100 Years of Collecting - A Trip to the Seaside

We're celebrating our centenary year throughout 2023 with new displays, digital content and events. 

As part of the celebrations, we created an interactive online exhibition starring 100 objects that represent our 100 Years of Collecting.

Each month, we’ll be looking at some of the objects in more detail and sharing other treasures from the collection in special themed blog posts.

It's been a bit of a dreary August - so we're taking you on a virtual trip to the seaside through our collection!

Mr Punch Glove Puppet

This little fellow is full of nostalgia for many local people!

He's part of a mid-20th century Punch and Judy puppet set that belonged to Featherstone legend, Albert Massey.

Albert was a surface worker with the coal board. In his spare time he often performed Punch and Judy puppet shows.

Albert Massey in the 1960s

Albert’s puppets and props were donated to the museum collection in the 1980s. The Mr Punch puppet representing Albert's story is one of our 100 Years of Collecting star objects.

As well as Punch and Judy themselves, the set also includes several of Mr Punch’s various enemies - the Policeman, the clown and the crocodile - who all often found themselves at the wrong end of Punch’s stick.

Albert performed in local venues such as Pontefract Park - but Punch and Judy shows will always be associated with the golden age of the British seaside holiday. 

Seaside Holidays

From the Victorian era onwards, red and white striped puppet show booths popped up on beaches and piers up and down the country. 

Here's a group of holidaymakers and daytrippers being entertained by a puppet show at Scarborough beach in the 1950s:

Some of these children look like they're enjoying the show more than others...

This photo is one of many captured by another local legend, Jack Hulme from Fryston. 

Hulme was a former colliery worker and hairdresser, and became an enthusiastic amateur photographer. He mostly photographed scenes from everyday life in Fryston and created an extraordinary record of industrial Yorkshire. 

Hulme’s charming action shot of a boy jumping over a makeshift hurdle is another of our 100 Years of Collecting star objects:

By the mid 20^th century, more people than ever before were heading to the coast. 

Public holidays and paid annual leave meant workers and their families could afford to take a seaside break. 

Employers and community groups often organised special excursions and laid on transport to the beach, such as these trips from Fryston. 

Jack Hulme joined them, and of course captured the trips in his photos:

The Fryston daytrippers - with 3 of the 10 buses they travelled over on in the background!

Rail companies also arranged extra services to seaside destinations during the summer. 

This posters advertising train times from Pontefract to the east coast was produced by Holmes Printers in Pontefract, for the Prince of Wales Colliery. 

Coal miners and their families packed onto the trains, ready for a day out with their buckets and spades.

Seaside souvenirs

No trip to the seaside would be complete without picking up a souvenir or two!

Ironically, these mementos of the east coast were actually made back over here, in Knottingley, by Bagley & Co Ltd: 

Bagley’s started as a bottle factory but became known for its innovative decorative coloured glass in the 1930s. 

The company’s iconic Andromeda bowl design also features in our 100 Years of Collecting:

What objects, photos or memories do you have of seaside trips from yesteryear? We'd love to hear from you!

Post in the comments, or email us at museums@wakfield.gov.uk. 

Click here for more on our 100 Years of Collecting project

"Her own Empire" - the story of Cliffe's Drapers, Featherstone

Laura, a Public History MA student on placement with us from the University of York, has been exploring the treasures of the ‘Cliffe costume collection’. Read on to discover what they found, and ‘visit’ Miss Cliffe’s Featherstone shop for yourself!

Miss Annie Cliffe outside her shop, from the early 20th century.
Photo copyright of Wakefield Libraries.

On Station Lane, where Cohen’s Chemist now is, Featherstone has its very own hidden history. 

In the early twentieth century Station Lane was a bustling hub of local business and shops. Alongside a newsagents, a greengrocers, and a bookmakers, was a drapers shop, owned by Miss Annie Cliffe. Described as “friendly, kind and considerate”, Miss Cliffe was a pioneering local businesswoman. 

