CHAPTER VII
THE MANUFACTURING DISTRICT

In the south-western parts of Yorkshire there still remains sufficient unspoiled scenery to remind us that, before industrialism claimed this area, it was as picturesque as many parts of the North Riding. No landscape in the world can remain beautiful when its atmosphere is polluted with grime, when ugly black villages are huddled near big factories and tall shafts, and when once luxuriant vegetation is blighted by sulphurous vapours. If a government brought into power with a mandate for beautifying England seriously set to work, no doubt smoke, the greatest trouble of all, could be dealt with by the compulsory use of some improved form of smoke-destructor. Following on this would come a thousand boons, and perhaps before another century had passed, in a clearer atmosphere, men might see things plainer, and light those Beltane fires in which Mr. H. G. Wells pictures the destruction of all the ugliness in this country.

Smoke and blackness being allowed to have its own happy-go-lucky way, we find, even on the very outskirts of the manufacturing district, that the towns are not exactly the places we should choose in selecting an objective for a vacation. Thus, Selby, although surrounded by pleasant unspoiled country, seems infected by the smoky towns a few miles to the west, and has black roads and the unsatisfactory suggestion of poverty everywhere. The great abbey church shows its long roof-line over dull houses, and does its best to make up for the deficiencies of the town. In this it is not very successful, having only a low central tower, and the severe character of the Norman and Early English work of the western half deprives the building of any outline which would relieve the monotonous appearance of the town. Even the Ouse adds no charm to Selby, for its sluggish waters flow between muddy banks without a trace of the picturesque. There is only one place where we can forget the sense of disappointment Selby gives, and that is inside the abbey church, where now, alas! the transepts and choir are still in the hands of masons and carpenters, who are renewing the stone and wood destroyed in the recent fire. Buildings of this character seem almost as though they could not be burnt, and probably if the choir roof had been vaulted with stone, as appears to have been originally intended, the fire would have been confined to the north transept and the chapel adjoining, where the newly constructed organ was being completed.

It was before midnight on October 19, 1906, that the flames were first seen bursting from the Latham Chapel, where the organ was placed. The Selby fire brigade with their small engine were confronted with a task entirely beyond their powers, and though the men worked heroically, they were quite unable to prevent the fire from spreading to the roofs of the chancel and nave, and consuming all that was inflammable within the tower. By about three in the morning fire-engines from Leeds and York had arrived, and with a copious supply of water from the river, it was hoped that the double roof of the nave might have been saved, but the fire had obtained too fierce a hold, and by 4.30 a correspondent telegraphed:

About the same time the timbers in the tower were burnt to such an extent that they could no longer support the weight above.

When the fire was vanquished, it had practically completed its work of destruction. Besides reducing to charred logs and ashes all the timber in the great building, the heat had been so intense that glass windows had been destroyed, tracery demolished, carved finials and capitals reduced to powder, and even the massive piers by the north transept, where the furnace of flame reached its maximum intensity, became so calcined and cracked that they were left in a highly dangerous condition.

Only a day or two before this disaster I spent some hours in the abbey church, wandering through the dark Norman aisles and the less sombre chancel, noting many beautiful features which I little realized would cease to exist in a very few days. When I next visited Selby, it was to find the churchyard converted into a mason’s workshop, and the interior of the building filled with a complicated mass of timber framework, supporting the cracked and calcined masonry.

Fortunately the splendid Norman nave was not badly damaged, and after a new roof had been built, it was easily made ready for holding services. The two bays nearest to the transept are early Norman, and on the south side the massive circular column is covered with a plain grooved diaper-work, almost exactly the same as may be seen at Durham Cathedral. All the rest of the nave is Transitional Norman except the Early English clerestory, and is a wonderful study in the progress from early Norman to Early English.

On the floor on the south side of the nave by one of the piers is a slab to the memory of a maker of grave-stones, worded in this quaint fashion:

A stone on the floor of the retro-choir to John Johnson, master and mariner, dated 1737, is crowded with nautical metaphor.

