Yorkshire Almanac Serenaded by the military, decorated barges leave Leeds for Liverpool to celebrate the completion, after almost 50 years, of the canal uniting east and west

Unedited excerpt

The excerpt in the book is shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

On Saturday morning at seven o’clock, several of the proprietors of the Canal, accompanied by a number of friends, proceeded in an elegant barge, from the basin of the Canal to the Bridge over the Aire, to commence at that point their voyage to Blackburn, to open that part of the Canal which was still wanting to complete the communication with Liverpool. This vessel was accompanied by a barge belonging to the Union Company, splendidly decorated with flags and streamers. The sailing of the vessels was announced by a discharge of cannon, and the barges entered the canal amidst the discharge of artillery, the animating strains of a full military band, and the acclamations of an immense number of spectators, which lined the banks of the canal for a great distance. On entering the first lock, the band struck up the national air of “God save the King.” The barge of the proprietors bore a flag, in which was inscribed the name of ‘John Hustler,’ the engineer, under whose superintendence a considerable part of the work had been completed. It was intended that another barge belonging to the proprietors, called the Joseph Priestley should have taken part in the procession, but some mischance which happened to it on its voyage to Leeds defeated this part of the plan; all the sloops in the basin were decorated with streamers, and the whole formed a truly animated and delightful scene. It was under these favourable auspices that the two barges proceeded on their route to Liverpool, attended by the military band, who gratified the immense number of persons who followed their route, with playing the most popular airs, marches, &c. It was not an uninteresting theme to endeavour to review the different feelings with which this scene was contemplated by the persons assembled. Many, no doubt, viewed it merely as a splendid and novel spectacle, whilst others contemplated it as the finishing of a great national work, of which they remembered not the beginning: others again associated with the memory of its commencement the earliest recollections of their boyish days; whilst a few, alas, how few, rejoiced in the completion of an undertaking, in the very first stages of which they had taken a lively interest when in the full bloom and vigour of life, to which period this scene would irresistibly carry back their thoughts (a period of nearly fifty years,) which, though brief in the review has been full of important incidents. But it was to all a scene of great interest, and afforded evident satisfaction to the immense multitude that witnessed it.

Our notice of the rest of the voyage must for the present be very brief-The barges reached Skipton on Saturday evening, and on the following day arrived at Burnley. On Monday, about three o’clock in the afternoon, they entered Blackburn, having in their train a number of other vessels. The proprietors and their friends, &c. proceeded with flags and music to the New Inn, where they sat down to an excellent dinner. The bells rung a merry peal, and the afternoon was spent with the utmost harmony and satisfaction. On Tuesday morning, at eight o’clock, all the arrangements being completed, the proprietors’ barge, attended by the sloop of the Union Company, and a number of other vessels decorated with flags, streamers, &c. and crowded with persons of the greatest respectability, entered the new part of the canal amidst the discharge of cannon, and the heartfelt cheering of an immense number of spectators. In the evening the procession reached Wigan, and on Wednesday this interesting ceremony was completed by the arrival of the voyagers at the Basin of the Canal at Liverpool about five o’clock in the evening.

As the aquatic procession passed through the different villages on the banks of the canal, it continued to be greeted with new spectators; nor was it unamusing, as the scene changed, to trace the different costume and manners of these various assemblages. The whole of the voyage was one indeed of peculiar interest, and frequently of great hilarity, and the populace, however noisy and uncouth their expressions of joy might occasionally be, manifested undeviating good humour, to which indeed the politeness, hospitality, and good humour of those who had the management of this procession, did not a little contribute.

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

H/t to the Leeds & Liverpool Canal Society. Their article also contains an excerpt from the Mercury of 1777/06/10 describing the opening ceremony of the Leeds-Gargrave segment on 1777/06/04, not reproduced here. Joseph Priestley (<1741-1817) was superintendent of Leeds & Liverpool Canal Co. for nearly 50 years, and is not to be confused with the Birstall-born scientist and theologian. The lock is apparently 1770-77, the bridge 1800.

