Tag Archives: Alfred Kingsley Lawrence RA

Byron Dawson: renowned Heaton artist

Regular readers will know that Heaton has been home to a number of accomplished artists: Alfred Kingsley Lawrence, once of 42 Heaton Road, whose paintings grace the Houses of Parliament, the Bank of England and many national galleries; John Wallace, formerly of 28 Kingsley Place, whose work you can see in the Shipley and the Laing, and John Gilroy, commemorated by a plaque on the wall of his home, 25 Kingsley Place, who painted royalty, politicians, even a pope, but is best known for his commercial art for Guinness.

We would now like to add Byron Eric Dawson to our Heaton artistic ‘Hall of Fame’. Heaton History Group’s Arthur Andrews remembers that, back in 2008, before Heaton History Group was even a twinkle in our eye, he cut out this article from the ‘Evening Chronicle’.

‘Evening Chronicle’ article about Byron Dawson, 2008

He had been impressed with Dawson’s drawings and saddened by his penniless demise. The 50^th anniversary of the artist’s death in 2018 seemed to pass unnoticed so, to rectify this, Arthur wondered whether Dawson had, by any chance, any connection with Heaton and when his research showed that to indeed be the case, our intrepid researcher set about discovering more.

Family

Born in 1896, Byron was the youngest son of Samuel and Kate Dawson, who originally came from Lincolnshire but moved to Banbury in Oxfordshire, where Byron and his elder brother, Horace, were born. Kate died in 1906 at the age of 36, when Byron was only 11 and Horace 13.

It appears that the family then split up as, by the 1911 Census, 17 year old Horace was living as a boarder in Harrow, Middlesex, while working as an assistant clerk for the Local Government Board. During WW1, Horace served in the Household Cavalry. He died in Western General Hospital, Manchester on 23 April 1917.

Byron, meanwhile, had gone to live with his mother’s sister, Lucy, and her husband, Henry Cock, a prison warder, at 43 Grantham Road, in the Heaton ward of Newcastle upon Tyne. He lived with them for about ten years, until he was 21.

Working life

After leaving school, Byron started to serve an engineering apprenticeship at a so far unknown company. The engineering company recognised his drawing skills and encouraged him to become an art student at Armstrong College in Newcastle. (It would be interesting to know if the company was C A Parsons, as Dawson painted this interior of the works later in his career).

Dawson painting of Parsons works (on a Parsons calendar)

In 1922, Dawson was living at 46 Hotspur Street, where he was lodging with fellow artist and friend, Thomas William Pattison, and his parents, Arthur and Annie.

46 Hotspur Street

It is said that Byron described himself as an orphan but we know from the electoral registers, that his father also came to Newcastle: he was lodging on Jesmond Road in 1921 and 1922.

On finishing the art course, Dawson was asked to stay on as an assistant master in painting. By 1925 he and Thomas Pattison were sharing an art studio on Newgate Street and Byron was living in Benwell, while Thomas had moved to Earsdon. (By 1939, Byron was again lodging with Thomas’s parents, now in Jesmond.)

Successes

Dawson became a full-time professional artist in 1927. In 1928 he completed a commission for Major Robert Temperley of Jesmond, originally known as ‘panel for morning room’ which was submitted to The Royal Academy. This painting, ‘Dawn’, was also shown at the 1929 North East Coast Exhibition at The Palace of Arts in Exhibition Park.

NE Coast Exhibition catalogue

There were nine galleries in the palace, containing 1,139 exhibits. At least three other artists with Heaton connections were represented: Byron’s friend, T W Pattison (1 item), John William Gilroy (1 item) and John Atkinson, who will be the subject of a future article (5 items). Dawson also exhibited three times at the Royal Scottish Academy.

During his long career, Dawson and his easel became a familiar figure in the streets of Newcastle and beyond, as he drew many of the region’s important buildings. He seemed not make friends easily and would not work for people he did not ‘warm to’ for one reason or another. But he did regular commissions, notably the northern scenes published in the ‘North Mail’ (The predecessor of the ‘Journal’) over many years.

Later years

Little did Dawson know when he drew Newcastle’s Plummer Tower in the 1930s, that this would become his final home in Newcastle.

Plummer Tower by Byron Dawson

In the early 1960s, he was not in the best of health and was having difficulties making ends meet, so much so that, when it became a museum, he was offered the opportunity to reside in the Plummer Tower as caretaker.

