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	A History of the Chalmers Park Family by James Chalmers Park (1995) corrections by Ian David Chalmers Park October '02 corrections and updates by Catherine Hannah Chalmers Park Feb '07 updates by Ian David Chalmers Park January '07 updates by Leslie Ann O'Hanlon September '07
	The Park family hailed from South West Scotland, owning an estate at Kirkland between Ayr and Sanquhar just North of the A76 road. There was a tradition that the eldest son be named James Chalmers, inherit Kirkland House and run the home farm. I was told that I am the 8th James Chalmers Park and that the "Chalmers" derives from an old Scottish family - the Cathcarts - a daughter of whom married the 1st JCP's father. The 1st JAMES CHALMERS PARK was born in the early years of the 18th century. His eldest son, the 2nd JCP was born about 1730 and inherited Kirkland, but a younger son, Mungo, had to find employment elsewhere. Fortunately he was engaged by the Duke of Buccleuch to manage the Fowlshiels farm on his estate near Selkirk. One of Mungo's younger sons, born at the farm 10/9/1771, also had to seek his fortune elsewhere, but his African explorations made Mungo Park Jnr. famous and after his death in 1806 a monument to his memory was erected in Selkirk. The 3rd JCP, born about 1755, continued to run Kirkland, but his elder son (the 4th JCP) had ambitions beyond farming in lowland Scotland. Concerned about the long-term effects on civilised life of the recent Revolution in France and convinced that a marked change in the attitude of the ruling classes was needed to avert a similar Terror in Britain (of which Scotland was now, by the Act of Union, an integral part) and that only the younger members of the Whig (later Liberal) party had the right policies, James left Scotland to fight their cause. He was given the job of convincing major families in the North of England that the Whig proposals to repeal the Corn Laws (protecting English farm prices by banning the importation of corn) and for Electoral Reform were the only way to avoid a much greater disturbance to the social order. A forceful advocate, James persuaded so many influential Northern families that it was in their interests to support the Whigs that he was eventually created Baron Parke of Wensleydale - an "e" added because there was already a Baron Park and Wensleydale for the Yorkshire area into which he had settled on leaving Ayrshire. Seeking the support of a powerful landed North Yorkshire family, the Howards, he clearly impressed the daughter and married her. Having ended his connection with Scotland, the Kirkland Estate and the tradition of the eldest son being named James Chalmers passed to his brother Robert, his own newly-acquired baronetcy passing to the eldest son of his new family. The younger son Robert, knowing he would not inherit, had joined the H.E.I.C.S. Regiment in Ayr. Fighting in the Battle of Waterloo as a Lieutenant, he was promoted after the victory to the rank of Captain by the Duke of Wellington. Returning to Kirkland after the Napoleonic Wars, he married Lady Mary - daughter of the Earl of Cathcart - and took over the Estate on the death of his father, his brother James having already gone to Yorkshire. Mary would thus appear to be a distant cousin or, if the first Cathcart to marry into the Park family, the occasion on which the name "Chalmers" appears, unless the name came from another Scottish family. Robert & Mary had a daughter Annie and, on 19/12/1824, a son who, as the new Kirkland heir, was named JAMES CHALMERS, my great-grandfather. Robert died in 1835 and when Mary returned with Annie to care for her recently-widowed mother, Kirkland was let to tenants during James's minority. However by the time James was old enough to inherit, expensive rebuilding was needed and James, having neither the means nor the desire to make his life there, accepted the family lawyer's advice and sold up, thereby ending the family connection with Scotland. His sister Annie remained at the Cathcart home eventually marrying a Mr. Halliday. Annie kept in touch with her brother and his children and was the source of the early family history. How much she had wished to be parted from her young brother would not, in 1836, have been considered. The mother's family raised the daughter and the deceased father's brother saw to the son and heir's upbringing. Concerned that young James, only 10 when father Robert died, should have an English education and be kept under his eye - rather than buried in the matriarchal society of the Cathcart household - Uncle James brought him to England. There he was educated at Fulneck, a boarding school in the village of that name which lies between Leeds and Bradford and which had been built by the Moravians when they came from Central Europe to seek work in the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. Future pupils at this school would be Robert Asquith, later Prime Minister, and Len Hutton, later England Cricket Captain. I have been to this School with the XXV String Orchestra, conducted by my father, the 7th JCP. Deprived of his immediate family, the no doubt lonely JCP found solace in the Bradford Sion Chapel of Rev. T. Pottenger and "after hearing a sermon preached by the Rev. J. Sherman of London at the Bradford Salem Chapel, was awakened to a sense of his spiritual condition, baptised and added to the church at Sion chapel on the first Sabbath of 1843", as recorded by the Baptist Handbook 1861. On his own initiative, he set up a highly successful Chapel Sunday School, perhaps as consolation for a lost family. This convinced both himself and his uncle Minister that he had a vocation for the Church, and in August 1846 he entered Horton College Northampton to study for the Baptist Ministry, graduating there in July 1850. Clearly he had some powerful forces behind him for, on the recommendation of Horton's Principal, he was immediately offered the Ministry of Trinity Baptist Church, Colne - a small industrial town just on the Lancashire side of the Pennines. After two years there he was appointed Minister of the "Scotch" Baptist Church, Hill Lane Burnley (a larger Lancashire cotton town) moving on in September 1854 to Salem Baptist Church, Wood Street, Bilston (an industrial town now part of Wolverhampton). He founded, on 14/12/54, the Bilston Temperance Society "for the suppression of all drinking customs and the promotion of total abstinence from intoxicating drinks". Wealthy local businessmen were persuaded to contribute to the Cause, the 5th JCP believing that alcoholism was a drug which could not be taken in moderation. A fiery preacher in the Scottish tradition with the persuasive skills of his Uncle James (Baron Wensleydale who had financed his training and travels), Rev. JCP also believed in catching his future parishioners young. In his youth, he had run the most successful Sunday School in Bradford, stimulating young minds to think, and throughout his life he used Sunday schools to develop literacy, numeracy and logic - compulsory school education at this time being several decades away. When £50 - now worth £2,500 - was given to his Church to found a Sunday School, the hand of Uncle James could be seen, as the gift came from "a close relative" of the former Prime Minister Earl Baldwin. JCP founded the Sunday School and not only taught the children, but also brought their parents into his now thriving Church. He was instrumental in the building of the new Bilston Cemetery (sadly made necessary by the spread of Cholera in the West Midlands) and bought the first plot. He was still under 30 when an older, Church of England Vicar with whom he enjoyed a friendship then rare between Ministers of different Protestant sects, described him in a Latin quotation from a Roman orator: "With a long forefinger like a sword he prodded those in his path and at the earliest moment he achieved the objectives he believed necessary for the good of the public". Obviously a Classical Scholar - as so many Church of England Vicars then were, he added another in Greek which I can no longer remember, except that it included the Greek word for power, "dunamis". By now JCP had 3 children of his marriage at Colne on 19/8/51 to Sarah Powell of Wetherby whom he had met there when preaching. Although officially Bilston had been declared "free from Cholera" in 1849, Medical Officers of Health were often bribed to give such certificates by local traders concerned to attract rather than frighten away trade. The Rev. JCP had accepted responsibility for Prison visiting, stressing that the official duties of visiting the dying or those condemned to be hanged was not enough - those living needed help to keep in touch with their families, to feed whom they had often committed the very crimes for which they had been convicted. Because of the danger of catching Cholera, such duties were often avoided by the clergy and maybe because of his prison visiting - or because Bilston was not as free from Cholera as had been thought - JCP had spells of illness not helped by his refusal to reduce his self-imposed duties. He had been helped by his uncle to achieve objectives beyond the reach of most boys who lost their fathers young - and had, no doubt, also been used to carry out Uncle James' aims of educating the underprivileged. Whig policy was to use Education not only as a means of building a fairer society but also to enable the underprivileged to better themselves without