A 1991 Award

Steve Brace recently shared an image of the GA Award that he received at the Conference in 1991, signed by the President of that year: Eleanor Rawling, and a former colleague Frances Soar.

Now back at work having been off for quite a while, & looking forward to catching up with #geography colleagues at #GAconf21.

Emptied a draw recently & found this relic from the 1991 conference.! #chembakolli @ActionAidUK pic.twitter.com/UQoeyQ7GyS

— Steve Brace (@SteveBraceGeog) April 11, 2023

Royal Patronage 1993

While in the GA archives at Solly Street at the start of the week, I came across some images of HRH Princess Anne meeting GA staff.

This was on the occasion of the 1993 Centenary Conference which was held in Sheffield. Simon Catling was President in that year.

In the second photo is former President Mike Morrish.

May also be Andrew Goudie in the picture as well.

Frances Soar filled in the details.

"These are press photos of HRH The Princess Royal, Frances Soar and Julia Legg at the GA Centenary Annual Conference, Sheffield 1993.  When the GA approached the Princess to be Patron of the GA, she (or her representative) wrote that because she only takes on this very significant role when she can devote sufficient time to do the job properly, she would have to decline. However, she offered to become Patron just for the Centenary year - and she was great in the role.  

I remember sending her lots of briefing notes about the GA, its history and its current activities.  She used the lot as part of her speech at the opening ceremony - but without consulting notes as she spoke! - and in chatting with us (as in the photo) knew exactly what she was talking about and to whom she was talking.  I was hugely impressed.  She is a real professional.  

There was a biography of HRH published shortly afterwards, which I bought because the GA got a mention in the list of patronages. 

Any other memories of the Royal visit welcome.

Past Presidents' reception

For some time, there was a tradition of Past Presidents and Long standing members' receptions to be held at the GA Conference. I have been present at one of these some years ago, well before the idea for this blog came about.

While down in the GA archives at 160 Solly Street, I came across a photo album. There were several pictures from the 1993 Centenary conference meeting in there. Here are a few of them.

Frances Soar gave me some further information on the context.

"This is a Past Presidents' reception at Sheffield in 1993, I think, as Simon Catling was President at the time. It could be the first time we had run a special reception for Past Presidents.  We introduced it in response to comments that Past Presidents (and other long serving members) would welcome a chance for a get together with their contemporaries rather than have to try and find them amongst all the other attendees, given that the 'sessions' were no longer their main aim in coming to Conference."

In the top image, Julia Legg - a GA administrator - is far left.

Frances also told me that: 

"Long serving GA staff member Margaret Vickers (standing, centre). Margaret used to do all the conference booking administration. She retired when we moved to Solly Street."

 

On the bottom images, Simon Catling on the far right is chatting to the guests.

Julia Legg is just behind Simon.

I can see Bill Mead in the background chatting to someone who may be Molly Long.

Thanks to Julia Legg, via Frances Soar for providing further details of the lady in the blue dress in both photos:

The person in the corner, full face, is Mary Ellis, who was Assistant Editor ( I think that was her job title) for 'Geography' for many years and came into Fulwood Road regularly. I think her husband was Ronald Ellis and he may too have been someone involved with geography and possibly the GA - maybe Hon. Secretary?

Mary Ellis later received Honorary Membership from former President Wendy Morgan.

If anyone can identify any other people, please let me know.

The Third Degree

Thanks to Frances Soar for sending me details of a radio quiz which features Barnaby Bear. Start from around 13 minutes in.

The link to listen is here.

The specialist subjects this week are Marine and Freshwater Biology, Education and Forestry Management and Conservation, and the questions range from brothels and bats to Barnaby Bear. There's also a chance to brush up on your fronted adverbials. 

The move to Solly Street #3

I've been writing a few posts about the GA's move to Solly Street. Here's the third and final one.

The next person I consulted over the move to Solly Street was Ashley Kent, who was mentioned by Frances Soar as having been present in the car when the building was first spotted.

160 Solly Street has imposing steel doors, which were manufactured in the building itself as it was owned by a steel fabricator.

When you enter the building, there is also a stair case with steel bannisters.

I hadn't previously been aware of the reason why there so much steel around the place, although Sheffield is 'steel city' of course (and my dad was a steelworker for over 40 years).

