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Born 27 May 1870 • Leeds, West Yorkshire, England Died 17 December 1943 • Tisdale, Saskatchewan, Canada Wortley: Past and Present (John Stones, 1887) |
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The Wortley Parochial Magazine: The Sunday School |
This little monograph is more anecdotal than scholarly, and much given to digression (sometimes, to disguise a lack of research, often, to offer a sentimental or moral observation). The author frequently refers to a period 'about seventy years ago', which would have been around the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and only just within living memory. It is unclear whether all his reminiscences are based on personal experience, but they reflect many fundamental differences between village life in the West Riding in the last days of the Regency, and in the last years of the Victorian era. (I have a photocopy of the entire booklet, on five double-sided pages, should anyone want a copy.) This history begins with a few scraps of research: Stones reports that, in 1080 (about the time of the Domesday Book), Leeds was a farming village with a population of about 300, and that: Baines in his Directory of the County of York, published in 1822, gives the population of Wortley at 3126 … The whole township covers an area of about 1036 acres, and contains at present from 25,000 to 30,000 inhabitants, two-thirds of which are in New Wortley, which, during the last 60 years has become a very important suburb of Leeds. Like the professional geographers a century later, Stones notes the importance of the Wellington Bridge ('a noble structure, spanning the river with a single arch, constructed at a cost of £7000 soon after the Battle of Waterloo'), turnpike roads and, particularly, railways. In 1887, 'over a score' of passenger trains ran to Leeds each weekday from Lower Wortley (four on Sundays), and 26 from Upper Wortley (13 on Sundays), and steam trams and omnibuses ran at fifteen minute intervals. 'Comparatively speaking,' Stone says, 'very few persons now take the trouble of walking to and from Leeds, seeing they can ride each way for twopence.' Most of Stones' observations work to the advantage of the modern era. The old toll-bar, 'at which a toll was demanded from all foot-passengers, as well as upon all horses, vehicles, cattle and sheep passing through the said bar to and from Leeds', he characterises as a 'nuisance' which was abandoned when the Corporation of Leeds took over responsibility for the roads from the Turnpike Trust. Stones remarks most frequently on the improvement in moral tone over the seventy years of his study: What is known as Low Wortley was noted at that period for almost all kinds of wickedness; in short, the place had acquired such a notoriety for all that is low, debasing, and demoralizing, that it sometimes went by the name of Sodom. The 'barbarous and horrid practices of dog- and cock-fighting', and even bull-baiting, are the principal offences here, although: At the time here referred to, burglary, warehouse breaking, and poaching were carried on in this part to an alarming extent, [and] some half-dozen persons out of this immediate neighbourhood were convicted and sent to penal servitude for various offences again the law. The poaching took place in Farnley Wood, 'about ten minutes' walk from Low Wortley', which was only cleared for farming in the mid-19th century. It also sheltered the small band of 'flying Cavaliers' who hatched the 'Farnley Wood Plot', after the Battle of Marston Moor (1644), which Stones says ended with their hanging in 1664 (twenty years after the battle and three years after the Restoration?). Stones also recounts some stirring stories of local indignation against Resurrectionists, or body snatchers, who struck at Wortley in 1826 and 1831. The bodies were recovered and re-interred on both occasions, and a permanent watch was established to guard the burial ground. Stones frequent attributes the improvement in public morals to the spread of religion and education. He records that from three places of worship in 1822 -- a Church, a Wesleyan chapel, and an Independent one -- the community had 14 by 1887 (four, Church of England; one, Roman Catholic; the rest the assortment of Methodists, Wesleyans and Baptists still known as Dissenters to some churchmen). In Lower Wortley, the Working Men's Institute housed a branch of the Leeds Free Library and provided the working classes with a place 'to read and hear the news of the day, and to engage in other innocent and lawful recreation. This is far better than spending their money and wasting their time at the ale-bench.' Stones charts the improvement of public education from the old 'dame schools' (which he seems to have attended as a young child) to the establishment of a grammar school (at which he was one of the first pupils) and, eventually, a central School Board. He commends the combined effect of factory acts (to prohibit child labour) and education acts (which made education compulsory and set new standards). He concludes that, by the 1880's, discipline in schools was less brutal, 'the facilities for learning are far greater, the teachers in general are better educated class of men'. Other benefits of modern life include a post office ('which is also a money-order office, also a telegraphic station' with two deliveries a week, but none on Sunday), two police stations, a penny savings bank ('held in the church school-room for a great many years'), not to mention gas works, a reservoir and a gaol. Wortley: Past and Present is most charming on the subject of folklore and local colour. Stone recalls the one- and