Dilhorne and the Zulu War

An abduction in the Peak District

We live in an age where the thought of forced marriages and abductions fills people with horror and reports of such events in the British Asian communities are condemned. Each year according to a recent TV documentary over 10,000 young Muslim women are forced into such arrangements against their will.

 The picturesque Blore near Ilam seems a world away from such considerations although a dramatic episode involving a forced marriage took place at Blore Hall at the beginning of the 16^th century.

Margaret Kebell was the daughter of Ralph Bassett and in 1502 was a newly widowed 25 years old. She had married 10 years before to an elderly Leicestershire lawyer on whose death the previous year had left his young bride a sizable inheritance. In short, Margaret was now a very attractive proposition to the gentry of the area as any wealth that she had would become the property of the husband.

At the end of January Margaret became engaged to Ralph Egerton of Wrinehill who was also a wealthy person as he stood to inherit lands in Cheshire, A party was organised to celebrate the event. However someone had other ideas.

On the 1^st February 1502 an armed band led by Roger Vernon of Wirksworth, Derbyshire assisted by a local landowner Thomas Foljambe of Throwley Hall attacked Blore Hall. The brigands arrived at 6am. The band was about 100 strong and was well armed. The trembling guests and retainers were under siege by a group of determined men. Vernon’s band broke in and threatened the servants of Margaret Kebell brandishing swords to get them to reveal her presence. Margaret was found and forced onto a horse and the posse plunged over the River Dove back into Derbyshire. Quickly a compliant priest was found in Derby and the couple was married despite Margaret’s protests.

Margaret’s father was furious and sent out parties to rescue his daughter. Roger Vernon was aware of the threat and moved his new unwilling bride into Herefordshire until things quietened down. Margaret’s mother, Eleanor, accompanied by Eleanor's father and brother, set off in pursuit of the abductors. They were outnumbered and unable to rescue Margaret, but Margaret later managed to escape on her own and reach safety in London. Sir Henry Vernon of Haddon Hall, Margaret’s father in law, was protesting his son’s innocence at court to anyone who would hear that his daughter in law was just being difficult. But Margaret was determined to have her say and gained personal audience with Henry VII. The case ended up before the court of the Star Chamber, where changes and counter-charges kept the litigation active for many years. Vernon was fined, but in December 1509 all those involved in the abduction were pardoned by the new king Henry VIII. Margaret did eventually marry Ralph Egerton, who was knighted in 1515. However whether it was a happy marriage is debateable as Egerton was reputed to have fathered many illegitimate children.

Youth Hostels

My family rejoined the Youth Hostel Association last summer. I have been a member for many years and visited dozens of hostels around the country. The Moorlands used to have several hostels although their numbers have been depleted and reduced even further with the selling off of Gradbach Hostel last year to Newcastle College.

The movement in the UK was born 80 years ago when cheap accommodation was opened in scenic parts of the country giving young people from industrial areas their first opportunity to explore the picturesque beauties of the UK. It gained royal approval early on when the Prince of Wales opened Derwent Hall in the Peak District in 1932.

Ilam Hostel opened in 1935 fulfilling a need as the Peak District attracted 20,000 youth hostellers to existing hostels in the area. During the war Ilam was pressed into service providing emergency accommodation for Czech refugees. Other hostels that opened in the 1930s were Ashover and Rudyard, both of which have long since closed. Rudyard had a distinguished literary visitor in the winter of 1936. George Orwell used it en route to Wigan to research “Road to Wigan Pier”; Orwell stayed a night at the Youth Hostel beside the Lake. It was intensely cold the hostel was unheated and lit only by candles. He had to thaw out over a fire in the morning. The lake was frozen and ice had formed into blocks which made a clanking sound as they collided. Cigarette packets bobbed up and down among the ice floes. Orwell thought it was a very depressing place.

YHA membership took off after the war with over 300 hostels opened by 1950 with individual membership reaching 200,000.

The first hostel I used was Hartington which coincidentally was the hostel where I rejoined in August. It was the summer of 1970 and I was part of a geography field trip from school. Of the local ones I have also stayed at Meerbrook in the late 80s which was rather cold and damp and Ilam which was delightful. I used to prefer the simpler hostels such as Ellingstring in Yorkshire Wheathill in Shropshire and Alpheton in Suffolk which was an old Nissen hut. It is a pity that these hostels were those targeted for closure in the 1990s as I found them basic but charming.

Anyone who has stayed any time in hostels during the old regime would be familiar with the “chores” that hostellers would be given and also the often eccentric hostel wardens who ruled with an iron fist and dole out the duties. I fell foul of such a character in the 80s at a basic hostel on Dartmoor who took a dim view of anyone who went to the pub. Dressed in lederhosen stretched over a portly frame the very camp warden admonished me in a phrase that has always lived with me “I tend to find that my young gentlemen like to go to bed early after a hard day on the hills”. I was on toilet cleaning duties the following day.

