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Volunteers and The Lumleys

TPP — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:41:15 +0000

Arthur COATES, born 27 Jun 1904 in Willington Co. Durham, died 21 Oct 1969 in Willington. He married Cora Lina LONGSTAFF, married 1925 in Durham District, born 1902 in Co. Durham, died 10 Aug 1981. They had 12 or so children, the eldest my father. Arthur and both oldest boys were coal miners, but that is only part of this story.

Arthur’s parents were George William COATES, born cir 1881 in possibly Crook, died ?. and Margaret Hannah LUMLEY. They were married 1901 in Lanchester District. Margaret was born 1883 in Darlington.

Margaret’s parents were Christopher LUMLEY, born cir 1845 in Burnley Lancashire, died ?, occupation carpenter. He married Ellen MOSES, on 27 Dec 1864 at St. John’s in Darlington. The 1871 census has them in Seaham Harbour, Durham, and the 1891 Census at 22, Chapel Street Darlington, and the 1901 Census at 49, Durham Road, Esh.

Ellen and Christopher’s Children:

i Eliza LUMLEY, born cir 1866 in Seaham Harbour, Durham, died ?.

ii Mary LUMLEY, born cir 1867 in Stockton Durham, died ?.

iii John LUMLEY, born cir 1869 in Stockton, Durham, died ?.

iv Frances Ellen LUMLEY, born cir 1872 in Seaham Harbour, Durham, died ?.

v James Christopher LUMLEY, born cir 1874 in Seaham Harbour, died ?.

vi Thomas LUMLEY, born cir 1878 in Darlington Durham, died ?.

vii Louisa LUMLEY, born cir 1881 in Darlington Durham, died ?.

viii Margaret Hannah LUMLEY, born 1883 in Darlington Durham, died ?. (She married George William COATES, married 1901 in Lanchester District.)

ix Robert LUMLEY, born cir 1885 in Darlington Durham, died ?.

The barely readable Census listings for Christopher and Ellen Lumley’s family has them living in Frances Street while they were in Seaham Harbour. According to baby Eliza’s date of birth, they were there from at least 1866 to 1874, so possibly a mere 8 years, maybe a year or so either side, but probably not earlier than 1864 or later than 1878. During this time, Seaham Harbour was at the beginning of its own industrial revolution. However:

The decade from 1871 to 1881 was one of almost continuous disaster for the ordinary people of Greater Seaham. It seems that no sooner was one tragedy over than another began. The Seaham Colliery explosion of Wednesday October 25 1871 occurred at 11.30 pm, otherwise the death-toll of 26 would have been much higher – by now the pit was employing 1100 men and boys. The shock was felt at Seaham Harbour. John Clark, aged 9, sitting on the surface in a cabin near the pit shaft, was blown 10 yards by the explosion. The force of the blast was such that many ponies were killed in their underground stables 1.5 miles away from the epicentre.

And:

A terrible storm occurred on December 17 1872. Newspapers of the time reported that six Seaham-based ships were lost with all hands but unfortunately they gave no names. It may be that dozens of Seaham men went to a watery grave but there is no record of who they were. The sea had not finished yet. On Tuesday June 26 1873 a dreadful boat accident took the lives of five men within hailing distance of the end of the pier…….

Both of those extracts are from one of the pages at Durham Records Online, a magnificent resource, thank you. It’s quite possible that by the mid 1870s the Lumleys had seen enough of all this tragedy. [Look who else was living in Frances Street around the same time? A Judson master mariner.]

Frances Street is named after Frances Anne Vane Tempest, who was married to the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry and recovered her wealth and her Seaham estate after ‘the old tyrant’ her husband died in 1854. Benjamin Disraeli visited her at Seaham Hall in 1861. He wrote:

…on the shores of the German Ocean, surrounded by her collieries and her blast furnaces and her railroads and the unceasing telegraphs, with a port hewn out of the solid rock, screw steamers and four thousand pitmen under her control…she has a regular office…and here she transacts, with innumerable agents, immense business – and I remember her five-and-twenty years ago a mere fine lady; nay, the finest in London! But one must find excitement if one has brains.

Frances Anne died on January 20 1865, well within the time that the Lumleys were in Seaham. Maybe baby Frances Ellen Lumley, born in 1872 in Frances Street was named after this major celebrity of the day, everyone’s paymaster.

So. One of my big projects of 2009 has been St John’s Square and its redevelopment. The Volunteer Arms (in the photograph above) is the only building that remains of Frances Street, the rest having been knocked down to make the library, bus station, Magistrate’s Court, Health Centre in the 1960s, all of which is now being demolished and rebuilt. There are some inspection contacts: the work has mostly been in 35mm. These night photographs taken in the snow are taken from what would have been the top of Frances Street.

And the Volunteer Arms’ gable end, the line of Frances Street:

The teens posed for the camera. Great spot for skateboarding, bmx-ing, rollerblading.

