933), knighted in 1915, was the Liberal Member of Parliament for East Aberdeenshire, an artist with exhibits at the Royal Academy who went on to become a noted art collector;{{sfnp|NPQH5HE2}} Trippi further describes Murray as “the beef and tanning magnate”.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|213}}
A few days later, despite feeling the painting remained incomplete, Waterhouse dispatched the canvas to Aberdeen so it could be displayed at the exhibition.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|214}} It arrived in the city on the morning of Friday, 29 December 1911, and was mounted in the gallery in time for those attending a presentation ceremony that afternoon to see it. Attendees, who included the Lord Provost, councillors, magistrates and other dignitaries, were initially reported in a local newspaper as viewing it “with great admiration”.{{sfnp|RJCWGUX2}} The following day, the same newspaper carried a short piece intimating that the committee of the gallery had agreed, subject to confirmation by the council, to purchase the painting for £1400.{{sfnp|GLWMFWDV}} According to historian Peter Trippi, “an uproar ensued”;{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|214}} a barrage of complaints were received with one letter published the next day claiming that the painting lacked emotion, and comparing it unfavourably to the work of Rossetti.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|215}} Objections focused mainly on the price; despite being discounted from £1500 – the amount a private buyer would be expected to pay{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|96}}\[d\]Waterhouse had never previously levied that much for any of his work.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|215}} – locals and dignitaries were indignant at the cost.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|215}} Several other newspaper articles appeared, including a full column letter from Professor Grierson,\[e\]At the time Sir Herbert John Clifford Grierson (1866–1960) was a professor at Aberdeen University; knighted in 1935, he introduced English Literature into the curriculum. A literary critic and academic, he was deeply knowledgeable and was also passionate about poetry.{{sfnp|VIQH9BLT}} who listed criticisms of the painting while at the same time raising questions concerning the policies and functions of the art gallery committee.{{sfnp|582E88T6}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Penelope-painting-before-alterations-reduced.png)1912 photograph taken by Herbert Koester of the painting before it was returned to Waterhouse for amendment
*J W Waterhouse*
Aside from the price, objectors cited incorrect perspectives, figures based on the same model and they wanted the funding used for Scottish artists instead. Detractors highlighted inaccuracies in the representation of archaeological features such as the Pompeian-style frieze when the narrative was set in Ithaca; the inclusion of Egyptian lotus within the carpet design; and, if Penelope was weaving a shroud, it should have been white. Additionally, the loom was incorrectly angled as it should have been upright.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|214-215}} Bate, who was not a fan of Waterhouse’s work generally,\[f\]When Bate was at the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts he would not buy any work by Waterhouse and he omitted mention of the artist in his 1899 book about Pre-Raphaelites despite covering others, such as Byan Shaw, who were much younger than Waterhouse.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|215}} wrote a letter to Murray on 27 January 1912 listing the technical issues that had to be rectified.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|215, 244}} Despite this, earlier in the month Bate sent a letter to the Lord Provost of Aberdeen refuting the criticisms, explaining Waterhouse was not replicating a dictionary definition of the scene; instead, as the curator expected from great artists, Waterhouse was producing his own interpretation of a romantic scene. The letter also justified the cost of the painting. The Lord Provost read Bate’s letter to the members of the council when they met to discuss approval of the purchase of the painting; it was unanimously approved.{{sfnp|D8NWF9DR}}
The painting was sent back to Waterhouse to enable him to make adjustments prior to the exhibition at the Royal Academy in the summer. On 12 April the artist wrote to Bate suggesting he might extend the canvas around a couple of inches on the left hand side, a technique he had used on earlier works like *Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May* in 1909 and *Flora and the Zephyrs*, his Academy exhibit in 1898. Although this was never carried out, he did eliminate the separation between the male suitors and Penelope and her female attendants caused by the rear of her chair.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|215}}
## Exhibitions and provenance
The alterations were carried out in time for the painting to be included in the summer exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1912; it was then sent to be included in the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts of 1913.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|191}} The painting remains part of the Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums collection.{{sfnp|R5MDET83}} In 1927 the gallery purchased another Waterhouse painting, *[The Danaides](https://engole.info/the-danaides/)*, his 1906 Royal Academy submission.{{sfnp|Q4A3724Q|164}}\[g\]An earlier smaller version from 1904 of *The Danaides* exists; owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber, it has five Danaides instead of seven.{{sfnp|Q4A3724Q|164}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a *Penelope with the Suitors*, a fresco by Bernardino Pintoricchio from c. 1509, shows a similar scene; it was acquired by the National Gallery in 1874.{{sfnp|B2W6D76S|184}} b Modern day historians and academics including Trippi and Anthony Hobson believe that diaries, correspondence and journals were thrown out or destroyed; there is also only scant detail or mention of Waterhouse in the letters of his contemporaries.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|4}}{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|ix}} c James Murray (1850–1933), knighted in 1915, was the Liberal Member of Parliament for East Aberdeenshire, an artist with exhibits at the Royal Academy who went on to become a noted art collector;{{sfnp|NPQH5HE2}} Trippi further describes Murray as “the beef and tanning magnate”.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|213}} d Waterhouse had never previously levied that much for any of his work.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|215}} e At the time Sir Herbert John Clifford Grierson (1866–1960) was a professor at Aberdeen University; knighted in 1935, he introduced English Literature into the curriculum. A literary critic and academic, he was deeply knowledgeable and was also passionate about poetry.{{sfnp|VIQH9BLT}} f When Bate was at the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts he would not buy any work by Waterhouse and he omitted mention of the artist in his 1899 book about Pre-Raphaelites despite covering others, such as Byan Shaw, who were much younger than Waterhouse.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|215}} g An earlier smaller version from 1904 of *The Danaides* exists; owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber, it has five Danaides instead of seven.{{sfnp|Q4A3724Q|164}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 20052
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
**Tags:** Facebook post, Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Pandora (painting)](https://engole.info/pandora-painting/)
**Published:** May 6, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/John_William_Waterhouse_-_Pandora%2C_1896.jpg/960px-John_William_Waterhouse_-_Pandora%2C_1896.jpg[/pimage]Painting by John William Waterhouse.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/John_William_Waterhouse_-_Pandora%2C_1896.jpg/960px-John_William_Waterhouse_-_Pandora%2C_1896.jpg)Oil on canvas
152 cm × 91 cm (60 in × 36 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Pandora* is a painting by the English artist [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/) (1849–1917). Completed in 1886, like many of Waterhouse’s later works, the picture contains only a single – almost invariably female – figure, the eponymous Pandora.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|118}}
According to Greek mythology, Pandora was the first mortal woman, fashioned out of clay by the god Hephaistos. She was sent to Earth with a box,\[a\]Early versions of the story of Pandora say a jar, (πίθος *pithos*). In his Latin account of the story, the 16th-century humanist Erasmus mistranslated the Greek *pithos* as *pyxis*, which means “box”.{{sfnp|3RGAH4HW|56}} and curious to know what was inside she opened it, releasing all of the evils that have since then plagued humanity: work, conflict, disease … only hope remained in the box.{{sfnp|P5JZUU9V}}
Pandora is depicted as a pale-skinned young woman, kneeling at the moment of opening the box, which is sitting on a stone pedestal in front of her. She is wearing a long, translucent blue dress with gold patterned detailing around the hem and the slipping neckline, eliciting an impression of purity and vulnerability.
*Pandora* was sold at auction in London in 1990 for £231,000.{{sfnp|PRQWFPBD}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Early versions of the story of Pandora say a jar, (πίθος *pithos*). In his Latin account of the story, the 16th-century humanist Erasmus mistranslated the Greek *pithos* as *pyxis*, which means “box”.{{sfnp|3RGAH4HW|56}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26231
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
---
### [Mariana in the South](https://engole.info/mariana-in-the-south/)
**Published:** June 17, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/John_William_Waterhouse_-_Mariana_in_the_South_%281897%29.jpg/960px-John_William_Waterhouse_-_Mariana_in_the_South_%281897%29.jpg[/pimage]Painting in the Pre-Raphaelite style by John William Waterhouse (1849–1917).
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/John_William_Waterhouse_-_Mariana_in_the_South_%281897%29.jpg/960px-John_William_Waterhouse_-_Mariana_in_the_South_%281897%29.jpg)Oil on canvas
135 cm × 86 cm (34 in × 17 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Mariana in the South* is an oil painting in the [Pre-Raphaelite](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood) style by [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/) (1849–1917), painted in 1897.{{sfnp|C3TM5S9F}} Like many of Waterhouse’s later works, the picture contains only a single – almost invariably female – figure.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|118}}
The picture depicts a young woman in a flowing dress kneeling in front of a large oval mirror in a wooden frame. Some letters and envelopes in the foreground, perhaps from her lost love, hint at the poem of the same name by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) which inspired the painting, and in particular the line “And in the liquid mirror glowed the clear perfection of her face”.{{sfnp|C3TM5S9F}}\[a\]The theme of Tennyson’s poem is the desolate loneliness of spurned love.{{sfnp|IU7WSC75}}
In 1927 the painting was sold at auction in London for £525, equivalent to about £42,000 as at 2024.{{sfnp|LSQG4HDS}}\[b\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} It was subsequently bequeathed by Cecil French to the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in 1954.{{sfnp|C3TM5S9F}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The theme of Tennyson’s poem is the desolate loneliness of spurned love.{{sfnp|IU7WSC75}} b Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27533
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
---
### [Mariamne](https://engole.info/mariamne/)
**Published:** March 30, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/John_William_Waterhouse_-_Mariamne_Leaving_the_Judgement_Seat_of_Herod%2C_1887.jpg[/pimage]Oil painting by John William Waterhouse, the largest art work he ever produced.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/John_William_Waterhouse_-_Mariamne_Leaving_the_Judgement_Seat_of_Herod%2C_1887.jpg)Oil on canvas
{{convert
259|cm|abbr=on}} × {{convert|180|cm|abbr=on
*Mariamne* is an oil on canvas painting by the English artist [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/). Painted in 1887, the same year it was exhibited at the Royal Academy, it is the largest art work he ever produced.{{sfnp|GSANU5HQ}} The painting’s full title is *Mariamne leaving the judgement seat of Herod*.{{sfnp|7AJ7X7AQ|39}} It is the finale in his sequence of works with historical themes, which began with *The Remorse of Nero* in 1878.{{sfnp|PDPHPNP6|108}}
Together with other relatives, Salome, Herod the Great’s sister, had deceitfully accused Mariamne, the King’s second wife, of adultery in 24 BCE. Waterhouse portrays the scene in which Herod condemned Mariamne to death despite his devotion to her, and she looks back at him as she walks in chains towards her execution.{{sfnp|GSANU5HQ}}{{sfnp|7AJ7X7AQ|39}} In the background shadows behind her the elderly judges responsible for finding her guilty are seated in a circle while to the right Salome stands beside the distraught Herod malevolently whispering to him. Adding to the menacing effect of the scene is the marble lion baring his teeth.{{sfnp|PDPHPNP6|108}}
The painting was owned by Sir Cuthbert Quilter until he sold it on 9 July 1909 for 480 guineas.{{sfnp|GSANU5HQ}} While it was in his possession Quilter sent it to be shown at international exhibitions. In 1889 it won a bronze medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle before being exhibited throughout Britain in venues such as Birmingham, Newcastle, Liverpool and Nottingham as well as several in London and its surrounds. After being displayed in Chicago in 1893 at the World’s Columbian exhibition, the painting was sent to Brussels for the Exposition Internationale held there in 1897, where it was awarded one of the five gold medals.{{sfnp|7AJ7X7AQ|39}} When the artwork was offered at auction on 15 July 1938 the highest bid was 48 guineas.{{sfnp|GSANU5HQ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 17805
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Destiny (painting)](https://engole.info/destiny-painting/)
**Published:** June 18, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/John_william_waterhouse_destiny.jpg/960px-John_william_waterhouse_destiny.jpg?20151024005747[/pimage]Painting in the Pre-Raphaelite style by John William Waterhouse (1849–1917), his contribution to the Artists' War Fund in support of British troops fighting in the Boer War.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/John_william_waterhouse_destiny.jpg/960px-John_william_waterhouse_destiny.jpg?20151024005747)Oil on canvas
69 cm × 55 cm (27 in × 22 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Destiny* is an oil painting in the [Pre-Raphaelite](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood) style by [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/) (1849–1917), painted in 1900.{{sfnp|PICNH79D}} As in many other of his later works, the picture contains only a single figure, almost invariably female.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|118}}
*Destiny* was Waterhouse’s contribution to the Artists’ War Fund, in support of British troops engaged in the Boer War, which had begun the previous year. In all, 350 artists donated works. After being exhibited in the London Guildhall, all the pictures were auctioned by Christie’s and the proceeds donated to the fund.{{sfnp|GWPJ7EKW}}
The girl is drinking a libation to the departing heroes, as she gazes at the ships under sail through the window behind her.{{sfnp|GWPJ7EKW}}
The painting was purchased in 1905 by Burnley Corporation, and is now in the collection of the Towneley Hall Art Gallery & Museum in Burnley, Lancashire.{{sfnp|PICNH79D}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27539
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Consulting the Oracle](https://engole.info/consulting-the-oracle/)
**Published:** November 29, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/John_William_Waterhouse_-_Consulting_the_Oracle_-_Christie%27s.jpg/1920px-John_William_Waterhouse_-_Consulting_the_Oracle_-_Christie%27s.jpg[/pimage]Oil painting by John William Waterhouse, showing a priestess using a mummified head, a tephra, as an oracle.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/John_William_Waterhouse_-_Consulting_the_Oracle_-_Christie%27s.jpg/1920px-John_William_Waterhouse_-_Consulting_the_Oracle_-_Christie%27s.jpg)Oil on canvas
119 cm × 198 cm (47 in × 78 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Consulting the Oracle* is an oil painting by the English artist [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/) (1849–1917), completed in 1884. The *Illustrated London News* considered it to be “one of the principal works of the year” following its exhibition at the Royal Academy.{{sfnp|MJBDWESK}}
The art critic Anthony Hobson has described the composition as resembling the shape of a keyhole, with seven young women sitting in a semicircle, focused on the priestess at the left.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|31-34}} She is gesturing for silence as she strains to hear the low voice foretelling future events issuing from the Teraph, a mummified human head fixed to the wall, surrounded by lamps.{{sfnp|MJBDWESK}}
The painting was purchased by the sugar refiner and philanthropist Sir Henry Tate for £900, equivalent to about £100,000 as at 2021,\[a\]Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} and was one of the sixty-five he donated to the National Gallery of British Art in 1894, now known as the Tate.{{sfnp|MJBDWESK}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24992
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
---
### [Cleopatra (painting)](https://engole.info/cleopatra-painting/)
**Published:** May 5, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Cleopatra_-_John_William_Waterhouse.jpg[/pimage]Painting by John William Waterhouse.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Cleopatra_-_John_William_Waterhouse.jpg)Oil on canvas
65 cm × 57 cm (26 in × 22 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Cleopatra* is a painting by the English artist [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/) (1849–1917). Completed in 1888, it depicts the last pharaoh of Egypt as a femme fatale lounging on a leopard skin, glancing up under a gold diadem, “her sultry gaze … as seductive and potentially poisonous as the asp that bit her”.{{sfnp|QI6U5Z5T}}\[a\]Following Cleopatra’s suicide in 30 BCE, Egypt became a province of Rome.
Like many of Waterhouse’s later works, the picture contains only a single – almost invariably female – figure,{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|118}} a “dark, dangerous woman”, a popular theme in late 19th-century art and literature.{{sfnp|A7R4NWTC|164-166}}
The painting was commissioned in 1887 by [*The Graphic*](https://engole.info/the-graphic), a London illustrated weekly newspaper, as one of an exhibit of twenty-one paintings of Shakespearian heroines. It had not been seen in public since 1889, and had been presumed lost after it was bought by a London dealer for 90 guineas that year, until it was discovered in a log cabin in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado in 2003.{{sfnp|6PFYIDPX}}\[b\]Ninety guineas in 1889 is equivalent to about £12,400 as at 2022, calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
*Cleopatra* was submitted for auction at Christie’s in London in 2005 with an estimated price of £200,000 – £300,000, but failed to reach its reserve.{{sfnp|TL5IDZ58}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Following Cleopatra’s suicide in 30 BCE, Egypt became a province of Rome. b Ninety guineas in 1889 is equivalent to about £12,400 as at 2022, calculated using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26229
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
**Tags:** Facebook post, Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses](https://engole.info/circe-offering-the-cup-to-ulysses/)
**Published:** March 1, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Circe_Offering_the_Cup_to_Odysseus.jpg[/pimage]Oil painting in the Pre-Raphaelite style by John William Waterhouse, created in 1891.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Circe_Offering_the_Cup_to_Odysseus.jpg)Oil on canvas
175 cm × 92 cm (69 in × 36 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses* is an oil painting in the Pre-Raphaelite style by [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/), created in 1891. Waterhouse is the best known of that group of artists who from the 1880s revived the literary themes favoured by the [Pre-Raphaelites](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood), although not themselves necessarily employing their techniques. Most of the paintings produced by Waterhouse at that stage of his career, including *Circe*, depict ancient classical or historical subjects.{{sfnp|SKW9QAVY}}
Circe is a sorceress encountered in Homer’s *Odyssey*, who seeks to bring Odysseus – known as Ulysses to the Romans – under her spell by having him drink the potion she is offering, as she has already done with the crew of his ship. One of Odysseus’s men, whom she has transformed into a pig, can be seen lying at her feet. Odysseus himself, looking understandably anxious, is reflected in the mirror behind the sorceress. The “dark, dangerous woman” of the painting was a particularly popular theme in late 19th-century art and literature.{{sfnp|A7R4NWTC|164-166}}
Waterhouse’s representation of Circe is almost certainly influenced by that of the French painter Louis Chalon, which had been exhibited three years earlier. Chalon focused on Circe’s descent from Helios, the Greek god and personification of the sun, showing her against the background of a light-filled disk. Waterhouse changed that sun to a mirror, but the two paintings otherwise share a similar composition and iconography. Chalon’s depiction shows the sorceress naked, but Waterhouse clothed her in a transparent fabric, with a “gorgeous freshness … that makes her look far more seductive than Chalon’s figure”.{{sfnp|A7R4NWTC|164-166}}
Waterhouse revisited the theme of Circe in 1892, in his [*Circe Invidiosa*](https://engole.info/circe-invidiosa/). In both paintings, in the words of art critic Judith Yarnall, he is inviting the viewer to ask the question “is she goddess or woman?”{{sfnp|A7R4NWTC|166}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 16018
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting, Pre-Raphaelite
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [The Bouquet](https://engole.info/the-bouquet/)
**Published:** June 19, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/The-Bouquet.webp[/pimage]Painting in the Pre-Raphaelite style by John William Waterhouse (1849–1917), one of his series of "flower women" created between 1908 and 1914.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/The-Bouquet.webp)Oil on canvas
42 cm × 59 cm (17 in × 23 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The Bouquet* is an oil painting in the [Pre-Raphaelite](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood) style by [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/) (1849–1917), created in about 1908.{{sfnp|JDV5XAFL}}
Waterhouse associated women with the beauty and decay of flowers, as both are vessels for the seeds of new growth. Between 1908 and 1914 this idea was a recurring theme in his series of “flower women”, which along with *The Bouquet* included *Gather Ye Rosebuds while Ye May* and *The Soul of the Rose*.{{sfnp|SUPE4DRT}}
The painting is currently in the collection of the Falmouth Art Gallery, to which it was donated by Alfred de Pass.{{sfnp|SUPE4DRT}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27542
**Categories:** John William Waterhouse, Painting
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Quatermass and the Pit](https://engole.info/quatermass-and-the-pit/)
**Published:** February 1, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/56/Qatp01.JPG[/pimage]British television science-fiction serial from the BBC, broadcast in 1958/1959.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/56/Qatp01.JPG)Opening title
Wikipedia
Quatermass and the Pit is a British television science-fiction serial transmitted live by BBC Television in December 1958 and January 1959. It was the third and last of the BBC’s Quatermass serials, although the chief character, Professor Bernard Quatermass, reappeared in a 1979 ITV production called *Quatermass*. Like its predecessors, *Quatermass and the Pit* was written by Nigel Kneale.
The serial continues the loose chronology of the Quatermass adventures. Workmen excavating a site in Knightsbridge, London, discover a strange skull and what at first appears to be an unexploded bomb. Quatermass and his newly appointed military superior at the British Rocket Group, Colonel Breen, become involved in the investigation when it becomes apparent that the object is an alien spacecraft. The ship and its contents have a powerful and malign influence over many of those who come in contact with it, including Quatermass. It becomes obvious to him that the aliens, probably from Mars, had been abducting pre-humans and modifying them to give them psychic abilities much like their own before returning them to Earth, a genetic legacy responsible for much of the war and racial prejudice/strife in the world.
## Background
The *Quatermass Experiment* (1953) and *Quatermass II* (1955), both written by Nigel Kneale, had been critical and popular successes for the BBC,{{sfnp|Y92DENMR}}{{sfnp|FGR97WDX}} and in early 1957 the corporation decided to commission a third serial. Kneale had left the BBC shortly before, but was hired to write the new scripts on a freelance basis.{{sfnp|GREXDUAK}}
The British Empire had been in transition since the 1920s, and the pace accelerated in the wake of the Second World War. More and more member states demanded independence, and a series of crises erupted during the 1950s, including the 1952 Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya and the Suez Crisis of 1956. During the same period immigration into Britain from the Indian subcontinent and the Caribbean was on the increase, causing some resentment among elements of the British. At the time Kneale was working on his scripts black communities in Nottingham and London came under attack from mobs of white Britons;{{sfnp|2W3L9XCQ|211-212}} Kneale became keen to develop the serial as an allegory for the emerging racial tensions that culminated in the Notting Hill race riots of August and September 1958.{{sfnp|FH82GJRF}}
## Plot
Workmen discover a pre-human skull while building in the fictional Hobbs Lane (formerly Hob’s Lane, Hob being an antiquated name for the Devil) in Knightsbridge, London. Dr Matthew Roney, a paleontologist, examines the remains and reconstructs a dwarf-like humanoid with a large brain volume, which he believes to be a primitive man. As further excavation is undertaken, something that looks like a missile is unearthed; further work by Roney’s group is halted because the military believe it to be an unexploded Second World War bomb.
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/41jjfmPxn7L._AC_.jpg)Martian space ship
Amazon
Roney calls in his friend Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Rocket Group to prevent the military from disturbing what he believes to be an archaeological find. Quatermass and Colonel Breen, recently appointed to lead the Rocket Group over Quatermass’s objections, become intrigued by the site. As more of the artefact is uncovered additional fossils are found, which Roney dates to five million years, suggesting that the object is at least that old. The interior is empty, and a symbol of six intersecting circles, which Roney identifies as the occult pentacle, is etched on a wall that appears to conceal an inner chamber.
The shell of the object is so hard that even a borazon boron nitride drill makes no impression, and when the attempt is made, vibrations cause severe distress in people around the object. Quatermass interviews local residents and discovers ghosts and poltergeists have been common in the area for decades. An hysterical soldier is carried out of the object, claiming to have seen a dwarf-like apparition walk through the wall of the artifact, a description that matches a 1927 newspaper account of a ghost.
Following the drilling, a hole opens up in the object’s interior wall. Inside, Quatermass and the others find the remains of insect-like aliens resembling giant three-legged locusts, with stubby antennae on their heads giving the impression of horns. As Quatermass and Roney examine the remains, they theorize the aliens may have come from a planet habitable five million years ago – Mars.
While clearing his equipment from the craft, the drill operator triggers more poltergeist activity, and runs through the streets in a panic until he finds sanctuary in a church. Quatermass and Roney find him there, and he describes visions of the insect aliens killing each other. As Quatermass investigates the history of the area, he finds accounts dating back to medieval times about devils and ghosts, all centred on incidents where the ground was disturbed. He suspects a psychic projection of these beings has remained on the alien ship and is being seen by those who come into contact with it.
Quatermass decides to use Roney’s optic-encephalogram, a device that records impressions from the optical centers of the brain, and see the visions for himself. Roney’s assistant, Barbara Judd, is most sensitive; placing the device on her, they record a violent purge of the Martian hive to root out unwanted mutations. Quatermass concludes that in its most primitive phase mankind was visited by this race of Martians. Some apes and primitive pre-humans were taken away and genetically altered to give them abilities such as telepathy, telekinesis and other psychic powers. They were then returned to Earth, and the buried artifact is one of the ships that had crashed at the end of its journey. With their home world dying, the aliens had tried to change humanity’s ancestors to have minds and abilities similar to their own, but with a bodily form adapted to life on Earth.
But the aliens became extinct before completing their work. As the human race bred and evolved, a percentage retained their psychic abilities, which surfaced only sporadically. For centuries the buried ship had occasionally triggered those dormant abilities, which explained the reports of poltergeists; people were unknowingly using their own telekinesis to move objects around, and the ghost sightings were traces of a racial memory. The authorities, and Breen in particular, find this explanation preposterous despite being shown the recording of Barbara’s vision. They believe that the craft is a Nazi propaganda weapon and the alien bodies fakes designed to create exactly the impressions that Quatermass has succumbed to, and decide to hold a media event to stem the rumors that are already spreading.
Quatermass warns that if implanted psychic powers survive in the human race, there could also still be an ingrained compulsion to enact the “Wild Hunt” of a race purge, but the media event goes ahead regardless. The power cables that string into the craft fully activate it for the first time, and glowing and humming like a living thing it starts to draw upon this energy source and awaken the ancient racial programming. Those Londoners in whom the alien admixture remains strong fall under the ship’s influence; they merge into a group mind and begin a telekinetic mass murder of those without the alien genes, an ethnic cleansing of those the alien race mind considers to be impure and weak.
Breen stands transfixed and is eventually consumed by the energies from the craft as it slowly melts away and an image of a Martian “devil” floats in the sky above London. Fires and riots erupt, and Quatermass succumbs to the mass psychosis and attempts to kill Roney, who lacks the alien gene and is immune to alien influence. Roney manages to shake Quatermass out of his trance, and remembering the legends of demons and their aversion to iron and water, proposes that a sufficient mass of iron connected to wet earth may be sufficient to short-circuit the apparition. Quatermass acquires a length of iron chain and tries to reach the “devil” but succumbs to its psychic pressure. Roney manages to walk up to the apparition and hurls the chain at it, resulting in him and the spacecraft being reduced to ashes.
At the conclusion of the final episode Quatermass gives a television broadcast, at the end of which he delivers a warning directly to camera: “If we cannot control the inheritance within us, this will be their \[the Martians’\] second dead planet.”{{sfnp|HCNEG9FX|291}}
## Episode list
**No.****Title****Directed by****Written by****Original air date****Prod. code****UK viewers (millions)**1“The Halfmen”Rudolph CartierNigel Kneale22 December 1958T/51337.62“The Ghosts”Rudolph CartierNigel Kneale29 December 1958T/51349.13“Imps and Demons”Rudolph CartierNigel Kneale5 January 1959T/51359.84“The Enchanted”Rudolph CartierNigel Kneale12 January 1959T/51369.55“The Wild Hunt”Rudolph CartierNigel Kneale19 January 1959T/513710.66“Hob”Rudolph CartierNigel Kneale26 January 1959T/513811.9## Cast
For the third time in as many serials the title role was played by a different actor, this time by André Morell; the part had initially been offered to Alec Clunes, but he declined it.{{sfnp|Z2GRZFYZ|67}} Morell had a reputation for playing authority figures, such as Colonel Green in *The Bridge on the River Kwai* (1957),{{sfnp|EMEW3APG}} and had previously worked with Kneale and Cartier when he appeared as O’Brien in their BBC television adaptation of *Nineteen Eighty-Four* (1954).{{sfnp|6H8FTQPX}} He had been the first actor offered the part of Quatermass, for the original serial *The Quatermass Experiment* in 1953, but he turned the part down.{{sfnp|Z2GRZFYZ|28}} Morell’s portrayal of Quatermass has been described as the definitive interpretation of the character.{{sfnp|JCKCD6Y4|596-601}}
Colonel Breen was played by Anthony Bushell, who was known for various similar military roles – including another bomb disposal officer in The Small Back Room (1949) – and preferred to be addressed as “Major Bushell”, the rank he held during the Second World War.{{sfnp|APKJRYA7}} Roney was played by Canadian actor Cec Linder, John Stratton played Captain Potter, and Christine Finn played the other main character, Barbara Judd.{{sfnp|EMEW3APG}} She went on to provide the voices for various characters in the popular 1960s children’s television series *Thunderbirds*.{{sfnp|BEV6A9E4}}
For the first time, Kneale used a character from a previous serial other than Quatermass himself, the journalist James Fullalove from *The Quatermass Experiment*. The production team had hoped that Paul Whitsun-Jones would be able to reprise the part, but he was unavailable, and Brian Worth was cast instead.{{sfnp|GREXDUAK}} Michael Ripper appeared as an army sergeant; he had been in Hammer Film Productions’ adaptation of the second Quatermass serial, Quatermass 2, the previous year.{{sfnp|HBCQMUD8}}
## Production
### Filming
The director assigned was Rudolph Cartier, with whom Kneale had a good working relationship;{{sfnp|NYQUMCU8}} the two had collaborated on the previous Quatermass serials, as well as the literary adaptations *Wuthering Heights* (1953) and *Nineteen Eighty-Four* (1954).{{sfnp|T9X29PI9}} The budget of £17,500 (equivalent to about £366,000 as at 2018{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}) allocated for *Quatermass and the Pit* was larger than that of the previous Quatermass productions.{{sfnp|GS7VULSP}} Pre-production began in September 1958, while Cartier was still working on *A Tale of Two Cities* and *A Midsummer Night’s Dream* for the BBC. As the two previous Quatermass serials had been scheduled in half-hour slots but, performed live, had overrun, Cartier requested 35-minute slots for the six episodes of *Quatermass and the Pit*. This was agreed in November 1958, just before the start of production on 24 November. The six episodes – “The Halfmen”, “The Ghosts”, “Imps and Demons”, “The Enchanted”, “The Wild Hunt” and “Hob” – were broadcast on Monday nights at 8 pm from 22 December 1958 to 26 January 1959.{{sfnp|GREXDUAK}}
Each episode was predominantly live from Studio 1 of the BBC’s Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, London. The episodes were rehearsed from Tuesday to Saturday, usually at the Mary Wood Settlement in Tavistock Place, London, with camera rehearsals in the morning and afternoon of transmission. Not every scene was live; a significant amount of material was on 35 mm film and inserted during the performance. Most filming involved scenes set on location or those too technically complex or expansive to achieve live.{{sfnp|GREXDUAK}} The latter were shot at Ealing Studios, acquired by the BBC in 1955,{{sfnp|4SSLA48C}} where Cartier worked with the cinematographer A. A. Englander.{{sfnp|NMH6HKJ2}} Pre-filming was also used to show the passage of time in the second episode; the archaeological dig at Ealing was shown to have dug deeper into the ground than the equivalent set at Riverside, enabling a sense of time having elapsed that would not have been possible in an all-live production.{{sfnp|GREXDUAK}}
Made just before videotape became general at the BBC, all six episodes of *Quatermass and the Pit* were preserved for a possible repeat by being telerecorded on 35 mm film.{{sfnp|GREXDUAK}} This was achieved with a specially synchronised film camera capturing the output of a video monitor; the process had been refined throughout the 1950s, and recordings of *Quatermass and the Pit* are of high technical quality.{{sfnp|MM68EEM4}} The serial was repeated in edited form as two 90-minute episodes, entitled “5 Million Years Old” and “Hob”, on 26 December 1959 and 2 January 1960. The third episode, “Imps and Demons”, was re-shown on BBC Two on 7 November 1986 as part of the “TV50” season, celebrating 50 years of BBC television.{{sfnp|GREXDUAK}}
*Quatermass and the Pit* was the last original production on which Kneale collaborated with Rudolph Cartier.{{sfnp|4DLL9JIQ}}
### Special effects
Special effects were handled by the BBC Visual Effects Department, formed by Bernard Wilkie and Jack Kine in 1954.{{sfnp|KZLKFCEX}} Kine or Wilkie oversaw effects on a production; due to the number of effects, both worked on Quatermass and the Pit.{{sfnp|N8Q3URH7|86}} The team pre-filmed most of their effects for use during the live broadcasts.{{sfnp|GS7VULSP}} They also oversaw practical effects for the Ealing filming and Riverside transmission,{{sfnp|GREXDUAK}} and constructed the bodies of the Martian creatures.{{sfnp|4P5RD8Z7}}
### Music
The music was credited to Trevor Duncan, a pseudonym used by BBC radio producer Leonard Trebilco, whose music was obtained from stock discs.{{sfnp|GREXDUAK}} *Quatermass and the Pit* also used sound effects and electronic music to create a disturbing atmosphere.{{sfnp|ZBXMYSV6}} These tracks were created for the serial by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, overseen by Desmond Briscoe; *Quatermass and the Pit* was one of the productions for which Briscoe and the workshop became most renowned.{{sfnp|DCZZISLQ}}{{sfnp|A22E6SEI}} It was the first time electronic music had been used in a science-fiction television production.{{sfnp|A22E6SEI}}
## Reception
*Quatermass and the Pit* was watched by an average audience of 9.6 million viewers, peaking at 11 million for the final episode.{{sfnp|L3B7T9KZ|60}} *The Times*‘ television reviewer praised the opening episode the day after its transmission. Pointing out that “Professor Bernard Quatermass … like all science fiction heroes, has to keep running hard if he is not to be overtaken by the world of fact”, the anonymous reviewer went on to state how much he had enjoyed the episode as “an excellent example of Mr. Kneale’s ability to hold an audience with promises alone; smooth, leisurely, and without any sensational incident”.{{sfnp|WYHQEPVQ}}
Kneale went on to use the Martian “Wild Hunt” as an allegory for the recent Notting Hill race riots,{{sfnp|4IBUREZD}}\[a\]Kneale himself said in an interview that “I try to give those stories some relevance to what is round about us today. The last one \[*Quatermass and the Pit*\], for instance, was a race-hate fable.”{{sfnp|8QMSCIDY|137}} but some Black British leaders were upset by the depiction of racial tensions in the first episode. “Leaders of coloured minorities here to-day criticized the BBC for allowing a report that ‘race riots are continuing in Birmingham,’ to be included in a fictional news bulletin during the first instalment of the new Quatermass television play last night”, reported *The Times*‘ Birmingham correspondent.{{sfnp|H685MRAZ}}
These themes and subtexts were highlighted by the British Film Institute’s review of the serial when it was included in their TV 100 list in 2000, in 75th position – 20th out of the dramas featured: “In a story which mined mythology and folklore … under the guise of genre it tackled serious themes of man’s hostile nature and the military’s perversion of science for its own ends.”{{sfnp|EMEW3APG}} The theme of military takeover of peaceful scientific research was also considered favourably by Patrick Stoddart, writing for *The Sunday Times* in 1988: “Last week I watched a BBC drama in which a scientist fought against smirking government ministers and power-crazed army officers to stop his peaceful rocket research group being turned into a Star Wars vehicle to put missiles on the moon. They won.”{{sfnp|WJTTJX5Y}}
## Influence
In a 2006 *Guardian* article Mark Gatiss wrote “What sci-fi piece of the past 50 years doesn’t owe Kneale a huge debt? … The ‘ancient invasion’ of *Quatermass and the Pit* cast a huge shadow … its brilliant blending of superstition, witchcraft and ghosts into the story of a five-million-year-old Martian invasion is copper-bottomed genius.”{{sfnp|HAZ8E5RC}} Gatiss was a scriptwriter for *Doctor Who*, a programme that had been particularly strongly influenced by the Quatermass serials throughout its history.{{sfnp|Q6V64JFX|93}}{{sfnp|HUWVKURF}} Derrick Sherwin, the producer of *Doctor Who* in 1969, acknowledged *Quatermass and the Pit*‘s influence on the programme’s move towards more realism and away from “wobbly jellies in outer space”.{{sfnp|XIYPCBR2|156}} The 1971 and 1977 *Doctor Who* serials *The Dæmons* and *Image of the Fendahl* share many elements with *Quatermass and the Pit*: the unearthing of an extraterrestrial spaceship, an alien race that has interfered with human evolution and is the basis for legends of devils, demons and witchcraft, and an alien influence over human evolution.{{sfnp|ZC7Y649Z}}
The writer and critic Kim Newman, speaking about Kneale’s career in a 2003 television *Timewatch* documentary, cited *Quatermass and the Pit* as perfecting “the notion of the science-fictional detective story”. Newman also discussed the programme as an influence on the horror fiction writer Stephen King, claiming that King had “more or less rewritten *Quatermass and the Pit* in *The Tommyknockers*“.{{sfnp|264GJRXD|100}}
After *Quatermass and the Pit* Kneale felt that it was time to rest the character: “I didn’t want to go on repeating because Professor Quatermass had already saved the world from ultimate destruction three times, and that seemed to me to be quite enough.”{{sfnp|76R4VLI2}} But by the early 1970s he had decided there were new avenues to explore, and the BBC planned a fourth *Quatermass* serial in 1972.{{sfnp|C6YTEWYI}} The BBC did not proceed with the project however, and Kneale’s scripts were instead produced in 1979 as a four-part serial for Thames Television titled *Quatermass*.{{sfnp|B8BG5SR6}}
## Other media
As with the previous two Quatermass serials, the rights to adapt *Quatermass and the Pit* for the cinema were purchased by Hammer Film Productions. Their adaptation was released with the same title as the original in 1967, directed by Roy Ward Baker and scripted by Kneale.{{sfnp|GS64Q3YG}} Scottish actor Andrew Keir starred as Quatermass, the role for which he was best remembered and regarded particularly highly in comparison to the previous film’s Quatermass, Brian Donlevy.{{sfnp|E9XLVAJI}}\[b\]“Keir also made many films … most gratifyingly, perhaps, the movie version of Quatermass and the Pit (1967), when he finally replaced the absurdly miscast Brian Donlevy.”{{sfnp|GNA2LBYU}} The film, made in colour, is regarded by many commentators as a classic of the genre for the way it blends science fiction with the supernatural.{{sfnp|PBRUQ3KF}}{{sfnp|4Z42DPAC}} In the United States the film was retitled *Five Million Years to Earth*.{{sfnp|264GJRXD|38}}
A script book of *Quatermass and the Pit* was released by Penguin Books in April 1960, with a cover by Kneale’s artist brother Bryan Kneale. In 1979 this was re-published by Arrow Books to coincide with the transmission of the fourth and final Quatermass serial on ITV; this edition featured a new introduction by Kneale. A “living theatre” adaptation of *Quatermass and the Pit* was staged in a quarry near Nottingham in 1997.{{sfnp|JCKCD6Y4|596-601}}{{sfnp|264GJRXD|98}}
For the box set release, *Quatermass and the Pit* was extensively restored.{{sfnp|339VFEFM}} A process called VidFIRE was applied to all of the scenes originally broadcast live, restoring the fluid interlaced video look they would have had on transmission, but which was lost during the telerecording process. For the pre-filmed scenes, most of the high-quality original 35 mm film inserts still existed, as they had been spliced into the 1959–1960 compilation repeat version in place of the lower-quality telerecorded versions of the same sequences. As this compilation also survived in the BBC archives, these film sequences were able to be digitally remastered and inserted into the newly restored episodic version for the DVD release. The compilation used a separate magnetic soundtrack, and although the original had decayed a safety copy had survived. This yielded better sound quality than the optical soundtracks accompanying the original episodes, and was therefore the main source for the audio remastering except in the case of scenes that were not in the compilation, and in a few cases where faults on the magnetic tracks necessitated their replacement by the optical versions.{{sfnp|MM68EEM4}}
## Parodies
A 1959 episode of the BBC radio comedy series *The Goon Show* parodied *Quatermass and the Pit* in an episode titled “The Scarlet Capsule”. It was written by Spike Milligan, and used the original BBC Radiophonic Workshop sound effects made for the television serial.{{sfnp|GREXDUAK}}
The serial was also parodied by the BBC television comedy series *Hancock’s Half Hour* in an episode titled “The Horror Serial”, transmitted the week after the broadcast of the final episode. In it, Tony Hancock has just finished watching the final episode of *Quatermass and the Pit*, and becomes convinced that there is a crashed Martian space ship buried at the bottom of his garden. It is in fact an unexploded bomb, although Hancock claims that the warning “Achtung!” is really the Martian for Acton. This episode no longer exists in the BBC’s archives, but a private collector’s audio-only recording has been discovered, and released publicly on the *Hancock’s Half Hour Collectibles Volume One* CD box set.{{sfnp|GREXDUAK}}
It was parodied a third time in a sketch from the final series of *The Two Ronnies* in 1986, which featured a guest appearance by Joanna Lumley.{{sfnp|GREXDUAK}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Kneale himself said in an interview that “I try to give those stories some relevance to what is round about us today. The last one \[*Quatermass and the Pit*\], for instance, was a race-hate fable.”{{sfnp|8QMSCIDY|137}} b “Keir also made many films … most gratifyingly, perhaps, the movie version of Quatermass and the Pit (1967), when he finally replaced the absurdly miscast Brian Donlevy.”{{sfnp|GNA2LBYU}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22562
**Categories:** Science fiction, Television programme
---
### [Spectre of Newby Church](https://engole.info/spectre-of-newby-church/)
**Published:** March 4, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Spectre-of-Newby-Church.webp[/pimage]One of the most famous spirit photographs ever taken.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Spectre-of-Newby-Church.webp)The Reverend K. F. Lord’s photograph
Wikimedia Commons
The Spectre of Newby Church (or the Newby Monk) is the name given to an alleged ghost captured in a photograph taken by the Reverend Kenneth F. Lord in 1963. One of the most famous [spirit photographs](https://engole.info/spirit-photography) ever taken, it shows the altar in the Church of Christ the Consoler, in the grounds of Newby Hall in North Yorkshire. On developing the photograph Lord noticed a dark translucent shape on the right, bearing an uncanny resemblance to a phantom.{{sfnp|WBCCBC85}}
Although the figure appears to resemble a human, comparison with its surroundings would suggest that it could be {{convert|9|ft|r=1}} tall when compared to its surroundings.{{sfnp|WBCCBC85}} Much speculation by believers has concluded that the spectre resembles a 16th-century monk with a white shroud over his face, possibly to mask leprosy or another disfigurement.{{sfnp|TVJ6GTC5}}
Multiple photographic experts have reportedly examined the image and found no evidence of tampering, but many other investigators say it has all the hallmarks of a double exposure image.{{sfnp|JG9QBI5W}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27244
**Categories:** Ghost, Spirit photograph
---
### [Aisle (architecture)](https://engole.info/aisle-architecture/)
**Published:** September 10, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9d/Seitenschiff.svg/1920px-Seitenschiff.svg.png[/pimage]Part of a church on either side of the nave or choir, separated from them by arcades, colonnades or piers. More generally, a passageway between seats in an auditorium, shelves in a supermarket and so on.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9d/Seitenschiff.svg/1920px-Seitenschiff.svg.png)Aisles shown in beige. The black dots represent arcade pillars.
Wikimedia Commons
The aisle is the part of a church on either side of the [nave](https://engole.info/nave) or choir, divided from them by [arcades](https://engole.info/arcade), colonnades, or piers supporting the [clerestory](https://engole.info/clerestory).{{sfnp|AZDAPABE}}
The term is also commonly used to describe the central passage between seats or pews in the nave,{{sfnp|4K352G3B}} and more generally a subsidiary space alongside the body of a building.{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|689}}
The word derives from the Anglo-Norman *ele*, *eele* or *eile*, meaning the wing of a church.{{sfnp|RXDQSWCB}} In common modern usage it can refer to a passageway between the seats in an auditorium, shelves in a supermarket, and so on.{{sfnp|RXDQSWCB}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Religious architecture
---
### [Apse](https://engole.info/apse/)
**Published:** September 17, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Apse.png[/pimage]Semicircular or polygonal termination of the chancel, which is typically situated at the eastern end of a Christian church.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Apse.png)Apse of a typical Latin cross church shown in beige
An apse is a semicircular or polygonal termination of the [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel), the area for the exclusive use of the clergy, typically situated at the eastern end of a Christian church. A similar structure was a common feature of Roman public buildings,{{sfnp|P2EMNK86}} and was introduced into England by St Augustine’s mission of 596, sent to Britain by Pope Gregory the Great to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity.{{sfnp|BUIS5KGL}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/apsex.jpg)Apse in St Athernase Church, Leuchars, in Scotland
Undiscovered Scotland
In medieval times the apse would have contained seats for the bishop and the presbyters behind the altar, separating the clergy from the congregation seated in the [nave](https://engole.info/nave/).{{sfnp|P2EMNK86}} Over time the altar was moved to the back of the apse, and the clergy sat to the sides.
The term *apse* is derived from the Latin word *apsis*, or *absis*, meaning a wheel, arch, or vault. It is also used in astronomy to denote the points in a planet’s orbit furthest and nearest to the body around which it moves, which are called the apses, or apsides.{{sfnp|99J7AT59}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [The Gentleman's Magazine](https://engole.info/the-gentlemans-magazine/)
**Published:** November 13, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/The_Gentleman%27s_Magazine%2C_May_1759.jpg/960px-The_Gentleman%27s_Magazine%2C_May_1759.jpg[/pimage]Monthly compendium of the best news, essays and information from the daily and weekly newspapers, published from 1731 until 1914.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/The_Gentleman%27s_Magazine%2C_May_1759.jpg/960px-The_Gentleman%27s_Magazine%2C_May_1759.jpg)Front page of *The Gentleman’s Magazine*, May 1759
Wikimedia Commons
*The Gentleman’s Magazine or Monthly Intelligencer* as it was originally known, founded in London by the publisher Edward Cave in 1731, was intended to be a monthly compendium of the best news, essays and information gathered from the daily and weekly newspapers.{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2|262}} It was a great success from its inception, and by 1739 had achieved monthly sales of almost 10,000.{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2|149}} Cave himself was a frequent contributor, writing under the name of Sylvanus Urban,{{sfnp|GPIMI3K3}} and his close friend [Dr Samuel Johnson](https://engole.info/samuel-johnson) also contributed regularly. By way of Johnson’s reports from Lilliput,\[a\]Lilliput is a fictional island nation invented by the satirist Jonathan Swift, which features in his *Gulliver’s Travels* (1726). the magazine succeeded in evading the official sanction on reporting the proceedings of parliament.{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2|262}}
The magazine, one of the first to use that word in its title,\[b\]The word magazine derives from the Middle French *magasin*, meaning a store or repository.{{sfnp|R7L4QP4Y}} continued in production until 1914.{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2|262}} The image of St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell, the magazine’s original office and where it was printed, appeared on the title page of every issue.{{sfnp|M8EGCZWD}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Lilliput is a fictional island nation invented by the satirist Jonathan Swift, which features in his *Gulliver’s Travels* (1726). b The word magazine derives from the Middle French *magasin*, meaning a store or repository.{{sfnp|R7L4QP4Y}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [Cheshire Plain](https://engole.info/cheshire-plain/)
**Published:** August 11, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Cheshire_Plain.jpg[/pimage]Relatively flat expanse of lowland in North West England, the surface expression of the Cheshire Basin, an area of sedimentary rocks overlain by Mercia Mudstones laid down about 250 million years ago.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Cheshire_Plain.jpg)The Cheshire Plain viewed from the Mid-Cheshire Ridge
Wikimedia Commons
The Cheshire plain is a relatively flat expanse of lowland in North West England, between the Mersey Valley to the north, the Shropshire hills to the south, the hills of North Wales to the west, and the foothills of the Pennines to the east. It is the surface expression of the Cheshire Basin, an area of sedimentary rocks overlain by Mercia Mudstones. At its base lies a layer of Sherwood Sandstone, between 600 and 700 metres thick, which sometimes outcrops around the western and southern margins of the basin. The sandstone was laid down about 250 million years ago, by a major river that once flowed across England.{{sfnp|ZVHQ43HT}} The plain is divided into the Cheshire Plain East and the Cheshire Plain West by a sandstone ridge that runs through it from north to south, the Mid-Cheshire Ridge.{{sfnp|56XASZ5L}}
The Mercia Mudstone overlaying the sandstone was laid down between 200 and 240 million years ago. About {{convert|2000|m}} thick, it was probably created by an accumulation of wind-blown dust deposited in temporary lakes. Britain was then much nearer the equator, and the plain was a low-lying desert into which the sea encroached periodically. The evaporation of the sea water resulted in the deposition of salt deposits, up to {{convert|50|m}} thick in places, which has been mined extensively and is the major source of salt for the whole country.{{sfnp|ZVHQ43HT}}
About 20,000 years ago, during the last glacial advance, ice from the Irish Sea deposited large amounts of glacial till, sand and gravel over much of the plain.{{sfnp|37AURDCC}} The resulting soil is ideally suited to grass, and was a major factor in the development of dairy farming on the plain.{{sfnp|56XASZ5L}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Cheshire, Landform
---
### [Lady Lovibond](https://engole.info/lady-lovibond/)
**Published:** September 28, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Lady-Lovibond.webp[/pimage]Perhaps the best-known of the ghost ships that reportedly haunt British waters.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Lady-Lovibond.webp)canstockphoto
The *Lady Lovibond*, sometimes *Lady Luvibund*,{{sfnp|EDM6I25N|loc=130}} is perhaps the best-known of the many ghost ships reportedly seen in British waters.{{sfnp|VIDPGCC7|158}} The common version of the legend tells that on 13 February 1748 the ship, captained by the newly married Simon Peel,\[a\]Also known as Simon Reed or Simon Reid in some tellings.{{sfnp|EDM6I25N|loc=156}} was carrying his new wife Annetta and their wedding guests from London to Oporto. Unknown to Peel, his first mate Rivers was also in love with Annetta, and in a fit of “insane jealously” seized the helm after murdering the helmsman and deliberately steered the ship towards the Goodwin Sands, where it ran aground, drowning everyone on board.{{sfnp|WTZVGXXJ|27}} A sceptical reader may perhaps wonder how the details of the *Lady Lovibond*‘s final moments can be known when there were no survivors, but the legend goes on to say that at a subsequent inquiry Rivers’s mother testified that her son had vowed to have his revenge on the captain even at the cost of his own life.{{sfnp|EDM6I25N|loc=146}}
And there the story might have ended, had it not been for witnesses who claim to have seen the ghostly ship reappear every fifty years, some of them even passing close enough to hear the sounds of celebration. On 13 February 1798 the skipper of the *Edenbridge* recorded in his log that he had almost collided with a three-masted schooner that was heading straight for the Goodwin Sands;{{sfnp|WTZVGXXJ|27}} subsequent sightings have been reported at fifty-year intervals except for 1984, when the ship failed to materialise.{{sfnp|45KMMTGC|91}}
## Historical record
There is no historical evidence for the *Lady Lovibond* being wrecked on the Goodwin Sands, and surveys of notable wrecks for the period in question fail to mention it, as do the local newspapers.{{sfnp|EDM6I25N|loc=199-213}}
Most accounts of the *Lady Lovibond*‘s fate closely follow that written by George Goldsmith Carter in his 1953 book *The Goodwin Sands*,{{sfnp|EDM6I25N|loc=160}} but the earliest known version was published anonymously in the *Daily Chronicle* on 14 February 1924. That earlier version places the ship’s loss at 1724, twenty-four years earlier than Carter’s account, and the unnamed reporter gives the impression that he had been sent to witness the “legendary apparition due every fifty years at midnight on Feb. 13”, but which had failed to materialise.{{sfnp|EDM6I25N|loc=175}}
Although an oral version of the story may have circulated during the 19th century, it seems unlikely that no Victorian collector of such folk tales would have thought it worthy of inclusion in their publications. That, together with the “consciously modern” style of the *Daily Chronicle*‘s version of the story, leaves open the distinct possibility that the legend of the *Lady Lovibond* is a 20th-century invention based on the standard motifs of the ghost-ship genre, according to the researchers Michael Goss and George Behe.{{sfnp|EDM6I25N|loc=238-243}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Also known as Simon Reed or Simon Reid in some tellings.{{sfnp|EDM6I25N|loc=156}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22289
**Categories:** Ghost ship
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Commonwealth (Adultery) Act 1650](https://engole.info/commonwealth-adultery-act-1650/)
**Published:** March 30, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%28black_and_white%29.svg/1280px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%28black_and_white%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act passed by the Rump Parliament in 1650 making fornication, adultery and incest secular offences.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%28black_and_white%29.svg/1280px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%28black_and_white%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Act for suppressing the detestable sins of Incest, Adultery, and Fornication, commonly known as the Commonwealth (Adultery) Act, was passed by the Rump Parliament of the Commonwealth of England in 1650, a year after the execution of King Charles I. Among other things, it represented an attempt by the state to wrest control of the enforcement of sexual morality from the Church.{{sfnp|YMKDVZQS|215}} The historian Bernard Capp has called the Act “the most notorious legislation of the interregnum”.{{sfnp|9UNLU32C|132}}
The view of the Church since at least the time of St Augustine (354–430 AD) had been that sexual desire had to be controlled through marriage, into the “relatively safe channel of monogamy”. Sexual pleasure was so dangerous that even sexual positions had to be considered; only the missionary position was acceptable, as it was thought to be the least pleasurable for women. Sex was for procreation, not for pleasure. Sexual deviance, which included non-penetrative acts and fornication – sexual intercourse outside marriage – were punished by the Church courts, until the Act of 1650 made it a secular offence punishable for married women by death.{{sfnp|YMKDVZQS|213, 215-216}}
## Fornication and adultery
Any man, married or otherwise, who had “carnal knowledge of the body of any Virgin, unmaried Woman or Widow”, was guilty of fornication, and subject to three months in prison for a first offence. A married woman on the other hand, who “be carnally known by any man (other them her Husband)” was subject to the death penalty, as was her lover. Exceptions were made for the victims of rape, and for those women whose husbands had been absent for three years or more.{{sfnp|EPYJM5MC}} Perhaps at least in part because of the ferocity of the new law, and the consequent unwillingness of some judges and juries to convict, the number of cases of adultery brought before the courts decreased after 1650 compared with the number that had been dealt with by the Church courts.{{sfnp|9UNLU32C|139-140}} But a significant problem for the courts was to determine whether or not a marriage had taken place, as until the passing of the Marriage Act of 1753 a formal ceremony of marriage before a clergyman was not a legal requirement in England, and marriages were unregistered.{{sfnp|6FTHHQHA|816-817}}
## Incest
Prosecutions for incest under the new law were rare. One early case was that of William Frodsham, who had married an elderly widow. Following her death he married her daughter, for which he was condemned to death at Chester Assizes in 1653, although it seems likely that he was reprieved. The previous year a man in Norfolk had been publicly whipped for sharing a bed with his daughter, despite there being no evidence of any sexual impropriety. Similar cases had come before the Church courts, and usually resulted in a warning.{{sfnp|9UNLU32C|139-140}}
## Repeal
Following the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the Commonwealth (Adultery) Act was declared void, along with every other Act of Parliament passed during the interregnum, as they had not received royal assent.{{sfnp|RZBNF22P}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Legislation
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Stretford Memorial Hospital](https://engole.info/stretford-memorial-hospital/)
**Published:** December 19, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Stretford_Memorial_Hospital_%28geograph_4436734%29.jpg/1920px-Stretford_Memorial_Hospital_%28geograph_4436734%29.jpg[/pimage]Former hospital in Stretford, Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Stretford_Memorial_Hospital_%28geograph_4436734%29.jpg/1920px-Stretford_Memorial_Hospital_%28geograph_4436734%29.jpg)Stretford Memorial Hospital in 2015
Wikimedia Commons
Stretford Memorial Hospital was built as a private residence known as Basford House for Henry Beecroft Jackson, a retired cotton shipping merchant.{{sfnp|WT72UJF8}} Completed in about 1850 in the Italianate style, it was lent by its then owner, James Nuttall, to the British Red Cross for use as an auxiliary hospital during the First World War.{{sfnp|3TA9MLI9|655}}
A local trust administered by the Red Cross acquired the building in 1925, and it was adapted to become a maternity hospital, as part of the Local War Memorial Scheme.{{sfnp|VKCSFRKV}} Ian Curtis of the band Joy Division was born in the hospital in 1956,{{sfnp|PQ3TBTK9|22}} as was Andy Gibb of the Bee Gees in 1958.{{sfnp|BMC6937P}}
Stretford Memorial joined the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, the year of the NHS’s foundation,{{sfnp|AWIXGPH4}}{{sfnp|8R9NN9UG}} and closed in 1983. It was reopened as a geriatric hospital in 1985, and became part of Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust in 1996.{{sfnp|VKCSFRKV}} The hospital was closed in 2015, and its services transferred to [Trafford General Hospital](https://engole.info/trafford-general-hospital/); as at 2024 the building remains vacant and in a very poor state of repair. Plans have been put forward by its current owners, Promenade Estates, to restore at least part of the mansion as the centrepiece of a new housing development.{{sfnp|NP852EDA}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Hospital
---
### [St Clement's Church, York](https://engole.info/st-clements-church-york/)
**Published:** October 29, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/St_Clement%2C_York_%2819705894310%29.jpg/960px-St_Clement%2C_York_%2819705894310%29.jpg[/pimage]Active Anglican church in York, England, built between 1872 and 1874.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/St_Clement%2C_York_%2819705894310%29.jpg/960px-St_Clement%2C_York_%2819705894310%29.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/AzUBdNknimZY2nDp7}}
St Clement’s in 2015
St Clement’s is an active Anglican church in the Archdiocese of York. A Grade II [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building), it is situated just outside the city walls of York, England, south-west of the city centre.{{sfnp|NR7SJRHM}}{{sfnp|9I5T22KQ}}
There was a medieval church dedicated to Saint Clement, lying outside the York city walls, which gave its name to the suburb of Clementhorpe. In 1130 the Benedictine Nunnery of St Clement was founded, and the church was later recorded as forming part of the nunnery complex. The nunnery was dissolved in 1536, but the church remained in use until 1585, when its parish was merged into St Mary Bishophill Senior. The church fell into ruin, and in 1745 the remaining stone from the church was removed and used to repair the city walls.{{sfnp|XYXW2UNT}}{{sfnp|VDGNAW59}}
St Clement’s was designed by J. B. & W. Atkinson, and constructed from 1872 to 1874. In 1876 it was given its own parish, and a [vestry](https://engole.info/sacristy) was added in 1880. The church contains various fittings from the nearby St Mary Bishophill Senior, demolished 1963, including monuments and boards, two of which record the mayoralty of the architect [John Carr](https://engole.info/john-carr/ "John Carr") of York, dated 1770 and 1785.{{sfnp|VDGNAW59}}
## Architecture
East end of the church, showing the vestry
Wikimedia Commons
The church is constructed of red brick, with stone dressings and plinth and dark brick bands. It has angled buttresses, and a steep slate roof covering both [nave](https://engole.info/nave) and [chancel](https://engole.info/chancel), topped by a small [bell-cote](https://engole.info/bell-cote). The nave has side aisles, and the east end is in the form of an [apse](https://engole.info/apse). The windows are [lancets](https://engole.info/lancet-window), those at the east and west ends having three lights, with two-light windows either side. The stained glass in the east window was designed by Jean-Baptiste Capronnier in 1875. Inside, the arcades are of brick, with stone piers and detailed stone capitals. There is a circular stone font, and an octagonal stone pulpit. The choir stalls and [screen](https://engole.info/rood-screen) are later, and were designed by Robert Thompson.{{sfnp|VDGNAW59}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmcloud.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/St_Clement%27s_Church,_York#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Anglican, Church, Yorkshire
---
### [Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868](https://engole.info/capital-punishment-amendment-act-1868/)
**Published:** June 23, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of Parliament that put an end to public executions for murder in the United Kingdom.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281837%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868 (31 & 32 Vict. c.24) received Royal Assent on 29 May 1868, putting an end to public executions for murder in the United Kingdom.{{sfnp|UMTZKNK5|3}} The Act required that all prisoners sentenced to death for murder be executed within the walls of the prison in which they were being held, and that their bodies be buried in the prison grounds.{{sfnp|IW6TMBEN}} It was prompted at least in part by the efforts of reformers such as Sir Robert Peel and Charles Dickens, who called in the national press for an end to the “grotesque spectacle” of public executions.{{sfnp|UMTZKNK5|4}} Abolition of public executions was one of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment 1864–1866. A similar measure, the Capital Punishment within Prisons Bill, had been introduced in 1867, but failed for lack of parliamentary time.{{sfnp|RD3F6V9W|409}}
The first execution under the new law was carried out by [William Calcraft](https://engole.info/william-calcraft/) on 13 August 1868 at Maidstone Gaol; 18-year-old Thomas Wells was hanged for the murder of Edward Walshe,{{sfnp|2M8JDGS5|2}} the stationmaster at Dover Priory railway station.{{sfnp|UMTZKNK5|3-4}} Calcraft had previously carried out the last public execution in the UK, when he hanged the Fenian Michael Barrett in front of Newgate Prison on 26 May 1868 for his part in the 1867 Clerkenwell Outrage.{{sfnp|6G7HLDT2|search=chapter 2}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Capital punishment
---
### [Arthington Priory](https://engole.info/arthington-priory/)
**Published:** April 13, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Nunnery_at_Arthington_1.jpg[/pimage]Arthington Priory, founded in the mid-12th century, was a nunnery or convent that was home to a community of about ten nuns in Arthington, Yorkshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Nunnery_at_Arthington_1.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/EsXJVqWXPRBR9SZYA}}
Arthington Priory
Arthington Priory, a nunnery or convent founded in the mid-12th century, was home to a community of about ten nuns in Arthington, Yorkshire. The priory housed the only Cluniac community of nuns in Yorkshire, and one of just two in England. The convent was established through a grant by Peter de Arthington.{{sfnp|E66H7P4T}}
The site of the priory church is possibly occupied by a private residence, The Nunnery, which has a date stone from 1585, but little remains of the priory.{{sfnp|IG68KSX5}}{{sfnp|5PTWTGPW|154}}
## History
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Arthington_Priory_Seal_001.jpg)Seal of Arthington Priory
Wikimedia Commons
Peter de Arthington gave the nuns “the place the whilk the said abby is byggyd on, with all the appurtenaunces”. His son, Serlo, added to his father’s gift and his son Peter confirmed the gifts of his father and grandfather and gave an acre of land in Tebecroft and “all the watyre that thai may lede to make yam a milne with, and to thair other usez necessarez.”.{{sfnp|E66H7P4T}}
The church at Maltby was granted to the priory in 1378, but the priory remained small.{{sfnp|E66H7P4T}} Other benefactors made donations, on the condition that they and their descendents were to have the right of presenting a girl for admission to the priory whenever there might be a vacancy.
## Dissolution
At the Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII in 1540 there were nine nuns aged between 72 and 25 at the priory, including the prioress, Elizabeth Hall, who was 45 years old.{{sfnp|E66H7P4T}} All the nuns except the prioress wished to continue in vows. The records state that “All these persons (including the prioress) be of good religious liffying and not slanderid.”{{sfnp|E66H7P4T}}
The priory was surrendered by the prioress on 26 November 1540. Its annual value was £11 8s 4d, and the demesne lands were valued at £5 8s 4d, and the priory grounds, its storehouses, gardens, and orchards were valued at 5 shillings a year. In 1543 the king gave the site to Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.{{sfnp|E66H7P4T}}
## The Nunnery
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/The_Nunnery_-_geograph.org.uk_-_137023.jpg)The Nunnery
Wikimedia Commons
All that remains of the former priory is a house now named The Nunnery, which stands on the foundations and lower courses of the priory church.{{sfnp|IG68KSX5}} It is built of coursed squared sandstone with [quoins](https://engole.info/quoin/) at the external corners, a stone slate roof and is dated 1585, inscribed TB and IB in the [spandrel](https://engole.info/spandrel/) above the door.{{sfnp|FFFFYP94}} In 1822 it was a farm house owned by the Earl of Harewood.{{sfnp|5PTWTGPW|154}} It is described as “a large well-built, square house, on a fine elevation above the river”.
The nunnery is a Grade II\* listed building. The centre room has a large Tudor-arched fireplace with a chamfered surround. A spiral stone staircase accessing the second floor was probably higher, and all that remains of the nunnery’s tower.{{sfnp|FFFFYP94}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Convent, Yorkshire
---
### [Pen-y-Crug](https://engole.info/pen-y-crug/)
**Published:** July 17, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Pen-y-crug_hillfort_-_geograph.org.uk_-_374823.jpg[/pimage]Multivallate Iron Age hillfort in the Brecon Beacons, Powys.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Pen-y-crug_hillfort_-_geograph.org.uk_-_374823.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/MmP8nTYAV1hteW1Q6}}
Pen-y-crug’s defensive banks and ditches
Pen-y-crug is a large, oval, multivallate Iron Age hillfort\[a\]A multivallate hillfort has more one rampart or defensive circuit.{{sfnp|S58I9F52}} in the Brecon Beacons, Powys, Wales.\[b\]Now known as Bannau Brycheiniog. About {{convert|2|km|abbr=on}} north-west of the confluence of the rivers Usk and Honddu, it encloses the summit of a prominent, isolated hill called the Crug.{{sfnp|IYQCQY59}}{{sfnp|7CETCFCE}}
The interior of the undulating site rises from north to south, peaking towards the west side at {{convert|330|m}} above sea level.{{sfnp|IYQCQY59}} During the 18th and 19th centuries the Crug was worked as a tile quarry,{{sfnp|7CETCFCE}} which has resulted in damage to the north, south and eastern outer perimeter defences.{{sfnp|IYQCQY59}}
As at 2024 the site is owned and managed by the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority.{{sfnp|IYQCQY59}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a A multivallate hillfort has more one rampart or defensive circuit.{{sfnp|S58I9F52}} b Now known as Bannau Brycheiniog.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26588
**Categories:** Hillfort, Monument, Powys
---
### [Lytham Pier](https://engole.info/lytham-pier/)
**Published:** July 22, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Lytham_Pier_C1920.jpg[/pimage]Pleasure and working pier opened in the seaside town of Lytham, Lancashire, England in 1865, demolished in 1960.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Lytham_Pier_C1920.jpg)Lytham Pier, c. 1920
Wikimedia Commons
Lytham Pier, a pleasure and working pier, was opened in the seaside town of Lytham, Lancashire, England in 1865, in the face of reservations from local residents. The pier underwent several renovations during the 1890s and early 1900s before being badly damaged by a storm in 1903, during which two barges collided with the structure and split it in two. A fire in 1928 resulted in extensive damage to the pavilion, which was not rebuilt, although the pier itself was reopened several months later. Following a period of decline it was closed to the public shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. The pier was demolished in 1960 despite the protests of thousands of local residents.
Plans to rebuild the pier were discussed by local councillors in 2007, with the Lytham St Annes Civic Society opposed to any such plan and no further progress has been made since that initial proposal.
## Planning
Provision for a pier to be constructed for pleasure and as a boat-landing deck was first discussed during the early 1860s, leading to the formation of the Lytham Pier Company in 1861.{{sfnp|GEWAWTD8|80}} Plans included visitor waiting rooms at the pier head and ornamental gates at the entrance, similar to those at Brighton’s West Pier. Its construction began in 1864 with the screwing in of the first iron pile, a pre-planned event designed to ensure a suitably large number of visitors would be present to witness the occasion.{{sfnp|RDPLV9NT}} The pier did not have unanimous local support; some residents believed that Lytham had insufficient regular visitors to make a pier financially viable, or that a high tide would too easily destroy the pier.{{sfnp|3PEJSPHU}}
## Construction
Despite some reservations, building work was completed a year after the first pile had been screwed in, at a cost of £5,890 (equivalent to about £579,000 in 2018\[a\]Using the GDP deflator at Measuring Worth.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}).{{sfnp|MK9HIUQM}} The pier was opened by Lady Eleanor Clifton on Easter Monday, 17 April 1865.{{sfnp|GEWAWTD8|81}}
Three hundred tons of iron were used in the construction of the pier. It was supported by 126 iron columns, {{convert|54|ft}} apart and screwed into the solid clay base beneath the beach. A shelter was erected on the pier head’s dock for passengers embarking or landing from steam vessels. The pier was capable of accommodating up to 5000 people, of whom 1000 could be seated.{{sfnp|3PEJSPHU}}
## Operation
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Lytham_Pier_extension_1901.png)Extension to Lytham Pier, 1901
Wikimedia Commons
The pier had a small renovation in 1892 when a floral hall pavilion was added half-way along the deck, at a cost of £12,000. A further reconstruction followed in 1901–1902 to enlarge the pavilion,{{sfnp|S8HNYWBI}} including raising the roof to accommodate taller stage scenery and enlargement of the theatre stage; other improvements included the erection of an additional dressing room, refreshment rooms and an upper tea-room added to the pavilion’s balcony.{{sfnp|K6ZXZ7KL}}
The pier suffered significant damage from two separate incidents in 1903. The first occurred on 27 February, when two shelters were blown into the sea during a storm. Worse damage was caused later in the year on 6 October, when two barges driven by a gale-force wind collided with the pier despite the best efforts of the one-man crews on each boat; one caused significant damage to the central pier structure while the other got caught among the piers supporting the pavilion. Claims for compensation were made against Preston Corporation, who owned the barges, and after repairs had been undertaken the pier reopened at Easter 1904.{{sfnp|GEWAWTD8|84}}
During the early 1900s, George Kingston’s Minstrels became an attraction on the pier and the beach, continuing through to 1910 on the pier and in the pavilion. Divers performed each season at the pier head in swimming displays, featuring Professor Stearne and Professor Payne.{{sfnp|GEWAWTD8|84}} A Floral Hall opened in July 1911, occasionally playing host to orchestral concerts, as well as amateur dramatic societies. By the 1920s the pavilion was showing films, which was its primary fare income from visitors.{{sfnp|GEWAWTD8|85}}
## Decline
By 1920 the pier was struggling to remain financially viable; JH Harrison, the manager of 32 years, stepped down the following year. The pavilion was destroyed by fire on 29 January 1928,{{sfnp|GEWAWTD8|85}} which left behind a steelwork shell that was not rebuilt. The cause of the blaze remains unknown. The cost of the damage, covered by insurance, amounted to thousands of pounds, but there were no fatalities, as the on-site caretaker who lived on the pier had only just left his residence to sound the alarm before it was engulfed by the flames.{{sfnp|T9ERT3W8}} Despite a proposal several months later to build a new pavilion at the pier’s shore end,{{sfnp|SFUJD82T}} from a design prepared by St Anne’s architect Arnold England, no work was carried out and the pier reopened on 24 May 1928 without a pavilion.{{sfnp|GEWAWTD8|86}}
The next ten years saw a plan by then owners Lytham Pier & Amusements Ltd to convert the pier into the shape of a ship, but it came to nothing.{{sfnp|GEWAWTD8|86}} As its popularity dwindled, the pier closed to visitors in 1938 and it subsequently deteriorated throughout the mid-20th century, remaining in use by anglers only.{{sfnp|MK9HIUQM}} The kiosks at the pier’s entrance remained in use, but the council decided in 1959 that they were unwilling to provide the £5,000 then required for the pier’s restoration.{{sfnp|S8HNYWBI}} It was subsequently demolished in March 1960\[14\] at a cost of £7,320,{{sfnp|MK9HIUQM}} which included £4,000 in compensation to then owner Harry Kaniya,{{sfnp|GEWAWTD8|86}} despite a petition opposed to the plan from local residents, which gathered almost 2600 signatures.{{sfnp|KJGR7JTF}}
## Reconstruction proposals
It was reported in May 2007 that local Conservative councillors were investigating the possibility of securing a grant to reconstruct the pier. Councillor Richard Fulford-Brown believes that if the circumstances regarding the pier’s demolition were an issue today, it would be considerably more difficult to follow through with it and takes the view that a pier visitor attraction offers something interesting for residents and visitors alike. A similar suggestion had previously been made by a local architect, who proposed an eco-friendly boardwalk complete with a viewing station. As of 2007, Lytham St Annes Civic Society were opposed to any reconstruction proposal on the grounds that the town centre should be protected, especially as there are already piers in nearby St Annes-on-the-Sea and Blackpool (North and Central) respectively.{{sfnp|K9QXAQAH}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Using the GDP deflator at Measuring Worth.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Pier
---
### [Bessie Wentworth](https://engole.info/bessie-wentworth/)
**Published:** April 21, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Bessie_Wentworth_%281873%E2%80%931901%29.png[/pimage]English music-hall singer and comic entertainer, 1873–1901, best known for her coon songs.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Bessie_Wentworth_%281873%E2%80%931901%29.png)Wikimedia Commons
Bessie Wentworth, born Elizabeth Andrews (1873 – 6 January 1901) was an English music-hall singer and comic entertainer. She gained “considerable success” during her short career with her performances of what were known as coon songs, during which she would often appear dressed as an American plantation negro, but without the black-face makeup.{{sfnp|TX5KL2QX}}
Bessie’s best-known song was “Looking for a Coon Like Me”, written by George Le Brunn with lyrics by John Harrington.{{sfnp|TX5KL2QX}}{{sfnp|E2SQSPJE|91}} Others included “The Alabama Coon”, “Happy ‘Cos Dey Foun’ Dis Coon” and “Dey Loved Each Other all de While”.{{sfnp|TX5KL2QX}}
A month after becoming engaged to the cyclist Alex Ross, Bessie died from typhoid fever at her London home on 6 January 1901, aged 27.{{sfnp|VFIXYN77}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** English, Female, Music hall, Singer
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Meriel Talbot](https://engole.info/meriel-talbot/)
**Published:** April 17, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** British public servant and women's welfare worker, (1866–1956).
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Dame_Meriel_Talbot_7_March_1918_by_Bassano_Ltd_%28sq_cropped%29.png)Meriel Talbot in 1918, by Bassano Ltd
Wikimedia Commons
Dame Meriel Lucy Talbot, DBE (16 June 1866 – 15 December 1956) was a British public servant and women’s welfare worker. During the First World War she organised the Women’s Land Army, and edited their magazine, *The Landswoman*. Meriel was born in Westminster, the daughter of the politician John Gilbert Talbot and his wife, Meriel Sarah, daughter of George Lyttelton, 4th Baron Lyttelton, and was educated at Kensington High School.{{sfnp|F7K8XHYS}}
During the 1880s and 1890s Meriel participated in the settlement movement, a reformist welfare programme the aim of which was to bring together society’s rich and poor, physically and socially. She was secretary, jointly with Idina Brassey, of the Bethnal Green Ladies’ Committee in 1889, chaired by her mother.{{sfnp|GSS8WIYM|82}} In 1891 she combined work at the Women’s University Settlement (WUS) for the Children’s Country Holiday Fund, the post of secretary to the Ladies’ Branch of Oxford House (again chaired by her mother), and social work training at the WUS relating to the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants. She also took on some of the house management work that had fallen to Margaret Sewell, the incoming Warden of WUS.{{sfnp|GSS8WIYM|79-80}} In 1897, again with Idina Brassey, she was joint secretary in the newly formed West End Association.{{sfnp|GSS8WIYM|94}}
From 1901 to 1916 Meriel served as secretary to the Victoria League, a charitable organisation that brings together people from all over the Commonwealth, and in this capacity travelled widely throughout the British Empire. The experience she gained in that role proved useful in the aftermath of the First World War, when she assisted in the settlement abroad of British women.{{sfnp|F7K8XHYS}}
In 1915 Meriel served on the official advisory committee for repatriating enemy aliens., and the following year was appointed the first woman inspector with the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries. She became director of the Women’s Branch of the Board in 1917, in charge of the recruitment and co-ordination of what was to become the Women’s Land Army.{{sfnp|F7K8XHYS}} The Land Army had 23,000 recruits by the end of the war, and Meriel edited its monthly magazine, *The Landswoman*.{{sfnp|63IQMZDE}} Her contribution to the development of the Women’s Land Army led to her appointment as Officer of the British Empire (OBE) in 1917 and Commander of the British Empire (CBE) the following year; in 1920 she was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE).{{sfnp|F7K8XHYS}}
Meriel was appointed an adviser on women’s employment to the Ministry of Agriculture in 1920, a role she performed until her retirement in 1921. But she did not withdraw completely from public welfare work, serving as intelligence officer for the Overseas Settlement Department and on a number of official committees, including the Royal Commission on Police Powers and Procedure in 1929. In the 1930s she became chairman of the BBC Central Appeals Advisory Committee, and from 1935 to 1951 she was chairman of the London Council for the Welfare of Women and Girls.{{sfnp|F7K8XHYS}}
Meriel Talbot never married. She died at her home, Newtimber Lodge, Newtimber, Hassocks, Sussex, on 15 December 1956, and was buried three days later at Markbeech parish church, near Edenbridge, Kent.{{sfnp|F7K8XHYS}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23537
This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Meriel_Talbot#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
---
### [Rivington Hall](https://engole.info/rivington-hall/)
**Published:** June 24, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Rivington_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_96701.jpg[/pimage]Grade II* listed former manor house in Rivington, Lancashire, England, the successor to a 15th-century building that was built near to the present building.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Rivington_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_96701.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/efP47T3YhjcDYeyD7}}
Rivington Hall
Rivington Hall is a Grade II\* listed former manor house in Rivington, Lancashire, England. The hall is the successor to a 15th-century timber-framed courtyard house that was built near to the present building. No trace remains of the old hall, which was largely demolished by Robert Andrews in 1744 when he rebuilt the hall with a frontage in the Classical Georgian style.
The hall passed to Andrew’s sister and through members of her family until William Lever bought the estate and the hall in 1900.
## History
Rivington Hall was mentioned in 1477, the year it was extended by Robert Pilkington who had inherited the Rivington estates the previous year. He employed William Holden to add a hall, cross chambers and two large windows.{{sfnp|VLFLBQM7|100}} The hall a “noble and imposing” structure, cost Robert Pilkington nine marks which he paid in two instalments.{{sfnp|GMBKIP5V|22}} The 15th-century hall was built of timber and wattle and daub. It was rebuilt in stone at the end of the 17th century {{sfnp|6CP7JD5J}} and again rebuilt, incorporating some of the older stone building, by Robert Andrews in 1774. Andrews demolished greater part of the old house when and gave it the present red-brick Georgian frontage.{{sfnp|SQ33CXE4|286–294}}
The oldest part of the hall is dated 1694 WB (William Breres) over a rear door on the west side. The date 1700 and WBM (William Breres and Martha) is on the north wing. The oldest parts of the hall are to the rear where the ground floor is built of sandstone rubble with [quoins](https://engole.info/quoin/); the upper storey is built of coursed squared sandstone, indicating a later date.{{sfnp|6CP7JD5J}} The oldest parts contain mullion windows.{{sfnp|SQ33CXE4|286–294}}
## Architecture
The hall is a Grade II\* listed building. Its west front is a symmetrical red brick, two-storey structure in the classical Georgian style with five bays and a pedimented centre. A stone parapet hides the roof which has a chimney in each gable. The central doorway, approached by a flight of four stone steps, is flanked by side lights and also has a pediment. At ground floor level are four tall, 15-pane sash windows and on the floor above five shorter 12-pane sashes with splayed heads.{{sfnp|6CP7JD5J}} The spout heads bear the date 1774 RA.\[a\]Robert Andrews The south wing was built in brick in the 19th century.{{sfnp|SQ33CXE4|286–294}}
The stables to the east of the house were dated 1713 WBMI \[b\]Owners William and Martha Breres and John and 1732 IAA\[c\]Owners John Andrews and Abigail.{{sfnp|SQ33CXE4|286–294}}
## Occupants
The Pilkingtons lived at Rivington from 1327. The first hall, built of timber and plaster, was mentioned in documents in 1477. James Pilkington, Bishop of Durham was born there in 1518. On the death of Richard Pilkington in 1551, the estate passed to George and then to his son, Robert, the last Pilkington owners.{{sfnp|VLFLBQM7|120}}
The estate was sold to relatives Robert Lever and Thomas Breres in 1611, and the Breres moved into the hall. In 1729 John Andrews bought the Breres’ share of the estate. His son Robert rebuilt the hall in 1774. After Andrews’ death the property passed to his sister Hannah Maria Andrews, who had married Robert Fletcher of Liverpool. Their daughter Lucy married Woodhouse Crompton in 1834.{{sfnp|SQ33CXE4|286–294}} The Cromptons remained at the hall until 1910, although they had sold the {{convert|2100|acre|adj=on}} estate to William Lever in 1900.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Robert Andrews b Owners William and Martha Breres and John c Owners John Andrews and Abigail
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 21335
**Categories:** Lancashire
---
### [My First Sermon](https://engole.info/my-first-sermon/)
**Published:** October 16, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/John_everett_millais_my_first_sermon.jpg/960px-John_everett_millais_my_first_sermon.jpg[/pimage]Fancy picture by the English artist John Everett Millais, created in 1863, depicting a young girl listening intently to a church sermon for the first time.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/John_everett_millais_my_first_sermon.jpg/960px-John_everett_millais_my_first_sermon.jpg)Oil on canvas
97 cm × 77 cm (38 in × 30 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*My First Sermon* is an oil painting by the English artist John Everett Millais (1829–1896), painted in 1863. A [fancy picture](https://engole.info/fancy-picture), it depicts a young girl listening intently to a sermon in church for the first time. Millais used his own daughter Effie as the model.{{sfnp|V2X5QX4W}}
The painting shows a young girl sitting in a high-backed church pew, wearing a cloak, hat and muff. It was displayed at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1863, and was well received.{{sfnp|5TJGYCHT|13,52}} Along with *The Eve of St Agnes*, the painting led to Millais’ election to full membership of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1863.{{sfnp|5TJGYCHT|60}}
The picture is now in the collection of the Guildhall Art Gallery in the City of London, having been bequeathed by the art collector Charles Gassiot in 1902.{{sfnp|JFAT3GAX}}
Millais produced a sequel in 1864, *[My Second Sermon](https://engole.info/my-second-sermon)*, which Gassiot also donated to the Guildhall Art Gallery in 1902. In it, the young girl has fallen asleep in her pew.{{sfnp|EHKX3AJ6}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 28031
**Categories:** Fancy picture, John Everett Millais, Painting
---
### [Nuckelavee](https://engole.info/nuckelavee/)
**Published:** June 12, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Douglas-Scottish_FFT%281901%29-p162-Nuckalavee-illustr-J_Torrance_%28cropped%29.jpg[/pimage]Horse-like demon from Orcadian mythology that shares some of the characteristics of humans.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Douglas-Scottish_FFT%281901%29-p162-Nuckalavee-illustr-J_Torrance_%28cropped%29.jpg)*The nuckelavee chasing an islander,* painting by James Torrance (1859–1916)
Wikimedia Commons
The nuckelavee, or nuckalavee, is a horse-like demon from Orcadian mythology that combines equine and human elements. Originating in Norse mythology and the most horrible of all the demons of the Scottish islands, its name may be a progenitor of that by which the Devil is sometimes known, Old Nick. The nuckelavee’s breath can wilt crops and sicken livestock, and the creature was held responsible for droughts and epidemics on land despite its being predominantly a sea-dweller.
A graphic first-hand description of the nuckelavee as it appears on land was given by an islander who claimed to have had a confrontation with it, but accounts describing the details of the creature’s appearance are inconsistent. In common with many other sea monsters it is unable to tolerate fresh water, therefore those it is pursuing have only to cross a river or stream to be rid of it. The nuckelavee is kept in confinement during the summer months by the [Mither o’ the Sea](https://engole.info/sea-mither/), an ancient Orcadian divine and the only one able to control it.
Orcadian folklore had a strong Scandinavian influence, and it may be that the nuckelavee is a composite of a water horse from Celtic mythology and a creature imported by the Norsemen. As with similar malevolent entities such as the [kelpie](https://engole.info/kelpie/), it offered an explanation for incidents that simple islanders could not otherwise understand.
## Etymology
The late 19th century saw an upsurge of interest in transcribing folklore, but the recorders used inconsistent spelling and frequently anglicised words, thus the same entity could be given different names.{{sfnp|ET6LXXXB|ix, xi, xv}} The term *nuckelavee* is a corruption of the Orcadian *knoggelvi*,{{sfnp|H84HK53X}} but the same demon is called a *mukkelevi* in Shetland, where it was considered a nasty sea trow or sea devil.{{sfnp|ZNSJA6R7|23}} Derivatives may have been the progenitors of the name *Old Nick* given to the Devil.{{sfnp|UHGN33AA|233}} According to [Walter Traill Dennison](https://engole.info/walter-traill-dennison/), an Orcadian resident and folklorist, *nuckelavee* means “Devil of the Sea”.{{sfnp|CD3GTVFR|131}}
## Folk beliefs
### Description and common attributes
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Rough_seas_at_Yesnaby_%28geograph_3744442%29.jpg)*The tempestuous seas of Orkney are home to the nuckelavee.*
Wikimedia Commons
Stories of mythical Orcadian demons are recorded in the 16th-century Latin manuscripts of Jo Ben,\[a\]It is uncertain why Jo Ben compiled the manuscript Descriptions of Orkney, which provides a sequential account of the Orkney Islands recording details of traditions and development. Various suggestions have been made as to his identity: Scran states he was John Ballender and had been sent to carry out a survey of the islands;{{sfnp|DPN9I6WF}} historical geographer Charles W. J. Withers suggests he was John Benston or Beinston, an Orkney bishop’s clerk;{{sfnp|MKVGLNUJ|48}} and local historian Sigurd Towrie indicates he may have been John Bellenden or Ballendon, attributing the manuscript to be “the oldest surviving account of the Orkney Islands, after they transferred to Scotland in 1468”.{{sfnp|MUE2SXJ7}} who may have been referring to the nuckelavee in his description of the Orkney island of Stronsay.{{sfnp|PRIMGBYI}} Dennison transcribed much of the information available about traditional tales told on Orkney, but to an extent romanticised and systematically altered certain elements of the stories in the process of transforming them into prose.{{sfnp|Y8CBUV9M}}\[b\]Specific dates are not given for exactly when Traill Dennison gathered the tales but his various transcripts were published between 1880 and 1894.{{sfnp|ZNSJA6R7|205}}
The nuckelavee is a mythical sea creature that appears as a horse-like demon when it ventures on to land.{{sfnp|XJB4NPVY|387}} Writer and folklorist [Ernest Marwick](https://engole.info/ernest-w-marwick/) considered it very similar to the Norwegian nøkk, the [nuggle](https://engole.info/nuggle/) of the Shetlands and the kelpie. A unique and solitary creature possessing extensive evil powers, its malevolent behaviour can influence events throughout the islands.{{sfnp|ZNSJA6R7|23}} Islanders were terrified of the creature and would not speak its name without immediately saying a prayer.{{sfnp|CD3GTVFR|132}} It was often found in the vicinity of a beach, but would never come ashore if it was raining.{{sfnp|ZNSJA6R7|22}}
No tales describe what form the nuckelavee takes when in the sea,{{sfnp|CD3GTVFR|131}} but its appearance on land has been recounted in graphic detail.{{sfnp|ENSMVPSC|67}} An islander, Tammas, survived a confrontation with the beast and, after much cajoling from Dennison, reluctantly gave his description of the monster, the only known first-hand account.\[c\]As alluded to by Walter Traill Dennison, to whom the story was told, Tammas’s account bears a certain resemblance to the events in Robert Burns’s poem Tam o’ Shanter (1790).{{sfnp|6FVIA5VP|125}} According to Tammas, the nuckelavee has a man’s torso attached to a horse’s back as if it were a rider.{{sfnp|CD3GTVFR|131}} The male torso has no legs, but its arms can reach the ground from its position on top of the equine body, the legs of which have fin like appendages.{{sfnp|CD3GTVFR|132}} The torso has a large head – possibly as much as 3 feet (0.91 m) in diameter – that rolls back and forth.{{sfnp|ZNSJA6R7|22}} The monster described by Tammas has two heads;{{sfnp|CD3GTVFR|133}} the equine head has an enormous gaping mouth that exudes a smelly toxic vapour, and a single giant eye like a burning red flame. A particularly gruesome detail is that the nuckelavee has no skin;{{sfnp|XJB4NPVY|388}} black blood courses through yellow veins, and the pale sinews and powerful muscles are visible as a pulsating mass.{{sfnp|CD3GTVFR|132}} Other reports state that the creature resembles a centaur;{{sfnp|SFXSTNDZ|57}} narratives are inconsistent in the finer details of the demon’s description however.{{sfnp|H84HK53X}} Traill Dennison only describes a man’s head with a “mouth projected like that of a pig”.{{sfnp|CD3GTVFR|132}} Marwick also only mentions one head with a single red eye, and he borrows some of Tammas’s characterisation by recording the creature’s mouth as “like a whale’s”.{{sfnp|ZNSJA6R7|22}}
The nuckelavee’s breath can wilt crops and sicken livestock, and it was considered responsible for epidemics and drought.{{sfnp|CD3GTVFR|132}} Seaweed burning to create what was known at the time as kelp began on Stronsay in 1722. The product – soda ash – was an alkali mainly used to treat acidic soil,{{sfnp|ZNSJA6R7|23}}{{sfnp|CD3GTVFR|132}} although as time went on its commercial importance in soap and glass manufacture increased. The pungent smoke emitted during the process can enrage the nuckelavee,{{sfnp|ZNSJA6R7|23}} resulting in a wild rampage of plague, the deaths of cattle and the destruction of crops.{{sfnp|YB7K25MZ}}{{sfnp|JQ9MJYAQ}} The nuckelavee infected horses on Stronsay with the deadly disease known as mortasheen,\[d\]This is now commonly known as glanders.{{sfnp|7PV4MBLX|search=morterchyn}} to demonstrate its fury and exact its revenge against the islanders for burning seaweed; the infection subsequently spread to all the other islands involved in the industry.{{sfnp|ZNSJA6R7|23}}{{sfnp|3SNSAE7L|61}} The creature can impose prolonged periods of abnormally low rainfall, leading to water shortages and poor harvests.{{sfnp|ZNSJA6R7|23}}
## Confinement
The nuckelavee is the most malevolent of the demons in and around the Scottish islands, without any redeeming characteristics.{{sfnp|ENSMVPSC|68}} The only entity able to control it is the [Mither o’ the Sea](https://engole.info/sea-mither/), an ancient divine in Orcadian mythology who keeps the nuckelavee confined during the summer months.{{sfnp|T6DCSI8P|252}} In common with other mythical sea monsters, with the possible exception of kelpies and the nuggle of Shetland, it is unable to wade through fresh flowing water,{{sfnp|XJB4NPVY|388}} therefore those it is chasing have only to cross a stream to be rid of it.{{sfnp|ENSMVPSC|53}} Tammas managed to escape from the nuckelavee after he inadvertently splashed it with water from the loch he was alongside; this briefly distracted the monster, allowing Tammas to run over to a nearby channel of fresh water and jump to safety on the opposite bank.{{sfnp|CD3GTVFR|133}}
## Origins
Malevolent creatures served to provide explanations for incidents that simple islanders were otherwise unable to account for; many ancient myths were based upon the natural elements of the turbulent and ever changing sea around Orkney.{{sfnp|P5WZILJN}} Established Orcadian tales were strongly influenced by Scandinavian mythology with a blending of traditional Celtic stories,{{sfnp|E3UES7B8|10}} so the nuckelavee may have its roots in a mythical creature imported by the Norsemen fused with a traditional Celtic water horse.{{sfnp|H84HK53X}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a It is uncertain why Jo Ben compiled the manuscript Descriptions of Orkney, which provides a sequential account of the Orkney Islands recording details of traditions and development. Various suggestions have been made as to his identity: Scran states he was John Ballender and had been sent to carry out a survey of the islands;{{sfnp|DPN9I6WF}} historical geographer Charles W. J. Withers suggests he was John Benston or Beinston, an Orkney bishop’s clerk;{{sfnp|MKVGLNUJ|48}} and local historian Sigurd Towrie indicates he may have been John Bellenden or Ballendon, attributing the manuscript to be “the oldest surviving account of the Orkney Islands, after they transferred to Scotland in 1468”.{{sfnp|MUE2SXJ7}} b Specific dates are not given for exactly when Traill Dennison gathered the tales but his various transcripts were published between 1880 and 1894.{{sfnp|ZNSJA6R7|205}} c As alluded to by Walter Traill Dennison, to whom the story was told, Tammas’s account bears a certain resemblance to the events in Robert Burns’s poem Tam o’ Shanter (1790).{{sfnp|6FVIA5VP|125}} d This is now commonly known as glanders.{{sfnp|7PV4MBLX|search=morterchyn}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2007
**Categories:** Mythical creature
---
### [Samuel Bamford](https://engole.info/samuel-bamford/)
**Published:** September 16, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Samuel_Bamford.png[/pimage]English radical and writer, born in Middleton, Lancashire.
**Content:**
Wikimedia Commons
Samuel Bamford (28 February 1788 – 13 April 1872) was an English radical and writer, born in Middleton, Lancashire. He was one of five children born to Daniel Bamford (a muslin weaver, dissenter, part-time teacher, and later master of the Salford workhouse), and his wife, Hannah. After his father withdrew him from Manchester Grammar School because he refused to allow him to be taught Latin, Bamford became a weaver and then a warehouseman, before settling down as a weaver in Middleton.{{sfnp|WY79A6ZB}}
Bamford married Jemima Shepherd (1788–1862) on 24 June 1810 at Manchester Cathedral; their daughter Ann had been baptised earlier that year.{{sfnp|WY79A6ZB}}
## Political activism
Bamford’s political consciousness was aroused by the Luddite protests of 1811–1816. He was one of the founders of the Hamden Reform Club, Middleton, and his activitism led to his arrest for treason in March 1817. He was acquitted, and recorded his experience of the ordeal in the *Account of the Arrest and Imprisonment of Samuel Bamford* (1817).{{sfnp|WY79A6ZB}}
### Peterloo Massacre
Painting of the Peterloo Massacre published by Richard Carlile
Wikimedia Commons
On 16 August 1819 Bamford led a contingent from Middleton to St Peter’s Fields in Manchester, to attend a meeting pressing for parliamentary reform and the repeal of the Corn Laws. There they became caught up in the [Peterloo Massacre](https://engole.info/peterloo-massacre/); Bamford was arrested and once again charged with treason. Although the evidence showed that neither he nor any of his group had been involved in the violence, he was found guilty of inciting a riot and sentenced to a year in Lincoln gaol.{{sfnp|WY79A6ZB}} The experience of the massacre made a deep impression on Bamford, convincing him that state power would always succeed against radical militancy. He came to be seen as a voice for radical reform, but opposed to any activism that involved physical force.{{sfnp|WY79A6ZB}}
## Literary career
Bamford produced a good deal of radical working-class material. His semi-autobiographical *Passages in the Life of a Radical* (1840–44) is considered to be an insightful account of life for the English working class during the first half of the 19th century, in the years following the Battle of Waterloo. He also wrote poetry, mostly in standard English as opposed to the Lancashire dialect, which he described in his *The Dialect of South Lancashire* (1854).{{sfnp|WY79A6ZB}}{{sfnp|U6WLQCF2|151}}
Bamford died at Harpurhey on 13 April 1872;{{sfnp|WY79A6ZB}} his funeral at what is now known as Middleton old cemetery, formerly St Leonard’s churchyard, was attended by thousands. A memorial obelisk to him was unveiled in the cemetery in 1877.{{sfnp|9GZZ8RXL}}
## Selected works
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 6120
**Categories:** Political reformer
---
### [Cookie policy (UK)](https://engole.info/cookie-policy-uk/)
**Published:** February 11, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Our website uses cookies and other related technologies (for convenience all technologies are referred to as “cookies”). Cookies are also placed by third parties we have engaged. In this document we inform you about the use of cookies on our website.
**Content:**
*This Cookie Policy was last updated on 18/06/2025 and applies to citizens and legal permanent residents of the United Kingdom.*
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googlesitekit_1.140.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::206d7feb84b3eae
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.140.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::e393ff62d6ee2b0
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_99bf18570637067e62c53b70cae2d762_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::afa
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_99bf18570637067e62c53b70cae2d762_modules::analytics-4::report::92c162d39239f11
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.140.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::1c8cf87da11d39f
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_99bf18570637067e62c53b70cae2d762_modules::analytics-4::report::263461e304ba5d1
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::bed986860506c6c
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_99bf18570637067e62c53b70cae2d762_modules::analytics-4::report::dbefd55030d8d74
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
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##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_99bf18570637067e62c53b70cae2d762_modules::analytics-4::report::2bf8adabb8be5c2
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::336
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_cb6f8fc596c30095d1b0f0721293b40d_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::3f4
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_cb6f8fc596c30095d1b0f0721293b40d_modules::analytics-4::report::8fa7130f6acc6b3
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::c0a6e9fbc744846
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::fc63ba2d839671a
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::793c1e2e57d0343
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::0047dd3a5205672
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_cb6f8fc596c30095d1b0f0721293b40d_modules::analytics-4::report::793c1e2e57d0343
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::92c162d39239f11
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.140.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::89bf51516227c60
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::dc1826d081d260e
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::9e6
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_cb6f8fc596c30095d1b0f0721293b40d_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::9e6
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.140.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::7a8
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_cb6f8fc596c30095d1b0f0721293b40d_modules::analytics-4::report::608b7e294afdc6b
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_99bf18570637067e62c53b70cae2d762_modules::analytics-4::report::c0a6e9fbc744846
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::870
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.139.0_99bf18570637067e62c53b70cae2d762_modules::analytics-4::report::fc63ba2d839671a
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_7d24fe91f880941464c694a0735119f8_modules::analytics-4::report::5d9a57eb5071ff8
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_7d24fe91f880941464c694a0735119f8_modules::analytics-4::report::c37e14a5690d902
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_7d24fe91f880941464c694a0735119f8_modules::analytics-4::report::723cf9a8b0d4733
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_7d24fe91f880941464c694a0735119f8_modules::analytics-4::report::f1bf475ebe621f9
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_7d24fe91f880941464c694a0735119f8_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::646
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_7d24fe91f880941464c694a0735119f8_modules::analytics-4::report::983575544fc45fd
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.141.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::b64
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::74d
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::6d0
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_89c9c667291d5a348bba99fd0b0d49f7_modules::analytics-4::report::3fdf78e412a3db5
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_89c9c667291d5a348bba99fd0b0d49f7_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::74d
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_89c9c667291d5a348bba99fd0b0d49f7_modules::analytics-4::report::cd9d463b0ad63a7
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::cd9d463b0ad63a7
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::0be
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::613942c5332a9ed
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_89c9c667291d5a348bba99fd0b0d49f7_modules::analytics-4::report::f1c0ebe7f4b3cdb
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::a97ce19676b883d
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::a55980a4de90977
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_89c9c667291d5a348bba99fd0b0d49f7_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::5e8
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::29b
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.141.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::c800528a116060b
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_89c9c667291d5a348bba99fd0b0d49f7_modules::analytics-4::report::e572af879271867
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::11e005983ee212e
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_89c9c667291d5a348bba99fd0b0d49f7_modules::analytics-4::report::a97ce19676b883d
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::68a7619c192ad2f
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_89c9c667291d5a348bba99fd0b0d49f7_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::88c
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::45acfea40a98fa2
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.141.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::edc43631d68ad21
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_89c9c667291d5a348bba99fd0b0d49f7_modules::analytics-4::report::2ac093669a50fe5
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_89c9c667291d5a348bba99fd0b0d49f7_modules::analytics-4::report::ab048af3ebde125
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_89c9c667291d5a348bba99fd0b0d49f7_modules::analytics-4::report::721a171169675fd
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::88c
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::8add17874b19fb5
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_89c9c667291d5a348bba99fd0b0d49f7_modules::analytics-4::report::3818a952ab38514
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::ab048af3ebde125
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.142.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::3818a952ab38514
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
_clck
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_da2e9f71b31764aed26bd824cab81d5a_modules::analytics-4::report::73817d6ea6fd4cc
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::04b841a7661abcf
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_fa970a985c70dcd2d9b0e78a03be5049_modules::analytics-4::report::bd1cbad85e564d7
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_fa970a985c70dcd2d9b0e78a03be5049_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::769
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_da2e9f71b31764aed26bd824cab81d5a_modules::analytics-4::report::7ae98b07d72fcca
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::769
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::561
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_fa970a985c70dcd2d9b0e78a03be5049_modules::analytics-4::report::83a264a311a2a6d
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::147ff71646068ed
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::83a264a311a2a6d
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::c59
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::cf08f2ccac73c32
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_da2e9f71b31764aed26bd824cab81d5a_modules::analytics-4::report::700118677d7eab9
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_fa970a985c70dcd2d9b0e78a03be5049_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::490
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_52396beded7fe4c20a673bd45c1a90ae_modules::analytics-4::report::9a4c106c4d8aba4
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::8fe379acd5194e4
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::c0c9e7af4fa49d3
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_fa970a985c70dcd2d9b0e78a03be5049_modules::analytics-4::report::c5ad0ffd23fa9b5
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::72e
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_fa970a985c70dcd2d9b0e78a03be5049_modules::analytics-4::report::14d3b7749cdab51
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::31fa6adf6d3274a
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::cdea110c742577b
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_da2e9f71b31764aed26bd824cab81d5a_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::687
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_52396beded7fe4c20a673bd45c1a90ae_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::5a2
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::5a2
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::f41194c2e7162dc
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::c34ca27604200b4
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_52396beded7fe4c20a673bd45c1a90ae_modules::analytics-4::report::793b06ed81a54e5
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_fa970a985c70dcd2d9b0e78a03be5049_modules::analytics-4::report::e02cf3721b5bd23
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_fa970a985c70dcd2d9b0e78a03be5049_modules::analytics-4::report::2bcfa70c5ed0ce4
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_52396beded7fe4c20a673bd45c1a90ae_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::3b1
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_52396beded7fe4c20a673bd45c1a90ae_modules::analytics-4::report::914fb8a52f252d7
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_fa970a985c70dcd2d9b0e78a03be5049_modules::analytics-4::report::f41194c2e7162dc
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::7c83853ad2bab01
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::914fb8a52f252d7
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::17f5c2111d2b994
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_da2e9f71b31764aed26bd824cab81d5a_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::2dc
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_fa970a985c70dcd2d9b0e78a03be5049_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::5a2
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_da2e9f71b31764aed26bd824cab81d5a_modules::analytics-4::report::978b62010aaf0c9
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_52396beded7fe4c20a673bd45c1a90ae_modules::analytics-4::report::952b31c6d72146b
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_da2e9f71b31764aed26bd824cab81d5a_modules::analytics-4::report::b6dadca33795266
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_fa970a985c70dcd2d9b0e78a03be5049_modules::analytics-4::report::914fb8a52f252d7
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::9a4c106c4d8aba4
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::1d4
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_fa970a985c70dcd2d9b0e78a03be5049_modules::analytics-4::report::9a4c106c4d8aba4
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_da2e9f71b31764aed26bd824cab81d5a_modules::analytics-4::report::26c06fb65685c6c
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::19130f5066ea24d
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_da2e9f71b31764aed26bd824cab81d5a_modules::analytics-4::report::8f13f799e644ac3
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::9b90775beafa01f
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.148.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::989
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.147.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::3f3
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.152.1_8a166f184cb3b5dd55a64f6495b03c9f_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::1ab
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.152.1_8a166f184cb3b5dd55a64f6495b03c9f_modules::analytics-4::report::97fa33cb92b99a4
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.152.1_8a166f184cb3b5dd55a64f6495b03c9f_modules::analytics-4::report::dc184ccaa80f600
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.152.1_8a166f184cb3b5dd55a64f6495b03c9f_modules::analytics-4::report::f20f50ae109051d
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.152.1_8a166f184cb3b5dd55a64f6495b03c9f_modules::analytics-4::report::6e9fb3eb3a34dba
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.152.1_8a166f184cb3b5dd55a64f6495b03c9f_modules::analytics-4::report::cf09bc9d4bac1a4
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
plyr
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
wpcode_scroll_position
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
tta__voices
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
cache-sprite-plyr
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_4d9575efc236cb7474aa3e85a6a984fd_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::4e1
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::404fb7a181be2ca
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::6daba73745845f5
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_4d9575efc236cb7474aa3e85a6a984fd_modules::analytics-4::report::c8abb685ab8c676
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_12ce1a4954976d9053c995ffb48d59e5_modules::analytics-4::report::862a96f8e12ba5c
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::148f67f283eeaa9
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_12ce1a4954976d9053c995ffb48d59e5_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::a1a
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::7e5
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::40c06c94e738485
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::c8abb685ab8c676
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::71651e85bfbf370
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
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##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
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##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
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##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::fb9
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::02622601bb6226c
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::944
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_4d9575efc236cb7474aa3e85a6a984fd_modules::analytics-4::report::9cb3084bcb79f64
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::37d
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::4e1
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::0461d469f7ed5f3
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
_cltk
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::1b58873fb3192b3
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::4e97b7e42e263ea
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_9b79820d2bcc75abed080f839751df09_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::7a1
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::8c0041c27106cb8
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::a5d1bb322b83133
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::8b845f6b7c7c344
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::7a1
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::c6a
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.154.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::9cb3084bcb79f64
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
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##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::9ef5f1f0a12188f
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::53a7750420b19b0
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::85a
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::analytics-4::report::543edd1a0b4610e
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::d63
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::analytics-4::report::26084ddf6d3b79e
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::866
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.157.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::edb3dc322046bac
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::analytics-4::report::3d2cbbff2569a74
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::e49
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::9577161e57888ea
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::95f75078b61cb17
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::cf1
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.157.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::27b059a768cae9f
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::f39
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::20992dd6caca6cc
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::b90e69a525780e2
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
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##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::eb41c4d5be44ab7
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.157.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::73f419251ab6d1e
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::ec62b9b3fdad35f
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::6a64a4d33c9a49d
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::analytics-4::report::1b9129138eafd4b
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::d4bc9919deb8085
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::analytics-4::report::ae863abbf108b1f
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::analytics-4::report::f478ff688a2468d
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::03a7f3f9c53e6ca
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::74f
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::analytics-4::report::759d78b0d718527
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::analytics-4::report::0ccb541cff5c856
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::3a784201aa6572c
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::78b97faa3d136f6
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
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##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::b7dd820ab0bf2b2
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::analytics-4::report::90f9fa79ad8b25f
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::174e0ea68667c24
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::860
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
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##### Expiration
##### Function
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##### Expiration
##### Function
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##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
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##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::4023d5091d462be
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
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##### Expiration
##### Function
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googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::a9909767af48080
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
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##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.157.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::c0a
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::c69e37159a07505
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::a5a6ee46e7dc00b
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::21d
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::518b7a0e1ba66ef
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::078
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::1b9129138eafd4b
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.157.0_183d45a6d0b11719ee791af6f6ac2a9f_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::a87
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::a0ebfaa1db1a962
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::01bfa3374e4be62
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::8b5
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::analytics-4::report::db2e8c4e57db2c6
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::f478ff688a2468d
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::374b9edad54766e
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::89f
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::651
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::019719ea4a9d2a6
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::d66
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::analytics-4::report::da058912f4148f9
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::analytics-4::report::0a3d05f24d4539b
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::1dd
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::dc1
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::fcc
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::73f419251ab6d1e
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::83bf0bca77bb385
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::543edd1a0b4610e
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::3165853f76d6506
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::c794d127b886533
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::36d
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::32cef5facd2031a
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::4aedd127c8a94d9
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::7ab
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::8c4503ea1bde3ef
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
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##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
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##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::aed
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::aed
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::e8c
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::5075fb59aebeb45
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::f39
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::c0a
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::7c4
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::108
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.157.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::a87
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::bb3
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::38cf1376b3bbab8
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.157.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::78a45a1ab826ff1
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::662
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::e08
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::fe355d724a00b45
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::a3a
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::f969ed3f0c5abc1
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::7cecaaa0f4c1ee3
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::0ccb541cff5c856
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::analytics-4::report::996ea65cbacbbd9
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::a16
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::300b1b715d4f515
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_0891a415c95d647b2e7d653b94515dd1_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::1dd
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::ae863abbf108b1f
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.157.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::375
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::893f2ed8ae30892
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::922
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::0eac4dbdc771f5c
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::search-console::searchanalytics::c53
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::46b9a427bd319ac
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::85ff8b178bdf4d4
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::83b72e011afc3ca
##### Expiration
##### Function
##### Name
googlesitekit_1.156.0_afa6655f3546d61f7286ec551de175a0_modules::analytics-4::report::4f44b85c42d1956
##### Expiration
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## 7. Consent
When you visit our website for the first time, we will show you a pop-up with an explanation about cookies. As soon as you click on “Save preferences”, you consent to us using the categories of cookies and plug-ins you selected in the pop-up, as described in this Cookie Policy. You can disable the use of cookies via your browser, but please note that our website may no longer work properly.
### 7.1 Manage your consent settings
You have loaded the Cookie Policy without javascript support. On AMP, you can use the manage consent button on the bottom of the page.
## 8. Enabling/disabling and deleting cookies
You can use your internet browser to automatically or manually delete cookies. You can also specify that certain cookies may not be placed. Another option is to change the settings of your internet browser so that you receive a message each time a cookie is placed. For more information about these options, please refer to the instructions in the Help section of your browser.
Please note that our website may not work properly if all cookies are disabled. If you do delete the cookies in your browser, they will be placed again after your consent when you visit our website again.
## 9. Your rights with respect to personal data
You have the following rights with respect to your personal data:
- You have the right to know why your personal data is needed, what will happen to it, and how long it will be retained for.
- Right of access: You have the right to access your personal data that is known to us.
- Right to rectification: you have the right to supplement, correct, have deleted or blocked your personal data whenever you wish.
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To exercise these rights, please contact us. Please refer to the contact details at the bottom of this Cookie Policy. If you have a complaint about how we handle your data, we would like to hear from you, but you also have the right to submit a complaint to the supervisory authority (the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)).
## 10. Contact details
For questions and/or comments about our Cookie Policy and this statement, please contact us by using the following contact details:
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Website:
Email: engole.elven@ex.comgmail.com
This Cookie Policy was synchronised with [cookiedatabase.org](https://cookiedatabase.org/) on 23/04/2024.
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Grade I listed buildings in Cheshire](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-cheshire/)
**Published:** January 9, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Cheshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/330px-Cheshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png[/pimage]Grade I listed buildings in the ceremonial county of Cheshire, split into the four unitary authorities making up the county.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Cheshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg/330px-Cheshire_UK_locator_map_2010.svg.png)Cheshire shown within England
Wikimedia Commons
The [ceremonial county](https://engole.info/ceremonial-county) of Cheshire is comprised of four [unitary authorities](https://engole.info/unitary-authority): Cheshire West and Chester, Cheshire East, Warrington, and Halton.
The 142 Grade I listed buildings in the county are shown in separate lists for each unitary authority.
Grade I structures are those considered to be “buildings of exceptional interest”.{{sfnp|IM9RWBMG}}
- Grade I listed buildings in Cheshire West and Chester
- [Grade I listed buildings in Cheshire East](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-cheshire-east)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Warrington](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-warrington)
- [Grade I listed buildings in Halton](https://engole.info/grade-i-listed-buildings-in-halton)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25895
**Categories:** Cheshire
**Tags:** No speech
---
### [Worsley dry docks](https://engole.info/worsley-dry-docks/)
**Published:** August 5, 2020
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/%27Starvationer%27_barge_in_dock%2C_Worsley_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1777088.jpg[/pimage]Earliest surviving example of a dry dock on Britain's canals.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/%27Starvationer%27_barge_in_dock%2C_Worsley_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1777088.jpg)Mine boat in Worsley dry dock
Wikimedia Commons
The dry docks behind Worsley Green in Worsley, Greater Manchester, built by John Gilbert and James Brindley in about 1761 on the Bridgewater Canal, are probably the earliest extant example on Britain’s canals.
The Grade II listed pair of dry docks have hammer-dressed stone retaining walls and wooden sluice gates. The docks were covered by timber and iron sheds with bow-string roof trusses on iron posts in the 19th century; a third dock has been filled in.{{sfnp|FIPI6NWP}}{{sfnp|IKA4HN3I|149}}
[Mine boats](https://engole.info/mine-boat/) used on the Bridgewater Canal and [underground levels](https://engole.info/worsley-navigable-levels/) were built and repaired here.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22952
**Categories:** Coal mining, Greater Manchester
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Southey and Gotleigh Moors](https://engole.info/southey-and-gotleigh-moors/)
**Published:** April 22, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Gotleigh-Moor.webp[/pimage]Site of Special Scientific Interest on the Blackdown Hills in Devon/Somerset.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Gotleigh-Moor.webp)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/o3YiWNjzrFzgQJEL7}}
Gotleigh Moor|Geograph
Southey and Gotleigh Moors is an {{convert|81.3|ha|adj=on}} biological Site of Special Scientific Interest on the Blackdown Hills in Devon/Somerset.{{sfnp|LH789WTM}}
Natural England describe the site as “one of the richest mosaics of valley mire, acid-marsh grassland and alder-birch carr to be found on the Blackdown Hills”. There are heavily waterlogged mineral soils in the valley basin, and the diversity of the site is enhanced by the presence of the Bolham River and small areas of standing water.{{sfnp|LH789WTM}}
Southey and Gotleigh Moors is privately owned.{{sfnp|5J4EYSI2}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29885
**Categories:** Devon, Somerset, SSSI
---
### [The Country of the Blind](https://engole.info/the-country-of-the-blind/)
**Published:** April 20, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/34/Wells_CountryOfTheBlindStories%281st_edition%29.jpg[/pimage]Short story by H. G. Wells first published in 1904, about the accidental discovery of a latter-day utopia where all the inhabitants are blind.
**Content:**
First edition cover of *The Country of the Blind and Other Stories* (1911)
Wikipedia
“The Country of the Blind” is the best known of the almost one hundred short stories written by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946).{{sfnp|PSQ4LZZE}} It was first published in the April 1904 issue of [*The Strand Magazine*](https://engole.info/the-strand-magazine), and subsequently in book form in [*The Country of the Blind and Other Stories*](https://engole.info/the-country-of-the-blind-and-other-stories/) (1911). Wells later revised the story, and an expanded version with a different ending appeared in 1939.
Told as a third-person narrative, the story centres on the accidental discovery of a latter-day utopia by a mountaineer climbing a fictitious mountain in Ecuador, all the inhabitants of which are blind, and his discomfiture at discovering that far from being considered an asset, his sense of sight is regarded as an affliction.
## Synopsis
While leading a group of English mountaineers attempting to climb the unconquered crest of Parascotopetl (a fictitious mountain in Ecuador), Nunez slips and falls. At the end of his descent, down a snowy slope in the mountain’s shadow, he finds a valley, cut off from the rest of the world on all sides by steep precipices. Quite by accident, Nunez has discovered the fabled Country of the Blind, which had been a haven for settlers fleeing the tyranny of Spanish rulers until an earthquake cut the valley off from the outside world. The isolated community prospered over the years, despite a disease that struck them early on, rendering all newborns blind. As the blindness slowly spread over fifteen generations, the people’s remaining senses sharpened, and by the time the last sighted villager died, the community had fully adapted to life without sight.
Nunez descends into the valley and finds an unusual village with windowless houses and a network of paths, all bordered by kerbs. Upon discovering that everyone is blind, Nunez begins reciting to himself the proverb, “In the Country of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King”.\[a\]The earliest version of the proverb appears in *Collectanea adagiorum veterum*, first published by Desiderius Erasmus in 1500. Erasmus first quotes a Latin proverb: “*Inter caecos regnat strabus*” – Among the blind the squinter rules. He follows this with a Greek proverb that is similar, but then translates the Greek into Latin: “*In regione caecorum rex est luscus*” – In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. He believes that he can teach and rule them, but the villagers have no concept of sight, and do not understand his attempts to explain this fifth sense to them. Frustrated, Nunez becomes angry, but the villagers calm him, and he reluctantly submits to their way of life, as returning to the outside world seems impossible.
Nunez is assigned to work for a villager named Yacob. He becomes attracted to Yacob’s youngest daughter, Medina-saroté, and the pair soon fall in love. After winning her confidence, Nunez tries to explain sight to Medina-saroté, but she dismisses it as his imagination. When Nunez asks for her hand in marriage, he is turned down by the village elders on account of his “unstable” obsession with “sight”. The village doctor suggests that Nunez’s eyes be removed, claiming that they are diseased and are “greatly distended”, and because of this “his brain is in a state of constant irritation and distraction”. Nunez reluctantly consents to the procedure because of his love for Medina-saroté. But at sunrise on the day of the operation, while all the villagers are asleep, he sets off for the mountains without provisions or equipment, hoping to make his way back to the outside world.
In the original version of the story, Nunez climbs high into the surrounding mountains until night falls, and he rests, weak with cuts and bruises, but happy that he has escaped the valley. His fate is not revealed. In the revised and expanded 1939 version, Nunez sees from a distance that there is about to be a rock slide. He attempts to warn the villagers, but again they scoff at his “imagined” sight. He flees the valley during the slide, taking Medina-saroté with him.
## Commentary
Wells described “The Country of the Blind” as an “exploration fantasy, and one of his best”, but it is also a utopian story, which clearly owes a debt to Plato’s account of Atlantis.\[b\]Wells said that reading Plato early in life was “like the hand of a strong brother taking hold of me and raising me up”, leading him to fantastic places and novel ideas.{{sfnp|PSQ4LZZE}} The literary critic and President of the H. G. Wells Society, J. R. Hammond, has described Wells as “the last of the great utopists”, and the land Nunez discovers can be seen as a latter-day Atlantis.{{sfnp|PSQ4LZZE}}
Jodie R. Gaudet of Georgetown University has suggested that Wells may not be intending to describe a valley that tangibly exists, but rather a hallucination brought on by Nunez’s concussion caused by his fall. The idea that the entire story takes place in the imagination of the main character is given some weight by Wells’s style of writing; the many ellipses inserted throughout the text – “the passing of time coterminous with an absence of recognition” – may be suggesting that Nunez is drifting in and out of consciousness as he dreams of the country of the blind.{{sfnp|NHXBHIDZ}}
## Alternative ending
In the preface to the 1939 edition Wells explains why he decided to rewrite the ending to this story:{{sfnp|EL9TFU38|loc=6183}}
It has been changed because there is a change in the atmosphere of life about us. In 1904 the stress is upon the spiritual isolation of those who see more keenly than their fellows and the tragedy of their incommunicable appreciation of life … In the later story vision becomes something altogether more tragic; it is no longer a story of disregarded loveliness and release; the visionary sees destruction sweeping down upon the whole blind world he has come to endure and even to love; he sees it plain, and he can do nothing to save it from its fate
In what A. Langley Searles writing in *The Wellsian* has called a “tack-on love interest”, Nunez and Medina-saroté marry and have four children together, all of whom can see. Though happy in her new life, she looks back nostalgically to her time in the valley, and steadfastly refuses to be treated for her blindness. She reveals why in a conversation with the narrator’s wife:{{sfnp|JRI664XA}}
“I have no use for your colours or your stars,” said Medina-saroté….
“But after all that has happened! Don’t you want to see Nunez; see what he is like?”
“But I know what he is like, and seeing him might put us apart. He would not be so near to me. The loveliness of *your* world is a complicated and fearful loveliness, and mine is simple and near. I had rather Nunez saw for me – because he knows nothing of fear.”
“But the *beauty*!” cried my wife.
“It may be beautiful,” said Medina-saroté, “but it must be very terrible to *see*.”
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The earliest version of the proverb appears in *Collectanea adagiorum veterum*, first published by Desiderius Erasmus in 1500. Erasmus first quotes a Latin proverb: “*Inter caecos regnat strabus*” – Among the blind the squinter rules. He follows this with a Greek proverb that is similar, but then translates the Greek into Latin: “*In regione caecorum rex est luscus*” – In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. b Wells said that reading Plato early in life was “like the hand of a strong brother taking hold of me and raising me up”, leading him to fantastic places and novel ideas.{{sfnp|PSQ4LZZE}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 18347
## External links
- [Full text of “The Country of the Blind”](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11870/11870-h/11870-h.htm#link2H_4_0033) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
---
### [Mise-en-page](https://engole.info/mise-en-page/)
**Published:** February 1, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Nouveau_Dictionnaire_Larousse_page.JPG/1280px-Nouveau_Dictionnaire_Larousse_page.JPG[/pimage]Term used to describe the physical layout of a page or manuscript, features such as indentation, columns, margins, font and so on.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Nouveau_Dictionnaire_Larousse_page.JPG/1280px-Nouveau_Dictionnaire_Larousse_page.JPG)Example from the *New Larousse Dictionary* (1899): titles in bold, text justified in three columns, thumbnails aligned to the right with wrapping
French Wikipedia
Mise-en-page is a term used to describe the physical layout of a page or a manuscript, features such as indentation, columns and spaces between paragraphs, but not the actual content of the page. It also encompasses other elements such as illustrations, pagination, margins, sidenotes and so on, as well as the choice of font or script and any decorative features. Mise-en-page is a French expression that translates as “putting on the page”.{{sfnp|L9NR9228}}
The related term mise-en-texte concerns the subdivisions of the text into chapters or scenes, and their subsections such as paragraphs or acts. From the 13th century onwards, different categories of books began to develop page layouts that reflected the requirements of their text or users. Even today, novels are conventionally presented in long lines of text, whereas dictionaries and other reference works have two or more columns to the page.{{sfnp|UTGE3U4K}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27178
**Categories:** Printing
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Outwood Viaduct](https://engole.info/outwood-viaduct/)
**Published:** February 25, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/Outwood_viaduct_from_river_irwell.jpg/1280px-Outwood_viaduct_from_river_irwell.jpg[/pimage]Grade II listed railway viaduct crossing the River Irwell in Radcliffe, Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/Outwood_viaduct_from_river_irwell.jpg/1280px-Outwood_viaduct_from_river_irwell.jpg)The west side; Radcliffe is to the left.
[https://maps.app.goo.gl/d7g6ah1SenL9K4gr6]()
Outwood Viaduct is a Grade II [listed](https://engole.info/listed-building) railway viaduct crossing the River Irwell in Radcliffe, Greater Manchester, commissioned by the Manchester, Bury and Rossendale Railway Company.{{sfnp|KR84VWL7" target="\_blank" rel="noopener">\[a\]The Manchester, Bury and Rossendale Railway Company changed its name to the East Lancashire Railway in 1845, and was amalgamated with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway in 1859.{{sfnp|U3PFDL3Y|18-19}} {{convert|340|ft|spell=in|sentence=on}} long, it was opened in 1846, and carries the line {{convert|70|ft}} above the water.{{sfnp|KBCILXRS|115}}
The bridge’s five arches were originally built in timber, but were replaced with cast-iron spans by Andrew Handyside & Co of Derby in 1881.{{sfnp|6WVWTNQQ|224}} The arches are supported on tall brick pillars topped with stone, with wooden decking and brick abutments.{{sfnp|KR84VWL7}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4e/Outwood_Viaduct_top.jpg/1920px-Outwood_Viaduct_top.jpg?_=20070906161908)Outwood Viaduct as at 2007
Wikimedia Commons
The viaduct was closed to railway traffic in 1966. After restoration it was re-opened to the public on 25 June 1999 by Sir William McAlpine, President of the Railway Heritage Trust.{{sfnp|4LDWQSP2}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The Manchester, Bury and Rossendale Railway Company changed its name to the East Lancashire Railway in 1845, and was amalgamated with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway in 1859.{{sfnp|U3PFDL3Y|18-19}} b, c var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27224
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Viaduct
---
### [Ornithomancy](https://engole.info/ornithomancy/)
**Published:** October 1, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Roman_augurs_interpreting_the_flight_of_birds_%28%3F%29._Etching_b_Wellcome_V0025852.jpg/1920px-Roman_augurs_interpreting_the_flight_of_birds_%28%3F%29._Etching_b_Wellcome_V0025852.jpg?_=20141103062115[/pimage]Method of divination that uses the behaviour of birds to predict the future.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Roman_augurs_interpreting_the_flight_of_birds_%28%3F%29._Etching_b_Wellcome_V0025852.jpg/1920px-Roman_augurs_interpreting_the_flight_of_birds_%28%3F%29._Etching_b_Wellcome_V0025852.jpg?_=20141103062115)Roman augurs interpreting the flight of birds, etching by J. Goupy
Wikimedia Commons
Ornithomancy is a method of divination that uses the behaviour of birds to predict the future, once widely practised by the people of the Ancient Mediterranean, among them the Greeks and Romans. It is rooted in the divine omniscience of the gods, who know everything including the outcome of future events, and are minded to communicate with mortals through signs such as the behaviour of animals.{{sfnp|TU8KQ6SF}}
Prophesying by bird behaviour is first documented among the Hittites in Anatolia, modern-day Turkey, where texts on bird oracles have been found dating from the 13th or 14th century BCE. The interpreter of the birds’ behaviour is known as an augur. Among the factors considered significant are the direction of the bird’s flight, from where it appeared and where it is seen.{{sfnp|B64FMYYY}}
In his comedy *The Birds*, the Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes (c. 446 – c. 386 BCE) has the birds boasting that people rely on them to “foretell the future in every matter of business or love”.{{sfnp|TU8KQ6SF}} The magpie counting song – “One for sorrow, two for joy …” – is a folklore remnant of ornithomancy.{{sfnp|9KCAL79D|225}}
## See also
- [Scrying](https://engole.info/scrying)
- [Sortes Biblicae](https://engole.info/sortes-biblicae/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26844
**Categories:** Divination
---
### [Thorley Wash](https://engole.info/thorley-wash/)
**Published:** October 4, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/Thorley_Wash_9.JPG/1920px-Thorley_Wash_9.JPG[/pimage]Biological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) near Bishop's Stortford, in Hertfordshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/Thorley_Wash_9.JPG/1920px-Thorley_Wash_9.JPG)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/cBK9jJ9zSUwVfMDB8
Thorley Wash, formerly known as Thorley Flood Pound, is a {{convert|17.3|ha|adj=on}} biological Site of Special Scientific Interest in the Roding Valley, near Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire.{{sfnp|N7BJMUNL}} It was originally a flood pound for the Stort Navigation, but is now a nature reserve managed by the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust.{{sfnp|YH5JQ4MH}}\[a\]A pound is the stretch of water between two locks.{{sfnp|NET5G4QG}}
The site contains a range of habitats associated with a fluctuating water table, including tall wash grassland, baserich marsh and ill-drained permanent grassland.{{sfnp|N7BJMUNL}} Since 2023 water buffalo have been used to graze the waterlogged and marshy grasslands, which has increased the site’s biodiversity.{{sfnp|DSNZ3XZV}}
## Flora and fauna
### Flora
The wide variety of plant species found in Thorley Wash include Reed Sweet-grass (*Glyceria maxima*), Meadowsweet (*Filipendula ulmaria*), Marsh marigold (*Caltha palustris*), Ragged Robin (*Lychnis floscuculi*) and Fen Bedstraw (*Galium uliginosum*).{{sfnp|N7BJMUNL}} The Marsh marigold in particular seems to have thrived since the introduction of the water buffalo.{{sfnp|DSNZ3XZV}}
### Fauna
The site provides a habitat for Snipe (*Gallinago gallinago*), Water Rail (*Rallus aquaticus*), wildfowl and other ground-nesting birds. Insects include dragonflies and damselflies such as the Banded demoiselle (*Calopteryx splendens*) and Broad-bodied chaser (*Libellula depressa*).{{sfnp|N7BJMUNL}} Water voles (*Arvicola amphibius*) were successfully reintroduced to Thorley Wash in 2015.{{sfnp|FH9XRVUX}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a A pound is the stretch of water between two locks.{{sfnp|NET5G4QG}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 27989
**Categories:** Hertfordshire, SSSI
---
### [Voussoir](https://engole.info/voussoir/)
**Published:** June 7, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/Carved_keystone_at_Wells_House.jpg/1920px-Carved_keystone_at_Wells_House.jpg?_=20200714145141[/pimage]Wedge-shaped stone or brick that in combination with others forms an arch.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/Carved_keystone_at_Wells_House.jpg/1920px-Carved_keystone_at_Wells_House.jpg?_=20200714145141)Wells House, Ilkley
Wikimedia Commons
A voussoir is a wedge-shaped stone or brick that in combination with others forms an arch.{{sfnp|KDJVTDTR}} The central stone in such an arch, known as the keystone, is sometimes decorated.{{sfnp|T5B6FGWB}}
The term is derived from the Old French *vausoir*, meaning “to turn”.{{sfnp|E5H6P48X}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26483
**Categories:** Architectural term
---
### [Hamlet (place)](https://engole.info/hamlet-place/)
**Published:** April 22, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/The_hamlet_of_Upper_Ogden_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2565827.jpg/1920px-The_hamlet_of_Upper_Ogden_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2565827.jpg?_=20210903112906[/pimage]Rural settlement smaller than a village.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/The_hamlet_of_Upper_Ogden_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2565827.jpg/1920px-The_hamlet_of_Upper_Ogden_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2565827.jpg?_=20210903112906)The hamlet of Upper Ogden, in Greater Manchester
Wikimedia Commons
A hamlet is a rural settlement smaller than a [village](https://engole.info/village), consisting of a few residential homes, usually without services, shops or a place of worship.{{sfnp|FA7R8MGG}}{{sfnp|RDDUTDAK}} Groups of hamlets and villages, and their adjacent lands, are organised into [parishes](https://engole.info/civil-parish), the smallest administrative unit in England, known as communities in Wales and Scotland.{{sfnp|KAJQRKPD}}
The word *hamlet* is derived from the Old French *hamelet*.{{sfnp|NC3FNH2Z}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25262
**Categories:** Hamlet
---
### [Mosley Common](https://engole.info/mosley-common/)
**Published:** July 10, 2023
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Mosley_Common_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1533793.jpg[/pimage]Suburb of Tyldesley in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, in Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Mosley_Common_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1533793.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/L17zcY4zoxaQTiha8}}
Mosley Common and village sign
Mosley Common, a suburb of [Tyldesley](https://engole.info/tyldesley/) in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, Greater Manchester was historically in Lancashire. The ancient [hamlet](https://engole.info/hamlet-place) on gently rising ground in the east of the township of Tyldesley cum Shakerley was in the [ancient parish](https://engole.info/ancient-parish/) of Leigh. The area of Mosley Common in 1747 was {{convert|34|acre}}.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|48}}
Mining became the most important industry after the deep shafts of Mosley Common Colliery were sunk south of the [Tyldesley Loopline](https://engole.info/tyldesley-loopline/) in the 1860s. Dubbed a “superpit”, the colliery was a major employer for a century before it closed in 1968.
