An English tartan army
QUESTION
Is there a tartan that I, as a Sassenach, am entitled to wear? While indelibly associated with the Scottish, the wearing of tartan cloth did not begin on these shores.
The earliest samples date from the period of hallstatt culture, the predominant Western and Central european Celtic civilisation of early Iron Age europe from the 8th to 6th centuries BC.
hallstatt, is a village south- east of Salzburg in Austria. It is important because the presence of a salt mine has preserved evidence of these people, including sophisticated textile weaving techniques.
Fragments of tartan, featuring bold and narrow green and brown stripes, quite familiar to us today, were found at this site.
The earliest documented tartan in Britain is the Falkirk tartan, which dates from about AD260. It was uncovered in Stirlingshire, about 400m north-west of the Antonine Wall. A fragment was stuffed into the mouth of an earthenware pot containing almost 2,000 Roman coins.
The Falkirk tartan has a simple check design, of natural light and dark wool. This pattern was adopted by shepherds in the Border counties, including northumberland.
Originally woven using the natural hues of the undyed sheep’s fleece, plants such as the water flag and alder bark were later used to colour the yarn.
The Falkirk pattern was subsequently adopted for use by the Duke of northumberland’s piper, possibly as early as 1760, and became known as northumberland tartan as well as Border tartan or drab.
It is commonly held that Sir Walter Scott popularised these ‘ Border drabs’ by wearing a pair of checked trews in London in 1820. This was followed by the tartan explosion of the 19th century, sparked by the 1822 visit of George IV to Scotland. These events encouraged the development of the famous Border woollen mills.
There is no restriction on englishmen wearing tartan — they often do at weddings —and there have been various modern attempts to create non-Scottish tartans, the most successful being the yellow and black Cornish tartan created in 1963 by e.e. Morton-nance. Its popularity no doubt stems from the Cornishmen’s Celtic roots.
In 1983, a green-based variation of this tartan was introduced as the Cornish hunting tartan. There is also a Yorkshire tartan. The Duke of York tartan has its origins in the red Inverness tartan, which was originally worn by Augustus, earl of Inverness, and son of George III.
A version of this tartan was later produced with a blue background and worn by George V while he was earl of Inverness and Duke of York, which led to it being called both the Duke of York tartan and Inverness hunting.
geraldine gooding, Hawick, Borders.
QUESTION
Press coverage of the Flying Scotsman locomotive shows it bearing the No 60103. Previously, it was No 4472. Do locomotives not always carry the same number during their working life? In The great railway boom of the second half of the 19th century, many railway companies were founded, although several failed because of a shortage of initial funds or operating revenue.
Some of them were absorbed into local or larger systems. For example, the Great Western Railway absorbed the Cornish helston line and the Oxford, Worcester & Wolverhampton Railway. engines taken over would be given numbers that did not duplicate any existing numbers of the new owners.
The first of two big renumbering schemes took place in January 1923, when hundreds of railway companies were incorporated into the Big Four: the Great Western Railway, the Southern Railway, the London, Midland & Scottish Railway and the London & north eastern Railway.
Such a large regrouping required the four to renumber their stock with unique numbers. The Great Western was relatively untouched by this since it absorbed many local/regional systems within its area. But as there were four groups, it was quite possible for there to be four different engines with the same number. For example, number 2340 was a GWR 2301 class, an SR K class, an LMS 2-6-4 and an LNER J27 class.
In the case of Flying Scotsman, it was built in 1921 by the Great northern Railway as 1472, being one of three engines 1471-1473. Under the LNER it became 4472 and post 1948 B.R. 60103.
With the nationalisation of railways in 1948 the Big Four merged. Again, because of its traditional brass number plates, the 3,500 Great Western engines kept their original numbers.
The Southern Railway added 30000 to its numbers, the LMSR added 40000 to its numbers and the LNER added 60000 to its numbers. The LMSR had more than 10,000 engines and needed a bigger number block than the other companies.
Many of the railway companies had a chaotic system for numbering, filling in gaps from scrapped engines with new engines of different class. This made it very hard to know a number and its engine class. Some renumbering took place to make new blocks for each engine class in the big four and much more at nationalisation.
alan Bowden, Bristol.
QUESTION
In Thetford, Suffolk, a statue of Thomas Paine (1737-1809), author of Rights Of Man, shows him holding the book with the title upside down. Is there a reason for this? The Tom Paine statue was highly controversial, because many locals were opposed to the arch-revolutionary being honoured in their town. (Thetford is actually in norfolk, just beyond the Suffolk border.)
The first memorial to Paine was a plaque on the house where he was born. It was paid for and erected by a group of USAF servicemen from the nearby air bases at Lakenheath and Mildenhall. This was just after World War II, almost 20 years before the gilded statue.
A new pub called The Rights Of Man was built soon after the statue was unveiled, and it was officially opened by Michael Foot MP. It is now closed and the last time I drove down the Brampton Road the building was in a sorry state of disrepair.
Much was made of the fact that Paine’s father was a stay-maker — he made women’s corsets. It was said that as the father confined women, so the son freed all mankind. michael Cole, Woodbridge, Suffolk.
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