1 00:00:00,840 --> 00:00:25,050 I. I'm here to talk about what went on behind the scenes in the making of Ralph Shelton's four taps to maps, 2 00:00:25,050 --> 00:00:33,660 how he used sex and surveys, what else he used and basically how he cobbled things together. 3 00:00:33,660 --> 00:00:41,970 It would have been terribly simple for Ralph if he had when he was considering the decoration for his house, 4 00:00:41,970 --> 00:00:52,590 simply to walk out into London streets and walk into one of the London shops selling off the pad tapestries. 5 00:00:52,590 --> 00:00:56,040 It wouldn't have been that simple. 6 00:00:56,040 --> 00:01:06,780 He would probably have ended up with a biblical or a classical theme with large speakers in the foreground and a nice selection of landscape trees, 7 00:01:06,780 --> 00:01:13,080 a hill shaded on the right hand side and a little windmill. 8 00:01:13,080 --> 00:01:25,020 When he lit on the idea of making a horror graphical picture for counties in which he held land, had family and friends and had some influence. 9 00:01:25,020 --> 00:01:34,370 It was an unusual choice, and it became still more unusual when he realised he could personalise the scene. 10 00:01:34,370 --> 00:01:39,620 Because he lived in a country without too many mapmakers. 11 00:01:39,620 --> 00:01:45,980 He lived in a country without a tapestry industry, so he had to find, first of all, 12 00:01:45,980 --> 00:01:54,750 a man capable of designing top streets, which are also maps whom I shall call from now on the designer. 13 00:01:54,750 --> 00:01:59,420 Secondly, he needed a man capable of. 14 00:01:59,420 --> 00:02:08,360 Seeing the project through. And thirdly, of course, he has to be able to find levers capable of delivering huge, 15 00:02:08,360 --> 00:02:14,720 complex, tough straits and solve all these problems not only simultaneously. 16 00:02:14,720 --> 00:02:20,450 But before he could even begin. His idea wasn't novel. 17 00:02:20,450 --> 00:02:29,860 We've seen. The first in the series of the emperor, Charles Junior's Typekit streets, here are some details. 18 00:02:29,860 --> 00:02:41,890 Barcelona and Santiago, a German nobleman, went on pilgrimage and came home and celebrated the event by commissioning two top stories. 19 00:02:41,890 --> 00:02:52,600 Based on all the drawings we've seen, the full version of the siege of Leiden commemorated first as a painting, 20 00:02:52,600 --> 00:02:58,550 and the painting was then turned into tapestry. Here is more detail. 21 00:02:58,550 --> 00:03:06,250 Sharon's idea isn't novel, but it is unusual. 22 00:03:06,250 --> 00:03:13,810 I don't you me in England, there was some help at hand because between 15, 74 and 15 78, 23 00:03:13,810 --> 00:03:20,380 a Yorkshireman, Christopher Saxton, had surveyed all the counties in England. 24 00:03:20,380 --> 00:03:30,100 It was a first. He then put them together in an Atlas 15, 17, nine and four years later. 25 00:03:30,100 --> 00:03:36,390 He thought he could get some more money out of it. So he combined it into smaller. 26 00:03:36,390 --> 00:03:43,170 Sorry for the gutter of the book going down the middle. But that's what it looks like. 27 00:03:43,170 --> 00:03:49,170 Now it's roughly five feet high, and it's roughly six feet across. 28 00:03:49,170 --> 00:03:59,450 So just under two metres across one and a half high, you can put something like that on the wall as it was designed to be. 29 00:03:59,450 --> 00:04:04,910 Or you can put it on a table and look at it from a chair and it can comfort. 30 00:04:04,910 --> 00:04:11,190 And if you're thinking of making tough tapestries to do some reverse engineering. 31 00:04:11,190 --> 00:04:16,470 You can draw out the edge tones of what become the tough stories. 32 00:04:16,470 --> 00:04:23,470 And there's your preliminary sketch. The red dots are up to a child from London. 33 00:04:23,470 --> 00:04:28,990 Opted not up to nearly struck Fred West to show covers, 34 00:04:28,990 --> 00:04:37,150 the northern part of Oxford and goes up to Ludlow and then the Blues, Warwick and the purple is Gloucestershire. 