The Raven

Some weeks ago I was walking down Burton Street on the way to work when I heard a commotion before my head. I looked up and I saw two Crows mobbing a Buzzard who was flying nonchalantly off unconcerned at the antics of the member of the Corvus family.

It’s another member of that family I wish to write about following a conversation with a fellow “twitcher” at the Dimmingsdale reserve near Cheadle who was telling me of the increased presence of the Raven, after a period of long decline.

WH Hudson the travel writer and nature writer remarked  in his 1913 book “Adventures Among Birds” that on Axe Edge that the birds absence was marked "Not a buzzard, not a harrier, not a raven which when soaring would seem an appropriate object and part of the scenery in these high wild places". The situation seems to have been turned around.

 The largest member of the Crow family ravens are very intelligent birds. Two wild ravens helped a captive one escape by digging a hole from outside of its cage while the one inside dug from there. They can be taught to talk. Ravens are playful and have learned to use tools. They employ stones and other hard objects to crack nuts. It has been observed (not infrequently) that when a member of the flock perishes, the birds will hold what could be called a “raven funeral” – a 24-hour event marked by raucous outcries.

Its reputation in legend is not the most cheerful one as it’s associated with death. Not surprising as it was a bird that frequented the gallows of hanged men, a feeder off carrion and its size, colour and dismal call add to the sepulchral image.

It has an association with pagan deities such as Odin, Lugas the Celtic God and Bran the Blessed (Bran means raven in Welsh) whose head is buried under the Tower of London as a talisman against invasion. According to legend the country will fall if the Ravens of the Tower are removed. Even now an” unkindness”, the collective noun for the bird, of six is maintained.

Ravens were considered messengers of the Gods. One raven does appear in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English when St Paulinus is trying to preach in Yorkshire. The croaking of a raven appeared to be competing with Paulinus and the people think that the pagan Gods are arguing with Paulinus. (The Norse god Odin had two raven familiars named Huginn and Muninn who perched on his shoulders and told him everything they saw and heard)

I visited Durham Cathedral over the summer in which the head of St Oswald who bought Christianity to the north of England is buried in the same coffin as St Cuthbert. Oswald was killed at the Battle of Maserfield in 642 near to modern day Oswestry (Oswald’s tree) fighting the heathen Welsh and the Mercians. Although he was a Christian warrior Oswald included the powerful symbol of the raven on his war banners. It may well be he was keeping all options open in terms of his relationship with the pagan God Odin least things did not work out in the other world.

National Holocaust Memorial Day- the fate of Ruth Schmerler

The theme of Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27th year will be “Journeys”. The Memorial Day originated in 2001 with the aim of remembering the crimes, racism and victimisation committed during the Holocaust are neither forgotten nor repeated, whether in Europe or elsewhere in the world. It has been commemorated every year since.

The young woman whose picture that looks out at the reader is Ruth Schmerler whose journey began when she left her home in Poland as a 14 year old in 1939 moved to a home in Manchester for Jewish Refugee Children with her brother Klaus. Her family had lived for generations in Galicia in Poland. Ruth worked as a Land Girl picking fruit in Worcestershire. She was found murdered her body found at Counslow in late September 1944 on the Alton-Cheadle road. She was 20 years of age, her journey had ended.

She was last seen receiving a lift from an Army vehicle at Selly Oak in Birmingham on 21^st September. She was intending to see her brother in Manchester who was working as an optician’s assistant. When her body was discovered she had been stabbed as well as an attempt made to strangle her. Her clothes were disarranged and a stocking was missing. Robbery was not thought to be a motive. Ruth’s suitcase and other belongings were found 150 miles away at Shap Fell in Cumbria. Her murder was unsolved despite the best efforts of the Cheadle police. It was the first case that mine detectors were used in a vain attempt to find the weapon that killed Ruth.

Ruth’s story is a poignant one. She escaped the persecution of the Nazis who had killed all her relatives in Poland, for her to die brutally and her body to be thrown into a Staffordshire ditch. Her story is just one of the many millions of people who were forced from homelands where communities had lived for hundreds of years to be either killed or resettled distances away from their birthplace. The Jewish community of Eastern Europe ceased to exist and cities which had sizable minorities such as Prague, Warsaw and Lvov were entirely purged. Only 150,000 Polish Jews survived out of a population of over 3 million by 1945. After the war vast movements of populations occurred. Tony Judt in his seminal book on Europe “ Postwar” estimated that over 30 million people were dispossessed from 1939 to 1950 including 11 million Germans, millions in the Soviet Union such as the Crimea Tartars thought to be enemies of the state, Poles, Hungarians, Italians and many other groups in a massive attempt at “homogenising” vast swathes of the continent. Many Jews moved to the new state of Israel, but also to unbelievably escape further persecution in Eastern Europe . Some of the displaced people of Europe found homes in England as the Polish community at Blackshaw Moor testifies.

Writing about a massacre of Jews that took place in Stryl in Galicia in the summer of 1943 Schaje Schmerler concluded with this prayer. “Their extinguished souls that ascended to heaven and were transformed into stars shine now together will the souls of all those unlucky Jews martyred-- al kiddush hashem --they shine down on us lest we forget what was done to our people”.