## Geography
Mosley Common is on the eastern edge of the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan where it shares a border with the City of Salford. The A580, East Lancashire Road is the southern boundary and to the north is the [Leigh-Ellenbrook guided busway](https://engole.info/leigh-ellenbrook-guided-busway/) and [New Manchester](https://engole.info/new-manchester/) and the Honksford Brook is its boundary with Tyldesley. The A577 road passes through the village and the B5232 links it with New Manchester and [Ellenbrook](https://engole.info/ellenbrook/). The underlying rocks are the coal measures of the [Lancashire Coalfield](https://engole.info/lancashire-and-cheshire-coalfield/) covered with boulder clay.
## History
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/St_John%27s_Mosley_Common.JPG)St John’s Church
Wikimedia Commons
The old name for the area was the Hurst or Tyldesleyhurst. Hyrst is Old English for wooded hill.{{sfnp|HLPY5IWM|404}} It was recorded as Mosseld Yard in 1301. Mosley could also mean the clearing on mossy ground. In 1695 the common was part of the Tyldesley Manor. Parr Bridge over the Honksford Brook was rebuilt in stone in 1698.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|49}}
A Sunday School was built in 1822 and enlarged in 1881. It was used for religious services before the church was built.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|65}} In 1885 the Countess of Ellesmere laid the foundation stone for [St John the Evangelist Church](https://engole.info/st-johns-church-mosley-common/), a daughter church of [Tyldesley Parish Church](https://engole.info/st-georges-church-tyldesley/), it cost £4,250.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|103}}
### Industry
In 1831 Richard Worthington of Mosley Common built a weaving shed with 60 pairs of looms.\[4\] Parr Bridge Mill, built in 1859, was a weaving shed. It had several owners and continued working into the 1950s.\[5\]
The [Bridgewater Trustees](https://engole.info/bridgewater-collieries/)‘ City and Gatley Pits were working at New Manchester in 1838.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|80}} Deep mining arrived when Mosley Common Colliery owned by the Bridgewater Trustees was sunk in the 1868. In 1896 Mosley Common, “Nos. 1, 2 & 5” pits employed 748 men underground and 85 surface workers. Coal was mined from the Brassey, Crumbouke and Seven Foot mines. “Nos. 3 & 4” pits employed 406 underground workers and 57 above ground. Coal was got from the Trencherbone mine. By 1919 the colliery employed more than 2,000 men.{{sfnp|W87UK3JH}} It was part of [Manchester Collieries](https://engole.info/manchester-collieries/) from 1929 to nationalisation in 1947{{sfnp|XUR7TNGT}}. It was a national show pit during the 1950s. Mosley Common closed in 1968.{{sfnp|J83BV9ID}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25469
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Suburb
---
### [Yale (mythical creature)](https://engole.info/yale-mythical-creature/)
**Published:** August 3, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/yale.jpg[/pimage]Heraldic beast whose meaning is "proud defence". Although it has never been identified with a living or extinct creature, it may be based on descriptions of Indian water buffalos.
**Content:**
The yale as depicted in a 12th-century English bestiary
The Medieval Bestiary
The yale, also known as a centicore, is one of the Royal Beasts, those creatures imaginary and real that have been used in the heraldic symbolism of the British royal family. The name may be derived from the Hebrew *ya-el*, meaning mountain goat.{{sfnp|PU4Q6D6H|108}}
Apparently a composite creature, the yale’s parts vary with the source. The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder described it as being black or tawny, with the tail of an elephant and the tusks of a boar.{{sfnp|PU4Q6D6H|108}}\[a\]Pliny called the creature an *eale*, the Latin version of its name.{{sfnp|AWTXF7GV}} Other depictions of yales as heraldic symbols depict them with the body of a deer or a goat, sometimes covered in gold spots, as can be seen in the arms of Margaret Beaufort (1441/3–1509), mother of King Henry VII, above the gatehouses of the two Cambridge colleges she endowed, St John’s College and Christ’s. All accounts agree on one thing however, that the yale is armed with two long horns that can be swivelled independently to meet an attack from any direction.{{sfnp|QRCYFG6R|42-43}} Perhaps as a result, the heraldic meaning of the yale is “proud defence”.{{sfnp|PU4Q6D6H|108}}
The yale appeared in the majority of Latin bestiaries until the 17th century, but has never been identified with any living or extinct animal. Although it is typically dismissed today as mythical, the researcher Wilma George has suggested that the yale may be based on a somewhat fanciful description of the Indian water buffalo.{{sfnp|AWTXF7GV}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Pliny called the creature an *eale*, the Latin version of its name.{{sfnp|AWTXF7GV}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22940
**Categories:** Mythical creature
---
### [Six Acts](https://engole.info/six-acts/)
**Published:** November 9, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Coat_of_Arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281816-1837%29.svg/1280px-Coat_of_Arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281816-1837%29.svg.png?_=20100720001843[/pimage] Six Acts of Parliament introduced in the aftermath of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, intended to quash any further protests in support of parliamentary reform.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Coat_of_Arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281816-1837%29.svg/1280px-Coat_of_Arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281816-1837%29.svg.png?_=20100720001843)Wikimedia Commons
In the aftermath of the [Peterloo Massacre](https://engole.info/peterloo-massacre) on 16 August 1819, the government of the United Kingdom introduced new legislation to deter future protests by what it regarded as dangerous radicals, those campaigning for a fairer system of parliamentary representation, and the activities of the radical press which supported them.{{sfnp|FN68TLLP}} The crackdown was championed and overseen by the Tory Home Secretary Henry Addington, first Viscount Sidmouth.{{sfnp|4CL88RHU}}
The historian Robert Reid has written that “it is not fanciful to compare the restricted freedoms of the British worker in the post-Peterloo period in the early nineteenth century with those of the black South African in the post-Sharpeville period of the late twentieth century”.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|211}} The six Acts of Parliament, hastily introduced in 1819, very soon proved to be counter-productive, provoking much opposition.{{sfnp|GKPXT5U2}}
## The Acts
- **The Unlawful Drilling Act** 1819 (60 Geo. 3 & 1 Geo. 4. c. 1), made any person attending a meeting for the purpose of receiving training or drill in weapons liable to arrest and transportation.
- **The Seizure of Arms Act** (60 Geo. 3 & 1 Geo. 4. c. 2) gave local magistrates the powers to search any private property for weapons and seize them and arrest the owners.
- **The Misdemeanours Act** (60 Geo. 3 & 1 Geo. 4. c. 4) attempted to increase the speed of the administration of justice by reducing the opportunities for bail and allowing for speedier court processing.
- **The Seditious Meetings Act** (60 Geo. 3 & 1 Geo. 4. c. 6) required the permission of a sheriff or magistrate to convene any public meeting of more than 50 people, if the subject of that meeting was concerned with “church or state” matters. Only those living in the parish were allowed to attend such meetings.
- **The Blasphemous and Seditious Libels Act** (or Criminal Libel Act) (60 Geo. 3 & 1 Geo. 4. c. 8), toughened the existing laws to provide for more punitive sentences for the authors of such writings. The maximum sentence was increased to fourteen years’ transportation.
- **The Newspaper and Stamp Duties Act** (60 Geo. 3 & 1 Geo. 4. c. 9) extended and increased taxes to cover those publications which had escaped duty by publishing opinion and not news. Publishers were also required to post a bond for their behaviour.
The historian G. M. Trevelyan considered that “the most lasting injury to the community was done by the Newspaper and Stamp Duties Act imposing a four-penny stamp on all periodical publications”, reduced to a penny in 1836, before such [taxes on knowledge](https://engole.info/taxes-on-knowledge) finally vanished mid-century.{{sfnp|IEJLRZ5P|190-191}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25709
This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmcloud.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Six_Acts#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Tyldesley](https://engole.info/tyldesley/)
**Published:** June 25, 2023
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Tyldesley_Top_Chapel_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2575664.jpg[/pimage]Former industrial town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, in Greater Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Tyldesley_Top_Chapel_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2575664.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/cq3aCrGTSmNNqJ8s9}}
Tyldesley Top Chapel
Tyldesley, a former industrial town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan in Greater Manchester, takes its name from a Saxon settler. The old [township](https://engole.info/township) contained [Shakerley](https://engole.info/shakerley/), [Mosley Common](https://engole.info/mosley-common/) and [New Manchester](https://engole.info/new-manchester/).{{sfnp|JEKM93HA}} It is {{convert|7.7|mi}} southeast of Wigan and {{convert|8.9|mi}} northwest of Manchester.
The remains of a Roman road passing through the township on its ancient course between Coccium (Wigan) and Mamucium (Manchester) were evident during the 19th century. Following the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain, Tyldesley became part of the manor of Warrington until the Norman conquest of England, when the settlement constituted the township of Tyldesley-with-Shakerley in the ancient parish of Leigh and the historic county of Lancashire. Its parish church was consecrated in 1825.
The factory system and textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, triggered population growth and urbanisation such that by the early 20th century the newly emerged mill town was described as “eminently characteristic of an industrial district whose natural features have been almost entirely swept away to give place to factories, iron foundries, and collieries”.{{sfnp|CZGN8DU2|439–445}} Industrial activity declined in the late 20th century, and land reclamation and post-war residential developments have altered the landscape and encouraged economic activity.
The railway arrived in 1864 and closed in 1969. Almost fifty years later a guided busway was built on the former trackbed between Leigh and Ellenbrook, with four stops in the town.
## Geography
Tyldesley is situated at the edge of the Lancashire Plain, north of [Chat Moss](https://engole.info/chat-moss/). The banks of Tyldesley are where the foothills of the Pennines begin. The land rises from about {{convert|100|ft}} at the foot of the banks to {{convert|250|ft}} at the highest point. The banks, a sandstone escarpment with the scarp slope facing south and the gentler dip to the north, are about one and a half miles (2.4 km) long. The main road through Tyldesley is the A577 which runs on the high ground along the ridge on which the town centre is situated. Red brick terraced houses branching off the main street run down the escarpment slope giving a the town a distinctive character. The Jig or Jig brow\[a\]Jig is an inclined plane in a coal pit where coal trucks were hauled up a sloping tramroad and brow in south Lancashire (pronounced brew) means a slope on a hillside.{{sfnp|IHZMXWMG56}} were cobbled streets of terraced houses off Manchester Road that ran down the steep slope towards the railway, most have been demolished.
At 53°30′59″N 2°28′0″W (53.5166°, −2.4668°), and 170 miles northwest of central London, Tyldesley is at the eastern end of the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, {{convert|7.7|mi}} east-southeast of Wigan and {{convert|8.|mi}} west-northwest of Manchester. The township of Tyldesley and Shakerley covers {{convert|2490|acre}}. The underlying rocks are the coal measures of the [Lancashire Coalfield](https://engole.info/lancashire-and-cheshire-coalfield/) covered with boulder clay. Streams drain the area including the Shakerley and Hindsford Brooks, which flow towards the Glaze Brook, a tributary of the River Mersey.{{sfnp|CZGN8DU2|439–445}}
## Demographics
{{census|E35000668}}
At the 2011 Census, the Tyldesley built-up area had a population of 16,142, with a median age of 38.5 years. The built-up area occupies {{convert|343|ha}}, giving a population density of 47.1 persons per hectare.{{sfnp|K9XCJ6UN}}
## Governance
Historically in the West Derby Hundred in southwest Lancashire, Tyldesley cum Shakerley was one of six [townships ](https://engole.info/township/) or vills that made up and predated the [ancient parish](https://engole.info/ancient-parish/) of Leigh.{{sfnp|BHSPSXWA|413–421}} Under the terms of the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, the township joined the [Leigh Poor Law Union](https://engole.info/leigh-poor-law-union/) in 1837. A workhouse in Tyldesley was replaced by the workhouse at Atherleigh in the 1850s.{{sfnp|TFS7BVFL}}
In 1863 the Local Government Act 1858 was adopted and the township was constituted a [civil parish](https://engole.info/civil-parish/) in 1866.{{snfp|ZX9PXUV5|682}} The first local board was formed in 1863.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|128}} The local board offices were in Lower Elliot Street where it had a fire station and depot.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|129}} Under the Public Health Act 1875 the local board gained additional powers as an urban sanitary district and under the Local Government Act 1894 [Tyldesley-with-Shakerley](https://engole.info/tyldesley-urban-district/) became an [urban district](https://engole.info/urban-district/) with an elected council. Tyldesley Town Hall, originally the Liberal Club, was bought by the council as its headquarters in 1924.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|139}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Tyldesley_Town_Hall_%28geograph_2575649%29.jpg)TyldesleyTown Hall
Wikimedia Commons
In 1933, Lancashire County Council reorganised districts with reference to the Local Government Act 1929. A new Tyldesley Urban District was formed by amalgamating Tyldesley with Shakerley Urban District and the civil parish of Astley from the abolished Leigh Rural District.{{snfp|ZX9PXUV5|689}}
The urban district was abolished in 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972, when the area became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan in Greater Manchester. Tyldesley and Mosley Common is an electoral ward of Wigan Council electing three councillors to the 75-member metropolitan borough council, Wigan’s local authority.{{sfnp|6PZRD85A}}
Tyldesley is in the Leigh parliamentary constituency which was created in the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 when the South West Lancashire constituency was divided into eight single member seats. Caleb Wright was elected as the first Liberal Member of Parliament for the new constituency of Leigh in 1885.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|139}}
## History
Tyldesley, “Tilwald’s clearing”, is derived from the Old English personal name *Tīlwald* and *leăh* a “wood, clearing”, suggesting what is now open land was once covered with forest.{{sfnp|HLPY5IWM|355}} The name was recorded as Tildesleiha in 1210 and as Tildeslei, Tildeslege, Tildeslegh and Tildesley.{{sfnp|CZGN8DU2|439–445}} The town’s situation on the banks gave the town its early name of Tildsley Banks. In local pronunciation “Banks” was corrupted to “Bongs”. The old name for Mosley Common was the “Hurst” or “Tyldesleyhurst”, the suffix *hyrst* means a wooded hill in Old English.{{sfnp|HLPY5IWM|404}}
### Earliest history
A Roman road that served camps at Coccium\[b\]Wigan and Mamucium\[c\]Manchester passed through the area. It ran from Keeper Delph crossing Mort Lane north west of Cleworth Hall and south of Shakerley Old Hall. The road continued towards the Valley at Atherton and on towards Gibfield and Wigan.{{sfnp|R759R8A6}} In 1947, two urns containing about 550 Roman bronze coins, minted between AD 259 and AD 278, were found near the old Tyldesley–Worsley border{{sfnp|J474AJG5}} The coins are in the British Museum.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|7}}
After the end of Roman rule in Britain and into the history of Anglo-Saxon England, nothing was written about Tyldesley. Evidence for the presence of Saxons is provided by place names incorporating the Old English suffix *leah*, such as Tyldesley,{{sfnp|HLPY5IWM|355}} Shakerley,{{sfnp|VKAWQZI8|132}} and Astley.{{sfnp|HLPY5IWM|17}}
### Manor houses
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/New-Hall-postcard.jpg)New Hall and moat before redevelopment
[Astley Hall](https://engole.info/damhouse/) was Tyldesley’s manor house which, in 1212 was home to Hugh Tyldesley, Lord of the Manors of Astley and Tyldesley. It is just inside the Tyldesley boundary but has been associated with Astley since the death of Henry Tyldesley in 1301 when the manor was divided among three sons. The Tyldesleys had a “reputation for lawlessness” and “had frequent disputes with their neighbours”.{{sfnp|KKSICGT4|5}} One exception was Hugh Tyldesley, Hugh the Pious,{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|5}} who endowed [Cockersand Abbey](https://engole.info/cockersand-abbey/) with land in Shakerley before his death in 1226.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|5}} The moated [New Hall](https://engole.info/new-hall-moat/) in the Park of Tyldesley, close to the old manor house belonged to Thomas Tyldesley in 1422.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|26–27}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Garrett_Hall.jpeg)Garrett Hall Farm
Wikimedia Commons
The Garrett was owned by John Tyldesley in 1505. The timber-framed [Garrett Hall](https://engole.info/garrett-hall/) remained with the Tyldesleys until 1652 when Lambert Tyldesley died leaving no heir. Its new owners, the Stanleys, leased it to tenant farmers and in 1732 the farmhouse was sold to Thomas Clowes. In 1829 the estate was bought by the Bridgewater Trustees.{{sfnp|PJBY8QXA|28}}
Generations of Shakerleys lived in Shakerley Old Hall. They paid rent to Cockersand Abbey and dues of “one pair of white gloves at the feast of Easter” to Adam Tyldesley.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|6}} Chaddock Hall was home to a family of yeoman farmers.\[19\] It was recorded as Chaydok, Chaidoke and Chaidok, the last syllable probably meaning “oak”.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|5}} It was surrounded by a hamlet in the east of the township. The Chaddocks, like the Tyldesleys and Shakerleys, had a reputation for lawlessness.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|10}} Archers from Chaddock fought at Crécy in 1346 and at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|20}}\] In 1360, William Chaddock was described as an archer on foot, “potens de corpore et bonis”.\[d\]fit for active service in body and equipment A muster roll described Hugh Tyldesley as an archer on horseback and Hugh Chaddock and Richard Tyldesley were foot-archers drawing daily pay for service from 22 July to 21 October 1391.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|21}}
Cleworth Hall was on higher ground north of the high road.{{sfnp|CZGN8DU2|439–445}} It passed to Nicholas Starkie of Huntroyde who married Anne Parr in 1578. In 1594 it was associated with witchcraft.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|27}} Two children, John and Anne Starkie, became “possessed of evil spirits”. [Edmund Hartley](https://engole.info/edmund-hartley/) was asked to cure them, which he apparently did before demanding money and Starkie denounced him. Hartley was taken for trial to Lancaster Castle in 1597 where he was tried and found guilty of witchcraft.{{sfnp|SA5YH37E|47}}
### Banks Estate
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/fulwell.jpg)Fullwell
In the early 18th century Tyldesley was a scattered community of cottages and farms around the halls with no church or inn. Thomas Johnson, a Bolton merchant bought the Banks Estate in 1728, land from the Stanleys of Garrett Hall in 1742 and Davenports in the west of the township in 1752. He died in 1764 leaving his estate to his grandson with the same name.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|92}} Thomas “Squire” Johnson developed the town of Tildsley Banks. His name lives on in Squires Lane and Johnson Street. The last quarter of the 18th century marked the beginning of a building boom and the grid plan of the town centre is from this date.
John Aikin described the area in 1795 in his book “A Description of the Countryside from 30 to 40 Miles around Manchester”:
“The Banks of Tildesley, in the Parish of Leigh, are about one mile and a half in length, and command a most beautiful prospect into seven counties: the springs remarkably clear and most excellently adapted to the purposes of bleaching. The land is rich, but mostly in meadow and pastures, for milk, butter, and the noted Leigh cheese. The estate had, in the year 1780, only two farm houses and eight or nine cottages, but now contains 162 houses, a neat chapel, and 976 inhabitants, who employ 325 looms in the cotton Manufactories…{{sfnp|KDCSYZHR|299–300}}”
### Industrial Revolution
Until the Industrial Revolution, Tyldesley was rural, agriculture and cottage spinning and weaving, mainly muslin and fustian,{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|53}} were the chief occupations before 1800. [Silk weaving](https://engole.info/leigh-silk-industry/) became an important cottage industry after 1827 when silk was brought from Manchester.{{sfnp|S68MNM9F|10}} Thomas Johnson opened the “Little Factory” for carding and spinning cotton in 1772. “The Great Leviathon” powered a steam-driven mill for woollen spinning on Factory Street in 1792. More cotton mills were built close to the Hindsford and Shakerley Brooks which provided water for steam power. Joseph Wilson built Hope Mill in James Street.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|107}} By 1838 [James Burton](https://engole.info/james-burton/) owned most of the town’s mills. In 1883 a fire at Burton’s mills caused £15,000 damage and by 1920 his mills had been demolished.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|114}} [Caleb Wright](https://engole.info/caleb-wright/) owned [ Barnfield Mills](https://engole.info/barnfield-mills/) which had a workforce of about 800. The last of his mills, Barnfield No 6 on Shuttle Street, was built in 1894 on the site of Resolution Mill which was destroyed by fire in 1891.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|107}}
In 1429 a dispute arose between the Shakerleys and the Tyldesleys over the theft of “seacoals”.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|31}} Shakerley Colliery on Shakerley Common was in existence in 1798. Shakerley was a centre for making nails,{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|103}} but was in decline by 1800.
The railway through Tyldesley was completed in 1864 and coal mining became the dominant industry. The town was surrounded by collieries for more than 100 years until the industry declined after the Second World War.{{sfnp|ZZKJDYGW}} [Bridgewater Collieries](https://engole.info/bridgewater-collieries/), [Tyldesley Coal Company](https://engole.info/tyldesley-coal-company/), [Ramsden’s Shakerley Collieries](https://engole.info/ramsdens-shakerley-collieries/) and [ Astley and Tyldesley Collieries](https://engole.info/astley-and-tyldesley-collieries/) were the local mine owners. Tyldesley Miners Association, established in 1862 at the instigation of [Robert Isherwood](https://engole.info/robert-isherwood/),{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|126}} built the Miner’s Hall in 1893 and the Astley and Tyldesley Miner’s Welfare Club opened at Gin Pit in 1927.
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Yew-Tree-Colliery-Explosion.jpg)Yew Tree Colliery Explosion
The town’s worst [mining disaster](https://engole.info/list-of-mining-disasters-in-lancashire/) occurred at [Yew Tree Colliery](https://engole.info/yew-tree-colliery/) in December 1858 when an explosion of [firedamp](https://engole.info/damps#firedamp) caused by a safety lamp cost twenty-five lives.{{sfnp|7LHH8UH3|48}} Another explosion in March 1877 at [Great Boys Colliery](https://engole.info/great-boys-colliery/) cost eight lives{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|220}} and in October 1883, six men died when the cage rope broke at Ramsden’s Nelson Pit in Shakerley.{{sfnp|7LHH8UH3|116}} In October 1895 five men including the colliery manager and undermanager died at Ramsden’s Wellington Pit after an explosion of firedamp.{{sfnp|GQE9HWVT|32}}
[Grundy’s Foundry](https://engole.info/john-grundy-limited/) was another important employer. John Grundy invented a warm air heating system that was used in churches and halls. He built a foundry close to the railway in Lower Elliot Street.{{sfnp|KXTK538D}}
## Transport
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Tyldesley-Station2.jpg)Tyldesley Station
In 1861 the London and North Western Railway revived powers granted to the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway to build a railway from Eccles to Wigan through the town.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|129}} The Earl of Ellesmere cut the first sod at Worsley on 11 September 1861 and the line opened to traffic on 1 September 1864.{{sfnp|RZZSCSHA|71}} The railway station was to the east of the junction of the branch to Kenyon Junction on the Liverpool to Manchester Line via Leigh and Pennington.{{sfnp|RZZSCSHA|63}} The [Tyldesley Loopline](https://engole.info/tyldesley-loopline/) closed on 3 May 1969 as a result of the Beeching Axe.{{sfnp|JPQW393H|362}}
In 1900 a Bill authorising South Lancashire Tramways to construct more than {{convert|62|mi}} of tramway in southern Lancashire was given Royal Assent.{{sfnp|T97VWFI9|7}} On 25 October 1902 a branch from Atherton to Tyldesley was opened and Tyldesley got its first tram.{{sfnp|T97VWFI9|21}} In August 1931 trams were replaced by trolley buses.{{sfnp|T97VWFI9|74}} Because of Tyldesley’s narrow streets trams and trolley buses followed a one-way system: eastbound via Shuttle Street and westbound via Elliot Street, a system now used by all traffic.
A guided busway was built on the former trackbed but the proposal was not universally popular.{{sfnp|39HSPT9T}} After consultations work started on the {{convert|4.5|mi|adj=on}} [busway from Leigh to Ellenbrook](https://engole.info/leigh-ellenbrook-guided-busway/) in 2013. It has four stops, Cooling Lane, Astley Street, Hough Lane and Sale Lane and a park and ride site. A pathway for walkers, cyclists and horse riders runs alongside it.{{sfnp|QQVZI3B5}}
## Religion
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/St_George%2C_Tyldesley%2C_north.jpg)St George’s Church
Wikimedia Commons
John Wesley preached in Shakerley four times, between 1748 and 1752, laying the foundations for the township’s first place of worship. Top Chapel was built in the Square in 1789 for the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion. Thomas Johnson, gifted the site and Lady Huntingdon, a supporter of Wesley, supplied money for building materials. The chapel became known as Top Chapel from its geographical location.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|100}}
Before 1825 Tyldesley had no established church. For ritual baptisms, marriages and burials, the population, had to travel [Leigh Parish Church](https://engole.info/st-mary-the-virgins-church-leigh/) or its daughter churches, [Astley Chapel](https://engole.info/st-stephens-church-astley/) or [Atherton Chapel](https://engole.info/st-john-the-baptists-church-atherton/) or to Deane or Eccles. [St George’s Church](https://engole.info/st-georges-church-tyldesley/) a [chapel of ease](https://engole.info/chapel-of-ease) to Leigh, St Mary’s, was built on land donated by Thomas Johnson and consecrated in 1825.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|109}}
Chapels were built for the Congregational, Primitive Methodist, Wesleyan Methodist, Baptist, Welsh Congregational, Welsh Calvinistic and Independent Methodist connexions.{{sfnp|CZGN8DU2|439–445}} Welsh chapels served the Welsh people who migrated to the town after the opening of the railway in 1864.{{sfnp|JDVIRIZW|8}}
## Education
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Tyldesley_Church_School.JPG)Tyldesley Church Schools plaque
Wikimedia Commons
George Ormerod gave a site for a [national school](https://engole.info/national-schools/) near St George’s Church, it catered for all age groups when it opened in 1827.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|112}} A day school was opened in the old Wesley Chapel in 1856 and in 1864 was replaced by new school, which lasted until 1912. A church school opened in Johnson Street in 1872 and closed in the 1960s.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|134}} The [British School](https://engole.info/british-and-foreign-school-society/) in Upper George Street opened in 1902.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|149}} The Mission School or Central C of E School in Darlington Street opened in 1892.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|144}} A board school opened in Lower Elliott Street in 1913, used for girls’ secondary education after 1935.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|151}} Garrett Hall Boys Secondary School opened in 1935.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|156}}
St George’s Central Primary School, built in the late 1990s, is an amalgamation of the historical St George’s C of E and Central C of E Schools. Other primary schools are Tyldesley Primary School and Garrett Hall Primary. Fred Longworth High School was awarded Arts College status in 1998. St Mary’s Catholic High School, in Astley, is the only Catholic high school and sixth form in the area.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Jig is an inclined plane in a coal pit where coal trucks were hauled up a sloping tramroad and brow in south Lancashire (pronounced brew) means a slope on a hillside.{{sfnp|IHZMXWMG56}} b Wigan c Manchester d fit for active service in body and equipment
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25433
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Town
---
### [New Hall moat](https://engole.info/new-hall-moat/)
**Published:** August 4, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** Scheduled monument in Tyldesley, Greater Manchester, England, which comprises a moat and an island platform on which a modern house has been built.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/New-Hall-postcard.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/rb7jz9vcstz}}
New Hall and moat before redevelopment
New Hall moat, known by some locals as Dicky Beefs, is a scheduled monument in [Tyldesley](https://engole.info/tyldesley/) Greater Manchester, England.{{sfnp|88VIHI8T}}
The monument includes a moat and an island platform on which a modern house has been built. The island was the site of New Hall, a medieval farmhouse. The moat measures between 20 and 30 metres (66–98 ft) across, and is widest at the southwest corner where the water soaks away to join a stream.{{sfnp|88VIHI8T}}
The moat was revetted on the south side, but the stonework is destroyed and is bridged on the same side by a modern stone bridge which replaced a timber structure. The rectangular island, measuring 60 metres by 40 metres (197–131 ft), encloses an area of {{convert|0.25|ha}} and is {{convert|0.4|m}} above the surrounding land. A ruined post-medieval farmhouse occupied a third of the island in 1983. The modern buildings on the island are excluded from the scheduling, although the ground beneath them is part of the schedule.{{sfnp|88VIHI8T}}{{sfnp|FRZC7CLH}}
## History
New Hall, in the Park of Tyldesley, close to [Damhouse](https://engole.info/damhouse/) near the Astley/Tyldesley border, was in existence before 1422 when it belonged to Thomas Tyldesley. The hall and its {{convert|8.1|ha|r=0}} of land was the subject of a feud between the Tyldesleys and the Hultons of Hulton Park which ended in 1422 when Roger Hulton gave up any title he had to Hugh Tyldesley.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|26–27}}
New Hall’s occupant in 1692 was Henry Marsh who was elected an overseer of the poor for Tyldesley lower side.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|82}} New Hall was described as a mansion house in 1716 when it was leased to a widow named Heyes. By 1742 Thomas Smith, a farmer, was tenant. In 1838 the property and its 23 [Cheshire acres](https://engole.info/cheshire-acre/) of land were owned by Lord Francis Egerton who leased it to John Lawton. The tenant from 1853 to 1872 was Richard Grundy and it acquired the local nickname, Dicky Beefs.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|39}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 4468
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Monument
---
### [Rococo](https://engole.info/rococo/)
**Published:** May 25, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/cabinet_vase.jpg[/pimage]Extravagently ornate and dramatic style of architecture, art and decoration.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/cabinet_vase.jpg)Rococo-style writing cabinet and vase
V&A
Rococo, also known as Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornate and dramatic style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, and *trompe-l’œil* frescoes to create surprise and the illusion of motion and drama. It is often described as the final expression of the Baroque movement.{{sfnp|TI26VVDW}}
The Rococo style originated in France in the 1730s, and is particularly associated with the reign of King Louis XV (1715–1774).{{sfnp|2IYYLA64}} It was developed by craftspeople and designers rather than architects, thus it is seen primarily in furniture, silver and ceramics. Rococo flourished in English design between 1740 and 1770, brought into the country by immigrant artists and craftspeople such as the Huguenot refugees from France.{{sfnp|JQKLSPJV}}
The term *Rococo* takes its name from the French word *rocaille*, meaning rock or broken shell, a natural motif that often appears in the designs, a principal feature of which is their curved asymmetric ornamentation, where the two halves of the piece do not match.{{sfnp|JQKLSPJV}}
In more recent times the term Rococo has also been applied to the visual arts, literary styles,{{sfnp|2IYYLA64}} music, and even gardens, but with little clarity about precisely what it means in those contexts.{{sfnp|BM8QX6RJ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25350
**Categories:** Architect style
---
### [Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood](https://engole.info/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood/)
**Published:** April 26, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/72/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_-_The_Girlhood_of_Mary_Virgin.jpg/960px-Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_-_The_Girlhood_of_Mary_Virgin.jpg[/pimage]Group of English artists formed in 1848 to counter what they saw as the corrupting influence of the late-Renaissance painter Raphael.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/72/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_-_The_Girlhood_of_Mary_Virgin.jpg/960px-Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_-_The_Girlhood_of_Mary_Virgin.jpg)*The Girlhood of Mary Virgin*, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1849
Wikimedia Commons
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) was formed in 1848 by three young English painters: [William Holman Hunt](https://engole.info/william-holman-hunt), John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. They were quickly joined by Rossetti’s brother William, the painters James Collinson and F. G. Stephens, and the sculptor Thomas Woolner. Their shared aim was to reject what they saw as the formulaic Classical poses first adopted by the High Renaissance painter and architect Raphael (1483–1520) and developed by his successors, which they believed had a “corrupting” influence on the academic teaching of art. They sought a return to the Early Renaissance style of painting that preceded him, hence the term *Pre-Raphaelite*. Sentimental and vulgar subjects were to be avoided, and instead the brotherhood’s initial inspiration came from the Bible, Shakespeare, and the works of the Romantic poet John Keats (1795–1821).{{sfnp|ZTEZZKFM}}
The formation of the PRB was initially kept secret, and their work was at first well-received. But when their existence became public knowledge members were accused of blasphemy, and of setting themselves up as being better than Raphael,{{sfnp|2BQ6ZR25}} thought even today by many critics to be one of the most accomplished painters who ever lived. Prominent among the brotherhood’s critics was the English author Charles Dickens, who in his periodical *Household Words* led the attack by describing Millais’ *Christ in the House of His Parents* (1849–1850) as “mean, odious, revolting and repulsive”.{{sfnp|GMPX97R6}} It took the intervention of the art critic John Ruskin in 1851 to help restore the reputation of the group.{{sfnp|2BQ6ZR25}}
The movement was short-lived, effectively over by 1853,{{sfnp|ZTEZZKFM}} but its influence continued in the work of painters including [John William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse) and Evelyn De Morgan.{{sfnp|FM8YSFPQ|202-205}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24645
**Categories:** Painting
---
### [Mary Taylor](https://engole.info/mary-taylor/)
**Published:** June 20, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Mary-Taylor.jpg[/pimage]Early advocate for women's rights, born in Gomersal in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, (1817–1893).
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Mary-Taylor.jpg)The Emily Brontë Society
Mary Taylor (1817–1893), an early advocate for women’s rights, was born in Gomersal in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England.
In 1845 Mary followed her youngest brother to New Zealand, and was joined by her cousin Ellen four years later. The women opened a drapery and clothing shop, which provided them with a good living. Mary had returned to Yorkshire by 1860, by then financially secure.
Mary contributed articles to Emily Faithfull’s *Victoria Magazine* championing feminist issues, women’s suffrage and property rights. In her only novel, *Miss Miles, or, A Tale of Yorkshire Life Sixty Years Ago*, she advocated a working life for women.
## Early life
Mary Taylor’s father Joshua, a cloth manufacturer, and his wife Anne had six children of which she was the fourth. Her father was a Radical and member of the Methodist New Connexion. He was bankrupted in 1826, but true to his religious principles, determined to repay his creditors.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Roe_Head%2C_Mirfield_-_geograph.org.uk_-_55901.jpg)Roe Head School in Mirfield
Wikimedia Commons
Mary was an impulsive, clever child who shared her father’s independent traits. She met Ellen Nussey{{sfnp|FIEW7UI5}} and Charlotte Brontë in 1831 at Roe Head School in Mirfield, where they became firm lifelong friends despite their differing views. At school Mary, although quiet, was defiant, standing by her opinions and practising what she preached. Charlotte was a visitor to Mary’s home, [Red House](https://engole.info/red-house/) in Gomersal, and described the family’s company as “one of the most rousing pleasures I have ever known”.{{sfnp|9R8BNZ97}} In her novel *Shirley*, Mary’s family corresponds to the Yorke family, and the twelve-year-old Mary was the inspiration for the “sharp, precocious, and outspoken” Rose.{{sfnp|QG7TR68K}}
## Overseas
After Joshua Taylor’s death in December 1840, Mary embarked on a European tour before joining her sister at the Château de Koekelberg, a finishing school in Brussels. She corresponded with Charlotte Brontë describing what she had seen on her travels and inspiring her to go to Brussels in 1842. After her sister’s death in October 1842, Mary went to Germany where, challenging established convention, she found employment teaching young men.{{sfnp|9R8BNZ97}}
In March 1845 Mary followed her youngest brother, Waring, to Wellington, New Zealand where he had arrived in 1842. Her cousin Ellen joined them in 1849 and the women built a house and opened a drapery and clothing shop. When her cousin died in 1851, Mary bought her share and the shop continued successfully selling goods sent from England. She never intended to remain in New Zealand, and sold the shop that had provided her with a good income in a way a middle-class woman would have found impossible in England. Mary returned to Yorkshire before 1860.{{sfnp|HV5ECM8S}}
## Yorkshire
Now financially secure, Mary returned to Gomersal where High Royd, the house built for her, became her home for the rest of her life. She made annual visits to Switzerland where, aged almost 60 in 1875, she led a party of five women on an expedition to climb Mont Blanc; they published *Swiss Notes by Five Ladie*s, an account of their ten-week adventure.{{sfnp|9R8BNZ97}}
Mary contributed articles to Emily Faithfull’s *Victoria Magazine* championing feminist issues, women’s suffrage and property rights. She worked on her only novel, *Miss Miles, or, A Tale of Yorkshire Life Sixty Years Ago*, for forty years before it was published in 1890. It strongly advocates a working life for women.{{sfnp|9R8BNZ97}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2451
**Categories:** English, Female, Feminist, Suffragist
---
### [Misericord](https://engole.info/misericord/)
**Published:** December 1, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Wooden ledge on the underside of a folding seat in a church, intended to support a member of the congregation while standing.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Boston_Stump_misericord_02.JPG)Misericord in St Botolph’s Church, Boston, Lincolnshire
Wikimedia Commons
A misericord, also known as a mercy seat,{{sfnp|LW7G65Q2|1}} is a wooden ledge on the underside of a folding seat in a church which, when the seat is folded up, is intended to support a member of the congregation in a partially standing position during long periods of prayer. The daily offices of the medieval Church, Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline followed by the recitations of psalms, canticles and hymns were physically demanding, particularly for the infirm, as they required standing for extended periods of time, often with arms outstretched. At some time towards the end of the 12th century, literally as an act of mercy – *misericordia* is the Latin for “mercy” – seats began to be installed in the choir stalls.{{sfnp|H6FF724Z|2}}
The seat was fashioned from a piece of solid wood, and to reduce weight much of the material below the supporting leading edge was removed, providing “an opportunity for much lively carving”.{{sfnp|QRCYFG6R|6-7}} The production of misericords ceased with the Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII, between 1536 and 1541.{{sfnp|LW7G65Q2|8}}
## Symbolism
Of the 3600 surviving English misericords, an estimated 10 per cent of the total produced, very few appear to be overtly religious,{{sfnp|LW7G65Q2|8}} although as the historian Julia Creswell has suggested, that may be because we are no longer attuned to the symbolism of a largely illiterate age.{{sfnp|QRCYFG6R|7}} About half of the carvings show figures; the rest are of vegetables or merely decorative.{{sfnp|LW7G65Q2|8}} Half of the carved figures are of animals, many of them hybrids composed of body parts from different animals, “an excellent source of good illustrations of mythical beasts”, as being within the church building they were protected from the elements.{{sfnp|QRCYFG6R|7}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Bristol-Satire.png)Rats hanging a cat, from Great Malvern Priory, c. 1480
misericords.co.uk
Misericords may also have made social statements, such as one from Great Malvern Priory depicting rats hanging a cat. It is probably a representation of the satirical episode the “Belling of the Cat” from *Piers Plowman*, in which a council of rats and mice – the common folk – hold a council to determine how best to deal with the cat, the royal court.{{sfnp|LW7G65Q2|141}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Religious architecture
---
### [Dunham Castle](https://engole.info/dunham-castle/)
**Published:** June 7, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Dunham_Massey_Hall_-_the_mound_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1712295.jpg[/pimage]Early medieval moated motte and bailey castle just to the northwest of present-day Dunham Massey Hall in Greater Manchester, England.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Dunham_Massey_Hall_-_the_mound_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1712295.jpg) [https://goo.gl/maps/Mw19kNPoGbU5fV2J6" target="\_blank" rel="noopener">]()
All that remains of Dunham Castle
Dunham Castle, an early medieval moated motte and bailey castle in Dunham Massey, Greater Manchester, is first mentioned in a document of 1173 stating that it was held by Hamon de Massey during the revolt against King Henry II in 1173/74. Although it is not listed in the *Domesday Book*‘s list of fifty castles in England and Wales, it may nevertheless have been built by the time of the book’s publication in 1086; “the Survey is as capricious in its mention of castles as in its mention of churches.”{{sfnp|BRWLRLFC|loc=1345}} The *Domesday Book* does however mention a house owned by Hamon de Massey on the site, and it is unclear whether the castle mentioned in 1173 is an addition to the house or the house itself.{{sfnp|HASXVRDJ}}
The castle was still standing in 1323, but by 1362 it had fallen into disuse,{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|33}} and by the 17th century it had been destroyed.{{sfnp|HASXVRDJ}} All that remains of the castle’s motte is a mound to the northwest of [Dunham Massey Hall](https://engole.info/dunham-massey-hall/), {{convert|2|m}} high and {{convert|24|m}} in diameter; the moat has been flooded as an ornamental lake.{{sfnp|7U3D4RCE}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Castle, Greater Manchester
---
### [Ullerwood Castle](https://engole.info/ullerwood-castle/)
**Published:** June 10, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/motte-remains-of-shell.jpg[/pimage]Early medieval fortification, possibly a shell keep, in Ringway, Greater Manchester, England.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/motte-remains-of-shell.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/UQMwkUEiTojpo8Ww9}}
Shell keep of the type that may have existed at Ullerwood Castle|TripAdvisor
Ullerwood Castle, also known as Ullersford Castle,\[a\]Also Ullenwood, Uttersford, Ullerwada, Ullerwda. Castlewood, Bollin, Oversleyford{{sfnp|3LJGB79V}} is an early medieval fortification, possibly a shell keep, in Ringway, Greater Manchester, England.{{sfnp|T3NGGWAG}} The only contemporary reference to it appears in a document of 1173, stating that the Norman knight Hamo de Massey held the castles of Ullerwood and [Dunham](https://engole.info/dunham-castle/) during the revolt against King Henry II that year.{{sfnp|ELLBXAN6|33, 35}} The present-day site lies beneath a modern house.{{sfnp|CTHZR5FJ}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Also Ullenwood, Uttersford, Ullerwada, Ullerwda. Castlewood, Bollin, Oversleyford{{sfnp|3LJGB79V}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 20746
**Categories:** Castle, Greater Manchester
---
### [The Triumphs of a Taxidermist](https://engole.info/the-triumphs-of-a-taxidermist/)
**Published:** August 10, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/c4cr-square-orig-1024x1024.jpg[/pimage]Humorous short story by H. G. Wells first published in 1894.
**Content:**
“The Triumphs of a Taxidermist” is a short story by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), first published anonymously in the [*The Pall Mall Gazette*](https://engole.info/the-pall-mall-gazette/) in March 1894 and reprinted in [*The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents*](https://engole.info/the-stolen-bacillus-and-other-incidents/) (1895).{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|446}} It is a humorous account of the reminiscences of a taxidermist.
## Synopsis
The taxidermist of the title is in conversation with the narrator, Bellows, during the latter’s visit to the taxidermist’s home. Sitting together in the den, “in the time between the first glass of whisky and the fourth, when a man is no longer cautious and yet not drunk”, the taxidermist begins to boast about some of his achievements, and of how some collectors of birds can be very easily fooled. He even claims to have stuffed a “nigger”, whom he used as a hat rack.
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/c4cr-square-orig-1024x1024.jpg)audiobookstore.com
The taxidermist goes on to claim that about half of the stuffed great auks are fakes,\[a\]The great auk became extinct in the mid-19th century.{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|446}} and admits to having faked one himself. He proceeds to briefly explain how it is done using the feathers of other birds. He even claims to have created birds that never existed in nature, and in particular a non-existent species of large New Zealand bird that had been described in an old German pamphlet, which appeared to be a confused combination of an existent species and one long extinct. A local collector, Javvers, swore he would have a specimen, and so the taxidermist made one and sold it to him.
The taxidermist also claims that he once created a “most attractive mermaid”, which he sold to an itinerant preacher, but it was smashed as idolatory, a “cheerful incident that must still remain unprinted”.
## Commentary
The taxidermist makes a reappearance in another of Wells’s short stories “[A Deal in Ostriches](https://engole.info/a-deal-in-ostriches/)“, also published in the [*The Pall Mall Gazette*](https://engole.info/the-pall-mall-gazette/), just a few months after “Triumphs of a Taxidermist”.{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|446-447}}
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The great auk became extinct in the mid-19th century.{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|446}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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## External links
- [Full text of “The Triumphs of a Taxidermist”](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12750/12750-h/12750-h.htm#link2H_4_0004) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
---
### [Otley Road drill hall, Skipton](https://engole.info/otley-road-drill-hall-skipton/)
**Published:** June 23, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Former drill hall in Skipton, North Yorkshire, now converted into office accommodation.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Wellington_House_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1602489.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Ndjsjs6UJcxA5H6KA}}
Wellington House as at 2009
Otley Road [drill hall](https://engole.info/drill-hall), now renamed Wellington House, is a former military installation in Skipton, North Yorkshire, England. Completed in 1892, the building was designed as the headquarters of the 3rd Volunteer Battalion, The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment and was completed in 1892.{{sfnp|I6G6XN87}} Under the Haldane Reforms of 1908, which created the Territorial Force, the regiment was renamed the 6th Battalion, The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment.{{sfnp|MDPDYG37}}
In 1947 the battalion converted to become the 673rd Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery (The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment).{{sfnp|MDPDYG37}}
Following the defence cut backs in 1967 the Otley Road drill hall was decommissioned,\[a\]Between 1967 and 1968 the Ministry of Defence disposed of around 850 drill halls out of perhaps 1,300 then in active use.{{sfnp|DUD5QCJ5|17}} and stood vacant for many years. In 1981 it was converted to a billiard and snooker hall, together with office accommodation. As at 2025 the building is mainly occupied by an architectural practice, with part of the premises occupied by the local authority.{{sfnp|MDPDYG37}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Between 1967 and 1968 the Ministry of Defence disposed of around 850 drill halls out of perhaps 1,300 then in active use.{{sfnp|DUD5QCJ5|17}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Military installation
---
### [Hulme Barracks](https://engole.info/hulme-barracks/)
**Published:** January 28, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Hulme_Barracks_in_St_George%27s_Park_in_Hulme%2C_Manchester.jpg[/pimage]Former cavalry barracks in Hulme, Manchester, now converted into flats.
**Content:**
 [https://goo.gl/maps/TMTnc6DyG5Ng2YB99" target="\_blank" rel="noopener">]()
Hulme Barracks, 2013
Hulme Barracks was a military installation in Hulme, Manchester, England, built in the Georgian style and completed in 1804. The barracks became home to the 15th The King’s Hussars, the cavalry regiment which in 1819 charged into protesters in Manchester in what became known as the [Peterloo Massacre](https://engole.info/peterloo-massacre/),{{sfnp|U76SCWZM}} during which 15 people were killed and 400–700 were injured.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150–151}}\[a\]The exact number of those killed and injured at Peterloo has never been established with certainty.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150–151}}
The barracks were used to house infantry battalions from 1895 until their sale to Manchester Corporation in 1914.{{sfnp|U76SCWZM}} Many of the structures on site were subsequently demolished; what remains today is the former officers’ mess, officers’ quarters and quartermaster’s house. Now converted into flats, Hulme Barracks was designated a Grade II listed building on 16 November 1978.{{sfnp|Y758AIXV}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The exact number of those killed and injured at Peterloo has never been established with certainty.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150–151}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23458
**Categories:** Military installation
---
### [Chapel of ease](https://engole.info/chapel-of-ease/)
**Published:** February 4, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Kings-lynn-st-nich-chapel.JPG/960px-Kings-lynn-st-nich-chapel.JPG[/pimage]Church subordinate to a parish church serving an area known as a chapelry, for the convenience of those parishioners who would find it difficult to attend services at the parish church.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Kings-lynn-st-nich-chapel.JPG/960px-Kings-lynn-st-nich-chapel.JPG)St Nicholas, King’s Lynn, Norfolk, founded in 1146,{{sfnp
4RP47JC4}} is the largest chapel of ease in England.{{sfnp|G9NLR5BM
A chapel of ease is a church building subordinate to the parish church, built for the convenience or ease of those parishioners who because of distance or natural obstacles would otherwise find it difficult to attend church services.{{sfnp|YZT8777D}} The area served by a chapel of ease is known as a chapelry.{{sfnp|BHRAIGCB}}
Chapels of ease were served by curates. Although initially burials and baptisms were often reserved for the parish church, over time many chapels were granted the rights to conduct those services, and most became parish churches during the 19th century.{{sfnp|AW7F4XI6}}
Many chapels of ease were founded from the 12th century onwards, often in the new medieval towns, or in association with local manor houses for the convenience of the families and their staff.{{sfnp|YZT8777D}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Church
---
### [Black Friday (1910)](https://engole.info/black-friday-1910/)
**Published:** July 4, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/The_Daily_Mirror%2C_19_November_1910%2C_front_page_%28cleaned%29.png[/pimage]Black Friday was a suffragette demonstration in London on 18 November 1910, in which 300 women marched to the Houses of Parliament as part of their campaign to secure voting rights.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/The_Daily_Mirror%2C_19_November_1910%2C_front_page_%28cleaned%29.png)Front page of *The Daily Mirror*, 19 November 1910, showing a suffragette on the ground, having been hit by a policeman
Wikimedia Commons
Black Friday was a suffragette demonstration in London on 18 November 1910, in which 300 women marched to the Houses of Parliament as part of their campaign to secure voting rights for women. The day became so-called because of the violence meted out to protesters, some of it sexual, by the Metropolitan Police and male bystanders.
During the January 1910 general election campaign, the Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party H. H. Asquith promised to introduce a Conciliation Bill to allow a measure of women’s suffrage in national elections. On his return to power a committee made up of pro-women’s suffrage MPs from several political parties was formed, which proposed legislation that would have added a million women to the franchise. The suffrage movement supported the legislation, but although MPs backed the bill and passed its first and second readings, Asquith refused to grant it further parliamentary time. On 18 November 1910, following a breakdown in relations between the House of Commons and House of Lords over that year’s budget, Asquith called another general election, declaring that parliament would be dissolved on 28 November.
The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) saw the move as a betrayal, and organised a protest march to parliament from Caxton Hall in Westminster. Lines of police and crowds of male bystanders met three hundred female protestors outside the Houses of Parliament; the women were attacked for the next six hours. Many women complained about the sexual nature of the assaults, which included having their breasts twisted and pinched. Police arrested 4 men and 115 women, although all charges were droppedthe following day. The conciliation committee was angered by the accounts, and undertook interviews with 135 demonstrators, nearly all of whom described acts of violence against the women; 29 of the statements included details of sexual assault. Calls for a public inquiry were rejected by Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary.
The violence may have caused the subsequent deaths of two suffragettes. The demonstration led to a change in approach; many members of the WSPU were unwilling to risk being subjected to similar violence, so they resumed their previous forms of direct action such as throwing stones and breaking windows, which afforded time to escape. The police also changed their tactics; during future demonstrations they tried not to arrest too soon or too late.
## Background
### Women’s Social and Political Union
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Suffragette_Banner_-_Museum_of_London.jpg)Banner of the Hammersmith branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union
Wikimedia Commons
The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) was formed in 1903 by the political activist Emmeline Pankhurst. From around 1905 – following the failure of a private member’s bill to introduce the vote for women – the organisation increasingly began to use militant direct action to campaign for women’s suffrage.{{sfnp|AZDQD53Z}}{{sfnp|SCI8MXHX|729}}\[a\]The first such act was in October 1905, when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney interrupted a political rally in Manchester to ask the pro-women’s suffrage Liberal Party politician Sir Edward Grey “Will the Liberal government give votes to women?” The two women were arrested for assault and obstruction; on refusing to pay the fines levied against them, they were sent to prison.{{sfnp|GTFHGGVC|49-52}} According to the historian Caroline Morrell, from 1905 “The basic pattern of WSPU activities over the next few years had been established – pre-planned militant tactics, imprisonment claimed as martyrdom, publicity and increased membership and funds.”{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|16}}
From 1906 WSPU members adopted the name suffragettes, to differentiate themselves from the suffragists of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, who employed constitutional methods in their campaign for the vote.{{sfnp|AZDQD53Z}}{{sfnp|59XGYSS6}}\[b\]Charles E. Hands, the *Daily Mail* journalist, coined the name suffragettes to belittle members of the WSPU in 1906, but they adopted the label with pride.{{sfnp|59XGYSS6}}{{sfnp|SCI8MXHX|452}} From 1907 WSPU demonstrations faced increasing police violence.{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|18}} Sylvia Pankhurst – the daughter of Emmeline and a member of the WSP – described a demonstration in which she took part in February that year:
Parliament was guarded by an army of police to prevent the women approaching its sacred precincts. The constables had their orders to drive them away, making as few arrests as possible. Mounted men scattered the marchers; foot police seized them by the back of the neck and rushed them along at arm’s length, thumping them in the back, and bumping them with their knees in approved police fashion … Those who took refuge in doorways were dragged down the steps and hurled in front of the horses, then pounced upon by constables and beaten again … As night advanced the violence grew. Finally fifty-four women and two men had been arrested.{{sfnp
— QIK3KR9U|loc=5003-5017}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Suffragettes%2C_Daily_Graphic%2C_14_February_1907.jpg)Illustration from [*The Graphic*](https://engole.info/the-graphic/) of suffragettes in the Central Lobby of the House of Commons, February 1907
Wikimedia Commons
After one demonstration in June 1908 in which “roughs appeared, organised gangs, who treated the women with every type of indignity”,{{sfnp|QIK3KR9U|loc=5591}} Sylvia Pankhurst complained that “the ill-usage by the police and the roughs was greater than we had hitherto experienced”.{{sfnp|QIK3KR9U|loc=5591}} During a demonstration in June 1909 a deputation tried to force a meeting with H. H. Asquith, the Prime Minister; 3000 police provided tight security to prevent the women from entering parliament, arresting 108 women and 14 men.{{sfnp|MG8IMXZC|86-87}}{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=2709-2722}} Following the police violence used on that occasion, the WSPU began shifting to a strategy of breaking windows rather than attempting to rush into parliament. Sylvia Pankhurst wrote that “Since we must go to prison to obtain the vote, let it be the windows of the Government, not the bodies of women which shall be broken, was the argument”.{{sfnp|QIK3KR9U|loc=6011}}\[c\]The women arrested for window breaking began a hunger strike to be treated as First Division prisoners – reserved for political crimes – rather than Second or Third Division, the classifications for common criminals. They were released early, rather than being reclassified. First Division prisoners had open access to books and writing equipment, did not have to wear prison uniforms and could receive visitors. Prisoners in the Second and Third Divisions were managed under more restrictive regulations.{{sfnp|XY6IEMAG|120-121}}{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|17}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Forcefeeding.jpg)A suffragette being force fed in Holloway prison, c. 1911
Wikimedia Commons
At a demonstration in October 1909 – at which the WSPU again attempted to rush into parliament – ten demonstrators were taken to hospital. The suffragettes did not complain about the rising level of police violence. Constance Lytton wrote that “the word went round that we were to conceal as best we might, our various injuries. It was no part of our policy to get the police into trouble.”{{sfnp|2VD83SVM|50}} The level of violence in suffragette action increased throughout 1909. Bricks were thrown at the windows of Liberal Party meetings; Asquith was attacked while leaving church; and roof tiles were thrown at police when another political rally was interrupted. Public opinion turned against the tactics and, according to Morrell, the government capitalised on the shift in public feeling to introduce stronger measures. Thus, in October 1909, Herbert Gladstone, the Home Secretary, instructed that all prisoners on hunger strike should be force fed.{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|21}}
### Political situation
The Liberal government elected in 1905 was a reforming one which introduced legislation to combat poverty, deal with unemployment and establish pensions. The Conservative Party-dominated House of Lords impeded much of the legislation.{{sfnp|ZXV8QPYY}}\[d\]According to the historian Bruce Murray, many of the measures introduced by the government were “mangled by amendments or rejected outright” by the House of Lords;{{sfnp|LZPQWG7S|5}} ten parliamentary bills sent to them from the Commons were rejected by the Lords, who also amended more than 40 per cent of the legislation they received.{{sfnp|BKJKVHF6|409}} In 1909 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, introduced the so-called People’s Budget, which had the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the population.{{sfnp|LZPQWG7S|6}} This budget was passed by the House of Commons, but rejected by the Lords.\[e\]The rejection of the budget was a breach of the constitutional convention that the House of Lords was not supposed to interfere in financial bills from the House of Commons.{{sfnp|LZPQWG7S|6}} As a result, on 3 December 1909, Asquith called a general election for the new year to obtain a fresh mandate for the legislation.{{sfnp|ZXV8QPYY}}{{sfnp|B6NN4VUC}} As part of the campaigning for the January 1910 election, Asquith – a known anti-suffragist – announced that should he be re-elected, he would introduce a Conciliation Bill to introduce a measure of female suffrage. The proposal was dismissed by suffrage campaigners as being unlikely to materialise.{{sfnp|6EPYE6WD|161-162}} The election produced a hung parliament, with the Liberals’ majority eliminated; although they won the largest number of seats, they returned only two more MPs than the Conservative Party. Asquith retained power after he was able to form a government with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party.{{sfnp|4U8GP8UY|118}}\[f\]The Conservative and Liberal Unionists gained 272 seats (up 116 from the previous parliament); the Liberals won 274 seats (down 123); the Irish Parliamentary Party won 71 (down 11) and Labour won 40 (up 11).{{sfnp|3VZB2J2R|20-21}}
On 31 January 1910, in response to Asquith’s statement, Pankhurst announced that the WSPU would pause all militant activity and focus on constitutional activities only.{{sfnp|4A8795VB|212}} For six months the suffrage movement went into a propaganda drive, organising marches and meetings, and local councils passed resolutions supporting the bill.{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|22}} When the new Parliament convened, a cross-party conciliation committee of pro-women’s suffrage MPs was formed under the chairmanship of Lord Lytton, the brother of Lady Constance Bulwer-Lytton.{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=3545}}{{sfnp|ICQS3G8L}}\[g\]The committee was composed of 25 Liberal MPs, 17 Conservative MPs, 6 Irish Nationalist MPs and 6 Labour MPs.{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=3545}} They proposed legislation that would have enfranchised female householders and those women who occupied business premises; the bill was based on existing franchise laws for local government elections, under which some women had been able to vote since 1870.{{sfnp|Q8KN7468}}\[h\]The terms of the Conciliation Bill, officially named “A Bill to Extend the Parliamentary Franchise to Women Occupiers” were that the franchise should be extended to: Every woman possessed of a household qualification, or of a ten-pound occupation qualification, within the meaning of the Representation of the People Act 1884, shall be entitled to be registered as a voter, and, when registered, to vote for the county or borough in which the qualifying premises are situate. For the purposes of this Act, a woman shall not be disqualified by marriage for being registered as a voter, provided that a husband and wife shall not both be qualified in respect of the same property.{{sfnp|CS2DA685|70-71}} £10 in 1910 equates to approximately £900 in 2018 pounds, according to calculations based on Retail Price Index measure of inflation.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Votes_for_Women_-_1909_front_page.png)Front page of Votes for Women showing a caricature of Asquith offering wider suffrage; the suffragettes were dismissive of the likelihood{{sfnp
6EPYE6WD|162
The measure would have added approximately a million women to the franchise; it was kept to a relatively small number to make the bill as acceptable as possible to MPs, mostly Conservatives.{{sfnp|CS2DA685|71}} Although the WSPU thought the scope of the bill too narrow – it excluded women lodgers and most wives and working-class women – they accepted it as an important stepping stone.{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|22}}{{sfnp|RKZF3R73|144}}
The Conciliation Bill was introduced into Parliament as a private members bill on 14 June 1910.{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|23}}{{sfnp|6GMUVJTG|1202-1207}} The question of women’s suffrage was divisive within Cabinet, and the bill was discussed at three separate meetings.{{sfnp|SV32AQSI|140}} At a Cabinet meeting on 23 June, Asquith stated that he would allow it to pass to the second reading stage, but no further parliamentary time would be allocated to it and it would therefore fail.{{sfnp|4A8795VB|219}} Nearly 200 MPs signed a memorandum to Asquith asking for additional parliamentary time to debate the legislation, but he refused.{{sfnp|GTFHGGVC|159}} The bill received its second reading on 11 and 12 July, which it passed 299 to 189. Both Churchill and Lloyd George voted against the measure; Churchill called it “anti-democratic”.{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|23}} At the end of the month Parliament was prorogued until November.{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=3795, 3881}} The WSPU decided to wait until Parliament reconvened before they decided if they were to return to militant action. They further decided that if no additional parliamentary time was given over to the Conciliation Bill, Christabel Pankhurst would lead a delegation to Parliament, demand the bill be made law, and refuse to leave until that was done.{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|23}} On 12 November the Liberal Party politician Sir Edward Grey announced that there would be no further parliamentary time given to the conciliation legislation that year. The WSPU announced that in protest they would undertake a militant demonstration to Parliament when it reconvened on 18 November.{{sfnp|4A8795VB|226}}
## 18 November
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Elizabeth_Garrett_Anderson%3B_Emmeline_Pankhurst.jpg)Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Emmeline Pankhurst at the Houses of Parliament on Black Friday
Wikimedia Commons
On 18 November 1910, in an attempt to resolve the parliamentary impasse arising from the House of Lords veto on Commons legislation, Asquith called a general election, and said that parliament would be dissolved on 28 November; all remaining time was to be given over to official government business. He did not refer to the Conciliation Bill.{{sfnp|JEHMF9ST|108-109}} At noon on the same day the WPSU held a rally at Caxton Hall, Westminster. The event had been widely publicised, and the national press was prepared for the expected demonstration later in the day.{{sfnp|6EPYE6WD|166}} From Caxton Hall, approximately 300 members – divided into groups of ten to twelve by the WSPU organiser Flora Drummond – marched to parliament to petition Asquith directly.{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=3985}}{{sfnp|6EPYE6WD|164}}\[i\]Sylvia Pankhurst, in her history of the women’s militant suffrage movement, puts the number at 450 demonstrators.{{sfnp|EMIAFN6D|502}} The deputation was led by Emmeline Pankhurst. The delegates in the lead group included Dr Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Dr Louisa Garrett Anderson, Hertha Ayrton and Princess Sophia Duleep Singh.{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=6630}}\[j\]Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was the first woman to openly qualify in Britain as a physician and surgeon; Louisa Garrett Anderson, her daughter, was a surgeon; Hertha Ayrton was an engineer and mathematician; Sophia Duleep Singh was a Punjabi princess whose godmother was Queen Victoria.{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=6630}} The first group arrived at St Stephen’s entrance at 1:20 pm.{{sfnp|AAFFFHWF}} They were taken to Asquith’s office where his private secretary informed them that the prime minister refused to see them. They were escorted back to St Stephen’s entrance, where they were left to watch the demonstration.{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|33}}
Previous demonstrations at the Houses of Parliament had been policed by the local A Division, who understood the nature of the demonstrations and had managed to overcome the WSPU tactics without undue levels of violence.{{sfnp|KF6AZEHF|1984}} Sylvia Pankhurst wrote that “During our conflicts with the A Division they have gradually come to know us, and to understand our aims and objects, and for this reason, whilst obeying their orders, they came to treat the women, as far as possible, with courtesy and consideration”.{{sfnp|RVJ7RYIM|121}} On the day of the demonstration, police had been drafted in from Whitechapel and the East End; these men were inexperienced in policing suffragettes.{{sfnp|JEHMF9ST|109}}{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=4227}} Sophia van Wingerden, in her history of the women’s suffrage movement, writes that “the differing accounts of the event of that day make it difficult to determine the truth about what happened”;{{sfnp|MG8IMXZC|123}} Morrell similarly observes that the government, the press and the demonstrators all provide markedly different accounts.{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|32}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Rosa_May_Billinghurst_-_38666686576.jpg)Rosa May Billinghurst, a disabled suffragette, who was present on Black Friday
Wikimedia Commons
Groups approaching Parliament Square were met at the Westminster Abbey entrance to the square by groups of bystanders, who manhandled the women. As they moved past the men, the suffragettes were met by lines of policemen who, instead of arresting them, subjected them to violence and insults, much of which was sexual in nature. The demonstration continued for six hours; police beat women attempting to enter parliament, then threw them into the crowds of onlookers, where they were subjected to further assaults.{{sfnp|AZDQD53Z}}{{sfnp|SK8ZDYYT|50}}{{sfnp|IUJVDTRU|121}}{{sfnp|MU7HZZVW|180}} Many of the suffragettes considered that the crowds of men who also assaulted them were plain-clothes policemen.{{sfnp|6EPYE6WD|167}} Caxton Hall was used throughout the day as a medical post for suffragettes injured in the demonstration. Sylvia Pankhurst recorded that “We saw the women go out and return exhausted, with black eyes, bleeding noses, bruises, sprains and dislocations. The cry went round: ‘Be careful; they are dragging women down the side streets!’ We knew this always meant greater ill-usage.”{{sfnp|QIK3KR9U|loc=6656}} One of those taken down a side street was Rosa May Billinghurst, a disabled suffragette who campaigned from a wheelchair. Police pushed her chair into a side road, assaulted her and stole the valves from the wheels, leaving her stranded.{{sfnp|PSBFH76I}} The historian Harold Smith writes “it appeared to witnesses as well as the victims that the police had intentionally attempted to subject the women to sexual humiliation in a public setting to teach them a lesson”.{{sfnp|SK8ZDYYT|50}}
## Following days
On 18 November, 4 men and 115 women were arrested.{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|33}}{{sfnp|6EPYE6WD|169}} The following morning, when they were appeared at Bow Street Police Court, the prosecution stated that Winston Churchill, the Home Secretary, had decided that on the grounds of public policy “on this occasion no public advantage would be gained by proceeding with the prosecution”; all charges were dropped.{{sfnp|MG8IMXZC|124}} Katherine E. Kelly, in her examination of how the media reported the suffrage movement in the early 20th century, considers that by dropping the charges against the demonstrators Churchill implemented “a tacit quid pro quo … \[in which\] he refused to inquire into the charges of police brutality”.{{sfnp|8FGMBXFA|350}}{{sfnp|IT2PWBMN|30}} On 22 November Asquith announced that should the Liberals be returned to power at the next election, there would be parliamentary time for a Conciliation Bill to be put to parliament. The WSPU were angered that his promise was for within the next parliament, rather than the next session, and 200 suffragettes marched on Downing Street, where scuffles broke out with the police; 159 women and 3 men were arrested. The following day another march on parliament was met with a police presence, and 18 demonstrators were arrested. Charges against many of those arrested on 22 and 23 November were subsequently dropped.{{sfnp|RKZF3R73|151-152}}{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|45-46}}
## Reaction
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Flier_for_a_suffragette_demonstration.jpg)Women’s Social and Political Union flier publicising the demonstration
Wikimedia Commons
On 19 November 1910, newspapers reported on the events of the previous day. According to Morrell they “almost unanimously refrained from any mention of police brutality”, and focused instead on the behaviour of the suffragettes.{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|39}} The front page of *The Daily Mirror* that day showed a large photograph of a suffragette on the ground, having been hit by a policeman during Black Friday; the image is probably that of Ada Wright.{{sfnp|BHRS25CJ|16}}{{sfnp|8FGMBXFA|327}}\[k\]Wright was identified by Georgiana Solomon in Votes for Women{{sfnp|EPGHZ3NJ|3}} and Sylvia Pankhurst in her book The Suffragette Movement (1931).{{sfnp|QIK3KR9U|loc=4098}} The National Archives identify the woman as possibly being Ernestine Mills.{{sfnp|FDFZ2XMH}} The art editor of the newspaper forwarded the photograph to the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police for comments. He initially tried to explain the image away by saying the woman had collapsed through exhaustion.{{sfnp|BHRS25CJ|16-17}}{{sfnp|8FGMBXFA|328-329}} The image was also published in *Votes for Women*,{{sfnp|RVJ7RYIM|121}} *The Manchester Guardian*{{sfnp|JDHT4XR9}} and the *Daily Express*.{{sfnp|63KWK9BM}}
Morrell observes that where sympathy was shown by newspapers, it was directed towards the policemen. *The Times* reported that “Several of the police had their helmets knocked off in carrying out their duty, one was disabled by a kick on the ankle, one was cut on the face by a belt, and one had his hand cut”;{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|39}} *The Daily Mirror* wrote that “the police displayed great good temper and tact throughout and avoided making arrests, but as usual many of the Suffragettes refused to be happy until they were arrested … in one scuffle a constable got hurt and had to be led limping away by two colleagues.”{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|39}} References to the suffragettes were in tones of disapproval for their actions; after Churchill decided not to prosecute the suffragettes, some newspapers criticised his decision.{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|40}}
On 3 March Georgiana Solomon – a suffragette who had been present at the demonstration – wrote to *The Times* to say that police had assaulted her. She had been bed-ridden after their manhandling, and had not been able to make a complaint at the time. Instead, she had written to Churchill on 17 December with a full statement of what she had suffered, and the actions she had witnessed against others. She had received a formal acknowledgement, but no further letter from the government on the events. Her letter to Churchill had been printed in full in the suffragette newspaper *Votes for Women*.{{sfnp|GVX545AC}}{{sfnp|EPGHZ3NJ|1-5}}{{sfnp|LHMZFZA8|10}}
The WSPU leadership were convinced that Churchill had given the police orders to manhandle the women, rather than arrest them quickly. Churchill denied the accusation in the House of Commons and was so angered he considered suing Christabel Pankhurst and *The Times*, who had reported the claim, for libel.{{sfnp|4A8795VB|241}}\[l\]Rosen gives as examples the suffragette newspaper *Votes for Women* of 25 November 1910, which stated that “The orders of the Home Secretary were, apparently, that the police were to be present both in uniform and in the crowd and that the women were to be thrown from one to the other”.{{sfnp|MEE9BI9J|117}} The 25 November 1910 edition of *Votes for Women* stated that “The orders of the Home Secretary were, apparently, that the police were to be present both in uniform and in the crowd and that the women were to be thrown from one to the other”.{{sfnp|MEE9BI9J|117}} In her biography of Emmeline Pankhurst, June Purvis writes that the police followed Churchill’s orders to refrain from making arrests;{{sfnp|RKZF3R73|150}} the historian Andrew Rosen considers that Churchill had not given any orders to the police to manhandle the demonstrators.{{sfnp|XY6IEMAG|140}}
### Murray and Brailsford report
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/A_policeman_tries_to_seize_a_banner_from_a_suffragette_on_Black_Friday.jpg)A policeman tries to seize a banner from a suffragette on Black Friday
Wikimedia Commons
When members of the conciliation committee heard the stories of the demonstrators’ maltreatment, they demanded a public inquiry, which was rejected by Churchill. The committee’s secretary – the journalist Henry Brailsford – and the psychotherapist Jessie Murray collected 135 statements from demonstrators, nearly all of which described acts of violence against the women; 29 of the statements also included details of violence that included indecency.{{sfnp|JEHMF9ST|109-110}}{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=4451}} The memorandum they published summarised their findings:
The action of which the most frequent complaint is made is variously described as twisting round, pinching, screwing, nipping, or wringing the breast. This was often done in the most public way so as to inflict the utmost humiliation. Not only was it an offence against decency; it caused in many cases intense pain … The language used by some of the police while performing this action proves that it was consciously sensual.{{sfnp
— JFCDCTG8|9}}
A woman, who gave her name as Miss H, stated that “One policeman … put his arm round me and seized my left breast, nipping it and wringing it very painfully, saying as he did so, ‘You have been wanting this for a long time, haven’t you'”;{{sfnp|QUL2SYFR|139}} the American suffragette Elisabeth Freeman reported that a policeman grasped her thigh. She stated “I demanded that he should cease doing such a hateful action to a woman. He said, ‘Oh, my old dear, I can grip you wherever I like to-day'”;{{sfnp|JEHMF9ST|111}} and another said “the policeman who tried to move me on did so by pushing his knees in between me from behind, with the deliberate intention of attacking my sex”.{{sfnp|V5QZGQMU|5}}
On 2 February 1911 the memorandum prepared by Murray and Brailsford was presented to the Home Office, along with a formal request for a public inquiry. Churchill again refused.{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|112}} On 1 March, in response to a question in parliament, he informed the House of Commons that the memorandum:
with regard to certain general statements included in the memorandum and find them to be devoid of foundation. There is no truth in the statement that the police had instructions which led them to terrorise and maltreat the women. On the contrary, the superintendent in charge impressed upon them that as they would have to deal with women, they must act with restraint and moderation, using no more force than might be necessary, and maintaining under any provocation they might receive, control of temper.{{sfnp
— X2UCRF5Q|367-368}}
## Impact
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Arrest_of_a_suffragette_on_Black_Friday1910-11-18_%2822163159204%29.jpg)Arrest of a suffragette on Black Friday
Wikimedia Commons
The deaths of two suffragettes have been attributed to the treatment they received on Black Friday.{{sfnp|JEHMF9ST|112}} Mary Clarke, Emmeline Pankhurst’s younger sister, was present at both Black Friday and the demonstration in Downing Street on 22 November. After a month in prison for breaking windows in Downing Street, she was released on 23 December and died on Christmas Day of a brain haemorrhage, age 48. Emmeline blamed her death on the maltreatment Clarke received at the two November demonstrations;{{sfnp|AZDQD53Z}}{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=4168-4325}} Murray and Brailsford wrote that “we have no evidence which directly connects the death of Mrs Clarke” to the demonstrations.{{sfnp|JFCDCTG8|6}} The second victim the WSPU claimed had died from maltreatment was Henria Williams. She had given evidence to Brailsford and Murray that “One policeman after knocking me about for a considerable time, finally took hold of me with his great strong hands like iron just over my heart … I knew that unless I made a strong effort … he would kill me”.{{sfnp|JEHMF9ST|111}} Williams died of a heart attack on 1 January 1911;{{sfnp|JEHMF9ST|113}} Murray and Brailsford wrote “there is evidence to show that Miss Henria Williams … had been used with great brutality, and was aware at the time of the effect upon her heart, which was weak”.{{sfnp|JFCDCTG8|6}}
The events that took place between 18 and 25 November had an impact on the WSPU membership, many of whom no longer wanted to take part in the demonstrations. The deputations to parliament were stopped, and direct action, such as stone throwing and window breaking became more common, affording women a chance to escape before the police could arrest them.{{sfnp|SK8ZDYYT|50}}{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=4256}} The historian Elizabeth Crawford considers the events of Black Friday determined the “image of the relations between the two forces and mark a watershed in the relationship between the militant suffrage movement and the police”.{{sfnp|3S23BBT9|491}} Crawford identifies a change in the tactics used by the police after Black Friday. Sir Edward Troup, the under-secretary at the Home Office, wrote to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in January 1911 to say that “I think there can be no doubt that the least embarrassing course will be for the police not to arrest too soon or defer arresting too long”, which became the normal procedure adopted.{{sfnp|3S23BBT9|492}}
On 17 November 2010 a vigil called “Remember the Suffragettes” took place on College Green, Parliament Square “in honour of direct action”.{{sfnp|7LKNJ4XQ|2}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The first such act was in October 1905, when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney interrupted a political rally in Manchester to ask the pro-women’s suffrage Liberal Party politician Sir Edward Grey “Will the Liberal government give votes to women?” The two women were arrested for assault and obstruction; on refusing to pay the fines levied against them, they were sent to prison.{{sfnp|GTFHGGVC|49-52}} b Charles E. Hands, the *Daily Mail* journalist, coined the name suffragettes to belittle members of the WSPU in 1906, but they adopted the label with pride.{{sfnp|59XGYSS6}}{{sfnp|SCI8MXHX|452}} c The women arrested for window breaking began a hunger strike to be treated as First Division prisoners – reserved for political crimes – rather than Second or Third Division, the classifications for common criminals. They were released early, rather than being reclassified. First Division prisoners had open access to books and writing equipment, did not have to wear prison uniforms and could receive visitors. Prisoners in the Second and Third Divisions were managed under more restrictive regulations.{{sfnp|XY6IEMAG|120-121}}{{sfnp|ZSNV77XY|17}} d According to the historian Bruce Murray, many of the measures introduced by the government were “mangled by amendments or rejected outright” by the House of Lords;{{sfnp|LZPQWG7S|5}} ten parliamentary bills sent to them from the Commons were rejected by the Lords, who also amended more than 40 per cent of the legislation they received.{{sfnp|BKJKVHF6|409}} e The rejection of the budget was a breach of the constitutional convention that the House of Lords was not supposed to interfere in financial bills from the House of Commons.{{sfnp|LZPQWG7S|6}} f The Conservative and Liberal Unionists gained 272 seats (up 116 from the previous parliament); the Liberals won 274 seats (down 123); the Irish Parliamentary Party won 71 (down 11) and Labour won 40 (up 11).{{sfnp|3VZB2J2R|20-21}} g The committee was composed of 25 Liberal MPs, 17 Conservative MPs, 6 Irish Nationalist MPs and 6 Labour MPs.{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=3545}} h The terms of the Conciliation Bill, officially named “A Bill to Extend the Parliamentary Franchise to Women Occupiers” were that the franchise should be extended to: Every woman possessed of a household qualification, or of a ten-pound occupation qualification, within the meaning of the Representation of the People Act 1884, shall be entitled to be registered as a voter, and, when registered, to vote for the county or borough in which the qualifying premises are situate. For the purposes of this Act, a woman shall not be disqualified by marriage for being registered as a voter, provided that a husband and wife shall not both be qualified in respect of the same property.{{sfnp|CS2DA685|70-71}} £10 in 1910 equates to approximately £900 in 2018 pounds, according to calculations based on Retail Price Index measure of inflation.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} i Sylvia Pankhurst, in her history of the women’s militant suffrage movement, puts the number at 450 demonstrators.{{sfnp|EMIAFN6D|502}} j Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was the first woman to openly qualify in Britain as a physician and surgeon; Louisa Garrett Anderson, her daughter, was a surgeon; Hertha Ayrton was an engineer and mathematician; Sophia Duleep Singh was a Punjabi princess whose godmother was Queen Victoria.{{sfnp|UJCDFIU7|loc=6630}} k Wright was identified by Georgiana Solomon in Votes for Women{{sfnp|EPGHZ3NJ|3}} and Sylvia Pankhurst in her book The Suffragette Movement (1931).{{sfnp|QIK3KR9U|loc=4098}} The National Archives identify the woman as possibly being Ernestine Mills.{{sfnp|FDFZ2XMH}} l Rosen gives as examples the suffragette newspaper *Votes for Women* of 25 November 1910, which stated that “The orders of the Home Secretary were, apparently, that the police were to be present both in uniform and in the crowd and that the women were to be thrown from one to the other”.{{sfnp|MEE9BI9J|117}} m, n var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3131
**Categories:** Women's suffrage
---
### [The National Review](https://engole.info/the-national-review/)
**Published:** April 19, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Right-wing British magazine founded in 1883.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/NewReview.webp)Cover page of November 1927 edition
Wikimedia Commons
*The National Review* was a right-wing magazine supporting the Conservative Party, founded in 1883 by the English writers Alfred Austin and William Courthope, its first joint editors.{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2|82}}{{sfnp|8DZ8RVRP|107}} It was initially funded by the Cecil Club, a secretive British dining club with close links to the Conservative Party, which survives in the form of the equally secretive United and Cecil Club today.{{sfnp|8DZ8RVRP|109}}{{sfnp|XDKLT4QT}}
Admiral Frederick Maxse bought the magazine in 1893 and presented it to his son, Leopold James Maxse, who immediately replaced Alfred Austin as editor. Leopold was succeeded in that role following his death in 1932 by his sister, Violet Georgina Maxse, Lady Milner, who held the post for sixteen years.{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2|407}}
The magazine absorbed [*The English Review*](https://engole.info/the-english-review) in 1937, and in 1950 was renamed the *National and English Review*, which ran until 1960.{{sfnp|RX4FSRRC}}
## Editors
- (1883–1887) Alfred Austin with William Courthope
- (1887–1893) Alfred Austin
- (1893–1932) Leopold Maxse
- (1932–1948) Violet Georgina Maxse
- (1948–1954) Edward Grigg
- (1954–1960) John Grigg
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25256
**Categories:** Magazine
---
### [Sweeney Todd](https://engole.info/sweeney-todd/)
**Published:** January 31, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/dibdin-pitt-sweeney-todd-e1416746391130.jpg[/pimage]Fictional character who first appeared as the villain of the Victorian penny dreadful serial The String of Pearls (1846–1847).
**Content:**
Advertising material for George Dibden Pitt’s melodrama, first performed in 1847, not 1842 as the flyer states
Wikimedia Commons
Sweeney Todd is a fictional character who first appeared as the villain in the Victorian [penny dreadful](https://engole.info/penny-dreadful/) serial *The String of Pearls* (1846–1847). The tale became a staple of Victorian melodrama and has been retold many times since, notably in the Tony award–winning Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim.
In the original version of the tale, Todd is a barber who dispatches his victims by pulling a lever as they sit in his barber chair. His victims fall backward down a revolving trap door into the basement of his shop, generally causing them to break their necks or skulls. In case they are alive, Todd goes to the basement and “polishes them off” (slitting their throats with his straight razor). In some adaptations, the murdering process is reversed, with Todd slitting his customers’ throats before dispatching them into the basement through the revolving trap door. After Todd has robbed his dead victims of their goods, Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime (in some later versions, his friend and/or lover), assists him in disposing of the bodies by baking their flesh into meat pies and selling them to the unsuspecting customers of her pie shop. Todd’s barber shop is situated in Fleet Street, London, next to St. Dunstan’s church, and is connected to Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop in nearby Bell Yard by means of an underground passage. In most versions of the story, he and Mrs. Lovett hire an unwitting orphan boy, Tobias Ragg, to serve the pies to customers.
By the 1930s *the Sweeney* had become established cockney rhyming slang for the Metropolitan Police’s flying squad.{{sfnp|QEJMDSG6}}
## Publication history
The story of Sweeney Todd was published in 18 weekly parts under the title *The String of Pearls: A Romance*, and appeared in Edward Lloyd’s *The People’s Periodical and Family Library*, issues 7–24, 21 November 1846 to 20 March 1847.{{sfnp|INU786GJ|viii-ix}} It was probably written by James Malcolm Rymer, although Thomas Peckett Prest has also been credited; it may be that each worked on different parts of the serial. Other attributions include Edward P. Hingston, George Macfarren, and Albert Richard Smith.{{sfnp|INU786GJ|xvi}} In February/March 1847, before the serial was completed, George Dibdin Pitt adapted *The String of Pearls* as a melodrama for the Britannia Theatre in Hoxton. It was in this alternative version of the tale that Todd acquired his catchphrase of “I’ll polish him off”.{{sfnp|INU786GJ|xxxi}}
Lloyd published another, lengthier, penny part serial from 1847–1848, with 92 episodes. It was then published in book form in 1850 as *The String of Pearls*, subtitled “The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance”. This expanded version of the story was 732 pages long. A plagiarised version appeared in the United States c. 1852–1853 as *Sweeney Todd: or the Ruffian Barber*. *A Tale of Terror of the Seas and the Mysteries of the City* by “Captain Merry” (a pseudonym for the American author Harry Hazel, 1814–1889).{{sfnp|INU786GJ|xxxi}}
## Historical basis
By 1878 it was widely believed that Sweeney Todd had been a real historical figure, a view promoted by many theatrical productions despite the lack of any supporting evidence, and which has persisted in the work of the author Peter Haining.{{sfnp|QEJMDSG6}} But the fact that the story of Sweeney Todd is set in the year 1785 perhaps gives a clue as to its antecedents. A report in the *London Chronicle* of 2 December 1784, tells of a “Journeyman Barber that lives near Hyde Park-corner, who had been a long time past jealous of his wife” who had shaved a gentleman who boasted of having had “certain favours” from a young woman who lived nearby. “The Barber concluding it to be his wife, in the height of his frenzy cut the Gentleman’s throat from ear to ear, and absconded”.{{sfnp|QEJMDSG6}}
Edward Lloyd had set the scene for the appearance of a murderous barber in the form of Sweeney Todd when, in an 1844 issue of his *Penny Atlas*, he featured a tale titled *Joddrel, the Barber, or, Mystery unravelled*. Jodrell is a London barber whose neighbours become suspicious of the number of his customers who disappear mysteriously, whose bodies are eventually discovered in a cupboard in his shop. Although there is no reference to their flesh being made into meat pies, there is in another story that appeared in 1824, this time telling of a French barber and wig maker, *A Terrific Story of the Rue de la Harpe, Paris*, published in *The Tell-Tale*. The barber slits his victims’ throats, robs them, and has their bodies turned into pies by his next-door neighbour, a patissier.{{sfnp|INU786GJ|ix–xi}}
The hysterical reaction provoked by the claims made in a broadsheet by James Catnach in London in 1818, claiming that a particular butcher was selling human meat in his shop, demonstrates the concern that at least some city dwellers shared about the source of their meat. In Charles Dickens’ *Martin Chuzzlewit* (1843) Tom Pinch wonders whether his friend is “afraid I have strayed into one of those streets where the countrymen are murdered; and that I have been made meat-pies of, or some horrible thing”.{{sfnp|QEJMDSG6}}
In the words of Sweeney Todd biographer Matthew Kilburn, “Todd is perhaps best described as a personification of early nineteenth-century fears of the anonymity of urban life built around some recorded events and older fictional or legendary sources”.{{sfnp|QEJMDSG6}}
## Adaptations
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Todsweeny.jpg)Tod Slaughter as Sweeney Todd, 1935 film
Wikipedia
Todd’s popularity continued into the 20th century, and he became the subject of several films, notably *Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street* (1935), starring the aptly named Tod Slaughter. The first film version was released in 1926, but is now lost. The earliest extant film version is the 1928 *Sweeney Todd*, featuring Moore Marriott in the title role.{{sfnp|INU786GJ|xxxii-xxxiii}}
Early adaptations stuck pretty much to the plot of the original story, but in 1973 the playwright Christopher Bond elaborated on it in his theatrical production by introducing an element of motivation for Todd’s barbaric behaviour. Bond suggests at the start of his play that Todd was motivated by his rage at the local judge and beagle, who some years before had killed his wife and had him transported to Australia as a convicted felon. Todd’s initial motivation is revenge, but as time passes he discovers “a taste for blood … and all the world’s my meat.”{{sfnp|INU786GJ|xxiv}}
Bond’s version of the story formed the basis for Stephen Sondheim’s musical *Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street*, which opened in New York in 1979 and in London the following year.{{sfnp|QEJMDSG6}} Sondheim’s version was in turn adapted by the director Tim Burton in the 2007 film *Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street*, starring Johnny Depp.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22557
**Categories:** Fictional character
---
### [William Waterhouse](https://engole.info/william-waterhouse/)
**Published:** May 9, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/William-Waterhouse-reduced.png[/pimage]English artist; father of John William Waterhouse
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/William-Waterhouse-reduced.png)William Waterhouse, c. 1873
*J W Waterhouse*
William Waterhouse (1816–1890) was an English artist who predominantly focused on copying Old Masters but also produced figure subjects and portraits.{{sfnp|279A8CFG|226}} His interest in pursuing an artistic career probably began in Leeds, but by 1840 he had moved to London, where he could further his training. The art historian Peter Trippi considers that Waterhouse may have trained under Gustaaf Wappers at the Antwerp art academy in Belgium between 1844 and 1846.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|10, 238}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Guarda-by-William-Waterhouse-reduced.png)*Guarda*, Waterhouse’s 1846 Society of British Artists exhibit
*J W Waterhouse*
Waterhouse exhibited his paintings over a span of twenty-one years, from 1840 until his last documented exhibit in 1861.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|12}} *A Girl of Avito at the Carnival of Rome* was the first of his paintings listed as being exhibited at the Royal Academy, in 1846.{{sfnp|MSP3EQRA|162}} That same year he also submitted *Guarda* to the Society of British Artists.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|12}}
## Personal life
Waterhouse was baptised on 17 March 1816 in the small West Yorkshire town of Heckmondwike; his parents were William and Hannah. His father is listed as a carpet weaver in the census when his son was born although more than two decades later he is recorded as a manufacturer of carpets, suggesting he was an effective businessman.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|10, 238}}
Little is known about Waterhouse’s first wife, Maria, and their marriage.{{sfnp|7AJ7X7AQ|45}} Records show the couple had two children: William Barham, born 14 July 1845, who died aged eleven months; and Albert, born 16 January 1847.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|10, 238}} By this time, Waterhouse was dividing his time between living in Rome painting for a few months then transferring back to London to exhibit and sell some of his work.{{sfnp|7AJ7X7AQ|11}} Maria died in Rome when she was aged 28 years and was buried there on 18 January 1847, two days after producing Albert; the baby also died.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|10, 238}}
The late twentieth-century academic Anthony Hobson suggests that Waterhouse met his second wife, fellow artist [Isabella Mackenzie](https://engole.info/isabella-waterhouse/), during 1846 at either the Royal Academy or the Society of British Artists exhibitions, where they both had works displayed.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|13, 14}} During one of his return trips to London from Rome, he married Isabella in Kensington Parish Church on 5 February 1848.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|12}}{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|10}} He took his bride back to Italy where three of their four children were born: the eldest, [John William](https://engole.info/john-william-waterhouse/), was born in 1849; Edwin, who was baptised on 2 June 1850; and Jessie, born on 22 February 1853, their only daughter. The couple’s youngest child, Charles, was born in 1855 after they had permanently relocated back to Britain in 1854 although he was not baptised until 18 May the following year.{{sfnp|ZA8GBU6K|12}}{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|11, 12, 238}}
Isabella died, aged 36, on 8 September 1857 of tuberculosis at the couple’s Kensington home;{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|12, 238}} their two younger sons, Charles and Edwin, also died from tuberculosis in adolescence.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|25, 239}}\[a\]Charles died 4 December 1871, aged 15; Edwin died earlier when he was an adolescent.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|25, 239}} Waterhouse married for a third time on 18 April 1860; his bride was Frederica Mary Jane Perceval. A cousin of Lord Egmont and Arden, she was a grand-daughter of Spencer Perceval, the assassinated prime minister. They had two sons, Frederick and William, and two daughters, Mary and Alice; all the children were born in Kensington between 1861 and 1870. Frederica was not only well connected but also had sufficient income to allow the family a prosperous lifestyle.\[b\]The Perceval family had received monetary compensation from the Government following the assassination; Frederica had been one of the beneficiaries.{{sfnp|7AJ7X7AQ|45}} Waterhouse continued to paint the occasional portrait although he ceased submitting exhibits after 1861.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|12, 238}}
## Death
Waterhouse died in January 1890 while on holiday in Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he was buried on 27 January.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|101, 241}} Frederica survived him, dying on 14 February 1903; her assets of £1,076 passed to her youngest son, William.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|238}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Charles died 4 December 1871, aged 15; Edwin died earlier when he was an adolescent.{{sfnp|QCQUPQCJ|25, 239}} b The Perceval family had received monetary compensation from the Government following the assassination; Frederica had been one of the beneficiaries.{{sfnp|7AJ7X7AQ|45}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 18868
**Categories:** English, Male, Painter
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Manchester Coalfield](https://engole.info/manchester-coalfield/)
**Published:** July 19, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/AstleyGreenCollieryPithead.jpg[/pimage]Part of the Lancashire Coalfield. Some easily accessible seams were worked on a small scale from the Middle Ages, and extensively from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution until the last quarter of the 20th century.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/AstleyGreenCollieryPithead.jpg)Astley Green Colliery headgear
Wikimedia Commons
The Manchester Coalfield is part of the [Lancashire Coalfield](https://engole.info/lancashire-and-cheshire-coalfield/). Its coal seams were laid down in the Carboniferous Period. Some easily accessible seams were worked on a small scale from the Middle Ages, and more extensively from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution until the last quarter of the 20th century. The Coal Measures lie above a bed of Millstone Grit and are interspersed with sandstones, mudstones, shales and fireclays. The Lower Coal Measures occupy the high ground of the West Pennine Moors above Bolton and are not worked in the Manchester Coalfield.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|12}}
The coalfield is affected by the northwest to southeast aligned [Pendleton Fault](https://engole.info/pendleton-fault/) along the Irwell Valley and the Rossendale Anticline. The Coal Measures generally dip towards the south and west. Numerous other smaller faults affect the coalfield.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|7}} The Upper Coal Measures are not worked in the Manchester Coalfield. The most productive of the coal measures are the lower two-thirds of the Middle Coal Measures, from which coal was mined from seams between the Worsley Four Foot and Arley mines. The deepest and most productive collieries were to the south of the coalfield. The earliest coal pits were dug to the shallow seams where they outcropped, particularly in the Irwell Valley and in Atherton. The early collieries were adits, bell pits and ladder pits. Deeper mines could be sunk after steam engines were developed to pump water from the workings.
Exploitation of the coalfield was limited by poor transport but accelerated after the Bridgewater Canal was built by the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater in 1760 and linked to his underground levels. The underground levels also drained water from the shallower seams.{{sfnp|S3ZRJADD|27}} The demand for coal increased rapidly and by the 1860s deeper shafts had been sunk, some of which survived into the mid-20th century.{{sfnp|S3ZRJADD|28}}
Most collieries to the east of the Pendleton Fault had closed by 1929, when a group of independent companies amalgamated to form Manchester Collieries.
## Coal seams of the West Manchester Coalfield
In this part of Lancashire a coal seam is referred to as a mine and the coal mine is a colliery or pit. The beds of coal in the Coal Measures are separated by layers of gritstones, sandstones, shales and mudstones of varying thicknesses. The seams were frequently named after their thickness – Yard, Three Quarters – or given local names in the areas in which they were first worked.
The **Worsley Four Foot mine**, also known as the Pendleton Four Foot is the Parker mine in central Manchester. As the shallowest coal seam west of the Pendleton Fault, it was exploited from the early days of mining from adits, bell and ladder pits and was accessed from the Delph at Worsley. It is from 3 feet to 4 feet in thickness and was used as steam coal. The seam was wet because of the layer of permeable sandstone above it.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|17}} It was worked westwards from Worsley to Bedford Colliery.{{sfnp|ZZY3XCNJ|13}} The seam is known as the Parker mine in the central coalfield under Manchester where a series of coal seams, the Bradford Group, was worked above it.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|20}}
The **Bin mine**, known as the Top Five Quarters in Radcliffe, has a maximum height of 3 feet 9 inches. Its coal was mainly used by industry.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|17}} Above the Bin mine the sandstones contain a layer of ironstone.{{sfnp|ZZY3XCNJ|12}}
The **Crombouke** or **Crumbouke mine** was named the Shuttle in Pendlebury, the Albert in Pendleton, Top Yard in Radcliffe and Roger mine in central Manchester.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|7}} The Crombouke contains from 2 feet 6 inches to 4 feet 6 inches of good quality coal in the west. At Worsley the seam thins out.{{sfnp|ZZY3XCNJ|11}}
The **Brassey mine**, also known as Brassey Bottoms and the Little at Newtown, is thickest around Tyldesley at 4 feet.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|17}}
The **Rams mine**, known as the Seven Foot at Walkden and Six Foot at Tyldesley, has a minimum thickness of 4 feet and average thickness of 6 feet west of the Pendleton Fault. To the east it is up to 9 feet in thickness. The high quality coal was mined to considerable depths under Pendlebury and Salford.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|17}} At Atherton it was good quality steam coal.{{sfnp|ZZY3XCNJ|11}}
The **Black and White mine** is a double seam with 7 feet 5 inches of workable coal. The top coal is the White mine and bottom coal is the Black.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|16}} It outcrops at the south east corner of Hulton Park, in Little Hulton{{sfnp|ZZY3XCNJ|10}} and across Gibfield and Chowbent in Atherton where it was mined in shallow ladder pits or drifts.{{sfnp|HTZMM86S|21}} The seam measured 7 feet 10 inches in Atherton town centre{{sfnp|HTZMM86S|22}} where it was called Great mine. It corresponds to the Seven Foot at Tyldesley, The bottom coal was called the Gingham mine and the top coal the Ten Foot in Bolton and Little Lever, east of the Pendleton Fault.
The **Doe** or **Dow mine** has two coals separated by a dirt parting. At Newtown the seam was liable to spontaneous combustion. The lower coals of this mine were worked around Tyldesley as the Yard mine, near Bolton the top coal was worked as the Bancroft mine.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|15}} The seam outcrops on either side of the River Irwell at Clifton where the seam was worked at the Ladyshore Colliery.{{sfnp|ZZY3XCNJ|9}}
The **Five Quarters mine** is the Yard in Atherton. The seam was worked extensively east of the Pendleton Fault around Radcliffe. The seam was split by a dirt band and the coal was used as steam and household coal.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|15}}
The **Hell Hole mine** was known as the Victoria and the Foor Foot in Atherton. The seam varies in thickness between 2 feet 6 inches and 4 feet and was used for coking and gas making and household use.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|15}}
The **Trencherbone mine** was extensively worked throughout the coalfield and reputedly produced the best coal. It outcropped at Stoneclough in the Irwell Valley.{{sfnp|ZZY3XCNJ|9}} It was 3 feet to 4 feet thick at Astley and Tyldesley and up to 8 feet elsewhere.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|14}} The seam outcropped between Schofield Lane and Bag Lane in Atherton.{{sfnp|HTZMM86S|21}}
The **Cannel mine**, also known as the King and Cannel, was on average less than {{convert|1|ft|r=1|spell=in}} thick. [Cannel coal](https://engole.info/cannel/) burns easily with a bright light, and leaves little ash. This was the lowest coal seam worked east of the Irwell Valley. Cannel was used to make coal gas.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|14}}
The **Sapling mine** is thickest in the west but reduces to 9 inches further east. The coal is poor quality but where mined was used for industrial steam raising.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|13}}
The **Plodder mine** was named the Ravine in Atherton. The Plodder mine contains seams of fireclay and shales. The coal seam was 2 feet 8 inches but thicker at Newtown. It was contaminated with iron pyrites. At Sandhole Colliery the seam was liable to spontaneously combust. It was poor quality but used as steam coal.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|13}}
The **Yard mine** or Haigh Yard had a height of 5 feet at Tyldesley. The coal seam was divided by a dirt parting of sandstone.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|13}}
The **Half Yard mine** or Bone a thin seam of coking coal with a maximum height of 20 inches.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|13}}
The **Three Quarters** or **Smith mine** had a maximum height of 2 feet and was worked, where the thickness of the seam allowed, to produce coking coal.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|13}} It was worked at Chew Moor, Deane Moor and Farnworth.{{sfnp|ZZY3XCNJ|8}}
The **Arley mine**, known as the Dogshaw at Bury and Daubhill in Bolton is the deepest of the seams of the Middle Coal Measures. It outcropped at [Red Moss](https://engole.info/red-moss/) near Blackrod where it was 2 feet (0.61 m) thick, and at Chew Moor, Westhoughton and Daubhill, Bolton.{{sfnp|ZZY3XCNJ|8}} Its average thickness was 3 feet to 4 feet. It produced excellent quality coal for coking, house and steam coal. The Arley mine was worked throughout the coalfield and around Tyldesley was a hot mine.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|13}}
## Central Manchester Coalfield
The eastern part of the coalfield under Manchester is isolated from the rest. The sequence of coal seams corresponds more closely with that of the Oldham Coalfield than the rest of the Manchester Coalfield. Workable seams are close to the surface and coal from the deep Roger mine was considered to be of the highest quality. The Upper Coal Measures above the Worsley Four Foot mine, known as the Parker mine, are worked in this part of the coalfield and known as the Bradford Group, above which is the Ardwick Group.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|20}}
The coal seams of the Bradford Group are the Two Foot, Doctor, New, Yard, Bradford Foor Foot, Three Quarters and Charlotte mines, the Charlotte being closest to the surface. The Openshaw mine above the Charlotte was worked for fireclay. Below the Bradford Group and the Parker mine are the Top, Middle and Deep mines and 60 feet below them, the Roger mine. The Top, Middle and Deep mines correspond to the Major, Bland and Ashton Great mines in the Oldham Coalfield. The Crumbouke mine in the western coalfield is the Roger mine in central Manchester.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|21–22}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 21886
**Categories:** Coal mining, Greater Manchester
---
### [Yew Tree Colliery](https://engole.info/yew-tree-colliery/)
**Published:** June 8, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Yew-Tree-Colliery-Explosion.jpg[/pimage]Former coal mine operating on the Manchester Coalfield after 1845 in Tyldesley, which was then in the historic county of Lancashire, England.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Yew-Tree-Colliery-Explosion.jpg)Yew Tree Colliery Explosion from *The Illustrated London News*, 1858
Yew Tree Colliery was a coal mine operating on the [Manchester Coalfield](https://engole.info/manchester-coalfield/) after 1845 in [Tyldesley](https://engole.info/tyldesley/), which was then in the historic county of Lancashire.
In 1835 George Green of Wharton Hall, Little Hulton and his brother William leased land at Yew Tree Farm, north of Manchester Road, to prospect for coal at what became Yew Tree Colliery. The colliery’s take stretched for 1000 yards in an east-westerly direction and 600 yards in a north-south line. The first coal was not raised until 1845.{{sfnp|XHVMJ3HW}} John Holland, a railway contractor from Ireland, joined Green and they formed the [Tyldesley Coal Company](https://engole.info/tyldesley-coal-company/) in 1870.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|93}}{{sfnp|9SG45HZC}}
By 1858 the shaft was {{convert|250|ft}} feet deep, and the workings extended under the [parish church](https://engole.info/st-georges-church-tyldesley/).{{sfnp|7LHH8UH3|48}} The colliery had two shafts, one for ventilation was sunk to the Rams mine at {{convert|600|ft}}. They were deepened in the early 1890s to access the Black and White mine.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|62}} When Cleworth Hall was developed, Yew Tree Colliery was abandoned and was shown as discontinued in the 1914 Mines Lists.{{sfnp|KLZ5HVNI|307}}
## Tramroad
In 1851 George Green and his partners signed a lease from the Ellesmere Trustees which allowed them to make a [tramroad](https://engole.info/greens-tramroad/ "Green’s tramroad") from Yew Tree to the Bridgewater Canal east of Astley Green. At the Tyldesley end, the tramway was worked by cable down the steep slope of the Tyldesley Banks and horse-drawn wagons completed the journey.{{sfnp|XHVMJ3HW}}{{sfnp|KLZ5HVNI|306}} The line was standard gauge by 1868 and locomotive haulage took over.{{sfnp|KLZ5HVNI|306}} In May 1912 the Earl of Ellesmere asked £250 per annum to renew the lease but the following year it was decided to move coal by rail and the lease was not renewed.{{sfnp|XHVMJ3HW}}{{sfnp|KLZ5HVNI|306}}
North of Manchester Road the tramway continued past Yew Tree No 1 shaft and across Common Lane on the level to a shaft on Shakerley Common from where coal was moved along the tramroad until the 1860s. A line to the east from Yew Tree was made when Cleworth Hall Colliery was sunk.{{sfnp|XHVMJ3HW}}{{sfnp|KLZ5HVNI|306}}
## Disaster
On 11 December 1858 an explosion of [firedamp](https://engole.info/damps/#firedamp), probably ignited by a safety lamp, cost the lives of twenty-five men and boys, the worst [mining disaster](https://engole.info/list-of-mining-disasters-in-lancashire/) to occur in Tyldesley.{{sfnp|7LHH8UH3|48}}{{sfnp|JVUW6IAB}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 1511
**Categories:** Coal mining, Greater Manchester
---
### [The All-Pervading](https://engole.info/the-all-pervading/)
**Published:** April 19, 2026
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/67/George_Frederic_Watts_-_The_All-Pervading_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/500px-George_Frederic_Watts_-_The_All-Pervading_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg[/pimage]Painting by the English artist George Frederic Watts (1817–1904), depicting what he described as "the immeasurable expanse".
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/67/George_Frederic_Watts_-_The_All-Pervading_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/500px-George_Frederic_Watts_-_The_All-Pervading_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)Oil on canvas
214 cm × 112 cm (84 in × 44 in)
Wikimedia Commons
*The All-Pervading* is a painting produced between 1887 and 1890 by the English artist George Frederic Watts (1817–1904).{{sfnp|PJHXNQ78}}
The heavily draped figure, surrounded by large wings, is staring into a globe or crystal ball, and depicts what Watts described as “the immeasurable expanse”. The androgynous nature of the figure suggests a higher knowledge of the universe, and is reminiscent of Michelango’s sibyls on the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel.{{sfnp|38HQTYTC}}
Watts painted a version of *The All-Pervading* for the altar of Watts Cemetery Chapel in the [village](https://engole.info/village) of Compton, Surrey. The chapel was designed by his second wife, Mary, and Watts completed his painting just three months before his death.{{sfnp|ETGRLNSR}}
Watts donated *The All-Pervading* to the Tate in 1899, and it remains in their collection today.{{sfnp|38HQTYTC}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 29864
**Categories:** Painting
---
### [Champagne Charlie (song)](https://engole.info/champagne-charlie-song/)
**Published:** May 6, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Champagne-Charlie.webp[/pimage]Best-known of the songs sung by the music hall artist George Leybourne (1842–1884).
**Content:**
“Champagne Charlie” (1867) is the best-known of the songs sung by the music-hall artist George Leybourne (1842–1884), one of the leading [*lion comiques*](https://engole.info/lion-comique) of his day, whose acts parodied upper-class toffs or “swells”;{{sfnp|X7U66WWJ}} the songs they sang were satirical “hymns of praise to the virtues of idleness, womanising and drinking”.{{sfnp|T7X6NCSG|49}}
The song was also sung by the crowd at the last public execution in England,\[a\]Public executions in England were abolished by the [Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868](https://engole.info/capital-punishment-amendment-act-1868) that of the Fenian Michael Barrett in 1867, for his part in the Clerkenwell explosion in December 1867, which killed twelve bystanders and severely injured many more.{{sfnp|7EP3F9WA}}
Sheet music cover by Alfred Concanen
Wikimedia Commons
With music written by Alfred Lee and lyrics by Leybourne himself, the song may be the first example of popular music being used for advertising. Charlie recommends “Moët’s vintage only”,{{sfnp|X7U66WWJ}} and in response, Leybourne’s great rival Alfred Vance wrote and performed the song “Cliquot”, a rival champagne brand.{{sfnp|9SR5TH8P|174-175}} The rivalry between Leybourne and Vance was a central theme of the 1944 film *Champagne Charlie*, starring Tommy Trinder and Stanley Holloway as Leybourne and Vance respectively.{{sfnp|4V8MBPVB}}
The melody of “Champagne Charlie” was adopted by The Salvation Army for their hymn, “Bless His Name He Sets Me Free”.{{sfnp|HHKDBVGW}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Public executions in England were abolished by the [Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868](https://engole.info/capital-punishment-amendment-act-1868)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25274
**Categories:** Music hall
---
### [My Word, You Do Look Queer](https://engole.info/my-word-you-do-look-queer/)
**Published:** December 17, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Comic monologue by Bert Lee and R. P. Weston, first performed by Ernest Hastings in 1922 and revived by Stanley Holloway in 1938.
**Content:**
“My Word, You Do Look Queer” is a comic monologue written by Bert Lee and R. P. Weston, first performed and recorded in 1922 by the English entertainer Ernest Hastings.{{sfnp|W7JQM7PX}} It was subsequently re-recorded by Stanley Holloway.{{sfnp|SKN5SFBZ|332}}
The song tells of a man recovering from illness, but feeling better. Yet his friends insist on telling him, one after the other, that he looks “queer.” He comes to believe that he must indeed be close to death, but revives after a visit to an undertaker.
Recording by Stanley Holloway
YouTube
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25045
**Categories:** Music hall
---
### [Harry Liston](https://engole.info/harry-liston/)
**Published:** November 30, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/mw243725.jpg[/pimage]English comedian and actor.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/mw243725.jpg)National Portrait Gallery
Harry Liston (7 October 1843 – 12 April 1929) was an English comedian and actor who appeared in music hall, variety shows and other entertainments during the Victorian era and the first decades of the 20th century. Born in Stockport, Cheshire, he started work as a commercial traveller before deciding on a career as a performer.{{sfnp|P4WSV8NT|19-20}}
Liston made his performing début at the Scotia Music Hall, Glasgow in 1863, continuing on the music hall circuit. Two years later, he moved to London and adopted a new style of performing as a [*lion comique*](https://engole.info/lion-comique/). He became associated with many popular comedians of the day, including Arthur Lloyd, George Leybourne and Alfred Vance. His repertoire included such songs as “The Ginger-haired Swell”, “Naughty Mary Ann” and “I’ll Tell Your Wife”. Perhaps his best-known song became his signature tune, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”.{{sfnp|P4WSV8NT|19-20}}{{sfnp|QISJTT4B}} By 1888 and with the *lion comique* becoming dated, Liston developed a new entertainment, “Merry Moments”, with which he toured concert halls throughout the country.{{sfnp|MSRYJ44Q}}{{sfnp|755S9VUX}}
In later years and with music hall on the decline, Liston made a successful transition to variety and performed in the northern provinces for the remainder of his career. He retired in 1925 and died four years later in Manchester, aged 85.{{sfnp|P4WSV8NT|19-20}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22384
**Categories:** Actor, Comedian, English, Music hall
---
### [Scottish poorhouse](https://engole.info/scottish-poorhouse/)
**Published:** July 12, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Town%27s_Hospital%2C_Glasgow.jpg[/pimage]Scottish institution, occasionally referred to as a workhouse, provided accommodation for the destitute and poor.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Town%27s_Hospital%2C_Glasgow.jpg)Engraving of the Glasgow poorhouse, [Town’s Hospital](https://engole.info/towns-hospital/), from the 1830s
Wikimedia Commons
The Scottish poorhouse, occasionally referred to as a [workhouse](https://engole.info/workhouse/), provided accommodation for the destitute and poor in Scotland. The term poorhouse was almost invariably used to describe the institutions in that country, as unlike the regime in their workhouse counterparts in neighbouring England and Wales residents were not usually required to labour in return for their upkeep.
Systems to deal with paupers were initiated by the Scottish Parliament in the 15th century, when a 1424 statute categorised vagrants into those deemed fit for work or those who were not able-bodied; several other ineffective statutes followed until the Scottish Poor Law Act of 1579 was put in place. The Act prevented paupers who were fit to work from receiving assistance, and was reasonably successful. Any help provided generally took the form of outdoor relief; although thirty-two main burghs were instructed to provide correction houses under the threat of being fined, it is doubtful any were built. In the 18th century cities including Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow had poorhouses or similar which were funded by wealthy merchants or trade associations.
The system was adequate until the early 19th century in rural areas, where poor relief was the remit of ministers, church elders and landowners, but did not suffice in the slum areas of towns. By the middle of the century though Scotland faced severe economic depression and this, coupled with the ecclesiastic upset of the Disruption of 1843, resulted in demand outstripping supply. Expansions to existing facilities in Edinburgh and Glasgow and design guidelines for constructing new poorhouses were drawn up by the Board of Supervision, which advised the parochial boards set up after the enactment of the 1845 Poor Law Act.
The facilities housed up to 400 occupants in cities and a slightly scaled down version was able to accommodate up to 300 paupers in rural areas. By 1868 there were fifty poorhouses in Scotland; strict regulations applied to admissions, which were overseen by a local Inspector of the Poor. The number of inmates peaked in 1906; after the introduction of the National Assistance Act of 1948, the Poor Law system was abolished throughout the United Kingdom.
## Legal and social background
### Medieval to Early Modern period
Poor relief had been available since medieval times with procedures attempting to deal with paupers dating back to the 15th century.{{sfnp|4LCWRRFA}} The first steps taken by the Scottish Parliament regarding arrangements for poor relief were enacted in a 1424 statute segregating vagrants into two categories: those fit enough to be able to work or those who were not considered able-bodied.{{sfnp|5VBWDC6H}} Legislation in Scotland concerning poor relief differed in a number of respects to that enacted in England and Wales. Parishes in England were required to supply work to be undertaken by paupers capable of employment whereas in Scotland this was not a stipulation.{{sfnp|UT83JBXT|236}} Vagrants refused poor relief in Scotland were entitled to appeal, unlike those in England and Wales.{{sfnp|UKX6VKK7}} A Scottish statute dating back to 1425 allowed sheriffs to apprehend beggars fit enough to work; if they did not find employment within forty days after their release they could be imprisoned.{{sfnp|ZDCY7JJU|12}} Ineffective statutes continued to be constituted: in 1427 magistrates failing to enforce previous legislation could be fined; beggars could be expelled from the area or jailed from 1449; and in further legislation passed during 1455 and 1477 beggars could be classified as thieves and executed.{{sfnp|ZDCY7JJU|12}}
The Scottish Poor Law Act of 1579 was implemented by Justices of the peace in rural districts and burgh magistrates in urban areas.{{sfnp|7NXK5XR3|341}} Poor and destitute people who were fit enough to work were legally barred from receiving any assistance so the monies raised by collections at churches were usually enough to cover the needs of the poor without having to utilise the provision of the compulsory rate that was allowed for in the Act.{{sfnp|7NXK5XR3|341}} The type of assistance given was generally outdoor relief,{{sfnp|7NXK5XR3|342}} providing clothing, food, goods or money. A later Act in 1672 transferred responsibility in rural areas to Ministers, church elders and landowners;{{sfnp|7NXK5XR3|341}} by 1752 greater influence was given to landowners, as the main ratepayers, to undertake decisions.{{sfnp|UKX6VKK7}} Up until the early 19th century the arrangements worked quite well in rural districts but as slum areas increased in towns of a more industrial nature the system began to fall short.{{sfnp|4LCWRRFA}}
The Act passed in 1672 required the thirty-two main burghs to build correction houses,{{sfnp|ZDCY7JJU|16}} in which vagabonds were to be detained and forced to work.{{sfnp|5VBWDC6H}} The Commissioners of Excise were empowered to issue fines of five hundred merks every three months against any burghs not completing the construction of correction houses within required time scales.{{sfnp|ZDCY7JJU|16}} But the threat of fines failed to encourage the building of these establishments, and doubt has been recorded by Poor Law Commissioners such as Sir George Nicholls as to whether any at all were built.{{sfnp|IRFVAM4P|85}} Alexander Dunlop, politician and lawyer, shared the opinion that no purpose-built correction houses were ever constructed.{{sfnp|6PYCM5NK|19}}\[a\]Discussing the 1672 Act, historian Rosalind Mitchison observed that it demonstrated “the continuation of the sixteenth-century \[Scottish\] practice of passing Acts which were totally ignored”.{{sfnp|BE5648LG|207}} Outdoor relief remained the main type of assistance, but poorhouses or their equivalent were sometimes funded by local merchants. In Aberdeen during the 1630s an institution had been established by wealthy cloth merchants;{{sfnp|Z2FNCXK8|64}} Canongate Charity Workhouse in Edinburgh was managed by several trade associations after being opened in 1761;{{sfnp|5VBWDC6H}} and Glasgow had the Town’s Hospital, opened in 1731.{{sfnp|5VBWDC6H}}
Towards the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, the system of poor relief in Scotland was considered to be superior to that of its counterpart in England by political economists like James Anderson.{{sfnp|ZDCY7JJU|200}} Writing in *The Bee*, a weekly publication mainly compiled by Anderson, in 1792 he reviewed the early volumes of the first Statistical Accounts of Scotland in which most parishes gave information on the poor; Anderson described the statutory system in England as “groaning under the influence of a system of laws”{{sfnp|VI9KQFHJ|118}} whereas he considered the poor in Scotland were “abundantly supplied with all that their wants require”.{{sfnp|VI9KQFHJ|118}} Just over twenty-five years later, in 1818, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland also praised the methods adopted when giving its opinion in the *Select Committee’s Report on the English Poor Laws*.{{sfnp|ZDCY7JJU|200}} Representatives of the English Commissioners spent time in Scotland prior to making recommendations which resulted in the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act and had declared the laws in Scotland and the way it was administered as “admirable”.{{sfnp|ZDCY7JJU|202}}{{sfnp|HUPR4ZEV|15}} Inadequacies in the Scottish arrangements began to garner more attention within a few years; in 1840 William Alison, a social reformer, published his thoughts on the administration of poor relief and its effects on disease.{{sfnp|ZDCY7JJU|206}} Around that time Scotland was spending about one shilling and three pence per head of population on poor relief; in France the figure was ten shillings,{{sfnp|ZDCY7JJU|206}} which was similar to the English costs in around 1832.{{sfnp|F2PX2A3Y|50}}
### Poor Law Act 1845
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Buchan_Combination_poorhouse.jpg)Buchan Combination poorhouse was constructed in 1867. It was taken over by the National Health Service in 1948 and operated as Maud Hospital until about 2008, providing care for the elderly.{{sfnp
2WL5H4WT
The 1707 Act of Union between Scotland and England had allowed Scotland to retain its existing legal system, so consequently the reforms to the Poor Law enacted in England and Wales in 1834 did not apply to Scotland. Nevertheless, the Scottish system of poor relief suffered from the same strains of demand exceeding supply as did the English. An additional factor in Scotland was the Disruption of 1843, which resulted in 40 per cent of the clergy of the Church of Scotland leaving to form the rival Free Church of Scotland.{{sfnp|XESZV3JN|search=The 1845 Scottish Poor Law Act}} The ecclesiastical upset followed a severe economic depression in Scotland between 1839 and 1842 and, as the poor relief system in the country was heavily dependent on the clergy, a Royal Commission was set up to address the impact this series of events had on the poor.{{sfnp|BCN2INRN|48-49}} The commission collated information received from almost every parish and its recommendations were published in 1844 forming the basis of the 1845 Poor Law Act.{{sfnp|BCN2INRN|49}}
Following the passage into law of the 1845 Poor Law Act,{{sfnp|6IZP3Q73}} parochial boards were established and given the power to allocate and raise local funding.{{sfnp|UKX6VKK7}} The parochial boards came under the jurisdiction of a Board of Supervision based in Edinburgh. Sir John McNeill was Chairman of the committee made up of the Lord Provosts from Edinburgh and Glasgow, together with sheriffs representing Perth, Renfrew and Ross and Cromarty.{{sfnp|XLMFPEZL|8}} The Solicitor General and three crown appointees were also included.{{sfnp|5VBWDC6H}} The central board acted in an advisory capacity to the 880 parishes{{sfnp|BCN2INRN|49}} but its approval was required for any alterations to established poorhouses and plans for any new ones also had to be approved.{{sfnp|UT83JBXT|256}} The new law allowed parishes to combine to operate poorhouses jointly, the so-called combination poorhouses. About three-quarters of Scotland’s seventy or so poorhouses were run as combinations, although the majority of paupers continued to be in receipt of outdoor relief. By the 1890s there was accommodation for more than 15,000 paupers in Scottish poorhouses, but the average occupancy rate barely exceeded half of that.{{sfnp|XESZV3JN|search=The 1845 Scottish Poor Law Act}}
## Early Victorian poorhouses
Plan for Aberdeen Poorhouse drawn up by the architects Mackenzie & Matthews in 1847
Wikimedia Commons
The reforms incorporated into the 1845 Poor Law in Scotland were not as extreme as those in the earlier English legislation of 1834 and changes were only slowly enacted.{{sfnp|BCN2INRN|54}} Three years after the inception of the Board of Supervision its annual report indicated the approval of proposals to expand the existing Edinburgh poorhouse and Town’s Hospital, the Glasgow workhouse that was established in 1731.{{sfnp|5VBWDC6H}}{{sfnp|AE7NQ5JH|vii}} A design guideline for the building of new poorhouses was drawn up in 1847 and the construction of eight new poorhouses was endorsed in 1848.{{sfnp|5VBWDC6H}} The architectural firm of Mackenzie & Matthews had drawn up plans for a proposed poorhouse to serve the joint parishes of St Nicholas and Old Machar in Aberdeen, the city in which their practice was primarily based,{{sfnp|QHBM9GP4}} and with only slight modifications formed the basis of the ideal.\[29\] It is likely the design was inspired by the work of Scott and Moffatt, who played a role in the design of later English workhouses, rather than those of Sampson Kempthorne.{{sfnp|9WEVIN4V|199}} The designs for facilities in cities were able to house up to 400 occupants with a smaller scale version for up to 300 inmates for rural poorhouses.{{sfnp|9WEVIN4V|202}}
Decisions concerning poor relief remained predominantly with individual parishes at local levels, and Inspectors of the Poor were appointed locally to assess requests for relief.{{sfnp|5VBWDC6H}} In contrast to the regulations in England and Wales the establishment of poorhouses was optional, and outdoor relief could still be provided, which remained the preferred choice of most parishes.{{sfnp|5VBWDC6H}} The model poorhouse design reflected this difference as rooms near the entrance were allocated for the distribution of clothing and food to those in need of outdoor relief.{{sfnp|9WEVIN4V|202}} Neither did Scottish poorhouses rely on the earnings of inmates to contribute towards their expenditure, as was the case in England.{{sfnp|DR426S4N|7}} The number of poorhouses constructed increased significantly during the period from 1850 when there were twenty-one poorhouses; this number had swelled to fifty by 1868.{{sfnp|BCN2INRN|53}} The majority of these were in or around Glasgow and Edinburgh.{{sfnp|CQKDS45M|437}} The Board required consistency in the management and operation of poorhouses, and provided a framework to be adhered to.{{sfnp|AE7NQ5JH|viii}}
### Admission and discharge
Strict regulations were enforced before paupers were admitted to the poorhouse, and written permission had to be produced to the gatekeeper.{{sfnp|Y7WSV7I9|247}} Generally signed by the local Inspector of the Poor, the authorisation had to be dated no more than three days earlier unless the holder stayed more than five miles from the poorhouse, in which case the limit was extended to six days.{{sfnp|Y7WSV7I9|248}} All new admissions were segregated into a probationary area until they had been examined and declared free from diseases affecting the mind and body by a medical officer.{{sfnp|Y7WSV7I9|248}} They would be thoroughly searched and their clothing removed before they were bathed and supplied with a standard-issue uniform.{{sfnp|Y7WSV7I9|248}} Their own clothing was steam cleaned and held in storage until they left.{{sfnp|5VBWDC6H}} If a pauper wished to leave they could do so by giving the House Governor twenty-four hours notice;{{sfnp|UT83JBXT|256}} the simplicity of this led to the discharge system often being exploited but official authorisation was again required before re-admittance was permitted.{{sfnp|UT83JBXT|257}}
Officially there were five groupings applied to inmates: children less than two years of age; girls under fifteen years old; boys under fifteen years old; male adults over fifteen years old; and female adults over fifteen years old.{{sfnp|BDA583EL}} Most children, around 80–90 per cent, who may have required long-term care were more often fostered, or boarded out as it was known at the time.{{sfnp|KFGBPBPY|198}} The rooms to the right of the entrance block provided the facilities for the paupers to be searched, bathed and held in a sequential course through the building, an arrangement that when compared to the buildings in England was “more sophisticated and functionally appropriate”.{{sfnp|9WEVIN4V|202}}
## Later developments and abolition
The Board of Supervision continued to have overall responsibility for the administration of the Poor Law in Scotland until 1894, when it was replaced by the Local Government Board under the terms of the Local Government (Scotland) Act that year.{{sfnp|G9UWGG6L|103}} In 1919 the newly formed Scottish Board of Health assumed responsibility for administering poor relief, mirroring a similar move in England and Wales that same year, where the Ministry of Health took over.{{sfnp|XESZV3JN|search=Ministry of Health}}
The number of those accommodated in poorhouses reached its peak in 1906, but represented less than 14 per cent of those in receipt of poor relief, compared with 37 per cent in England.{{sfnp|GACGGB2N|131}} Nevertheless, by 1938 more was being spent on administering the Poor Law in real terms than had been spent in 1890. The inter-war depression was felt much more keenly by the working-class in Scotland than in England, and the bitterness it engendered led directly to the introduction of the National Assistance Act of 1948, which finally abolished the last vestiges of the Poor Law system across the entire United Kingdom.{{sfnp|XLMFPEZL|1-6}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Discussing the 1672 Act, historian Rosalind Mitchison observed that it demonstrated “the continuation of the sixteenth-century \[Scottish\] practice of passing Acts which were totally ignored”.{{sfnp|BE5648LG|207}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3513
**Categories:** Workhouse
---
### [Town's Hospital](https://engole.info/towns-hospital/)
**Published:** June 23, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Town%27s_Hospital%2C_Glasgow.jpg[/pimage]Poorhouse in Glasgow, Scotland, founded in 1731. It occupied a site at the Old Green on Great Clyde Street, at the junction of present-day Ropework Lane.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Town%27s_Hospital%2C_Glasgow.jpg)Engraving from the 1830s
Wikimedia Commons
The Town’s Hospital was a [poorhouse](https://engole.info/scottish-poorhouse/) in Glasgow, Scotland, founded in 1731.{{sfnp|3I7BUMUM|loc=8048}} It occupied a site at the Old Green on Great Clyde Street, at the junction of present-day Ropework Lane. The hospital was managed by the Lord Provost and forty-eight directors, twelve of whom were elected by the town council. Of the remainder, twelve represented the Church of Scotland’s General Session, twelve the merchant’s guild and twelve the producer’s guild. A year after its opening the Town’s Hospital accommodated sixty-one old people and ninety children.{{sfnp|JBPLZH5M}}
The hospital closed in 1844, although it was reopened briefly in 1848 to house the victims of a cholera outbreak. It was demolished and a warehouse built on the site;{{sfnp|4ELC5AHX}} its function as a home for the destitute poor of the parish was taken over by the Glasgow City Poorhouse, sometimes also known as the Town’s Hospital. Opened in 1845, it occupied premises formerly known as the Glasgow Lunatic Asylum.{{sfnp|JBPLZH5M}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2622
**Categories:** Workhouse
---
### [John Frederick Bateman](https://engole.info/john-frederick-bateman/)
**Published:** November 25, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/JFBateman.png[/pimage] English civil engineer whose work formed the basis of the modern United Kingdom water supply industry.
