In the run up to this year’s Remembrance Day, almost 40,000 knitted poppies have appeared around Harrogate and Ripon.
Between 25,000 and 30,000 poppies can be seen at prime locations throughout Ripon, after people involved in the Ripon Community Poppy Project spent thousands of hours making the stunning displays.
Many of the poppies were put in place over the weekend. The cascading display on the walls of the town hall (below), was installed with help from a Ripon fire station crew.
The ones seen in Harrogate town centre were donated to the Poppy Appeal campaign last year.
They were put up this morning by a small socially distanced group including Harrogate Mayor Cllr Stuart Martin.
Fiona Burks, of independent business Yarn Etc helped to coordinate the effort, and will be offering poppies to businesses for their window displays.
Cllr Stuart Martin said:
“The comments we’ve had since putting them up this morning are just tremendous. People are so pleased that we’re making an effort for Remembrance Day and you can’t help but smile when you see them.”
Cllr Martin is encouraging people to commemorate Remembrance Day on November 11 by observing two minutes of silence from their doorstep, and placing poppies in windows.
Cascading display down Ripon’s town hall.
The entrance to Spa Gardens.
Volunteers in Ripon fitting the knitted poppies to the railings along Kirkgate.
Along the shopping street of Kirkgate.
Spa Park. Credit: Cllr Stuart Martin
Along the railings outside the Wakeman’s House.
Ripon bus station. Credit: Cllr Stuart Martin
Across from Harrogate war memorial. Credit: Cllr Stuart Martin
Along the railings outside of Bettys cafe in Harrogate. Credit: Cllr Stuart Martin
On the corner of Cambridge Street, Harrogate. Credit: Cllr Stuart Martin.
Harrogate Town supporters have raised concerns about the number of people allowed in the club’s home ground on Saturday to watch the team play.
With spectators banned from attending matches due to covid, many fans paid £10 to watch a livestream of the game against Barrow.
Town won 1-0 and many fans in the Harrogate Town Supporters Facebook group hailed the team’s performance at the EnviroVent Stadium.
But 15 fans posted comments in the group about what they considered to be an excessive amount of people in the stands.
Although fans are not permitted to attend fixtures, club directors and staff, media and match volunteers, such as ballboys and girls, are allowed in.
One fan said it “was an absolute joke the amount of people in the ground today”.
Another said it was “not fair on the fans” and one described it as a “kick in the teeth”.
Harrogate Town declined to comment when approached by the Stray Ferret.
The club has won a lot of praise recently for its off the pitch initiatives as well as its performances on the pitch.
Earlier this month, club chairman Irving Weaver told the Stray Ferret it was a “big loss” not having supporters in attendance during the club’s first-ever season in the English Football League.
Do you think there were too many people at Wetherby Road on Saturday? Watch the highlights below and judge for yourself.
Art event will raise money for Harrogate hospital charityLocal artist Jos Haigh will sell her work at a preview event to raise money for Harrogate Hospital & Community Charity.
The event, at the Cedar Court Hotel in Harrogate on November 27, will showcase Ms Haigh’s vibrant wildlife art while also generating funds for the charity.
One hundred percent of the sale prices will go to the charity, which funds specialist equipment, training and services at Harrogate District Hospital outside what the NHS provides.
The charity recently funded colouring and art materials for patients at the hospital during the pandemic.
People who attend the preview event will have the opportunity to meet Ms Haigh, who lives in Harrogate and exhibits all over the country, as well as enjoy mince pies and mulled wine.
Christmas gifts and the charity’s newly launched 2021 calendar will also be on sale.
Ms Haigh told the Stray Ferret her works of art had been in a gallery in York for three weeks but lockdown had restricted viewings so she decided to donate them to the charity. She added:
“I chose to donate these paintings after the extremely tough year HDFT has had dealing with a global pandemic as well as the usual challenges that healthcare brings.
“I wanted to say a rainbow thank you to my local NHS trust for all it has done and continues to do.”
Sammy Lambert, business development, charity and volunteer manager at HHCC, said:
“We are so grateful for this incredible donation of paintings from Jos. They are beautiful and will brighten up people’s homes, even more so in the knowledge that they are supporting their local NHS.”
The preview evening is free to attend but tickets must but pre-booked. To get one, email hdft.hhcc@nhs.net.
If you can’t make the evening, Ms Haigh’s paintings are available to view and purchase here.
Harrogate International Festivals cuts more than half of jobs
Harrogate International Festivals has laid off more than half of its staff after missing out on an estimated £850,000 due to covid.
The arts charity, which was set up in 1966, now has just four staff remaining.
in a statement today, it warned of “further difficult decisions ahead”.
