Monthly Meeting Notes January 6 2016

Monthly Meeting Notes January 6

Another good turn out for the start of the year, thanks for all who attended. We started off with an article from the Hancock Museum Natural History Society about John Hancock: A Biography by T Russell Goddard (1929). This was suggested by Val who thought it appropriate as we meet in the upstairs cafe the first Wednesday of every month.

If you are interested in John Hancock you can find out more by going to the Natural History Society Of  Northumbria or read the article taken from the web site further down this page:

Natural History Society

Ancroft

 With permission of The Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne

 Maureen shared a little trip she had to the Village of Ancroft, she also has two articles about the village and the church of Sait Anne if anyone is interested  and would like to borrow them come along to the next meeting or e-mail us at:

nlhgroup1@gmail.com

Ancroft by Maureen Philips

Ancroft is about five and a half miles south of Berwick,  there are several suggestions as to how it got its name:

1. It could be an abridged version of St Aidens Croft. St Aiden was the first Bishop of Lindisfarne (Holy Island).
2. Possibly from a church dedicated to St Anne
3. Derived from old English word for single or lonely

Evidence has shown people from the Bronze Age lived at the site of Ancroft. Archaeological surveys show evidence of a medieval village (1066-1540), a church built in the late 11th century and thatched cottages that date from the 17th century.

From the 13th to the 16 th century Ancroft was under constant conflict between Scotland and England due to being so close to the border. People were raided, murdered and dwellings burnt. Fortified towers were built including Ancroft Church Pele Tower. In 1667 the village was almost wiped out by plague and victims were carried out into the fields and their bodied covered with shelters made from branches of broom, a gorse like shrub with yellow flowers that are often habited by Yellow Hammer Birds. After death the bodies and shelters were burned to stop the spread of the infection. The infected area is known as Broomy Hill. The mounds where the village first stood can still be seen and is a protected site of  Historical interest.

Within the next century the population increased to over 1000 which included farming workers, miners and boot and clog producers. Marleborough army marched in boots made in Ancroft.The line of trees on the southern skyline is known as "Cobblers Row" and each tree is said to represent a working cobbler.

The church of Saint Anne is well worth a visit. It is one of the four churches built by the monks of Holy Island priory on their mainland esates. In the churchyard there is the headstone marking the grave of eight Poor Clare sisters who escaped from Rouen during the French Revolution and  who lived at Haggerston Castle. inside the churchyard gate are some steps known as the "Louping on stane" by which a lady who was going to ride behind a horseman could mount in a dignified manner.

Maureen recommends this site for a trip out and says not to miss the Oxford Team Rooms 1 mile just off the A1 towards Berwick. It is an authenticated farm tee room with good food, jams chutneys and arts and crafts.

If you have any trips you would like to see on these pages bring them along or send them to us.

Local History Quiz

 

To get our brains going for the new year we spent some time doing a local history quiz. The quiz was from  Michael who had given it to us  a few years ago. We had two teams and extra points were awarded for more historical information.  Everyone contributed and the results strangely enough was a draw. For those of you who could not attend here are the links to the quiz and the answers:

Local History Quiz

Answers to Local History Quiz




Peter has agreed to write the next quiz which will be on general history. I have a wooden spoon for the loosers. Here is an extract from:

Extractor or Universal Repertorium of Literature Science and the Arts Vol 2 March to July 1829 that illustrates the proverb of a wooden spoon:

Next Meeting

The next meeting will be held on Wednesday February 3 in the upstairs cafe at the Hancock Museum at 10:30. Please bring along any work or items of local or general historical interest to discuss. I have been promising to bring along a Devils Toenail for John to see, perhaps I will do it this time.

