Egremont has been the birthplace for many notable people who havesucceeded in many differing walks of life, including music, writing, publishing, painting, sculpture, sport and business.

Francis Dunnery.
Francis Dunnery was born on Christmas day in the north of England. Still to this day the only kid to play Jesus 2 consecutive years in the Catholic school pantomimes, Francis got a taste of Rock n Roll early in life!

He was front man for the UK rock band IT BITES who had moderate chart success in the 80's with the top 10 hit single, Calling all the heroes.

After recording 3 albums with IT BITES the band split and Francis moved to Los Angeles.

His first solo album, Welcome to the Wild Country received critical acclaim but was completely ignored by Virgin records.

In 1992 He stopped drinking alcohol and signed to Atlantic Records in New York City. He recorded his second solo CD called 'Fearless' and had a USA hit with the track 'American Life in the Summertime'.

In 1995 He recorded 'One night in Sauchiehall Street' which was a live recording of the highly controversial acoustic show that he was performing with friend and comedian Ashley Reekes. Talking very openly about subjects such as alcoholism, death or very deep personal feelings didn't go down too well; neither did the x rated poetry that his friend Ashley was performing. Both Francis and Ashley thought the show was incredibly unique and hysterically funny, both thoroughly enjoying the rebellion from the pompous pretence of the rock world!

In 1995 he was asked to join Robert Plant's band and recorded the 'Fate of Nations' album contributing on tracks such as 'Calling to you' and the worldwide hit single '29 palms'. A world tour with Robert Plant followed.

In 1996 he recorded the extremely popular 'Tall Blonde Helicopter” and the track 'Too Much Saturn' was a hit across the USA and Australia. In the same year he had a USA top 20-billboard dance hit with a track called 'Spiritual'.

In 1998 he changed record companies and signed to an independent label in NYC. He recorded 'Lets Go Do What Happens' and then proceeded to remove himself from the music industry so that he could train horses and further his studies in Philosophy, Psychology and Astrology.

In a brief return, he played guitar on Lauren Hills classic 'The Mis-education of Lauren Hill' and also on Carlos Santana's 'Supernatural', both albums topping the world charts for many weeks.

He returned to the serenity of horse training in Vermont and continued his already 10 year long study as a Psychological Astrologer and began performing Psychological Seminars and Astrological readings, which have become extremely popular in the UK and USA.

On a quick visit to the UK he recorded the guitar and wrote songs for ex Stone Roses front man Ian Brown's 'Music of the spheres' which had the award-winning chart hit 'F.E.A.R.' After a brief stint performing live with Ian Brown, Francis returned once again to the mountains of Vermont.

Barry (Baz) Dunnery

The focal point of NECROMANDUS was always guitarist Barry 'Baz' Dunnery, although never to break into the public arena Dunnery's talents left many open mouthed in astonishment. "He was incredibly fast," reckons Hall. "I remember Steve Howe being very impressed as Baz was going through his legato runs and speed picking. I'll never forget that look on Steve's face, like, “what's he doing?'"

Ozzy Osborn’s reputation for targeting guitarists with exceptional abilities was evident even then. With Black Sabbath on a global commercial high the singer had nevertheless earmarked Dunnery as Frank Hall explains. "Everyone knows Baz's brother Francis from It Bites but believe me Baz leaves his brother standing. Baz was, and is, a fantastic guitarist. Both Ozzy and Glenn Hughes really rated him. Ozzy, I'll never forget, really tried to push Baz. He told Baz that he had the world at his feet."
Iommi himself would guest on one track though putting guitar down on 'One Fine Lad', a song about army life. However, Frank has some problems with remembering which song was which because, for a reason the drummer never discovered, all of the song titles would be changed. "The first Necromandus single was to be 'Don't Look Down Frank', a song about me. For some reason that title got changed to 'Nightjar'.
With Black Sabbath riding high internationally, an Iommi production credit, a guitar hero in the making and signed to a major label it seemed as though the future looked bright indeed for Necromandus. It was not to be. Orexis Of Death was shelved. The reasoning behind the decision remaining a mystery for nearly three decades.
"The album was axed because Baz left the band," Frank sighs resignedly. "He said that he didn't want to go but he felt he had a conflict with the musical direction of the band. This was our big chance. We just couldn't understand it at all. We were devastated." With Dunnery out of the picture Iommi thought Necromandus was dead in the water. "We offered to try and get another guitarist as good as Baz but Tony thought this would be unlikely. He was right. We tried to get someone to keep the band going and get the album out but it was just impossible. Then of course Black Sabbath got back out onto the road so Tony was busy with that and the whole thing was just forgotten."