In 1966 Dawson was taken to the Wooley Sanitorium near Hexham with acute chest problems. Unfortunately, did not recover enough to return to his Newcastle home at the Plummer Tower. He died in 1968 and is buried in an unmarked grave in Jesmond Cemetery.

On display

The first major exhibition of Byron Dawson’s work in 40 years was held in the Dean Gallery, Newcastle on the 25^th anniversary of his death. Over 60 watercolours, oils and sketches were on display, all of which were for sale. Allan Graham, the gallery director at the time, said that the works were of immense historical as well as artistic importance and that Dawson was the best known artist of his era, thanks to his commission to draw ‘almost every building of importance in the North East’ for the ‘North Mail’.

That exhibition was temporary but it is still possible to see Dawson’s work. Newcastle City Library holds 69 of his drawings and prints. They can be readily be accessed on request.

The Laing Art Gallery has a portrait of Byron Dawson drawn by his good friend T W Pattison. Both painters, along with Alfred Kingsley Lawrence, were among those commissioned to paint individual ‘lunettes’ for the gallery – ‘half moon’ shaped murals, high up in the upstairs galleries, which you can still see today.

Byron Dawson lunette, Laing Art Gallery

The ‘morning room panel’, ‘Dawn‘, is in the permanent ‘Spirit of the North’ Exhibition.

One of the most accessible paintings by Byron Dawson is a very large, eye-catching landscape situated in the Centurion Bar of Newcastle Central Station. A good excuse to go for a drink!

Byron Dawson painting, Centurion Bar, Newcastle Central Station

Dedication

When Marshall Hall published his authoritative book, ‘The Artists of Northumbria’ in 1973, he prefaced it with the following:-

Dedicated to the memory of

Byron Eric Dawson

Artist

my tutor in art

and friend for more than a decade.

This article is also dedicated to his memory.

Acknowledgements

Written and researched by Arthur Andrews, Heaton History Group.

Sources

‘The Artists of Northumbria’ by Marshall Hall

‘Newcastle between the Wars: Byron Dawson’s Tyneside’ by Marshall Hall

Newcastle City Library

Tyne Bridge Publishing

Findmypast

National Newspaper Archive

The Laing Art Gallery

Can you help?

While looking for Byron Dawson artworks on-line, Arthur came across the print below of Heaton Hall in Manchester and bought it for £10. We still haven’t given up hope of finding a Dawson drawing or painting of our own Heaton Hall. Let us know if you can point us in the right direction or have any other information about or of photographs of Byron Dawson. You can contact us either through this website by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org.

Heaton Hall, Manchester by Byron Dawson

The Dewey-Eyed Librarian and his Legacy in Heaton

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One of Heaton’s most recognisable buildings and one which contributed to the education and entertainment of generations of Heatonians is 120 years old this autumn. The Victoria Branch Library was opened by Earl Grey on 6 October 1898.

The library was gifted to the city by Alderman William Haswell Stephenson who, two years earlier, had financed a library for the west end of the city in Elswick. When nobody else responded to the council’s appeal for another local benefactor to ensure that the people of the east end also had access to books, Stephenson put his hand in his pocket a second time, stipulating only that the council should undertake the equipment, management and maintenance of the building.

The position chosen for the library was controversial. Many people had concerns which resonate today about the encroachment of buildings, even a library, onto a public green space, Heaton Park:

‘It might seem a small thing to take 450 yards out of a park but they did not quite know where this nibbling process would end’ reported the ‘Daily Journal’.

Local residents also wanted the Corporation to approve both the site and the design of the building rather than all decisions being made by Alderman Stephenson, again a contemporary concern as private enterprise becomes increasingly involved in what have previously been public sector concerns. However, the site on Heaton Park View and the design by Newcastle architect, John William Dyson, were eventually approved.

Inside, on the ground floor there was a large reading room and a newsroom (where people had access to newspapers), a smoking room and a ladies reading room. Upstairs was the library itself, which measured 70 feet by 36 feet and would be able to house around 25,000 books; a committee room and the janitor’s room. External features included a turret on the roof, the dome of which was covered in copper. Carved panels depicted the royal arms, the city arms and Alderman Stephenson’s arms.

