Selby

In "Yorkshire Rambles", the cult international TV programme, your roving reporter visited the town of Selby yesterday. A very different place from Thurcroft, it sits on a bend in the River Ouse, some fourteen miles south of York. 

Shirley's sister Carolyn lives nearby and we were paying her a day visit which would include a trip to Selby - birthplace of King Henry I. They were looking forward to shopping but I just wanted to look round the town's ancient abbey It was founded in 1069, though Vikings and Saxons had occupied the abbey site long before that.

It was a splendid day to view the old abbey with sunlight streaming in and very few other visitors in attendance. What an amazing building! Gnarled like an old oak tree, it has many stories to tell and is arguably one of  England's best kept secrets. So shh! Don't tell anybody else.

High up in the south clerestory, I noted the famed Washington Window containing the heraldic arms of the same Washington family that produced the first president of the USA. The glass is fourteenth century.When Glover the Herald visited Selby in 1584-5 he described the escutcheon as 'Argent, two bars and in chief three mullets pierced, gules'. 

The 14th century Washington coat of arms contains three stars above red and white stripes, and is one of the first known representations of the stars and stripes pattern later used for the US flag. The window is thought to commemorate John Wessington, Prior of Durham (1416-1446). Because of this  Washington connection, Selby Abbey is on the 'American Trail' of attractions around the UK with strong American historical connections.

Other noteworthy contents include the magnificent fourteenth century stained glass window directly behind the altar - The Jesse Window. It tells the story of Jesus's lineage and is testament to the skill and patience of long forgotten medieval craftsmen. Below you can see a section of the window and in the next picture you can see the Jesse Window looming behind the intricately carved wooden altar:-

Something else that caught our eye was a feature called the "Lepersquint" which was essentially a hole in the thick limestone north wall that allowed medieval lepers to stand outside the church and look in towards the altar. They could thereby participate in religious services without infecting healthy townspeople. I imagine the lepers pushing and shoving each other to get a look in as bits of their bodies fell off..."I'd give my right arm to look through that lepersquint!"

We stayed for an hour or so and then Shirley and Carolyn went shopping while I strolled out of the town centre, taking in various sights and outside some Victorian almshouses I chatted to a ninety two year old resident who was waiting for her seventy year old daughter to arrive to undertake a few "messages".

Selby felt like a town that is proud of itself. There was hardly any litter or graffiti and the main shopping streets had not been taken over by charities. People seemed cheerful and well-heeled as they went about their business and in "Mr C's Fish Restaurant" we were greeted warmly by the staff before sitting down to one of the most popular and traditional English meals - battered cod and chips (fried potato fingers) with mushy peas, buttered bread and a fresh pot of tea. 

Here's Shirley and Carolyn in front of the magnificent Norman west door of Selby Abbey:-

Thurcroft

For everything there has to be a first and I guess that this must be the first time that anybody anywhere has ever blogged about a former pit village in South Yorkshire called Thurcroft. It's like the land that time forgot. It isn't very well signposted and to the north and west it is bordered by motorways. Winding lanes are its main links with the outside world. Sheffield is only five miles away but I don't know anybody else in my neighbourhood who has ever been to Thurcroft.

John Street, Thurcroft

It has a population of just over 5,000 simply because once the village was dominated by the local coalmine and its associated charcoal coloured slagheaps. No duck ponds here or oak-timbered pubs, no horsey girls exercising their ponies, no grouse shooters or Range Rovers. This is a different world, a world of work but without the work. When the pit finally closed in 1991, it was as if the village had suffered a debilitating stroke from which it has never really recovered.

Nature reclaiming the old colliery site

There's a kebab shop on Green Arbour Road, a fish and chip shop, three or four hairdressers, "Thurcroft Mini-Mart" and "Booze 4 You", "Di's Diner", "C.J's Frozen Foods" as well as the "Thurcroft Miners Welfare Club" where pints of bitter cost £1.55 and lager is £2.19. It's a place where people really know what hard times mean. You can see it in their eyes.

Not long after parking my car near the Miners Welfare I needed a lavatory and so brazenly stepped into a  functional red brick establishment called "Top Club". I noticed a sign on the door - "If you were barred by previous management you are still barred!" and in the Gents there was another notice that said "Anyone found taking drugs in here will be barred for life!" How charming! This was clearly not the sort of social venue frequented by Messrs Cameron and Clegg, BBC executives or Premiership footballers. They inhabit a very different kind of England the sort of England that Thurcroft people only see on TV. To them it might as well be California.

