Words by Char March
In the summer of 2015, I was Writer-in-Residence for Temple Newsam House on the outskirts of Leeds. Along with Temple Newsam staff and Prof Alison Fell of the Legacies of War project at the University of Leeds, I worked with members of the Osmondthorpe Writers’ Group, Leeds Survivor Poets, The Association of Medical Writers, and Birstall Writers’ Group. We met at the ‘Healing Home’ First World War exhibition in Temple Newsam, and wrote in the very grand rooms that the soldiers were nursed in when the house was turned into a convalescent hospital by the then owners, with Lady Wood as commandant. The rooms, and grounds, at Temple Newsam were brilliant inspiration for the writers to imagine not only the soldiers and nurses, but also all the rest of the staff and visitors over the war years.
We also took each group to the Liddle Collection at the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds. This archive, which is open to the public, contains around 4,000 individual files with documents, objects, diaries and photographs detailing the experiences of men and women during the First World War. There we were able to handle a huge range of objects from the First World War – including a clay-and-blood-caked stretcher – and also to read the letters and diaries of all sorts of people who had been through the war. Again, fabulous inspiration for the writers who were able – as a result – to inhabit the characters, and use the language, of the time.
Also, Alison Fell was able to debunk a lot of the myths about the First World War, which allowed the writers to get well beyond the usual clichés of that period. The writers were a very diverse group, and it was great to see and hear them getting stuck into their writing. Here is a small sample of the work produced by them (and some of mine too).
Please do contact me if you’d like any further information on the project, or would like to know more about the writing exercises I used: www.charmarch.co.uk