35 00:04:37,150 --> 00:04:48,100 A designer can work out quite quickly how to make a panoramic view from the Bristol Channel through to our Worcester, 36 00:04:48,100 --> 00:04:59,930 Warwick, Oxford, and because Ralph wants to extend his power all the way down to the Thames estuary and actually at London. 37 00:04:59,930 --> 00:05:06,560 Looking again at the rectangles off the top stream up, one thing is going to hit Ralph. 38 00:05:06,560 --> 00:05:15,490 Fair and square. And that is Western house buying in the middle of the four tough streets. 39 00:05:15,490 --> 00:05:24,650 It's something else that's going to hit the designer. You can see that two tough stories. 40 00:05:24,650 --> 00:05:30,200 Oh, dear. Oxfordshire and Worcestershire. 41 00:05:30,200 --> 00:05:37,910 It doesn't take very much to push them down, so the bottom line is parallel with the floor. 42 00:05:37,910 --> 00:05:42,350 But you've got a problem with Warwickshire and with Doster shot, 43 00:05:42,350 --> 00:05:49,520 they're always going to be taller than the other top stories if you want to leave north at the top. 44 00:05:49,520 --> 00:05:58,880 It isn't actually a convention that's yet established. It probably wouldn't bother an Elizabethan too much when one of the solutions 45 00:05:58,880 --> 00:06:08,240 found is to push north over to this side and have east at the top instead. 46 00:06:08,240 --> 00:06:20,100 It fits very nicely. And it means that this tough street can be not quite as long as Oxfordshire and to, but almost as long. 47 00:06:20,100 --> 00:06:25,200 And from the designer's point of view, he can keep something that's extremely important. 48 00:06:25,200 --> 00:06:35,040 The royal arms span dividers along text from Camden's Britannia, which was a travelogue first published in 1886, 49 00:06:35,040 --> 00:06:45,620 and it raced through into eight editions by six seven and then Sheldon's in the corner. 50 00:06:45,620 --> 00:06:51,870 Works for Warwickshire. It does not work for Gloucestershire. 51 00:06:51,870 --> 00:06:58,470 They could have picked Gloucestershire with no effect at all. But then you disturb the extra bits. 52 00:06:58,470 --> 00:07:05,610 So they pushed Gloucestershire so that North is over here and that is roughly east. 53 00:07:05,610 --> 00:07:16,130 But it allows the Camden tapes to be in the same position, and it now allows for fragment, which could be here. 54 00:07:16,130 --> 00:07:22,320 To be in the top border. This piece is in private hands. 55 00:07:22,320 --> 00:07:32,090 This piece is the part that belongs to Bradley. But the designers may realise something else, and that is. 56 00:07:32,090 --> 00:07:40,590 That Wal-Mart is going to be far too small because by now, he's demanded to know the wall space he's designing for. 57 00:07:40,590 --> 00:07:46,820 And Sheldon happily tells him it's 80 feet, 23 and a half metres. 58 00:07:46,820 --> 00:07:55,940 So the wall map is not going to be very much use when he sees the survey of Worcestershire, 59 00:07:55,940 --> 00:08:01,880 though to minor Susan Plus the plus is here is his inspiration for the corners. 60 00:08:01,880 --> 00:08:11,780 He saved himself some labour. The Royal Arms. The scale and dividers this, which sometimes mentions the engraver does name the county, 61 00:08:11,780 --> 00:08:23,110 becomes the Camden text and lost of Thomas six foot arms, master of the Court of Request and the man who financed Sexton's project. 62 00:08:23,110 --> 00:08:29,000 Go down to the bottom right hand corner and become the shoulder arms. 63 00:08:29,000 --> 00:08:39,650 The pluses are that he's got the county boundary neatly delineated, and he's got the two main rivers, the seven and the Warwickshire Avon. 64 00:08:39,650 --> 00:08:48,490 He's got forests to play with in the north, and he's got a line of hills going steadily north eastwards. 65 00:08:48,490 --> 00:08:56,610 It was at this point that I had what passes for a bright idea. 66 00:08:56,610 --> 00:09:08,430 I thought it would be very useful to find out how this map was actually used on when I worked with Mike Evans and who is a computer whiz kid. 67 00:09:08,430 --> 00:09:15,240 Are we compared to Wal-Mart and the such Stone County map? 68 00:09:15,240 --> 00:09:27,600 We discovered in Oxfordshire and actually elsewhere, the Wal-Mart towns on Sorry, Sorry, Sorry and Hampshire are misplaced. 