Barry Hall’s Blog

The commemorative plaque that marks the location of William Black Street in East Jarrow now appears to be nothing more than a hacksawed off stump.  I hope this is not a metaphor for the way we are to remember Catherine Cookson from now on.  Over the years I have heard a lot of comments about this author, some of them laughably snobby.  Some people suggesting that the quality of her writing doesn’t match up to William Shakespeare or Leo Tolstoy.  Well I don’t expect it does and I don’t expect Catherine Cookson thought so either.  I look at the people who make these statements and ask have you kept generations of readers entertained? Have you sold millions of books worldwide? Are you a household name?  No!

 The other ridiculous thing I have heard said is that the image that the term Catherine Cookson Country invokes to the rest of the world, is a bleak existence of rainy cobbles and torn headscarves (and probably a handful of whippets thrown in for good measure). As if your average person can’t work out that her novels were usually set 100 years ago or more and things have moved on here in South Tyneside, at the same pace as they have everywhere else.  Are we really so lacking in confidence about this, that we need to wipe clean, bits of our heritage, just in case someone somewhere gets the wrong idea?

Anyone who has a vision to do something and makes it happen is worthy of note in my eyes.  Catherine Cookson not only achieved her dreams, but put a lot back into the community too.  You can argue whether her beginnings were as humble as she maintained - After all she was a professional storyteller. You can argue whether East Jarrow is really considered as Jarrow or South Shields. But you can not argue that Catherine Cookson was someone who was a high achiever and that she deserves to be celebrated.

Painting: “Not Bad For A Little Jarra Lass Eh?” 2010. Painted in Acrylic. Size 30 x 24 inch. © Barry Hall 2010

Being a painter in suburbia can be a lonely business, my head is always filled with ideas. Some of these ideas see the light of day - Some stay in a little book for another day. 

My latest idea is a series of paintings and drawings under the title The Jarra Scrolls.  As I paint them, I will post them here, with a little background information about the reason I painted them in the first place … Well it keeps me motivated!

In 1939, Ellen Wilkinson wrote a book entitled The Town That Was Murdered.  Four years earlier she had been elected as MP for Jarrow, at the time nearly 80% of the towns working population was out of work.  The problem?  Jarrow was a one industry town. It had built up around Palmer’s Shipyard and depended on it totally to keep the  local economy ticking over.  There is a good argument that the National Shipbuilding Industries Securities, a government body set up to reduce the overcapacity of shipbuilding nationally, committed this murder by recommending the closure of Palmers. Of course this is a moral argument, rather than an economic one and in some people’s eyes not sensible point of view. Although I imagine that most of the people who agreed with the closure lived somewhere other than the banks of the Tyne.

But here is the funny thing, in 2010 Jarrow is still living and breathing in a way that you would not expect when a heart has been so viciously rived out.  It is fair to say that the pain of the 1930’s travels down in the genes and is still felt, albeit almost subconsciously, by the folk of this town.  That’s how real and painful that episode was.  When I look around today I think there is nothing that took the place of this beating heart, there is nothing which acts as a central focus around which everyone builds their lives, no historic centre, no big employer, no big attraction - So the question is - How does Jarrow live on?  There is something almost defiant about its survival!

Painting: “The Town That Was Murdered? I Don’t Think So!” 2010 Painted in Acrylic. Size  30 x 24inch. ©Barry Hall 2010

This summer I decided to visit Cherryburn, birthplace of the artist Thomas Bewick.  An vaguely familiar voice drew me into the little museum workshop.  It was my Headmaster from primary school.  Still teaching, he looked old, but sounded the same.  Still imparting knowledge enthusiastically, engagingly.

I first attended primary school in Stocksfield forty years ago.  The Headmaster was an artist.  His presence in the school was a positive and creative one.  I now realise that my love of art started there.  Then it grew at Prudhoe Secondary School, where art teacher, Birtley Aris, raised aspirations, presented possibilities.  Good teachers are inspiring.  They have power.

I asked my mother and father about their Jarrow schooldays. Once again good teachers came to the fore.

In 1934, aged five, my father, John, started Ellison Church of England School, Jarrow.  It was situated between Ellison Street and Wylam Street.  He recalls the building as impressive. Which it would be when you are five.  He particularly remembers its large windows, made up of many small panes of glass.  Streams of natural light flooded into the classrooms.  The ground floor housed the mixed infant classes.  The first floor accommodated the older children.  It was divided into two sections, girls only and boys only.  With large sliding screens between the two.

