Want to Know What's Going on Inside Our Town's Music Hall? Here's Your Chance to Find Out

An extraordinary project is taking place in the heart of Shrewsbury and most people, if they’re anything like me, won’t know much about it.  I’m talking about the Music Hall, soon to become Shrewsbury’s Museum and Art Gallery.  Like many of you I’ve wondered what’s going on behind the old Music Hall’s dusty windows and closed doors. I’ve also wondered whether the move from the museum’s current location at Rowley’s House [such an iconic building on the Shrewsbury landscape] would be worth all the expense.

I have to tell you though, that I’m not wondering any more.  Last week, courtesy of Tim Jenkins, Heritage Project Manager, I was able to see for myself the changes being made to the Music Hall and catch the vision of what lies ahead.

And what a vision it is.  Even amid bricks and scaffolding, plaster lime washes, drilling, shoring and rebuilding, it’s obvious that something very special is happening in our town.  For two hours last week, as part of a small group, I picked my way through the vast open spaces that will soon be galleries housing everything from Shropshire’s prehistoric collection and its collection of Roman artifacts, right through history to the modern day.  There will be Medieval, Tudor and Stuart galleries. A large collection of paintings will be on show, some of which have never been exhibited before. A dedicated education suite, including lecture, conference and seminar rooms, is being built sponsored by the Walker Trust.  And right along the front of the building at first floor level, looking down upon the Square and the Old Market Hall, will be a gallery with the potential to house national and international touring exhibitions. 

Add to all of that a 13^th century mansion of national importance – which is what we have in Vaughan’s Mansion – and it’ll be obvious that not only the exhibits, but the building itself will be important once the museum is open.  And, interestingly, if it wasn’t for the current building work, there’d be no Vaughan’s Mansion. Early in the building process it was discovered that over time [and due in part to serious manhandling in the 1980s], it had dislodged itself from the main body of the Music Hall and was tilting dangerously in the direction of the Benbow pub. Since then a vast amount of work has gone into saving it.  In addition, in clearing the ground around it, an ancient space has been re-born. The courtyard of William Vaughan’s mansion has emerged afresh from many years of being covered over by unsympathetic outbuildings. It’s set to become one of the major open spaces in the town centre.  

How much do you know about the old Music Hall? Like much of the Square, it’s situated on what was once an ice-age kettle hole, which means that building on that site has always been a bit of a geological nightmare. The original building was positioned between two higher parts of the Saxon town separated by the town pond in which nagging women were ducked [see my post on the subject, A Bog, A Square And One Big Stink].  In the 13^th century the whole area was re-planned to create a new market place. The pond was filled in and its adjoining slopes terraced. Vaughan’s Mansion was built circa 1290 at one end of this new civic place, but hidden behind the street frontage. The classical frontage we now all see on the Square was built by the Haycock brothers, who were responsible for much of the buildings of that period in our town. Behind that frontage, to the left, stood the early Victorian Assembly Rooms. Then right across the building the Victorian Public Rooms were installed. In the cellar at the front of the building was a coffee house. And running through it all was what had once been the medieval passageway, Fire Office Passage, where ladders for the fire service were hung along the walls.

According to Tim Jenkins, when Fire Office Passage has been restored with York stone paving and lime washed walls, that old sense of public passageway will return to it.  You’ll probably know this part of the old Music Hall better as the entrance lobby leading down to the ticket office. Beyond that old ticket office, the Victorian staircase is being restored, and upstairs a view of the auditorium from gallery level was one of the highlights of the tour. 

It’s amazing to see some of these huge old spaces coming back to life. Maybe you’ll remember, as I do, the ceiling of the auditorium being painted a ghastly shade of murderous red. Almost none of the molding was on show.  Now it’s been restored to its original colours, and every last detail of decoration is on show too, courtesy of light pouring through windows that most of us will only remember as being blacked out.  It’s an incredible ceiling, and the auditorium beneath it looks pretty good too.  Once the Beatles performed in this auditorium. Soon it will be the museum’s main collections that are performing - all the way from mammoths through to Darwin.

This isn’t the first museum on this site, you know. In the 1850s, Shrewsbury’s first museum was opened here, one of the originals of its kind in the country. However, by this time, as part of ongoing work on the Assembly Rooms, a section of Vaughan’s Mansion had been destroyed.  This pattern continued, and right up until the 1980s a cavalier attitude to the value of Vaughan’s Mansion meant that much else was destroyed. In fact, according to Tim Jenkins, it was generally believed that in 1917 all of the roof of Vaughan’s Mansion was lost, but during the current building works the original 17^th century roof over its west wing was found to be intact, if in desperate need of restoration. 

The mansion belonging to William Vaughan, wool merchant, has been carefully restored now, and is heading to be the jewel in the new Musuem and Art Gallery’s crown.  Its windows, walls and doors date back to 1290, its roofs to 1470 and 1623 and builders have introduced steel posts to stop the screen on its end wall from dropping through to the lower floor. When the work is finished, its gable end will be restored to its Jacobean splendour, and the craftsmanship of Shrewsbury’s 16-17^th   century School of Carpentry will be on view.  In the undercroft beneath the mansion [where the old cinema was – remember all those films that used to break down?] massive two-and-a-half tonne beams have been installed to create a space where Shrewsbury’s Prehistoric and Roman exhibits can be shown.   It will lead out into Vaughan’s Mansion’s courtyard where there will be seating, an area for eating and drinking and space for performances.  This will be the first time in 150 years that this space has been opened out.  

