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The
Call
of
a
Grouse
Led
to
a
Lifetimes
Calling
in
Natural
History
and
Photography.
These famous sons of Thwaite, Richard and Cherry Kearton were born of humble beginnings. Although their forebears were descendants of the Wharton family, landowners in Yorkshire and Westmoreland since 1350, their parents John and his wife Jane, two daughters Jane and Margaret and another son Foster farmed a few acres of land in upper Swaledale and lived in a small stone cottage called Corner House.
Like any young dales lad Richard had a passion for the outdoors and in particular birds and their nests. He boasts in his memoirs that he had also perfected the art of trout tickling in Muker Beck, much to the annoyance of a neighbour a fearsome women with a high pitched voice.
Whilst climbing a tree to inspect a nest he fell and injured his leg and was promptly carried off to a bone setter surgeon in a country pub in Westmoreland. Diagnosed with a dislocation and fortified with brandy the surgeon and a couple of assistants to 'hold him down' carried out an operation. He was made much worse by the ordeal which ended with a permanent disability. This all happened before his tenth birthday, Richard was unable to play rough and tumble games with the other village boys because of this injury, so his grandfather taught him to love birds and he would listen spellbound by his rhymes. They dropped feathers from the bridge over the beck and watched as swallows caught them on the wing. They fed the birds in summer and helped them build their nests in spring and a close companionship was forged with nature.
The brothers attended the endowed national school at Muker, a mile from Thwaite. Parents were charged two pennies a week for each child attending. Any child misbehaving would be tied to a table leg by a piece of white thread and severely lectured by the school mistress who was the wife of the village cobbler. Aged seventeen Richard began his apprenticeship in sheep farming which was part and parcel of the families life, salving and smearing sheep with Norway tar to kill parasites and butter to bind their wool to keep out the rain and cold. In early summer the sheep would be washed in the beck prior to sales and shearing. The brothers also spent time on the high fells with their sheep where the Kearton family held grazing rights.
In the autumn of 1882 Mr.Sidney Galpin, the son of Thomas Dixon Galpin who with Petter and Cassell created the publishing house Cassell's visited Swaledale as a shooting guest on Muker Moor. At this chance meeting with Richard the pair stood at Bull Bog, close to the Buttertubs when Richard called in a Grouse which was promptly shot by Galpin. Impressed by Richards ability to call in these reckless birds, Galpin offered him a job at Belle Savauge Yard and Richard started out for London on 10th. October 1882 and what was to become a famous and successful career in writing, publishing, broadcasting and lecturing as far a field as America as a guest of President Roosevelt.
John Kearton died in 1887 and Cherry made the journey from Swaledale to join his brother at Cassell's. Armed with a cheap second hand camera and keenness to experiment with wildlife photography, Richard's text and Cherry's photographs proved to be the perfect blend for the publishers. Their first collaborative work, British Birds Nests and Egg Collecting was published in 1895 and many more books followed in many languages.
Cherry could be described as a Victorian rock athlete, his head for heights and fearless ascents of sea cliffs on remote Scottish islands and further a field resulted in some spectacular photography. The importance of these photographs of St Kilda cannot be understated as they were taken only a few years prior to the start of the islanders evacuations and are therefore an invaluable record of the island's history.
After leaving Cassell's in 1894 Cherry continued to experiment with his photography, 'Cherry Kearton Big Game Photographer' is believed to be the first publication containing flash photography depicting a lion and a rhino. He also took the first cinematic aerial footage of London from an airship in 1908, nearly coming to grief in the process as the craft lost height and stability nearly hitting a building and exploding. Setting up his own film company, he travelled to India, Borneo, Canada and Africa capturing images of wildlife in still photographs and early films he caught the publics imagination both here in Britain and in America. An expedition off the African coast resulted in his best selling book; Island of Penguins.
Captain Cherry Kearton (Frontiersman) 25th. Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers served in East Africa during the First World War. He was described by Driscoll, his commander as 'just the sort of man of experience he needed', his knowledge of East Africa led to him being appointed as an Intelligence Officer but he admitted that he was never a parade-ground soldier. After the war he continued producing natural history and expedition films. He married his second wife Ada Forrest, a famous opera singer and had two children by his first wife but little is know of them. Ada gave up her singing career to accompany Cherry on his trips and they eventually settled in Surrey. On September 27th.1940 he was leaving Broadcasting House where he had just broadcast a children's programme about animals when he collapsed and died in the street. His widow wrote; never once did he take life needlessly, he carried the camera far more happily than the gun and it was his earnest hope that one day safaris would take place of those shooting expeditions when Gods creatures are so shamefully and wantonly slaughtered.
Members of the Kearton family are buried in Muker Church graveyard and Richard's and Cherry's lives are commemorated with marble plaques set into the front wall of their former school at Muker which has undergone conversion. The Royal Geographical Society's Cherry Kearton Medal is still awarded for outstanding work in the field of natural history to this day. Their publications are sought after and traded around the world either at auction or by dealers in antiquarian books.
The families home at Thwaite can easily be found, look for the inscriptions in the stone lintel above the cottage's front door, other references to the Kearton's are, the Kearton Country Hotel and Kearton Holme, a converted barn and dairy adjoining Porch House.
Richard Kearton 1862-1928
Cherry Kearton 1871-1940
  
 
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