Ashley gave me his memories of the move to Solly Street:

"My flawed - no doubt!? - memories were of driving round...with Frances I am sure at least, looking at premises in the Meadowhall area.

These were very much new retailing / warehousing / still industrial areas away from the city centre, and the GA staff were a little unhappy about that! 

Also we looked at rental premises at / next to the station but clearly inadequate re size / cost, but accessible for many! 

Solly Street felt like a rundown inner city area but with a big advantage of size and rent. Bizarrely it seems to have been a good decision!"

The premises next to the station were also mentioned by Peter Fox, who I also consulted about this move.

"The recollections are much as I remember them. The Fulwood Road site had its attractions - a nice old stone house with the ground floor used as the GA Library with oak shelves and members of staff housed in different 'bedrooms'. The search for a new home too is as I remember it. I was involved in the search - two properties we looked at were the old bus garage out towards Meadowhall and the refreshment rooms at Sheffield railway station. Very grand still with a huge long mahogany bar in a very good location but the storage space was very limited.
The fire of some of the book stock did mean we had a good clear-out of old stock but we were lucky to keep the Fluere Library books and a complete run of the journals which were not stored there. We got a very good deal on the building which the daughters of the previous owner wanted to get rid of at the time and we did not have too much work to do to get it into shape - it had been a specialist stainless steel factory. We had an official opening by Wendy Morgen - President at the time but most of the GA meetings were still held in London."

It turned out we had our beermeet in the premises that Peter and Ashley looked at the last time that the GA was held in Sheffield.

Image: Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license

Beermeet picture taken by Matt Podbury

1993 - Centenary Conference

From the GA News. Details of HRH Princess Anne attending the Centenary conference at Firth Hall in Sheffield, at the University of Sheffield.

1998: The view from the Window

Thanks to Frances Soar, former Senior Administrator for the GA for sending me this piece from the Sheffield Telegraph in 1998 when the Geography through the Window project was launched as part of the Geography Action Week. 50 000 posters were printed apparently.

Frances told me in an earlier email:

Seeing the area further develop around Solly Street was fascinating. I have a vivid memory of standing with Rex Walford at one of Solly Street's first floor windows, leaning on the window sill and looking out at the landscape below with all the features that in a single view told the history and geography of our city - 'Geography Through the Window' came not long afterwards. Sadly, that wonderful view up the Don Valley (which also provided a helpful weather forecast and bird's eye view of traffic levels as we planned our evening journeys home), was eventually blocked by all those smart new blocks of student flats.

It's a lovely piece as it also makes clear Frances' own strong connections with Sheffield: the long-term home of the GA.

Does anyone still have one of the original posters? I hope to be able to find one in the archive when I finally get a chance to visit it in person again...

The move to Solly Street #1

I've previously blogged about the GA's move from 343 Fulwood Road to Solly Street in 1996-7

Fulwood Road was the GA's HQ from the mid 1960s to the late 1990s.

Frances Soar, Chief Adminstrator of the GA for many years got me started on some of her memories of this time. She was involved in assisting with the move, and some additional complications from the time, which I have blogged about previously.

The old Roman Catholic area of St Vincent's is certainly worth further study - an excellent book about it was published by the Church when they moved up to Crookes: it's available on line The Sheffield Indexers - History of St Vincents written by Ted Cummings.

Frances is the first of several people who will share their memories. It is a pity the memories of some of the other moves of the GA are not so easy to collect.

Frances told me:

At the back of Solly Street when we first moved in, before the block of flats just above us on Solly St. was built, there were still apple trees from the time when the area had old housing, and I once met a lady who remembered visiting her grandparents in a house there when she was small. Some of the trees were still there in my time, by the access drive to the back yard.

343 Fulwood Road was a lovely old house, but totally impractical for housing the publications business that had become such an important part of the GA's service. Deliveries of new publications were by then arriving shrink wrapped on pallets in huge delivery vehicles that couldn't get down the narrow, bendy, drive. 

We had to unload boxes from pallets on big lorries parked on the main road, and cart the heavy boxes down to the house one by one, sometimes reversing my poor little Austin Metro up the drive and back down again with a few boxes in the boot each time, all under the impatient gaze of the lorry driver who was anxious to get to his next drop. 

