#38 British Craftsmen by Thomas Hennell
Set the task of producing an extended essay on “British Craftsmen” you could simply provide potted biographies of a number of craftsmen over the years, or maybe only those alive at the time of writing; or you might focus on individual crafts – and give an historical perspective, or technical descriptions, or both. In the event the author covers all of this, and then some. The blurb tells us that Thomas Hennell “describes not only the crafts themselves but the way of life of the craftsman and the effect that social changes have had on his conditions of work”.
Hennell, according to Wikipedia, was “a British artist and illustrator who specialised in illustrations and essays on the subject of the British countryside.” At the time he wrote British Craftsmenin 1943, Hennell was aged 40. Two years later he was dead. He had served as an official War Artist at home, in Iceland, in France (after D-Day), then later in Burma and in Singapore. He was presumed killed by Indonesian Nationalist fighters in Java in November 1945.
In Hennell’s own words, his “intention has been to give the reader a vivid set of illustrations of the life and conditions of the craftsman rather than a text book exposition of the theory of handicrafts.” He proceeds through eleven sections, rather more capricious than in some obvious and orderly sequence:
Crafts of Stone
Some Crafts of Fire
Wooden Roofs
Country Wood-crafts
British Timber
Furniture
Crafts of Iron
Industrial Revolution and Decline of Crafts
Some Modern Revivals: Morris and Co
Weaving and Fabric-printing: Individual Craftsmen
Pottery and The Omega Workshops.
An eclectic group, and worth a delve, I thought. But, boy, was it hard going? Hennell floods us with so many anecdotes, so many names, so many achievements, alas the majority of them things of the past or crafts no longer practised. Along the way the trail is a bric-a-brac of the past both remote and recent. Fascinating vignettes, but plaintive to read that such-and-such has died out, or at best might possibly have a revival.
We learn how to make flints. We learn that freestone can be cut accurately and without waste using metal if suitably lubricated with sand and water – metal not necessarily toothed or sharp edged. We learn that the structures of wooden church ceilings evolved over time to accommodate the ever-larger spans of grander buildings, and in the process were able to become more elaborate and decorative. And ecclesiastic uses aside, Hennell notes the extensive range of uses to which wood, English wood, has been put – ships, barges, scaffolding, piers, and windmills; wagons and carts, farm tools, looms, spinning wheels, even water pipes; cradles, beds, beer vats and wine barrels.
In perhaps a surprising note for 1943 we are warned that the world is wasting its timber resources. “We must learn through necessity to plan and economise such timber resources as we have, and their waste products, and to replace our ephemeral needs in some less wasteful way.” Hennell laments this wastage in a second passage: “The woodman who had a whole idea of his job wasted nothing, except the root of the tree, which would not repay the trouble of excavating. He knew each kind of tree and what it was good for: its right age and season for felling. He put by the pieces of timber for the shipwright and the builder whose natural growth was suited to their needs; of posts and beams, straight planks, or crooked ‘knee timber’. To-day the offals of the tree-carcase are burnt and wasted – but then, twigs were made into faggots for the baker and the bark was stripped for the tanner.”
Some further stern words: While in France “a Post-Impressionist painter, Dufy, was producing designs of astonishing vigour and beauty for the silk-weavers of Lyon, in England habits of taste and the fallacious axioms of commerce have hindered us from appreciating good designers, and from introducing them, as the French have done, into our manufacturing firms.”
Hennell, in his section on individual craftsmen engaged in weaving and fabric-printing, talks of an enthusiast who “by visiting the last surviving spinners and weavers of Wales, Ireland and Scandinavia, acquired their several methods in spinning and weaving and in making vegetable dyes.” “This Miss Kendon of Uckfield, like Cecil Sharp in music, has collected folk traditions in her craft.”
One reference to Cecil Sharp in 48 pages, and a passing one at that. As implied by Hennell, the place of Sharp in music is significant. I first heard Sharp referred to on a long playing record, Coronation Concert by Burl Ives, back in the mid 1950s. Ives (1909 to 1995) was a folk singer and actor, indeed with an impressive film career including major roles in the film of Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms, in the film of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and in William Wyler’s The Big Country. Ives collected numerous traditional and folk songs, and recorded many of them for the Library of Congress. On stage at the Royal Festival Hall for the Coronation Concert in 1954 Ives, among a programme of mainly folk songs, paid tribute to Cecil Sharp, specifically for collecting the song, Henry Martin.