Tangye did the talking. Frank remembers the exact words. "Right, Ozzy wants a guitarist, bassist and drummer and you lot in Necromandus are the likely candidates." Piling into Ozzy's car the new recruits journeyed down to Staffordshire and Ozzy's home at Bullrush Cottage. Enter Blizzard of Ozz…
The original incarnation of Blizzard of Ozz was in an enviable position. Ozzy was a globally known figure and with Baz Dunnery the quartet was blessed with a world class guitarist. Frank Hall had many reasons to be optimistic. "Ozzy had a lot of offers on the table from a few record companies. The potential was just huge at that point because the press would jump on any new Ozzy album. Ozzy was really keen to show the world how good Baz was too."
The musical persuasion of the inaugural Blizzard Of Ozz was not what the average Black Sabbath fan would have ever anticipated, however, as Frank elaborates. "Necromandus was always a kind of progressive, Jazzy type rock band. I suppose you could put us in the same camp as Greenslade or Gentle Giant- that type of thing. We didn't actually change much when we worked up the songs with Ozzy. Some of the material was extremely complex, lots of time changes and it sounded great. Ozzy of course wanted heavyweight detuned guitars all the time but the combination really was striking."
In later years Dunnery would become a member of the ELO offshoot Violinski whilst Hall's career has most recently seen him playing with jazz band The Children. He can also be found touting his own band project, The Binmen, also featuring former Sweet singer Malcolm McNulty.
Meanwhile, with the Necromandus musicians no longer on the scene, Ozzy had another stab at forging the Blizzards. His manager, the ubiquitous Don Arden, had discovered that a band an acquaintance of his handled business affairs for were in limbo. That band was Dirty Tricks, currently signed to Polydor Records, and had just completed a run of three albums, the first of which happened to be produced by Rodger Bain- the man responsible for the early Black Sabbath albums. The band comprised vocalist Kenny Stewart, guitarist John Fraser Binnie, bass player Terry Horbury and drummer Andy Bierne. Arden played Ozzy the band's new tapes, for the Tony Visconti-produced “Hit And Run” album, to favourable response and a meeting was duly arranged
The three musicians suggested to Ozzy that rather than travelling to Staffordshire it would be more practical to pursue matters in London. "Ozzy thought this was a good idea too so I went ahead and booked a month's rehearsal at The Tunnel studios for us" relates Terry. "The day before we were scheduled to go in I phoned Ozzy to make arrangements and he simply said "Oh, I've just rejoined Black Sabbath". So that was that."
In 1977, Mik teamed once again up with John Hodgson, John Marcangelo and several other musicians to found band Violinski. Former Wizzard and Fairport Convention pianist Robert Brady and bass player Baz Dunnery also featured in the band for a while. Although the three friends composed material for their first album, the band only got started in earnest after the Electric Light Orchestra finished their Out Of The Blue Tour in 1978 and started recording their album Discovery without Mik. They went to the Musicland Studios in Munich, Germany and recorded their album “No Cause For Alarm”. Reinhold Mack took care of the mixing and engineering of the album. But during the recordings it became evident that the band members had their own views about de musical direction it should take. As a result, the line-up changed several times.

Paul Bainbridge

Cumbrian born, Paul Bainbridge was involved in Art education for 25 years before becoming a freelance sculptor; specialising in portraiture but interested also in all other aspects of traditional and modern sculpture is including reliefs and miniatures. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1993.Since 1990 he has been employed by Madame Tussaud's as one of their select team of freelance portrait sculptors. His portraits for Tussaud's include former President of the United States George Bush, actor Sir Anthony Hopkins, international singer Gloria Estefan, astronomer Patrick Moore, Sean Connery and Australian cricketer Shane Warne. His most recent work for Tussaud's is a portrait of film producer Steven Spielberg. A portrait head of former Vice-President Al Gore was also completed for Mme Tussaud's, in case he had been declared the winner in the race for the presidency of the USA

Most of his work is in private collections, though his miniature portrait of Lord Nelson is in the collection of the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth. One of his larger pieces can be seen at Tesco's Superstore at Bishop's Stortford. His largest piece, to date, has recently been installed at the Bishop's Stortford College in Hertfordshire.

