#WFMuseumStaffPick: Wakefield Trinity and me

As part of our regular Staff Picks social media feature, our Visitor Assistant Debbie tells us about her chosen object and her passion for Wakefield Trinity.

I’m a big lover of the great game of rugby league- especially Wakefield Trinity. We once were a great club and have plenty of history surrounding us. Wakefield Trinity was established way back in 1873 by a group of men from the Holy Trinity Church. They played on various pitches, including Heath Common, before moving to Belle Vue in 1879, where they still play to this day. Their colours are red white and blue and the nickname they have is ‘Dreadnoughts’. Rumour has it, it is because ‘they dread nowt’.

Club colour badge in Wakefield Trinity colours for wearing in a button hole or hat

Cap awarded to Trinity forward, Joe Longbottom, for the 1879-80 season

The 'water splash' final boots

Everyone knows about the Challenge Cup ‘water splash’ final in 1968. Some say that it should have never been played due to the torrential weather conditions but, according to officials, telling nearly 90,000 spectators that it was cancelled would have caused mayhem. In the last minute of the game,  Don Fox missed a conversion right in front of the posts, which would have won Trinity the game. Instead, Wakefield lost to Leeds 11-10. Despite the loss and the missed conversion, Don Fox got man of the match and claimed the Lance Todd Trophy.

Although I wasn’t around at this time, it is great that we have a display in the museum, where some things relating to that game are on show. Many people who look in the case might just see some old rugby boots but these rugby boots are actually the ones that Don Fox wore in the water splash final. These are the actual boots that kicked and missed the conversion. To me personally, I feel so proud to have these in our display as Don Fox was a great asset to our club and to Great Britain. I can’t help but imagine myself being there and actually witnessing that moment. What must he be feeling? Every rugby league fan knows or has heard about the 1968 ‘water splash’ Challenge Cup final. And this will keep Wakefield and Don Fox in the history books.

Wakefield Museum is very grateful to Don Fox's family for kindly loaning us the boots for our displays.

The Yorkshire Cup and my favourite game

In the season of 1934 Wakefield Trinity made it to the final of the Yorkshire Cup along with Leeds. This match ended in a 5-5 draw, meaning a replay, which again resulted in a draw. They then had to have a third game and Leeds finally took the cup. This is the only occasion to have had three attempts to settle the Yorkshire Cup.

I got into supporting Wakefield Trinity by being invited down to Belle Vue by a couple of their players at the time. I did go watch my brother play rugby sometimes but it was in open fields and I remember always being so cold. Being in the stands with thousands of supporters, it felt so different and the excitement and buzz got me hooked.

My favourite ever season was 1991/1992. That season we made it to yet another Yorkshire Cup final- Wakefield Trinity v Sheffield Eagles at Elland Road in Leeds. I remember being stood in the middle of nearly 8000 fans and the singing, the shouting, the cheering was electric. The half time score was 11-0 to Wakefield. Elland Road was buzzing. Sheffield got back in the game in the second half but Wakefield kept their cool and scored some fantastic tries. It ended with Wakefield getting the victory, winning 29-16.

For me, when the final whistle blew, I just couldn’t believe it. We’d done it! I had finally seen my club winning a cup (and probably my last.)My favourite ever team and some of my favourite ever players, including Geoff Bagnall, Andy Mason and local Stanley lad, Nigel Wright, who got man of the match. It was an amazing day followed by a massive celebration back at Belle Vue.

After all these years, we are still the current holders of the Yorkshire Cup. It got scrapped soon after because of fixture congestion. They were introducing it again this season within the lower leagues, but with the current situation, no games have yet been played.

Super League

In 1996 the rugby league world was going through changes. The season changed from winter rugby to summer rugby and the British clubs were given a large sum of money to form the Super League. A lot of clubs were asked to merge, including Wakefield, Castleford and Featherstone. If it had been successful, we would have been called Calder. 

