Catching up with Christmas

Okay,  so I am only just catching up with Christmas.  But it is still January, the snow hasn't yet arrived and the Poinsetta still survives - so I'm not doing that badly.  I can even just about remember my new year's resolutions  - something about being organised, motivated, solvent and getting educated.

Lots of exciting stuff ahead - Tour de France is coming up and over Wincobank Hill in July so we are cooking up a fun weekend. I am writing a funding bid for the Chapel Heritage Centre and planning a joint project with Sheffield Cathedral in November.  That's just in my spare time.  To pay the bills I am going to be spending time out in the woods with children and in the countryside with families.

Then - there is family stuff - Friday is still Granny Day and I often get to see my little family together as they are conveniently all now in Liverpool although not normally in the same house.  It looks like I will be also paying a few visits to my big bro's new Kentish abode. My amazing big sister, who nearly died 15 years ago, is celebrating a special birthday ending in 0 and next month we are going away together for a little weekend in Norfolk. As for that other brother,  the fit one that keeps cycling up mountains - well he has already booked in for TdF in July. So what with a few trips up north, over west and down south, it should be another interesting year.  So if you want to keep up with just enter your email address in the box at the top of this page and you will get a message in your inbox when I update.  Think of it as a supplementary postcard - you might even get one with a stamp as well - I still do those.  And by the way - thanks for all the Christmas cards and emailed greetings.  I will be in touch to try and see people this year.

Bethlehem

A seasonal picture for this time of year.

This little water-colour of Bethlehem was painted in an exercise book nearly 200 years ago by 15 year old Catherine Read who used to live in Wincobank Hall, just across the road to where I live now.  Maybe Catherine copied another picture drawn by one of the many well-travelled visitors to her home. Or maybe her grandfather brought back a decorated souvenir with a landscape scene. His 18th century passport, lodged in the Sheffield Archive, is a glorious colour parchment stamped and sealed in countries across the world.

Catherine's parents, John and Elizabeth Read, were energetic campaigners for social justice and religious freedom. With missionary zeal they supported campaigns to to improve the lot of the poor and they supported the Sunday School movement so that children could learn to read the Bible for themselves. But John Read died a broken man, shamed by potential bankruptcy, having bailed out his father-in-law whose iron-works had failed due to the recession following the Napoleonic Wars.  His debts were cleared by his eldest daughter Mary Anne, who had married well, but been widowed early.  She bought the Hall and moved back home with her baby daughter to live with her mother and sisters. Together these women were a formidable force for change.

Earlier this year I spent days and days leafing through piles of hand written documents, old notebooks and letters, account books and wills trying to piece together the story of this extraordinary family.  Catherine never married. Instead, she spent her life looking after her sister Eliza's children, many of whom were frail and died young, along with their delicate mother.

Mary Anne, a woman ahead of her time, became well known as editor of  collections of persuasive poetry and prose, essentially social propaganda. Her most notable cause was the universal abolition of slavery and in 1841 she was at the inaugural meeting of what is now Anti-Slavery International. Emily Read ran the village school at the chapel, provided hands on help and was well loved by the local families. Two of Eliza's son's survived to found the Wilson dynasty and their children went on to become Liberal and Labour politicians, continuing to campaign for improved social conditions. And all the time in the background, the fortunes of the family firm The Sheffield Smelting Company, waxed and waned with all the precariousness experienced by today's financial institutions.

Sheffield's industrial heritage owes all to the courage of the entrepreneurs who built the businesses from nothing. reinvesting their profits without a safety net, and to the workforce who invested their lives and their health. As a city, Sheffield is shaped by allegiance to the parliamentary cause dating back to the Civil War, non-conformist radical religion and the commitment of the great philanthropists of the Industrial Revolution.

There is a great story here that brings alive all that dry and dusty Victorian legislation I learned about at school, in those history lessons that were awash with dates and Prime Ministers but told nothing of the people.  This is a story I want to get back into.  In between everything else.  And Christmas.

More of the Wincobank story is here http://upperwincobankchapel.wordpress.com/about/
The rest is in archives around the world.