The Ellars/The Ellers/Ellers Cottage and J.M.W. Turner

Chapel Allerton estate agents Fowler & Powell claim that the big house on the left of Turner’s image is the same as the one they are keen to shift in summer 2025:

No1. THE ELLERS Historic City Home. Leeds & Bradford Rd LS5

Introduction

Introducing a home that embodies the essence of being ‘steeped in history’ while also serving as ‘the perfect family home.’ This property and plot perfectly combine period charm with modern luxury. Sitting on the bank of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal is No.1 The Ellers – or Ellers house as it is referred to in Turners painting – an imposing historical building and, most importantly, a five-bedroom family home that is perfectly ready to move into. We’re delighted to welcome you to explore No.1 The Ellers in West Leeds.

Historical Significance

The Ellers was built in the early 1800s as a malting house, producing malt for a nearby brewery, but was not named until some years later. The home holds a claim to fame as it sits in a landscape painting by the famous landscape artist Joseph Turner in 1824-5 positioned in the prestigious Tate Gallery. Turner was London-based but would travel around the UK in the summer months, capturing scenes that inspired him. In his watercolour, he captured a barren Kirkstall Abbey with the bustling canal used for transportation, particularly in the textile industry, with one building standing proudly in the image – The Ellers. Framed clippings and photographs detailing the property’s remarkable history and transformation journey can be found displayed around the ground floor of the home.

Even for an estate agent this is pretty silly. Kathleen Gurney has established that the original house, stables, and maltings with direct access to the canal were built by around 1820 on ground already known as the Ellers by an Armley maltster, Peter Tattersall, who was married to her great-great aunt, Mary Cooper (Gurney 1998). I think this is the curious house – see the window alignment and the apparent lack of chimneys on the cold north side – shown on the 1842 OS, and the ground plan appears consistent with Turner’s house:

However, the three-storey house in the early-century vernacular depicted by Turner is clearly not the two-storey late-19th-century house with an H layout(?) visible in 1952 in the background following a road accident:

Shayne Niemen, the architect for the 2004 redevelopment, claims to believe that, despite obvious fundamental differences, the two houses are the same in some sense: “When the planners told us the building was in a Turner painting, restoring it immediately became the number one priority.” However, and I think this is Niemen again, “at some point in the 19th century, the building was … given a new [sandstone] façade, obscuring the gable end visible in … Turner’s watercolour” (Greenwood 2004/02/11). This patent nonsense is presumably the source of the estate agents’ claims. The following two shots, the first from the 2004 architect’s website, the second from Google Maps, may show different stone used in the south-facing cottage (left) and the crossbar of the H, but barring any structural evidence to the contrary, I’m guessing that is a consequence of reuse of stone from the early century building(s):

I think the history went something like this. In the late-ish 19th century, after the original family had moved out (in the 1840s, according to Gurney), the 1810s house was demolished and replaced, starting from scratch (Regency houses tend to be short on foundations), by a south-facing cottage, which was faced with more fashionable and more readily available (canals, railways) fine-grained sandstone from the Pennine Coal Measures (I hope I’m not misinterpreting Graham Lott (Lott 2012)), and which took advantage of the many technological improvements in house construction since the Napoleonic Wars (e.g. flush toilets became common mid-century) Some of the coarser-grained Millstone Grit sandstone may have been reused in the crossbar and rear vertical of the H layout visible in the 1952 photo. Perhaps the rebuild was by the prosperous Leeds draper, George Francis Crowe (1833/4-1909), who was living at The Ellars on Bradford Road, Kirkstall (continuation of Bridge Road) by 1888. The lack of listing suggests to me that the experts believe there to be no historical association. (Erkulis incorrectly says that it is Grade-II listed, though the bridge and lock are.)

The modern house has much in common with the late 19th century one, but the chimneys (which you will note are in a different location from Turner’s) and the rear vertical of the H (industrial function?) had gone by the time Ian Thornton produced the sketch reproduced in Gurney’s piece:

And the garage to the left of the front façade is even newer.

