August 2009

Your letters

A local legend

I was interested to read the short humorous note about the position of Dent station (June). I was a boy in Dent in the 1940s, and at the time this ‘joke’ was attributed to Tom Stenton. His reply to the question, “Why didn’t they build the station nearer the village?” – “Ah reckon they thowt it better to build it near t’railway” has gone down in local history.

Owd Tom, as we called him, went past our house every morning with a little dog on the end of a piece of string on his way to feed the pigs at the huge piggery situated below the village. It was one of these morning walks that the incident is reputed to have happened. If true it would be typical of Tom’s sense of humour.

In the 1960s, Professor Bertil Hedevind of Uppsala University in Sweden visited Dent to study the dialect of the local people. He made recordings of several of the older people including Tom. One of Tom’s offerings was about a meeting between two ladies whose conversation went as follows:
“Ow’s your John?”
“Why he’s deead!”
“How did he die?”
“He come home fra ’is wark and he set hissen down in his armchair and fell fast asleep and when he wakened he was deead.”
“How long has he been deead?”
“Well if he’d lived while tomorn he’d of been deead a fortneet.”

The recordings of these conversations have unfortunately been lost but transcripts are to be found in Bertil Hedevind’s book, The Dialect of Dentdale, published in 1967.

Denis Sanderson, Grange-Over-Sands

Moorland adventures

I well remember that Christmas of 1955 when John Walshaw of Dewsbury was lost on the moors (June). I was one of the search party.
A few of us had gone to Burley Woodhead Youth Hostel for the holidays, including John’s elder brother who said John was coming later. When he did not turn up his brother was very worried. There was a very thick fog and we searched until we realised that there was nothing we could do until morning, at which time John turned up.

I recall it as Christmas Eve, not Boxing Day, as I remember stopping at a farm to see if they had seen anything and the farmer and his wife were busy plucking a turkey.

Stuart McPhail, Qualicum Beach, British Columbia

Mystery building

In the March issue there was a photograph from Mr Cross in Australia of a strange tower which he had seen on the Yorkshire moors. I responded to him but thought your readers might also be interested to know what these towers are.

I have been inside one of those towers on a friend’s farm in Northumberland. He told me that a whole string of them were built across Britain during the Cold War in the 1940s and 1950s by the General Post Office. They were built for communications equipment but never occupied.

The windows at the top were covered in a plastic substance which would allow the radio/radar aerial inside to work unimpeded by brick or concrete (rather like the domes on Fylingdales Moor or on Forest Moor off the A59 between Harrogate and Skipton).

I have not seen the tower in the photograph but I did see one in the Midlands when on holiday a few years ago.
I happened to meet the friend again at the recent Northumbrian County Show at Corbridge and he told me that he has just received planning permission to convert the tower into a holiday home.

Christopher White, Richmond

The volume of response from readers regarding the strange-looking barn I asked about (March) was amazing and the variety of explanations as to the use of this building even more so.

Ideas for its use ranged from it being a chapel to a booster aerial for British Gas. The general consensus seems to be that it is a water tank built by Yorkshire Water in the last twenty years to improve the water pressure to the village of Ellingstring and local farms. I would like to thank all your readers who sent emails and letters for their interest.

Max Cross, Port Macquarie, Australia

Many Halifax Bombers

n the May Issue is a letter from Mrs M Dean which includes a picture of her brother taken in front of a Halifax bomber. She wonders if this was the first aircraft to arrive at RAF Station Marston Moor.

This was certainly not the case as the photograph features a Halifax Mk3 that was not received at Marston Moor until 2 December 1944, the unit having used earlier versions of Halifax prior to this date. I therefore suggest that this picture was taken after her brother left Marston Moor and had been posted to an operational bomber station located elsewhere in Yorkshire.

Guy Jefferson MBE, aviation historian

Fans of Phyllis Bentley

I write regarding the letter, ‘A Forgotten Author’, from Jean Hammond (June) regarding the Halifax novelist, Phyllis Bentley, most famously known for her novel Inheritance.

The story of a Yorkshire textile family, this book eloquently brings to life the atmosphere and the essence of the West Riding of Yorkshire and its history, both of which Phyllis adored. At the time the book was regarded as a masterpiece; it was reprinted twenty-three times and filmed for television in 1967.

Phyllis Bentley OBE wrote many other novels as well as scholarly works on literary topics, especially of the Brontë family. She was awarded an honorary D.Lit. degree by the University of Leeds and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

I am acquainted with Jean Hammond with whom I share both an interest in Phyllis and a deep concern that she has largely been forgotten, and I would be most interested to hear from anyone who knew her and has memories of her.

Diana Parsons email

I was most interested and saddened to read Mrs Hammond’s letter in the June issue. It so happens that I have recently read several of Phyllis Bentley’s books and I am currently enjoying her autobiography. Seven of her books are available to blind or partially sighted people, as I am, through the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) Talking Book Service on CDs.

Daphne Ibbott, Hereford

I have just read, with great interest, my June copy. Of particular interest was the long letter about Phyllis Bentley. I am now ninety-one and lived for many years in the same Heath Villas in Halifax as Phyllis (or Miss Bentley as I always called her). I often saw her or her elderly mother as I was passing their house; she was always pleasant, although very reserved. Her mother always took the lead in any conversation.

I think it is a case of a prophet not being without honour, except in his own country, or rather town. To Halifax people, she was just another unmarried daughter, living with her mother but who happened to write rather readable books.

Mention by a Dalesman reader of ‘I’ll go to the foot of our stairs’ (June) had my mind going back to wartime, when after our spell as part-time ambulance drivers, three of us would rather daringly go to the White Swan for steak and chips, then to second house at the Palace Theatre for a variety show in our uniforms, trousers and all, which was truly emancipation for well-brought-up young ladies. I think it was a catchphrase of one of the many comedians, possibly Norman Evans in his ‘Over The Garden Wall’ sketches.

Jean Gilman, Oakham, Rutland (née Hoyle, formerly of Halifax)

Unfair review

The book review (June) of The Class of 58 states ‘perhaps of more appeal to those involved, their families and contemporaries but nevertheless of wider interest to historians’. This is an unreasonable narrowing of the potential audience; I am aware of several people, unconnected with the school or its pupils, who, educated in the same post-war period, have hugely enjoyed the book.

“I could identify with every one of those people,” one reader said to me.

Sarah E Birkin, Settle

The flat cap brigade

Ian McMillan’s May article has caused some hilarity here mainly because it was very late in life (my mid-60s) when I took to wearing a flat cap. My late sister-in-law persuaded me to start wearing one, saying it would keep my declining brain warm.

Since retiring in 1996, up to July 2008 I worked part time delivering prescriptions for our local chemist. Most of my customers were elderly and appreciated the service and I felt I was putting something back.

Recently I met one of these customers by chance and her comment to me was, “I didn’t recognise you without your cap.”

What higher tribute can you get?

Roy Hepworth, Bristol

We welcome readers' letters, which should be sent to:
Dalesman, The Water Mill, Broughton Hall, Skipton, North Yorkshire BD23 3AG
Or email: paul@dalesman.co.uk

The editor reserves the right to edit letters for length and clarity.