full transcripts - Moors for the Future

Moor Memories
Oral History Project
“A living, working moorland”
Transcriptions of interviews

Moor Memories Oral History Project
Contents of transcription document
1. Roger France – first interview
2. Roger France – second interview
3. Elizabeth Worsley
4. John Eardley and Philip Sharply
5. Dereck Nobles
6. Clifford Robinson – first interview
7. Clifford Robinson – second interview
8. Don Johnson
9. Ray Platts
10. Rangers Group Interview 1
11. Bamford Workshop
12. Flash School Workshop
13. Ron Priestley
14. Geoff Kaye
15. John Littlewood
16. Clarion Ramblers Longshaw Group
17. John Bunting
18. Mr and Mrs Frodsham and Janet Garlick
19. Ian Stuart
20. Bill Emmingham
21. Holme Village Workshop 1
22. Rangers Group Interview 2
23. George Townsend
24. Brian Gill
25. Hayfield Day Care Group
26. Terry Howard
27. Margaret Bailey
28. Brenda Smith
29. Ken Harwood
30. Fred Goddard
31. Holme Village Workshop 2
32. Maureen Armes and George Hill
33. Frank Harvey
34. Arthur Quarmby
35. David Wombwell
36. Herbert Beardsell
37. Ian Davidson
38. Gwyn Fields
39. Gerald Eastwood
40. John Ownsworth
41. Nick Smith
42. Ian Hurst
43. Linda Cawley
44. Riona Shergold
45. Ken Drabble

Roger France: Interviewed by Tegwen Roberts
23 rd November 2009
First Interview:
(Ok, so it’s the 23 rd November 2009, I just have to say that for the tape. Uh for the tape
could you please say your name and your age, if that’s ok)
I’m Roger France, and I'm well I'm 62 nearly 63.
(Ok, and what did you do for your job)
I'm a gamekeeper, a moorland gamekeeper.
(You’re still a gamekeeper)
Yes.
(And when did you start)
April 1962, as far as I can remember.
(Right. And what made you, what inspired you to be a gamekeeper)
I don’t really know, I was always interested in outdoor work and things like that and sort of
it were suggested when I was a boy, a friend of me father’s had the moor near us and he’d
told him if I wanted a job when I left school he would fix me up, and he did and I stayed
there about 5 ½ years.
(Right, so you went straight from school.)
Yeah I left school one day and started the next.
(Right, so did it involve much training)
I worked under a chap for all the period that I was there and I sort of learnt the trade and
things from him and did as I were told for 5 ½ years.
(That’s a good way to learn.)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
(So what did your job involve, I don’t know very much about game keeping, so...)
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It’s management of the ground as much as anything, it’s…our job basically is to produce
grouse, a surplus of grouse so that they can shoot some.
(Yep.)
Our job involved the basics were to burn heather and increase the food supplies so that it
was better habitat for the game and that hopefully they would increase in numbers. As
they increase in numbers various birds and beasts come in which want to eat them, things
like foxes and crows come in eating eggs and that sort of thing, our job then was to try and
cut those numbers down to increase the breeding performance and hopefully give us a few
more grouse at the end of the year. There were a lot of other jobs involved, we did a little
bit of draining in very wet places to increase or improve the heather coverage, we would
carry stone and mend footpaths and things like this, there were grouse shooting butts
which we used to try and repair each year, we used to, at that time mow bracken, it’s all
spraying now and that sort of thing, but at that time we used to mow it every year to reduce
bracken cover where we could.
(So was it just grouse that you were breeding or were there other game birds)
On our ground it was just grouse that we were interested in shooting; there were very few
grey partridges, there were a number of rabbits, there were mountain hares, we’d things
like snipe and woodcock and various birds like that, but on that place it was primarily
grouse, yeah.
(Right. And what’s the season for grouse, I mean how does their year work When’s
the shooting season)
The shooting season starts on the 12 th August and technically finishes on the 10 th
December, it’s very rare really that they shoot late into December, generally August and
September have seen the bulk of the shooting so you’re only looking at perhaps about 6
weeks, so in a good season when there are a lot of grouse they’ll shoot later. The problem
with having a lot of grouse is that when you get too many there’s a worm which causes a
disease, when they get too many this disease will hit them and take them from several
thousand grouse on a piece of ground possibly down to almost none and it’ll do that within
a few months.
(So what do you do if you get this worm)
There’s not a lot you can do.
(Oh right.)
Nowadays we’ve got medicated grit which has a wormer which you can feed to them. The
main thing really is that as the grouse are increasing you must shoot enough of them to try
to keep them down so that the levels don’t get too high. If you try, thinking you’ll have a
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ecord season, leave a lot one year or you get bad weather when you can’t shoot them
and they build up above that, this disease will come in and it’ll wipe things out for you.
(Right, so it’s taken out of your hands.)
Yeah.
(Um, so how much land do you cover as a gamekeeper)
Where I am now, when I first went there it’s between 10 and 11,000 acres that I looked
after, since then I’ve got two people who are probably best described as assisting me. I'm
not over them and they aren’t over me but there’s three of us doing what I did on me own
before. So most people seem to think that 3 or 4,000 acres is about the acreage that one
man should be able to manage comfortably, the stuff that I was on was very high and very
rough and possibly half the moor we didn’t shoot it anyway because it was very high
ground, very difficult to get to and quite eroded and very little lived up there anyway.
(Right, so it wasn’t really worth your while.)
That’s it.
(And has the job changed in the time that you’ve done it)
In many ways yes, yeah…um science has become very much more involved now, as I
was saying medicated grit and things like that, bracken now I don’t think any of the modern
gamekeepers would know how to mow with a scythe, it’s all spraying with chemical
now…um there’s this medicated grit, there’s also a technique for going out at night
catching the birds live and dosing them.
(Oh right for the worm)
…and putting a tag on to show that they’ve been wormed, um…how long this’ll carry on
without somebody like the Environment Agency getting upset about things or worried
about things I don’t know, yes it’s changed a lot, methods of controlling crows and things
have altered a lot…um.
(So what do you do to control, what did you used to do to control crows and what do you
do now)
Before I started a lot of vermin control was done with poison, which I believe at the time
was probably illegal, although nobody seemed to bother with it much. Poison has
fortunately pretty well gone out of things, most of it now is catching them with various
forms of cage trap and there are certain woods where they go to roost at night and you just
stand quietly in the woods and shoot them as they come in…you know, those are the
basic things, um…foxes before my time were trapped in, caught in steel traps.
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(Are they like wire or are they more)
No, those were the leg traps that I'm talking about.
(Ah right.)
About the time that I started people realised that they could catch them in wire snares, that
has made a terrific difference, fox numbers in general have increased I think nationwide
considerably, well, since the last war and there’s also a method of going out now with a
powerful spot lamp at night and spotting the foxes while they’re out hunting them and then
shooting them with a high powered rifle which can be very, very effective. These are all the
things we didn’t have, you know, when I started…
(Yeah.)
…and it’s made, it’s certainly made it much easier to deal with, I mean when I started you
had a great, great difficulty getting a rifle under any circumstances.
(Oh right, to get a licence for it.)
Yeah, yeah even in my side of things it was a difficult thing to get a licence for a rifle. It is
easier and they are far more amenable to it now, um…you’ve still got to sort of fulfil a lot
of…
(Paperwork)
…yeah, paperwork, criteria and…
(Do you have to be trained to use a gun or is it more just to do with your job)
It’s more to do with your job, with things like rifles you need to sort of be very conscious of
what’s happening in the direction that your shooting because they cover such a long range
and you need, particularly at night you need to be very aware of livestock, any footpaths or
walkers or where anybody could be camping and this sort of thing and you can’t relax for
one second, you cannot afford to sort of fire one shot wrong.
(No, of course not, has the hunting ban, the fox hunting ban made a difference)
Yes, yes the regulations as they are now are totally impractical…we have large blocks of
forestry which we could put get the local hounds to come into to drive foxes out. Now I
think the technical thing is you can’t use any more than three, well…
(But you can still use 3)
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…(sighs)…yeah, but it isn’t enough to cover a large enough area, we can use three
providing we have guns there to try and shoot them down, which we did before. Well it
used to be then that we could drive them into a hole and catch them when they’d gone in
the hole. There are lots more regulations about what we can’t do at holes and things like
this now and again it’s made it very much harder. There used to be a gas which we could
use for them in’t hole. Now gassing sounds dreadful which in, on the top, basically yes it is
dreadful but the gas that we used was cyanide gas and when an animal walked into that it
was dead literally in a second or two.
(Oh right so.)
It wasn’t, as you can imagine, have you heard about people killing themselves in the gas
oven, or gassing themselves in cars it wasn’t anything like that, it was far, far quicker, and
it was I felt it was a very quick humane thing. If you bear in mind that the animal didn’t
know what it was walking in to, and then suddenly collapsed. I felt it was quite a, and it
was coming out in its own time when it felt it was safe, I felt it was a very safe humane
thing. That’s been taken off the market and made illegal now, so that’s made life awkward.
(So how did you administer gas Was it in a cylinder)
There were two ways, you could put it into the hole entrance with a spoon and seal the
entrance up to make it relatively airtight, or the other was to use a machine, a pump, there
was a hand pump and a motorised pump which would blast it down into the hole and kill it
literally while that you were there; other than that the spoon method left a gas pocket in the
end of the hole, which the animal walked into when he thought everything was quiet and
that sort of thing, it was a matter of cutting numbers down. These things are very
disruptive, um…I know they’re beautiful things to look at but nevertheless they are
disruptive and it was a matter of trying to keep the numbers in check.
(Yep, absolutely. So describe a shoot for me, what happens When does it start…when’s
the preparation start)
From about the 1 st February…[laughter]…Our year starts from the 1 st February pretty well,
um…it’s a matter of trying to cut down on yer numbers of crows and foxes that are coming
on to yer ground, so that by the, at the same time round about March very often it dries up
and you can do a certain amount of heather burning, the point of the heather burning is to
put patches all over the moor, so that you have young heather for the birds to eat, longer
heather for them to hide from predators, er and to build their nests in and some bare
patches which you’ve burnt which are coming on. Heather is quite a slow growing thing, it
can be from whilst we burn a certain quantity of it each year hopefully on a 15 year
rotation, you could be looking at 15 – 20 years rotation with it so, there’s obviously a year
or two before anything starts to come. Um and by the time we get round to burning it, it’s
generally well past it’s best and the plant is sort of dying in itself and a lot of dead stuff in it
and if you burn it off it grows from seed and from the roots; young heather, whether it is
being eaten by grouse or sheep is far more nutritious than the older stuff so they need less
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of it to get the benefits from it, and its burnt in patches pretty well scattered all about the
moor. You also learn by experience that certain parts of the moor it’ll grow much quicker
than it will on other pieces depending on the way it lies or whether it’s dry or damp or
whether…uh sorry I’ve lost the thread a bit.
[Laughter.]
(And, so talking about a burn, we’ll come back to the shoot maybe in a minute. How do
you manage the burn, do you...)
It’s a matter again of knowing your ground er, pretty well, you then would light a piece of
heather, possibly 25, 30 yards wide…as it goes away you’ll then finish up with an oval
shape of a fire because its blowing, it follows the wind. You then knock the back fire out,
once you’ve knocked that out that takes the smoke away from that side, you can then see
where it’s going, if you have one person at each side then with a beater you can just sort
of follow it on, if conditions are perfect you can follow it on and more or less take it where
you want, but it’s usually safe to make sure that there’s somewhere where you can stop it
up front. The longer that you keep a fire going, you could take a fire 50 yards without any
problem, but if you decide to take it 200 yards, the smoke, if it’s a constant wind, will dry
the ground more…
(Right.)
…in front of the fire, so that by the end it could be much hotter than it was after 50 yards
And this is where people, this is where we get accidents and mistakes if people misjudge
that, which is quite easy to do, um…and it’ll, whatever you’ve got for your area where you
think the fire’ll stop, if it gets too hot it’ll cross it.
(Right, and then what happens)
That’s when you ring for the fire brigade.
[Laughter.]
(Because, yeah moorland fires are quite a problem aren’t they, um wild fires obviously, not
managed fires.)
That’s it, the thing about our thing is it’s done between October and April when the ground
is fairly damp so that it the fire that we’re doing skims across the top, doesn’t damage the
ground or the peat. If you get a summer fire that goes through and it burns all the seeds
that’s waiting in the ground for the next generation it also burns so deep that it often kills
the root and that’s when you get sort of some dead ground that won’t really do anything.
That’s where erosion comes into it, and uh and also where we might be looking at shall we
say anything up to a hectare, um I usually speak in acres but for the benefit of you I’ll
mention hectares, with a wild fire you could be looking at miles and miles of barren ground
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and it could be lost for hundreds of years really, which is the case in Bleaklow and Kinder
at the moment, which your group are trying to…
(Yes, we’re working hard on that.)
…to regenerate. So, yeah.
(Are there any wild fires or managed fires that went wrong that you can remember
particularly, any big ones that you maybe were involved with)
Off the top of my head, not at the moment.
EG: [inaudible]...the 57…87…was it 72 or I thought it was 57…you were at…and Geoff
Eyre brought that machine.
Yeah, but that wasn’t controlled burning.
EG: Oh no, no, no, yeah, yeah.
It was in nesting season, wasn’t it
EG: Yeah, yeah.
(Was there a fire)
There was a fire at Moscar in 1980 which was a wild fire which started in one corner down
at the bottom of Hallam Moors, and um…they got the fire brigade in knocked it all out and
they left a skeleton team keeping an eye on it at night and I don’t think, I wasn’t there but I
got the impression that they didn’t take much notice, the fire they thought was out and as
the sun came up and things dried up next morning the wind got up and it started again
and...How far would it go, 3, 4 miles
EG: To top of Moscar, yeah.
Right to top of Moscar and sort of, I don’t know 700 yards wide, something like that…
EG: Oh easy, yeah.
…it could have been maybe more and just went, and that Geoff Eyre came round with a
draining machine, didn’t he, and ran it up the side, which to look at it you wouldn’t have
thought it made a thing, and it stopped it.
(Right, brilliant, so was that pumping water onto the fire, sorry explain the draining
machine.)
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No, it was a machine that dug a drain and threw soil on to it basically…
(Oh right, ok.)
…and uh, but it was it stopped the side of the fire, the front end fortunately went onto very
thin vegetation and they could stop that, but it as I said by that time it was uh, it’d take you
over an hour a long way over an hour to walk from one end to another.
(And must have done an awful lot of damage.)
Yes it did, it killed, there were birds killed on their nests, it killed a number of sheep and
everything it just went so fast, it took out some old Scots pine woodland, it burnt that
through at one period the thing jumped about 500 yards the fire.
(God, was that on the wind it jumps)
Yeah, yeah, it was so dry it blew some burning particles forward which dropped in t’ground
and relit it in front, um cos they were hoping to stop it at one gully and it just jumped that
as I said by 500 yards.
(Wow.)
Sorry, that should be metres now.
[Laughter.]
(I can’t imagine seeing something like that, all the sort of the devastation that must cause.
Was it set deliberately, do you know, was it)
I never heard anything like that, a lot of people sort of go out there, they take barbeques
that they sort of, most have a camp fire and y’know they’ll cook their sausages and this
sort of thing, this does happen because we had a small fire on ours only 4 or 5 years ago
and we found teabags and sausages and things like that at one point so obviously they’d
had a little fire, really it all went wrong and they’d sort of grabbed their stuff and done a
bunk…so y’know.
(Yeah, not great.)
I cannot, I'm sure some of it is lit deliberately but, I cannot understand the mentality of
people doing that but that seems to be, it’s not just a moorland problem is it, that happens
on lots of things.
(No, I think it’s everywhere isn’t it…so, sorry if we go back to the shoots, so you start you
said in February, I presume that’s with the birds, do you introduce new birds every year.)
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No, in the past it has been that they’ve transferred eggs and this sort of thing, but basically
no we don’t, er, in fact if you looked into it you’d probably find it was illegal to move eggs
now.
(Right.)
You know the egg collecting regulations and that sorta thing. No, it’s a matter of trying to
get everything healthy, get yer stocks built up, let them breed, it also depends on good
weather and a good breeding season for them and each pair can have anything up to, I
would say 11 or 12 is probably about the maximum, you do hear of odd broods bigger, but
I’ve never come across anything bigger than a 12. Erm…but there again if you’ve got quite
a lot of grouse and they all sort of do sort of 8 or 10 or whatever, you can soon have a
huge increase in your populations.
(Yeah, yeah.)
…um, as for the actual shoot itself the old method of shooting grouse was to use pointing
dogs and take a couple of people up…one man would work take 2 or 3 pointers and set a
dog off working and when the dog came on point because he could smell the birds in front
of him the guns would approach on either side and they’d move forward till the (indistinct)
or whatever it was flushed and they would have a shot at it, pick it up whatever they’d shot
and then move on to the next. As a dog got tired they would take it back and chain it up
and let one of the others that were tied up have a go.
(So basically following the dog around the moor)
Yeah, and the trip around the moor would be based on which ever direction wind was
blowing.
(Oh right, so the dog could smell.)
Because the dog would need to, and they would be planning to, they could go across wind
if they wanted and it was…well its pretty well a lost art is that now, because very few
people do it. Modern way of walking would be to put a line of people across the moor and
walk quietly and shoot them as they got up if they get up, erm...
(So how many people would be in a line, typically)
On walked up day normally 4 or 5 people shooting, possibly extra people in between them
to carry the birds that were shot um and to have dogs to help pick up anything that were
shot, but the most common way really now is to drive the birds. They have set flight lines
across the moor which generation after generation of grouse use.
(Oh really)
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The grouse fly in the same directions on ground now that they did 100 years since, and if
there’s no drastic change in the ground they would probably still be doing it in a 100 years’
time.
(Right.)
So people have learnt these over the years, set a number of what we call grouse butts
which are shelters really, hides for the people to stand in so that they’re not as obvious
and we sort of drive in an area of ground towards these butts. Things that can alter it if you
could imagine they will drive them off one piece of ground through these butts onto
another piece of ground, if the ground behind was uh ploughed up and planted for forestry
well they wouldn’t want to go that way then because it isn’t their sort of habitat, so those
butts wouldn’t work after that, something like that could change it. Or if it was ploughed up
and turned into pasture or something like that it would spoil that side of things. But in
general they’ll tend to fly the same directions. This can vary to a certain extent on’t
direction of wind and strength of’t wind and this sort of thing.
(Right, yeah of course.)
And basically you sort of drive the piece of ground to the people who shoot at these birds if
they’re good at their job they can shoot a few if they can’t they don’t. You then sort of pick
up what’s fallen, you have people there with dogs to hunt the ground for, make sure
there’s nothing wounded left anywhere…
(Course, yeah.)
…and to try to sort of account for everything that could have been hit, the shooters then
move off to another line of butts somewhere and the beaters go off another way, if it’s a
big piece of ground or rough ground you can sometimes have two teams of beaters and
one, as one’s finishing another ones lined out ready to bring the next drive in.
(So how many beaters would you have in a team)
Possibly up to about 20.
(Right.)
It depends on the, it all varies from whichever ground it is to another.
(And where do the beaters come from, are they the same people every year or...)
A lot of them are just local lads…er, there’s a number of people who really enjoy it and
they’ll move round lots of moors doing…
(Right.)
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…things like that y’know and just, erm...
(Is there any skill to the beating Do you need to know what you’re doing)
The biggest thing with beating is being able to keep in line abreast, uh…try and keep your
distance from your neighbours whilst spaced out and…um…just wave a flag really to try
and sort of push the birds in the...
(Ah so that’s what you do, you wave a flag)
Yeah, yeah, mostly white flags erm, just to drive these things through; it’s rather a different
type of beating to…well I'm sort of committing a crime now in my opinion because we don’t
beat grouse we drive them.
(Right.)
You beat pheasants out of a wood…
(Ok)
…but that is different…
(Different terminology.)
…you beat with sticks…
(Oh, ok.)
…in wood you wouldn’t normally doing the beating use a flag, you might use a flag at the
end of the wood to turn the pheasants if you wanted them which they don’t take a big lot of
notice of, but...
(So how would you turn Just wave at them to make them turn or...)
Yeah you would try to get at an angle where by flagging them they would change their
angle slightly.
(And is that to make them fly towards the shooters or across)
Yeah.
(So, towards)
Towards, or hopefully through, y’know over the top of the shooters, that’s their favourite.
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(Right, so they’re shooting straight up.)
Yeah, well it dun’t matter what they do for a start because they’re flying to the…you could
be starting from a mile away from the shooters with grouse.
(Wow that’s a fair distance.)
Erm, so until you get probably within quarter of a mile you’re relatively, the beaters are
relatively safe, but that’s one thing we have had in recent years, they’ve brought in some
very sensible ideas of blowing a horn at one point, and the beaters get close in…what
mostly happens now is there are two or three pegs out from the butts two or three hundred
yards away, the beaters stop when they get there, there’s then a horn blown and the
shooters are not allowed to shoot forwards then.
(Has to be.)
They can then shoot either over their heads or behind once they’ve past them…
(Right.)
…but that stops anybody getting an eye knocked out or anything like that which happens
occasionally, or has happened occasionally should I say. Erm, which is a very good
sensible thing.
(Yeah. Has anyone been killed being shot by mistake)
Not that I'm aware of in recent years; there is a recorded incident somewhere over
Saddleworth where a gentleman was killed on a shoot, but I think we’re talking somewhere
in the region of 150 years ago.
(Right.)
And apparently they were walking along a roadway and a chap’s gun went off and he blew
the heel off the man in front of him, and he bled to death.
(Oh heck.)
Now that’s the only incident that I can think of off the top of me head. In this day and age
they might have been able to save him, might they, with the helicopter…and one thing or
another, modern technology like, but…
(I suppose the moors are a long way from anywhere really, aren’t they)
Yeah, and uh, no that’s the only thing I’ve heard of in that respect, so erm.
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(So do you spend most of your working life on your own Are you out on the moors on
your own)
Probably yeah, I suppose that’s a fair description…[laughter from all]…friendless…[more
laughter from all.]
(So how do you cope with sort of the seasonal changes, things like bad winters and being
out there on your own, talking about them being so far away from anywhere.)
Well, fortunately these last few years we don’t seem to get bad winters, really.
(I s’pose, yeah, has it noticeably changed)
Oh absolutely yeah, you usually had snow for two or three weeks at a time didn’t yer, er
when you probably couldn’t get a vehicle to your homes, erm, when you went out on
t’moors you were, you could have sort of a foot to 18 inches of snow to try and walk
through…
(Right.)
…which meant that you couldn’t cover the ground anything like as well as you could when
there wasn’t stuff there, erm y’know it’s…I mean there were times when, not long after I
started there was a really bad winter in 1963, and I mean you began to think that snow
was never gonna go, it was month after month after month of it. I think it started on Boxing
Day and there was still snow on’t moors, I think, in June.
(Really)
Yeah, it, uh...
(And what difference does that make to the birds It must be quite difficult for them.)
Yes, they, if it, if the heather isn’t too deep with snow they will scratch down through it and
get to feed on the, they only take the tip shoots you see, they don’t sort of graze the plant
right down the stalk they just take the top sort of quarter of an inch or something like that
off it. And they’ll…if its soft snow they can scratch through it, if it isn’t too deep. What spoils
it then is when you get a heavy frost and everything becomes covered in ice and they then
tend to move on to lower ground.
(Right.)
Erm, this can be quite a good thing, because if it pushes them onto the edges there aren’t
normally as many birds on the edges of the moor, so it gives a rest to the ground where
they generally live. And it sort of cuts down on the problems of disease, but on the other
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hand it can work the other way because you get a lot of grouse perhaps on a small piece
of ground…
(Right.)
…which could increase this, uh the chances of this disease.
(I suppose predators are a bit more, erm, prevalent the lower down you get, are they)
Yeah they can be but when there’s snow they have a chance of seeing things coming…
(Of course, yeah.)
…better like. There again the predator also can see them, so it’s…
(Works both ways, yeah.)
…swings and roundabouts, yeah, but, um, y’know so, that...
(Yeah I’ve seen some amazing photographs of people digging out sheep in the snow,
y’know, really heavy stuff.)
That’s right.
(Um, how does working the moorland for grouse work with things like grazing sheep
and...)
Very, very well for most things, the methods that we have for bringing grouse are very
similar to what you would do for the best thing for sheep, and sheep and grouse for the
most part work hand in hand. Erm, in the past there has been overgrazing on a lot of these
moorlands, but in recent years they’ve sort of got it under control and they’ve got a pretty
good balance.
(So that’s something that’s changed has it, that the way that works together)
Yes I would say it has really…erm the grouse and sheep always did work together but if
you get too much stock on anything the ground gets eaten out…
(Yeah.)
…and the sheep’ll beat the grouse every time on that.
(They’re bigger, I suppose.)
14

Bigger animal, they can eat it right down until, they can make it so it’s not very good for
grouse so...
(And in the same way, how does sort of grouse shooting work with other uses of the moors
like walkers or, uh, cyclists that kind of thing)
Generally speaking if there are footpaths and things like that we try to sort of keep out of
the way of the bikers and people. In the past when I started on National Park land shall we
say or within the National Park there used to be a system whereby we used to publish the
dates when a particular moor was going to be shot…
(Right.)
…and access at that time on the National Park was withdrawn so that they could go out
and shoot the grouse from a y’know a health and safety point of view, the public weren’t
there and we didn’t interfere with them and they didn’t interfere with us and that worked
quite well until we had some problems a few years later and things have had to alter now
and of course with the CROW Act and everything, erm I’m not sure whether it is really
closed or not now. Erm, but 99 out of 100 people, in that would be my impression, if you
approached them and explained the problem most of them are very good people to deal
with, you get the odd awkward one, but I think you find that in all walks of life and
somebody wants to be different or believes he’s got a right to do something differently and,
uh…well you cross that bridge when you come to it don’t you…
(Yeah, ‘course.)
…y’know, but for the most part the public are very very understanding and y’know we try
not to sorta, we watch constantly when we’re on a shoot looking for the public, we expect
them we don’t just sort of look surprised when we see somebody. We go out expecting
them and we watch for them and try and y’know keep ‘em safe and that’s all you can do
really…
(Yeah, ‘course.)
…and, y’know, so that...
(Well, you wouldn’t want anyone getting shot would you)
No, no obviously.
(It would be awful.)
No, something like that would be catastrophic really; upset the applecart with everyone,
wouldn’t it
15

(Yeah, it would be terrible.)
Um, y’know.
(Do you have problems with people walking dogs and that kind of thing Is it during
nesting season that that’s a problem)
Yeah, it can be, there again I think the bulk of these people, it sounds a bit of a sweeping
statement to say that its ignorant, but I don’t think they realise the problems that the dog
can cause, I think it’s just lack of understanding really. And I think a lot of the things where
there is conflict with the public and our side of things is…communication. We need to be
able to get across to these people what we are trying to do and why, so that they
understand what’s happening because we aren’t good communicators I suspect, I think
we’re better now than we’ve ever been but we certainly weren’t much good at one time,
and that is a fact.
(I suppose maybe it wasn’t part of your job, a long time ago when you started was it)
No, well, originally it was a matter of sort of asking them to leave the ground because they
were on private ground, since, if you, since you get in’t National Parks and since the
CROW Act’s come in it’s different, so you’ve got to handle the thing differently.
(Yeah, yeah. Have you seen a difference in the way people use the land that you look
after)
When you say people do you mean the people living on the land or the visitors
(Er, both, both.)
Yeah there’s a lot of things, from a farming point of view when I started everybody walked
everywhere. A few farmers would have a Land Rover or a tractor, now they all seem to
sort of have some sort of 4x4, they seem to fly over all land on quad bikes and things like
this; very few people walk. You also find it in the gamekeeping side of things as well, that
people are using these all-terrain vehicles much more than they were and they’re very
handy and very, very useful and have in many ways revolutionised and made things easier
like, erm, heather burning for instance you can now take a machine up with it on perhaps
an 80 gallon tank o’ water on the back and heather burning is considerably easier than it
was, where you can get these vehicles. Joe public, yeah he’s very much more into
mountain bikes, uh, there is…
(I suppose they’re, they’re quite a new invention, aren’t they, mountain bikes really, you
didn’t have them.)
Relatively yeah, there were two things happened some years ago and I can remember
talking to the National Trust who were our landlords and saying that I had two worries; one
16

of them was mountain bikes and I said I have a feeling that these could take off and
become quite a nuisance and the other thing at that time was whenever we had heavy rain
such as we’ve had lately, we had cars coming up the valley as far up as they could,
bringing canoes…
(Oh wow.)
…getting into the streams and doing this white-water, which, in itself, doesn’t bother me…
(No.)
…but where the problem is, is that as you get down you then come to shall we say to
some forestry land, there will be a fence across the river, so the canoe can’t get through…
(Right.)
…well the obvious thing is, the gentleman of the sport, would pull out there and walk back
up.
(Yeah.)
The other type gentleman will have wire cutters and will cut the fence…
(Ah…)
…go through, they’ll then have to cut a fence at the other end, and as you go down the
river, there are fences across the river at each different farmer’s land, so if you get
somebody going down there on this the first one cutting the fence so that all his friends
can follow, you then get all the stock from various farms going backwards and forwards…
(Oh heck.)
…everything gets mixed up, causes no end of friction and upset…
(Yeah, ‘course.)
…but fortunately that one seemed to die its own death.
(So when was that, that was kind of popular)
About the same time the bikes started, whenever that was.
[Laughter from all.]
17

But bikes have really taken off and I, I cannot for the life of me see what people get out of
it, but its each to his own I suppose. You watch these people coming down off’t moors
they’ve no mud guards on their bikes…
(Right.)
…all their backsides are plastered up with mud and water and it must be the most
uncomfortable state to be in [laughing] and they seem to think it’s fun don’t they, and even
this time of year they’ll be doing it in shorts and this sort of thing y’know, which I suppose
its each to their own but I cannot for the life of me see what fun they’re getting.
(No, well it’s like you get people like fell runners don’t you, who get completely plastered.)
Yeah yeah, but we have a bit of that there’s more of that goes off, uh we’ve some close to
our house a group comes and the only problem is that they came twice a year somewhere
in near mid-summers day and then somewhere about was it just before Christmas they
come. And there’s a huge load of cars parked on’t roads so, and I just stopped em one day
and said have yer had permission for this, and they said well who do we need to tell, and I
said well have a word with the landlord, the people who owns it y’know, I said the only
problem I’ve got I said I’d like, this is our home I’d like you just to keep our road clear. Ever
since I talked to him, there was no animosity from either side, ever since I’ve done that
they have always kept the road clear for us.
(That’s good.)
They now have talked to the National Trust and for the last I don’t know 20 years whatever
they’ve always asked permission; they get permission granted without any problems and
they run out on t’top of hill to a trig point back again, and…
(Everybody’s happy.)
Yeah, yeah absolutely.
(That’s great, that’s great, that’s brilliant, thank you very much.
18

Roger France: Interviewed by Tegwen Roberts.
15 th April 2010.
Second Interview:
(So this is, erm, the second oral history interview with Roger France, it’s the 15 th of April
and the interviewer is Tegwen Roberts, oh and we’re at the Moorland Centre in Edale. Um,
so, uh can you tell me about the horse that we were talking about erm...)
When I came to the Snake they used a horse, a pannier pony to take things up on shoot
days. This was only the third horse that I’d seen, there used to be one on Lady Cross Moor
that pulled a sledge down to the cabin, took the lunches down and the grouse back later.
There was one on Ronksley Moor which they used but they extended the road just after I
came here, so that horse was only operating for about two years that I saw anything of it,
erm if that, probably only one. We used a horse for 12 years, basically to take lunches and
cartridges up to the moor on a morning, it would then bring the empty lunches back and
the, hopefully any grouse back and then would go back and continue bringing grouse until
it had taken most of whatever we had. I think all together we had about five horses one
after another.
The first one was an old shire horse called Bill who was about 30 and we, I used to
take him up to the road we didn’t need a bridle, you just sat on his back and told “get on
the grass Bill”, and Bill would walk on’t grass, he preferred walking on’t road but wi’ main
road being as it is, it’s about two miles to go he weren’t so keen. And erm, then we tried
one or two others over the years, for a start we had a farmer that used to take the shire
horse and then after that horse grew too old, well he was pretty old then but when he got
that he couldn’t manage we got some other horses and we then had to find someone else
to take them. This was rather difficult because you needed someone interested in horses,
it was very easy to get young girls who were interested in ponies, but I mean they might
decide the horse was tired and not bring him for the next load or something like that which
has happened. And you needed someone who would make the horse do, as a horseman
told me once, ‘horses are very laid back, they will either be bossed or they will be the boss
and they aren’t fussy which’. So you needed the horse to walk and sometimes when you
did get someone who really knew horses everything went a lot quicker and easier and
everything.
(Yeah.)
And the horse was better looked after as well and was safer because there was, some of
the tracks were fairly steep and if he’d slipped off he’d only have slipped off once,
y’know…
(Yeah, sure.)
…and things like that. But, erm the other problem of course was, well the baskets and the
harness, we’d two sets of baskets when I came but they were both riddled with woodworm
1

and collapsing. At that time there was what was known as the blind school, I don’t know,
I’ve never heard of it now for a number of years. But baskets or anything like that you
could have made to order there and we got these baskets made to order and they charged
us very, very little, so we actually paid them I think double something like that for these.
Harness was nearly always very old stuff, kept breaking cus it was rotten and needed
repairing and erm, y’know so it was always a bit of an ongoing thing.
(Yeah.)
We did use a proper horse collar for a start, erm but later we went onto a breast collar
because it was simpler for if we had a 15 year old girl or somebody looking after horse, it
was far easier for her to keep an eye on things. I used to go up first job and harness the
horse and check him over and get him ready to go, we sort of had’t make do and mend.
I’ve still got the last lot of baskets and erm, some of the harness but I don’t think it’s up to
much now; the baskets are probably fairly sound. The thing then with the baskets on the
horse you needed somebody to be bright enough to fill both panniers at once.
(Ok, so it didn’t…)
Many people would try to load one pannier and then load the other, this of course twisted
the horses back which the horse didn’t like, and if sort of half a ton of horse decides he’s
upset it can be nasty for everybody.
(Yeah, sure.)
Erm, most of them were very very good, we got most of the later ones, well I think we got
all the later ones from Alan Atkin at Lady Booth.
(Right, is he a horse breeder)
He does…where the trekking centre is now…
(Oh yeah.)
…and he was very much into horses and a very clever man with horses, and I really
wouldn’t know where to go to get a pony now, unless he, well his granddaughter’s there,
she would be the only hope we’d have of getting something similar. The horse had to wear
blinkers as well, cos some of them again took offence at seeing the baskets out of corner
of their eyes…
(Right, ok.)
…so it, it really needed specialised harness but I mean we were sort of, well we’re talking
sort of 40 odd years ago now and horses had pretty well been out of date for a good 30
years then hadn’t they…
2

(Yeah.)
…something like that, so erm well 25 anyway er y’know, so.
(So did, erm all, did other moors have horses or was it just yours)
No, this is what I'm saying, Ronksley had one and Lady Cross used one, everywhere else
had managed to get tracks so that Land Rovers could deal with things, erm or appeared to
be. Either that or it was ‘shank’s pony’ that did everything, y’know, things were carried by
hand, as I say I only knew three places that ran horses, we ran ours for about 12 years I
think it was and uh…there were a number of bits of things which I used to watch for y’know
you would hear sometimes, I’d have two or three bits of tools not that I was any I wasn’t a
blacksmith but I would try to tighten up the shoes if they were sort of obviously loose and…
(Yeah.)
…ringing and this sort of thing. We always kept corn and water for the horse and fed him
y’know…
(Yeah.)
…at night, um...
(So where was he stabled)
He used to live in the field opposite the Snake Inn.
(Oh yeah.)
And at that time there was a small corrugated iron garage thing which wasn’t being used
and he could go and stand in there and shelter from really bad weather or whatever, we
had an old sink in there which we made a point of going everyday and keeping his water
topped up, but we used to take him up the night before we shot, we usually shot for two
days and then the day that we’d finished I would walk him back and back down road and
stick him out in field which was a couple of miles below pub and turn him back in fields
where he could sort of y’know do his own thing then…
(Yeah.)
…until the next shoot, which was probably the week afterwards.
(Yeah.)
3

The old horse Bill didn’t, he knew what was coming and he didn’t want to go up the road,
he’d go any direction except up the road.
(Right.)
But once you got him going he was fine then…
(Yeah.)
…y’know and they were, horses were characters like, y’know, it…
(Yeah.)
…it did add a bit of interest to things, y’know.
(So did you have them up there while the shoot was going on)
Yeah.
(So they, were they ok with the guns and that kind of thing)
Mostly.
[Laughter from both.]
We did have, erm, the old horse Bill was fine; we got another horse afterwards and uh the
lad who was taking it had taken the old shire and we didn’t bother tying the shire up, there
was a post you could tie him to but he just stood there he knew where to stand and stood.
And this lad didn’t bother tying him up, so the first lot of gunfire that he heard he turned
round and trotted perhaps quarter of a mile and the chap had to chase after him and he
trotted back, it was a blazing hot day and it was in the days, he’d brought the, he was
loaded with drinks for the beaters and it was in the days of glass bottles. Because he’d
trotted up and down most of the glass bottles had broken so there was no drink, those that
were still intact the tops were still on but they’d been shook up so much there was only
about a quarter of the bottle remaining and so it was a bit of a trying day for…
(Everybody)
…yeah, for everybody really [laughing] and then afterwards when we got back the baskets
were absolutely packed with glass splinters; it’d wedged in among and I spent probably a
day and a half with a nail and some safety glasses on poking all these splinters out to try,
cos every time you put your hand on basket you cut yourself, y’know managed to get it all
cleared out and that was one incident we had. Another we, there was a fence that we used
to erm, tie the horse to, there was a, on near the Snake pub right beside the main road
and on another occasion we got him loaded ready for going and a large wagon came past
4

and he jumped, got a bit startled and jumped, his shoes slipped on the stone flag floor and
he fell down on to his, well onto his brisket, y’know, onto his chest and we got him up and
checked him over and he seemed alright and then as I as running my hand round I
suddenly realised that on his breast bone he’d a swelling about 2 inches deep all down
and probably about twice the size of a brick something so we said we can’t take him in that
state, y’know, so we unloaded him and we carried everything by hand after that, erm,
y’know, cos it was no use, to be right wi horse, hadn’t yer…
(Yeah absolutely.)
…it was only way yer could, do so, um.
(Ah bless him. So when did you, what year did you stop using horses, did you finish)
It would be about 1980, ‘81, probably 1980 would be last year, I think.
(Yeah.)
That’s certainly the last horse that we used and it, the year after I think we would have the
road being used after a fashion. Although I'm not certain if we didn’t once we’d got the
road I think we still used the horse a little bit, but it didn’t, for one year I think. That was the
biggest headache was getting the horse sorted out, getting somebody to take the horse
and it, as I say it involved a two mile walk taking the horse to the pub at night, then a two
mile walk back then feed him and work him all day the day after and the day after that and
then walk him back at night two miles and then go back two miles to collect your vehicle, I
had nobody at that time to pick me up, y’know, so it made long days, it made a long tiring
job out of things really.
(Yeah.)
But, erm…it was very pleasant in its own way though…
(Yeah.)
…y’know so. And I knew virtually, well nothing of horses when I came here, I don’t know a
huge lot now but I y’know I sort of learnt to sort of make the best of it. Erm, Mr Atkin who
provided the horses had put me right, when you…I don’t know whether you’re familiar with
the terms for harness, do you know what a crupper is
(I don’t, no, probably should.)
A crupper is when you put the harness round the back end of the horse the crupper was a
loop and you had to put the tail of the horse through this loop…
(Oh right.)
5

…so that it sort of hooked onto his back end by the root of his tail if you like and it was
most important to make sure that every hair on his tail was straight because if it wasn’t that
caused irritation and irritation could upset him and so you had to sort of stand round with
the horse and I was told in no uncertain terms that if you go round the back of the horse
you sort of follow him round with your hand till you get there, you do the thing and talk to
him and you stand right up to him.
(Yeah, so he knows you’re there.)
So that he knows you’re there and you are safer right up to him than if you stand back, he
can’t get a swing at you. If you imagine, if I sort of took a swing and punched you I could
hurt you from here, but if my hand was up against you…
(Yeah.)
…I’ve no, I can’t get the leverage to go at him and you always felt it was a bit frightening.
But I mean all, fortunately all t’horses were pretty good and erm, if they did get a bit uppity,
if you talked to them they’d generally settle down straight away.
(Yeah.)
So they were good to deal with, y’know.
(Yeah, well stuff like shires, they’re generally quite staid aren’t they, they’re quite gentle.)
Where you found problems with this was that with having the lunches and drinks and
everything and its quite a high animal or the basket’s quite high, cos they’re sort of set up
on a, the top of the baskets on a level with spine of horse, so if it’s a big horse it was
difficult to reach into bottom of basket and you might find beaters, school boys jumping up
and swinging on a pannier in order to reach and y’know and you just had to keep an eye
on them and make sure that, y’know they didn’t cause a great upset, we were very lucky
that the horses were as placid as they were.
(Yeah.)
Erm, had we not had Mr Atkin I'm sure we would have had, y’know, a lot more problems
than we did have…
(Yeah.)
…but um…
(But he knew his horses.)
6

Yeah, yeah and that made all the difference.
(Yeah.)
So...
[All chuckling.]
(And when we spoke before you were telling me about bracken; erm, I think we probably
talked about it after the interview, about cutting the bracken with a scythe.)
Yeah, yeah.
(Now did you do that all year round)
No, no the bracken that I mowed was near the shooting butts where they were shooting
the grouse, there were bracken beds, and bracken as you’re well aware, a bracken bed is
possibly three or four feet deep…
(Yeah.)
…on an ordinary one, a lot more on some of them. And all I did was mow the bracken just
before the shooting, usually at the beginning of August, in order to make it easier to pick
up any birds that were shot.
(Right.)
Sometimes there’d be a bracken bed that people had to walk through and you would mow
a track three or four yards wide, sorry that should be metres nowadays shouldn’t it, but
anyway it was yards then and so that they had a clear track to go through, if it was wet and
bracken were wet you got wet through otherwise. So that’s really all it was, we didn’t use
the bracken for anything, erm, I did try it a little bit as bedding for dogs at one point but
bracken tended to break up into…it wasn’t like straw it tended to break up much finer and
make a sort of…
(Well, the bits break off, don’t they)
Yeah.
(Yeah.)
…and those bits are very sharp as well and, uh, I’ve had both dogs and me with lumps of
bracken in that you’ve had to pull out and, y’know, can go into you easily about quarter an
inch or half an inch something like that which, erm...
7

(Not good, then)
Not a good thing, no bracken that’s about all we did in that sense.
(So you weren’t keeping it down for the heather or...cos obviously bracken’s quite invasive,
it takes over, doesn’t it, but you didn’t manage it...)
At that time, no, it was so labour intensive mowing it with a scythe, erm…and also it’s
difficult to really mow properly on bracken, you tended more to chop it, erm a lot of people
chop some bracken and then say ‘oh I can mow with a scythe’, and it’s actually a different
thing. Erm, but once you got used to it and you could mow the stuff and if you had sort of
learnt the technique you could leave it in a row behind you so that when you’d finished,
your patch would be all out in rows and looked quite, well more impressive than if it was
just cut and left, y’know…
(Yeah.)
... “willy nilly” sort of thing. Erm, but then of course later on they started with bracken spray
which we tried which I was delighted about cos the first thing I did was go and spray where
these beds were that I had to mow and try and get rid of those and nowadays yeah, we
certainly do mow with a view to giving the heather and other vegetation a chance.
Bracken, well in my lifetime has really taken off and it’s swallowing whole, huge areas of
moorland and it needs to be knocked back a lot…
(Yeah.)
…in order to y’know bring out the best in these hills, I think…
(Yeah.)
…but erm, yeah.
(Yeah, I don’t think you’re on your own thinking that [laughing].)
No, quite, it’s erm, I mean they learnt with the bracken spraying, they did some a lot of
helicopter work, erm, they didn’t do it enough follow up treatment and they got a bit of
erosion in places but I always felt that the erosion was preferable to the bracken
personally, cos nothing else much grew under it…
(No.)
…and, uh, they were better finding somewhere regenerating the ground afterwards, I think.
(Yeah.)
8

But that’s pretty much in hand now, like they seem to have got the right side of that, so, er,
y’know, that isn’t a great problem I don’t think now.
(So you were telling me about cornfields, on the sort of the edge of the moors, were they)
Mostly, yeah, erm, a lot of the farming community had horses so they grew their own oats
and they used to say that grouse went on to there and fed, I mean this is before my
generation by a good few years.
(So what sort of years were we talking)
I would imagine that it would, erm, horses would fade out sort of aft...round about the
Second World War or just after…
(Yeah.)
…erm, so the corn would be grown presumably in the ‘30s I'm guessing, a lot of this is
speculation, I might not be totally accurate on that, and we ploughed ground up at home
on Snailsden Moor for the, specifically for the grouse, I think when we’d finished we’d 7 or
8 acres; we used a tractor to plough it and we planted wheat oats and barley. My job was
the plough weight, I had to stand on’t plough to hold it down cos it tended to catch a stone
and bounce out…
(Oh right (laughter].)
…and erm, anyway we grew this corn and in the early years when they first did it they
tended to mow it and make it into sheaves and then ‘stook’ it up the old fashioned way, we
did that I think the first year I was on, after that we tended to leave it standing. And some
years the grouse came in large numbers like flocks of starlings to whit or flocks of rooks
whatever you want to describe it as and really went for it, other years for no apparent
reason they didn’t bother very much with it, a few would come in. And, erm after I left they
went back to stooking and the keeper who was on there then said that he felt that they
took it better when it was in stooks. What we also did was to buy a ton of grain or more
and then sow that through winter to make sure that the stooks all had, always had plenty
of feed on it but as I say some years they went for it some years they didn’t, and then...
(But you thought oats were better, sorry, you thought corn was better than oats for them)
The chap that I worked with felt that wheat was better so we used to plant wheat, oats and
barley, an old farmer used to say that oats was best, but as my head keeper said to him in
the old days they only grew oats because that’s what they needed for their horses, so he
said, y’know he said I think they would go better with wheat so we finished up with a
mixture of wheat, oats and barley and, erm, so they had the choice of everything
like…[Laughter from both]…and then I think after 2 or 3 years after I left which would be
9

into the early ‘70’s they stopped doing it and they haven’t done it since, and I never knew
of anywhere else that grew corn specifically for grouse only that, but uh...
(So, it was a bit of an experiment really)
Yeah, and they would.
(Did you plough the moorland up for that)
It was white ground, er grassy stuff, erm, on the edge of the moorland, close to the
heather, but we didn’t actually plough the heather up.
(Right, so along the edge of the moor.)
Yeah, and in the past the ground that we ploughed up had been part of a large hill farm,
which had not been used for a good number of years, erm, y’know, so I don’t think we sort
of ruined any heather or anything. In fact this last year or two they’ve been planting some
of this ground with heather or doing this regeneration work such as Geoff Eyre, I think
Geoff Eyre’s actually doing it on this ground, so, erm, yeah that was sort of the corn side of
things.
(Right, that’s really interesting. Thank you.)
10

Elizabeth Worsley: Interviewed by Hazel Winder, Area Ranger for the Peak District
National Park. February 2010
First Interview:
It’s Elizabeth really, but it’s Bessy. Everyone calls me Bessy.
(So it’s Elizabeth really)
It’s just Elizabeth. I was christened Elizabeth.
(Could you give me your full name and if you don’t mind your age and/or your date of
birth)
Yes. Elizabeth Worsley, I was born on the 24 th February 1929.
(And where were you born)
In Greens Cottage, Gradbach, near Flash
(How old were you when you left)
I was three years old when I left there and we went down to the Mill House in Gradbach
and that was a big house because the person that lived at Mill House was a single man
and we’d got, there was ten of us children, we weren’t all at home then in Greens Cottage
and it was only a two bed-roomed house and so he swapped over with us. He went to
Greens Cottage and we went to the Mill House through the estate agents ‘cos they were
estate agents from Calke Abbey and Derby. They were the agents and we went to Mill
House and I remember going there, and with there being an old man there, all the
wallpaper was hanging off and I thought ‘my goodness what have we come to’
But I was only three so I can’t remember a lot, but it was, you know, just going from
a nice clean house to a house like that! But there was six bedrooms, you see, there. There
was…end room which used to be a doctors surgery, then there was what we used to call
the parlour and then there was the hall and then the kitchen and then there was a living
room rather, sorry, the kitchen, then there was the pantry, which was at the back all
underground, so it was always cold, you never needed a fridge, but we used to have a little
square thing which we called a meat safe with netting on the front just to keep the flies off.
That was for the meat and we used to, you know, have pigs and all sorts and we had
someone to kill a pig and I remember this chap…we used to have a lot of boiling water, the
copper going with boiling water and he’d have a bench and he’d put this pig on and they
had to pour boiling water over it all the time and he used to scrape it to get all the hair off
of it. And he’d stick it first and we had to stir all the blood all the time, one of us, because it
would make black puddings out of this blood.
(So when you said he had to stick it first)
To kill it, to kill it and then of course he stuck it because he had to make a way for the
blood to come, you see, and it came into a bucket and then, he did it with a knife, we had
to stir it all the time till it was cold else it would, I don’t know why, it would go solid or
something. And we stirred it, one of us, stirred it all the time till it was cold and then he
used to, you know, skin it and cut the head off. We made brawn of the head, cut the ears
off, the eYes, out and the snout used to take off, then boil it and it was really nice brawn it
1

was with pepper. We used to put pepper and salt to it. And then he used to cut it in joints
and we’d have ‘em hanging up in the kitchen off hooks. We’d got hooks in the kitchen,
used to hang them up and then we used to slice bacon off, you know, when some was
bacon and some were joints of ham; and we did that because there was such a lot of us,
so we needed something like that.
With this pantry, well we’d a cellar down below and there was big benches in that
and we used to salt with saltpetre which tasted, you know, they tasted different to what
they do today. We used to put the joints down there, like, to salt them, put ‘em in saltpetre
before we hung them up and, you know…oh I remember going down there and getting,
you know, when they brought them back, up after so long, I can’t remember how long it
was, but they used to put them in saltpetre but afterwards put them in muslin and then
hang them up and they tasted – they didn’t taste salty like they do today, something was
different, the saltpetre was and that was what we did and we grew, oh they used to have a
croft and we used to grow potatoes and mangolds for the cows and grow cabbages and
things. And in the garden we used to grow things. ‘course we had the watercress beds and
as soon, ‘cause my mother had a café at the end, she started doing teas and we had
watercress sandwiches. People used to love those watercress sandwiches.
(I’d like to talk to you separately about the watercress.)
I see.
(That was such a big part for you, especially when you were younger, so I think we’ll
definitely take that as a separate subject, if that’s alright with you.)
I see. But I was just going on about the sandwiches like me mother used to do. And we
used to sell apples and oranges out of a big box, anything to make money, and they were
a penny each. I don’t know where they got the boxes of oranges and apples, I don’t know,
but we used to sell them on the doorstep like. Then we used to, I remember, washing up;
as soon as we were old enough to handle cups and saucers. We used to wash up me and
May, next sister to me, and we’d stand on a box, orange box or something, we used to
stand on something to reach the sink because we were not big enough.
(How old would you be)
Well I went there at three and I’d only be about, I think, four or five, five I think, maybe six
when we started washing up. We weren’t very old ‘cos we couldn’t reach the sink and it
wasn’t very high. It was a great big stone sink and of course there was a bowl there
because you couldn’t put water in the sink because they were only shallow weren’t they,
the big stone sinks and if we dropped a cup or anything we used to get, me dad used to go
mad at us! Mother always used to try and cover up for us but me dad used to be so awful
and I remember Sundays, because it was Saturdays and Sunday, ‘cos there wasn’t many
people in the week, it were more Saturdays and Sundays where people used to come
down and call for a cup of tea and these, you know sandwiches.
And mother used to make scones as well and of course we’d got a black leaded
range and she used to bake the bread in the fire side oven and it was beautiful bread. Oh
it was beautiful. She did that, you know, had a baking day and then in between we hadn’t
enough like for the week, she used to bake one day, and then we had a bread man,
Newton’s from Buxton, they used to come, Harold and Arthur Newton and then a Mr.
Needham used to work for them and he came down. He used to fetch the bread on a
Saturday, Yes, and then, of course, mother used to bake Tuesday mostly for the bread to
last till the Saturday, you see.
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(How much bread did she bake She must have baked an awful lot then for a family
of…plus all the people who came. Were you open during the week as well)
Well there wasn’t anybody walked past much in the week but, just more or less Saturdays
and Sundays we used to open you see, you know, ‘‘cos it wasn’t, I think everybody was
working weren’t they in the week, you know, everybody was busy. But the ramblers used
to come round like, walked to Lud’s Church because it was so, sort of like a spot where
everyone went to, you know, to walk and bilberry time I remember going bilberrying and
Mother used to make jam of the bilberries. We used to go with a bucket and collect
bilberries. That was near Lud Church. Oh it’s a lovely bilberry spot that is and, which she
used to make bilberry jam and she used to make, and my dad we’d got gooseberry bushes
all round the garden where we dug and we used to pick gooseberries. Mother used to
make gooseberry jam of that and make elderberry wine.
I don’t know how she did it because she had a big patch like brown on the outsides and
yellow enamel in the middle, and this stood about that high off the floor. There were big
round ones and she used to make elderberry wine and how she did it I don’t know. She
used to put toast on top of it, just toast floating on the top and I don’t know, it tasted
beautiful, it really did taste really, and it never went sour, never went, you know, like.
Today I mean if you leave a bottle of wine out it goes funny doesn’t it Well it didn’t.
Whether we drank it so quick or not, I don’t know, but I remember it tasted really, really
nice it did. We only had it like a little drop on a Sunday and then we always had it at
Christmas. There was always wine at Christmas, yeah. We used to have the family over at
Christmas and we all went in the front room like and called it parlour then, you know we
called it parlour then.
We all went into there and me brother used to bring in gramophone , one of these
you wind up, and he used to fetch all these old records – Nellie Grey and all Harry Lauder
tunes he used to play. We loved it because it was so nice, it was just one of the days in the
year you really felt happy and we only had like six of us at home at the time ‘‘cos some of
them, the elder ones, were all out at work you see, because there was twenty years in
between my eldest daughter, er, sister.
(There were 10 children so what sort of ages were there – boys, girls)
Well the oldest sister was twenty years older than me, the next one, there was two and a
half years between all of them, the next was my brother Joe and the next was my brother
Laurence. Gladys, no Gladys was the next one, sorry.
The eldest was Edith, she was twenty years older than me. Then the next was Joe,
he was two and a half years younger than her and then there was Gladys, me sister
Gladys, she was two and a half years younger, then there was my brother Laurence, he
was two and a half years younger, and then there was Teddy, he was two and a half years
younger than my brother Laurence, but he, they had sort of, he was so cruel with my
mother till they parted and he wouldn’t let her take the children with her. She couldn’t take
the children with her and she left but she came back because this brother was, this Teddy,
which I never knew, he caught pneumonia and he died. Like she came back to live to look
after him and he, anyway, he caught this pneumonia and he died. He was only four when
he died and then, of course, while they parted.
There was my sister, Mary, was born to another woman. He went off with this other
woman because he was working in the coal pit and this other woman was a friend of one
of them that worked with him and he went off with her and she was expecting and of
course my mother was expecting before they went and of course she would, my sister
3

Mary was born on the 6 th January and that was, and then my other sister was born on, and
they were both the same age like, with me mother expecting, and then this other one.
So she was born on the 14 th March so’s there’s only like, you know, a month, about six
weeks in between them.
But this other woman didn’t want my sister Mary so my mother, like, had two babies
to look after. Like I wasn’t there then, I didn’t know but I know it like from telling me.
So she had two babies to look after and when they went to school people always
used to question why aren’t you twins, you know, because there’s only six weeks in
between and they used to get called for that and then of course there was, Florry was
born. She was two and a half years younger than me sister Daisy and then there was me
who was two and a half years younger than Florry and then there was me brother Harold
which was two and a half years younger than me and then there was me sister, brother,
Cyril, which was two and a half years younger than Harold.
So well there was ten of us altogether so it really was a big family and I suppose
that was why he got cross and bad tempered because he never, you know, much money
and that. He sort of seemed as if he wanted a big family you know. Nothing stopped him,
my mother never had any say in it and he used to get so bad tempered with her. He did
and how she managed she used to go and have to do the shopping and walk up to Flash
and we used to go and meet her when we were old enough - help her carry the groceries
down. All my brothers and sisters did till I was old enough and help her to carry them
down. Once a week that’s all she went shopping and of course my dad went on, started
going on a tricycle and he used to get one or two things. He was on a tricycle like a big box
in the front. He started when he broke his leg. He were going up on, er, must have gone to
the side. Fell off it anyway, onto a stone and broke his leg. ‘course he was in hospital for a
while. So after that he started going to Macclesfield after, when he got better and we stood
Macclesfield market like, but he used to go on the Saturday to Macclesfield.
My mother sometimes went and then when I was old enough, ‘‘course, I did that
and they used to work at home and of course most of my brothers and sisters were all out
at work you see and there was only me, well me and my two brothers, at home and as
they got older they had to go out to work and I was the one because I could work inside
and out, so I was left at home. Then of course the other brother went out to work when he
was old enough.
So we just had ponies to start with to do the hay making. We had somebody to cut
the grass and we had a little cart, you know, for the pony and they used to cart the hay and
stuff on that. Hay making, and we used to get enough in summer to last all winter. And we
used to have all sorts of different cows to start with but then eventually he wanted to start
Jerseys and he bought some Jerseys. He went to different places and he paid a lot of
money for the Jerseys. And when he sold them it was too cold a place in Gradbach for the
Jerseys, it was much too cold and they used to go downhill.
The milk was very rich, it was beautiful milk. You could stand a penny on it and it
wouldn’t sink in the cream.
Mother used to make butter out of that. I used to take it on a donkey and cart in milk
churns to Manor farm which was a mile away and I used to take that every morning in the
milk churn. But it was very rich and he got more money for that because it was rich like.
But he used to pay a lot of money for the Jerseys and when he sold them he got about half
the price, you know, he lost money, but he kept having, you know, they kept having calves
and he had milk recorder man come to record the milk because that way he could say how
much they produced when he sold them.
And they did do well milking, especially when he first got them and the ones that
calved and grew up like, the heifers, they did better because they were used to the cold
4

ut he didn’t want to be, he wanted to be the sort of first person to have Jersey herd here
in that area and he wasted all his money on these Jerseys.
(I seem to remember reading about the Jerseys. He was quite famous for them because
he was the first person to have them.)
In that area, Yes, he was.
(Could you go back a bit as you had this huge family to look after Could you tell us a bit
more about your dad as he was obviously quite a character)
Well he was. Well he’d worked hard, he’d been, he was I think one of six children in his
family but his father died when he was, I think, it was about twelve when his father died
and he went to live with his grandparents which was at Middlehills. He lived with his
grandparents at that school house which was the one on the corner. He lived there for a
few years and then, I don’t know how old he was when he, his mother died, his mother
married again. She never liked us.
We used to go there one day a year and she was so prim and proper. I remember
going there one, we had to go there one day a year, and we sat around this table. We
weren’t allowed to put our hands on the table, our arms on the table, we were only allowed
to put our hands on when we were eating anything. To sit there, we weren’t allowed to
speak or do anything and she had, she’d got two, like, there were six of the others, six
people born before and then they had two, a boy and a girl, after with this woman and she
always spoilt them but she didn’t bother about the others and of course I remember me
dad always tutored Gladys, this was the youngest one of the two that he had with me
stepmother, and she lived at Poynton and we used to go once a year to see her and I went
with him. We used to go on the train and, you know, it wasn’t far from the station where
she was and he would always make sure he took her eggs and butter and she always had
to have this eggs and butter every time. No matter how short we were he’d have to take
some. He’d always look after her and spoiled her.
But Tom, that was the other son, he was very good with us because he was married
but had no children, they couldn’t have any children, so he spoiled us and I remember
coming up and he’d got a car and he’d got a two-seater with big dickey on the back. I don’t
know if you remember those, and he used to take us round, a little ride, as far as the
Manor farm and he’d used to let us sit in this dickey and then we’d walk back. And he used
to really like us but he’d stop coming at one time because me dad, I don’t know whether
he’d stopped him or something, but they fell out anyway. But he never fell out with Gladys,
his stepsister; he never fell out with her.
(How did he meet your mother)
They worked together somewhere, somewhere the other side of Buxton. They must have
worked together because I remember him saying they worked together and me mother
lived at Litton, Litton she lived, but she was born at Keswick in the Lake District. She was
only about two when they moved from there to Litton and that’s where Mother was. And
then they were married at Tideswell Church. She was only nineteen when they got
married, well, nearly nineteen when they got married and they went to live at Gratton and
my two eldest brother and sister were born there. And then they went to Topmiddle Edge
which is only stones now, there’s no Topmiddle Edge.
Then me next brother which was, no there was Gladys and Laurie were born there
and that was two children , so there was four of them then and they moved to Greens
Cottage.
5

Then Mary was born like, out of, with this other woman in Flash and then Daisy was
born there, and I was born. Florry was born there and I was born there and I was just three
when I came to Gradbachs because it was too crowded there. There was so many of us in
one bedroom, it was awful.
But of course I don’t remember a lot about it, but I remember going when we were
at Greens there was no water on tap at all, we had to fetch from a well down in the field for
washing the clothes and doing cleaning things and doing the vegetables and that.
Well we peeled them and that and we had to have the fresh drinking water which was
across the road and down some steps and carried two buckets, but of course I was too
young. When I went with them I used to stand at the top and watch my sister go down and
she fetched these two buckets of water up. That was for drinking and boiling the
vegetables or anything in. And then when I was three I went down to the Mill House and of
course we’d got water on the tap there, but only cold water, and a well at the side of the
house which isn’t there now. That was lovely water. We used to…
(Where was that)
You know as you go, it’s altered all now, but there was a gate there. Well there wasn’t a
gate as there was no wall there, it was all open like. There was, where you went down
there was just – where they’ve got it now, where you go down to the cellar, well there was
nothing there only a window and you just went straight up to the door to the kitchen and by
the side of the kitchen the well was there and it was pure water, oh it was beautiful water
and it never, ever dried up and we used to stand the churns in that to cool the milk.
We’d fetch the milk round from the sort of, the dairy, and we used to roll it like, and roll it
and put it in this water to cool it then, like, and I fetched donkey. We had a little cart and a
donkey at a later time and then he used to take the milk in this donkey and cart. We had
ponies sometimes but we had this donkey and he was lovely, but he wouldn’t let me ride
him, he wouldn’t. You got on his back and his back went up and you went flying. Never let
you ride him.
(Were the Tunnicliffes at Manor farm)
They were.
(That would have been Jeff’s)
Mother and Father, Yes.
(They were there so that was where you took the milk)
Yes, and Nadine’s, which were up on the back. They had, they used to take the milk there
as well. And there was Mr. Mountford at Gradbach End, he used to take his milk there as
well. Now where the Mill House is there’s Gradbach Old hall which was Anderssons’s and
further up the Gradbach end there was, which was, Will Mountford who had two
daughters, one died of consumption and the younger one stopped with him.
(When you say Gradbach End, where Cliff Whalley is now)
I don’t know.
(Towards Back Forest)
6

That’s right, yeah. I don’t know who’s there now, but Mountfords were there and we were
there like, but I’ve never known who was there, you know, afterwards. And he used to take
his milk there but his neighbours used to have donkeys as well. One donkey, a female
donkey, and his was male and used to chase after it. Sometimes as I was going along and
his was coming after used to race like mad after me and we used to go round the corner
on two wheels and it was just the same if I was going first and he was going. It was so
funny. I remember going round, and you know where the bridge is before you get to the
Manor, going round on two wheels.
But if it was there’d been a storm and the river was up it was awful getting him to
go along there. There was nothing to stop the river coming out you see and it used to be
so rough. I remember going along and it was such a job. I used to have to, you know, get
out and pull him and I used to walk between the river and him to hold him, to make it seem
I was hiding from the river to get him to come.
(Yes, the river right by the road)
Yes, it’s only a little grass verge isn’t there I remember Tunnicliffes used to laugh at me
they did, they used to laugh.
(There is an old white house above Tunnicliffe’s if you look up the hill)
Yes, there is a wooden shed. That’s a bungalow. We were going to go there when we
were married but, because we couldn’t find anywhere else. ‘Course Tunnicliffes were
marvelous with us because they knew what me dad was like and ‘course we were going
there but of course we got Sniddles after so we didn’t need to.
(So who lived there The Tunnicliffes owned it)
Yes, they did. They used to let it to people to go, you know, to stay weekends.
(Who would have originally lived there One of the Tunnicliffes Because it’s very old.)
Yes, but it’s only wooden, it was only wooden, wasn’t, isn’t a proper bungalow. A wooden
bungalow it is, that’s all. No gas or electricity in that, so.
(It’s right in the middle of the field there)
Yes, it is. Yes, it is. It’s not like there’s a proper road up to it is there
(Could we go back to your childhood again, to before you had the water cress Did you
have pigs in or did you buy)
We just bought a pig to grow it up. A young pig and grew it up. We always had one coming
on you know, as we killed one another one, sort of thing to, you know, to sort of carry on
‘cos we’d always to have, when we finished that meat as we’d got, you know, all the pork
and the bacon and things, we had to have another to be able to kill.
George Kirkham from Eagle and Child used to come and kill. He used to go round
killing pigs, he did so.
(Was that when it was a pub there)
No, it’s never a pub as long as I know it, no.
7

(It was originally a pub)
It was originally a pub. The bar’s still there as you go in, you know, the wooden bar. Of
course, it isn’t a pub and it isn’t used as a bar but the wooden part is still there. And then
there was another pub which was the Peg Inn – a bit lower down there and they used to,
they couldn’t get a license for that, so they used to sell pegs and give a glass of beer with
this to get round it because they wouldn’t give them a license.
I don’t know if they were too close together I don’t know, but that was what we’ve
read about, that we’ve heard. They used to sell this and me mum and dad have told me
about it like. They used to sell these pegs and give a glass of beer that was why it was
called Peg Inn.
(Wasn’t there an old mine along the bottom as well)
There used to be a house you know, where the chapel is. There used to a house in that
field there, one time. Not as I know it but the foundations were there you know, at one time
and it’s still little bits of stone there. I don’t know about a mine, but I know there was a mine
just up from Tunnicliffe’s, you know, as you go up to Pitch Moss, there used to be one on
the right hand side there, there used to be one. They used to get coal, but I mean water
that comes down from there is all tarry isn’t it That’s off coal they say, that’s off coal.
Where the far pasture, where we used to have a water cress bed, there was all tar in there
and they reckon there was coal underneath there. But nobody ever got that, nobody ever
went down to get that.
I know we used to take sandwiches to school, I remember that and most of it was,
we used to take jam sandwiches and ‘course me dad used to grow all these gooseberries
and they were mostly gooseberry jam and I can’t stand gooseberry jam! I can’t stand
gooseberry jam.
(You had too much of it)
We did and of course it wasn’t mum’s fault because she had to manage the way she
could, she’d nothing else. ‘Course we’d, I mean I love a jam sandwich now, but we used to
have a, but I could never stand gooseberry jam. It was never sweet enough really because
you’d never enough sugar you see. Sugar was hard to come by you know, especially
when the war was on. That was bad that was. Of course we were grown up then, except of
course there was two brothers were young.
I was going to school then, but, I mean we weren’t, I was going to Leek school then,
‘cos they wanted all those from Flash school to go after twelve, after eleven, they were
supposed to go to Leek school.
Of course the bus wouldn’t come round so we were supposed to walk up to
Middlehills. Well it was a long way up so me dad wouldn’t let me go. Wouldn’t let me go
because the bus wouldn’t come round. And then at twelve they decided to let the bus
round because there was one or two more twelve year olds so they brought them round.
So I went to Leek School at twelve and left at fourteen because you left school then at
fourteen. Started working at home on the farm.
(Did you only ever work on the farm)
I did, no, no there was always plenty of work because we used to have this croft; plough
this croft with little pony. We had a pony and hand plough. I remember we’d ploughed it
and then of course you had to take the weeds off, go and pick the stones up and throw
8

them in the river and then we had to sort of, with little harrows, break the soil up and then
we had to drill it.
I remember going down with this. It was so hard to keep the drills level, you know,
because the pony was so, it was only a pony, it was hard work for the pony and me dad
used to put a handkerchief at the bottom.
“Now get straight with that ‘arrow” and I tried to keep the pony straight and I couldn’t
and I’ve come in floods of tears because I’ve had it that much because getting this, he
used to put the handkerchief on and he said “Follow that handkerchief!”
Honestly, it was so hard work trying to get this pony, because it was pulling and it would go
from side to side you see, pulling this to keep it, and I was trying to hold the pony level and
of course it couldn’t it was so hard work for it.
(Too much)
It was, it was too much for the pony and of course you can’t keep it straight and he used to
say “It’s like a bloody dog’s hind leg!” And I’ve come in in floods of tears many a time,
could hardly eat me dinner.
When it was dinner time then we’d just give the pony a rest and then go out after
dinner to do the rest of it. I know it isn’t a big croft but it looked enormous when you’re
doing it. It was enormous and then we used to clamp potatoes down, enough you know, as
many as we could. Then we used to grow cabbages and Brussels and then two rows of
mangolds for the cows like help them.
You know it was so, sort of hard work, really hard work, but then, of course, there
was the garden and we used to grow lettuces and radishes.
We used to have horseradish. It was lovely horseradish, but we used to, when you
used to get it, it was like underground, a thick stalk and it used to be my job to get it. A
piece of horseradish up on a Sunday for the beef and of course you’d peel it and then
grater it and it used to make your eyes, water it was so strong.
You grated it up and then put it in a jug and used to, like, mash it you know. Used to
put a bit of, a drop of cream and vinegar and sugar and mash it up and that was your
horseradish. But it was strong, you couldn’t hardly have any, you know, on your meat.
Different to what you’d buy today it is. It was so strong but it was lovely it used to taste
really nice. We used to have that on a Sunday the horseradish.
We used to grow mint and we used to do little things in the garden like, you know,
all sorts of; we had blackcurrant bushes but we only had two. There was loganberries
against the wall of what I suppose was the tea room and then down across the bridge, my
dad made a bridge to go across to the orchard, what we used to call the orchard, and
there was a trough there in which we’d grow water cress in for a quick pick like, for
anybody’d come and we needed a bit.
And then there was loganberry trees along there, loganberry bushes, and it was
across between a blackberry and a raspberry, a loganberry, but it was bigger. It was quite
big and we used to have those and we used to make a jam of those.
Anything she used to make jam of and we did have some fruit trees but they never
did anything. We had some fruit trees down one side of the path going up to the front door
of the house but they never did anything.
There was two plum trees, two apple trees, eating apples and two cooking but we
never had hardly any of them. It was too cold, there wasn’t enough bees about I think to,
you know. If they were there, frost would come, being against the river and it would kill all
the blossom before they set you see. We used to grow quite a few lettuces and that. We
used to have lettuce sandwiches and something for tea.
(What would be a typical days’ meal)
9

Well, when we got up in the morning, we used to have porridge, always porridge and a
piece of toast, and then we’d go to school.
We’d toast on the fire as mother always, we always got up at six o’clock and got the
fire going and boil the kettle on the fire like. We used to toast the toast on the fire, toasting
forks, and then we had a piece of bread and cheese, when we was at home this was, after
I’d left school and we used to have apiece of bread and cheese in the middle of the
morning.
Breakfast at eight o’clock, a piece of toast and cheese at ten o’clock, always dinner
at twelve, that had to be at twelve. We used to have what was left on the joint which we’d
have like, on Sunday.
Mother sliced it cold, we had cold meat, potatoes and one vegetable and gravy and
rice pudding. And then for afternoon, afternoon tea was at four o’clock and we had bread
and jam and then a cup of tea and one piece of cake.
Mother used to bake cakes on Saturday. Then at eight o’clock we used to have a
piece of bread and cheese, slice of bread and cheese and a cup of tea and that was it. No
more then. And of course that was a typical day.
Tuesday we’d have ‘ash made out of the Sunday joint, which lasted two days. Made
a bit with potatoes, like, she made it into a hash, which we had with potatoes and a
cabbage, piece of cabbage and then rice pudding after.
Wednesday we had the hash again, which was left and the Thursday we had a piece of
bacon with potatoes and Friday we always had bacon again because there was no, you
used to have to make that do for a week.
And then Saturday we used to have, like, with going to Macclesfield, we used to
fetch sausage from Gaskells’ down Mill Street. ‘cos I used to go on the bike for a while, a
carrier bike, and it was very hard work with water cress in the front, it was. Used to get off
and take water cress to the Rose and Crown. Called there, there was two bundles for
there, two bundles for the Shavins at Longdale Farm and then go up Longdale and call at
Rothwells, that was at Burnham Road and from then on I used to walk – I fell off me bike
see, because it was a mans’ bike – and then call at Latham’s, Mrs. Latham, at Mill Lane.
She used to have two bunches there and then call at Grimshaws, paper shop, they had
two bunches and then used to call at Mill Street. There was Gaskells and they had two
bunches but we always used to have to get sausage from there and they were always sour
and we always had to have them on Saturday dinner when we come and Sunday for, if
there was any left, we’d have those for breakfast.
Oh they were sour. I don’t know, they didn’t taste nice but we always had to get them from
there because they had water cress off us. Now he’d come back on a Saturday like and of
course he’d count his money. He used to put it in piles. Got to count out how many
bunches you’d had, and they all had to tally. You didn’t dare. And if I hadn’t sold all of
them, Frank Reeves used to take them next door ‘cos he knew what me dad was like and
he used to take them and sell them, ‘cos he used to have to go and he used to say come
back at two o’clock because I had to come back in plenty of time to do the milking and
everything, you know at night. We used to milk, do up and that, like you’ve got to do up
and clean everywhere up ready for milking.
Six o’clock was milking time every night. Everything had to be done so punctual.
Milking at six o’clock and supper at eight. There was breakfast eight o’clock, lunch at ten,
dinner at twelve, tea at four, supper at eight.
(Is that what your father…)
Everything had to be done on time. He was very, very strict he was and of course he
wouldn’t let me go out anywhere ‘cause he didn’t want me to meet anybody and I’ve had
10

cards. When Mother left Mill House I went down like, to help them to flit and I found cards
that were addressed to me which had never been opened and I opened them because he
was frightened of boys writing to me.
And there was my school friend which I used to write to and she never of thought
she’d stop writing to me. And so I found letters from her and of course then I’ve tried to get
in touch with her but I’ve not been able to. And I know her sister and we were best friends
at school but he was so, he didn’t want me to meet anybody , he wanted me to be there for
him ‘cos I was the last one to be at home you see, with, I know my two brothers were
younger, but I then met Brian, of course.
He used to let him come down because he used to help me with the milking and
that but we never used to be able to go anywhere because nine o’clock we had to be in.
Nine o’clock had to be in by nine o’clock. Well by the time we’d finished milking and fed the
cows and done everything it was, you know, you hadn’t much time because all we’d done
was have a little walk round.
There was one time I went to a concert with Brian at the Clough and we left when
the interval was. It as nine o’clock the interval and I said to Brian we’ll have to go home
now because I said he would be so mad. Of course it was an hours’ walk for miles to the
Clough and we walked and nearly run all the way home because it was a bit late by the
time we’d come out and we nearly run all the way home and of course he was fine when
we got there.
He enjoyed it and that was it and the next morning – “What were you doing till that
time of night” I said we were coming home, we left it half way through the concert. “The
concert don’t go on till that time. What were you doing” I said we were doing nothing, we
were coming home. And he said he wouldn’t believe me, he just wouldn’t believe me and
he nagged me all the time saying what were you doing, tried to make me say we were
doing something wrong and I just couldn’t stand it any longer.
But he just kept on and on and he kept hitting me a lot. And me dad was having the
building done at the back and there was two men who were doing, belonging to Mrs.
Tunnicliffe’s sister, Daisy, was staying at the Manor like at the time, and he was stopping
there while working with the building, him and his brother, and he came round the corner
one day and me dad were going to hit me with the spade because I would not tell him I
were doing anything wrong because we weren’t and he just wouldn’t believe me and I
didn’t ever say anything to Brian about this.
But one day, when Brian was in town, he saw Norman Nathan, which was the chap
doing the building, and he said he’d been wanting to see you and he told him about this
and of course Brian said to me “What was this Why didn’t you tell me”
I said well I knew he wouldn’t let me go, things would not be right after. Anyway, of
course, Brian he wouldn’t let it pass, he confronted him. Came to the day said I want to
speak, when we went in at night, he set into him and I said what you know about.
He said we were coming home and he told him everything. We’d left half way
through and he says what’s this about you hitting, going with a spade to hit Bessy and of
course he sat in this corner and of course Brian set into him about what had happened -
while me mother had left him he’d gone with this other woman and he said you you’ve
done wrong yet you’ve accused Bessy of doing wrong when she hasn’t done anything
wrong.
Anyway he went and then next time he came down, you know, I used to go and
open the door, me mother went and opened the door and he saw him. He went to the door
and said “You don’t come in here until you apologize”
He says “I’ve nothing to apologize for so I’m not going to apologize” Me dad shut
the door and says you don’t come again. I got up and I’m going with him. Brian stuck up
for me and we hadn’t done anything wrong and everything was right.
11

But every time he come, he let him in the house and I used to go and meet him. But
he never spoke to me, me dad didn’t, only by telling me what to do or having a row with
me and it got so uncomfortable for twelve months till we decided to get married and I was
so worried about my mother because leaving her with him. But I know me brother said
he’d come home and work at home. But I know the money he gave him he couldn’t live on
because I only got £2 a week and had to buy all me own clothes and everything out of
that.
I only got 50p for ages and then he put it up to a pound when I was twenty one, but
I had to buy all me own clothes and everything and then I saved as much as ever I could
but it wasn’t much.
Then we managed to get a few things when I went to Macclesfield, like, after, I
couldn’t go on the bike after so long because it got so heavy. So Mr. Hatchetts said he’d
take me and he took me down and then came back on the half past two bus to Clulow
Cross and then walk from Clulow Cross, which was a long way with the water cress. You,
they was only like very light things, like plywood woven in, and had four of these in the bag
and he used to put them altogether and tie them up and carry them on the bus. They
weren’t heavy but you did what bit of shopping you had to do, sausage and any water
cress left used to leave it with Frank Reeves to sell it. But I used to have to put the money
in out of my own pocket because, if I’d any left, because he used to count it out every time.
But then of course we decided we were going to go to this bungalow in this field of
Tunnicliffe.
And we used to get little things and Brian used to take me into town sometimes and
we’d get a saucepan or something. What we could afford and a kettle and Brian used to
take them to the Manor and they used to leave them there for us and they were ever so
good, really so good Annie Tunnicliffe was. I used to walk down Burncliff Trust, Brian used
to go on like, he wasn’t allowed to come in the house, ‘course me, I’d come down hardly
ever speak to me dad. Life was awful then but of course my mother tried to make it as
happy as possible.
This was in the spring and I knew that me brother wouldn’t stop and he couldn’t, he
couldn’t afford it. He gave him £8 a week, well, he’d got a house in Macclesfield and he
was married so he couldn’t manage on that. So they had a farm sale and they had to sell
quite a lot of furniture as well as they were going to a cottage - Kennel Cottages near
Melbourne in Derby. They let him have a cottage. All this was sorted out and they had the
sale.
I weren’t allowed to go home after I was married. In between Harold going and
them selling the farm I think it was about ten months altogether. But one day when they’d
gone to Kennel Cottages to look round there was a flood at Mill House and this water, was
all flooded in the Mill and Dennis Williams came up and he said they’ve had a flood and
your brother’s on his own down there and he says all the water’s gushing down. So Brian
and I went down and of course it was such a mess! Everywhere things were floating in the
mill and all got hay out in the mill flat. All that had gone down the river, it was all messed
up and after that when they said they were going to sort things out, I went down to help
them and that was the only time I started going down after just when they were going to
sell up.
And I helped mum to pack but I never spoke to him, never spoke to him after we
were married. I wouldn’t speak to him and he wouldn’t speak to me and he didn’t give me
away at the wedding. Because my mother wanted him to give me away, because it would
be such a sort of thing in the paper. So mother said to Brian would you ask him to give me
away and so Brian come down and he did ask him and he said he would.
We were married on the Wednesday, December 15 th 1954.
(Your dad was a bully all your life though not just because of that)
12

Yes, he was. He was all so cross with us. He used to hit us all. When we went to school, if
we were late home, it took us an hour walk from Flash down to the Mill House, and if we
were late home we’d stand there. We used to have rice pudding; we used to have a meal
at night with taking sandwiches and we used to have rice pudding and we used to say the
one who goes in first, because we knew we were going to get hit, had the skin off the rice
pudding, because we would scrape the dish and the one was allowed to have the skin, the
one that went in first. We used to take turns. Whenever we were late we always used to
get hit we did. If we were late home, we always got hit. If we were five minutes late we did.
(And he used to hit your mum as well)
He used to hit me mum when we’d gone to school and me Mam had blood running out of
her nose when he’d hit her. And we wondered if ever we’d got home and we’d got a
mother to come back to, we did. We used to worry all day “I wonder how Mum is”
We’d always hurry home at night when we’d gone to school. We were always early home
at night because we’d, usually when we’d, we were really naughty, really, because a lot of
people knew us and we used to call at Daze opposite barbers at Springhead. There were
two lovely ladies, they were lovely and we used to knock on the door and ask the time and
she used to give us a piece of cake, a lovely piece of cake. She was really nice, they must
have felt so sorry for us and this cake was beautiful and we used to love this.
(It sounds as if your dad had quite a reputation)
Everybody knew him, they did.
(Not very kind)
No, he wasn’t. And we used to call at a little Post Box above Tunnicliffes’ and they used to
leave the paper there and we used to take it down every day. They used to give us two
pennies a week. When we went to school there was a little toffee shop down some steps
and Sarah Jane used to have this toffee shop.
(Where was it)
Just opposite where the well is, where the chapel is, there was like a little cottage and you
used to go down some steps to it, through a door and, just three steps down, and go
through the door and she had a toffee shop there and you could get ten aniseed balls for
1d or you used to get two liquorices, you know these laces like, or there was spinning
wheels with toffee in the middle and you used to get such a lot of things for a penny.
And we used to get these and divide them up between us. This was 2d a week, which
was a lot of money then, you know, taking this paper down. They always used to leave
this paper for us so we could take it down to them and have this 2d a week and it was
lovely.
Oh, there were all sorts of little things you know. People were so good to us in lots
of ways because they knew what he was like.
13

Second Interview:
(I’d like you to tell me about the water cress as this was an important part of your life. Tell
me whose idea it was, how they were created to start with.)
Well, me dad started off because he’d finished at the coal. He used to do, work in a coal
mine, and he finished with that and he had to do something else. So he started off
because there were so many springs in the Gradbach. There were seven springs all
coming out of the bank, all along the side; and so having all those springs he thought Ooh
it would make a nice water cress beds.
So we started and me two eldest brothers helped to dig them out and started off in
a small way and then we went to get water cress roots from different places. There was
one place, from Lanes, at the back there, they had a big pond and there it was full of water
cress and they let us fetch roots from there, to let us start off.
And then there was, below the Pearls, there was another stream full of water cress
and we got some from there and some from Knabb’s and we gathered them up and set
them in these beds that were already dug out. And then we started to make more beds as
we went along and, you know, we made them all so as you went in one end and round and
out the other, so it kept running through, all the way.
(Can I just ask you how many beds there were altogether)
We started with four to start with and then, that was when I started, and then we made
more and made about twenty altogether and like there was two long canals and they were
always full of water cress ‘cos the spring just came in first, but it used to wash a bit of sand
down so you just had to keep digging them out and then setting them again to make sure
that they weren’t lower down in the water.
And then we started, we made one on the bank, there was about twelve at the
bottom, I think, and then we made one on the bank, ‘cos there was a spring up there and
then we made five, six, no five in the far pasture, ‘cos there was, where the car park is
now, a field there and some willow trees. Well we put willow trees round and there was
one which was one bed.
That was very dark water cress that was, very strong. It was lovely, really was, but it
was very tarry round there because it was on top of coal. But one of them, if you didn’t
stand on a plank, you went down over your Wellington tops. So we had to stand on the
plank to get back on the first one. But I’d like to come and see if there’s anything there
now.
But there’s like this one and four more, three more at the side I think, four beds in
the far pasture. So there was quite a bit. We used to get them on a Thursday and we used
to walk, there was a path down from the far pasture, we used to go down the bank from
the water cress and there was a pool next to the little canals and it was very deep so we
used to put the water cress, boxes of water cress, in there.
On a Thursday we got the water cress and we used to put them there till Friday and
then we used to fetch them down and pack them up on the table in the kitchen in the Mill
House.
(How long did it take to pick the water cress each week)
Well we was there most days. Just depends how much there was, usually on a Thursday,
took us a, we booked Thursday for getting water cress.
(And how many of you did it)
14

Well just me and me dad, yeah, we got it and then we pack it up into bunches, I think they
were about three ounces, weighed them and then put them, we had a band, elastic band,
and we had a ticket which we put round and me dad had a, his own Krystal Spring, he
spelt it with a K, because it was his way of being his own…
(His own brand)
That’s right, yeah. So Fred Hill, from Leek, used to do the labels and we used to have so
many thousands at a time. And then we used to put this round and pack them into boxes
and to tray. You know, these sort of, they were very thin like, very thin plywood, almost
very nearly like cardboard, but they were ever so strong and we used to put a dozen in the
bottom in one way and then turn them the other way and do a dozen that way. And
another dozen, that’d be three dozen and we used to have four. Well we did three of
those; there was about three or four. Sometimes three dozen sometimes four dozen. Just
depends how pegged they were and then depends on how much we’d got, like.
Sometimes if it was spring you had quite a bit because it grew quite well in spring and
summer. But, when it got to back end, we didn’t have as much.
People had got sort of a bit tired of it I should think, ‘cos we slacked off a bit in the
summer, well, back end rather, and we used to take about twelve dozen bunches, that was
about what we took.
(That’s an awful lot, isn’t it)
It is, but you know we had a courier bike and once put down there at the bottom and then
you put two that way and then another, if you’ve got more, put one on the top and we used
to have a sacking that we put over, to put round, because we used to have to carry them
up.
We used to push the bikes up to Burntcliff Top, up to the top to the Eagle and Child,
and then we’d get, come back and take the water cress up after.
And me dad went till I was eighteen and he went, and I used to take his place. He’d never
push his bike up Longdale. I used to have to push his bike up Longdale. He pushed mine
and then he used to come back when we got to Clulow Cross because he’d go down into
Macclesfield. He stood market himself like till I was eighteen.
Then I went with him for twelve months and then he said I must go on my own then when I
was eighteen. So I did, I went on the bike for two years but it was very hard work because
it was very heavy. So after a while Mr. Atkinson said he’d take me ‘cos my brother was
working for him then. He was helping him ‘cos he had a garage. So because he was
pleased with my brother working for him he decided he’d take me and charged ten
shillings.
So I went with him and then I came back on the half past two bus from Clulow
Cross and walked from Clulow Cross back to the Mill House which was four miles. But my
baskets were only light then you know, ‘cos I’d emptied them by the time I came home.
(Did you bring other shopping back from the market)
Just a bit of shopping, yes. Used to have sausages, used to have, well, Gaskells had, they
had two bunches and so we had to have sausages off them but I thought they were always
sour, horrible, and we had to take them. And then there was Latham’s, we always got a
quarter of sweets from her because she’d got a sweet shop. And then there was
Grimshaw’s, along Mill Lane. We used to take two bunches and we had bacon off them.
15

Anybody who had water cress off us we used to trade with them. Then it got sort of, well,
back end. We had to finish with it ‘cos it got too cold, water cress didn’t grow, so we
finished for six weeks from the end of December till January, end of January, February and
it used to be sometimes March before we could start again because it depended on the
weather like, the cold, because it wouldn’t grow in cold weather.
(I should imagine you were very pleased to have a break from it)
We were.
(Can you explain how your father and brothers dug the water cress beds out, but you had
to maintain them)
Oh yes. About every two years you had to dig them all out because the soil as it washed
round, it made the soil rise so the water cress was out of the water. So we had to pull your
water cress, dig it all out, dig the soil out, so to lower it and then you had to set all your
water cress again in the beds.
You kept doing it every so often. But when it flowered, some of it flowered, you could just
cut the tops off and throw them in where you’d got a place that was a bit bare. And if you
hadn’t enough roots, throw those in and they’d bed themselves down, so it was very nice
like, that was.
(What about the sides of the bed)
Well we dug it out with clods and make the sides, divide them up with clods, but you had to
go up every day when it was frosty because either the voles or the water rats made holes
in it and this let the water off so we’d got to go up every day just to make sure the water
was on. Make them up with soil from the water cress or the clod like. Make the holes up.
It was hard work it was, and it was so cold at times. Sometimes you carried on and
you couldn’t move your fingers, you couldn’t undo your button on your coat it was that
cold. We had these sort of shears, were cold, and you used to clip it with that. It wasn’t
easy at all, it was very hard work.
(And you’ve always been quite tiny so pushing that bike, carrying the water cress, must
have been hard work)
It was, it was hard work.
(And what happened if you didn’t sell all the water cress)
Well I used to give it to George and Frank Reeves, they used to sell it. They were next
door to me [in Macclesfield market]. They had a grocery store and they said they knew
what my dad was like, so they took it and they’d sell it like, because I had to catch the half
past two bus. So they sold some in the afternoon for me and I had to put my own money in
to make up for it; and then they‘d give me the money. If they hadn’t sold it I was out of
pocket.
But it was just the way because he counted every penny up when he got home.
Every penny. He knew how many bunches, he knew how much there was. Of course I had
to pay for the stall out of it; it was so many shillings a week. That was for the stall and he
used to pay them and he had to go up and pay them ‘cos they put up the stall.
Mind it was only a table so it wasn’t a lot, but some of them had a big top to it. I didn’t have
a top to mine so it wasn’t as expensive.
16

But he knew exactly how many bunches I’d had and how much, ‘cos it was six pennies a
bunch it was, in the old money that was, which is nothing really. But it was expensive in
those days it was, I mean ‘cos that was, I mean.
It was 1954 when I finished and then my brother came home and he said he’d do it
but me dad couldn’t pay him enough. ‘cos he’d got a house in town, he was married, got a
house in town and he couldn’t afford to keep his house going on what me dad could pay
him, so they went on.
I was married in 15 th December 1954 and Harold came home then. Well in the
spring he said he just couldn’t manage and so they decided to sell up and they went to
look at a cottage on the estate at Calke Abbey near Melbourne. And so they went to look
at this cottage; there was a thunderstorm. I weren’t allowed to go home after I was married
till. I wasn’t allowed to go home because, like, we’d had a row. He didn’t want me to get
married, he did his best to stop me getting involved with anyone.
(Was that because they would have to give up the farm)
Yes, yes.
(Let’s go back very slightly. You did the water cress beds and you weren’t allowed to go
home after you were married)
After I was married no, no. I wasn’t because we fell out and he said I weren’t allowed to
come home again and so I used to meet my mother. My mother used to walk up to Flash,
‘course she had to walk three and a half miles down with her shopping. So I used to go up
and meet her and walk down carrying the shopping. I used to take my bicycle and carry it
down till we got to the Lodge building. Just to the top of the road where we got a sight of
the house and she used to take it down as if she’d been on her own and I used to walk
back over the tops to Sniddles and we did that every week; just to be with her and to help
her.
But when that thunderstorm came someone had been, a workman who lived near
us at Sniddles, he said they’d had a thunderstorm and it had washed all the stuff right
down there like. All the rubbish and stuff was all over the Mill House and that ‘cos the river
had burst its banks. So Brian and I went down and it was such a mess. Everything was
swimming in the mill then and all the…They’d got some hay in the far meadow and of
course that had all been washed away and there was little fish everywhere that had
washed out of the river.
Oh it was awful and so I, when me dad and mother came back, like, was still there.
But I never sort of spoke to him and he never spoke tome but I spoke to my mother of
course. And they’d got this cottage, they decided to take this cottage and so they put
everything up for sale.
But then Harold he was, like, he stopped at home as much as he could, but then
they had to give the water cress up because, like, he couldn’t do it and so they had this
sale booked – it was September 1955. They had this sale of everything, sold the Jerseys
and they made absolutely rock bottom prices because they’d grown so thin. It was such a
poor place for Jerseys ‘cos all the frosts on everything, they all hung down being against
the water, against the river, it was just a waste.
He’d paid top price for them and he’d recorded them. They did quite well with the
milk but as soon as they finished with the milk there was nothing to them, just bones, skin
and bones they were. ‘Course he had them recorded, so he’d had to pay for milk recorder
to come and he came about every once a month.
17

(Can I ask you about the old mill itself When you had the farm house what did you use
the old mill house for Was the wheel there, the old water wheel)
Yes, it was. Yes, there was ninety six pockets in it. It was in that end where there is a café
now, isn’t there There was a very big wheel and it used to come down the canal, ‘course
the water did, and it used to get in these pockets and turn the wheel which was good. Yes,
that was there all the time we were there. We used to have, just under the window, there
was a big pit which we used to put silage, grass in, and make silage and we had that as
silage pit.
And then we used to keep all the implements in there, like, you know, the carts. And
people used to store their carts in. Tunnicliffes used to have a big cart there, barbers used
to have a cart there because, you know, they used to store them there.
And then we had hen cote at the back which was, we used to keep hens and then
there was a place where there was a grating but we never used to use that grate. We used
to keep that as a tool place, where he kept all his tools and then there was a bench there
where he kept his vice on and things and all his tools were there. But we couldn’t use the
upstairs because, well, you went up the steps to the top floor but it was so rotten you
couldn’t walk on it at all, it was too bad, so that was not used.
(So it was just the bottom area you used)
Just the bottom part. It was stone, all stone flagged.
(Was the bell still there)
Yes, it was still there. They took it down in the war. They took it but it was such a nice
tone. They took it somewhere on the estate but I can’t tell you where it went, but they took
it because it was such a nice tone. One day when we came back from school it’d gone and
they’d taken it, so. We were so disappointed because it looked so nice up there you know.
(I didn’t realise the wheel was there all the time you were there.)
It was.
(So was there water still running down the leat)
No, that wasn’t used. It was all overgrown that canal was, but the water wheel was there
all the while we were there. It was still there when I left.
(So your father didn’t want you to get married because he knew he’d have to sell the
farm)
That’s right, because I was the youngest girl and I could work inside and out and he just,
he wanted control like and he didn’t want me to have any friends, any male friends, but
then I started meeting Brian.
We was coming on the bus sometimes from Macclesfield, coming back. I met him
there and then I went to chapel a lot like, because me mother and dad were chapel. We
knew that we wanted to be together and so we started to go, you know, Brian started to be
friends with me and he came down a time or two. But me dad wouldn’t let me go out
anywhere. Got to be in by nine o’clock every night; got to be in by nine o’clock. So we
weren’t allowed.
18

‘Course when he came down we were still milking and Brian used to help me to
finish off milking. We’d got the gharry to clean, milk to put in the churns and clean the dairy
up. It was half seven to eight before we’d done. Then we’d got to change to go out and we
just went for a little walk and that; that was all we were allowed to do.
But this time we went to the concert, there was a concert at Wildboarclough. Brian
used to play for the concert because he could play the piano as he’d passed all his exams
barring the cap and gown. He was a lovely player he was, he could play anything.
He’d heard a tune, he could play it; he didn’t need any music but he could play with music
but he didn’t need it. If he just heard a tune he’d go and play it on the organ or piano.
So he played with, there was Bill Slack and Dorothy Whealton. Dorothy Whealton used to
play on the accordion, Bill Slack on the accordion and one of Dorothy’s brothers on the
accordions and Brian on the piano. And they used to play for dances, and of course in this
concert he wasn’t playing but all his friends were there that he had played with.
Halfway through I said I’ll have to go home because I said me dad’ll go mad, he’ll lock me
out or something. So we went home of course half way through and we nearly ran all the
way home and it was about ten o’clock when we got home and of course he said have you
enjoyed it to Brian. And Brian went home and we never thought nothing and then next
morning he said where were you till this, where were you till this time of night
I said we were coming home; we left the concert half way through. He said concerts don’t
go on till that time of night, where were you And he wouldn’t take no for an answer. I said
we weren’t, we were doing nothing wrong, we went to this concert, we left it half way
through and he kept nagging me all the time, every morning, every night. He never spoke
to me unless he was either hitting me or accusing me of this.
(But he used to hit you anyway before. You and your brothers and sisters and mother
anyway)
He did, he did. But I was the one that was left home. You see when we were ploughing
and we had that croft below the little stick cote where we used to have sticks and there
was a little croft and we used to plough that and of course we only had a pony.
(Oh yes, I remember you saying that. He put a handkerchief on the wall)
Yes, he said go to that, and of course the pony used to stagger because it was hard work,
because me dad was holding the plough and it was struggling; it was too hard work for it. It
was not so bad when we were ploughing but when we were harrowing. We harrowed it
then, and then we drilled it and of course with drills they went a bit crooked and he used to
say: “Bloody hind legs, like hind legs!”
And of course they did look crooked but you couldn’t help it because it was so hard
for the pony. And he used to hit me, he used to hit the pony, it was hard work it was.
(So when Brian proposed that’s when your father realised he had to sell the farm)
Yes, it was because we just couldn’t stand it any longer. I just couldn’t stand it any longer
because, you know, I was twenty five, I just had enough. I know that my mother was
getting worse. She had to do the packing of the water cress, she had to help with. We
fetched the water cress down and all day Friday we were packing water cress up and it
was too much for her as well and I knew if I got married I knew Harold couldn’t, they
couldn’t, Harold couldn’t manage on the wage he’d be able to pay him because he spent
all his money on these Jerseys.
19

He just wanted his name to be Joseph Lawrence Sigley, the main Jerseyer, the
Gradbach Jersey herder and he’d got to have his name up in lights for that regardless of
whether they could survive down there.
And of course when we decided to get married and Harold came home and he
looked after the water cress beds and that. But he just couldn’t manage it.
As time went on like, they decided to, after he said he couldn’t manage and he’d
have to find another job. So he went, he got a job as milk recorder and he did a bit on the
side like, as well as the water cress and they decided of course to try to get this job before
they packed up with the water cress and they decided of course they’d have to sell up.
So they made arrangements to and the estate offered them this cottage, Ticknall
near Derby, and then they had this sale in September 1955.
‘Course after I got married weren’t allowed to go home because I’d let them down
with not stopping at home. I let them down and he said I wasn’t welcome at home again.
So I used to meet mother up at Flash and carry her groceries down for her, just before we
got in sight of the house, and then she used to go down and that was all, right until the
flood. And then when the flood came they’d gone to Kennel Cottages and so I went and it
was such a mess in the yard and the hay was all gone out of the Mill flat and it was such a
mess down there.
Of course when he came home we were still helping to clean up and he never said
anything to me but ‘course my mother spoke to me. After that I went to help them pack up
for me mother’s sake but he never used to speak to me ‘cos he’d been so awful with me.
(You couldn’t be expected to stay.)
Well he had a shippon made at the back before we were married. He’d had a new shippon
‘cos he was going to buy the Mill House but they couldn’t find the deeds and so he weren’t
allowed to buy it and so he had to keep renting it. And so they said the deposit he’d put
down on the farm he could build this building with it, this new building, so. This new milking
parlour and that and where he used to record all the cows milk and that, so, he had two
men building this and when one of them came round the corner he was going to hit me
with a spade.
Every little thing he picked up on and he was there ready to clout me because he
was so disappointed because I was letting them down you see, because I wanted to leave.
He knew I was going with Brian. He knew eventually I would leave because I wouldn’t give
Brian up.
I never said anything to Brian about this but Norman Nathan, which was doing in
this building and Desmond, his brother, they knew, saw Brian in town one day and said
I’ve been wanting to see you and he told him what he’d seen, like he’d been going after
me with the spade so of course Brian said to me why haven’t you told me about that then
and they had a good bust up. Then of course things went from bad to worse. He never
spoke unless he was just rowing or hitting me or something.
So we just made arrangements that if we couldn’t find anywhere we were going to a
bungalow in Goodwin’s field, Tunnicliffe’s field, and we’d made arrangements to go there.
Anyway this job came up Sniddles so we went there.
I remember going, we went to go see Major Young and then he said if we go and
see a furniture shop, he’d got three furniture shops, one in Ashby de la Zouch, one in
Ashbourne and one in Derby, and he just sent us a telegram and it said see, telling where
to go. So we went to pick this furniture like he said we could have. New furniture,
reproduction furniture or he’d put some second hand furniture in for us and we could pay
so much out of our wages each week.
20

So we had reproduction and we bought this bureau and four chairs and a table and
a bed, a dressing table. We managed to do that and paid so much down and he stopped
so much out of our wage each week. He was ever so good that way.
Then we went to Sniddles, ‘course that was when I helped mum with the shopping
down and that. It was so nice to be able to get away but the wedding we had to do
everything ourselves.
Third Track:
(Bessy now I’d like to go onto happier times. I’d like to talk about when you and Brian got
married. Where abouts, what date were you married)
We were married on the 15 th December 1954 at Wildboarclough Church and then we had
the Reception over the Post Office. It was the Social Club room then and we little realised
we should be living down there a few years after, but then we went to live at Sniddles and
it was lovely to get away – our own little place, our own happiness.
Although it was such a mess because the person who had looked after the farm
he’d let it go. There was hay and corn and everything all mixed up. There was rats
everywhere, there was dead pigs, oh it was such a mess and when we went there we
thought ooh what have we let ourselves in for But when we looked in the building you
could just see on top of a big lot of calf bedding they’d never cleaned the calves out, they
couldn’t get out. We had to get a hay knife and cut it away to get them out. It was such a
mess, they’d never done anything at the farm, really let it go.
But we soon, we did straighten it up and we were so happy together, we really
were. We used to you know, do the things together and he killed rats and he used to kill as
many rats as he could. We trapped them and all sorts. We soon got it all, well, in a few
years. We were there three years and got it really nice by the time those three years were
up.
Then he decided, Major Young, decided to sell it. And he built us a house Dalbury
Lees, near Derby. He built us a house and he said he was going to build some shippons
and to start selling milk. So he said sure, when we had the sale, we had a sale at Sniddles
Head like, for Major Young, and he said keep ten stirks out and we’d take them to Dalbury
Lees and get them in calf and start them off as milk selling. By the time ….
(Can we go back there What was Brian doing)
He was a farm bailiff, he was sort of the farm bailiff and I was helping him, and we went
there, like, to look after the farm and look after the stock and we got hens and used to sell
eggs and rear calves and with the milk like from the…used to milk the cows and rear the
calves and just have milk for the house, but the rest went to feeding calves and getting,
producing more stock.
We were there for three years and by the time the three years were up we’d got sort
of things to sell and hens, we’d got pigs to sell. We used to rear pigs and we saved ten
stirks, he’d wanted ten stirks saving out, and we took those to Danbury Lees. Put them in
the field and by the time the shippons were all built they were ready for calving.
Then they started off with milk cows, started off selling milk.
We were there from, in 1957, we went there and we looked after the farm there and
of course, in the new house. It was a lovely, lovely new house.
Then we had, mind you we lost one baby at Sniddles, we had a first boy, a little boy and
we lost him. He was born in 1957 he was, born before we moved. And it was only six
21

weeks after he was born we moved to Dalbury Lees. Then after, the person we went to
work for, Major Young, he got a gynecologist friend and so he looked after me and we
signed up with him and he said when you have anymore children I'll look after you.
And he came when I was expecting Anne in 1958. He said start off having children, if you
leave it you won’t want to have any more with losing that one, going through that, because
I had a pretty bad time, and he said you won’t want to have any more if you leave it.
So fourteen months after, Anne was born and oh it was lovely to think we’d got one
at last. Brian was so pleased and we were so happy then. Then two and a half years after
Margaret was born and so we said we’d got two and we were quite happy then.
And of course the people we worked for they’d got a son and a daughter, younger, and
they used to come up and play with our two and it was so nice.
But they went away to boarding school they did, but in the holiday time they came
up and stayed with us ‘cos they, she, Mrs. Young, was a very sort of outgoing person and
she wouldn’t stop at home, she used to go out a lot and of course I used to go down and
help in the house there and Brian worked in the farm and we did the farm together.
When he were silaging he used to put the girls in, well Margaret was in the pram,
but Anne, used to put her in bales of straw around with straw at the bottom and toys in and
they used to play, used to be ever so good.
Then I used to help because we had a forage harvester and of course he used to
throw the silage in and I used to level it then. We could only get silage because there
wasn’t enough to do either silage or hay because we hadn’t enough ground. We’d only got
about thirty five or thirty six acres but we used to have three crops of it ‘cos it was good
ground.
We were so happy there but in 1962 he sold up and went to Jersey. He wanted us
to go with him but Anne was only four, Margaret was two and my parents were both, well
my mother was, weren’t bothered about me dad, but me mother was getting a bit older and
we didn’t want to leave them else he wanted us to go to Jersey.
He’d bought a hotel there and he wanted us to produce the milk and butter and
cheese for the hotel- grow the vegetables and he thought we would be happy there but we
decided we wouldn’t go. So he said he was going in any case, so we went, we wanted to
go back to the Clough, so he said we were silly going back to that.
Brian got a job on the council and then we went to Wincle start with because Sir
Philip Brocklehurst said we could have a cottage. We rented a cottage ten shillings a week
I think it was, which was a lot then. Then I helped out at the Post Office a bit and Brian got,
went on the council of course and it was very bad weather then.
(So that was when there was a Post Office at Wincle Whereabouts was it)
It was just at the end of the row, Chapman’s Row. You know where the Ship Inn is and
down to the bottom There’s a row of cottages; you can only see one about two foot, that
was the one we went to and you went down steps to it at the bottom, it was underground.
And then the Post Office was at the end. Mrs. Buchanan was there then and I went to help
her. Brian of course he worked on the council. We’d only been there a few weeks because
we moved there at the end of November, Brian started on the council straightaway, and
Tommy Proudlove came from Wincle, from Barber Clough sorry, and he said he was
giving up the Post Office at Wildboarclough so that was coming empty. So we put in for
that and we got that. So we moved there in April, 27 th April 1963 we went there. But if we
went there we’d got to sign a paper to look after Lord Derby’s keeps and chauffeurs
whenever they’d come because we’d got six rooms at the Post Office.
(That’s a really, really big house, building isn’t it And you were at the Post Office)
22

