The Countryman's Daughter

Teeny little money spinners

If a money spider lands on you then ‘gold will rain down from heaven’. They build horizontal webs, like these, which look like silky hammocks.

I am beginning to wonder if I should apologise for reintroducing spiders to this column, a subject with which some of you might be getting fed up, especially if you are phobic of them. I implore the phobics among you to think of this as my way of offering you complimentary aversion therapy, which embraces the theory that the more I expose you to your worst fear, the less of a fear it becomes. Is it working yet?

Today though, you may have noticed that I have avoided subjecting you to any alarming pictures and am going to talk about a much less scary arachnid. I was prompted to write about this thanks to reader Billy Goode who quoted a bit of folklore to me: “If you ever find a money spider you put it in your hair for good luck. I was taught that by my grandad and have been doing it for 30 years.”

Now, the idea of putting a spider in your hair might be every arachnophobe’s Room 101, but I would like to know if these really teeny tiny weeny things spark the same kind of fear in you as their larger counterparts. To be honest, even the prospect of becoming rich would not tempt me to put one in my hair, but the superstition connected to money spiders pops to the front of my mind whenever I see one: if one lands on you, then it will bring you good luck of the financial variety, so you have to treat them with respect and kindness. Do otherwise, then fiscal ruin will head your way.

Different parts of the country have different rituals associated with this spider, which is also known as the money spinner. Some of these contradict the advice to do it no harm, including placing it in your pocket, tossing it over your shoulder or, bizarrely, eating it! In Berkshire, you are advised that if one lands on you, you have to pick it up by the silky strand upon which it drifted in, twirl it round your head three times, then deposit it back upon your clothes in the same spot it first landed.

According to my folklore bible, Steve Roud’s Guide to Superstitions, the first written account of this kind of belief appears in the 16th century poet and diarist Thomas Nashe’s book, Terrors of the Night (1594), although it is likely to have been around for much longer than that. Nashe writes: “If a spinner creep upon him he shall have gold rain down from heaven.”

Money spiders are less than 5mm long and belong to the Linyphiidae family which makes up about 40% of our spider population with more than 270 species. It is the shiny black ones, Erigone, that are particularly associated with luck thanks to their way of getting about which is known as ‘ballooning.’ They launch a silky strand into the ether which catches on the breeze, hoisting them heavenwards from the ground. At certain times of year, there are thousands upon thousands of these tiny creatures ‘flying’ through the air as they move to new ground, landing in whichever destination the prevailing wind sees fit, often your hair.

You will be able to see evidence of money spinner dwellings in your garden, particularly on dewy autumnal mornings. Look out for dozens of little silky hammocks decorating the exterior of hedges and shrubs. These are made by spiders weaving horizontal layers of web, suspended above and below by silk guide ropes. Unsuspecting prey trip over these barely visible ropes like drunk people on a campsite, propelling them into the sticky hammock where they are at the mercy of the hungry predator. I must admit, I always feel a pang of pity whenever I see a creature caught in a web, for the more they struggle, the more trapped they become, and as such their fate is inevitable. It’s like an entomological horror film.

It’s quite amazing to think that people like Billy and me are perpetuating a superstition that has been around for at least 500 years, even though in all the time I have been doing it, the most I have ever won on the lottery is £80. I suppose, though, by 16th century standards that is the equivalent of winning the jackpot.

I’d love to hear from you about your stories, memories, opinions and ideas for columns. Use the ‘Contact’ button on the top right of this page to get in touch.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 4th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 2nd Oct 2024.

An air of mystery

What we believe is an ancient gatepost covered in moss and lichen spotted on the Cleveland Way by Paul Martin. But what is purpose of the hole at the top?

A ‘daisy-chain’ of padlocks at a BT site. Each contractor will have their own lock and key so they can gain access at any time.

