Postscript to York

WHILE stonemasons such as Deb Hughes at York Minster have been carving new pieces of stone as part of the res tora tion, there has been a large number of interesting pieces of old stone to be dis­posed of. So an auction was held, with individual lots ranging from complex tracery panels, finials, and pin nacles to smaller stones with simpler masonry details. Each piece had with it a certificate of auth entifica tion.

They proved popular: people bought them as stand-alone garden features, or to en hance a pond or rockery, or even as a base for a table lamp. When the auction was held in the Minster School grounds, 184 lots were sold, raising more than £20,000 towards the restora tion fund.

It was so successful that the Minster hopes to hold a similar auction next year.

Five Days

This BBC drama is particularly absorbing because of local filming.

FIVE DAYS SERIES II

FIVE DAYS (BBC) returns for a second series in 2010, and filmed in Leeds, Wakefield and Dewsbury in summer 2009, with Screen Yorkshire providing crew and locations support.Suranne Jones and David Morrissey head up the ensemble cast, both returning to Yorkshire after filming Unforgiven and Red Riding respectively here in 2008.

Starring in this gripping new drama serial written by Gwyneth Hughes (Miss Austen Regrets, Cherished), Suranne Jones returned to the region after starring in ITV's hit drama UNFORGIVEN (pictured above) in 2009, and David Morrissey is returning after the critically acclaimed RED RIDING trilogy hit our screens on Channel 4 back in March 2009.

The second series of FIVE DAYS filmed at the following Yorkshire locations:
- Kirkgate Station, Wakefield
- Ridings Centre, Wakefield
- Scarborough Beach, South bay and promenade
- Seacroft and Cookridge hospitals, Leeds
- Leeds University
- Leeds Metropolitan University
- Burley Streets
- Dewsbury town hall
- Dewsbury market
- Yorkshire Building Society, Kirklees
- Batley
- Pontefract town square

Andy Morgan, Location Manager, says of his experience shooting in the region: ''The joy of filming in Yorkshire is the sheer wealth of locations available to you. With Leeds, Bradford & Wakefield so close in proximity you have triple the amount of options for urban locations, yet on your doorstep you have some of (if not THE) most beautiful countryside in England. 'Five Days 2' was set in an anonymous West Yorkshire town which meant we could explore all these areas finding incredible locations to piece together our perfect town. The local authorities, ie. Police, Council & Highways, are very helpful towards filming as they feel it's good PR for the area and always makes for positive local interest stories in the press.

Screen Yorkshire played a huge part in the production of FD2 as we engaged their help on many occasion. They appear to know everyone and even when we suggested the most random and bizarre location, they somehow managed to find a contact and get us in. Wherever we filmed it felt like the red carpet had been laid out for us upon our arrival. Their approach to creating a film-friendly region is second to none and their constant support throughout FD2 was very helpful, particularly to the Locations Team.''

SYNOPSIS
A tiny newborn baby is abandoned in the toilets of a Yorkshire hospital. At the same time, the Trans-Pennine commuter train is halted by a suicidal jumper. Are they connected?

From this moment on, the lives of those onboard the train and in the hospital will be changed irrevocably, not least for DC Laurie Franklin (Suranne Jones), off-duty that day but travelling on the train with her mum (Anne Reid), who is recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

Laurie likes tying up loose ends. And if she can prove a connection between the body and the baby she will be happy. But things never turn out quite the way we expect. Who is the baby's mother? And who is the jumper? And was it just a simple case of suicide - or was it really a murder?

FIVE DAYS is an atmospheric ensemble drama; a mystery which unfolds over the five most significant days of the police investigation into these two mysteries. It is set in the heart of urban Yorkshire - a melting pot of tensions and relationships within a multicultural landscape. The first series of Five Days received BAFTA, RTS and Golden Globe nominations.

The ensemble cast includes: Suranne Jones (Unforgiven, Coronation Street), David Morrissey (Red Riding, Is Anybody There?), Anne Reid (In Love With Barbara, Hot Fuzz), Bernard Hill (Valkyrie, Titanic), Hugo Speer (Bleak House, The Full Monty), Derek Riddell (Ugly Betty, No Angels), Nina Sosanya (Casanova, Teachers), Steve Evets(Looking For Eric), Ashley Walters (Small Island, Bullet Boy), Shaun Dooley (Married, Single, Other; The Mark of Cain), Matthew McNulty (Cranford, The Shooting Of Thomas Hurndall), Navin Chowdhry (Sinchronicity, Teachers),Shivani Ghai (House Of Saddam), Sacha Dharwan (The History Boys, State Of Play), Cornell John (Kidulthood, Adulthood), Aaron Neil (White Girl), Philip Arditti (House Of Saddam), Kerry Condon (Rome), Chris Fountain(Hollyoaks).

A BBC Drama Production for BBC One, FIVE DAYS is due for transmission in Spring 2010.

Barnsley in Colour

Photo: © James Sheriff

The Strata project at Central Offices explores the formal progressions of Chromatic colours and repetitive structures. The effect is to generate sensations of movement, light and space - visual experiences which also have a strong emotional and even visceral resonance. Strata provides an exploration and celebration of a fundamental human experience of colour. Using this particular buildings history, physicality and dominance as an evocation of the everyday, Murphy as intervened and reinterpreted the function of this former office block, challenging the viewer's assumptions or expectations as to where the 'real world' stops and art begins.

Strata allows for greater civic engagement and participation allowing time to rethink the overall line between everyday life and art. People can engage with these artworks and the thoughts they provoke everyday by walking passed them, being on a bus or train, it brings art to a much wider audience than in the environs of an art gallery.

