The Norman Nicholson Society
Minutes of the Annual General Meeting
Online Zoom 24th April 2021
Attendees: Barbara Andrews, David Boyd, Janice Brockbank, Brian Charnley, Sue Dawson, Laura Day, Chris Donaldson, Antoinette Fawcett, Judith Gale, Phil Houghton, Norma Hughes, Charlie and Dorothy Lambert, Glenn Lang, Abigail Palmer, Jonathan Powell, Ann Thomson, Rosemary and Malcom Morrison, Clive Shaw, Jack Threlfall-Hartley, Keith Walmsley, Brian Whalley, Harry Whalley, Andrew Wilson,
Chair’s welcome: AGM 2021
Good morning and welcome to the AGM of the Norman Nicholson Society. I’m so pleased that you can join us and that we’ve been able to make the most of digital technology to bring us all together.
Over the course of this AGM you’ll hear me and my colleagues on the committee refer to the challenges we’ve faced due to the Covid pandemic. I’d like to stress that whatever difficulties we may have encountered, we all know that these are absolutely nothing compared to the difficulties most of us – maybe all of us – have had to deal with on a personal and family level over the last 12 months. If you have lost someone dear to you, I am so sorry for your loss, and if you have had to deal with the illness yourself, I do hope you are recovering.
Whether from Covid or other causes, we have sadly lost members who have passed away over these last two years: Tom Troll; Peter Houghton; Valerie Rickerby; Christine Boyce; Stella Barnes; Jane Hignett; and Chris Pilling. My apologies if I have omitted anyone. Our condolences go to their family and friends.
The pandemic meant that we were unable to go ahead with our AGM last year. The committee made the very difficult decision to cancel on March 13th, even though at that stage there were no legal restrictions to prevent us going ahead. There was, though, ample evidence that allowing our AGM to proceed would pose a real health risk. It was another full week before the Government made its announcement banning such events. Looking back now, I can only say that your committee’s decision holds up pretty well to scrutiny.
There was no AGM last year but I don’t propose to dwell too much on the events that we would have summed up then. Once the cancellation was announced I posted a letter to all members on our website, along with our financial statement, and invited anyone with any queries about these to contact me direct. No-one did, and I thank members for your understanding and support, and that is very much a heartfelt thanks to you all, for renewing your membership and continuing to support the Society.
Despite everything, this has been a remarkably creative and constructive year. You will hear more details as our committee officers deliver their reports, but to hold an international poetry competition – won wonderfully by our own member Martyn Halsall – to publish a book of lockdown poems, set up a Community Interest Company, attract almost £30,000 in grant funding, hold several online events, and produce two packed issues of Comet is a pretty good year’s work under the circumstances.
I would like to say a massive thank-you to our vice-president Kathleen Jones for judging our poetry competition and then becoming the driving force behind the publication of our book, The Unpredicted Spring. Also to the members of your committee whose dedication in trying times has been remarkable, and at this point I want to pay tribute to two members who are stepping down this year. Dot Richardson has been on the committee for 11 years and for many years was treasurer; Dot has been unfailingly positive, as well as bringing a lifetime’s knowledge of Millom and personal acquaintance with Norman. Chris Donaldson has been our universities rep since taking over from Alan Beattie in 2017 and has done a brilliant job in strengthening our relationship with Lancaster University, including setting up our online archive of Comet. He has also provided consistently wise input to our meetings. My thanks Dot and Chris – you will be missed.
At the same time I’m delighted to welcome Laura Day to the committee. Laura was co-opted within the last few weeks and we will invite you to confirm this decision later on. I’m also really pleased that another of our younger members, Jack Threlfall-Hartley, has put his name forward for election to the committee today – again, that’s something we will come to shortly. A formal welcome also to Brian Whalley who was co-opted to the committee in September 2019 and has since taken over the responsibilities of membership secretary from Antoinette. A big thank you to Antoinette for her hard work in this role. Thank-you also to Janice Brockbank who took over as secretary of the Society in September 2019.
And that leads me to one more matter that I must mention. In 2019 Glenn Lang stepped down after many years as secretary of the Society. Had we been able to meet last year, there would have been a small presentation to Glenn to mark our gratitude. Events dictated otherwise, but it’s never too late so can I ask Antoinette to make that presentation now…and at the appropriate moment, feel free to unmute yourself and make some noise.
NNS Secretary's annual report: AGM 2021
Some of the Society's main events are listed below not otherwise covered in other committee Officers' reports.
Literary & Musical Houses of Britain & Ireland map
The Committee agreed to support the above publication to feature and promote Norman Nicholson and his home, 14, St George's Terrace, by purchasing 100 copies for re-sale to re-coup costs.
Events cancelled 2020-21 due to the global pandemic and national lockdowns
Postponed Events 2020-21
Norman Nicholson showcase: Wordsworth Trust's exhibition, Tuesday, April 7th 2020
This prestigious exhibition was initially due to coincide with Wordsworth's 250th Anniversary and the 200th Anniversary of the Duddon Sonnets in April 2020 but was postponed. However, WWT is planning to launch the exhibition once restrictions ease in July 2021. Dr Antoinette Fawcett is leading the design with input from Sue Dawson, Glenn Lang and Janice Brockbank.
Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, Saturday, November 7th 2020
The following events took place online, using Zoom:
Commemorative Event via Zoom for Norman's Birthday: Friday, January 8th 2021
NN-inspired Lockdown Anthology launch, The Unpredicted Spring : Wednesday, March 3rd 2021
Our thanks to our Honorary Vice-President Kathleen Jones for supporting the Society's very successful Lockdown Poetry Competition inspired by Charlie Lambert. Congratulations to Martyn Halsall, an NNS member, who was the winner of the adult competition. The winner of the under 18 competition was fourteen-year-old Katie Deutsch from Cambridge.
University of Cumbria ‘visit’: Monday, March 8th 2021
Students on the MA course at the University of Cumbria, led by Dr Penny Bradshaw, took part in a virtual visit to Millom as part of their study of Norman Nicholson’s work. Because a physical visit was ruled out by Covid restrictions, members of the Society’s committee Sue Dawson, Antoinette Fawcett, Janice Brockbank and Charlie Lambert put together video and powerpoint presentations to give the students an insight into the physical environment which inspired Nicholson’s work.
All of the events listed above have required extensive planning and time commitment. The Committee has met three times in the past year and kept in contact mainly via Zoom, email and social media.
The Society has purchased the Pro version of Zoom in order to host online events without any time limits.