Of course, until today I didn’t know that I’d been standing in what once was the street where my great-great grandparents lived.

And on a completely different note, a Reading newspaper reports a photographer given an ASBO for photographing graffiti.

More St John’s Square from the contact sheets, and a new set in MF when this amazing weather clears and we get back to the diffused northern light we all know and love.

Please do let me know if you think you’re connected to any of these Coates/Lumley/Moses/Longstaff people. The full tree is on the internet somewhere. Or if you know any more about Frances Street and goings on around there in the 1860-70s. We’ll meet for a pint in the Volunteer’s Arms if you do.

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On Blizzards

TPP — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 05:28:21 +0000

Earlier:

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Gerlingen – Some Work in Progress

TPP — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:23:17 +0000

This summer, Seaham Town Council took a contingent including 5 artists, to Gerlingen, a pretty little town just south of Stuttgart. Several of us took work, including a batch of 2D artwork from the East Durham Artist’s Network. I took these as a set of little prints, each mounted in a sandwich of heavyweight board. We had a show while we were there, at the town’s magnificent Strassenfest, and there are plans afoot to mount an exhibition at the town’s Rathaus. More when it happens.

Some of my favourite photographs were taken on the journey – the autobahn, the ferries, and they’ll be posted at some point. Bit of an editing job, and non-essential when things are so busy. The work for my next solo show include the photographs above, mounted small, and a new series of strassen photos. They are of the literal street: paths, roadways, routes. Here’s a taster:

Hope you like them.

A venue hunt is about to begin, although the launch will be at Number Seven, and the lovely EDAN people have offered me a solo show in the Courtyard. Big scanning job to do, and a decision to make about how to mount them. Any suggestions gratefully welcomed.Similar Posts:

Hidden Hendon at Raich Carter

TPP — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:25:54 +0000

Scrambling the north-east’s hidden beaches and forlorn concrete commercial sites at midnight may not be for everyone, but some of Andy Martin’s photos were apparently found on the internet, and fast forward some months, there’s a small gallery of maybe 8 of them, hung with an emphatic lack of pretension or ceremony, in a sunny corridor in the local sports centre.

Bulldog clips. We’ve written about them before. Marvelous things.

The pictures themselves are really worth seeing: poster size prints on soft museum rag style paper, of milky long-exposure seas and blue hour skies enclosing the crumbling debris of the once-prosperous commercial heart of a changed city. This one, or one like it, with less colour, was a favourite:

They look to be Holgas or Dianas, with that heavy vignette, although many of them are also made with a V Series Blad, some are polaroids, and lots are transparency film. Andy is young, and seems happily bemused by this success – film is coming back, as Graham Lowe (and I) keep saying. And showing a sample of your work in the huge new sports centre, with a footfall most galleries would die for, is inspired, too. People will see it, the people who play 5-a-side footy, the fitness fanatics and the swimmers. Great.

The hardworking people at Back on The Map seem to have had an outburst of cultural flowering and have employed a couple of wideawake new resident consultant/artists to create a better buzz around the place. In an initial chat, I misinterpreted what was being said and made some comment about finding a local photographer on the beach, and for that I unreservedly apologise. Working in the area, and with all sorts of complex bureacracies, must present considerable difficulties.

Hendon is the strip of Sunderland from Ryhope Road eastwards, towards and including the beach, with gasometers, bits of dock, the occasional battered Victorian manufactory, the once-familiar lone pub stranded in a blitzed acre of rubble. It’s had a raw deal in recent years. In the 60s and 70s, Commercial Road carved its slice through from the docks to Vilette Road, housing all the country’s mail order catalogue employers. Janet Fraser, Littlewoods – every order from each big fat book that thudded onto pre-internet doormats throughout the land was filled by the women of Hendon.

Now a second, brand new ‘link’ road joins this empty stripe of commercial dereliction, this and the railway line creating great linear swathes of nothing at all but the occasional lost car zipping between snug blocks of trim terrace and sturdy brick semis, and the sea. Even the Raich Carter Centre faces away from the people of Hendon, the nouveau flatpack architecture turning its back on them all.

It’s a road built from an urban planning model so outdated, so void of humanity, that credit crunch or no credit crunch, its rubble-strewn verges will stay potential and empty for many years to come. Footballing hero Carter also has a road named after him in Hull. Who knew?

As well as this lovely wee exhibition, there’s also a Hendon history talk with old photos collected from people living and working in the area, on Thursday 24th September at the Holy Trinity Church from 6.30. Map below, so you have no excuse. Go and support these lovely people.

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Caravans

TPP — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 08:43:29 +0000

These caravan parks, draped like UPVC necklaces all along the coast, will be humming by now. Schools have finally broken up for the summer. No lollipop wardens on our streets, stranger than normal daytime TV, fewer cars on the road. There must be other benefits, but I can’t think of any.

