Karl Wood, George Green and Simple Films Limited at Bromley House Library, Nottingham

This morning I was interviewed about Karl Wood by Stuart Cresswell, the Managing Director of Simple Films Limited, Welsford, Nova Scotia, Canada, in the splendid setting of the George Green Room at Bromley House, Nottingham. Stuart and crew are on the point of completing the filming of the hour-long The Mühlendämmerungs of Karl Salsbury Wood, a part-biography of the bookish windmill artist Wood, so this was a highly appropriate background.

The George Green Room with, from left to right: Paul Allen (Camera), Stuart Cresswell, and Charley Cresswell (Sound).

I also took the opportunity to photograph a few things that had escaped my attention when I last came here in June this year. Above is a representation of the plaque in Westminster Abbey, placed there on 16 July 1993, just two days after the bicentenary of the birth of George Green, who was a member of the library from 1823 to 1833.

Mrs Jane Moth (1824–1900), née Jane Smith, was George Green's eldest daughter.

Due to building works in June I was unable to get a decent view of the garden, but now there's a view of the back of Bromley House Library unhindered by scaffolding.

The garden of Bromley House Library.

An impressive 'mean time' sundial. A page of explanation is attached to it, but this is science so I won't run the risk of making a cock-up of a précis of it.

A very enjoyable morning: I look forward to the screening of the film and thank the crew for their relaxed style and their hospitality.

Thanks also to Dr Rowena Edlin-White and Carol Barstow for making this venue possible, and to the rest of the staff there today for their enthusiastic welcome.

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Bromley House Library, Nottingham
Windmill Wood: A Biography of Midlands Artist Karl Salsbury Wood

The Grave of Robert Goodacre (1777–1835)

Another chance discovery in Nottingham General Cemetery:

 

'IN MEMORY OF

ROBERT GOODACRE OF STANDARD HILL, WHO DIED AT EDINBURGH, NOVEMBER 25TH 1835, AGED 58.'
Robert Goodacre (1777–1835) was born in Long Clawson, Leicestershire, and was the eldest son of a tailor. He began his working life as a journeyman tailor, and it was after working as assistant to a schoolmaster in Mansfield that he established Robert Goodacre's Academy in Lower Parliament Street, Nottingham at the age of twenty.

Goodacre had a particularly strong interest in mathematics and astronomy, and the mathematician- and physicist-to-be George Green (1793–1841) became pupil number 255 at the academy in 1801 at the age of eight, to leave the following year after four terms, by which time he had probably absorbed all that Goodacre had to offer.

A few years after Green left the academy, Goodacre bought an area of land on Standard Hill from the Duke of Newcastle, and built his three-story Standard Hill Academy (with an observatory at the top) on it. In the early 1820s he left the academy and spent five years lecturing (mainly on astronomy) in the USA, where he visited twenty-four towns and cities.

He returned to the UK in 1828 to continue lecturing, and it was during a tour that he died in Scotland.

His various publications include:

An Essay on the Education of Youth (1808)

A Treatise on Book-keeping (1811)

A glossary: or, Explanation of the principal terms used in the sciences of astronomy and geography (1828).

Much of my information about Goodacre came from D. M. Cannell's George Green: Mathematician and Physicist 1793-1841: The Background to His Life and Work (London: The Athone Press, 1993; repr. Philadelphia, PA: The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 2001).

Writers and literary associations in Nottingham General Cemetery:

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Ruth Bryan (1805–1860)

Sarah Ann Agnes Turk (1859–1927)
Annie Matheson (1853–1924)
Josiah Gilbert (1814–1892)
Anthony Hervey (c. 1796–1850)
Charles Bell Taylor (1829–1909)
James Prior's Parents
Ann Taylor (1782–1866)
Robert Millhouse (1788-1839)
Henry Hogg (1831-74)

Clara Green in Nottingham

'IN
MEMORY OF
CLARA GREEN,
DAUGHTER OF THE LATE
GEORGE GREEN, M.A.
OF CAIUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE;
AND FORMERLY OF SNEINTON;
DIED 6^TH. MARCH 1919; AGED 79 YEARS.'  

The Church (Rock) Cemetery, Mansfield Road, Nottingham. Clara Green was the mathematician George Green's last surviving offspring and the owner of Green's windmill in Sneinton, Nottingham. She died intestate and her property passed to the Crown. Below is a link to a post I made about her father.

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George Green in Sneinton, Nottingham

George Green in Sneinton, Nottingham

The grave of the mathematical physicist George Green (1793–1841), whose influential work An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism, was published in 1829.

'[...] George Green Esq. B A
Fellow of Caius College Cambridge
(Son of the above George and
Sarah Green) who departed this
life on the 31st. of May 1841
Aged 47 years.'
The grave is in St Stephen's Church, Sneinton, which is incidentally where D. H. Lawrence's parents Arthur and Lydia were married on 27 December 1875.

This is Green's Mill, a few paces from the churchyard and built on land bought in 1807 by Green's father, a wealthy Nottingham baker. This is a link to a YouTube account of Green's work by a breathless Professor Roger Bowley, who – of Green's relationship with Jane Smith, the windmill manager's daughter and Green's commonlaw wife – says 'they had a good time, having seven children'! But I don't think his geography's spot on: Sneinton 'in the middle of Nottingham'? Well, not exactly.

Below is a link to a related post.
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Clara Green in Sneinton, Nottingham