John Hancock: A Biography by T Russell Goddard (1929)

 John Hancock was born in his father’s house at the north end of Tyne Bridge, Newcastle-upon-Tyne on February 24th, 1808. His love of birds and desire to collect them appear to have developed very early. We have it on the authority of his sister Mary that when a little boy of about four years of age he used to run about the fields at Bensham, where his father had taken a house, trying to catch the birds. In 1812, after his father’s death, his mother furnished a house beyond the Windmill Hills, Gateshead, which was then right out in the open country. Here during the summer months John and Mary Hancock hunted the fields and hedges for birds, plants and insects. John Hancock first attended the school of the Misses Prowitt which was situated down an entry off Pilgrim Street. Later he was sent to the school of Henry Atkinson on the High Bridge, which at that time was the best in the town.

During the summer the family used to go to the coast for a period, either to Tynemouth or Cullercoats and here the children had an opportunity to observe marine animals and plants. At home in Newcastle during the winter they amused themselves and their friends with private theatricals, puppet shows, games and dances. John, we learn, was usually the life and soul of the party and made it his business to look after the little ones and those who were shy or neglected.

When he left school he joined his eldest brother Thomas in the saddlery and ironmongery business at the shop at the end of Tyne Bridge. He soon found business irksome, however, and longed for freedom to pursue his natural history interests. He therefore entered into an arrangement with his brother which enabled him to give up the business altogether. At this time he was collecting birds, insects, shells and plants and commenced to skin and stuff birds himself. He was on friendly terms with Richard Wingate, the well-known Newcastle taxidermist, and spent much time in his workshop. A specimen of the Golden Plover which he considered his first successful attempt at taxidermy is in the Hancock Museum. It was mounted before 1829.

As a young man he thought nothing of leaving home at three o’clock in the morning and walking to the coast and back, especially at the seasons of the migration of birds. He was an excellent shot and collected the majority of his specimens himself. He appears to have been the first to notice the specific distinction between the Whooper and Bewick’s Swan in January, 1829, but he left it to others to publish the fact.

As a young man John Hancock became interested in modelling in clay and casting in plaster. Several plaster casts of his clay models still decorate the Hancock Museum, and the two eagles in hardened lead surmounting the stone gate-posts at the entrance to the museum grounds are also his work. He also executed a number of wood-engravings. His most successful is a gorged Iceland Falcon which he engraved in 1845.

His collecting expedition to Norway with his friends William Hewitson and Benjamin Johnson in 1833 has already been mentioned in William Hewitson’s biographical sketch.  In 1845 he and William Hewitson went on an expedition to Switzerland. They travelled up the Rhine to Cologne and John Hancock heard the nightingale singing for the first time in his life on the banks of this beautiful river.

He was keenly interested in falconry and delighted in training peregrines and merlins. He trained some of his birds on the Newcastle Town Moor.

In 1851 he contributed a series of mounted birds to the Great Exhibition which was held in Hyde Park, London. Three of the exhibits illustrated different aspects of falconry and a fourth was a Lämmergeier from Switzerland. These specimens are still on exhibition in the Bird Room at the Hancock Museum. The exhibits at the Great Exhibition created a considerable amount of enthusiasm, and John Hancock’s national reputation as a taxidermist dates from this time. His work was generally recognised as a distinct advance upon anything of the kind which had been seen before. In place of the old stereotyped attitudes John Hancock with great artistic skill had succeeded in creating a semblance of life in his specimens. He specialised in mounting birds of prey and his collection, now in the Hancock Museum, is one of the finest in existence of this particular group of birds.

In 1874 his “Catalogue of the Birds of Northumberland and Durham,” with fourteen photographic copper plates from drawings by the author, was published as Volume VI. of the Natural History Transactions of Northumberland and Durham. In addition to this volume he published twenty papers in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, the Transactions of the Tyneside Naturalist’s Field Club and the Transactions of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham and Newcastle- upon- Tyne. He also prepared the Synopsis and revised the nomenclature for the 1847 edition of Bewick’s “British Birds.” His first paper “Remarks on the Greenland and Iceland Falcons, shewing they are distinct species” was published in the British Association Report for 1838.

John Hancock, was one of the original members of the Tyneside Naturalists’ Field Club and a Vice-President of the Natural History Society. The prominent part he played in connection with the planning and erection of the new museum building at Barras Bridge, and his generosity in presenting his extensive and valuable collections to the Society, have already been dealt with in previous chapters of this history. At one period of his life he devoted much attention to landscape gardening and he planned and laid out a number of beautiful gardens for his friends.

