Salopian Recorder No.86
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Diary Dates The newsletter of the Friends of Shropshire Archives, Saturday 15 October 2016 Tuesday 1 November 2016 ARCHIVES Shropshire History Day Tracing the history of your house SHROPSHIRE gateway to the history of Shropshire and Telford 10.30am Shirehall, Shrewsbury, SY2 6ND A six week course with Liz Young Cost: Free event 2.00pm - 4.00pm Shropshire Archives, Castle Gates, Shrewsbury, SY1 2AQ • The history of the Shrewsbury & Newport canals and Cost: £45 to include all six sessions A provincial frost Researching 'A Crow's Nest': The their restoration - Bernie Jones fair and an ill fated Transport History significance of Wem • Bruce Bairnsfather - Fragments from France and the Shropshire connection - Keith Pybus Saturday 19 November 2016 Stuntman during the English Using the Archive resources • Forty years of the Historic Environment Record - Friends Annual Lecture Page 2 Civil War, 1642-1646 Penny Ward and Giles Carey 'William Hazledine, Ironmaster Extraordinary' by Page 4 Page 6 • Shropshire Archives update - Mary McKenzie Andrew Pattison • The Trench Experience project update - Mark Hignett 10.30am Shropshire Archives, Castle Gates, • Clun Look Back Heritage HLF project update - Shrewsbury, SY1 2AQ Angela Martin Cost: £5, booking advised • Impressions of the past: Medieval seals - Dr Elizabeth New, Aberystwyth University Tuesday 28 February 2017 Latin for local and family historians Monday 29 October 2016 A six week course with Helen Haynes Victoria County History Annual Lecture 2.00pm - 4.00pm Shropshire Archives, Castle Gates, 'Capability Brown' by Gareth Williams Shrewsbury, SY1 2AQ 2.00pm The Guildhall, Frankwell Quay, Shrewsbury, Cost: £45 to include all six sessions SY3 8HQ Cost: £5, booking required Contact Shropshire Archives for more information or Monday 12 to Friday 16 December 2016 tickets to all events. Contact details below. Shropshire Archives closed week ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The newsletter of the Friends of News Extra... Shropshire Archives is edited by Andrew Pattison and designed by Nat Stevenson, Shropshire Archives’ Image Services. Do you have any stories to tell about There are three issues per year, paid for by the Friends. The Shropshire’s history or have any news contents are provided by friends and well-wishers. If you about Shropshire Archives? If you have, would like to join the contributors, please contact the editor at the editor is waiting to hear from you [email protected] now. The contact details are below and DISCLAIMER: We have made every effort to ensure that the information in this publication is correct at the time of printing. photographs are always welcome. We cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions. Contact... For further details or to pass on your comments, please contact: Uffington Ferry, c.1905. Shropshire Archives ref: PH/U/1/46 Shropshire Archives, Castle Gates, Shrewsbury, SY1 2AQ • Tel: 0345 6789096 Email: [email protected] • Website: www.shropshirearchives.org.uk Number 86 . Summer/Autumn 2016 Price £2.00 (free to Members) his spectacle in detail writing: ‘A breast plate of wood, who had been passing round the hat, ‘threw away her with a groove to fit the rope, and his own equilibrium, money in an agony of grief, and ran to him in hopes of were to be his security, while sliding down upon his affording some relief’. A mock-heroic, yet sympathetic body, with his arms and legs extended. He could not poem, written by an unnamed ‘J.A.’, presumably be more than six or seven seconds in this airy journey, an eyewitness and published in the Gentleman’s in which he fired a pistol and blew a trumpet. The Magazine in February 1739, reads: velocity with which he flew, raised a fire by friction, and a bold stream of smoke followed him’ (p. 245- ‘Nothing could aught avail but limbs of brass, 6). He performed the act for three successive days, When ground was iron, and the Severn glass’ descending twice. He even once marched up the rope, which took him an hour during which he ‘exhibited Cadman’s death was likened to Greek and Roman many surprising achievements’, which included sitting mythology in verses that record vivid details of his with his arms folded, lying across the rope on his back final flight. The London Evening Post (7 February 1739) and then his belly, blowing the trumpet, swinging reported that Cadman was killed ‘by the cutting off of round, hanging by his chin, hand, heels, and toes. the rope where it came through the steeple, it being fasten’d to the frames of the bells.’ This dramatic death In Shrewsbury, as part of the town’s celebrations reinforced his reputation and ended the golden age of of the Great Frost, Cadman attached a rope from the flying. Subsequently Cadman was buried at St Mary’s spire of the church across to the Gay Meadow on the Church, Shrewsbury, on 4 February 1739. A plaque in other side of the river. As on previous occasions, he his memory can be found by the main door of the entertained the crowd with a variety of rope stunts. A church and he is commemorated by a ten-line epitaph handbill dated 24 January 1739 heralded his flight on which reads: 2 February from St Mary’s steeple over the Severn to the meadow opposite (SA P257/U/3/1). However, the ‘Let this small Monument record the name rope broke causing him to plummet suddenly to his Of CADMAN, and to future times proclaim death. Owen and Blakeway’s, A History of Shrewsbury, Feature Volume 2 (1825) says that ‘just before he set out on How by’n attempt to fly from this high spire ‘A prospect of the town of his mad career, he found the rope a little too tight, Across the Sabrine stream he did acquire Shrewsbury as it appear’d in the and gave the signal to slacken it: but that the persons A provincial frost fair and Great Frost 1739’. Image supplied employed, misconceiving his meaning, drew it tighter. His fatal end. ‘Twas not for want of skill James P Bowen by Shropshire Council, Shropshire It snapped in two as he was passing over St. Mary’s Or courage to perform the task he fell: an ill-fated stuntman Museums, ref: SHYMS FA/1995/001 Friars, and he fell amid the thousands of spectators’ No, no, a faulty Cord being drawn too tight (p. 410). As the ground was frozen it was recalled Harried his Soul on high to take her flight that his body, ‘after reaching the earth, rebounded Which bid the Body here beneath good Night Whilst the frost fairs held on the River shown frozen hard in the ice. Included in the scene upwards several feet’. It was observed that his wife, Feb.ry 2nd 1739 aged 28.’ n Thames, London, in the years 1608, 1683- is a heavy looking printing press, demonstrating the thickness of the ice. 4, 1789 and 1814 are well recorded in The commemorative plaque in memory of Robert Cadman by the main door of St Mary’s Church, Shrewsbury. Shropshire Archives ref: PH/S/13/S/11/17 both documentary evidence and artistic Robert Cadman (1711/2–1740) representations, little is known about A popular form of entertainment at fairs and markets was flying men, the 1730s witnessing comparable events in provincial town and something of a craze for rope dancing, sliding and urban settings throughout England. walking. In 1739 Robert Cadman or Kidman, a native of Shropshire and well-known steeplejack and his engraving by an unknown artist shows a ‘ropeslider’ (the famed ‘Icarus of the rope’) and his panoramic view of Shrewsbury in the winter wife were in Shrewsbury to restore the damaged Tof 1739 during the Great Frost when a fair was weathercock of St Mary’s Church. William Hutton (1723- held on the frozen River Severn. Various activities are 1815), in his History of Derby published in 1791, wrote shown taking place, including people ice skating, a that Cadman was a ‘small figure of a man… composed horse and rider, and groups of people congregating of spirit and gristle’, who had entertained the crowds and playing games. Others appear to be carrying at Derby in October 1732 by sliding from the steeple of wood, presumably for fuel given the harsh winter All Saints Church to the bottom of St Michael’s Church, conditions. Several boats and Severn ‘trows’ are also a horizontal distance of eight yards. Hutton described 2 Salopian Recorder . Number 86 . Summer/Autumn 2016 Summer/Autumn 2016 . Number 86 . Salopian Recorder 3 Highley, I included three images from the Archives dates from 1772 and provides a wide range of material Feature Collection: an early 18th century print of Porthill ferry on transport matters, including for example items (Watton’s Cuttings, SA 8184/1); a photograph c.1905 of on Shrewsbury’s ferries (e.g. 10 December 1795). the Uffington ferryman and his family posing on the Eddowes’s Salopian Journal (1794-1891) is also a rich Researching ferry boat (reproduced on the front cover, PH/U/1/46); source; an example is a report on the low level of the and an 1892 photograph of a team of seven horses Severn and its impact on navigation (27 August 1800). hauling a heavy timber wagon across the ford at The Wellington Journal was first published in 1854; the Neil Clarke Hampton Loade (SA 2626/6). Archives have copies from 1901 to its demise in 1964. At Transport History the beginning of the last century, the paper reported For the trilogy Railways/Waterways/Roads of East on the protracted closure of the ferries at Jackfield Shropshire Through Time (Amberley Publishing, 2015- and Coalport and their replacement by bridges (e.g.