We were there sixteen years and I looked after the keepers and chauffeurs for sixteen
years.
(So they used to stay in the there)
In the rooms, yes. The middle floor six rooms on that but only one bathroom and it was so
hard work because sometimes we’d have six to eight men and only one toilet, it was awful
‘cos, you know, the girls, they had to get ready for school, had to get them ready for
school. Of course they had to have chamber pots which, you know, because they couldn’t
go to the toilet. It was awful it really was.
(So you had to cook and clean for these guys)
Yes, I used to clean for them and I started to have a little shop there because people
wanted cigarettes, they wanted sweets and started to sell birthday cards, Christmas cards
and tablets like Junior Aspirin and ordinary aspirin, Anadins and things. Used to have
travellers come round, used to sell tobacco and cigarettes and ice cream. I had ice cream
fridges, yes, to sell ice cream ‘cos we had to try and make it so that we could, you know, I
could have a job as well you see, and look after. But we didn’t do very well with it because
when the supermarkets started up took all the trade away ‘cos I didn’t have any foodstuff,
only cakes, biscuits, crisps, toilet rolls, kitchen towels and things; disinfectant and things
you could run out of. People used to come in for it but if they could get it cheaper, of
course everybody wants cheaper things. But at week ends always did well with ice cream.
We were quite happy there but then after sixteen years he decided to sell the Post
Office, so we moved up to Banktop. We put in for Bank Cottage. He took us there but he
said if we went up to Banktop and he did some rooms up at the Hall, could I still look after
the keepers and chauffeurs So I said I would and we did rooms up in the yard back of
Crag Hall. He did the rooms up for me and there was three bedrooms upstairs, a bathroom
and two bedrooms downstairs and there was a toilet in the yard which they used.
(Banktop. That’s the one below Shutlingsloe Farm)
That’s right, yes. We went there in 1962 and we were there till 1979 and then we went to
Crag Hall because the roof was so bad at Banktop. It was raining in every time it rained. At
one time when we went on holiday just to my sisters’ like, the only place we went on
holiday was to my sisters’, and we went and it rained in and it was raining in on the top of
the landing and it was coming in against the electric so we were so worried and they said
oh, they’d have to have it done. But we said well if you, you know, we wanted to stay there
but it was so bad it was.
So we decided if we paid half towards it and they paid half and of course they said it
wasn’t our responsibility because we thought we could claim for it you know, when we
moved. But anyway they decided to get somebody to take over and they had Garton and
Wilson’s’ manager, he moved in there. Of course he was a builder and they said if he
moved there they wouldn’t take any rent off him for twelve months and then for seven
years after, was it five years after rather. They’d pay so much but it’d keep going up as the
years went on but they’d pay him for it like, eventually.
And so they let us have a cottage in the yard at the back of Crag Hall and we were
there seven years.
Then we put in for the bungalow here because, like, we thought as we were getting
older and bus services were hopeless up there, we thought if ever we couldn’t have, you
know, Brian couldn’t drive, we thought we’d be stuck up there so we put in for a cottage. It
was seven years before we got this bungalow and we moved here in 2002. 1995 we
23

moved here to Crag Hall cottages and 2002 we moved here and we were happy here we
were. We’ve been lucky. Wherever we’ve gone he’s made a lovely garden, he really has.
He was really good with plants, he loved his plants he did, Brian did.
(What I’d like to ask you is about the moorlands and what it was like round Sniddles when
you lived there. Was Gradbach hill and the Roaches, did they have heather on them
then)
Yes, they did.
(They did have heather on What was the land like around Sniddles, was it improved
land)
It was all rushes, it was very swampy and the water was, oh, it was so peaty. We had to
carry our drinking water half a mile, it was below Bradley Howel, and of course you went
down with two buckets and you filled your buckets at this spring down there and by the
time you got home you’d got two half buckets that’s all. But you had to boil your vegetables
and everything in this because when you run the bath water, we had a bath and we had
water on tap but and a pump like which could pump, but, and of course a back boiler which
heated the water, but the water when you run your bath it looked like you had emptied the
tea pot in, it was so brown.
All my clothes went brown, brown coloured, they didn’t look white at all. When I went to
Dalbury Lees it was a while before I could get my clothes nice and white again, it was.
(So at the time with the farms all round there had they improved the as much as they
could, or during the war was any of the moorlands ploughed up)
No, it was too swampy and too stony.
(There was nothing really you could do with that land)
No, no, we did most of them for hay, we got a bit of hay but it wasn’t very good.
(So there wasn’t hay meadows round there either)
No. They could have improved if they wanted to but we were only there three years and
don’t think Major Young he didn’t want to spend money on the farm, he just kept it as tax
purposes that’s all he had his farm for, tax purposes.
(Did he just have Sniddles farm then)
Yes, he did.
(So where did he live himself)
Dalbury Lees. Dale Lodge, Dalbury Lees.
(And he only had Sniddles farm in that area)
Yes.
(When you went to Banktop and the Crag that was Lord Derby’s)
24

Yes.
(What about the moorlands there Did you see any differences)
Oh yes, well they were, they looked after the estate Derbys had, it was not bad ground at
all. I mean it was a bit stony and you had to sort of help it a bit but it was different ground.
There was lots of meadows and…
(Were there hay meadows there Proper, old hay meadows)
Yes, that’s right. But ‘course we didn’t have any hay, we were only in the cottage you see
at Banktop, we didn’t have the hay.
(Did you see any changes in the hay meadows, the moorlands being cut back Any
changes at all)
Oh they did, they looked after, people did look after them. In bad summers they made
silage, in good summers they made hay. They made hay for the sheep because sheep
don’t like silage much. Of course they’re all sheep farmers round there so they made hay
when they could but silage when they couldn’t and haylage, which is half hay and half
silage, which the sheep would eat if it was bad weather, but it did make better hay for
sheep.
The weather was bad sometimes, bad summers, just had to do what you could. But
the Derbys did look after the ground, they did and all the farmer tenants looked after, you
know, they looked after the tenants. They were good that way.
(Well Bessie that’s absolutely fantastic. Thank you very much indeed, I think we’ve
covered everything; so thank you very much…that’s absolutely brilliant.)
25

John Eardley and Philip Sharpley: Interviewed by Tegwen Roberts, with Hazel
Winder. 25 th February 2010 at Clough House Farm, Wildboarclough, Macclesfield,
Cheshire.
First track:
JE: I’m John Eardley, a tenant of Lord Derby at Clough House Farm, I’m 73, and I’ve been
here since 1949.
PS: I’m Philip Sharpley and I live in Wildboarclough, at Fellmarther () bungalow at the
bottom of the valley and I was born at the Crag Inn, 87 years ago.
(Right. So how do you both know each other)
JE: Well, we’ve been neighbours all through that period of time.
PS: You came in 1947 didn’t ya.
JE: 1949.
PS: 1949, it was after the blizzard then. Yes, Bowlers were here in the blizzards.
JE: We used to work together harvesting hay, and corn in the early days.
PS: Yes, corn, potatoes.
(So does your farm include moorland either of you)
PS: No, ours was down the valley, Lower Nabbs Farm, Crag Inn and Shutlingsloe were
together and in 1947 the family left and went to Lower Nabbs and we farmed the valley,
those three places for two years, I think, three years perhaps and then Shutlingsloe we left
there. We had finished with the Crag Inn when we left in ’47. So we had quite a big
acreage then and during the war we had to plough a lot of it up. We grew a lot of potatoes,
corn and er…
(Was that on land that you hadn’t ploughed before)
PS: Yes, it’d never been ploughed, not this century anyway.
(Right, not in living memory)
PS: No, not in living memory, no. The crops were very very good, grown on virgin land, the
potatoes were excellent. We grew, erm, the scotch seed, new seed from Scotland and we
sold it back to Scotland once grown, weren’t it John
JE: Mmm, well it was a bit before my time, potatoes.
PS: Aye, yeah. And the corn we used to thrash and we had a grinding machine, we ground
a lot of it up, the sheaves put through the grinder and fed to the cattle. Swedes, turnips as
we call em, we grew acres and acres of them to feed the cattle, yeah.
1

(Did you grow sweet beet and that kind of thing)
PS: Yes, yes we kept sheep as well.
([to JE] Was your farm similar)
JE: Er, well me father farmed a thirty acre farm in Macclesfield where we had a, we were
called producer / retailers. We milked the cows and then delivered the milk to the door
through the old brass-topped churns with the people coming to the door with their jugs and
the measures for putting it into. And also people have forgotten about but it was quite
interesting, was what they called a milkless day on a Wednesday because after the war or
during the war no-one could have milk other than pregnant mothers and children under
five. Me father was continually looking for a bigger farm because there was six sons and
one daughter. We took a farm at Ashby-de-la-Zouch and then one at Shropshire and then
the next door neighbour informs us that this farm was coming up to let as the tenant from
Clough House was taking his farm over next door to where we farmed in Macclesfield.
(Right, yeah)
JE: Er, so we came up here, totally new venture, 500 acre farm…stocked with 220 ewes,
80 replacement lambs and round about 30, we used to milk 32 cattle and there 32
followers. Again when we took to the farm there was 10 or 15 acres of corn made on this
farm in the big meadow and we was lucky enough to have a fantastic summer, it was 1949
when we came here and that was when we had Philip’s family and we used to work
together and me brother finished up marrying Philip’s sister.
(Oh right, so…)
JE: So yes, we had a thrashing machine, I don’t know what happened to it, it was stored
here for years.
PS: Yes, we had a threshing machine during the war on this lease lend, it came from
America, a metal box affair and I used to go round thrashing, er Wildbourclough, Macc
Forest, Rainow, we went as far as Disley, Kettleshulme, thrashing and ploughing. We were
one of the first to have a brand new Fordson tractor in 1937. Me dad bought it for me, he
said you can use that because we’d only one horse and horses were just at the start of
dying out when the tractors came in and we had all the implements for the tractor, all the
machines.
(So what kind of date would that be)
PS: That was in, the first tractor we had was the 17 th May 1937, a brand new Fordson…
(There or thereabouts!)
PS: And it cost £196 delivered and it was a deluxe model with a mirror on the mudguard, a
horn and an underneath exhaust pipe with a silencer.
JE: A clutch and brake combined.
PS: Oh and a hand brake on. Now the silencer didn’t rate many weeks because if anyone
was behind sitting on a machine, a two-horse machine had to work the cutter bar he got
2

gassed; so the upright one came in to send the smoke up. The handbrake lasted a few
years and the tractor is still running to this day. It was in our possession until 10 years ago
and it was like brand new. It had had several engines in but everything else was original
because it was on contract work.
(Wow, yeah)
PS: We had one or two tractors hired off the War-Ag because we couldn’t cope. We’d one
or two drivers working for us, but I was the main one and I used to drive 40 hours a day,
non-stop, never turned the engine off, all day, all night and all the next day.
(Wow!)
PS: And when you turned the engine off it was very, very quiet.
(I bet it was, yeah)
PS: I used to see how long I could keep awake.
(Right)
PS: In those days my father never gave me any money, that was unheard of, giving the
sons any money, wa’nt it John
JE: Yes, yes.
PS: You did it for love and er…
JE: Oh, and a promise you were going to inherit it.
PS: That’s it that was the very truth [laughter] which I didn’t inherit it er...
(So with the moorland that is sort of within your farm particularly, how did you use that land
in terms of stock or the plants that grew there; I’ve talked to people about bracken cutting,
that kind of thing – was that something you did)
JE: No, Clough House was a typical hill farm. Its 80% moorland and rough grazing, 20%
pasture, meadow land. Er, as I said when we first came to Clough House er, stock in hand
was 220 ewes and whatever after that. But the interesting one was that we used to be paid
a government subsidy to have cattle to graze the hills, er…it was, I think it was £3 a head
for the period 12 th May to the 12 th October where dairy farmers was encouraged to send
the heifers or in-calf heifers onto the hills for the summer to help to improve management
of the moorland and the rough grazing...
(Is that because they grazed the moorland down to a lower level)
JE: Yes, they wasn’t as selective as, you know, as well it made a better pasture for the
sheep.
(Right)
3

JE: As I say the whole idea of it was that the sheep had to winter on what they could get
for themselves. It was what I used to call controlled starvation because with the light
stocking of the summer the sheep got as fat as seals and in winter, I mean there wasn’t a
lot of money for feed for them and they just about managed to live through to spring. And
again it was such a difficult job to feed these sheep er, yes they could come down, they
got buried, but we’d a building which is over on the A54 which is a good way from Clough
House. And I’ve carried bales out of this yard and taken up Hall Lane in deep snow and
gone up where the two entries are, got over the gate and the sheep’d meet me and they
were so hungry they knocked me down so I couldn’t take it to where I wanted it to go and
what they hadn’t trodden out of sight had blown out of sight.
(Right)
JE: And I used to think whatever have I done…how do you win in a situation like this and
that was where it progressed. I helped to form a system where the sheep was taken off the
hills in the winter and sent onto dairy farms for four months of the worst part of the
weather.
(Yes)
JE: Which has improved the hills a lot, they’ve not been, both man, beast and plant has
been one of the biggest improvements there’s been.
(Right, and what kind of date was that)
JE: That started in 1981.
(Right, so the last 30 years)
JE: Yes, yeah.
(So how did you collect the sheep off the hills)
JE: Well no problem really cos we’d got good dogs.
(Right, so you’d take dogs up)
JE: Yes, and even that’s improved because we have motorbikes now and again that’s a
good thing for t’dog, its a good thing for t’man and its a good thing for t’motorbikes, so
PS: Kind on man and kind on dog and kind on’t sheep.
(So as well as farming the moors have either of you had any other connections with the
moorlands in this area)
JE: Well we went through this phase that Philip’s talked about really because they did
attempt to plough these hills, the sounder part of the hills and again there was a big
subsidy for you to put lime on. It was proper lime I’m talking about, big lumps of lime where
it was put into a big heap and dropped and then spread out of that heap and er, they used
to encourage, you know, improving the hills. Not particularly the moors, what’s classed as
moorland, I’m talking of Red Bent and White Bent and the nardus grass, and the Molinia
4

type grasses, because the nardus type grasses and it did a tremendous job, it really made
the grass palatable and er, also the sheep did well on it.
(Yes)
JE: And it was used, what we used to call a mat, which is dead grass which has died back
over the years and if you go with a penknife to cut it out to this day and see the depth of
dead mat that’s underneath. Er, and in the early 1980s we started to reseed this nardus
type grass through sprays, glysophosphate and er, what was the other one that ICI did
One killed off the plant to the ground and then inactivated and the other one,
glysophosphate, killed down to the root. And that was the method we had because by that
time farming industry couldn’t afford lump lime and it went through what they call ‘small
burnt lime’ which was the bits and pieces which Philip was contracted to bring round to
farms for this reason and spreading it in’t early days. But the problem was that the modern
day lime, when they went to ground limestone wouldn’t burn the mat off so that’s why we
had to kill it off with glysophospate and then we had, what they call Aitkenhead ripper
harrows which used to rip this nardus land about on a thunderstorm day in June and you
would actually make, what would be called a ‘pig-mass’, what pigs had been at, and the
reason for that was there was that much rocks close to the top like, there was no other
way to plough it other than do this. So we’d spend days ripping this top about and then
with a lot of help and guidance from MAFF, as it was then, soil testing and seeing what it
needs and doing everything right and then when we got everything, the base right for
accepting the seed then we used to mix the seed and fertiliser together through a fertiliser
sower and then spread this seed all over, all these fields on the top side by the road was
done. And after we’d done that we’d go and find three or four hundred sheep and walk ‘em
all over it all day to tread the seed in and then we’d open the gates, let the sheep out and
they weren’t to come in until the seed sprouted, as soon as the seed sprouted we shut the
gate. And we’d fantastic results with it…
(Yeah, fantastic)
JE: …fantastic results. I mean there was a scheme then called the Farm and Horticultural
Development Scheme which even helped with machinery, tractors, any sort of work that
you wanted doing, altering the buildings, to increase productivity. Where we’ve got today is
totally opposite…
(Right)
JE: ...because where we was going then for maximum stocking rates, in fact this particular
farm they told me was one of the heaviest stocked farms in converted acres anywhere
they was monitoring in Britain.
(Right)
JE: Now then it must be the lightest stocked farm for t’last hundred years.
(Right)
JE: So it just shows you how farming on these hills has changed.
(Yes, so what’s happened to the fields now The fields that you’ve converted)
5

JE: Reverting back to where they came from; should probably never have been touched
in’t first place.
(Right, yeah, so are you actively doing work to help them revert back or have you just left
them)
JE: No, I’d not gone to a lot of trouble to get ‘em there, so…I was actually offered money to
revert back and I said no, you know I’d spent a lot of hard work getting to where they were,
while I’d accept they could go back naturally I wasn’t prepared to force the issue but the
moorland that we’ve been a lot of work on since 1984, we actually split the hill into, with
two electric fences then er, and made a 300 acre hill into three stretches, one hundred
acres, with good land at the front, medium land in the middle and poor land at the top. And
they used to have access to all three pieces, easy to manage as well because there was
only a hundred sheep in each patch and you could set dog off at top and meet him down
at bottom here with the sheep and he’d come round and fetch the sheep up. But that
worked so well because it was, sheep was tending to go on to the fields that was reseeded
and they was really only going back to rest and relieve themselves at night on to the top.
And as I say John from Peak Park was very interested in what we was doing but couldn’t
give me any more help other than to a different system, so he suggested that we fenced
25 acres out and keep the stock out of them and they would monitor them, which they
have done, and its 17 years now since there’s been no sheep on that particular area of
land and that has come back, not with heather but with the most fantastic show of bilberry.
In fact I tried get ‘em to come out last year to have a look at it because it was just like Tate
and Lyle’s syrup and Denise Law from [indistinct] and she said somebody, top brass come
out, bring ‘em out like, would come and look at it but they never turned up. It is a fantastic.
(Yes, I bet)
JE: Now the other two areas of moorland they found out, we agreed with the ESA, which
came in 1993, that the problem was having all these sheep about we was tending to, once
they’d taken the lambs off and was putting ‘em back on the moor actually starving ‘em,
well not quite starving ‘em, before they went into Cheshire at the first of November, or
through November, and then they was flushed and had a tremendous lot of lambs to come
back again, all twins again to come back again, because this is what we actually did, but
that was having a detrimental effect to, t’moorland management, they were grazing it out
too hard in October and since they’ve been taken off in October and don’t go back again
until the 1 st of March, which is ESA stipulations, there’s been a fantastic improvement in
‘em with heather coming in, not in great masses but noticeable heather. You can see it as
you drive past, is it Cut-thorn Gate, there’s a lovely patch of heather coming there. It isn’t
just heather its whole host of other plants; in fact I think its one of the best spots of bog
asphodel, in’t it
(Ooh lovely!)
JE: Yeah and that’s…we’d never seen one, never seen one, and now then I would say
there’s something like acre, acre and a half and springing up all over the moor.
(Yes…fantastic)
JE: And I have been involved wi’ taking people walks over it; once a year, a friend of mine
was a ranger and would come each year and I’d set them on telling me which plants,
6

which birds, different birds, booking them down and…it was ‘frogbits’ and different things
like, all the different, that you’ve never heard of…you know.
(Wow!)
JE: And it’s fantastic to see that sort of improvement, as I say, I was probably the first to be
allowed or given permission to use glycophosphate on t’hills. I didn’t intend to do it in a big
way, I only intended to do it, in probably 6 to 8 foot squares, in half a dozen patches all
over the hill. But I lost me nerve because I’m not a lover of sprays and I felt that moorland
was the only part of Britain that hadn’t seen any sprays so, I’ve moved on to…very nicely
now letting a natural habitat come back. In fact, Natural England released a press release
where they’re preferring my method to...
(Great)
JE: It’s in that book there and all the different things that was happening to it and, but I just
feel that I get neglected…I like it monitored, you know. There’s patches in there where
they’ve come out and done it for me but I haven’t had it done now for ten years, both by
birds and plants, because you want to be doing it at that similar time of the year so that
you can judge…
(How it’s changed)
JE: How it’s changing. And I just feel that I get neglected because nobody seems to come
now, but they think I’m doing a good job without them coming but they seem to be more
interested in the big areas that they’re trying to work on with this regeneration of moors.
(They probably think you’re doing a great job.)
JE: Well yes, they do, but I want to see it in writing, I mean people, I mean, I’m not up to
describing plants and all different birds that are on it. I mean we’ve golden plovers on it
and we’ve got quite a nice selection of grouse on it now, you know, but the interesting part
of it is now is we’ve got the stocking rate right down that, although they have the access to
go exactly the same as they did before, at the bird nesting time none of those sheep are
bothering up there because it’s the freshest time of the grass so they spend the time, not
even the sheep are disturbing them while they’re nesting which I think again is
interesting…
(Yeah, it is, very)
JE: …part of it.
Second track:
(So back to the way the moorlands been used, we were talking earlier about grouse
shooting…and I believe)
PS: Yeah, yeah, John was just on about lime when we took Shutlingsloe in 1936, er, we
had it two years rent free, we had to put two hundred ton o’ best lime on it, the estate paid
for that, we paid nothing, we had to spread it. And when they tested the ground on
Shutlingsloe it was six tons per acre short of lime…six ton. That always stuck in me mind.
7

JE: And that was proper lime…
PS: That was proper lime, and they used to come with five ton loads and we had to drag
the wagon, or he couldn’t get up Shutlingsloe Road, we had to put it on a chain and drag it
up. We carried it, they tipped it in a heap and we carried out in’a buckets. And when it
rained on it was that big…
JE: Twice as big, three times as big…
PS: Three times as big.
(‘Course lime expands doesn’t’ it…)
JE and PS: Yes. Yes.
PS: But that was best lime and then finally as you said, it was ground limestone.
JE: But in between that was the…
PS: The small lime…
JE: No, the spreaders, when small burnt lime came in…
PS: Yes…
JE: …and Taylor, Friths had their wagons bout five or six ton…
PS: That’s it…
JE: And the four wheel drive, same as your old Bedford wagons…
PS: That’s it…
JE: And they’d go and spread it on the roughest of hillsides didn’t they
PS: Yes, yes.
(Right)
PS: We spread the ground limestone after that.
(So you just put it on the top and then let the rain and the weather, erm, weather it in)
PS: Weather it in, yes, yes.
(Wow. I can’t imagine what six tons of lime looks like)
JE: [laughing] Well, when they were doin’ the work that I were doin’ on’t’ hills, it was four
because…the fields were 4.3 pH, 000 phospate, potash and magnesium an’ all these
others, there was just nothing there and they came up with this four or five tons to the
acre, er, but I think the problem was with ground limestone, that when you put it on a steep
slope, and, putting that amount on, a lot of its being washed off. So we went for doing a
8

different system. We put two tons on and half o’ ton of slag the following year and then
another two tons of lime and another half ton o’ slag…
(So what’s this for)
JE: Basic slag was the phosphate…
(Right)
JE: Phosphate – the old fashioned phosphate. Everybody, nobody used the...
PS: No, slag was a common thing.
JE: Slag was the, was the…
PS: We used to fetch it from Grimsby I think was it
JE: Yes, filings, steel filings…was it
PS: Aye.
JE: Or was it Steel filings war it
PS: It was somewhere over, going to the East Coast somewhere, George Turner used to
fetch it, do you remember
(Did it come in on the ships perhaps)
PS: No, steelworks wasn’t it
JE: Steelworks, that’s what I said, I think it was from steelworks.
PS: Steelworks, yeah.
JE: In fact they are turning back to it now, there’s quite a lot of basic slag, it went off
market for years, but there’s a lot of basic slag advertised now…
PS: Aye, aye.
JE: …whether it’s as good as what we were saying lime was like, the lime today is just a
waste o’ time really, its er…if you’d wanted it to improve, alright for keepin the fertility up
on already fertile fields that’s a different set...thing; but what we were trying to do then was
bring, you know, basically poverty stricken ground back as quick as we could get it weren’t
it
(Yeah. So tell me, to go back to the grouse shooting, tell me about your involvement)
PS: Er, the local farmers used to go beating…driving the grouse and I did get shot; when
the drive was over the guns weren’t supposed to shoot at all, and this particular day a
grouse got up in front of me and one of the shooters put the gun up and shot it dead and I
ended up with one bullet in me face. It was very lucky the grouse got most of the shot
because I should have been shot dead.
9

(Right, that’s a bit scary…)
PS: It was very scary. It was at the time…lookin’ up the barrel of the gun for a second…
(Yeah)
PS: …then bang!
(So how old were you then)
PS: I’d be about sixteen, I should think...
(Right, right. So was it just a bit of pocket money)
PS: Fourteen perhaps. Oh, we had eight shillings a day.
(That sounds quite good to me, but I’m not sure…)
PS: Then it was very good money, because like we were only young, and we had a packet
of sandwiches and a bottle o’ pop. But the beaters had, was it two bottles of beer, big beer,
and the sandwiches it was a big pile and we’d look forward to it, we were hungry.
(Yes, I bet)
PS: Yeah.
(So how many days)
PS: Er, they were ‘ere six weeks weren’t’ they At one time shooting grouse.
JE: Yes.
PS: Six weeks.
(And did you work six days a week, five days a week)
JE: No.
PS: Probably, I should think three or four days a week, something like that.
(And how many of you were they)
PS: I should think there should be twenty of us beating.
(All local lads)
PS: Yes all locals. We used to look forward to this.
(Right)
PS: And they got a lot of birds then…a lot. What would they get John
10

JE: They could have 300 brace a day.
PS: 300 brace. That’s six hundred birds per day.
JE: Yeah
(All grouse)
PS: Yes. Pickford Moor was the best one where they got the most birds – for a little moor.
JE: That’s Richard May’s moor that is…
(Right, yeah)
PS: They used to have two days shooting there that was all in the six weeks. And me dad
used to take the food up and the beer in a horse and cart. An’ when the horse an’ cart left
the road, you never saw them because the bracken that was covering the hillside hid it…
(Right)
PS: …it was the height of the horse, you might see its ears sticking out over the top, yeah.
(That’s high that)
PS: Yes.
(So what did they do about the bracken Did they have to keep it down)
PS: Er, when we started ploughing, we ploughed that bracken in, and the roots were there
for years and then we grew potatoes or corn on that ground, a bit o’ fertiliser, it was
good…
(Yeah)
PS: …and the potatoes were very good and the corn grew.
JE: They always said there was gold under bracken.
PS: Yeah, yeah [laughter]
(So I know in other areas, I’ve been told people used to cut the bracken for fuel, used to
burn it and use it for bedding…)
PS: We used to cut it for bedding cattle…
(Right, so you’d cut it…)
PS: I remember doing that.
(When would that have been)
11

PS: That would be…1937, in the ‘40s, because where this wood is down the road ‘ere, on
the right hand side, we used to cut that with a scythe, an’ its like that, steep, but covered in
trees now, and it used to be covered in bracken. In fact when you went down the
Congleton Road, going for the Rose and Crown, the Nabbs and Shutlingsloe was green
and people used to think it was potatoes, an’ it was bracken; field after field.
(Wow. But you don’t see so much now, do you)
PS: No. No. All those fields now are green. When we took…er…Shutlingsloe over…the
chap that was there did a moonlight, they often used to go farmers did in the night, they
were never seen again.
JE: He couldn’t afford rent.
(They flitted)
PS: Aye, they owed rent and they went! And that’s why we got Shutlingsloe, it’d been
empty for a little while. And the landlord begged me dad to take this farm over, so it was
two years rent free. What he finally paid when he did pay rent, I can’t remember…it
wouldn’t be a lot.
JE: No. No. I think house was the biggest rent when we came here…
PS: Aye.
JE: …and that was £220 a year…
PS: Aye.
JE: …and that was a tender rent, so it’d be, you know, quite an high rent and there’s a lot
of 140 acre farms on this estate with moorland and a little bit of in-bye land, and usually
the rent for those farms was £35.
PS: Yes. But in 1937/38, we started ploughing then, they knew the war was coming and
we’d have to be self-sufficient, and the clough was brown side up. I think every fields been
ploughed in Wildboarclough. An’ I think I’ve been involved in most of ‘em.
Third track:
(We’re talking about the bracken and ploughing up the bracken because there’s no
bracken up there now. So you ploughed it all in)
PS: Yes, yes.
(And then you were saying that there was a lot of grouse on Piggford Moor…)
PS: Yes
(But they went, they’ve obviously all gone because Richard’s now trying to get...)
PS: To get them back again
12

(So when did all the grouse, what happened to that land)
PS: Well the moor was left wasn’t it
JE: Well it was one farm – Nabbs and Higher Nabbs.
JE and PS: Nabbs and Higher Nabbs was all one farm. And er, Jack Barry was the tenant
there and when we came up here, he was the farm manager for the two farms which was
a big acreage.
JE: Yes, because I think Piggford Moors four hundred acres, what Richard bought was
four hundred acres. It’s all been blamed on sheep as to why the grouse and the heather
went. I find that hard to believe because I know me neighbours quite well who had the land
and I would never have thought they overstocked the land. What the other reason is, I’ve
always said that it’s…er, what’s the…acid rain.
(Right…do you)
JE: Yes, I’ve always been a believer, in fact we did some work years since and it caused
lots of problems. In this particular case it was a mill from Glossop that caused problems
here.
(With pollution)
JE: Yes, because it was killing all forms of molybdenum, sulphur and molybdenum.
(Right, so it was kind of releasing it)
JE: Yes, now it wasn’t landing on other side of valley, it was just on this side of valley. But I
think definitely acid rain and sheep was blamed for it all. I haven’t seen a plant yet that
doesn’t benefit from cutting or grazing, any plant, but what wipes it out is chemicals like
that.
PS: And I’ve had two or three incidents of aviation fuel which has sent me sheep
absolutely to skin and bone. I mean David Mellor, up in Hayfield, he’s had similar
problems. They will not all admit to it and it rights itself after a while but again that wouldn’t
do plants any good. But I’ve always said, the sheep that was on Old Farm, where Lord
Derby’s Moor, Ben’s Moor, I mean the sheep that was there up to 1968 was unbelievable
and they were shooting all these grouse. Me brother actually fenced two acre patches of
heather on Axe Edge and both those patches died out – they didn’t have a sheep near
them. He fenced heather out, fenced heather in shall we say, and both patches within, I
don’t know how many years it was, hadn’t a bit of heather in them.
(Mind you it is known as a bit of a dumping ground for fuel isn’t it When they’re coming
over from Manchester, especially the northern moors, they’re known for them to eject their
fuel)
PS: But you see the part that the sulphur and molybdenum played in, killed all forms of
copper that go through the gut and copper is the common denominator to all trace
elements and that was why, I mean we used to all inject for copper. Then we went on to a
friend of mine that was head of Redesdale Experimental Farm, said that these copper
13

needles had come out and what a success they were and once they come on’t market get
stuck into using ‘em which I did. I used ‘em and was losing lambs and was convinced it
was copper, but with copper being toxic I couldn’t inject ‘em with it you see because of
killing ‘em if I was wrong and as it turned out they’d no copper in them when they were
sent off to be tested.
(Right)
PS: And that was the sulphur and molybdenum that had actually killed the copper in the
gut form and that’s why we could only inject and if it’d do that sort of thing I don’t see why
acid rain didn’t have an effect on these moors.
(Has that changed in recent years)
JE: Yes, well it’s gone a lot cleaner and I think this is why the heather’s coming back.
(Right, yeah. Well that’s good news at least)
JE: A lot cleaner, a lot less pollution in’t it and they traced it back and I’ll tell you another
farm, what is Nadin’s on Fairfield, and they had exactly same problem as me, but theirs
was in cattle. They couldn’t get the cattle in calf. The cattle went thin and that turned out to
be copper and exactly same problem as I had it. They took it back and it was associated
with a mill at Glossop.
(Right. Do you know what the mill was making)
JE: No I don’t, no.
(Pollutions got a lot to answer for)
PS: There was lots of discussion. I was on a committee in London for five years, Hill
Farming Advisory Committee, and this acid rain job was a regular thing that was coming
up on it, they didn’t really know what was happening to the hills and in fact I’ve still got the
paperwork on it that somebody had done work on it you know.
(Yeah, so it was affecting a lot of farms around)
JE: Yes, yes.
(Do you know whether it was affecting other farms in other parts of the country as well)
JE: Yes. On this aviation fuel it does as well because last herd I had, it was about six or
seven years since and there was different spots all over country they told me, close to
airfields, that was being, this excess fuel was being jettisoned. They made a real mess of
correction. We had water tested, grass tested.
(So on a similar issue have the seasons changed Obviously we’ve had a deep winter)
JE: Yes they have. There’s been a fantastic run of mild winters – nothing like the original
winters, were they Philip I mean you’ll know…
PS: Mmm…
14

(So tell me about the original winters)
JE: Well…there was a lot of snow every winter weren’t there
PS: Every winter. Oh, yes, yes
JE: You didn’t get mild winter. I mean this’d be a mild winter what we just had. This’d be as
reasonable, you know what you’d call reasonable.
PS: More like the winters, weren’t it Yes
JE: But…erm, there were a lot worse than that. I remember coming up here as a kid from
Macclesfield and hanging on to car in case, you know coming between Setter Dog and
Bole Hill; seen that big drop and skiddy roads and, you know, goin over t’middle a
car…[laughter]
(So did you get cut off here, when the snow was bad)
PS: Well in 1947 I’d just bought an ex-army truck, four-wheel drive, biggish one and there
were skid chains with it for all wheels, back and front…
(Right)
PS:…and the farmers were sledging the milk to the Crag Inn.
(On wooden sledges)
PS: Horse and sledges and I was taking it up this valley, up Standing Stone and down the
other side.
JE: There’s less snow down there
PS: When I got to the top of Standing Stone I thought I can go, this wagon’ll go through
anything and I buried it in this drift, buried the wagon fast and I got all local farmers with
me and I said stay there and see me out of sight. Well I didn’t get out of sight and they
come and they dug me out and they got me out of this drift and I went and I got nearly to
Langley and there was biggest drift going in to Langley you ever saw in your life. I had no
chance and I was left on me own…and I sussed the fields out round about, there was a
gate and I could have gone in that field but I couldn’t get out into Langley because I had
this load of milk on and I lived in Mosslee then and I was going home, hadn’t’ seen wife for
a week or two, and I turned round and I parked the wagon, you know where the pay park
is at the reservoirs, on that gate, backing in there, I backed it in there, there was no gate
there, slammed the door and left it and I walked back to Dryknowle. And the wind got up
again, oh and it was atrocious top of Standing Stone, I got down once and that’s, you must
never get down in a snowstorm, so I got up again and when I got in the house at
Dryknowle they took me coat off and they stood it up in the kitchen. It was solid and had
icicles down here and Mrs Oggerthorn [] run the bath, boiling hot bath. Next morn, I
stayed there, next morn, they’d no phone from here to there, I come here, walked here and
Bowler said where’s your wagon I says where you left me last night and we walked back
again and they’d put, I should think a hundred German prisoners in, they were still here in
15

’47, in that drift to shift it and we got away in the afternoon and when I got into Macc, to the
dairies, the milk was frozen solid in the churns…
(I’m not surprised)
PS:…and he got the steam cleaner round these churns to get the milk out, but he was that
pleased because he hadn’t had any milk, they hadn’t come from down Cheshire. And I
filled the cans with bread, I went round shops, filled cans wi’ bread but instead of coming
back home I went to Bosley, tipped the wagon over in a ditch and had to walk a mile to
where Mary lived like. I left it in the ditch on its side like this. And next morning we got a
local farmer with two tractors to come and yanked it down on the road; I put it in gear and
drove it out. And I got home, oh late on in the afternoon, I come back and for days we
used that run to take the milk to Macc when we finally did get out. It was no good going up
by Stanley Arms that was blocked solid. And we couldn’t get down that way at all.
JE: How much a gallon did you get for taking it
PS: I think farmers give me a penny a gallon – it was a lot of money then.
JE: And one refused to pay for it, mention no names, one refused to pay for it.
PS: One farmer refused to pay anything. He said you must get it out of John Gleave, that.
And I said well all others have agreed to give me a penny, they offered it me to get rid of
the milk see, and he went back and he pushed every churn over in the shippon and it went
down the grate.
JE: He wouldn’t pay a penny.
PS: A hundred gallon went down the drain before he’d pay a penny. But the best of it was
after all this was over, John Gleave was so pleased with me he sent me another penny a
gallon! I kept me mouth shut over that because farmers would have wanted it back. One
did actually [laughter]
JE: Al Owen
PS: Yes he did, aye. He did, I think Gleave paid him n’all.
(So, you were saying about the German prisoners of war – were there German prisoners
of war Where were they)
PS: German prisoners of war, Germans were still here. They was in some camp I should
think down Knutsford. There was a lot down there. These Jerries were there.
JE: Americans on t’Etherington, Marlborough Drive. There was an American camp there.
(So they’d brought them up especially to clear the snow)
PS: Yeah, to clear the snow. Oh they were happy outfit they were.
(So did they use the moors for training in this area Obviously a bit further north they used
them for training during the war, and tanks…and then you’d got the Dambusters in the
Derwent later on. Was there similar stuff round here or was it all just farmed)
16

PS: No it was farmed just round here.
JE: It was Mermaid Moors that was…Blackshaw.
(Warslow Moors)
JE: Yes, aye, that was where the Poles were…well they still train on there don’t they
(Yes)
JE: And then you got the Polish camp at Blackshaw Moor.
PS: Yes, yeah.
(So what was the Polish camp, were they prisoners of war as well)
JE: They all stopped didn’t they after war
PS: Aye, they stopped, a lot of them, Leek’s full of ‘em still, the offsprings. They were
alright the Polish were…good workers. The quarries were full of Italians weren’t they
JE: Were they
PS: Yeah, Italians they were lazy little sods they were. All the Italians - they always said
they wouldn’t work. Aye they didn’t like them. They’d have the Poles in but they didn’t like
the Italians.
JE: ‘Itoles’ as they called ‘em.
(So was ’47, you were saying about a plane crash)
JE: No it was me saying about that. That was at Onecote, when all villages had been cut
off for quite a considerable...
PS: There was one crashed in ‘42 or 3 wasn’t there Top of Hall Lane on the moors there.
(That was a fighter was it Was that a fighter plane that crashed, or was it a civilian)
PS: American plane. They were delivering it to somewhere and they got too low in the fog,
it were a terrible night that night, and they just skimmed the hill. They were all killed.
(That’s awful. They’ve got a memorial up there haven’t they)
PS: Yeah. But a funny thing, me brother went up, I didn’t go to that when it crashed ‘cos I
was living in Rainow ploughing there for a week or so, living up there. I missed it. He went
up and he found a disc on a chain with a name on, and I finally got it out of me brother
and, I threw it in a drawer and Mary found it, several years after, and she said “I’m going to
write to this address”, and she wrote to this address in America and we got a letter back, a
beautiful letter, from his mother about him. His mothers’ name was on the back and his
name was on the front and she says “When I got this letter from England” she says “I had
a terrible feeling something was going to come out of this letter” – because killed in action,
didn’t know where. And she sent us a food parcel, big one, and she thought we were
17

starving in England. This’d be in 1946 I should think when Mary sent this thing back and it
cost me, was it 7, or 9 pounds, in taxes for this food. It was a lot more than what it was
worth and we daren’t say a thing, we had to thank her for it! But she kept in touch with us
every Christmas and every Easter, but she sent us, above one parcel – they kept coming
for a while – we had to keep paying! And the letters finally stopped, but when these lot
came over, this last lot, I was missing, I was on holiday, broke my heart that did because I
wanted to meet them and some of the relations were there. But I’d written a letter hadn’t I
to them, and they read it out in the school here what I’d found like, apologising for not
being there. If I could’ve cancelled that holiday I would have done. But where the plane
crashed there’s a patch of grass, it’s never grown has it
JE: I don’t know I’ve never seen it.
PS: Where there must have come oil out of the engines or something. Aye there’s a patch
of grass.
(I’ve not noticed that. Is the actual dip – is that where the plane..)
PS: It’s that long since I went up, I went up…
(It must have made that hole)
PS:…to see the cross but there was a piece of ground, not a big piece, but there was
nothing on it.
(Were there any bombs dropped round here)
PS: Erm, the nearest bombs was dropped, t’was Nixon’s place, Fieldhead.
JE: Oh, Fieldhead
PS: One dropped there and if you go down Torside and look down there’s a hole in the
ground and there’s often water in it - on left hand side. That dropped one night when I was
carrying milk across the yard at the Crichton. Bang!
JE: Course all bombs were stored at Harpur Hill.
PS: And the Clough Mill down here.
JE: They was trying to find, that’s how Sterndale come to be badly hit with bombs because
they hit Sterndale Church didn’t they
PS: Aye
JE: They were trying to find the bombs at Harpur Hill.
PS: But the Clough Mill was full, full of bombs down here.
JE: Were it
PS: Yeah. Full, yeah. Dutch soldiers came to guard that and they said they were Queen
Wilhelmina’s’ bodyguards. They were smart fellas, by George, they were smart!
18

JE: They had guards on Cumberland barn because that was supposed to have all t’drink in
there, rum and what not.
PS: Oh, I don’t know. I never knew that.
JE: Yeah, there were guards on there in 14/18 war.
PS: 14/18
JE: 14/18 war because…another road had been made underneath old grass.
PS: Well, down the Goyt – what do they call it They made dynamite or something down
Goyt valley in one of them quarry holes. Go down from Cat and Fiddle that way, that first
big quarry on your left, they had a name for that.
(Is that Goyt’s Clough Quarry There’s a Goyt’s Clough quarry just as you go down isn’t
there)
PS: On the left
(On the left)
PS: Yes,
(If you go do from Cat)
PS: Yes, on the left, the big opening.
(On the left there)
PS: And there was a powder mills or something there; they had gunpowder there. They
had a name for it. I can’t just think at it. My memory is gone!
JE: Mine as well.
PS: It comes back when somebody mentions it.
(Yeah, completely. So, slightly different subject, but did you have fires in this area, sort of
moorland fires, because obviously again that’s something that’s a bit of a problem, has
been a problem further north)
JE: Yes there’s plenty of moorland fires. I mean they used to have besoms on Cat Road
every so many yards, hundred yards.
PS: Aye they did and they had telegraph poles to tell you where snow was, where road
was. I remember them, poles every so many hundred yards.
JE: But fires were a regular thing weren’t they like
PS: Aye they had the besoms up there.
19

JE: Yeah, I mean if they get overgrown and not burnt properly, well you’ve got this
tremendous and, and a dry summer and the problem is then burning into peat and this is
why they’re doing this regeneration.
PS: And if it got in the peat they couldn’t get it out, keep blazing up.
JE: Often wonder how they’ve got on cos they’ve done away with, you know, seed blanket
haven’t they You know once it’s burnt through that seed blanket, I mean, it comes back
for ever and a day. But once you‘ve burned down below that you’ve taken all…that’s what
I’ve worries over this sprays on hills. I think if it ever come a big landslide or rather a big
downpour while they was, before they got the seed in it’d take the lot off. It is a risk they
take.
(How many keepers were there)
JE: Three
(Looking after this area)
JE: Yes.
PS: The Paint Mills was one name down the Goyt valley.
JE: Paint Mills, yes, Paint Mills are still there I suppose.
PS: Have you heard that name
JE: Oh yes, Paint Mills that’s where start beating from in’t it One lot starts from Paint
Mills, they drop all beaters off at Paint Mills, used to. Course he wouldn’t have Goyt when
you were…
PS: No, no I never went on the Goyt.
(Tell me, with the beating, tell me what you did. How do you go about beating)
PS: You had a white flag on a stick and you went waving it.
(So would there be a line of you)
JE: Yes, probably hundred, hundred and fifty yards apart weren’t ya
PS: Aye, yeah.
JE: Hundred yards apart and you’d be under control wi what they called flankers, one on
end…
PS: Aye, that’s it
JE:…keeping you all in line.
PS: The lazy farmers as didn’t want to walk, he’d be a flanker…
20

JE: He’d be a flanker! That’s what we’d be calling people…he’d be a flanker!
PS:…and sometimes there’d nearly be a fist fight because: “he’s always there, it should be
my turn to go there.” They never let us young ones go to flanking, oh no. They used to
send us the farthest they could.
JE: First job you did in a morning was fill your Wellington weren’t it…[laughter]. You go in
whatsitsname…fill your Wellington and then you were walking up and down all day
“squish, squish”.
(So what time did you start in the morning Was it an early start)
PS and JE: Nine o’clock.
PS: Nine till about half past four, five o’clock finish. An hour off for dinner and they had
cabins on the moors, they took lovely cabins on Piggford Moor, beautiful cabins up there.
(Made of stone)
PS: Like big huts, wooden cabins with forms in and everything.
JE: There were another one down be Barrel weren’t there
PS: Aye, there were two down be Barrel weren’t there
JE: There were definitely one be Barrel because, I mean, I used to go beating.
PS: When they moved them from up the top from Piggford Moor, they did take one down
there, down Dane Bower.
JE: Did they
PS: Down there I believe.
(So these were shelters for people on the grouse shoots)
PS: Yes to have their dinner in. We didn’t have it outside, no, no.
JE: Or if it’d come on a storm.
PS: Well, beaters might have to have it outside but Lord Derby and all his cronies they
went in the hut.
(Right. So, were these…I’ve talked to some ramblers and they used to, you know, before
the right to roam, they used to use the huts when they could. Did you have that kind of
thing round here People walking across the moors)
PS: They probably did go in ‘em, they’d break door down and then they could get in and
they wouldn’t repair the doors so.
JE: I don’t remember anything like that, no, no.
21

(No, I don’t think anyone said they ever broke in, I think they were generally open)
PS: Perhaps; doors’d perhaps be loose.
JE: I don’t know, I don’t remember that. I remember goin having me dinner. I mean, the
way I didn’t, err, finish beating was, I’d gone up for quite a number of years, and of course,
it was a rush to get all farm work done to be up there for nine o’clock and on this particular
day when I’d got done all rush and got up there I were told I weren’t wanted. So I got a
chip on me shoulder, said ‘if they don’t want me, they won’t bloody have me again!’ And I
never did go again! [laughter]
PS: No!
(So was it generally the same people that went with the beating)
JE: Yes pretty well. I mean now then its friends, dog handlers, people, you know, wi’
spaniels for picking up and their friends. There won’t be a lot of farmers that go, perhaps
young lads that enjoy company; three or four buddies decide they’re goin, but basically the
people that are interested in shooting…
PS: All the lads in our day were
JE:…goin for money.
PS: Goin for money, aye. Eight shillings was a lot of money to us!
(But these moors haven’t’ been that well shot for a long time, have they Just this last, last
year they had a good shoot didn’t they, but before then they weren’t shot for several years
were they)
JE: But this has been right the way through the time that we’ve been up here. There’s
been good times and bad times and you’ll have three or four good seasons and then
suddenly there’ll get this disease in ‘em. And they think up all sorts of things, whether it’s
grit or they’re short of this, they’re short of that, but it hasn’t made any difference cos to me
it still ebbs and flows between good seasons. Probably this next season, I don’t know how
winters affect ‘em, but I’d have thought this next season we’d be heading for a good
season.
(Of course the snow will affect the grouse quite badly, I’d have thought)
JE: Well I was asking our keeper that and he was quite pleased how they’d come out. I
often wonder how they go on in deep snow because the amount shelter is low spots aren’t
they
(Yeah)
JE: But I mean they’re hardy little creatures and it’s been grand to see them on’t snow
PS: On’t snow, aye, you’ve seen ‘em
22

JE: Because I mean that’s what the heathers there for and I mean to see ‘em near enough
count them when they’re on at this time on this deep snow when they’re working to get a
bit of heather seed.
PS: I went down Glossop one day in snow and you could see them then running about,
several of ‘em.
JE: Very rare you can see ‘em is it
PS: No, camouflaged
JE: I mean there’s parts where you can see ‘em fly across road like, but er…
(So did you work closely with the local keepers as an upland farmer, hill farmer)
JE: No I didn’t, it’d more like Ben that’d work with them, that were involved with all the
moorland, I mean I were only on the edge of it.
(Right, yeah)
JE: Yeah you worked with them as regards informing them when there was foxes about or
whatever it was, vermin, stoats or whatever that was likely damage nesting birds. And I
think this is where a lot of ground nesting birds have been wiped out now because they’re
not keepered properly and they’re not…
(Do you think the fox hunting ban’s made a difference)
JE: [laughter] I’ll demand same as beagle job – they only catch them that are ill!
(Right)
JE: I mean I’ve been associated with beagles all me life and I enjoy watchin hare wait for
beagles catch ‘em up, to see how much he can give ‘em, how much air. I mean they only
catch one a season don’t they That’s one that wants putting down and they actually come
round and you can hear sat up on their legs waitin, all these dogs are barking. How long
can I say to you, you know And it’s same wi’ fox, I’ve been down chase ‘em, you know
they’re wiser than these dogs. A fit fox, a fit hare, they’ll not get caught
(Right)
JE: And that’s why I think it’s exaggerated you know; I mean fox doesn’t show any mercy
to anything else does she
PS: No
(No, it’s true)
JE: I was thinking vicar that had few hens like, and he went one day, he’d had problems
with ‘em, fox were in, and he shut it in…and he was so savage he beat it to death, he beat
it to death! I say it’s all right for people to have their opinions but when their favourite
animals murdered next morning by fox they soon change their mind.
23

(Yeah, sure)
JE: I mean I had a laugh the other week about, we used to have holiday cottage next door,
Edward it was, they stopped with us eight weeks and was made away with rabbits eating
all plants. And, of course, lad out of Macc come wi’ ferret and they were horrified and they
were screaming and standing in front of, you know, burrows to stop us putting ferret down
hole, they gave it up eventually like. But in last twelve month, same people have rung me
up: “How do we get rid of rabbits ‘cos they’re eating all us garden!”
(What can you do!) [laughter]
JE: So you can’t win can you really I mean they don’t understand how countryside works,
this is the problem. I mean, everybody got, I love wildlife but, I mean you can’t have one
thing dominating all the rest, you know, there’s nothing worse, I mean ground nesting birds
that, you know, most prone aren’t they, I mean they don’t stand a chance, don’t stand a
chance. I mean, there’s all this talk about sprays and all this lot, it’s a load of bunkum.
There’s that much vermin about and they’ve all got live and you’ve got bear in mind, I
mean, this is what I say over lot of these curlews for instance, I take interest in curlews,
and there was four, had four sets, three years since all over farm, and they came as pairs
and then they were sitting, I didn’t know where they were sitting, but I’d been told cock bird
was quite savage, whenever I went near wi’ motorbike, he’d be harassing me doing this.
Not one chick or one hen came out of that lot. And then four male birds come back year
and still circled same areas. Now you’re finishing up with all males so there’s nothing
complicated about why they’re dying out. The hen’s sat on nest and they clean hen out
and they clean chickens out, they clean eggs out. So all your breedings gone in one fell
swoop, it doesn’t matter what breed of ground nesting bird it is, they’re all gone. I mean I
had somebody coming discussing this from RSPB years since from Carlisle, and they
know exactly what it is but you see, paymasters, they have to do what they’re told.
(It’s same with all the lapwings up here isn’t it, exactly the same, and round Flash, and that
way)
JE: See all those lapwings, I saw about one chick last year up at Ben’s, on that lot. I mean
there was any amount of lapwings in that corner, on May and on Ben. So, no, it’s got to be
managed, countryside’s got to be managed. It’s like anything else, everybody else you
know, you got all these problems with education and what not, knowing their own job, they
know everybody else’s job overnight [laughter]. Especially farmers, they know everything
about farmer’s job.
(And you’re all bad!)
JE: Well, exactly, yes!
PS: Well I reckon the farmer is very, very clever. He’s got to be a vet, he’s got to be a
mechanic, he’s got to be everything. There’s no other industry like that is there
(No, no…)
PS: A farmer is a very clever fella.
(Yeah, got to be very versatile I think. So, to completely, again, change the subject, but
back to what you were saying about snow ploughs, you had snow…)
24

PS: Snow ploughing
(Yeah, you ploughed, well cleared the)
PS: Oh yes
JE: A54 moorlands up here b’Cat and Fiddle, but that was Philip’s area.
(So how long did you do that for)
PS: I last went on the road snow ploughing in 1980.
(And when did you start)
PS: Cos three years after I chopped me arm off.
(Really)
JE: Yes, sewn it back on again.
(Oh, blimey! Good grief)
PS: That was a tractors did that.
JE: That was the Fordson tractor he was telling you about.
(Right, right. What happened)
PS: I missed the foot brake. I was winching, it had a big winch on the back, standard
Fordson. And there’s a wood down the road here being cut down.
JE: Over riverside, you go up the slope don’t you, you go past riverside, there’s them
double gates.
PS: Before you get to the bungalow.
JE: In wood below going down to Lower House, he went backwards down that.
PS: We found out we could have the spare timber when they cut the good out and I’d got
this winch and we used to go at nights, drag this timber out, Mike Kellett [] at the café was
sawing it up at the roadside and I was backing on to the grass verge, dropping the spade
to stop the tractor going down, throwing the wire rope down the bank and dragging it up
and the last pull of the night me foot slipped off the brake and it slipped twice. And this old
tractor, a 1939 model was so well tuned up the governors opened up and pushed the bank
out, and it went down and it was on that angle, jammed in a tree wi’ spade, one that had
been left, a rotten one, and the spade went in it. I looked up the bonnet like that. I knew
when I went over I were dead, no way out, and I looked up the bonnet and thought we’ve
stopped and it went through me thick head, a machine on the road I can get it out, but it
happened in fractions, it started turning over, going, and I jumped off. I remember going up
in the air with fear and our Robert, me nephew, was at bottom of the wood and he saw me
go and he said I got clean away, rolled down the wood and the tractor rolled after me, and
there was a tree, imagine a bank side like that and a tree’d been cut off here, I rolled over
25

it and there was a drop there and I lay there and I had the full tractor on me. I don’t
remember anything of this, but Robert said I had the full machine and it come down past
his feet, he was terrified, didn’t know which way tractor were coming, couldn’t move, and it
went past him. He looked up and I sat up wi’ me back and me arm were down here, bones
were sticking through me jacket here and I were trying to get it back up me sleeve, that’s
when I come conscious, try to put me arm on.
(Oh, gosh…flippin’ heck!)
PS: And he just shouts at me “I’m going for t’ambulance”, and Michael was sawing wi’
chain saw, never missed me, he went and told him what had happened, he come, I
gathered me arm up and carried it and he pushed me up the hill because it was steep, got
in his car and he met the ambulance going up Long Dale coming and I ended up in
Withington Hospital. And, it was ten to twelve midnight, I can see clock now, two surgeons
shaking their heads. One said “Do you smoke” I said “I haven’t smoked for twenty years.”
Their faces lit up “Come on we’ll have a go at you. No chance if you’d smoked, kill you
under anaesthetic!” And I remember no more till Saturday afternoon, this were Friday
night. Saturday afternoon sometime I woke up, oh, the ward was full wi’ white coats and
me arm was strapped up here in a frame, all bandaged. I thought they’d cut it off. God.
One of ‘em says, he says “How do you feel” I says, “I feel fine.” He says “You’re lucky, if
you’d said you smoked last night we couldn’t do this operation.” He said again, “we should
kill you under anaesthetic.” John knows the surgeon very well, and he says “You’ve
several more operations”, he says, “you’ll probably have to have an automatic car.” I says
“I’m going back on trucks.” He says “You’re goin to get better” he said “We can deal wi
you!” And I was eighteen months having it put back. They took bone out of me leg, put in
here, bone grafts, skin off this leg here, twice, they took it off same place twice. And you
can’t tell, it’s healed up, and that was it.
(That’s amazing. How long ago was that)
PS: 1983…
(Crikey!)
PS:…27 th September.
(But you’ve got all your fingers)
PS: I’ve no joint in that thumb. That’s out of me back and that’s bone out of me leg here,
took bone out.
(Wow, that’s amazing)
PS: That was a rum operation doing that…
(Yeah, I bet it was)
PS:…putting that in. But I’ve got me arm…it’s a bit shorter than the other.
(Does it matter)
26

PS: It were months after, I said to him one day, I says “It’s shorter than other, why didn’t
you keep it same length” and he laughed. He says you didn’t bring all the bones. They
picked the bones out of me jacket and put them on a steel plate to join. He said there were
some missing and why they took this out of me leg, the bones wouldn’t just join, they went
dead, there and there, so they cut it off and put this bone in, chamfered it, chamfered the
bone, and put three pins in, there. I were walking about with pins in me arm, weren’t I, for
months. But the surgeon that did it he treated everybody alike, it didn’t matter who they
were. He’d done one fellas arm before me and I met him one day and he says to me, he
says “If Mr. Watson wants to cut me head off, I should let him!” He had that much faith in
him. But he was so kind wasn’t he; he had a way with him.
Fourth track:
PS: We had a brainwave one day, two ex-Army trucks – Bedfords – and the front one had
a big “V” plough on and we often got short of power, going uphill. And we had a tow pole
spring-loaded, a proper one, for dragging wagons in and we coupled two wagons
together…
(Right)
PS: …and it was like a train coming, and we could go through a lot of snow with that.
(Yeah, I bet)
PS: It was a marvellous invention that was.
(Yeah, well, yeah)
PS: But you can certainly go through snow when you’ve got power behind yer – we used
to love that job.
(Yeah. So you’d bring them all up these roads up here, the A54 and…)
PS: Yes. The A54 Cat an’ Fiddle and down as far as Bull Hill, nearly to Forest Cottage,
Macclesfield.
(So, when did you start)
PS: And we used to go up to the Forest Chapel, we were really short of horsepower
there…
(Did you…what year did you start ploughing the snow)
PS: I started…soon…after we had the tractor about 1967, er…1937, ‘38.
(Right)
PS: When the Council found us a plough that’d fit on the front of the Fordson tractor, we
eventually built a homemade cab on.
(So you’ve not had anything since)
PS: No.
27

(What did you build it out of)
PS: A windscreen out of a Morris car…
(Right)
PS: …and a tin sheet on the top an’ a bit o’ metal framework [laughter]. That was better
than sitting outside.
(I bet it was, yeah)
PS: You had to put your head out of the side because there was no windscreen wiper on,
and it blocked it with snow [laughter]. So it had its disadvantages [laughter]. In the early
days when we ‘ad wagons, you opened the windscreen, in a fog, so that you could see.
(You actually opened the windscreen out…)
PS: They used to lift up like that.
(Right. Oh ‘eck. I could have done with one of those this morning [laughter])
JE: But it used to be a lot thicker fog, didn’t it Philip…
PS: Oh, far worse fog. With the smokey chimneys and the trains
JE: Couldn’t see hand in front of yer.
(Right)
PS: You used to spit it out and if you blew your nose yer handkerchief were black.
(Oh, oh I can’t imagine)
JE: You’d come out of Macclesfield and you know road and get on wrong side of t’road,
get on footpath on’t wrong side of t’road it was that thick.
(Really Wow)
JE: Comin over from Mermaid and that way, we just couldn’t…nightmare…
PS: I used to cart corn out of Liverpool for Bibbies for a good number of years, and I went
to Liverpool one foggy night, I left Macclesfield at five o’clock an’ I got in Liverpool at ten to
ten. I’d gone at walking speed.
(Right, the whole way)
PS: And, er, I ended up in a park in Liverpool.
(Right)
PS: There was two big stone gateposts I were goin’ through an’ I thought these shouldn’t
be an’ I stopped. And a chap come to me he said, “Where’re y goin’”. I says “I’m goin’
28

down to Bibbies near tunnel, he says your goin’ in some park it was [laughter]. He says:
“I’ll back yer out”, so he backed me out an then police car crept past me, so I followed him,
an I knew it was a straight road, and he put his indicator out to go left, after he’d gone so
far, so I didn’t follow ‘im; an’ I was only wagon as went into Bibbies that night. The only
one. Buses were all stopped.
JE: Wicked fogs
PS: An’ I got back at, what was it, quarter to three next morning
(Heck, that’s a long day)
PS: An’ that night, blew yer handkerchief, oooh, it was black.
(Did it smell, the fog)
PS: You could spit it out.
JE: God it were…
(Did it smell Was it like a smokey…)
PS: Yes, smoky smell, yes. Terrible.
(So it must have been quite dangerous up here, you know when you get into sort of the
moors and the fields…)
PS: Yes, yes.
(…and I can imagine getting lost fairly easy really)
JE: Yes you could get lost…you can get lost on these moors
PS: Oh you can get lost, yes, yes.
JE: You can get lost on these moors in’t fog. I’ve been lost on’t top in’t fog; you just lose all
sense of where you are.
PS: You don’t know where you are
(And what do you do then How do you…)
JE: Find a wall, find a brook or something [laughter].
PS: Water always goes down hill.
(Are there any other weather differences Were summers different)
JE: Yes, far better summers. Far better summers, weren’t they
PS: Oh, far better, far better…far, far better summers.
29

JE: I mean you’d have never managed to get there if you’d had summers like we have
now.
PS: We got hay, acres and acres and acres of it. You couldn’t get a day’s haymaking now.
(Tell me about…you were saying about those barns, or, erm, the sheds that were up in the
fields that had…)
PS: Yes, yeah.
(…tell me a bit about those)
JE: Well we’ve got probably…oldest building in Wildboarclough, reeves () building, and
that’s situated right on the edge of the moor, a very small barn. Er, it had four cattle up and
a pig in the corner of it with an outside feeding; have you seen that up there Erm, again,
that was done same as all the barns were in these hill areas. Erm, first of all they were
such a good way to fetch the hay home t’farmstead, which they hadn’t really got time to do
wi’ old fashioned methods of doin’ it, so they took the cattle and the cattle were inside the
barns on the floor and the hay was on the lofts above, and it were lad’s job to go across,
there was always a trough made outside these buildings, so he could turn cattle out in
winter for t’water, erm it’d be lad’s job to go across and look after it. And then the idea of it
was that the muck was in the meadow so they didn’t have to cart the muck long distances,
it was already in the field that they was needing it for meadow.
(Sounds a good system)
JE: It was a good system, yes. But the interesting part about this farm, is that for…there’s
a 22 acre meadow on this farm and Lord Derby farmed it from 1885 to 1922, ‘23,
something like that. And he had different bailiffs on it; and they once mowed it with scythes
in the day. Twenty-two men…
PS: Cut it with scythes
JE: …with twenty-two scythes; an acre a day was what a man could do with a scythe.
(Ah! Wow!)
JE: And they did it from, I don’t know whether it’d be a bet or…
PS: Aye it would be a wager…
JE: …or some sort of wager, er and they mowed that 22 acre in a day with scythes.
(Wow)
PS: Well here, there used to be a dryin’ shed for corn that was grown ‘ere. Was it ‘ere
when you come ‘ere In that back yard ‘ere.
JE: Well that could’ve been where muck millings were, Philip.
PS: It was there somewhere.
30

JE: They were two open sheds on that corner.
PS: Open sheds…
JE: Yes.
PS: It had a floor in, an’ above you put your corn, because they used to grow oats ‘ere,
from what I’ve heard.
JE: Well we grew oats when we first come ‘ere ‘ant we
PS: Yes, yes. But that drying shed, they put it up above an’ there was holes in the sheets
or something, netting, whatever they put, so that wind blew through it. And that, I think his
name was Porter that was here last…
JE: He went to Canada he did…
PS: That’s it. That’s it.
JE: But, I mean they tried to grow whatever they could on the farms. I mean, it was one of
the hard work jobs was sowing turnips and then hoeing ‘em out to leave the ones, every...
PS: So far apart.
JE:…six inches. An’ if that wasn’t bad enough, come Autumn, you know, you had to take
them out, cut the top off and cut the bottom off an’ chuck ‘em in the cart and they was used
for cattle feed again. And the worst one of the lot was growing kale, because kale grows
about this high…
(Does it really)
JE: And you always go getting kale in, you brought kale in as you wanted it, you couldn’t
store it…
(Right)
JE:…so on a nice frosty morning, your job was to go and cut this kale and stack it on the
trailers and then bring it in ta’ yards and then carry it wi’ ice running down yer because
there were none of this gear you’ve got now for weather [laughter]
PS: Ah, I’ve done that, I’ve done that.
JE: An’ the ice dropping down yer arm [laughing as he speaks] and carrying it between two
cows that were so desperately hungry, that they were so eager to see yer both of ‘em
would turn round, but they’d turn round in opposite directions. So they was actually bum to
bum. An’ you were stood there holding this great arm of stuff waiting for them to part, so
you could walk through them [general laughter]. Yeah, I mean, there was turnips, there
was mangolds, kale…
PS: We ‘ad to chop them up.
JE: Yes an’ there was the old pulp…
31

PS: …an’ straw bedding, you had to turn chopper on that…
JE: To get it sharp enough.
PS:…you never stopped.
(That was like one of those machines…it’s like a funnel almost isn’t it that you put them in
the top)
JE and PS: Turnips in, yes, yes that’s it…pulper…
JE:…pulper they was called, the last one in this area was ‘ere in 1960, when we borrowed
it off John Fenney at High Ash…
PS: Ah. Oh aye.
JE: …and he’d meticulously looked after this pulper like, an’ of course as happens when
there were all lads about an’ forgetting doors and what not, the cows got in and smashed
this pulper…to bits n’…
[PS loud laughter]
(Oh dear)
JE:…an’ o’course he left in 1960 and a firm from Roberts, the bread people bought High
Ash and they give ‘im what price he wanted for it, an’ he put his own price on everything
on the farm; animals, lock, stock and barrel as we used to call it. If they took everything it
was lock, stock and barrel. And of course, Mr Lovegrove, farm manager, and he comes
down to collect this pulper. And it was one pulper to be collected from Clough House five
pounds.
PS: He’d smashed it [laughter]
JE: It’d been in pieces for years [all three laughing together].
PS: Ah, dear.
JE: And then they’d go back to the old, you know, hand clipping, which I’ve never done.
(What was that)
PS and JE: Scissors for’t’ sheep clipping.
(Oh right; yeah)
JE: Er, I mean it was all hand clippers. And then before winder come out.
PS: They used to have us turning this thing all day – “go on, keep turning!”
JE: “Bit harder!”
PS: “Bit harder!”
32

(So what did it do It was a…)
JE: It was the same sort of headpiece as on…
PS: It was on a cable…
JE: …a sheep shearer as it is today, only it’s a bigger one…
(Like an electric…)
JE: …like an electric one…
PS: Like electric, aye
JE:…but it was on a shaft…
PS: Aye.
(Right)
JE:…with a big wheel to turn and the wheel turned the headpiece and it was essential that
the headpiece was going as hard as possible to make the shearing easier.
(Yeah, so you were there constantly sort of…)
JE: Yes, yes…always lad’s job was turning…
PS: They wouldn’t have as many sheep…
JE: Oh no.
PS:…on a farm then as they have today.
JE: No, no, they wouldn’t, no.
(Still sounds like hard work)
JE: It was very hard work, yes.
PS: It wouldn’t be five hundred or a thousand. That would break yer heart…
JE: Wouldn’t it…
PS:…twenty, thirty or forty; big flock if you ‘ad forty in them days.
JE: Yeah, well, I always, but, you know, apart from Goyt Valley ours’d be biggest flock in
area, two-twenty.
PS: We started selling milk approximately in 1932, Nestles come round. Previously yer
made butter or cheese, we always made butter, and take it to town an’ sell it. An’ then
when milk, er, they started picking up milk, Nestles did, and it was 6p in the old money a
gallon and that’d be about 3p now wouldn’t it 3p a gallon.
33

JE: But I mean women had it ‘ard. I mean I always think of t’old lady sent out back, you
know, Knar, and Birchen Booth…
PS: Aye.
(Oh yes)
JE:…and they’d walk down to there with their arms, baskets full of eggs, to catch, there
were two buses, first one in a morning, there was another one at Tuesday, Friday
dinnertime…
PS: Quarter past eight and one about…
JE: …and they’d sell their eggs in Macc to whoever wanted them, or give ‘em away
whatever it was, and then they’d fill the baskets with shopping and they’d get off bus down
at what we call Mill Corner, down there…
PS: Mill corner, aye.
JE:…an’ have t’ walk back t’Knar, Cut-thorne, er Birchen Booth…
(It’s a long old hike isn’t it)
JE: Yes.
(It must have been awful. Awful)
JE: I can see two old women from, Auntie Mary at Birchen Booth, Harriet at Knar an’…
PS: Steve Slack…
JE: Steven Slack, I mean he’d ‘ave been an interesting character…
PS: By Jove, if they’d bin ‘ere now they’d have told you something.
[JE and PS talking over each other – inaudible]
PS:...been entertaining I can tell ya.
JE: He never went out of t’yard, only when he went t’ elections.
PS: But he knew everything…
(But where was he)
JE: At Knar.
(At Knar. Oh he was at Knar)
JE: Slack family built the Knar.
(Is it)
34

JE: They built the Knar, yes.
(Oh, right)
JE: But he never, only time he went off farm was when he went for vote at election…
PS: Arr.
JE:…and he knew everythin’.
PS: Everythin’ that went on in’t valley.
JE: He worked from twelve till twelve.
PS: Arr.
JE: Twelve at dinner time, he didn’t start until twelve at dinner time. And postman used to
go and cook his breakfast and then shout him and he’d go an’ collect eggs for his
breakfast and let his hens out.
PS: Postman, aye he did
JE: Arthur Beresford, aye…
PS: Then when Beresford were goin he’d shout, “Hey, come ‘ere, bring me an ounce of
bacca.”
JE: Yeah
PS: An’ he’d give him a ten bob note, and he’d say, “I never see any change you know”,
half o’ that he’d keep [laughter]. He’d come with ounce o’bacca next day and that might
cost five shillings. He never got any change. And if he wanted to get rid of him, he’d get on
politics.
JE: Oh yes
PS: Oh, he was a Labour man postman was, by Jove that’d shift ‘im! He’d say to me,
“Watch ‘im go”, he says, “I’ll shift ‘im.” An’ he’d get on about politics; by God he’d go!
JE: But he died gonna feeding his hens at that building across from t’Knar, that building
further across…
(Yes)
JE: … he dropped dead in’t snow didn’t he Went across feedin’ hens.
PS: Aye he did.
JE: But a real, real character.
PS: I’ll tell yer somethin’ funny about ‘im. This happened regular. I used to wheel and deal
in hay, running down Lincolnshire. And I’d come back at 8 o’clock or 9 o’clock at night an’
35

I’d think where can I sell it And I’d go down to Steve Slack’s, pull up and go t’house.
“What’s tha got”; “I’ve a load a hay.”; “Is it any good”; “Aye, its good stuff.” He said “I
wonder whether Brown want’s any” That was down in’t bottom. And he’d go outside hold
lantern up and he’d shout: “Hey, Brown, Sharpley’s ‘ere.” And they’d come. You’d see
lantern move outta that building across wi’ no roof on an’ come t’door an’ hold lantern up.
He says: “What’s up” He says: “Sharpley’s here. He’s got some hay, does tha want any”
“Is it any good” “Well Sharpley says it is.” And this is how conversation went on…
JE: Across valley
PS:… across the valley. And he’d say: “Well, I’ll just finish milking this cow an’ I’ll come
up.” So Steve’d say to me, “Come in ‘an ‘ave a brew.” An’ pint pot, kettle were always
boiling; ‘ave a brew, and he’d say: “Hey, just come and milk us a cow”; he’d two cows and
I’d ‘ave to milk a cow and he’d milk the other and when I’d milked it, he’d say, “Hey, feed
that calf there”, he’d say [laughter]
JE: He ‘ad his army of men…
PS: I’d be as daft as owt; me with loada hay stood on’t side, I’d been out since four o’clock
in’t morning to get this load hay running down Lincolnshire. And Brown’d come up…”Is it
alreet Steve” “Arr, it smells alreet to me.” And then they’d look up. “Does tha think its
gonna be fine”...”Arr, arr, moon’s out, arr; I think it’ll be fine t’neet.” “Ah well, how much do
you want” “Well I’ll ‘ave half if you’ll ‘ave half.” “Er, how many ton as got” So we worked
it out how many bales t’ton. But why they were interested in the weather, if it’s goin’ to be
fine, we put the top half of the load in Steve’s loft up there, and the bottom half we dropped
on the floor at the end of the house you see. But if it were goin’ rain one lot went up the
high and then we backed up yard t’lower one to put hay up there. An’ it’d be two o’clock in
a morning when I got away.
JE: All to sell a load of hay [laughter]
PS: Then Steve’d say: “I canna pay thee today”, but he says, “I owe thee for last lot.” So
we’d go in an’ have a sortin’ out do. And Brown’d say: “tha mun call round for thee money.”
Well I only drew off Brown once a year. I’d no time to go mithering down there, because
when you went there it was a tea party job, you were there all night. She put a banquet on
for you.
JE: It would be a banquet an’ all.
PS: Aye, an’ paid, no trouble, money were always there like, I could ‘ave ‘ad it every load if
I’d ‘ave gone down to Brownie, but I wasn’t goin’ down there.
JE: They wanted conversation when you called; they wanted to know what were goin’ off.
PS: But the conversations, oh it was hilarious.
(In those days…)
PS: An’ Trelthy (), at Cut-thorne, they were two brothers, they were another comical pair.
JE: They’d been all over world before they come back to Cut-thorne.
36

PS: They went to…
JE: Canada, Australia, New Zealand…
PS: They went to Crewe College didn’t they Were it Crewe College
JE: Well they were Crewe people…
PS: Sandbach…
JE: Sandbach people…
PS: Aye, Sandbach College they’d been to, they were all educated. But you’d call there,
“Do you want any hay” “Er, well we’ve got plenty. But we’ll ‘ave half a ton or a ton.” They
were wire bales then, they were big, a hundredweight a piece. And you’d take ropes off
and leave them so many bales. “Now we shall do for winter”; but you’d go a fortnight after
and they’d buy some more. An’ this is how it went on, all winter. An’ I used to sell a lot o’
pataters (potatoes). And I used to sell a lot a potatoes…I used to go round wi’ spuds.
Funny part, Mathie Millwood that lived at Heald End, he lived on his own, but he’s always
have five hundredweight of potatoes. And it didn’t matter how often you went, he’d ‘ave
another five hundredweight. But he went, buses went past two or three times a week, he
went shopping. He’d take so many taters to Macc. But he made current bread…and
when…when…when he finally finished there…it belonged to Derby didn’t it
JE: Yes, part of the estate…
PS:…and Turner the auctioneer took Mrs…what was her name Erm, Watts…
JE: Major Watt’s wife…
PS:…Major Watt’s wife there to look at the property one day, and er, she was a very prim
and proper woman, and Mathie comes to the door…with a ‘piss pot’ from under bed
[laughter]
JE: That always tickles me!
PS: Mrs Watts, she come down t’farm an’ told us this tale after she’d been there. She said:
“What should ya think, he came to the door with a piss pot. And he had a wooden spoon in
it and he was making currant bread…stirring it up!” [laughter]. She went living there
eventually. But another time, I went up with potatoes, he says: “I’ve bought a little pig off
Harold Turner for writ ()”, he says. A little dodgy pig was a ‘writ’ ()…
JE: Littlest in’t litter…
PS:…and he’d bought it, an’ I went about a month after, ‘an he’s in tears when he saw me.
I says “What’s up” He says: “I’ve had to sell that little pig.” I says, “You’ve sold it Why did
you ‘ave to sell it” “Well” he says, “so and so came an’ he offered me a bit o’ profit”, an
he’d sold pig, an he were in tears, he didn’t want to sell it. But he couldn’t resist money!
JE: Bit of profit! [laughter]
(What did he do with all those potatoes)
37

PS: Eh Potatoes
JE: Sell ‘em in little lots didn’t he Philip
PS: Aye, little lots, he’d take ‘em to Macc to sell ‘em.
JE: He’d trade on ‘em, trade on ‘em…
(He’d just sell them)
PS: He’d trade on ‘em, aye…
JE: He’d buy ‘em in hundredweight and sell ‘em in pounds.
PS: Hey, dear me…he were a comedian want he
(Fantastic!)
PS: He always paid. He’d always got money...never no trouble getting’ money off ‘im. But I
laughed over that pig. He was literally in tears, he didn’t want to sell it, but he’d ‘ad a bit a
profit off it an’ he couldn’t resist money! [laughter]
PS: Well, Mrs Watts were funny. She says, “He came to the door…to think he’d…his arm
was round the piss pot stirring currant bread up!” Well, I used to go mowing for him and
little Albert Bellfield…
JE: At Rottenstone…
PS:…at Rottenstone. I’d been mowing there and you had to work the machine in them
days. And I says, “I’m goin’ up Mathie’s, come and work that machine.” “Ar”, but he says
“I’m ‘aving nowt to eat!” [laughter]. We hadn’t been there long before he comes with his
basket covered up with a white towel. I says, “Hey up Albert, he’s comin’.” “I’m havin’ non
of his bloody tea” he says. Well, I’m sat on’t tractor ‘ere, he puts it on wing of tractor and
little Albert’s sat on mowing machine with his back to us like this…hey dear, and do you
know it was cut thin as if a woman had done it…it was beautiful [laughter]
(That’s fantastic…)
PS: Albert were bow-legged an all. Little funny fellow…it was hilarious it was.
JE: Had a brother that got drunk and got on railway line, Macc, and cut his arm off and he
were the strongest fella I’ve ever seen.
PS: Aye, with one arm, he used to wheel a wheel-barrow!
JE: He used to muck out these cattle at Dropstone, long building from the house and he’d
take it down that field, each barrow load of muck each day into that bottom field. And
they’d said that little white building, Albert always told me had a lot of lime tipped there and
him and Mathie had to wheel it all round that field with barrow-fulls at a time and spread it
on that.
PS: He had a little muck-fork, shaft were cut off short.
38

JE: When muck spreaders came out I went mucking with him one day and he was filling
muck-spreader with one arm…stabbed me straight in wrist wi’ muck-fork!
(Oh dear!)
JE: But there was four, five lived in Rottenstone House. Don’t know if you’ve ever been in
it…
PS: Brothers and sisters. The old woman; the old lady.
(Which house is that)
JE: Rottenstone…
(But which do you call Rottenstone)
JE:…opposite Crag Hall, right across from where our Geoff lives, the first one. There was
five of them, it was a very, very tiny house when you get inside. It’s nothing like as big as
what it looks. And there was three sons, n’ daughter an’ old lady. We always think about
that group of people who lived in that area. They said the water wasn’t fit to drink and they
had all sorts of methods of getting this water for drinking. There was Grandma lived to 92;
there was Annie Thorne that lived to 102, Bert would be the minor character at about 74
when he died. Mrs Bellfield lived to almost a hundred, little old lady. Ralph Usher lived to
almost a hundred and Martha Usher. Tom Usher, he died in his seventies. They all lived to
great ages in that corner and they said the water wasn’t fit to drink!
(There’s obviously something good in it!)
PS: Talk about a lot of rubbish and I bet a lot of it come down lead pipe. Well, all Crag Hall
did. It come here in lead pipes.
JE: We were on lead pipes yesterday in bottom field. It crossed reservoir in lead pipes for
village.
PS: Eh
JE: It used to cross reservoir.
PS: Aye, aye.
JE: It was in the kiln [laughter]
(Right, that’s fantastic. Thank you)
JE: When the moorland ‘grips’ came in with the idea of drying the moors out, because
that’s why they thought they was losing the, the moors were goin’ wet and they thought
they was losing the heather. The moorland grips came in about 1952, ’53 and on this
estate there was 46 miles of grips put in and me brother’s job was to walk, once a year,
and throw any clods out.
(Right, to keep the drainage going)
39

JE: To keep ‘em clean, but I mean all they’ve done is erode the moors.
(But it’s drained them hasn’t it It’s made them a lot drier to a certain extent)
JE: I’m not sure about that but, on my particular patch, on Wood Moss, some of those
grips now, if, well before they come to fill ‘em in, you could have put a ten foot gate across
and the gate wouldn’t be seen. That’s how much erosion has gone because there was
about two foot, I don’t know, two foot be two foot, I think, I don’t know, two foot be three
foot, I can’t just think what size they were; there’s a lot of places, I mean we’ve had cattle
on edge of A54, when we had Lakeland cattle, those I was telling you about, and they
came and there was some bad weather at end of May, 26 th May, they had some very bad
snow and we couldn’t find these cattle anywhere and they was all in them trenches at Spa
Bent.
(Were they)
JE: Yeah, all blocked up with water and we drove past and couldn’t see ‘em. We had to
back them out and all sorts to get them to come out because they’d gone into peat you see
and they was all backed up with water. And it hasn’t just made this water quicker to vanish
has it I mean that’s what its done, I mean, that’s the worse thing it’s done, but I think this
erosion, you know, such a lot of these places now, terrific width, terrific width.
(So who put them in in the first place)
JE: Well, the estate.
(Right. Did they dig them by hand)
JE: No it was by machine. It was the modern day, new idea at the time which I think was
the wrong idea, but again we’re going back, we were talking about acid rain, it wasn’t that
that was killing the heather, it was something else.
(Yeah. I suppose you’re talking 60 years ago aren’t you, so I suppose it’s taken them that
long to work out that maybe it’s not the right way to go about it)
JE: Well it died a natural death. I don’t think it went on long. There was quite a lot done in
‘50s but nothing’s ever been done since as far as I know.
(Right, so it was just a block of drainage channels and then they stopped doing that)
JE: Yes, there were no drains put in, just open…
(But they did them all over the moors, didn’t they, that was the thinking in those days, well
there’s loads of places you see them aren’t there)
40

Dereck Nobles: Interviewed by Tegwen Roberts and Gordon Danks.
2010.
(TR: If you could just say your name and your age)
DN: My name’s Dereck Nobles
(TR: And how old are you)
DN: Holme Village. I’m 73
(TR: And have you lived here all your life)
DN: I’ve lived here all my life apart from a period in the Forces.
(TR: What did you do for your job)
DN: Well, I was a staff photographer for David Brown tractors, that’s what my job was. I
came out of photography when it closed down, when the publicity side closed down and
then I went into the experimental, into the development side. So I’ve been connected with
farming all me life and been brought up in farming. I went as, I put a pair of overalls on and
I went as a field test driver and I enjoyed every minute of it, working on the farms, because
we worked from home and, provided we kept the log book up to date and reported all our
failings of the experimental parts; because what we did was, we drew a new tractor,
completely new tractor from the production, and they fitted test items to the tractor which
we’d to monitor all the time.
(TR: Like what)
DN: Well it could be anything, any part of the tractor, from the engine to the clutch to the
whatever, transmission, hydraulics…and then they’d do so many hours, you might put a
thousand hours on the tractor because, unlike a car you put hours on a tractor not miles…
(TR: Right, oh I didn’t know that)
DN:…so, er, and then they’d strip it down, it’d come in, it’d be stripped down, completely
down. But it was a very interesting job, especially when you came from the agricultural
side, it was more or less 50/50, it was half agricultural because you was working on farms
all the time, and ploughing etc, you know the sort of thing…so it was very interesting, yes.
(TR: So what year did you start doing that then)
DN: ’59.
1

(TR: Right)
DN: I came out of the RAF in ‘59 and there was a vacancy at Browns for a staff
photographer and I was very fortunate, I managed to be successful in my application and
yes, so I did that for 15 years and then, as I say, I went when that closed down. Publicity
manager retired and cos we got, you know, sort of new broom, he brought all his own
people in, he put everything out on contract. There we go!
(TR: And your job changed)
DN: And the job changed. So I thought ‘What am I going to do’ and I thought well. I got
chance of a job with the Huddersfield Examiner, I got chance of a job which, really, you
come to crossroads in life, you either go straight on or you go right or left. I should have
gone straight on because I got, through contacts I got a job offered at Yorkshire Television
in the Stills Department. But the only thing was it was just processing; now then, that was
alright; me being me of course I went for this interview on the Saturday morning, it very
very quiet…the only personality I met was Les Dawson [laughter]. So I had this interview
and, at the end of the interview, I said ‘Well’; by this time I’d been working outdoors all
summer, and of course I’m an outdoors man anyway. Well, I couldn’t see any daylight but
the equipment, with photography being the end product unlike, you know, tractors were,
you know, of course it was tractors were the end product. I mean the equipment was
fantastic…I said, “Well, it’s alright”, I said, but “can’t see any daylight. You know I just feel
like a bloody battery.” This was the stills, Head of Stills Department. So I, I turned it down.
(TR: Right, because it wasn’t outdoors)
DN: Well, and I didn’t fancy working in Leeds anyway.
(GD: It’s a long way to Leeds from Holme Village innit)
DN: Well, I was happy doing what I was doing; at the end of the day. Because I’ve always
been one that’s pursued what I like doing, as far as I can, as I say you come to these
crossroads in life and sometimes, well you’ve got to turn right or left haven’t you
(TR: Yeah, sometimes)
DN: At end of day, you know, you’ve got to keep the wolf from the door.
(TR: You do. So, Holme Village, would you consider that to be a moorland village)
DN: Well, we are just in the Peak District here, just, the boundary is by the little chapel
down the road there
(TR: Oh right, so really close)
2

DN: Yes, oh yes. It’s as near as that. That’s right.
(TR: And you’re quite high up here, aren’t you)
DN: We’re just on the 1,000 foot contour. And it just climbs 720-odd feet to the summit of
Holme Moss.
(TR: Right and is that the highest point round here)
DN: That’s the highest road. The highest point is Black Hill which is 200 feet higher.
(TR: Oh that’s the trig point)
DN: That’s the trig point; and you can’t appreciate it unless you stand on Snailsden Pike
Hill and you look across and half the mast, its got a backcloth of Black Hill and you can
really see how the ground rises; very deceptive is the rise and fall of land, it’s surprising.
When you stand on the summit of Holme Moss you think Black Hill’s, well its level to all
intents and purposes, but it isn’t…unless the surveyors have got it wrong!
(GD: You never know! TR: So, have you always walked on the moors)
DN: Well you see, I was born, as I say, into hill farming. We milked 15 cows and we’d 70
breeding ewes and it brought me and my brother up and me father and mother raised us
on that. But things have changed so dramatically, I mean I’m 73, going 74, so I’ve seen a
lot of changes, as we all have, but I mean now you couldn’t…I mean my son works for the
NFU, he’s the NFU representative for this area. He’s farming as well as, 250 breeding
ewes with about half a dozen cows, me brother is still farming and he likes his cows so we
just keep a few but, I mean he’s got three children has my son and there’s no way that he
could even begin to support a family on 250 breeding ewes. And this brings me round to
the moors, this is why the farmers have had to increase their numbers; cos, then this here
grant came along where they were subsidising them to take them off the moors for a
certain period of time.
(TR: Is that during the winter)
DN: No, that’s all year round.
(TR: Right, ok)
DN: I mean a local farmer said to me, he says “Oh, if you’re on top o’moor”, he says, “and
you see any of my sheep wi’ my mark”, he says, “let me know will ya tell cos I want ‘em
off.” Well, he sent a lot of ‘em away for wintering and I thought ‘oh, he just wants ‘em off for
winter’, cos it was about October time…well they took them off at back end of the year
naturally when you sell your fat lambs you see, spring lambs. So anyway he wanted them
3

off full stop. Didn’t say to me that he wanted them off full stop, but he did. But, I mean, the
difference now, immediately he took those sheep off, I could take you to areas that was
growing nothing but moss, just a blanket of moss on the flanks of, above issues there,
issues, what we call Fisher’s ‘Oyl. And, within twelve months, oh it was amazing how the
moor had come back
(TR: So the heather)
DN: I reckon taking the sheep off has done more than anything else…
(TR: Right, in terms of regeneration)
DN: I mean obviously, yeah, that’s right. I mean the moors we like to think they’re
wilderness areas but they are actually man-made, I mean everything was covered in trees.
You want go to Coomb’s Edge at the back of the Snake pub there and look at all those
roots there, I mean it’s a real example of what the moors were really like, what the ground
was really like, it was just covered in trees of course, as all Britain were for that matter
wasn’t it You could have travelled from Lands End to John O’Groats and it would have
been forest.
(TR: Is that the biggest change that you’ve seen to the moors in this area)
DN: Taking…there was two things, there was paving the Pennine Way, that’s from a local
point of view, you know, when I say local sort of thing, I mean its just a path isn’t it, but that
was a great step forward I thought. I kept an open mind, I must admit, I was a bit of a
purist at the time I thought, ‘it’s a bit of a beggar paving the moors’, you know sort of thing,
suburbanising the moors, its not good this. And then when the fences all went up, I thought
‘ooh my goodness’, I thought well ‘will they clear them away’, because a fence only lasts
about 10 years, and er, plastic covering, you can do what you want with the wire but the
weather is so severe, I mean a local farmer here, he ran a fence line from the top of Holme
Moss just to fence, Mr Gill, just to fence his own little moor in, about 3 or 400 acres and he
said “Do you know”, he said “that fence is beggared after 3 years. It’s blasted the
galvanising off”, you know, so severe is the weather.
(TR: It’s pretty exposed up there, isn’t it)
DN: Oh gosh, aye, yes.
(TR: So why were they fencing the moors)
DN: Well, it can be one of several things, I mean the shepherd at, ‘quiet shepherd’ now,
that’s farming ‘quiet shepherd’, I just don’t know where the funding would actually come
from for that, would you Gordon
4

(GD: Well, no. It in’t clear)
DN: But I mean there was 6,000 acres of all new materials, fence posts and you’re talking
about fence posts at £1.50 a time, you know, I mean you’re talking a lot of money, I mean
there’s no private individual could afford to do it.
(TR: No, but is it to keep stock in or out)
DN: It’s to control stock, that’s what it’s for, yeah.
(TR: So when you were growing up, in a hill farming family, did you have cows and sheep
on the moors)
DN: We had cows and, no not on, no cows on the moor, not milk cows – you wouldn’t
have very much milk!
(TR: That’s true! Humour me, I’m new to this)
DN: Well you see, we changed the breed of sheep, there’s the Gritstone, the Woodland,
which is actually the White-faced Penistone strictly speaking, that’s it’s correct name but
we called it the Woodland – it’s got the white face with horns. The Gritstone, is a mottled
face with no horns, and then the breed that really found out was the most profitable, with
the smallest mouth, was the, what we called Dales bred, the Swaledale – those with the,
they’ve got a white muzzle, black face with a white muzzle and the butchers like them. It’s
a case you’ve got to provide what the customer wants at the end of the day. And they are
still very very popular as a hill sheep but now we, we’re on Texels and Rouge, Rouge
which is a French breed sheep. But the Texels you couldn’t run it on the moors, it just
wouldn’t do at all, it would die.
(TR: It’s just not hardy enough)
DN: It’s not hardy enough. But the butchers do really like them because they’re a big
sheep with a small bone, you know, you as the customer don’t like paying for bone do ya,
[laughter], you can’t eat bone so, and the Rouge is the sort of equivalent of the…sort of
thing
(TR: So are there less sheep on the moors now than there were)
DN: Oh a lot less sheep. I can think of at least half a dozen people who are on this scheme
now where, you know, they’re paying to keep ‘em off the moors because of over-grazing,
giving it chance to recuperate, regenerate.
(TR: So did you have to do anything else beyond just turning the sheep out them out onto
the moors Did you have to manage them)
5

DN: Oh, yeah, very much so. In fact that, it prompts me that about a little story, I once, in
1947, the winter of winters, we were taking hay to Heyden Moors and, er we met this guy
walking down Holme Moss, and he was a surgeon, Mr Galloway they called him, Dr
Galloway, well he was a ‘Mr’ Galloway actually he was. I was only 11 years of age but I
can remember it quite clearly and me father said “What on earth are tha doin up here; fit
for nowt up here”, cos I mean the snow it was really, you know, that was the snow of
snows. He said “Well, I’m getting a little bit of fresh air, I’ve been in the theatre all
morning”, he says, “and I like to get some fresh air when I’ve been working in the theatre.”
“By the way”, he says, “what’re you doing now” he says. “Well, we’re taking this hay on
our sledges onto the moors after the sheep”. “Oh” he says, “well, do they belong to
anybody” And this is an academic right, talk about being a specialist you see, you know,
it’s every man to his own isn’t it
(TR: It is yes)
DN: And he honestly thought that they just roamed wild. He didn’t realise that they
belonged to anyone…that has always stuck in my mind, you know.
(GD: There’d have been no fences in those days, would there)
DN: There was no fences. Everybody could trust everyone and there was an annual get
together, there was one at Dunford Bridge, there was one here, several pubs and they
would meet, what was called a ‘shepherd’s meeting’, where everybody gathered,
everybody knew everybody, everybody trusted everybody; that was in the days of trust you
see.
(TR: So how would you know your own sheep)
DN: And what happened was you always got unmarked lambs. Now when lambs are born
you put your own mark on them, you take a snip out of the ear on one side etc, etc. You
raddle them, mark them with raddle – well, you’ll see different colours on sheep won’t you.
Like, if you go onto Upper Derwent you’ll see them all with yellow horns. And there was a
book, a loose-leaf book, which would add or takeaway…pages, and when someone sort of
got some sheep they would say ‘Well, I’m going to mark my sheep this way or that way’,
making sure you never marked them like someone else, and then you would go into the
book you see. But any lambs that were sort of born on the moor that was never marked,
because you marked them more or less, you’d go around on the moors you see and they’d
mark them on the moors these sheep men, they’d just put their dogs round and get maybe
two or three hundred sheep and they’d mark all the lambs up you see, this was like April
time, May time. But some always got missed so what they did, they brought these
unmarked lambs to the shepherd’s meeting and then you would form a human ring and
you’d put the lambs in the middle and the highest bidder got the lamb, or mostly they knew
their own breeds, so they’d say ‘That’s one of mine, that’s one of yours John’, so this is
how it worked. There was no fences, there was no, no, the only boundary was usually
6

watersheds. Like county, like you’ve got Derbyshire on the other side, you’ve got
Yorkshire. They were just watersheds, and that’s all there was, there were no fences, they
were just non-existent.
(TR: And you left the sheep up there all year did you at that time)
DN: Well yes. What you’d do, you’d bring them off, well we always brought them off for
lambing, we lambed them at home. In fact the sheep used to make their way home
(TR: Right. On their own)
DN: Yeah. They’d make their way back…most of them would. And then so you lambed
them, the spring of the year, April into May, because if you was lambing on the moor you
didn’t want them lambing before there was some grass, to flush the milk. So the hill men
always lambed later than the lowland men. And, and then of course you would gather
again and then of course you would turn them back onto the moor after lambing and
marking up and then that would be into June, end of June, July. You’d gather again for
shearing, for clipping, and then of course whilst you had them you’d dip them, because at
one time they introduced two compulsory dips…
(TR: You mean chemical ones)
DN:…chemical ones, well yes, yes. Liquid, it was in powder form then, you mixed with
water. So there was one at the July time, that was to stop blowing, when the blowflies are
rampant because sheep get messed up at the backside, you know what I mean and then
they ‘blow’, they will lay their eggs and then they’ll eat their way into the flesh.
(TR: Yeah, that’s nasty)
DN: So you dipped in July when you’d sheared whilst you had them, sort of thing, round
the farm and then you’d let them go again and then October time you would gather them
again and then the lambs would be saleable size, you see. So then you’d bring the lambs,
you’d bring the sheep off the moor, you’d put them onto better ground, what they call inbye
land.
(TR: Is that the…almost on the edge of the moor)
DN: Well, yeah. When you go to Edale, you look around, you know you walk round the
Pennine Way from Broadlee Bank and all round there, its all land that’s been cultivated
isn’t it, you know what I mean, and that’s your in-bye land.
(TR: So it’s been reclaimed from the moorland basically)
DN: Well, yes it has. You leave it five years it’ll be back to moorland…
7

(TR: Right, ok)
DN:…it’ll be back to rushes and bracken and er. You would take all the lambs from the
ewes, wean the lambs from the sheep, this is October, wean the lambs from the sheep
and then all the ones that were sort of, you would try to finish them on grass you see if you
could, the lambs, you would sort of isolate them from the mothers of course and then,
you’d keep the mothers in, whilst you had them there again and you would put them to the
tup again, to the ram because it’s a 5 months gestation period.
(TR: Right, ok)
DN: So you’d put them through in the November, that takes you through to April again you
see, it’s like a cycle!
(TR: Yeah, yeah)
DN: And then the lambs that was already fit, you’d give them a good feel and see if they
were fit. You don’t want them fat, you want them fit. Fats no good, there again because
who wants to eat fat
(TR: No, they want lean meat)
DN: Yeah, but they want to be fit. So, all you could finish on grass that was all good and
well, they’d be gone. Sometimes a farmer would say, ‘Well they’re making such a good
price you know these store lambs, I think I’ll let the bloody lot go, I’ll get rid of ‘em’. So,
what you find is farmers coming up from like Lincolnshire and these people who’ve got
good ground, you know what I mean, your cereal men, they’d come and buy these lambs,
you see and they’d take them, take the lot. Failing that, but it’s all to do with prices, its all
sort of a balancing act. If the prices weren’t too good for store lambs, they’d had bad crops
etc. and there wasn’t the money available to buy store lambs, then you’d find they’d sell
them on, as and when, watching the market all the time, because the markets, it’s up and
down all the time. So that brings us round to November, so then you’re back into winter
again and then you put them back onto the moor and hope to God we don’t get a ’47
winter. We finished up with three ewes at the end of ‘47 winter. The only three that
survived, we’d three ewes and two lambs and they managed to work their way down to
Crowden. While me Uncle John, John Hawksworth, who then had, who was farming ‘quiet
shepherd’, they were feeding with his sheep down there, he was foddering them everyday,
feeding them everyday with his own ewes; so we finished up with three sheep.
(TR: So how much snow was there in ’47)
DN: ’47, it wasn’t so, well there was a huge amount, but it wasn’t so much the amount, it
was the duration. It went on for about eight to ten weeks. And we had snow fields in these
gullies in May.
8

(TR: May!)
DN: It was twenty foot deep in the gullies, where it had blown off the tops you see and then
of course it just accumulates from off the wind you see. I mean up there now I bet there’s
gullies up there with six or seven foot of snow in now. We’ve had snow on the hill here
from mid-December and we’ve never been clear.
(TR: So were there other winters that were bad)
DN: ’63, the frost was even keener. Our lowest temperature, I can recall in ’63 was minus
26. And that was in the village, so you go to the top of Holme Moss; I went to the top of
Holme Moss, I went to Black Hill trig point yesterday, it was thawing here, it was like rice
pudding, right. Top of Black Hill it was freezing and it was arctic, you know it was really, it
was powder snow. It was powder, there was no moisture in the snow at all. No, but that’s
the difference in 900 feet. It’s just a 900 foot lift to the trig point from here.
(TR: So which was the winter that Holme Moss froze up – was there one when there was
ice on Holme Moss)
DN: Well there’s ice on the Moss now…
(TR: Well was there one where it...)
DN:…masts covered in ice now, as we speak.
(GD: No, that’s Emley Moor Dereck)
DN: Oh, sorry, it was Emley Moor mast that fell.
(TR: Right, oh I thought Holme Moss…didn’t some ice fall off and cause damage to the
building itself)
DN: It did, it did actually, yeah, it was an on-going thing they had to reinforce the roof at
the finish. In fact, it’s unmanned is the station up here and that brings me to another point.
They don’t bother with the road here now. Now when the BBC contributed to the road
clearance, to the snow clearance, it was always clear. If they couldn’t get through with a
snow plough they’d bring a snow-blower but whatever they would clear it through. But I
remember in the days when it was a television station it had a chauffeur and he used to
bring the personnel from Huddersfield. He just got out of the white van one day, one
winter’s day when it was beginning to thaw, just walked, just walked into the station and he
came out and his van was flat. The minibus was flat. A great dollop of ice had come off the
mast and ‘boom’…
(TR: Flippin’ eck!)
9

DN:…just flattened it! Would do wouldn’t it, dropping from 700 feet.
(TR: That’s scary stuff though isn’t it. So have winters generally changed over time)
DN: They’ve been very mild, generally speaking. There have actually been winters, we
always get a little bit of snow but I can only remember one winter, must have been twenty
years ago, when there was just a light covering for just an odd day and that was it. Now
this time of course, this winter, it’s developing into a long winter. I judge a winter by the
length of it. I mean it’s a, when you’re having to work with it and you’re farming and you’re
battling against it all the time.
(TR: So did you go and…actually we’ve got some pictures in our archives of rangers
digging sheep out of the snow and carrying them on their backs. Did you actually go…)
DN: Well in ’81, I remember in ’81 I’d been putting fertiliser on some land, Water Board
land up here. ’81 it was, it were a Thursday, I finished on the Wednesday and on the
Thursday overnight it snowed very heavily and this was April right in the middle of lambing
and they were on ‘shill’ () sheep then. On the Friday it just cleared out. On the Thursday
night it did the same again, but it kept on snowing didn’t it, and snowing, and snowing, and
I took one or two photographs actually. My son and I were on top of the walls with canes
feeling for the sheep and digging them out.
(TR: Oh really)
DN: We lost 30 odd lambs. I went up there and we’ve a cabin up there and I said to John,
this was on the Friday night, I said “Well John, there’s only one thing we can do”, this is me
brother, “we shall have to just pick all the lambs up and put them in the cabin and wall
them in with bales of hay and what’s living in the morning is living and what’s dead’s
dead.” Me brother says “That’ll do.” I mean it was terrible, the ice was so thick on the walls.
I mean ‘phew’ it was bad. And then I well, you’re trying to sleep but, you know, you’re like
tossing and turning, I thought ‘Well I can’t do anything now, we’ve done all we can do,
we’ve put the lambs inside’; we lost one lamb. So I got up about 4 o’clock in the morning
because the daylight was lengthening you see April, towards the end of April, it was the
end of April, it was a late Easter that year, and I went up and pulled the bales away…the
steam that came out. All the ewes were outside bleating, they’d been bleating, you could
hear them from here bleating, all night. But we lost one lamb. I thought half of them’d die of
pneumonia, sweating like that, but anyway they didn’t. It’s amazing how resilient they are,
you know; hill sheep are, they’ve a greater fighting spirit has a hill sheep, you know, than a
lowland sheep.
(TR: Well they have to)
10