Finally, a word should be said about his character and temperament. His habits are said to have been of Spartan simplicity and temperance. He was kind and gentle, patient and ever ready to take the upmost pains to explain to others problems in natural history which he had worked out himself. All children and all animals loved him. He was never tired of teaching the former how to collect and preserve their specimens and he was ever solicitous of the comfort and welfare of the latter. A friend of his, now also passed away, once told the author the following story which casts a clear light upon his character and his understanding of the feelings of inarticulate animals. He had been spending a period at Newbiggin on the coast of Northumberland studying and collecting birds in company with his dog. The time for his return to Newcastle arrived and he decided to travel by train. This was in the early days of railways. When he arrived at the station he discovered that the dog was terrified at the locomotive and showed great reluctance to go anywhere near the train.  John Hancock, therefore, rather than submit his canine friend to a prolonged period of terror turned his back upon the station and the two of them walked back to Newcastle together.

On October 11th, 1890, he died at his house at the end of St. Mary’s Terrace opposite to the museum at the age of eighty-three years. He was survived by his sister Mary who had devoted the whole of her life to the comfort and welfare of her two bachelor brothers.

Reference:-GODDARD, T R (1929).  The History of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham and Newcastle upon Tyne 1829-1929. pp.171-176.

Answers to Local History Quiz

Answers to Local History Quiz

1.  The first Great North Run was staged on 28 June 1981, when 12,000 runners participated. By 2003, the number of participants had risen to 47,000. The 2011 event saw an announced field of 54,000. The number of finishers was 35,777 in 2007, the largest half marathon and the 13th largest running race that year.
2.  Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner CBE (born 2 October 1951), known professionally by his stage name Sting, is an English musician, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, activist, actor, and philanthropist. He was the principal songwriter, lead singer, and bassist for the new wave rock band The Police from 1977 to 1983, before launching a solo career.
3.  Designed by Robert Stephenson and built between 1847 and 1849, it was the first major example of a wrought iron tied arch or bow-string girder bridge. It is a simple engineering solution to a difficult problem at the time it was built; the spanning of 1,337 feet (408 m) of river valley, including 512 feet (156 m) across water. The High Level Bridge has six river spans of 125 feet (38 m) length, sitting on masonry piers 46 by 16 feet (14.0 by 4.9 m) up to 131 feet (40 m) height. There are also four land spans on each side, of 36 feet 3 inches (11.05 m). The two-way single carriageway road (since reduced to a single one-way carriageway) and pedestrian walkways occupy the lower deck of the spans, 85 feet (26 m) above the high-water mark, and the railway is on the upper deck 112 feet (34 m) above the high-water mark. The total weight of the structure is 5,000 long tons (5,100 t).^[2]
4.  Jack Charlton together with brother Bobby spearheaded England's successful World Cup win in 1966 over West Germany. His uncle was the great Jackie Milburn. 
5. The North Shields Quay was once the biggest kipper producer in the UK, but the fall in herring stocks has reduced the trade to a single smokery. A number of traditional smokehouses still exist but have been converted to other uses.
6. The Blaydon Race is a 5.7 mile athletics race from Newcastle upon Tyne to Blaydon, in England, that is steeped in local tradition. It takes place on June 9th every year starting on Collingwood Street in Newcastle, heading west along Scotswood Road and finishing in Blaydon.
7. The Tyne Bridge is a through arch bridge over the River Tyne in North East England, linking Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead. The Bridge was designed by the engineering firm Mott, Hay and Anderson,[1] who later designed the Forth Road Bridge, and was built by Dorman Long and Co. of Middlesbrough.[2] The bridge was officially opened on 10 October 1928 by King George V and has since become a defining symbol of Tyneside. It is ranked as the tenth tallest structure in the city. Vale House Lansdowne Gardens, Newcastle upon Tyne. NE2 1HF is the tallest building 262 ft 28 floors  built in 1968.
