The Ashington Group: A North of England Men’s Shed for Artistic Miners

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Local history, Visual Arts

One of the more novel art genres to emerge in the first third of last century was the “Pitman Painters” phenomenon in northern England. Known as the Ashington Group✱, these were a small collective of unionised mine workers in county Northumberland who approached their local Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) seeking out tuition in new areas of education. Initially the pitmen were hoping WEA could find a economics professor to tutor them in the “dismal science”. When none could be arranged, their interest switched to learning painting and drawing.

⇡ ‘Coal Face’, Jimmy Floyd (1947) (Credit: Woodhorn Museum)

Artist and WEA teacher Robert Lyon took on the task of teaching the miners—mainly from the Woodhorn and Ellington collieries—all of whom had no formal art training. The workers however didn’t take to dry lectures on the Classical and Renaissance art, so Lyon adopted a more pragmatic approach of teaching the miners the basics of drawing and painting. Lyon advised the miners to simply “paint what they knew” ‘Ashington Group of Pitmen Painters’, Artist Biographies, www.artblogs.co.uk.

⇡‘Coal-Face Drawers’, Oliver Kilbourn (1950) (Image: TUC150.tuc.org.uk)

In 1934 the workers formed themselves into a small society of miner-artists who met weekly to paint and discuss their work. Most of the small group were adherents of the political platform of the Independent Labour Party) (‘Ashington Group’, Wikipedia). The Ashington men even wrote their own constitution, setting out the regulations each of the members had to abide by, including a commitment to the establishment of a permanent collection of their work (” ‘An Experiment in Art Appreciation’: The WEA and the Ashington Art Group”, Marie-Therese Maybe, North East History, Vol 37 2006, www nelh.net).

⇡ ‘Pithead Baths’, Oliver Kilbourn (1939) (Credit: Woodhorn Museum)

With guidance from Lyon and support from patrons, especially from celebrated collector Helen Sutherland, the group got to observe ‘professional’ art in galleries – Newcastle, London (Tate and National Galleries), etc. Absorbing the influences of professional art, the group of amateur artists increasingly focused on local subjects from their lives and their environs. They also experimented with art forms and styles…trying sculpture, dabbling in abstraction, but ultimately they stuck with social realism, painting mostly in a naive style. In the communal environment of the group hut members critically evaluated each other’s work.

⇡ L Brownrigg, ‘The Miner‘

The Ashington colliery was situated in what some called “the largest coal-mining village in the world”, (‘Celebrating 150 proud years of Ashington, in Northumberland – in 10 archive photos’, Chronicle Live, David Morton, 05-Oct-2017, www.chroniclelive.co.uk). The achievement collectively of the mine workers was to capture their lived experience accurately and truly on canvas, showing the severity of life in the pits. Devoid of sentimentality, the paintings depict the day-to-day reality of gruelling, dirty, backbreaking work, an experience that outsiders have no familiarity with, eg, Leslie Brownrigg’s ‘The Miner’ conveys the deprivations of the tunnel ‘hewer’, labouring away in ultra-cramped, severely restricted space, “crouching semi-naked within the tomb-like shafts” (Mayne). Painting their own lives, the pitmen “testified to a familiarity that no one else from trained art backgrounds could truly understand” (Ashington Group of Pitmen Painters).

⇡ ‘X’mas Tree 1950’, Harry Wilson

Pitmen Painters did not restrict themselves to the life of mine workers below the ground. The non-professional group of artists took on all aspects of home life, ordinary social activities, the pub, football matches, dog tracks, fish-and-chip shops, pigeon ‘crees’ (sheds), etc. What comes through in many of the paintings is just how unglamorous 1930s coal-dominated Ashington was – “dreary rows (of homes) a mile long…ashpits and mines down the middle of still unmade streets” (Mayne).

The group’s first exhibition at Hatton Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1936, gave them new public exposure and even a critical nod from the likes of Julian Trevelyan and sculptor Henry Moore.

‘Pigeon crees’, Jimmy Floyd ⇡

After WWII interest in the Ashington Group waned but the men from the pits continued their painting. The early 1970s brought a renewal of interest in the Ashington Group due to the efforts of critic William Feaver  After meeting what remained of the group including foundation member Oliver Kilbourn, Feaver “reconstructs their history, revives their work, curates exhibitions, culminating in a China tour in  1980, the first western exhibition in China after the Cultural Revolution✧ (‘Pitman Painters. The Ashington Group 1934-1984 by William Feaver’, Vulpes Libres,  (2009), (‘Pitman Painters. The Ashington Group 1934-1984 by William Feaver’, Vulpes Libres,  (2009) (http://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com)⊞.

