I Never Knew That About the English
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It is regarded as one of the defining books of the 20th century, and is astonishingly prescient of the society we live in today, as indicated by the terminology from the book that has crept into the language used to describe the modern world: ‘Big Brother is watching you’, the Thought Police, Doublespeak. Even Orwell’s name has become an adjective ‘Orwellian’ is used to describe the modern surveillance society and authoritarian government, particularly in Britain.
Two television shows take their names from the book, Big Brother and Room 101.
In 1984, Room 101 is a torture chamber at the Ministry of Love where a victim is forced to face his greatest fear or nightmare. Orwell took the name Room 101 from a conference room at BBC Broadcasting House where he used to have to sit through mind-numbing meetings.
George Orwell would be amused, or chilled, to learn that today, within 200 yards of the flat where he lived in Islington, and where he began planning 1984, there are 32 CCTV cameras, monitoring everything that moves. ‘Big Brother is watching you.’
AGATHA CHRISTIE (1890–1976), novelist, playwright and poet, is buried in the churchyard at CHOLSEY. She is best remembered for her detective novels featuring Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot and for The Mousetrap, the world’s longest-running play, with over 23,000 performances so far in London’s West End.
THOMAS HUGHES (1822–96), lawyer and author, was born in UFFINGTON. He is best known for his semi-autobiographical novel set at Rugby school, Tom Brown’s School Days.
LESTER PIGGOTT, the most successful jockey in the history of the Derby, with nine wins, was born in WANTAGE in 1935.
Warwickshire
THE BARD ∗ HIS ANCESTORS ∗ HIS CHILDHOOD
∗ HIS MARRIAGE ∗ HIS RELIGION ∗ NEW PLACE
∗ GEORGE ELIOT ∗ FIRST LABOURING MP
Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, England’s most famous chocolate box cottage.
WARWICKSHIRE FOLK
William Sheldon ∗ Joseph Arch ∗ Sir Frank Whittle ∗ Richard Lindon ∗ Sir Joseph Lockyer ∗ John Wyndham
Meriden
The Warwickshire village of Meriden is reckoned to be the geographical centre of England, and the claim is marked by a stone cross. The village has a memorial to all cyclists who died in the Great War, and cyclists from all over England gather here once a year to pay tribute. Meriden was also home to Triumph Motorcycles from 1942 to 1983.
William Shakespeare
1564–1616
Warwickshire has been described as the most typically English of all the English counties, and so it is fitting that it should lie at the very centre of England and be the home county of the man who has contributed more to theEnglish language than any other, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Ancestors
William Shakespeare’s ancestors were Warwickshire farmers rooted in the farms and villages of the Forest of Arden, a wild area north of Stratford upon Avon. Shakespeare played and grew up in a forest landscape of trees and plants and animals, and this very English landscape forms the background to many of his plays, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It.
Shakespeare’s family can be traced back to the 14th century, to Oldeditch Farm in Balsall, when the son of Adam of Oldeditch gave himself the name of Shakespeare, or Shakesper, which derives from military usage as someone who wields a spear. It was not an uncommon name in Warwickshire, possibly because many of the yeomanry and squires of the area had fought in the Wars of the Roses, a claim later made by William’s father John, when he applied for a coat of arms.
Birthday
William Shakespeare was born in Henley Street in Stratford, and we may still stand in the very room where he first opened his eyes. He was baptised in Holy Trinity Church on 26 April, and as it was the custom in Elizabethan England to have a child baptised three days after birth, William’s birthday is accepted as 23 April – St George’s Day.
Shakespeare’s birthplace
Childhood
He attended the Grammar School in Stratford, housed in a long, half-timbered building which has remained essentially unchanged since it was erected as the home of a religious guild in 1428. The schoolroom was upstairs, while below was the hall where William saw his first play. From a young age he would have mingled with the various acting companies that came to Stratford, as they would have had to apply for a licence to William’s father John when he was Mayor of Stratford.
Holy Trinity
At the age of 11 William went to see the pageantry surrounding Queen Elizabeth’s legendary visit to Robert Dudley at Kenilworth Castle, pageantry that he would later to recreate in many of his plays.
