Category Archives: Yorkshire Folk

Who is and who was in Yorkshire. Down to earth folk from or linked to God’s Own County.

Hillbilly of Yorkshire

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Yorkshire can rightly boast about the ‘three peaks’ but little did we know that they hid the Yorkshire Hillbillies. The group have escaped from the set of Emmerdale Farm and The Commercial at Esholt. That is why they are called the Woolpackers with Zak Dingle on drums, Lisa Dingle on fiddle, Terry Woods lead singer and Vic Windsor.

Hillbilly Rock should have a minty red sauce on the outside and Emmerdale written through the rock. At least that is what the rock of Whitby, Scarborough and Filey tastes like.

American Hillbillies obviously were not named after Yorkshire emigrants as the term has derogatory connotations. US Hillbillies tend to live in the rural sticks and enjoy homemade hooch and a reputation for low educational qualifications.

The Power of We Yorkshire Folk

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15th October 2012 is the day when Bloggers from Yorkshire and all over the world unite in writing about one subject. The subject for this year’s Blog Action Day is “The Power of We” a celebration of people working together to make a positive difference in the world.

The organisers say that Community, Equality, Transparency/Anti-Corruption, Freedom, and People Power will be the sub-themes that Bloggers will write about on 15th October 2012.

Freedom generated by ‘Working together to make a positive difference’ is amply displayed by the team at Kidz in Kampz who raise funds for displaced children who left Burma seeking refuge in Thailand. They were herded into camps and not allowed to leave and Kidz in Kampz is a charity raising funds that directly help the education, health and well being of these children.

Community Hedon whose blog introduced us to the concept of blog action day.

People Power is being harnessed by Yorkshire business A View from the Hill. They aim to bring volunteers into contact with charities and match needs with wants. As a Community Interest Company they run informal and free networking events that help charities engage more effectively with people who want to help them.

Equality is a harder concept to extemporise when every person and community is different. We can’t be equal in every way but should not be differentiated, discriminated or demeaned based on differences.

Transparency/Anti-Corruption our Winges
Now we are getting to the heart of the matter. The examples of corruption and lack of transparency are too many to enumerate and whilst Yorkshire folk are known to be blunt and direct we could all remain transparent and supportive of community interest.
Let us start a campaign against being ‘economical with the truth’. We need to be able to trust the police (Hillsborough), our financial community (Bankers) and statistics which are so often corrupted to make a vested interests point.
We can’t trust ‘nest feathering’ politicians in Europe, Westminster or local councils so we must weed out the bad and support those with integrity, probity and rectitude.
If we get the politicians we deserve, what did we do to deserve our media? Let us have strong investigative journalism that exposes hypocrisy and fraud not a cheque book media obsessed with celebrity and their own corporate power.

To end on a positive note 2012 has seen great sporting triumphs with relatively drug free Olympics and Paralympics. Whilst money played its part in training and funding a good balance seems to have been struck with sponsorship and advertising. Of course we Yorkshire folk did our country proud – more power to the many ‘we’ people involved at all levels.

Marie Hartley’s Gayle

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Gayle and Duerley Beck by Marie Hartley

Marie Hartley MBE would have been 104 this week had she not died in Askrigg at the age of 100. Fortunately there is a significant legacy of 33 books chronicling the Dales, numerous paintings and wood cuts and The Dales Countryside Museum at Hawes. Marie, born in Morley, went to the Leeds College of Art and the Slade School London where she specialised in wood engraving. She worked with two other redoubtable women Ella Pontefract and then Joan Ingilby.

With fellow Dales affectionado Ella Pontefract they published ‘Wensleydale’ in 1936 and many of the insights remain true today. For example they noted that may villages were built like little clumps up both sides of the valleys but ‘often two of them come together like sisters, as Hawes and Gayle, Bainbridge and Askrigg, Redmire and Castle Bolton.’   In 1936 not unlike now milk and cheese were the most important products of the local farms. Via the Milk Train, over 2 million gallons of milk a year were sent to London as part of the Milk marketing board’s sales campaign, using the Wensleydale Railway.

Knitters of Gayle

‘The Old Hand-knitters of the Dales’ was a 1951 book with Joan Ingilby that chronicled the development of knitting throughout the dales. Sold at Richmond Market, stockings and knitware were made in the homes of Gayle long after it declined in other parts of Yorkshire. Knitting started in the mid 16th century and it continued to be a successful activity, employing 400 knitters in Hawes homes, until the advent of machinery towards the end of the 19th century.