HENRY SPEIGHT (1879-1947)

Henry Speight was a stone mason, and in later years clerk of works, employed by the Ennerdale Rural District Council.
In his spare time he was a talented amateur painter and sculptor. He was completely self-taught, having had no training or, instruction of any kind; and he worked in an unpretentious little hut about nine feet square, at the bottom of his allotment garden on East Road.
Mr. Speight was interested in art since boyhood and began by painting landscapes which earned great praise from Mr. J. D. Kenworthy the well known St. Bees artist. The steep rise in the cost of paints and canvas during the 1914-18 war caused Mr. Speight to give up painting and turn to modelling and sculpture. The materials he used were cement and plaster of paris, and clay taken from the bank of the River Ehen, behind his allotment. These unpromising rustic materials were transformed in the delicate, sensitive hands of Henry Speight into sculptures which have about them the quality of genius.
Mr. Speight preferred to model from life. He used callipers to measure exactly every detail of his sitter's head and shoulders. He was also a shrewd and discerning student of human character and of how this is reflected in facial expression and bodily posture: and he had the talent to reproduce this in stone. His sculptures of human heads seem to breathe: and no one would have been surprised if one or other or of them were to speak.
Two local professional men, Mr. Kenworthy the artist and Mr. Ormerod the solicitor, decided to notify the Slade School of Art of Mr. Speight's work. The Director of the Slade School was so impressed with the photographs sent to him, that he offered to accept Mr. Speight as a student at the Slade, and advised him to submit specimens of his work to the Royal Academy for its summer exhibition. Mr. Speight had examples of his work accepted and actually exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1936 and again in 1938. He was unable to take up the offer of a place at the Slade, because he was a working man with a wife and family to support, and could not possibly afford to go to the Slade.
Mr. Speight was a modest, almost self-effacing man of diminutive stature. Most of his works were given away to his sitters; and many of them are treasured in the sitters' families. He had a natural in-born reluctance to accept any payment. At the time he was exhibiting at the Royal Academy, the angel font in Egremont parish church required repair. Mr. Speight was invited to repair it: which he did. He made an excellent job of it: and when the church council asked for his bill, he refused to accept any payment whatsoever. He said he was so impressed by the beauty of the carving of the stonework of the church and its font that he considered it a great privilege to have been asked to do the repair.
In Egremont Methodist Sunday School there was a very fine bust of Mr. Joseph McGuffie, a life-long worker for this church. The facial expression and the posture of the head are perfect. This bust was one of the first works of Henry Speight to receive publicity.
In the Presbytery of the Roman Catholic Church in Egremont there used to be another fine bust of the late Father W. F. Tate, which was also the work of Mr. Speight.
Mr. Speight, a staunch member of the Roman Catholic Church, was an ecumenical craftsman, years ahead of his time. He loved the countryside around Egremont: and he expressed this love in his paintings.
He also loved humanity: and this is manifest in the many sculptures he made of men of character - such as John Hannah, the old council roadman with his matted wiry hair, furrowed brow, lined face and bushy moustache; and James Devlin the school attendance officer; and Jack Rigg the boxer.
Henry Speight is an artist of whom Egremont can be proud: and his work deserves to be more widely known.