⇡ Norman Cornish, last of the group

Despite their late rediscovery the Ashington Group’s days were numbered. Coal mines in the Ashington area and the north were closing down in 1980s Thatcherite Britain. The trigger which brought the group to a sudden halt was a prosaic and trivial matter of 50p! In 1982 the annual ground rent on the pitmen’s hut in Ashington was increased by 50p to £14 (Mayne). This proved a straw too much for the ageing handful of members still active and the Ashington Group folded in 1983, just one year shy of its half-centenary. Today the Pitmen Painters are all gone and Ashington and like towns are bereft of traces of their coal-mining past, however the art of the pitmen (or most of it) remains as a visual reminder of that life. With Feaver and other admirers’ help, the permanent collection, a key article of the group’s constitution, exists today, housed within the Woodhorn Mining Museum.

Footnote: Mining art Japanese style
Coal miner art is not the exclusive domain of Northumberland or even Britain. It also emerged in Japan in the art of Sakubei Yamamoto. Yamamoto’s entire work life from the age of seven or eight was in coal mines in the Fukuoka Prefecture. Only at age 57 did Yamamoto start painting seriously. Over the following years he produced over 700 paintings of his work milieu, providing “a visual record of the brutality of mining life, capturing the poverty of workers and their families, the personal lives, customs and superstitions, and their struggles for a better life. Like the Pitmen Painters’ permanent collection, Yamamoto’s ouevre found a home in a former mine site, the Tagawa History and Coal Museum (‘The Pitmen Painters of England and Japan’, Diana Cooper-Richet, The Conversation, 16-Jan-2018, www.theconversation.com).

⇡ (L) O Kilbourn (Image: Bellcode Books)

Pitmen personnel: the Ashington Group’s founder members include Oliver Kilbourn (probably the best known of the Pitmen Painters)⌖, George Blessed, Jimmy Floyd, Harry Wilson, Lee Robinson, John Dobson and John F Harrison.

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✱ the group initially met in a small hut in Longhorsley, but after WWII began, they were forced to relocate into Ashington proper, a small town in the coal-mining region of Northumberland

✧ on the China tour group members visited the mining province of Shansi

⊞ Feaver’s book on the group inspired a 2007 play by Billy Elliot author Lee Hall

⌖ prolific in output and broad in scope (including historical subjects among his artwork), Kilbourn exhibited his own series ‘My Life as a Pitman’ in Nottingham in 1977

James Oatley, Keeper of the Town Clock and Pioneering Georges River Landowner

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Biographical, Local history, Natural Environment

Oatley is a prime piece of residential real estate in the southern suburbs of Sydney. The suburb faces on to the Georges River (Tucoerah River in the local indigenous language). Large leafy blocks of land and water views abound in this “north shore” status locality of the south. One of the star attractions in the western fringe of Oatley is the 45-hectare Oatley Park, a dense concentration of natural bushland with Edwardian era baths and sandstone ‘castle’ built during the Great Depression and now encircled by lofty smooth-barked Angophoras Costatas.

If you cross the railway line to the east side of Oatley you can see a tower dedication to the early Sydney settler the suburb is named after – James Oatley. Oatley was yet another  transported felon made good in New South Wales’ formative years.  The Oatley tower in the high street contains a clock face which alerts us to J Oatley Esq’s association with timepieces. Oatley from Staffordshire in the West Midlands got napped for stealing two featherbeds and linen to the value of £16, sentenced to death for his crime but transported instead to Australia in 1814. Oatley put his watch and clock making skills to good use, winning a conditional pardon and a Georges River land grant from Governor Macquarie in 1821. On his Georges River land—stretching from Gungal Bay in the west to Boundary and Hurstville Roads—where he established a farm on his property called “Needwood Forest” after the woodland in his native Warwickshire. Oatley’s Needwood Forest grant included the area of today’s eponymous suburb.

Appointed colonial clockmaker, Oatley plied his trade from a shop in George Street opposite the Sydney Town Hall, with a bit of a flair for constructing grandfather clocks. His best known work was the clock in the turret at the Hyde Park Prisoners’ Barracks built by fellow emancipist Francis Greenway (Oatley’s clock has featured on the Australian $10 note).