Sharp (1859 to 1924) was born in London and, after completing his formal education at Cambridge, migrated to Australia at age 23. He chose to settle in Adelaide because – so the story goes! – it had the same name as the Beethoven song. He then studied law, and for some five years was associate to the Chief Justice of South Australia. Sharp exercised his musical talents as assistant organist at St. Peter’s Cathedral, and conductor of the cathedral’s choral society. He returned to England in 1892 when age 33; and for some years was principal of the Hampstead Conservatoire of Music. Sharp was driven to revive and record folk song and dance after seeing a Morris Dance performed in 1899. The notebooks of his subsequent endeavours record over 1700 pieces. From 1916 through 1918 Sharp travelled the United States recording forgotten tunes.
And coming back to Thomas Hennell for one final snippet; followed by a heartfelt burst of passion: “The roof of Westminster Hall [in the Parliamentary precinct], of length 238 feet and 68 feet wide in span, which was begun in 1394, is the largest and ‘the greatest triumph of mediaeval carpentry which England has ever possessed.’ [There won’t be any more.] It was built of Sussex oak. It is formed of thirteen roof-trusses, each with a pair of hammer-beams and hammer-posts, of which a single timber weighs three-and-a-half tons and must have required an oak of four feet diameter. It may not be fantastic to consider that, since oaks known to have been planted in Queen Elizabeth’s reign have sometimes attained this size, the tree can be said to survive much longer in a building than the time it has taken to grow to maturity. And therefore it should be profitable for the State to plant oaks, and to discourage (instead of compelling!!) the cutting of oaks at sixty years or less. Wasteful felling of oak trees is a crime against the community which ought to be heavily penalised.”
#129 The Turf by John Hislop
When I say that a particular topic in this series has wide general interest or, conversely, is of limited interest to the general reader, I am betraying a modicum of actual knowledge overlayed with a thick slab of personal taste and preference. This is manifestly true when it comes to The Turf. I am absolutely disinterested in horse racing – disinterested to the point of barely caring to listen to a broadcast of the Melbourne Cup. I did, however, see the grey, Lord Fury, win the 1961 Melbourne Cup, so I’m not totally un-Australian. But I have no knowledge of horse racing. That said, is this an opportunity to engage with the romance of the turf; alternatively, to cut my losses, and move on to the next book on the shelf? My head tells me to cut my losses, but I’m intrigued to keep reading.
John Hislop (1911 to 1994) was the Observer’s racing correspondent, and in this small volume he covers a lot of territory. There are chapters on the history of racing, on training, on jockeys, and on steeplechasing. He has a section on famous racehorses – all British bred, the earliest, Flying Childers, bred 1715. Hislop discusses the attributes and careers of a number of champion horses, including West Australian, “altogether a racehorse of the highest class” - bred in 1850, trained in Yorkshire, and in 1853 the first winner of the Triple Crown. The Triple Crown comprises three races for 3-year olds: the Two Thousand Guineas (1 mile), the Derby (1 1/2 miles) and the St. Leger (1 3/4 miles).
I was disappointed in Hislop’s chapter on breeding. I had expected an explanation of ‘thoroughbred” as a category of horse, how the breed came about, what distinguishes it from other strains of horse, why does there appear to be a skewing towards the genetic influence of the sire more so than the dam, how did “the industry” come to be regulated, how does the “stud book” work, who keeps the records, how come the rules and practices are international, is there an overarching regulatory authority, what sort of breaches can there be and how are they policed, what’s to stop a cart horse being raced against a thoroughbred. Hislop tells us none of this; instead he enumerates successful breeding lines, beginning with this introduction: “All our bloodstock traces to three original, imported sires, The Darley Arabian, The Godolphin Arabian and The Byerley Turk.” The Darley Arabian, foaled in 1700, was imported from Aleppo in 1704. The Godolphin Arabian was imported from France in 1730. The Byerley Turk, said to have been “pure Arabian”, was captured at the siege of Buda and brought into Britain in1689. These horses were not necessarily champion racehorses but proved to be outstanding sires. The long journey from three sires some three hundred years ago to 1948 would surely be much more interesting than lists of prominent thoroughbreds era by era – but perhaps that is the story of the journey.
