We really needed a business morning to catch up on emails and to make plans, sort out tickets and contact all the people we were hoping to see in England. Far from Barnsley being a place to have lots of down time in, it was proving to be a veritable centre of the universe for lovely countryside, fascinating history and historical sites and friendly and kind people. Our friend Michael, himself a traveller, understood how hard it is not to use the limited time you have in a place to explore and learn about it, while at the same time trying to fit in all the necessities of diary, contacts, research and planning. He was happy to work out something to do together in the afternoon, with hopefully the chance of us being able to catch up with Kerry and Rohan later so that they could meet him.
The pouring rain was not so great, but we have discovered that the weather predictions must be a nightmare to make, given the changeability in a fifteen minute period, let alone a day, so we were optimistically hoping for a break pretty soon.
Michael drove us to Wentworth Woodhouse, the home of the earls who ran the Elsecar works, village and surrounding mines, which we had visited last week. We drove up through a most charming former estate village and past farms and gardens which were once working solely to supply the estate.
The Wentworth family had two branches (the Wentworth branch and the Stainborough branch) who vied for superiority in wealth and ostentation in their homes, with this branch having the longest house frontage of any in England (over 600 feet, about 200 metres).
Built around 1743, it sits in enormous parklands which the public can pass through. The house has a front lawn in keeping with its immensity, but a little lacking in features to the modern eye. I suppose 2½ acres of rooms and a whole wood and vast park were sufficient to occupy the servants and gardeners, and perhaps leaving a blank in front of the house drew attention to its lengthy frontage. We could see various buildings above the park trees, and guessed that they were some of the follies that were built here, some as part of the competition between the branches of the family. A hill in front of the house had been removed to enhance the view of the parklands!The stables are also enormous, with an arch to pass under and huge areas for stabling the horses. Originally there was a fountain in the middle which would have complemented the ornate architecture. The stables and grounds were used as the Lady Mabel College of Physical education from 1949 – 1974, named after the sister of the 7th Earl Fitzwilliam.
We drove on past the Rockley Abbey farm, where once an Abbey stood, to a grove of trees where Michael visited the Monk’s Furnace in his youth. Coming upon a bit of a ruin, we tried to see anything resembling a furnace, without success, but a little way on across the bridge, we found it nestling in amongst the trees. Of course, it does raise a hundred questions of what the monks needed a furnace for but, like the monks at the Monk Bretton Priory, these were worldly types, well versed in commerce and trade and in exerting control over the surrounding districts. Just as interesting was Michael’s story of how, as a very young man, he had come parking here with amorous intentions which were bubbling along nicely when he sensed a presence. Turning around, he saw a man’s face at the window, enjoying the goings on. Shouted at, he retreated into the forest and the young couple continued. Again they felt a presence, the peeping Tom had returned, so hurling on his jocks, Michael pursued him through the night forest, only pausing to arm himself with a hammer from his tool kit in the boot. Despite the creepiness of it all, the great break while Michael ran around, the physical exertion, the mixed emotions of anger and frustration and no doubt head to foot splatterings of mud, a good night was finally had by all.
Wentworth Castle at Stainborough was a different kettle of fish altogether, proving that wide frontage is not nearly so good as having gardens and a view over a valley to distant hills. Here we could see the remnants of the workers’ cottages, now like archaeological sites, and the walled garden where the food for the house was produced. I read later in the Daily Telegraph that research has shown how much longer estate workers lived compared to their contemporaries engaged in industry or manufacture, with a better and more plentiful food produced for the gentry, and consequently also for the servants, and far superior living conditions.At the other entrance a large open barn structure remained from the system of collecting tythes, a kind of tax, that was paid in produce. The idea of one family controlling all the surrounding land and the workers on it as well is easier to understand when you realise that whole swathes of land were given to deserving or favoured people by the king. Those living on it went with the land, with their loyalties and fortunes tied to the lord, who was supposed to carry out his responsibilities to the people in his care. The walled gardens were being restored and were not open, and we could understand as we stood in the brief moment of respite in the wild summer storm, that a mini-climate would have needed to be created for the variety of fruits and vegetables required to be grown.
The garden in front of the house was really pretty and a lovely perfumed place to walk. Nearby you could press buttons to hear recordings of oral histories, which was a fabulous idea and a great way to make oral histories accessible to the public in the place that they related to. One woman told of her husband, an employee on the estate in the 1950s, being offered a cottage on the estate but only if he would marry immediately. It seemed that the woodsman who was in the cottage had been sacked and, because it was a married man’s cottage, and the incubators attached had to be attended to daily, they looked for an employee with a girlfriend who might oblige with a hasty wedding. The couple had been planning to marry when they could afford a cottage, so they were happy. I imagined that, once the wedding service was completed and the reception held, they raced down to check the eggs in the incubator in their new home.
Around the back we strolled through the grounds to the Grecian Temple, built by one family member who wanted to bring the classics and some ruins into the park and garden. Could it have been a case of one-upping the follies of the relatives?
The formal gardens have been restored and replanted in the original design of a Union Jack, but it and the next smaller garden were not available to walk in. An intricate and enormous glass conservatory is on the list for restoration in the near future. To escape the rain we entered the garden centre and belatedly paid our entry fees. We bought a beautiful candle holder that we thought would appeal to Maureen and some Wentworth peanut brittle as well. A cup of coffee and some carrot cake restored our energy levels and we set off for the café to pick up Rohan and Kerry.
The next place we headed for was in Derbyshire, the region Keith’s ancestors hailed from, and the village was called Eyam. We started our visit at the Eyam Parish Church, where the grave of Catherine Mompesson, the vicar’s wife, started to tell the story of the devastation caused by the plague in 1665. The cottages in the street had plaques in memory of the people who had died in them, as the plague swept on. Thought to have started when a delivered package of damp cloth was open in the cottage where the first victim lived, the plague was so rampant that people had to bury their dead family members in their yards. Jane Hawksworth lost 25 family members, Mary Hadfield was the sole survivor in her family, losing 13 relatives and no-one survived of the nine members of the Thorpe family who lived in Rose Cottage. Imagine the panic, the grief and the despair. The vicar and villagers decided to quarantine their village rather than to try and flee and possibly spread the plague. If I remember correctly, three quarters of the people in the village and district died, leaving about thirty-three survivors, many of whom were weakened and unable to provide for their own needs. Michael drove us to a spot in the hills called Mompesson’s Well, where the remaining villagers left money in the well to be collected by people from neighbouring areas, who would leave food and supplies for the village.It was a sobering visit and one which left me thinking about the courage and selflessness of the villagers, and about the mental as well as physical torment that they went through.
The rest of the evening was on a much lighter note, with the winding narrow roads leading us to the Pheasant Hotel for a drink and then to the Scotsmans Pack where we had a tasty dinner.
English pubs seem to specialise in being old, atmospheric and cosy, with the Scotsmans Pack having a chair supposedly having been sat in by Little John. Rohan posed in it for me.
I was very tired by the time we reached Barnsley but it was not too late and for once I had an early night. Michael had given us the chance to see areas of countryside and some sites that were nearby in a car but would have been difficult without one and we really appreciated it. We were keen to do a couple of days walking on the nearby trails as a bit of training for the walk in France, which has had to be reduced to fit in with our journey to Tanzania, but should still be for about five or six days. We looked at the trail maps and decided to think about it in the morning, after checking out the weather.
A sign at the front of the church drew our attention to this cricketer´s grave at in the graveyard out the back. The 'umpire' has definitely given this batsman 'out' on this occasion.
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