This edited article about spa towns originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 256 published on 10 December 1966.

General view of Spa by W S Bagdatopulos

“One [o'clock] in the afternoon. Called for my flowered handkerchief. Worked half a violet in it. Eyes ached and head out of order. Threw by my work . . .” (Mr. Addison – The Spectator no. 323.)

Many such as these would come to ‘drink the waters’ at a spa in order to while away part of the year in a congenial social atmosphere under the pretext of the pursuit of health.

Spas like Bath were so popular at this time that the merits of their medicinal waters were remembered in the summer months when the rigours of London society began to pall. “The city of Bath” remarked Oliver Goldsmith, “by such assiduity, soon became the theatre of summer amusements for all people of fashion . . . Upon a stranger’s arrival at Bath, he is welcomed by a peal of the Abbey bells, and in the next place, by the voice and music of the city waits. For these civilities, the ringers have generally a present made to them of half-a-guinea, and the waits of half-a-crown, or more, in proportion to the person’s fortune, generosity, or ostentation.”

Society in Bath was organised by Beau Nash – “a man,” said Oliver Goldsmith, “who for 50 years presided over the pleasures of a polite kingdom” – and Bath was organised for Society. Its brilliance and gaiety revolved around the healthful springs.

Few of the wilting social ‘flowers’ who fortified themselves for the giddy round of frivolity with mineral water, can have known to whom they owed the fortunate and fashionable practice.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Banffshire originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 138 published on 5 September1964.

General view, Banff, c. 1890

In the gathering darkness a string of ponies made their way southwards from the rugged and almost inaccessible glens of Glenlivet in Banffshire.

One of the men leading the ponies cursed as he stumbled over a dry twig. The crack split the silent air and the man cursed again. This small convoy making its way through the Scottish highlands was strictly illegal. Strapped to the backs of the ponies were casks filled with whisky brewed on illicit stills.

Suddenly the night air was filled with running feet and shouting. The preventive men – the agents of the government in enforcing the law – had ambushed the smugglers. A brief struggle – and then it was over. One or two of the smugglers managed to escape, the rest were captured, their whisky confiscated.

The late eighteenth century saw many such encounters and by 1823 it was estimated that in the area around Glenlivet there were over 200 illegal stills operating. At one time, of course, every man in this part of Scotland had made his own whisky, but private stills were banned in the middle of the eighteenth century.

Today, Banffshire is still a centre of whisky-making, all of it now, of course, on a legal basis. What has made it so? The three necessary ingredients for distilling have always been present in abundance: barley, peat and water.

Yet any Scotsman will tell you that there is more to it than that. For have not the Americans, in desperate attempts to produce the same Scotch whisky in their own country, taken highland water, peat and barley across the Atlantic to brew whisky in the States; and have they not failed to reproduce that particular flavour that makes it renowned throughout the world?

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Kincardineshire originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 136 published on 22 August 1964.

Dunnottar Castle by Henry Sutton Palmer

Dr. Barbara Moore and the Aldermaston marchers pale to comparative insignificance beside the pride of Kincardineshire, the one and only Captain Robert Barclay from Ury.

What a walker he was! In tight-fitting suit, top hat and cravat his exploits at the turn of the nineteenth century are nothing short of remarkable.

In 1809 he covered 1,000 miles in as many hours around a measured track at Newmarket. This was probably his finest and most footsore hour, although in 1801 he covered 110 miles in 19 hours 20 minutes around a muddy park and a year later managed sixty-four miles in ten hours.

Captain Barclay could lift huge weights as well as walk. When he was twenty it is said he raised an eighteen-stone man standing on his right hand from the floor to a table.

In Stonehaven, Kincardineshire’s county town, many streets are named after members of his family, but they do not see these days such feats of endurance. Violent physical activity in Kincardineshire is now confined mainly to Hogmanay, the celebrations of the New Year.