69 00:09:27,600 --> 00:09:34,970 But that mistake was not transferred to the top story, which the brown dots. 70 00:09:34,970 --> 00:09:38,390 I had done this exercise before the old fashioned way, 71 00:09:38,390 --> 00:09:44,750 I listed all the names in the county map room under tough straits, but it's much more fun doing it on a computer. 72 00:09:44,750 --> 00:09:54,160 It's much more dramatic. Now, by now, we're getting an idea of who the designer is, she knows a thing or two about matchmaking, 73 00:09:54,160 --> 00:10:04,180 and he knows his contemporaries would have used to grid either to fix positions or to reduce or to enlarge pictorial material. 74 00:10:04,180 --> 00:10:17,680 This is a picture of Valencia made by a Flemish draughtsman and turned one God who worked for Philip, the second in the 50s and the 60s. 75 00:10:17,680 --> 00:10:24,360 So we copied him. Here is Worcestershire printed. 76 00:10:24,360 --> 00:10:33,850 And here is the area we chose to work on. We chose it deliberately because it's got four counties which need to be merged 77 00:10:33,850 --> 00:10:40,090 because you can't just put what was to show or any other county into a top story. 78 00:10:40,090 --> 00:10:47,320 Top story has to be either square or rectangular, so the designer was going to have to merge substance maps. 79 00:10:47,320 --> 00:10:59,220 That is where it should. Part of Oxfordshire, very large part of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire. 80 00:10:59,220 --> 00:11:03,240 I have to say that at this point, we started cheating. 81 00:11:03,240 --> 00:11:11,040 We considered what ought to go in first, the county boundaries followed by the natural features rivers, 82 00:11:11,040 --> 00:11:18,660 hills and forests or the manmade features the villages, towns and parks. 83 00:11:18,660 --> 00:11:23,850 We also can't come to grips with the problem, how in the world it was done, 84 00:11:23,850 --> 00:11:33,660 so we made some mock up little drawings of villages because you couldn't possibly have left the weavers to design the villages as they went along. 85 00:11:33,660 --> 00:11:40,740 One mistake in size, height or spread, and the whole tapestry has gone out of kilter. 86 00:11:40,740 --> 00:11:44,430 And the same is true of the names you've probably noticed. 87 00:11:44,430 --> 00:11:50,820 All the places are named underneath, and they're named in quite remarkably, regular letters. 88 00:11:50,820 --> 00:11:56,550 We actually work from the restored tapestries and we noticed that everything is 89 00:11:56,550 --> 00:12:04,080 in the little box on a pale background and in black or possibly brown thread. 90 00:12:04,080 --> 00:12:14,220 Then we started counting warps, and it's very, very easy to make an eye the same size all over the place of the same size as everything else. 91 00:12:14,220 --> 00:12:24,240 It's going to be less than an inch slightly county level warps, and that applies to any letter with a straight element. 92 00:12:24,240 --> 00:12:30,510 It becomes difficult when there's a curve, a D or an O or B, 93 00:12:30,510 --> 00:12:39,450 and it must have been a real headache on a letter with a curve and a piece at an angle like this or like. 94 00:12:39,450 --> 00:12:48,150 Nevertheless, it does look to us, did look to us as though the names have been worked out on that precise mathematical formula. 95 00:12:48,150 --> 00:12:56,010 We worked on the chief, I have to say, on a sheet of pass wrapping paper sellotape down the middle, 96 00:12:56,010 --> 00:13:01,830 which does nothing for photographs, but it was terribly useful for us. That's why we got it wrong on this side. 97 00:13:01,830 --> 00:13:08,810 We could try and put it right on that side or vice versa. And it can just see the grid. 98 00:13:08,810 --> 00:13:16,560 It was three metres high and two metres across. Our first mistake and we made plenty. 