The charity was forced to cancel its entire summer season of events in March, causing a huge loss of income from ticket sales and sponsors.
Fiona Movley, the chair of HIF, said:
“Whilst we are often recognised as an extremely resilient organisation, agile and adaptable for over 50 years, times are still extremely challenging and HIF unfortunately did not qualify for the recent emergency Arts Council England grants that have been reported in the media.”
Harrogate Theatre received £250,000 from Arts Council England. Also, £238,590 was awarded to Deer Shed Festival near Topcliffe, £117,500 to Ripon Museum Trust and £54,339 to Ripon Amateur Operatic Society.
HIF has said it will need to raise funds to “secure its future”, having used its reserves to support individuals and the creative community.
Sharon Canavar, chief executive at HIF, said:
Covid-safe Halloween trail begins this week in Harrogate“We are more than a series of events; we are at the heart of Harrogate’s cultural life and have been a magnet and income generator for local tourism for more than 50 years.
“If we are to survive we urgently ask for your continued support and appreciation of Harrogate International Festivals and its crucial role in our town’s cultural, economic and social future.”
Families in Harrogate can take part in a new town centre Halloween trail, thanks to Harrogate Mumbler and the Harrogate Business Improvement District.
The aim of the trail is to find Halloween images in the windows of 10 Harrogate shops.
Once the trail is complete, children can collect a Halloween treat.
The initiative will run from Thursday until October 31.
Parents group Harrogate Mumbler and the Harrogate Business Improvement District hope this alternative to trick or treating will entertain children during half-term and encourage families to support the town centre.
All resources, including easy, medium and hard sets of clues and answer sheets, can be found on the Mumbler website here.
Harrogate Mumbler founder Sally Haslewood said:
“As a mum of two, I know how difficult it can be to shop with young children, yet there has never been a bigger need to support our town centre retailers.
“My hope is that this Halloween trail makes a trip to town much more fun for young families, provides a completely free activity for families during half term and brings some much-needed footfall to our town centre.”
To ensure the trail is covid safe, those taking part are asked to do so in small groups or within households or support bubble. All displays are visible from outside so there is no obligation to enter any shops.
Harrogate BID acting chair Sara Ferguson said:
‘Dangerous’ highchair recalled two years late, says Bilton grandma“The trail will allow them to fully explore Harrogate town centre, taking them down streets and into shops they may not have visited before. And once they see just what the town has to offer, I’m sure they will return time and time again.”
A grandmother from Bilton has raised concerns after the “dangerous” highchair she returned to Argos two years ago has only just been recalled.
Liz Carnell bought the Cuggl Plum Deluxe highchair from Argos in Sainsbury’s on Wetherby Road, Harrogate, in July 2018.
One day when her grand-daughter was sitting in the chair, the back of it collapsed. Liz said:
“One Sunday lunchtime the baby was in the highchair when there was a loud ping and a spring shot across the floor as the back of the chair collapsed. If she had been on her own, she would have fallen out.”
The grandmother has accused the retailer of being aware of the danger for nearly two years but failing to act. She returned it in January 2019 to the Harrogate store and was assured a hazard form would be filled out.
She received another chair from the same range, the Little Sheep model, in exchange.
These three models have been recalled from Argos after testing showed they “could fail”.
Not only has that model now been recalled, but the one which Liz reported to be dangerous two years ago has only just been recalled as well.
Argos recalled three Cuggl models – Plum, Little Sheep and Pumpkin Deluxe – last month, saying “in some cases the back of the highchair could fail, resulting in a child falling from the highchair.”
Liz added:
“I’d like to know why Argos didn’t act on this problem much sooner and what happened to the hazard form I was told would be completed?
“I was lucky that as the original buyer of the highchair I received the recall notice, but there may be many families out there who bought them second hand who won’t know of the danger.”
Argos said it received a small number of reports regarding the design of the back of the product but only within the 2020 batch of chairs. The design was the same as the one purchased by Liz in 2018 so it was recalled as well.
A spokesperson for Argos said:
Number of positive covid cases in Harrogate district rises by 55“The safety of our products is our highest priority and we have processes in place to ensure any issues with an item are immediately investigated. Unfortunately in this case our product safety team has no record of this customer’s experience and we are looking into this.”
The number of positive covid cases in the district has risen by 55 in the past 24 hours. The district has recorded 253 positive cases in the past week.
Whilst other parts of England moved to higher restrictions over the weekend, Harrogate remains in the lowest category of the government’s three-tier local lockdown system.
It brings the total number of cases since the pandemic began to 1,692. Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the House of Commons this week the government would consider a district-by-district approach to its tier system.