destroying the country as the French had done. The Industrial Revolution was already enabling people to rise above the station in life into which they had been born and the Whigs were looking to the new voters created by the 1832 Reform Act to enable them to wrest power from the Tories. Charitable aims, then as now, often had ulterior motives. Since the Church of England was perceived as "the Tory Party at prayer", the Whigs looked to the Methodists and the Baptists for support - the "low churches" which had grown in the last century. It also made political sense to finance the work of a dynamic Baptist Minister with a mission to educate his young parishioners. How much the Rev. JCP realised he was being used as well as helped can only be speculated, but support for his own objectives of providing a better way of life for the disadvantaged - with whom he would have felt a greater bond having been torn from his family on losing his father at the age of 10 - was gratefully received. Only his sister Annie, writing her copious letters in flawless copperplate script via the new Postal system, uttered warnings to her brother that he must not sacrifice his health to fulfil the ambitions of their uncle. On Sarah's advice, JCP decided to leave Bilston for the sake of his health, and was offered the Pastorship at Chipping Norton - a small country town south-west of Banbury. When he arrived, the services were held in a small room. The Rev. JCP, however, had other ideas. Deciding that the Church needed a larger building, he obtained financial help from the owner of a large textile mill who employed most of the townsfolk to build a new Baptist Church which would have graced a major city. It would be a focal point in the town with a gallery to take the enormous number, too large for the existing room, already flocking to hear the new dynamic preacher. It was duly built and I saw both the new and the old buildings in 1993. However, like Moses, who died in sight of, but without reaching the promised land, JCP sadly never lived to see his church completed. Honouring a promise to organise a fund-raising bazaar for his Bilston Temperance Society, he was "smitten down with a fever" - probably Cholera - and died within the week. The Church Minute Book records: "The Rev. James Chalmers Park of Bilston, having preached as a candidate, and his ministry proved very acceptable to the Church and Congregation, a unanimous invitation was on the 6th May 1857 forwarded to him to be Pastor of this Church, which he accepted and commenced his stated labours on the first Sabbath in July. Having been greatly interested in the Temperance Movement in Bilston and having promised to assist in the conduct of a Bazaar therefore for the benefit of the Cause, he went to Bilston in the month of September to superintend the bazaar and was actively engaged in this work when he was smitten down with a fever. After lingering at the house of a friend in Bilston for one week only he was, on the 14th of September 1858, removed by death from the scene of his labours on Earth to his Rest in Heaven. His sudden and unexpected loss was universally deplored in his Church and Congregation on whose affections, though so short a time with them he had gained a strong hold. His remains are deposited in the Cemetery at Bilston". This appears to have been a family plot for also buried there are William Wilson (d.9/3/55) and his wife Mary (d.17/6/58) who were probably close friends, JCP's eldest son is named William Wilson Park, and in the same plot are buried Joseph and Mary Lovatt, a family closely associated with Bilston Baptist Church. Charles Hugh Park eldest son of William Wilson Park and Mary Brownridge was born in Leeds, Yorkshire in 1883. Following a public school education he enlisted in the West Yorkshire Volunteers and the London Scottish Volunteers until his emigration to Canada in 1909. He had had Rheumatic Fever in England and was advised to settle in a dry climate. He travelled across Canada stopping in Medicine Hat, Alberta to visit an old friend James Gaskell, who he had known in England. James had come to Canada in 1904 and married Emilie Gilberta Darling. James and Emilie obtained land in Alberta and began farming. Charles was introduced to Emilie’s sister Zillah Minnedosa Dunn (nee Darling). Zillah was a young widow left with three children to raise. (Geraldine Dunn “Francis”, Edwin Dunn “Laurie”, and Hilda Dunn “Molly”. She and Charles married and had four children of their own. (Kathleen Park, Winnifred Park “Elsie”, Muriel Park and Barbara Park). They settled in Medicine Hat, Alberta and remained there their entire lives. Charles served with the Canadian Expeditionary Forces from 1916 to 1920. He was awarded the Military Medal and Bar for bravery in Rosieres and Neuville Vitasse in August 1918. He received severe injuries but remained in Europe following the end of the war to provide translation services for prisoners of war. He was fluent in both French and German Upon his return to Canada, Charles worked very hard at a variety of jobs to provide for his large family growing up during the great depression. He did accountancy work, prepared contracts, managed the local branch of the Canadian Legion and raised purebred Wire Haired Terriers. Charles died in 1963 and Zillah died in 1952. They are buried in Hillside Cemetery in Medicine Hat, Alberta. It is now time to look at Sarah's own family history. Her father William Powell had been born in 1786 in Wetherby. His family were "closely related to the Powells of Knaresborough, a legal family of considerable note in the county". Although Knaresborough is a small market town, solicitors could then become "of considerable note" by looking after the affairs of local gentry disinclined to make the long coach journey into Leeds necessary before railways. Many wealthy families chose to live beside the river Nidd, away from the pollution of the cities. Powell married - on 13/2/13 - Hannah Wheelhouse who also came from a distinguished family. One was MP for Leeds in the early 19th Century and another was a very famous surgeon who, "after a long and distinguished career, retired to the Yorkshire fishing village of Linton". This could have been the misnamed Linton-on-Ouse (on the river Ure between Boroughbridge and York) or the more famous fishing village of Linton near Grassington which lies beside the River Wharfe and is where Barbara Park, wife of the 7th JCP, spent most of her widowhood. William & Hannah's eldest son William Powell worked in Brixton, South London for I & R Morley, a major clothing concern, and lived there all his working life. He and his wife Mary Ann had 5 sons & 6 daughters, 3 of whom died in infancy, then a common occurrence. Of William & Mary's family, William dealt in Huddersfield cloths at Gresham Street, City of London; Frederick had a Hosiery business in Finchley, North London; Mary married Rev. Howard Twiss, Rector of Sterndale, near Buxton; Kate and Louisa lived at home, never marrying. Brixton at this time was a relatively prosperous part of London and the social life would have been much livelier than Wetherby. The youngest daughter, Helena (1862-1942) was the clever one. Aided at Clapham Middle School by the Headmistress (a History teacher who inspired her with a love of the subject), Helena was accepted by Newnham College to read History in 1881 - the first year that Cambridge opened the Tripos to women. In 1884 she graduated with First Class Honours being ranked "equal to" a man placed 3rd in the order of merit (women received neither degrees nor individual rankings then) and accepted an invitation from the Vice-Principal Helen Gladstone (daughter of the Prime Minister) to remain as a lecturer and tutor, the two later becoming firm friends. By the end of the year, however, Helena was so appalled by the poor quality of education her female undergraduates had received at their schools that she resolved to improve it and left to teach for 7 years at Oxford Girls' High School before, at the age of 28, being appointed Headmistress of Leeds Girls' High School. She took with her an older sister Emily, who had been looking after their father in his last illness and who was without occupation after his death, as her personal housekeeper and School Secretary. Leeds was the home of her artist cousin, the 6th JCP, and only a short train journey from the Powell family home at Wetherby. Helena's enormous influence on Leeds Girls' High School is fully described in a brochure published by the School. She inspired in her girls a love of literature, started them playing tennis and cricket, took picnic parties to Bolton Abbey, founded the Old Girls society and engineered the move from buildings which the School had outgrown to it's present site on Headingley Hill. After 20 years, Helena decided that the School needed a younger Principal and returned to Cambridge as Principal of Homerton College to train teachers, moving to London after 7 years to be Principal of St. Mary College - both a Training College for woman graduates and a Girls' School. Deeming the area and the buildings unsuitable, she raised monies through an Appeal and enabled the College to move to Lancaster Gate overlooking Hyde Park. When, in the early '20s, the success of that School and College necessitated another move to still larger premises, a further appeal for funds failed, too many appeals being made after the Great War, and Helena resigned in protest that "more money was raised for memorials to