English Food and Dinners

Murgatrods typical English fish and chips
with the Barrons and Brinkerhoffs




Crumpets



One a penny, two a penny, Hot Cross Buns

Lemon Curd can be spread on toast
and it tastes like the filling to
lemon meringue pie. 

  


 

Large milk carton is 3.408 liters=6 pints

 

Meats at Toby's Carvery

Vegetables

Yorkshire Pudding

Woodside Carvery

 



Sweets at the Woodside Carvery





Sunday dinner at the Barrons
 

 

Sister Brinkerhoff-Wilson-Barron

Elder Brinkerhoff-Wilson-Barron











St. Stephen's Church in Kirkstall

St. Stephen's Church and Cemetery
This is where the Midgley and Raistrick relatives were buried.

 

 

 

Richard Oastler was undisputed leader of the Ten-Hour Movement aimed at improving the conditions of millworkers, and he was a staunch campaigner against the cruelties of the factory system.

The son of a clothing merchant, Oastler was 31 when he was appointed steward to Thomas Thornhill's estate near Huddersfield in 1820. A less likely candidate for a reforming radical it is hard to imagine - he was a dedicated Tory, against parliamentary reform and trades unions, a paternalist who believed the upper classes had a duty to protect the weak.

Still, he felt strongly about the exploitation of children in factories, and a chance meeting with Bradford worsted manufacturer John Wood in 1830 pointed the way forward. "John Wood turned towards me," he wrote later, "and reaching out his hand in the most impressive manner, pressed my hand in his and said: 'I have had no sleep tonight. I have been reading the Bible and in every page I have read my own condemnation. I cannot allow you to leave me without a pledge that you will use all your influence in trying to remove from our factory system the cruelties which are practiced in our mills.'

Richard Oastler is buried in the south east corner
of the St. Stephen's Church

I promised I would do all I could. I felt that we were each of us in the presence of the Highest and I know that that vow was recorded in heaven."

The same month, Oastler wrote on the subject to the Leeds Mercury. Radical MP John Hobhouse read his letter and was prompted to introduce a child labor bill in the Commons which would have banned all factory work for children under nine, and limited those between nine and 18 to 12 hours a day, 66 hours a week.

Unfortunately, Parliament was dissolved before the bill could be passed, and when it was reintroduced in 1831 Hobhouse had agreed to changes: As passed, the bill applied only to cotton factories and there were no provisions for its enforcement.

Oastler and the short-time committees that were now forming in industrial towns were irate. The man they called the Factory King continued the battle as leader of what was now known as the 10-Hour Movement and by 1836 he was urging workers to use strikes and sabotage. This proved his downfall.

His employer, Thornhill, hearing of his speeches, sacked him as his steward and called in unpaid debts. Oastler was unable to pay up and was jailed for debt in December 1840. It took his friends more than three years to raise the cash and release him from the Fleet Prison.

Oastler went straight back to his campaign and achieved some sort of success when the 1847 Factory Act restricted children to a 10-hour day in cotton mills. But it was not until six years after his death in 1861 that the act was widened to encompass children working in all factories.

 

 

SNOW,SNOW,SNOW in March

11 March 2013                  FIRST SNOW

18 March we woke up to more snow!

It snowed all day on 22 March . 

23 March,we woke up to more snow!

 

Luke's Flat Stanley just begged us to build him a snow man!

 

 

Kirkstall Abbey

We took a walk about a half mile from our home to see the historic Kirkstall Abbey. 

It was very impressive to see all the stones delicately placed to build this massive structure.  

 

 

 

 

The history of Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire, begins with its foundation in 1147, when a group of twelve monks from Fountains Abbey, under the guidance of their prior, Alexander, colonised the site at Barnoldswick. In 1152 the community relocated to the present site of Kirkstall, and remained here until the dissolution of the abbey in 1539. The abbey buildings escaped the wholesale destruction and plunder that occurred elsewhere; most were left standing and used for agricultural purposes; this is perhaps why Kirkstall is now the most complete set of Cistercian ruins in Britain. While the abbey is now embedded in the industrial quarter of Leeds and the site bisected by the A65 Kirkstall Road, during the Middle Ages - and up until the late eighteenth century - this was a secluded spot in a rural setting. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the main thoroughfare to Leeds actually ran through the nave of the church.

Kirkstall was founded by Henry de Lacy, baron of Pontefract, who was one of the leading landholders in the North. The abbey’s coat of arms, however, is actually based on those of the Peitivin family, who gave the monks the site at Kirkstall. Like most other Cistercian abbeys in England, the twelfth century was for Kirkstall a time of growth and expansion, when the community developed the abbey precinct and acquired lands and holdings. From the thirteenth century patronage waned and the history of the abbey was marked by highs and lows. The Kirkstall monks, like their Cistercian contemporaries, were embroiled in legal wrangling over their own lands and rights, they were caught up in business relating to the state and the Order, and were affected by social and economic problems that swept the country such as the Black Death, wars and taxation. Nevertheless, the monks made a significant contribution in the areas of trade, industry and technological innovation.



 

 

Sharilyn trying out the stone coffin.

It was very cold and uncomfortable.

 

Model of Kirkstall Abbey

Model of Kirkstall Abbey from the top

River Aire runs south of the Abbey