In 1986 I was managing an indoor market in Bristol and had my own stall of secondhand books there also. One Monday a man came in and asked if I would give him £15 for the volume he had in a bag he was holding under his arm, adding he urgently needed money for a cup of tea and a sandwich. Though I gave him the £15 I didn't look at the 'volume' for a day or two. When I did, I found it to be an album written in c1861, apparently pertaining to a group of young people from the Isle Of Wight called The Larky Lot Club, the text in copperplate handwriting and with numerous quirky illustrations scattered throughout. 

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There followed several years of intense research in which I tried to make sense of the album’s origins and purpose. It isn’t possible to itemise everything I discovered in this brief commentary. Suffice to say I was soon entirely distracted by the mysteries of the Larky Lot Club itself. Early on, I transcribed the copperplate content onto a computer to make it easier to read from day to day without damaging the album itself. I was baffled initially by the text’s esoteric nature, much of it requiring a long while of lateral thinking to access it. 

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In brief, I learned that from time to time members of the Larky Lot Club forwarded letters, poems and/or illustrations to Mary Crozier (the Larky Lot Club secretary) who lived at Westhill House in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. I've not yet been able to work out how each member came to know the others. Mary would transcribe the various items into this album. It is clear there are other Larky Lot albums out there somewhere since I've acquired, quite by accident, an ink sketch (made by the Larky Lot Club Limner, Mary Harriet Claudet) which in this instance shows the Club's fascination with Croquet. (See attachment.) I came across the sketch in c1987 at an antiques fair. I realised by its style it had been drawn by Mary Harriet Claudet and that it had probably once been in an album similar to the one now safely housed in the Archives of Southampton University but which had obviously been broken up if that were the case.

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The listed Larky Lot Club Rules reveal the Club's connection to various 'celebrities' who were friends and associates of Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson at the time (He lived in Farringdon, Freshwater, now a hotel.) These include Edward Lear, photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and even Queen Victoria herself. You'll note veiled references to the Queen (who frequented the Isle Of Wight at the time) as 'Mrs Brown'. The queen was sometimes satirically called this in reference to her friendship with John Brown, the Scotsman who became her personal attendant after the death of Prince Albert.(Their close relationship was explored in the 1997 feature film ‘Mrs Brown’ starring Dame Judi Dench and Billy Connolly.)

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Matthew Herbert Wilson (referred to as the Poet Laureate of The Larky Lot Club in the members' list when Tennyson himself lived near to Westhill House) was occasionally assigned to write poems for the other club members. It became apparent in this way the Club was satirically modelling itself on various local celebrities. These connections are never made explicit, one of the reasons it took so long to work out the goings-on documented in the album itself. 

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Fearing for the album's frailty, I had it rebound in authentic covers by a long-established book-binders here in Bristol. Though some prefer items such as this to remain in original condition, it may well have fallen apart had it not been done. The box in which the album is now protected was made by Bob Frost. I sold the album and its box to Raymond Turley in the late nineteen nineties. The minute the transaction was made, I wished I hadn't gone through with it. I was a bit broke at the time and felt I didn't have a choice. I was sure however, given Raymond Turley’s academic provenance and enthusiasm, the album would be in safe hands. 

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In the late 1980's I was invited by the then Tennyson Society to talk about the Club and their album at Farringford, Tennyson’s former home, now a hotel. (The Society is now being revitalised with new members.) The talk took place in Tennyson's former study. I was thereafter given a guided tour of the various Larky Lot locations (including Westhill House, both inside and out) by Isle of Wight Historian, Richard Hutchings. At that time no-one I met had heard of the Larky Lot which may indicate how well-guarded evidence of the Club’s existence was in its day. 

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I gave a brief talk on the Larky Lot on Radio Bristol in the 1980's, hoping to find out if anyone in this area had heard of them. An article on the Club subsequently appeared in the Bristol Evening Post for the same reason.   

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Since my own writing was going well, I endeavoured to get my (then) publisher, Fourth Estate to consider creating a saleable facsimile of the album, but after a cursory read-through of it they felt its content wasn’t explicit enough in its intentions to be viable as a published work, that is, without an extensive accompanying explanatory and fully-researched text. (Not my forte.) 

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For years I’d been hoping to find other references to the Larky Lot Club, focussing my enquiries on bookshops dealing in old manuscripts and other contemporary scrapbooks and journals. Then just recently my friend, writer Louise Gethin - when the Larky Lot came up in conversation - did a search on the name and suddenly a reference to the Club popped up, originating from the archives of the University of Southampton to whom the album had been passedon at some point.

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I’ve since acquired a digital copy of the Larky Lot album, thanks to those managing the University of Southampton archive. Now I can continue the research started all those years ago. Looking through the album again has re-awoken the enormous excitement I experienced when I first became acquainted with the original.

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Thanks again to The University of Southampton Archive, to Raymond Turley, to Richard Hutchings and, of course, to the long-gone but never forgotten Larky Lot Club and its indomitable members.  

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Any further discoveries and commentary will appear on this website. You might also like to access the University of Southampton Archive at www.soton.ac.uk/archives

tel: 02380592721

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Dave Peak. June 2024.