Oatley’s work also won favour with later governors who granted him 515 acres in the Hurstville area between 1831 and 1835. The clockmaker died on his residential property ‘Snugburough’ in 1839. The precise location of Snugburough in Sydney is not certain…some sources give it as Canterbury, others Beverley Hills or Pubchbowl. After Snugburough was sold by Oatley’s family, future owners had to accede to a curious condition of sale  – they were required to retain Oatley’s sepulchre and his body on the property. Clockmaking stayed in the family after Oatley’s demise, his third son took over the George Street shop.

 

⌖ ⌖ ⌖

Books and sites consulted:

Frances Pollon, The Book of Australian Suburbs  (1988)

Brian and Barbara Kennedy, Sydney and Suburbs: A History and Description (1982)

Oatley, James (1770–1839)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/oatley-james-2514/text3399, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 30 March 2021

Australian Royality, www.australianroyalty.net.au

 

 

Fort Scratchley, Guarding the Hunter River Estuary

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Local history, Military history

Situated on a bluff high above the coastline, Fort Scratchley, a leisurely walk from Newcastle’s city centre, boasts position A views of the popular Nobbys Beach and Head and the mouth of the Hunter River. The site has a long history – European land use of the headland began about 1804 with mining of the coal seams at its base¹. Indigenous use predates this with local aboriginal clans thought to have utilised the coal as well as taken advantage of the site’s desirability as a prominent lookout.

The military installation didn’t emerge until 1882² (constructed by colonial architect James Barnet), prompted by British concerns about Russian intrusions in the western Pacific. The fort was named after one of the officers who conducted a reconnaissance of the area in the 1870s, Lt-Col Peter Scratchley.

Fort Stratchley and other east coast fortifications, like Middle Head and Bare Island in Sydney, never sighted the Tsarist Russians but it did briefly see action during World War 2. On the night of 7–8 June 1942 it’s 6-inch guns fired two salvos at Japanese submarine l–21 bombarding the city’s shoreline, the only occurrence of a coastal fort firing on an enemy naval vessel in Australia.

(A model of the Japanese submarine, source: www.battleforaustralia.asn.au)

The fort’s guns were decommissioned in 1962 and the fort itself closed in 1972. Vacant for several years followed closure, it has since been occupied by the Newcastle Regional Maritime Museum and the local historical society. Today, open to the public and with some of its guns repositioned, guided tours of the fort and it’s tunnels are a principal feature of the site’s activities.

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¹ before acquiring the name Ft Scratchley the site had a sequence of different English names, “Beacon Hill”, “Fortification Hill”, “Signal Hill”

² although the first (seven-gun) earthen battery was installed there in 1828

✿ ✿ ✿

Referenced websites and sources:

‘Tunnel into 200 years of history’, Fort Scratchley Historical Site, www.fortscratchley.com.au

‘The Newcastle Fortifications – SMH 24 May 1881’, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/13484259

‘Fort Scratchley’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org

Thurn-und-Taxis Post, the Holy Roman Emperor’s Transnational Postmen

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
International Relations, Media & Communications, Regional History

The background story of Thomas Pychon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49 involves a centuries-old conflict between two mail distribution companies, Thurn and Taxis and Trystero. In the novel Thurn and Taxis triumphs over its rival in the 18th century, forcing Trystero to go underground and operate incognito as a waste disposal business. Trystero (sometimes in the book ‘Tristero’) does not exist, it is a fictional creation of Pynchon, and in true Pynchon style it may not even exist in the novel…Pynchon leaves the question floating, open to speculation and interpretation throughout the novel. Thurn and Taxis on the other hand is a very real historical entity.

⍋ Pynchon’s muted horn

The Thurn-und-Taxis story usually starts with one Franz (or Francesco) von Taxis—an Italian nobleman from Bergamo near Milan—who acquires the office of postmaster-general from the Habsburg Holy Roman emperor Frederick III in 1489 (in 1504 Philip I of Spain gives the Taxis family the same right to his territory). By these royal approvals Franz von Taxis is awarded the right (along with his brother Janetto) to carry both government and private mail from its base in the Austrian Tyrol the length and breadth of the Holy Roman Empire and Spain, in what was the world’s first public access mail service [‘Thurn and Taxis postal system’, Britannica, www.britannica.com/].