Windows have been painted and transformed into panels of coloured glass. This leads to the transformation of a former office block into a canvas of expression.

© Patrick Murphy

Celebrating Yorkshire Day 2009

(some of our residents have been to Ryedale Festival, 17th July - 2nd August, where today they are marking 'Yorkshire Day')

Saturday 1st August - 9.45 a.m - 4.45 p.m.

Meet at East Gate Car Park, Pickering
Ryecrawl - Yorkshire Day 2009

Following the enormous success of our first ‘RyeCrawl’ in 2008, we will again treat our audience to a magical mystery tour of seven venues; at each venue you will hear a short concert of music that is particularly suited to the venue.

Last year’s locations included Pickering Castle, an Elizabethan Manor House, Helmsley Walled Garden and Rievaulx Abbey, but 2009’s will remain a closely guarded secret!

Tickets include transportation on coaches. Please book well in advance and bring a picnic; there will be a certain amount of walking involved so please let us know when booking if mobility is an issue.

Community Theatre

(The monks of Monk Bretton founded the church in my home village of Royston in 1234)

By Michael Hickling in Yorkshire Post Magazine

A former Barnsley miner will reveal that Britain's got talent with his biblical epic performed by the community. Watch a preview in the stunning setting of Monk Bretton Priory.

A call comes in on John Kelly's mobile phone. It's Judas Iscariot.

"Yes Judas?" The conversation continues for a minute of two. "Okay, right Judas, thanks Judas, bye."

It's not clear if all the members of John Kelly's cast stay in character when they get in touch with him. Maybe God (to be played as a disembodied voice by Patrick Stewart) will ring in a moment? Probably not. Doesn't He usually communicate by other means, through a clap of thunder or something?

We are sitting in the bar of John Kelly's tiny theatre in Barnsley. The one-time miner created it by taking out a second mortgage on his house, and all that his investment bought at the time was a wreck of a building. With ingenuity it was transformed into a little gem called the Lamproom which survived for a decade without a penny of public funding.

It's now in it's 10th anniversary year and John Kelly is moving from this small, but perfectly-formed auditorium onto a broader stage. He's directing his own outdoor community version of a medieval Mystery Plays cycle in an arena at the ruins of the 13th century Monk Bretton Priory.

The total number in the cast and crew is nearly 200 – bigger than a capacity Lamproom audience of 187– and will play to 500 people a night for 12 nights.

There are no mysteries in the Mystery Plays. The name comes from the way each craft, or "mystery", in a town undertook to adapt and perform a Bible story to be part of a linked narrative from Creation to Last Judgement.

It was an enterprise which did not justify the ways of God to Man so much as bring them vividly to life by capturing the imagination of the unlettered.

Ordinary people were embedded in Catholic ritual, so instinctively responded to this extension of religion as theatre. These home-spun takes on familiar stories probably had an impact like today's Hollywood blockbusters. Audiences throughout the country turned out anticipating shock and awe and that's what they they seem to have got, with a bit of low humour thrown in.

We're not entirely sure, since most of their scripts were lost after the plays were banned. Four survive, mainly intact, including the York cycle of plays and the Wakefield cycle which were unearthed last century in Lancashire. A modern taste for them was re-discovered when York revived their cycle in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain.

John has spent years studying them to create his English Mystery Plays which, he says, is 80 per cent new writing. "They can be very long and exceedingly tedious. I've condensed the greatest moments to about two hours, 15 minutes." He got the idea for a narrator he calls Bogoak from the Coventry Cycle and found Toby Stephen, a comedian and presenter on Radio Sheffield, to play the part.

John has also brought in Morris dancing, longsword dancing, medieval music and jesters for what he thinks is the only outdoor play of this sort taking place this summer in western Europe.

He is not one for received opinion where Bible stories are concerned. "I've got great sympathy for Judas from a theatrical point of view. Why does the poor chap have to spend his eternal life in the fires of Hell just because he's the one who had to move the storyline along?"

His show has a couple of interesting star names attached to it, apart from Patrick Stewart. Notes in the programme about the history of Mystery Plays are contributed by dangerous Becky Granger, the chavvy barmaid of the Rovers Return in Coronation Street. Her theme is that there's a theatrical void between Sophocles and Shakespeare and the Mystery Plays fill it.

In real life, Becky is John's elder daughter, Katherine Kelly, recently crowned best actress in the British National soap Awards.

The other name to leap out is Grace Kelly. This is not another ghostly-voice arrangement but a corporeal presence in the shape of John's younger daughter, who plays Eve. Grace Kelly, 19, is off to
Los Angeles to study acting when the show ends.

Her father's fascination with the medieval goes back 30 years. A school party from Worsborough High School went to York for the Mystery Plays which in those days were mounted every three years in the Museum Gardens against the backdrop of the ruins of St Mary's Abbey.

It impressed one of the school's teachers so much she devised her own. The vicar of St Mary's church in Worsborough moved some of the gravestones to make a little acting area and a local outdoor dramatic tradition was born. Later, John, then aged 33, was invited to play Jesus and he went on to direct or produce at Worsborough, bringing in semi- professional actors to bolster the amateur cast.

Three years ago, Barnsley Council asked John if he would attempt something grander in this vein with his own acting set-up, the Barnsley Secret Theatre Company. They promised a proper budget. He said no. "They sat me down and I said no again. In fact I said it three times. They didn't understand the vastness of it.

"Then we got to go and take a look at Monk Bretton Priory. It's funny, I used to live in Grimethorpe and passed it on the way to work and never really noticed it. But after that look around I was absolutely stunned. That did me. It had production values written all over it. That's the genesis."