Stonehaven has a distillery, though its chief industry is fishing. In the old days every Highland laird had his own simple still but in 1814 stills of less than 500 gallon capacity were prohibited. Now the distillation of whisky – no “e” for the Scots’ brand – is of course a very carefully regulated and controlled industry.

Kincardine itself is a rugged, beautiful county, with the Grampians arching their lofty backs across it, and the sea leaping into its coves and caves along a dourly magnificent coastline.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Clackmannanshire originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 134 published on 8 August 1964.

Castle Campbell is perched on a pinnacle at the head of Dollar Glen

What a story-book county is Clackmannanshire, the smallest shire in Scotland and filled to the very brim with tradition and legend. Why, there is even a tale told about how the county came by its name.

One day King Robert the Bruce was out riding and stopped for a while to rest upon a large blue stone.

He continued his journey and had gone a little way when he found he was missing one of his gloves and ordered one of his men, Sir James Douglas “to the ‘clack’ (stone) to fetch my ‘mannan’ ” (Gaelic for glove).

The soldier replied: “Sire, if ye’ll just look about ye here I’ll come back wi’ it directly.”

So, it is said, did the county get its name and also its motto “Look About Ye.” An ingenious story – but one lacking in authenticity for the name is certainly older than the fourteenth century in which this incident is said to have taken place.

Although Scotland’s smallest shire, Clackmannanshire is also one of the wealthiest, having a wide variety of industries.

Coal-mining is a major source of Clackmannan’s wealth, and until the early eighteenth century silver was also mined on the Erskine estate near Alva. It was an extremely rich lode when the precious metal was first mined but eventually the amount of silver found became less and less until the owner, Sir John Erskine, lost nearly all of the £50,000 fortune he had acquired from it through sinking another useless mine in the hope of finding more silver.

In those days mines were a favourite place for consigning criminals serving life sentences, and one such unfortunate was sent to work for Erskine, complete with a metal collar round his neck on which was inscribed his name, his crime, and the name of his owner.

It was a grim fate to be condemned to perpetual slavery.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Berwickshire originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 124 published on 30 May 1964.

Dryburgh Abbey where Sir Walter Scott and Earl Haig are buried, by A F Lydon

The wind that blew damp and cold off the North Sea howled and swirled round the stone battlements of Dunbar Castle on the coast of East Lothian. The gate sentry, who had propped his spear against a wall and was now desperately trying to keep warm in the shelter of the postern gate, suddenly saw a stranger, his cloak folded close about him, hurrying towards the castle.

The soldier seized his spear hastily, and came to attention. The stranger spoke to him in a low voice, and was escorted inside.

In the castle courtyard a manservant hurried forward to relieve the visitor of his cloak. “Ye may tell your earl that Thomas Rhymour is here,” said the stranger as he unbuckled his short sword.

In the Great Hall, Patrick, Earl of Dunbar, rose to greet his guest.

“You are welcome, Thomas of Erceldoune,” said the nobleman as the man they called Thomas the Rhymer, the poet, the prophet from Berwickshire, moved to warm himself at the fire.

The conversation ebbed and flowed like the tide of the North Sea on the foreshore of Dunbar. Then the Earl, who could no longer contain his curiosity (and his disbelief) about Thomas’s prophecies, said with a sly smile, “Today is the eleventh day of March, in the year of Our Lord twelve hundred and eighty six. Tell me, Thomas from Berwickshire – what will tomorrow bring forth?”

“Alas for future days!” replied True Thomas. “Alas for the day of calamity and woe! Before the hour of twelve has struck will be heard such a violent wind in Scotland as will not be seen for many a year to come!”

Ask for a prophecy, ask for a sign, and all you get is a treatise on the weather, thought the Earl glumly.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Cambridgeshire originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 123 published on 23 May 1964.

A picture history of Cambridge by C L Doughty

What connection can there be between a Royal princess called Etheldreda, who lived thirteen hundred years ago, and an atomic power station?