⍒ Franz von Taxis

Tassis antecedents
Franz von Taxis’ elevation to imperial postmaster in 1489 is not the family’s first foray into the mail distribution business, far from it in fact! Some of Franz’s Italian ancestors were in the game as far back as the late 13th century. The association appears to start with the Bergamascan Omedeo (or Amedeo) Tasso➀. This chapter of the story begins in the small city of Bergamo in the alpine region of Lombard (northern Italy). After Milan conquers Bergamo Omedeo Tasso organises his relatives into a company of couriers (Compagnia dei Corrieri) around the year 1290. His post riders (known as i Bergamaschi) operates routes to three Italian city-states, to Rome and Venice from the company’s Milan base [‘Omedeo Tasso’ Wikiwand, www.wikiwand.com]. In the mid-15th century another relative, Ruggiero de Tassis, extends the mail network north to Innsbruck, Styria and Vienna, and later to Brussels. Thus, by the time the Holy Roman emperor awards the mail distribution rights for the Kayserliche Reichspost (“Imperial Post”), to the Tassos’, the family has notched up an impressive CV of service to popes (Posta papale) and the ‘merchantocracy’ of Venice.

⍒ Thurn-und-Taxis crest

Tassos to Taxis
The change of the original Italian family name ‘Tasso’, sometimes rendered ‘Tassos’ or “de Tassis’, to “Thurn and Taxis”, comes about in 1650…one of the nobles in the German branch of the Tassis family, Lamoral II Claudius Franz, gets imperial permission to change the family name from the French, “de La Tour et Tassis” to the German, “Thurn und Taxis”. As the Thurn-und-Taxis business become more lucrative the family’s social standing follows a similar upward trajectory…in the 17th century they accumulate a sequence of hereditary titles  – from “imperial free baron” to grafen (“imperial count”) to a ‘princely’ status in the Fürstenhaus (“first house”) [‘Thurn und Taxis’, www.thurnundtaxis.de/].

(Image: www.labrujulaverde.com)

The Taxis’ Imperial Post thrives with improvements in service and greater efficiency. Emperor Maximilian I is able to despatch correspondence via the Post from Innsbruck to his son Philipp (Fillippo) in Brussels in five days (six in winter). The creation of a series of postal stations along the route—located 35 km apart➁—improves the speed of delivery [Schobesberger, Nikolaus, et al. “European Postal Networks”, News Networks in Early Modern Europe, edited by Noah Moxham and Joad Raymond, Brill, LEIDEN; BOSTON, 2016, pp.19-63, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctt1w8h1ng.9. Accessed 10 Dec. 2020]➂. The Tassis family postal fortunes continues with succeeding holy Roman emperors…Charles (Carlos) V appointed Janetto’s son, Giovanni Batista de Tassis (Signoria di Taxis) as master of posts in 1520, recognising the necessity of an efficient, reliable method in communication in the empire continually expanding to include new acquisitions (such as the Burgundian and Spanish territories).

⍒ Imperial Post, Quincentenary commemorative card (Image: Collection of Museum for Communication, Nuremberg)

Thurn-und-Taxis and Imperial Post, democratisating postal services
Before Taxis takes charge of the Imperial Post, the Habsburgs depend on courier services that are exclusive to the elites of society. Dedicated messengers service sovereigns, aristocrats, merchants and other corporate bodies like universities and monasteries, but are not available to the general public. Thurn-und-Taxis changes that pattern, being the first to carry both private and public items on its trans-empire routes (Schobesberger).

⍋ Thurn & Taxis post-roads, western Germany, 1786 (Image: www.euratlas.com)

Serving the emperor: Privilege, surveillance and censorship Generally, the Reichspost under the management of the Taxis neatly serves both it‘s own interests and that of the Habsburgs. The Taxis provide the efficient postal system required of the vast Habsburg empire. They keep the imperial confidential posts and security secrets safe and when the opportunity arise, they engage in espionage (including intercepting correspondence hostile to their masters)[Cole, Laurence. Central European History, vol.42, no.4, 2009,pp.763-766. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40600986. Accessed 10 Dec.2020]. In return, the emperor grants them various concessions in business building to a monopoly by Taxis/Imperial Post over the postal industry by forbidding competition from rival courier providers (the right of monopoly confirmed by Emperor Rudolph II in 1595)➃. Thurn-und-Taxis are also co-opted into a political role on behalf of the Habsburgs, appointed principal commissar (making them the emperor’s personal representative at Regensburg). At its peak (ca. 1700) the company employs a staff of around 20,000 (messengers, administrative workers and state representatives).

⍒ T & T postal timetable, Augsburg (Germ.) (Source: www.postalmuseum.si.edu)

Defection and reconciliation
In a rare miscalculation Thurn-und-Taxis in 1742 finds themselves briefly on the wrong side—backing the Wittelsbach successor (Charles VII) to the imperial crown against the Habsburgs’ candidate—although the Taxis’ manage to patch things up with the Habsburgs after Charles’ death. Reconciliation is facilitated by Empress Maria Theresia’s recognition of what the Taxis provide,  “organisational know-how and (a) communications network which left no effective competitors” (Cole).

