An Earlier Percy Wedding

My previous post may have led some readers to believe that there has been enmity between the Housbys and the Percys for generations. Not so!  My grandparents were present in Westminster Abbey for an equally spectacular Percy wedding back in 1939. My grandfather was chairman of the local council at the time and in this capacity got to go to many interesting events.  Lady Diana Percy was married to Viscount Brackley in grand style only a few months before the outbreak of World War II.

The yellow card below is the golden ticket that actually got you into the Abbey, the larger white document is the formal invitation. On the inside are directions to Syon House, where the reception was held. This is the Northumberlands' official London residence, though it's actually in Brentford. Well, that's what this 1939 invitation says, anyway, though in modern times the rather downmarket associations of Brentford have led the custodians of the house to prefer to describe it as 'in West London' or 'just across the Thames from Kew Gardens'.

The lower picture in this newspaper cutting shows an elderly woman wearing the traditional costume of Cullercoats, an old fishing village that is now a suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne. My grandmother has written on one of the cuttings that they saw Mrs Donkin seated in the Abbey in her fishwife's outfit. One wonders what the high society guests made of her. She must have been one of the last women to wear this costume 'for best'.

The imminence of war lends poignancy to these mementoes of a happy occasion. My grandmother has also written on the cutting that the wedding reception at Syon House was the last time they saw the young Duke of Northumberland, brother of the bride. "He was killed at Dunkirk."

Ça Ira

I can't believe I don't have any photos of St Michael's Church, Alnwick, but I don't. Apparently it was such a taken-for-granted part of my life for so long that I never bothered to photograph it. So instead I have scanned the cover of an old guidebook to show you what it looks like. This serves the additional purpose of proving that my family has been involved with St Michael's for a long time. Observe the pre-decimal price.

I was christened in St Michael's church and the funeral services of both my parents and of many other people I was close to were held there. So as far as I'm concerned, this is my family church. The Duke of Northumberland, his heirs, successors and hangers-on, are at liberty to regard it as their family church as well, even though their attendance is generally limited to turning up on Christmas Day and sitting in a row in the special ducal seats down the side of the chancel, at a right-angle to the rest of the congregation and featuring comfortable cushions and fancy wood carving that the rest of us have to do without. And since they are formally resident in the parish they are entitled to hold their weddings there, even if they do spend a lot of time out of the parish, at their London residence or at their private home in the Scottish Borders, purchased reportedly as a bolt-hole to escape the visitors to Alnwick Castle whom they expect the rest of the town's inhabitants to welcome with open arms.

Do not, however, expect me to be unequivocally thrilled when one of the Percy daughters gets married in St Michael's church wearing a dress that I'm guessing probably cost as much as some families in the parish earn in a year and invites half the royal family to be her guests. All I know so far about yesterday's 'society wedding' in Alnwick is taken from grudging peeks at the website of the Northumberland (for which read Alnwick) Gazette, which in relation to the Percy family habitually displays a degree of fawning adulation for an unelected local leader seldom seen in a newspaper outside North Korea. If you want to see the pictures, go ahead, click on this link, because you won't see any of them on this blog. During the preparation (for which read massive hype and tourist promotion) for the wedding the paper was reporting that the family hoped the whole town would see it as 'their' wedding. Given the level of security necessitated by the number of royals present, I can't see that this can mean much except that they were all encouraged to stand for hours in indifferent weather waiting to cheer as the procession of their betters walked past. But to be fair, there was a firework display at night to reward them. The ducal family are well known locally for their fondness for very large, very loud and very late firework displays.

A few years back the oldest Percy son modelled for a statue of Harry Hotspur, the scion of the family immortalised by Shakespeare. I made a point of being out of town for the unveiling ceremony. In fact I went to Paris for a few days, where I stood in the Place de la Bastille and sang a few snatches of  La Marseillaise and Ça Ira, two songs of the French Revolution. (Don't worry, the Parisian traffic was far too noisy for anyone to be able to hear me.)  Since then I have taken the more constructive step of  leaving Alnwick permanently. At the time Lady Melissa was walking down the aisle I was sitting in a park in Berwick enjoying performances by a string of great local bands, congratulating myself on my good sense in moving out of the feudal zone.

