S.H.E., reminiscing in 1938, looks back on the strange hobbies of some Stamford men in late Victorian times.
“A BLIND ORGANIST
Then, there was Mr. Hilary Hewitt. the blind organist at St. Mary’s. he lived with the petite, golden-haired Miss Hewitt, who kept a private school in St. Martin’s, next to Hibbin’s carriage works. You would see him tapping his stick at the edge of the pavement, usually humming cheerfully to himself. It was a great mystery to me how he learnt his pieces.
Three men stand out in my memory on account of their interesting hobbies. One was a chimney-sweep named Barlow, who lived in the Sheep-market. You went down two steps direct into his living-room – the brightest, cheeriest room you ever saw. How Mrs. Barlow gave her fire grate such a beautiful polish I do not know. She was as bright and as cheery as her room. But the great attraction was the pictures on the walls – needlework pictures worked in wool on canvas, the work of the sweep himself. He did not follow the usual method of counting the stitches from a copy – so many stitches of one colour, so many of another. No! He took an ordinary picture and made his own interpretation of it. I remember ‘Burghley House,’ ‘Peterborough Cathedral’ and ‘Melrose Abbey.’ I wonder if he finished the bunch of flowers he was engaged on, when a lady called with a handful of flowers, and he begged a water-lily for a model.
There was a wood-turner in Brookes’-court named Hawkins. He made cork models of public buildings with just a penknife and ordinary corks. he showed one at Stamford Fair one year. Now was it Burghley House or Peterborough Cathedral? I forget, but I know I paid a penny to go into a booth in Red Lion-Square, at the corner near Snarrt’s chemist shop, a the top of St. John’s-street.
I expect old Hitchcock is forgotten now. He was an old man with a fine head and face. He might have sat as a model for one of the twelve Apostles. I don’t know what his occupation was, but he collected the rents of the houses in Lumby’s-court (now terrace). It was said that he taught himself to read and write after he turned seventy, but the most extraordinary thing about him was his hobby. He had spent all his life trying to discover the secret of perpetual motion. Think of it!”
The Stamford Mercury, 6th May, 1938.