JUNE  2018

 

REGIONAL HERITAGE CENTRE

(LATE -  Centre for North-West Regional Studies)

Lancaster University

 

Bookings  for events in 2018

BOOKS ON LOCAL HISTORY

 

ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. EXTENSIVE RANGE OF BOOKS ON FYLDE LOCAL HISTORY.

 

THE PALACE MARKET      GARDEN STREET     ST ANNE’S ON THE SEA    LANCASHIRE

 

There is a good range of second-hand books on local history from across England and Scotland, including numerous books / pamphlets relating to the Fylde. There is also an extensive collection of books on transport.

 

PHONE 01253 205140 / 07429 575 397

 

 

THE FOLLOWING  REVIEW IS PUBLISHED BY KIND PERMISSION OF ANTHONY COPPIN

 of GARSTANG HISTORICAL SOCIETY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thomas's preserved sketches are of 18th century items such as clock casings, clothes chests, chests of drawers, doors, spice boxes, church pews, tables, cradles, bannisters, chairs and squabs (settees).
He travelled around the Fylde area doing both domestic and ecclesiastical work. The main author, Bill McCartney, points out in his introduction that currently it has not been possible to find any furniture made by Thomas still in family hands.

 

 

Designs for a pulpit and a church gallery are included in these fascinating pages. Which church they were crafted for is unknown. (There are similar style fixtures at the old St John the Baptist church, Pilling).
One of Thomas’s domestic customers was one Eling (Eileen?) Grimbildstone who wanted a made-to-order “Dresing Teble.”

Throughout the book measurements, details of costs, expenses, payments, itemised listings of timber, jottings regarding accounts, financial borrowings and mathematical calculations show Thomas’s eye for detail.

 

Other unexpected jottings listed (and commented on) include a supposed cure for worms - not the timber-eating creepies.

The background notes which form the introduction to the book explain how Thomas’s notebook came to be found, preserved and transcribed, as well as details of the Noblet family and their relations, the Jolly family, over several centuries.

The book is clearly of both specialist and wider interest.

Co-author Dr Adam Bowett of the Regional Furniture Society says Noblet’s notebook is “… a unique survival from the period, and it contains some of the earliest drawings and descriptions of a number of key eighteenth-century furniture archetypes. Most remarkable … is the fact that it comes, not from London or some other urban centre, but from a tiny village on the Fylde of Lancashire.”

More generally the book will be of interest to local and family historians. Numerous family surnames from the period covered by the book are extant in rural Fylde and Wyre today.

The authors are to be commended for shedding light on this generally overlooked area of domestic, ecclesiastical and workaday history.

 

* The book is available from William McCartney, priced £12.99 (plus packing and postage). He can be contacted at: willmccar@gmail.com

 

Title: The notebook of Thomas Noblet; joiner from the Fylde in Lancashire

 

Authors: William McCartney and Adam Bowett    ISBN: 978-1-9996303-0-0

 

The cost of family tree tracing for genealogical sleuth Bill McCartney included getting a bloodied leg when a dog attacked him at the gate of a farmhouse in Wrea Green.

The hound’s owner turned out to be distantly related to Bill and not only related, but the custodian of an unsorted treasure trove of family, local and craftwork history – the brightest gem of which was an old notebook dated 1725.

This reproduction of joiner Thomas Noblet’s workbook (along with opposite page facing transcriptions and notes) forms the basis of this fascinating and highly unusual paperback.
These days if you want some furniture or a piece of woodwork it’s a simple as a visit to a trading estate. Not so in the 1700s, when master craftsman Thomas Noblet was at work, painstakingly carrying out his craft in the rural Fylde.