Lord Beestonia🐝 Profile picture
Sep 19, 2020 21 tweets 9 min read Read on X
THE NOT ENTIRELY OBVIOUS NOTTINGHAM ESSAY: PART 1: TWO PLAQUES.

Here's a story about two plaques in Nottm city centre, and why they might have a strange link that spans a century and created one of the most recognisable characters of all time.

So, let's see the plaques.
We'll begin with the 1st. It's in Exchange Arcade (under the Council House Dome where all the posh shops are), marking onthe former home of Henry Kirke White, a poet who took the whole Romantic Poet idea of dying young to the extreme. Henry who? We'll call him HKW from here on..
The rest of this thread disappeared into the ether when I posted it. Ta, Twitter.

I'll write it again at some point and save the text this time

I swear this isn't some sort of teaser campaign.
It'll be worth the wait, I promise. There were literally minutes of painstaking, deep-dive research put into putting together a further strand of my theory that Nottingham is the centre of the cultural universe.
While two of the most famous live fast/good-looking- corpse guys, Byron and Shelly, died before middle age (36 and 29, respectively) HKW made them look like a pair of Methuselahs, booting the bucket at a tender 21, in 1806.
The son of a butcher (something he had in common with Herbert Kilpin, the Nottm born and bred founder of AC Milan -watch the @LeftLion film, it's ace) he was a prodigy of sorts, and took to writing verse in between bouts of deathly consumption.
To save him from the polluted air of industrial revolution era Nottingham, which by all accounts was utterly filthy, he moved to Wilford, and was encouraged to take long country walks. And so he did, venturing further down the Trent to that well-known beauty spot, Clifton.
I know, I know. Modern day Clifton is hardly the most beautiful area, after millions of tons of concrete was dumped on it in the fifties to build what was then Europe's largest council estate. But mock not. It's been home to @JakeBugg and the wonderful @samthesparrow. Also....
The old Clifton Village is a beauty. Behind that is a place once hugely fashionable amongst those seeking a Sylvian paradise by the Trent. Clifton Grove was - is- a beautiful area. I was there just today...
HKW would go there frequently and fell in love with the area, to the extent it inspired a long and rather readable poem, appropriately called 'Clifton Grove' On publication it was a hit, and attracted the admiration of Robert Southey and a young Lord Byron.

Here, have a taste.
Yet this fame was short-lived: a move to Cambridge to study and further his talents resulted in him becoming obsessive about Christianity, illness and his death.
The Famous Notts Romantic Poet crown would be claimed by Byron just a few years later.
His legacy faded fast. While a decent poet, his religious obsessiveness fell out of favour and Byron, who was very much inspired by HKW, swiftly eclipsed him. However, you'll find him in this painting that can be found in @BromleyHouseLib ...
Titled 'Clifton Grove' it shows the area as it was in the 19th Century and was painted by John Rawson Walker. Check out a figure, barely visible, sitting beneath a towering oak...
It's our mate HKW!

A decent legacy, no doubt, but there is one much, much more prestigious.

I reckon that Henry Kirke White was an inspiration for Peter Pan.
Here's the other plaque, marking the place JM Barrie worked when he (briefly lived in Nottingham) as a young writer. He was here just shy of a year. You'll find this on Pelham Street.
He too loved Clifton Grove, and one day while there with a friend, George Basil Barham, said, upon seeing an 'urchin' in the woods "See that lad, his name's Peter and he has lost his shadow. His sister's pinned that rag on him for a shadow."
It's long been noted that the Arboretum, just up from the city centre @TrentUni campus, was the inspiration for many aspects of Neverland. My theory is, however, that HKW, who the well-read Barrie would be well aware of, was at least a part of the creation of Peter Pan.
Other candidates were likely blended into the character: Barrie's brother died young, giving a profound emotional jolt. Barrie himself was quite childlike, under 5ft tall and boyish in stature. Fictional characters really have a single source.
But I still think that somewhere in the story of Peter Pan, a story retold in many ways and an iconic character, Henry Kirke White lives on. The End.
Ps: I decided not to pursue this further by pointing out that Pan's companion Tinker Bell was based on the Nottingham stream, Tinker's Leen and the most famous pub on the Market Square.