These were taken back in December, when sublime peace reigned supreme. It is easy to see the appeal. The views over a damp north sea are extraordinary.

In process of renewing a love affair with this 6×6 camera. More to come, including a visit to some soon-to-be-gone local architecture and the refurbished Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee.Similar Posts:

There’s No Place Like Home

TPP — Sun, 03 May 2009 09:54:30 +0000

Yesterday’s response from Michael Ormerod’s daughter on the competition winners we’ve featured here reminded me to post my 2008 entry. Click though to see a slide show.

Interesting visual serendipidy with the psychogeography post.

I like these photos. Maybe that’s the trick: to revisit your negatives in 12 months’ time. For the gadgetheads amongst you – it’s an elderly V series with turret finder, difficult to focus and helps you to take your time, which is always good. And it’ll be some expired Kodak colour neg, the yellow boxed stuff. Digitalab’s special discount £1 a roll days, probably. Cut price competition entering, then.Similar Posts:

Dig Where You Are

TPP — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:53:48 +0000

A long time ago, Myra Connell wrote a short story about a woman sitting in a railway carriage imagining the lives of those around her and dreaming thoughts of turf and territory, of land and home, as the wheels sped through the countryside.

Of late there’s been a bit of a buzz about psychogeography. To some extent, all the very best of the modern wave of landscape photographers are telling their life stories, their autobiographies. Not the pretty picture landscapes, not the sunscapes or the stunning mountain views. Although perhaps them too, yes.

One wet day this winter last, in an attempt to find some of the houses where I used to live, a sudden storm blew gusty rain into my eyes and this piece was found, later.

As a representation of the house, of a certain style of suburban architecture, Google Street View surely does it better. But this day, this night, photographing on that corner, in that rain, is personal. This corner once looked upon, looked into my personal space, where I slept.

This is where I first heard that Diana had died, where one night I fell and knocked myself out cold on the staircase, where my son hit an emotional and traumatic high. Things happened. Big things, life changing. Irrevocably, unalterably, nothing would be the same. It was a house of the cusp, of the tipping point.

This one isn’t my house. I never lived here. It’s in Scotswood in Newcastle, where the council has torn down street after street of graceful Victorian terraces because it didn’t like their inhabitants.

I once lived in house like it, though. And its destruction is a better metaphor for digging where we all were then, than the other neat double-fronted with its grassy verge. One theory was that if you had a patch of grass between the pavement and the road in your street, then you’d really made it. Scotswood has all grass and all pavement now, and bright sunny days filled with emptiness. Nobody made it.

This is the first in an occasional series where I’ll dig where I am. It might be rooted in the now, or in place far off in time, or in geography. Like Myra’s train journey, we are not dependent upon a sense of place, but place might define who we are in some way, tangible and intangible.

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Gherkinesque

TPP — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 14:10:12 +0000

Mobile Blogging from here. whilst listening to Santiago Genochio attempt to argue that all reality is his own and other fluent matters. One can admire his overall tenacity.

You could probably Google him. He’s not wearing his tail today.

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Here’s the Road, Jack

TPP — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:35:54 +0000

Doesn’t make me think of the lonely, disgruntled and meagre Kerouac, more the laconic charm of Ray Charles. Hit it, Raymondo!

The psychogeography of the pictures we make tell a hundred stories, some more obvious than others. After seeing these, one observant commentator noted ‘he’s stopped doing the doors’.

And then there’s Aaron Guy, with this road picture, one emblematic of his story of the truncated life and times of Ashington’s open cast mining workers. Or is it something else? It’s speaking to a lot of us right now.

Like most photographers, Aaron doesn’t like being photographed, so he had to be persuaded to look at the camera. He’s in Brighton right now, at a Magnum workshop, which explains the tension in his face as he tries to explain exactly what was making him anxious about his week to come. More on that asap.

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Murray Martin Film and Retrospective

TPP — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 09:17:33 +0000

If you missed yesterday’s fascinating tribute to Murray Martin at the Side Cinema and Gallery, the last film he made is currently being completed by Ellin Hare, his wife and lifelong collaborator. The clip above is from Shooting Magpies, made in 2005.

Pursuit of Happiness is full of clips that anyone who knows the north east will recognise as scenes once familiar, but now long gone. Gathering seacoal, racing gigs at Appleby, familiar and not forgotten. The launch of ships from the Walker shipyards and from the Wear were magnificent sights: the whole community would gather on the riverbanks to see the result of many months of gruelling labour, and Amber was there.

The ITV documentary Captured in Amber about the collective and its work is being repeated on Thursday 4th September at 11pm. Set your video contraptions, alarm clocks, stopwatches for that.

And this post is in part to remind Graeme Rigby and me to get in touch with each other, and so we will!

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