Martin Erkulis, the developer, struggling with the evident contrast between the houses worked on by himself and Turner, decided that Turner’s was simply an invention: “Although the house that Turner depicted has three storeys, Erkulis says there is no evidence that it ever had three floors above ground. ‘At one end of the property is a basement with a vaulted ceiling which will have a window looking out to the front,’ he says. ‘But whether Turner painted from sketches or used artistic licence, we don’t know.’” And on his own site, Erkulis says it is Georgian – presumably in a general historical sense rather than in terms of any stylistic traits.

I think Turner for artistic effect foreshortens the scene and exaggerates height differentials in the landscape (Dover (1825) is the most notorious example of this latter practice of his), but why would he paint the wrong house into an otherwise reasonably verosimil scene, a scene which would probably be familiar to the Fawkes family at Farnley Hall, his principal local clients?

Stuff:

Greenwood has a puzzling quote from David Hill, then Professor of Fine Art at Leeds University, and a prolific writer on Turner. No, an ellars isn’t “a place where elm trees grow”: an eller is an alder – see the OED entry (“common on riverbanks and damp woodland”) and Thoresby’s confirmation (Thoresby 1715). It is true that when Crowe sent his son to Rugby, the address was listed as The Elms, and there were elms along the Aire at Kirkstall, but that doesn’t affect the meaning of ellers/ellars.
I hoped in vain to find something in Lidar.

Something to say? Get in touch

Comment

H/t to the Leeds & Liverpool Canal Society. Their article also contains an excerpt from the Mercury of 1777/06/10 describing the opening ceremony of the Leeds-Gargrave segment on 1777/06/04, not reproduced here. Joseph Priestley (<1741-1817) was superintendent of Leeds & Liverpool Canal Co. for nearly 50 years, and is not to be confused with the Birstall-born scientist and theologian. The lock is apparently 1770-77, the bridge 1800.

The Ellars/The Ellers/Ellers Cottage and J.M.W. Turner

Chapel Allerton estate agents Fowler & Powell claim that the big house on the left of Turner’s image is the same as the one they are keen to shift in summer 2025:

No1. THE ELLERS Historic City Home. Leeds & Bradford Rd LS5

Introduction

Introducing a home that embodies the essence of being ‘steeped in history’ while also serving as ‘the perfect family home.’ This property and plot perfectly combine period charm with modern luxury. Sitting on the bank of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal is No.1 The Ellers – or Ellers house as it is referred to in Turners painting – an imposing historical building and, most importantly, a five-bedroom family home that is perfectly ready to move into. We’re delighted to welcome you to explore No.1 The Ellers in West Leeds.

Historical Significance

The Ellers was built in the early 1800s as a malting house, producing malt for a nearby brewery, but was not named until some years later. The home holds a claim to fame as it sits in a landscape painting by the famous landscape artist Joseph Turner in 1824-5 positioned in the prestigious Tate Gallery. Turner was London-based but would travel around the UK in the summer months, capturing scenes that inspired him. In his watercolour, he captured a barren Kirkstall Abbey with the bustling canal used for transportation, particularly in the textile industry, with one building standing proudly in the image – The Ellers. Framed clippings and photographs detailing the property’s remarkable history and transformation journey can be found displayed around the ground floor of the home.

Even for an estate agent this is pretty silly. Kathleen Gurney has established that the original house, stables, and maltings with direct access to the canal were built by around 1820 on ground already known as the Ellers by an Armley maltster, Peter Tattersall, who was married to her great-great aunt, Mary Cooper (Gurney 1998). I think this is the curious house – see the window alignment and the apparent lack of chimneys on the cold north side – shown on the 1842 OS, and the ground plan appears consistent with Turner’s house:

However, the three-storey house in the early-century vernacular depicted by Turner is clearly not the two-storey late-19th-century house with an H layout(?) visible in 1952 in the background following a road accident:

Shayne Niemen, the architect for the 2004 redevelopment, claims to believe that, despite obvious fundamental differences, the two houses are the same in some sense: “When the planners told us the building was in a Turner painting, restoring it immediately became the number one priority.” However, and I think this is Niemen again, “at some point in the 19th century, the building was … given a new [sandstone] façade, obscuring the gable end visible in … Turner’s watercolour” (Greenwood 2004/02/11). This patent nonsense is presumably the source of the estate agents’ claims. The following two shots, the first from the 2004 architect’s website, the second from Google Maps, may show different stone used in the south-facing cottage (left) and the crossbar of the H, but barring any structural evidence to the contrary, I’m guessing that is a consequence of reuse of stone from the early century building(s):

I think the history went something like this. In the late-ish 19th century, after the original family had moved out (in the 1840s, according to Gurney), the 1810s house was demolished and replaced, starting from scratch (Regency houses tend to be short on foundations), by a south-facing cottage, which was faced with more fashionable and more readily available (canals, railways) fine-grained sandstone from the Pennine Coal Measures (I hope I’m not misinterpreting Graham Lott (Lott 2012)), and which took advantage of the many technological improvements in house construction since the Napoleonic Wars (e.g. flush toilets became common mid-century) Some of the coarser-grained Millstone Grit sandstone may have been reused in the crossbar and rear vertical of the H layout visible in the 1952 photo. Perhaps the rebuild was by the prosperous Leeds draper, George Francis Crowe (1833/4-1909), who was living at The Ellars on Bradford Road, Kirkstall (continuation of Bridge Road) by 1888. The lack of listing suggests to me that the experts believe there to be no historical association. (Erkulis incorrectly says that it is Grade-II listed, though the bridge and lock are.)

The modern house has much in common with the late 19th century one, but the chimneys (which you will note are in a different location from Turner’s) and the rear vertical of the H (industrial function?) had gone by the time Ian Thornton produced the sketch reproduced in Gurney’s piece:

And the garage to the left of the front façade is even newer.

Martin Erkulis, the developer, struggling with the evident contrast between the houses worked on by himself and Turner, decided that Turner’s was simply an invention: “Although the house that Turner depicted has three storeys, Erkulis says there is no evidence that it ever had three floors above ground. ‘At one end of the property is a basement with a vaulted ceiling which will have a window looking out to the front,’ he says. ‘But whether Turner painted from sketches or used artistic licence, we don’t know.’” And on his own site, Erkulis says it is Georgian – presumably in a general historical sense rather than in terms of any stylistic traits.

I think Turner for artistic effect foreshortens the scene and exaggerates height differentials in the landscape (Dover (1825) is the most notorious example of this latter practice of his), but why would he paint the wrong house into an otherwise reasonably verosimil scene, a scene which would probably be familiar to the Fawkes family at Farnley Hall, his principal local clients?

Stuff:

Greenwood has a puzzling quote from David Hill, then Professor of Fine Art at Leeds University, and a prolific writer on Turner. No, an ellars isn’t “a place where elm trees grow”: an eller is an alder – see the OED entry (“common on riverbanks and damp woodland”) and Thoresby’s confirmation (Thoresby 1715). It is true that when Crowe sent his son to Rugby, the address was listed as The Elms, and there were elms along the Aire at Kirkstall, but that doesn’t affect the meaning of ellers/ellars.
I hoped in vain to find something in Lidar.

Something to say? Get in touch

Similar

Glorious present, glorious past: Turner’s image eight years later of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal sets off Ephraim Elsworth’s maltings(?), the Ellers/Ellars, Ellers Bridge, and Kirkstall Lock against the ruins of Kirkstall Abbey

9 June 1758: Entry into law of the first dedicated railway enabling act, for Richard Humble and Charles Brandling’s wagonway from Middleton Colliery to the Aire at Leeds

23 January 1643: Thomas Fairfax, the Rider of the White Horse, captures Leeds from the Beast with the help of Psalm 68

16 August 1842: Lancastrian plug-drawing rioters invade Skipton in an attempt to halt the mills

1 July 1840: The opening of the Hull and Selby Railway terminates the threat to Hull’s port from Goole, Scarborough and Bridlington

13 September 1816: The greatness of Great Britain

19 May 1147: An expedition leaves Fountains Abbey to found Barnoldswick (WR/Lancs), predecessor of Kirkstall Abbey, as told by one of the colonists