Hislop also includes a chapter on racecourses, with brief notes on the characteristics of several: Goodwood, situated on the Duke of Richmond’s estate, “is undoubtedly the most beautiful”; Doncaster in Yorkshire, home of the St. Leger; Newmarket in Suffolk (established in 1636), with more than a mile straight in its Rowley Mill course, home to the Two Thousand Guineas, the topography of the course little changed since Charles 2nd raced there. And Epsom in Surrey, home of the Derby; and Ascot, a mere six miles from Windsor Castle. “To say that there is no single meeting in the world comparable with Royal Ascot is no exaggeration. Its setting of pine trees and the vivid emerald of its turf form a fine background to the scarlet and gold of the Royal procession as, headed by the famous Windsor greys, it glides up the course, as gay and imposing a spectacle as one could wish to see.” Amen.
Of interest to Australian readers is the fact that – as of 1948 – there was no enclosure, and no admission charge, at Newmarket, Doncaster, Epsom or Ascot.
I was minded to allow Hislop the following last words [not a strict quote]: “The love of horses, in particular the racehorse (with his qualities of beauty, speed, courage and endurance), has been a national characteristic throughout our history……….it is sometimes termed ‘the Sport of Kings’, but it is equally the sport of the people… …English racing is best summed up by the words: ‘On and under the turf all men are equal’.”
Wait on, you can’t exercise the “last word” privilege with a porky like that, cute though it sounds. I happily accept that all men are equal under the turf, including the princes and the potentates, but equality of all men above the turf? That particular piece of fancy was pinched by Hislop from Lord George Bentinck (1802 to 1848), parliamentarian, racehorse owner and “notorious gambler”; but Bentinck was not sufficiently well credentialled, I fear, nor sufficiently disinterested, to substantiate his assertion that all men are equal above the turf.
#50 British Soldiers by S.H.F. Johnston
With the old limerick surfacing in memory I am unable to take seriously anything redolent of the town of Aberystwyth. Yet here it was that Major S.H.F. Johnston, author of British Soldiers, was history lecturer at University College of Wales. But smile suppressed we must press on.
Johnston became interested in military history while at Oxford, and notes that in this present book he does not give a history of the army so much as the story of the British soldier – hence the title.
British soldiers fought against the legions of Caesar, against the Normans, and in the Holy Land, but it was not until the Civil War that there was a standing army. Until then, private armies and “free companies” were deployed for skirmishes and campaigns as required. In 1645 Cromwell’s New Model Army was the first army recruited by the nation, by Parliament, ironically to fight against Charles 1st, the sovereign. They were full-time professionals rather than part-time militia, with a professional officer corps whose members were expressly prohibited from serving in Parliament. Notwithstanding the high purpose, for some years after 1645 more than half the infantry had been pressed into service. In those early days of the New Model Army foot soldiers were armed either with a musket or a pike, two musketeers to one pikeman. The sixteen-foot pike was regarded as the more honourable weapon. The mounted troopers, all volunteers, were regarded as the aristocrats of the army, the cavalry generally having the decisive influence over the outcome. Johnston writes that the New Model Army although efficient was never popular with the people, it being regarded as “the army of a religious and political faction rather than as the army of the nation”. After the end of the Commonwealth, and the restoration of the monarchy with the accession of Charles 2nd, elements of the New Model Army merged with Charles’ exiled Royalist army into the standing army kept by Charles. Therein lay the direct ancestor of today’s British Army.