As to his own beginnings, they are pretty unusual for the founder of a theatre and an acting dynasty. John left his Catholic comprehensive in Featherstone at the age of 15 with no qualifications. He put that right when he signed up to be a miner at Monkton Colliery and worked so hard he was crowned Yorkshire apprentice of the year for 1966. That gave him a leg-up to train as an electrician, but a long-term life underground was not to be.

Despatched on his motorbike to deliver a parcel for a fellow miner in a mental hospital, his eyes were opened to the fact that men could do this work. Within a day he had switched jobs and made a lifetime career out of psychiatric nursing instead.

The Lamproom came about after he headed a trust aiming to bring back theatre to Barnsley's Edwardian Theatre Royal. The way was blocked and John spotted in the pages of the local paper another building for sale. It's on a prominent position overlooking Barnsley and began life in 1792 as a chapel or meeting house. By the 1990s it required a giant step of the imagination to see any potential there.

A hammer and chisel were required to get inside and snow lay in a 30-foot drift against a wall. Windows were smashed and the only recent visitors had been flocks of pigeons and druggies whose detritus was scattered around. All the wiring had been stripped.

The make-do-and mend approach to turn things round blended cheek with adaptability.

Today, the auditorium's stepped flooring was once boarding belonging to a supermarket. "It was around the new Sainsbury's in Wakefield. I asked if I could have it when they were finished with it." The stage is constructed from pallets for which the Redfearn National Glass Company had no further use. A joiner put in the bar for nothing.

Trust volunteers brought their own special skills and the trust purchased the theatre from John for the same price he paid. He is now a trustee and has just been made president. As a figurehead, he will have more time to expand his writing horizons.

This autumn the Lamproom is putting on a trilogy of plays he wrote some time ago set in the Sixties. He won't be there to see them. In September he is off to Los Angeles for six months to find out more about how they write for television.

"I've got some writing pals over there who work for some of the big network comedy shows. The writers are in teams and it's amazing seeing at first hand how the shows come together. I'll be doing some writing on my own there. But I'm 58, maybe a bit too old to make it in television."

For the amateurs who come to have a go in the Mystery Plays, it's often a never-to-be-forgotten experience.

"A chap of six foot three and 18 stone came towards me in Barnsley market," says John. "He was all tattoos and bulging muscles. I went to step aside but he said, 'Remember me? I were a wave in 1983. I'd never done anything like that in me life. I never did again. Me mam's still got the photos on the mantlepiece'."

John's job, once a production is underway, is to think on his feet. "One night I counted 10 disciples. I asked the others about the missing two and they said, 'they've gone to a Queen concert'. I thought the audience were going to notice this when we got to the Last Supper and in the interval found two people in the audience to make up the dozen."

Another year, when John had a main part, his car broke down on the motorway as he drove to a performance.

He jumped out and ran across fields to the nearest house, calling out to a man in the garden: "Good evening, I'm Noah!" The man he was hailing turned out to be Arthur Scargill, who obliged by giving Noah a lift so he was just in time to catch the Ark.

English Mystery Plays, June 29 to July 11, Monk Bretton Priory, tickets 01226 321741

Away Days

To Harrogate and Knaresborough to celebrate 75th birthday.

Betjeman on Leeds

In 1968, Sir John Betjeman, the poet and architectural critic, was asked by the BBC to make a television programme about Leeds.

The result was a half-hour film in which he explored the city's Victorian heritage and lamented the destruction of the city's past in favour of new tower blocks.

For reasons which are still unexplained, Sir John's film was never broadcast.

Now, forty years on, extracts from the film will be broadcast for the first time on Inside Out on Wednesday 18 February at 7.30pm on BBC One Yorkshire & Lincolnshire.

The existence of the film came to light when a copy was found on top of a cupboard in the offices of Leeds Civic Trust.

The Trust was given a copy because, in 1968, it contributed 200 guineas towards the cost of the film and co-operated with the BBC during its production. It was passed to the Yorkshire Film Archive, where it was restored.

Kevin Grady, Director of Leeds Civic Trust, said: "When I became Director of the Trust 20 years ago, I was searching round the office and I found this cylindrical tin. I was told it was the Betjeman film."

Binny Baker, Head of Access at the Yorkshire Film Archive, said: "It's just so exciting to find a treasure like this. We've got a star – Sir John Betjeman – and nobody's seen it. That for me is a real find."

On Inside Out, reporter Nicola Rees follows in Sir John's footsteps.

Her first stop is Temple Mill, in Holbeck, Leeds, a 19th century flax mill built in the style of an Egyptian temple.

In 1968, Sir John was filmed walking across the roof of the mill which, after it was first built, was covered with grass on which sheep were allowed to graze.

It was announced in 2005 that the mill would be part of a £180m development scheme, including shops, art and sculpture. Work is still to start, and now the roof of this Grade One listed building has collapsed.

Writer, Martin Wainwright, said: "It's appalling to see how it is now. This is one of the most important industrial buildings in the whole country. If Betjeman came back now he’d be aghast to see what's happened."

John Mapplebeck, the BBC producer who made the film with Betjeman in 1968, is filmed by Inside Out watching the programme for the first time in forty years.

He said: "He was delightful. He taught me the pleasures of drinking champagne at 11 o'clock in the morning, which was the way his day used to start.

"He had a great deal of knowledge but, more than knowledge, he had tremendous affection for the city. I think that's one of the things that still comes out after 40 years."

It's still not clear why the film was never broadcast. A copy of the programme exists in the BBC's film library, but no paperwork has survived.