During the holidays Shakespeare would wander through the countryside visiting friends and relatives, including the Shakespeares of Packwood Hall with whom he would sometimes stay, and while there he got to meet the historian RAPHAEL HOLINSHED, who lived at nearby Packwood House. Holinshed was the author of the Chronicles of England and Scotland, the source for much of the material in Shakespeare’s history plays.
Marriage
When William was 18 he married ANNE HATHAWAY, who was 26 and three months pregnant. Anne lived in SHOTTERY, a small village about a mile (1.5 km) outside Stratford, and the path that William would have taken to visit the thatched cottage where she lived can still be followed. Inside, the cottage is furnished as it would have been in Shakespeare’s day.
William and Anne married in the church at TEMPLE GRAFTON in 1582. They chose here rather than Stratford to wed, because the priest at Temple Grafton was sympathetic to a Catholic form of marriage.
Religion
In the days of Elizabeth I the official religion of England was Protestant, and although Catholics were tolerated they were not popular, with the memory of Bloody Queen Mary’s persecutions still fresh and England under constant threat from Catholic France and Spain. The Forest of Arden was a strongly Catholic area and both William’s parents came from Catholic families, so it is reasonable to suppose that William was privately, if not overtly, Catholic.
Once married, William and Anne moved in to live with William’s parents in the house on Henley Street, and his first child Susannah was born there six months later. In early 1590 William began to write his first play, Henry VI Part I, and in 1592 he moved to London to try his hand in the theatre as an actor and playwright, leaving behind his wife and children in Stratford.
It has been suggested that Shakespeare fled to London after being caught poaching in the grounds of CHARLECOTE PARK, a magnificent Tudor pile east of Stratford, and got his revenge on SIR THOMAS LUCY, Charlecote’s owner, by portraying him as Justice Shallow in The Merry Wives of Windsor. It is more likely that the poet ridiculed Lucy, a local Justice of the Peace and prominent Protestant, for his harassment of Catholics in Warwickshire, and in particular for his part in the arrest and trial of Edward Arden, kinsman of William’s mother Mary Arden.
New Place
In 1597 Shakespeare returned to Stratford as a rich man and bought NEW PLACE, the second largest house in Stratford, and the only one made of brick. He retired there in 1610.
Gatehouse, Charlecote Park
William Shakespeare died in 1616 on 23 April, his 52nd birthday, apparently after a drinking session with Ben Jonson in the Falcon Inn at Bidford. He is buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church, where he had been baptised.
New Place was inherited by William’s daughter Susannah, and then passed to her daughter Elizabeth, who married the next-door neighbour Thomas Nash. The house was eventually purchased by a disagreeable parson called FRANCIS GASTRELL, who became so infuriated by people gawping over the wall that he went out into the garden one night and chopped down the mulberry tree that Shakespeare had planted, reducing it to a pile of logs. The inhabitants of Stratford were so incensed that they flung stones through Gastrell’s windows until, driven to madness by a tax demand, he finally lost his temper and razed the whole house to the ground. The eccentric clergyman was run out of town, and no one of that name may ever live in Stratford again. On
the site of New Place there is now a replica of an Elizabethan knot garden.
George Eliot
1819–80
GEORGE ELIOT, one of the greatest English novelists, was born Mary Anne Evans at ARBURY FARM (now South Farm), set in the middle of the Arbury estate near Nuneaton, where her father was the estate manager for the Newdegate family. The farmhouse in which she was born is still there, lived in by the present estate manager. Mary was christened in the church at Chilvers Coton, where her parents are now buried, and grew up in nearby Griff House, which appears as Doricote Mill in The Mill on the Floss. It is now a hotel.
When her father retired to Coventry, Mary began to move in intellectual circles, and their lofty disdain caused her to reject her religious upbringing, much to her father’s bewilderment. After he died she moved to London, where she became editor of the Westminster Review, working under the first of her many assumed names, since editing was not considered women’s work. She also embarked on an affair with the philosopher Herbert Spencer, the founder of socialism, which she hoped might lead to marriage, but Spencer discarded her, commenting cruelly that she was too ugly. She then met the true love of her life, an already married man called George Henry Lewes, and they started to live together as husband and wife. He encouraged her to write and this she did, hiding behind the name George Eliot lest her scandalous live-in relationship with Lewes should affect how her books were received.