**Content:**
Bateman in 1859
Wikimedia Commons
John Frederick La Trobe Bateman FRSE FRS MICE FRGS FGS FSA (30 May 1810 – 10 June 1889) was an English civil engineer whose work formed the basis of the modern United Kingdom water supply industry.{{sfnp|YCR9YHQP}} For more than fifty years from 1835 he designed and constructed reservoirs and waterworks.
Bateman’s largest project was the Longdendale Chain system, which has supplied Manchester with much of its water since the 19th century. The construction of what was in its day the largest chain of reservoirs in the world began in 1848 and was completed in 1877. Bateman became “the greatest dam-builder of his generation”,{{sfnp|YJ976FNI|15}} and was President of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1878 and 1879.{{sfnp|UH9BDYSG}}
Bateman also worked on water supply systems for Glasgow, Belfast, Bolton, Chester, Dublin, Newcastle upon Tyne, Oldham, Perth, Stockport and Wolverhampton, amongst many others. He also carried out projects abroad, including the design and construction of a drainage and water supply system for Buenos Aires, and water supply schemes for Naples, Constantinople and Colombo.{{sfnp|YCR9YHQP}}
In 1883 Bateman assumed his mother’s family surname of La Trobe, by royal licence, becoming John Frederic La Trobe Bateman.{{sfnp|YCR9YHQP}}
## Personal life
John Bateman was born on 30 May 1810 at Lower Wyke, a Moravian Church settlement near Bradford. He was the eldest son of John Bateman, “an unsuccessful inventor”, and his wife Mary Agnes, daughter of Benjamin La Trobe, a member of the Moravian Church at Fairfield, near Ashton under Lyne. He spent his early years at Moravian settlement and was educated at the Moravian schools in Fairfield and Ockbrook before being apprenticed to a surveyor and mining engineer in Oldham in 1825.{{sfnp|YCR9YHQP}}
On 1 September 1841 he married Anne, only daughter of Sir William Fairbairn, and they had three sons and four daughters. In 1883 he assumed by royal licence the prefix, surname, and arms of La Trobe, in compliment to his grandfather. Bateman died on 10 June 1889 at his home, Moor Park in Farnham, an estate he bought in 1859.
## Career
Bateman started his civil engineering business in 1833, and directed it alone until between 1881 and 1885 when he worked in partnership with George Hill. In 1888 he took his son-in-law, Richard Clere Parsons, and his son, Lee La Trobe Bateman, into partnership.{{sfnp|YCR9YHQP}}
Bateman was elected a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers on 23 June 1840 and was its president in 1878 and 1879. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on 7 June 1860 and was a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Geographical Society, the Geological Society, the Society of Arts, and the Royal Institution.
### Early works
In 1834 Bateman investigated the causes of flooding on the River Medlock, which led to a study of hydraulic engineering. In 1835, in association with Sir William Fairbairn, he laid out the reservoirs on the River Bann in Ireland. From that time he was almost continually employed in the construction of reservoirs and waterworks.
In all his undertakings he advocated soft water in preference to hard, and favoured gravitation schemes where they were practicable to avoid the necessity of pumping. He devoted much attention to methods of measuring rainfall, accumulated a quantity of statistics on the subject, and wrote several papers describing his observations.
### Manchester water supply
The greatest waterworks project undertaken by Bateman was that connected with supplying water to Manchester and Salford from a chain of reservoirs in Longdendale. He was consulted about such a scheme in 1844 and by 1846 had devised a project for obtaining water from the Pennine hills. Work commenced in 1848 and was not finished until spring 1877. The Longdendale Chain scheme was designed to supply a population less than half that of Manchester in 1882, and additional sources of supply had to be found. At Bateman’s suggestion the corporation decided to extract water from Thirlmere in the Lake District. A bill introduced into parliament in 1878 was rejected, but passed the following year. Bateman superintended the works, assisted by George Hill. In 1884 Bateman published a *History and Description of the Manchester Waterworks*.
### Loch Katrine and Milngavie waterworks
In 1852 Bateman was consulted by Glasgow Council in regard to its water supply. In 1854–1885, on Bateman’s advice, a bill was obtained to supply water to Glasgow from Loch Katrine. Work commenced in spring 1856 and was completed by March 1860. The works extend over {{convert|34|mi}}, and were described by James M. Gale as worthy to “bear comparison with the most extensive aqueducts in the world, not excluding those of ancient Rome”.{{sfnp|4WW34UKA}}
### Other works
In 1855 he wrote a paper for the British Association, “On the present state of our Knowledge on the Supply of Water to Towns”, explaining the nature of the problem, outlining previous measures, enumerating sources from which towns could be supplied, and discussing their merits. In 1865 he published a pamphlet *On the Supply of Water to London from the Sources of the River Severn*, a scheme he designed and surveyed at his own expense. A royal commission in 1868 reported in favour of the project, a gravitation scheme to convey 230 million gallons (1.05 billion litres) of water a day to the city.
Bateman was connected with harbour and dock trusts throughout the British Isles, including the Clyde Navigation Trust, for which he was consulting engineer, and the Shannon Inundation Inquiry in 1863, on which he was employed by government.{{sfnp|YCR9YHQP}}
In addition to undertakings at home Bateman carried out several works abroad. In 1869 in a pamphlet *Channel Railway*, written with Julian John Révy, he proposed to construct a submarine railway between France and England in a cast-iron tube. In the same year he represented the Royal Society at the opening of the Suez Canal, and wrote a report of his visit, which was read to the society on 6 January 1870, and published in its *Proceedings*. In late 1870 he visited Buenos Aires at the request of the Argentine government, for the purpose of laying out harbour works for that city. His plans were not adopted, but he was employed to design and carry out drainage and water supply works for the city.{{sfnp|YCR9YHQP}}
In 1874 he prepared water supply schemes for Naples and Constantinople, and was engineer for reclamation schemes in Spain and Majorca. Crown agents in the colonies employed him in Ceylon to design works to supply Colombo with water.{{sfnp|YCR9YHQP}}
## Memorials
On 15 September 2000, the leader of the Metropolitan Borough of Tameside unveiled a blue plaque on the deepest air shaft of the Mottram Tunnel, a {{convert|3100|yd|adj=on}} long pipeline connecting the valleys of the Etherow and the Tame.{{sfnp|YJ976FNI|24}} The plaque is inscribed:
John Frederick La Trobe Bateman
(1810–1889)
Pioneer – Water Engineer extraordinaire
Brought water to the taps of Tameside and Manchester by constructing the six mile long chain of Longendale Reservoirs from 1848.
At the time these became the largest reservoirs constructed in the world and Europe’s first major conservation scheme.
Completed in 1877, these waters have never run dry.
This plaque is located on the deepest air shaft over Mottram Tunnel, measured at some 200 ft below.{{sfnp|YJ976FNI|127}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 11562
**Categories:** Civil engineer
---
### [Newes from Scotland](https://engole.info/newes-from-scotland/)
**Published:** September 25, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/sws-logo-5.jpg[/pimage]1591 pamphlet describing the North Berwick witch trials in Scotland, detailing the confessions given by the accused witches before King James VI.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/sws-logo-5.jpg)Woodcut included in the pamphlet, showing some of the scenes described in the text
Survey of Scottish Witchcraft
*Newes from Scotland* is a pamphlet describing the Scottish [North Berwick witch trials](https://engole.info/north-berwick-witch-trials/), detailing the confessions given by the accused witches before King James VI. Printed in London in 1591, at the time the trials were taking place, it was probably written by James Carmichael, the minister of Haddington, who interrogated some of the accused witches and later guided King James in writing his book *Daemonologie*. The original title of the pamphlet was *Newes from Scotland, declaring the damnable life and death of Doctor Fian, a notable sorcerer who was burned at Edenbrough in Ianuary last*. The source of virtually the only diagrams available illustrating witchcraft in Scotland from that time, it is the first Scottish or English printed copy purely dedicated to witchcraft in Scotland and provided the first descriptions of the [*osculum infame*](https://engole.info/osculum-infame/), also known as the kiss of shame or the obscene kiss, to the English population.
Twenty-first century academics have described the *Newes* as the most propagandistic of the narratives generated concerning the group of trials at North Berwick. A modern 1924 edition of *Daemonologie* contained a reproduction of the pamphlet.
## Contents
### Narrative
The pamphlet provides details of the initial events leading up to the trials together with how each of the suspected witches were discovered and captured.
The narrative begins with an account of circumstances involving [Geillis Duncan](https://engole.info/geillis-duncan-witch/). The young maidservant was employed by David Seton,\[a\]Some sources use an alternate spelling of his surname, Seaton. a magistrate in Tranent, who became suspicious about her nightly absences and her claims she was able to heal people. He subjected her to torture using pilliwinks\[b\]Pilliwinkes or thumbikins are similar to thumbscrews.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|312}} and by twisting and tightening some rope round her head. Only after her tormentors claimed to have found the Devil’s mark on her did she finally confess to being a witch; she was then incarcerated and proceeded to name many others involved in witchcraft. These included [Agnes Sampson](https://engole.info/agnes-sampson/), Doctor [John Fian](https://engole.info/john-fian/) (alias John Cunningham),\[c\]Doctor was the term used for a schoolmaster.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|144}} [Barbara Napier](https://engole.info/barbara-napier-witch/) and [Euphame MacCalzean](https://engole.info/euphame-maccalzean/), all of whom were subsequently arrested.
MacCalzean was reputed to have caused the death of her father-in-law, John Moscorp. Sampson’s confession includes details of two hundred witches gathering to meet the Devil with the group then all taking to the sea in individual sieves.\[d\]This type of unusual conveyance as a means of getting from one point to another is not uncommon in continental witchcraft accounts.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|314}} Traversing water in a sieve appears to emanate from folklore as it resembles impossible task tales.{{sfnp|877W99Z3|197}} She recounted tales of dancing, drinking, merriment and the Devil insisting they kiss his buttocks.\[e\]This is *osculum infame*, a sign of respect accorded to the Devil; Sampson’s early court documents show she stated “He \[the Devil\] lifted up his gown and everyone kissed his arse”{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|315, 138}}
It chronicles events leading to the eventual apprehension of Dr. John Fian, who was declared a notable sorcerer. Allegedly the head of the coven, during his examination Fian confessed to be the register of the witches under the service of Satan; later, after he had been returned to his cell, he recanted his pact with Satan and swore to live an honourable Christian life. The following morning Fian claimed Satan visited him during the night to persuade him to uphold his original pact but Fian stated that he renounced Satan to his face. That evening he managed to steal a key to his cell from one of the guards and escaped during the night. He was soon recaptured and again tortured to obtain a fresh testimony as he had denied all his previous confessions. Implements described as used during his interrogation included the boot, which crushed his feet and lower legs, turkas – a type of pincer – and needles to forcibly extract his nails.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|309-324}}
### Illustrations
The pamphlet includes woodcuts that are almost the only known illustrations of Scottish witchcraft from that period.{{sfnp|65LCLHEU}} The number of images displayed in early editions varies; some feature three woodcuts while others include four. The location on pages is also inconsistent.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|10}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Daemonologie2.jpg)
[](#)
[ ](#)
Dr. Fian (top) drawing magic circles
[ ](#)
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Newes-from-Scotland1.jpg)
[](#)
[ ](#)
The woodcut is a printers stock piece, also used in an earlier 1579 pamphlet, *A Brief Treatise*, by Richard Galis.
[ ](#)
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Dr._Fian_showing_pentinence_for_his_wicked_life_the_morning_before_his_escape-copy.jpg)
[](#)
[ ](#)
Dr. Fian showing penitence for his wicked life the morning before his escape
[ ](#)
Two of the four images used were from the printer’s stock.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|119}} The woodcut generally assumed to depict four of the witches kneeling before the King first appeared in an English witchcraft pamphlet written by Richard Galis in 1579.{{sfnp|SETU5BF5|53}}\[f\]Entitled *A Brief Treatise*, the illustration is of the four women Galis alleged were witches. Three men feature in the image: Galis and a seated rich trader together with a medical student who is brandishing a stick above the women’s heads.{{sfnp|SETU5BF5|53}} The other stock image used – depicting a jailor, his prisoner and a woman – has a tentative relevance to part of the text about Fian’s incarceration.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|119}}
## Editions
The first known manuscripts bear the title *Newes from Scotland, declaring the damnable life and death of doctor Fian*. Three different versions of the original exist; a total of six copies of these are known to survive.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|8-9}} It was later reproduced several times in a variety of publications, including *[The Gentleman’s Magazine](https://engole.info/the-gentlemans-magazine/)* in 1779 and *Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland* by Robert Pitcairn in 1833.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|9-10}} The 1924 edition of *Daemonologie* includes a copy of it.{{sfnp|JUN52PBX}}
All the manuscripts are unsigned, but some versions include a preface directed at the reader, which was probably written by the publisher.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|291, 297}} James Carmichael, the minister of Haddington, is likely the author of the narrative.{{sfnp|65LCLHEU}} His name was first suggested by Sir James Melville in the early seventeenth-century;{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|292}} Carmichael was involved in the examination of some of the accused witches, later guiding King James VI in writing his book *Daemonologie.*{{sfnp|65LCLHEU}} Although most academics and historians of witchcraft cite Carmichael as the most likely candidate to be responsible for penning the narrative and supplying the publisher with copies of the depositions, authors of his biographies do not mention it.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|293}}
The title page includes the phrase “Published according to the Scottish copy” but no earlier editions survive; according to scholars Lawrence Normand and Gareth Roberts it is unlikely that there was a Scottish version and the words are a reference to Carmichael supplying the original.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|294}} The spelling used throughout the pamphlet was Anglicised.{{sfnp|GPAZ2W6M|31}}
## Modern interpretations
Originally produced in late 1591, *Newes from Scotland* was the earliest Scottish or English printed document dedicated to exclusively covering witchcraft in Scotland.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|290}} Tailored specifically for an English audience,{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|37}} it provided the first descriptions of the *[osculum infame](https://engole.info/osculum-infame/)*, also known as the *kiss of shame* or the *obscene kiss*, to the English population.{{sfnp|F3MJECHY|40}}
Historians Lizanne Henderson and Edward Cowan describe the pamphlet as including “a good dose of titillation and gruesome detail”;{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|123}} Normand and Roberts reach a similar observation finding it “far more colourful, sensational and violent than sixteenth-century English pamphlets printed after the apprehension and arraignment of witches.”{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|290}} Twenty-first-century academics such as Peter G. Maxwell-Stuart define the pamphlet as propaganda;{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|149}} it sought to enhance the King’s blossoming status as a detector of witchcraft and endorse his belief he was a “godly king”.{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|123}} A myriad of literature was produced about the North Berwick witch trials, but Normand and Roberts classify *Newes from Scotland* as the “most propagandistic.”{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|290}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Some sources use an alternate spelling of his surname, Seaton. b Pilliwinkes or thumbikins are similar to thumbscrews.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|312}} c Doctor was the term used for a schoolmaster.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|144}} d This type of unusual conveyance as a means of getting from one point to another is not uncommon in continental witchcraft accounts.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|314}} Traversing water in a sieve appears to emanate from folklore as it resembles impossible task tales.{{sfnp|877W99Z3|197}} e This is *osculum infame*, a sign of respect accorded to the Devil; Sampson’s early court documents show she stated “He \[the Devil\] lifted up his gown and everyone kissed his arse”{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|315, 138}} f Entitled *A Brief Treatise*, the illustration is of the four women Galis alleged were witches. Three men feature in the image: Galis and a seated rich trader together with a medical student who is brandishing a stick above the women’s heads.{{sfnp|SETU5BF5|53}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 6395
**Categories:** Pamphlet, Scottish, Witchcraft
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Cistercian ware](https://engole.info/cistercian-ware/)
**Published:** January 11, 2020
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Ceramic_vessel%3B_wrenthorpe_ware_%28FindID_455695%29.jpg[/pimage]Type of earthenware pottery manufactured in England in the 16th and 17th centuries.
**Content:**
Pottery from Wrenthorpe found at Ackworth in West Yorkshire and dated to between 1645 and 1646.
Wikimedia Commons
Cistercian ware is a type of earthenware pottery manufactured in England in the 16th and 17th centuries. Archaeologists had found it at major Cistercian abbeys in Yorkshire and assumed that it belonged to the period before the abbeys were dissolved (1540), but the [Wrenthorpe potters](https://engole.info/potovens-pottery/) were producing Cistercian ware well into the 17th century.{{sfnp|FKXKRZQP}}
Cistercian-ware pots have a reddish-coloured fabric, covered inside and out with an almost black lead-based glaze.{{sfnp|FKXKRZQP}}{{sfnp|XZ88CS7E}} The potters at Wrenthorpe made Cistercian-ware vessels including cups, cisterns and bowls with an internal yellow glaze. Evidence suggests that the wares were fired in saggars in multi-flued kilns. Some early Cistercian wares were decorated with white pipeclay motifs. Large numbers of unique forms from small rounded cups with flared rims, tall cups and tygs,\[a\]A tyg is a cup with more than one handle. some very large, were made.{{sfnp|XZ88CS7E}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a A tyg is a cup with more than one handle.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22495
**Categories:** Pottery, Yorkshire
---
### [Atherton Urban District](https://engole.info/atherton-urban-district/)
**Published:** August 10, 2019
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** Atherton Urban District was from 1894 to 1974 a local government district in Lancashire, England.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Atherton_Town_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1548868.jpg)Atherton Town Hall
Wikimedia Commons
Atherton Urban District was from 1894 to 1974 a local government district in Lancashire, England. In 1974 the [urban district](https://engole.info/urban-district/) was abolished and its former area was transferred to the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan in Greater Manchester.
The [vill](https://engole.info/vill/) or [township](https://engole.info/township/) of Atherton historically lay in the large [ecclesiastical parish](https://engole.info/ancient-parish/) of Leigh and became a constituent member of [Leigh Poor Law Union](https://engole.info/leigh-poor-law-union/) when it was created in 1837.{{sfnp|Y3V43KKY}} Atherton was a local government district in Lancashire from 1863 to 1974.
## History
In 1863 Atherton Local Government District was created when the township adopted the Local Government Act 1858. A local board\[a\] Local boards were set up to improve the sanitary condition of towns in England and Wales by placing responsibility for the supply of water, sewerage, drainage and so on under a single body. was formed to govern the town. The Local Government Act 1894 added part of the township to Leigh Urban District and reconstituted the rest of the township as an urban district, with Atherton Urban District Council replacing the local board.{{sfnp|Y3V43KKY}} The urban district council consisted of fifteen members, elected from five wards – Central, North, East, South, and West.{{sfnp|VBUQCPY6|435-439}}{{sfnp|BDWBV89G}} In 1974 Atherton Urban District was abolished by the Local Government Act 1972 and its former area transferred to Greater Manchester to form part of the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan.
## Arms
Atherton Urban District Council was granted a coat of arms on 29 May 1951. Two black diamonds on the shield reference coal mining; the lion’s leg is taken from the arms of the Powys family, who were lords of the manor after the second Lord Lilford married the [Atherton heiress](https://engole.info/atherton-hall/) in 1797. A shuttle and a millrind represent the town’s cotton and engineering industries. The sparrowhawk is from the arms of the Atherton family. Its motto, *CONSILIO ET PRUDENTIA* means by counsel and by wisdom.{{sfnp|B5TXMRHA}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Local boards were set up to improve the sanitary condition of towns in England and Wales by placing responsibility for the supply of water, sewerage, drainage and so on under a single body.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22049
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Lancashire
---
### [Through a Window](https://engole.info/through-a-window/)
**Published:** May 21, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/H_G_Wells_pre_1922.jpg[/pimage]Short story by H. G. Wells, first published in 1894, a precursor to the sub-genre of thriller in which a crippled or bed-ridden hero, after observing the world through a window, is suddenly confronted by a killer.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/H_G_Wells_pre_1922.jpg)H. G. Wells (1866–1946)
Wikimedia Commons
“Through a Window” is a short story written by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946), originally published under the title “At a Window” in the 25 August 1894 issue of [*Black & White*](https://engole.info/black-white-magazine/) magazine.{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|448}} The story was included in [*The Stolen Bacillus and Others Incidents*](https://engole.info/the-stolen-bacillus-and-other-incidents/) (1895), and is told as a third-person narrative.
As the story begins, Bailey is being laid down on a couch in his study, his legs set like a “double-barrelled mummy” in white wrappings. The window of his room looks out onto a river, the view of which Bailey becomes increasingly thankful for during his convalescence. Traffic is moving up and down all day, and after a few days Bailey begins to recognise some of the craft, and even to learn something of the habits of their crews. One particular launch passes in front of Bailey’s window four or five times a day, crewed by two “Oriental attendants”.
One morning, Bailey sees one of the Orientals running through the trees at a distant bend in the river, being chased by a group of men. To escape them, the Lascar\[a\]Lascar is an archaic name for an oriental – originally Indian – sailor.{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|448}} jumps into the water and swims across to Bailey’s side of the river. Bailey’s landlady comes in and tells him that the man is running amok stabbing people with his krees, a curved blade. Suddenly the Lascar appears on the balcony outside Bailey’s window, with the krees gripped between his teeth. A shot rings out and the Lascar collapses on top of Bailey’s legs, apparently dead. But then he raises himself and moves closer to what he knows must be his last victim. Bailey smashes a medicine bottle into the Lascar’s face, and the danger is passed.
## Commentary
In “Through a Window” Wells portrays the original bed-ridden or crippled hero confined to watching the world through a window, before being confronted by a threat against which he has little defence, a sub-genre perhaps best represented today by Alfred Hitchcock’s film *Rear Window* (1954), starring James Stewart. Wells adds the final twist, common in films today, a malefactor apparently rendered harmless suddenly once again springing to life and exhibiting lethal aggression.{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|XXIV}}
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Lascar is an archaic name for an oriental – originally Indian – sailor.{{sfnp|5CFE8B3N|448}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 20025
## External links
- [Full text of “Through a Window”](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12750/12750-h/12750-h.htm#link2H_4_0006) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** H. G. Wells, Short story
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Astley and Tyldesley Collieries](https://engole.info/astley-and-tyldesley-collieries/)
**Published:** June 8, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/AT-3.jpg[/pimage]Colliery company formed in 1900, became part of Manchester Collieries in 1929, and some of its collieries were nationalised in 1947.
**Content:**
The Astley and Tyldesley Collieries Company was formed in 1900. The company owned Gin Pit, St George’s and Nook Collieries on the [Lancashire Coalfield](https://engole.info/lancashire-and-cheshire-coalfield/) in [Astley](https://engole.info/astley/ "Astley") and [Tyldesley](https://engole.info/tyldesley/), which were then in the historic county of Lancashire, England. The deep collieries were sunk to the south of the [Tyldesley Loopline](https://engole.info/tyldesley-loopline/) after it was completed in 1864{{sfnp|C4YA66RP}}{{sfnp|ZZKJDYGW}} The company built a mineral line to link its pits to the Bridgewater Canal at Marsland Green. The company became part of [Manchester Collieries](https://engole.info/manchester-collieries/) in 1929, and some of its collieries were nationalised in 1947.
## Geology
The company’s collieries were on a part of the [Manchester Coalfield](https://engole.info/manchester-coalfield/) whose coal seams were laid down in the Carboniferous period, and where some easily accessible seams were worked on a small scale before the Industrial Revolution, and extensively from the mid-19th century until the middle of the 20th century. The Coal Measures lie above a bed of Millstone Grit and are interspersed with sandstones, mudstones, shales, and fireclays.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|12}} The most productive seams are in the lower two-thirds of the Middle Coal Measures where coal is mined from seams between the Worsley Four Foot and Arley mines.\[a\]In this part of Lancashire a coal seam is referred to as a mine and the coal mine as a colliery or pit. The coal measures generally dip towards the south and west. Numerous small faults affect the coalfield.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|7}}
## History
In the 1840s, John Darlington leased the mineral rights of land belonging to [Astley Hall](https://engole.info/damhouse/) and sank a pit, Astley Colliery, which subsequently became the site of [Gin Pit Colliery](https://engole.info/gin-pit-colliery/).{{sfnp|KLZ5HVNI|285}} It was near other old shafts on Meanley’s Farm. Coal had been mined in Astley before this date, on an old enclosure map North Lane was titled the “Coal Road” and later was known as “North Coal Pit Lane”.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|79}}
In 1847 Darlington’s company, ”Astley and Bedford Collieries”, had offices at Bedford Lodge in Bedford, Leigh.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|122}} Gin Pit’s name suggests that it, or its predecessor, had horse driven winding gear on the site of even older coal workings.{{sfnp|TL3F32XX}} The colliery site was isolated from roads and so Darlington built a narrow gauge tramway worked by horses to transport coal from his pit to a basin on the Bridgewater Canal at Marsland Green. In 1851 Darlington attempted to sell his colliery, tramroad, cranes and tipplers on the canal to the Bridgewater Trustees but the operation was eventually sold to Samuel Jackson, a salt merchant and owner of Bedford Colliery or Milner’s Pit which he had bought from W. E. Milner around the same time.{{sfnp|KLZ5HVNI|285}} Jackson’s lease was for coal from the Worsley Four Foot mine and he was required to sink two shafts {{convert|14|ft}} in diameter with no workings under Astley Hall.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|79}}
A lease from 1857 committed the company to paying the lessors of Astley Hall a minimum annual rent of £1,000 and royalties for the Bin mine of £70 “per foot thick per Cheshire acre”, £95 for the Crombouke, £70 for the Brassey, and £95 for the Six Foot. The lease expired in 1896. By the time the Astley Hall estate was sold in 1889, Astley and Tyldesley Collieries had paid £90,526 for these mines and the Worsley Four Foot mine. The deeper mines, the Seven Feet and the Trencherbone were not included in the 1857 lease.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|123}} These coal seams produced steam coal, household coal and coal for Tyldesley’s gasworks.{{sfnp|JPQW393H|333}} About 500 tons of coal per day was raised from the older pits.{{sfnp|JPQW393H|197}} Bedford Colliery closed in 1864, and the company concentrated its operations closer to Gin Pit.
## Deep pits
The London and North Western Railway (LNWR) opened a line from Eccles to Wigan via Tyldesley and the Tyldesley Loopline via Leigh to Kenyon Junction in 1864, providing the impetus for the rapid exploitation of coal reserves to the south of the railway line. Jackson’s Astley and Tyldesley Coal and Salt Company sank two shafts at [St George’s Colliery](https://engole.info/st-georges-colliery/), commonly known as “Back o’ t’ Church”, to the south of Tyldesley Station. In 1866, [Nook Colliery](https://engole.info/nook-colliery/) No 1 Pit, south of Darlington’s original Gin Pit was sunk. The company also sank a pit at Cross Hillock south of the Leigh to Manchester road in near Higher Green Lane but flooding caused it to close by 1887. The deep collieries replaced the older pits in the area. A new shaft was sunk at Gin Pit in 1872 and a second shaft a year later at Nook. St George’s No 3 pit was sunk in 1883 and by 1899 Nook No 3 was in operation.{{sfnp|KLZ5HVNI|285}}
In about 1888 it was discovered that miners employed by George Green’s [Tyldesley Coal Company](https://engole.info/tyldesley-coal-company/) had exceeded the boundaries of the company’s lease and extracted coal south of Well Street which belonged to Astley and Tyldesley Collieries. Lengthy litigation followed resulting in a £3,000 fine for Green’s company.{{sfnp|JPQW393H|148}}
The company was a major employer in the area. In 1896 Nook Pit employed 480 men below ground and 125 workers on the surface. Household and manufacturing coal was produced from the Binn and Crombouke mines. Gin Pit was smaller, employing 240 underground workers and 55 on the surface. Gas coal, household and steam coal was extracted from the Crombouke and Six Foot mines. St Georges Colliery employed 629 underground workers and 137 surface workers producing gas coal, household and steam coal from the Brassey, Crombouke, Six Feet, Seven Feet and Trencherbone mines.{{sfnp|8YELJ4EQ}} The surface workers included [pit brow women](https://engole.info/pit-brow-women/ "Pit Brow Women") who sorted coal on the screens at the ”pit brow”.
In 1900 the company became the Astley and Tyldesley Collieries Company, and in 1914, Nook No 4 Pit was sunk. Nook became the largest colliery on the Manchester Coalfield.{{sfnp|DC89GX5F|55}} Jackson’s Sidings were built by the LNWR and extended to Gin and Nook Pits and, on the early tramroad, a locomotive replaced the horses. The company built its own standard gauge mineral railway which exchanged traffic with the LNWR at Jackson’s Sidings southwest of Tyldesley Station.{{sfnp|KLZ5HVNI|288}}
Coal was wound to the surface at St George’s Colliery, Nook and Gin Pit. Coal for Tyldesley was sold from the landsale yard at St George’s and there were smaller yards at Nook and Gin Pit but considerable quantities of coal were sent elsewhere by rail from Jackson’s Sidings and by barge from Marsland Green on the Bridgewater Canal to Partington on the Manchester Ship Canal. Nook Colliery had a brickworks and the company had sheds and facilities for servicing its industrial locomotives at Gin Pit.{{sfnp|KLZ5HVNI|289}} Gin Pit had a sawmill and supplied pit props to neighbouring collieries.{{sfnp|JPQW393H|333}}
As a result of difficult economic conditions, Astley and Tyldesley Collieries merged with other local colliery companies in 1929, becoming part of Manchester Collieries, whose Western Division consisted of John Speakman’s [Bedford Colliery](https://engole.info/bedford-colliery/), Fletcher, Burrows and Company of Atherton and Astley and Tyldesley Collieries.{{sfnp|C4YA66RP}}{{sfnp|KLZ5HVNI|288}}
On nationalisation in 1947 the coal pits belonging to Manchester Collieries became part of the No 1 Manchester Area of the National Coal Board’s (NCB) North Western Division. In 1961, the area became the NCB’s East Lancashire Area.{{sfnp|KLZ5HVNI|289}} Gin Pit closed in 1955 and Nook Pit closed in August 1965.{{sfnp|JPQW393H|333}}
## Locomotives
The earliest locomotives that worked on the colliery railway system were a narrow gauge engine that worked the tramway to the Bridgewater Canal possibly named “Gordon” and “Tyldesley”, a 6-coupled Manning Wardle saddle tank locomotive, bought in 1868 and renamed “Jackson” in 1872. A 2-2-0 tender locomotive “Lady Cornwall” was sold to George Peace in 1874 by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway’s works at Miles Platting at a cost of £150 and was later rebuilt as tank engine. In 1875 Manning Wardle supplied “Maden”, a 6-coupled tank engine and “Astley” another 6-coupled tank locomotive was bought from Sharp Stewart in 1886. The second “Tyldesley”, another 6-coupled tank engine was bought in 1894 from Peckett with “Jackson” taken in part exchange.{{sfnp|JPQW393H|329}}
The company bought three 0-6-0 side tank locomotives from Lowca Engineering in Whitehaven, “T.B. Wood” in 1897, “James Lord” in 1903 and “George Peace” in 1906.{{sfnp|FDHDF9FZ}} Two unique 0-8-0 side tank locomotives, “Maden” in 1910 and “Emanuell Clegg” in 1924 were built by Naysmith Wilson at Patricroft.{{sfnp|JPQW393H|329}}
## Gin Pit village
Gin Pit Colliery was isolated from both Astley and Tyldesley centres. The company built the terraced houses of Gin Pit village to accommodate the workers. Some of the workforce had migrated from Staffordshire. The village streets, Peace Street, Maden Street and Lord Street, are named from former company directors as were the colliery locomotives.{{sfnp|7V5NAFNG|122}} The first houses were built around 1874 and more added by 1909.{{sfnp|RB2U9UUD|97}} The Astley and Tyldesley Miners’ Welfare Club was built by the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation (CISWO) and remains in the village as a social and sports club.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a In this part of Lancashire a coal seam is referred to as a mine and the coal mine as a colliery or pit.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 1552
**Categories:** Coal mining, Greater Manchester
---
### [Haruspicy](https://engole.info/haruspicy/)
**Published:** November 23, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Haruspex.webp[/pimage]Method of divination based on examination of the entrails of slaughtered animals, particularly the liver.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Haruspex.webp)Haruspex examining the liver of a slaughtered animal
Live Science
Haruspicy, also known as extispicy or hepatoscopy, is a method of divination based on examination of the entrails of slaughtered animals, mostly goats, lambs and calves, although dogs and cats were also sometimes used.{{sfnp|TU8KQ6SF}}{{sfnp|6DFWR6W5}} The diviner was known as a haruspex.{{sfnp|TU8KQ6SF}}
The underlying idea was that the internal organs of animals sacrificed to the gods could be a medium for their messages. The liver, considered to be the site of the soul, was the most important organ, but the animal’s heart, lungs, kidneys, spleen and intestines were also examined.{{sfnp|NPBY6KV8}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/Piacenza_Bronzeleber.jpg/1280px-Piacenza_Bronzeleber.jpg)Liver of Piacenza, c. 100 BCE, discovered in 1877.{{sfnp
6DFWR6W5
A life-size bronze model of a sheep’s liver was discovered near the city of Piacenza, in northern Italy, known as Placentia to the Romans.{{sfnp|Z8DL7TGH}} Its convex side is divided into forty sections, each inscribed with the names of one or more Etruscan deities.{{sfnp|6DFWR6W5}} The liver represents the heavens, and each section the abodes of the gods in the sky. By examining each corresponding part of the liver the haruspex was able to determine which gods were angry, which were favourable or neutral, and thus what the future had in store.{{sfnp|DI4B8Y3T}}
## See also
- [Ornithomancy](https://engole.info/ornithomancy)
- [Scrying](https://engole.info/scrying)
- [Sortes Biblicae](https://engole.info/sortes-biblicae/)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26846
**Categories:** Divination
---
### [Local Nature Reserve](https://engole.info/local-nature-reserve/)
**Published:** August 6, 2024
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Aberlady_Bay_Footbridge.jpg[/pimage]Statutory designation allowing principal local authorities to protect areas containing wildlife or geological features of particular local interest.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Aberlady_Bay_Footbridge.jpg)[Aberlady Bay](https://engole.info/aberlady-bay-lnr), in East Lothian, Scotland became the UK’s first LNR in 1952.{{sfnp
NLZ28JGU
A Local Nature Reserve (LNR) is a statutory designation made under Section 21 of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. It allows principal local authorities – district, borough and [unitary councils](https://engole.info/unitary-authority) – in England, Scotland and Wales to protect areas containing wildlife or geological features that are of special local interest.{{sfnp|HD3NTFEP}} Designated sites are usually owned by their local authority, but are often managed by a local county Wildlife Trust.{{sfnp|2JDIFYGV}}
Parish and town councils in England have no direct authority to designate LNRs, but that power can be delegated to them by their principal local authority under section 101 of the Local Government Act 1972.{{sfnp|HD3NTFEP}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 26663
**Categories:** Local Nature Reserve
---
### [Sabrina (actor)](https://engole.info/sabrina-actor/)
**Published:** August 5, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/sabrina3s.jpg[/pimage]Norma Ann Sykes, better known as Sabrina, was a 1950s English glamour model who went on to have a minor film career; she is best known for her hourglass figure.
**Content:**
Triumph Sports Car Club of South Africa
Norma Ann Sykes (19 May 1936 – 24 November 2016), better known as Sabrina or Sabby, was a 1950s English glamour model who progressed to a minor film career. She was best known for her hourglass figure of 42.5-inch (108 cm) breasts together with a tiny 19-inch (48 cm) waist and 36-inch (91 cm) hips.{{sfnp|4BD79DA3|128}}
Sabrina was one of “a host of exotic, glamorous (British) starlets … modelled on the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Lana Turner”; others included Diana Dors, Belinda Lee, Shirley Eaton and Sandra Dorne.{{sfnp|K749SS2E|167-168}} According to Su Holmes, Reader in Television Studies at the University of East Anglia, Sabrina was the visible focus for contemporary debates about the cultural decline associated with fame: “The press marvelled at how she had achieved fame ‘without professional experience or training’, and they wondered if she was a ‘bosomy Frankenstein-style construction produced in the BBC workshops and stuffed with old scripts’ ”.{{sfnp|AU5RWWQG|159}}
## Early life
Sabrina was born on 19 May 1936 at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport, Cheshire, to Walter and Annie Sykes. She lived in Buckingham Street, Heaviley, for about 13 years and attended St George’s School there, before moving with her mother to Blackpool. At the age of 11 she contracted polio, which resulted in two years in hospital and some scarring on her leg. After reaching the age of 16 Sabrina moved to London, where she found work as a waitress and did some nude modelling,{{sfnp|YCXLTVLT}} posing for Russell Gay in a photoshoot that led to her appearance on the five of spades in a deck of nude playing cards.{{sfnp|ZDB74K8C}}
## Career
In 1955 Sabrina was chosen to play a dumb blonde sidekick in Arthur Askey’s new television series *Before Your Very Eyes* (BBC 1952–1956, ITV 1956–1958). The show ran from 18 February 1955 until 20 April 1956, and made Sabrina a household name.{{sfnp|4BD79DA3|128}} She was promoted by the BBC as “the bosomy blonde who didn’t talk”, but surviving episodes show quite clearly that she did.{{sfnp|5IPHHIAI}} Askey, who in his autobiography claimed to have chosen the stage name “Sabrina”, explained how she was chosen for the part in his TV series:
We held auditions for a suitable dumb-cluck and found one in Norma Sykes. She had a lovely face and figure, but could not act, sing, dance, or even walk properly.{{sfnp
— KK9NRS9E}}
The critic Cosmo Landesman has referred to Sabrina’s appearance in Askey’s show as “a pivotal point in Britain’s postwar cultural history”. Despite her perceived lack of talent she was soon receiving fan mail at the rate of 1000 letters a week, and her personal appearances often degenerated into near riots. On one occasion 4000 people turned up to watch her open a shop in Sheffield, for which she was paid £100, more than twelve times the average weekly wage of the time.{{sfnp|KK9NRS9E}}
Sabrina made her film debut in *Stock Car* in 1955, followed by a small role in the 1956 film *Ramsbottom Rides Again*. In her third film, *Blue Murder at St Trinian’s* (1957), she had a non-speaking role in which, despite sharing equal billing with the star Alastair Sim on posters and appearing in many publicity stills in school uniform, she was required only to sit up in bed wearing a nightdress, reading a book, while the action took place around her.{{sfnp|4BD79DA3|129}}
Sabrina’s penultimate film role was in the western *The Phantom Gunslinger* (1970),\[a\]Although it was not released until 1970, the film was produced in 1967.{{sfnp|HNVZJYKD}} in which she starred alongside Troy Donahue. Her final film was the horror movie *The Ice Hous*e (1969), in which she replaced Jayne Mansfield, who had died in a car crash two years earlier.
## Later life and death
On 27 November 1967 Sabrina married Dr. Harold Melsheimer (born 11 June 1927 in Germany), a Hollywood gynaecologist/obstetrician. They divorced ten years later.{{sfnp|DRFNYE7P}}
In 2002 an article in the *Daily Mail* claimed that Sabrina was living “a lonely and sad existence” in Los Angeles. The paper later issued an apology, stating that “allegations in the article were untrue and that she lives in a desirable residence in West Toluca Lake”.{{sfnp|PUNFKCNJ}} In 2007 however, there were further newspaper reports that Sabrina had become a hermit, “living in squalor” in a Spanish-style house on a street known as “Smog Central”, under the flightpath of Burbank Airport.{{sfnp|DRFNYE7P}}
Having suffered from chronic back problems for many years, towards the end of her life Sabrina became paralysed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair. Her mother moved to Hollywood to care for her in 1990, but died five years later. Sabrina died of respiratory failure on 24 November 2016, at the age of 80.{{sfnp|KK9NRS9E}}
## Acting credits
- *Stock Car* (1955)
- *Ramsbottom Rides Again* (1956)
- *Blue Murder at St Trinians* (1957)
- *Goodnight with Sabrina* (1958)
- *Make Mine a Million* (1959)
- *Satan in High Heels* (1962)
- *House of the Black Death* (1965)
- *The Ice House* (1969)
- *The Phantom Gunslinger* (1970)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Although it was not released until 1970, the film was produced in 1967.{{sfnp|HNVZJYKD}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22036
## External links
- [YouTube video featuring Sabrina, from *Before Your Very Eyes*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OsX-A4XZcg)
**Categories:** Actor, English, Female
---
### [Almshouse](https://engole.info/almshouse/)
**Published:** April 10, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cd/Bakewell_Almshouses_201307_154.jpg/960px-Bakewell_Almshouses_201307_154.jpg[/pimage]Charitable foundation established to provide for the poor.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cd/Bakewell_Almshouses_201307_154.jpg/960px-Bakewell_Almshouses_201307_154.jpg)Bakewell Almhouses, Derbyshire
Wikimedia Commons
An almshouse, also known as a hospital, maison dieu,{{sfnp|NPVSSVDQ}} or in Scotland a parish house,{{sfnp|XESZV3JN|loc=14252}} is a charitable foundation for the care of the poor, particularly the elderly poor.{{sfnp|NPVSSVDQ}} It was originally the name given to that part of a medieval monastery in which alms – food and money – were distributed,{{sfnp|NEDYPD45}} but during the Middle Ages almshouses were often built by rich merchants for the needy members of their guilds.{{sfnp|CTHIBVS7}}
Almshouses usually consisted of small houses of at most two storeys, sometimes arranged in a terrace, but often around three or four sides of a central court, with perhaps a separate house for the warden;{{sfnp|CTHIBVS7}} they sometimes also incorporated a chapel and dining hall.{{sfnp|BD2VSUHV}} By the mid-16th century there were about 800 almshouses across England. Those with chapels were regarded as chantries, chapels established by bequest in which a priest was paid to say masses and pray for the soul of the deceased benefactor,{{sfnp|QNLTCE7Q}}\[a\]Almshouses were also known as bede-houses, *bede* being a Middle English form of “bead”, an archaic term for “prayer”.{{sfnp|4DDDF4PR}} which resulted in them being either sold off to landowners or left to ruin during the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1539–1540).{{sfnp|C2VDHA35}}
Following the accession of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603) some of the old almshouses were re-established, and many new ones founded by private benefactors. Beginning with the Act for the Relief of the Poor 1597, the charitable relief provided by almshouses was supplemented by a series of Poor Laws.{{sfnp|NEDYPD45}}
## Present-day
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Wilbrahams_Almshouses_Welsh_Row_Nantwich2.jpg)Tollemache Almshouses, Nantwich
Wikimedia Commons
As at 2023 there are more than 30,000 almshouse dwellings in the UK, accommodating more than 36,000 residents,{{sfnp|BCXDEU3J}} known as qualified beneficiaries. Instead of rent they are required to pay a weekly maintenance contribution “that must not be set at a level that would cause hardship”.{{sfnp|PMWNW5QJ}}
Almshouse trusts were generally founded by benefactors in earlier times to provide for those in need, and often to cater for a particular group of people. Today there are almshouses for retired fishermen, miners, retail workers and a host of other groups in addition to the elderly. Some almshouse charities have no age restrictions and are able to accommodate families, the disabled and key workers.{{sfnp|9RDV4UU7}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Almshouses were also known as bede-houses, *bede* being a Middle English form of “bead”, an archaic term for “prayer”.{{sfnp|4DDDF4PR}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25242
**Categories:** Residential building
---
### [Restoration style](https://engole.info/restoration-style/)
**Published:** August 15, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Belton_House_South_Elevation.jpg/1920px-Belton_House_South_Elevation.jpg[/pimage]Architectural style popular during the reign of King Charles II of England (1660–1685)
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Belton_House_South_Elevation.jpg/1920px-Belton_House_South_Elevation.jpg)Belton House
Wikimedia Commons
Restoration style, also known as Carolean style from the name Carolus (Latin for Charles), refers to the the style of architecture that became popular in England from the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 under Charles II (1660–1685) until the late 1680s. It was strongly influenced by the Baroque style then popular in Continental Europe.{{sfnp|KMGGRD9E}}
Typical Restoration-style buildings were highly symmetrical,{{sfnp|KMGGRD9E}} and often included [cupolas](https://engole.info/cupola) such as at [Belton House](https://engole.info/belton-house), built between 1685 and 1687.{{sfnp|QRKTCGCH}} The architectural historian Nigel Nicolson considers Belton to be “a summing-up of all that is best in the only truly vernacular \[architectural\] style in England since the late Tudors”, the Carolean style.{{sfnp|Q3Z6SXF5|136}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25551
**Categories:** Architect style
---
### [Rivington Pike](https://engole.info/rivington-pike/)
**Published:** January 2, 2020
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Rivington_Pike%2C_from_Georges_Lane.jpg[/pimage]Hill summit on Winter Hill, part of the West Pennine Moors, overlooking the village of Rivington in Lancashire, England.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Rivington_Pike%2C_from_Georges_Lane.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/XgyWb9Y2hiDbLnAy5}}
Rivington Pike
Rivington Pike is a hill summit on [Winter Hill](https://engole.info/winter-hill/), part of the West Pennine Moors, overlooking the village of Rivington in Lancashire, England. The nearest towns are Adlington and Horwich. The pike is a prominent local landmark which derives its name from the Old English words *hreof* and *ing* meaning the rough or rugged hill and *pic*, a pointed eminence. The early English cartographer [Christopher Saxton](https://engole.info/christopher-saxton/) records its name as Rivenpike Hill on his 1577 map. The pike was the site of a beacon warning of the coming of the Spanish Armada.
The pike and its surrounding [moorland](https://engole.info/moorland/) is open access land used for recreation, and its footpaths are popular with walkers, fell runners and mountain bikers.
## Geography and geology
At {{convert|1191|ft}} high, the pike is the most westerly high point of Winter Hill on the West Pennine Moors. The high moorland is underlain with Carboniferous rocks, the Millstone Grit, sandstones and shales of the Lower Coal Measures which rise high above the Lancashire Plain to the west and the Greater Manchester conurbation to the south. The humped shape of the summit coincides with a coal seam of the Lower Coal Measures at around {{convert|1148|ft}} that outcropped and was mined in about 1800. There is evidence of bell pits close to the summit.{{sfnp|3GAHHR5B|27}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Rivington_Pike_-_8136496360.jpg)Steps to the Pike tower
Wikimedia Commons
In 1904 the pike was described as “the curious hog-backed mound which crowns the summit of the hill and on which stands the Beacon, shows signs of having been at least shaped by artificial means. No doubt it is mainly a natural feature, but there are distinct traces of its having been trimmed and the approach steepened at several points”.{{sfnp|GMBKIP5V|8}}
The natural vegetation is characterised by areas of blanket bog, impoverished upland heath and acid grassland.{{sfnp|49AYVI7W}}
The hill and surrounding moorland are in open access land where there is a right to roam.{{sfnp|TBTEPTVN}} A network of public footpaths provides access to the hill and surrounding moorland.{{sfnp|49AYVI7W}} Steps to combat erosion and prevent further deterioration of the footpath were built in the 1990s on the last stage of the walk to the summit. From the summit it is possible to see Blackpool Tower, the Lake District mountains, the Welsh mountains and as far as the Isle of Man on the clearest days.
## History
Evidence of early human activity in the area is found at the prehistoric sites at [Noon Hill](https://engole.info/noon-hill/) tumulus on Winter Hill, at Coblowe hillock by the [Lower Rivington Reservoir](https://engole.info/rivington-reservoirs/) and it is possible that a standing stone occupied the summit in the prehistoric period.{{sfnp|GMBKIP5V|8}} An archaeological dig found evidence of prehistoric activity at Winter Hill but Rivington Pike summit has not subject to an archaeological survey.{{sfnp|3GAHHR5B|10–16}}
The hill derives its name from the Old English words *hreof* meaning rough or rugged and *pic*, a pointed eminence.{{sfnp|VKAWQZI8|126}} The hill was recorded as Rovyng in 1325. John Leland, the antiquary, on his Itinerary through Lancashire sometime before 1542, described the “peak or Pike of Rivington” as having the name “*Faierlokke*“\[a\]Fair-look or Belle Vue but was commonly called “Riven-pike” by the locals.{{sfnp|X27BUXRM|207}} Christopher Saxton recorded its name as Rivenpike Hill on his 1577 map of Lancashire.{{sfnp|VKAWQZI8|126}}
The prominent summit was the site of one of a series of beacons spanning England as an early warning system. The beacon system was put in place by Ranulph de Blundeville, 4th Earl of Chester around 1139{{sfnp|T499KB68}} after a Scottish raid the previous year when a small Lancashire army was defeated near Clitheroe by a much larger Scottish force. The beacon was lit on 19 July 1588 to signal the Spanish Armada was heading towards English shores.{{sfnp|B68YTDVG}} Beacons were lit near to the tower for the coronation of King George V in 1910, at the end of the Great War in 1918 and in 1977 and 2012 to celebrate the Silver and Diamond Jubilees of Queen Elizabeth II.
A Pike Fair held was annually on Whit Saturday but moved to Good Friday in 1900. It was held close to the summit attracting people from Horwich, Chorley and further afield. When the Manchester and Bolton Railway was extended to Preston and Blackrod railway station opened in 1841, more visitors arrived but the introduction of seaside excursions in about 1860 resulted in a decline.
## Pike tower
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Pike_tower.jpg)Pike tower
Wikimedia Commons
The landmark Pike Tower is a Grade II l[i](https://engole.info/listed-building)sted building on the summit. John Andrews of [Rivington Hall](https://engole.info/rivington-hall/) built it as a hunting lodge on the site of the beacon using its stone for the foundations. Built of gritstone, the tower is square in plan with sides about {{convert|5|m}} in length and {{convert|7|m}} high. It had a wooden roof, three windows and a door, all of which are now blocked. The roof was hidden by a parapet with pointed corner and intermediate steps. Inside, its only room has a fireplace and once had a chimney. It had a small a cellar underneath its stone-flagged floor.{{sfnp|BMH98DH3}} A 1733 date stone marking the year of its completion has been removed.{{sfnp|B68YTDVG|146}}
William Lever\[b\]Lord Leverhulme gifted land in Rivington which included the Pike Tower to the people of Bolton. The tower was subsequently owned by Liverpool Corporation as part of an agreement for water supplies. The corporation neglected the tower and planned to demolish it in 1967. After a public outcry and legal action the land was transferred to Chorley Rural District Council who restored the tower in 1973 and completed further work in the 1990s.{{sfnp|3GAHHR5B|27}} The land is now owned by United Utilities.{{sfnp|TZS4Z6SQ}}
## Sport
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Rivington_Pike_Fair.jpg)Good Friday walkers
Wikimedia Commons
Under the auspices of the North-East Lancs Automobile Club and the Lancashire Motor-Cycle Club, the first hill-climb races took place on 25 July 1906 on private roads on the Rivington estate. Competitors were limited to club members and the race was divided into ten classes according to the list price of the car.{{sfnp|E5QLFCF4}}
The Rivington Pike Fell Race has been held on Easter Saturday since 1892. It started from Horwich railway works, but since 1930 from the park entrance at Lever Park Avenue. It attracts around 400 runners. The course is 3¼ miles (5.2 km) long and has a {{convert|700|ft|adj=on}} ascent.{{sfnp|96QDIW63}}
Walking is a popular pastime and hundreds of walkers continue the Good Friday tradition of walking to the pike summit.{{sfnp|5UEIBTKB}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Fair-look or Belle Vue b Lord Leverhulme
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 21204
**Categories:** Lancashire, Landform
---
### [Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick](https://engole.info/eleanor-mildred-sidgwick/)
**Published:** March 8, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Eleanor_Sidgwick_by_James_Jebusa_Shannon_died_1923.jpg[/pimage]Physics researcher, activist for the higher education of women, Principal of Newnham College of the University of Cambridge, and a leading figure in the Society for Psychical Research.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Eleanor_Sidgwick_by_James_Jebusa_Shannon_died_1923.jpg)Eleanor Sidgwick painted by Sir James Jebusa Shannon, 1889
Wikimedia Commons
Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick, (née Balfour; 11 March 1845 – 10 February 1936), known as Nora to her family and friends, was born in Whittingehame, East Lothian, Scotland, daughter of James Maitland Balfour MP and Lady Blanche Mary Harriet Gascoyne Cecil , daughter of the second marquess of Salisbury; Eleanor was the eldest of their five sons and three daughters.\[a\]One of Eleanor’s brothers, Arthur, was prime minister from 1902 until 1905.{{sfnp|WJLU4EIL}} She was educated at home and given advanced instruction in mathematics, for which she showed a particular aptitude.{{sfnp|WJLU4EIL}}
In 1876 Eleanor married Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900), who was then teaching philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge; he had also been one of the founders of Newnham College for women in 1871. Their marriage, although it may not have been consummated, seemed like a perfect match, the couple sharing as they did a devotion to the cause of higher education for women and a deep interest in the paranormal. In 1880 Eleanor became Newnham College’s vice-principal, and went on to succeed Anne Clough as principal on the latter’s death in 1892. Eleanor and her husband lived together in the principal’s flat at Newnham until his death in 1900; she remained there alone until her retirement ten years later.{{sfnp|WJLU4EIL}}
As well as her administrative duties at Newnham, Eleanor taught mathematics. The physicist Lord Rayleigh – professor of experimental physics at Cambridge and Eleanor’s brother-in-law – was a regular visitor to the Sidgwick’s home. He and Eleanor collaborated with his work on the measurement of electricity, and her name appears jointly with Rayleigh’s on three papers published by the Royal Society.{{sfnp|WJLU4EIL}}
In 1894 Eleanor was one of the first three women to serve on a royal commission, the Bryce commission on Secondary Education.{{sfnp|6YKFDJ6K|55-56}}
## Psychical research
Eleanor’s husband Henry was one of the founders of the[ Society for Psychical Research](https://engole.info/society-for-psychical-research/) (SPR) in 1882, and was appointed its first president;{{sfnp|5KBNSAY6|102}} she herself was elected president of the society in 1908.{{sfnp|HGG4CWJ4|302-303}}\[b\]Eleanor was named President of Honour in 1932.{{sfnp|HGG4CWJ4|302-303}} She stirred up some controversy among the society’s members with a series of papers she co-authored with S. J. Davey and Richard Hodgson Published in the society’s journal in 1886 and 1887, they exposed the slate-writing tricks of the medium William Eglinton.{{sfnp|CHQLJC6L|139-140}} Their conclusion that he was nothing more than a clever conjurer led to the resignation of several prominent spiritualist members from the SPR, including Stainton Moses.{{sfnp|5KBNSAY6|261}}{{sfnp|HGG4CWJ4|224}}
To account for the phenomenon of apparitions that seemed to be associated with distinct locations, Eleanor proposed in 1888 that there was “something in the building itself” that had recorded the experiences reported, an idea that became known as place-memory.{{sfnp|JNNT9VNB}} Her idea re-emerged in the following century under the guise of the [stone tape theory](https://engole.info/stone-tape-theory/).
## Later life and legacy
Eleanor continued as a member of Newnham College’s council after her retirement, until her death in 1936. In 1916 she had moved to live with her brother Gerald and his family at Fisher’s Hill, near Woking, where she died convinced of the existence of an afterlife, and that she would once again be united with “my Henry”. Her last words were said to be “that is a very bold hypothesis”.{{sfnp|WJLU4EIL}}
In the words of her biographer, Helen Fowler, “Her \[Eleanor’s\] spirited stance in the struggle for fairness, truth, and informed help for the world is a large part of her legacy to Newnham College and to the University of Cambridge”.{{sfnp|WJLU4EIL}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a One of Eleanor’s brothers, Arthur, was prime minister from 1902 until 1905.{{sfnp|WJLU4EIL}} b Eleanor was named President of Honour in 1932.{{sfnp|HGG4CWJ4|302-303}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 16373
**Categories:** Female, Mathematician, Paranormal researcher, Scottish
---
### [Westhoughton Mill](https://engole.info/westhoughton-mill/)
**Published:** September 27, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Blue_Plaque_for_Westhoughton_Mill.JPG[/pimage]Former cotton mill built in 1804, the target of a Luddite attack in 1812.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Blue_Plaque_for_Westhoughton_Mill.JPG)Blue plaque on the White Lion public house, opposite the site of the mill
Wikimedia Commons
Westhoughton Mill in Mill Street in Westhoughton, near Bolton in the historic county of Lancashire, was built in 1804 by Richard Johnson Lockett, a Macclesfield man who lived at Westhoughton Hall. He leased the mill to Thomas Rowe of Manchester in 1808,{{sfnp|SFIHL4SE}} and in 1812 it was the site of a Luddite attack during which its steam-powered looms were smashed and the mill itself set alight.{{sfnp|Q6KKTRWZ|search=The burning of Westhoughton factory (Factory Nook)}}
## Background
During 1811 and 1812 Luddites had been attacking powered mills throughout the North and Midlands in protest against what they regarded as manufacturers who used machines in “a fraudulent and deceitful manner” to replace the skilled labour of workers and drive down wages by producing inferior goods.{{sfnp|QYRBZJKM}}{{sfnp|D22VPP3N}} Skilled weavers were losing their livelihoods as production moved from a domestic system to new manufactories, causing severe hardship and unrest. Unemployed weavers joined the Luddites believing their only hope was to destroy the machines. In 1812 Luddite disorder around Manchester was rife, and the Westhoughton Mill had the most up-to-date machinery in the area.{{sfnp|Q6KKTRWZ|search=The burning of Westhoughton factory (Factory Nook)}}
## Rioting and punishment
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Westhoughton_Mill_Stained_Glass.jpg)Stained glass window depicting the burning of the mill in the Waggon & Horses public house, Westhoughton
Wikimedia Commons
On 28 April 1812 a large crowd gathered at the site of the mill, and a contingent of the Scots Guards was summoned from Bolton. Believing the unrest to have been quelled, the Guards returned to their barracks, but soon after the mill was set on fire, destroying much of the building and the machinery it contained.\[a\]Westhoughton Hall was also set on fire by the rioters.{{sfnp|SFIHL4SE}} In the following days dozens of men and women were rounded up and sent for trial at Lancaster Assizes. Some were discharged, but Job Fletcher, James Smith, Thomas Kerfoot and sixteen-year-old Abraham Charlson were found guilty and hanged; nine other men were transported to Australia.{{sfnp|Q6KKTRWZ|search=The burning of Westhoughton factory (Factory Nook)}}\[b\]The Frame-Breaking Act had been passed in February 1812, making the destruction of powered-looms a capital felony, punishable by death.
## Aftermath
The mill was rebuilt after the attack and used at various times as a corn mill and for cotton spinning, but was empty for some time before being demolished in 1912. In later years the site was used as a privately owned car park. As at 2023 the site, opposite the White Lion public house, where the straw to start the fire had been taken from, remains undeveloped.{{sfnp|Q6KKTRWZ|search=The burning of Westhoughton factory (Factory Nook)}}{{sfnp|IWG5ZFTR}}
## See also
- [Power-loom riots](https://engole.info/power-loom-riots)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Westhoughton Hall was also set on fire by the rioters.{{sfnp|SFIHL4SE}} b The Frame-Breaking Act had been passed in February 1812, making the destruction of powered-looms a capital felony, punishable by death.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25610
**Categories:** Cotton mill
---
### [Robert Tatton](https://engole.info/robert-tatton/)
**Published:** September 11, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Robert_Tatton.jpg[/pimage] Member of the Tatton family who unsuccessfully defended his family home, Wythenshawe Hall, against a siege by Parliamentary forces in the winter of 1643/44.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Robert_Tatton.jpg)Robert Tatton more than a decade before the siege of Wythenshawe Hall
Wikimedia Commons
Robert Tatton (1606 – 19 August 1669) was the High Sheriff of Chester between 1645 and 1646 and a supporter of King Charles I in the English Civil War. He is perhaps best remembered today for the ultimately unsuccessful defence of his family home, [Wythenshawe Hall](https://engole.info/wythenshawe-hall/), during its three-month siege by a Parliamentary force in the winter of 1643/44.{{sfnp|D4LCTFI4|8-9}}
Robert was fined heavily by Parliament for fighting on the side of the King, but he was subsequently rewarded for his loyalty by Charles II following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. He and his wife Anne had six children, the eldest of whom, William, inherited Robert’s Wythenshawe estate after his father’s death in 1669.
## Early life
Robert’s father, William Tatton, drowned in the River Mersey when Robert was 10 years old. As the only male heir Robert inherited his father’s estate in Wythenshawe, but as a minor he was made a ward of the king, Charles I, until he came of age. On 9 January 1628, Robert married Anne Brereton, the third daughter of William Brereton of Ashley.{{sfnp|D4LCTFI4|9}} The couple went on to have four sons and two daughters.{{sfnp|E7KC6UTG|1355}}
Robert’s father-in-law William Brereton was a close relative of his namesake Sir William Brereton,{{sfnp|VT58BNFH|229}} who the year after Robert’s marriage was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Parliamentary troops in Cheshire following the outbreak of the English Civil War.{{sfnp|H97PWJI9|49}} The first pitched battle of the war was fought at Edgehill on 23 October 1642, and Robert decided to join the Royalist side.{{sfnp|D4LCTFI4|9}}
## Siege of Wythenshawe Hall
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Wyhtenshawe_Hall_in_2005.jpg)After its confiscation by Parliamentarians in 1644, Wythenshawe Hall was returned to Robert Tatton in 1646.
Wikimedia Commons
Towards the end of 1643 the commander of the local Parliamentary forces in Cheshire, Colonel Robert Duckenfield, was ordered to seize Wythenshawe Hall and to remove anything of value that could be found. Forewarned, Robert Tatton recruited a group of more than fifty defenders from among his staff and Royalist friends. After ransacking the nearby village of Northenden the Roundheads arrived at Wythenshawe Hall on 21 November 1643, but they did not find the task of taking it as easy as they had imagined.{{sfnp|D4LCTFI4|9}} At one point during the siege the attackers almost took possession of the house in a struggle during which six of the defenders were killed. The Parliamentarians refused a truce to allow the bodies to be taken to the local church for proper services to be held, necessitating their burial in the garden behind the house.\[a\]Writing in 1852 Sir Bernard Burke reported that six skeletons had been discovered in the garden during the previous century, perhaps belonging to the six killed in the defence of Wythenshawe Hall.{{sfnp|E7KC6UTG|1355}} One of those killed was the fiancé of Mary Webb, a young woman who had been brought up by the Tattons and had remained in the house with the defenders. Towards the end of the siege Mary saw the man who had led the attack, Duckinfield’s second-in-command Captain Adams, sitting on a wall near the house. Borrowing a musket from one of the defenders, she shot him dead.{{sfnp|D4LCTFI4|10}}
The siege ended on 27 February 1644 after the Parliamentarians brought two cannons from nearby Manchester, with which they “reduced” the hall. By then the defenders had exhausted their ammunition and had very little food left. The hall was confiscated; an inventory taken after the surrender valued its contents at almost £1,650,{{sfnp|D4LCTFI4|10}} equivalent to about £260,000 as of 2016.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## Later life
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Oliver_Cromwell_-_geograph.org.uk_-_49551.jpg)Statue of Oliver Cromwell facing Wythenshawe Hall
Wikimedia Commons
Robert escaped and made his way to Chester, where in 1645 he was made High Sheriff of the county of Cheshire. But he was forced to flee from the city early the following year when it too was besieged by Parliamentary forces. This time he made for Oxford, where King Charles I was in residence, but it fell only a few months later on 24 June 1646,{{sfnp|D4LCTFI4|10-11}} effectively ending the war.
In the aftermath of the conflict Wythenshawe was included in a list of estates owned by Royalists that were to be forfeited to the new government. Robert’s entry is as follows:
His [Robert Tatton’s] Delinquencie, that hee deserted his owne Dwellinge, and went and lived in Oxford whiles it was a Garrison holden for the Kinge againste the Parliament, and was there at the tyme of the surrender … Hee hath neither taken the Negative Oath nor Covenante, but prayes to be exempt upon the articles of Oxford and the Vote of the House of Commons pursuante.{{sfnp
— D4LCTFI4|11}}
Parliament allowed Robert to keep his estate on payment of a fine of £804 10s, reduced to £707 13s 4d in December 1646, and Wythenshawe Hall was returned to him two years after its confiscation. Following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 King Charles II rewarded Robert’s loyalty to the Crown by presenting him with a silver snuff box.{{sfnp|D4LCTFI4|11}} Robert Tatton died on 19 August 1669 and was buried at St Wilfrid’s parish church in Northenden,{{sfnp|D4LCTFI4|11}} which contains a wall monument in his memory.{{sfnp|LHCG7HV4}} His eldest son William (born 1636) inherited the Wythenshawe estate.{{sfnp|E7KC6UTG|1355}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Writing in 1852 Sir Bernard Burke reported that six skeletons had been discovered in the garden during the previous century, perhaps belonging to the six killed in the defence of Wythenshawe Hall.{{sfnp|E7KC6UTG|1355}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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---
### [Violet Alford](https://engole.info/violet-alford/)
**Published:** August 3, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Violet-Alford.webp[/pimage]Internationally recognised authority on folk dancing and its related music and folk customs.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Violet-Alford.webp)The Society of Folk Dance Historians
Violet Alford (18 March 1881 – 16 February 1972){{sfnp|5MWHHDT5}} was an internationally recognised authority on folk dancing and its related music and folk customs. She believed that a common prehistoric root explained the similarities found across much of Europe.{{sfnp|UJLTYXST}}
The third daughter of Canon Josiah George Alford of Bristol Cathedral, Violet had the typical upbringing of a Victorian society lady. Her father taught her and her sisters music, and a governess was responsible for their other early education. After completing her studies at Clifton High School, Violet was sent to a finishing school for girls in Switzerland.{{sfnp|5MWHHDT5}}
Violet spent her summers observing dances in the Pyrenees, and her winters writing and researching at the University of Bristol and the British Museum. She also learned the Basque language, and learned to perform some of the Basque dances she studied. She was secretary of the first International Folk Dance Festival, held in London in 1935, and in the following year became a founding member of the International Folk Music Council.{{sfnp|5MWHHDT5}} Her work was described as “dance ritual archaeology” by a fellow scholar.{{sfnp|KIYA7ALX}} “She was especially concerned with the degenerative popular adaptation of traditional customs and media representation”, wrote another folklorist, Paul Cowdell, of her strong interest in authenticity.{{sfnp|S3KUZCDQ}}
From 1946 to 1953 Violet was an editor of the Handbooks of European Dances series. She was also an adjudicator at the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod, judging folk dances and instrumental music. From 1949 to 1953 she served on the executive committee of the English Folk Dance Society.{{sfnp|5MWHHDT5}}
## Selected works
- *English Folk Dances* (1925)
- *The Traditional Dance* (1935), in collaboration with Rodney Gallop
- *Pyrenean Festivals* (1937)
- *The Singing of the Travels* (1956)
- *Sword Dance and Drama* (1962)
- *The Hobby Horse and Other Animal Masks* (1978)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** English, Female, Folklorist
---
### [Penny dreadful](https://engole.info/penny-dreadful/)
**Published:** January 9, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Pennydreadful.png[/pimage]Cheap popular serial literature produced during the 19th century, typically a story published in weekly parts, each costing a penny.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Pennydreadful.png)*Black Bess; or, The Knight of the Road*, was a romanticized tale of [Dick Turpin](https://engole.info/dick-turpin/) – a popular subject in fiction. c. 1860
Wikimedia Commons
Penny dreadfuls, or penny bloods, were cheap popular serial literature produced during the 19th century in the United Kingdom, “Britain’s first taste of mass-produced popular culture for the young.”{{sfnp|Y3SBJXW9}} The term typically referred to a story published in weekly parts, each costing one penny. The subject matter was usually sensational, focused on the exploits of detectives, criminals, or supernatural entities. First published in the 1830s, penny dreadfuls featured characters such as [Sweeney Todd](https://engole.info/sweeney-todd/), [Dick Turpin](https://engole.info/dick-turpin/) and [Varney the Vampire](https://engole.info/varney-the-vampire/).
Although the term “penny dreadful” was originally used in reference to a specific type of literature circulating in mid-Victorian Britain, it came to encompass a variety of publications that featured cheap sensational fiction, such as story papers and booklet “libraries”. Penny dreadfuls were printed on cheap wood pulp paper and were aimed at young working class men.{{sfnp|VHYM9AE6|20}} More than a million boys’ periodicals were sold a week, but the popularity of penny dreadfuls was challenged in the 1890s by the rise of competing literature, especially the half-penny periodicals published by Alfred Harmsworth.{{sfnp|Y3SBJXW9}}{{sfnp|7255CMPB|75}}
## Origins
Crime broadsides were commonly sold at public executions in the United Kingdom during the 18th and 19th centuries, often produced by specialist printers. They were typically illustrated by a crude picture of the crime, a portrait of the criminal, or a generic woodcut of a hanging taking place. There would be a written account of the crime and of the trial and often the criminal’s confession of guilt. A [doggerel](https://engole.info/doggerel) verse warning others not to follow the executed person’s example, to avoid their fate, was another common feature.{{sfnp|VUP77NYA}}
Victorian-era Britain experienced social changes that resulted in increased literacy rates. With the rise of capitalism and industrialisation, people began to spend more money on entertainment, contributing to the popularisation of the novel. Improvements in printing resulted in newspapers such as Joseph Addison’s *The Spectator* and Richard Steele’s *The Tatler*, and England’s more fully recognising the singular concept of reading as a form of leisure; it was, of itself, a new industry. Other significant changes include the invention of the locomotive and the development of a railway network,\[a\]The first public railway, Stockton and Darlington Railway, opened in 1825. all of which created a market for cheap popular literature and the means to circulate it widely. The first penny serials were published in the 1830s to meet this demand.{{sfnp|ASVB3IMQ|20}} Between 1830 and 1850 there were up to 100 publishers of penny fiction, in addition to many magazines which embraced the genre.{{sfnp|XEV8WB4C}} The serials were priced to be affordable to working-class readers, being considerably cheaper than the serialised novels of authors such as Charles Dickens, which cost a shilling \[twelve pennies\] per part.{{sfnp|B44WJUVI}}
## Subject matter
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Jack4.jpg)Advertisement for an 1886 penny dreadful of *Spring Heeled Jack*, “the terror of London”
Wikimedia Commons
The stories themselves were reprints, or sometimes rewrites, of the earliest Gothic thrillers such as *The Castle of Otranto* or *The Monk*, as well as new stories about famous criminals. The first ever penny blood, published in 1836, was *Lives of the Most Notorious Highwaymen, Footpads, &c*. The story continued over sixty issues, each eight pages of tightly packed text with one half-page illustration.{{sfnp|XEV8WB4C}} Highwaymen were popular heroes; *Black Bess or the Knight of the Road*, outlining the largely imaginary exploits of real-life English highwayman [Dick Turpin](https://engole.info/dick-turpin/), continued for 254 episodes and was more than 2,000 pages long; Turpin was not executed until page 2,207. Some lurid stories purported to be based on fact, but Spring-Heeled Jack was what we would now call an urban myth. The first “sighting” of him was in 1837, when he was described as having a terrifying and frightful appearance, with diabolical physiognomy, clawed hands and eyes that “resembled red balls of fire”. He was mainly sighted in London, but popped up elsewhere, and seems to have been a source of frightened fascination for several decades. At the height of Spring-Heeled Jack hysteria, several women reported being attacked by a clawed monster of a man breathing blue flames; the last reported sighting was in Liverpool in 1904. Other serials were thinly disguised plagiarisms of popular contemporary literature. The publisher Edward Lloyd, for instance, published a number of penny serials derived from the works of Charles Dickens entitled *Oliver Twiss*, *Nickelas Nicklebery*, and *Martin Guzzlewit*.{{sfnp|ASVB3IMQ|20}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Varney_the_Vampire_or_the_Feast_of_Blood.jpg)Cover of a *Varney the Vampire* publication
Wikimedia Commons
The illustration which featured at the start of each issue was an integral part of the Dreadfuls’ appeal, often acting as a teaser for future instalments. As one reader said, “You see’s an engraving of a man hung up, burning over a fire, and some \[would\] go mad if they couldn’t learn … all about him.” Little wonder that one publisher’s rallying cry to his illustrators was “more blood – much more blood!”{{sfnp|XEV8WB4C}}
Working class boys who could not afford a penny a week often formed clubs that would share the cost, passing the flimsy booklets from reader to reader. Other enterprising youngsters would collect a number of consecutive parts, then rent the volume out to friends. In 1866, *Boys of England* was introduced as a new type of publication, an eight-page magazine that featured serial stories as well as articles and shorts of interest.{{sfnp|LMH4F78X}}
The penny dreadfuls were influential since they were, in the words of one commentator, “the most alluring and low-priced form of escapist reading available to ordinary youth, until the advent in the early 1890s of future newspaper magnate Alfred Harmsworth’s price-cutting ‘halfpenny dreadfuller'”.{{sfnp|7255CMPB}} In reality, the serial novels were overdramatic and sensational, but generally harmless. If anything, the penny dreadfuls, although obviously not the most enlightening or inspiring of literary selections, resulted in increasingly literate youth in the Industrial period. The wide circulation of this sensationalist literature, however, contributed to an ever-greater fear of crime in mid-Victorian Britain.{{sfnp|6LLV7DBH}}
## Decline
The popularity of penny dreadfuls was challenged in the 1890s by the rise of competing literature. Leading the challenge were popular periodicals published by Alfred Harmsworth. Priced at one half-penny, Harmsworth’s story papers were cheaper and, at least initially, were more respectable than the competition. Harmsworth claimed to be motivated by a wish to challenge the pernicious influence of penny dreadfuls. According to an editorial in the first number of *The Half-penny Marvel* in 1893:
It is almost a daily occurrence with magistrates to have before them boys who, having read a number of “dreadfuls”, followed the examples set forth in such publications, robbed their employers, bought revolvers with the proceeds, and finished by running away from home, and installing themselves in the back streets as “highwaymen”. This and many other evils the “penny dreadful” is responsible for. It makes thieves of the coming generation, and so helps fill our gaols.{{sfnp
— 7255CMPB|75}}
*The Half-penny Marvel* was soon followed by a number of other Harmsworth half-penny periodicals, such as *The Union Jack* and *Pluck*. At first the stories were high-minded moral tales, reportedly based on true experiences, but it was not long before these papers started using the same kind of material as the publications they competed against. A. A. Milne, the author of *Winnie the Pooh*, once said, “Harmsworth killed the penny dreadful by the simple process of producing the ‘ha’penny dreadfuller'”.{{sfnp|LPRUJHKW|65}}
The penny dreadfuls were also challenged by book series such as The Penny Library of Famous Books launched in 1896 by George Newnes which he characterized as “penny delightfuls” intended to counter the pernicious effects of the penny dreadfuls.{{sfnp|8U4ES972}}
## Legacy
Two popular characters to come out of the penny dreadfuls were Jack Harkaway, introduced in the *Boys of England* in 1871, and Sexton Blake, who began in the *Half-penny Marvel* in 1893.{{sfnp|ASVB3IMQ|129}} The fictional [Sweeney Todd](https://engole.info/sweeney-todd/), the subject of a successful musical by Stephen Sondheim and a feature film by Tim Burton, also first appeared in an 1846/1847 penny dreadful titled *The String of Pearls: A Romance*.{{sfnp|INU786GJ|ix}}
Over time, the penny dreadfuls evolved into the British comic magazines. Owing to their cheap production, their perceived lack of value, and such hazards as war-time paper drives, the penny dreadfuls, particularly the earliest ones, are fairly rare today.{{sfnp|C2IV4HJ7}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The first public railway, Stockton and Darlington Railway, opened in 1825. b, c var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22490
**Categories:** Comic
---
### [Hanging Bridge](https://engole.info/hanging-bridge/)
**Published:** August 23, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Hanging_Bridge_1892.jpg[/pimage]Medieval structure spanning the Hanging Ditch, which connected the rivers Irk and Irwell in Manchester, England, part of the city's medieval defences.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Hanging_Bridge_1892.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
The Hanging Bridge is a medieval structure spanning the Hanging Ditch, which connected the rivers Irk and Irwell in Manchester, England.{{sfnp|388T2KRY}} The first reference to the bridge was in 1343, when it was called Hengand Brigge,{{sfnp|XBMPWJF3|51}} but the present structure was built in 1421, replacing an earlier bridge;{{sfnp|KT9VF6S2}} material taken from Manchester’s Roman fort may have been used in its construction.{{sfnp|MDI2LVQX|3}} It has been speculated that the Hanging Ditch may be of Roman origin, part of a defensive circuit between the rivers Irk and Irwell,{{sfnp|98NNIZ9G|98-99}} but the more modern view is that it is a natural watercourse that might have been used as a medieval defensive feature.{{sfnp|TFQB78QA}}
The name may derive from the Old English *hen*, meaning wild birds, and the Welsh *gan*, meaning between two hills. At its Irwell end, the Hanging Ditch was {{convert|120|ft}} wide and {{convert|40|ft}} deep. A stream flowed through the ditch, from the Irk to the Irwell – possibly the lost River Dene, which gave its name to Deansgate.{{sfnp|XBMPWJF3|52}} The bridge has two arches and was built using sandstone from Collyhurst. It is {{convert|108|ft}} long and {{convert|9|ft}} wide.{{sfnp|XBMPWJF3|51}} The Hanging Bridge formed part of Manchester’s medieval defences, when it was the main route from Manchester to the cathedral, then a parish church.{{sfnp|KT9VF6S2}}
In 1600 the Hanging Ditch was condemned as an unsanitary open sewer, and in the following years the ditch was culverted and the bridge buried and built over. A directory published in 1772 recorded that nine houses had been built along the line of the bridge, suggesting that it may have been covered over during the first phase of Manchester’s town planning, some time in the 1770s.{{sfnp|XBMPWJF3|52}} The bridge was then forgotten, remembered only in the name of the area in which it had stood, until its rediscovery and subsequent excavation as a result of demolition work carried out in the 1880s. The bridge was put on display, and in three months had about 32,000 paying visitors. It was once again covered up during the Victorian expansion of Manchester. More than 100 years later it was uncovered again, and following restoration work it went on display in 2002 as a main attraction of Manchester Cathedral’s newly built visitor centre.{{sfnp|GCNGJHHD}}
Today the bridge is largely hidden by modern buildings, but it can be seen in the basement of Manchester Cathedral Visitor Centre, where it forms one side of the refectory.{{sfnp|XBMPWJF3|53-54}} The bridge is listed as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.{{sfnp|KT9VF6S2}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Bridge, Greater Manchester, Monument
---
### [Cantlop Bridge](https://engole.info/cantlop-bridge/)
**Published:** October 1, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/Cantlop_Bridge_2016.jpg/1280px-Cantlop_Bridge_2016.jpg[/pimage]Only surviving Telford-approved cast-iron bridge in Shropshire.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/Cantlop_Bridge_2016.jpg/1280px-Cantlop_Bridge_2016.jpg)map
https://maps.app.goo.gl/tXirXReaqNa7Ba6k7}}
Cantlop Bridge, 2016
Cantlop Bridge is a single span cast-iron road bridge over the Cound Brook, north of the [village](https://engole.info/village) of Cantlop in the parish of Berrington, Shropshire. It was constructed in 1813 to a design possibly by Thomas Telford, having at least been approved by him.{{sfnp|H552DGLF}}\[a\]Thomas Telford was the county surveyor of public works for Shropshire from 1787 until his death in 1834.{{sfnp|RH7GSJ3F}}
The design of the bridge was innovative for the period, and appears to be a scaled-down version of a Thomas Telford bridge at Meole Brace, Shropshire. The bridge is the only surviving Telford-approved cast-iron bridge in Shropshire.{{sfnp|H552DGLF}} A Grade II\* [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building), it originally carried the turnpike road from Shrewsbury to Acton Burnell.{{sfnp|QWFNUYT6}}
The bridge was closed to vehicles in the 1970s, when a new road bridge was built immediately to the west. Still open to pedestrians, it is now in the care of English Heritage.{{sfnp|QWFNUYT6}}
## Design
The bridge is constructed using a light-weight design of cast-iron lattice ribs to support the road deck in a single span. The cast-iron ribs are supported by stone abutments, which have chamfered [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) [quoins](https://engole.info/quoin). The surface of the roadway is formed of cast-iron deck plates, tarmacked and now gravelled over.{{sfnp|QWFNUYT6}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Thomas Telford was the county surveyor of public works for Shropshire from 1787 until his death in 1834.{{sfnp|RH7GSJ3F}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
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**Categories:** Bridge, Derbyshire
---
### [The Daily Courant](https://engole.info/the-daily-courant/)
**Published:** June 20, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** First British daily newspaper, first published on 11 March 1702.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/The_Daily_Courant.png)Front page of the first issue
Wikimedia Commons
T*he Daily Courant*, first published on 11 March 1702, was the first British daily newspaper. It was produced by [Elizabeth Mallet](https://engole.info/elizabeth-mallett/) at her premises next to the King’s Arms tavern at Fleet Bridge in London.{{sfnp|NBJNDK75}} The newspaper consisted of a single page, with advertisements on the reverse side.{{sfnp|752HM6EE|54}} Mallet advertised that she intended to publish only foreign news and would not add any comments of her own, supposing her readers to have “sense enough to make reflections for themselves.”{{sfnp|KRMY2PTN}}
After only forty days Mallet sold *The Daily Courant* to Samuel Buckley, who moved it to premises in the area of Little Britain in London, at “the sign of the Dolphin”. Buckley later became the publisher of *The Spectator*.{{sfnp|2N3MBHV3|100}} *The Daily Courant* lasted until 1735, when it was merged with the *Daily Gazetteer*.{{sfnp|2N3MBHV3|101}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 2460
**Categories:** Newspaper
---
### [Ancoats Hall](https://engole.info/ancoats-hall/)
**Published:** September 8, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Ancoats_Hall_1825.jpg[/pimage]Post-medieval country house built in 1609 in Ancoats, Manchester by Oswald Mosley, a member of the family who were Lords of the Manor of Manchester.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Ancoats_Hall_1825.jpg)Ancoats Hall, 1825
Wikimedia Commons
Ancoats Hall was a post-medieval country house built in 1609 in Ancoats, Manchester by Oswald Mosley, a member of the family who were Lords of the Manor of Manchester. The old timber-framed hall, built in the early 17th century, was described by John Aiken in his 1795 book *Description of the country from 30 to 40 miles around Manchester*. The old hall was demolished in the 1820s and replaced by a brick building in the early neo-Gothic style. The new hall, at the eastern end of Great Ancoats Street between Every Street and Palmerston Street, was demolished in the 1960s.
## Old hall
Oswald Mosley, a nephew of Sir Nicholas Mosley, bought the land on which the hall was built in 1609 from the Byrons of Clayton Hall. The house was sequestered by Parliament after Oswald’s son Nicholas Mosley supported the king in the Civil War, but was returned to him after paying a £120 fine. The house remained in the family until Sir John Mosley inherited it from a cousin in 1779, and preferring to live on his estate in Staffordshire, sold it.{{sfnp|UAHZ3N28|230–251}} For a period the embalmed body of Hannah Beswick (known as the [Manchester Mummy](https://engole.info/manchester-mummy/)) was kept at the hall.{{sfnp|YRKM4NPV|87}}
In his book, *Lancashire Gleanings* (1883), William Axon tells of the “curious Manchester tradition”, that in 1744, the Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart, visited the town, in disguise, and stayed with Sir Oswald Mosley at Ancoats Hall for several weeks, to assess whether the people of Manchester were “attached to the interests of his family”. The following year, when the Jacobite army rode into Manchester, a young girl was said to have recognised the prince as the “handsome young man of genteel deportment” who had stayed at the hall and who came to the Swan Inn, where she lived, to read the London newspapers three times a week. As the prince passed by the inn with his army in 1745 she exclaimed, “Father, father, that is the gentleman who gave me the half-crown” but her father drove her back into the house with severe threats if she ever mentioned that circumstance again. Axon was not fully convinced by the story as he could find no other evidence for it other than an account in the Sir Oswald Mosley’s Family Memoirs, printed for private circulation.{{sfnp|ENFA4CRC|224–230}}
According to Aiken in 1795, the old hall stood facing north-west on Ancoats Lane (which became a continuation of Great Ancoats Street). Its terraced back gardens sloped towards the River Medlock. The two-storey hall had attics and a hipped roof. It was constructed in timber and plaster. Its front had three gables and a square tower and the back and its west wing had been rebuilt. Britton, in 1807 described its upper storeys as overhanging the ground floor, and windows projecting from the face of the building.{{sfnp|UAHZ3N28|230–251}}
## New hall
During the Industrial Revolution at the end of the 18th century Ancoats Hall was bought by one of the new elite – a wealthy Manchester merchant, William Rawlinson.{{sfnp|WL2JU2I8}} By 1827 it was owned by George Murray (of nearby Murrays’ Mills{{sfnp|FLDZK8TC|10}}). Murray demolished the old hall and replaced it with a brick hall in the fashionable neo-Gothic style.{{sfnp|UAHZ3N28|230–251}}After his death, his wife Jane remained there with her son James for at least ten years until James moved to London, and by 1868 Jane Murray had moved to the home of her son, Benjamin, in the Polygon in Ardwick.{{sfnp|AMKYQ8SW|85}}
The hall and its surrounding lands were bought and used by the Midland Railway for Ancoats railway station that opened in 1870.{{sfnp|DEEPXTWB|155}} From 1886 the hall was used for Manchester Art Museum, founded by Thomas Coglan Horsfall as a philanthropic project. The Manchester University Settlement, an unofficial hall of residence, was established in part of the premises in 1895 and merged with the museum six years later.{{sfnp|HX53C2GH}} By this time the hall stood in squalid urban surroundings and its gardens had been built over.{{sfnp|UAHZ3N28|230–251}} The new hall was in turn demolished in the 1960s after falling into disrepair.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 5487
**Categories:** Country house, Greater Manchester
---
### [St George's Church, Tyldesley](https://engole.info/st-georges-church-tyldesley/)
**Published:** September 6, 2020
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/St_George%2C_Tyldesley%2C_north.jpg[/pimage]Waterloo church dedicated to St George, completed in 1825 to serve the growing township of Tyldesley cum Shakerley.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/St_George%2C_Tyldesley%2C_north.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/knNAAzoqHZDe5njN8}}
St George’s Church
St George’s Church is the Anglican parish church serving [Tyldesley](https://engole.info/tyldesley/) and Shakerley in Greater Manchester. Together with [St Stephen’s in Astley](https://engole.info/st-stephens-church-astley/) and [St John’s, Mosley Common](https://engole.info/st-johns-church-mosley-common/) it is part of the United [Benefice](https://engole.info/benefice) of Astley, Tyldesley and Mosley Common in the Leigh deanery, the archdeaconry of Salford and diocese of Manchester.{{sfnp|WF3S9DFM}}{{sfnp|72JQQDL9}}{{sfnp|B325X2TC}}
St George’s was built as a [chapel of ease](https://engole.info/chapel-of-ease) to St Mary the Virgin’s Church in Leigh. A Waterloo or Commissioners’ Church, it was built in the rapidly expanding [township](https://engole.info/township/) in 1825. A mistake with plans led to a larger church being built than the site could accommodate, and extra land and money was donated to ensure it could be completed. The church was extended at the east end and re-seated in the 1880s.
St George’s has survived two fires: in 1878 the upper west gallery housing the choir and organ was destroyed, and in 1966 a fire destroyed half the roof and part of the ceiling. The churchyard contains the graves of victims of a disaster at [Yew Tree Colliery](https://engole.info/yew-tree-colliery/). The church was designated a Grade II listed building in 1966.
## History
Until 1789, when the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion built Top Chapel, there was no place of worship in the growing township. Tyldesley was part of the [ancient ecclesiastical parish](https://engole.info/ancient-parish/) of Leigh that, from medieval times, covered six townships and its population had to travel to St Mary’s in Leigh for baptism, marriage or burial. As the population grew quickly after 1800, a movement seeking to have an established church developed. Thomas Johnson, owner of the Banks Estate, gave a plot of land at the western end of the banks on which to build the church. It was partly paid for by money from the parliament of the United Kingdom raised by the Church Building Act 1818, and said to be a celebration of Britain’s victory in the Battle of Waterloo. The Church Building Commissioners provided £17,000.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|110}} The architect was Robert Smirke.{{sfnp|KFHZSU97}} It was one of 174 neo-Gothic and 40 Classical style churches built under the Act.{{sfnp|JPTGERL4|58}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Tyldesley_Church_Plaque.jpg)Church plaque
Wikimedia Commons
Work began in November 1821 and the foundation stone was laid on 23 April 1822 – St George’s Day. As construction progressed, it was realised that the structure was too big for the site and that the plans had been inadvertently exchanged for the Church of St George in Chorley.{{sfnp|W7S6QE4T|5}} Johnson’s nephew, George Ormerod gave more land for the churchyard and £2,000 so that the church could be finished. Building work was completed in November 1824. Six bells for the tower were transported on carts from Leigh on 10 August 1825 arriving to celebrations when the largest bell was upturned and filled with ale supplied by all the local inns.{{sfnp|W7S6QE4T|6}}
The chapel was consecrated on 19 September 1825 by the Bishop of Chester and dedicated to Saint George.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|110}} It was licensed as St George’s Chapel, a [chapel of ease](https://engole.info/chapel-of-ease) of Leigh Parish Church. Tyldesley became a district parish in August 1829. On the last day of 1833, the curate, the Reverend Jacob Robson, writing in the parish registers, signalled the change in spelling of the township’s name from Tildesley to Tyldesley.{{sfnp|W7S6QE4T|9}} Fourteen of the twenty-five victims of a [firedamp](https://engole.info/damps/#Firedamp) explosion at [Yew Tree Colliery](https://engole.info/yew-tree-colliery/) in 1858 are buried in the churchyard.{{sfnp|W7S6QE4T|10}}
The upper west galley was destroyed by fire in 1878. It housed the choir and organ which were moved to the [chancel](httpe://engole.info/chancel).{{sfnp|W7S6QE4T|21}} The church was altered and refurbished in 1886 and 1887 when the east end was extended by {{convert|12|ft}} to form a new chancel. At the same time the vestry and entrance porch were added to the north side and the west end of the church was remodelled by architects Preston and Vaughn. The work was completed by contractors Cordingley and Stopford. The large west gallery was removed and a smaller one installed with central doors hung in the archway beneath it. The woodwork was by J. Pearson of Pendleton. The [nave](https://engole.info/nave/) and [aisle](http://engole.info/aisle-architecture) roofs were panelled in pitch pine, the wooden floor was replaced and the windows were reglazed. Paint was removed from the interior stonework and the columns were reduced in thickness. The church was relit and a heating system by [John Grundy](https://engole.info/john-grundy-limited/) was installed.{{sfnp|RY2EJVZG}}
In 1920 the the Lady Chapel was dedicated as a War Memorial.{{sfnp|W7S6QE4T|14}} A second fire, in 1966, destroyed half the roof and part of the ceiling.{{sfnp|W7S6QE4T|21}}
In 1886 [St John’s Church](https://engole.info/st-johns-church-mosley-common/) at Mosley Common was built as a chapel of ease to St George’s.{{sfnp|CZGN8DU2|439–445}}
### School
Funds were raised in 1827 and George Ormerod gave a site next to the church for a [national school](https://engole.info/national-schools/) that catered for all age groups when it opened in 1829.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|112}}
## Structure
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/TSG_Spire_and_west_end.JPG)West end and spire
Wikimedia Commons
Peel Quarry in Little Hulton supplied the sandstone for the church{{sfnp|JJGR7H29}} which is {{convert|112|ft}} long and {{convert|60|ft}} wide.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|121}} It was built in the Early English Gothic style{{sfnp|CZGN8DU2|439–445}} with a seven-bay nave and clerestory which, according to Pevsner have, “unconvincing Geometric aisle windows and squashed Y-tracery on the clerestory”.{{sfnp|M4A33PZV|65-66}} The chancel, added in 1886, has two-light windows to the south and north walls and a three-light east window, all with geometrical tracery. On the north side is a vestry and a porch in the westernmost bay.{{sfnp|KFHZSU97}}
The tower at the west end has a west door and rises in three stages to a parapet with crocketed pinnacles and flying buttresses at each corner to a recessed octagonal spire that rises to {{convert|150|ft}}. At its second stage is a [lancet window](https://engole.info/lancet-window), and at the third stage, three lancet [belfry](https://engole.info/belfry) openings and a clock face to each side of the tower.{{sfnp|KFHZSU97}}
### Furniture and fittings
The tower contains a peel eight bells, six were cast in 1825 by William Dobson at Downham Market in Norfolk.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|121}} When the bells were rehung in 1910, two trebles by Mears and Stainbank added.{{sfnp|W7S6QE4T|14}} In the 1960s, subsidence and cracks in the tower prevented bell ringing but an inspection in 2012 revealed the bells could be rung again after repairs to the frame. The Lancashire Association of Change Ringers paid for the repairs, and the bells rang out again in December 2012.{{sfnp|CPZBV3YV}}
The town’s first public clock, with three faces, was installed on the tower in 1847, paid for by public subscription. A four-faced clock installed in 1913, wound by hand until 1967, now has an electrical movement. After 1912 the town council was responsible for the cost of repairs and illumination, and in 1937 electricity superseded gas for lighting its faces.{{sfnp|CIAEHT3N|121}}
The church when first built could seat 1,100 people. The church has a west gallery, originally there were two. The original 1825 font was replaced by a larger one in 1853. In 1860 an organ was bought from Willis of London for £350, replacing a barrel organ given by George Ormerod when the church was opened.{{sfnp|7ETSN33Y}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/tst-g-int-2.jpg)Interior of Tyldesley Parish Church
Most of the church woodwork dates from the extensions and refurbishment in 1887. The chancel woodwork is in American walnut and was carved by Earp of Manchester. The wooden altar is elaborately carved, as is the [reredos](https://engole.info/reredos/). The pulpit is in carved walnut on a base of Mansfield red stone. A new case was made for the organ at the east end of the south aisle. Pitch pine pews were stained and polished to match the chancel woodwork and replaced the original [box pews](https://engole.info/box-pew/).{{sfnp|RY2EJVZG}}{{sfnp|W7S6QE4T|12}}
The stained glass in the east window was designed by William Pointer of Manchester and dates from 1956. On either side of the window are mosaic panels dated 1914, each of which depicts two evangelists. The stained-glass windows depicting saints in the north and south walls of the chancel date from the 19th century and were moved from Bishopscourt, the former palace of the Bishops of Manchester, in about 1958. Monuments include one dated 1855 showing a “grieving woman slumped over an urn” and a bronze plaque from 1924.{{sfnp|M4A33PZV|596}}
## Clergy
During its first 120 years, St George’s had four incumbents. Jacob Robson came to the church as curate in 1825, becoming vicar in 1842, although Tyldesley was made a parish in 1829. He died in 1851.{{sfnp|W7S6QE4T|9}} His successor was George Richards who was vicar from 1851 to 1884, during which time 14 of the 25 victims of the Yew Tree Colliery firedamp explosion in 1858 were buried in the churchyard.{{sfnp|W7S6QE4T|10}} John Lund was the next incumbent. He oversaw the extension of the east end of the church in 1886 and the building of the vicarage in 1902.{{sfnp|W7S6QE4T|12}} He was vicar for 36 years until 1920, when he was replaced by Samuel Fleming, who was vicar until 1948.{{sfnp|W7S6QE4T|15}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23084
**Categories:** Anglican, Church, Greater Manchester
---
### [Sunbeam Tiger](https://engole.info/sunbeam-tiger/)
**Published:** October 7, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Sunbeam_Tiger%283%29.jpg[/pimage]High-performance V8 version of the British Rootes Group’s Sunbeam Alpine roadster, designed in part by the American car designer and racing driver Carroll Shelby and produced from 1964 until 1967.
**Content:**
The Sunbeam Tiger is a high-performance V8 version of the British Rootes Group’s Sunbeam Alpine roadster, designed in part by the American car designer and racing driver Carroll Shelby and produced from 1964 until 1967. Shelby had carried out a similar V8 conversion on the AC Cobra, and hoped to be offered the contract to produce the Tiger at his facility in the United States. Rootes decided instead to contract the assembly work to Jensen at West Bromwich in England, and pay Shelby a royalty on every car produced.
Two major versions of the Tiger were built: the Mark I (1964–1967) was fitted with the 260 cu in (4.3 L) Ford V8; the Mark II, of which only 633 were built in the final year of Tiger production, was fitted with the larger Ford 289 cu in (4.7 L) engine. Two prototype and extensively modified versions of the Mark I competed in the 1964 24 Hours of Le Mans, but neither completed the race. Rootes also entered the Tiger in European rallies with some success, and for two years it was the American Hot Rod Association’s national record holder over a quarter-mile drag strip.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Sunbeam_Tiger%283%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Manufacturer:**Rootes Group**Production:**1964–1967
7083 made**Top speed:**{{convert|122|mph}}
Production ended in 1967 soon after the Rootes Group was taken over by Chrysler, which did not have a suitable engine to replace the Ford V8. Owing to the ease and affordability of modifying the Tiger, there are few remaining cars in standard form.{{sfnp|3GZB95L2}}
## Background
The Sunbeam Tiger was a development of the Sunbeam Alpine series I, introduced by the British manufacturer Rootes in 1959.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|27}} Rootes realised that the Alpine needed more power if it was to compete successfully in world markets, but lacked a suitable engine and the resources to develop one. The company approached Ferrari to redesign the standard inline-four engine, recognising the cachet that “powered by Ferrari” would likely bring. Negotiations initially went well, but ultimately failed.{{sfnp|ILQLLRRE|10}}
In 1962 racing driver and Formula 1 champion Jack Brabham proposed to Rootes competition manager Norman Garrad the idea of fitting the Alpine with a Ford V8 engine,\[a\]Jack Brabham proposed the idea to Norman Garrad after he and Stirling Moss had co-driven an Alpine to second place overall in the Production Car Class of the Los Angeles Times Grand Prix held in October 1962 at Riverside, California.{{sfnp|ILQLLRRE|11}} which Garrad relayed to his son Ian, then the West Coast Sales Manager of Rootes American Motors Inc. Ian Garrad lived near Carroll Shelby’s Shelby American operation, which had done a similar V8 conversion for the British AC Cobra.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|96}}
## Initial prototypes
According to journalist William Carroll, after measuring the Alpine’s engine bay with “a ‘precision’ instrument of questionable antecedents” – a wooden yardstick – Ian Garrad despatched his service manager Walter McKenzie to visit the local new car dealerships, looking for a V8 engine that might fit. McKenzie returned with the news that the Ford 260 V8 engine appeared to be suitable,{{sfnp|ILQLLRRE|11}} which apart from its size advantage was relatively light at 440 lb (200 kg). Ian Garrad asked Shelby for an idea of the timescale and cost to build a prototype, which Shelby estimated to be eight weeks and $10,000. He then approached Brian Rootes, head of sales for the Rootes Group, for funding and authorisation to build a prototype, to which Brian Rootes agreed.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|97}}
Well all right, at that price when can we start? But for God’s sake keep it quiet from Dad \[Lord Rootes\] until you hear from me. I’ll work the $10,000 out some way, possibly from the advertising account.{{sfnp
— ILQLLRREIan Garrad, impatient to establish whether the conversion was feasible, commissioned racing driver and fabricator Ken Miles to build another prototype as quickly as he could. Miles was provided with a budget of $800, a Series II Alpine, a Ford V8 engine and a 2-speed automatic transmission, and in about a week he had a running V8 conversion, thus proving the concept.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|97, 99}}
Shelby began work on his prototype, the white car as it came to be known, in April 1963,{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|99}} and by the end of the month it was ready for trial runs around Los Angeles. Ian Garrad and John Panks, director of Rootes Motors Inc. of North America, tested an early version of the car and were so impressed that Panks wrote a glowing report to Brian Rootes: “we have a tremendously exciting sports car which handles extremely well and has a performance equivalent to an XX-K Jaguar\[b\]Panks was almost certainly referring to the E-type Jaguar.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|103}} … it is quite apparent that we have a most successful experiment that can now be developed into a production car.”{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|103}}
Provisionally known as the Thunderbolt,{{sfnp|LNDKCIA4}} the Shelby prototype was more polished than the Miles version, and used a Ford 4-speed manual transmission. The Ford V8 was only 3.5 inches longer than the Alpine’s 4-cylinder engine it replaced, so the primary concern was the engine’s width.{{sfnp|2WYMXY96|108}} Like Miles, Shelby found that the Ford V8 would only just fit into the Alpine engine bay: “I think that if the figure of speech about the shoehorn ever applied to anything, it surely did to the tight squeak in getting that 260 Ford mill into the Sunbeam engine compartment. There was a place for everything and a space for everything, but positively not an inch to spare.”{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|99}}{{sfnp|GBBXISBA|218}}
## Development
All Rootes products had to be approved by Lord Rootes, who was reportedly “very grumpy” when he learned of the work that had gone into the Tiger project without his knowledge. He agreed to have the Shelby prototype shipped from America in July 1963 for him and his team to assess. He insisted on driving the car himself, and was so impressed that shortly after returning from his test drive he contacted Henry Ford II directly to negotiate a deal for the supply of Ford V8 engines.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|103-104}} Rootes placed an initial order for 3000,{{sfnp|NUEVHQU7|178}} the number of Tigers it expected to sell in the first year,{{sfnp|ILQLLRRE|47}} the largest single order Ford had ever received for its engines from an automobile manufacturer.{{sfnp|ILQLLRRE|34}} Not only did Lord Rootes agree that the car would go into production, but he decided that it should be launched at the 1964 New York Motor Show, only eight months away, despite the company’s normal development cycle from “good idea” to delivery of the final product being three to four years.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|104}}
Installing such a large engine in a relatively small vehicle required some modifications, although the exterior sheet metal remained essentially the same as the Alpine’s. Necessary chassis modifications included moving from the Burman recirculating ball steering mechanism to a more modern rack and pinion system.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|101}}
Although twice as powerful as the Alpine, the Tiger is only about 20 per cent heavier,{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|174}} but the extra weight of the larger engine required some minor suspension modifications. Nevertheless, the Tiger’s front-to-back weight ratio is substantially similar to the Alpine’s, at 51.7/48.3 front/rear.{{sfnp|2WYMXY96|8}}
Shortly before its public unveiling at the New York Motor Show in April 1964 the car was renamed from Thunderbolt to Tiger, inspired by Sunbeam’s 1925 land speed record holder.{{sfnp|BVQ5NWZI}}\[c\]The 1925 Sunbeam Tiger was the last car to be competitive as a land speed record holder and a circuit-racing car.{{sfnp|E3DMIVNV|33}}
## Production
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Sunbeam_tiger_v8.jpg)The chrome strips either side of the Tiger logo show this to be a Mark I car
Wikimedia Commons
Shelby had hoped to be given the contract to produce the Tiger in America, but Rootes was somewhat uneasy about the closeness of his relationship with Ford, so it was decided to build the car in England.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|105}} The Rootes factory at Ryton did not have the capacity to build the Tiger, so the company contracted the job to Jensen in West Bromwich.{{sfnp|LNDKCIA4}} Any disappointment Shelby may have felt was tempered by an offer from Rootes to pay him an undisclosed royalty on every Tiger built.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|106}}
Jensen was able to assume production of the Tiger because its assembly contract for the Volvo P1800 had recently been cancelled. An additional factor in the decision was that Jensen’s chief engineer Kevin Beattie and his assistant Mike Jones had previously worked for Rootes, and understood how the company operated.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|106}} The first of 14 Jensen-built prototypes were based on the Series IV body shell, which became available at the end of 1963.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|107}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/1960s_left_hand_drive_Sunbeam_Tiger_dash_%28cropped%29.jpg)The Tiger’s interior is almost identical to the Alpine on which it is based.
Wikimedia Commons
The Tiger went into production in June 1964, less than a year after completion of the Shelby prototype.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|95}} Painted and trimmed bodies were supplied by Pressed Steel in Oxfordshire, and the engines and gearboxes directly from Ford in America.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|112}} Installing the engine required some unusual manufacturing methods, including using a sledgehammer to bash in part of the already primed and painted bulkhead to allow the engine to be slid into place.\[13\] Jensen was soon able to assemble up to 300 Tigers a month,{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|113}} which were initially offered for sale only in North America.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|9}} The first few Tigers assembled had to be fitted with a Borg-Warner 4-speed all-synchromesh manual gearbox, until Ford resolved its supply problems and was able to provide an equivalent unit as used in the Ford Mustang.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|109}}
Several performance modifications were available from dealers. The original 260 CID engine was considered only mildly tuned at 164 hp (122 kW), and some dealers offered modified versions with up to 245 hp (183 kW) for an additional $250. These modifications were particularly noticeable to the driver above {{convert|60|mph|abbr=on}}, although they proved problematic for the standard suspension and tyres, which were perfectly tuned for the stock engine.{{sfnp|2WYMXY96|26}} A 1965 report in the British magazine *Motor Sport* concluded that “No combination of an American V8 and a British chassis could be happier.”{{sfnp|ILQLLRRE|49}}
## Versions
Production reached 7128 cars over three distinct series. The factory only ever designated two, the Mark I and Mark II, but as the official Mark I production spanned the change in body style from the Series IV Alpine panels to the Series V panels, the later Mark I cars are generally designated Mark IA by Sunbeam Tiger enthusiasts.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|118}} The Mark II Tiger, fitted with the larger Ford 289 cu in (4.7 L), was intended exclusively for export to America and was never marketed in the UK,{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|125-127}} although six right-hand drive models were sold to the Metropolitan Police for use in traffic patrols and high-speed pursuits; four more went to the owners of important Rootes dealerships.{{sfnp|C4U498AL|127}}
All Tigers were fitted with a single Ford two barrel carburetor. The compression ratio of the larger Mark II engine was increased from the 8.8:1 of the smaller block to 9.3:1.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|110, 125}} Other differences between the versions included upgraded valve springs (the 260 had developed a reputation for self-destructing if pushed beyond 5000 rpm), an engine-oil cooler, an alternator instead of a dynamo, a larger single dry plate hydraulically operated clutch, wider ratio transmission, and some rear-axle modifications. There were also cosmetic changes: speed stripes instead of chrome strips down the side of the car, a modified radiator grille, and removal of the headlamp cowls.{{sfnp|2WYMXY96|125}}{{sfnp|N9KGXU8I|397}}{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|125}} All Tigers were fitted with the same 4.5 in (110 mm) wide steel disc bolt-on wheels as the Alpine IV,{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|86, 110, 125}} and Dunlop RS5 4.90 in × 13 in (124 mm × 330 mm) cross-ply tyres.{{sfnp|QL3BIHVH|299}} The lack of space in the Tiger’s engine bay causes a few maintenance problems; the left bank of spark plugs is only accessible through a hole in the firewall, normally sealed with a rubber bung, and the oil filter was relocated from the lower left on the block to a higher position on the right-hand side, behind the generator.{{sfnp|2WYMXY96|108}}
## Mark I
The Ford V8 as fitted to the Tiger produced 164 bhp (122 kW) @ 4400 rpm, sufficient to give the car a 0–60 mph (97 km/h) time of 8.6 seconds and a top speed of 120 mph (190 km/h).{{sfnp|2WYMXY96|8}}\[d\]The standard Series II Alpine had a top speed of {{convert|98.6|mph|abbr=on}} and accelerated from 0 to {{convert|60|mph|abbr=on}} in 13.6 seconds.{{sfnp|77QUJXCX}}
The Girling-manufactured brakes used 9.85 in (250 mm) discs at the front and 9 in (229 mm) drums at the rear. The suspension was independent at the front, using coil springs, and at the rear had a live axle and semi-elliptic springs. Apart from the addition of a Panhard rod to better locate the rear axle, and stiffer front springs to cope with the weight of the V8 engine, the Tiger’s suspension and braking systems are identical to that of the standard Alpine.{{sfnp|2WYMXY96|8}} The fitting points for the Panhard rod interfered with the upright spare wheel in the boot, which was repositioned to lie horizontally beneath a false floor. The battery was moved from beneath the rear seat to the boot at the same time.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|108}} The kerb weight of the car increased from the {{convert|2220|lb|abbr=on}} of the standard Alpine to {{convert|2653|lb|abbr=on}}.{{sfnp|2WYMXY96|8}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/1964_Sunbeam_Tiger_convertible_%286105607813%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Production:**1964–1967
6450 made
In 1964, its first year of production, all but 56 of the 1649 Mark I Tigers assembled were shipped to North America,{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|118}} where it was priced at $3499.{{sfnp|2WYMXY96|8}} In an effort to increase its marketability to American buyers the car was fitted with “Powered by Ford 260” badges on each front wing beneath the Tiger logo.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|117}} The Mark I was unavailable in the UK until March 1965, when it was priced at £1446.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|120}} It was also sold in South Africa for R3350, badged as the Sunbeam Alpine 260.{{sfnp|2WYMXY96|69}}
## Mark II
Priced at $3842, the Mark II Tiger was little more than a re-engined Mark IA; by comparison, a contemporary V8 Ford Mustang sold for $2898.{{sfnp|LNDKCIA4}} The larger 289 cu in (4.7 L) Ford engine reduced the Tiger’s 0–{{convert|60|mph|abbr=on}} time to 7.5 seconds, and increased the top speed to {{convert|122|mph|abbr=on}}.{{sfnp|ILQLLRRE|98}} Officially the Mark II Tiger was only available in the US, where it was called the Tiger II.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|9}}{{sfnp|N9KGXU8I|397}} By the time the Mark II car went into production Chrysler was firmly in charge of Rootes, and the “Powered by Ford” shields were replaced by “Sunbeam V-8” badges.{{sfnp|KSHHJSJ5}}
Sources differ in the number of Tiger IIs assembled as 536,{{sfnp|B2AFS8ZC}} 534,{{sfnp|NSDB472V}} and 571.{{sfnp|Q2M8WXM5|235}} Rootes allocated consecutive serial numbers to each car, and although it was well known that the last Tiger II to be produced was B-382100633,{{sfnp|NSDB472V}} the number of the first was for some time believed to be B-382100101, which subtracting one number from the other would give a production run of 533 inclusive. But the first production Mark II Tiger is now known to have the serial number B-382100001, suggesting a run of 633 cars.{{sfnp|ILQLLRRE|56}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Green_Sunbeam_Tiger_2_%28reworked%29.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
**Production:**1967
633 made
## Demise
Rootes had always been insufficiently capitalised, and losses resulting from a damaging thirteen-week strike at one of its subsidiaries, British & Light Steel Pressings, coupled with the expense of launching the Hillman Imp, meant that by 1964 the company was in serious financial difficulties. At the same time, Chrysler was looking to boost its presence in Europe, and so a deal was struck in June 1964 in which Chrysler paid £12.3 million ($34.44 million) for a large stake in Rootes, although not a controlling one.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|201}}{{sfnp|AAGV64E6}} As part of the agreement Chrysler committed not to acquire a majority of Rootes voting shares without the approval of the UK government, which was keen not to see any further American ownership of the UK motor industry. In 1967 Minister of Technology Anthony Wedgewood Benn approached BMH and Leyland to see if they would buy out Chrysler and Rootes and keep the company British, but neither had the resources to do so.{{sfnp|AAGV64E6}} Later that year Chrysler was allowed to acquire a controlling interest in Rootes for a further investment of £20 million.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|201-202}}
Manufacturing a car powered by a competitor’s engine was unacceptable to the new owner,{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|128}} but Chrysler’s own 273 small-block V-8 was too large to fit under the Tiger’s bonnet without major modifications.{{sfnp|2WYMXY96|95}} Compounding the problem, the company’s small-block V8 engines had the distributor positioned at the rear, unlike the front-mounted distributor of the Ford V8. Chrysler’s big-block V8 had a front-mounted distributor but was significantly larger.{{sfnp|3GZB95L2}} Shortly after the takeover Chrysler ordered that production of the Tiger was to end when Rootes’ stock of Ford V8 engines was exhausted; Jensen assembled the last Tiger on 27 June 1967.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|126}} Chrysler added its pentastar logo to the car’s badging, and in its marketing literature de-emphasised the Ford connection, simply describing the Tiger as having “an American V-8 power train”.{{sfnp|ILQLLRRE|58}}
Rootes’ design director Roy Axe commented later that “The Alpine and Tiger were always oddballs in the \[Rootes\] range. I think they \[Chrysler\] didn’t understand it, or have the same interest in it as the family cars – I think it was as simple as that.”{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|129}}
The Tiger name was resurrected in 1972 when Chrysler introduced the Avenger Tiger, a limited-edition modified Hillman Avenger intended primarily for rallying.{{sfnp|I5FED4EU}}
## Competition history
There is no doubt that the Tiger is somewhat misnamed, for it has nothing of the wild and dangerous man-eater about it and is really only as fierce as a pussy cat. A woman would find it easy to control.{{sfnp
— AFZVSV44Three racing Tigers were constructed for the 1964 24 Hours of Le Mans, a prototype and two that were entered in the race.{{sfnp|BVQ5NWZI}} Costing $45,000 each,{{sfnp|2WYMXY96|104-105}} they were highly modified versions of the production cars, fitted with fastback coupe bodies produced by Lister.{{sfnp|BVQ5NWZI}} But they were still steel monocoques, and made the Le Mans Tigers {{convert|66|lb|abbr=on}} heavier than a road-going Tiger at {{convert|2615|lb|abbr=on}}, almost {{convert|600|lb|abbr=on}} more than the winning Ferrari.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|163}} The standard Ford four-speed manual transmission was replaced with a BorgWarner T10 close-ratio racing transmission, which allowed for a top speed of {{convert|140|mph|abbr=on}}.\[e\]The first car suffered a piston failure after three hours and the second a broken crankshaft.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|164}}
Both Tigers suffered early mechanical failures, and neither finished the race.\[f\]The first car suffered a piston failure after three hours and the second a broken crankshaft.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|p=164}} The engines had been prepared by Shelby but had not been properly developed, and as a result overheated; Shelby eventually refunded the development cost to Rootes.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|163-164}} All three of the Le Mans Tigers have survived.{{sfnp|BVQ5NWZI}}
Once Rootes had made the decision to put the Tiger into production an Alpine IV minus engine and transmission was shipped to Shelby, who was asked to transform the car into a racing Tiger. Shelby’s competition Tiger made an early appearance in the B Production Class of Pacific Coast Division SCCA races, which resulted in some “highly successful” publicity for the new car. But Shelby was becoming increasingly preoccupied with development work for Ford, and so the racing project was transferred to the Hollywood Sports Car dealership, whose driver Jim Adams achieved a third-place finish in the Pacific Coast Division in 1965. A Tiger driven by Peter Boulton and Jim Latta finished twelfth overall and first in the small GT class at the 1965 Dayton Continental.{{sfnp|ILQLLRRE|51}} The Tiger was also raced on quarter-mile drag strips, and for two years was the American Hot Rod Association’s national record holder in its class, reaching a speed of {{convert|108|mph|abbr=on}} in 12.95 seconds.{{sfnp|ILQLLRRE|53}}
Rootes entered the Tiger in European rallies, taking first, second and third places in the 1964 Geneva Rally.{{sfnp|ILQLLRRE|51}} Two Tigers took part in the 1965 Monte Carlo Rally, one finishing fourth overall, the highest placing by a front-engined rear-wheel drive car, and the other eleventh.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|179}} After finally having sorted out the engine overheating problem by fitting a forward-facing air scoop to the bonnet, Rootes entered three Tigers in the 1965 Alpine Rally, one of which crossed the finishing line as outright winner. Scrutineers later disqualified the car however, because it had been fitted with undersized cylinder head valves.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|179, 182}} By the end of the 1966 Acropolis Rally though, it had become clear that low-slung sports cars such as the Tiger were unsuited to the increasingly rough-terrain rally stages, and the car was withdrawn from competition soon after.\[g\]The Tiger had {{convert|5|in}} of ground clearance, a lot for a sports car but not for a rally car.{{sfnp|2WYMXY96|107}} In the words of Ian Hall, who drove the Tiger in the Acropolis Rally, “I felt that the Tiger had just had it – it was an out of date leviathan”.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|186-187}}
## In popular media
The 1965 Tiger Mark I gained some exposure on American television as the car of choice for Maxwell Smart in the spoof spy series *Get Smart*.{{sfnp|FUTBP6R5}} The Tiger was used for the first two seasons in the opening credits, in which Smart screeched to a halt outside his headquarters, and was used through the remainder of the series in several episodes.{{sfnp|JXRIFUPM}} Some of the scenes featured unusual modifications such as a retractable James Bond-style machine gun, for which there was no available space under the Tiger’s bonnet, so rebadged Alpine models were used instead.{{sfnp|JXRIFUPM}}
Don Adams, who played the protagonist Maxwell Smart, acquired the Tiger after the series ended and later gave it to his daughters; it is reportedly on display at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.{{sfnp|JXRIFUPM}} During its early years Rootes advertised the car extensively in *Playboy* magazine and lent a pink Tiger with matching interior to 1965 Playmate of the Year Jo Collins for a year.{{sfnp|ILQLLRRE|52}}
The Tiger also featured in the 2008 film adaptation of the *Get Smart* TV series.{{sfnp|V95VRFKP}} A replica Tiger had to be constructed using a stock Sunbeam Alpine and re-created Tiger badging as no available Tiger could be found in Canada, where the film was produced. The production team recorded the sound of an authentic Tiger owned by a collector in Los Angeles{{sfnp|PLH8ARIV}} and edited it into the film.{{sfnp|FUTBP6R5}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Jack Brabham proposed the idea to Norman Garrad after he and Stirling Moss had co-driven an Alpine to second place overall in the Production Car Class of the Los Angeles Times Grand Prix held in October 1962 at Riverside, California.{{sfnp|ILQLLRRE|11}} b Panks was almost certainly referring to the E-type Jaguar.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|103}} c The 1925 Sunbeam Tiger was the last car to be competitive as a land speed record holder and a circuit-racing car.{{sfnp|E3DMIVNV|33}} d The standard Series II Alpine had a top speed of {{convert|98.6|mph|abbr=on}} and accelerated from 0 to {{convert|60|mph|abbr=on}} in 13.6 seconds.{{sfnp|77QUJXCX}} e The first car suffered a piston failure after three hours and the second a broken crankshaft.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|164}} f The first car suffered a piston failure after three hours and the second a broken crankshaft.{{sfnp|AFZVSV44|p=164}} g The Tiger had {{convert|5|in}} of ground clearance, a lot for a sports car but not for a rally car.{{sfnp|2WYMXY96|107}} h, i, j, k, l, m var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 6934
This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Sunbeam_Tiger#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Automobile, British
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Samuel Johnson](https://engole.info/samuel-johnson/)
**Published:** May 27, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Samuel_Johnson_by_Joshua_Reynolds.jpg/960px-Samuel_Johnson_by_Joshua_Reynolds.jpg[/pimage]18th-century English writer, critic, editor and lexicographer whose Dictionary of the English Language had far-reaching effects on the development of Modern English.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Samuel_Johnson_by_Joshua_Reynolds.jpg/960px-Samuel_Johnson_by_Joshua_Reynolds.jpg)Samuel Johnson c. 1772,
painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds
Wikimedia Commons
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 \[OS 7 September\] – 13 December 1784), often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to the language as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. He was a devout Anglican,{{sfnp|A6WYMPND|2}} committed Tory, and “arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history”.{{sfnp|JF9E96IW}}
Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, he attended Pembroke College, Oxford until lack of funds forced him to leave. After work as a teacher, he moved to London and began writing for [*The Gentleman’s Magazine*](https://engole.info/the-gentlemans-magazine/). Early works include *Life of Mr Richard Savage*, the poems *London* and *The Vanity of Human Wishes* and the play *Irene*. After nine years’ effort, Johnson’s *A Dictionary of the English Language* appeared in 1755 with far-reaching effects on Modern English, acclaimed as “one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship”.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|240}} Until the arrival of the *Oxford English Dictionary* 150 years later, Johnson’s was pre-eminent.{{sfnp|KQRWU5C2|1}} Later work included essays, an annotated *The Plays of William Shakespeare* and *The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia*. In 1763 he befriended James Boswell, with whom he travelled to Scotland, as Johnson described in *A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland*. Near the end of his life came a massive, influential *Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets of 17th and 18th centuries*.
Tall and robust, he displayed gestures and tics that disconcerted some on meeting him. *Boswell’s Life*, along with other biographies, documented Johnson’s behaviour and mannerisms in such detail that they have informed the posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome,{{sfnp|XWNHRFRF}}{{sfnp|VEPG7R67}} a condition not recognised in the 18th century. After several illnesses he died on the evening of 13 December 1784, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
## Early life and education
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Johnson_house_Lichfield.jpg)Johnson’s birthplace in Market Square, Lichfield
Wikimedia Commons
Samuel Johnson was born on 18 September 1709, to Sarah (née Ford) and Michael Johnson, a bookseller.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|5}} The birth took place in the family home above his father’s bookshop in Lichfield, Staffordshire. His mother was forty when she gave birth, considered an unusually late pregnancy, so a “man-midwife” and surgeon of “great reputation” named George Hector was brought in to assist.{{sfnp|KAKHAKS9|15-16}} The infant Johnson did not cry, and there were concerns for his health. His aunt exclaimed that “she would not have picked such a poor creature up in the street”.{{sfnp|UXY6A53F|25}} The family feared that Johnson would not survive, and summoned the vicar of St Mary’s to perform a baptism.{{sfnp|KAKHAKS9|16}} Two godfathers were chosen, Samuel Swynfen, a physician and graduate of Pembroke College, Oxford, and Richard Wakefield, a lawyer, coroner, and Lichfield town clerk.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|5-6}}
Johnson’s health improved and he was put to wet-nurse with Joan Marklew. Some time later he contracted scrofula,{{sfnp|KAKHAKS9|16-17}} known at the time as the [King’s Evil](https://engole.info/kings-evil/), because it was thought that royalty could cure it. Sir John Floyer, former physician to King Charles II, recommended that the young Johnson should receive the “royal touch”,{{sfnp|KAKHAKS9|18}} and he did so from Queen Anne on 30 March 1712. But the ritual proved ineffective, and an operation was performed that left him with permanent scars across his face and body.{{sfnp|KAKHAKS9|19-20}} Following the birth of Johnson’s brother Nathaniel a few months later, their father was unable to pay the debts he had accrued over the years, and the family was no longer able to maintain its standard of living.{{sfnp|KAKHAKS9|20-21}}
When he was a child in petticoats, and had learnt to read, Mrs. Johnson one morning put the common prayer-book into his hands, pointed to the collect for the day, and said, ‘Sam, you must get this by heart.’ She went up stairs, leaving him to study it: But by the time she had reached the second floor, she heard him following her. ‘What’s the matter?’ said she. ‘I can say it,’ he replied; and repeated it distinctly, though he could not have read it more than twice.