I’ve had a lovely message from a reader following my recent column about love locks. If you remember I wrote about the padlocks that are attached to the metal walkway over the River Wharfe in Otley. The idea is that a courting couple declare their everlasting love by fixing a padlock on to the bridge and throwing the key into the waters below ensuring the lock can never be undone. The practice has become widespread all over the world, most famously on the Milvian Bridge in Rome, the Pont Des Arts in Paris, and on Mount Huangshan in China.There are a number of tales purporting to be the origin of the practice, but it is not known if any any of them are actually true.

Betty McDonald got in touch with me about a September 2013 trip she made with her late husband to the War Museum in Arnhem in the Netherlands, and to the German dams which were the target of the famous Dambusters Raid in May 1943. She wrote: “We did a tour of two of the bridges which where breached, Eder Dam and the Mohne Dam…It was a very proud moment to actually walk and stand on the dam which helped us to win the war, although sad too as many villages were swept away, destroying a German bomb-making factory.”

She added: “It was our very first sight of the padlocks of love on the Mohne Dam…We wish we had known about the love locks as we both knew the Mohne dam would be on our tour, and maybe one of our last tours. We stayed looking at the many locks of love and when we left I blew a kiss to the locks, with a lovely memory of being there together with my husband knowing our love was truly locked.”

It makes me wonder how many of you reading this have secured a love lock to a bridge, and was your love sealed forever?

On a slight tangent, I saw a Facebook post by Paul Martin who was walking the Cleveland Way. He included some pictures of what he had seen en route, and one was a secure gate outside a BT property which had three padlocks attached to it. He explained: “Each contractor who has access to the BT site will have their own padlock in the ‘daisy chain’ meaning any of them can get access at any time. It is not one of those lovers’ things on bridges.”

What a good idea, that each contractor has their own lock and key. It makes me think of when we get our oil tank filled up. We have one of those newer bunded ones where the outlet for filling it is under a manhole on top and you always need a key to access it. More often the not the delivery driver does not carry one, so we have to either make sure we are at home, or leave the key in a safe place. The keys are universal, a bit like those that open electric meter cupboards, so wouldn’t it make more sense if the drivers simply carried their own?

Paul included another picture from his walk of what looked like an ancient gatepost with a hole in the top. He wondered what it was for, and we surmised that the hole could be for tethering horses, or that another part of the gate mechanism would have once been attached to it. I’ve included a picture so you can see for yourself. Let me know what you think was the purpose of the hole.

The markings on the right-hand side of the post particularly caught my eye. They reminded me of those made by moorland stonemasons, often herringbone in style, which I have written about before in relation to traditional house building. This time they are a series of a vertical strikes in the stone, which look deliberate, but only decorate one half of the post. Was this the signature of a particular mason?

The post is covered in vivid green moss and lichen, as is another waymarker that lies high on the Cleveland Way that Paul photographed. He explains that this occurs when the air is particularly clean and free of pollution.

Let’s hope our precious North Yorkshire countryside air will remain this way for many centuries to come.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 27th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 25th Sept 2024.

No Leg to Stand On

Daddy longlegs’ webs are rather scruffy compared to their scarier home-dwelling counterparts. But these harmless creatures can help keep the scarier spiders at bay

I hope you weren’t too disturbed by my column about house spiders last week. It’s funny how seeing just a picture of an eight-legged arachnid produces a physical shudder in many of us, so apologies for doing it again this week.

Our reactions go back to our evolutionary ‘fight or flight’ response. When we are under threat, our brain floods our body with the stress hormone adrenaline signalling to our muscles prepare to either run away or stay and fight. It’s estimated that around 4% of us fear spiders and as a phobia it comes second only to snakes. If we are truly phobic it means that we are fearful to the point of irrationality, and the terror we experience far outweighs the actual danger posed by the object of the fear.

If you are worried about house spiders then I suggest you rein in your instinct to clean because they have a natural predator that loves nothing more than setting up home in the corner of your living room. The trouble is though (especially for arachnophobes), this helpful predator is yet another spider. In its defence it’s much less scary and, unlike the house spider, does not whizz alarmingly across your floor at the rate of half a metre a second.

