My work for His Grace was my first proper job after finishing my apprenticeship so, as you can imagine, I was altogether very pleased with myself and walked about the place with a few inches added to my stride. I was on the estate about six months in all. Was paid and treated very well. I had a room in the servants’ quarters and it was left to me to get myself up and out first thing. I would take with me a little bread and cheese wrapped in linen, which I would eat while I was on the job, and my dinner would be keeping warm for me in the kitchens when I came in around seven or eight.
After meeting with His Grace a time or two I was left very much to myself. I’d go to him with my designs and he might sometimes slip me one or two sketches of his own. Odd little drawings, they were, on bits of paper. I would pin them on my workshop wall. But His Grace was not much of a draughtsman, so I would take care to listen to his ideas and work from what he said. Once in a while he might drop by to see how I was faring but on the whole he left me alone.
I was given some of the finishing touches to do on the tunnels, such as the gateposts and so forth. Well, I assumed that what would be required would be an obelisk or a Grecian urn. The usual sort of thing. But when I was ready to get on with them and went to ask His Grace what he had in mind, he asked me how I felt about onions. Onions about a foot and a half wide.
Well, it took me a while to come up with an onion we both felt happy about. They caused me a bit of a headache. To be honest, I was worried I might become something of a laughing-stock. What I eventually came up with was something quite similar to a traditional stone orb, but fatter in the middle and with a stalk coming out the top. But there was no mistaking it for anything else – it was an onion from top to toe. His Grace told me that he thought it was just the job. Once it was erected folk would come up and ask me about it. Most of them thought it first rate. It was my own design, so of course I was very pleased to be asked if I was the onion-man. Quite proud, I was. So we had onions by the lodge at Norton and cauliflowers on the gateposts out at Belph.
My largest undertaking was what the Duke always referred to as ‘the Grotto’, which was down where all Mr Bird’s tunnels came in above the landing platform. Well, I was instructed to cover the ceiling with plaster – easily thirty feet high – then carve out of it the likenesses of various ‘natural’ things. His Grace gave me a list of suitable subjects for me to bear in mind, such as pineapples, grapes and fish-heads. I remember he asked if I could do a seashell and maybe some barleycorn.
Well, just like the onion and the cauliflower before it, I had no training in such things and I was a little hesitant at the start. But His Grace asked me if I had an imagination and when I replied that I believed I had, he told me I had better get on and make some use of it. I was told I could include more or less anything which took my fancy, just as long as they were ‘natural’.
Well, I gave it a go. Did some fruit to start off and then some creatures … snakes and snails and so forth … and soon found I’d fairly got the hang of it. After a day or two I didn’t worry at all. A bird’s head here, an acorn there. Perhaps a fern leaf alongside a feather.
In the evenings I would occasionally nip out for a drink – the Vault in Whitwell or the old Bird’s Nest – and, of course, I would come across all the stories about the Duke which were doing the rounds at the time. As a stranger to the area and with my being a good bit younger than the other drinking men, I sometimes found it hard to go against what they said. If I am honest, I will say that after a couple of jars I found I could spin a tale or two myself. I am most ashamed of that now.
In my last week on the estate I was called in to see His Grace and the first thought I had was that I must have done something wrong. I thought perhaps something I’d said in the pub had got back to him and that I was going to get a dressing down or even dismissed. But he only asked me about a roundel he’d seen by the underground chapel. Wondered if it was anything to do with me. He took me down there and I had a look at it. Very simple it was – just a face peering through a bush. At a guess I’d say fourteenth century, though I’m no historian. Probably put in when the chapel was first built. The stonemasons, of course, wouldn’t have shared the beliefs of the monks who paid them so it was maybe just a little pagan symbol which they tucked away. I’ve heard that they would often do that. At a guess I’d say it was just old Jack in the Green.