Boy from Barnsley

He was the nation's top TV inquisitor for 
40 years, yet never told his own story. Now Michael Parkinson has written his autobiography and for the first time shone a spotlight on his life. Roger Ratcliffe reports on Parky's earliest days as a Yorkshire journalist.

It is a little-known fact about Michael Parkinson that although he has made a career out of interviewing every living legend – the Fred Astaires, Bette Davises and Jimmy Stewarts of Hollywood and the Paul McCartneys, Michael Caines and Judi Denches of Britain – he actually learned his craft by writing about dead people.

These were not A-list celebrities. For a start, the term had yet to be coined in the 1950s, when he was a cub reporter whose patch centred on the pit villages on the north-east side of Barnsley.

No, the deceased were usually from ordinary mining families, names he had to collect almost every day by interrupting a grave-digger he would find hard at work in a local cemetery.

Parky has been lauded for his relaxed interviewing style on TV, so it's hard to resist saying that he learned this by perfecting a good graveside manner. 

Certainly, it was his job to obtain a lot of stories for the South Yorkshire Times, which he joined in 1951 at the age of 16, by those visits to the council cemetery at Royston.

There he would find a small, soft-spoken gravedigger called Bob Ellerker, who was slightly bent through working in such confined spaces. Ellerker was always the first to hear of any local deaths and had the names and addresses ready on a piece of paper tucked into his overalls.

Often accompanying Parkinson on these visits was another teenage reporter named Don Booker, who worked for rival weekly newspaper, the Barnsley Chronicle. "Anybody died overnight, Bob?" they would shout into the grave, and Ellerker stopped digging. Sometimes he shouted the details back, or if he knew a bit more about the dead person, he climbed up his small ladder to talk to the boys. Later, they would visit the homes of families to gather more information for the obituaries. In those days, there were few chapels of rest, so they usually found the deceased laid out behind a clothes-horse, and the bereaved invited them to view the corpse before they left.

Parkinson was the son of a pit deputy and was brought up in the village of Cudworth, four miles from the bright lights of downtown Barnsley. 

He was two years old when they moved there, in the days when the rent for one of their three-bedroom corporation semis on the Darfield Road estate ranged from 10 shillings and eightpence to 11 shillings and sixpence a week. The house had an air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden.

An early picture of him show a self-possessed and almost impossibly dapper little boy. 

His mother is said to have been a marvellous knitter who designed Fair Isle patterns especially for the apple of her eye. Such a turnout at that age might have seemed a bit excessive in the Home Counties. 

On a Yorkshire pit estate it must have looked uncanny.

Young Michael probably got away with it among people of his age because he was talented at the two things that mattered to boys of that time, football and cricket. 

He became the leader of his gang. Not because he was the toughest; he was the only one who owned his own cricket bat.

He was noted for his batsmanship at Shaw Lane Cricket Club and one season was selected for Barnsley's first team when another promising youngster was still making his way in the second team. His name was Geoff Boycott.

At Barnsley Grammar School, Michael's writing talents were identified and appreciated by fellow pupils. He charged them threepence a time to do their essays and managed as many as five in one night. But he loathed the place and later said his real education happened at The Rock, his local cinema, and on the terraces at Oakwell where his beloved Barnsley played. The player in red he worshiped most was Skinner Normanton, a man who was later to become more famous through his appearances in Michael's Sunday Times column than he ever was during his playing days.

One of Michael's best friends at school recalled that his pal never seemed settled there and lacking academic gifts, apart from English, was something of the form clown. Michael himself says that all school did was put on hold the career which he ought to have started at the age of 11.

As a trainee on the Mexborough-based South Yorkshire Times, with a grand salary of 25 shillings a week, he had to report village news in Cudworth, Royston and Grimethorpe, which coincided with Don Booker's patch for the Chronicle.

They met on Parkinson's first day as a reporter. Booker drove a BSA 250 motorcycle, while Parkinson's transport was just a drop-handlebar pushbike, and found themselves collecting paragraphs of local news on the same circuit of Darby and Joan Clubs, Mothers' Unions and pigeon fanciers.

Don Booker recalls how they became friends and, although supposed to be rival reporters, for a lot of the time, Parkinson rode pillion on Booker's BSA.

When they saw the 1952 Humphrey Bogart film Deadline – USA in which Bogart played a tough newspaper editor, they started dressing like him, buying white trenchcoats and going to Westnedge's outfitters in Royston to find trilby hats with wide rims they could bend just like Bogart's.

The problem was, their hats blew off the moment they set off on the motorbike, so they solved the problem by attaching a chin strap made of knicker elastic. Parkinson insists the elastic came from a pair of his aunty's old knickers.

Parkinson's first job every morning was to cycle from Cudworth over to Grimethorpe to collect the previous day's stories from his immediate boss, a dapper ex-Army man named Stan Bristow. He then cycled up to the railway station at Royston and put the copy on a train to his head office in Mexborough.

By 11am, he and Booker would be sitting in the station buffet, having ginger pudding with custard and a pot of tea while they traded paragraphs of local news.

The stories were not all mundane. Sometimes there was some exciting news event to report. One that still shines out after all these years was a fire at a terrace house next to the coking plant at Monkton Colliery.

Children were collecting "bunny wood" – the material for their November 5 bonfires – but it was common practice to steal other people's wood from back yards.

So one family had the idea of storing it in their front room with almost disastrous consequences. A toddler got up in the middle of the night and put a match to it, the house burning to the ground and the family lucky to escape.

Another came from a parish council meeting at Grimethorpe, where a plan to give a facelift to a local park was being discussed. One councillor, who had been to Venice, suggested the park's small lake would look good with the addition of a gondola. Another councillor, not to be outdone, said they might as well have two gondolas and breed them. He thought they were ducks.