Janice Brockbank NNS Secretary April 14th 2021
Norman Nicholson Society - Income & Expenditure Account
1st March 2020 to 30th March 2021
Active Account:
Income: Expenditure:
Subscriptions 891 Printing/Postage 147.00
Donations 20 Events 108.00
Interest 7.53 Expenses 264.14
Insurance /Licence 521.32
Total Income: 918.53 Total Expenditure: 1040.46
Excess of Income over Expenditure: -121.93
House Project Account:
Income: Expenditure:
Interest 2.64 TRANSFER CIC Nicholson -2500.00
Total Income: 2.64 Total Expenditure: 2500.00
Actual Excess of Income over expenditure: - 2497.36
TOTAL Excess of Income over Expenditure: - 2619.29
BALANCE SHEET AS AT 30TH MARCH 2021
CURRENT ASSETS:
Debtors
Bank Account - Active 6649.09
Bank Account - House project 139.28
Total: 6788.37
CURRENT LIABILITIES:
Creditors
TOTAL ASSETS: 6788.37
CAPITAL ACCOUNT:
Balance brought forward + 6771.02 + 2636.64 = (9407.66)
Excess income over Expenditure -2619.29
TOTAL RESERVES: 6788.37
Brian Charnley April 24th 2021
Norman Nicholson Society – Membership Report 2019-2021
I took over the role of Membership Secretary from Antoinette in 2020. Since then, we have had the Corona Virus to contend with and Antoinette has particularly suffered in the long term from its effects. I thank Antoinette for her long-standing role as Membership Secretary and in facilitating the handover (as well as editing the Bulletin and Comet) and Glenn for dealing with The Cumberland (formerly Cumberland Building Society) and lodging cheques and checking membership payments. (Our use has been less convenient during the pandemic because of its lockdown closure or limited opening hours in Ulverston.)
This report is for a two-year period as the AGM in 2020 was cancelled.
The current membership (April 2021) is:
The Festival (2019) generated some eleven new members, and we hope that the same might follow for this year. Although the entry to the Lockdown Poetry competition was, perhaps surprisingly, large (over 230 poems from 129 poets) it did not generate any new members. In the light of the disruptions cause by Covid 19 I propose that your Committee look again at the Society's Membership Review and Action Plan with a view to generating more income and membership numbers.
Brian Whalley
Membership Secretary
21st April 2021
What appears below is the complete report by Antoinette which was posted in the Members' Section of the Society's website a week ahead of the AGM. Antoinette delivered a shortened version at the AGM itself.
REPORT ON COMET and COMET ONLINE 2019-20 / 20-21 Norman Nicholson Society AGM
Online Zoom Saturday, April 24th 2021 – 11.00 a.m.
This report covers the years 2019-20 and 2020-21 as the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 meant that the AGM scheduled for that year was cancelled.
Comet Online: http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/nns/
In the report for the Norman Nicholson Society AGM April 13th 2019 I included a paragraph on the Comet Online Project. This is a brief update on that project and its usefulness.
At the 2018 AGM the Society mandated the committee, and specifically the editor of Comet, to look for ways in which the Comet archive could be put online and made available in a fully searchable format to the wider community. Dr. Christopher Donaldson, our Universities Liaison Officer, suggested that this would be a good project to work on in conjunction with the School of Computing and Communications at the University of Lancaster.
Our work with Lancaster University, specifically Dr Christopher Donaldson (Cultural History), Dr Paul Rayson (Computing and Communications) and Bartek Barański (Computer Sciences student), was carried out over the course of about six months, from October 2018 through to April 2019. In that period a large number of previous Comets were put online, both as full issues and as individual articles. The website is hosted by Lancaster University and is now maintained by Dr. Christopher Donaldson. There is an Article Index and an Author Index, which can be consulted to make searching easier. Past issues, which have been redacted where necessary, can be downloaded, as can individual articles. Copyright of the articles remains with the individual authors. The site also contains information about the Norman Nicholson Society and includes a link to our own website on the Home Page and a page dedicated to information about Comet and the NN Society. There is also a very useful page about Norman Nicholson himself and a page that describes the Archival Materials that relate to Nicholson.
The relatively short period of time in which the materials were prepared and redacted and the website was put together meant that not all our past issues have yet been put online. The intention was always to leave a gap of at least three years between an issue of Comet being made available to our members and its being placed online on the Lancaster University website. More recent issues of Comet can be downloaded in their original form from the Member Section of our own website.
If you make a Google Search for Comet Online, remember to include the words ‘Norman Nicholson’, otherwise you will be directed to Comet Electrical or to a Stevenage local online newspaper. I suggest the search term: ‘Comet Online Norman Nicholson’.
The Covid-19 pandemic, and my own long-lasting Covid experience, meant that my plans to update the website with further past copies and articles were not carried out in 2019-20, but I hope that I will be able to continue redacting and preparing the materials later this year. Dr. Chris Donaldson will also continue to support this project.
We are extremely grateful to the University of Lancaster for hosting the website and to Dr. Donaldson, Mr Barański and Dr. Rayson for their collaboration on this project.
Comet 2019-20 and 2020-21
In the Norman Nicholson Society year 2019-20 two issues of Comet were published (Vol. 14.1; Vol. 14.2).
Vol. 14.1 included interesting memories relating to Norman by Merryn Williams, Roger Bush and Geraldine Green; an article by Mary Robinson on the translation of The Old Man of the Mountains into Welsh; poems by several members and NN Festival participants; an account of the process of creating ‘An Image for Norman’, by the artist and graphic designer Alan Roper and myself; a report on the Alliance of Literary Societies AGM Weekend at Nuneaton, in celebration of the bicentenary of George Eliot’s birth; reports on the Norman Nicholson Festival 2019 and on the exhibition in Kansas City of a new artwork by Andy Goldsworthy, inspired by Nicholson’s poem ‘Wall’; and the third part of Professor Brian Whalley’s response to Nicholson’s Geology and Geomorphology. This series of articles will form a major resource for a proper appreciation of Nicholson’s scientific knowledge and the way in which he used this in his work. The series is still ongoing. Finally, I had the sad duty of writing an obituary for one of our founding members, the poet Chris Pilling, who knew Nicholson personally and was an excellent writer in his own right.
Vol.14.2 should have appeared in the spring of 2020. Unfortunately, I caught (suspected) Covid-19 myself in March that year and have been dealing with Long Covid symptoms ever since. This issue was therefore postponed until September 2020, although it reports on all the events the Society held or attended between September 2019 and January 2020.
The editorial dealt with some of the events that had to be put on hold, particularly the celebrations planned by the Wordsworth Trust to mark the 250th anniversary of Wordsworth’s birth and the 200th anniversary of the publication of his Duddon Sonnets. The Norman Nicholson Society had been invited to contribute to the exhibition on the Duddon Sonnets which would be the first exhibition to take place in the new Wordsworth Grasmere museum. In September 2020 both the opening of the museum and the exhibition had been postponed and it wasn’t yet clear when – or even if – the exhibition would take place. I am pleased to say that the situation has now changed for the better, and the ‘Endless Waters’ exhibition is expected to open in May 2021, with community involvement from various groups, and a showcase dedicated to the impact of Wordsworth and the Duddon on Norman Nicholson. I expect to report on this exciting development in the Comets of 2021.
