RECENT EVENTS
29 APRIL 2019. ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING followed by LESLEY TAYLOR: A WAKEFIELD DANCING MASTER
The evening began with a brief Annual General Meeting in which Ruth Nettleton was confirmed as Chairman for the next season and all officers and members of the Committee were re-elected. Both the Secretary and Treasurer’s reports were read and accepted. As the Society’s finances are in a healthy state, it was agreed to maintain the current level of subscriptions.
Lesley Taylor started her talk by linking the venue of the music class she attended in the 1950s in Wakefield, with the location of a dancing school in the town in the middle of the 18th century. At that time the Earl of Strafford owned an extensive estate to the north of the town centre, which included Northgate Head, a large house with orchards and gardens, once known as Haselden Hall. From the early 1740s this property was leased by Robert Greaves (or Grave) a dancing master formerly based in Briggate in Leeds. Greaves was possibly attracted to Wakefield by the availability of pupils studying at a successful new grammar school at Heath and by the vitality of the social and cultural life of the town, centred around the Assembly Rooms on Southgate. Not only did Greaves teach the young gentlefolk to dance but he was also very active in promoting balls to demonstrate the abilities of his pupils and concerts in which both amateur and professional musicians performed. His own gardens seem to have been the venue of the concerts and became known as Wakefield’s answer to the Vauxhall pleasure gardens in London. Robert Greaves married late in life, but he and his wife had three daughters, two of whom survived him. He died in 1788 and was buried in Wakefield parish church.
25 MARCH 2019. DAVID SCRIVEN: MEMORIALS IN HOLY TRINITY CHURCHYARD
The first burials in Holy Trinity churchyard took place in 1861, four years before Holy Trinity church was consecrated by the bishop of Ripon. Over the following years, it became the resting place of a cross-section of Ossett society ranging from the very rich to paupers who ended their days in Dewsbury Workhouse. Among the wealthiest of those buried at Holy Trinity were the dyer William Gartside, the landowner and maltster Joshua Whitaker and the mungo manufacturer Abraham Pollard. These men were part of Ossett’s elite, but buried near them were humbler people such as the butcher Sarah Asquith and the school teacher David Lucas. Several of those mentioned in the talk played an active part in the public life of the town. Among them was the teetotaller and non-smoker Bennett Brook who campaigned for Ossett to have a Local Board of Health and then to have a Borough Council. Bennett Brook lived to be 88, but the youngest person mentioned, Herbert Aliffe, was only 10 months old when he died in 1899 after suffering convulsions. Unfortunately, his case was not an isolated one as 23% of the burials at Holy Trinity that year were of children under the age of one. Much of the information in the talk came from the ‘Ossett Observer’, which was owned by the Cockburns from 1873, and Stephen Cockburn senior and Stephen Cockburn junior, who between them edited the paper for a generation, are also both buried at Holy Trinity.
25 FEBRUARY 2019. CLIVE McMANUS: CHRISTOPHER SAXTON, ELIZABETHAN MAPMAKER
There are difficulties in tracing Christopher Saxton’s genealogy due to a lack of useful contemporary documents. It is known that his ancestors came from Sowood, Ossett, though later moved to Dunningley, near Tingley. Although modern day researchers have used sources such as parish records, wills and lay subsidies, Saxton’s own birthplace and date have not been revealed. Nor is anything known about his education, though his success as a surveyor must have been partly due to great mathematical knowledge and skill. It has been suggested that he was apprenticed, possibly to John Rudd, vicar of Dewsbury, a noted cartographer. They were certainly working together in 1570. Saxton came to national prominence during 1574-9 when thanks to his patron, Thomas Seckford, he was employed to produce a set of county maps of England and Wales. The resulting series were the first ever published for the entire the country. Each map shows features such as towns, rivers and hills and administrative hundreds and wapentakes. Once completed, the series of maps were collected into the first English atlas. Saxton was well rewarded for his labours and later returned to live and work in Yorkshire, where he completed several surveys commissioned by the Savile family. Although his date and place of death are unknown, it is possible that he was buried at Woodkirk.
