Kelbrook

Rainy November - a visit to Kelbrook, the village where I lived until I was 3 years old, where my mum and brother were born and where we stayed during school holidays....

Here I am by the beck, from which the village takes its name: 'coele', meaning gulley or ravine, 'broc', meaning brook or stream, in the language of the Angles... and so it's still pronounced, with the soft 'ch' , and 'oo' between 'luck' and 'loch', even though these are the Disputed Territories, annexed by Lancashire, where 'brook' should rhyme with 'fluke'. The Brook in the Ravine, the deep, narrow part of the beck running through Harden Clough, site of one of the ancient settlements from which the village formed. Where we once built a dam of stones across the beck to make a swimming pool, and got our first sunburn.

From the archives of the Craven Herald and Pioneer: a Celtic stone head, found at the Hague, site of another ancient settlement, on the southern outskirts of the village. It is the household god of a family belonging to the Brigante tribe and dates from the time of the Roman occupation of Yorkshire, about 2000 years ago.

Kelbrook's earliest residents, however, lived neither at Harden nor at Hague but on Kelbrook Moor, around 4000 years ago. They were a small group of semi-nomadic farming people, perhaps one family. A few flint tools found on the moor top early last century are all that survives of them. In the City Museum at Leeds I heard the reconstructed music of the Malham Pipe, a little 3-holed bone whistle found on moorland near Malham, dating from the same period.

Yellow Hall: this is the house my grandparents moved to from Merseyside, about 1940, and where my mum was born.

There's a new village hall, shared with neighbouring Sough - it rhymes with 'ruff', not 'sow' ('sogh' meaning 'marsh'), as I think should Gimmerton Sough in 'Wuthering Heights.' The valley was once all marshland, with woods of oak and ash covering the hillsides leading to Kelbrook Moor. In the fields where we played as children clumps of reeds grew up among the buttercups and daisies.

The last time I'd been here was for my Aunty's funeral, about 2 years before. After the service I stood with my brother in the early autumn sunshine, outside the church, by Low Bridge, looking up the main street at all the little places where we'd learned to walk and to call a bird a bird and a stone a stone. People stood on Dotcliffe Lane and stared at us, like we'd come back from another world. ('Dotcliffe', from the Dock leaves which grow profusely there, the leaves that take away the sting of nettles, or sunburn)

Tynemouth/Cullercoats Photos

The Dove Marine Laboratory, where the sea is made.

The strange world of the Blue Reef Aquarium seals - such different creatures under water.

Remains of the great barrier reef of the coast's tropical days.

My reflection, I think, swimming through a holey stone.

Walking the porpoise.

A sky seal, back home in Armley.

The Powerstock Hare

I came across this 12th century stone carving of a hare playing a harp at Dorset County Museum, Dorchester. Found at a cottage in Powerstock, Dorset, it is believed to have come from the site of the church at Wytherston, the precise location of which is now unknown - in ruins before 1550, no trace of the church remains.


The hare is a much mythologised creature worldwide, associated with, among other things, the moon, madness, shape-shifting witches and the ghosts of jilted maidens. A harp-playing hare was news to me, however, though Harp and Hare are associated in Ted Hughes' poem, 'The Hare', when a hare is hit by a car: "As if the car had crashed into a flying harp//So that the driver's nerves flail and cry/Like a burst harp."








http://www.hare-preservation-trust.co.uk/index.html

John Clavell's Recantation - A Highwayman's (Successful) Appeal in Verse

While visiting the Dorset County Museum this summer I came across an account of the curious case of John Clavell (1601-1643). Imprisoned and sentenced to death for his brief career as a highwayman, he was reprieved by Charles I after writing an appeal in verse.

Passages from John Clavell’s  'A Recantation of an Ill Led Life'

Source:
John Clavell, A Recantation of An Ill Led Life: or, A Discoverie of the High-way Law, 3rd edition, (London, 1634), reprinted in facsimile in John Pafford, John Clavell 1601–1643. Highwayman, Author, Lawyer, Doctor, (Oxford, Leopard’s Head Press, 1993), pp. 6–8, 16, 17, 23, 45
Date:
1627; first published 1628