I have to tell you that I’ve gone from wondering what the fuss was all about to thinking that Shrewsbury’s Museum and Art Gallery is really going to put our town on the map. What captured my imagination more than anything else [and a lot captured my imagination, believe me] was that gallery at the front of the building, designated for national and international touring exhibitions. It was the one thing above all others that stopped me in my tracks.  Currently the room is full of scaffolding and looks a mess, but the potential is undeniable.  The space is huge, and with its windows looking out over the Square and Old Market Hall, it’s going to be a beautiful room.

Already talks are under way with national institutions about the possibility of bringing major traveling exhibitions to our town. These would provide a fantastic draw for the museum.  Anybody coming in for them would find a wealth of other things to interest them, all housed in a building that’s of interest in its own right. We have plenty to be proud of here in Shrewsbury. Our Roman collection, courtesy of Wroxeter, is very fine.  We have the best Caughley and Coalport anywhere outside of the Victoria & Albert Museum. A year or so ago I glimpsed some of the collection of paintings that are currently stored in Rowley’s House, and what a fine collection it is. We even [if what I’m told is correct] have the bloody rag that once was used to wrap around Charles I’s severed head!

I am so excited by the potential of this Museum and Art Gallery.  What we have here could make a difference not just to Shrewsbury but the whole of Shropshire. For two hours last week, kitted out in jerkins, goggles, hard hats and hobnailed boots, our little group picked its way between builders and building work. We saw galleries, open spaces, teaching spaces and areas for cafes and shops. We caught a glimpse of the 1960s nuclear bunker that has always been a bit of a Shrewsbury urban myth - and yes, it really does exist, fitted to sleep twelve in the event of nuclear war, but containing one fatal flaw – a window.  We also saw the remains of the cells where prisoners were held for trial when the assize courts were held in the old Shirehall on The Square.

So what stood out most? I think for me it had to be that auditorium with the light pouring in.  Beyond its windows I could see the rooftops, ridges and chimney pots not only of Vaughan’s Mansion, but of much of our town.  It’s a living, vibrant town with a contemporary 21^st feel, but I don’t think anybody in Shrewsbury would deny that it’s a museum too, in its own right.  We’re proud of Shrewsbury’s history and its fine old buildings, and here in its heart, we’ll soon have a Museum and Art Gallery to be proud of too.  

One of the aims of My Tonight From Shrewsbury was to get behind closed doors. Well, I’m telling you that behind the doors of the Old Music Hall, floors are waiting to be paved, walls to be lime-washed and galleries to house their first exhibits.  It may still look like a building site, but the lion’s share of work is done, the building has been restored and, in some cases, saved - and by Christmas this year it will be open to the public.

I can’t wait to see it in its final glorious state. 

-If I find out any more, I’ll keep you posted.

-If you want to see more, here’s a YouTube clip.

-The other members of the group photograph are John Long, David Waterhouse, Sir William Francis, Tim Jenkins and Howard Franklin  

Dan Cassidy the Fiddle Player

‘Dan travels the world with his fiddle, and in his spare time lectures on the positive aspects of sarcasm.’  These words are written in a book made for Dan Cassidy by his sister, Eva. I’ve heard the fiddle – and Dan’s occasional flashes of sarcasm - but I can’t say there’s been much sign of lecturing.  

The first time I ever met Dan was in Poet’s Corner in the Loggerheads pub. I sat with my family in one corner, talking about the amazing music of the Stanley Brothers, and this quiet, solitary man sat in the opposite corner looking in a bit of a fug.   Slowly it became apparent that he knew the bands we were talking about.  As he began to share his knowledge we realized he was an American.  He loved country music, and so did we. There was a directness about him - a way of saying what he thought and not holding back that we instinctively warmed to.    

Dan grew up with country music. Folk too. His father was a musician, though he had a day-job too, and his mother played what Dan describes as ‘good’ folk and classical music on the record player.  There was always a guitar on the wall, and Dan’s father played the banjo too.  He introduced his children to music through folk songs.  Very quickly Dan’s sister, Eva, emerged as somebody who could carry a melody.  She and Dan were very close.  Dan’s father admires him now for his sink-or-swim attitude to making music his career, and respects him for the lessons he’s learned in the school of hard knocks.  But he wasn’t so keen when first Dan set out.  To begin with, his son went off to Germany with an English outfit, the Bobbie Barnwell band and only just squeezed out a living, then he came back and failed to hit the big time in the US too.  What he needed were qualifications, his father said.  He should go to college, have a proper career.  It took Eva Cassidy to give her brother the encouragement that kept him going, propelling him into the musical career he has today.

Eva was a year older than Dan, a person of great courage and unswerving instinct who would never willingly do anything she wasn’t happy about.  She went on to achieve great things, but at that stage she didn’t have Dan’s confidence in terms of public performance.  It’s tantalizing to wonder what sort of band they’d have made if they’d started performing together at that stage. But when Dan left the US for a second time, determined to go it alone and make something of himself, Eva remained behind in suburban Maryland where they’d grown up .

The first place Dan headed for was Iceland, a country he loved. After his stint with Bobbie Barnwell, Dan had done some gigs in Iceland and had been impressed by how uncrowded everything was - a clear, unpolluted country with a creative vibe and comfortable affluent lifestyle.   

