FUMIGATING THE CAT & Other Stories
from the Marsh History Group,
and

MONKS, MARTYRS and MAYORS:
The History of Lancaster's
Roman Catholic Community
and Cathedral 1094 - 1991

A women of many parts and places
Dr Sharon Lambert is a well-known and well-respected figure in a number of circles in these parts, and not least in these web pages. (In fact you can read an interview with her here.) Having lived in Lancaster all her life that is hardly surprising, but what has particularly intrigued me is the variety of very different milieus Sharon inhabits. For now, I want to look at just two of those here.

At one end of the spectrum is the University where she studied. Their Centre for North West Regional Studies has published her magnum opus, Irish Women in Lancashire, 1922-1960 [A review of this is to follow shortly, so watch this space – Ed].

SECULAR LIFE on the West Side of Lancaster

Geographically and perhaps socially at quite a different point on the spectrum is the Marsh, where Sharon is actively and indefatigably involved on her own home territory as Tutor to the Marsh Local History Group…

… whose memories and stories are vividly captured (and nicely illustrated, too) in her delightfully-named Fumigating The Cat and Other Stories, published last year. Clearly the teacher role is only one part of her life in the community, for the fluency, skill and sheer lucid readability of these stories show an intimate, passionate involvement with the people of the Marsh, their lives, problems (not least the cat!) and their families.

Bottle banking
The book opens with the recently-closed Victoria public house on the corner of West Road and Willow Lane, with one delightful recollection of someone who had a nice little number going in the days when most bottles had deposits on them. After buying beer, "we would go round in yard and get bottles and then take ‘em back and get money off ‘em – go and get some chips.' A similar exploit is also recounted in Dennis Potter in Blue Remembered Hills, recently staged here in Lancaster (see our review).

Other key physical features of the Marsh are described too: the dominating presence of the former Williamsons' Lune Mills, and the former Isolation Hospital, which was "situated where the builders' yard is at the other side of Williamsons' factory, right on the side of the Lune.' Flooded after the freak tides in 1907, it was later replaced by that "over on Beaumont. That was in 1934', according to one recollection.

Scarlet fever
Another unfortunate resident contracted scarlet fever, which in those days meant being shut up away from home in isolation. I quote her extensively, not just because of her vivid style, but also because her recollection provides the book's title:

"When I had scarlet fever: I had bad scarlet fever in [family house], I was taken into Beaumont Hospital with it. My mam had to have all her house fumigated because I had scarlet fever'. It was a serious matter then, and not just for humans!

"And she had to have the cat taken away. Cat had to go to the … to thing to be fumigated. Fumigated! Cat an' all! Poor cat … Anything you had they burnt, libraries …'

I'd rather just take the tablets …

Other images
There are also memories of wartime, school, shopping, Freeman's Wood - "that was our Morecambe,' according to one resident, "'cause we couldn't afford anything else.' Other wonderful period insights are faithfully recorded too, from the Midden Men (or night-soil carriers – look it up!) and the pawn shops, to the VE Day street party and even the old Marsh Windmill, which was built when the Marsh was drained and enclosed in the 1790s It was demolished in 1879 – they had philistines even then.

Thus, warts and all, in its glorious and diverse way, was the fabric of everyday life here in Lancaster, and all within living memory. Everything in the book's thirty-two pages has all been painstakingly and meticulously recorded by Sharon and her co-Editor, Nigel Ingham. This volume, with its evocative pictures, is a veritable treasure of fast-disappearing memories, and a compelling collection of some real gems of Lancaster's history.

I am looking forward to their next volume.

SPIRITUAL LIFE on the other side of town

Secular to sacred – and from new to old
Moving across the city from secular life on the city's western floodplain to the dominant presence of St Peter's Cathedral, we now turn to a brief survey of the Roman Catholic Community in Lancaster. And there is another point of contrast here, too.

Fumigating The Cat was only published last year, while Monks, Martyrs And Mayors is ‘early Lambert'. Sharon modestly recalls that "it was my first attempt at writing history - I wrote it in 1991 as a unit of my undergraduate degree'. Also in A4 format, and again with some useful photographs, its two-dozen plus pages are a clearly-written ‘taster' to another complex and fascinating aspect of local community history.

Her story begins with the establishment in 1094 of the Benedictine Priory of St Mary the Virgin, by Norman ‘robber baron' and hanger-on of William the Bastard, Roger de Poitou. An early example of ‘conscience' charity, perhaps.

Monks
Sharon then briefly looks at other early religious houses in the area, including the St Leonard's Hospital (as in St Leonardgate, and founded by King John) and the Abbey of St Mary of The Marsh at Cockersand. Her narrative leads us on to the 1530s and Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries.

What a polite euphemism that is for one of the most daring acts of political bravado and greed of all time! Henry not only effectively proscribed the Pope and the Catholic Church from his realms, but also brazenly appropriated wholesale every last bit of the fabulous wealth of England's then leading economic giants, the monasteries. It all went, with scarcely a murmur of dissent, into his own coffers.

How do you think the world-beating Tudor Navy and the battles against the Armada were funded?

Martyrs
Perhaps better known is the bloodshed that followed the establishment of, effectively, the Church of England. From the beginnings of serious religious persecution, Sharon tells us that, between 1584 and 1646, "eleven priests and four laymen surrendered their lives for their faith in this town'. There were, it has to be said, Protestant martyrs too, particularly under Catholic reign of the ill-fated Queen Mary I (1553 – 1558).

Their desperate and daring lives are briefly chronicled in Sharon's clear and vivid style, which grasps the reader throughout. Moving on in time, we meet the dramatic and better-known Pendle Witch Trials of 1612, which should be seen in the wider context of the ‘Penal Years'. Remember that being a Catholic in the UK was only fully normalised (unless you are royal) in 1829 with the Emancipation Act of the Duke of Wellington's government of that year.

Moving now from people and events to places, Lambert describes the various premises that the Catholic Community has used in Lancaster over the years, from a house in "Leonardgate' to the now City Council offices in Dalton Square and, in 1859, the fine edifice on of St Peter's Cathedral on East Road.

Mayors
This volume is not a history of or guide book to the building, and Sharon is primarily concerned about the role of the Catholic community in the life of the wider community of the city. Lancaster's first Catholic mayor was Alderman Thomas Preston, who was elected in 1875. A popular co-religionist successor of his, William Smith (1891) inaugurated the Easter Monday children's festival on the Giant Axe Field (Lancaster City FC).

She finishes her story with the building of St Joseph's, Skerton and St Thomas More, Marsh, and her work concludes with a useful list of resources for those who want to learn more about the subject.

The two books are similar in physical size, but cover widely different aspects of Lancaster's history. Taken together, they both provide useful insights and well-structured evidence into the fascinating realms of our city's past. Sharon obviously has, above all, a passionate interest in the development and diverse lives, both past and present, of the people who make up our local community.

Copyright © 14 March 2005 Michael Nunn

Monks, Martyrs and Mayors is on sale in St. Peter's Cathedral for £3.

Fumigating The Cat can be bought for £2 in the City Museum, St Thomas More Church (off Willow Lane on the Marsh), the Lottery Stall in Lancaster Market or from any member of the Marsh History Group.