Pillars Past – a window into the past by Nidderdale based sculptor Joseph Hayton
One of my favourite sculptures sits a short walk from the High Street in Pateley Bridge and was created by local sculptor Joseph Hayton who has his studio in King Street Workshops in the town.
Known as Pillars Past, the artwork consists of three upright sandstone pillars with a historic figure emerging from each pillar. The stone was kindly donated by Johnsons Wellfield Quarry in Huddersfield.
I often stop at the piece on my way into the Yorkshire Dales as it is a great visual aid to tell the story of the Dales through the three pillars. I will explain more later in the piece, but it was originally commissioned by Sustrans as part of the Travelling Art Project which was also part of the Way of the Roses Public Art Trail (a 170 mile cycle route through Lancashire and Yorkshire from Morecambe to Bridlington).
The sculptures sit on the circle of what used to be the turntable for turning locomotives at the Pateley Bridge Station on the Nidd Valley Railway, the line sadly no longer exists.
The concept behind the sculpture was to represent parts of Nidderdale’s history, so Joseph decided to represent Monastic, Agricultural and Industrial life in the Dale.
Each pillar has a figure emerging from the sandstone, with a Monk, a Farmer and a Lead Miners realistically carved from the rough stone. The three figures were positioned so that if you stood in the centre of the turntable, that all the figures would be actually looking at you.
So why a Monk, Farmer and Lead Miner?
Back in medieval times, Monastic life was very much part of the Dales with Fountains Abbey near Ripon being one of the largest and wealthiest Cistercian monastic centres in England with up to 650 Monks based there at the height of the Abbey’s life.
The Catholic Monks promoted the concept of purgatory and that possibility that people could speed their paths through purgatory, with guess what? Yes, gifts of money, land and sheep! At one point before Henry VIII and the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the Monks owned, farmed and managed large chunks of Nidderdale and had up to 15,000 sheep.
They employed lay brothers to help farm the land and as shepherds to look after their sheep. The monks made vast amounts of money off the back of wool and until the Dissolution played an important part of life in the region.
The Farmer is a nod to the importance of farming in the area both during the time of the Monks and after the Abbeys were dissolved. There would have been some limited arable farming, but Nidderdale continued to be an area for sheep farming as well as some cattle.
There are still hundreds of people continuing this tradition and Pateley Bridge holds the annual Nidderdale Agricultural Show in September each year.
The Lead Miner is a nod to times past too. We know the Roman’s mined lead in the area and then later after the Norman Conquest lead was mined in the area mainly for use with the mass church and cathedral building which was taking place after 1066.
The lead was used for church roofs and for glazing of expensive stained glass windows.
But lead mining really took off in the mid 1700’s and continued for 125 years in the Dales before cheap imports caused the death of the industry in England. With the Industrial Revolution and manufacture, particularly of textiles in Yorkshire, lead was required in vast quantities for the factories and mills for plumbing, pipework and roofing.
Miners came from as far as the United States and Cornwall to seek their fortunes, on the bleak exposed moors in Nidderdale with the hope of finding veins of Galena (lead ore).
The decline of lead mining lead to mass migration from the Yorkshire Dales as there was no work to support people and until tourism and the coming of the railways, the Dales lost over half its population.
I find it interesting to look at the sculpture of the Lead Miner and note that there is no fancy head torch or hard hat, just a bowler hat with a candle situated on the rim!
I think the artwork is haunting and the figures (reputedly based on local Nidderdale characters) are so life like. They represent a window into the past and when I stop with guests is the perfect visual prompt when explaining the areas heritage.
To find out more about Joseph Hayton visit - https://www.josephhayton.co.uk
To view Paul Harris’s video about the making of the sculpture visit – scroll to the bottom of this page - https://www.paulharrisphotography.com/inmotion
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