Vol 14.2 strongly featured the work of the stained glass artist Christine Boyce, who created the beautiful Norman Nicholson Memorial Window, placed in St. George’s Church, Millom in 2000. The Society was extremely shocked to receive the news of Christine’s sudden death in November 2019, only a month after the brilliant study day we had spent with her in Carlisle in October 2019. Again, it was a sad duty for me to write a tribute to her, but also a great joy to be able to present her wonderful life and work to members and friends of the Society.
Other important pieces included Charlie Lambert’s essay on the relationship between the poet Matt Simpson and Norman Nicholson; the first part of an engaging article by Leo Finighan on Wordsworth, Nicholson and the Duddon; a continuation of Brian Whalley’s ‘Rocks and Landscape’ series; reviews of a new book by Society Vice- President Neil Curry and a poetry collection by Mary Robinson; and several reports on events, including the LitHouses Conference, held in Brantwood in October 2019, the Christmas Tree Festival 2019, and the Norman Nicholson Birthday Party 2020, our last live Society event before the lockdown.
Vol 15.1 came out just before Christmas 2020. It was a bonus issue, intended to compensate members for the fact that the usual spring issue had been postponed. For the first time since I started editing Comet, there were no Society events to report on, again as a result of the pandemic. Nevertheless, this did not mean that our actual activity came to a standstill. The Society News column reported on the Lockdown Poetry Competition, the formation of the Norman Nicholson House Community Interest Company and a Walking Trails App, expected to be produced in the spring of 2021.
This issue also contained two important and interesting pieces by our doctoral student members, Laura Day (University of Durham) and Jack Threlfall Hartley (University of Oxford). Both of them are also brilliant photographers and their responses to landscape, here in Cumbria and also in Iceland, formed an important theme in this issue, complementing Brian Whalley’s ongoing series on Nicholson and geomorphology. Laura even discovered a degree of freedom in the pandemic which enabled her to roam through Cumbria in a way that might have been impossible if she had been tied to her desk in Durham.
Charlie Lambert gave us another, very touching, piece on Nicholson’s correspondence with Matt Simpson, and I was able to use some of my lockdown time to investigate the life of Nicholson’s teacher, Miss Hobson, after receiving a tribute to her from Donald Benson, another of her former students. The article I wrote will be continued in a later issue of Comet, supplemented by further articles about Nicholson’s schooling and his teachers. I had also been able to discover a ‘lost’ Nicholson poem – ‘Christmas Carol for the First Man on the Moon’ – with the help of Katy Conover, Archivist for Hearst Magazines UK, re-published for the first time in this issue, by kind permission of David Higham Associates Limited on behalf of the Estate of Norman Nicholson. Other pieces included a report on a Nicholson-inspired land art project by Irene Rogan and a discussion piece on Nicholson’s poem ‘The Blackberry’ by Chris Donaldson.
As in previous issues, it was both a sad duty and a privilege for me to create tributes to the lives of some of our members who had passed away in the previous months: Tom Troll; Peter Houghton; and Valerie Rickerby.
Concluding remarks
Because of the difficulties created by the pandemic, in 2020-21 Comet has appeared primarily in digital format. Rather than sending our members a printed copy, they were encouraged to download the digital version from the Members Section of the Norman Nicholson Society website. Full instructions on how to do this were sent out several times in our e-bulletins. Some members, who do not have access to the internet, were sent Vol. 14.2 by post. The Christmas issue (Vol. 15.1) was only available online, but the intention is to print and distribute a small number of copies of this issue as soon as it seems possible and safe to do so.
Comet has now been published for a full fifteen years. It has grown during that time into an important resource for members and non-members. It is a magazine I am proud to edit, but without the many writers who have contributed to it over the years, it would simply not exist. My grateful thanks to all of you, past and present.
Antoinette Fawcett 16th April 2021
Norman Nicholson Society
Schools & Community liaison Officer
Annual Report 2021
This annual report will reflect one of the most challenging years for the NNS in view of the lockdown and restrictions placed not only on the NNS, the community but nationwide by Covid. Many of the normal events which we would have participated in like the Christmas Tree Festival had to be cancelled, which will be the first time in 10 years that the NNS have not needed to decorate a tree. We can only hope that 2021 will see the return of this popular community event.
Millom Town Council have suspended the awarding of the NN Literary Fund and we can hope that this will be back in place for the start of the new term in September and students will be again encouraged to apply.
I have been involved in contributing photographs and content to the new Walking Trail App which has been created by a team of people to link NN’s writing with the locations around Millom and district. I was able to suggest appropriate quotations and text for a range of different sites including the Ironworks, Hodbarrow and Millom town for people to enjoy as they explore the Trails.
Last year we welcomed the students from the University of Cumbria MA Romanticism and the English Lake District course for a field trip to Millom so that they could enjoy listening and experiencing NN’s poetry in the locations which inspired him. This year proved more of a challenge as I attempted to recreate some of this ‘lived in experience’ virtually for the students. After a number of discussions with the Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Penny Bradshaw, I was able to create a range of resources which showed the students the locations which NN wrote about accompanied by a reading of the poem that it was based on.
On the day of their ‘visit’ we organised a session which included illustrated poems, readings by Janice Brockbank, answers to students questions and discussions about what they had all seen in order for them to experience the locality NN was writing about. It was also possible to do some filming in the attic of number 14 St George’s Terrace which at least provided the students with an insight into an important part of NN’s home. The feedback has been positive about this first ‘virtual’ event and Penny Bradshaw was very appreciative that the NNS was able to provide the current MA students with some ‘lived in’ experience of Nicholson’s Millom.
The Millom Discovery Centre has recently rebranded and become the Millom Heritage and Arts Centre. There has also been some refurbishment during lockdown and some of the rooms have been moved including the Norman Nicholson one. In discussion with the Centre’s staff it was explained to me that they have tried to make the Nicholson section more interactive and child friendly. However as the Centre is closed until May 17th it is not possible to report back about these changes until it re-opens.
As schools have been closed for large parts of the last 12 months there has been little opportunity to engage with them. However Antoinette Fawcett was able to provide learning resources for the NN poem to ‘To the River Duddon’ for the Haverigg School Hub in the hope that they might have been able to use them to produce some materials to be included in the forthcoming WWT exhibition. However this was not possible due to an emergency school closure and challenges over the curriculum during this difficult period. It is hoped that the local schools will be involved in the NN Festival in June and that they will be able to use the NN Learning Resource Files they were provided with last year to produce some materials for this event.
Sue Dawson
Schools & Community Liaison Officer
University Liaison Officer’s Report
What appears below is the complete report by Chris which was posted in the Members' Section of the Society's website a week ahead of the AGM. Chris delivered a shortened version at the AGM itself.