DN: Oh, they want mollycoddling, they’re spoilt. I mean hill sheep they’re fighters, fighters.
Yeah, right from the day they’re born. I mean within 2 hours they’re up and they’re
underneath and they’re sucking. Aye. Wi’ a lowland sheep, when we’re lambing we lamb
inside all the time. I’ll take you across to where the lambing pens are before you go,
they’re full of ewes now, 250 ewes and…
(TR: All nice and warm)
DN: Well, yeah. And then we put individual pens all round the side and as soon as they
lamb we take them out of, sort of the pens and put them in to individual pens and then just
squirt their navels with disinfectant, you see. Because when you lamb inside, you’d be
better off lambing outside actually; it would be cleaner because they take a lot of keeping
clean inside, the bedding down every other day and…and then you keep them in for 2 or 3
days until they are up and sucking and you know they’ve mothered up properly and you
turn them out you see. Now going back to this weather now it’s going to be a very late
spring, in a month from now, 1 st of March today, month from now we should be getting the
first arrivals and we’ve no grass. None and the haylage is going down like that.
(TR: So tell me about how else you manage the moors)
DN: Well usually the keepers manage the moors. The shooting fraternity usually looks
after the moors; they do the husbandry for the moors.
(TR: Right, ok)
DN: Right, because they always say, my Uncle John always said at Woodhead, and he
was brought up at Harden with the rest of the family, in fact he lived there for quite a while
by himself because he was the eldest of a very big family and he came away from Harden.
My mother was born at Harden and my grandfather. My grandfather, George Hawksworth,
he was the under-keeper for Pilkington’s, who still, who still have the shooting rights. Now
you tell me, Gordon, I should know, do Pilkington’s own that moor or do they just rent
They own it don’t they
(GD: Yeah, they own it; I think they got it off the Stanhope Estate a long time ago)
DN: Right, now then, I come from six generations of gamekeepers at Swinden, right
because my mother goes back, when she was a girl living at Harden she said when it
came shooting time she’d to go to Swinden, ten year old, twelve year old and all the
guests, all the guns, which there were usually eight or ten guns, well it isn’t a syndicate at
Pilkington’s it’ll just be an invitation job you see. Most shoots are run by a syndicate where
they all chip in, but that was an invitation job. Always the same people that came along,
they would come by train to Penistone, picked up by horse and trap and brought up to
Swinden. And they used to get royalty. And I’ll tell you another little story: me mother says,
“I fair remember the Duke of Gloucester used to come every year”, and me Uncle Tom, I
11

mean he was 6 foot 3 you know, which was exceptional, but he’d got a way with him had
me Uncle Tom; he could say anything to anybody without offending them. And me mother
said “I fair remember he shook hands with the Duke of Gloucester you see and the rest of
‘em and he put his arm round the Duke of Gloucester and said ‘Now then how’s that old
father of yours going on’” And that of course was King George the fifth!
(TR: Right!) [laughter]
DN: Because he was never insubordinate you see, he knew how far to go. He was like,
well six generations, I mean, they looked forward to this sort of thing. They used to come
for a week at once and every bedroom was occupied at Swinden and me mother said you
hoped to God it wasn’t rough weather because there were fires to put in every bedroom,
all the clothes were to dry out, not like there is today with yer, sort of, you know Goretex
and these fancy clothing you know what I mean. Everybody was wearing tweeds and
they’d to dry out for the morning after. She says it was hard work…
(TR: Yeah, I bet it was)
DN: I used to go shooting rabbits at Harden when there was, I mean they’ve come back a
little bit, but it used to be lousy with rabbits. And me Uncle Tom would say “Now then if you
want to kill ‘em you’ve got to shoot straight at ‘em, you know.” [laughter]
(GD: Were you related to the Hawksworth’s at Midhope then)
DN: Yes, the Hawksworth House at Midhope. I was once fortunate enough, I was walking
past one day and the door was open, it was a nice summer’s day, the door was open and I
thought ‘Well I can’t just go poking my head inside’, so I knocked on the door politely and I
said “Excuse me but my ancestors lived here and the house is named after my ancestors,
Joseph Hawksworth and Sarah Hawksworth”…“Ooh! Come inside and have a look.” Their
names are carved on the beams.
(TR: Ah, fantastic! That’s lovely. GD: I’ve got photographs of those)
DN: Have you
(GD: Yeah, at Langsett, yeah)
DN: Now who’s that old lady, when the information centre with the barn was opening at
Langsett I once talked to her at length, she’ll have gone now, she’ll be dead long ago now
but she was a real authority on the history of Midhope and Langsett.
(GD: That’d be Pat’s mother, won’t it)
DN: I don’t know, she was an old lady then and I’m going back thirty years.
12

(GD: Well, the Greens had it, at the end it was John and Billy Greens they bought it when
they left the pub. And David and John had it in the end; John survived David and then
there was a big to do over the wills and bits and bobs. But now a doctor’s got it now, done
a lot of work to it, but I think basically because it is a listed building it’s still kept)
DN: Young lady who lives in the village here, her mother has the Wagon and Horses now,
has done for some time.
(GD: Yes, yes. Maureen, it’s, er, Vanya)
DN: That’s right. Aye
(TR: So were you ever involved in the shoots)
DN: In the shoots Very much so. I never went beating, I don’t know why, but I never went
beating to Swinden, to Midhope, but I used to help Philip Evans, which was on the other
side of the hill. Yes, the Midwoods shot north, what we call North Bleaklow that was the
northern side of Bleaklow, right up to Bleaklow Head. Again that’s watersheds, the
boundary you see. What a terrible moor to drive; that was a hard moor to work. When
you’re on the hill, the hill walker if he’s any wit he’ll always walk with the grain of the hill,
not against it, right. Well, when you was grouse beating, this is the difference between
working the hill and walking the hill. When you’re walking the hill you can go whichever
way you want. When you’re working it you’ve got to go whereever the quarry is that you’re
shooting, or the stock is. You were into one gulley, out of another. Aye
(TR: So was it grouse that they were shooting)
DN: Grouse shooting, yes. Yes a good grouse moor, a very good grouse moor North
Bleaklow, irrespective of the fact it was north-facing.
(TR: Is that normally bad for grouse)
DN: Well the south, the south side of the hill’s always the best side in’t it.
(TR: I suppose shelter…)
DN: If you know these moors properly and you were working the moors what you always
did, with sheep, you never over-stocked it because they’d to move with the weather and
this is why you never got over-grazing because you never over-stocked; if the weather was
bad on one side they’d move to the other. And those sheep, all those sheep tracks have
grown out now because people were taking sheep off the moor but those tracks were very
good sheep tracks. And if you followed sheep tracks you never tired. They say, sheep
13

have no brains, but believe me, you follow a sheep track. You’ll never see a sheep walking
straight up a hill…
(TR: No, that’s true, you don’t do you!)
DN:…on the flank, this is the way. [laughter]
(GD: Because all the sheep here are hefted aren’t they really)
DN: Aye, they should be.
(TR: What’s hefted)
(GD: Hefted. They’re born and bred on the hills so that’s where they want to live, they don’t
want to…)
DN: They always go back, to where they were…yes
(TR: Oh, I didn’t know that)
DN: Yes, that’s right. That’s why you’d never…there was a rule: you never bought your
neighbour’s sheep.
(TR: Because they’d go back)
DN: It was a sin because they’d go back.
(TR: You’d lose them straight away!)
DN: You’d lose ‘em straight away.
(GD: There’s lots of old cabins on the hills round here, aren’t there Old shepherds’
cabins)
DN: Yes
(TR: Are they still there)
DN: Well yes, roofless. Our red cabin here, you see it from here now, I remember when
there was a fire, fireplace and the roof was on and everything. You know it’s a typical
example of what happens if you don’t keep up a property – once the water gets in and the
frost gets in and then they just drop to pieces.
(TR: So were they made of wood, or stone)
14

DN: Stone, with a grey slate, what we call a grey slate roof…
(TR: Right, proper…)
DN: Proper, oh yes. Proper job, yeah. What they would do, they’d go up there by ponies
you see and the womenfolk would have the tablecloths out and everything out and then at
lunchtime, you see, all the guns would come and sit down and have a tot of whatever.
(TR: So as beaters, did you get to eat in the cabin as well)
DN: Well, eh, eh, eh! You’d three cabins, you’d one for the shooters with the tablecloths,
you’d one for the loaders because they always had a loader because most guns, you see
had two guns so that when the grouse were coming thick and fast you had someone to
load them for you. So you’d shoot, it wasn’t a pump action it was always side, what they
call, shotguns are either side-by-side or under-and-over - usually side by side for game
shooting.
(TR: What’s the difference between)
DN: Well, no difference really. But for clay pigeon shooting you usually, you know, on clay
pigeon shooting its under-and-over.
(TR: That’s a type of gun is it)
DN: It’s just where the barrels are situated…
(TR: Oh, I see)
DN:…side-by-side, they lie side-by-side, as you look down the barrels they’re side-by-side,
but you’ve only two shots at any one time and that’s why you had a loader so that you’d
take the gun off, which was, sort of from the loader…exchanged them, you see.
(TR: Like a roadie tuning a guitar So you had the loaders and you had the beaters, how
many beaters would you have)
DN: Er…at Philip’s up to 20.
(TR: Wow, that’s a lot and you’d walk in a line, would you)
DN: You’d walk in a line and keep a line, because if you didn’t keep a line you’d find that if
some of ‘em were moving faster than others you’d walk past a grouse and then they’d fly
the other way.
(TR: Right, that’s no use. Did you have a stick to beat)
15

DN: You had a flag.
(TR: And that would flush them out)
DN: Mmm…like on Philip’s for instance I found there was a row, Philip never told me, cos
keepers are usually men of few words so it’s hard to, sort of get through to them and
they’re not very good at explaining. Er, I found a row of pegs across the moor, all the way
across the moor and I found out, if I followed those pegs I could look up, what they call up
the line, I could see the top man and I could see the bottom man. Because I used to get
the beaters, most of them I used to get from Meltham, a village just over the way here.
(TR: You’d recruit them or you’d collect them)
DN: Well, the same guys came every year. I had a good team because they all had, if you
worked it right, they all had their own positions so you just sent them off and, at a time
you’d say right ‘Start at 10 o’clock’, that’s it right, ‘away you go’, aye. If it was foggy I’d
always say to the bottom man, ‘Right you follow the edge John and we’ll take our dressing
from you’, so that, you take your dressing up to the right or to the left, depending which
was the bottom man so he could follow the edge you see. But people walking across the
middle of the moor, if you didn’t keep in contact with the man next to you, depending on
which way you were dressing you see, you could get lost, and I mean the visibility could be
down to 20 yards sometimes…
(TR: And they’d still go shooting)
DN: Well, yeah but I…
(TR: I thought you wouldn’t be able to see that much)
DN: I wouldn’t dare do it now. I mean a lot of them were schoolboys, school lads. I
wouldn’t dare do it now with this. Oof! When I think, you know, I used to take them and,
well somehow we all finished back at the shooting cabins at lunch time and…
(GD: Couldn’t’ve been that bad!)
DN: Bleaklow’s not a place to get lost if it’s rough weather.
(GD: But a lot of people have haven’t they really – when all the rain gauges used to be up
here it used to be a job for the watermen, didn’t it)
DN: Yes, that’s right.
(TR: What were the rain gauges)
16

DN: Well, the rain gauges, they were placed there by the Water Board.
(TR: What kind of date is this)
DN: Oh, up until the ‘60s, yes. And they went once a month, they were visited once a
month. And a rain gauge its like er, its like a cylindrical drum let into the ground with a little
hole at the top and it just tapers down to something and nothing you know, a little hole.
And…if you left a bucket outside all night it could be full, but that’s not the right guide. And
they used to visit them once a month and…
(TR: To check them)
DN: Because when we were lads we used to put water into them…[laughter]…just for a bit
of fun!
(GD: I bet they were really impressed by that)
DN: Especially when they’d walked about three miles reluctantly. Aye. But the keeping
fraternity they, when you’re looking after a moor you’ve got to systematically burn it.
(TR: Yes. That’s burn the heather off is it)
DN: Yes, they burn the heather off and the reason why they burn it in patches is one of two
reasons. Number one is that you want heather at all different heights and states of growth.
You want the little new shoots for the young birds, and then right up to, sort of, heather
knee deep so that when the snow comes they’ve still something to feed off.
(TR: So they can get underneath the snow then)
DN: No, not underneath the snow…so that they can, there’s something to eat because
they, they only eat from the seeds at the top, you see, the very top, the flower, that’s all
they eat, they don’t eat the stalks. So, and the other thing is that when nesting time comes
along, which is right from April, well that’s a bit early for moorland nesting; May, June, July,
not into August, but July because when you’re shooting, the shooter who has anything
about him, you don’t shoot ‘chirpers’. You know, you can see them when they’re coming
you know, little chirpers.
(TR: Oh, the young ones)
DN: When you get a clutch of grouse, you can see them all flying together you wouldn’t
shoot into them, you’d let them go through you see. But that’s late…what happens then, if
you get a second, you get chirpers when you get a good summer and they’ll have two
broods, you see.
(TR: So the chirpers are the young)
17

DN: Aye, that’s right, juveniles.
(TR: And you tend to leave those alone)
DN: Well, absolutely, yes. But that’s what happens if it’s a good summer sometime they
will have two broods, you so, so that’s…I mean, it’s rather ironic because…since it was
open access, since the moors were open access they’ve never had bigger bags.
(TR: What’s bags Is it how many they take)
DN: Yes, it’s how many in any one day’s shooting. So that can be anything from nothing to
whatever, you know, you see you don’t shoot a limited number. I mean what you do do, a
good keeper will know by walking the moor and depending, I mean, if you, get a bad
spring just when they’re nesting, if three weeks where it’s bad weather, we’ll say in late
April early May and it’s bad weather, it’ll kill the first brood…
(TR: So a lot fewer birds)
DN:…yeah, they’ll lose them. But a good keeper will, he’ll say ‘Well, we haven’t many like’,
and he’ll say to the boss, ‘Well, I think we only ought to shoot three times this year
because we’ll have to leave breeding stock you see’. Actually, if the moors weren’t
managed and they weren’t shot there’d be no grouse. There would be no grouse, within 5
or 6 years the grouse would’ve gone.
(TR: Why How)
DN: Because you’ve got to hit them hard, they always say, a good keeper, ‘hit them hard’.
If you’ve got the birds, hit them hard, and keep a good strong stock because they get a
disease.
(TR: Oh, this is the worm)
DN: Well no, the worm’s another thing. Now then on North Bleaklow they got the worm
and what the worm is, it lays in the bottom of the, at ground level, they creep up to the
flower and as I’ve already said the grouse only live off the flower. Now then that’s where,
that’s where, the worm gets into the gut and kills them. I walked across Bleaklow at the
time and Dougie Breardon was the keeper then, he was Woodhead. I said, “Well I called to
see you”, I said “Well Doug, I’ve just walked across your moor and I haven’t seen a bird.”
He said, “No, you won’t do because there isn’t any.” He said, “We’ve worm”. They didn’t
shoot for three seasons. They didn’t shoot, no. No grouse, it killed the lot; wiped them out
just about.
(TR: That’s pretty awful)
18

DN: Mmm, now they’re having record bags; Snailsden here’s having, it’s only a small moor
really as moors go, but they’re having three on, same here at Good Bent, which is a
smaller moor yet again. So…but you see…what the keepers thought, open access people
are going to wander all over the place, but they don’t. People follow paths they don’t want
it hard work do they If I go for a day’s walking on the moor I don’t want it to be hard work I
want it to be pleasurable.
(TR: Yeah, yeah. Of course)
DN: Going back to ’81, 1981 when we had this freak storm at the end of April. It was ironic
because we’d had a late Easter and I’d been up to a place called Loch Ossian in Scotland
which my mate used to look after the hostel there. It was a fantastic Easter and my son
and myself, we slept in what they called a () bothy. We traversed the Great Corries,
Aonach Beag, erm, what’s its neighbour What they ski off…it’ll come to me in a minute.
Anyway, we did both Aonach Beag and whatever. We dropped down and we were going
to go over Carraig () and Ben Nevis, this was in the day. Well we got down to, by the
Steall Meadows, I don’t know how we…do you know Glen Nevis
(TR: Yes, I do)
DN: Where you park, then you walk through the gorge. It’s a bit like a Himalayan Gorge
really to the Steall Meadows and, I said “Well, there’s no way we’re going to catch that six
o’clock train for Fort William, we’ve got to walk the length of Glen Nevis yet.” Just by luck
there was a couple up from Bradford and they’d been to visit, they’d parked in the little car
park and walked through to the head of Glen Nevis and they were just on the return. And
Robert, he came out with just the right spiel, he says “If we don’t hurry Dad we’re not going
to catch that six o’clock train and Marie will wonder where we are.” Because me daughter
was up at Loch Ossian with a friend at the youth hostel. And there wasn’t another train that
was it. “Oh, we can give you a lift.” Anyway, to cut a long story short, we’d time to have a
nice cup of tea and something to eat. But that was Easter just prior to this vicious storm
that we had at the end of April because I just said to Robert when we were prodding for
these sheep, I said “Well, you can’t believe it we were in shorts at the top of the Great
Corries three weeks since.”
(TR: Yeah, comes in fast doesn’t it sometimes)
DN: Oh, aye. Yes.
(TR: Another thing I was going to ask you was, in the war, whether the moors were used
around here)
DN: Yes, we had an army camp up the road here on what they call Barley Flats. I don’t
know personally, I wasn’t there, but I know there was definitely an army camp there.
19

(TR: And were there plane crashes in this area)
DN: Yes, quite a few. There was an American Liberator with 10 crew, just the rear gunner
got out, because when it hit the moor the tailplane broke off and he was the only…usually
when they were actually doing a sortie, it was usually the rear gunner that got shot up, you
know, when they were bombing over Germany. He was in this Perspex bubble at the back
of the plane.
(TR: Easy to get to I suppose)
DN: Well, he was exposed to the fighters intercepting them you see. Yes, and then there
was a, now then, two Meteors that crashed on Sliddens Moss and then there was one that
crashed just at the back of the village here, I don’t know what that was, and then there was
several crashed on Bleaklow, what make of plane they were I don’t know but there’s one
or two. I think in the Dark Peak, I think, then of course there was the Flying Fortress that
crashed, have you been to that one The Flying Fortress at Higher Shelf Stones.
(TR: No, I haven’t)
DN: Of course the Flying Fortress was quite, it was a big plane and very well armed, I
mean it was, that’s the reason they christened them the Flying Fortress. Then again it was
American, it was crewed by Americans, you see. I think in the Peak District, in the Dark
Peak I think there’s about twenty-eight.
(TR: Really, that’s a lot)
DN: Mmm, I think somewhere in that region.
(TR: Right. It’s a lot of men isn’t it when you think about it)
DN: I’m reading a book now it’s called ‘Tail-end Charlies’, and it’s about Bomber
Command during the war: fifty-five thousand men went down in Bomber Command, that
was the RAF. And then there was the United States Air Force which spent a lot of time
over here and bombed during the day. The RAF would only bomb at night and the
Americans bombed during the day.
(TR: Right, I didn’t know that)
DN: Yes, when I was in the RAF, our CO (commanding officer) was from Bomber
Command, I’m going back now, I did my national service in the RAF in ’57 to ’59, I was in
the RAF, so it wasn’t really that long after the war. But he was in Bomber Command, was
the CO and he’d been shot down. The first time the French Resistance got him out. The
second time he was shot down he was badly burnt. And he played for the rugby team, the
20

Station rugby team, and all the back of his legs you know plastic surgery, he’d been badly
burnt. He didn’t tell it was a flying officer that played in the rugby team with us that told us
that he’d been a…Oh, he was a man, he was a man and half was that fellow.
(TR: Yes, you’d have to be)
DN: I’ll tell you who he was related to, his surname was Boyle, which is Scottish and he
was related to Sir Dermot Boyle which was a very famous writer, one of the Boyle family.
But he was a man and a half was that fella – phew!
(TR: So tell me about something you were saying earlier, tell me about fires on the moors,
wild fires)
DN: Wild fires, well, they can be caused by umpteen different, you know, it can be a piece
of glass, or it can be a cigarette end or it can be deliberate. The main thing is, all the time, I
used to go to Swinden, at holiday times, and I used to go Crowden with my uncle and he
used to say, “You know, the thing to do on this job, you never fall out with the public
because it’s so easy to level up with you, you know.” He says, “Just go and drop a match,
at shooting time, just before shooting time.” He says, “I can’t understand chaps, you know,
in this job - that’s game keeping - that fall out with people”, he said, “because unless they
are absolute out-and-out wrong ‘uns”, to coin a phrase, “if you’re civil with them and polite
with them they’re not going to come back and do you any damage.”
(GD: Were there many on that moor then in the ‘50s, because access only came in in ’62
basically didn’t it)
DN: Yes, that’s right. But people used to wander o’er top of Harden.
(GD: Up the valley and round)
DN: But people always kept out of the fields, you see, because they’re still privately
owned.
(GD: Yeah, yeah, still in-bye land, yeah)
(TR: So were a lot of people coming from the cities, from Sheffield)
DN: Well, that’s where they come from of course ramblers.
(TR: They’d come out for a walk)
DN: Yes, but of course there are people and there are people and, I mean…Geoff Frost,
he used to say to me, when he was working, he’s retired now of course is Geoff, as you’ll
know. I was a Ranger, you see, for 34 years…
21

(TR: Were you I didn’t know)
DN:…I worked as a part-time Ranger. I worked all over, but basically, I was based at
Dovestones (known as Outer Mongolia!). [laughter] But, Geoff used to say, “I can’t
understand it, I can walk round Dovestones here and what a cross section of society I
meet, from very nice people to very very rough people.” He said, “I can get in the Land
Rover and drive over to Digley and walk round Digley”, he says, “and I just meet nice
people.” I said, “Well, you’re near to Manchester aren’t you and Oldham!” [laughter] I said
“With all due respects”, well, you only got nice people if the weather was bad at
Dovestones. But if it was a lovely summer’s day the, lads’d jump on the bus and they’d
come out and they’d be swimming in the reservoir, yeah and er…I had one bad
experience, in fact, I think I might have been a Ranger had it not been for this incident.
(TR: Really)
DN: Yeah. I’d just come off the hill and I was at ‘Yeoman Hey’ reservoir embankment; so
that meant that I’d still got to get back to the centre, I’d still got to walk round the side of
Dovestones reservoir, and there was about 8 or 9 young lads, they’d range from about 12
or 13 to 16 maybe, and they were opening the valves, you see, and diverting the water. I
said, “Come on lads”, I said “they aren’t to play with those”, I said “Come on, let’s have
you.” Well, I always walk with walking poles you see. Well the language I got. And they
came round me you know.
(TR: Really)
DN: Manchester United badge and Manchester United badge, they were rough.
(TR: Yeah, that sounds pretty scary actually)
DN: Then I thought, ‘Oh no, I should never have opened my mouth’, but I was civil with
them…“oh, that old b******”, you know. Thank goodness there was a lot of people walking
round the reservoir that day because I would have been duffed up. If there’d been nobody
about I would either have finished up in the reservoir or I should’ve been knocked about.
And all the way back to the centre, at first they were walking behind me, treading on me
heels you know…
(TR: Really!)
DN:…and then some of them would walk in front of me and stop, then I had to walk round
them. I had all this harassment all the way back to the centre. Well, Geoff was in the
centre when I got back, I said, “Well that’s me finished here”, I said “it’s the boys in blue
you want round here, not Rangers!” I said, “I didn’t come into the job for this, I came here
to help people not be harassed by youngsters like that”, I said “no way.” Anyway, I went on
for quite a while after that but er…
22

(GD: That’s why Geoff always had that great big Alsatian in’t it)
DN: Geoff says to me, he says, aye this one’s soft though he’s got now, you see, soft as
pudding. But, he said, I went to something, he told me, he said, well he said there were
some lads camping in the woods and they were lighting fires, he said ‘I shall have to go
down’. He said, there was one there, he’d got a branch and he was hitting his hand, you
know, like ‘this is for you’. Geoff says, “You can put that down mate because if I let this
dog go and you try…he’ll tear your bleeding throat out.” He said he wouldn’t though cos
he’s soft.
(GD: Yeah, he’s as daft as a brush that dog)
DN: But he says, “Anyway they didn’t call me bluff luckily.” I think Geoff was glad to be out
of it at the finish.
(GD: Well, I’ve had that down on the Sheffield side. I got threatened with a kid with a
hatchet and in the end had to take it off him, and I chucked it in the Land Rover and locked
it. I had a dog with me)
DN: What breed of dog have you got
(GD: I’ve only got a collie and he’s as daft as a brush)
(TR: He’s quite big though, isn’t he)
(GD: He’s big yeah)
DN: Yes, but a collie’s keen, you know.
(GD: He’s got teeth)
DN: A collie’s keen, ooh, if a collie set about you he’d give you a rough time.
(GD: Again…radioed for back up and eventually Paul came round but, again, a gang of
lads out from Sheffield that was, up to no good, to mischief)
DN: You don’t meet many people like this.
(TR: No, they’re the exceptions)
DN: Yes, they are exceptions.
23

(GD: And I had a bit of help from a few walkers that were walking round as well, they got
stuck into ‘em, this gang of youths)
(TR: So was it just kids, kind of…)
DN: Well, what age They must have been
(GD: I mean they’d be 16 to 18 year olds something like that)
DN: There were eight or nine of these. The youngest wouldn’t be above 12 or 13 years old
but you can’t deal with eight or nine people.
(TR: No, no you can’t)
DN: And I never spoke all the way back to that centre, I thought…
(TR: Just get back)
DN: Oh yeah, they really, you know, they really tried to draw me out, they were just
wanting a go.
(TR: Yeah, and you can’t get into that can you)
DN: No, of course, well
(GD: Not as a volunteer, you’re not paid enough for that)
DN: Well, you get part time pay, but I mean to say it’s...
(GD: No you’re a volunteer aren’t you, you’ve only got expenses)
DN: Yes, that’s right you’re paid an acknowledgement aren’t you.
(TR: So, you said you were a Ranger for 25 years)
DN: Thirty five, 34 years. I joined in the early ‘60s and the reason I joined was it was one
of two reasons really. Although I was brought up in farming and although I worked at David
Brown Tractors, which was heavy industry to all intents and purposes, I had a lot of friends
and colleagues, both at work and outside of work, that were keen on the outdoors see and
I was keen on the outdoors because I was very much into climbing when I was younger.
(TR: Oh right, you’re a climber as well)
DN: Yeah. And I’ve been all over, well I’ve been most parts of the world mountaineering
but…but yes so, I just wanted to give something back and what really persuaded me was I
24

met Ken Drabble. Now then, he finished up the Head Ranger, now then, that time he was
responsible for two centres, that was, Dovestones and Crowden. And I met him at Black
Hill trig point and I’d actually just been to some sheep, to feed some sheep, there was
snow on the ground and I got talking to Ken. And he explained what he was and who he
was and all about it and I thought this sounds alright this. I thought, ‘I’ll have a go’.
Anyway, I applied. I mean there was no course then you know. All you did was go to
Bakewell and you sat there and they asked you a few questions and you knew before you
came away whether you were a Ranger or not!... can you see a 6…grid reference, very
simple questions.
(TR: What did it involve, has it changed, the Ranger’s job Did it change in the time you
did it)
DN: Well it depends on what centre you were working from. At the northern end, the Dark
Peak, it hasn’t really changed all that much really. I mean, you tell me Gordon, I mean I’ve
been out of the job a long time.
(GD: Mmm, I tried not to change it too much but it has changed with different contracts that
we’ve got with different water companies and having to do work on the ground a bit more;
the patrolling side is not that important, is it, at certain times of year either and also we’ve
come away from mountain rescue over the last twenty years as well. Well we used to do
virtually all the rescues here, that’s all gone)
(TR: So have you rescued people off the hills)
DN: Well, I was a founder member of the local rescue team here.
(TR: Right, ok)
DN: Well, no, correction, I wasn’t actually a founder member but I was one of the first half
dozen. [laughter]
(GD: That’s near enough!)
DN: And it all happened, there again, it was because, we were milking cows of course,
well we still take milk around the village, but Bob Wilson was the team leader and he lived
further up the valley, head of the valley. And I went one Saturday morning and Bob says,
“You’ll know the moors pretty well with always having sheep on.” I says, “Aye, well I think
so.” He says, “I wonder if you’d like to join this rescue team we’re getting together.” “Well”,
I says, “I can’t see that I”, I says, “Well, what’s involved like” He said “Oh, we have
exercises”, he says, “there’s only a few of us as yet, but it’s growing.” I said, I’ve already
told you I was very keen on the outdoor life like, so I said, “Count me in.” I says, “I can’t
promise I can have time to come to all your practices or whatever”, I says, “but, if there’s a
genuine do, I’ll turn out. Put me on your call out list.” And it all came about actually, the
25

escue team all came about, it was after the Pennine Way opened. There was a bloke
called Doug Naylor who had the contract for clearing the road over the Isle of Skye road
and he picked some lads up who was on the Pennine Way and there was snow on the
ground and they had advanced stages of exhaustion and he brought them down to the
Ford pub, that towards Holmfirth. No he didn’t, he took them to the Youth Hostel. There
was a Youth Hostel then, Wood Cottage Youth Hostel, just above the pub, and a bloke
called O’Grady was the warden. And he says “Can you see to these chaps”, he says, “I’ve
just brought them offa top of Isle of Skye in the back of the wagon and they’re in a bad
way.” So…Doug Naylor was a bit of an outdoor man in the day, he was quite keen. So he
says, “You know there ought to be some sort of a rescue service, you know, because
somebody’s going to die you know.” Because the Isle of Skye road, the six-three-five, is a
long top, it’s a long, long top. In summer time, you’ll think nothing of it, but in winter
time…if you came off the moor exhausted…so that was the beginning of it. And then Bob
Wilson was a friend of Doug Naylor’s, so that was the initial start of it…oh, and then Ken
Drabble got involved.
(TR: So what kind of date was that)
DN: That would be the very early ‘60s I’m talking about, very early ‘60s and they didn’t call
themselves the Mountain Rescue Team, they called themselves, which I thought was
appropriate, a Moorland Rescue Team. And it is now called the Mountain Rescue Team,
Search and Rescue, but…Holme Valley Mountain Search and Rescue Team or whatever
they call themselves.
(TR: Have you been involved in many rescues)
DN: Well, you know, we got half a dozen a year. But, what used to amuse me was, they
were like dogs pulling on a leash you know, if somebody was down on their luck they
thought it was great. [laughter] So these people only turned out, you got people in the
rescue team that really weren’t, what I would classify, they’d have all the fancy gear and
that, but I wouldn’t classify them really as genuine outdoor types. They wouldn’t have set
off by themselves. Most of them would, but some of them wouldn’t and then when you’d
done a rescue, you used to come in off the hill you know, and you knew by, you knew very
well the press’d be waiting. These were the guys with the radios, you know, talking you
down in the dark and you were stumbling falling in peat haggs with a stretcher and then
when you got to the Ford, you could see the chaps with the cameras, they’d say, “I’ll give
you a rest now” [laughter]. “Ere, take the radio!” And these were the guys, you know, you
knew.
(TR: Yeah, yeah)
DN: They were all good guys really, they all meant well, they all meant well. Aye, but
yes…there again, I went till I was crossed off the callout list, at 60 years of age we crossed
26

them off. So I said, “Thank God for that!” [laughter] because it’s no fun stumbling about on
a moor with a stretcher, believe me, that’s what you want, you want one of those…
(TR: Helicopter)
DN: Helicopter. Do you know I was talking, I’ll explain to yer, I was once up on Skye
climbing, in the Cuillins, and I went up by myself, the rest of the lads didn’t want to go so I
said, “Well, I’m gonna go up, I’m going up side of the Cioch, on Sron na Ciche, gonna
climb out on the top and I’m going to do the…”, what they call the Lagan Horseshoe.
Anyway, I’m going up the valley and this lads coming running down and he’s blathered in
dirt. I says, “What’s the matter” He says, “Me mate’s fallen”, he says, “We started up the
ridge this morning and he’s fallen on Mhic Connich.” I said “Oh!” He says, “He’s fallen out
of King’s Chimney.” No he hadn’t, they’d come round Collies Ledge and then decided to
go over the Connich, instead of going up King’s Chimney. Anyway, I said, “Well.” He says,
“I’m going to raise the alarm.” I says “Well, where is he abouts” I said “I can see him.” He
was this Collies Ledge which is about that wide with about a thousand foot of exposure
under it you see. Anyway, when I got up there, there was two more people already there.
To cut a long story short, you just realise what a position you’re in, if you’re in an
inaccessible place like that, even on the hills here. Well, I don’t call the Cuilins hills, they’re
mountains. They’re the only real mountains we’ve got in this country really, what I call
mountains. So, anyway we made him as comfortable as we could. There was a guide and
he came up, straight up this rock face and he got a McInnis folding stretcher on his back.
His opening sentence was, he says, “Why didn’t you fall down into the bottom!”, he says,
“You’d have saved us a lot of trouble!” [laughter]. But to cut a long story short, the
helicopter was coming, it was clear at the time. We got him on the stretcher and there’d
got to be one man at the front, one man at the back and then we was knocking pitons in
and tying the carrying men and the stretcher, as edging round, you see, yeah. Do you
know, we just got him onto the ridge, just got him onto the blinking ridge and the ‘clack’
came, and the helicopter struggled, ‘clack came in, and that was it, he couldn’t…and he
hovered and hovered and hovered and he said, then he came through on the radio, said,
“I’ll have to go back to refuel.” So he went back to Portree to refuel. So we did the round of
Corrie Lagan, right to the foot of An Stack and down the An Stack stone we shoved him to
Corrie Lagan with a stretcher…six of us.
(TR: Flippin’ eck!)
DN: And we were tired I’ll tell you…
(TR: I bet you were)
DN: Anyway, because we’d to rope all the time. Anyway we got down into the valley by the
lochan and we thought ‘What’s he doing’ And we could look down onto the cloud then
and the helicopter, I thought…, you know…’come on!’, he couldn’t get up for the down
draught, it was too risky. We had to carry him right down onto the moor. And then when I
27

got back down onto the campsite, after being up there all day, no food no nothing…there
was one of the moorland rescue team comes walking towards me and he says, “You’ll
have had a good day today an’t yer!” [laughter] I says, “I don’t know about a good day”, I
says, “I’ve had a very enlightening day.” Aye, but they’re all experiences. I was involved on
Ben Nevis with an avalanche job once as well…there were three killed, no I’m lying there
was one killed, there was one killed and they’d done everything right. We’d gone up there,
that was at Easter and it had snowed, above 2,000 feet, like here it was continuous snow.
I’d seen these three students from Belfast cos I was staying in the Youth Hostel along with
my mate who looked after the hostel. The hostel up at Loch Ossian was closed for the
winter you see, so I met him at Glen Nevis Youth Hostel. Well, I saw them gearing up,
these three students to go up to the climbing hut, what they call the CIC hut, to climb
you’ve got to be, sort of, in the, under the north east face of Ben Nevis. And er, well of
course, tea-timeish news was going round the hostel that there’s been an accident, there’d
been three avalanched, which were these three students. They’d done everything right.
They’d gone onto the shoulder, the Meall an t-Suidhe, by the lochan there, ‘half-way
lochan’ they call it. They’d walked round underneath the northeast face, on to the hut, and
they were actually coming back, they didn’t attempt any climbing, it wasn’t on and the
avalanche was so big out of the Castle Basin, off the face, it came right down over the
climbers’ track and buried them.
(TR: Oh gosh!)
DN: So, Tom says, “Well I don’t know what you’re doing today”, he says “but I’m going to
go up and give ‘em a day.” This was on the Saturday when they got avalanched, on the
Sunday, so we went up on the Sunday. I’ve never seen an avalanche as big as that in this
country before; in fact Hamish McInnis was there and I read an article of McInnis’s, its
biggest avalanche he’d ever seen in Scotland. This is…McInnis is a guy who’s, well he’s a
household name in mountaineering. Well I just said to Tom, these long canes they must
have been 15 foot long, you know you get in a long line, you stand in a long line then you
move together and every 18 inches or so you prod you see. It’s amazing how you can feel.
(TR: A bit like you do with the sheep I suppose)
DN: Yes, exactly so. And I just said to Tom, who was at the side of me, I says, “Well they
won’t find this guy at all, they won’t find him till spring, till the snow’s gone.” I’d no sooner
said it than up the line there was a shout, and they’d found a rucksack strap. And do you
know the force had been as such, Gordon, it had snapped the rucksack strap. And do you
know he wasn’t under that much snow. He wasn’t under that, if he could have got to a
sitting up position he’d have been out. His mate, one of them had been buried up to his
neck and just his head was sticking out so he was very lucky.
(TR: He got himself out did he)
28

DN: Well, I don’t think so but the other guy had a broken leg, but two of them, two out of
three were dead. The worst, it was a terrible experience was that, because there were a lot
of hardened men around there, there was the Lochaber Mountain Rescue, there was the
marines. Unbeknown to me, the father was there from Belfast, he’d flown over.
(TR: Oh, dear)
DN: And they’d taken him up in the helicopter. Well, he grabbed hold of a shovel,
everybody stood back, it the brought tears to my eyes I’ll tell you.
(TR: I bet)
DN: And I think it did to a lot more. He grabbed hold of this shovel, his feet were just bare,
you know and he starts digging furiously…
(GD: When was that TR: I feel a bit teary just thinking about it)
DN: It still upsets me to this day. He dropped down onto his son, you know…oh…I just
looked round at everybody and I thought ‘Aye, you know, this is when things go wrong’,
and they can go very wrong in mountains. And the more experience you have and the
more careful you are…the more careful you are, you never take things for granted.
(GD: Well we had an avalanche over at Dovestones didn’t we In the ‘60s)
DN: Yes, we did.
(GD: Were you involved in that one)
DN: That was ’63, that was a big thaw came very rapidly. No, there was no rescue service
then. That was the very early ‘60s. Harry Mumford, was the, he was the Water Man at the
Chew Mount before they pulled the house down, you know, by Chew Reservoir. Now then,
I should know their names – they were very experienced mountaineers, very experienced
but they decided to climb this gully called Wilderness Gully. It is recognised if the
conditions are right as an ice climb or a snow climb. Graham West, that was the name of
one of ‘em. But you see with being a gully like that, you’ve got the gully here, it was like a
ravine, so that when the snow came pouring down, if you understand, Wilderness Gully
ran off at ninety degrees from the main gully which fed Chew Valley. So that the snow
came down and just piled up; it had nowhere to go. Well Harry Mumford got called, he got
involved and the watermen started digging, the police came, they started digging. And they
dug and dug and dug until dark and they hadn’t found them of course and anyway. So they
all went up to, Harry told me this himself, he sadi “Well, they all came up here and kipped
down for the night.” He says “At first light we went back again.” He says, “And do you
know, we hadn’t been digging ten minutes and we came across one he was still warm.”
He’d have lived, but he said “He was dead but he was still warm. If we’d have just gone on
another ten minutes we’d have got one out alive.” Ahh…
29

(TR: That’s awful isn’t it, to think that you can be that close)
DN: Aye…
(TR: But you could have dug all night and not found him)
DN: One of the worst jobs I’ve been involved with, I’ve been on. I’ve been on the scene at
a few accidents, fortunately never me own, although I did walk over a snow cornice in
Scotland once but I was roped luckily. Walked straight over the snow cornice and I was on
the top of the same mountain some years later, ‘cos Pete who I was with, when I went
over this snow cornice, I was so annoyed with meself, and of course it was foul, it was
blizzarding, it had developed into a terrible day, deteriorated into a shocking day and Peter
says, “Oh, I think you’d’ve been alright mate, I think it was a continuous slope.” Well I was
up there some years later and well…I’d have been like a rag doll by the time I’d got to the
bottom. Aye, anyway, there we are.
(TR: So, where else do you climb round here Is there good climbing)
DN: Well the gritstone edges were always the…was always the training ground for a lot of
well known mountaineers: many from Manchester, many from Sheffield.
(TR: It’s very popular in Sheffield isn’t it)
DN: Oh yeah, well you can go out in the Rivelin Valley, don’t you, Rivelin Rocks and
you’ve got Stanage, you’ve got Curbar…Laddow
(TR: When did you start climbing)
DN: Well I must have been in me very early teens.
(TR: Did you have all the fancy kit or did you just have a rope and some boots)
DN: No…fancy kit There was no fancy kit then!
(TR: ‘Cos obviously now you go out with all sorts of…)
DN: we used t’say…it was a couple of ‘grannies’ and a good lad we had then! Ha, ha, ha.
We used to make our own gear at work. Like if you wanted to put a running belay in a crag
you’d get an appropriate sized stone and wedge it in and then thread a sling round it up
onto the rope. I once came off at Stanage leading a climb…only time I came off leading
rock and I shouldn’t have done that day but it was nearly dark and we’d had a really good
day must have done about twenty-odd climbs and me mate says, “Come on, lets go for a
pint it’s nearly dark.” I said, “Come on we’ll just do this before we go.” And I ran at it.
30

(TR: Did you hurt yourself)
DN: Well, I’d never done the climb before. And I knew it was a hand traverse and I
thought, ‘Ooh made it’, and there was nothing there you know. And I was hanging on with
one hand and me jumper was pulling against and there’s this bulge of rock and I couldn’t
pull. Jim said, “I thought you were going to make it” and I said, “I can’t hold it Jim, I’m
coming off.” But I had a good runner on, a real good runner on, ha, ha, ha. That’s why you
protect yourself you see. That’s what it’s about.
(GD: There used to be a lot of plumbers that climbed, they’d make runners out of nuts,
take the threads out)
DN: Well, that’s what you did at work; what you did, you took the threads out, that’s right,
different size nuts, and then you’d, yeah.
(TR: So how did you take the threads out Just grind them out)
DN: Oh yes, put them on a lathe or just file them out. Put in the vice and file them out.
(TR: And where did you get your ropes from Were they just normal)
DN: Oh no, no, no. You bought the right, you always had a good rope. But, you know, it’s a
dangerous game is mountaineering.
(TR: Yeah, it is)
DN: You know when things go wrong they can go very wrong. And they go wrong very,
very quickly.
(TR: Well, back to the moors it’s the same up there isn’t it You know, if the weather
comes in and you’ve not got the right gear)
DN: I think anybody, might sound a silly statement to make, should just once, irrespective
of your…er…navigational capabilities or whatever, should go up there without a compass
or without any instrument whatsoever and just get lost once. And just walk to the point and
most people you know exactly where they are, then you’re suddenly, ‘Which way do I go
Do I go that way’ And you think ‘Christ!’ You’re not really lost, you’re just misplaced.
[laughter]
(TR & GD: Yeah, yeah)
DN: You just don’t know which way to go and the only thing you can do, you can say
‘Well…’, especially if it’s getting late in the day, you’ll think ‘well, I’ll follow…a trickle
becomes a stream and a stream becomes a river. So, the Peak District’s not a big place
31

and if you’re reasonably young and fit within a couple of hours you’re going to be in a
valley anyway. But people don’t have the sense to do that. It’s utterly amazing when you
rescue people that they’re just stood there like a lump of dough getting, you know,
exhausted, exposure setting in, hypothermia, you know and there’ll be a stream within
yards of them, and you think ‘why didn’t you follow that bloody stream!’ You know it
doesn’t matter what side of the hill you come off. It doesn’t even matter if you get into the
valley because as you can see from up there to here the temperature difference is terrific
and it can make the difference between survival and dying.
(TR: Yeah, completely)
DN: So, you know, why I once met some Scouts on top of West Nab, they’d been taught
and they were out on this sort of exercise and we were called out and when we got to
them we could hear the cars. We could hear the cars going down Wessenden Head Road
into Meltham. It was foggy, it was dark but they said “No, we’ve been told, if we got lost
we’d to stay where we were until we were found.” They were doing it exactly to the book
you see. Well in some cases it might have been a fine idea but I said, “Why didn’t you walk
down to the road” But they were young lads you see, they were doing as they’d been told
you see.
(TR: Did you find that some of the walkers that came out from the cities were worse than
locals for getting lost)
DN: Err...
(TR: Or is that just a horrible generalisation GD: I bet there weren’t that many locals that
went walking were there)
DN: Very few, I could go onto Black Hill and, you know, you’d never see a footprint, you’d
have the hills completely to yourself. It was a rarity to see someone else. I bet you could
walk from here right at this moment of time and get to the summit of Black Hill and there’d
be somebody there.
(TR: Yeah, so it’s got a lot busier, has it)
DN: Oh yeah, and it’s good to see, this is why I joined the rescue service, this is why I
joined the Ranger service because I wanted to put something back. With the little bit of
experience I had, I thought ‘Well might help somebody else out’, because anybody can be
down on their luck...anyone can fall and break an ankle. I mean, oh my son and my
daughter who live in the village say, “Why don’t you have a mobile phone, Dad Because
if anything happens we don’t know where you are.” I mean most lone walkers you haven’t
a clue, I set off I don’t know…
(GD: You don’t know where you’re going to go do you)
32

DN: I know I’m going to go up there somewhere, but I haven’t a clue really. It’s wrong
really, in theory, its very, very wrong but, well you do these things don’t you
(TR: You do, you do)
DN: And the best days are by yourself, the best days are definitely goin, you know, walking
solo, there’s no doubt about that.
(TR: Is it the solitude that you like)
DN: It’s the solitude, yeah, all you’ve got is the whisper of the wind through the grass, and
you know.
(TR: The odd mountain hare)
DN: Laid on your back watching the clouds go by. [laughter]
(TR: Yeah, sounds gorgeous. And have you noticed a difference in terms of pollution in
recent years Someone was telling me they used to go bilberrying, they’d come back
covered in soot)
DN: Oh well yes, you’ve only got to look at the sheep haven’t you. I mean when the sheep
were newly shorn they’re white.
(TR: Right)
DN: Now when there was the old steam trains and all the heavy industry, you know, steel
from Sheffield and cotton from Manchester, all the West Riding was woollen…
(GD: Every house had a coal fire)
DN:…every house had a coal fire. I mean the sheep, by the end of August were black
again.
(TR: Were they)
DN: Yes, and when you handled them, you know, you could feel the, you could feel, you
know what soots like, if you’ve ever touched, you could feel it.
(GD: In the fleece)
DN: Because, you know, years ago they used to wash the sheep, you know, before they
sheared them. There’s a washing hole at Harden today…
33

(GD: Harden, yes, yes)
DN: Still the old sheep wash.
(TR: Like a pond)
DN: Yes, it was a man-made thing and it was, they used to get in there and they used to
throw the sheep in and they used to, I don’t know, before my time, I don’t know if they
used any soap or what but they used to wash them because the wool was downgraded,
you see, if it was dirty.
(GD: Lots of villages had sheep washes)
DN: But you go to Scotland, you go up to northwest of Scotland and look at the sheep
there, it’s like snow balls!
(TR: So has that changed in recent years)
DN: It has changed a lot. I mean the amount of rail traffic that went up and down
Longdendale, you know, years ago, I mean it was terrific. I used to go shearing to my
Uncle John’s at Woodhead there and looking out of the barn door you would see trains
going up and down all day long…aye, all gone.
(GD: How did foot and mouth affect everything, the first foot and mouth in the ‘60s What
was that, ’63 was it I can just remember it as a kid)
DN: Yes, I’d just become a Ranger and, er, we did static patrols as you might’ve called
them. We just stood around all day, at strategic places like access points, etc. And there
again we just got the awkward one, you know. One guy, I was with Eric Plumtree, a fellow
Ranger and we was at Dovestones: “Scuse me, but…”, he’d parked his car and he was
going to walk up the valley, “I’m sorry, but…”, you know, I mean there were notices there
but he says, “If I can’t walk up there I’ll just have to go and smash a few telephone boxes
up” he says. “So, well you carry on son, no problem to us!”
(GD: But there was a big fear at that time, because there being no fences anywhere, of
foot and mouth going right up the Pennines, wasn’t there)
DN: Yes.
(TR: Was it isolated to here, the foot and mouth outbreak in the ‘60s)
(GD: They’d picked up a bit in Edale and I don’t think they found it much further north did
they)
DN: I don’t think they did.
34

(GD: I’d have thought a lot of people would have been frightened to death in the farming
community up in these little villages of it coming up, or weren’t they too bothered I mean,
if you look at 2001, that scare then everybody were…)
DN: That was more widespread wasn’t it
(GD:…that was the whole country and, I mean, what about, everybody was walking the
roads weren’t they, they were a bit more responsible)
DN: Well you know the Sheffield area, yeah, I mean we went walking, we walked on the
roads, you know, we did the right thing, what we thought was the right thing.
(GD: But it was eerie because everything was quiet wasn’t it People kept away and there
was just a few on the roads)
DN: Aye, people kept away, aye
(GD: 2001; TR: Yeah, I remember that)
(GD: It was very, very weird. But ’63 was a bigger fear because there were no fences
anywhere)
DN: That’s right, no you couldn’t keep stock away from each other you see as there were
no fences, no boundary fences.
(TR: So if your neighbour had it, you were gonna have it)
DN: Well, you know, the chances were you would.
(GD: And the problem with the hills here with them being hefted sheep, the sheep as
Dereck was saying, they all want to go in one direction, maybe back home – they know the
way which way they want to go and if you’re trying to gather them in a direction which they
don’t necessarily want to go you’ve got massive problems. We were looking at that with
the military in 2001 to take ‘em off Kinder. How to gather them and bring them in for
slaughter if needs be and it was almost, we’d have to do it by helicopter and shoot ‘em
from the air because you couldn’t, one flock would go one way and one’d go the other)
DN: Yes, that’s right.
(TR: So, in the ‘60s did they actually, did they put the sheep down in the same way Did
they have to bring them in off the moors to cull them if they’d got foot and mouth or did
they just leave them to it)
35

DN: Well, I personally never came...
(GD: I don’t think it got to the hill sheep)
DN: I never came in contact with anything like, no. I don’t know if it ever got to the hill
sheep, you know, I can’t remember. I can’t remember anyone having it.
(TR: It probably didn’t then)
(GD: It was in the in-bye land wasn’t it There was certainly one case in Edale ‘cos the
Ministry vets were based there for a while)
DN: Was there, yes
(GD: Er, cos Ken Drabble always used to tell the story about the Ministry vets were there
and they were always running short of fuel and one of the likely lads in the pub was always
selling it back, because he was siphoning it out at night and then selling it back to ‘em the
following day!) [laughter]
DN: Well I don’t know how true it is but talking about grants and subsidies, I know of a
farmer, well I know the guy but, I don’t know whether its true or not. It was said at the time,
or rumoured…he’d have the Ministry come and count the sheep, you see, his stock and
then whilst he was having his lunch at the pub - the ministry man – he’d cart whole lot to
the other farm, over to the other farm, and they’d be counted again! [laughter]
(GD: So he’d get twice as much money!)
(GD: Well as they always say, ‘If you want a fool in the countryside, bring one with you!’)
36

Clifford Robinson: Interviewed by Tegwen Roberts and Gordon Danks.
2 nd March 2010. Holmfirth.
(TR: Could you just say your name and your age for the tape if that’s ok)
My age now
(Yeah)
Don’t know if I should tell you or not! Eighty, Clifford Robinson, I’m 80. Born in 1929 and
started going on the moors, well ever since I could walk, yes.
(TR: Right, did you grow up in this area)
I was brought up on Tinker Hill Moor, Carlecotes Moor, yeah.
(TR: Where’s that in relation to here)
Between Dunford Bridge and Carlecotes, up that side.
(TR: And what did your parents do)
My father was a pipe inspector and mother was a housewife, and looked after us, as best
she could [laughing]
(GD: Do you have any brothers or sisters)
Yes, I’ve a brother and a sister. I had, my sister died, brothers still living.
(TR: And what was it like growing up in this area, round Tinker Hill Was it different to
today)
It would be, well what we never had we never missed, we all walked and it was only a
small moor, me father were part-time keeper. He took over in, oh, I forget what year now,
1937, part-time keeper, and his uncle was full-time before him and he never had above 10
shillings a week wage did Joe, his uncle…that’s all they had. But at that time they all had a
bit of land.
(GD: Right)
And they had a house cow, they had hens, pig, a few hens and a pig, and that’s what they
lived off. Grew their own potatoes and turnips, and they lived very plain.
(GD: Who owned the house Was that the estate)
1

At Carlecotes Chapman’s owned it
(GD: Chapman’s, they owned the shoot)
Yes, it’s still in that family now, Robert Hyman owns it now…it went from Chapman’s, then
John Adams and then from John Adams it went to Robert Hymans () who still has it…and
I left there in 1960, ’72 sorry. My father died in 1960 and I took over part-time, but I were
living in Holme and it weren’t enough, there in’t such thing as a part-time keeper. You
know, you want to be there altogether watching it and it were a worry wi’ sheep then, at
that time. There were no fences. Sheep could just go anywhere and it were worried with
sheep, that were problem then and then later on when Hepworth bought Snailsden they
fenced that and that was same, all moors were same.
(GD: What do you blame all these sheep on, was that since the war then that all these
sheep came or were there as many sheep before the war)
It were war that brought sheep on; they put a subsidy on to sheep. Sheep were worth
nothing before then. They used to keep ‘em for t’wool mainly, they tell me, just wool. And
then when war started, then they put a subsidy on ‘em…instead of importing it, the meat,
which we used to do, that’s why sheep were cheap, then they put a subsidy on ‘em and all
farmers used to let walls fall down and let sheep on moors. And it got that bad and then,
anyway, eventually when I left they said, “What’s best way to do it” I said “Fence it in and
let it to one man.” And that’s when I left, I went then to Lady Cross full-time and they said
“Who to let it to” and I said “Thomas Edward” because he was interested in both and he
left it and he’d done right thing and the heather’s grown since. You’d hardly see any
heather, just some tips, couldn’t see any heather up there. Heather lays dormant for a long
time and then it’s all come back again.
(GD: Plus Geoff Eyre’s been heather seeding there hasn’t he, on Tinker Hill, which helped
it)
He has been, yes.
(GD: But it seems to have been quite an issue really, too many sheep on these hills, all
over the Pennines, from working on the stand all the subsidies now changing isn’t it to
these farmers)
Yes, they’re paying ‘em to take ‘em off now, I understand. But the thing is, they don’t want
to be without sheep; like when we’ve had this snow recently, an heavy winter, when
there’s a few sheep on they bare heather a bit for grouse and make a bit of feed for ‘em,
so they can get to feed. I don’t want to see, I should never want to see no sheep on’t
moors. The thing is heather has to be boss of sheep, and its evergreen so in winter sheep
that’s what they live off. They live off heather because it’s an evergreen.
(TR: So you were saying that some of your family were involved in peat cutting)
2

Me ancestors were involved in peat cutting, they used to do a bit, yeah.
(TR: Was that for personal use, just for them to use, or did they sell it)
Oh no, no. I don’t think they were allowed to sell it. Anybody could have a plot as I
understand it, because I never got peat, but anybody could have a plot who lived in area
and dig peat.
(TR: So which area was that happening)
Hade Edge and round there and, I should say, Dunford. But Graveship of Holme, that’s
who that comes under. We didn’t own those peat pits, they’re owned by Graveship of
Holme; Arthur Quarmby, he were boss of that, he lives in Holme.
(GD: Right)
Do you know him
(GD: No, I’ve not come across him)
His father did before him.
(GD: Right. Yes, because its registered common land where the diggings are)
Yes, and it’s, and moor owners rented it off them for shooting rights, yes.
(TR: So tell me about what a gamekeeper does; tell me about your job)
A gamekeeper were there to preserve grouse, full stop, vermin control, heather burning to
make sure because, to make sure that you had young heather. Long heather were no
good, and burn it in strips so there was shelter at side and then chicks could fend and
shelter on short heather before it got too long. And if it were wet, then chicks didn’t get wet
then and they could run to sides then, then they’d fend in short heather not so far off, if
there were any vermin came then outta air, crows anything like that, then grouse could run
in to heather, long heather, then.
(TR: So what did you do about the vermin, how did you control)
Traps
(TR: Did that change in the time that you were working Were there different ways of
doing it in the time you were working Did you change how you did it)
3

It were, it were traps; we used to make ‘samsons’ (). We used to have three sticks and
put a big stone up for t’stoats and we used to tie a bit of meat to a long stick and then
stoat’d go pull it and stone’d drop on top of it.
(TR: Did that work)
And that worked, yeah. And then traps and then, yeah shooting wi’ shotgun, foxes. When I
were a lad there weren’t a lot of foxes about, round about. You see when they took farm, I
argue when they took farmyard poultry into batteries, when they put them all in batteries,
then…everybody used to have half a dozen hens, and farmers always had a few hens and
sold eggs. And when they put ‘em in batteries that had all gone and farmers didn’t bother
about fox then. But before they put ‘em in batteries everybody were after fox, farmers and
everything. When they’d done that there were only gamekeepers that were bothered.
(GD: Foxes used to be really rare didn’t they, when you look in the old history books. If
there was a fox it was very unusual. It used to hit the papers that there was a fox seen)
It was up on t’tops, yeah very rare you got foxes up there.
(GD: Yeah, and towards the end, how many foxes would you get a year)
When I were a lad
(GD: No, when you got towards the end of your keeping career, how many foxes might
you get a year on Lady Cross Moor)
Oh well, round about twenty…
(GD: And that was regular)
… we’d take. Yes, that were later on but not when I was a lad, not when I were younger
because they weren’t about same. We used to have to go with, and then snares came in.
(GD: Yes)
They were a good thing, you see. And I’ve got to say this, by preserving grouse you were
preserving all ground nesting birds, besides poultry, you were preserving all ground
nesting birds. Lapwing, curlew and if they’d hatched off, fox would take chicks, wouldn’t it
And that in my opinion is why a lot of ground nesting birds are disappearing, you see,
there’s more…When I were on Lady Cross I was on on my own. There’s two men on there
now. There’s a lot more keepers on’t moor now than what there used to be and they’re all
mobile, they’ve all got transport. When I were a lad there was no transport. On Dunford
Moor, on Snailsden Moor there used to…I’m talking now before the war, there used to be
a keeper at Milton Lodge, there used to be, well Dunford Moor and Snailsden used to be
owned by Spencer Stanhope and there were three keepers on that and they all, and all
4

they had were Shanks’s pony, it were all walking. Now, you see there’s two men where I
was, in’t there on Lady Cross, I were on me own; but moors are better kept now than what
they were when I were there because there’s more keepers.
(GD: Have the bags gone up though over the years)
Bags have gone up; well they’ve gone up this last year. Yeah, for some reason, for some
reason they’ve been down a long, long time.
(GD: They have been down for a long time, yeah)
Because they were really down, it was like a desert in 1989 when disease got hold. It hit
Lady Cross, Bord Hill, it didn’t touch Snailsden, Midhope, Broomhead, Strines, Ronksley. It
hit ‘em all, cleared ‘em out and they’ve been a long, long time coming back.
(GD: And then you started putting medicated grit out then, didn’t you)
Yes, they put medicated grit out.
(GD: To try and combat it)
That, that, yes and it helps, it does help but you see records were broken, I don’t know,
I’ve forgot what year, before war, when Broomhead broke record.
(GD: About seventeen hundred brace wasn’t it, that)
And they didn’t put any grit out then at all. So, is grit the answer
(GD: Did they at that time they had, I can’t call them butts, did they used to put bales or
something out with something on top for these grouse to go and roost in Was it like
medicated barley or something like that Somebody was telling me)
Well I don’t know about that but during war, everybody, farmers used to grow a bit of corn.
(GD: Right)
And they used to cut it with combine and have sheaves, you know, they used to have
sheaves. Grouse’d go into corn fields where they were up t’moors and feed off that
because they couldn’t get it when it were dry; they had to get that corn when it were really
dry you see, they used to stand it up, yes, sheaves.
(GD: Do you think it would be better to have that sort of agriculture nowadays, would be
beneficial, to have that bit of in-bye land with a little bit of corn here and there. I mean it’s
good for twite and things like that, they like seeds)
5

It could be, one disadvantage would be they’re all getting together aren’t they grouse,
they’re all on a lump and that’s when disease starts, disease starts, that’s why that
medicated grit is about. More grouse there is…
(GD: Yes, yes)
…you know t’cycle of this strongylosis worm, that gives this, well it erm…more grouse
there is and that’s when disease starts. That’s why they shoot heavy if there’s a lot of
grouse and they don’t kill ‘em, then chances are if it’s a mild winter then you’ll get
strongylosis and it’ll clear lot out.
(GD: Yeah, yeah)
(TR: So can you tell me about heather burning)
About what
(TR: Heather burning; how did you choose when and where to burn)
Well, you burn long heather. I never used to bother burning it if it were good heather and I
never used to bother burning strips through that at all. I used to like heather if it were
patchy, crowberry in it and a bit of grass and a bit of heather, all mixture of different
herbages. If you get a mass of long heather, that’s where I used to choose to burn strips
through, about 30 or 40 yards wide and get as many as you could and…so chicks could,
when it started growing then, chicks could run about and find grubs and all sorts in short
heather and then run to some shelter then where it wasn’t burnt. Yeah, and I used to pick,
you used to be watching weather and, you knew when atmosphere were coming right, you
just knew when atmosphere were coming right and when it’d go. Many a time you could
only snatch a couple of hours and sometimes you could burn as long as, there in’t so
many good burning days and you used to burn, when it had started you could be burning
well, 5 or 6 o’clock at night, whenever you could, yes.
(TR: So what makes a good burning day Does it have to be damp or dry)
Well either if it were damp, if it were damp and not too damp and top were dry, if it were
dry down to ground level more or less, then you could burn it and if it were damp in bottom
then it wouldn’t burn peat. But if you got a black frost, a black frost and then there are
pools of water and fire would go through that even. It’d go straight over it because
ground’s frozen and then again it couldn’t touch peat. Once frost had gone though and
peat was dry then you’d to watch your edges because they could soon...and then you had
to put ‘em out straight away. And if it had been a really dry summer and it had cracked
peat and then fire’d drop in t’cracks and that were very dangerous, you had to get that out
straight away and there’s only one thing that’d put it out and that’s water because once it
started smouldering it’d be a long time. You always had a bit of an accident, you had to
6

watch it a bit but if it were in middle of fire it were more or less safe, weren’t it. It were
edges you had to watch only to keep them out.
(TR: So did you have lots of people with you when you were burning or was it just you)
Well, three, three people, one for steadying it, there’s always one side goes a bit faster
than other, and one at one side and two at other. If I’d half a dozen I’d have two fires
going at once.
(TR: Right. And how big was the area that you burnt)
Varies, depending, you knew where you were burning to. When you knew where you were
burning to, you might take an area, you might go four or five hundred yards, longer than
that, you knew where, you knew where your breaks were. And if there were another fire
where you could burning to it, then you used to take notice of wind; one day wind might be
southeast and then day after you’d burn into that if it’d changed.
(GD: Did you always like burning long thin strips or did you like smaller areas or, cos
certain people have different styles don’t they almost)
If it’s really, sometimes, you could get a really bad, an area that was really damp and all
dead, long heather that you can’t really get to burn and then there might just come that day
when you’d burnt it and then you’d burn a big lump. I mean it’d be a few acres to get it out.
You’d burn it, yes, to get it out, when you had that chance…dead heather.
(GD: Right, some people’d say if you got too straight an edge it’d allow a fox to run up that
edge to find things, I heard that years ago. So some people would make it wiggle a bit,
things like that)
But you can’t change wind can you
(GD: No, no you can’t)
You’ve got to follow wind. Whatever fox did, you’ve got to follow wind. You know, and like
you kept on...I used to like it to be about 30 yards wide and to keep up to front of fire, if I
could, because you never know if wind were gonna change, and if you had a, if you didn’t
keep up to it and wind changed you could have a really wide fire, because it’d take, it’d
take edge, you know...it’d take edge and take wind and it then be 50 or 60 yards wide
then.
(TR: Did you ever have any get out of control)
I never had a fire out of control.
(TR: Right. Did that happen to some people)
7

It has done, it has done and I don’t know why, but…if it’s out of control it’s because either
wind’s changed. I’ve been very fortunate, it’s either because wind’s changed or peat’s too
dry, moor’s too dry and you can’t put it out.
(TR: Did you have problems with wild fires You know, fires that people had set
deliberately or were accidental)
I didn’t have so many but I’ve gone and helped one or two who have had ‘em, that public,
you know, had set on fire, yeah.
(TR: And what do you do Is it water)
Well it was floggin’, because you couldn’t get water to ‘em then. They hadn’t all this up-todate
stuff with pumps and that, had they You used to have to carry water in a bucket.
(TR: Right, up the hill)
(GD: Canvas buckets we used to have)
Well to wherever…you had to carry it a long way, just to put a bit out. When Harden, Lady
Cross Moor, you know that got a fire, didn’t it
(GD: At Cat Clough)
Harden,…right down to Cat Clough and that were going weeks because that was a
summer fire when peat were really dry and it got really wide.
(GD: When was that, was that in the ‘50s)
I’d say so. I’ve forgotten when it war, but yeah.
(GD: Was that the Colonel that set fire to that)
I don’t know who set fire to it, it started on a shooting day.
(GD: I remember once, I was with Has Oldham. Who used to come in a wheelchair with a
chauffeur pushing him, was he the Colonel Was he a Bowes-Lyon or...)
Oh, I can’t think what his name were, but he didn’t come when I were there.
(GD: I remember once on Thurlsden)
Verdon, Colonel Verdon.
8

(GD: And we helped him to get on to the moor, to look at the shoot. His chauffeur was
trying to push him up on the moor in his wheelchair. We told the chauffeur to go and sit
down and we manhandled him up the track so he could watch you and he was saying, he
said to me he’d accidentally set fire to the moor by leaving his cigar on top of the butt)
Ah well, I don’t know if that were true, but...
(GD: I didn’t really get his name properly you see; I think he was a Colonel or something
like that)
Verdon, yes.
(TR: So who came on your shoots Was it the landowner)
Yes, yes there was a syndicate. Captain Owen, Sir Thomas who owned moor, then there
were seven, then they varied. Some had half a gun, some had a full gun and some had
half a gun, Colonel Scott.
(TR: What does half a gun and a full gun mean Is that how many you can do in a
season)
It meant if they bought a gun for that season they could shoot everyday and if they bought
half a gun then they’d shoot, they’d have half the days and other would have other half of
day.
(TR: So, if you bought a gun you’d pay for your shooting for a year)
You’d pay for shooting for that year, yeah.
(TR: And how many shoots did you have a year)
Varied, depending on how many, what grouse there were, like I’ve said before, if there
were a lot of grouse it were healthy to shoot to get ‘em down to a reasonable level, you
never know how many grouse you have on your moor, you think you do but you can sense
whether there’s too many or not. If there is none, if there in’t a lot of grouse, if it’s been a
bad breeding season you don’t shoot at all. You wait to let ‘em come up again. You don’t
shoot at all.
(TR: So how did you organize the shoots What was involved Did you have beaters)
Well you had loaders and beaters, yes.
(TR: And what did they do What did the loaders do)
9

Loaders, they’d carry guns up and they’d carry guns up and loaded the gun. You took two
guns up and when he’d shot one he’d…they used to keep, they change over, you had to
be sharp sometimes if there were a lot of grouse coming all at the same time. Loaders had
to be sharp to keep him going, yeah.
(TR: And were they just local lads that would come up as loaders)
Yes.
(TR: And what about the beaters)
They were local for me, yeah. They were local.
(TR: And how many did you have on a shoot)
Well obviously…guns, you might have about eight, and beaters and flankers, I had about
twenty.
(TR: Right, and did they all work at the same time)
Sometimes you might have two teams going out, not all same time. If it were a long drive
then some of ‘em would go to end or they did a short one.
(TR: And what did the flankers do)
Flankers are straight out from butts; you have a row of butts, nine in a butt, depending on
which way wind’s blowing. If there were eight guns you would miss one out whichever had
advantage, what to butts which were going to be in, and then flankers went out. I had three
flankers...three at bottom, three at one end and three at other and then beaters used
to…and they used to flank grouse in to butts.
(TR: So did the beaters have sticks)
Flags, yes
(TR: So did they just walk along in a line)
Yes, yeah.
(GD: And the guns, did they draw straws then for the butts or.. The guns did they draw
straws for the butts, to which butt they were in, or how did they choose which butt to go
in)
Well depending on which way wind were, they knew, we knew which way wind, which way
grouse’d go. We knew…all butts…on most of moors…they follow contours do grouse and
10

prevailing winds are westerly and if it’s southwest it could be an ideal wind and northwest it
could be a disaster and it could cut your bag by half. That’s what I’d say, if you’ve nine
butts, you’d know which butt to leave empty as there’d be nothing go there at all.
(TR: So how did you look after the butts, were they built of stone or made of wood)
Well when I went to Lady Cross they were built on, erm bilberry, sods.
(TR: Right)
And when I went there I built every butt new and I stoned them. They were four foot six
across and four foot six in and two foot six high because if it were peat, sheep used to go
in and shelter in and then start rubbing inside butt and then top used to fall down, so I built
‘em like that, stone, two foot six up so they couldn’t do it, and got ‘em growing.
(GD: Where did you get the stone from)
I dug it wherever I could.
(GD: Right)
Up on Cloudberry, at end of Cloudberry, you know, bottom end of Cloudberry. I don’t know
if you know, I think it’s been a fire at some time and it had bared right down to stone. Do
you know where I’m talking about
(GD: Right, yeah, yeah)
And, I barrowed it from there; I took a barrow up and barrowed it.
(GD: And how far did you have to barrow it then)
Well, er, butts are 55 yards apart about, you know and if there’s nine butts well so you
know how far I barrowed it.
(GD: Yes, there’s a few ton of stones been shifted to there)
Yes, but like up in rush beds then, I dug grip out, out of where, they’re in the hollow aren’t
they, up there they are and I got it out of here and same at Cabin, but up on Barmins () I
got a tractor and transport box…
(GD: Right)
…and took it off a wall.
(GD: Right, because it’s easy ground)
11

(TR: So how did you decide where the butts went)
Well, like I said, they’d been planned a long, long time, butts erm, before, when grouse
shooting started and they understood, they understood then that grouse followed contours
and they took, like I’ve said, they took prevailing wind into consideration and built ‘em
there. And you used to set off in a morning, you’d do one drive here and you’d feed your
next drive and then you’d be feeding every drive all time.
(TR: What does that mean)
Well your grouse would go, you’d take ‘em over a line, you’d bring ‘em up hill and take ‘em
over a line of butts so they’d all land on that ground wouldn’t you. You might bring ‘em
back, if you were shooting different butts all day, you’d take ‘em up and then move into
another row of butts and take ‘em over on to that and they’d feed on another piece of
ground, you know.
(TR: And did you say you had cabins as well)
A lot of moors had cabins, yes.
(TR: And were they just for shooting parties)
That’s what they were built for, for shooting, yes.
(TR: And were they made of stone again)
Mostly wood, some were stone but round here wood.
(TR: Right, and did you used to look after those)
You used to have to try and maintain them, yeah.
(TR: Did you have any problems on your moor, well not problems, but did you have
walkers that used the cabins)
We used to leave cabins open for walkers. And mostly real hiker never did any damage,
they used to go and have their lunch in, they used to set off somewhere and have their
lunch in cabins and then off and on their way. But it were ‘anti’s’ that ripped it down I think.
(TR: Anti-shooting people)
Anti-blood sports; they ripped it down, yeah.
(GD: Yes, we had a problem with those didn’t we really, late ‘70s early ‘80s. They came
once or twice didn’t they onto Lady Cross)
12

Yes, they pulled one, well they ripped a lot of butts down but we just used to throw ‘em
back up again, yes.
(TR: So did you have problems with them actually trying to disrupt shoots, the protesters)
We never had ‘em, touch wood, on Lady Cross but I’ve been on moors where ‘anti’s’ have
been and then they would go then, and they’d go up to butt and guns daren’t shoot.
(TR: No, of course not)
It were dangerous, they just used to get in way so you just used to pack in. Which in my
opinion were wrong because they wasn’t breaking law was they Law should have said, in
my opinion, law should have said that ‘anti’s’ should have come off, it were them who were
breaking law and police should have fetched ‘em off in my opinion.
(TR: So did the police come out when there were problems)
On some occasions. On some occasions.
(TR: Yeah. Erm, did you, what was your relationship with the walkers like You said you
had some walkers that, obviously they were on private land at the time I presume.)
Most of walkers were alright. I always used to argue if walkers’d go about like sheep, then
they were no problem at all, but if you saw somebody, well when there were eggs and
grouse chicks and they had their dogs running about, that, I thought were bad, that were
problem with walkers. Odd occasions they’d leave a gate open and then cows and, you
see, and sheep and everything would come out, odd occasions. The problem is you never
knew who were going to do it so you had to be watching everybody. And from my
experience anybody with a party of kids, schools, they were biggest culprits because as,
you know what they say, ‘last shut gate’, but they didn’t.
(TR: So has the open access stuff made a difference, did it make a difference, to how
people used the moors)
Open access, you see it were a big change for me, from just being, nobody were allowed
on moor. You always got ‘em, but like I’ve just said, open access didn’t make any
difference if they’d have gone about like sheep but, when they were dropping matches and
setting...you never knew. That’s why they’d talk about closing moors so they didn’t set
moors afire…and Gordon knows that. That’s why they thought, because if everybody had
acted responsibly then there would have been no problem then wi’ hikers if they’d gone
about like sheep, gone about, yeah.
(GD: Well its transport that’s changed everything over the years in’t it I mean at one time
people came on the train to Hazlehead didn’t they or on the bus, there wasn’t all these
cars about and things like that)
13

They were genuine hikers, they were genuine hikers, erm…most of ‘em were at any rate,
but you always got somebody who, you never knew who were gonna drop a cigarette end
and even start a fire and start cooking egg and bacon on a dry, and that’s happened, you
know that.
(GD: Oh, yeah, yeah)
And when peat’s been really dry and set moor afire and ground afire.
(GD: Yeah, yeah)
You see, that’s the problem with access, you’ve got to like people haven’t you, you know
and you’ve to try and trust ‘em but you can’t because you never know which one it’s gonna
be...
(TR: Yeah, sure)
(GD: When I first started, when was that ‘75, ‘76 they were doing, Peak Park, we were
doing nesting patrols because they’d had that film, Kes, it was set in Barnsley and he’d got
a kestrel hadn’t he and there was always people coming out, I can remember going out in
spring time, early morning because we had all these egg thieves all the time, all these
youngsters all the time)
Oh yeah, that’s what you get you see, that’s what you get, you never know who’s gonna
be doing it.
(TR: Did you get…, what was I going to ask Oh, I was going to ask about the winters
actually. Obviously, we’ve had quite a deep winter this year. Did you used to get severe
winters)
Well when I were on Lady Cross I think longest time we were made in were about seven
weeks.
(TR: Wow)
You know, and it were all snow shovelling to dig out then. And I used to leave Land Rover
at end of lane and walk on. But we’d everything, we’d a deep freeze, we’d everything in
and we’d have half a cow, a sheep, a pig, bread. We had a house cow and a few eggs, we
had, we could live out of freezer if it came to stick and lift and you’d got plenty coal in for
winter.
(TR: Yeah, so what kind of time would that have been, when you had the big winter)
What year That would be in ‘70s, somewhere, I don’t just know when. I mean a few
times, been tied in a month, many a time. I used to walk out and get to end of lane, you
14

daren’t leave Land Rover at end of lane now. I used to leave it at end of lane, but I daren’t
leave that now because engine’d be gone.
(GD: Yeah. And you couldn’t go and visit because the lane’s that long, if you ended up
meeting halfway through you couldn’t get off it cos snow was that deep, so you daren’t go
visit, you had to keep off it, just in case somebody wanted to come out or go in)
Yeah.
(TR: Was this at Swinden)
(GD: That’s at Swinden Lodge, yeah)
Yes, snow used to blow it. It’d keep, it’d make it a foot deep or summat like that wouldn’t it
but you could go if you kept going. But I used to have to dig it out mostly on lane and
where it had drifted where walls were and gate.
(GD: Yeah, that end one where it starts to turn round)
Yes to go in the field there.
(TR: Did it affect the grouse when it was a hard winter)
It just depends, did if it froze snow, it would.
(GD: ‘85 was a bad year wasn’t it for that ‘85 it froze quite a bit and the grouse were sort
of down in the river, the sheep were in the river, the grouse were in the thorn trees)
I don’t think sheep could get down to anything that winter because it snowed and then it
rained on it and froze it and then it snowed again and froze it again. And sheep, you could
walk on top of it and you couldn’t walk uphill because it was shot ice and grouse that did
affect ‘em, when it’s like that. But if its steady snow, if it covers heather and there’s some
sheep about, they’ll bare heather a bit for grouse and grouse will follow ‘em and they know
that. I’ve seen grouse follow them. I’ve seen grouse come within twenty yards of me when
I’ve come walking through and that’s all they’re after because they know I’m going to be
baring a bit of heather…yeah.
(TR: So did you ever have to take extra food up to the grouse)
No, I never fed ‘em . You can’t feed ‘em because they’re mainly heather, aren’t they The
diet is mostly heather, yeah. And if you took it up and it started blowing it’d soon bury it in
heather.
15

(TR: Did you do anything else Obviously you talked about the heather burning. Was there
anything else you had to do to the moors physically to sort of look after them Did you
have bracken that you had to clear)
We used to cut bracken with a scythe and when there were, ESAs came in about 1959, no
sorry before, no after then wasn’t it ’89…
(GD: ’89, something like that)
…’89 and then they sprayed it with helicopter with Asulox. We used to try and do a bit with
a knapspray but you wasn’t doing any, you couldn’t do any, you couldn’t make any
impression on it at all with a knapsack, but helicopter it cleared it out. And then, and then
somebody started squealing then and saying it were killing different herbages and it were
getting in water or summat…and they…and so they stopped it. But that would have been a
good thing, if they could’ve kept helicopter coming just to keep up to it while they’d got it
killed permanently, I think. That were only answer, you can’t do anything with a knapsack
spray, because you’d only a couple of months when fronds had got really open then that’s
when you used to spray and it was soon too late, yeah.
(TR: So when you cut it with a scythe, what did you do with it)
We just left it and it died off. We only used to cut it for tracks or if there were somewhere a
bit of bracken where grouse might fall and get lost on a shoot day so they could find ‘em
better.
(TR: You didn’t use it for bedding because I’ve heard)
We didn’t. They used to do when I were a lad because they used to go cutting bracken
with a scythe. I know somebody who used to go, that was his job and he’d go cutting
bracken, grass, heather and made a living that way. And they used to take it then and,
when Hepworth Iron, used to pack pipes with it to put into railway trucks to move it so it
didn’t, so they didn’t break, yeah.
(TR: So where would that have been that he was cutting)
Where would it be
(TR: Yeah, the bracken cutting)
Well all o’er, anywhere there was any bracken on moors, Snailsden, Lady Cross I think
they used to do and yeah. And old hay that had gone, been weathered, rained and gone
black and weren’t fit to eat or straw, anything like that and take it and use it for packing.
(TR: Right, that makes sense)
16

Yes.
(TR: That makes sense. Do you know anything about the forestry)
We used to go in for foxes and then they stopped us then. You see, a fox hasn’t a predator
has it Only man…this is what I say about a lot a, a lot of this stuff has been stopped now.
Badger didn’t come so far up moor, he stopped down in wood mostly. Foxes, we used to
go snaring and then they’d say you were after badger. Badger men would say, and we
weren’t, none of keepers want to be getting, because you know what it were, they’d go
lock you up. They didn’t want to catch badger intentionally but I suppose if some of them
could have an accident, I don’t know.
(TR: So did the forestry, was there always forestry around and or was that later)
No, forestry well, erm that on’t Strines, it were planted a long, they’re taking a lot of it out
aren’t they
(GD: They’re virtually putting it all back to moorland now, yeah)
Putting it all back to moorland, so that had been done, I don’t remember it being made into
forestry but Langsett, I can remember them trees being planted and that, that going on
from Swinden Lane, on’t roadside going down t’Flouch, that were done in about ‘73.
(TR: Right, so quite recent really)
Because we went there in ‘72, to Lady Cross.
(GD: Yeah. I can remember, well we had to set back a path at Swinden Rocher there, the
trees were only two and a half foot, three foot high then. That was Don Wilson and meself
and Mike Hammond at that time, had to put the fence back)
At where
(GD: At Swinden Rocher it’s called on the map, below, er, Swinden Farm, where that barn
is. You know if you go down past the old pump house there, on that bit of the path there
above the river. We had to set the path back because it was falling into the river)
Yeah.
(TR: Do you know anything about Magnum Was it Magnum Again, we came past that
yesterday, never heard of it before)
There was a church there and a pub, there were a row of houses, you know, on’t road,
there were hamlet there, a shop. I can remember there being a shop, I can’t remember
17

pub, they called it Moss Inn and Magnum Church we’ve been there to t’Harvest when I
were younger.
(TR: And what happened to it)
It were condemned, all condemned and pulled down. All houses were condemned, no
sanitation were there, proper drainage and that.
(GD: When was that)
That’s a question Gordon, in’t it I should say in ’50s.
(GD: Right)
(TR: Were there any other, are there any other hamlets that’ve gone Sort of on the edge
of the moor, that you can think of)
There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of farm places been shut down all round Holme Woods and
up Bradshaw an’t there, you know, because of pollution into reservoirs and Holme Styes,
Hades. Hades wasn’t, it wasn’t a hamlet really not like Magnum were. There used to be a
shop at Magnum, a sweet shop.
(TR: Did you go as kids to the sweet shop)
As kids, yes when we were going passed but we were a long way off, you know. There
used to be, anybody would’ve, there was a shop in Carlecotes, they’d just have a bit of a
corner in’t house and sell sweets t’kids, yeah.
(TR: Sounds good!)
(GD: And what were your favourite sweets then Clifford)
I don’t know…liquorice.
(GD/TR: Liquorice! Not sherbert fountains)
[Laughter]
Yeah.
(GD: No, but didn’t they reckon Strangeways Prison was built from stone from Magnum
I’d heard that)
I don’t know but, if that’s where stone came from, from there, I can remember, I can
remember Cook’s Study, you know, tower
18

(GD: Yes, I’ve just seen some photographs of that, Jack Elmore’s just got some from
Huddersfield Archives)
Well they had some and Study House and I would think, and I’m nearly sure, I would say
Spence Gaunt would be last to live in Study House.
(GD: Spence Gough)
Spence Gaunt
(GD: Gaunt, oh yeah right)
(TR: Where was Study House)
Do you know where Cook’s Study is
(TR / GD: Yes, we came past it yesterday; we went past it yesterday)
Where tower were
(GD: Yeah, yeah just at the bottom of it)
Well you can see, well there’s no stone there now its all been taken and Ben Childs, I think
he pulled Study…pulled tower down.
(TR: And what was the tower Was it used for anything)
I don’t know, it were just a landmark.
(GD: Just a folly)
(TR: And when did that come down)
Again, you’re asking me a question. You see Thomas Edward would have known all these.
(GD: Yeah)
He would have known when all, and George Wood would know, he could know.
(GD: Right. I know it was definitely there in 1910, it was there)
I should guess in’t ‘40s.
(GD: Right)
19

I would guess that come down in ‘40s, or ‘50s could be.
(TR: Did the war make a difference to the way people used the moors)
No, what happened to, what happened with moors during war they used ‘em, well Midhope
were a target practice weren’t it They used to use ‘em for training soldiers on. And
keepers all went t’moors, they weren’t shot as much then, moors, because of that. Lady
Cross, they used to go training on there, there were certain days when moors had to be,
some of ‘em, I don’t suppose all of ‘em, well Tinker Hill weren’t, that didn’t come into it but,
well that’s what all them tank tracks are up Midhope, yeah.
(GD: Yeah. Did they have any decoys, because they used to have decoys in these rough
areas didn’t they as well or search lights and things like that)
There’s one up at car park in’t there at Bord Hill, do you know it
(GD: Yeah, yeah)
Where car park is and you can see, its round in’t it, a mound, and they had searchlight in
middle and then it’d be where they were walking round then, yeah, we did.
(GD: Because on Emlin and erm, Strines Moor there they had decoys for Sheffield didn’t
they at that side. And I think they had decoys for Barnsley erm, I’m trying to think where
that is, its Royd Moor area up there, there’s a pill box up there. Because there’s one up
near Tinker Hill isn’t there, there’s a…)
That’s an observation post.
(GD: …observation point in’t there, there)
Yes, that were an observation post, there weren’t a searchlight there. There used to be
one at Victoria, a searchlight in field there.
(TR: So did the moors get bombed If there were searchlights and things on them were
there any bombs round here)
I don’t think they’d bomb ‘em. Sometimes they used to drop their bombs by accident.
There was a bomb dropped at Swinden…
(GD: Oh right!)
…I think…when Tom Beevor () lived there.
(GD: Right)
20

Incendiaries, yeah, they said.
(TR: And were there plane crashes round this area as well, do you remember those at
all)
There weren’t a plane, no, there’s some on Woodhead in’t there and one or two on
Broomhead over that area, yeah. Tthere’s none on Lady Cross, a plane, plane crashes.
(GD: You just used to find lots of mortar fins and tank shells all over the place, even now)
(TR: Right)
Midhope, a lot of old shells, a lot.
(GD: There’s a lot, back of North America, that area, there’s loads up there)
And you could tell where machine guns were because there’s loads of machine gun…
(GD: 303)
…303 shells in’t ground where they’ve left them, yeah.
(TR: Right, wow! It’s funny when you look at these tranquil spaces and they’re full of
ammunition)
(GD: You never sent any off then…when you were burning You didn’t hear any cracking
and banging while…)
No, no, we had a burn through many a time, never had any bother.
(GD: Right)
No.
(GD: We had a fire, oh perhaps four or five years ago, that was down Staffordshire on
some land that the Peak Park owned and the army had been training on there and we
were there one night and all these bullets were cracking and banging as the flames went
through and the military had said ‘Oh no, there’s no ammunition on there’, you know, ‘we
don’t use that for practice’. Of course all the soldiers had just chucked all their ammunition
out as they were walking along to lighten the loads)
What I did have once or twice, just odd occasions, only three or four I would think, were
police’d come up. Hikers have found a bomb that hadn’t gone off, a shell that hadn’t gone
off and then they’d come up wi’ bomb disposal. It were nothing, they’d let it off and it’d
blow up but it were now’t. Not big ones.
21

(GD: It still happens)
(TR: So have the moors changed in the time you’ve known them)
They’ve changed because like we said earlier, when I were a lad there were heather on’t
moors, because everything, there was no sheep, there weren’t a lot of sheep on’t moors
then and grouse were good. That would be when Broomhead broke that record. And then,
and then when war started, it were muck’d up wi’ sheep, littered wi’ sheep. And there were
no heather on at all, hardly. And then now it’s back again. So its been from good, and then
during war and up to, I should think about 1950, that’s when, that’s when businessmen
started taking over on’t moors and they fenced moors, you know, and took over…and
fenced sheep out.
(TR: Right)
And let ‘em to a limited number and like I’ve said before you don’t want to see, its good to
have sheep on a moor, its wrong not to have sheep on a moor, in my opinion. Well, on
Woodhead now on brash ground there’s trees growing all over place, sheep would’ve kept
them down, yeah.
(TR: Yeah, of course. And did you have any problems with pollution I was talking to
Dereck Nobles and he was saying about sheep being covered in soot or going bilberry
picking and getting covered in soot)
Well, reason sheep are black round here, they say is because, because of pollution out of
Manchester. You go up North Yorkshire and up Scotland there, sheep are white. But they
say its industry and they said it came out, whether it’s right or not, all that pollution out of
Manchester, turned sheep black.
(TR: Right, yeah. You don’t think about how much soot there was around, there used to
be)
And they tell me, you know Holme Moss television mast
(TR: Yeah)
Well they said that were covered in, it were coated with lime, whether it is or not or used to
be because erm, erm…at Buxton, lime.
(GD: Oh, right)
Where they were blasting lime, there were a lot of lime coming.
(GD: From the limestone quarries)
22

(TR: Oh gosh! Do you remember Holme Moss getting iced up in the winters)
Getting what
(TR: Iced up, you know, lots of ice on it)
Oh it did yeah. When Emley Moor came down, would that be about ‘58 then
(GD: Something like that)
Yes, something about there and it was, yes.
(TR: That was the ice then)
It was yeah, ooh! It brought Emley Moor down, it didn’t bring Holme Moss down but it were
all coated up with solid ice there, yeah.
(TR: And also you said that you’ve been walking on the moors since you were tiny, as a
child did you collect bilberries)
We just used to go, we used to go, you see me father was a part-time keeper and I used to
go wi’ him. No I didn’t, we did use to get bilberries, we always used to get a few bilberries
but we used to, I used to go round with, like I’d tie samsons and stoat traps, and stuff like
that , yeah. And when you were burning we’d go and mess about with a bit of a sack or
summat and try to put it out. We just used to throw in with them and that’s how we were
brought up. That’s how keepers were born, they were born t’moors then. Now they’re
coming in, there were no money you see then. If you employed father, you employed
family, when I were a kid. And you used to want to go, there were nothing else to do up
on’t moors. You always used to spend your spare time wi’ farmers or gamekeepers and
that’s all you knew. And you were glad they’d have yer.
(GD: Did you used to get invited to the Shepherds’ Meets or anything like that)
Shepherds’ meetings
(GD: Yeah)
Yeah, used to do, yes.
(TR: Did you have a good relationship with the farmers; did you have a close working
relationship)
Yeah. I did. They were all farmers on Lady Cross weren’t there with me.
(GD: Yes)
23

I had a close relationship, I made it. I put meself out to be right, you know, you have to do,
you’ve to get on together, we’d to live together and we shot Monday, Tuesdays and that’s
only time when farmers, they could come, if they could come, that was, you know.
Anybody else were in industry and some of ‘em would take a week off.
(TR: So would the farmers come as beaters)
They’d come beating or loading or whatever, yeah. We all used to help one another, yeah.
(TR: Oh, that’s great, thank you very much)
24

Clifford Robinson: Interviewed by Tegwen Roberts.
25 th May 2010 in Holmfirth at New Mills.
(Can I ask you your name and when were you born)
My name is Clifford Robinson. I were born on 24 th September ’29, so that makes me 81,
81 this September.
(Where were you born)
And I were born at Low Crossroads.
(And where’s that)
That’s near Fox House up by Tinker Hill Moor.
(Right, and where did you live as a child)
I lived there. I lived there till I were 21 up to going into Forces.
(Was it a farm or was it a cottage)
No, it were just a cottage and I used to, I was brought up as a plumber but I always had
interest in moors. Me father were a part-time keeper, and I used to go on to moors with
him as soon as I could walk.
(Did you have brothers and sisters)
I had a brother and a sister, yeah.
(Where did you go to school)
Hazlehead School, two miles away. We had a mile to walk down to Carlecotes, a mile to
walk every morning, wet or fine, and then we caught a bus then to Hazlehead School.
They used to give us a ticket and it were a penny return. A penny return ticket for that mile.
(You can’t think now can you!)
No, and then we had to, we came back to Carlecotes and walked back up. All weathers.
(Through the snow and everything)
Oh yeah. I never bothered. Way of life weren’t it
(What did you do in your spare time when you weren’t at school)
Well, what all other kids did, we used to go messing about on farms a bit and then on
moors a bit and then playing tin cans and stuff like that, like anybody does. Off on us bikes
with us mates and that. We hardly went anywhere off of tops. We hardly went away, not so
far away from home, a mile away.
(Presumably nobody had a car)
1

There were no cars then, not many. We used to sit outside with a book taking car numbers
and if you got six numbers on all day you were lucky. You know.
(So when you said your father was a part-time keeper what did that entail When did he
go out onto the moors – was it evenings and weekends)
Evenings and then weekends, yes because he worked at Hepworth Iron, he worked at
Hepworth Iron Company and then it was evenings when he got home. Never saw moor in
winter obviously when it were dark. It were dark when he got home.
(So was he helping a full-time keeper or was he the only keeper for that area)
No. Uncle Joe used to be full-time keeper, but he died in about 1937, Joe would die in
1937, and then me father took over part-time.
(You said that you trained as a plumber)
I was brought up as a plumber.
(So where did you do your training for that)
In Penistone. And I used to be up at half past five in a morning and you’d to light fire, and
get fire going and then fry you’re egg and bacon. To go to your work, I used to catch a bus
at ten to seven and go to Hazlehead Bar, Hazlehead, and walk then, and then walk to
Penistone really, yeah, that were two miles. I had a bus back. I had a bus right back. I had
to walk from Hazlehead Bar to Penistone in the morning.
(That’s a long way)
And that were a long way, wet or fine, and I never missed.
(Never missed a bus)
Unless it were very, er…I missed in 1947, I think I were eight weeks off work then because
of snow.
(Was that a bad winter)
It were a really bad winter and I were snow shoveling and it was snow shoveling then no
tractors ‘n doing bulldozing. Well not then, no.
(Did everybody go out to shovel the snow)
Mostly, those that couldn’t get to their work, that’s what they did.
(And how deep was it)
Oh, level with wall tops in a lot of places, you know, on side of roads, yeah.
(Did that cause problems for the farmers, you know, with the sheep)
2

That’s what we used to open roads for – mainly for buses and then to get milk away
because they couldn’t get the milk away to dairy in cans. And that time they’d only milk
maybe a dozen cows to get the milk away, some of ‘em yeah.
(Did you have to go and dig…I’ve spoken to some people who used to go and dig sheep
out, they used to put sticks down to find them)
Oh yes when they went under walls we used to go round just after storm and then you
used to look for a breathing hole under wall and stick a stick in because when t’sheep
were warm, you see, it used to leave an air hole through in t’snow and then you’d go
prodding and find sheep under wall, where they’d been sheltered and they’d get buried
and you used to go and dig them out.
(Then what did you do with them)
Well, you let ‘em go then because that’s where they’d walk. It used to drift up against wall
and bury ‘em but mostly, have you noticed, out on moors, where it were flat it wasn’t so
far, it wasn’t so deep. Once they get out onto heather then they could forage for
something.
(Yeah, so you said about the dairy farms. Were the cows actually on the moors)
No, no. In’t winter they’d be tied up in cowshed in a mistle, yeah.
(Did they let them out in the summer)
And then let ‘em out in’t fields in summer, yeah.
(Because I was talking to some farmers from Staffordshire way and they used to have, for
a while they had cows up on the moors during the summer)
Yes, but, in’t summer yeah, oh yeah, but not up on the moors. I’ve never seen cows on’t
moors. They’d go on’t rough grazing, where there were a bit of rough grazing but not on
heather moorland, no. Sheep’d be on heather moorlands, yeah.
(So, you said you missed the bus in 1947…because of the snow)
There was no buses came, yeah.
(Did you say earlier that that affected your training that you were doing At Penistone)
When I went to Tech
(Yeah)
Yes it did because that winter, well I’d had eight weeks off so I’d broken in to me, you
know, it broke into it, it were too long to miss and I thought well, take it again then year
after. Go again for me Finals…and then I, I whipped into the Forces when I were twenty
one and I never carried on. But I carried on plumbing but I never took me City and Guilds, I
never got me Final. So I went plumbing again. But I were always interested in’t moors.
Moors and farming, but me father always said there were no money then at game keeping
and farming and he said you’ll learn a trade. You’ve got to learn a trade.
3

(I think that’s good advice!)
And even that, it took some getting. Because they couldn’t get timber into country during
war, that time, I wanted to be a joiner really and I weren’t getting any joinering and where I
worked they did plumbing and joinering, and I were getting more plumbing than joinering,
so I took plumbing.
(Fair enough. So after you came out of the Forces what did you do then)
I went back plumbing, to Penistone, to a different firm because me old boss had died.
When I went to Penistone I went over when I were fourteen and me old boss died when I
were…he went to bed with cancer when I were twenty and he died six months after and I
carried on there on me own and he wanted me to stop on on me own. They got me
deferred, the firm got me deferred while I were twenty one but then I had to go, so there
you go.
(Yeah, so were you still living at Tinker Hill at that time)
No, I were living at Low Crossroads then, I never lived at Tinker Hill…
(Oh, right, ok sorry)
No, I never lived at Tinker Hill, it were Uncle Joe that lived there, me father’s uncle, my
great uncle.
(So when did you get involved with keeping Obviously you’ve said you’d been involved all
your life, but when did you get involved with the job)
Full-time
(Yeah)
Well, full-time Lady Cross, but when I were thirty, me father died, when I were thirty, he
were only sixty when he died and I took over at Tinker Hill. I still lived in Holme village -
well I couldn’t keeper it from there it were too far away. I never saw moor, only at weekend
during t’winter because it were dark when I went to work and dark when I came home. So
it were only weekends and you couldn’t do, you couldn’t keeper it. So that’s why I went to
Lady Cross because part-time that’s all, you’d to have a job beside.
(Is that because it didn’t pay much money)
Keepering
(Yeah)
No, they weren’t big wages then, no. No, I’d only a pound, a pound a week from home and
to get there.
(Right, yeah. So how did you get there)
I got an A35 van. I bought it because I were interested, yeah.
(When did you get involved with Lady Cross)
4

In 1972
(Is that just because the job came up)
That job came off, Alf Hammond were leaving, he were retiring, and his son wasn’t
interested. So that’s why, and they wanted a keeper so I put in for it and got it, yeah.
(Was there much competition for keeper’s jobs at that time Were there many people
interested)
I don’t know. I know there were one or two more tried, but I didn’t know at time who were
trying, but anyway I got it.
(Did you make many changes at Lady Cross when you started)
Did I make many changes
(Yeah)
Well, Alf Hammond when, he were there before me and he had sheep as well and he had,
I think it were fourteen pounds a fortnight. I mean he had his farm in to supplement him,
but I had twenty quid a week when I went and Alf had a lot more land and some sheep on’t
moor. I had no sheep on moor but I’d just ten acres of land in Swinden and I looked after, I
did that and t’keep it tidy, yeah.
(So what was Swinden like Was it a cottage, was it a house)
Oh, no it’s a big house. That’s it up on wall there.
(Oh, lovely, yeah)
It’s a big house, its seven bedrooms, there were seven bedrooms, yeah it were a big
house. We didn’t have it all furnished, well upstairs we didn’t have it furnished. It were all
furnished downstairs, but part of it were for shooters when they came for their lunch at
shooting days you know.
(so, did they come and stay over Did people come and stay)
No, no they didn’t stay over. No they went to an hotel somewhere, various places.
(So did you keep animals then if you had a bit of land with Swinden)
Yes, I had about, I used to keep about ten cattle on, yeah. Reared some calves, yeah.
(And was that just for selling them or for milk)
For beef. We had house cow, you know, for milk, for ourselves.
(Was that normal then, did people have a cow and…)
Well, it were normal out there. When you got storms, you know, when you got, you had
milk then didn’t you
5

(Yeah, yeah, if you got stuck. So, if I was to go back to when you were a child and you
were talking about the winters, were the summers particularly different to what they are
now)
You remember good summers don’t you and we’d good summers and bad winters. We
had worse winters…winters started coming a lot milder when would be about 1990, when I
were about sixty, when would that be 1990 about
(They started to change then)
And they started coming milder winters, yeah.
(So, at Swinden you were saying the guns would come for their lunch when they were
shooting. Was there a point where you all met up to start the day Did you meet them on
the moors or did you take them up)
I met them over at Swinden. Everybody met up at Swinden.
(Is that including the beaters and so on)
Yes, yes everybody…all met at Swinden.
(What time in the morning would you meet. Was it an early start)
Most’d be there for nine o’clock or half past.
(How long was the day when you were shooting)
Well we’d various…first the drive’d start. You see you’d got to get to your place, you could
have a lot of walking to do and then they’d be starting shooting about ten o’clock, roughly
ten o’clock and finish about five, half past. Then you’re off.
(It’s a long day isn’t it, I suppose)
Well, yeah.
(One thing I was going to ask, I was talking to somebody about the log books, shooting
logs they used to keep of what had been shot everyday. Was there ever anything unusual
that was shot by mistake on your shoots)
Anything unusual shot Can’t think of anything. Not at Lady Cross, not in my day. You
wouldn’t do it. I’ve never, they never even shot a crow on my...
(Grouse only)
Just grouse. That’s what they went to shoot and that’s all they shot.
(Have you ever eaten grouse Did you ever eat it)
Did I do
(Yeah)
6

Yeah.
(People seem to be, they either very much like it or they absolutely hate it from what I can
tell)
I like grouse but I think they’re overrated. I think they’re a delicacy, they’re rare aren’t they
I think that’s what it is and people try; they either like them or they don’t. I like grouse.
(What happened to the grouse because the guns don’t take many do they They only take
a few that are shot Is that how it works What happens to the grouse that are shot)
Oh right, they go to game dealer.
(Right)
Guns’ll take so many, few brace each, if they want ‘em. If they don’t then they’d go t’game
dealer.
(And then they get sent off)
I don’t know what he does with ‘em, where they send ‘em. They do anything with them
won’t they Yeah. What they want, yeah.
(So how long were you at Lady Cross; when did you stop)
How long was I there About twenty three years.
(So when did you retire)
I retired when I were…I left Lady Cross when I was sixty four, then came down here and
then went back. Then I went back, they got another keeper, part-time, to work with him into
system a bit.
(So you went back and helped him)
I went back and we worked together, yeah.
(Did you ever use horses on your shoot)
We didn’t, you see Land Rover’d come in.
(Right)
Land Rovers came in then and horses came in…horses used to be…panniers with
baskets, a basket on each side to put grouse in, yeah.
(I was talking to Roger France and they had a horse)
They did on Snake, yes, to carry ‘em off.
(Yes, till quite late)
7

Well they, they met right out in middle of moor that’s why they had horses and they did
Snailsden, they used to have horses. They did at Lady Cross as well, but it’s all Land
Rovers, its all transport now. When I were younger I’ve been on moors where they had
horses but I’ve, while I’ve been keeping, I never used horses, no.
(So if we go back to when you were, you moved to Holme village. When did you live
there)
When
(Yeah)
I lived there for sixteen years. I should…aye; when did I go from there I’ve forgotten when
we went to Holme village…about 1954 or 5.
(Was that after you married)
Yeah, yes and went to live in Holme village.
(What was Holme village like)
A community…a lot of relations which Sheila had, wife had. A lot she were related to, I
were on me mother’s side, her cousins, distant cousins in Holme village, yeah. A very
homely village.
(Were there lots of farmers, people involved with the moors)
Well there were sheep farmers mostly. There was a dairy farmer you know, two, yeah.
(You were telling me about the reservoirs. You said some of the farms were shut down
around the reservoirs because of pollution Which farms was that)
Oh there were a lot of farms. Round Hades, up Bradshaw, up by Bilberry Reservoir and
Digley.
(Was that because the farms were polluting the reservoirs)
At that time yes.
(Do you remember the reservoirs built, some of them)
I remember Dunford Reservoir being built and Digley, up at Holme, yeah.
(That must have been quite a big change for the area)
Well, it war a big change, yeah.
(How long did they take to fill up)
I don’t know, a couple of years I would think. There used to be, when Dunford were built,
they said there were about seven hundred men working at Dunford when that reservoir
8

anking were built and there used to be a pub and a picture house in Dunford then for
workers.
(Because there were so many of them)
Yeah.
(Did they have like a ‘tin town’)
Oh, I’m sorry that were tunnel…
(Right)
…that were tunnel. No reservoir were different, reservoir came after tunnel.
(So which tunnel’s that)
Woodhead tunnel.
(Woodhead, yeah)
They built new tunnel through Woodhead.
(And they had a lot of workers)
Yeah, that’s what that were for, yeah.
(So what sort of time would that be, what year)
About 1953-4.
(Did the workers settle after they’d finished)
Some did.
(Where were they from Were any from Ireland)
They were from all over place. Our brother-in-law came with ‘em, t’tunnel, yeah. Still living,
he’s eighty eight.
(Right, wow. And you also told me about Magnum. You were saying you remembered
going to Harvest Festival in the church)
I said they used to have Harvest Festivals. We didn’t go, we went to Carlecotes.
(Right)
But they did. I’ve gone and taken stuff to Magnum Church for Harvest Festival.
(It seems strange to think of a whole village that just doesn’t exist anymore)
It were a hamlet, yes it were hamlet.
9