25 September 1705: Daniel Defoe is amazed by Leeds’s outdoor cloth market on Briggate, shortly before the opening of the white cloth hall

19 October 1808: William Perigo of Bramley finds that Mary Bateman defrauded him in promising to cure his wife Rebecca’s palpitations, and suspects she died of poisoning

8 June 1561: A York official explains why textile manufacturing has left his city for the West Riding

30 May 1835: Alfred Austin, future poet laureate, “Banjo-Byron that twangs the strum-strum,” is born into rural splendour at Ashwood, 48 Headingley Lane, Leeds

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Austin’s parents were married in 1829 in Barnsley, so Ashwood was built in the early 1830s. It is listed, and Historic England has some fine photos by Martin Pitt. Austin’s father died in the winter of 1857, the same year in which Austin was called to the London Bar, and it sounds like his mother and sister moved from Ashwood to Adel in 1858. Then, presumably, Ashwood Villas and Hilton Court were built on parts of the garden. Ashwood makes far more sense without them. Headingley Hill Congregational Church was designed by Cuthbert Brodrick, architect of Leeds Town Hall, and built in the mid-1860s.

The first home of Alfred Austin: Ashwood, 48 Headingley Lane, Leeds, viewed from the forecourt of Hilton Court (Cobb 2018/01/26)

Eveleigh Bradford and Jane Bower have published profiles of Austin. A cosmopolitan Catholic Tory patriot, he clearly preferred Italy to his birthplace, which he doesn’t seem to have versified, and where the Leeds Civic Trust has demonstrated what some regard as embarrassing smallness of mind in denying him a blue plaque. However, there’s a lot to be said for this contemporary view:

Mr. Alfred Austin is another poet who takes himself very seriously, in six or seven volumes of verse (it does not matter counting precisely, for they are all very much alike), admirably printed, with Pegasus on the cover, and everything proper. Mr. Austin writes for the most part in smooth and polished metre, and he does not make any ostentatious attempt to mimic the style of greater poets, except in the portentous array of eight hundred and eighty-six stanzas, under the title ‘The Human Tragedy’ (why this particular story should be the human tragedy par excellence, Heaven only knows!), which was probably what provoked Browning’s reference to the author as

Banjo-Byron, that twangs the strum-strum there.

On the other hand, Mr. Austin is absolutely without ‘style’ of his own. He has never achieved style, never risen to it; and his volumes, considering that they are mostly fairly written verse and not without pleasing ideas of a simple and obvious kind, are the most absolutely colourless poetry, to have any pretence to be called poetry at all, that we have ever turned over. The matter is made worse by the author’s utter deficiency in the sense of humour – a deficiency which he shares with some great poets (Wordsworth, for example), but which is a peculiarly dangerous defect for a ‘minor poet.’ A sense of humour would have saved him at all events from such extraordinary bathos, for instance, as when the hero of ‘the human tragedy’ encounters his faithless fiancée:

The shop whence they that moment had emerged
Plainly bespoke their errand up to town (!!)

and would have saved him from making himself a laughing-stock in the conclusion of his poem ‘At Delphi,’ where he professes to have hesitated about crowning his head with the indigenous laurel, lest he should court the fate of Marsyas, but is emboldened by the voice of the god assuring him that there is no ill feeling:

Take it! wear it! ’tis for thee,
Singer from the Northern Sea.

(Edinburgh Review 1893)

I’ve only read vol. 1 of the autobiography, which is very good on mid-century Italy, but contains several delightful anecdotes of 1830s and 1840s Leeds. For example:

Wool-stapling, as followed by my Father, Grandfather, and Great-grandfather — the last two had passed away before I reached the age of memory — seemed to me at the time a singularly light occupation. We all had to be in the breakfast-room at nine o’clock; and Morning Prayers, read by my Father, always preceded the morning meal. When it was over, he lingered among the flowers, the poultry, and the pigeons, and not till about ten o’clock did he leave for Leeds, where, in Albion Street, his office and warehouses were. He invariably walked there and back, a distance of about two and a half miles each way; for, with the masculine habit of the time, he looked on driving in carriages, save for pleasure or very long distances, as suitable only to women. In those days, people dined at a much earlier hour than now; hence he was always home by five, frequently by four o’clock, and on Saturdays yet earlier. I mention these otherwise insignificant facts to show under what leisurely conditions business was then conducted. His remaining share in it consisted in periodical visits to London when the Wool-Sales took place, where he bought what his judgment told him the cloth manufacturers of the West Riding would be likely to require, warehousing what he bought, and selling to them the number of bales they needed. Such was the trade of Wool-stapling in those days. I am told it no longer exists; since the mill-owners, their manufactures being now on so large a scale, purchase for themselves in London and elsewhere what they require. Sometimes my Father would pay a visit to Germany, in connection with his interests at home; and for years I kept a letter from him, from Breslau, with a coloured picture of a Prussian Hussar in the corner of the first page. I remember that his judgment, in all matters of life and conduct, was regarded as a superior one, and he was frequently asked for advice, which they who sought it believed to be deliberately and impartially formed. More than once pressed to be Mayor of the Borough, all the more remarkable in those days, since he was a Roman Catholic, he thought it wiser to decline the office, though he accepted the duties of Magistrate. As the sequel of this narrative will show, he died when I was only twenty-two years of age, and within a few weeks after I had been called to the Bar. But I well remember the even cheerfulness of his temper, and on his face that philosophic smile which testifies to a knowledge of human nature, and a kindly indulgence towards it. No University education was then accessible in England to Roman Catholics, and, save for ecclesiastical purposes, hardly a collegiate one. But, on the other hand, the Grammar Schools of England still offered sound mental training of no narrow character, and his acquaintance with the best Literature was remarked by me from my earliest days. He was, in no filially conventional sense, the best of Fathers; solicitous for the education of his children, comprehensive as regards study, severe in respect of conduct, and reasonably strict as a mentor in morals. The most devoted and domestic of husbands, he was, I could not help observing, much liked and trusted by women of every condition; for his attitude towards them was essentially chivalrous, and he impressed on his sons its supreme importance. The phrases most frequent on his lips were “Fairplay” and “Honour bright.” His piety was simple and sincere, but never intolerant.

Re Catholic Emancipation:

Catholics at that time were on the side of the Whigs, who had long been advocates of the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act, which was passed a year after his marriage, which had been compulsorily celebrated in a Protestant Church before being sanctioned in the Roman Catholic one of Saint Anne’s. To me, when a child, differences of Party bias naturally signified nothing. But I took a keen interest in the hoisting of a large Orange Flag, the Whig-Colour in the Borough, on our house at election time. Many years later, my Father, as was and is still the case with most Roman Catholics, transferred his sympathies to the Conservative Cause ; and I recollect a Mr. Beecroft, who had been returned by a very small majority as Conservative member for Leeds, telling me in the lobby of the House of Commons he owed that majority entirely to the local influence of my Father.

Re his childhood at Ashwood, Headingley:

Reminiscences of early childhood, especially if told by oneself, are apt to be rather naif, and only raise a smile. If I say that I have a clear and loving recollection of my own special nurse, Mary Wilkinson, whose prattle was of the ordinary pattern of such; and for no other reason I can imagine, than that she had certain vague ideas concerning Alfred the Great, and my Christian name was the same as that of England’s Darling, she was fond of iterating and reiterating the misappropriate words, “He shall be King of all England, he shall.” I equally well remember our nursery governess, Ann Ingleson, who afterwards married the Manager of a prosperous cotton-mill. My earliest recollections are of a disposition to wander alone in meadows, gathering wild-flowers, and humming to myself songs I had heard others sing. At night I used to steal as quietly as I could out of my bed, and creep into the day nursery, from the window of which could be seen the rising of the moon, or the afterglow of sunset in summer. Anything of a more active character in which I took part arose from the suggestions of my elder brother and sister, the former of whom thought it the most natural because the most hazardous of sports, to wheel me along the top of the kitchen-garden wall, or to inter my sister’s doll with funeral honours, subject to its being dug up again; and the latter of whom displayed the girlish inclination towards mischief from the sheer enjoyment of doing what was forbidden. But my heart was in none of these. A little later I had a genuine pleasure in elementary cricket, flying my kite, and shooting arrows at a fixed target.