Two of her celebrated novels, Adam Bede and Middlemarch, are based on her early life in Warwickshire, and in much of her work she includes references to North Warwickshire locations she knew and loved as a child. Her novels are renowned for their pyschological insight and realism.
Well, I never knew this
about
WARWICKSHIRE FOLK
William Sheldon
WILLIAM SHELDON WAS THE FIRST ENGLISH TAPESTRY MAKER. Through marriage, he inherited the Manor of BARCHESTON, near Shipston-on-Stour, and set up England’s first tapestry workshop in the manor house barn, in about 1560. He learnt the technique from Flemish weavers brought to England by his manager Richard Hickes, and Sheldon tapestries are now regarded as some of the finest in the world. Particularly sought after are his tapestry maps of English counties such as Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Worcestershire. A number of these were purchased by Horace Walpole. They are very rare now, but a Sheldon tapestry of Warwickshire, dated 1588, hangs in the Warwickshire Museum in Warwick’s market-place.
Joseph Arch
1826–1919
JOSEPH ARCH, the FIRST AGRICULTURAL LABOURER TO BECOME AN MP, was born in the village of BARFORD, in a tiny cottage that remained his home all his life. Arch came from a family of farm labourers and his early days were spent in the fields, but his mother encouraged him to read at night and he trained to become a Methodist lay preacher. His skill as a speaker enabled him to organise and articulate the local farm workers’ protests against the poor wages and living conditions of the 1870s. In 1872 Arch called a meeting in nearby Wellesbourne, held under a chestnut tree and lit by candlelight, where he formed the National Agricultural Labourers’ Union to put pressure on the powerful land-owning establishment. As President of the Union he is credited with persuading Gladstone to force through the Reform Act of 1884–5, which gave rural workers the same voting rights as their town counterparts. In 1885 he became Liberal MP for a rural Norfolk constituency.
Arch loved Warwickshire and particularly his home village of Barford, and he is buried in the churchyard across the road from his cottage. He lived his life by his own creed, ‘Make a man proud of, and interested in, his birthplace, make him feel he has a part in it, and you have started him on the road to good citizenship . . .’
Sir Frank Whittle
1907–96
SIR FRANK WHITTLE, the INVENTOR OF THE JET ENGINE, was born in COVENTRY and grew up in Royal Leamington Spa. He joined the RAF in 1923, became a pilot, and began to think about new ways of powering fighter planes to make them faster and more manoeuvrable. He came up with the idea of combining a gas turbine with rocket propulsion, and in 1930 took out a patent for an engine built along this concept. He received little encouragement from the Air Ministry and was forced to find private backing to set up a firm, Power Jets Ltd, to design an engine to his specifications. The onset of war in 1939 finally ignited the Air Ministry’s interest and they began to back Power Jets’ research. On 15 May 1941 the Jet Age was born when the first GLOSTER WHITTLE E28 jet took to the skies and performed flawlessly. ‘Frank, it flies!’ they cried. ‘That’s what it was designed to do, isn’t it?’ he replied.
RICHARD LINDON (1816–87), inventor of the oval rugby ball, was born in RUGBY.
SIR JOSEPH LOCKYER (1836–1920), scientist who discovered helium and founder of the journal Nature, was born in RUGBY.
JOHN WYNDHAM (1903–69), author of The Day of the Triffids, was born in KNOWLE.
Westmorland
ENGLAND’S BIGGEST HORSE FAIR
∗ SMALLEST COUNTY TOWN ∗ ENGLAND’S OLDEST TOPIARY
Appleby Castle, at the heart of England’s highest county town.