I marched past the huge colliery site which Nature is trying desperately to retrieve. When I first started teaching in South Yorkshire I frequently used to ride a slow bus back to Sheffield past Thurcroft Colliery from an equally godforsaken pit village called Dinnington. But in those days each of the pits were in full production and families had both money and pride. Now it's as if everybody's favourite grandma has just died.

Thurcroft's primary school is now called "Thurcroft Junior Academy" and is run by an "educational trust". Trust? I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them. They have even put the poor children in blazers with old gold edging. What the hell for? This is Thurcroft - not leafy Surrey or Oxfordshire. Why does anybody imagine that forcing kids to wear traditional uniforms will somehow encourage greater educational success? Next to the school is the Gordon Bennett Memorial Hall which seems a very appropriate name. Junior Academy? A pit village without a pit? Gordon Bennett!

If you would like to see more of this unsung and forgotten place, why not cruise round it courtesy of Google Streetview?  There are many different versions of England and not all of them belong on biscuit tin lids. Like other hardworking South Yorkshire pit villages, Thurcroft gave its very lifeblood to this country and for that it deserves enormous respect.

(Blogpost amended May 2020)

Thurcroft Junior Academy aka Thurcroft Primary School

Stupid

Yesterday, polling stations were open across England and Wales for the election of our first local Police and Crime Commissioners. The turnout was utterly abysmal - testament to the electorate's justifiable suspicions and disinterest in the whole expensive affair. This is the first election I have refused to participate in, viewing my non-participation as a suitable sign of disapproval. Around the country, turnouts appear to have ranged between 7% and 19% and in the city of Coventry, for example, many voters simply spoilt their ballot papers. The BBC report that some polling stations attracted no voters whatsoever  - empty ballot boxes.

Hi-jacked by political parties, in my estimation the bandwagon has taken precious funds away from police forces. The Commissioners with their offices, support staff and generous expenses will each cost the nation around quarter of a million pounds a year. That's a hell of a lot police officers' salaries.

Over in Hull, it is likely that former Deputy Primeminister, John Prescott (aged 74) will become that area's first commissioner. I don't wish to appear ageist but in the majority of occupations people of seventy four have retired long before - in their early sixties - if not before. Why should Lord Prescott be any different?

The bottom line is that the neverending battle to uphold the law and suppress criminal activity costs money - lots of it. When funds are cut back, the basic task of any police force becomes more difficult and "democratically elected" commissioners will have no impact whatsoever in achieving more effective policing when funds are constantly being eroded by the same Westminster government that came up with this stupid idea.

Sapphires

It takes forty five minutes to march from our house to "The Showroom" cinema in the city centre. So this pale November morning I set off just after ten o'clock for the 11am over 55's showing of an Australian film called "The Sapphires". Not only did I get to see the film at a bargain basement price, I also received a free coffee and a piece of fruitcake.

The film reminded me of "The Commitments" and was equally pleasant as light entertainment. If you were going to pigeonhole it you might say that "The Sapphires" is a musical comedy, loosely based on the true story of an aboriginal singing group that entertained troops in Vietnam in the early nineteen seventies. If you're looking for gritty realism or a meaningful cinematic post mortem on the degradations heaped upon aboriginal Australians then you won't find it here. Instead, you'll find some tears and some laughter in a "feel good" movie that is interspersed with some of the classics of soul music.

Directed by Wayne Blair, "The Sapphires", released in August 2012, was genuinely entertaining and left a pleasant glow behind in the auditorium. As Betty said to three other grey-haired ladies in the carpeted foyer afterwards, "Did you enjoy that?" and they all smiled, replying "Yes", "Good fillm that one" etc.. I think Wayne Blair, his crew and the actors would have been delighted with such a positive reaction. Sometimes you don't want to see films that brand themselves deep into your memory - sometimes you just want to be entertained.

Driving through Vietnam, The Sapphires with their manager Dave are
alarmed when they come to a Vietcong roadblock.

Continuation

...and so after visiting Bolsover Castle, we had a little look at the town itself before strolling off into the countryside. The Remembrance Sunday ceremonies were still in full swing by the town's well-kept war memorial. It seemed that everybody had turned out including the yellow-capped brownies over whom I peered. Oddly, the two minute silence happened at midday and not at the usual eleven o' clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

We had hot drinks and jacket potatoes in "The Cavendish" before setting off along Moor Lane, past the entrance to Bolsover Town's football ground - "The Field of Dreams"  and then across the fields of earth, following ancient rights of way to the delightful village of Scarcliffe. We passed by the source of the River Poulter and along grassy Poulterwell Lane to Palterton, then back northwards along the limestone ridge to Bolsover. There we visited the antique centre in what was once a grand public house and Shirley went back to the castle to buy a set of English heritage chutneys as a Christmas present for Alison - a friend and work colleague.