99 00:13:16,560 --> 00:13:25,690 We marked out the county boundaries in pencil and we made little dots for the villages. 100 00:13:25,690 --> 00:13:35,740 And then we thought, right? We will place village icons. 101 00:13:35,740 --> 00:13:42,850 This is one of the first areas we did. We gave Gretchen Aspire not to tower. 102 00:13:42,850 --> 00:13:56,740 So we gave Stanley Asla, not a tower. When we place the main label, the Spire ran straight into the place name, and that just doesn't happen. 103 00:13:56,740 --> 00:14:05,050 So we scrapped that effort completely and we moved on. 104 00:14:05,050 --> 00:14:13,630 It really was quite easy to place these place names, although we did make an awful lot of mistakes and when we were fairly well advanced, 105 00:14:13,630 --> 00:14:18,040 we could see how space is panning out on this section. 106 00:14:18,040 --> 00:14:24,460 That's going to be space around here. And there is a very empty space there. 107 00:14:24,460 --> 00:14:35,620 But is the space for the Cotswold Hills, which we put in this time in paint and we put it in before we put the village icons? 108 00:14:35,620 --> 00:14:46,270 Remember that all this is movable. We are going to do things down later, not just terribly expert. 109 00:14:46,270 --> 00:14:53,050 We got even into even more of a mess with our first attempt in this area. 110 00:14:53,050 --> 00:14:57,690 You can see what's happened here is the river star. 111 00:14:57,690 --> 00:15:06,430 That's the knee rock, which flows through a long, shallow valley, but it was Sheldon property, both sides, it has to go in. 112 00:15:06,430 --> 00:15:12,630 Bebington, Teddington, Botched and the ship's done have all come out the right side of the river. 113 00:15:12,630 --> 00:15:18,240 Huntington does not have a river flowing through it, and trading is not on that bank, 114 00:15:18,240 --> 00:15:27,080 and Holford now Helford is closer to the river than you would know from this attempt. 115 00:15:27,080 --> 00:15:34,910 We concluded that the designer was a man of some experience. 116 00:15:34,910 --> 00:15:39,140 Once she had got all of his place names in position on the river, 117 00:15:39,140 --> 00:15:47,570 some of which are very much more sinuous than they might be and put in the hills and put in forests, 118 00:15:47,570 --> 00:15:59,660 he can get down to what Sheldon perhaps wanted most. Inclusion of houses of his friends and family here is certainly castle home of Giles Chandor's. 119 00:15:59,660 --> 00:16:04,340 Lord Bridges from Sheldon visited very frequently. 120 00:16:04,340 --> 00:16:09,570 He was coaching court, the home of the Throckmorton family. 121 00:16:09,570 --> 00:16:17,550 Ralph was married to one of the daughters beach food court is another cousin, the Gravel's. 122 00:16:17,550 --> 00:16:27,510 Here is a less happy example Park Hall is the home of the Arden's, and so Edward and his son were accused of treason. 123 00:16:27,510 --> 00:16:36,210 Edward committed suicide. Sir Edward was executed and US Catholics, their estates were forfeit to the crown. 124 00:16:36,210 --> 00:16:46,960 That's the toughest redrawing of the house. This is a drawing of a house made by the Crown Surveyor sent in to map their lands. 125 00:16:46,960 --> 00:16:56,170 I'm not asking you to believe that the houses are perfect drawings of what stood there, but they aren't formalised drawings either. 126 00:16:56,170 --> 00:17:04,100 I think they were made specially for the tapestries. I think much the same about the Times. 127 00:17:04,100 --> 00:17:09,620 Here is an early 16th century Anytown. And here is Eve Shop. 128 00:17:09,620 --> 00:17:16,550 It's shown from the South. You can see it two stone bridges and a wooden footbridge. 129 00:17:16,550 --> 00:17:31,080 It's got the right number of tiles and spires. To be realistic, if you change sides, look at Henley, it's the same story. 130 00:17:31,080 --> 00:17:42,070 It's seen from the South Stonebridge in the right relationship to the tower and the town round about it. 131 00:17:42,070 --> 00:17:48,670 But this slide has something else. Christopher Saxton was working for the government. 