Now, courtesy of a one-way ticket, Dan was back with $500 dollars in his pocket and nothing else but his fiddle.  He had no band behind him this time, but he succeeded in infiltrating the Icelandic music scene as the only electric fiddle player doing it his way.  He may have been a big fish in a small pool, he said, but it paid the bills. He was never out of work.  Everybody wanted Dan Cassidy playing on their albums.  The money was good.  He found opportunities in Iceland that wouldn’t have been available anywhere else.

‘I had a second teenager-hood,’ said Dan.  ‘Iceland’s a place for hard drinking – and I drank hard.  People lived fast lives. Rejkjavig was a party capital – a regular free-for-all.  And that’s the way I wanted it. I didn’t feel squeezed in a country like that.  I didn’t feel part of the rat race.  Back in Washington DC I’d had to work as a courier eight hours a day, with a further three hours commute home afterwards. Any music I made had to be squeezed in after that, when I was exhausted.’

Back in Washington DC, Dan had played part-time in a couple of bands, but no way had he made the living he was doing now. One had been a 13-piece big band dressed in smoking-jackets playing 20s-30s music for the well-to-do.  The other was an all-black outfit, playing in a rough part of town, from which Dan would need escorting at the end of the night.  ‘I remember thinking if they accept my electric violin here, they will anywhere,’ Dan said.  And they did.  And here in Iceland, they did too. But this time they were paying good money for it. 

How easy had it been acclimatizing to Icelandic culture, I wanted to know.  Dan said the hardest thing about it had been the language, which he still struggled with.  ‘If you want to know what Icelandic sounds like, listen to Robbie Burns read by a Highlander,’ he said.  ‘The Viking influence is plain to hear in both of them.’

Dan’s home-base is Iceland to this day.  He’s married now and has a little daughter, Eva, who is seven years old.  ‘The day she was born was the day I laid off the booze,’ he said. ‘Drugs, the lot.  I cleaned up my life.  And it’s been that way ever since.’   Being a musician was a balancing job, Dan said. He was a family man.  He had a teaching job.  He played in Iceland.  He’d formed a swing quartet that toured Europe doing gigs.  Sometimes he worked on TV.  Sometimes he collaborated in other ways with musicians.  Sometimes he played alone.

But every year he comes to Shrewsbury. ‘It was Bobbie Barnwell who first brought me here.  I was with her band for three and a half years before returning to the US to that job as a courier.  Every six months she’d come back to this country for a short period, and because Shrewsbury was where she hailed from, that’s where I’d come too.’

These were difficult years. Dan had constant money problems and frequent immigration issues. He had trouble connecting with people too. ‘I was a troubled young man’ is how he now describes it.  As a relative newcomer to Shrewsbury Dan remembers trying to work his way into the local music scene.  St Patricks’s Day in the back room of the Seven Stars in Coleham is one occasion he won’t forget.  ‘It was a folk gathering,’ he said.  ‘I had this weird home-made electric violin, and Bobbie’s brother-in-law, Cedric, and I played some bluegrass together.  It wasn’t what people were used to hearing. At the end somebody went yeeehaaaa. I didn’t get the sense that it was meant kindly.’

After that Dan was on a mission to prove how versatile the violin could be.  ‘I wanted to be Dan Cassidy the Fiddle Player, not Dan Cassidy the Eejit,’ he said.  ‘In pub sessions, on TV and radio, doing rock stuff, Hendrix and all that, doing country & western – I was not an ordinary violinist and I was out to prove something.’

The friendship with Bobbie, Cedric and their families has grown over the years. Now Dan says Shrewsbury feels like a third home, and the Hickman/Barnwell clan an extended family.  Returning to Shrewsbury has about it a sense of touching base.  ‘I’ve grown to appreciate the beauty of Shropshire, and the history of this town,’ Dan said.  ‘There’s a sense here of natural protection against intruders.  I suppose the river gives it that.  It’s a fascinating spot.’

Since 2004, Bobbie’s nephew James has been playing in the Dan Cassidy Swing Quarter. Dan has watched him over the years turning from a little kid to a hulking six foot man. He’s seen him take up the guitar, learn from his dad, Cedric and, as Dan puts it, ‘take the ball and run with it’. For the past five years too, he and Dan have played UK gigs as Hickman and Cassidy.  Every year, the two of them fill the Adam Ballroom at the Lion Hotel. This year they’ll be doing the same at Henry Tudor House, playing on May 19th to what ticket sales tell them will be a full house. 

‘I have a real following here in Shrewsbury,’ Dan said.  ‘I’ve made some great friends.  There’s always such a pull to come back.  Next year I’ll be celebrating my 50^th birthday with a Dan Cassidy Swing Quartet concert in the Lion Ballroom. Then I’m taking my wife and daughter off on a cruise.’ 

Dan cracks a joke about financing the cruise, which is plainly important to him.  We both have a chuckle.  Dan’s sense of humour is very dry.  It’s also has a direct quality that he says he’s had to tone down over the years.  There’s a difference between what Americans and the British find acceptable when it comes to humour, he says.  A line that can’t be crossed, and it’s taken him a while to recognize it.  ‘I used to be quite tactless sometimes,’ Dan said.  ‘But I learned.  I’m better now.’ 

Dan said it was a profound experience first arriving in Shrewsbury, a young American in a foreign land.  He loved listening to people and hearing what their angle was, but more often than not it was very different to the angle back home. ‘It was as if I’d been living in a bubble all my life,’ Dan said.  ‘And now I’d broken out of it.  Americans are so used to saying they’re the greatest, and it’s easy to maintain that view when you never go anywhere else. As an American abroad you want to be patriotic towards the country you love, but you have to accept that things seem different from abroad.’