Unfortunately, it proved to be very unpopular with a lot of clubs, which led to protesting on pitches and signing petitions. The merger idea was scrapped and Wakefield Trinity didn’t make it into Super League. It wasn’t until 1998 that Wakefield beat Featherstone 24-22 in a controversial Grand Final and entered the Super League. With the start of our first ever Super League season came the added name Wakefield Trinity Wildcats. This is what we would now be called until it was dropped in 2016.

Another great game I remember came in 2006 with Wakefield Trinity Wildcats playing Castleford Tigers in a relegation battle at Belle Vue. It was a game full of tension and emotion. The final score resulted in Castleford being relegated with Wakefield winning to stay in Super League 29-17. This game will always be called ‘The Battle of Belle Vue’.

Wakefield Trinity Wildcats home and away shirts, 2006

The rugby league family

I know quite a lot of our visitors and staff like a bit of rugby and some are fans of other clubs. At the end of the day, this rugby league world we are in is just one big family! This has been proven by the horrific accident that happened earlier this year at Belle Vue. Mose Masoe (aged 30) was in a collision that left him paralysed from the chest down. It was sadly career ending and life changing but the rugby league family came together and raised nearly £110000. Mose was told he may never walk again but his fight and determination have got him walking with the parallel bars. What an inspiration! Pinderfields hospital have played a major part in Mose’s journey to recovery and he has praised them in the media. I also wish him a speedy and healthy recovery.

I am proud to be part of this rugby world.
I am proud to be a supporter.
I am proud of our NHS.
And YES, I’m proud to be a Wakefield Trinity fan!

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Festival of Archaeology: Cannon at the castle

As we continue our Festival of Archaeology celebrations, we look back at a recent exciting archaeological discovery at Pontefract Castle that sheds light on the bombardment of the castle during the English Civil Wars.

Pontefract Castle sits on the edge of the medieval market town. Conservation work is being undertaken with the ambition of making Pontefract a key heritage destination within West Yorkshire. The £3.5m Heritage Lottery funded project is known as the Key to the North, after the title bestowed upon the castle by Edward I. During the project, workmen at the castle recovered seven cannonballs from a section of the castle’s curtain wall. The discovery includes:

A demi-cannon (normally around 6 3/4 inches in diameter, weighing 33.5lb)

 

A cannon petro (6 inches in diameter, weighing 24.5lb)

 

 

Two culverin (5.5 inches, 17.5lb)

 

Three basilisks (5 inches, 15lb)

One of the smaller cannonballs

Two of the basilisks

 

Pontefract Castle was besieged three times during the English Civil Wars but it never fell to military force and was one of the last castles to surrender during the wars. Cromwell even described the castle as one of England’s strongest inland garrisons. It was during the first of three sieges of the Civil Wars that these cannonballs were fired.

Whilst many museums up and down the country have metal shot of various sizes in their collections, the Pontefract Castle discovery is very unusual. Most cannonballs have either been found somewhere in the ground of a fort or castle site or their surroundings, meaning that they either missed their target or have lost the context of where they were fired from. In contrast, the Pontefract Castle cannonballs were found embedded in the wall that they were aimed at. And thanks to a diary kept during the wars, we can even give a possible date for when they were fired.

The workman who found the first cannonball

The hole where one of the cannonball was removed from the wall

Nathan Drake, a “gentleman volunteer” of the garrison within the castle, kept a diary of the sieges. In the diary he records that between the 17th and 21st January 1644, 1363 shots were fired at the castle. He identifies that the shots were fired from cannon placed within the back yard of a Mr Lumne's property and were aimed at the Piper Tower. It seems likely that this is true as the balls were recovered from the curtain wall just to the side of the location of the Piper Tower. 

Excavating the Civil Wars alterations to the Piper Tower

Drake records no other instance of a cannon firing from this location, although he does record that on another occasion powder stored at Mr Lumne’s house was ignited by a shot from the castle. From other entries about events at Mr Lumne’s house, it can be calculated that the house was located on the route of the siege works, somewhere around the top of Horsefair and the bottom of Salter Row.