132 00:17:48,670 --> 00:17:55,810 He would have been required to show the parks because the parkland land around a house has several uses, 133 00:17:55,810 --> 00:17:59,110 none of them agricultural, but they were used for breeding. 134 00:17:59,110 --> 00:18:07,720 Horses and horses are needed for the armies, which fight in the low countries and in Ireland. 135 00:18:07,720 --> 00:18:15,580 So the government needs to know who's got a park and who might therefore be lightly armed forces, which could be commandeered. 136 00:18:15,580 --> 00:18:22,380 Sheldon's designer saw parks as an opportunity to frame a picture of the house. 137 00:18:22,380 --> 00:18:25,440 Grace Court is now rather field Grace. 138 00:18:25,440 --> 00:18:39,520 It was the home of Sir Francis Knowles who is kin to Sheldon, not Catholic king, but he was probably worth mentioning in passing in the top streets. 139 00:18:39,520 --> 00:18:48,340 Having completed his list, which our nation was supplied by Sheldon, we move on to more detailed stuff. 140 00:18:48,340 --> 00:18:57,490 Timber Bridge, a beacon, leafed trees or if you get bored trees without leaves. 141 00:18:57,490 --> 00:19:07,930 These were never going to be seen at the top of Worcestershire mills, which are Sheldon property references to local history. 142 00:19:07,930 --> 00:19:13,060 This is the earthquake which happened in Herefordshire in 15 71, 143 00:19:13,060 --> 00:19:20,230 and I imagine it's on substance map because its surveyors were told about it and then 144 00:19:20,230 --> 00:19:29,140 a brave couple preparing to be rowed across the Bristol Channel to the other side. 145 00:19:29,140 --> 00:19:35,440 The designer hasn't actually yet finished. You can't just bring a tapestry to an end. 146 00:19:35,440 --> 00:19:42,190 You need to do something about the borders. And there are two things that are important about the borders. 147 00:19:42,190 --> 00:19:51,490 Very, very little of what is in the borders is original material, it's borrowed from books or it's borrowed from prints. 148 00:19:51,490 --> 00:19:56,200 But that means for disobedience, it's going to be familiar material. 149 00:19:56,200 --> 00:20:03,830 They will pick up references that we do not. It's easy enough, however, to pick up some of them. 150 00:20:03,830 --> 00:20:10,370 Here's a Frontispiece to Christopher Substance Atlas. And here it has been borrowed. 151 00:20:10,370 --> 00:20:14,090 On the tough streets, liner borrowed the two figures either side. 152 00:20:14,090 --> 00:20:17,810 What he's done is to turn them the other way on. 153 00:20:17,810 --> 00:20:28,160 The architectural detail and the floral detail comes from Prince Charity is familiar from religious iconography. 154 00:20:28,160 --> 00:20:35,300 Her kidneys has been used in tapestries before and this may help this. 155 00:20:35,300 --> 00:20:41,750 How can these may be modelled on tapestries woven in Brussels in the 50s and 60s? 156 00:20:41,750 --> 00:20:50,140 He could have got into previous pattern books, or they could have had the prince moving up the Worcestershire vertical border. 157 00:20:50,140 --> 00:20:59,140 We have Hercules at the bottom. The next stage is an inscription framed by columns, but the columns are not original. 158 00:20:59,140 --> 00:21:08,740 They're borrowed from the frontispiece of one of three books printed in 15, 74, 50, 80 and 90. 159 00:21:08,740 --> 00:21:15,400 But the old thing about those books is that they express a Protestant viewpoint. 160 00:21:15,400 --> 00:21:25,270 Above that, we have the figure of Judas, an Old Testament heroine who went down to dine with the assailant of her native town, 161 00:21:25,270 --> 00:21:29,800 made sure he got drunk, let him fall asleep, cut off his head. 162 00:21:29,800 --> 00:21:38,080 But that story is in the Old Testament apocrypha, and those text only appear in the Catholic Bible. 163 00:21:38,080 --> 00:21:48,540 They do not appear in the Protestant Bible, a point which would not have been lost on educated Elizabethan viewers. 164 00:21:48,540 --> 00:21:59,880 The columns were repeated in Worcestershire. But they were changed in Oxfordshire to have a picture of a receding gallery. 