Currently Hickman & Cassidy are on a six-week tour of the UK.   They’re in the South-West next week, then Scotland the first week in June, including a concert on Skye.  Dan only does concerts these days.  He said his days of playing in bars whilst people talked over him were over. Playing concerts, he said, raised the bar.  It was extraordinary, for example, to find oneself in the Adam Ballroom knowing that Paginini had been there before you on that very same stage.  A hard act to follow – but Dan had never had a bad gig at the Lion Hotel.

Dan and James’s music is a mixture of swing, blue-grass, blues and folk.  They’re writing their own material too.  There’s more of it than they can fit into one show. ‘We’re not a cookie-cutter act,’ Dan said.  ‘We love and play old classics, but we do it our own way, and we do our own stuff too. James wrote a song about the Battle of Shrewsbury recently. You should get him to play it for you.’

Dan has always loved the combination of violin and acoustic guitar, he said, the one so lyrical, the other with its percussive element driving forward the beat.  ‘I find that blend of sounds intriguing,’ he said.  ‘And when you add in someone like James, who can really sing, you’ve got it all.  With Eva, I was used to working with a real high-calibre singer.  And what James and I have today is built on the foundation of that partnership.’ 

Eva was uncomfortable with gigging.  She honed her skills in the recording studio, Dan said, rather than the rough and tumble of live performance.  Not that she was the unknown she’s so often presented as in the Eva Cassidy myth.  On the contrary, she was on the verge of a contract with Blue Note when they suddenly got cold feet and said her style was too eclectic – the decision to pull out, Dan said, being one they regretted to this day. 

‘There’s a lovely film coming out about Eva,’ Dan said.  ‘Timeless Voice – Eva Cassidy’. It’s beautifully done. It’ll be on the Sky Arts Channel and eventually out as a DVD too.  All sorts of people are on it talking about the impact of her music at that very highly commercialized time in the business. And there are some lovely clips of her singing, of course. You know, she came to see me in Iceland a couple of times. People were mesmerized by her. Not only did they sit in silence while she sang, they wouldn’t even touch their drinks until she’d finished each song.  She had such a presence.  Her voice simply commanded attention.’

A moment’s silence falls between us. But Dan’s a natural talker in his own quiet way, a garrulous man you might almost say, and it doesn’t take much for him to be off again, telling me about one of his students, who is currently touring the world with Icelandic post-rock band, Sigur Ros, who are famous, amongst other things, for their bowed guitar. 

Teaching is very important to Dan.  His specialism, he said, was teaching classical-trained musicians how to play by ear.  There was very little, if any, curriculm for non-classical studies at Conservatory level, he said, yet an inability to play instinctively was a missing element in any musician’s education.  ‘Mind you, folk musicians can miss out too by sticking to the vernacular,’ he said.  ‘There’s a lot you can discover about folk by learning about Baroque music.  Either way, music students are limited if they adhere too strongly to one or the other, classical or folk.’

Dan runs Masterclasses on this subject, and hopes to develop these, introducing  young musicians to the range of possibilities bowed instruments can provide - especially the violin.  ‘Some day, if I live long enough,’ he said, ‘I’d like to change the way people think about learning stringed instruments.  I’d like to see them borrowing from the best of jazz, folk, classical, pop.  Teaching classes and performing go hand in hand.  There’s a golden opportunity, via performance, to inspire young musicians. And inspiring young musicians is what I want to do.’ 

We’ve been talking about the violin for hours, but only now do I get round to asking Dan how he chose it as his instrument. As a child, he said, he was always grabbing bits and pieces of music and making something of them.  But things really took off  for him when a violinist came to school and played a piece of music from a TV commercial.  Dan was inspired by the idea that the instrument could be fun, and not just arduous.  He was given a violin for his tenth birthday. Eva had a guitar.  Now they could play with their father – not as a family, because Dan’s mother and two other sisters didn’t join them, but as a musical entity within the family.  It became a part of who the Cassidys were.

‘Soon I’m going to be playing Eva’s music again,’ Dan said. ‘I’m really looking forward to it.  It’s a collaboration with a Dutch singer I met on TV in the Netherlands.  Margriet Sjoerdsma is her name.  We’re doing an Eva Cassidy tribute tour and concert, playing at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam.’

But wherever Dan goes, he’ll always return to Shrewsbury. ‘There are lots of chapters in my life,’ he said, ‘and in between them all is Shrewsbury.’  A lot of Dan’s lessons in life have been learned here in this town.  He arrived as a shy lad trying to find his feet. He used to drink heavily back in those early days.  It was a way for a shy boy to fit in socially. ‘I wanted to be liked,’ Dan said, ‘and I thought I could do that by getting drunk. When you’re young that’s a common mistake.’  

Dan has had thirty years of coming here. Shrewsbury, he says, is the place where he measures the changes in himself and charts his development as he strives to ‘prove his salt’. But he’s not the only one who has changed. Over the years, Shrewsbury has too. ‘When I first arrived here in 1984, Shrewsbury was a very different town to what it is now,’ Dan said. ‘For starters, there was no Pride Hill Centre, nor were there any wine bars or much of a night life.’ 