(So it had a shop)
They had a small shop, yes, it were a sweet shop as I remember it. But there were a shop,
there were church and there were a pub. I don’t remember pub either.
(When you were a child and you used to help with sort of the keeping and the farms, you
played on the farms and that kind of thing, would you help with the farming Did people
get involved in bringing the sheep in or, you know, were there jobs to do on the farm)
For me
(Yeah)
I used to do all sorts, I could milk when I were twelve, ten or twelve, and they used to think
you should! It were all hand-milking then. And shearing, you know, I used to go shearing
sheep, hand shears.
(So just hand held shears So how long did it take to shear a sheep)
I don’t know, erm, ten, fifteen minutes, were it I don’t know really, it varied.
(How old would you be when you were doing that)
Twelve or fourteen I would think. Fourteen maybe when I started.
(Did all the local children get involved)
No it were just them that were interested, everybody had their own interest didn’t they
Some, I don’t know, some’d be doing, be off playing football while I were shearing sheep,
or playing cricket or summat like that.
(So what time of year did you shear the sheep Was it spring or autumn)
Well they’ll be starting, it’s May now in’t it They’ll be starting in June, hill sheep in June,
yeah.
(So after they’ve had their lambs)
Yeah, yeah.
(And did the sheep stay on the hills all year round at that time)
Yeah.
(They didn’t take them off)
No.
(If a farm had dairy it wouldn’t have sheep as well Were they one or the other)
10

They could have a few but no, not normally. You were either a sheep keeper with a few
cattle or a dairy farmer, yeah. It were all hand-milking. When I were young anybody who
were milking a dozen cows, up there, up on tops.
(It’s a lot. And so would a cart come for the milk Would someone come to collect it or did
the farmers have to take it…)
A lot of milk, when I were a lad, they used to sell it local and they used to get a pony and
float, a pony and trap, and take it…round hamlets. They used to deliver round here, New
Mill. They used to deliver round, I can remember ‘em, I had a relation lived just up road
and they used to come and they used to deliver with pony and trap anywhere, Holmfirth or
anywhere then.
(Did they have a big churn on the back)
Yeah, big milk cans and two measures - one for a gill and one for a pint.
(How much is a gill)
Half a pint.
(Ok. You see I’m on litres and millilitres! So did they take other things round on the pony
and trap)
They might take a few eggs, yeah and potatoes, yeah.
(Did the hill farmers grow corn or things for the cattle)
They did during war, they started growing corn, and oats yeah.
(Was that just because of the war)
That was because of war, because you couldn’t get it into the country from abroad, from
America, you see, because of shipping.
(Did that carry on after the war or did it all finish after the embargos were lifted)
Well it’s still, it’s gone off a top because obviously they can grow corn a lot better lower
down, in lower country. Up here it isn’t real corn growing country, up on hills. No.
(It’s a bit wild for it really, isn’t it)
A bit too wild for it, yeah.
(Did they grow things like sweet beet and turnips for the cows)
They grew potatoes, turnips, not many carrots and that, but corn.
(Was that all hand planted and hand harvested)
Well they’d have a plough to plough potatoes out, but turnips were all pulled up be hand,
yeah.
11

(That must have been back-breaking)
Yeah, and cold if there were a bit of frost on!
(So did you get them after the frost)
Turnips
(Yeah)
Sometimes you’d leave them with a bit of frost on, yeah. You’d get turnips, potato picking
week kids used to have a holiday in October for potato picking week.
(Right, so you’d be off school and just go picking potatoes)
Yeah, have a week off and go picking potatoes.
(Were there any other times that you had time off school to help with the farming You
know was there anything else that you did)
I can’t think of it, no, I don’t think so.
(There wasn’t a corn harvest or…)
Oh no, oh no, but we used to go on farms helping ‘em in hay field, you know, to get their
hay in and it were all loose then, it weren’t baled. It were all fork, rakes and forks, yeah.
(So would you put it into a pile)
Put it into lumps.
(And then would you sheaf it Was it made into sheaves)
What corn I were talking about hay. They put hay in lumps, they didn’t put corn in lumps.
Corn, they used to be what they called a combine and it used to go through and put ‘em in
sheaves and tie ‘em up into sheaves and then they stood ‘em up in fields, then in stooks,
what they call stooks, to let ‘em dry in’t sun.
(What were stooks)
Well, when you’ve sheaves you’d stand two up like that and about, maybe ten, there’d be
five down one side and five down other and they held one another up to keep corn, to
keep grain off a ground.
(oh, to keep it dry)
Yeah, to dry it. They’d be all over fields that way. All done wi’ hand that.
(Wow. That’s a lot of work.)
It were a lot of work but it weren’t a lot. It were a big farm you know, fifty acres were a big
farm, and they’d only have about, maybe, ten acres of corn.
12

(So how many farms would there have been around where you lived)
Oh I don’t know. Where I lived It just depends how far off you see, there weren’t, maybe
half a dozen or a dozen, you know.
(So would you have helped at all of them or would you just go to the ones that you knew)
Well mostly you stuck with one or two; you stuck with one or two, yeah…your neighbours
more or less. When we used to go on farms and they used to have two Shire horses and
they used to be in ‘stannings’, right
(In a stable)
In a stable yes, tied up and they used to bed ‘em down with straw and then you used to go
then with a fork and shake straw up and muck used to fall through straw and you took
muck away and then bedded ‘em down wi’ straw again and maybe put a bit of fresh over
top. And when we went to live up in Holme there were some stables up there. They were
race horses and they were in loose boxes. Loose, they were loose, and they’d be as big as
this room about and there’d be a bucket in that corner wi’ water in and in that corner
there’d be a hay heck () in, to put hay in.
(Like a manger)
A manger, yeah, to put hay in and one in here to put the corn in, right And this chap he
went, he were going off for Easter once and would I go and see to horses for him So I
said “Yes I would.” So I went down and they were race horses and they always used to
follow you with their back end to you. They’d never used to come with their face to you like
ordinary Shire horses’d come up to you and nuzzle you, but race horses, them did, always
with their back end to you. He said “Don’t bother about straw and muck and that.” He said,
“I’ll see to it when I come back.” Well I thought it looks a bit untidy, so I did do. I started
shaking muck out of straw then when I’d done this side of it, I went t’other side of horse
and said ‘Stand over’, you know, and it let go with both back legs and it were a wooden
box with strong, inch and a half boards and it went through ‘em, it kicked through ‘em! I
thought ‘If I’m going to back of that!’ And I thought after that, I thought ‘They’ll eat corn off
of floor and their hay off floor and drink their water out of bucket on floor.’ I never went in
there no more wi’ that!
(They can do a lot of damage can’t they horses)
Yeah, but I didn’t know because I was a stranger.
(Were they pedigree race horses Did he race them)
They would be pedigree. Oh yes. Yes they were bred for racing and they were different to
Shire horses!
(So what did they use the Shires for on the farm)
Ploughing. They’d be two for ploughing and they’d pull plough and plough ‘taters’ out and
then they’d pull carts for muck, taking muck out and leading shafts, you know, for taking,
for leading hay in.
13

(What kind of date would that be)
Tractors came in during war. I don’t remember a tractor before war, it were all horses up to
war and then tractors came in and they didn’t used to have big, they used to have iron
wheels and studs to grip in and when they went on road they used to churn all road up.
(Right, bet that wasn’t popular)
That weren’t popular! First tractors…
(And did people still use horses alongside the tractors)
Well a lot of old ‘uns, they all went onto tractors eventually. You see, horse were eating all
year round weren’t it and a tractor weren’t, when tractor were in shed it weren’t using any
diesel or petrol but a horse could eat as much as two or three cows, them big Shire
horses. And they all said and they used to prefer ploughing wi’ horses. They said they did
it better than tractors but eventually they went over. Silage, they didn’t make silage then
you know during war. It were after war when they started making silage.
(Why do you think that was)
Well because they always used to make hay. They didn’t make silage. Dickinsons, at
Longley Farm, creamery, they were the first around here who I knew who made silage and
everybody said it’d turn inside of cows rotten. You know folk they were saying they can’t
do them any good that, keeping grass like that, just piling it up green and then giving it ‘em
in mid winter, but it didn’t.
(No it’s worked out OK, hasn’t it)
You know it didn’t, but folk don’t like change do they
No, I don’t, but we’ve to accept change.
(It has to happen I think. You can’t stop change)
No you can’t stop change, no and it in’t all for good!
(No, no, though it’s not all for bad either)
Some’s for good, in’t it
(Yeah, yeah definitely. Great, thank you)
14

Don Johnson: Interviewed by Tegwen Roberts
12 th March 2010.
82 years old.
(So what’s your relationship with the Moors in the Peak District)
Well, I started walking in the Peak District when I was very young. At that stage, the
leading authority in the Peak was a man called Ward. GHB Ward who was the founder of
the Clarion Ramblers, and he was a hero of mine and I used to go with the Clarion, not a
lot, but I used to go as a young man with the Clarion and we used to go out walking. That
was my first introduction to the Edale Moors and I would say at that stage, this was in the
1940s, before it was a National Park, in 1951. So nearly wherever you went, in the Peak
District in those days, you were trespassing. Well, certainly you were trespassing in
Bleaklow and Kinder and places like that, which made it so much more attractive, so we
would trespass as much as we can. The basic thing that we used to have to worry about
was the guardians of the moors, which were the gamekeepers, because depending on
their personalities, they were ordered to keep people off and therefore, if they caught you,
they weren’t averse to being, you know…
(A bit rough)
…A bit rough, so you didn’t bother. So I used to go up there as a teenager with one or two
friends. I’ve been on there with the Clarion Ramblers and all sorts of things and I can tell
you about the personality of GHB Ward. He was a fascinating man; he was very intelligent
of course, spoke many languages; had been involved in the Spanish Civil War to some
degree; he was related, I think, to Wards the bookshop in Sheffield and lived at a place
called Storth Lodge, which is right up by The Peacock a nice little house, overlooking the
Moor. And he was a man who was very strong, he died in his late 70s. He was a lecturer;
he did a lot of lecturing, and a very attractive personality. And in fact in Derbyshire, as you
probably know, they commemorated a piece of land to him called Ward’s Peace, which is
at the top of Lose Hill. He used to dress like an Edwardian gentleman. That is to say, he
used to wear tweeds, quite often what we used to call plus-fours or plus-twos, like
trousers, not waterproof or anything like that. They didn’t wear modern gear like cagoules
and gortex, that sort of thing, that was unheard of! What he used to wear normally, in fine
weather, was an ordinary Norfolk jacket and trousers. He might have carried a small
rucksack, but more often than not, they didn’t. In winter, when it was cold, he wore a cap
to protect his head and he wore a very long mac, which also he used for carrying
sandwiches in.
(In the pockets)
…Pockets. So that was basically what the men in those days, the 1940s, when I was
introduced to them, that’s what we used to wear.
1

(Did you taken anything other than just sandwiches)
Well, what they quite often did…we used to have what is called brew ups, you see, and we
used to set off about 8 o’clock to catch the tram.
(In the morning)
In the morning, and the day usually was finished about 8 o’clock at night…these are the
sort of days they had, 10 to 12 hour days walking, on a Sunday, that’s the only day they
had. And we used to walk until about 11 o’clock and someone in the party used to carry a
primus stove. In those days, it wasn’t considered to have a flask of tea, you brewed up.
So after you’d done about 2 or 3 hours, you said, “Shall we have a brew up” and that’s
what we did. We found a stream; it was important to find a stream, and we brewed up with
a primus stove and metholated spirits and after we’d done that, we might have had a
sandwich or something. We used to carry on ‘til lunchtime, do exactly the same then
sometimes we had afternoon tea, and at afternoon tea, they used to have favourite spots
which, in those days, were more often than not farm places, for example, there was one at
Alport on the Snake road and there was one in Hathersage and one in Hope. These were
familiar little places and we probably went in and we paid 6d for a pot at tea or something
like that in old money…What is tremendously different between those days and today is
the basic clothing they used to have; they didn’t have anything modern and waterproof;
they just made do with macs and caps and that sort of thing.
(That must have made for quite unpleasant walking at times.)
Yes, but they were tough you see, very tough men because these men…were
instrumental of course in opening up the Peak Park as a National Park, I mean Ward
worked years, very hard to break down the people who owned it and so on and he was
well-known because, in addition to him being a hero of mine as a walker, he was an
extremely knowledgeable man as you know from his books, they’re an absolute mine of
information on geology…amazing. But he was well liked, I think, by farmers, people like
that, they knew him and he would [get to] [inaudible – background noise] places where
other people couldn’t So if you were with him to some degree, you had a certain amount of
protection, you know, but if you were by yourself you didn’t. And I can remember being
chased off the moors as a young man with…I remember, it’d be about 1944 and we’d
gone up onto Kinder and the friend I was with was very experienced, older than me and he
said “We’ll have to watch for gamekeepers”. And we did in fact sight a couple of them. He
said, “Don’t worry, we can get away”. So we had to run off the moor chased by these
people, but he knew if just as well as the gamekeepers, and we did in fact get off. But we
actually got off the moor just by the Snake, by the river there, and unfortunately he
sprained his ankle so it was even more exciting, but I remember we went into the Snake
Inn, so that was a little adventure we had.
And the other thing that might be of interest to you, and if you look in these books,
there’s some boots advertised here. I think in this particular one, oh this one, Thomas and
2

Taylor was often the place where people went for boots and they were 21 shillings, special
heavily-made boots. And they were quite heavy. I can remember having that type of boot
as a young man and it was only ‘cause [] wear them. But I had a friend called Reg Dams,
who was a personality, he had a boot repairing shop in Totley and during about 1944-45,
he used to repair all the ramblers’ boots. They all used to go to him and we always used
to have what was known as ‘clinkers’ in the side, or ‘tricunies’. These were sort of special
nails which go round the side of there and protect it. And before climbing became very
technical, as it is today, they used to climb in those sort of things, but they stopped it
because it was damaging the rocks, so they wanted rubber or something like that. But
those boots used to have tricunies and nails in the sole and you can imagine the weight
then before you set out. But the interesting thing, and this might interest you, about 1944
or 45 I think, this man, Reg Dams came with us on a walk and he was very excited and he
said, “There’s a new type of sole been…a rubber sole been invented called a vibram sole”.
And it’s still used today, 60 years later, but it was an innovation in those days and it
completely changed the way we had boots after the vibram sole came in nobody had nails
anymore; they just had vibram soles.
(So they were much lighter, I presume)
So much lighter and very much better for gripping, apart from on wet limestone,
which…nothing can grip on that…So that was that. And of course, amongst these people
that I used to know, there was a lot of people who were very famous, well famous to me
that is. And I don’t know whether you know this, but there is a chap called Harry Baxby.
He was eventually one of the presidents of the Clarion Ramblers. And he was president in
1945, which was about the year when I knew him. He was known as Harry Baxby, very
nice man. But the interesting thing is, he was so well-known, there’s a plaque to Harry
Baxby at Back Tor. Well there are two Back Tors, there’s at least two Back Tors that I
know…
(There’s one in Edale, isn’t there)
Yeah, there’s a Back Tor at the edge of Derwent Edge, which leads on to what they call
Cartlidge Brook and there’s another Back Tor which is further on and if you ever go up
there you’ll see it. It’s a plaque marked Harry Baxby.
[Tape stops]
That’s a photograph of machine gun practice in one of the packhorse bridges up
Burbage.
(Did the war make a difference to the Moors Were the moors used during the war)
Well, I think the moors became attractive…they were always attractive to me because it
was a way of getting away from Sheffield, you know. And it was attractive because you
never saw anybody up there, apart from other ramblers I mean and you…I had a friend
3

whose name was Priestley. He was related to the Priestleys I think and he had a cabin, a
weekend cabin and I don’t know if you’ve been travelling up and down the Edale Road,
just before you get to a bridge. If you got out of the car just before the bridge and went in,
there’s a little open place and in there, that hut or shed or whatever you like to call it, was
still there, but it’s derelict and that’s where he used to be and so I used to go for weekends
with him, you know, birdwatching…But the attraction of going on the moors was being with
a group of people you liked and getting the fresh air and of course when you’re a young
man in your teens, you’ve got bags of energy and it didn’t seem to be any problem to go
up there. But what always amazes me is dress, if you look at old photographs and
compare to what people do now, I mean the average rambler’s walk starts at 10 o’clock
and they do 10 or 11 miles and that is considered to be a good walk, you know, a strong
walk. Finish at 4 and they have a break for coffee and tea. That would have been
considered very feeble, you know, you had a 12 hour day. You didn’t go in, you know, you
stayed out…From time to time, we used to shelter in the shepherds’ huts, or the huts that
they used for shooting, shooting cabins…
(Were they always open)
Sometimes they were open, sometimes not…do you know Bleaklow There’s a couple of
shooting cabins up there which are always open…Small Dale, Little Dale of something
they call it on Little Clough…no, Lower Small Clough and that’s nearly always open, but
most of the time…the other popular gear which we did have, which developed about that
time were cycling capes, the younger end had a cycling cape, I had a cycling cape. I didn’t
have a gortex jacket, but a cycling cape was the thing that covered up…
(What was that made of)
Oh, it was a thick, waterproof material and if you look at modern cyclists today, sometimes
they wear them. The problem with them, as far as walking was concerned, was getting
over walls and stiles, they were a bit of a nuisance…
(Were they quite long)
They were quite long, yeah three-quarter length, but if it did pour down with rain, you could
sit under it like a tent. And sou’westers…do you know what a sou’wester is They were
very popular…big yellow sou’westers. So there was some protection, but it was primitive
compared to what they have today…
(Did you go out all the time, throughout the year)
Yes, all the time, yes.
(It was just Sundays you went)
4

I’ll tell you why it was just Sundays, shall I You see, if you go back to the 1940s, during
the year, which probably seems like the Bronze Age to you, men only had Sunday off.
The men that were in this group, apart from Ward and one or two people who I suppose
you could consider were more intellectual, better educated, most of the men who were
working class men, not unintelligent, but not formally educated because they’d not had
chance to be formally educated…they’d come up the hard and tough way. And most, a lot
of them worked in the works, steelworks, which was very active in those days. They had
hard, physical jobs. So they worked 6 days a week, and on the seventh day they walked,
how on earth they’d got the energy to do it, I don’t know because they were up at 7 the
following day working in the steelworks a lot of them. So, Sunday was the day; I don’t
remember going out any other day but Sunday when I was a young man. It’s only when I
got older…when I joined the Ramblers, which was in the 1980s…when I first joined the
Ramblers, it was basically Wednesday and Sunday and now it’s everyday, you know, and
on a Wednesday, they quite often have 3 walks. But it’s quite different to what the other
walking [] used to be…
(Were there women that went as well)
Oh yes, quite often women went. In fact, some of them were tougher than the men! Reg
Dam’s wife…she was very tough and they used to go abroad a lot walking. And he said to
me one day, he said “The test of a man’s stamina is walking up a hill and still smoking a
pipe” and he did!… and he used to plod up these hills puffing away at his pipe… amazing.
You don’t get it at all now, no. The basic difference was, you know, you’d brew up and
that was the highlight of the day…Not many of them took rucksacks, mainly they had long
coats and sandwiches….boots certainly and certainly the odd little café.
(Were the cafes attached to farms They actually were in the farm buildings)
Yes, but I can remember, I’m trying to think of the name, not Priestley, there’s a wellknown
farming family and I think they’re still up there, to Alport Castles, that’s where we
used to go and, not Haythornthwaite.
(Did you go all over the White and Dark Peak)
No, basically, we were Dark Peak; basically we were Kinder Scout men …White Peak was
considered a bit pansy really. It’s only since the 1980s that I do the White Peak. Because,
although it presents its own problems, it doesn’t present the same problems as Kinder.
You see, one of the things you had to learn, you had learn to read a compass and you had
to learn to read a map and you had to be quite accurate, because that’s the only thing you
could depend on. Which is one of the reasons why we used to go as a group. Because
Ward was a good map reader and the leaders….you see they always appointed a leader
and …not only did they appoint a leader….This is like your typical [walk] … Oh, this is a
later one. This is ‘46…this is a 9.30 start, which turned by Fulwood Carr [] and so on. The
leader is CH [ TH] Ainsworth, I used to know and they’d do a whole day walk in detail
and you can still follow that on a map quite closely, and so on.
5

(Have you ever been stuck on the moors Have you ever got stuck up there)
Lost you mean
(Yes.)
Only when I used to go on my own! Oh, I’ve been lost many times, yes I have. But you
have to remember certain things when you’re on the moors…suppose you’re going up to
Bleaklow for example, it’s very easy to get mixed up between the west end and Alport
because the origins of them or the source are very close, up on by Bleaklow Stone. So if
you left your car somewhere else, you had a long walk!…you had to make sure...The basic
problem was mist of course, if the mist came down. But what you tried to remember was
to make for the streams and if you’re going downhill you’d eventually come off the moor
and get somewhere civilised, that was the thing to do. But it’s very tough walking country
up there, very tough. It’s very featureless. I mean, if you’re on…not Grindslow Edge, but
anyway…
(As soon as the mist comes down it’s featureless.)
Even if it’s broad daylight on the upland plateau, it’s pretty featureless, you know…even
coming across from Kinder Downfall to [the] top of Fair Brook which is only about 20
minutes, half an hour, about three quarters of a mile, you can easily get lost, or at least I
can! So yes, I’ve often been lost.
(You said trespassing was part of the excitement. Did that change for you when open
access arrived)
Open access was a long time…you didn’t get freedom to roam until about 2000. So it was
50 years…certainly there was a Peak Park formed, certainly it became easier because
there was certain parts you could walk on, but there’s still a hell of a lot of places you can’t
walk even today. And of course, you get National Trust and people like that who have
certain sections they don’t want you to walk. Well yes, once the gamekeepers were gone,
but then they were replaced to some degree by other types of people, National Trust
people who try to supervise it and the ramblers who have a series of rangers. They’re not
aggressive, of course, they’re there for the public good. But it wasn’t quite so exciting
once they’d gone. No, not really. But the whole of Kinder and Bleaklow offers an exciting
challenge really.
(Was Kinder the main challenge in that area)
Yes it was. Kinder was the one that was always talked about. Kinder was the one where
we spent more time on, yeah.
(Is that because it’s the most difficult peak, the highest)
6

Well…I think Bleaklow’s more difficult than Kinder, oh definitely, I do. And of course
Kinder’s been more…tamed if I may put it like that, with modern people…
(Paths)
Paths. I mean, there’s a hell of a lot of access now on Bleaklow and it’s not quite the
same. It has been tamed, but they’re both still very dangerous places, even today. And
certainly back then, because you see, you didn’t have any rescue services and that sort of
thing like you have today…But I think the basic difference today is that although there are
people who do long distanced walks and I’ve done them myself, as a day, as a weekly
event, it was the sheer mileage they did…If you look through these early books, the
average walk was 20 miles on a Sunday and the average time they’re out are 10 to 12
hours in all weathers.
(How many people would go on the walks)
It varied, but I think 15, 20 was about right, yeah.
(How did you all get out there)
There was very little private transport. The trams ran a great deal, if you look at the books,
you will see then went from Middlewood Terminus. Trains of course you know; they used
the trains to Hope Valley, when the trains before Beeching’s axe, were more adequate
than they are today. In fact, this friend of mine whose name was Priestley, he used to say
to me…and this was in 1940, it’s always been popular the Hope Valley. He said he used
to go out. He used to finish on a Friday and set off on a Friday night to have a weekend at
his sort of chalet or whatever he liked to call it in the Edale Valley. And he said the train
was filled you know but as soon as you got off the train, within 5 minutes you were on your
own; they‘d all disappeared. They used to make for the hotspots; they used to make for
Hope and to the pubs, you see.
I also had friends, this is the White Peak…they used to go out every weekend and
they were the parents of a friend I had and they never stayed at home. Friday, they were
off on the train and they used to go down the Manifold Valley and the first thing they did,
they went in a pub and they got themselves thoroughly sozzled. They did a little walk, and
then they used to find a barn, they didn’t pay anything. They used to find the nearest
farmer’s barn, wait ‘til the farmer had gone to bed, go into his barn, sleep in his barn all
night and hope to get out before he arrived the following morning, get out early, do a big
walk ‘til lunchtime, into the pub again and then come home. That was there weekend,
every weekend.
(That sounds such a great life! Apart from the possible angry farmer.)
Well, they did get caught from time to time, but I suppose they probably didn’t damage
anything, get away with it, get well known with certain people.
7

(Did you ever have any problems with farmers There are some upland farmers aren’t
there)
I personally have not had any trouble with farmers, although many of my friends with the
ramblers were very nervous of going to farms because they’d had bad experiences with
aggressive farmers. But I decided quite early on, from a friend…I used to go walking with
a much older chap and he was very wise and he said to me, “If you get into any trouble,
somebody challenges you, do you know what to do” , I said “Yes, run away!” He said
“No.”… No he said, “The first thing you do is to try and break the tension. The first thing
you do is you apologise, you say, ‘Look, I’m awfully sorry if I’m trespassing’”, he says,
“Whether you are trespassing [or not]…”, he says “It usually works like a charm; I’ve
always adopted that and never had any trouble”. When I was a ranger, I did a bit of
ranging, you see, I was a qualified ranger. And one of the things they used to talk to us
about was to deal with people with dogs. And they can be very aggressive and they…not
everybody would respond to a gentle approach, you know, they’d say “You can bugger
off”, you know, “I’m going to have this dog where I want” and you know, take no notice of
you and so on …but no I haven’t had any trouble with farmers, no.
(Did any of the ramblers take dogs with them)
Very rare it was do I remember dogs when I used to go, very rare. No, I don’t remember a
time. This became much more of a modern thing…It was developing in the 1980s when I
was walking with the ramblers. It got worse because we had to impose certain rules, such
as ‘dogs on lead always’. Because if you said ‘sometimes’ then people exploited that and
dog would run after sheep and things. They do allow dogs, what happens with the
ramblers now, it depends on the leader, but the ramblers’ organisation have a rule that
dogs should be on leads at all times, but if the leader said, “Well, you can let it off here…”,
you know, but then he becomes responsible if the dog bites somebody…Dogs are a
problem…One of the interesting things today to me is people have more than one dog,
more often than not, if there are 2 people there are 2 dogs and sometimes 3 dogs. How
on earth you control them, I don’t know. I personally wouldn’t want them…We had a dog
for years and years, but I think…I can see that if you go out by yourself a dog is a
companion, but it becomes a big responsibility and I think you’ve got to recognise that.
(Has the way the people used the moors changed in other ways Are there more cyclists
because I was quite interested to see some of the pictures of the Kinder Tresspass, there
are lots of bicycles everywhere.)
The main change that I’ve seen in my lifetime is…it’s become much more of an organised
playground than it was before. In the 1940s and the years I’m talking about hen there was
no access…it was wild and really was wild and tough country and you couldn’t rely on very
much except yourself. There were no cyclists. But now look at the whole range of things
you have, I mean it’s not just mountain bikes is it There’s off-roaders that are causing
problems on these lovely green lanes, there’s people who jump off mountains in a
8

parachute, there’s runners. The other basic thing that’s changed I think is this apparent
charity runs and charity walks, when 50 and 100 and 200 people are going out. I find
difficulty coming to terms with that, yes.
(Why do you find it difficult)
Well, it can spoil the very thing that you’re trying to enjoy. Because, when I was in the
rangers, they used to talk about ‘honey pots’, Edale being a honey pot and I can
remember before Fairholmes was developed as a honey pot, I was…apprehensive about
what would happen to Fairholmes and it has happened to a large extent. Because now….I
know this is a difficult problem, I know, but if you give people access, what do they want
They want somewhere to eat and they want toilets, it’s got to be tarmacaddamed, got to be
a parking place and the whole thing develops and develops. And Fairholmes is a
reasonable example of this because at one time, you could walk up onto the top above
Fairholmes and not meet anybody. Strangely enough people’s habits, the average
person’s habit, I don’t think has changed very much. They take a car and the average walk
is perhaps a couple of miles near to the car, the average walk, but nevertheless, the whole
aspect of walking, you see they have to create routes, they have to put waymarks and it
becomes much more of a playground and I think it takes a lot of the pleasure away from it.
(You like the wilderness)
I do, yeah. And I go along….with this idea, which a lot of people object to, that I don’t
believe in complete access everywhere, I just don’t. I think there should be areas kept like
the National Trust do, just away, keep the public away, you know and let the animals and
the wildlife develop…You’ve got to have reasonable access, but I think a reasonable
amount. I don’t go along with this idea that everything but everything should be
accessible, I just don’t.
(Did you see the moorlands degenerate People talk about the pollution there used to be
up there. Is that something you experienced)
I think the sheer volume of people that go into the Lakes, such as in the Lake District itself,
Wainwright’s influence for example, is one. Whether he would like what has happened
now or not, I don’t know. But it’s a catch 23 question really isn’t it because people are
entitled to enjoy the leisure, but it’s a question of how do you control it, how do you place
[pace] it You see, as soon as you got easier access to Kinder Scout and Bleaklow, you
got erosion and a lot people object to all that paving stone from the mills, you know, they
object to it; it’s like a walking M1, you know. I can see that unless you stop people going,
it’s got to come about because as put that in, the moors can go back to some sort of
semblance of beauty. So I don’t object to that; I think it’s the price we have to pay, but this
is why I say I don’t think everywhere should be because as soon as you open it up, the
public…not because they are destructive, you know, deliberately, but as a by-product of
that invasion, it imposes deterioration on the countryside, takes away a lot of the pleasure
of it. And this is one of the reasons I don’t particularly want to go on a walk and meet a
9

hundred people running over the moors in shorts, although I used to do it myself at one
time! No, I don’t.
(Did you used to go fell running)
Yes I did; I was a member of the Dark Peak Fell Runners.
(That’s hardcore!)
It’s hardcore, yes. I wasn’t a hard man … I used to go, I didn’t take it up until I was 40ish,
but I used to love running.
(Did you go in all weathers)
Oh yeah. Because, you see although it might appear to be crazy to a non-runner, you
could keep very warm, providing you had…the essence was keep your head warm and
your hands warm, apart from that you were okay. You could wear shorts and a singlet and
keep quite warm.
(I’ve got some friends that go fell running and I think they’re mad!)
Yes, I think I was mad; I did a lot of that. And I did marathons as well.
(Have you got favourite bits of the moorland in the Peak District)
Yes, I think I have…
[Tape stops]
Dark Peak Fell Runners used to organise various events, in Derbyshire and also in the
Lake District. And the hard men used to do all of them. I wasn’t a hard man, but I fancied
my chance in this particular race, which was in February usually, still held in February. We
used to meet as a group, about eight o’clock by The Nag’s Head and they used to fire the
pistol and off you went. It was 21 miles and you used to run up to Grindslow Knoll and
round and round and round and cross Jagger’s Clough, eventually make your way up to
Win Hill and at each of these places they marked you with a little spot. And then, after
you’d done that, you ran up into Lose Hill and then eventually you found yourself at the top
of Mam Tor and you continued round Kinder and dropped down into Edale. If you weren’t
at Lose Hill in 2 hours, they wouldn’t let you go on…And quite often I didn’t! Because I
was too old really; I was 40-ish. But I watched them for many years and they used to do it
in under 2 hours and it’s 21 miles and God knows how many thousand feet to climb….And
that was peanuts to what they used to do…So that’s one of my favourites. The other place
is around Lockerbrook around there. I’m not so keen on Black Hill, places like that. I quite
like it from Fairholmes…I quite like Barrow Clough. What I quite often did was park at…the
tree, you know, the tree at the end of Derwent moor and Derwent…and then I used to go
10

up to, walk up by the Derwent and go up to Barrow Stones, up to Grinah stones and up
there. So I like it up here, done a lot of walks up here….And I particularly like it round here
because Grinah Stones, you very rarely saw anybody and I often used to think when I was
up there, “ I hope the mist doesn’t come down, because I’ve had it!”. But I used to like it
there and all round here. So that’s Lockerbrook, Alport Moss is a favourite…I know this
very well…
(Has some of the forestry been developed in your lifetime)
Erm…I remember we had a meeting, it’ll be about 10 years ago now at Alport Castles
because they were wanting to chop down the forest there. Alport Grain is one of my
favourite walks and until fairly recently, that was fairly private…it’s a more pleasant walk to
go up on the top by the trig point …and then…I think they said that had been planted
about 60 years. So it’s a bit before my time. One of the things that we did do, going back
years…just under Alport Castles, at the bottom of Alport Grain, there’s a farm, remote
farm. When I used to go with the group, it was a farm, it was owned by a farmer, it was
actually farmed. Last time I was there was when we were doing this fight to preserve the
plantation, which they in fact did preserve it, because they wanted to develop it. I think we
felt it would have spoilt Alport Grain. And so in answer to your question, that forestation
had been there about 60 years, 70 years now,so it was a bit before my time. But yes, I do
remember them planting lots of forestation. I can’t remember, you know, it’s such a long
time ago. But that farm now is an adventure centre, I think. It’s some sort of place where
people go and pay…like an outward bound school, yeah.
(Are there any other settlements that have disappeared)
No, I don’t know anything of that. I used to think years ago that when I went to Alport
Castles, the whole thing would fall down because it’s the biggest landslip in Europe, but it’s
still stood, it still looks as though it’s going to fall down!…I don’t think…the war to some
extent caused a lot of damage… quite often they used certain areas for manoeuvres and
they used certain rocks for firing at but I don’t think in those terms there’s been very much
change. The biggest change has just been more and more erosion and what you’re doing
now is absolutely essential or else it’d just all have blown away wouldn’t it.
[Break in tape.]
The introduction of the ranger service, I think that’s made a big impact.
(What difference has the introduction of the Ranger Service made)
Well, I think it’s involved an organisation which has contributed a lot towards the
understanding of the countryside. It continually attempts to educate in the best possible
sense people’s idea of going into the countryside, you know, not leaving litter and that sort
of thing. And they bang on about those things and I do think it’s had an effect. It’s still not
had a complete effect because people are people and it probably never will, but it’s
11

definitely had a good effect generally. A lot of people don’t like people wandering about
with peak caps and uniforms and badges and you know, brings them out in prickles. But I
think it’s been a good thing. I think that’s been a significant change. It’s patrolled by
people who are very interested and love the countryside and I think it’s been a big
advantage. And I think this idea of educating people, I mean, the people I see generally
speaking are well-behaved, well-mannered and respect the countryside. But there’s
always been a minority and there always will be. Some of the mountain bikers are very
rude and violent, both on the trails and in the countryside. But the majority are not. The
off roaders are the worst thing…they, I don’t think, contribute anything. And I honestly
don’t see why they have to sit in a car riding through the country; it takes away everything
that is realistic about the countryside and they ruin it, there’s no doubt about that. So
those are very significant changes which you never used to see.
(So you never saw mountain bikes I suppose you didn’t have mountain bikes until
recently.)
Mountain bikes has only developed within the last 10 years because we used to have
meetings about it and I thought that the Peak Park would control them very much more
than they do, but they don’t, I mean, there’s been a lot of encouragement by the Peak
Park, you know, they’ve opened up a great deal to them. And providing they keep to these
routes that’s fine, but again many of them don’t; they go on private paths and footpaths
and cause problems. And the other basic problem is the mixture on the trails of walkers
and cyclists…I can’t understand why they don’t impose a legal warning for cyclist such as
a bell. I just don’t understand…they bang on about you should wear a hat when you’re
cycling and they’ve not made that law, but they will and I certainly think cyclists should
announce their approach, because many of my friends have got knocked down because
they can’t hear them.
There are significant changes and of course people have got…the other things is now, the
significant thing is that motor cars have made the countryside so much more accessible.
In the period that I’m talking about, in the war, and in the ‘60s, before it was a national
park, you hardly saw a motor car and if you wanted to get out, you had to use public
transport, and this was the trams, the buses and the trains. And you’ve still got a lot of
people, but you didn’t get the same number, so that’s a significant thing, the sheer volume
of people that go out now because it’s accessible. And again, you know, the danger is that
you’re destroying the very thing that you’re going to see, which is happening in the Lakes
all the time, you know, it’s a continual fight. And over the years, whether you like it or not,
there’s been a hell of a lot of publications made by interested people, the government, the
Peak Park, to encourage people to go out. I mean, we have, I understand, at the last
figures are somewhere about 22 million people going into he Peak Park. It’s a hell of a lot
of people, it’s bound to make a difference.
(You were talking about the ramblers. Were they all Sheffield ramblers that you knew
Were the Clarion from Sheffield)
12

Well the Clarion was the forerunner of the Ramblers I think I’m right in saying that the
Ramblers took over the Clarion; the Clarion was the earlier one…It was founded about
1910, I think, something like that.
(It might have been 1902.)
It probably was, it was 1900, first ramble on Kinder Scout was in 1900, which was even
before my time!
(Were there ramblers from elsewhere Manchester)
Oh yes, there’s always been very well-known groups of people; Manchester was quite a
famous one…Oh yes, we didn’t have it all to ourselves.
(Were there known shops that hikers would go to [for equipment])
Yes, there were well-known shops, many were advertised in here. Thomas and Taylor
was one of the ones in Cambridge Street. I think they may still be there and they had
boots and tents and rucksacks and that sort of thing, but they didn’t have the wide variety
of gear that is available today…If you go into Bakewell, there’s at least 6 or 7 out-of-door
shops, at least and there’s just opened another one and that includes [] and Yeomans
and Millets and you know so on and so on and so on. You’re amazed because you think,
“Where’s it all coming from”. Well it’s because people are coming in, because Bakewell’s
a popular place to walk from. You’ve got access to Baslow and all these White Peak
areas, so presumably they’re all making a living, but how they do it I don’t know.
(Did people go camping in the Peaks)
Oh yes, it was quite popular to go camping, yes, oh yes…
(I’m interested in whether the seasons have changed. We’ve just had a really deep
Winter this year. Did you have similar winters in the past)
From my personal experience and it’s just a personal point of view…I think 1947 was the
worst winter we’ve ever had, certainly the worst winter I’ve ever experienced. I would be
20 then. And it was a very long, hard winter with enormous drifts of snow. And whilst it’s
true there’s been bad winters, this one in particular’s been a very cold winter, you’ve not
had the volume of snow. The real killer in 1947 was its duration, it lasted a long time and it
was very cold and we had huge quantities of snow. Loss of sheep: I had a friend who
wasn’t a farmer, but he was a man who liked to think he was a farmer and he was out on
the moors during that time, digging sheep out, at the weekends, all the time…He had
friends who were farmers and he used to dig them out and carry them back to the farm…It
was hard work, yeah, but he was a toughie, he didn’t sleep out of doors, but he almost did.
He was sleeping in his bed with the window wide open. Another character.
13

(How long did the winter of ’47 last)
I can’t remember how long in terms it lasted, but it seemed to be here forever, you know, it
seemed to go on forever, people got very tired…If you want to find out the worst winter, I
think you’ll find ’63 was a bad one as well, but I don’t think it compared to ’47, I still think
’47 was the worst.
(Did you still go walking when the snow was down)
Yes, oh yes, there was no question of that. See, there again, we had walking sticks, we
didn’t have all this sort of posh gear.
(Were they just made out of cane)
Ordinary walking sticks, yes. Sometimes like a shepherd’s crook. But they all developed
since. Of course they did do walks in the White Peak…but my experience of it…and they
did sell rucksacks in 1947, so yes we did have rucksacks, but you know, I remember my
first rucksack was what they called a Bergen, which was like the Rolls Royce of rucksacks
because it had the Bergen badge on the back made in Norway you see…It was a very
innovative thing then because it had a frame. The frame was actually not built into the
rucksack, but it was outside the rucksack and it fitted to your back. Oh, I was very proud
of that. I had it for years. I wish I’d still got it…an antique.
(Do you remember getting your first gortex as well)
I can remember going into John Merrill’s shop in Bakewell. Do you know John Merrill
(No.)
Well, you must investigate John Merrill, he’s written dozens and dozens of books about
walking and he’s supposed to be the world’s biggest walker, not in the sense of…but the
number of miles. And, he was quite a character was John Merrill, married 2 or 3 times I
think. And he had a family business in Winster and I think he was involved with the family
business, but when I first knew him, which was donkeys years ago, he was a journalist,
then from being a journalist, he got interested in walking and he used to sleep out. He
used to test all the gear you see, personally, all the boots and everything. I remember
going to his shop; he opened an out of door shop in Bakewell, just on what is now,
Monyash Road, King’s Road just…I went in to see him and the shop was filled with all
sorts of beautiful gortex gear and John wasn’t a businessman at all and he wasn’t often
there, but this particular day he was and he came in and…”All right,” he said, very quiet
bloke. I said, “You’ve got some nice gear, all this new gortex that’s becoming very
fashionable…what do you think of it”, he said, “I don’t think anything about any of it. I
don’t like any of it!” I said, “You’re not going to sell much are you”. He closed the shop
after that.
14

No, but gortex has developed more and more hasn’t it...I got a booklet today from
[], the prices are extraordinary, you know 250 quid for a jacket. But they’ve sold the idea
to the vast majority of the public who don’t do anything more than walk round the Derwent
or they don’t go very high, they certainly don’t do mountain walking, so why on earth they
buy these great thick jackets I don’t know. It’s all money isn’t it
(Tell me about GHB Ward. How did you meet him)
Well I met him through the Clarion. He was very much involved with the Clarion. He was
the Clarion. He started it; I think he was a founder member.
(How old was he when you met him)
I think he was in his late 60s. He died when he was about 77, so I probably picked him up
on the last 10 years of his life. He was a very colourful, impressive man. One of the
things that he used to like to do, if you were out in the countryside and you met him my
accident, the thing that you did if you wanted to get on the right side of him was to say,
“Hello Mr Ward…do you happen to have the time on you”. And he’d very proudly reach
into his jacket, sort of jacketNorfolk jacket, and pull out this Hunter watch you see on a
lovely chain, [impersonating Ward] “A quarter to four…” or whatever time it would be. That
made it, you see! He had a slight…a very slight impediment in his speech, but he didn’t
detract from it; in fact it enhanced him as a lecturer. I have been to his lectures and these
little things [Clarion handbooks]…an absolute mine of information…how on earth he
found time to do it. Detailed, you know, he was a real scholar, a real clever man, no doubt
about that.
(What would you say were the most important things in those books to be republished)
I think they are a very important record of the geology and archaeology that is in
Derbyshire and a very important record of the struggle to enjoy. This is one of the things.
He epitomises and records the struggle of a certain group of people who were very keen to
have access and it was struggle, it went on for years.
(Everyone was very committed, weren’t they)
Everyone was committed, I mean, to some degree committed to have violence inflicted on
them and to go to prison. One of the famous ones went to prison, you know and when
they had that trespass walk, it was very dangerous for them. It wasn’t just academic
legislation that was there, they had to really work physically hard and to be very strong,
you know, like the growth of a union if you like...it has a history of violence; it has a history
of persecution; it has a history of disappointment and failure and they did, but they pressed
on. I think that group of people…the thing that to me is alive in that book and always will
be is the sheer dedication of those people as compared to people today…One of things
that I think is destroying England is this culture of care; there’s far too much care given to
people, far too much spoon-feeding them. They’re not allowed to think for themselves;
15

they’re not allowed to be themselves. I know you’ve got to have a basic medical and
educational system, but I think it’s gone far too far personally. That to me is the main
strength of that, coupled with the idea of showing you how a group of people could walk
physically, and do these physical walks and at the same time enjoy a hard working life.
And the other thing is, to get there, to these places, by public transport. It’s so easy today.
Every place has a car park and it’s easy to get in and get a couple of hours and, you know,
wonderful…
(Whereas then you had to get on the train…)
Yes, there was a lot of dedication and…this particular group, as far as I know, were 6 days
a week. Sometimes they worked just Saturday mornings, but generally speaking…Sunday
was their day.
(Were there other social things that went with the walking Like pubs)
Yes. You see, I was very young compared with them. I was only 14, 15, 16 years of age
at that time when I first started. Most of them would seem very old to me even then.
Some were in their 30s and Bert Ward was in his 60s and so on, so there were much more
middle aged men, so no, I don’t say they were all Methodist, but they had that sort of
attitude. They didn’t go round to pubs as far as I remember, no. The element that used to
go into pubs were described by, here, if you read them…they had a certain name for them,
not rowdies, but there was a certain expression that was used in the 1940s, which you
don’t hear now. For example, we call everybody ‘ramblers’, but that was unknown…they
used to call them ‘hikers’, not ramblers, but yes there was a rowdy element and it was
criticised by these people in the ‘40s, and during the war years, because they, as is normal
in any generation, the teenagers have a lot of energy and there always will be that sort of
person, we’ve got a problem with it now haven’t we, with drink And they used to
specifically go out to Hope because they could go and I won’t say terrorise the farmers, but
the farmers didn’t like it because they didn’t really go to walk that group of people, they
went to have a booze up…they were quite a distinct, different type of walker, they were
much more the adolescents. As they got older and got more sense perhaps they would
graduate to groups where they didn’t do it, but in every age…from 15 to 25, that’s the
group that’s, if they’re going to enjoy themselves freely, that’s going to be the time…before
they get married, settle down whatever.
(Were you involved in political actions Walks attended by the police)
No, I wasn’t no, no. I was too young I think.
(Was that all pre-‘40s)
It went on before the ‘40s and was beginning to become successful because if you
remember the Peak Park was formed 5 years after that, so most of the digging, most of
the growth, most of the foundation had gone on in the 1930s, when Bert Ward was a much
16

younger man and this, again, comes out. No, it was getting…There were various acts of
parliament passed…in a very formal way…You see, you got a tremendous resistance from
the landowners and in fact…when I was in the rangers, the only way that the rangers could
patrol parts of the Peak was by co-operation with the landowners, they owned, and still do
as far as I know, owned the land and they are paid, in fact, by the government or by the
rangers to allow them to be on their land, it’s all subject to approval….For all this talk about
access it’s still privately owned, no mistake about that.
17

Ray Platts: Interviewed by Tegwen Roberts
12 th April 2010.
Well, I’ve always been known as Ray Platts. I was born in 1922, which if my recollection is
correct was just when we went off the gold standard. Now it’s very difficult to really…I’ve
tried to tell my grandchildren what it was like, but no one’s any conception of what it was
like at that time. Everybody was frightened to death because, you know, the whole thing
had collapsed. They called in all the…sovereigns, half sovereigns. It was against the law
to keep them. People didn’t like this paper money. They thought it was valueless.
Anyone that had money, they couldn’t get it invested because no one wanted it. And if
they did want it, you got a very low interest rate. The best thing going at that time was the
Derwent Valley Water Board. Some local people ran it to get their money, but others lost it
on the stock exchange. So thing were very, very iffy at that particular time. My earliest
recollections were not very stable as far as the environment went and people who lived in
it, everybody was frightened and didn’t know what they were frightened of…very, very
difficult.
I was born at what was the farm at Hathersage, which belonged to Colonel
Shuttleworth, right in the village, it’s now a residence, opposite the what was the Station
Hotel and now is The Little John. We kept having land taken off us for building, I suppose
things were difficult for the landlord at that particular time and any opportunity he had to
sell land he sold it and the playing field at Hathersage where the bowling green, that was
our night pasture and of course he sold that off. It was bought by public subscription for
King George V’s Jubilee. I think that was 1935. I always remember, I asked Colonel
Shuttleworth how much they’d paid for it because I was interested because it wouldn’t be a
great deal; it’d only by about £20 an acre I suppose and I remember my father saying it
was half a crown for every house in Hathersage and reckoned that was a shilling for father
and mother and 6d for every child. That was how he worked it out, but of course, it was
only Hathersage that subscribed; it wasn’t Outseats. People were very jealous, they said,
oh they couldn’t join in. But they did eventually, like. They put swings and various things
on and I always remember we went the night before it should have been opened officially
by the parish council and they’d put thorns all round the slide and roundabouts and
everything so the seesaw was chained down and we moved all these thorns as we were
just nicely getting on the slide when they came and stopped us. But at that time
everything was shut on Sunday; nothing opened on Sunday and it was chained up, you
couldn’t go in the playing field on Sundays. It was closed. That’s another thing that has
altered.
(Where did you go to school)
I went to school at Hathersage. A Church of England School, which at that time was very
much, I’ll not say dominated by the church, but it was controlled by the church. We had a
service in assembly in the morning and another in assembly in the evening, a thing they
don’t have today. It brought the school together, I’m sure of that. When I started school in
infants, we had a slate. It’s be about…15 inches by about 8 I suppose and it had a
1

wooden surround on it. And on the top was 1 to 10 and down the sides were the alphabet
and that was what we had to learn. And we had a crayon, which was also slate, round like
a pencil and we wrote with that. And the schoolmaster, Mr Roden was very keen
disciplinarian, walked about with a cane under his arm and you got it for very little. Didn’t
matter whether you were infant or what you were you got the cane and I’ve known lads
been caned for not stepping off the footpath [to] let old people [pass]. And also if you
didn’t take your cap off, ‘cos we had a school cap, a sort of uniform and if you didn’t take it
off to old people and they reported you, then you were hauled in front at assembly and
given the cane. Later on we had…he was followed by Mr Newbury who again, very
forthright in thinking…he brought in the prefect system. We had elections to elect the
prefects. They were responsible for all sorts of things in the yard and taking us into
school. And he didn’t have a cane, but when he wanted to cane anybody, he gave them
money and sent them down to the hardware store for a cane. I’m sure he’d picked them
out beforehand. And so you saw these lads going back up to school, through the village
and everybody saying “Ah, you’ve got the cane”. That which I think was a worse
punishment than having the cane.
(How old were you when you left school)
I left at 14. Everybody left at 14 unless they went on to New Mills and only a very, very
selected few went on to New Mills. The infants was standards 1 and 2, then they went to 2
and 3. Then 3 and 4, which was Miss Royce, and then the headmaster took 5 and 6.
And…I can’t remember a lot about what happened in the infants. I know we had extra
window put in the building…and it was very cold and no extra heating was put on. And
they didn’t move us out of the classroom, so we watched the builders at work putting this
big hole in the thing… of course it wasn’t until late on, they had a collection and had the
school yard tarmacced, previous to that it was just earth and occasional stone here and
there. And I know once when it was very frosty weather and lads used to go back at night
and put water down so we had a good slide next day. And the slide had worn through and
‘course me having me boots on, I was delegated to make a new a slide and hit the wall
and knocked myself out. Everybody was laughing until my eyes disappeared, then they
thought it was serious!
(Tell me about your father’s farm. What animals did he have)
We…were much more self-supporting on the farm in those days. My father…he was born
at Nether Hurst Farm at Hathersage of course. My grandfather, he farmed Upper Hurst,
Nether Hurst and Thorpe Farm. And my father’s brothers, eventually one went on to
Nether Hurst, one went on to the Thorpe and my father was left at home on Nether Hurst
and I remember…sometime during the Great War, the ‘14-‘18 War and I can’t remember
which winter it was, but he said he ploughed over 100 acres of what we call ‘lay’, that was
from grassland. Now, an acre a day was a good day’s work and I often thought it must
have been a very, very good winter that ‘cos it’s 100 days out that he could plough. And
they had a lot of horses. They had 17 brood mares, which kept the foals and broke them
in. And he also bought ponies and other foals and because he was breaking about 20
2

horses a year ‘cause having sons at home and he had what we call arable, mare fallow,
always something for them to do. And the tales he could tell about breaking horses was
nobody’s business…When we were at home we had a very good mare and I didn’t realise
‘til afterwards it was one that not only had they bred that, but they’d bred its mother and
grandmother. And it was one of these that they knew each and he only need to speak to
it, tell it exactly where to go, you know, and it didn’t need a line when it was ploughing. I
suppose looking back, it was a wonderful, wonderful horse. And I remember when it got
poisoned by eating acorns and the vet couldn’t do anything for it and it had to be put down.
Father wouldn’t stop [to] see it put down. He asked a neighbour to come and look at it and
he went out of the way. Very sad that day.
(What cattle did you have)
Well, they would be short horns in those days. You didn’t milk so many because…you
delivered in the village, twice a day and of course, difficulty getting paid for it if people had
it. A lot of people, you know, they’d had half a pint in the morning and half a pint at night
and then say the cat had drunk it and it were your fault ‘cause they’d left the [basin]
out…You got all sorts of tales to try and get out of paying. So to get any money at all,
enough to pay the rent was very, very difficult. There used to be a fella came round in
March buying what we call store cattle that were cattle that were finished later on. And of
course it was a gift to people because he paid money and they could pay the rent with it,
but of course, for him, he left them on the farm ‘til May, Hope Fair was always on 13 th May,
then he would get you to take them there and they’d make him about twice what he'd
given for ‘em. But of course there was nothing you could do about it if you hadn’t got your
rent money you were turned off; there were no appeal or anything, you were just turned
off, so that was it.
(Do you know how much the rent was)
How much rent was…It would be somewhere about 7/6 an acre, I think. You see…after
the Great War things went…you had inflation and the of course the slump came and I
heard my father…I often said to him, “Why didn’t you get out”, you know, “Why did you
let,… stick there”. “Well,” he said, “I’ll give you an idea” he said “When I’d got a barren
cow which I more or less done with,” we might call it a fat cow, but it was ready for the
butcher, and he would take it to Bakewell market. Well, of course he had to milk the cow,
take the milk round in the village, the walk it to Bakewell Market, and of course, when it
sold he walked it with a push bike and push biked home. And then he had to milk cows
and take milk out again for the night. Well, of course he let his cow go. He said they had
been making £80 a head and the cows that day, they were 60 and he let it go. Now there
was a man called Outram, that lived at Grindleford and he got 2 and he said he wasn’t
selling his. And he said, well me father pointed out to him that he had to get home and he
said, “Well you could let me take it home with mine”. Anyway that was how it was. Well on
the Wednesday, was Hope Fair and Outram took his 2 up there and they came to 60, that
was from the Monday and he took them home again. Took them to Bakewell the following
Monday and they came to 40. That was how quick it came, yeah. So, of course, there
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was nothing they could do about it and it incurred a lot of hardship. And I remember there
was a young couple, Hathersage people, married and they were hit very hard. He couldn’t
get a job…Nobody had any money to employ them and they had 2 little boys and my
father was giving them, I don’t know whether it was a pint or a pint and half of milk a day
because that was all they were living on and they said they couldn’t afford and he said,
“Well, we can’t let the little kid die.” And…we weren’t living in luxury, you know, if you had
bread and butter, and the butter was what you’d made out of milk you couldn’t sell, that
was it, you didn’t get bread, butter and jam. If you had bread and jam, that’s what you
had, no butter on it. The jam was mostly rhubarb and gooseberry, it wasn’t anything to
write home about, just something…you know.
(Your mother made that)
Oh yes…She used to bake once a week and she would make 8 loaves, but you couldn’t
eat the bread the first day, it had to be a day old before… or said it’d make you ill. Now
bread won’t keep 8 days now, so…there were some difference to it then. It was all the
Yorkshire range and you had to put what we call oven sticks these were mostly material
that’d been taken out of old fences and they were cut up into lengths of about a foot and
pushed under the oven. And of course there was an art in getting it to the right heat and
then keeping it there or letting it die out as they wanted it. And there was a water boiler at
the side…that was all the heat we had. That was all the hot water we had. And I
remember you had to fill it from the kitchen tap, and then later on my father, he got the
plumber to come and put a pipe in so we turned it on and it filled up, which was marvellous
until somebody forgot to turn it off and flooded the kitchen, which they were not very
pleased about. And I often think now when I get up in the morning and I turn the water on,
you know it’s nice and hot. You used to get up at 5 in the morning and the fire was lit, the
kettle was filled and put on. It’s be 2 hours before the kettle boiled, before the fire was
burnt up enough to boil the kettle before you could have a cup of tea. And then of course,
you didn’t use it for washing; you washed in cold water. You always washed in cold water
because there were no hot. And I think about it this morning, I think well, “At least I’ve
moved the right way”.
(What other animals did they have on the farm)
We had a few sheep, not many; I think about 14 I think. We shared a ram with a
neighbour and we clipped his feet. I always remember when I left school and clipping
sheep on a hot day, bending down, it was a back killer. And they’d say “Oh, you’re young,
you can do it”. That’s all the sympathy you got. Same when you were hoeing turnips or any
other green crop. It was a back breaking job, and always a long way to the floor for me
unfortunately.
(You are tall.)
Well, I had pneumonia. I wasn’t too tall until I had pneumonia when I was 15 and I… I
mean, at that time there was only one…you had a big piece of cotton wool, a hole cut in
4

for your head, was put down your back and your chest, fastened with 2 tapes at the side
and it was always plastered with what was then antiphlogistine. Later on it became kaolin,
but that was the only thing they did for pneumonia, plus keeping you warm and putting you
a fire in the bedroom. And it went on weeks and weeks and weeks this and then we got a
young…doctor, he came to help Dr Olbrook and I never forgot because he came and I
thought about it many a time. He gave me mother about 6 round tablets. They’d be about
¾ of an inch across. White. And he said, “Here. Give him,” I don’t know, he said, “2 of
these a day. Take all the clothes off him. Just leave him with a sheet on and open that
bedroom window. Put that fire out. Of course it was M&B a forerunner of one of the
sulphanilamide drugs. Well, of course, we didn’t know that. She must have tremendous
faith in this young doctor to do it. Within about 10 days I was up, but in that time I’d grown
6 or 8 inches while I’d been in bed. So no clothes would fit me. Well, I didn’t get new
clothes but I got ‘em altered.
(Tell me about moving to Bamford.)
1943 we came to Bamford...it must have been a good winter because Mr Croston that
lived here, he said if we liked, we could have one of his lofts and we could put our small
tools and things if we’d like to bring them up and put them in there, and they’d be
alright…And I spent all winter bringing the haymaking machines and everything, you
know…so when it came to Lady Day, we only had the stock to bring. He left no fodder at
all; he’d used his hay up, used everything up. So we kept whatever hay we had at
Hathersage; we didn’t sell it and we brought it up here to feed the cows. But it was quite
something…he was getting on…he was getting towards retiring age. Two men worked for
him. Both of them were going to be called up. One had gone and the other was liable to
be called up. So of course he said he wasn’t going to carry on; he couldn’t carry on, he
hadn’t got a son and he said to my father, “Well, you come and take it off me”. And of
course at that time it belonged to the Duke of Norfolk. And father said, “Well, what will the
landlord say” And he says, “I’ll have a word with him”. And the landlord agreed and or
course we came straight away, within about 6 months. So that’s how we arrived up here
and he…he came from Retford, he was a ploughman, well an arable man, not a
ploughman; he couldn’t plough for toffee. And he ploughed and ploughed and ploughed
the fields ‘til they wouldn’t grow anything. And I remember someone saying to my father, “I
don’t know why you’ve gone there,” he says, “The land’ll grow nothing”. Me father says,
“There’s nothing matter with the land, what a bit of good husbandry won’t put right”. And,
of course, he ordered a lot of lime; he said it was short of lime. He order 100 tonne
straight away and then every day that we were not doing any other work, I was sent with
horse and cart to cart and spread this lime. And I was doing about 10 tonne a day,
shovelling it into the cart and spreading it. And as soon as I’d done this 100 tonne, he
ordered another 100 tonne and I wasn’t very chuffed about it!
(Who started the beef herd)
You see, we’ve kept keeping more cows as the land’s got better we’ve kept more cows
and more cows. They’ve 140 on at the moment. When we came here, the man had 17,
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now that just shows you what a difference things can make. I know we’d no arable
whatsoever, but…all sorts, a few beef and a few sheep and a few pigs and a lot of hens at
one time. Anything, you know, whatever we tried to make a living out of.
(And that developed into the prize herd)
Ah… my only brother, he was in the air force. He was up at Wick in Scotland and he used
to go, of course being a farmer’s son, on to local farms and he was telling me how good
the Ayrshire cows up there were and how well they milked and he said, “You ought to try
some”. So I persuaded my father and we went to a sale at Stokesley because there was
some Ayrshires advertised there and some had been bred from short horns, but some
were pure. And we bought 6 calves and a cow. Now this cow, she were only a young cow,
but with us she had 13 calves, I never forgot it because she had 3 sets of twins and she
gave quite a lot of milk. So we sort of started changing from short horns onto Ayrshires.
What I used to do when my father retied, I used to sell my non-pedigree heifers, I’d
probably sell 6 or 7 then go up to Scotland with the money and buy 2 or 3 pedigree heifers
and I was very fortunate in so far as I found a fellow who was an honest man, really and I
used to buy these heifers off him about 3 month before they calved and then they’d come
down and settle nicely before they calved and I could always get more out of them than
what he could get out of them. I think he learned something off of me as well as me off
him. And I went up there originally to buy a bull that he’d advertised. And it was just
outside Ayr itself, a little place called Maybole. And he’d 2 bulls and then he showed us a
nice dark bull that was going to Kenya, but he said they’d got a lot of problems with the
tsetse fly there and we’re not sure whether we can get an import licence. So I said, “Well
how much would you take for this bull”, and he, well at that time good cows were £20 and
a pedigree cow be about 40 or 45, a good one, very good one 50. Well, he said, he might
take £200. Well that were a lot of money, a lot of money. Anyway, when I came home I
told my father, I said, “It’s a lovely bull” and I think he must have thought I was mad
because he said, “Go on then, buy it”. Well it came down and the first lot of calves we had
off it, we’d 40 some bulls and 3 heifer calves. That’s all we had first year. And second year
wasn’t much better, I think we’d only 5 heifer calves and me father said, “You know, that
bull’ll ruin us; we ought to sell it”. And so we let it go to [the] butcher and it was just the
opposite way round. We got over 50 heifer calves and no…so it was that year’s crop of
calves that really set us up. It was great pity that he hadn’t done it year before because
we’d [have] kept him 2 more years. And since then of course I went back, buying heifers
and I bought bulls up there and at one time, I mean, the herd, it went back to about 6 or 7
cows, which…we culled the others out. So it’s been a long, long process.
(Did you sell milk to Sheffield)
Oh yes, of course when we came here, we had a milk round in village, but we were
making more milk than that and it used to go on milk wagon to Sheffield to…Chatsworth
Dairies at that time, at Broadfield Road. It was bottled there and sold in Sheffield itself.
And I remember one time, we used to get short measure and couldn’t make it out…If we
filled the churns absolutely full, we didn’t get short measure, but if we had 2 churns that
6

were not full, you know milk fluctuated, we got short measure. Couldn’t make it out at all
and…I said to the county secretary if he knew about this and he said, “Well, if you’re sure
we’ll go and see them”. So off we went to see them and they said…well they couldn’t
explain it. “Are you sure” I said, “Yes, I’m certain about it”. They showed us the scales
and they had them checked by the weights and measures people and they were alright.
And so I said, “Well there’s something wrong somewhere”. So they asked the weights and
measures people to go and check again and they did and they said they were alright.
Well, I still wasn’t satisfied. So I went back to weights and measures and I said, “Well,
how do you check them And he said, “We put weights on and check that way”...You see
these scales weighed up to 100 gallons. And I said “Do you take it right up to the 100
gallons”. “Oh no,” he says, “if we take it half way we think we’ve done enough.” I said,
“Ah, well, that’s where it’s going wrong”. And they did then, they checked it right through
and they found out it was wrong. Well, of course, everybody then wanted to jump on the
bandwagon and wanted take ’em to court and they were going to do all sorts of things.
And I said, “Well, we’ll get nothing that way about. They’ll get fined and we shall get
nothing.” I said, “If we can get compensation for the milk they’ve taken, we’re a lot better
off”. And eventually that prevailed and they did work out a system whereby they paid us, I
don’t know whether it was too much or not enough, but at least we got something out of it.
(Did the milk go on the cart or by train)
No, it went…a wagon came round; a chap called Pheasey used to come round and collect
it. He came from Ashford and during the summer, of course all the top limestone [lands]
up round by Sheldon and there, there was no water up there. So when he got back from
collecting and taking the milk out, he would draw up again then sheep wash at Ashford, fill
all the cans up with water and cart it up there. I think he made money, a lot of money
carting water, more than he carted milk in dry times!
(You can’t remember the train coming)
No I can’t remember the train coming. I remember me father saying it made the biggest
difference to this valley than anything that ever happen. Because he said before the train
came, time didn’t matter. People that lived within the village and heard the church clock,
some of them worked to the time. But people outside the village, he said, worked to their
stomach. And he said….you came home when you were hungry. But he said another big
change…at one time, you could cross from one side of the valley to the other anywhere.
And then when the railway came you couldn’t; you had to walk round, big diversion. He
said there were a lot of people crossing the line, several got killed. And it took ’em a while
to settle down on it…They said that Pashley at Bradwell, who ran a service from Bradwell
down to Hope station with a pony and trap, when first it opened, he was coming down with
these people and the train drew out of Hope Station as he turned in to go into the station.
And he said, “You won’t last long it you don’t wait for your customers”. ..So it made
everybody be punctual, which was a thing that hadn’t happened before.
But I remember me father saying, when they built the Westminster Bank, that was at the
time…before they went off the gold standard…he said the butchers used to come round
7

from Sheffield buying cattle when they were short of sheep and they’d have 2 or 3 men
with them and drive them back. And this chap had been up to Edale and he’d bought
some stock and he wanted to give them a cheque, well they didn’t like the idea at all,
they’d always been used to sovereigns. Anyway, he talked them into having this cheque
and told them they could take it down to the Westminster Bank and there they’d give them
sovereigns for it. So, they said “alright”. So they took this cheque and he took the cattle
and when the son came home, mother said, by that time her and the father had talked it
over and, anyway, mother said to this lad, “You get off down the road and catch up with
Mister so-and-so and you ask him where he gets one of these little books from”. She
thought it were a wonderful idea.
(You’ll remember Mr Hancock then, in the shop)
Oh yes, he started taking paraffin up to the reservoir and Mrs Hancock she was a
wonderful lady and I remember going one morning with the milk and it had been ever so
cold and I said, “My word Mrs Hancock, haven’t you been cold during the night” “No, I’ve
been lovely and warm” she said. I said, “Oh that’s good”. She said, “I have 2 electric
blankets, one over me and one under me and I have them both switched on”. And she
said, “I’ve been lovely and warm”. And I said, “Mrs Hancock, aren’t you afraid of getting
electrocuted” “What a lovely way to go!” she says. Never forgotten it!
(Did they live at Knowle House then)
No, they lived on [] Lane when I knew her…I just remember him as an old man, not
particularly being so active as he had been…When I were a kid, they still talked about the
Boer War as though it was yesterday. Even Mafeking and all. They knew exactly which
day it was on. We had half a day holiday for Empire Day and we had about 3 half day
holidays for things like that and nowadays they’re not recognised.
(How did you meet your wife Dorrie)
How did I meet Dorrie She came to work at Hathersage, William [Deakin’s ] bank when
she left school. They were Derwent, then they went to Glossop because they couldn’t get
the farm at Derwent and they came back to Garner House. And then she left school and
got a job down there…So I saw her when I was biking one way, she she’d be biking the
other way and we got to know each other. It was wartime, we were going to dances and
got to know each other. Really, the war broke out when I was 17, finished when I was 23.
It took the best years out of my life.
(And took your brother George.)
Oh yes, and a lot of friends too. There were very few left when I got back at the end of the
war, very few. And now you wonder what it was all about, whether it was worthwhile…I
remember….There was a programme on the television about the zeppelins. Now I
remember the German Zeppelins, 2 of them that crashed and then the R101 that was
8

either struck with lightning or…it was tied up to whatever it called it and it set on fire.
Whether it was lightning set it on fire or whether it had a short circuit I have no idea, but I
remember that. I remember the what-you-call it getting burnt down…the Crystal Palace. I
remember that being in the ‘paper and I remember Amy Johnson going on her solo flight to
Australia because we followed it on the atlas in school.
(Can you remember the planes crashing on the moor)
Oh yes. We were getting bracken one day on the moor and this plane came over very
low, tut-tut-tut-tut-tutting, and then there was a crash and we set off. Well it’d travelled
about another mile and a half by the time we got there. Anyway, a young fella was dead
by time we got there. It wasn’t on fire or anything so of course we came back and reported
it.
(Why were you collecting bracken)
Why For bedding. We’d no straw you see. What little straw we had was all the straw we
also used it for feeding, so we kept bracken. We used to go in August. At that time you
could go up on Stanage and there’d be no one up there, not a soul. And you could spend
all day, and the skylarks, grouse, lovely it was. And my father as a child got his nose
broken carting bracken because they used to cut a bough, load it on to it…and then [] it
out with a horse and he was riding on this and got thrown out and landed on his nose on a
rock and it broke his nose and of course they didn’t bother about it, they just left him, so
he’d always a broken nose.
(I didn’t know you collected bracken for bedding)
Yes and, of course, they liked it to get what we call weathered, in other words, they liked it
to rain on it because if it got green and then the cattle ate it, of course, it was poisonous to
‘em. But for horses it was very good and we used it for calves strangely enough and you
made it into a stack and the dogs’d always run round one way, then run round the other
way to act as a sort of brush for them. By the time winter was over they’d got quite a [run
of everything].
(You went up to Derwent)
No, we went up on Stannage. There used to be some good beds of bracken up there. You
couldn’t cut it every year because it weakened it. You’d cut it about every third year, but in
a different place each year. You had to get the permission of the gamekeepers, of course,
to go on their patch.
(Was it strange coming to Bamford or did you know everyone)
Well, not really. I remember Mrs Burns saying, “Oh, you’re not Bamfordites, you never will
be”, …my father he’d only been born half way between Hathersage and Bamford and I had
9

an uncle lived in Bamford – “Don’t belong to Bamford ‘til you’re third generation buried in
churchyard”. But there’d only be about 5 cars in Bamford when we came in ’43. I don’t
know how many there are now. And I remember in Hathersage there used to be 2 cars.
One belong to Miss Mills who lived in the Cannonfields, and [who had] a carriage built
there…and there was a solicitor came out from Sheffield and he built a house up the dale
and he put a garage on it…Oh and, the criticism there was in Hathersage for him building
a house with a garage! I mean everybody that got married had to live in rooms until they
could afford to pay rent, then they rented the rooms out. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, and
one pump that was before the garage was built at Hathersage…One pump Mr Rampley
had down Barnfield and one of those pumps where they pumped it up by hand into a glass
jar and read it off then let it siphon off by gravity. Miss Mills was filling up with petrol and
coming out of Cannonfield there when this chap was coming on… he’d got a Bentley and
he hit her…hers was a Morris Dickie Seat [] He hit Miss Mills and turned her over onto
her side. She scrambled out and she says “What are you doing” she says. And he said,
“I’m on the main road,” you know. And she said, “Everyone knows that I come out of here
at 11 o’clock on a Friday morning”. [Laughs] How things change.
…Earls had very big, what they call [scannals]. Some said 40 ton, but they were a
danger. They were driven by coal and stream and they had like a steam engine, they had
a lad with them to stoke the fire up and a driver. And one went off the road on Grindleford
Road [by] the quarry there and into the river and the driver was killed, lad from Bamford
here. They were only driven by a chain and they had solid tyres, they were
dangerous…lethal really.
(What were they used for)
[To] cart cement. When first they started at cement works. And Hadfields they had a
quarry at the side of Earls’ quarry and they used to cart stone. And at Hathersage there,
where the brook is, we used to make a little dam for them because they always got to
there and wanted to fill the water thing…put the pipe in and draw the water out…in the
brook there.
(Now the farm at Hathersage is a house)
It’s a house, yes. I called there years ago because Dorrie was alive then and she wanted
to go and do some shopping and I said, “Well, I’ll just have a look at the farm”. And I
walked up and I was looking at the farmyard and this lady came out and she said, “Can I
help you” and I said, “I was born here and I was just interested.” “Oh, do come in,” she
said, I want you to tell me what it was like, so I was telling her all about it. Of course they’d
modernised it terrifically. Well, “the front door”, I said, “There was no wood jambs to it; it
just fitted against the stonework and it blew a gale through there!” She said, “Oh yes, it
still does!” The back kitchen, it had a stone sink in and it had a…copper, which you had to
light on a Monday morning to do the washing. And in those days, everything got boiled.
Nowadays, nothing gets boiled. I wonder sometimes, all this asthma that’s going about, if
that has something to do with it.
10

I was thinking the other day about the war…with being young it didn’t have the
same effect I suppose on me as it did on my father…Dunkirk, they brought I don’t know
how many…but we took 2 soldiers. Dumped on us, well I don’t suppose they were
dumped on us. All they wanted was somewhere for the night and then next morning they
were gone again…the WVS I suppose it was, was looking after them. These lads…one
had no shoes and neither of them had got a gun and…you know those little gaiters they
wore He’d only one and he gave it me and he says, “We shall be kitted out when we go
from here”. Which they would be. Then they had a roadblock on the bottom road where
the old tip used to be…had a lot of old cars and you had a chicane there. And I remember
coming back with the eggs one day with me father and these soldiers told us “Stop” and I
kept riding past and me father shouted at me to stop. He said, “We’re in a different game
now to what we used to be”…When I was in the home guard at Hathersage, but when I
came up to Bamford, it was just at the time when they was forming a separate platoon at
what they called headquarters, that was for the battalion. They wanted 2 people from
each company, that was each village, to join this. So me being an outsider come in, they
volunteered me straightaway and a chap called Reggie Morgan, who was another
chap…he’d come from the south coast out of the bombing because of his wife’s health and
he’d taken a job with the water board. Anyway…we were riding about, dispense with our
rifles, we got sten guns and ammunition. We used to down the fields shooting rabbits.
(Where did you meet)
We met at Stoke Hall…our job…we had to blow all the bridges up, if old Hitler had come
our job was to blow all the bridges up and we didn’t have dynamite, we had
gelatine…gelignite rather. Of course, you kept it a while it’s very unstable. And we used
to carry it…cut a long pole and carry it between 2 people on the theory that if one dropped,
fell, the stuff wouldn’t hit the ground and blow us up. The chappie that was our
commanding officer, he’d been in the First World War and, of course, he’d been a
sapper…he taught you how to make the stuff blow where you wanted it to blow, rather
than take its easiest way out…I said, the other day, “I’d like to go and look at some of
these old bridges, particularly that old railway bridge on Bamford Road where we took
some stones out of it so we could put the gelignite in, whether they’ve ever been put back”.
(What other bridges would you have blown)
Hathersage Road Bridge, one against the station, and the iron one. Then that one at Hill
Fort and then when we came here, the most difficult one we had was that steel on at the
back of the…caravan site. That was the most difficult as there were nowhere where it
would blow where you wanted it to blow. We could do that one against station, that was
easy, but it took us a long time to work out how to blow that one.
(Ladybower wasn’t built then.)
11

No, well it was, it finished in 1945. And we had an invitation. That was just before our
wedding…King and Queen came to open it and we got an invitation to snitch [] on the top
there.
(So you remember Derwent being flooded)
Oh yes, I mean it took two years to get anything like and then we had a wet winter and it
filled up pretty well. And the spire was sticking out for years. They didn’t want to take it
down, because it got unstable. They took it down then. Oh yes, I remember cycling down
to Ashopton Inn in the bottom In fact one of those pillars that comes up for the bridge,
they made it so close to the kitchen window that they couldn’t open the window.
Every time there was a bit of a flood, planks and all sorts of stuff used to come
down the river. And they used to come and collect them and take them all back again.
(What jobs did your mother do around the house)
Well…she used to make all her own chutneys, all her own jam, floor / furniture polish,
things like that…
(Candles)
No…not commercially, you know, she could make candles because…but not
commercially. Hancock’s shop was only just across the road. I tell people the reason I
have a fairly reasonable memory is because she always said you should remember one
thing each year of your age. So if you were 7, you should remember 7 things when you
went to shop, you should never write them down. So if you forgot one you had to go back
again, or if you bought half a pound instead of a pound, you had to take it back and
change it, so it improved your memory.
(Did she make butter)
Yes, we had 2 butter-making churns. One was a small glass one that held probably 4
pints of cream and the other was a great big pot, well, whether it was a bread pot or what it
was, I don’t know. On top was a wooden lid with a hole in the middle and it had a sort of
thing that you used to use for [washing clothes] and that type of thing and you banged it
up and down until it finally decided to make butter. Sometimes you’d a lot, sometimes
you’d a little…even if you’d a little, you’d try to sell it. If you couldn’t sell it, she’d use it for
baking or whatever. There was no freezer on those days, no fridge or anything like that,
so it were either sold to [] and used that way or it was wasted, but we didn’t waste much
in those days. If it went rancid, you still had it to eat.
(Did you keep it on marble)
Well, the benches were stone…
12

And they pickled eggs, at spring you had plenty of eggs and then, back end when the hens
were malting, people who were having a dozen eggs a week got down to three. So when
there was plenty they used to sell the eggs and they used to pickle them in what we used
to call isinglass and they was alright. They could use them for baking; they were not much
use for anything else, but for baking they were alright.
(What would you have had for breakfast)
Homemade, home-cured bacon, which in those days, if it had any lean in it, it was
although you’d drawn it with a pencil, it was so thin. We used to have it boiled sometimes.
I remember how nice it was when the mint was ready in the spring, you could have some
mint sauce with it and it cut the fat a little bit. When you killed a pig, you’d plenty of all
sorts of things…of scraps and the bits that were left after they made lard and then they’d
make pork pies and you’d have what we called the fry, that was the best bit out of the loin
and then it was cut up and salted and the [flitters] were hung up in the kitchen, and the
hams ‘til they were dry and then they were, well ours were left in the kitchen; some people
put them away in the corn loft and that sort of thing, but ours were left in the kitchen. And
then you just cut a piece off when you wanted it. Not like, my father said, when they were
brought up, it was all rye bread, no wheat, all rye bread and this was hung at the top of the
kitchen and you couldn’t cut it; you hit it with a walking stick and broke pieces off.
(What did you eat with the bacon An egg)
When there was egg. Very rare. No mostly you’d get plenty of fat with it to dip your bread
in. Mostly that was what it was.
(What was your midday meal)
Midday meal Well, we’d have a joint on Sunday and it would last most of the week. And
then you’d have potatoes with it and…cabbage…whatever was in season. We grew
cabbage, we grew, what was the [mangle] field, we used to put a few peas in, but a few
beans in and that sort thing. Sometimes they made something, sometimes they didn’t
because of course it would depend upon the season, whether it rained at the right time,
whether it didn’t, but we’d always got potatoes, always potatoes. And then at tea, it was a
bread and jam job, or bread and butter.
(No cake)
No cake, no you didn’t see cake! We didn’t get cake on a Sunday. I remember my father
saying the only time they got cake was when it was either a bank holiday or Christmas.
And when he was in his teens and he went to a dance with a friend of his and they came
home to this lad’s house, stopped on the way and this lad says, “Will you have a drink”
And he made them a cup of cocoa and he said, “I think we’ve some cake somewhere”.
And he opened this tin and they’d got a brand new cake and cut wedges off this cake and
they ate that. And then he said, “Come on, have some more”. Dad said he thought this
13

was alright, 2 pieces of cake and then he wanted him to have some more and he said, “Oh
I mustn’t eat some more” And this lad said, “We’ve gotta finish it. If we finish it, she’ll be
saying ‘I’m sure I had a cake somewhere’, where if we leave it, she’ll know we ate it!”
(What was Christmas like)
Christmas, well for us children, although we lived in a village and we had certain friends as
would come and play on the farm, people were very selective. It’s very difficult to explain
nowadays, but you see, in a village, if you got the wrong side of people, you were out of
society as you might say. When you were in business, you couldn’t afford to be out of
society, you had to keep in with everybody, so we were never allowed out on the streets or
anything like that, never. When it came to Christmas, we had a stocking, which would
have the usual, probably a sweet in it and maybe an orange. Apples for some reason or
another were very scarce. I remember at school, if someone brought an apple, everyone
wanted a bite at it or a piece o’t core or something. It was very treasured an apple, but
don’t ask me why. The only time I saw apples was when we had them on our tree and
they were that sour, they were difficult to stomach. You’d get a toy of some kind, I mean as
I got older I remember I had Meccano, which I got a lot of pleasure of out making various
things with it. Bits added each Christmas I think. Then one Christmas I got a…a golf club,
my brother had one and I had one and a cousin of mine came and we were out in the field
playing golf and he wanted to have a stroke and I lent him mine and of course he wouldn’t
give it me back. And in the end I went to take it off him and he swung and he hit me right
in the eye with a golf club. And I had…still got the mark under my eye where I had stitches
in it. And I was about 3 weeks or more before they knew whether my sight had gone. I
always remember that.
14

Peak Park Rangers Interview by Tegwen Roberts.
13 th May 2011 at the Ranger Briefing Centre at Fieldhead, Edale.
First Interview.
(General discussion around filming of Coronation Street in the Peak District.)
(This is an oral history recording for the Moor Memories project. It’s 13 th May and we’re at the
Ranger Briefing Centre at Fieldhead, Edale. The interviewer is Tegwen Roberts and Lynne
Fox is also present.)
First Track:
(If you’d all just go round and say a bit about who you are and what you did in the Ranger
service.)
I.H.: That introduction rather sounded like a taped statement at the Police Station [laughter]
“And also in attendance”, yes. My name is Ian Hurst. I was born on the fifth of April 1943 and
my initial contact with the Warden Service was back in the late ‘50s when my teacher brought
us, brought a group of us, out from Sheffield and we went to Kinder Scout. Never been on
Kinder Scout before and it was exhilarating. I remember seeing one warden, I didn’t know
who he was at the time, but I just saw a silhouette. He was standing on a rock and he had this
arm band, a read and green arm band, as I remember. And that turned out to be Malcolm
Padley, which we’ll all recall, I suspect. But that sort of engendered some interest in me. And
when I left school, I came with, Bill, for instance, used to bring me on the train in the early
days. And we used to camp at Ollerbrook and we had an organisation called the Peak
Warden’s Association in those days. And we all used to meet there on a weekend. And we’d
camp and we’d have great fun.
But that was back in the early ‘60s, possibly, and then things started to move a little bit.
I became a volunteer warden, having taken a Warden Training Course – I don’t know what
number it was, but it was at Edale School. Tom Tomlinson was the Head warden in those
days. And I remember the navigation tests quite vividly. And what we were given was a blank
piece of A4 paper. And you were then asked to draw the top of Kinder Scout on this blank
piece of paper. So you draw a ring basically. Then he said “Put in the rivers.” So you put in
the rivers and that was it. And if you could put in the rivers then you’d passed the course.
And I couldn’t navigate for toffee, quite frankly, in those days. And then, in fact, I was
based here for many years. And then when I became 21, because that was the age of
consent in those days, I was appointed a Patrol Ranger and I was then based at North Lees
farm at Stanage, I spent a few years there. A vacancy became available for a part-time
assistant warden at Crowden in Longdendale. And I applied for that and got that. So I was
then posted to the old rifle range at Crowden in Longdendale. That would be the middle ‘60s –
‘65 or ‘66 I suspect. And then in 1970, I was appointed full time as an assistant warden on a
very poor salary. I think we all had reduced salaries, having come from industry and the
outside world and joined the Warden Service.
I was then posted and lived at Crowden in Longdendale, from 1970 until early 1978,
when I was appointed a District Ranger and moved to Buxton. And there I spent the rest of
my service. But I obviously moved around the National Park, initially in the Western Central
District, which was an area in terms of Millers Dale [someone coughs] Dales, based initially at
1

Tideswell Dale. And then we acquired the old railway line, which is now the Monsal trail. And I
worked with a chap by the name of George Challoner to convert that for the use that it’s
currently used for. And I also used to be responsible for the Roaches and the Goyt Valley,
Macclesfield Forest and that sort of area.
Then in 1986, I moved back here as District Ranger for the Northern District, worked
with Gordon and all these chaps around the table. And then I was seconded to the
Countryside Commission in 1991, I think it was, to be an advisor for an agricultural
environmental scheme, which was a Countryside Stewardship scheme. And whilst there, I
promoted to Regional Project Manager and ran the scheme in the North West, based in
Manchester. And I came back in 1995 to work in the National Park. But by that time, the
structure had changed somewhat. My job had disappeared, but I then became an area ranger
based in Hayfield and spent the rest of my time in Hayfield and I retired in 2007. Is that
alright Have you still got the tape in there [Laughter].
(It’s a wide district)
I.H.: It is, yes.
Second Track.
C.L.: Well, mine, thankfully, will be shorter. My name’s Cliff Laycock and I was born in what is
now Cumbria, then was Lancashire in Barrow-in-Furness in 1938 and after a bit of education
and messing about as a student, I got a job in what was then Sheffield College of Technology,
now Sheffield Hallam University in 1966 and moved over from Manchester. And one day I
was going back home to Manchester over the Snake and there’s this large, polished green
Landrover coming the other way, with George Garlick in it. I just saw this guy who looked
rather impressive – didn’t know who he was. I thought “I wouldn’t mind a ride in one of those”
a bit like you saw this guy with the arm band on. I never got one, but never mind. And then I
enquired at Aldern House. And Johnnie Lees was then the Warden Training Officer and he
told me what it was all about and suggested I come down here some Saturday or Sunday
morning and introduce myself. And just went out with the other rangers for a little bit.
And then it was suggested that I take the Warden Training Course and I think it was
Number 21 in about ’66 or ’67, just before the foot and mouth that we had then. And it was
handy, because I got an arm band, or the right to wear an arm band, just when people were
needed I think at Stoney Middleton, because I lived in Baslow, to try to keep people off the
moors and keep them off the cliff faces while that was going on. And it lasted a long time. And
I remember being shacked up in the nicest way with Glen Moffatt in Stoney Middleton one
day and trying to shoo people away, in the early days.
And then gradually, because I lived where I did, more or less on the job, just under the
eastern edges which had then been opened up, it was suggested to me I get an annual
certificate because in the old days you were only allowed to come in and sign in on Saturday
or Sunday and sign in as a volunteer and you got the certificate for that day. But you got the
annual certificate if you were putting in enough effort and showed promise and cart this round
with you and be helpful 365 days a year. And this is largely what I did. And mostly it was the
eastern edges because I lived there. And I liked Langsett because it was a nice mixture of
moorland and woodland. And farmers. And we often got accused at Langsett of being the
private army of that shepherd up there – I can’t remember his name.
2

G. M.: At Langsett it was Hammond, Alf Hammond.
C.L.: Yes, Alf Hammond, because we were always carrying his hay around in winter through
the snow. And the other farmers didn’t like it at all, but there it was.
And then as other areas like the Tissington Trail and things like that, I did quite a bit
with that. And then – this was all in the ‘60s – and then at the end of the ‘60s and ‘70s I got
myself a croft on Skye and spent less time doing this. And I had a brief period when I got
partly co-opted into the Edale Mountain Rescue Team with Roy Briggs. But then, as I guess
age and decay took its part, I eased out of the whole thing and I’ve only just been on the
sidelines now for a long, long time.
(And do you still do rangering.)
C.L.: No.
Third Track:
J.E.: Right, my name’s Jack Elmore, I was born on 20 th March 1934. So that makes me an
old bugger amongst this lot. I’ve been enrolled in the warden ranger service for 39 years now
– it’ll be 40 years next year. That was officially. Prior to that I was out 2 or 3 years at Edale
with people like Gordon and Ian and all the others that had been out a few years before me.
At that time, Ken Drabble was the Head Warden at that time. So it took him 2 years to
talk me into taking the Training Course, for some strange reason. But, yes, I did the Training
Course, which was Training Course 33, and it was held at the village hall in Edale. And we
went all through the process of learning how to do navigation – map reading, compass work,
which a lot of us probably weren’t as proficient at as we thought we were at that time.
And then, so I had the first 5 years at Edale and the eastern edges on the Saturday
and Edale on the Sunday. The Information Centre was at Aldern House, at that time. So when
you went into that place, you see, you had to take your boots off and things like that –
everything had to be proper, you know. And if you forgot some time, you sort of crept in. The
caretaker used to appear out of the wall, “Get your boots off”, you know.
Then from Aldern House the Briefing Centre moved to Stoney Middleton. And the fulltime
ranger there was Mike Hammond. So – and then from there I was sort of a few more
years at Edale and then I got [someone coughs] down to the High Peak and Tissington Trails,
which had just been newly opened. And we were down there, actually keeping people off,
which sounds a bit similar like, but we were walking up and down, just keeping people off the
trails at that time.
Down there, we got quite involved with a lot of estate work. We were always mowing
grass and cutting trees down and stuff like that, which we don’t do now because of all the
Health and Safety and things like that. A lot of the things we used to do then we’re not
allowed to do now, which is a shame in some cases.
So I had 12-15 years down on the trails and in between times, I was spending my time
up at Langsett as well, which is where I’m based now. I’ve been there, ooh! quite a long time.
And, as Cliff says, Langsett, it’s a very diverse place. You’ve got everything there. You’ve got
walks round reservoirs, which get quite busy now. And then people that want to get out onto
the higher fells and hills, they can do, you know.
3

I’ve really enjoyed it. I wish I could do another 40 years. But it’s not to be. But at that
time, I thought it would be a good idea to put something back into what I’d taken out. And
that’s how I came to be a warden ranger.
And, of course, obviously, the pay that they give us. You obviously didn’t do it for the
money, you know. When I first started it was 1 pound 25shillings and 5 shillings subsidence –
that was extra food that we were required to take out when we were on patrol, you know. And
we used to have things like mini-flares that we never used, all sorts of things. And now it’s
advanced. It’s always going forward, you know. Things are better, the training’s better, more
precise, more business-like, but yes, I enjoyed it.
Fourth Track:
D.M.: My name is David Milner, I was born on the 12 th August 1938. And my first encounter
with the – then was the Warden’s [someone coughs] a ranger. And I’d been out with 2 friends
of mine. We’d been camped over in the Blacks in the cabins, slept in the cabins. And we
came over and I was tired and we came off the Knabb and I came down. And at this time
there was a wall there. And these 2 friends of mine was quite a few feet away from me and
they went over the wall and disappeared. And I got to the wall and just started to climb over
and this voice said “I’m sorry, but you can’t climb over this wall.” And was the Assistant,
Trevor Wright. So I said “Alright.” He said “You’ll have to go round.” So I said “Fair enough.”
He said “We have a lot of problems with this.” And then I got talking with him and he said
“Well, would you like to come out to the Briefing Centre on a Sunday” I said “Yes, alright, I
will do.”
And after that I came out on a Sunday and I went walking. And I got very interested in
it. And they explained to me what the wardens did. And I was over 21 at the time and they
said to me, “Would you like to take the Wardens’ Training Course” “Yes, alright, I will do,
yes.” They said “It’s not obligatory, you know.” So I said “Alright, I’ll take it.” I thought, well it’ll
be good for the experience. And they asked me questions on how to approach people and
then navigation, we did. But there when I took it, they said to me, “Well, Kinder’s on a North,
South axis, so how do you get from one to…all you had to do, just the basic compass
bearings and that was it, that was the, you know. But they showed you how to read a map
and everything. But the actual…and it was an oral examination, no written work at all.
And then we used to camp at Ollerbrook. And I got more and more involved in it. And
we used to have a lot of people coming out, especially from Manchester – gangs of young
lads. And they – the thing they used to take great delight in was rolling stones down the
hillside and we had, well, Gordon will verify this, but we used to have terrible trouble with
them, you know. But nowadays, everything seems to be better now, a lot better. I think people
are a bit more educated.
(Yes.)
D.M.: Then I went to Stanage. I did some duties. At this time I was voluntary. And I went to
Stanage. And our Briefing Centre was in the North Lees, in the kitchen of North Lees Farm.
And I always remember, especially in springtime, you used to go in and there used to be
lambs in, next to the Yorkshire range, you know, orphan lambs.
4

And then I met Jack and he said to me “Would you like to come to Langsett” And I
said “Well, I’ve never been to Langsett.” Well, I never walked actually in Langsett. I used to go
over to Crowden.
And when we started off we had Bantam sets. And there was like a box, with a great
big aerial. And I can always remember, setting off, going up Soldiers’ Lump. And as you
walked up there, we used to get the Family Favourites on the Bantam radio!
G.M.: Holme Moss transmitter.
D.M.: Jack said “Go to Langsett” and I went to Langsett. Then I went down to Tissington Trail.
And I’ve been friends with Jack, well, and Gordon and everybody here for a long, long time.
Yes, thank you.
Fifth Track:
B.G.: My name’s Bill Garlick. I was born 21 st December 1925. Like thousands of other people,
I was in the forces during the war. And when everybody came back from the war, there was
an explosion of people wanting to come out of places like Sheffield and Manchester, which, in
those days, were very, very dirty sort of places. There was an explosion of people wanting to
come out into Derbyshire. And, for instance, the platforms of Edale station of an evening
would be absolutely heaving with people. People going to Manchester were called “the
brewers” and the people on the Sheffield side were called “the mashers”, because in
Yorkshire you mashed your tea, in Lancashire you brewed it. Simple as that.
And at that time, I also joined up with a few people. We had a cottage at Upper Booth.
And several years we spent every weekend at the cottage in Upper Booth. And then it was
decided that there would be access agreements signed between the Planning Board and the
landowners and so it was decided to appoint our Assistant Wardens, Tom Tomlinson already
being the full-time Head Warden. I remember going to interview at Aldern House. And I think
really I was given the job for 2 reasons, I think. 1 was that I knew a lot of the local people in
Edale. And secondly, 1 of the people on the interviewing committee was the Vicar of Eyam.
He liked to go into Switzerland, go mountain walking. And I’d just come back from about 2 or
3 seasons in Switzerland. So we got on like a house on fire. So I think really that’s why I got
the job.
So the 4 assistants were set on. And initially, of course, just looking after the Edale
side of Kinder. And later on we then had the opposite side. And we moved to Hayfield. And
we also had a Briefing Centre in the Co-op at Glossop. Then I suppose the next centre would
have been Stanage in the early days, Crowden. And so the whole thing grew. And over the
years I’ve covered a reasonable number of the areas, and enjoyed, really thoroughly enjoyed,
every minute.
Sixth Track:
G.M.: I’m Gordon Miller and I was born on the 2 nd August 1941 in Stockport in Cheshire. And I
suppose that’s where my story starts, in Stockport. Because when I was at Stockport School,
the Grammar School in Stockport in 1952, they stopped having school camps at Lyme Park
and moved to Edale and I came on the first school camp here. My best recollection of that
5

was that one of the masters coming round and selecting those who looked capable of
walking, and said “You’re going to be taken up on Kinder.”
And we were taken up on Kinder, with special permission, because there was no
access, by a man who became very famous, Fred Heardman. And that was a very, very
interesting day. It was throwing it down with rain. There was a thick mist and everybody was
thoroughly miserable, but I liked it.
And about four years after that, the Warden Service had been founded on Good
Friday, 1954 – I think it was 1956, Tom Tomlinson, who had been appointed the very first
National Park Warden in the country, came to Stockport School, to give an after-school talk.
And it was all pioneering talk. This was the first Warden Service in the country. Nobody really
knew how it was going to go. But I was fired up.
So the next Sunday, as a fifteen year old, I ran down to Stockport station, hurried
there, got on the train and presented myself at the Nags Head where the regional centre was.
And Tom looked at me, aghast. He said “What are you doing here” So I said “Well, I’ve
come to volunteer.” So he said “I’m sorry, you’re too young.” I was totally devastated, totally.
But at that time the wardens were made up of representatives from rambling clubs, as Bill will
recall, Sheffield R.A., Manchester R.A., Clarion, all these. And there was a club called the
Pennine Rambling Club. They were based in Ashton, Manchester. They took pity on me, took
me under their wing and we used to go walking and climbing all weekend, wardening the
next.
So this was how I actually started. I was too young, there was no training course or
anything. I was not a qualified warden but I tagged on. And then I got into the civil service. I
was working in that for a year. And I was coming out here at weekends. And in 1960, they
had the first Warden Training Course up in the village school, which Ian and David and so on
talked about. And David’s quite right, it was very basic. I mean, you had this map and write on
place names and so on. And I think it was over 6 weekends, wasn’t it, David
D.M.: Yes, it was.
G.M.: I’m pretty sure it was – it’s so long ago now. And then you became a qualified warden.
But before that, the way Tom decided whether you were fit enough to be a warden was, he’d
take you up to the Meadows, to the bottom of Golden Clough, and then he’d look up at
Ringing Roger, and he’d go straight up the hill. And he’d been a footballer for Burnley and he
was as fit as anything. He had this long gait. His legs’d stretch out and you’d be running
behind him like this, trying to keep up with him. And if you sat down on the rock at the top at
the same time as him, you were in, if you were still panting up the hill, he’d say “Right, go
away, lad, and just get a bit fitter and then come back and see.”
So that was the way you became a warden in those days. But then probably the most
important time of my life was probably, I moved down to London about 1966, working at a
training centre down there. And I used to drive up and down the motorway every weekend to
Edale. And it took me 2 years to realise that when I was driving down the motorway I had this
glum, depressed look on my face. And when I was driving North I was singing away in the
car. And it dawned on me that there was more to life than earning money and living in
London. And I was very lucky to get a full-time job – half the salary, I might add. I couldn’t
have done that if I’d been married at the time. And that was for the eastern edges. And I got
friendly with George Garlick and came here every weekend before [then]. And I got this job. I
think I was the only non-climber who was interviewed. Because there were all these climbers
6

like Geoff Birtles and sort of “Oh, this is great. Full-time job and I can climb every day and get
paid for it.” But I think the Peak Park sussed them out. And I was lucky to get the job.
At the time, though, the eastern edges, they were still negotiating with the water
company, so the only bit that really could walk on was Stanage, which the Park had an
agreement on. And somebody mentioned the [Prigeons]. I used to – I was living with Brian
Jones as a fellow, full-time warden on the Snake. And I used to travel down in the morning to
North Lees hall and have breakfast with the [Prigeons] around their big table.
And they were very happy days, those, because I learned some farming. I used to help
them with the hay-making, the wrapping the fleeces and all this. And that was such important
background work, because as wardens you knew about the enforcement of by-laws and
knowledge but very lit… and farmers were very sceptical of wardens in those days, you know.
We were the other side, you know. We were useless, you know. We were…So it helped a lot
to sort of get some respect from farmers. And also, to learn what their problems were. And I
got to do quite a bit of climbing on Stanage, which was very nice, as well.
Subsequently there was a – they decided to have a floating full-time warden. And I
wanted to stay in Edale where, by then, I was living. And George says “Oh, you can have that
and we’ll give somebody else.” Mike Hammond actually got the job for the eastern edges and
I was this floating warden, which was wonderful. I was filling in for everybody. So one day I’d
be down at Dovedale and another time I’d be up at Langsett or whatever.
But that only lasted, I think, a couple of years. When George Garlick left and Ken
Drabble came in, Ken took on that role and gave me Kinder, which was probably the best
thing he ever did ‘cause I’d always loved Kinder, I always will. And I’ve more or less – I’ve
been – I was the full-time ranger for Kinder and Hayfield, the Castleton area, for nigh on 30
years, I think, before I finally retired in 2001, I think. When I was 60 I took it. And now I just go
out and volunteer again. So I’m back to what I was doing in 1956. So it’s come full circle.
(Great.)
J.E.: He’s 60 and they won’t let me retire!
: Every time I threaten I’m packing it in, as well. [Hard to hear].
Seventh Track.
(So, tell me more about what a ranger actually does, because you’ve mentioned different bits
and things that you did.)
J.E.: What you should say is “What doesn’t a ranger do” He does everything. He does
everything from talking to land-owners, game-keepers, the public, educating the public,
everybody. And we get involved in all sorts of work, whether it’s repairing fences, making new
stiles, changing stiles and putting gates in order to make it easier for people to come out
walking – a multitude of things that we do. [Talking over each other]. You could write a book
on everything. You could fill a book with what we do.
I.H.: It’s a PR job.
C.L.: It is, exactly.
7

G.M.: I think one or two have touched on this. I think in the very early days, you’ve to bear in
mind that the national Parks were set up in 1949, National Parks Act. And it was specifically
written into that Act that there would be access land, because the Peak National Park was the
first National Park, because the whole issue about walkers not being able to go on Kinder.
And so wardens were written into the Act. So this National Park, that’s why they were the first
one to appoint them. So the thing was then, what is a warden And in fact, the Park didn’t
know. And in fact, when Tom Tomlinson – I love this story – that Tom Tomlinson, before he
was a full-time warden here, he’d been a professional footballer with Burnley Football Club,
he’d been a chauffeur, and at the time he was the warden of Edale Youth Hostel. And I’ve
always believed that those were the 3 requirements. He’d been a chauffeur, so it meant he
could drive a Landrover he’d been warden of a youth hostel, so he knew how to deal with
people, and he’d been a professional footballer, so he was obviously fit. They didn’t know
anything else about him. And, in fact, when he was appointed they offered him a motorbike as
a form of transport, and he went up into the air and he said “How do I get a stretcher onto a
motorbike” And as a result of that, he got a Landrover.
But when I said earlier on about pioneering, they’d no idea really. All they had was this
fact that they had to enforce these by-laws. And in the very early days that’s what it more or
less was. It was enforcing by-laws. It was a police thing. It didn’t make us popular. And we
had these arm bands on that were reminiscent of the Nazis.
J.E.: I did get called a Fascist pig in the Meadows, one day, you know, for wearing an arm
band.
G.M.: And, to be fair, in those days, because people were not used to the simple rules of, you
know. David mentioned climbing over the wall, you see, classic. And stone-rolling and things
like that, dogs chasing sheep, and all our Warden Service life revolved round that. But over
the years, as that’s got better, people have become more educated, the role’s changed.
J.E.: Got more professional, as well.
G.M.: Yes, and got more involved in maintaining the fabric of the place and educating people.
Well, not educating, interpreting the landscape and getting people involved in it, you know.
I.H.: Yes, I think we did a lot of that.
G.M.: So it has evolved.
I.H.: Face to face communication with visitors, with anyone really, was one of the best things
we ever did. But I remember, I think, the full-time staff, their role was a little different from
part-time and volunteer staff, in the sense that when I was living at Crowden I was seen by
the community in Longdendale, as, if there was a problem, they contacted me. And you were
on call 24/7. If you wanted a day off, you had to leave your home, really, and go wherever you
wanted to go. But whilst ever you were at home and contactable, the phone was ringing or
people were knocking at your door. Which was good in a sense, that they were looking upon
the Ranger, or the Warden Service initially, then the Ranger Service, from ’74 onwards, as an
important fixture within that community. And we started to do the things that people have just
explained, in terms of stiles, way-marking and all this. But certainly the major function was the
8

y-law. And God forbid anybody that put a tent on access land. Goodness me. You had to be
up at the crack of dawn to go down and remove these tents.
(Did lots of people try and camp)
J.E.: That’s still a big issue. It’s bigger now, I think, than what it was in the early days,
camping people seemed to take a little bit more notice of things like that earlier on. But now
they camp everywhere.
G.M.: There’s also, I mean, the shooting cabins were being damaged a lot then.
I.H.: Yes, vandalism.
G.M.: If you’ve got to stop to go in a bothy, it might be your last chance of some shelter. But
here they were wrecked. I mean, I remember Tom Tomlinson was a Quaker and wouldn’t
drink alcohol, so his one way of stopping us drinking alcohol was to drag us out of the pub at
ten o’clock to take us round the Snake and go to the cabins to try to catch people wrecking
them. And then he’d take us back to Edale just after closing time, which was interesting. But
in those days – there’s very few cabins left now.
: No.
G.M.: So, I daresay now there would be a different attitude to cabins if they were still intact,
because people would see them as shelters. But there was a lot of vandalism. I mean, I
remember there used to be a gang – David and I were talking the other day – came from
Manchester in the sort of the ‘50s and they were a gang…
: [Fir Connick] Brigade.
G.M.: And they would wreck, just simply wreck things for the heck of it. It was often nothing to
do with the Warden Service. It was a police issue. But, because there were no police, it was
us who got the job of dealing with it.
B.G.: I remember one day, outside the Nags Head, there were two big gangs, mostly with
motorbikes. And things – they were both glaring at each other – things were getting really
nasty. And I thought “I don’t know what I’m going to do about this, I don’t really want to be
involved in this.” And they were really getting annoyed with each other. And at twelve o’clock
the Nags Head opened and they all went in and that was it. They were all drinking. So it was
all sorted out. There was always that threat of there being serious problems.
C.L.: You have to be careful with motor-cyclists. They’re dreadful people, you know!
D.M.: They used to come out and in their socks they had long knives.
G.M.: Oh yes, you did not – you had to be very careful if you were on your own.
D.M.: You didn’t mess.
9

J.E.: I think also in those days you weren’t recognised like we are now. Because we didn’t
have a uniform. We were a ragamuffin brigade really. You wore everything you could buy
cheap from ex-army surplus stores.
G.M.: You had your arm band.
: And then…
D.M.: You had your…
J.E.: About 1974 was it Eric Bardell introduced a uniform which was a Lovat green sweater
and Derby tweed breeches or trousers. That was alright. I think we’d still got the arm band if I
remember.
[All talking.]
: No, we had a badge, yellow and black.
G.M.: We had a yellow and black arm band, if you remember, which was rather akin to a
traffic warden’s.
C.L.: Looked like a cholera thing – “Keep Off. Diseased.”
J.E.: So we advanced and then Eric Bardell introduced this uniform. And then that went after
a while because we were accused of not being able to be seen out on the moors, because
the colours blended in. We needed to be seen. So the next uniform was what we’ve got now,
red and silver.
G.M.: That Shaun brought in.
J.E.: Yes, and you’re recognised then, you see, because of your colour. Everybody knows
you’re a ranger, you know, which they didn’t before.
B.G.: Before the official uniforms we all had a uniform. We always used to buy the old ex-
Fleet Air Arm flight deck dark blue jackets… [All talk at once] from a little second hand shop
down Attercliffe in Sheffield. I think they were the equivalent now of £1.50 each. I priced a
similar thing up [Vent] were still going strong and it was about £500 last year – still – it was
double, wasn’t it
I.H.: You pulled it over your head.
G.M.: Went over your head.
J.E.: Nailed boots, they were about 2 foot high, in winter, you know, when snow built up on
them.
B.G.: Practically everybody had one of those.
10