165 00:21:59,880 --> 00:22:08,810 And that is probably also print based. So far, then, nothing original looking at the top border. 166 00:22:08,810 --> 00:22:15,330 Things change. We have two celestial globes, one left and one right. 167 00:22:15,330 --> 00:22:24,220 And there were almost certainly both framed by inconsistency and a half moon and mercury. 168 00:22:24,220 --> 00:22:29,680 Whatever gave toughs Shelton, the idea to put Globes into tapestry, 169 00:22:29,680 --> 00:22:39,940 the earliest example I can think of is in the very famous set of the Acts of the Apostles, designed by Rafael and woven in the early fifteen twenties. 170 00:22:39,940 --> 00:22:50,890 But then they creep into maps. Peter Barber showed us a wonderful picture of the Portuguese sovereigns claiming sovereignty displaying Africa. 171 00:22:50,890 --> 00:22:55,180 Here's a map that was definitely imported into England. 172 00:22:55,180 --> 00:23:01,660 Just look at the imagery to jolly gentleman. I think where the inspiration for Saxons figures. 173 00:23:01,660 --> 00:23:08,710 But in the corners you have celestial globes. 174 00:23:08,710 --> 00:23:11,380 Sheldon goes one better. 175 00:23:11,380 --> 00:23:32,030 The left hand top flow is the night sky over London seen from below the bottom one is the night sky over London imagined from above. 176 00:23:32,030 --> 00:23:40,130 I would love to be able to tell you who did this top story. It's really very odd that there should be so many names in the scripts. 177 00:23:40,130 --> 00:23:47,480 It will almost blank, blank, blank, blank companies. That's William Condon, headmaster at Westminster School. 178 00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:57,020 He is responsible for the Britannia, of which these texts in the top right hand corners of the top stories all are paraphrased. 179 00:23:57,020 --> 00:24:02,060 Trans Juliet. Tricky word I'm going to go for transfer. 180 00:24:02,060 --> 00:24:07,370 It's the William and there's only space for three or four letters. 181 00:24:07,370 --> 00:24:15,500 I'm going to opt for William Kip because he was associated with maps in Camden's Britannia. 182 00:24:15,500 --> 00:24:19,730 Whether or not he was associated with Sheldon's mapping effort, I don't know. 183 00:24:19,730 --> 00:24:22,570 But he was a goldsmith and he was an engraver. 184 00:24:22,570 --> 00:24:33,020 He's a potential candidate, but there's a much, much more popular figure when Richard Gough looked at the copy map of Worcestershire. 185 00:24:33,020 --> 00:24:40,230 And incidentally, he would have seen Warwickshire and Oxfordshire as well. His eye was caught by this inscription. 186 00:24:40,230 --> 00:24:47,470 And by the way, these are not the maps that came to the Portland. 187 00:24:47,470 --> 00:25:00,970 Richard Hicks Embellished Enhanced, the county of Worcester when Gough saw these inscriptions, he said we do not know where the Richard Hicks was, 188 00:25:00,970 --> 00:25:12,100 the weaver or the designer 80 years earlier, the Oxford gossip and diarist A. Word had absolutely no doubt whatsoever. 189 00:25:12,100 --> 00:25:17,440 The first, Richard Hicks, was found to a Dutch iris weaver in Holland. 190 00:25:17,440 --> 00:25:25,120 Settled departure, stunned, amazed and weep those fair hangings that were in the dining room at Weston. 191 00:25:25,120 --> 00:25:34,960 Well, almost certainly not, but I'd like you to remember something else when that quotation came in tapestry literature. 192 00:25:34,960 --> 00:25:37,090 It was absolutely murdered. 193 00:25:37,090 --> 00:25:46,090 William Shelton commissioned a certain Richard Hicks a botched and to go to the low countries for the purpose of studying tapestry weaving. 194 00:25:46,090 --> 00:25:51,700 It's the first of the many myths that surround Sheldon Tapestry history. 195 00:25:51,700 --> 00:26:00,730 So when you read in many, many websites that William sent Richard Hicks abroad, just turn that website off or close the book. 196 00:26:00,730 --> 00:26:04,240 So what do we know about Richard Hicks from Birch? 