He says that, on his arrival at Cambridge, he found that the undergraduates drank hard, and that their conversation was even worse than their lives. As for work, they did none at all, but passed their time in cock-fighting, drinking, and creating disturbances. Corruption reigned in all the public offices.
The medical profession was distracted by jealousies, rivalries, and ignorance. The law was made ridiculous by the absurd technicalities of the courts, and the ignorance manifested by barristers in the laws and constitution of their own country.

Read on for the answer to this statement!

Well I suppose the reference to cock-fighting gave the game away! The observation was made by William Wilberforce (24 August 1759 – 29 July 1833) the British politician, philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade, on his entry to St. John’s, Cambridge University, in 1778 at the age of seventeen!
The quotation was found in: Highways and horses. By Athol Maudslay dated 1888

You can imagine how pleased I was therefore to discover that the photograph had been included in the collection! Here it is, but I’m sure the book will be a better place to view it, so keep this site bookmarked and I’ll add a link to the book when it is available.

Just a quick addendum to this post. It is very easy to create new blog posts on here but I am very aware that it is some time… over a month in fact since I added a new article on the Parlington history site, this is because they take much more time and effort! I still have a lot of research material to use for generating future articles, for example I now have some really good images for enhancing the coal mining section, these are a collection of old glass lantern slides, whilst not specific to Garforth they are very helpful in demonstrating the technology of the time, and fit very well with how the Gascoigne pits were being run, so do keep looking out for new additions, your patience will be rewarded!

I have so far found that in 1834 listed in the Gazetteer of the County of York, a certain William Cockren was a Victualler at the Fox Inn, Aberford. Hmm! where was that? At the north of the village is/was the Royal Oak, south in the centre of the village just north of the Cock Beck bridge is the Arabian horse, a longstanding popular venue! On the south of the Cock at the junction of Cattle lane is the Swan Hotel/Inn, long famous for its ample food! At the brow of the hill south of St Ricarius church is a house with the name the “Former Rose & Crown”, then there was a pub on the opposite side of the main street near the Crown, and further south was a hostelry at the top of Bunkers Hill; that’s six in total, which fits with earlier references I’ve been given, so where was the Fox Inn?

Additional information from the 1834 Gazetteer states as follows: Coaches The mails for london and the North pass through the town at the hours named in the post office account.

The Lord Nelson, from Cockrem’s, (the Fox) to London, every Tu. Thu. & Sat.at 4 mng. [morning] To Carlisle every Mon. Wed. & Fri. at 2 aftr. [afternoon]

Anyway it looks like our intrepid photographer may have been related to the victualler, grandson perhaps, and plied his trade at a location in Aberford. Other photographs appear from time to time on the net, by the same photographer, but sadly, he never put his address on the rear of his photos, see below:

Returning to the photo, the subject looks slightly in awe of his situation, or at least cautious! But then he was facing a large box camera on a tripod, with the photographer hiding under a black sheet, perhaps. I wonder what was the purpose of this portrait, a momento for his wife? Who knows; probably wearing his “best outfit”, along with the cravat and bowler hat, he is, judging by his hands a man used to hard toil. His beard is of the style of the period, a curious appendage! Of photographic interest is the back cloth with painted trees and in the foreground, to add realism is the very unlikely fence, made of very dry pieces of timber, that lack the decay of the same in the outside world.

If anyone knows anything further about Mr Cockrem and his photographic work I would love to hear from you.

Some of the best restaurants are tucked away in the most inauspicious places, one such in the Yorkshire area easily commutable from Leeds or York, is “The Bon” restaurant in Sherburn in Elmet. On the main street it is easily found, but you are best advised to make a booking as it is generally well attended.

The Address is:
19 Low street,
Sherburn in Elmet,
Leeds
LS25 6BG

t: 01977 682146
email enquiry to the restaurant.
The Bon Website.

My wife and I had a really excellent meal last night [11 February 2012], I gave in and had the fillet steak! Whereas the more cautious mrs H enjoyed sea bass. It was busy but in an embracing way. Well worth giving a try. If you go they do like you to make a comment on Trip Adviser.

[This short article is in no way a commercial pitch, just my opinion!]

I read this the other day.

The economy is a tool. It is a tool for all of us who participate in it to improve our provision with material things by mixing our labour with that of countless other people in an extensive division-of-labour economy and with the accumulated capital stock in that economy. We get wealthier by combining our efforts with others in precisely the way that produces exactly the goods we want at the prices we are willing to pay for them, and we earn the income to afford these goods by participating in their production. If that sounds complex, it does because it is.

For further information from, in my view, a very solid economist, visit DETLEV SCHLICHTER on his Blog “Paper Money Collapse”. His analysis of the present mess is one of the foremost I have come across. If only he were advising the young man who is our Chancellor of the Exchequer… George “the Youngster” Osborne.

Returning to his comment outlined in the block quote above, the simple fact is that whilst the procedure may be complex, unless and until the political class start to recognise this as a truth, or a fact of life, and lay the ground work to implement such a method, we will never see a return to proper economic growth.

It seems that it is time to celebrate, whether or not the Huhne person is found guilty of perverting the course of justice or not. He is a dead parrot as far as his ministry of climate change is concerned. The question remains though, will his departure herald a new awareness of practical and sensible policies in respect of the energy crisis, he and his ilk have created. Or will it be carry on straight ahead, the road is clear, lets legislate the country back to the sixteenth century, with the damaging and ludicrous and so called, but not at all renewable, green environmental policies!

For example it does not take long to discover that the cost of producing a mega wind farm in energy terms, and this is using hydrocarbons for the energy supply, is greater than the sum total of energy produced over the lifetime [20 years] of the device. If the construction cost was based on the power from a wind turbine, as the prime source of energy for the component manufacture, neither would it ever be built, as the supply of energy would be so intermittent as to render progress virtually impossible. Imagine waiting for the concrete to arrive in the wind powered truck… sorry its gone off, do you want a piece of modern sculpture, here where it stopped!

The facts are irrefutable, you cannot generate electricity in a timely and reliable manner by an ancient concept such as a windmill, no matter how much twentieth century technology you bolt on to it. Today as I write this post, there is and has been no wind for many hours, and the temperature has at no time risen above freezing in the last twelve hours. Equally there is no suitable technology to store the electrical energy from a wind farm for later use, no not even pumped storage, which, given the small geographical size and population density of the UK is a diabolical idea.

There are of course other technologies which could be a twenty-first century solution to the energy crisis, one of these, which I believe to be a great innovation is hydrogen fuel. Strangely, but for how long? we do have a potential champion in this area, and no I do not have shares in the company… Check out Cella Energy the Shell Springboard overall UK winner 2011.

Sent from my iPad!

I have 958 photographs (as of todays date) on Flickr and I also have 2,381 views. But on looking at my pages I note that the stats are wildly adrift, on one page alone of pictures of the cellar at Parlington for example I have over 3,000 views! So what’s going on is this something to do with the sad situation of Yahoo… can’t they find the right people anymore to do justice to the sites they operate. It’s not that long since they threw in the towel on MyBlogLog, which was quite good at determining the users on a web site.