by Desconhecido
In 1714 Parliament set up ENGLAND’S FIRST SCIENCE FUNDING BODY, THE BOARD OF LONGITUDE, which offered a prize of £20,000 to whoever could invent a means of calculating longitude to within 30 miles (48 km), after a voyage of six weeks to the West Indies.
John Harrison, a humble joiner with a passion for making clocks, was determined to win the prize and, at the fourth attempt, he designed a timepiece that looked like a large watch, with a new balance mechanism unaffected by the sea. It lost just five seconds in six weeks at sea and Harrison claimed the prize, but the Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne, miffed that his own experiments with lunar charts had failed, persuaded the bureaucrats on the Board not to award the money to the upstart Harrison. Harrison spent the rest of his life petitioning Parliament for his money, which he was finally awarded just before he died, on the personal intervention of George III. H4, an exact replica of Harrison’s prize-winning design, was carried by Captain Cook on his two final voyages of discovery. Cook called it ‘our faithful guide through all the vicissitudes of climate’. John Harrison’s ingenuity revolutionised sea travel, and for a while gave the English a huge advantage in the race to explore the globe.
William Hogarth
1697–1764
WILLIAM HOGARTH is the only major English artist to have a roundabout named after him, a dubious honour that would no doubt have tickled him, as one of England’s great satirists. The roundabout, a busy junction on the M4 at Chiswick, lies close to Hogarth’s House, where the artist lived during the summer months for the last 15 years of his life, with his wife Jane, daughter of SIR JAMES THORNHILL, THE FIRST ENGLISH-BORN ARTIST TO RECEIVE A KNIGHTHOOD.
Hogarth’s House
Gin and Tonic
One of Hogarth’s most evocative pictures is Gin Lane, which portrays the debauchery and degradation of a 17th-century London awash with cheap gin.
Gin was invented in Holland in the mid-17th century by Dr Franciscus Sylvius, as a cure for stomach disorders. It is distilled from grain spirits flavoured with juniper oil, and the name comes from ‘genever’, the Old Dutch word for juniper. English soldiers serving in Holland developed a taste for gin, which they called ‘Dutch courage’.
Gin production was then promoted in England by William of Orange, who slapped a tax on French brandy, and since it was already cheap to make, being a by-product of ordinary grain, gin rapidly became the tipple of choice for the poor, leading to the rampant drunkenness and disorder depicted in Hogarth’s picture. The government tried to curb this by bringing in the Gin Act of 1736, which led to rioting in the streets and drove gin distilling underground.
The development of the more refined London Dry Gin in the late 19th century made gin more respectable, and it became an essential ingredient in the newfangled cocktails.
‘Pink Gin’, with angostura bitters, a tonic formulated from herbs in the West Indies, was popular amongst naval officers, while gin and tonic was developed for the British army in India. The quinine in tonic water was believed to help fight off malaria, and the addition of gin made the tonic more palatable.
London Dry Gin is considered best in a gin and tonic, while Plymouth Gin, distilled in Plymouth since 1793, is preferred when making a Dry Martini Cocktail.
William Hogarth started life as a copper engraver, but soon turned to painting as a more lucrative occupation, and became known for his narrative pictures that told moral tales, in an early form of the comic strip. The eight pictures in his celebrated The Rake’s Progress tell of the dissolute life of wealthy Thomas Rakewell, who throws away his inheritance on drinking, whoring and gambling, and ends up in Bedlam, a reflection of the decline Hogarth saw all around him. He loved to poke fun at self-serving politicians and at affectation, and he was especially good at capturing real life, as he had an almost photographic memory and could remember scenes that he could later recreate in the most precise detail. It was this realism, both in the subject and the artwork, that he is remembered for.
Well, I never knew this
about
MIDDLESEX FOLK
Born in Middlesex
MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822–88), poet and renowned literary critic, was born in LALEHAM. His father was Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby School, famously portrayed in Tom Brown’s Schooldays. Both father and son are buried in the family plot in the churchyard of All Saints, Laleham.
EVELYN WAUGH (1903–66), novelist (Decline and Fall, A Handful of Dust, Scoop, Brideshead Revisited), was born in FORTUNE GREEN.