— Boswell’s *Life of Johnson*{{sfnpJohnson displayed signs of great intelligence as a child, and his parents, to his later disgust, would show off his “newly acquired accomplishments”.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|18-19}} His education began at the age of three, and was provided by his mother, who had him memorise and recite passages from the Book of Common Prayer.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|21}} When Samuel turned four, he was sent to a nearby school, and, at the age of six he was sent to a retired shoemaker to continue his education.{{sfnp|KAKHAKS9|25-26}} A year later Johnson went to Lichfield Grammar School, where he excelled in Latin.{{sfnp|KAKHAKS9|26}} During this time, Johnson started to exhibit the tics that would influence how people viewed him in his later years, and which formed the basis for a posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome.{{sfnp|IHDQRUQF|5-6}} He excelled at his studies and was promoted to the upper school at the age of nine.{{sfnp|KAKHAKS9|26}} During this time he befriended Edmund Hector, nephew of his “man-midwife” George Hector, and John Taylor, with whom he remained in contact for the rest of his life.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|23,31}}
At the age of 16 Johnson stayed with his cousins, the Fords, at Pedmore, Worcestershire.{{sfnp|KAKHAKS9|29}} There he became a close friend of Cornelius Ford, who employed his knowledge of the classics to tutor Johnson while he was not attending school.{{sfnp|BZGWQA7I|32}} Ford was a successful, well-connected academic, and notorious alcoholic whose excesses contributed to his death six years later.{{sfnp|KAKHAKS9|30}} After spending six months with his cousins, Johnson returned to Lichfield, but Mr Hunter, the headmaster, “angered by the impertinence of this long absence”, refused to allow Johnson to continue at the school.{{sfnp|KAKHAKS9|33}} Unable to return to Lichfield Grammar School, Johnson enrolled at the King Edward VI grammar school at Stourbridge.{{sfnp|BZGWQA7I|32}} As the school was near Pedmore, Johnson was able to spend more time with the Fords, and he began to write poems and verse translations.{{sfnp|KAKHAKS9|33}} But he spent only six months at Stourbridge before returning once again to his parent’s home in Lichfield.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|61}}
During this time Johnson’s future remained uncertain, because his father was deeply in debt.{{sfnp|KAKHAKS9|34}} To earn money, Johnson began to stitch books for his father, and it is likely that Johnson spent much time in his father’s bookshop reading and building his literary knowledge. The family remained in poverty until his mother’s cousin Elizabeth Harriotts died in February 1728 and left enough money to send Johnson to university.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|87}} On 31 October 1728, a few weeks after he turned 19, Johnson entered Pembroke College, Oxford.{{sfnp|KAKHAKS9|39}} The inheritance did not cover all of his expenses at Pembroke, and Andrew Corbet, a friend and fellow student at the college, offered to make up the deficit.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|88}}
Johnson made friends at Pembroke and read much, but in later life he told stories of his idleness. His tutor asked him to produce a Latin translation of Alexander Pope’s *Messiah* as a Christmas exercise.{{sfnp|7XVJ9NYV|91-92}} Johnson completed half of the translation in one afternoon and the rest the following morning. Although the poem brought him praise, it did not bring the material benefit he had hoped for.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|92}} It subsequently appeared in *Miscellany of Poems* (1731), edited by John Husbands, a Pembroke tutor, and is the earliest surviving publication of any of Johnson’s writings. Johnson spent the rest of his time studying, even during the Christmas holiday. He drafted a “plan of study” called “Adversaria”, which he left unfinished, and used his time to learn French while working on his Greek.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|93-94}}
After thirteen months, a lack of funds forced Johnson to leave Oxford without a degree, and he returned to Lichfield.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|87}} Towards the end of Johnson’s stay at Oxford, his tutor, Jorden, left Pembroke and was replaced by William Adams. Johnson enjoyed Adams’ tutoring, but by December he was already a quarter behind in his student fees, and forced to return home. He left behind many books he had borrowed from his father because he could not afford to transport them, and also because he hoped to return to Oxford.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|106-107}}
Johnson did eventually receive a degree. Just before the publication of his *Dictionary* in 1755, the University of Oxford awarded him the degree of Master of Arts.{{sfnp|KAKHAKS9|128-129}} He was also awarded an honorary doctorate in 1765 by Trinity College Dublin and in 1775 by the University of Oxford.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|36}} In 1776 he returned to Pembroke with Boswell and toured the college with his former tutor Adams, who by then was the Master of the college. During that visit he recalled his time at the college and his early career, and expressed his later fondness for Jorden.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|99}}
## Early career
Little is known about Johnson’s life between the end of 1729 and 1731, but it is likely that he lived with his parents. He experienced bouts of mental anguish and physical pain during years of illness;{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|127}} his tics and gesticulations associated with Tourette syndrome became more noticeable and were often commented upon.{{sfnp|UJ3Y6XAB|24}} By 1731 Johnson’s father was deeply in debt and had lost much of his standing in Lichfield. Johnson hoped to get an usher’s position, which became available at Stourbridge Grammar School, but since he did not have a degree, his application was passed over on 6 September 1731.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|127}} At about this time, Johnson’s father became ill and developed an “inflammatory fever”, which led to his death in December 1731.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|129}} Johnson eventually found employment as undermaster at a school in Market Bosworth, run by Sir Wolstan Dixie, who allowed him to teach even though he had no degree.{{sfnp|7XVJ9NYV|130-131}} Although Johnson was treated as a servant,{{sfnp|HPLC4INU|53}} he found pleasure in teaching, despite considering it boring. After an argument with Dixie he left the school, and by June 1732 he had returned home.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|131-132}}
Johnson continued to look for a position at a Lichfield school. After being turned down for a job at Ashbourne, he spent time with his friend Edmund Hector, who was living in the home of the publisher Thomas Warren. At the time, Warren was starting his *Birmingham Journal*, and he enlisted Johnson’s help.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|134}} This connection with Warren grew, and Johnson proposed a translation of Jerónimo Lobo’s account of the Abyssinians.{{sfnp|7XVJ9NYV|137-138}} Johnson read Abbé Joachim Le Grand’s French translations, and thought that a shorter version might be “useful and profitable”.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|138}} Instead of writing the work himself, he dictated to Hector, who then took the copy to the printer and made any corrections. Johnson’s *A Voyage to Abyssinia* was published a year later.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|138}} He returned to Lichfield in February 1734 and began an annotated edition of Poliziano’s Latin poems, along with a history of Latin poetry from Petrarch to Poliziano; a *Proposal* was soon printed, but a lack of funds halted the project.{{sfnp|7XVJ9NYV|140-141}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Mrs._Samuel_Johnson_%28by_Vereist%29.jpg/960px-Mrs._Samuel_Johnson_%28by_Vereist%29.jpg)Elizabeth “Tetty” Porter, Johnson’s wife
Wikimedia Commons
Johnson remained with his close friend Harry Porter during a terminal illness,{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|144}} which ended in Porter’s death on 3 September 1734. Porter’s wife Elizabeth (née Jervis) (otherwise known as “Tetty”) was now a widow at the age of forty-five, with three children.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|143}} Some months later, Johnson began to court her. The Reverend William Shaw claims that “the first advances probably proceeded from her, as her attachment to Johnson was in opposition to the advice and desire of all her relations”.{{sfnp|7XVJ9NYV|88}} Johnson was inexperienced in such relationships, but the well-to-do widow encouraged him and promised to provide for him with her substantial savings.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|145}} They married on 9 July 1735, at St Werburgh’s Church in Derby.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|147}} The Porter family did not approve of the match, partly because of the difference in their ages; Johnson was twenty-five and Elizabeth was forty-six. Elizabeth’s marriage to Johnson so disgusted her son Jervis that he severed all relations with her.{{sfnp|BZGWQA7I|65}} But her daughter Lucy accepted Johnson from the start, and Elizabeth’s other son, Joseph, later came to accept the marriage.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|146}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Edial_Hall_School.jpg)Edial Hall School
Wikimedia Commons
In June 1735, while working as a tutor for the children of Thomas Whitby, a local Staffordshire gentleman, Johnson had applied for the position of headmaster at Solihull School.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|153-154}} Although Johnson’s friend Gilbert Walmisley gave his support, Johnson was passed over because the school’s directors thought he was “a very haughty, ill-natured gent, and that he has such a way of distorting his face (which though he can’t help) the gents think it may affect some lads”.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|154}} With Walmisley’s encouragement, Johnson decided that he could be a successful teacher if he ran his own school.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|153}} Towards the end of 1735 Johnson opened Edial Hall School as a private academy at Edial, near Lichfield. He had only three pupils: Lawrence Offley, George Garrick, and the 18-year-old David Garrick, who was to become one of the most famous actors of his day.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|154}} The venture was unsuccessful and cost Tetty a substantial portion of her fortune. Instead of trying to keep the failing school going, Johnson began to write his first major work, the historical tragedy *Irene*.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|156}} The biographer Robert DeMaria believed that Tourette syndrome likely made public occupations like schoolmaster or tutor almost impossible for Johnson. This may have led Johnson to “the invisible occupation of authorship”.{{sfnp|IHDQRUQF|5-6}}
Johnson left for London with his former pupil David Garrick on 2 March 1737, the day Johnson’s brother died. He was penniless and pessimistic about their travel, but fortunately for them, Garrick had connections in London, and the two were able to stay with his distant relative, Richard Norris.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|164-165}} Johnson soon moved to Greenwich near the Golden Hart Tavern to finish *Irene*.\[63\] On 12 July 1737 he wrote to Edward Cave with a proposal for a translation of Paolo Sarpi’s *The History of the Council of Trent* (1619), which Cave did not accept until months later.{{sfnp|BZGWQA7I|81}}{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|169}} In October 1737 Johnson brought his wife to London, and he found employment with Cave as a writer for [*The Gentleman’s Magazine*](https://engole.info/the-gentlemans-magazine/ "The Gentleman’s Magazine").{{sfnp|7XVJ9NYV|169-170}} His assignments for the magazine and other publishers during this time were “almost unparalleled in range and variety,” and “so numerous, so varied and scattered” that “Johnson himself could not make a complete list”.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|14}}
In May 1738 Johnson’s first major work, the poem *London*, was published anonymously.{{sfnp|KQRWU5C2|5}} Based on Juvenal’s Satire III, it describes the character Thales leaving for Wales to escape the problems of London,{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|172}} which is portrayed as a place of crime, corruption, and poverty. Johnson could not bring himself to regard the poem as earning him any merit as a poet.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|18}} Alexander Pope said that the author “will soon be déterré” (unearthed, dug up), but that did not happen until fifteen years later.{{sfnp|KQRWU5C2|5}}
In August, Johnson’s lack of an MA degree from Oxford or Cambridge led to his being denied a position as master of the Appleby Grammar School. In an effort to end such rejections, Pope asked Lord Gower to use his influence to have a degree awarded to Johnson.{{sfnp|UXY6A53F|25}} Gower petitioned Oxford for an honorary degree to be awarded to Johnson, but was told that it was “too much to be asked”. Gower then asked a friend of Jonathan Swift to plead with Swift to use his influence at the University of Dublin to have a master’s degree awarded to Johnson, in the hope that this could then be used to justify an MA from Oxford,{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|182}} but Swift refused to act on Johnson’s behalf.{{sfnp|UXY6A53F|25-26}}
Between 1737 and 1739, Johnson befriended poet Richard Savage.{{sfnp|UXY6A53F|51}} Feeling guilty of living almost entirely on Tetty’s money, Johnson stopped living with her and spent his time with Savage. They were poor and would stay in taverns or sleep in “night-cellars”. Some nights they would roam the streets until dawn because they had no money.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|178-179}} Savage’s friends tried to help him by attempting to persuade him to move to Wales, but Savage ended up in Bristol and again fell into debt. He was committed to debtors’ prison and died in 1743. A year later, Johnson wrote the *Life of Mr Richard Savage* (1744), a “moving” work which, in the words of the biographer and critic Walter Jackson Bate, “remains one of the innovative works in the history of biography”.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|180-181}}
## A Dictionary of the English Language
In 1746 a group of publishers approached Johnson with an idea about creating an authoritative dictionary of the English language.{{sfnp|KQRWU5C2|5}} A contract with William Strahan and associates, worth 1,500 guineas, equivalent to about £250,000 as at 2020,\[a\]Using the retail price index measure of inflation.{{sfnp|JEKMSQRM}} was signed on the morning of 18 June 1746.{{sfnp|L7QTD9LM|58}} Johnson claimed that he could finish the project in three years. In comparison, the Académie Française had forty scholars spending forty years to complete their dictionary, which prompted Johnson to claim, “This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.” Although he did not succeed in completing the work in three years, he did manage to finish it in eight.{{sfnp|KQRWU5C2|5}} Some criticised the work, including Thomas Babington Macaulay, who described Johnson as “a wretched etymologist,”{{sfnp|HUZACSWV|33}} but according to Bate, the *Dictionary* “easily ranks as one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship, and probably the greatest ever performed by one individual who laboured under anything like the disadvantages in a comparable length of time.”{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|240}} Published in 1755, Johnson’s dictionary was not the first, nor was it unique, but it was the most commonly used and imitated for the 150 years between its first publication and the completion of the *Oxford English Dictionary* in 1928.{{sfnp|KQRWU5C2|1}}
Tetty Johnson was ill during most of her time in London, and in 1752 she decided to return to the countryside while Johnson was busy working on his *Dictionary*. She died on 17 March 1752.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|272-273}} Johnson felt guilty about the poverty in which he believed he had forced Tetty to live, and blamed himself for neglecting her. She had been his primary motivation, and her death interfered greatly with his continuing ability to work productively.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|273-275}}
In 1762 the 24-year-old King George III granted Johnson an annual pension of £300 in appreciation for the *Dictionary*,{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|36}} equivalent to about £47,600 as at 2021,\[b\]Using the retail price index measure of inflation,{{sfnp|JEKMSQRM}} which allowed him a modest yet comfortable independence for the remaining twenty-two years of his life.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|356}} When Johnson questioned if the pension would force him to promote a political agenda or support various officials, he was told that the pension “is not given you for anything you are to do, but for what you have done”.{{sfnp|7XVJ9NYV|354-356}}
## Later career
On 16 March 1756, less than a year after the publication of his *Dictionary*, Johnson was arrested for an outstanding debt of £5 18s, equivalent to about £900 as at 2021.\[c\]Using the retail price index measure of inflation.{{sfnp|JEKMSQRM}} Unable to contact anyone else, he wrote to the writer and publisher Samuel Richardson. Richardson, who had previously lent Johnson money, sent him six guineas to show his good will, and the two became friends.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|321}} Soon after, Johnson met and befriended the painter Joshua Reynolds, who so impressed Johnson that he declared him “almost the only man whom I call a friend”.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|324}} Reynolds’ younger sister Frances observed during their time together “that men, women and children gathered around him \[Johnson\]”, laughing at his gestures and gesticulations.{{sfnp|XWNHRFRF|1611}} In addition to Reynolds, Johnson was close to Bennet Langton and Arthur Murphy. Langton was a scholar and an admirer of Johnson who persuaded his way into a meeting with Johnson which led to a long friendship. Johnson met Murphy during the summer of 1754 after Murphy came to Johnson about the accidental republishing of the *Rambler* No. 190, and the two became friends.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|322-323}} Around this time, Anna Williams began boarding with Johnson. She was a minor poet who was poor and becoming blind, two conditions that Johnson attempted to change by providing room for her and paying for a failed cataract surgery. Williams, in turn, became Johnson’s housekeeper.{{sfnp|RFYJI3U6|319}}
To occupy himself, Johnson began to work on *The Literary Magazine, or Universal Review*, the first issue of which was printed on 19 March 1756. Philosophical disagreements erupted over the purpose of the publication when the Seven Years’ War began and Johnson started to write polemical essays attacking the war. After the war began, the *Magazine* included many reviews, at least 34 of which were written by Johnson.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|328}} When not working on the *Magazine*, Johnson wrote a series of prefaces for other writers, including Giuseppe Baretti, William Payne and Charlotte Lennox.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|329}} Johnson’s relationship with Lennox and her works was particularly close during these years, and she in turn relied so heavily upon Johnson that he was “the most important single fact in Mrs Lennox’s literary life”.{{sfnp|VMZJ5XY7|221-222}} He later attempted to produce a new edition of her works, but even with his support they were unable to find enough interest to follow through with its publication.{{sfnp|VMZJ5XY7|223-224}} To help with domestic duties while Johnson was busy with his various projects, Richard Bathurst, a physician and a member of Johnson’s Club, pressured him to take on a freed slave, Francis Barber, as his servant.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|325-326}}
Johnson’s work on *The Plays of William Shakespeare* took up most of his time. On 8 June 1756, Johnson published his *Proposals for Printing, by Subscription, the Dramatick Works of William Shakespeare*, which argued that previous editions of Shakespeare were edited incorrectly and needed to be corrected.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|330}} Johnson’s progress on the work slowed as the months passed, and he told music historian Charles Burney in December 1757 that it would take him until the following March to complete it. Before that could happen, he was arrested again, for a debt of £40, in February 1758. The debt was soon repaid by Jacob Tonson, who had contracted Johnson to publish Shakespeare, and this encouraged Johnson to finish his edition to repay the favour. Although it took him another seven years to finish, Johnson completed a few volumes of his *Shakespeare* to prove his commitment to the project.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|332}}
In 1758 Johnson began to write a weekly series, *The Idler*, which ran from 15 April 1758 to 5 April 1760, as a way to avoid finishing his *Shakespeare*. This series was shorter and lacked many features of *The Rambler*. Unlike his independent publication of *The Rambler*, *The Idler* was published in a weekly news journal, *The Universal Chronicle*, a publication supported by John Payne, John Newbery, Robert Stevens and William Faden.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|334}}
*The Idler* did not occupy all of Johnson’s time, so he was able to publish his philosophical novella *Rasselas* on 19 April 1759. The “little story book”, as Johnson described it, describes the life of Prince Rasselas and Nekayah, his sister, who are kept in a place called the Happy Valley in the land of Abyssinia. The Valley is a place free of problems, where any desire is quickly satisfied. But the constant pleasure does not lead to satisfaction, and with the help of a philosopher named Imlac, Rasselas escapes and explores the world to witness how all aspects of society and life in the outside world are filled with suffering. They return to Abyssinia, but do not wish to return to the state of constantly fulfilled pleasures found in the Happy Valley.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|337-338}} *Rasselas* was written in one week to pay for his mother’s funeral and settle her debts; it became so popular that there was a new English edition of the work almost every year. References to it appear in many later works of fiction, including *Jane Eyre*, *Cranford* and *The House of the Seven Gables*. Its fame was not limited to English-speaking nations: Rasselas was immediately translated into five languages (French, Dutch, German, Russian and Italian), and later into nine others.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|337}}
By 1762 Johnson had gained notoriety for his dilatoriness in writing; the contemporary poet Churchill teased Johnson for the delay in producing his long-promised edition of Shakespeare: “He for subscribers baits his hook / and takes your cash, but where’s the book?” The comments soon motivated Johnson to finish his *Shakespeare*, and, after receiving the first payment from his government pension on 20 July 1762, he was able to dedicate most of his time towards this goal.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|391}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/George_Willison_-_James_Boswell%2C_1740_-_1795._Diarist_and_biographer_of_Dr_Samuel_Johnson_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/960px-George_Willison_-_James_Boswell%2C_1740_-_1795._Diarist_and_biographer_of_Dr_Samuel_Johnson_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)James Boswell at 25, by George Willison
Wikimedia Commons
On 16 May 1763, Johnson first met 22-year-old James Boswell – who became Johnson’s first major biographer – in the bookshop of Johnson’s friend, Tom Davies. They quickly became friends, although Boswell would return to his home in Scotland or travel abroad for months at a time.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|360}} In early 1763 Johnson formed “The Club”, a social group that included his friends Reynolds, Burke, Garrick, Goldsmith and others; the membership later expanded to include Adam Smith and Edward Gibbon. They decided to meet every Monday at 7:00 pm at the Turk’s Head in Gerrard Street, Soho, and their meetings continued until long after the deaths of the original members.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|366}}
On 9 January 1765 Murphy introduced Johnson to Henry Thrale, a wealthy brewer and MP, and his wife Hester. They struck up an instant friendship; Johnson was treated as a member of the family, and was once more motivated to continue working on his Shakespeare.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|393}} Afterwards, Johnson stayed with the Thrales for seventeen years until Henry’s death in 1781, sometimes staying in rooms at Thrale’s Anchor Brewery in Southwark.{{sfnp|BZGWQA7I|262}} Hester Thrale’s documentation of Johnson’s life during this time, in her correspondence and her diary (*Thraliana*), became an important source of biographical information on Johnson after his death.{{sfnp|KLYMXJGA|186}}
Johnson’s edition of *Shakespeare* was finally published on 10 October 1765 as *The Plays of William Shakespeare, in Eight Volumes … To which are added Notes by Sam. Johnson* in a printing of one thousand copies. The first edition quickly sold out, and a second was soon printed.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|395}} The plays themselves were in a version that Johnson felt was closest to the original, based on his analysis of the manuscript editions. Johnson’s revolutionary innovation was to create a set of corresponding notes that allowed readers to clarify the meaning behind many of Shakespeare’s more complicated passages, and to examine those which had been transcribed incorrectly in previous editions.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|397}} Included within the notes are occasional attacks upon rival editors of Shakespeare’s works.{{sfnp|BZGWQA7I|194}} Years later, Edmond Malone, an important Shakespearean scholar and friend of Johnson’s, stated that Johnson’s “vigorous and comprehensive understanding threw more light on his authour than all his predecessors had done”.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|396}}
During the whole of the interview, Johnson talked to his Majesty with profound respect, but still in his firm manly manner, with a sonorous voice, and never in that subdued tone which is commonly used at the levee and in the drawing-room. After the King withdrew, Johnson shewed himself highly pleased with his Majesty’s conversation and gracious behaviour. He said to Mr Barnard, ‘Sir, they may talk of the King as they will; but he is the finest gentleman I have ever seen.’
— Boswell’s *Life of Samuel Johnson*{{sfnpIn February 1767, Johnson was granted a special audience with King George III. This took place at the library of the Queen’s house, organised by Barnard, the King’s librarian. The King, upon hearing that Johnson would visit the library, commanded that Barnard introduce him to Johnson. After a short meeting, Johnson was impressed both with the King himself and with their conversation.{{sfnp|7XVJ9NYV|133-135}}
## Final works
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/Portrait_of_Samuel_Johnson_%28%22Blinking_Sam%22%29.jpg/960px-Portrait_of_Samuel_Johnson_%28%22Blinking_Sam%22%29.jpg)Johnson (1775) showing his intense concentration and the weakness of his eyes; he did not want to be depicted as “Blinking Sam.” This unique portrait showing his nearsightedness is in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.\[133\]
Wikimedia Commons
On 6 August 1773, eleven years after first meeting Boswell, Johnson set out to visit his friend in Scotland, and begin “a journey to the western islands of Scotland”, as Johnson’s 1775 account of their travels would put it.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|463}} The work was intended to discuss the social problems and struggles that affected the Scottish people, but it also praised many of the unique facets of Scottish society, such as a school in Edinburgh for the deaf and mute.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|471}} Johnson also used the work to enter into the dispute over the authenticity of James Macpherson’s Ossian poems, claiming they could not have been translations of ancient Scottish literature on the grounds that “in those times nothing had been written in the Earse \[i.e. Scots Gaelic\] language”.{{sfnp|978NK8CA|104-105}} There were heated exchanges between the two, and according to one of Johnson’s letters, MacPherson threatened physical violence.{{sfnp|BZGWQA7I|331}} Boswell’s account of their journey, *The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides* (1786), was a preliminary step toward his later biography, *The Life of Samuel Johnson*. Included were various quotations and descriptions of events, including anecdotes such as Johnson swinging a broadsword while wearing Scottish garb, or dancing a Highland jig.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|468-469}}
Johnson had tended to be an opponent of the government in his earlier life, but in the 1770s he began to publish a series of pamphlets supporting various government policies. In 1770 he produced *The False Alarm*, a political pamphlet attacking John Wilkes. In 1771, his *Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland’s Islands* cautioned against war with Spain.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|443-445}} In 1774 he printed *The Patriot*, a critique of what he viewed as false patriotism; on the evening of 7 April 1775 he made the famous statement, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”{{sfnp|7XVJ9NYV|182}} This line was not, as widely believed, about patriotism in general, but what Johnson considered to be the false use of the term “patriotism” by Wilkes and his supporters. Johnson opposed “self-professed Patriots” in general, but valued what he considered “true” patriotism.{{sfnp|BA34Z7J7|21}}
The last of these pamphlets, *Taxation No Tyranny* (1775), was a defence of the Coercive Acts and a response to the Declaration of Rights of the First Continental Congress, which protested against taxation without representation.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|446}} Johnson argued that in emigrating to America, colonists had “voluntarily resigned the power of voting”, but they still retained “virtual representation” in parliament. In a parody of the Declaration of Rights, Johnson suggested that the Americans had no more right to govern themselves than the Cornish, and asked “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” If the Americans wanted to participate in parliament, said Johnson, they could move to England and purchase an estate.{{sfnp|U8I3SVWC|13}} Johnson denounced English supporters of American separatists as “traitors to this country”, and hoped that the matter would be settled without bloodshed, but he felt confident that it would end with “English superiority and American obedience”.{{sfnp|IHDQRUQF|252-256}} Years before, Johnson had stated that the French and Indian War was a conflict between “two robbers” of Native American lands, and that neither deserved to live there.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|328}} After the signing of the 1783 Treaty of Paris, marking the colonists’ victory over the British, Johnson became “deeply disturbed” with the “state of this kingdom”.{{sfnp|BA34Z7J7|15}}
On 3 May 1777, while Johnson was trying and failing to save the Reverend William Dodd from execution for forgery, he wrote to Boswell that he was busy preparing a “little Lives” and “little Prefaces, to a little edition of the English Poets”.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|525}} Tom Davies, William Strahan and Thomas Cadell had asked Johnson to create this final major work, the *Lives of the English Poets*, for which he asked 200 guineas, an amount significantly less than the price he could have demanded.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|526}} The *Lives*, which were critical as well as biographical studies, appeared as prefaces to selections of each poet’s work, and they were longer and more detailed than originally expected.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|527}} The work was finished in March 1781 and the whole collection was published in six volumes. As Johnson justified in the advertisement for the work, “my purpose was only to have allotted to every Poet an Advertisement, like those which we find in the French Miscellanies, containing a few dates and a general character.”{{sfnp|2EXNUEFU|161}}
Johnson was unable to enjoy this success, as Henry Thrale, the dear friend with whom he lived, died on 4 April 1781.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|546-547}} Life changed quickly for Johnson when Hester Thrale became romantically involved with the Italian singing teacher Gabriel Mario Piozzi, which forced Johnson to change his previous lifestyle.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|557,561}} After returning home and then travelling for a short period, Johnson received word that his friend and tenant, Robert Levet, had died on 17 January 1782.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|562}} Levet had lived in Johnson’s London home since 1762, and Johnson was shocked by his death.{{sfnp|FCAK6M7N}} Shortly afterwards Johnson caught a cold, which developed into bronchitis and lasted for several months. His health was further complicated by “feeling forlorn and lonely” over Levet’s death, and by the deaths of his friend Thomas Lawrence and his housekeeper Williams.{{sfnp|RFYJI3U6|501-502}}
## Final years
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Hester_Thrale.jpg)Hester Thrale and her daughter Queeney
Wikimedia Commons
Although he had recovered his health by August, he experienced emotional trauma when he was given word that Hester Thrale would sell the residence that Johnson shared with the family. What hurt Johnson most was the possibility that he would be left without her constant company.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|566}} Months later, on 6 October 1782, Johnson attended church for the final time, to say goodbye to his former residence and life. The walk to the church strained him, but he managed the journey unaccompanied.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|569}} While there, he wrote a prayer for the Thrale family:
To thy fatherly protection, O Lord, I commend this family. Bless, guide, and defend them, that they may pass through this world, as finally to enjoy in thy presence everlasting happiness, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.{{sfnp
— 7XVJ9NYV|284}}
Hester Thrale did not completely abandon Johnson, and asked him to accompany the family on a trip to Brighton.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|569}} He agreed, and was with them from 7 October to 20 November 1782.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|570}} On his return, his health began to fail, and he was left alone after Boswell’s visit on 29 May 1783.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|575}}
On 17 June 1783, Johnson’s poor circulation resulted in a stroke,{{sfnp|UJ3Y6XAB|51}} and he wrote to his neighbour, Edmund Allen, that he had lost the ability to speak.{{sfnp|UXY6A53F|71}} Two doctors were brought in, and he regained his ability to speak two days later.{{sfnp|UXY6A53F|71-72}} Johnson feared that he was dying, and wrote:
The black dog I hope always to resist, and in time to drive, though I am deprived of almost all those that used to help me. The neighbourhood is impoverished. I had once Richardson and Lawrence in my reach. Mrs. Allen is dead. My house has lost Levet, a man who took interest in everything, and therefore ready at conversation. Mrs. Williams is so weak that she can be a companion no longer. When I rise my breakfast is solitary, the black dog waits to share it, from breakfast to dinner he continues barking, except that Dr. Brocklesby for a little keeps him at a distance. Dinner with a sick woman you may venture to suppose not much better than solitary. After dinner, what remains but to count the clock, and hope for that sleep which I can scarce expect. Night comes at last, and some hours of restlessness and confusion bring me again to a day of solitude. What shall exclude the black dog from an habitation like this?{{sfnp
— UXY6A53F|72}}
By this time he was sick and gout-ridden. He had surgery for gout, and his remaining friends, including novelist Fanny Burney (the daughter of Charles Burney), came to keep him company.{{sfnp|UXY6A53F|73}} He was confined to his room from 14 December 1783 to 21 April 1784.{{sfnp|UXY6A53F|74}}
Johnson’s health began to improve by May 1784, and he travelled to Oxford with Boswell on 5 May 1784.{{sfnp|UXY6A53F|74}} By July, many of Johnson’s friends were either dead or gone; Boswell had left for Scotland and Hester Thrale had become engaged to Piozzi. With no one to visit, Johnson expressed a desire to die in London, where he arrived on 16 November 1784. On 25 November 1784 he allowed Burney to visit him, and expressed an interest to her that he should leave London; he soon left for Islington, to George Strahan’s home.{{sfnp|UXY6A53F|76-77}} His final moments were filled with mental anguish and delusions; when his physician, Thomas Warren, visited and asked him if he were feeling better, Johnson burst out with: “No, Sir; you cannot conceive with what acceleration I advance towards death.”{{sfnp|UXY6A53F|78}}
Many visitors came to see Johnson as he lay sick in bed, but he preferred only Langton’s company.{{sfnp|UXY6A53F|78}} Burney waited for word of Johnson’s condition, along with Windham, Strahan, Hoole, Cruikshank, Des Moulins and Barber.{{sfnp|UXY6A53F|79}} On 13 December 1784, Johnson met with two others: a young woman, Miss Morris, whom Johnson blessed, and Francesco Sastres, an Italian teacher, who was given some of Johnson’s final words: “*Iam Moriturus*” (“I who am about to die”).{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|599}} Shortly afterwards he fell into a coma, and died at 7:00 p.m.{{sfnp|UXY6A53F|79}}
Langton waited until 11:00 p.m. to tell the others, which led to John Hawkins’ becoming pale and overcome with “an agony of mind”, along with Seward and Hoole describing Johnson’s death as “the most awful sight”.\[173\] Boswell remarked, “My feeling was just one large expanse of Stupor … I could not believe it. My imagination was not convinced.”{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|599}} William Gerard Hamilton joined in and stated, “He has made a chasm, which not only nothing can fill up, but which *nothing has a tendency to fill up*. –Johnson is dead.– Let us go to the next best: There is nobody; –*no man can be said to put you in mind of Johnson*.”{{sfnp|UXY6A53F|79}}
Johnson was buried on 20 December 1784 at Westminster Abbey.{{sfnp|JF9E96IW}}
## Literary criticism
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Vanity_of_Human_Wishes.jpg)[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Plays_of_Shakespeare_title_page.jpg)*The Vanity of Human Wishes* (1749) title page
Wikimedia Commons
*Plays of William Shakespeare* (1773 expanded edition) title page
Wikimedia Commons
Johnson’s works, especially his *Lives of the Poets* series, describe various features of excellent writing. He believed that the best poetry relied on contemporary language, and he disliked the use of decorative or purposefully archaic language.{{sfnp|7JAREYUH|95-96}} He was suspicious of the poetic language used by Milton, whose blank verse he believed would inspire many bad imitations. Also, Johnson opposed the poetic language of his contemporary Thomas Gray.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|27}} His greatest complaint was that obscure allusions found in works like Milton’s *Lycidas* were overused; he preferred poetry that could be easily read and understood.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|28-40}} In addition to his views on language, Johnson believed that a good poem incorporated new and unique imagery.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|39}}
In his smaller poetic works, Johnson relied on short lines and filled his work with a feeling of empathy, which possibly influenced Housman’s poetic style.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|31,34}} In *London*, his first imitation of Juvenal, Johnson uses the poetic form to express his political opinion and, as befits a young writer, approaches the topic in a playful and almost joyous manner.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|35}} However, his second imitation, *The Vanity of Human Wishes*, is completely different; the language remains simple, but the poem is more complicated and difficult to read because Johnson is trying to describe complex Christian ethics.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|37}} These Christian values are not unique to the poem, but contain views expressed in much of Johnson’s works; in particular, he emphasises God’s infinite love, and shows that happiness can be attained through virtuous action.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|38}}
Johnson disagreed with Plutarch’s use of biography to praise and to teach morality. Instead, he believed in portraying the biographical subjects accurately and including any negative aspects of their lives. Because his insistence on accuracy in biography was little short of revolutionary, Johnson had to struggle against a society that was unwilling to accept biographical details that could be viewed as tarnishing a reputation; this became the subject of *Rambler* 60.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|62-64}} In addition, Johnson believed that biography should not be limited to the most famous, and that the lives of lesser individuals were also significant;{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|65}} thus in his *Lives of the Poets* he chose both great and lesser poets. In all his biographies he insisted on including what others would have considered trivial details to fully describe the lives of his subjects.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|67}} Johnson considered the genre of autobiography and diaries, including his own, as having the most significance; in *Idler* 84 he explains how a writer of an autobiography would be the least likely to distort his own life.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|85}}
Caricature of Johnson by James Gillray mocking him for his literary criticism; he is shown doing penance for Apollo and the Muses, with Mount Parnassus in the background.
Wikimedia Commons
Johnson’s thoughts on biography and on poetry coalesced in his understanding of what would make a good critic. His works were dominated with his intent to use them for literary criticism. This was especially true of his *Dictionary* of which he wrote: “I lately published a Dictionary like those compiled by the academies of Italy and France, ***for the use of such as aspire to exactness of criticism, or elegance of style***“.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|134}} Although a smaller edition of his *Dictionary* became the standard household dictionary, Johnson’s original was an academic tool that examined how words were used, especially in literary works. To achieve this purpose, Johnson included quotations from Bacon, Hooker, Milton, Shakespeare, Spenser and many others from what he considered to be the most important literary fields: natural science, philosophy, poetry, and theology. These quotations and usages were all compared and carefully studied in the *Dictionary* so that a reader could understand what words in literary works meant in context.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|134-135}}
Johnson did not attempt to create schools of theories to analyse the aesthetics of literature. Instead, he used his criticism for the practical purpose of helping others to better read and understand it.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|140}} When it came to Shakespeare’s plays, Johnson emphasised the role of the reader in understanding language: “If Shakespeare has difficulties above other writers, it is to be imputed to the nature of his work, which required the use of common colloquial language, and consequently admitted many phrases allusive, elliptical, and proverbial, such as we speak and hear every hour without observing them”.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|141}}
Johnson’s works on Shakespeare were devoted not merely to the bard himself, but to understanding literature as a whole; in his *Preface* to Shakespeare, Johnson rejects the previous dogma of the classical unities and argues that drama should be faithful to life.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|142}} But Johnson did not only defend Shakespeare, he also discussed his faults, including his lack of morality, his vulgarity, his carelessness in crafting plots, and his occasional inattentiveness when choosing words or word order.{{sfnp|7JAREYUH|134}} As well as direct literary criticism, Johnson emphasised the need to establish a text that accurately reflects what an author wrote. Shakespeare’s plays, in particular, had multiple editions, each of which contained errors resulting from the printing process. The problem was compounded by careless editors who deemed difficult words incorrect, and changed them in later editions. Johnson believed that an editor should not alter the text in such a way.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|143}}
## Character sketch
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Portrait_of_Samuel_Johnson%2C_L.L.D_%284673326%29.jpg/960px-Portrait_of_Samuel_Johnson%2C_L.L.D_%284673326%29.jpg)Portrait of Samuel Johnson c. 1770
Wikimedia Commons
Johnson’s tall\[d\]Johnson was 180 cm (5 feet 11 inches) tall, when the average height of an Englishman was 165 cm (5 feet 5 inches).{{sfnp|A6WYMPND|208}} and robust figure combined with his odd gestures were confusing to some; when William Hogarth first saw Johnson standing near a window in Richardson’s house, “shaking his head and rolling himself about in a strange ridiculous manner”, Hogarth thought him an “ideot, whom his relations had put under the care of Mr. Richardson”.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|16}} Hogarth was quite surprised when “this figure stalked forwards to where he and Mr. Richardson were sitting and all at once took up the argument … \[with\] such a power of eloquence, that Hogarth looked at him with astonishment, and actually imagined that this ideot had been at the moment inspired”.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|16}} Beyond appearance, Adam Smith claimed that “Johnson knew more books than any man alive”,{{sfnp|9KYRYSYX|423}} and Edmund Burke thought that if Johnson were to join Parliament, he “certainly would have been the greatest speaker that ever was there”.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|15-16}} Johnson employed a unique form of rhetoric, and is well known for his refutation of Bishop Berkeley’s immaterialism, the idea that matter does not actually exist but only seems to exist;{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|316}} during a conversation with Boswell, Johnson kicked a nearby stone and proclaimed of Berkeley’s theory, “I refute it thus!”{{sfnp|7XVJ9NYV|122}}
Johnson was a devout conservative Anglican and a compassionate man who supported a number of poor friends under his own roof, even when unable to fully provide for himself.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|36}} Johnson’s Christian morality permeated his works, and he would write on moral topics with such authority and in such a trusting manner that, Walter Jackson Bate claims, “no other moralist in history excels or even begins to rival him”.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|297}} But Johnson’s moral writings do not contain, as Donald Greene points out, “a predetermined and authorized pattern of ‘good behavior’ ”, even though Johnson does emphasise certain kinds of conduct.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|87}} He did not allow his own faith to prejudice him against others, and had respect for those of other denominations who demonstrated a commitment to Christ’s teachings.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|88}} Although Johnson respected Milton’s poetry, he could not tolerate his Puritan and Republican beliefs, feeling that they were contrary to England and Christianity.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|537}} He was an opponent of slavery on moral grounds, and once proposed a toast to the “next rebellion of the negroes in the West Indies”.{{sfnp|7XVJ9NYV|200}} Johnson was also known for his love of cats, especially his own two, Hodge and Lily;{{sfnp|HN9MYYYN}} Boswell wrote, “I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat.{{sfnp|7XVJ9NYV|294}}
Johnson was also known as a staunch Tory, and admitted to sympathising with the Jacobite cause during his younger years, but by the reign of George III he had come to accept the Hanoverian Succession.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|537}} It was Boswell more than anyone else who determined how Johnson would be seen by later generations, but he was absent for two of Johnson’s most politically active periods: during Walpole’s control over the British Parliament, and the Seven Years’ War.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|xxi}}
In his *Life of Samuel Johnson*, Boswell referred to Johnson as “Dr. Johnson” so often that the name stuck, even though Johnson disliked being referred to as such. Boswell’s emphasis on Johnson’s later years shows him too often as merely an old man discoursing in a tavern to a circle of admirers.{{sfnp|7XVJ9NYV|365}} Although Boswell, a Scotsman, was a close companion and friend to Johnson during many important times of his life, like many of his fellow Englishmen Johnson had a reputation for despising Scotland and its people. Even during their journey together through Scotland, Johnson “exhibited prejudice and a narrow nationalism”.{{sfnp|UJSMQYFR|192}} Hester Thrale, in summarising Johnson’s nationalist views and his anti-Scottish prejudice, wrote: “We all know how well he loved to abuse the Scotch, & indeed to be abused by them in return.”{{sfnp|ZSB8PEJF|165}}
## Legacy
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Samuel_Johnson_Statue.jpg/1280px-Samuel_Johnson_Statue.jpg)Statue of Dr Johnson erected in 1838 opposite the house where he was born at Lichfield’s Market Square
Wikimedia Commons
Johnson was, in the words of Steven Lynn, “more than a well-known writer and scholar”;{{sfnp|J7AZPSKU|240}} he was a celebrity. His activities and the state of his health in his later years were constantly reported on in various journals and newspapers, and when there was nothing to report, something was invented.{{sfnp|J7AZPSKU|240-241}} According to Bate, “Johnson loved biography,” and he “changed the whole course of biography for the modern world. One by-product was the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, and there were many other memoirs and biographies of a similar kind written about Johnson after his death.”{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|xix}} These accounts of his life include Thomas Tyers’s *A Biographical Sketch of Dr Samuel Johnson* (1784);{{sfnp|9KYRYSYX|335}} Boswell’s *The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides* (1785); Hester Thrale’s *Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson*, which drew on entries from her diary and other notes;{{sfnp|UISSL2FU|75}} John Hawkins’s *Life of Samuel Johnson*, the first full-length biography of Johnson;{{sfnp|YW736CVY|vii}} and, in 1792, Arthur Murphy’s *An Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson*, which replaced Hawkins’s biography as the introduction to a collection of Johnson’s Works.{{sfnp|9KYRYSYX|355}} Another important source was Fanny Burney, who described Johnson as “the acknowledged Head of Literature in this kingdom” and kept a diary containing details missing from other biographies.{{sfnp|VMZJ5XY7|4-5}} Above all, Boswell’s portrayal of Johnson is the work best-known to general readers. Although critics like Donald Greene argue about its status as a true biography, the work became successful as Boswell and his friends promoted it at the expense of the many other works on Johnson’s life.{{sfnp|7XVJ9NYV|7}}
Johnson had a lasting influence on literary criticism, although not everyone viewed him favourably. Some, like Macaulay, regarded Johnson as an idiot savant who produced some respectable works, while others, like the Romantic poets, were completely opposed to Johnson’s views on poetry and literature, especially with regard to Milton.{{sfnp|J7AZPSKU|245}} But some of their contemporaries disagreed; Stendhal’s *Racine et Shakespeare* is based in part on Johnson’s views of Shakespeare,{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|142}} and Johnson influenced Jane Austen’s writing style and philosophy.{{sfnp|929PRUI6|199-200}} Later, Johnson’s works came into favour, and Matthew Arnold, in his *Six Chief Lives from Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets”*, considered the *Lives* of Milton, Dryden, Pope, Addison, Swift, and Gray as “points which stand as so many natural centres, and by returning to which we can always find our way again”.{{sfnp|WY7TWZWS|351}}
More than a century after his death, literary critics such as G. Birkbeck Hill and T. S. Eliot came to regard Johnson as a serious critic. They began to study Johnson’s works with an increasing focus on the critical analysis found in his edition of *Shakespeare and Lives of the Poets*.{{sfnp|J7AZPSKU|245}} Yvor Winters claimed that “A great critic is the rarest of all literary geniuses; perhaps the only critic in English who deserves that epithet is Samuel Johnson”.{{sfnp|YCGK57QI|240}} F. R. Leavis agreed, and on Johnson’s criticism, said, “When we read him we know, beyond question, that we have here a powerful and distinguished mind operating at first hand upon literature. This, we can say with emphatic conviction, really is criticism”.{{sfnp|8RLGTMWZ|244}} Edmund Wilson claimed that “*The Lives of the Poets* and the prefaces and commentary on Shakespeare are among the most brilliant and the most acute documents in the whole range of English criticism”.{{sfnp|YCGK57QI|240}}
The critic Harold Bloom placed Johnson’s work firmly within the Western canon, describing him as “unmatched by any critic in any nation before or after him … Bate in the finest insight on Johnson I know, emphasised that no other writer is so obsessed by the realisation that the mind is an activity, one that will turn to destructiveness of the self or of others unless it is directed to labour.”{{sfnp|UISSL2FU|183,200}} It is no wonder that his philosophical insistence that the language within literature must be examined became a prevailing mode of literary theory during the mid-20th century.{{sfnp|S2KPRQIN|139}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, c Using the retail price index measure of inflation.{{sfnp|JEKMSQRM}} b Using the retail price index measure of inflation,{{sfnp|JEKMSQRM}} d Johnson was 180 cm (5 feet 11 inches) tall, when the average height of an Englishman was 165 cm (5 feet 5 inches).{{sfnp|A6WYMPND|208}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24146
This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Samuel_Johnson#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** English, Male, Writer
---
### [Resurrectionists](https://engole.info/resurrectionists/)
**Published:** June 24, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Resurrectionists_by_phiz.png[/pimage]Those who exhumed the bodies of the recently deceased during the 18th and 19th centuries to provide cadavers to anatomists for their research.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Resurrectionists_by_phiz.png)*Resurrectionists* (1847), by Hablot Knight Browne. This illustration accompanies an account of John Holmes and Peter Williams who, for unearthing cadavers in 1777, were publicly whipped from Holborn to St Giles in London.
Wikimedia Commons
Resurrectionists were commonly employed by anatomists in the United Kingdom during the 18th and 19th centuries to exhume the bodies of the recently dead. Between 1506 and 1752 only a very few cadavers were available each year for anatomical research. The supply was increased when, in an attempt to intensify the deterrent effect of the death penalty, Parliament passed the [Murder Act 1752](https://engole.info/murder-act-1752/). By allowing judges to substitute the public display of executed criminals with dissection (a fate generally viewed with horror), the new law significantly increased the number of bodies anatomists could legally access. This proved insufficient to meet the needs of the hospitals and teaching centres that opened during the 18th century. Corpses and their component parts became a commodity, but although the practice of disinterment was hated by the general public, bodies were not legally anyone’s property. The resurrectionists therefore operated in a legal grey area.
Nevertheless, resurrectionists caught plying their trade ran the risk of physical attack. Measures taken to stop them included the use of increased security at graveyards. Night watches patrolled grave sites, the rich placed their dead in secure coffins, and physical barriers such as [mortsafes](https://engole.info/mortsafe) and heavy stone slabs made extraction of corpses more difficult. Body snatchers were not the only people to come under attack; in the public’s view, the 1752 Act made anatomists agents of the law, enforcers of the death penalty. Riots at execution sites, from where anatomists collected legal corpses, were commonplace.
Matters came to a head following the [Burke and Hare murders](https://engole.info/burke-and-hare-murders/) of 1828. Parliament responded by setting up the 1828 Select Committee on anatomy, whose report emphasised the importance of anatomical science and recommended that the bodies of paupers be given over for dissection. In response to the discovery in 1831 of a gang known as the London Burkers, who apparently modelled their activities on those of Burke and Hare, Parliament debated a bill submitted by Henry Warburton, author of the Select Committee’s report. Although it did not make body snatching illegal, the resulting Act of Parliament effectively put an end to the work of the resurrectionists by allowing anatomists access to the [workhouse](https://engole.info/workhouse/) dead.
## Legal background
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Henry_VIII_and_the_Barber_Surgeons%2C_by_Hans_Holbein_the_Younger%2C_Richard_Greenbury%2C_and_others.jpg)*Henry VIII and the Barber Surgeons* (1543), by Hans Holbein the Younger. Anatomical research on human cadavers was legalised in England in 1540.
Wikimedia Commons
Human cadavers have been dissected by physicians since at least the 3rd century BCE, but throughout history, prevailing religious views on the desecration of corpses often meant that such work was performed in secrecy.{{sfnp|WTMRKQ8J|18}} The Christian church forbade human dissection until the 14th century, when the first recorded anatomisation of a cadaver took place in Bologna. Until then, anatomical research was limited to the dissection of animals.{{sfnp|DEPYXLTR}} In Britain, human dissection was proscribed by law until 1506, when King James IV of Scotland gave royal patronage to the Barber-Surgeons of Edinburgh, allowing them to dissect the “bodies of certain executed criminals”. England followed in 1540, when Henry VIII gave patronage to the Company of Barber-Surgeons, allowing them access to four executed felons each year (Charles II later increased this to six felons each year).{{sfnp|BBYDW3HX|36}}{{sfnp|XS4952RG|32}}{{sfnp|RVJY22LU|51-52}} Elizabeth I granted the College of Physicians the right to anatomise four felons annually in 1564.{{sfnp|DEPYXLTR}}
Several major hospitals and teaching centres were established in Britain during the 18th century, but with only a very few corpses legally available for dissection, these institutions suffered from severe shortages. Some local authorities had already attempted to alleviate the problem, with limited success; in 1694, Edinburgh allowed anatomists to dissect corpses “found dead in the streets, and the bodies of such as die violent deaths … who shall have nobody to own them”.{{sfnp|BBYDW3HX|37}} Suicide victims were given over, as were infants who had died while being born and also the unclaimed bodies of abandoned children. But even though they were supported by the common law, anatomists occasionally found it difficult to collect what was granted to them. Fuelled by resentment of how readily the death penalty was used, and imbued with superstitious beliefs, crowds sometimes sought to keep the bodies of executed felons away from the authorities. Riots at execution sites were commonplace; worried about possible disorder, in 1749 the Sheriff of London ignored the surgeons and gave the dead to their relatives.{{sfnp|BBYDW3HX|37}}{{sfnp|XS4952RG|53}}
These problems, together with a desire to enhance the deterrent effect of the death penalty, resulted in the passage of the [Murder Act 1752](https://engole.info/murder-act-1752/).{{sfnp|BBYDW3HX|37}} It required that “every murderer shall, after execution, either be dissected or hung in chains”.{{sfnp|W9B38ILP|122}} Dissection was generally viewed as “a fate worse than death”;{{sfnp|BBYDW3HX|38}} giving judges the ability to substitute gibbeting with dissection was an attempt to invoke that horror.{{sfnp|RVJY22LU|53}} While the Act gave anatomists statutory access to many more cadavers than were previously available, it proved insufficient. Attempting to bolster the supply, some surgeons offered money to pay the prison expenses and funeral clothing costs of condemned prisoners, while bribes were paid to officials present at the gallows, sometimes leading to corpses that had not been legally given over for dissection being taken anyway.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|52-53}}
## Commodification
Documented cases of grave robbery for medical purposes can be found as far back as 1319. The 15th-century polymath Leonardo da Vinci may have secretly dissected about thirty corpses, although their provenance remains unknown.{{sfnp|NSCT5QEH|8-9}}\[a\]During the 16th and 17th centuries Italy became a European leader in the study of anatomy, with English anatomists travelling there to study. For instance, William Harvey, the first physician to demonstrate the human body’s circulatory system, studied at the University of Padua.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|31-32}} In Britain, the practice appears to have been common early in the 17th century. For example, William Shakespeare’s epitaph reads “Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear, To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones”, and in 1678 anatomists were suspected of being involved in the disappearance of an executed gypsy’s body. Contracts issued in 1721 by the Edinburgh College of Surgeons include a clause directing students not to become involved in exhumation, suggesting, according to historian Ruth Richardson, that students had already done so.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|54}} Pupils accompanied professional body snatchers as observers, and were reported to have obtained and paid for their studies with human corpses, perhaps indicating that their tutors were complicit. The unauthorised removal of bodies from London graveyards became commonplace and by the 1720s, probably as a direct result of the lack of legally available bodies for anatomical research, fresh corpses had likely undergone commodification.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|52, 54-55}}
The Corporation of Corpse-stealers, I am told, support themselves and Families very comfortably; and that no one should be surpriz’d at the Name of such a Society, the late Resurrections in St. Saviour’s, St. Giles’s, and St. Pancras’s Churchyards, are memorable Instances of this laudable Profession.{{sfnp
— QS3MQQ6H}}Corpses and parts thereof were traded like any other merchandise: packed into suitable containers, salted and preserved, stored in cellars and quays and transported in carts, waggons and boats.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|71-72}} Encouraged by fierce competition, anatomy schools usually paid more promptly than their peers, who included individual surgeons, artists and others with an interest in human anatomy. As one body snatcher testified, “a man may make a good living at it, if he is a sober man, and acts with judgement, and supplies the schools”.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|58}}
In London, late 18th-century anatomists may have delegated their grave-robbing almost entirely to body snatchers, or, as they were commonly known, resurrectionists. A fifteen-strong gang of such men, exposed in Lambeth in 1795, supplied “eight surgeons of public repute, and a man who calls himself an Articulator”. The report into their activities lists a price of two guineas and a crown for a dead body, six shillings for the first foot, and nine pence per inch “for all it measures more in length”.{{sfnp|JY9SVCN3}} These prices were by no means fixed; the black market value of corpses varied considerably. Giving evidence to the 1828 Select Committee on Anatomy, the surgeon Astley Cooper testified that in 1828 the price for a corpse was about eight guineas, but also that he had paid anything from two to fourteen guineas previously; others claimed they had paid up to twenty guineas per corpse.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|57}} Compared to the five shillings an East End silk weaver could earn each week, or the single guinea a manservant to a wealthy household was paid, these were considerable sums of money and body snatching was therefore a highly profitable business.{{sfnp|3IZK7JJI|30}} Surgeons at the Royal College in Edinburgh complained that resurrectionists were profiteering, particularly when local shortages forced prices up. One surgeon told the Select Committee that he thought the body snatchers were manipulating the market for their own benefit, though no criticism was made of the “Anatomy Club”, an attempt by anatomists to control the price of corpses for their benefit.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|103}}
Prices also varied depending on what type of corpse was for sale. With greater opportunity for the study of musculature, males were preferable to females,{{sfnp|3IZK7JJI|30}} while freaks were more highly valued. The body of Charles Byrne, the so-called “Irish Giant”, fetched about £500 when it was bought by John Hunter.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|57-58}} Byrne’s skeleton remains on display at the Royal College of Surgeons of England.{{sfnp|VHKIB64G}} Children’s bodies were also traded, as “big smalls”, “smalls” or foetuses. Parts of corpses, such as a scalp with long hair attached, or good quality teeth, also fetched good prices – not because they held any intrinsic value to the anatomist, but because they were used to refurbish the living.{{sfnp|3IZK7JJI|30-31}}
Resurrection was one of the most covert underworld activities of the day, and tantalisingly little about it has ever come to light.{{sfnp
— 3IZK7JJIWith no reliable figures for the number of dissections that took place in 18th-century Britain, the true scale of body snatching can only be estimated. Richardson suggests that nationally, several thousand bodies were robbed each year.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|87}} The 1828 Select Committee reported that in 1826, 592 bodies were dissected by 701 students.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|52, 54-55}} In 1831, only 52 of 1,601 death penalties handed down were enacted, a number far too small to meet demand.{{sfnp|3IZK7JJI|31}} Since corpses were not viewed as property and could neither be owned nor stolen,\[b\]For more detail on the legal status of corpses, see Ross & Ross (1979){{sfnp|GBIBAFRG}} body snatching remained quasi-legal, the crime being committed against the grave rather than the body.{{sfnp|LXCXT2AP|11}} On the rare occasions they were caught, resurrectionists might have received a public whipping, or a sentence for crimes against public mores, but generally the practice was treated by the authorities as an open secret and ignored.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|59}} A notable exception occurred in Great Yarmouth in 1827, with the capture of three resurrectionists. At a time when thieves were regularly transported for theft, two of the body snatchers were discharged and the third, sent to London for trial, was imprisoned for only six months.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|83-86}} Resurrectionists were also aided by the corpse’s anatomisation; since the process also destroyed the evidence, a successful prosecution was unlikely.{{sfnp|3IZK7JJI|33}}
## Resurrection
### Method
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/The_Anatomist_Overtaken_by_the_Watch.jpg)*The Anatomist Overtaken by the Watch* (1773), by William Austin. A caricature of John Hunter making his escape from two watchmen.{{sfnp
79MMA49C|281
Resurrectionists usually found corpses through a network of informers. Sextons, gravediggers, undertakers, local officials; each connived to take a cut of the proceeds. Working mostly in small gangs at night with a “dark lanthorn”,\[c\]A dark lanthorn or dark lantern has a sliding panel that can obscure the light swiftly without extinguishing the flame of the candle within. their modus operandi was to dig a hole – sometimes using a quieter, wooden spade – down to one end of the coffin. To disguise this activity, the spoil was sometimes thrown onto a piece of canvas at the side of the grave. A sound-deadening sack was placed over the lid, which was then lifted. The weight of soil on the remainder of the lid snapped the wood, enabling the robbers to hoist the body out. The corpse was then stripped of its clothing, tied up, and placed into a sack. The entire process could be completed within thirty minutes. Moving the corpse of a pauper was less troublesome, as their bodies were often kept in mass graves, left open to the environment until filled – which often took weeks.{{sfnp|3IZK7JJI|31}}{{sfnp|XS4952RG|59-61}}
If caught in the act, body snatchers could find themselves at the mercy of the local population. A violent confrontation took place in a Dublin churchyard in 1828, when a party of mourners confronted a group of resurrectionists. The would-be body snatchers withdrew, only to return several hours later with more men. The mourners had also added to their number, and both groups had brought firearms. A “volley of bullets, slugs, and swan-shot from the resurrectionists” prompted a “discharge of fire-arms from the defenders”. Close-quarters fighting included the use of pick axes, until the resurrectionists retreated.{{sfnp|QHV9XAF8}} In the same city, a man caught removing a corpse from a graveyard in Hollywood was shot and killed in 1832.{{sfnp|NGPF9G3H}} In the same year, three men were apprehended while transporting the bodies of two elderly men, near Deptford in London. As rumours spread that the two corpses were murder victims, a large crowd assembled outside the station house. When the suspects were brought out to be transported to the local magistrates, the approximately 40-strong force of police officers found it difficult to “prevent their prisoners being sacrificed by the indignant multitude, which was most anxious to inflict such punishment upon them as it thought they deserved.”{{sfnp|C7VPBIJ4}}
### Gangs
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Banchory_Devenick_mortsafe.jpg)A mortsafe in Banchory-Devenick, Scotland
Wikimedia Commons
As many as seven gangs of resurrectionists may have been at work in 1831. The 1828 Select Committee on Anatomy believed that there were about 200 London resurrectionists, most of them working part-time.{{sfnp|3IZK7JJI|36}} The London Borough Gang, which operated from about 1802 to 1825, at its peak consisted of at least six men, led first by a former hospital porter named Ben Crouch, and later by a man called Patrick Murphy. Under the protection of Astley Cooper, Crouch’s gang supplied some of London’s biggest anatomical schools, but relations were not always amicable. In 1816 the gang cut off supplies to the St Thomas Hospital School, demanding an increase of two guineas per corpse. When the school responded by using freelancers, members of the gang burst into the dissecting rooms, threatened the students and attacked the corpses. The police were called, but worried about adverse publicity, the school paid their attackers’ bail and opened negotiations. The gang also attempted to put rivals out of business, sometimes by desecrating a graveyard (thereby rendering it unsafe to rob graves from for weeks thereafter) and other times by reporting freelance resurrectionists to the police, recruiting them once freed from prison.{{sfnp|DEPYXLTR}} Joshua Naples, who wrote *The Diary of a Resurrectionist*, a list of his activities from 1811–1812,\[d\]Anatomical sessions took place from October to May, and Naples’ book therefore contains no entries for May, June and July 1812.{{sfnp|5ZSEDJZF|124}} was one such individual. Among entries detailing the graveyards he plundered, the institutions he delivered to, how much he was paid and his drunkenness, Naples diary mentions his gang’s inability to work under a full Moon, being unable to sell a body deemed “putrid”, and leaving a body thought to be infected with smallpox.{{sfnp|5ZSEDJZF|139-176}}
Violent mobs were not the only problems body snatchers faced. Naples also wrote of how he met “patrols” and how “dogs flew at us”,{{sfnp|5ZSEDJZF|139-176}} references to some of the measures taken to secure graves against his ilk. The aristocracy and very rich placed their dead in triple coffins, vaults and private chapels, sometimes guarded by servants. For the less wealthy, double coffins were available, buried on private land in deep graves. More basic defences included the placing of heavy weights over the coffin, or simply filling the grave with stones rather than soil. Such deterrents were sometimes deployed in vain; at least one London graveyard was owned by an anatomist who, it was reported, “obtained a famous supply \[of cadavers\] … and he could charge pretty handsomely for burying a body there, and afterwards get from his pupils from eight to twelve guineas for taking it up again!”{{sfnp|XNQ75S4J}} Ever more elaborate creations included The Patent Coffin, an iron contraption with concealed springs to prevent any levering of its lid. Corpses were sometimes secured inside their caskets by iron straps, while other designs used special screws to reinforce metal bands placed around the coffin. In Scotland, iron cages called mortsafes either encased buried coffins, or were set in a concrete foundation and covered the whole grave.\[e\]The *Oxford English Dictionary*‘s historical definition of mortsafe is “an iron frame placed over a coffin or at the entrance to a grave as a protection against resurrectionists in Scotland.”{{sfnp|9F28JUPI}} Some covered more than one coffin, while others took the form of iron lattices fixed beneath large stone slabs, buried with the coffin.{{sfnp|L2H2YIDE|44}}{{sfnp|XS4952RG|80-81}} They may not have been secure enough; as one 20th-century writer observed, an empty coffin found beneath a buried mortsafe in Aberlour had probably been “opened during the night succeeding the funeral, and carefully closed again, so that the disturbance of the soil had escaped notice or had been attributed to the original burial.”{{sfnp|H8ME9J4S|224}}
### Other methods
Occasionally, resurrectionists paid women to pose as grieving relatives, so that they might claim a body from a workhouse. Some parishes did little to stop this practice, as it reduced their funeral expenditure. Bodies were also taken from dead houses; Astley Cooper’s servant was once forced to return three bodies, worth £34 2s, to a dead house in Newington parish. Bribes were also paid, usually to servants of recently deceased employers then lying in state, although this method carried its own risks as corpses were often placed on public display before they were buried.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|64-65}} Some were taken from private homes; in 1831 *The Times* reported that “a party of resurrectionists” burst into a house in Bow Lane and took the body of an elderly woman, who was being “‘waked’ by her friends and neighbours”. The thieves apparently “acted with the most revolting indecency, dragging the corpse in its death clothes after them through the mud in the street”.{{sfnp|VF97Z7Q7}} Bodies were even removed – with no legal authority – from prisons and naval and military hospitals.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|106}}
While some surgeons eschewed human cadavers in favour of facsimiles, plaster casts, wax models and animals, bodies were also taken from hospital burial grounds.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|104}} Recent excavations at the Royal London Hospital appear to support claims made almost 200 years earlier that the hospital’s school was “entirely supplied by subjects, which have been their own patients”.{{sfnp|N4GXJG5R}}
## Dissection and anatomy
### Public view
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Cruelty4.JPG)*The Reward of Cruelty* (1751) by William Hogarth. A criminal is dissected by surgeons. The image contains several references to popular superstitions regarding the human corpse and its treatment by English law.{{sfnp
9R49BEMA|29
The moving in 1783 of London’s executions, from Tyburn to Newgate Prison, reduced the likelihood of public interference and strengthened the authorities’ hold over felons. However, society’s view of dissection remained unequivocal; most preferred gibbeting to the laying open of a corpse. Martin Gray, sentenced to death in 1721 for returning early from transportation, was “greatly frighted, least his Body should be cut, and torn, and mangled after Death, and had sent his Wife to his Uncle to obtain some money to prevent it.”{{sfnp|AUAVE6AT}} Vincent Davis, convicted in 1725 of murdering his wife, said he would rather be “hang’d in Chains” than “anatomiz’d”, and to that effect had “sent many Letters to all his former Friends and Acquaintance to form a Company, and prevent the Surgeons in their Designs upon his Body”.{{sfnp|XTGSGKL5}} There are cases of criminals who survived the short drop, but dissecting the body removed any hope of escape from death’s embrace. Anatomists were popularly thought to be interested in dissection only as enactors of the law, a relationship first established by kings James IV and Henry VIII.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|32}} Thomas Wakley, editor of *The Lancet*, wrote that this lowered “the character of the profession in the public mind.”{{sfnp|XNQ75S4J}} It was also thought that the anatomists’ work made the body’s owner unrecognisable in the afterlife. Therefore, while less hated than the resurrectionists they employed, anatomists remained at risk of attack. Relatives of a man executed in 1820 killed one anatomist and shot another in the face,{{sfnp|XS4952RG|75-76}}{{sfnp|UB6S8DRL|101}} while in 1831, following the discovery of buried human flesh and three dissected bodies, a mob burnt down an anatomy theatre in Aberdeen. The theatre’s proprietor, Andrew Moir, escaped through a window, while two of his students were chased through the streets.{{sfnp|TPVBAVNU}}
Some aspects of the popular view of dissection were exemplified by the final panel of William Hogarth’s *The Four Stages of Cruelty*, a series of engravings that depict a felon’s journey to the anatomical theatre.{{sfnp|9R49BEMA|28-29}} The chief surgeon (John Freke){{sfnp|79MMA49C|261}} appears as a magistrate, watching over the examination of the murderer Tom Nero’s body by the Company of Surgeons. According to the author Fiona Haslam, the scene reflects a popular view that surgeons were “on the whole, disreputable, insensitive to human suffering and prone to victimis\[ing\] people in the same way that criminals victimised their prey.”{{sfnp|79MMA49C|257}} Another popular belief alluded to by Hogarth was that surgeons were so ignorant of the respect due to their subjects, that they allowed the remains to become offal. In reality, the rough treatment exacted by body snatchers on corpses continued on the premises they delivered to. Joshua Brookes once admitted that he had kicked a corpse in a sack down a flight of stairs,{{sfnp|XS4952RG|96-97}} while Robert Christison complained of the “shocking indecency without any qualifying wit” demonstrated by a male lecturer who dissected a woman.{{sfnp|73UW7CXP|199}} Pranks were also common; a London student who dropped an amputated leg down a household chimney into a housewife’s stewpot, caused a riot.{{sfnp|4BXS3GXA|114}}
### Anatomy Act 1832
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Henry_Warburton.jpeg)*Henry Warburton* (1833), by George Hayter. Warburton presented two bills to parliament, the second of which became the Anatomy Act 1832.
Wikimedia Commons
{{main|Anatomy Act 1832}}
The Anatomy Act 1832 was an attempt by the UK parliament to put the resurrectionists out of business by increasing the number of cadavers available for medical research, although it did not prohibit body snatching or the sale of corpses. It allowed a person’s body to be given up for “anatomical examination” provided that the person concerned had not objected. As the poor were often barely literate and therefore unable to leave written directions in the event of their death, this meant that masters of charitable institutions such as [workhouses](https://engole.info/workhouse) decided who went to the anatomist’s table.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|205-208}}
But the Act was ineffective; resurrection remained commonplace, the supply of unclaimed paupers’ bodies at first proved to be inadequate to meet demand, and reports of body snatching persisted for some years. In 1838 Poor Law Commissioners reported on two dead resurrectionists who had contracted an illness from a putrid corpse they had unearthed.{{sfnp|3IZK7JJI|276}}{{sfnp|XS4952RG|237, 245, 263}} Resurrectionists continued to operate until 1844, when the trade came to an end.{{sfnp|3IZK7JJI|287}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a During the 16th and 17th centuries Italy became a European leader in the study of anatomy, with English anatomists travelling there to study. For instance, William Harvey, the first physician to demonstrate the human body’s circulatory system, studied at the University of Padua.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|31-32}} b For more detail on the legal status of corpses, see Ross & Ross (1979){{sfnp|GBIBAFRG}} c A dark lanthorn or dark lantern has a sliding panel that can obscure the light swiftly without extinguishing the flame of the candle within. d Anatomical sessions took place from October to May, and Naples’ book therefore contains no entries for May, June and July 1812.{{sfnp|5ZSEDJZF|124}} e The *Oxford English Dictionary*‘s historical definition of mortsafe is “an iron frame placed over a coffin or at the entrance to a grave as a protection against resurrectionists in Scotland.”{{sfnp|9F28JUPI}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 21352
**Categories:** Medical education
---
### [Cock Lane ghost](https://engole.info/cock-lane-ghost/)
**Published:** January 22, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Cock_lane_ghost.png[/pimage]Purported haunting that attracted mass public attention in 1762.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Cock_lane_ghost.png)19th-century illustration of Cock Lane. The alleged haunting took place in the three-storey building on the right.
Wikimedia Commons
The Cock Lane ghost allegedly haunted a lodging in Cock Lane, a short road adjacent to London’s Smithfield market and a few minutes walk from St Paul’s Cathedral. The haunting, which attracted mass public attention in 1762, centred on three people: William Kent, a usurer from Norfolk, Richard Parsons, a parish clerk, and Parsons’ daughter Elizabeth.
Following the death during childbirth of Kent’s wife, Elizabeth Lynes, he became romantically involved with her sister, Fanny. Canon law prevented the couple from marrying, but they nevertheless moved to London and lodged at the property in Cock Lane, then owned by Parsons. Several accounts of strange knocking sounds and ghostly apparitions were reported, although for the most part they stopped after the couple moved out, but following Fanny’s death from smallpox and Kent’s successful legal action against Parsons over an outstanding debt, they resumed. Parsons claimed that Fanny’s ghost haunted his property and later his daughter. Regular séances were held to determine “Scratching Fanny’s” motives; Cock Lane was often made impassable by the throngs of interested bystanders.
The ghost appeared to claim that Fanny had been poisoned with arsenic and Kent was publicly suspected of being her murderer. But a commission whose members included [Samuel Johnson](httpe://engole.info/samuel-johnson) concluded that the supposed haunting was a fraud. Further investigations proved the scam was perpetrated by Elizabeth Parsons, under duress from her father. Those responsible were prosecuted and found guilty; Richard Parsons was pilloried and sentenced to two years in prison.
The Cock Lane ghost became a focus of controversy between the Methodist and Anglican churches, and is referenced frequently in contemporary literature. Charles Dickens is one of several Victorian authors whose work alluded to the story, and the pictorial satirist William Hogarth portrayed the ghost in two of his prints.
## Background
In about 1756–57 William Kent, a usurer from Norfolk,{{sfnp|7Y33MKS5|171}} married Elizabeth Lynes, the daughter of a grocer from Lyneham. They moved to Stoke Ferry, where Kent kept an inn, and later the local post office. They were apparently very much in love, but their marriage was short-lived as within a month of the move Elizabeth died during childbirth. Her sister Frances – commonly known as Fanny – had during Elizabeth’s pregnancy moved in with the couple and she stayed to care for the infant and its father. The boy did not survive long and rather than leave, Fanny stayed on to take care of William and the house. The two soon began a relationship, but canon law appeared to rule out marriage; when Kent travelled to London to seek advice he was told that as Elizabeth had borne him a living son, a union with Fanny was impossible. In January 1759 therefore, he gave up the post office, left Fanny and moved to London, intending to “purchase a place in some public office” in the hope that “business would erase that passion he had unfortunately indulged”. Fanny meanwhile stayed with one of her brothers at Lyneham.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|6-7}}
Despite her family’s disapproval of their relationship, Fanny began to write passionate letters to Kent, “filled with repeated entreaties to spend the rest of their lives together”. He eventually allowed her to join him at lodgings in East Greenwich near London. The two decided to live together as man and wife, making wills in each other’s favour and hoping to remain discreet. In this, however, they did not reckon on Fanny’s relations. The couple moved to lodgings near the Mansion House, but their landlord there may have learnt of their relationship from Fanny’s family, expressing his contempt by refusing to repay a sum of money Kent loaned him (about £20).\[a\]Based on the RPI, about £27,400 as of 2010.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} In response, Kent had him arrested.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|4-10}}
While attending early morning prayers at the church of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, William Kent and Fanny met Richard Parsons, the officiating clerk.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|4-10}} Although he was generally considered respectable, Parsons was known locally as a drunk and was struggling to provide for his family. He listened to the couple’s plight and was sympathetic, offering them the use of lodgings in his home on Cock Lane, to the north of St Sepulchre’s. Located along a narrow, winding thoroughfare similar to most of central London’s streets, the three-storey house was in a respectable but declining area, and comprised a single room on each floor, connected by a winding staircase.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|4-6}} Shortly after Mr and Mrs Kent (as they called themselves) moved in, Kent loaned Parsons 12 guineas, to be repaid at a rate of a guinea per month.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|10}}
It was while Kent was away at a wedding in the country that the first reports of strange noises began. Parsons had a wife and two daughters; the elder, Elizabeth, was described as a “little artful girl about eleven years of age”.{{sfnp|E2ZZMNW6}} Kent asked Elizabeth to stay with Fanny, who was then several months into a pregnancy, and to share her bed while he was away. The two reported hearing scratching and rapping noises. These were attributed by Mrs Parsons to a neighbouring cobbler, although when the noises recurred on a Sunday, Fanny asked if the cobbler was working that day; Mrs Parsons told her he was not. James Franzen, landlord of the nearby Wheat Sheaf public house, was another witness. After visiting the house he reported seeing a ghostly white figure ascend the stairs. Terrified, he returned home, where Parsons later visited him and claimed also to have seen a ghost.{{sfnp|7274C44C|39-40}}{{sfnp|S6VD757I|14-15}}
As Fanny was only weeks away from giving birth Kent made arrangements to move to a property at Bartlet’s Court in Clerkenwell, but by January 1760 it was not ready and so they moved instead to an “inconvenient” apartment nearby, intending only a temporary stay.{{sfnp|7274C44C|28}}{{sfnp|S6VD757I|12-13}} However, on 25 January Fanny fell ill. The attending doctor diagnosed the early stages of an eruptive fever and agreed with Kent that their lodgings were inadequate for someone at so critical a stage of pregnancy. Fanny was therefore moved, by coach, to Bartlet’s Court. The next day her doctor returned and met with her apothecary. Both agreed that Fanny’s symptoms were indicative of smallpox. On hearing this, Fanny sent for an attorney, to ensure the will she had had made was in good order, and that Kent would inherit her estate. An acquaintance of Kent’s, Stephen Aldrich, Rector of St John Clerkenwell, reassured her that she would be forgiven for her sins. She died on 2 February.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|13-16}}
As sole executor of Fanny’s will, Kent ordered a coffin, but fearful of being prosecuted should the nature of their relationship become known, asked that it remain nameless. On registering the burial he was, however, forced to give a name, and he gave her his own. Fanny’s family was notified and her sister Ann Lynes, who lived nearby at Pall Mall, attended the funeral at St John’s. When Ann learned of the terms of Fanny’s will, which left her brothers and sisters half a crown each and Kent the rest, she tried but failed to block it in Doctors’ Commons. The bulk of Kent’s inheritance was Fanny’s £150 share of her dead brother Thomas’s estate. This also included some land owned by Thomas, sold by the executor of his estate, John Lynes, and Kent received Fanny’s share of that too (almost £95). Her family resented this. Legal problems with Lynes’s sale meant that each of Thomas’s beneficiaries had to pay £45 in compensation to the purchaser, but Kent refused, claiming that he had already spent the money in settling Fanny’s debts. In response to this, in October 1761 John Lynes began proceedings against Kent in the Court of Chancery.\[b\]The result of these proceedings is not mentioned. Meanwhile, Kent became a stockbroker and remarried in 1761.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|16-19}}
## Haunting
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Cock_lane_room.png)19th-century illustration of the room where the haunting took place
Wikimedia Commons
Echoing the actions of Kent’s previous landlord, Parsons had not repaid Kent’s loan – of which about three guineas was outstanding – and Kent therefore instructed his solicitor to sue him.{{sfnp|7274C44C|28}}{{sfnp|S6VD757I|12-13}} He managed to recover the debt by January 1762, just as the mysterious noises at Cock Lane began again. Catherine Friend had lodged there shortly after the couple left but moved out when she found the noises, which had returned intermittently and which were becoming more frequent, could not be stopped. They apparently emanated from Elizabeth Parsons, who also suffered fits, and the house was regularly disturbed by unexplained noises, likened at the time to the sound of a cat scratching a chair.{{sfnp|E2ZZMNW6}} Reportedly determined to discover their source, Richard Parsons had a carpenter remove the wainscotting around Elizabeth’s bed.{{sfnp|G4W8U8RK|165}} He approached John Moore, assistant preacher at St Sepulchre’s since 1754 and rector of St Bartholomew-the-Great in West Smithfield since June 1761. The presence of one ghost, presumed to belong to Fanny’s sister, Elizabeth, had already been noted while Fanny lay dying, and the two concluded that the spirit now haunting Parsons’ house must be that of Fanny Lynes herself. The notion that a person’s spirit might return from the dead to warn those still alive was a commonly held belief, and the presence of two apparently restless spirits was therefore an obvious sign to both men that each ghost had an important message to disclose.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|20-21}}
Parsons and Moore devised a method of communication; one knock for yes, two knocks for no. Using this system, the ghost appeared to claim that Fanny had been murdered. It was conjectured that the mysterious figure in white which so terrified James Franzen, presumed to be the ghost of Elizabeth, had appeared there to warn her sister of her impending death. As the first ghost had seemingly vanished, this charge against Kent – that he murdered Elizabeth – was never acted on, but through repeated questioning of Fanny’s ghost it was divined that she had died not from the effects of smallpox, but rather from arsenic poisoning. The deadly toxin had apparently been administered by Kent about two hours before Fanny died and now, it was supposed, her spirit wanted justice. Moore had heard from Parsons how Kent had pursued the debt he was owed, and he had also heard from Ann Lynes, who had complained that as Fanny’s coffin lid was screwed down she had not been able to see her sister’s corpse. Moore thought that Fanny’s body might not show any visible signs of smallpox and that if she had been poisoned, the lack of scarring would have been something Kent would rather keep hidden. As a clergyman with inclinations toward Methodism he was inclined to trust the ghost, but for added support he enlisted the aid of Thomas Broughton, an early Methodist. Broughton visited Cock Lane on 5 January and left convinced the ghost was real. The story spread through London, *The Public Ledger* began to publish detailed accounts of the phenomenon, and Kent fell under public suspicion as a murderer.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|23-25}}{{sfnp|7Y33MKS5|172}}
## Séances
After reading the veiled accusations made against him in *The Public Ledger*, Kent determined to clear his name, and accompanied by a witness went to see John Moore. The Methodist showed Kent the list of questions he and Parsons had drawn up for the ghost to answer. One concerned William and Fanny’s marital status, prompting Kent to admit that they never married. Moore told him he did not think he was a murderer, rather, he believed the spirit’s presence indicated that “there was something behind darker than all the rest, and that if he would go to Parson’s house, he might be a witness to the same and convinced of its reality”. On 12 January therefore, Kent enlisted the aid of the two physicians who attended Fanny in her last days, and with Broughton, went to Cock Lane. On the house’s upper floor Elizabeth Parsons was publicly undressed, and with her younger sister was put to bed. The audience sat around the bed, positioned in the centre of the room. They were warned that the ghost was sensitive to disbelief and told that they should accord it due respect. When the séance began, a relative of Parsons, Mary Frazer,{{sfnp|E2ZZMNW6}} ran around the room shouting “Fanny, Fanny, why don’t you come? Do come, pray Fanny, come; dear Fanny, come!” When nothing happened, Moore told the group the ghost would not come as they were making too much noise. He asked them to leave the room, telling them he would try to contact the ghost by stamping his foot. About ten minutes later they were told the ghost had returned and that they should re-enter the room.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|26-29}} Moore then started to run through his and Parsons’ list of questions:
“Are you the wife of Mr. Kent?” –Two knocks
“Did you die naturally?” –Two knocks
“By poison?” –One knock
“Did any person other than Mr. Kent administer it?” –Two knocks
After more questions, a member of the audience exclaimed “Kent, ask this Ghost if you shall be hanged”. He did so, and the question was answered by a single knock. Kent exclaimed “Thou art a lying spirit, thou are not the ghost of my Fanny. She would never have said any such thing.”{{sfnp|S6VD757I|26-29}} Public interest in the story grew when it was discovered that the ghost appeared to follow Elizabeth Parsons. She was removed to the house of a Mr Bray, where on 14 January, in the presence of two unidentified nobles, more knocking sounds were heard.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|26-29}} A few days later she was returned to Cock Lane, where on 18 January another séance was held. In attendance were Kent, the apothecary, and local parish priest and incumbent of St John Clerkenwell, Stephen Aldrich.{{sfnp|7274C44C|80-87}} On that occasion, when a clergyman used a candle to look under the bed, the ghost “refused” to answer, Frazer claiming “she \[the ghost\] loving not light”. After a few minutes of silence the questioning continued, but when Moore asked if the ghost would appear in court against Kent, Frazer refused to ask the question.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|30-32}}
When they lived at Cock Lane William and Fanny had employed a maid, Esther “Carrots” Carlisle (Carrots on account of her red hair). She had since moved to a new job and knew nothing of the haunting, but seeking evidence of Fanny’s poisoning, Moore went to question her. Carrots told him that Fanny had been unable to speak in the days before she died, so Moore invited her to a séance, held on 19 January. Once there, she was asked to confirm that Fanny had been poisoned, but Carrots remained adamant that Fanny had said nothing to her, telling the party that William and Fanny had been “very loving, and lived very happy together.” Kent arrived later that night, this time with James Franzen and priests William Dodd and Thomas Broughton. Frazer began with her usual introduction before Moore sent her out, apparently irritated by her behaviour. He then asked the party of about twenty to leave the room, calling them back a few minutes later.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|32-34}} This time, the séance centred on Carrots, who addressed the ghost directly:
“Are you my mistress?” –One knock, followed by scratches
“Are you angry with me, Madam?” –One knock
“Then I am sure, Madam, you may be ashamed of yourself for I never hurt you in my life.”
At this, the séance was ended. Frazer and Franzen remained alone in the room, the latter reportedly too terrified to move. Frazer asked if he would like to pray and was angered when he apparently could not. The séance resumed and Franzen later returned to his home, where he and his wife were reportedly tormented by the ghost’s knocking in their bedchamber.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|34-36}}
## Investigation
On 20 January another séance was held, this time at the home of a Mr Bruin, on the corner of nearby Hosier Lane. Among those attending was a man “extremely desirous of detecting the fraud, and discovering the truth of this mysterious affair”, who later sent his account of the night to the *London Chronicle*. He arrived with a small party which included James Penn of St Ann’s in Aldersgate. Inside the house, a member of the group positioned himself against the bed, but was asked by one of the ghost’s sympathisers to move. He refused, and following a brief argument the ghost’s supporters left. The gentleman then asked if Parsons would allow his daughter to be moved to a room at his house, but was refused. For the remainder of the night the ghost made no sound, while Elizabeth Parsons, now extremely agitated, displayed signs of convulsions. When questioned she confirmed that she had seen the ghost, but that she was not frightened by it. At that point several of the party left, but at about 7 am the next morning the knocking once more recommenced. Following the usual questions about the cause of Fanny’s death and who was responsible, the interrogation turned to her body, which lay in the vaults of St John’s.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|38-41}}
Parsons agreed to move his daughter to Aldrich’s house for further testing on 22 January, but when that morning Penn and a man of “veracity and fortune” called on Parsons and asked for Elizabeth, the clerk told them she was not there and refused to reveal her whereabouts. Parsons had spoken with friends and was apparently worried that Kent had been busy with his own investigations.\[c\]Evidence of these investigations exists in a letter which appeared in a newspaper in February 1762, signed by a “J. A. L.”, which gave a detailed report on how Fanny had arrived in London, and which claimed that Kent had drawn up Fanny’s will in his favour. It made no specific accusations, but as its author observed, Kent’s actions had had “the desired effect”. Kent later claimed to know the identity of its author, who, Grant (1965) surmises, was a member of the Lynes family. Grant also writes that the letter was printed to maintain pressure on Kent.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|43}} Instead, he allowed Elizabeth to be moved that night to St Bartholomew’s Hospital, where another séance was held. Nothing was reported until about 6 am, when three scratches were heard, apparently while the girl was asleep. The approximately twenty-strong audience complained that the affair was a deception. Once Elizabeth woke she began to cry, and once reassured that she was safe admitted that she was afraid for her father, “who must needs be ruined and undone, if their matter should be supposed to be an imposture.” She also admitted that although she had appeared to be asleep, she was in fact fully aware of the conversation going on around her.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|41-44}}
Whereas several advertisements have appeared in the papers reflecting upon my character, who am father of the child which now engrosses the talk of the town; I do hereby declare publicly, that I have always been willing and am now ready to deliver up my child for trial into the hands of any number of candid and reasonable men, requiring only such security for a fair and gentle treatment of my child, as no father of children or man of candour would refuse.{{sfnp
— S6VD757IInitially only *The Public Ledger* reported on the case, but once it became known that noblemen had taken an interest and visited the ghost at Mr Bray’s house on 14 January, the story began to appear in other newspapers. The *St. James’s Chronicle* and the *London Chronicle* printed reports from 16–19 January (the latter the more sceptical of the two), and *Lloyd’s Evening Post* from 18–20 January. The story spread across London and by the middle of January the crowds gathered outside the property were such that Cock Lane was rendered impassable. Parsons charged visitors an entrance fee to “talk” with the ghost, which, it was reported, did not disappoint.{{sfnp|7Y33MKS5|172}}{{sfnp|ARD8BZMY|232}}{{sfnp|QAYVP87H|463-464}} After receiving several requests to intercede, Samuel Fludyer, Lord Mayor of London, was on 23 January approached by Alderman Gosling, John Moore and Parsons. They told him of their experiences but Fludyer was reminded of the then recent case of fraudster Elizabeth Canning and refused to have Kent or Parsons arrested (on charges of murder and conspiracy respectively). Instead, against a backdrop of hysteria caused in part by the newspapers’ relentless reporting of the case, he ordered that Elizabeth be tested at Aldrich’s house. Meanwhile, Elizabeth was again the subject of study, in two séances held 23–24 January.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|44-45, 51-52}} Parsons accepted the Lord Mayor’s decision, but asked that “some persons connected with the girl might be permitted to be there, to divert her in the day-time”. This was refused, as were two similar requests, Aldrich and Penn insisting that they would accept only “any person or persons, of strict character and reputation, who are housekeepers”. Aldrich and Penn’s account of their negotiations with Parsons clearly perturbed the clerk, as he defended his actions in the Public Ledger. This prompted Aldrich and Penn to issue a pointed retort in Lloyd’s Evening Post: “We are greatly puzzled to find Mr. Parsons asserting that he hath been always willing to deliver up the child, when he refused a gentleman on Wednesday evening the 20th inst. … What is to be understood, by requiring security”?{{sfnp|S6VD757I|54}}
Elizabeth was taken to the house of Jane Armstrong on 26 January, where she slept in a hammock. The continued noises strengthened the resolve of the ghost’s supporters, while the press’s ceaseless reporting of the case continued. Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, announced that with the Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke and Lord Hertford, he was to visit Cock Lane on 30 January. After struggling through the throngs of interested visitors though, he was ultimately disappointed; the P*ublic Advertiser* observed that “the noise is now generally deferred till seven in the morning, it being necessary to vary the time, that the imposition may be the better carried on”.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|55-56}}
## Exposure
With Lord Dartmouth Aldrich began to draw together the people who would be involved in his investigation. They chose the matron of a local lying-in hospital as principal lady-in-waiting, the critic and controversialist Bishop John Douglas, and Dr George Macaulay. A Captain Wilkinson was also included on the committee; he had attended one séance armed with a pistol and stick; the former to shoot the source of the knocking, and the latter to make his escape (the ghost had remained silent on that occasion). James Penn and John Moore were also on the committee, but its most prominent member was Dr Samuel Johnson.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|56-57}}
Disappointed that the ghost failed to reveal itself, Moore now told Kent he believed it was an imposter, and that he would help expose it. Kent asked him to admit the truth and write an affidavit of what he knew, so as to end the affair and restore Kent’s reputation, but Moore refused, telling him that he still believed that the spirit’s presence was a reminder of his sin.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|73}}\[d\]Kent did, however, manage to issue an affidavit, signed by Fanny’s doctor and her apothecary on 8 February.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|77}} Moore’s view of the couple’s relationship was shared by many, including Mrs Parsons, who believed that the supposed ghost of Elizabeth Kent had disapproved of her sister’s new relationship.{{sfnp|7274C44C|39-42}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Cock_lane_ghost_wooden_board.jpg)The piece of wood used by Elizabeth Parsons, and a map of the haunted room, as illustrated in 1762
Wikimedia Commons
Another séance on 3 February saw the knocking continue unabated, but by then Parsons was in an extremely difficult – and serious – situation. Keen to prove the ghost was not an imposture he allowed his daughter to be examined at a house on The Strand from 7–10 February, and at another house in Covent Garden from 14 February. There she was tested in a variety of ways which included being swung up in a hammock, her hands and feet extended. As expected, the noises commenced, but stopped once Elizabeth was made to place her hands outside the bed. For two nights the ghost was silent. Elizabeth was told that if no more noises were heard by Sunday 21 February, she and her father would be committed to Newgate Prison. Her maids then saw her conceal on her person a small piece of wood about 6 by 4 inches (150 by 100 mm) and informed the investigators. More scratches were heard but the observers concluded that Elizabeth was responsible for the noises, and that she had been forced by her father to make them. Elizabeth was allowed home shortly after.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|73-76}}{{sfnp|G4W8U8RK|169}}
On or about 25 February, a pamphlet sympathetic to Kent’s case was published, called *The Mystery Revealed*, and most likely written by Oliver Goldsmith.{{sfnp|J52VRJMV|364}} Meanwhile, Kent was still trying to clear his name, and on 25 February he went to the vault of St John’s, accompanied by Aldrich, the undertaker, the clerk and the parish sexton. The group was there to prove beyond any doubt that a recent newspaper report, which claimed that the supposed removal of Fanny’s body from the vault accounted for the ghost’s failure to knock on her coffin, was false. The undertaker removed the lid to expose Fanny’s corpse, “and a very awful shocking sight it was”.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|76-77}} For Moore this was too much, but the retraction he published was not enough to keep him from being charged by the authorities with conspiracy, along with Richard Parsons and his wife, Mary Frazer, and Richard James, a tradesman.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|80}}
## Trial
The trial of all five was held at the Guild Hall in London on 10 July 1762. Presiding over the case was Lord Chief Justice William Murray. Proceedings began at 10 am, “brought by William Kent against the above defendants for a conspiracy to take away his life by charging him with the murder of Frances Lynes by giving her poison whereof she died”. The courtroom was crowded with spectators, who watched as Kent gave evidence against those in the dock. He told the court about his relationship with Fanny and of her resurrection as “Scratching Fanny” (so-called because of the scratching noises made by the “ghost”).{{sfnp|E2ZZMNW6}} James Franzen was next on the stand, his story corroborated by Fanny’s servant, Esther “Carrots” Carlisle, who testified later that day. Dr Cooper, who had served Fanny as she lay dying, told the court that he had always believed the strange noises in Cock Lane to be a trick, and his account of Fanny’s illness was supported by her apothecary, James Jones. Several other prosecution witnesses described how the hoax had been revealed, and Richard James was accused by the prosecution’s last witness of being responsible for some of the more offensive material published in the *The Public Ledger*.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|110-112}}
The defence’s witnesses included some of those who had cared for Elizabeth Parsons and who presumably still believed that the ghost was real. Other witnesses included the carpenter responsible for removing the wainscotting from Parsons’ apartment and Catherine Friend, who to escape the knocking noises had left the property. One witness’s testimony caused the court to burst into laughter, at which she replied “I assure you gentlemen, it is no laughing matter, whatever you may think of it.” Thomas Broughton was also called, as was a priest surnamed Ross, one of those who had questioned the ghost. Judge Murray asked him “Whether he thought he had puzzled the Ghost, or the Ghost had puzzled him?” John Moore was offered support by several esteemed gentlemen and presented Murray with a letter from Thomas Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury, who sought to intercede on his behalf. Murray placed the letter in his pocket, unopened, and told the court “it was impossible it could relate to the cause in question.” Richard James and Richard Parsons also received support from various witnesses, some of whom although acknowledging Parsons’ drink problem, told the court they could not believe he was guilty.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|110-112}}
The trial ended at about 9:30 pm. The judge spent about 90 minutes summing up the case, but it took the jury only 15 minutes to reach a verdict of guilty for all five defendants. The following Monday, two others responsible for defaming Kent were found guilty and later fined £50 each. The conspirators were brought back on 22 November but sentencing was delayed in the hope that they could agree on the level of damages payable to Kent. Having failed to do so they returned on 27 January 1763 and were committed to the King’s Bench Prison until 11 February, by which time John Moore and Richard James had agreed to pay Kent £588; they were subsequently admonished by Justice Wilmot and released. The following day, the rest were sentenced:{{sfnp|S6VD757I|113-114}}
The Court chusing that Mr. Kent, who had been so much injured on the occasion, should receive some reparation by punishment of the offenders, deferred giving judgment for seven or eight months, in hopes that the parties might make it up in the meantime. Accordingly, the clergyman, and tradesman agreed to pay Mr. Kent a round sum – some say between £500 and £600 to purchase their pardon, and were, therefore, dismissed with a severe reprimand. The father was ordered to be set in the [pillory](https://engole.info/pillory) three times in one month – once at the end of Cock–Lane; Elizabeth his wife to be imprisoned one year; and Mary Frazer six months in Bridewell, with hard labour. The father appearing to be out of his mind at the time he was first to standing in the pillory, the execution of that part of his sentence was deferred to another day, when, as well as the other day of his standing there, the populace took so much compassion on him, that instead of using him ill, they made a handsome subscription for him.{{sfnp
— EI7PS6AG|148}}|Annual Register, vol cxlii. and [Gentleman’s Magazine](https://engole.info/the-gentlemans-magazine/), 1762, p. 43 and p. 339
Parsons, all the while protesting his innocence, was also sentenced to two years imprisonment. He stood in the pillory on 16 March, 30 March and finally on 8 April. In contrast to other criminals the crowd treated him kindly, making collections of money for him.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|113-114}}
## Legacy
In William Hogarth’s *Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism*, the Cock Lane ghost is shown at the top of the thermometer, knocking to the girl in the bed. A Methodist preacher is seen to slip an icon of the ghost into the bodice of a young woman.{{sfnp
W8QDAWBA|143-144
The Cock Lane ghost was a focus for a contemporary religious controversy between the Methodists and orthodox Anglicans. Belief in a spiritual afterlife is a requirement for most religions, and in every instance where a spirit had supposedly manifested itself in the real world, the event was cherished as an affirmation of such beliefs.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|60}} In his youth, John Wesley had been strongly influenced by a supposed haunting at his family home of [Epworth Rectory](https://engole.info/epworth-rectory/), and that experience was carried through to the religion he founded, which was regularly criticised for its position on witchcraft and magic. Methodism, although far from a united religion, became almost synonymous with a belief in the supernatural.{{sfnp|JCKHM9EW|12-14}} Some of its followers therefore gave more credence to the reality of the Cock Lane ghost than did the Anglican establishment, which considered such things to be relics of the country’s Catholic past. This was a view that was epitomised in the conflict between the Methodist John Moore and the Anglican Stephen Aldrich.{{sfnp|7274C44C|47-54, 87}} In his 1845 memoirs, Horace Walpole, who had attended one of the séances, accused the Methodists of actively working to establish the existence of ghosts. He described the constant presence of Methodist clergymen near Elizabeth Parsons and implied that the church would recompense her father for his troubles.{{sfnp|EI7PS6AG|146-147}}
Samuel Johnson was committed to his Christian faith and shared the views of author Joseph Glanvill, who, in his 1681 work Saducismus Triumphatus, wrote of his concern over the advances made against religion and a belief in witchcraft, by atheism and scepticism. For Johnson the idea that an afterlife might not exist was an appalling thought, but although he thought that spirits could protect and counsel those still living, he kept himself distant from the more credulous Methodists, and recognised that his religion required proof of an afterlife.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|60-63}}
Johnson’s role in revealing the nature of the hoax was insufficient to keep the satirist Charles Churchill from mocking his apparent credulity in his 1762 work *The Ghost*.{{sfnp|B8R88693}} He resented Johnson’s lack of enthusiasm for his writing and with the character of Pomposo, written as one of the more credulous of the ghost’s investigators, used the satire to highlight a “superstitious streak” in his subject. Johnson paid this scant attention, but was said to have been more upset when Churchill again mocked him for his delay in releasing *Shakespeare*.{{sfnp|U3GDE6VL|352-353}} Publishers were at first wary of attacking those involved in the supposed haunting, but Churchill’s satire was one of a number of publications which, following the exposure of Parsons’ deception, heaped scorn on the affair. The newspapers searched for evidence of past impostures and referenced older publications such as Reginald Scot’s *Discoverie of Witchcraft* (1584).{{sfnp|S6VD757I|81-82}} The ghost was referenced in an anonymous work entitled *Anti-Canidia: or, Superstition Detected and Exposed* (1762), which sought to ridicule the credulity of those involved in the Cock Lane case. The author described his work as a “sally of indignation at the contemptible wonder in Cock-lane”.{{sfnp|ALCX2ZCZ}} Works such as *The Orators* (1762) by Samuel Foote, were soon available.{{sfnp|XVLSIG2M|81-101}}{{sfnp|7Y33MKS5|173}} Farcical poems such as *Cock-lane Humbug* were released, theatres staged plays such as *The Drummer* and *The Haunted House*.{{sfnp|7NJ2LBQK|14-16}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/William_Hogarth_-_The_Times%2C_plate_2.png)Hogarth’s *The Times, Plate 2*. Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Secker can be seen in the shade, behind the pilloried figures of both the Cock Lane ghost and John Wilkes.{{sfnp
Z5XR7IK3|300
Oliver Goldsmith, who had in February 1762 published *The Mystery Revealed*, may also have been responsible for the satirical illustration *English Credulity or the Invisible Ghost* (1762). It shows a séance as envisioned by the artist, with the ghost hovering above the heads of the two children in the bed. To the right of the bed a woman deep in prayer exclaims “O! that they would lay it in the Red Sea!” Another cries “I shall never have any rest again”. The English magistrate and social reformer John Fielding, who was blind, is pictured entering from the left saying “I should be glad to see this spirit”, while his companion says “Your W——r’s had better get your Warrant back’d by his L—rds—p”, referring to a Middlesex magistrate’s warrant which required an endorsement from the Lord Mayor, Samuel Fludyer. A man in tall boots, whip in hand, says: “Ay Tom I’ll lay 6 to 1 it runs more nights than the Coronation”\[e\]*The Coronation* was a theatrical play based on the coronation of George III.{{sfnp|QWZW77V8|46}} and his companion remarks “How they swallow the hum”. A clergymen says “I saw the light on the Clock” while another asks “Now thou Infidel does thou not believe?”, prompting his neighbour to reply “Yes if it had happen’d sooner ‘t would have serv’d me for a new Character in the Lyar the Story would tell better than the Cat & Kittens”.\[f\]*The Lyar* was a comedy in three acts produced by the dramatist Samuel Foote.{{sfnp|QWZW77V8|46}} Another clergyman exclaims “If a Gold Watch knock 3 times”, and a Parson asks him “Brother don’t disturb it”. On the wall, an image of The Bottle Conjuror is alongside one of Elizabeth Canning, whose fraud had so worried Samuel Fludyer that he had refused to arrest either Parsons or Kent.{{sfnp|QWZW77V8|45-46}}
Playwright David Garrick dedicated the enormously successful *The Farmer’s Return* to the satirical artist William Hogarth. The story concerns a farmer who regales his family with an account of his talk with Miss Fanny, the comedy being derived from the reversal of traditional roles: the sceptical farmer poking fun at the credulous city-folk.{{sfnp|7NJ2LBQK|14-16}}{{sfnp|9R49BEMA|366}} Hogarth made his own observations of the Cock Lane ghost, with obvious references in *Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism* (1762). This illustration makes a point of attacking Methodist ministers, one of whom is seen to slip a phallic “ghost” into a young woman’s bodice.{{sfnp|W8QDAWBA|143-144}} He again attacked the Methodists in *The Times*, Plate 2 (1762–1763), placing an image of Thomas Secker (who had tried to intervene on behalf of the Methodists) behind the Cock Lane ghost, and putting the ghost in the same pillory as the radical politician John Wilkes, which implied a connection between the demagoguery surrounding the Methodists and Pittites.{{sfnp|9R49BEMA|392-393}}{{sfnp|EI7PS6AG|150}} The print enraged Bishop William Warburton, who although a vocal critic of Methodism, wrote:
I have seen Hogarth’s print of the Ghost. It is a horrid composition of lewd Obscenity & blasphemous prophaneness for which I detest the artist & have lost all esteem for the man. The best is, that the worst parts of it have a good chance of not being understood by the people.{{sfnp
— 9R49BEMA|366}}
The 19th-century author Charles Dickens – whose childhood nursemaid Mary Weller may have affected him with a fascination for ghosts – made reference to the Cock Lane ghost in several of his books.{{sfnp|JG2FT2PA|218}}\[g\]Slater (1983) theorises that Weller may not have provided Dickens with the ghostly stories that affected his childhood.{{sfnp|MIGLNGDI|383}} One of Nicholas Nickleby’s main characters and a source of much of the novel’s comic relief, Mrs. Nickleby, claims that her great-grandfather “went to school with the Cock-lane Ghost” and that “I know the master of his school was a Dissenter, and that would in a great measure account for the Cock-lane Ghost’s behaving in such an improper manner to the clergyman when he grew up.”{{sfnp|RVTS9GT6|655}} Dickens also very briefly mentions the Cock Lane ghost in *A Tale of Two Cities*{{sfnp|BBLW6THJ|1}} and *Dombey and Son*.{{sfnp|E3L9GHYR|64}}
According to a 1965 source, the site of Parson’s lodgings corresponded to the building with the modern address 20 Cock Lane.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|4-6}} The house was believed to have been built in the late 17th century, and was demolished in 1979.{{sfnp|XFCRSH6H|105}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Based on the RPI, about £27,400 as of 2010.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} b The result of these proceedings is not mentioned. c Evidence of these investigations exists in a letter which appeared in a newspaper in February 1762, signed by a “J. A. L.”, which gave a detailed report on how Fanny had arrived in London, and which claimed that Kent had drawn up Fanny’s will in his favour. It made no specific accusations, but as its author observed, Kent’s actions had had “the desired effect”. Kent later claimed to know the identity of its author, who, Grant (1965) surmises, was a member of the Lynes family. Grant also writes that the letter was printed to maintain pressure on Kent.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|43}} d Kent did, however, manage to issue an affidavit, signed by Fanny’s doctor and her apothecary on 8 February.{{sfnp|S6VD757I|77}} e *The Coronation* was a theatrical play based on the coronation of George III.{{sfnp|QWZW77V8|46}} f *The Lyar* was a comedy in three acts produced by the dramatist Samuel Foote.{{sfnp|QWZW77V8|46}} g Slater (1983) theorises that Weller may not have provided Dickens with the ghostly stories that affected his childhood.{{sfnp|MIGLNGDI|383}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 13518
**Categories:** Ghost, Hoax
---
### [Blackbeard](https://engole.info/blackbeard/)
**Published:** January 17, 2021
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Edward_Teach_Commonly_Call%27d_Black_Beard_%28bw%29.jpg[/pimage]English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of America during the early 18th century.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Edward_Teach_Commonly_Call%27d_Black_Beard_%28bw%29.jpg)Engraving, c. 1736
Wikimedia Commons
Edward Teach (alternatively spelled Edward Thatch, c. 1680 – 22 November 1718), better known as Blackbeard, was an English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of Britain’s North American colonies. Little is known of his life before he settled on the Bahamian island of New Providence, a base for Captain Benjamin Hornigold, whose crew Teach joined in about 1716. Hornigold placed him in command of a sloop he had captured, and the two engaged in numerous acts of piracy. Their numbers were boosted by the addition to their fleet of two more ships, one of which was commanded by Stede Bonnet; but Hornigold retired from piracy toward the end of 1717, taking two vessels with him.
Teach captured a French slave ship known as *La Concorde*, renamed her *Queen Anne’s Revenge*, equipped her with 40 guns, and crewed her with more than 300 men. His nickname derived from his thick black beard and fearsome appearance; he was reported to have tied lit fuses (slow matches) under his hat to frighten his enemies. Teach formed an alliance of pirates and blockaded the port of Charles Town, South Carolina, ransoming the port’s inhabitants. He parted company with Bonnet and settled in Bath, North Carolina, also known as Bath Town, where he accepted a royal pardon. But he was soon back at sea, where he attracted the attention of Alexander Spotswood, the Governor of Virginia. Spotswood arranged for a party of soldiers and sailors to capture the pirate. On 22 November 1718, following a ferocious battle, Teach and several of his crew were killed by a small force of sailors led by Lieutenant Robert Maynard.
Teach was a shrewd and calculating leader who spurned the use of violence, relying instead on his fearsome image to terrorise those whom he robbed. He was romanticised after his death, and became the inspiration for an archetypal pirate in works of fiction across many genres.
## Early life
Little is known of Teach’s early life. It is commonly believed that at the time of his death he was between 35 and 40 years of age, and thus born in about 1680.{{sfnp|N2BW8H37|14}}{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|10-12}} In contemporary records his name is most often given as Blackbeard, Edward Thatch or Edward Teach, the latter most frequently. Several spellings of his surname exist – Thatch, Thach, Thache, Thack, Tack, Thatche and Theach. One early source claims that his surname was Drummond, but the lack of any supporting documentation makes this unlikely. Pirates habitually used fictitious surnames so as not to tarnish their family name, which makes it unlikely that Teach’s real name will ever be known.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|3-4}}{{sfnp|N6RTMAKC}}
The 17th-century rise of Britain’s American colonies and the rapid 18th-century expansion of the Atlantic slave trade had made Bristol an important international sea port, and Teach was probably raised there in what was then the second-largest city in England. He could almost certainly read and write; he communicated with merchants, and when killed had in his possession a letter addressed to him by the Chief Justice and Secretary of the Province of Carolina, Tobias Knight. The author Robert Lee speculated that Teach may therefore have been born into a respectable, wealthy family.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|4-5}} He may have arrived in the Caribbean in the last years of the 17th century, on a merchant vessel (possibly a slave ship).{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|19}} The 18th-century author Charles Johnson claimed that Teach was for some time a sailor operating from Jamaica on privateer ships during the War of the Spanish Succession, and that “he had often distinguished himself for his uncommon boldness and personal courage”.{{sfnp|H5Y6FWYQ|70}} At what point during the war Teach joined the fighting is, in keeping with the record of most of his life before he became a pirate, unknown.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|9}}
## New Providence
With its history of colonialism, trade and piracy, the West Indies was the setting for many 17th and 18th-century maritime incidents. The privateer turned pirate Henry Jennings and his followers decided, early in the 18th century, to use the uninhabited island of New Providence as a base for their operations; it was within easy reach of the Florida Strait and its busy shipping lanes, which were filled with European vessels crossing the Atlantic. New Providence’s harbour could easily accommodate hundreds of ships, but was too shallow for the Royal Navy’s larger vessels. The author George Woodbury described New Providence as “no city of homes; it was a place of temporary sojourn and refreshment for a literally floating population,” continuing, “The only permanent residents were the piratical camp followers, the traders, and the hangers-on; all others were transient.”{{sfnp|2HRNQ295|71-72}} In New Providence, pirates found a welcome respite from the law.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|9-11}}
Teach was one of those who came to enjoy the island’s benefits, moving there from Jamaica following the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714, and along with most privateers once engaged in the conflict, became involved in piracy. Possibly in about 1716, he joined the crew of Captain Benjamin Hornigold, a renowned pirate who operated from New Providence’s safe waters. That year Hornigold placed Teach in charge of a sloop he had taken as a prize.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|11-12}} In early 1717 Hornigold and Teach, each captaining a sloop, set out for the mainland. They captured a boat carrying 120 barrels of flour out of Havana, and shortly thereafter took 100 barrels of wine from a sloop out of Bermuda. A few days later they stopped a vessel sailing from Madeira to Charles Town, South Carolina. Teach and his quartermaster, William Howard, may at this time have struggled to control their crews. By then they had probably developed a taste for Madeira wine, and on 29 September near Cape Charles all they took from the Betty of Virginia was her cargo of Madeira, before they scuttled her with the remaining cargo.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|64-69}}
It was during this cruise with Hornigold that the earliest known report of Teach appeared, in which he is recorded as a pirate in his own right in command of a large crew. In a report made by a Captain Mathew Munthe on an anti-piracy patrol for North Carolina, “Thatch” was described as operating “a sloop 6 gunns \[sic\] and about 70 men”.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|64}} In September Teach and Hornigold encountered Stede Bonnet, a landowner and military officer from a wealthy family who had turned to piracy earlier that year. Bonnet’s crew of about 70 were reportedly dissatisfied with his command, so with Bonnet’s permission, Teach took control of his ship *Revenge*. The pirates’ flotilla now consisted of three ships; Teach on *Revenge*, Teach’s old sloop and Hornigold’s *Ranger*. By October, another vessel had been captured and added to the small fleet.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|78-79}} The sloops *Robert of Philadelphia* and *Good Intent of Dublin* were stopped on 22 October 1717, and their cargo holds emptied.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|13-14}}
As a former British privateer, Hornigold attacked only his old enemies, but for his crew, the sight of British vessels filled with valuable cargo passing by unharmed became too much, and at some point toward the end of 1717 he was demoted. Whether Teach had any involvement in this decision is unknown,{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|66-67}} but Hornigold quickly retired from piracy. He took *Ranger* and one of the sloops, leaving Teach with *Revenge* and the remaining sloop.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|79}} The two never met again, and along with many other occupants of New Providence, Hornigold accepted the king’s pardon from Woodes Rogers in June the following year.{{sfnp|2HRNQ295|155}}
## Early engagements
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/General_History_of_the_Pyrates_-_Blackbeard_the_Pirate_%281725%29.jpg)Blackbeard as depicted in the *General History of the Pyrates*, 1725.
Wikimedia Commons
On 28 November 1717 Teach’s two ships attacked a French merchant vessel off the coast of Saint Vincent. They each fired a broadside across its bulwarks, killing several of its crew, and forcing its captain to surrender.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|14}} The ship was *La Concorde*, a large French Guineaman registered in Saint-Malo and carrying a cargo of slaves. This ship had originally been the English merchantman *Concord*, captured in 1711 by a French squadron, and had changed hands several times by 1717.{{sfnp|VNP4NEW9}} Teach and his crews sailed the vessel south along Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to Bequia, where they disembarked her crew and cargo, and converted the ship for their own use. The crew of *La Concorde* were given the smaller of Teach’s two sloops, which they renamed *Mauvaise Rencontre* (Bad Meeting), and sailed for Martinique. Teach may have recruited some of their slaves, but the remainder were left on the island and were later recaptured by the returning crew of *Mauvaise Rencontre*.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|81-88}}
Teach immediately renamed *La Concorde* as *Queen Anne’s Revenge*, and equipped her with 40 guns. By this time Teach had placed his lieutenant Richards in command of Bonnet’s *Revenge*.{{sfnp|BUKCYHB5|54}} In late November, near Saint Vincent, he attacked the *Great Allen*, and after a lengthy engagement forced the large and well-armed merchant ship to surrender. He ordered her to move closer to the shore, disembarked her crew and emptied her cargo holds, and then burned and sank the vessel. The incident was chronicled in the *Boston News-Letter*, which called Teach the commander of a “French ship of 32 Guns, a Briganteen of 10 guns and a Sloop of 12 guns.” It is not known when or where Teach collected the ten-gun briganteen, but by that time he may have been in command of at least 150 men split among three vessels.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|18}}{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|88}}
On 5 December 1717 Teach stopped the merchant sloop *Margare*t off the coast of Crab Island, near Anguilla. Her captain, Henry Bostock, and crew, remained Teach’s prisoners for about eight hours, and were forced to watch as their sloop was ransacked. Bostock, who had been held aboard *Queen Anne’s Revenge*, was returned unharmed to *Margaret* and was allowed to leave with his crew.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|154-155}} He returned to his base of operations on Saint Christopher Island and reported the matter to Governor Walter Hamilton, who requested that he sign an affidavit about the encounter. Bostock’s deposition details Teach’s command of two vessels: a sloop and a large French guineaman, Dutch-built, with 36 cannons and a crew of 300 men. The captain believed that the larger ship carried valuable gold dust, silver plate, and “a very fine cup” supposedly taken from the commander of *Great Allen*.\[a\]Konstam (2007) considers this unlikely and that the pirates were almost certainly “teasing the captive with tall stories.”{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|90-91}} Teach’s crew had apparently informed Bostock that they had destroyed several other vessels, and that they intended to sail to Hispaniola and lie in wait for an expected Spanish armada, supposedly laden with money to pay the garrisons. Bostock also claimed that Teach had questioned him about the movements of local ships,\[b\]Among these other ships, Bostock reported that Teach was intent on finding a Captain Pinkentham and asked about him repeatedly. Teach never found Pinkentham, who had instead been caught by a pirate named Grinnaway.{{sfnp|QCZBVHUL|224-225}} but also that he had seemed unsurprised when Bostock told him of an expected royal pardon from London for all pirates.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|27-28}}
So our Heroe, Captain Teach, assumed the Cognomen of Black-beard, from that large Quantity of Hair, which, like a frightful Meteor, covered his whole Face, and frightened America more than any Comet that has appeared there a long Time. This Beard was black, which he suffered to grow of an extravagant Length; as to Breadth, it came up to his Eyes; he was accustomed to twist it with Ribbons, in small Tails, after the Manner of our Ramilies Wiggs, and turn them about his Ears.{{sfnp
— H5Y6FWYQBostock’s deposition describes Teach as a “tall spare man with a very black beard which he wore very long”. It is the first recorded account of Teach’s appearance and is the source of his cognomen, Blackbeard.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|91}} Later descriptions mention that his thick black beard was braided into pigtails, sometimes tied in with small coloured ribbons. Johnson (1724) described him as “such a figure that imagination cannot form an idea of a fury from hell to look more frightful.” Whether Johnson’s description was entirely truthful or embellished is unclear, but it seems likely that Teach understood the value of appearances; better to strike fear into the heart of one’s enemies, than rely on bluster alone.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|155}} Teach was tall, with broad shoulders. He wore knee-length boots and dark clothing, topped with a wide hat and sometimes a long coat of brightly coloured silk or velvet. Johnson also described Teach in times of battle as wearing “a sling over his shoulders, with three brace of pistols, hanging in holsters like bandoliers; and stuck lighted slow matches under his hat”,\[{{sfnp|H5Y6FWYQ|87}}\[c\] Lee (1974) describes these matches as “fuses made of hemp cord about the thickness of a pencil and dipped in a solution of saltpeter and lime water.”{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|21}} the latter apparently to emphasise the fearsome appearance he wished to present to his enemies.{{sfnp|H5Y6FWYQ|57}}{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|20}}
But despite Teach’s ferocious reputation, there are no verified accounts of his ever having murdered or harmed those he held captive.\[d\]For Teach at least, this policy paid off. According to historian Angus Konstam, until Teach’s final battle, he had not so much as killed a single man.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|157}} According to the University of Chicago economist Peter Leeson, he apparently did not need to.{{sfnp|RFHDUSJA}} Teach may have used other aliases; on 30 November, the *Monserrat Merchant* encountered two ships and a sloop, commanded by a Captain Kentish and Captain Edwards (the latter a known alias of Stede Bonnet).{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|88-89}}
## Fleet enlargement
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Pirate_Death%27s_Head_Flag.svg)Blackbeard flew a black flag with a skull on it, along with a blood-red flag, rather than the horned skeleton flag commonly attributed to him.{{sfnp
S4IEU3WX
Teach’s movements between late 1717 and early 1718 are unknown. He and Bonnet were probably responsible for an attack off Sint Eustatius in December 1717. Henry Bostock claimed to have heard the pirates say they would head toward the Spanish-controlled Samaná Bay in Hispaniola, but a cursory search revealed no pirate activity. Captain Hume of HMS *Scarborough* (1711) reported on 6 February that a “Pyrate Ship of 36 Guns and 250 men, and a Sloop of 10 Guns and 100 men were Said to be Cruizing amongst the Leeward Islands”. Hume reinforced his crew with soldiers armed with muskets, and joined up with HMS *Seaford* to track the two ships, to no avail, though they discovered that the two ships had sunk a French vessel off St Christopher Island, and reported also that they had last been seen “gone down the North side of Hispaniola”. Although no confirmation exists that these two ships were controlled by Teach and Bonnet, the author Angus Konstam believes it very likely that they were.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|124-126}}
In March 1718, while taking on water at Turneffe Island east of Belize, both ships spotted the Jamaican logwood cutting sloop *Adventure* making for the harbour. She was stopped and her captain, Harriot, invited to join the pirates. Harriot and his crew accepted the invitation, and Teach sent over a crew to sail *Adventure*, appointing Israel Hands as captain.{{sfnp|6GXJNZM8|44}} They sailed for the Bay of Honduras, where they added another ship and four sloops to their flotilla.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|30-33}}{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|127-128}} On 9 April Teach’s enlarged fleet of ships looted and burned *Protestant Caesar*. His fleet then sailed to Grand Cayman where they captured a “small turtler”.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|36-37}} Teach probably sailed toward Havana, where he may have captured a small Spanish vessel that had left the Cuban port. They then sailed to the wrecks of the 1715 Spanish fleet, off the eastern coast of Florida. There Teach disembarked the crew of the captured Spanish sloop, before proceeding north to the port of Charles Town, South Carolina, attacking three vessels along the way.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|130}}
## Blockade of Charles Town
By May 1718 Teach had awarded himself the rank of Commodore, and was at the height of his power. Late that month his flotilla blockaded the port of Charles Town in the Province of South Carolina. All vessels entering or leaving the port were stopped, and as the town had no guard ship,{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|164}} its pilot boat was the first to be captured. Over the next five or six days about nine vessels were stopped and ransacked as they attempted to sail past Charles Town Bar, where Teach’s fleet was anchored. One such ship, headed for London with a group of prominent Charles Town citizens which included Samuel Wragg (a member of the Council of the Province of Carolina), was the *Crowley*. Her passengers were questioned about the vessels still in port and then locked below decks for about half a day. Teach informed the prisoners that his fleet required medical supplies from the colonial government of South Carolina, and that if none were forthcoming, all prisoners would be executed, their heads sent to the governor and all captured ships burned.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|39-42}}
Wragg agreed to Teach’s demands, and a Mr. Marks and two pirates were given two days to collect the drugs. Teach moved his fleet, and the captured ships, to within about five or six leagues from land. Three days later a messenger, sent by Marks, returned to the fleet; Marks’s boat had capsized and delayed their arrival in Charles Town. Teach granted a reprieve of two days, but still the party did not return. He then called a meeting of his fellow sailors and moved eight ships into the harbour, causing panic within the town. When Marks finally returned to the fleet, he explained what had happened. On his arrival he had presented the pirates’ demands to the governor and the drugs had been quickly gathered, but the two pirates sent to escort him had proved difficult to find; they had been busy drinking with friends and were finally discovered drunk.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|42-47}}
Teach kept to his side of the bargain and released the captured ships and his prisoners – albeit relieved of their valuables, including the fine clothing some had worn.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|47}}
## Beaufort Inlet
Whilst at Charles Town, Teach learned that Woodes Rogers had left England with several men-of-war, with orders to purge the West Indies of pirates. Teach’s flotilla sailed northward along the Atlantic coast and into Topsail Inlet (commonly known as Beaufort Inlet), off the coast of North Carolina. There they intended to careen their ships to scrape their hulls, but on 10 June 1718 the *Queen Anne’s Revenge* ran aground on a sandbar, cracking her main-mast and severely damaging many of her timbers. Teach ordered several sloops to throw ropes across the flagship in an attempt to free her. A sloop commanded by Israel Hands of *Adventure* also ran aground, and both vessels appeared to be damaged beyond repair,{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|50-51}} leaving only *Revenge* and the captured Spanish sloop.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|183}}
Teach had at some stage learned of the offer of a royal pardon, and probably confided in Bonnet his willingness to accept it. The pardon was open to all pirates who surrendered on or before 5 September 1718, but contained a caveat stipulating that immunity was offered only against crimes committed before 5 January. Although in theory this left Bonnet and Teach at risk of being hanged for their actions at Charles Town Bar, most authorities could waive such conditions. Teach thought that Governor Charles Eden was a man he could trust, but to make sure he waited to see what would happen to another captain.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|183-185}} Bonnet left immediately on a small sailing boat\[e\]Possibly a longboat from *Queen Anne’s Revenge*.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|184}} for Bath Town, where he surrendered to Governor Eden, and received his pardon. He then travelled back to Beaufort Inlet to collect the *Revenge* and the remainder of his crew, intending to sail to Saint Thomas Island to receive a commission. Unfortunately for him, Teach had stripped the vessel of its valuables and provisions, and had marooned its crew; Bonnet set out for revenge, but was unable to find him. He and his crew returned to piracy and were captured on 27 September 1718 at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. All but four were tried and hanged in Charles Town.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|52-54}}\[f\]The captured *Revenge* was later included in a fleet of ships commanded by the Governor of South Carolina. The fleet made a ferocious attack on a group of pirates near the entrance to Charles Town Harbour, resulting in the execution of 49 pirates inside a month. Their bodies were hung in gibbets near White Point.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|52-54}}
The author Robert Lee has surmised that Teach and Hands intentionally ran their ships aground to reduce the fleet’s crew complement, and so increasing their share of the spoils. During the trial of Bonnet’s crew, *Revenge*‘s boatswain Ignatius Pell testified that “the ship was run ashore and lost, which Thatch \[Teach\] caused to be done.”{{sfnp|4RW3ZTHE|1249}} Lee considers it plausible that Teach let Bonnet in on his plan to accept a pardon from Governor Eden. He suggested that Bonnet do the same, and as war between the Quadruple Alliance of 1718 and Spain was threatening, to consider taking a privateer’s commission from England. Lee suggests that Teach also offered Bonnet the return of his ship *Revenge*.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|51-52}} Konstam proposes a similar idea, explaining that Teach began to see *Queen Anne’s Revenge* as something of a liability; while a pirate fleet was anchored, news would be sent to neighbouring towns and colonies, and any vessels nearby would delay sailing. It was therefore prudent for Teach not to linger too long, although wrecking the ship was a somewhat extreme measure.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|150, 167}}
## Pardon
Before sailing northward on his remaining sloop to Ocracoke Inlet, Teach marooned about 25 men on a small sandy island about a league from the mainland. He may have done this to stifle any protest they made, if they guessed their captain’s plans. Bonnet rescued them two days later.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|187}} Teach continued on to Bath, where in June 1718 – only days after Bonnet had departed with his pardon – he and his much-reduced crew received their pardon from Governor Eden.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|52-53, 56}}
Teach settled in Bath, on the eastern side of Bath Creek at Plum Point, near Eden’s home. During July and August he travelled between his base in the town and his sloop off Ocracoke. Johnson’s account states that he married the daughter of a local plantation owner, although there is no supporting evidence for this. Eden gave Teach permission to sail to St Thomas to seek a commission as a privateer (a useful way of removing bored and troublesome pirates from the small settlement), and Teach was given official title to his remaining sloop, which he renamed *Adventure*. By the end of August he had returned to piracy, and in the same month the Governor of Pennsylvania issued a warrant for his arrest, but by then Teach was probably operating in Delaware Bay, some distance away. He took two French ships leaving the Caribbean, moved one crew across to the other, and sailed the remaining ship back to Ocracoke.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|198-202}} In September he told Eden that he had found the French ship at sea, deserted. A Vice Admiralty Court was quickly convened, presided over by Tobias Knight and the Collector of Customs. The ship was judged as a derelict found at sea, and of its cargo twenty hogsheads of sugar were awarded to Knight and sixty to Eden; Teach and his crew were given what remained in the vessel’s hold.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|80}}
Ocracoke Inlet was Teach’s favourite anchorage. It was a perfect vantage point from which to view ships travelling between the various settlements of northeast Carolina, and it was from there that Teach first spotted the approaching ship of Charles Vane, another English pirate. Several months earlier Vane had rejected the pardon brought by Woodes Rogers and escaped the men-of-war the English captain brought with him to Nassau. He had also been pursued by Teach’s old commander, Benjamin Hornigold, who was by then a pirate hunter. Teach and Vane spent several nights on the southern tip of Ocracoke Island, accompanied by such notorious figures as Israel Hands, Robert Deal and Calico Jack.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|85, 88-90}}
## Alexander Spotswood
As it spread throughout the neighbouring colonies, the news of Teach and Vane’s impromptu party worried the Governor of Pennsylvania enough to send out two sloops to capture the pirates.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|204-205}} They were unsuccessful, but Governor of Virginia Alexander Spotswood was also concerned that the supposedly retired freebooter and his crew were living in nearby North Carolina. Some of Teach’s former crew had already moved into several Virginian seaport towns, prompting Spotswood to issue a proclamation on 10 July, requiring all former pirates to make themselves known to the authorities, to give up their arms and to not travel in groups larger than three. As head of a Crown colony, Spotswood viewed the proprietary colony of North Carolina with contempt; he had little faith in the ability of the Carolinians to control the pirates, whom he suspected would be back to their old ways, disrupting Virginian commerce, as soon as their money ran out.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|94-95}}
Spotswood learnt that William Howard, the former quartermaster of Queen Anne’s Revenge, was in the area, and believing that he might know of Teach’s whereabouts had the pirate and his two slaves arrested. Spotswood had no legal authority to have pirates tried,\[g\]Colonial governors had been given the power to try pirates outside England by proclamation of William III in 1702, but it had expired and Spotswood did not receive George I’s new proclamation until December 1718.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|205-206, 217}} and as a result, Howard’s attorney, John Holloway, brought charges against Captain Brand of HMS Lyme, where Howard was imprisoned. He also sued on Howard’s behalf for damages of £500, claiming wrongful arrest.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|98-101}}
Spotswood’s council claimed that under a statute of William III the governor was entitled to try pirates without a jury in times of crisis and that Teach’s presence was a crisis. The charges against Howard referred to several acts of piracy supposedly committed after the pardon’s cut-off date, in “a sloop belonging to ye subjects of the King of Spain”, but ignored the fact that they took place outside Spotswood’s jurisdiction and in a vessel then legally owned. Another charge cited two attacks, one of which was the capture of a slave ship off Charles Town Bar, from which one of Howard’s slaves was presumed to have come. Howard was sent to await trial before a Court of Vice-Admiralty, on the charge of piracy, but Brand and his colleague, Captain Gordon (of HMS *Pearl*) refused to serve with Holloway present.\[h\]The two captains refused as Holloway was involved in the civil action. Incensed, Holloway had no option but to stand down, and was replaced by the Attorney General of Virginia, John Clayton, whom Spotswood described as “an honester man \[than Holloway\]”.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|104}} Howard was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, but was saved by a commission from London, which directed Spotswood to pardon all acts of piracy committed by surrendering pirates before 23 July 1718.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|104-105}}{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|205-207}}
Spotswood had obtained from Howard valuable information on Teach’s whereabouts,{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|105}} and he planned to send his forces across the border into North Carolina to capture him.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|106}} He gained the support of two men keen to discredit North Carolina’s Governor – Edward Moseley and Colonel Maurice Moore. He also wrote to the Lords of Trade, suggesting that the Crown might benefit financially from Teach’s capture. Spotswood personally financed the operation, possibly believing that Teach had fabulous treasures hidden away. He ordered Captains Gordon and Brand of HMS Pearl and HMS Lyme to travel overland to Bath. Lieutenant Robert Maynard of HMS Pearl was given command of two commandeered sloops, to approach the town from the sea.\[i\]HMS Pearl and HMS Lyme drew too much water and were therefore unable to navigate the sandbars around Ocracoke.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|241}} An extra incentive for Teach’s capture was the offer of a reward from the Assembly of Virginia, over and above any that might be received from the Crown.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|108-110}}
Maynard took command of the two armed sloops on 17 November. He was given 57 men – 33 from HMS *Pearl* and 24 from HMS *Lyme*. Maynard and the detachment from HMS *Pearl* took the larger of the two vessels and named her *Jane*; the rest took *Ranger*, commanded by one of Maynard’s officers, a Mister Hyde. Some from the two ships’ civilian crews remained aboard. They sailed from Kecoughtan, along the James River, on 17 November.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|242-244}} The two sloops moved slowly, giving Brand’s force time to reach Bath. Brand set out for North Carolina six days later, arriving within {{convert|3|mi|spell=in}} of Bath on 23 November. Included in Brand’s force were several North Carolinians, including Colonel Moore and Captain Jeremiah Vail, sent to counter any local objection to the presence of foreign soldiers. Moore went into the town to see if Teach was there, reporting back that he was not, but that the pirate was expected at “every minute.” Brand then went to Governor Eden’s home and informed him of his purpose. The next day, Brand sent two canoes down Pamlico River to Ocracoke Inlet, to see if Teach could be seen. They returned two days later and reported on what eventually transpired.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|111-112}}
## Last battle
Maynard found the pirates anchored on the inner side of Ocracoke Island, on the evening of 21 November.{{sfnp|QCZBVHUL|289-290}} He had ascertained their position from ships he had stopped along his journey, but being unfamiliar with the local channels and shoals he decided to wait until the following morning to make his attack. He stopped all traffic from entering the inlet – preventing any warning of his presence – and posted a lookout on both sloops to ensure that Teach could not escape to sea.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|113}} On the other side of the island, Teach was busy entertaining guests and had not set a lookout. With Israel Hands ashore in Bath with about 24 of *Adventure*‘s sailors, he also had a much-reduced crew. Johnson (1724) reported that the pirate had “no more than twenty-five men on board” and that he “gave out to all the vessels that he spoke with that he had forty”.{{sfnp|H5Y6FWYQ|81}} “Thirteen white and six Negroes”, was the number later reported by Brand to the Admiralty.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|210}}
At daybreak, preceded by a small boat taking soundings, Maynard’s two sloops entered the channel. The small craft was quickly spotted by *Adventure* and fired at as soon as it was within range of her guns. While the boat made a quick retreat to the *Jane*, Teach cut the *Adventure*‘s anchor cable. His crew hoisted the sails and the *Adventure* manoeuvred to point her starboard guns toward Maynard’s sloops, which were slowly closing the gap.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|246-248}} Hyde moved *Ranger* to the port side of *Jane* and the Union flag was unfurled on each ship. *Adventure* then turned toward the beach of Ocracoke Island, heading for a narrow channel.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|115-117}} What happened next is uncertain. Johnson claimed that there was an exchange of small arms fire following which *Adventure* ran aground on a sandbar, and Maynard anchored and then lightened his ship to pass over the obstacle. Another version claimed that *Jane* and *Ranger* ran aground, although Maynard made no mention of this in his log.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|252}} What is certain though is that *Adventure* turned her guns on the two ships and fired. The broadside was devastating; in an instant, Maynard had lost as much as a third of his forces. About 20 on *Jane* were either wounded or killed and 9 on *Ranger*. Hyde was dead and his second and third officers either dead or seriously injured; his sloop was so badly damaged that it played no further role in the attack.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|118}} Contemporary accounts of what happened next are confused, but small-arms fire from *Jane* may have cut *Adventure’*s jib sheet, causing her to lose control and run onto the sandbar. In the aftermath of Teach’s overwhelming attack, *Jane* and *Ranger* may also have been grounded; the battle would have become a race to see who could float their ship first.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|253}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Capture-of-Blackbeard.jpg)*Capture of the Pirate, Blackbeard, 1718* by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, painted in 1920
Wikimedia Commons
Maynard had kept many of his men below deck, and in anticipation of being boarded told them to prepare for close fighting. Teach watched as the gap between the vessels closed, and ordered his men to be ready. The two vessels contacted one another as the *Adventure*‘s grappling hooks hit their target and several grenades, made from powder and shot-filled bottles and ignited by fuses, broke across the sloop’s deck. As the smoke cleared, Teach led his men aboard, buoyant at the sight of Maynard’s apparently empty ship, his men firing at the small group formed by the lieutenant and his men at the stern.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|119-120}}
The rest of Maynard’s men then burst from the hold, shouting and firing. The plan to surprise Teach and his crew worked; the pirates were apparently taken aback at the assault. Teach rallied his men and the two groups fought across the deck, which was already slick with blood from those killed or injured by Teach’s broadside. Maynard and Teach fired their flintlocks at each other, then threw them away. Teach drew his cutlass and managed to break Maynard’s sword. Against superior training and a slight advantage in numbers, the pirates were pushed back toward the bow, allowing the *Jane*‘s crew to surround Maynard and Teach, who was by then completely isolated.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|255-257}} As Maynard drew back to fire once again, Teach moved in to attack him, but was slashed across the neck by one of Maynard’s men. Badly wounded, he was then attacked and killed by several others of Maynard’s crew. The remaining pirates quickly surrendered. Those left on the *Adventure* were captured by the *Ranger*‘s crew, including one who planned to set fire to the powder room and blow up the ship. Varying accounts of the battle’s list of casualties exist; Maynard reported that 8 of his men and 12 pirates were killed. Brand reported that 10 pirates and 11 of Maynard’s men were killed. Spotswood claimed ten pirates and ten of the king’s men dead.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|120-123}}
Maynard later examined Teach’s body, noting that it had been shot five times and cut about twenty. He also found several items of correspondence, including a letter to the pirate from Tobias Knight. Teach’s corpse was thrown into the inlet and his head was suspended from the bowsprit of Maynard’s sloop so that the reward could be collected.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|122, 124}}
## Aftermath
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Blackbeard%27s_head.jpg)Edward Teach’s severed head hangs from Maynard’s bowsprit, as pictured in Charles Elles’s *The Pirates Own Book* (1837)
Wikimedia Commons
Lieutenant Maynard remained at Ocracoke for several more days, making repairs and burying the dead.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|259}} Teach’s loot – sugar, cocoa, indigo and cotton – found “in pirate sloops and ashore in a tent where the sloops lay”, was sold at auction along with sugar and cotton found in Tobias Knight’s barn for £2,238. Governor Spotswood used some of the proceeds to pay for the entire operation. The prize money for capturing Teach was to have been about £400 (equivalent to about £63,000 as at 2019){{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}, but it was split between the crews of HMS *Lyme* and HMS *Pearl*. As Captain Brand and his troops had not been the ones fighting for their lives, Maynard thought this extremely unfair. But he lost much of any support he may have had when it was discovered that he and his crew had helped themselves to about £90 of Teach’s booty. The two companies did not receive their prize money for another four years;{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|139}}{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|125-126}} despite his bravery Maynard was not promoted, and faded into obscurity.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|272-274}}
The remainder of Teach’s crew and former associates were found by Brand, in Bath,{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|125-126}} and were transported to Williamsburg, Virginia, where they were jailed on charges of piracy. Several were black, prompting Spotswood to ask his council what could be done about “the Circumstances of these Negroes to exempt them from undergoing the same Tryal as other pirates.” Regardless, the men were tried with their comrades in Williamsburg’s Capitol building, under admiralty law, on 12 March 1719. No records of the day’s proceedings remain, but 14 of the 16 accused were found guilty. Of the remaining two, one proved that he had partaken of the fight out of necessity, having been on Teach’s ship only as a guest at a drinking party the night before, and not as a pirate. The other, Israel Hands, was not present at the fight. He claimed that during a drinking session Teach had shot him in the knee, and that he was still covered by the royal pardon.\[j\]Konstam suggests that while imprisoned, Hands was an informant for Spotswood.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|271}} The remaining pirates were hanged, then left to rot in gibbets along Williamsburg’s Capitol Landing Road, known for some time after as Gallows Road.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|136-138}}
Governor Eden was certainly embarrassed by Spotswood’s invasion of North Carolina,{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|127}} and Spotswood disavowed himself of any part of the seizure. He defended his actions, writing to Lord Carteret, a shareholder of the Province of Carolina, that he might benefit from the sale of the seized property and reminding the earl of the number of Virginians who had died to protect his interests. He argued for the secrecy of the operation by suggesting that Eden “could contribute nothing to the Success of the Design”, and told Eden that his authority to capture the pirates came from the king. Eden was heavily criticised for his involvement with Teach and was accused of being his accomplice. By criticising Eden, Spotswood intended to bolster the legitimacy of his invasion.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|233}} Lee concludes that although Spotswood may have thought that the ends justified the means, he had no legal authority to invade North Carolina, to capture the pirates and to seize and auction their goods.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|127-135}} Eden doubtless shared the same view. As Spotswood had also accused Tobias Knight of being in league with Teach, on 4 April 1719, Eden had Knight brought in for questioning. Israel Hands had, weeks earlier, testified that Knight had been on board the *Adventure* in August 1718, shortly after Teach had brought a French ship to North Carolina as a prize. Four pirates had testified that with Teach they had visited Knight’s home to give him presents. This testimony and the letter found on Teach’s body by Maynard appeared compelling, but Knight conducted his defence with competence. Despite being very sick and close to death, he questioned the reliability of Spotswood’s witnesses. He claimed that Israel Hands had talked under duress, and that under North Carolinian law the other witness, an African, was unable to testify. The sugar, he argued, was stored at his house legally, and Teach had visited him only on business, in his official capacity. The board found Knight innocent of all charges. He died later that year.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|143-153}}{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|274-277}}
Eden was annoyed that the accusations against Knight arose during a trial in which he played no part. The goods which Brand seized were officially North Carolinian property and Eden considered him a thief. The argument raged back and forth between the colonies until Eden’s death on 17 March 1722. His will named one of Spotswood’s opponents, John Holloway, a beneficiary. In the same year, Spotswood, who for years had fought his enemies in the House of Burgesses and the Council, was replaced by Hugh Drysdale, once Robert Walpole was convinced to act.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|98-101}}{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|276-280}}
## Modern view
We normally think about pirates as sort of blood-lusting, that they want to slash somebody to pieces. \[But\] a pirate, just like a normal person, would probably rather not have killed someone, but pirates knew that if that person resisted them and they didn’t do something about it, their reputation and thus their brand name would be impaired. So you can imagine a pirate rather reluctantly engaging in this behavior as a way of preserving that reputation.{{sfnp
— 5AN3QA23}}Official views on pirates were sometimes quite different from those held by contemporary authors, who often described their subjects as despicable rogues of the sea. Privateers who became pirates were generally considered by the English government to be reserve naval forces, and were sometimes given active encouragement; as far back as 1581 Francis Drake was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, when he returned to England from a round-the-world expedition with plunder worth an estimated £1.5 million.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|5}} Royal pardons were regularly issued, usually when England was on the verge of war, and the public’s opinion of pirates was often favourable, some considering them akin to patrons.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|168}} The economist Peter Leeson believes that pirates were generally shrewd businessmen, far removed from the modern, romanticised view of them as barbarians.{{sfnp|5AN3QA23}} After Woodes Rogers’ 1718 landing at New Providence and his ending of the pirate republic, piracy in the West Indies fell into terminal decline. With no easily accessible outlet to fence their stolen goods, pirates were reduced to a subsistence livelihood, and following almost a century of naval warfare between the British, French and Spanish – during which sailors could find easy employment – lone privateers found themselves outnumbered by the powerful ships employed by the British Empire to defend its merchant fleets. The popularity of the slave trade helped bring to an end the frontier condition of the West Indies, and in those circumstances, piracy was no longer able to flourish as it had once done.{{sfnp|2HRNQ295|201-208}}
Since the end of this so-called golden age of piracy, Teach and his exploits have become the stuff of lore, inspiring books, films and even amusement park rides. Much of what is known about him can be sourced to Charles Johnson’s *A General Historie of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates*, published in Britain in 1724.{{sfnp|QCZBVHUL|325}} A recognised authority on the pirates of his time, Johnson’s descriptions of such figures as Anne Bonny and Mary Read were for years required reading for those interested in the subject.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|8-9}} Readers were titillated by his stories and a second edition was quickly published, although author Angus Konstam suspects that Johnson’s entry on Blackbeard was “coloured a little to make a more sensational story.”\[k\]Among many questionable “facts” in Johnson’s account is the encounter between Teach and HMS *Scarborough*.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|90}} Neither the log of the *Scarborough* nor the letters of its captain mention such an encounter; historian Colin Woodard believes that Johnson confused and conflated two actual events: the *Scarborough*‘s battle against John Martel’s band and Blackbeard’s close encounter with another warship, HMS *Seaford*.{{sfnp|QCZBVHUL|222-223}} *A General Historie* though, is generally considered to be a reliable source.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|4}}{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|1-2}} Johnson may have been an assumed alias, but as his accounts have been corroborated in personal and official dispatches, whoever he was, he may had some access to official correspondence.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|8-9}} Konstam speculates further, suggesting that Johnson may have been the English playwright Charles Johnson, the British publisher Charles Rivington, or the writer Daniel Defoe.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|1-2}} In his 1951 work *The Great Days of Piracy*, author George Woodbury wrote that Johnson is “obviously a pseudonym”, continuing “one cannot help suspecting that he may have been a pirate himself.”{{sfnp|2HRNQ295|198}}
Despite his infamy, Teach was not the most successful of pirates. Henry Every retired a rich man, and Bartholomew Roberts took an estimated five times the amount Teach stole.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|viii}} Treasure hunters have long busied themselves searching for any trace of his rumoured hoard of gold and silver, but nothing found in the numerous sites explored along the east coast of the US has ever been connected to him. Some tales suggest that pirates often killed a prisoner on the spot where they buried their loot, and Teach is no exception in these stories,{{sfnp|GFXWPW4W|72-74}} but that no finds have come to light is unremarkable. Buried pirate treasure is often considered a modern myth for which almost no supporting evidence exists;{{sfnp|2HRNQ295|131-133}} the only pirate ever known to bury treasure was William Kidd.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|285}} The available records include nothing to suggest that the burial of treasure was a common practice, except in the imaginations of the writers of fictional accounts such as *Treasure Island*. Such hoards would necessitate a wealthy owner, and their supposed existence ignores the command structure of a pirate vessel, in which the crew served for a share of the profit.{{sfnp|2HRNQ295|131-133}} the only treasure so far recovered from Teach’s exploits is that taken from the wreckage of what is presumed to be the *Queen Anne’s Revenge*, which was found in 1996.{{sfnp|T6HE64BS}} A selection is on public display at the North Carolina Maritime Museum.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|288}}
Various accounts exist of Teach’s ghost. Unexplained lights at sea are sometimes referred to as “Teach’s light”, and some tellings claim that the pirate now roams the afterlife searching for his head, for fear that his friends and the Devil will not recognise him.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|174}} A North Carolinian tale holds that Teach’s skull was used as the basis for a silver drinking chalice; a local judge even claimed to have drunk from it one night in the 1930s.{{sfnp|WG4BAQY4|32-33}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Konstam (2007) considers this unlikely and that the pirates were almost certainly “teasing the captive with tall stories.”{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|90-91}} b Among these other ships, Bostock reported that Teach was intent on finding a Captain Pinkentham and asked about him repeatedly. Teach never found Pinkentham, who had instead been caught by a pirate named Grinnaway.{{sfnp|QCZBVHUL|224-225}} c Lee (1974) describes these matches as “fuses made of hemp cord about the thickness of a pencil and dipped in a solution of saltpeter and lime water.”{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|21}} d For Teach at least, this policy paid off. According to historian Angus Konstam, until Teach’s final battle, he had not so much as killed a single man.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|157}} According to the University of Chicago economist Peter Leeson, he apparently did not need to.{{sfnp|RFHDUSJA}} e Possibly a longboat from *Queen Anne’s Revenge*.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|184}} f The captured *Revenge* was later included in a fleet of ships commanded by the Governor of South Carolina. The fleet made a ferocious attack on a group of pirates near the entrance to Charles Town Harbour, resulting in the execution of 49 pirates inside a month. Their bodies were hung in gibbets near White Point.{{sfnp|VTDQTVDI|52-54}} g Colonial governors had been given the power to try pirates outside England by proclamation of William III in 1702, but it had expired and Spotswood did not receive George I’s new proclamation until December 1718.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|205-206, 217}} h The two captains refused as Holloway was involved in the civil action. i HMS Pearl and HMS Lyme drew too much water and were therefore unable to navigate the sandbars around Ocracoke.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|241}} j Konstam suggests that while imprisoned, Hands was an informant for Spotswood.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|271}} k Among many questionable “facts” in Johnson’s account is the encounter between Teach and HMS *Scarborough*.{{sfnp|G2LEAM5Q|90}} Neither the log of the *Scarborough* nor the letters of its captain mention such an encounter; historian Colin Woodard believes that Johnson confused and conflated two actual events: the *Scarborough*‘s battle against John Martel’s band and Blackbeard’s close encounter with another warship, HMS *Seaford*.{{sfnp|QCZBVHUL|222-223}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23427
**Categories:** Male, Pirate
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### [Coterel Gang](https://engole.info/coterel-gang/)
**Published:** November 22, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Coterel-Gang.webp[/pimage]14th-century armed group that flourished in the North Midlands of England, led by James Coterel.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Petition_SC_8-131-6544_from_Walter%2C_Vicar_of_Bakewell_to_the_King%2C_c.1331.png)The National Archives (UK), document SC 8/131/6544: The petition from Walter, Vicar of Bakewell, Derbyshire, dated c. 1331 and written in old French to the King, asking for justice against the Coterel gang, who have beaten him up and evicted him from his church.
