Life and death ... and life

And the ever-present now.

Feb 28, 2025

This is really a guest post. Sadly, a posthumous guest post. But, gloriously, a posthumous guest post that truly lives and breathes the essence of Paul Bagshawe and his industrious, curious, enquiring mind.

Paul died on 2 November 2024. He was just 62 years old. (I wrote a little about it here.) For the celebration of his life, his widow, Sara, wrote of Paul:

Your passion for design was borderline obsessive and you would agonise over the tiniest detail, in the knowledge that this was the only way to realise perfection, and nothing less than that would ever do.

Personally, I’d scrub the word ‘borderline’. Face it, Paul was full-throttle obsessive, particularly about graphic design and typography, yes, but also about life in general.

He was an early subscriber to this Substack and gave me some profound feedback, particularly in response to my autobiographical ‘fragments’. There will be more in future articles but, for now, I’ll start this thread with an introduction - an introduction sent to me when Paul and I discussed autobiographical strands, and he had decided that he himself would ‘give it a go’.

The image at the top of this post, sourced by Paul, is of a place called Brierlow Bar which is in the English Derbyshire Dales. The nearest town is Buxton, about 30 miles south-east of Manchester. But let Paul take up the story in his own words1 …

I am thinking about writing a series of linked, fact-based short stories about events surrounding a place a short distance from Chelmorton in Derbyshire. The place is Brierlow Bar, site of the family motor business (W. Bagshawe & Sons Ltd), founded sometime between 1890 and 1905 by my great-grandfather, Herbert William Bagshawe (1871-1947) and then continued on by his sons.
As well as writing, I would like to include artwork and visual references. I don’t have tremendous amounts of information of interest, so I plan for this to be a relatively compact endeavour – which fits in with my desire for it to be brief, but as beautiful as possible.
Apart from initiating a little research online, the essence of the book will be based on: what I saw myself; what I heard from my grandfather and father; and to a lesser extent the farming family next to the business.
Louisa – the woman who has transformed the original buildings of the business into an extensive bookshop/restaurant is very supportive of my idea – and I am sure she can see the potential for herself in this. She is an industrious woman, and I admire how she has taken on what I thought was a hopeless dream – opening a bookshop in such an isolated place - and is clearly thriving.
In terms of content for the project, my late father (Peter) will be central to this entire project. His lifespan encapsulated what I think can be considered the glory years of the business, and it is my memories of his stories – alas not even that many really – that give me the impetus to do this. As a boy, he lived in the house closest to the garage from 1930 until around 1944.
On opening, W. Bagshawe & Sons Ltd was run by Herbert. And as they were born and grew up, his five sons all joined the business, and stayed with it until they had all died off by 1984. No one retired. The site was bought by the farmer’s son Donald – whom I knew from 1960s to the late 1980s, and then reconnected with in the months before he died in around 2018.
My last conversation with Donald was poignant. I had driven up to his beautiful house in Bakewell (maybe 15 miles south of Chelmorton). His wife Christine (whom I am just about to get in touch with again) politely led us into a lovely compact snug hidden away from the hustle and bustle of the main heart of the house, with us all knowing it would be for the last time. Donald’s cancer had advanced to the stage where there was no turning back – but despite it taking him just a few months later – typical of the man he barely spoke about it and actually didn’t really look that poorly. At one point in the conversation I said “Donald, why on earth did you buy the garage?” He basically said; “Paul, I was down the pub with a mate of mine. We knew the place was for sale and thought 'why not?'”.
I am just mentioning Donald here because; his father was, in Donald’s words, ‘best mates with my Dad’, when around 14-15 years old he used to storm around the farm in an old pick up my father had given him with my brother and I in the back, he was the best thing about our family trips from Cheshire to see my grandparents, and it was Louisa’s father who bought the Brierlow Bar site off Donald.
You will remember in xSymmetry I spoke a little about the village of Chelmorton, and why we have an “e” in “Bagshawe”. [DP Note: we’ll come back to this in a later post.] I will be adding to that in this project, but I will be also be going into as much detail about the name “William.”
William is a special name in the family – it apparently goes way back. I was told by my father that the convention was (and still is) that the eldest son of each new generation must be given William as his middle name. At the moment I am speculating that maybe it was my great-great grandfather, William Bagshawe (1840-1907), who original founded the business at Brierlow Bar (?) that is the William behind this convention.
In the early-1900s, William would have been in his early 60s, and his son Herbert around 30. Maybe William had some funds to get his son started? It seems logical that down at the bank the company would have been formed as W. Bagshawe & Sons Ltd, and I also think the dates of business formation, William’s death, and my grandfather’s (first son) birth would have been within a maximum of five years – leaving Herbert as the man, in the prime of his life, to run the business.
Maybe William is the reason why since then we all have to have William as our middle names? (note to self: double check that 1911 census, and who all lived together in Chelmorton). I know there were William Bagshawes long before this and somewhere I have letters from a very long time ago from a William Bagshawe who emigrated to Australia (ironically where my brother is), but I will have to see what I can find.
Anyway, for reference, below is the basic information relating to ”William" and the “e” : it has become a list of the first sons of the first sons, from each generation:
Joseph Bagshaw** (1817-1876)
↓
William Bagshawe (1840-1907)
↓
Herbert W Bagshawe (1871-1947)
↓Frederick W Bagshawe (1902-1984) (brothers: Fred, Sam, Len, “Pim" and “Foggy", sister: Gwendoline – in the census but I never heard of her, maybe she is the missing “shareholder”? (tell you about that another time!)
↓
Peter W Bagshawe (1930-1992) (sister: Freda Kathleen Marriott, nee Bagshawe 1935-2019)
↓
Paul W Bagshawe (1962-) (brother: Mark Edward 1966-)
** Definitely no “e” in Bagshawe – I have seen the marriage certificate, which is very clear that there is no “e”. Of course this could be an error and I need to cross-reference this in as much detail as I can, but it does partially answer my question about why most Bagshaws don’t have the “e”. In my book I mentioned before, I stated: My grandfather, Frederick Bagshawe, told me in the early-1970s that the ‘e’ in our surname is from the woodcarvers’ elaborate handwriting – the documents I have show the surname, and it is difficult to tell if the ending of the name is a ‘w’ with an elaborate flourish, or a ‘we’, which is what we inherited

Photograph: Fred & Herbert Bagshawe

Well, there we are - a little bit of Paul’s enthusiasm for posterity. There will be more soon.

Aargh! by David Pinder

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