CHRISTOPHER STEELE PORTRAIT PAINTER (1733-1767)

In the eighteenth century, Kendal in Westmorland became the centre of small school of English portrait painters. There were four of them.
The most famous of the four was George Romney. He was the son of a village carpenter, who left school at the age of eleven and worked for the next ten years as an apprentice in his father's carpenter's shop. At the age of 21, his talent for portraiture was discovered by an influential woman of Kendal, who had him apprenticed to a young painter, aged only 22, who had opened a studio in one of the Kendal years. His name was Christopher Steele; and he came from Egremont. He is regarded as the founder of the Kendal school of portrait painters. In terms of natural artistic ability, he was the most gifted of the four: but in terms of achievement, owing to defects of character, he was the least successful.
He was the son of an Egremont tallow-chandler (a manufacturer and retailer of tallow candles, which were then in great demand for domestic lighting): and he was socially very well connected. On his father's side he came of a long line of yeoman farmers, who farmed Acrewalls, near Arlecdon, round about the year 1600. On his mother's side he came of a long line of Church of England clergy. His maternal grandfather Christopher Denton became rector of Gosforth at the early age of 21, married a local heiress of the wealthy Sherwen family, moved into his bride's more comfortable home at Gosforth Gate, and remained contented as rector of Gosforth for 50 years, and died there in harness at the age of 71.
Through his mother, Christopher Steele was related to at least four wealthy West Cumberland families: to the Bensons of Egremont who owned Old Hall and the King's Arms, and had shares in the two paper mills at Newhouse and High Mill: also to the Pooles of Gosforth Hall: and to the Benns of Starmire (now Ingwell): and through the Benns to the Senhouses of Whitehaven, Seascale and Netherhall.

With such potentially lucrative family connections among the merchant community and gentry of his native West Cumberland, Christopher Steele did not even have to leave home, in order to become a successful and prosperous portrait painter. Instead, according to the critics and art historians, he became an idle, work-shy extravagant sponger on other people. He had an insatiable wanderlust. Before he was twenty years of age he went to Paris to study under Carle Van Loo, the distinguished Court painter to king Louis XV of France. This gave him an introduction to the pleasure-loving high society of Paris: and he spent more time taking lessons in deportment than in the art of portrait painting. He acquired and cultivated and kept up for the rest of his short life, the fine dress and airs and graces of an elegant eighteenth century French dandy. When he returned to England, he caused a sensation; and the inhabitants of Egremont, who had known him all his life, nicknamed him the Count; and as Count Steele he was known for the remainder of his life.

The Count had undoubted natural talent as a painter; and he gave his pupils in Kendal a good grounding in the art of portraiture. But he lacked the patience and capacity for hard work needed to complete portraits. He made his pupils finish them for him, as part of their training. He himself was far more interested in some young ladies who came to him for instruction in the then fashionable accomplishment of painting and sketching. The Count had considerable natural charm which he exercised on one of these young ladies, a wealthy heiress named Amy Grundy. He persuaded her to elope with him to Gretna Green: and he left his pupil Romney, in Kendal, to pacify the bride's infuriated family and angry trades people with unpaid bills, and to finish and sell the Count's unfinished portraits.
After his marriage, the Count continued his old life style, moving incessantly and piling up debts, and neglecting his painting. A wealthy relative, Mrs. Senhouse of Whitehaven, died and left £100 to the Count and £200 to the Count's sister. He persuaded his sister and his wife to join him in the purchase of some property in Cheshire: and he then proceeded to borrow money on mortgages raised on the security of this property. With this money he was able to continue to live extravagantly in idleness.
His wife died: and he decided to try his luck by emigrating to the West Indies, leaving to friends the thankless task of straightening out his affairs and settling his debts.
From the West Indies he moved on to Maryland on the American mainland, where his brother Henry had built up a thriving business as a merchant trading with England. In Maryland the Count sponged on his brother as he had done on other people for most of his life. He was now a very sick man; and his brother paid for his passage back to England, where the Count died, aged only 34 at the end of August 1767. He was buried in Egremont churchyard.
Such is the hitherto accepted view of Christopher Steele. Hardly anybody, who has written about Christopher Steele, has had a good word to say about him. He has been dismissed as a weak, extravagant, idle, irresponsible playboy with very little artistic talent. It was thought that only two genuine portraits, actually signed by Steele, existed; and that any others must have been the joint works of Steele and one or other of his pupils. But within the last ten years, new evidence has been uncovered which calls for a reappraisal of this much condemned man.
When the Count returned to Egremont to die in 1767, he brought with him a letter from his brother Henry to their uncle John Benson, the proprietor of the King's Arms. This letter disclosed that Christopher Steele was an epileptic, periodically incapacitated by this affliction and physically incapable of managing his own affairs. He was easily put on by other people. His brother Henry pleads with Uncle John Benson and another Uncle Thomas Poole of Gosforth to become trustees for Christopher, to manage his affairs for him and to protect him from unscrupulous spongers.
In 1973 and again in 1982 exhibitions of Cumbrian portrait painters have been held at the Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal. The research undertaken to prepare for these exhibitions has brought to light 16 portraits painted by Christopher Steele, most of them in private ownership. This discovery of 16 works by Steele casts doubt on the reputation he has acquired of being a mere indolent dabbler in art of no real artistic merit. There may be other Steele portraits in private ownership, awaiting discovery.
Christopher Steele is an artist who needs to be rehabilitated: and if such rehabilitation can be made, it may add one more name to the number of Egremothians of whom Egremont can feel proud.

