Ripon MuseumsThe Yorkshire Law and Order Museums |
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Ripon MuseumsThe Yorkshire Law and Order Museums |
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For once "lavishly illustrated" really does sum up this book by broadcaster David Dimbleby. Its flysheet says "This is a journey through Britain and through a thousand years of our history to see how we built the country we live in ... This is the story of Britain through its buildings and the people who built them." Five chapters cover the range from Medieval to Modern Britain. Amongst the grandeur of Newcastle, Leeds and Manchester included in "The Victorians" is the humbler Ripon Union Workhouse. David Dimbleby writes " The Victorian workhouse seems to have been a place deliberately designed to force men back to work... The old workhouse in Ripon is a vivid reminder of this harsh regime....the building emphasises the grim conditions." Publication of the book coincides with a six-part BBC1 TV series based on it and broadcast in the summer of 2007.
How We Built Britain by David Dimbleby is published by Bloomsbury Publishing at £20.00 hardback. ISBN 978 0 747 58871 9. Further information can be found at www.bbc.co.uk/britain.
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At last. An irreverent and refreshingly different guide book to the more offbeat. It's amusingly well-written and covers a great variety of "real places" including our very own Law & Order Museums. We are in there along with a museum of gnomes, one of pencils and even the David Beckham Trail. The Workhouse, or rather the Tramp Museum as they want us to call it, gets the biggest mention of our three sites. The authors say this "does a fantastic job with what it has. Don't expect to be guided round by a robotic Tramp Of The Future and shown interactive computer displays on archaic street fashion." The guide notes that our museums are "unusual in that they reflect the entire Victorian judicial process" (actually we cover a bit more besides) and are run by locally-based volunteers. It's a great book. Go and buy it now.
Bollocks to Alton Towers: Uncommonly British Days Out by Robin Halstead, Jason Hazeley, Alex Morris and Joel Morris is published by Michael Joseph at £12.99 hardback, ISBN 0-718-14791-X.
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Times journalist and English Heritage Commissioner, Sir Simon Jenkins, has included both the Prison and Police Museum (aka the House of Correction) and the Workhouse Museum in this book which provides an illustrated selection of the finest houses in the country. He notes the House of Correction has its punishment crank where "screw adjustments made this labour harder or easier, giving rise to the term 'screw' for warder." A superb photograph of the baths at the Workhouse is aptly captioned 'Carbolic charity' and the complex is described as "not so much a mini-welfare state as a civic kibbutz". Jenkins does not limit himself to the great and famous houses and estates, though they are certainly included in full, but includes an eclectic mix from the very best towers, castles, halls, abbeys, cottages, private houses - even schools and prisons - in England, which are open to the public for at least some part of the year.
England's Thousand Best Houses by Simon Jenkins is published in hardcover edition by Allen Lane Publications at £30.00, ISBN 0713995963 (paperback by Penguin Books Ltd at £18.99 ISBN 0141006250).
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The Law and Order Museums are in the Top 21 Odd Museums in Britain. So says Benedict le Vay in Eccentric Britain the Bradt Guide to Britain's Follies and Foibles published in 2005.
The guide quotes our own Workhouse Museum Curator, Anthony Chadwick, as saying: " This place has a remarkable effect on people. About ninety percent of visitors to the Prison approve of everything they see and wish to go back to those times. Then they see the workhouse and their reaction is exactly the opposite."
Eccentric Britain the Bradt Guide to Britain's Follies and Foibles by Benedict le Vay is published by Bradt Travel Guides at £11.95, ISBN 1841621226.
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The biography of Barbara Taylor Bradford published in February 2005 reveals some interesting facts about her family. The biographer Piers Dudgeon sets out to show that her mother may well have been the illegitimate daughter of the future Second Marquis of Ripon. Following the latter's elevation to the peerage in 1910 on the death of the first marquis, Barbara's grandmother Edith found herself on hard times and, as was the fate of many with children born out of wedlock, was forced into Ripon Workhouse with her daughter Freda. Records show that she arrived at the gates in May 1910 and was there till the following year. Mr Dudgeon feels the stint must have had a profound effect on both Edith and Freda, then aged six. "The stigma of being in the workhouse was burned into a child's very soul." Perhaps this was partly responsible for Freda's determination that her daughter Barbara must succeed, as indeed she has, to be one of the world's most widely-read novelists.
The Woman of Substance: The Life and Works of Barabara Taylor Bradford by Piers Dudgeon is published by Harper Collins at £18.99, ISBN 0007165684. Further information can be found at www.barbarataylorbradford.com.
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The museums have a welcome mention in The Good Britain Guide
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The Courthouse Museum has featured as the location for the fictional Ashfordly Courthouse in Yorkshire Television's popular series Heartbeat.
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