RECENT EVENTS
28 JANUARY 2019. RUTH NETTLETON: OSSETT PUBS
With a wide-ranging series of photographs, our speaker embarked on a tour of Ossett, showing the many pubs in the town, some of which have now disappeared. The Quiet Woman at the top of Storrs Hill Road (later the Junction Inn,) was later converted into a greengrocer’s shop. The Flying Horse on Dewsbury Road was demolished in the early 2000s and houses built on the site, although its bowling green still exists. On the other hand, the Prince of Wales, on South Parade, was converted into a pub from a Primitive Methodist chapel in the 1860s and is still open today. The old Miller’s Arms, later Brewer’s Pride at Healey, is now the home of the successful Ossett Brewery. The talk clearly demonstrated the important part pubs play in the Ossett townscape .
26 NOVEMBER 2018. ALAN HOWE AND STEVE WILSON: OSSETT WAR MEMORIAL
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of World War One, Alan Howe, Steven Wilson and Neville Ashby began to research the biographies of Ossett men who had lost their lives in the conflict. Although 230 were listed on Ossett’s roll of honour, they went on to find another 85 names and later extended the search to servicemen and women of World War Two. (See www.ossett.net). Ossett people began to discuss ways of commemorating the fallen as early as 1917, but there was little enthusiasm for the project despite ideas for a park, scholarships, swimming baths or bronze statue being put forward. Eventually, a simple war memorial, erected on Kingsway, was dedicated in the presence of Lord Lascelles, on 11th November 1928. Ninety years later Alan Howe and a small group began planning to commemorate all those people their research had discovered. With funding from Wakefield Council and the support of the British Legion, they arranged for the names to be cut into granite sets to be laid around the war memorial, now in the Market Place. Despite setbacks, all was ready for the dedication of these names, which took place in front of a large crowd on Sunday 11th November..
29 OCTOBER. IAN STEVENSON: YORKSHIRE DIALECT
Ian, a member of the Yorkshire Dialect Society, started his talk by drawing a distinction between accent and dialect: far more people speak with a Yorkshire accent today than use Yorkshire dialect. Dialect is sometimes wrongly viewed as a corruption of Standard English. In fact Yorkshire dialect originated in Old English and Old Norse, both of which were spoken in early medieval Yorkshire. Not surprisingly, many Yorkshire dialect words have parallels in modern Scandinavian languages including Icelandic. Naturally dialect changed over time and its use declined in the 20th century, partly as a result of social and economic changes. Rendering Yorkshire dialect into written text has been a challenge which some authors have met more successfully than others. Some writers have been misguided enough to create a generalised northern dialect using words taken from different parts of the north and even from the south of England. Even the publicity for Yorkshire Tea uses the word ‘brew’ rather than the Yorkshire ‘mash’.
24 SEPTEMBER 2018. DAVID SCRIMGEOUR: THE EVOLUTION OF ASYLUM PATIENT PHOTOGRAPHY.
David pointed out that photography was being used to capture the appearance of asylum residents from the 1850s. Dr Hugh Welch Diamond of the Surrey Lunatic Asylum explained that the advantages of a photographic record were that it helped with the identification and diagnoses of his patients. Dr James Crichton-Browne introduced photography into the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum in Wakefield in the 1860s. He sent many photographs to Charles Darwin while the latter was researching his book on the facial expression of human emotions: Darwin believed that asylum residents were unlikely to disguise or fake their feelings. As a result of Crichton-Browne’s correspondence with Darwin, Cambridge University has a collection of Browne’s photographs, while the West Yorkshire History Centre has another 400. Crichton-Browne stopped commissioning photographs taken in the early 1870s and it was not until twenty years later that the Wakefield Asylum resumed the photographing of residents on a regular basis. David illustrated his talk with a wide selection of asylum photographs, many of them moving records of Victorian mental illness.
With a wide-ranging series of photographs, our speaker embarked on a tour of Ossett, showing the many pubs in the town, some of which have now disappeared. The Quiet Woman at the top of Storrs Hill Road (later the Junction Inn,) was later converted into a greengrocer’s shop. The Flying Horse on Dewsbury Road was demolished in the early 2000s and houses built on the site, although its bowling green still exists. On the other hand, the Prince of Wales, on South Parade, was converted into a pub from a Primitive Methodist chapel in the 1860s and is still open today. The old Miller’s Arms, later Brewer’s Pride at Healey, is now the home of the successful Ossett Brewery. The talk clearly demonstrated the important part pubs play in the Ossett townscape .
26 NOVEMBER 2018. ALAN HOWE AND STEVE WILSON: OSSETT WAR MEMORIAL
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of World War One, Alan Howe, Steven Wilson and Neville Ashby began to research the biographies of Ossett men who had lost their lives in the conflict. Although 230 were listed on Ossett’s roll of honour, they went on to find another 85 names and later extended the search to servicemen and women of World War Two. (See www.ossett.net). Ossett people began to discuss ways of commemorating the fallen as early as 1917, but there was little enthusiasm for the project despite ideas for a park, scholarships, swimming baths or bronze statue being put forward. Eventually, a simple war memorial, erected on Kingsway, was dedicated in the presence of Lord Lascelles, on 11th November 1928. Ninety years later Alan Howe and a small group began planning to commemorate all those people their research had discovered. With funding from Wakefield Council and the support of the British Legion, they arranged for the names to be cut into granite sets to be laid around the war memorial, now in the Market Place. Despite setbacks, all was ready for the dedication of these names, which took place in front of a large crowd on Sunday 11th November..
29 OCTOBER. IAN STEVENSON: YORKSHIRE DIALECT
Ian, a member of the Yorkshire Dialect Society, started his talk by drawing a distinction between accent and dialect: far more people speak with a Yorkshire accent today than use Yorkshire dialect. Dialect is sometimes wrongly viewed as a corruption of Standard English. In fact Yorkshire dialect originated in Old English and Old Norse, both of which were spoken in early medieval Yorkshire. Not surprisingly, many Yorkshire dialect words have parallels in modern Scandinavian languages including Icelandic. Naturally dialect changed over time and its use declined in the 20th century, partly as a result of social and economic changes. Rendering Yorkshire dialect into written text has been a challenge which some authors have met more successfully than others. Some writers have been misguided enough to create a generalised northern dialect using words taken from different parts of the north and even from the south of England. Even the publicity for Yorkshire Tea uses the word ‘brew’ rather than the Yorkshire ‘mash’.
24 SEPTEMBER 2018. DAVID SCRIMGEOUR: THE EVOLUTION OF ASYLUM PATIENT PHOTOGRAPHY.
David pointed out that photography was being used to capture the appearance of asylum residents from the 1850s. Dr Hugh Welch Diamond of the Surrey Lunatic Asylum explained that the advantages of a photographic record were that it helped with the identification and diagnoses of his patients. Dr James Crichton-Browne introduced photography into the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum in Wakefield in the 1860s. He sent many photographs to Charles Darwin while the latter was researching his book on the facial expression of human emotions: Darwin believed that asylum residents were unlikely to disguise or fake their feelings. As a result of Crichton-Browne’s correspondence with Darwin, Cambridge University has a collection of Browne’s photographs, while the West Yorkshire History Centre has another 400. Crichton-Browne stopped commissioning photographs taken in the early 1870s and it was not until twenty years later that the Wakefield Asylum resumed the photographing of residents on a regular basis. David illustrated his talk with a wide selection of asylum photographs, many of them moving records of Victorian mental illness.