THOMAS TICKELL (1685-1740)

Oxford Professor, Public Servant, Poet and Man of Letters
In the great dining hall of Queen's College, Oxford, there hangs by the side of the great fireplace, a fine portrait in oils attributed to the distinguished portrait painter Sir Godfrey Kneller, It shows the fine figure of a man, handsome in his full bottomed wig, and distinguished looking in the elegant costume of the period.
This man was an Egremothian of some distinction. His name was Thomas Tickell (known generally as Tickell the Poet, to distinguish him from other Thomas Tickells in the family).
His father, Rev. Richard Tickell, rector of Egremont 1673-1692, was the son of the steward of the Lowther estates, responsible for running the Whitehaven Collieries. His mother was Margaret Gale, daughter of the other Lowther estates steward, who was a successful and prosperous merchant and ship-owner trading between Whitehaven and America.
Thomas Tickell, the poet, was only 6 years old when his father, the rector of Egremont died. The widowed mother and her children moved to Whitehaven to be among her Gale relations. At this time one of her brothers, George Gale, was actively engaged in the tobacco trade between Whitehaven and Virginia. In America, George Gale married a young widow, called Mrs. Mildred Washington. She, and her Washington children, came over to Whitehaven with George Gale. One of these children, then aged 6, was Augustine Washington who was to grow up to be the father of George Washington, the first President of the United States. The future father of George Washington was, for a time, a childhood playmate in Whitehaven of Thomas Tickell of Egremont, the future poet.
Thomas Tickell, the poet, was left fatherless at the age of six. His grandfather Tickell died a year later; and his grandmother Tickell only a year after that.
Despite these disadvantages, Thomas Tickell was a brilliant child. He won a scholarship to St. Bees at the early age of nine; and again a scholarship from St. Bees to Oxford when he was only fifteen; and he took his B.A. degree at Oxford when he was only nineteen.
He wrote his first poem (which was about Oxford) when he was twenty. He became a fellow of Queen's College and Professor of Poetry at Oxford, when he was twenty-five; and he held these two positions for the next sixteen years.

Throughout this sixteen year period, he was very busy turning out poetry, much of it political in support of the Whig (liberal) party to which he belonged. In an age when literary men lashed their political opponents mercilessly in print, Thomas Tickell was noted for his courtesy and fair mindedness towards his Tory opponents: and his poetry was well received by both Whigs and Tories, alike.
Aside from politics, Tickell translated into English verse the entire first book of the Iliad of Homer. He would have gone on to translate the rest of the Iliad but for the virulent opposition of Alexander Pope who was also engaged on his translation of Homer, at the same time as Tickell. To avoid unpleasantness Tickell withdrew from the task.
In 1724 Tickell's literary efforts in support of the Whig interest were rewarded by his appointment as Chief Secretary to the government of Ireland. In Dublin he became a close friend of Dean Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels: and at the age of 40 he met, in Swift's Deanery, a wealthy Irish heiress, called Clotilda Eustace, whom he married. He did not enjoy the best of health: but for the remaining fifteen years of his life, he played an honourable part as chief executive of the government of Ireland and as a very efficient manager of his wife's extensive estates.
Altogether he showed remarkable brilliance as an intellectual, literary man, public servant, and practical man of affairs. When he died in 1740, at the comparatively early age of 54, he was mourned by political friends and foes alike, and loved with deep affection by his numerous relatives.