When my mother died some close friends of our family planted a tree in her memory in the churchyard of St Michael's. I like to think that some of the HRH-es may have thrown it a passing glance. I'm sure it will grow better after the light of the royal countenances has shone upon it.

P.S.  Some time after writing this post I visited my friend Margaret in Alnwick. She is a church warden at St Michael's and in this capacity she could have been present at the wedding service if she had so wished. Instead, she announced that she was sure her fellow wardens could manage without her and took herself off to visit her family on the other side of the country for the weekend of the celebrations. Respect!

Beautiful Spittal

This week I've decided to big up Spittal, a village semi-detached from Berwick that never seems to get as much recognition as it deserves. It has one of the best beaches on the Northumbrian coast and yet hardly anyone is cashing in on this. The sum total of the facilities available in Spittal, other than pubs, is one cafe, a shop which is closed on Sundays, and one grossly inadequate set of public toilets. Meanwhile Berwick itself is awash with coffee outlets, probably  more than it can sustain. If I had a wodge of capital to invest in a business, I would be setting up a rival cafe in Spittal.

Spittal Gala is taking place this weekend and the publicity for it in the local paper made me think. The paper commented that this annual festival is usually assumed to have its origins in the fishing industry, as with the Tweedmouth salmon festival, but that in fact 'galas' are always associated with mining. And Spittal was indeed a mining town in the past. A 'directory' of Northumberland published in 1855 says that the inhabitants of Spittal are 'mostly fishermen and pitmen'.  This is a valuable reminder that mining was not confined to stereotypical 'it's grim up north' style towns. In some parts of Northumberland the coal seams extend under the sea and so some pit villages are on the coast. Spittal used to have extensive factory operations as well, but the big chimney seen in the photo is now the only survivor of those. It is a much loved landmark, the sign of being back home when seen from the window of the train. Certain interest groups would like to knock it down and cover the whole of the Point with houses. N-O-O-O!  Another suggestion is to cover the chimney in some sort of shiny cladding so it looks like a space rocket. I quite like that idea.

 The heritage industry (which, as regular readers will have gathered, I dislike) seems to have trouble processing such conflicting images. A place can be branded as a picturesque fishing village or a family-fun seaside resort or a former mining community or a former industrial site, but not all of them. Spittal is a wonderful miniature example of how real communities just do anything they need to do to get by and have fun whenever they can as well.  Shine on, you crazy chimney.

Coronations

This is a picture of the exhibition mounted last summer by Berwick Civic Society. They put one on every year and the theme changes each time. Because of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, last year's theme was 'coronations and jubilees'. This week we were supposed to be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the coronation of the present queen, as opposed to her accession to the throne, so it seemed appropriate to produce these photos now. I have to say that this particular anniversary appears to have generated no interest whatsoever among the general public. We were all Jubilee-ed out last year.

One of the items on display (because I put it there) was this special coronation edition of the Northumberland volume of the series usually known as The King's England, although the title had of course just been changed to The Queen's England. A copy of this book was presented to schoolchildren in Northumberland by the county's Education Committee, with an uplifting message reminding them of their 'duty to Her Majesty and to the beautiful county of Northumberland'.  If you click on this picture to enlarge it you can read the message.

The subject of coronations has some special interest in a town which faces both ways, regarding itself as part of both England and Scotland. The monarch's claim to the throne of Scotland is arguably separate from her or his claim to the throne of England. The two monarchies were united in one person in 1603 but a vocal body of constitutional opinion maintains that the two thrones and the claims to them are still separate. Because of this many Scots would like to see the next monarch crowned in Edinburgh in a ceremony additional to his coronation in London. If Scotland has by then opted for independence from the Rest of the United Kingdom, no matter, the monarchy will not be affected. Charles will still be King of Scotland until his Scottish subjects hold another referendum and decide to become a republic. Or, of course, to re-install the Stuart line which was ejected from the throne in 1688 for being too Catholic and replaced with the Protestant Hanoverians from whom the present royal family descends. Don't laugh, there are still some Jacobites out there.  

