Text and illustrations by Paul Wood, 2024.
Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall (1769-1825) was described in the polite obituary of Gentleman’s Magazine, as a man ‘universally esteemed for his urbanity, an excellent landlord and kind master’. In an attempt to restore some local colour beyond the national eulogy, our recent articles have revived Fawkes’ activity in anti-slavery, political reform, painting and the patronage of J.M.W. Turner.
To further reveal the Fawkes of Farnley character on home ground, is to remember his particular contribution to natural history through the creation of the project known as ‘Turner’s Birds’. Revealing this ‘Ornithological Collection’ again to the public, was its acquisition by Leeds City Art Gallery in 1985 from Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Horton Fawkes of Farnley Hall.
Celebratory exhibitions were duly held at Leeds City Gallery and the Tate in London in 1988-9. Explanatory catalogues by David Hill of Leeds and Anne Lyles of the Tate were prepared. There is no attempt here to repeat that effort, simply to remind interested observers of the early 19th century context and personal associations of the original Farnley project. For ther rarities recorder or garden birdwatcher, the two century old animal ancestors are a significant back story.
The original five volume natural history albums created for ‘young master Fawkes’ and the Farnly Hall library, incorporated the two volumes of the Ornithological collection, ‘Book of Birds’, which included Turner water colours and Thomas Bewick’s wood engravings. Clear identifications were attempted and corresponding feathers mounted on the facing pages Twenty water colours by Turner, either from life or that of dead specimens, were interleaved with the work of other artists. His paintings were stored in a book of their own after intervention by John Ruskin in 1851.
Whereas our Farnley-Turner topography article of 2019 looked at his viewpoints in the local landscape, we now note the particular species observed in it, and on behalf of his friend’s interests.
Another natural history visitation to Farnley was that of Charles Waterton (1782-1865) of Walton Hall, Wakefield, naturalist, explorer and beneficiary of his families Demerara slave-sugar planations in colonial British Guyana.
Calling also, was artist George Walker (1781-1856) of Killingbeck Hall, Leeds, and author of the book ‘Costumes of Yorkshire’ in 1814. Waterton as trailblazing taxidermist and Walker as renowned sporting gun; Victorian wildlife was in full flight. Hawking and game dog breaking as a feature of ‘Costume’ was joined by Walker’s skill in heroic hunting murals for the gentry halls and houses – including Farnley, Caley and probably Castley. Both inside and out, the squirearchy lived with their daring deeds in pursuit of quarry – such as the boar attacked by hounds, which Walker painted in the drawing rooom of the old wing at Farnley Hall. The Farnley hunting estate’s ‘boar hole’ on Otley Chevin was no romantic fantasy.
As one eighteenth century historian put it, ‘the first impulse of many naturalists on seeing a rare bird was to shoot it’. Here, the collection of avian specimens must be put in the context of the country estate culture of hunting and shooting (see Game Hunting for further details). Depicted upside down and hanging from the captor’s noose were Blackcock, Dipper, Red Grouse and Pheasant. Turner killed a Cuckoo on Farnley Moor, portrayed the shooting of Woodcock on the Chevin and Grouse on local moorland. Wildlife was to be exploited according to custom.
The natural world was pursued in volume for sport, science, amusement or fashion. Beyond the keeper’s gun was the collection of birds eggs, the netting of butterflies and moths, with the plucking of colourful feathers for flounces.
The typical gentleman’s cabinet of curiosities had no better local example that that of ‘eccentric collector’ Francis Billam of Newall Hall, a mile south-west from Farnley, as the unsuspecting Crow flies. Billam’s ‘Bird Room’ of shot and stuffed relics was a well known attraction. His early days of taxidermy were in the regional context of Charles Waterton’s expertise and also connected to George Walker and their organisation of the Exhibitions of the Northern Society for the Encouragment of Fine Arts in Leeds. Fawkes, Waterton, Walker and Billam were celebrating local cultural development, whilst Turner, Bewick and later Ruskin were on a national stage. The workings man’s interest might seek out similar perfection.
Otley oologist, Ike Thomas amassed 438 birds’ eggs from 150 species between 1883 and 1938, the Museum collection being both a wonder of natural diversity and a trophy room horror story, now held under the 1981 Countryside Act. Ike records taking 2 Raven’s eggs from a quarry crevice on Ilkey Moor on 21st March 1885, adding ‘these birds were shot later and were the last breeding pair of Ravens to breed in Wharfedale’.
These relentless avian casualties are confirmed at Pateley Bridge and nearby Raven’s Gill, where the ‘last nesting bird was shot by old Jack Sinclair’, who died in 1898 aged 92.
Thomas, like Turner before him, bagged his own specimen of the West African migrant Cuckoo, not with shotgun shattered carcass, but in the form of stolen parasitic egg layed in a host Meadow Pipit nest on Otley Chevin. On the same hillside at a sand quarry rabbit burrow he took Wheatear eggs and those of the Redstart. From a ledge of a bridge girder at Dob Park he lifted those of a Dipper. From the skeleton of a dog at Farnley a nesting ‘Blue Titmouse’ lost some of its corpus clutch. After yet more, dissonant daylight robbery, Thomas added: ‘pity I found it – it deserved a better fate’. Charles Waterton’s earlier words on ‘Preserving Birds for Cabinets of Natural History’ warns the reader not to shoot the pretty songster warbling near your door ‘or I will regret I ever wrote them’.
