About Anne Lister's diary 11-13 June 1837

Introduction

Both Anne’s father Jeremy Lister and her aunt Anne had died the previous year. Anne Lister and Ann Walker remained living at Shibden Hall with their servants (and, for a visit, Ann Walker’s little niece Mary Sutherland). Their ‘married’ life together appeared tranquil, productive and not unaffectionate. Yet their domestic routine was threaded with tensions – about, for example, relationships with the Shibden servants, and Ann Walker’s hesitating over republishing her will in Anne Lister’s favour.

One indication in the diaries of how this emotional distance from each other is played out is the references to the rooms at Shibden that they occupied: as she found Ann Walker’s snoring irksome, Anne Lister often slept on her own in the ‘kitchen chamber’. At one point, an unwell Ann Walker locked the door on Anne Lister; and Ann Walker apparently had her own sitting-room downstairs (the north parlour). Apart from servants like Mrs Oddy, the only domestic witness was young Ann Walker’s young niece, Mary; Anne Lister noted ‘Poor child! How innocent’, and then added in code: ‘The child said A- was not tired in this way at Cliffe-hill’.

Meanwhile, Anne Lister’s estate business preoccupations continued including letting Northgate House and working on the meer to provide water-power for the Listerwick colliery she planned. For, as Halifax grew increasingly industrial and urban, both land values and the demand for coal rose in the town. Yet, despite all the talk about steam-power and railways, conservative-minded landed gentry like Anne Lister retained their loyalty to – and investment in – the traditional canal system.

Selected passage

This has been selected because it represents - just another three days of domestic and business routine at Shibden. On Sunday, one of Anne Lister’s key tenants, Thomas Greenwood of nearby Park Farm, came and discussed estate business; this was combined with church attendance at Lightcliffe – where Anne happened into conversation with Rawdon Briggs about railways versus canals, and about who should be elected as new clerk to the navigation company.

On Monday Anne Lister ‘sharpened up’ the half-dozen men working down at the meer, and kept a keen eye on Listerwick pit, on the horses carting bricks up from Halifax, and on the building of her new tower. But all this commanding estate bustle (almost obsessive in its recorded detail here) took place against a background of sullen domestic silence.

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