the dead than to provide education for the living". Reverting in 1926 to her original subject, Helena became General Editor of the Bede Histories, personally writing the volume "Tudors and Stuarts". She also headed the Guild of the Epiphany, promoting religious education in schools, before her death in 1942. I was in the Leeds Girls' High School (mixed) Kindergarten at the time and remember my teacher, Phyllis Grover, telling me of the death of my relative who had been one of the most important Heads of that School. For a woman in the 19th century, her achievements were formidable and although she never married - successful women were never allowed to combine a career with marriage - it must not be thought that this period was devoid of opportunities for the able and dedicated woman. Like her uncle, the Rev. JCP, she made thing happen. Of William & Hannah's other children, John was a representative for the Sheffield cutlers Wm. Rogers and retired to Wetherby as most of them did. Samuel went to Australia and lived light. In a Melbourne hotel bar one night, he told a casual acquaintance that he was going to die the next day, and asked him to notify his family. Both were as good as their word. Charles' Lace business in Knight Rider Street London flourished - especially after he married Marshal & Snelgrove's Chief Lace Buyer. In the 1850s, she must have been exceptional to have such a position with such a large company. They had 4 sons, Charles, William, Bertie and Stuart who went as a journalist to Montreal. Of William & Hannah's daughters, the thinker was Mary, the eldest. Sadly there was little opportunity then for women to use their intellects so when her fiancé died just before the wedding, she followed up a fascination with the "lost County" of Cornwall and became a Companion to a wealthy lady in Penzance until she also retired to Wetherby. In her letters, she strongly encouraged her niece Helena to make use of opportunities which had come too late for her. She also kept the family records, a task then undertaken by the eldest unmarried daughter. Jane was a dressmaker who "held good positions in Edinburgh, Dublin and London". When her sister Sarah lost her husband, the Rev. JCP, Jane gave up her job to help look after the boys, and did dressmaking from home. She became a Deaconess at St. James' Church, Leeds, one of the first to be appointed. We have her family Bible. Elizabeth stayed at home all her life, also helping to raise Sarah's boys after they lost their father. Sarah was a flaming redhead who broke the mould and married her dynamic Baptist preacher. She started producing boys, and nothing but boys, from only 10 months into her marriage. William Wilson was clearly given the name of all first born Powells. "Wilson" is the surname of a married couple buried on a plot bought by the Rev. JCP at Bilston, probably godparents. The second son, Henry, was given the name Kirkland after the old Chalmers Park family home. James only appears as the second Christian name of the third son Charles so neither tradition nor a wish to name a son after Uncle James possessed them. John Francis followed but it was not until Sarah, pregnant with her 5th child, lost her husband to whom she was devoted, that she gave her posthumously-born son the name of his recently deceased father. It was because he knew that his wife was pregnant that the Rev. JCP "lingered on for a week in Bilston" preferring to die without his wife at his side rather than pass on the fever to her and the unborn child. It was a very tragic moment in the family history. William Wilson Park, their eldest son, started work as a travelling representative in the wool trade, later entering into partnership with Frederick Crawshaw, selling the cloth that their firm manufactured. He was only one of several members of the family to make use of the expanding railway system to travel widely, seeking new markets for the woollen products of the Industrial Revolution in Yorkshire. To succeed in this field one needed both stamina to withstand the uncomfortable journeys and articulate presentation, qualities of which this family - before and since - were rarely found wanting. William married Mary Brownridge - who died in 1897 - and was able to bring up his 8 children in comfort. At his death in 1908, he left a Trust Fund of £20,000 - now worth over £1m - to provide an income until marriage for his 5 daughters, Mary, Catherine, Eleanor, Winifred, Margaret and Kathleen. Mary, also given Sarah's family name of Powell but who was known as "Maire", never married. This was partly because of a long-term affair with a married man whose wife would not divorce him and partly because she realised that every time a sister married, her share of the Trust Fund increased. This enabled her to live her life in luxurious Harrogate hotels - and later Nursing Homes - where she remained devoted to the music of the Jack Byfield/Max Jaffa/Reginald Kilbey Trio and to the radio cricket commentaries of John Arlott. She gave us her Strohmenger piano before she died in 1957 aged 70. Winifred married Bertram Spence. Their son Geoffrey was a Purser on cruise liners who eventually settled in Brisbane working as an accountant. On hearing that Mary had not long to live, he returned to England to remind her that he was her nearest relative. He was kept waiting longer than he expected, but collected in the end. Margaret Emily married Henry Edward Jennings Dalton, a Bradford Insurance Broker, Catherine Elsie married J. Malverne. Charles Hugh and Neville sought their future abroad in Medecine Hat, Alberta and Australia respectively. Eleanor married William Henry Mumford a Bridlington man of independent means. I remember them both dying and my father (the 7th JCP) being called in to trace relatives. Typically they all got something except him. Kathleen married no fewer than 3 times, to Charles Henry Mawdesley in 1910, to James Bird in 1914 and to Tom Fitzgerald Norbury of Stratford-on-Avon in 1921. I have seen their splendid house at Wilmcote near Mary Arden's House This branch of the family, always known as the "Wilson Parks", were very well-off and rather materialistic. Mary and Kathleen seemed always to be competing as to how much money they could spend - not at all in keeping with the ethos of their grandfather the Rev. JCP. To be fair, it was now the start of the 20th Century when women were beginning to feel independent and in control of their monies and their lives. When Mary and her sister were barely 12, they were so fascinated by the sight of cantankerous elderly Harrogate ladies being wheeled in bath chairs by long-suffering companions that they hired a bath chair themselves so that they could take turns at being the "invalid" and the companion. Passers-by would be told that the invalid had been born hideously deformed. Only a local newspaper article, complete with photographs of the "little mother" made neighbours realise that daily the roles were being exchanged. William Wilson Park had made a fortune and they were determined to enjoy it rather than devote their lives to looking after others like their grandfather and die at the age of 33. I see them as Galsworthy's female Forsytes. Henry, the second son, was given the name Kirkland after the family home in Ayrshire - a discreet touch of nostalgia? Henry's first son Henry Stewart appears to be the father of Marjorie to whom the 6th JCP - my grandfather - wrote a letter dated 15/7/37 acknowledging a drawing or painting she had sent him for comment, and giving her details of family history which have been used here. Henry's 2nd son Edward was given the name Powell to keep Sarah's family name alive. I don't know what happened to Marjorie. I remember a family gathering in 1957 and a family called Lapish. (Did Marjorie marry a Mr. Lapish?) Edward had a son Ronald who, when his cousin Billy died in 1947, contacted his widow Bunty, but they lost touch when Bunty returned to her family in Nottingham. Henry Kirkland attended Knaresborough Grammar School, near the family's Wetherby home. How a boy with weak lungs, later to die of Tuberculosis at the age of 38 came to be apprenticed in an Iron Foundry and then, when proved not fit enough for the work, sent to a dusty sculptors studio before getting a clerical job with the Leeds Gas Board and only at the end getting into the open air he so clearly needed as a travelling representative for a firm which made photographic calendars, shows either ignorance of what was bad for weak lungs or a lack of opportunity. Those who complain of conditions at the end of the 20th century should have tried life 100 years earlier. Henry Kirkland married - on 20/9/87 - Agnes Payne who died in 1895. Charles James, the 3rd son of the Rev. JCP, was educated at Reedham School, Surrey (probably with the help of Sarah's wealthy brother William Powell in London) and was later apprenticed to the same Iron Foundry as his brother. Later he worked for Blairs at Stockton-on-Tees and served at sea as a Marine Engineer. Retiring to Leeds, he died there on 20/3/31, shortly before his 75th birthday. His wife Mary - daughter of Francis Newton Vicar of Beamsley (near Ilkley), had been attracted to the idea of marrying the son of the Rev. JCP whom her own father had held in awe as a dynamic preacher, but it must have been a dull life with her husband mostly at sea. She died in 1897. Their son Charles Francis - "Frank" - was a journalist who emigrated to Canada, working first for the "Montreal Star" and then for