Due to the exigencies of the pandemic, the officer has had to prioritize his work at Lancaster University this past year. Consequently, he has not been able to make progress on activities he had hoped to deliver. The officer did present a paper on Nicholson as part of the ‘Wordsworth, Water, Writing’ online conference, which he organised with Prof Phil Shaw (Leicester University) in September 2020 and December 2021. This activity has complemented the Society’s contribution to a forthcoming exhibition at the Wordsworth Trust, for which credit and thanks are owed to Dr Fawcett and other members of the Society Committee.
This is the officer’s last year in post, and he wishes to thank the Committee and Society for their support, enthusiasm and patience. The officer is pleased to join the Committee and Society in welcoming Laura Day as Youth and Student representative, and he hopes to be able to support her work and the Society’s work going forwards.
The officer has compiled a short list of recent academic publications (since 2016) that engage with Nicholson’s works. The list is not comprehensive (and the officer apologizes for any accidental omissions or oversights), but he hopes that these titles may be of interest to members:
Brannigan, John, Ryfield, Frances, Crow , Tasman and Cabana, David, ‘“The Languo of Flows”: Ecosystem Services, Cultural Value, and the Nuclear Legacy in the Irish Sea’, Environmental Humanities, 11.2 (2019), 280–301
Gibson, Andrew, ‘Norman Nicholson and the Cumbria Coast’, in Coastal Works: Cultures of the Atlantic Edge, ed. by Nicholas Allen, Nick Groom and Jos Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 77–90
Hannigan, Tim, ‘A Voice in the Wilderness: James Rebanks’ The Shepherd’s Life as a “travellee Polemic”’, Studies in Travel Writing, 23.4 (2019), 378–90
Long, Max, ‘Light, Vision and Observation in Norman Nicholson’s Topographical Notes’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 96.2 (2020): https://doi.org/10.7227/BJRL.96.2.7
McDowell, Stacey, ‘Rhyming and Undeciding in Wordsworth and Norman Nicholson’, Romanticism, 23.2 (2017), 179–90
Morra, Irene, Verse Drama in England, 1900–2015: Art, Modernity and the National Stage (London: Bloomsbury, 2016)
Pitches, Jonathan, Performing Mountains (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
Walley, Brian, ‘An Exploration of Elliptic and Hybrid Poetry from a Geomorphological Viewpoint’, in Poetry in Pedagogy: Intersections Across and Between the Disciplines, ed. by Dean A. F. Gui and Jason S. Polley (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021), 24pp.
Widmer, Matthias, ‘The Second Edition of Cowper’s Homer’, Translation and Literature, 28.2–3 (2019), 151–99
Chris Donaldson 14 April 2021
NORMAN NICHOLSON HOUSE CIC – Report to the AGM of the Norman Nicholson Society, April 24th 2021
Charlie Lambert
In the autumn of 2019 your committee made the decision to set up a Community Interest Company (CIC) to drive the project forward.
The Norman Nicholson Society CIC was formally registered at Companies House in March last year – just as Covid was beginning to make life very hard for everyone. However, 12 months on, I am pleased to report that the CIC is up and running with a board of eight directors, including four who you know very well, Sue Dawson, Janice Brockbank, Phil Houghton and myself, to ensure the interests of the Society are looked after.
The company secured £20,000 in funding from Copeland Borough Council, this being fast-track money made available through the Government’s Towns Fund, a scheme to boost regeneration in towns across the country. The money was used to create a smartphone app, ‘Norman Nicholson’s Millom’, from which users can download two walking trails around the Millom area, with audio, text, images and extracts of Nicholson’s work being displayed on their phones as they walk. So as well as giving visitors the chance to explore the area, we are also introducing them to Norman Nicholson’s work.
Our other major success is a grant of £7,800 from the Architectural Heritage Fund . This is paying for the services of a museum design consultant, Jennie Pitceathly, who is one of the leaders in this field in the country, and I am delighted that she is going to be part of our team.
So where are we up to in terms of the whole point of the project, to buy 14 St George’s Terrace? We are pursuing a variety of funding opportunities. When we started off we applied to the National Lottery Heritage Fund for the whole amount, without success, so now we are making a number of applications for differing amounts. At the moment we have an application under consideration by Sellafield, and we are part of Copeland’s application to the Government for a multi-million pound grant under the main tranche of the Towns Fund scheme – decision due in May.
If you would like to support us and have a stake in this project yourself, there is a crowdfunding page now in operation. The target is to raise £10,000, which is a drop in the ocean compared to the £500,000-plus which we need, but the idea is to show that we can raise some of the money ourselves and not just hold out a begging bowl. Whether we’ll raise £10,000 I don’t know, but all donations are really welcome.
Minutes of the Annual General Meeting
Online Zoom 24th April 2021
Attendees: Barbara Andrews, David Boyd, Janice Brockbank, Brian Charnley, Sue Dawson, Laura Day, Chris Donaldson, Antoinette Fawcett, Judith Gale, Phil Houghton, Norma Hughes, Charlie and Dorothy Lambert, Glenn Lang, Abigail Palmer, Jonathan Powell, Ann Thomson, Rosemary and Malcom Morrison, Clive Shaw, Jack Threlfall-Hartley, Keith Walmsley, Brian Whalley, Harry Whalley, Andrew Wilson,
- Chair’s Welcome: Charlie Lambert. See below.
- Apologies had been received from Dot Richardson, Martyn Halsall and Ann Lingard.
- Rising Covid infection rates in March 2020 forced the AGM to be postponed and subsequently cancelled. Members received 2019 AGM Minutes by email.
AGM Minutes from April 2019 were approved. - There were no matters arising from 2019 AGM Minutes.
- Election of Committee: Under the rules of the Society’s Constitution, members of the committee are due for re-election if they have held office for three years since their last election. Thanks were given to Dot Richardson who has stepped down from the committee after 11 years, most of them as Treasurer. Chris Donaldson has stepped down from the committee, but will continue to support the Society's activities. Thanks were given to Glenn Lang who stepped down as Secretary, and to Antoinette Fawcett who stepped down as Membership Secretary.
- Brian Whalley was approved as a committee member as this was delayed by last year’s AGM cancellation. Proposer: Glenn Lang, seconded by Antoinette Fawcett.
- Laura Day was approved as committee member, having been co-opted earlier this month. Proposer: Antoinette Fawcett, seconded by Charlie Lambert.
- Jack Threlfall Hartley was elected as committee member. Proposer: Antoinette Fawcett, seconded by Ann Thomson.
- Brian Charnley, treasurer, was re-elected for a further three years. Proposer: Brian Whalley, seconded by Sue Dawson.
- Brian Whalley was confirmed in his role as Membership Secretary. Proposer: Brian Charnley, seconded by Glenn Lang.
- Janice Brockbank was confirmed in her role as Secretary. Proposer: Phil Houghton, seconded by Antoinette Fawcett.
