Groups

See below an obituary to Dr Joan S Skinner as published on the University of Leicester website which is acknowledged.

PEOPLE - BEREAVEMENTS

Obituary: Dr Joan S. Skinner

Leicester author, heritage campaigner and industrial historian died aged 82 years

Dr Joan S. Skinner 16.06. 1923 – 19.03. 2006

Background and Early Life

Joan Skinner was born in Manchester in 1923 and then brought up in Endon, Staffordshire. For the whole of her life Joan was a Manchester United fan. Her father was a master builder and was in the Royal Flying Corps. Her mother was a tailor/dressmaker. During 1940-42 Joan was in the WAAFs (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force) stationed at Harwell and Abingdon. She was discharged on medical grounds and began working as a probate clerk for solicitors. Then 1946-1948 Joan was in Germany working for the Control Commission in Hamburg in charge of organising transport.

Joan was married in Canterbury in 1948. Her husband was a prison officer and in 1950 they moved to prison officers’ housing in South Knighton, Leicester. They had three sons, Duncan, Alistair and Rory. During this period Joan was following her mother’s trade of dressmaking. The marriage broke up in 1964 and Joan brought up the sons and a niece on her own. From the late sixties to late seventies Joan Skinner was personal assistant to Professor Sir Hans .L. Kornberg of the Biochemistry Department, University of Leicester when researchers in the department worked on nucleic acids and slime moulds. DNA and the double helix. Professor H.L. Kornberg later went to Cambridge to become Master of Christ College. Whilst at the university Joan was active in the trade union, NALGO, for which she sat on the industrial tribunals’ panel.

Reinvention as author, heritage campaigner and industrial historian From being a mother, clerk and dressmaker, Joan decided to complete her education during the 1960s and in the process totally reinvented herself. She took A-Levels at Alderman Newton’s School and then in 1969 took a part-time degree at the Open University. She completed her first degree in History in 1975 aged 52 years and was a founder member of the Leicester Open University graduates’ society.

Joan went on to study a second degree in History of Art and Design in the Modern Period at Leicester Polytechnic (now De Montfort University) graduating in 1981. Whilst there she researched the Leicester firm, Dryad, and was employed briefly to build the historical archive of Dunlop. Joan went onto to gain a doctorate in architectural history at Liverpool University in 1990 which was published as the book Form and Fancy: Factories and Factory Buildings by Wallis Gilbert & Partners, 1916-1939, Liverpool University Press in 1997. This was the 1930s firm of architects that built many Art Deco factories such as the Firestone, Hoover and Coty Factories on the Great West Road, London. Despite recent ill health, Joan remained invincible and was engaged in writing a book on Leicester’s nineteenth century industrial heritage when she died.

She became active in several societies including The Tiles Society, The Twentieth Century Society and The Victorian Society. As a member of the Tiles Society she was a brilliant Events Secretary and then Assistant Membership Secretary. Each of these societies regularly called upon her energy, research skills and detailed knowledge.

The Leicester Group of the Victorian Society

The Victorian Society campaigns for the Victorian and Edwardian heritage and as part of its educational work organises lecture, walks and tours. Joan Skinner was one of the founders of the Leicester Group established by Professors Jim Dyos and Bill Brock in 1977 and was a committee member, activist and researcher for over thirty years until her death.

Joan had been chair of the Leicester Group of the Victorian Society in its early days and many will remember her involvement in the seventies campaign to save the St Martin’s area of central Leicester from commercial redevelopment with what she called ‘Noddy’ architecture. Under her leadership the group produced an illustrated leaflet detailing the history of all the significant buildings. Amongst them she uncovered the history of the only other Leicester buildings by F. J. Hames, the architect of Leicester Town Hall. One still stands in Silver Street.

Support for Conservation Officers

Joan Skinner was well known among Leicestershire conservation officers to whom she gave advice and information on historic buildings. Her report just a couple of years ago on the industrial treasures of Leicester’s waterside contributed to Leicester city council’s newly declared and hopefully more cautious and sensitive approach to redevelopment along the riverside.