the magazine "Chatelaine" in Vancouver where he met cousin Charles Hugh and, when Charles died, married his widow, Kaye Gwendolene (from Wetherby) by whom he had 2 daughters. Another son, Harold Edward, died in infancy as so many then did. When Frank tried to establish contact with his English family, I remember him sending us copies of "Chatelaine" and dying in the 1950s. John Francis, born 27/9/57 when Rev. JCP was at Chipping Norton, lost his father before his first birthday. Educated at Crossley & Porters Grammar School. Halifax with younger brother James, he also had weak lungs (Tuberculosis was a killer disease in the polluted cities of the Industrial Revolution) so, on advice, he emigrated to New Zealand. Working in the open air there and in Australia as a travelling representative saved him from TB. Returning to England in 1900, he married that year in Manchester a Roman Catholic widow Mary Craik. Their daughter Dorothy Jane became a nun at the H. C. J Convent Tunbridge Wells and that family line died with her. JAMES CHALMERS PARK - my Grandfather, the "Old Jolyon" of our family was born after his father's death at the old Powell family home in Wetherby where Sarah always returned to have her children, and followed his brother John to Crossley & Porters Grammar School. He then went to Leeds Art School where he was advised, as a talented student but without family money to support him until he could make his name, to finance his real interests with commercial art. His ability showed itself first in bird paintings, exhibited at many galleries. Later, as a member of the Society of Miniature Painters, the 6th JCP earned a fine reputation, but his name is best known for his etchings of buildings since these were exhibited in most of the Northern art galleries. JCP was also a keen singer with the Leeds Choral Union of which he was a founder member, and the Leeds Philharmonic where he was for a time the youngest Committee member. An original testimonial for him written by a Mayor of Leeds who was also a member of the Philharmonic Choir reads: "Energetic, active, would keep a number of things going at once. Enterprising, a good businessman and of an inventive turn of mind. He is clever with a pencil and would design well, would show a great deal of originality in this respect. He is honourable, straightforward, a man of his word and only speaks when he has something to say. Systematic, thorough, good business capabilities, will always pay great attention to detail. Some depth of feeling, only rarely demonstrative, very faithful in his attachments. Has great presence of mind, deliberate in action, would do many a kind act and say nothing about it, and an even temper". E. K. M. This is dated 26/2/1891, some 18 months before he married Sarah Eliza Buckle, an infant teacher from Headingley who had trained at Lincoln College. Sarah had a deep Contralto voice and had joined the Leeds Philharmonic Choir, then conducted by Mr. Arthur Sullivan whose greater fame lay elsewhere. JCP had joined the Philharmonic when it had been invited to prepare for one of only two English performances of the recently composed Verdi Requiem (the other being by the Royal Choral Society in the Royal Albert Hall). JCP came from a family of brothers, she from one of sisters, but it was a marriage as happy as that of his father, whom he had never known and his mother, also Sarah, who had died in 1882. They married on 6/9/92 when he was 33 years, 10 months - almost exactly the age that his own father had died - and 11 months later to the day they had twins the 7th JCP and John Francis (Jack) named after the brother with whom he had been brought up. Sylvia Katherine (Kitty) was born on 15/1/97 and Harold Kenneth (Billy) on 26/4/98. Work as an artist took JCP to London where the family lived in Hendon shortly before the First World War, not far from the Welsh Harp Reservoir where I have been racing sailing dinghies since 1963. Book illustrations for Longmans and the design of fireplaces took up much of his professional time with a wife and 4 children to support, but there are also etchings of Hampstead Heath. Probably more London etchings were made but sold at the time. This, however, was only a short episode in his life for most of the etchings were done in Yorkshire, either in his Belmont Grove house in Leeds within walking distance of the famous Town Hall where the Philharmonic concerts took place, or Scarborough, where he had a studio on the Foreshore. The etching of Scarborough Castle may have been done from the studio window (the angle is right) but the studio was destroyed at the opening of the First World War when, on December 16th 1914, German battleships shelled the Scarborough Foreshore (and later Whitby and Hartlepool) in retaliation for a naval defeat in the Falkland Islands. The shelling of non-military targets was in breach of the Hague Convention, but the Germans justified this by describing Scarborough as a "fortified town", although this referred to the Norman Castle in JCP's etching. Innumerable plates of etchings were lost along with equipment and the studio itself, which was not covered for War Damage - England not having experienced anything of this nature before. With other investments being wiped out, it was a bad time financially for him as well as the worry of 3 sons who had answered the call to defend England while the "War Profiteers" enjoyed a good war making money. Over one terrible weekend in 1916 during the notorious Battle of the Somme when all 3 sons were reported missing, Sarah's hair turned grey. Happily all 3 survived, although Jack was wounded and carried off the field of battle by Jim. Although JCP built a dormer window into the roof of his Belmont Grove house in Leeds to complete his works, he went to all sorts of locations to do the detailed sketches from which the etchings would be made. These had to be made by train, artists not owning cars in those days. This explains the many etchings of York, Durham and Edinburgh - on the direct railway line from Leeds - and other places easily reached by rail. He loved the light in Scotland and did much admired work there. There are also some fine etchings of Whitby (from the days of the Scarborough studio) and parts of Yorkshire, such as Bolton Abbey, easily reached from Leeds. He would have been delighted to know that his great-grandchildren, Alistair & Miranda Chalmers Park, value particularly those of Durham and York having been students at these universities. Music, however was the dominating interest in this Chalmers Park household. Sunday evening madrigals in the Belmont Grove house (accompanied on one occasion at his own request by Sullivan who found that Sarah had perfect pitch when, to help the sopranos with some very high notes, he transposed a madrigal down a tone) were a regular feature. JCP also served on the Philharmonic Committee where he frequently attended to the needs of the composers who were commissioned to write works for it and the Leeds Festival Chorus - a group of excellent West Yorkshire choirs which had since 1858 joined together for a major Choral Festival every 3 years. JCP took Dvorak, also a railway enthusiast, to Leeds City Station to see the signalling system and, less pleasantly, to an Abattoir so that Dvorak could tell his father - a Prague pork butcher - how pigs were slaughtered in England. He used to book a room for Dvorak at the Cow & Calf Hotel, Ilkley because the composer loved the view over the River Wharfe to the Yorkshire Dales and because it involved a picturesque journey on a single-track railway line to Ilkley. Years later, JCP would book the same room for Elgar, who loved the Yorkshire Dales almost as much as his Malvern hills. On another occasion, JCP had to escort Dvorak to a performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's "Ruddigore" because Sullivan (who was conducting) had inserted a quotation from Dvorak's "Serenade for Strings" and wanted to see if the composer noticed. Although the opera had been out of favour with the public since it's first performance, Dvorak thought "Ruddigore" magnificent and wished he could find a librettist as powerful and funny as Gilbert. Elgar, was a frequent visitor to the house at Belmont Grove where it was convenient to change between an afternoon rehearsal and the evening concert. Unlike other Committee members who treated Elgar as an inferior servant when he was unknown but who became sycophantic when he became Master of the King's Music, JCP always treated him as a fellow artist and their friendship lasted until Elgar died in 1934. Interested in Chemistry, Elgar's fascination with the etching process led to him often asking to help with the copper wax or the acid so he could "have a hand in the picture". They exchanged Christmas cards every year, JCP's being one of his etchings printed from a block by his son Jack, a Master Printer. In 1913, JCP & Sarah went with the Philharmonic Choir to Vienna to sing in two concerts as part of a Festival. Taken for a picnic in the Vienna Woods by their hosts in the Vienna choir, a memorable holiday ended with an invitation to the Vienna choir to sing at the next Leeds Triennial Festival - and to picnic on Ilkley Moor. However by 1915 when the next Festival was due, World War 1 had started and after it ended, the prevailing anti-German/Austrian feeling was such that a return visit could have caused trouble. Just as it was hoped that bitter feelings had died, World War 2 broke out and the return