Grand Opening

At the opening, over 200 of the great and the good enjoyed breakfast and speeches. Apart from benefactor Alderman Stephenson, guest of honour Earl Grey, and the architect, they included the mayors of Newcastle, Gateshead, Tynemouth and South Shields; the Bishop of Newcastle; the Sheriff of Newcastle; most of the council; industrialists such as shipbuilder, John Wigham Richardson and many many more.

Alderman Stephenson reminded the audience that it was 44 years to the day since the ‘Great Fire of Gateshead’, which he remembered well as a young boy serving his apprenticeship on the Quayside. He regretted the absence of Heaton Councillor James Birkett, a great supporter of the project, who had recently died. And he spoke about the success of the Elswick branch library, including how few books had been lost.

The library was officially opened by the Right Honourable Earl Grey. In his speech, Lord Grey praised Alderman Stephenson’s generosity at a time when ratepayers’ money wasn’t forthcoming and also his modesty in not requiring the library to be named after him (although this may have been because he’d already ensured that the Elswick Library carried his name!), preferring instead to honour the queen. He urged others to follow the alderman’s example perhaps by gifting ‘more pleasure grounds, great and small, bright with flowers; drinking fountains of artistic design; clocks with chimes, for bells are the best music a crowded city could enjoy; nursing homes in every ward; halls in every ward with the best organs money could buy..’

The Bishop of Newcastle gave a vote of thanks, in which he said:

‘Even fiction, if it were rightly chosen, would aid in the development of character and if that aid was found in fiction, it would certainly be found in other books as well.’

Lord Grey was presented with a copy of the library’s initial catalogue of 7,000 volumes. This was a significant document as contemporary newspaper accounts state that the shared catalogue with Elswick Library (To save money, they both carried the same stock) was ‘ the first catalogue published in the Dewey Decimal System in the British Isles’. The newspaper praised Andrew Keogh, Assistant Librarian at the Central Free Library ‘ who had earned the gratitude of all who have need to consult the catalogues’.

We are used to Heaton being at the forefront of developments in the various branches of engineering, science and mathematics and Heatonians excelling in arts, music, literature and sport but should we also be trumpeting our place in the history of librarianship? And does the library and its innovative catalogue partly explain why Heaton was at the forefront of so much. We carried out a little more research.

Catalogue

Amazingly, copies of that first catalogue survive eg in the Lit and Phil and so we can see exactly what was on the shelves of Heaton’s Victoria Library when it opened. There was a broad selection, catering for all interests and some written in foreign languages, as you can see from the first page of the author listing below.

To mention just a few, artist John Wallace will have watched the library being built at the end of his street, Kingsley Place, and was surely delighted with the selection of books on painting and other arts as, a little later, would Alfred Kingsley Lawrence of Heaton Road. And suffragist and social campaigner Florence Nightingale Harrison Bell, who married in 1896 and went to live on nearby Hotspur Street, suddenly had access to a wide range of books on politics and sociology including Engels’ ‘Condition of the Working Class in England’ as well as a surprising number of books on the emancipation of women and ‘The Woman’s Manual of Parliamentary Law’. Gerald Stoney of Meldon Terrace then Roxburgh Place, who had helped Sir Charles Parsons develop the record breaking Turbinia the previous year, had many books on engineering and physics from which to choose.

There were plenty of books for ‘juveniles’ too, marked with a J in the main catalogue, as well as having their own separate listing. The musical Beers children, living on Kingsley Place just yards from the library when it opened, had access to a vast array of fiction, including many classics still enjoyed today, but also books on music – and photography, a hobby which led to their wrongful arrest years later.

The library was an incredible resource for the people of Heaton, even if the books weren’t on open access. As was normal practice at the time, you made a choice from the catalogue and asked the librarian to bring you the book if it wasn’t on loan. A bit like Argos today. This made the catalogue extra important.

And the catalogue of the Victoria Library in Heaton was groundbreaking. Although the Dewey system had been copyrighted in the USA over 20 years earlier by Melvil Dewey, in the eighteen nineties almost all British libraries, if they were classified at all, used very broad classes, such as ‘Theology and Philosophy’ or ‘ Arts, Sciences, Law, Politics, Commerce’. Readers would have to peruse lists of accessions arranged chronologically under each heading. No further breakdown was considered necessary in Victorian public libraries, although by 1908, the absence of a detailed classification system was described as a weakness by the Library Association. Yet, ten years ahead of his time, the year in which our library opened, an Andrew Keogh (whose name you might remember from the newspaper report mentioned earlier) had written in ‘Library World’ that it was highly desirable that a uniform, detailed classification system be adopted across the country.

