Bryan Morgan

I know it's probably too late to help in your search for information about Art Garfunkel in Sheffield but I have recently been reminded about when I picked him up on Cemetery Road and took him to the Kenwood Hotel. It was a dark, wet evening and I was driving up Cemetery Road when i noticed a soaking-wet figure, carrying a guitar case, standing at the edge of the pavement. As a guitar player myself, I thought that the rain was going to damage the case and probably the guitar, so I stopped to offer him a lift, which he accepted. In an American accent, he asked to be taken to the "Kenwood Hotel" - about a mile up the road. There was something very familiar about him and I said "Shouldn't I know you?" and he told me that he was Art Garfunkel. I didn't have time to find out what he was doing there, but I assumed he was staying at the hotel and had been walking back from a rehearsal somewhere in town when he had got caught in the rainstorm. I keep a fairly detailed diary but have been unable to trace which year this incident happened but I think it must have been in the 1970s. If you could give me a more positive idea of the year, I might be able to look up the diary and satisfy my own curiosity as well as yours. I also seem to remember from some more recent research that Art went on a loan "walkabout" trip from Ireland (I think) to Turkey. It may have been at about the time that I met him.

I remember patrons in the central stalls getting soaked with rain water when the roof was opened at the interval - following a thunderstorm!

Hello again, Richard. I'm afraid I don't remember your cousins John, Simon and Charles - it's possible that I never met them. I still wonder what became of the Jones boys, Christopher and Mark. I think that Christopher at first went into something to do with canals and Mark went into a wallpaper business with his father after he left Leyland Paints (which was the family business). Best regards, Bryan Morgan

Hi Richard, I've just picked up your enquiry about your uncle, John G Clixby whilst looking at the history of Whiteley Wood Hall, Common Lane, Ecclesall, Sheffield. John and Freda were great friends of our neighbours, Bryan and Ray Jones, on Marsh House Road, Ecclesall. Bryan Jones' family were Leyland Paint and Varnishing Company. My family often met John and Freda with the Jones. I was a student at the time in the late 1950's and the Clixbys allowed me to earn a bit of pocket money by gardening at their house at Hollow Meadows, Moscar, way up on the moors. They seemed to have a passion for large old (sometimes derelict) halls and had made an offer in October 1957 for Whiteley Wood Hall, which wasn't accepted. They went to live even further out in the wilds at Sugworth Hall, overlooking Strines reservoir. They eventually lived in Baslow Hall, which as you say is now Fischers Baslow Hall House Hotel. I think they inspired the Jones to buy and live in "The Tower" at Hathersage for a short time.