: You’re absolutely right.
J.E.: We were a ragamuffin brigade. We really were. Talk about a scruffy lot.
D.M.: We really, when we were trying to enforce the by-laws, technically speaking we’d got
nothing at all, we’d no backing at all. We had to just bluff us was through.
(So, what were the by-laws)
D.M.: Camping and dogs on leads and things like that.
G.M.: Stone-rolling, fires.
C.L.: Loud instruments.
G.M.: Firearms.
J.E.: Climbing over walls has come out of it now, because you can do it, providing you don’t
damage the wall.
(Can you)
J.E.: Yes, you can’t say that you can’t climb over a wall now.
I.H.: As long as you don’t damage it, fences as well.
Eighth Track.
(Oh, there they are, I see. Bye-Laws for behaviour on access land.)
D.M.: Everything’s changed since the Countryside Act.
G.M.: Yes, there are no bye-laws on the high moors now. The bye-laws that do apply now are
the bye-laws on places like the Trails, for instance.
D.M.: Yes, that’s right.
G.M.: Which have been retained.
C.L.: So you can set light to the high moors now, can you
G.M.: A lot of them are common sense, I would say now, the Country Code, mainly.
(So in 1949 the bye-laws were [reading]: vehicles – no mechanically propelled vehicles, fires
– no fires.)
I.H.: They still apply now.
11

(No hunting, shooting and fishing.)
B.G.: That’s poaching.
J.E.: We used to get quite a bit of that at one time.
D.M.: We did, yes.
G.M.: And they could be nasty. I mean when you’re talking about poachers you’re talking
[general public].
I.H.: I do remember an incident when I lived at Crowden. I got a phone call from one of the
local gamekeepers. He said, “These bloody poachers are on my moor. Will you come down”
So I said “Have you called the police” “Yes, I’ve called the police.” “Fine” So I went and met
him. And we crept onto the moor. We could see these two people. They had shotguns. And
this was just outside Glossop. And we could see these. The police hadn’t arrived. And they
were walking towards us. Well, this particular gamekeeper also had his shotgun with him. And
when they got within fifty yards of us, he stood up and put a round above over, their heads. Of
course, then they started to run away from us. Whereas, if he’d left it, they’d have walked
straight to us. So there I am, across the moor – I used to be able to run in those days – and
managed to catch them. And then we walked them back. And by that time, the police had
arrived. So – we all dealt with those sorts of incidents.
D.M.: They never threatened you, then Ian, with the gun. You know, we was told, you never
argue with somebody, if they’re going to point the gun.
I.H.: No, well they didn’t get close enough to us, because this particular gamekeeper stood up
and fired above their heads.
C.L.: In Langsett, I mean, you’re quite close there to Penistone and the former Barnsley
mining communities, you know. You’d get people coming out at weekends, probably miners,
with their dogs, looking for hares. These guys could handle themselves and don’t get mixed
up with them. You had to be really careful. Don’t tackle them on your own.
I.H.: But we did, Cliff, because if you remember back in the late sixties/early seventies egg
stealing was a massive...
D.M.: We used to get up early.
I.H.: Yes, we did. And at Langsett particularly.
D.M.: Five o’clock in the morning.
I.H.: We used to meet Alf Hammond. And we’d be down the bottom of Cut Gate Track. And
these people were coming off the moor. And we didn’t search them, but what Alf used to do,
he used to pat them down, so if they’d got any eggs on them it crushed them in their pockets.
Do you remember that
12

D.M.: Because you couldn’t put the eggs back, because the birds – you didn’t know where
they’d got them from and they couldn’t tell you. Because it only makes a scrape, a grouse, in
the ground, so…
G.M.: One of the funniest instances, I recall, talking about shooting, was on the Snake.
B.G.: The Chinese.
G.M.: The Chinese. When they were actually shooting, the moor was closed. That was
another duty we had, which was probably the hardest of the lot, to actually keep people of
Kinder, you know, so a few people could shoot, was politically and also logistically a very
difficult problem.
But this particular day, we were covering the shoot on the Snake. And you could see
the line of butts up on the moor with the guns behind. You could just see the glint of the
barrels there you see. And all of a sudden we heard this shooting coming from a completely
different place on the moor, further back. “What Where’s that coming from” So we went up
on the moor and we found these Chinese guys with shotguns. And the birds are driven
towards the butts. They were only getting as far as these Chinese who were [] them. They
weren’t getting as far as the butts.
We brought them all down and we said “you can’t shoot here.” And they said “Why
not” And he’d seen these signs that said “Moor Closed For Shooting.” So they thought,
having seen this the day before, that that meant that the moor was closed so they could go
shooting. And they were going to shoot the grouse for their Chinese noodles and everything
in Glossop, or wherever it was. And it was unbelievable and total mayhem on the moor.
And we got them off. And we had to get the police there, of course, as well because...
I.H.: But you’re reminded when we talk about shooting, when the hunt saboteur activity up
there began. What we used to do. These signs used to go up in July, initially, which had a
map of all access areas, which were all numbered. And at the bottom was a list of dates when
these moors were closed for shooting. And so the hunt saboteurs used to see this and used
to turn up when these moors were closed for shooting. And really our role then was simply to
monitor this activity. Because the police were there as well. And some of the situations we
found ourselves in were quite difficult, at times. And I think the skills of being able to
communicate in a calm manner…
G.M.: Definitely a learning curve.
I.H.: It was a learning curve for me on many occasions.
J.E.: And of course, when the gamekeepers stopped printing where the shoots were, that
made life more difficult for us.
G.M.: Because the public didn’t know then.
J.E.: The public didn’t know and they were turning up and we were. They’d come up from
London to do a walk somewhere and we were having to send them off somewhere else,
because the moors was closed for shooting. So that caused us a lot of trouble, as well.
13

D.M.: But they couldn’t close it.
G.M.: But the tactics the hunt saboteurs had was – the beaters that were driving the birds, the
grouse, towards the butts had a white flag. So what the hunt saboteurs would do would be
come between the flags and the butts, which was quite dangerous, but they would do it in
order to turn the birds away from the butts. You know, they’d do that sort of activity and just
generally try and disrupt the actual shooting process. Which, of course, irritated the guns
immensely, as you can imagine. And, as I say, as Ian said, we were piggy in the middle.
Because the police were brought in – they often were – but, you see, they had to have done
some sort of damage, you know, trespass. It’s very difficult actually to do anything with them,
other than coax them off the moor.
(So what sort of dates was that)
G.M.: That was happening in the eighties and nineties.
I.H.: Might have been before then, late seventies I suspect.
G.M.: Yes, maybe, yes, you’re probably right – late seventies.
I.H.: I can remember them on Crowden and Holme Moss particularly.
J.E.: We had odd ones up to about 2000, didn’t we
D.M.: These saboteurs used to destroy the butts as well. Then they’d…
[All talk at once.]
G.M.: Yes, but they always did that, not on the day they were demonstrating, David. They
always did it well before…
D.M.: Well before.
G.M.: And we could never catch them.
D.M.: No, I know.
G.M.: Because that is damage.
D.M.: It is.
G.M.: They could have done something about that.
J.E.: We used to do patrols for that. We used to do early morning one, part of the shift. And
then, afternoon while evening. We never caught anybody, you know. They were very elusive,
really.
14

I.H.: I mean, they knew that we were about and they were keeping a watch for us.
C.L.: And the other patrol on Langsett that we used to do was the Christmas tree patrol.
Because there were knew plantations up near the top there – what do you call the pub over
the top there – the cross roads.
: The Flouch
C.L.: The Flouch, yes. There were knew plantations up there. And these little fir trees grew up
to about this height, just right for a Christmas tree, you know. And a lot of people would come
out just before Christmas and go away with car boots loaded up with these trees. And we
spent quite a bit of time driving up and down there in cars. I mean, quite a lot of rangering at
one time was done from transport, you had to keep an eye on what was coming off the road.
Ninth Track.
B.G.: Well, I was sent up to Langsett before it was an area. And the instruction from Aldern
House was – we spent eight Saturdays driving up and down.
D.M.: Oh dear.
B.G.: We mustn’t get out of the car and don’t go anywhere near the moor. And monitor how
many people were going up to the moor. And I did that with…do you remember, what did they
call him Rolo Robinson
I.H./C.L.: Johnny Robinson.
B.G.: That’s right. Well, he used to be with me and we used to be driving up and down.
Anyway, we did monitor it and, as you were saying, there were quite a lot of the Barnsley lads
[A chorus of “Yes.”] coming onto the moor. And, anyway, the access agreement did go ahead
and that was it.
C.L.: And this little motorbike of mine, an ex-police motorbike, I found it very useful in the foot
and mouth, for going up and down Stoney Middleton and round the roads underneath the
Edges, just to keep people clear. And, of course, in those days people could remember those
motorbikes and knew that it might just be a policeman. And I wasn’t going to give anything
away, you know! And it was really handy to be able to get around a big area like that and
keep people off.
G.M.: Foot and mouth was a big job.
I.H.: It was, really.
G.M.: Because we basically were drafted in to try to keep people off however many thousand
hectares of moorland.
(And people didn’t pay attention to that)
15

G.M.: Some would not. Some would deliberately say, “Nobody’s going to stop me from
walking across Kinder” and so on.
D.M.: It’s such a big area.
G.M.: And they would go right the way through the middle of the moor. Most people were
pretty good about it, but sometimes, I mean, I remember – it might have been at Hathersage,
Dale Bottom at Hathersage. And we had to stop cars going up over the moor and, you know,
the road was closed. And there would be a local there – said, “I’ve driven this shortcut for fifty
years and nobody’s going to stop me.” And they’d drive over your toes. And trying to deal with
that sort of local antagonism, plus people who just deliberate… was a very, very big
challenge, a very big challenge.
C.L.: Round Chatsworth…
B.G.: That was a big change in the attitude between the farmers and us. I mean that’s
completely changed the way…
G.M.: Yes, they had a lot more respect
J.E.: They realised that we were then for them as well as the public.
I.H.: That was the 1960 outbreak, wasn’t it
: 1967.
I.H.: 1967. Yes, I remember I was based initially at Fairholmes and the island was in the road
there, just by Fairholmes. And we were so bored and it was snowing. We made an igloo in the
middle of the island. And also I think I was asked to go to Redmires.
D.M.: Yes, I remember.
I.H.: Were you there, as well
D.M.: Yes, I was there.
I.H.: And Alf Hammond’s brother used to farm at – Fred, Fred Hammond.
D.M.: He used to give you coffee with Cognac.
I.H.: That’s right. His wife used to bring down these flasks. Because, again, the snow was on
the ground, it was bloody cold. And, of course, you were stood there. You couldn’t move
around. We used to move round in the locality, but you couldn’t move any distance. And she
used to bring these huge flasks down, didn’t she Which was laced with – brandy, was it I
mean, I’m tee-total, David. I never drank a bit. I think you had it all! [Laughter].
16

C.L.: I mean, there’d been appeals on the radio for people to stay away from the National
Park. And it was serious stuff, you know, they really asked people not to do it. And yet, there
were people coming to Chatsworth, the moor behind there, to watch the bodies being burned.
Just coming in a car and standing watching. A kind of ghoulish thing – “Oh, something new’s
happening.” Like people will stand around a road accident, you know.
G.M.: The valley here, where we are now, was literally cut off, because there were two cases
of foot and mouth in the valley here. Mam Nick was closed and the bottom of the valley was
closed and it became a totally isolated community. The vets from MAFF…
C.L.: [Mafia.]
G.M.: …were based at the Church Hotel. Nobody was allowed in and out of the valley. It was
almost like the Eyam Plague. There was disinfected hay across Mam Nick, so that cars going
in and out…they met here in the village. We were not allowed in, part-time wardens, we lived
outside. You could only come as far as Mam Nick and we worked there to explain to people
why they couldn’t go into the valley. Extraordinary times, really. Extraordinary times. And
we’ve had other outbreaks since.
I.H.: Well, MAFF were actually based inside the old centre, weren’t they
G.M.: They were, the old information centre.
I.H.: No, here, the old square building. But the later outbreak was 2004, was it And we had a
similar situation. People were asked not to visit the National Park. I remember I was based at
Hayfield and we had a huge trough, which a local farmer had created, with this, a metal
trough basically. And you could actually drive a vehicle into it. It was full of disinfectant. And
people used to walk the verges, the grass verges, they didn’t go out onto the hill. They used
to walk the grass verges, just to feel, you know, as if they were out in the countryside. And I
think, I mean people did go out on Kinder, even in 2004.
G.M.: I think with the ’68 outbreak, the important thing there was that, at that time, there no,
none of the moorlands were fenced off the roads. And the big fear was, with having the cases
in the valley here, was that sheep would infect each other, literally all the way up the
Pennines to Scotland. That was a distinct possibility. So actually stopping any activity here,
they were able actually to stop it. And it never went out of the Peak District, so there must
have been some sort of success there. But that was the big fear.
J.E.: But it had an amazing effect on the moors and landscape, as well. The fact that the
moors were shut, everything seemed to grow. Paths grew over. And yes, so it just shows you
how much pressure was put on footpaths and moors. And then when it was shut down how it
all…
(Did they take the sheep off the moors as well)
D.M.: Not all of them.
B.G.: They had restrictions on them.
17

G.M.: They had restrictions on movements exactly. The farmers were not allowed to take
sheep to market, or to sell them to other farmers, although I won’t say – libel and that sort of
thing – but things happened which shouldn’t have happened.
D.M.: I think Gordon will bear me out with this, there was illegal movement of sheep.
G.M.: There was, but that was not our problem.
D.M.: And apparently saying, “Oh, I’ll have that foot and mouth on mine for the
compensation.”
J.E.: Well, we’ve been parked on the A628 and seen trailers going up and down with sheep in
them and you know what they’re doing with them, you know.
G.M.: But that was not really our problem. It was a police problem. We did have a key role to
play, in that the police didn’t have the numbers. So we were supporting them. We were
supporting the agricultural community, we were supporting the police and so on. Basically, it
goes back to what Ian was saying that, you know, we talked about our role in the early stage
as being the enforcement of bye-laws. Over a time we learned skills in diplomacy, working
with people, you know, helping people enjoy the places much more. And those periods like
the foot and mouth and those sort of incidents helped us immensely with that – developing
the skills to do it.
(I think [when you’re under] stress, I suppose.)
G.M.: That’s right, when people realised we were there to enhance their experience and not
put the heavy foot down, you know.
Tenth Track.
J.E.: And of course, we were involved in Mountain Rescue as well.
(Yes, tell me about the Mountain Rescue.)
J.E.: If you were on duty and there was an incident, you were in there. It’s not the same now,
because of insurance and stuff like that. It’s a separate issue now, Mountain Rescue.
D.M.: I think you’ll bear me out in this, that the one that stands out in my mind is the Four
Inns.
: Yes, ’64.
G.M.: That was probably a turning point in Mountain Rescue. Because, until then, I mean,
Ian’s the Mountain Rescue expert here, from the point of view of he’s written books and so
on, is that up ‘til then, or prior to that, in the very early days, if something happened on the
moor it was usually the farmers who went up and brought somebody down. Whether it was
18

planes crashing in the Second World War or after it when walkers went missing, farmers
would just come together.
Then they established a Mountain Rescue post at the Nag’s Head in Edale and one in
Hayfield and various others. They had equipment, but that equipment was basically there for
the public to take. But, because it was a National Park, it tended to be the rangers and
wardens who were responsible for it and would take it. So we then started to get wardens
working with farmers and so on. And gradually it changed.
And then, as David said, the Four Inns happened. And people realised there needed to
be much better expertise; efficient, more coordinated system of Mountain Rescue. And it all
changed then and Mountain Rescue teams were set up. They’ve over the years become
much more technically…
[A phone rings.]
(We’ll just hang on, we’ll pause it for a second, while that rings.)
G.M.: We used to have here – in the Mountain Rescue post you would find a stretcher.
B.G.: There we go, you remember those photographs. That’s top of the Alport with the police.
G.M.: This is the police on top of Bleaklow with their helmets on, with normal gear. They’d
have no mountain gear whatsoever.
D.M.: No.
I.H.: There’s George Garlick and his dog, there. Trevor Wright’s there, who’s already been
mentioned.
(Is that a mountain rescue, that picture)
I.H.: Yes, this is the Four Inn’s incident, you can see what the conditions were like.
(Yes, terrible.)
I.H.: Heavy snow. There’s Tom Tomlinson, who was the Head Warden, and George Garlick
there.
The thing was that what they used to do, incidents were occurring from people having
access to the moorlands and there wasn’t any bona fide rescue teams, other than one in
Glossop. And I think there was one in New Mills back in the very early days. Certainly, there
was RAF Harpur Hill, as well. And they formed, if you like, groups of people who were
wardens in Sheffield and Manchester. And there were controllers in these centres. And if an
incident occurred, Tom or George would get on the phone and call these people. And they’d
either drive out here, but there weren’t that many cars around in those days and not many
telephones either, to be quite honest. We had a cascade in the system, didn’t we That one
person got the call, he then called two others and they then called others and people would
come out and respond in that sort of way. So it took a long time to get people you know
gathered and ready to go to an incident. And some, you see, some of them used to travel on
19

the train. If it was a search incident, it was going on for some time. You can just guess how
long it took people to attend those incidents.
D.M.: Certain people, like I myself, I worked on the railways, so I could be anywhere.
(Of course.)
D.M.: And I couldn’t do it. You couldn’t have – that’s why they set up the team that could get
permission from where they were working to go straight away. It doesn’t work – it didn’t work
in every industry.
(No, some jobs you can’t just leave.)
D.M.: No, you can’t just get up and…I was on the locomotives, so I can’t just sort of say, “Oh,
that’s it” and jump off at Edale and…no.
C.L.: It’s a bit different nowadays, in that there are, as you know, a whole industry based on
providing outdoor clothing. If you go to Bakewell, the shops are all cutting each other’s throats
selling outdoor clothing. But we used to get a lot of people coming ill-equipped. My first wife
and I, one Easter, when it had been a nice day like this, we’d been up on the top and coming
over towards the top of Crowden. And we could see someone carrying something in the
distance. So we turned up and joined them. And it was some youngsters who were carrying a
pram. So – it gets much worse than this – beside this pram were a man and a woman and a
toddler. The man was dressed in an ordinary mac that you’d use in town, the woman had flipflops
on and a mini-skirt and the toddler had very little on at all. And there was this pram and
they were trying to carry the pram without help and walk down the hill. So this woman was
very frightened. So I said, “Do you want some help” and she said, “Yes.” and the man said
“No, we’re quite alright.” And I said “Well, how did you get here” “Well, a mountaineering
club brought us up. They’re our friends. And they’ve walked over to the other side of Kinder
and they told us to wait here. And we’re going to wait until they come back.” And I said, “Well,
if you wait in this snow-storm there aren’t going to be any babies or whatever.”
So we slowly made our way down. This poor woman was frightened to death. And I’m
not surprised, in that clothing, and was really, really getting on for hypothermic. So I said,
“Well, could we collapse this pram” And they said “Oh no, we can’t do that, there’s a six
week old baby in it.” So, it was getting dangerous by this time, so I insisted on us getting
down, you know. And we rang ahead and somebody brought a Landrover to the bottom of
Jacob’s Ladder. We loaded them and we walked back, because there wasn’t room in the
Landrover. And when we got back to here, everybody was happy and warmed up again. But
the Board really wrote a very stiff letter to the mountaineering club for taking somebody up
equipped like that and then leaving them in changeable weather. When they left them it was
sunny. But Easter, you can get really heavy snow showers, you know. That doesn’t happen
quite as much now. I think people know about outdoor clothing.
(Did you stop people going on the hill with inappropriate clothing)
[All talk at once.]
20

J.E.: Yes, you advised them to but you could never tell them it’s the wrong way. You worked
around it in a diplomatic way.
D.M.: I know one day, I was in Grindsbrook coming down. And this woman coming up
towards me. And she was in high-heeled shoes. I said, “Excuse me,” I says, “but I don’t think
you’re footwear is very suitable.”
J.E.: Tom Tomlinson always used to say “If you get three or four burly rangers standing in the
middle of the footpath, they ain’t going to get past you!”
C.L.: But you had to be very diplomatic, you know. I mean, if you – you could tell by looking at
some people that they were lost, hadn’t a clue where they were. So you don’t just barge in
and say “Are you lost”, it makes them look a fool. So you sort of worm your way in and say
“Are you going far” or “Where have you been” “Where are you going” Then it comes out
that they’re lost, you see, and there’s no loss of face really.
J.E.: All sorts of things happened.
G.M.: I think you know the challenges to wardens, one of the biggest problems we used to
have with dogs. Dogs used to have to be on a lead or under control.
(Just on a lead.)
: Well, there was variable…
: There’s a word called discretion, which the wardens used quite a lot.
G.M.: There would be somebody with a dog running around chasing sheep. And you’d tell
them to bring it to heel and they couldn’t do. And then you’d say, “Well, you’ve got to take it
off.” But, you know, criticising a man about his dog was worse than actually criticising his wife.
B.G.: Yes, because it’s part of the family, you know.
G.M.: And it was often very, very difficult. And they know better. And it’s very difficult, that.
You can’t force them to put it on a lead. And I think they were some of the biggest challenges
with dogs, often, I don’t know if you all agree.
D.M.: That’s just reminded me again – when you’re walking you see somebody with a dog off
the lead. They saw you, put it on the lead. [As soon as you’d gone, off the lead.]
I.H.: Yes, that’s very apparent with the red uniform. Because of it, they could see you coming
from a long way.
J.E.: One thing about the green uniform, they didn’t know you were coming. They didn’t see.
I.H.: They always said, didn’t they, when we spoke “My dog never chases sheep.”
J.E.: “He was brought up on a farm”, you know.
21

I.H.: Obviously, some dogs did and it was a difficult time. And we used to tell people quite
frankly that if you can’t control your dog and it’s seen chasing sheep, then the farmer has a
perfect right to shoot it.
D.M.: To shoot it, yes.
I.H.: And they used to shoot [] dogs, probably still do.
: At Stanage one year [ shot] an Alsation in front of its owner.
I.H.: We used to get incidents where people would actually abandon a dog in – I remember
very clearly when I was again at Crowden, there was an Alsation.
G.M.: Oh, on Bleaklow.
I.H.: On Bleaklow, yes. It was running loose between sort of the Derwent, Langsett and
Woodhead Pass side of the hill. And it was killing sheep. And this went on for weeks and
weeks. And eventually we got a group of farmers together and we used our radio system, if
you remember, to manage and control this. And we swept that part of the moor and that dog
was eventually found and shot. But these things did occur.
D.M.: Took you a long time, didn’t it
I.H.: It took – yes, it was running for weeks this dog. And I don’t know how many sheep, but
lots of sheep were killed.
C.L.: We had a trigger happy farmer – no names, no pack drill – on the moors above Baslow.
And he would largely shoot any dog on sight, whether or not it was chasing sheep, if it was
unaccompanied. And he did, on one occasion, shoot a dog and it happened to be the local
police sergeant’s dog. [Laughter.] So a veil was drawn over that.
I.H.: But another major concern for us was fires. Well, the one that sticks in my mind still was
the fires of 1976. We had over 80 fires within a 3 month period – all moorland fires I’m talking
about now. Yes, from June, we got the snow in June, do you remember, it stopped the cricket
match in Buxton. And from then on it was a piping hot summer. So I think it was sort of June,
July, August, probably went into September as well. But – 80 fires. We were doing nothing but
fire-fighting, morning, noon and night.
(Must be dangerous.)
I.H.: Well, it…
C.L.: Goes down into the peat, you can’t get…
I.H.: It did burn into the peat. The danger was…I remember a big fire at that time we had on
Stand Edge, which is not the Stanage over there, Stand Edge is right in the north of the Park,
near Marsden, between Marsden and Upper Mill. And there was a large block of Moorland.
22

But, in between there was a big clough called South Clough. And the army and the police
used to use it as a firing range.
And this thing was going quite merrily and we were all in there; fire service, ourselves,
farmers, everyone, fighting this fire. And ten, suddenly, we were all withdrawn, because
somebody had found ammunition and, of course, our safety was questioned. So we actually
all withdrew.
But during the war, I mean Bill may remember this, during the war all these moorlands
were used for training. And you can go up today to Langsett and places round there, as I say,
and you’ll find 303 shells, and mortar shells have been found, I would say, annually. Because
they’re buried in the peat and, over time, they’ll work back to the surface again, you see, a bit
like bottles. And these things would be found and…
(Are they live)
I.H.: Some of them were HE. We had the bomb disposal out at times. We used to get
the…yes, we used to have to take them, I remember that, again on the Snake. And we’d
found this mortar shell. It was near Wainstones. And we’d marked it. Because we were all
asked to build a cairn or mark it in some way. And I met the bomb disposal people at Snake
summit. And we walked in and we found this location. And he said “Yes, I’m going to blow this
here.” So he put this plastic on it, and all the rest of it. He said, “You go away” so I went away,
I went onto some high ground. He said, “Just make sure there’s nobody around and I’ll join
you.” Anyway, he lit the fuse, or whatever he did with it, and he walked about 10 yards away
from this mortar – bear in mind the fuse is burning – stopped, got a fag out, lit the fag and
walked nonchalantly to where I was, and – BOOM! – the whole thing went up! But I mean,
they were days, we did those sort of things. We all did ‘em. Because there was no guidance, I
mean, I can’t remember if there was even HSE in those days. But that was part and parcel of
it. And Gordon said, you know, we were pioneering, and I think we were.
J.E.: Yes, I mean, you’re talking about fire-fighting on the moors – we were very primitive
then. I mean now, it’s a big issue now. And we’ve got a [Fog], which you know all about, and
anyway, big organisations between rangers and fire services all round the Park, you know.
(And helicopters.)
: And helicopters and everything. I mean, it just used to be beaters and a backpack with
water on, if you could get it, you know.
B.G.: Was a spade, wasn’t it
J.E.: Then a spade to dig trenches.
D.M.: Trenches to stop it.
J.E.: Now we have equipment that digs it out. It’s amazing.
I.H.: You used to come off the moor, you used to reek of burnt peat. You’d take your goggles
off and you’d look like a panda and you’d steep your clothes for weeks to try and get this…
23

J.E.: I’ve gone home at nights straight from here, not realising – I’ve been in a hurry to get
home. And I’ve gone home and I’ve walked in and everybody’s laughing, you know, “Where
have you been” You get in the bath and have a wash and it just – you’re shovelling it out, the
peat, you know.
G.M.: Yes, they’re not very pleasant, fires. But again, like Mountain Rescue, fires now, within
the Park, the management of fires, between the Park, the National Trust and the Fire Service
and so on is now really very, very well organised. So we’ve come through those pioneering
years, the testing years, finding mistakes – we’ve had some horrendous lucky escapes in
some respects – and through to now, a much better organised…
I.H.: It’s taken years to develop.
J.E.: But it’s always moving forward – that’s the beauty about being in the Ranger Service –
it’s always moving on. Some things you don’t like, but you get on with it, you know.
Eleventh Track.
G.M.: I was talking about when we used to have – we even used to run a ski run at Edale. I
don’t know, the park, for some reason unbeknown to us, bought this second-hand,
homemade Zephyr 6 engine tow that would have towed 300 people up to the bank side, it
was that powerful. But we landed the job of running it. And Ian and I were talking about an
incident the other day, when one Monday we were up there. And it was a rope tow. And,
because it was a rope tow, after so many people had been on it, it would stretch, so it would
slacken. So we had this wheel, a horizontal wheel on the tripod. And we would have to get a
tirfor winch on, lift it off and jack it back and jack it back and then you’d go and you’d pick up
the tripod and you’d bring it back and slot the wheel back on and it was the tension up then.
And on this particular occasion, Brian Jones, that was a colleague of Ian and mine, we were
doing this between us and we’d got to the point where we had to go back – I had to go up the
hill to get the tripod. And I bent down to pick the tripod up and as I bent down to pick the
tripod up I felt this wind above my head, I’ve no hair now, but I did have then. And what had
happened, this wheel had disengaged and this giant catapult, 300 metre long catapult,
catapulted the wheel. It would have taken my head clean off, if I had not, at that very moment,
bent down to pick this tripod up. And I turned round and Brian was, like, grey. And I said,
“What on earth’s wrong with you, Brian” And he said, “What’s wrong with me!” And he told
me, because I’d no idea what had happened, no idea whatsoever, yes. And, you know, Ian
mentioned Health and Safety, in those days there was no such thing as Health and Safety.
: It didn’t exist.
G.M.: And that thing was put together by a dental mechanic. And I think if he put teeth in like
he made that they’d be falling out in 5 minutes. In the end, that was a learning curve, as well.
But, and another story I had, we used to have a little wooden toggle with a notch in it. And
you’d pay 50 pounds, or a pound for a day or whatever it was, and they’d put this notch on the
rope and it would kink. And they’d hold onto this and it would tow them up the hill, where this
big tow was, with big roller drums and the rope going round them. This guy thought he’d be
24

clever. And he had one of these mole grips with a wrist thing. So he put the mole grip on,
because that was a bit easier. And off he goes and, of course, he gets close to the rollers.
: And he couldn’t get it off.
G.M.: And couldn’t get this thing off. He realised it and he started screaming, he realised he
was going to go through these rollers. And Ian Milner, who was one of our colleagues, was
quick enough to just dive and switch the engine off, just before this guy hit the rollers. And
again, had he gone through those rollers, I think there would have been a lot of questions
asked.
J.E.: It was definitely a dangerous piece of equipment.
G.M.: It was. And again, that was a learning curve. It was so, I mean, I mentioned the ski tow
because the number of things we’ve had to adapt to and take on board and do as a service is
quite unique in many respects.
B.G.: Part of your job was giving tickets out. Spend all day long giving tickets out.
G.M.: Yes.
B.G.: For 50 pence, or whatever it was in those days.
I.H.: Provide first aid, for people who hit the walls as they came down.
G.M.: Six ambulances on the first day!
D.M.: We were talking about that, the walls and…
I.H.: We used to get on a stretcher, didn’t we We had a big Thomas Stretcher here.
G.M.: [] ski run.
J.E.: Weighed a ton before you got anybody on it.
I.H.: Yes, we made it up.
: We hadn’t got anybody on it.
I.H.: With wooden runners and it was the one piece. And we used to take that up ready for
people injuring themselves. But at the end of the day…
G.M.: We sledged down on it! We’d take it up to the top of the hill and we’d all sit on it.
D.M.: Yes, that’s right.
I.H.: Half a dozen people. And you’d slide down. And you mentioned Johnnie Lees, who was
a warden training officer in those days. and he caught us on one occasion, sliding down. And
25

we got the biggest rollicking that we’d had for some time. I remember we hit a snow drift on
one occasion, didn’t we And the stretcher stopped and we carried on going [down].
B.G.: Another time…
D.M.: That was when Julian lost his tooth.
I.H.: Hit the wall
D.M.: Yes, we were coming down on this…
: Yes, we did some silly things.
B.G.: I remember during… in the Edale team. We decided to build a lamp. When David
Fawshaw [] was there.
D.M.: Oh yes, Dave.
B.G.: We wanted a light.
G.M.: A searchlight.
B.G.: So we produced this, must have been about that diameter. And it was so heavy that
only one person, Dave Fawshaw [], was big enough and heavy enough to carry it.
G.M.: It was run off a Butane, a gas bottle, so it had a platform at the back with a gas bottle
on and this great big searchlight in the front. And he was tall and he was like a searchlight,
he’d turn round like this and you’d see this great big beam going round the moor. And he was
the only person who could carry it.
B.G.: I remember on one, we were on Bleaklow on a search and Mike Jackson was on the
team. He was a solicitor in Sheffield and he had a friend, I can’t remember his name, but
anyway, they’d gone to London to watch Arsenal play Sheffield United. So they’d driven all
the way down to London, driven all the way back, about 11 o’clock at night, walked in. And
Mike’s wife said “There’s a search on, you know.” They’d [] and instead of saying “Oh well,
that’s it” they got in the car again and drove out onto Bleaklow.
And I always remember Dave’d got that big searchlight. And we suddenly heard some
noise, so we thought, “Oh, maybe…” I think there were two girls who were missing, “maybe
we’ve found them.” And this light shone round and it’s Mike Jackson and the other bloke – I
can’t remember his name. And, you know, they’d, all the way to London, all the way back, still
turned out. So it must have been, by that time, it was 1 o’clock in the morning.
Twelfth Track.
I.H.: I remember one search that I did, that I was involved in. We used to get a lot of people
missing between Edale and Crowden on the Pennine Way. And it was a regular – every
weekend there were people missing.
26

And I remember, I went out and I had these – somebody mentioned mini-flares – I had
a pack of mini-flares. And they were whites, which meant they were illuminators rather than a
red or a green or whatever. And because the mist was down and these things didn’t go very
high, so you could usefully use them. And I was firing these things as they went along, but
nothing was happening. And it was in the summer. And, obviously, we were not illuminated
and, I can’t remember what happened with the incident, but we went home and all the rest of
it. The following day, there were reports of fires alongside the Pennine Way. These bloody
flares, they must have come out sideways, rather than go up and illuminate, they came out
sideways, still alight, and set fire to the…
J.E.: They were a pain in the backside.
I.H.: All along the Pennine Way!
B.G.: Well, I think I told the story the other week. On Stanage and somebody came down to
North Lees to say somebody’d fallen. So we got the stretcher out. So all the wardens who
were involved were there. And [Prigeon] – in those days we had a Verey pistol – and
[Prigeon] being [Prigeon], he’s in charge of the Verey. So they took the stretcher up to the
road. And – beautiful day – we could see where the accident was. But [Prigeon] stepped
forward, like that, boom, like that, came down here and set fire to the moor. And we were all
dashing about, trying to put the fire out.
G.M.: While the poor devil who was injured is lying there waiting.
B.G.: By the time we got down there, somebody next to the casualty said, “What’s happening
down there We thought you were a band of Red Indians.”
I.H.: The very same thing happened to me, Bill. Again, when I was based at Crowden in the
early ‘70s – the Four Inns – and we used to have teams standing by, if you remember, at
various places. And I think it was the Derby team, something like this – they were at Crowden.
And I got a message that someone was hurt around the Laddow area. So, I mean, Mountain
Rescue’s hairy-chested he-men, you know – Red Mist – Boom – off they went. And I wanted
to call them back. And the only way I could do it was, because I had a Verey pistol, because I
was a one-man RAF sub-unit. So I had a Verey pistol and an axe and I could actually break
into an aircraft. So I fired this thing, not knowing that you have to hold it vertically, because if
you don’t – if you hold it like that – it comes down and it’s still alight. And I fired it and it came
down in a rifle range, amongst all the bracken, and it set fire to the []. “Oh My God!” So the
first thing I had to do was put the bloody fire out.
B.G.: It was funny because [].
I.H.: Not funny at the time, I might say. Well, you can imagine, all the bracken round there.
D.M.: So there was no need for them really.
J.E.: There were all sorts of incidents going off. If you were doing rope work, practising
abseiling and stuff like that, there was always somebody who’d have an injury or something
like that. Really mad lot, you know.
27

Second Interview.
Thirteenth Track.
(So tell me about – you’ve talked about Edale and the briefing centres – the different ones
you had. Tell me about…)
G.M.: The ones here
(Yes, and what the conditions were like – I presume you didn’t have central heating.)
G.M.: No.
J.E.: We did – it were a fire in the middle of the room!
G.M.: The very first one was in the Nag’s Head, because Fred Heardman had set aside a part
of the pub for this, basically, a National Park Information Centre. And there was a big table
and all these photographs and stuff. There was not much room to stand in there, because we
had all these photographs and everything else. Big table and Tom Tomlinson had a big map
of Kinder. And Tom would show you the patrols he wanted you to do.
And it moved from there, it didn’t stay there very long. It moved across to Cooper’s
Café, which at that time was two old railway carriages pushed together sideways on. So
inside were like a curved [double barrelled] ceiling. And they had a great big kettle, which
was for the wardens. And we were briefed basically in one corner of the café, while all the
walkers were in the rest of it. We just had one table and this big teapot. And Tom would brief
us and tell us where he wanted us to go.
And then, to give us a bit more privacy, next to that was a bigger building, which had
been like a village hall, a social club place. And they partitioned the end off, so that we could
have a proper briefing centre. And then in 1960, the Park had bought Fieldhead, where we
are now. And there was a shed on the end of the house, where the Moorland Centre is now, a
wooden outrigger with a door into the house. And George Garlick’s wife, Joyce, would bring
this big – she’d have a big kettle, which she’d bring into there.
And then, of course, that had to be knocked down when they built the first visitor
centre. And that’s when we moved into the building we’re in now – this part of the building,
which did not have this floor in. It was just from the ground floor up to the ceiling.
(Was it a barn)
I.H.: It was almost – it was a barn, yes. And it was a barn with a slatted ceiling. And it had a
great big pot-bellied stove, which Joyce would always fire up. Because it was like firing up a
steam engine. She would do that in a morning early on, before the patrols came in. And in
winter that was a life saver, because you’d come off the hill and everybody would stand
round, steam pouring off them as they gradually dried. And then they would turn with their
back to it and dry their back out.
J.E.: Used to have bench seats, didn’t they
29

G.M.: There was bench seats in there and that was the briefing centre. And it’s been here
since then.
(What was the shed you were saying, with the corrugated iron…)
G.M.: There was one on the car park, which was actually a bungalow, and that was the
Information Centre. While they were building this, not the current one, the one before, while
they were building that, that bungalow was the Visitors’ Centre. And it was actually a
bungalow from when they built the railway in 1894 when there, well, the population of this
valley went from 300 to 1,300. There were a thousand navvies and their families, so they
were living in wooden bungalows, most of which have gone now. But that was a relic of it,
probably one of the foreman’s houses or something.
B.G.: And the first briefing centre at Langsett was just a little tiny wooden hut, right on the
corner.
G.M.: Across from the church.
B.G.: It had been a café. And we had that for a while.
J.E.: Then we went to the café across the road.
G.M.: There was some fascinating briefing centres actually. Like at Hartington, it was in the
signal box.
: Yes, I remember that.
G.M.: Some were adapted – at Hayfield it moved, the one at Hayfield, that used to be in
Dale’s Café, which was in the village. And then it moved to opposite the railway station and I
remember when we there, one day, Arthur Lowe out of “Dad’s Army” came in. He was looking
for relatives, because he came from there originally, apparently. I didn’t know this. But he was
asking if we knew any Lowes. It is a Derbyshire name. And we connected him with some.
But that was a little shed, and then that moved. And we moved then up to the filter
house at the reservoir – a great big filter house. And we had this little room – a little building
next to the filter house. And that was very handy, because it’s straight onto Kinder from there.
And then they built the…the Park took over a campsite down the road and they built the
purpose-built one. But there’s a real variety of briefing centres.
J.E.: I know at Langsett we had the saddle store, didn’t we Do you remember the saddle
store in the village And they’d no proper toilets. There were thunder boxes outside and we
had “Ladies” and “Gents”. The “Ladies” always had a door on, the “Gents” never did, for some
reason.
B.G.: Glossop was the offices of the Co-operative.
I.H.: It was in the Co-op, yes.
: Where the Girl Guides used to meet.
30

I.H.: And do you remember the fungi on the walls
G.M.: That was the Natural History lesson.
[Laughter.]
I.H.: Yes, every time it was wet. Then we moved up, didn’t we, to Mossy Lea and the cabin.
No, not the cabin.
G.M.: Bungalow on the corner, the Lodge.
I.H.: That’s right, the Lodge, Mossy Lea Lodge, yes. And I remember, I had to plaster the
ceiling and do all sorts of things there.
G.M.: And we said earlier, at Stanage, it was actually in the kitchen of the farmer’s house. It
was wonderful.
D.M.: I loved it.
J.E.: If there was an argument…
G.M.: You’d arrive there. The family would have their bacon and eggs and the tea was on the
stove and everything and you’d sit and have a chat.
D.M.: Like I was saying about the lambs, yes.
J.E.: But they used to argue, didn’t they, sometimes, and you’d be sat.
D.M.: It were, looking back now at Old [Prigeon], he was a most unlucky man; he’d either
broke his arm or OL!
G.M.: Accidents.
B.G.: When we first went there, the Hall, North Lees Hall, was just derelict. The farmhouse
was O.K. And while we were doing our briefing in the kitchen, that period, they restored the
Hall.
G.M.: That’s the hall that’s featured in “Jane Eyre”, so it’s historically important, but now the
Peak Park’s got it.
J.E.: Yes, they put a lot of money in it, didn’t they You know, the roof and that.
G.M.: Miller’s Dale was in the station, still is, in the station building.
I.H.: Prior to that, though, we were in Tideswell Dale, between the toilet blocks.
G.M.: Down the bottom. Like Dovestones is also between the toilet blocks.
31

I.H.: It is now, but prior to that, we were in Ashway Gate House and the only water supply was
a spring supply, which was in an adjoining outhouse, if you remember. So we had to go and
dip the kettle, it wasn’t a tap, it was a constant supply of water. So dip the kettle into this little
trough – and it was wonderful water – and then boil it. And at Crowden we were in…
G.M.: The Youth Hostel at Crowden. And then it went into that place on the road, didn’t it
The old school room.
I.H.: No, it was in the rifle range.
G.M.: Oh! Sorry, the rifle range. It was in the big house.
I.H.: Firzakaly’s. Firzakaly was the warden of the rifle range.
G.M.: Then they demolished that, then they went in the hostel, then the board school.
I.H.: No, from the rifle range we went into the old school. We never went into the Youth
Hostel.
G.M.: There was a time when we were briefed in the Youth Hostel in the end, in that drying
room, I remember, for a spell.
I.H.: Not in my memory, Gordon.
G.M.: When Brian Foster and I shared we were both assistants there.
: He’s making it up.
G.M.: I was assistant for northern and he was assistant for south.
I.H.: The hostel wasn’t there. I mean, it was originally cottages, wasn’t it, converted into a
Youth Hostel. But that was in the ‘60s. And we were in the rifle range. Because when Ken
was appointed in ’65, we went straight to the rifle range and then we went into…
G.M.: It was a big house, big building.
I.H.: Oh! Absolutely enormous.
: You could hide [] in there.
D.M.: I can tell you one about Stanage. When we moved from [Prigeon’s], you know, the
kitchen up the top, where the road is, we used to have a big gas bottle for the lighting and
heating. And I can remember this day. Every time when we’d finished we always used to go
and turn the gas bottle off. So I went outside and I switched it off, and it were a bit hard to
close the valve. And this chap at the side of me, he says, “Is it shut off” I says “No, not
quite.” And he got this lighter out. Ah! Whoosh! Oh! And before I knew it, this bottle, it were
32

jus like a jet. Oh Dear! We thought we’d have to call the fire brigade, you know, set wood
alight.
: It did burn down, a few years later.
G.M.: Somebody set fire to it.
D.M.: I was shouting, you know, “No! Don’t!”
B.G.: We had some funny old times at Stanage, didn’t we
I.H.: I mean, when you think of some of the things that we did.
J.E.: You’d get locked up now.
I.H.: Well, we got away with it, didn’t we
G.M.: Well, there weren’t any legislation.
: There weren’t any rules.
I.H.: So we just did it.
D.M.: There were no come-back at all.
J.E.: I mean, one thing about the warden service then, it was so diverse. We’d got everybody,
engineers, electricians, and we could all do things, you know. I mean, now we have an estate
to do that sort of thing. But in those days it wasn’t. If anybody were wiring stuff up, “Oh, you
can do that.” or “Can you mow the grass or cut a tree down”
G.M.: One of the wonderful things about the Warden Service here, it was such an eclectic
group of people – from university professors to people who were doing pretty simple jobs.
You’d get the whole range. But there was no hierarchy or anything like this. Everybody was
doing the same thing. They came together and…extraordinary. I don’t know if I’ve ever been
anywhere quite like that.
D.M.: There was nobody saying “I’m cleverer than you are.” was there
G.M.: No, everybody was out to do. They all wanted to look after the Park.
D.M.: I mean, I was just on the railway, me, a fireman on a steam engine, [].
J.E.: I mean, as a family, they paid us a nominal fee, really, in those days, to ensure that they
got the number of wardens out to patrol. Otherwise, they couldn’t have done it voluntary, like
they did early doors, you know, from Rambling Clubs and stuff like that. It had to be a bit more
precise. They had to guarantee that they’d have the same number of people out. So they
introduced a system of…I mean, if we’d all been doing it for the money, we wouldn’t be here
now, you know. It’s as simple as that.
33

I.H.: It was a guinea wasn’t it My first wage was a guinea.
J.E.: 1 pound, 30 shillings.
I.H.: No, 1 pound, 1 shilling.
J.E.: It was 1 pound, 30, when I came in. Well, it was 1 pound, 25, then 5 shillings for
subsidence.
G.M.: I mean, to be honest, it’s sad the way things are going now, with financial constraints
and so on, and the environment. It’s going to be things like the Warden Service that’ll suffer.
And yet, if you actually look at value for money over the years, the voluntary Warden Service
and part-time paid Warden Service has been incredible value, incredible. And if it just
disappeared tomorrow, this would be a poorer place for it. And so, visitors would have a
poorer experience for it.
Fourteenth Track.
G.M.: Yes, in the very, very early days of the Warden Service, when it first started, they had
the actual inauguration, was on Good Friday, 1954. But about 3 months before that, Tom
Tomlinson, who’d been appointed the year before, had brought all these Rambling clubs
together, like the Manchester Ramblers, Sheffield Ramblers, Clarion, Fell and Rock and
talked about what they were doing to set this Warden Service up. And asking them to commit
to providing volunteers. And that’s how it started. So these volunteers would come from all the
clubs. They’d be given an arm band in the Nag’s Head and they’d go off on patrol.
But, after a while it started to dwindle and dwindle, less and less. And then, by the time
it got to 1960 – and this is where Bill comes in – because they had to have that legal
commitment to have wardens on access land and we weren’t getting the numbers, they had
to start appointing contract paid wardens.
But we still used to get the Rambling Clubs round. I remember when we covered
Hayfield, as well as Edale; sometimes you’d have about 24. Manchester and Sheffield R.A.
would come out to do a patrol. But they wouldn’t go on different patrols, they all wanted to go
together. So, there’d be one guy with an arm band on and 25 behind him all, so poor public,
Joe Public, you know, if ever they did anything wrong, they’d be surrounded by…
B.G.: Instant back up.
G.M.: And the other thing I recall from the days when I started, which was like as a part-time
paid ranger, and Bill will also recall this. Tom used to actually type out every week an
individual briefing for every warden and mail it to you. And you would get this letter, just like
this one here with the heading, “Peak Park Planning Board” across the top. And it would say
“Dear Gordon” or “Dear Bill”, it would say, “This Sunday, will you go up Grindsbrook and will
you check out so-and-so. Then go over to Wood Cabin and check the cabin’s O.K. and just
check the lock’s O.K. and will you do this. And watch out for litter and such and such.” And he
would type one of those for every warden.
34

(How many part-time staff were there)
G.M.: Oh! Quite a lot. Dozens and dozens of them.
B.G.: Oh! []
G.M.: Dozens and dozens of them. And he was a two-finger typist. He’d be with this old
Remington going thump, thump, thump. And you always knew it was from Tom, you could tell
it was, because the “O”s were never right.
B.G.: And his “R”s were [odd].
G.M.: You knew just what it was. But it was incredible, how he could do that. Then he’d be
here for a briefing, as well, just in case he wasn’t here when you arrived on a Saturday or
Sunday.
B.G.: And what did he used to sign off with
G.M.: Oh, he’d say, “Have a good…”
B.G.: “I hope you have…”
G.M.: “A nice day…”
B.G.: Something like that, “without incidents” or something like that.
G.M.: “I hope you have a good day without incidents.” Yes, every one signed off with that.
Yes, I wish I had some of those briefings still now.
J.E.: But we used to get quite a lot of mail, didn’t we, backwards and forwards from the office,
different things.
(They weren’t phones and email then, were there)
G.M.: No. There was a Warden Service clerk. And there was the Head Warden to start with.
And then, what actually happened was that, as it got bigger and bigger and became
administratively more complicated, the Park decided to take on a Warden Service Officer in
1966, I think it was. And that was Johnnie Lees, whose background was, he’d been one of the
RAF Mountain Rescue, a very great climber and all this sort of thing. He was brought in,
basically, to administer the Ranger Service. So Tom Tomlinson, who by then had been
around quite a long time, was getting older, could concentrate on the field issues. And, to be
fair, it’s probably then we moved from being a lot of amateurs pioneering a service to
becoming a bit more…
(Organised.)
G.M.: Organised, trained. I mean, the first thing Johnnie Lees did when he started was sent
Brian Jones and I off to do a Mountain Leadership Certificate. Because he said all wardens, if
35

you want to be talking to groups, you should have a Mountain Leadership Certificate. And we
weren’t just sent on a summer one. We were sent on the worst possible one, in the middle of
winter at Plas y Brenin in Wales. We were up to our necks in snow. This was supposed to be
a summer Mountain Leadership Certificate. And when we came back from that he said, “I
want to see what you’re like.” And he used to take the part-time assistants off to Wales,
climbing.
B.G.: I remember climbing on Tryfan with him.
G.M.: That’s right. And it was good because it brought assistants together to talk about
issues, camaraderie was there. Because when wardens and rangers were working in different
briefing centres, they didn’t often see each other.
B.G.: No, you didn’t.
G.M.: It was left to like the Kinder Warden, the Peak Warden Association to get people
together. So, having these courses for assistants, he raised the standards, you know. Some
of them didn’t like climbing, but he said, “I’m not going to teach you to be a climber,” he said,
“I want you to be safe on rock. And I want you to understand.”
So there was a change there, ’66. And the next big change, I think, was probably Eric
Bardell, wasn’t it Eric. ’74 was the time of local government reorganisation. He was brought
in. He was an ex-colonel, a military man. And I think he was seen as knocking these people,
like Ian and I, into shape, you know. So we walked upright and kept our chins up and you
know. And he addressed us like, we were always addressed like the army, weren’t we Eric’s
private regiment, I think. But, again, it was changing. And it’s gone through those changes all
the way through.
B.G.: That’s natural, it always will.
: That’s natural, yes.
J.E.: I mean, Johnnie Lees was the one that insisted that when you went on a training course,
you’d got to spend a night out on Kinder Scout.
G.M.: We used to do Assistants Courses, yes. And Peter Lawrence and I developed a night
navigation course up on Kinder. And at the end of the night we gave this course we had
everybody in bivvy bags and they had to sleep through the night up there.
J.E.: To get a feeling.
G.M.: To get a feel of what it was, you know.
J.E.: What it could be like.
: And they don’t do that now, you see. It’s not…
B.G.: No, they’re soft these days.
36

[Laughter.]
J.E.: When you think, I mean, waterproofs were Helly Hansen, they didn’t wear out, they used
to rub. And now it’s…
[Several talk at once.]
I.H.: I remember a night I spent in waterproofs. But I didn’t have any trousers on underneath,
because they’d got wet. I don’t know how they’d got wet, but they were wet. And we were
bivvying out on Kinder. So I took them off and just put my waterproofs on. Now, if you’re
wearing a Helly Hansen, you’re with bare legs, freezing [] cold. God, I don’t think I slept a
wink that night. But it’s all part of the experience.
G.M.: I remember one of the night navigation things. I was up at Crookstone and somewhere.
And I’m sat like this and it’s dark. And they had to navigate in the dark and find you, you
know. So you used to be sat down []. I’m sat there like this and a badger came round the
corner, wandered straight across my knees and off. I just went, “Oh! What’s that” I just saw
the two white patches in the dark. And it walked straight over my knees.
Fifteenth Track.
(That’s quite an interesting point. Has wildlife changed You must see a lot more than most
people, being out there.)
I.H.: I think wildlife has changed for the better. I think now that raptors are protected in the
way that they are and most people are aware there’s that protection and do watch out for
them. So I think there’s far more raptors now than ever before. I mean, when I first started you
used to see the odd kestrel. But now, you’ll see a buzzard, as well as kestrels, merlins, the
whole gamut. I remember, years ago, I saw my first short-eared owl. But I didn’t see the bird, I
just saw the shadow on the ground – “Jesus! What’s this” Huge thing, it just used to glide
across, like this. And it was about some 6 or 7 feet above the moor, so it was obviously
watching out for prey. But they were huge things and, I mean, they’re still around.
B.G.: Are there still mountain hares on Kinder
: Probably.
G.M.: I mean, I was just going to say, I’ve just talked about different phases in the Warden
Ranger Service and I think Ranger Service now is going into another phase. And I don’t just
think here, but I think worldwide. I think rangers have always been seen as they’re, we say,
the eyes and ears of the ground, of the Park, you know. People in an office can’t know what’s
going on out here; they need people, the eyes and ears, to see what’s happening. And I think
the next critical stage is rangers being used, and they are being used now, much more for
observation powers and for recording and monitoring, you know.
And in the past we always used to have a [] report. You’d get back at night and the
assistant would say “Well, what did you see today How many birds How many – did you
see any hares How many people” And it all goes down. And somewhere in the vaults at
37

Aldern House there’s all these statistics over the years, which somebody could pull out and
say where there’s trends there. But very little of it was of immediate relevance or focused on
anything really. And now you see rangers go out – they’ve got a monitor – changes in
vegetation, looking at the experiments that are going on. The detail now on wildlife is much
more detailed.
So, and I think that’s a very important role and it’s one that might well save Ranger
Services because they are the ideal people to do it. Because they’ve developed all these
rangers with skills such as local knowledge, communication skills, observation skills and just a
general knowledge of what and where things are. And can see changes and say, “Look, that
is changing, I’ve been coming up here every fortnight for the last 10 years and that is
changing.” There’s very few people can do that.
(You’re absolutely right.)
J.E.: Of course, talking about wildlife, it has changed, because the attitude of gamekeepers.
Gamekeepers used to manage their moors in the early days under big secrecy. Nobody knew
what was going off. And they would get rid of raptors and stuff just like that. But now we’ve
got people wandering around, so they can’t, they don’t get away with the things that they used
to do years ago.
D.M.: We have one spot, though, Broomhead Moor, that’s not so good with the raptors.
G.M.: There are still problems.
J.E.: Yes, there’s still problems, but it’s all down to more management by the grouse
shooting.
Sixteenth Track.
B.G.: Looking at developing the Ranger Service from now on, how do you think we should go
about it from an educational point of view Because, well, one instance of a neighbour of
mine, her son, more than anything else, would love to be in the Ranger Service. He’s done
about six years voluntary work with the Sheffield Ranger Service and went for an interview at
Aldern House and was told, “Well, go away and get a degree.” Is that the right approach, or,
looking back at our experience, should we be looking more towards that way
J.E.: But that’s full time.
B.G.: [What’s the level]
G.M.: I think it’s both, Bill. Because I think when I started and when Ian started as full-timers
they were not looking for a degree. They were looking essentially for experience of the Park,
experience as wardens over the years, what you develop, local knowledge and all this sort of
thing. Those were the principal skills they were looking for.
I.H.: But there wasn’t any countryside degrees around in those days.
38

G.M.: There was no appropriate degrees or post graduate []. But in the early ‘80s/late ‘70s
there were universities, agricultural colleges starting to develop these post graduate courses
you could take – management and environmental management. And I think that started
to…people think “Right, what we now need is people with that academic knowledge and
background, which underlies most of this, but we also want them with practical skills.” Now,
what the universities and colleges don’t provide is the practical skills. And you only get that by
doing it.
B.G.: By coming out as a voluntary or a paid part-time ranger or doing some voluntary work in
a country park. But, I think if I was appointing a ranger now – if I was in the position of, and I’d
got two or three people there, the people I would be looking for would be people with both
those strings to their bows. Because I don’t think you can turn the clock back and say you just
want people now with practical skills. They’ve got to, more and more is demanded now. And I
was saying about observation, you need to have that background to understand not just what
you see, but what the process is. So I think it’s the two. But, I would hate to see it where
we’ve got pure graduates going straight into the Ranger Service, because I do know that
those people who go in for that sort of job see it with a fairly blinkered academic view, which,
you know, I think rangers are almost between the scientists and the practitioners, in many
roads. We are practitioners, but sometimes we’re between the two, with a link. And I think that
is increasingly important.
So I think anybody, like the person you’re talking about, who’s looking to get a career
in this sort of thing needs to get that academic qualification. They won’t get a job otherwise
now, and that’s a fact of life. But, I think, equally, they need to get as much practical
experience as possible, either in the area where they want to work or somewhere that’s
similar. I don’t know whether Ian would agree with me on that
I.H.: Yes, I would agree. In fact, I actually did a degree when I was in my mid-forties, sort of a
day release thing at Salford University. It took me five years, but I eventually got it. And that
opened – I mentioned earlier when we started that I was seconded to the Countryside
Commission – without that degree, there was no way I would have got that secondment and
that experience, because that opened the door for me.
But you’re obviously right, Bill. I think Gordon in right, as well. Without a degree these
days you, they certainly won’t get a job. But, the way that we did it can’t be replicated, I don’t
think, anymore. Other than people gaining a bit of experience as a volunteer. But the
experience we obtained, it took us years to do that, didn’t it, as well
G.M.: I think the reason for the marriage of the two is that, when I look back to before I did my
Master’s, like Ian, at university, everything we did was, you did something and you tried it out.
Proven examples were erosion control. And I remember Brian Jones. He thought, “Ah! I’m
going to try putting some chestnut paving down on the Featherbed Moss.” And he rolled this
chestnut paving out. Now that was Brian’s initiative to do that and try it through trial and error.
And we tried all sorts of other things.
What happens when you go back like Ian and I did, back into academia, to learn the
theoretical side of it, is that you don’t just do something instinctively. You think, “What’s going
to be the consequence of doing that” And it’s that added thing.
J.E.: But that’s progress, isn’t it
39

G.M.: It is. And I think that’s why, Bill, I think it’s important to have both.
B.G.: Yes, I agree.
J.E.: At the end of the day, Bill, as a ranger, you’re always learning and you always will learn.
It’s just an ongoing thing, it never stops. But it works the other way. If you just have somebody
coming in purely academic, they’ll find actually that they’ll have to do lots of things over and
over again, because Ian and I could probably say, “We’ve done that before and it doesn’t
work.” And so there is this question of marriage of nouse with knowledge.
And I think we’re more involved now in educating people than what we ever have
been. I think communication skills now, if not always, have been one of the key…I mean, we
didn’t used to take school kids out when I first started. Now we get them, we’re doing it
regular. And health walks and stuff like that. They’re all boxes that need to be ticked now, to
function as a service, really.
(I think it’s good that you are engaging with all those people that use the moors.)
J.E.: But you’ve got to – it’s one of those sorts of things, you’re either interested in it or you’re
not.
J.E.: It’s not a job – you know, if you’re not interested you’d do it for a few months and then
disappear somewhere.
(Find it hard and leave.)
J.E.: I mean, I’ve been here all this time because I enjoy doing it. There’s no other
explanation for it. You chop my leg off, it’ll have got “Peak Park” right through it, much to my
wife’s regret. I mean, I used to sneak back off holidays on a Friday, rather than coming back
on the Sunday, so I could come out and do a duty on Saturday and Sunday. That was terrible.
Put up with a lot my wife did in all the years as a warden, really. It’s in your blood. You can’t…
I.H.: I think it led to lots of wrecked marriages.
G.M.: It used to be amongst the profession, I’m talking now about full-time rangers, I think the
percentage of divorces, well, I’m a divorcee, the percentage is very, very high in this particular
profession. And I think it’s because, well, I’m sure it’s because you marry the job, you know.
And you can’t be in two marriages. Also, it makes for individual focussing and everything else,
and some people, like Ian, you know, succeeded, bless him, in keeping the two together. But
for many it’s very hard. And I do recall, and it’s probably still the case now, it’s very high, the
percentage, isn’t it
B.G.: It is. It’s very high in the full-time staff. Yes, we look back through all our colleagues and
so on, [] of our colleagues have been divorced.
D.M.: When they get married to someone like that, they know what the job entails, so why get
married You know
J.E.: Yes, but they don’t know what the job entails until they actually do it.
40

G.M.: No, and I remember when – I don’t see it much now among full-time rangers, I have to
admit – but Ian will tell you, that we would go out giving talks at night and they’d be all over
the place.
I.H.: I was just going to say that when you were talking about [the problems]. We used to go,
there used to be a Police Cadet training place up the snake and we used to commit once a
month to go there. I was on the Peak District Duke of Edinburgh Gold Assessment Panel. We
were on the Peak District MRO (the Peak District Mountain Rescue Organisation). There was,
I could go through…And you’d finish up, you’d be working a full working stint, going home,
grabbing your tea and then going out for some meeting or some panel or something as a
ranger.
J.E.: Well, it’s like part-timing.
G.M.: It’s no wonder marriages broke up.
J.E.: It didn’t used to be half-past ten while five o’clock then. You used to get there at ten
o’clock in the morning and if it was a nice summery day and there were a lot of people out,
you were eight o’clock at night.
D.M.: I can remember that.
I.H.: In that respect, it’s very different.
(It’s a labour of love.)
I.H.: It is, very much so.
D.M.: And when you left at eight o’clock at night, there were still loads of people about so,
yes.
Seventeenth Track.
B.G.: Do you think this is still the best National Park
: Without a doubt.
G.M.: In what way For its Ranger Service, you mean, or on the part of the Park
B.G.: I mean from the Ranger Service.
I.H.: Well, I’m biased in a sense, because I do believe that.
G.M.: Certainly [viewed] from a training point of view.
41

I.H.: But I don’t, perhaps I shouldn’t be saying this, but I don’t feel that the direction in which
the Ranger Service is going now is the right direction, certainly not for me. Because it hasn’t
got the respect within the communities that it had when, in our day, as it were. Things have
changed and that may be the reason. But, it’s not, I mean, you can go out and build a stile,
that’s not a problem. And you can go out and talk to a group. But it seems to be spending a
lot more time in terms of education, formal education, by taking groups out and all this
business and becoming a teacher. And we’re not trained as teachers, we’re trained as, if you
like, a countryside manager, but with an overall view of what’s happening in terms of visitors
and the farming community. I saw myself as a support to allow that to happen. And I was
happy for groups to come out and talk to them. But I think now it’s gone a little too far.
G.M.: I think what it is, Ian. I often say this when I see rangers, not just here, but elsewhere
working. What worries me now is I see more and more rangers sat by computers. You
mentioned about education. My fear with some Ranger Services is that they start to focus on
ne particular issue. Now, if you go down the avenue of just taking out more and more school
parties, at the end of the day, somebody’s going to turn round and say, “Look, there are other
people we can get, better trained, to do that and probably cheaper.” And I’ve always said that
the essence of being a ranger is having many strings to your bow. The more strings you have,
the more difficult it is to replace you, because it’s very easy – you sit down at a computer all
day and somebody says, “Hang on, what are we employing you for Is it just to focus on
getting statistics down there, or is it actually being a presence out on the hill” And I think it’s
all of them and they need to keep more jobs, and I see less and less of that.
J.E.: And it’s also what brings that in, as well. That’s the main issue, what [] to do these
things. And it worries me. I used to be with rangers who were in country parks and so on and,
as I said before, many of them were doing nothing but taking guided walks out. That was all
they were doing. And I’m not saying that’s bad, it’s good. But, if that’s all your doing, it gets
very easy somewhere down the line for somebody to say, “Well, are guided walks so
important in the big picture” And they can say, “Look, sorry, we’ll replace you.” But, if you’re
monitoring, if you’re communicating with people, providing feedback, educating, making sure
that people behave themselves, all these different things, if you’re keeping those within your
remit, then you’re actually in a unique job, which is a ranger job. And too many actually start
to deviate off. And, I’m afraid, once you start to do that, you’re, well, I think in the economic
climate we’re in now, it would become much, much easier to dispense with you.
D.M.: Gordon, do you find that You go to all National Parks all over the world.
G.M.: This is happening all over the world.
D.M.: Is it It is
G.M.: This I’m talking about now, I’m not just talking about the Peak District.
D.M.: No, no.
G.M.: But to go back to Ian’s question about this National Park. I still think this National Park
has the best developed part-time Ranger Services anywhere, certainly in the U.K. And that’s
42

ecause of the way it’s developed. It’s a training course, which has developed and gone with
the times. Still the core issues are there, but it’s developed with the times.
J.E.: Yes. It’s gone with changes.
G.M.: And I don’t know of another National Park that’s got anywhere near. I mean, the Lake
District have always had a voluntary warden service, run on very, very different lines. And
they do train them, but not the same way as here. And then there’s no other National Parks, I
don’t think, that have developed volunteers in the same way as we have here. So I think it’s
very much still a leader, this Park, in that respect.
D.M.: So we met a Lakeland Ranger and he came one day and signed on and did a walk and
that was it. It was totally different from here. No briefing at all. They have geographical
problems in the Lake District. Their volunteers are divided up into sectors, because it’s not
easy to go from one valley all the way round to another. Somebody working in…and they’re
all different, so it’s not fair to perhaps make an analogy with them.
: A comment…
G.M.: But, from the point of view of the development, certainly, I think this National Park
has…
B.G.: I find going down to the New Forest, which I do quite often, I can’t see any signs really
of a Ranger Service.
G.M.: It’s interesting.
B.G.: Or information service. I really, I’m very, very disappointed.
D.M.: Nothing at all, then, Bill
B.G.: Well, there is.
J.E.: It’s not quite as spread out, like it [in] the Peak District
B.G.: I get the sense that, really, nothing much happening. It’s interesting, though, down
South. You look at the New Forest, if you look at a City of London place, like Burnham
Beeches, Epping Forest, and so on; they actually have a long, long history of rangers there.
But they’re different. They’re like verderers, they’re looking after the forest, and in the New
Forest that is the case. They don’t call them verderers there, they call them something else,
but they are rangers. But they’re on horseback. And they have these laws going back to the
time of William the Conqueror. What they need to do, or if they have anything to learn from a
place like the Lake District and here, is that have other roles to do. Because, I think, it’s
almost like they’re back to what we started with. They’re just enforcing bye-laws, essentially.
And perhaps over the years they will develop these on the same lines. Well, who knows I
suspect they may.
43

(I think the Peak Park’s been very lucky to have people like you, really, sort of, very
committed.)
B.G.: I think it’s remarkable. I always remember – never forgotten that when I first heard that
this was going to be a National Park, my first reaction was, “Who in their right mind is going to
put a National Park here, where it is” Because, going back to what I said before, Sheffield,
Manchester, because of the area were two huge industrial centres. And you’d think, “Well,
why have a National Park here” It didn’t sound credible at all.
(Right, that’s interesting.)
B.G.: But we did, and it worked. And it’s probably because of all the disadvantages that has
made it so successful.
G.M.: I think, as well, underlying it all is if we go back to the Mass Trespass, the thirties, the
Depression, you know, you’re talking about the cities. We all know the stories of people out of
work in Sheffield and Manchester. The only place you could go free was out in the hills of the
Peak District, get away from mucky Manchester and mucky Sheffield. And I think that
underlies everything we’ve been talking about today, because that’s the foundation, you’ve
got that commitment to protecting it, to keeping it, to letting people enjoy it the same way we
did, all the way back to the thirties.
So, it took a lot to fight to get what we’ve got, having done that and having that history,
people want to keep it. And I think that underlies everything we do. Once we lose that, and it
does sometimes worry me when I talk to some of the new rangers around, who don’t know
that history. Because it underpins it. You think, well, it’s much easier to go off track and go
down some avenue, which our predecessors, the people who fought for this, would go, you
know, “What is happening Why did we fight for this”
J.E.: I mean, like we say, all these people that used to come out walking from Sheffield, it
were all Socialist motivated, weren’t it Because of the layout of the industry and mills and
factories and stuff like that. And people wanted to get out.
B.G.: People like J.B. Ward, now they were very influential Left-Wingers. And, in that respect,
they did a lot of good.
D.M.: They used to say, “Sheffield in a golden frame”.
(Yes.)
G.M.: Well, I remember as a kid, going to school with masks in November over your face.
J.E.: Yes, smog and things like that, yes.
G.M.: And getting to school, the mask was yellow. And you couldn’t see. The conductors
would walk in front of the bus. And nobody, they don’t seem, people don’t understand what
smogs are now. But, I think, when you’ve live through that as a child, to walk on Kinder was
Nirvana, I mean it was fresh air.
44

J.E.: I mean, even the sheep are whiter now, aren’t they Than they used to be.
G.M.: Sorry
J.E.: The sheep are whiter now, than what they used to be.
G.M.: Even the sheep are whiter because, you know, that’s part of that whole thing about
fighting for this. It wasn’t just about access, it was about getting some fresh air, God-given
fresh air, or whatever, you know. And I think that still underlines my philosophy. And I think it’s
something that we all share here. How much our present generation and future generations
are going to appreciate that, I don’t know. It’ll be interesting.
J.E.: We take it for granted now, it’s these…
G.M.: Well, that is a problem – you lose it then.
D.M.: With the Park, it was like a roll – on effect with the cities – “Oh! Well, we must get some
clean air.” And this is how I think it started. And the “golden frame” for the cities. And then
Sheffield now is much cleaner, and Manchester, as well.
B.G.: In that respect, this is still unique. There isn’t any other National Park that has that
[population].
I.H.: No other major conurbations that were around, that there are around this Park.
G.M.: Seventeen million people within fifty miles.
B.G.: Sometimes you think they’re all there.
I.H.: Well, that’s the conflict, isn’t it To try and manage and retain the special qualities. And
yet, you’ve got thousands, millions of people visiting and wanting to do their own thing. And
there has to some, somebody and some management, to protect the resource, as well as
provide opportunities for the people to enjoy it. So it’s always going to be a conflict.
B.G.: But, it’s amazing how well it works.
: Absolutely.
B.G.: I mean, regularly, June and I will go out, say Bakewell or somewhere like that. And, if
you keep away from the weekends, it’s lovely. We have no problems. Sensibly, because
we’re retired, you don’t have to go out at weekends. Let somebody else get on with it and, on
the whole, it works pretty well.
Eighteenth Track.
D.M.: Do you know, Bill, on Derwent Edge, where they’ve slabbed it the vegetation’s coming
back.
45

I.H.: Oh! It is on the Pennine Way and in some places where I think we can all quote those
areas. But that’s not a new idea, the Romans did it a thousand years ago.
D.M.: Of course they did.
J.E.: It took us some time to get round to it. Same as like they did, they did palings, like you
said. We’ve had nylon matting and all sorts [] and all sorts of things.
G.M.: Well, [] in [Pathfinders] in 1971, a guy called Nick [Pakovsky] did some work on Park
Hall Moor. And the work he did, it was for the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, was to look at
the impact on grouse of recreation. And he did some work. And he showed that it was
something like five or six percent of people walk off paths – by “paths” I mean rights of way,
regular sheep trods – so most of the moor itself, people are not walking.
: It’s a one-off if you do it, isn’t it
G.M.: So then, when we started with flags and so on, I remember a guy who worked for the
B.B.C. in Manchester, Alistair McDonald – do you remember Alistair McDonald
B.G.: Yes.
G.M.: And he was very critical on radio and television about these slabs being put on the
moors. And I wrote an article in the Countryman Magazine, to him, because he’d written in
this magazine about this, in response to him. And he as saying that it was abysmal and that it
was urbanising the, this wild landscape of Kinder. Well, of course, Kinder’s only wild in
imagination, it’s a man-made landscape, we all know that, well, we do. And it’s managed and
has been for many years. And I said to him, “Look, if these regular paths are slabbed, for the
ninety percent to walk on, or ninety-five percent, you and your colleagues, who want to be
free spirits, can do the rest, you know, so what’s the problem And, in fact, it’s been proved
beyond doubt that putting flags down as a [means] to putting vegetation back, most people, I
would think ninety-eight percent of people, are happy with them. It’s reduced erosion. It’s
made for a better experience, because does anybody really enjoy being up to their waist in
peat I know I don’t. And they blend in, because, as Ian said, there were the Romans, the
pack-horse people were putting slabs in over here for centuries ago, so we’re not doing
anything new.
D.M.: No, we’re not.
G.M.: And I just, well, as far as Alistair’s concerned, I rest my case.
I.H.: I think quite a few people saw it as an intrusion in what they saw as a wilderness area,
because they’d no other experience, of course, Kinder and Bleaklow. But it has, I think,
worked remarkably well in improving the erosion. Because erosion is not only a scar, but it’s
physically difficult to manage, as well.
J.E.: You can’t hide it either, can you
46

G.M.: We’ve still got the largest carbon store in the world if [].
: But that’s a relatively recent thing. We didn’t talk about carbon stores in the Peak twenty
years ago. We just used to go.
G.M.: We just saw it as Kinder disappearing before our very eyes.
B.G.: You talk about Kinder disappearing, but I mean, we used to get people nicking peat,
didn’t we
G.M.: You used to go to the Snake Summit and there used to be bags, you’d find, there’d be
about six bags, plastic bags, full of peat.
(Cut [for fuel])
G.M.: No, for their gardens.
J.E.: They’d be no good for it.
G.M.: And the thing is, it’s so acidic.
J.E.: It would kill everything.
G.M.: No self-respecting plant would ever live in it. But they would be bagging [].
B.G.: And sphagnum for the hanging baskets.
D.M.: And it’s not the peat that, you know, that crofters got in Scotland, for the fire, is it
G.M.: And, you’re right, sphagnum for hanging baskets. Well, they still get that now. That’s
particularly a problem on places like Stanage and the Goyt Valley. There’s certain areas
where there’s sphagnum bogs and they’re just taking it, yes, and that is still a current
problem.
B.G.: But, if it’s sphagnum, you can wash it and get it clean.
G.M.: But the peat has actually stopped, though, the peat cutting [].
B.G.: Well, it was the Theft Act. We always used to quote that. This is theft, stealing from the
land, six months down the line or six hundred pounds.
J.E.: They didn’t like it when we used to tell them to put it back.
G.M.: No, they didn’t. I’d forgotten about that.
J.E.: I remember that up at Upper Booth, I got up there one day and there’s this car parked
there and this man and woman in it. They’d got two stainless spades lying in bags, mother-in-
47

law sat in the back, [eyes shut]. I said, “It carries so much fine for that.” And I thought she
would have palpitations in the back of the car, mother-in-law.
I.H.: They didn’t know better. They didn’t know it was…
J.E.: No, they didn’t.
G.M.: “Peat’s good for the garden. Let’s go and get some. It’s free.”
I.H.: They didn’t know the damage they were doing.
J.E.: Well, they thought it was the same as you buy, but it isn’t. It’s treated, the stuff you buy.
And you don’t get so much of that now. That’s been curtailed.
(Yes, a lot of people don’t use peat.)
G.M.: Well, people are better educated now. And there are also lots of other good alternatives
now, which there weren’t around then.
J.E.: That’s like they always say, plants don’t need soil to grow in, they only need water and
nutrients, that’s all they need. A lot of stuff that they grow now, mass-produced, it’s not grown
in soil, it’s…I forget, there’s a name for it, isn’t there
G.M.: Hydroponics.
I.H.: That’s cannabis.
J.E.: Ah, there were. I’ve had a few of that, sniffing and you can always smell it when you
open the car door.
I.H.: I remember, we did a search down the A6 in the woodlands between Taddington and
White Lodge. I remember, it was a young man from Eyam, went missing. And he was
missing for weeks and weeks and weeks. And we did lots of searches over lots of areas. And
I remember some piece of evidence came to light and we were asked to search this
woodland. And we did. And we found this cannabis, where people used to go and smoke,
because there was all these accoutrements there and bits of leaves and stuff like that. This
was in a sort of cave, an overhang. So there’s all sorts of things going on, I suspect, that we
don’t know about.
J.E.: But I think the issue now is, well, I’m thinking so, is litter, litter and camping.
(Has that got worse)
J.E.: Oh! God, up at Langsett it seems to be on the increase, I mean, we were up there last
week and there was five tents up in the valley. And we rounded up forty tins, forty full cans of
lager, out of the river, plus bags of empty cans and bottles.
I.H.: That’s your rationale for going and collecting them, isn’t it
48

J.E.: And they don’t take the tents home with them now, they set them on fire.
(Really)
J.E.: Yes.
I.H.: The number of tents that get left on the hill now is unbelievable. They don’t bother taking
them back, they bring all their stuff down with them and leave it all there.
(Oh! It makes you despair.)
J.E.: It does.
D.M.: Some people, they do what they call wild camping. Put this tent up and they’re gone
next morning. And all you can see is just where…
J.E.: Well, that’s the difference between, that’s the difference, you see, people that respect
the countryside and people that don’t.
G.M.: I met up with Joe Barber, one of the Hayfield rangers, on last Monday up on Kinder
Low. And Ian Milner had seen a tent last time he was on, a fortnight ago [under] Sandy Hays.
It was still there at the weekend.
J.E.: Just leave them there.
I.H.: With all the gear in.
J.E.: Can’t be bothered carrying it back.
B.G.: We used to go and recover them.
J.E.: Well, apparently, a bloke on a blog that, I think one of our rangers picked it up. And
there’s this chap going round, and if he sees a tent there, he hangs around for a bit, and if
nobody turns up, he takes it down and sells it on e-bay. That’s stealing, that, isn’t it
G.M.: Yes, it is, or loitering with in-tent!
D.M.: You can get pegged for that!
I.H.: If he’s a guy!
(O.K. I’ll turn it off then. Thank you very much.)
49

Bamford Residents: Interviewed by Tegwen Roberts.
[General discussion.]
1st Voice: He was an electrician and he worked for a company called Electricity House in
those days and which then became Yorkshire Electricity Board and I don’t know what it is
now. And his area was this area and he had a van and he used to come out and he used to
do all sorts of jobs in Hathersage, Bamford and…So I remember him and the first time I came
out here was about 1947 and, yeah, I’d be nine and on holiday from school and doing nothing
at home so me mother said “Well take him out with you then” [laughing] so he dragged me out
in the van and we went to the Thornhill and I remember going to Thornhill in this van and
when we came across the dams you could still see the church tower and Derwent church was
still sticking out of the water in those days. And so it’s amazing to think that the dams were
still filling and Lady Bower had only been completed in ’45 and it was two years later and they
were still filling up and …
(So how long did they take to fill)
1st Voice: How
(How long did they take to fill)
1st Voice: I don’t know really.
2nd Voice: Probably a couple of years.
3rd Voice: I think they were a bit slow and then there was a very wet winter I think and it filled
up a bit quicker.
1st Voice: It takes a long time I think to [inaudible].
(Yeah, it’s a lot of water isn’t it)
1

1st Voice: That’s right.
(It must have been quite spooky seeing the church spire though)
1st Voice: and then sort of the next memories were the scouts. And I think a lot of people
probably started walking on the moors when they were with the scouts. So I was with a
school, Barnsley Grammar School scout troop, and my first, again, memories of walking over
there were with the scouts. We took the bus out to Langsett and ten scouts in shorts and we
had all these old rucksacks with [iron] frames on them and we were just carrying sandwiches
and for waterproofs, just in case it rained, we had cycling capes. [laughing] In the back and
we all walked over from Langsett over the Cut Gate and down to here. There was no
Fairholmes or anything then, right down to the road. And then went up to the Ladybower Inn
and got the bus back to Sheffield and back to Barnsley. So we left Barnsley about 7.30 in the
morning on the Manchester bus and got back in about 9 o’clock coming from the Sheffield
bus.
(Quite a big adventure then)
1st Voice: Yeah, a big adventure, yeah, sort of thirteen years old and this was a huge
adventure.
(Fantastic.)
2nd Voice: Did your family come from Derwent, Ray
Ray: My family Yeah, we used to farm at Ashopton.
2nd Voice: Yeah. So what happened when they, did the Water Board move in
Ray: Well they said “You’re getting out, we’re flooding it” There was no, nothing against it you
see in those days. One just accepted it.
1st Voice: You were just told, were you
2

Ray: Yeah, you know. Your tenancy would be up then.
1st Voice: Right.
2nd Voice: So you sold the cow and moved.
Ray: Yeah but some people, one or two, still [followed on] farming. But several of them, you
know, retired, packed up. My father did pack up, he started working on the Water Board then
and we moved down to Yorkshire Bridge, you know, the houses there.
2nd Voice: It’s amazing now, that there was no compensation.
Ray: No.
2nd Voice: Nothing, just you pack up and go.
Ray: No, you just had to have your sale, farm sale.
1st Voice: Well everything was rented wasn’t it in those days and people didn’t own things,
they just, they were tenants and when their lease came up then, you know, you didn’t – even
today if your lease comes up you don’t have any redress
Ray: You know, same for everybody.
1st Voice: Yes.
Ray: Farmers, businesses and…
2nd Voice: How did your dad feel
3

Ray: Very upset about it ‘cos I don’t think he’d been doing it too long. It was what, ’36 I think,
yeah ’36 when we packed. ‘Cos they took our land away, dug it away and put it in the bank,
an embankment. [Laughing] Just scooped it out and put it there.
2nd Voice: Yeah.
(It must have been heartbreaking)
Ray: Well I wasn’t really old enough to realise that.
(No, no.)
Ray: But it took [inaudible].
(These are the kind of things we’ve be asking people, hoping these might prompt some
memories, …[inaudible] [gathering] food…Have you ever used the moors for fuel, you know,
there’s peat cutting rights [inaudible].)
1st Voice: Bilberries.
[General laughter.]
3rd Voice: Everybody’s done that. [Inaudible] Mushrooms, yeah.
4 th Voice: I came from the other side and we call them winberries, winberries, yeah.
(Are they the same thing)
1st Voice: Manchester.
4th Voice: Yes, yeah, Stockport side.
1st Voice: Bilberries over here.
4

5th Voice: I used to love going picking bilberries.
3rd Voice: We used to go up to Hayfield. On the train to Hayfield.
(They’re so tasty.)
3rd Voice: They are fantastic. In those days you used to have pies.
4th Voice: Carnation milk.
(Do you pick them by hand or by [inaudible])
General: Oh by hand, one at a time.
3rd Voice: You can’t do it any other way.
1st Voice: It’s a very painstaking job, picking bilberries.
Ray: Takes a long time.
1st Voice: But it’s really worthwhile when you get a bilberry pie.
3rd Voice: That’s why they’re not sold commercially I think because they…
1st Voice: Because they’re very intensive.
3rd Voice: You’ve got to pick them on the moor, yeah.
4th Voice: Still go bilberry picking now. Take the grandchildren now.
(Are there more or less bilberries around or just the same)
5

3rd Voice: If you can get a good area, you know, you can get…
1st Voice: Along the Strines is a good area.
Ray: As long as you get there before the birds.
1st Voice: Yeah that’s right. If you go along the Strines early August you’ll see whole lots of
people. [Laughing.]
(But what about mushrooms)
4th Voice: You go out early in the morning getting mushrooms. Used to go out early in the
morning with me dad picking mushrooms.
1st Voice: On the golf course.
4th Voice: All over the place. No I don’t remember ever getting it wrong.
(You didn’t pick the wrong ones)
4 th Voice: No
(I’m too scared to pick mushrooms wild.)
4th Voice: Oh they’re nice. Me dad used to.
Ray: You want them nice and early ‘cos if they’re too old, the Sun’s [inaudible].
1st Voice: They’re beautiful aren’t they, they’re fresh, you know, picked that day and eaten
that day.
3rd Voice: Oh yeah, go out early in the morning [inaudible] for your breakfast.
6

Ray: They’re fantastic, nothing like the ones you get in the shop. They’re really, really good.
3rd Voice: They’re nice, very tasty.
Ray: Eaten that day.
3rd Voice: And rabbits I love as well. Me brother used to go out getting rabbits with a
slingshot and a stone. You know, a catapult.
(Really)
3rd Voice: Yeah, course they weren’t on rationing and it was a real treat, yes.
Ray: Used to snare rabbits.
3rd Voice: You could get a rabbit stew.
(And you can use the fur as well can’t you)
3rd Voice: Yeah, never did, but we had plenty of rabbit stew.
(And was there anything else that was caught sort of off the moors or harvested or…)
3rd Voice: Rosehips we used to get.
Ray: Used to collect rosehips, used to collect them during the war. I think we used to get paid
for them at school if we got sound many pounds.
3rd Voice: And sloes of course, we still go down Jam Lane for sloes.
Ray: Sloes, yeah.
(And so what did you do with the rosehips)
7

Ray: Pardon
3rd Voice: Made rosehip syrup.
Ray: Rosehip syrup. It was during the war. Pregnant women used to get…
3rd Voice: It’s come back in; they’re saying it’s scrumptious.
Ray: We used to get paid for collecting acorns as well.
(Why Were they eaten)
Ray: No, they went for seed, as far as I know.
(Right, right.)
3rd Voice: Or coffee substitute perhaps.
Ray: That’s why my education failed me, [laughing] used to go farming.
3rd Voice: And blackberries of course we picked as well. Blackberry and apple pie. Still do.
4th Voice: And sloes, sloe gin.
3rd Voice: Sloe gin
4th Voice: Sloe gin, you can’t beat it, it’s lovely.
(So what about fuel, I mean you were talking about cutting peat, obviously in some areas you
had peat cutting rights. Also bracken, you told me about harvested bracken for packing, and
for bedding for animals)
8

Ray: It was used for animal bedding at one time, bracken, we used to cut that.
3rd Voice: Did you used to cut it
1st Voice: Disappointingly as fuel, you know, when we used to camp a whole load of us we
used to climb and we used to grab bracken to start fires but all you got was a load of smoke,
[laughing] you were smoked out.
(It’s not the greenest of fuels.)
1st Voice: Never very successful with bracken fires. Keep trying but you just got smoke and
weeping eyes.
(So did you cut bracken, did you say)
Ray: No, it used to be cut. We didn’t cut it.
3rd Voice: Ray Platts talked about it because they had no arable land there. So for their
animals they used to go and cut bracken for the bedding.
(Yeah, I suppose it’d be a little bit spiky, isn’t it)
3rd Voice: You had to go at the right time – too dry.
(Right, so obviously bracken is also a big pest so it was a way of keeping it down they used to
cut it as well. And other people have told me about the pollution, they’d go bilberrying and
they’d get covered in soot from the moors, in the forties when, you know, Manchester and
Sheffield were spewing out smoke and grime and people would come back sort of dirty and
the sheep would end up mucky and that kind of thing. I don’t know if anyone has any
memories of that.)
9

3rd Voice: I can’t, no I can’t remember getting dirty. I can remember being in Manchester in it
would be October/November 1959 and having to walk in front – Rob was driving – and I had
to walk along the pavement edge so that he could see me.
Ray: Oh yeah, a few of them was like that.
1st Voice: There used to be terrible fogs.
3rd Voice: Terrible fog, smog, smog.
1st Voice: In some ways you see pollution helped some people, well it helped climbers that,
particularly around the Stocksbridge/Deepcar area, we used to climb on Wharncliffe Crags
and Agden Rocher and they used to be quite clean but the rocks used to be a bit sooty. And
since many of the foundries and small steelworks have closed down those rocks have
become lichenous and they’re all green now and slimy where they used to be clean and easy
and it used to be the smoke and the soot that used to keep the lichen off. And now the
lichen’s come back, so those crags are now not very popular where they used to be the
Mecca and it was all due to the chimneys and the foundries.
(That’s really interesting.)
3rd Voice: ‘Course we’ve lost our chimney here in Bamford.
(Yes I’ve seen the pictures. It’s quite amazing.)
1st Voice: The biggest change is people, I mean in my book, a lot of litter and things come
from people but, you know, people and regulation have changed the way it was. You used to
come out, it was a wilderness, you used to fly camp and spend a weekend and now you can’t
do any of that. Now there’s regulation and you can’t do this and you can’t do that and you
can’t ride your bike here and you can’t do that. And there was none of that. And the moors
didn’t suffer from it probably because…
3rd Voice: Because there were less people.
10

1st Voice: Much less people doing those sorts of activities. But now it’s so regulated that you
just feel you don’t want to do it any more. It’s not the same at all.
(Another thing we’re talking to people about particularly this year. People remember, you
know, when they were snowed in for weeks on end…)
4th Voice: There was one in the mid sixties, wasn’t there
Ray: ’47.
1st Voice: ’47 was the awful one. ’62 and ’63.
Ray: It was about three months.
3rd Voice: Because in those days everybody used coal and there was so much snow the
railways couldn’t run so there was no fuel and I can remember my mother being absolutely
jubilant because she came home, she’d been to the cobbler’s, shoe repairer, and she’d got
the little off-cuts of leather, you know, he’d cut round, so she could put them on the fire as
another fuel.
(Wow.)
3rd Voice: Anything to keep some heat because of power cuts and no coal.
1st Voice: ’67 wasn’t a particularly bad winter, it was a sort of normal winter but before ’67 we
lived in Tynemouth and I worked in Northumberland and Durham as a geologist in the
coalfields there and we got transferred down to Sheffield. So we moved to Sheffield in ’67 and
we bought this house on Sandygate Park, just below the Hallamshire golf course there. And it
was a brand new house, just newly built, there were only about a dozen there then, now
there’s I don’t know how many. And we came to move in in February and we drove in and the
drive sloped down from the road to the garage and the snow was up to the top of the front
11

door on the garage and we had to dig our way in when we came to move into the house! And
you can’t remember doing things like that much in recent years.
3rd Voice: The farmer came down with a plough because, you know, lots of farmers, I don’t
know whether they still do, do they Do they still have an agreement
Ray: They don’t now, they used to.
3rd Voice: They used to get paid to go with the tractor or the plough. Well this one went up
and they’d got all the telephone cables underground and he’d dug them all up. [Laughing]
And, you know, you need the phone when you’ve just moved here.
4th Voice: Well, I remember some bad winters in Bamford in the sixties ‘cos I was born in ’53
so I was, like, when I was at school in the sixties where we were cut off for days and there
was no bread and, you know, everybody was making their own. And there were snowdrifts at
Fox House one year where a lot of cars got buried.
Ray: Yeah, got completely covered.
4th Voice: Yeah and like snowdrifts about ten foot high weren’t there We had to dig cars out
and there were some very severe winters.
3rd Voice: We must have had, you know, since ’93, when did we do it Yeah, it must have
been the mid-nineties when there was a bad winter and I can remember looking out of the
Institute window and a truck got stuck coming up the hill and then no traffic could get past it
and, well, I think they stayed the night in The Derwent the people that were stuck. I don’t
know whether they were farmed out to houses. And then a truck went sideways and took out
the stoops on the Green. You remember the stones there got knocked over I think that was
a John Lewis van from Coles went sideways into that.
(And on the other, well, flipside, I suppose, the hot summers, you know, particularly…)
1st Voice: ’55, ’59.
12

3rd Voice: ’59, yeah.
1st Voice: ’55 was a long hot summer.
3rd Voice: ’76.
4th Voice: ’76 was very hot.
3rd Voice: ’76 went on and on and on.
4th Voice: Plague of ladybirds in ’76, I remember ladybirds everywhere.
(As that brought drought, would you say there were fires more often)
3rd Voice: Oh yeah, yes.
4th Voice: Dry summers there used to be fires at one time.
3rd Voice: Yeah, I don’t know whether it was people smoking or whether it was just a bit of
glass that the sun reflected on or even a thunderstorm can start a fire can’t it Mmm, flash of
lightening and stuff when it’s dry.
(And did people go out locally, did local people go out and fight fires or was it more the police
or…)
3rd Voice: I think it’s more organised [inaudible].
4 th Voice: Fire brigades, the local fire brigades.
Ray: And before that it always used to be the farmers and gamekeepers if there was a fire
didn’t it
3rd Voice: Mmm.
13

4th Voice: Yeah.
Ray: And then they said that they’d finished.
4th Voice: The gamekeepers as well,
3rd Voice: But of course the fire brigade are volunteers.
4th Voice: Yeah
Ray: Yeah.
(But I suppose the trouble is that there wasn’t any water up there really, is there It was
getting water.)
Ray: No, they’ve got to …
3rd Voice: Still is a problem isn’t it with the fire on the tops But it’s funny, when we were first
married we had a little car but heating was extra in the car so [laughing] so if we were, we
lived in Chester and Rob’s mother was in Barnsley, and if we went to visit her it was, you
know, and especially coming back, she’d fill the car with rugs and flasks of tea ‘cos you were
going over the top. And this was because the roads, you know, there weren’t motorways or
dual carriageways or anything, it was quite an expedition to go over the top in a little car,
wasn’t it
Ray: Mmm. Couldn’t get green flag out if you was in trouble could you
3rd Voice: No, and if the weather was bad you went over Mam Tor because that was lower
down, rather than going Woodhead or Snake.
1st Voice: Rather than going over Woodhead, yes. Old cars didn’t have much horsepower in
those days, they used to chug, chug up there.
14

3rd Voice: You wouldn’t have dreamt of getting your car up the Winnats, would you That
was far too steep.
1st Voice: It wouldn’t have got up the Winnats.
3rd Voice: Mine won’t go up Winnats now.
[Laughter.]
(And I suppose the other thing about whether you’ve been caught out by weather, not
necessarily bad weather, but, you know, caught out by the weather on the tops, or whether
you’ve actually gone out to help people)
3rd Voice: Well when the mountain rescue first started the organiser would go round where
people were camping and they went out because they were experienced walkers.
1st Voice: Many times I’ve been called out on the mountain, and I’ve never been a member
of a mountain rescue organisation but if somebody was in trouble then they’d come to all the
campsites and say, you know, “There’s somebody stuck, anybody coming” and you’d just
join in and go up and do it and, you know, that’s the way it was organised. There were no
official mountain rescues but a man called Wilson Hey who was a Manchester Rucksack Club
member of many years’ standing from about the 1920s, a doctor at Manchester Infirmary,
who was instrumental in putting these stretchers, mountain rescue stretchers, in various parts
of the country. And they all had a medical kit and they all had a syringe of morphine in their –
and that’s in the 50s when drugs started, that’s when they all got raided for the morphine. But
these stretchers were everywhere. And there was one just below Stanage, a stretcher there.
And I so remember a number of times we were called out to grab the stretcher and then go up
onto the crag and get somebody and bring ‘em down to the road.
(So was it like one of those wooden framed…)
1st Voice: Yeah.
15

Ray: Wood and canvas.
1st Voice: Yes, a wooden framed fold up with a canvas.
Ray: Nothing compared with today’s [laughing].
4th Voice: No, but it worked.
1st Voice: It took six of you carrying a stretcher down and the stretcher was there and you
just went and got it and went up. The mountain rescue organiser had a key to the stretcher
locker and you went out and did it. But they were all volunteers except for the organiser who
himself I think was a volunteer. Usually a landlord of a pub.
3rd Voice: But there used to be a medical kit at the bottom of Stanage, you know, next to the
plantation, I call it the plantation. And it was locked up and they set fire to it, they set fire to the
building, they burned it to the ground didn’t they About ten years ago, ten, twelve years ago.
(Some people are just mindless, aren’t they)
1st Voice: All that’s gone now, most of the stretcher, you know everywhere where you climb
in Snowdonia and the Lake District, Scotland, here at the Peak District, there were a number
of stretchers in places but they’ve all gone now as there are now official mountain rescues like
Edale round here and Lake District and Wales.
3rd Voice: And they call the helicopter now.
(Were there any sort of big rescues, I suppose there was the Four Inns.)
3rd Voice: The scouts on, yeah, the scouts, of course.
([Inaudible] were there rescues or searches that went on for days)
16

1st Voice: Yeah, there was big searches. I mean I can’t remember the year that that one
when the, was it the mountain marathon or whatever that was coming over the Derwent
Moors, when it was really heavy snowfall and there were about twenty people missing at one
time.
(Right, I think it was in the sixties, ’64 wasn’t it)
1st Voice: Yeah, probably sixties, yeah.
(This is an interesting one, there’s, just seen next door, on one of the posters there’s a quote
from one of the rambling magazines from the ‘50s or possibly ‘40s saying that they’d been
out, a party had been out and had the pleasure of seeing a grey squirrel and how exciting it
was. So asking people whether they remember things changing and how they…)
3rd Voice: Had you spoken to Cath Birkenshaw
(Not yet, no.)
3rd Voice: Because she sent, she gave us a talk at the WI once, and she said foxes were
never a problem, it’s the crows that goes for the lambs’ eyes.
Ray: Yes, they used to take ‘em out.
3rd Voice: That’s a problem, you know.
(And I suppose the birds of prey are much more visible now)
3rd Voice: Yeah, foxes weren’t a, never bothered the lambs.
Ray: They never bothered them I don’t think. Red squirrels, used to be a few about, used to
be in that wood opposite Yorkshire Bridge Inn. Red squirrels used to be there.
(Were there What sort of date was that)
17

Ray: Forties. And right up the King’s Tree.
3rd Voice: Yes, I can remember up the King’s Tree.
(Yeah, I’ve never seen one. I suppose the greys have done for them really. And when were
mountain hares introduced)
3rd Voice: Victorian times mmm. And it was only here and Scotland that they’ve sort of
survived, haven’t they
(Right, again something I haven’t seen yet, but I’m looking forward to it.)
3rd Voice: Haven’t you
(No, I haven’t.)
Ray: On Derwent Edge, mountain hare, on Derwent Edge is a good place for them.
3rd Voice: Yes, you can see them on Stanage Edge and out of the window.
(Right, must keep looking [laughing].)
18

Janet Garlick: Interviewed by the pupils of Flash School.
July 26 th 2010 at Flash School in the Staffordshire Moorlands.
(Hello Janet. Could you please tell me your full name and date of birth)
My full name is Janet Garlick and my date of birth is the 25 th of May 1960.
(Thank you.)
(Hello Janet.)
Hello.
(Where were you born and how long did you live there)
I was born in Leek but I lived on Goldsitch Moss for twenty nine years, Jacob.
(What was your maiden name)
Frodsham. My ancestors were all born up here. I can go back six generations.
(What did your parents do)
My mum was a housewife but my dad was a haulage contractor. He drove a wagon for a
living.
(Thank you, Janet.)
(Well done, that was very…oh brilliant Jake, can you get the next person please You did
that really nicely and I remember the first time we did it you wouldn’t do it, would you
[Laughing] Thank you.)
(Hello Janet.)
Hello.
(How many brothers and sisters did you have)
I had two sisters and one brother but my dad had lots of brothers and sisters, cos he’s one
of eighteen, so his brothers and sisters were younger than me so we were a big family
really.
(How old was the house you lived in)
It was built in 1716, Samantha, very old.
(Had your parents lived there a long time)
When they got married they moved into there when I was, oh, two months old. So yes.
(Did you help your parents on the farm)
We didn’t own the animals on the farm, Samantha, but we did have animals on the farm,
so yes I did help.
(Thank you.)
1

(Hello Janet.)
Hello.
(Did you have electricity)
Not when we first moved there, no, Michael, I was six when we got electricity.
(How did you cook your food and heat your house)
We cooked the food on a range, the old fashioned range, and that’s the only heat we had
in the house was that. There was no central heating.
(What did you use to light your house)
We used Tilley lamps, Michael, and candles and paraffin lamps.
(Where did you play and what games did you play)
Where did we play We played in the fields, on the rocks, you know, Ramshaw Rocks
(No.)
We played on the Ramshaw Rocks. We went everywhere, Michael, we just roamed the
countryside…[laughing].
(Thank you.)
(Hello Janet.)
Hi Russ.
(Where did you get your food from Did you have it delivered)
No we didn’t have it delivered Russell. There was a van but we didn’t have a van. There
used to be a mobile van come round once in a while but we didn’t have it. We went to
Leek on the bus on a Wednesday.
(Did you ever go on holiday)
Yeah, but I’d be eleven, twelve the first time I went away. I went to stay with me grandad.
(Where did you go to school and how many children were there at the school)
I went to Flash School. There was fifty two children at the school when I started. We had
three buses to get them all in and three buses – the same bus came three times to take
them all home. So I finished school at half past two, the next bus when he got back and
dropped us off at Moss he came back to school and dropped Knotbury, then he came back
and dropped Hollinsclough and Petals Lane and that after. So they used to get home at
quarter past three. So when I used to spend the weekend with me grandma, instead of
going home at half past two like I normally did I used to get on the bus at quarter past
three and go home…[laughing].
(Where did they come from)
Hollinsclough, Knotbury, Goldsitch Moss. It was a bit bigger than the catchment area now,
but not a lot.
2

(OK, thank you, Janet.)
(Hello Janet.)
Hello.
(How old were you when you left Flash Primary School)
Twelve.
(Where did you go then)
Then I went to Warslow Secondary Modern School and I was seventeen when I left there.
(What animals did you have on the farm)
Sheep, horses, hens, ducks, geese, pigs.
(Did you have to help with the lambing)
We had to go round and – they weren’t our sheep – but we had to go round and get all the
sheep in that we thought were lambing and keep an eye on ‘em. And yes, it’s hard work
lambing, Kieran.
(What pets did you have)
I had a cat.
(Thank you.)
(Hello Janet.)
Hello.
(What was the weather like)
It always…I think it’s just memories playing tricks on me, Andrew, but it seemed a lot
warmer than it is nowadays and the winters were a lot colder.
(Did you have a pond)
Yeah.
(And did you have frogs and newts in it)
Yeah we must have done. It was, the pond was on the land but it wasn’t near the house, it
was miles away, but yes we had frogs and newts in it cos we used to go and collect frog
spawn.
(Did you have a river on your land)
Yes, well not on our land but it was the boundary between our ground and the next door’s.
And we used to go and catch, try and tickle trout, we actually did catch one one day when
we were kids…[laughing]…it’s illegal though now.
(Thank you, Janet.)
(Hello Janet.)
3

Hello.
(Were there lots of hay meadows)
There were lots of hay meadows when I was a child, Ellie, yeah, lots more than there are
now.
(What is the land used for now)
Not a lot. When I was a child each little smallholding was farmed and now all the
smallholdings aren’t farmed, they’ve got, well, city people coming in and all they have is a
horse or a pony or they don’t actually farm the land now.
(Did the land belong to the Crewe and Harpur Estate)
The land behind the house, the moor at the back of the house belonged to the Crewe and
Harpur. The moor at the front of the house belonged to Swythamley.
(Did the land change when it was sold)
Definitely…definitely. The Swythamley Estate, it used to be looked after. They used to
have grouse shooting and then there was no gamekeeper, no nothing, no grouse shooting.
So it just went…it just went.
(Thank you.)
(Hello Janet.)
Hello.
(Are there changes to the land round the area where you grew up)
Yes Lewis there’s lots of changes, it’s not farmed any more, it’s just gone back to bog and
moor and all sorts. It’s not the hay meadows that I grew up with anyway.
(Were there heather moorlands and where were they)
They were in the front of the house and at the back of the house…they were all round
really. But they’ve never been, nobody’s ever done anything with them for at least twenty
years. So they’ve all just gone. There’s no grouse, there’s no nothing now like there used
to be, Lou.
(Have they changed)
Yeah, they have changed a lot.
(Thank you.)
(Hello Janet.)
Hello sweetheart.
(Have any been ploughed up)
No, not ploughed up, but just left to go to ruin, well not ruin, but just left to go back to how
they used to be.
(Did you see much wildlife on them)
4

Yeah, we’d have grouse, deer, lapwings, and newts and voles and
stoats…[laughing]…yeah.
(What did you see)
Well all those things really but in different areas.
(How much has the wildlife changed since you were a girl)
There isn’t, I can’t remember seeing a lot of grouse, as many as there were. When I was a
child they used to be everywhere, you could hear ‘em cos they’d cackle and gobble and
you could hear ‘em every time you walked down the road. And now it’s very rare you hear
a grouse around here. You do hear the odd one but not like that. And the deer, I haven’t
seen them for ages, Leon.
Lapwings, there’s not many of them because their nesting sites seem to have gone so
they can’t … When we were kids you could walk across the field and find the – not find the
nests but come across the nests – we wouldn’t look for it, but you’d be there. Now you
don’t see any of that, they’ve all gone.
(Thank you.)
(Hello Janet.)
Hello.
(What was your first job and how did you get to work)
My first job after I left school was I worked at Hinton’s Motor Factors, Jack, and you had to
be there for seven in the morning so I used to have to walk to work.
(When did you leave your parents’ house)
I was twenty nine when I left my parents’ house.
(Where did you live next)
Where did I live next Well, I moved up to Blackbank which is just the other side and then
from there I moved to the top of the Goyt Valley which was lovely there.
(How many children did you have)
Two boys…[laughing].
(Thank you.)
5