All of this means we know the location of the gun, the probable date it was fired, the size of the shot fired, and where the shots ended up. From this we get a very real impression of the power of these guns.

It has been previously calculated that as much as 18lb of black powder would be used to fire a 32lb shot (the demi-cannon we have weighs roughly 32lb), and that the effective range of such a gun would be around 490 metres. The distance from the probable location of Mr Lumne’s house to the castle wall is about 480 metres. This means that the gun was placed as far away as possible from the castle to avoid being shot at by musket, but close enough for the weapon to be effective. The balls ended up nearly a metre into the solid castle wall, a terrifying prospect for the besieged soldiers.

It is amazing to think that, after that five day period when so many shots were fired with no doubt many more than seven penetrating this section of wall, anything at all remained of the castle at the end of the wars. However, not only did the castle survive the wars, but the only section of the castle wall to collapse was the Piper Tower (the subject of this bombardment). Drake records that the tower collapsed on the 19th January, with 78 shots being fired that morning. Although little remains of the Piper Tower today, the curtain wall that made up the outer edge of the tower still stands to around 5 metres high on the outside, hardly making the collapse a major breach.

The remains of the Piper Tower today

In one final twist to the story, Mr Lumne was an alderman of Pontefract and was a member of the castle’s garrison. He was no doubt watching on as his property was requisitioned by the army and used to bombard the castle he was held up in.

Making a Racket

On what should’ve been Wimbledon finals weekend, we thought it was the perfect time to serve up some aces from our Playmakers collection of locally made sports products. Did you know that many a Wimbledon legend’s racket was made in Horbury? Find out about our proud tradition of sports manufacturing and how local innovation made its mark on the courts of SW19.

Breaking into the game

In 1870 a saddler’s apprentice from Horbury risked all his life savings to buy his own business. It was a gamble that would pay off handsomely. After 10 years in saddlery, William Sykes turned his leather working skills to making footballs in the start of a venture that would see Sykes become chairman of a major international company, and turn Horbury into a centre of high tech, high quality sports manufacturing, home in its heyday to possibly the largest sports equipment factory in the world.

William Sykes Ltd soon expanded from football into other sports, beginning with cricket and tennis. In 1896, having outgrown his original premises, Sykes proudly opened the Yorkshire Athletic Manufactory. By 1903 the new factory’s production lines included 21 different models of racket.

Handicap racket, William Sykes Ltd, c. 1880-1920. The wooden grip, small racket head size and convex wedge are characteristic of rackets from the turn of the century.

The star of the tennis range was the company’s premium racket, the EDB, named for and produced to the instructions of Ernest Douglas Black. Known as Edmund, Black had competed in Great Britain’s first ever Davis Cup tie, playing the competition founder, Dwight Davis of the USA, in Boston in 1900. The EDB was one of the earliest in a long line of Sykes products to be endorsed by elite sports people. Further tennis stars would follow suit in future.

EDB Special racket, William Sykes Ltd

Expansion 

Business continued to thrive after William Sykes Snr’s death in 1910, his two sons overseeing further expansion. In 1926 the company acquired the London-based tennis firm, Jefferies, extending their racket range further.

Raleigh Super racket, late 1920s. This racket from shortly after the acquisition of Jefferies is marked with both companies’ names.

Advertising poster for the William Sykes Ltd racket range. The company is now located in Horbury & London.

By 1933, as attendance at Wimbledon exceeded 200,000 and TV cameras were allowed at the All England Club for the first time, Sykes were able to meet rising demand from tennis fans with production now running to 50,000 rackets a year. With business booming, it was necessary to move into bigger premises again. Production at Albion Mill began in 1936 with an ever increasing range. In fact, Sykes supplied everything you needed for a match, from the balls to the net and posts.