Some Old Pubs

This is The Free Trade pub in Berwick.  The photo was taken at the time when it was hanging out the flags for the 'Jubilympics'. A man from CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, recently gave a talk here and told us that this is the only pub in Berwick that's on their list of historic pub interiors that ought to be preserved. I'm not much of a pub-goer myself and I'm afraid I've never been inside it.  But the artist Brita Granstrom has, and below are her paintings of Brenda the landlady at work.

I have never heard anybody comment on the significance of the name The Free Trade. I shouldn't think its regulars spend much time discussing the finer points of the history of economic ideas. But the name itself is a real period piece, preserving the memory of the bitter 19th century debates over protectionism versus free trade which culminated with the triumph of the latter and the abolition of the 'corn laws', resulting in cheaper food for the masses.


A great deal of nostalgia seems to be attached to old pubs and that goes for their names as well. One of the oldest pubs in Alnwick was called the Black Swan. Allegedly Robert Burns once stayed there on a trip south of the border in the course of his duties as an excise officer. So when in 2001 it was taken over by a chain who decided to modernise it in order to attract a younger clientele, there was quite a kerfuffle. There was an even bigger kerfuffle when it was announced that its name was being changed to The Hairy Lemon. The local council was concerned that this moniker might have an obscene reference. The reports of their deliberations, during which nobody ever dared to say exactly what they thought the hairy lemon shaped object referenced might be, were small masterpieces of unintentional comedy. Alas, they failed to make a case for forbidding the name change on grounds of decency and it went through.  But even this was not enough to make the pub viable during the present gloomy times for traditional pubs, and in 2012 it closed down, taking both its names into history.

EDIT  Just discovered that this pub has now re-opened under its original name of the Black Swan. Hoorah!

A Wartime Plane Crash in the Cheviots

This is a photo of a memorial erected in a lonely spot in the Cheviot hills in 1968 by an Alnwick boys' club to the memory of the American airmen who died when their plane crashed in that place. My late father helped out with the club and his photos and other records of the unveiling of this memorial are now in my possession. This picture gives a good sense of the bleakness and wildness of these hills, which straddle the English-Scottish border. It is easy to understand why quite a number of Allied aircraft crashed into them - flying with primitive instruments, disorientated by bad weather, exhausted and nerve-frayed by repeated missions.

In recent years the subject of plane crashes in the Cheviots has attracted considerable attention and at least one book has been published on the subject. There is now a rather grander memorial to all the wartime flyers who died in the hills. Back in 1968 though nothing much had been done in that way and the Reivers Club of Alnwick were pioneers. While exploring the area they found traces of the wreckage of a plane, dug up the rest of it, investigated the story behind the crash and decided to set up the plane's broken and bent propeller as a memorial. This involved hauling bags of cement for 1,300 feet uphill from the nearest road. Try getting young people today to do that.

The propeller came from a Flying Fortress which crashed in December 1944 while returning from a bombing mission over Germany which was aborted because of fog. The pilot was flying in white-out blizzard conditions, following a weak direction signal to their home base in Cambridgeshire, when the side of a hill suddenly loomed in front of him. Two members of the crew died on impact. The seven survivors made haste to abandon the plane, mindful that it was still carrying a full load of bombs which could explode at any minute. They became separated in the fog. Three of them managed to reach a farmhouse, where they narrowly escaped being shot by the occupants, who thought they were Germans. Once he realised his mistake the farmer lent his motorbike to one of the Americans and he was able to drive to the nearest town and arrange for an ambulance to take them all to the RAF hospital near Berwick. The other four fliers, more badly hurt, had taken shelter from the storm as best they could on the exposed hillside by crawling into a ditch and wrapping themselves in a parachute. They were discovered by a collie dog called Sheila who belonged to two local shepherds who had heard the crash and gone out to search for survivors. The shepherds helped the airmen to the home of one of them and his wife tended to their injuries while his daughter walked several miles in the blizzard to reach a telephone and summon the RAF ambulance. In the 1940s ordinary people did not have phones - indeed they were still not that common in Northumberland in the 1960s.