Scarcliffe - St Leonard's

Palterton Primary School

Bolsover Parish Church

And finally, let us return to the castle for those (mentioning no names) who like to see pictures of little boys weeing. You know who you are:-

Bolsover

Model of Bolsover Castle with the real thing behind it.

" Bolsover Castle occupies the hilltop site of a medieval fortress built by the Peveril family. The wealthy Sir Charles Cavendish - who already owned several other great mansions, including one only a few miles away - bought the old fortress in 1612 and began work on his Little Castle project.

His son William - playboy, poet, courtier and later Civil War Royalist general and first Duke of Newcastle - inherited the Little Castle in 1617 and set about its completion, assisted by the architect John Smythson. What resulted was a kind of 'toy keep', housing tiers of luxurious staterooms. The exquisitely carved fireplaces, and richly-coloured murals and panelling of its miraculously preserved and beautifully restored interiors still take the visitor on an allegorical journey from earthly concerns to heavenly (and erotic) delights.

William also added the vast and stately Terrace Range overlooking the Vale of Scarsdale, now a dramatic roofless shell. To show off his achievement, in 1634 he invited King Charles I and his court to "Love's Welcome to Bolsover", a masque specially written by Ben Jonson for performance in the Fountain Garden. Finally he constructed the cavernous Riding House with its magnificent roof and viewing galleries, among the finest surviving indoor riding schools in the country and a landmark in British equestrianism: here he indulged his passion for training great horses in stately dressage. 

The Venus Fountain, with 23 new statues, plays again for the first time in centuries, and the 'Caesar paintings' commissioned by Cavendish and depicting Roman emperors and empresses have also returned to Bolsover." - English Heritage Description

As Sunday was scheduled to be sunny, Shirley and I set off early for Bolsover - a little Derbyshire town we had never visited before. It lies about seven miles east of Chesterfield on the other side of the M1 motorway and was once well-known as a centre for coal mining. But the pits have all closed and evidence of that dirty industry is hard to find.

Before setting off on the five mile walk I had planned out of the town, we visited Bolsover Castle and we were pleased to find that only a dozen other visitors had bought tickets so as we explored the site with its amazing "Little Castle" we could do so in peace without being jostled or distracted. 

The castle's location is quite spectacular and to see it on a blue sky November morning was marvellous. Below you can see just a sample of my photos. Top row - oak roof construction in The Riding Range & view from The Terrace Range. Second row - cross-shaped aperture in the castle wall & "The Little Castle". Third row - Ceiling of the Elysium Room & bench in north western corner. Bottom - Shirley in the enclosed garden of "The Little Castle".

Click to enlarge photos:-

Pathé

The Pathé company was founded as Société Pathé Frères in Paris on 28th September 1896, by the four brothers Charles, Émile, Théophile and Jacques Pathé During the first part of the twentieth century, Pathé became the largest film equipment and production company in the world, as well as a major producer of phonograph records.

In 1910, Charles Pathé was the brother who conceived the idea of the Pathé News Service which became a vital feature of the British cinema experience from the nineteen twenties right up to 1970. In an age where people did not have access to twenty four hour news and faraway places seemed, well, very faraway, Pathé interpreted what was going on both nationally and internationally. Sometimes, right wing political bias is very evident in the company's descriptions of workers' industrial action and there is often a paternalistic or propagandist air about the commentaries but there is no doubt that for forty years Pathé had a huge impact upon the British people's understanding of the world they inhabited.

Recently, I have enjoyed exploring a range of clips from the British Pathé online library. I have seen my football team - Hull City in training in 1935. I have seen the East Coast floods of 1953, the funeral of Winston Churchill, Pablo Picasso arriving at Sheffield City Hall for a World Peace Conference and The Beatles first arrival in America. To visit the Pathé website click on the perky cock below. If you are interested in modern history or simply inquisitive, you will not be disappointed:-

And just as a "taster", here's a somehow disturbing "human interest" item from 1935. I wonder whatever happened to the unfortunate Leslie Bowles - the "ten stone baby" and why don't English newsreaders talk like that any more?