Miss Moore taught the infants.  A friendly and jolly lady with a methodical approach to reading and writing.   Skilful.  Thrilling adventure stories were read aloud. Followed with great interest by everyone.  Forefingers no doubt tracing each word.  Paying particular attention to the spelling and punctuation.  Imaginations were fired.

Thrilling adventure stories?   It should be noted that this was the depths of The Depression.  Things were bleak.  Particularly in Jarrow.  Outside the classroom, 200 men were preparing a crusade.  Marching to London, then into the history books.  Seventy years on children are reading about them.

Sometimes the class was taken to some waste ground at the top of Clayton Street.  Here my father recalls listening to a small ginger haired lady standing on a box.  Addressing the crowds about unemployment and such like.  Her name… Ellen Wilkinson.

The rollcall of teachers at Ellison School included Miss Maddock, Miss Thornton, Miss Downie, Miss Willis, Miss Addison, Mr Pycroft, Mr Nicholson, Mr Moore , Mr Farrell and Headmaster Mr Pigg.

During the early war years Ellison School closed for a while.  Partly because there were too many glass windows in the building, rendering it dangerous.  Schooling became patchy. Pupils were sent to other schools.  Most of the children who lived close to the shipyards were evacuated to the country.  At the same time, male teachers were called up for military service…  I wonder how many returned?

St Bede’s Senior Girls School in Pine Street Jarrow, opened in 1928.  More commonly known as Mayfield.  My mother’s memories of Mayfield are all light-hearted.  Recalled with great laughter and warmth.  Cookery lessons, when the icing on her Christmas cake would not set properly.  To the rescue came Miss Dale brandishing a fork.  She flicked the icing vigorously.  Eventually the cake resembled a fluffy white hat.  Then colourful ribbon was wrapped around as a final flourish.  Snatching culinary victory from the jaws of disaster.  Viola!  The best cake in the class!  My mother later became a cook.

Music classes at Mayfield didn’t go as well.  When my mother’s composition came back with the comment RUBBISH SEE ME! she knew that Benjamin Brittan wouldn’t be facing competition.  Mary Mulholland taught drama. In a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream…Well I’ll let you guess the casting.  But it did involve a donkey’s head…and more laughter.

Just recently I was talking to Rose Moad.  She was a pupil at Mayfield ten years earlier.  She remembers the day she left school.  Miss Mulholland gave her a small prayer book as a keepsake. Which she did keep… for years and years.

An old photograph I came across shows the building ready for demolition.  It looked vacuous,  fading fast.  Fortunately good teachers don’t fade. They live on.  In all the pupils whose heads they filled with facts, figures, skills and sometimes… just sometimes… inspiration!  BH.

Taken from ’Write Up School’ (ISBN978-0-9548587-6-X) Arts Advance Press 2006

The sky was heavy and my car wipers were working overtime, it was an indifferent day, just like any wintry afternoon in England.  This seemed very appropriate, since I was driving down Nevinson Avenue and Any Wintry afternoon in England happens to be the title of one of the artist CRW Nevinson’s better known paintings.

I have always been aware the work of Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson.  He was one of the first English painters to show the influence of European art movements such as Cubism and Futurism, although I don’t think his reputation has endured as strongly as his contemporaries.  Never-the-less Nevinson had a fascinating artistic career.

He was the son of the renowned radical investigative journalist Henry Nevinson, who, as foreign correspondent for the Daily Chronicle, was notable for his reporting of the Boar War and his exposé of the appalling slave trade in Portuguese Angola. 

Nevinson’s mother Margaret seemed equally active in promoting social justice. She had a successful career as a teacher before marrying Henry Nevinson.  After marriage she was involved with good works, presumably because it was not appropriate for married women to pursue their careers in those days.  She was elected to serve as a Poor Law Guardian in London, alongside Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. However, in 1907, several women, including Margaret broke away from the influence of the Pankhursts and formed the Women’s Freedom League.

Christopher was born in London in 1889.  Growing up as the son of two such radicals was obviously not always easy. So controversial were the causes of his parents at the time, that the young Christoper remembers being booed by neighbours as he walked down his street!