- Secretary’s Report: Janice Brockbank. See below.
- Treasurer’s Report: Brian Charnley. See below.
- Membership Secretary’s Report: Brian Whalley. See below.
- Comet and Comet Online Report: Antoinette Fawcett. See below
- Glenn Lang highlighted that Comet’s printing and postal costs were minimal last year compared to previous years as Comet had been sent electronically which had positively affected the end of year total budget figure.
- Antoinette Fawcett has been the only Editor of Comet for the past 15 years. The Chair thanked Antoinette, seconded by Andrew Wilson and Brian Charnley. Andrew felt that Comet keeps people connected to the society which not all societies achieve.
- Schools and Community Officer’s report: Sue Dawson. See below.
- Sue invited David Boyd to summarise the University of Cumbria virtual visit to Millom as one of the MA students who confidently said students were very enthusiastic about the event, reiterated by Ann Thomson, also an MA student.
- Antoinette raised concern about the ownership and the future protection of Nicholson’s artefacts currently on display at Millom Heritage and Cultural Centre and due to be moved. Sue will meet with Millom Heritage & Arts Centre staff to establish ownership of artefacts, although she understood that this would not be problematic.
- University Liaison Officer’s Report: Chris Donaldson. See below.
- NNH CIC update: Charlie Lambert. See below.
- Glenn raised his concern about the NNH CIC accepting Sellafield funding due to what he believed to be Norman’s opposition towards the nuclear industry. Charlie acknowledged Glenn’s point and stated that this was a topic that would doubtless be discussed further.
- Antoinette reported on the society’s plan to explore the opportunity to co-host the 2027 ALS Festival weekend in partnership with the Ruskin Society if they are in agreement. The ALS would favour the prospect.
- Any other business: None
Chair’s welcome: AGM 2021
Good morning and welcome to the AGM of the Norman Nicholson Society. I’m so pleased that you can join us and that we’ve been able to make the most of digital technology to bring us all together.
Over the course of this AGM you’ll hear me and my colleagues on the committee refer to the challenges we’ve faced due to the Covid pandemic. I’d like to stress that whatever difficulties we may have encountered, we all know that these are absolutely nothing compared to the difficulties most of us – maybe all of us – have had to deal with on a personal and family level over the last 12 months. If you have lost someone dear to you, I am so sorry for your loss, and if you have had to deal with the illness yourself, I do hope you are recovering.
Whether from Covid or other causes, we have sadly lost members who have passed away over these last two years: Tom Troll; Peter Houghton; Valerie Rickerby; Christine Boyce; Stella Barnes; Jane Hignett; and Chris Pilling. My apologies if I have omitted anyone. Our condolences go to their family and friends.
The pandemic meant that we were unable to go ahead with our AGM last year. The committee made the very difficult decision to cancel on March 13th, even though at that stage there were no legal restrictions to prevent us going ahead. There was, though, ample evidence that allowing our AGM to proceed would pose a real health risk. It was another full week before the Government made its announcement banning such events. Looking back now, I can only say that your committee’s decision holds up pretty well to scrutiny.
There was no AGM last year but I don’t propose to dwell too much on the events that we would have summed up then. Once the cancellation was announced I posted a letter to all members on our website, along with our financial statement, and invited anyone with any queries about these to contact me direct. No-one did, and I thank members for your understanding and support, and that is very much a heartfelt thanks to you all, for renewing your membership and continuing to support the Society.
Despite everything, this has been a remarkably creative and constructive year. You will hear more details as our committee officers deliver their reports, but to hold an international poetry competition – won wonderfully by our own member Martyn Halsall – to publish a book of lockdown poems, set up a Community Interest Company, attract almost £30,000 in grant funding, hold several online events, and produce two packed issues of Comet is a pretty good year’s work under the circumstances.
I would like to say a massive thank-you to our vice-president Kathleen Jones for judging our poetry competition and then becoming the driving force behind the publication of our book, The Unpredicted Spring. Also to the members of your committee whose dedication in trying times has been remarkable, and at this point I want to pay tribute to two members who are stepping down this year. Dot Richardson has been on the committee for 11 years and for many years was treasurer; Dot has been unfailingly positive, as well as bringing a lifetime’s knowledge of Millom and personal acquaintance with Norman. Chris Donaldson has been our universities rep since taking over from Alan Beattie in 2017 and has done a brilliant job in strengthening our relationship with Lancaster University, including setting up our online archive of Comet. He has also provided consistently wise input to our meetings. My thanks Dot and Chris – you will be missed.
At the same time I’m delighted to welcome Laura Day to the committee. Laura was co-opted within the last few weeks and we will invite you to confirm this decision later on. I’m also really pleased that another of our younger members, Jack Threlfall-Hartley, has put his name forward for election to the committee today – again, that’s something we will come to shortly. A formal welcome also to Brian Whalley who was co-opted to the committee in September 2019 and has since taken over the responsibilities of membership secretary from Antoinette. A big thank you to Antoinette for her hard work in this role. Thank-you also to Janice Brockbank who took over as secretary of the Society in September 2019.
And that leads me to one more matter that I must mention. In 2019 Glenn Lang stepped down after many years as secretary of the Society. Had we been able to meet last year, there would have been a small presentation to Glenn to mark our gratitude. Events dictated otherwise, but it’s never too late so can I ask Antoinette to make that presentation now…and at the appropriate moment, feel free to unmute yourself and make some noise.
NNS Secretary's annual report: AGM 2021
Some of the Society's main events are listed below not otherwise covered in other committee Officers' reports.
Literary & Musical Houses of Britain & Ireland map
The Committee agreed to support the above publication to feature and promote Norman Nicholson and his home, 14, St George's Terrace, by purchasing 100 copies for re-sale to re-coup costs.
Events cancelled 2020-21 due to the global pandemic and national lockdowns
- Norman Nicholson Poetry classes at South Lakes Music Festival.
- NNS 2020 AGM.
- Annual Christmas Tree Festival, St George's Church.
- Annual Christmas Lunch 2020
Postponed Events 2020-21
- Summer: Nicholson and Ruskin led by Dr Chris Donaldson
- Autumn: Creative Writing Workshop at Cockley Moor led by Mike Tickell
Norman Nicholson showcase: Wordsworth Trust's exhibition, Tuesday, April 7th 2020
This prestigious exhibition was initially due to coincide with Wordsworth's 250th Anniversary and the 200th Anniversary of the Duddon Sonnets in April 2020 but was postponed. However, WWT is planning to launch the exhibition once restrictions ease in July 2021. Dr Antoinette Fawcett is leading the design with input from Sue Dawson, Glenn Lang and Janice Brockbank.
Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, Saturday, November 7th 2020
- Poetry readings led by Glenn Lang and Sue Dawson at no. 14.
- Additional visits readings at the Nicholson Memorial Window and Nicholson Room, Discovery Centre.
