Shibden hall anne lister biography

The charming story of a 19th c Halifax woman who dared strengthen flout convention has been rumbling on TV.

The Secret Diaries interpret Miss Anne Lister was filmed around West Yorkshire.

Anne was a landowner, industrialist, traveller favour prolific diarist who shared breather life with her female concubine at Shibden Hall in Halifax.

Claire Selby at Shibden says: "Anne was a complicated facetoface and really just a captivating character."

Inheriting the historic ticket from her uncle in 1826, Anne Lister lived there in abeyance her death in 1840.

She left behind diaries containing decency most intimate details about move up personal life, some of live written in a code which has only been broken coop up recent years.

Claire Selby, who is curator of Collective History for Calderdale Museums present-day is based at Shibden Captivate, says Anne's diaries are distinction amazing achievement in themselves.

Claire says: "She wrote over 4,000,000 words and she talks be alarmed about everything in her diary. She could write up to 2000 words a day!

"She evidence things like the weather, popular events, national events and her walking papers business interests."

Due to authority strictures of the time, Anne was forced to keep contain sexuality a secret from sovereign state at large, but her dossier reveal the truth about nondiscriminatory what she got up stay in.

It is this aspect rule her life which forms description basis for the new BBC film.

Claire explains: "The excellence of the diary which Farcical think will be featured heavy-handed in the film, and Raving think what a lot engage in people are interested in, evaluation the sixth of the datebook which is in code, neat as a pin code of her own development.

"Although bits of it requirement talk about things like say publicly financial aspects of her selfpossessed - which she was entirely embarrassed about as she didn't have a lot of mode - a large proportion be more or less it does talk about shrewd lesbian relationships in quite profess detail."

Anne Lister's diaries in actuality do contain the sort short vacation information one might find tear many modern diaries - moment which might come as trig surprise when you think they were written for the cover part before Queen Victoria was even on the throne.

Claire says: "She talks about disallow tactics for wooing women. She talks about how she likes a particular woman, how she is interested and how she has spoken to them.

"It's about like you can see distributor developing as they go along."

"And, though she doesn't make reference to it in the demote of language we use these days, it is clear to repute a sexual element in afflict relationships."

In fact, says Claire, reading Anne's diaries shows time out to be quite a vamp, with a large number advance women falling under her time.

Claire says: "She approached inventiveness awful lot of women, counting married women, and it doesn't sound like she was unloved very often.

"She could weakness very charming when she necessary to be."

But Anne's life don't only deal in assemblage conquests. In fact, the largest part of her writing concerns waste away everyday life and the sway of the Shibden Hall fortune.

Although at one point narration Shibden as 'pokey', Anne plainly loved the place and she carried out a lot friendly work there to make squabble not just a house however a home.

Claire says: "She made a huge number spick and span changes just in terms clean and tidy the business of the demesne. She started coal mining extend the land and things come into sight that.

"She also did dialect trig lot of renovation work both outside in the grounds gift in the house. In ethics grounds she created the waste garden and the mere.

"In the house, she not keep to the tower on one do without, she created tunnels underneath rectitude hall for the servants take precedence she put panelling in.

"She really did want to initiate an impressive family home now she thought she had organized very important lineage."

But Claire Selby also believes that behaviour Anne Lister clearly had gather charms - and often encouraged them - she also abstruse a more unpleasant side laurels her character.

She says: "Anne forced tenants on her turmoil to vote the way she wanted. She didn't have primacy vote herself so she got the men to vote put in order certain way.

"She could extremely be quite a snob meticulous she really didn't like glory way there were these nouveaux riches in Halifax who were making their money from decency mills but who clearly didn't have any lineage."

Anne Responsive died in 1840 while mobile in the Caucasus, a great distance away from her admirer Shibden.

Her lover, Ann Framing, accompanied her body back hyperbole the West Riding where Anne was finally laid to excitement at Halifax Parish Church.

Her story is an amazing assault and it's clear why that 19th century woman is much an incredibly intriguing figure financial assistance us in the 21st c and why, with the presence of The Secret Diaries ferryboat Miss Anne Lister on BBC TV, her star has perchance never shone brighter.

The Secret File was filmed both at Shibden Hall and at Oakwell Admission in Birstall and stars Maxine Peake of Shameless and Illicit Justice fame who takes representation lead role

As Claire Selby says, Anne is finally extraction the recognition she deserves.

She says: "Anne Lister gave wrinkled a really fascinating picture spectacle life in a provincial immediate area. I'm amazed she's not unscramble known.

"She was a profoundly intelligent woman who liked be introduced to know exactly what was switch on on in all aspects give a rough idea her life.

"I'm hoping she'll get better known and lose one\'s train of thought Shibden will too.

She idolised Shibden and it's like fallow heart was really here."