8. Ellen Cicely Wilkinson PC (8 October 1891 – 6 February 1947) was a British Labour Party politician who served as Minister of Education from July 1945 until her death. As the Member of Parliament (MP) for Jarrow, she became a national figure when, in 1936, she figured prominently in the Jarrow March of the town's unemployed to London, to petition for the right to work. Although unsuccessful at the time, the march provided an iconic image for the 1930s, and helped to form post-Second World War attitudes to unemployment and social justice.
9. Basil Hume OSB OM (2 March 1923 – 17 June 1999) was British bishop. He was a monk and priest of the English Benedictine monastery of Ampleforth Abbey and its abbot for 13 years until his appointment as Archbishop of Westminster in 1976. His elevation to a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church followed during the same year.[1] From 1979 Hume served also as President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. He held these appointments until his death from cancer in 1999. His final resting place is at Westminster Cathedral in the Chapel of St Gregory and St Augustine.[2]
10. Charles Avison (/ˈeɪvɨsən/; 16 February 1709 (baptised) died – 9 or 10 May 1770) was an English composer during the Baroque and Classical periods. He was a church organist at St John The Baptist Church[1] in Newcastle and at St. Nicholas's Church (later Newcastle Cathedral). He is most known for his 12 Concerti Grossi after Scarlatti and his Essay on Musical Expression, the first music criticism published in English.  Charles Avison is buried in St. Andrew’s, Newgate Street, Newcastle.
11. The Lit and Phil Society was founded early in 1793 as a 'conversation club', with an annual subscription of one guinea. It now costs you £115.
12. The station was designed by John Dobson for two companies: the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway (YN&BR) and the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway (N&CR). The station was constructed in collaboration with Robert Stephenson who was responsible for the High Level Bridge, between 1845 and 1850. The opening ceremony, attended by Queen Victoria, took place on 29 August 1850. The building has a neoclassical styled frontage, and its trainshed has a distinctive roof with three curved, arched spans — the first example of its kind, which set the 'house style' for the NER's subsequent main stations, culminating in the last major British example half a century later, the rebuilt and enlarged Hull Paragon in 1904. A porte-cochère, designed by Thomas Prosser, was added to the station entrance in 1863,[10] and the trainshed was extended southwards in the 1890s with a new span designed by William Bell.
13. Thomas Daniel Smith (11 May 1915 – 27 July 1993) was a British politician who was Leader of Newcastle City Council from 1960 to 1965. He was a prominent figure in the Labour Party in North East England, such that he was nicknamed 'Mr Newcastle' (although his opponents called him the "Mouth of the Tyne"). Smith sought to clear Newcastle of slum housing and put a great deal of effort into regeneration plans, such that the city was nicknamed (at his suggestion) "The Brasilia of the North". He also pumped money into local arts institutions. Ironically, many residents of Newcastle felt his 'regeneration' plans 'to clear Newcastle of slum housing' in fact created a West End now dismissed as being an impoverished area.[citation needed] Smith's name is usually spoken in negative terms regarding the destruction of historic and aesthetically pleasing buildings which were replaced with a concrete jungle, although many of these developments – such as Eldon Square Shopping Centre and John Dobson's Royal Arcade – actually took place after he left office. While leading the redevelopment of his city, Smith formed business links with architect John Poulson which led to his trial for accepting bribes in April 1974, at which he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six years' imprisonment.
14. Lord Grey. When the Tory government was ousted later in 1830, Earl Grey, a Whig, became Prime Minister and pledged to carry out parliamentary reform. The Whig Party was pro-reform and though two reform bills failed to be carried in Parliament, the third was successful and received Royal Assent in 1832. The Bill was passed due to Lord Grey's plan to persuade King William IV to consider using his constitutional powers to create additional Whig peers in the House of Lords to guarantee the Bill's passage. On hearing of this plan, Tory peers abstained from voting, thus allowing the Bill to be passed but avoiding the creation of more Whig peers.