The following events took place online, using Zoom:
Commemorative Event via Zoom for Norman's Birthday: Friday, January 8th 2021
- Update on Project 14
- 'The Unpredicted Spring' Lockdown Poetry: Kathleen Jones
- A selection of Nicholson poems
NN-inspired Lockdown Anthology launch, The Unpredicted Spring : Wednesday, March 3rd 2021
Our thanks to our Honorary Vice-President Kathleen Jones for supporting the Society's very successful Lockdown Poetry Competition inspired by Charlie Lambert. Congratulations to Martyn Halsall, an NNS member, who was the winner of the adult competition. The winner of the under 18 competition was fourteen-year-old Katie Deutsch from Cambridge.
University of Cumbria ‘visit’: Monday, March 8th 2021
Students on the MA course at the University of Cumbria, led by Dr Penny Bradshaw, took part in a virtual visit to Millom as part of their study of Norman Nicholson’s work. Because a physical visit was ruled out by Covid restrictions, members of the Society’s committee Sue Dawson, Antoinette Fawcett, Janice Brockbank and Charlie Lambert put together video and powerpoint presentations to give the students an insight into the physical environment which inspired Nicholson’s work.
All of the events listed above have required extensive planning and time commitment. The Committee has met three times in the past year and kept in contact mainly via Zoom, email and social media.
The Society has purchased the Pro version of Zoom in order to host online events without any time limits.
Janice Brockbank NNS Secretary April 14th 2021
Norman Nicholson Society - Income & Expenditure Account
1st March 2020 to 30th March 2021
Active Account:
Income: Expenditure:
Subscriptions 891 Printing/Postage 147.00
Donations 20 Events 108.00
Interest 7.53 Expenses 264.14
Insurance /Licence 521.32
Total Income: 918.53 Total Expenditure: 1040.46
Excess of Income over Expenditure: -121.93
House Project Account:
Income: Expenditure:
Interest 2.64 TRANSFER CIC Nicholson -2500.00
Total Income: 2.64 Total Expenditure: 2500.00
Actual Excess of Income over expenditure: - 2497.36
TOTAL Excess of Income over Expenditure: - 2619.29
BALANCE SHEET AS AT 30TH MARCH 2021
CURRENT ASSETS:
Debtors
Bank Account - Active 6649.09
Bank Account - House project 139.28
Total: 6788.37
CURRENT LIABILITIES:
Creditors
TOTAL ASSETS: 6788.37
CAPITAL ACCOUNT:
Balance brought forward + 6771.02 + 2636.64 = (9407.66)
Excess income over Expenditure -2619.29
TOTAL RESERVES: 6788.37
Brian Charnley April 24th 2021
Norman Nicholson Society – Membership Report 2019-2021
I took over the role of Membership Secretary from Antoinette in 2020. Since then, we have had the Corona Virus to contend with and Antoinette has particularly suffered in the long term from its effects. I thank Antoinette for her long-standing role as Membership Secretary and in facilitating the handover (as well as editing the Bulletin and Comet) and Glenn for dealing with The Cumberland (formerly Cumberland Building Society) and lodging cheques and checking membership payments. (Our use has been less convenient during the pandemic because of its lockdown closure or limited opening hours in Ulverston.)
This report is for a two-year period as the AGM in 2020 was cancelled.
The current membership (April 2021) is:
- 146 of which 6 are Honorary Life Members, and 5 are junior members. There are 21 joint memberships.
- We are still chasing up lapsed members we had on the lists (possibly five). We had three resignations and have been notified of eight deaths over the last two years
- We appear to have a stable core of members with a slow annual addition. Over the last 18 months we have had 5 new members and some recent enquiries. This is reasonable but we should try to increase the number as Nicholson's poetry gains in popularity.
The Festival (2019) generated some eleven new members, and we hope that the same might follow for this year. Although the entry to the Lockdown Poetry competition was, perhaps surprisingly, large (over 230 poems from 129 poets) it did not generate any new members. In the light of the disruptions cause by Covid 19 I propose that your Committee look again at the Society's Membership Review and Action Plan with a view to generating more income and membership numbers.
Brian Whalley
Membership Secretary
21st April 2021
What appears below is the complete report by Antoinette which was posted in the Members' Section of the Society's website a week ahead of the AGM. Antoinette delivered a shortened version at the AGM itself.
REPORT ON COMET and COMET ONLINE 2019-20 / 20-21 Norman Nicholson Society AGM
Online Zoom Saturday, April 24th 2021 – 11.00 a.m.
This report covers the years 2019-20 and 2020-21 as the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 meant that the AGM scheduled for that year was cancelled.
Comet Online: http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/nns/
In the report for the Norman Nicholson Society AGM April 13th 2019 I included a paragraph on the Comet Online Project. This is a brief update on that project and its usefulness.
At the 2018 AGM the Society mandated the committee, and specifically the editor of Comet, to look for ways in which the Comet archive could be put online and made available in a fully searchable format to the wider community. Dr. Christopher Donaldson, our Universities Liaison Officer, suggested that this would be a good project to work on in conjunction with the School of Computing and Communications at the University of Lancaster.
Our work with Lancaster University, specifically Dr Christopher Donaldson (Cultural History), Dr Paul Rayson (Computing and Communications) and Bartek Barański (Computer Sciences student), was carried out over the course of about six months, from October 2018 through to April 2019. In that period a large number of previous Comets were put online, both as full issues and as individual articles. The website is hosted by Lancaster University and is now maintained by Dr. Christopher Donaldson. There is an Article Index and an Author Index, which can be consulted to make searching easier. Past issues, which have been redacted where necessary, can be downloaded, as can individual articles. Copyright of the articles remains with the individual authors. The site also contains information about the Norman Nicholson Society and includes a link to our own website on the Home Page and a page dedicated to information about Comet and the NN Society. There is also a very useful page about Norman Nicholson himself and a page that describes the Archival Materials that relate to Nicholson.
The relatively short period of time in which the materials were prepared and redacted and the website was put together meant that not all our past issues have yet been put online. The intention was always to leave a gap of at least three years between an issue of Comet being made available to our members and its being placed online on the Lancaster University website. More recent issues of Comet can be downloaded in their original form from the Member Section of our own website.
If you make a Google Search for Comet Online, remember to include the words ‘Norman Nicholson’, otherwise you will be directed to Comet Electrical or to a Stevenage local online newspaper. I suggest the search term: ‘Comet Online Norman Nicholson’.
The Covid-19 pandemic, and my own long-lasting Covid experience, meant that my plans to update the website with further past copies and articles were not carried out in 2019-20, but I hope that I will be able to continue redacting and preparing the materials later this year. Dr. Chris Donaldson will also continue to support this project.
We are extremely grateful to the University of Lancaster for hosting the website and to Dr. Donaldson, Mr Barański and Dr. Rayson for their collaboration on this project.