Wikimedia Commons
The Coterel gang (also Cotterill,{{sfnp|M64D5BGA|267}} fl. c. 1328 – 1333){{sfnp|JLPAB738|294}} was a 14th-century criminal group that flourished in the North Midlands of England. It was led by James Coterel, after whom the gang is named, supported by his brothers Nicholas and John. It was one of several gangs that roamed the English countryside in the late 1320s and early 1330s, a period of political upheaval and increased lawlessness in the provinces, and may have been part of the inspiration for many of the stories later woven around the legend of Robin Hood in the 15th century.
Coterel and his immediate supporters were members of the gentry, and according to the tenets of the day were expected to assist the crown in the maintenance of law and order, rather than take advantage of its collapse. Basing themselves in the peaks of Derbyshire and the heavily wooded areas of north Nottinghamshire, including Sherwood Forest, the Coterels frequently cooperated with other groups such as the Folvilles. Membership of the Coterel gang increased as its exploits became more widely known; most members were recruited locally, but others came from as far away as Shropshire. Despite repeated attempts by the crown to suppress the Coterels, their criminal activities increased; by 1330 they had committed murder, extortion, kidnap, and ran protection rackets across the Peak District. They do not seem to have ever been particularly unpopular with the populace, and the secular and ecclesiastical communities provided them with supplies, provisions and logistical support.
Possibly their most famous offence took place in 1332. A royal justice, Richard Willoughby, was despatched to Derbyshire to bring the Coterels to justice, but before he could do so he was kidnapped by a consortium of the Coterel’s and the Folville’s men. Both gangs had previously encountered Willoughby in his professional capacity, and probably wanted revenge as much as they wanted his money. This outrage against a representative of the crown led King Edward III to launch a royal commission into the troubled area to bring the Coterels to justice and restore the King’s peace. Many gang members were subsequently arraigned, but all except one were acquitted; the Coterel brothers themselves ignored their summonses and did not even attend.
The Second War of Scottish Independence provided the King with the opportunity to recruit seasoned men to his army while appearing to solve the local disorder. As a result, most of the Coterel gang received royal pardons following their service abroad or in Scotland; James, Nicholas and John Coterel all eventually had profitable careers.
## Background
### Political context
The Coterel gang was active during a period of political factionalism within central government. The king, Edward II, was extremely unpopular with his nobility,{{sfnp|BE69RQQF|114}} because of his dependence on favourites such as Hugh Despenser the Younger, on whom he lavished royal patronage at the expense of other the barons. Despenser was hated by the English nobility, particularly those gathered around the King’s cousin, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster.{{sfnp|P2VJDMXZ|11}} In 1322 Lancaster had rebelled against Edward and his favourites, but had been defeated and executed.{{sfnp|QTJ6F6UR}} One of the Coterel brothers and their later allies from the Bradbourne family were also involved, so it is likely, according to the historian J. R. Maddicott, that there was a political dimension to the band’s activities as part of general opposition to the King.{{sfnp|XIIWH7UH}} The gang at least thrived on the political chaos of the last years of Edward II’s reign and the early years of that of Edward III.{{sfnp|249DWARA|76}} This was an exceptionally lawless and violent period, says the historian Michael Prestwich, “where a quarrel over a badly cooked herring could end in violent death, as happened in Lincoln in 1353”.{{sfnp|2BNIXDIT|231}}
Members of their own family were “contrariants” – opposed to the Despensers and Edward II –but this did not prevent the Coterel brothers stealing from members of that party whenever the opportunity arose. For example, after the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322 –when the contrariant nobles fought Edward II and lost –the Coterels ambushed fleeing survivors of the losing side, and robbed them of horses and armour. On another occasion they stole “a quantity of silver plate”, only to be ambushed themselves by a small force of Welsh who in turn relieved them of their loot.{{sfnp|BIRA9XTB|150}}\[a\]The looting of Contrariants’ estates was not confined to the Coterel gang: in the period between their defeat at Boroughbridge and the arrival of royal officials to administer them, lands were pillaged on a widespread scale, especially by “ordinary” (that is, those not involved in organised crime) people. Similar destruction had taken place on the lands of those supporters of Simon de Montfort after his defeat in 1265 following the Second Barons’ War,{{sfnp|W8NSM82W|117-121}} and later on Despenser’s lands following his execution in 1326.{{sfnp|6VBY32GR}}
### Family background
The Coterel family has been described as “not only numerous, but also litigious”.{{sfnp|67PLNCEF|617}} Nicholas, James and John were the sons of a major Derbyshire landowner, Ralph Coterel. Nicholas had been involved – to what extent is unknown – in Lancaster’s rebellion in 1322, for which he had received a pardon.{{sfnp|XIIWH7UH}} James Coterel, in his youth, has been described as a 14th-century juvenile delinquent.{{sfnp|YM6R88UK|xx}} He was the eldest – and according to the medievalist Barbara Hanawalt, the dominant personality – among the brothers,{{sfnp|Q6LH65X6}} (“young men of prys”, as they became known){{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|73}} and was the acknowledged leader of the gang, which was later recorded as the “Society of James Coterel”;{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|699}} he became of particularly high standing in the local community.{{sfnp|ZADG7VQP}} His group has been described as something like a “federation of gangs”, due to its fluid membership and connections with similar groups{{sfnp|W8NSM82W|512}} in the Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland area.{{sfnp|RWVSR9WH|80}}
### Origins
There is no firm evidence as to James Coterel’s motives for embarking on his criminal career. As the medievalist J. G. Bellamy has suggested, perhaps after having started off in a small way he discovered that he was good at it, and that it provided an easy source of income{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|73}} in what was a relatively wealthy area.{{sfnp|9JNRPR72|67}} The Coterel gang was a combination of “criminal gentry”,{{sfnp|VRCIFVMH}} the class on whom – “paradoxically” – the upkeep of law and order usually devolved to in the localities.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|72}} They were joined by men of lower class,{{sfnp|KUGG7GEL|xxviii}} with a few local men forming the kernel of the gang.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|75}} The group is first mentioned in official records on 2 August 1328, when the three Coterel brothers, allying with Roger le Sauvage\[b\]Sauvage had already established himself as a criminal in his own right, and an extortioner par excellence, who had recently extracted £20 from William Amyas and £40 from Geoffrey Luttrell, both leading Nottinghamshire gentry.{{sfnp|ZADG7VQP}} Before joining the Coterel gang, he had already committed two murders in Derby, various crimes in Oxford, had escaped to London, been arrested there, escaped again, and returned to Derbyshire, where he allied with Coterel.{{sfnp|K6I6I5PX}} and others, attacked the vicar of Bakewell,{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|699}} Walter Can,{{sfnp|249DWARA|75}} in his church, evicted him from it{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|79}} and stole ten shillings from his collection plate. The offence was committed at the instigation of Robert Bernard, who had held several important positions: he had been a clerk for the Westminster chancery, had taught at Oxford University and was, at the time of the offence, the registrar of Lichfield Cathedral. Brother Bernard had himself been vicar of Bakewell in 1328 and had been forcibly ejected by his parishioners for embezzling church funds. He was, says Bellamy, “an unsavoury individual”,{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|699}}\[c\]Bernard had been evicted from Bakewell on Christmas Day 1328. He continued his career of embezzlement at Lichfield as a chantry priest, “where on four successive founder days between 1325 and 1329 he failed to pay the stipulated sum to the poor”.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|699}} In another link to the political opposition to Edward II, Barnard had been imprisoned in Oxford Gaol in 1326 for allegedly supporting Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|699}} and may have participated in the assault on Walter Can.{{sfnp|249DWARA|75}}
## Criminal activities
The Coterels and their associates were a “greenwood gang”, so-called because they favoured hiding out in the local woods.{{sfnp|F6PJ2KBQ|52}}\[d\]A modern scholar notes how “outlaws could make the innocent woods fearsome places to tread”, and quotes Bartholomeus Anglicus, a contemporary monk and commentator, as saying “For often in woods thieves are hid, and often in their awaits and deceits passing men come and are spoiled and robbed and often slain.”{{sfnp|F6PJ2KBQ|52}} Michael Prestwich notes one 14th-century outlaw who “described himself almost poetically as ‘Lionel, King of the rout of raveners’, writing threatening letters from ‘Our castle of the wind in the Greenwood Tower in the first year of our reign'”,{{sfnp|W8NSM82W|512}} deliberately mimicking the *stilo regio*, or royal style, used in Chancery letters.{{sfnp|CW8RQLJQ}} They cooperated with similar groups, most notably the Folvilles,{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|698}} and when Eustace Folville hid out in Derbyshire “during his enforced absences” from Leicestershire, James Coterel was later described as his leader,{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|699}}\[e\]The Folville gang is perhaps even more infamous than the Coterels. Of the six brothers who turned to crime, the eldest and their leader, Eustace “was the most notorious; he committed three or four murders – one of which was of a baron of the Exchequer – a rape, and three robberies between 1327 and 1330”.{{sfnp|W8NSM82W|512}} although strictly the Coterels were of a lower social status.{{sfnp|W8NSM82W|512}} Maurice Keen wrote that James Coterel “might have ranked as a minor gentleman”, while Folville was a knight;{{sfnp|KUGG7GEL|xxviii}} the Coterels did not merely have contacts among the gentry, they were members of it.{{sfnp|56SQ8S94}} The gang was known to hide out on the “wild forests of the High Peak”{{sfnp|H8GUHNDK|187}} – James Coterel was called “the king of the Peak”{{sfnp|WEQ7YVDY|108}} – with spies keeping a look-out for the sheriff’s men.{{sfnp|H8GUHNDK|187}} The Coterels never stayed more than a month in the same place, although they did return intermittently to various safe houses.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|702}} One of the areas they concentrated on was around the village of Stainsby, where the Sauvage family was based and on whose manor the Coterels often made their headquarters.{{sfnp|VRCIFVMH|51}}
James Coterel committed murders in Derby in 1329 and 1330,{{sfnp|K6I6I5PX|123}} on the latter occasion killing Sir William Knyveton; in 1330 he also murdered John Matkynson in Bradley. James was attached at the Derbyshire Eyre for the crime that year, but escaped arrest.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|701}}\[f\]Attachment denoted the legal process by which a defendant was required by writ to provide sureties for their appearance;{{sfnp|WHHWVSND|76}} a Northamptonshire Gaol delivery roll from the last years of the previous century explains how the local “constables of the peace of the King, by rite and authority of their office and according to the law and custom of the realm … have jurisdiction and power to attach malefactors and disturbers of the peace and those who are pursued by the hue and cry for felony and homicide”.{{sfnp|WIE99LSL|135}} Bellamy notes that this was the only time in Coterel’s career that he was attached at law.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|701}} Both he and Laurence were accused of ravaging the Derbyshire estates of the dead Earl of Lancaster’s brother and heir, Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster.{{sfnp|XIIWH7UH}} Lancaster later brought suit against the three Coterel brothers for the damage they had done to his park and chase in Duffield, where, he said, they had “hunted and carried away deer and did many other wrongs”. The Coterels did not deign to appear in court, but in their absence judgement was given against them and the damage estimated at £60:{{sfnp|67PLNCEF|617}} the cattle that the Coterels stole may have been worth as much as £5,200.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|80}}\[g\]John Bellamy notes that this was “a large sum even allowing for probable exaggerations of the Earl of Lancaster’s executors who reported the loss”.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|80}} Most of the gang against whom proceedings had been attempted were found to be legally vagabonds, and the sheriff postponed the hearings three times before giving up.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|701}} Sir Roger de Wennesley, Lord of Mappleton,{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|84}} was then dispatched to arrest them on 18 December that year. De Wennesley was a “sworn enemy” of the Coterels, having stabbed one of their relations{{sfnp|249DWARA|75}} – and Coterel gang associate{{sfnp|BIRA9XTB|150}} – Laurence Coterel to death in March the same year.\[h\]It was a policy of Edward III to use members of these groups against each other, and to take advantage of pre-existing feuds.{{sfnp|ETLMTWHB|10}} De Wennesley was eventually to join the Coterel gang himself and was arrested in 1332.{{sfnp|249DWARA|75}} De Wennesley was, supposedly unable to locate the gang,{{sfnp|249DWARA|75}} who were then declared outlawed in March 1331.{{sfnp|ZADG7VQP}} One commentator says their outlawry “seems to have inspired them to expand the range of their criminal behaviour”.{{sfnp|249DWARA|75}} Soon after de Wennesley’s failed commission, the Coterels kidnapped John Staniclyf, a tenant of de Wennesley’s. They refused to release Staniclyf until he swore an oath never to oppose the Coterels again, and he was forced to pay a bond of £20 to ensure his compliance.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|77}}
## Peak of activity
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Near_the_High_Peak_-_pano.jpg)A High Peak panorama, Derbyshire, where the band headquartered occasionally while on the run
Wikimedia Commons
The high point of the gang’s activity was between March 1331 and September 1332.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|83}} Roaming between the Peak District and Sherwood Forest, where they often sheltered, the group grew to number at least fifty.{{sfnp|JLPAB738|294}} James Coterel was later personally accused of recruiting twenty men in the Peak and Sherwood areas,{{sfnp|CW8RQLJQ|18}} but recruits also came from further afield; Sir John de Legh, for example, was from Shropshire.{{sfnp|CW8RQLJQ|8}} Many, including Roger le Sauvage,\[i\]Roger le Sauvage had borrowed 1,000 marks – a medieval English mark was an accounting unit equivalent to two-thirds of a pound{{sfnp|KLGVH6GI|xiv}} – from Sir William Aune (who would later be a staunch supporter of the Coterels), and then entailed his manor of Stainsby on his wife before joining Coterel.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|700}} joined after getting into debt and being outlawed when they were unable to pay their creditors.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|700}} Like Sauvage, some members were already outlawed when they sought membership, but many were not,{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|70}} and seem not to have had any previous criminal record.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|705}} Increased numbers allowed the gang to expand its operations, both geographically and by type.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|70}} In 1331 they were joined by Sir William Chetulton of Staffordshire (already, says Bellamy, an “infamous gang leader” himself by this point), who had previously operated in Sir James Stafford’s gang in Lancashire.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|71}} In December 1331, the group was joined by John Boson, an esquire from Nottingham who held land off William, Lord Ros; Bosun’s father not only had been an outlaw himself but had been an early associate of James Coterel.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|705}}
The Coterel gang were the subject of multiple presentments throughout their short career,{{sfnp|Z4NABL9Z|128, 129}} and committed at least two murders as well as extortions\[j\]A favoured method of extortion was simple but effective. It would be arranged for the intended victim to receive a severe (but not life-threatening) beating, following which, he would be approached by others and offered protection from any future attacks.{{sfnp|ETLMTWHB|6}} and kidnappings around the Peak District,{{sfnp|XIIWH7UH|204}} running protection rackets,{{sfnp|W8NSM82W|512}} and generally involving themselves in the feuds of their neighbours.{{sfnp|JLPAB738|294}} Until mid-1331 the group had made a name for themselves by committing extreme acts of violence; it seems that from then they made it a policy to avoid violence whenever possible and concentrate on more financially profitable schemes.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|706}} They became particularly involved in extortion, and Hanawalt has described their technique as being refined: they possessed “such an evil reputation for extortion that they only had to send a letter threatening damage to life, limb, and property in order to extort money”.{{sfnp|ETLMTWHB|6}}
This was the gang’s method with the mayor of Nottingham, to whom they wrote demanding £20 – “or else”.{{sfnp|MKXWMEEK|92}} They used the indenture system:\[k\]An indenture was a legal contract between two parties, particularly for indentured labour and land transactions. The term comes from the medieval English “indenture of retainer”.{{sfnp|ZILWHMLU|126}} The contract was written in duplicate on the same sheet, with the copies separated by cutting along a jagged line – toothed (in Latin “indenture”) – so that the teeth of the two parts could later be refitted to confirm authenticity, known as a chirograph.{{sfnp|E9I7TV4T|97}} one half of the indentured contract was sent to the victim with the demand, and the sum demanded was to be paid to whoever arrived at the appointed time bearing the other half of the indenture.{{sfnp|ETLMTWHB|6}}\[l\]In law this was called “extortion by false letters and counterfeit seals”.{{sfnp|6VBY32GR|866}} This seems to have been a particular speciality of two gang members, William Pymme of Sutton Bonington and Roger Sauvage,{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|73}} and one of the bearers they used in 1332 to carry such a letter to William Amyas, a wealthy Nottingham ship owner, was Pymme’s mother.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|80}} In direct imitation of royal justice, they demanded tribute from the local populace;{{sfnp|CLGQNZKB|36}} William Amyas was told that, if he failed to comply, “everything he held outside of Nottingham would be burned”.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|80}} On another occasion they went mob-handed to the house of Robert Franceys, where they forced him to hand over £2; Fraunceys, so a chronicler wrote, was sufficiently scared by his experience that “he left his house and did not return for a long time”.{{sfnp|MKXWMEEK|90}} A Bakewell man, Ralph Murimouth, was forced to hand over £5.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|706}}
They did all this with apparent immunity.{{sfnp|WIE99LSL|256}} In 1331 the gang kidnapped Robert Foucher of Osmaston (whom they knew would soon be wealthy, as he was due to be granted some local parkland).{{sfnp|WMRFRQT9|62}} One of their most notorious acts was not extortion, but another kidnapping – that of Sir Richard Willoughby, a royal justice, whom they captured in 1332.{{sfnp|ZADG7VQP}}
## Kidnap of Richard Willoughby
The kidnap of Richard Willoughby has been described by historians Anthony Musson and Mark Ormrod as a “daring and very high-profile event”.{{sfnp|QI5Y77CX|75}} He was captured in Melton Mowbray on 14 January 1332,{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|71}} and spirited away while on a judicial commission in the East Midlands. The Coterels, accompanied by members of the Folville gang,{{sfnp|ZADG7VQP}} numbered between 20 and 30 men.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|71}} In exchange for Willougby’s life, they demanded 1300 marks for his release.\[m\]To put this figure in context, when Gilbert de Clare, 8th Earl of Gloucester died in 1314, his estate was valued at around 4000 marks annually, and in 1337, when King Edward III created a raft of new earls, their titles were each endowed with an income of 666 marks yearly. When in 1314 Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford was captured by the Scottish at the Battle of Bannockburn, he was subsequently granted 1,000 marks to cover his costs by the king.{{sfnp|2BNIXDIT|66, 126}} Willoughby was a wealthy man, and raised the necessary amount by the following day.{{sfnp|ZADG7VQP}}\[n\]Because he had been on the King’s business at the time of the kidnap, he was subsequently granted an annuity of 100 marks in compensation. Willoughby made his family “the wealthiest non-baronial family” in Derbyshire.{{sfnp|ANFSUJ9B|7}} His career in royal service came to an end in 1340 when the King imprisoned him on charges of corruption, forcing Willoughby to pay 1200 marks for a pardon and his freedom.{{sfnp|ZADG7VQP}} Clearly, says Hanawalt, the risks associated with attacking such a prominent individual were deemed to be acceptable in expectation of such large amounts.{{sfnp|ETLMTWHB|8}} The Folvilles received 300 marks of the ransom.{{sfnp|F6PJ2KBQ|52}} It is likely that the Coterels and their associates were motivated at least in part by the fact that many of them would have come up against Willoughby on previous occasions{{sfnp|QSJM676W|19}} in his capacity as a puisne judge{{sfnp|TFZ3YTPG|66}} who was regularly active on commissions of oyer and terminer in the region.{{sfnp|BGSB5ILK|128}} It is known that in June 1329 he investigated the pillaging of the Earl of Lancaster’s lands by the Coterels, and in 1331 he heard the complaint of the vicar of Bakewell over his eviction by the gang.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|78}} Willoughby was notoriously corrupt{{sfnp|ANFSUJ9B|7}}{{sfnp|8NNQKQ3R|171}} – the royal yearbooks would later report Willoughby as selling the laws of the land “as if they were cattle or oxen”{{sfnp|2TMCNJDB|33}}{{sfnp|SMR73WVT|5}} – and according to the near-contemporary Knighton’s Chronicon, the Coterel associates had much to feel aggrieved about:{{sfnp|QSJM676W|19}} Willoughby had been the judge in several cases against members of the group.{{sfnp|KUGG7GEL|xxviii}} He was, says Bellamy, “thus a fit subject for humiliation”.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|708}} His kidnap was almost certainly the chance for revenge “for some wrong or imagined wrong once suffered” as much as, if not more than, financial gain.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|78}}
The distribution of the ransom took place in one of Sir Robert Touchet’s manors at Markeaton Park. Touchet was a prominent Midlands landowner,{{sfnp|QSJM676W|20}} and probably the Coterel’s chief patron.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|73}} With his brother, Edmund Touchet – who was parson of nearby Mackworth – he knew and approved of the Coterel scheme. These men, who provided the gang with material assistance when it was required, were an exemplar of the kind of support the Coterels enjoyed locally.{{sfnp|QSJM676W|20}} The kidnapping of Willoughby was not merely a local outrage, but, says the historian John Aberth, for the crown it was “an unprecedented assault on the dignity of its bench and the authority of its law”.{{sfnp|TFZ3YTPG|66}} In Derbyshire, there was a “widespread lack of sympathy” for the judge.{{sfnp|F6PJ2KBQ|52}}
## Royal response
In response to Willoughby’s kidnapping, the King despatched a “powerful” judicial commission to the north Midlands in March 1332.{{sfnp|34IXZWAW|297}} Fifty men were brought before the bench.{{sfnp|JLPAB738|294}} In the event, many indictments were presented and heard, but “hardly any of the principals were brought into court, much less convicted”, even though King Edward personally attended the sessions held at Stamford, Lincolnshire.{{sfnp|TFZ3YTPG|297}} Some of those arrested were bailed; for example, Roger de Wennesley – who by now had joined the gang he had been sent to arrest the previous year – while on bail became a forger and wrote “pretended letters to arrest certain persons … by means of which he extorted money daily”.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|710}} Of the fifty brought to the bench, only one – de Uston – was convicted.{{sfnp|JLPAB738|294}} This was William de Uston, who was acquitted of a charge of assault{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|710}} but then sentenced to death for robbery.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|85}} It may be that, in spite of recent provisions strengthening the powers of a town’s night watch and gaol delivery, juries composed of local people were unwilling to accuse men who were their neighbours; in 1332 the majority of accusations the presentment juries made were against men in other towns.{{sfnp|56SQ8S94|113}} The lack of convictions may not have been only due to fear of reprisals among the jurors. They may also reflect sympathy for the group, and perhaps a general unwillingness to condemn anyone who, as Bellamy put it, was “not of notorious record”.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|85}}
A jury of presentment, composed of men from the hundreds of Wirksworth and Appeltree, sat in September 1332,\[o\]These records are of the 1332–1333 presentments held before Richard de Grey, Henry de Grey, John Darcy, Nicholas de Langeford, John de Twyford and Richard de la Pole, keepers of the peace.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|702}} They consist of a roll of 13 membranes, have been fully translated from the original Latin and transcribed by the Historical Manuscripts’ Commission in 1911, who published them as part of their Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton Preserved at Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire, pp. 272–283.{{sfnp|QI5Y77CX|78-79}}{{sfnp|WSSI857Z|272-283}} and claimed that the gang was known to collaborate with Robert Bernard, backed by the Chapter of Lichfield Cathedral.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|699}} This commission documented the Coterels’ activities minutely, and, Anthony Musson says, it is “a tribute to the functioning of the judicial machinery” of the county in the midst of a severe break down in order that it was able to do so.{{sfnp|WIE99LSL|266}}\[p\]Musson points out that the amount of time the jury devoted to investigating the Coterels is demonstrated by the amount of the roll devoted to it. The roll is held by The National Archives in Kew, classification JUST 1:1411b. The Folvilles are recorded on membranes two to six, and the Coterels are on seven and eight.{{sfnp|WIE99LSL|266}}
## Popular support
The Coterels poached, ambushed, had a spy in Nottingham, ill-treated clerics, were pursued by bounty hunters and the sheriff, operated in Sherwood, entered royal service, had as an ally a member of the gentry who had lost his inheritance, were retained at one time by a local magnate and wore his livery, and were pardoned by the King.{{sfnp
— ZDDUF4HQThe Coterels were generally well-supported locally,{{sfnp|JLPAB738|294}} and by the gentry and churchmen in particular. Within Lichfield Cathedral, apart from Robert Bernard, there were seven canons{{sfnp|249DWARA|76}} including John Kinnersley, who were all later accused of being supporters of the Coterels and of providing James with “protection, succour and provisions”.{{sfnp|XIIWH7UH}}\[q\]This was not altogether uncommon says Prestwich, “and some remarkable stories were told” of the phenomenon by contemporaries. In 1317 six monks from Rufford Priory assaulted, robbed and kidnapped Thomas of Holm, and demanded a ransom of £200. On another occasion, the rector of Manchester “invited a couple and their daughter to dine; but after dinner, two of the rector’s servants came and seized the daughter, beat her so that her ribs were broken and put her in the rector’s bed. He spent the night with her; she died a month later of her injuries.”{{sfnp|W8NSM82W|514}} There was, comments Bellamy, “no lack of worldly knowledge in the Lichfield cloisters”:{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|704}} Kinnersley was James Coterel’s legal receiver on multiple occasions.{{sfnp|ZADG7VQP}} The cathedral chapter supported the gang even after its activities had become the subject of an official investigation.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|699}} It seems probable that the chapter directly employed them several times,{{sfnp|ETLMTWHB|16}} to rob the vicar of Bakewell for instance, and to collect tithes.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|73}} The cathedral chapter’s support for Coterel was instrumental in protecting him from arrest. Also among the Coterel’s local supporters was the Cluniac prior of Lenton, Nottinghamshire, who on at least one occasion gave them advance warning of an intended trailbaston commission{{sfnp|ZADG7VQP}}\[r\]The Prior of Lenton and the Dean and Chapter of Litchfield’s support for James Coterel was one of the few things they agreed on – they had repeatedly clashed over possession of various High Peak district advowsons, and the fact that they came together over Coterel illustrates how highly he was regarded by them. James Coterel later acted as a tax collector for the priory, and “was even entrusted with one arrest warrant in 1336 and another in 1350, when he and six others were instructed to find and capture three monks of Lenton” who had absconded from their House.{{sfnp|ZADG7VQP}} led by Richard de Grey.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|709}} Similar support was received from the Cistercian house at Haverholme.{{sfnp|56SQ8S94|144}}
While on the run, local people kept the men supplied with material support as well as information.{{sfnp|PAFDFTX6|171}} Their supporters were always more numerous than the gang itself; it has been estimated that the Coterels could rely on about 150, {{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|72}} 57 from the villages of Bakewell and Mackworth alone.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|703}} Such support was not wholly based on fear,{{sfnp|RP4274QC|29}} but neither did people believe that the outlaws were romantic figures out to help the community; perhaps, says Hanawalt, “respect and a reluctant admiration” was the prevailing attitude of the populace.{{sfnp|RHEJVFNQ|279}} For example, Walter Aune delivered a quantity of food to them in the woods on one occasion.\[s\]Aune was unlikely to have been acting out of fear or as because of threats; one of James Coterel’s closest allies was Walter’s brother Sir William Aune.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|81}} On another he delivered the rents from Richard le Sauvage’s Stainsby manor to Sauvage while the latter was hiding out with the Coterels.{{sfnp|PAFDFTX6|171}} When the gang was hiding out in Bakewell they were brought sustenance by local man Nicholas Taddington, who also showed them secret paths around the countryside. Occasionally they had to actively forage for food, and Pymme is known to have sent his servants and members of his household out for this purpose.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|81}}
The Coterel gang enjoyed support within local officialdom as well, including at least six bailiffs in the High Peak area. They were supporters but not necessarily active members,{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|73}} and included at least seven local men who attended parliament during the decade.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|82}} Another “clandestine ally”{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|73}} was Sir Robert Ingram, whom the Coterels had personally recruited.{{sfnp|YPYJIL2K}} Ingram was a man of some importance; he was High Sheriff of Nottingham and Derbyshire between 1322 and 1323 and then from 1327 to 1328 as well as mayor of Nottingham for two terms, 1314–1316 and 1320–1324.{{sfnp|L7XYJGA6}} It was Ingram who wrote to a Coterel spy (or explorator){{sfnp|K6I6I5PX}} in Nottingham Castle, William de Usfton, who was not only lord of the manor of Radmanthwaite in Nottinghamshire but also a counterfeiter.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|73}} Ingram’s letter informed the Coterels that their base in the High Peak forest had just been discovered, and thus enabled their escape.{{sfnp|K6I6I5PX}} Not everyone supported them; in 1331, a petition was presented to parliament which complained about members of the gentry uniting to kidnap and kill the king’s loyal officials, almost certainly an oblique reference to the Coterel gang.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|711}} A jury later reported how the band “rode armed publicly and secretly in manner of war by day and night”.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|702}}
## Later events
The Coterels and their men received few, if any, legal penalties, and James Coterel was eventually pardoned of all “extortions, oppressions, receivings of felons, usurpations, and ransoms” in 1351, probably at the instigation of Queen Philippa, whose patronage he seems to have enjoyed even during his days of criminality.{{sfnp|ZADG7VQP}}\[t\]Payling suggests that this is likely because James brother Nicholas was bailiff of Philippa’s Derbyshire liberty, although Nicholas did not, says Payling, “acquit himself well in that office, since he was summoned before the King’s Council to answer a charge of embezzlement in 1359”.{{sfnp|ZADG7VQP}} The few members of the gang who were eventually brought before the King’s Bench in 1333 were acquitted, and the three Coterel brothers seem to have continued receiving the patronage of Lichfield Cathedral, while Barnard retained both his employment at Oxford University{{sfnp|249DWARA|76}} and his church living until his death in 1341.{{sfnp|DY9TRGQW}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Lichfield_cathedral%2C_west_front.JPG)West front of Lichfield Cathedral; the dean and chapter hired the Coterel gang from the beginning, protected them during their crime wave, and supported them in later years.
Wikimedia Commons
Many members of the gang appear to have undertaken royal service in Scotland and in the Hundred Years’ War in France in the latter years of the decade,{{sfnp|RWVSR9WH|80}} which led directly to the end of the gang’s activities.{{sfnp|ETLMTWHB|10}} This included de Legh in 1330,{{sfnp|CW8RQLJQ|8}} and both James’ and Nicholas Coterel’s names are on the 1338 summons to join the royal army in Flanders.{{sfnp|K6I6I5PX|129}} The crown, for its part, withdrew its commissions from the region claiming that the king’s peace had been restored; in reality, it had been distracted by the renewal of war with Scotland the previous year, and, writes E. L. G. Stones, “the impetus of the general attack on disorder, which had seemed so strong in March 1332, rapidly declined”.{{sfnp|K6I6I5PX}} Bellamy notes how usual this was: “expenditure of royal energy meant temporary success”; but, with the King preoccupied with projects abroad, the status quo ante soon returned.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|6}} For their part, those who fought for the King were pardoned by him on their return for the offences they had previously committed.{{sfnp|ETLMTWHB|10}} There were rewards too: in May 1332, James Coterel was granted the wardship of Elizabeth Meverel.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|86}} Coterel’s ally Chetulton was sentenced to hang, but produced a pardon obtained for him by Ralph, Lord Neville; when it looked as though a second murder could be laid at his door, he was able to produce a second pardon.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|711}} By July, Chetulton was back in royal favour, and commissioned to capture robbers in Nottingham.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|84}} In 1334, Sir William Aune was appointed surveyor of the King’s Welsh castles,{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|86}} and that same year, William de Uston – the only member of the gang to have been convicted, and, indeed, sentenced to death – was commissioned to investigate some murders in Leicester that were believed to have been carried out by Sir Richard Willoughby’s servants.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|87}} One of the last occurrences of James Coterel’s name in official records indicates that he too regained the King’s trust, as in November 1336, “he was on the right side of law”, having been commissioned to arrest a “miscreant Leicestershire parson”.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|84}} They were, says Bellamy, reformed characters, and the Coterel brothers would never again ride *armata potentia* – armed and in power.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|700}}{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|87}}\[u\]The King, meanwhile, continued and expanded his policy of pardoning criminals in return for military service: “thousands” were issued during his reign, says the medievalist Andrew Ayton,{{sfnp|GMEYV2BU|199}} with “several thousand” recorded during the Siege of Calais of 1346–1347. Although Ayton notes that “many of the pardons were of a general nature, suggesting that in some cases they had been sought as a precautionary measure rather than to deal with the legal consequences of specific crimes”, there was sufficient concern domestically that the House of Commons complained to Edward that “many murders, woundings, robberies, homicides, rapes and other felonies and misdeeds without number are done and maintained in the kingdom because the evildoers are granted charters of pardon … to the great destruction of the people”.{{sfnp|GMEYV2BU|194-195}}
## Historical perspective
The Coterel gang has been described by a late 20th-century historian as being the locus of an “apparent disregard for the law which has been shown as emanating from the Midlands”,{{sfnp|WIE99LSL|65}} demonstrating the degree to which the crown lacked control over the provinces.{{sfnp|MBPPBNU4|4}} They have also been identified as accelerating the legal concept of conspiracy, which was in its infancy.{{sfnp|Z4NABL9Z|128}} Royal authority had been weakened by its appearance of powerlessness in the face of the Coterels’ widespread and systematic lawlessness.{{sfnp|PAFDFTX6|171}} The Coterels’ activities show how “interwoven the criminal, the military, and the royal administrative” could be; sometimes, says Carter Revard, “the outlaw of one year could be the brave soldier of the next”.{{sfnp|M689BGIT|155}}\[v\]Revard gives a similar example, from a few years later, in Sir Laurence Ludlow, who in 1340 was outlawed for assault and battery, but also requested to collect the Black Prince’s feudal dues for him in Stokesay.{{sfnp|M689BGIT|157}}
The Coterels were “unique to th\[eir\] time and location”,{{sfnp|WIE99LSL|266}} and, suggests one scholar, symptomatic of a changing system of retaining,{{sfnp|Z4NABL9Z|128}} in which once-firm ties to a supporting lord had become much more fluid and uncertain, with the result that some men effectively chose to operate outside the feudal system.{{sfnp|C62SJEEY|49-50}} While much of the gang warfare that plagued England in the early 14th century can be put down to the return of unemployed soldiery from the north, as contemporary chroniclers were prone to assume, organised crime such as that of the Coterels’ – which does not seem to have contained this element of demobilization – were, suggest the historians Musson and Ormrod, “the product more of the disturbed state of domestic politics in the 1320s than of the crown’s war policies”.{{sfnp|RWVSR9WH|80}}
## Literary influences
It would be wrong to romanticize. The Folvilles, the Coterels and their like were tough, brutal and unscrupulous men, some way removed from their more refined counterparts of the ballads. Their attacks were particularly directed against the rich; they specialized in extortion … Such victims were probably selected, not from any tender respect for ‘social justice’, but rather from a well-judged sense of where the best pickings lay.{{sfnp
— JLPAB738The medievalist John Bellamy has drawn attention to the degree to which the tales of Robin Hood and Gamelyn intersect in detail with known historical events such as those the Coterels were involved in; he also notes that there are probably an equal number of points on which the stories diverge from history.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|87}} A comparison to Gamelyn shows how, even while that lord was a fugitive, his tenants “maintain their deference and loyalty to him … they go down on their knees, doff their hoods, and greet him as ‘here lord'”, all the while keeping him fully abreast of the state of legal proceedings against him.{{sfnp|PAFDFTX6|171}} Gamelyn as “king of the outlaws” was also reflected in the fame of the Coterel gang in local society.{{sfnp|CLGQNZKB|36}} Likewise, the Coterels’ propensity for attacking royal officials is “very much Gamelyn style”, says T. A. Shippey, as was the King’s willingness to pardon them in return for military service.{{sfnp|MKJCJ2LL|84}}\[w\]King Edward III’s policy of pardoning has been the subject of much debate among historians. It has been estimated that many pardons – ranging from 900 to more than a thousand – were granted to returning soldiers between 1339 and 1340 (all in acknowledgement of participation in the Flanders’ campaign): of these, it has been suggested that around three-quarters were murderers.{{sfnp|TFZ3YTPG|297}} John Bellamy has suggested that the King’s intention was not only to avail himself of a large pool of men willing to fight, but to remove them from the theatre by sending them abroad, and, hopefully, drain their energies for the future.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|712-713}} The practice was unpopular with contemporaries: petitions had been submitted to parliament in 1328, 1330, 1336 and 1340 against it.{{sfnp|TFZ3YTPG|297}}
Similarities have been noted between the tales of Robin Hood and the activities of such armed groups as the Coterels, particularly in their attacks on authority figures;{{sfnp|RHEJVFNQ|279}} the pavage\[x\]A toll for the use of a road. imposed by Hood’s gang is similar to the tribute extorted by the Coterels.{{sfnp|CLGQNZKB|36-37}} The tale of Adam Bell was similarly shaped by the Coterels’ and Folvilles’ activities.{{sfnp|M64D5BGA|193}}
R. B. Dobson and John Taylor suggested that there was only a limited connection between the invention of Robin Hood and the criminal activities of the Coterels, who do not, summarises Maurice Keen, “seem to offer very promising matter for romanticization”. However, contemporaries were aware of such a link: in 1439 a petition against another Derbyshire gangster, Piers Venables, complained that he robbed and stole with many others and then disappeared into the woods “like as it had been Robin Hood and his meiny”.{{sfnp|SMS3CWKU|xxix}} John Maddicott, on the other hand, notes an “accumulation of coincidences” between the Coterel and Folville gangs and the exploits attributed to Hood, which he lists principally as:{{sfnp|JLPAB738|294}}
An unprincipled abbot of St Mary’s, York, who lent money to knights and others; a chief justice who, as a Yorkshireman, may well have been retained by the abbot and who had some reputation for the illicit use of power; and a corrupt sheriff of Nottingham, detested both by the gentry and by the lesser men of his county and finally outlawed for his misdeeds.{{sfnp
— JLPAB738|294}}
Maddicott describes the capture of Willoughby as very much “a feat reminiscent of the world of ballads” and the gang’s popularity as “close to the standing of Robin Hood and his men as folk heroes”.{{sfnp|JLPAB738|294}} The people who actively supported and aided the Coterels in Derbyshire, says Maddicott, were also those who, another time, were the audience of the Hood ballads.{{sfnp|JLPAB738295}} After all, he says, they did take from the rich, “even if they did not give to the poor, and if the rich were also royal officials, like Willoughby, such retribution may have seemed well deserved”.{{sfnp|JLPAB738|297}} David Feldman likewise describes the Coterels and their supporters as “disgruntled gentry with an eye for the main chance” who set themselves up as Robin Hood types, except, like Maddicott, Feldman reiterates that what they “robbed from the rich never reached the poor”.{{sfnp|56SQ8S94|114}} They possessed a certain “gentrified behaviour”, as it has been called, along with the more usual brutality of the gangs, which dovetail in the ballads.{{sfnp|CW8RQLJQ|19}}
Coterel’s ally Robert Ingram has been proposed as the original inspiration for the sheriff of Nottingham in the *Gest of Robin Hood*, a late 15th-century re-telling of the tale.{{sfnp|L7XYJGA6}} The close association of criminally minded ecclesiastics and blatant outlaws such as the Coterels has also been linked to the fiction of Friar Tuck, who, whilst being a “large, merry body” was also the leader of his own “merry gang of murderers and thieves”.{{sfnp|249DWARA|85}}\[y\]In a similar comparison to that between Robin Hood and James Coterel, there was a real Friar Tuch – one Richard Stafford, a chaplain, who was known as Frere Tuck, and, like the Coterels, “was never tried in a court, perhaps because … he never bothered to appear”.{{sfnp|249DWARA|85}} John Maddicot has concluded that while the links between fiction and reality are strong, it is{{sfnp|JLPAB738|296}}
Perhaps more likely that the character of Robin Hood may well have taken the career of some real outlaw, such as James Coterel … given him a fictitious name, and embroidered his progress in a series of episodes peopled with identifiable villains and set against real backgrounds in Barnsdale and Sherwood Forest.{{sfnp
— JLPAB738|296}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The looting of Contrariants’ estates was not confined to the Coterel gang: in the period between their defeat at Boroughbridge and the arrival of royal officials to administer them, lands were pillaged on a widespread scale, especially by “ordinary” (that is, those not involved in organised crime) people. Similar destruction had taken place on the lands of those supporters of Simon de Montfort after his defeat in 1265 following the Second Barons’ War,{{sfnp|W8NSM82W|117-121}} and later on Despenser’s lands following his execution in 1326.{{sfnp|6VBY32GR}} b Sauvage had already established himself as a criminal in his own right, and an extortioner par excellence, who had recently extracted £20 from William Amyas and £40 from Geoffrey Luttrell, both leading Nottinghamshire gentry.{{sfnp|ZADG7VQP}} Before joining the Coterel gang, he had already committed two murders in Derby, various crimes in Oxford, had escaped to London, been arrested there, escaped again, and returned to Derbyshire, where he allied with Coterel.{{sfnp|K6I6I5PX}} c Bernard had been evicted from Bakewell on Christmas Day 1328. He continued his career of embezzlement at Lichfield as a chantry priest, “where on four successive founder days between 1325 and 1329 he failed to pay the stipulated sum to the poor”.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|699}} In another link to the political opposition to Edward II, Barnard had been imprisoned in Oxford Gaol in 1326 for allegedly supporting Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|699}} d A modern scholar notes how “outlaws could make the innocent woods fearsome places to tread”, and quotes Bartholomeus Anglicus, a contemporary monk and commentator, as saying “For often in woods thieves are hid, and often in their awaits and deceits passing men come and are spoiled and robbed and often slain.”{{sfnp|F6PJ2KBQ|52}} Michael Prestwich notes one 14th-century outlaw who “described himself almost poetically as ‘Lionel, King of the rout of raveners’, writing threatening letters from ‘Our castle of the wind in the Greenwood Tower in the first year of our reign'”,{{sfnp|W8NSM82W|512}} deliberately mimicking the *stilo regio*, or royal style, used in Chancery letters.{{sfnp|CW8RQLJQ}} e The Folville gang is perhaps even more infamous than the Coterels. Of the six brothers who turned to crime, the eldest and their leader, Eustace “was the most notorious; he committed three or four murders – one of which was of a baron of the Exchequer – a rape, and three robberies between 1327 and 1330”.{{sfnp|W8NSM82W|512}} f Attachment denoted the legal process by which a defendant was required by writ to provide sureties for their appearance;{{sfnp|WHHWVSND|76}} a Northamptonshire Gaol delivery roll from the last years of the previous century explains how the local “constables of the peace of the King, by rite and authority of their office and according to the law and custom of the realm … have jurisdiction and power to attach malefactors and disturbers of the peace and those who are pursued by the hue and cry for felony and homicide”.{{sfnp|WIE99LSL|135}} Bellamy notes that this was the only time in Coterel’s career that he was attached at law.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|701}} g John Bellamy notes that this was “a large sum even allowing for probable exaggerations of the Earl of Lancaster’s executors who reported the loss”.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|80}} h It was a policy of Edward III to use members of these groups against each other, and to take advantage of pre-existing feuds.{{sfnp|ETLMTWHB|10}} De Wennesley was eventually to join the Coterel gang himself and was arrested in 1332.{{sfnp|249DWARA|75}} i Roger le Sauvage had borrowed 1,000 marks – a medieval English mark was an accounting unit equivalent to two-thirds of a pound{{sfnp|KLGVH6GI|xiv}} – from Sir William Aune (who would later be a staunch supporter of the Coterels), and then entailed his manor of Stainsby on his wife before joining Coterel.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|700}} j A favoured method of extortion was simple but effective. It would be arranged for the intended victim to receive a severe (but not life-threatening) beating, following which, he would be approached by others and offered protection from any future attacks.{{sfnp|ETLMTWHB|6}} k An indenture was a legal contract between two parties, particularly for indentured labour and land transactions. The term comes from the medieval English “indenture of retainer”.{{sfnp|ZILWHMLU|126}} The contract was written in duplicate on the same sheet, with the copies separated by cutting along a jagged line – toothed (in Latin “indenture”) – so that the teeth of the two parts could later be refitted to confirm authenticity, known as a chirograph.{{sfnp|E9I7TV4T|97}} l In law this was called “extortion by false letters and counterfeit seals”.{{sfnp|6VBY32GR|866}} m To put this figure in context, when Gilbert de Clare, 8th Earl of Gloucester died in 1314, his estate was valued at around 4000 marks annually, and in 1337, when King Edward III created a raft of new earls, their titles were each endowed with an income of 666 marks yearly. When in 1314 Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford was captured by the Scottish at the Battle of Bannockburn, he was subsequently granted 1,000 marks to cover his costs by the king.{{sfnp|2BNIXDIT|66, 126}} n Because he had been on the King’s business at the time of the kidnap, he was subsequently granted an annuity of 100 marks in compensation. Willoughby made his family “the wealthiest non-baronial family” in Derbyshire.{{sfnp|ANFSUJ9B|7}} His career in royal service came to an end in 1340 when the King imprisoned him on charges of corruption, forcing Willoughby to pay 1200 marks for a pardon and his freedom.{{sfnp|ZADG7VQP}} o These records are of the 1332–1333 presentments held before Richard de Grey, Henry de Grey, John Darcy, Nicholas de Langeford, John de Twyford and Richard de la Pole, keepers of the peace.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|702}} They consist of a roll of 13 membranes, have been fully translated from the original Latin and transcribed by the Historical Manuscripts’ Commission in 1911, who published them as part of their Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton Preserved at Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire, pp. 272–283.{{sfnp|QI5Y77CX|78-79}}{{sfnp|WSSI857Z|272-283}} p Musson points out that the amount of time the jury devoted to investigating the Coterels is demonstrated by the amount of the roll devoted to it. The roll is held by The National Archives in Kew, classification JUST 1:1411b. The Folvilles are recorded on membranes two to six, and the Coterels are on seven and eight.{{sfnp|WIE99LSL|266}} q This was not altogether uncommon says Prestwich, “and some remarkable stories were told” of the phenomenon by contemporaries. In 1317 six monks from Rufford Priory assaulted, robbed and kidnapped Thomas of Holm, and demanded a ransom of £200. On another occasion, the rector of Manchester “invited a couple and their daughter to dine; but after dinner, two of the rector’s servants came and seized the daughter, beat her so that her ribs were broken and put her in the rector’s bed. He spent the night with her; she died a month later of her injuries.”{{sfnp|W8NSM82W|514}} r The Prior of Lenton and the Dean and Chapter of Litchfield’s support for James Coterel was one of the few things they agreed on – they had repeatedly clashed over possession of various High Peak district advowsons, and the fact that they came together over Coterel illustrates how highly he was regarded by them. James Coterel later acted as a tax collector for the priory, and “was even entrusted with one arrest warrant in 1336 and another in 1350, when he and six others were instructed to find and capture three monks of Lenton” who had absconded from their House.{{sfnp|ZADG7VQP}} s Aune was unlikely to have been acting out of fear or as because of threats; one of James Coterel’s closest allies was Walter’s brother Sir William Aune.{{sfnp|ZDDUF4HQ|81}} t Payling suggests that this is likely because James brother Nicholas was bailiff of Philippa’s Derbyshire liberty, although Nicholas did not, says Payling, “acquit himself well in that office, since he was summoned before the King’s Council to answer a charge of embezzlement in 1359”.{{sfnp|ZADG7VQP}} u The King, meanwhile, continued and expanded his policy of pardoning criminals in return for military service: “thousands” were issued during his reign, says the medievalist Andrew Ayton,{{sfnp|GMEYV2BU|199}} with “several thousand” recorded during the Siege of Calais of 1346–1347. Although Ayton notes that “many of the pardons were of a general nature, suggesting that in some cases they had been sought as a precautionary measure rather than to deal with the legal consequences of specific crimes”, there was sufficient concern domestically that the House of Commons complained to Edward that “many murders, woundings, robberies, homicides, rapes and other felonies and misdeeds without number are done and maintained in the kingdom because the evildoers are granted charters of pardon … to the great destruction of the people”.{{sfnp|GMEYV2BU|194-195}} v Revard gives a similar example, from a few years later, in Sir Laurence Ludlow, who in 1340 was outlawed for assault and battery, but also requested to collect the Black Prince’s feudal dues for him in Stokesay.{{sfnp|M689BGIT|157}} w King Edward III’s policy of pardoning has been the subject of much debate among historians. It has been estimated that many pardons – ranging from 900 to more than a thousand – were granted to returning soldiers between 1339 and 1340 (all in acknowledgement of participation in the Flanders’ campaign): of these, it has been suggested that around three-quarters were murderers.{{sfnp|TFZ3YTPG|297}} John Bellamy has suggested that the King’s intention was not only to avail himself of a large pool of men willing to fight, but to remove them from the theatre by sending them abroad, and, hopefully, drain their energies for the future.{{sfnp|NJGP2SVC|712-713}} The practice was unpopular with contemporaries: petitions had been submitted to parliament in 1328, 1330, 1336 and 1340 against it.{{sfnp|TFZ3YTPG|297}} x A toll for the use of a road. y In a similar comparison to that between Robin Hood and James Coterel, there was a real Friar Tuch – one Richard Stafford, a chaplain, who was known as Frere Tuck, and, like the Coterels, “was never tried in a court, perhaps because … he never bothered to appear”.{{sfnp|249DWARA|85}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23294
This article may contain text from [Wikipedia](https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Coterel_gang#tool-authorship), released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
**Categories:** Criminal, Gang
---
### [Supermarionation](https://engole.info/supermarionation/)
**Published:** September 8, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/NMM_Supermarionation_puppets_2106.jpg[/pimage]Style of puppetry created in the 1960s and used extensively in the action-adventure puppet series of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/NMM_Supermarionation_puppets_2106.jpg)Supermarionation puppets on display at the National Media Museum in Bradford, UK
Wikimedia Commons
Supermarionation (a portmanteau of “super”, “marionette” and “animation”) is a style of puppetry created in the 1960s by the British television production company AP Films (APF). It was used extensively in the action-adventure puppet series of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, most of which used electronic marionettes. The term was coined by Gerry, who regarded Supermarionation as APF’s “trademark”. According to Sylvia, Supermarionation was created to “distinguish the pure puppetry of the stage from our more sophisticated filmed-television version”.{{sfnp|L3VCHW9J|65}}
Emma Thom of the National Science and Media Museum defines Supermarionation as a single “technique”: APF’s use of electronics to synchronise puppets’ lip movements with pre-recorded dialogue.{{sfnp|YYMI84RC}} According to Chris Bentley, the term encompasses all the “sophisticated puppetry techniques” used by APF – mainly lip-synching – “combined with the full range of film production facilities normally employed in live-action filming”, such as visual effects and front and back projection.{{sfnp|GPLMEMFH|48}} David Garland believes that the term expresses Gerry Anderson’s preference for artistic realism and his desire to make APF’s puppet techniques “more and more life-like”.{{sfnp|L3VCHW9J|65}}
## Development
When we got to making this better class of puppet film, I was looking for a more fitting way to explain how our productions differed from those of our predecessors. I wanted to invent a word that promoted the quality of our work, so we combined the words “super”, “marionette” and “animation”. It didn’t mean anything other than that, and it certainly didn’t refer to any specific process. It was our trademark, if you like.{{sfnp
— 57X33ABYAPF’s first production, The Adventures of Twizzle, featured puppets made of papier-mâché with painted eyes and mouths. Gerry Anderson and Arthur Provis, APF’s founders, wanted to make Twizzle in the style of a feature film with dynamic shooting and lighting. To this end, three-dimensional sets were used instead of traditional flat backgrounds and the puppeteers operated the marionettes not from the studio floor, but from a bridge about {{convert|6|ft|r=1|spell=in}} above it.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|15-16}}
The puppets of the follow-up series, Torchy the Battery Boy, were made of plastic wood and incorporated a moveable lip that opened and closed on a string.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|19}} In practice, lip movement was difficult to control owing to the bobbing of the puppets’ heads. The sets were made of cardboard and the props were fibreglass.{{sfnp|GVPBUNLX}}
By the time *[Four Feather Falls](https://engole.info/four-feather-falls/)* entered production, the head strings had been replaced with tungsten steel wires and the moveable lip with a solenoid-driven electronic lip-sync mechanism. The latter was a key step in the development of Supermarionation and made it easier for the puppeteers to move the marionettes to match their dialogue.{{sfnp|GVPBUNLX}} Character dialogue was pre-recorded on two tapes – one to be played during filming to guide the puppeteers, the other to be converted into a series of electrical impulses to open and close the puppets’ mouths.{{sfnp|K74SJDG5}}
The term “Supermarionation” was coined during the production of APF’s fourth series, Supercar, whose final 13 episodes were the first to be credited as being “filmed in Supermarionation”.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|67}}
## Technical overview
The system used marionettes suspended and controlled using thin tungsten steel wires that were chemically blackened to make them less visible to the camera.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|28}} Though only 0.005 inches (0.13 mm) thick,\[9\] the wires often needed to be concealed further by being sprayed with “antiflare” (grease mist) and painted various colours to blend in with the sets.{{sfnp|K74SJDG5}}{{sfnp|L3VCHW9J|70}} Puppets and sets were built to &third; scale, the puppets being roughly {{convert|22|in}} tall.{{sfnp|GVPBUNLX|61, 63}} Close-ups of live actors on full-size sets were used to show intricate actions that the puppets could not perform, such as pressing buttons.{{sfnp|GVPBUNLX|64}}
The puppets’ distinguishing features were their fibreglass heads and the internal solenoids that formed the basis of their lip-sync mechanisms.{{sfnp|KXEZVCZY}} Dialogue was pre-recorded rather than spoken live. Each episode’s dialogue was recorded on two tapes: a master tape to be used for the soundtrack, and a copy to be played during puppet filming.{{sfnp|GVPBUNLX}} When played in the studio, the dialogue was converted into electrical impulses that were conducted by the wires into the puppet’s head; there, the impulses powered a solenoid that caused the lower lip to open and close with each syllable.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|29}} To accommodate the solenoids, heads were made as hollow shells. The heads of main characters were sculpted in clay or Plasticine, then encased in rubber or silicone rubber to create a mould; fibreglass resin was then painted onto the mould to produce the finished head. The heads of guest characters, which were played by puppets called “revamps”, were Plasticine sculpted on a blank base.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|32-33}}
The lip-sync mechanism dictated the puppets’ body proportions. On all APF series from *Four Feather Falls* to *Thunderbirds*, the solenoids were located inside the puppets’ heads. As a result, the head of a puppet was disproportionately large compared to the rest of its body; the latter could not be scaled up to match as the puppet would have been too bulky to operate effectively.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|150}} Garland comments that the disproportion was influenced partly by “aesthetic considerations … the theory being that the head carried the puppet’s personality”. This resulted in many puppets being given caricatured appearances.{{sfnp|L3VCHW9J|64}} Towards the end of the 1960s, the development of miniaturised components led APF to design a new type of puppet. The option to downsize the electronic components in the head was rejected in favour of moving the entire lip-sync mechanism to the chest, where it was connected to the mouth by narrow rods through the neck.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|151}}{{sfnp|NKYH7E64}}{{sfnp|ZDPB3GYA}} This allowed the head to be shrunk and the puppets of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and later series to be sculpted to realistic body proportions.{{sfnp|NKYH7E64}}{{sfnp|ZDPB3GYA}} Around this time, APF also tried to make the puppets’ faces more lifelike by crafting them in a new, flexible material, but the results proved unsatisfactory and the idea was abandoned.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|151}}
Thom believes that the re-design reflected Anderson’s desire for greater “realism and spectacle” in his TV series.{{sfnp|YYMI84RC}} Not all of Anderson’s colleagues welcomed the change; puppet sculptor and operator John Blundall negatively likened the new puppets to “little humans”, claiming that they had less personality than the caricatured versions and that the emphasis on realism hampered the puppeteers’ creativity.{{sfnp|L3VCHW9J|64}} According to director Desmond Saunders, APF was trying “anything to get \[the puppets\] to look like ordinary human beings. But they are not ordinary human beings! … I often wonder it if would have been better to make them more like puppets, not less like puppets.”{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|151}} A disadvantage of the new puppets was that the smaller heads upset the weight distribution, making the puppets harder to operate.{{sfnp|L3VCHW9J|64}}
In all the Anderson puppet series, a major limitation of the marionettes was their inability to walk convincingly.{{sfnp|YYMI84RC}}{{sfnp|A4QT6QIU|16}} According to Sylvia Anderson, the new puppet design exacerbated this: “The more realistic our puppets became, the more problems we had with them … It was just possible to get away with the awkward moments in Thunderbirds because the proportions of the characters were still caricature. It was later when we had developed a more realistic approach … that the still imperfect walk was \[all\] the more obvious.”{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|153}} To reduce the characters’ need to move, many scenes showed them standing, sitting or driving vehicles. Supercar and Stingray’s focus on their eponymous car and submarine, as well as Stingray’s depiction of Commander Shore as a paraplegic confined to a futuristic “hoverchair”, are examples of devices used to overcome the puppets’ lack of mobility.{{sfnp|YYMI84RC}}{{sfnp|L3VCHW9J|70}}{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|44}} The cast of Fireball XL5 avoid walking by riding personal hovercraft called “jetmobiles”;{{sfnp|K74SJDG5}} similar vehicles are seen in Stingray and Thunderbirds.
In a 1977 interview, Anderson said that the steps taken to make the puppets more life-like were part of a general effort on APF’s part to “make the \[puppet\] medium respectable”. On the preparations for Supercar, the first of APF’s science-fiction series, he remembered “\[thinking\] that if we set the story in the future, there would be moving walkways and the puppets would be riding around in the car for much of the time, so it would be much easier to make them convincing.” According to interviewer Kevin O’Neill, this “moving into the future” for greater realism meant that it was “almost accidental” that APF’s later series were all science fiction.{{sfnp|X3FRZ7ZW}} David Garland calls character movement Anderson’s “bête noire” and states that the puppets’ limited mobility resulted in “vehicle-heavy science fiction \[becoming\] Anderson’s preferred genre”.{{sfnp|L3VCHW9J|70}} He regards the use of marionettes – which he considers the kind of puppet “perhaps most unsuited” to an action format – as “one of the most striking paradoxes” of the Anderson productions.{{sfnp|L3VCHW9J|70-71}} Carolyn Percy of *Wales Arts Review* comments that the inclusion of “futuristic vehicles” like Supercar allowed APF to devise “more exciting and imaginative scenarios” and “work around the limitations of the puppets … to give their ‘acting’ the integrity to match the material.”{{sfnp|KXEZVCZY}}
The final Supermarionation series, *The Secret Service*, used extensive footage of live actors to a point where, in the words of Stephen La Rivière, it ended up “half-way between live action and Supermarionation”. Its main character, Stanley Unwin, was modelled on the comedian of the same name, who voiced the puppet character and served as its human body double in long shots and other sequences where the puppet could not be used. Gerry Anderson explained that this was another way of circumventing the puppets’ lack of mobility, commenting: “I came up with the idea of getting Stanley Unwin to do all the walking shots, and driving shots in this Model Ford T \[sic\] \[the character\] had. If, for example, you had a sequence where Stanley Unwin would arrive at a building in his model T, he would … get out, walk down the path, and as soon as he opened the door, you’d cut to the reverse angle and that would be the puppet of Stanley Unwin … I used Stanley Unwin, married to his own puppet, to enable him to do all the things that the puppet couldn’t do.”{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|190-191}}
## Supermarionation productions
**Title****Year****Type****Notes***[Four Feather Falls](https://engole.info/four-feather-falls/)*1960TV seriesAPF’s first production to use electronic marionettes equipped with lip-sync mechanisms. First fibreglass heads and moving eyes.{{sfnp|K74SJDG5}}*Supercar*1961TV seriesFirst production to feature rocket effects, back projection effects and underwater scenes filmed “dry” through water tanks.{{sfnp|GVPBUNLX}}{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|56, 61}} The 13-episode second series was the first to be “filmed in Supermarionation” and the first for which puppets were duplicated to allow episodes to be filmed in pairs by separate crews.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|65, 67}} It also marked the APF’s first use of a dedicated special effects unit, led by Derek Meddings.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|65}}*Fireball XL5*1962TV seriesFirst production to feature puppet heads with blinkable eyes{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|103}}*Stingray*1964TV seriesFirst production for which puppets’ facial expressions were varied: main characters could now be fitted with “smiler” and “frowner” heads. For greater realism, poseable hands and glass eyes (bearing miniaturised prints of real human eyes) were also introduced.{{sfnp|GVPBUNLX}}{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|97-98}}*Thunderbirds*1965TV series*Thunderbirds Are Go*1966Feature filmFirst production in which all puppets were fibreglass (previously, guest characters had been sculpted in Plasticine).{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|132}} “Under control” (string-less) puppets were introduced for scenes of characters sitting – for example, fighter pilots in aircraft cockpits.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|152}}*Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons*1967TV seriesThe lip-sync mechanism was moved to the chest, allowing the puppets to be redesigned in realistic body proportions. Eyes were once again plastic.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|152}} Guest characters were played by a “repertory company” of fibreglass puppets whose appearances could be superficially altered for each new role.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|154–155}}*Thunderbird 6*1968Feature filmFirst production to feature extensive location shooting.{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|169}}*Joe 90*1968TV series*The Secret Service*1969TV seriesIncluded extensive footage of live actors*The Investigator*1973TV pilotFeatured Supermarionation puppet characters and live actors{{sfnp|73BAHRAU|201}}
## Critical reception
Percy notes that Gerry Anderson would have preferred to make live-action productions rather than puppet series, and argues that his style of filming was developed to “make the puppet film as ‘respectable’ as possible”. She also comments that the Andersons’ filming techniques “would not only result in a level of quality and sophistication not seen before in a family show, but also give birth to some of the most iconic series in the history of British children’s television.”{{sfnp|KXEZVCZY}}
Garland describes the underlying theme of Gerry Anderson’s work as a “self-reflexive obsession with an aesthetic of realism (or more accurately a surface realism often associated with naturalism) borne of an unfulfilled desire to make live-action films for adults”,{{sfnp|L3VCHW9J|62}} and further observes that “being typecast as a producer of children’s puppet television led \[Anderson\] on a lifelong quest to perfect a simulation of reality”. Garland notes that Anderson’s involvement with puppets began at a time when Western puppet theatre “had become increasingly marginalised to a niche, to an association with children’s entertainment”, and that to ensure appeal to adults as well as children – a target audience described by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson as “kidult” – APF’s puppet TV series employed an “aesthetic of incremental realism”.{{sfnp|L3VCHW9J|63}} He suggests that the drive towards increased realism in APF’s TV series echoed “19th-century marionette theatre’s own attempts to distinguish itself from other forms of puppetry (especially glove puppets), which also involved a tethering to the newly-emergent realist aesthetic across the arts”.{{sfnp|L3VCHW9J|66}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22197
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### [Peterloo Massacre](https://engole.info/peterloo-massacre/)
**Published:** August 12, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Peterloo_Massacre.png[/pimage]Cavalry charge on 16 August 1819 into a crowd of 60,000–80,000 gathered at St Peter's Field, Manchester, England to demand the reform of parliamentary representation
**Content:**
Painting of the Peterloo Massacre published by Richard Carlile
Wikimedia Commons
The Peterloo Massacre, or Battle of Peterloo, took place at St Peter’s Field, Manchester, England, on 16 August 1819, when cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000–80,000 that had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation.
The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 had resulted in periods of famine and chronic unemployment, exacerbated by the introduction of the first of the Corn Laws. By the beginning of 1819 the pressure generated by poor economic conditions, coupled with the relative lack of suffrage in Northern England, had enhanced the appeal of political radicalism. In response, the Manchester Patriotic Union, a group agitating for parliamentary reform, organised a demonstration to be addressed by the well-known radical orator Henry Hunt.
Shortly after the meeting began local magistrates called on the military authorities to arrest Hunt and several others on the hustings with him, and to disperse the crowd. Cavalry charged into the crowd with sabres drawn, and in the ensuing confusion, 15 people were killed and 400–700 were injured. The massacre was given the name Peterloo in an ironic comparison to the Battle of Waterloo, which had taken place four years earlier.
Historian Robert Poole has called the Peterloo Massacre one of the defining moments of its age. In its own time, the London and national papers shared the horror felt in the Manchester region, but Peterloo’s immediate effect was to cause the government to crack down on reform, with the passing of what became known as the [Six Acts](https://engole.info/six-acts). It also led directly to the foundation of *The Manchester Guardian* (now *The Guardian*), but had little other effect on the pace of reform. In a survey conducted by *The Guardian* in 2006, Peterloo came second to the Putney Debates as the event from British history that most deserved a proper monument or a memorial. Peterloo is commemorated by a plaque close to the site, a replacement for an earlier one that was criticised as being inadequate as it did not reflect the scale of the massacre.
## Background
### Suffrage
In 1819, Lancashire was represented by two Members of Parliament (MPs). Voting was restricted to the adult male owners of freehold land with an annual rental value of 40 shillings or more – the equivalent of about £150 in 2018\[a\]Using the retail price index{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} – and votes could only be cast at the county town of Lancaster, by a public spoken declaration at the hustings. Constituency boundaries were out of date, and the so-called “rotten boroughs” had a hugely disproportionate influence on the membership of the Parliament of the United Kingdom compared to the size of their populations: Old Sarum in Wiltshire, with one voter, elected two MPs,{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|28}} as did Dunwich in Suffolk, which by the early 19th century had almost completely disappeared into the sea.{{sfnp|ANTKT3IW}} The major urban centres of Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Blackburn, Rochdale, Ashton-under-Lyne, Oldham and Stockport, with a combined population of almost one million, were represented by either the two county MPs for Lancashire, or the two for Cheshire in the case of Stockport. By comparison, more than half of all MPs were elected by a total of just 154 voters.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|28}} These inequalities in political representation led to calls for reform.
### Economic conditions
After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, a brief boom in textile manufacture was followed by periods of chronic economic depression, particularly among textile weavers and spinners (the textile trade was concentrated in Lancashire).{{sfnp|LME5VWCB|30}} Weavers who could have expected to earn 15 shillings for a six-day week in 1803, saw their wages cut to 5 shillings or even 4s 6d by 1818. The industrialists, who were cutting wages without offering relief, blamed market forces generated by the aftershocks of the Napoleonic Wars.{{sfnp|TYV72D32|22}} Exacerbating matters were the Corn Laws, the first of which was passed in 1815, imposing a tariff on foreign grain in an effort to protect English grain producers. The cost of food rose as people were forced to buy the more expensive and lower quality British grain, and periods of famine and chronic unemployment ensued, increasing the desire for political reform both in Lancashire and in the country at large.{{sfnp|VTDM2N3J}}{{sfnp|YPIH7F4B|194–252}}
### Radical mass meetings
Economic conditions in 1817 led to a group who became known as Blanketeers to organise a march from Manchester to London so they could petition the Prince Regent for parliamentary reform.{{sfnp|DRVU8H9N}} A crowd of 25,000 including 5,000 men who intended to march gathered in St Peter’s Fields. After the magistrates read the Riot Act, the crowd was dispersed by the King’s Dragoon Guards. The ringleaders were arrested and subsequently released when serious charges against them were not forthcoming. In April 1819 three leading Blanketeers were convicted of sedition and conspiracy when witnesses alleged they had advocated the principal towns of the kingdom should elect representatives to a National Convention to demand their rights and if refused enforce them ‘sword in hand’ during a meeting in Stockport in September 1818.{{sfnp|6AXLTDKE}}
By the beginning of 1819 pressure generated by poor economic conditions was at its peak and had enhanced the appeal of political radicalism among the cotton loom weavers of south Lancashire.{{sfnp|LME5VWCB|30}} In January 1819, a crowd of about 10,000 gathered at St Peter’s Fields to hear the radical orator Henry Hunt and called on the Prince Regent to choose ministers who would repeal the Corn Laws. The meeting, conducted in the presence of the cavalry, passed off without incident.{{sfnp|PFEQJ4P7}}
In July 1819, the town’s magistrates wrote to Lord Sidmouth warning they thought a “general rising” was imminent, the “deep distress of the manufacturing classes” was being worked on by the “unbounded liberty of the press” and “the harangues of a few desperate demagogues” at weekly meetings. “Possessing no power to prevent the meetings” the magistrates admitted they were at a loss as to how to stem the doctrines being disseminated.{{sfnp|P6LIEIBV|1-3}}
### August meeting
Against this background, a “great assembly” was organised by the Manchester Patriotic Union formed by radicals from the *Manchester Observer*. The newspaper’s founder Joseph Johnson was the union’s secretary. He wrote to Henry Hunt asking him to chair a meeting in Manchester on 2 August 1819. Johnson wrote:
Nothing but ruin and starvation stare one in the face [in the streets of Manchester and the surrounding towns], the state of this district is truly dreadful, and I believe nothing but the greatest exertions can prevent an insurrection. Oh, that you in London were prepared for it.{{sfnp
— MNS42M6Q|115}}
Unknown to Johnson and Hunt, the letter was intercepted by government spies and copied before being sent to its destination. The contents were interpreted to mean that an insurrection was being planned, and the government responded by ordering the 15th Hussars to Manchester.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|116}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Samuel_Bamford.png)Samuel Bamford led a group from his native Middleton to St Peter’s Field. Following his imprisonment for “inciting a riot”, Bamford emerged as a prominent voice for radical reform.
Wikimedia Commons
The mass public meeting planned for 2 August was delayed until 9 August. The *Manchester Observer* reported it was called “to take into consideration the most speedy and effectual mode of obtaining Radical reform in the Common House of Parliament” and “to consider the propriety of the ‘Unrepresented Inhabitants of Manchester’ electing a person to represent them in Parliament”.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|122}} The magistrates, led by William Hulton, had been advised by the acting Home Secretary, Henry Hobhouse, that “the election of a member of parliament without the King’s writ” was a serious misdemeanour,{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|118}} encouraging them to declare the assembly illegal as soon as it was announced on 31 July.{{sfnp|FD3JKYFI|118}}{{sfnp|4QCDZCL2|22-23}} The radicals sought a second opinion on the meeting’s legality which was that “The intention of choosing Representatives, contrary to the existing law, tends greatly to render the proposed Meeting seditious; under those circumstances it would be deemed justifiable in the Magistrates to prevent such Meeting”.{{sfnp|P6LIEIBV|23}}
On 3 August, Hobhouse conveyed the view of the Attorney-General that the magistrates were incorrect to declare 9 August meeting illegal as it was called to consider the election of a representative,{{sfnp|FD3JKYFI|122}} and it was not the intention to elect an MP that was illegal, but the execution of that intention.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|125}} On 4 August Hobhouse advised against any attempt to forcibly prevent the 9 August meeting if it went ahead, or do anything beyond collecting evidence for subsequent prosecution unless the meeting got out of hand:
even if they should utter sedition or proceed to the election of a representative Lord Sidmouth is of opinion that it will be the wisest course to abstain from any endeavour to disperse the mob, unless they should proceed to acts of felony or riot. We have the strongest reason to believe that Hunt means to preside and to deprecate disorder.{{sfnp
— YCVTL3CN}}
The meeting on 9 August was postponed after magistrates banned it to discourage the radicals but Hunt and his followers were determined to assemble and a meeting was organised for 16 August, with its declared aim solely “to consider the propriety of adopting the most LEGAL and EFFECTUAL means of obtaining a reform in the Common House of Parliament”.{{sfnp|P6LIEIBV|23}} The press had mocked earlier meetings of working men because of their ragged, dirty appearance and disorganised conduct, but the organisers were determined that those attending the St Peter’s Field meeting would be neatly turned out and march to the event in good order.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|123}} Samuel Bamford, a local radical who led the Middleton contingent, wrote that “It was deemed expedient that this meeting should be as morally effective as possible, and, that it should exhibit a spectacle such as had never before been witnessed in England.”{{sfnp|LME5VWCB|30}} Instructions were given to the various committees forming the contingents that “Cleanliness, Sobriety, Order and Peace” and a “prohibition of all weapons of offence or defence” were to be observed throughout the demonstration.{{sfnp|LME5VWCB|31}} Each contingent was drilled and rehearsed in the fields of the [ townships](https://engole.info/township/) around Manchester adding to the concerns of the authorities.{{sfnp|4QCDZCL2|22-23}} A royal proclamation forbidding the practice of drilling had been posted in Manchester on 3 August,{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|125}} but on 9 August an informant reported to Rochdale magistrates that at Tandle Hill the previous day, 700 men were “drilling in companies” and “going through the usual evolutions of a regiment” and an onlooker had said the men “were fit to contend with any regular troops, only they wanted arms”.{{sfnp|P6LIEIBV|33}}
### Rehearsals
Although banning the 9 August meeting had been intended to discourage the radicals entirely, Hunt and his followers were determined to assemble. A new meeting was organised for 16 August,{{sfnp|4QCDZCL2|22–23}} after the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth, had written to the magistrates instructing them that it was not the intention to elect an MP that was illegal, but the execution of that intention.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|125}}
The press had frequently mocked previous meetings of working men because of their ragged, dirty appearance and disorganised conduct. The organisers were determined that those attending the meeting at St Peter’s Field would be neatly turned out and would march to the event in good order.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|123}} Samuel Bamford, a local radical who led the Middleton contingent to the assembly, wrote that “It was deemed expedient that this meeting should be as morally effective as possible, and, that it should exhibit a spectacle such as had never before been witnessed in England.”{{sfnp|LME5VWCB|30}} Instructions were given to the various committees forming the contingents that “Cleanliness, Sobriety, Order and Peace” and a “prohibition of all weapons of offence or defence” were to be observed throughout the demonstration.{{sfnp|LME5VWCB|31}} Each contingent was drilled and rehearsed in the fields of the townships around Manchester, further adding to the concerns of the authorities.{{sfnp|4QCDZCL2|22–23}} One spy reported that “seven hundred men drilled at Tandle Hill as well as any army regiment would”.{{sfnp|4QCDZCL2|22–23}} A royal proclamation forbidding the practice of drilling was posted in Manchester on 3 August.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|125}}
## Assembly
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Peterloo_contingents_map.webp)Peterloo contingents
Wikimedia Commons
St Peter’s Field was a croft (an open piece of land) alongside Mount Street which was being cleared to enable the last section of Peter Street to be constructed. Piles of brushwood had been placed at the end of the field nearest to the Friends Meeting House, but the remainder of the field was clear.{{sfnp|KL2IX5EA|7}} Thomas Worrell, Manchester’s Assistant Surveyor of Paving, arrived to inspect the field at 7:00 am. His job was to remove anything that might be used as a weapon, and he duly had “about a quarter of a load” of stones carted away.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|145}}
Monday, 16 August 1819, was a hot summer’s day, with a cloudless blue sky. The fine weather almost certainly increased the size of the crowd significantly; marching from the outer townships in the cold and rain would have been a much less attractive prospect.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|119}}
The Manchester magistrates met at 9:00 am, to breakfast at the Star Inn on Deansgate and to consider what action they should take on Henry Hunt’s arrival at the meeting. By 10:30 am they had come to no conclusions, and moved to a house on the southeastern corner of St Peter’s Field, from where they planned to observe the meeting.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|152–153}} They were concerned that it would end in a riot, or even a rebellion, and had arranged for a substantial number of regular troops and militia yeomanry to be deployed. The military presence comprised 600 men of the 15th Hussars; several hundred infantrymen; a Royal Horse Artillery unit with two six-pounder (2.7 kg) guns; 400 men of the Cheshire Yeomanry; 400 special constables; and 120 cavalry of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, relatively inexperienced militia recruited from among local shopkeepers and tradesmen, the most numerous of which were publicans.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|88}} The Yeomanry were variously described as “younger members of the Tory party in arms”,{{sfnp|BI3CBEBQ}} and as “hot-headed young men, who had volunteered into that service from their intense hatred of Radicalism”.{{sfnp|UV4SBEUA|160}} Socialist writer Mark Krantz has described them as “the local business mafia on horseback”.{{sfnp|EBUEE8EZ|12}}
The British Army in the north was under the overall command of General Sir John Byng. When he had initially learned that the meeting was scheduled for 2 August he had written to the Home Office stating that he hoped the Manchester magistrates would show firmness on the day:
I will be prepared to go there, and will have in that neighbourhood, that is within an easy day’s march, 8 squadron of cavalry, 18 companies of infantry and the guns. I am sure I can add to the Yeomanry if requisite. I hope therefore the civil authorities will not be deterred from doing their duty.{{sfnp
— MNS42M6Q|136}}
The revised meeting date of 16 August, however, coincided with the horse races at York, a fashionable event at which Byng had entries in two races. He once again wrote to the Home Office, saying that although he would still be prepared to be in command in Manchester on the day of the meeting if it was thought really necessary, he had absolute confidence in his deputy commander, Lieutenant Colonel Guy L’Estrange.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|128}}
### Meeting
The crowd that gathered in St Peter’s Field arrived in disciplined and organised contingents. Each village or [chapelry](https://engole.info/chapel-of-ease) was given a time and a place to meet, from where its members were to proceed to assembly points in the larger towns or townships, and from there on to Manchester.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|95}} Contingents were sent from all around the region, the largest and “best dressed”{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|118}} of which was a group of 10,000 who had travelled from Oldham Green, comprising people from Oldham, Royton (which included a sizable female section), Crompton, Lees, Saddleworth and Mossley.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|118}} Other sizable contingents marched from Middleton and Rochdale (6,000 strong) and Stockport (1,500–5,000 strong).{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|120–121}} Reports of the size of the crowd at the meeting vary substantially. Contemporaries estimated it from 30,000 to as many as 150,000; modern estimates are 60,000–80,000.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|125}} Scholar Joyce Marlow describes the event as “The most numerous meeting that ever took place in Great Britain” and elaborates that the generally accepted figure of 60,000 would have been 6 per cent of the population of Lancashire, or half the population of the immediate area around Manchester.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|118}}
The assembly was intended by its organisers and participants to be a peaceful meeting; Henry Hunt had exhorted everyone attending to come “armed with no other weapon but that of a self-approving conscience”,{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|148}} and many were wearing their “Sunday best” clothes.{{sfnp|KL2IX5EA|7}} Samuel Bamford recounts the following incident, which occurred as the Middleton contingent reached the outskirts of Manchester:
On the bank of an open field on our left I perceived a gentleman observing us attentively. He beckoned me, and I went to him. He was one of my late employers. He took my hand, and rather concernedly, but kindly, said he hoped no harm was intended by all those people who were coming in. I said “I would pledge my life for their entire peaceableness.” I asked him to notice them, “did they look like persons wishing to outrage the law? were they not, on the contrary, evidently heads of decent working families? or members of such families?” “No, no,” I said, “my dear sir, and old respected master, if any wrong or violence take place, they will be committed by men of a different stamp from these.” He said he was very glad to hear me say so; he was happy he had seen me, and gratified by the manner in which I had expressed myself. I asked, did he think we should be interrupted at the meeting? he said he did not believe we should; “then,” I replied, “all will be well”; and shaking hands, with mutual good wishes, I left him, and took my station as before.{{sfnp
— 5ZL3TQ6Q|XXV}}
Although some observers, including the Rev. W. R. Hay, chairman of the Salford Quarter Sessions, claimed that “The active part of the meeting may be said to have come in wholly from the country”,{{sfnp|LME5VWCB|33}} others such as John Shuttleworth, a local cotton manufacturer, estimated that most were from Manchester, a view that would subsequently be supported by the casualty lists. Of the casualties whose residence was recorded, 61% lived within a three-mile radius of the centre of Manchester.{{sfnp|SC4H7AYD|19}} Some groups carried banners with texts like “No Corn Laws”, “Annual Parliaments”, “Universal suffrage” and “Vote By Ballot”. The only banner known to have survived is in Middleton Public Library. It was carried by Thomas Redford, who was injured by a yeomanry sabre. Made of green silk embossed with gold lettering, one side of the banner is inscribed “Liberty and Fraternity” and the other “Unity and Strength”.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|119–120}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Dreadful_Scene_at_Peterloo.png)Print published on 27 August 1819, depicting Hunt’s arrest by the constables
Wikimedia Commons
At about noon, several hundred special constables were led onto the field. They formed two lines in the crowd a few yards apart, in an attempt to form a corridor through the crowd between the house where the magistrates were watching and the hustings, two waggons lashed together. Believing that this might be intended as the route by which the magistrates would later send their representatives to arrest the speakers, some members of the crowd pushed the waggons away from the constables, and pressed around the hustings to form a human barrier.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|161}}
Hunt’s carriage arrived at the meeting shortly after 1:00 pm, and he made his way to the hustings. Alongside Hunt on the speakers’ stand were John Knight, a cotton manufacturer and reformer, Joseph Johnson, the organiser of the meeting, John Thacker Saxton, managing editor of the *Manchester Observer*, the publisher Richard Carlile, and George Swift, reformer and shoemaker. There were also a number of reporters, including John Tyas of *The Times*, John Smith of the *Liverpool Echo* and Edward Baines Jr, the son of the editor of the *Leeds Mercury*.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|162–163}} By this time St Peter’s Field, an area of {{convert|3|acre|spell=in}}, was packed with tens of thousands of men, women and children. The crowd around the speakers was so dense that “their hats seemed to touch”; large groups of curious spectators gathered on the outskirts of the crowd. The rest of Manchester was like a ghost town, the streets and shops were empty.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|129}}
## Cavalry charge
When I wrote these two letters, I considered at that moment that the lives and properties of all the persons in Manchester were in the greatest possible danger.{{sfnp
— MNS42M6Q[William Hulton](https://engole.info/william-hulton/), the chairman of the magistrates watching from the house on the edge of St Peter’s Field, saw the enthusiastic reception that Hunt received on his arrival at the assembly, and it encouraged him to action. He issued an arrest warrant for Henry Hunt, Joseph Johnson, John Knight, and James Moorhouse. On being handed the warrant the Chief Constable, Jonathan Andrews, offered his opinion that the press of the crowd surrounding the hustings would make military assistance necessary for its execution. Hulton then wrote two letters, one to Major Thomas Trafford, the commanding officer of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry Cavalry, and the other to the overall military commander in Manchester, Lieutenant Colonel Guy L’Estrange. The contents of both notes were similar:{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|166–167}}
Sir, as chairman of the select committee of magistrates, I request you to proceed immediately to no. 6 Mount Street, where the magistrates are assembled. They consider the Civil Power wholly inadequate to preserve the peace. I have the honour, & c. Wm. Hulton.{{sfnp
— MNS42M6Q|167}}|Letter sent by William Hulton to Major Trafford of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry Cavalry
The notes were handed to two horsemen who were standing by. The Manchester and Salford Yeomanry were stationed just a short distance away in Portland Street, and so received their note first. They immediately drew their swords and galloped towards St Peter’s Field. One trooper, in a frantic attempt to catch up, knocked down a woman in Cooper Street, causing the death of her child when he was thrown from her arms;{{sfnp|KL2IX5EA|8}} two-year-old William Fildes was the first casualty of Peterloo.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|168}}
Sixty cavalrymen of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, led by Captain Hugh Hornby Birley, a local factory owner, arrived at the house from where the magistrates were watching; some reports allege that they were drunk.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|156}} Andrews, the Chief Constable, instructed Birley that he had an arrest warrant which he needed assistance to execute. Birley was asked to take his cavalry to the hustings to allow the speakers to be removed; it was by then about 1:40 pm.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|170}}
A map of St Peter’s Field and surrounding area on 16 August 1819
Wikimedia Commons
The route towards the hustings between the special constables was narrow, and as the inexperienced horses were thrust further and further into the crowd they reared and plunged as people tried to get out of their way.{{sfnp|KL2IX5EA|8}} The arrest warrant had been given to the Deputy Constable, Joseph Nadin, who followed behind the yeomanry. As the cavalry pushed towards the speakers’ stand they became stuck in the crowd, and in panic started to hack about them with their sabres.{{sfnp|BHDCSZ6Q|254–276}} On his arrival at the stand Nadin arrested Hunt, Johnson and a number of others including John Tyas, the reporter from The Times.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|185}} According to Tyas the yeomanry’s progress through the crowd had provoked a hail of bricks and stones, and caused them to lose “all command of temper”.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|180}} Their mission to execute the arrest warrant having been achieved, they then set about destroying the banners and flags carried by the crowd.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|180}}
From his vantage point William Hulton perceived the unfolding events as an assault on the yeomanry, and on L’Estrange’s arrival at 1:50 pm, at the head of his hussars, he ordered them into the field to disperse the crowd with the words: “Good God, Sir, don’t you see they are attacking the Yeomanry; disperse the meeting!”{{sfnp|BZZZAQKU|214}} The 15th Hussars formed themselves into a line stretching across the eastern end of St Peter’s Field, and charged into the crowd. At about the same time the Cheshire Yeomanry charged from the southern edge of the field.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|175}} At first the crowd had some difficulty in dispersing, as the main exit route into Peter Street was blocked by the 88th Regiment of Foot, standing with bayonets fixed. One officer of the 15th Hussars was heard trying to restrain the by now out of control Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, who were “cutting at every one they could reach”: “For shame! For shame! Gentlemen: forbear, forbear! The people cannot get away!”{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|181}}
However, within ten minutes the crowd had been dispersed, at the cost of 11 dead and more than 600 injured. Only the wounded, their helpers, and the dead were left behind. A woman living nearby said she saw “a very great deal of blood”.{{sfnp|4QCDZCL2|22–23}} For some time afterwards there was rioting in the streets, most seriously at New Cross, where troops fired on a crowd attacking a shop belonging to someone rumoured to have taken one of the women reformers’ flags as a souvenir. Peace was not restored in Manchester until the next morning, and in Stockport and Macclesfield rioting continued on the 17th.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|186–187}} There was also a major riot in Oldham that day, during which one person was shot and wounded.{{sfnp|4QCDZCL2|22–23}}
## Victims
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/The_Massacre_of_Peterloo.jpg)Caricature by George Cruikshank depicting the charge upon the rally; text reads: “Down with ’em! Chop em down my brave boys: give them no quarter they want to take our Beef & Pudding from us! —- & remember the more you kill the less poor rates you’ll have to pay so go at it Lads show your courage & your Loyalty!”
Wikimedia Commons
The exact number of those killed and injured at Peterloo has never been established with certainty.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150–151}} Sources claim 11–15 killed and 400–700 injured. The Manchester Relief Committee, a body set up to provide relief for the victims of Peterloo, gave the number of injured as 420, while Radical sources listed 500.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150–151}} The true number is difficult to estimate, as many of the wounded hid their injuries for fear of retribution by the authorities.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|187}} Three of William Marsh’s six children who worked in the factory belonging to Captain Hugh Birley of the Manchester Yeomanry lost their jobs because their father had attended the meeting.{{sfnp|SC4H7AYD|12}} James Lees was admitted to Manchester Infirmary with two severe sabre wounds to the head, but was refused treatment and sent home after refusing to agree with the surgeon’s insistence that “he had had enough of Manchester meetings”.{{sfnp|SC4H7AYD|12}}
A particular feature of the meeting at Peterloo was the number of women present. Female reform societies had been formed in North West England during June and July 1819, the first in Britain. Many of the women were dressed distinctively in white, and some formed all-female contingents, carrying their own flags.{{sfnp|SC4H7AYD|1}} Of the 654 recorded casualties, at least 168 were women, four of whom died either at St Peter’s Field or later as a result of their wounds. It has been estimated that less than 12 per cent of the crowd was made up of females, suggesting that women were at significantly greater risk of injury than men by a factor of almost 3:1. Richard Carlile claimed that the women were especially targeted, a view apparently supported by the large number who suffered from wounds caused by weapons.{{sfnp|SC4H7AYD|31}}
Eleven of the fatalities listed occurred on St Peter’s Field. Others, such as John Lees of Oldham, died later of their wounds, and some like Joshua Whitworth were killed in the rioting that followed the crowd’s dispersal from the field.
**Name****Abode****Died****Cause****Notes****Refs.****John Ashton**Cowhill, Chadderton16 AugustSabred and trampled on by the crowdCarried the black flag of the Saddleworth, Lees and Mossley Union, inscribed “Taxation without representation is unjust and tyrannical. NO CORN LAWS”. The inquest jury returned a verdict of accidental death. His son, Samuel, received 20 shillings in relief.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150-151}}{{sfnp|SC4H7AYD|65}}**John Ashworth**Bulls Head, ManchesterSabred and trampledAshworth was a Special Constable, presumably attacked unintentionally by the cavalry.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150-151}}**William Bradshaw**Lily-hill, BuryShot by musket{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150-151}}{{sfnp|SC4H7AYD|74}}**Thomas Buckley**Baretrees, ChaddertonSabred and stabbed by bayonet{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150-151}}{{sfnp|SC4H7AYD|77}}**Robert Campbell**Miller Street, Salford18 AugustKilled by a mob in Newton LaneCampbell was a Special Constable{{sfnp|SC4H7AYD|79}}**James Crompton**Barton-upon-IrwellTrampled by the cavalryBuried on 1 September{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150-151}}{{sfnp|SC4H7AYD|86}}**Edmund Dawson**SaddleworthDied of sabre wounds at the Manchester Royal InfirmaryThe historian Joyce Marlow has suggested that Edmund and William Dawson may have been the same individual.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150-151}}**William Dawson**SaddleworthSabred, crushed and killed on the spot{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150-151}}**Margaret Downes**ManchesterSabred{{sfnp|SC4H7AYD|90}}**William Evans**HulmeTrampled by cavalryEvans was a Special Constable{{sfnp|SC4H7AYD|92}}**William Fildes**Kennedy Street, ManchesterRidden over by cavalryTwo years old, he was first victim of the massacre. His mother was carrying him across the road when she was struck by a trooper of the Manchester Yeomanry, galloping towards St Peters Field.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150-151}}**Mary Heys**Oxford Road, Manchester17 DecemberRidden over by cavalryMother of six children, and pregnant at the time of the meeting. Disabled and suffering from almost daily fits following her injuries, the premature birth of her seven-month-old child resulted in her death.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150-151}}{{sfnp|SC4H7AYD|105}}**Sarah Jones**96 Silk Street, SalfordNo cause given by Marlow but listed as “bruised in the head” by FrowMother of seven children. Beaten on the head by a Special Constable’s truncheon.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150-151}}{{sfnp|SC4H7AYD|115}}\[b\]Frow (1984), p. 8 lists Sarah as injured, not that she died.**John Lees**Oldham9 SeptemberSabredLees was an ex-soldier who had fought in the Battle of Waterloo.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150-151}}**Arthur Neil**Pidgeon Street, ManchesterInwardly crushed{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150-151}}**Martha Partington**EcclesThrown into a cellar and killed on the spot{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150-151}}**John Rhodes**Pits, Hopwood18 or 19 NovemberSabre wound to the headRhodes’ body was dissected by order of magistrates who wished to prove that his death was not a result of Peterloo. The coroner’s inquest found that he had died from natural causes.{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150-151}}{{sfnp|SC4H7AYD|139}}**Joshua Whitworth**20 AugustShot at New Cross{{sfnp|9SPJEZSC|150-151}}
## Reaction and aftermath
### Public
As the ‘Peterloo Massacre’ cannot be otherwise than grossly libellous you will probably deem it right to proceed by arresting the publishers.{{sfnp
— 9SPJEZSCThe Peterloo Massacre has been called one of the defining moments of its age.{{sfnp|BHDCSZ6Q|254}} Many of those present, including local masters, employers and owners, were horrified by the carnage. One of the casualties, Oldham cloth-worker and ex-soldier John Lees, who died from his wounds on 7 September, had been present at the Battle of Waterloo.{{sfnp|4QCDZCL2|22–23}} Shortly before his death he said to a friend that he had never been in such danger as at Peterloo: “At Waterloo there was man to man but there it was downright murder.”{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|201}} When news of the massacre began to spread, the population of Manchester and surrounding districts were horrified and outraged.{{sfnp|EWVQDR4Y|21–30}}
### Publications
PETER LOO MASSACRE ! ! !
Just published No. 1 price twopence of PETER LOO MASSACRE Containing a full, true and faithful account of the inhuman murders, woundings and other monstous Cruelties exercised by a set of INFERNALS (miscalled Soldiers) upon unarmed and distressed People.{{sfnp
— 9SPJEZSCThis was the first public meeting at which journalists from a number of important distant newspapers were present, and within a day or so of the event accounts were published as far away as London, Leeds and Liverpool.{{sfnp|KL2IX5EA|8}} The London and national papers shared the horror felt in the Manchester region, and the feeling of indignation throughout the country became intense.
James Wroe as editor of the *Manchester Observer* was the first journalist to describe the incident as the “Peterloo Massacre”, coining his headline by combining the name of the meeting place, St Peter’s Field, with the Battle of Waterloo that had taken place only four years before.{{sfnp|6NZHAG97}} Wroe subsequently wrote pamphlets entitled “The Peterloo Massacre: A Faithful Narrative of the Events”. Priced at 2d each, they sold out each print run for 14 weeks, having a large national circulation.{{sfnp|6NZHAG97}} Sir Francis Burdett, a reformist MP, was jailed for three months for his publication of a seditious libel, so moved was he.
The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was living in Italy at the time and did not hear of the massacre until 5 September. He immediately wrote a poem, “The Masque of Anarchy”, subtitled “Written on the Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester”, and sent it for publication in the radical periodical *The Examiner*. But owing to restrictions on the radical press the poem was not published until 1832.{{sfnp|LKDEXE74}} Many commemorative items such as plates, jugs, handkerchiefs and medals were produced, all with the iconic image of Peterloo; cavalrymen with swords drawn riding down and slashing at defenceless civilians.{{sfnp|SC4H7AYD|30, 35}}
### Political
The government instructed the police and courts to go after the journalists, presses and publication that was the *Manchester Observer*.{{sfnp|6NZHAG97}} Wroe was arrested and charged with producing a seditious publication. Found guilty he was sentenced to twelve months in prison, plus a £100 fine.{{sfnp|6NZHAG97}} Outstanding libelous court cases against the *Manchester Observer* were suddenly rushed through the courts, and even a continual change of sub-editors was not sufficient a defence against a series of police raids, often just on the suspicion of the newspaper writing a radical article. The result was that the *Manchester Observer* was almost continually shutdown from late 1819 onwards, finally closing in February 1820 where it recommended in editorial that readers now follow events via the newly formed *Manchester Guardian*.{{sfnp|6NZHAG97}}
Hunt and eight others were tried at York Assizes on 16 March 1820, charged with sedition. After a two-week trial, five of the ten defendants were found guilty. Hunt was sentenced to 30 months in Ilchester Gaol; Bamford, Johnson, and Healey were given one year each, and Knight was jailed for two years on a subsequent charge. A test case was brought against four members of the Manchester Yeomanry at Lancaster Assizes, on 4 April 1822: Captain Birley, Captain Withington, Trumpeter Meagher, and Private Oliver. All were acquitted, as the court ruled that their actions had been justified to disperse an illegal gathering.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|203–204}}
Notice “to the inhabitants of the Hundred of Salford”, published by the magistrates the day after the massacre
Wikimedia Commons
The government declared its support for the actions taken by the magistrates and the army. The Manchester magistrates held a supposedly public meeting on 19 August, so that resolutions supporting the action they had taken three days before could be published. Cotton merchants Archibald Prentice (later editor of *The Manchester Times*) and Absalom Watkin (a later corn-law reformer), both members of the Little Circle, organised a petition of protest against the violence at St Peter’s Field and the validity of the magistrate’s meeting. Within a few days it had collected 4800 signatures.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|195}} Nevertheless the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth, on 27 August conveyed to the magistrates the thanks of the Prince Regent for their action in the “preservation of the public peace”.{{sfnp|VTDM2N3J}} That public exoneration was met with fierce anger and criticism. During a debate at Hopkins Street Robert Wedderburn declared “The Prince is a fool with his Wonderful letters of thanks … What is the Prince Regent or King to us, we want no King – he is no use to us.”{{sfnp|BHDCSZ6Q|154}} In an open letter, Richard Carlile said:
Unless the Prince calls his ministers to account and relieved his people, he would surely be deposed and make them all REPUBLICANS, despite all adherence to ancient and established institutions.{{sfnp
— BHDCSZ6Q|154}}
For a few months following Peterloo it seemed to the authorities that the country was heading towards an armed rebellion. Encouraging them in that belief were two abortive uprisings, in Huddersfield and Burnley, during the autumn of 1819, and the discovery and foiling of the Cato Street Conspiracy to blow up the cabinet that winter.{{sfnp|BHDCSZ6Q|272}} By the end of the year, the government had introduced legislation, later known as the [Six Acts](https://engole.info/six-acts), to suppress radical meetings and publications, and by the end of 1820 every significant working-class radical reformer was in jail; civil liberties had declined to an even lower level than they were before Peterloo. The historian Robert Reid has written that “it is not fanciful to compare the restricted freedoms of the British worker in the post-Peterloo period in the early nineteenth century with those of the black South African in the post-Sharpeville period of the late twentieth century”.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|211}}
One direct consequence of Peterloo was the foundation of the *Manchester Guardian* newspaper in 1821, by the Little Circle group of non-conformist Manchester businessmen headed by John Edward Taylor, a witness to the massacre.{{sfnp|BI3CBEBQ}} The prospectus announcing the new publication proclaimed that it would “zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious Liberty … warmly advocate the cause of Reform … endeavour to assist in the diffusion of just principles of Political Economy and … support, without reference to the party from which they emanate, all serviceable measures”.{{sfnp|T8WL8GCQ}}
Events such as the Pentridge Rising, the March of the Blanketeers and the Spa Fields meeting, all serve to indicate the breadth, diversity and widespread geographical scale of the demand for economic and political reform at the time.{{sfnp|2LNP2TMR|32–33}} Peterloo had no effect on the speed of reform, but in due course all but one of the reformers’ demands, annual parliaments, were met.{{sfnp|MNS42M6Q|218}} Following the Great Reform Act of 1832, the newly created Manchester parliamentary borough elected its first two MPs. Five candidates including William Cobbett stood, and the Whigs, Charles Poulett Thomson and Mark Philips, were elected.{{sfnp|YU7HCSSU|25}} Manchester became a Municipal Borough in 1837, and what remained of the manorial rights were subsequently purchased by the borough council.
## Commemoration
Original blue plaque commemorating the Peterloo Massacre
Wikimedia Commons
The replacement red plaque, unveiled by the Lord Mayor of Manchester on 10 December 2007
Wikimedia Commons
The [Skelmanthorpe Flag](https://engole.info/skelmanthorpe-flag/) is believed to have been made in Skelmanthorpe, in the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1819, in part to honour the victims of the Peterloo Massacre.{{sfnp|GKRDD8T6}}
The Free Trade Hall, home of the Anti-Corn Law League, was built partly as a “cenotaph raised on the shades of the victims” of Peterloo.{{sfnp|5I3WVZPF|204}} Until 2007 the massacre was commemorated by a blue plaque on the wall of the present building, the third to occupy the site, now the Radisson Hotel. It was regarded as a less than appropriate memorial because it under reported the incident as a dispersal, and the deaths were omitted completely.{{sfnp|BI3CBEBQ}} In a 2006 survey conducted by The Guardian, Peterloo came second to St. Mary’s Church, Putney, the venue for the Putney Debates, as the event from British history that most deserved a proper monument.{{sfnp|DCKDHHHS}} A Peterloo Massacre Memorial Campaign was set up to lobby for a more appropriate monument to an event that has been described as Manchester’s Tiananmen Square.{{sfnp|UTDMESHQ}}
In 2007, Manchester City Council replaced the original blue plaque with a red one, giving a fuller account of the events of 1819. It was unveiled on 10 December 2007 by the Lord Mayor of Manchester, Councillor Glynn Evans.{{sfnp|XSK4439Z}} Under the heading “St. Peter’s Fields: The Peterloo Massacre”, the new plaque reads:
On 16 August 1819 a peaceful rally of 60,000 pro-democracy reformers, men, women and children, was attacked by armed cavalry resulting in 15 deaths and over 600 injuries.{{sfnp
— QCZMWFF4}}
In 1968, in celebration of its centenary, the Trades Union Congress commissioned British composer Sir Malcolm Arnold to write the *Peterloo Overture*.{{sfnp|BWEAZ4WJ|133–134}} Other 20th-century musical commemorations include “Ned Ludd Part 5” on electric folk group Steeleye Span’s 2006 album *Bloody Men*, and Rochdale rock band Tractor’s suite of five songs written and recorded in 1973, later included on their 1992 release *Worst Enemies*.
Mike Leigh’s feature-length film about the events of 1819, *Peterloo*, premiered in Manchester on 17 October 2018 as part of the London Film Festival.\[c\]Mike Leigh was born in nearby Salford. The actors Maxine Peake and Roy Kinnear appear in the film.{{sfnp|SZ56XYGC}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Using the retail price index{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} b Frow (1984), p. 8 lists Sarah as injured, not that she died. c Mike Leigh was born in nearby Salford.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 4730
**Categories:** Massacre
---
### [1996 Manchester bombing](https://engole.info/1996-manchester-bombing/)
**Published:** February 4, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/87/BBC_picture_Arndale_centre_after_1996_bomb.jpg[/pimage]Attack carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army on Saturday 15 June 1996, when they detonated a 15,000 kg bomb in the centre of Manchester, England.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/87/BBC_picture_Arndale_centre_after_1996_bomb.jpg)Corporation Street after the bombing
Wikipedia
The 1996 Manchester bombing was an attack carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on Saturday 15 June 1996. The IRA detonated a {{convert|15000|kg|adj=on}} lorry bomb on Corporation Street in the centre of Manchester, England. The biggest bomb detonated in Great Britain since the Second World War,{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|139}} it targeted the city’s infrastructure and economy and caused devastating damage, estimated by insurers at £700 million (equivalent to £1.3 billion in 2019) – only surpassed by the 2001 September 11 attacks and the 1993 Bishopsgate bombing in terms of financial cost.{{sfnp|9W36LHAQ}}
The IRA had sent telephoned warnings about 90 minutes before the bomb detonated. At least 75,000 people were evacuated from the area,{{sfnp|HV3APV4G}} but the bomb squad were unable to defuse the bomb in time. More than 200 people were injured but there were no fatalities,{{sfnp|QLHUXAG2}} despite the strength of the bomb, which has been largely credited to the fast response of the emergency services in evacuating the city centre before the explosion.{{sfnp|F7MMEZPD}}{{sfnp|HMTYXD68}} At the time, England was hosting the Euro ’96 football championships, and a Russia vs. Germany match was scheduled to take place in Manchester the following day.
Although Manchester had been targeted by the IRA before, it had not been subjected to an attack on this scale. In February 1996, the IRA had ended its seventeen-month ceasefire with a large truck bomb attack on London’s Canary Wharf financial district, though the 3,300-pound bomb of Manchester was three times the size of the Canary Wharf bomb.{{sfnp|HV3APV4G}} The Manchester bombing was condemned by the British and Irish governments and U.S. President Bill Clinton. Five days after the blast, the IRA issued a statement from Dublin in which it claimed responsibility, but regretted causing injury to civilians.{{sfnp|6B6TP8SV}}
Several buildings near the explosion were damaged beyond repair and had to be demolished, while many more were closed for months for structural repairs. Most of the rebuilding work was completed by the end of 1999, at a cost of £1.2 billion, although redevelopment continued until 2005. The perpetrators of the attack have not been caught, and Greater Manchester Police have conceded it is unlikely that anyone will be charged in connection with the bombing.{{sfnp|BKBBNFDR}} The bombing has however been viewed by some as a catalyst for starting the city’s mass regeneration and turning Manchester into a modern British “powerhouse” city with above national average economic growth in the twenty years following the bombing.{{sfnp|QLHUXAG2}}{{sfnp|Y474C4G5}}{{sfnp|E5JDRUKX}}
## Background
From 1970 the Provisional Irish Republican Army was carrying out an armed campaign aimed ultimately at bringing about a united Ireland. As well as attacking military and political targets, it also bombed infrastructure and commercial targets in Northern Ireland and England. It believed that by damaging the economy and causing severe disruption, it could pressure the British government to negotiate a withdrawal from Northern Ireland.{{sfnp|FGLBL78G|20}} Manchester had been the target of earlier IRA bombs. Firebombs damaged city centre businesses in 1973 and 1974, for which a man was later imprisoned. In April 1974, a bomb exploded at Manchester Magistrates’ Court, injuring twelve. In 1975, IRA bomb factories were found in Greater Manchester and five men were imprisoned for planning attacks in North West England.{{sfnp|9K6DSIER}} On 4 December 1992, the IRA detonated two small bombs in Manchester city centre, forcing police to evacuate thousands of shoppers. More than 60 were hurt by shattered glass and the blasts cost an estimated £10 million in damage and business losses.{{sfnp|IDQSRAS2}}
The Downing Street Declaration of 1993 allowed Sinn Féin, a political party associated with the IRA,{{sfnp|6B6TP8SV}}{{sfnp|BF8625D3|258}} to participate in all-party peace negotiations on condition that the IRA called a ceasefire. The IRA called a ceasefire on 31 August 1994. John Major’s government, dependent on Ulster Unionist Party votes, then began insisting that the IRA must fully disarm before there could be any all-party negotiations. The IRA saw this as a demand for total surrender and believed the British were unwilling to hold negotiations.{{sfnp|FYVHUW6C|128-130}} It ended its ceasefire on 9 February 1996 when it detonated a powerful truck bomb in Canary Wharf, one of London’s two financial districts. The blast killed two people and caused an estimated £150 million worth of damage.{{sfnp|9K6DSIER}} The IRA then planted five other devices in London within the space of 10 weeks.{{sfnp|ACSL6WD8}}
The IRA planned to carry out a similar bombing in Manchester. The city may have been chosen because it was one of the host cities of the Euro ’96 football tournament, attended by visitors and media organisations from all over Europe, guaranteeing the IRA what Margaret Thatcher called the “oxygen of publicity”. A Russia vs Germany match was to take place at Old Trafford in Manchester a day after the bombing.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|29}} The year before, Manchester had also won its bid to host the 2002 Commonwealth Games,{{sfnp|XMEV6WXK}} at the time the biggest multi-sport event ever to be staged in Britain.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|183}}
On 10 June 1996, multi-party negotiations began in Belfast. Sinn Féin had been elected to take part but were barred because the IRA had not resumed its ceasefire or agreed to disarm.{{sfnp|IE9GBVCU}}
## Details of the bombing
The IRA’s South Armagh Brigade was tasked with planning and carrying out the attack. It had also been responsible for the Canary Wharf bombing in February, and the Bishopsgate bombing in 1993. Its members mixed the explosives in Ireland and shipped them by freight from Dublin to England. In London, the bomb was assembled and loaded into the back of a red and white Ford Cargo van. On 14 June it was driven north towards Manchester, accompanied by a Ford Granada which served as a “scout car”.{{sfnp|TW5NG2NY|343-344}}
### Discovery
At about 9:20 am on Saturday 15 June 1996, the Ford van was parked on Corporation Street, outside the Marks & Spencer store, near the Arndale Centre.{{sfnp|Y3NQ9LCU}} After setting the bomb’s timer, two men – wearing hooded jackets, baseball caps and sunglasses – left the vehicle and walked to Cathedral Street, where a third man picked them up in the Ford Granada.{{sfnp|TW5NG2NY|343-344}} The truck had been parked on double yellow lines with its hazard lights flashing.{{sfnp|HV3APV4G}} Within three minutes a traffic warden had issued the vehicle with a parking ticket and called for its removal.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|5}} At about 9:40 am, Granada Studios on Quay Street received a telephone call claiming that there was a bomb at the corner of Corporation Street and Cannon Street and that it would explode in one hour. The caller had an Irish accent and gave an IRA codeword so that police would know the threat was genuine.{{sfnp|Y3NQ9LCU}}{{sfnp|KKBZUG6X}} Four other telephoned warnings were sent to television/radio stations, newspapers and a hospital.{{sfnp|MDI2LVQX|228}}{{sfnp|9R9SGM2S|83}}
The first policeman to arrive on the scene noticed wires running from the van’s dashboard through a hole into the back and reported that he had found the bomb. Forensic experts later estimated that the bomb weighed 1500–1600 kg (3300–3500 lb){{sfnp|FYVHUW6C|131}} and was a mixture of semtex, a military-grade plastic explosive, and ammonium nitrate fertiliser,{{sfnp|KEBT4BQ7|29}} a cheap and easily obtainable explosive used extensively by the IRA.{{sfnp|4EHB5DED}} Components of what may have been a tremble trigger were also found later, designed to detonate the bomb if it was tampered with.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|6}}
### Evacuation
At 10:00 am, there were an estimated 75,000–80,000 people shopping and working in the vicinity. An evacuation of the area was undertaken by police officers from Bootle Street police station, supplemented by officers drafted into Manchester to help control the football crowds. The police were helped by security guards from local shops.{{sfnp|Y3NQ9LCU}}{{sfnp|KBVC297A}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8d/Manchester_1996_explosion_stills.jpg)Stills taken from India 99, a Greater Manchester Police helicopter, showing the Ford van moments before the blast, the explosion taking place, and the resulting mushroom cloud over the city, dwarfing the adjacent 23-storey high-rise, Arndale House.
Wikipedia
### Explosion
The bomb squad arrived from their Liverpool base at 10:46 am and attempted to defuse the bomb using a remote-controlled device, but they ran out of time. The bomb exploded at 11:17 am, causing an estimated £700 million of damage and affecting a third of the city centre’s retail space. Marks & Spencer, the sky bridge connecting it with the Arndale Centre, and neighbouring buildings were destroyed.{{sfnp|Y3NQ9LCU}} The largest peacetime bomb ever detonated in Great Britain,{{sfnp|9K6DSIER}} the blast created a mushroom cloud that rose 300 metres (1000 ft) from the ground.{{sfnp|FYVHUW6C|132}} The explosion could be heard up to {{convert|15|mi}} away, and left a crater 15 metres (50 ft) wide.{{sfnp|HV3APV4G}} Glass and masonry were thrown into the air, and behind the police cordon – up to half a mile (800 m) away – people were showered by falling debris.{{sfnp|9X7A9FEL}} There were no fatalities, but 212 people were injured. A search of the area for casualties was confused by mannequins blasted from shop windows, which were sometimes mistaken for bodies. Hospitals across Greater Manchester were made ready to receive those injured in the blast.{{sfnp|Y3NQ9LCU}} The police commandeered a Metrolink tram to take 50 of the casualties to North Manchester General Hospital, which treated 79 in total; a further 80 were cared for at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, and many others were treated in the streets by ambulance crews assisted by doctors and nurses who happened to be in the city centre that morning.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|21-22}}
## Reaction
In his initial response to the bombing, the British Prime Minister John Major stated that “This explosion looks like the work of the IRA. It is the work of a few fanatics and … causes absolute revulsion in Ireland as it does here”.{{sfnp|NSQSCUIY}} Sinn Féin was criticised by Taoiseach John Bruton for being “struck mute” on the attack in the immediate aftermath. Bruton described the bombing as “a slap in the face to people who’ve been trying, against perhaps their better instincts, to give Sinn Féin a chance to show that they could persuade the IRA to reinstate the ceasefire”.{{sfnp|NSQSCUIY}} The President of the United States, Bill Clinton, stated he was “deeply outraged by the bomb explosion” and joined Bruton and Major in “utterly condemning this brutal and cowardly act of terrorism”.{{sfnp|K37QMM3G}} Sinn Féin President, Gerry Adams, stated that he was “shocked and saddened” by the bombing. He insisted that his party was committed to achieving a peace settlement and argued “it is sheer folly to return to the old agenda of excluding Sinn Féin and seeking to isolate republicans”.{{sfnp|SH4UI4RW}} On 20 June 1996, the IRA claimed responsibility for the bombing, and stated that it “sincerely regretted” causing injury to civilians.{{sfnp|6B6TP8SV}} The IRA statement continued:
The British Government has spent the last 22 months since August ’94 trying to force the surrender of IRA weapons and the defeat of the republican struggle. We are still prepared to enhance the democratic peace process … but if there is to be a lasting peace … then the British Government must put the democratic rights of all of the people of Ireland before its own party political self interest.{{sfnp
— 4SWMI86J}}|*The Irish Times*
The bombing came five days after the beginning of the peace talks in Belfast, and represented the IRA’s opposition to talks which excluded republicans.{{sfnp|IXBI9MNT|203}} The attack was part of a political strategy by the IRA to be included in negotiations on their own terms.{{sfnp|F68ZDJXP|137}} According to the historian Richard English: “What they were doing with their return to bombings like the Manchester bomb was saying, ‘We can still return to war if we want to. We can still put off a huge bomb in your cities and devastate them and therefore you have to deal with us’ ”.{{sfnp|BJRIX6D2}}
In an effort to allay fears that Manchester’s considerable Irish community might be subjected to reprisal attacks, Councillors Richard Leese and Martin Pagel – leader and deputy leader of Manchester City Council respectively – made a public visit to the Irish World Heritage Centre in Cheetham Hill. In the event there were only a few incidents, the most serious of which occurred on the evening of the bombing, when a gang of ten men rampaged through an Irish-themed bar in the centre of Middleton, shouting the Ulster loyalist slogan “No surrender” and smashing furniture and windows.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|41-44}} Seven days after the bombing, Manchester Council held a ‘family fun day’ in front of the Town Hall in Albert Square to encourage shoppers and visitors back into the city centre, the first of a “series of events and entertainments”. The Euro ’96 football match between Russia and Germany at Old Trafford went ahead as planned the day following the bombing, after the stadium had been heavily guarded overnight and carefully searched; the game, which Germany won 3–0, was watched by a capacity crowd of 50,700.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|52}}
## Investigation
In an effort to trace the route of the Ford van, police examined CCTV footage from every major road and motorway taken in England within two days of the bombing. Footage revealed that the van was driven south along the M1 motorway into London on the Friday afternoon before the attack. It was seen again heading north along the motorway at 7:40 pm, accompanied by the Ford Granada. Detectives surmised that the van had been loaded with explosives in London and that the Granada was intended to be the getaway vehicle. The truck was last recorded travelling east along the M62 motorway towards Manchester at 8:31 am on the morning of the explosion.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|65-66}}
Police in Manchester were aware that their Metropolitan Police colleagues in London were investigating a suspected IRA unit based in the capital, and wondered whether the London unit was responsible for the Manchester bombing. On 15 July, Metropolitan police arrested six men suspected of IRA membership: Donal Gannon, John Crawley, Gerard Hanratty, Robert Morrow, Patrick Martin, and Francis Rafferty. Each was tried and convicted of “conspiracy to cause explosions at National Grid electricity stations”, and sentenced to 35 years in jail.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|67}}{{sfnp|EAJPYHRA}} Police in Manchester meanwhile worked to establish if the men were also responsible for the Manchester bomb.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|67}}
The police investigation was led by Detective Chief Inspector Gordon Mutch of the Greater Manchester Police (GMP), “astonishingly … the only person ever charged with a criminal offence in connection with the Manchester bomb”.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|163}} The van’s last registered owner told police that he had sold it to a dealer in Peterborough, who had in turn sold the van on to a man calling himself Tom Fox, two weeks before the bombing. After the purchase price was delivered in cash by a taxi driver, the dealer was instructed to take the van to a nearby lorry park, and leave it there with the keys and documents hidden inside.