Back in those days, Dan sometimes sensed an unease that he could only describe as ‘bad energy’.  It was quickly sprung up, and quickly gone again, he said, but he’d never felt it anywhere else. He’d asked extensively if other people felt it too, and was relieved when a few folk said they had.  The balance to that, he reckoned, was that the town had a life about it, and creative flow, that he’d rarely felt anywhere else either. ‘This really is a very special place,’ he said. ‘That’s why I keep coming back. Eva would have loved it here, you know. She never wanted the big stage.  She would have loved singing at one of the music nights in the Loggerheads.  It was my dream to bring her over here.  In fact in her last letter to me she talked about coming to Europe. But she never did.’

I left Dan in Poets’ Corner, at the back of the Loggerheads, ordering their special sausage & mash lunch. ‘Good to see you again,’ I said.  ‘I’ll get James to send you his song,’ he replied.  And he did.. Here it is:. Thank you Dan, and James: 

We supported Henry in the war against Richard, 

And gave our lives fighting Glyndwr and the Scottish.

But by his word we found Henry, he would not stand.

What was promised was not given, no money, no land.

Earls we were,

Of Worcester and Northumbria,

With influence and power,

Betrayed we were,

By our King.

Died did we, in the battlefields of Shrewsbury.

We marched south through Cheshire, where we raised ten thousand archers. 

And our numbers grew with Welshmen from the Marches.

Then by the banks of the Severn, we spied Henry's army.

Drew our swords and knocked our arrows, just 3 miles north of Shrewsbury.

On that day, 

Shropshires fields were golden,

The summer sun was setting.

We set forth, 

To kill our king.

Died did we in the battle fields of Shrewsbury.

The battle would be won by the deadly English longbow.

Arrows filled the air and men lay stricken on the meadows.

And though our archers were the finer,

And their men fell like leaves in autumn.

One stray arrow struck Earl Percy, as he rode forth to give orders.

That single arrow, 

It ruled the fates of many,

Robbed us of our victory.

Defeated we were, 

By our king.

Died did we in the battle fields of Shrewsbury.

Died did we in the battle fields of Shrewsbury.

[copyright James Hickman]

 

  

Shiny, Shiny Great Gatsby Flapper-Girl Frocks

Baz Luhrmann’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ premieres in London tonight.  I’ve been on the internet and  have picked up some of the excitement Leonardo di Caprio fans are experiencing as they wait for his red carpet moment.  I’ve also watched the film’s trailer on You Tube, and as a result can confirm that I’ll be going – though not tonight, and it’ll be to Old Potts Way, Shrewsbury, not the Odeon Leicester Square.  I’ve seen the Robert Redford film, so it’ll be interesting to find out what Leonardo makes of the part.  I’ve also read the book [by which I mean F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book, not Baz Luhrmann’s!].  In fact, over the years I’ve read it several times.

I love the writing of F.Scott Fitzgerald.  I even love ‘Tender Is The Night’, which I’ve heard described as ‘about nothing’.  I particularly love Fitzgerald’s long short story ‘The Diamond As Big As The Ritz’, but I love ‘The Great Gatsby’ too.  More than the story itself, it’s Fitzgerald’s cool, pared-back style that grips me.  But his classic tale of glamour and greed, privilege and decadence in the jazz age is pretty gripping too - and as relevant now, I’d suggest, when divisions between rich and poor are growing, as they ever were.

Over the coming weeks I’m guessing that interest in Twenties clothing, especially those of wealthy, party-loving women, is going to be booming.  I was on St John’s Hill today, in the vintage clothes shop, E. A. Jones, looking at Emilia Jones’s collection of 1920s dresses, jackets and coats. Some items are for sale, but most of what I’d come to look at and photograph form her own private collection. 

And what fabulous stuff she collects.  Where to start sharing it with you? Certainly this beaded, flame-orange dress from the early ‘20s is an important one in Emilia’s collection.  It was one of her first pieces, bought at a Christie’s auction when she was only fourteen.  Young, you might think - but Emilia was a collector before that.

‘It was through my dolls that I first became interested in clothes,’ said Emilia.   ‘My first doll was brought for me when my brother was born. I was two and a half at the time and I grew to love the clothes, the dressing of dolls and exhibiting them. But I was never interested in playing.  It was always collecting that I wanted to do.’

Now Emilia’s collection of dolls extends from the eighteenth century onwards.  Most are British or German, some are tiny, others almost life sized.  Emilia also collects early clockwork toys, which she says drive her poodle crazy.  And then there are the clothes.  Emilia’s parents are collectors too, and at around the age of twelve, inspired by her mother’s collection of period costumes, Emilia moved into vintage clothing. 

The purchase of the orange dress was a defining moment, however. Emilia had never bid in a big sale before.  She left commission bids on everything she fancied, with no idea how successful she’d be, and waited to see what would happen next.  It was really exciting to learn from Christie’s that many of her bids had been successful, and even more exciting when her purchases started turning up in the post, all individually packaged, carefully wrapped in layers of tissue paper. 

Emilia had bought a wide range of items from a variety of periods, and now found herself inspired to find out more about them and research the history of fashion. ‘But it was the orange flapper dress that turned me into a collector of 1920s clothing,’ she said. ‘The rest was interesting, but it was the 1920s I fell in love with.’ 