Gayle Mill started life in 1784 as a cotton-spinning mill, powered by a 22′ diameter overshot waterwheel, and over the next century, as economic conditions in the Dales changed, was also used for spinning flax and then wool for the local knitting cottage industry in the valley. Marie would be pleased to see the story continue into the 21st century as the latest sustainable technologies enable Gayle Mill to be create all its own carbon-neutral energy for heating and power from it’s reopened water powered generation system. Visit Gayle  Mill and see how it has benefited from the BBC restoration programme.

Bringing Knitting up to date you can read Knitting for Yorkshire here

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Knitters of Gayle by Sue Hasker – catching up after being away. ‘Detail from the millennium window in St Margaret’s church, Hawes, Yorkshire Dales. The window depicts the many aspects of life in the town.’ CC BY-ND 2.0

Duncan Preston Soap and Shakespeare Star Actor

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How many Yorkshire actors do you know that combine soap humor and Shakespeare? Well straight from The Bradford Playhouse and the Civic Playhouse via RADA I give you the career to date of Duncan Preston.
Duncan Preston is a Bradford-born actor who recently starred as Doug Potts in ITV’s Emmerdale. Duncan has now moved back from London, where he studied and excelled at RADA, to live near ‘Hotten’.

Duncan is well known for his roles in the TV sitcoms Dinnerladies, Surgical Spirit and Acorn Antiques. His successful collaboration with Victoria Wood has seen him take on many characters in Victoria’s sketch shows and her All Day Breakfast.

Duncan Preston’s impressive range of theatre credits include roles in various Royal Shakespeare Company productions such as Romeo & Juliet and Midsummer Nights Dream.
Duncan must be hard working as his TV credits include roles in The Professionals, All Creatures Great and Small, Bergerac, Heartbeat, My Family, Casualty, The Bill, Harry Enfield and Chums (as Kevin the teenager’s Dad) Robin of Sherwood, Coronation Street, The New Statesman, Press Gang, Boon, Peak Practice, Coogan’s Run, Midsomer Murders and Holby City.

Film credits include A Passage to India, Porridge, If Tomorrow Comes, Pat & Margaret, Happy Since I Met You, Scandalous, Macbeth and Milk

A range of DVD’s featuring Duncan Preston are available from Amazon. Try to raise a laugh, titter or smile when you go back down memory lane watching any of the classic series that featured Duncan.

Duncan Preston Other Interests

Duncan is a passionate supporter of The Alzheimers Society

The Bradford-born actor has been watching the Bradford Bulls play since the age of three, and that is in the last century! Duncan has been a campaigner to help save and refund the rugby club even trying to encourage the former chairman Chris Caisley to return to the helm.

Duncan received an honorary doctorate from Bradford University in 2000

Audio Books for a Dales Father’s Day

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Is your Dad struggling to see well enough to read small or LCD print? If so, then rather than a traditional book or kindle, you may want to consider an audio book for father’s day.
If your Dad is too young to be loosing his sight he might appreciate an audio book to listen to in the car when he’s stuck on the motorway or at some road works.

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Mr ‘erriot is good for a smile or two as he takes you through his entertaining reminiscences about his life as a Dales vet. There are 8 audio books in the series including the above The Lord God Made Them All which is read by Christopher Timothy.
On this site you can read more about James Herriot of Askrigg and Thirsk

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In ‘Up and Down in the Dales’ Gervase Phinn reads his own work. His other titles The Other Side of the Dale, Over Hill and Dale and Head Over Heels in the Dales have already been read on radio 4 but an audio book can be slotted into the player at any time.

Alternative Father’s Day Presents

Sit your Dad down and ask him what life was like when he was your age. He probably wont tell you but secretly he will be pleased to have been asked.
Offer to wash up to save him a job (a job that he probably delegates anyway.)
Send him a birthday card (suitably modified and cheeky) – it is what I often get as a multipurpose offering that can cover Christmas, anniversaries and other occasions.
I know Clintons and Birthdays have just gone under despite the high price of greetings which some of us can now get American style. So opt for a n’then Dad are you going to take us to the pub?

Likely Lads from Bingley – Rodney Bewes

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Rodney Bewes was born near Bingley Grammar School in 1939 and was a sickly child suffering from asthma. At the age of 12 he read in the Daily Herald that the BBC wanted some child actors and he wrote in, was auditioned and featured in several Children’s Hour programmes.
Rodney moved to London aged 14 to study at RADA but was expelled for failing to work. Undaunted he developed his acting career and was cast in Billy Liar alongside Tom Courtney, Julie Christie Wilfred Pickles and Leonard Rossiter. Billy Liar was largely filmed in Bradford as a 1963 film based on the novel by Keith Waterhouse. It was directed by John Schlesinger.

Rodney Bewes as Mr Rodney wrote, produced and sometimes presented Basil Brush – Ha Ha Ha Boom Boom! It was the Likely Lads and Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads that made Rodney a household name.