Rallying the troops

Only shortly after the publication of the summer 1939 catalogue, the outbreak of the Second World War in September disrupted Sykes’ production as the company turned almost all of its capacity to the war effort, its leather and woodworking expertise in particular proving vital. The 1000 strong workforce at Horbury produced a dizzying array of equipment from bayonets and ammunition boxes to sand goggles and skis. Among the many and varied products supplied to the War Office were snow shoes, made using the same steam bending technique as the wooden frame of a tennis racket.

An example of a snow shoe

Sykes’ competitors, Slazenger, were also affected by the war, with their London based factories suffering serious bomb damage. In 1942 the two former rivals joined forces. The merger of Sykes and Slazenger married the massive manufacturing capacity at Horbury with Slazenger’s brand power, not least its long standing association with the Wimbledon championships. Although the first products made after the merger kept the Sykes logo, the Slazenger name soon took over. Shortly after the war, Slazenger moved all of its production to Yorkshire. Its long established and prestigious Challenge and Demon rackets were among the many ranges now made in Horbury. Indeed, the only Slazenger products not made at the factory were tennis balls, and these were produced down the road at Barnsley.

Slazenger made Demon brand rackets from 1880 – 1966.

Slazenger Challenge, c. 1975

Innovation and domination

In 1959 Slazenger was bought by Dunlop. Throughout the 1960s, the vast majority of professional tennis players opted for Dunlop Slazenger rackets to propel them to top of their game.

The June 1962 edition of the Dunlop Gazette staff magazine included an in-depth look at the Horbury factory.

By the 1970s though, sales of wooden rackets were in decline, with players favouring new, lightweight materials like aluminium and carbon fibre. In response, Dunlop turned to its new state of the art Research and Development Centre, opened in Horbury in 1978. Its team of expert engineers were tasked with revolutionising the tennis racket and re-establishing Dunlop as the go-to brand for amateurs and Wimbledon champions alike.

Their pioneering solution was an injection moulded racket using a material known as Grafil, a hard-wearing compound of graphite and nylon. Melted Grafil was injected into racket moulds around a metal core. The core had a lower melting point than Grafil and, once the outside frame was cooled and set, the metal was heated and melted out of the mould to leave behind a hollow frame.

The result was a racket that was both robust and lightweight - 50% stronger and 12% more powerful than traditional wooden frames. The Dunlop Max 200G was ground breaking. No surprise then that it received several prestigious engineering awards and attracted such giants of the game as Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova. Graf played with the 200G when she won her first Grand Slam title at the French Open in 1987. In total she won 22 major singles titles and she is the only player to have achieved a calendar Golden Slam, winning all four major titles and an Olympic gold medal in the same year. Her triumphs kept the 200G in the news into the 1990s.

Dunlop Max 200G

In 1983, John McEnroe switched to the 200G. The racket’s association with his star quality saw sales rocket from 20,000 to 200,000. By 1988 there were no wooden rackets in use at Wimbledon.

I used to think that I might’ve been stringing one of John McEnroe’s rackets. I was so proud of that. It made Wimbledon exciting for me. When he used to smash his rackets, I would think of how much trouble had gone into making it!
Lynne Holroyd, former Slazenger employee

End of an era

After more than a century at the cutting edge of sports manufacturing, the Horbury factory finally closed its doors in 1986. Tennis racket production continued at new premises in Wakefield until 1992 when production moved abroad. Today, the Slazenger Sports Club is the surviving legacy of the company. Founded in 1950, the Sports and Social club became the hub of the Slazenger community. Mrs Slazenger officially opened the pavilion and sports ground, with the tennis courts being christened by none other than Fred Perry.

Fred Perry playing at the Slazenger Sports and Social Club and signing autographs, 1950

Festival of Archaeology: Chasing walls

For the Festival of Archaeology this week, we need your help! Find out how you can get involved in some practical archaeology and help us to better understand our local environment.

Victorian archaeologists are sometimes called wall chasers. This is a little rude and refers to how they were sometimes only interested in finding ruined buildings and less concerned with the artefacts that reveal what life was like in the past. For this project though, we are going to join them in their quest for wall hunting and see if we can map all the walls in Pontefract that are made from medieval stone.