Ron Priestley: Interviewed by Tegwen Roberts.
11 th June 2010.
Born in Sheffield. Lived first 9 years at a hill farm in Hathersage, then moved to another
little dairy farm in Hathersage. And then, when I was 18 we moved up here….
(When you were on the hill farm, what stock did you have, was it sheep)
When I was at the hill farm at Overstones, it was all sheep, hill sheep and that and then we
moved down to White House and there was a small dairy herd there. Did a milk round,
they used to come round with the milk every day, chatting the girls up. And then me dad
got the tenancy of the farm up here and we moved up here in 1946.
(Was that cattle)
That was dairy and sheep, there were some sheep, but then I spent all 1947, all the big
snow in 1947 shepherding with me uncle on the moors.
(What did you have to do)
Dig sheep out, find sheep, swear at sheep…
(How did you find them)
There were dogs that would scent ‘em out. They’d go on top of the drifts and…if a sheep’s
buried, there’s always an air pipe from it and dog’d find that air pipe, spot where they were
and he dug down and pulled ‘em out.
(And then you’d carry them off would you Would you bring them back down off the
moor)
Didn’t carry very many off! You were up to here in snow, you see. Most of the time we
were…You know when you come over Moscar and you know where the turning is to the
Strines
(Yeah, yeah.)
Well, if you look in front of you up there, there’s a great long hollow. Most of the time we
spent up there, because every time it snowed, it snowed from a different direction you see
and anything you dug out was filled up again. It was a thankless job; it was bloody hard
work…when you’re 18, you don’t bother much do you Come home and go down to village
to the dance…
(Was that the village here)
That was when we lived at Hathersage. When we moved up here, used to do the same,
but I used to go courting then.
(Is that different)
1

Different lifestyle. But we used to go out a lot, used to go to dances ‘cos at that time…see,
we’re only 8 miles from Buxton and Buxton’s got marvellous facilities, they used to have
the big bands…radio bands used to come and play at Buxton and we used to go there at
night.
(Of course they’ve got the park and the spa and things, haven’t they, at Buxton)
‘Course you have, yeah. Marvellous set up, better still now.
(Did you drive to get there)
Yeah, yeah and the drive to get back sometimes was difficult, but we always did manage
to get back. Some wonderful experiences there at Buxton. Ted Heath and….Hawaiian
serenaders and all those big bands used to come to Buxton. And then we used to…we
were both of us involved in the Young Conservatives Group. And we used to arrange
dances ourselves, ‘cos there used to be a big dance hall in Castleton at one time and we’d
get the star band from Buxton down to play for us and…didn’t make a lot of money, but we
could make ‘em pay, we could have a good evening.
(Where was the dance hall)
Do you know where the Peak Hotel is That big car park, at the back of that big car park.
Best fire we ever had in Castleton, ‘cos it was wooden and all the roof was felted and
tarred and that… by hell it was a blaze!
(When did it go up)
Dora, when did Peak Pavilion go up in flames
Dora: Dunno, it was when Denise was alive…
Aye, it was and we were up at the farm then, weren’t we So it’d be…round about 1950.
Hell of a fire. George came out with his little fire pump and started it up and a little trickle
came out [laughs].
(So it wasn’t much use! So, on the subject of fires you were saying earlier about when the
eastern moors caught fire. When was that)
That was 1938, before the war. But it burnt from end to end, there’s no way could they
stop it. But you see a lot of people have got an idea that if it’s a moor fire, what you need
first of all is a fire brigade, but that’s the last thing you want on a moor fire because for one
thing they need water for a fire brigade and you can put an awful lot of water on a heather
moor before you…slow a fire down, let alone put it out. The big authority on all that’s
Geoff Eyre. Have you met Geoff Eyre yet
(I haven’t, he’s on my list of people to meet.)
You get Geoff Eyre on your list, ‘cos I’ve known Geoff ever since he was a kid like and
he’s done a lot of studying of moorland restoration and that and did a lot of work with the
2

university on it how to make heather grow because heather won’t grow until it’s been
frosted.
(Oh right, OK.)
And that’s one thing he found out and he kept it to hisself for a long time. Because it’s out
now. It’s frost that releases the heather seed out of the plant and then it’ll grow after that,
but it won’t before.
(Has there been much change to the moors in terms of the heather, either disappearing or
coming back)
Well, most of the moors that have been managed properly, with the farmers and the
gamekeepers, there’s more heather on ‘em now than ever there’s been. And Geoff’s done
several projects but its same as me son says like, cos he works for the National Park, he
says, “Anywhere where Geoff’s made heather grow, it’s easy part where they get with a
tractor and trail…”, and that’s true to a large extent, I mean getting heather to grow on
Bleaklow’s a lot different kettle of fish to getting heather to grow on the moors round
here…You can get it to grow, there’s heather growing now where…Geoff’s got it going, but
you’ve got to manage it. What he does is spray it off and then all the grass and that that’s
growing there gradually either blows away or gets on fire accidentally and then afterwards
then he just has a cultivator and runs over it and seeds it and it’ll grow. Well, if you come
over from Sheffield, over Moscar, and you’re coming down, there’s a bungalow on the left,
that’s the old gamekeeper’s bungalow. If you look straight ahead there, all that’s heather
and there wasn’t a sprig of heather there at one time. And that’s all what Geoffrey’s got
growing up there.
(So when would that be, when there wasn’t any heather there)
Well, up ‘til 10 years ago there was no heather on there; he’s just got it going this
last…well, he’s done a big job on it this last 5 years and it’ll be all purple this year now, it’s
got hold properly and got growing.
(I’ll look out for it.)
You’ll see it. Think of me when you see it.
(When you had the hill farm, did you do much managing of the moors)
You’d got to do a certain amount of managing to help the gamekeepers and that, help
them. But if you go back 30 years or a bit more, there were very few walkers on the moors,
not like it is today, I mean they’re absolutely walking all over ‘em! They’re disturbing the
wildlife and the grouse and that on the moors. It’s very, very difficult to manage it because,
well about 4 years ago there was a big fire threat, so they closed the moors and they were
closed for a long time and then there was foot and mouth as well, that did as well. Well,
the change in the wildlife from the moors during that period was fantastic. There was
nothing disturbing it, you see, there was nobody on the moors and there were nobody
disturbing it and it give ‘em a chance and a breathing space. You have to spend a lot of
3

time on the moors to know the moors. Me Uncle Peter, he was a gamekeeper up there
and a farmer as well. And Uncle Peter never came to Longshaw sheep dog trials without a
sprig of white heather. It was only him that knew where it could get it. I don’t know where it
is now like…I’ll see a friend of mine that’s just about had it with cancer, going down to see
him in Hope and…he knows where it is! [Laughs.]
(You were saying about had to do a certain amount to manage the moors when you were
grazing it. Did you do things like clearing bracken to manage the moors)
We did some bracken clearance. There was a lot of bracken clearance done at the end of
the war, during the war and at the end of the war. And they used to roll it with a…serrated
roller.
(Like a grass roller)
Well, with a tractor pulling it obviously, gotta have a crawler tractor to pull it. And the roller,
instead of being round was like serrated and that broke the bracken and let it bleed and it
would reduce it. The year after, it was half as much. The year after, it was getting old and
going back again. Well, there’s not a lot of bracken clearance done and that’s one of the
biggest threats to the moors now. There’s acres and acres and acres, it’s incredible the
amount of bracken there is up there now to what there used to be.
(It’s very invasive, isn’t it)
Yes it is…
(Did they use the bracken for anything after…)
Well, yer used to use it for bedding when you’d got strength to mow it, but you had to mow
it with a scythe obviously and it was all hard work. And then you’d got to be careful at what
stage you cut it because if it had still a bit of growth in it, it was poisonous and that’s the
stage when bracken’s at its most poisonous when it’s sort of dying back and it’ll kill cattle
in no time. Doesn’t bother sheep; sheep seem to be…they don’t seem to suffer from it.
(Will they eat bracken, sheep)
No, they’d have to be very pushed to eat bracken! But cattle will, especially at that stage
when it’s dying off. But the moors are different to what they used to be. If you go to
Hathersage; do you know the way from Hathersage to Sheffield over the Surprise
(Yes.)
Well if you go up there now, that used to be a massive quarry and now it’s all grown up
with silver birch and you’d never know a quarry was there unless you knew…And then at
the back of the quarry, when you go on the flat at the back of the quarry, it’s all silver birch.
Well, there didn’t used to be a tree on there, used to be all moor. But that got burnt out in
1975 and it burnt for weeks. And then the silver birch took over, and none of it was
planted, it all self-planted with birds taking the seeds and dropping ‘em.
4

(It’s pretty fast, silver birch, isn’t it. It colonises quickly)
Yes, very fast, yes. And all that quarry, Millstone Edge Quarry they called it, well that was
all working when we came here in 1946, that was still working.
(Right, making millstones I presume)
Yes, they made a few millstones, but they’d about phased out then. But…as far as I know
there’s still a lot of the equipment up there, and there was a railway to it was well…
(I’ve seen pictures actually.)
Up to Bole Hill, up a bank then it carried on across the road, before you get to the
Surprise, it crossed the road there and went up into the woods then. There’s still the
winding house apparently still there from all those years ago…
(Wow, I might have to go and have a look.)
We used to play up there when we were kids. And if you go on the other way, go down
the other side of it, there are stacks of millstones stacked up down there that they made
and abandoned, they weren’t needed, grindstones and millstones.
(When you remember them quarrying was it all mechanical by then)
Oh, good lord no!
(So it was by hand still)
If you’re making millstones, you can’t blast the stone out, you’ve got to put wedges down
the back and gradually lever it out to keep it in one piece so as you can work on it and…a
lot of hard work to it. But all the stone on the right hand side of the Surprise that was taken
up Derwent to build the two dams up there. It’s a special hard stone because it’s so deep
down, it’s very hard. And they built the dams with them and then…Surprise Quarry closed
and was closed for a bit and a firm opened it up again and they were crushing stone for
aggregate and all sorts of thing when we came here in ’46 it was going full blast. Making
building stone and all those building stones are all made individually.
(Wow, that’s a lot of work!)
Yes, there is a lot of work, but you have to know the stone and know where to hit it and it’ll
crack.
(When were the dams built, the Derwent dams)
The two top ones were built at the turn of the century. They started ‘em in 1901 and they
finished ‘em in 1915 and then the other one was built after…well, they started it in 1934,
the other one, Ladybower.
5

(Do you remember that being built)
Oh yes, I remember that ever so well.
(Was that the one where they evacuated Derwent village and Ashopton)
Yeah, yeah, Ashopton and Derwent village were evacuated…well, they weren’t evacuated,
they were closed. Yes, some pictures of these in here…that’s shearing sheep up at
Derwent, hand shearing.
(I saw them doing the hand shearing at Bamford, they were doing a display. It looked like
hard work; they made it look easy.)
It is hard work and there’s a proper way to do it. When you’re hand shearing, you’ve got
your shears, you shear like that, you don’t squeeze the blade up from the bottom, you
squeeze the blade down from the top and that cuts the ridge, leaves a ridge across the
fleece.
(So have you sheared sheep)
Have I Yes, I was on…I’ve got some photographs of me shearing.
(How long did it take you to shear)
Oh, it’d take you about 3 minutes to shear one by hand. It’s a lot different now. Our Neil
can shear a sheep in well under a minute.
(Is that with electric clippers)
Yes, yes.
(Did you have to dip them as well)
Dip ‘em after you’d sheared them, yeah. Get rid of all the bugs and nits and that.
(What did you do with the wool, the fleece)
Well, the wool, you’d pack the wool and it goes to Bradford. All wool is sold through
Bradford, even Australian wool is marketed through Bradford.
(I didn’t know that. Has that always been the same)
It has been for a long, long time. And we went up there one day, me and Dora went up to
Bradford when they were…processing the wool and the wool’s coming off and there’s a
little Black bloke with a washing machine like, great long thing and it’s got paddles in,
paddling the wool back all the time and there’s a little man stood at the end like, a little
Black man stood at the end. I said, “What do you do if he falls in”… “Oh,” he says, “plenty
more to put up there”.
(That’s terrible!)
6

But it was interesting, wasn’t it, Dora, that day at...the wool mill up at Bradford
(When was it you went)
25 years or more since, it’d be a bit more than that. That’s old Mr Marrison, he was the last
man to make ropes in the Cavern at Castleton, old Bert. He was a character.
(Do you remember him)
Yeah, every girl that got married in Castleton, he gave ‘em a rope clothes line. That’s
Birchinlee when they were building the other dams, Birchinlee village.
(Do you remember Birchinlee)
No, no, no, well remains of it’s there, but there’s only one left of one of the cabins and
that’s up Edale Road on the right. It’s a hairdressers now, beautician. Well that was one of
the cabins that was up there and there was about 4 or 500 of ‘em.
(Was that known as Tin Town)
That’s it, yeah, Birchinlee….That’s when they were building Ladybower reservoir, that’s the
things where the road goes over now…That’s one of the stanchions that they put it on.
What’s that Oh, that’s Derwent Hall before they pulled it down, when they built the other
dams…that’s the Derwent Hall as well.
(Do you remember Derwent village)
No I don’t remember that.
(There’s quite a lot of forestry round the reservoirs, isn’t there)
Oh yes, they were all planted all the way round after they were made and of course they
said it slowed the water down flowing in and the woods attracted the rain. It can rain up
Derwent I’ll tell you, even now. I can remember that coming round with the beer to
Hathersage, old steam wagon bringing the beer to the pubs in Hathersage.
(Where did it come from)
Sheffield, there was 7 breweries in Sheffield; now there in’t any.
(No, was it Wards the last one that went)
Yeah. That’s the old hall at Hope…as it was.
(Did the forestry make any difference to the moors)
Ah well, they planted a lot of heather with trees you see. Of course all that’s gone now; it’s
just acres and acres of trees.
(Is that because the heather just didn’t survive)
7

It’ll still be there I suppose, but there’s no grazing under the trees at all. At one time they
were all fenced off. There weren’t any sheep in those woods at one time, there is now…
(Were there fences on the moors, just thinking about when you were grazing your sheep.
Were they just open to everybody)
They were open; most of em were what we called hefted and the sheep lived on the moors
all their lives, but sheep were different then, you see. You weren’t keeping sheep to breed
lambs for lamb to sell as lamb, you were selling it as mutton. Well mutton comes from
sheep that’s like 3 years old and…but there’s very little market for it now and the taste of
mutton on sheep that were reared on the moor is very, very little difference to…venison.
There were very little difference to venison.
(Why do you think that is)
Well, of course when they get older, the sheep will eat the heather and it gives a different
flavour.
(Right. If they were just out on the moors, how did you work out which sheep was yours)
Oh, everybody had their own mark, yeah, they have today, everybody’s got their own
mark.
(What would that be, like paint)
Hole through each ear and a tip out underneath. Dad had hole through each ear, one of
the sons had the snip under the left ear and one had the snip under the right ear. And then
the raddle mark that was still the same, ours is stroke down the tail and a dot on the right
side. We still use the same mark after all those years.
(Is that paint)
Yeah, red raddle, yeah.
(Would you bring the sheep off the hills to lamb Did you bring them in)
Some of ‘em did, but actually they were best left alone, there to look after theirselves,
because provided they raised one lamb, they would pay. And if you brought ‘em off down
onto the grass, the grass would give ‘em…used to tipple over with what they call ‘speed’.
And it’s the young green grass that alters their diet and they can’t cope with it.
(It’s too rich for them)
Too rich.
(How did you go about marking the lambs Did they get mixed up)
8

They were all marked. If they lamb up on the moor, every lamb that’s on that moor belongs
that moor, or should do. They have a shepherds’ meet…still have a shepherds’ meet down
at pub down in…used to be in Castleton…now it’s gone down to Bamford.
(Yorkshire Bridge)
No, the shepherds’ meet used to be at Edale, ‘cos of the shepherds’ society. And all the
marks of the different flock masters were all recorded. I’ve got a book for it somewhere,
but I don’t know where it is…
(What happened at the shepherds’ meet)
At the shepherds’ meet, well, you go to the shepherds’ meeting and you pay a subscription
and you have a dinner and after the dinner, anybody’s who’s got a sheep that’s not got a
mark on, they’ll offer it for sale and they sell the sheep and buy the whiskey for
sandwiches after. That used to be the tradition, but it’s altered a bit now obviously, but that
used to be the principle of it. And…it was one of these occasions that was looked forward
to obviously.
(Was it an annual thing)
There’s four of ‘em, four shepherds’ societies. There’s Edale, Hayfield and Strines that are
still going; the others have died like.
(That’s a shame.)
Yeah, well beer got dear! [Laughs.] That’s North Lees at Hathersage where Charlotte
Bronte wrote about North Lees. What was it called…in the story Er...Interesting these old
books.
(They’re great, aren’t they)
They are…absolutely
(We’re hoping eventually we’ll get a book together with some of these memories and some
photographs and things.)
Oh, it wants doing. You’ve got lots of memories of things here that’s happened; well they
don’t happen today like…You won’t see anybody washing sheep these days.
(No, so tell me about that.)
We’ll, they used to wash the sheep before they sheared ‘em and then the wool was clean
you see, it took all the dirt out of the wool, the smoke and that went out of the wool and the
wool was clean so you got a certain amount more for it.
(Oh, a better price.)
9

When the sheep ran on the moor, before the mills all closed in Lancashire, if you were
shearing, you were as black as the ace of spades because there was that much soot in the
wool and that…that mixed with the grease in the wool and you got it all over yer hands.
Here we are, knew I’d find it eventually. That’s making a millstone.
(Oh wow, they’re huge, aren’t they)
That’s [Minor/Miner] Priestley, now his mother was my great grandmother’s daughter and
she went out to service at Mr Shuttleworth’s, lord of the manor in Hathersage. And she had
to bring an extra one up and that’s who it was. But these, they were all quarry men like and
they’re, well they’re all dead now obviously, but there’s 4 of the…or 3 Wilsons, Charlie,
Arthur and Jack. And Jack Wilson, he…Arthur Wilson was always know as Long Arthur
because he was very tall. And he was still alive when I was taking milk round in
Hathersage. And that was working in the quarry. As far as I know, I think that old crane is
still there in Millstone Edge Quarry…it was last time I was up there, but that’s a long time
ago, when I had legs that’d work! The wreckage of that is still up near North Lees and that
was a paper mill. They used to make packing paper there.
(Someone told me they used to use bracken sometimes for packing.)
Yeah, they did. She was one of the butchers in Hathersage. If you touched the meat, “I’ll
chop yer bloody fingers off!” [Laughs]. And…that’s Long Arthur.
(Oh brilliant, he is quite tall.)
A big bloke was Arthur.
(Did the pollution make a difference to the moors themselves)
Must have done because it was blowing over Lancashire, they’re all downwind from
Lancashire you see. And you’d go over to Oldham for instance, when you dropped down
the Snake went to Oldham, it were just a sea of chimneys; they’d be over 100 mill
chimneys down there and all of ‘em were coal fired you see, so they were all smoking
chimneys as you may imagine and atmosphere was full of soot. I remember going one
morning because I used…I drove for Earls at one time, cement lorries. I was going one
morning and I had a lorry that delivered twice a day to a place called West Haughton in
Lancashire. And I did that for 4 and a half years, I knew every bloody stone I was going to
run over in a mornin’! And I remember going one morning, gone down into Stockport, clear
as a bell and all of a sudden everything was stopped. It was thick fog and I got farther on
the road, making no progress at all and I saw a yellow lorry coming towards me and I
shouted and he stopped and he was from Hathersage you see. I said, “I’m coming back
with you, I’ll park this up and leave it” and I did. And we’re coming back and the fog was so
thick you’ll hardly believe this, but in Regent Road in Manchester, both of us agreed that
we wanted a pee, so we stood in front of the lorry and had a pee and there were people on
the footpath talking and they couldn’t see us. And that’s how the fog was. And then you get
through to Stockport and start to come up High Lane, brilliant sunshine. Did it many a time.
10

(So it just sits in the valley)
It just stuck in the bottom, yeah. The fog was different you see because there was that
much smoke in it and that filth, used to call it smog and people were walking around with
handkerchiefs over their nose and that.
(Have there been other changes to the weather)
It’s not so much a change to the weather that they’ve cleared the atmosphere up which
wanted doing, there’s nowt so sure as that. They stopped people burning coal you see,
coal fires and that and it was a big change…
There’s one of our old milk carts somewhere in here as well, but I can’t find it
(How long did you have the milk round for)
Oh, me granddad got…he started…I don’t know…when he got White House…’cos he
lived in a little cottage and worked at that time, I don’t know where, but me dad was born
and me dad was born just before 1898 me dad was born and he worked then, and then he
got chance of this tenancy up at White House Farm, so it’d be…soon after the turn of the
century like when he took it on. And we still had it right up to when we moved up here…ah,
its there, that’s our old milk cart.
(Oh, in the snow. Did you go round with it)
Yes, I used to take milk round. I was milkman in village, teenager, fancied the bank
manager’s daughter like hell! But it’s all changed. He only died…less than a year ago,
Harold Froggatt and they had the coal business in Hathersage for years and he was the
oldest man in Hathersage at one time, but course he popped off like, gone now.
(Was it just your own milk that you took round)
Yeah, Yeah.
(Did all the farmers do that)
Yeah, there were 7 different milkmen in Hathersage at one time, now there’s only one.
(Was that quite amicable, did you manage to share…)
Um...
(…things out ok)
You can borrow these. Have I got me name in…yes, I have, “belongs to Ron Priestley.”
(Oh I’d love to, yeah if that’s ok.)
You can borrow them an’ look at ‘em.
11

(That’d be brilliant. Thank you.)
They’re all dee’d [laughs]. Funerals are a regular job when you get old.
[Discussing lending photo album.]
(Were there any other bad winters apart from 1947)
Yeah, there was one at the beginning of the war, 1941 I think it was. Not as bad, ‘47 was
the ace one, but that one was pretty bad like, you see, ‘cos you hadn’t got the means to
get about then like you have now, I mean they’ve got snowploughs and things to clear the
roads straightaway, whereas they hadn’t then. All they had was a snowplough with a horse
pulling it and that didn’t shift much snow.
(So what did you do if you got snowed in)
Well, you’d always got to be prepared for a snow. You’d got to sort of know the area and
know when it was coming because only shop was down in the village and you’d got to get
to the village and you’d got to get the stuff back like. But there was a firm, A.F. Hancock
and they had a shop in every village and they also used to do deliveries and that.
(Did they have a cart)
Yeah. It was altogether different to what it is now ‘cos all the stuff was displayed on the
counter and they cut some butter off for you and weighed it and the same with the cheese,
whereas now it’s all got to be under glass and that an’t it...Butchers was much the same,
you see, all the meat was on display, “I’ll have a piece of that”, cut it off and weigh it…
(You were saying about the sheep that you kept for mutton. Did you have to send them off
to be slaughtered or did you do it yourself)
Er…mutton’s got from a male sheep that’s been castrated…got to be castrated before he’s
9 months old. Then they keep ‘em on for 2 or 3 years, they’re like bloody donkeys…that
meat’s different, but what you’d got to do is farm ‘em in such a way that…as soon as it
came spring and the heather started to grow, they’d eat the heather, that’s when you
needed to market them, otherwise they went old and tough, you couldn’t chew the bloody
things when they got older…nobody in those days sold lamb as lamb, that’s only come,
you know, sort of since the war really.
(Did the war make a big difference to the moors)
Obviously, people used to grumble about you’d put too many sheep on the moor, they still
do now, but if you’re farming sheep, if you put too many sheep on the moors, your sheep
don’t do very well do they obviously if you’ve got too many of ‘em. You can overgraze
them, I’m not pretending otherwise, but you’ve got to keep enough sheep to pay the rent
and then you’ve got to try and make a bit of profit after that and at one time…well, when
we were at Overstones we were making nothing at all…we used to walk them to…just this
side o’ Bakewell on a Sunday, drive ‘em there and leave ‘em overnight in a park and then
12

go right early next morning and walk them into Bakewell market. Well, when they’d walked
all that way there weren’t many sheep left you see…walked all flesh off ‘em anyway. But
before that me granddad, coming back to me now, it takes so long…Me granddad was a
shepherd for the Duke of Rutland on Longshaw estate. And two of his brothers were and
they used to go up into the Dales, Yorkshire Dales to buy sheep to bring down onto the
moors and they used walk them back and they had places where they stopped off
overnight where there was a pasture to put sheep in and a bed for them to lay on
obviously. And that’s where he met me grandma, at a place called London Fort…and she
came back to live with him at Hathersage then like. And then he got the dairy farm, White
House, but before that, that was his job, he was a shepherd for t’Duke of Rutland.
(Did the Yorkshire Dales sheep do okay)
Of, they did all right if they came down here, yeah…but it was a hard life and there wasn’t
much reward like you know…various people…Ollerenshaws at North Lees…there’s a
photograph in one of them, you’ll find it when you’re looking through…Arthur Ollerenshaw
going with his horse and cart to Sheffield to sell his eggs and a bit meat and a bit of pork
and whatever. And he used to go every Friday to Sheffield to see that, then back again
Friday night. He told me once about coming back from there and he said, “Really cold, and
I called in at Norfolk Arms,” which is at Ringinglow and he says, “I had a drop of port wine”
and he said there were these 3 blokes in there and he says they were talking, and he said,
“I could tell they were talking about me.” Anyway, he said he set off back, going over the
top, and came over the top of the moor to Burbage Bridges and he said, when he got to
Burbage Bridges, he said, they were not far behind. He said, “I could hear them talking
ever so plain.” He said, “I let horse go,” he said, “I knew it’d go home and got under
bridge.” And they thought “I wonder where the bugger’s gone because he’ll have plenty of
money in his pocket, he’s been down to Sheffield.” Anyway, he said, eventually they went
and he said, “I sneaked out and went home.” But he said, “They’d have had me,” he said,
“If they’d have found me under the bridge.” But you see there were people about on their
own; people never bothered about walking about on their own in those days, not like it is
today. I mean, I walked from Overstones to school when I was 6 and back again at night
and it was nearly always dark at winter time at night when I was walking home, but you
never bothered. Nobody bothered to come and meet me; I didn’t matter! Used to gang up
with other kids from up in the area like, but you were generally last one when you got to
school.
13

Geoff Kaye: Interviewed by Tegwen Roberts.
28 th June 2010 in Upper Midhope.
My name is Geoffrey Kaye, I was born on 15 th April 1954 in this house “Fairview”, Upper
Midhope.
(And what did your parents do)
My mother, Majorie, she originated from this village and she worked firstly at a shop in
Langsett and then went to Thurlstone as a shop assistant, up to me being born. My father,
well, my father’s done all sorts of things. Originally a farmer in various places, then after the
war when he came home he went into the waterworks. Where he retired due to ill health in
1970.
(And so you grew up in this village then)
Yes. As the only child in the village.
(Oh! really)
Never mind the only child in the house, I was the only child in the village for many, many
years.
(What was that like)
[Intake of breath] Well, living with both my parents and my mother’s parents, it didn’t seem
anything different really, because I didn’t know anything different, ‘til I got to school.
(So where did you go to school)
Er, Midhopestones, the next village down, up ‘til eleven and then I went to Stocksbridge.
(Oh yes, that’s just down the valley, isn’t it)
Yes, yes the main town down the valley. I didn’t pass my eleven plus to go to Penistone
Grammar School…
(Oh dear.)
Which was needed at that time. But I think I did just as well as one of my same age friends
that went to Penistone Grammar School. We didn’t do any better, any worse – about the
same.
(So what did you do in your spare time as the only child in the village)
Go to farm down the road.
(Right.)
1

I was never ever lost, I was always at John Walker’s farm down the road.
(Were you helping out)
Yes.
(And what sort of stuff did you do)
Get in’t way mainly, I think, as a child [laughter]. Erm, well there was John and his uncle and
John’s uncle was a good bit older. Very strange character. Erm, still very friendly with John
even though he’s moved out of village and farm’s gone. Erm, it was basically what you did in
those days; everything was done by hand. There was only his uncle allowed to drive the
tractor.
(Right.)
So, I’d go with John possibly shooting and poaching a little bit.
(Shocking! [laughter].)
Like mole trapping and a bit o’ duck shooting on’t dam.
(Was that sort of thing frowned upon or was that okay You said poaching…)
Frowned upon by the gamekeeper who was the guy in charge, but John usually had the gift of
the gab to get round it if we got caught.
(Right. And were you doing it for food)
Yes. That was the thing that they did round here.
(Yes.)
‘Appen I shouldn’t say it ‘cause John’s still living, but we’ve got a lot more pheasants round
the garden since John left!
(I see.)
But having said that, pheasant’s lovely…
(Yeah. Fair enough.)
And we do have a lot of pheasants. They come to’t door.
(Are they farmed round here)
No, no they’re all wild. All wild. They won’t come in the house, but they’ll come to within a yard
of the door.
2

(Right.)
You’ll not see ‘em this time of year because there’s plenty of food about, but autumn, winter
time, they come and there’s always some in the field. Yeah, there’s always some about.
(Did you catch anything else like rabbits or…)
Rabbits, fox…
(Fox!)
Yes.
(Was that predator control)
Yes. Yes. I think there was a bit of competition between the local farmers and the
gamekeeper. Erm it’s something that isn’t done now, but at that time o’t day when you caught
a fox you’d could cut its tail off and you’d hang it somewhere.
(Somewhere visible)
Yes. Right. And that was to prove how many fox you’d shot.
(Right.)
Now that was alright if you discarded the fox tails at the end of the year. But the gamekeeper
didn’t tend to discard all of his, so he set off with a…
(Head start.)
[Laughter.]
You’ve got it.
(I see.)
[The following highlighted section is only present in the full-length recording of
Geoffrey Kaye’s interview from 5:20 to 8:18, not in the separate mp3 tracks]
(So how many foxes would you get in an average year Were they quite common)
Well…There’s er we call it the old minefield. Its part of an old mine working’s going back to ’t
1920s or 30s.
(Right.)
Its just down bottom of t’ valley just before you get to the main road. Part of it fell in ‘cause it
isn’t that far under the ground…
3

(Right.)
And the foxes and the badgers lived in there. Now then after the foxes kind of vacated in
quantity, it became the biggest badger sett in South Yorkshire.
(Right.)
And they crossed the main road to get into the wood at the other side and a lot of ‘em used to
get killed – the badgers.
(Right.)
Erm its now – there’s still badgers down there, but you don’t see ‘em. You can go and find
‘em, but you don’t see ‘em – they’re not as plentiful as they used to be.
(Did farmers cull badgers)
Yes.
(Right. They were considered bad news.)
They are bad news. Erm…a fox will go into a hen house, kill a hen and take it. A badger will
demolish the hen house, kill all the hens and take one.
(Right. Okay.)
So you can see the difference.
(So what do you do to deal with badgers Is it…)
Well at my time at day there were ‘snickles’, which is a wire loop.
(Like a snare)
Yes. Yes. And we used to get ‘em with them.
(And is that the same with foxes and things)
Yes. Yes.
(So it was all snaring.)
Or shooting.
(Would you do that at night I presume)
Yes. Lights of Land Rovers; powerful torches and…
4

(Right. But that’s what they call lamping isn’t it)
Yes. But a lot of lamping is done for rabbits and hares, because they, it kind of – if you’ve got
a powerful torch it will dazzle as it does with us. Your eyes get accustomed to t’ dark and
animals are t’ same, stick a powerful torch in their eyes they can’t see. Bang.
There used to be a farmer here, he had a Land Rover with a spare wheel on the
bonnet and his mate used to sit in the spare wheel with the gun and they used to charge
round the fields on the bottom here shooting various things then pick ‘em up and bring ‘em to
me in a bag following morning and I used to take ‘em into work and sell ‘em.
(Right [laughter]. I bet that was a bit of a sight [laughter].)
Ah this is country life, you see. All gone.
(It’s different.)
Its all gone, well round here…I’m not saying it still doesn’t ‘appen, but…
(And why has it gone Is it illegal or just…)
Gun laws. One thing they change. Erm, this village was five working farms when I was a kid,
there isn’t one now…
(Right.)
All gone.
(And what’s replaced them)
Houses.
(Right.)
They’ve just made all the buildings into houses, ‘cause the farms belonged to the waterworks.
Erm, with the…farmland kind of bordering the reservoirs and the tributaries into the reservoirs
they don’t want nitrates from fertilizers and manures and all this ‘ere; so they decided to sell
the properties which have now been made into houses, the land, erm, that’s been taken by
other farmers but there’s very serious stipulations as to what they can and can’t do with the
land, when they can mow it and all this ‘ere, and at the minute it’ll not be long before Upper
Midhope is in the middle of the moor.
(Right.)
Because there was fields between Upper Midhope and the moorland that was farmed; they’ve
now stopped that; its all going back to moorland and rough grass and one thing and another
‘cause the farmers can’t do what they want to do with it.
(Right.)
5

Erm…Due to…from my point of view, people just come in and we want the birds to use this
and we want this, that and t’other. Now then before all these rules and regulations the birds
still came and then they come and stick their nose in and you can’t do this and you can’t do
that…and the birds are still ‘ere like they were before.
(So you haven’t seen much change to the bird life in your lifetime)
Not particularly. There’s various species of hawks and things that come back. We do get quite
a few bird watchers coming in at different times.
I presume one’s seen something and the bush telegraph goes round, there all here to
have a look so you can usually tell when there’s something of interest, because there’s a lot
of bird watchers about.
(Right.)
Which is good, to me. But I still think the farming should go on, being a country person, I think
the farming should carry on.
(So you thing the moorland’s encroaching more than it ever did)
Yes. But yet there’s great controls on what they can do on the moor.
(So within your lifetime was there any of the moorland taken back to farming the opposite
way)
No. No. It’s gone back the opposite way.
(Right.)
It’s farmland that’s gone back to moorland.
(Not even during the war or anything like that They didn’t farm…they didn’t cultivate areas
that hadn’t been cultivated before)
No…Because most of the moorland round here was used by the Army. There was a big Army
camp at the top of the village.
(Just up the hill)
Straight up through the village there was a big Army camp up there and they trained tank
drivers.
(Right.)
On the moor. And there’s a big, its still there, there’s a big oval concrete area what the tanks
drove round, which was learning the drivers how to drive; plus, up the moor, was, shall we
say, like a railway line at the back of the embankment, and every so oft there was a hollow in
this embankment and on the railway line was a moving target. And as the tanks went round
6

the oval track, the gunners had got to follow this moving target and try and hit it between the
hollows and the…
(Right.)
And that’s how they learnt. And they brought their tanks actually through the village.
(Wow, that must have been a bit of a sight.)
The road is all concrete. From Langsett through here, through the village. They kept knocking
our wall down at the bottom.
(By accident)
Yeah, because the tracks on the tank when they’re going round a corner they don’t know
whether the front’s going to go one way and the back the other, you just don’t know what
happens. Well instead of hitting the house they hit my grandad’s wall. Which they built up and
what have you.
(Right.)
But it was a regular thing, by the sounds of it.
(Right.)
And there was hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of soldiers came through Upper
Midhope learning to drive tanks.
(That must have made a big difference to quite a small village.)
Yes. Yes. And there was like the sergeants mess.
(Did they actually camp up here)
Oh yes, there were big wooden huts built at top o’the village going down a lane. They split a
field up and put a road down the middle and my mother still refers to it as the “Squatters”.
Now that is a nickname to us for the road; but squatters are people that just go and live in
buildings like…uninvited.
(Yeah.)
Well when the Army they had finished after the war, these buildings were vacated by the
Army and people came and lived in ‘em.
(So who)
Families from all over’t place. There’s local people round ‘ere that were actually born up there.
(Right.)
7

In the Army village shall we say.
(So were they people who had been bombed out of cities or bombed out of other places)
Yes, I presume so. Yes…because…I mean this bungalow there’s only four bedrooms and
there were families lived in the bungalow during the war and also in wooden sheds outside.
There were three if not four families lived in sheds outside.
(So people were evacuated to here)
Yeah, I can remember one lot called Randles from Wakefield; they had a toy shop in
Wakefield.
(Right.)
And they used to come here for a week, once a year and stay ‘ere a week; because they’d
stayed ‘ere during the war and then they came back. Yeah. And then there was other people
used to come and visit. I can fair remember going’t toy shop playing and that is one thing that
has stuck in my memory.
(I’m sure, yeah, it must have been quite exciting.)
Yeah. And that’s how we became friends during...through’t war like.
(So how long did the camp last So how long was it there for if it was wooden sheds)
Now that I’m not too sure of, like I say, I was born in 1954 and I cannot remember any sheds.
I can remember one or two brick bases, after the sheds had been demolished and most of the
bases had been demolished. So I would think it would have gone by’t fifties.
(Right. So just a few years after the war.)
Early fifties.
(Yeah. I suppose they’d rebuilt quite a lot of stuff by then hadn’t they and re-homed people
and that kind of thing.)
And like the war were changing.
(Yes, yes.)
It finished in 1945. It finished in ’45 so I’d think it started changing in ’43, ’44 I would think.
(Wow, that’s fascinating.)
Just for a little village, you know, you think nothing ‘appens up ‘ere.
(Well…yeah…)
8

But nothing does ‘appen now, it all ‘appened…
(In the past.)
Yes.
(I suppose it took it from a small village and it also made it into a small town for a while.)
Yes, and then like previous to that when they were building the dams, not at Upper Midhope
but at Langsett, there was another village appeared for the dam workers…
(Right.)
Which had its own hospital and – which was on the lawn of the pub [as it is now]; that was
the hospital.
(In Langsett that was.)
Yes. Then all down the main roadside, down both sides were tin huts.
(Oh Tin Town. Ah, yes I’ve heard of that.)
Yeah. Corrugated tin buildings, yeah.
(Wow.)
I can remember the last two of ‘em.
(Yeah When were they then)
When would that be Early sixties.
(And were they still being used)
Yes.
(Still living in them)
Yes. There was a girl I went to school with, Elaine Swindles [Swindells], she lived in there with
her parents and there was a guy called Sharp[e]. There was two of ‘em. Swindles lived in one
and a guy called Sharp[e] lived in the other.
(Right.)
And they’d gone by the time they built the new waterworks in ’85.
(So, which waterworks was that)
Langsett. The Yorkshire Water. They built a new treatment plant at Langsett. In ’83 to ’85.
9

(Did that make a difference to the reservoirs)
Well, instead of being two drinking water reservoirs round ‘ere, one at Langsett which
belonged to Sheffield Corporation waterworks and one at Midhope which belonged to
Barnsley Corporation Waterworks; which were two totally separate concerns and then
Yorkshire Water took over and it all amalgamated into one and one new treatment plant. And
that’s what we were talking about earlier that the – the water authorities and gamekeepers
didn’t like sheep or people round the dams, because of the old fashioned way of treating
water and when the new water treatment plant came they just don’t bother now.
(So it’s okay to…use the resevoirs…)
Yes – because the new treatment plants can deal with any contamination in the water.
(Right. So has that made a difference to the land around the reservoirs)
Yes. Where you used to get, used to have a reservoir keeper that lived in a reservoir house,
or, waterworks house, doing nothing but look after the reservoir, keeping people away or if
there was any bother he was there to sort it out. There isn’t one now. There’s not one
reservoir keeper per reservoir; there might be one reservoir keeper per valley or two or three
valleys. They don’t bother about people walking round; in fact they’ve put a lot of new
footpaths around the dams to go and visit areas that you couldn’t go and see before. You
weren’t allowed to go. And now you can walk about in the woods and there’s signs saying
there isn’t a public footpath, but you have a concessionary right to roam shall we say.
(Right. Well that’s good.)
Well I suppose that’s a benefit. The only down side to it is, which seems part of English
culture, everybody comes out into the countryside brings their rubbish and leaves it.
(Perennial problem, I think, isn’t it)
Yes, and it’s not just round ‘ere its everywhere. It’s everywhere and that is a concern.
(Yes, of course, of course…)
(I’d like to talk about your dad and what he did, but first while I remember, talking of litter and
that kind of thing. In some areas they talk about the pollution there used to be on the moors,
you know when the mills were still working in Manchester and Halifax and that kind of place;
did you have that kind of thing round here Was there much pollution in the form of soot, or
that kind of thing – black sheep)
No, not really. Like there’s steelworks down the valley, all the pollution from that went further
down the valley, it didn’t come up here and there’s nothing before us to pollute anything apart
from Manchester too far away. I think the Army had a good do at it in trying to blow it up and
firing at things an’…
(Interestingly with the Army is there still ammunition up there)
10

Yes. Yes. Erm I’m not saying now, but there is shells and small bombs and one thing or
another being found, various bits of aircraft, there’s numerous aircraft come down on’t moor
round ‘ere.
(Was that during the war or was that…)
Well I can remember one…
(When was that)
It’ll be fifty years ago, ‘appen a bit less. When I was a child and my dad was working as a
farmer at the top of the village he had a piece o’ land on the moor, which was then field which
is now moor, back to what we were talking about a bit since…
(Yep.)
Erm this light aircraft came down and it landed, without crashing, and me dad and the farmer
went to see if everybody was alright …. “aye there’s nothing wrong with us chaps, we’re just
short of petrol; is there anywhere we can get petrol so we’s can carry on home” And they
must have gone down to’ local garage and got ‘em some and stuffed it in the plane, fired it up
and it set off and away it went and everyone was happy.
(Yes, a happy ending. Its quite an exciting, quite an unusual thing to happen I suppose.)
Bit different. [Pause] Different.
(Where had they come from do you know)
They were going over to Manchester; trying to get back home.
(Right.)
I don’t know where they’d come from. Like I say, I was only a child. And I can just remember
me dad takin’ me up to see it. I can’t remember it’s takin’ off. ‘Cause it happened too late for
me waiting or something by the time they’d come back wit petrol. I don’t know.
But we did have a glider land in our garden.
(Wow.)
It hit the garden wall and the poor chap died. He’d come from Doncaster and he shouldn’t
have been here. He shouldn’t have been this far out. And he’d come past a lot of places
coming up the valley where he could have landed. And then he were realising that he was
losing height and he had to get down or he would have been in the houses and ended up in
our garden.
(Oh dear. Must have been a bit traumatic. When would that have been)
[Pause] Late 60s, early 70s.
11

(Right.)
No it might have been mid-60s; mid-60s, because me dad were still working.
(So you wouldn’t have been very old then)
No. No.
(That sort of stuff sticks with you doesn’t it)
Yes. Yes. It does. One Sunday it was.
(So you said with your dad you worked for the water company.)
Hmm.
(What did he do)
He was just a general labourer when he lived here and then he got to be like the second in
command.
(Right.)
So we left here and went into a waterworks house a couple of hundred yards down the road
where the waterworks is. Erm that’s the only move that I’ve ever made, down there.
(Right.)
I was only eight or nine when I went and then me dad had a stroke in 1969, which meant he
couldn’t work, so we’d to leave the waterworks house, and we came back here, that was
1970.
(So like you were saying, was he one of the people who was keeping the general public out of
the…)
Yes. Yes. That’s how I know about the waterworks, ‘cause that was what me dad did for the
Barnsley corporation dam.
(Right. And did you get many people trying to sort of walk on the land or…)
Oh yeah, yeah, on a weekend you’d get people going down to the water’s edge and having a
picnic or a paddle. Not particularly causing any damage, but they’d park car and would walk
down the wood and just naturally think they were doing nothing wrong really. Which I don’t
suppose they were. But it was just the way the waterworks was and no people round, and that
were that.
Some of them would just pack up and go and others would give a bit of verbal abuse
and what have you, they were doin’ no wrong which quite rightly they were doing no wrong,
but technically they were trespassing and what have you. Well I mean all that’s gone now like.
12

(Yeah it has…Did you get a lot of walkers out in this sort of area obviously you’re quite close
to Sheffield)
Yes, but we’ve a lot more now.
(Right.)
A lot more.
(Since when do you think Have things changed or is it just a general…)
What’s changed is the Peak Park, the Sheffield City Council and the Yorkshire Water have all
got together promoting, erm, the areas around the dam and woodland that you couldn’t go in,
when the Waterworks owned it. Well the Waterworks still do own it. But with having them all
get together they’ve made these concessions where you can go in the dam. Because in my
job we do do forestry work, not particularly demolishing trees, but putting footpaths in,
puttingtracks in to get the trees out and various things an’ that; and there is a heck of a lot of
people about.
(Right.)
All the time. More at weekends but a lot in the week, because they can go and ramble and do
what they want.
(And I suppose people have better access to cars nowadays as well, don’t they…)
Yes. Yes. I think one of the problems that I see is that there is a lot of lovely countryside to be
seen but nowhere to park your car.
(Yeah. That is a bit of an issue.)
So how they are going to get around that I don’t know. So you get cars obstructing roads
and this all here bit which isn’t too good for the people that’s wanting to use the roads but you
can’t altogether blame the people that’s wanting to visit the countryside.
(No, no, it’s a…)
I mean the Peak Park and the Water Board and the Council promote all these things and
want people to come – that’s back to the litter job again – and there we are, we’ve had this
debate before.
(I think its just cyclical isn’t it, it goes round…)
Yes, yes. And I don’t think anything can be done much about it, no matter how many litter
bins you put up.
(No.)
They don’t use ‘em!
13

(So you were saying about the forestry. Was that all planted when the reservoirs went in)
No. I can remember a lot of’t forest being planted in my lifetime. All round’t Langsett dam was
done before I was born, because it was done by one or two of my great-uncles, or my
mother’s uncles, and they used to come here at dinner time and have their dinner and bring
their friends with them that were working with them and they were people that our family knew
as well. But my dad planted quite a lot of trees around Midhope dam and I can remember him
doing it. In that 50 years.
(Right. So is it commercial forestry, using it for forestry; or is it just to protect the reservoirs)
A bit o’ both. It’s to protect … one thing’s to protect the water that runs off the moors, it cleans
it up going through the trees into the dam.
(Okay – that makes sense.)
Farmers can’t farm the land right down to the water’s edge. So if they’re farming between the
water and the trees in the middle, the trees help to purify the water that runs into the dam. But
it’s also grown for a commercial product as well, if the trees are managed and there’s a lot
round ‘ere that aren’t; or weren’t should I say. They are being now, but they’ve been left far
too long, in my eyes, and other peoples as well; but they’re just a pile o’ rubbish now. They
are not worth a great deal in timber.
(Is that because they are not straight enough or…not healthy enough)
They haven’t been thinned, so they’ve been drawn up, they’re long and thin and not worth a
lot. Whereas a managed forest will grow green under the trees, an unmanaged forest will not
grow anything – no grass, no brambles, no bracken, no rubbish; its just dead because it
doesn’t get the light in and that is when the trees are forced.
(Right.)
And they just grow and grow and grow and there’s nothing to ‘em when they’ve done. But a
proper managed forest – which they have tried to do – and some ‘em round here they’ve
achieved it.
(Yes.)
They keep coming having a purge.
(Right.)
Then you don’t see nothing for a good number of years and then they’ll come again. That’s
just the way they go.
(Yeah, yeah, and you said that your uncles and people that you knew, were involved…did
they just come round and ask the farmers to plant the trees)
14

Oh no, its all specific land owned by the water authority.
(Yeah...)
Erm, which was taken when the dams were built, and they haven’t planted much farmland
and if it was farm…they did plant a bit round the back, but it really wasn’t fit to farm.
(Right.)
It was very, very wet land and farmers couldn’t do a fat lot with it,. So it just basically got left;
possibly grazed a bit, so they planted it.
(Yeah, yeah. And you were saying with the farmers round here there were four at one time…)
Five.
(Five, yeah. What sort of farms were they Were they mixed or were they…)
Yes, there was one, two, three that I can remember that made milk.
(Right…)
Erm, milk wagon used to come with the churns, throwing the churns about and all that. Erm
and they’ve just generally dwindled away nice and steady. Erm, the main farm was owned by
‘t Water Board and they closed that up and sold it on and that was it.
(I suppose maybe it wasn’t making enough money for them or…)
I think they wanted more control o‘t land round the dam. I think that was the top an’ bottom of
it. Because there was, there was a water works tenant at Midhopestones, they were wanting
him out of his farm because…because it was cut through the middle by the main road. Itwas a
big house that was getting into a serious state of neglect, and they wanted to sell it; but in
order to sell it they’d got to get him out and this farm up ‘ere would have been an ideal place
for him. But he didn’t want that so they built him a new one…
(Right.)
A brand new farm, because I’ve done all the ground works on it.
(Oh right.)
Which were very interesting.
(I’m sure.)
And it took twelve years to sort, up to turning the first sod to building the first building.
(How come How come it took that long)
15

Well it was due to him being a tenant – anybody that’s a tenant, if the landowner wants you
out they’ve got to supply a property of equal to what they are turfing you out of. Well they
hadn’t got that. So there was long negotiations about how they were going to get him out and
what they were going to do with him and all the rest of it; and it ended up whereby the land
that was owned by the Water Board, was sold to the farmer, for him with planning permission
to build a new farm. And he was also paid a reasonable sum for getting out of the big house
so as they could sell it…
(Right.)
So it ended up where everybody was happy.
(Yeah.)
In the end; but after twelve years it wanted to be, really.
(Yeah, it’s a long time…check how tape’s doing, okay…So, back to you. Obviously we went
through your childhood but, erm, what was your first job What did you do after you left
school)
I stayed on for an extra year at school and got some qualifications, which might not be the
right thing to say, but [they] haven’t done me anything whatsoever in any of the jobs I’ve gone
into since leaving school. Two weeks after leaving school I had a job at the Hepworth Iron
Company pipe works as an apprentice engineer. Which my uncle had worked up there all his
life, never anywhere else, got the gold watch when he was 65 and he got me my first job. So I
did twelve months at the pipe works up the road and then I went to Holmfirth.
(Right.)
(Is that the same pipe works)
It’s the same, but the engineering, the engineering division of the pipe works where I did, I
took my City and Guilds in Mechanical Engineering at Barnsley College and served my
apprenticeship in Holmfirth while 1976 by which time I got a bit fed up and then I went into the
steelworks at Stocksbridge for two years and I got made redundant there.
(So that was engineering or…)
No. I was…I got fed up of working inside. Being a country guy, when I’d done me work…well
even when I was at school, soon as I’d come home, had me tea, changed, off to the farm. I’ve
worked on most farms in the valley over ‘t years and that was my main thing, just goin’t the
farm. Not particularly for the money, but for the love of it…
(Yes.)
…As a country kid. And working in a single storey building with a glass roof, where you
couldn’t see anything at all, apart from a grass bank just drove me absolutely crazy.
(Yeah, I’m sure.)
16

So I left there and got an outside job, thermic lancing, even though I was covered head to foot
in leather and sparks up your boots an’ one thing an’ another, erm, I enjoyed a lot more.
(So thermic lancing, what does that…I presume its temperature…)
Yes. It’s a steel tube that has high pressure oxygen running through it that actually burns at
the end; and you burn big lumps of steel, scrap steel, into smaller parts.
(Right, so…cutting…)
Yes, you cut it. You’re talking about 60, 70, 80 tonne lumps of steel, solid lumps. I’m not
talking about oxyacetylene burning which you’ll see in the average scrapyard, this is serious
burning this and it burns your skin as well. Erm, an’ that were quite interesting – ‘til I got made
redundant...
(Yeah.)
And then we moved on to JCB’s an digging machines an farming an anything that ‘ed make
me a bob or two…
(Yeah.)
To go to’t pub… [at] the day. So that’s what’s set me up into business today.
(Yeah.)
There it is.
(Are there many people from round here that worked in the pipe works and then the
steelworks)
Yes. Yes. Where I had two weeks off school after I finished and then I had to be at Langsett
at quarter to seven in the morning to get on the bus that came from Stocksbridge, but we
didn’t start while half past seven…
(Right.)
So we’d to be there for quarter to seven, we was at work at ten to seven, then the bus went to
Penistone to pick some more people up and bring ‘em back for half past.
(So you’d a bit of a time to wait.)
Yes. And then we finished at quart’ to five, and the bus brought us back home again – to
Langsett.
(Right. And then you’d walk down from Langsett. Erm…)
17

Yes or pushbike. And in the steelworks at Stocksbridge, there was dozens and dozens of
Barnsley buses bringing people from Barnsley and surrounding areas into the steelworks –
there were hundreds of people. Because it was labour, it was labour intensive and even more
so at pipe works, a lot more labour intensive. Now, nothing, its all automated.
(Yeah, no people.)
No people. I went up there last year and I was very, very surprised. I went straight through the
middle of the works and I think I saw one chap.
(Wow.)
And that was it. Nobody walking about with bits of paper an’ all this ‘ere. Now that’s all gone.
(Bit sad, really.)
Yes. Erm…having worked in the steelworks since I’ve been self-employed, there has been a
lot of redundancies while I’ve worked there but…When the people have been made
redundant the production has gone up due to the fact that technology has taken over those
people’s jobs and its become automated.
(Erm…I suppose machines can work twenty four hours a day can’t they…)
Yes and one man can look after several machines.
(Right, yeah.)
So you’re only paying…You might be paying a lot of money initially for that machine, but if it’s
running twenty four hours a day and your paying one man to look after it and others as well,
you can see why…
(Yeah, yeah.)
…people were made redundant.
(Yeah.)
I mean, when I started in me self-employment back in the works in 1983 and I was there for
twenty three, twenty four years and we saw a lot of change in that time…
(Yeah, I bet you did.)
Due to technology. When we started in the melting shop there was three furnaces and it
gradually got down to one and that one furnace was producing more steel than what all three
were when we started.
(Wow.)
18

And it never stopped. During the week it had one day off; then it was a mad rush; wrecked it,
re-rigged it and off again it was goin’ Monday night, Tuesday morning.
(Right.)
And that’s what we did working in the melting shop.
(Right.)
And that’s how we became to buy us first digger with; doing lots of hours in there early
mornings and late nights.
(And did you buy the digger because you just liked them Or were you looking ahead…)
It was a progression from a tractor. I had a tractor when I first started work for Hepworth Iron
Company and then I put a loader on the front and a back actor on the back and there was
nobody round ‘ere got anything like it, so I got bits o’ jobs wit local farmers and then I wanted
to buy something a little better but without selling something – I just hadn’t got the money to
buy it outright, and me, now, business partner I was talking to ‘im and “oh lets go an have a
look at it” and we ended up buying it between us and that’s what set the partnership off and
we’ve been goin’ ever since.
(Great.)
So with both of us being local people working on the local farms and different things, that’s
how we got us work.
(So you said you do land drainage, that kind of thing…)
Mmm…
(…Were you involved in the [grickes/bricks/grips] on the moors You know they do quite a
lot of drainage.)
Yes. Yes. We’re doin’ more o’ that now than we’ve done for a long time.
(In terms of now, are you digging them or blocking them ‘Cause they’re doing some blocking
aren’t they)
Yeah, we’re digging these things out that’s been left, unattended, really since the, I would say,
the dam keepers and the waterworks have changed. Because the waterworks used to look
after a lot of ditches and dikes and watercourses on the moor, to get the water into the dams.
It seems to be the general attitude now that water flows downhill and eventually it’s goin’ to
get to’t’ dam whether its through the ditch, dyke, pipe that were there or over the top where it
shouldn’t go – it’s goin’ to end up in’t dam, and that seems to be the general attitude - to me.
But they do have a purge now and again, usually when they are wanting to get some trees
out, because the damage done by the water means that the timber men, or the timber lorries,
can’t get to where they want to be, to get the timber out, so we go repair the ditches, dykes,
19

pipes, culverts, what ever’s needed, resurface the road and all the rest of it, and they’ll have a
good do at it.
(Yeah.)
Now whether it’s maintained after that is anybody’s guess. But it keeps such people as us in
business in tidying it up.
(Yeah.)
And we’re local and all they need do is ring up and say can you go up to so and so and have
a look, you’ll see what the problem is, what’s it going to cost us, give me a ring back, an its all
done over the telephone, not particularly meeting anybody. Sometimes we do, but we know
the local area.
(And they trust you to get on with it and get it sorted.)
If the price is right, as they say…
(Yeah.)
…then that’s it, order the stuff and away we go.
(So most of your work is in this area)
Yes. Yes.
(You won’t go further afield)
Oh I mean, Bradfield, Sheffield, round abouts.
(Yeah, yeah. It’s all quite close I suppose isn’t it.)
Yes. Yes. We’ve worked for’t Water Board, for’t Council for’t Forestry Commission, erm and
they know what we can do, and just basically leave us to it.
(And you get to be outside like you said.)
Oh yes, yes. That’s the main thing.
(Yeah, absolutely.)
That’s the main thing.
(So have you had much to do with the moorlands As obviously you’re very close to the
moors here…)
When I was younger I used to do grouse beating, on the moors, with one or two of me friends
from school; but, when I started working that seemed to put an end to it, erm…
20

(Is that [because] you didn’t have time or you didn’t feel like going)
Well I think one o’ the main things was, the amount o’ money you got paid for grouse beating
and the amount o’ money you got for going to work, there was one heck of a difference. And
when you’d been on the moor all day, you knew you’d been on the moor.
(It wasn’t easy work then.)
It wasn’t easy work. Because being some of the youngest there, we always got pushed into
some of the hardest parts. Now then when you’re trying to walk through bracken up to your
neck…
(Up to your neck!)
Up to your neck, which is all platted together at the top, its far easier to get on your hands and
knees and go under it.
(So is that what you did)
Yes. And on a wet day, by God was you wet when you came out!
(I bet you were.)
So it was far easier to say I was – couldn’t get me day off work that day, then go grouse
beating. But like in my father’s day, and me grandfather’s with being country people and
farmers, when it was grouse shooting, farming stopped and all the farmers went on the moor.
(Right. So everybody went; it was a big community thing)
Yeah. Yep. And I’m not saying that it’s the same today as it was then, but, the farmers, the
smaller farmers, will still go.
(Is that because it’s a social thing as much as anything)
Yes I think it is and it’s something that’s carried on from years gone by. Yeah. But like for the
likes of the young, I think they’ve seen the light that there’s better things to do.
(Or different things to do I suppose…)
Yes. Yes. However you want to look at it. I mean there are some – don’t get me wrong. There
was a young lass came to live in the cottage at bottom o’ garden ‘ere, and her boyfriend duly
arrived and they stayed there and then I don’t know whether they fell out – I don’t know, but
she flitted out he’s still ‘ere, he’s very, very friendly with the gamekeeper and he’s got his own
little parcel van and goes delivering things; but if there’s something to do on the moor he is on
the moor. And for a young lad…I couldn’t tell you really where he’s originated from even
though he lives at bottom o’t garden. But he didn’t want to move; when she went…
(He stayed.)
21

He stayed. “I’m stopping ‘ere, I’m ‘appy.”
(Some people love the moors, don’t they)
Yeah.
(You know, it’s sort of in the blood, I think.)
Yeah. I mean, one of the highest parts of the moor round ‘ere, they call it Pike Low. Ahm, an’
I’ve been up at top o’ there a couple or three times, and when you get there, there isn’t a
blade o’ grass, there’s nothing; its just peat and stones. And you can hear absolutely nothing.
If there’s no aeroplanes about you might hear’t odd grouse; but other than that there is no
noise whatsoever. Which … is a little strange these days, cause there’s usually something
making a noise.
(Yeah, it’s at that point that your ‘phone rings or something isn’t it)
Yes. Yes. Now then it could o’ changed because its some years since I‘ve been up there…
(Yeah.)
…But when I were up there I thought it was wonderful.
(Yeah, its very special. Yeah.
(And as a child and as a sort of an older person, did you use the moors for anything I know
in some area’s they did peat cutting, or they mowed the bracken for various purposes…did
any of that happen around here)
I don’t recall any peat cutting being done in this area, I know there’s some done up by
Dunford, and its still done.
Regarding bracken mowing…erm, I can remember as a early teenager when I worked
on my uncle’s farm, he’d three farms bordering the moors and we used to mow bracken on
the moor for bedding.
(Yep.)
For’t cattle.
(For cattle)
Yeah, yeah. Not very oft, but I have been.
(Did you mow it by hand Or was it sort like with a scythe)
Yeah, yeah, with a scythe. He did it wit scythe and we loaded it on to’t’ trailer.
(Was that hard work)
22

Well everythin’ were ‘ard work on their farm.
(Right.)
Oh everything, everything.
(Was that because it was all just done by hand)
Yes. Yes. They wouldn’t spend any money on machines, labour saving machines, or owt
o’this; they had two or three old tractors. Erm, basic things that farmers had, but…basically it
was donkey work, as we’d call it.
(Right.)
Hard work in old buildings. Because they were rented properties and they wouldn’t spend
anything – they weren’t paying a lot o’ rent; so’t landlord wouldn’t put any buildings up wi’out
puttin’ rent up. They didn’t want to pay anymore rent and so they didn’t get anymore buildings.
So it were a vicious circle.
(Yeah, I suppose so.)
So I left them and went to another farmer, who was owned by the same landlord and his was
a totally different place with concrete yards and new buildings, an’ better tackle an’ a lot better
looked after farm because he’d spent some money and I stayed there a good number of
years.
(Right, yeah.)
An’ that was just difference between various farms.
(Yeah, yeah, I suppose so.)
He was a guy on his own an’ he just got on with it.
(Yeah, yeah. So I suppose, my last question…It’s the moorlands I’m particularly interested in;
in this area, have they changed in your lifetime People’s relationship with the moors and how
people use them and that kind of thing in this area.)
I wouldn’t think so, I think the only thing that could have changed is this open access. But that
particularly hasn’t changed the moor as such, it’s just let people see it from a different angle.
(Yeah.)
Instead o’ sticking to the footpaths – of which there are plenty – they can just wander where
they want. Well for the people I’ll expect that’s alright, but, from the point of breeding grouse
an’ other wildlife, not a good thing.
(No, no.)
23

Because people on the moor, from that point of view it isn’t a good thing. Because half of ‘em
don’t know what they’re looking for, they don’t know what they’re treading on, till they’ve done
it.
(Then it’s too late, isn’t it)
Yes. Your gamekeeper is there for a purpose to look after these things, so he knows what
he’s looking for, so…
(I suppose its striking a balance as with all things, really.)
Yes, yes. But it’s getting that balance without causing too much problem.
(Yeah, yeah, sure.)
And these days the gamekeeper has got a very, very difficult job.
(Do you think it’s more difficult than it used to be)
A lot more. Because it isn’t looking after the game; its keepin’ the people happy that’s
dictating the terms of how he looks after the game. Because there’s far more rules and
regulations these days than what there ever was and they’re still only achieving the same
ends in looking after the wildlife.
(Yeah.)
That’s all they’re doin’. But you’ve got people sticking their nose in and half of ‘em don’t know
what they’re talking about, but they’ve got to abide by the rules; which makes things very
difficult at times. But I suppose these rules have been brought in for some reason, a lot o’
people don’t know why, but, there we are, rules is rules aren’t they
(Yeah, rules is rules indeed.)
I’m not saying everybody sticks by ‘em, its same wi everythin’, but they’ve got to be seen to
be doin’.
(Yeah, yeah.)
So, I wouldn’t want to be a gamekeeper; but I think the difference is, the younger
gamekeepers are brought up with all these rules and regulations and they don’t bother.
Whereas the older end, that have been forced to do ‘em, and they’ve done things a different
way previously, which could be better – I’m not saying it is – but could be better, but they’ve
been made to do something different, resent it.
(Yeah.)
I suppose you can see why. But your young ones, they just go with the flow.
24

(Yeah, that’s what they are brought up to do. I suppose things change, don’t they)
Yes they do. Yes. Yes. I mean what’ll ‘appen in’t next twenty years, I don’t know; I can’t see it
gettin’ any better.
(Well maybe it will be different. I don’t know. It’s a…)
Things haven’t changed a great deal in’t last fifty years. So…
(Well the grouse don’t change do they)
No. No. An’ I think last year was one of the best years they had for a good number of years
for shooting. But you see a lot of people don’t like that; breeding grouse to shoot. But it’s what
they do.
(Yeah, yeah.)
That is what’s done round ‘ere.
(Yeah, yeah.)
It’s only like breeding cattle to eat.
(Yeah, I suppose so. I suppose so.)
That’s the way we look at it.
(And it keeps those landscapes looking the way they do, doesn’t it Which I think some
people maybe don’t understand.)
Yes. I don’t think it’s as bad round ‘ere as you get up North Yorkshire. Same in Scotland and
what have you. It’s the farmers that make the countryside look as it is for the people to go and
look at. And, I’m not saying this government because its changed, but previous governments
have always seemed to be hell bent on doin’ away wi the farmers. Yet it’s the farmers who
make the countryside. So if the farmers aren’t there, whose goin’ to look after it for the public
to go an’ look at
(Yeah, that’s an interesting question.)
It’s the farmers, in’t it And they are now paying the farmers not to farm the land, in some
cases, but maintain it. Paying them to do their walls up and to make the countryside look nice
and I think they’ve now realised…
(Yeah, they need them.)
Yeah, yeah.
(Well it’s about time.)
25

Yeah, it is about time. Yeah. ‘Cause I mean you go down to Lincolnshire an’ all you’ve got is
miles and miles and miles of corn, an’ it’s flat and there’s nothing a lot to look at. Now you
come up ‘ere into the hills an’ you’ve a lot of beautiful scenery.
(Yeah, yeah.)
And the reason is it’s beautiful is because it’s managed, by a lot o’ small farmers; not so many
small ones now – they seem to be getting bigger. But it is managed.
(Yeah, that’s important.)
That’s my outlook of it…and…
(Well, brilliant, thank you very much. I’ll turn that off now.)
26

John Littlewood: Interviewed by Tegwen Roberts.
30 th June 2010, Penistone
(Tell me who you are and your date of birth.)
I’m John Littlewood and I was born on 24 th June 1948.
(And where were you born)
I was born actually in Wombwell near Barnsley, left there when I was 5 years old and er
went to live at Loadbrook which is just outside Stannington up on edge of Peak District and
my father went into the clay mines there; worked in clay mines and then from there, we
lived there for about 10 years and we moved to Bradfield and worked for Earl Fitzwilliams
in forestry, in forestry and then I started work as a lad in forestry.
(So where did you go to school)
I went to Bradfield School at Worrall. Well Dungworth school as an infant and then up to
Bradfield school, yeah.
(How did you get there)
Oh ‘eck, we used to have to walk to Dungworth school. There were no school buses or
anything we used to have to walk. And then when we went up to the big school, Bradfield
school there used to be a coach which used to pick us up and take us to school.
(So what was it like as a child growing up in Loadbrook You said that was quite a
moorland place.)
Well yes it was, just a small place, a couple of farms and a brickyard as I said, 9 cottages.
And one or two other children besides me, it was a good childhood, yeah, spent a lot of
time on the farms as a child.
(Were you helping out)
Yes, we used to help out, you know as children do, we used to look forward to haymaking
and what have you and ‘tater picking, well yes, a good childhood really, yes.
(So what did you do when you left school)
I went to work for Earl Fitzwilliams, my father worked for them and I spent 2 years working
for them but it weren’t very much money in them days. I think my first wage from
Fitzwilliams, 5 ½ days per week was £1.25 a week which when I was 16 ½ went up to
1

£2.50 for a 45 hour week so I decided that I wanted to try and earn some money for the
amount of hours I was working so I went into clay mines for about 5 years.
(So that was the clay mines near Bradfield)
That was the clay mines in Ughill. I started off down at Old Wheel when I first went and
worked on ‘t pit top, tipping tubs of clay when they came out of the pit.
(So was it opencast)
Drift mine. I mean I went from £2.50 a week to working 37 ½ hours per week for about £16
per week.
(Bit of a difference.)
It were hard work but it was different and then when I was 18 I went working down on the
face you know on piece work, in the mines themselves.
(Oh, in the mines themselves, so was it shift work)
No, just one shift from 8 ‘til half past 3 er, say it was very hard work because it was piece
work and erm that were it, yeah 37 ½ hour week.
(So what did you use to get mining clay)
Pick and shovels, pick and shovels er, used to be, used to be it were a drift mine with what
they called ‘gates’ off which is a 6 foot wide and depending on thickness of seam is could
be anything from 3 foot 6 [inches] to 7 foot in height and you probably used to have
wooden tubs with iron-rimmed wheels, used to hold up to about half a ton. You’d take it
from where there used to be a train coming, a winching train, used to pick yer tub up from
there and take it to face which could be anything up to I think 100 to 300 yards, fill it, bring
it back and take another empty and do that all day. Used to average about 8 to 12 tons a
day depending on what type of face you were working on.
(On your own)
Yes, yeah, we used to get anything from between 8/6 a ton to 12/6 a ton depending on
where you were and conditions you were working in.
(And how many people worked in the mine Was it all men)
It was all men at that time, they’d probably be round about 10 face workers, all worked
individually 2 deputies and then you’d get where the train came up, what we called a train
anyway, what they called a winching man and he’d change all the ropes over on the
winching to take the tubs back out of the pit, out of the drift and then you’d have two men
2

on top, engine driver and assistant to tip the tubs clear as they got outside. What they
used to do was to bring them out of pit onto a weighbridge and weigh each individual tub
used to be marked with a little stick about 6 inches long and about an inch square with
either a number or notches in it so they knew who, which man it were that had sent that
tub of clay and then they’d weigh it, put it into a weighing book and then total it at the end
of each day what each man brought out.
(And what happened to it after it was weighed Where did it go)
Well, it was took down into brickyard at Wraggs in Loxley and that’s where they made clay
pipes and er, I forget what else they made but it was nearly all clay pipes they made – a lot
went into the steelworks I think. But it were a hard life. [Laughter]
(So how long were you in the pit)
I spent, altogether in the mines, around about 6 years, about 6 years and then I went from
there I went to work for a chap called Major Bramley at Dronfield which were back in
forestry and er well it were gardening and forestry and vermin control. And er I spent about
4 years working for that chap there and then from there I moved down to Derby to
Elvaston castle erm were down there for 5 years and same thing forestry and then I came
back from there and back up there to Fitzwilliams at Foulstone and I did keepering and
working in the forestry but I used to do a full beat every day.
(And what was that)
You know, trapping vermin and er…
(So what sort of vermin would you trap)
Foxes.
(For forestry)
No, no when I came back there were 2 keepers at Fitzwilliams, Derek Bladon and John
Warhurst. And John Warhurst was retiring but they decided they wanted to have another
keeper but also to assist by doing something else bar keeping. They were trying to cut
down like everyone else were in them days, you know, sort of keepering and having
people doing other jobs so I went back and I did a full beat, which I did Strines for a full
beat er then on, I used to assist Derek with shooting days, on shoot days, help with the
heather burning, butts, mending butts and things like that and er any spare time which
weren’t a lot really and then I used to go and work in the woods you know felling trees.
(What actually does a full beat mean)
3

It’s actually a ‘beat’ is a piece of moorland what you look after and you know you sort of
walk the boundary of it if you like and have your traps and what have you and kill the
vermin.
(Like a policeman’s beat)
Yes, that’s right its like a policeman’s beat if you want to put it that way. Erm and then they
decided a tenant on t’ moor had sheep that were retiring and they decided then that when
the tenant came off, the keeper, meself, was going to look after the sheep and then we
took the sheep on and also took farmland on, Thornseat Delph land by Thornseat Delph
and Strines, round Strines pub. And then they asked me instead of doing forestry if I’d do
farming but still assist Derek wi’ t’ shooting and help wi’ t’ sheep as well which is what I did.
(So were the sheep grazing on the moors)
The sheep were grazing the moors, yes.
(Were they on all year round)
Yes, at that time because there was no ESA then it were, they only came off for shearing
and tupping and that was it, you know.
(So would they be what you call ‘hefted’)
Yes.
(That’s something I’ve only heard in the last few weeks.)
Yes, everything altered with the ESA, when the ESA came in this business of taking sheep
off and that but there was a lot more sheep farmers ont’ moors then than what obviously
there is today. They’ve cut numbers down and they’ve cut grazing down you know. And
then from there, then in ‘80s I went to Midhope when Neil Taylor left, I followed Neil in.
(And were you the keeper)
Yes, I was the keeper in there but also we had 450 ewes as well so, erm, I had me work
cut out.
(So how does that work out because obviously the keeper’s busy time presumably is when
the birds are nesting and they are lambing at the same time, aren’t they)
Well yeah, I mean at end of day wi’ keepering you are busy all year round anyway
because I mean obviously vermin’s a 24 hour a day job, keeping vermin, the more vermin
you keep down obviously its better for your grouse and other animals and birds that live on
the uplands. So yeah it were hard. Whereas with sheep we tried to work it that, we tried to
4

fit the sheep in with the grouse shooting if you like. So we lambed out on the moor, we
didn’t bring them onto fields we lambed them out on the moor so actual contact wi’sheep
were say in June, we’d gather up in June, shear, mark all us lambs up, dip, and then put
them back ont’ moor and you wouldn’t see ‘em then ‘til end of September. September
time, bring ‘em back off take most of the new lambs off, dip ‘em again and then put them
back ont’ moor until November.
(And what happened in November)
Well, then in November we used to gather then for tupping, putting to the tups and then
we’d keep all sheep off for about 6 to 8 weeks, erm, we used to put them in Pike Low and
at that time we didn’t have a lot of in-bye land at Midhope so we’d to grab every little bit of
land we could but most of it was in-bye land on t’ moor or if you like.
(So can you explain in-bye land to me)
Well its just rough grazing ground that’s what we call in-bye same as at Pike Low at
Midhope we’d a fenced in piece there. Sugden, there was a fenced in piece er we used it,
its just grassland, rough grassland.
(So would that be between farmland and moorland)
Well, yes if you like, yes it was just land we used for tupping on and that were it. We just
tried to use it for that specific reason, you know. And then keep sheep out ont’ moor.
(So what would you do if you had a hard winter or a snowy winter say)
We used to make hay, as we progressed when ESA came into’t job we had a building put
up at Midhope and we stored hay in it and mineral blocks and things like that. Up to that
we used to just feed [them] mineral blocks unless it was really bad we never fed sheep.
But er we got that we started feeding them hay when it got really bad because they were
coming off the moor onto edges of moor putting a lot of pressure on so we started feeding
them hay then. And we grew a lot of hay then for feeding and then when ESA came in we
had a quota then as you know to take your quota of your flock off of ‘t moor which we did
do and we used to rent land to put them on and they needed feeding so…
(So did your job, obviously you’ve been involved with looking after moors as a keeper or
farming aspect of it for a number of years, did the job change in the time you were doing
it)
It changed a lot, to me it changed a lot, yes. I mean when I first started as a lad going on to
’t moors and when I left school, the type of people who used to come shooting and that, it
were more family affairs and business but it was more of a relaxed sort of a day. I mean,
yes they wanted grouse and they wanted to shoot, you know, good numbers of grouse but
it wasn’t the be all and end all of shooting because it was a social event and a business,
5

they used to talk business, presume they still do today but it was more family orientated
than what it is today.
(More of a social event)
More social and I think it were more enjoyable, you know I mean today its big business,
big money involved in it and obviously wildlife I think’s you know benefiting from what’s
happening but you know as far as it being a good day out for socialising, er, I suppose I’m
old fashioned in that respect, its not as enjoyable I don’t think because they are after the
numbers now er but that’s shooting and that’s what they want so…
(So did you go beating as a boy)
Yes, yes when I first started, I think I were about 10 years old when I first went, 10 year old
and er…
(What was it like)
It were hard really, it were hard there weren’t waterproofs like there are now. I used to
wear one of me dad’s old macs and a pair of old clogs and a flat cap. And you know, I
suppose for a lad that age at that time, it were £1.50 a day beating money, it were a lot of
money really em it were nearly equivalent I think to a farm labourer’s day wage then but
you know, for a lad, it were good money.
(And what time did you start)
It’d roughly be about 9 o’clock.
(Oh, so not an early start)
Not er, no I think it was around about half 8, 9 o’clock ‘til about 4 o’clock more or less,
similar to what it is today, yeah.
(And what would you do, meet up at a certain place)
Yes, I used to go with 2 old chaps. They called one Clifford Wingfield, he lived at
Loadbrook, he used to take me and we used to pick up a chap called Arthur Howe up, out
of Howe family, he lived up Moscar and I used to go with them and being a young lad they
used to put me, to start wi’, in between them, they were flanking so I were lucky in that
respect until I got to know ‘t moor and everything and as I got older I started beating.
(So what was flanking)
Flanking birds, erm, when drivers, drive birds across moor to shooting butts you’ve got
probably 4 to 6 men off of edge of butts lined out. Keep very still and keep their flags down
6

and try to keep sort of low so you’re not seen by grouse and then surprise grouse as
grouse come flying up if they look as though they are coming out of the edge of the guns
you jump up wi’ your flag and waving it in the air like mad and turn and it shocks, its like a
shock treatment really and it turns birds back into guns so they can shoot.
(Right, so its turning the birds round )
Turning the birds, that’s what flankers do yes, they turn them to turn them into the guns so
they can shoot them yeah.
(And the beaters)
The beaters walk across the moor waving their flags and whistling er and then join up to
the flankers when they get up to the butts but the flankers are there to turn the birds in –
try to keep ‘em from going out so ‘t guns can have a shot.
(So how many people would you have on a shoot, shooting party)
Er, well at Midhope, we’d round about well we’d got the beaters, we’d got the flankers,
we’d got the loaders and then we’d got the dog men picking up wi’t dogs so round about
35 people.
(Oh, so that’s quite a lot.)
Yes, yes.
(So the dog men you were saying, do they)
Yeah, for picking birds up, they stand behind the guns when they are shooting er, they’ll
find the spots you know, terrain’s difficult for guns to see where birds have gone, whatever,
and they’ll stand there and stand a good range back probably 150 yards, 200 yards back
and basically they look for birds that drop in t’ heather back of the guns. They try to shoot
them in front but obviously you get birds going to the back so, they shoot, the gun would
shoot a bird and it would drop far back and whatever was behind that gun there’d probably
be 4 or 5 of these people with dogs keeping an eye on where that bird was, and send the
dog to go and pick it up and then when the shoot was over they’d tell the gun we’ve got
that bird or if the gun couldn’t find the bird then you’d say to the person with the dog like
you know, I’ve a bird missing down this area and they’d go and look for it like.
(So were they local people, were they trained)
Er, yes mostly local people yes and they’d train the dogs themselves and at Midhope we’d
some really good people. I don’t know if you’ve come across him John Mackay was one,
Jim Cliffe, …can’t remember other 2, oh a lad called Duncan…really good people.
7

(And the same people would come every year)
Yes, they used to come every year, yeah, yeah and we never changed them really
because they were very good at what they did and, er…We’d one lady, Cherry. Cherry
Holmes, she were fantastic wi’ dogs she’d flat coats and she were very good with them
but, yeah, we’d a good team.
(So what about the rest of your year)
For me, when I wasn’t wi’ grouse I was wi’ sheep. The problem was for me at Midhope we
increased sheep. When I went there it was 400 and we finished up with round about 5 and
a half hundred ewes. We took quite a , with being in ESA, the chap I worked for Mr
Clugston, he bought quite a bit of land for making hay on and grazing so that had to be
maintained and unfortunately I’d just somebody part time with me, just one man part time
so I had to, you know, run grouse, moor and sheep as well and obviously as I got older it
just got a bit too much.
(So what did you have to do to keep the moor in a right state for sheep and grouse – burn
heather, cut bracken)
Well we did, I can remember when ESA started and they wanted bracken control. I can go
back to the 1960s, the Fitzwilliams, we were controlling it then. We’d a machine like a
swipe like a big hover mower, very big one and we used to control the bracken then. I think
the Fitzwilliams were the first then to start with bracken mowing and also they
experimented with heather seed and they had 2 pieces fenced off on Strines Road where
they experimented with heather seed and also they mowed heather and baled it in bales
and put it out in blocks ont’ moor for ‘t winter to try and feed grouse with it when it were
really bad winters.
(Did that work)
Er, not to ‘t extent… No. because a lot of winters you wouldn’t use it, so ‘t heather was
wasted but there were odd occasions where they did. They did put it out but er I don’t think
it were a big success no, but it was tried back in the ‘60s. You see when ESA came along
with bracken spraying and regeneration of heather, like. But going back to what you asked
me, yes, you’ve got to get the right balance, er you know when we broached sheep were
out on the moor we had to be careful with breeding and some parts of the [] to cut any
young females off to keep it at low numbers, so they wouldn’t increase so we’d grazing to
see to and I’d like to think we did our fair share of heather burning at Midhope and erm…
(And how would you go about that Did you have a team of people)
Yes, I mean when I first started we’d no motorbikes or Agercats or anything we used to
carry everything, us fire beaters, paraffin lamp, and a shovel [laughter] in case we got any
piece on fire and that’s only…we’d have to walk everywhere over moor and then we
8

progressed. We got a 4-wheeled drive motorbike, we got an agercat er you know we used
to carry all our equipment and we used to move about more quiet. I used to have two
teams burning, set one team off burning on Pike Low and then I’d go across to Sugden, so
you could move a lot faster and get more burning done.
(Because Midhope’s got some concrete tracks, hasn’t it)
It’s got some good roads on it but it can be a very bad moor to burn. There’s parts on it, as
you know, where I don’t know if you know during the war when it got burnt out a lot of Peat
Haggs got took up, same as Pike Low, were a bad place.
(Right, so where it got bombed)
No, I think it was, from what I’ve been told it was started off by er, there was Americans
based at Midhope during the war and one of the old ladies that lived in Midhope, Mrs
Kaye, she told me that , there were Americans based there and it was a flare that set it off.
(Right , of course they had tank training.)
That’s right and of course it set all Pike Low on fire and it were burning for weeks upon
weeks and on Pike Low especially where its all stony it took all the peat out. So therefore
you’ve got edges of peat up on Pike Low and that so and yes it were a bit difficult places to
burn.
(Would you decide how big an area would you burn at one time)
Well anything from sort of say, depending, well anything from 50metres by 25 metres up to
25metres by 400 metres [laughter] up to that extent depending where it were but on a
normal burn 25 metres up to 100/150 metres.
(And how would you contain it)
First of all you get the direction of your wind and where you were burning and what where
you burn to and try to make sure you’ve got a reasonable place to where you were going
to burn to. 2 teams of men, light a fire 20 metres wide because obviously when you light it,
it gets wider anyway. Have 2 teams of men on, one behind the other, flapping wi’ flappers
and knocking the flames out and keep up with the fire if its burning fierce, try to keep up
with the front of it to try and keep it at a reasonable width. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always
work like that but that’s what you try to do and work on a rotation on each area. From Pike
Low to Sugden to parts of Cut Gate you know, Barnside and work an area.
(So, where you ever involved in any wildfires, non-controlled)
Do you mean, I once had one at Midhope and we’d been burning one year and we’d been
burning on year and it did get away next morning it had stopped in overnight and it was
9

getting to the time of year, it was coming up to March, it were ‘t America and we’d been
burning and I’d decided we’d done enough it were getting a bit dry and anyway we left it
and we thought everything was alright and next morning I was up on top of Sugden and I
looked across to America and I could see puff of smoke coming out of ground so I dashed
round there and got up there and where the smoke was coming out of the ground it was
under a rock and there was a peat hole and at the bottom of the peat hole I could see the
fire glowing and wind were blowing and it were blowing down this peat hole at back of this
rock and heating peat up and so I thought “right, we’ll get back home, get some spades,
get back up here” and I left it. And by time I’d got off top of America, down to bottom of
bridge where you come off America it were following me, the fire, and it took all that piece
out and it, the terrible thing about that was it went for a week that and it was continuous
burning same bit of ground over and over again. And what it was, there was that much
bracken litter, it was about anything up to 18inches deep, bracken litter on it and very
rocky underneath all this bracken litter because at that time, I think it was just when we
started, just before we started with ESA with spraying so we weren’t doing that much with
bracken at that time and it was a massive area and it burnt, yes. And we’d five fire engines
there.
(Wow!)
Yes and it burnt for a week and it used to burn out and it used to run down to edge of trees
on Langsett dam and died out and then next morning, you see, what it was, it was in like
all peat holes in the top, loads of peat holes so the fire was underground but when the
wind kept whipping up everyday it were blowing it to ‘t top of the bracken litter and just run
down the moor everyday.
(What a nightmare.)
And it went on from Monday to Friday night and on the Friday night, fire brigade were still
up there and thank God it snowed! [Laughs] Next morning it was sleeting. I’ve never been
as happy, never been as happy, er, and it sleeted and after that obviously it put fire out
and put peat out after. ‘Cause we’d about a week of it yes, but we’d five full days.
(So, where did they get the water from, the Fire Brigade)
They pumped it from out of the dam and reason they had five fire engines there is that
they were trying to get the water in to the top of the moor but it was such a big rise from ‘t
neck of the dam to where the fire was starting, they had to get the hoses underground.
They had to pump it from one fire engine to the other and pump it up that way.
(That’s quite a job.)
Mmm and that’s how they had to pump it because they couldn’t do it any other way.
(At least nature sorted it for you in the end, I suppose.)
10

Yes, and the other one I’ve been on was Fitzwilliams, Dukes Road, you know Dukes Road
that runs between Fitzwilliams and Broomhead, all that went up. Erm, and that were in, I
just can’t tell you dates properly, but let me think, that were round about 1980, wait a
minute, about 1980, I think.
(And what about the other one)
The one at Midhope that’d be er about same, well I’d not been moved very long, yes, I
think it must have been about ’82, I’ll have to check on that but it was after because
obviously I was working at Fitzwilliams when this big one went up. There were 2 bombs
went off in that, because up Duke’s Road there’a lot of bombs from ’t war, because they
used to use it in’t blitz during ‘t war as, like Sheffield, with all lighting systems and that so
Germans‘d drop their bombs on there.
(Oh, like a dummy)
Yeah, ‘Cos I don’t know if you know but up on Strines Moor there’s a shed, a stone shed,
out in’t moor, that used to be the battery house where they kept the batteries for lighting it
all up, I don’t know if you knew that
(So, were they electric lights or…)
Yes, what they did, what they did, they used to call it the battery house, they had all these
big batteries and then what they did, they simulated Sheffield. Put lights everywhere as
though it were the city and then when‘t Germans came along they dropped their bombs on
there instead of the city and that moor was absolutely plastered in live bombs from the
war. Up to John Warhurst retiring, they used to have one day a year or one week a year
where they used to go up and collect all these live bombs up and they used to put them in
heaps. [laughs]
(Oh heck! [laughter])
Used to put ‘em in heaps, yes!
(Just leave them)
Yes, well they used to do it and then local policemen would come and deal with it and
army whatever and they used to, but they stopped doing that some time ago.
(You’d got to be pretty brave to go and dig up a live bomb!)
But I mean that fire at Fitzwilliams all the keepers from the area came, you know Roger
France and everybody come to help wi’ that, that were a big fire that, yes.
11

(And what set that one off)
It got out of control, really.
(It was a controlled burn)
Yes, that was controlled burning but what we had was two fires going at the same time
and ‘erm one o’t teams had to go home and it finished up there were only a small team left
of us to cover these two fires and they joined into one and it made one big fire and that
went right down Dukes Road that, from Back Tor rocks right down to the road nearly.
(Wow, and how long did that go on for)
That, we were lucky really, that one’s same, that rained and that but we’d about 4 days on
that, big team. There were 2 bombs actually did go off in that.
(Was anybody injured)
No, nobody was injured, we were lucky it was one morning that happened, it were on a
Sunday. We were going back to the fire and there were 2 exploded and somebody, I don’t
know who it was, somebody rang bomb disposal and they came and asked if, er, if they,
erm, if they could come on moor and…
[Tape stops]
(So you were saying about the bracken, you had a mower did you say)
Yes, er they called it a swipe, basically it was made of ¼ inch steel, thick plating, power
take-off shaft off a tractor and then a 4 foot blade underneath or chains, they put chains or
a blade and literally it cuts everything in its way. It start off there in Sweden, I think it was
used to cut birch forests down up to 3 inches thick, you know but Fitzwilliams had one of
them you know and we used to use it for cutting bracken beds because the idea was you
went into a bracken bed, it was really strong, bracken, you’d cut it one year, go back the
following year and cut it, and it weakened it so after about 3 years or 4 years it got that
weak that the grass and everything used to take over and choke bracken and you’d get
grasses and things like that and bilberry and that come back.
(And did it work)
It did, it did work but you’d got to be consistent with it and you know, it was a slow process
obviously doing it like that but it did actually work, yeah. But I mean, when I was at
Midhope even though we used helicopter to spray, we did buy a swipe. We bought a
Foster swipe and that were about 4 or 6 feet it were a big one, 4-wheeled drive tractor we
bought and I used to use it for cutting heather, really long heather because when you’re
burning heather, obviously, you get really old heather which is 30 years old, 40 years old
12

and its thick, when you burn it, it doesn’t burn clean obviously at that thickness and I mean
this is the point about burning, if you start burning stalks like that its too dangerous to burn.
That’s when you get a lot of moor fires because the [hold] on and try to burn it and it’s
too dry. So, idea was, I said to my boss, John Clugston about getting this swipe, that a lot
of these bad places where there were long heather and that, we could… lets give it a try
and we did do and it worked, slow, a very slow job but in a bad season when its wet and
you can’t get you quota in burning, then at least you are doing something, you know and
we used to use it and if we got a good season in burning, then I didn’t use it that much but
if it was a bad season or if it were a wet month through winter then yeah, do it and it used
to cut it right down to’t ground and ‘erm and within 2 years you’d heather growing back and
bilberry. But it was a slow process.
(And did you do anything with the stuff you’d cut)
No, because it used to break it up that fine. It used to smash it completely like a lawn
mower does with grass. You just left it on top you know and it just blended in to ground so
it weren’t heavy stuff that were laid about you know, like you cut hay, and swaffs in the
fields, it weren’t like that you know I think in some places they used to have, er in fact at
Fitzwilliams when I think about it, they used to have er, used to have er, they used to have
one with a shoot on it and throw it into rows and that’s when they used to bale it then. They
got one of the local farmers to come and baled it, baled heather for feeding to grouse.
(And what about the bracken, was there any use for bracken anywhere)
No, because when, they used to use bracken, I can remember as a boy cutting bracken for
bedding cows down.
(Yes, I’ve heard of that.)
Yes, I can remember as a boy er Mosley’s at Beacon [Rod], just above Loadbrook, they
used to go on edge of moor and scythe it and use it as bedding.
(Must have been hard work.)
Yes, but otherwise it weren’t used for anything really, you know.
(And did you, you said as a boy you remembered using the moor for bedding and that kind
of thing, did people use them for anything else Collecting bilberries, peat cutting)
Not as such peat cutting, I think you’d go more up north for people burning peat. It’s a
different type of peat, more blocky up north than what this peat is. But not really, the only
time you ever saw, in them days they used to do more draining over the moors that what
there is, obviously there used to be a lot of draining done, to drain it…
(So what did they do)
13

Pick and shovels, cut drainage down off the hillside er yeah, you know, if they built a row
of butts it were on a boggy piece then they’d dig open drains to it and try and dry it off, but
otherwise, apart from just normal people picking bilberries, er you know, that were it,
really.
(Erm and back to the forestry that you said you did, was that managed commercial
forestry)
Ooh yes, it was a big way at that time with Fitzwilliams, the head forester was Godfrey
Broadhead, he was the head forester at Fitzwilliams. The forester at Bradfield, that ran the
Bradfield team, was Alwyn Dearden and Alwyn he like sort of run,… foreman, if you like,
and team and everybody up there and it were managed and …contractors in, Job
Earnshaw’s was one of them and a firm from up North Yorkshire used to come in and fetch
timber, yes it was in a big way.
(So what kind of land were they planting Were they planting trees)
Yes they were, yes, when I were there they did. All what they are taking down now at
Fitzwilliams now was what was planted when I was a lad.
(Right.)
Yes, you know what they are doing at Fitzwilliams. Yes, it was all planted up as I was a lad
that, erm with Scotch Pine, Spruce and things like that erm and most of the timber in them
days went for pit props. Because obviously collieries and everything you know were
happening in a big way so nearly all the contract work and what have you in them days,
not like today where it goes for fencing and pulp and them things it was all for pit work.
And it was a very, very busy place.
(So what did you need to do with the forest, did you have to…was it looking after the trees
or was it just general management or…)
Yes, there all the plantings at Bradfield were named and they’d all got plaques on with
dates when they were planted and then you’d if… in those days you’d plant at 3 foot 6
inches when they planted a piece up because back in those days they’d use rustic, which
is thin timber, for making furniture, rustic furniture, stakes and everything really so they
used to plant at 3 foot, 3 foot 6 inches.
(Do you mean 3 foot 6 apart)
Yes, every 3 foot 6 there’d be a tree whereas today they plant anything up to 8 foot apart
because as I say in those days they planted at 3 foot 6 inches. As the trees got to about 18
years old then they’d go in and what they’d call ‘brash up’ which is taking the branches off
and with them being so close together the trees, they could knock them off with a billhook
14

without having to saw them or anything ‘cause they’re only thin branches and while they
were doing that they’d take the odd tree out as a thinning so at 3 foot 6 inches they might
take every other one out to make it down to six feet, just over six feet and then they’d the
timber they took out would go for round fencing er making rustic furniture and stuff like
that. And then they might go another 10 years and take another few trees out er you know
and they’d thin it down over the years until it came to a standing crop of timber and then
they’d clear fell them.
(And they were big trees)
Yes, and that’s when they get up to big trees so you’re talking round about, on soft wood
you’re talking round about 80 to 100 years for ‘t main crop to come down.
(And were did it go, the timber)
Most of the timber, as I say, went to, the main contractor I knew that used to take it was
Job Earnshaw at Huddersfield, Wakefield.
(Did it go by road)
Yes, it went by road, it went by timber drug, what they call a timber drug. They put big
trees, full trees on to a lorry.
(Like a low loader type)
Yes, that’s right. I mean I can remember at that time, Fitzwilliams had got their own two
saw mills going at Wentworth erm most of timber then went to Wentworth and they used to
make all their own fencing and gates because they’d got their own joiners’ shops and
everything for all the tenants so they made all their own fencing, all their own gates, their
own stiles, everything and I can remember them coming up with timber drugs with tractors
from Wentworth and we used to load timber on with what they called 3-legs. Which is
three, say, 30-foot poles, like telegraph poles in a cross. You’d put two together and then
one at a diagonal off it and they were tied with bolts at the top and then they’d have a
pulley on it with a chain and a rope er and they used to lift the timber up, back the trailer
under, put it on the trailer, move trailer out, get next tree…
(Wow.)
That’s how they used to load he timber drugs up then. That was before they got these
loaders with grabs and anything like that. They used to use 3-legs.
(It was quite a big job then)
Oh yeah, yes, it were a big operation yes. They used to come up from Wentworth with two
timber drugs first thing in the morning and wherever timber was we’d take 3-legs. 3-legs
15

would be set up. They’d come and timber ‘d be there and they’d have one little tractor
pulling say a couple of trees in, put the chain round them or rope, pull them in the air, the
low loader would come underneath to it, then move out of the way. That’s how it used to
be done.
(And how many men would it take to do that sort of operation)
There’d be, from Wentworth, two tractor drivers with two helpers and then there’d be
probably two or three men that’s based up at Bradfield you know, loading timber, helping
to load timber.
(So how did you fell the trees Was it done by hand)
When I first started, yes, in fact I’ve still got my axe what Godfrey Broadhead bought me
when I was 15 years old and it’s a pruning axe because they’d got big ideas for me when I
was 15, going to college and being a head forester. We used to fell trees them days, there
used to be two chaps wi’ axes, they used to take front of tree out on ‘t angle it was going to
fall where they were going to fell‘t tree, there’d be two guys doing that, taking a wedge out
and then two guys on a cross-cut would follow them around and fell trees and then there’d
be two guys, same as me, pruning them up. That were me first job, er, before I was
allowed to take a front out of a tree for ‘em to fell it you know. And yes, we used cross-cuts
and axes and I’ve still got me axe in the garage now. It’s a 4-pounder, a 4-pounder axe, it’s
like a razor blade.
(Obviously good quality.)
Yes, proper thing for pruning, yeah, yeah
(Did you have any health and safety gear, boots or…)
[Laughing] It weren’t invented then. Health and safety, my goodness! No there was nothing
like that no, no health and safety.
(Because it sounds quite dangerous to me.)
Erm, I suppose it does sound dangerous but it was just a way of life, you know all this
health and safety business weren’t same you know it was like when I told you about
working in the mines. I mean in a coal mine they’ve got to go to college to learn how to use
explosives and I had one day’s training down in clay mine and I was classed as a shotfirer,
firing gelignite every day. There were three young lads, three of us and ‘erm they
picked us out and said “Right, you’ve got to start firing”, what they called “firing shots” and
er that had one day’s training and in a coal mine they’d go berserk, you know that’s that’s
the way it were in clay…Health and safety, it was dreadful you know. It was same with
farming or anything, you know, you just had to be careful with what you were doing, I
suppose. Yes [laughing].
16

(So, obviously you’ve been quite involved with the moorlands and the land around it
through all your life it sounds like, have they changed at all in the time you’ve known
them)
The moors, yes it has changed, for a start like I said with the shooting from that point of
view, you know it used to be a really social event. I suppose it still is a social event but a
different type. Nearly everybody come out of the villages, came to do the beating and that,
whatever and then it got from that stage to going all haywire, as I put it, you know, they
started getting young lads from towns, certain villages, from towns coming out doing ‘t
beating for them and what have you. And yeah moors changed because in them days you
didn’t see hikers I suppose like you do today, you’d see ‘odd hiker er and it were a lot
quieter. And you know I can remember when we lived at Loadbrook, my mum and dad
never locked door unless they went away for a week’s holiday and then they used to lock it
but they never, ever locked and when I first went to Midhope it was very rare you locked ‘t
door, people who lived in village just used to walk in your house, you know it was accepted
like that. Today, you can’t do things like that; it’s a different, it a different ball game on
moors today. I know with all this restoration, you know, what’s going on some of it I agree
with, and others I don’t, same as everybody, you know.
(Do you think the wildlife changed in the time, you knew it Was there anything new that
appeared or disappeared)
No, I can always remember when ‘t goshawks first came back, 1955 and they were
introduced in Bradfield, yeah 1955 I think it were, Scandinavian goshawks, they brought
them from Scandinavia.
(They’re quite a sight, aren’t they)
Yes, quite a size and to be honest they do do a lot of damage, there’s no ifs and buts
about birds of prey, they do take grouse there’s no question about that. I’ve seen it first
hand, you know. And ‘t trouble is you can get the balance is not right and you know when
you’d got a moor down you know in ‘80s and that when we’d all that disease and ‘90s were
shocking. You know, you’ve only got a handful of grouse and all these birds of prey. Don’t
get me wrong I think they are a fantastic bird and that but I’ll tell you summat, when you’re
a keeper and you see them coming and taking what few grouse there is, its very, very
hard. You know but only thing I can say is, if it weren’t for gamekeepers managing moors
as they do and that there wouldn’t be, wouldn’t be a quarter of the wildlife that there is.
You know, songbirds and things like that, it just wouldn’t be there. You know so in that
respect, I think it’s a good thing. I don’t think it’s acknowledged as it should be for what
gamekeepers do. I know they get the shooting and the grouse but they want to think they
are producing grouse; in them doing that there’s lots of things benefit by it and I think that’s
what people, especially the public don’t get to hear or see. They only hear one side of it as
far as I’m concerned. You know, and I don’t think such as RSPB, and I don’t think they do
enough to stand up and say “yeah! Moorland management is a really good thing”. They
17

will do behind closed doors but they’ll not come out openly in public and say it. I think they
are wrong, I think they should do, you know.
(I think because gamekeepers spend a lot of time on the hills and on their own, they don’t
necessarily talk to people.)
That’s right.
(You don’t get that.)
If a keeper knows his job, I don’t care who they are, they can have any organisation they
want come, I mean, I mean if you know your job and you’ve been brought up in
countryside and that, they can learn a lot from, from keepers and farmers and what have
you because it’s a way of life and they know what’s what you know and its just a pity that it
can’t be shared more and for public to know more and understand it more because I think
if they did it’d be far better place, er, than people just thinking that they can do what they
want you know and it doesn’t work like that.
(No.)
I think there’s room for everybody, room for everybody and that’s what its there for and I
think in this day and age you’ve got to accept that, but also I think if there’s a problem,
whether its RSPB or whoever it is, I think if there’s a problem it’s got to be solved but I
think that’s where let down is because, er, they never would accept anything like that, you
know. I think that problem would stop with this situation as it is forever. It won’t ever alter,
that, which is a pity, I think. I think they should tell more of the people, tell the public more
just exactly what keepers and farmers do.
(Well, hopefully this project will do a bit of that, show some of those voices.)
I hope so, I hope so because, er, I do go to to‘t RSPB because I do a lot of photography
now, that’s what I spend my time doing now I’ve finished and I do talk to people, and I’ve
met people and explained to them. I’ve been to Midhope with them, in fact I’ve been with
some these last few weeks up to Midhope and that and I’ve explained about vermin and
what have you and they’ve had it explained and they realise there’s a problem with vermin
and its best to be controlled. And I just think it’s a pity that more of it can’t be done same
as in schools and things like that, why they can’t see, let an ex-keeper, let them go into
schools, I mean RSPB do it and other organisations, they go into schools. Let them go into
schools, take slides and pictures, slide show whatever and explain to them and I think it
would be better as they grow up they’d know exactly what things are…
(…And what people do.)
Yeah. I hope one day that happens.
18

(That’s brilliant, thank you.)
19

Clarion Group: Interviewed by Tegwen Roberts
Longshaw Estate
Track One
[General discussion]
1 st Voice: We started coming here when Harry Cook died. Harry Cook used to come here
regularly and he loved it.
Colin Todd: You helped to scatter his ashes.
1 st Voice: Mmm, yeah.
Colin Todd: And I did.
1 st Voice: And when he died I thought we ought to do something.
Colin Todd: There were a lot of writings as well.
(So can you tell us who you are)
3 rd Voice: Say who you are.
1 st Voice: [inaudible]
2 nd Voice: Both of ‘em, Brenda and…
3 rd Voice: He’s Vincent and she’s Brenda [inaudible]. We didn’t come in till about 1980.
2 nd Voice: [inaudible]
1

1 st Voice: Graham Blacksmith. I started; I got me name down in the books in 1945 when I
first started. [laughing]
([laughing] Wow.)
Colin: You’ll remember ‘t big snow then
Graham: Mmm
Colin: I were working at Bakewell all through that.
(Sorry, can you say who you are)
Colin: Colin
(Can you just go round and just say sort of everybody’s name, so, can you tell us who you are
and how long you have been coming to Longshaw)
Colin: Oh now then, I had a break in between, came in the early days for me was about
1949, 1950.
2 nd Voice: That was with the Clarion.
Colin: That was with the Clarion.
1st Voice: Not wardening.
Colin: No but I did come with a working party spasmodically but not every time.
3 rd Voice: And that’s Colin Todd, we haven’t said who he is yet. [laughing]
2 nd Voice: You didn’t say your name.
2

Colin Todd: Oh, Colin Todd.
Bob Priestley: And you’ve been working spasmodically ever since.
[general laughter]
George Thomas: Are you suddenly looking at me now I’m just George Thomas, one o’ the
old codgers. Go on Bob, you’re next. [laughing]
Bob Priestly: Is that all you’re saying
: When did you start coming here
George Thomas: Well it’s probably when the children were young, we couldn’t go out on a
ramble, so when the kids were little we used to bring ‘em.
Bob Priestly: In sixties.
George Thomas: oh yeah, early sixties.
Bob Priestly: And I’m Bob Priestley and I joined the Clarion in ’57, which was the year that
Ward died, I joined in September and he died in October I think. And I’ve been coming,
volunteering, since our children were small in the early sixties.
: And he comes every month.
Bob Priestly: Really, since then.
: Mid sixties, weren’t it
Bob Priestly: Yes, in the early sixties we were so well appreciated by the National Trust that
we were allowed to have our bonfires here on the Estate.
3