On checking records of telephone calls made to the dealer, the police found that some had been made from a mobile phone registered in Ireland, and on further checking the records of that phone it appeared that the calls were made from locations consistent with the known whereabouts of the Ford truck. One call was to a known IRA member. The phone was last used at 9:23 am on the morning of the bombing, just three minutes after the bombers had parked their truck in Corporation Street. On 27 June, the phone’s registered owner reported that it had been stolen 17 days earlier, but the police felt they had gathered enough evidence to bring a prosecution against the six IRA men held in London.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|67-69}}
At a meeting attended by the commander of Special Branch in Manchester, a GMP assistant chief constable and a “senior officer” from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), it was decided, for reasons never made public, not to present the findings of the investigation to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the body responsible for undertaking criminal prosecutions in England. The three may have felt that as the IRA suspects were already in police custody they were no longer a threat, or that to pursue the case against them may have jeopardised ongoing undercover operations. It was not until 1998 that the police finally sent their file to the CPS, who decided not to prosecute.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|69-71}}
## Leak
Early in 1999, Steve Panter, chief crime reporter for the *Manchester Evening News*, leaked classified Special Branch documents naming those suspected of the bombing. The documents also revealed that the man suspected of organising the attack had visited Manchester shortly after the bombing and been under covert police surveillance as he toured the devastated city centre before returning to his home in South Armagh.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|163-164}} Suspicion fell on Mutch as the source of the leaked documents after an analysis of mobile phone records placed both him and Panter at the same hotel in Skipton, North Yorkshire, about {{convert|40|mi}} from Manchester on the same evening.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|166-167}}
On 21 April 1999, the *Manchester Evening News* named a man it described as “a prime suspect in the 1996 Manchester bomb plot”.{{sfnp|BMP7U7NN}} The newspaper reported that the file sent by Greater Manchester Police to the Crown Prosecution Service contained the sentence: “It is the opinion of the investigating officers of GMP that there is sufficient evidence to charge \[him\] with being a party in a conspiracy to cause explosions in the United Kingdom.”{{sfnp|LT5J9PU5}} The man denied any involvement.{{sfnp|48FTXBP9}} The Attorney General wrote in a letter to a local MP that the advice given to the CPS by an independent lawyer was that “there was not a case to answer on the evidence available … a judge would stop the case”: the attorney general further wrote that the decision not to prosecute was not influenced by the government. The newspaper also identified the six men arrested in London on 15 July as having planned the attack.{{sfnp|N3LTSAWX}}{{sfnp|YNAK5CS5}} By July 2000 all six had been released under the terms of the 1998 Belfast Agreement.{{sfnp|BQ3JCKRV|43}}
As of 2019, Panter and Mutch are the only people to have been arrested in connection with the bombing. Mutch was tried for “misconduct in a public office” during an 11-day trial held in January 2002 but was acquitted. During the trial Panter was found in contempt of court for refusing to reveal his source,{{sfnp|BQ3JCKRV|46-77}} an offence punishable by a term of imprisonment without the right of appeal.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|171}} Greater Manchester Police announced in 2006 that there was no realistic chance of convicting those responsible for the bombing.{{sfnp|BKBBNFDR}}
## Reconstruction
About twelve buildings in the immediate vicinity of the explosion were severely damaged. Overall, {{convert|530000|sqft|sqm}} of retail space and {{convert|610000|sqft|sqm}} of office space were put out of use.{{sfnp|6LNWBQDE|86-87}} Insurers paid out £411 million in damages for what was at the time one of the most expensive man-made disasters ever,{{sfnp|HEIXXTTV}} and there was considerable under-insurance.{{sfnp|6LNWBQDE|86-87}} Victims of the bombing received a total of £1,145,971 in compensation from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority; one individual received £146,524, the largest amount awarded as a result of this incident.{{sfnp|MHNC54GD}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Manchester_1996_bomb_epicentre.jpg)Close to the location of the blast, 2009
Wikimedia Commons
According to Home Office statistics, an estimated 400 businesses within half a mile (0.8 km) of the blast were affected, 40 per cent of which did not recover.{{sfnp|KPLWTEQX}} The heaviest damage was sustained by the three buildings nearest the bomb: Michael House, comprising a Marks & Spencer store and a six-storey office block; Longridge House, offices for Royal and Sun Alliance, an insurance company; and the Arndale Centre, a shopping mall.{{sfnp|JPTGERL4|256}} Michael House was deemed beyond economic repair and demolished. Marks & Spencer took the opportunity to acquire and demolish the adjacent Longridge House, using the enlarged site for the world’s biggest branch of the store.{{sfnp|6LNWBQDE|86-87}} The company’s fortunes changed during construction, and Selfridges subsequently co-occupied the building;{{sfnp|6LNWBQDE|86-87, 183-187, 218}} Marks & Spencer leased part of the Lewis’s store in the interim.{{sfnp|JPTGERL4|256}} The frontage of the Arndale was badly damaged and was removed in a remodelling of that part of the city centre.{{sfnp|6LNWBQDE|86-87}}
Coming to Manchester \[after the bombing\] was a journey I shall never forget. I sat on the train obviously deeply shocked and horrified. I knew that questions would be asked about what we were going to do; what is the right solution. Then I knew what the right solution was – to see this event, horrific as it was, as an opportunity and, no mucking about, we must do things on the grand scale and to the best quality we can.{{sfnp
— DAZICRIEThe glass domes of the Corn Exchange and the [Royal Exchange](https://engole.info/manchester-royal-exchange/) were blown in. The landlord of the Corn Exchange invoked a force majeure condition in the lease to evict all tenants, and the building was converted into a shopping centre.{{sfnp|JPTGERL4|261}} The dome of the Royal Exchange shifted in the blast; its reconstruction took two and a half years and cost £32 million, paid for by the National Lottery.{{sfnp|JPTGERL4|256}}{{sfnp|W5RQ9DN4}}
The possibility of rebuilding parts of the city centre was raised within days of the bomb. On 26 June 1996, Michael Heseltine, the Deputy Prime Minister, announced an international competition for designs of the redevelopment of the bomb-affected area. Bids were received from twenty-seven entrants, five of whom were invited to submit designs in a second round.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|129-30, 143}} It was announced on 5 November 1996 that the winning design was one by a consortium headed by EDAW.{{sfnp|6LNWBQDE|108}}
## Redevelopment
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Corporation_Street_bollards.jpg)New security safeguards were included in the redevelopment of the city centre, including retractable bollards and pedestrianised streets.
Wikimedia Commons
Much of the 1960s redevelopment of Manchester’s city centre was unpopular with residents. Market Street, near the explosion and at that time the second-busiest shopping street in the UK, was considered by some commentators a “fearful” place, to be “avoided like the plague”.{{sfnp|JPTGERL4|222}} Until Margaret Thatcher’s third consecutive election victory in 1987, the staunchly Labour-controlled Manchester Council believed that Manchester’s regeneration should be funded solely by public money, despite the government’s insistence on only funding schemes with a significant element of private investment. Graham Stringer, leader of Manchester City Council, later admitted that after the 1987 General Election result “there was no get out of jail card. We had gambled on Labour winning the General Election and we lost.”{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|84-85}} Thatcher’s victory effectively put paid to Manchester’s “socialist experiment”, and Stringer shortly afterwards wrote a letter of capitulation to Nicholas Ridley, then Secretary of State for the Environment, saying, “in a nutshell; OK, you win, we’d like to work together with you”.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|85}}
Efforts at improvement before the bombing had in some respects made matters worse, cutting off the area north of the Arndale Centre – the exterior of which was widely unloved – from the rest of the city centre. A large building nearby, now redeveloped as The Printworks and formerly occupied by the *Daily Mirror* newspaper, had been unoccupied since 1987.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|181}} Many locals therefore considered that “the bomb was the best thing that ever happened to Manchester”,{{sfnp|D3GRDZK3}} as it cleared the way for redevelopment of the dysfunctional city centre, a view also expressed in 2007 by Terry Rooney, MP for Bradford North. The leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition on Manchester City Council, Simon Ashley, responded that “I take exception to his \[Rooney’s\] comments about the IRA bomb. No one who was in the city on that day, who lost their jobs or was scared witless or injured by the blast, would say the bomb was the best thing to happen to Manchester”.{{sfnp|E8QGUIWH}} Sir Gerald Kaufman, MP for Manchester Gorton, stated that the bomb provided the opportunity for redeveloping Manchester city centre, although it was not fully exploited. “The bomb was obviously bad but from a redevelopment point of view, it was a lost opportunity. While the area around St Ann’s Square and Deansgate is not disagreeable, if you compare it with Birmingham and its exciting development, we’ve got nothing to touch that in Manchester”.{{sfnp|E8QGUIWH}} Howard Bernstein, chief executive of Manchester City Council, has been quoted as saying “people say the bomb turned out to be a great thing for Manchester. That’s rubbish.”{{sfnp|BQ3JCKRV|80}} There was already substantial regeneration and redevelopment taking place in the city centre before the bombing, in support of the Manchester bid for the 2000 Summer Olympics, its second Olympic bid. Tom Bloxham, chairman of property development group Urban Splash and of the Arts Council England (North West), agreed with Bernstein that the bomb attack was not the trigger for the large-scale redevelopment that has taken place in Manchester since the early 1990s:
For me the turning point for Manchester came before the bomb … it was the second Olympic Games bid [in 1992] when we lost but the city suddenly had a realisation. There was a huge party in Castlefield and people grasped the idea that Manchester should no longer consider itself in competition with the likes of Barnsley and Stockport. It was now up against Barcelona, Los Angeles and Sydney and its aspirations increased accordingly.{{sfnp
— DAZICRIE|219}}|Tom Bloxham
## Memorials
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Manchester_bomb_survivor.jpg)A pillar box that withstood the bomb blast. A memorial brass plaque commemorates the 1996 bomb.
Wikimedia Commons
A pillar box that survived the blast, despite being yards from the explosion, now carries a small brass plaque recording the bombing. It was removed during construction and redevelopment work and returned to its original spot when Corporation Street was reopened.{{sfnp|DAZICRIE|148-149}} The plaque reads:
This postbox remained standing almost undamaged on June 15th 1996 when this area was devastated by a bomb. The box was removed during the rebuilding of the city centre and was returned to its original site on November 22nd 1999
At 11:17 am on 15 June 2006, a candle was lit at a memorial held at Manchester Cathedral to mark the tenth anniversary of the bombing.{{sfnp|SINYJJ89}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22579
**Categories:** Terrorist attack
---
### [Colonel John Gordon](https://engole.info/colonel-john-gordon/)
**Published:** February 15, 2021
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** Daubed "The richest commoner in Scotland", Colonel John Gordon owned estates on mainland Scotland and purchased several Scottish islands
**Content:**
John Gordon (1776 – 16 July 1858) was a Scottish soldier, Tory politician and the richest commoner in Scotland. The son of Charles Gordon of Braid and Cluny, Aberdeenshire, and his wife Johanna Trotter, Gordon became a 2nd lieutenant in the Royal Aberdeenshire Light Infantry on 2 December 1800. He was then lieutenant in the 7th Company of the 55th Aberdeenshire Militia on 25 April 1804. In 1804 Gordon made a grand tour of Egypt, carving his name on many ancient monuments. He returned home via Gibraltar, where he boarded HMS Victory, which also brought home the mortal remains of Admiral Horatio Nelson. Arriving back in England in December 1805, Gordon became a major on 11 August 1808, lieutenant-colonel on 6 June 1820, then rose to the rank of Honorary Colonel in 1836.{{sfnp|HQXJ8RU9|13}}\[a\]Colonel Gordon’s father, Charles Gordon of Braid and Cluny (1740–1814), a Principal Clerk of Session and Writer to the Signet, married the Colonel’s mother, Johanna (d. 10 August 1798{{sfnp|PG4TSL9C}}), the daughter of Thomas Trotter of Mortonhall, in 1775.{{sfnp|ZC5DG8FP}}
The scene of wretchedness which we witnessed, as we entered on the estate of Col. Gordon, was deplorable, nay, heart rending. On the beach the whole population of the country seemed to be met, gathering the precious cockles … I never witnessed such countenances,– starvation on many faces– the children with their melancholy looks, big looking knees, shriveled legs, hollow eyes, swollen-like bellies,– God help them, I never did witness such wretchedness!{{sfnp
— I6DSY8H2On the death of his father in 1814, Gordon inherited the family estates including [Cluny Castle](https://engole.info/cluny-castle/); he was already a wealthy man as he also succeeded to his uncle’s estate, who had been a merchant in West India.{{sfnp|YBT8UGJM|460-462}} After the British government introduced the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 Gordon received a compensation payment from it of £24,964. His six plantations in the Caribbean island of Tobago had 1383 slaves.{{sfnp|9X2UEACH}} Additional properties, including the Scottish islands of North and South Uist, Benbecula and Barra, were added to his land portfolio.{{sfnp|YBT8UGJM|460-462}} He was described by the architectural historian Harry Gordon Slade{{sfnp|GRCBFKSE}} as a “model landlord” to tenants on his Aberdeenshire properties,{{sfnp|YBT8UGJM|462}} although he was responsible for the expulsion of tenants in the Highland Clearances from the islands.{{sfnp|IBCYNTNI}} Tenants from his estates on the Outer Hebrides – about 3000 people – were forced to emigrate to Canada in 1851. The Colonel’s actions are described by modern-day academic James A. Stewart Junior as “one of Scotland’s most brutal clearances” and “particularly brutal”.{{sfnp|I6DSY8H2|205}}
Elected as the Member of Parliament for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis in 1826, Gordon complained that getting elected cost him £40,000; he “abandoned his parliamentary career in disgust” in 1832.{{sfnp|PG4TSL9C}}
Gordon died a bachelor without legal issue on 16 July 1858,{{sfnp|PG4TSL9C}} although he had four illegitimate children: John, Charles, Susan and Mary,{{sfnp|JA5JUIHN}} with his housekeeper.{{sfnp|ZC5DG8FP}} Of his illegitimate children, John Gordon of Cluny, his eldest son, was the only one to outlive him.{{sfnp|YBT8UGJM|462}} After several legal challenges, the estate eventually passed to the widow of John Gordon of Cluny, Colonel Gordon’s son, [Lady Emily Gordon Cathcart](https://engole.info/lady-emily-gordon-cathcart/),{{sfnp|YBT8UGJM|463}} who continued sending evictees from her lands to Canada.{{sfnp|IBCYNTNI}} In *[The Gentleman’s Magazine](https://engole.info/the-gentlemans-magazine/)* the obituary written for Colonel Gordon describes him as “without doubt the richest commoner in Scotland.”{{sfnp|476V95P5|310}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Colonel Gordon’s father, Charles Gordon of Braid and Cluny (1740–1814), a Principal Clerk of Session and Writer to the Signet, married the Colonel’s mother, Johanna (d. 10 August 1798{{sfnp|PG4TSL9C}}), the daughter of Thomas Trotter of Mortonhall, in 1775.{{sfnp|ZC5DG8FP}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23473
**Categories:** Landowner, Male, Politician, Scottish, Soldier
---
### [Alison Pearson, witch](https://engole.info/alison-pearson-witch/)
**Published:** July 11, 2019
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** Scottish woman found guilty of sorcery, witchcraft and invoking the spirits of the Devil in 1588, then strangled and burned.
**Content:**
On 28 May 1588 Alison Pearson, a healer and visionary, stood trial in Fife, Scotland, accused of sorcery, witchcraft and invoking the spirits of the Devil. This was the second time she had faced accusations of being a witch; she had been held in custody on 28 August 1583, until the intervention of Patrick Adamson, the Bishop of St Andrews.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|99}} In 1584 Robert Sempill penned a lampoon based on the bishop’s dealings with witches, including Adamson’s consultation with Alison.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|100,102}}
Alison was found guilty, strangled and burned,{{sfnp|TIL9BX57|112}} probably on Castle Hill, Edinburgh.{{sfnp|DXB45NIB|165}}
## Healing
Alison Pearson,\[a\]In Scotland and England during the sixteenth century spelling was haphazard leading to many words, places and names having several variations. Modern-day texts often use an anglicised version.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|15-16}} Alternative spellings of her name are: Alesoune or Alesoun together with any combination of Peirson;{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|19}} Peirsoun;{{sfnp|WGHVEMID|9}} Pearsoun; or Piersoun. born in about 1553,{{sfnp|9PK5ZEGY|219}} was a healer and visionary who lived in Boarhills, Fife.{{sfnp|PFSQ9V59|106}}{{sfnp|5BCDJ28M|219}}\[b\]Boarhills is sometimes given as Byrehills At the age of twelve she suffered from an unspecified ailment that left her with a weak hand and foot. A relative, William Simpson,\[c\]Spelling variations include Simson, Simpsoune or Sympsoune had medical knowledge, so over the next seven years Alison frequently travelled to his home in Edinburgh to receive treatment.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|102}} The services he provided helped her gain better use of her affected limbs; he also schooled her in diagnostics and methods to remedy any afflictions identified.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|102-103}}
Alison developed into a skilled healer with a wide-ranging reputation, and regularly visited St Andrews over a sixteen-year period to ply her trade.{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|85, 130}} One of her clients was Patrick Adamson, Bishop of St Andrews, a controversial figure during a time of political and ecclesiastical turmoil.{{sfnp|YM4G2HRM|206-207}} He was resident in St Andrews Castle from April 1582 until August 1583; records indicate he was severely incapacitated at that time by an acute illness, which kept him confined to the castle.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|100}} Alison’s treatment improved his condition, but the Bishop’s political opponents snatched at the chance to accuse him of consorting with a witch, an “emissary of the Devil”.{{sfnp|2NI9S7TN|20}}
Suspected of being a witch, by the end of August 1583, Alison was incarcerated. Adamson met with the members of the Kirk session on 28 August seeking its judgement concerning her.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|99}} The Presbytery declared her guilty of witchcraft, instructing Adamson to keep her imprisoned in the castle in readiness for her execution but he allowed her to escape. For several years, until her trial in 1588, Alison avoided coming to the further attention of the Kirk sessions.{{sfnp|BFFSDIMD}}
## Fairies and spirit guides
The indictment against Alison at her trial in May 1588 lists her associations with fairies and the Queen of Elphame among her transgressions.{{sfnp|DXB45NIB|161-162}} The first item of her testimony confirms her illness as a child and that she was treated by her scholarly relative, William Simpson.{{sfnp|NNTU2S3X|142}}\[d\]The relationship between Alison and William Simpson is unclear; nineteenth-century journalist and writer, Eliza Lynn Linton (10 February 1822 – 14 July 1898){{sfnp|JXASXL53}} describes him as Alison’s cousin;{{sfnp|6TE59V4J|12}} others, such as Maxwell-Stuart and Goodare for example, designate him as her uncle.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|102}}{{sfnp|8UT69D3U|162}} She goes on to explain that when Simpson was about eight-years-old he had been abducted by an Egyptian and forced to live with them in Egypt for twelve years before he was able to return to Scotland, but was later taken away by the fairies.{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|60}}
Alison was unable to specify how much time she had spent with the fairies, but the Queen of the Elphame, with whom she was well acquainted, had been helpful to her when she was so inclined. Alison had several good friends – some were blood relatives – within the fairy court but she interacted predominantly with fairies of the lower classes. Her kinsman, Simpson, acted as a mentor and intermediary with the fairy world.{{sfnp|DXB45NIB|161-162}}
Alison did not know when the fairies would arrive; sometimes it was when she was in good health, other times when she was ill in bed. They let her help them collect herbs and join in when they concocted embrocations. The Fairy Queen was absent for seven years during which time the fairies treated Alison poorly; they were abusive and violent towards her, hitting her so severely that she was bedridden for weeks having lost all strength in her side.{{sfnp|DXB45NIB|162}} She became scared of the fairies and they often made her cry. They told her she would have everything she desired, and more, providing she did not reveal their secrets but if she spoke of them she would be murdered. On another occasion, she had witnessed them dancing, playing musical instruments, drinking wine and making merry.{{sfnp|DXB45NIB|163}}
Aside from Simpson, Alison had other spirit guides. She went on a trip to Grangemuir with friends but became ill so lay down to rest while her companions continued on their way; a green-clothed man appeared at her side telling her that he would help her if she aided him in return. Filled with fear, Alison shouted to her friends for help but they were too far away to hear her pleas. She managed to scare him away when she called upon help from God. Praying and making the sign of the cross was sufficient to chase away another male spirit guide who came to her on another occasion.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|104}}
## Robert Sempill’s lampoon
An old woman of the Queen of Fairies,
That carries evilly gained goods to Elfame.
Through all Breadalbane she has been
On horseback, on Hallowe’en;
And always in seeking, certain nights,
As she says, with our seely wights;
And gives the names of six or seven neighbours,
That we had believed were in heaven.{{sfnp
— YM4G2HRMRobert Sempill penned a lampoon, *The Legend of the Bischop of St Androis*, in 1584 that describes Adamson’s dealings with witches.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|100}} Writing in *Scottish Fairy Belief*, scholars Lizanne Henderson and Edward Cowan describe the poem as having “immortalised \[Alison\] as a witch”.{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|130}} Basically a work of fiction,{{sfnp|YM4G2HRM|207}} it contains lines that academics such as Julian Goodare, Peter Maxwell-Stuart and others agree specifically refer to Alison.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|102}}{{sfnp|YM4G2HRM|207}}
The satire describes Adamson seeking help from three witches. The first is nameless, but she supplies a large and varied selection of magical practices to the bishop; these were tried out on his horse but it died. Next, the services of a witch from Anstruther were sought out; she provides a concoction of dried frogs mixed with eggs from black hens added into some wine dregs.{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|165}}\[e\]Maxwell-Stuart identifies the second witch in the lampoon as another real person, Agnes Melville, a healer whom Adamson also consulted. Imprisoned from February 1588, she was told a trial would be held around mid-November;{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|107}} other details are sketchy. She was found guilty, although she may not have been executed until some time later – but before September 1595 – as records indicate she was free and active in the interim.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|107}}{{sfnp|M3CV6R9B|236-237}} The third witch Sempill’s caricature of the prelate turned to was Alison; styling her as an elderly woman who rode out with the fairies and [seely wights](https://engole.info/seely-wights/), mention was also made of her relative, William Simpson. The poet then introduced verses of a sexual nature:{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|166}}
> Closing the door behind his back
> And quietly to her he spak,
> And said his tool was of no worth:
> Loosing his breeks he laid it forth.
> She sained it with her holy hand,
> The pure pith of the prior’s wand:
> When she had sained it twice or thrice,
> His rubigo began to rise:
> Then said the bishop to \[his\] ‘John Bell’,
> Go take the first sight of her yoursel.
> The witch to him her vessel gave,
> The bishop’s blessing to receive.
Sempill, a presbyterian,{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|101}} was one of the bishop’s fiercest detractors;{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|165}} he was also a favoured childhood friend of James Melville\[f\]James Melville (1556-1614), diplomat, minister and writer of memoirs, he was responsible for Adamson being excommunicated in 1586.{{sfnp|CG5ZIQDU}} and his uncle, Andrew Melville,\[g\]Andrew Melville (1545–1622), scholar, theologian and religious reformist, a powerful but controversial figure who was appointed moderator of the General Assembly of Scotland; among some of the characterisations given to him was “the father of Scottish Presbyterianism”.{{sfnp|VEUUDDYT|1}}{{sfnp|UHFYE7DV}} both of whom were bitter opponents of Adamson.{{sfnp|BFFSDIMD}}{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|167}} Among the dignitaries Sempill satirically described Alison associating with while she was in the company of the fairies were the courtier and diplomat of Mary, Queen of Scots, William Maitland of Lethington, who had committed suicide in Leith Prison in 1573 and one of the Buccleuch lairds, who had died fighting with his arch enemies; Buccleuch was also a stalwart of the Scottish Queen.{{sfnp|NNTU2S3X|142}}
## Modern interpretations
The effects of the lampoon were long-lasting, tainting anti-episcopal vitriol in Scotland for decades as well as having a bearing on how women were investigated in ensuing witchcraft trials.{{sfnp|BFFSDIMD}} At the beginning of the twenty-first century, assembling all relevant information available for their book, *Scottish Fairy Belief*,\[h\]Printed in 2001 Henderson and Cowan identify Alison’s trial as the third witchcraft case to include details of fairy belief following on from those of [Janet Boyman](https://engole.info/janet-boyman/) at the end of 1572 and Bessie Dunlop’s trial in November 1576.{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|217}} The records for Alison’s trial in 1588 were collated by James Melville and reflect a similar organisation of the same type of topics as those used in the lampoon.{{sfnp|BFFSDIMD}} The historian Ronald Hutton considers that Alison was used in the political manoeuvrings of Adamson’s enemies.{{sfnp|5BCDJ28M|219}}
Historian Margo Todd suggests Alison referring to Simpson being kidnapped by an Egyptian alludes to gypsies, forming a connection between fairies and gypsies.{{sfnp|SXQIFADP|206-207}} Goodare offers an alternative opinion, believing Alison was describing giants and mystical beings rather than human beings; he considers distinguishing whether a person is alluding to fairies or human gypsies is straightforward and that associations between fairies and gypsies are “overdone”.{{sfnp|8UT69D3U|162-163}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a In Scotland and England during the sixteenth century spelling was haphazard leading to many words, places and names having several variations. Modern-day texts often use an anglicised version.{{sfnp|WL2KUG3T|15-16}} Alternative spellings of her name are: Alesoune or Alesoun together with any combination of Peirson;{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|19}} Peirsoun;{{sfnp|WGHVEMID|9}} Pearsoun; or Piersoun. b Boarhills is sometimes given as Byrehills c Spelling variations include Simson, Simpsoune or Sympsoune d The relationship between Alison and William Simpson is unclear; nineteenth-century journalist and writer, Eliza Lynn Linton (10 February 1822 – 14 July 1898){{sfnp|JXASXL53}} describes him as Alison’s cousin;{{sfnp|6TE59V4J|12}} others, such as Maxwell-Stuart and Goodare for example, designate him as her uncle.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|102}}{{sfnp|8UT69D3U|162}} e Maxwell-Stuart identifies the second witch in the lampoon as another real person, Agnes Melville, a healer whom Adamson also consulted. Imprisoned from February 1588, she was told a trial would be held around mid-November;{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|107}} other details are sketchy. She was found guilty, although she may not have been executed until some time later – but before September 1595 – as records indicate she was free and active in the interim.{{sfnp|EQ52LKJV|107}}{{sfnp|M3CV6R9B|236-237}} f James Melville (1556-1614), diplomat, minister and writer of memoirs, he was responsible for Adamson being excommunicated in 1586.{{sfnp|CG5ZIQDU}} g Andrew Melville (1545–1622), scholar, theologian and religious reformist, a powerful but controversial figure who was appointed moderator of the General Assembly of Scotland; among some of the characterisations given to him was “the father of Scottish Presbyterianism”.{{sfnp|VEUUDDYT|1}}{{sfnp|UHFYE7DV}} h Printed in 2001
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 16200
**Categories:** Female, Healer, Scottish, Witch
---
### [Belle Vue Zoological Gardens](https://engole.info/belle-vue-zoological-gardens/)
**Published:** July 8, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Belle-Vue-main-entrance.jpg[/pimage]Large zoo, amusement park, exhibition hall complex and speedway stadium in Belle Vue, Manchester, England, opened in 1836.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Belle-Vue-main-entrance.jpg)map
https://goo.gl/maps/95f9ZCHtfsv}}
Main entrance|Wikipedia
Belle Vue Zoological Gardens was a large zoo, amusement park, exhibition hall complex and speedway stadium in Belle Vue, Manchester, England, opened in 1836. The brainchild of John Jennison, the gardens were initially intended to be an entertainment for the genteel middle classes, with formal gardens and dancing on open-air platforms during the summer, but they soon became one of the most popular attractions in Northern England.
Before moving to Belle Vue, Jennison, a part-time gardener, had run a small aviary at his home, the beginnings of the zoo that over the years grew to become the third-largest in the United Kingdom. Jennison set out a small amusements area in Belle Vue during the 1870s, which was expanded in the early 20th century to become what was advertised as the “showground of the world”.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|17}} Popular rides included the 60 mph (97 km/h) Bobs roller coaster and the Scenic Railway. Other entertainments included grand firework displays from 1852 and an annual Christmas circus from 1922. Music and dancing were popular attractions in Belle Vue’s various ballrooms. The Kings Hall, opened in 1910, housed the Hallé Orchestra for several years and hosted concerts by artists including Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash and Led Zeppelin.
Catering for visitors at Belle Vue was on an industrial scale, ranging from the late 19th century hot-water rooms, which accommodated up to 3000 diners each, providing crockery and hot water for those who brought their own picnics, to more upmarket themed restaurants. Belle Vue became a part of the caterer and hotelier Charles Forte’s business empire towards the end of its life in the 1960s. Although he made some improvements to the zoo, Forte’s interests lay in developing the gardens’ dining and exhibition facilities. The Kings Hall was then the largest exhibition space outside London, but competition from the G-Mex exhibition and conference centre in central Manchester led directly to its closure in 1987.
At its peak Belle Vue occupied {{convert|165|acre|sqkm|r=2}} and attracted more than two million visitors a year,{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|8}} up to 250,000 of whom visited over the Easter weekend.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|5}} The zoo closed in September 1977 after its owners decided they could no longer afford its losses of £100,000 a year. The amusement park remained open on summer weekends until 1980. The land was sold in 1982, and the site finally cleared in 1987. All that remains of Belle Vue today is a greyhound racing stadium and a snooker hall built in the stadium’s car park.
## Commercial history
Belle Vue Zoological Gardens was the brainchild of entrepreneur and part-time gardener John Jennison.{{sfnp|MDI2LVQX|118–119}} He opened the grounds around his home in Adswood, Stockport{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|3}} to the public in 1826, from where he and his wife Maria sold fruit and vegetables. He called his establishment Strawberry Gardens, later Jennison’s Gardens. Manchester’s increasing urban population encouraged the development of a thriving leisure industry, and public parks were popular.{{sfnp|I7MKVUG8|46}} In 1828 or ’29 Jennison purchased an adjacent {{convert|0.5|acre}} of land on which he and his wife built an aviary, to which they charged admission; its first occupant was a captured thrush.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|3}} Jennison turned his home into a public house, the Adam and Eve, which he and his wife ran together.{{sfnp|MDI2LVQX|118–119}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/John-Jennison.png)John Jennison, founder
Wikimedia Commons
In 1835 Jennison was approached by businessman George Gill, who suggested that he lease Belle Vue – a public house in {{convert|35.75|acre}} of open land between Kirkmanshulme Lane and Hyde Road – as a more suitable site for his aviary.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|3–4}} Jennison took out a mortgage of £300 to pay off the £80 mortgage on the Strawberry Gardens and spent the remainder on a trial six-month lease of the Belle Vue property, in June 1836. In December Jennison signed a 99-year lease at a rent of £135 per annum. For an extra £100 a year he leased additional land to extend the western boundary to Redgate Lane, close to Stockport Road, where he made a second entrance. To finance further expansion Jennison re-mortgaged the site for £800.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|4–5}}
Except for their belongings, which fitted on a handcart, all the Jennisons took with them to Belle Vue was two or three birdcages containing parrots and other assorted birds. At its opening in 1836, Belle Vue contained an Italian Garden, lakes, mazes and hothouses, as well as the aviary.{{sfnp|H3R7S2SJ}} The family decided that their zoological collection had to be expanded as a matter of priority,{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|5}} and by 1839 elephants, lions, and other exotic African animals had been added.{{sfnp|I6NBBXKN|180}} Many other attractions were subsequently added, including a racecourse in 1847.{{sfnp|H3R7S2SJ}} The gardens were an immediate success, but the neighbouring St James’s Church was offended that they were open on Sundays, and asked Jennison to close while services were being conducted; he “politely but firmly refused”.{{snfp|54SSYEZT}}
Admission to the gardens, which were open until 9 pm during the summer, was by subscription ticket priced at 10 shillings for a family and 5 shillings for an individual, beyond the means of most workers. Concerts of “genteel music” were staged, and there was dancing to various bands on a large open-air wooden platform. Initially, the only public transport to Belle Vue was by horse-drawn omnibus from what is now Piccadilly, in central Manchester, but the last departure time of 6:00 pm coincided with the end of most workers’ shifts. The first railway station was opened near Belle Vue in 1842, allowing workers easier access to the gardens and their attractions, and by 1848 complaints began to appear in the press that “roughs” in coarse attire were embarrassing middle-class ladies on the dancing platform by attempting to dance with them. There were also complaints about working-class men dancing together, and increasing resentment from working-class patrons about Belle Vue’s “forbidding dress requirements, its restricted opening hours, \[and\] its unwelcoming admission price”. In the words of historian David Mayer, Jennison was facing a crisis: “either keep Belle Vue Gardens an exclusive, class-specific, genteel preserve for the gentry and the middle class – who would arrive and depart in their own carriages through the Hyde Road gate – or open the gardens to a popular crowd who would arrive by train at the Stockport Road (Longsight) gate”. For a time, Jennison sent carriages to the railway station to collect the first-class passengers, but he also abandoned the idea of subscription tickets, settling instead on a general admission price of 4d, rising to 6d in 1851.{{sfnp|I6NBBXKN|180–181}}
### Financial difficulties
Although the gardens thrived in their early years, by 1842 Jennison was in financial difficulties, and on 13 December bankruptcy proceedings were initiated. Jennison’s problems were caused by his failure to sell the Strawberry Gardens property, competition from the recently opened [Manchester Zoological Gardens](https://engole.info/manchester-zoological-gardens/), and the Manchester and Birmingham Railway track cutting through the land Jennison had leased in December 1836, restricting access to the gardens. Jennison twice tried unsuccessfully to sell Belle Vue, after which his creditors allowed him time to make a success of the gardens;{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|3}} by the end of the 1843 season Jennison was able to repay his debts.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|7}} The railway that had been a thorn in his side eventually proved to be an asset when Longsight railway station was re-sited closer to Belle Vue in 1842, making it easier for visitors to reach the gardens.
### Expansion
An additional 13 acres (5.3 ha) of farmland at the western end of the site was incorporated into the gardens in 1843. One of the ponds was enlarged to form a boating lake, which later became the Firework Lake. An island was created in the middle of the lake, which housed a natural history museum. In 1858 another 8 acres (3.2 ha) were leased, in the triangle between Kirkmanshulme Lane and Hyde Road, from which clay was extracted to make bricks for the gardens’ buildings. The result of the excavations was a large hole that Jennison filled with water, creating the Great Lake in 1858.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|21}} Two paddle steamers, the Little Eastern and the Little Britain, each capable of accommodating 100 passengers, offered trips around the lake for 1d (equivalent to £0.38 in 2016).{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|22}} By 1905 Belle Vue consisted of 68 acres (28 ha) of walled gardens, with an additional 97 acres (39 ha) outside its walls.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|7}}
### War years
During the First World War the gardens were used by the Manchester Regiment for drilling, and a munitions factory complete with railway sidings was built.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|28–29}}
At the start of the Second World War the gardens were closed at noon following Neville Chamberlain’s radio broadcast announcing that Britain was at war with Germany on Sunday, 3 September 1939, forcing the cancellation of an “open rehearsal” by the Gorton Philharmonic Orchestra. The nation’s armed forces immediately sequestered the Exhibition Hall, the restaurants and most of the top floor of the administrative offices. They also took over the sports ground to use as a barrage balloon base, and dug several air-raid shelters. The gardens were allowed to re-open on 15 September 1939, and remained open throughout the rest of war,{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|43–44}} although parts of the site were requisitioned by Manchester Corporation and converted into allotments.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|45}}
Although the Second World War forced the cancellation of many events, and made it difficult to feed all the zoo’s animals, it was nevertheless very lucrative for the gardens. Profits steadily increased, and the company made several compensation claims for the requisitioning of its facilities. It was granted £4,000 in 1941 (equivalent to £182,000 in 2016) and £7,242 in 1942 (equivalent to £310,000 in 2016); in gratitude for the latter, the company presented the Civil Defence Service with a new mobile canteen.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|45}}
### Changes in ownership
The Jennisons had been considering setting up a limited company to administer the gardens since 1895. Most were in agreement except for Richard, John Jennison Snr’s youngest son. After his death in 1919, the remaining family members created John Jennison & Co Ltd with a capital of £253,000 (equivalent to £10,700,000 in 2016), comprising investments and loans totalling £63,000 (equivalent to £2,700,000 in 2016). George Jennison became chairman, secretary, treasurer and joint managing director with John Jennison Jnr, John Jennison Snr’s great-grandson. John, William, Angelo and Richard Jennison Jnr were appointed to the board of directors which was reported to be a “very happy board with few meetings and an entire absence of quarrels”.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|29}}
On 27 November 1924 the Jennisons agreed to sell Belle Vue for £250,000 (equivalent to £13,100,000 in 2016) to Harry George Skipp, but he was acting as an intermediary, and on 6 March 1925 a further contract was signed by the Jennisons, Skipp and a new company called Belle Vue (Manchester) Ltd. The agreement was for the new company to take over from 1 January 1925, but the transfer did not take place until 28 March. Under the new managing director, John Henry Iles, the gardens expanded to include what became a world-famous amusement park.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|30}}
### Later years
Belle Vue enjoyed a brief post-war boom between the end of the Second World War and the early 1950s. During the early 1960s, it could still attract 150,000 visitors on Easter Monday, but by the end of the decade that figure had dropped to about 30,000, as the competition from rival amusement parks increased. Sir Leslie Joseph and Charles Forte bought Belle Vue in 1956, but by 1963 Forte was in sole control.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|8}} Although he made some improvements to the zoo, Forte’s interests lay in developing the gardens’ dining and exhibition facilities.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|5}} Fire became an “ever present hazard” during Belle Vue’s later years. The most devastating occurred in 1958 and destroyed many buildings, including the Coronation Ballroom.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|125}} Although the zoo was spared, the fire almost reached the lion house, distressing one of the older lionesses so much that she had to be shot.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|45}} Vandalism and theft also became serious and recurring problems; intruders killed 38 of the zoo’s birds, including 9 penguins, in 1960.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|22}}
## Zoo
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/BelleVueGuide1906.jpg)Cover of the official guidebook for the 1906 season
Wikimedia Commons
Belle Vue was the first privately financed zoo in England,{{sfnp|SWYR7EMK|64}} and grew to become the third-largest in the UK.{{sfnp|RG34LI6X}} Jennison’s original idea was that the gardens should be primarily a botanical excursion, but it became clear that the public was interested in the animals as an attraction in their own right. The initial collection had consisted of domestic birds and a few exotic parrots, but Jennison probably also acquired those animals that could not be sold after the Manchester Zoological Gardens closed in 1842.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|7}} By 1856, the Jennisons had added kangaroos, rhinos, lions, bears and gazelles.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|11}}
In 1871 the zoo acquired four giraffes; the following year an elephant, Maharajah, was bought for £680 from Wombwell’s Menagerie No.1 in Edinburgh. The plan to transport Maharajah from Edinburgh to Manchester by train was abandoned after the elephant destroyed the railway compartment in which he was to travel.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|11}} It was therefore decided that Maharajah and his trainer, Lorenzo Lawrence, should walk to Manchester, a journey they completed in 10 days with little incident.\[a\]There was a story of an incident on the walk where it seems there was an argument at a tollgate. The crux of the argument was the question of what was the appropriate charge for the elephant when there was no entry for elephants on the toll rates chart. Maharajah’s answer to the problem was to lift the gate off its hinges. Although the incident is probably apocryphal, it was the subject of a painting called “The Disputed Toll” by Heywood Hardy,{{sfnp|ZHHPKZCR}} and a book entitled The Elephant Who Walked to Manchester.{{sfnp|2EDUHCB9}}{{sfnp|ZHHPKZCR}} Lorenzo became the zoo’s head elephant keeper, and stayed at Belle Vue for more than 40 years.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|82}} Maharajah provided elephant rides to the public for ten years, until his death from pneumonia in 1882. His skeleton was preserved and added to the gardens’ natural history museum.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|23}} When the museum was decommissioned in 1941, the skeleton, along with other exhibits, was transferred to the Manchester Museum.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|38}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Consul-the-chimp.jpg)Consul, from his 1906 obituary
Wikimedia Commons
In 1893 a chimpanzee was purchased from another of Wombwell’s Travelling Menageries in London. The four-year-old chimpanzee, Consul, was dressed in a smoking jacket and cap and puffed on a cob pipe; he frequently accompanied James Jennison to business meetings. Consul proved to be exceptionally popular, and after his death on 24 November 1894,\[b\]An obituary was printed for Consul, to which Ben Brierley contributed this poem:”Hadst thou a soul?” I’ve pondered o’er thy fate
Full many a time … Thou hadst ways
In many things like ours. Then who says
Thou’rt not immortal? …
‘Tis God alone who knows where the “Missing Link”
Is hidden from our sight; but, on the brink
Of that Eternal line where we must part
For ever, sundering heart from heart
The truth shall be revealed …{{sfnp|ZYW3NVYT|2–3}} the Jennisons immediately obtained a replacement, Consul II, who played a violin while riding a tricycle around the gardens, later graduating to a bicycle.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|22–24}}
Food for the animals became difficult to obtain during the First World War, but for the most part the gardens carried on as usual. Following the declaration of peace, several monkeys originally destined for government experiments with poison gas were acquired, as was a hippo, a dromedary and a zebra. In 1921 and 1922 the zoo obtained two animals who became great favourites. Lil, an Indian elephant, arrived in 1921 accompanied by her British Malayan handler, Phil Fernandez. Phil and Lil provided entertainment, advertising, and elephant rides for 35 years. Frank, a brown bear, arrived in 1922. By the time of his death, 40 years later, he was known as the “Father of the Zoo”.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|29}}
Open-air cages installed in the Monkey House resulted in a dramatic improvement in the life expectancy of its residents,{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|29}} but the potential for expansion and improvement after the First World War was limited by the post-war economy. Rising labour costs and minimal profits resulted in the gardens’ increasing dilapidation.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|29}} The zoo began to be neglected after the sale of Belle Vue in 1925, but it was rejuvenated by the appointment of Gerald Iles as zoo superintendent in 1933. A new Gibbon Cage and Monkey Mountain were created and the Reptile House was extended.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|12, 18}}
On the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the animal keepers were issued with rifles to deal with any dangerous animals who might escape if the gardens were bombed. A night shift was introduced to watch over the animals 24 hours a day. A list of dangerous animals that was drawn up included 13 lions, 6 tigers, 2 leopards, 1 cheetah, 2 tigons, 3 other small cats and several bears. Although the zoo’s administrators succeeded in convincing the local authorities that any danger from the animals was minimal, primarily because the perimeter walls were so high, the keepers were replaced in their sharp-shooting role by soldiers who patrolled the grounds armed with tommy guns.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|43–44}}
Stocks were increased by animals transferred from other zoos that had been forced to close. Initially the zoo was given favourable food rationing quotas, but certain foods became unavailable and the price of others increased dramatically.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|43–44}} Bananas were impossible to obtain and the supply of fish was problematic. As a result, the keepers were forced to experiment. The sealions became casualties of the food shortage when their keepers attempted to feed them strips of beef soaked in cod liver oil. Although they seemed to thrive on this diet, their digestive systems were unable to cope with the unusual food, and they eventually died of stomach ulcers. The lions’ new diet was green-coloured horsemeat, and the monkeys were fed on boiled potatoes. The birds-of-paradise (lack of millet), and the penguins (lack of fish), were unable to adapt to their make-do diet and also succumbed. Vegetables were not in short supply however, as the garden staff grew lettuce, cabbage and carrots in the kitchen gardens.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|43–44}}
Wartime interruptions in the supply of gas for heating resulted in the deaths of all the zoo’s tropical fish and several other animals, including a lioness called Pearl and her litter of cubs.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|44–45}} Although Manchester was heavily bombed during the Blitz, the gardens sustained only minor damage. The Scenic Railway was hit by an incendiary bomb and the Reptile House was damaged by shell splinters from ack-ack guns, which also caused the death of a bull bison.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|44–45}}
Iles remained as superintendent until 1957, and proved to be a good publicist for the zoo, taking part in radio and television programmes such as Children’s Hour.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|12, 18}} A new attraction was introduced in 1963, a Chimps’ Tea Party, which proved to be very popular. The zoo’s last superintendent, Peter Grayson, took over in 1971, but by then the owners of Belle Vue had lost interest in the zoo, and closure seemed imminent.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|12–13}}
News that Belle Vue Zoological Gardens would close on 11 September 1977 was announced on BBC Radio at 10:00 am on 4 August 1977. The 24 keepers were informed an hour before the news report went on air. The reason given was that the company could no longer afford to cover losses of about £100,000 per year. Shortly before the closure, a number of non-poisonous reptiles were stolen from the Reptile House, only one of which, a 10-foot (3.0 m) python, was recovered.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|74}}
A 15-year-old elephant, Ellie May, had acquired an undeserved reputation for being dangerous, which made her extremely difficult to sell. Her food costs became difficult to justify, but Grayson refused to have her put down. Although he left the zoo in January 1978, Grayson returned frequently to care for Ellie May, the last animal left at the zoo. Eventually Rotterdam Zoo agreed to take her, and plans were made to transport the elephant to the Netherlands. Ellie May refused to budge however, and overnight developed pneumonia and heart failure. Grayson and veterinary surgeon, David Taylor, felt that she would not recover, and decided to call in a marksman to euthanise her.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|75}}
Public reaction to the zoo’s closure was one of “relative indifference”, with only a few minor protests. The doors remained open to visitors at a discounted admission price until early November, a little beyond the official closing date, by which time most of the animals had been sold for an estimated £100,000.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|74}}
## Gardens and amusement park
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Belle_vue_plan_1892.jpg)Plan of the gardens from the official guide published for the 1892 season
Wikimedia Commons
Under the Jennisons, the main priorities for Belle Vue were the zoological and botanical gardens; amusements were provided merely as a distraction. The Jennisons laid out formal gardens in various styles between 1836 and 1898, including mazes, grottoes, an Italian garden, “billiard-table lawns” and constructed Tropical Plant Houses.{{sfnp|H3R7S2SJ}} There were also exotic constructions like the Indian temple and grotto, designed by George Danson, Belle Vue’s scenic artist. Built to resemble a ruined temple, it housed snakes and crocodiles as well as flowers. At the end of the 19th century, “the resort relied almost entirely for its attraction on its delightful gardens”, but by 1931 the formalism had entirely disappeared.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|20}} The gardens were also used to stage large political rallies for a wide spectrum of opinion, such as the Great Liberal Demonstration of 1924, at which Lloyd George addressed a crowd of 50,000, the first political meeting at which loudspeakers were used.{{sfnp|5MVAXT2R|118}} The British Union of Fascists, popularly known as the Blackshirts, also held a meeting there, in September 1934. One contemporary commentator observed that “perhaps the Ku Klux Klan will be found in session there one day, for Belle Vue is nothing if not catholic”.{{sfnp|5MVAXT2R|119–120}}
The Jennisons set out a small amusements area near the main entrance to the gardens in Hyde Road during the 1870s.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|49}} comprising steam-driven attractions such as the Ocean Wave, installed in 1894, which simulated a storm at sea.\[c\]“A circular platform, equipped like the bridge of a ship, \[the Ocean Wave\] is set among scenery painted to represent the waves of an ocean during a high wind. Round the edge of the platform is a line of small yachts. Powerful machinery makes the platform revolve, and at the same time rise and fall, giving the yachts a motion not unlike the ones they have at sea.”{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|23}}
John Henry Iles, who took over control of Belle Vue in 1925, believed that expansion of the rides and the fun aspect of the park was the way forward, and added attractions such as dodgems, the Caterpillar, the Ghost Train, Jack & Jill, and the Flying Sea Planes. The Scenic Railway, purchased in 1925 but not fully operational until two years later, proved to be one of Belle Vue’s most popular rides, and remained in use until 1975.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|35–36}}
The Bobs rollercoaster was arguably the most popular ride of all, so named because it cost a bob (shilling) for admission. It had an 80-foot (24 m) drop at a 45 degree angle, down which the cars travelled at 60 miles per hour (97 km/h).{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|36}} It was built by Harry Traver and designed by Fredrick Church,{{sfnp|52G56IZE}} who had to develop a series of engineering innovations to make the ride possible. The Bobs’ distinctive white-painted wooden superstructure became an imposing element of the Belle Vue skyline.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|36}}
During the 1960s and 1970s “Professor” Len Tomlinson operated one of the UK’s last flea circuses in a small booth on the amusement park. The attraction consisted of harnessed human fleas racing chariots at the rate of an inch every few seconds, pulling a garden roller, riding a tricycle and “fencing fleas” scrabbling at pins stuck in pieces of cork in a semblance of a sword fight. The flea circus closed down in the late 1970s as improvements in domestic living conditions made human fleas more difficult to obtain.{{sfnp|EJ32KXIJ|93}}
When the zoo closed in 1977, it was announced that the gardens and amusement park would be expanded with “new active leisure pursuits”. By 1978 the site had been renamed Belle Vue Leisure Park, and the Tropical River House had been converted to a skateboard arena in an attempt to cash in on the new craze from America. The arena turned out to be poor investment however, as there was virtually no demand after the first few months.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|76}} The 1977 closure of the London Festival Gardens in Battersea, London, allowed Belle Vue the opportunity to buy their Jetstream ride, which opened the following year.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|77}}
Other attractions that closed at about the same time as the zoo included the boating on Firework Lake, and the miniature railway.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|77}} In 1979 the amusement park was leased to the main concessionaire, Alf Wadbrooke, although by then it was only open at weekends during the summer season. The long-promised restoration of the Scenic Railway had not happened and the Water Chute had closed. In August 1980, Wadbrooke was given notice to close down the park by 26 October 1980 and to have all his equipment removed by February 1981.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|78}}
## Music and dancing
In 1853 Belle Vue staged the first British open brass band championships. Attended by a crowd of more than 16,000, it was the first of what became an annual event until 1981.{{sfnp|K64ASQPF}} A revival occurred in the popularity of brass band contests during the 1970s; competitions between local bands could attract crowds of up to 5,000.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|84–85}}
Belle Vue contained several ballrooms, the first of which was constructed in 1851, above a hotel at the Longsight entrance to the gardens. A larger structure, the Music Hall, was built in 1856, underneath the firework viewing stand, capable of accommodating 10,000 people on its 27,000 square feet (2,500 m2) of dance floor.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|71}} A wooden open-air dancing platform was opened in 1852, and by 1855 had been extended to cover an area of 0.5 acres (0.20 ha). Throughout the summer, music was provided by bands such as the Belle Vue Military, the Belle Vue Quadrille and the Cheetham Hill Brass Band. Open-air dancing continued until the 1940s, but by then the attraction had lost its appeal, and the platform was converted to a roller skating rink. It was destroyed by fire in 1958.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|29}} The same fire destroyed the Coronation Ballroom, which was replaced by a “huge ballroom complex” known as the New Elizabethan Ballroom in 1959. With room for 4,000 dancers on its two floors, and the largest Wurlitzer organ in Europe (installed in 1967), it was described as being “unsurpassed in Great Britain for size, comfort and elegance”. Many well-known bands of the time regularly played for the dancers, including Geraldo and his Orchestra and the Joe Loss Orchestra.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|31}}{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|38}} During the 1960s and 1970s the ballroom also hosted discothèques, such as Jimmy Savile’s Top Ten Club.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|32}}
## Kings Hall
Opened in 1910 the Kings Hall was a converted tea room, enlarged in 1928 and reconstructed as a “saucer like arena” capable of seating 7,000 people.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|122}}{{sfnp|2E57UV8B|60}} The name “Kings” was chosen in reference to the two kings who reigned during the six-week period of its construction: George V and Edward VII. The hall was designed to stage “Demonstrations, Exhibitions, Social Gatherings, etc”,{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|73}} and was a popular concert venue until the 1970s, with appearances by artists such Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|72}} The Kings Hall became home to the Hallé Orchestra in 1942, when its previous base, the Free Trade Hall, was damaged by bombing during the Manchester Blitz; the orchestra continued to perform concerts at Belle Vue for more than 30 years.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|36}}
From 1961 until 1966, bingo sessions were held in the hall. Able to accommodate up to 3,500 players, it was advertised as the “largest bingo club in the world”. Many exhibitions were also held in the hall, which with its 100,000 square feet (9,300 m2) of floor space was one of the largest venues outside London. It was split into three separate halls in 1956, to allow three exhibitions to be run simultaneously.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|124}}
The last piece of live music played in the hall, on 14 February 1982, was a performance by the Glossop School Band, who were taking part in the North West Amateur Brass Band Championship in front of a crowd of 1,700.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|86}} The hall had been sold 18 months earlier to a development company, Espley Tyas Development Group, and was by then scheduled for demolition to allow the site to be redeveloped. News of the sale had triggered the formation of local action groups, who organised a petition signed by 50,000 people in an unsuccessful effort to save the hall.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|72}} The exhibition halls were sold to Mullet Ltd. in 1983, but competition from the newly opened G-Mex exhibition and conference centre in central Manchester led directly to their closure. The site was sold to the British Car Auction Group in 1987, and the buildings demolished to make way for a large car auction centre.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|124}}
## Catering
The gates were opened to visitors between 10:00 am and 10:30 pm. Kiosks around the gardens sold snacks and ice cream, made in Belle Vue’s own ice cream factory. Families were catered for at lunchtimes by the hot-water rooms, each of which could accommodate up to 3,000 diners, providing hot water for drinks and crockery for visitors who brought their own picnics.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|96}} The price was 2d per person, according to the 1892 guide book,{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|82}} and cakes and jams made in the gardens’ bakery and on-site kitchens were also available, at extra cost. “One shilling tea rooms”, close to the hot water rooms, offered lunchtime deals such as a pot of tea, bread and butter, green salad and fruit cake for a shilling. The more expensive restaurants tended to open during the evening. Alcohol was available in the many licensed premises in the gardens,{{sfnp|5MVAXT2R|200–201}} including, until its closure in 1928, beer produced in Belle Vue’s on-site brewery. Many public houses were also opened in the area immediately surrounding the gardens.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|96}}
Licensed hotels were built at each of the three entrances to the gardens. The Longsight Hotel, built in 1851 and demolished in 1985, was a part of the entrance.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|95}} The Lake Hotel, built in 1876, had facilities for the free stabling of horses belonging to Belle Vue’s visitors. It was extended in 1929 and then again in 1960, when a concert room was added, offering late-night entertainment. After its closure in the 1980s, the hotel was demolished.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|96}} The Hyde Road Hotel and Restaurant at the main entrance, originally known as Belle Vue House, was renamed the Palm Court Restaurant in 1942, and then Caesar’s Palace in 1969. It housed a cabaret bar and a restaurant, which was converted to an amusement arcade in 1976 when it was once again renamed, to Jennison’s Ale House. The building was closed after a partial collapse in 1980.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|94}}
## Firework displays
After a trip to London to visit The Great Exhibition of 1851, Jennison’s ideas for Belle Vue became more ambitious. He decided to implement large, scheduled “fantastic” firework displays employing a scenic artist, George Danson, to design and create a 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) canvas backdrop.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|12}} The displays took place on an island in the middle of the Firework Lake, which also housed a small natural history museum.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|22}} In keeping with Jennison’s desire for self-sufficiency, the fireworks were made on-site at Belle Vue.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|4}}
The first display took place on 2 May 1852, designed by “Signor Pietro”. The theme for the early displays was “battle enactment”, which proved to be popular with the paying public and resulted in Belle Vue becoming an all-day entertainment venue.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|12}}\] The firework displays incorporated real people and real weapons, some of which, 1866-vintage Snyder rifles, were issued to members of the local Home Guard during the Second World War.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|43–44}} The first display, a re-enactment of the Bombardment of Algiers involving 25 men, 300 rockets, 25 “large shells”, and 50 Roman candles, was watched by 18,000 spectators.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|98}}
The displays continued throughout the First World War, except that the use of rockets was prohibited under the Defence of the Realm Act. Reflecting contemporary events, the theme for the 1915 display was “The Battle of the Marne”; in 1916 it was “The War in Flanders”, during which one spectator got so caught up in the action that he waded across the lake to join in with the “fighting”.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|28–29}} Anticipating the outbreak of the Second World War, the theme for the 1933 display was “Air Raid on London”.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|43–44}}
The last grand firework display took place in 1956, on the theme of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|5}}
## Circus
The first Belle Vue Circus took place in 1922, but it was not considered a success. The next was staged in 1929, after the company negotiated a deal with the Blackpool Tower Company to provide acts and equipment for what subsequently became a regular Christmas event held in the Kings Hall. One of the first arrivals from Blackpool was ringmaster George Lockhart,{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|55}} known as “the prince of ringmasters”.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|38}} Lockhart became synonymous with the Belle Vue Circus, and his face was used on many advertising posters. Zoo superintendent Gerald Iles included some of the zoo’s animals in the circus, in a feature called Noah’s Ark.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|12}}
For the 1967–68 season, to celebrate his 39th consecutive year, the circus was temporarily renamed the “George Lockhart Celebration Circus”.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|39}} Lockhart was the ringmaster for 43 years, until his retirement in 1970 at the age of 90. His replacement, Danish-born Nelly Jane, held the job for two years before being replaced by Norman Barrett, the last ringmaster. Another of the circus stalwarts was resident band leader and Belle Vue’s musical director Fred Bonelli,{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|30}} who started his career as a trumpet player for Barnum and Bailey’s circus band,{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|39}} and led various Belle Vue circus bands for 40 years.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|30}}
Many of the acts featured animals, such as Eugene Weidmann’s mixed group of tigers and bears, Thorson Kohrmann and his Farmyard Friends, Willi Mullen’s Caucasian Cavalry & Ponies, Miss Wendy’s Performing Pigeons and Harry Belli’s Horse Riding Tiger – to say nothing of the Dog! As well as the animal acts there was the usual collection of acrobats, strongmen and clowns, two of whom, Jacko the Clown and his partner “Little Billy” Merchant, performed at Belle Vue for thirty years.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|56–63}}
The last circus to take place in the Kings Hall before its sale was in 1981. For a few years afterwards the circus continued in the car park, then in a marquee on wasteland directly opposite the gardens’ main gates on Hyde Road.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|56}}
## Sports facilities
Sporting events became a permanent feature at Belle Vue after an athletics stadium was built in 1887.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|87}}
### Greyhound racing
Greyhound racing was introduced to Belle Vue in 1926, in the UK’s first purpose-built greyhound stadium, constructed at a cost of £22,000. It was built on land leased by Belle Vue to the Greyhound Racing Association (GRA), a company chaired by Sir William Gentle, who was also the chairman of Belle Vue (Manchester) Ltd. The site was sold to the GRA in 1937, with the proviso that it had to be used for greyhound racing.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|118}}
### Speedway
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/BelleVueSpeedway.jpg)Speedway racing in 1963
Wikimedia Commons
One of the activities that became synonymous with Belle Vue was speedway (known at the time as dirt track racing), which was introduced on 28 July 1928 in the recently built greyhound racing arena. The sport proved to be very popular, and the decision was taken to convert the 1887 athletics ground into a speedway stadium,{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|114}} which opened on 23 March 1929. It was at the time the largest purpose-built speedway stadium in the country, possibly in the world. Eventually it became the first home of the Belle Vue Aces, but it was also used for many other events, such as football, cricket, rugby league (Belle Vue Rangers), baseball, stock car racing and tennis.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|114}} The stadium had covered accommodation for 40,000 spectators.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|117}} As the speedway bikes ran on wood alcohol (known as dope), they were unaffected by fuel rationing during the Second World War and racing was able to continue, although many other attractions in the gardens were forced to close.{{sfnp|FR9NNW5S|43–44}}
Belle Vue sold the stadium in 1982, but speedway continued there until 1987;{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|117}} the final event was a stock car race, held on 14 November 1987, shortly before the stadium was demolished after having been sold to the British Car Auction Group. The Belle Vue Aces returned to their first home, the greyhound stadium, where they had begun in 1929.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|106}}
### Boxing and wrestling
From the late 1920s until the outbreak of the Second World War, Belle Vue was “the boxing Mecca of Europe”.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|123}} Bouts were held in the Kings Hall, and although popularity declined in the years following the war, Belle Vue staged a televised world championship fight in 1964 between Terry Downes and Willie Pastrano.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|123}}
The first wrestling contest took place in the Kings Hall on 15 December 1930, and proved to be a popular attraction. Except for a break during the Second World War, events continued to be held until 1981, watched by up to 5,000 spectators.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|89–95}} Popular performers included Jack Pye,{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|122}} Big Daddy, and Giant Haystacks.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|89–95}}
### Rugby league
The speedway stadium became the home of rugby league club, Broughton Rangers, who recruited international players including Frank Whitcombe (who also worked in the zoo as a zookeeper), Billy Stott, and James Cumberbatch. When the club was taken over by Belle Vue in 1933 Broughton were given a 21-year lease for use of the stadium, at a rent to be based on attendances. The first Anglo-Australian Test match of the 1933–34 Kangaroo tour of Great Britain was played at Belle Vue,{{sfnp|4E5V76PR}} with the home side’s victory attracting approximately 34,000 spectators.{{sfnp|7C9SDG8L}}
Games were suspended during the Second World War, and on their resumption in 1945 the club was renamed Belle Vue Rangers. Belle Vue declined to renew the lease when it expired in 1955 as the arrangement was proving to be a “financial burden”, and the team was disbanded.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|120}}
### Football
After a fire at Manchester City’s Hyde Road ground in 1920, the club considered a move to the Belle Vue athletics stadium,{{sfnp|E62I52WH|150}} but it was deemed too small.{{sfnp|E62I52WH|381}} At the behest of Belle Vue director John Henry Iles and John Ayrton, Manchester Central, was formed, and played its home matches at the speedway stadium.{{sfnp|E62I52WH|155}} One of Manchester Central’s first matches at Belle Vue was a visit by FA Cup holders Blackburn Rovers in September 1928.{{sfnp|E62I52WH|157}} The club attempted unsuccessfully to join The Football League in 1930 and in 1931;{{sfnp|E62I52WH|165}} with momentum lost, the club faded, and folded in 1934.
## Present day
When it closed, Belle Vue left a gaping hole in the heart of the region that has never been completely replaced. It gave people a focal point, something to be proud of, a place where they could take their families and be sure of a great day out at a reasonable cost.{{sfnp
— TU8NRTCJIn 1963 the Top Lake, formerly known as the Great Lake, was filled in and a 32-lane ten-pin bowling alley built on its site, just behind the Lake Hotel. Known as the Belle Vue Granada Bowl, it opened in 1965, advertised as “the north’s leading luxury centre”. In 1983, after the rest of Belle Vue had closed, it was sold to First Leisure Group, and bowling continued for a time. A snooker club was built in a corner of the car park in 1985.{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|119}} By 2010, all that remained of Belle Vue was the greyhound stadium and the snooker club.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|124}} The greyhound stadium closed in 2020,{{sfnp|WXR4W3ZW}} and the original gardens and amusement park are now an industrial and residential area.{{sfnp|TU8NRTCJ|124}}
In the aftermath of Manchester’s failed supercasino bid in 2008, local groups began to lobby for the construction of a “linear park” in the area, building on “the legacy of Belle Vue”. It would have comprised a new zoo, deer park and amusement park.{{sfnp|22DQ46TQ}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a There was a story of an incident on the walk where it seems there was an argument at a tollgate. The crux of the argument was the question of what was the appropriate charge for the elephant when there was no entry for elephants on the toll rates chart. Maharajah’s answer to the problem was to lift the gate off its hinges. Although the incident is probably apocryphal, it was the subject of a painting called “The Disputed Toll” by Heywood Hardy,{{sfnp|ZHHPKZCR}} and a book entitled The Elephant Who Walked to Manchester.{{sfnp|2EDUHCB9}} b An obituary was printed for Consul, to which Ben Brierley contributed this poem:”Hadst thou a soul?” I’ve pondered o’er thy fate
Full many a time … Thou hadst ways
In many things like ours. Then who says
Thou’rt not immortal? …
‘Tis God alone who knows where the “Missing Link”
Is hidden from our sight; but, on the brink
Of that Eternal line where we must part
For ever, sundering heart from heart
The truth shall be revealed …{{sfnp|ZYW3NVYT|2–3}} c “A circular platform, equipped like the bridge of a ship, \[the Ocean Wave\] is set among scenery painted to represent the waves of an ocean during a high wind. Round the edge of the platform is a line of small yachts. Powerful machinery makes the platform revolve, and at the same time rise and fall, giving the yachts a motion not unlike the ones they have at sea.”{{sfnp|4A6ZI43W|23}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3348
**Categories:** Greater Manchester, Zoo
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### [Workhouse](https://engole.info/workhouse/)
**Published:** July 9, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Workhouse_Nantwich.jpg[/pimage]Establishment where the destitute in England and Wales received board and lodging in return for work.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Workhouse_Nantwich.jpg)Former workhouse in Nantwich, dating from 1780
Wikimedia Commons
In England and Wales a workhouse, colloquially known as a spike, was a place where those unable to support themselves were offered accommodation and employment. The earliest known use of the term dates from 1631, in an account by the mayor of Abingdon reporting that “wee haue erected wthn our borough a workehouse to sett poore people to worke”.{{sfnp|CG53I8H2}}
The origins of the workhouse can be traced to the Poor Law Act of 1388, which attempted to address the labour shortages following the Black Death in England by restricting the movement of labourers, and ultimately led to the state becoming responsible for the support of the poor. But mass unemployment following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the introduction of new technology to replace agricultural workers in particular, and a series of bad harvests, meant that by the early 1830s the established system of poor relief was proving to be unsustainable. The New Poor Law of 1834 attempted to reverse the economic trend by discouraging the provision of relief to anyone who refused to enter a workhouse. Some Poor Law authorities hoped to run workhouses at a profit by utilising the free labour of their inmates, who generally lacked the skills or motivation to compete in the open market. Most were employed on tasks such as breaking stones, crushing bones to produce fertiliser, or picking oakum using a large metal nail known as a spike, perhaps the origin of the workhouse’s nickname.
Life in a workhouse was intended to be harsh, to deter the able-bodied poor and to ensure that only the truly destitute would apply. But in areas such as the provision of free medical care and education for children, neither of which was available to the poor in England living outside workhouses until the early 20th century, workhouse inmates were advantaged over the general population, a dilemma that the Poor Law authorities never managed to reconcile.
As the 19th century wore on, workhouses increasingly became refuges for the elderly, infirm and sick rather than the able-bodied poor, and in 1929 legislation was passed to allow local authorities to take over workhouse infirmaries as municipal hospitals. Although workhouses were formally abolished by the same legislation in 1930, many continued under their new appellation of Public Assistance Institutions under the control of local authorities. It was not until the National Assistance Act of 1948 that the last vestiges of the Poor Law disappeared, and with them the workhouses.
## Legal and social background
### Medieval to Early Modern period
The Act for the Relief of the Poor of 1601 made parishes legally responsible for the care of those within their boundaries who, through age or infirmity, were unable to work. The Act essentially classified the poor into one of three groups. It proposed that the able-bodied be offered work in a house of correction (the precursor of the workhouse), where the “persistent idler” was to be punished.{{sfnp|F2PX2A3Y|40}} It also proposed the construction of housing for the impotent poor, the old and the infirm, although most assistance was granted through a form of poor relief known as outdoor relief – money, food, or other necessities given to those living in their own homes, funded by a local tax on the property of the wealthiest in the parish.{{sfnp|CG53I8H2}}
### Georgian era
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Microcosm_of_London_Plate_096_-_Workroom_at_St_James_Workhouse.jpg/1280px-Microcosm_of_London_Plate_096_-_Workroom_at_St_James_Workhouse.jpg)“The workroom at St James’s workhouse”, from *The Microcosm of London* (1808)
Wikimedia Commons
The workhouse system evolved during the 17th century, allowing parishes to reduce the cost to ratepayers of providing poor relief. The first authoritative figure for numbers of workhouses comes in the next century from The Abstract of Returns made by the Overseers of the Poor, which was drawn up following a government survey in 1776. It put the number of parish workhouses in England and Wales at more than 1800 (approximately one parish in seven), with a total capacity of more than 90,000 places.{{sfnp|IBCJWYLY}} This growth in the number of workhouses was prompted by the Workhouse Test Act of 1723; by obliging anyone seeking poor relief to enter a workhouse and undertake a set amount of work, usually for no pay (a system called indoor relief), the Act helped prevent irresponsible claims on a parish’s poor rate. The growth in the number of workhouses was also bolstered by the Relief of the Poor Act 1782, proposed by Thomas Gilbert.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Albert_Edelfelt_-_The_Boys%E2%80%99_Workhouse%2C_Helsinki_%281885%29.jpg)*The Boys’ Workhouse* by Albert Edelfelt (1885)
Wikimedia Commons
Gilbert’s Act was intended to allow parishes to share the cost of poor relief by forming unions – known as Gilbert Unions – to build and maintain even larger workhouses to accommodate the elderly and infirm.{{sfnp|2NUGUPR4|63}} The able-bodied poor were instead either given outdoor relief or found employment locally.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|47}} Relatively few Gilbert Unions were set up,{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|28}} but supplementing inadequate wages under the Speenhamland system did become established towards the end of the 18th century.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|89}} So keen were some Poor Law authorities to cut costs wherever possible that cases were reported of husbands being forced to sell their wives, to avoid them becoming a financial burden on the parish. In one such case in 1814 the wife and child of Henry Cook, who were living in Effingham workhouse, were sold at Croydon market for one shilling (5p); the parish paid for the cost of the journey and a “wedding dinner”.{{sfnp|S3TS59Z2|51}}
By the 1830s most parishes had at least one workhouse, {{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|18}} but many were badly managed. In his 1797 work, *The State of the Poor*, Sir Frederick Eden wrote:
The workhouse is an inconvenient building, with small windows, low rooms and dark staircases. It is surrounded by a high wall, that gives it the appearance of a prison, and prevents free circulation of air. There are 8 or 10 beds in each room, chiefly of flocks, and consequently retentive of all scents and very productive of vermin. The passages are in great want of whitewashing. No regular account is kept of births and deaths, but when smallpox, measles or malignant fevers make their appearance in the house, the mortality is very great. Of 131 inmates in the house, 60 are children.{{sfnp
— SP2I6NZK|163–164}}
In lieu of a workhouse some sparsely populated parishes placed homeless paupers into rented accommodation, and provided others with relief in their own homes. Those entering a workhouse might have joined anything from a handful to several hundred other inmates; for instance, between 1782 and 1794 Liverpool’s workhouse accommodated 900–1200 indigent men, women and children. The larger workhouses such as the Gressenhall House of Industry generally served a number of communities, in Gressenhall’s case fifty parishes.{{sfnp|SP2I6NZK|163–164}} Writing in 1854, Poor Law commissioner George Nicholls viewed many of them as little more than factories:
These workhouses were established, and mainly conducted, with a view to deriving profit from the labour of the inmates, and not as being the safest means of affording relief by at the same time testing the reality of their destitution. The workhouse was in truth at that time a kind of manufactory, carried on at the risk and cost of the poor-rate, employing the worst description of the people, and helping to pauperise the best.{{sfnp
— EJ3YK2R5|18}}
### 1834 Act
By 1832 the amount spent on poor relief nationally had risen to £7 million a year, more than 10 shillings per head of population,{{sfnp|F2PX2A3Y|50}} up from £2 million in 1784.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|121}}\[a\]Britain’s gross national income in 1830 was £400 million, of which the £7 million spent on poor relief represents 2 per cent, not a great deal by modern standards according to the historian Trevor May. He further observes that “As poor relief was the only social service provided by the state this might seem to be a small price to pay for saving Britain from the revolution that must have seemed so imminent during the Swing riots.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|121}} The large number of those seeking assistance was pushing the system to “the verge of collapse”.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|103}}\[b\]It has been estimated that there were 1.5 million paupers in Britain in 1832, about 12 per cent of the population of 13 million.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|121}} The economic downturn following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century resulted in increasing numbers of unemployed. Coupled with developments in agriculture that meant less labour was needed on the land,{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|14–16}} along with three successive bad harvests beginning in 1828 and the Swing Riots of 1830, reform was inevitable.{{sfnp|II8WYYIA|51}} Many suspected that the system of poor relief was being widely abused, and in 1832 the government established a Royal Commission to investigate and recommend how relief could best be given to the poor.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|14–16}} The result was the establishment of a centralised Poor Law Commission in England and Wales under the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, also known as the New Poor Law, which discouraged the allocation of outdoor relief to the able-bodied; “all cases were to be ‘offered the house’, and nothing else”.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|242}} Individual parishes were formed into Poor Law Unions, each of which was to have a union workhouse. More than 500 were built during the next 50 years, two-thirds of them by 1840.{{sfnp|F2PX2A3Y|63–64}} In certain parts of the country there was a good deal of resistance to these new buildings, some of it violent, particularly in the industrial north. Many workers lost their jobs during the major economic depression of 1837, and there was a strong feeling that what the unemployed needed was not the workhouse but short-term relief to tide them over. By 1838, 573 Poor Law Unions had been formed in England and Wales, incorporating 13,427 parishes, but it was not until 1868 that unions were established across the entire country,{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|124}} the same year that the New Poor Law was applied to the Gilbert Unions.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|42}}
Despite the intentions behind the 1834 Act, relief of the poor remained the responsibility of local taxpayers, and there was thus a powerful economic incentive to use loopholes such as sickness in the family to continue with outdoor relief; the weekly cost per person was about half that of providing workhouse accommodation.\[c\]In 1860 the weekly cost of maintaining a pauper in a workhouse in the east of England was 3s ½d a week, as opposed to 1s 9d a week for outdoor relief.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|125}} Outdoor relief was further restricted by the terms of the 1844 Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, which aimed to end it altogether for the able-bodied poor.{{sfnp|F2PX2A3Y|63–64}} In 1846, of 1.33 million paupers only 199,000 were maintained in workhouses, of whom 82,000 were considered to be able-bodied, leaving an estimated 375,000 of the able-bodied on outdoor relief.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|124–125}} Excluding periods of extreme economic distress, it has been estimated that about 6.5 per cent of the British population may have been accommodated in workhouses at any given time.{{sfnp|F2PX2A3Y|67}}\[d\]Official twice-yearly headcounts, taken on 1 January and 1 July, suggest that between 2.5 and 4.5 per cent of the population was accommodated in workhouses at any given time.{{sfnp|F2PX2A3Y|67}}
## Early Victorian workhouses
The New Poor Law Commissioners were very critical of existing workhouses, and generally insisted that they be replaced.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|49}} They complained in particular that “in by far the greater number of cases, it is a large almshouse, in which the young are trained in idleness, ignorance, and vice; the able-bodied maintained in sluggish sensual indolence; the aged and more respectable exposed to all the misery that is incident to dwelling in such a society”.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|122–123}}
After 1835 many workhouses were constructed with the central buildings surrounded by work and exercise yards enclosed behind brick walls, so-called “pauper bastilles”. The commission proposed that all new workhouses should allow for the segregation of paupers into at least four distinct groups, each to be housed separately: the aged and impotent, children, able-bodied males, and able-bodied females.
{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|122–123}} A common layout resembled Jeremy Bentham’s prison panopticon, a radial design with four three-storey buildings at its centre set within a rectangular courtyard, the perimeter of which was defined by a three-storey entrance block and single-storey outbuildings, all enclosed by a wall. That basic layout, one of two designed by the architect Sampson Kempthorne (his other design was octagonal with a segmented interior, sometimes known as the Kempthorne star{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|10}}), allowed for four separate work and exercise yards, one for each class of inmate.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|49–52}} Separating the inmates was intended to serve three purposes: to direct treatment to those who most needed it; to deter others from pauperism; and as a physical barrier against illness, physical and mental.{{sfnp|LL5382T4|65}}
Contrasted Residences for the Poor (1836), by Augustus Pugin. He was critical of Kempthorne’s octagonal design shown above.
Wikimedia Commons
The commissioners argued that buildings based on Kempthorne’s plans would be symbolic of the recent changes to the provision of poor relief; one assistant commissioner expressed the view that they would be something “the pauper would feel it was utterly impossible to contend against”, and “give confidence to the Poor Law Guardians”. Another assistant commissioner claimed the new design was intended as a “terror to the able-bodied population”, but the architect George Gilbert Scott was critical of what he called “a set of ready-made designs of the meanest possible character”.{{sfnp|LL5382T4|59}} Some critics of the new Poor Law noted the similarities between Kempthorne’s plans and model prisons, and doubted that they were merely coincidental. Augustus Pugin compared Kempthorne’s octagonal plan with the “antient poor hoyse”, in what Professor Felix Driver calls a “romantic, conservative critique” of the “degeneration of English moral and aesthetic values”.{{sfnp|LL5382T4|61}}
By the 1840s some of the enthusiasm for Kempthorne’s designs had waned. With limited space in built-up areas, and concerns over the ventilation of buildings, some unions moved away from panopticon designs. Between 1840 and 1870 about 150 workhouses with separate blocks designed for specific functions were built. Typically the entrance building contained offices, while the main workhouse building housed the various wards and workrooms, all linked by long corridors designed to improve ventilation and lighting. Where possible, each building was separated by an exercise yard, for the use of a specific category of pauper.{{sfnp|MLW53ZAY|117–118}}
### Admission and discharge
Each Poor Law Union employed one or more relieving officers, whose job it was to visit those applying for assistance and assess what relief, if any, they should be given. Any applicants considered to be in need of immediate assistance could be issued with a note admitting them directly to the workhouse. Alternatively they might be offered any necessary money or goods to tide them over until the next meeting of the guardians, who would decide on the appropriate level of support and whether or not the applicants should be assigned to the workhouse.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|202–203}}
Workhouses were designed with only a single entrance guarded by a porter, through which inmates and visitors alike had to pass. Near to the entrance were the casual wards for tramps and vagrants\[e\]The Metropolitan Houseless Poor Act 1864 imposed a legal obligation on Poor Law Unions to provide such temporary accommodation.{{sfnp|XESZV3JN}} and the relieving rooms, where paupers were housed until they had been examined by a medical officer.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|57}} After being assessed the paupers were separated and allocated to the appropriate ward for their category: boys under 14, able-bodied men between 14 and 60, men over 60, girls under 14, able-bodied women between 14 and 60, and women over 60.\[f\]Those were the official categories, but some Poor Law Unions further subdivided those in their care, particularly women: prostitutes, “women incapable of getting their own way from syphilis”, and “idiotic or weak-minded women with one or more bastard children”.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|57}}) Children under the age of two were allowed to remain with their mothers,{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|57}} but by entering a workhouse paupers were considered to have forfeited responsibility for their families.{{sfnp|UDZ2K36C|19}} Clothing and personal possessions were taken from them and stored, to be returned on their discharge.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|57}} After bathing,{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|59}} they were issued with a distinctive uniform:{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|57}}((The notion of marking out those in receipt of poor relief by their clothing was enshrined in law by the Poor Act 1697, although the custom dated back to at least the previous century. The 1697 Act required paupers to wear a badge consisting of the letter “P” on their right shoulder, in either red or blue cloth.\[39\] for men it might be a striped cotton shirt, jacket and trousers, and a cloth cap, and for women a blue-and-white striped dress worn underneath a smock. Shoes were also provided.\[37\] In some establishments certain categories of inmate were marked out by their clothing, such as at Bristol Incorporation workhouse, where prostitutes were required to wear a yellow dress and pregnant single women a red dress; such practices were deprecated by the Poor Law Commission in a directive issued in 1839 entitled “Ignominious Dress for Unchaste Women in Workhouses”, but they continued until at least 1866.\[40\] Some workhouses had a separate “foul” or “itch” ward, where inmates diagnosed with skin diseases such as scabies could be detained before entering the workhouse proper.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|57}}
Conditions in the casual wards were worse than in the relieving rooms and deliberately designed to discourage vagrants, who were considered potential trouble-makers and probably disease-ridden.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|57}} Vagrants who presented themselves at the door of a workhouse were at the mercy of the porter, whose decision it was whether or not to allocate them a bed for the night in the casual ward.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|160–161}} Those refused entry risked being sentenced to two weeks of hard labour if they were found begging or sleeping in the open and prosecuted for an offence under the Vagrancy Act 1824.{{sfnp|T9TRSU93|87}}
A typical early 19th-century casual ward was a single large room furnished with some kind of bedding and perhaps a bucket in the middle of the floor for sanitation. The bedding on offer could be very basic: the Poor Law authorities in Richmond in the mid-1840s provided only straw and rags, although beds were available for the sick.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|190}} In return for their night’s accommodation vagrants might be expected to undertake a certain amount of work before leaving the next day, such as at Guisborough, where men were required to break stones for three hours and women to pick oakum, two hours before breakfast and one after.{{sfnp|SZWDBE7D}} Until the passage of the Casual Poor Act 1882 vagrants could discharge themselves before 11 am on the day following their admission, but from 1883 onwards they were required to be detained until 9 am on the second day. Those who were admitted to the workhouse again within one month were required to be detained until the fourth day after their admission.{{sfnp|T9TRSU93|94}}
Inmates were free to leave whenever they wished after giving reasonable notice, generally considered to be three hours, but if a parent discharged him or herself then the children were also discharged, to prevent them from being abandoned.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|130}} The comic actor Charlie Chaplin, who spent some time with his mother in Lambeth workhouse, records in his autobiography that when he and his half-brother returned to the workhouse after having been sent to a school in Hanwell, he was met at the gate by his mother Hannah, dressed in her own clothes. Desperate to see them again she had discharged herself and the children; they spent the day together playing in Kennington Park and visiting a coffee shop, after which she readmitted them all to the workhouse.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|130–131}}
### Work
**Daily workhouse schedule**5:00–6:00Rise6:30–7:00Breakfast7:00–12:00Work12:00–13:00Dinner13:00–18:00Work18:00–19:00Supper20:00BedtimeSunday was a day of rest. During the winter months inmates were allowed to rise an hour later and did not start work until 8:00.{{sfnp|UDZ2K36C|19}}Some Poor Law authorities hoped that payment for the work undertaken by the inmates would produce a profit for their workhouses, or at least allow them to be self-supporting, but whatever small income could be produced never matched the running costs.{{sfnp|9ANB5CA3|27}} Eighteenth-century inmates were poorly managed, and lacked either the inclination or skills to compete effectively with free market industries such as spinning and weaving. Some workhouses operated not as places of employment, but as houses of correction, a role similar to that trialled by Buckinghamshire magistrate Matthew Marryott. Between 1714 and 1722 he experimented with using the workhouse as a test of poverty rather than a source of profit, leading to the establishment of a large number of workhouses for that purpose.{{sfnp|BE5MWM6Y|15–16}} Nevertheless, local people became concerned about the competition to their businesses from cheap workhouse labour.{{sfnp|9ANB5CA3|27}} As late as 1888, for instance, the Firewood Cutters Protection Association was complaining that the livelihood of its members was being threatened by the cheap firewood on offer from the workhouses in the East End of London.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|110}}
Many inmates were allocated tasks in the workhouse such as caring for the sick or teaching that were beyond their capabilities, but most were employed on “generally pointless” work,{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|111}} such as breaking stones or removing the hemp from telegraph wires. Others picked oakum using a large metal nail known as a spike, which may be the source of the workhouse’s nickname.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|110}} Bone-crushing, useful in the creation of fertiliser, was a task most inmates could perform,{{sfnp|EJ3YK2R5|394}} until a government inquiry into conditions in the Andover workhouse in 1845 found that starving paupers were reduced to fighting over the rotting bones they were supposed to be grinding, to suck out the marrow.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|8–9}} The resulting scandal led to the withdrawal of bone-crushing as an employment for those living in workhouses and the replacement of the Poor Law Commission by the Poor Law Board in 1847.{{sfnp|UDZ2K36C|19}} Conditions thereafter were regulated according to a list of rules contained in the 1847 Consolidated General Order, which included guidance on issues such as diet, staff duties, dress, education, discipline, and redress of grievances.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|130}}
Some Poor Law Unions opted to send destitute children to the British colonies, in particular to Canada and Australia, where it was hoped the fruits of their labour would contribute to the defence of the empire and enable the colonies to buy more British exports. Known as Home Children, the Philanthropic Farm school alone sent more than 1000 boys to the colonies between 1850 and 1871, many of them taken from workhouses. In 1869 Maria Rye and Annie Macpherson, “two spinster ladies of strong resolve”, began taking groups of orphans and children from workhouses to Canada, most of whom were taken in by farming families in Ontario. The Canadian government paid a small fee to the ladies for each child delivered, but most of the cost was met by charities or the Poor Law Unions.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|147}}
As far as possible elderly inmates were expected to undertake the same kind of work as the younger men and women, although concessions were made to their relative frailty. They might alternatively be required to chop firewood, clean the wards, or carry out other domestic tasks.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|174}} In 1882 Lady Brabazon, later the Countess of Meath, set up a project to provide alternative occupation for non-able-bodied inmates, known as the Brabazon scheme.{{sfnp|T9TRSU93|63}} Volunteers provided training in crafts such as knitting, embroidery and lace making, all costs initially being borne by Lady Brabazon herself. Although slow to take off, when workhouses discovered that the goods being produced were saleable and could make the enterprise self-financing, the scheme gradually spread across the country, and by 1897 there were more than 100 branches.{{sfnp|UDZ2K36C|Brabazon scheme}}
### Diet
*Dinnertime at St Pancras Workhouse*, London, 1911
Wikimedia Commons
In 1836 the Poor Law Commission distributed six diets for workhouse inmates, one of which was to be chosen by each Poor Law Union depending on its local circumstances.{{sfnp|UDZ2K36C|19}} Although dreary, the food was generally nutritionally adequate, and according to contemporary records was prepared with great care. Issues such as training staff to serve and weigh portions were well understood.{{sfnp|UHFG7ZH9|1450–1451}} The diets included general guidance, as well as schedules for each class of inmate. They were laid out on a weekly rotation, the various meals selected on a daily basis, from a list of foodstuffs. For instance, a breakfast of bread and [gruel](https://engole.info/gruel/) was followed by dinner, which might consist of cooked meats, pickled pork or bacon with vegetables, potatoes, yeast dumpling, soup and suet, or rice pudding. Supper was normally bread, cheese and broth, and sometimes butter or potatoes.{{sfnp|ZAXGZCBM|56–59}}
The larger workhouses had separate dining rooms for males and females; workhouses without separate dining rooms would stagger the meal times to avoid any contact between the sexes.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|62}} Rations provided for the indoor staff were much the same as those for the paupers, although more generous. The master and matron, for instance, received six times the amount of food given to a pauper.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|79}}
### Education
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Children_at_crumpsall_workhouse_circa_1895.jpg)A group of children at Crumpsall Workhouse, 1895–1897
Wikimedia Commons
Education was provided for the children,{{sfnp|UDZ2K36C|19}} but workhouse teachers were a particular problem. Poorly paid, without any formal training, and facing large classes of unruly children with little or no interest in their lessons, few stayed in the job for more than a few months.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|134–135}} In an effort to force workhouses to offer at least a basic level of education, legislation was passed in 1845 requiring that all pauper apprentices should be able to read and sign their own indenture papers.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|135}} A training college for workhouse teachers was set up at Kneller Hall in Twickenham during the 1840s, but it closed in the following decade.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|134}}
Some children were trained in skills valuable to the area. In Shrewsbury, the boys were placed in the workhouse’s workshop, while girls were tasked with spinning, making gloves and other jobs “suited to their sex, their ages and abilities”. At St Martin in the Fields, children were trained in spinning flax, picking hair and carding wool, before being placed as apprentices. Workhouses also had links with local industry; in Nottingham, children employed in a cotton mill earned about £60 a year for the workhouse. Some parishes advertised for apprenticeships, and were willing to pay any employer prepared to offer them. Such agreements were preferable to supporting children in the workhouse: apprenticed children were not subject to inspection by justices, thereby lowering the chance of punishment for neglect; and apprenticeships were viewed as a better long-term method of teaching skills to children who might otherwise be uninterested in work. Supporting an apprenticed child was also considerably cheaper than the workhouse or outdoor relief.{{sfnp|3DTJ2RVK|21–23}} Children often had no say in the matter, which could be arranged without the permission or knowledge of their parents.{{sfnp|UDZ2K36C|19}} The supply of labour from workhouse to factory, which remained popular until the 1830s, was sometimes viewed as a form of transportation. While getting parish apprentices from Clerkenwell, Samuel Oldknow’s agent reported how some parents came “crying to beg they may have their Children out again”. Historian Arthur Redford suggests that the poor may have once shunned factories as “an insidious sort of workhouse”.{{sfnp|9QNL67LD|24–25}}
### Religion
From the Jewish point of view … was the virtual impossibility of complying with the Jewish ritual requirements; the dietary laws could have been followed, if at all, only by virtual restriction to bread and water, and the observance of the Sabbath and Festivities was impossible.{{sfnp
— 3X9NDU9RReligion played an important part in workhouse life: prayers were read to the paupers before breakfast and after supper each day.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|66}} Each Poor Law Union was required to appoint a chaplain to look after the spiritual needs of the workhouse inmates, and he was invariably expected to be from the established Church of England. Religious services were generally held in the dining hall, as few early workhouses had a separate chapel. But in some parts of the country, notably Cornwall and northern England,{{sfnp|FQ2KPUAN}} there were more dissenters than members of the established church; as section 19 of the 1834 Poor Law specifically forbade any regulation forcing an inmate to attend church services “in a Mode contrary to \[their\] Religious Principles”,{{sfnp|G3EU7JYS|666}} the commissioners were reluctantly forced to allow non-Anglicans to leave the workhouse on Sundays to attend services elsewhere, so long as they were able to provide a certificate of attendance signed by the officiating minister on their return.{{sfnp|FQ2KPUAN}}
As the 19th century wore on non-conformist ministers increasingly began to conduct services within the workhouse, but Catholic priests were rarely welcomed.{{sfnp|FQ2KPUAN}} A variety of legislation had been introduced during the 17th century to limit the civil rights of Catholics, beginning with the Popish Recusants Act 1605 in the wake of the failed Gunpowder Plot that year. But although almost all restrictions on Catholics in England and Ireland were removed by the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, a great deal of anti-Catholic feeling remained.{{sfnp|9ANB5CA3|130}} Even in areas with large Catholic populations, such as Liverpool, the appointment of a Catholic chaplain was unthinkable.{{sfnp|FQ2KPUAN}} Some guardians went so far as to refuse Catholic priests entry to the workhouse.{{sfnp|9ANB5CA3|130}}
### Discipline
Discipline was strictly enforced in the workhouse; for minor offences such as swearing or feigning sickness the “disorderly” could have their diet restricted for up to 48 hours. For more serious offences such as insubordination or violent behaviour the “refractory” could be confined for up to 24 hours, and might also have their diet restricted. Girls were punished in the same way as adults, but boys under the age of 14 could be beaten with “a rod or other instrument, such as may have been approved of by the Guardians”. The persistently refractory, or anyone bringing “spirituous or fermented liquor” into the workhouse, could be taken before a Justice of the Peace and even jailed.{{sfnp|X3PPVZU3}} All punishments handed out were recorded in a punishment book, which was examined regularly by the workhouse guardians, locally elected representatives of the participating parishes with overall responsibility for the running of the workhouse.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|135}}
### Management and staffing
Ripon Union Workhouse, completed in 1855, replaced an earlier Georgian era workhouse. It now houses a museum{{sfnp
RJGI7EZ3
Although the commissioners were responsible for the regulatory framework within which the Poor Law Unions operated, each union was run by a locally elected board of guardians, comprising representatives from each of the participating parishes, assisted by six ex officio members.{{sfnp|ZS96PSF2}} The guardians were usually farmers or tradesmen,{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|14}} and as one of their roles was the contracting out of the supply of goods to the workhouse the position could prove lucrative for them and their friends. Simon Fowler has commented that “it is clear that this \[the awarding of contracts\] involved much petty corruption, and it was indeed endemic throughout the Poor Law system”.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|33}}
Although the 1834 Act allowed for women to become workhouse guardians provided they met the property requirement, the first female was not elected until 1875. Working class guardians were not appointed until 1892, when the property requirement was dropped in favour of occupying rented premises worth £5 a year.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|14}}
Every workhouse had a complement of full-time staff, often referred to as the indoor staff. At their head was the governor or master, who was appointed by the board of guardians. His duties were laid out in a series of orders issued by the Poor Law Commissioners. As well as the overall administration of the workhouse, masters were required to discipline the paupers as necessary and to visit each ward twice daily, at 11 am and 9 pm. Female inmates and children under seven were the responsibility of the matron, as was the general housekeeping.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|75–76}} The master and the matron were usually a married couple, charged with running the workhouse “at the minimum cost and maximum efficiency – for the lowest possible wages”.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|77}}
A large workhouse such as Whitechapel, accommodating several thousand paupers, employed a staff of almost 200; the smallest may only have had a porter and perhaps an assistant nurse in addition to the master and matron.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|75}} A typical workhouse accommodating 225 inmates had a staff of five, which included a part-time chaplain and a part-time medical officer.{{sfnp|9ANB5CA3|127}} The low pay meant that many medical officers were young and inexperienced. To add to their difficulties, in most unions they were obliged to pay out of their own pockets for any drugs, dressings or other medical supplies needed to treat their patients.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|155–156}}
## Later developments and abolition
Thomas Allom’s design for St Mary Abbots workhouse in Kensington, London, is noticeably different from those produced by Sampson Kempthorne a decade earlier.
Wikimedia Commons
A second major wave of workhouse construction began in the mid-1860s, the result of a damning report by the Poor Law inspectors on the conditions found in infirmaries in London and the provinces. Of one establishment in Southwark, London, an inspector observed bluntly that “The workhouse does not meet the requirements of medical science, nor am I able to suggest any arrangements which would in the least enable it to do so”.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|47}} By the middle of the 19th century there was a growing realisation that the purpose of the workhouse was no longer solely or even chiefly to act as a deterrent to the able-bodied poor, and the first generation of buildings was widely considered to be inadequate. About 150 new workhouses were built mainly in London, Lancashire and Yorkshire between 1840 and 1875, in architectural styles that began to adopt Italianate or Elizabethan features, to better fit into their surroundings and present a less intimidating face. One surviving example is the gateway at Ripon, designed somewhat in the style of a medieval almshouse. A major feature of this new generation of buildings is the long corridors with separate wards leading off for men, women and children.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|48}}
By 1870 the architectural fashion had moved away from the corridor design in favour of a pavilion style based on the military hospitals built during and after the Crimean War, providing light and well-ventilated accommodation. Opened in 1878, the Manchester Union’s infirmary comprised seven parallel three-storey pavilions separated by 80-foot-wide (24 m) “airing yards”; each pavilion had space for 31 beds, a day room, a nurse’s kitchen and toilets.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|49}} By the start of the 20th century new workhouses were often fitted out to an “impressive standard”.{{sfnp|XESZV3JN}} Opened in 1903, the workhouse at Hunslet in West Riding of Yorkshire had two steam boilers with automatic stokers supplying heating and hot water throughout the building, a generator to provide electricity for the institution’s 1,130 electric lamps, and electric lifts in the infirmary pavilion.{{sfnp|XESZV3JN}}
As early as 1841 the Poor Law Commissioners were aware of an “insoluble dilemma” posed by the ideology behind the New Poor Law:{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|125}}
If the pauper is always promptly attended by a skilful and well qualified medical practitioner … if the patient be furnished with all the cordials and stimulants which may promote his recovery: it cannot be denied that his condition in these respects is better than that of the needy and industrious ratepayer who has neither the money nor the influence to secure prompt and careful attendance.{{sfnp
— 6LH7J8DF|125}}
The education of children presented a similar dilemma. It was provided free in the workhouse but had to be paid for by the “merely poor”;{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|125}} free primary education for all children was not provided in the UK until 1918.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|144–145}} Instead of being “less eligible”, those living in the workhouse were in certain respects “more eligible” than those living in poverty outside.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|125}}
Hush-a-bye baby, on the tree top,
When you grow old, your wages will stop,
When you have spent the little you made
First to the Poorhouse and then to the grave.{{sfnp
— EPDQLVVR}}Responsibility for administration of the Poor Law passed to the Local Government Board in 1871, and the emphasis soon shifted from the workhouse as “a receptacle for the helpless poor” to its role in the care of the sick and helpless. The Diseases Prevention Act of 1883 allowed workhouse infirmaries to offer treatment to non-paupers as well as inmates, and by the beginning of the 20th century some infirmaries were even able to operate as private hospitals.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|19}}
By the late 1840s most workhouses outside London and the larger provincial towns housed only “the incapable, elderly and sick”.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|19}} By the end of the century only about 20 per cent of those admitted to workhouses were unemployed or destitute,{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|105}} but about 30 per cent of the population over 70 were in workhouses.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|171}} The introduction of pensions for those aged over 70 in 1908 did not reduce the number of elderly housed in workhouses, but it did reduce the number of those on outdoor relief by 25 per cent.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|170}}
A Royal Commission of 1905 reported that workhouses were unsuited to deal with the different categories of resident they had traditionally housed, and recommended that specialised institutions for each class of pauper should be established, in which they could be treated appropriately by properly trained staff. The “deterrent” workhouses were in future to be reserved for “incorrigibles such as drunkards, idlers and tramps”.{{sfnp|9ANB5CA3|54}}
The Local Government Act of 1929 gave local authorities the power to take over workhouse infirmaries as municipal hospitals, although outside London few did so.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|346}} The workhouse system was abolished in the UK by the same Act on 1 April 1930, but many workhouses, renamed Public Assistance Institutions, continued under the control of local county councils.{{sfnp|2FRJBURE|155}} At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 almost 100,000 people were accommodated in the former workhouses, 5,629 of whom were children.{{sfnp|9ANB5CA3|110}}
The 1948 National Assistance Act abolished the last vestiges of the Poor Law, and with it the workhouses.{{sfnp|2FRJBURE|155}} Many of the workhouse buildings were converted into retirement homes run by the local authorities;{{sfnp|ZE5VK5HS|284}} slightly more than half of local authority accommodation for the elderly was provided in former workhouses in 1960.{{sfnp|9ANB5CA3|112}} Camberwell workhouse (in Peckham, South London) continued until 1985 as a homeless shelter for more than 1,000 men, operated by the Department of Health and Social Security and renamed a resettlement centre.{{sfnp|25WDWLNQ}} Southwell workhouse, now a museum, was used to provide temporary accommodation for mothers and children until the early 1990s.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|223}}
## Modern view
It is beyond the omnipotence of Parliament to meet the conflicting claims of justice to the community; severity to the idle and viscious and mercy to those stricken down into penury by the vicissitudes of God … There is grinding want among the honest poor; there is starvation, squalor, misery beyond description, children lack food and mothers work their eyes dim and their bodies to emaciation in the vain attempt to find the bare necessities of life, but the Poor Law authorities have no record of these struggles.{{sfnp
— 6LH7J8DFThe Poor Law was not designed to address the issue of poverty, which was considered to be the inevitable lot for most people; rather it was concerned with pauperism, “the inability of an individual to support himself”. Writing in 1806 Patrick Colquhoun commented that:{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|120}}
Poverty … is a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society, without which nations and communities could not exist in a state of civilisation. It is the lot of man – it is the source of wealth, since without poverty there would be no labour, and without labour there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth.”{{sfnp
— 6LH7J8DF|120}}
The historian Simon Fowler has argued that workhouses were “largely designed for a pool of able-bodied idlers and shirkers … However this group hardly existed outside the imagination of a generation of political economists”.[\[94\]](https://engole.info/workhouse/?preview_id=3431&preview_nonce=b668c875e1&preview=true#citation_94) Workhouse life was intended to be harsh, to deter the able-bodied poor and to ensure that only the truly destitute would apply, a principle known as less eligibility.[\[95\]](https://engole.info/workhouse/?preview_id=3431&preview_nonce=b668c875e1&preview=true#citation_95) Writing ten years after its introduction, Friedrich Engels described the motives of the authors of the 1834 New Poor Law as “to force the poor into the Procrustean bed of their preconceived notions. To do this they treated the poor with incredible savagery.”[\[96\]](https://engole.info/workhouse/?preview_id=3431&preview_nonce=b668c875e1&preview=true#citation_96)
The purpose of workhouse labour was never clear according to the historian M. A. Crowther. In the early days of workhouses it was either a punishment or a source of income for the parish, but during the 19th century the idea of work as punishment became increasingly unfashionable. The idea took hold that work should rehabilitate the workhouse inmates for their eventual independence, and that it should therefore be rewarded with no more than the workers’ maintenance, otherwise there would be no incentive for them to seek work elsewhere.{{sfnp|9ANB5CA3|197}}
## In art and literature
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Hubert_von_Herkomer_1878_-_Eventide.jpg)*Eventide: A Scene in the Westminster Union (workhouse*), 1878, by Sir Hubert von Herkomer
Wikimedia Commons
The “dramatic possibilities” of the workhouse provided the inspiration for several artists including Charles West Cope, whose Board Day Application for Bread (1841), depicting a young widow pleading for bread for her four children, was painted following his visit to a meeting of the Staines Board of Guardians.{{sfnp|XESZV3JN|search=Art}} The “quintessential workhouse yarn” is Oliver Twist (1838) by Charles Dickens, which contains the well-known request from Oliver to the master of the workhouse: “Please, sir, I want some more \[food\]”.{{sfnp|XESZV3JN|search=Fiction}} Another popular piece of workhouse literature was the dramatic monologue In the Workhouse: Christmas Day (1877) by George Robert Sims, better known by its first line of “It is Christmas Day in the workhouse”.{{sfnp|XESZV3JN|search=Christmas}} In chapter XXVII of his first novel Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), George Orwell gives a brief but vivid account of his stay in a London workhouse when he roamed the streets as a tramp during a short period in his late twenties. In 1931 an early version of this account had already been published as an essay (“The Spike”) in an issue of *The New Adelphi*.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Britain’s gross national income in 1830 was £400 million, of which the £7 million spent on poor relief represents 2 per cent, not a great deal by modern standards according to the historian Trevor May. He further observes that “As poor relief was the only social service provided by the state this might seem to be a small price to pay for saving Britain from the revolution that must have seemed so imminent during the Swing riots.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|121}} b It has been estimated that there were 1.5 million paupers in Britain in 1832, about 12 per cent of the population of 13 million.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|121}} c In 1860 the weekly cost of maintaining a pauper in a workhouse in the east of England was 3s ½d a week, as opposed to 1s 9d a week for outdoor relief.{{sfnp|6LH7J8DF|125}} d Official twice-yearly headcounts, taken on 1 January and 1 July, suggest that between 2.5 and 4.5 per cent of the population was accommodated in workhouses at any given time.{{sfnp|F2PX2A3Y|67}} e The Metropolitan Houseless Poor Act 1864 imposed a legal obligation on Poor Law Unions to provide such temporary accommodation.{{sfnp|XESZV3JN}} f Those were the official categories, but some Poor Law Unions further subdivided those in their care, particularly women: prostitutes, “women incapable of getting their own way from syphilis”, and “idiotic or weak-minded women with one or more bastard children”.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|57}}) Children under the age of two were allowed to remain with their mothers,{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|57}} but by entering a workhouse paupers were considered to have forfeited responsibility for their families.{{sfnp|UDZ2K36C|19}} Clothing and personal possessions were taken from them and stored, to be returned on their discharge.{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|57}} After bathing,{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|59}} they were issued with a distinctive uniform:{{sfnp|TXQUXCGB|57}}((The notion of marking out those in receipt of poor relief by their clothing was enshrined in law by the Poor Act 1697, although the custom dated back to at least the previous century. The 1697 Act required paupers to wear a badge consisting of the letter “P” on their right shoulder, in either red or blue cloth.\[39\]
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 3431
**Categories:** Workhouse
---
### [Cotswold Olimpick Games](https://engole.info/cotswold-olimpick-games/)
**Published:** January 19, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/CotswoldGames01.jpg[/pimage]The Cotswold Olimpick Games is an annual public celebration of games and sports held on the Friday after Spring Bank Holiday near Chipping Campden, in the Cotswolds of England.
**Content:**
Image from 1636 depicting the Cotswold Games. Robert Dover, founder of the games, is on horseback, carrying a wand.{{sfnp
IT2FMSCN|14–19
The Cotswold Olimpick Games**,** an annual public celebration of games and sports held near Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds of England, probably began in 1612, and have continued on and off to the present day. They were started by a local lawyer, Robert Dover, with the approval of King James. Dover’s motivation in organising the Games may have been his belief that physical exercise was necessary for the defence of the realm, but he may also have been attempting to bring rich and poor together; the Games were attended by all classes of society, including royalty on one occasion.
Events included horse-racing, coursing with hounds, running, jumping, dancing, sledgehammer throwing, fighting with swords and cudgels, quarterstaff, and wrestling. Booths and tents were erected in which games such as chess and cards were played for small stakes, and abundant food was supplied for everyone who attended. A temporary wooden structure called Dover Castle was erected in a natural amphitheatre on what is now known as Dover’s Hill, complete with small cannons that were fired to begin the events.
The Games took place on the Thursday and Friday of the week of Whitsun, normally between mid-May and mid-June. Many 17th-century Puritans disapproved of such festivities, believing them to be of pagan origin, and they particularly disapproved of any celebration on a Sunday or a church holiday such as Whitsun. By the time of King James’s death in 1625, many Puritan landowners had forbidden their workers to attend such festivities; the increasing tensions between the supporters of the king and the Puritans resulted in the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642, bringing the Games to an end.
Revived after the Restoration of 1660, the Games gradually degenerated into a drunk and disorderly country festival according to their critics. The Games ended again in 1852, when the common land on which they had been staged was partitioned between local landowners and farmers and subsequently enclosed. Since 1966 the Games have been held each year on the Friday after Spring Bank Holiday. Events have included the tug of war, gymkhana, shin-kicking, dwile flonking, motorcycle scrambling, judo, piano smashing, and morris dancing. The British Olympic Association has recognised the Cotswold Olimpick Games as “the first stirrings of Britain’s Olympic beginnings”.{{sfnp|VHQCVUJV}}
## Origins
The first Olimpick Games were probably held in 1612, organised by lawyer Robert Dover, although different sources give dates from 1601 until 1612. Little is known about Dover. He was probably born between 1575 and 1582 in Norfolk, one of four children born to John Dover, and may have been admitted to Queens’ College at Cambridge in 1583, leaving early to avoid swearing the Oath of Supremacy.{{sfnp|XSHGQH3P}} Dover was admitted to Gray’s Inn on 27 February 1636, and was probably called to the bar in 1611,{{sfnp|TH6FX452}} the same year he likely moved to Saintbury, near Chipping Campden, with his wife and children.{{sfnp|XSHGQH3P}}
It is unclear whether Dover began the Games from scratch, or took over from an existing event, perhaps a church ale.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|19}}\[a\]The word *ale* was used to describe any kind of festivity or feast.{{sfnp|A9X7ZGA2}} The Games had the approval of King James,{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|18-20}} who in his book of advice to his son, Basilikon Doron (1599), had written that to promote good feeling among the common people towards their king, “certain days in the year would be appointed, for delighting the people with public spectacles of all honest games, and exercise of arms”.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|28}} Although there was at that time in England a growing admiration for the ancient Greeks, Dover may have been motivated by military rather than cultural considerations. His biographer, Christopher Whitfield, claimed that Dover combined ancient countryside practices with “classical mythology and Renaissance culture, whilst linking them with the throne and the King’s Protestant Church”.{{sfnp|J9DJJDRF}} Dover believed that physical exercise was necessary for the defence of the kingdom.{{sfnp|N5HXQ8AJ|104}} He may also have believed that the Games would bring rich and poor together, increasing social harmony, an ideal that might explain why the event captured the public imagination;{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|64}} the poetry of the period eulogises the Games as “an occasion of social harmony and communal joy”.{{sfnp|LSA7IRKP}} Writing a few years after the first Games of 1612, Dover himself claimed to be uncertain of his motivations in starting the event:
> I cannot tell what planet ruled, when I
> First undertook this mirth, this jollity,
> Nor can I give account to you at all,
> How this conceit into my brain did fall.
> Or how I durst assemble, call together
> Such multitudes of people as come hither.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|47-48}}
Endymion Porter, a member of the court of King James, had an estate in the village of Aston-sub-Edge, close to Dover’s home.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|28-29}} Dover acted as Porter’s legal agent between 1622 and 1640, and through him James sent some of his own clothes to Dover, “purposely to grace him and consequently the solemnity \[of the Games\]”.{{sfnp|XSHGQH3P}} James may also have granted Dover a coat of arms, with the motto “Do Ever Good”, as claimed by Dover’s grandson, a claim that was rejected by the heraldic authorities in 1682.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|28-29}}
The *Annalia Dubrensia* (Annals of Dover), a collection of poems praising Dover and his achievements in promoting and managing the Games, was published in 1636. The contributors included well-known poets such as Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, Thomas Randolph, and Thomas Heywood.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|54-56}} They saw the Games as revitalising traditional English social life, and they countered opposition from the critics of such events, who complained of “drunken behaviour and sexual licence”,{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|25}} by stressing the “peaceful and well-behaved” nature of the occasion, and even praising the Games as “a gesture of loyalty to the king”.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|59-61}} The Games had acquired their title of “Olimpicks” by the time the *Annalia Dubrensia* was published, a name approved of by Dover. It secularised the proceedings, while adding an air a gentrification to the sports by linking them with the Olympics of ancient Greece.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|54}} Having been brought up in a Catholic family, Dover might well have been keen not to draw attention to religion, particularly if the Games had taken over from an earlier church ale.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|53-54}}
## Proceedings
Panoramic view of the site of the Games
Wikimedia Commons
The Games took place in a natural amphitheatre on what is known today as Dover’s Hill, then called Kingcombe Plain, above the town of Chipping Campden, in Gloucestershire.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|18-20}} They were held on the Thursday and Friday of Whit-Week, or the week of Whitsun, which normally fell between mid-May and mid-June. Dover presided over the Games on horseback, dressed ceremonially in a coat, hat, feather and ruff, donated by King James. Horses and men were decorated with Dover’s favours, yellow ribbons pinned to a hat or worn around the arm, leg, or neck.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|62}} Tents were erected for the gentry, who came from the surrounding counties of Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Worcestershire, and food was supplied in abundance.{{sfnp|IT2FMSCN|14–19}} The poet Nicholas Wallington wrote that:
> He \[Dover\] spares no cost; this also doth afford
> To those that sit at any board.
> None ever hungry from these Games come home,
> Or e’er made plaint of viands, or of room.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|63-64}}
A temporary wooden building was constructed each year, called Dover Castle, from which gunfire salutes were sounded during the competitions.{{sfnp|IT2FMSCN|14–19}} Competitors were summoned to the hillside by the sound of a hunting horn, to take part in various sports. Mounted cannons were fired to begin the events, which included horse-racing, coursing with hounds, running, jumping, dancing, sledgehammer throwing, fighting with swords and cudgels, quarterstaff, and wrestling.{{sfnp|IT2FMSCN|14–19}}{{sfnp|N5HXQ8AJ|104}} Prizes included silver trophies for the mounted sports, and perhaps also money for the other events.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|62-63}}
The contests were refereed by officials called sticklers, from which the phrase “a stickler for the rules” is derived. Sticklers were so-named because they carried sticks, with which to safely separate two fighting swordsmen.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|81}} No scores or times are recorded for any of the events. Portable watches of the time were “rare, costly, and relatively unreliable devices”, but perhaps just as importantly “nobody in Dover’s time was much interested in sports record-keeping or record-breaking”.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|90}}
Visitors from all strata of society attended, from agricultural labourers to the nobility, some of whom travelled up to {{convert|60|mi}} to attend the Games.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|62}} Prince Rupert attended in 1636.{{sfnp|TH6FX452}}
## Other diversions
A harper dressed as the Greek poet Homer entertained the crowds, enhancing the classical Olympic theme. There was also a maze, known as a Troy Town, constructed from piled up turf with walls about {{convert|1|ft|r=1|spell=in}} high, through which villagers would dance. Various games were played for small stakes in booths and tents, including chess, Irish – a game similar to backgammon – and card games such as cent, a game like piquet. King James approved of card games “when you have no other thing ado … and are weary of reading … and when it is foul and stormy weather”, but he considered chess to be “too obsessive a game”.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|111-119}}
The Games ended with a grand firework display, centred on the castle.{{sfnp|N5HXQ8AJ|105}}
## Controversy
In the 17th century many Puritans believed that the slightest action might lead to sin, and even to Hell if it was not repented.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|122-123}} They frowned on festivities such as the Games as being of pagan origin, promoting immorality and drunkenness,{{sfnp|J9DJJDRF}} and disapproved of any celebration on a church holiday such as Whitsun.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|125}} A Puritan revolt over a 1627 “Bringing in the May” festival at Mount Wollaston in present-day Massachusetts resulted in the expulsion of its organiser from the colony.{{sfnp|J9DJJDRF}} King James, on the other hand, viewed Puritanism as a challenge to the authority of the monarch.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|124-127}}
The fine clothes donated by the King, which Dover wore when he presided over the Games, were not just a fashion statement, but also a political one.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|122-123}} The feather in Dover’s hat was a “flag of defiance to virtue” in Puritan eyes, and even the starch probably used in the washing of his ruff was evil, according to the Puritan writer Philip Stubbes. He described starch as “\[a\] certain kind of liquid matter … wherein the Devil hath learned them \[non-Puritans\] to wash and die their ruffs”.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|124-127}}
James was succeeded by King Charles I in 1625. The new King reluctantly consented to an Act of Parliament “for punishing divers abuses on the Lord’s Day, called Sunday”. The Act restricted the activities that were allowed to take place on a Sunday, and prohibited any meetings of people outside their own parishes on Sunday. Many Puritan landowners went even further, forbidding their workers to attend any church ales, culminating in two Somerset circuit judges ruling in 1632 that “all public ales be henceforth utterly suppressed”.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|145-146}}
The following year Charles reversed the judges’ ruling of 1632. He produced a new version of James’s Book of Sports, which he ordered to be read in every church. In it he wrote:
We find that under pretence of taking away abuses, there hath been a general forbidding, not only of ordinary meetings, but of the feast of the dedication of the churches, commonly called wakes … Now our express will and pleasure is that these feasts, with others, shall be observed, and that our Justices of the Peace … shall look to it, both that all disorders there may be prevented or punished, and that all neighbourhood and freedom, with man-like and lawful exercises be used.{{sfnp
— EGW3ABBX|146-147}}
The outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642 brought the Games to an end.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|152}}
## First revival, 1660–1850
On Thursday in Whit-week, On that Highly-renowned and universally admired spot called Dover’s Hill, Near Chipping Campden. Glos. The sports will commence with a grand match of Backswords for a purse of guineas, To be played by 9 or 7 men on a side. Each side must appear in the ring by 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Or 15s. each pair will be given for as many as will play. Wrestling for belts and others prizes. Also Jumping in bags and dancing. And a Jingling Match for 10s. 6d. As well as divers others of celebrated Cotswold and Olympic games, for which this annual meeting, has been famed for centuries.
— *Flyer advertising the Games of 1812*The Games were revived at some uncertain date after the Restoration of 1660.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|163-164}} Dover had died in 1652,{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|156}} and bereft of his influence, the Games became “just another drunken country festival”, according to an account written by the poet William Somervile in 1740.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|163-164}} By then the Games, known as Dover’s Meeting, were well established and once again quite popular, and included events such as backsword fighting. It is unclear whether the contestants fought with metal or wooden swords, but there is no doubt that very real danger was involved. During a fight at the beginning of the 19th century, one of the contestants was so badly injured that he died soon afterwards. The wrestling competitions had become shin-kicking contests, with competitors wearing heavily nailed boots, sometimes with pointed tips. The poet and writer Richard Graves described the Games in his picaresque novel *The Spiritual Quixote* (1773) as a “heathenish assembly”.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|169}} Somervile’s account of the 1740 Games describes a general riot in which “chairs, and forms, and battered bowls are hurled/With fell intent; like bombs the bottles fly”.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|164}} Graves dramatised the enthusiasm for the women’s race for a Holland shift displayed on a pole: “six young women began to exhibit themselves before the whole assembly, in a dress hardly reconcilable to the rules of decency”.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|167}} By 1845 the Games were being organised by a local publican, William Drury, who paid £5 for the right to do so. He hired out space for stalls and booths, and presumably sold alcohol at the event. The rector of Weston-sub-Edge, the parish in which Dover’s Hill is located, Reverend Geoffrey Drinkwater Bourne, claimed that up to 30,000 people were attending the Games by then, and that the hillside was full of drunk and disorderly individuals. Bourne also claimed that:
From 1846 onwards, the games, instead of being as they originally were intended to be decorously conducted, became the trysting place of all the lowest scum of the population which lived in the districts lying between Birmingham and Oxford.{{sfnp
— EGW3ABBX|169-170}}
Such accounts may have been exaggerated however, as there are few reports of police being called to the Games, and no court records of prosecutions for drunkenness or fighting.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|171}}
The staging of the Games depended on the existence of a suitably large area of common land, but by the mid-19th century much of England’s common land was being partitioned up and fenced off. Consent for the enclosure of the parish of Weston-sub-Edge was given in 1850,{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|172}} signalling the end of the Games in 1852.{{sfnp|LT2WMCQW}} The parish’s 969 acres (392 ha) were divided among local farmers and landowners; Reverend Bourne, who a few years earlier had complained so vociferously about the Games, received {{convert|63|acre|ha}}.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|172}}
## Shakespearean connection
Some historians have suggested that the Games were alluded to in playwright William Shakespeare’s *The Merry Wives of Windsor*,{{sfnp|IT2FMSCN|14–19}}{{sfnp|YSZNK7V5}} and used that as evidence to suggest that Shakespeare may have seen the Games. But the allusion is not present in the quarto edition of 1602, making its first appearance in the posthumous First Folio of 1623, edited by Henry Condell and John Hemminges. It is therefore uncertain whether or not it was written by Shakespeare.{{sfnp|XSHGQH3P}}
The first Shakespearean scholars to make a connection between Dover and Shakespeare were [Samuel Johnson](https://engole.info/samuel-johnson), George Steevens, Thomas Warton, and Edmond Malone; historian Jean Wilson has commented that it required “quite imaginative leaps such as a hill referred to by Bolingbroke \[King Henry IV of England\] being the hill on which the games were held”. More recently, the historian and secretary of the Robert Dover’s Games Society, Francis Burns, has suggested that the wrestling scene in *As You Like It* “reflects the wrestling at the Games”.{{sfnp|XSHGQH3P}}
Although Shakespeare may have been acquainted with Robert Dover, there is no evidence that he ever attended the Games.{{sfnp|9JXKXGTA|68}}
## Second revival, 1951–present-day
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Shin_kicking_at_the_Olimpicks.jpg)A shin-kicking contest
Wikimedia Commons
Dover’s Hill was bought by the National Trust in 1928,{{sfnp|TH6FX452}} and until recently contained a monument to Robert Dover.{{sfnp|3SRLPGQG|92}} The Games were revived for the 1951 Festival of Britain,{{sfnp|TH6FX452}} but did not return to being a regular event until the Robert Dover’s Games Society was founded in 1965. Except when exceptionally bad weather or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has forced their cancellation the Games have been held each year since 1966, on the evening of the Friday after Spring Bank Holiday, and attract thousands of visitors. An actor dressed as Dover arrives on horseback to open the games. Events have included the tug of war, gymkhana, shin-kicking, dwile flonking, motorcycle scrambling, judo, piano smashing, morris dancing, and, in 1976, poetry. After dusk a bonfire is lit, followed by a torchlight procession to the square in Chipping Campden.{{sfnp|EGW3ABBX|183}}
The British Olympic Association, in its successful bid for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, recognised Dover’s Games as “the first stirrings of Britain’s Olympic beginnings”.{{sfnp|VHQCVUJV}} Writing in 1972, the athletics coach and sports journalist Ron Pickering said:{{sfnp|XSHGQH3P}}
The influence of English rural sports, and the work of William Penny Brookes\[b\]William Penny Brookes was the founder of the Wenlock Olympian Society, which held its first annual Games in 1859. and Robert Dover, have been significant in the development of the Olympic Games philosophy. Almost half the events in the Modern Games are historically connected to British rural sports. Therefore we have a certain arrogant claim and a responsibility to the development of the Modern Olympic Games.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The word *ale* was used to describe any kind of festivity or feast.{{sfnp|A9X7ZGA2}} b William Penny Brookes was the founder of the Wenlock Olympian Society, which held its first annual Games in 1859.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 13300
**Categories:** Sports event
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Wife selling](https://engole.info/wife-selling/)
**Published:** December 8, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Rowlandson%2C_Thomas_-_Selling_a_Wife_-_1812-14.jpg[/pimage]Way of ending an unsatisfactory marriage by mutual agreement that probably began in the late 17th century, when divorce was a practical impossibility for all but the very wealthiest.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Rowlandson%2C_Thomas_-_Selling_a_Wife_-_1812-14.jpg)*Selling a Wife* (1812–1814), by Thomas Rowlandson. The painting gives the viewer the impression that the wife was a willing party to the sale, which was “a genial affair” marked by laughter.{{sfnp
5GFGMNMV
Wife selling in England was a way of ending an unsatisfactory marriage by mutual agreement that probably began in the late 17th century, when divorce was a practical impossibility for all but the very wealthiest. After parading his wife with a halter around her neck, arm, or waist, a husband would publicly auction her to the highest bidder. Wife selling provides the backdrop for Thomas Hardy’s novel *The Mayor of Casterbridge*, in which the central character sells his wife at the beginning of the story, an act that haunts him for the rest of his life, and ultimately destroys him.
Although the custom had no basis in law and frequently resulted in prosecution, particularly from the mid-19th century onwards, the attitude of the authorities was equivocal. At least one early 19th-century magistrate is on record as stating that he did not believe he had the right to prevent wife sales, and there were cases of local Poor Law Commissioners forcing husbands to sell their wives, rather than having to maintain the family in workhouses.
Wife selling persisted in England in some form until the early 20th century; according to the jurist and historian James Bryce, writing in 1901, wife sales were still occasionally taking place during his time. In one of the last reported instances of a wife sale in England, a woman giving evidence in a Leeds police court in 1913 claimed that she had been sold to one of her husband’s workmates for £1.