This creature is a friend to all housework-shy humans, a regular resident of neglected corners, cupboards and attics and a weird-shaped spindly thing, the lazy old daddy longlegs. Compared to the clean and ordered webs built by swotty old regular spiders, the slovenly daddy longlegs’ home is a shambles and described as ‘untidy’ and ‘without great design’ by the Natural History Museum. I can relate to that, because it reminds me of my side of my dishevelled university room compared to that of my unnaturally tidy roommate.

The light brown DLL (how I will refer to the daddy longlegs from now on because it is too much effort to type it out fully) is characterised by its long dark two-part body of abdomen and paler thorax (head end) to which are attached its eight ridiculously long skinny legs. It originated in the Sub-Tropics and after hitching a lift on an England-bound boat, was first documented in the south of the UK in 1864. Once it worked out that to survive our much chillier climate it had to stay indoors, it dared to venture up north and is now common all over the country.

It relies on its web to do the heavy lifting where dinner is concerned, but if that fails, it will get off its idle backside to hunt food, which includes – arachnophobes take note – other spiders. In the entomological version of analysing the rubbish left outside MacDonalds, someone in Hampshire decided to count all the food waste discarded by the slothful DLL in the webs found in his garden shed. He discovered that of the 102 bits of leftover critter, 63 belonged to house spiders, six were DLLs, and the rest were mainly other spiders. How the DLL loves a spider-flavoured meal, even if it is their own sister.

There are a couple of other minibeasts that we also refer to as ‘daddy longlegs’, but they are distinctly different. You will likely have seen the harvestman in your garden, which from a distance looks very much like our DLL but is not actually a spider. Found outside among vegetation rather than indoors in webs, it has a teeny tiny bulbous single body and six long wispy legs. The other is the crane fly, that lanky-legged winged thing that looks like a giant mosquito and has a habit of bobbing into your room late at night to flap annoyingly round your lampshade. It may be the most stupid of creatures but its (literal) saving grace is that if it gets trapped by its dangly legs, they simply pop off and it bobs away again, unperturbed by the fact it is a leg or two lighter.

In conclusion, if you hate house spiders but can cope with the odd messy web of the slothful DLL, then perhaps you should welcome it into your home as your ally rather than your enemy.

But my educational takeaway from this column is that I now have a valid excuse to do even less dusting than I do already.

I’d love to hear from you about your stories, memories, opinions and ideas for columns. Use the ‘Contact’ button on the top right of this page to get in touch.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 20th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 18th Sept 2024.

Along came two spiders

A massive house spider on my son Jasper’s hand. He’s not squeamish at all

The herringbone pattern has featured in a few of my columns of late, most notably in relation to patterns on stones used in Yorkshire moorland cottages, and as a decoration used by clock and watchmakers. But it also features somewhere I was definitely not expecting, and I challenge you to guess where. The answer lies further down this column.

Twice in the past week I have had to call on the services of my son Jasper to rescue me from being attacked by that most venomous and deadly of creatures, the house spider. OK, they are not venomous (well, not to us) and they are not deadly (again, not to us) but I don’t know if it is a result of global warming or what, but I am convinced they are getting bigger. Every year I come across them, they seem to be more monstrous than the year before.

I know by the way they scurry across the floor that they are more scared of me than I am of them. I am after all a gazillion times bigger, and I am not too worried if they remain at a respectable distance. I just don’t like the idea of them being ON me.

Jasper has no such qualms, which is why I summon him whenever I’m confronted by the not so wee beasties. Earlier this week, one was waiting at the top of the sitting room curtains, poised to pounce on me when I walked past, and the next night, another was skulking around my bedroom floor, no doubt waiting for me to get into bed so it could creep over my face while I was asleep.

Jasper’s way of dealing with them makes me shudder. He simply catches them, usually in his naked hand, then lets them wander around his arm a bit and has a good look at them while I panic in the corner. Finally he deposits them outside. It is utterly bonkers, isn’t it? Not the letting them go, but the letting them scuttle around his arm. The curtain one was quite high up, so he used his mobile phone as an aid, and the spider crawled on top of it. He then thought it was hilarious to wave it at me before putting it outside. For the record, we never kill spiders in our house because, as everyone knows, that will make it rain (But judging by our summers, there must be plenty of people who do!).