The great Perpendicular east window was considered by Pugin to be one of the most beautiful of its type in England, and the risk it ran of being entirely destroyed during the fire was very great. The design of the glass illustrates the ancestry of Christ from Jesse, and a considerable portion of it is original.

Of the grave-slabs of the abbots of Selby, the earliest is that of Alexander, who held the office from 1214 to 1221. In the floor of the north aisle of the choir is a very much mutilated alabaster slab to that abbot—John de Shireburn—who, it will be remembered, was one of the chief witnesses in the great law-suit in the fourteenth century between Lord Scrope of Bolton Castle in Wensleydale and Sir Robert Grosvenor, as to the right to bear the arms ‘azure, a bend or.’ Shireburn stated that those arms were in the porch of the infirmary of Selby Abbey, and that they were always attributed to the Scropes, in whose favour the case was decided. William Pygot, who was the next abbot, succeeded in 1407; John Cave followed him in 1429, and both are buried near Abbot Shireburn. A terribly mutilated effigy of a knight in chain-armour is also preserved in the choir. Head, arms, and legs are missing, but the arms on the surcoat are those of Saltmarshe, and the figure no doubt represented one of the members of that ancient family.

Although it cannot be denied that Selby Abbey suffered severely in the great conflagration of two years ago, yet its greatest association with history, the Norman nave, is still intact. At the eastern end of the nave we can still look upon the ponderous arches of the Benedictine Abbey Church, founded by William the Conqueror in 1069 as a mark of his gratitude for the success of his arms in the north of England, even as Battle Abbey was founded in the south.

Going to the west as far as Pontefract, we come to the actual borders of the coal-mine and factory-bestrewn country. Although the history of Pontefract is so detailed and so rich, it has long ago been robbed of nearly every building associated with the great events of its past, and its present appearance is intensely disappointing. The town stands on a hill, and has a wide and cheerful market-place possessing an eighteenth-century ‘cross’ on big open arches. It is a plain, classic structure, ‘erected by Mrs. Elisabeth Dupier Relict of Solomon Dupier, Gent, in a cheerful and generous Compliance with his benevolent Intention Anº Dom’ 1734.’

The castle stood at the northern end of the town on a rocky eminence just suited for the purposes of an early fortress, but of the stately towers and curtain walls which have successively been reared above the scarps, practically nothing besides foundations remains. The base of the great round tower, prominent in all the prints of the castle in the time of its greatest glory, fragments of the lower parts of other towers and some dungeons or magazines are practically the only features of the historic site that the imagination finds to feed

upon. A long flight of steps leads into the underground chambers, on whose walls are carved the names of various prisoners taken during the siege of 1648. Below the castle, on the east side, is the old church of All Saints with its ruined nave, eloquent of the destruction wrought by the Parliamentary cannon in the successive sieges, and to the north stands New Hall, the stately Tudor mansion of Lord George Talbot, now reduced to the melancholy wreck depicted in these pages. The girdle of fortifications constructed by the besiegers round the castle included New Hall, in case it might have been reached by a sally of the Royalists, whose cannon-balls, we know, carried as far, from the discovery of one embedded in the masonry. Coats of arms of the Talbots can still be seen on carved stones on the front walls over the entrance. The date, 1591, is believed to be later than the time of the erection of the house, which, in the form of its parapets and other details, suggests the style of Henry VIII.’s reign. It is exceedingly probable that Lord George Talbot, who was granted the Priory of St. John the Evangelist at Pontefract by the Crown soon after the Dissolution, built this stately mansion, to a considerable extent, with the materials of the demolished monastery, for many of the stones bear Norman and later carving, and even the wooden beams have palpably been used in an earlier building. Nearly all the outer structures of the courtyard on the east side have disappeared; in 1828 the north tower fell, and year by year the decay of the walls advances.

Although we can describe in a very few words the historic survivals of Pontefract, to deal even cursorily with the story of the vanished castle and modernized town is a great undertaking, so numerous are the great personages and famous events of English history connected with its owners, its prisoners, and its sieges.