Assistant Librarian

Andrew Keogh was born on 14 November 1869 the son of recent Irish immigrants, Bridget and James Keogh, a shoemaker. In 1871, aged 11, Andrew was living with his parents, older sister, May and younger siblings, Bridget, Elizabeth and Edward at ’14 Trafalgar Street (or, as the census form gives as an alternative, 8 1/2 Back Trafalgar Street, All Saints, off New Bridge Street). Did this young man of such humble origins really produce the first published Dewey catalogue in Britain? Luckily we have enough further sources of information to draw on in order to flesh out Andrew’s career and confirm his pioneering work for the people of Elswick and Heaton.

His biography would grace any library shelf.

While Andrew was a student, Newcastle’s first public library opened at the end of his street. It is said that he was never away. The staff got to know this ‘modest, serious, polite young boy’ and, if a staff member was ill or away, they called on him. Two years into his college course, the library offered him a full time job.

His parents were divided and he too was unsure about giving up his education but he accepted the post. He clearly took his work very seriously and researched developments which he could bring to Newcastle.

Keogh became an advocate for Melvil Dewey’s Decimal Classification System and was allowed to try it out on the stock for Stephenson’s new branch libraries. So the people of Heaton were able to easily see in detail what books they could take home on ornithology, plumbing, physics, horticulture, world religions, baking, poetry or whatever else interested them when most of those few libraries in Britain that already used Dewey used it only in their reference libraries. It seems that, at this time, not only was it a first for Britain but no library in Europe had published a catalogue arranged and indexed by Dewey.

What Next?

In July 1897, when Keogh was 27 years old, a big international librarians’ conference was held in London. It was attended by 641 librarians and influencers from all over the world – from Australia, Canada, Ceylon, India, Jamaica, Japan, New Zealand and South Africa, as well as from right across Europe and the United Kingdom. Newcastle Public Library’s head librarian, Basil Anderton; Councillor Robert Flowers, Vice Chairman of the Books Committee of Newcastle Public Library; Councillor Henry Newton, Chairman of Newcastle Public Library Committee and Robert Peddie of the Lit and Phil were among the many British delegates. But by far the largest foreign delegation was from the United States, including Melvil Dewey himself, who delivered a paper on the relation of the state to the public library.

Afterwards many of the American delegates took a tour of important English libraries, including on Friday 6 August, those in Newcastle. We haven’t been able to discover whether Dewey was among them.

Andrew Keogh was put in charge of their reception and arranged an evening river trip, followed by dinner at the Grand Assembly Rooms and ‘conversazioni’ at the Lit and Phil. One of the delegates was Jessica Sherman Van Vliet, a librarian from the Armour Institute in Chicago. Keogh immediately fell in love and it is said ‘took her home that evening’. He saw her and the rest of the delegates off the following day and the pair started to correspond. His letters often contained poetry, ‘some original, some quoted, always meticulously referenced’. Soon he proposed by letter and, his proposal having been accepted, Keogh set about finding a job in the USA.

Eventually he secured a post in a Chicago bookshop which was looking for someone who knew the Dewey system (the manager no doubt impressed by Keogh’s pioneering catalogue for the Elswick and Heaton libraries) and in January 1899, he sailed for America, reaching Chicago in February. But with his aim a position in a library, Keogh soon made the arduous 720 mile journey to the next annual meeting of the American Library Association in Atlanta, where he reacquainted himself with some of the delegates he had met in Newcastle. He was offered posts in several public libraries but, with his heart set on an academic position, turned them down, a brave move for a foreigner of humble origins and no university education. Eventually though, his persistence paid off with the offer of a post in Yale University library. He began work on 1 August 1900 and on 6th, he married Jessica Sherman Van Vliet.

By 1902, Keogh was teaching bibliography at Yale and he quickly progressed up his chosen career ladder, also becoming a lecturer and professor of bibliography. In 1909, he successfully applied for an American passport, from which we have a description of him as 5 feet 8 inches tall with an oval face, hazel eyes, dark brown hair and a moustache.

On 1 July 1916, despite ‘certain limitations of a middle class Englishman which he will probably never overcome’, he was appointed Librarian of the University of Yale.

Keogh wrote many papers and books and one of his many career highlights was a term as President of the American Library Association in 1929-30.