: We had some super bonfires.
Bob Priestly: For our children.
: And Joe.
Bob Priestly: Until our children grew out of bonfires.
(Was that an annual thing, like an annual bonfire)
Bob Priestly: What the bonfires Oh yes, the Clarion bonfire yes, yes.
(Was that on bonfire night)
: It was near enough.
Bob Priestly: As possible because the Clarion walks were on Sundays and it would be the
nearest Sunday. And me wife and I, Jenny, have been coming ever since the mid sixties.
Jenny: Needless to say the children aren’t, they’re grown up.
: I was here in ’45 up till when I’m fifty. But when they opened the, got the access on Kinder,
the younger members of the Clarion, twenty [inaudible] they did their walking on there so they
didn’t come to Longshaw at that time.
(Right, so nobody came to Longshaw or…)
: Well we used to get quite; we used to get parties of twenty but the younger ones, round
about teenagers and twenties used to go onto the Kinder Scout. And then they got bigger and
were at the Kinder and Alport and that area until. Then when we started with the families we
came back here again. They finished with the voluntary warden; they started getting part time
paid wardens. They call ‘em rangers now but we didn’t bother then.
4

: Those were Peak Park people.
: They were the Peak Park that organised that
: National Parks.
: So we wouldn’t come between, we was there, but Clarion had been coming right from the
start.
: Used to do a revellers’ ramble didn’t they Was it about twenty two [inaudible]
: 1927 wasn’t it when it…
:’27
: When it was transferred.
: 1927 that a few days ago.
[laughing]
(So what did you do in the early days, or what)
: What I remember then we did a lot of, it was patrolling and we used to collect litter more or
less. We’d just patroll and collect litter and see that they were – cos there were quite a lot of,
people used to light fires and there’d be a lot of fires and people, we used to just patrol and
we used to come up and I think first bus was about half past nine from Sheffield but we was
here after tea going back about seven o’ clock at night.
(Right, how did you get out here)
: By bus, public transport.
5

: I remember working wi’ you mending ‘t paths.
: But in ’47, ’48 down by Yarncliffe Quarry the Derbyshire Council were complaining that
water was running down the road and freezing in winter and they said the stream that comes
down and goes under the road there was the cause of it cos it used to come down and it used
to drop down a big hole and go under, it was under must have been a quarry where the
quarry all the old stone from the quarry was tipped across on top of the river. And so in ’47 a
party from the Clarion we came and dug out the channel wi’ crowbars [laughing] and picks
and crowbars and cos there were some big, you know, imagine some of the stone that was
left there. Cos there used to be a hut in the quarry and we used to have a primus stove. Me
dad used to have a primus stove and he used to use that and make tea and we used to be
down there all day.
(So how long did it take you to dig it out)
: Can’t remember exactly. [laughing] It’s a long time since. [laughing] Yeah I remember
coming [inaudible]
(So you said you brought your children, did they just used to, did they used to help or did they
just used to sort of play around and … while you …)
: Used to play around.
: Well they used to do some bits and [inaudible].
: Did a bit.
: They used to do sawing.
: One thing is they would help then collecting.
: They used to do sewing and things like that didn’t they
6

: Mine used to; Mark weren’t one for playing around was he
: Mmm
: Mark weren’t one for playing around.
: Why
: He’s always been a worker.
: In the early days you collected donations didn’t you
: Well that was the early days, that was not, not me, I weren’t there then. The early days it
was, they used to collect donations to pay back the loan. I believe they got a loan.
(So that was when they bought the estate)
: When they bought the estate.
[Tape stops – Track 2]
: Our duties would be different from most of the National Trust properties because there are
no internal duties. The house has been converted into a farm so there’s no room stewards.
It’s all outdoor work that we do. Mainly clearing up brash and trees that the permanent
wardens have felled during the week. We collect up the branches and most times have a fire
and burn them. But today we’re working on rhododendrons, that’s another of the jobs,
reducing the rhododendrons.
[End of track]
(Right.)
: I’m not sure but I think they had to
7

: [inaudible]
: And they used to go round collecting for different things.
General: Hello.
[Inaudible]
: In the early days the warden, the volunteers used to cut trees down.
(Right)
: Trees, yeah.
: Trees [inaudible]
: Ah yeah, but, yeah.
(Were there no permanent staff)
: Health and futilities.
: Originally there was enough volunteer, there was a Longshaw Warden Management
Committee, they was all volunteers. And we had, on at the end; I think [inaudible] may just
have been Lady Arnott [ph].
[All talking at once]
: When I first come [inaudible] And then from there was Charlie Hill. And then from Charlie
Hill his son took it over Bernard Hill.
: And when did Bernard retire, about twelve years since was it
8

: 2000, he was sixty five.
[All talking at once]
(So have any of the …)
: [inaudible] Forester used to issue all the work.
(So in the early days, and has that changed much)
[track 3]
: Well, as I said, the working party there used to be about eighteen or twenty people.
(And you’d get that, is it once a month you used to come)
: That was once a month, back through the fifties and sixties, yeah.
(And do you get that many now or was this …)
: No [inaudible]
(Right, did you ever work with other groups, you know, did people come up the same time as
you or was it always just …)
: We’ve always worked; we’ve always been, always on the fourth Sunday of each month.
Except December we don’t come at Christmas. [laughing]
: There have been special occasions like when you were working down in …
: They’ve had special weekends when all the groups have been here.
: I can only remember that happening once.
9

: I think it were twice we had that.
: But we’ve always known of the other groups from the book that we had to sign in.
: But in the early days there was …
: The Mudlarks and Park Gate.
: There were Park Gate. The Mudlarks came after – there was Park Gate, in the early days
there was somebody up nearly every week. There were the scouts groups and the chap that
we saw today he was from the Co-op Youth Club.
(And they used to come from)
: And they used to come about twice a year I think from Sheffield I think.
(Right. So were most of the groups from Sheffield)
: Yeah I think the main management committee were in Sheffield.
(And are the Clarion all from Sheffield)
: Yes
: Oh Yes
: And founded in 1900 by GHB Ward. [laughing]
[End of track]
(So do you do walks as well as the working groups)
10

: Well yeah there used to be, did a walk every week.
: [inaudible]
: But there was still a walk on that day but there were certain few, about twenty [inaudible]
about twenty used to come up here and they didn’t go walks but there was still a walk on that
day that they used to go on.
(Right so for the one week [inaudible])
: One day a month.
: You have got a Clarion book have you
(Yes, yeah, I’ve seen the handbooks, they’re amazing, they’re amazing.)
: You ought to see the old ones, have you seen those
(Well, I’ve seen, I think I’ve got them back to about 1950 but I haven’t seen much earlier
ones.)
: I’ve been to the Sheffield Library and I’ve been through them all, mainly looking in the
index for anything to do with Longshaw and so on, so I’ve got photographs of most, you know,
most of the relevant bits. It’s just [inaudible]
[Track 4]
(Has Longshaw changed in the time that you’ve been coming, has the estate changed I
mean obviously there’s a lot of trees have grown up on one side of it haven’t they, sort of
silver birch and has anything else changed about it)
: Yeah, well there wouldn’t be a visitor centre
: No, this place, there was a Holiday Fellowship holiday home.
11

: This was.
: And they ran a café in there; the Holiday Fellowship ran a café in there.
: They ran a café but on a Sunday it was closed from twelve till one.
[general laughter]
(That’s not much use.)
: Cos the staff used to serve the … cos the main holiday makers didn’t do a walk on a
Sunday and they had a lunch in on a Sunday and the staff used to serve them. So on a
Sunday they used to close from twelve till one [laughing] Cos I know we used to come, when
the club would come but we had to be there before twelve to get anything. [laughing]
: Did you ever have tea at Greenwood Farm They used to do teas there.
: Well there was, as I was saying, they catered for six wardens and on Sunday tea time
there was six teas supplied, free teas, there was two down at Greenwood Farm and four from
the Holiday Fellowship.
: Can you remember when that stopped happening
: No [inaudible]
: Well from the early sixties.
: Well it would be probably when the HF went.
: When the HF packed it in.
: Packed it in.
12

: But I know that the people that used to go down to Greenwood they used to get eggs, they
used to get boiled eggs and that for their tea. But here they only got bread and jam.
[general laughter]
: After a hard day’s work.
: They were patrolling at that time remember. But in the fifties and sixties I think it was
largely working parties, different working parties.
( So did you put the paths in sort of around the estate, was that done by working parties)
: That’s another way that it’s changed because in the early days there wasn’t such a thing as
user friendly. The paths were just as you found them. There was none of these paths for
wheelchairs and that sort of thing.
[End of track]
[all talking at once]
[Track 5]
: I don’t think Longshaw’s been bad for litter. I do think most people have respected it.
: It’s much better than it used to be.
: Oh well, that’s one of our jobs, litter picking. If we want a light job some time.
: I always remember way back, came down with a working party and there was a group of
just at [Hinshaw’s Mouth] on the area just below Toad’s Mouth and there were a group of
people there, youngsters and quite a, some youth group, and came by and had tea, and we
said “Oh we’d better go back and see if there’s any litter” But we got down there and they’d
cleared everything up.
13

(Oh great, that’s really good.)
: Not very often you find that is it
(So what other stuff, you said you did warden duties, did you have to tell people about the by
laws and that sort of thing)
: Yes, [inaudible] keep people off.
: You were looking for people having fires and camping.
: Camping
: Fires and Camping yes.
: Things that were …
(And did you have much of a problem with people sort of camping, trying to camp over and
…)
: We didn’t have a lot of problems no.
: No.
(And what about the lake, have you done much work on the lake)
: We haven’t but it has been … cos the chap that were talking today was telling us the Park
Gate used to come, they used to come up every month. There was the Sheffield Clarion
came up fourth and Park Gate Rambling Club they came up on the first Sunday in each
month. And they’ve got – there is a photo somewhere with them on the lake in a dinghy when
they were cleaning it.
(Right, wow.)
14

: Somebody’s got, somebody from the – and the Trust have got a photo, I think the trust
have got a photo of that.
: I remember on one occasion
: Well people used go swimming in the lake didn’t they
: Pardon
: [inaudible]
: [laughing] They used to camp at, Father in Law, they used camp in Hathersage and then
walk back up, after Sunday, they walked back over to Fulwood to catch the… and they’d
come up here and have a swim in lake [laughing].
(What sort of date would that have been, when would that have been)
: That’d be in the thirties.
(Right, and so it wasn’t prohibited to swim in the lake, you were allowed)
: No.
: Well, I don’t know whether it was cos it was evening when they were, you know, [laughing]
: I remember on one occasion seeing them skating on the lake.
(Do you)
: But I only saw ‘em once.
15

: Oh that were regular at one time. That were regular at one time, in the forties, it used to
freeze over and there used to be skating on it.
(Right. So was that an official thing or did they kind of officially open it up as a skating rink)
: No just people used to come and skate. There was nothing organised at all.
[End of track]
[Track 6]
(So what was it like, you said you were here in ’45, were you also here in ’47 for the really
deep winter)
: [laughing] Can’t remember that much.
([laughing] Right. Did you get people sort of skiing and that kind of stuff round here, you know,
cos it’s quite a hill.)
: No, they didn’t know what skiing was in those days. Skiing was something they did in
Switzerland.
[laughing]
: We didn’t get nothing, no.
: Skiing was for the really well off then.
: Well you didn’t get skiing in this country until people started going abroad.
: Yeah.
: You didn’t get a lot of skiing at Skegness did you
[laughing]
16

: In that winter of 1947 you wouldn’t have been able to easily get out here [inaudible]
Longshaw.
: No they wouldn’t have been a bus. The [inaudible] bus was running though.
: In fact there were some got snowed in at Surprise View weren’t there A couple of buses
got bogged down in Surprise View.
: But it doesn’t relate to Longshaw, doesn’t relate to Longshaw, but I remember me dad, the
club, they were round, they came back down to end of the Derwent Road, Shipton Viaduct
there and – this was in ’47 – they thought there was a bus coming so they set off walking
across the viaduct and the bus came down from Derwent and [inaudible] and he said “Oh
jump on” while he was still going “jump on, jump on”. But this was ten to seven at night, seven
o’ clock at night, cos it was ten to seven. So they says “You’re on time aren’t you” and he
says “On time We’re ten to three from Derwent!”
[general laughing]
[End of track]
[Track 7]
(So how many buses a day were there came out this way, was it quite a regular service from
Sheffield)
: It was quite regular.
: Well, here they used to queue, you know the road that goes on the top here
(Yeah.)
: The buses were stood, double decker buses, used to stand on there.
(Right.)
17

: Queuing, yeah.
: They would queue on there and then where the bus stop was used to go down right round
the car park and onto one of the Sheffield roads towards Sheffield. That was a queue.
(Wow.)
: And so in summer the buses they used to be queuing up there to bring, but then they used
to bring single, could only get single deckers through to Castleton and Bakewell so what they
used to do was they used to run single deckers between Castleton and Fox House and then
load the double deckers up from people – and then finish off with the people in the queue to
take them to Sheffield in the double deckers. Cos I always remember when we were walking
up the road we thought ‘It’s a big queue like that’ we thought ‘Oh we’ll walk across to Fulwood
and not bother waiting for bus’ So we got to the bus stop, he’s saying “Six standing, come on,
six standing, six standing” and nobody wanted it cos there was another bus then at front of
queue there was a bus there. So we jumped ont’ bus. [laughing]
(And how much was the bus fare)
: It would be a few pence.
(Right, so it wasn’t expensive to get out then)
[End of track]
And tell me about, you were saying sort of in here they used to stay over, there used to be
bunks and … What sort of date would that be that people were sleeping here)
: That were in the forties I believe.
: That would be even before Graham’s time, I think.
18

: Well Norma stopped, me sister stopped, Norma and Winnie Grace stopped and, as I said,
there was a big boiler at the side of the … for boiling water, and in middle of the night the
water was boiling, the fire was on and the water was boiling away and it bubbled and bubbled.
[general laughter]
: So they emptied it and filled the tank up again. [laughing] In the middle of the night.
(So how many people would stay out)
: Well they catered, it catered for six but I don’t know how many did stop. That’s only once
that I remember anybody stopping from [inaudible] but I don’t know about other parties like,
they might have. But, as I say, they used to have Saturday lunch time ‘til Sunday night.
(And then go home and [inaudible])
: That’s why they supplied their teas, six teas you see.
: I was working at Bakewell all through that winter.
(Were you)
: And we were getting there every day.
(How did you get there, on the bus)
: [laughing] Single decker bus.
(Right and they got up in the snow)
: And when they got to Calver we all had to get off and help to push it up the hill. There was
only work people on the bus.
19

[general laughing]
: But was that bus coming from Sheffield, Colin
Colin: I think so, yeah.
: You were living in Sheffield
Colin: Mm.
(So what were you doing in Bakewell at the time)
Colin: What was I doing
(Yeah.)
Colin: Painting and decorating. I’ll tell you a funny incident. After I’d been working there we
went to work at the George at Hathersage and this particular day I were going home and I felt
in me pocket for me bus fare and all me mates were all Irish and we used to have a bit of fun
with ‘em. And they’d filled every one of me pockets wi’ fish heads.
[general laughing]
Colin: And then I got on the bus, well I were on the bus when I realised what they’d done.
And I froze. Daren’t sit down.
[general laughing]
: Aye, it were a long time before I laughed about it!
(Yeah I’m sure. [laughing] )
[End of track]
20

(So tell me how has the estate changed in terms of changing the vegetation or…)
: Physically, you mean
(Yeah, yeah, or are there any wildlife that you now see and didn’t see before or vice versa)
: Not a lot, I shouldn’t think.
: I don’t think it’s changed an awful lot.
[Track 9]
: You’ll have noticed a big difference in the way people dressed in those days to how they
dress now. [laughing] They used to go; they only had old clothes to wear anyway. There were
nothing made for ramblers.
: We used to have ex army stuff didn’t we Ex army.
: A lot of it was yeah.
: Graham, did the wardens have to wear anything distinctive to …
: No, they just wore the ordinary clothes with some …
: They had an arm band.
(Did you have an arm band)
: You had an arm band. I mean [inaudible] arm band, just a square, a square with a leather
strap.
(So was it like the park wardens where you signed in for that day you had sort of legal, well
was it legal rights But you had to …)
21

: They’d no rights but could only advise people.
: You couldn’t tell people that you couldn’t do anything about it.
(Did you ever get anybody being…)
: Obstreperous
(Yeah, that’s it.)
[general laughing]
: I’m just thinking of the …
: No, because they were different people in those days.
[all talking at once]
: There probably was the odd one that…
: When you were told that something wasn’t right you took it for granted. There were fewer
lawyers in those days.
[general laughing]
: Yeah, that’s why there was never much litter at Longshaw because the people respected it
and they were respectable people that used it.
: In the early days there were plenty at the time.
: On Bank Holidays there would be.
: All the time, when we were patrolling you could find plenty of litter.
22

(Aha, what sort of stuff …)
: Nothing like what they got at Chatsworth.
(Cos you wouldn’t have plastic then would you)
: It wouldn’t be plastic – papers and glass.
(And did you have any training to be the warden)
: No. [laughing]
(No)
: No. [laughing] I think I had booklets, I forgot, I couldn’t find it. I’ve got a little booklet,
warden’s booklet. I know when we was here, we was down at New Year, [inaudible] who used
to be boss in them days, he took photos of the pages in the book to make it up. I don’t know
whether that’s gone. That must be in the trust somewhere, a copy of this booklet, booklet that
I’ve got. I think that were something from when work was first started.
: They have got a couple of copies, there’s an archive with a couple of copies in. I think
they’re originals...[inaudible]
: It was a booklet about that size.
: Yeah, yeah, with instructions about where to patrol and [inaudible] and all that sort of thing,
yeah, yeah.
: Yeah [inaudible]
[End of track 9]
23

[Track 10]
[all talking at once]
: Very few trees. Perhaps if anybody could tell me if they were there or
: Well that’s Harry Cook, that’s Harry Cook.
: Reg mentioned that’s Harry Cook.
: Clearing out the ice house.
: [He] came for many years and was very, very enthusiastic about it.
: Down by the stream, if you go down from the [inaudible]
: Down to Burbage
: There’s a bridge, a footbridge.
: Bottom of the hill, a footbridge, and he was largely, what do you call it He was in charge
anyway, he was a pattern maker.
: They put a plaque.
: Right, so he made the, or he designed the bridge.
: No, that was in his memory, that was after he’d died.
: Aye I know but he was working on it, that’s why it was named that after.
: No, I don’t know, the money, the money that was collected was put up towards that bridge.
: Yeah but we’ve always called it Harry’s Bridge because he worked most
24

: He didn’t work on it, no, the money that was collected was gone towards doing that
bridge, you know, from Harry’s donations, you know, you give donations, when he died the
people gave donations to the state and that money
: That money went towards the preservation of the bridge.
: Who was the patern maker
: Harry Cook.
: That was Harry yeah.
: Harry Cook I never knew that.
: But at the time that the National Trust agreed to put that plaque there for Harry it was quite
rare wasn’t it to have any things like plaques, recognition You know, they didn’t, it was a
policy wasn’t it of the Trust not to do that Exception really.
: At time we didn’t have seats.
: They did it for him because
: They wouldn’t have seats.
: There’s a thing, you talk about there’s been big changes; well there’s a big change. In the
early days, that’s it; they wouldn’t have any recognition would they No seats, no that, you
walk around now there’s seats everywhere.
: And they have a plaque on, well that was contrary to their policy for a long time. It was
quite exceptional really…
[End of track 10]
25

[Track 11]
[all talking at once]
: We were talking about the ice house.
(Yes.)
: When we started clearing it out we got the entrance and it was piled up, when you stood on
it, the entrance, your chest was at the level of the entrance.
(Wow, that’s quite a lot of stuff to clear.)
: Mmm, but they had to dig it out and they had buckets, a bucket
: Over your head.
: A bucket, pulled on a rope, pull it up...
: As I say, Mark did a lot of work on the ice house didn’t he Your Mark.
: Paul.
: Paul, sorry, Paul yes.
: Paul were on a photo that we’ve got.
: Can you remember when that was
: Must have been seventies, were it eighties Seventies/eighties.
[all talking at once]
26

: It would be early eighties cos when they come up, they didn’t come after the mid 80s. They
didn’t come after ’85, Madge didn’t come after ’85.
: Brenda can you remember when it was we went to The Victoria Falls and had his, was it
his retirement do
: A lot of the stuff that was in the, a lot of the stuff that came out of the ice house was stuff
from; crockery had got HF written on it. [laughing]
[all talking at once]
: As I say, we brought it up in buckets. When we first got there you could drop in but then we
had to have a ladder and then with buckets and a barrow and tipped it, took it into the woods
and away from, tipped it up.
(Sounds like hard work [laughing])
: I think were two inside.
: He’s got bucket there and tipping it in.
: Oh that’s a roundel isn’t it Down in the meadow.
: Is that ice he’s got in there
: No, that’s just, that’s what was cleared out of it.
: Oh right.
: It was nearly full. As I said, have you seen it How deep it is. Have you seen how deep it
is Go and have a look and see how deep it is. When we first got into it you could stand but
that entrance there...
27

[all talking at once]
: And is that Harry Cook
: Yeah. Aye, it, I know a lot of the stuff was
: Rubbish.
: The rubbish that had got HF written over it, the crockery. [laughing] Oh there was the old,
there were old Tizer bottles with the marble inside.
: Oh yeah.
: Wow.
: Oh aye, they were old bottles.
: There were ... had a marble in to seal it.
: [inaudible] regular job, all one summer digging that out.
: I think we found one of those, I don’t know, one or two of those.
(Right, so what happened to the things that you dug out, did they just get)
: The rubbish was just tipped on the estate but a bit away from it.
: Anything you’d expect to be tipped out from a café. [laughing]
(What was that roundel; can you remember when that was done)
: I don’t know whether [inaudible] Do you remember roundel, doing roundel in meadow
28

: You know that in middle of meadow there’s a bit roundel where you, trees inside
: Like a Druid’s place.
: A copse.
: A copse but it’s got a wall round it, got a wall round it, I can’t remember …
(Just thinking how many trees there are in it now compared to that photograph, you know,
how much bigger they are.)
: [inaudible]
(You’re not sure, no, ok.)
: Well I wasn’t there at that time, that must have been at …
: But there won’t have been many changes over the years.
: Harry was quite young there.
: Well he died at 67.
: The surroundings have not changed.
: But I couldn’t see his wellies, he always had wellies on. [laughing]
: The thing about this group is that we’re all keen, although most of us are turned seventy.
Including myself.
: He’s not. [To the baby]
: He’s the next generation. Shh. [baby making noises]
29

: We’ve kept coming because we’re keen and we’re conscientious people. I mean and when
we get too old to go on the Clarion walks this is a way of meeting up and keeping in touch.
: That’s how you get rid of your old labourers. [laughing]
: Shut up.
: I’m going to say careful love we’ll have to get the violins out in a minute.
[End of track 11]
[Track 12]
(Can I ask another question please, this is cos specifically at the moment I’m trying to
research – I’ve got a copy of the sale catalogue here, the ’27 sale catalogue, and all the
places that were mentioned as keepers’ lodges and I’m trying to research as much as I can
about them and obviously some are still here and some aren’t. And I’ve identified four that I
know aren’t still there and just wonder does anybody know anything about either Higger
Lodge, Badger House, specifically where it was. I mean Piper House and Rountley Lodge I
have seen, I know …)
: Higger Lodge, you know the field underneath Higger Tor
(Yeah.)
: It was in; looking from this side it was in the top left hand, I believe it was in the top left
hand corner of that field.
: Which one was that
: Higger Lodge.
: Oh Higger Lodge.
30

: And what was it, what was it
: What was the other one Badger House
(Badger House.)
: That was on the Houndkirk Road.
(On Houndkirk Road)
: Where the bridge is, where the river
: Oh right, where the bridge, yeah.
: If you look up the river there’s a little flat bit.
(Right.)
: Looking up on the left hand side.
(As you’re coming from Sheffield on the left hand side)
: No, when you come on the bridge, you get on the bridge.
(Oh right, on the bridge and look up)
: Look up the river.
(Yeah, and it’s on the left hand side).
: Up the river and on the left hand side of the river there’s a little flat piece and the
buildings was on there.
31

: And they used to call in there for tea; they used to call in there for tea.
: [inaudible] lodge, yes.
: [inaudible] Duke, and there was a piano in that Badger House and they used to have sing
songs.
: Aye it’s always been a wreck when I’ve been.
: No, well Walt Taylor, when he was walking with the club, Walter Taylor, he said they used
to call in at Badger Houses for tea and there was a piano in there and they’d have singing.
: [inaudible] Badgers together. [laughing]
: That must have been in twenties.
: It could have been. Probably was. Anyway it was when Walter Taylor was walking with the
club.
: Yes. Was there a road up to it
: He were walking until fifties.
: Yeah.
: They’d have a big job getting piano there then
: Probably did. [laughing]
: It were in fifties weren’t it
: They’ve taken Pianos to funnier places than that, Colin.
32

: I don’t know how long he’d been in club; he must have been in club for …
: But I don’t remember any house, I remember certain buildings being there but it were ruins.
: Oh yeah but it was probably about nineteen thirty something when it was abandoned.
[all talking at once]
: Which is Ramsley Lodge, then
(That’s a ruin now, on Ramsley Moor. I have been, I mean that’s a picture, I’m just wondering
if anybody can tell me anything about it)
: During the war.
(Sorry, it was...)
: The army was on there and they were lobbing grenades down the chimneys and things like
that, lobbing grenades through the windows.
(Right, so for training, yeah, right.)
: For the training.
(Oh so it was just …)
: Was that near the reservoir was that
: Yeah, if you’re going down towards Baslow
: Baslow, yeah.
33

: There’s a, on your left hand side there’s a gate and the track goes along the top, a bit lower
down there’s another gate and the track goes onto the bottom.
: Yeah.
: If you went out through the top and it was on, just nearly opposite where, if you looked up
from the gate the house was more or less … on the top track from the gate.
(And the bit that’s saying now that’s in the picture I’ve been told since, I’ve spoken to
somebody since I took that, that that was actually the remains of the outhouses and the
orchard and the actual lodge was sort of just to the side. Do you know, is that right Do you
know anything about that)
: I didn’t think there was anything left now.
: No but [inaudible] there’s a stone enclosure with a little bit of ruin.
: I have a vague memory that somebody said to me once when I worked for the Gas Board.
“Oh I was speaking to so and so” and he told me one of the worst jobs he ever did was
reading the gas meter at Rawnsley Lodge. [laughing]
: They wouldn't have any gas.
: Oh he said, he said, “Oh I had to”
: Can’t see ‘em having gas there.
: “I had to read the gas meter at Rawnsley Lodge”
: But how could they get gas out there
: There can’t have been gas.
34

: Unless it’s a joke. [laughing]
: And what about this Piper House, anybody know anything that
(I mean I know, I’ve seen the ruin but again does anybody know anything about it)
: No I don’t know nothing about it.
: How do you spell Higger
: Have I spelt it wrong
: I don’t know, I would have spelt it Higger.
(I would have done as well. How have you spelt it)
(I’m not going to tell you. [laughing])
: Meanie.
: Well in the sale catalogue it’s Higgar.
: In the what, for sale catalogue
: In the sale catalogue it’s AR, AR, yeah.
: I think it is HiggAR Tor.
[End of track 12]
[Track13]
(So you were saying about this piano and you had sing songs)
: Mmm
35

(You were saying about this piano and you had –)
: Yes.
(So who was “they”, was that)
: The Clarion.
(The Clarion, you would go to)
: The Clarion was for – the Clarion was formed by the Clarion Glee Club essentially. The
people on the first Clarion ramble were virtually all, well, yeah, virtually, all members of the
Clarion Glee Club. And that was a…
: Singing
: I wouldn’t say it was a requisite but, well it was a requisite, because Ward said “On every
ramble a song must be sung and a reading must be given” When he said reading, not talking
about a bible reading or anything like that, but some local history or something like that,
where they were.
: Yes, mmm.
: And that came from the Clarion movement.
(Right, and what sort of songs would they sing, would you sing, I don’t know if you …)
: Oh all sorts o’ songs. Any. Not …
: Well songs that were popular at the beginning of the 20 th Century.
: If you’ve got the, you’ve been looking in the handbook you say Well in that handbook
there will be some of those songs, the words of some of those songs.
36

: I’ve got the Clarion song book with songs.
: They printed a …
: Yeah, that were in the, I don’t know when that were.
: The twenties.
: That’d be printed in, course there’s a song there in 1921, “We’re twenty one today” It was
sung to “twenty one today”.
(As to keys to the door.)
: Yes.
: One of the verses it says “Now we’re two thousand strong”.
: I thought that meant they’d sold two thousand books.
: That were two thousand books. They used to sell, those little booklets, they used to sell.
(And did you carry on singing, you know, after GHB Ward …)
: Sort of.
[laughing]
: No we didn’t, not as
: Caroller!
: That’s a different thing.
37

(Oh, were you a Sheffield Caroller)
: Yeah we sing carols in Sheffield.
: We go carol singing at Christmas, yes.
(So no-one’s going to offer to sing me a song now)
: Mmm
: No. [laughing]
: There’s only Reg who could.
Reg: Thank you very much, very flattering.
: They didn’t sing every – while I’ve been going with clubs.
: Well I suppose it died out during the war when … well what happened was that there was
a part of the club, young men, the younger men, used to like, when they got for lunches they
used to go in a pub and they, when they’d had lunch, they liked to linger, they liked to linger.
And they were singers, they were quite keen.
: And drinkers.
: Well, yeah and singers. And so they formed the Sheffield Rambling Club, which was all
men, all male. And they used to frequent – they used to ramble, they were … but they were
strong ramblers.
: But originally when they started they had a load more coach rambles.
: Oh they was virtually all coach rambles.
38

: They had coach rambles. Cos remember Jack, you remember Jack Hartley
: Yeah, oh aye.
: He said “Oh will you join”, he joined, he paid his subs but he never went with them. So
one day he got this thing, he got his money back. [laughing] Cos they wanted people that
went to fill the coach you see. So with him not going back they sent his money back.
[laughing] And Mary his wife says to him, she says, “Why have they sent your money back
Jack” He says “Well I don’t sup enough for ‘em” [laughing]
: But that’s really where the singing element went.
: Yeah, aye, they used to carry singing.
: Yeah, they did sing.
: I didn’t know anything about that early history.
: Yeah, mmm.
: I can remember Ward.
: Well what was it, Fox, who was, what’s his first name Jack Fox.
: Jack Fox and Bill Ellis.
: Well the Sheffield club wasn’t... early. I remember when it broke away
: Well it didn’t exactly so much break away as they sort of branched off.
: Jim McNerny [ph].
: And Jim McNerny. Yeah.
39

: Cyril and Lucy Peacock.
: No they weren’t no, not with the Sheffield Club.
: Cyril Booth
: Cyril Booth yeah.
: Walter Taylor.
: Walt Taylor.
: Pat Wigley.
: Pat Wigley, Leo Nelson,
: Who were that lad who’d been in the Air Force.
: Dancer was it
: Cyril Dancer was it
: Cyril Dancer, yes, he was, but was he in the Clarion I suppose he would be.
: He was in Clarion yes.
: They’ve all been with the Clarion at some time or other. Bill Ellis.
: They still used to come with the Clarion but they had a ramble once a month and they had
a coach ramble once a month.
: Yeah.
40

: One chap had been in the war with the RAF. Can you remember his name, but I think it
were George
: George what Oh you mean George Poole
: Poole, yeah, George Poole.
: Georgie Poole, yeah, but most of, a lot of ‘em were club members.
: Yeah, oh yeah.
: They all started.
: I think there weren’t many that weren’t club members.
: Well the Broadheads I don’t think were ever in the Clarion were they Bernard and Albert
were never in the Clarion. But the others, most of ‘em were, most of ‘em
: The majority used to, yeah.
[End of track 13]
[Tracl 14]
(Mmm, so I presume GHB Ward came out here sort of regularly with the group when you
were doing the working parties and the …)
: Well I never [inaudible]
(So did Ward come out)
: A regular attender.
: I never saw Ward on a working party.
41

: Well he’d be with the club probably wouldn’t he
: No, never saw him with the warden. As I say, I was here in late forties.
: But he’d be interested, he would
: With me father like, me father, and me parents.
: He’d always take an interest wouldn’t he He’d want to know.
: Yeah.
: He’d want to know what was happening but he never attended.
(Cos he wrote in the books didn’t he He writes in the handbooks and …)
: Yes, he’d got the information yeah.
(About people. And I mean you’re all too young … [inaudible] to remember but [Thelma]
found an advert in the Manchester rambling thing asking for moorlands, during the war, for
moorland patrols and that kind of stuff.)
(For a moorland home guard. Has anybody ever heard Does anyone know)
(Were the Clarion involved)
: I don’t know, no.
(Has anyone ever heard anybody saying anything about that)
: No.
42

: I heard a chap say who walked with the Sheffield RA group.
: Have you finished with that Ray
: No. And he said in his training during the war, he was in the war, the second world war,
they were allowed to do their training on Langsett Moor but after the war when he was
rambling …
: They were closed.
: They were closed and they weren’t allowed.
[laughing]
: So they’d been allowed on to train in the war but they weren’t allowed to walk on it until,
you know, until this...
:1954 weren’t it
: ...Campaign for open moors.
: But lots of things happened during the war Bob that when you got back to normal life, when
you revert to normal life that was it.
: The first day Kinder Scout opened again Bert Ward was there.
(Right.)
: Cos he’d been banned from walking on them after the trespass. If he’d have been caught
he’d have been in prison. And on the first day, Good Friday, in ’54 I believe it was, he was
there.
: Ah but wasn’t he, he said himself, he wrote in one of the handbooks, “That was the first
time I’ve been on Kinder Scout officially”
43

[laughing]
: Yeah, he might have been on his own.
: He’d been up there before, yeah.
: But I remember him going up.
: But that was his point really, that was the … He didn’t believe in legislation did he He
thought, he said, “Anybody who’s worth their weight should be able to trespass without being
caught”
[laughing]
: If you can’t trespass without being caught you shouldn’t be up there.
: One of his, you know this access agreement
: Yes.
: One of his ideas was getting footpaths going across the moors.
: Yeah.
: He was saying you get a footpath across the moor you can easier trespass off it!
: Yeah.
[laughing]
: Yes, one official route you can then …
: You get an official route across the moor …
: Then you, you know, you had the option that …
44

: And then you could get [laughing]
: Go a bit further afield, yeah, yeah.
[End of track 14 – Track 15 includes all track 14 audio]
[Track 15 – from 0:00 to 3:45 this duplicates track 14 ]
Another thing I found going through the Manchester [inaudible] for the war was an appeal for
sphagnum moss. You know, cos they used it for dressings. So they used it a lot in the First
World War. And there was an appeal for, you know, for people out on rambles to collect
sphagnum moss. And then somebody else wrote, do you know, a couple of months later
“Well are they going to allow us on these moors then” [laughing] “to go and collect it”
[laughing]
: Same as in the Winter. In the winters they were allowed to go on looking for sheep.
: Right.
: We used to go on anyway. If there was a group of you, you outnumbered the keeper so he
couldn’t do owt apart from turn out a lot of foul language. But that’s all he did, but we still just
used to walk past.
: The times I’ve been on the moors I’ve never seen a keeper.
: There were one at Snakeside who was atrocious for language.
: I’ve seen one once...
: [inaudible] clear off
: ...And that was on Ramsden Moor, beyond the Flouch somewhere.
: Oh yeah.
45

: And that’d be back in the sixties.
: Oh yeah coming over from Holme.
: Yeah.
: We came, we’d been in, we’d set from [Flowt] accross to Holme and used to have lunch
in Holme and we come up, is it Ramsden Clough,
: Yeah.
: And we used to come over Ramsden Clough and go out onto the road by Cook’s Study but
this particular day we decided to come across the moor and came out just above, onto the
road, just above Dunford bridge. We was walking down the road and this chap come out on
his motorbike and sidecar, he was a keeper. [laughing]
: He’s the only one we’ve seen.
: [laughing] Yeah, that was the one who...
: Shouted to us from, [inaudible] moor or something.
: But they were the ones who bought that...
: Old Leo Nelson out that day.
: Was he
: Yeah, cos he talked to him and that.
: Sang to him.
[laughing]
46

: But they were the ones who used to buy the book, the keepers.
: Oh aye, to find where …
[laughing]
: To decide whether to be there or not to be there.
[laughing]
: I remember during the war me dad, they were on Kinder, and the RAF was up there and
they helped to drag some o’ parts of a plane that had crashed onto edge so that it could...
[laughing]
(Right, and were the Clarion ever involved in sort of moorland rescues or fighting wildfires or
anything like that, did you get involved in those kind of things)
: Moorland, eh...
: Well in the book you related the story where you …
: In the early days, very early days
: You went to help somebody who’d had an accident, didn’t you You were called out to … it
was in the centenary book wasn’t it
: There was... there was a walk patrolling on Kinder, we came back down onto above Upper
Booth and there was a Land Rover there, we were just coming back down from Jacob’s
Ladder under the [inaudible], coming back to Edale and the Land Rover was there and Tom
Tomlinson and there was a few wardens and they’d somebody that fell on Crookston on the
crag on top of Crookston. And we were sent up there. We went up.
: And asked if you could go and help bring them out, yes.
47

: Cos we went up the Clough, Len Johnson, he’d got one of the rucksacks with the stuff in,
and then another chap had took other one. We were, I were first up, we got to the steep bit
and I took rucksack off of Len and we went up to, with the rucksack to where he’d fell off, and
then I came back down the steep bit, the other chap was struggling up, and I took it off him
and went back up. [laughing] And took that one. And then we had a big stretcher.
(Right, one of those sort of solid)
: It was solid stretcher with a sledge and runners on. And we came off the end and we
remember bringing him down on that stretcher.
(Wow. That must have been quite a thing to do)
: That was about ’58 I think, ‘57/’58.
: That was before the mountain rescue teams were formed, yes.
(That was after the Four Inns wasn’t it that that really took off, mountain rescue.)
: It was under the scouts, yes.
: Yes that was up on the moors yeah.
(That’s brilliant, I’ll turn that off.)
End Track Two
48

John Bunting: Interviewed by Tegwen Roberts.
12 th July 2010 in Sheffield.
First Track:
(Just for the tape I’ll say that this is an oral history recording for the Moor Memories. It’s
the 12 th of July and I’m in Sheffield. The interviewer is Tegwen Roberts. So for the tape
could you just tell me who you are and when you were born please)
My name is John Bunting; I was born on the 9 th of March 1918.
(Right and where did you grow up)
I grew up in Pitsmoor really. Up to being ten years of age at the bottom end of Pitsmoor,
which was more or less slums, and then they cleared the slums and when I was ten years
of age I went to live at Southey and I lived there until I were married. And then when I were
married we lived in a house in Ecclesall Road and we’ve been here fifty years.
(Right, wow.)
In Woodseats. And it’s been wonderful.
(Yeah [laughing] so where did you go to school)
I went to Pye Bank school when I was an infant, as a junior I went to Firs Hill School, but
living on the Southey Estate we had to walk across what we called the seven fields, which
is now the Shirecliffe. But there weren’t any Shirecliffe then. And I had a few problems at
Firs Hill School because in those days Barnsley Road and Scott Road were a posh area
and at the time my father had been out of work for four years whilst I was at school and a
lot of us estate kids couldn’t afford uniforms. So there was a kind of a, I’d never seen a
black man then, but it were apartheid, all those with uniforms went on outings, us estate
kids had to stop at school while they went.
(Oh that’s awful, oh dear.)
So, you know, people today don’t realise how things have improved for everybody.
1

(Yeah, yeah, so what did your dad do before he was unemployed)
He was, well he was on’t railway, he were a platelayer on railway. And there were in that
recession in 1920s, him and a lot more were laid off, and it were four years before they got
back.
(Right, it must have been hard.)
Oh aye it were. Well me mother used to take washing in and things like that and help
people out for a meal of something, price of a meal or something, you know.
(Yeah. So what did you do in your spare time as a child)
Well me father, when me father was working and at home, although he worked on the
railway on the line and inevitably most of the, a lot of the line laying was done on Sunday
when there weren’t a lot of traffic, but every Saturday me and me sister, there were two of
us, every Saturday me mum and me dad’d take us to places like Fox House and Rivelin.
And even Graves Park, which was a long way from we, we lived at Pitsmoor, and he
always took us out – and Caudwell Valley and places like that. And then when I was
sixteen I was old enough to join Youth Hostels Association. So – and I was only on’t shop
floor in steelworks – I mean I weren’t a staff man or anything like that and…
(Was that at sixteen you went there)
I was sixteen years of age then when I joined YHA and that’s the really start of my walking
life and campaigning life. ‘Cos my first campaign was in 1934 so I had to... Castleton and
rallies in Winnats Pass, campaigning for national parks then like. ‘Cos we thought at the
time when we got National Parks it had to include moors. But anyway, that’s by the way.
And people like Ward, GHB Ward, you know, Sheffield Clarion, he was really the main
campaigner for, as I say, national parks. ‘Cos we expected we’d get everything when we
got national parks but in the event we didn’t, but that’s by the way. And there were Barbara
Castle, I remember her speaking, she were only a young, you know, like you, young lady.
Oh Professor Judd. Tom Stephenson, who became first secretary of the Ramblers’
Association. Steve Morton who was president of the SYNED area, that’s South Yorkshire
2

and North East Derbyshire of the Ramblers’ Association. And at that time all these
organisations were run by professional people, like teachers and... very few working class
lads. And I think I were one o’ first, you know, worked on shop floor but I got involved in
committee work. And from there I, you know, as I said the first rally that I went to in ‘34 in
Winnats Pass. There was no road through then, it were just a footpath. And now there’s a
road through. And a few years ago they had me unveil a plaque in the Winnats Pass; it’s
on a board in middle of’t pass, to celebrate the old trespassers. And it just went on from
there.
(What was it like, was it, I mean how many people were there for a start)
Oh, thousands sometimes. Two or three thousand, mmm. And there was as many bikes
on grass as there were rucksacks.
([Laughing] So were people…)
We couldn’t afford train; we had to go on us bikes in’t early days.
(Was it like a positive atmosphere)
Oh yes, and very friendly. And everybody, you know, very, very friendly. ‘Cos it’s not very
often you all want the same thing is it
(And did people take food with them, did they…)
Oh we all, aye, we used to have us sandwiches while we were sat listening to the speaker.
(Right, and how long did they last)
Oh sometimes perhaps couple o’ hours, mmm.
(Right and then what would you do afterwards)
3

Oh walk back, to have a walk, you know, either, perhaps if it were minutes you might have
a walk over to Peak Forest and come back another way or there’s Lose Hill Ridge, or, oh, I
mean there’s hundreds of little walks you can do from Castleton…
(And were they trespasses at the time or did you go on the paths)
No, no, they weren’t trespasses because, not at the time, because you’d have to go too far
at the time of the day and by time the rallies finished to go and do any trespassing I think.
So I don’t think they did much trespassing. Might have... places like Eyam Moor and that
we did a bit o’ trespassing and stuff like that on us perhaps way back from’t Rise, perhaps
walking to Grindleford Station or something like that we might go over Eyam moor []
which was, would be trespassing.
(Yeah, and did the police come to the rallies)
Oh yes, yes. But never interfered or anything like, they just were kind of in’t distance.
(Yeah, making sure that …)
Yeah.
(That it was peaceful. And were they always peaceful)
Oh yes, I can’t remember any altercation whatsoever.
(Did any of the landowners ever come, or did they stay...)
They stayed at distance, you could see they were there but they didn’t, I can’t ever
remember ‘em coming to a rally and speaking. They had the opportunity, they were told
where they were.
(And what did the speakers talk about at the rallies, what were the speeches like)
Mainly, I suppose they were all same, the right to walk on the land that we all owned and
we all loved and in some cases fought for.
4

(Yeah, so why did you get involved)
Well I don’t know, I just loved to be out in’t fresh air and I couldn’t see why we couldn’t
walk on like places like Longshaw. Or if you go across Big Moor or Hallam Moor, you got
to see – you couldn’t do a shortcut, and you weren’t doing any harm, you couldn’t take a
shortcut over’t moor like people with grouse shooting rights, there’s no way they were
going to walk on open moorland if they could help it. And then when it got to’t war when
things – after war then obviously there were lots of young men of my age fought and some
of ‘em died for the freedom of this country and ‘course when we got back we were no more
free than we were before we went, you know, so. And that’s when they really got
interested. And when they made my national vice president of Ramblers’ Association, the
chap that proposed me, he were an industrialist, he says “Most of us sit on us backsides in
office ringing MPs up” he says “But John, he gets his boots on and gets out on moors and
argues wi’t landlord.” [Laughing.]
(Did you argue with landowners)
Oh yes, yes, mmm. I mean – it varied. Some, you know, we had a reasonable argument
and we obviously disagreed and we had to agree to disagree. I knew we would win
eventually. And I always remember a quote what one said and he said “I don’t mind you”
he said “coming and I’m talking to you now” he said, “but” he says “On Sunday you bring
all your pals here.” [Laughing.]
(So it was the groups that they weren’t keen on)
Aye, it were really. It’s the, all the, apart from the rambling clubs – and as they were saying
“hooligans”. Well, there were never any hooligans on moors, all the hooligans used to go
to places like Matlock and, you know, congregate in gangs in some of these like Matlock or
even Castleton or Bakewell. Not so much Bakewell but certainly at Castleton there were
some yobbos at times. But mostly Matlock and Matlock Bath. And you all got tarred wi’t
same brush I suppose.
(And where did they come from, the …)
5

Oh over, well, the national park’s in centre of a lot of industrial towns, Manchester,
Stockport
(Sheffield)
Sheffield obviously and Barnsley and…
(Huddersfield)
Huddersfield and, you know, places on west o’ Pennines. I mean it must have been
biggest concentration of working class people in Britain around this middle area of
England.
Second Track:
And I suppose really that, I mean, I was on, everybody’s heard of Benny Rothman, who,
you know, went to prison for trespassing. Well I was on Kinder Scout advisory committee
with him and also on the Peak Park Advisory Board with him. That’s when we were, we
actually had a Peak Park, well we were campaigning for it and we’d got on committees
that formed it kind of thing. And, although he was that couple of years older than me
because when he went to prison that were 1932 and I didn’t get involved while 1934. So it
were a bit later on when I met him and went to... – as I say, we were on these advisory
committees. And fortunately one of, well a chap I mentioned before, Steve Morton, who
was our president in Sheffield, most of the meetings were in, oh, Hayfield and places like
that and I wouldn’t have been able to go ‘cos they were at night. But this Steve Morton
who was always on committee used to take me you see. Over there and back every
meeting. And that’s how I think I were just about first working class lad to get on these
committees.
(Right, so how did you get out to the moors)
6

Oh well in early days when I first left school and when I, you know, well even before I was
sixteen, ‘cos I left school at fourteen obviously, which we did in those days, working class
lads. And the first thing we ever bought were a bike.
(OK.)
My first wage was seven and sixpence a week, old money [laughing], which I gave to me
mum and she gave me half a crown back, that’s two and six. So I’d one and three pence a
week to pay for me bike and one and three pence to spend. So that used to be, it were
one and three pence to stay a night at youth hostel, so we didn’t have to buy food ‘cos us
mums packed us up wi’ food but if we went and stayed at a youth hostel it only ‘cost us
one and three pence for night and we’d got us own food anyway. And we’d no bus fares to
pay ‘cos we’d got bikes. And it weren’t till, oh, much later, that – and in those days, you
know, you could go out on your bike in the country, either leave it in hostel yard or
grounds, or even put it in a field over a wall, and it’d be there when you come back. I don’t
think you could do it now.
(No, I don’t think you could. [Laughing]. So was there a group of you that used to go out)
Originally there were four of us and we all worked at same place like and we were all same
age. And I can remember the first holiday we had on our own. The four of us rode on push
bikes to’t Lake District and that were the first time I’d seen Lakes and it were absolutely
mind boggling. Didn’t think they could be any way so lovely. You’ve got to bear in mind
that in the working environment in Sheffield the only time we saw’t sun was at weekends
and at holidays when furnaces shut down. You couldn’t see across there in them trees, it
were just one …
(‘Cos of the smoke)
Fog like, you know, caused by smoke, mmm. And I mean you couldn’t …
(Wow.)
So we never saw’t sun during week, only at weekend and holidays when’t sun, anyway,
what I was saying, there’s four of us, we went on’t bikes. I always remember I think the first
7

youth hostel were Waseley [] Hill and I really, really fell in love wi’t Lakes then. And I think
apart from when kiddies were very young – we’ve had two kids – apart from when kids
were – when I met her, Irene, when I met Irene she started coming with me and I think I’ve
been to Lakes more or less every year from being sixteen to being ninety. And I still love it.
([Laughing] I bet you don’t cycle any more)
Oh no. We did have a tandem for one bit but I packed that up when I found out she was
sat at back wi’ her feet up while I were peddling.
([Laughing.])
You know, but, and the same year as we went to Lakes we also, four of us, cycled to
Glasgow to see the Empire Games and we stayed at a youth hostel on way up at Barnard
Castle.
But when I got really involved with rambling was in me late teens and early twenties and I
was – Ramblers’ Association hadn’t been formed, well it formed in 1935, so it were only...,
YHA was the big thing and all the – camping as well – were in YHA and eventually kind of
merged together and, you know, you might have been secretary of one organisation and
treasurer in another, and they were all same people in both organisations. And I started
organising walks..., well they did, I were only a young man. And then at that time the
Ramblers and YHA, well particularly YHA, had also many social activities. We still do
lectures in winter now. But we ran dances in winter every week at the Sunshine Café,
which is now a clinic on Orchard Street, we had one every month at, oh what do they call
church on City Road, oh I’ve forgot name of it, and then we used to run one at Blind
Institute on Mappin Street.
(Oh yeah, I know it.)
And at that time I was a keen dancer as well as a walker and I used to MC them all.
(Right, wow.)
So, and that’s how I met Irene, at a dance. Well it’s not strictly true that, she met me at a
dance when I were a … and I didn’t really get to know her personally ‘til I met her at a
8

youth hostel at Ravenstor []. But, you know, we’ve been together ever since. We’ve
walked from Norway to the Mediterranean and we’ve done most of long distance pass in
this country, some of ‘em two or three times.
(Wow.)
In fact she did Dales Way when she was eighty, back Dales Way when we were eighty.
(Wow.)
We’ve had a wonderful life.
Third Track:
(But where did you walk when you went out You said that there was no access.)
No access, well, you did the usual footpaths like Duke’s Drive and... oh, my memory,
ninety, don’t get to be ninety.... Actually there’s several still there, packhorse routes across
the moors from, some of ‘em used to call ‘em salt roads in’t old days because they’d take
steel implements or iron implements from Sheffield over to’t Manchester side, Cheshire
side, and they’d bring salt and silt and other things back on these packhorse routes. But
you couldn’t deviate off them, you’d got to keep to the route.
(Right, ‘cos it was privately owned land)
It was privately owned. And there were gamekeepers and at one time they had, well I’ll call
‘em heavy walking sticks.
(Right [laughing].)
But fortunately, and we used to trespass as younger ones, but fortunately we could run
past them then. And, as I say, one of ‘em said to me, he said “We don’t mind you coming”
he said “but you’ll bring all your mates on Sunday”.
9

([Laughing] So was Sunday the day to walk)
Oh yes, yes, well, see Saturday was part of the working week.
(Right.)
Now if we went youth hostelling that’d be Saturday afternoons. It was just a matter o’ going
to’t youth hostel, stopping night, and then you’d an early start next morning.
(Right, and then you’d go home on Sunday night)
Go home on Sunday evening, yes, mmm.
(And, so you said that you were involved with setting up the Peak Park)
Yeah, the advisory committee, that, by that time I was on the Ramblers’ committee, you
know, Ramblers’ Association. And we were appointed to go to meetings at Bakewell and,
of course, as I’ve just told you, that friend of mine, Steve Morton, he used to take me and
bring me back. Course I suppose I was first kind o’, ‘cos I’d no what, you know, I hadn’t
been to university or owt like that, I’d only had an ordinary council school education. So,
but even now, I mean Irene was a shorthand typist and company secretary when I met her
and if you look at some of these old letters you’ll see where she’s, she hadn’t wrote them,
but she corrected spellings for me and things like that.
(Yeah. So what was the idea behind the Peak Park, what were you hoping to get from it)
We were hoping for the freedom to walk. I mean we fought for it and a lot of... some o’ my
colleagues died fighting for that freedom and when we come back it were no different to
what it were before we went. So that was the motivation, we thought, you know, we’d the
right to walk on it. And at end of the day we wanted to preserve it, and which we have
done.
(And have the moors changed since you started walking on them)
10

No I don’t think so, not a right lot. I can’t remember any big changes. Obviously, I suppose
the paths leading up onto the moors when you’re narrowed in, you know, like Grindsbrook
and Fairbrook and all them, there’s a lot of erosion. And the proper paths round the, round
Kinder Scout, or the reach path across Win Hill and Lose Hill, they all, of course they’re
maintained now aren’t they, you know, and it’s artificial paths now more or less.
(Yeah and around Black Hill and that area.)
Yeah, but I mean, I remember ‘t first time going up to Black Hill and you couldn’t get near
the cairn, you’d be waist deep in mud.
(Really)
Mmm.
(When would that have been)
Oh, let’s see, ’47, we were married in ’47. Round about that time,perhaps just before we
had ‘t kids.
(So it was already a…)
Oh it was already eroded, yes, mmm.
(‘Cos I’ve heard that the level of the peat’s dropped quite heavily up the …)
Yes I’m sure it has, yes, mmm. But, I don’t know, it’s difficult. It’s a wonderful place to be,
you can feel the freedom and … Since Irene’s been ill and we’ve not been out now for
nearly two years, now what’s heartbreaking, I haven’t seen a bluebell for two years, I
haven’t seen a primrose for two year. But, having said that, we’ve still got us memories.
(Yeah, yeah, sure.)
11

So, and I’ve, must have got thousands o’ slides upstairs, you know. And I’ve two or three
photograph albums. I could have you here all day showing you photographs of things
probably.
(Yeah. So tell me about, you said the rally that you went on in Winnats Pass.)
Oh Winnats Pass, yes, well they, I think they started about ’32, well ’34 first one I went to.
And …
(‘Cos when was the mass trespass on Kinder, was that earlier)
That were ’32, yes, that was ’32. I got involved in 1934, Winnats Pass. Oh and it lasted
until 1939, the ralies in Winnats.
(And how often were they)
Every year, every summer, once a year. Addressed by many notable people, MPs,
Barbara Castle, Hugh Dalton, Professor Judd and others. Benny Rothman. The real work
was done by local people, Bert Ward of Clarion, Ted Spencer and Steve Morton of the
Ramblers. Noel Norton, Howard Hill, Roy Bullen, Walter Grocott. Most of these have gone
now like, they’re all dead. In 1945 the rallies moved to Cave Dale because then during the
war they put a road through Winnats. So they carried on but we had them in Cave Dale
then. And moved to Cave Dale, eventually got the 1949 Act for National Parks. We were
delighted ‘til we saw the small print. Most of the excess land had been left off.
Fourth Track:
(So, who came to the rallies)
In the first place, I think, all walks of life. And there used to be as many bikes on grass as
there were rucksacks. Course, I was going to say, YHA were big organisation and you
couldn’t use a car, well not many people had cars then, only, you know, the wealthy. So
you had either walk or you’d to go on a bike. And therefore even cyclists were interested in
12

countryside and I’m certain there were as many cyclists – in fact I was a cyclist in first
place, at first one. And many cyclists was walkers at the early rallies. And then after the
war it went a bit quiet and course by the Ramblers’ Association, of which I was a member,
kind o’ took over. And there were one or two of us thought things weren’t moving quick
enough. And Roy Bullen, a colleague of mine, he was in’t Ramblers’, he suggested that we
form a kind of [agenda] group. So about half a dozen of us, Terry Howard became first
secretary. We formed SCAM, Sheffield Campaign to Access the Mountains and Moorland.
And that’s when we started really organised trespasses. And we advertised them and we
notified the landowners that we were going.
(So where did you advertise them, the paper)
In the newspaper, on radio, and, you know, things like that. And strangely enough you
could see the gamekeepers on the horizon but they never came near ‘cos actually I think
they must have realised they were on a losing battle because if they’d have confronted us
– ‘cos police were there as well obviously – if they’d have confronted us they’d have got
some bad publicity ‘cos we, I mean, we’d every intention of having a peaceful walk across
moors. We didn’t want any problems. We hadn’t got big heavy walking sticks or owt like
that. [Laughing] And it carried on like that for a bit. We went to all the surrounding moors. I
can remember talking to a landowner at Langsett and I were telling him, I said, “Well we
could fight for it but we can’t walk on it” I says “I trained as an anti-tank gunner on Langsett
Moor” And he said “Aye you left it a right mess, there’s oil all over’t place” [laughing].
([Laughing] So when did you train on Langsett Was that before the war)
No it were during the war. ‘cos being a steelworker, well in any case when I first
volunteered, I’ve got what they call an idle eye, and I didn’t pass’t test. But we could go in’t
Home Guard. So at weekends we were patrolling moors. Some nights we were on Totley
Moor, Hallam Moors, looking for German paratroopers. And just before blitz we were
lighting fires on moor. If you go on Totley Moor now you’ll see a lot o’ holes full o’ water
and I’ll always remember one young lady, she says, “What do they need all these dew
ponds for on’t moors” I said [laughing] “They’re not dew ponds, they’re bomb craters that
are filled up with water”.
(Right.)
13

‘Cos we used these fires to decoy German aircraft bombing Sheffield. But course they
were useless when Blitz came ‘cos it were a beautiful starlit, moonlit night, and it were just
like daylight. And even from top of moors you could follow River Don right through
Sheffield. It was clear as a bell.
(Yeah, of course, a river’s a reflector of the light. So how did you light the fires, were they
like bonfires or…)
Yeah, sometimes they were piles of wood or barrels o’ tar of summat like that, you know,
anything like that.
(Would you do that every night, did you go up every night and do it)
Somebody would, yes, different, course there were different companies of Home Guards
all over Sheffield and we’d take it in turns.
(Right.)
‘Cos we were all working during ‘t day.
(‘Course, yeah.)
In‘t steelworks. So you couldn’t, you know, working in’t day and … but perhaps working out
one night a week and most weekends.
(That’s a lot of work.)
Aye, well we never thought owt about it, we were young then.
(Yeah, I saw, there’s a few adverts in, been looking at some of the old magazines, the
Rambler magazines, advertising for people to be part of the Moorland Home Guard, in
Manchester, so that happened all over did it)
Oh yeah, yes, yes, yeah.
14

(Right, and you were saying about training for tanks, when did that start)
Oh, that’d be, be, you know, some time between ’39 and ’45.
(Yeah.)
You know, it didn’t start straight away because we’d a bit of a false start to war and it were
long time before it got going. Let me think. I reckon it’d be going on for ’44 I think, war were
well on it’s way then, mmm.
(Right, and were you called up, is that why you went to train)
Oh yes, yes, yeah, our headquarter were Somme Barracks on West Street.
(Oh yeah, at the top of West Street)
Yeah, it’s still there I think isn’t it Yeah.
(Is it the TA now)
It probably is, I don’t know, but. And then that’s where we did us original training and then
we was moved to companies and our headquarter was, oh what do you call it It’s Nether
Edge way, it was like a church with a kind of church hall at side where they had, you know,
whist drives and things like that. Well then we took that over. So we were pretty near to’t
moors then.
(Yeah, and how often did you go up on the moors)
Oh at least once a week, at least once a week and sometimes, you know, at weekends.
(Yeah, ‘cos was there an American base up near Midhope up that way)
Midhope I can’t remember American base, no. And I, no, and I would because I was, it
were... there was army base ‘cos they were regular soldiers that trained, it were Midhope
15

Moors where I trained as anti tank gunner but there were professional soldiers based, they
were kind of little village of Nissen huts where regular soldiers lived. But I can’t remember
the Yanks.
(Oh right, well maybe I’ve got that wrong. I think the area’s called North America locally.)
They call it North America farm but that were before war. I’ve a faint recollection that
somebody once told me reason it were called North America when, you know, when they
did clearances.
(Ah, ok.)
A lot of them went to North America, you know, peasants that were chucked out so as they
could, wealthy could shoot a few grouse, murder a few grouse. And I think they went to
North America. Which would be Canada wouldn’t it
Fifth Track:
(So you were saying about SCAM, when you set that up, what sort of date was that)
Oh, would it be ’t sixties I don’t know if I’ve got date down here.... Terry’d know, he’ll fill it
in for you. I would say it’d be seventies probably. I don’t know, 2010 now, eighties.
(Right.)
Aye eighties.
(Right, and were the rallies still happening then With the rallies)
Oh no, no, no. No, I can’t remember they were.
(Was there any reason they stopped)
16

That much going off, you know, all me life, I forget, at my age now.
(Yes. So did some people feel that they’d achieved what they needed to with the Park
being created)
Some did yes but we didn’t ‘cos we still, you know.
(Didn’t have access to where you wanted)
We still didn’t have access to the place we wanted to go.
(Right. So you were saying about the organised trespasses, you’d let the police know you
were going)
Oh yes, and the landowners.
(So the police would turn up would they to check that you were …)
Oh yes, yes, yes, yes. They’d, they wouldn’t be on top of us like, they’d be either way
down’t path or way in front. And they never interfered. And course we’d never got close
enough to landowners to have any altercation, which was good, which we didn’t want
anyway. ‘Cos, you see their argument was “Oh you’ll disturb grouse, you’ll do this and
you’ll do that”. All our life we were about preserving countryside and ‘t wildlife not blooming
getting rid of it and murdering it. That’s what we go for in first place, to see it.
(So do you think that with the CRoW Act and that kind of thing, do you think that was
enough)
No, no, no. Want a footpath round the coasts of England now, all the way round.
(Do you think that’ll happen in your lifetime)
Oh it’ll happen, might not be my time but it will happen. They’re still campaigning, yes.
Ramblers’ yeah.
17

(Yeah.)
Sixth Track:
(So right back to the beginning, was it different the way you walked in the 30s and in the
50s)
I suppose it is in a way because in, not so much 30s but late 40s and 50s, there were a lot
more younger people and families. I mean there were my wife and I and our two kids. And
I can remember taking groups youth hostelling, perhaps a dozen kids, all walk regularly on
Sunday wi’t Ramblers, with their parents. Well you don’t get that now ‘cos kids do their
own thing don’t they They’ve got their computers and this, that and ‘t other. I mean you
don’t see parents going up river wi’ a fishing rod and a jam jar like you used to when I were
a kid.
(No I suppose not [laughing].)
See, it’s a different world. And of course in our days at school, we left school at fourteen,
now as I think earliest is sixteen isn’t it Or probably nearer eighteen for some of ‘em, I
don’t know.
(I didn’t leave till I was eighteen.)
No, when I were fourteen I were working in steelworks.
(Yeah, it’s very different, isn’t it)
Different world.
(Yeah. It sounds daft but were the clothes that you wore different)
Yes. They hadn’t invented nylon [laughing] for a start. And that sort o’ stuff, you know
goretex and all that. What we used to wear, and it’s funny this ‘cos you see some old
18

photographs and you can tell, when we went out dressed up with our Burberry coats well,
there were no climbing shops like this, well I’m saying, there were only, there were one. I
think Blacks had one in, oh, top o’t Moor, not where it is now, nowhere near where it is. But
anyway, that’s by the way. What we did, when they were no longer fit for going out
dressed up we cut bottoms off, you know, and they were short coats then. So, inevitably
everything that we walked in were something made o’ something we’d had for when we
was dressed up.
(So did you have waterproofs)
Yes, but mostly cycle capes. They hadn’t invented anoraks and things … see, as I’ve told
you, us anoraks was cut down Burberrys.
(Right [laughing].)
But us waterproof, if we needed one, were cycle capes.
(Right. And what did you put on your feet)
Army boots wi’ nails in.
(And did that change When did you get …)
Oh, when did it change I suppose it changed as we got wealthier and started work and
got better jobs and things like that. And of course, like now, everything progresses don’t it
(It does.)
Starts in a little way but … and then...
(And did you take rucksacks with you in)
Oh yes, and that’s another thing, it were nearly, inevitably army packs. They hadn’t
invented – my first proper rucksack, and it were the bee’s knees then, were a frame
19

ucksack, and there weren’t many, you know, in fact they were the only ones that you got
from Norway.
(Right.)
A Norway rucksack were famous. You were a real somebody if you’d got a Norwegian
rucksack. ‘cos the rest of us – well I did eventually get a Norwegian one – but before I had,
you know, a frame rucksack, it were knapsacks from‘t army. In fact everything we’d got
nearly were from’t army stores. Us boots, ex army boots, and things like that. And socks of
course, stockings. And even trousers. I remember having a khaki jumper and things like
that, jersey. Most things we got were from’t army store.
(And did you take like a packed lunch with you)
Oh yes, packed lunch and a flask, yeah, always. Mmm.
(And how far did you walk)
Varied. But I would say we walked a lot farther then than they do now for simple reason,
especially in summer, we always had tea out and walked after tea. That never happens
now. I don’t know why but it never happens now. And I can remember it changing. Some
perfectly nice young ladies joined RA with us and our leading rambles were RA, and these
young ladies they wanted to get back to get to church, you know. They’d been used to
going to church I suppose in the morning and afternoon, but they’d dropped that to come
walking but they still wanted to go at night. And that’s when it started, you know, finishing
early. But for many years we walked... And I’ll give you an example. A ramble I led every
year for many years was Kinder Round. Now that’s not around top o’ Kinder, that’s round
bottom of Kinder and that’s twenty odd mile.
(Right.)
‘Cos you’d go, start at Edale, go up Jacob’s Ladder, not onto Kinder, down other side to
Hay Field, across and up Ashop Clough, across to’t Snake, and down back o’t Snake Inn
then across Snake Road at, oh, Ladybower, and then go on past Edale Hostel and that
back to Edale for train.
20

(That’s quite a long way.)
That were exceptional that one but normally I would say an average’d be about twelve
mile. But, as I said, we walked for longer, you know, longer hours. And I’ve always said a
person can walk as far as he can breath if he takes his time. It’s when you start trying to
catch up with somebody. That’s one o’ problems I think today. I mean I don’t go now wi’t
groups and that because I can’t. But I’ve heard one or two grumbling about pace and, you
know, some younger people have got to be at front and to be at front they’ve got to be
quick to get at front. And then it finish up groups going too fast. And instead of taking their
time and they finish up at bus stop at station half an hour, an hour before train’s due.
Whereas if they’d took their time it’d be a lot more pleasurable.
(And they’d be just on time. [Laughing] So were you ever involved in any accidents, you
know, people hurting themselves on the moors, rescues, that kind of thing)
Rescue, only, you’re going to laugh at this. I can remember rescuing... That’s another
thing, I’ll just talk about that for a bit. When we first got the National Parks and Kinder
Scout and that, the landlord at ‘t pub at – what do you call it now, at Edale Oh, he was the
only warden.
(The Ramb…no, it was the Nag’s Head wasn’t it)
Nag’s Head, Nag’s Head, yeah. I were going to tell you his name then but I’ve forgot.
(Fred.)
He was the warden.
(Fred Herdman)
Yeah, Fred Herdman, aye. And, you know, I was on Kinder Scout committee with him.
When you get to ninety two your memory goes. And then after Fred it was – I were going
to tell you, I knew when I said Fred Herdman it were other one – what you do call him,
Tomlin
21

(Tom Tomlinson)
Tom Tomlinson.
(I’ve heard that name before.)
Yeah, he was the first paid warden and then the rest of us were all volunteers. And we had
an arm band, it said “Warden” but it also said Ramblers’ Association on it. And we only
wardened it at weekends. There was no wardens, you know, Monday to Friday and all,
you know, Clarion, Co-op, RA, oh, various rambling clubs all sent volunteers every week,
you know, didn’t all do same weekend, we, Ramblers’d do one weekend, Co-op another
and Clarion another. And it was all done voluntarily. And apart from that, at the same time,
we all, we got Longshaw Estate, you know, and presented to National Trust. Now there
was just one paid warden for that. So when we weren’t’ on Kinder Scout we were on,
doing, burning rubbish and collecting rubbish on … and by that time I’d got kids and they
were perhaps round about ten years old, eight, ten, and they used to love it Longshaw
wardening ‘cos we used to get all rubbish up and broken trees, branches, and have a
bonfire, then put roast potatoes in and things. And, oh, kids used to think it were
marvellous.
(Sounds great [laughing]. So the wardening at Edale was that, what did that involve, was
that also clearing trees and…)
No, no, the warden was purely mountain rescue. And you know the first person I rescued
(No.)
Were one o’ first full time wardens.
(Really [laughing])
I met him on Kinder Scout and he asked me way off, he were lost [laughing]. ‘Cos then
they started having paid wardens like you know, eventually. I just don’t know what year
22

they started but, as I say, in first place we were all volunteers. And obviously, of course,
we worked. It was only weekends.
(Yeah. So what did you do as a warden)
As a warden we just walked, wandered across Kinder Scout or Bleaklow looking for
anybody in trouble, you know. And there were a lot, I wouldn’t have said they were lost,
perhaps misplaced, and we’d perhaps be able to show ‘em easy way off, you know. ‘cos
sometimes what they think’s easy way off’s the hardest and they finish up climbing down a
waterfall.
(Yeah, that’s not ideal is it [laughing])
It isn’t, no.
(Did you go out in all weathers Did you go out in the winter)
Oh yes, yes, yes.
(And were the winters different, ‘cos people tell me about the deep snows that they used to
have.)
Yes, oh aye, I think they were harder winters, yes, I’m certain they were. ‘cos I think all this
climate change and, you know, don’t forget, I mean working class men didn’t have motor
cars then, you know, you had to be a boss to have a motor car. So there weren’t the
pollution that there is now and, you know, global warming or whatever you like to call it. So
I think it’s inevitable that winters were worse. But I can only remember one Sunday
morning and it said buses weren’t running and I were leading a walk in Peak District, I
forget where I were going now, and Irene said “Well you’re not – buses aren’t running, you
can’t do walk” I said “Well what if somebody turns up” And at that time I lived on Ecclesall
Road, bottom end, so it weren’t all that far to walk to bus station. So I walked to bus station
and one lad turned up. So we had a walk down’t canal [laughing] ‘cos there were no
buses, no, we had a walk down’t canal. But it had it’s, you know, it’s been wonderful. I can
remember walking in Julian Alps and I did a kind of an horse shoe walk round a valley on a
ridge. And it were a perfectly good path on this ridge. It were a pretty sharp ridge but a
23

perfectly safe path till we got to end of ridge and then there were a cliff. And in this cliff
were iron rungs. And she says “We can’t go down there” She says “I’m not going down
there” she said “We’d better go back”. Well it were end o’ day. I said “We can’t go back it’ll
be dark any time and we’ve got to get to hotel” Anyway, I got her down.
([Laughing].)
It’s so sad to see Irene, but she’s actually been a wonderful wife, wonderful.
(Yeah. So you always went walking together after you got …)
Yes, yes. In the sixty five years we’ve been together we’ve never ever been out for
pleasure without each other.
(Wow, wow.)
And she used to come to committee meetings with me and all that sort of stuff.
(So were there many women)
And our president, who was our president some years ago, said she was the finest lady
walker he’d ever met.
Seventh Track:
(So were there many lady walkers, were there many)
Oh yes, yes, yes, and I think there were as many as there were men really. Because that
class, in those – and I think it’s a bit like it even now – I mean there are more working class
people are members and that, but the vast majority are professional people, like school
teachers and people like that. And I still think it leans that way a bit. Course there’s a
tradition in Sheffield of working lads and their dads going fishing. I mean when I were a
young man there used to be, oh, dozens o’ coaches round the station approach, you
24

know, going out into Lincolnshire to’t rivers for coarse fishing. And course the sons all
went. And all lads of my age in’t steelworks, I’d say, I can only remember four of us that
went cycling and walking, all rest went wi’ rest o’ mob, fishing.
(Right, right. And can you tell me about, I don’t know if you know anything about the rough
ramblers I’ve read in some of the, you know, Ward’s Clarion handbooks)
Clarion, yeah.
(It mentions the rough ramblers, sort of in the 50s, I don’t know whether they were
anything)
No, I can’t remember anything about them, no, certainly avoided me.
(I’m just fascinated by sort of the whole, I suppose the political involvement of people.)
Oh yes, yes, course it were, yeah. I mean it’s funny that because a colleague and I were
both shop stewards in same works and he were my best man and I were his best man and
we went everywhere together until we started courting us different girls. But he stopped wi’
trade union and he finished up under Scanlon in London and he had a big posh house in
one o’ suburbs o’ London. And I went other way and got – still campaigning – but voluntary
campaigning and I didn’t get owt. In fact it ‘cost me money ‘cos I was paying me own bus
fares and everything like, you know. So that’s how we kind of went different – we were
both campaigning as socialists, of course I’ve been a socialist all me life, always will be,
and we wouldn’t have got any o’ this what we’ve got if it hadn’t been for‘t Labour
government in 1945 and that, you know. Well if we’d have got it it’d been a long, long time
coming. So, you see you can’t, either Labour or Conservative, the very word conserve is to
conserve for themselves, doesn’t matter about anybody else. Whereas as a proper
socialist you want to share with everybody the good things.
(So did the Labour government make a difference then)
Oh yes, yes. I think we’d have had to wait for another Labour government if we ever got
one. But we’d’ve never had got access under Conservatives.
25

(And we’ve talked a lot about Sheffield and the Sheffield groups, was there groups from
other places)
Oh yes, yes, particularly Manchester we got involved with, ‘cos it was a big group like ours.
But you see Sheffield represented, in those days, you know, Barnsley, Doncaster,
Rotherham, Chesterfield, in fact our title is SYNED, you know, South Yorkshire and North
East Derbyshire branch o’ Ramblers’ Association. And in those days Sheffield and
Manchester were the representative bodies and if anybody from the other towns wanted
involvement, and they did, they had to come to Sheffield to meetings, it was part of
Sheffield. Well now, you know, many years later, now we’ve got, you know, Doncaster
group, Rotherham group, Derwent [Dearne] Valley group, so all different groups. Whilst
we have an area meeting that they attend, I mean Sheffield is just a group same as the
others. So each group has it’s own committee but they have representatives on the area.
(Yeah, and as well as the trespassing, what else did you do Did you, were there
campaigns elsewhere, did you write to people)
Not really.
(So it was an action …)
If I wrote to MPs it were about access, no. It were our life, you know, everything. Even
when we first knew each other we used to go dancing. The dances I MC’d were all to raise
money for YHA and Ramblers for, you know, for campaigning.
(Yeah, and what was the biggest change you think you’ve seen in your lifetime to do with
the moors and the peak district)
Well, the availability and the capability of ordinary working class lads like me having the
freedom to walk in this wonderful land of ours.
(That’s fantastic, thank you very much. I’ll stop it there.)
26

Mr & Mrs Frodsham: Interviewed by Hazel Winder, with Janet Garlick (Mr and Mrs F’s
daughter).
At Broadstone Farm, Ramshaw, 12 th July, 2010
(HW: So can we, with both of you if we start with Mrs. Frodsham, could you tell me your full
name and date of birth)
Mrs F: Marion Frodsham, date of birth is 19 th of the 12 th 1940.
(HW: And Mr Frodsham)
Mr F: My name is William Stanley Frodsham, my date of birth is 11 th of 12 th ‘32.
(HW: Ok, thank you very much, and how long have you been married for)
Mr and Mrs F: Fifty years.
(HW: Congratulations, and is Janet your only daughter)
Mr F: No, no.
(HW: How many children)
Mr F: Two more daughters and a son.
(HW: Very good.)
Mr F: Got two more like that.
[Laughter.]
(HW: Well, whereabouts, first of all Mrs Frodsham whereabouts were you born)
Mrs F: In Leek.
(HW: In Leek)
Mrs F: Yeah.
(HW: Ok and Mr Frodsham)
Mr F: I were born in Addis Green.
(HW: Addis Green Oh right.)
Mr F: [] you’ll know that place well enough.
(HW: I certainly do, we used to have a ranger place there.)
1

Mr F: []
(HW: and you were born there did you say)
Mr F: Yeah.
(HW: And how long did you live there for)
Mr F: Twenty five year.
(HW: And then did you move here when you got married)
Mr F: No, I moved to Winking Man, what is called the Winking Man now, it were the Moorland
Club, moved in [] moved in for 3 years.
(JG: Oh it was a club)
Mr F: Yeah.
(JG: Was it)
Mr F: Yeah, it were called the Moorland Club.
(JG: Oh I didn’t realise that.)
(HW: When did it become as it is today)
Mr F: Oh when some of these others were taken over and called it the Winking Man, er I don’t
know who it was.
Mrs F: Barber
Mr F: Barber that did that, it could have been, I’m not sure about that who changed name of it
but it started off as a filling station.
(JG: And a café weren’t it)
Mrs F: Then a café.
Mr F: I moved in the day the café opened, I helped both buildings, only I weren’t working for
him, I went up when I’d finished work, I used to have me tea and go off and give him hand for
an hour or two.
(JG: Excellent, I’d no idea.)
Mr F: Then we’d used to go Cottage and have a pint somewhere, quite good.
[Laughter.]
2

(HW: How long’s the Royal Cottage been there as a pub then)
Mr F: Been a pub all my life.
(HW: Do you know how old it really is)
Mr F: No, Prince Charles were it, Prince Charles, bonny Prince Charles supposed to slept
there on old couch, whether it’s true or not I don’t know.
: ‘Cus it were the old turn:pike there, wasn’t it
Mr F: I’ve slept on that flaming couch and I can tell you it wouldn’t have been very
comfortable.
[Laughter.]
(HW[]: I mean, did you feel it when you were sleeping on there or were you so inebriated it
didn’t really matter)
Mr F: Flaming thing wanted chopping up years ago.
[Laughter.]
(HW: So, you were born Mrs Frodsham, you were born in Leek)
Mrs F: Yeah.
(HW: And did you move here when you got married)
Mrs F: Well we moved at Bank Top for 3 months…
Mr F: 6 months.
Mrs F: 6 months.
(HW: Which Bank Top is that)
Mrs F: At Bew[] round Roaches.
Mr F: Just on topside of Roaches.
Mrs F: Then on 6 th September we moved up here, in 1960.
(HW: And have you farmed the land round here at all)
Mr F: No, no.
Mrs F: No.
3

Mr F: We rented it first just the house, and then when it came up for sale I bought the house
and buildings and just 4 acres of land, so I’ve since bought another acre, haven’t I
Mrs F: Yeah.
(JG: Jack had farmed it, hadn’t he, while we lived here.)
Mr F: Yeah, Jack owned, he farmed it.
Mrs F: Jack had owned it, he was renting it.
Mr F: He rented it first ‘cus [] Bradley had bought it I think he give £400 for it and 12 month
after he were trying to sell it and he [] for £300 ‘cus he couldn’t afford the mortgage. Then
when Jack had rented off him it helped him out a little bit, then he finished up buying, Jack
had finished up buying it I believe, but he said for 300 quid []
(HW: Did it used to be part of the Harpur:Crewe estate]
Mr F: Yeah.
Mrs F: No.
(HW: Where was the boundary)
Mrs F: No, Swythamley.
(HW: Or was it Swythamley I can, I get muddled because…)
Mr F: Ah the boundary for Swythamley is just down [] t’river.
(HW: So Swythamley’s the Roaches, the other side of Black Brook.)
Mr and Mrs F: Yeah.
(HW: Is that right and Harper:Crewe is this side Did they get sold about the same time, the
two estates, did they get broken up about the same)
Mr F: No, No the Swyathamley estate was only sold 20, 30 years ago were it [].
(JG: ‘T’isn’t long, well no Dad I were about 22, 23 when they sold it, when Matty bought it.)
Mrs F: So about 25 years.
(JG: Yeah.)
Mr F: Didn’t realise she were that old.
[Laughter.]
4

(JG: Well I know you’d come back and that one down at [] Bridge had made £100 and I’d got
£100 in my savings and I’d thought oh I should have got that.
(HW: Did you used to see the animals on the roaches, because people used to say they used
to see, well I knew the wallabies were there until recently, but…)
Mr F: No, in my younger days, Jack Besset [] from travellers reserve [] was game keeper,
not the Jack Besset you’ll know, his Uncle, and er, he wouldn’t have anybody or anything on.
(HW: It was all private)
Mr and Mrs F: Yeah.
Mr F: He used to chuck ‘em off Ramshaw Roach [].
(HW: And was that because um they shoot for grouse)
Mr F: They weren’t allowed on there, it were private ground.
(HW: And was it shot for grouse)
Mr F: Yeah.
(HW: Did they get a lot)
Mr F: They got a hell of a lot more than what they get today anyway.
Mrs F: You went beating didn’t yer, one time
Mr F: I went beating yeah, 10 bob a day.
(HW: Did you)
Mr F: Yeah.
(JG: But there were a lot of grouse when we were kids as they used to [] sheep when we
were kids, didn’t they)
Mrs F: Yeah.
(JG: ‘Cus Mrs Smith used to have grouse parties there, feeding them didn’t she)
Mr F: I don’t really know how, I bet they used to have 20 grouse on this common at back ‘ere.
(HW: Round the back here)
Mr and Mrs F: Yeah.
5

(HW: Oh right.)
Mr F: You could walk along Roach Road [] in them days and there’d be a dam great bunch
of grouse sat in road y’know they’d go up like a cloud and now hardly, we’ve seen one grouse
this morning when we come down, haven’t we
Mrs F: Yeah.
Mr F: But we have a few more on back here than what we used to have, they come down to
back of ‘em trees at night on a lot of nights, we’ve even had a partridge in yard this morning,
with 3 young’uns, it had 7 last week.
Mrs F: Yeah and it’s only got 3 now.
(HW: What were you saying about grouse parties)
(JG: Mrs Smith used to have, they feed them didn’t she the people that came, not the beaters
the shooters, she used to have to feed them ‘cus in her front room, you could never go round
Mrs Smith’s on a certain day she’d say I’ve got the shooting party coming.)
(HW: Where did she live)
Mrs F: What’s it called
Mr F: Is it called Roach, it’s not called Roach Side it’s called Roach House or something isn’t
it
(HW/JG: The big one)
Mrs F: No.
Mr F: No it isn’t, it’s not a big house, its ordinary size.
(HW: This size)
(JG: Shay Top)
Mrs F: Shay Top Shay [butt] Shay [head] Whatever it were, there’s 3 isn’t there.
Mr F: Shore House.
Mrs F and JG: Shore House.
(HW: Shore House.)
Mr F: I knew we should get round to it.
[Laughter.]
6

(JG: Mind block.)
(HW: And she used to feed everybody then)
(JG: No, not the beaters, just the privileged few.)
Mr F: The beaters used to go, well the beaters on this side used to go to Royal Cottage for
their dinner. We used to take us sandwiches with us and well in them days, we’d only be 12
or 13, perhaps not that old because we left school at 14 and we could have a pint o’ale with
our dinner in the days, well we couldn’t go buy one, mind .
[Laughter.]
(HW: They didn’t provide your lunch for the beaters then, had to take your own)
Mr F: No, no, no, no we just took our sandwiches with us.
(HW: And was that just, were they long days beating)
Mr F: It were bloody hard work walking across these moors.
(HW: Where would you have started)
Mr F: Well they’d start same as, on Ramshaw Rocks and beat them for start, then they’d go
on to [] Torr and beat this one this road ‘cus they had butts all down’t side of road, didn’t
they
(JG: ‘Cus they used to shoot cross road.)
Mr F: You shoot across the flaming road.
(JG: As kids we use to go round and pick up bullets for brass on [])
Mr F: It isn’t long ago we were coming back, I were coming back from working, you were with
me.
Mrs F: Yeah.
Mr F: And come back over mermaid didn’t I wasn’t it, blind bridge or somewhere, I come
back over that top and they were shooting, and they were shooting right across the bloody
road.
Mrs F: And they went right in front.
Mr F: I had to stop ‘cus I were right in middle of where they were shooting, weren’t we And
they brought a new law in and they got to be 20 yards from road, or something, haven’t they
Jack Perkin moved all them []. They’ve all dropped in now. I never went on Roaches, Middle
Edge was bad. And that one down there [] Old Jack Basset always used to stick me in []
[House] And had’t walk right up middle of flaming common [] Notbury was another mad lot.
7

(HW: And that was Middle Edge that you were saying, that you…)
Mr F: Yeah.
[Mrs F agreeing.]
(HW: And did you ever do any beating anywhere else then, did you do any on the Derby
Estate)
Mr F: No, no, only on this. There was no way of getting that way, I had’t walk there.
(HW: Well people walked miles, didn’t they, so…)
Mr F: Yeah, people walked everywhere.
(HW: Yeah, oh yeah.)
Mr F: If you had to go to phone you had’t walk up to go to Post Office.
(HW: When you lived at Addis Green then, where did you go to school)
Mr F: Ramshaw.
(HW: How many children were there)
Mr F: I would think when I started there must have been about 60 there.
(HW: There was a lot more families around.)
Mr F: Well there was a lot more families with, uh, they had biggish families in them days, but I
mean a lot of ‘em come from up [] Because the other school’s [Meebrook], there weren’t
one on [Blacher] Then, half of ‘em, half of [Bew] Come to Ramshaw, the other half went to
Meersbrook didn’t they
[Mrs F agreeing]
(HW: Was Flash school around then)
Mr F: Yeah.
(HW: Oh right.)
Mr F: [] Flash school ‘cus there was a lot in ‘em because there was a lot of [] about and
they had 12 and 13 of them in a family didn’t they, some of ‘em. When I went to Ramshaw
school, you started at 5 and they went ‘til they were 14. I mean there were a lot of people like
Jack Perkin, you’d know Jack very well.
Mrs F: Gamekeeper.
8

Mr F: He were a gamekeeper at [Hayhead].
(HW: I don’t know, no I didn’t know him, I didn’t know him.)
Mr F: You missed a treat he were a good bloke, I went to school with him, he’s a lot older
than me but [Ernie] was a lot older than me and I went to school with him, so there’s quite a
lot of ‘em [Sid], Les Perkin, May, May [Plews].
(JG: Yeah, you said though that you used to take your food in ‘cus they used to cook and
things, didn’t they)
Mr F: Oh yeah, I take sandwiches.
JG and Mrs F: No, no.
(JG: No you took your rhubarb or whatever ‘cus you cook it.)
Mr F: Well back, when Mrs [Cockle] come up there.
Mrs F: First school to have school meals.
Mr F: You’d take rhubarb in summertime one day a week so we could have []... She used to
do the shopping and get the meat and the veg-es and bring ‘em up to school with her then
[Maud Brooke] did the cooking, and she could cook, she were no special chef or anything
like that but she could cook, the lass could.
(HW: So they were proper school dinners you were getting then)
Mr F: Cost about 4d a day.
(HW: Fourpence a day [gasps]. Well that’s unusual though, most schools you had to bring
your own, bring your sandwiches or…)
Mr F: Mrs [Cockle] was a very good teacher in that respect, she used to get concerts up for
the, to get money for the, ... buy stuff for the soldiers, and used to get dances and all them
sorts of things. She bought curtains, there were no curtains round the windows in’t school,
she almost furnished the flaming school. She were a very hard working woman. And I thought
she come from Hull, but apparently she didn’t. She’s a local person come from Roundbottom
house Or something, I think her name, her maiden name was Finnegan or something. Some
relation to Finnegans [] I believe, I’m not sure about this but I believe she’s still alive. I would
like t’ meet her if she is.
(HW: I wonder where she’d be.)
Mrs F: I dunno.
Mr F: She’s somewhere around Leek Bottom house Or somewhere, Ashbourne Or
somewhere, she’s somewhere about, I didn’t know, I thought she come from Hull but she
9

didn’t, she married a bloke from Hull, her husband come from Hull because they were moving
them about everywhere in those days, if they weren’t in’t Army, weren’t they
(HW: Try to find out.)
Mr F: Arthur Bullock Taught us for a while, when I first started there was Arthur Bullock and
Florrie [] teaching. [Florrie] was a local lass she lived in the [Smedlers]. We found her in the
gutter one morning, just below where Joel lives at top of road, just below Allie [Gimpson],
she’d gone off road with her bike, she were unconscious, we had to get the ambulance to her.
(HW: How long would it take an ambulance to get up here then)
Mr F: Ey, I’ve no idea, it’d take a while.
(HW: It would, yeah.)
Mr F: Have to find one, biggest job would be finding one, in them days there wouldn’t be
many about.
(HW: That’s what I was thinking, yeah.)
Mrs F: Summer used to burst tar bubbles on road ‘cus there were hardly any.
Mr F: You could sit in the road because cars only came down, there were only one or two an
hour I should think. If you saw Sammy [Longson’s] Wagon coming up, when he got to []
gutter he’d be boiling it’s flaming head off on a hot day, and he’d had to go find some water to
put in it.
(HW: So it was mainly people using horses)
Mr F: Yeah.
(HW: For everything)
Mr F: There were not tractors up ‘ere ‘til end of’t war or just after it, then there was nothing
like there is now [] the machinery they’ve got now.
(HW: Oh it’s, you can’t compare it, can you So were there many horses around)
Mr F: There were quite a lot, yeah, most farmers had one, we didn’t, not for a long time, we
couldn’t afford one.
(HW: What about getting your water and electricity and stuff like that)
Mr F: Water, no electrics.
(HW: Where did you have to get your water from)
10

Mr F: Water, you used to at Addis Green, we walked across yard with bucket and fetched it
out of troughs across ‘t yard.
(HW: That was at Addis Green)
Mr F: Yeah, but everybody did that, they went to toilet in hole in the ground and they went to
fetch water out of hole in ground, most apartments and places did, didn’t they
Mrs F: Yeah, well we even did it ‘ere when we come in 1960.
(HW: Did you used to collect it off the gutters)
Mr F: Pardon
(HW: Did you used to collect the rain water off the gutters into barrels and that)
Mrs F: Yeah, we used to fetch drinking water from up Notbury and everywhere, didn’t we
Mr F: There was no guttering up here for a long time, were there
(HW: From Notbury)
Mrs F: Yeah, there used to be a spout what comes out down Notbury.
(JG: Redway)
Mrs F: Yeah Redway, and we used to get us water there.
Mr F: Fetched it from there, we fetched it from there since, when we’ve runned out of water,
spring run dry now, we’re back on mains.
(HW: Are you usually on spring then)
Mr and Mrs F: Yeah.
(HW: That’s good.)
Mr F: But it’s gone dry, it’s been dry a month, hasn’t it)
Mrs F: Yeah.
Mr F: Never known it go dry so soon, it’s dried up before but it’s usually August, September
time, this time June.
Mrs F: You can’t fetch water from Notbury now, can we They’ve turned that.
Mr F: They turned it back, haven’t they, now.
(HW: They’ve done what)
11

Mr F: Well there used to be pipe that came out of wall down Redway, at Notbury.
(HW: Which is Redway)
Mr F: Going into Notbury, you going down from New Lodge down to Notbury, just at bottom of
the hill they used to, why I don’t know, but they used to call it [Toweys] spout, and there as
this much water coming into side of road all time. And a lot of farmers round there, used to
stop and fill churns there a lot of farmers went t’fill churns there didn’t they y’know, just to get
water for drinking and washing things like that.
Mrs F: When ours ran down we went up there for it.
Mr F: Yeah, been up there hundreds of times, didn’t we
Mrs F: Yeah.
(HW: You don’t realise, ‘cus there’s so much water coming down there, but I didn’t realise it
was spring water)
Mrs F: And there was no electric on ‘ere ‘til 64, 1964.
(JG: You said Dad, that in the war the Ministry of Ag. made you change, grow food, didn’t
they)
Mr F: Yeah, well we had two lots ploughs at Addis Green, our old chap he was a right
damned old slave driver, he used to have us fetching pea sticks out of Rambatch Wood, we
fetched, peas grow up and you’d have a row right up this ploughed field, a row of peas.
(HW: So you had to plough up some of the moorlands or the grassland for the war)
Mr F: Well what was ploughed up was part of the meadow to start off with, and then we
ploughed a piece right up again round hill that as, well that were just pasture land, but it were
quite good land [] it were bit of a job getting muck and stuff up there from farm, but we had a
horse, when we got that, otherwise we’d have to hire somebody with a tractor like John
[Odkison] or somebody like that, we went round [] and what no, he’d take it up.
(HW: Was much of the moorland areas used for vegetables, crops in the war, or not really)
Mr F: No.
(HW: It was just left was it)
Mr F: It were just…
(HW: Was it just the pasture, the grass)
Mr F: Well I mean they tried to plough some of [] and it was all rock, [Downsdale] never
ploughed any, but I, about 5 year after the Ministry of Agriculture, they had a grant on, and
12

you could plough this land, well the Ministry would plough it and reseed it for you and it didn’t
cost you anything. And [Downsdale] had all around the hill done, but they couldn’t plough
anything during war like. But that would be, oh what was his name [Bourne] the bloke from
[Ipstons] he was in charge of this job, he made some people plough ground up and others he
didn’t, he had his favourites I suppose.
(HW: I suppose the estates in a way were protected as well, you had the gentry at the
estates, so do you think that had partly to do with it, why they were left)
Mr F: No, no I don’t think so.
(HW: No)
Mr F: I mean, hardly ever saw ‘em, only rent day when they come up to cottage to collect
rent.
(HW: What about hay meadows, did you used to have more hay meadows)
Mr F: Yeah at Addis Green I think there was, must have been getting on for 20 acres, out of
48, there must have been at least 16anyway, ‘cos big meadow s’posed to been 11, then
there was a little field at side, must have been about 4 acre, and odd couple little crofts
(HW: It’s very wet over there though isn’t it, well it is now, really wet.)
Mr F: Some of Addis Green, it’d be really wet now because they let all rain block up, haven’t
they They only had the old storm drains, and been running on ‘em with tractotrs and things
like that... rolled ‘em in I reckon...
(HW: Ah that’d be why it is like that now, ok, yeah ‘cos it’s particularly boggy now.)
Mr F: There’s wet patch, there’s two or three wet patches on Addis Green, we even had a
horse bogged on it once y’know, went right in right up t’shoulder and we had, I forget what he
had got on him, it were a mowing machine or something, we had to get it out, and pull
mowing machine but get it out, somebody sitting on it’s head to stop it doing, you know
throwing itself about, they throw thereselves about, didn’t they
(HW: Yeah, very much so, it can really hurt themselves as well can’t they, yeah. What about
birds, difference in birds, we talked a bit about the grouse, that there were more grouse.)
Mr F: All sorts of birds, even found a golden plover’s nest once.
(HW: Did you)
Mr F: On ground at Addis Green, but now well I don’t know if there’s as many now or not, but
I don’t think there is. You got too many badgers about…
Mrs F: Foxes.
Mr F: And foxes…
13

Mrs F: Magpies.
Mr F: Haven’t even got any hens now.
Mrs F: Foxes had them
(HW: But, do you think it’s, do you think it is purely that, that they don’t do vermin control so
much now)
Mr F: I’m not sure what it is really, that is a lot of it because we’ve got a lot of crows, we’ve
got a hell of a lot of badgers and we got a lot of foxes and they if the don’t get the eggs they’ll
get the little birds and things like that. Magpies there’s hundred’s of them in’t there
(JG: Not many lapwings though, you said.)
Mr F: Hmm
(JG: Not many lapwings you said, haven’t yer)
Mr F: Well up til now there’s always been one on Janice’s field just across road at bottom
here, and they ain’t got one this time.
(HW: None at all)
Mr F: Nope, Ben Kid[] he lives at Holt[] on Derbyshire side. You know Ben, everybody
knows Ben, his brother in law, he said, I don’t know if he said they got 15 or 20, and we
haven’t got any, and I don’t think Janice has got any this time. I’ve not heard one, Curlews
I’ve heard them shouting. I mean in my younger days there was hundreds of curlews about,
pewits. Tom [] he went to collect pewit eggs one morning, he found a nest down’t field there
boiled ‘em up and they’d got young ’uns in. That was not a good breakfast was it.
(JG: Well there used to be lots of hares though when I was a kid, you could follow hare tracks
everywhere.)
Mr F: Up to 1947 there was hundreds of ‘em, we were [snide] out with ‘em.
(JG: What happened to ‘em)
Mr F: Well in ’47 winter they literally starved to death, they’re not the same as rabbits they
don’t go underground, you see, they just simply got frozen to death. You’d go round a
haystack in the morning it wasn’t unusual to pick a couple or three up, they were, there were
hundreds of ‘em before that, and they never really recovered from that, there’s still one or two
about somebody said there were one run over just below’t gate, or somewhere, I haven’t seen
it.
Mrs F: May said.
14

(JG: They say though when we were kids though Dad you could track the tracks in the snow,
but I’ve never, mind you, I’ve never looked for them for years.)
Mr F: Well Norman did in ’82, when we were walking over [] over’t top here. Norman’s her
brother, he lives in Bournemouth and he’d come up …
Mrs F: He’d never seen snow before …
Mr F: He’d never seen any snow before; not like there was then. Do you remember ’82
(JG: I do.)
Mr F: It was April weren’t it, end of April weren’t it [inaudible] old Richard [Marsh] rang up and
she [Janet] used to do his shopping and he’d rang up on’t Monday morning and he’d got no
bread, this an’ that. We knew he’d be getting short because she used to do her shopping on
Saturday and we couldn’t get out. Anyway, you [inaudible] went didn’t you
Mrs F: Yes.
Mr F: You, Stan and Sue was it
Mrs F: And you took the bread up what we’d got …
Mr F: What bread we’d got left with, put it in a bag an’ took it up. We went straight up by []
but I wouldn’t like to do it now. Up to us knees in snow we were.
Mrs F: And Norman …
Mr F: And Norman, when we got above them trees at [] Tor. He’s a grown man with a family
and he’s following these rabbit tracks. He was just like a little kid in it he were; he’d never,
ever, seen snow like it. And he were same when we got to what we call [Wexta Holme Head].
That’s just below [inaudible] belongs to [inaudible]. Helicopter took off from [Athersbury]…it’d
been with Mrs [].
Mrs F: Some potatoes and things because she’d come back from holiday …
Mr F: She’d come back from holiday on’t Friday and couldn’t get anything in. Something like
that anyway, wasn’t it
[Mrs F talking at the same time and agreeing.]
Mr F: We got up to [landlords] Frank [] grandson [and...] and cleared [down Dale Lane]
out. And when they’d cleared it out, kept pushin’ []. It must have been twelve foot high at
side of road.
And Norman, I’ve never seen anything like it; he was absolutely amazed with it he were. He
didn’t know what to do with it or anything. But, that were Norman. He were up again last week
but we didn’t see him, did we
15

Mrs F: No.
(HW: Do you think the weather has changed a lot since, you know, in the last …)
Mr F: We had a lot worse winters then and we had a winter every winter. Nothing like we’ve
had this last few years. I mean this last winter was bad enough, but I’ve seen ‘em ten times
worse.
(HW: Yeah, I mean this winter really wasn’t that bad, was it)
Mr F: The worst winters are them that come just before Christmases, stop about two or
three... [] with dark nights and things like that.
(HW: Did you used to get stuck here because of, very often because of …)
Mrs F: We used to get stock in … didn’t we
Mr F: We’ve always carried a bit of stock in … Main thing we used to get short of was milk
and bread. That’s about all. But during ‘t war, you got short of everything because ... there
were no money to buy anything then. And you could only buy so much in them days anyway;
it were all rationed weren’t it You could only go andget so much meat and so much cheese.
[] used to come over t’top and drop something off, drop bread off on one of [].
(HW: Did people used to grow a lot of their own stuff then around here)
Mr F: Well they did during‘t war, because you couldn’t get it could you Most people did
anyway. Most people have got a big garden. I went …
(JG: But most people had a pig, didn’t they, dad)
Mr F: Most of ‘em had a pig and they always killed it about the end of November.
(HW: What to see them through the winter)
Mr F: Yeah.
(HW: And I suppose they ate every bit of it. Eh They ate every bit of it!)
Mrs F: Make brawn out its head …
Mr F: You’d always got something to eat in the house if you’d got a pig. And they’re good
food they are. I mean, the bacon was about that thick an’ all fat, very little lean in it.
(HW: But you said something about lime changing the …)
Mr F: Well we had a lot. Everybody … lime were very cheap after’t war. It were these
government grants and everybody bought lime and that’s what altered this country. The
meadows were like a grey, they used to call it “bent” it were like grey wiry stuff … it wasn’t …
16

(HW: In t’meadows)
Mr F: Yeah …
(HW: Because I remember when we talked to John Eardley, you know John down at Clough
House Farm down at Wildboarclough and – I can’t think of the name of the chap – anyway
somebody else and they were saying that down the Clough, that was done a lot with lime; and
this other stuff. Yeah, a lot of it.)
Mr F: Yes, a very good fertiliser wasn’t it lime though But you see until it came on that grant
nobody would pay for it.
(HW: When that happened, did it sort of make the whole place look so different Or was it
just…)
Mr F: The thing that changed this country to my mind was when, I think it was Express
Dairies as used to come round I think, a bloke called Spendywell was driving and he used to
say to farmers, if you put a five gallon o’milk in a churn and put it in the side of the road, I’ll
take it. And there was a Milk Marketing Board then and that was another wage comin’ in…
(HW: Yeah.)
Mr F: … and that made things a lot different. The only reason is people lived up here was
because the rents were fairly little and they couldn’t afford to live anywhere else.
(HW: ‘Cause the land wasn’t worth much …)
Mr F: No it was worth nothing. I went to Leek School and if you come from Flash in them days
you were the scum of the Earth. Nobody wanted to live at Flash, it was a place that nobody
wanted to live at. Now, there all trying to get there, now there’s mains water and electric…
Mrs F: Now there’s electric and water.
Mr F: Mains water and electric.
Mrs F: And toilets, that was a laugh, weren’t it [chuckles.]
Mr F : [] there’s water. They had an influx of, I call them [imports] These people from down
[], we had 3 or 4 of them. They got together because they’ve only got a dry closet at the
bottom of the garden to go to, they wanted flush toilets. They got on the parish council then
got on to Leek council and they got a scheme together and they put a septic tank in, under
yard, well it was a yard weren’t it, in’t field and put ‘em all flush toilets in and put ‘em [sewers]
in and everything. And then when they done that they found out they got no bloody water.
[All laughing.]
Mr F: And it took ‘em 7 years to get water from Ladybower.
[Laughter.]
17

(HW : Really)
Mrs F: Yeah. [Chuckles.]
(HW: They were a bit before their time then weren’t they Ah lovely.)
Mr F: Well like I said everybody used to go to hole in the ground and get water and used to
go to hole in the ground to go’t toilet, and that’s how it was.
(HW: Very much so.)
Mr F: Have you ever seen the twin seat toilets that they used to have
(HW: I’ve not seen a twin seat, I’ve heard of them, but my Aunt had a single seat one.)
Mrs F: At [Betils] There’s..
.
Mr F: We had a twin seat at Addis Green. Big and a little.
Mrs F: Yeah, bigguns went on, older ones went on one and young ones went on other and
two can go together.
(JG: I’d probably be sitting there having conversation after conversation after conversation
after conversation, why not)
Mr F: Yeah, why not
Mrs F: And they didn’t always have toilet paper, you used…and cut it up and you could get
print off it [chuckling].
Mr F: Oh you didn’t go and buy toilet rolls in them days .
Mrs F: No, you just cut newspaper up and put it on a bit of string.
(HW: On a piece of string, yeah.)
(JG: Me Gran used to take butter and things to didn’t she Buxton, to sell.)
Mr F: Well yeah everybody did, before they started milk selling But I think it were selling milk
probably that made the country a lot better, but what really made the country was mains
electric and water.
(HW: But when you were saying about the milk, um did that mean that most people around
had a cow, had a couple of cows)
Mr F: Well I mean they all kept stock and they used to rear calves, but then they started to
putting the milk in the churn and selling it. And gradually got more cows and then they had
18

this DD testing thing and had t’ double fence for every place and if you weren’t DD tested you
had to double fence the place, had to put a barbed wire fence inside the boundary fence.
(HW: Inside your wall, why)
Mr F: Well…
Mrs F: So cows couldn’t get over and over into the next field.
Mr F: The idea were that they couldn’t get into next farm.
(HW: So it was the start really I suppose of all this documentation, if they were tested then
they knew they were…)
Mr F: That was the start of it, now the documentation today is colossal I believe, I’m glad I’m
not in it.
(HW: Did they used to have more barns in the fields around here like they do in other places
So like more in the limestoney areas they used to have a lot of barns that just fell down. Here,
when you get in the Yorkshire Dales you get the barns in all the fields and it used to be like
that much more in limestone, but did you have that here
Mr F: You’ve only got to go across to [Attleborough]. And that barn fell down, didn’t it
(JG: That barn fell down in 20 years, its just gone to nothing.)
Mr F: They used, in my younger days, I don’t remember anyone living at round hill, that’s right
on top of the hill, but that was used for storing hay in.
(HW: Oh was it)
(JG: But you got like Watchmens up here, that must have been…)
Mrs F: That was a house.
Mr F: Well I don’t remember that, but me mother reckons she can remember somebody living
there.
(HW: Up the back here)
Mr F: Yeah on top here.
Mrs F: Watchmens it’s called.
(HW: Doesn’t take long for them to fall down and go though does it, that’s the problem.)
Mr F: Well I think they’ll be better with somebody living in them then letting them fall down, all
these tumbled down old buildings they don’t look good. And they’d be far better built up into
houses.
19