The name Pontefract has suggested such an obvious derivation that, from the early topographers up to the present time, efforts have been made to discover the broken bridge giving rise to the new name, which replaced the Saxon Kyrkebi. No one has yet succeeded in this quest, and the absence of any river at Pontefract makes the search peculiarly hopeless. At Castleford, a few miles north-west of Pontefract, where the Roman Ermine Street crossed the confluence of the Aire and the Calder, it is definitely known that there was only a ford. The present name does not make any appearance until several years after the Norman Conquest, though Ilbert de Lacy received the great fief, afterwards to become the Honour of Pontefract, in 1067, the year after the Battle of Hastings. Ilbert built the first stone castle on the rock, and either to him or his immediate successors may be attributed the Norman walls and chapel, whose foundations still exist on the north and east sides of the castle yard. During his advance towards York for the conquest of the north of England, William the Norman was delayed for three weeks at Castleford, owing to the river being so flooded that it could not be crossed even with boats, and it was no doubt during his enforced stay on the south side of the river that he realized the importance of the site of Pontefract; and if Ilbert de Lacy were with him at the time, it is reasonable to suppose that the Norman lord expressed to the Conqueror his liking for the neighbourhood.

The De Lacys held Pontefract until 1193, when Robert died without issue, the castle and lands passing by marriage to Richard Fitz-Eustace; and the male line again became extinct in 1310, when Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, married Alice, the heiress of Henry de Lacy. Henry’s great-grandfather was the Roger de Lacy, Justiciar and Constable of Chester, who is famous for his heroic defence of ChÂteau Gaillard, in Normandy, for nearly a year, when John weakly allowed Philip Augustus to continue the siege, making only one feeble attempt at relief. Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, who was a cousin of Edward II., was more or less in continual opposition to the king, on account of his determination to rid the Court of the royal favourites, and it was with Lancaster’s full consent that Piers Gaveston was beheaded at Blacklow Hill, near Warwick, in 1312. For this Edward never forgave his cousin, and when, during the fighting which followed the recall of the Despensers, Lancaster was obliged to surrender after the Battle of Boroughbridge, Edward had his revenge. The Earl was brought to his own castle at Pontefract, where the King lay, and there accused of rebellion, of coming to the Parliaments with armed men, and of being in league with the Scots. Without even being allowed a hearing, he was condemned to death as a traitor, and the next day, June 19, 1322, mounted on a sorry nag without a bridle, he was led to a hill outside the town, and executed with his face towards Scotland.

In the last year of the same century Richard II. died in imprisonment in the castle, not long after the Parliament had decided that the deposed King should be permanently immured in an out-of-the-way place. Hardyng’s Chronicle records the journeying from one castle to another in the lines:

Archbishop Scrope affirmed that Richard died of starvation, while Shakespeare makes Sir Piers of Exton his murderer.

On the west side of the castle ruins some broken walls are pointed out as Richard’s chamber, on what evidence I do not know.

During the Pilgrimage of Grace the castle was besieged, and given up to the rebels by Lord Darcy and the Archbishop of York. In the following century came the three sieges of the Civil War. The first two followed after the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, and Fairfax joined the Parliamentary forces on Christmas Day of that year, remaining through most of January. On March 1 Sir Marmaduke Langdale relieved the Royalist garrison, and Colonel Lambert fell back, fighting stubbornly and losing some 300 men. The garrison then had an interval of just three weeks to reprovision the castle, then the second siege began, and lasted until July 19, when the courageous defenders surrendered, the besieging force having lost 469 men killed to 99 of those within the castle. Of these two sieges, often looked upon as one, there exists a unique diary kept by Nathan Drake, a ‘gentleman volunteer’ of the garrison, and from its wonderfully graphic details it is possible to realize the condition of the defence, their sufferings, their hopes, and their losses, almost more completely than of any other siege before recent times.

In the third and last investment of 1648-49 Cromwell himself summoned the garrison, and remained a month with the Parliamentary forces, without seeing any immediate prospect of the surrender of the castle. When the Royalists had been reduced to a mere handful, Colonel Morris, their commander, agreed to terms of capitulation on March 24, 1649. The dismantling of the stately pile by order of Parliament followed as a matter of course, and now we have practically nothing but seventeenth-century prints to remind us of the embattled towers which for so many months defied Cromwell and his generals.