I looked around the shop, its rails hanging with dresses, skirts, blouses and coats, its walls with pretty frocks on hangers, its stands with jewellery and hats.  It was a perfect treasure trove.  I wanted to know how Emilia made her choices about what to buy.  Her shop was packed with not just clothing but pieces of period furniture and little knick-knacks, and downstairs I found a whole room full of vintage fabrics and another of men’s period coats and suits and assorted hats. ‘Of course I buy what I think Shrewsbury people will like,’ Emilia said, and I’ve been here long enough now to have an idea of what that might be.  But I’ll also try to buy things that are special, that belong to a particular moment in history like the 1780s dress I bought last week, and that lovely 1948-50 New Look coat on the rack over there.’  

All the while that she was talking, Emilia was taking dresses out of boxes, shaking them out of their tissue paper and hanging them up.  On one wall hung a shocking pink velvet coat [shocking pink as a colour was first named in the '20s by Elsa Schaperelli], lined with something soft and beige that looked remarkably like fur.  I had to try it on.  It felt like drowning in warm milk - a surprisingly agreeable experience. I thought it looked rather fetching as well, and imagined the stir it might cause if I turned up in Waitrose wearing it. Oh, for a bit of glamour in our lives!

Suddenly out of tissue paper emerged a beautiful black dress, as light and fine as gossamer, decorated with beads and tiny dots of silver. Its hemline was scalloped, beaded and embroidered and a sash hung down one side of it, creating an asymmetrical effect. Emilia said this dress would have come from the late 1920s. By that stage designers were getting away from the tape-chested androgynous look, waistlines were rising and the desired effect was becoming more feminine.

This dress was definitely feminine. Everything on it shimmered. I’ve seen butterflies in the jungle, and I’m telling you they didn’t shimmer more.  But then everything about the 1920s, apparently, always had to have a shine on it.   We moved on to a black flapper dress which was absolutely smothered in beads, its skirt made of rows of shiny silk tassles under which could be seen a flash of red silk.  Emilia dated it  around 1925.  The beaded orange dress was 1922, she reckoned, when the whole flapper thing was really kicking off.  Then there was a light, white, sleeveless dress beaded with silver, which she dated around1926. Then, draped over a dummy was a black long-fringed shawl covered in snow-white silk embroidery that shone like moonlight on a midnight lake.

On and on the items came - a velvet evening coat decorated with tiny flowers, which had been sold at auction as a 1970s coat, which Emilia said was a common mistake; a black velvet jacket with a quilted stand-up collar; a lilac and primrose frilled and layered fancy dress, trimmed with a hint of yellow down; a heavy black cloak literally smothered in the most intricate silver embroidery.  Talk about shimmering – it was hard to believe this piece wasn’t being exhibited in the V & A.

To begin with, E. A. Jones was very much a retro shop, selling to a young audience at the less expensive end of the market. Surprisingly, Emilia found that 1920s clothes didn’t prove as popular as Victorian or 30s and 40s items.  My guess is that after a few weeks of The Great Gatsby, this will change. By now, however, Emilia has developed a reputation for high quality garments with the sort of detailing and finishes that make them of value to collector, or to re-enactment enthusiasts.

There were a lot of these around, apparently.  Emilia said that frequently she attended events that might be anything from tea dances to weekend-long military re-enactments. One of these was coming up at Berrington Hall in June.  Last time Emilia was there, she said the front lawn was full of military vehicles, including a tank, and there was a fly-past of Hurricanes. ‘People come to these events dressed in the clothes of the day,’ Emilia said, ‘and they’re looking to buy more of the same.’

By the time The Great Gatsby has run its course, I’m guessing there will be ‘20s re-enactments too.  It was such an interesting time, Emilia said.  Certainly a time of dramatic change when it came to clothes. In a short space of time, hemlines shot up, arms and legs appeared and everybody wanted shiny, shiny clothes.  ‘Lots of glass, beads, sequins and metallic thread, ‘ Emilia said, bringing out a series of head dresses beaded in silver and bright colours and crocheted in gold.  ‘The flapper dress is very much a 1920s stereotype. It’s important to realize that not everybody dressed like that.  The whole flapper phenomenon was more of a showgirl thing. Amongst the wealthy, even in terms of evening attire, not everybody went for the full flapper look.  Clothes were being designed that were more beautiful and imaginative than flapper dresses. Some of the items here – the black evening dress with the scalloped edge, for example - aren’t what you’d call typical flapper dresses. But they are very much of the period.’

Today Emilia’s shop is a riot of periods. Rifling along the rails, I found Victorian lace nightdresses, satin 1930s knickers, a World War II ‘utility’ coat of a quality you’d never get today and a lovely lavender coloured 1930s evening dress. Emilia told me it was Madelaine Vionnet who first introduced this style of slinky, bias-cut evening-wear.  Plainly she knows her history of fashion. I loved the fact that all her clothes were labeled with where they’d come from, and when, and as much of their background as Emilia knew.

Emilia talked about how hard it was buying 1920s daywear.  She was always on the look-out for Chanel-inspired knitwear – sports suits, knitted skirts and jackets, and trousers for women. Behind her, as she said this, stood a massive wedding dress that was the polar opposite of Chanel.  It was a typical ‘Four Weddings & A Funeral’ meringue – a mass of swirling silk, net and God alone knows what else exploding outwards from a tiny waist. ‘Size 8, and taken in because, incredibly, it was too big,’ Emilia said.  ‘I didn’t know where else to put it but there in the window. Anywhere else, and it would fill the shop.’