After a couple of years, Parkinson passed his driving test but didn't have a car. Booker still had L-plates but had bought a 1946 Standard Flying Eight, so the two would drive around in his car.

Their friendship was interrupted when Parkinson went off to do his National Service, eventually being commissioned as a captain and working as a press officer at Suez. Booker stayed in Yorkshire, an eardrum having been "blown up" when he had his army medical. When Parkinson returned to civilian life, he wasn't too struck by the kind of reporter's money being offered to someone from the officer class. For a time he worked nights in a bottle factory where his colleagues were mostly women.

After a few months, Parkinson moved to work for an evening newspaper in Doncaster, where he met his future wife, Mary Heneghan, on a bus. She wore a red duffel coat, and he thought she had a face he "could look 
at forever".

His leg-up into the big league came with the offer of a job at the Manchester Guardian. But by now print journalism, even at the top level, was no longer enough. He craved to be a face recognised in the street from television and he got work interviewing on a weekend 
ITV programme.

Fleet Street came calling in the shape of the Daily Express where he was advised by colleague Nancy Banks-Smith never to go into television. He ignored her and started taking that side of his career seriously at the start of the Sixties – even though by that time he had a newspaper job which many journalists would have died for – a sports column in the Sunday Times with his own picture by-line.

He moved to Granada as a producer and performer, then on to London Weekend and never looked back. When his show Parkinson started in the early Seventies, broadcast straight after Match of the Day, the chat show was an unknown quantity on this side of the Atlantic. 

Some people even wondered if a journalist sitting talking to somebody famous could actually be regarded as an entertainment programme. But Michael Parkinson's judgment of what people wanted was right. Among the celebs who were to line up to be interviewed by him was Lauren Bacall, the widow of Humphrey Bogart. It is not known if he told her that he once rode around the pit villages of South Yorkshire on the back of a motorbike, dressed like her late-husband.

But with the trademark trilby held on with knicker elastic.

Parky: My Autobiography is published by Hodder & Stoughton, price £20. To order a copy from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free 
on 0800 0153232 or online at www. yorkshirepostbookshop.co.uk. Postage and packing is £2.75.

Michael Parkinson is the guest at the next Yorkshire Post Literary Lunch on October 9 at The Majestic Hotel, Harrogate.

Yorkshire Flag

The flag of the county

By Martin Herron


YORKSHIRE is setting its own standard! The county's very own flag has just been registered with the UK flag institute, and the banner has made its official debut at a ceremony.


Official recognition for the flag means that anyone wanting to fly it from their rooftop no longer needs to apply for planning permission first.The move comes after controversy in recent years when householders flying flags celebrating their Yorkshire roots were warned against it.In one case a North Yorkshire farmer was issued with a summons by Ryedale Council until the case was dropped after a local campaign.And the flag is now hitting the road – a series of walkers will carry it to York where it is scheduled to arrive tomorrow, Yorkshire Day.



The move to register the flag has been masterminded by the Yorkshire Ridings' Society whose vice-chairman Roger Sewell said: "I hope that the ceremony and the registration of the Yorkshire Flag will encourage Yorkshire folk to proudly fly it, especially on Yorkshire Day."It would be wonderful to see the historic county covered in white roses on 1 August."Perhaps we can, as it were, sow the seeds this year and see the blossoming of the idea next year and in following years."

God's Own County

An American decided to write a book about famous churches around the world, so he bought a plane ticket and took a trip to Rome.

On his first day in Rome he was inside a church, taking photographs, when he noticed a golden telephone mounted on a wall that read '$10,000 per call'. Intrigued, he asked a priest who was strolling by what the telephone was used for and the priest replied that it was a direct line to heaven where the caller could talk to God. The American thanked the priest and went along his way.

Next stop was Moscow. In a large cathedral there he saw the same golden telephone with the same sign underneath it. He wondered if this was the same kind of telephone that he had seen in Rome and asked a nearby nun what its purpose was. She told him that it was a direct line to heaven and that for $10,000 he could talk to God. 'OK and thank you' said the American.

He then travelled to France, Israel, Germany and Brazil. In each country he found a church with the same golden telephone and the '$10,000 per call' sign below it.

Finally, the American came to the UK . When he visited York Minster there was the same golden telephone but this time the sign read '20p per call'. He was so surprised that he asked a priest about it. 'Reverend Sir' he said 'I have travelled all over the world and seen this same golden telephone in many churches. I'm told that it is a direct line to heaven but everywhere else the call price has been $10,000. Why is it so cheap here ?' The priest smiled and replied 'Well, my friend, you are in Yorkshire now, it's a local call!'

Cedd and Chad

St. Cedd(AD 620-AD 664)
Bishop of EssexAbbot of Lastingham
Born: c. AD 620 in Northumberland
Died: 26th October AD 664 at Lastingham, Yorkshire North Riding

St. Cedd was the eldest of four holy brothers, born into a noble Northumbrian family at the beginning of the 7th century. With his siblings, Cynebil, Caelin & (St.) Chad, he entered the school at Lindisfarne Priory at an early age and learnt the ways of the Irish monks under Bishop Aidan. They were eventually sent to Ireland for further study and all four subsequently became priests.

In AD 653, the mighty armies of King Penda of Mercia expanded their monarch's influence to the control of Middle Anglia (Leicestershire and parts of Lincoln and Derby), where his son Peada was appointed King. Soon afterward, the young king visited his neighbour, King Oswiu of Northumbria, at Walton (or Atwell or Wattbottle) and, as his new kingdom had already been considerably influenced by East Anglian Christianity, Peada agreed to be baptised in return for the hand of Oswiu's daughter, Alchflaed. Bishop Finan of Lindisfarne therefore welcomed the King and a number of his nobles into the Christian faith and Oswiu provided him with four priests to instruct his people further. One of these was St. Cedd.