On his retirement in 1938, Andrew Keogh was named Librarian Emeritus of Yale University. He and Jessica were together for over 50 years until her death in 1952 aged 84. Andrew died a few months later on 13 February 1953 at the same age. Not a bad shelf life for the working class Geordie who cut his teeth cataloguing the collections of Elswick and Heaton branch libraries and whose life was shaped by love at first sight – and an equally strong passion for books.

Heaton’s Victoria Library, loved and appreciated by generations, closed in 2000. The nearest public libraries are now in High Heaton and Byker.

Can You Help?

If you have memories or photos of Heaton Library or know more about Andrew Keogh, we’d love to hear from you. Please either leave a reply on this website by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or email chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Acknowledgements

Researched and written by Chris Jackson, Heaton History Group.

Sources

Andrew Keogh: his contribution to Yale / James T Babb; The Yale University Gazette Vol 29 No 2, October 1954

Classification in British Public Libraries: a historical perspective / J H Bowman; Library History Vol 21, November 2005

Heaton: from farms to foundries / Alan Morgan; Tyne Bridge Publishing, 2012

Transactions and Proceedings of the Second International Library Conference held in London July 13-16 1897

The Lit and Phil library

plus Ancestry, British Newpaper Archive and other online sources

To Heaton for Love: an artist’s life

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What do the present queen and her 16th century namesake; Vivien Leigh (in the roles of Cleopatra and Blanche DuBois); scenes from Romeo and Juliet and these ‘builders’ have in common?

‘The Builders’ by A K Lawrence Copyright: The Governor and Company of the Bank of England

A clue – naturally, there’s a Heaton connection. No, nothing to do with The People’s Theatre but, yes, the answer is arts related. They were all depicted by a notable artist who spent part of his life in Heaton. Not Kingsley Place’s John Gilroy (though he too painted the Queen) nor John Wallace (landscapes were more his forte) but a painter still more lauded in fine art circles. You may not have heard of him but you may well have seen his work.

Early life

Alfred Kingsley Lawrence was born in Lewes, Sussex on 4 October 1893, the third son of Fanny Beatrice and Herbert Lawrence, a solicitor. His father, however, died, when Alfred was only around a year old and when the boy was just three years old, his mother remarried George Giffin, a customs officer.

By 1901, while Fanny continued to live in Lewes with the children (by now there was a younger half brother, George junior too), her husband seems to have relocated to Newcastle (We don’t know why.) and was living in Roxburgh Place in Heaton. The family eventually followed, although one of Alfred’s older brothers, Frederick, had died in 1906, aged 14 in Sussex. By 1911, they were living in Sandyford. Alfred, now 17, was a ‘civil engineer’s clerk and student’.

He was, in fact, a student at the King Edward VII School of Art, Armstrong College, where his teachers included Professor Richard Hatton, who was soon to found the Newcastle University gallery which still bears his name. A local newspaper article in 1925 said that ‘not since the[ school of art] was founded has a student displayed such conspicuous talent or worked so consistently and with such conspicuous talent as a student of painting’.

Alfred won the John Christie scholarship, aged 18, in 1912; the School Medal for the most brilliant student in his year in 1913 as well as Silver Medal s awarded by the Royal College of Art in both 1913 and 1914. In the latter year, he was also awarded a Royal Exhibition Scholarship tenable at the Royal College of Art in London.

But by now the country was at war.

Heaton wife

It was apparently while at the King Edward VII School of Art that Alfred met his future wife, Margaret Crawford Younger, a Heaton lass. Margaret was the daughter of Robert Younger, a marine engineer, and his wife, Catherine, who lived at 42 Heaton Road. The family were very comfortably off: the 1901 census shows a governess lived with the family, presumably to home school the four daughters.

By 1911, Robert had retired: local trade directories now refer to him as a ‘Gentleman’ and no occupations are listed in the census for the daughters, now aged between 21 and 27. Alfred married Margaret on 26 June 1915 and joined his wife at his parents in law’s on Heaton Road (by now known as Elmire House), although mostly he was away from home.

War Service

In 1914, he had voluntarily joined the Northumberland Fusiliers’ 19th battalion (2nd Tyneside Pioneers), which was posted to France in 1916.

