The Ram Inn, then and now

For the son of a dedicated teetotaller, pubs feature quite frequently in Lawrence's work. In his first novel, The White Peacock, the Ram Inn (above) was the home of Meg the barmaid, who George Saxton carts off (literally) to the Registry Office in Basford one fine morning. In describing the course of their courtship Lawrence provides an intriguing picture of pub life at the turn of the 20th century:

It was Saturday night, so the bar parlour of the Ram Inn was fairly full. … The men talked on the most peculiar subjects: there was a bitter discussion as to whether London is or is not a seaport – the matter was thrashed out with heat; then an embryo artist set the room ablaze by declaring there were only three colours, red, yellow and blue, and the rest were not colours, they were mixtures: this amounted almost to atheism and one man asked the artist to dare to declare that his own brown breeches were not a colour, which the artist did, and almost had a fight for it ...
(The White Peacock)

The Inn was on Dovecote Lane between Hill Top and Moorgreen. A new Ram Inn was later built on the other side of the road, though today named The Dovecote. The original pub is now a pair of houses, shown below:

Lawrence's voice: from the Breach?

Lawrence’s upbringing in an East Midlands mining community gave his work more than a physical setting.  It also provided him with a particular tone of voice which, at its most distinctive, contributes to the appeal that so many readers have found in his best work:

They came to the silent house. He took the key out of the scullery window, and they entered.  All the time he went on with his discussion. He lit the gas, mended the fire, and brought her some cakes from the pantry. She sat on the sofa quietly, with a plate on her knee. She wore a large white hat with some pinkish flowers. It was a cheap hat, but he liked it.
(Sons & Lovers)

Here the story is developed in short, simple sentences which parallel narrative speech. His tone can be characterised as natural and informal, with a touch of sardonic humour that sprang from his working -class roots, the product of generations of scraping by, with the expectation that life is unlikely to improve. At the heart of working -class culture is the instinct for deflating humbug and pomposity, as in this description of Baron Skrebensky:

When Anna was about ten years old, she went with her mother to spend a few days with the Baron Skrebensky. He was very unhappy in his red-brick vicarage. He was a vicar of a country church, a living worth a little over two hundred pounds a year, but he had a large parish containing several collieries, with a new, raw, heathen population. He went to the north of England expecting homage from the common people, for he was an aristocrat. He was roughly, even cruelly received. But he never understood it. He remained a fiery aristocrat. Only he had to learn to avoid his parishioners.
(The Rainbow)

Lawrence's old school sold

Greasley Beauvale School, on the corner of Dovecote Road and Mill Road, which Lawrence attended from 1890 to 1898, was recently sold by Savills. At auction it failed to meet the reserve price of £250,000 and was subsequently sold privately, apparently for conversion into housing.

It is an impressive building with three wings which meet at the central entrance shown in the photo. As an indication of the birth rate in the district when it was built in 1878, it was designed to hold 550 children, including 150 infants. With class sizes well over 50 it must have been a daunting place to teach in.

Although Lawrence later went on to win a county scholarship to Nottingham High School from here, with the help of the headmaster's coaching, he at first found the school's atmosphere oppressive. Being a sensitive and rather frail child he found playground life difficult to cope with, and some of the antipathy he later felt for Eastwood may be traced back to his suffering at the hands of more boisterous boys.

It will be interesting to see how the developers use the link with Lawrence in marketing the maisonettes.

Vine Cottage revival?

This is the current sad state of Vine Cottage, home of Lawrence's Aunt Polly, and the house featured in his early, brilliant short story 'Odour of Chrysanthemums'. The building is just beside the track leading up to Brinsley Headstocks, and was originally next to the colliery railway, as described in the story:

At thge edge of the ribbed level of sidings squat a low cottage, three steps down from the cinder track. A large bony vine clutched at the house, as if to claw down the tiled roof.

The owner of the cottage, who lives in Brinsley, is currently attempting to restore the property.
Given the loss of other Lawrentian landmarks such as Marsh Farm, and the closing-off of Haggs Farm, it's to be hoped that this iconic house can be preserved.

The Mystery of Marsh Farm

Was this the house that Lawrence called Marsh Farm in The Rainbow, the home of the Brangwen family? The photo is taken from his sister Ada's book about DHL, and is labelled 'Marsh Farm'. Other sources say that his model was called Aqueduct House, named for the nearby canal aqueduct. It was apparently right beside the canal embankment, and the building was demolished and replaced by the current bungalow called 'Pipswood'.

Given that Lawrence almost always portrayed real places, this raises two questions. Does the picture show the building that occupied this site in the late nineteenth century? According to Harry Moore, it was 'an old stone farm', which had been lived in for two centuries by the Fritchley family. But the 1901 census for Cossall only lists one Fritchley in the village, who was living with his in-laws.

The second question is why Lawrence chose this place for a key role in what is arguably his finest novel. Although it does correspond to the setting described in the book, the location today seems too cramped and hemmed-in for the drama he creates. It would be good to know whether he had any links with the family at the real-life farm, or if he simply chose this spot to allow for a convincing flood in chapter IX?