Now you licencious Rebels, that doe make
Profession of this wicked course, and take
A pride therein, and would be term’d by me
Knights of the Roades, or else at leastwise be
Stil’d High-way Lawyers, No, I doe defie,1
You, and your actions, I will tell you why;
But first plucke off your visards, hoods, disguise,
Masks, Muzels, Mufflers, Patches from your eyes,
Those Beards, those Heads of haire, and that great Wen
Which is not naturall, that I may ken
Your faces as they are, and rightly know
If you will blush at what I speake, or no;
As well you may, but that you want the grace:
Forlorned men, I pitie though your case,
Because it hath been mine, and gladly I
Would suffer death to be a remedy,
And your example, onely that I know
It will doe better for to live, and show
Vnto the world your basenesse, to prevent
Others that yet sinne onely in intent,
Conceiving that it is a gentle course,
Not to be discommended whilst none’s worse
Or baser on the earth; yet it is true,
Some Gentlemen, perhaps before they knew
The pooreness of this way, to serve their need
Have more then once attempted some such deed;
But now they see their warlike Prince take Armes,
They scorne to live upon their countries harmes,
But will goe on, whence there may Honour grow
To blot out quite their fames first overthrow,
Expressing to the world that want of Action,
As much as monies made them know your faction,
Which though your courser natures follow still,
The Active spirit leaves, and knowes it ill;
But what are you that nothing can reclaime,
From giving to your soules so foule an ayme?
Who neither feare of heavens, nor earths just Law
Can into compasse of selfe-knowing draw?
Whose honours, strumpetted to this base course,
Have made you of your selves take no remorse,
But hugging your owne ruine, and foule shames,
Are proud in losing your repute and fames?
Now I consider better, ’tis not strange
That you this life will for no other change;
For you have got by this vild course of sinning
A kinde of state, ne’re knowne to your beginning;
And from attending others, are become
The principall, and best men in the roome,
Where (like the Asse in trappings) you doe awe
The silly beasts, that Beere and Claret draw;
For they you Captaines and Leivtenants call,
And tremble when a frowne you doe let fall,
For Peerelesse now your selves are Masters growne,
That in mans memorie were Foot-Boyes knowne;
And you[r] despaire as base as your condition,
Makes you beleeve if you should leave Perdition
In these attempts you should again be made
From being Sunnes your selves, anothers shade,
And that your worthlesse spirits cannot rise
In any course that walkes without disguise,
For bred on dunghils, if unmask’d, you feare
You shall too much in your own filths appeare.
* * *
For you beleeve you had deserv’d to bee
Admir’d, not scorn’d, for your past villany,
And that the actions you have done are such
As pace with honour, can endure the touch
Of cruel’st censure, whilst you fondly deeme
That men you brave, and valiant doe esteeme,
And so are bound with your ills to connive,
And in despite of Law keepe you alive:
So from the Gaole unto the halter goe
Carelesse of now or after overthrow.
Base usurpation, and conceits as vaine
As are your lives, expenses, and your gaine.
For good and brave men censure right your sinne,
And pittie you, and the course you are in,
Rather in common Pietie, then that
Your vild defeatings should be wondred at.
* * *
Your ends besides (if nothing else) might draw
You into feare to breake the rigorous Law;
Vnhappy he that hangs upon a tree,
The wretched guerdon of impietie.
* * *
And yet these senselesse Caitives who inherit
This way of dying by their owne demerit,
Laugh at this judgement, call it a fine thing,
Thus to be pull’d to heaven in a string,
And that the Appoplex, Flegmes and Catarre,
More cruell to the soules of Christians are
Then hanging, for these passions take men hence,
Ere they can thinke of dying, or have sense
Of their repentance, being snatcht away
Scarce with so poore a warning, as to pray.
But these have Sermons, Prayer, Sacrament,
Psa[l]mes, and all wayes to bring them to repent,
And a great audience of the people by,
For whose faire warning th’are content to die;
And thus their strong deluder drawes them on
To laugh at, and deserve destruction.
* * *
There are some certaine people (who roare well)2
That in their drunken cups are apt to tell
Strange stories what they did, and meane to doe,
(And they intend you should beleeve them too)
That three of them well hors’d, assaulted ten,
And robb’d them all, stout, able, monied men;
Then will they name a summe (as large) they got,
Heere, if you pause, that you may doubt it not,
They will blaspheme amaine, that you were better
Seeme to beleeve, and let them rest your debtor,
For what they now would otherwise have sworne:
Why are you with these idle fancies borne?
What honour is it, but a foule disgrace,
A great disfiguring [t]o a spotlesse race,3
A vild, a base, a most unworthy fact,
A poore, dishonest, yea a cowardly act?
What have you here to boast of then but shame?
You that are greedie of this guilt, and fame,
Would you had mine to share amongst you, though
I doe beleeve you ne’re durst act it so ...
* * *
... I whose easie youth, with fond admire
Was drawne at first this ill course to desire,
Hugg’d it in dreames, and in my waking fitts
Doted upon’t, to my worse losse of witts;
Whilst I esteem’d none brave or good but this,
But now I know how farre I was amisse ...

John Clavell


Context:

'A Recantation of an Ill Led Life' was written by John Clavell while he was in prison following a conviction for highway robbery. Keen to demonstrate his penitence, he reproached his former companions for their way of life and revealed ways by which the traveller might avoid being attacked. After many months in prison, during which he was technically under sentence of death, he was finally granted a pardon.

Notes:
'Knights of the Roades': a slang term for the mounted highway robbers. This is its first occurrence. 'High-way Lawyer's: more usually ‘high lawyers’, a canting (argot) term for highway robbers.
'roare': brag; raise hell, kick up a racket (slang).
'race': the English race, at that time notorious for robbery.

Notes and page design © Gillian Spraggs 2001, 2007
www.outlawsandhighwaymen.com

Cawder Ghyll

Much of August spent trying to find this little place near Skipton, Cawder Ghyll, where I was born. The maternity hospital there closed years ago and no-one seemed to remember it. Searching online I found only quotations from Blake Morrison's book, 'Things My Mother Never Told Me ' - I knew already that his mother was the midwife, his father our GP. Then another online search produced an estate agent's advert for a house at Cawder Ghyll, BD23 2QG - with a map.

We followed the Keighley Road out of Skipton town centre and soon found that we were walking alongside the Leeds Liverpool Canal, back towards Leeds in fact, and so switched to the towpath, watching ducks waddle in and out of the cottage gardens, and crossed each bridge to look for signs on the lanes which meandered off up the hillsides. Over a humpbacked bridge we'd passed under by barge just days before we found first Cawder Lane then Cawder Ghyll. No old buildings remained, just a small cul-de-sac of new houses where the lane runs out, then nothing but fields and those soft hills which have always seemed strangely familiar as I've passed them by rail or road.

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?X=399394&Y=450448&A=Y&Z=110

Cawder Gill, the beck running down from the moors above Skipton...
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cawder_Gill_-_geograph.org.uk_-_308119.jpg

.. also nearby are the remains of the Iron Age settlement at Horse Close Hill (Cawder Hall Enclosure):

http://megalithix.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/horseclosehill-skipton/

Poppies- Little London

Through the hot streets searching for play scheme places, distracted by poppies...

There's an Escape Tunnel Under the Settee (2)

Just one I missed earlier - not that we're bitter or anything.