A Yorkshire poet in the family

I’ve just discovered a strange coincidence. In 1859, my great great grandfather James Casmey wrote a poem, A Voice From Hackfall, in praise of the 18^th-century landscape gardens at Hackfall Woods near Grewelthorpe, just south of Masham, North Yorkshire. That same wood fought off stiff competition to be awarded a grand prix in the EU Cultural Heritage Prize for conservation in 2011.

James Casmey was born in 1813 in Goa, and died on 24th December 1886 in Brighouse. He was a nailmaker, and, ironically, also an active teetotaller and co-founder of a temperance society in Staincross, just north of Barnsley. The rather rare name Casmey is still being passed down among my Rands cousins, and my brother Najm-ud-Din (to whom thanks for the genealogical research) uses it as an internet handle.