Meanwhile, Dr Lincoln Sargeant, director of public health for North Yorkshire, said the main cause of spread of coronavirus in the county was between households.
He said he supported the new tier system as it would help to tackle the spread in the county.
StrayArt is a monthly column written by Johnny Messum, Director and Founder of art gallery and centre, Messum’s Wiltshire, London and Harrogate. Johnny’s passion is for contemporary art and sculpture.
Each month he will look at art, exhibitions and events across Yorkshire and sometimes further afield with the aim of guiding and inspiring us.
It is a challenge to feel clear about the immediate future. We have new structures to adhere to, I have visors supplied for my team in the car, along with the NHS track and trace QR code to go in the window.
What should have been alongside me instead, was the formidable British sculptor, Bridget McCrum, whose family, the Bains, hail from Leeds. Now in her late eighties she was planning to come to the opening of her show in James Street.
Along the way I had imagined us discussing sculpture in the landscape, something that is taking on added dimensions, not least because it is one of the few places where we can safely view art without PPE, but also because it is, in itself, interesting and complex.
Amongst the myriad attractions of Yorkshire, the landscape has to rank amongst the highest. It is a daunting partner to duet with as a sculptor. There is nowhere this subject is more comprehensively demonstrated than at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where I went to see the work of a friend, Sean Henry, and of an artist I am showing in London, Jorgen Haugen Sorensen.
Set into the landscape there, each work takes its cue from the ground around it. I sometimes think that of all the artists, perhaps only local boy, Henry Moore, had the swagger to meet the rolling landscape toe to toe, so to speak. His work stands resolutely chest open to the wind and wilds.
A stunning life-size sculpture ‘Seated Figure’ by Sean Henry at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Above picture and featured image credit: Jonty Wilde curtesy of YSP.
The rule of thumb in placing sculpture in the landscape is one of scale and context. Seldom best placed in wide open spaces, they often prefer the same locations humans do, close to the house, in glades between shrubs or woodland corpses. This is seen well in the locations chosen in the Himalayan Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grewelthorpe, near Ripon, which is open to the public until November 1, 2020.
Utopia: A stunning vista of the Himalayan Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grewelthorpe.
Sculptures placed outside really come into their own in the autumn. They become the key focus until the verdant spring surges forward once more. It is the perfect time to head into the open air as the greenery falls away and the landscape itself becomes more architectural.
Do be careful though with the choice of materials; the weather does not spare sculptures any more than other objects, so stones need to be wrapped if it gets cold and on a hot afternoon rub beeswax into the exposed bronzes. Perhaps the artist who most willingly accepted the ravages of time is Cheshire-born artist, Andy Goldsworthy, whose work picks up and changes with the rhythms of the seasons.
Next time I shall be bringing the boat to harbour so to speak and talking about living with art in the house – combining old and new objects and thinking about ways of displaying artworks to their best advantage.
Messum’s Yorkshire is open from Thursday to Saturday 10am-5pm. For more information, visit the website by clicking here.
Strayside Sunday: “Levelling Up” means acting now to help the NorthStrayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party.
Try as I might, my rudimentary internet research skills have not yet uncovered the criteria for Harrogate currently residing in Covid-19 Medium Tier Alert. With some application I can discern the do’s and don’ts of the category: 10pm curfew, the Rule of 6, non-attendance at the monthly swingers club, that sort of thing. It’s just that, for the life of me, I can’t uncover the triggers that would mean Harrogate might be promoted to High Alert, alongside near neighbours Leeds, or even catapulted into Very High Alert, there to rub shoulders with Liverpool.
I think the alert level might be something to do with the R-rate, the number of positive Covid-19 tests, the size of the city or town’s student population, relative levels of social deprivation, areas of health inequality, the proportion of people over the age of 60, ethnicity and pre-existing and underlying health conditions. No one is able to say for sure. In fact the alert level decision is of course about all of these things and more. Myriad factors discussed and negotiated between a national government (the authority of which has lost its wax and found its wane) and local government leaders, in full voice, newly ‘bold as Beauchamp.’ Or, should I say, given I write this in Yorkshire about the North’s crop of elected Mayors, ‘bold as brass.’
What’s going on? The Conservative government is, of course, in a terrible stew. The decisions it faces hour-by-hour must balance the ongoing threat to our health with further damage to our already grievously wounded economy. It is making life or death decisions, affecting health or wealth, in real-time, with only instinct and imperfect information as a guide. But, as the number of clangers, screeching hand-break turns and misfires mounts up, even those, like me, sympathetically minded toward the government, are beginning to lose patience. It’s not only about poor decision making and obvious political incompetence, it’s about the glaring lack of a guiding principle, a north star, so to speak.