## Legal background
Wife selling in its “ritual form” appears to be an “invented custom” that originated at about the end of the 17th century,{{sfnp|RKZXLGED|163}} although there is an account from 1302 of someone who “granted his wife by deed to another man”.{{sfnp|6FTHHQHA|820}} With the rise in popularity of newspapers, reports of the practice become more frequent in the second half of the 18th century.{{sfnp|VHYEYB4X|88}} In the words of 20th-century writer Courtney Kenny, the ritual was “a custom rooted sufficiently deeply to show that it was of no recent origin”.{{sfnp|WG75J6US}} Writing in 1901 on the subject of wife selling, James Bryce stated that there was “no trace at all in our \[English\] law of any such right”,{{sfnp|6FTHHQHA|819-820}} but he also observed that “everybody has heard of the odd habit of selling a wife, which still occasionally recurs among the humbler classes in England”.{{sfnp|6FTHHQHA|819}}
## Marriage
Until the passing of the Marriage Act of 1753, a formal ceremony of marriage before a clergyman was not a legal requirement in England, and marriages were unregistered. All that was required was for both parties to agree to the union, so long as each had reached the legal age of consent,{{sfnp|6FTHHQHA|816-817}} which was 12 for girls and 14 for boys.{{sfnp|2R8UWS4P}} Women were completely subordinated to their husbands after marriage, the husband and wife becoming one legal entity, a legal status known as coverture. As the eminent English judge Sir William Blackstone wrote in 1753: “the very being, or legal existence of the woman, is suspended during the marriage, or at least is consolidated and incorporated into that of her husband: under whose wing, protection and cover, she performs everything”. Married women could not own property in their own right, and were indeed themselves the property of their husbands.{{sfnp|HN6ZUVJB|12-13}} But Blackstone went on to observe that “even the disabilities the wife lies under are, for the most part, intended for her protection and benefit. So great a favourite is the female sex of the laws of England”.{{sfnp|6FTHHQHA|820}}
## Separation
Five distinct methods of breaking up a marriage existed in the early modern period of English history. One was to sue in the ecclesiastical courts for separation from bed and board (a mensa et thoro), on the grounds of adultery or life-threatening cruelty, but it did not allow a remarriage. {{sfnp|6468F6A5|141}} From the 1550s, until the Matrimonial Causes Act became law in 1857, divorce in England was only possible, if at all, by the complex and costly procedure of a private Act of Parliament.{{sfnp|DVQGGMDP|144}} Although the divorce courts set up in the wake of the 1857 Act made the procedure considerably cheaper, divorce remained prohibitively expensive for the poorer members of society.{{sfnp|X66XSVAH|15}}\[a\]In his 1844 judgement against a bigamist, at Warwick Assizes, William Henry Maule described the process in detail.{{sfnp|864MM6PN}} “I will tell you what you ought to have done … You ought to have instructed your attorney to bring an action against the seducer of your wife for criminal conversation. That would have cost you about a hundred pounds. When you had obtained judgment for (though not necessarily actually recovered) substantial damages against him, you should have instructed your proctor to sue in the Ecclesiastical courts for a divorce *a mensa et thoro*. That would have cost you two hundred or three hundred pounds more. When you had obtained a divorce *a mensa et thoro*, you should have appeared by counsel before the House of Lords in order to obtain a private Act of Parliament for a divorce a vinculo matrimonii which would have rendered you free and legally competent to marry the person whom you have taken on yourself to marry with no such sanction. The Bill might possibly have been opposed in all its stages in both Houses of Parliament, and together you would have had to spend about a thousand or twelve hundred pounds. You will probably tell me that you have never had a thousand farthings of your own in the world; but, prisoner, that makes no difference. Sitting here as an English Judge, it is my duty to tell you that this is not a country in which there is one law for the rich and one for the poor. You will be imprisoned for one day. Since you have been in custody since the commencement of the Assizes you are free to leave.”{{sfnp|644VDSU5}} This affirmation later contributed to the passing of the 1857 Act. An alternative was to obtain a “private separation”, an agreement negotiated between both spouses, embodied in a deed of separation drawn up by a conveyancer. Desertion or elopement was also possible, whereby the wife was forced out of the family home, or the husband simply set up a new home with his mistress.{{sfnp|6468F6A5|141}} Finally, the less popular notion of wife selling was an alternative but illegitimate method of ending a marriage.{{sfnp|TKADE5SQ|215}} The Laws Respecting Women, As They Regard Their Natural Rights (1777) observed that, for the poor, wife selling was viewed as a “method of dissolving marriage”, when “a husband and wife find themselves heartily tired of each other, and agree to part, if the man has a mind to authenticate the intended separation by making it a matter of public notoriety”.{{sfnp|644VDSU5}}
Although some 19th-century wives objected, records of 18th-century women resisting their sales are non-existent. With no financial resources, and no skills on which to trade, for many women a sale was the only way out of an unhappy marriage.{{sfnp|TKADE5SQ|217-218}} Indeed, the wife is sometimes reported as having insisted on the sale. A wife sold in Wenlock Market for 2s. 6d. in 1830 was quite determined that the transaction should go ahead, despite her husband’s last-minute misgivings: “‘e \[the husband\] turned shy, and tried to get out of the business, but Mattie mad’ un stick to it. ‘Er flipt her apern in ‘er gude man’s face, and said, ‘Let be yer rogue. I wull be sold. I wants a change’.”{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|462}}
For the husband, the sale released him from his marital duties, including any financial responsibility for his wife.{{sfnp|TKADE5SQ|217-218}} For the purchaser, who was often the wife’s lover, the transaction freed him from the threat of a legal action for criminal conversation, a claim by the husband for restitution of damage to his property, in this case his wife.{{sfnp|TD8MVLA6|122}}
## Sale
It is unclear when the ritualised custom of selling a wife by public auction began, but it seems likely to have been some time towards the end of the 17th century. In November 1692 “John, ye son of Nathan Whitehouse, of Tipton, sold his wife to Mr. Bracegirdle”, although the manner of the sale is unrecorded. In 1696, Thomas Heath Maultster was fined for “cohabiteing in an unlawful manner with the wife of George ffuller of Chinner … haueing bought her of her husband at 2d.q. the pound”,{{sfnp|H8TPCKTW}} and ordered by the peculiar court at Thame to perform public penance, but between 1690 and 1750 only eight other cases are recorded in England.{{sfnp|JAFSHXYM|76}} In an Oxford case of 1789 wife selling is described as “the vulgar form of Divorce lately adopted”, suggesting that even if it was by then established in some parts of the country it was only slowly spreading to others.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|412}} It persisted in some form until the early 20th century, although by then in “an advanced state of decomposition”.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|408-409}}
In most reports the sale was announced in advance, perhaps by advertisement in a local newspaper. It usually took the form of an auction, often at a local market, to which the wife would be led by a halter (usually of rope but sometimes of ribbon){{sfnp|WG75J6US}} around her neck, or arm.{{sfnp|TKADE5SQ|215-216}} Often the purchaser was arranged in advance, and the sale was a form of symbolic separation and remarriage, as in a case from Maidstone, where in January 1815 John Osborne planned to sell his wife at the local market. However, as no market was held that day, the sale took place instead at “the sign of ‘The Coal-barge,’ in Earl Street”, where “in a very regular manner”, his wife and child were sold for £1 to a man named William Serjeant. In July the same year a wife was brought to Smithfield market by coach, and sold for fifty guineas and a horse. Once the sale was complete, “the lady, with her new lord and master, mounted a handsome curricle which was in waiting for them, and drove off, seemingly nothing loath to go.” At another sale in September 1815, at Staines market, “only three shillings and four pence were offered for the lot, no one choosing to contend with the bidder, for the fair object, whose merits could only be appreciated by those who knew them. This the purchaser could boast, from a long and intimate acquaintance.”{{sfnp|6B9RQR8N|216-217}}
Although the initiative was usually the husband’s, the wife had to agree to the sale. An 1824 report from Manchester says that “after several biddings she \[the wife\] was knocked down for 5s; but not liking the purchaser, she was put up again for 3s and a quart of ale”.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|433}} Frequently the wife was already living with her new partner.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|428}} In one case in 1804 a London shopkeeper found his wife in bed with a stranger to him, who, following an altercation, offered to purchase the wife. The shopkeeper agreed, and in this instance the sale may have been an acceptable method of resolving the situation. However, the sale was sometimes spontaneous, and the wife could find herself the subject of bids from total strangers.{{sfnp|TKADE5SQ|216-217}} In March 1766, a carpenter from Southwark sold his wife “in a fit of conjugal indifference at the alehouse”. Once sober, the man asked his wife to return, and after she refused he hanged himself. A domestic fight might sometimes precede the sale of a wife, but in most recorded cases the intent was to end a marriage in a way that gave it the legitimacy of a divorce.{{sfnp|TKADE5SQ|216}} In some cases the wife arranged for her own sale, and even provided the money for her agent to buy her out of her marriage, such as an 1822 case in Plymouth.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|440-441}}
Such “divorces” were not always permanent. In 1826 John Turton sold his wife Mary to William Kaye at [Emley Cross](https://engole.info/emley/ "Emley") for five shillings. But after Kaye’s death she returned to her husband, and the couple remained together for the next thirty years.{{sfnp|L3LNJPTR|132}}
## Mid-19th century
The Duke of Chandos, while staying at a small country inn, saw the ostler beating his wife in a most cruel manner; he interfered and literally bought her for half a crown. She was a young and pretty woman; the Duke had her educated; and on the husband’s death he married her. On her death-bed, she had her whole household assembled, told them her history, and drew from it a touching moral of reliance on Providence; as from the most wretched situation, she had been suddenly raised to one of the greatest prosperity; she entreated their forgiveness if at any time she had given needless offence, and then dismissed them with gifts; dying almost in the very act.{{sfnp
— 7VD6I4GJ}}It was believed during the mid-19th century that wife selling was restricted to the lowest levels of labourers, especially to those living in remote rural areas, but an analysis of the occupations of husbands and purchasers reveals that the custom was strongest in “proto-industrial” communities. Of the 158 cases in which occupation can be established, the largest group (19) was involved in the livestock or transport trades, fourteen worked in the building trade, five were blacksmiths, four were chimney-sweeps, and two were described as gentlemen, suggesting that wife selling was not simply a peasant custom. The most high-profile case was that of Henry Brydges, 2nd Duke of Chandos, who is reported to have bought his second wife from an ostler in about 1740.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|413-414}}
Prices paid for wives varied considerably, from a high of £100 plus £25 each for her two children in a sale of 1865 (equivalent to about £13,200 in 2018)\[34\] to a low of a glass of ale, or even free. The lowest amount of money exchanged was three farthings (three-quarters of one penny), but the usual price seems to have been between 2s. 6d. and 5 shillings.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|415}} According to authors Wade Mansell and Belinda Meteyard, money seems usually to have been a secondary consideration;{{sfnp|VHYEYB4X|88}} the more important factor was that the sale was seen by many as legally binding, despite it having no basis in law. Some of the new couples bigamously married,{{sfnp|TKADE5SQ|216}} but the attitude of officialdom towards wife selling was equivocal.{{sfnp|VHYEYB4X|88}} Rural clergy and magistrates knew of the custom, but seemed uncertain of its legitimacy, or chose to turn a blind eye. Entries have been found in baptismal registers, such as this example from Perleigh in Essex, dated 1782: “Amie Daughter of Moses Stebbing by a bought wife delivered to him in a Halter”.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|451}} A jury in Lincolnshire ruled in 1784 that a man who had sold his wife had no right to reclaim her from her purchaser, thus endorsing the validity of the transaction.{{sfnp|92V49UZ7|86-87}} In 1819 a magistrate who attempted to prevent a sale at Ashbourne, Derby, but was pelted and driven away by the crowd, later commented:
Although the real object of my sending the constables was to prevent the scandalous sale, the apparent motive was that of keeping the peace … As to the act of selling itself, I do not think I have a right to prevent it, or even oppose any obstacle to it, because it rests upon a custom preserved by the people of which perhaps it would be dangerous to deprive them by any law for that purpose.{{sfnp
— 5PY38YFG|451}}{{sfnp|2HRNQ295|223}}
In some cases, such as that of Henry Cook in 1814, the Poor Law authorities forced the husband to sell his wife rather than have to maintain her and her child in the Effingham workhouse. She was taken to Croydon market and sold for one shilling, the parish paying for the cost of the journey and a “wedding dinner”.{{sfnp|S3TS59Z2|51}}
It is this day agreed on between John Parsons, of the parish of Midsummer Norton, in the county of Somerset, clothworker, and John Tooker, of the same place, gentleman, that the said John Parsons, for and in consideration of the sum of six pounds and six shillings in hand paid to the said John Parsons, doth sell, assign, and set over unto the said John Tooker, Ann Parsons, wife of the said John Parsons; with all right, property, claim, services, and demands whatsoever, that he, the said John Parsons, shall have in or to the said Ann Parsons, for and during the term of the natural life of her, the said Ann Parsons. In witness whereof I, the said John Parsons, have set my hand the day and year first above written.{{sfnp
— WG75J6US}}By choosing a market as the location for the sale, the couple ensured a large audience, which made their separation a widely witnessed fact.\[40\] The use of the halter was symbolic; after the sale, it was handed to the purchaser as a signal that the transaction was concluded,{{sfnp|VHYEYB4X|88}} and in some instances, those involved would often attempt further to legitimate the sale by forcing the winning bidder to sign a contract, recognising that the seller had no further liability for his wife. In 1735, a successful wife sale in St Clements was announced by the common cryer,\[b\]A common cryer was a person whose responsibility it was to make public announcements on behalf of his employer. who wandered the streets ensuring that local traders were aware of the former husband’s intention not to honour “any debts she should contract”. The same point was made in an advertisement placed in the Ipswich Journal in 1789: “no person or persons to intrust her with my name … for she is no longer my right”.{{sfnp|TKADE5SQ|218}} Those involved in such sales sometimes attempted to legalise the transaction, as demonstrated by a bill of sale for a wife, preserved in the British Museum.\[c\]MSS. 32,084 The bill is contained in a petition presented to a Somerset Justice of the Peace in 1758, by a wife who about 18 months earlier had been sold by her husband for £6 6s “for the support of his extravagancy”. The petition does not object to the sale, but complains that the husband returned three months later to demand more money from his wife and her new “husband”.{{sfnp|WG75J6US}}
In Sussex, inns and public houses were a regular venue for wife-selling, and alcohol often formed part of the payment. For example, when a man sold his wife at the Shoulder of Mutton and Cucumber in Yapton in 1898, the purchaser paid 7s. 6d. (£40 in 2018)\[34\] and 1 imperial quart (1.1 l) of beer. A sale a century earlier in Brighton involved “eight pots of beer” and seven shillings (£30 in 2018);\[34\] and in Ninfield in 1790, a man who swapped his wife at the village inn for half a pint of gin changed his mind and bought her back later.{{sfnp|ZUCCULM5|65}}
Public wife sales\[d\]Private sales have not been counted.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|409–412}} were sometimes attended by huge crowds. An 1806 sale in Hull was postponed “owing to the crowd which such an extraordinary occurrence had gathered together”, suggesting that wife sales were relatively rare events, and therefore popular. Estimates of the frequency of the ritual usually number about 300 between 1780 and 1850, relatively insignificant compared to the instances of desertion, which in the Victorian era numbered in the tens of thousands.{{sfnp|6468F6A5|147-148}}
## Distribution and symbolism
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/French_depiction_of_englishman_wife_selling.jpg) French depiction of Milord John Bull, heading to Smithfield Market to sell his wife
Wikimedia Commons
Wife selling appears to have been widespread throughout England, but relatively rare in neighbouring Wales, where only a few cases were reported, and in Scotland where only one has been discovered. The English county with the highest number of cases between 1760 and 1880 was Yorkshire, with forty-four, considerably more than the nineteen reported for Middlesex and London during the same period, despite the French caricature of Milord John Bull “booted and spurred, in \[London’s\] Smithfield Market, crying ‘*à quinze livres ma femme!*‘ \[£15 for my wife\], while Milady stood haltered in a pen”.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|409}}
In his account, *Wives for Sale*, author Samuel Pyeatt Menefee collected 387 incidents of wife selling, the last of which occurred in the early 20th century.\[45\] Historian E. P. Thompson considered many of Menefee’s cases to be “vague and dubious”, and that some double-counting had taken place, but he nevertheless agreed that about three hundred were authentic, which when combined with his own research resulted in about four hundred reported cases.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|408}}
Menefee argued that the ritual mirrored that of a livestock sale – the symbolic meaning of the halter; wives were even occasionally valued by weight, just like livestock. Although the halter was considered central to the “legitimacy” of the sale, Thompson has suggested that Menefee may have misunderstood the social context of the transaction. Markets were favoured not because livestock was traded there, but because they offered a public venue where the separation of husband and wife could be witnessed. Sales often took place at fairs, in front of public houses, or local landmarks such as the obelisk at Preston (1817), or Bolton’s gas pillar\[e\]The gas pillar was a large cast iron vase erected in the early 19th century, in Bolton’s market square, atop which was a gas lamp. The whole structure was about {{convert|30|ft}} tall. (1835), where crowds could be expected to gather.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|418}}
There were very few reported sales of husbands, and from a modern perspective, selling a wife like a chattel is degrading, even when considered as a form of divorce.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|458-459}} Nevertheless, most contemporary reports hint at the women’s independence and sexual vitality: “The women are described as ‘fine-looking’, ‘buxom’, ‘of good appearance’, ‘a comely-looking country girl’, or as ‘enjoying the fun and frolic heartily’&thinsp”.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|461}}
Along with other English customs, settlers arriving in the American colonies during the late 17th and early 18th centuries took with them the practice of wife selling, and the belief in its legitimacy as a way of ending a marriage. In 1645 “The P’ticular Court” of Hartford, Connecticut, reported the case of Baggett Egleston, who was fined 20 shillings for “bequething his wyfe to a young man”. The *Boston Evening-Post* reported on 15 March 1736 an argument between two men “and a certain woman, each one claiming her as his Wife, but so it was that one of them had actually disposed of his Right in her to the other for Fifteen Shillings”. The purchaser had, apparently, refused to pay in full, and had attempted to return “his” wife. He was given the outstanding sum by two generous bystanders, and paid the husband – who promptly “gave the Woman a modest Salute wishing her well, and his Brother Sterling much Joy of his Bargain.”{{sfnp|2HRNQ295|224-225}} An account in 1781 of a William Collings of South Carolina records that he sold his wife for “two dollars and half \[a\] dozen bowls of grogg”.{{sfnp|ZTUW7KTB|131}}
## Changing attitudes
On Friday a butcher exposed his wife to Sale in Smithfield Market, near the Ram Inn, with a halter about her neck, and one about her waist, which tied her to a railing, when a hog-driver was the happy purchaser, who gave the husband three guineas and a crown for his departed rib. Pity it is, there is no stop put to such depraved conduct in the lower order of people.{{sfnp
— LYW286PM}}Towards the end of the 18th century, some hostility towards wife selling began to manifest itself amongst the general population. One sale in 1756 in Dublin was interrupted by a group of women who “rescued” the wife, following which the husband was given a mock trial and placed in the [stocks](https://engole.info/stocks) until early the next morning. In about 1777, a wife sale at Carmarthenshire produced in the crowd “a great silence”, and “a feeling of uneasiness in the gathering”.{{sfnp|TKADE5SQ|217}} When a labourer offered his wife for sale on Smithfield market in 1806, “the public became incensed at the husband, and would have severely punished him for his brutality, but for the interference of some officers of the police.”{{sfnp|92V49UZ7|86-87}}
Reports of wife selling rose from two per decade in the 1750s, to a peak of fifty in the 1820s and 1830s. As the number of cases increased so did opposition to the practice. It became seen as one of a number of popular customs that the social elite believed it their duty to abolish, and women protested that it represented “a threat and insult to their sex”.{{sfnp|92V49UZ7|86-87}} JPs in Quarter Sessions became more active in punishing those involved in wife selling, and some test cases in the central law courts confirmed the illegality of the practice.{{sfnp|6468F6A5|416}} Newspaper accounts were often disparaging: “a most disgusting and disgraceful scene” was the description in a report of 1832,{{sfnp|FEU4LBNW}} but it was not until the 1840s that the number of cases of wife selling began to decline significantly. Thompson discovered 121 published reports of wife sales between 1800 and 1840, as compared to 55 between 1840 and 1880.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|409}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Contemporary_wife_selling_print_georgian_scrapbook_1949.jpg)A contemporary French print of an 1820 English caricature of a wife sale. The scene is set at a cattle market, which places it in the context of livestock sales and implies that the wife already has a lover, as the husband is shown apparently “wearing horns”, a traditional symbol that he has been cuckolded.
Wikimedia Commons
Lord Chief Justice William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, considered wife sales to be a conspiracy to commit adultery, but few of those reported in the newspapers led to prosecutions in court.{{sfnp|VHYEYB4X|88}} *The Times* reported one such case in 1818, in which a man was indicted for selling his wife at Leominster market, for 2s. 6d.{{sfnp|VMGJFUWR}} In 1825 a man named Johnson was charged with “having sung a song in the streets describing the merits of his wife, for the purpose of selling her to the highest bidder at Smithfield.” Such songs were not unique; in about 1842 John Ashton wrote “Sale of a Wife”.{{sfnp|U3I5AP6M}}\[f\]Thank you, sir, thank you, said the bold auctioneer,
Going for ten—is there nobody here
Will bid any more? Is this not a bad job?
Going! Going! I say—she is gone for ten bob.{{sfnp|FG726QFJ|3}}
The arresting officer claimed that the man had gathered a “crowd of all sorts of vagabonds together, who appeared to listen to his ditty, but were in fact, collected to pick pockets.” The defendant, however, replied that he had “not the most distant idea of selling his wife, who was, poor creature, at home with her hungry children, while he was endeavouring to earn a bit of bread for them by the strength of his lungs.” He had also printed copies of the song, and the story of a wife sale, to earn money. Before releasing him, the Lord Mayor, judging the case, cautioned Johnson that the practice could not be allowed, and must not be repeated.{{sfnp|3YPP4W2G}} In 1833 the sale of a woman was reported at Epping. She was sold for 2s. 6d., with a duty of 6d. Once sober, and placed before the Justices of the Peace, the husband claimed that he had been forced into marriage by the parish authorities, and had “never since lived with her, and that she had lived in open adultery with the man Bradley, by whom she had been purchased”. He was imprisoned for “having deserted his wife”.{{sfnp|DFJ5645I}}
The return of a wife after eighteen years results in Michael Henchard’s downfall in Thomas Hardy’s novel *The Mayor of Casterbridge* (1886). A bad-tempered, impulsive and cruel husband, feeling burdened by his wife, Henchard sells her to a stranger for five guineas. He becomes a successful businessman and rises to the position of mayor, but the return of his wife many years later prompts his fall back into penury.{{sfnp|S3TS59Z2|95-97}} The custom was also referred to in the 19th-century French play, *Le Marché de Londres*. Commenting on the drama and contemporary French attitudes on the custom, in 1846 the writer Angus B. Reach complained: “They reckon up a long and visionary list of our failings \[… They\] would as readily give up their belief in the geographical and physical existence of London, as in the astounding fact that in England a husband sells his wife exactly as he sells his horse or his dog.”{{sfnp|JY9TP87F}} Such complaints were still commonplace nearly 20 years later; in *The Book of Days* (1864), author Robert Chambers wrote about a case of wife selling in 1832, and noted that “the occasional instances of wife-sale, while remarked by ourselves with little beyond a passing smile, have made a deep impression on our continental neighbours, \[who\] constantly cite it as an evidence of our low civilisation.”{{sfnp|I5KTCYMF|487}} Embarrassed by the practice, a legal handbook of 1853 enabled English judges to dismiss wife selling as a myth: “It is a vulgar error that a husband can get rid of his wife by selling her in the open market with a halter round her neck. Such an act on his part would be severely punished by the local magistrate.”{{sfnp|6468F6A5|146-147}} Originally published in 1869, *Burn’s Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer* states that “publicly selling or buying a wife is clearly an indictable offence … And many prosecutions against husbands for selling, and others for buying, have recently been sustained, and imprisonment for six months inflicted”.{{sfnp|KA3VLY73|1025}}
Another form of wife selling was by deed of conveyance. Although initially much less common than sale by auction, the practice became more widespread after the 1850s, as popular opinion turned against the market sale of a wife.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|455}} The issue of the commonly perceived legitimacy of wife selling was also brought to the government. In 1881, Home Secretary William Harcourt was asked to comment on an incident in Sheffield, in which a man sold his wife for a quart of beer. Harcourt replied: “no impression exists anywhere in England that the selling of wives is legitimate”, and “that no such practice as wife selling exists”,{{sfnp|6R247UKH}} but as late as 1889, a member of the Salvation Army sold his wife for a shilling in Hucknall Torkard, Nottinghamshire, and subsequently led her by the halter to her buyer’s house, the last case in which the use of a halter is mentioned.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|455}} The most recent case of an English wife sale was reported in 1913, when a woman giving evidence in a Leeds police court during a maintenance case claimed that her husband had sold her to one of his workmates for £1, equivalent to about £90.\[g\]Comparing the value of £1 in 1913 with 2017 using the retail price index{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} The manner of her sale is unrecorded.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|408-409}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a In his 1844 judgement against a bigamist, at Warwick Assizes, William Henry Maule described the process in detail.{{sfnp|864MM6PN}} “I will tell you what you ought to have done … You ought to have instructed your attorney to bring an action against the seducer of your wife for criminal conversation. That would have cost you about a hundred pounds. When you had obtained judgment for (though not necessarily actually recovered) substantial damages against him, you should have instructed your proctor to sue in the Ecclesiastical courts for a divorce *a mensa et thoro*. That would have cost you two hundred or three hundred pounds more. When you had obtained a divorce *a mensa et thoro*, you should have appeared by counsel before the House of Lords in order to obtain a private Act of Parliament for a divorce a vinculo matrimonii which would have rendered you free and legally competent to marry the person whom you have taken on yourself to marry with no such sanction. The Bill might possibly have been opposed in all its stages in both Houses of Parliament, and together you would have had to spend about a thousand or twelve hundred pounds. You will probably tell me that you have never had a thousand farthings of your own in the world; but, prisoner, that makes no difference. Sitting here as an English Judge, it is my duty to tell you that this is not a country in which there is one law for the rich and one for the poor. You will be imprisoned for one day. Since you have been in custody since the commencement of the Assizes you are free to leave.”{{sfnp|644VDSU5}} b A common cryer was a person whose responsibility it was to make public announcements on behalf of his employer. c MSS. 32,084 d Private sales have not been counted.{{sfnp|5PY38YFG|409–412}} e The gas pillar was a large cast iron vase erected in the early 19th century, in Bolton’s market square, atop which was a gas lamp. The whole structure was about {{convert|30|ft}} tall. f Thank you, sir, thank you, said the bold auctioneer,
Going for ten—is there nobody here
Will bid any more? Is this not a bad job?
Going! Going! I say—she is gone for ten bob.{{sfnp|FG726QFJ|3}} g Comparing the value of £1 in 1913 with 2017 using the retail price index{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 11978
**Categories:** English custom
---
### [Pail closet](https://engole.info/pail-closet/)
**Published:** August 21, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Rochdale_corporation_pail_closet.jpg[/pimage]Small outhouse containing a seat underneath which was a bucket into which the user would defecate. The buckets were regularly removed and emptied by the local authority.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Rochdale_corporation_pail_closet.jpg)Rochdale Corporation pail closet. The seated area is on the right. The chamber on the left was for the disposal of ordinary household waste.
Wikimedia Commons
A pail closet or pail privy was designed for the disposal of human excreta, dirty water, and general household waste by the “pail system” (or Rochdale system) of waste removal. The “closet” (a word which had long had one meaning as “toilet”) was a small outhouse (privy) containing a seat, underneath which a portable receptacle was placed. This bucket (pail), into which the user would defecate, was regularly removed and emptied by the local authority. The contents, known euphemistically as night soil, would either be incinerated or composted into fertiliser.
Although the more advanced water closet (flush toilet) was popular in wealthy homes, the lack of an adequate water supply and poor sewerage meant that in 19th-century England, in working-class neighbourhoods, towns and cities often chose dry conservancy methods of waste disposal. The pail closet was an evolution of the midden closet (privy midden), an impractical and unsanitary amenity considered a nuisance to public health. The pail system was popular in France and England, particularly in the historic Lancashire town of Rochdale, from which the system commonly took its name. But the pail closet was not without problems of its own; if the pail was not emptied on a regular basis, it overflowed and became unhygienic. Some manufacturers lined the pail with absorbent materials, and other designs used mixtures of dry earth or ash to disguise the smell.
Improved water supplies and sewerage systems in England led directly to the replacement of the pail closet during the early 20th century. Municipal collection of pail toilets (dunnies) continued in Australia into the second half of the 20th century. In the western world, the pail closet has now been almost completely replaced by the flush toilet.
## Middens
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Nottingham_midden_closet.jpg)Diagram of a midden closet in Nottingham
Wikimedia Commons
By 1869, Manchester had a population of about 354,000 people who were served by about 10,000 water closets (flush toilets) and 38,000 middensteads.\[a\]Middens and middensteads refer to dunghills, ash pits, or refuse heaps.{{sfnp|9MZZMRAL}} An investigation of the condition of the city’s sewer network revealed that it was “choked up with an accumulation of solid filth, caused by overflow from the middens.”{{sfnp|T3SVQG4X}} Such problems forced the city authorities to consider other methods of dealing with human excretion. Although the water closet was used in wealthy homes, concerns over river pollution, costs and available water supplies meant that most towns and cities chose more labour-intensive dry conservancy systems. Manchester was one such city and by 1877 its authorities had replaced about 40,000 middens with pail and midden closets, rising to 60,000 by 1881.{{sfnp|R5SMKPQX|26}} The soil surrounding the old middens was cleared out, connections with drains and sewers removed and dry closets erected over each site. A contemporary estimate stated that the installation of about 25,000 pail closets removed as much as 3 million gallons (14 million litres) of urine and accompanying faeces from the city’s drains, sewers and rivers.{{sfnp|LSUZQC5C|1-2}}
The midden closet was a development of the privy, which had evolved from the primitive “fosse” ditch. Midden closets were still used in the latter part of the 19th century but were rapidly falling out of favour. A Mr Redgrave, in a speech to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1876, said that the midden closet represented “the standard of all that is utterly wrong, constructed as it is of porous materials, and permitting free soakage of filth into the surrounding soil, capable of containing the entire dejections from a house, or from a block of houses, for months and even years”. The 1868 Rivers Pollution Commission reported two years later: “privies and ashpits are continually to be seen full to overflowing and as filthy as can be … These middens are cleaned out whenever notice is given that they need it, probably once half-yearly on an average, by a staff of night-men with their attendant carts.”{{sfnp|ZEBY88QI|45-46}}
Midden closets were, therefore, generally insanitary and were also difficult to empty and clean. Later improvements, such as a midden closet built in Nottingham, used a brick-raised seat above a concave receptacle to direct excreta toward the centre of the pit, which was lined with cement to prevent leakage into the surrounding soil. This closet was also designed with a special opening through which deodorising material could be scattered over the top of the pit. A special ventilation shaft was also installed. The design offered a significant improvement over the less advanced midden privy, but the problems of emptying and cleaning such pits remained and thus the pail system, with its easily removable container, became more popular.{{sfnp|ZEBY88QI|46-49}}
## Rochdale system
… the absorption appeared to me to be trivial in pails used by women and children. Widely different degrees of sloppiness existed, obviously dependent upon differences in the families using the pails; but the extent of sloppiness noticed in Salford, in 1869, was rarely observed in Halifax, greater care being apparently taken in the latter town to avoid the emptying of chamber utensils into the pails. Probably the more regular locking of the doors of the closets, which is practiced in Halifax, contributes not a little to the exclusion of the contents of chamber utensils from the pails, less trouble being experienced in casting them into the yard drain. At any rate the aspect of the lined pails in use in Halifax generally, was less offensive to the eye than that of the simple pail, and the casting down of a portion of the lining, as I noticed in several instances, sufficed effectually to hide the offense and diminish the odor from the pail.
— John Netten Radcliffe (May 1874), commenting on the use of the Goux system in Halifax.{{sfnpThe Rochdale system was first used in 1869. It used a wooden tub, or pail (sometimes half of a petroleum barrel), which was placed under the closet seat. The pails were often circular (to aid cleaning),{{sfnp|Y9NCZAKD|6}} and were designed to be easily handled and of a size that encouraged regular collections.{{sfnp|H3ECPND2|273-274}} The top of the pail carried a cast iron rim about {{convert|3|in}} deep to receive a tight-fitting inner lid. The pails were collected on a weekly basis during the day. Each pail was secured by its lid and loaded onto a sealed 24-bay wagon to be taken to a depot where they were emptied, cleaned and returned. While the pail was removed from the closet, a replacement was installed in its place. In 1874, Rochdale Corporation employed five such wagons in full-time service, collecting from 3,354 privies spread across the town. By contrast, with a much larger population, Manchester Corporation employed 73 wagons.{{sfnp|LSUZQC5C|2}} By 1875, 4,741 pails were in use, and in 1876 the number was 5,566. A separate cart accompanied the wagon to collect other household refuse, which was housed in a separate chamber in the pail closet.{{sfnp|Y9NCZAKD|6}}{{sfnp|5YXP45VH|16}}
About 9,000 tons of night soil were collected in Rochdale each year, from a population of about 64,000 – about {{convert|310|lb|abbr=on}} per person. At the depot, the night soil was emptied into a storage tank. The pails were washed in a large trough using a mixture of chloride of lime and water. The night soil was then dried in revolving cylinders, using furnace heat from other borough refuse, before being transferred to so-called drying plates. Gases were burnt in a furnace, the fumes escaping up a {{convert|250|ft|adj=on}} chimney. Clinker from the remains of burnt refuse was used to make mortar. The manure works was a filthy environment, filled with dust. Enginemen were paid 7¼d, firemen 6½d, and general labourers 4½d. The fertiliser was transported from the works via railway to local filtration plots for disposal.{{sfnp|T3SVQG4X|53-55}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Full_pail_and_empty_pail.jpg)A full pail, complete with lid (left), and an empty pail, ready to be returned. These are Rochdale pails, made from wood. Manchester’s pails were made from galvanised iron, with India-rubber beading around the lids to seal them.{{sfnp
LSUZQC5C|2-3
Some pails were supplied with deodorants such as iron sulphate. Manchester Corporation attempted to remove the smell of putrefaction by attaching cinder-sifters to their closets so that fine ash could be poured on top of the excrement.{{sfnp|LSUZQC5C|3}} The Goux system, invented in the 1860s by Pierre Nicholas Goux, a landowner near Paris, and widely used in France, overcame some of the more common problems associated with pail closets by lining the pail with an absorbent material.{{sfnp|DFI6ZBBI|194-195}} The Rochdale Corporation experimented with Goux’s design for several months but settled instead on a system which used smaller pails. Goux’s system did, however, find a home in Halifax, where it was used in more than 3,000 closets after 1870. The wooden pails used in Halifax were oval in cross-section (about 24 by 19 inches) and 16 inches deep. Each was lined at the sides and bottom with a mixture of refuse, such as straw, grass, street sweepings, wool, hair, and even seaweed. This lining, which was formed by a special mould and to which sulphate of lime was added, was designed to help remove the smell of urine, slow putrefaction and keep the excreta dry. Pails were collected between 7 am and 5:30 pm. Members of the public occasionally complained about the smell, which usually occurred when a pail was left to overflow, such as in winter 1875 when severe weather conditions prevented the horse-drawn collection wagons from reaching the closets.{{sfnp|H3ECPND2|265-270}}
## Earth closet system
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Henry_Moule%27s_earth_closet%2C_improved_version_c1875.JPG)Henry Moule’s dry earth closet. This example is from around 1875.
Wikimedia Commons
In some areas, an earth closet was used. Invented by Henry Moule, this system used a metal container as with the pail system, but small amounts of a mixture of peat, dry earth and ashes were used to cover the excreta, removing any smells almost immediately. These deodorisers were often applied with a small scoop or shovel, but more elaborate systems existed where the powder was kept in a box near the seat, with a small handle to control the amount deposited on the excrement.{{sfnp|Y9NCZAKD|4-5}}{{sfnp|ZEBY88QI|61-62}} Charcoal – which could be obtained cheaply from street-sweepings – and sawdust were also used to good effect. The process was more expensive than the simpler pail system.{{sfnp|DFI6ZBBI|194-195}} The mixture of earth and excreta could often be dried and re-used, but the fear of infections meant that it was sometimes used instead as a garden fertiliser.{{sfnp|Y9NCZAKD|6}}
Earth closets were usually housed in a separate building from the main structure and were well ventilated. As with the pail system, earth closet containers had to be emptied frequently.{{sfnp|ZEBY88QI|62}} The earth closet was popular and was used in private houses, military camps, hospitals, and extensively in India. It remained in use well into the 1930s.{{sfnp|57L7V4WQ}}
## Disadvantages
From a sanitary perspective, the pail system of waste removal was imperfect. Excreta and other general waste were often left above ground for hours, sometimes even days at a time. In his report on the Goux system used in Salford, the epidemiologist John Netten Radcliffe commented: “In every instance where a pail had been in use over two or three days, the capacity of absorption of the liquid dejections, claimed by the patentee for the absorbent material, had been exceeded; and whenever a pail had been four or five days a week in use, it was filled to the extent of two thirds or more of its cavity, with liquid dejections, in which the solid excrement was floating.”{{sfnp|H3ECPND2|270}}
The pail closet contained several important design considerations. In his 1915 essay to the American Public Health Association, author Richard Messer described some of the more commonly encountered problems:{{sfnp|DBA5L89V}}
Any of these [pails] should be provided with handles and be held in place by guide pieces nailed to the floor. Too often no mention is made of the latter in the specifications. Wooden boxes are unsatisfactory for they soon become leaky due to warping, are too heavy to handle and hold excreta long enough to permit the breeding of flies. To keep flies away from the receptacle is a difficult matter. The hinged door at the rear, being exposed to weather, soon warps, leaving openings around the edges, the self-closing seat cover fails to operate properly due to rusty hinges and the front door is seldom kept closed … The lack of proper attention in regard to cleaning is perhaps the principal drawback to this style of privy and one which makes it practically a failure for general use. In towns it is becoming more and more difficult to find anyone willing to do this kind of work and in rural districts the privy is usually neglected.
## Adoption
Following the successes seen in various northern towns, about 7,000 pail closets were introduced in 1871 in Leicester, where the implementation of water closets had been hindered by the refusal of the water company to provide adequate supplies. The use of pail closets reduced the demand placed upon the area’s inadequate sewerage system, but the town suffered with difficulties in the collection and treatment of the night soil. Initially, night soil was collected by contractors, but after 1873 the local authority became responsible. The authority found dealing with the night soil an expensive and difficult business and, following legal proceedings against the corporation in 1878, transport of night soil was transferred from the railway system to canal barges. This, however, led to complaints that the canal was being polluted. In 1886 the authority found that the River Soar was badly polluted by sewage, so they built a sewage farm at Beaumont Leys. By the end of the 19th century, this and the construction of a new sewer system enabled all pail closets to be phased out and replaced by water closets.{{sfnp|ZBNULA2Z}} In Manchester, faced with phenomenal population growth, the council attempted to retain the pail closet system, but following the exposure of the dumping of 30–60 tons of human faeces into the Medlock and Irwell rivers at their Holt Town sewage works,{{sfnp|TXWUTTHL|397-400}}\[b\]Holt Town was an area to the east of Manchester, along the River Medlock. The “sanitary works” are visible on late 19th-century Ordnance Survey maps, along Upper Helena Street the council was forced to change their plans. Originally they had intended to build incinerators, but public objections to the dumping of waste into rivers forced the council instead to purchase Carrington Moss in 1886, and [Chat Moss](https://engole.info/chat-moss/) in 1895, which were both developed as refuse disposal sites. But by the 1930s neither site was receiving night soil, the water closet having replaced dry conservancy in Manchester.
## Decline
In Coventry, the number of pail closets in use declined from about 712 in 1907, to 92 in 1912, and to only 16 by 1926.{{sfnp|38UN6QQC}}
Pail toilets with municipal collection was widespread in Australia, and persisted well into the second half of the twentieth century. Brisbane, the country’s third most populous city, relied on “dunny carts” until the 1950s (one source says until the 1970s{{sfnp|PAV4IALJ}}). Tar, creosote, and disinfectant kept the smell down.{{sfnp|MHJ7QY33}} Academic George Seddon claimed that “the typical Australian back yard in the cities and country towns” had, throughout the first half of the twentieth century, “a dunny against the back fence, so that the pan could be collected from the dunny lane through a trap-door”.{{sfnp|6J2GXZ7G}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Middens and middensteads refer to dunghills, ash pits, or refuse heaps.{{sfnp|9MZZMRAL}} b Holt Town was an area to the east of Manchester, along the River Medlock. The “sanitary works” are visible on late 19th-century Ordnance Survey maps, along Upper Helena Street
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22085
**Categories:** Sanitation
---
### [Nathaniel Butter](https://engole.info/nathaniel-butter/)
**Published:** March 6, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Early publisher of news in England, 1583–1664.
**Content:**
Nathaniel Butter (bap. 1583 – 1664) was a bookseller who in the 1620s became one of the earliest English news publishers, in the form of pamphlets and books. He was baptised on 18 February 1583, the son of Thomas Butter (c. 1558–1590), also a bookseller, and his wife Joan. From 1605 Butter was carrying out business from his father’s shop, the Pied Bull, near St Austin’s Gate into St Paul’s Churchyard, specialising in small, cheap, ephemeral publications including travelogues and plays.{{sfnp|A4DAWD3G}}
Nathaniel Butter’s Weekly News was the first English newspaper which appeared duly numbered like our newspapers of the present day.
— James Grant{{sfnpNotable among Butter’s early publications is the first edition of Shakespeare’s *King Lear* (1607). Between 1621 and 1623 Butter’s newsbooks appeared most weeks in quartos of four to forty pages, usually selling for two pence.{{sfnp|A4DAWD3G}} Among the news he reported were two recent murders in Yorkshire,{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2|137}} and translations of Dutch and Italian [corantos](https://engole.info/coranto/) imported into England reporting on the ongoing Thirty Years War.{{sfnp|A4DAWD3G}}\[a\]The Thirty Years War was fought in Europe between 1618 and 1648, and is considered one of the most destructive wars ever on that continent.
But publishing the news was a dangerous endeavour under the Stuart monarchy,\[b\]The Stuart dynasty reigned in England and Scotland from 1603 to 1714.{{sfnp|MDW2WBJW}} and Butter was arrested several times between 1620 and 1623 for publishing material the authorities considered to be dangerous. He was imprisoned again in 1627 as England’s foreign relations with the rest of Europe deteriorated, and in 1632 the privy council moved to suppress corantos “on account of complaints from ambassadors of Catholic countries”.{{sfnp|A4DAWD3G}}
Although Butter was granted a patent in 1638 to revive his corantos, the venture was by then financially doomed, and it had failed entirely by 1640. In 1643 Butter was once again imprisoned, this time for sedition, and subsequently fell on hard times financially. In 1651 the Stationers Company paid from their poor fund to have him released from the Compter prison. Butter died on 22 February 1664; his death was reported as “Nath. Butter, an old stationer, died very poore”.{{sfnp|A4DAWD3G}}
As an “outstanding figure” in the early days of journalism, Butter was satirised by the playwright Ben Jonson in his comedy *The Staple of News*, first performed in 1626, which discusses the absurdity of news gathering:{{sfnp|5MHSLHN2|530}}
> See diverse men’s opinions! Unto some
> The very printing of ’em makes them news,
> That have not the heart to believe anything
> But what they see in print.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The Thirty Years War was fought in Europe between 1618 and 1648, and is considered one of the most destructive wars ever on that continent. b The Stuart dynasty reigned in England and Scotland from 1603 to 1714.{{sfnp|MDW2WBJW}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24567
**Categories:** Publisher
---
### [Victoria Arches](https://engole.info/victoria-arches/)
**Published:** July 15, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Cathedral_Landing_Stages_viewed_from_Chapel_Street.jpg[/pimage]Series of bricked-up arches in an embankment of the River Irwell in Manchester. They served as business premises, landing stages for steam packet riverboats and as Second World War air-raid shelters.
**Content:**
The Victoria Arches are a series of bricked-up arches in an embankment of the River Irwell in Manchester, England. They served as business premises, landing stages for steam packet riverboats and as Second World War air-raid shelters. They were accessed from wooden staircases that descended from Victoria Street.{{sfnp|WZZKIKAQ}}
Regular flooding resulted in the closure of the steam-packet services in the early 20th century, and the arches were later used for general storage; following the outbreak of the Second World War they were converted into air raid shelters. They are now bricked up and inaccessible, the staircases having been removed in the latter part of the 20th century.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Cathedral_Landing_Stages_viewed_from_Chapel_Street.jpg)The River Irwell, and the bricked-up landing stages (left)
Wikimedia Commons
## Background
Sailings to Pomona Gardens were very popular with courting couples, who liked to watch the Eel-catchers, admire views of Trafford Park Woodlands, and gaze at the peaceful farms and orchards. But the increasing smells from the river stopped it all.{{sfnp
— F5CDPKJM}}The arches were built to create new industrial space, during construction of a new embankment along the River Irwell, built to support a new road. The embankment was completed in 1838.{{sfnp|B2R6FB5M}}
Victorian-era passenger trips along the Irwell were very popular, despite increasing levels of pollution; in 1860 the Irwell was described as “almost proverbial for the foulness of its waters; receiving the refuse of cotton factories, coal mines, print works, bleach works, dye works, chemical works, paper works, almost every kind of industry.” The Rivers Pollution Prevention Act 1876 was designed to solve such problems, but it was largely ineffective. It did however lay the groundwork for the more draconian legislation that followed.{{sfnp|4QU3JUPR|19}}
## Packets
The Manchester Ship Canal was opened in 1894, and by 1895 the Ship Canal Company, who encouraged passenger traffic, had opened at least one landing stage.{{sfnp|Y74KTMZY}}{{sfnp|XIQ29JSH}} Two of its steamers, *Shandon* and *Eagle*, are known to have used the landing stages.{{sfnp|FXYAXWYW}} These boats could carry 900 and 1100 passengers respectively. During the first half of 1897 more than 200,000 passengers were carried on trips around Manchester Docks. Holiday seasons were the most popular,{{sfnp|XIQ29JSH}} and competition for passengers was fierce; at least two landing stages were operated by different companies. The ferries would occasionally carry musicians to provide entertainment.{{sfnp|7TTZ2TE4}}
The landing stages suffered problems with flooding of the Irwell and do not appear to have remained in business for long, being closed in 1906.{{sfnp|WZZKIKAQ}} In *Underground Manchester; Secrets of the City Revealed*, author Keith Warrender quotes the recollections of a *Manchester City News* writer, originally published in 1923:{{sfnp|NUBRM75Y|38-45}}
I became acquainted with those arches in the sixties, for my father, a master joiner and builder, had a workshop there. Two approaches thereto were provided, one by a flight of steps near the Cateaton Street side of the old churchyard, and the other at the corner of Victoria Street and Fennel Street. The arches were lofty and spacious, and had previously been used as a copper and iron works, in connection with which was a tall chimney by the cathedral steps. Part of the chimney was damaged by lightning and the upper part was taken down in 1872. I believe the lower part remained until the old buildings at that point were demolished, not many years ago.
He continues, quoting another letter from the *Manchester Evening News* in 1960 which says:{{sfnp|NUBRM75Y|38-45}}
At the time I knew it well, 1898, one or two of the arches were used as a battery station by Manchester Electricity Department and two or three others as meter testing and storage departments. Also there was the first testing station for the department where the prototypes of all apparatus used by electricity users in the city were tested. The tunnel was bricked up, about level with the end of Fennel Street. From its gradient it would reach approximately water level at the Irk at the bottom of Hunt’s Bank, and the other end would reach street level at St Mary’s Gate. The roadway was one cart track wide. The entrance was in Victoria Street alongside the door to a tobacconist’s shop near Cathedral Yard.
## Second World War
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Cathedral_Landing_Stages_viewed_from_Cathedral_Approach.jpg)The landing stages along the River Irwell, next to Victoria Bridge
Wikimedia Commons
During the Second World War the arches and tunnels surrounding them were converted into air-raid shelters.{{sfnp|9S5753MR}}{{sfnp|QDU84CYS}}{{sfnp|AIB7PEU8}} The conversion took three months, and with additional brick blast walls added, cost £10,150, providing shelter for 1619 people. The cobbled surfaces shown in some of the pictures on the Manchester City Council website show the same network of tunnels before their conversion to air raid shelters. The land covered by the arches included a street, which led at the western end to a wooden bridge over the River Irk. The old road was covered over in an improvement scheme that began in 1833.{{sfnp|NUBRM75Y|38-45}}
The steps and landing stages have been closed to the public for many years. In 1935 less elaborate steps were in place,{{sfnp|UM9LGEPJ}} some of which remained until 1971.{{sfnp|AKWA99NL}} Photographs taken in 1972 show the arches to be barred; some are covered with metal grilles.{{sfnp|GJ7GBYFG}}
## Connections
The stages also connected with public toilets that were once in front of the cathedral. Although now disused and closed to the public in 1967, Manchester Central Library maps demonstrate their proximity to the landing stages on the river, and both stage and toilets are accessible from one another. Explorers have accessed the landing stages and documented their current condition, including taking photographs.{{sfnp|B2R6FB5M}} There was an underground entrance to the stages from the premises of Thomas Cook & Son, which stood on the corner of Victoria Bridge.{{sfnp|NUBRM75Y|38-45}} Evidence of the building was reportedly found inside one of the stages in the form of fire-damaged timber purlins, albeit in very poor condition. It has been suggested that the landing stages might be reopened to the public as a tourist attraction.{{sfnp|WZZKIKAQ}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 21849
**Categories:** Greater Manchester
---
### [The Sleeping Girl of Turville](https://engole.info/the-sleeping-girl-of-turville/)
**Published:** July 3, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Sleepy_Cottage.jpg[/pimage]Girl claimed by her mother to have fallen into a deep sleep from which she could not be roused for nine years.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Sleepy_Cottage.jpg)Ellen Sadler’s family home in Turville, Buckinghamshire, named Sleepy Cottage after Ellen’s case, and used during filming of the BBC sitcom *The Vicar of Dibley*.{{sfnp
LCZTQMZ6
Ellen Sadler (15 May 1859 – after 1901), sometimes called The Sleeping Girl of Turville, lived in the small village of Turville, in Buckinghamshire, England. She was the youngest of the twelve children born to William and Ann Sadler; William died when Ellen was an infant, and her mother remarried to Thomas Frewen.
Most of Ellen’s impoverished family were farm workers, and at the age of eleven she was sent to work as a nursemaid. Soon after starting her new job Ellen began to exhibit periods of drowsiness, for which she was referred to a local hospital. After four months her condition was declared incurable, and she was sent back home. Two days later Ellen had a series of seizures and – her mother claimed – fell into a deep sleep from which she could not be roused for nine years.{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}}{{sfnp|CMSXW9KP}}{{sfnp|DB88YBYN}}
Ellen’s case attracted international attention from newspapers, medical professionals and the public, and she became a profitable tourist attraction for the village of Turville. As the years progressed with no sign of Ellen’s waking, speculation grew that her illness was either a hoax or caused by her mother, an issue that was never resolved. In late 1880, soon after her mother’s death, Ellen awoke.
Later in life Ellen married and had at least five children.{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}}
## Illness
### Initial symptoms
In 1870, aged eleven, Ellen began work as a nursemaid in nearby Marlow,{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}} but after she began to exhibit bouts of somnolence her employment was terminated. She was subsequently attended by a local doctor, Henry Hayman F.R.C.S., from nearby Stokenchurch. Ellen had been suffering for thirteen weeks from “glandular swellings” or an abscess on the back of her head,{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}} and symptoms consistent with a spinal disease.{{sfnp|YG7HVGQ9}} The family did not have much money, so the parish vicar, The Reverend Studholme, asked Hayman to secure Ellen’s admission to a local hospital,\[a\]In 1873 Hayman refers to the hospital as the “County Infirmary”;{{sfnp|YG7HVGQ9}} in 1880 he names “Reading Hospital”.{{sfnp|CMSXW9KP}} where her condition worsened. Ellen stayed at the hospital for 18 weeks before being “discharged as incurable” in March 1871.{{sfnp|CMSXW9KP}} Hospital records indicate Ellen was nine years old at the time of her admission,{{sfnp|YG7HVGQ9}} but most sources say she was eleven by the time of her subsequent illness, which began two days after her discharge.{{sfnp|CMSXW9KP}}{{sfnp|TMP786ZC}}
### Fall into unconsciousness
According to Ellen’s mother, upon the girl’s return home on a rickety cart, she began to feel drowsy and had several seizures.{{sfnp|TMP786ZC}} Hayman states that it was two days after her discharge that the seizures occurred.
The mother’s narrative is that she told the little girl to pray, and that they prayed together – the child rocking herself to and from with her hands clasped, gradually losing command over herself and growing more and more convulsed, her eyes rolling wildly and her limbs twitching. When \[Dr Hayman\] arrived, to use her expression “the child was fixen down.” That is to say, she had sunk into a state of insensibility, in which she now remains.
— Journalist’s account Hayman visited Ellen at her home, where he was told that the previous night, 17 March,{{sfnp|CMSXW9KP}}\[b\]Other sources say March 27{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}} and March 29,{{sfnp|TMP786ZC}} but as the attending doctor, Hayman is more likely to have known the correct date. Ellen had endured a series of such attacks, after which she turned to lie “on her left side, with her hand under her head, and the lower extremities drawn upwards”.{{sfnp|YG7HVGQ9}} It was in this position that – her mother maintained – Ellen remained for the duration of her sleep. Hayman visited Ellen many times over the next few years and he later said that he “never found her otherwise”.{{sfnp|CMSXW9KP}}
Ellen became something of a tourist attraction for Turville.{{sfnp|BYYF382S}} She was visited by journalists, medical professionals, religious personnel and the “plain curious”{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}}\[c\]Rumours persist that Ellen was visited by royalty,{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}} possibly the Prince of Wales,{{sfnp|VHZN76GF|20-27}} but there is no supporting evidence. from across the country, many of whom donated money to Ellen’s family to be allowed to see her.{{sfnp|BYYF382S}} Some paid to take cuts of Ellen’s hair, until the “supply” began to run out. A *Bucks Free Press* journalist recounted his visit:{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}}
Her breathing was regular and natural, the skin soft and the body warm, as in a healthy subject; the pulse rather fast. The hands were small and thin, but the fingers quite flexible; the body somewhat emaciated; the feet and legs like those of a dead child, almost ice cold … the aspect of her features was pleasant, more so than might be expected under the circumstances … her eyes and cheeks were sunken, and the appearance was that of death … but although there was no colour on her cheeks, the paleness was not that heavy hue which betokens death.
A correspondent from *The Daily Telegraph* visited Ellen about 22 months after she fell ill. He wrote:{{sfnp|TMP786ZC}}\[d\]Aspects of the correspondent’s account conflict with the known facts. Although there is no doubt that the child of which he speaks is Ellen Sadler, he names her as “Ann Trilling”, Ellen’s mother’s maiden name. He names William Sadler as Ann’s second husband, and the physician Hayman, from Stokenchurch, as “Dr Hammond” from “Stock Church”. He also recounts Ellen’s mother’s claim that the condition was not unique in the family. Before her husband died, Ann said, he “lay for three weeks speechless and motionless”. Warning the reader to bear in mind that there was no evidence to this effect, the journalist also detailed Ann’s claim that her brother-in-law had died after six months in the same condition.{{sfnp|TMP786ZC}}
The girl’s face is by no means cadaverous. There is flesh on the cheeks, which have a pinkish tint, and there is some colour in the thin lips. The eyes are calmly closed, as though in healthy sleep. I ventured to raise one of the lids and touch the eye beneath … but there was not even a quivering of the eyelash. … The girl’s [hand] was quite warm and moist, and the finger nails were neatly trimmed. The fingers are not the least bit stiffened … It is not a skeleton hand, neither are any of the girl’s limbs so emaciated as, under the extraordinary circumstances alleged, might be expected. … The child’s body is very thin as compared with her limbs … There is not much substance in her flesh, however; it is soft and flabby … [Her feet were] almost ice-cold … As regards the child’s breathing, it is so feeble that it is almost impossible to detect it; you cannot feel it by holding the cheek to her mouth, and the only faintest flutter is felt when the hand is laid over the region of the heart.
By March 1873 Ellen was believed to be suffering from starvation.{{sfnp|YG7HVGQ9}} At first, she had largely subsisted on port, tea and milk, given three times per day. After about fifteen months – while her mother was attempting to administer arrowroot – Ellen’s jaw locked closed.{{sfnp|TMP786ZC}} Subsequently, according to Hayman, she was fed “wine, gruel and other things” using the “spout of a toy teapot inserted between two broken teeth”.{{sfnp|YG7HVGQ9}} T*he Daily Telegraph* journalist expanded on Ellen’s feeding: “The feeding implements stand on a little table by the side of the stump bedstead, and, at first sight, give you the idea that they are toys placed there to attract her attention should she, by a merciful termination of her trance, presently awake to life. The toys in question are two tiny ‘teapots’, each not much larger than a full-sized walnut and holding four small teaspoonfuls. One of these is filled with port wine, and the other with milk … this quantity of liquid nourishment … cannot weigh more than half an ounce …”{{sfnp|TMP786ZC}} At this time, it was considered “manifestly out of the question to think of moving her”.{{sfnp|YG7HVGQ9}} How the family dealt with Ellen’s passing of urine and faeces is unclear, but in 1880, Hayman said that her mother told him that no bowel movements had occurred for five years, and that approximately every four days “a somewhat large amount would pass from the bladder”.{{sfnp|CMSXW9KP}}
### Scepticism
Some visitors were sceptical of Ellen’s illness and attempted to uncover the alleged ruse through methods such as stabbing her with pins, to no effect.{{sfnp|BYYF382S}} The *Bucks Free Press* journalist was suspicious of Ann’s practice of making visitors wait before seeing Ellen. Some neighbours were also “deeply sceptical”, as Ellen’s family was making a “healthy profit” from her illness.{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}} During summers, the family was taking as much as £2 per week – an agricultural labourer at the time would have been earning about 80p per week.{{sfnp|CMSXW9KP}}{{sfnp|6HTJT23X}} Others said they sometimes saw Ellen sitting by her window at night. Ann consented to “fair tests”, but further suspicions were raised because medical personnel were not allowed to remain for too long, and Ann did not want Ellen to be moved to a hospital. Nor was Ellen listed as an invalid during the 1871 census.{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}} Hayman said that Ann was reluctant to allow handling of her daughter by medical personnel because they often concealed sharp objects with which to “test \[Ellen’s\] powers of feeling”. Her parents had also “strenuously opposed” Hayman’s recommendation to run an electric current through Ellen’s sleeping body.{{sfnp|CMSXW9KP}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Sarah_jacob.jpg)Sceptics drew comparison with the case of the Welsh “fasting girl”, Sarah Jacob.{{sfnp
CKYWXNHY}}|Wikimedia
There was much speculation in the press as to the cause of Ellen’s illness; some linked the case to that of Sarah Jacob, a girl from Wales who, her parents claimed, was able to survive without nourishment, through divine intervention. Sarah died of starvation in 1869, and her parents were subsequently convicted of manslaughter. A journalist for *The Observer* commented, “It is to be hoped that \[Sarah’s case\] is known in the obscure village of Turville, where – we are asked to believe – a fresh case of miraculous trance has taken place. … \[Ellen’s case\] very much … incites suspicion of deliberate imposture.” One correspondent to *The Times* wrote, “It is by widespread publicity that such cases are multiplied, and it is difficult to overstate the harm thus done. These impostures exist through a morbid love of sympathy on the part of the children, or from the gains that accrue to the parents. Once begun, they soon pass into real disease.” Another said the “ridiculous mystery” could be resolved if only Ellen were transferred, over her mother’s continued objections, to a London hospital, a sentiment echoed by many. Claims that Ellen was suffering from a form of catalepsy – a condition at the time considered “so rare that not one physician in a thousand has so much as seen a single case of it” – were also disregarded as unlikely, as was any thought of religious ecstasy.{{sfnp|CKYWXNHY}}
Nevertheless, Hayman affirmed, “every effort \[had\] been made to discover the deception, if any, but without effect.” The Home Secretary and local Magistrate corresponded about the case but the law was powerless to interfere, because despite accepting donations, Ellen’s family never asked for money outright, and she “was not represented as a ‘fasting girl’ ”,{{sfnp|CMSXW9KP}} as Sarah Jacob had been.{{sfnp|CKYWXNHY}} *The Daily Telegraph* journalist said, “\[Ann Frewen\]’s manner is that of a perfectly honest woman who would be too glad if her child could be restored to consciousness.” He spoke to neighbours, none of whom indicated anything other than trust in Ellen’s parents and Hayman, and claimed that the family was receiving no money from Ellen’s illness,{{sfnp|TMP786ZC}} although the latter point is contradicted by Hayman{{sfnp|CMSXW9KP}} and others.{{sfnp|CKYWXNHY}} The journalist concluded, “I have no medical knowledge, and \[am\] unqualified to give an opinion beyond what is justified by close observation of the ordinary kind. I went to Turville prepared to find an imposture. I have returned – puzzled.”{{sfnp|TMP786ZC}}
## Recovery
Ellen’s mother died in May 1880. The inquest into her death was held at the nearby Bull and Butcher public house,{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}} presided over by the county coroner, Frederick Charsley. Part of the inquest’s remit was to consider the matter of Ellen’s subsequent care. Her step-father, Thomas Frewen, was reported as being “quite evasive” when the coroner asked him how Ellen was fed, and although Hayman testified to reaffirm his belief that Ellen’s illness was genuine, Reverend Studholme was less certain.{{sfnp|DB88YBYN}} However, he could not offer any evidence to this effect, even though he had made several unannounced visits to Ellen’s home.{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}} Charsley concluded that Thomas could not look after Ellen, as his job left him absent from their home all day, and that the other members of the household would be too busy with its upkeep.{{sfnp|DB88YBYN}} Therefore, he turned Ellen’s care over to her married sisters, Elizabeth Stacey and Grace Blackall, both of whom lived in Turville.{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}} The cause of Ann’s death was found to be oedema of the heart,{{sfnp|DB88YBYN}} from which she had been suffering for many years.{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}}
Five months later, Ellen awoke;\[e\]Some sources list December 1880 rather than October; however, the former appears merely to be the date Ellen’s recovery was reported in the press. by November, she had “fully recovered”. By this time, Ellen was twenty-one and claimed to remember nothing of the previous nine years. She otherwise suffered few long-term effects, save for slightly stunted growth and a “weak eye”.{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}}
## Later life and legacy
In 1886 Ellen married Mark Blackall\[f\]Speculated to be related to her brother-in-law. in nearby Fawley. In the censuses of 1891 and 1901, the pair are listed as living in Barkham and Caversham, respectively. They had five children: Ann (b. 1888), Elizabeth or Mable (b. 1889), Gladys (b. 1890), Sydney (b. 1896) and Gertrude (b. 1898).{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}} Ellen and Mark appear in the 1911 census together with Sydney and Gertrude, all living in Lower Caversham. The census also records that they had six children, one of whom had died.
The case of Ellen Sadler has remained a part of local folklore, spawning tales of witchcraft and rumours of royal attention in Turville.{{sfnp|VHZN76GF|20-27}} The Sadler family home became known as “Sleepy Cottage”, and was used for filming of the BBC situation comedy *The Vicar of Dibley*.{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}} No clear cause has ever been ascribed for Ellen’s condition; modern diagnoses might include narcolepsy,{{sfnp|BYYF382S}} or deliberate drugging,{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}} and the possibility that it was a hoax cannot be discounted.{{sfnp|BYYF382S}} An embellished account of the story can be found in the 1973 collection *Witchcraft in the Thames Valley* by Tony Barham.{{sfnp|VHZN76GF|20-27}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a In 1873 Hayman refers to the hospital as the “County Infirmary”;{{sfnp|YG7HVGQ9}} in 1880 he names “Reading Hospital”.{{sfnp|CMSXW9KP}} b Other sources say March 27{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}} and March 29,{{sfnp|TMP786ZC}} but as the attending doctor, Hayman is more likely to have known the correct date. c Rumours persist that Ellen was visited by royalty,{{sfnp|LCZTQMZ6}} possibly the Prince of Wales,{{sfnp|VHZN76GF|20-27}} but there is no supporting evidence. d Aspects of the correspondent’s account conflict with the known facts. Although there is no doubt that the child of which he speaks is Ellen Sadler, he names her as “Ann Trilling”, Ellen’s mother’s maiden name. He names William Sadler as Ann’s second husband, and the physician Hayman, from Stokenchurch, as “Dr Hammond” from “Stock Church”. He also recounts Ellen’s mother’s claim that the condition was not unique in the family. Before her husband died, Ann said, he “lay for three weeks speechless and motionless”. Warning the reader to bear in mind that there was no evidence to this effect, the journalist also detailed Ann’s claim that her brother-in-law had died after six months in the same condition.{{sfnp|TMP786ZC}} e Some sources list December 1880 rather than October; however, the former appears merely to be the date Ellen’s recovery was reported in the press. f Speculated to be related to her brother-in-law.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 21820
**Categories:** Hoax
---
### [William Calcraft](https://engole.info/william-calcraft/)
**Published:** November 10, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/William-calcraft.jpg[/pimage]19th-century English hangman, one of the most prolific British executioners.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/William-calcraft.jpg)William Calcraft c. 1870
Wikimedia Commons
William Calcraft (11 October 1800 – 13 December 1879) was a 19th-century English hangman, one of the most prolific of British executioners. It is estimated in his 45-year career he carried out 450 executions. A cobbler by trade, Calcraft was initially recruited to flog juvenile offenders held in Newgate Prison. While selling meat pies on streets around the prison, Calcraft met the City of London’s hangman, John Foxton.
After Foxton’s death in 1829 the government appointed Calcraft the official Executioner for the City of London and Middlesex. Following this, his executioner services were in great demand throughout England. Nevertheless, some considered Calcraft incompetent, in particular for his controversial use of the short-drop hanging method in which the condemned were slowly strangled to death.
Because with Calcraft’s methods the condemned took several minutes to die, to hasten death Calcraft would sometimes dramatically pull on legs or climb on shoulders in an effort to break a victim’s neck. It has been speculated that Calcraft used these methods partly to entertain the crowds, sometimes numbering 30,000 spectators or more.
Executions in England were public until 1868. That year the law changed, mandating executions would take place privately and inside the prison. In 1868 Calcraft carried out the last public and first private executions. Among his executions were Marie and Frederick Manning, the first husband and wife to be hanged together since 1700.
## Early life
Calcraft was born in Baddow, near Chelmsford, in 1800. He was a cobbler by trade, but had also worked as a nightwatchman at Reid’s brewery in Clerkenwell, London. While attempting to earn a living by selling meat pies on the streets around Newgate Prison he made the acquaintance of John Foxton, who was the City of London’s hangman for 40 years. That meeting led to his employment at Newgate to flog juvenile offenders, for which he was paid ten shillings a week.{{sfnp|FBDYG3PF}}
## Executioner, 1829–1874
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/West_View_of_Newgate_by_George_Shepherd_%281784-1862%29.jpg)
Newgate Prison in the mid-19th century. Between 1783 and 1868 all public executions in London took place on a temporary gallows erected in front of the prison.{{sfnp
8I3R8KVW|44, 51
Foxton died on 14 February 1829, and Calcraft was appointed as his successor. He was sworn in as the official Executioner for the City of London and Middlesex on 4 April 1829,{{sfnp|LAXTK92S|51}} a position for which he was paid one guinea a week plus an additional guinea for each execution. He also received an allowance for cats o’ nine tails and birch rods,{{sfnp|FBDYG3PF}} and supplemented his income by selling sections of the rope used to hang his victims,{{sfnp|SZVLPVZ2|38}} for which he charged between five shillings and £1 per inch.{{sfnp|2I43VL65} Calcraft’s first duty in his new role was the execution of Thomas Lister and George Wingfield, hanged together on 27 March 1829, Lister for burglary and Wingfield for highway robbery. Esther Hibner, known in the press as the “Evil Monster”, was the first woman hanged by Calcraft. She was executed on 13 April 1829, having been found guilty of starving to death her apprentice, Frances Colppits. Hibner did not go to the scaffold willingly, but had to be restrained in a straitjacket to prevent her from attacking her executioners. As she was hanged the watching crowd shouted out “Three cheers for the Hangman!”{{sfnp|LAXTK92S|52}}
Calcraft was “in great demand” as an executioner elsewhere in the country as well,{{sfnp|SZVLPVZ2|38}} such as at Reading Gaol.{{sfnp|CZUGJE2U|53-54}} During his tenure of office the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868 was passed, requiring that all executions must be conducted in private. Calcraft carried out the last public execution in Britain on 26 May 1868, when he hanged the Fenian Michael Barrett in front of Newgate Prison for his part in the Clerkenwell Outrage.{{sfnp|6G7HLDT2|search=Chapter 2}} Calcraft also carried out the first private execution in Britain under the new law. Eighteen-year-old Thomas Wells, who had been convicted of the murder of his superior Edward Walshe, the stationmaster at Dover Priory railway station,{{sfnp|2M8JDGS5|2}} was hanged on 13 August 1868 in a former timber yard inside Maidstone Gaol. Members of the press were allowed to attend and reported that Wells, who wore his railway porter’s uniform,{{sfnp|9IP348RR|358}} did not die quickly, “struggling on the end of the rope for several minutes”.{{sfnp|UMTZKNK5|3-4}} Calcraft’s final official duty was the hanging of James Godwin, on 25 May 1874.{{sfnp|FBDYG3PF}}
Reporting on Calcraft’s visit to Dundee to perform an execution in that city in April 1873, *The Times* newspaper observed that “if their visitor had been a Royal personage, or an eminent statesman he could hardly have been treated with greater consideration”. They further reported that Calcraft arrived with only one piece of hand luggage, a carpet bag containing “a new rope, a white cap, and some pinioning straps”.{{sfnp|NIEAYI5R}}
The number of executions Calcraft carried out is unrecorded, but it has been estimated at 450, of whom 35 were women, making him one of the most active of British executioners.{{sfnp|CZUGJE2U|53}} Among his better-known victims was François Courvoisier,{{sfnp|FBDYG3PF}} executed on 6 July 1840 outside Newgate Prison. Courvoisier had been valet to Lord William Russell, and had murdered his employer after being caught stealing silverware from the household.{{sfnp|TVNXLYPI|336}}
Calcraft officiated at one of the very few executions of a husband and wife, and the first since 1700, when he hanged Marie and Frederick Manning at Horsemonger Lane Gaol on 13 November 1849.{{sfnp|FBDYG3PF}} The couple had murdered Marie’s wealthy lover, Patrick O’Connor, with the aim of stealing his money. Calcraft also officiated at the last public execution of a woman in Britain, Frances Kidder, who was hanged on 2 April 1868. Convicted of drowning her stepdaughter, she was executed in front of a crowd of two thousand, among whom was reported to be her husband. After her drop of {{convert|3|ft|r=1}} she struggled for “two or three minutes” before expiring.{{sfnp|LAXTK92S|74}}
## Technique
At a quarter to 8 he \[Mapp\] was brought into the pinioning room, where the governor of the gaol formally handed him over to Calcraft … Beyond a slight trembling of the limbs he displayed no sign of fear … He walked steadily up the winding staircase to the tower on which the gallows was erected, and preserved his extraordinary firmness even on the drop while Calcraft was adjusting the rope. He said ‘Good-bye’ when Calcraft shook hands with him, and as he left him he turned his head as if about to speak, but at that moment the drop fell … In turning his head round Mapp displaced the rope, and the noose was brought round almost under his chin, the consequence being that the fall not being immediately fatal, he struggled for half a minute before he died.{{sfnp
— KD3A42I9}}Although Calcraft’s career as a hangman spanned 45 years, he appears to have been “particularly incompetent”, frequently having to “rush below the scaffold to pull on his victim’s legs to hasten death”.{{sfnp|FBDYG3PF}} Those being hanged had their arms pinioned to their sides with leather straps before being walked to the gallows, where they were placed on a trapdoor and their heads and faces covered with a white cap, or hood. The purpose of the hood was to prevent the prisoner seeing the hangman pull the lever that released the trapdoor – and thus attempting to jump at the critical moment – and to hide from spectators any agony on the dying prisoner’s face.{{sfnp|UMTZKNK5|14}} After the noose had been secured around each victim’s neck and the hangman had retired to a safe distance, the trapdoor was released. The bodies were left hanging for some time to ensure that death had occurred, before being lowered to the ground. Calcraft employed the short-drop method of execution, in which the drop through the trapdoor might be around 3 feet (0.91 m) or so. That was often insufficient to break the prisoner’s neck, and therefore death was not always instantaneous, typically occurring slowly by strangulation. Historians Anthony Stokes and Theodore Dalrymple have suggested that Calcraft’s “controversial” use of the short-drop allowed him a couple of minutes to entertain the large crowds of 30,000 plus that sometimes attended his public executions. “Renowned for his poor taste”, he would sometimes swing from his victim’s legs or climb onto their shoulders in an attempt to break their necks. In one of the first executions Calcraft carried out at the new Reading Gaol his victim, Thomas Jennings, took more than three minutes to die.{{sfnp|CZUGJE2U|53-54}}
On 31 March 1856, Calcraft executed William Bousfield, but a threat he had received that he would be shot on the scaffold unnerved him. After releasing the bolt securing the trapdoor on which the condemned man was standing, Calcraft ran off, leaving Bousfield hanging; a few moments later Bousfield raised one of his legs to support himself on the platform. Calcraft’s assistant tried to push the victim off, but Bousfield repeatedly succeeded in supporting himself. The officiating chaplain forced the frightened Calcraft to return to the scaffold, where he “threw himself around his \[Bousfield’s\] legs and by the force of his weight finally succeeded in strangling him”.{{sfnp|SZVLPVZ2|38}} Calcraft’s bungling became the subject of a popular ballad.{{sfnp|IGRINLAS|100}}
Calcraft was also reportedly nervous of executing Fenians, because of threats he had received. On 22 November 1867 he officiated at the public execution of William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O’Brien, who became known as the Manchester Martyrs. The three Fenians had been found guilty of the murder of a police officer, and were hanged together. Most accounts claim that Allen died almost instantaneously from a broken neck, but Larkin and O’Brien were not so fortunate. A Catholic priest in attendance, Father Gadd, reported that:
The other two ropes, stretched taut and tense by their breathing twitching burdens, were in ominous and distracting movement. The hangman had bungled! … Calcraft then descended into the pit and there finished what he could not accomplish from above. He killed Larkin.{{sfnp
— AC7X236T|98}}
Father Gadd refused to allow Calcraft to dispatch O’Brien in the same way, and so “for three-quarters of an hour the good priest \[Father Gadd\] knelt, holding the dying man’s hands within his own, reciting the prayers for the dying. Then the long drawn out agony ended.”{{sfnp|AC7X236T|98}}
Towards the end of his career the feeling began to be expressed in the press that Calcraft’s age was catching up with him. On 15 November 1869, aged 69, Calcraft executed Joseph Welsh, for murder, at Maidstone Gaol. Reporting on the execution *The Times* commented that “the adjustment of the rope was slow and bungling, and such as to show that Calcraft’s age has unfitted him for his occupation”.{{sfnp|6DYHD2CZ}}{{sfnp|CU554SJT}}
## Later life
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cd/Executioner-william-calcraft.jpg)Calcraft in later years
Wikipedia
By 1869 Calcraft’s mother, Sarah, was living as a pauper in a workhouse at Hatfield Peverel near Chelmsford.{{sfnp|FBDYG3PF}} Calcraft was ordered to pay three shillings a week towards her upkeep,{{sfnp|2I43VL65}} to which he objected, arguing that his brother and sister should be made to help, and that he had three children of his own to support, although there is no record of his marriage.{{sfnp|FBDYG3PF}}
After reluctantly being forced to retire from office because of old age in 1874, Calcraft received a pension of twenty-five shillings a week from the City of London and was succeeded as hangman by William Marwood.{{sfnp|SZVLPVZ2|38-39}} Although as a younger man Calcraft had been considered to be “genial”, with a love of breeding rabbits, in his later years he was described as “surly and sinister-looking, with long hair and beard, in scruffy black attire and a fob chain”.{{sfnp|FBDYG3PF}}
Calcraft died at Poole Street in Hoxton, on 13 December 1879.{{sfnp|FBDYG3PF}}An obituary published in *The New York Times* on 1 January 1880 reported that “Several so-called biographies of Calcraft were published during his lifetime, but all are notable for a narrow stream of fact meandering through a broad meadow of commentary, and not one may be considered worthy of the subject or to be relied on for a strict accuracy of statement”. The earliest of them was an octavo pamphlet published in 1846 entitled *The Groans of the Gallows; or; The Past and Present Life of William Calcraft, the Living Hangman of Newgate*.{{sfnp|2I43VL65}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 9654
**Categories:** Executioner
---
### [Scuttlers](https://engole.info/scuttlers/)
**Published:** October 21, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Scuttler.jpg[/pimage]Members of neighbourhood-based youth gangs formed in working-class areas of Manchester, Salford, and the surrounding townships during the late 19th century.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Scuttler.jpg)Scuttler arrested in 1897
Wikimedia Commons
Scuttlers were members of neighbourhood-based youth gangs (known as scuttling gangs) formed in working-class areas of Manchester, Salford, and the surrounding townships during the late 19th century. Parallels can be drawn with the London street gangs of the 1890s, whose behaviour was labelled hooliganism. The social commentator Alexander Devine attributed the gang culture to lack of parental control, lack of discipline in schools, “base literature” and the monotony of life in Manchester’s slums.{{sfnp|HJQE6F2J|loc=207-219}}
Gangs were formed throughout the slums of central Manchester, in the [townships](https://engole.info/township/) of Bradford, Gorton and Openshaw to the east and in Salford, to the west of the city. Gang conflicts erupted in Manchester in the early 1870s and went on sporadically for thirty years, declining in frequency and severity by the late 1890s.{{sfnp|EEIAWWJ8}}
## Dress
Scuttlers distinguished themselves from other young men in working-class neighbourhoods by their distinctive clothing. They generally wore a uniform of brass-tipped pointed clogs, bell-bottomed trousers, cut like a sailor’s (“bells” that measured fourteen inches round the knee and twenty-one inches round the foot) and “flashy” silk scarves. Their hair was cut short at the back and sides, but they grew long fringes, known as “donkey fringes”, that were longer on the left side and plastered down on the forehead over the left eye. Peaked caps were also worn tilted to the left to display the fringe.{{sfnp|EEIAWWJ8}} The scuttlers’ girlfriends also had a distinctive style of dress consisting of clogs, shawl, and a vertically striped skirt.{{sfnp|3LIR4DVS|289}}
## Clashes
A scuttler is a lad, usually between the ages of 14 and 18, or even 19, and scuttling consists of the fighting of two opposed bands of youths, who are armed with various weapons.
— Alexander Devine, *Scuttlers and Scuttling: Their Prevention and Cure*. (Manchester, 1890)Scuttling gangs were territorial fighting gangs, as reflected in their names; the Bengal Tigers came from the cluster of streets and courts off Bengal Street in Ancoats. Most gangs took their names from a local thoroughfare, such as Holland Street, Miles Platting, or Hope Street, Salford.{{sfnp|HJQE6F2J|loc=182}} Gang members fought with a variety of weapons, but they all carried knives and wore heavy buckled belts, often decorated with pictures such as serpents, scorpions, hearts pierced with arrows or women’s names. The thick leather belts were their most prized possessions, and were wrapped tightly around the wrist at the onset of a “scuttle”, so that the buckle could be used to strike at opponents; the use of knives and belts was intended to maim and disfigure rather than to kill.{{sfnp|EEIAWWJ8}}
Some of the clashes between rival gangs involved large numbers; the *Gorton Reporter* described one such instance in May 1879 as involving more than 500 people.{{sfnp|E62I52WH|57}} Scuttling reached a peak in 1890–1891; it was said that by 1890 more youths were detained in Strangeways Prison for scuttling than for any other offence.{{sfnp|HJQE6F2J|loc=3132}}
## Demise
By the turn of the century the gangs had all but died out owing to some of the worst slums having been cleared, the setting up of Working Lads’ Clubs (such as Salford Lads’ Club) to engage the working youths in more peaceful activities, the spread of street football and the advent of the cinema.{{sfnp|HJQE6F2J|5276}}
One initiative to provide an alternative to gang warfare resulted in the formation of St Marks (West Gorton) Football Club, which later became Manchester City FC.{{sfnp|E62I52WH|58}} In 1997 the Manchester historian Gary James highlighted that scuttling was the number one unifying activity of young men, and that the creation of St Mark’s Football Club was a very serious attempt at diverting the young men of West Gorton into more worthwhile activities. Anna Connell, perceived by many as the founder of St Mark’s FC, also helped create men’s meetings, a library, and other society improving facilities and clubs.{{sfnp|H6GIERYE|9-12}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 7766
**Categories:** Gang
---
### [Black cat](https://engole.info/black-cat/)
**Published:** October 3, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/A_black_cat_named_Tilly.jpg[/pimage]The numerous folk beliefs about black cats, and cats in general, are often contradictory. Superstitions surrounding black cats are almost certainly some of the most prevalent even today, along with the number thirteen and walking under a ladder.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/A_black_cat_named_Tilly.jpg)Domestic black cat
Wikimedia Commons
The numerous folk beliefs about black cats, and cats (*Felis catus*) in general, are often contradictory.{{sfnp|PMW9V5ML}} Superstitions surrounding black cats are almost certainly some of the most prevalent even today, along with the number thirteen and walking under a ladder.{{sfnp|VGCWWL2L|17}}
Humans and cats have lived in close association for at least 3500 years, and probably considerably longer than that, as the interred remains of a human and a cat have been found buried together with various decorative artefacts in a 9500-year-old grave in Cyprus. By contrast, the earliest known graves of dogs and man are about 12,000 years old.{{sfnp|8UDETETB}}
There is no evidence to suggest that the way society has viewed black cats is in any way related to them having different behavioural or personality characteristics as compared with other cat colours.
## Luck
Bury the head of a black catt with a Jacobus or piece of gold in it and putt into the eies two black baenes. But it must be donne on a Tuesday night at twelve o’clock at night; and that time nine nights the piece of gold must be taken out and whatever you buy with it (always reserving some part of the money) you will have money brought to your pockets, perhaps the same piece of gold again.{{sfnp
— 6KVF7Y5JAlthough in England a black cat crossing a person’s path is generally considered to bring good luck, in much of the rest of Europe the opposite is true.{{sfnp|PMW9V5ML}} A black cat walking into a house or a room has also been considered fortunate. The wives of fishermen in the area around Scarborough, in Yorkshire, kept black cats in their homes in the hope that its influence would keep their husbands safe while at sea.{{sfnp|6KVF7Y5J|search=BLACK CAT}}
Black cats have moved in very exalted circles. King Charles I thought so highly of his lucky black cat that he kept him under constant guard. On hearing that his cat had died, Charles is reported to have lamented “My luck is gone”. And so it transpired, as he was arrested by Parliamentarian forces the following day.{{sfnp|6KVF7Y5J|search=BLACK CAT}}
## Witches’ familiar
Yet I went into the house again.
Killed the black cat, and here’s the brain.{{sfnp
— 6KVF7Y5JAlthough black cats are widely associated with witches, they were just one of the animals that appear as [familiars](https://engole.info/witchs-familiar) in confessions. In his *Beware the Cat* (1553), the author William Baldwin recounted the then commonly held belief that blacks cats were actually witches who had taken on the form of a cat: “A Cat hath nine lives, that is to say, a witch may take on her a Cat’s body nine times”.{{sfnp|VGCWWL2L|32}}
## Association with deities
Freya, the Norse queen of the Valkyries, was said to ride in a chariot pulled by black cats,{{sfnp|VGCWWL2L|31}} which given how fiercely independent cats are known to be would have been a great accomplishment.
## Folk medicine
The mutilation or death of a black cat is the basis for several cures recorded in the 17th and 18th centuries, often involving blood taken from the cat’s cut-off ear or its tail and smeared on the affected body part:{{sfnp|PMW9V5ML}} blood from the ear for St Anthony’s Fire – probably ergotism – and blood from the tail for shingles.{{sfnp|6KVF7Y5J|search=BLACK CAT}}
## Magic
The trick bone of a black cat was believed to confer on its owner the power of invisibility, which seems a little curious given that the cat itself was not invisible. The [spell](https://engole.info/spell-magical/) calls for a black cat to be decapitated and its body boiled in ashes and water until the flesh is removed from its bones. Sometimes the trick bone will rise to the top of the boiling liquid once all the flesh has gone, otherwise each bone must be tested in turn by placing it in the mouth and asking a helper “Do you see me?” When he or she answers “I don’t see you”, that is the trick bone. If no assistant is available then a mirror can be used as a substitute.{{sfnp|7S2XK82K}} As a cat’s skeleton contains about 240 bones,\[a\]The number can vary between 230 and 250, depending on factors such as the length of the tail. By way of comparison, humans have 206 bones in their skeleton. the procedure must have taken some time.{{sfnp|4JKS4X6Q|16}}
The [taghairm](https://engole.info/taghairm/) of Scottish Celtic magic involved impaling black cats on spits and roasting them alive, in an effort to provoke the appearance of their master, the Devil. A deal could then be struck in which the Devil agreed to grant the wishes of the magicians in return for their stopping the ordeal.{{sfnp|E3VZQGZ7|97-98}}
## In literature
In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “[The Black Cat](https://engole.info/the-black-cat/)“, a psychological study of guilt, the narrator has a black cat called Pluto. He is on good terms with the cat until he falls victim to alcoholism and kills both the cat and his wife, who has earlier reminded him that black cats are all witches in disguise. Poe himself had a black cat, of whom he wrote
The writer of this article is the owner of one of the most remarkable black cats in the world – and this is saying much; for it will be remembered that black cats are all of them witches.{{sfnp
— ITS8XTHS|58}}
## Scientific background
The darkness of a cat’s fur is determined by the presence of a pigment called melanin, which also gives humans their dark skin colouration. Domestic cats have 38 chromosomes,{{sfnp|4KXSDMY2}}\[b\]Humans have 46 chromosomes. of which one – chromosome E2 – carries the ASIP gene. It is a mutation of this gene, known as ASIP-Δ2,\[c\]Δ2 is the nomenclature used to indicate that the mutant gene has two fewer base pairs than the normal gene, i.e. they have been lost during DNA replication.{{sfnp|DTHNVHTH}} which is responsible for producing black cats. The gene is recessive in domestic cats, although not in some big cats such as jaguars, so both parents of a black domestic cat must be carriers of ASIP-Δ2 even if neither of them is itself black.{{sfnp|DTHNVHTH}}
Such investigations as have been carried out to determine whether black cats display any common personality or behavioural characteristics that mark them out from other cats have failed to find any significant differences.{{sfnp|8BCIRQD2}} It thus seems that the portrayal of black cats in legend and folklore has nothing to do with the cats themselves.
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The number can vary between 230 and 250, depending on factors such as the length of the tail. By way of comparison, humans have 206 bones in their skeleton. b Humans have 46 chromosomes. c Δ2 is the nomenclature used to indicate that the mutant gene has two fewer base pairs than the normal gene, i.e. they have been lost during DNA replication.{{sfnp|DTHNVHTH}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 6804
**Categories:** Cat, Superstition
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [ELIZA](https://engole.info/eliza/)
**Published:** August 7, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/ELIZA_conversation.png[/pimage]Early natural language processing computer program.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/ELIZA_conversation.png)Interactive computing was in its infancy in 1966, and users interacted with ELIZA via a teletype.
Wikimedia Commons
ELIZA is an early natural language processing computer program created from 1964 to 1966,{{sfnp|GNXATVWZ}} by Joseph Weizenbaum at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.{{sfnp|T9MMB49B|3-4}}
The program, consisting of about 200 lines of code,{{sfnp|C6IUJB2W}} was built in two layers, the first a language analyser. The second layer incorporated a script, which Weizenbaum likened to the rules “rather like those that might be given to an actor who is to use them to improvize around a certain theme”. In that way ELIZA could be supplied with different scripts allowing it to maintain conversations about “cooking eggs or about managing a bank checking account”. The name ELIZA was chosen because just like the Eliza Doolittle of *Pygmalion* fame, the system could be “taught” to speak increasingly well, by being supplied with updated scripts.{{sfnp|T9MMB49B|3}}
ELIZA allocated a “precedence number” or ranking to keywords in the input sentence such as *I*, *you*, *boyfriend*, and then applied appropriate transformations such as turning “*you*” into “*I*“. The first and best-known script, known as DOCTOR, was designed to mimic the responses of a Rogerian psychotherapist;\[a\]The psychotherapist Carl Rogers was well-known for mirroring whatever the patient said, producing “an unusually constrained form of dialogue.”{{sfnp|7DL2VC8R}} Weizenbaum gave as an example the input “I need some help …” returning “What would it mean to you …”{{sfnp|C6IUJB2W}}
The original version of ELIZA was written in SLIP,\[b\]**S**ymmetric **LI**st **P**rocessor.{{sfnp|7DL2VC8R}} a programming language invented by Joseph Weizenbaum.{{sfnp|7DL2VC8R}}
## Response
Weizenbaum was disturbed by what he perceived to be the misinterpretation of his work on ELIZA, and in response wrote his book *Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation*. He was particularly concerned that some practising psychiatrists believed that ELIZA could be developed into an almost mechanical form of therapy, and was “startled” to see how quickly some people interacting with the computer became deeply involved with it, the so-called ELIZA effect. In a more technical sense, he was also concerned that some people believed that ELIZA was a general solution to the problem of understanding natural language, which he believed was a problem that had no general solution.{{sfnp|T9MMB49B|2-7}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The psychotherapist Carl Rogers was well-known for mirroring whatever the patient said, producing “an unusually constrained form of dialogue.”{{sfnp|7DL2VC8R}} b **S**ymmetric **LI**st **P**rocessor.{{sfnp|7DL2VC8R}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24852
## External links
- [Before Siri and Alexa there was ELIZA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMK9AphfLco), YouTube video showing Joseph Weizenbaum speaking about and demonstrating ELIZA
- [Try Eliza for yourself](https://anthay.github.io/eliza.html)[](https://psych.fullerton.edu/mbirnbaum/psych101/eliza.htm)
**Categories:** Artificial intelligence
---
### [Leighth Feight](https://engole.info/leighth-feight/)
**Published:** July 29, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** Clash between Chartists and police in Leigh, Lancashire in August 1839.
**Content:**
The Leighth Feight\[a\]Leigh Fight was a clash between Chartists and police in Leigh in Lancashire in August 1839. Across the country Chartists were demanding that the franchise should be extended to the working classes.
The fight occurred after two days of relatively peaceful protest marches to mills around the area and demands that work be stopped. On the third day, the Riot Act was read by Squire Worthington and after dispersing and then returning, the protesters were stopped by special constables and troops chased the crowd away.
## Background
Dissatisfaction after the 1832 Reform Act that gave property owners the vote but not the working classes, fear of the “[bastilles](https://engole.info/workhouse/)” created by the poor laws, the high cost of living and poor trade all increased social tensions. As industrialisation widened the gap between the social classes, many organisations grew out of the unrest that followed including locally the “Leigh Reform Association” in 1835 and nationally, the Chartist movement that published its five-point charter in 1838.{{sfnp|CDQL59QF|20}}
## Activists
The economy of Leigh, where many were employed as silk handloom weavers, worsened in 1836 and there was much unemployment. Wages were reduced in 1838, the cotton trade was poor, food prices, particularly bread, were rising and people were worried about ending up in the dreaded [workhouse](https://engole.info/workhouse/). The Reverend Joseph Rayner Stephens embarked on a political campaign in November 1838. He held meetings in Wigan, Leigh and Hyde, attracting large crowds with contingents from the nearby towns.
The banner of the Westhoughton contingent read:
Ye reformers of England have courage a while,
And all your great tyrants shall see you to smile,
And tell them your feats of your labour and toil.
It never did merit a cursed Bastille.{{sfnp
— CDQL59QFAt Wigan the crowd approached the meeting holding banners demanding, “Justice to the Millions” and “It is better to die by the Sword than perish with Hunger”.{{sfnp|CDQL59QF|20-21}} Stephens’ oratory addressed the plight of handloom weavers, abuses in the mills and coal mines, he attacked the poor laws and advocated for the extension of the franchise.{{sfnp|CDQL59QF|21}}
Stephens was warmly received in Leigh where he addressed a crowd of two to three thousand people. His inflammatory speeches attacked the poor law guardians, the church, shopkeepers, mill owners and advocated violence and arming supporters with pistols and pikes.{{sfnp|CDQL59QF|22}} The authorities were alarmed by his “incendiary” language.{{sfnp|CDQL59QF|22}} The magistrates asked the Manchester Constabulary for help and the Vicar of Astley wrote to the Home Secretary demanding Stephen’s arrest for sedition. Stephens moved on to Hyde were he attracted even greater crowds, but his call “for children and wife we will fight to the knife” led to his arrest and a 18 month prison sentence. The Leigh Chartists became convinced that “physical force” was the way forward.{{sfnp|CDQL59QF|23}}
In February 1839 delegates at a Chartist convention In London attended by moderate and “physical force” advocates agreed to petition Parliament in support of the Charter and if it was rejected, that a”National Holiday” be declared during which a general strike would be held from 12 to 14 August 1839. Chartists in Leigh started to arm themselves and drill on Siddow Common and political meetings were held.{{sfnp|CDQL59QF|24}} When the petition was rejected by Parliament in July 1839 the Leigh Chartists decided to adopt the National Holiday.{{sfnp|CDQL59QF|25}}
## August 1839
On 12 August a large crowd gathered in Leigh market place before processing around the district to stop work in factories and works. They headed to Jones’s Mill in Bedford and forced it to close when activists withdrew the plug from the mill’s boiler. The following day even more people turned out in support. Detachments marched to Astley, Chowbent\[b\]Atherton, Boothstown, Hindley and Westhoughton and forcibly closed down several mills some by drawing plugs from mill boilers. Numbers were swollen by mill hands who joined in the processions. Some activists were armed with pikes and pistols. The magistrates were nervous and arranged for troops to be sent from Haydock.{{sfnp|CDQL59QF|25}}
## Feight
On the third day, in pouring rain, a crowd of at least 6,000 gathered in the market place, many were armed and instructions had been given for women and children to remain at home. As the crowd approached, Squire Withington read the Riot Act from the obelisk in the square and special constables and a detachment of troops moved forward to ensure it dispersed.{{sfnp|CDQL59QF|25}} The crowd headed towards Chowbent and for a time the town was quiet but in the afternoon the Chartists returned. What happened next became known as the “Leighth Feight”. Outside the White Horse Inn a special constable stepped forward to advise the leaders to disperse peaceably but was struck with a blow to the head. Thirty constables, brandishing truncheons, rushed to help him in the narrow street. Confusion and panic ensued and many Chartists were felled by blows from the constables’ heavy truncheons. Others following behind turned tail in an attempt to escape. Four constables were injured but the mob was routed.{{sfnp|CDQL59QF|26}}
## Aftermath
Activists were arrested and a few were given long prison sentences. Local historian Dr John Lunn’s appraisal was:
“Leighth Feight” was an ugly episode in the swelling theme of franchise extention, an eruption in a movement which has given today to each adult in the land the priceless right of suffrage and privilege of sharing in the election. Leigh Fight is as great an event enshrined in our national history as that of the Tolpuddle martyrs.” {{sfnp
— TJHH5H2A|86}}
Chartism was a spent force by 1848, and its demands were eventually met by other means over many years. ## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Leigh Fight b Atherton
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 4161
**Categories:** Riot
---
### [Malkin Tower](https://engole.info/malkin-tower/)
**Published:** June 2, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Upper_and_Lower_Black_Moss_Reservoir_-_geograph.org.uk_-_106540.jpg[/pimage]Home of Elizabeth Southerns, also known as Demdike, and her granddaughter Alizon Device, two of the chief protagonists in the Lancashire witch trials of 1612.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Upper_and_Lower_Black_Moss_Reservoir_-_geograph.org.uk_-_106540.jpg)Lower Black Moss reservoir (on the left), is one of the suggested sites for the location of Malkin Tower.
Wikimedia Commons
Malkin Tower (or the Malking Tower or Mocking Tower) was the home of Elizabeth Southerns, also known as Demdike, and her granddaughter Alizon Device, two of the [Pendle witches](https://engole.info/pendle-witches/) executed in 1612.
Perhaps the best-known alleged witches’ coven in English legal history took place in Malkin Tower on 10 April 1612.\[a\]All dates in this article are given in the Old Style consistent with the Julian Calendar in use in England until 1752, when the Gregorian calendar was adopted. Eight of those attending were subsequently arrested and tried for causing harm by witchcraft, seven of whom were found guilty and executed. The house may have been demolished shortly after the trials. The only firm evidence for its location comes from the official account by the clerk of the court, Thomas Potts, who places it somewhere in the Forest of Pendle. Archaeological excavations in the area have failed to discover any confirmed remains of the building.
Several explanations have been suggested for the origins of the word *Malkin*. Despite its name, Malkin Tower is likely to have been a simple cottage.
## **Toponymy**
Malkin’s Tower, a little cottage where
Reporte makes caitive witches meete to swear
Their homage to ye devil.{{sfnp
— BKY2YYUIThe name *Malkin* has several possible derivations: it was a familiar form of the female names Mary or Maud, and a term for a poor or shabby woman;{{sfnp|RDVUAHWY|39}} the similar *mawkin* was a word used to describe a lower-class woman or slut.{{sfnp|HE5LVMGV|13-14}} *Malkin* was also used as a term for a cat, particularly an old cat, as in grimalkin or grey malkin,{{sfnp|RDVUAHWY|39}} and was an old northern English name for a hare,{{sfnp|YZMWCJPQ|47-48}} into which witches were said to be able to transform themselves.{{sfnp|UL5D97AQ}} It has also been suggested that the name was a combination of *mal* and *kin* as a slight to the residents of Malkin Tower,{{sfnp|HE5LVMGV|13-14}}{{sfnp|YZMWCJPQ|47-48}} which local historian Arthur Douglas considers unlikely owing to the poor education of people in the area at that time.{{sfnp|YZMWCJPQ|47-48}} Another possibility is a corruption of malt kiln,{{sfnp|YZMWCJPQ|47-48}}{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|268}} which is supported by a claim made by Alizon Device that the family of Anne Whittle, also known as Chattox, had broken into their fire house.{{sfnp|UTPSBF6Q|154}}\[b\]A fire house was used in the final stage of converting barley into malt for use in brewing, by heating it up over a slow fire. The value of goods stolen from Demdike’s fire house was about £1,{{sfnp|AXC9YLSE|80}} equivalent to about £100 as of 2008.{{sfnp|BVRXVCXZ}}
Authors have speculated on a range of buildings that could account for the Tower appellation. Malkin Tower may have incorporated a Norman [peel tower](https://engole.info/peel-tower), built as a defence against Scottish raiders,{{sfnp|DR3M4GJB|60}} or might have been a disused poacher’s lookout,{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|268}} but it is more likely that despite its name Malkin Tower was a simple cottage.{{sfnp|WMSWP4G9}} The historian W. R. Mitchell suggests that it was originally a small farm building, perhaps a shelter for fodder or livestock, which was converted into poor-quality living accommodation.{{sfnp|4C8H36FT25}} Poverty was not uncommon among the residents of the Forest of Pendle, hence the building may have been no more than a hovel,{{sfnp|KV3PHZQA|13}} and *tower* may have been a sarcastic name given by local residents.{{sfnp|HE5LVMGV|13-14}} It is almost certain that Southerns and Device did not own Malkin Tower but were tenants.{{sfnp|UTPSBF6Q|155}}
Malkin Tower is sometimes alternatively referred to as Malking Tower,{{sfnp|RDVUAHWY|37}} or Mocking Tower.{{sfnp|SA5YH37E|13}}
## **Association with witches**
On Good Friday, 10 April 1612,{{sfnp|DB6SXDFK|2}} Malkin Tower was the venue for perhaps the best-known alleged witches’ coven in English legal history.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|22}} The house was home to Elizabeth Southerns, also known as Demdike,\[c\]Demdike” is derived from “devil woman”, suggesting that Elizabeth Southerns was “feared and loathed within the community”.{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|204}} and her granddaughter Alizon Device,{{sfnp|RDVUAHWY|38}} two of the alleged [Pendle witches](https://engole.info/pendle-witches/).{{sfnp|CCJM7NLP}}
On 21 March 1612 Alizon had a chance encounter with John Law, a pedlar from Halifax, who refused to sell her some pins. Law collapsed shortly afterwards and his son accused Alizon of being responsible.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|10}} She and her grandmother were summoned to the home of local magistrate, Roger Nowell, on suspicion of causing harm by witchcraft.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|10}} Both were arrested and detained in Lancaster Gaol, along with two other women.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|16}} Friends of the Demdike family met at Malkin Tower on 10 April 1612, allegedly to plot the escape of the four gaoled women by blowing up Lancaster Castle. Nowell learned of the meeting and, after interrogating Alizon Device’s “mentally sub-normal” brother, James, concluded that Malkin Tower had been the scene of a witches’ coven, and that all who had attended were witches.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|16-18}} Eight were subsequently accused of causing harm by witchcraft and committed for trial, seven at Lancaster Assizes and one at York.{{sfnp|88FWII9K|22}}
## **Location**
The location of Malkin Tower is uncertain.{{sfnp|RDVUAHWY|39}} It may have been demolished shortly after the 1612 trials, as it was common at the time to dismantle empty buildings and recycle the materials.\[d\]The building accommodated only Alizon Device and her grandmother; Alizon was hanged and her grandmother died in prison awaiting trial. The other members of the family lived in a smallholding that had belonged to John Device, Elizabeth Device’s deceased husband.{{sfnp|RDVUAHWY|38}} The building may also have been destroyed to eradicate the “melancholy associations” of the place.{{sfnp|UTPSBF6Q|156}} The official account of the trials written by Thomas Potts, clerk to the court, in his *[The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster](https://engole.info/the-wonderfull-discoverie-of-witches-in-the-countie-of-lancaster/)* mentions Malking Tower many times, but only describes it as being in the Forest of Pendle, a former royal forest\[e\]Pendle Forest was part of the Honour of Clitheroe,{{sfnp|FVVYINHU|3}} which was disafforested in 1507,{{sfnp|FVVYINHU|9}} although the land remained a part of the Duchy of Lancaster until 1660. that covered a considerable area south and east of Pendle Hill, extending almost to the towns of Burnley, Colne and Padiham.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Blacko_Tower_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1138193.jpg)Stansfield Tower, Blacko, a Victorian folly often confused with Malkin Tower.{{sfnp
UTPSBF6Q|157
One contender is in the [civil parish](https://engole.info/civil-parish/) of Blacko, on the site of present-day Malkin Tower Farm;{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|286}} since the 1840s claims have been made that old masonry found in a field wall is from the remains of the building.{{sfnp|HE5LVMGV|13-14}}{{sfnp|T6YLQ4W5|xlix, introduction footnote}} In The Lancashire Witch-Craze, Jonathan Lumby conjectures that the building was situated on the moors surrounding Blacko Hill, near to an old road between Colne and Gisburn.{{sfnp|355QT8H5|19}} Local folklore in the parish holds that the remains of Malkin Tower are buried in a field behind the nearby Cross Gaits Inn public house; the tower used to be featured on the inn’s sign.{{sfnp|75V9Q2MQ|22}} The primary evidence supporting this location seems to be that a hollow in the hillside east of the farm is known as Mawkin Hole.{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|279}} It has been suggested that this is the same place mentioned in the 16th-century halmote court records for the manor of Colne as Mawkin Yarde,\[f\]Spelt variously: Malkynyerd, Malkenyerd, Malkynyerde, Mawkyn-yarde, Mawkin Yarde.{{sfnp|MK625HXX|237, 266, 241, 458, 466}} described as being “in the north of Colne”,{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|286}} but anywhere inside the manor of Colne would have been outside the Forest of Pendle, and the first Ordnance Survey map of the area, created in the 1840s, identifies the farm as Blacko Tower.{{sfnp|WWNWDYCR}} The site is also several miles from any of the traceable locations mentioned at the trial.{{sfnp|YZMWCJPQ|47-48}}
In 1891 local grocer Jonathan Stansfield constructed a solitary tower on the nearby summit of Blacko Hill.{{sfnp|DR3M4GJB|148}} Today this is also commonly known as Blacko Tower, and is often confused with Malkin Tower. Although he claimed at the time that he wished to see into neighbouring valleys, historian John Clayton suggests that, aware of the story, he may have wished to provide the area with his own version.{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|265-266}}
Another possible location is somewhere near the village of Newchurch in Pendle.{{sfnp|DR3M4GJB|60}} Douglas claims there is “persuasive” evidence that an area near Sadler’s Farm (now known as Shekinah Christian Centre) was the site of Malkin Tower; there were numerous reports of alleged witchcraft in the area, and it was in the vicinity of other locations named during the trial such as Greenhead,\[g\]Greenhead, near Fence, was the home of Christopher Nutter and his son Robert,{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|79}} for whose deaths Anne Whittle and Anne Redferne were charged with murder during the Pendle witch trials.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|34}}{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|33}} Barley and Roughlee.{{sfnp|YZMWCJPQ|47-48}} Others involved in the trials were known to have lived in the area; alleged witches Jane and John Bulcock resided at Moss End Farm in Newchurch, and John Nutter, whose cows were claimed to have been bewitched, lived at the neighbouring Bull Hole Farm. Southerns’ son Christopher Holgate also lived nearby. But neither the deeds of Sadler’s Farm, which date back to the 17th century, nor contemporary maps of the region mention Malkin Tower or any fields in which it may have stood.{{sfnp|UTPSBF6Q|155}}
Archaeological excavations have been undertaken in several locations in the Pendle Forest area, including Newchurch, but nothing has been found.{{sfnp|4C8H36FT|25}} A potential candidate for the lost Malkin Tower was announced in December 2011, after water engineers unearthed a 17th-century cottage with a mummified cat sealed in the walls,\[h\]The spirits of dead cats were believed to protect household food supplies from vermin such as rats and mice.{{sfnp|RDVUAHWY|161}} close to Lower Black Moss reservoir near Barley.{{sfnp|QDD3NY8Z}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a All dates in this article are given in the Old Style consistent with the Julian Calendar in use in England until 1752, when the Gregorian calendar was adopted. b A fire house was used in the final stage of converting barley into malt for use in brewing, by heating it up over a slow fire. The value of goods stolen from Demdike’s fire house was about £1,{{sfnp|AXC9YLSE|80}} equivalent to about £100 as of 2008.{{sfnp|BVRXVCXZ}} c Demdike” is derived from “devil woman”, suggesting that Elizabeth Southerns was “feared and loathed within the community”.{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|204}} d The building accommodated only Alizon Device and her grandmother; Alizon was hanged and her grandmother died in prison awaiting trial. The other members of the family lived in a smallholding that had belonged to John Device, Elizabeth Device’s deceased husband.{{sfnp|RDVUAHWY|38}} e Pendle Forest was part of the Honour of Clitheroe,{{sfnp|FVVYINHU|3}} which was disafforested in 1507,{{sfnp|FVVYINHU|9}} although the land remained a part of the Duchy of Lancaster until 1660. f Spelt variously: Malkynyerd, Malkenyerd, Malkynyerde, Mawkyn-yarde, Mawkin Yarde.{{sfnp|MK625HXX|237, 266, 241, 458, 466}} g Greenhead, near Fence, was the home of Christopher Nutter and his son Robert,{{sfnp|BKY2YYUI|79}} for whose deaths Anne Whittle and Anne Redferne were charged with murder during the Pendle witch trials.{{sfnp|BDJAFZ5Q|34}}{{sfnp|VXVTC2MB|33}} h The spirits of dead cats were believed to protect household food supplies from vermin such as rats and mice.{{sfnp|RDVUAHWY|161}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 1053
**Categories:** Witchcraft
---
### [Isobel Gowdie](https://engole.info/isobel-gowdie/)
**Published:** June 1, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Binsfeld%2C_witches.jpg[/pimage]Scottish woman accused of witchcraft in 1662 and probably executed, whose detailed testimony provides one of the most comprehensive insights into European witchcraft folklore at the end of the era of witch-hunts.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Binsfeld%2C_witches.jpg)According to the historian Emma Wilby, several aspects of witchcraft included in Isobel’s confessions are seen in Peter Binsfeld’s 1592 drawing.
Wikimedia Commons
Isobel Gowdie was a Scottish woman who at Auldearn near Nairn confessed to being a witch during 1662. Little else is known of her life, and although she was probably executed in accordance with the usual practice, she may have been allowed to return to her previous obscurity as a cottar’s wife.\[a\]A cottar is a Scottish term for a peasant who occupies a cot-house or cottage belonging to a farm, in return for which he has to provide labour.{{sfnp|HNRVUMWG}} Her detailed testimony, apparently obtained without the use of violent torture, provides one of the most comprehensive insights into European witchcraft folklore at the end of the era of witch-hunts.
The four confessions Isobel made over a period of six weeks include details of charms and rhymes, claims she was a member of a coven in the service of the Devil and that she met with the fairy queen and king. Lurid information concerning carnal dealings with the Devil were also provided. A combination of demonic and fairy beliefs, the narratives were used by Margaret Murray as the basis for her now mostly discredited theories about cults and witchcraft.
Modern-day academics characterise Isobel, who was illiterate and of a low social status, as a talented narrator with a creative imagination. It is unclear why she came forward or was initially arrested but she may have suffered from ergotism. Since the confessions were transcribed by Robert Pitcairn and first published in 1833, historians have described the material as remarkable or extraordinary and scholars continue to debate the topic in the 21st century. Recently it has been suggested her confessions together with earlier cases like that of [Janet Boyman](https://engole.info/janet-boyman/) may indicate a cult-like group of nature spirits, the [seely wights](https://engole.info/seely-wights/), being active in Scotland.
Isobel is commemorated outside academia by songs, books, plays and radio broadcasts. *The Confession of Isobel Gowdie*, a work for symphony orchestra, was composed by James MacMillan as a requiem for her.
## Background
The early modern period saw the Scottish courts trying many cases of witchcraft{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|1}} and witch hunts began in about 1550.{{sfnp|P5A55XWK|644}} The parliament of Mary, Queen of Scots, passed the [Scottish Witchcraft Act in 1563](https://engole.info/witchcraft-acts/#Scottish-Witchcraft-Act-1563),{{sfnp|BRFU8MAR|345}} making convictions for witchcraft subject to capital punishment.{{sfnp|XQ3YWSPF|61}} Mary’s son, James, wrote *Daemonologie* in 1597 after his involvement in the [North Berwick witch trials](https://engole.info/north-berwick-witch-trials/) in 1590 and the Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597, a nationwide hunt that started in Aberdeen.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|42}} In common with other European witch trials, major Scottish witch hunts occurred in batches;{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|30}} historians offer differing opinions as to why this would happen but generally agree that military hostilities and political or economic uncertainty played a part coupled with local ministers and landowners determined to seek convictions.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|30-31}} Scotland had been subjected to nearly a century of vigorous oppression although areas in the north of the country had not felt the full brunt of Presbyterianism so a strong belief in fairy traditions and folklore persisted.{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|134}} The Laird of Park, who owned the land where Isobel lived, was a fervent Covenanter and rejected all traditional superstitions.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|164-165}} He had been involved in commissions for witchcraft trials and the deaths of his father, uncle and grandfather were publicly credited as being caused by witchcraft.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|165}}
Adverse weather conditions caused a sustained period of poor harvests from 1649 until 1653.{{sfnp|9M2CGW2Z|17}} The execution of King Charles I took place in 1649 and an extensive witch hunt started that year.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|55}} Charles II was declared the monarch of Scotland in 1660; most historians connect the Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1661–62, the last but most severe wave of prosecutions, with the Restoration.{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|81-82}} Writing in 1884, Scottish antiquary Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe stated that “Whatever satisfaction the return of King Charles the Second might afford to the younger females in his dominions, it certainly brought nothing, save torture and destruction, to the unfortunate old women, or witches of Scotland.”{{sfnp|DB3Q54LJ|82}} According to Emma Wilby, a British historian who has undertaken a comprehensive study of Isobel and her confessions,{{sfnp|GY3SBJ77|7}} she was one of probably seven witches tried in Auldearn during this witch hunt.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|31}}
## Personal life
Records provide no information on Isobel before her marriage to John Gilbert,{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|10}}\[b\]Her surname is sometimes spelled Gaudie or Goudie;{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|117}} women in Scotland did not assume their husband’s name.{{sfnp|VRDVMMRZ|398}} who had no involvement in the witchcraft case.{{sfnp|VMWH3VKT}} Wilby speculates that she would have been brought up in the Auldearn region as she alluded to locations in the area.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|10}} Likewise no detail is available concerning her age; at the time of her trial in 1662 she may have been aged anywhere from fifteen – unlikely, as she claimed to have participated in sexual activities fifteen years before her confession – to well into her thirties or fifties, but she was certainly of child-bearing age despite there being no records of her having any children.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|12}}{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|155}}
Isobel and her husband lived in the area around Loch Loy,{{sfnp|VMWH3VKT}} some {{convert|2|mi|spell=in}} north of Auldearn.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|6}} The sea loch was larger than it is now during the 17th century, and was surrounded by woodland, hills and sand dunes.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|6}} Isobel ‘s husband was a farm labourer, possibly a cottar, hired by one of the tenants of the Laird of Park; in return for his labour he would have been provided with a cottage and the use of a small parcel of land.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|8-9}} According to Wilby, Isobel’s lifestyle and social status could be compared with present-day developing countries.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|9}} Unable to read or write,{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|35}} Isobel nevertheless had a good imagination and was able to express herself eloquently.{{sfnp|TDDC7SYY|237}} Her daily life was spent in basic household chores and tasks such as milking, making bread, weaving yarn or weeding.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|35-36}}
## Confessions
Isobel made four confessions over a period of six weeks;{{sfnp|489UKEGE|121}} the first is dated 13 April 1662 at Auldearn.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|31}} It is uncertain why she came forward;{{sfnp|DGKMEZVL|89}} the historian John Callow,{{sfnp|ZPJMRT28}} who wrote her *Oxford Dictionary of National Biography* article,\[c\]Isobel is one of only a handful of witches who have an entry in their own right.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|4}} suggests it was because of her involvement in a conspiracy to torment the local minister, Harry Forbes,{{sfnp|VMWH3VKT}} a zealous extremist who had a fear of witchcraft.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|107}} Forbes was a witness at each of Isobel’s four interrogations.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|35}} Accusations against Isobel would have circulated for a lengthy period before she confessed.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|32}} She would have been detained in solitary confinement, probably in the tollbooth in Auldearn, throughout the six-week time span of her confessions.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|34}}
To turn into a hare Isobel would chant the following [spell](https://engole.info/spell-magical/):
*I shall go into a hare,
With sorrow, sych and meickle care
And I shall go in the Devil’s name,
Ay while I come home again*
To change back she would say:
*Hare, hare, God send thee care.
I am in a hare’s likeness now,
But I shall be in a woman’s likeness even now.*{{sfnp
— 36TY4TDIHer first confession described an encounter with the Devil after she arranged to meet him in the kirk at Auldearn at night.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|603}} Naming several others who attended including Janet Breadhead\[d\]Janet Breadhead was detained at Inshoch Castle and confessed to witchcraft the day after being named in Isobel’s first confession.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|32}} Various spellings are used for her name: in Isobel’s confession, it is spelled Breadhead{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|603}} whereas her own confession gives her name as Breadheid.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|616}} and Margret Brodie, she said she renounced her baptism and the Devil put his mark on her shoulder then sucked blood from it. Other meetings took place at several locations, for instance Nairn and Inshoch. She touched on having sexual intercourse with the Devil who she described as a very cold “meikle, blak, roch man”.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|603}} He had forked and cloven feet that were sometimes covered with shoes or boots. Details were given of taking a child’s body from a grave and spoiling crops together with information about covens and where they danced.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|603}} She explained that brooms were laid beside her husband in his bed so he would not notice she was absent. The coven ate and drank the best of food at houses they reached by flying through the air on magical horses and entered via the windows.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|604}} They were entertained by the Queen of the Fairies, also known as the Queen of Elphame, in her home at Downie Hill\[e\]One of a series of mounds near Nairn.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|3}} which was filled with [water bulls](https://engole.info/water-bull/) that frightened her.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|604}} Isobel claimed to have made clay effigies of the Laird of Park’s male children to cause them suffering or death and that she had assumed the form of a jackdaw and, with other members of the coven who had transformed into animals like cats and hares, visited the house of Alexander Cumings.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|605}} Some parts of her testimony, like her description of the king and queen of fairies, has been cut short when the notaries have just noted et cetera, a frequent occurrence when the material was deemed irrelevant{{sfnp|WGHVEMID|88}} or, if it did not comply with the inference the interrogators intended, it was abruptly ended.{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|4}} Alternatively it may have happened when the scribes were unable to keep pace with the volume of information being narrated by Isobel.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|115}}
A little over two weeks later, on 3 May 1662, Isobel ‘s second confession was transcribed. She expanded on details about the coven by providing the nicknames of its members and as many of the spirits that waited on them as she could remember; her own servant spirit, dressed in black, was called the Read Reiver.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|606}} Claims included having the ability to transform into animals with the individual chants used to turn into a cat, horse or various other animals supplied.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|608}} In all, she provided a total of twenty-seven benevolent or malevolent chants in her confessions, more than in any other British witchcraft case;{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|54}} three were transcribed twice but with significant differences.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|550}}
Isobel testified the Devil handmade elf arrows that were then enhanced by small roughly spoken “elf-boys”.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|607}}\[f\]Henderson and Cowan suggest Isobel may have been alluding to a brownie or trow-like fairy when describing the elf-boys.{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|55}} The Devil allocated a number of arrows to each coven member with instructions they were to be fired in his name; no bows were supplied so the arrows were flicked by thumb.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|607}} The witches were not always accurate when they fired the arrows but if the intended target, whether it was a woman, a man or an animal, was [touched by the implement](https://engole.info/elfshot/), she claimed they would die even if wearing a protective armour.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|607}} Spells used to inflict illness and torment on Harry Forbes, the minister, were also described.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|609}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Black-John-chastising-the-witches-Cruickshank-1830.jpg)Satirical sketch entitled *Black John chastising the witches* by George Cruickshank which, according to the scholar Jeffrey Burton Russell, stems from Isobel’s confessions.
Flickr
On 15 May 1662 Isobel was brought before her interrogators for a third time.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|610}} Like her first and second confessions, and in common with many other Scottish witchcraft testimonies, the transcript begins by detailing her pact with the Devil after she encountered him and agreed to meet him at Auldearn kirk.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|86}} Expanding on the information she had already provided about the elf arrows, she revealed the names of those killed,{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|610}} expressed regret for the deaths she had caused,{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|77}} and supplied names of other coven members along with details of whom they had murdered.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|611-612}} She also gave an account of the Devil sending her on an errand to Auldearn, disguised as a hare.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|611}} Her narrative went on to describe how while in that form she was chased by a pack of dogs; she escaped from them by running from house to house until eventually she had the opportunity to utter the chant to transform herself back into a human.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|611}} She added that sometimes the dogs would be able to bite a witch who took the form of a hare; although the dogs could not kill the shapeshifter, the bite marks and scars would still be evident once the human form was reinstated.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|611}}
Descriptions of dining with the Devil and his beating of coven members and their responses to it are recounted.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|613}} Salacious details concerning sexual relations with the Devil together with broad characteristics of his genitalia are chronicled.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|610-611}} Continuing on from the tale in her first testimony about the methods undertaken to kill any male children of the Laird of Park, the verse the Devil had taught them to chant while burning the effigies was relayed.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|612}}
The fourth and final confession, dated 27 May 1662,{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|614}} is, according to the historian Robert Pitcairn who first reproduced Isobel testimonies in 1833,{{sfnp|DGKMEZVL|85}} basically to confirm the three previous testimonies coupled with an attempt to elicit more information about the members of the coven to enable charges to be brought against them.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|614}} Forty-one people were arrested as the result of statements made by Isobel and Janet Breadhead.{{sfnp|DGKMEZVL|90}}
## Aftermath
The panel of interrogators felt there was ample evidence to secure a conviction against Isobel so they applied to the Privy Council in Edinburgh seeking a Commission of Justiciary for a local trial to be held.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|32-33}} Together with the confession of her accomplice, Janet Breadhead, some or all of Isobel’s confessions were sent with the request.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|33}} According to Wilby, it is likely the confessions were received in Edinburgh around the middle of June 1662;{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|34}} the Register of the Privy Council for July contains an entry instructing the Sheriff principal of Nairn, Sir Hew Campbell of Calder \[Cawdor\], and others to arrange local trials for both women.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|33}}
Isobel’s second testimony has a note on the back dated 10 July 1662 indicating the document had been appraised and the justice department found it germane; a further instruction was added to “Tak ceare of this peaper”.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|33}} On the same document the justice depute, Alexander Colville,\[g\]Colville had served as commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and was a staunch Presbyterian; despite voicing some disbelief regarding witchcraft, he sentenced many witches to death.{{sfnp|BJAYUHRH|64-75}} added a signed statement beside the witness signatures endorsing the commission.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|33}} Lord Brodie was likely to have been involved in approving the commission; he was in Edinburgh at the time and he noted in his diary that he had been “excisd in ordouring the depositions of witches”.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|33}}\[h\]The Brodie family were prominent landowners around Loch Loy and Auldearn;{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|8}} Lord Brodie had been a commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, presided over witchcraft trials and left diaries covering the period 1652–1680 that detail several aspects of witches and justice at the time.{{sfnp|BJAYUHRH|71, 74}} The entry in his diary the following day describes a meeting with Colville when they discussed witches and he mentions “Park’s witches”.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|33}} Brodie was highly thought of by the minister and the lairds from the Auldearn area who had asked for his intervention on prior occasions.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|34}} His relative, the Laird of Lethen, was a witness at Isobel’s interrogations and visited Brodie at the time; he was probably the person who took the trial application to Edinburgh.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|33}} The pair prayed together petitioning against the Devil and witchcraft.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|33}}
On 10 April 1662 the Privy Council had issued a proclamation prohibiting torture being used as a means of securing confessions from witches{{sfnp|BJAYUHRH|72}} unless it was specifically authorised by the Council.{{sfnp|XHGHRI6M|174}} This led to a caution frequently being appended to commissions.{{sfnp|XHGHRI6M|174}} In Isobel and Janet Breadhead’s case, the Council advised they should be found guilty only if the confessions had been volunteered without torture, that they were sane and without a wish to die.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|63, 65}}
There is no record of Isobel’s execution,{{sfnp|VMWH3VKT}} although this is not unusual, as in 90 per cent of Scottish cases the final outcome is unknown due to the local records no longer existing.{{sfnp|GY3SBJ77|10}}{{sfnp|6ZAMJMJM|14}} Wilby hypothesises that once the commission was returned to Auldearn, Isobel and Janet would have been found guilty at a local trial in mid-July, transported by cart to Gallowhill on the outskirts of Nairn where they would have been strangled and burned.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|34}} Prior to 1678 most Scottish witches tried under a Privy Council commission were convicted and executed;{{sfnp|3D6B4U32|283}} Pitcairn shared the opinion that Isobel and Janet were executed,{{sfnp|VMWH3VKT}} and most modern day academics, such as historian Brian P. Levack, agree it would be the likely outcome.{{sfnp|3D6B4U32|283}} The possibility the pair may have been acquitted on the basis of mental impairment has been put forward by some historians;{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|34}} Callow suggests they may have been freed under the clauses attached to the commission and then been permitted to return to “quiet obscurity”.{{sfnp|VMWH3VKT}}
## Modern interpretations
The confessions are a blend of fairy and demonic beliefs without parallel in any other witchcraft case.{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|134}} They are more detailed than most and are inconsistent with much of the folklore and records from the witchtrials.{{sfnp|VMWH3VKT}} It is unclear whether Isobel’s confessions are the result of psychosis, whether she had fallen under suspicion of witchcraft or sought leniency by confessing.{{sfnp|VMWH3VKT}} Locally it has been suggested she may have suffered ergotism, which can produce hallucinations and other mental instability.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|56}} At least two other confessions from the 16th century, those of [Andro Man](https://engole.info/andro-man)\[i\]The name Andrew Mann is sometimes used.{{sfnp|VBNTMM2M|128}} and [Allison Peirson](https://engole.info/alison-pearson-witch/),\[j\]Man, from Rathven in Aberdeenshire, was convicted in early 1598;{{sfnp|VBNTMM2M|128}} Peirson’s case was at Boarhills, Fife in 1588.{{sfnp|TAHHHTHA|36}} reported encounters with the Queen of Elphame;{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|45, 58}}{{sfnp|VBNTMM2M|129}} later, in 1670, Jean Weir from Edinburgh, also claimed she met the fairy queen.{{sfnp|NBTBHECC|154, 156-157}}
Isobel’s confessions formed the crux of the Egyptologist and folklorist Margaret Murray’s thesis about covens consisting of thirteen members; she also asserted that pre-Christian [cults](https://engole.info/witch-cult-hypothesis) were structured in this way throughout Europe, but her work is now discredited.{{sfnp|ERWEVQ39|301}} Wilby has suggested that there may have been dark shamanic aspects contained in the fairy elements,{{sfnp|7XDHTSJU|93-95}} and that Isobel may have been undergoing visionary experiences.{{sfnp|5BCDJ28M|216}} The academic Julian Goodare{{sfnp|RD735ABT}} suggests Isobel’s confessions together with others like those of [Janet Boyman](https://engole.info/janet-boyman/), who was convicted and executed in 1572, may indicate the existence of a Scottish cult-like group, the [seely wights](https://engole.info/seely-wights/),\[k\]The seely wights were fairy-like nature spirits, blessed or magical beings.{{sfnp|YM4G2HRM|198, 200}} similar to the Sicilian *donas de fuera* (“ladies from outside”) or the *benandanti* (“good walkers”) of north-eastern Italy.{{sfnp|YM4G2HRM|198-219}}
Despite the Privy Council’s April 1662 proclamation, torture was often still employed and Levack speculates some form of it may have been applied to Isobel;{{sfnp|3D6B4U32|282}} she may have become unbalanced by the imprisonment and lengthy inquisitions.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|141}} While kept in solitary confinement, she was probably prevented from sleeping and mistreated.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|540}} Scholars, such as Callow and Diane Purkiss, suggest Isobel’s narratives about sumptuous meals are indicative of a woman who was constantly hungry; other details may be evidence of a powerless woman, angry and sexually frustrated by the austerity imposed by the ministers.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|209-210}} Church and court records show rape to be a recurring crime during civil unrest and in the mid-16th century; Isobel described her first carnal experience with the Devil as being in 1647, when soldiers may still have been in the area. Wilby postulates that the lurid sexual details may be Isobel’s “fantasy-response to the trauma of rape.”{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|212}}
Wilby characterises Isobel as a survivor of conflicts like the Battle of Auldearn, who experienced the wrath of zealous, bigoted, ministers and local elite frightened of witches; she was a skilled story-teller who entertained relatives and friends with narratives of the supernatural.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|539}} Wilby suggests that the tales recorded may have been the result of a talented orator responding to a “rapt audience”.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|540}}
Levack describes Isobel’s initial statement as “one of the most remarkable documents in the history of witchcraft”,{{sfnp|3D6B4U32|282}} and Goodare refers to her as “one of the most famous of all Scottish witches”{{sfnp|GY3SBJ77|7}} whose “extraordinary confessions”{{sfnp|GY3SBJ77|7}} include “some of the most remarkable \[visionary activities\] on record”.{{sfnp|GY3SBJ77|7}} These modern-day descriptions mirror those of Pitcairn in 1833 and George F. Black in 1937 who wrote in the Calendar of Witchcraft in Scotland that “This is the most remarkable witchcraft case on record … referred to, in more or less detail, in every work relating to witchcraft in Scotland.”{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|4}} According to Wilby, the confessions still remain at the forefront of academic debate on witchcraft.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|4}}
## In literature and music
Isobel and her magic have been remembered in a number of later works of culture. She appears as a character in the biographical novels *The Devil’s Mistress* by novelist and occultist J. W. Brodie-Innes,{{sfnp|YSF62UPP|225}} *Isobel* by Jane Parkhurst and the fantasy novel *Night Plague* by Graham Masterton.{{sfnp|DGKMEZVL|90}} In the 21st century her story has been the inspiration for plays, radio broadcasts and lectures.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|4}}
*The Confession of Isobel Gowdie* is a work for symphony orchestra by the Scottish composer James MacMillan;{{sfnp|6NWAIIC7}} he believed IIsobel’s confession was obtained by torture, and that she was burned at the stake for witchcraft. In a broadcast by BBC Radio 3 in 2010 he styled the composition as his requiem for her.{{sfnp|9KKC4UC9}} The Sensational Alex Harvey Band song titled “Isobel Goudie” was one of many songs commemorating her.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|4}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a A cottar is a Scottish term for a peasant who occupies a cot-house or cottage belonging to a farm, in return for which he has to provide labour.{{sfnp|HNRVUMWG}} b Her surname is sometimes spelled Gaudie or Goudie;{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|117}} women in Scotland did not assume their husband’s name.{{sfnp|VRDVMMRZ|398}} c Isobel is one of only a handful of witches who have an entry in their own right.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|4}} d Janet Breadhead was detained at Inshoch Castle and confessed to witchcraft the day after being named in Isobel’s first confession.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|32}} Various spellings are used for her name: in Isobel’s confession, it is spelled Breadhead{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|603}} whereas her own confession gives her name as Breadheid.{{sfnp|36TY4TDI|616}} e One of a series of mounds near Nairn.{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|3}} f Henderson and Cowan suggest Isobel may have been alluding to a brownie or trow-like fairy when describing the elf-boys.{{sfnp|V26XEBXU|55}} g Colville had served as commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and was a staunch Presbyterian; despite voicing some disbelief regarding witchcraft, he sentenced many witches to death.{{sfnp|BJAYUHRH|64-75}} h The Brodie family were prominent landowners around Loch Loy and Auldearn;{{sfnp|NG7GKUKV|8}} Lord Brodie had been a commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, presided over witchcraft trials and left diaries covering the period 1652–1680 that detail several aspects of witches and justice at the time.{{sfnp|BJAYUHRH|71, 74}} i The name Andrew Mann is sometimes used.{{sfnp|VBNTMM2M|128}} j Man, from Rathven in Aberdeenshire, was convicted in early 1598;{{sfnp|VBNTMM2M|128}} Peirson’s case was at Boarhills, Fife in 1588.{{sfnp|TAHHHTHA|36}} k The seely wights were fairy-like nature spirits, blessed or magical beings.{{sfnp|YM4G2HRM|198, 200}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 992
**Categories:** Female, Scottish, Witch
**Tags:** Facebook post
---
### [Moors murders](https://engole.info/moors-murders/)
**Published:** August 13, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/91/Moors_Murderers.jpg[/pimage]Murders carried out by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley between July 1963 and October 1965, in and around what is now Greater Manchester, England. The victims were five children aged between 10 and 17 – Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans – at least four of whom were sexually assaulted.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/91/Moors_Murderers.jpg)Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, October 1965
Wikipedia
The Moors murders were carried out by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley between July 1963 and October 1965, in and around what is now Greater Manchester, England. The victims were five children aged between 10 and 17 – Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans – at least four of whom were sexually assaulted. The murders are so named because two of the victims were discovered in graves dug on Saddleworth Moor; a third grave was discovered on the moor in 1987, more than twenty years after Brady and Hindley’s trial in 1966. The body of a fourth victim, Keith Bennett, is also suspected to be buried there, but despite several searches it remains undiscovered.
While Brady and Hindley were in prison awaiting trial, the death penalty for murder was suspended, and so the pair – who would undoubtedly have been executed a few months earlier – were sentenced instead to life imprisonment. The police were initially aware of only three killings – those of Edward Evans, Lesley Ann Downey, and John Kilbride, but their investigation was reopened in 1985, after Brady was reported in the press as having confessed to the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett. Brady and Hindley were taken separately to Saddleworth Moor to assist the police in their search for the graves, but they did not formally confess to the additional murders until 1987.
Described by the press as “the most evil woman in Britain”,{{sfnp|RRD6WTZI}} Hindley made several appeals against her life sentence, claiming she was a reformed woman and no longer a danger to society, but she was never released. She died in 2002, aged 60. Brady was declared criminally insane in 1985 and confined in the high-security Ashworth Hospital. He asked repeatedly to be allowed to die, and made it clear that he wanted never to be released. Brady died in 2017, at Ashworth, aged 79.