Anyway, back to herringbone – any ideas yet?

According to the Natural History Museum, a houses spider is: ‘A large spider with a brown cephalothorax (the fused head and thorax) and a tan-coloured abdomen that often has a characteristic ‘herringbone’ pattern. Six species of this group are commonly found in homes, and you may often find them in the bath or dashing across the living room floor.’ Although I did know what a house spider looked like, I had not heard a herringbone pattern mentioned before, and thus it provides a comforting (albeit slightly tenuous) link to my previous columns.

As the seasonal temperature cools, male house spiders leave their webs to look for mates, wandering into our homes through open windows, under doors, and down chimneys, making we unsuspecting inhabitants flip out when they pop out.

If you are not too squeamish to get close to one, you will be able to see its herringbone pattern quite clearly (or maybe you’d prefer to just look a picture up on the internet). Several other species seem to enjoy cohabiting with humans, including the daddy long legs, the lace web, the zebra jumping spider, the scary-sounding false widow spider, and the brilliantly named missing sector orb web spider. False widows look like their deadlier namesakes but are harmless (although they can give a small bite). The missing sector orb web spider is so called because of the way it weaves its web. From a distance, it looks like many traditional spiral webs that you find in your garden (called the ‘orb’ style in the trade), but with a couple of sections missing. When building its web, this spider will turn back every time it gets to that sector, so it never fills it in.

So next time you find a web with a big gap, you’ll know why!

I’d love to hear from you about your stories, memories, opinions and ideas for columns. Use the ‘Contact’ button on the top right of this page to get in touch.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 13th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 11th Sept 2024.

Locked in love

Love locks on the bridge over the River Wharfe in Otley

Recently, I enjoyed a tranquil walk with my son and his girlfriend followed by lunch at a riverside restaurant in the lovely town of Otley. Afterwards, I went back to my car across the bridge spanning the Wharfe that links the north and south sides of the town.

A bridge has existed at this point on the river since around 1228 when it is said the then Archbishop of York, Walter de Gray, who also had the title Lord of the Manor of Otley, commissioned a crossing to enable him to get back to York more easily when travelling from the west. The bridge has had a couple of substantial rebuilds over the centuries, and in 1957, a pedestrian walkway was added to the eastern side.

It was this walkway that I was crossing when I noticed that there were dozens of padlocks attached to the metal railings facing the river. It made me wonder why people do this, and how long the tradition has been going on, if it is indeed classed as a tradition.

The idea is that a courting couple meet on the bridge and declare their everlasting love by fixing a padlock on to the bridge and throwing the key into the waters below ensuring the lock can never be undone.

The origins of love locks are not clear, and and it is up to you to decide which story you believe. One tale comes from China and involves the daughter of a wealthy man who falls in love with a poor boy. Her father forbids the relationship and forces her to become engaged to another rich man. On her wedding day, she runs away with her peasant lover and the couple flee to Mount Huangshan, or Yellow Mountain, and together leap from its heights to their deaths. And now, modern lovers mark the spot by securing padlocks to the railings there.

Another commonly repeated tale is of two Serbian lovers called Relja and Nada who used to meet each other on a bridge in their home town of Vrnjacka Banja. At the outbreak of World War I, Ralja was sent to defend his country, and was killed. From then on, women from the town bought padlocks and attached them to the bridge in the hope that their beloveds would return safely and their love would not be broken in the same way. A variation on that tale is slightly less romantic, in which Relja is posted to Greece where he falls in love with another woman and never comes back. Perhaps then the women of Vrnjacka Banja, fearing the same fate might befall them while their husbands and boyfriends were away for the war, placed the padlocks on the bridge as a superstitious gesture to secure their love’s return.