visit was never made. In his last years when his son - the 7th JCP - was conducting the XXV String Orchestra, the artist JCP was the orchestral scribe, writing up XXV records in his beautiful copperplate writing. He died in October 1938 when I was 22, but I have distinct memories of him building a rockery in our Headingley garden with water cascading down in diagonal channels from a pool at the top which gathered the rainwater. Sarah survived him another 8 years, six of them in World War 2. We have a photograph of her sitting at her loom weaving. Elgar used to call her "Sarah the Weaver" - one of his secret jokes, for he had been ready to marry one Sarah Weaver, but her well-to-do Worcester family had thought a young impoverished composer not good enough for their daughter and sent her off to Australia. Sarah Park was wonderful with her grandchildren, always making them feel at ease, unlike many grandmothers of the day, but she had trained as an Infant Teacher before she married. Of their 4 children, Sylvia Katherine (Kitty) married first. A red haired beauty like her grandmother Sarah, she had been educated in Leeds at Thoresby High School and the Yorkshire College. Marrying 10/9/25 John Bennett Clarke, a Master Tailor, they lived initially on the outskirts of Leeds at Whitkirk before moving to Hampstead Garden Suburb, London when John's job moved to Keith & Henderson. Kitty sung in the choir of the local church, to which she was very close, and brought up a daughter and son before dying of cancer at Christmas 1951 much loved by all who knew her. Of her children, Mary Katherine Bennett born 29/11/27, was educated at Henrietta Barnet School and London's Royal College of Music where she trained as a singer. She sung in the Fleet Street Choir, which did radio broadcasts, but before her career could develop married the son of her mother's oldest friend, Muriel Dryden. John was a direct descendant of the Restoration poet and the family still owned his country house at Canon's Ashby, Northamptonshire. To ensure its preservation, it was transferred to the National Trust in 1980, the Dryden family having emigrated before World War 2 to Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia - now Harare, Zimbabwe. There, as well as practising as Chartered Accountants, they built up a group of businesses, including Safari holidays under the name Rhodesian Trust. At first life was easy, but as the "winds of change" swept through Africa, the offers of independence contained conditions which the Rhodesian Government was too honest to accept. Instead of paying lip-service to British requirements to obtain its independence and changing the rules afterwards as most other African countries did, Rhodesia unilaterally declared Independence on Nov. 11 1965, Armistice Day, reminding Britain that Rhodesians had in two World Wars come here to defend England when other African countries, recently given independence without any checks whether conditions were being met, had been killing English settlers. This seemed to them - and me - to be an abandonment of moral principles in favour of economic interests, particularly when England traded happily with countries having far worse records on human rights. Sanctions imposed on Rhodesia made life difficult, but stiffened resolve in the country and Rhodesia's freedom from corruption was in marked contrast to other African countries where economic aid from Britain was regularly diverted to the pockets of the rulers. Of Mary's children, John Anthony, b.27/8/52, attended school in Salisbury, emigrated to Australia at the age of 19, worked at various jobs settling up in wholesale hardware. Marrying Alison Woods - and acquiring a step-daughter Alison - they have a daughter Chantelle b. / / . Frances Elizabeth, b.30/5/55 went to a Journalists' college in Harlow, England, moved to Texas and married Andrew T. Sayers. As yet they have no children. Alan David, b.12/6/56, briefly attended Cape Town University, but left it to come to England where he met Melanie Jones whom he married in July 1980. So far they have Michael Lawrence b.23/7/90. John Michael Bennett, born 12/6/32, attended Haileybury Preparatory School, but when this evacuated to Devon at the outbreak of World War 2, stayed in Devon attending Blundells School, Tiverton. After training as a photographer, John emigrated to Australia in 1954 on his father's remarriage, working in various jobs leading to Computer Analysis. Developing an interest in building houses, he built his own at Marimbula on the borders of New South Wales and Victoria where he now lives happily with his second wife Larraine Woolcock whom he married on 7/8/75 and indulges his passion for golf. From his first marriage to Gretta Forbes, he had 6 children; Christopher, b.28/11/56 attended Latrobe University and is now an officer in a Government employees' Union. He married Elizabeth Anne Schroder 18/7/92. They have a daughter Georgina Odette b.27/4/93. Michael Kenneth b.5/5/58 read Science at Melbourne University and now works for the Commonwealth Employment Service. Married Maryse Helen Meale 6/10/90. They have a son Andrew David b.25/3/93. David Alan b.23/10/59 read Ceramics at Melbourne University and is now a Director of Disabled Persons' Employment. He married Margot Jane Knight /10/87. They have a daughter Jessica Jane b.19/11/88. Elizabeth Anne b.9/11/61 has 2 sons Ruben John b.12/7/85 and Kieran b.23/10/88 which she is bringing up single-handed. Peter Bennett b.23/10/63 read Statistics at Monash University and is now Computer Audit Manager of the Australia & New Zealand Bank. He married Lucinda Cathryn Vincent 24/11/90. They have a daughter Amy Sarah b.8/10/92. Jeffrey James Andrew b.5/6/70 decided, like his sister, to bypass university and now has a business repairing car windscreens. The artist JCP's youngest son, Harold Kenneth ("Billy"), was born 26/4/98. In 1915, he ran away from school to join the Army, both brothers having answered Kitchener's World War 1 call to defend the country. There was a minimum age of 18, but when he admitted to 17, the Recruiting Sergeant told him "go round that square and see if you are not 18 by the time you get back". Serving throughout the War, Billy saw the benefits of electricity and decided that this was the career of the future. At one time he had a record and gramophone shop in Boston Spa, near Wetherby (the old family home), and was also doing the lighting for the Bradford Civic Theatre. A bad accident when he fell through an open loading window while helping to move scenery shortened his life and he died of cancer on 7/1/47. His widow Gladys (Bunty) whom he married 27/1/40, and their son Ian David Chalmers born 27/1/41 returned to her family in Nottingham where Ian attended High Pavement School. He went on to Birmingham University where he read Electrical Engineering - his father's abiding passion - and met Lesley Kirby of Cromer, Norfolk, whom he married 18/12/65. At Birmingham, Ian became involved with the University Guild Theatre Group and, like so many others who have spent more time than was wise in this area, missed getting his degree. He then went to work in London for the GPO. After three years with the GPO, Ian got a second chance at university, and went to Brunel where, encouraged and supported by Lesley, he obtained a Bachelor of Technology degree. He then returned to work with Lesley at the Post Office Research Station, Dollis Hill, North London, from which they moved with the job to Martlesham near Ipswich, Suffolk, living in the village of Otley. Having gained a taste for study, Ian took an MSc degree at the University of Essex, after which he returned to Martlesham. For the next 16 years he worked in digital switching, both doing research on experimental public network switching and developing the software for a small private switch. In 1990, Ian decided to take early retirement when British Telecom started their programme of staff cuts, and moved to Newbury, Berkshire and a job with the mobile telephone company, Vodafone. Since then he spent a good proportion of his time travelling the world working on mobile telephony standards until he retired in January 2004. Ian and Lesley have 2 children, Kevin and Joanna. Kevin Michael Chalmers b.28/8/72 was educated at Ipswich School and briefly at Aston University reading Electronic Engineering and Computer Science before following his father's example and dropping out at the end of his second year. In 1998 he decided to return to University, and went to read Artificial Intelligence & Philosophy at Leeds University, where he took his degree in 2001. Since then he was unemployed for several years, but is now working doing data entry - a job well below his capabilities! Joanna Ruth b.7/7/74 was educated at Farlingaye School, Woodbridge, and Newcastle University, where she read Psychology. After a two-year break touring Ireland in a converted Post Office van, Joanna went to Leicester University to work for a PhD in Psychology. Since September 2001 she has worked in the Education department of Exeter University; at first studying teaching methods in mathematics, and more recently doing research on team reasoning and acting as mentor in research methods. Joanna married Chris Rose, whom she met while they were both studying for PhDs at Leicester University, on 14/2/06. In her spare time she enjoys the company of a horse, two dogs and her husband. JOHN FRANCIS CHALMERS PARK born 7/10/1893, 23 hours after his twin brother James, went with him