© 2017 Whippet Records
Copyright Control MCPS/PRS
Keith Armstrong - Recitation
Mick Tyas - Mandolin
Richard Doran - Dulcimer
William Bell Scott, poet, artist and master of the School of Design in Newcastle, described a chance meeting with William Martin, on the streets of Newcastle in the 1840's. William, at the time in his 70's, was nearing the end of an extraordinary career which had seen him budding as a philosopher, a poet and an inventor. As Bell Scott testifies, William was wearing on his head a tortoise shell and the breast of his overcoat was festooned with a great many 'military' medals, most of them apparently presented to him as a joke by Newcastle's Quayside clerks and regarded by William as genuine. In fact, William had become the subject of great ridicule. Who indeed would have believed that a quiet and innocent place such as Tow-house, near Bardon Mill, Northumberland, could have spawned one of Tyneside's greatest characters?