Guided Walks

She regularly took guided walks around Leicester and other parts of the county including Charnwood, Hinckley, Loughborough and Market Bosworth. Victorian Society Committee members remember a fairly recent and notable Saturday when Joan, in her eighties and with walking stick in hand, educated us in the plethora of wonderful Victorian and Edwardian buildings she had discovered in Loughborough.

She had arrived at the crack of dawn and already undertaken a recce of her planned route. At ten in the morning the Victorian Society group turned up. She proceeded to take us around the town meticulously telling us about the buildings and their history, without a note. The tour continued until four in the afternoon at which point her followers were all ‘done in’. Not Joan, her adrenaline raised, she still had another area of the town she really wanted to show us! She knew so much and generously wanted to share it.

Industrial Buildings

Factories were her great love. She saw them as ‘potent images’ which ‘had a vitality and boldness, an emotional content that touched the human psyche, particularly of those to whom the manufacturer owed his living – his workforce and his customers’. It was this that lay behind her efforts to persuade the rest of us that these factories and commercial buildings were worthy of conservation.

She used her prodigious knowledge to both raise the profile and successfully conserve many significant factories and offices. Over the years seven major industrial/commercial buildings, all but one in Leicester itself, were given listed status by English Heritage as a result of her researches. The last was the Atkins Brothers Factory in Hinckley – listed as recently as February and probably the most important of all hosiery factories, not just in Leicestershire, but the whole country.

Industrial/commercial buildings in Leicester researched by Joan and given Listed status:

Luke Turner & Co Elastic Web Factory, Deacon/Henshaw Street, Leicester, Stott & Son, 1893, Listed Grade II

The Liberty Shoe Factory, Eastern Boulevard, Leicester, H.H. Thompson, 1918-19, Listed Grade II, demolished 2002.

Richard Harris & Sons Warehouse, 35, King Street, Leicester, c.1840 William Flint, 1851 Flint & Wickes, 1856 Flint & Shenton, 1859 and 1862 James Hunter, 1866, 1867 Shenton & Baker, Listed Grade II

Frisby Jarvis Building (formerly St Leonards Works, Worsted Spinning Mills), 33, Frog Island, North Bridge, Leicester, Shenton and Baker, 1867, Listed Grade II. Destroyed by fire on Friday 18th March, 2005.

Richard Roberts Hosiery Factory (formerly Messrs Toone and Kelsey Ltd Hosiery), Junior Street, Burgess Street, Leicester, 1915, G. Lawton Brown and Percy C. Jones, Grade II

Exchange Buildings, 34-50, Rutland Street/ 61-67 Halford Street, Leicester, Stockdale Harrison, 1888, Listed Grade II

Atkins Building, Lower Bond Street, Hinckley, Goddard& Paget 1873-5 and Goddard & Company 1910

Amongst other buildings she researched for the Leicester Group of the Victorian Society were:

H.T.H. Peck Building, West Bridge, Leicester, Stockdale Harrison & Son, 1933

Benjamin Russell & Son Factory and Warehouse, Eastern Boulevard, Leicester, J.W. Simpson, 1910 and Fosbrooke & Bedingfield, 1924/5

Hoskins Brewery, Beaumanor Road./Robert Hall Street, Leicester, established 1877

Alexandra House, (Faire Brothers Bootlace Warehouse) Rutland Street/Southampton Street, Leicester, 1895-8, Edward Burgess, Listed Grade II Failed attempt to get up-graded.

Faircharm Trading Estate, formerly St Mary’s Mill (1086) and William & Alfred Bates Ltd India Rubber Factory, 1867-1925, off Evelyn Drive, Leicester, (later Dunlop)

Hawley & Johnson Dye Works, Woodgate, Leicester, Keites, Fosbrooke and Bedingfield, 1913

Local Legacy

Leicester City and the county of Leicestershire will forever owe a debt of gratitude to Joan Skinner for raising awareness of the heritage and saving so many fine industrial and commercial buildings. Joan was an irreplaceable asset to the Leicester Group of the Victorian Society and will be greatly missed by many for whom she was a courageous and loyal friend.

Rowan Roenisch