Once inside, we had to cart the boxes up steep steps to the first floor, where they filled the spaces around and under our desks until sold, or were hauled up to the attic where we nervously stacked them as close to the walls as possible, hoping that the weight wouldn't bring down the ceiling.

Eventually we were forced to move most of our stock to the premises of a local storage company. Unfortunately, they moved our stock to a less secure location without telling us, and a fire there destroyed the lot. 

Lack of storage space also meant that each quarter we had to hope that all the deliveries of journals and their inserts would arrive at exactly the same time, on the same morning and at the same place (a local church hall) so that we could prepare everything for mailing, helped by a small army of volunteers. I lost count of the times we had to postpone the whole exercise because one journal had been delayed for some reason.

It was clear that we needed either to 'outsource' everything, or find a proper warehouse and packing space, as well as offices for the GA staff and meeting rooms for the GA committees, ideally within easy reach of the railway station and with good vehicle access for deliveries.

The problem was finding suitable alternative premises. 

After careful consideration, the GA decided to stay in Sheffield, so we started looking locally, discovering all too soon that whilst it was fairly easy to find a suitable warehouse with a small office, or suitable offices with a tiny storage area, finding the two combined was a real challenge. With the help of former GA President Professor Stan Gregory, who lived in Sheffield and who volunteered to take part in the search, we looked at various possible places in and around Sheffield, eventually drawing up a shortlist for further consideration. 

On a hot June Saturday in 1996 my Metro was pressed into service once again to take several Officers including I think Ashley Kent and Neil Simmonds to look at a few possible buildings. At some point I pulled off the road close to the town centre for us to 'take stock' before the visitors had to catch their trains home, which was when Ashley (I think) spotted a 'to let' board on a nearby building. Peering at what we could see of the empty premises we realised it was worth further investigation. 

A little bit of serendipity then in the choice of location.

Solly Street is located in an area called 'St. Vincent's', once the heart of Sheffield's Catholic community, which had developed into a centre of old Sheffield industries such as toolmakers and knife manufacturers. 

By the 1990s, further changes were happening, as manufacturers with viable businesses began to move to more suitable premises elsewhere, and others, sadly, disappeared altogether. Many of the old church buildings along Solly Street were becoming run down, St Vincent's Church itself having been empty for some years. 

I occasionally used the parking business which opened up in the old church yard as an overflow option when the spaces outside Solly Street were full, or were needed for visitors.

Our building had been built by a stainless steel architectural fabricator for his own business - hence the smart stainless stair rail and front door we inherited. 

This I did not know!

After he retired it had been let by his widow and daughters to various companies. 

As our GA geographers astutely spotted, this was a good time to take up a lease there, as the area had huge but as yet unrealised potential for upgrading. This is of course what has happened, with old factories and patches of wasteland replaced by modern apartment blocks, and the former church and its ancillary buildings improved for other uses. I remember watching foxes in the waste ground opposite the GA.

Whilst preparing the staff for the move, Frances timed how long it took to walk up to the city centre and what sort of walk it would be. Staff were going to miss the shops, bank and other services at Broomhill so it was helpful to know they could easily get to and from the city centre. 

Coincidentally, two former members of the GA's staff at Solly Street now run a business in Broomhill called Ginger. More on Lucy Oxley and Anne Greaves' involvement with the GA as we get nearer to the present day.

The Trustees agreed to take the Solly Street lease a quarter before the Fulwood Road lease expired, so we were able to prepare the old premises for our departure and the new premises for our arrival without disrupting services to members. It was quite moving to say goodbye to a building that had been such an important part of the GA's history, with its impressive fireplaces and other original features no longer boxed in or covered up, looking much more like the proud private house it once was, ready for new occupants.

An early task at Solly Street was to persuade the authorities to give the building, then called 'Greco House', a proper address with a street number - a surprisingly complex exercise. 

The GA did contemplate inventing another name for the building, but characteristically chose to be practical rather than pretentious.

Further memories of the move to Solly Street to come...

L J Jay - more details

I posted earlier in the week about L J Jay, who worked as the former GA librarian, and who wrote a great many reviews and contributions to 'Geography' - his initials were repeated many times in the journals across the decades. This has been substantially brought up to date with some new information from my former colleague at Solly Street: Frances Soar.