Johnstone continues his story much as a series of stepping stones of significant campaigns and illustrious commanders. In the 280 years between the resumption of the monarchy to Johnstone writing in 1944 there was no shortage of the former and, arguably, no dearth of the latter either. We can, in a way, dismiss the battles because – as with Jesus’ poor – they are always with us. The cavalcade of battles and wars large and small that has tormented – or vice-versa - the British over the two-century-plus period is astonishing, unbelievable from today’s reasonably peaceful vantage point. Are we more “civilized” today, or less vexatious? Has diplomacy developed to a point where it is capable of standing between foolish words and warfare? When applying these questions to the British situation I suspect another factor is relevant, and dominant. The political globe of today is much more settled than in earlier times. Throughout much of the period since Charles 2nd there was continual struggle for territory in Europe (much of it resolved by 1900 – certainly insofar as the British were concerned), this paralleled by the colonial incursions into Arica and the Americas. And India. Much of the story of British soldiers concerns not the remedying of perceived wrongs at the hand of traditional enemies but the taking of foreign territory simply as colonial plunder. British soldiers were not only instrumental in the conquest of the then-to-be-subjugated peoples of much of the red areas on the old world maps, but were then required to maintain the peace thereafter. The collapse of the Empire, the return of self-rule to the countries of Egypt, India, South Africa et cetera, and the return home of the British soldiers, was not seen before Johnstone wrote in 1944, nor foreseen.
The colonial “wars”, campaigns to conquer or supress “the natives”, were interminable, and had a heavy cost. The 3738-strong first detachment sent to Rangoon in the First Burmese War (1824 to 1827) suffered 166 killed in action, plus 3160 who died of malaria, cholera or scurvy. The Second and Third Burmese wars, respectively in 1852 and 1885, eventually resulted in the full annexation of Burma. The two Sikh Wars (1845/6 and 1848/9) brought the Punjab province finally into the British Empire. The wars were actually fought by the army of the East India Company, although commanded by British Army generals, but the tale of the East India Company is a tale too murky to be told and, at this remove, to be believed. And the East India Company was the perpetrator of the First Afghan War (1839 to 1842), although the British Government itself had the carriage of the Second (1878 to 1880) and the Third (1919) Afghan Wars – through which the Afghanis eventually gained their independence from the British Crown………without, one feels, gaining since then 100 years of uninterrupted joy. And the South African War (the Boer War), the biggest of the colonial wars (1899 to 1902), saw for the first time the enlistment of non-U.K. troops to assist the mother country’s expansionist cause.
Pretty ignoble stuff, really, and it seems more comfortable to be contemplating a good old fashioned stoush between the English and the French. In this regard I thought it might be interesting to compare the two great British commanders (and national heroes) who between them bestrode a couple of centuries – the Duke of Marlborough (1650 to 1722) and the Duke of Wellington (1769 to 1852). [Marlborough, born John Churchill, was later to have a descendant Winston as famous as he.] But, on reflection, there seemed to be no particular merit in recounting the glories of the great commanders when the real story of British soldiers – certainly for much of the time before Johnston was writing – was one of never ending privation.
Hear this of Marlborough’s time: Campaigns were fought only in summer. In winter the roads were impassable for large movements of arms; and, in any case, the winter months were needed for recruitment to re-stock the wasted ranks. Cajolery and bounties were necessary because the Recruiting Acts imposed conscription only on criminals, debtors and paupers. It is said that one of Marlborough’s greatest feats was to train such recruits into an effective fighting force. His troops were said to have regarded him as one of their own and, accordingly, nicknamed him Corporal John.
Hear this of the later times between the wars: “Bad conditions and inadequate pay meant that only the dregs of the population were willing to enlist, and discipline among such recruits could only be maintained by severe and brutal punishments.” Parliament was unwilling to build barracks, and the men of a regiment were usually split into detachments and billeted in alehouses, often many miles apart. Discipline suffered, and training was all but impossible.
Hear this of Wellington’s time - bit of a turn-up, actually: Although Wellington’s greatest character flaw was his scarcely veiled contempt for his men (Johnston attributes this to Wellington being a product of “the aloof Irish aristocracy of the Protestant Ascendancy” – I shall not pursue what that means), he nevertheless was considerate towards his troops “and sent them into battle as well-equipped and well-fed as he could”. Yet he described them as “the scum of the Earth; English soldiers are fellows who have enlisted for drink. That is the plain fact, they have all enlisted for drink.” In return, while the men had respect for him, they did not love him.