Comet 2019-20 and 2020-21
In the Norman Nicholson Society year 2019-20 two issues of Comet were published (Vol. 14.1; Vol. 14.2).
Vol. 14.1 included interesting memories relating to Norman by Merryn Williams, Roger Bush and Geraldine Green; an article by Mary Robinson on the translation of The Old Man of the Mountains into Welsh; poems by several members and NN Festival participants; an account of the process of creating ‘An Image for Norman’, by the artist and graphic designer Alan Roper and myself; a report on the Alliance of Literary Societies AGM Weekend at Nuneaton, in celebration of the bicentenary of George Eliot’s birth; reports on the Norman Nicholson Festival 2019 and on the exhibition in Kansas City of a new artwork by Andy Goldsworthy, inspired by Nicholson’s poem ‘Wall’; and the third part of Professor Brian Whalley’s response to Nicholson’s Geology and Geomorphology. This series of articles will form a major resource for a proper appreciation of Nicholson’s scientific knowledge and the way in which he used this in his work. The series is still ongoing. Finally, I had the sad duty of writing an obituary for one of our founding members, the poet Chris Pilling, who knew Nicholson personally and was an excellent writer in his own right.
Vol.14.2 should have appeared in the spring of 2020. Unfortunately, I caught (suspected) Covid-19 myself in March that year and have been dealing with Long Covid symptoms ever since. This issue was therefore postponed until September 2020, although it reports on all the events the Society held or attended between September 2019 and January 2020.
The editorial dealt with some of the events that had to be put on hold, particularly the celebrations planned by the Wordsworth Trust to mark the 250th anniversary of Wordsworth’s birth and the 200th anniversary of the publication of his Duddon Sonnets. The Norman Nicholson Society had been invited to contribute to the exhibition on the Duddon Sonnets which would be the first exhibition to take place in the new Wordsworth Grasmere museum. In September 2020 both the opening of the museum and the exhibition had been postponed and it wasn’t yet clear when – or even if – the exhibition would take place. I am pleased to say that the situation has now changed for the better, and the ‘Endless Waters’ exhibition is expected to open in May 2021, with community involvement from various groups, and a showcase dedicated to the impact of Wordsworth and the Duddon on Norman Nicholson. I expect to report on this exciting development in the Comets of 2021.
Vol 14.2 strongly featured the work of the stained glass artist Christine Boyce, who created the beautiful Norman Nicholson Memorial Window, placed in St. George’s Church, Millom in 2000. The Society was extremely shocked to receive the news of Christine’s sudden death in November 2019, only a month after the brilliant study day we had spent with her in Carlisle in October 2019. Again, it was a sad duty for me to write a tribute to her, but also a great joy to be able to present her wonderful life and work to members and friends of the Society.
Other important pieces included Charlie Lambert’s essay on the relationship between the poet Matt Simpson and Norman Nicholson; the first part of an engaging article by Leo Finighan on Wordsworth, Nicholson and the Duddon; a continuation of Brian Whalley’s ‘Rocks and Landscape’ series; reviews of a new book by Society Vice- President Neil Curry and a poetry collection by Mary Robinson; and several reports on events, including the LitHouses Conference, held in Brantwood in October 2019, the Christmas Tree Festival 2019, and the Norman Nicholson Birthday Party 2020, our last live Society event before the lockdown.
Vol 15.1 came out just before Christmas 2020. It was a bonus issue, intended to compensate members for the fact that the usual spring issue had been postponed. For the first time since I started editing Comet, there were no Society events to report on, again as a result of the pandemic. Nevertheless, this did not mean that our actual activity came to a standstill. The Society News column reported on the Lockdown Poetry Competition, the formation of the Norman Nicholson House Community Interest Company and a Walking Trails App, expected to be produced in the spring of 2021.
This issue also contained two important and interesting pieces by our doctoral student members, Laura Day (University of Durham) and Jack Threlfall Hartley (University of Oxford). Both of them are also brilliant photographers and their responses to landscape, here in Cumbria and also in Iceland, formed an important theme in this issue, complementing Brian Whalley’s ongoing series on Nicholson and geomorphology. Laura even discovered a degree of freedom in the pandemic which enabled her to roam through Cumbria in a way that might have been impossible if she had been tied to her desk in Durham.
Charlie Lambert gave us another, very touching, piece on Nicholson’s correspondence with Matt Simpson, and I was able to use some of my lockdown time to investigate the life of Nicholson’s teacher, Miss Hobson, after receiving a tribute to her from Donald Benson, another of her former students. The article I wrote will be continued in a later issue of Comet, supplemented by further articles about Nicholson’s schooling and his teachers. I had also been able to discover a ‘lost’ Nicholson poem – ‘Christmas Carol for the First Man on the Moon’ – with the help of Katy Conover, Archivist for Hearst Magazines UK, re-published for the first time in this issue, by kind permission of David Higham Associates Limited on behalf of the Estate of Norman Nicholson. Other pieces included a report on a Nicholson-inspired land art project by Irene Rogan and a discussion piece on Nicholson’s poem ‘The Blackberry’ by Chris Donaldson.
As in previous issues, it was both a sad duty and a privilege for me to create tributes to the lives of some of our members who had passed away in the previous months: Tom Troll; Peter Houghton; and Valerie Rickerby.
Concluding remarks
Because of the difficulties created by the pandemic, in 2020-21 Comet has appeared primarily in digital format. Rather than sending our members a printed copy, they were encouraged to download the digital version from the Members Section of the Norman Nicholson Society website. Full instructions on how to do this were sent out several times in our e-bulletins. Some members, who do not have access to the internet, were sent Vol. 14.2 by post. The Christmas issue (Vol. 15.1) was only available online, but the intention is to print and distribute a small number of copies of this issue as soon as it seems possible and safe to do so.
Comet has now been published for a full fifteen years. It has grown during that time into an important resource for members and non-members. It is a magazine I am proud to edit, but without the many writers who have contributed to it over the years, it would simply not exist. My grateful thanks to all of you, past and present.
Antoinette Fawcett 16th April 2021
Norman Nicholson Society
Schools & Community liaison Officer
Annual Report 2021
This annual report will reflect one of the most challenging years for the NNS in view of the lockdown and restrictions placed not only on the NNS, the community but nationwide by Covid. Many of the normal events which we would have participated in like the Christmas Tree Festival had to be cancelled, which will be the first time in 10 years that the NNS have not needed to decorate a tree. We can only hope that 2021 will see the return of this popular community event.
Millom Town Council have suspended the awarding of the NN Literary Fund and we can hope that this will be back in place for the start of the new term in September and students will be again encouraged to apply.
I have been involved in contributing photographs and content to the new Walking Trail App which has been created by a team of people to link NN’s writing with the locations around Millom and district. I was able to suggest appropriate quotations and text for a range of different sites including the Ironworks, Hodbarrow and Millom town for people to enjoy as they explore the Trails.