Within a year, Cedd returned home, having helped to convert much of Middle Anglia to Christianity. He travelled to Lindisfarne to confer with Bishop Finan, who promptly sent this impress young missionary out once more to evangelise the people of Essex, who were sorely in need of some spiritual guidance. King Oswiu, having imposed his overlordship there, had persuaded King Sigeberht Sanctus to adopt Christianity, in a general mobilization against Penda of Mercia. Cedd thus turned south again to spread the word of God amongst the East Saxons. He baptised many of the locals and built several churches - possibly Prittlewell and West Mersea amongst them - and is particularly noted for the foundation of monasteries at Ythanchester (Bradwell-on-Sea) and Tilaburg (East Tilbury).

The following year, Cedd made a brief visit to Northumbria once more, where Bishop Finan had no hesitation in ordaining him as Bishop of Essex. Back in his southern province, Cedd pursued the work he had previously begun with more ample authority. He re-instated St. Paul's in London as the main seat of his diocese. He ordained priests and deacons to assist him in his work and gathered together a large flock of servants of Christ in his two monastic foundations.

Bishop Cedd always remained fond of his homeland, however, and was wont to make regular visits there. On one such occasion in AD 658, Cedd was approached by King Aethelwald of Deira who had been instructed in Christianity and administered the Sacraments by the Bishop's brother, Caelin. Finding Cedd to be a good and wise man, he pressed upon him to accept a parcel of land at Laestingaeu (Lastingham in Yorkshire) on which to build a Royal monastery and prospective mausoleum. Cedd eventually agreed, but would not lay the foundation stones until the place had first been cleansed through prayer and fasting. This, he undertook himself throughout lent, until his brother, Cynebil, took over, when the Bishop was called to the Royal Court. Cedd was the first Abbot of Lastingham and remained so while still administering to his flock in Essex.

Christianity had not quite been universally accepted in Cedd's southern province and, by AD 660, there was considerable discontent with the rule of King Sigeberht of Essex. He was murdered by his brothers, Swithelm and Swithfrith, and the former took the throne as a pagan King. St. Cedd was forced to flee north into East Anglia, where he settled at the Court of King Aethelwald at Rendlesham (Suffolk). The East Anglians appear to have held some sort of overlordship in Essex at this time and, within about two years, Aethelwald had persuaded Swithelm that it would be in his interest to become Christian. Cedd baptised him at Rendlesham, with Aethelwald as his godfather, and the two returned to Essex.

It was around this time that, owing to the influence of St. Wilfrid who had been established at Ripon by King Alchfrith of Deira, that a great divide was forming in the Northumbrian Church. All the missionaries of the north had been brought up in Iona or Lindisfarne, and followed the Celtic ritual. Wilfrid, ordained by a French bishop, introduced Roman ways. The split even extended to the Royal household where, each year, Oswiu celebrated the Celtic Easter feast and his Queen, the Roman. To settle this difference, and prevent a rupture, the King convened a religious synod at Whitby in AD 664. St. Cedd attended the synod - probably with his brother, Chad - to act as interpreter and to speak on behalf of his fellow Celtic ecclesiastics, Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne and Abbess Hilda of Whitby. On the opposing side were Abbot Wilfrid of Ripon, former Bishop Agilbert of Wessex, Romanus, the Queen's chaplain, and James the Deacon who had remained in Swaledale after St. Paulinus had fled Yorkshire. After much debate, it was decided that the Roman usages should be adopted and Cedd, along with many others, reluctantly renounced the customs of Lindisfarne and returned to his diocese to spread the new Roman ways amongst the people of Essex.

The same year, Cedd visited his Abbey at Lastingham while a great plague was, unfortunately, raging through the area. Both he and his brother, Cynebil, fell sick and, after placing Lastingham in the charge of their youngest brother, Chad, they died. Cedd was first buried in the open air and his funeral was attended by some thirty monks from Bradwell who, sadly, also contracted the plague and died. Eventually, a little stone church was built at the Lastingham, in honour the Virgin Mary, and Cedd's body was interred there, to the right of the altar. The latter remains intact in the Norman crypt that was later built on the site, though St. Cedd's bones were removed around the same time to the cathedral founded by his brother, Chad, at Lichfield.

St Chad, bishop of Mercia (Lichfield) d. 672
Feast day, 2nd March

St Chad was the first bishop of Mercia and Lindsey at Lichfield. He was the brother of Cedd, whom he succeeded as Abbot of Lastingham, North Yorkshire, and a disciple of Aidan who sent him to Ireland as part of his education.

Chad was chosen by Oswi, king of Northumbria, as bishop of the Northumbrian see, while Wilfrid, who had been chosen for Deira by the sub-king Alcfrith, was absent in Gaul seeking consecration shortly after the Synod of Whitby (663/4). Faced with a dearth of bishops in England, Chad was unwise enough to be consecrated by the simoniacal Wine of Dorchester, assisted by two dubious British bishops. Wilfrid on his return to England in 666, found that Alcfrith was dead or exiled and retired to Ripon, leaving Chad in occupation. But in 669 Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, restored Wilfrid to York and deposed Chad (who retired to Lastingham), but soon reconsecrated him to be bishop of the Mercians. This unusual step was due both to the new opening for Christianity in Mercia and to the excellent character of Chad himself, whom both Eddius and Bede recognised as being unusually humble, devout, zealous and apostolic. Chad's episcopate of three years laid the foundations of the see of Lichfield according to the decrees of Theodore's council at Hertford, which established diocesan organisation. Wulfhere, king of Mercia, gave him fifty hides of land for a monastery at Barow (Lincolnshire); he also established a monastery close to Lichfield Cathedral.

