Further Thoughts in Conversation with Joseph Ford.
Or
The Missing Stones of Danby Castle
Danby Castle, Joseph Ford explains, presents something of a puzzle. There’s not much to see if you go to visit the place, he writes,
“…it is a problem to know where such a vast pile of masonry can have gone, for we know it existed.”
He is quite sceptical about the pronouncements of experts who have sought to identify where the stone could have gone, he says of their efforts,
“Antiquarians may stretch their imagination as much as they can in conjecturing the whereabouts of the stone, but in my experience it is not so easily to be found.”
I can’t help reading in this that North Yorkshire attitude that distrusts experts and outsiders and favours home grown practical knowledge. If so I suspect Ford has a point, he may be only an amateur historian but he is a professional stone mason and quite capable of identifying masonry that once belonged to the castle.
Joseph Ford is sceptical in general about what we can know for sure about the past, he comments on the missing stones of Danby Castle,
“The centuries have that unhappy knack of obliterating what might have been most spectacular traces of things undertaken and accomplished by man, even though leaving, as so often happens, some trifling trace as a witness – in this case , the two or three yards of massive wall.”
I am in agreement with Joseph Ford on this, the passing of time seems particularly capricious in regularly dismantling enough stones of the past to suggest but not to confirm our history. It serves to remind us of our mortality - that is not just that we must die but that all our achievements disappear down the plug hole of time only to resurface at the other end of the drainage system in a mangled form. Looking at ruins should make us humble, especially about what we can say concerning the past.
Joseph Ford is equally cautious about the future, quoting Alexander Pope as an aside on the story of two Ecclesiastical Deputations who set out from York full of purpose only to get lost and confounded on the moors, the quote reads,
“Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate.”
The book of history has rather a lot of pages missing and torn, the book of the future only opens on the page of the present moment despite our best efforts to turn to the back page and see how the story ends.
When I was last in the area I took the opportunity to visit Joseph Ford’s grave in Danby Church Yard. I have never before felt motivated to visit the grave of someone I did not know in person, but I have so enjoyed Joseph’s company via his book that I did not want to miss the opportunity. His writing can be a bit grandiose, even monumental, and I am not sure if he adopts this style for comic effect or if he is really serious, but it does amuse me. I can’t help seeing the flicker of a mischievous smile at the end of some of his more granity constructions, for instance his Maestoso conclusion to a description of Pickering’s Historical Pageant,
“We can rest secure in the knowledge of the great fact, that the stream of evolution flowing ever onward will empty its mighty waters into the still mightier waters of Eternity at some point, or time, or place, chosen and known only to that great incomprehensible Force which we have learnt from one another to call God.”
I read that Joseph Ford was a good Methodist, so I may presume he now has knowledge of that "point, or time, or place" and a fuller comprehension of "that great incomprehensible Force."
Amen Mr Ford, Amen.
Pictured – Joseph Ford’s gravestone with a copy of his book.
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