It was a week after the funeral of textile artist and teacher Joan Charnley, who died, at 84, in the summer of 2016, that her solicitor got in touch with her neighbours, Julian Bovis and Nigel Durkan, to tell them she had left them her house – a tall, listed Georgian building in Uppermill, on the edge of Saddleworth moor outside Manchester – and that she would like, although she understood it might not be possible, for it to be turned into what she quaintly called an “art house”. She described the two men, in her will, as her “soulmates”. In her lifetime, she referred to them simply as “the boys”. I meet “the boys” – both middle-aged – before the opening, on 6 April, of the Weavers Factory and at the end of more than two years of devoted slog during which they have made their neighbour’s dream come true. The gallery got its name because these houses were once a pre-industrial weavers’ factory. Their windows look on to a former steam mill. The houses’ window frames are painted black (originally to hide the soot). “Even the soot here is listed,” Bovis laughs.
Over lunch in their own house, Bovis and Durkan reminisce about their relationship with Charnley. What I want to know is: did they have any idea she was leaving them her house? None, they say. They were busy organising her funeral when the news came through and too grief-stricken to take it in. Durkan recalls every detail of the funeral (Bovis wrote the eulogy, Durkan oversaw refreshments). Two huge Saddleworth pies had been ordered, with “JO” the decoration in pastry on one, and “AN” adorning the other. But once they had recovered from all the work that follows a death, surely they must have hesitated before taking on the daunting transformation of her house? “No – we’d have been scared not to do it,” Bovis says. Charnley, they imagine, must have been waiting for the right moment to tell them about her plans, always believing there would be more time. Her aunt had lived to 104, she had told them she hoped to do the same.
Joan Charnley was born in Southport, in 1928, and married Scottish artist Archie MacDonald in the early 60s (he died in the 90s). The marriage was childless. Charnley seems to have chosen Bovis and Durkan as the sons she never had. Bovis, a former art director and artist himself, and Durkan, an art therapist, recall that there was nothing sudden about the relationship with Joan. They moved into their house in 2012 (she had been living in hers since 1963) but it was three months before they received an invitation to tea.
Bovis has since observed that the better she knew them, the further into the house they were permitted to go. At first, it was ground floor only; later, they were invited into what she jokingly referred to as the “grand salon” on the first floor; only much later – the ultimate vote of confidence – were they admitted to her studio at the top. It was in that studio, after her death, that they were thrilled to discover an “unbelievable” hoard of textiles going back to the 40s, 50s and 60s. Durkan explains that she had taken part in the Festival of Britain and shown her designs to Liberty and Heal’s but that Heal’s had judged them “too advanced” and warned her: “You’ll never sell them.” (“Idiots!” Durkan fumes.) Charnley’s work was ahead of its time, although Sanderson took a design called Beachcomber, now in the V&A. They show me a wonderful selection of textiles, including a bold, Ghanaian-inspired pattern, a profuse garden (she was a skilful botanical artist) and intricate repeat patterns of shells, leaves and birds. “We want to make her famous,” they say.
Asked what Joan was like as a character, they alight on the same adjective: “Cheeky.” Durkan says: “Her public persona was upstanding, proper, well-spoken – queen of etiquette – yet behind it all, she was raucous and subversive. She thought she was subtle but the faces she would pull!” There was more than a touch of the thespian about her.
What comes across most strongly is the fun the three of them had. There were themed dinners where Charnley would appear in fancy dress: with French moustache, Indian crown, Russian fur hat (depending on the menu). Reminiscing about the days when she taught at Flatford Mill in Suffolk with the painter John Nash (she and her husband had also been friends with LS Lowry), she would shout out: “We’d be smoking, drinking whisky and eating marmalade!” Her voice was “like Margaret Rutherford’s”. Durkan is keen that no one gets the wrong end of the stick: “We didn’t look after her. She was no doddery old bird, she was fierce.” They show me a snap of her dressed up in Father Christmas kit – “the full Santa”. She had turned up on their doorstep with rouged cheeks, a homemade, cotton-wool beard and with a black bin-liner stuffed full of gifts (little did they know what a huge gift would one day be coming their way).
During the 50s and early 60s, before she married, Charnley had lectured in textiles at Great Yarmouth (the school no longer exists). And she only missed out on becoming principal because, Durkan explains, unmarried women were not considered eligible during that era. Since her death, the two men have made a pilgrimage to East Anglia, taking with them her sketchbooks and meticulously – delightedly – retracing her steps.
They explain that she was never going to be held back by being a widow. She once told them that, on the day her husband died, there had been a village party going on at the top of the hill. She told herself she had a choice and that life, like the party, must go on – and went up the hill. Her spirit seldom flagged: at 80 she took off on a trip to the Galápagos islands.
It took months, after Charnley’s death, to clear the house. It had been a weaver’s cottage, a temperance hotel, a gambling den and a coffin-makers (Archie MacDonald had even fashioned a table out of coffin boards). But it was a house never destined to be funereal and besides, it is Bovis and Durkan’s belief that the most powerful memorials are about continuing life: at the Weavers Factory, workshops will flourish in what was once Charnley’s studio. It took a year to convert the house – fortunately, Bovis had, as a young man, trained as an architect. The result is a gem: stylishly quirky, in keeping with Charnley’s eccentricity. There are, in addition to the assorted gallery spaces, a tea-bar and shop. In what used to be the kitchen, there is an antique grocer’s counter with cards and wrapping paper reproducing Charnley’s sketches – another form of afterlife. On the ground floor, there is handsome York stone paving, lifted from the small, fern-filled garden. The grand salon is an elegant space with beams that were, as Durkan has recently discovered, taken from Prussian ships decommissioned at the end of the 1700s.
They had been fearful that converting the house might neutralise Joan – but the Georgian building was never about to turn into a white cube. “It’s a gallery and her house,” they say. They have hung on to two of her chairs, her father’s stepladder and her little kitchen stool. They are determined that because she could not abide “sloppy work or mediocrity”, they will only show work by artists they love. Two years’ worth of shows are already planned. They stress this will never be a “poncey” gallery. It will be “democratic”. There will be no manifestos by artists: the work will speak for itself. But there will be a selection of short films, made by Bovis, about artists’ lives, shown in the “blue movie room” (thus named because it is painted blue).
The focus will be on young, as-yet-unknown artists and older, neglected artists. They plan to feature Ivon and Jack (both 23), who are singular and lively furniture designers, and Seamus Killick, 28, born in Wales and based in Glasgow, who will receive the Factory’s first bursary with a project about fires in Saddleworth’s cotton mills. “We have also found loads of women like Joan. The wonderful potter Pat Kaye and the superb artist Elizabeth Wood are both octogenarians.” They are chuffed, too, to be involving students aged 16-18 from Oldham College who will be curating a show inspired by Charnley’s life (education was important to her). The invitation to the Weavers launch is a sketch by a 16-year-old, who was inspired by hearing that Charnley’s three favourite scents were freshly mown grass, lavender and Chanel No 5.
It is touching to meet Bovis and Durkan in a world where most stories about neighbours involve a failure to get on, and they admit to feeling emotional as they relive their friendship and show me around their immaculate gallery spaces. And when I suggest that the progression through the front door, into the grand salon and into the studio now seems to have gone a step further, Bovis agrees at once: “Into our heads.” And he then admits that the biggest surprise is that Joan is “in our lives more than ever before”.