As we get nearer to the present day, you will see further contributions with a credit for the contributions of Frances Soar. She has very kindly offered to help with some updates as we get closer to her own time working at Solly Street.

Frances found a lot more information about L J Jay. Sometimes known as 'Jim' Jay.

Leslie Joseph Jay, born 25 Aug 1917 in Aston, Warks.  Parents Joseph Jay, described in 1939 as 'Inspector Engineering', and Martha (nee Green).

1936: Successful in the First Examination, Geography Dept, University of Birmingham (B'ham Daily Gazette, 2 Feb 1936)

1938: Awarded Geography Degree (II2) by the University of Birmingham (B'ham Daily Gazette, 30 Jun 1938)

1939: Passed the written examination for the Degree of MA (Birmingham Daily Post, 29 Jun 1939) 

1939: Living with his parents at 58 Caldwell Road, Birmingham.  Described as 'student, intending te[indistinct]'.  Possibly 'teacher' (From the WW2 Register, 1939)

1943 (25 Jan): Royal Navy 'Schoolmaster Candidate (entered for Hostilities only)' (Navy Lists for 1943ff).  Served at HMS Nabsford, a base in Australia for Royal Naval Aircraft maintenance.  [I've learnt more about RN ranks in the past hour than I ever thought I would need to know!]

1943: (4th quarter) Married Hilda Seal in Birmingham

1949: Awarded Master of Arts by University of Birmingham (Birmingham Daily Gazette, 30 Jun 1949)

1986 (24 Jan): Died Sheffield, having been living at 14 Overglade Gardens, Dore, Sheffield, leaving wife Hilda and children Heather and Paul 

He served in Australia during the war. While in Australia, he used his 'schoolmasterly' skills to edit and create a newsletter called Nabsford News.

The newsletters make entertaining reading if you take a look - lots of in-jokes for sure.
The newsletter copies were provided by L J Jay's son Paul.

You can also see several galleries of photos on the site, and one of them features L J - front row, first left.


29th April 1945: "The J6 Crowd" L to R: back row: Lt. (S) George Baker RNVR, Lt. Ted Folkard RNVR, Lt. (Sp. Br.) Bill Grant RNVR, Sub-Lt (A) Peter Bearcroft RNVR. Front row: Schoolmaster Jim Jay, Sub-Lt (A) I.Thomas RNVR, Sub-Lt (A) J. Pinch RNVR, Commissioned Store Officer Reg Goodhue.

An appreciation of L J Jay was printed in 'Geography' in 1986, written by former GA President Michael Wise. It turns out that he went to school with Michael Wise. There is a good mention of his geography teacher Mr. Cotton and also a mention for R H Kinvig

He wrote a humorous book on geography teaching called 'Geography teaching with a little latitude' which I've seen before, and was published in 1981. In it he said:

 "there is a ample scope for... an element of humour in the teaching of geography".

He taught at Wellingborough School apparently after the war before joining the University of Sheffield.

He joined the GA in 1943 and joined as Honorary Librarian in 1954. He stayed with the GA until 1973, also serving on the Council and Executive Committee. He was involved in the transfer of the library from Duke Street to Fulwood Road. He compiled the Dudley Stamp Index of 'Geography' articles with Hilary Todd.

He classified the work of Herbertson and wrote an appreciation of his work which I have previously added to the blog.

Before retirement he oversaw the transfer of the Fleure library to the University of Sheffield. A manuscript for a booklet for the GA called 'Starting to teach Geography' was completed just before his death.

The appreciation by Michael Wise ends with these two paragraphs:

One sentence there is a reminder for all teachers:

"he knew that gifts as a teacher were not sufficient without a continuous replenishment of the mind, without experimentation in method, without respect for pupils..."

Source:

Wise, M. J. “The Geographical Association.” Geography, vol. 71, no. 2, 1986, pp. 169–172. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40571093. Accessed 31 July 2020.

JAY, L. J. “A. J. Herbertson : His Services to School Geography.” Geography, vol. 50, no. 4, 1965, pp. 350–361. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40565960. Accessed 1 Aug. 2020.