SIR ALAN AYCKBOURN, the writer of 71 full-length plays, and the most successful and prolific English playwright since William Shakespeare, was born in HAMPSTEAD in 1939.
Buried in Middlesex
JOHN CONSTABLE (1776–1837), pre-eminent English landscape painter, is buried in the churchyard of St John’s, Hampstead.
ARTHUR AND SYLVIA LLEWELYN DAVIES, parents of the boys who inspired J.M. Barrie’s ‘lost boys’ in Peter Pan, are buried in the churchyard of St John’s, Hampstead. Peter Pan himself, PETER LLEWELYN DAVIES (1897–1960) lies in Hampstead Cemetery in Fortune Green.
Also buried in Hampstead Cemetery are:
LORD JOSEPH LISTER (1827–1912), the pioneer of anti-septic surgery, after whom Listerine is named.
SIR CHARLES WYNDHAM (1837–1919), actor-manager and founder of Wyndham’s theatre. Trained as a doctor, but by inclination an actor, Wyndham travelled to America to find work and served as an army surgeon under Ulysses S. Grant in the American Civil War. In 1863 he managed to obtain employment as an actor at Grover’s Theatre in Washington, where the leading man was John Wilkes Booth, who two years later would murder President Abraham Lincoln. Wyndham later recalled: ‘I saw nothing there that would foreshadow such an act as his except where the subject of politics was introduced. Then, even in those days of heated discussion, his excitement was remarkable, and his friends who wished to be on pleasant terms with him, gradually learned to avoid the discussion of politics.’
FRANCIS JAMES BARRAUD (1856–1924), who painted ‘Nipper’ the dog on the His Master’s Voice record label.
MARIE LLOYD (1870–1922), the ‘Queen of the Music Hall’.
NIGEL BALCHIN (1908–70), who thought up the name for Britain’s bestselling chocolate bar, the Kit Kat, and who also conceived the Aero chocolate bar.
Norfolk
THE FIRST ENGLISH HOLIDAY CAMP
∗ EARLY ENGLISH BRICKWORK ∗ PASTON LETTERS
∗ FIRST STEEPLECHASE ∗ NORFOLK TERRIER
King’s Lynn Custom House, a Norfolk landmark for 300 years.
NORFOLK FOLK
Margery Kempe ∗ Thomas Paine ∗ George Vancouver ∗ Horatio Nelson ∗ Parson Woodforde ∗ Sir James Dyson
Caister
THE FIRST HOLIDAY CAMP IN ENGLAND was established in CAISTER, on the bracing Norfolk coast north of Great Yarmouth. In 1906 former grocer JOHN FLETCHER DODD paid a visit to Caister to relax and ingest the sea air. He was so taken with the place that he bought himself a house on the front in Ormesby Road and settled in to enjoy his new domain. Fletcher Dodd, however, was an active socialist and founder member of the Independent Labour Party, and it was not in his nature to wallow in pleasure while others were working hard, so he pitched a few tents in the garden and invited some working-class families from London’s East End to come and stay for a week.
The idea was a huge success, and soon people were coming from all over the country, including whole families – parents, children, even grandparents. The camp spread across the road to the edge of the beach, and Fletcher Dodd began building wooden huts for extra accommodation. The camp was run on strict socialist lines with no alcohol, no gambling, no swearing and lights out by 11 p.m., and everyone had to pitch in with the cooking and cleaning. The cost of one week, full board, was kept at no more than a week’s wages, and the meals were good and wholesome.
Leading socialist worthies such as George Bernard Shaw, Herbert Morrison and Keir Hardie all came along to taste the delights, although Fletcher Dodd welcomed
people of all political persuasions.
Within ten years the camp had beach huts, a shop, bicycles for hire, sports facilities and a dining hall for 200, which was used in the evenings for entertainment, as well as opportunities for bus trips, picnics and rambles.
The camp continued to expand until it covered 100 acres (40 ha), and it was finally sold by the Dodd family some years after the Second World War. It is now part of Haven Holidays – and the rules have been relaxed somewhat.