In 1907 Nevinson went to St John’s Wood School of Art, later transferring to the famous Slade Art School.  It was at the Slade that he met likes of Stanley Spencer and Mark Gertler, now seen as two of the most idiosyncratic enduring names in British painting.  It seems that Nevinson was to spend much of his career in the company of influential thinkers.

Nevinson’s life seems to follow a romantic’s blueprint.  After leaving the Slade, he moved to Paris where he met Pablo Picasso, Claude Derain and Henri Matisse.  He also shared a studio with two Italian artists who were also to set become big names in twentieth century art, Amedeo Modigliani and the Futurist Gino Severini.

Because of the people he was mixing with in the French avant-garde, Nevinson was one of the first English artists to become influenced by the work of The Cubists and the Italian Futurist movement.

The fast and furious Futurist Movement was founded in 1909 to celebrate the force, power and speed of the new mechanised age and to denounce the so-called static art of the past.  Futurist paintings looked much different from anything that had gone before and energetically conveyed a sense of movement through blurring forms and overlapping multiple images, drawing heavily upon the influence of the new art of cinematography.

Nevinson embraced the philosophy of Futurism, so much so that in 1914 he collaborated with the leading theorist of Futurism, the poet Philippo Marinetti on a manifesto for England entitled Vital English Art.

The outbreak of the Great War curtailed his Futurist career and Nevinson, who was a pacifist, volunteered for the Red Cross. He was sent to France to work as a stretcher bearer and later on joined the Royal Army Medical Corps.  However he was invalided out of the Army in 1916 with rheumatic fever. This must have given him a valuable opportunity to continue painting, because later that year he displayed an exhibition of paintings influenced by his experiences in France.

These paintings were brought to the attention of the War Propaganda Bureau.  The bureau had been set up by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George and was headed by Charles Masterman, a fellow Liberal MP and successful author.  It was the task of the bureau to promote Britain’s interests during the war and it utilised the skills of writers and artists to do this.  The bureau was very particular about the information it relayed and very strict, for example only two official photographers were allowed to take pictures at the Western Front, both of them Army Officers, and the penalty for anyone else caught with a camera was the firing squad. 

In 1917 Nevinson was sent to the Western Front where he painted an impressive 60 pictures.  He was not particularly happy in his role as an Official War Artist and not all of his paintings were accepted. Paths of Glory (1917), which graphically depicts two dead soldiers in No Man’s Land, earned him a reprimand from the War Office and was not officially allowed to be seen by the public until after the war had ended.

It is worth noting here, that if you continue along Nevinson Avenue in Whiteleas you will then come onto Galsworthy Road.  An interesting coincidence, as John Galsworthy, famed as the author of the Forsyte Saga, was also recruited by the War Propaganda Bureau as a war writer.

After the war, Nevinson declared himself to be utterly tired of chaos and rejecting Futurnism, turned to a more conventional style of painting. This is where some art critics believe that Nevinson’s work lost the social concern that he demonstrated so graphically in his war art and became more traditional and rather pedestrian.  Yet if you look at his atmospheric depictions of cities like Paris, London and New York, they do have great worth as evocative observations.

So how would CRW Nevinson have portrayed South Shields in a painting? Well Any Wintry Afternoon in England probably gives us a clue.  It’s a rainy afternoon, footballers are playing on some spare land and in the background factory chimneys belch out acrid smoke which billows across the terraced roofs and gas tanks… a passing steam train adds to the clamour.  It’s probably a homogenised image drawn from many different locations, but there is definite sense of life in a typical English town.  

When the Second World War broke out, Nevinson’s vision and skills were once more required when he became an official War Artist for a new conflict, sadly this time his career came to an abrupt end when, in 1942 he suffered a stroke.  Four years later Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson died. 

I wonder how many people who travel down Nevinson Avenue know of his work, or even know who he was?  I suspect that when this estate was built, his reputation looked as strong as his near contemporaries, Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland, who also have streets named after them in Whiteleas.  Maybe if he had continued to make social statements through his work, his career would now be more highly regarded?  But after witnessing the appalling atrocities of war, can we really blame him for retreating into the peaceful world of traditional landscape painting. BH.

Taken from ‘Write Up Your Street’ (ISBN0-9548587-5-1) Arts Advance Press 2005