Chad died on March 2nd 672 and was buried in the Church of St Mary. At once, according to Bede, he was venerated as a saint and his relics were translated to the Cathedral Church of St Peter. Cures were claimed in both churches. Bede described his first shrine as 'a wooden coffin in the shape of a little house with an aperture in the side through which the devout can...take out some of the dust, which they put into water and give to sick cattle or men to drink, upon which they are presently eased of their infirmity and restored to health'.

His relics were translated in 1148 and moved to the Lady Chapel in 1296. An even more splendid shrine was built by Robert Stretton, bishop of Lichfield (1360-85) of marble substructure with feretory adorned with gold and precious stones. Rowland Lee, bishop of Lichfield (1534-43), pleaded with Henry VIII to spare the shrine: this was done, but only for a time. At some unknown date the head and some other bones had been separated from the main shrine. Some of these, it was claimed, were preserved by recusants, and four large bones, believed to be Chad's are in the Roman Catholic cathedral of Birmingham. A fine Mercian illuminated Gospel Book of the 8th century called the Gospels of St Chad was probably associated with his shrine, as the Lindisfarne Gospels were associated with the shrine of St Cuthbert; it is now in Lichfield Cathedral Library. The 11th century shrine list mentions the relics of Cedd and Hedda resting at Lichfield with Chad. Thirty-three ancient churches and several wells were dedicated to St Chad, mainly in the Midlands. There are also several modern dedications, one of which is at Hutton le Hole, adjacent parish to Lastingham in North Yorkshire.

Local Saint

I live in Scarborough but family holidays were always in Bridlington.

St John of Bridlington

It is truly disappointing that the town of Bridlington has, but for a few exceptions, nothing to celebrate a man who was destined to become a saint. The man, of course, was John, from the family of Twenge. And the saint? St John of Bridlington, the last English saint before the Reformation.

The exceptions? A stained glass window in the Priory Church and - oddly, because John of Bridlington abstained from alcohol - a public house in the town.The fact that the largest church in this East Yorkshire town, the Parish Church of St Mary, known locally as the Priory, was once part of a huge Augustinian monastery seems largely ignored by the majority of the town's residents. Perhaps it is because the current population is made up, in a great part, by South and West Yorkshire people coming to live out their retirement "by the seaside.

"The Priory is all that remains of a once magnificent group of buildings that were the Augustian monastery founded in 1136 by Walter de Gant. St John of Bridlington was born in 1320 in the small Yorkshire Wolds village of Thwing, about nine miles inland from Bridlington. He was schooled in the village from the age of five and he took a vow of chastity when he was 12 years old.His education was continued at Oxford from about 1336 to 1339, and in 1340 he was ready to become a monk in Bridlington Priory. He carried out his duties with humility and diligence, and was in turn novice master, almsgiver, preacher and sub-prior. He became Canon of the Priory in 1346 and was eventually elected Prior in 1356. John refused this honour because of his humility and it was only when he was re-elected, probably in 1361, that he took on the task of Prior in January 1362.

The religious community flourished under his leadership, which was marked by his piety and also his administrative expertise. He served as Prior for 17 years before his death on October 10, 1379, and he was canonised by Pope Boniface IX in 1401.

During his lifetime he enjoyed a great reputation for holiness and miraculous powers. Probably the best known of these miracles has a special significance for Bridlington as St John was said to have saved five seamen from drowning during a terrible storm. The men, from Hartlepool, had called upon God in the name of St John when their vessel was in danger of sinking. He appeared to them and brought them back to the safety of the shore. The men left their vessel at the harbour and walked to the Monastery where they thanked John in person for saving their lives.

On another occasion, during the time he was Cellarer, John was concerned about the poverty of the people in the cottages surrounding the monastery. He took to taking loaves of bread through the gate and handing them secretly to the poor. Some people felt that John should not be handing out bread so freely and wished to entrap him. On one of his missions, John was stopped by these people. But he replied that he was taking stones to mend the road outside the gate. When he opened his cloak, his accusers took the bread he carried, but found that the loaves had changed to stones.

A nobleman once dined with John, who abstained from alcohol, but the guest wished to taste the Prior's wine. John did not want others to know of his abstinence, but, after blessing the liquid in the silver cup, allowed the visitor to taste the drink. John was complimented on the quality of his wine, although John's cup had contained only pure water.

On another occasion, a thatched roof caught fire in a cottage outside the monastery. John carried a ladder and placed it against the wall so that a widow could escape the flames. Everyone gave thanks that John had saved the woman. When the ladder came to be moved again, it needed three men to carry it away.

It is also recorded that St John was struck by a large falling stone but suffered no ill effects, and that such was his fervour at prayer steam rose from his head. He is also credited with saving sight, mending broken limbs, restoring speech, curing the plague, and healing fever. Many of these miracles were recorded during John's lifetime.

After his death of natural causes in 1379, a mere 22 years passed before he was elevated to sainthood on September 24, 1401. His relics were translated on March 11, 1404.Works of reference dealing with St John include St John of Bridlington, published in 1924. This volume was No. 2 of the Journal of the Bridlington Augustinian Society and written by J. S. Purvis, M.A. It was then priced 1s. 6d. (seven and a half pence). Its 50 pages include photographs of stained glass windows in churches around the country: Thwing in East Yorkshire, Morley near Derby, Warwick, Ludlow (Shropshire) and Hempstead-by-Eccles (Norfolk).