From one Bank Holiday to Another

Shelly, Ed & Freddie Ford 4 May 2013

5 Wards & 2 Fords

Rea Smiths & Co

The year is spinning by and leaving me behind.  As August Bank Holiday Monday dawns I am still catching up with May.  I'm thinking back to the gathering of the clans in Hackney Town Hall for the joining in wedlock of our Ed with beautiful Shelly and further back to the years that a younger Ed spent with us Newcastle.  when nothing was certain and everything scary.  And now here we are 17 years on and still smiling.  What a lot has happened in those years in between.  And so much still to come.

Fast Freddie

 Freddie zoomed into the world 10 weeks early, in a hurry just like his dad always was.  Ed never hangs about. When he lived with us in Newcastle, we had to be on our toes to keep up with him. So much energy. None of the Rea Smith prevarication and contemplation of options which sometimes goes on for years.  When Ed has an idea he makes a decision and if he's going to do it, he does it.  Ed wanted his own company - and he has it: All Lovely Stuff   And so with Freddie.  When he thought it was time, out he came, into the world, taking all by surprise especially his lovely mum, Shelly.

This gorgeous little man is definitely the son of his parents - blonde, smiling and wide-eyed about the world around him.  And growing up so fast.  I can just imagine a family day out with Lizzy and Freddie at Lightwater Valley,  just like when the Ward brothers would come to stay and we used to pack up a a picnic to eat in the rain inbetween swooshing down the hellslide, careering round the skatecart track and scrambling up the spiders web.
Now, Great Aunt Penelope is really looking forward to our family get together in October, to see how the next generation is doing.

Down in the woods

I've been in the woods today.  I only have to walk for five minutes to be in an ancient oak wood, thought to have been self-seeding since the Ice Age. The trees themselves have been cut down many times as this wood has been farmed for many hundreds of years, for timber, for fuel, for charcoal, and for the making of whatever could be made from the leftover bits.

Today I was gathering a strange harvest of scrap metal, plastic and broken glass from the hillside. It looked so much better when I had finished.  Its a shame that tidying my house doesn't have the same appeal.

My Dad

This is my Dad, jolly, jolly Dad, off on a works fishing trip back in the 1960s.  Acting the fool to amuse others, making others smile.

Today, well, yesterday - for it is just past midnight now- it was Father's Day in the UK.  I had already been thinking about my Dad even before I remembered it was a special day.  This morning I was texting my niece Emma about our family ability to hand letter posters - a skill taught to me at the kitchen table and I discovered, taught to her by her dad who must have learnt as I had done, to hold the brush steady, resting one wrist upon the other and make the strokes just so, as our Dad had done years back in the 1930s when it was his job.  Before the War changed everything.

 I have been thinking today about a very special day when my Dad took me on my own to Battersea Fun Fair. I was ten and this was a great treat.  It was wonderful. I had been to the fair on Wimbledon Common but Battersea Park was spectacular.  It had the Water Chute and the Big Dipper.  It was a vast Pleasure Park, a real treat. We spent £5.  I knew this was a lot of money, but I didn't realise how much it really cost until I read Dad's letters after my mother passed away.    I read that he took me to the Fun Fair when Mum was in America with Barbara and they were worrying about which stamps they could afford and under what circumstances a phone call was merited.  I had forgotten the month and the year and only remembered the event. When I pieced it all together I understood the significance and great generosity of this day out.  And that it was one of the last days before the black clouds came.

My Dad was nearly always tired, very often worried, occasionally cross.  He worked so hard to make our lives better than his had been.  On that summer's day when his cares were at their greatest he put on his jolly smile and jokey manner and we went to the Fun Fair. He made me laugh and I had fun.  My brave, strong, kind Dad.

New York Airport 1966

This is a picture of my sister Barbara at New York Airport, changing planes on the way to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota in America.  It was a big adventure: the first time anyone in the family had ever been on a plane.  She was just 16 and going for an experimental heart valve transplant.  These days the op is done in local hospitals but then it required a major fund-raising exercise including remortgaging the house and a long flight to the other side of the world.  Sadly, it was all too late and she died on this day 15 June 1966. Hope you're running and dancing now Babs.  Love and miss you loads. xxx