ANNOUNCEMENT: PODCAST SERIES – DEATH OF A POET: A SONIC UNEARTHING OF BINGLEY’S FORGOTTEN VICTORIAN BARD

From the meadow pipits, skylarks and standing stones of Ilkley Moor to the river at Saltaire where he met his end, a new audio documentary from the University of Leeds’ Cultural Collections unearths the chaotic, charismatic story of Bingley’s forgotten working-class poet.

Known as The Airedale Poet, The Orpheus of Bradford and The Bingley Byron, John Nicholson spent most of his life in the lowly day job of woolsorter; went from Methodist preacher to the depths of addiction, twice; got arrested in London for arguing with a bust of Shakespeare; became a pawn in one of the great political spats of the 19th century; played the oboe; fathered nine children; and ad-libbed untold quantities of rhyme for his mates in the pub, most of which has been lost to intoxication and the passage of time.

His fame briefly reached as far as London and, although he never had the fleeting success of his contemporary ‘Peasant Poet’ John Clare, he was a celebrity in Yorkshire’s West Riding, laureate of both the moors and the burgeoning textile mills and iron works of the Industrial Revolution. After his untimely death on the banks of the Aire at Saltaire on the morning of Good Friday 1843, a crowd of a thousand turned up to his funeral. Queen Victoria apparently contributed to the support of his widow and orphans.

Nicholson was brought back to life on the stage by Northern Broadsides legend Barrie Rutter in the late Tony Harrison’s 1993 play Poetry or Bust – a tall story in itself. Written in three months in response to a challenge set by Harrison’s friend Jonathan Silver, Poetry or Bust was performed at Silver’s redeveloped Salts Mill, on the spot where Nicholson had sorted wool for Sir Titus Salt 150 years before. David Hockney contributed to the set design and produced the artwork from a table in Salts Diner. Before its opening night, Harrison led his cast on a pilgrimage to the remote rock outside Bingley on which Nicholson had carved his name, and ritually washed it with champagne.

Harrison’s research for the production is now held in Cultural Collections at the University of Leeds. Exhibitions Curator and presenter of the documentary Dr RJ Wade has used Harrison’s maps, photographs, notebooks, and the infamous bust of the poet, to retrace his steps, in the steps, in turn, of John Nicholson.   

Only a brief biography on The Bingley Byron survives; the steppingstones he slipped on at Saltaire were removed shortly after his death; his original grave site was lost to the B6265; and the plinth that once supported his statue stands empty in a Bingley park. But Wade and the Cultural Collections team have gathered a cast of poets, artists, bellringers, historians, academics, enthusiasts, actors – and a direct descendant – to return to the poems that Nicholson managed to write down, and to the locations of his life and death in Bingley, Eldwick, Bradford and Saltaire.

Saturated with the sounds of his beloved Rombalds Moor and a recurring folk tune that one of his verses was sung to, Death of a Poet attempts a sonic excavation of this compelling, larger-than-life character. And we hear how Nicholson’s writing about nature, about joy, beer, spirituality, loss and depression, still resonates with the documentary’s contributors today.

Bradford-based poet and “stand-up historian” Glyn Watkins has done more than anyone in recent decades to revive the memory of Nicholson, and the talks and walks that he stages have nurtured a growing band of enthusiasts. “I discovered John Nicholson through random reading of West Riding histories”, he remembers. “I write poetry and drink. John Nicholson wrote poetry and died after falling in the River Aire whilst drunk. I liked John Nicholson’s poetry, and I appreciated the man enough to try and bring him back from the forgotten. He was remembered around Bingley until the 1950s. Now nobody knows his name.”

Another contributor, Hadley Nicholson, shares his own genealogical journey as the documentary unfolds: “I was first drawn in when I was handed an old book, a family heirloom passed down through the generations. It led me to my fourth great-grandfather, the poet John Nicholson, and ultimately to his graveside. From there, a simple question about a forgotten family connection became a fascinating journey of discovery — and the deeper I looked, the more intriguing the story became.”

Tom and Alex Duxbury live on the moors above Bingley, in the landscape where John Nicholson grew up and which shaped much of his writing. Tom is an illustrator currently developing a series of works inspired by Nicholson’s poetry, while his sister Alex is drawn to the ways in which faith, and the journeys towards it, shape a life. They discuss their deep attachment to the landscape and its stories, where Nicholson’s presence feels part of the hills, streams and everyday life around them.

Dr RJ Wade comments: “What began as a small exhibition in the University’s Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery, sparked by an intriguing conversation about a plaster bust in the Tony Harrison Archive, has grown into an expansive and emotional sonic expedition connecting two of West Yorkshire’s most irrepressible poets.

“Following Harrison’s lead to ‘work by omens’, we found Nicholson through the local landscape, encountered a vivid new cast of characters, and uncovered an extraordinary series of coincidences along the way. This is a very special project, and we are so grateful to our collaborators for joining us on the journey.”

Listen to Season 1 of Death of a Poet via the University of Leeds Cultural Collections & Galleries’ Gloves Off podcast platform, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A concluding season is scheduled to coincide with John Nicholson’s anniversary and what would have been Tony Harrison’s 90^th birthday, in April 2027.

For more information, images or interviews, contact Rowland Thomas, Media Relations and Production Officer, Cultural Collections & Galleries: R.Thomas6@leeds.ac.uk