Autumn Newsletter www.place.uk.com 2014 Last chance to book for our autumn conference! Yorkshire’s Religious Heritage, c. 1780 –c. 1910 A celebration of the contribution of religion to our cultural heritage in the ‘long 19 th century’ Saturday 11 th October 2014 St Wilfrid’s Church Hall, Duchy Road, Harrogate • George Herring – The church of England c. 1780 – c. 1960: declines and revivals • Barbara Windle – “Let your lives speak”: putting religious experience into social action • Paul Toy – Divisions in the Methodist movement in the early 19th century The talks will be followed by a tour of St • Leo Gooch – Revival or transition: the northern Catholics before Wilfrid’s Church (above) – one of the and after 1850 jewels of Harrogate church architecture. • Paul Toy – Developments in religious music in the 19 th century Cost: £25.00 (£20.00 for • Peter Hills – The parish church in the 19 th century: restored and retired/unwaged), including coffee/tea new and finger buffet lunch. Please use the booking form enclosed . YOU BE THE JUDGE! An irregular short course for the autumn Have you ever wondered what really goes on inside a court room? Now is your chance to find out. Anyone can observe the courts in action by simply visiting a courthouse and sitting in the public gallery. There is no charge for this – but there is also no guidance or help in understanding what might be going on. If you would like to understand more about the courts in the UK, then come to Bedern Hall on Tuesday afternoon at 2.00pm on 18th November. Aileen Bloomer (currently a magistrate on the York & Selby Bench) will talk about a typical day in a magistrates’ court and after discussing some of issues around sentencing, will invite you to be the judge. The cost for this afternoon session will be £5.00 and will include tea/coffee. As a follow-up for those who are interested, and at no charge at all, it will be possible to visit the magistrates court and observe a sitting on either Friday 21 November or Monday 24 November with a magistrate to help you make sense of what is happening. If you arrive at 9.00am, then you will be shown around the Magistrates Court building (including the cells if possible but this cannot be guaranteed) before settling down to observe the morning sitting which starts at 10.00am and usually concludes at about 1.00pm. If you do not want to see round the court building, then please make sure that you arrive at 9.45am at the latest. There are no lifts for public use in the courthouse and going round the whole building will involve stairs – indeed, getting in to the courthouse involves stairs. These follow up visits will be limited to 10 people maximum on each day so please indicate your preferred date on the booking form – and if you are interested in coming and able to be flexible about the date, that would be greatly appreciated. REMINDER: There are a few places left for the repeats of Alison Sinclair’s walks around York. ‘Roman to Restoration’ takes place on 11 th September and ‘Restoration to Modern’ on 25 th , both starting at 2.00pm. Anyone who wishes to come should contact the PLACE Office by 5th September at the latest. Page 2 Join us for our pre-Christmas event on This will also be an opportunity to Thursday 11 th December from 7.00 to celebrate the tenth year of PLACE as an 9.00 pm in Bedern Hall, York, when independent charity. David Wharton-Street will present: A buffet supper is included in the price The History of Carols of the event. Please use the enclosed The majority of the presentation will consist booking form to secure your place, of playing carols, to identify their origins and and mention when booking any special evolution. Be amazed at where some of our dietary requirements. The cost will be carols come from, and listen to the finest £20.00 per person (£15.00 for renditions in the world from our own retired/unwaged people). This event is cathedrals and colleges. A carols sing-song likely to be very popular, so early will follow (with words supplied if needed). booking is advisable . Joint autumn outings with the Royal Geographical Society The secrets of Lake Gormire – a guided walk led by Chris Speight and a North York Moors National Park Authority ranger. Saturday 20 th September 11.00am–2.00pm . Lake Gormire is one of Yorkshire’s scenic treasures. The walk will go along the ice-cut escarpment edge, following a stretch of the Cleveland Way. Meeting point: North York Moors National Park Centre, Sutton Bank, Thirsk, YO7 2EH. Free to attend , contact Chris Speight for further details and to book in advance: [email protected] Capturing water – a