197 00:26:04,240 --> 00:26:11,890 Tim Birch registers. We know that he died and was buried in November 16 21, aged 97. 198 00:26:11,890 --> 00:26:17,020 That means he's born around 15, 24 or 15 25. 199 00:26:17,020 --> 00:26:25,420 He's going to be starting an apprenticeship round about 40 15 40 one two three four five at the age of 17 or 18. 200 00:26:25,420 --> 00:26:32,290 We have no idea whether he knew William Shelton or William Shelton knew him, 201 00:26:32,290 --> 00:26:38,770 and we don't actually know what his apprenticeship might been in, Wood said he lived about. 202 00:26:38,770 --> 00:26:42,310 And when you're up to a point, he did. 203 00:26:42,310 --> 00:26:52,180 He was given by William Shelton, who established guidelines for the creation of a Tar.bz2 workshop by his will and 15 70. 204 00:26:52,180 --> 00:26:55,210 Hicks was given the use of the Manor House staff, 205 00:26:55,210 --> 00:27:06,280 but in the same year he was designated future head of the Queen's Irish workers, whose workshop was in London by St. Paul's. 206 00:27:06,280 --> 00:27:13,420 So at the end of 15 70, Hicks has got two jobs two and a half days riding apart. 207 00:27:13,420 --> 00:27:19,240 I don't know how he chuckled his commitments, but there are payments to him in the royal archives, 208 00:27:19,240 --> 00:27:27,940 in the public record office that there is no mention of him at Boston apart from the burial of his two boys. 209 00:27:27,940 --> 00:27:39,640 I have no idea what went on there. However, I do think that Richard Hicks is probably the man who in charge of the royal IRS workers, 210 00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:46,780 most of whom were Flemish emigres, could have recruited the weavers that Sheldon needed. 211 00:27:46,780 --> 00:27:54,490 And because he has contact in the emigre community, many of whom supply the artists and craftsmen carvers, 212 00:27:54,490 --> 00:28:01,330 whether in wood or stone, he could also have found the designer. 213 00:28:01,330 --> 00:28:08,200 Now, at this point, I notice I'm running out of time. So do you want me to carry on for three slides or sit them and come back to them? 214 00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:12,580 Hurry up, please. Thank you. Right. 215 00:28:12,580 --> 00:28:18,280 Richard Hicks does have a job to do. He's got to get the wheel of the sheep's back. 216 00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:26,980 He's got to get it washed and carted off. He's got to get it loaded onto a doorstop and woven into thread. 217 00:28:26,980 --> 00:28:33,730 He's then got to calculate the wool he needs for each tub spray and in each colour, 218 00:28:33,730 --> 00:28:41,980 and he needs to get the full amount he's going to need died all at once because on vegetable dyes, 219 00:28:41,980 --> 00:28:49,790 you cannot guarantee your second batch won't be exactly the same shade, and that has a very nasty habit of showing up in tapestry straight. 220 00:28:49,790 --> 00:29:00,340 So the first thing you see? Then he's got to get his weavers to walk the loom and alleged put the wool threads in Honolulu. 221 00:29:00,340 --> 00:29:05,560 That's a high wool. The warp thread tying vertically. 222 00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:10,450 They're suspended on a roll. They fall down. They come on to another roller. 223 00:29:10,450 --> 00:29:17,170 But by that time, they've actually turned into tapestry. The weaver is going to be sitting here. 224 00:29:17,170 --> 00:29:26,620 The cartoon is either behind him or it's in front of him on a no walk in the room. 225 00:29:26,620 --> 00:29:32,770 The principle of weaving is exactly the same, but the cartoon is going to slide under there sideways, 226 00:29:32,770 --> 00:29:38,980 and it may have been chopped up into sections for easier use because I can't imagine a cartoon 227 00:29:38,980 --> 00:29:46,450 which is exactly the same size as the top tapestry comfortably fitting under that space. 