Perhaps there is no connection; but it is possible that if Etheldreda had not defied her husband, Egfrid of Northumbria, taken refuge on the Isle of Ely, in northern Cambridgeshire, and there founded a monastery, the world as we know it would not exist.

It was monks from Ely who established a nucleus of learning in the town of Cambridge, and in 1284 it was the Bishop of Ely, Hugh de Balsham, who founded Peterhouse, the first college of Cambridge University.

It was in Cambridge, in first floor chambers north of the great gate of Trinity College, that Sir Isaac Newton formulated his Laws of Motion, interpreted gravity, revolutionized scientific thought and paved the way for the modern world.

It was in Cambridge, in the Cavendish laboratories, that in 1918 a scientist from New Zealand, Lord Rutherford, the atom scientist, became the first man to transmute one element, nitrogen, into another, hydrogen.

Conceivably Rutherford would still have ushered in the atomic age, Newton still have made his great deductions, if Cambridge University had never existed. Equally it is possible that both would have missed the mental stimulation that Cambridge provides.

The finest view in south Cambridgeshire is gained from the GogMagog hills. Although they rise no more than 300 feet they are veritable mountains in this flat land, and it is an interesting fact that there is nothing higher, due east of them, until the great European plain merges with Asia.

From their summits can be seen the colleges of Cambridge, the spires of many village churches telling of a deeply religious, Puritan past, and to the north on a clear day the massive towers of Ely Cathedral. There is also to be seen an impressive network of natural and man-made waterways, reminders that much of Cambridgeshire once was flooded. All but the southern part of the county still is a very few feet above sea level.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Westmorland originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 122 published on 16 May 1964.

Helm Cragg in Westmorland was immortalised by William Wordsworth in The Prelude

The year was 1485. The terrible Wars of the Roses had ended with the victory at the battle of Bosworth of Henry of the Red Rose, Henry Tudor. In the House of Lords in London, the great men of England were assembled in their finery when into the Chamber trudged a man in ragged clothes whose hands were scarred with toil.

Henry Clifford, of the Great House of Clifford, who could neither read nor write, had come to claim the Barony of Westmorland that was his birthright.

His father John Clifford had been killed by the Yorkists in 1461, and soldiers had been sent to Westmorland to put Clifford’s heirs to the sword. But Henry, then a boy of seven, was forewarned, hurried away, and for 24 years lived with shepherds in the wild northern hills.

Restored at last to his father’s lands, and the castles which today are among the gaunt ruins of Westmorland, Henry Clifford learned to read at the age of thirty, studied astronomy, acquired courtly graces and served the king well. He lived to be seventy, and four centuries later his story inspired the pen of another great inhabitant of Westmorland, William Wordsworth.

In his poem “Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle” Wordsworth celebrated the homecoming of Clifford the Shepherd Baron and included these words:

“In him the savage virtue of the Race,
Revenge, and all ferocious thoughts were dead;
Nor did he change; but kept in lofty place
The wisdom which adversity had bred.”

Henry Clifford may have stayed wise, but certainly he did not lose all ferocious thoughts, for he fought at the Battle of Flodden. He came, after all, from a family of soldiers, and Westmorland in his day was not the home of gentle Lakeland poets but of great lords and dour peasants ever ready to defend themselves.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Kent originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 121 published on 9 May 1964.

Augustine ‘invading’ the kingdom of Kent and preaching before King Ethelbert and his Queen, Bertha, by Pat Nicolle

For two thousand years Kent has been the gateway to England. Through this gateway came Julius Caesar and his all-conquering Roman Legions, to bring order and civilization to the wild country of the ancient Britons. A few centuries later came St. Augustine, who brought Christianity.

It was in Kent, near the town of Aylesford, that English history can be said to have begun. Here, in A.D. 449, Hengist and Horsa met, fought and conquered the Celts and laid the foundation of English power throughout the land. Aylesford was in fact the first battlefield of the English race. From this epic confrontation on the soil of Kent stems the story of modern England.