Caister Castle
To the west of Caister is the shell of CAISTER CASTLE, built in 1432 by SIR JOHN FALSTOLF, leader of the English archers at the Battle of Agincourt, and model for William Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff. It is one of England’s earliest brick buildings and the only English example of a ‘Wasserburg’-style moated castle, as more commonly found in Flanders and the Rhineland.
Caister Castle was left to the Pastons, much to the annoyance of Falstolf’s relatives, and was besieged for over a year, captured and then eventually returned to the Pastons. The story is told in the celebrated Paston Letters.
The Paston Letters
1422–1509
THE PASTON LETTERS consist of over 1,000 letters written between various members of the Paston family during the 15th century, and give a unique and intimate insight into the social and domestic life of an English family in medieval times – the earliest known archive of private correspondence in English
The Pastons were a remarkable family that rose from humble peasants to landowning aristocrats in two generations, in the aftermath of the Black Death and during the turmoil of the Wars of the Roses.
The story begins with the Black Death of 1348, which wiped out nearly half the rural population of England. One young man who survived was Clement Paston, a yeoman farmer in the village of Paston, on the north-east coast of Norfolk. Taking advantage of the confusion, Clement built up a substantial landholding by quietly annexing the lands of those who had died, and using this to raise money for the education of his son William as a lawyer.
This decision showed great foresight, for with the breakdown of the feudal system caused by the Black Death, society began to rely much more on the rule of law rather than the brute force of those with private armies. William rose to become a respectable judge and made a good marriage to an heiress, Agnes Berry, who brought with her more land and the beautiful manor of Oxnead, in the countryside north of Norwich.
William’s oldest son John also became a lawyer and made an advantageous marriage to Margaret Mauteby, bringing yet more lands and property into the family. In London, John befriended his fellow Norfolk landowner Sir John Falstolf and became his lawyer, somehow ending up as the major beneficiary of the elderly knight’s will and inheriting all of Falstolf’s estates, including the magnificent castle at Caister.
This upset Falstolf’s relatives, who immediately contested the will, beginning a long-running wrangle, centred on the ‘jewel in the crown’, Caister Castle, and it is this dispute that forms the background to the Paston Letters. They were written between the two sons of John Paston Senior, who took over the castle when their father died, and their mother, Margaret, who was living at Oxnead – confusingly, both the sons were also named John, Elder and Younger.
Not long after John Paston Senior died in 1466, Thomas Mowbray, the Duke of Norfolk, a distant kinsman of Falstolf who had always expected to inherit Caister, decided to take advantage of the lawlessness existing while the Wars of the Roses were being waged and seize Caister by force. He laid siege to the castle with 3,000 men, but it took over a year and another 3,000 men before the Pastons finally surrendered.
For the next 11 years the Pastons dragged the Duke of Norfolk through the courts to get Caister back, a course of action unthinkable before the changes wrought by the Black Death, when a powerful lord could help himself to any property he desired. The upstart Pastons even fought against the Duke on Henry VI’s side at the Battle of Barnet in 1471, and when Norfolk died in 1476, John the Elder moved quickly to establish his claim to Caister with the King, who granted the castle to his supporters the Pastons and threw out the Duke’s widow.
This victory propelled the Pastons into the ranks of the great courtiers and landowners – just three generations after they had been yeomen farmers. They ruled at Caister for 200 years and even became Earls of Yarmouth, until the castle had to be sold in the 17th century to pay the debts of a dissolute descendant, and eventually fell into ruin.
First Steeplechase
The first recorded steeplechase in England was run in Norfolk at EAST WINCH, near King’s Lynn, and was won, appropriately enough, by a horse called Useful. The course continued in use until 1905, when the racecourse at Fakenham was opened.
Norfolk Terrier
The Norfolk terrier is the smallest breed of working terrier and is distinguished from the Norwich terrier by having drop ears as opposed to pricked ears. Both terriers were developed for hunting rats and other vermin by crossing Irish terriers with Cairn terriers.
