1 May 1734: “The forwardest spring that ever was known in the memory of man”
John Hobson. 1877. The Journal of Mr. John Hobson, Late of Dodworth Green. Yorkshire Diaries and Autobiographies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Ed. Charles Jackson. Durham: Surtees Society. A (morbid) compendium of everyday England. It is sometimes unclear whether the date given is that of an occurrence or that on which news reached his capacious ears. Get it:
.Excerpt
Here is the forwardest spring that ever was known in the memory of man: the trees in full leave, the hedges green; a month ago a vast of blossom upon all sort of trees; the sloe trees out of blossom; the haythorn in full blossom; the tulips almost over; everything grand and flourishing.
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.
Abbreviations:
- ER: East Riding
- GM: Greater Manchester
- NR: North Riding
- NY: North Yorkshire
- SY: South Yorkshire
- WR: West Riding
- WY: West Yorkshire
Comment
Comment
The editor comments on Haythornthwaite as toponym, near Doncaster, and surname.
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Original
Here is the forwardest spring that ever was known in the memory of man: the trees in full leave, the hedges green; a month ago a vast of blossom upon all sort of trees; the sloe trees out of blossom; the haythorn in full blossom; the tulips almost over; everything grand and flourishing.
55 words.
Tags
Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.
- Crataegus monogyna (1)
· - 📌Dodworth (17) ·
- Haythornthwaite (1) ·
- Hobson, John (32), enthusiastically morbid diarist of Dodworth Green (Barnsley), the date of whose own death is unknown ·
- Little Ice Age (3) ·
- Prunus spinosa (1) ·
- Spring (season) (2) ·
- Tulip (1) ·
- Weather (4) ·
- West Riding of Yorkshire (147) ·
Similar
- 31 December 1733: John Hobson reviews a pleasant but surprising December
- 20 March 1852: Sam Hyam, gents’ outfitter of Briggate, Leeds, markets his spring collection to poetry-lovers
- 1 January 1726: Heavy snow stops the post and kills parson William Baines of Dronfield at Froggatt Moss
- 5 May 1732: William Lindley of Dodworth recalls how charcoal burners would cheat coal merchants at the time of the Restoration
- 21 June 1703: A whirlwind at Hatfield, Doncaster
- 13 March 1728: Wild daffodils in the hedges at Wickersley (Rotherham)
- 29 May 1732: Old William Lindley of Dodworth tells various marvellous stories from his youth
- 5 October 1727: The burial of Francis West (80) removes a witness of the deforestation caused by demand for charcoal in iron production around Higham (Barnsley)
- 12 September 1731: Edward Garner of Dodworth dies, perhaps the victim of his runaway horse
- 8 March 1768: William Evers, engineer-inventor at Swillington (Leeds), advertises his new machine: a windmill for the threshing and grinding of grain
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