Liquorice is still grown at Pontefract, although the industry has languished on account of Spanish rivalry, and the town still produces those curious little discs of soft liquorice, approximating to the size of a shilling, known as ‘Pontefract cakes.’

To the west of Pontefract, in a comparatively small space, and connected with a wonderful network of railways, lie Wakefield, Leeds, Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, Dewsbury, and a dozen smaller centres of manufacture, while further south are Barnsley and Sheffield. It seems unfair that a district contributing so much to England’s wealth should be repaid by gloomy skies and depressing landscapes.

Wakefield has a fine Perpendicular church with a tall crocketed spire, which became a cathedral in 1888, when the new diocese was formed. The chantry on the bridge over the Calder is entirely a modern reconstruction. It is, however, so richly carved, and so deceptive in its appearance of age, through the weathering of the Caen stone employed, that even Ruskin was under some misapprehension in regard to its age. There is nothing in the town to connect it with Goldsmith’s ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’ and it is not known if he ever visited the place.

The great black city of Leeds has a nucleus consisting of several fine streets possessing numbers of modern buildings, making an imposing effect worthy of the fifth English city and the commercial capital of Yorkshire. New public buildings, banks, shops, or whatever they may be, however white they commence their existence, in a very short time are toned down to the uniform sable tones of the whole city. Clock-faces stand out with painful whiteness against the sooty stonework of towers and gables, and the only colour to be seen is restricted to the shop-windows. Architects should remember the atmosphere of Leeds, and use coloured glazed bricks and porcelain extensively, so that whole buildings could every year be washed down from the roofs to the ground, and cheer the citizens of the great town with their cleanliness and colour. In City Square, just outside the stations of the Midland, Great Northern, and other

railways, and therefore where people get their first impression of Leeds, stands a fine statue of the Black Prince mounted on a noble charger. It seems curiously appropriate that the one member of the royal line of England with such a distinction should have been chosen for a prominent statue in the chief of the black cities of England, especially when we know that Edward III.’s son was, according to tradition, instrumental in introducing the weaving industry from Flanders into Yorkshire, where it has flourished increasingly ever since. Edward III. has been called ‘the father of English industry,’ and if this is a justifiable distinction both he and his son are in a measure responsible for the blackness as well as the riches their foresight has produced.

The ruins of the great Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstall, founded in the twelfth century by Henry de Lacy, still stand in a remarkable state of completeness, about three miles from Leeds. With the exception of Fountains, the remains are more perfect than any in Yorkshire. Nearly the whole of the church is Transitional Norman, and the roofless nave is in a wonderfully fine state of preservation. The chapter-house and refectory, as well as smaller rooms, are fairly complete, and the situation by the Aire on a sunny day is still attractive; yet owing to the smoke-laden atmosphere, and the inevitable indications of the countless visitors from the city, the ruins have lost much of their interest, unless viewed solely from a detached architectural standpoint. We do not feel much inclination to linger in this neighbourhood, and continue our way westwards towards the great rounded hills, where, not far from Keighley, we come to the grey village of Haworth.

More than half a century has gone since Charlotte BrontË passed away in that melancholy house, the ‘parsonage’ of the village. In that period the church she knew has been rebuilt, with the exception of the tower, her home has been enlarged, a branch line from Keighley has given Haworth a railway-station, and factories have multiplied in the valley, destroying its charm. These changes sound far greater than they really are, for in many ways Haworth and its surroundings are just what they were in the days when the members of that ill-fated household were still united under the grey roof of the ‘parsonage,’ as it is invariably called by Mrs. Gaskell.

We climb up the steep road from the station at the bottom of the deep valley, and come to the foot of the village street, which, even though it turns sharply to the north in order to make as gradual an ascent as possible, is astonishingly steep. At the top stands an inn, the ‘Black Bull,’ where the downward path of the unhappy Branwell BrontË began, owing to the frequent occasions when ‘Patrick,’ as he was familiarly called, was sent for by the landlord to talk to his more important patrons.