The twenty birds that Turner illustrated for the early nineteenth century Farnley project had been the ‘Moor Buzzard’, ‘White Owl’, Jay, Cuckoo, Green Woodpecker, Goldfinch, Robin, Ring Dove, Game Cock, cock and hen Pheasant, Turkey, Peacock, Guinea Fowl, Grouse (two), Partridge, Kingfisher, Heron and Woodcock. Turner’s painting of the head of a Heron, appeared in Vol. 3, with the bird in full flight in other waterside watercolours. The artist’s impression of a dead Kingfisher in 1816, was followed by a later study by Farnley visitor John Ruskin. This was again echoed in 1986, when a conflicted bird crashed into a plate glass window on Bridge Street and was duly recorded.
This twentieth century mounted specimen was prepared by M. Gadd of Wetherby for £55 and might have been matched locally on Otley’s Westgate in the 1830s. Richard Cooper, as brazier, tin-plate worker and manufacturer of brass instruments, had a sideline as ‘animal preserver’.
Other artists brush work depicted Kite, Red Backed Shrike, Nutcracker, Hoopoe, Pied Flycatcher, Nightingale, Blackcock, Watercrake, Bittern, Teal, Wigeon, Ling-tailed Duck and Garganey. If the Red Backed Shrike was said to be common at Farnley at the beginning of the nineteenth century, what other exmples of local distribution could be noted at the end? The Nightingale’s northern territorial boundary was listed at Otley, with nesting habitat below Arthington viaduct. An unfortunate Nutcracker was killed by a keeper at Ilkley on 5th January 1901 and Pied Flycatchers occupied their current nesting haunts in the Washburn Valley.
Classifying nature scientifically, as in the Linnaen system (Linnaeus, 1707-78), was the Farnley objective, through their bird family albums of form, feather and habitat. Multiple local and dialect names sometimes confused the synopsis.
Working towards the same vision, in his Newcastle workshop, was ‘Nature’s engraver’ Thomas Bewick (1753-1828), and his History of British Birds. The Fawkes family corresponded with Bewick between 1809 and 1822 on ornithological opinion, sending specimens for identification. Bewick’s books were in the Farnley Library, just as his imprint arrived at Howarth Parsonage in the time of 12 year old Charlotte Bronte.
Francis, writing to Ayscough Fawkes in 1810 requested that the next time he was in Newcastle, to ask Bewick which haunts he could find specimens of birds including Hobby, Merlin and ‘Great Ash-coloured Shrike’ (Grey). In search of the ‘Grey Linnet’, he had killed numbers ‘and find them all Redpolls’. After its Farnley heydays as the ‘Butcher Bird’, the Red Backed Shrike turned up in Bramhope in 1981, presumably bewildered at its surroundings. Fawkes, keen to get specimens of unusual vagrants like the ‘Woodchat’ (Shrike) and Hoopoe for their feathers on the facing page, was struggling. Bewick, writing to Walter in 1822, appended his list of 41 supplementary woodcouts for his bird study, commented how Fawkes had ‘whetted his curiosity exceedingly by his wide reading’. Among the now widely known names were ‘Little Horned Owl’ (eared), ‘Golden Thrush’ (Oriel) and ‘Pigmy Sandpiper’ (Curlew Sandpiper).
Farnley’s ‘Moor Buzzard’ was the Marsh Harrier which tried to breed again on Denton Moor in 2017, only for the nest to be annihilated by deliberate human intervention. As our Animal Ancestors article has pointed out, the Cuckoo still pursues the Pipit at its ancient dialect ‘Gawk’ Hall Gate on Middleton Moor. Farnley’s ‘Watercrake’ or Dipper remains a famililar sight on local fast running watercourses.
Ornithological ancestry appears from the sublime to the wonderfully ridiculous, as witnessed by our patriotic Kite Flying article. Historic questions persist. What exactly was the raptor or ‘Golden Eagle’ observed by Albert Spence feeding on dead sheep at Weston in 1885? Had the Black Woodpecker noted at Ashfield House in 1897 really been liberated from ‘Lord Lilford’s aviaries in Northamptonshire’? Did the calling Corncrake which hid on what is now St. Mary’s R.C. School sport’s ground at Menston during the 1950s, ever find a mate? Or did the Red List’s offspring succumb to the grim reaper? Will the Airedale Parakeets ever become ‘British’ birds, or forever remain Cat. E. taxonomy as illegal migrants – to be shot at dawn along with their nineteenth century counterparts?
The nineteenth century ‘naturalist’ was not a malicious agent against the animal world, they walked with the moral compass of the day and on a scientific journey which now suggests it might be wrong to persecute Marsh Harriers.
Twenty first century ‘twitching’ continues apace, to a local timeline of 200 years and pioneering individuals like Fawkes and his ‘Farnley Birds’. Follow the animal magic as Corvus corax is alive and ‘kronking’ over Norwood Edge.
Sources
‘Birds of Yorkshire’; 1987, Nelson 2 vols; 1953 Chislter, 1986 Mather.
Hill, D. 1988 ‘Turner’s Birds’ Leeds City Art Gallery; Lyles, A. 1989 ‘Turner and Natural History, the Farnley Project’ Tate Gallery. Waterton, C. 1825 ‘Wanderings in South America’, On Preserving Birds, pp.335-50. Uglow, J. 2006 ‘Nature’s Engraver, a life of Thomas Bewick’. Otley Museum collection, bird egg collection by Ike Thomas 1883-1938 (O/O/be/1). Kingfisher, 1986, Bridge Street, mounted specimen & pencil drawing, P. Wood and C. Dean collection.
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