Greetings all
So, I received a pair of emails recently, and both of them answered an outstanding question that has been bugging me for some time.
Answers people, we actually have answers! I asked, you listened, and by Great Zeus (or Arnomecta, perhaps) you answered.
So, drum roll please…
THE STONE IN ST JAMES’S CHURCHYARD, WHITFIELD.
I mused here on the possibility that a large, out of place, stone in the churchyard St James’s, Whitfield, might be part of the base of the Hollin Cross that almost certainly stood at the junction there, on Hollincross Lane.
I was wrong. And how!
I got an email from Louise Seville which states:
“My father-in-law Neal Seville had some connection with the church (Sunday school??), I think in the 1970s. He was giving a talk based on the parable of the wise man and the foolish man. He and his friend Bert Taylor from Chunal, brought the stone from Bert’s own small quarry at the back of his house on Chunal. The stone was moved on a truck – Bert had a haulage company. The stone was used in church to illustrate the story and was abandoned in the churchyard afterwards as it proved to be too difficult to move. Neal said that in the future people would wonder how the stone got there and come to all sorts of conclusions! “
And how right he was!
So there we have it folks. I genuinely think that it was bonkers to use a stone that size to illustrate the parable, no matter how factually correct! But apparently that was about right for Neal, who got up to all sorts of capers. Here is the parable, for those of you that slept through Sunday School.
So my thanks to Louise and Eddie Seville for solving the mystery. And, of course, thanks to the late Neal Seville for providing one in the first place.
Now, the next one has bugged me for years, so I am truly grateful for its solution.
THE ODDLY SHAPED CERAMIC OBJECTS
I asked for ideas about these bits of pottery that Sandra T. and I had found. They were so oddly shaped, and so similar in production, that they must have had a single, very specialised, purpose. But what purpose, that was the question.
Well, bam! An email from the wonderful Eddie Picton arrived in my inbox the other day.
May I suggest that they are “creel peg pivots” as used in textile machinery. A roving bobbin had sliver wound on it, this was then put upon a creel peg and then put in following machine creel. The lower end then would be free to rotate on the ceramic with minimal friction. I worked in the last spinning mill in Oldham, the last of this type of creel was scrapped in the early 1990s, the mill finally closing 2002.
The connection between the object and the place – both connected with weaving and spinning – made this very likely, and it is not an interpretation I had thought of before. I did a bit of research, and began to understand how they would have worked. Yes, it seemed to fit.
Last night, Eddie was at the Glossop and Longdendale Archaeological Society talk on ‘Melandra – Past and Future’ given by Mike Brown and Roger Hargreaves (and very good it was too). He gave me this drawing of how the creel peg pivot would have worked and where it sat in the machine.
Our pottery pieces are those marked ‘Pot’ in the picture, with the bobbin/creel peg sitting in the hollow, glazed, part of the mystery object. They are tapered slightly so that they can fit into the holes in the frame.
So that’s that solved! Thanks for that, Eddie, you’re a star. And it seems I owe you a drink… I’m as good as my word. See you on the first Tuesday of November.
I have another blog almost ready to go, so fingers crossed you’ll get a bumper crop of posts by the weekend.
As always, comments and questions are very welcome.
RH
The Glossop Cabinet of Curiosities 