Last year we welcomed the students from the University of Cumbria MA Romanticism and the English Lake District course for a field trip to Millom so that they could enjoy listening and experiencing NN’s poetry in the locations which inspired him. This year proved more of a challenge as I attempted to recreate some of this ‘lived in experience’ virtually for the students. After a number of discussions with the Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Penny Bradshaw, I was able to create a range of resources which showed the students the locations which NN wrote about accompanied by a reading of the poem that it was based on.
On the day of their ‘visit’ we organised a session which included illustrated poems, readings by Janice Brockbank, answers to students questions and discussions about what they had all seen in order for them to experience the locality NN was writing about. It was also possible to do some filming in the attic of number 14 St George’s Terrace which at least provided the students with an insight into an important part of NN’s home. The feedback has been positive about this first ‘virtual’ event and Penny Bradshaw was very appreciative that the NNS was able to provide the current MA students with some ‘lived in’ experience of Nicholson’s Millom.
The Millom Discovery Centre has recently rebranded and become the Millom Heritage and Arts Centre. There has also been some refurbishment during lockdown and some of the rooms have been moved including the Norman Nicholson one. In discussion with the Centre’s staff it was explained to me that they have tried to make the Nicholson section more interactive and child friendly. However as the Centre is closed until May 17th it is not possible to report back about these changes until it re-opens.
As schools have been closed for large parts of the last 12 months there has been little opportunity to engage with them. However Antoinette Fawcett was able to provide learning resources for the NN poem to ‘To the River Duddon’ for the Haverigg School Hub in the hope that they might have been able to use them to produce some materials to be included in the forthcoming WWT exhibition. However this was not possible due to an emergency school closure and challenges over the curriculum during this difficult period. It is hoped that the local schools will be involved in the NN Festival in June and that they will be able to use the NN Learning Resource Files they were provided with last year to produce some materials for this event.
Sue Dawson
Schools & Community Liaison Officer
University Liaison Officer’s Report
What appears below is the complete report by Chris which was posted in the Members' Section of the Society's website a week ahead of the AGM. Chris delivered a shortened version at the AGM itself.
Due to the exigencies of the pandemic, the officer has had to prioritize his work at Lancaster University this past year. Consequently, he has not been able to make progress on activities he had hoped to deliver. The officer did present a paper on Nicholson as part of the ‘Wordsworth, Water, Writing’ online conference, which he organised with Prof Phil Shaw (Leicester University) in September 2020 and December 2021. This activity has complemented the Society’s contribution to a forthcoming exhibition at the Wordsworth Trust, for which credit and thanks are owed to Dr Fawcett and other members of the Society Committee.
This is the officer’s last year in post, and he wishes to thank the Committee and Society for their support, enthusiasm and patience. The officer is pleased to join the Committee and Society in welcoming Laura Day as Youth and Student representative, and he hopes to be able to support her work and the Society’s work going forwards.
The officer has compiled a short list of recent academic publications (since 2016) that engage with Nicholson’s works. The list is not comprehensive (and the officer apologizes for any accidental omissions or oversights), but he hopes that these titles may be of interest to members:
Brannigan, John, Ryfield, Frances, Crow , Tasman and Cabana, David, ‘“The Languo of Flows”: Ecosystem Services, Cultural Value, and the Nuclear Legacy in the Irish Sea’, Environmental Humanities, 11.2 (2019), 280–301
Gibson, Andrew, ‘Norman Nicholson and the Cumbria Coast’, in Coastal Works: Cultures of the Atlantic Edge, ed. by Nicholas Allen, Nick Groom and Jos Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 77–90
Hannigan, Tim, ‘A Voice in the Wilderness: James Rebanks’ The Shepherd’s Life as a “travellee Polemic”’, Studies in Travel Writing, 23.4 (2019), 378–90
Long, Max, ‘Light, Vision and Observation in Norman Nicholson’s Topographical Notes’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 96.2 (2020): https://doi.org/10.7227/BJRL.96.2.7
McDowell, Stacey, ‘Rhyming and Undeciding in Wordsworth and Norman Nicholson’, Romanticism, 23.2 (2017), 179–90
Morra, Irene, Verse Drama in England, 1900–2015: Art, Modernity and the National Stage (London: Bloomsbury, 2016)
Pitches, Jonathan, Performing Mountains (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
Walley, Brian, ‘An Exploration of Elliptic and Hybrid Poetry from a Geomorphological Viewpoint’, in Poetry in Pedagogy: Intersections Across and Between the Disciplines, ed. by Dean A. F. Gui and Jason S. Polley (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021), 24pp.
Widmer, Matthias, ‘The Second Edition of Cowper’s Homer’, Translation and Literature, 28.2–3 (2019), 151–99
Chris Donaldson 14 April 2021
NORMAN NICHOLSON HOUSE CIC – Report to the AGM of the Norman Nicholson Society, April 24th 2021
Charlie Lambert
In the autumn of 2019 your committee made the decision to set up a Community Interest Company (CIC) to drive the project forward.
The Norman Nicholson Society CIC was formally registered at Companies House in March last year – just as Covid was beginning to make life very hard for everyone. However, 12 months on, I am pleased to report that the CIC is up and running with a board of eight directors, including four who you know very well, Sue Dawson, Janice Brockbank, Phil Houghton and myself, to ensure the interests of the Society are looked after.
The company secured £20,000 in funding from Copeland Borough Council, this being fast-track money made available through the Government’s Towns Fund, a scheme to boost regeneration in towns across the country. The money was used to create a smartphone app, ‘Norman Nicholson’s Millom’, from which users can download two walking trails around the Millom area, with audio, text, images and extracts of Nicholson’s work being displayed on their phones as they walk. So as well as giving visitors the chance to explore the area, we are also introducing them to Norman Nicholson’s work.
Our other major success is a grant of £7,800 from the Architectural Heritage Fund . This is paying for the services of a museum design consultant, Jennie Pitceathly, who is one of the leaders in this field in the country, and I am delighted that she is going to be part of our team.
So where are we up to in terms of the whole point of the project, to buy 14 St George’s Terrace? We are pursuing a variety of funding opportunities. When we started off we applied to the National Lottery Heritage Fund for the whole amount, without success, so now we are making a number of applications for differing amounts. At the moment we have an application under consideration by Sellafield, and we are part of Copeland’s application to the Government for a multi-million pound grant under the main tranche of the Towns Fund scheme – decision due in May.
If you would like to support us and have a stake in this project yourself, there is a crowdfunding page now in operation. The target is to raise £10,000, which is a drop in the ocean compared to the £500,000-plus which we need, but the idea is to show that we can raise some of the money ourselves and not just hold out a begging bowl. Whether we’ll raise £10,000 I don’t know, but all donations are really welcome.