DVD’s and T-shirts are part of the Likely Lads memorabilia available from Amazon

The Likely Lads starring Rodney Bewes as Bob Ferris and James Bolam as Terry Collier is an aimless but endlessly entertaining saga that ran from 1963 when it featured on Christmas Night with the Stars. Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais’ the script and characterisations hit a funny bone on the elbo of the public. The series is the equal of Porridge, Auf Wiedersehen Pet, Fawlty Towers, Dads Army, or Blackadder in the minds of many.
Bob often found himself ‘timidly chafing at the clutches of domestic “bliss” as personified by wife Thelma. He’s frustrated by or jealous of the footloose Terry who thinks the world has done him a bad turn.
December 1964 episodes were Entente Cordiale, Double Date and Older Women Are More Experienced, giving some clue as to the basis for the laddish humor that also gave the odd chortle to all the family.

The series was watched by some 27 million people and the sitcom made Rodney Bewes and James Bolam household names. Friends in the series Rodney’s TV jealousy continued as he fell out with James Bolam over the rights to earn fees for repeat showing. Rodney also had a high profile dispute with George Harrison’s widow over a garden fence. A case of ‘Bewes Bingley Bitchiness’ or a Likely Lad still putting it around?

Know Your Oliver Onions Yorkshire’s Ghost Story Expert

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Oliver Onions was a contemporary of J B Priestley both were born in Bradford and both authors of significant talent. Oliver Onions wrote some of the finest Ghost stories of the time and his tales of the supernatural are still worthy of being read.

In his early life he was schooled in Bradford living in Undercliffe, Manchester Road and Little Horton. He became a pupil at Bradford Grammar School and as a student attended evening classes at Technical college (as many folk use to do).
After time at the National Art Training School, Oliver was apprenticed to a printer where he illustrated books and acted as a printers draughtsman.
As a war artist during the South African War he turned to journalism and then writing his first novel.

Specialist Subject The Novels of Oliver Onions

Many of Oliver Onions books were of interest to the people of the West Riding as they embodied autobiographical detail and memories from the end of the 19th century.
Oliver Onions oeuvre of 40 novels may not all be in print but a selection of his work is available via amazon
Widdershins (illustrated above) is a collection of short ghost stories Widdershins means “contrary to the course of the Sun”
Oliver Onions was a man of care and detail and this is demonstrated in his stories such as Back o’ the Moon and Ghosts in Daylight.

‘Oliver Onions is unique in the realms of ghost story writers in that his tales are so far ranging in their background and substance that they are not easily categorised. His stories are powerfully charged explorations of psychical violence, their effects heightened by detailed character studies graced with a powerful poetic elegance. In simple terms Oliver Onions goes for the cerebral rather than the jugular. However, make no mistake, his ghost stories achieve the desired effect. They draw you in, enmeshing you in their unnerving and disturbing narratives. This collection contains such masterpieces as The Rosewood Door, The Ascending Dream, The Painted Face and The Beckoning Fair One’ by David Stuart Davies.

Oliver died in 1961 at the age of 87 and I wonder if he is now taking part in some of his own tales of the supernatural or may be he is a genuine ghost and not having to fictionalise his writing.

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Yorkshire’s Richest People

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  • 1st Eddie and Malcolm Healey. Combined weatlh of £1.5 billion (UK – 42nd) Eddie Healey was the developers of the Meadowhall shopping centre, in Sheffield. He made £420 million by selling his stake in the development in 1999. His brother, Malcolm, 67, built up and later sold the Hygena Kitchens business and has invested in ebuyer, an internet retailer with annual sales of about £250m.
  • 2nd Sir Ken Morrison (UK – 66th) – £1.11 billion. Owner of Morrisons supermarket, developed from market stall founded by father in late Victorian Britain. Sir Ken is now also owner of farms in North Yorkshire and president of Great Yorkshire Show. Retired supermarket supremo remains the second richest man in Yorkshire, according to this year’s Sunday Times Rich List to be published on Sunday.

 

Other Yorkshire Rich People.

  • Lawrence Tomlinson – motor racing fan. Made wealth from sale of Orchard Care Homes business
  • Hamish Ogston who founded the York-based CPP and is worth £530 million (2008)
  • Jack Tordoff (11th) – £290 million owners of the Bradford-based JCT600 motors group, which operates 48 dealerships across Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, and the North-East. Their fortune is measured at , placing them at equal 279th in the UK.
  • David Hood (15th) – £370 millionfounder of Saltaire electronics firm Pace and the Multiflight air charter operation based at Leeds Bradford International Airport.
  • Sir Robert Ogden (20th) £150 million, Former Otley-based construction chief and now a computer entrepreneur, is Yorkshire’s 20th richest man, worth which ranks him at equal 501st in the overall list.
  • Me (4,000,345th) – £279 I own a Reynolds 531 Racing bicycle worth £279.