on a Music Scholarship from Leeds Parish Church - where the twins rose to be joint Senior Choristers - to Leeds Grammar School. Known as "Jack" to distinguish him from his uncle with whom the artist JCP had been brought up, he was apprenticed to the Leeds printers Arthur Wigley which became part of Alf Cooke & Sons, where he became a Master Printer. Enlisting with Jim in the "Leeds Pals" - The 15th (Service) Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment - at the outbreak of World War 1 in 1914 on the assurance "it will be all over by Christmas", Jack was wounded 2 years later in the notorious Battle of the Somme, where more soldiers were killed than in the whole of World War 2. He was hit by a piece of shrapnel hit him on the base of the neck and stopped 1/8th of an inch from the jugular vein. The doctor who examined him said that he had no business to be alive! His brother took him back behind the lines, but Jack was able to walk. The first dressing station they came to was manned by their own doctor from Leeds. He checked the field dressing and asked Jack if he could walk. When this was confirmed he asked the twins to go on to the next dressing station as there were men there who had no legs or were seriously wounded. This happened about 4 times before Jack was able to be properly attended to. Then his brother had to leave him and go back into battle and they didn't know if they would see each other again. Jack was put on a train and then a ship and sent back to England. There was much interest in their arrival as they were amongst the first casualties to arrive from the Somme. Jack later said that he had never asked Jim what happened when he went back to the front line and wondered if he had ever told anyone. It was as well that all the powers that be knew the twins and turned a blind eye to Jim taking Jack back, as he could have been court martialled and shot as a deserter! Jack had the rank of Captain and was mentioned in dispatches. He was in signals. After what was then known as "The Great War" - supposedly the war which would end all wars - Jack returned to the printing trade, several times rising to the top of a company only to be made redundant when it was the time for the owner's son to take over. During this time Jack, who had unsuccessfully tried to learn the piano and violin, and, with slightly more success, the 'cello, found that his true talent lay in conducting. In 1923 Jack founded the XXV String Orchestra (so-called because when performing for the first time at the former Leeds Competitive Music Festival, a name was needed and there were 25 players) and laid the foundations of an orchestra based on capable amateurs and professionals who were keeping up their skills until the music profession offered a more secure living. When, after being made redundant again, the need for a job sent him in 1924 to West Hartlepool, he was able to hand to brother Jim a competent String Orchestra. At that time, amateur woodwind playing was of a low standard (due partly to the lack of good instruments) and the decision to keep to Strings was to keep standards high, the twins having been accustomed to high choral standards themselves with the Leeds Parish Church Choir under Edward Bairstow and hearing their parents' choirs the Leeds Philharmonic and Leeds Choral Union as well as their parents Sunday evening madrigal group. Printing work sent Jack to Switzerland for the 1925 International Conference which led to the signing of the Locarno Pact, his job being to have the minutes of each day's session printed, bound and ready for the delegates next morning. In 1930, when once again a son was brought in to take over his job, Jack accepted a post with the Herald Newspaper in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia - now Harare, Zimbabwe - moving after 2 years to Bulawayo to become Works Manager of Philpott & Collins, printing most of Rhodesia's magazines. There Jack spent the rest of his long life. Gathering, in 1936, an orchestra to play for a local production of "The Mikado" as an improvement on the usual piano accompaniment, Jack's conducting was such a success that the players agreed to stay together and perform orchestral repertoire. Thus began the Bulawayo String Players which expanded to a full orchestra, initially called the Bulawayo Municipal Orchestra and later the Bulawayo Philharmonic, combining skilled amateurs and teachers in the same way as he had done in Leeds. He also conducted for the Bulawayo Choral Society and the Bulawayo Musical & Dramatic Society. During the second world war he did part time training in Rhodesia and was OC Signals in Bulawayo. Catherine (his daughter) remembers his being away on exercises nearly every weekend. The Bulawayo Chronicle used to run a cartoon series called Curly Wee about the benevolent pig, Count Curly Wee and his friends. Jack's nickname in the Signals was Curly Wee, but the men weren't aware that he knew until he began a speech at a dinner 'Now all you folk of Fur and Feather Land' - quoting from the cartoon. It brought the house down! In Bulawayo, Jack organised trips by famous musicians who would perform a concerto with the Orchestra at a concert, give a recital at the Music Club, which Jack founded and served several terms as President, hold a Master Class at the Academy of Music and examine young musicians for the Associated Board Grade exams. Included in the tour would be trips to the Zimbabwe ruins, the Victoria Falls or the Wankie Game Reserve to provide such a memorable experience that there was no shortage of leading musicians willing to make the tour, thereby stimulating the orchestra and attracting its audiences. However, as soon as an orchestra has been built up to a reputable standard, there are always people waiting to remove the trainer so that they can satisfy their personal ambitions to conduct a successful orchestra. This is usually cloaked in an apparently high-minded concern that the orchestra "is now ready to benefit from the insight which can be brought be a professional musician" although it is a truth universally acknowledged by orchestras - both professional and amateur - that in no area of music does a man more overestimate his abilities than in the conducting of an orchestra. Realising that others were already manoeuvring to take over his orchestra - claiming that it now needed a professional musician on the rostrum - Jack forestalled them by announcing his retirement at the Orchestra's memorable 100th concert, somewhat cynically amused that the plans to remove him were being hatched while he was in England receiving the OBE for services to Bulawayo's music (in 1957). Returning occasionally at the request of the players to conduct an item, keeping it's records and arranging to borrow the music needed for the next set of rehearsals, Jack received a standing ovation as guest of honour at the orchestra's 50th anniversary concert in 1987. In this year Jack was given Municipal Honours by the City of Bulawayo and by its Rotary Club for services to the community, 34 years after he had received the Coronation Medal for services to its Music. His retirement years had been devoted to building the Bulawayo Music Library which in his own lifetime was named after him. In 1980 he was made the first Honorary Fellow of Bulawayo's Music Academy and his photograph hangs in the foyer. A well-loved and respected figure in Bulawayo, Jack celebrated his 95th birthday in October 1988 before dying on June 11th 1989. His obituaries record what he achieved after so many setbacks. Like so many of his family driven abroad by lack of opportunity at home, he would rather have stayed in England. He named his house "Wetherby" after the Powell family home of his grandmother Sarah. His wife, In 1936, Jack had come over to England to see his father for what proved to be the last time. Still unmarried, although regularly pursued by single female Rhodesians, Jack decided at the age of 42 to marry. His twin's wife Barbara prepared a list of suitable wives, top of the list being Janet Elder, a violinist in the XXV orchestra then teaching in Leeds. Jack quickly made up his mind but Janet had just started a new job and he had shortly to return to Bulawayo so it was a further 18 months before Janet was free to sail to Cape Town where they were married in March 1938. Janet clearly looked after Jack well since he lived to celebrate in 1988 their Golden Wedding and his 95th birthday. Having by now converted to the Viola, Janet was also a valuable member of the Orchestra in a section always in need of good players. After Jack died in 1989, Janet emigrated to Howick, a small town in the South African province of Natal, to be near her daughter Catherine and lives in a pleasant retirement home. Jack and Janet have 2 surviving children; a son John b.22/10/41 (who died of Meningitis on 15/11/41) and Catherine Hannah Chalmers, b.19/12/38. Catherine attended school in Bulawayo and learned the piano. In 1957 she went to St. Andrews University in Scotland where she graduated in English and to Cambridge where she obtained a Post-Graduate Teaching diploma. Returning to teach in Bulawayo, she married another teacher - Bryan Haddon - but when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe they lacked confidence in their future as whites in a now black-ruled country and emigrated to South Africa to seek a better education for their children. Both Bryan and Catherine taught in Howick and Pietermaritzburg (a nearby city) in the