two-roomed thatched cottages of the past, 'very primitive … very rudely built' and two cottage-dwellers in particular (Robert and Mary Whitaker, known as Bob and Pally Bob respectively, lived in a 'straw-thatched cot' facing the green; Pally Bob was the local sweet-seller). He also describes the ruin of the old manor house, where: The ceiling of the large kitchen was formerly decorated with some curious and antique figures and animals in plaster of Paris, which for a long time were nearly covered over with lime, and when the kitchen was pulled down, were utterly destroyed. The geographers' observations about the irregularity of the old villages are borne out by Stones' observation that: … you might almost imagine that they had fallen from the clouds in a cluster, no uniformity, nothing in the form of streets. The different localities were known by such names as the following, viz.: Top o' t' town, Bottom o' t' town, Cabbage hill, Low-fold, Wasp nest, Town end, Wapping, Granny lane, etc. In the domestic economy of the early 19th century, he says, it was still common for a family to keep a pig over the summer, and slaughter it in the autumn for a feast of fresh meat and a winter's supply of bacon and hams; 'two or three neighbours would join and purchase a quarter of beef, which was cut up, salted and hung'; and it was customary to buy potatoes 'in the ground' -- that is, to pay a farmer for the right to dig within a designated area of the field, and keep all the potatoes that could be found there (an early form of pick-your-own). Stones notes that the best joint of mutton was fourpence a pound 'seventy years ago', and double that by 1887; but as one who remembered the events surrounding the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 (when the price of bread fluctuated wildly, and the political climate with it), he saw the inestimable value of 'cheap, abundant, and good bread' -- the very staff of life for most poor people. Although dismissive of 'the low superstitious notions' of the past, Stones records phenomena including a woman in white at Moggypit Hill, a white rabbit 'on the site where Bethel Chapel now stands', and a white mouse which ran around the edge of Pud-well (opposite the Fleece Inn, where it appeared only at night). Other local apparitions include a ghost known as Guytrash, and 'a large black dog, with a pair of flaming eyes, each about the size of a tea saucer'. By 1887, the sound of 'church-going bell' had consigned 'the whole tribe of ghosts and hobgoblins … to the grave of oblivion'. Out of living memory, he notes that the windmill on Windmill Hill 'was burnt down and never rebuilt', and says of the beck ('a very serpentine watercourse') which forms the boundary between Wortley and Farnley: One hundred years ago, this beck was a clear stream of water, a trout stream in fact, where might be seen that pretty kind of fish in speckled pride, playing its antics in the pure and limpid stream. For many years the water in this beck has been so polluted by the refuse flowing from mills and other places of manufacture, that it is now at times little better than a common sewer, and it would be impossible that any kind of fish could live in it for any great length of time. The climate, nonetheless, was still considered healthy at the end of the 19th century -- which is to say, principally, that the air was relatively unpolluted, with long views across the moors from vantage points such as Windmill Hill and the Leys 'on a clear day'. The soil, Stones says, 'is rather heavy [with] a clay subsoil', better suited to meadow and pasture than cultivation, and suited to manufacturing best of all, as bricks, pottery pipes, 'sanitary tubes, gas retorts, crucibles, filters, fancy bricks, mosaic or tesselated pavements, chimney tops, terra-cotta ornaments, statuary, etc.' The chief employers in this industry, he says, are Joseph Cliff & Sons, and William Ingham & Sons. Woollen manufacture had, in his time, given over from 'manufacturers on a small scale, who, on an average would probably employ half-a-dozen hand looms' to 'machinery [which] has to a great extent gone into the hands of merchants and mill owners'. The hand looms were often in the weavers' own homes, and Stones reports that many older houses indicated by their broad windows that weavers had once worked there. The speciality of the district was 'superfine cloths', and a Wortley man, one James Hargreave, won a competition in 1821 to make cloth for the Duke of York (a dubious privilege, as the Duke was no better paying his bills than any of his family). Mr. Hargreave gave a famous feast for the mill workers on the coronation of the Duke's brother when he became George the Fourth. Of newer industries: … in addition to our domestic trades such as joiners, masons, bricklayers, smiths, plus, butchers, tailors and shoemakers, with shops of almost every description, we have now also machine-makers, millwrights, patent axle makers, several woollen mills, spindle works, curriers, brass and iron founders, corn-millers, maltsters, confectioners, cabinet-makers, several surgeons, more than sufficient of public-houses and beer-shops, some of which I fear have proved a curse to the place rather a blessing. Stones concludes with a the cautionary tale of local manufacturers who fell from wealth and power through greed and speculation (particularly by taking risks in South America), and of 'poor men, natives of our village,from the ranks, and by the blessing of Divine Providence upon their persevering industry, economy, and prudence, have attained to affluence and power and who, today, occupy good positions in society.' |
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