A New Life For Old Friends
New Shell Guides by the Secretary of Heritage Shell Guides Trust
After Shell withdrew their sponsorship of the County Guides in 1984 many regretted their passing. Like an old friend the authors of Cornwall, Sussex, North Wales and others seemed to accompany us when exploring whether on foot, by car or bike. That personal introduction into their highways and byways, describing and illustrating the landscape history and architecture, was the ideal companion to a voyage of discovery.
I was asked by John Piper to write South and West Yorkshire after being introduced by Henry Thorold. In proposing this volume, it was likely that neither the editors at Faber nor John Piper knew the huge extent of Yorkshire as a county. Pevsner Guides, only recently completed, may have told another story. I had the privilege of exploring two populous Metropolitan Counties - not previously described as a whole - undergoing vast change with the eclipse of coal, wool and iron marking. John Piper said we should look at the counties as twins with the subtitle “Wool and Steel”. He was keen in his democratic way to look at places not so middle class as Gloucester and Surrey. His guidance sessions over supper at Fawley Bottom with Myfanwy were memorable. A tall aesthetic man, he much favoured the underdog whom you may have mistaken for a banker at first glance. His preoccupations however were the common man and an appreciation of art and history. He almost clapped his hands with delight on hearing that the fine Peacock Inn at Rowsley was being patronised by miners. We debated keeping the old West Riding which he wanted to live on, although the counties were much altered. He agreed that we should go with the new metropolitan designations, but no one appreciated the vast extent of Yorkshire. This had previously been proposed for a whole volume. John sent me the work of my predecessors which should have warned me – some entries showed a kind of despair “…not much here…”, and little appreciation of industrial archaeology. It took far longer to find my way with OS maps and local guides (and Arthur Mee) than was reasonable. Thus, it was that when Shell withdrew sponsorship I had not completed the task. Shell paid me off and that might have been that.
A long-time friend of the Guides, Peter Burton, took many of the iconic photos for the old series - he and I explored much of S & W Yorkshire together, (on one occasion we were locked into the proposed West Yorkshire Police College whilst looking for photo locations; at Wentworth Woodhouse we appeared at Rotherham Council’s invitation to take photos on the very day the freeholder’s builders separated Whistlejacket et al from the walls and took them away) . It had long been Peter’s ambition to write a Shell Guide to North Yorkshire, his own county, which he knew well, and with the assistance of a Millennium grant he achieved this in 20030. Other keen followers of the Guides proposed combining to publish the many counties left behind, from Lancashire to Somerset and Yorkshire to Suffolk. The latter much pressed for by Norman Scarfe who had written an earlier distinguished edition. So, we set about creating a not-for-profit trust to achieve this. The view of Shell was explored via their archive department and an introduction to the legal department achieved via their good offices. It was agreed that so long as we did not claim any assistance from Shell, we would be free to publish as Heritage Shell Guides provided, we used a prescribed disclaimer for Shell in the books. Shell people came over Waterloo Bridge to Lincoln’s Inn where a celebration tea was held in the Bar Common Room!
The new Trust set about publishing its first book, West Yorkshire which, experience showed had to be separated from South Yorkshire, so voluminous had it become. Our chairman Stephen Platten achieved much of the fundraising and introduced us to the publisher Canterbury Press. Thus, the first Trust volume came into being and received good national and Yorkshire notices. Some said however that by 2012 the Piper model which we had striven to retain looked somewhat old fashioned. This was taken seriously since many making these comments were known for their own antiquarian tendencies! Our plan was to go forward with East Yorkshire and York, Cumbria, Cheshire, Somerset, Derbyshire and Suffolk, the latter two being renewals (much of Henry Thorold’s Derbyshire was lost in a warehouse fire). Despite John Betjeman looking forward to the Guides having colour photos* many regarded this possibility as retrograde for a monochrome flagship. It is interesting to reflect that John Piper himself was a staunch supporter of monochrome even as print numbers slipped away, and sales failed in the 1970s for want of conversion to the new idiom. John ‘s famous painting style involved making pared-back pen sketches of buildings depicting what he saw as their principal features augmented by unexpected colour: by this he imported significant and startling emotion. He was fluent in colour composition reading not only their narrow chords, (perhaps only to depart from them), but also the wider periphery of vision e.g., his Coventry Cathedral window. He made very many stained glass windows for churches and institutions throughout the country, indeed I was privileged to be shown the stained-glass scheme for Churchill College Cambridge in his workshop at Fawley Bottom. So it is distinctly odd that, in would be opposition to Betjeman, and with his fluency in colour that he was against the fine colour photography we are able to publish today.
In the new series we are using some monochrome where it may be adjudged best for architecture, but more importantly we now have a graphic designer and e a coordinated plan for base colour, colour modulation and maps which we hope will be found satisfying and attractive.
The Trust is grateful to donors, as ever, and we hope that our efforts to modernise will be to their and your liking and look forward to your becoming one of our new friends! Like the National Trust we are including an option to donate to publications if you wish to.
William Glossop
Secretary HSGT