A not unpicturesque passage just above this inn leads to the church, the schools, and the ‘parsonage.’ Everything that is not a recent accretion is built of stone, and generally roofed with stone slabs also, all, however, of that blackish hue that needs creepers, white window-frames, and bright-coloured shutters and doors, to relieve the gauntness. Such cheerful touches are lacking in Haworth, and no doubt the want of colour in their surroundings accounted for much of the morbid melancholy so marked in the children who grew up in the sombre house.

We cannot see to-day the church the BrontËs knew. With the exception of the tower, it has been rebuilt, and even the old pulpit and sounding-board of Mr. BrontË’s time are not to be seen. The verger knows of their existence in a barn, and perhaps one day the BrontË Society will contrive to have them replaced in the church. Many pilgrims to Haworth would find more pleasure in seeing an object which must have been so extremely familiar to Charlotte and her sisters, than in examining the very pathetic and often painful mementoes in the society’s museum in the village. We are not far enough removed from the times of the BrontËs to make it seemly to exhibit in glass cases garments, and obviously inexpensive boots, worn by Charlotte.

The churchyard is, to a large extent, closely paved with tombstones dating back to the seventeenth century, laid flat, and on to this dismal piece of ground the chief windows of the BrontËs’ house looked, as they continue to do to-day. It is exceedingly strange that such an unfortunate arrangement of the buildings on this breezy hill-top should have given a gloomy outlook to the parsonage. If the house had only been placed a little higher up the hill, and been built to face the south, it is conceivable that the BrontËs would have enjoyed better health and a less melancholy and tragic outlook on life. An account of a visit to Haworth Parsonage by a neighbour, when Charlotte and her father were the only survivors of the family, gives a

clear impression of how the house appeared to those who lived brighter lives:

Very soon after the family came to Haworth Mrs. BrontË died, when the eldest girl, Maria, was only six years old; and far from there having been any childish laughter about the house, we are told that the children were unusually solemn from their infancy. In their earliest walks, the five little girls with their one brother—all of them under seven years—directed their steps towards the wild moors above their home rather than into the village. Eighty-eight years have passed, and practically no change has come to the moorland side of the house, so that we can imagine the precocious toddling children going hand-in-hand over the grass-lands towards the moors beyond, as though we had travelled back over the intervening years.

The unnatural environment of the BrontËs’ childhood gave that lurid colour to their imaginations so evident in the writings of Charlotte and Emily, and, when at Roe Head School, one of Charlotte’s friends, after describing in a letter her companion’s strange gift of ‘making out’ histories and inventing characters, writes: ‘I told her sometimes they were like growing potatoes in a cellar. She said sadly, “Yes, I know we are.”’

It is difficult to quite absolve the father of this remarkable family for not realizing that his little girls were not living a healthy childhood, mentally or physically, and all we read of Mr. BrontË in Mrs. Gaskell’s book suggests a total want of appreciation of the important elements so woefully lacking in their upbringing. In those days Haworth was extremely isolated, and the few outside influences that reached the neighbourhood came no nearer than the small manufacturing town of Keighley, four miles away. The journey to London was then a vast undertaking, whereas now we can reach the famous old ‘parsonage’ from St. Pancras, by the Midland Railway, in less than four hours.

The purple moors so beloved by the BrontËs stretch away to the Calder Valley, and beyond that depression in great sweeping outlines to the Peak of Derbyshire, where they exceed 2,000 feet in

height. Within easy reach of this grand country is Sheffield, perhaps the blackest and ugliest city in England. At night, however, the great iron and steel works become wildly fantastic. The tops of many chimneys emit crimson flames, and glowing shafts of light with a nucleus of dazzling brilliance show between the inky forms of buildings. Ceaseless activity reigns in these industrial infernos, with three shifts of men working during each twenty-four hours; and from the innumerable works come every form of manufactured steel and iron goods, from a pair of scissors or a plated teaspoon to steel rails and armour plate.