It is likely that these stories are just that, stories, and have little basis in reality. What we do know, though, is that the ‘tradition’ was popularised relatively recently by a 2006 Italian teen novel by Federico Moccia called ‘I Want You’ in which a couple fix a lock to a lamppost on the Milvian Bridge in Rome and toss the key into the River Tiber to signify their unbreakable love. The best-selling novel was turned into a film starring a popular Italian heartthrob, and soon swarms of infatuated teens began turning up to do the same thing. The bridge, which was built in 207BC and survived military invasions and centuries of heavy traffic, was no match for passionate padlock-wielding youngsters. The weight of the extra metal caused the lamppost to topple and by 2012, the padlocks had been permanently removed. Locals became so fed up with the damage being caused to the historic monument that police were deployed to guard it.

A similar fate befell the Pont des Arts in Paris, which from 2008 became a hotspot for love-struck couples after the film came out in France. By 2015, around one million locks had been placed onto the bridge adding an extra 45 tonnes of weight causing part of it to collapse. The locks were removed and the practice banned.

There are hundreds of ‘bridges of love’ around the world, where couples are still permitted to attach their tokens of affection. I wonder if Otley Bridge will ever be toppled by the weight of the love locks?

I’d love to hear from you about your stories, memories, opinions and ideas for columns. Use the ‘Contact’ button on the top right of this page to get in touch.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 6th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 4th Sept 2024.

Mother of all battles

Olympic skeet shooting silver medalist Amber Rutter with her three-month-old baby Tommy in Paris (Picture Isabel Infantes/PA)

I love the Olympics and Paralympics, seeing so many countries come together to battle it out at a bewildering array of sports (some of which I did not know existed) is absolutely captivating.

One of my favourite images during the Olympics was seeing Team GB’s Amber Rutter cuddling her three-month-old son Tommy after winning silver in the skeet final (a form of competitive clay shooting). Amber had had her baby only three months before and, as every mother knows, having a baby takes an enormous toll on the body and mind. To get to the Olympics and win a medal is incredible.

The Paris Olympics and Paralympics have spotlighted the accomplishments of women throughout history, and in 2024 they are classed as the first ever ‘gender-equal’ games. That is, there are as many women as men among the 15,000 competitors.

Of course, it hasn’t always been the case. When the first modern Olympics took place in Athens in 1896, women were not permitted to take part. However, in Paris in 1900 they were allowed to compete in five sports – tennis, golf, croquet, sailing and equestrianism. In all there were 22 female athletes and 975 male.

The first female Olympic champion was Helene de Pourtales, a Swiss-American Countess who became the first female to win a gold medal in the sailing regatta. Other notable female winners were Briton Charlotte Cooper, who won in the tennis, and American Margaret Abbott who took the golfing gold. Interestingly, Abbott’s mother Mary also competed in the golf, finishing seventh. She might possibly be the first mother to take part in the games (I could not find out if any of the other female athletes had children).

It was not easy for elite athletes who also happened to be mothers to compete, and until relatively recently, women who had given birth were expected to give up their sporting careers.

Fanny Blankers-Koen was one of the most successful female athletes ever and at the 1948 Summer Games in London, she was the first competitor from the Netherlands – male or female – to win a gold medal in athletics. She won her first in the 100m dash, her second in 80m hurdles, her third in the 200m dash and her fourth in the 400m hurdles. She was the first woman to win four Olympic gold medals, and the first to do it at the same games. She would have won more had she been allowed to compete in more events, but they were limited to three individual plus one relay.

She achieved all of this in the face of intense criticism thanks to the fact she was married with a young son and daughter. She said later: “I got very many bad letters, people writing that I must stay home with my children.” She was also informed by the British athletics coach of the time, Jack Crump, that at 30, she was “too old to make the grade”. All this was just fuel to Fanny’s fire, and she was delighted to prove the doubters wrong in brilliant fashion, earning herself the rather patronising nickname ‘The Flying Housewife’. Even more remarkable was that she was only training twice a week in the run-up to the games thanks to the fact she was pregnant.

Fanny is said to have missed her children badly while she as away, and almost left halfway through due to homesickness.