The murders, reported in almost every English-language newspaper in the world,{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|19}} were the result of what Malcolm MacCulloch, professor of forensic psychiatry at Cardiff University, called a “concatenation of circumstances”, which brought together a “young woman with a tough personality, taught to hand out and receive violence from an early age” and a “sexually sadistic psychopath”.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|400}} The trial judge, Mr Justice Fenton Atkinson, described Brady and Hindley in his closing remarks as “two sadistic killers of the utmost depravity”.{{sfnp|Q24VMLID|2}}
## Victims
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Yeoman_hey_and_dovestones_from_hollin_brown_knoll.jpg)Saddleworth Moor, viewed from Hollin Brown Knoll. The bodies of three of the victims were found in this area.
Wikimedia Commons
The full extent of Brady and Hindley’s killing spree did not come to light until their formal confessions in 1987.{{sfnp|2XG6DYG2}} Their first victim was 16-year-old Pauline Reade, a neighbour of Hindley’s who disappeared on her way to a dance on 12 July 1963. That evening, Brady told Hindley that he wanted to “commit his perfect murder”. He told her to drive her van around the local area while he followed behind on his motorcycle; when he spotted a likely victim he would flash his headlight, and Hindley was to stop and offer that person a lift.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|82-85}}
Driving down Gorton Lane, Brady saw a young girl walking towards them, and signalled Hindley to stop, which she did not do until she had passed the girl. Brady drew up alongside on his motorbike, demanding to know why she had not offered the girl a lift, to which Hindley replied that she recognised her as Marie Ruck, a near neighbour of her mother.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|83}} Shortly after 8:00 pm,{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|185}} continuing down Froxmer Street,{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|185-186}} Brady spotted a girl wearing a pale blue coat and white high heeled shoes walking away from them, and once again signalled for the van to stop.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|83}} Hindley recognised the girl as Pauline Reade, a friend of her younger sister, Maureen.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|42}} Reade got into the van with Hindley, who then asked if she would mind helping to search for an expensive glove she had lost on Saddleworth Moor. Reade said she was in no great hurry, and agreed. At 16, Pauline Reade was older than Marie Ruck, and Hindley realised that there would be less of a hue and cry over the disappearance of a teenager than there would over a seven or eight-year-old child. When the van reached the moor, Hindley stopped and Brady arrived shortly afterwards on his motorcycle. She introduced him to Reade as her boyfriend, and said that he had also come to help find the missing glove. Brady took Reade onto the moor while Hindley waited in the van. After about thirty minutes Brady returned alone, and took Hindley to the spot where Reade lay dying, her throat cut. He told her to stay with Reade while he fetched a spade he had hidden nearby during a previous visit to the moor, to bury the body. According to Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Topping,\[a\]Topping was the police officer in overall charge of the investigation into the moors murders. Hindley noticed that “Pauline’s coat was undone and her clothes were in disarray … She had guessed from the time he had taken that Brady had sexually assaulted her.”{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|82-85}} Returning home from the moor in the van – they had loaded the motorcycle into the back – Brady and Hindley passed Reade’s mother, Joan, accompanied by her son, Paul, searching the streets for Pauline.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|189-190}}
Brady and Hindley approached 12-year-old John Kilbride in the early evening of 23 November 1963 at a market in Ashton-under-Lyne, and offered him a lift home on the pretext that his parents would be worried about him being out so late. With the additional inducement of a bottle of sherry they claimed to have won in a raffle, Kilbride readily climbed into the Ford Anglia they had hired that morning. Brady told Kilbride that the sherry was at their home, and they would have to make a detour to collect it. On the way he suggested that they take another detour, to search for a glove he said that Hindley had lost on the moor.{{sfnp|CW94SN67|130-134}} When they reached the moor, Brady took Kilbride with him while Hindley drove on to an unlit parking spot opposite a nearby public house, returning to collect Brady half an hour later.{{sfnp|CW94SN67|134-135}} Brady sexually assaulted Kilbride and attempted to slit his throat with a six-inch serrated blade, before fatally strangling him with a piece of string, possibly a shoelace.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|90-92}}
Twelve-year-old Keith Bennett vanished on his way to visit his grandmother on 16 June 1964.{{sfnp|2XG6DYG2}} Hindley lured him into her Mini pick-up – which Brady was sitting in the back of – by asking for the boy’s help in loading some boxes, after which she said she would drive him home. She drove to a lay-by on Saddleworth Moor as she and Brady had previously arranged, and Brady went off with Bennett, supposedly looking for a lost glove. Hindley kept watch, and after about thirty minutes or so Brady reappeared, alone and carrying a spade that he had hidden there earlier. When Hindley asked how he had killed Bennett, Brady said that he had sexually assaulted the boy and strangled him with a piece of string.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|95-96}}
Brady and Hindley visited a fairground on 26 December 1964 in search of another victim, and noticed 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey standing beside one of the rides. When it became apparent that she was on her own, they approached her and deliberately dropped some of the shopping they were carrying close to her, before asking for the girl’s help to carry some of the packages to their car, and then to their home. Once inside the house Downey was undressed, gagged, and forced to pose for photographs before being raped and fatally strangled with a piece of string. Hindley maintained that she went to draw a bath for the child and found the girl dead (presumably killed by Brady) when she returned. The following morning Brady and Hindley drove with Downey’s body to Saddleworth Moor,{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|101-105}} where she was buried, naked with her clothes at her feet, in a shallow grave.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|34}}{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|239}}
On 6 October 1965 Brady met 17-year-old apprentice engineer Edward Evans at Manchester Central railway station and invited him to his home at 16 Wardle Brook Avenue in Hattersley,{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|244-247}}{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|31}} where Brady beat him with an axe and strangled him to death.{{sfnp|2XG6DYG2}}
## Murder of Edward Evans
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/16_wardle_brook_avenue.jpg)The empty plot where 16 Wardle Brook Avenue in Hattersley, once stood. The house was demolished by the local council.
Wikimedia Commons
The attack on Edward Evans was witnessed by Hindley’s 17-year-old brother-in-law, David Smith, the husband of her younger sister Maureen.{{sfnp|2XG6DYG2}} Hindley’s mother “loathed” Smith, who had four criminal convictions for actual bodily harm the first of which occurred when he was aged eleven, and had refused to attend their wedding.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|230}} Smith was “in awe” of Brady, which increasingly worried Hindley, as she felt it compromised their safety. Shortly before Evans’ murder, Brady had announced to her that he and Smith intended “to roll over a queer”.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|244}}
On the evening of 6 October 1965 Hindley drove Brady to Manchester Central Station, where she waited outside in the car while he selected their victim; after a few minutes Brady reappeared in the company of Edward Evans, to whom he introduced Hindley as his sister. After they had driven back home Brady sent Hindley to call on her brother-in-law, which she did, purportedly to deliver a message for her mother. As it was late, Hindley asked Smith to walk her home. When they got back to the house, Hindley told Smith that Brady had some miniature wine bottles for him, and asked him to wait outside for her signal, a flashing light. When the signal came, Smith knocked on the door and was met by Brady, who asked if he had come for the miniatures. Brady led Smith into the kitchen and left him there, saying that he was going to collect the wine. A few minutes later, Smith heard a scream, followed by Hindley shouting loudly for him to come and help.{{sfnp|CW94SN67|196-199}} Smith entered the room to find Brady repeatedly striking Evans with the flat of an axe. He watched as Brady then throttled Evans with a length of electrical cord.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|31}} Evans’ body was too heavy for Smith to carry to the car on his own – Brady had sprained his ankle in the struggle – so they wrapped it in plastic sheeting and put it in the spare bedroom.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|247}}
Smith agreed to meet Brady the following evening to dispose of Evans’ body,{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|247}} but after returning home he woke his wife and told her what he had seen. Maureen told him that he must call the police. Three hours later the couple cautiously made their way to a public phone box in the street below their flat, Smith taking the precaution of arming himself with a screwdriver and a kitchen knife to defend them in the event that Brady suddenly confronted them. At 6:07 am Smith made an emergency services call to the police station in nearby Hyde and told his story to the officer on duty.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|81-82}}{{sfnp|QW964TH3|67}} In his statement to the police Smith claimed that:
[Brady] opened the door and he said in a very loud voice for him …”Do you want those miniatures?” I nodded my head to say yes and he led me into the kitchen … and he gave me three miniature bottles of spirits and said: “Do you want the rest?” When I first walked into the house, the door to the living room … was closed. … Ian went into the living room and I waited in the kitchen. I waited about a minute or two then suddenly I heard a hell of a scream; it sounded like a woman, really high-pitched. Then the screams carried on, one after another really loud. Then I heard Myra shout, “Dave, help him,” very loud. When I ran in I just stood inside the living room and I saw a young lad. He was lying with his head and shoulders on the couch and his legs were on the floor. He was facing upwards. Ian was standing over him, facing him, with his legs on either side of the young lad’s legs. The lad was still screaming … Ian had a hatchet in his hand … he was holding it above his head and he hit the lad on the left side of his head with the hatchet. I heard the blow, it was a terrible hard blow, it sounded horrible.{{sfnp
— N8UM7Q93|78}}
## Arrest
Early on the morning of 7 October, shortly after Smith’s call, Superintendent Bob Talbot of the Cheshire Police arrived at the back door of 16 Wardle Brook Avenue, wearing a borrowed baker’s overall to cover his uniform. Talbot identified himself to Hindley as a police officer when she opened the door, and told her that he wanted to speak to her boyfriend. Hindley led him into the living room, where Brady was sitting up in a divan writing a note to his employer explaining that he would not be able to get into work because of his ankle injury. Talbot explained that he was investigating “an act of violence involving guns” that was reported to have taken place the previous evening.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|33, 121}}{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|83}}
Hindley denied that there had been any violence, and allowed police to look around the house. When they came to the upstairs room in which Evans’ body was stored the police found the door locked, and asked Brady for the key. Hindley claimed that the key was at work, but after the police offered to drive her to her employer’s premises to retrieve it, Brady told her to hand the key over. When they returned to the living room the police told Brady that they had discovered a trussed up body, and that he was being arrested on suspicion of murder.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|121}} As Brady was getting dressed, he said “Eddie and I had a row and the situation got out of hand.”{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|85}}
Hindley was not arrested with Brady, but she demanded to go with him to the police station, accompanied by her dog Puppet, to which the police agreed.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|254}} Hindley was questioned about the events surrounding Evans’ death, but she refused to make any statement beyond claiming that it had been an accident. As the police had no evidence that Hindley was involved in Evans’ murder she was allowed to go home, on condition that she return the next day for further questioning. Hindley was at liberty for four days following Brady’s arrest, during which time she went to her employer’s premises and asked to be dismissed, so that she would be eligible for unemployment benefits. While in the office where Brady worked she found some papers belonging to him in an envelope that she claimed she did not open, which she burned in an ashtray. She believed that they were plans for bank robberies, nothing to do with the murders. On 11 October Hindley was charged as an accessory to the murder of Edward Evans and was remanded at Risley.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|122-124}}
## Initial investigation
Brady admitted under police questioning that he and Evans had fought, but insisted that he and Smith had murdered Evans between them; Hindley, he said, had “only done what she had been told”.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|122}} Smith told police that Brady and Hindley had hidden evidence in two suitcases stored in a left-luggage office somewhere in Manchester. British Transport Police were asked to search all of Manchester’s stations,{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|35}} and on 15 October found what they were looking for{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|266}} – police later found the left-luggage ticket in the back of Hindley’s prayer book.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|107}} Inside one of the cases were nine pornographic photographs taken of a young girl, naked and with a scarf tied across her mouth,{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|95}}{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|37}} and a 13-minute tape recording of her screaming and pleading for help.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|35}} Ann Downey, Lesley Ann Downey’s mother, later listened to the tape after police had discovered the body of her missing 10-year-old daughter, and confirmed that it was a recording of her daughter’s voice.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|35-36}}
Police searching the house at Wardle Brook Avenue also found an old exercise book in which the name “John Kilbride” had been scribbled, which made them suspicious that Brady and Hindley may have been involved in the unsolved disappearances of other youngsters.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|33-34}} A large collection of photographs was discovered in the house, many of which seemed to have been taken on Saddleworth Moor. One hundred and fifty officers were drafted to search the moor, looking for locations that matched the photographs.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|34}} Initially the search was concentrated along the A628 road near Woodhead, but a close neighbour, 11-year-old Pat Hodges, had on several occasions been taken to the moor by Brady and Hindley and she was able to point out their favourite sites along the A635 road.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|91}} On 16 October police found an arm bone sticking out of the peat; officers presumed that they’d found the body of John Kilbride, but soon discovered that the body was that of Lesley Ann Downey. Ann Downey – later Ann West after her marriage to Alan West – had been on the moor watching as the police conducted their search, but was not present when the body was found.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|93-94}} She was shown clothing recovered from the grave and identified it as belonging to her missing daughter.{{sfnp|UAKNNGCD}} The following day she identified her daughter’s body at a local mortuary.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|94}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ac/Myra_at_John_Kilbride%27s_grave.jpg)A photograph taken by Ian Brady of Myra Hindley with her dog, Puppet, kneeling over John Kilbride’s grave on Saddleworth Moor
Wikipedia
Detectives were able to locate another site on the opposite side of the A635 road from where Downey’s body was discovered, and five days later they found the “badly decomposed” body of John Kilbride, whom they identified by his clothing.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|37}} That same day, already being held for the murder of Evans, Brady and Hindley appeared at Hyde Magistrate’s Court charged with Lesley Ann Downey’s murder. Each was brought before the court separately and remanded into custody for a week.{{sfnp|A5DABQ2Q}} They made a two-minute appearance again on 28 October, and were remanded for a further week.{{sfnp|S92G6IMC}}
The search for bodies continued, but with winter setting in it was called off in November.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|37}} Presented with the evidence of the tape recording Brady admitted to taking the photographs of Lesley Ann Downey, but insisted that she had been brought to Wardle Brook Avenue by two men who had subsequently taken her away again, alive. Brady was further charged with the murder of John Kilbride, and Hindley with the murder of Edward Evans, on 2 December.{{sfnp|5XB7TW65}} At the committal hearing on 6 December Brady was charged with the murders of Edward Evans, John Kilbride, and Lesley Ann Downey, and Hindley with the murders of Edward Evans and Lesley Ann Downey, as well as with harbouring Brady in the knowledge that he had killed John Kilbride. The prosecution’s opening statement was held in camera,{{sfnp|F3UVZQ5F}} and the defence asked for a similar stipulation, but was refused.{{sfnp|NVWTEFBY}} The proceedings continued in front of three magistrates in Hyde over an 11-day period during December, at the end of which the pair were committed for trial at Chester Assizes.{{sfnp|2XG6DYG2}}
Many of the photographs taken by Brady and Hindley on the moor featured Hindley’s dog Puppet, sometimes as a puppy. Detectives arranged for the animal to be examined by a vet, to determine its age, from which they could date when the pictures were taken. The examination involved an analysis of the dog’s teeth, which required a general anaesthetic from which Puppet did not recover. On hearing the news of her dog’s death Hindley became furious, and accused the police of murdering Puppet, one of the few occasions detectives witnessed any emotional response from her.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|37}} In a letter to her mother shortly afterwards\[b\]Written less than thirty days after the murder of Edward Evans, the letter was dated 5 November 1965.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|279}} Hindley wrote:
I feel as though my heart’s been torn to pieces. I don’t think anything could hurt me more than this has. The only consolation is that some moron might have got hold of Puppet and hurt him.{{sfnp
— UBUC5IU4|279-280}}
## Trial
Brady and Hindley’s trial was held at Chester Assizes during April and May 1966, in front of Mr Justice Fenton Atkinson.{{sfnp|2XG6DYG2}} Modifications to the court room, including the installation of microphones, speakers and security screens to protect Brady and Hindley from assassination, were reported in the press.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|292}} The pair were each charged with three murders, those of Evans, Downey, and Kilbride. The Attorney General, Frederick Elwyn Jones led the prosecution,{{sfnp|2XG6DYG2}} Brady was defended by Emlyn Hooson,{{sfnp|QG26XQZG}} and Hindley by Godfrey Heilpern, recorder of Salford from 1964 – both experienced QCs.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|294}}{{sfnp|AMTX6QGF}} David Smith was the chief prosecution witness, but during the trial it was discovered that he had agreed a deal with a newspaper that he refused to name – even under intense questioning – guaranteeing him £1,000 (equivalent to about £18,000 in 2018\[c\]Using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}}) for the syndication rights to his story if Brady and Hindley were convicted, something the trial judge described as a “gross interference with the course of justice”.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|295}} By the time of the trial Smith had already enjoyed a foreign holiday, and was accommodated at a five-star hotel for the duration of the trial, both at the newspaper’s expense.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|143}}
Brady and Hindley pleaded not guilty to the charges against them;{{sfnp|6JDGVYI9}} both were called to give evidence, Brady for more than eight hours and Hindley for six.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|38}} Although Brady admitted to hitting Evans with an axe, he did not admit to killing him, arguing that the pathologist in his report had stated that Evans’ death was “accelerated by strangulation”. Under cross-examination by the prosecuting counsel, all Brady would admit was that “I hit Evans with the axe. If he died from axe blows, I killed him.”{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|297-298}} Hindley denied any knowledge that the photographs of Saddleworth Moor found by police had been taken near the graves of their victims.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|39}}
The tape recording of Lesley Anne Downey, on which the voices of Brady and Hindley were clearly audible, was played in open court. Hindley admitted that her attitude towards the child was “brusque and cruel”, but claimed that was only because she was afraid that someone might hear Downey screaming.{{sfnp|CW94SN67|275}} Hindley claimed that when Downey was being undressed she herself was “downstairs”; when the pornographic photographs were taken she was “looking out the window”; and that when the child was being strangled she “was running a bath”.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|299}}
On 6 May, after having deliberated for a little over two hours,{{sfnp|48FHIW9Q}} the jury found Brady guilty of all three murders and Hindley guilty of the murders of Downey and Evans. The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act had come into force during the time that Brady and Hindley were held in prison, abolishing the death penalty for murder, and so the judge passed the only sentence that the law allowed: life imprisonment. Brady was sentenced to three concurrent life sentences and Hindley was given two, plus a concurrent seven-year term for harbouring Brady in the knowledge that he had murdered John Kilbride.{{sfnp|2XG6DYG2}} Brady was taken to Durham Prison and Hindley was sent to Holloway Prison.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|39}}
In his closing remarks Mr Justice Atkinson described the murders as a “truly horrible case” and condemned the accused as “two sadistic killers of the utmost depravity”.{{sfnp|Q24VMLID|2}} He recommended that both Brady and Hindley spend “a very long time” in prison before being considered for parole but did not stipulate a tariff. He stated that Brady was “wicked beyond belief” and that he saw no reasonable possibility of reform. He did not consider that the same was necessarily true of Hindley, however, “once she is removed from \[Brady’s\] influence”.{{sfnp|SSFXY2KK}} Throughout the trial Brady and Hindley “stuck rigidly to their strategy of lying”;{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|300}} Hindley was later described as “a quiet, controlled, impassive witness who lied remorselessly”.{{sfnp|2XG6DYG2}}
## Later investigation
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/C_71_article_1194585_long_teaser_group_long_teaser_image.jpg)Keith Bennett
*Manchester Evening News*
In 1985 Brady allegedly confessed to Fred Harrison – a journalist working for *The Sunday People* – that he had also been responsible for the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett,{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|252-253}} something that the police already suspected, as both children lived in the same area as Brady and Hindley and had disappeared at about the same time as their other victims. The subsequent newspaper reports prompted the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to reopen the case, in an investigation headed by Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Topping, who had been appointed Head of GMP’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) the previous year.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|10-11}}
On 3 July 1985 Topping visited Brady at Gartree Prison, but found him “scornful of any suggestion that he had confessed to more murders”.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|13}} Police nevertheless decided to resume their search of Saddleworth Moor, once more using the photographs taken by Brady and Hindley to help them identify possible burial sites. Meanwhile, in November 1986 Winnie Johnson, Keith Bennett’s mother, wrote a letter to Hindley begging to know what had happened to her son, a letter that Hindley seemed to be “genuinely moved” by.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|260-262}} It ended:
I am a simple woman, I work in the kitchens of Christie’s Hospital. It has taken me five weeks labour to write this letter because it is so important to me that it is understood by you for what it is, a plea for help. Please, Miss Hindley, help me.{{sfnp
— BKGP8W3S|42-43}}
Police visited Hindley, then being held in Cookham Wood, a few days after she had received the letter, and although she refused to admit any involvement in the killings, she agreed to help by looking at photographs and maps to try to identify spots that she had visited with Brady.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|262}} She showed particular interest in photographs of the area around Hollin Brown Knoll and Shiny Brook, but said that it was impossible to be sure of the locations without visiting the moor.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|45-46}} The security considerations for such a visit were significant; there were threats made against her should she visit the moors, but Home Secretary Douglas Hurd agreed with Topping that it would be worth the risk.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|264-265}} Writing in 1989, Topping said that he felt “quite cynical” about Hindley’s motivation in helping the police. Although the letter from Winnie Johnson may have played a part, he believed that Hindley’s real concern was that, knowing of Brady’s “precarious” mental state, she was afraid that he might decide to co-operate with the police, and wanted to make certain that she, and not Brady, was the one to gain whatever benefit there may have been in terms of public approval.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|44}}
Hindley made her first visit to assist the police search of Saddleworth Moor on 16 December 1986.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|55}} Four police cars left Cookham Wood at 4.30 am. At about the same time, police closed all roads onto the moor, which was patrolled by two hundred officers, forty of them armed. Hindley and her solicitor arrived by helicopter from an airfield near Maidstone, touching down at 8.30 am. Wearing a donkey jacket and balaclava, she was driven, and walked around the area. It was difficult for Hindley to make a connection between her memories of the area and what she saw on the day, and she was apparently nervous of the helicopters flying overhead. At 3:00 pm she was returned to the helicopter, and taken back to Cookham Wood.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|265}} Topping was criticised by the press, who described the visit as a “fiasco”, a “publicity stunt”, and a “mindless waste of money”.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|266}} He was forced to defend the visit, pointing out its benefits:
We had taken the view that we needed a thorough systematic search of the moor … It would never have been possible to carry out such a search in private.{{sfnp
— N8UM7Q93|266}}
Topping continued to visit Hindley in prison, along with her solicitor Michael Fisher and her spiritual counsellor, the Reverend Peter Timms, who had been a prison governor before resigning to join the Methodist Church.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|259, 266}} She made a formal confession to police in a series of interviews conducted between 19 February and 24 February 1987, admitting her involvement in all five murders,{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|72-75}} but news of her confession was not made public for more than a month.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|268}} The tape recording of her statement was more than seventeen hours long; Topping described it as a “very well worked out performance in which, I believe, she told me just as much as she wanted me to know, and no more”.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|153}} He also commented that he “was struck by the fact that she was never there when the killings took place. She was in the car, over the brow of the hill, in the bathroom and even, in the case of the Evans murder, in the kitchen.”{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|146-147}} Topping concluded that he felt he “had witnessed a great performance rather than a genuine confession”.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|147}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Hollin_brown_knoll_a635.jpg)During the 1987 search for Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, Hindley recalled that she had seen the rocks of Hollin Brown Knoll silhouetted against the night sky.
Wikimedia Commons
Police visited Brady in prison again and told him of Hindley’s confession, which at first he refused to believe. Once presented with some of the details that Hindley had provided of Pauline Reade’s abduction, however, Brady decided that he too was prepared to confess, but on one condition: that immediately afterwards he be given the means to commit suicide, a request that was impossible for the authorities to comply with.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|158}}
At about the same time, Winnie Johnson sent Hindley another letter, again pleading with her to assist the police in finding the body of her son Keith. In the letter, Johnson was sympathetic to Hindley over the criticism surrounding her first visit. Hindley, who had not replied to the first letter, responded by thanking Johnson for both letters, explaining that her decision not to reply to the first resulted from the negative publicity that surrounded it. She claimed that, had Johnson written to her fourteen years earlier, she would have confessed and helped the police. She also paid tribute to Topping, and thanked Johnson for her sincerity.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|268-269}} Hindley returned to the moor on 23 March 1987,{{sfnp|CW94SN67|328}} this time with a heightened level of security surrounding her visit. She stayed overnight in Manchester, at the flat of the police chief in charge of GMP training at Sedgley Park, and visited the moor twice.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|268-269}} She confirmed to police that the two areas in which they were concentrating their search – Hollin Brown Knoll and Hoe Grain – were correct, although she was unable to locate either of the graves.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|163-164}} She did later remember, though, that as Pauline Reade was being buried she had been sitting next to her on a patch of grass and could see the rocks of Hollin Brown Knoll silhouetted against the night sky.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|171}}
News of Hindley’s confession became public in April 1987. Amid strong media interest, Lord Longford pleaded for her release, writing that her continuing detention to satisfy “mob emotion” was not right. Fisher convinced Hindley to release a public statement, in which she explained her reasons for denying her complicity in the murders, her religious experiences in prison, the letter from Johnson, and that she saw no possibility of release. She also exonerated David Smith from any part in the murders, except that of Edward Evans.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|270-274}}
Over the next few months interest in the search waned, but Hindley’s clue had directed the police to focus their efforts on a specific area. On the afternoon of 1 July 1987, after more a hundred days of searching, they found a body lying in a shallow grave {{convert|3|ft}} below the surface, only {{convert|100|yd}} from where Lesley Ann Downey had been found.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|171-172}}{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|274}}{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|24}} Brady had been co-operating with the police for some time, and when news reached him that Reade’s body had been discovered he made a formal confession to Topping.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|276}} He also issued a statement to the press, through his solicitor, saying that he too was prepared to help the police in their search.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|188}} Brady was taken to the moor on 3 July, but he seemed to lose his bearings, blaming changes that had taken place in the intervening years, and the search was called off at 3:00 pm, by which time a large crowd of press and television reporters had gathered on the moor.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|188-196}}
Topping refused to allow Brady a second visit to the moors,{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|277}} and a few days after his visit Brady wrote a letter to BBC television reporter Peter Gould, giving some sketchy details of five additional murders that he claimed to have carried out.{{sfnp|QGVYEIKD}} Brady refused to identify his alleged victims, however, and the police failed to discover any unsolved crimes matching the few details that he supplied.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|231-232}} Hindley told Topping that she knew nothing of these killings.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|277}}
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/HoeGrain.jpg)Hoe Grain leading to Shiny Brook, the area in which Bennett’s undiscovered body is believed by the police to be buried{{sfnp
BKGP8W3S|253}}|Wikipedia
Although Brady and Hindley had confessed to the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) decided that nothing would be gained by a further trial; as both were already serving life sentences no further punishment could be inflicted, and a second trial might even have helped Hindley’s case for parole by giving her a platform from which to make a public confession.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|248-249}}
On 24 August 1987 police called off their search of Saddleworth Moor.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|223}} Keith Bennett’s body remains undiscovered, despite repeated searches by members of his family.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|24}}
The BBC reported on 1 July 2009 that Greater Manchester Police had officially given up the search for Keith Bennett, saying that “only a major scientific breakthrough or fresh evidence would see the hunt for his body restart”.{{sfnp|MT99M3RE}}
## Perpetrators’ backgrounds
### Ian Brady
Ian Brady was born in Glasgow as Ian Duncan Stewart on 2 January 1938 to Maggie Stewart, an unmarried 28-year-old tea room waitress. The identity of Brady’s father has never been reliably ascertained, although his mother claimed he was a reporter working for a Glasgow newspaper, who died three months before Brady was born. Stewart had little support, and after a few months was forced to give her son into the care of Mary and John Sloan, a local couple with four children of their own. Brady took their name, and became known as Ian Sloan. His mother continued to visit him throughout his childhood.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|17-19}} As a young child he took pleasure in torturing animals; he broke the hind legs of one dog, set fire to another, and decapitated a cat.{{sfnp|VEWJ7PAP|67-68}} Aged nine, Brady visited Loch Lomond with his family, where he reportedly discovered an affinity for the outdoors, and a few months later the family moved to a new council house on an overspill estate at Pollok. He was accepted for the Shawlands Academy, a school for above average pupils.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|19-20}} As he grew older Brady’s “brutality escalated”, and soon he was hurting children smaller than himself.{{sfnp|VEWJ7PAP|67-68}} At Shawlands his behaviour worsened; as a teenager he twice appeared before a juvenile court for housebreaking. He left the academy aged 15, and took a job as a teaboy at a Harland and Wolff shipyard in Govan. Nine months later he began working as a butcher’s messenger boy. He had a girlfriend, Evelyn Grant, but their relationship ended when he threatened her with a flick knife after she visited a dance with another boy. He again appeared before the court, this time with nine charges against him,{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|20-21}} and shortly before his 17th birthday a Scottish court put him on probation on the condition that he went to live with his mother,{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|24}} who had by then moved to Manchester and married an Irish fruit merchant called Pat Brady, who got him a job as a fruit porter at Smithfield Market.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|165}}
Within a year of moving to Manchester Brady was caught with a sack full of lead seals he had stolen and was trying smuggle out of the market, but because he was still under 18 he was sentenced to two years in borstal for “training”.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|165-166}} He was initially sent to Hatfield but after being discovered drunk on alcohol he had brewed he was moved to the much tougher unit at Hull.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|24}} Released on 14 November 1957 Brady returned to Manchester, where he took a labouring job, which he hated, and was dismissed from another job in a brewery. Deciding to “better himself”, Brady obtained a set of instruction manuals on book-keeping from a local public library, which he “astonished” his parents by studying alone in his room for hours.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|166-167}} In early 1958, just three months after being released from borstal, Brady applied for and was offered a clerical job at Millwards Merchandising, a wholesale chemical distribution company based in Gorton.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|167}} He was regarded by his work colleagues as a quiet, punctual, but short-tempered young man. He read books like *Teach Yourself German*, and also *Mein Kampf*, as well as works on Nazi atrocities, and visited the Pennines on his Tiger Cub motorcycle.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|23-25}}
### Myra Hindley
Myra Hindley (born 23 July 1942){{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|2}} was brought up in Gorton, then a tough, working class area of Manchester, the daughter of Nellie and Bob Hindley. Her mother and alcoholic father beat her regularly as a young child. The small house the family lived in was in such poor condition that Hindley and her parents had to sleep in the only available bedroom, she in a single bed next to her parents’ double. The family’s living conditions deteriorated further when Hindley’s sister, Maureen, was born in 1946. Shortly after the birth Hindley, then aged five, was sent by her parents to live with her grandmother, who lived nearby.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|58-67}}
Hindley’s father had fought in North Africa, Cyprus, and Italy during the Second World War, and had served with the Parachute Regiment.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|57}} He had been known in the army as a “hard man” and he expected his daughter to be equally tough; he taught her how to fight, and insisted that she “stick up for herself”. When Hindley was aged 8, a local boy approached her in the street and scratched both of her cheeks with his fingernails, drawing blood. She burst into tears and ran into her parents’ house, to be met by her father who demanded that she “Go and punch him \[the boy\], because if you don’t I’ll leather you!” Hindley found the boy and succeeded in knocking him down with a sequence of punches, as her father had taught her. As she wrote later, “at eight years old I’d scored my first victory”.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|59, 71-72}}
Malcolm MacCulloch, professor of forensic psychiatry at Cardiff University, has suggested that the fight, and the role that Hindley’s father played in it, may be “key pieces of evidence” in trying to understand Hindley’s role in the moors murders:
The relationship with her father brutalized her … She was not only used to violence in the home but rewarded for it outside. When this happens at a young age it can distort a person’s reaction to such situations for life.{{sfnp
— UBUC5IU4|72}}
One of her closest friends was 13-year old Michael Higgins, who lived in a nearby street. In June 1957 he invited her to go swimming with friends at a local disused reservoir. A good swimmer, Hindley chose not to go and instead went out with a friend, Pat Jepson. Higgins drowned in the reservoir, and upon learning of his fate Hindley was deeply upset, and blamed herself for his death. She collected for a funeral wreath, and his funeral at St Francis’ Monastery in Gorton Lane{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|7}} – the church where Hindley had been baptised a Catholic on 16 August 1942{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|54}} – had a lasting effect on her.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|7}} Hindley’s mother had only agreed to her father’s insistence that she be baptised a Catholic on the condition that she was not sent to a Catholic school, as her mother believed that “all the monks taught was the catechism”.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|54}} Hindley was increasingly drawn to the Catholic Church after she started at Ryder Brow Secondary Modern, and began taking instruction for formal reception into the Church soon after Higgins’ funeral. She took the confirmation name of Veronica, and received her first communion in November 1958. She also became a Godparent to Michael’s nephew, Anthony John.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|11}} It was also at about this time that Hindley first began bleaching her hair.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|9}}
Hindley’s first job was as a junior clerk at a local electrical engineering firm. She ran errands, made tea, and typed. She was well liked at the firm, enough so that when she lost her first week’s wage packet, the other girls had a collection to replace it.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|8}} She had a short relationship with Ronnie Sinclair from Christmas 1958, and became engaged aged seventeen. The engagement was called off several months later; Hindley apparently thought Sinclair immature, and unable to provide her with the life she envisioned for herself.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|12-13}}
Shortly after her 17th birthday she changed her hair colour, with a pink rinse. She took judo lessons once a week at a local school, but found partners reluctant to train with her, as she was often slow to release her grip. She took a job at Bratby and Hinchliffe, an engineering company in Gorton, but was sacked for absenteeism after six months.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|14}}
### As a couple
In 1961, the 18-year-old Myra Hindley joined Millwards as a typist. She soon became infatuated with Brady, despite learning that he had a criminal record.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|16}}{{sfnp|ACXL6LDF}} Hindley started to keep a diary and, although she had dates with other men, some of the entries detail her fascination with Brady, whom she eventually spoke to for the first time on 27 July 1961.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|27}} Over the next few months she continued to make entries, and grew increasingly disillusioned with him, until 22 December when Brady asked her on a date to the cinema{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|28}} where they watched a film about the Nuremberg Trials.{{sfnp|2XG6DYG2}} Their dates together followed a regular pattern; a trip to the cinema, usually to watch an adult film, and then back to Hindley’s house to drink German wine.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|31}} Brady then gave her reading material,{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|31}} and the pair spent their work lunch breaks reading aloud to one another from accounts of Nazi atrocities. Hindley began to emulate an ideal of Aryan perfection, dying her hair blonde and applying thick crimson lipstick.{{sfnp|2XG6DYG2}} Hindley expressed concern at some aspects of Brady’s character; in a letter to a childhood friend she mentioned an incident where she had been drugged by Brady, but also wrote of her obsession with him. A few months later, however, she asked her friend to destroy the letter.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|31-32}} In her 30,000-word plea for parole, written in 1978 and 1979, submitted to Home Secretary Merlyn Rees, Hindley said:
Within months he [Brady] had convinced me that there was no God at all: he could have told me that the earth was flat, the moon was made of green cheese and the sun rose in the west, I would have believed him, such was his power of persuasion.{{sfnp
— BKGP8W3S|139-141}}
Hindley began to change her appearance further, wearing clothing considered risqué such as high boots, short skirts, and leather jackets, and the two became less sociable to their work colleagues.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|32-33}} The couple were regulars at the library, borrowing books on philosophy, as well as crime and torture. They also read works by the Marquis de Sade, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s *Crime and Punishment*.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|35}} Although she was not a qualified driver (she passed her test on the third attempt, late in 1963) Hindley often hired a van, in which the two planned bank robberies. Hindley befriended George Clitheroe, the President of the Cheadle Rifle Club, and visited two local shooting ranges on several occasions. Clitheroe, although puzzled by her interest, arranged for her to buy a .22 rifle from a gun merchant in Manchester. She also asked to join a pistol club, but she was a poor shot and allegedly often bad-tempered, so Clitheroe told her that she was unsuitable; she did though manage to purchase a Webley .45 and a Smith and Wesson .38 from other members of the club.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|37-39}} Brady and Hindley’s plans for robbery came to nothing, but they became interested in photography. Brady already owned a small box camera which he used to take photographs of Hindley and her dog, Lassie, but he upgraded to a more sophisticated model, and also purchased lights, and darkroom equipment. The pair took photographs of each other that for the time would have been considered explicit. For Hindley, this demonstrated a marked change from her earlier, more shy nature.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|40-41}}
### As murderers
Hindley claimed that Brady began to talk about “committing the perfect murder” in July 1963,{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|81}} and often spoke to her about Meyer Levin’s novel *Compulsion*, published in 1956. The book tells the story of two children from well-to-do families who attempt to carry out the perfect murder of a 12-year-old boy, and who escape the death penalty because of their age,{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|80-81}} a fictionalised account of the Leopold and Loeb case of 1924.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|172-173}}
What they were doing was so out of the scope of most people’s understanding, beyond the comprehension of the workaday neighbours who were more interested in how they were going to pay their gas bill or what might happen in the next episode of *Coronation Street* or *Doctor Who*. In 1960s Britain, people did not kidnap and murder children for fun. It was simply beyond the realms of most people’s comprehension, and this is why they managed to get away with it for so long.{{sfnp
— XGW7GLLQBy June 1963 Brady had moved in with Hindley at her grandmother’s house in Bannock Street, and on 12 July 1963 the two murdered their first victim, 16-year-old Pauline Reade. Reade had been at school with Hindley’s younger sister, Maureen, and had been in a short relationship with David Smith, a local boy with three criminal convictions for minor crimes. Police could find nobody who had seen Reade before she disappeared, and the 15-year-old Smith became a suspect, although he was cleared of any involvement in her death.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|41-45}} Brady and Hindley’s next victim, John Kilbride, was killed on 23 November 1963. A huge search was undertaken, with more than 700 statements taken, and 500 “missing” posters printed. Eight days after he failed to return home, 2000 volunteers scoured waste ground and derelict buildings.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|46-47}}
Hindley hired a vehicle a week after Kilbride’s disappearance, and again on 21 December 1963, apparently to make sure that the burial sites had not been disturbed. In February 1964 she bought a second-hand Austin Traveller, but soon after traded it for a Mini van. On 16 June 1964 twelve-year old Keith Bennett disappeared. His step-father, Jimmy Johnson, became a suspect; in the two years following Bennett’s disappearance, he was taken for questioning on four occasions. Detectives searched under the floorboards of the Johnsons’ house, and on discovering that the houses in the row were connected, extended the search to the entire street.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|50-53}}
Maureen Hindley married David Smith on 15 August 1964. The marriage was hastily arranged and performed at a registry office, but none of Hindley’s relatives attended; Myra did not approve of the marriage, and her mother was too embarrassed – Maureen was seven months pregnant. The newly-weds moved into Smith’s father’s house. The next day Brady suggested that the four take a day-trip to Lake Windermere. This was the first time that Brady and Smith had met properly, and Brady was apparently impressed by Smith’s demeanour. The two talked about society, the distribution of wealth, and the possibility of robbing a bank. The young Smith was similarly impressed by Brady, who throughout the day had paid for his food and wine. The trip to the Lake District was the first of many outings. Hindley was apparently jealous of their relationship, but became closer to her sister.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|56-58}}
In 1964 Hindley, her grandmother, and Brady, were rehoused as part of the post-war slum clearances in Manchester, to 16 Wardle Brook Avenue in the new overspill estate of Hattersley.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|59}} Brady and Hindley became friendly with Patricia Hodges, an 11-year old girl who lived at 12 Wardle Brook Avenue. Hodges accompanied the two on their trips to Saddleworth Moor to collect peat, something that many of the householders on the new estate did, to improve the soil in their gardens, which was full of clay and builder’s rubble.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|137}}{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|62-63}} She remained unharmed; living only a few doors away, her disappearance would have been easily solved.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|64}}
In the early afternoon on Boxing Day 1964 Hindley left her grandmother at a relative’s house, and refused to allow her back to Wardle Brook Avenue that night.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|65}} On the same day, 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey disappeared from a funfair in Miles Platting.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|66-67}} Despite a huge search she was not found. The following day Hindley brought her grandmother back home.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|67, 69}} By February 1965 Patricia Hodges had stopped visiting 16 Wardle Brook Avenue, but David Smith was still a regular visitor. Brady gave Smith books to read, and the two discussed robbery and murder.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|70}} On Hindley’s 23rd birthday, her sister and brother-in-law, who had until then been living with relatives, were rehoused in Underwood Court, a block of flats not far from Wardle Brook Avenue. The two couples began to see each other more regularly, but usually only on Brady’s terms.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|71-72}}
During the 1990s, Hindley claimed that she only took part in the killings because Brady had drugged her, was blackmailing her with pornographic pictures he had taken of her,{{sfnp|CW94SN67|103-104}} and had threatened to kill her younger sister, Maureen.{{sfnp|CW94SN67|104}} In a 2008 television documentary series on female serial killers broadcast on ITV3, Hindley’s solicitor, Andrew McCooey, reported that she had said to him:
I ought to have been hanged. I deserved it. My crime was worse than Brady’s because I enticed the children and they would never have entered the car without my role … I have always regarded myself as worse than Brady.
— Myra Hindley{{sfnp|CP42TEK2}}
## Incarceration
### Brady
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Ashworth_Hospital_-_geograph.org.uk_-_90341.jpg)Ashworth Hospital, where Ian Brady was incarcerated from 1985
Wikimedia Commons
Following his conviction, Brady was moved to Durham Prison, where he asked to live in solitary confinement.{{sfnp|KA9KDA65}} He spent nineteen years in mainstream prisons before being diagnosed as a psychopath in November 1985 and sent to the high-security Park Lane Hospital, now Ashworth Psychiatric Hospital, in Sefton;{{sfnp|QY9M9SN3}} he made it clear that he never wanted to be released.{{sfnp|N65QRKXU}}
The trial judge recommended that his life sentence should mean life, and successive Home Secretaries agreed with that decision. In 1982, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Lane said of Brady: “this is the case if ever there is to be one when a man should stay in prison till he dies”.{{sfnp|QWQF48RQ}} The death, in November 2007, of John Straffen, who had spent fifty-five years in prison for murdering three children meant that Brady became the longest serving prisoner in England and Wales.{{sfnp|NP6NDGBG}}
Although he refused to work with Ashworth’s psychiatrists, Brady occasionally corresponded with people outside the hospital,\[d\]His communications were sometimes censored by the prison authorities.{{sfnp|XGW7GLLQ|17}} including Lord Longford, writer Colin Wilson and various journalists.{{sfnp|XGW7GLLQ|16}} In one letter, written in 2005, he claimed that the murders were “merely an existential exercise of just over a year, which was concluded in December 1964”. By then, he went on to claim, he and Hindley had turned their attention to armed robbery, for which they had begun to prepare by acquiring guns and vehicles.{{sfnp|58DAIX6T}}\[e\]Forensic psychologist Chris Cowley writes “So there was a gap in the murder cycle, this is not unusual with serial killers, but in most cases the gaps between murders get shorter, not longer. The so-called ‘cooling-off’ periods diminish on a timeline. In Brady’s case, this did not happen: it went the other way. So their next killing \[Edward Evans\] was out of sequence and it went badly wrong for pretty much everyone concerned, not least their victim.{{sfnp|XGW7GLLQ|41}}
During several years of interactions with forensic psychologist Chris Cowley, including face-to-face meetings,{{sfnp|XGW7GLLQ|51, 74}} Brady told him of an “aesthetic fascination \[he had\] with guns”,{{sfnp|XGW7GLLQ|61}} despite his never having used one to kill. He complained bitterly about conditions at Ashworth, which he hated.{{sfnp|XGW7GLLQ|124}} In 1999, his right wrist was broken in what he claimed was an “hour-long, unprovoked attack” by staff.{{sfnp|XGW7GLLQ|177}} Brady subsequently went on hunger strike, but while English law allows patients to refuse treatment, those being treated for mental disorders under the Mental Health Act 1983 have no such right if the treatment is for their mental disorder.{{sfnp|CV5KZ8TK}}{{sfnp|4NDICASJ}} He was therefore force-fed and transferred to another hospital for tests, after he fell ill.{{sfnp|8YPDLYVN}} He recovered, and in March 2000 asked for a judicial review of the legality of the decision to force-feed him, but was refused permission.{{sfnp|CV5KZ8TK}}
Myra gets the potentially fatal brain condition, whilst I have to fight simply to die. I have had enough. I want nothing, my objective is to die and release myself from this once and for all. So you see my death strike is rational and pragmatic. I’m only sorry I didn’t do it decades ago, and I’m eager to leave this cesspit in a coffin.
— Ian Brady{{sfnp|2A6IWAG5}}
While at Ashworth, in 2001 Brady wrote *The Gates of Janus*, which was published by Feral House, an underground US publisher. The book, Brady’s analysis of serial murder and specific serial killers, sparked outrage when announced in Britain.{{sfnp|5IX22T6T}} According to Chris Cowley, Brady regretted Hindley’s imprisonment and the consequences of their actions, but not necessarily the crimes themselves. He saw no point in making any kind of public apology; instead, he “expresse\[d\] remorse through actions”.{{sfnp|XGW7GLLQ|256-257}} Twenty years of transcribing classical texts into Braille came to an end when the authorities confiscated his translation machine, for fear it might be used as a weapon. He once offered to donate one of his kidneys to “someone, anyone who needed one”,{{sfnp|XGW7GLLQ|256}} but was blocked from doing so. According to Colin Wilson, “it was because these attempts to express remorse were thrown back at him that he began to contemplate suicide”.{{sfnp|4NDICASJ}} He might have achieved this in 2006, when a female friend sent him fifty paracetamol pills, stored in two Smarties tubes hidden inside a hollowed-out crime novel. The potentially lethal dose of tablets was intercepted.{{sfnp|4NDICASJ}}{{sfnp|95BR5CBQ}}
Winnie Johnson, the mother of the sole remaining undiscovered victim, 12-year-old Keith Bennett, received a letter from Brady at the end of 2005 in which, she said, he claimed that he could take police to within {{convert|20|yd}} of her son’s body but the authorities would not allow it. Brady did not refer directly to Keith by name and did not claim he could take investigators directly to the grave, but spoke of the “clarity” of his recollections.{{sfnp|CHMPF3FU}}
In 2012, Brady applied to be returned to prison, reiterating his desire to starve himself to death.{{sfnp|5GSAPF89}} At a mental health tribunal in June the following year, Brady claimed that he suffered not from paranoid schizophrenia, as his doctors at Ashworth maintained, but a personality disorder. His application was rejected and the judge stated that Brady “continues to suffer from a mental disorder which is of a nature and degree which makes it appropriate for him to continue to receive medical treatment”.{{sfnp|I42RWGK8}}
After receiving end-of-life care, Brady died of restrictive pulmonary disease at Ashworth Hospital on 15 May 2017.{{sfnp|PZUHWVNB}} On 21 September 2017, the inquest found that he died of natural causes and his hunger strike had not been a contributory factor.{{sfnp|7ZH5RY8N}} Brady had refused food and fluids for more than forty-eight hours on various occasions, causing him to be fitted with a nasogastric tube, although his inquest noted that his body mass index was not a cause for concern.{{sfnp|5HW3K88Q}} Brady was cremated without ceremony by Sefton Borough Council on 25 October 2017 and his ashes were disposed of at sea during the night.{{sfnp|QXFU6LXK}}
### Hindley
Immediately following the trial Hindley lodged an unsuccessful appeal against her conviction.{{sfnp|7W6DCYBA}} Brady and Hindley corresponded by letter until 1971, when she ended their relationship. The two remained in sporadic contact for several months,{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|162}} but Hindley had met and fallen in love with one of her prison officers, Patricia Cairns. A former assistant governor claimed that such relationships were not unusual in Holloway at that time, as “many of the officers were gay, and involved in relationships either with one another or with inmates”.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|60, 326}} Hindley successfully petitioned to have her status as a category A prisoner changed to category B, which enabled Governor Dorothy Wing to take her on a walk round Hampstead Heath, part of her unofficial policy of reintroducing her charges to the outside world when she felt they were ready. The excursion caused a furore in the national press and an official rebuke from the then Home Secretary, Robert Carr.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|164-166}} With Cairns’ assistance and the outside contacts of another prisoner, Maxine Croft, Hindley planned a prison escape, but it was thwarted when impressions of the prison keys were intercepted by an off-duty policeman. Cairns was sentenced to six years in jail for her part in the plot.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|327-331}}
Hindley was told that she should spend twenty-five years in prison before being considered for parole. The Lord Chief Justice agreed with that recommendation in 1982, but in January 1985 Home Secretary Leon Brittan increased her tariff to thirty years.{{sfnp|QWQF48RQ}} By that time, Hindley claimed to be a reformed Roman Catholic. Ann West, the mother of Lesley Ann Downey, was at the centre of a campaign to ensure that Hindley was never released from prison, and until West’s death in February 1999 she regularly gave television and newspaper interviews whenever Hindley’s release was rumoured.{{sfnp|LN4X9U4J}}
In 1990, then Home Secretary David Waddington imposed a whole life tariff on Hindley, after she confessed to having a greater involvement in the murders than she had previously admitted.{{sfnp|QWQF48RQ}} Hindley was not informed of the decision until 1994, when a Law Lords ruling obliged the Prison Service to inform all life sentence prisoners of the minimum period they must serve in prison before being considered for parole.{{sfnp|Q6QN7BIA}} In 1997 the Parole Board ruled that Hindley was low risk and should be moved to an open prison.{{sfnp|QWQF48RQ}} She rejected the idea and was moved to a medium security prison, however the House of Lords ruling left open the possibility of later freedom. Between December 1997 and March 2000 Hindley made three separate appeals against her life tariff, claiming she was a reformed woman and no longer a danger to society, but each was rejected by the courts.{{sfnp|4LCPCMSF}}{{sfnp|K7BS29XZ}}
When in 2002 another life sentence prisoner challenged the Home Secretary’s power to set minimum terms, Hindley and hundreds of others whose tariffs had been increased by politicians, looked likely to be released from prison.\[{{sfnp|VQFRJ74D}} Hindley’s release seemed imminent and plans were made by supporters for her to be given a new identity.{{sfnp|W2Y2E2FK}} Lord Longford, a devout Roman Catholic, campaigned to secure the release of “celebrated” criminals, and Myra Hindley in particular, which earned him constant derision from the public and the press. He described Hindley as a “delightful” person and said “you could loathe what people did but should not loathe what they were because human personality was sacred even though human behaviour was very often appalling”.{{sfnp|4X4ACLUP}} Home Secretary David Blunkett ordered Greater Manchester Police to find new charges against her, to prevent her release from prison. The investigation was headed by Superintendent Tony Brett, and initially looked at charging Hindley with the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, but the advice given by government lawyers was that because of the DPP’s decision taken fifteen years earlier a new trial would probably be considered an abuse of process.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|31-32}}
## Aftermath
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/LowerBrushesValley.jpg)Part of Stalybridge Country Park, where Hindley’s ashes were scattered
Wikimedia Commons
David Smith became “reviled by the people of Manchester”, despite having been instrumental in bringing Brady and Hindley to justice,{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|64-65}} and while her sister was on trial, Maureen – eight months pregnant – was attacked in the lift of the building in which she and David lived. Their home was vandalised, and hate mail was regularly posted through their letterbox. Maureen feared for her children: “I couldn’t let my children out of my sight when they were little. They were too young to tell them why they had to stay in, to explain why they couldn’t go out to play like all the other children.”{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|232}}
After stabbing another man during a fight, in an attack he claimed was triggered by the abuse he had suffered since the trial, Smith was sentenced to three years in jail in 1969.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|64-65}} In the same year, Maureen asked the local authority to take her children into care; she moved from Underwood Court to a single-bedroom property, and found work in a department store. Subjected to whispering campaigns and petitions to remove her from the estate where which she lived, she received no support from her family Part of Stalybridge Country Park, where Hindley’s ashes were scattered in 2003 – her mother had supported Myra during the trial. Her father left home when he discovered that his wife had been having an affair with another man, whom she later married. On his release from prison, David Smith moved in with the girl who later became his second wife, and won custody of his three sons. Maureen managed to repair the relationship with her mother, and moved into her council property in Gorton. She divorced Smith in 1973,{{sfnp|XGW7GLLQ|16}} and married a lorry driver, Bill Scott, with whom she had a daughter.{{sfnp|XGW7GLLQ|41}}
Maureen and her immediate family made regular visits to see Hindley, who reportedly adored her niece. In 1980, Maureen suffered a brain haemorrhage; Hindley was granted permission to visit her sister in hospital, but she arrived an hour after Maureen’s death.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|238-240}} Sheila and Patrick Kilbride, who were by then divorced,{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|49}} were present at Maureen’s funeral, believing that Hindley might make an appearance. Patrick mistook Bill Scott’s daughter from a previous relationship, Ann Wallace, for Hindley and tried to attack her before being knocked to the ground by another mourner; the police were called to restore order.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|240}} Shortly before her death at the age of 70, Sheila said: “If she \[Hindley\] ever comes out of jail I’ll kill her”.{{sfnp|3NJCHQKB}} It was a threat repeated by her son Danny, and Ann West.{{sfnp|LRCFJI7J}}{{sfnp|GPVY4MF4}}
In 1972 Smith was acquitted of the murder of his father, who had been suffering from terminal cancer. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to two days’ detention.{{sfnp|9TSUCF2Q}} He remarried and moved to Lincolnshire with his three sons,{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|64-65}}{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|249}} and was exonerated of any participation in the Moors murders by Hindley’s confession in 1987. In 2011 he co-authored the book *Witness* with biographer Carol Ann Lee.{{sfnp|AKBPXDGD}} He died in Ireland in 2012.{{sfnp|YUGLARQ4}}
Joan Reade, Pauline Reade’s mother, became an inpatient at Springfield Mental Hospital in Manchester. She attended the funeral of her daughter on 7 August 1987, under heavy sedation. Her husband Amos lived alone.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|45}} Ann West, mother of Lesley Ann Downey, died in 1999 from cancer of the liver. Since her daughter’s death she had campaigned to ensure that Hindley remained in prison, and doctors said that the stress had contributed to the severity of her illness.{{sfnp|JV8HE6D3}} Winnie Johnson, mother of Keith Bennett, continues to visit Saddleworth Moor, where it is believed that the body of her son is buried.{{sfnp|NETP6V65}}
The house in which Brady and Hindley lived on Wardle Brook Avenue, and where Edward Evans was murdered, was demolished by the local council.{{sfnp|DNTZTGLK}}
Hindley died as a result of bronchial pneumonia caused by heart disease, at the age of 60, on 15 November 2002.{{sfnp|DIVALX6A}} Cameras “crowded the pavement” outside, but none of Hindley’s relatives were among the congregation of six who attended a short service at Cambridge crematorium, as they were living anonymously in Manchester under assumed names.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|33}} Such was the strength of feeling more than thirty-five years after the murders that a reported twenty local undertakers refused to handle her cremation.{{sfnp|974K7ATT}} Later Hindley’s ashes were scattered by a former lover, a woman she had met in prison;{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|33}} four months later, at the end of February 2003, newspaper accounts reported claims the ashes were scattered less than {{convert|10|mi|spell=in}} from Saddleworth Moor in Stalybridge Country Park. Fears were expressed that the news might result in visitors choosing to avoid the park, a local beauty spot, or even to the park being vandalised.{{sfnp|P342BFNP}} Less than two weeks after Hindley’s death, on 25 November 2002, the Law Lords agreed that judges, not politicians, should decide how long a criminal spends behind bars, and thus stripped the Home Secretary of the power to set minimum sentences.{{sfnp|22DNT6SZ}}
A 1977 BBC television debate discussed arguments for and against Myra Hindley’s release, with contributions from the parents of some of the murdered children.{{sfnp|76KNPNIY}} The case has been dramatised on television twice; in *Longford* (2006), and *See No Evil: The Moors Murders* (2006).
## Lasting notoriety
The murders might have remained a footnote in criminal history but for the fact that one of the perpetrators was a young woman. The photographs and tape recording of the torture of Lesley Ann Downey, demonstrated in court to a disbelieving audience, and the cool responses of Brady and Hindley, have helped ensure the lasting notoriety of their crimes. Brady was was rarely mentioned in the news, but until her death Hindley’s repeated insistence on her innocence, and attempts to secure her release from prison, resulted in her becoming a figure of hate in the national media.{{sfnp|JN2XVTQN}} Retribution was a common theme among those who sought to keep her locked away, and even Hindley’s mother insisted that she should die in prison – although out of fear for her daughter’s safety, and the desire to avoid the possibility that a relative might kill her. Some commentators expressed the view that of the two, Hindley was the “more evil”.{{sfnp|N8UM7Q93|281-290}} In 1987 she admitted that the plea for parole she had submitted to the Home Secretary eight years earlier was “on the whole … a pack of lies”,{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|140}}\[f\]Topping clarifies these interviews were taking place in 1987 on page 71.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|71}} and to some reporters her co-operation in the searches on Saddleworth Moor “appeared a cynical gesture aimed at ingratiating herself to the parole authorities”.{{sfnp|JN2XVTQN}}
Lord Longford, a Catholic convert, campaigned to secure the release of “celebrated” criminals, and Myra Hindley in particular, which earned him constant derision from the public and the press. He described Hindley as a “delightful” person and said “you could loathe what people did but should not loathe what they were because human personality was sacred even though human behaviour was very often appalling”.{{sfnp|4X4ACLUP}} The tabloid press branded him a “loony” and a “do-gooder” for supporting Hindley, describing her as “evil”. She became a long-running source of material for the press, which printed embellished tales of her “cushy” life at the “5-star” Cookham Wood Prison and her liaisons with prison staff and other inmates.{{sfnp|SJFWJXL5|44-46}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Topping was the police officer in overall charge of the investigation into the moors murders. b Written less than thirty days after the murder of Edward Evans, the letter was dated 5 November 1965.{{sfnp|UBUC5IU4|279}} c Using the retail price index.{{sfnp|E8GKNK6I}} d His communications were sometimes censored by the prison authorities.{{sfnp|XGW7GLLQ|17}} e Forensic psychologist Chris Cowley writes “So there was a gap in the murder cycle, this is not unusual with serial killers, but in most cases the gaps between murders get shorter, not longer. The so-called ‘cooling-off’ periods diminish on a timeline. In Brady’s case, this did not happen: it went the other way. So their next killing \[Edward Evans\] was out of sequence and it went badly wrong for pretty much everyone concerned, not least their victim.{{sfnp|XGW7GLLQ|41}} f Topping clarifies these interviews were taking place in 1987 on page 71.{{sfnp|BKGP8W3S|71}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22062
**Categories:** Murder
---
### [Cottingley Fairies](https://engole.info/cottingley-fairies/)
**Published:** June 12, 2018
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Cottingley_Fairies.webp[/pimage]The Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright (1901–1988) and Frances Griffiths (1907–1986), two cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Cottingley_Fairies.webp)
The first of the five photographs, taken by Elsie Wright in 1917, shows Frances Griffiths with the alleged fairies.
*The Strand Magazine*, 1920
The Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright (1901–1988) and Frances Griffiths (1907–1986), two cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England. In 1917, when the first two photographs were taken, Elsie was sixteen years old and Frances was nine. The pictures came to the attention of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who used them to illustrate an article on fairies he had been commissioned to write for the Christmas 1920 edition of [*The Strand Magazine*](https://engole.info/the-strand-magazine). Doyle, as a spiritualist, was enthusiastic about the photographs, and interpreted them as clear and visible evidence of psychic phenomena. Public reaction was mixed; some accepted the images as genuine, others believed that they had been faked.
Interest in the Cottingley Fairies gradually declined after 1921. Both girls married and lived abroad for a time after they grew up, yet the photographs continued to hold the public imagination. In 1966 a reporter from the Daily Express newspaper traced Elsie, who had by then returned to the UK. Elsie left open the possibility that she believed she had photographed her thoughts, and the media once again became interested in the story.
In the early 1980s Elsie and Frances admitted that the photographs had been made by using cardboard cutouts of fairies copied from a popular children’s book of the time, but Frances maintained that the fifth and final photograph was genuine. The photographs and two of the cameras used are on display in the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, England.
## 1917 photographs
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/CottingleyBeck.jpg)Cottingley Beck, where Frances and Elsie claimed to have seen the fairies
Wikimedia Commons
In mid-1917 nine-year-old Frances Griffiths and her mother – both newly arrived in the UK from South Africa – were staying with Frances’ aunt, Elsie Wright’s mother, in the village of Cottingley in West Yorkshire; Elsie was then 16 years old. The two girls often played together beside the beck (stream) at the bottom of the garden, much to their mothers’ annoyance, because they frequently came back with wet feet and clothes. Frances and Elsie said they only went to the beck to see the fairies, and to prove it, Elsie borrowed her father’s camera, a Midg quarter-plate. The girls returned about 30 minutes later, “triumphant”.{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|97-98}}
Elsie’s father, Arthur, was a keen amateur photographer, and had set up his own darkroom. The picture on the photographic plate he developed showed Frances behind a bush in the foreground, on which four fairies appeared to be dancing. Knowing his daughter’s artistic ability, and that she had spent some time working in a photographer’s studio, he dismissed the figures as cardboard cutouts. Two months later the girls borrowed his camera again, and this time returned with a photograph of Elsie sitting on the lawn holding out her hand to a 1-foot-tall (30 cm) gnome. Exasperated by what he believed to be “nothing but a prank”,{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|97}} and convinced that the girls must have tampered with his camera in some way, Arthur Wright refused to lend it to them again.{{sfnp|GZC7FNV4|42}} His wife Polly, however, believed the photographs to be authentic.{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|97}}
I am learning French, Geometry, Cookery and Algebra at school now. Dad came home from France the other week after being there ten months, and we all think the war will be over in a few days … I am sending two photos, both of me, one of me in a bathing costume in our back yard, while the other is me with some fairies. Elsie took that one.
— Letter from Frances Griffiths to a friend in South Africa{{sfnpTowards the end of 1918, Frances sent a letter to Johanna Parvin, a friend in Cape Town, South Africa, where Frances had lived for most of her life, enclosing the photograph of herself with the fairies. On the back she wrote “It is funny, I never used to see them in Africa. It must be too hot for them there.”{{sfnp|GZC7FNV4|40}}
The photographs became public in mid-1919, after Elsie’s mother attended a meeting of the Theosophical Society in Bradford. The lecture that evening was on “fairy life”, and at the end of the meeting Polly Wright showed the two fairy photographs taken by her daughter and niece to the speaker. As a result, the photographs were displayed at the society’s annual conference in Harrogate, held a few months later. There they came to the attention of a leading member of the society, Edward Gardner.{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|98-99}} One of the central beliefs of theosophy is that humanity is undergoing a cycle of evolution, towards increasing “perfection”, and Gardner recognised the potential significance of the photographs for the movement:
… the fact that two young girls had not only been able to see fairies, which others had done, but had actually for the first time ever been able to materialise them at a density sufficient for their images to be recorded on a photographic plate, meant that it was possible that the next cycle of evolution was underway.{{sfnp
— FVVEFV4H|382}}
## Initial examinations
Gardner sent the prints along with the original glass-plate negatives to photography expert His opinion was that “the two negatives are entirely genuine, unfaked photographs … \[with\] no trace whatsoever of studio work involving card or paper models”.{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|99}} He did not go so far as to say that the photographs showed fairies, stating only that “these are straight forward photographs of whatever was in front of the camera at the time”.{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|389}} Gardner had the prints “clarified” by Snelling, and new negatives produced, “more conducive to printing”,{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|98-99}}{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|382}} for use in the illustrated lectures he gave around the UK.{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|382}} Snelling supplied the photographic prints which were available for sale at Gardner’s lectures.{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|401}}{{sfnp|L6QMD5WS}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/CottingleyFairies2.jpg)The second of the five photographs, showing Elsie with a winged gnome
*The Strand Magazine*, 1920
Author and prominent spiritualist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle learned of the photographs from the editor of the spiritualist publication *Light*.{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|383}} Doyle had been commissioned by *[The Strand Magazine](https://engole.info/the-strand-magazine)* to write an article on fairies for their Christmas issue, and the fairy photographs “must have seemed like a godsend” according to broadcaster and historian Magnus Magnusson. Doyle contacted Gardner in June 1920 to determine the background to the photographs, and wrote to Elsie and her father to request permission from the latter to use the prints in his article. Arthur Wright was “obviously impressed” that Doyle was involved, and gave his permission for publication, but he refused payment on the grounds that, if genuine, the images should not be “soiled” by money.{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|99-100}}
Gardner and Doyle sought a second expert opinion from the photographic company Kodak. Several of the company’s technicians examined the enhanced prints, and although they agreed with Snelling that the pictures “showed no signs of being faked”, they concluded that “this could not be taken as conclusive evidence … that they were authentic photographs of fairies”.{{snfp|FVVEFV4H|384}} Kodak declined to issue a certificate of authenticity.{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|101}} Gardner believed that the Kodak technicians might not have examined the photographs entirely objectively, observing that one had commented “after all, as fairies couldn’t be true, the photographs must have been faked somehow”.{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|385}} The prints were also examined by another photographic company, Ilford, who reported unequivocally that there was “some evidence of faking”.{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|385}} Gardner and Doyle, perhaps rather optimistically, interpreted the results of the three expert evaluations as two in favour of the photographs’ authenticity and one against.{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|385}}
## 1920s photographs
Doyle was preoccupied with organising an imminent lecture tour of Australia, and in July 1920, sent Gardner to meet the Wright family. Frances was by then living with her parents in Scarborough,{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|385}} but Elsie’s father told Gardner that he had been so certain the photographs were fakes that while the girls were away he searched their bedroom and the area around the beck (stream), looking for scraps of pictures or cutouts, but found nothing “incriminating”.{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|102}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/170px-CottingleyFairies3.jpg)Frances and the Leaping Fairy, the third photograph
*The Strand Magazine*, 1920
Gardner believed the Wright family to be honest and respectable. To place the matter of the photographs’ authenticity beyond doubt, he returned to Cottingley at the end of July with two Kodak Cameo cameras and 24 secretly marked photographic plates. Frances was invited to stay with the Wright family during the school summer holiday so that she and Elsie could take more pictures of the fairies.{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|102}} Gardner described his briefing in his 1945 *Fairies: A Book of Real Fairies*:
I went off, to Cottingley again, taking the two cameras and plates from London, and met the family and explained to the two girls the simple working of the cameras, giving one each to keep. The cameras were loaded, and my final advice was that they need go up to the glen only on fine days as they had been accustomed to do before and tice the fairies, as they called their way of attracting them, and see what they could get. I suggested only the most obvious and easy precautions about lighting and distance, for I knew it was essential they should feel free and unhampered and have no burden of responsibility. If nothing came of it all, I told them, they were not to mind a bit.{{sfnp
— TW2JB7FQ}}
Until 19 August the weather was unsuitable for photography. Because Frances and Elsie insisted that the fairies would not show themselves if others were watching, Elsie’s mother was persuaded to visit her sister’s for tea, leaving the girls alone. In her absence the girls took several photographs, two of which appeared to show fairies. In the first, *Frances and the Leaping Fairy*, Frances is shown in profile with a winged fairy close by her nose. The second, Fairy offering Posy of Harebells to Elsie, shows a fairy either hovering or tiptoeing on a branch, and offering Elsie a flower. Two days later the girls took the last picture, *Fairies and Their Sun-Bath*.{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|102-103}}
The plates were packed in cotton wool and returned to Gardner in London, who sent an “ecstatic” telegram to Doyle, by then in Melbourne.{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|103}} Doyle wrote back:
My heart was gladdened when out here in far Australia I had your note and the three wonderful pictures which are confirmatory of our published results. When our fairies are admitted other psychic phenomena will find a more ready acceptance … We have had continued messages at seances for some time that a visible sign was coming through.{{sfnp
— BDW9HTKC|103}}
## Publication and reaction
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/170px-CottingleyFairies4.jpg)The fourth photograph, Fairy Offering Posy of Harebells to Elsie
*The Strand Magazine*, 1920
Doyle’s article in the December 1920 issue of *The Strand* contained two higher-resolution prints of the 1917 photographs, and sold out within days of publication. To protect the girls’ anonymity, Frances and Elsie were called Alice and Iris respectively, and the Wright family was referred to as the “Carpenters”.{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|388}} An enthusiastic and committed spiritualist, Doyle hoped that if the photographs convinced the public of the existence of fairies then they might more readily accept other psychic phenomena.{{sfnp|BKTEP9UN}} He ended his article with the words:
The recognition of their existence will jolt the material twentieth century mind out of its heavy ruts in the mud, and will make it admit that there is a glamour and mystery to life. Having discovered this, the world will not find it so difficult to accept that spiritual message supported by physical facts which has already been put before it.{{sfnp
— BKTEP9UN}}
Early press coverage was “mixed”,{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|390}} generally a combination of “embarrassment and puzzlement”.{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|391}} The historical novelist and poet Maurice Hewlett published a series of articles in the literary journal *John O’ London’s Weekly*, in which he concluded: “And knowing children, and knowing that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has legs, I decide that the Miss Carpenters have pulled one of them.”{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|390}} The Sydney newspaper *Truth* on 5 January 1921 expressed a similar view; “For the true explanation of these fairy photographs what is wanted is not a knowledge of occult phenomena but a knowledge of children.”{{sfnp|TW2JB7FQ}} Some public figures were more sympathetic. Margaret McMillan, the educational and social reformer, wrote: “How wonderful that to these dear children such a wonderful gift has been vouchsafed.”{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|390}} The novelist Henry De Vere Stacpoole decided to take the fairy photographs and the girls at face value.{{sfnp|TW2JB7FQ}} In a letter to Gardner he wrote: “Look at Alice’s \[Frances’\] face. Look at Iris’s \[Elsie’s\] face. There is an extraordinary thing called Truth which has 10 million faces and forms – it is God’s currency and the cleverest coiner or forger can’t imitate it.”
[John Hall-Edwards](https://engole.info/john-hall-edwards/), a keen photographer and pioneer of medical X-ray treatments in Britain, was a particularly vigorous critic:{{sfnp|DBY2M5ZJ}}
On the evidence I have no hesitation in saying that these photographs could have been “faked”. I criticize the attitude of those who declared there is something supernatural in the circumstances attending to the taking of these pictures because, as a medical man, I believe that the inculcation of such absurd ideas into the minds of children will result in later life in manifestations and nervous disorder and mental disturbances.{{sfnp
— TW2JB7FQ}}
Doyle used the later photographs in 1921 to illustrate a second article in *The Strand*, in which he described other accounts of fairy sightings. The article formed the foundation for his 1922 book *The Coming of the Fairies*.{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|389}} As before, the photographs were received with mixed credulity. Sceptics noted that the fairies “looked suspiciously like the traditional fairies of nursery tales” and that they had “very fashionable hairstyles”.{{sfnp|TW2JB7FQ}}
## Gardiner’s final visit
Gardner made a final visit to Cottingley in August 1921. He again brought cameras and photographic plates for Frances and Elsie, but was accompanied by the clairvoyant Geoffrey Hodson. Although neither of the girls claimed to see any fairies, and there were no more photographs, “on the contrary, he \[Hodson\] saw them \[fairies\] everywhere” and wrote voluminous notes on his observations.{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|390}}
By now Elsie and Frances were tired of the whole fairy business. Years later Elsie looked at a photograph of herself and Frances taken with Hodson and said: “Look at that, fed up with fairies.” Both Elsie and Frances later admitted that they “played along” with Hodson “out of mischief”,{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|105}} and that they considered him “a fake”.{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|390}}
## Later investigations
Public interest in the Cottingley Fairies gradually subsided after 1921. Elsie and Frances eventually married and lived abroad for many years.{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|393}} In 1966, a reporter from the *Daily Expres*s newspaper traced Elsie, who was by then back in England. She admitted in an interview given that year that the fairies might have been “figments of my imagination”, but left open the possibility she believed that she had somehow managed to photograph her thoughts.{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|104}} The media subsequently became interested in Frances and Elsie’s photographs once again.{{sfnp|TW2JB7FQ}} BBC television’s *Nationwide* programme investigated the case in 1971, but Elsie stuck to her story: “I’ve told you that they’re photographs of figments of our imagination, and that’s what I’m sticking to”.{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|104}}
Elsie and Frances were interviewed by journalist Austin Mitchell in September 1976, for a programme broadcast on Yorkshire Television. When pressed, both women agreed that “a rational person doesn’t see fairies”, but they denied having fabricated the photographs.{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|105}} In 1978 the magician and scientific sceptic James Randi and a team from the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal examined the photographs, using a “computer enhancement process”. They concluded that the photographs were fakes, and that strings could be seen supporting the fairies.{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|394-395}} Geoffrey Crawley, editor of the *British Journal of Photography*, undertook a “major scientific investigation of the photographs and the events surrounding them”, published between 1982 and 1983, “the first major postwar analysis of the affair”. He also concluded that the pictures were fakes.{{sfnp|FVVEFV4H|395}}
## Confession
In 1983, the cousins admitted in an article published in the magazine *The Unexplained* that the photographs had been faked, although both maintained that they really had seen fairies. Elsie had copied illustrations of dancing girls from a popular children’s book of the time, *Princess Mary’s Gift Book*, published in 1914, and drew wings on them.{{sfnp|MBWMDS76}} They said they had then cut out the cardboard figures and supported them with hatpins, disposing of their props in the beck once the photograph had been taken.{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|105}}
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/CottingleyFairies-PrincessMary2_gobeirne-1.png)Comparison of Cottingley Fairies and illustrations from Princess Mary’s Gift Book
Wikipedia
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Cottingley-sunbath.jpg)Fairies and Their Sun-Bath, the fifth and last photograph of the Cottingley Fairies
*The Strand Magazine*, 1920
But the cousins disagreed about the fifth and final photograph, which Doyle in his *The Coming of the Fairies* described in this way:
Seated on the upper left hand edge with wing well displayed is an undraped fairy apparently considering whether it is time to get up. An earlier riser of more mature age is seen on the right possessing abundant hair and wonderful wings. Her slightly denser body can be glimpsed within her fairy dress.{{sfnp
— 4SGT86D4|103}}
Elsie maintained it was a fake, just like all the others, but Frances insisted that it was genuine. In an interview given in the early 1980s Frances said:
It was a wet Saturday afternoon and we were just mooching about with our cameras and Elsie had nothing prepared. I saw these fairies building up in the grasses and just aimed the camera and took a photograph.{{sfnp
— TW2JB7FQ}}
Both Frances and Elsie claimed to have taken the fifth photograph.{{sfnp|R74266FQ}} In a letter published in *The Times* newspaper on 9 April 1983, Geoffrey Crawley explained the discrepancy by suggesting that the photograph was “an unintended double exposure of fairy cutouts in the grass”, and thus “both ladies can be quite sincere in believing that they each took it”.{{sfnp|L6QMD5WS}}
In a 1985 interview on Yorkshire Television’s *Arthur C. Clarke’s World of Strange Powers*, Elsie said that she and Frances were too embarrassed to admit the truth after fooling Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes: “Two village kids and a brilliant man like Conan Doyle – well, we could only keep quiet.” In the same interview Frances said: “I never even thought of it as being a fraud – it was just Elsie and I having a bit of fun and I can’t understand to this day why they were taken in – they wanted to be taken in.”{{sfnp|MBWMDS76}}
## Subsequent history
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/FrancesGriffithsandElsieWright.jpg)Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright, June 1917
Wikimedia Commons
Frances died in 1986, and Elsie in 1988.{{sfnp|BDW9HTKC|105}} Prints of their photographs of the fairies, along with a few other items including a first edition of Doyle’s book The Coming of the Fairies, were sold at auction in London for £21,620 in 1998.{{sfnp|9XH5TJBD}} That same year, Geoffrey Crawley sold his Cottingley Fairy material to the National Museum of Film, Photography and Television in Bradford (now the National Science and Media Museum), where it is on display. The collection included prints of the photographs, two of the cameras used by the girls, watercolours of fairies painted by Elsie, and a nine-page letter from Elsie admitting to the hoax.{{sfnp|XZBJWPVY}} The glass photographic plates were bought for £6,000 by an unnamed buyer at a London auction held in 2001.{{sfnp|URQ66FSM}}
Frances’ daughter, Christine Lynch, appeared in an episode of the television programme *Antiques Roadshow* in Belfast, broadcast on BBC One in January 2009, with the photographs and one of the cameras given to the girls by Doyle. Christine told the expert, Paul Atterbury, that she believed, as her mother had done, that the fairies in the fifth photograph were genuine. Atterbury estimated the value of the items at between £25,000 and £30,000.{{sfnp|FGW8IVBX}} The first edition of Frances’ memoirs was published a few months later, under the title *Reflections on the Cottingley Fairies*.{{sfnp|RCRML85M}} The book contains correspondence, sometimes “bitter”, between Elsie and Frances. In one letter, dated 1983, Frances wrote:
I hated those photographs from the age of 16 when Mr Gardner presented me with a bunch of flowers and wanted me to sit on the platform [at a Theosophical Society meeting] with him. I realised what I was in for if I did not keep myself hidden.{{sfnp
— V5ENNHWF}}
The 1997 films *FairyTale: A True Story* and *Photographing Fairies* were inspired by the events surrounding the Cottingley Fairies.{{sfnp|DG8KR66C}} The photographs were parodied in a 1994 book written by Terry Jones and Brian Froud, *Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book*.{{sfnp|2RH3GCN2|174}}
In 2017 a further two fairy photographs were presented as evidence that the girls’ parents were part of the conspiracy. Dating from 1917 and 1918, both photographs are poorly executed copies of two of the original fairy photographs. One was published in 1918 in [*The Sphere*](https://engole.info/the-sphere) newspaper, before the originals had been seen by anyone other than girls’ immediate family.{{sfnp|8APTIPLN}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 1962
**Categories:** Hoax
---
### [Stephen Potter bibliography](https://engole.info/stephen-potter-bibliography/)
**Published:** December 20, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/97/Stephen-potter-times-obit-photo-1969.jpg[/pimage]Works of Stephen Potter (1900–1969) listed in order of their date of first publication.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/97/Stephen-potter-times-obit-photo-1969.jpg)Wikipedia
S[tephen Potter](https://engole.info/stephen-potter) (1 February 1900 – 2 December 1969) was an English writer best known for his parodies of self-help books, and their film and television derivatives, and in particular for his popularisation of “gamesmanship”, the art of winning without actually cheating.{{sfnp|XTMUP8Z2}}
Works are listed in order of their date of first publication.
- *The Young Man* (1929)
- *D.H. Lawrence: A First Study* (1930)
- *Minnow Among Tritons* (1934)
- *Coleridge and S.T.C.* (1935)
- *The Muse in Chains* (1937)
- *The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship: Or the Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating* (1947)
- *Lifemanship: With a Summary of Recent Researches in Gamesmanship* (1950)
- *One-Upmanship: Being Some Account of the Activities and Teachings of the Lifemanship Correspondence College of One-Upness and Games Lifemastery* (1952)
- *The Sense of Humour* (1954)
- *Christmas-ship; or, The Art of Giving and Receiving* (1956)
- *Potter on America* (1956)
- *Supermanship, or, How to Continue to Stay Top without Actually Falling Apart* (1958)
- *Steps to Immaturity: An Autobiography* (1959)
- *The Magic Number* (1959)
- *Anti-Woo: The Lifeman’s Improved Primer for Non-Lovers* (1965)
- *Squawky, the One-up Parrot* (1965)
- *The Complete Golf Gamesmanship* (1968)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25051
**Categories:** Bibliography
---
### [Juliana Horatia Ewing bibliography](https://engole.info/juliana-horatia-ewing-bibliography/)
**Published:** December 11, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/odnb-9780198614128-e-1006450-graphic-1-full.jpg[/pimage]Books written by Juliana Horatia Ewing (1841–1885) listed in order of their date of first publication.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/odnb-9780198614128-e-1006450-graphic-1-full.jpg)*Oxford Dictionary of National Biography*
J[uliana Horatia Ewing](https://engole.info/juliana-horatia-ewing/) (3 August 1841 – 13 May 1885) was an English writer of children’s literature whose short story “The Brownies”, first published in [*The Monthly Packet*](https://engole.info/the-monthly-packet/) in 1865,{{sfnp|UXATJHLU|46-47}} provided the inspiration for Agnes Baden-Powell’s idea for and the name of the junior level of the Girl Guides, the brownies.{{sfnp|GZQBDNJN}}\[a\]Agnes Baden-Powell was the younger sister of Robert Baden-Powell, and established the Girl Guide movement as a female counterpart to her brother’s Scouting Movement.
Books are listed in order of their date of first publication.{{sfnp|IHVPV2VB}}
- *Melchior’s Dream, and Other Tales* (1862)
- *Mrs Overtheway’s Remembrances* (1869)
- *The Brownies and Other Tales* (1870)
- *A Flat Iron for a Farthing* (1872)
- *Lob Lie-by-the-Fire* (1874)
- *Six to Sixteen* (1875)
- *Jan of the Windmill* (1876)
- *Old Fashioned Fairy Tales* (1882)
- *Jackanapes* (1883)
- *Daddy Darwin’s Dovecote* (1884)
- *The Story of a Short Life* (1885)
- *Dandelion Clocks, and Other Tales* (1887)
- *Verses for Children* (1888)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a Agnes Baden-Powell was the younger sister of Robert Baden-Powell, and established the Girl Guide movement as a female counterpart to her brother’s Scouting Movement.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 23352
**Categories:** Bibliography
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Compton Mackenzie bibliography](https://engole.info/compton-mackenzie-bibliography/)
**Published:** December 23, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/odnb-9780198614128-e-1004997-graphic-1-full.jpg[/pimage]Books written by Compton Mackenzie (1883–1972) listed in order of their date of first publication.
**Content:**
[](https://engole.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/odnb-9780198614128-e-1004997-graphic-1-full.jpg)Portrait by Robert Heriot Westwater, 1962
*Oxford Dictionary of National Biography*
Compton Mackenzie (17 January 1883 – 30 November 1972) was an English writer who became one of Scotland’s best loved authors. A staunch supporter of an independent Scotland, he famously declared in a 1929 radio broadcast that “an English voice and a Scottish heart is a better combination than a Scottish voice and an English heart.{{sfnp|NWTN7L6Z}}
Books are listed in order of their date of first publication.{{sfnp|3BETRBRG}}
- **The Passionate Elopement** (1911)
- **Carnival** (1912)
- **Sinister Street* \[volume i\]* (1913)
- **Sinister Street* \[volume ii\]* (1914)
- **Guy and Pauline** (1915)
- **The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett** (1918)
- **Sylvia and Michael** (1919)
- **Poor Relations** (1920)
- **The Vanity Girl** (1920)
- **Rich Relatives** (1921)
- **The Altar Steps** (1922)
- **The Parson’s Progress** (1923)
- **The Seven Ages of Woman** (1923)
- **The Old Men of the Sea** (1924)
- **Coral** (1925)
- **Rogues and Vagabonds** (1927)
- **Vestal Fire** (1927)
- **Extraordinary Women** (1928)
- **Gallipoli Memories** (1929)
- **First Athenian Memories** (1931)
- **Our Street** (1931)
- **Greek Memories** (1932)
- **Literature in My Time** (1933)
- **Reaped and Bound** (1933)
- **Water on the Brain** (1933)
- **The East Wind of Love** (1937)
- **The South Wind of Love** (1937)
- **West to North** (1940)
- **The West Wind of Love** (1940)
- **The Red Tapeworm** (1941)
- [*The Monarch of the Glen*](https://engole.info/the-monarch-of-the-glen-novel) (1941)
- [*Keep the Home Guard Turning*](https://engole.info/keep-the-home-guard-turning) (1943)
- **Wind of Freedom** (1943)
- **The North Wind of Love: Book One** (1944)
- **The North Wind of Love: Book Two** (1945)
- [*Whisky Galore*](https://engole.info/whisky-galore-novel) (1947)
- **All Over the Place** (1948)
- **Hunting the Fairies** (1949)
- **The Rival Monster** (1952)
- *Ben Nevis Goes East* (1954)
- **Thin Ice** (1956)
- *Rockets Galore* (1957)
- *The Lunatic Republic* (1959)
- **Mezzotint** (1961)
- **The Stolen Soprano** (1965)
- **Paper Lives** (1966)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25059
**Categories:** Bibliography
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [On the Choice of a Wife](https://engole.info/on-the-choice-of-a-wife/)
**Published:** December 1, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** Essay by H. G. Wells first published in 1895, offering advice to young men on choosing a wife.
**Content:**
“On the Choice of a Wife” is an essay by the English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946) first published in [*The Pall Mall Gazette*](https://engole.info/the-pall-mall-gazette/) in 1895 and subsequently in [*Certain Personal Matters*](https://engole.info/certain-personal-matters/) (1897).{{sfnp|S36I6TJY|50}} Told as a first-person narrative, it offers advice to young men on choosing a wife wisely.
## Synopsis
The narrator begins by stating that most young men would choose as their wife a young woman of “one-and-twenty or less, inexperienced, extremely pretty, graceful, and well dressed, not too clever, accomplished …”, but goes on to suggest that beauty in a prospective wife should be avoided. Not because beauty inevitably fades – “the fundamental and enduring grace of womanhood goes down to the skeleton; you cannot have a pretty face without a pretty skull” – but because it inevitably masks some imperfection that will become evident in due course; “No beauty is a beauty to her husband”.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/H._G._Wells_Daily_Mirror.jpg)H. G. Wells, c. 1918
Wikimedia Commons
Therefore, suggests the narrator, it is better to choose a thoroughly plain woman. Over time certain of her features and characteristics will begin to seem attractive, perhaps the waviness of her hair, or a lack of clumsiness, and over time the man will find in her “beauty enough and to spare”, but it will be a safely hidden treasure, unlike the beauty for all the world to see. The narrator goes on observe that many young men choose a wife who is too young:
Marriage has been defined as a foolish bargain in which one man provides for another man’s daughter, but there is no reason why this should go so far as completing her education. If your conception of happiness is having something pretty and innocent and troublesome about you, something that you can cherish and make happy, a pet rabbit is in every way preferable … the ideal wife, I am persuaded, from the close observation of many years, is invariably, by some mishap, a widow.
The narrator goes on to warn against choosing a wife with “social charm” or “accomplishments”, observing that the former create a home that is a cross between a museum and a casual ward, and the latter as “like marrying a slightly more complicated barrel-organ”, as the limitations of their accomplishments become apparent.
To conclude, a summary. The woman you choose should be plain, as plain as you can find, as old or older than yourself, devoid of social gifts or accomplishments, poor – for your self-respect – and with a certain amiable untidiness … And, by the bye, I had almost forgotten! Never by any chance marry a girl whose dresses do up at the back, unless you can afford her a maid or so of her own.
## See also
- [List of works by H. G. Wells](https://engole.info/h-g-wells-bibliography/)
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a, b var(--global-kb-gap-md, 2rem) \* 1 )/2
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 24995
## External links
- [Full text of “On the Choice of a Wife”](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/17508/pg17508-images.html#Page_18) at Project Gutenberg
**Categories:** Essay
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Matthew Hopkins](https://engole.info/matthew-hopkins/)
**Published:** January 29, 2019
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Matthew_Hopkins%2C_Witch-finder._Wellcome_L0000812.jpg[/pimage]English witch-hunter who claimed to hold the office of Witchfinder General, although that title was never bestowed by Parliament.
**Content:**
Portrait of Matthew Hopkins, from the 1837 edition of *The discovery of witches*.
Wikimedia Commons
Matthew Hopkins (c. 1620 – 12 August 1647) was an English witch hunter whose career flourished during the English Civil War of 1642–1651. He claimed to hold the office of Witchfinder General, although that title was never bestowed by Parliament. His witch hunts mainly took place in East Anglia.\[a\]“After Essex, he turned to Norfolk and Suffolk. By the next year, he had extended his operations with a team of six – himself, [John Stearne](https://engole.info/john-stearne), and four prickers – to the counties of Cambridge, Northampton, Huntingdon, and Bedford. He had become indeed the Witch Finder General.”{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|251}}
Hopkins’ witch-finding career began in March 1644 and lasted until his retirement in 1647. He and his associates were responsible for more people being hanged for witchcraft than in the previous 100 years,{{sfnp|D56JQV85|97-98}}\[b\]In Essex there were no executions after 1626 until 1645.{{sfnp|B7Q26UJP|537}} and were solely responsible for the increase in witch trials during those years.{{sfnp|RUC63FTE|41}}{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|164}}{{sfnp|B7Q26UJP|528}} He is believed to have been responsible for the conviction and execution of 300 witches between 1644 and 1646.{{sfnp|DB6SXDFK|3}}
It has been estimated that all of the English witch trials between the early 15th and late 18th centuries resulted in fewer than 500 executions for witchcraft. Therefore, presuming the number executed as a result of investigations by Hopkins and his colleague [John Stearne](https://engole.info/john-stearne) is at the lower end of the various estimates,{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|194}}{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|195}}{{sfnp|B7Q26UJP|537, 544}} their efforts accounted for about 60 per cent of the total; in the 14 months of their crusade Hopkins and Stearne sent to the gallows more accused people than all the other witch-hunters in England of the previous 160 years.{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|195}}
## Early life
Very little is known of Matthew Hopkins before 1644, and there are no surviving contemporary documents concerning him or his family.\[c\]It is the author’s opinion that “unfortunately one cannot dispute that all Hopkins documentation was deliberately destroyed after his death”.{{sfnp|3A9GMZ33|9}} He was born in Great Wenham, Suffolk{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|9}}{{sfnp|RUC63FTE|13}}{{sfnp|DCHG2ZNI}} and was the fourth son{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|9}} of six children.{{sfnp|RUC63FTE|15-17}} His father, James Hopkins, was a Puritan clergyman and vicar of St John’s of Great Wenham, in Suffolk.{{sfnp|DCHG2ZNI}}{{sfnp|RUC63FTE|13, 17}} The family at one point held title “to lands and tenements in Framlingham ‘at the castle’ ”.{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|23}}{{sfnp|RUC63FTE|17}} His father was popular with his parishioners, one of whom in 1619 left money to purchase Bibles for his then three children James, John and Thomas.{{sfnp|RUC63FTE|13}} Thus Matthew Hopkins could not have been born before 1619, and could not have been older than 28 when he died, but he may have been as young as 25.{{sfnp|3A9GMZ33|6}} Although James Hopkins had died in 1634,{{sfnp|RUC63FTE|13}} when the iconoclast William Dowsing, commissioned in 1643 by the Parliamentarian Earl of Manchester{{sfnp|3A9GMZ33|19}} “for the destruction of monuments of idolatry and superstition”, visited the parish in 1645 he noted that “there was nothing to reform”.{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|13}} Hopkins’ brother John became Minister of South Fambridge in 1645 but was removed from the post one year later for neglecting his work.{{sfnp|RUC63FTE|14}}
Hopkins states in his book *The Discovery of Witches* (1647){{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|252}} that he “never travelled far … to gain his experience”.{{sfnp|3A9GMZ33|15}} In the early 1640s Hopkins moved to Manningtree, Essex, a town on the River Stour, about {{convert|10|mi|spell=in}} from Wenham. According to tradition Hopkins used his recently acquired inheritance of a hundred marks{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|23}} to establish himself as a gentleman and buy the Thorn Inn in Mistley.{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|27}} From the way that he presented evidence in trials, Hopkins is commonly thought to have been trained as a lawyer, but there is scant evidence to suggest that he was.{{sfnp|RUC63FTE|58-59}}
## Witch-hunting
Frontispiece from Matthew Hopkins’ *The Discovery of Witches* (1647), showing witches identifying their [familiar](https://engole.info/witchs-familiar/) spirits
Wikimedia Commons
Following the later Lancaster Witch Trials of 1634, William Harvey, physician to King Charles I of England, had been ordered to examine the four women accused,{{sfnp|69RIFYJT}} and from this there came a requirement to have material proof of being a witch.{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|46-47}} The work of Hopkins and [John Stearne](https://engole.info/john-stearne) was not necessarily to prove any of the accused had committed acts of [maleficium](https://engole.info/maleficium/), but to prove that they had made a covenant with the Devil.{{sfnp|B7Q26UJP|543}}{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|47}} Until then, any malicious acts on the part of witches were treated just as those of other criminals, until it was seen that, according to the then-current beliefs about the structure of witchcraft, they owed their powers to a deliberate act of their choosing.{{sfnp|B7Q26UJP|521, 542-543}} Witches then became heretics to Christianity, which became the greatest of their crimes and sins.{{sfnp|B7Q26UJP|542-543}} Within continental and Roman Law witchcraft was *crimen exceptum*: a crime so foul that all normal legal procedures were superseded. Because the Devil was not going to “confess”, it was necessary to gain a confession from the human involved.{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|498}}
The witch-hunts undertaken by Stearne and Hopkins mainly took place in East Anglia, in the counties of Suffolk, Essex, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, with a few in the counties of Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire. They extended throughout the area of strongest Puritan and Parliamentarian influences which formed the powerful and influential Eastern Association from 1644 to 1647, centred on Essex.{{sfnp|RUC63FTE|39}}{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|197}} Both Hopkins and Stearne would have required some form of letters of safe conduct{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|79}}{{sfnp|3A9GMZ33|46}} to be able to travel throughout the counties.{{sfnp|RUC63FTE|70-71}}{{sfnp|3A9GMZ33|33}} According to his book *The Discovery of Witches*, Hopkins began his career as a witch-finder after he overheard various women discussing their meetings with the Devil in March 1644 in Manningtree.{{sfnp|Y3J8MUPV|xii}} In fact, the first accusations were made by Stearne and Hopkins was appointed as his assistant.{{sfnp|Y3J8MUPV|xi}} Twenty-three women were accused of witchcraft and were tried at Chelmsford in 1645. With the English Civil War under way, this trial was conducted not by justices of assize, but by justices of the peace presided over by the Earl of Warwick.{{sfnp|B7Q26UJP|545}} Four died in prison and nineteen were convicted and hanged. During this period, excepting Middlesex and chartered towns, no records show any person charged of witchcraft being sentenced to death other than by the judges of the assizes.{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|201}} Hopkins and Stearne, accompanied by the women who performed the pricking, were soon travelling over eastern England, claiming to be officially commissioned by parliament to uncover and prosecute witches. Together with their female assistants, they were well paid for their work, and it has been suggested that this was a motivation for his actions.{{sfnp|D56JQV85|98}} Hopkins states that “his fees were to maintain his company with three horses”,{{sfnp|3A9GMZ33|36}}{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|193}} and that he took “twenty shillings a town”.{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|193}} The records at Stowmarket show their costs to the town to have been £23 (£3,700 as of 2019) plus his travelling expenses.{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|183, 193}} The cost to the local community of Hopkins and his company were such that, in 1645, a special local tax rate had to be levied in Ipswich.{{sfnp|B7Q26UJP|544}} Parliament was well aware of Hopkins and his team’s activities, as shown by the concerned reports of the Bury St Edmunds witch trials of 1645. Before the trial, a report was carried to the Parliament – “as if some busie men had made use of some ill Arts to extort such confession” – that a special Commission of Oyer and Terminer was granted for the trial of these witches.{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|178}} After the trial and execution the Moderate Intelligencer, a parliamentary paper published during the English Civil War, in an editorial of 4–11 September 1645 expressed unease with the affairs in Bury.
## Methods of investigation
Methods of investigating witchcraft heavily drew inspiration from the *Daemonologie* of King James which was directly cited in Hopkins’ *The Discovery of Witches*.{{sfnp|7DRGDILW|search=Query 10}} Although torture was unlawful in England, Hopkins often used techniques such as sleep deprivation to extract confessions from his victims.\[d\]Three days and nights of “watching” brought Elizabeth Clarke to “confess many things”.{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|167}} He would also cut the arm of the accused with a blunt knife, and if she did not bleed, she was said to be a witch. Another of his methods was the swimming test, based on the idea that as witches had renounced their baptism, water would reject them. Suspects were tied to a chair and thrown into water: all those who “swam” (floated) were considered to be witches. Hopkins was warned against the use of “swimming” without receiving the victim’s permission first. This led to the legal abandonment of the test by the end of 1645.{{sfnp|3A9GMZ33|22}} Hopkins and his assistants also looked for the Devil’s mark. This was a mark that all witches or sorcerers were thought to possess that was said to be dead to all feeling and would not bleed – although it was sometimes a mole, birthmark or an extra nipple or breast.{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|552}} If the suspected witch had no such visible marks invisible ones could be discovered by pricking, therefore “witch prickers” were employed, who pricked the accused with knives and special needles looking for such marks, normally after the suspect had been shaved of all body hair.{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|399}}\[e\]“… justification for shaving applied especially, but not exclusively, in England”{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|469}} It was believed that the witch’s [familiar](https://engole.info/witchs-familiar/), an animal such as a cat or dog, would drink the witch’s blood from the mark, as a baby drinks milk from the nipple.
## Opposition
Hopkins and his company ran into opposition very soon after the start of their work,{{sfnp|B7Q26UJP|545}} but one of his main antagonists was John Gaule, vicar of Great Staughton.{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|187}}{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|219-220}} Gaule had attended a woman from St Neots who was held in gaol charged with witchcraft until such time as Hopkins could attend. Upon hearing that the woman had been interviewed, Hopkins wrote a letter{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|187}}{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|220}} to a contact asking whether he would be given a “good welcome”. Gaule hearing of this letter wrote his publication *Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches and Witchcrafts* (1646){{sfnp|872XP4ZL}} – dedicated to Colonel Walton of the House of Commons{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|187}} – and began a programme of Sunday sermons to suppress witch-hunting.{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|220}} In Norfolk both Hopkins and Stearne were questioned by justices of the assizes, about the torturing and fees.{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|252}} Hopkins was asked if methods of investigation did not make the finders themselves witches, and if with all his knowledge did he not also have a secret,{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|193}} or had used “unlawful courses of torture”.{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|238}} By the time this court session resumed in 1647 Stearne and Hopkins had retired, Hopkins to Manningtree and Stearne to Bury St Edmunds.{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|193}}{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|238}}{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|253}}
## Colonial impact
Hopkins’ witch-hunting methods were outlined in his book *The Discovery of Witches*, which was published in 1647. These practices were recommended in law books. During the year following the publication of Hopkins’ book, trials and executions for witchcraft began in the New England colonies with the hanging of Alse Young of Windsor, Connecticut on 26 May 1647, followed by the conviction of Margaret Jones. As described in the journal of Governor John Winthrop, the evidence assembled against Margaret Jones was gathered by the use of Hopkins’ techniques of “searching” and “watching”.{{sfnp|WXJSX4WX|133-137}} Jones’ execution was the first in a witch-hunt that lasted in New England from 1648 until 1663. About eighty people throughout New England were accused of practising witchcraft during that period, of whom fifteen women and two men were executed.{{sfnp|INPGE33U|15}} Some of Hopkins’ methods were once again employed during the Salem Witch Trials,{{sfnp|CFJR5I2V|5}} which occurred primarily in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692–1693. These trials resulted in nineteen executions for witchcraft, one man, Giles Corey, pressed to death for refusing to plead,{{sfnp|GLMVY8E6|108}} and one hundred and fifty imprisonments.
## Death and legacy
Matthew Hopkins died at his home in Manningtree, Essex, on 12 August 1647, probably of pleural tuberculosis. He was buried a few hours after his death in the graveyard of the Church of St Mary at Mistley Heath.{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|263}} In the words of historian Malcolm Gaskill, Matthew Hopkins “lives on as an anti-hero and bogeyman – utterly ethereal, endlessly malleable”.{{sfnp|QACTZV9W|283}} According to historian Rossell Hope Robbins,{{sfnp|I2TZ3HUE}} Hopkins “acquired an evil reputation which in later days made his name synonymous with fingerman or informer paid by authorities to commit perjury”.{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|249}}
What historian James Sharpe has characterised as a “pleasing legend” grew up around the circumstances of Hopkins’ death, according to which he was subjected to his own swimming test and executed as a witch, but the parish registry at Mistley confirms his burial there.{{sfnp|DCHG2ZNI}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a “After Essex, he turned to Norfolk and Suffolk. By the next year, he had extended his operations with a team of six – himself, [John Stearne](https://engole.info/john-stearne), and four prickers – to the counties of Cambridge, Northampton, Huntingdon, and Bedford. He had become indeed the Witch Finder General.”{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|251}} b In Essex there were no executions after 1626 until 1645.{{sfnp|B7Q26UJP|537}} c It is the author’s opinion that “unfortunately one cannot dispute that all Hopkins documentation was deliberately destroyed after his death”.{{sfnp|3A9GMZ33|9}} d Three days and nights of “watching” brought Elizabeth Clarke to “confess many things”.{{sfnp|G7A9GC7X|167}} e “… justification for shaving applied especially, but not exclusively, in England”{{sfnp|U23ZUQ2R|469}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 13998
**Categories:** Witch finder
---
### [Udny Mort House](https://engole.info/udny-mort-house/)
**Published:** July 28, 2018
**Author:** Georgie Darcy
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Udny_Mort_House_01.JPG[/pimage]In the 18th and 19th centuries body-snatchers, also known as resurrectionists, shush-lifters or noddies, excavated graves to meet the increasing demand from medical colleges for bodies to dissect, as not enough were being supplied from executions.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Udny_Mort_House_01.JPG)Udny Mort House
Wikimedia Commons
Udny Mort House is a Category B [listed building](https://engole.info/listed-building) in the old kirkyard at Udny Green, Aberdeenshire, northeast Scotland, built in 1832. It housed corpses until they started to decompose, so their graves would not be desecrated by [resurrectionists](https://engole.info/resurrectionists/) and body-snatchers digging them up to sell the cadavers to medical colleges for dissection. Bodies were permitted to be stored for up to three months before burial. The circular mort house was designed with a revolving platform and double doors. After the passage into law of the [Anatomy Act 1832](https://engole.info/anatomy-act-1832) Udny Mort House gradually fell into disuse; minutes of the committee responsible for its operation cease in about July 1836.
## Background
In the 18th and 19th centuries body-snatchers, also known as resurrectionists, shush-lifters or noddies, excavated graves to meet the increasing demand from medical colleges for bodies to dissect, as not enough were being supplied from executions. Precautions were taken to protect the bodies and various methods were used to prevent access to graves. In Scotland, vaults, watch houses, mort houses and [mortsafes](https://engole.info/mortsafe) were used. Grave-robbing was a widespread problem and in 1821, the minister for West Calder, Reverend W. Fleming wrote:{{sfnp|YGR544UE}}
Few burial grounds in Scotland, it is believed, have escaped the ravaging hands of resurrection men; and it is reported that with respect to a church-yard not far from Edinburgh, that, till within three years ago, when the inhabitants began to watch the graves, the persons interred did not remain in their graves above a night, and that these depredations were successfully carried on for nine successive winters.
Bodies were securely kept in locked buildings until the process of natural decomposition rendered the cadavers useless for dissection.{{sfnp|363EY3IJ|5}}
## History
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Udny_Mort_House_05.jpg)The outer door
Wikimedia Commons
A group of fifteen local gentlemen held a meeting in Udny Green on 21 January 1832 to discuss constructing a vault within the churchyard to hold dead bodies until they could be buried. Agreement was reached and a decision was made to use a plan that had been submitted by John Marr of Cairnbrogie.{{sfnp|3WF9SRZQ}} Formally adopted the following week, an advertisement was placed in the *Aberdeen Journal* on 15 February 1832{{sfnp|RMIPA9BB}}, inviting tenders for the construction of the mort house. Applications were also invited from potential subscribers to use the facility.{{sfnp|3WF9SRZQ}} The contracts to undertake the building work were awarded on 17 March 1832; however, difficulties were encountered collecting the subscriptions (which were to be used to cover the building costs), so the plans were altered to reduce costs. Construction was to be completed by 1 September 1832 but was delayed after arguments took place with the mason. The contractors received final payments on 26 January 1833 and the formal “Regulations for the management of the vault at Udny” were agreed on 23 February.{{sfnp|3WF9SRZQ}} The regulations are likely to be similar to those applied to other mort houses, although records of other structures are not generally available. Rules included stipulations as to the construction of coffins, which had to be made from well-seasoned fir 7⁄8 inches thick and completely air-tight. Additionally, any bodies considered to be “infectious or otherwise dangerous” had to be wrapped in tin plate or lead. A penalty of two pounds was levied on the maker of a coffin that did not conform to the requirements.{{sfnp|3WF9SRZQ}}
Bodies were permitted to remain in the mort house for up to three months. Non-subscribers were allowed use of the vault by paying between five and twenty shillings, at the committee’s discretion. Four members of the committee were key bearers, and it was compulsory for them to be present to open and close the vault whenever necessary, although they were to be given twenty-four hours notice that they were required.{{sfnp|3WF9SRZQ}}
## Architecture
Built from [ashlar](https://engole.info/ashlar) granite in 1832 to the design of John Marr of Cairnbrogie; the masonry work was undertaken by Alexander Wallace of Smiddyhill. Thomas Smith of Oldmeldrum completed the carpentry work.{{sfnp|2QKFBK2U}} The roof is slated rather than the more common covering of turf. There is a thick oak outer door accompanied by an iron inner door. {{convert|3|ft|r=1|spell=in|sentence=on}} above the floor inside was a revolving circular oak platform, on which the coffins were placed.{{sfnp|3WF9SRZQ}} The structure has no windows. The interior has a domed stone roof and lath and plaster walls.{{sfnp|X4I6GJZQ}}
After the passing of the [Anatomy Act 1832](https://engole.info/anatomy-act-1832), the mort house gradually fell into disuse. The minutes of the committee meeting held on 4 July 1836 record that the key-bearers were warned that they must be present when the doors were being opened, or they could be fined.{{sfnp|3WF9SRZQ}}
Udny Mort House is described as a “rare and important structure” by the Scottish Church Heritage Research.{{sfnp|BKYG7B8F}} Historic Scotland allocated it a Category B listing in April 1971.{{sfnp|IXCNAJJ3}} Some restoration work was undertaken in 1976–1977. A further inspection by Aberdeenshire Council officials in July 1998 suggested it required further work, particularly highlighting the need for re-pointing and some roof slate replacement.{{sfnp|ZZGHFPZD|67}}
The dead house in Ontario, Canada, built in about 1868, is a very similar structure to Udny Mort House. It seems to have been used to store bodies until weather conditions improved sufficiently to allow burial to take place.{{sfnp|36CQ5WDE}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 4133
**Categories:** Aberdeenshire
---
### [William Harrison Ainsworth bibliography](https://engole.info/william-harrison-ainsworth-bibliography/)
**Published:** May 15, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/William_Harrison_Ainsworth_by_Daniel_Maclise.jpg[/pimage]Works of William Harrison Ainsworth (1805–1882) listed in order of their date of first publication.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/William_Harrison_Ainsworth_by_Daniel_Maclise.jpg)Portrait by Daniel Maclise, c. 1834
Wikimedia Commons
W[illiam Harrison Ainsworth](https://engole.info/william-harrison-ainsworth/) (4 February 1805 – 3 January 1882) was an English historical novelist, at the height of his popularity in the 1840s considered to be a serious rival to Charles Dickens. A particular feature of Ainsworth’s novels is their attention to historical detail, but with the addition of supernatural elements characteristic of the Gothic tradition.
Works are listed in order of their date of first publication.{{sfnp|UZID58IR}}
- *December Tales* (1823)
- *Sir John Chiverton* (1826) , in collaboration with J. P. Aston
- *Rookwood* (1834)
- *Crichton* (1837)
- *Jack Sheppard* (1839)
- [*The Tower of London*](https://engole.info/the-tower-of-london-novel) (1840)
- [*Guy Fawkes; or, The Gunpowder Treason*](https://engole.info/guy-fawkes-novel) (1841)
- *Old Saint Paul’s* (1841)
- *The Miser’s Daughter* (1842)
- *Windsor Castle* (1842)
- *Saint James’s; or, The Court of Queen Anne* (1844)
- *James the Second; or, The Revolution of 1688* (1848)
- [*The Lancashire Witches*](https://engole.info/the-lancashire-witches/) (1849)
- *Auriol* (1850)
- *The Flitch of Bacon; or, The Custom of Dunmow* (1854)
- *The Star-Chamber* (1854)
- *The Spendthrift* (1857)
- *The Life and Adventures of Mervyn Clitheroe* (1858)
- *The Combat of the Thirty* (1859)
- *Ovingdean Grange* (1860)
- *The Constable of the Tower* (1861)
- *The Lord Mayor of London; or, City Life in the Last Century* (1862)
- *Cardinal Pole; or, The Days of Philip & Mary* (1863)
- *The Projector* (1864)
- *The Spanish Match; or, Charles Stuart at Madrid* (1865)
- *The Constable de Bourbon* (1866)
- *Old Court* (1867)
- *Myddleton Pomfret* (1867)
- *Hilary St Ives* (1870)
- *Talbot Harland* (1870)
- *The South-Sea Bubble* (1871)
- *Tower Hill* (1871)
- *Boscobel: or, The Royal Oak. A tale of the year 1651* (1895)
- *The Good Old Times* (1873). Reissued as *The Manchester Rebels* in 1874.
- *Merry England: or, Nobles and Serfs* (1874)
- *The Goldsmith’s Wife* (1875)
- *Preston Fight: or, The Insurrection of 1715* (1875)
- *Chetwynd Calverley* (1876), published in three volumes
- *The Leaguer of Lathom* (1876)
- *The Fall of Somerset* (1877)
- *Beatrice Tyldesley* (1878)
- *Beau Nash; or, Bath in the Eighteenth Century* (1879)
- *Stanley Brereton* (1881)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22703
**Categories:** Bibliography
---
### [Mary Pownall Bromet](https://engole.info/mary-pownall-bromet/)
**Published:** December 4, 2018
**Author:** Daisy Grace
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Watford_Peace_Memorial.jpg[/pimage]Sculptor born in 1862 Leigh, Lancashire, where her father, James Pownall, was a silk manufacturer.
**Content:**
The sculptor Mary Pownall Bromet (1862 – 25 February 1937) was born in Leigh, Lancashire in 1862, where her father, James Pownall, was a [silk manufacturer](https://engole.info/leigh-silk-industry/). She studied in Frankfurt for a year, in Paris for six years, including a year in 1897–1898 when she was a pupil of Rodin, after which she studied in Rome for four years.{{sfnp|AG6WKH3Q}} Following her marriage to the barrister Alfred Bromet in about 1902, she and her husband moved to Lime Lodge in Oxhey, where she had a studio.{{sfnp|JSHE2M3T|134}}
Mary was President of the Society of Women artists and an Associate Member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors.{{sfnp|JSHE2M3T|134}} Her autobiography, *Response*, was published by Methuen in 1935.
## War memorial
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Watford_Peace_Memorial.jpg)Watford Peace Memorial
Wikimedia Commons
Mary Pownall Bromet donated three plaster figures she had made during the First World War to Watford Peace Hospital. She made the first figure *To the Fallen* in 1914 after attending a casualty’s funeral. *To the Wounded* was made in 1916 and the third figure,*Victory*, followed. Collectively known as *The Spirit of War*, they were cast in bronze by Morris Singer & Company at a cost of about £800 after a public appeal for funds. The trio of figures was unveiled outside the hospital on 18 July 1928. Few war memorials were sculpted by women, and Watford’s is a rare depiction of male nudes in war memorial sculpture.{{sfnp|NGIZIVEM}}
The male figures have separate plinths connected by a curved wall. The central standing figure has his right arm raised and the flanking figures are seated, one in a pose that recalls Rodin’s *The Thinker*. The Grade II\* listed memorial’s description describes its creator as having “a talent for emotionally vigorous sculpture”.{{sfnp|NGIZIVEM}}
## Other work
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Mary_Pownall_-_Maiden_meditation_%28avant%29.jpg)*Maiden*, by Mary Pownall Bromet
Wikimedia Commons
- *Acquedotts Claudio*, Roma
- *A Sunbeam*
- *An Intruder*
- *The Great Specialist*
- *The Kiss*
- *A La Recherche de la Brebis Perdue*
- *Mercury*
- *Love or Money* 1906
- *The Intruder* 1906
- *The Great Specialist* 1907
- *A Ragamuffin* 1907
- *A Bolshevic Commissar* 1923{{sfnp|AG6WKH3Q}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 11886
**Categories:** English, Female, Sculptor
---
### [Gas Light](https://engole.info/gas-light/)
**Published:** February 4, 2020
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Vincent_Price_1942-11-11.jpg[/pimage]Gas Light is a 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton which has given rise to the term "gaslighting", in which a victim is presented with false information making them doubt their own memory and perception.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Vincent_Price_1942-11-11.jpg)Vincent Price as Jack Manningham in the Broadway production of *Angel Street*
Wikimedia Commons
*Gas Light* is a 1938 play written by Patrick Hamilton. The play and its film adaptations gave rise to the term “gaslighting”, a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented to the victim with the intention of making them doubt their own memory and perception.
On the play’s transfer to Broadway in 1941 it was renamed *Angel Street*; film adaptations made in 1940 and 1944 used the title *Gaslight*.
The play is set in fog-bound London in 1880, at the upper-middle-class home of Jack Manningham and his wife Bella.
## Synopsis
It is late afternoon, a time Hamilton notes as being “before the feeble dawn of gaslight and tea.”
Bella is clearly on edge, and the stern reproaches of her overbearing husband (who flirts with the servants) make matters worse. What most perturbs Bella is Jack’s unexplained disappearances from their home, increasing her anxiety. It becomes clear that Jack is intent on convincing Bella that she is going insane, assuring her that it is only in her imagination that the gas light in their apartment is dimming.
The appearance of a police detective named Rough leads Bella to realise that Jack is responsible for her torment. Rough explains that the apartment above was once occupied by Alice Barlow, a wealthy woman murdered for her jewels, but the murderer never found them.
Jack goes to the apartment each night to search for the jewels, and lighting its gas lights causes those in the rest of the building to dim. His footsteps in the supposedly empty apartment above persuade Bella that she is “hearing things.” Rough convinces Bella to assist him in exposing Jack as the murderer, which she does, but not before she takes revenge on Jack by pretending to help him escape. At the last minute she reminds him that, having gone insane, she is not accountable for her actions. The play closes with Jack being led away by the police.
## Productions
### London
*Gas Light* premiered on 5 December 1938 at the Richmond Theatre in Richmond, London. It transferred to the Apollo Theatre on 1 January 1939, and to the Savoy Theatre on 22 May 1939. The cast featured Dennis Arundell (Mr. Manningham), Milton Rosmer (Mr. Rough), Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies (Mrs. Manningham), Beatrice Rowe (Elizabeth) and Elizabeth Inglis (Nancy). The production closed on 10 June 1939, after 141 performances.{{sfnp|XN2BBSWM|740}}
### Broadway
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Angel-Street-Evelyn.jpg)Judith Evelyn in the Broadway production of Angel Street
Wikimedia Commons
Early in 1941, Vincent Price and his wife, actress Edith Barrett, saw *Gas Light* performed in Los Angeles as a three-hander titled *Five Chelsea Lane*. They were impressed with the play and set about securing the rights for a Broadway production of their own. Towards the end of the year they had found a producer to underwrite the project, but Barrett abruptly withdrew to remain in Hollywood and work in films, and in November 1941 Price returned to work on the New York stage. Judith Evelyn, the Canadian actress who had played the role of Mrs. Manningham in Los Angeles, was hired for the Broadway production. The name of the play was changed to *Angel Street*.{{sfnp|YW5EPH4K|109-111}}
*Angel Street* premiered on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre on 5 December 1941. Produced and directed by Shepard Traube, the cast featured Leo G. Carroll (Rough), Florence Edney (Elizabeth), Elizabeth Eustis (Nancy), Judith Evelyn (Mrs. Manningham) and Vincent Price (Mr. Manningham).{{sfnp|ENHDD9VV}}{{sfnp|CPU5W4ID}} Price left the play after a year, when his working relationship with Evelyn deteriorated into what she described as his “violent dislike”.{{sfnp|YW5EPH4K|109-111}} In December 1942 the role of Mr. Manningham was assumed by John Emery. The play transferred to the Bijou Theatre on 2 October 1944, and closed on 30 December 1944 after 1295 performances.{{sfnp|ENHDD9VV}}
## Revivals and adaptations
The play ran at New York City Center from 22 January 1948 to 1 February 1948, for 14 performances. Directed by Richard Barr, the cast featured José Ferrer (Mr. Manningham), Uta Hagen (Mrs. Manningham), Phyllis Hill (Nancy), Nan McFarland (Elizabeth), Ralph Roberts (Policeman), Victor Thorley (Policeman) and Richard Whorf (Rough).{{sfnp|LIT7KAM9}}
The play has since been revived several times, more recently at The Old Vic, London in June 2007, under the title of *Gaslight*. Directed by Peter Gill, the cast featured Andrew Woodall as Mr. Manningham, Rosamund Pike as Mrs. Manningham and Kenneth Cranham as Rough.{{sfnp|YJV88EPX}}
*Gas Light* has also been adapted to film, in particular the British 1940 psychological thriller *Gaslight* directed by Thorold Dickinson, which is more true to the original plot than the more lavish 1944 MGM production of the same name.{{sfnp|GPID3A7R}}
## Critical reception
Louis Kronenberger wrote in his review of the 1948 City Center production that “it remains one of the better thrillers … let’s call it one of the best. All the same, though it holds up nicely for three acts, it seems to me outstandingly good for only one.” Brooks Atkinson, in *The New York Times*, is quoted as writing “As a creepshow, Patrick Hamilton’s Victorian melodrama remains close to the top of the class.”{{sfnp|LDFFV483}}
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 22583
**Categories:** Play
---
### [John Wyndham bibliography](https://engole.info/john-wyndham-bibliography/)
**Published:** December 30, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4d/John_Wyndham_Parkes_Lucas_Beynon_Harris.jpg[/pimage]Works by John Wyndham (1903–1969) listed in order of their date of first publication.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4d/John_Wyndham_Parkes_Lucas_Beynon_Harris.jpg)Wikimedia Commons
John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (10 July 1903 – 11 March 1969) was an English novelist and short-story writer who, influenced by the the novels of H. G. Wells, specialised in science fiction. Wyndham’s early work was published in America under pseudonyms including John Beynon Harris, or simply John Beynon.{{sfnp|U95E85SU}}
Works are listed in order of their date of first publication.{{sfnp|U9S4AQQA}}
## Published under pseudonyms
- *The Curse of the Burdens* (1927), as John B. Harris
- *The Secret People* (1935), as John Beynon
- *Foul Play Suspected* (1935), as John Beynon
- *Planet Plane* (1936), as John Beynon; republished as *The Space Machine* and as *Stowaway to Mars*
- *Love in Time* (1946), as Johnson Harris
## As John Wyndham
- *The Day of the Triffids* (1951), published in the USA as *Revolt of the Triffids*
- *The Kraken Wakes* (1953), published in the USA as *Out of the Deep*
- *Planet Plane* (1953)
- *‘Melia Ann: A Fantasy of the WI* (1953), a poem
- *Jizzle* (1954)
- *The Chrysalids* (1955), published in the USA as *Re-Birth*
- *The Seeds of Time* (1956)
- *Tales of Gooseflesh and Laughter* (1956)
- *The Midwich Cuckoos* (1957) filmed as *Village of the Damned* (1960)
- *The Outward Urge* (1959)
- *Trouble With Lichen* (1960)
- *Consider Her Ways* (1961)
- *The Infinte Moment* (1961)
- *Chocky* (1968)
- *Sleepers of Mars* (1973)
- *Wanderers of Time* (1973)
- *The Man from Beyond* (1975)
- *Web* (1979)
- *Exiles on Asperus* (1979)
- *No Place Like Earth* (2003)
- *Plan for Chaos* (2010)
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25078
**Categories:** Bibliography
**Tags:** Not on Wikipedia
---
### [Housing Act 1930](https://engole.info/housing-act-1930/)
**Published:** December 11, 2022
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of Parliament making it easier for local authorities to clear slums, and obliging them to rehome the tenants of such areas.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Housing Act 1930 (20 & 21 George 5 c. 39), also known as the Greenwood Housing Act after the minister tasked with steering its passage through parliament, Arthur Greenwood, was a United Kingdom Act of Parliament intended to make it easier for local authorities to clear slum areas, and obliging them to rehome the tenants of such areas in more suitable accommodation.{{sfnp|ZRU32YEE}}
The Act recognised two classes of slum dwellings:{{sfnp|H78MZDTA}}
- Those which are “not in all respects reasonably fit for human habitation”, which the local authority could require the owner to repair, or if the owner refused, carry out the necessary work themselves and pass the cost on to the owner
- Those which are “in a state so dangerous or injurious to health as to be unfit for human habitation”, which were to be closed pending repairs or demolition.
Local authorities were also given the power to determine that all buildings within a specified area should be demolished, and to compulsorily purchase such properties if necessary.{{sfnp|H78MZDTA}}\[a\]The Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Act of 1875 had already allowed local authorities to compulsorily purchase slum properties,{{sfnp|W7T4WGCI}} but few had taken advantage of the opportunity. The Act led to the mass demolition of [back-to-back housing](https://engole.info/back-to-back-house), a cheap form of terraced house for the working poor, designed to maximise the number of workers living in the least possible space.{{sfnp|RXVKZNZJ|243}}
The legislation was passed into law under the premiership of Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour prime minister. But under the subsequent coalition National Government formed in 1931, dominated by the Conservatives, policy switched from building new houses to the construction of cheaper blocks of flats to accommodate former slum dwellers.{{sfnp|ZRU32YEE}} Nevertheless the Act led to a record number of slum clearances, and the construction of 700,000 new homes.{{sfnp|KAD5IT5V}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Act of 1875 had already allowed local authorities to compulsorily purchase slum properties,{{sfnp|W7T4WGCI}} but few had taken advantage of the opportunity.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25025
## External links
- [Full text of the Housing Act 1930](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1930/39/pdfs/ukpga_19300039_en.pdf)
**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Anatomy Act 1832](https://engole.info/anatomy-act-1832/)
**Published:** March 20, 2023
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Coat_of_Arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281816-1837%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_Arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281816-1837%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of Parliament intended to increase the number or corpses available for dissection by medical students.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Coat_of_Arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281816-1837%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_Arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%281816-1837%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Anatomy Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will. IV c. 75), known popularly as the Dead Body Bill or the Blood-Stained Anatomy Act,{{sfnp|XWYARLUY}} is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom intended to increase the number of corpses available for dissection by medical students.{{sfnp|XWYARLUY}} It was enacted in response to public revulsion at the activities of those such as the [body-snatchers](https://engole.info/resurrectionists) John Bishop and Thomas Williams, known as the London Burkers because they based their crimes on the notorious [Burke and Hare murders](https://engole.info/burke-and-hare-murders) of 1828.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|143, 194, 197}}\[a\]The London Burkers were active for a few months in London in 1831.
## Background
In March 1828 three defendants charged in Liverpool with conspiracy and unlawfully procuring and receiving a corpse buried in Warrington were acquitted, while the remaining two were found guilty of possession. The presiding judge’s comment, that “the disinterment of bodies for dissection was an offence liable to punishment”, prompted parliament to establish the 1828 Select Committee on Anatomy.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|107-108}}\[b\]The committee’s administrative records were lost in the 1834 Burning of Parliament and only its minutes and report are extant.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|107-108}} The committee took evidence from 40 witnesses: 25 members of the medical profession, 12 public servants and 3 resurrectionists, who remained anonymous.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|114-115}} Discussed were the importance of anatomy, the supply of subjects for dissection and the relationship between anatomists and resurrectionists. The committee concluded that dissection was essential to the study of human anatomy and recommended that anatomists be allowed to appropriate the bodies of paupers.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|120, 131}}
## Parliamentary bills
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Henry_Warburton.jpeg)*Henry Warburton* (1833), by George Hayter.
Wikimedia Commons
The first bill was presented to parliament in 1829 by Henry Warburton, author of the Select Committee’s report.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|108}} Following a spirited defence of the poor by peers in the House of Lords, it was withdrawn,\[c\]The Archbishop of Canterbury, Earls of Malmesbury and Harewood, and the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Tenterden, argued that the poor had a right to a decent burial and questioned if people who had broken no laws should be classed alongside murderers. An “unconquerable objection” to dissection held by many paupers was also mentioned.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|157-158}} but almost two years later Warburton introduced a second bill, shortly after the execution of the London Burkers.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|143, 194, 197}} The resulting wave of social anxiety helped speed Warburton’s bill through parliament,{{sfnp|XS4952RG|197-198}} and with little parliamentary opposition the Anatomy Act became law on 1 August 1832.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|202, 215}}
The Act abolished that part of the [Murder Act 1752](https://engole.info/murder-act-1752) allowing murderers to be dissected, ending the centuries-old tradition of anatomising felons, although it neither discouraged nor prohibited body snatching, or the sale of corpses, whose legal status remained uncertain.\[d\]The Act left Burking, the crime that had helped push Warburton’s bill through parliament, still feasible. It also allowed a person’s body to be given up for “anatomical examination”, provided that the person concerned had not objected. As the poor were often barely literate and therefore unable to leave written directions in the event of their death, it meant that masters of charitable institutions such as [workhouses](https://engole.info/workhouse) had the power to decide who went to the anatomist’s table. A stipulation that witnesses could intervene was also open to abuse, as such witnesses might be fellow inmates who were powerless to object, or workhouse staff who stood to gain financially.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|205-208}}
## Legacy
The Anatomy Act 1832 was ineffective in its aim to increase the number of cadavers available for anatomical dissection: 600 were available to medical schools in 1832–1833, but that number had fallen to 430 by 1845–1846.{{sfnp|XWYARLUY}}
Neither did the Act quell the public’s concern about dissection. In 1832 there were a growing number of protests, one of the most serious in Manchester. During a cholera epidemic in September 1832 a three-year-old boy was discovered by his grandfather to have been buried with a brick replacing the boy’s missing head, after his death at the Swan Street Cholera Hospital in the city.{{sfnp|XWYARLUY}}
The Anatomy Act 1984 (Commencement) Order 1988 mandated that anyone licensed to practise anatomy under the 1832 Act would lose that right on reaching the age of seventy, and that those premises licensed under the 1832 Act should apply for a new licence.{{sfnp|EMIAME2U}}
The Human Tissue Act 2004 now lays out the legal framework for the “removal, storage, use and disposal of human bodies, organs and tissue” in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.{{sfnp|2ASC9SRR}} Similar legislation was passed by the Scottish devolved government with the Human Tissue (Scotland) Act 2006.{{sfnp|C8U4DVLH}}
## Notes\[+\]
Notes a The London Burkers were active for a few months in London in 1831. b The committee’s administrative records were lost in the 1834 Burning of Parliament and only its minutes and report are extant.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|107-108}} c The Archbishop of Canterbury, Earls of Malmesbury and Harewood, and the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Tenterden, argued that the poor had a right to a decent burial and questioned if people who had broken no laws should be classed alongside murderers. An “unconquerable objection” to dissection held by many paupers was also mentioned.{{sfnp|XS4952RG|157-158}} d The Act left Burking, the crime that had helped push Warburton’s bill through parliament, still feasible.
## References
{{reflist}}
## Works cited
modern-language-association creator asc 1 0 25211
**Categories:** Legislation
---
### [Papists Act 1722](https://engole.info/papists-act-1722/)
**Published:** January 3, 2025
**Author:** Eric Corbett
**Excerpt:** [pimage}https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png[/pimage]Act of the Parliament of Great Britain requiring all Catholics who refused to accept the monarch as the supreme head of the church in England to register themselves and their estates with the authorities.
**Content:**
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg/960px-Coat_of_arms_of_Great_Britain_%281714%E2%80%931801%29.svg.png)Wikimedia Commons
The Papists Act 1722 (9 Geo. 1. c. 24) is an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain, enacted in response to the Jacobite [Atterbury Plot](https://engole.info/atterbury-plot) uncovered that year, a thwarted attempt to restore the Catholic Stuart dynasty to the British throne. Catholics had been “hounded” because of their association with the Stuarts, and since 1715 it had been a requirement that all estates held by Catholics had to be registered with the authorities.{{sfnp|VS79HQT6}}
The 1722 Act additionally required all Catholics who refused to take the oaths of allegiance, supremacy and abjuration,\[a\]The oaths of allegiance and supremacy acknowledged the monarch as the supreme head of the C