Where did Emilia buy from, I wanted to know. She said some of her clothes came from France, others from the US.  American clothes were expensive, she said, because of customs charges. But there was a real difference between them and British clothes.   A 1940s American blouse would be more extrovert than a 1940s British one.  ‘The US one would be more confident,’ Emilia said, holding up an example to show me.  ‘The British one would be more demure.  The war hadn’t bitten so deeply over there, and it showed in the clothes.’  

 

There was a vast market in the US, Emilia said.  Vintage clothes that were hard to find here were readily available in the US, and the interest was huge. Many of Emilia’s clothes were bought online nowadays, rather than at auction.  She’d got to know a variety of sellers, not just in the US but around the world and in this country too. She knew what to expect from each of them, who to get in touch with if looking for something in particular. At the same time, she was working towards getting a name for herself as someone who sold exquisite, interesting things.

If you want to look at Emilia’s exquisite, interesting things, take a peek at her Facebook page, or better still visit her shop, E.A. Jones, on St John’s Hill.  Another way to find her is at some of the major antiques fairs.  Emilia was at one of the biggest, Antiques for Everyone at the NEC, back in April, and she’ll be there again in July.  Did she ever exhbit her collection, I wanted to know.  Emilia said she didn’t, but she did give talks.  The history of fashion up to the 1950s was her subject.  I bet she gives a fascinating talk. I’m sure she’d take bookings if you wanted to ask.

It’s time to pay up and leave. Not content with rifling along rails and chatting to Emilia over a cup of coffee, I’ve also been buying – a couple of small items that [just in case you get one for Christmas] I won’t describe here; also a green velvet Canadian coat that will be finish off my outfit for a friend’s wedding later this year. Given how much I love clothes, it’s amazing that this is the first post I’ve written on the subject for My Tonight From Shrewsbury. H & M, eat your heart out.  And French Connection, Fat Face and M & S too. Emilia’s shop, E. A. Jones, is to clothes what Shrewsbury Market is to fish, fresh meat, fruit and veg. In other words, this is the real deal - and I’ll be back. Oh, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, I’ve just started re-reading ‘The Diamond As Big As The Ritz’.

Great Gatsby preview:   

Emilia’s Facebook Page: 

Berrington Hall Event:  

Shakespeare and Shrewsbury. What's the Link?

One of Shakespeare’s plays has its grand finale here in Shrewsbury. Not many people seem to know that. The play is Henry IV Part I, and its dramatic climax takes place out at Battlefields and is one of the pivotal moments in English military history, being the point at which the long bow really came into its own. All the key political figures of the day were in that play [not to say anything of on that battlefield].  King Henry IV was there, riding out from Shrewsbury Castle to take up position in a pea-field, along with his son and heir, the hapless Prince Hal, who would one day have a personality transplant and become the Henry V of Agincourt fame. The scion of the ambitious Percy family, Harry Hotspur, was there.  Lord Edmund Mortimer was there, descendant of Edward III, tied by marriage alliance into the Percy family.  Even that great Welsh hero, Owen Glendower, who Shakespeare famously accused of ‘calling forth spirits from the vasty deeps’ was there [though not for long – he came as far as Bicton Water Tower apparently, saw the lie of the land and turned back].

And Sir John Falstaff was there.  Not that he was a key player on any other stage than Shakespeare’s.  But on that stage he’s reckoned, alongside Hamlet, to be one of Shakespeare’s two greatest characters.   Imagine it - a character of that stature in the works of Shakespeare, and connected to our town.

I think that’s something worth shouting about, but I don’t hear anybody doing any shouting.  At the very least it’s something to know about.  I bet everybody in Elsinore knows about Hamlet, yet here on the killing fields of Shrewsbury, where the great Sir John Falstaff even went so far as to fake his own death, do I ever hear anybody talking about it, or mentioning the connection, or naming their pub after this most famous of Shakespearean drinkers?  No I don’t.   

So what’s the story behind the Battle of Shrewsbury? I’m no historian, but here’s the gist of it.  Back in 1399 when Henry Bolingbroke [named after the place of his birth, Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire] usurped the throne of England from his one-time playmate and cousin, Richard II, becoming King Henry IV, he did it with help from the powerful Percy family. However, arguments and rivalries quickly broke out and the Percys started planning rebellion. In particular they wanted to put the under-age Earl of March – another of Henry’s cousins in the Plantagenet line - on the throne in Bolingbroke’s place, pulling in an alliance of lords, including the man known to many as the ‘Welsh Prince’, Owen Glendower, all of whom were linked to each other by marriage.

Complicated?  Well, you should see Henry IV’s family tree. [http://www.history.ac.uk/richardII/RII_] His great, great grandfather was the mighty Edward I, his father John of Gaunt, son of Edward III and King of Castile.  His uncle was the Black Prince, and his grandfather started the Hundred Years War.  And that’s only a small handful of the men in the family. There were more kings, queens, princes, princesses, lords, ladies, rivals and coups in the making in the Plantagenet family than there are stalls in Shrewsbury market – and I’m not exaggerating here.

There are those who believed Henry IV seized the throne by starving the legitimate king, Richard II, to death, and those who reckoned, given the wealth of other claimants, that Henry’s claim to the throne [and indeed position in the family pecking order] was very weak indeed.  The Percys clamed that they’d only supported him to help him get back stolen lands – they’d no idea he was aiming to make himself king. 