Thankfully, that would be unlikely to happen today because after much campaigning by Olympian mothers, most notably 11-time U.S. medalist Allyson Felix, for the first time this year there is a creche in the Olympic Village. Allyson was motivated by her own difficult experience at the Tokyo 2020 games when her baby was just two: “It was challenging in ways I didn’t expect, like staying in hotels, washing bottles, all the things you have to bring, feeding your baby in stadiums, who’s going to watch your baby.” Now, as well as daycare, the on-site nursery provides things like nappies, bottles, milk and food so that away from the competition, parents can relax and can enjoy genuine family time with their little ones.

I was very impressed to learn were nine mothers who competed for Team GB at the Olympics, seven of whom brought home a medal. I think Fanny would have been impressed.

I’d love to hear from you about your stories, memories, opinions and ideas for columns. Use the ‘Contact’ button on the top right of this page to get in touch.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 30th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 28th August 2024.

Flying by the seat of our ants

Continue reading “Flying by the seat of our ants”

Finding the faith

The red circle shows where I found the back of my earring on the bathroom, the same place I’d lost it about a week before

The back of my earring which was lost on the bathroom floor for a week before magically reappearing. Was St Anthony having a laugh at my expense?

I’ve had a few more responses about lost items following my column on the patron saint of such things, St Anthony of Padua. If you recall, he is the patron saint of wayward possessions, people and even faith, having been credited with many miracles that recovered seemingly unrecoverable losses.

Canada-based Lynn Catena contacted me saying: “I have a friend who texts asking me to pray to St Anthony for her. It’s probably worked two or three times. The last time, sadly, her passport remained lost. But I reminded her that she could show her Nexus card to return home to Canada from the US (A Nexus card is a form of identification that allows US and Canadian residents to cross between the two countries without a passport). The other times her diamond engagement ring and a lost diamond pendant from a broken necklace were located.”

Monica Ganz from the USA added: “I’ve often prayed to St Anthony for things. Sometimes I have found the item, sometimes not. Interesting story about the novice monk who stole St Anthony’s prayer book, but then brought it back. Imagine how awful that must have been for St Anthony! Oh, loved your ending. It is a mystery on how we search for things only to find them in strange places.”

Yorkshire cyclist and blogger Rob Ainsley recalled a story from around 1982: “I went to the fair one evening with a friend. As we headed home for the night from our last ride, the rollercoaster, he noticed a bunch of keys on the muddy path in front of us. “Look,” he said, “Someone’s dropped their keys. I’ll take them to the police station and hand them in.” Except he didn’t have to: they were his. They’d fallen out his pocket during the ride, unbeknown to him, and he’d stumbled on his own keys quite by chance…My mate was Dave. I wish I had his magic powers today. My fabulous thief-resistant 15 out of 15-rated bike lock isn’t much use until I remember that safe, memorable location where I put the keys!”

It is always sad, though, when we lose something that is meaningful, as mentioned by Liz Davidson, who also happens to be my aunt, and her mum was my grandmother: “I have a few single earrings. I have one Whitby Jet earring which was my mother’s. I’ve never found its mate.”

Clare Proctor came up with a suggestion for my treasured, now single, diamond earring: “A second piercing is definitely the way to go, especially for your diamond – or have it set in a ring instead and wear that. I have been known to wear odd earrings, if they compliment each other. Do not throw your diamond away – it may be reunited with its partner one day – think of that elephant!” ‘That elephant’ refers to a pendant that was lost by a friend of Clare’s until it fell out of a sofa during a house move many years later.

Lynne Wheatley suggests: “You must also write about lost shoes. So many people lose one shoe – how many different shoes have we seen in different places? Whenever I see one my mind makes up a little story about who is wearing the other one. Just like your lost earnings, so interesting.” She has a point, doesn’t she. You see lonely shoes in such strange places, like roundabouts and roadsides. How do they get there? Do people throw them out of cars?