When about six, I was sent to a day-school in the village of Headingley, kept by two maiden ladies, the Misses Summers, staid and conscientious experts in teaching young children the rudiments of learn ing. My sister Winifred was my companion as far as their door, and then she went on to a Mrs. Gomoschinska, the English widow of a Pole, who educated one or two “young ladies” in what were then regarded as the necessary “accomplishments” for such. As an indication, possibly, of an inborn romantic tendency, I may recall an indefinable feeling which I cherished for a girl of my own age, who likewise was a pupil of the Misses Summers, and who, it would seem, in some degree shared the sentiment, since it was arranged between us that whichever of the two started schoolward first, placed a stone outside our garden gate as a token. I have always understood that what was there taught me was taught thoroughly.

Holidays in Ilkley:

Our summer holiday was generally passed by my sister and myself at Ilkley, now well known to Hydropathists, but then as primitive a little place as was to be found in the island, and about fourteen miles from Headingley, the road to it being up the lovely valley of the Wharfe through a small township of the name of Otley… But I already loved the [Wharfe], and used to lean for hours over its picturesque bridge at the end of the lane where the elder and the woodbine scented the air. There was what was called the village street, but it was paved roughly, if at all; and a beck, as small streams are called in Yorkshire, and never dry, zigzagged through it. With the exception of the Inn, from which the Daily Coach started for Leeds or Bradford to much blowing of horns, I do not think there was a tiled or slated roof in the place. All the other houses were thatched; and our lodgings were in the chief of these, kept by a Mr. and Mrs. Senior, along whose kitchen ceiling were stretched wires, over which home-made oatcake was dried. Immediately opposite was the equally primitive home of Betty Butterfield, much frequented by us, since she kept donkeys for hire, and had charge of the baths and wells up the hill on Ilkley Moor. It was altogether a place after my young heart; and though I do not think we ever took the baths, we used to walk up the hill every morning to where they were, to drink the cold pellucid water of an adjoining well that was supposed to have special health-giving virtues. I have a clear recollection of seeing an incorrigible drunkard in the Village Stocks, a revival of which I shall shock the sentimentalist by saying I should much like to see; and farmers and their wives who lived in the neighbourhood invariably riding into the village pillion fashion. Every Saturday, during the time we remained at Ilkley, our parents drove over from Headingley. On Sunday morning we all attended Mass in the private chapel in Middleton Park, belonging to the Middleton family, and in the afternoon we were driven to Bolton, six miles from Ilkley, whose ruined Abbey on the Wharfe, whose bounding and flashing waterfall, apparently endless woods, through which the Wharfe flowed and foamed, and well-known “Strid,” filled me with romantic glee. They have all been celebrated, as I discovered later on, by Wordsworth in his poem “Hart-Leap Well.” … I am told that Ilkley is now a model Hydropathic resort, whose once rocky fern-clad slopes are covered with the huge conventional hotels of to-day, spacious Clubs and Concert-Rooms, and all the other concomitants of our much-vaunted material Progress and Civilization. And so one visits it no more, but repairs for rustic refreshment of the spirit to places mayhap such as Garmisch in the Bavarian Highlands, or to Château d’OEx.

Meanwood Beck:

When I strolled with my parents along the stream, then clear and silvery, now black as Erebus, that wound its way to Meanwood and Wheatwood…

Something to say? Get in touch

Yorkshire Almanac 2025

19 October 1816: Serenaded by the military, decorated barges leave Leeds for Liverpool to celebrate the completion, after almost 50 years, of the canal uniting east and west

Unedited excerpt

Comment

Comment

The Ellars/The Ellers/Ellers Cottage and J.M.W. Turner

Tags

Comment

Comment

The Ellars/The Ellers/Ellers Cottage and J.M.W. Turner

Similar

Comment

Comment

Search

Subscribe/buy

Donate

Music & books

Social