Alfred, a Second Lieutenant, was mentioned in despatches in January 1917, most likely for his actions during the latter stages of the Battle of the Somme. Upon discharge in 1919, he resumed his scholarship at the Royal College of Art. He won a travelling scholarship to Italy in 1922 and in 1923 won the prestigious Prix de Rome, which allowed him to study in Rome for three years. Paintings by Lawrence during this period and during his military service can readily be found on line. Influenced by his time in Italy, he often painted classical themes.

Success

From this point on, commissions came thick and fast and Alfred’s adopted city was among the first in the queue. The Hatton Gallery owns two works ‘Male Nude’ and ‘Female Nude’ painted in 1922 (hopefully they’ll be on display when the gallery reopens later this year) and his magnificent ‘The Building of Hadrian’s Bridge (Pons Aelii) over the Tyne, c122’ is in the Laing. (But not on display at the time of writing).

When next you’re in London, head to St Stephen’s Hall in the Houses of Parliament,where you’ll find his ‘Queen Elizabeth Commissions Sir Walter Raleigh to Discover Unknown Lands, 1584’ and to the Bank of England, which commissioned a group of large oil paintings, of which the above work is one.

In 1930, Lawrence was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy and in 1938 he became a Royal Academician, a huge honour for an artist. The photograph below shows the Academicians selecting works for the 1939 summer exhibition. AK Lawrence is nearest the camera on the right. The president, Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens is holding a letter D, which stands for ‘doubtful’ (for inclusion in the exhibition).

Royal Academicians, 1939 Copyright: Royal Academy of Arts, London

Lawrence himself exhibited in the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition almost much every year from 1929 until his death, a period of almost 50 years.

His ‘Study for Leda’ was presented to the Queen as part of the institution’s coronation gift in 195 3 and is now in the Royal Collection. His painting ‘Elizabeth II at the State Opening of Parliament 1962’ is in the Parliamentary Art Collection.

Character

In the 1920s, the young Alfred was described as ‘shy of temperament but studious and painstaking, with sound and erudite knowledge and the crowning gift of imagination. He has high ideals and his conception of art, particularly in the employment of the figure, is lofty and virile’.

Lawrence’s entry in the ‘Dictionary of National Biography’ refers to his great interest in the theatre and suggests that that he might have been a successful professional actor ‘particularly in heroic roles. He was a tall, dignified man with a resounding voice, a stalwart in debate, forthright in his adherence to traditions and rather grand in his renderings of Shakespeare (We wonder, did Lawrence, before he left Newcastle for London, see his Heaton neighbour, Colin Veitch, play Falstaff in the People’s first Shakespeare production in 1921?)… he was a stickler for the correct use of words…strongly against the use of photography or substitution for good draughtsmanship’.

The article also states that Margaret, with whom he had been married since their days on Heaton Road during WW1, died in 1960, after which ‘AK’, as he was known, became a rather solitary figure. Their son, Julius, had emigrated to New Zealand.

Legacy

Alfred Kingsley Lawrence died suddenly on 5 April 1975 at his London home. His legacy is his art, however.

In addition to the works already mentioned, Lawrence paintings and drawings are in the collections of National Portrait Gallery; Victoria and Albert Museum; Imperial War Museum; Scottish National Portrait Gallery; National Trust; Queens College, Cambridge; Guildhall Art Gallery; Royal Society; Royal Air Force Museum and many other collections, both public and private. Digital copies of many of those in public collections can be seen here.

As recently as April 2015, A K Lawrence’s classically inspired ‘Persephone’ (1938) was the Royal Academy’s ‘Object of the Month’ and in December of the same year, the ‘Daily Telegraph’ illustrated an article about the government owned works being hidden from public view with a Lawrence painting.

And now, at last, Heaton, where he found love, has paid tribute to him.

Acknowledgements

This article was written by Chris Jackson, Heaton History Group. Research was carried out by Joe Chipchase, Christopher Durrans and Chris Jackson. Thank you too to Peter Clarke, Alfred’s grandson, who has kindly sent us further photographs, two of which have been added to the bottom of this article. The first shows him wearing his Northumberland Fusiliers uniform and the second shows him in the process of painting ‘The Committee of the Treasury, 1928’ which is in the Bank of England Museum on Threadneedle Street, London.

Can you help?

If you know more about Alfred Kingsley Lawrence or have photos of him or works by him that you’re happy to share or if you know of any other eminent artist with a Heaton connection, we’d love to hear from you. Either click on the link below the article title to post direct to this website or email chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org.