By backing Brexit (opportunistically and at the last moment) and, through the good offices of Dominic “The Brainiac” Cummins, by turning it into a conversation about immigration, Boris earned a hearing from the white working-class north of Watford Gap. So, when Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson won his stonking parliamentary majority in December 2019, he did so with what seemed a strong, if, from Boris, counterintuitive promise to “level up” the North. No longer the posh London metropolitan ‘hug-a-hoodie’ Tory party of Dave and Sam Cam, the Conservatives were striking out beyond the M25, prioritising the forgotten industrial waste lands of post-post-Thatcherite Britain and, BBC-like, placing new emphasis on regional accents. Man of the people BoJo promised us investment in jobs, skills, infrastructure, a brave and bold future grown rich on newly minted international trade deals. But, then, Covid, only Covid.
We know that people in the North of England went into this crisis earning, owning and saving less than those in the South. Nothing new to see here. We also know now that Covid hits hardest in densely populated urban areas with high levels of social deprivation. And we know that Covid seeks out and punishes those in ill health. We know too that Covid disproportionately impacts BAME nationals. All these matter more in the urban multi-cultural north.
The northern mayors have a point; Covid, and the government’s developing economic response to it, are widening the gap between north and south. Its hitting hardest those who can least afford it, whether they are working in low paid jobs, or not working at all. Yes, the mayors are being politically partisan, they scent a real opportunity to regain lost ground and build again in red brick. But they are most certainly representing the feelings of their constituents, secondary modern kids snubbed once more by their betters in gowns and mortarboards.
It was announced during the Conservatives’ virtual conference last week that it was going to open a northern party headquarters in Leeds. This the better to emphasise its un-swingeing commitment to the region. But unless the Conservative Party genuinely hears and urgently acts upon the grievances being aired now by mayors like Andy Burnham from Greater Manchester, Steve Rotheram from the Liverpool City Region and Jamie Driscoll from North Tyne, it won’t just receive a cool welcome when it opens for business in Leeds (Labour Leader Judith Blake is said to be spitting at the prospect), it will surely lose the north at the next election.
So I propose that Boris doubles down on levelling up, to counterpoint my metaphors. If he doesn’t, he leaves the Conservatives open to the easy charge that they don’t care about the north after all. It’s not too late for him to tack and change course. As St. Augustine said, “repentant tears wash out the stain of guilt.”
That’s my Strayside Sunday.
Harrogate artisan bladesmith is a ‘hidden gem’The forge gives off a warm glow as sparks fly into the air. The hammer is coming down on a new sharp blade at the hands of this Harrogate bladesmith.
It is an art that may have all but died out in Britain but a handful of bladesmiths are trying to keep this special flame alive.
Dominic Banks, the founder of Forge Art Online, started his craft about three years ago, inspired by the blades in films like Lord of the Rings.
While there is not much of a market for swords, many professional and home chefs want to use homemade and unique knives.
Just some of the knives he has finished recently.
Prices range from £150 to £200 for Dominic’s blades. He keeps a high standard for himself, which means that not every knife makes it out of the workshop.
A perfect storm of increased interest in British manufacturing along with the power of social media has fuelled Dominic’s passion.
He started taking commissions three years ago but the business has really started to boom over the last year.
On a brisk autumn morning with a new blade freshly forged, bladesmith Dominic told the Stray Ferret:
“You do have to get over that barrier where you avoid using the knife because you have spent so much money on it. But the thing is: If the knife is made right and the heat treatment is really good then it should be really sharp and strong. When you use one of these knives you realise how bad most knives are.”
Working away with the hammer over the anvil.
Dominic makes his knives out of carbon steel. They are more durable and can be sharper than stainless steel but can rust without proper care.
They are not to be left in water or put through a dishwasher for that reason, but that tendency to stain also means it can tell stories.
“Carbon steel has a lot of character. Say if you use a lot of onion in your cooking it stains the knife brown, whereas if you cut really acidic food like fruit the knife can come out in greens, purples and blues. Those colours all mix together and people really like that.”
Carbon steel has a unique look.
What is the future for Forge Art Online? It may not be a full-time job just yet but Dominic hopes that it could be soon.
He is planning to hold workshops when the coronavirus pandemic is in the rear view mirror so he can teach people how to make their own knives. But his true dream is to make swords and other weaponry to be used in films and TV shows.
This is part of the Stray Ferret’s ‘hidden gem’ series. We are trying to highlight small independent businesses. They need to be tucked away but growing in popularity with an eye-catching and unique product or approach. Send us an email with your nominations.