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.
The evening began with a brief Annual General Meeting in which Ruth Nettleton was confirmed as Chairman for the next season and all officers and members of the Committee were re-elected. Both the Secretary and Treasurer’s reports were read and accepted. As the Society’s finances are in a healthy state, it was agreed to maintain the current level of subscriptions.
Lesley Taylor started her talk by linking the venue of the music class she attended in the 1950s in Wakefield, with the location of a dancing school in the town in the middle of the 18th century. At that time the Earl of Strafford owned an extensive estate to the north of the town centre, which included Northgate Head, a large house with orchards and gardens, once known as Haselden Hall. From the early 1740s this property was leased by Robert Greaves (or Grave) a dancing master formerly based in Briggate in Leeds. Greaves was possibly attracted to Wakefield by the availability of pupils studying at a successful new grammar school at Heath and by the vitality of the social and cultural life of the town, centred around the Assembly Rooms on Southgate. Not only did Greaves teach the young gentlefolk to dance but he was also very active in promoting balls to demonstrate the abilities of his pupils and concerts in which both amateur and professional musicians performed. His own gardens seem to have been the venue of the concerts and became known as Wakefield’s answer to the Vauxhall pleasure gardens in London. Robert Greaves married late in life, but he and his wife had three daughters, two of whom survived him. He died in 1788 and was buried in Wakefield parish church.
25 MARCH 2019. DAVID SCRIVEN: MEMORIALS IN HOLY TRINITY CHURCHYARD
The first burials in Holy Trinity churchyard took place in 1861, four years before Holy Trinity church was consecrated by the bishop of Ripon. Over the following years, it became the resting place of a cross-section of Ossett society ranging from the very rich to paupers who ended their days in Dewsbury Workhouse. Among the wealthiest of those buried at Holy Trinity were the dyer William Gartside, the landowner and maltster Joshua Whitaker and the mungo manufacturer Abraham Pollard. These men were part of Ossett’s elite, but buried near them were humbler people such as the butcher Sarah Asquith and the school teacher David Lucas. Several of those mentioned in the talk played an active part in the public life of the town. Among them was the teetotaller and non-smoker Bennett Brook who campaigned for Ossett to have a Local Board of Health and then to have a Borough Council. Bennett Brook lived to be 88, but the youngest person mentioned, Herbert Aliffe, was only 10 months old when he died in 1899 after suffering convulsions. Unfortunately, his case was not an isolated one as 23% of the burials at Holy Trinity that year were of children under the age of one. Much of the information in the talk came from the ‘Ossett Observer’, which was owned by the Cockburns from 1873, and Stephen Cockburn senior and Stephen Cockburn junior, who between them edited the paper for a generation, are also both buried at Holy Trinity.
25 FEBRUARY 2019. CLIVE McMANUS: CHRISTOPHER SAXTON, ELIZABETHAN MAPMAKER
There are difficulties in tracing Christopher Saxton’s genealogy due to a lack of useful contemporary documents. It is known that his ancestors came from Sowood, Ossett, though later moved to Dunningley, near Tingley. Although modern day researchers have used sources such as parish records, wills and lay subsidies, Saxton’s own birthplace and date have not been revealed. Nor is anything known about his education, though his success as a surveyor must have been partly due to great mathematical knowledge and skill. It has been suggested that he was apprenticed, possibly to John Rudd, vicar of Dewsbury, a noted cartographer. They were certainly working together in 1570. Saxton came to national prominence during 1574-9 when thanks to his patron, Thomas Seckford, he was employed to produce a set of county maps of England and Wales. The resulting series were the first ever published for the entire the country. Each map shows features such as towns, rivers and hills and administrative hundreds and wapentakes. Once completed, the series of maps were collected into the first English atlas. Saxton was well rewarded for his labours and later returned to live and work in Yorkshire, where he completed several surveys commissioned by the Savile family. Although his date and place of death are unknown, it is possible that he was buried at Woodkirk.
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.
