'A Present from Kirk Yetholm' (by-the-sea)

Yetholm History Society is delighted to have recently received from Jenni Smith, of Huntsman’s Cottage, the colourful mug shown above. Our Heritage Centre has limited space, so we don’t collect or display many objects – our collecting policy is that anything we accept must have a connection with Yetholm or the Bowmont Valley.

At first sight the mug can’t have any link with Yetholm. We are, after all, over twenty miles from the sea. However if the mug is turned around the following text appears; ‘A Present from Kirk Yetholm’. It will make a nice companion piece to the Kirk Yetholm cup-and-saucer which were donated to the society by Betty Mallen (see below - currently on display in the Heritage Centre). All of these items probably date to the early years of the twentieth-century, when Yetholm was growing as a local tourist destination. Wealthy people had holidayed in the area since the early nineteenth-century – shooting was popular with gentelmen. With the coming of the railway to Mindrum, opened in the 1880s, humbler folk from the Central Belt and Tyneside came to lodge for a week in the summer with locals. Many visitors went to the Gipsy Royal Palace in Kirk Yetholm, where they were entertained by conversation with the monarch and a display of coronation regalia. Even after the death of the last king, in 1902, Yetholm remained the ‘Gipsy Capital’ in popular imagination - this association is reflected in the cup-and-saucer, which shows the Gipsy Palace in Kirk Yetholm.

The image on the cup and saucer shows the brick porch, with was added to the palace after the coronation of King Charles in 1898. Click on image to enlarge.

Why, then, does the mug given to us by Jenni show an image of the seaside? A scoot round the internet shows several similar cups and mugs for sale. Some have no images on them, just the message – ‘A Present from…’ Others, as with our cup-and-saucer, show an image from the place concerned. Many are from well-known resorts, as with mug from the Crystal Palace (below left), which has similar lettering to ours, but some are from quite small villages, like Yetholm. The image below right is taken from the blog of Market Lavington Museum*. I’m sorry to say that I had never heard of the place or knew where it was – probably the people of Market Lavington are in equal ignorance about Yetholm – but it too seems to have been something of a tourist destination at the time.

Clearly such items could be ordered from manufacturers, who would customize their designs for the vendor who placed the order. Looking closely at the Yetholm mug it is clear that the type used to print ‘Kirk Yetholm’ is slightly different from the type used for ‘A Present from…’ But whether it was the vendor or the manufacturer who, in this case, chose the image is unknown. It must have been confusing for whoever received this present, if they didn’t know the area, to associate Yetholm with a day on the beach! And what did the locals make of it – most children in the village only saw the beach once a year, if they were lucky, when the population departed en masse for the annual Spittal Trip.

Whatever the case, having now viewed several similar souvenirs from the period online, I think it is fair to saw that this Yetholm example is one of the most charming!

*See HERE. Market Lavington is in Wiltshire on the northern edge of the Salisbury Plain. It has to be admitted, as is clear from the image, that Market Lavington is a rather more substantial place than Yetholm.