The story of how the four men's lives were saved by a sheepdog captured the imagination of the public on both sides of the Atlantic and Sheila became the only 'civilian' dog during the war to be awarded a special animal medal, shown here.The two shepherds were also given medals, but the public was much less interested in that.

The PR potential of the story was recognised by the Honeywell company when the boys sent it a switch of its manufacture that they had found among the wreckage of the plane, which after more than twenty years buried in English mud still worked. The company arranged for the memorial to be unveiled in a state-of-the-art transatlantic ceremony. The son of one of the crew members who had died pressed this switch, suitably restored, in New York and a cover in the colours of the USAAF fell off the memorial in the heart of the remote Cheviot hills. This necessitated laying several miles of cable. A bunch of notables in the States made speeches praising the efforts of the local Brits in aiding American fighters during the war and commemorating them now. In the days before the internet it must have been quite something for a group of young lads from Northumberland to introduce themselves to a couple of US generals speaking live from New York. Here is the timetable for the event. My father once remarked on how pleased he was with his photo of the fly-past, but sadly I haven't been able to find it.

P.S.  I have now given these papers and photos to the local archives in Berwick, so if you want to see them, call in and ask Linda, the ever helpful archivist. 

The Northumbrian Origins of a Great American Institution

I had vowed that no picture of Alnwick Castle would ever appear on this blog. The Percy family's highly efficient PR operation does not need any help from me, and I would rather spread the word about the lesser known aspects of life in Northumberland. However, this post really does need to be illustrated by a picture of the ancestral home of the Percys, so I have compromised. Rather than the standard tourist view of the Castle from the northern approach to the town, pretentiously known as 'the Canaletto view' because the artist of that name once painted it, I bring you a photo taken one wintry day from a freezing council allotment with the back side of the Castle just visible in the distance. This seems appropriate to my subject.

The Smithsonian Institution, the world renowned group of museums and research institutes in Washington D.C., was founded by James Smithson, who was an illegitimate son of a Duke of Northumberland. The Smithsonian's own website includes a full account of the origins of both James and his foundation. And one of its staff, Heather Ewing, has written a whole biography of Smithson which includes an account of his Percy paternity and his possible bitterness about his neglect by his natural father.

The story is remarkably little known in the area the Dukes call home. I grew up in Alnwick and I was unaware of it until I read it in The Encyclopedia of North-East England, an invaluable tome produced a few years ago by Professor Richard Lomas.  Reeling with disbelief, I looked it up in a few other places and discovered that it seems to be known everywhere in the world except North Northumberland. I'm not sure why Alnwick Castle's publicity machine does not make more use of this story, as it is normally very keen to work any American angle on its history to pull in more free-spending American tourists. Is the family still embarrassed about it after all this time?

James was born to Elizabeth Macie in Paris in the middle of the 18th century and initially took his mother's surname. His father was the 1st Duke of Northumberland, born Hugh Smithson, who changed his surname to Percy after he married into the family and was later bumped up the aristocratic ladder to a dukedom by a government that needed his vote. In adult life James changed his surname at the request of his mother, who seems to have kept trying to get his father to take some notice of him. Despite never having set foot in the United States James left all his wealth to the government of that country to be used for educational purposes, motivated it seems by sympathy with the egalitarian and anti-aristocratic ideals of the USA. He wanted to make his own name more famous than that of the Percys, and he succeeded in that in the most satisfying way. Personally I would be even happier about it if he had immortalised the name of his mother instead, but then it was she who wanted him to change his name. (And anyway, isn't Macy's a department store? That might have been confusing.)

I was already planning to write a blog post on this subject when I heard an item on the PM programme about a proposal to introduce gender equality in the peerage. Now that the royal family have decreed that Kate's baby will be first in line of succession to the throne regardless of sex, some radical peer was earnestly telling Radio 4 that inheritance of aristocratic titles should now also pass to the first born, boy or girl. I think this is the biggest piece of humbug I've ever heard on PM, and that's saying something. What about the gross inequalities of wealth and power passed simply by birth - legitimate birth only - down to the umpteenth generation of descendants of those who managed to blag a peerage a few centuries back? Are we actually going to care less about this if the wealth and power is being enjoyed by a woman? Give me a break.