Susan’s Tale

  SUSAN’S TALE   Mrs Susan Ibbotson (nee Dalton) lets us into a quaint tale told to her by a relation who lived a cottage previously owned by Atkinson Grimshaw (the moonscape painter) Susan follows on with a charming little tale of a fall into Knostrop Pond.   Did They Throw Away a Grimshaw Painting? It seems that Atkinson Grimshaw used the first of the little cottages in the Old Hall Yard (which ran adjacent to the Knostrop Old Hall) as a store for his materials and a drying room for his paintings. After Grimshaw’s time at the Hall a family called Beanland came to live in the cottage. Susan, a distant relation of the Beanland family, was told of how when they moved in there a painting was left in the cottage from Grimshaw’s time. They lived with it for a while and then thinking it a bit dowdy, they threw it away! Remember to ‘click on pictures to enlarge             Knostrop Pond     . It was one Whitsuntide and Auntie Bertha (Beanland) had as usual made a brand new set of clothes for Diane Chadwick (my cousin and her granddaughter) and me. We thought it would be a good idea to explore (she would be about eight and I five) so off we set in the direction of the pond. When we got there we decided to swop clothes – we were different sizes – then, disaster! I fell in the pond wearing her new clothes, so she waded in wearing mine and dragged me out! She then proceeded to dry me using dock leaves, thereby staining her clothes green! We squelched back to Aunt Bertha’s where she made us cocoa and dried our ruined clothes and new shoes by the cottage fire! It must have been heartbreaking for her to see all her beautifully made clothing spoiled. No health and safety in those days either! We did live to tell the tale. Remember to ‘click’ on pictures to make them bigger.