228 00:29:46,450 --> 00:30:00,010 When the river is waving, this is the back of understood Gloucestershire, what we would see is Aston Foxley, Norton Bradfield and so on. 229 00:30:00,010 --> 00:30:12,160 The cartoon is suspended sideways. What the Weaver is seeing is Aston Foxley, Norton Bradfield. 230 00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:18,940 It's actually mind boggling, but that's how those top stories were woven. 231 00:30:18,940 --> 00:30:21,700 This is the result of all their hard work. 232 00:30:21,700 --> 00:30:31,000 The later copy, which they started again to draw, because if you try to superimpose this one on that one or vice versa, they don't fit. 233 00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:39,290 They must have drawn the cartoon again. Oxfordshire has actually seen three restorations. 234 00:30:39,290 --> 00:30:48,440 This one was actually done in 1913, but it's exactly the same positioning as 1894. 235 00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:57,980 The reason that due to go so quickly is that moths got at the mining put in 1894. 236 00:30:57,980 --> 00:31:03,020 The beach in the corner. Those belong to the bodley and they still belong to the bodley. 237 00:31:03,020 --> 00:31:06,950 And that definitely is Gloucestershire. Like this, either. 238 00:31:06,950 --> 00:31:12,440 Warwickshire, Gloucestershire no way to tell, but it's another zodiac blow. 239 00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:20,780 These three pieces have been put in position here, here and here in the recent restoration. 240 00:31:20,780 --> 00:31:26,900 But the big difference is that here a toaster is in roughly its right position. 241 00:31:26,900 --> 00:31:34,460 These are not because this top st had to be reduced in height for display in 1914, 242 00:31:34,460 --> 00:31:40,700 when all six shell tapestries were seen together for the first and last time. 243 00:31:40,700 --> 00:31:52,910 National Trust has decided or reportedly has decided to move toaster away away from its geographical location, and I'm the height down still further. 244 00:31:52,910 --> 00:31:58,880 You will notice on both tapestries as a working great empty space in the corner. 245 00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:06,620 The family cut those corners out because they had the arms of earlier generations in Oxfordshire. 246 00:32:06,620 --> 00:32:17,900 These two pieces turned up in 1954. The whole tough story would have been about 20 feet across, and it's 18 feet high. 247 00:32:17,900 --> 00:32:24,560 It's got Africa in its central border. We've got the same columns I floral arrangements. 248 00:32:24,560 --> 00:32:29,540 Mercury pops up again. That is a disagreeable figure of envy. 249 00:32:29,540 --> 00:32:39,560 Hercules, the book columns, Judith, the book columns again with the arcades, the Globes and then you repeat the board at. 250 00:32:39,560 --> 00:32:43,580 On the right hand side, Hercules would have been here. 251 00:32:43,580 --> 00:32:51,320 His club is about to smash into the boy's had children. 252 00:32:51,320 --> 00:32:54,440 Cypress trees were really a fantastic achievement. 253 00:32:54,440 --> 00:33:03,200 They used the most recent choreographic sources available only about 12 or 15 years after they were made. 254 00:33:03,200 --> 00:33:11,210 They made those flat, non dimensional sources into the picture we've been looking at. 255 00:33:11,210 --> 00:33:21,890 They put Sheldon into a country by sharing not only its features, but his heart is, I think, slightly failed gloriously. 256 00:33:21,890 --> 00:33:36,080 They put his activities between heaven and Africa because a lot of the houses shown are those of his friends and relatives who are Catholics. 257 00:33:36,080 --> 00:33:41,600 I personally think that Sheldon had a reason to commission these top stories. 258 00:33:41,600 --> 00:33:46,700 As Peter Bava said, propaganda and maps go together. 259 00:33:46,700 --> 00:33:54,860 As Katie told us, Catholics are fighting a quiet war protest in art and architecture. 260 00:33:54,860 --> 00:34:01,490 And I think that in these tough streets, Ralph Sheldon was doing very much the same thing. 261 00:34:01,490 --> 00:34:06,890 Thank you very much.