Hear this of the time of the Crimean War (1853 to 1856; you know, just when the gold was panning out in Bendigo!): Before the War It was said that the Government “spent on the army very little of its own time or of the nation’s money”. So: undermanned, a collection of regiments with no experience of acting together, no organisation for supply or transport, no training for living in the field, and little if any musket training – at one battlefield the men were given training on their new muzzle-loading rifles, rifles that had arrived after they had.
We’ll leave it there. The situation of the British soldier gradually improved – because of, or despite, the fact that between 1854 and 1904 there were 567 committees and Royal Commissions on army administration. Yet as of 1904 pay was so low that officers continued to be partially dependent on subsidies from their families, and “other ranks were largely drawn from the lower levels of the artisan and agricultural labourer classes”. Having taken us through the first half of the 20thCentury, with little relief from the soldier’s travails Johnston is obliged to finish on an upbeat note - remember it is 1944. “The British soldier is at his best and has performed his most memorable feats when he has been faced with his greatest odds……..his long story is full of actions when he has fought, often hopelessly, against superior numbers, without thought of retreat.”
#47 British Engineers by Metius Chappell
The title suggests that the book will focus on famous and successful British engineers, and before I opened it I speculated whether it might in fact be skewed towards the achievements of British engineering – the achievements rather than the achievers.
Then came to mind the BBC series Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, which aired in 2003; and I thought of the likely overlap. The book of the series, however, reminds me that of the seven “wonders”, only three are British – the mammoth iron ship, Great Eastern; the lighthouse on the Inchcape Rock; and the sewerage system of London. So, now to see how Metius Chappell includes these in his story, if at all, Chappell being the author – “a brilliant young Canadian writer”. Furthermore, “he is a lecturer in economic history and has specialised in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the great age of change and development, in which civil engineering, as we know it, first began to affect the everyday life of the people to any appreciable degree.” A promising start: the publisher promises and the writer starts.
To a degree that promise is not fulfilled. We are taken through the broad sweep of centuries: miles of canals and aqueducts and improved waterways, miles of railway lines and cuttings and viaducts, scores of bridges and other bread and butter feats of civil engineering. There’s so much to tell that the wonder of it, the pizzazz, is somehow lost in the detail. However, Chappell presents his case through the steps of the engineers, and this is the route we must follow.
James Brindley (1716 to 1772) was the foremost engineer of the so-called “canal age”, the 60 years after 1760. He was responsible for some 360 miles of canals. Born in poverty, little formal education, apprenticed to a wheelwright, his mechanical aptitude led to him working for near twenty years as a millwright constructing machinery for flour mills. Then, from 1759 and until his death at age 56 in 1772, he was the canal designer nonpareil, applying practical solutions to all problems that presented. “The difficulties he encountered and overcame, without the advantage of the experience of others or any kind of knowledge of the theoretical basis of his subject, and the great scale of his works, entitle him to be regarded as the first, and in many ways the most remarkable of the British engineers.”
John Smeaton (1724 to 1792) gained fame as the designer of the Eddystone Lighthouse off Cornwall – the replacement for a wooden structure built 1709 which stood until being destroyed by fire in 1755; and which in turn had replaced the original tower, also a wooden structure, which had been built in 1700 and was swept away in a storm in 1703. On-site work on Smeaton’s stone lighthouse could proceed only at low tide and in calm weather, and in summer. Construction continued for three seasons. Smeaton’s structure was innovative in that it combined granite blocks with concrete, and the blocks were cut to interlock. It was tapered, “to give it the strength of an oak”. Its height was 59 feet, its diameter 26 feet at the base tapering to 19 feet at the top. It functioned for 118 years, from 1759 to 1866, until the wearing away of the underlying rock caused it to become unstable. The replacement lighthouse was built nearby, and the Smeaton Tower, as it had become known, was dismantled and re-erected on shore as a public monument – except for the granite base, which was too strong to be shifted. Smeaton’s career included harbour works, canals, bridges, and industrial machinery. The 38-mile-long Forth and Clyde Canal climbed 156 feel, and had 39 locks.