WESTMORLAND FOLK
Catherine Parr ∗ George Romney ∗ John Cunliffe ∗ Sir Arthur Eddington ∗ David Starkey
Appleby-in-Westmorland
THE BIGGEST HORSE FAIR IN THE WORLD takes place every year in June at APPLEBY-IN-WESTMORLAND, the former county town of Westmorland. The fair was established by charter from James II in 1685, and is held on the outskirts of the town at Fair Hill, originally known as Gallows Hill, which gives a small hint as to what went on there before. Gypsy horse traders and Romany families come together from all over the country to conduct their business, and during the fair horses can been seen everywhere in the town, tethered in the high street, trotting through the town centre or just grazing by the side of the road – creating an exhilarating, ‘wild west’ frontier town effect. Before being put up for sale, the horses are trotted or raced along Flashing Lane and then washed and spruced up by youngsters in the River Eden. Sales are usually sealed with a spit and a handshake.
Appleby-in-Westmorland is THE SMALLEST COUNTY TOWN IN ENGLAND, with a population of just 2,600. It used to be simply Appleby, but after local government reorganisation in 1974, when Westmorland was abolished as an administrative county, the ‘in Westmorland’ was added to ensure that the historic county name was not forgotten. Appleby has had as its MP two men who became Prime Ministers, William Pitt the Younger in 1783, the year he became the youngest ever Prime Minister, and Viscount Howick, who became Earl Grey. Ironically, it was Earl Grey’s administration that passed the Great Reform Act in 1832, which saw Appleby lose its Member of Parliament, the only county town to be so disenfranchised.
Appleby Grammar School occupies a notable place in American history, for amongst its roll-call of old boys are Lawrence and Augustine Washington, half-brothers of the first American President, George Washington. Lawrence would go on to build a fine house in Virginia, which he named Mount Vernon in honour of his commanding officer, English hero Vice-Admiral Edward Vernon, and which eventually became George Washington’s home.
APPLEBY CASTLE overlooks the town from behind its curtain wall at the top of the main street. The central keep was built around 1170 and is surrounded by a collection of medieval buildings that were restored in the 17th century by Lady Anne Clifford, who was responsible for preserving many homes and castles across the North.
Levens Hall
The gardens at LEVENS HALL, just south of Kendal, were laid out in 1694 by a French gardener called Guillaume Beaumont. He was already well known in England for his work at Hampton Court Palace and various other English gardens, but the gardens at Levens Hall are the only surviving example of his work. They are an extravagant riot of box, beech and yew, cut into extraordinary shapes, pyramids, columns and displays with names like the ‘Judge’s Wig’, the ‘Bellingham Lion’, and ‘Queen Elizabeth and her Maids of Honour’. One exhibit, the ‘Jugs of Morocco’, r
ecalls a powerful ale that was imbibed at the convivial annual Radish Festival held at Levens Hall in May. Beaumont’s garden survives almost intact and boasts THE OLDEST AND MOST EXTENSIVE TOPIARY IN ALL ENGLAND.
Beaumont was commissioned by James II’s Keeper of the Privy Purse, Colonel James Grahame, who had won Levens Hall from a cousin, Alan Bellingham, in a game of cards. Apparently the game was won with an ace of hearts, and in recognition of this the down spouts of the guttering are decorated with gilded hearts.
The hall itself, a glorious Elizabethan house built around a 13th-century peel tower, is said to be haunted by a gypsy woman who was refused hospitality there. As she lay dying of starvation she put a curse on Levens, to the effect that ‘no son should inherit the house until the River Kent ceased to flow and a white fawn was born in the park’. And indeed, Levens Hall was passed down solely through the female line until 1896, when the river froze over, a white fawn appeared in the park and a male heir, Alan Bagot, was born to the owner Sir Josceline Bagot. Levens Hall is still the home of the Bagot family today.
Well, I never knew this
about
WESTMORLAND FOLK
CATHERINE PARR, the sixth wife of Henry VIII, and the only one to survive him, was born in KENDAL CASTLE in 1512. Her prayer book, bound in silver, can be seen in the town museum.
The portrait painter GEORGE ROMNEY, who was born at nearby Dalton-in-Furness in 1734, had his first studio in Kendal, where he worked on his portraits of prominent Lakeland families. His name lives on in Romney’s Kendal Mint Cake, the Westmorland speciality.