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More from @Beeestonia

May 12
Yesterday was hot, bright sunshine and utterly lovely.

A perfect day to go to a graveyard and then down into the Catacombs of Nottingham, where the air temp is pretty cold and totally dark.

It's also a VERY Nottingham place, of which I shall explain later.

Thread time! Image
But I won't rush you straight down. Let's have a look around the bit above, Nottingham's Rock Cemetery, which, like Rock City in the eighties, is GOTH HEAVEN. Image
It's celeb centre here, if you judge celeb by the NG postcode. Who has bone beneath the turf?

Well, bloke who started Raleigh, for one, Sir Frank Bowden.

No Frankie, no Chopper. Image
Read 26 tweets
Apr 19
Lord Byron died exactly 200 years ago today, after falling ill in Greece while gathering an army to fight the Ottoman Empire.
Raise your game, Simon Armitage.

There is plenty to be said about his death, and you will not struggle to find that.

I, however, want to talk about.. Image
...something that happened long after he died, which proves that you can't keep a good heroic poet down, even if they've been dead for ages.

Let us look at one of the most bizarre stories in Byron's death, when a vicar decided to see how Byron was doing under his church.
The year is 1938. We are in Hucknall, north of Nottingham, where Byron's corpse lies in a crypt beneath Mary Magdalen Church, with ancient family members (and his daughter, the computer genius Ada Lovelace) Image
Read 25 tweets
Apr 9
A while back I was contacted by the English Department at the University of Milan, who were studying Saturday Night, Sunday Morning and were planning a trip to Nottingham to see where it is set. Could I guide them? Yeah, Ok. I assumed I'd walk them to Canning Circus... Image
...and possibly Ilkeston Road.

They turn up, on a Sunday Morning exactly seven years ago today, 25 stylish Italian young people fascinated with the urban decay that is that part of Nottingham.

And they want to walk. Canning Circus won't cut it. Image
The book opens in the White Horse Pub down Ilkeston Road, as Arthur Seaton falls drunk down the stairs.

"We have to go there" they tell me, about a pub I've passed a thousand times without a glance
"Ok, fair enough".
Down Ilkeston Road we go, grimy from a Saturday Night Image
Read 13 tweets
Mar 17
Tomorrow is the 45th Anniversary of the death of Richard Beckinsale, a hero of British comedy, and, to those who knew him (and I've met many) a kind, gentle, loving man.
He was also a poet with a scary sense of his own sudden death... Image
He grew up in Beeston and attended College House school, where a few years ago a blue plaque was unveiled. A bizarre day where a suburban East Midlands school had @davidwalliams , @michaelsheen , Kate Beckinsale and others appear for a glass of Schloer prior to the unveiling.
Image
Image
I was the only journo at the pre-unveiling reception, and mistook Michael Sheen for a waiter. We later talked about brogues (his were a bit pricier than mine).
Anyhow, was a lovely event, if not downright weirdly starry.
Image
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Read 9 tweets
Oct 8, 2022
How does this play out on a hyperlocal level?

Broxtowe goes to the polls next year, so will be a great test of polls v reality, pre the 2024 GE

My guesses, after too many years being embroiled in such matters?

Broxtowe will be redder than ever.

THREAD 🧵
I best show my working out.

Ok, here goes.

Before we get local, let's look at Wiltshire's most useless MP ( unless the metric is expense claims)
Darren Henry is toast. His one hope to buck the trend is local popularity on account of being able to detach from the government and show he'sa free thinker

He is never here.

He runs from his own constituents

He is devoted to Truss.

He's a whip.

GE PREDICTION: Tarah, Daz
Read 26 tweets
Jan 21, 2022
Our MP, @DarrenG_Henry , is famously useless in doing anything.
Yet he is top of the charts on one measure: how much he claims in expenses! Last year he claimed a staggering £280,936, despite not having to form out huge amounts commuting from Scotland (usually such MPs...
...dominate the top spot.

So, what has Darren been spending our money on? He's apparently not much in his Stapleford office.

He doesn't do anything, apart from vote on whatever he is told, from dumping shit in rivers to exonerating Owen Patterson.
Broxtowe is only 100 miles from Westminster.
Wiltshire is only 100 miles from Nottingham. Can't be that then, unless he is claiming to move between the three.
Read 6 tweets

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