Thomas Telford (1757 to 1834) and John Rennie (1761 to 1821) were the two engineering giants of their era. Telford oversaw the construction of over 1000 miles of roads and some 1200 bridges. His most famous achievement was the suspension bridge across the Menai Strait, between the island of Anglesea and the Welsh mainland. Rennie was famous for his work on docks, harbours and canals; and, astride the Thames in London: Waterloo Bridge, Southwark Bridge, and (the new) London Bridge.
And then there were the railways. And the engineers that facilitated them. And the timing? Just in time to dole out a large dose of one upmanship to the recently upgraded roads. Before long the railways were able to out-compete the stage coaches for passengers, and outcompete the canal barges for freight. By 1830 there was a reasonably good network of roads between all major centres, and 2200 miles of canals and 1800 navigable miles of other waterways. But, canals and canal boats were typically narrow, and hence uneconomical. Moreover, the typical speed was no more than three miles per hour – and could not be increased without serious damage to the banks. Enter steam. Rails had long been used in collieries and other mine sites, but early attempts to marry rail transport with steam locomotion were unsuccessful. And steam propulsion had been tried on road vehicles - again without success, because the prototype vehicles were necessarily so heavy that they chewed up the roads.
George Stephenson (1781 to 1848) had no formal schooling, learning to read at night school only when eighteen. Early on he worked at a coal mine where his father was responsible for the steam engines that powered the pumps and the whims. Stephenson studied the mechanics of the steam engine, and at age 21 was appointed colliery engineman. This he pursued for the next decade, all the while educating himself and experimenting with steam engines. In 1814 he was able, finally, to gain support for the employment of a steam engine to haul colliery coal wagons. As an independent engineer in his post-colliery years Stevenson undertook railway design and engine design and manufacture. He oversaw the construction of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, from 1825, including the crossing of a peat bog, sixty-three bridges, and the seventy feet high Sankey Viaduct. He then gained wide fame, in 1829, by winning the competition for a locomotive to run on the Liverpool to Manchester line – The Rocket. Although The Rocket was not the first steam locomotive, its design set the pattern for the steam locomotives of the next century and more.
Finally, the unforgettably named Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Although Brunel’s life (1806 to 1859) overlapped that of some of the engineers already discussed he is described by Chappell as a second generation engineer. This description fits in three ways. First, Brunel came along a little later than the other engineers profiled by Chappell. Second, unlike nearly all his predecessors, Brunel was academically trained. Third, he was the son of a successful engineer, Sir Marc Brunel.
Brunel the younger worked on the Thames Tunnel (with his father), and among Brunel’s other engineering achievements was the Great Western Railway. But perhaps the stand-out one is the building of the ship, Great Eastern (initially named Leviathan). The largest ship in the world when launched in 1858, Great Eastern was iron hulled, with hybrid propulsion – a screw propeller as well as paddles, both driven by steam, and sails flying from six masts. It displaced 32,160 tons and had length of 692 feet. It carried 4000 passengers, with crew in excess of 400. Although it remained in service for more than forty years it was not very popular, and its huge holds were said to be never filled. Great Eastern ended its days laying the trans-Atlantic telephone cable. Brunel ended his days courtesy of a stroke, while Great Eastern was on her maiden voyage.
The history of engineering as a calling is fascinating, no less so when considering British engineering only. And the stories that Chappell selects for us are interesting, arguably because most of the early protagonists he chooses are self-taught - engineers before a formal profession existed. So much is crammed into Chappell’s 48 pages that we must forgive him for not including reference to London’s reticulated sewers. But then, he bypasses the cathedrals too.
Having immersed his reader in the past, the author concludes on a prescient note. “It is interesting to speculate on the role of the engineers in the future progress of the nation. New roads, aerodromes and electrified railways may well be the characteristic engineering works of the twentieth century, just as canals and steam railways were of the eighteenth and the nineteenth. It may be, too, that the work of the engineer will tend to merge into that of the architect in the construction of the cities of the future. Whatever its form, however, the civilisation of the future will present the civil engineer with many problems which will be solved with the aid of increasing knowledge and yet more wonderful materials……the history of civil engineering cannot come to an end before the history of civilisation itself.” Ponder that!
Gary Andrews