province of Natal. Bryan retired in about 1996 and Catherine in about 2001, having been Head of English at a private girls' boarding school, St Anne's Diocesan College. Of their children, Lesley (b.17/6/70) attended school in Bulawayo and went to Rhodes University Grahamestown, graduating in Social Science. She married in 1999 and lived in Kenya for about 3 years, but her marriage came to an end and she now lives in Howick with her son, Cameron George Terwin (born 24 April 2001), close enough to Catherine and Bryan to visit every day after school. Lesley works on a big farming enterprise a few kilometres out of Howick and deals with labour, wages and administration. Ian (born 13 December 1971) married Julia Horne on 21 February 2004 and they live in Pretoria. Ian graduated with Honours in Geology and Economics at Rhodes University and went to work for the Council for Geoscience in Pretoria, from whom he had a bursary for University. He gained his PhD in Geology from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 2005. His thesis was on the structures under the Kalahari system, which stretches from Namibia through South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia right up to the Congo. He is now a manager at the Council and is currently in charge of mapping projects in Mozambique and Madagascar. His work has been interesting and varied and he has done exploration in Ghana and Argentina (where he got bad altitude sickness in the Andes). He has also done mapping in the Atlas mountains in Morocco and in Mozambique. A couple of years ago he gave a paper at a big international conference in Florence - making his parents suitably proud. Malcolm Chalmers b.13/10/43 attended school in Bulawayo and went to Cape Town University where he graduated in Economics. Marrying Diana Priday 13/11/82, they have a daughter Caroline b.16/8/83 and he has a step-daughter Lara from Diana's previous marriage. Sadly, Malcom lost his lovely wife to cancer in 2003, and has since retired from his job as Human Resources Director with a big retail chain, although he still consults for them. Lara, who is the same age as Lesley, has twins Anthony and Mikaela born in 1996. Caroline, graduated from Cape Town University in 2005 with an Honours degree in Business Science. She is now (in 2007) 22 and has been taking a gap year, working at a ski resort in Vail Colorado and in London. She will probably come back to Cape Town after the ski season in about April or May and then look for a job. Caroline is a talented musician and plays piano, flute and guitar. JAMES CHALMERS PARK, the 7th JCP, born 6/10/93, 23 hours before his identical twin John Francis (Jack) with whom he remained close throughout his life - however far apart circumstances rather than choice compelled them to live - attended Leeds Parish Church School with Jack as Choristers, moving together to Leeds Grammar School although separating when they left school. Training for a career in music ended in 1914 with the outbreak of "The Great War" and assurances of "it'll all be over by Christmas" induced the youth of the country to abandon its training for the trenches of the most personally damaging war in history. Carrying brother Jack off the battlefield at the notorious Battle of the Somme with a bullet in his shoulder, Jim was so angry at the loss of friends killed in the camp by a concealed sniper that he volunteered for a dangerous mission to flush him out. Successfully completing the mission (killing the sniper) Jim was later awarded the Military Cross and ended "the Great War" a Captain, the same rank as that to which his great-grandfather had been promoted, 100 years before at the Battle of Waterloo. The medal was presented by King George V's brother the Duke of Connaught. To the 4 years out of Jim's life lost in World War 1, another 6 years was added in World War 2 when, although remaining in England, he was in charge of camps testing tanks which would be used in the Desert War, having been involved with tanks since their first appearance in World War 1 when they were the cause of a decisive British victory at the Battle of Cambrai. He ended World War 2 a Colonel. Life after the Great War was hard for those with interrupted training seeking jobs controlled by those who had avoided the war and made money. Jim's talents - as pianist and organist - lay towards music, but this profession provided only scarce jobs and meagre rewards. With his father having suffered heavy financial losses in the war, he needed to support the family and joined the Leeds-based tobacco company Hirst & Co. as a sales representative and lived at the family home. It was not to his liking, but it was a job. To pursue his musical interests, he became Church organist, first in the Yorkshire Dales village of North Rigton - which made a change of air from the then polluted city of Leeds - and then at St. Matthew's Church Holbeck, where he gave the same training as he had received at Leeds Parish Church to boys in one of the poorest districts of Leeds. Few thought this possible, but St. Matthew's was a parish where young potential bishops were sent to acquire inner city experience, and a succession of very able young curates assisted Jim in persuading the mothers that not only were their sons safer at choir practice than on the streets, but also that musical skill was good for their education and would impress employers who were often pillars of their local church. JCP's choir soon became the best in Leeds outside the Parish Church and indicated what he could have achieved had he been able to pursue the musical career he had wished. His work with the underprivileged was a strange echo from the life of his grandfather, the Rev. JCP. The departure of brother Jack for Durham in 1924 presented Jim with a duty and an opportunity in another direction - to conduct the XXV String Orchestra. To prepare for this he attended classes held by Henry Wood, the founder of the London Promenade concerts, and was the star pupil. Building on the foundation of very good amateurs and unemployed professionals, Jim soon made the XXV the finest String Orchestra in the North of England. It was invited to give the first performance when the Leeds Studio opened for radio broadcasts in 1926 and it was intended that it would give many more when the Musicians Union intervened and, as part of the deal struck when the General Strike of 1926 ended, had performance by amateur orchestra banned from radio broadcasts. Performances at concert halls, schools, Church halls and Churches themselves, however, flowed in this pre-television era and there existed in the XXV a camaraderie which one finds where people pursue similar interests in times of financial stringency. Jim remained a bachelor and, with the orchestra containing a large number of unmarried women whose potential husbands had been lost in "The Great War", cynical souls feared for the XXV's future. Just short of his 40th birthday Jim did marry, and to an XXV lady. However it was not one of the many spinsters of his own age, but a much younger 'cellist, Barbara Ellison, the daughter of a Leeds physician who, coincidentally, had run a clinic in Holbeck for those unable to afford medical treatment in those pre-National Health days. Although she was 12 years younger, their marriage - 8/9/33, at St. Matthew's Church with his own choir singing and his old friend Herbert Bardgett (later to become famous as the trainer of the Huddersfield, Sheffield, Nottingham, Hallé and Leeds Philharmonic Choirs) taking his place at the organ - followed a family tradition in being as happy as those of Jim's parents, grandparents and great-grand parents. I never ever heard them argue. One of the XXV traditions was to have a day out at Ilkley to play in the Wharfedale Music Festival. The festival tradition was very strong in Yorkshire with the finest choirs and singers performing for leading adjudicators who, in addition to giving sound advice, often helped their careers. The XXV was a principal attraction of the Festival and to the orchestra, the day in the Dales was always one of the delights of May. These simple joys - taken for granted by later generations - were not only relished for their own sake, but were a much needed relief from grim lives in polluted cities. A Junior XXV was started for me and my friends, initially playing in the drawing room at Headingley and later in Devonshire Hall, Leeds University where a member's father - Commander David Evans, a First World War naval hero - was the Warden. The Senior orchestra had won the famous Wharfedale Music Festival so many times in the 1930s that other orchestras had stopped entering. From 1951, the Junior XXV followed this tradition, winning each year with Honours marks until once again the competition dried up. Some excellent players emerged from this orchestra, led for the first 2 years by John Tunnell - later Leader of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra - and many others who made their mark later in the music profession including Barry Wilde, Geoffrey York and Charles Tunnell, later to become, respectively, leader of the Northern Sinfonia and principal viola and 'cello of the BBC Welsh and English Chamber Orchestras. However, the advent of television in Yorkshire and a large number of concerts available at subsidised prices, made it more difficult to attract the audiences and motivate the good players needed to maintain the high standards he always demanded so, after the XXV celebrated it's 40th