Until A.D. 596, the country was largely pagan. Then came St. Augustine, accompanied by a group of missionary monks who landed at Ebbsfleet and set about the task of converting England to Christianity.

Although he was given ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the whole of England, St. Augustine’s powers only held sway in the county of Kent. He founded the See of Canterbury and before he died he had Christianized most of the people in this corner of England.

As his legacy, he left the Archbishopric of Canterbury which, in time, came to be acknowledged as the shrine and cradle of the Anglican Church. Today, Canterbury is the spiritual centre of the Church of England and of the Anglican Communion, stretching across the English-speaking world.

Together with the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox faiths it forms part of the three main branches of conformist Christianity. Such is Kent’s far from modest contribution to Christian development and growth over the centuries.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Carmarthenshire originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 120 published on 2 May 1964.

The siege of Carmarthen Castle in 1145, when a large force of Normans, English and Flemings attempted to retake the castle from Rhys, son of Grufydd, by John Harris Valda

The moon came suddenly from behind a cloud to light a deserted stretch of winding road. A poacher, putting his ferret to a rabbit hole, shivered slightly in the night air, and kept a wary eye on the toll-gate keeper’s house a field away. The lights were out, Evans the Gate should be asleep, but you could never be too careful. . . .

Then, in the distance, came the click of a pebble on the road – and the chinking sound of a horse with a loose shoe. The poacher vanished into the shadows, and watched.

Up the road to the toll-gate came a strange procession. At its head a huge carthorse bore a grotesque figure in a bonnet, bundled with petticoats, and behind came a gang of men, dressed in scraps of women’s clothing, carrying axes, billhooks and bales of straw.

The poacher’s mouth dropped open in surprise as the “woman” on the carthorse came to the toll-gate, and demanded in a deep voice, “What is this that bars my way?”

“It is a gate across the public road, Mother Rebecca!” came the reply.

“We cannot have such barriers across the roads of Carmarthenshire! Break it down, my daughters!”

As the axes cut into the wooden gate, the poacher saw the figure of the toll-gate keeper appear. With a coat flung hastily over his nightshirt, he stood helpless as “Rebecca” and her “daughters” piled straw around his cottage – and set it alight.

Then the mob, shouting and jeering, passed by on the road, and the sound of their laughter died in the distance. The poacher left his ferret and his nets, and slipped quietly away in the other direction.

Such was a common scene on the Carmarthenshire roads in 1843. All over southern Wales the country people rose in rebellion against the system of paying tolls in order to use what they considered to be public rights of way.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Staffordshire originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 119 published on 25 April 1964.

A canal barge leaving Stafford with a cargo of earthenware and porcelain

Around the pit, a rough sand-covered arena, was gathered a villainous-looking mob, although here and there could be seen a “gentleman,” marked out by the superior quality of the clothes.

A dog-fight was about to begin. A line, or “scratch,” was drawn diagonally across the ring, and on either side of it the “setters” or dog handlers, whispered sweet words of brutality to their respective charges.

These were bull terriers, and so inseparable did they become from the county in which these fights were staged that they became known as Staffordshire bull-terriers.

The job of the setters was to encourage the dogs to attack each other. Bets were placed, the dogs were set loose upon each other, and fought until they tired.

Sometimes a dog killed another, sometimes the fight ended indecisively. This in itself did not matter. All that was required of it was to show willing and try.

Dog-fighting, along with bull-baiting and cock-fighting, all in the past popular in Staffordshire, is today illegal.

But even today the police are active against cock-fighting, which still secretly flourishes here and there at after-dark meetings held perhaps on lonely wastelands.

Cocking, as this so-called sport is known, is perhaps the most cruel of all these activities. Large metal spurs are fixed to the legs of the birds. In the days when it was still legal – in the nineteenth century – men sometimes grew so proud of their fighting birds that they would keep them on either side of their mantelpiece as a sort of adornment to the living-room.

Read the rest of this article »