Epitaphs and Monumental Inscriptions of Warkworth Church & Churchyard. Printed for Private Circulation.

Alnwick: Henry H. Blair, Printer, 1890. 8vo, pp. 112 + frontispiece. Original black-printed green paper wrapper bound in before frontispiece. Errata slip loosely inserted. [Bound with:] ‘J.W.’ Bambro’ Fox Hunt. Newcastle: J.M. Carr, printer. [c.1890?] 8vo, pp. [4]. Contemporary pebbled red cloth, edges speckled red. Second work a little creased. Just a touch rubbed to extremities. Bookplate of John Bolam to pastedown, inscription to paper wrapper: ‘With the editors’ compliments’, pencil inscription to foot of first page of Bambro’ Fox Hunt ‘this to be kept private as the fox is dead’, further marginal pencil notes in same hand. Two scarce publications of Northumbrian interest, bound together. The first is privately-printed catalogue of the inscriptions in the graveyard of the 12th-century church of St Lawrence in Warkworth, this copy presented by the editors. Library Hub records 3 copies, at Cambridge, Newcastle and The Institute of Historical Research. Bound with it to the rear is an interesting unrecorded piece of annotated doggerel, ostensibly a comic piece about a fox hunt, which an owner has annotated with identifications of the principal characters both professional (the text’s ‘Lying Davie’ is designated ‘the blacksmith’) and personal (‘Teece’ is ‘Mrs Leighton’). Along with the injunction in the same hand that ‘this is to be kept private as the fox is dead’ this suggests a satirical meaning now obscure, and we have been unable to trace any other copies or further details of the poem or its author. It was printed by jobbing Newcastle printer John Mensforth Carr, who is first recorded as printing under his own name in 1868 and who produced many reports, speeches and miscellaneous papers of this ilk.