Ruth Schmerler lies in a Jewish cemetery in Manchester. Perhaps some passer-by can say Kaddish for her and her people?

Battle of the Nile

The sad  news that the closure of the Portsmouth Dockyards will end 500 years of naval ship building coincides as  a major exhibition on Admiral Lord Nelson opens at the Royal Maritime Museum at Greenwich. The exhibition presents the legendary deeds of  Britain’s greatest and most charismatic  military leader.

Horatio Nelson achieved national prominence firstly with his daring exploits during the Battle of St Vincent in 1797 when the Royal Navy squadron was under the command of Admiral John Jervis of Meaford near Stone(  Given that the county is land locked, Staffordshire has produced great naval officers of the stature of Jervis, Anson and Gardner). But Nelson’s international fame was firmly cemented at the Battle of the Nile of August 1798 when he led the fleet against a larger French force supporting Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. Showing audacious leadership his fleet annihilated the French culminating in the flagship, L’Orient   exploding killing the French commander Brueys and all but one hundred of the ship’s crew.

The immediate result of the battle was the collapse of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt and the lifting of any threat to Britain’s control of India. Napoleon abandoned his army to its fate and returned to France.

 The battle cost Nelson 218 killed and 677 wounded, while the French suffered around 1,700 killed, 600 wounded, and 3,000 captured. During the battle, Nelson was wounded in the forehead, exposing his skull. Despite bleeding profusely, he refused preferential treatment and insisted on waiting his turn while other wounded sailors were treated before him.

News of the victory reached Staffordshire in November where the news was greeted euphorically in Cheadle.

The Staffordshire Advertiser reported of “the rising spirit and the glowing ardour of this little but loyal town, a procession of many hundreds of the inhabitants carrying lighted torches and emblematic devices of victory marched through Cheadle escorting the post”. The crowd enjoyed a roasted sheep washed down by large amounts of “stout old October” finishing the hilarity of this festive evening”.

Elsewhere the crushing victory was celebrated on the highest hills of the district. On top of Thorpe Cloud on the 29^th November 1798 a sheep was roasted and a large bonfire lit, “a considerable quantity of ale was given by Hugh Bateman of Ilam to above 100 persons assembled there from neighbouring villages terminating the thanksgiving of the day on the summit by repeated toasts to the health of Lord Nelson and to the continued success of His Majesty’s arms”.

Wonderfully, the “Advertiser” ended its report with the words “it is the transcendent glory of this island alone, to shine with the lustre of a superior planet amidst the dim horizon of political darkness”

Now, as then, the Royal Navy has a special place in the hearts of this island nation. 

Fairies of Cauldon Lowe

Belief in Fairies was common enough for people in the  past although in more recent times such opinions are considered idiosyncratic. In country areas however belief in them and in other fey entities such as elves, goblins and boggarts persisted well into the 19^th century.

Some months ago I was having a chat with an elderly former quarry worker from Cauldon Lowe who was telling me entertaining stories about his childhood including encounters with gypsies he called “ roadsters”. I touched on a legend I had heard of the area “The Fairies of Caldon Lowe”  well enough known story to have a 19^th century writer Mary Howitt produce a poem on the subject in the 1840s. (She was the first English translator of the children stories of Hans Christian Andersen) The old man told me that he had heard accounts of fairy’s dancing on an ancient burial mound on certain nights of the year.

The Leek priest and folklorist of the 1950s WP Wincutt researched a number of other places in the Moorlands that fairy traditions attached to them including Long Low close to Castern Hill where pixies danced inside a hill on Christmas Eve. Wincutt believed that a common denominator in most of these local stories was that incidents happened at sites of great antiquity.

 In another account a writer in 1901 described at Longnor a flickering light “seen moving as one moves . . . it has given rise to many tales of belated travellers having been beguiled by it and led into the swamp, where their bodies remain, and from whence their “boggarts” arise at night to caper and dance all over the countryside, to the terror of the inhabitants.”

Fairy lore has a tradition of thousands of years going back to before pre Christian times. Mischievous fairies have been said to abduct human babies and substituting them with their own children or “changelings”. They are accused of inflicting amnesia on their victims, drugging their victims and taking them to other worldly places filled with light. Medieval tales are full of encounters between humans and fairies where people when wandering back home find that life has radically changed.

One example from the Welsh border refers to a King called Herla who is invited by an Elf King to attend a feast. He and his entourage are let into a magnificent hall under a cliff where they are wined and dined until the meal ends and they fall asleep. On returning to the surface find that they have been gone 300 years and all has changed.

If we could remove the mythological aspect from fairy abductions and dress them a little differently, these folklore reports would be virtually indistinguishable from present UFO abduction reports which is an interesting conclusion to arrive at. 

The ability of fairies to cause mischief even into the 20^th century is illustrated by the fooling of the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle who was taken in by two young girls in 1920s Yorkshire photographed posing with fairies. Many years later Elsie and Frances confessed that they had faked the pictures with paper cut outs.