guided walk in the Saddleworth area led by Robin Grey. Sunday 2nd November 11.00am–2.00pm. This walk will explore six reservoirs that were constructed in the 1800s to meet the demands of the rapidly growing population and to feed the canal system. Meeting point : Ogden Reservoir car park, Ogden Lane, Newhey, Greater Manchester, OL16 3TQ. Free to attend , please email for further details and to book in advance : gschris@cspeight .plus .com Report on the 2014 AGM in Leeds Report on visit to Hagg Wood, Dunnington This year’s annual general meeting was held in the unusual setting of the Discovery Centre in Leeds and attended by 32 people. After a short talk by Clare Brown, the curator of natural science, we were given a fascinating guided tour of some of the collections (below). At the AGM, Hilary Moxon and Brian Walker were re- elected as trustees and Christine Handley was elected for the first Eleven members managed to battle with the race time. meeting traffic in May to enjoy an evening stroll in this delightful wood, led by the Friends of Hagg Wood. Recorded as wood pasture in Domesday In the afternoon, Book, the wood was heavily felled for timber in we were led on World War II and replanted by the Forestry guided tours Commission in the 1950s. It became a around the city Community Woodland in 2003 and is gradually centre by two being restored to mixed broad-leaved woodland. It volunteers from contains many features of historic interest as well the Leeds Civic as a range of wildlife. Although the bluebells were Trust (right). past their best, many other wild flowers were observed during the visit. Page 3 Report on visit to Bramham Park, led by Peter Goodchild In March and April this year, I gave a series of 6 lectures to members of PLACE about the development of landscape gardening in England from the 17 th to the early 19 th century, with special reference to Yorkshire. The series was called ‘Gardening the Landscape and Landscaping the Garden, 1600-1820”. The lectures were about the relationships, designed relationships in particular, between two things; the first being gardens and the second being the wider landscapes in which individual gardens are located whether the landscape in question is farmland, parkland, other, or a mixture. This is a rich topic and a significant one in connection with British perceptions of landscapes and all kinds of outdoor environments. One of the principal themes is the change from geometrically based designs to a more free and naturalistic approach. The new naturalistic style originated in the 1730s. It evolved and became widespread not only in England but around the world and was known as ‘the English style’. Its moist famous practitioners in the UK were William Kent (a Yorkshireman), Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, and Humphry Repton. A very good local example of the naturalistic English style can be seen in the parkland at Harewood House. Brown and Repton, and others, advised here. Peter describing one of the water features with the back of the house in the background Temple, cascade and lake surrounded by mature trees Bramham, by contrast, was laid out between about 1700 and 1730 in the geometrical style. Although it was later modified slightly by naturalistic landscape gardening, it is still one of the best and most important surviving examples in the UK of the geometrical style and indeed of ‘the Grand Manner’. ‘The Grand Manner’ is a very appropriate description for the layout of the garden and park at Bramham because the scale of the layout is in harmony with the scale and features of the local landscape and with the scale of nature that they represent. A plan was drawn up c.1725-c1728 by the architect John Wood the Elder and survives as an engraving. It shows three large wooded areas which are located, as it were, at the corners of a very large triangle. The area between them is taken up by the park. The three wooded areas are (1) the pleasure grounds which lie immediately behind the mansion, (2) Black Fen Wood, and (3) Whittle Carr. The whole design is stitched together by a series of straight narrow vistas, broad views, and architectural eye-catchers. The pleasure grounds behind the mansion are notable for their alleys between high clipped hedges, their water features, their perimeter walks with their views beyond the pleasure grounds, and the wild flowers at your feet. The plan of c.1725-28 can still be used and is a very effective guide because much of the layout survives as shown on it. And where there have been changes, the plan makes it relatively easy to imagine what was there before.