anniversary in 1963, Jim closed the orchestra. Ironically, only a few years later there was a revival of interest in this very activity, but by then JCP was 70 and with a heart problem not eased by a busy travelling schedule since he had not been able to afford to retire. He died on Michaelmas Day 1965, having just lived long enough to see his son, the 8th JCP, married to a professional Violinist - Anne Norman - and settled in Wembley, not far from where he had spent some time as a boy when his own father had worked in London. His widow Barbara, an unfailing support in his orchestra, and in later years, its principal 'cellist, stayed a further 11 years in Leeds, teaching the 'cello and becoming Chairman of the Leeds Music Club - which the family had joined in the late '50s - before retiring to the Yorkshire Dales village of Linton where she had a charming old cottage beside Linton Falls and later a modern flat overlooking the River Wharfe. In 1989, she moved to a retirement home near her son's family in Pinner where she was able to enjoy concerts given by the Harrow School of Young Musicians and see her grandson Alistair graduate from Durham and her grand-daughter Miranda established at York University. She died 24/1/92, her funeral being attended by 3 of the former Junior XXV as well as her family. JAMES CHALMERS PARK, the 8th JCP, was the only issue. Following his father to Leeds Grammar School where he won a Choral Exhibition, was principal chorister in the Chapel Choir, principal 'cello in the School Orchestra, Secretary of the Music Society, had principal parts in several school plays, was Head of House and played for the Rugby XV. He read Law at Leeds University where he gained his colours in Rugby and Sailing, was a member of the Debating team, principal 'cello in the orchestra and performed chamber music and solos at their recitals. Serving his Articles with Ramsden, Sykes & Ramsden of Huddersfield, he qualified as a Solicitor. After working with firms in the London area, he started his own firm in Harrow looking after the affairs of a wide variety of people in a broad spectrum of work including advocacy of a kind which would have appealed to some of his ancestors, eventually moving to project finance. From an early stage he had benefited from parental encouragement in music, starting as a chorister and learning the piano before turning to the 'cello, playing in the Junior (and later Senior) XXV String Orchestra and the National Youth Orchestra. However his favourite musical activity was chamber music and it was on a string quartet course at Keswick Hall, Norwich that he met his future wife Anne Norman whom he married 29/12/64. Their first matrimonial home was in Leith Close, Wembley Park, near the Welsh Harp reservoir where he raced every week throughout the year in a succession of Merlin Rocket dinghies, moving in 1966 to Harrow-on-the-Hill and in 1973 to Pinner Hill. He played Rugby for Wasps FC until the birth of Alistair in 1968, but continued racing Merlins and playing chamber music. For 7 years he coached his son Alistair's string quartet the "Wolfgang", which competed at music festivals as he had himself in his student days with a quartet of that name. Racing his sailing dinghy throughout the year, Jim became involved in the administration of the sport both at local level as Sailing Master of the Welsh Harp Sailing Association and Wembley Sailing Club and as Fixture Secretary and Chairman of the National Merlin Rocket Class Committee. With Ian Holt, a designer, he wrote a history of the class, "The Merlin Rocket Book" which was published in 1986 to celebrate the class' 40th anniversary, a copy of which is in the National Maritime Museum library. He taught both his children to become competent dinghy sailors, and the family enjoyed some excellent sailing holidays. Anne, a professional violinist, taught initially at Camden School for Girls, then North London Collegiate and the Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls which she combined with playing jobs, leading orchestras which accompanied choirs and the Nonesuch String Orchestra which would have pleased her father-in-law, the 7th JCP. She became a member of Music Camp and a Baroque Group. Together they are keen supporters of the Royal Shakespeare Company London and Stratford. Alistair James Chalmers, b.13/7/68, attended St. Martin's Prep School Northwood, Haberdashers' Aske's School Elstree, Durham University, where he graduated in Geology and was principal 'cellist in the orchestra - a position he had also held at Haberdashers' and the Harrow School of Young Musicians - Leicester University where he was awarded with Honours, the first Master's Degree for the new science of Geographical Information Systems, and Bristol University for his Doctorate in Slope Stability. At Bristol, Alistair developed his growing stage career which had begun accidentally at Leicester where he had taken principal parts in Goldoni's "A Servant of Two Masters" and Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance". On arriving at Bristol he led the 'cello section of the orchestra accompanying "The Magic Flute" in the Mozart Bi-Centenary festival and moved on to stage parts in operas including "The Marriage of Figaro", "The Tales of Hoffmann", "Die Fledermaus" and "Carmen"; musicals including "Into the Woods" and "Chicago"; plays including both Shakespearean and modern classics such as Shaffer's "Equus" and Karge's "The Conquest of the South Pole"; and improvised and devised comedy, before moving to directing "The Yeomen of the Guard" and the Britten/Auden opera "Paul Bunyan". Instead of starting at the bottom, he was offered principal parts from the outset and attributes much of his (continuing) interest in the stage to having been taken when young by his parents and grandparents to the Royal Shakespeare theatres at Stratford and London. He now has a Research Fellowship helping the Geography Department to finance itself by accepting contracts to solve the geological problems of other countries. Music has not been forgotten, however, and he has been a keen member of the Anglo-German Youth Orchestra courses, held alternately in each country, since he was 17, although now reluctantly accepting that he no longer meets the requirement of "youth" - even if this has been prolonged by 10 years in 3 universities. Owning a Laser dinghy and a set of golf clubs, and determined to continue stage work, he is never short of interests and hopes to resume playing string quartets, having started at the age of 11 with his Wolfgang Quartet which stayed together all his school life winning many trophies at Music Festivals. Miranda Jayne Chalmers b.9/8/70 went to Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls at 5 and stayed there - leading the orchestra in her last 2 years until going to York University where she graduated with Music. In addition to playing in the University Chamber Orchestra - and performing a Violin Concerto with it - she took part in Gilbert & Sullivan operas leading the orchestra and having principal stage parts in "Patience" and "The Yeomen of the Guard". Like Alistair, she went through the various orchestras of Harrow Young Musicians ending up as co-leader and going on tours to Edinburgh, Vienna and Salzburg. While in Vienna with the family one New Year, Miranda met the organiser of an International University Music Festival to be held in Vienna that Easter and quickly persuaded her that York was the orchestra to represent England. Returning to York, she persuaded staff and students that this was an opportunity to be seized and the tour was a great success, York's students making a very favourable impression in Vienna both on and off the stage. As the project for her degree, Miranda chose to go to South Korea to study interactive effects of music and the Buddhist culture, and the methods of teaching the Violin to Oriental children. The 9 weeks she spent there, living with the family of one of Anne's pupils, in a totally different culture enabled her to write up an unusual project which undoubtedly helped to get her a 2(i) degree in spite of being very ill just before Finals. After graduating from York, Miranda immediately secured a job at the Royal Academy of Music - where her mother had been a student - in the Administration Department, having decided that the way forward was to have a secure daytime job in administration which could be used in other fields, and to do professional playing jobs in the evenings and at weekends. To this end she became the professional leader of the orchestra for Court Opera, a group which is publicly financed to take opera "into the community", with productions in Holland Park and Wimbledon Common, and for Harrow Light Opera Society which stages musicals to a high standard. Although Music and her new job, running the office of the National Council of Women, now occupies all her time, Miranda was a very able sailing dinghy crew, winning with her father the National Championship of the Gull Class when she was barely 12, a skill learned when the family used to spend Whitsun half-term holidays Oulton Broad and summer holidays in Minorca as well as racing with Wembley SC on the Welsh Harp reservoir. Over August Bank Holiday 1995, Miranda announced her engagement to Bruce Walton whom she had met at York directing the University's "The Yeomen of the Guard". Since Bruce is the son of a Minister of the Church of Scotland, this seems to bring the family history round in a full circle.