Having written my column about St Anthony, I then I dropped the back of one of a favourite pair of earrings on the bathroom floor. I heard it land and thought I would easily find it because it is only a small bathroom. I scoured the floor on my hands and knees, looked under all the obstacles, and found absolutely nothing. I was baffled and finally had to admit defeat and give up. In the intervening week, I vacuumed and mopped the floor, still not coming across it and assumed it was lost forever. Then yesterday, I saw it on the floor, right in the spot I thought it had first landed, not under or behind anything. Just there on the the open floor.

Was St Anthony was having a laugh at my expense?

I’d love to hear from you about your stories, memories, opinions and ideas for columns. Use the ‘Contact’ button on the top right of this page to get in touch.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 16th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 14th August 2024.

The legacy of lost things

1-100_0612 — A clock face made by reader David Severs’ ancestor Hugh Pannell with the herringbone pattern around the outer edge of the dial and around the name boss, along with the rare ‘Clock & Watchmaker’ inscription.

I’ve had some more feedback from readers following the column I wrote about the stones marked with the herringbone pattern typically used in the construction of traditional North Yorkshire moorland homes. Reader John Severs had referred me to a book entitled ‘Life in the Moorlands of North-East Yorkshire’ written in 1972 by Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby. There was a section on this specific type of masonry along with some photographs featuring a well-known local family, the Weatherills.

Another reader, John Buckworth, has emailed to say: “Good to read your article re. Mr G. Weatherill. We were a customer of his some years ago and a great admirer of his craftsmanship. I pass his stone yard at Ainthorpe quite frequently and still see the antiquated home-made crane to lift the headstones. Also there’s a piece of carved stone on his wall depicting a fox’s mask, brush and hunting horn. Most country people followed the hunt and I find this a great tribute to the past way of life. Being now in my 80s I am a great admirer of country life and your father’s writings.”

He added: “I think the old crane was built by his grandfather…There are some very fancy and OTT headstones. However when my wife’s father died, he was a man of the soil and we walked into the stone yard at Ainthorpe and there was a piece of rough Yorkshire sandstone which fitted the man admirably.”

My editor at the Darlington and Stockton Times, Hannah Chapman, spotted something relevant on a weekend walk: “I was walking on the Cleveland Way yesterday (north from Lordstones café) and I’m sure I spotted a stone in the path with the grooved diagonal pattern you wrote about in the Chop Gate area. Could the old stones from houses in the area have been used to build paths?”

I think Hannah probably has a point – why not reuse stones from the tumbled down moorland buildings in the construction and repairs of our public walkways?

I also received a couple more stories about ‘lost things’ and how difficult it is to discard a lone earring. Monica Ganz contacted me all the way from America about a bracelet her mother had given her: “It had a daisy as a charm. I loved it, because the daisy was painted yellow and white…I was delivering newspapers on my bike and somehow the Daisy fell off, never to be found again. When I was older in my 20s, I was water skiing. I wore these cute little gold huggy earrings that had small diamond on them. Of course…the earring popped off…I still have the bracelet and the one earring…Why do we lose treasured items? Hard to know why, right? And it’s hard to part with them.”

I wonder if it is more the memories and feelings that are held within the precious item that makes it hard to let go?

David Severs from Northallerton had his own fascinating story too: “You might be interested to know that in Saywell’s ‘History and Annals of Northallerton’ he recounts how a gardener’s newlywed wife had lost her wedding ring in their garden and 14 years later, in 1796, it was found when a customer cut into a turnip and found the ring inside.”

David also mentioned how the herringbone pattern was used in the decoration of clocks and watches: “Herringbone engraving was used on the brass dials of long-case clocks in the early years of the 18th-century in London … said to be a sign of quality. Some clockmakers used it until about 1740. My ancestor Hugh Pannell, the Northallerton clockmaker, was in business until he died in 1788. I have traced well over 100 of the clocks he made and many of them have herringbone engraving. Most clockmakers decorated the spandrels on their brass dials (the corners) with cast-brass decoration; a few engraved the spandrels; and even fewer left them undecorated: Hugh did all three…Most of his dials have herringbone engraving somewhere. Incidentally on the photograph (seen here) he described himself as ‘Clock & Watchmaker’ and this is very rare indeed. In very many years I have found only one example by one other clockmaker whereas I have found five examples by Hugh Pannell, three of these dials now being in the USA.”