What do we mean by medieval stone - isn’t all stone much older?

We are looking for walls that are made from stone that might have been taken from one of Pontefract’s medieval buildings. The most likely buildings that stones might have come from are the castle, St John’s Priory, St Richard’s Friary, or one of the three medieval hospitals on Micklegate. We should see a cluster of medieval stone walls around those sites, but do we? That’s where you come in.

We want you to go out with your mobile phones and help us map all the walls. You can send us the location of the walls using the app, What3words. The app is free to download and use, and splits the whole world up into one metre squares named with three normal words.

We want to know about any wall that looks old and has stones in it - it doesn’t have to be all stone (as long as the stone isn’t just on the top.) The stone needs to look weathered (rounded or flat, or dished.) Here are two examples. One is just stone and the other very worn stone that has been partially rendered and mixed with bricks. It could even be a dry stone wall - that’s a wall that isn’t fixed together with mortar.

Example of a wall with mixed stone and brick, as well as a render repair

An example of a wall with infilled features - note the colour of the stone.

We're not asking you to be certain (we will check them later); we don’t want you to leave the footpath or other public area; and we don’t want photos of the wall (unless it’s on your land and we can’t see it ourselves to verify it later.)


We just want:

One set of What3words per wall 

Only walls in Pontefract 

Only walls that are visible from public land or on your own property

This screen shot shows what the app looks like - you can have map view or aerial photography, and it can centre on your location. The location of our second example here is at 'mile.kicks.nobody'. It’s that simple!


You can send your locations in one at a time or as a list, either using Twitter, Facebook or as an email to: museumslearning@wakefield.gov.uk.

With your help we will then hopefully be able to display the results in October when (fingers crossed) the Festival of Archaeology returns.

Pontefract Allsorts: How liquorice got its roots in Pontefract

Liquorice - whether you love or hate the taste, there's no denying the plant has long been synonymous with Pontefract. But how did a middle Eastern herb become embedded in our town's history? Where did liquorice originate from? We've had a root through our liquorice collection and dug up some treasures. 

Liquorice was probably first brought to Pontefract either by medieval knights returning to the castle from the Crusades, or by the Dominican monks who settled at the neighbouring priory. Pontefract proved to be fertile ground for liquorice, the plant's long roots thriving in the deep loamy local soil. 

Liquorice fields in the Nevison area

Liquorice growing and harvesting in the Friarwood area

A spoonful of sugar

Prized at first for its medicinal properties, liquorice began to be grown across the area. The sap was extracted from the root and used to treat coughs and stomach complaints. By the 1700s, there were liquorice garths springing up all around and even the castle yard was being cultivated. Local chemists, the Dunhill family, rented the land there and used the castle cellars to store their harvested roots. 

It is George Dunhill who is credited with first adding sugar to liquorice to transform the medicine into the sweet delicacy we still know today. He is believed to have pioneered the production and marketing of the now iconic Pontefract Cake as a commercial confectionery.

Handstamp for marking Pontefract Cakes, Dunhills Ltd, early 20th century

A worker stamping Pontefract Cakes at W. R. Wilkinson & Co. Ltd, 1950s

And so Pontefract became inextricably linked with liquorice. By the 1900s, treats made in one of Pontefract's many factories were enjoyed by those with a sweet tooth all around the world. At the industry's height there were 13 factories in the town. The rival companies all produced a wide array of different liquorice variations: 

Ewbanks

From 1887 Ewbanks' production was based at the Eagle Liquorice Works in Friarwood. The factory was surrounded by orchards. During the Second World War, Eagle Works suffered bad bomb damage and some production moved to other local companies.

 

Ewbanks advert from 1927

Reads: Make them laugh or cry - Liquorice Funny faces, 1/2D each. Ewbanks Ltd Pontefract.