Overall, the wealth of the top ten in Yorkshire at £7,22 billion.

The annual Sunday Times Rich List is based on identifiable wealth (land, property, other assets such as art and racehorses, or significant shares in publicly quoted companies), and excludes bank accounts (to which the publisher has no access).

 

Related

Yorkshire Rich at T&A

Big Daddy – Shirley Crabtree

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TV Shows We Used To Watch - 1970s - Wrestling

With a name like Shirley Crabtree you were bound to learn to fight and so it must have been for young Shirley in Halifax in the 1930′s. Early stints as a miner and in the Coldstream Guards did not prepare him for a regular place in the team at Bradford Northern so he took his 64 inch chest into professional wrestling. After a collection of ‘stage names’ the Blond Adonis, Mr Universe and Battling Guardsman Shirley opted for ‘BIG DADDY’ for his matches and became a cult TV personality.

Big Daddy feuded with Mick McManus, Steve Veidor and Giant Haystacks among others and would also be noted as the first man to remove the mask from Kendo Nagasaki during a televised match. I wonder who wrote that script, everyone knew who was going to win but we had to go through all that nonsense before hand before Big Daddy was once again declared the winner. World of Sport on ITV was the escapism with Dickie Davis and Saint and Greavesy from the more serious Grandstand on the BBC and the All in Wrestling was a major part of the attraction.

According to Shirley Crabtree entry in wikipedia ‘In August 1987, Big Daddy bowed out of the professional wrestling spotlight after a turn of events during the final moments of the match against Mal “King Kong” Kirk. After Big Daddy had delivered his belly-splash, rather than selling the impact of the finishing move, Kirk turned an unhealthy colour and was rushed to a nearby hospital, but was pronounced dead on arrival. Despite the fact that the inquest into Kirk’s death found that he had a serious heart condition and cleared Crabtree of any responsibility, Crabtree was devastated and nevertheless blamed himself for Kirk’s death. ‘

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Shirley died in 1997 at the age of 67 after being big Daddy to six children. See online tribute

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TV Shows We Used To Watch – 1970s – Wrestling by brizzle born and bred, CC BY-NC 2.0

Fred Trueman Still Speaks Out

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Frederick Sewards Trueman OBE Fred Trueman to All Yorkshire Folk

All Yorkshiremen have a favourite Fred Trueman story and mine goes something like this: Opening the bowling as usual from the Kirkstall Lane End Fred’s first ball rapped the openers pads and Fred bellowed Owzat only to get a firm shake of the head from the umpire, the next ball created an audible snick and firmly Fred appealed to get an even firmer ‘Not Out’, on the third ball Trueman flattened the middle stump and remarked to the umpire ‘Well umpire we nearly had him that time!’

Fred was a great raconteur and afterdinner speaker amongst his sporting tallents and this CD brings back many memories and the dulcet tones of a great Yorkshire personality and character. I for one wish he were still around to give vent on Twitter, that is about twitter not using it like some current footballers.

Bluebells in Woods

Take a walk on the wild side in April or May and the chances are you will smell the wonderful scent of our Yorkshire bluebells.
Bluebells grow best under the edge of woodland in dappled shade of deciduous trees. The sun and light in spring, before the tree leaves fully develop, encourages the nodding, bell shaped, violet-blue flowers of our native bulbs.

Unlike the foreign imports from Spain and Italy our Yorkshire Bluebells have a wonderful scent. They can also be recognised by the curved back petals and creamy-white anthers.

The scent attract insects to Bluebells delicately scented flowers which aids pollination. The resultant seed helps spread the bluebells into large drifts.

Classic Yorkshire Bluebell Locations

  • Our native bluebell, Hyacinthoides non-scripta, is widespread in low level woodland such as Freeholders Wood Nature Reserve Wensleydale
  • Other good smelling spots include Bratt Wood near Hull Nunburnholme
  • Stittenham Wood Sheriff Hutton
  • Sutton Wood Sutton-on-Derwent
  • Burton Bushes Bluebell walk Beverley
  • Hackfall Wood near Ripon
  • Middleton Woods Ilkley and Grass Wood in Wharfedale.
  • Newton Woods at Roseberry Topping
  • Millington Wood near Pocklington & Hagg Wood Dunnington
  • Renishaw House and Woolley Woods Sheffield
  • Hardcastle Crags, West Yorkshire A hidden beauty spot near Hebden Bridge. The three-mile Mill Walk is the ideal place to see a mass of bluebells in spring..