⍒ Empress Maria Theresia

Vicissitudes of war
The outbreak of wars affecting the empire is a recurring threat to Thurn-und-Taxis’ prosperity (and even its survival). The Dutch War of Independence prompts a virtual collapse of the Taxis system (Schobesberger). The Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars  result in economic crises that Thurn-and-Taxis have to weather. Swift changes in the balance of power in Europe in the early 1800s means that the Taxis have to pull off some astute business manoeuvring between Napoleon and the Habsburgs. Thurn-und-Taxis’ Princess Therese is especially instrumental in negotiating vital port agreements with Napoleon which keeps the company business going during wartime (Cole).

End of the Keyserliche Reichspost but Thurn-and-Taxis survives sans royal imprimatur
The Napoleon-dictated Confederation of the Rhine (Rheinbund) dissolves the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and therefore the Imperial Post➄. Thurn-und-Taxis are still able to continue operating as a private postal concern in western-central Europe. In 1810 Thurn and Taxis relocates its capital from Regensburg to Frankfurt am Main➅.

Issue No 1
In 1852 Thurn-und-Taxis (borrowing the recent English invention) introduces its own adhesive postage stamps. A minor hitch arising from this is that the company has to issue two sets of stamps in Germany, owing to the different currencies in use – the Northern Germanic states deal in silbergroshens while the Southern Germanic states deal in kreuzers [‘German States Stamps Thurn and Taxis A Brief History’, Stamp-Collecting-World, www.stamp-collecting-world.com].

Endgame and after for Thurn-und-Taxis
The shadow of an expanding Prussian military state forebode ill for the company’s future. The Thurn und Taxis’ business is past its best days and its entry into the German-Austrian Postal Association in 1850 earns it the displeasure of future chancellor Bismarck. With Prussia’s triumph in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) it’s army occupies Thurn-und-Taxis’ Frankfurt headquarters and the company is wound up in 1867 after being forced to sell all its postal contracts to the Prussian government for three million thalers.

⍋ St Emmeram Palast, Regensburg (T& T) (Photo: Pinterest)

The House of Thurn-und-Taxis is something of an anomaly among European nobility, acquiring its aristocratic standing and wealth not from land as is customary, but from a monopoly over an imperial postal service (Cole). Since its postal connexion ended, Thurn-and-Taxis finds its future financial security in brewing➆, with sidelights in the accumulation of property and land and the construction of palaces. Today Thurn-und-Taxis—and its current family head Albert, 12th Prinz of Thurn-und-Taxis, Regensburg—with its diverse business interests➇ still has a place among the richest noble houses of Europe.

Endnote: Thurn-und-Taxis, transnational mail mover
Branches of the Taxis family operate both locally and transnationally across Europe – Austria, Spain, Luxembourg, Italy, Hungary, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. While Thurn-und-Taxis are funnelling the imperial mail through its distribution networks to all points of the empire, other countries in Europe launch their own nationwide postal systems. Nikolaus Schobesberger contends that Thurn-und-Taxis ultimately was out of kilter with the prevailing trend – early modern Europe was witnessing the ascent of nation-states with strong central governments, calling for efficient national systems of relaying mail (itself an ingredient of nation-building) that could be controlled by the state…so France (from 1477) and England (from 1516) both introduced royal post services which functioned as a state monopoly (Schobesberger).

 

⍋ ‘Thurn & Taxis’ game

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➀ ‘Tasso’ means ‘badger” in Italian (features on the family crest)

➁  by the first half of the 17th century these narrow to just 15 km

➂ the Taxis’ couriers carry a coiled horn to alert towns and change-stations of their approach, and they transport the mail which include newspapers in a felleisen, a satchel encased in iron [‘Franz von Taxis and the invention of the Post’, (Museum for Communication, Nuremberg), www.artsandculture.google.com].

➃ it never amounts to a watertight monopoly, two northern Protestant princes (Brandenburg and Prussia) are able to create their own state postal systems in the second half of the 17th century, independent of the Imperial Post (‘Taxis invention of the Post’)

➄ the last postmaster-general of the Imperial Post is Prinz Karl Alexander von Thurn-und-Taxis

➅ having originated in Italy

➆ Taxis is no longer in the brewing business having sold its interests to the Munich-based Paulaner Group, but the Thurn und Taxi brand of bier is still stocked on retail liquor shelves

➇ there’s even a “Thurn and Taxis board game” for which the House no doubt receives royalties