Hillaby's

John Hillaby established his Lion Liquorice Works, a four storey steam-powered factory, in 1850. The company grew its own crops and by 1893 had become the largest producer in the world. In 1925 they achieved a further claim to fame, producing the liquorice boot eaten by Charlie Chaplin in the film, Goldrush.

 

Hillaby's delivery van outside the factory, 1930s

The van has the 'Hillaby's Pontefract Cakes' logo on its side, and a uniformed worker is loading large boxes of Hillaby's Promfret Cakes into the van. In the background there is a horse-drawn cart being led away from the van. Has this just delivered the cakes fresh from the factory behind?

J. H. Addingley & Sons

Baghill Refinery was a three storey building boasting steam-powered machinery, offices, a warehouse and packing room, and mechanics and joinery shops.

 

Addingley's sweet tin from the early 20th Century

The tin is painted with the red Addingley's logo and a picture of a crown with the word 'Imperial'. It reads 'Liquorice Confectionary, Baghill Refinery, Pontefract, England'. There are also some yellow flowers.

W. R. Wilkinson & Co.

Originally started in 1884 at a malt kiln in Southgate, Wilkinson's expanded several times. First, to the Britannia Works on Skinner Lane and then again in 1925 to a 'garden factory' in Monkhill. Here, employees enjoyed workers' housing, tennis courts and allotments, as well as outings to the seaside.

Workers packing sweets at the Wilkinson's factory, mid-20th century

All of the workers are women, dressed in long overcoats and white caps covering their tied-up hair. One of the workers, a young woman, is looking towards the photographer and smiling. All of the workers are weighing out the sweets before packing them into identical boxes. Each has a lot of boxes in front of her!

Wilkinson's specimen carton, early 20th century

The carton shows a drawing of the Wilkinson's Liquorice factory, a large rectangular building with big rectangular windows. In front of the factory, a male and a female worker are playing tennis on a perfect grass tennis pitch. There are also flower beds and benches, where other workers are reading the newspaper and having a chat. The sides of the carton read 'Wilkinson's Liquorice All-Sorts' and 'Manufcatured by Wilkinson & Co Ltd, Pontefract, England'

Robinson & Wordsworth

Founded in 1871, the company was based at Victoria Works. In 1893, the recently expanded factory welcomed the curator of Kew Museum, who visited to research liquorice cultivation. Robinson & Wordsworth also had a display at the Kew Botanic Gardens.

 

 A Robinson &Wordsworth's sweet tin from the early 20th century
The tin is pale green, with the words 'Robinson & Wordsworth's, wholesome & reliable, liquorice confectionary, Pontefract' on it. In the middle is a cartoon of a castle with the words 'castle brand', referring to Pontefract Castle.

'Spanish'

Eventually, Pontefract's prolific business began to exhaust the local crops. With supplies struggling to keep up with demand, the firms instead imported liquorice from Turkey and Spain. Liquorice is still affectionately known as Spanish by locals. By the end of the 19th century, most of Pontefract's liquorice fields were gone, although it continued to grow at Stump Cross until the mid 20th century. 

Liquorice growing near Stump Cross Lane in 1960s

Wooden spade for harvesting liquorice root

Liquorice legacy

Over time, Pontefract's confectioners began to close, merge with one another, or be acquired by their larger rivals. Today, there are two producers remaining in the town. The German giant, Haribo, arrived in Pontefract in the 1970s when they first acquired a stake in Dunhills Ltd, the original pioneer of the Pontefract Cake. Tangerine Confectionery's roots in the town can be traced back to W. R. Wilkinson & Co.

Pontefract Museum's liquorice displays, including scales used by liquorice growers in the early 20th century

Wakefield Museums & Castles are very privileged to care for our large liquorice collection. We proudly display a selection of highlights at Pontefract Museum but there is even more to enjoy on our online catalogue - why not have a root around today yourself? Or get your teeth into our liquorice inspired jigsaw: 

35Dunhills Pontefract Cakes