In this blog, we’ll explore Miss Cliffe’s story and how the Cliffe Costume Collection now owned by Wakefield Museums & Castles is a treasure chest of practically untouched working-class clothing and accessories.

A photo of Station Lane, Featherstone, from the early 20th century.
Photo copyright of Wakefield Libraries.

“It was the only place [dad] could get [caps] from”

Originally acquired by Wakefield Museum in the late 1970s, the Cliffe Costume Collection is made up of over 600 items of clothing and accessories. The items are mainly designed for women (blouses, stockings, jerseys, undergarments) but there are also children’s clothes and accessories designed for men, such as flat caps and ties.

A purple blouse, Edwardian-style. Around the neck and front of the blouse there are basting stitches to keep the pleats in place when on display. These stitches would have been easy to remove once the shirt had been purchased. Part of the unsold stock from Cliffe's Drapers now in our collection.

Miss Cliffe’s shop is remembered as being “old-fashioned” and “like Aladdin’s cave” in a series of oral histories recorded in the 1990s. 

The counter on the right was for the many blouses and other items of clothing. The counter facing the door mainly displayed knitting needles, sewing tools and materials for hand-making and mending clothes. 

Although money may have been tight for working-class people, shops like Miss Cliffe’s widened accessibility to the latest fashions. The collection the shop left behind helps show how fashion in Featherstone developed over the decades. 

A green-blue Tam O'Shanter hat that was for sale at Cliffe's Drapers. 

Tam O'Shanters were especially popular during the 1920s and were often worn by young girls and women. They were easy to sew or knit, and relatively cheap to buy. As a result, many young women would make or buy multiple Tam O'Shanters to match with different outfits.

“Her own Empire”

Establishing the origins of Cliffe’s Drapers has been quite difficult as the relevant documents have been lost. Until now, it wasn’t clear whether Miss Cliffe owned her shop or if she managed it for her parents. However, we can now confidently say that Cliffe’s Drapers was owned and ran by Miss Cliffe.

Annie Cliffe was born in Huddersfield on the 29th of March 1880. By the 1911 census she and her family were living at 21 Kimberley Street, Featherstone.

In the 1921 census, she is recorded to still be living with her father (Alfred) and sister (Gertrude), who was working as a teacher. Miss Cliffe is recorded as a “Draper shop keeper” and her employer being “her own account” which implies that this was her own business. The 1921 census is also the earliest account so far that we have found that records the shop. The 1927 and 1932 censuses also record Miss Cliffe along with her shop ownership.

As an unmarried woman from not a particularly affluent family, the fact that she owned and ran her own shop is pioneering. This would have been very rare in the early twentieth century. Women could own businesses and shops at this time, and around 30% of businesses between 1851 and 1911 record female owners. However, the social norms and inequalities of the time would have made it extremely difficult for a single woman to have her own business. Understandably, Miss Cliffe was very proud of her shop, which an oral history interviewee in the 1990s remembers as “her own Empire”.

A pin striped child’s sailor suit jacket with a Peter Pan collar, belt and white buttons.
An unsold garment from Cliffe's Drapers, dating to the early 20th century.

If clothes could talk…

As Miss Cliffe was often reluctant to mark down her stock, she accumulated a large amount in her stockroom when unsold items went out of fashion. Miss Cliffe continued to proudly run her shop until she died, aged in her nineties. Before the shop closed in the late 1960s it was practically a time capsule of working-class clothing! 

Generally, clothes worn by working class people do not survive as they are worn, passed down and repaired until they were irreparable. This makes the collection particularly special, as shines a spotlight on the sort of clothes the ‘ordinary people’ of Featherstone and Yorkshire were wearing in the early twentieth century.

An exhibition will be installed later in 2023 at Featherstone Library, bringing some of Miss Cliffe’s shop stock back to the local high street.

Do you have memories of Miss Cliffe and her drapers shop? Comment below!

Click here to ‘visit’ Miss Cliffe's shop, with our interactive version of Cliffe Drapers!

Click here to go to the recently revamped Twixt, Aire and Calder website, full of photographs from Wakefield Libraries’ Local Studies archives.