I’d love to hear from you about your stories, memories, opinions and ideas for columns. Use the ‘Contact’ button on the top right of this page to get in touch.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 9th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 7th August 2024.

Praying for a Tony award

A painting from the chapel of Pius V Santi Giovanni e Paolo (Venice) by Joseph Heintz the Younger depicting the miracle of St Anthony of Padua and the Mule. Credit: Didier Descouens – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62705004

My column last week about lost precious things made me think about the non-practical methods we employ to try and find them again. Having been brought up a Catholic, I was taught that there was a saint to pray to for almost every problem in life, and it was to St Anthony that you had to turn if you lost something.

I remember as a youngster praying to him when I had mislaid an important item, but unfortunately cannot recall if my prayers were ever answered or not. Traditionally, you were supposed to recite an old couplet that went:

“Tony, Tony, turn around, something’s lost and must be found.”

There is another, perhaps more reverent rhyme written by Julian of Spires, a German Franciscan monk and contemporary of St Anthony who was particularly known for being a gifted writer and musical composer noted for his ‘rhyming offices’, prayers, that are said or sung. He wrote this one about St Anthony in 1241, about 10 years after the saint’s death.

“The sea obeys, the fetters break, and lifeless limbs thou dost restore,

while treasures lost are found again, when young and old thy aid implore.”

St Anthony is known as either Anthony of Lisbon, the Portuguese capital where he was born on 15th August 1195, or Anthony of Padua, the northern Italian town where he spent much of his later life. He planned to travel extensively to preach and hoped to become a missionary, but his recurring poor health curtailed his ambitions. He ended up in Padua and became one of St Francis of Assisi’s most famous followers. He founded a Franciscan community and became known as a champion of the poor and as a gifted preacher celebrated for his simple yet compelling delivery. St Anthony died battling poor health on a return journey to Padua on 13th June 1231 (now his saint’s day).

He earned a reputation for performing miracles, including reviving several people after they had been confirmed dead, reattaching severed limbs simply by praying and holding them in place, getting a newborn baby to declare out loud who his real father was after said father had accused his wife of cheating, and other miraculous achievements involving people with a whole plethora of illnesses and disabilities. He was also said to induce wild animals to behave in surprisingly sophisticated ways when in his holy presence. As the patron saint of lost things such as possessions, people and even faith, he is also credited with many miracles that recovered seemingly unrecoverable losses.

Thanks to his miraculous reputation, he was canonised less a year after his death on 30th May 1232 by Pope Gregory IX, and considering he was not yet 36 when he died, he must have been a remarkably charismatic and impressive man. In January 1946, Pope Pius XII named him ‘doctor of the church’ which in Roman Catholicism indicates his theological writings are considered particularly important.

The original reason he became patron of lost things is thanks to a story that involves a novice monk who stole Anthony’s book of psalms in which had written personal notes he used for his sermons and teachings. The novice took the book, then deserted the Paduan Franciscan community. Anthony prayed fervently for the return of his book and for the novice to return to the faith. His payers were answered, and the repentant novice came back, forgiven and welcomed once again by the community.

There are websites that celebrate St Anthony, and they encourage the faithful to submit their success stories of having found lost stuff after praying to the saint. Some could be just good luck, while others are much harder to explain. One story involves a teacher who lost an earring. She scoured her classroom including looking under her desk and chair. Just as she gave up, the cleaner arrived with his dust mop, and she explained the situation, asking him to look out for it. That night she said her prayers to Saint Anthony and the next morning, there was the earring lying under her chair in the same place she had looked the night before. She asked if the cleaner had for some reason placed it there, but he said he had not found it, despite looking out for it.

So how did it get there?

I’d love to hear from you about your stories, memories, opinions and ideas for columns. Use the ‘Contact’ button on the top right of this page to get in touch.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 2nd Aug and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 31st July 2024.