Whether or not this is likely, in the summer of 1403 when Henry picked up on rebellion in the Percy camp, drawing in several of his cousins in what was plainly a major coup, he acted quickly. Hearing of forces gathering against him in Cheshire, with a view to marching on Shrewsbury which was garrisoned by his eldest son, the sixteen year old Prince Hal of Shakespeare’s play, and hearing too that the Earl of Worcester, had defected to the Percy side, taking with him a thousand men, Henry headed north-west to intercept the conspiritors before they could join forces with Owen Glendower and the Welsh. 

A race for Shrewsbury took place, which the king won.  The famous Percy son, Harry Hotspur, found himself isolated on the north side of the town, with the River Severn and the king’s army between him and any hope of Welsh reinforcements.  For a day or so he lurked around Harlescott, then with no sign of Glendower turning up and the king’s forces advancing upon him, Hotspur and his men were forced back to take up positions in the most famous pea-field in English history, now known as Battlefields.

For a while, a stand-off took place, during which it seemed neither side was keen to fight.  The abbots of Shrewsbury and Haughmond attempted to mediate and indeed Hotspur appeared to be amenable, reality having hit home when his reinforcements still failed to show up and even his father – as Shakespeare would have it – cried off sick on the big day.  However, King Henry was unwilling to back down.  

Finally, with only two hours of daylight left, battle commenced. The king’s men advanced, and Hotspur’s archers opened fire, driving them back. This is reckoned to be the first time that English longbow men turned upon each other on English soil.  Seizing this opportunity, Hotspur ordered a counterattack. In the ensuing battle, however, he lost his life, at which point it was over for the Percys, and indeed for the battle as a whole.

Shrewsbury was short, but savage. It was the bloodiest battle in English history. At the end of the day the ground was so strewn with bodies that the field itself could no longer be seen.  The political significance of the Battle of Shrewsbury was to secure the line of Henry Bolingbroke and break the power of the Percy family, but from Shakespeare’s point of view, it was very much the precursor to Agincourt.   

Shakespeare has Prince Hal transformed by battle into the son and heir his father had always wanted him to be.  He places Harry Hotspur’s body at Prince Hal’s feet. But just in case we’re taking all this too seriously, he places Falstaff at Prince Hal’s feet too – his old drinking partner and alternative father-figure pretending, like the coward he so often was, to be dead to avoid having to fight.

I’d love to see a production of this play. There are so many strong characters in it, and moments of real pathos. Hotspur was brave, proud and impetuous, absolutely full of himself, in many respects exactly the sort of son that Henry IV would have loved to have - and given the son he did have, Hotspur’s being Henry’s enemy was one of the tragedies of the tale.   Then there was Hal, the wayward son with the calculating mind who used and discarded people at will. A bit of a shit is the way I’d describe Henry IV’s precious son – on a mission to please only himself, yet eventually, as Henry V of Agincourt, he was regarded as one of England’s greatest kings. Then there was Owen Glendower, the hero of the Welsh and yet a mystery unto himself, tied by bonds of marriage to the Percy family, but tied to nobody when it came to his own will.  Then there was Falstaf, mentor to Prince Hal, instructing him in the practices of criminals and vagabonds, yet loving him like a real son. Space here doesn’t do justice to what he was all about.

And then there were the lords.  Back in the day, in their own territories each of them lived out their lives as demi-kings, powerful beyond belief, and treacherous too.  To my mind, there’s not a hero amongst the lot of them.  Perhaps the only hero is Shakepeare, who told their tangled tale. 

Ten years ago, at the celebration to mark six hundred years since the Battle of Shrewsbury, and before an audience of Shropshire schoolchildren, I interviewed ‘Parkinson-style’ all the main protagonists in that battle. The venue was Battlefields Church, built over a mass burial pit for the purpose of singing masses for the souls of the dead in battle, and later to  pray daily for the soul of the king. The hosts were the Battlefields Preservation Trust.  One by one, Hotspur, Henry IV, Prince Hal and all the others came clanking out of the ‘hospitality suite’ [ie the vicar’s vestry] in full body armour to be quizzed about the part they’d played in the lead-up to the day and the battle itself. It was brilliant. The children were thrilled. At the end of the interviews they trooped outside to line up with Henry and Hal on one side of the churchyard and Hotspur and the Percys on the other, and charge each other armed with rubber truncheons in a re-enactment of the battle.

Shame a film wasn’t made of the occasion.  Nor have I ever seen any photographs. However, I do know that the BBC filmed Henry IV Part I as part of their Hollow Crown series, recently seen on BBC 4.  Here’s a clip from it.  Prince Hal is getting his come-uppance from a father who’s had enough. Watch it all the way through.  It’s quite a shocking clip: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00t3mrr

This isn’t the only film of Henry IV Part I doing the rounds, however.  Shrewsbury College of Art & Technology made a film of the play a year or so ago, in conjunction with the British Youth Film Academy.  Apparently it was premiered in Shrewsbury this January. I’m sorry I missed it. I’d love to talk to anyone who was involved in it, or know if it will be shown again.  For those of you who are interested, here's the link:        

 http://www.britishyouthfilmacademy.com/our-films/henry-iv-part-1

'For I profess not talking, only this -

Let each man do his best. And here draw I

A word whose temper I intend to stain

With the best blood that I can meet withal

In the adventure of this perilous day.

Now, Esperance! Percy! And set on!

Sound all the lofty instruments of war,

And by that music let us all embrace,

For heaven to earth, some of us never shall

A second time do such a courtesy.'

[Henry IV, Part I - Act 4 Sc 2 - Hotspur ]