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BEZIQUE: The Private Life of Gertrude Lowthian Bell: Part 1 The Bells, The Bells
PART 1 of our travels with Gertrude Bell as companion jumps forward to April 1892 at London’s Victoria Railway Station and to a First Class train compartments on the 11 a.m. train for Dover; inside sits a group of elegant and intrepid women Mary, Lady Lascelles, her sixteen-year-old daughter Florence, twenty-three-year-old Gertrude Bell – Mary’s niece, and the enigmatic ‘Miss F’. Safely strapped and stowed aboard are their twenty-four luggage trunks. This is Gertrude’s first journey to the Middle East (Tehran) and was to be life changing in so many ways…
Fifty-three years earlier, at exactly the same age, Gertrude’s paternal grandfather Isaac Lowthian Bell, had set out on one of his own continental journeys of industrial science discovery. His task? To take new manufacturing knowledge back to the North-East of England where eventually, the iron and steel megacorp that Bell Brothers’ industries became was born.
Gertrude’s North of England Quaker forebears shared common attributes of hard-working fortitude and ambition. All four of Gertrude’s grandparents – the Bell, Pattinson, Shield and Barnett families – emerged from deeply rural communities across Cumberland, Northumberland and Ireland to make their mark on the industrial towns and cities of the north-eastern coast of England. Some earned rich rewards from discovering and exploiting the application of innovative science in industrial manufacture; others created successful retail businesses and reputable professional services. For Gertrude, this proved a formidable and intellectually rich heritage.
Tragedy strikes, resulting in serious childhood trauma for Gertrude but some compensation is derived from her new ‘Poky little home’: Red Barns, Redcar, the underrated Arts & Crafts gem designed by architect and aesthete, Philip Webb.
Fifty-three years earlier, at exactly the same age, Gertrude’s paternal grandfather Isaac Lowthian Bell, had set out on one of his own continental journeys of industrial science discovery. His task? To take new manufacturing knowledge back to the North-East of England where eventually, the iron and steel megacorp that Bell Brothers’ industries became was born.
Gertrude’s North of England Quaker forebears shared common attributes of hard-working fortitude and ambition. All four of Gertrude’s grandparents – the Bell, Pattinson, Shield and Barnett families – emerged from deeply rural communities across Cumberland, Northumberland and Ireland to make their mark on the industrial towns and cities of the north-eastern coast of England. Some earned rich rewards from discovering and exploiting the application of innovative science in industrial manufacture; others created successful retail businesses and reputable professional services. For Gertrude, this proved a formidable and intellectually rich heritage.
Tragedy strikes, resulting in serious childhood trauma for Gertrude but some compensation is derived from her new ‘Poky little home’: Red Barns, Redcar, the underrated Arts & Crafts gem designed by architect and aesthete, Philip Webb.
127 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 7, 2018
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