The Harbour Heritage Museum has copies of Mike Wilson's booklets on Bridlington's history for sale at £2.50.

Mike Wilson

The Humber Bridge

My wife's bed in the Royal Infirmary at Hull was on the 11th of the 13 floors with wonderful views of the Humber estuary and bridge.

The Humber Bridge spans the river Humber uniting the historic counties of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.

The Bridge is one of the world's longest span suspension bridges, a masterpiece of engineering which took 9 years to build. It was officially opened by HM The Queen on 17th July 1981.

On the North Bank are the historic towns of Hull, Beverley and York and also the East Coast resorts of Withernsea, Hornsea, Bridlington, Scarborough, and Whitby.

On the South Bank are the historic towns of Barton Upon Humber, Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Brigg, Scunthorpe and Lincoln.

The Bridge can be crossed on foot via the bridge walkways as well as by driving across.

The Humber Bridge Country Park is an area of 50 acres with woodlands, meadows, and trails. There are refreshment and information facilities. Before 196o the area was worked as a chalk quarry. A play area is located on the foreshore.

City of Hull

We came home from Hull yesterday after wife's successful operation in the Royal Infirmary.

I was able to stay nearby in the historic Royal Hotel where Queen Victoria stayed and addressed the crowds from suite balcony at the front of the hotel facing Paragon Square.

During three free mornings I have been able to explore the main central area of the city and endorse the content of this letter from yesterday's Telegraph:

SIR - Reading that Hull is apparently the least cultured city in Britain(report, August 25), I can only say that surely there must be some mistake.

It is a city renowned for its recently refurbished museums' quarter, including the Wilberforce House Museum of Slavery, the Hull and East Riding Museum with arguably the best collection of Roman mosaics, and Streetlife, an excellent transport museum. The Deep is a highly successful millennium exhibition and research centre. The Maritime Museum has impressive whaling industry exhibits, and there is a hands on museum in the old Tudor Grammar School. So clearly a cultural delights awaits the visitor.

The City Hall provides excellent classical concerts by orchestras from all over Europe, and there is the traditional New Theatre and the very popular Hull Truck Theatre.

I encourage readers to come to this cultural desert and find out more for themselves.

David Brunt, Beverley, East Yorkshire.

I would want to add the Ferens Art Gallery with its first class permanent and temporary exhibitions;
libraries, poetry groups, film societies;
churches, historic and architectural wonders.
Add to these the open spaces, shops, docks, marina, seascape and much, much more and you have a proud city with plenty to delight and surprise residents and visitors alike.

Yorkshire Day

More than 25 years of Yorkshire Day

Following the government's re-organisation of England's county boundaries during 1974, a number of county groups were set up by concerned people to lobby for the return of their traditional heritage. One of these groups was the Yorkshire Ridings Society.

A meeting of their members in the East Riding village of Market Weighton led to the idea of Yorkshire Day. This was to be a celebration of all things Yorkshire and was designed to make people more aware of our county's proud history and heritage. The date chosen for Yorkshire Day was August 1st and the first one took place in 1975.

August 1st held a special place in Yorkshire's history for, on this day in 1759, soldiers from Yorkshire regiments who had fought in the battle of Minden, in Germany, picked white roses from bushes near to the battlefields has a tribute to their fallen comrades.

Since the few events which took place in 1975, Yorkshire Day has grown in popularity and now almost every town and village in the county organises an event of some kind, and many businesses have also become involved.

Remember, wearing Yorkshire's white rose on August 1st shows you care about the traditional culture and heritage of our county.

The Yorkshire Declaration of Integrity

"I, (your name), being a resident of the [West/North/East] Riding of Yorkshire [or City of York] declare;
that Yorkshire is three Ridings and the City of York, with these Boundaries of 1124 years standing;
that the address of all places in these Ridings is Yorkshire;
that all persons born therein or resident therein and loyal to the Ridings are Yorkshire-men and women;
that any person or corporate body which deliberately ignores or denies the aforementioned shall forfeit all claim to Yorkshire status.
These declarations made this Yorkshire Day 2001.God Save the Queen!"

How you can make Yorkshire Day a success

display a Yorkshire Day poster in your shop or house window

help sell the white silk roses - all proceeds go to local Multiple Sclerosis charities

attend a reading of the Yorkshire Declaration of Integrity in your area.

What is art for?

I am no artist but I am constantly enriched by the work of artists , not least contemporary artists.

David Hockney is a favourite, especially as he is a Yorkshireman. I know his home and his family. His work is often related to my times and places.

In a speech yesterday he bemoaned the decline of art in his home country and was critical of the present generation of shock-art painters such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

I think Hirst is posing important philosophical questions through his art and I welcome that.

Hockney is particularly critical of Emin. "Her paintings are OK, but you don't remember them too well". "You always see photos of Tracey in the papers, not of her paintings. I'd rather have photos of my pictures in the papers, not me".

Reviewing the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale art critic, Richard Dorment, is brutal . "Emin lets Britain down; it's high time she grew up. In the 22 years I've been reviewing this Biennale, I've never seen such thin material at the British pavilion" "Emin returns again and again to the subject of her own naked body with works suggesting a sense of profound psychic damage" "She has only one subject- Tracey's fragility, Tracey's pain, Tracey's sense of betrayal" "The note of adolescent self pity she struck at the beginning of her career hasn't altered by one iota" "It's all about poor little Tracey, and what a hard time she's had in life" "She still wants us all to feel sorry for her as she does for herself" "alongside artists of real stature it is obvious how slight her talent really is".

I think the purpose of her art may well be to speak to the human vulnerability of the many out of her own vulnerability. To let others know that they are not alone in their pain is positive.