Well, I never knew this
about
NORFOLK FOLK
Margery Kempe
1364–1444
MARGERY KEMPE was born in the flourishing port of LYNN, now King’s Lynn, daughter of the mayor. After bearing 14 children for her husband, John Kempe, she received a heavenly vision urging her to set off on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. So she struck a bargain with John, that if he would cease to trouble her with his attentions and allow her to go off on her travels, she would settle all his debts. He agreed with alacrity and off she went. While on her pilgrimage she began to suffer from frequent bouts of loud wailing and weeping during her devotions, which did not endear her to the other pilgrims, nor indeed to the people of Lynn on her return.
She made many further pilgrimages and travelled widely throughout Europe, before finally settling down in her home town in 1436 at the age of 72 and embarking on her memoirs, which she dictated to a local priest. Lynn, isolated as it was from the French-speaking court in London, had become the first English town to abandon Latin and French and adopt English as its main language. And so Margery Kempe’s life story was written down in English – THE FIRST AUTOBIOGRAPHY EVER WRITTEN IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
Thomas Paine
1737–1809
THOMAS PAINE, political philosopher and radical, was born in Thetford. Credited with coming up with the name United States of America, he is known as ‘Father of the American Revolution’ by virtue of his pamphlet Common Sense, which advocated independence from the monarchy for the American colonists, and acted as inspiration for George Washington, John Adam and Thomas Jefferson. His most famous works are The Rights of Man, written in support of the ideals behind the French Revolution, and The Age of Reason, which argues against organised religion. He also championed radical ideas such as a progressive income tax, minimum wage and old-age pensions. He was buried in New Rochelle, New York, near the farm where he lived out his final years. A few years after his death, however, the author of Rural Rides, William Cobbett, dug up Paine’s bones and shipped them back to England, intending to give them a heroic burial in Paine’s birthplace, Thetford. However, this never happened and the bones were eventually lost, their whereabouts unknown to this day.
George Vancouver
1757–98
GEORGE VANCOUVER, was born in King’s Lynn, the son of the Collector of Customs. As a boy of 13 he went off round the world with Captain Cook, witnessing his death on Hawaii in 1779, and gaining a taste for exploration and adventure. When he revisited New Zealand he was amused to rename a bay that Cook had called ‘Nobody Knows What’, as ‘Somebody Knows What’.
Vancouver’s lasting legacy was the charting of the west coast of America, from Mexico to Alaska, during the longest mapping expedition in history. His charts were so accurate that they have been used until very recently, when electronic mapping was introduced. While on this voyage Vancouver won the island of Nootka from the Spanish – after which it was renamed Vanc
ouver Island. Worn out from his harsh life at sea, Captain George Vancouver retired to Petersham, in Surrey, to write his memoirs, and died there at the young age of 40. He is buried in Petersham churchyard.
George Vancouver
Horatio Nelson
1758–1805
England’s greatest naval hero, VISCOUNT HORATIO NELSON, was born in BURNHAM THORPE a year after the execution of Admiral Byng, an event that had a remarkable effect on the navy that Nelson would eventually join. Byng had fallen foul of the Articles of War that required naval officers to ‘do their utmost’ and proved that officers could no longer hide behind their orders. They were expected to use their initiative and to stand or fall by their decisions made on the spot – it didn’t matter so much if you failed, but it was fatal if you didn’t ‘do your utmost’.
An example of Nelson using his initiative was during the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, when he disobeyed the order to retreat by putting his telescope up to his blind eye and remarking, ‘I really do not see the signal.’ He then went on to break the Danes’ defensive line and win the battle.
Under Nelson, and officers like him, the Royal Navy gained a reputation for courage and aggression that became a huge psychological advantage over the enemy, who knew that the English would not, indeed could not, surrender – at the Battle of Trafalgar, for instance, Nelson’s fleet went into battle expecting to win or die trying, while their opponents were already half expecting to lose.
PARSON WOODFORDE (1740–1803), author of The Diary of a Country Parson, is buried in WESTON LONGVILLE, where he was Rector for 30 years. His diary is an invaluable first-hand account of everyday life for the folk of an 18th-century English village.
SIR JAMES DYSON, inventor of the ‘ballbarrow’ and the world’s first bagless vacuum cleaner, was born in CROMER in 1947.