(HW: Well they used to be houses, didn’t they So…)
Mr F: Well most of them did, yeah.
Mrs F: Yeah.)
(HW: Were there more houses over on the Roaches)
Mr F: No.
(HW: That’s always been…)
Mr F: It’s always looked like that to me since, except for where they’ve been mowing the
bloody thing and putting them strips in it.
Mrs F: Yeah.
(HW: Oh what, for the, um, fire control)
Mr F: It belongs to the Wildlife Trust.
Mrs F: For seed, they mow it.
(HW: Oh you mean the bit that belongs to the Wildlife Trust)
Mr and Mrs F: Yeah.
Mrs F: Mowing it in March for seeding, for seeding it in March.
Mr F: After’t winter like we’ve had I wouldn’t know.
Mr F: But, you wouldn’t commit yourself on that one... [sounds like experiencing a bit of a
problem with recording equipment]
[Tape stops]
Mrs F: Ramshaw [] School was still open when, when Janet, Stan and Susan went to
school, but it meant I’d got to walk there with them in the morning and fetch them back in the
afternoon; but a bus come to pick Flash up so that’s why Janet went to Flash from here,
because I didn’t have to walk, I could take her to the bottom of the road and she could get on
a bus.)
(HW: But why no bus to Ramshaw, because you’d pretty well have to go past it)
Mrs F: Yeah, but there weren’t a bus to Ramshaw. Even [name of family referred to] who
lived round the Roaches there, they had to walk their kids to Ramshaw School, every
morning, and go fetch ‘em in the afternoon.
20

(HW: How very strange…)
Mrs F: Huh huh…
(HW: Or did the bus go round …)
Mr F: The bus came from longer …
Mrs F: You see … and then …
Mr F: [Cluses Family referred to above] used to live on the [] moor and … oh, Mr Cope had
it before them …
Mrs F: Yes …
Mr F: Then a bloke named Riley started it off; Stan Riley’s uncle, started it all off, on’t school
journey with an’ old taxi or something didn’t he He were’t first bloke for’t run on’t Flash. But
that’s reason our Janet went to Flash; but that’s reason they all went Flash because the could
get on’t bus at gate.)
Mrs F: Meant me walk with two little un’s; because…
(JG: Was five and the other one was three and one – one, and you’d got to walk ‘em all the
way up to Ramshaw and back again…
(HW: Bit of a way…)
Mr F: I mean we all used to walk to school in our younger days, there were twins, Goodwin
twins, used to live next door, and their mother used to bring them when they first started the
mother used to bring ‘em in the morning and I used to, and walk back this way and walk over
top to [] at night in’t afternoon like.
(HW: So…just going back to Addis Green and Roach was there at the same time, that
building was still there, were they just small farms then)
Mr F: Well, yeah, Addis Green was, if I remember right it were 48 acre an’Roach would be
possibly somewhere round about same, might have been a little bit bigger.
HW: So nothing’s really changed a lot around here has it at all
Mr F: No, I mean we knew everybody round in them days and yet there was no transport to
get anywhere.
HW: But what about shopping then
Mr F: We’d go up an’ catch bus, my mother used to catch bus on Saturday morning and go to
Buxton. We used to have walk up an’ meet bus carry shoppin’ down.
(HW: What about…)
21

Mrs F: It was same when my three was little, I used to have to walk up…
Mr F: You had a twin pram…
Mrs F: …to the bus, there used to come a bus on a Wednesday round ‘ere but I’d got a twin
pram…
Mr F: And they wouldn’t have the bugger on…
Mrs F: …and they wouldn’t help me to hold the two little ones and put the twin pram on; he
wouldn’t have the twin pram on, so I couldn’t go down, then I used to walk up to the main
road, so, and catch it there. But that was only every two hours, and if you saw it going past
when you got near the top, you had to wait two more hours [laughter].
HW: I think I’d turn round and come back…
Mrs F: But be time you’d come back, it was time to go again with three children like, so we
used to go [Mo’s]…
Mr F: Yes.
Mrs F: …and stop with Mo [] till bus come next one.
Mr F: Did you know Mo
HW: No.
Mr F: Oh you missed a treat.
HW: Where did she live
Mr F and Mrs F: At the Winking Man.
HW: At the Winking Man, ah right.
Mr F: [In’t building]. Well he built this.
HW: Did he
Mrs F: This [] yes.
Mr F: Well he knocked it down and rebuilt it. He were a damn good bloke.
Mrs F: Well they were still ‘aving dances at Ramshaw School when I was courting ya, ‘cause
we went up Mo’s and Mo took me down one time because you was late … so …
(HW: That was the …)
22

Mr F: My memory’s gone to what it used to be; I don’t know, I can’t remember things same
as…
(HW: Oh you still remember a lot though, you’ve still given us an awful lot.)
Mr F: There’s old people…There’s an old lady down Leek they had a…she’s hundred in…
Mr F and Mrs F: November.
Mrs F: And they ‘ad her opening a garden…A garden fête…party like…
Mr F: A garden party at Thorncliffe Chapel.
[Telephone rings and Mrs F goes to answer it whilst Mr F keeps talking despite loud ringing.]
Mr F: It was a right good day for her, a lovely day an’ it was good like, you know, marvellous
old woman. She can remember years an’ years ago, when…absolutely marvellous mind she
has.
(HW: Some people do…)
Mr F: Nearly blind, but she’s a lovely woman, absolutely gorgeous she is.
(HW: But some people do have that…)
Mr F: She still looks after herself.
(HW: Fantastic.)
Mr F: Her daughters take her out an’ do the shoppin’, because she struggles to walk now, but
a marvellous old woman. We took her to, last time we went we took her to Australia with us.
(HW: Did you)
Mr F: She was 87 when she went or 88; well she’d a son in Australia, I used to work with him
and every time I’ve gone over to Australia, I’ve always gone to see him…an’ that’s how I got
to know Miss [] through [John] and er she’s got two daughters. She used to have two sons
but one died when he were 31. She gets upset, but still gets upset about it old girl does; but
she’s a marvellous old woman.
(HW: Were there any particular old characters around that you remember that really were
good old characters)
Mr F: Oh there was a lot. [Jeff/Geoff Noel/Knowle] was one of the last ones. There was a
bloke as lived on [Bran]side named Frank [Hollit] a comedian in his own right. I used to go up
to Flask up to Traveller’s Rest on Boxing Day and have a pint or two just to sit an’ listen to
him. You’d laugh your socks off at him. He would do anything, to anybody, it doesn’t matter if
they were strangers in or who they were, they were all treated the same. If they were ordering
a pint he’d put his pot in front – oh it were funny, he weren’t doin’ it just for, he weren’t that
23

short o’ money he was just doin’ it for devilment. But he used to walk from’t [Branside] on to’t
quarries every mornin’ and walk back every night. And then when he ‘ad a fortnight’s holiday
or week or fortnight he used to walk right down, he’d go down as far as [Water Houses] and
stop, anywhere, and spend his holiday…
(HW: Just down there…)
Mr F: …just goin’ from one pub to another an’ going an’ things like that. He’d stop an’ talk all
day to anybody he would, he were a brilliant bloke he was.
(HW: Did…I suppose people didn’t move around much in those days…)
Mr F: Well they couldn’t. It was a job to move weren’t it [] Everywhere you went you’d got to
walk.
(HW: What about holidays Did you have holidays Did you go away because…just didn’t
happen)
Mr F: My first holiday was twelve month after I’d got married. When I were 29. I only went to’t
seaside on a…used to ‘ave trips with [Bibby’s] do you remember
(HW: Oh, heard about it yeah, yeah.)
Mr F: Well I went on one o’ them to, where worrit I know we called in Liverpool, it’d be
Southport I would think or something like that, we went to Bibby’s at Liverpool and then went
up to Southport, or something like that it was. That were’t first trip I ever ‘ad to’t seaside. But I
should be…there’s a photo of me somewhere drinking a pint so I should be, I should be 17
anyway.
(HW: Yeah, yeah, I suppose it was very difficult for people because there wasn’t any money
was there)
Mr F: There was no money at all; no money at all.
(HW: No. So what did you…what was…what did you work…I mean, you weren’t farming,
were you lorry driving)
Mr F: I did finish up lorry driving. I started off farming. When I first left school I went farming to
a woman named Nella Smith at [] 35 bob a week…
(HW: Oh yeah.)
Mr F: …An’ er, I did that for about four year; very cantankerous woman she was …
(HW: What sort of things did you have to do)
Mr F: Well, she was selling milk an’ we ‘ad to get the hay in. When I first went there all she’d
got was a horse that was half mad…did a job to get [to mow with him] or anything and then
she bought a trap an’…I ‘ad to get the hay, I had to mow it and turn it, what ever wanted doin’.
24

I dunno how many acre there were, but [I] used to do it all on my own. And the building
couldn’t hold it all. I couldn’t do it today, I mean…it were bloody stupid doin’ it in them days
really. Used to have to push so much hay on to a loft then get on to loft and shift it back from
[] door. It was hard work. It was. We built a stack at bottom o’ field. [Inaudible]. One went in.
[] jumpin’ off cart, ‘ad to load it yourself…oh it were…
(HW: Very, very hard work.)
Mr F: Yes. But, I don’t know, hard work never bothered me in them days.
(HW: No.)
Mr F: It’s never bothered me all my life really. I’ve always dun me share o’ work.
(HW: What did you do after the farming then)
Mr F: Well, I were working on’t quarries, an’ buildin’ an’ all sorts…
(HW: Yes.)
Mr F: [Left W and J at Brook Bottom] digging trench to [] reservoir, they were.
An’ I left them an’ went working for [Alcocks] at Buxton. Tuppence an hour more money.
Tuppence an hour money, love. T’an’t even gotta value nowadays, has it
(HW: Absolutely not. )
Mr F: That’d be in’t ‘50s…
Mrs F: Felling trees.
Mr F: Oh I was in the quarry and we jacked in that job, breaking stones for twenty pounds and
loading it into trucks. One and nine pence [] a ton.
(HW: How were you breaking them)
Mr F: Hammer. Twenty eight pound ‘ammer.
(HW: What size to)
Mr F: Pardon
(HW: What size were you having to break them to The stones.)
Mr F: Twenty pounds.
(HW: Ohh!)
Mr F: [Millstone]. If it was any bigger they reckoned it wouldn’t burn through.
25

(HW: Blimey.)
Mr F: And I left that and went timber felling, for about, oh only on that to about six weeks. And
then I jacked in there and went working for Alec Dale, didn’t I, love
Mrs F: Yes.
Mr F: [] spreading, tractor driving.
Mrs F: Half a crown an hour [laughing].
Mr F: That‘d be in 1955 or 6; it’d be ‘55 that would. Then left there and went
working for Alf [Buxon] mowing, [] hay, gardening and one thing or another.
[HW: So it’s been a fair mix.]
[Daughter enters and proceedings turn to domestic issues – been raining, would you like
another ‘brew’. Therefore HW draws to a close 52 mins 13 seconds.]
26

Ian Stuart interviewed by Tegwen Roberts – 19 th July 2010
[Track one]
(Tegwen – So, just for the tape, I need to say that this is an oral history recording for the
Moor Memories project, it’s the 19 th of July 2010, and the interviewer is Tegwen Roberts.
And the interview is taking place in Bakewell. So, for the tape, if you could say your name
and when you were born please)
My name’s Ian Stuart and I was born on the 19 th of December 1931.
(Tegwen – and where were you born)
I was born in Manchester, south Manchester.
(Tegwen – Yeah, and where did you grow up)
I grew up in South Manchester, mostly in the village of Gatley, which is sort of rural
suburban.
(Tegwen – and where did you go to school)
I went to school at Manchester Central High School, otherwise known as Whitworth Street,
which is now a college of some sort. Right in the centre, near Piccadilly Station.
(Tegwen – what did your parents do)
Well, my mother worked as a van driver during the war for BP and my father was a director
of a small film company in Manchester.
(Tegwen – right, oh that’s interesting. What sort of films did they produce)
I think, I’m not sure really, I didn’t have very much to do with that. All kinds of different
things. The guy that actually ran the film unit, (which it wasn’t my father, my father was
really more of an accountant) he was a stringer for NBC so they would call on him if a
news story broke and that he could get to, you know, he would be involved in doing that.
(Tegwen – oh right)
I think they did weddings as well and things like that.
(Tegwen – yeah, wow. And what did you do in your spare time as a child)
1

Well as soon as I was old enough to escape from stuffy suburbia, because it was a kind of
fairly genteel neighbourhood, and it was sufficiently long ago for people not to hang out
washing on Sundays. And children certainly didn’t play in the street on Sundays, the
children had to be quiet, seen and not heard. And this was onerous and as soon as we
were old enough to get on buses we would get away to the moors and escape.
(Tegwen – right, and who’s we Was that friends or siblings or)
Oh well yeah, well I lived opposite a chap called Arthur Bevan who was a bit older than me
and he would have been the ringleader and we had a number of other people in Gatley
who were interested and we used to go out, a small group of us. And my father, actually,
was the one that got me interested first of all because he sent home, when he was in the
RAF, he sent home to my mother and said “Take him to the moors”. So she said “Well
come on, we’ll go and climb Kinder Scout. I think that’s the biggest” So I was quite excited
by that, I was nine at the time, and we went to Chinley or somewhere. And very
inadequate maps. They were probably Bartholomew’s half inch, you know, he’s totally
useless. And, anyway, we climbed what I’m certain was South Head which is tiny. And she
said when we got to the top “Oh I think this must be the top” and I, being me, said “Well
what’s that one over there which is considerably bigger” [laughing] And she said “Oh well
perhaps that’s it and you can do that some other time”. And that, so I think that kindled a
bit of a spark, you know.
(Tegwen – yeah, yes, why do you think your father told your mother to take you to the
moors)
Oh well he was born on the edge of the sort of Pennines and, yeah, it’s a healthy thing to
do.
(Tegwen- so they were important. It is yes. [laughing] So which buses did you get out and
which moors would you visit)
What was your first question Which bus
(Tegwen – sorry, which buses would you get)
Oh we used to take one bus from Gatley to Stockport and from there, we were very
fortunate, and we could get a bus to Hayfield right on the edge of Kinder Scout for
fourpence. And we could afford that. And so usually we went to Hayfield and we would
2

make for Kinder Scout. We were all in love with the Downfall, though that was a
tremendously glamorous place. Sometimes, very rarely, but sometimes, you would see
somebody climbing that and that became a kind of long term objective.
(Tegwen – oh to climb the Downfall)
No, to climb rocks.
(Tegwen – ah right)
Anyway, and where else did we go We would get a train sometimes, up the Woodhead
Pass, I’m not sure whether we used to get out there, but from there we could walk over
Bleaklow and down to the Snake or Doctor’s Gate and come home by bus from Glossop.
Oh we’d occasionally get a train from Edale – but these were more ambitious ventures and
took more money, so we would be a bit older then – and we did this for a long time. I mean
we did it, I was doing this from sort of eleven, twelve, up until I went in the army at about
twenty. So that’s quite a lot of years and we became very strong of course and could walk
vast distances.
(Tegwen – mmm, so how far would you walk, or how long would you be out walking for)
I don’t know about time, I’d have to sit and think about that, but we used to do twenty miles
without any difficulty and sometimes we’d really stretch ourselves and do some more, like
thirty.
(Tegwen – wow)
But that was a long way and we were quite tired at the end of that.
(Tegwen – yes I can imagine)
And we were very fortunate in that the Peak District at that time, and probably still I think,
has the best network of youth hostels in the country and once we were old enough to use
those we made full use of those and we would walk from a. to a youth hostel and then to
somewhere else. So we didn’t have to do circular walks the whole time. And they were
usually just one nights but sometimes we’d do more.
(Tegwen – so would that be just over a weekend normally)
3

Oh yeah. But we did Whitsuntides and Easters as well, most holidays would find us up
there. And I can remember when some of the older members of the group discovered
North Wales, which of course is far more mountainous. [laughing] And I felt they were
being disloyal. [laughing]
(Tegwen – right [laughing])
I was a complete idiot, I still am.
(Tegwen – [laughing] So what did you wear when you went out)
Hah, shorts, shorts in any weather, suicide really. Usually a woolly hat and boots and two
pairs of thick socks.
(Tegwen – right, even in the winter)
Well no, as you’re probably aware, the weather up on those moors in the winter is not to
be sneezed at.
(Tegwen – I know, I know)
I mean, part of the interest to us increasingly became the challenge, you know, of bad
weather. And we experimented, I remember, we experimented with a vast range of
different kinds of waterproof garments. And the best one I ever had was a kind of mac
made of some rubbery material. I cut the bottom off so it’s just long enough to chaff your
knees. But that was fairly waterproof, but of course in those days there was nothing that
was waterproof, you know. Oh, army capes, army gas capes, I’d forgotten about those.
That was a big rectangle of rubberised kind of fabric designed for lying on the ground and
using as a groundsheet. It had a neat little triangle with the collar attached at one corner
and you could actually put that round you. And they were good because you could put it
over your rucksack and, you know, and you weren’t in contact with it. The trouble with
anything that’s waterproof is that usually, in those days anyway, nothing breathed, so they
got very hot and sweaty on the inside if the weather was at all warm and if you were
working hard. And those gas capes were really good.
(Tegwen – yeah, yeah, I imagine they were. I was just thinking, I had a question in my
head as you were talking – oh the rucksacks, you said the rucksacks, what were they)
4

Appalling [laughing], they were appalling, killing, I mean it wasn’t till 1971 I discovered
what a sensibly designed rucksack was like to wear. It was an American thing that I got
and quite different. The rucksacks were Bergen style but they were ex army, army
rucksacks. The army for some reason, sort of pretentiously, still call them Bergens. Bergen
was a Norwegian make of rucksack. I’d be interested to know if it’s still going. And it had
some superior bits of design on it. The army ones were – I knew they were ridiculous –
and just so typically army, in that they were very inefficient rucksacks. The best way to
carry a heavy load in a rucksack is to have it high up with all the heavy things right at the
top and the army rucksack’s kind of triangular and so most of the space is at the bottom
and that’s usually where you get all the stuff. There’s a big flap to it with straps coming
over that you could put a tent or something on top of it and strap that down. And they cut
into your shoulders. Usually you walk with your thumbs or your hands through it and
actually keep it off you slightly. But they did have a metal frame and a canvas lattice
across the frame which kept it away from your back, which was quite good. You still had to
be careful how you packed it with soft things next to your back. But it was ok, they were
alright, I think there was one front pocket on them. But the thing is they were cheap and
especially, as the end of the war came around, and the whole market was flooded with
stuff and some of it was really very good.
(Tegwen – so tell me about the moors during the war)
Well they were marvellous in that you never saw anybody else and nothing was eroded
away. After a break of several years I went back and had a look at them again and I was
appalled at how it was eroded, you know, so badly.
(Tegwen – which bits do you mean, sort of paths that had been)
It’s hard to describe, but there weren’t any paths, there were no paths, hardly. There’d be
occasional places where there were paths. I guess there’d be a bit of a path around the
edges in most places but very faint, very indistinct. And then if you went off the path you
were into peat gruffs with vegetation on top of them, you know. But when I went back
again, as I said, after a break of several years, I was appalled to find that all that green
cover and heather had gone and it was just black peat, which is, as I’m sure you know, is
being eroded away at an incredible rate of knots and they’re now trying to, I understand,
reseed and trying different things at places like Black Hill.
5

(Tegwen – yes, yes, they are)
And oh, God, a big disaster, the Pennine Way, they put that in and I suppose somebody
did it in Whitehall, and said “Oh well, we can go from Edale and we’ll go straight across to
there” Now they drew a line on the map where there was no natural line for a path to be
[phone ringing] and this is where I’ve got to unclip the wire.
(Tegwen – I’ll just pause this for a minute then)
[End of track one]
[Track two]
(Tegwen – so we were talking about the creation of the Pennine Way)
Yeah, and I was saying that the original line was a silly line to take. If it had been directed
round the edges to the Downfall that would have been very interesting, and round the
edges and so on and then down Fairbrook, that would have been a much more sensible
route to take. But they didn’t.
(Tegwen – so when was the Pennine Way created)
Oh I don’t know, early fifties, about ’50, 1, 2, something like that. But it could have been
later, when was the National Park started, do you know that
(Wife – you were doing your National Service when it was created ‘cos you were wanting
to go and walk it weren’t you) That’s why you got into trouble)
You are clever. [laughing]
(Tegwen – [laughing] so what did you get into trouble for)
I’m not going to talk about my army days, that’s a different world altogether.
(Tegwen – ok [laughing])
Yeah, anyway, you can find out when the National Park was formed, but she’s right, it’d
be, as I said, about ‘51/’52, Pennine Way.
(Tegwen – so were you at all involved in the access movement)
6

No I wasn’t because that was in the thirties. But we were aware of it. I guess the chap that
I used to go working with, he was actually, when we first started to go walking together he
was working, he was a young apprentice somewhere in the aircraft industry, and so he
would have known older people in his factory who would talk to him, I guess. And, you
know, the information came through that way and we knew there’d been this big
movement and we knew there’d been a trespass. And we felt that it was iniquitous that the
whole of Kinder Scout could be barred to us occasionally so people could go – and six
people, I believe, used to go and shoot little birds – and we didn’t like that. And I can
remember one of my very exciting and very satisfying moments was outwitting a
gamekeeper. I was coming down the, from Bleaklow across the Snake Road and then my
intention was to go up over the Kinder and I saw a figure on the far side as I walked down
and so he walked down and he stood four square and looking aggressive on the far bank
of the stream, I like to imagine with his fists on his hips and legs akimbo, and, or is it your
arms you have akimbo And so I thought ‘well I’ll have lunch now”. So I stopped and I got
my lunch out and I ate a very leisurely lunch. [laughing] And then I got up and packed
everything away and looked at the stream and looked at him, turned sharp right and went
into a forestry commission plantation, which he had no right to go into. And I shot in there
for a few yards then went downhill, over the stream, up the other side, came out well
above where he was I presumed hopefully prowling around and I felt very triumphant you
know. Very silly really but it was very satisfying.
(Tegwen [laughing] – so was there, were all gamekeepers …)
I don’t know. They looked, you know, this was the wartime. You know, gamekeepers were
out shooting Germans rather than little birds.
(Tegwen – right, yeah. And so did they close the moors during the war ‘Cos they had sort
of army training on some of them didn’t they)
No, not round here. No I don’t think so. Not Kinder and Bleaklow, I don’t know about
others. But I think they’re probably a bit too wild for soldiers.
(Tegwen – [laughing] Maybe. And tell me about the aeroplane wreck sites)
I don’t know anything about them other than the one that we found which we thought was
a flying fortress, of which you have a photograph, and I can remember my friend, it was
Arthur who took the photograph, the older man I went out with, and took a photograph and
7

I sat on it to give some idea of scale and tried to look sombre because somebody had died
there, you know. And that’s why my face is looking the way it does in the picture. But it
was a moving, it was, of course, moving, you know. I mean we were aware of all these
planes coming and going and people were getting killed, but to actually see the place
where this had happened relatively recently and to see the tremendous mess that the
crash had made of the plane were very sobering and solemn things to witness.
(Tegwen – and what sort of year would that be)
I don’t know. I mean we were discussing it earlier, I gave you an estimation, and can’t
even remember now what I said then, it’s a long time ago. But it was not later, not later
than ’49.
[Wife – inaud]
Exactly, but the war was over then but a wreck of that size is going to survive for a number
of years because although they eventually, all these wrecks disappeared into the peat.
After a brief interval or three or four years there’s going to be something showing. And I
think the bombing was taking place ’42, 3 and 4, so it could be any time between ’42 and
’46, 7, something like that. I’d put it around there, probably the end of the 40s. Because
during the war years we didn’t go up onto Bleaklow, that was too serious for us.
(Tegwen – and you were saying that the, sort of, the seasonal changes, the winter and the
difficult weathers became a bit of a challenge for you)
Yeah, very much so, particularly in ’47 where it was the worst winter, I think. There hasn’t
been one as bad as it since then and it was the worst that had been for some time before.
Edale I remember had food dropped to it from the air. And this was marvellous, we thought
it was absolutely wonderful and we just couldn’t wait to get to Kinder Scout and see what it
was like under these conditions. And I remember the day we decided we would do Kinder
Scout and we got the bus to Hayfield and walking up the slopes just outside Hayfield we
saw a man on skis which was the first person we’d ever seen skiing and that was very
exciting and a bit of a treat. And we carried on, climbed up Kinder Scout, in our shorts. I
remember going through very thick snow and one of our party, there were quite a lot of us,
when I say that, half a dozen would be maximum, but one of them, Dick Darnell, I
remember, he said “Oh I think it might be easier on the other side of the wall”. And so he
climbed up the wall, jumped down the other side and he didn’t call out or anything but he
8

didn’t, we didn’t hear nothing, so we climbed up to have a look. And on the snow at the
other side of the wall all we could see was his hat apparently lying on the snow. [laughing]
And, of course, after a short pause and some muffled grunts he fought his way out of this
drift and made his way back over to the other side where it was only waist deep. [laughing]
But, yeah, and we got up onto the edge of Kinder and we were starting to go across the
top and we met the most horrendous conditions I’ve ever been in up there. There was an
east wind blowing and the weather, the snow, had thawed and refrozen, thawed, refrozen
over obviously a number of days when the sun had been out, and very large ice crystals
had formed as a ‘crust’, I think the term is, on the snow. Now on the eastern side the wind
was undermining that and it was picking up slabs of this crust and then blowing them
across the top and they were tumbling. And so we were being confronted with sort of ice
cube size, not ice cube, sorry, sugar cube size lumps of snow, I would think some of them
must have been, and with bare legs it was absolutely catastrophic. It was horrendous! And
we stuck it out for a bit and then we gave up and packed it in. I say that, I think some of
them actually had long trousers. A lot of them were more sensible than me. And we
packed it in and retreated to Hayfield and we’d not managed to go across Kinder and that
upset us. And we were even more upset when we heard from somebody else that that
same afternoon some young ladies – so imagine, young ladies, not men – they’d managed
to get across from Edale [laughing] They’d have had the wind behind them wouldn’t they
It’d be easy!
(wife – and long trousers probably)
The probably had long trousers and better clothes, yeah, and the wind behind them and
they’d got blown across to the Hayfield side, so …
(Tegwen – so were there many female ramblers or walkers)
Yeah, yeah, there were a lot in our group, quite a lot. Probably equal numbers really.
Certainly as we got older there were. In the early days it was all boys, you know and then
sex reared its ugly head and girls began to join.
(Tegwen – so were you part of an official group, like a Ramblers’ group or)
No, no, no, no. We tried with various names for our group and I won’t tell you what they
were, they were so twee. No, there was nothing rude, they were twee. And, no, we weren’t
members of anything. And there were a lot around that we could have joined if we’d known
9

ut we didn’t know. I mean this kind of information didn’t disseminate easily during the war,
you know. We weren’t in the centre of Manchester, when we started I wasn’t, and if I’d
gone to the central library I’d probably look at other things. We could have perhaps found
out, but we were very happy doing what we did. We didn’t really need … and we disliked
very large groups of people. I still do.
(Tegwen – yeah, well it’s a different experience isn’t it with a large group)
Oh totally, totally.
[End of track two]
[Track three]
(Tegwen – So were you ever involved in any rescues or did you get stuck yourself in bad
weather)
We were far too good for that, no we didn’t. We didn’t get, we never got, there wasn’t
anybody to rescue anyway. Having said that that’s not quite true. There was a mountain
rescue post, RAF, at Harper Hill near Buxton.
(Tegwen – Oh I know it, yeah)
Ah well, very chequered history, there was a big ammunition store there. The hillside
there, which is hollow at Harper Hill, was full of bombs, and I believe now it’s full of butter
and cheese.
(Wife – Butter mountain)
Yeah, part of the butter mountain. And so, and they were there for rescuing crashed air
people, you know, and we wouldn’t have had any means of getting them out. I mean there
were no mobile phones and there are not many of the ordinary sorts of phones on Kinder
Scout.
(Wife – [laughing] No, I don’t suppose there were)
(Tegwen – [laughing] So do you remember the beginning of the ranger service when the
rangers started)
No not really, no, no.
10

(Tegwen – ‘Cos they were started with the National Parks weren’t they Those rangers)
Yes they were, that’s right, that’s right, yes, I’m sure they do a wonderful job.
(Tegwen – and so what happened, you said you went in the army and then I presume you
came back, and what did you do work-wise)
Well before I’d gone in the army I was working with a film unit in Manchester but that
closed when I was in the army and the only place I could get a job with a film unit then was
down in London so I moved to London, which was the end of my regular visits to the Peak
District. By that time, the time I’d come out of the army and gone to London, climbing clubs
were started and people’s interest had widened and clubs were forming. The government
encouraged that kind of thing because we were entering the ‘white heat of the
technological revolution’, as Harold Wilson used to say, and everybody was going to have
lots of leisure time and they needed to encourage people to form clubs and things so that
they would do something useful with their leisure time. And I’m not sure whether that’s
ever come about but clubs proliferated, you know, clubs like the Minath in Gatley started
there. And when I went to London I joined the North London Climbing Club and used to go
with them to Wales. Although occasionally we would come up and climb the great stone
edges in the Peak District.
(Tegwen – So had you been climbing before, before you left the area)
I started climbing in 1952, I think, when I came out of the army.
(Tegwen – so were you climbing – I suppose you’d moved to London by that point had
you)
Not quite, well, oh it all happened about the same time, but, of course, all the people that
were in the walking group, and people that I’ve been talking about, who went out onto the
moors, they were all interested in climbing, you know, they wanted that extra freedom. I
can remember our first forays into the sport, with no experience, and a cheap piece of
rope. And we weren’t very successful. But then one of our number went off to
Loughborough and did a PE course and he got introduced to climbing and learnt the
ropes. And came back and got us all going, you know. And he actually, Brian Royle his
name is, he started the Minath.
(Wife – this is the one who got this book together, Brian Royle)
11

(Tegwen – Is that his photograph on the front So you were saying about the hills
becoming eroded after the war)
Oh yeah, tremendously so.
(Tegwen – Do you remember places like Black Hill being different to the way they are
today)
Oh yeah, very much so. Yeah. Black Hill was quite nice and then, again, you know, that’s
another of these, you know, we’d come up from London after sort of a few years down
there, probably ten or so, and say “Oh we’ll trot over Black Hill” and found it was actually
well named now, it was black. It wasn’t covered in green stuff. It was a morass, a mess.
(Tegwen – And it had been before)
Oh yeah, mmm. Delightful.
(Tegwen – Right, and what do you think caused that)
I should think largely acid rain. I remember being on top of Kinder once and being
enveloped in a smog, which I recognised because Manchester had smogs, big time and it
was daytime, of course, but it was quite dark and there was a rather nastiness, poisoness
looking, orange light everywhere. Quite a deep orange colour. And it had a very distinctive
smell that smog had. I wouldn’t try to begin to describe.
(Wife – Oh it’s like bad eggs)
Was it Do you think
(Wife – well it was in Leeds)
Well Kinder, of course, bless it, didn’t stand a chance because if the wind was from the
west it got Manchester. If it was from the other side it got Sheffield. And both of them
pouring out massive amounts of toxic fumes.
(Wife – Seems incredibly now doesn’t it)
Incredibly acid rain. That can’t have done the vegetation any good at all. And I can
remember on this occasion when I was on top Kinder and I recognised that this is a smog
12

and I looked at the ground and I dragged my hand over the surface of the grass and my
hand came up absolutely black, absolutely black.
(Wife – That’s right, everywhere was black)
I can’t remember precisely what my emotions were but I know that I was moved by this
and I think saddened and angered by it. I mean I’d actually come away from Manchester to
get out on Kinder Scout to escape exactly that kind of environment and here it was.
(Tegwen – yeah, that’s awful)
It was.
(Wife – I just accepted it because I’d never known anything different)
No, I know when they started ‘clean air’ off. You couldn’t really believe that they could do
that, you know, but they did.
(Wife – well they did ‘clean air’ in about 1962, cos I had a baby then, our Andrew, and I’d
come north, I’d put him outside and he was covered in big black spots of soot.)
(Tegwen – oh dear)
(Wife – and I couldn’t believe, and then suddenly there was ‘clean air’ and I brought him up
the next year and the soot had gone. But, do you know, my father was very, very against
it)
What, ‘clean air’
(Wife – yeah, he said …)
Unhealthy [laughing].
(Wife – Yeah, he said unhealthy. He said it’s not as healthy)
[laughing] [inaud]
(Wife – incredible)
(Tegwen – Yeah, it’s amazing how people sort of rationalise things I suppose)
(Wife – ...Get used to things, cos all his life he’d lived in that atmosphere)
13

(Tegwen – yeah)
[End of track three]
[Track four]
(Tegwen- So, have the moors changed in the time that you’ve known them)
In what respect
(Tegwen – In the sorts of animals, the sorts of vegetation or the way people use them for
instance)
Well yeah, I mean the biggest change, apart from the one we’ve mentioned, which is the
destruction of the vegetation, the number of people. The thing I miss most if I go on the
moors now is the total absence of anybody. I can’t quite remember what the word is to
describe somebody who just dislikes people intensely, but I mean I start to feel like that.
I’m not really like that, I’m quite gregarious, but you can’t do that now, you can’t go for a
walk on Kinder and not see somebody, but you could. And that, it made it more of a
challenge of course with it being so empty and I think there’s a lot of things about life in
this country when I was a lad which lads found preferable to life now because of the
freedom you had with the lack of pressure of people because they were all doing
something important somewhere else. I think, yeah, I can remember you could fairly well
guarantee at one time to see white hares, alpine hares, up, especially on the north side of
Kinder. We always seemed to manage to find them there. And I get the feeling those
numbers have gone down. Not having them restricted for shooting, that’s another one, big
plus.
(Wife – They’re cleaner)
Oh absolutely, I mean that’s, yes, that’s invaluable isn’t it We, there was a farm building
which had been cut off by the flooding of the Kinder reservoir and abandoned in 1800
something and we used to go to that and that was still intact. A beautiful little farmhouse.
And we slept there occasionally, not very often, but occasionally. It had a grate you could
light a fire in. And not very far from the river Kinder and there was a little copse there, a
little fir wood there, so there was some wood fairly near to hand. But then after the war,
and I guess it would be the ‘50s, people who weren’t really particularly interested in
walking and so on and were getting a bit more affluent got motorbikes and things and
14

people were starting to travel around. And yobbos would go out there and for fun they
would start to destroy it. And that was raised to the ground.
(Tegwen – Oh that’s a real shame)
And that was a real shame, yeah.
(Wife – I think it must have been a real blow actually I should think. A bitter blow. I would
have been very upset at that)
Well there were lots of bits of graffiti on the plaster in the house, you know, and there were
quite interesting things written that had been there for a long time, you know.
(Tegwen – Yeah, did you use any other buildings, like shooting cabins, that kind of thing.
I’ve heard some walkers have said about they used to shelter in cabins)
Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. We didn’t know any that we used, no, we didn’t. But I was
aware of shooting cabins here and there but we never made use of them. We could
always get back home very quickly. There were very good public services from either
Edale by train, or Hayfield by bus. And then later when we were feeling like overnights we
would use youth hostels. I guess we were a bit soft and suburban and not hard, you know.
[laughing]
(Tegwen – [laughing] so did you have particular favourite places that you went Obviously
Kinder you’ve mentioned quite a lot)
The Downfall, yeah. Oh yeah, anywhere in the Peak District. Roaches, that was a very
popular spot. That was full of all kinds of wild animals, wallabies, of course, the Big One.
(Tegwen – oh right, have you seen those)
Oh yes, oh yes. On my, I think they’ve gone, on my first class hike where you have to – it’s
very Duke of Edinburgh – you have to do a two day walk and camp out, you know. Or
perhaps it was three days. And our route took us past the Roaches. We didn’t know
anything about the place but we camped at the side of the Hen Cloud, a little subsidiary
peak to the south of the main cliff, and we had a little – and I remember an American, I
think it was called a bivvy tent, it came in two halves so it was beautiful for two people to
carry, and it did up down the centre with press studs. And so we got that pitched and I
remember sticking my head out of the door in the morning and saying “Gordon There’s a
15

llama outside!”. And you can imagine his reaction, you know. [laughing] He was very
annoyed at being woken up and dragged out to see this thing. And it was, it was a llama. A
llama or an Alpaca. And, you know, it was a …
(Tegwen – where would it have come from)
Ah well now then you see, where do the wallabies come from Now there’s a chap whose
name I could have probably told you ten years ago ‘cause I wrote all this information in my
log. Have to do a log. And when you’ve left and this recording is stopped I’ll remember this
name. It was owned by Lord somebody, the Hen Cloud, and he kept on it a private zoo.
(Tegwen – Right)
And he had, I think he had ostriches, I’m not sure about that, but he certainly had wallabies
and other animals. And when the war started they couldn’t keep ‘em so he just let ‘em go
and so they infested the countryside. And the wallabies survived there for ages. They
survived the ’47 winter.
(Tegwen – Wow)
Incredible, so hardy. I heard that they, you may be able to tell me, I don’t know, at some
point in time they introduced some young fresh buck wallaby into the group to stiffen it all
up a bit. But I think they’re probably extinct now, but I don’t know that, there might still be
the odd one.
(Tegwen – I’ve never seen one but I don’t know)
Have you heard of anybody that has
(Tegwen – Not in recent years. I’ve heard tell of them but know no...)
I think there may not be.
(Wife – I thought they were, you know, I was so blasé, I thought they were terribly boring
[laughing])
There you go, that’s the trouble with coming from Burnley isn’t it
16

(Tegwen – Have you noticed a change in things like the number of birds of prey and that
sort of thing)
Well I’m ashamed to say I was never aware of any birds of prey.
(Tegwen – You weren’t a bird watcher)
Not at all, no. Well not feathered ones! [Laughter] No. Skylarks, I remember skylarks big
time. And even as recently as 1970s around here more skylarks than there are now. In fact
it seemed to me that in the last sort of ten years skylarks have practically disappeared but
I’ve been going out – I walk round here fairly regularly – and there are some around now.
(Tegwen – oh that’s good news)
Not in the numbers I think, nowhere near the numbers there were.
(Wife – There were lapwings when we first came to Bakewell, a lot of lapwings)
Oh yes, that’s right, yeah.
(Wife – ...a lot of lapwings down the valley and they’ve gone now. Well I haven’t seen any.)
Where else did we go
(Wife – But I’ll tell you what, I never saw any bird of prey when I was a child, ever, very few
birds, and I think there are more, I think there are more birds around)
(Tegwen – Well, they’re much more heavily protected now aren’t they They stopped
people plundering their eggs and …)
Oh absolutely, yes, people doing that must have decimated them in the past. Extraordinary
thing to do. Yeah.
(Tegwen – OK, that’s brilliant, I think we’ll stop there for now. Thank you.)
[End of track four]
[Track five]
You’ve talked about the start of the National Park.
(Tegwen – Yes)
17

That was of great interest to us, of course, thought that was a very desirable idea. And it
seemed to us that the government was dragging it’s feet, rather. But then something
absolutely awful and catastrophic happened and it really annoyed us no end. They built
the Hope Valley Cement Works.
(Tegwen – Oh right)
Massive thing, enormous chimney pouring out smoke, the kind of stuff we were escaping
from. And you could see it from everywhere, it seemed, in the Peak District. The great
Mam Tor ridge dominated by the cement works. You can see it from bits of Kinder Scout,
Win Hill, Lose Hill, Stanage Edge, all that, right in the middle and just after that opened the
National Park came into being. I think that somebody – the two things I think about this – I
think to me it seemed very fishy that this place was built just before the National Park
began. I think they knew jolly well that once it was a National Park no way you could build
that thing. And I know it provides fifteen jobs for Hope but, oh, catastrophic! And I do see
the National Park and the Moors as the lungs of the people and I’m fiercely protective of
the Park.
(Tegwen – Yeah)
Cut!
[End of tape]
18

Bill Emmingham interviewed by Tegwen Roberts – 19 th August 2010
[Track one]
(Tegwen – So I’ll just say for the tape that this is an oral history recording for
the Moor Memories Project. It’s the 19 th of August 2010 and the interviewer is
Tegwen Roberts. So just to start off, can I ask you to tell me your name and
when and where you were born please)
My name is Bill Emmingham. I was born in Sheffield, Summerfield Street, and
then went on to live on Southey Green, Longley Estate. And left there when I
was 32, got married and lived on Crookesmoor, then on to Gleadless Valley
and now live at Birley.
(Tegwen – Right. So you’ve moved around a bit)
So I’ve moved around a bit but only when I got married otherwise I don’t think
I’d have moved. [laughing]
(Tegwen – [laughing] So what did your parents do)
Oh, me dad was a grinder. Me mother didn’t work cos at that time me dad was
one of those that women didn’t work. She had to be there for the meals and
washing, cooking and so on. [laughing] Very strict at that, yeah.
(Tegwen – And where did you go to school)
Southey Green, Southey Green school yeah.
(Tegwen – And what did you do in your spare time when you weren’t at
school)
Well up to joining the Woodcraft Folk – that was in 1942 – we just did general
things. Play games outside. Went to the pictures on odd occasions. And
generally stayed around the streets. But oh we went in park of course and
things like that. And I was a little bit interested in walking but not all that much,
you know. And then course when I joined Woodcraft in 1942 me life
1

completely changed to what it is today really. Because then we started
camping, even though the war was on we still went camping every Sunday in
summer, walking every Sunday in winter. Always had to have our shorts on no
matter what weather was. And it was like a spiritual journey if you like, even
though I was so young, I didn’t realise how much it had changed me. And …
(Tegwen – So why did you join the Woodcraft Folk)
Well it was a little bit of a political organisation in a sense because it was
mainly to get children out of the city and smoke. And it was formed – in
Sheffield anyway – it was formed by twelve members of Independent Labour
Party at that time on the Stanage in what is now the bit of wooded area.
There’s a rock there called ‘the rock of resolution’ where twelve members they
met and said that somebody ought to go down to London and see what this
organisation’s all about. And came back and met there and took the resolution
that this was going to happen. And a group was formed and it went on from
there.
(Tegwen – So when was the group formed)
In March 1929.
(Tegwen – Right. And how did you find out about them)
Well, me dad, being another... bit political, and so did most of members of
Labour Party or being of that ilk, decided that’s where us kids should be.
Which was a good thing because it immediately transformed us all. And we
sort of formed; we become a very strong group. And not only did we only go to
us group night, but we also met other nights and talked about things and then,
of course, we got what we call the Folkhouse which was on Barnsley Road at
the time in the hospital grounds. And we transformed that into what we call the
Folkhouse where groups met. And from then on in we had all sorts of activities
nearly every night. So you weren’t just a outdoor sort of group, you become a,
we became a very, very strong group. And I still see some of ‘em now. And
one of ‘em I hadn’t seen for, oh, what, I hadn’t seen for at least fifty years and
he just contacted me again. So we..., it did make a big bond.
2

(Tegwen – Yes)
Yeah.
(Tegwen – So how many of you were there)
Well there was a group on Shire Green at that time. There was a group on
Longley. There was a group at Woodseats. And I think, oh, there was one at
Firth Park I think as well. And we, it was more of a democratic movement
because you had your own group leader. Different to today’s because there
was only one group leader. And you all had a part to play from being six year
old. There were jobs you could do. There were voting, you could get voted in
or off. When you were a ‘pioneer’ same applied. And then – at that time they
called them [inaud], when you become a teenager you’d also another stronger
role to play. And your test work, when you was a teenager in particular, you
had to start working on your citizen badge and then you had to work on your
international badge, which was getting involved with organisations abroad.
(Tegwen – Right)
Of likeminded ilk.
(Tegwen – Yeah. And what sort of things did you do for your badge Was it
activities and …)
Yeah, I mean, at that time when I was a teenager you had to understand trade
unions, you had to understand the co-op movement. Cos in London the co-op
sponsored the very, very first one way back in ’25 I think it was. There was
what you knew about your town council and how it was run. So you had to
attend in public gallery to go and see meetings.
(Tegwen – Right, wow)
And what else did we have to do Oh and we had to get involved with us
community. So when war was on we were collecting outside picture houses
and things like that for aid to Russia, aid to China and collecting scrap and,
oh, you know.
3

(Tegwen – All sorts of things then)
And then while war was on also they had what they called the ‘holidays at
home’ in which things happened in park. And there were like concert parties.
And we formed like a tumbling thing.
(Tegwen – Oh like a gymnastics type of thing)
Yeah. So we formed that with some of older ones and only very, very simple
things, but it entertained, you know, community around. And it used to go in
park and see us do that rather than go off to seaside and stuff.
(Tegwen – That sounds like fun)
Yeah, it was very, very, you know, spontaneous and, yeah, we went all over.
We did quite a few in Longley Park because that were nearer to our group.
But then we did one, we did ‘em in Graves Park and Concord Park and …
(Tegwen – Yeah, all over)
Yeah. And then we also got involved in co-op movement which was also
sponsoring stuff like that. So we got involved at their sports days and things.
So …
(Tegwen – So you said that you went walking and camping with the Woodcraft
Folk, where did you go, was that into the Peaks)
Well when it was in the war we camped at – our group – and I think
Woodseats Group camped at Stubley Hollow which was at Meadow Head.
(Tegwen – Yeah)
And then after the war was over we found, our leader found that Sheffield
Corporation owned land out at Norton so we transferred from there over to
Norton... Hazelbarrow. And that campsite is still now I think still owned by
Sheffield Council. And I go down there just as a memory like, you know. Now
and again have a walk over fields and that. Yeah, so that’s where we camped.
And also me first camp, summer camp was at Youlgreave on Buxton’s Field
as they called it. They’ve only just, they haven’t been long since closed. They
4

had a shop in village and they let us camp down just like a little jetty and then
on this field and then there were a big drop down to river and we camped
there in ’43. And at that camp our leader’s son was getting married, well he’d
got married at a civic wedding at the, well they didn’t have a, you know, they
didn’t have a church wedding, just whatever, what they called.
(Tegwen – Town hall type)
Yeah. But there they had their own wedding in the Hiawatha fashion.
(Tegwen – Oh lovely)
So we had the Hiawatha, red Indian type wedding there.
(Tegwen – At the camp)
At camp park, it was absolutely fantastic. And these sort of things set you
going when you’re kids. You know, well to me they did. They were mystic,
they were spiritual. It were all to do wi’ nature and that. And so, yeah. And
then we camped at Edale and then we went back to Youlgreave a year after
and then I, that were VJ, VJ Day, happened when we was at Youlgreave.
(Tegwen – That must have been exciting.)
Yeah, well we weren’t into war because our leader’s son was in Manchester
Jail for being a conscientious objector. Because during the First World War he
finished up getting gun whipped because he was, they called him a coward.
He’d got gassed so he’d only one lung. He’d had all roof of his mouth tore out
with this respirator. Because they had them tubular things, box, and a tubular
thing, and of course when gas got in it ripped it off and it sprung up and …
(Tegwen – Ooh, nasty)
And then he became, he stood for Labour MP for Hallam. Basil Rawson was
his name but we all knew him as Brown Eagle, because we all had to have
folk names. Mine were Brown Bear. So you didn’t, you didn’t sort of use your
own name again, not while you was in Folk, while you were on Folk activities.
And so it was – and what we did at our camp – when you came to your first
5

camp and you picked your folk name then I wrote Bill Emmingham on a piece
of birch bark and put it in fire.
(Tegwen – Oh and burnt it)
And burnt it. And I was only known then as Brown Bear.
(Tegwen – Right, wow)
And all these things were, you know, they were, ooh...
[End of track one]
[Track two]
(Tegwen – So, as a group, did you get involved with things like the Open
Access movement, the campaign for …)
Not really because I went out of the Folk and then I joined the Clarion but I
went into ‘t forces and – oh I did a spell just walking on me own and probably
going out with a friend, but mainly on me own – and I used to do barning and
things like that.
(Tegwen – ‘Barning’, what’s that)
Well I don’t know whether it were all popular but I used to love it. It were just
that when you’d had enough walking you’d go and spot a barn and have a
look round it and then jump in it and sleep for night. And I always remember
one Christmas I were doing it and I happened to see this farmer and I says
“Have you got anywhere I could sleep” he says “Well, it’s absolutely freezing,
where do you want to sleep” I said “Have you just got a barn where I can just
drop down like” So he says “Get in that manger thing” you know, where they
used to push hay. He says “Get in there lad wi’t beasts” he says “They’ll keep
you warm”. And so you didn’t need your sleeping bag, I just slept up there and
heat from bodies, oh, were lovely. [laughing]
(Tegwen – Yeah [laughing])
So yeah, I did that for a while and then of course I went in ’t forces.
6

(Tegwen – So just on the barn, so the farmers didn’t mind particularly)
Some did. It was, but if you asked, ok. If you’d asked and you’d still went in
well then you were in trouble next morning if he copped you, if you didn’t get
away quick enough. But, yeah, it were, I loved it. It were …
(Tegwen – Did you sleep in shooting cabins and that kind of stuff as well)
Anything, anything that had got a roof on.
(Tegwen – Right)
But barns were – like at Youlgreave – I slept at Mosstone Farm quite a lot
there. He were nice Mr Horley and Mr Parker. And I’d go down to ‘t pub at
night and then I’d meet ‘em in pub and we’d have a chat and then they’d go
back in car and I’d walk up to farm and they’d say “Don’t forget, bang on door
before you go to bed and we’ll have a sandwich” Like a big meat dish wi’ big
piece of cheese on what Mrs had made and we had cheese sandwiches and
that before – oh!
(Tegwen – So they’d really give you a feast [laughing])
Yeah, yeah. I got to know them quite well. In fact I knew quite a lot o’ villagers
in Youlgreave. In fact I started courting one o’ girls there. And she’s still there
now. I were out other week and talking to some o’ old women and they said
“Oh aye, she’s still around. Still blowing her fags up” [laughing]
(Tegwen – [laughing])
And it’s lovely, you know, there’s quite a few places I can just wander around
now and still see some o’ older end, you know. And, yeah.
(Tegwen – Are some of the barns still there and that kind of thing)
Oh yeah, yeah, barns are still there, yeah. So...
(Tegwen – So you said you joined the Clarion)
I joined the Clarion in ’47, but I didn’t start going out with ‘em ‘til ‘50s and we
had a, course that’s when I got onto a lot o’ Kinder work and stuff like that.
7

Because at that point I hadn’t been, we’d been in’t Folk, we were more or less
just around fringes, although our leader, Basil, was involved in the sort of
skirmishes and things.
(Tegwen – The trespasses)
Yeah. But he never involved us at that time. So I didn’t get really involved into
what you might call the heavy side of rambling until I joined Clarion and that
then sparked me off because Bert Ward, being a bit of a socialist as he was, I
cottoned on to him because that’s where my upbringing had come from. So I
could relate to him quite well even though I were a lot younger than he was.
[laughing] You know, but yeah, and so that made it for me then, sort of...
(Tegwen –So what sort of time, what date would that have been that you
joined)
That’d be ‘50s. Well I come out of ‘t forces, ’51, it’d be about ‘54 I would think,
somewhere about there, because I’d got heavily involved in athletics when I
come out o’t forces cos I never knew I was athletic until I joined. And so I was
involved in star walk and cross country and all that sort of thing. And it’d be
about ’54 I should think, about that time.
(Tegwen – And how old would Bert Ward have been then)
Well it was just, it wasn’t long before he died. It’d be about. I think I knew him
three years before he died.
(Tegwen – Right, and what was he like as a character)
A wonderful fellow. He always gave you after your – I, this is my experience –
he sort of, after lunch he’d always got a tale to tell. And one famous one that’s
always stuck in me mind, when he were telling us about biscuits and what a
huge profit these biscuit makers made. [laughing] And he sort of, I listened to
him and it’s never left me. It’s never left me. He were good at that. And he
also, in his little book, he had poems.
(Tegwen – Yeah I’ve seen them)
8

And he sometimes read one. Or he read a piece out o’t little book.
(Tegwen – Oh lovely. Is that to the group)
Yeah. At lunchtime, after you’d had your lunch. And I still do it in actual fact.
I’ve got a song book, a Woodcraft Folk songbook, which is like all about open
air and things. And I either sing a couple of songs after I’ve had me
sandwiches before I leave or I read ‘em as poems. And that’s all from the sort
o’, I just like to carry on some o’t traditions I’ve picked up on way, you know.
(Tegwen – That’s lovely, that’s really lovely)
Yeah, it’s great. He were a wonderful man, a wonderful man, you know. I
mean he could be a bit haughty at times, I’m not saying he – we’re not all
angels, but by and large he were, he did a right lot for’t movement, you know.
[End of track two]
[Track three]
(Tegwen – So in the 50s was there still sort of access campaigning going on)
There was behind the scenes. I mean I weren’t involved in that. But there
must have been because Basil were out. And Bert was always somewhere up
front because he knew so much and he knew the law and he’d challenge
anybody. In a nice sort o’ way, you know. But very authoritarian when he
spoke, you knew he’d spoke, at times, you know. Yeah, he was – but I was
only on fringe of it at that time. I think I were sort of experiencing all sorts of
things. I were involved in so many things. I were just on’t fringe of..., not into
core of the hard one.
(Tegwen – Yeah, just one of the things you did)
Yeah, yeah. Later on I did. I got involved, but that was much later on.
(Tegwen – And so when you were with the Clarion, where did you walk, what
sort of things did you do, you know, was it)
9

Well we followed a book. So you walked – every Sunday was already mapped
out for you – and ’t leader was already mapped out. So, you know, I mean
today, course I were in it when I was younger, we used to walk with probably ‘t
group and then when they was finished we, as a younger group, used to go
further and then come home in’t dark. We walked many, many times in’t dark
and finished us walks in’t dark, you know.
(Tegwen – Did you ever get lost)
Funnily enough, no. Cos them that were, had the experience, and a lot o’
younger ones their parents were already in it, like Graham Baxby and that.
Already in it, they’d formed these walks in their own mind, you know. So, no, I
just followed on at that point. [laughing] A new experience, you know. I gained
a lot. And I still walk some o’ walks. I still, some o’ walks I know now are only
because o’ Clarion.
(Tegwen – Right. So do you still walk with the Clarion, did you stay with them
or did you move on)
I left. I did about I think a couple o’ years after Ward had died and then I
drifted off into running a physical culture club and a Spartan club and then I
got married and rejoined Woodcraft in 1962.
(Tegwen – And had anything changed with the Woodcraft at that point)
Oh it’s changed tremendous, tremendous. So, yeah, I don’t, I think they’re
more, the Green movement, you know, it’s not like I knew it. They don’t sing
the songs that I liked. It had got sort of a outdoor connotation but it also got
another story in with it. And it’s died out I think and they don’t do the
citizenship and the internationals, they don’t have badges like we had for kids
to work to. I think what’s happened is that leaders now, it’s their own children
that’s in. So the kids don’t get that experience of being on their own, having to
fend for theirselves, get out of bed in the morning and get theirselves ready
and get theirselves washed and be on rota, and come under that sort o’ thing,
you know. So they don’t, I don’t think they’re experienced and that. And when
the children grow up the parents sort o’ drop out in many cases.
10

(Tegwen – Right)
So it’s a matter of when we were leaders we were leaders for life, if you like,
you know. And they’re not on the estates now, you know. There was one on
the Manor, there was one on Parson’s Cross, there was one on Shire Green,
there was one on Gleadless Valley, there was one on – all the areas where
kids now are struggling for that sort o’ thing. And people say they don’t want
that but if you get a group of kids together – and I experienced this cos I’m on
management at Lockerbrook, Lockerbrook Farm. And I experienced this with
the – I suddenly thought – I were coming home on train from a meeting once
and I thought ‘Oh we’ve got this unemployment now wi’ kids, what’re we going
to do’ And it suddenly struck me that we’d got Lockerbrook that was nowhere
near up to date as it is at moment. And I thought about it and I got all me bits
o’ notes together and I picked up on Terry Howard and I broached it to Terry
Howard and I says “What do you think I think they could make a go of it” So
he knocked a programme up and he said he’d take it on as being, you know,
the guide of it. So I went to Council and they give me, what was it two
thousand, I don’t know whether two thousand, three thousand pound, to do
the first week. And I was still working in town. Terry took these kids up from
youth clubs and all over, you know. And we set this programme out and we
sort of egged ‘em on to think that they were running it. They formed a council,
just like we would do wi’ Woodcraft. They formed their own council, they got
their own chairperson, used to meet every morning and they used to meet
every night. Problems, any problems in’t night used to be brought to council.
Day’s programme was sorted out. And they did conservation work, cycling,
caving. And then Monday night I’d go up to explain to ‘em what were
expected. Thursday night I went up with me cinematograph from work. A bit
sixteen ml projector, carrying it up across moors. [laughing]
(Tegwen – [laughing])
Oh in all weathers. And do an assessment with ‘em. Now then them kids
wanted to come back.
(Tegwen – I’m not surprised, it sounds amazing)
11

They wanted to come back and then I got twelve and a half thousand pound
from council to run one over winter period because we’d no, you know, it
weren’t being used. And the worst young person I saw and met was a lad who
wanted to commit suicide, he were that depressed.
(Tegwen – Oh dear)
And he’d cut his wrists and his dad had sewn ‘em up wi’ cotton so the police
wouldn’t get involved.
(Tegwen – Oh dear)
And that lad were a new lad when he left. And I think it’s same wi’ children, if
you give them something outdoors where they’re them and their selves and
they can feel that they’ve got, you know, their own responsibility plus
responsibility for others, but they’re doing it as a group responsibility, so that
you just don’t tell ‘em this, they actually do it hands on.
(Tegwen – And they work it out for themselves)
When they meet in a morning, when they meet at night, and they talk it
through and they’re allowed to talk it through, and they’re allowed to have, you
know, you just make up certain jobs what they could vote and all the kids vote
for ‘em. And I think the passion is still there for ‘em, the mystic thing is still
there for ‘em. We’re just not doing it. And we’re not doing it with the right type
of kid. The estates where they’re on drugs and they’re on this and they’re on
that, they don’t see anything. Nobody seems to want to involve ‘em in a
degree of – except it’s like in a building, and it’s not got to be that, there’s got
to be camps where you can run these things. And they could be very close to
one another and feel that there’s a bond, building a bond between each other.
And it can be done outside wi’ camping and … And, you know, not just
learning about flowers and things like that. Though they’re a thing as well as,
but there is other things. There’s physical and there’s mental and there’s, you
know. Because if you look at it basically a lot o’ problems wi’ kids is because
they’re stressed out. We think there’s only us that’s stressed.
(Tegwen – [laughing])
12

[laughing] We do, we think
(Tegwen – I think everybody’s stressed [laughing])
We do, we think it’s only us carrying big burdens and it’s not so. Kids carry a
hell of a lot o’ burdens. The kinds I had to deal with at times, you know, was
… And of course, you know, you move on. Like I’ve dealt with homeless, I’ve
dealt with alcoholics, prostitutes, the lot, in running and helping to run centres
for ‘em. And it all comes from stemming o’ Woodcraft and being involved in
these movements with people. I run now one now called the Strollers for our
Chapel. Not that I’m religious, it’s just that it did me the world o’ good cos I
had a really bad accident, and mentally it destroyed me, but going to Chapel
got me out of it. So I started this Strollers, and now we’ve got it going people
that never thought they’d ever walk again or, you know, it’s become a focal
point, a talking point, a social activity.
(Tegwen – Yeah, so do you actually go out onto the moors and onto the...)
I’m, well I’m in really bad health at moment, at this moment in time, although I
have got to do one in October on Win Hill and I’ve promised meself I’ll do it
come hell or high water. [laughing] Because they’re all – I’ve talked to ‘em
about it that much that they want to see the beautiful view.
(Tegwen – Yeah, yeah, it is a beautiful view)
[End of track three]
[Track four]
And the story is that when I were at Woodcraft and we were camping at Edale
I was working at the time so I only did a week’s camp and then I had to go
home and go to work. But our leader says, we were doing this walk and it
were blazing hot. And we walked from, we were camping at side of Knoll [ph]
(Tegwen – Oh yeah)
And we went up, oh it were roasting, and when we got there, as teenagers,
our leader said “I want you to stand here and I want you to come and look at
13

this view cos you’re not going to see it again” And being teenagers, “We are
not, get knotted” So we sat down and we had our sandwiches and rebelled as
usual. And then come back and ever since I’ve regretted it.
(Tegwen – Yeah)
Because that’s when they was building the dam.
(Tegwen – Oh wow. So you really wouldn’t ever see it again)
And it was before they’d got the wall across. So, well, no, they must have just
about finished it cos in ’47 it filled up quick after snow. But I was up there, oh,
when was it About five year ago and I was sat with these Woodcraft kids and
there were quite a lot of ‘em up there and I says to leader “Could we just have
a word with ‘em” and I told ‘em this story. So I says “When your leader says
‘Come and have a look at this’ don’t just ignore him, or her, and think ‘oh not
again’ look because” I said “This is one of the things that I most dreadfully
regret I ever did” And there was a warden, one o’ rangers I didn’t know further
on, and he says “Do you know, I’ve just heard you say that, that’s a wonderful
story” he says. [laughing] I said “But it’s true”.
(Tegwen – It is a wonderful story, yeah)
You know, and we don’t, if you do these things like that you’ve got to be able
to pass ‘em on to kids and hope that what you’re saying a little bit rubs off
because when you get older – they’re only small memories that happen – but
(Tegwen – They’re so important though aren’t they)
They are. You get told such an ocean, oceans of stuff as you’re coming
through life but there’s certain ones that you think ‘I regret not doing that’ or ‘ I
wish I’d have seen that’
(Tegwen – Mmm, yeah)
And I always think now when I’m getting involved wi’ kids that I do try to
explain to ‘em but a little bit more in detail. And I’ve always said when leaders
say, you know, “Oh you can’t get kids out” I said “But you can, you can, you
14

tell ‘em that they’re going to see, there’s going to trees, there’s going to be
water, there’s going to be rocks, there’s going to be splashing in a river or
whatever or whatever.” I says “And you’ll get ‘em there, you’ll get ‘em there
because it’s all …” Cos when I first went to Youlgreave camping our leader sat
us down for weeks and weeks telling us about Youlgreave river and all this
and all that. Cos I’d never been away, I’d never been out of, just apart from
round about in Sheffield like. And of course I’m baying at reins, can’t get off
early enough in morning. And we got on bus and went in Pond Street, went to
Youlgreave, ah we were running wild and it, ah, it were all there, everything
he’d told. And that’s what leadership’s all about, that’s what it’s all about.
Giving young people a picture.
(Tegwen – Yeah, getting their enthusiasm going)
Yeah, and building this picture and away they go.
(Tegwen – Yeah, so you were saying, obviously the dams have made quite a
big difference, are there any other sort of significant landscape changes,
things that have changed in the area)
Oh I think, well the thing that, and I’ve been on, I were on about it other year,
well two years, three years ago. I keep forgetting how long I’ve had me
operation. And I said, we were out at Houndkirk and we’d just come over top
from Brown Edge and I were taking strollers out, all these, they’d not been
anywhere near there, it were total foreign. And we gets to Ringinglow at
beginning of Houndkirk and there were twelve Land Rovers all in a line and,
oh, I got me blood up, you know. And one of ‘em were coming over, I says
“What you doing” “Never you mind what we’re doing, we’re out enjoying
ourselves” I says “I hope you realise what damage you’re doing” And I’ve
regretted us letting that happen because it’s now like a big motorway. Now
they only used to go across it in ‘40s and early ‘50s but nothing like that, it’s
wall to wall now. It were just over a cart track wide. You know, now you could
get three cars side by side. And now they’re not satisfied wi’ doing that, they
want to go over walls and start on moors. And, you know, it’s all criminal, it
really is.
15

(Tegwen – Has anything else changed about the way people use, sort of, the
moor and, you know, obviously there’s the four by fours, is there anything, I
don’t know, were there climbers when you started there)
There were climbers but nowhere near as much. I mean we’ve got to accept
now it’s business isn’t it You know, I used to go out in an ordinary, me dad’s
rain mac. Now I’ve got a cagoule that’s a hundred and odd quid.
(Tegwen – It’s very different isn’t it Yeah)
You know, the difference, the weather, the weather’s in some cases if you
look through there, nowhere near as bad.
(Tegwen – So was …)
So it’s, the things have, everything’s changed in that respect, there’s more
people using it and they’ve more publicity for ‘em to use it. And the more
people who are going to use it the more people are going to think there’s
something to be had here. You see you can’t go to a café now wi’ your own
sandwiches.
(Tegwen – No, could you in the past)
You could, yeah. Alport Castles, when we used to go up wi’ old Bert Ward, we
used to go there and have us sandwiches at Alport Castles, you used to …
Miss Ayres, Mrs Lancaster’s at Castleton, could always have your sandwiches
in there and a pot o’ tea, just at bottom o’ Cavedale. There used to be one at
Owler Bar, Sparrow Pit, not Sparrow Pit, Curlew, there was all over the place
there were cafes. At Alport near Youlgreave there was a cyclist’s café.
(Tegwen – Right, right.)
You know, you could go all over place. Villages had ‘em, more than one.
(Tegwen – So you’d just buy a pot of tea or whatever and you could have your
…)
Yeah, and have your sandwiches.
16

(Tegwen – Oh right)
Yeah. It’s totally changed now. It’s business. Everything’s planned to
business. Everything works for money whereas we didn’t have that problem.
We had no money and everybody that were doing anything, you know, on, like
cafes or whatever, they were doing it because they enjoyed your company as
well as...
(Tegwen – Yeah)
Now they only enjoy your company if you’re [laughing]
(Tegwen – If you’re paying for it. [laughing])
If you’re paying lot. And, yeah, I mean youth hostelling, that’s totally changed.
(Tegwen – Did you used to go youth hostelling)
Oh aye. Aye we used to go, when we first got married we, us first Christmas
married we were youth hostelling.
(Tegwen – In this area)
Before I were married we met, we used to meet up at Edale and meet ‘t
Manchester lot and play house rugby and all that sort o’ thing and say “Oh
we’ll see you next month” or whenever, you know, and we’d all …
(Tegwen – So that was a Manchester group of the Woodcraft)
Yeah, no, that were just, I weren’t in Woodcraft then, it was just a body of,
groups of us used to get together and meet up in hostels, you know.
(Tegwen – Right)
I mean Ilam Hall were another place where we used to do. Ravenstowe. Leam
Hall, it’s not there now. And that moved down to Hathersage.
(Tegwen – So where was that, Leam Hall)
Leam Hall is just on the edge of Eyam Moor. It was a big house and we used
to go there. I had a little motorbike in me early days and one o’ young lads in
17

Clarion he was, he were a plumber, only an apprentice but we used to go out
there and he’d do plumbing at nights after we’d done work, you know. We’d
do all sorts o’ jobs at ‘t weekend. Yeah. Castleton, been to most o’ hostels in
Derbyshire we were at. Bakewell we had a, we took all kids down from
Woodcraft and had a Christmas party at Bakewell Youth Hostel. Yeah. We
had some good times.
[End of track four]
[Track five]
(Tegwen – So you were saying about the..., well, the weather’s changed. Do
you remember any particular bad winters)
Well I was out in ‘47, the very, very first day it snowed was Saturday night and
we went out on Sunday and we walked from Fulwood.
(Tegwen – In Sheffield)
In Sheffield, over to Stanage, Red Mires, Stanage, I’ve got a photograph of
snow blowing up off ‘t edge. I went down what I call staircase and down into
Hathersage and we sat there, me and this friend, talking far too long to this
person. And then we set off and we went down and went along river to
Grindleford and up Padley to, thinking we were going to catch bus at Fox
House, which there were no chance. So we walked along Burbage, along ‘t
ring causeway as we knew it, and come out at other end at the Upper
Burbage bridge and then walked along to Ringinglow, still no transport. We
had to walk right into town before we got a tram. And then we got home. And
me mother were going spare, absolutely spare. And I think it were about half
past ten at night when we got home.
(Tegwen – Wow)
It were that bad.
(Tegwen – And was the snow quite deep by then)
18

Oh yeah, we got, we’d only got shorts on. But we didn’t go out for a week or
two after that. [laughing]
(Tegwen – [laughing])
That really did … first time weather’s really put me off, yeah.
(Tegwen – And how long did the snow last that time)
Well I think it’s, I did keep a diary and it snowed for about, at some point every
day for at least a fortnight, three weeks.
(Tegwen – Wow)
And snow was, in Eldon Hole and in some crofts on Kinder way into August.
(Tegwen – Really Flipping heck)
Yeah, it was really, really deep, really deep that one. And that one sticks in me
mind. But all these do, you know, I mean that’s us at top o’ Crowden in shorts
again. [Looking at photographs]
(Tegwen – I can’t believe you didn’t get hypothermia [laughing])
Aye. And that’s one I took at Kinder Downfall.
(Tegwen – Wow, wow, those icicles were amazing)
Yeah, and that was in, that was in ‘70s, I was sat on Gramston Nor [ph]
[Grindslow Knoll]. And that’s a lone walker on his way, yeah.
(Tegwen – So did you ever get stuck in the snow, did you ever)
Not really, no. That’s us with Clarion again. And that’s, I think that’s when we’d
been with police that time.
(Tegwen – Oh so tell me about that. You went out on rescues did you)
Yeah when they started rescue service, I think it were very first time we’d ever
really done a proper exercise. I had one when there were RAF there as well.
(Tegwen – So when did they start the rescue service)
19

Eh, that’d be ‘50s.
(Tegwen – So while you were with the Clarion)
Oh it were while I were wi’ Clarion, yeah, yeah.
(Tegwen – And who asked the Clarion to get involved, was it)
Well I think it’d be the older end, it wouldn’t be us. Like Graham’s dad and one
or two others. Some of older end had’ve been involved in it. We just sort o’ …
I mean they didn’t get involved in actual that. But putting us forward I think
and encouraging us, it would be older end o’ Clarion.
(Tegwen – So what was the first rescue you went out on)
We didn’t do a rescue, we were only training then. That was a training rescue
thing.
(Tegwen – Yeah, so how did they train)
That were, the body actually had been put behind that rock. All it was was
that. We’d gone up with the sledges.
(Tegwen – Oh so it was like a sack full of things to …)
Yeah, we was given a map reference so we had to try and find it and it was
out on top o’ Kinder somewhere.
(Tegwen – How long did it take you)
Oh it took us ages.
(Tegwen – [laughing])
Because we’d never dragged a sledge anywhere before.
(Tegwen – No)
And we’d never, ever had to do an exercise of that type, you know. So, yeah.
(Tegwen – So you said that you got involved with the Four Inns rescue, this
picture with the police in)
20

Oh that one, yeah, we did one and the …
(Tegwen – Cos was that one the scouts had been lost)
Oh, that one, no, I was in’t Woodcraft that one. Now then we was manning,
we’d got Lockerbrook at the time and I’d set some young kids a job of – I met
‘em in town, there was three adults, me and two others, two younger ones,
and I think there were four or five kids. We met ‘em in town, it had snowed like
mad. And I’ve got some photographs of it here, pictures in town. In fact I’ve
got some photographs of when we met up with them after. And their job was
to get to‘t Clarion Rambling Club.
(Tegwen – Right)
And I give ‘em a route. I don’t know if you ever … to Clarion hut. I don’t know
if you remember Clarion hut It was, actually it was Clarion cyclists but we as
Woodcraft got permission to use it. And there’s a massive pot bellied stove
and it were a big hut and you could, they used to sell you big pint pots o’ tea
and stuff like that, you know.
(Tegwen – So where was this)
So I set them off from town and we then set off to go to Ringinglow and we
were walking across at Houndkirk to meet ‘em up. And that’s when we heard
that these scouts had died.
(Tegwen –Right)
If we’d have been at Lockerbrook at that time, although it was ours, if
somebody had of been manning it we would have been able to save ‘em
because they came over that way.
(Tegwen – Oh right)
One of ‘em died just over top from us. And it was shame that.
(Tegwen – That was an absolute tragedy, yeah)
21

Absolute shame, really was. But, yeah, you know, it’s easy to say, “well
leaders should never have done it”, but we can all speak in hindsight can’t we
really
(Tegwen – Yeah, can’t we Yeah)
When a tragedy happens you look at it in hindsight, and, yeah, it was a thing,
but.
(Tegwen – So did things change after that, did, cos the mountain rescue
became more formal didn’t it)
Oh yeah, I mean, Harper Hill RAF took on as well. They played a part in
training and then – I don’t know whether they still do – but they did play a big
part in’t end, you know. But we was – I’ve got a photograph at home where we
are with ‘em when they’ve got all’t electronics, all’t electronics there, you
know.
(Tegwen – Right, like tracking)
Oh they hadn’t got them [laughing] they’d got like a box about this big wi’ all
dials on and thing up a …
(Tegwen – Oh like a radio)
Yeah, oh, aye, aye. Aye it were good. It finished up at, you know, well it’s
become professional now, which looking at it …you see you didn’t get many
accidents and things like that. Bearing in mind because a lot of land wasn’t
open like it is now. And there wasn’t so many people about anyway. You do
need that that professionalism now. They’ve moved … I mean people are not
only having sort of accidents, if you like to call it, through actual walking or
terrain or, they’re having heart attacks and things like that. Now then these are
things that nobody knows when they’re going to have one. So, you know, it’s
fortunate that we really have got a good professional team.
(Tegwen – Yeah, definitely)
22

Now. I mean you can’t, I mean looking at ‘em today going out and going up,
you know. And last time I was on Kinder, about six years ago I think it was,
the family that was up there at Downfall, well their kids, they’d only go trunks
on and they were letting ‘em go to’t edge, you know, and trying to climb and
get under waterfall. And it was ridiculous. I were petrified. Needless to say, I
fell down though just after. I fell down Fairbrook Naze and finished up with me
gashed eye and in hospital.
(Tegwen – Oh heck)
Being stitched up. [laughing]
(Tegwen – [laughing] Oh dear)
So, you know, I can’t say a lot about parents can I Really. But, yeah, it is a
massive change and we do … I mean climbing on Stanage and Froggatt and
that, there’s an accident every week just about.
(Tegwen – I think that’s because there’s more people doing it)
There’s more people out doing it. And so it will always be. I mean I sit on’t
High Peaks as well and we were discussing these mobile phones and
particularly up Snake Pass. And then once we were discussing about fires on
Kinder and Bleaklow. And somebody says “Well if we put notices at either end
saying ‘If you see a fire, phone” I said “Hang on a minute, we’ve just said we
don’t want mobile phones, we don’t want masts.” And you can’t get a
message up there. So if you can’t get a message what they going to do wi’ a
phone” So, you know, you pull yourself back a bit and you look at these
things and they’re things that we could do before but we didn’t have as many.
Now you can have a fire any minute now. Because summers are not as,
winters are not as long, but summers are more intense somehow, they’re
dryer. I know people say “Oh but we used to have sunshine a lot longer” but
we didn’t get the intense heat that we’re getting now. So, you know, global
warming, it’s catching up and we’re seeing these things more prevalent.
[End of track five]
23

[Track six]
(Tegwen – Do you remember any particular big wildfires Did you ever get
involved with fighting wildfires)
No but I mean I saw some. I saw one on Eastern Moor which wi’ [] is in full
discussion. I saw one there which, when you’re driving down, you’re coming
along from Owler Bar, come round and then come round road as if you’re
going down to Fox House, then there’s one cuts immediately across. I drove
between that when all that lot were a fire and it, oh, were awesome that. And
then I was on the Pennine Way with a group, a group o’ kids, and we had to,
we were walking in all smouldering heather, you know. It were all
smouldering, ground were red hot. So it does, it has changed quite a bit. And
year by year it’s changing.
(Tegwen – So just talking about Pennine Way, one of the areas that we’ve
done a lot of work in, on, is Black Hill around Holme Moss and that area.)
Oh yeah.
(Tegwen – Have you got any particular memories of Black Hill. Cos for some
people it’s a real sort of memorable spot, you know, it’s a …)
Oh. I only remember one because I’ve only been on it once. And we’d come
across Kinder when we were doing ‘t Pennine Way. I’d got thirteen lads wi’
me. Youngest were thirteen, oldest were sixteen, and we were camping most
o’ way. And we did Kinder and we got down into Crowden Youth Hostel. Next
morning it were thick mist, it were raining, and course we’d all got shorts on.
And we set off and warden, there were a warden there, he says “You’re not
going up there are you” I says “Yeah, we’re doing ‘t Pennine Way” “Oh no
you’re not” he says “You’re going round here, they’re not equipped properly
for this lot” So I says “Oh” So he went, I got ‘t lads together, I said “Now then,
what you going to do It’s up to you. Are we going ahead Do you want to go
ahead and go this way or shall we get ‘t bus and go round” “We’re doing it,
we’re doing it” So we started off and one lost – he were doing it in trainers and
I’d played hell wi’ him for trying it on – and he lost his trainer. And by time we’d
24

got to other end [laughing] three of ‘em decided that were it, they’ve had
enough. And it was so bad, they were so wet. And we were camping at other
end. So they just couldn’t … It sort of brought out the sort o’ lads from ‘t men,
as you might say, you know. But it was bad, it was really bad.
(Tegwen – Boggy and …)
Oh aye, ever so boggy, ever so boggy. And, you know, I mean, fortunately the
sixteen year old lad that I’d got, I had him as my sort of feedback wi’
problems. If kids were getting into – oh any one of ‘em had got sort of a
problem, not just with bad feet or what, mentally, he were me feedback. And
we’d got map out, we’d got compass out and we’d got everything ready and
we worked it out between us. So, and that’s again, giving kids the confidence
that they can be a part o’ you, that they’re a team, that we’re all in it together.
(Tegwen – Yeah, they’ve got some control)
Yeah, and it worked absolutely well. All way up it did, absolutely. And, yeah,
I’ve always done that wi’ young people, I’ve always said “We’re a team here,
we don’t work out on us own at all”
(Tegwen – Yeah. Well that’s important on the moors isn’t it)
Yeah it is.
(Tegwen – Cos you can get into trouble very quickly)
Oh yeah, I mean one o’ these, I think, where were it I had to slap his face for
him. Oh...
(Tegwen – Oh dear)
It was him.
(Tegwen – On the right)
Yeah. He panicked because mist come down and we were walking and he
thought we were walking, we were, you know, we were totally lost and
everything. And he went, oh …
25

(Tegwen – And where were you)
Up on Kinder.
(Tegwen – Right)
And of course when you keep dropping down into crofts and that, eh dear. But
I had to really just – I just gave him one big slap and it pulled him round – but,
yeah, there is all sorts of problems. And it’s frightening for young people.
(Tegwen – Yeah, can be can’t it)
Can be, yeah.
(Tegwen – So did you ever get involved with the wardens and the Ranger
Service Cos I know the Clarion did some rangering early on)
Yeah, yeah, I did, but not a lot. Because, as I say, I were open spirit then, you
know. I joined groups, I got involved as best I could, and then there were
something else come up and I’d vanish into that. And so I spiralled around.
But it were always to do wi’ this, you know.
(Tegwen – Yeah. And you were talking about Ward’s Piece earlier, you said
you know someone that was involved in creating Ward’s Piece)
Oh it were Frank Spriggs. There were two Frank Spriggs. One, his dad, who I
knew, and he got me to join Clarion. His son didn’t work at our place but I
found out, oh, quite a few years after, that I always thought – when I saw
Frank Spriggs in ‘t Clarion handbook that it were old man that did walk and
then when I met up with his son, called him Frank as well, he says “No” he
says “I took on me dad’s walks. And I did ‘em” [laughing] I says “Oh” I said
“Because when I dropped out” I says “I always used to see his name still in
and I thought ‘surely he’s still not going’” Because he were an old man like,
you know. But he carried two buckets o’, I think four buckets, he went up wi’
two and come back down and then took another two up, o’ sand, for mixing to
make ‘t monument. You know.
(Tegwen – Right, that’s some going)
26

And he were right proud o’ that, his dad, right proud he’d done that. But it was
a – I don’t know whether it was made in South Africa, but certainly paid for by
a man in South Africa. So that’s where that disc came from, yeah.
(Tegwen – Yeah, it’s a bit of a pull up to the top there isn’t it, with a
Especially with two buckets of sand!)
Oh aye, it’s bad enough wi a rucksack on wi’out two buckets o’ sand as well.
[laughing] Yeah, yeah
[End of Track six]
[Track seven]
(Tegwen – So have you seen any changes in wildlife since you’ve been out on
the moors)
Only that now you don’t see … in, up Grindsbrook here and in Crowden you’d
see white hares in winter but I haven’t seen any for years and years now. But
there was quite a lot at one time. Curlews have died out, they died out as well,
you didn’t see many o’ them. You used to hear them, you know, way back in
‘40s and ‘50s they were everywhere, but all of a sudden they seem to be
dying away from hearing ‘em. Now then, whether that were because of all
conservation getting changed or whatever I don’t know.
(Tegwen – Right. And what about birds of prey Are there more of those
around)
Well I don’t know about them because I weren’t into bird life as such. Although
I were interested. I mean I have got some photographs of, you know,
pheasants’ eggs and stuff like that as I’ve been around but I weren’t into it to
really pacify me time to think about it. You know. I just accepted it I suppose
as all one glorious part. Although if changes change I know I got a little bit
annoyed at first, I think I must have mellowed a bit now, with hand gliders.
(Tegwen – Right, when did they start)
27

Oh they started not that long ago. But it was the fact that in some … you see
I’m one o’ these that likes to lay out. When I’m … I walk so far and then I want
to sit down and I always think I can hear, when wind’s blowing through grass
as you’re laid, it’s talking to you, you know, and then you look up and you
could always either see a skylark or blue sky or whatever. And then all of a
sudden you see hand gliders coming over and flying above you and that and it
didn’t seem private any more. You know, that weren’t yours any more. The
sky, the blue sky. And planes going over leaving big white lines. Nothing
become natural any more. And I suppose it’s me. What I started off and how
it’s developed. And I have to keep saying to meself now, “Well nothing’s going
to change Bill, there’ll be probably more and more different things coming on
before long” you know. And you’ve got these sort of biplanes now, these little
motor biplanes, making a noise and no longer can you just lay there and just
hear natural sounds.
(Tegwen – Yeah I can see)
I wrote a little piece once, just for a memory, and that were laying out on
Burbage and just listening to grasses and things, you know, and looking up at
sky and seeing it all and what you … now you’ve got shooting and [laughing]
(Tegwen – Yeah, it’s not so relaxing [laughing])
You know, I know people’s got to have these sort o’ sports but they don’t,
they’ve never realised what countryside is about. And I think you’ve got to go
a bit further afield now like Yorkshire Dales, you can find odd corners there.
Lake District, last big walk I did was just before I went in for me operation, I
did Helvellyn. Well I got up to Striding Edge anyway, I couldn’t go no further
than that, but the people that were going up there. It was one long treck, you
know.
(Tegwen – It’s like a conveyor belt some places isn’t it)
It is, it is, and I thought ‘Oh dear’ you know. So, yeah, there’s not many. I think
Alport’s, Alport Castles and that way, that end is about the last one left now
where you can actually say you can go and lay down and realise that there
28

isn’t going to be no disturbance from anywhere. But I suppose that’s progress
and we’ve got to … can’t fight it.
(Tegwen – No, no, you can’t)
There’s no, you’ve got to, I mean I found that out when I went to the Eastern
Moor other night, at Totley.
(Tegwen – It’s one of the … In fact I think it was there, I was at one of them,
they had a couple of – it was a meeting with all the …)
Yes, it was the first one.
(Tegwen – Oh no I went to the cultural heritage one, which is about the third
one they did I think)
Yes, that’s it, well I went to the first one, mmm. And that’s what I like being on
high peaks for as well, lot of old ramblers on there, well not that, you know.
They are, actually many are in their sixties and that and it’s nice to be among
that fraternity still.
(Tegwen – Yeah, yeah, definitely)
Although I still like young’uns, I still love ‘em. Me heart’s still pleads and
bleeds for ‘em that they’re not getting that opportunity. The kids on the
estates, they don’t, you know, there’s nothing that can be done unless you
pump money into something that’s materialistically finishes up having to be a
materialistic thing when there’s so many little things you could do we’ ‘em
outside, you know.
(Tegwen – Yeah definitely)
I mean now they’ve got, of course we’ve got health and safety, we’ve got this
business of where you can’t get involved wi’ kids because of ‘t law and that. I
mean we’ve took as many as, what, fifty, sixty kids camping, me and ‘t wife.
And we were in Scotland, you know, kids’d be crying at night and you’d say
“Come on, get in our tent, and get out sleeping bag, and you’d cuddle ‘em and
get ‘em off to sleep” and then you’d carry ‘em back into their sleeping bag, you
29

know. And it were all, we were all a family, but can’t do that any more, it’s so
stringent. And I think that’s where our problem is. Is, we’ve become the
problem now. [laughing]
(Tegwen – [laughing] Yeah it’s sad isn’t it)
You know, it’s a mental blockage we’ve got and we’ve just got to try and live it
out because, you know, kids … When I talked to my kids about, me
daughter’s forty, and she’s just gone onto council for first time, and me son,
she’s forty odd, he’s forty one I think. And they’ve always gone out wi’ us, you
know. Camping, hiking, whatever. And when I start going off about things “I
know Dad but it’s different for us. We’ve grown up wi’ this” And it’s true, you
know. When you went walking you could walk from Baslow Village at night in
dark right up to and over to Totley in’t dark and probably only see, only three
cars’d pass you.
(Tegwen – That is a big difference isn’t it Yeah)
And [laughing] you know, now it’s, it’s one continuous stream, all hours o’
night, you know. So there is that change. And they say “Well we’ve grown up
wi’ it Dad”, you know. They don’t hear noise now, it’s just, it’s there.
(Tegwen – It’s just there isn’t it Yeah, yeah. Oh that’s brilliant thank you, I’ll
stop it there)
It’s been a – yeah, been a wonderful experience.
[End of track seven]
[Track eight]
(Tegwen – So just tell me about these photographs again)
Yeah, these are photographs which I took at New Year’s Day 1981 when it
had snowed, it was icy and it was blowing a gale and only thing I could do was
lay down on me stomach and take these photographs looking across Kinder.
And it was absolutely dramatic. It were frightening as well as dramatic,
absolutely frightening. But, as you can see, I’ve got me rucksack and me
30

hisacks, I had to have them. But, yeah, it was really something that one was.
And I always used to try and make it a rule that on New Year’s Day I was first
up there. And I camped up there once, on Downfall, took a tent wi’ some lads
and we camped up at Downfall and I stood at edge o’ Downfall and I says,
and they went to bed and I’d stood there and I said “I’m the last one here” and
I were first one up in morning and I stood at edge o’ Downfall and I says “I’m
the first one here”. And that made it for me, yeah.
(Tegwen – [laughing] Fantastic. What an experience)
Mmm. I used to love Kinder, used to love it. It were always a challenge. When
I used to get on train sometimes at Edale and it were going dark I’d look up at
silhouette o’ Kinder and I’d look at it and say “I’ll be here next time, I’ll still
have you”. And I used to think that Kinder said back to me “And I’ll be waiting
for you”. [laughing]
(Tegwen – [laughing] Well it’s still there)
It’s still there, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it’s lovely.
(Tegwen – It is.)
[End of tape]
31

Holme Village Workshop October 2010: general discussion
Holme Moss
Stand a bit nearer have a look at them. Barrage balloon. Yeah, at top o’ moss. They
were testing them & one of the restraints broke & the wind blew it downwards.
[barrage balloon] Wasn’t there at the same time as searchlights further down the road.
Before that.
It was when they were testing experimental masts. In the 1950s I think.
Well the searchlights were at the bottom of the Holme Moss. As you come out of the
village of Hope & start climbing there’s a straight piece of road & they was there on the
left & one of about four searchlights on there & the idea was that they would pick the
planes out & there was a gun battery back of the Ford Inn & they, the idea was the
searchlights on Holme Moss picked them out, the guns shot them down, but, whether
they did I never heard of anything.
I collected the mail up at there for four years at Holme Moss & I only ever failed to get
there once because of the snow. During one summer when it was very dry I was going
up & there was all this, looked like, sand blowing but it was peat dried & it was blowing it
all over. It was unusual was that. I’ve never seen it blow like that.
It must have been a dry period.
[Interviewer - You were telling me about your bikes up to top of Holme Moss]
Aye on the roads. Push & pedal them up there & then challenge a car at the top to see
who could get to bottom quickest & we never lost. You could get down quicker than a
car. By Jove. When you’re on a sit up & beg bike.
Red Cabin
What was Red Cabin built for
Well it was a shooting cabin.
It was a shooting – I thought it was on a pack horse route
That’s what my father in law said that er
Well he lived in Holme a long time.
They used to bring their horses round & used to leave their foals there.
I thought it was a pack horse route when there were drovers, for drovers. I can always
remember it must have been fantastic carrying all that stone slate & everything stone on
there because there was flue pipes, ceramic clay flue pipes & the stone. There were no
tracks.
They laid the foundations for the trig point upon Black Hill. Alleged anyway by my Aunty
Mary that her father took all the stuff up on the donkey.
Well he must have taken it back Must have taken it back [] Well it must have been a
pack mule. Didn’t they always say it was a drovers' Didn’t it go over Blackpool Bridge
1

Well that’s what they say & there’s Lightens Road []
We’ve a lovely picture of Blackpool Bridge on disc.
You know where Red Cabin is where we’re talking about
[I don’t]
Well it’s above that top reservoir.
Well the best time to see it, mind the roof’s gone now, the best time to see that was
when there was an inch of snow & it covered the roof white & all the ground was rough
at the side & the edge on the wall groove it stood out. We used to go there every, a
pilgrimage, every year. But I always understood it was a pack horse route.
Peat Cutting
[Interviewer - Have you lived in Holme all your life then]
Holme Bridge two miles. Just about 82 year. So we’ve just seen a little bit in us time.
Sorry 82 in February. Just seen a bit.
[Interviewer - Have you stayed there always then]
Yes. Apart from me time in the forces that’s the only time.
[Interviewer - What did you do for a living when you were here]
Well various activities. Did a bit of property []. A dental technician by trade. David was a
butcher.
A postman 37 years
A postman 37 years, he were the village postman.
Once went up there collecting mail & that fence that goes round, there was so much ice
on it, it looked like a wall – a foot thick.
[Interviewer - I’ve heard that some of the people told me about, you could see the
pollution coming across. Somebody’s talked to me about on Kinder not Holme Moss &
seeing smog basically coming across the moor]
It’s surprising though, I went over to Buxton to fetch a vintage car to restore for
somebody & the difference between this side & that. Virtually as if the Moss holds it back
– either the good weather or vice versa. Luckily it was lovely weather when we got down
the bottom to [].
[Interviewer - One of the reasons that we all started talking was because you’d shown us
a picture that you’d taken of a commercial peat cutting enterprise up on the moors]
Yes. I thought it might be of interest to you.
[Interviewer - Was it in 1947 Before 1947]
Aye 1947. It didn’t last so long though.
[Interviewer - So I know that a lot of people in the village have their own private peat
graving rights. Do you have]
2

We had ours down, we had ours two miles down, a mile down in the bottom. We’re in
the – there’s Cartworth ward, Austonely ward & Holme ward. Well the river separates
the two. To the left of the river as you go down is Cartworth. To the right, er, is
Austonely. To the right is Cartworth & we’re just over the river aren’t we
You’re in Austonely.
Where are we supposed to dig peat
I think you’re able to go with us.
Cooks Study that’s our town land.
[Is that different to the place where the people in Holme village would dig]
No they’ll dig up here.
Up Issues Road.
Issues - been there a long time.
We did it just after the war when there was no fuel, yeah. But you couldn’t do it today
because it’d just get stolen. We used to cut it in blocks & lay it flat out on the top of the
heather for a start – for a week depending on the weather. Then you’d go then & stack it
in fours like that to dry cos it was obviously, the weight must have been nearly 90%
water. And then we used to fetch it home by various means. I say there was a chap who
used to live just down the road here – used to fetch his on the wheel barrow.
It used to smell nice though when it were burning.
[You say that as if you were really impressed by him. Why]
Well it were a physical skill. Wheeling a wheel barrow from up a hill side there, down into
the valley bottom at Holme Bridge then up the steep hill towards Holme here after he’d
done a day’s work as a plaster’s labourer. I reckon he were pretty…. he hadn’t a motor
vehicle. The only thing we were lucky me brother in law, er, Mills, they had a little pick up
wagon & we used to fetch it. We were very, very fortunate.
I don’t think we should have gone digging if we couldn’t have brought it home.
[Interviewer - Did you do that at certain times when you were short of coal or did you do
it regularly]
No we only did it about four years & then coal became more plentiful & we got a bit
weaker in the back. So…
More money in your pocket perhaps
Perhaps! We only did it because coal was rationed.
I’ve seen a photograph this week somewhere showing peat digging in the 1970s quite
recently.
Oh they still do it.
It mentioned the economic factors that were in play just at that time.
The price of coal had shot up.
I’m talking about…
You just couldn’t dig it & burn it, it would take a month or two before it would dry out.
Oh no. I used to stack it at home then & burn it the winter after.
They used to bring it down & dry it on walls when it got stolen. On the walls at home in
the garden.
You’d bring it in anyway. But you see it was always a heck of a bit heavier to carry full of
water than when it was dry. Well it’s the age we live in now. What sickens me is this dry
3

stone, this walling going. Oh dear, you can’t replace it you see, with new. Well you can
but it doesn’t look right does it I mean you drop down to Meltham, if you go down foot &
turn left into Meltham they’ve pinched all the coping stones out.
They’ve pinched them all from Jackson’s bridge graveyard haven’t t they
Theyv’e taken all from Jackson’s Bridge graveyard.
There’s a long list in the Police report this week about thefts.
They’ve got, it’s like the copper cables thieves pinch off the railway lines etc. There’ve
got to be receivers. These that pinch the stone aren’t builders; they’re selling it to …
Meteor Plane Crash 1950s
[Interviewer - Just looking at this picture of Black Hill when it was black, can you
remember it being like that]
No it’s a long time since I was there. We differ, me & David, about this aircraft. I thought
it crashed on Black Hill.
No it didn’t. Derek says not.
I’ll stand corrected then.
That Meteor.
That Meteor crashed 54 years ago.
It wasn’t the Black Hill, it was just this side, straight up from Fleece.
[Interviewer - You’re talking about a plane]
Yes, a Meteor plane.
Not a meteor literally.
I know my wife was hanging clothes out when we were newly married. We lived at
Brown Hill & it came over spewing black smoke out & straight into the…
It was this side of Black Hill then
Yes. Well it was more or less straight up from here.
Like all these aircraft, I mean, got to the Liberator, you can go to that one, er not so
much on Sliddens Moor but you can go to top of Shelf Stones, Higher Shelf Stones to
the Flying Fortress there, they just missed the top of, just missed getting over the top.
Aye they did, they missed. But that were spewing black smoke. It were on fire I think.
You see that Oxford the first one that crashed in the war just up road here.
Another one crashed over Cloist [] during war & it were bombed up ‘n all.
Where were that
If you go up Cliff Lane.
Oh that one.
Which’s place
Over Bob Gill’s, Above… Howard’s’ bungalow.
Where me brother brought me mother home from hospital & Jack Gill, you know, that
building that was down here before they built reservoir, well Jack had already taken
Peacock Farm up here & Jack was living up Peacock on his own. Jack jumps out of bed,
gets his britches on & comes running down into Holme banging on doors “They’re here!
They’re here! They’re here!”
Well it were an Oxford, an Oxford plane that had crashed.
4

I don’t know what it was.
Well it was. They took every scrap away of that.
They exploded a bomb you know.
That wouldn’t be carrying a bomb would it
Oh aye.
I’m sure it was an Oxford, twin-engine Oxford.
I don’t know whether it were or not. It’s in that big book.
What they did, they had tractors & they made sleds, sledges with corrugated sheeting,
roof sheeting, & they fetched every bit of it. The only one they could get to Derek, wasn’t
it
Which is that
That one up Cliff Lane.
Top of Cliff, ah.
They shifted every bit of it.
They always said there was a chap’s arm with his wrist watch still going on it.
Still going.
On the pole top. I don’t know whether it were right or not.
Norman Bottomley & all them, they were in the Fleece & they reckoned they found one
with a watch still going on his arm but, I mean, that were…
LAUGHTER
It must have been a good watch. It must have been a good watch if it blew his arm off!
Digley Reservoir
Talking about helicopters, they used to call them autogyros & I can always remember
the first one. I was only, I were only six, seven, & it landed at Bowers Hall & we all went
up. I lived at Rock View at time, at bottom here, & that was a little autogyro. No such
thing as helicopters then.
One man job.
Aye it landed without field by Bowers Hall.
[Where’s Bowers Hall]
Under Digley reservoir.
By Digley Reservoir. It’ll still be in Peak will it
Under water.
It isn’t a Hall anymore, it’s just pulled down.
It were only a cottage – it wasn’t a Hall.
Old building with mullioned windows.
Ah, but it wasn’t a big Hall as we know.
No it wasn’t a big important place. No. By Ellis Pond.
[So all this area - all the moors was your playground when you were kids]
Oh Aye. After being to Sunday school we used to go walking up & down.
Go home & get your ears clipped because you’d get your trousers in….
We used to go up to Bilberry Reservoir which was above Digley. There was some of this
sulphur-rock water & we used to stir it up with a stick till it come right down int’ village
you’d get it on your clothes & they’d play ‘eck them when they got back.
What there was there was, in the reservoir bottom now, was a sulphur spring.
That where the test bore holes they made wasn’t it Beside Digley.
5

It were in front when they did it bore holes for bank & it was sulphur water.
It did smell.
It seriously smelt. You know it was….
Black Hill
I walked over with my daughter for the NSPCC – they did a sponsored walk around the
area. We used that route which is possibly two years ago now & up till then I had never
seen those slabs. Then again the last time I went over was with my children, again not
that daughter, my other children when they were probably eight or nine which takes us
back to 1980 & it was black, totally, it were just like that – a black, muddy morass & you
picked your way very carefully because it was more likely that, you know, you’d go in
above your knee if you didn’t watch it as you can see from that. You stepped off that
stone, stone slabs, you were straight in.
[What’s it look like now Since you last went up]
I can’t remember, I guess it’s going to be like this green, but I can’t remember it being
green. It’s probably green when we went over it two years ago.
It wouldn’t be before two years ago because Allan went up there last year & he thought
“Desecration, this green”
“What have they done to the moor” It’s lost its character altogether.
It’s very different now.
Just a bit of a meadow now. [Laughter.]
[Are you saying that tongue in cheek]
I am. I’m saying that tongue in cheek.
Do you remember when we had a Scout walk up there once I was doing a test point at
Black Hill.
Was that a Jamboree walk
Could have been couldn’t it We took a tent up and our breakfast and a primus stove &
we had to tie the tent to the Trig Point to stop it blowing away. You couldn’t get close to it
of course because of the mud. But, er, we had a radio - telephone things. It’s going back
quite a way, my call sign was Pete Bog.
Very appropriate. Have you read Arthur Wainwright
It was so windy there was a bit of corrugated iron in the peat, we put that up to put round
our stove but we couldn’t get it hot enough to cook the eggs, honestly.
Have you read Arthur Wainwright’s account of his walk on the Pennine Way ‘Cos he
describes that beautifully. But for the fact that there were two other people in sight he
was he would have been lost forever. They pulled him out when they saw his
predicament.
It’s certainly not a place to be when it’s misty.
No.
6

Interview with Carlton Mellor at the Holme Village Workshop Oct 2010 (Tegwen
Roberts, Interviewer)
[If you could say who you are]
Carlton Mellor. I was born & brought up in Holme Bridge which is just down the road
from here.
[Right. is that part of Holme Village or is it a different village]
It’s in the bottom, the bottom of Holme Banks.
[Right. I don’t know this area too well. So what did you do; what was your job]
When I was working I was a baker in Holmfirth but, you know, I used to roam these
moors when I was on school holidays. Me parents worked up at Holme Moss. Me
mother worked in the canteen when they were actually building the site.
[Right. So when did they build it]
I think they started about 1948 or 9 or something of that sort. I think it opened in 1953,
but, err, the old radio when it was Home & Light programme before there was Radio 1,
2, 3 & 4, there was a programme on the Home Service called ‘Look North’ & a chap
called Eric Jolley was the compere or in charge of the programmes. He was the Richard
Dimbleby of his day, & he came along when they were building it & he interviewed me
mother. Me mother was actually whisked up to top of the mast when they were actually
building it! A couple of the workmen just for a prank grabbed hold of her & popped her
in the bucket & before she knew what was happening she was up at the top.
[And what did she think of that]
She was a bit apprehensive going up, but, once she got up, you know, she was admiring
the view.
[Yes, good job she’s not scared of heights!]
And when the station was actually up & running, err, in 1953, I don’t know whether it was
broadcast from up there or whether it came from Sutton Coldfield, but they broadcast the
Rugby League cup final when Fartown, which was a Huddersfield team, were in the final
& our family went up to the station & watched the final on the monitors up there.
[Fartown was the name given locally by older people to Huddersfield Rugby League
team, named after the ground they played at. They won 15-10 in the 1953 final beating
St. Helens.]
[Were there a lot of people went to watch the match]
No., no, we only got preferential treatment because my parents worked there! [Laughter]
[So what happened when it snowed in the winter Did they ever get snowed in or out]
7

Oh yeah. Yes they got snowed in regularly. The workers used to get taken up in a bus. I
think the shift started at 6 in the evening for the night shift & then about 8 o’clock it took
the day workers up & brought the night workers & quite a few times they were stranded
up there for, I think the longest would be about a week. But they had, you know, there
were food up there & a canteen & everything.
But 1947, I think that’d be before they started building, the Holme Moss road that was
closed, Oh for about two months, couldn’t get through at all.
[Really. That was the really heavy winter wasn’t it]
Yes, yes it was & it didn’t start until February!
[So what did you kids do if your parents were snowed in at Holme Moss]
Well they never actually got snowed in. They were either at home, you know, when the
snow came down but they never got snowed in no.
[Did the mast get iced up Was it Emley Moor that came down]
Yes, yes it was the workers when they were building it, there was guy ropes holding it &
ice used to form on that and they used to have to be wary where they was walking, you
know, because chunks of ice’d fall, off.
[Must have been quite dangerous.]
Yes it was, yes. I don’t know whether you know but the Emley Moor mast, actually the
original mast, actually fell down because of the weight of ice.
[Yes I did hear that, that must have been terrifying]
Yeah, landed on a chapel roof.
[Heck! Oh dear! So in the time you’ve lived here have you noticed the changes to Black
Hill & that area Was it always black]
Yes, yes. I mean you could tell when the weather was changing; the hillside used to
appear nearer, like, you know, because the droplets in the air used to magnify it & it
used to be overpowering & then when the sun was out it was a long, long way away.
The border up there, between Lancashire, err, between Yorkshire & Derbyshire, the first
time I ever went up there was when I was at primary school & the headmistress had us
standing astride the border. One foot in Derbyshire & one foot in Yorkshire.
The Milk Race, cycle race, used to come through down here every year & we used to
watch at various bends & what not; see these cyclists coming off and...
[That must have been quite exciting]
Yeah. About 1954 I think it was, there was a Sabre jet aircraft crashed up there.
[Is that a military aircraft]
8

Yes, there were two, a crew of two, & they were both killed & they used, the rescue
teams, used the television station as a base for going out. You know for salvage &
bringing the bodies back.
[That’s really sad. There were a lot of crashes round here, in the war particularly]
In the war, yes, but not many up there. I can only remember that, err; Oh yes there was
some up there during the war.
When they built the masts they had warning lights on the masts for the aircraft &
obviously during the war these lights weren’t there & if any aircraft were flying a bit too
low in bad weather – just straight into the hillside.
[Yes, dangerous territory.]
[Well, that’s brilliant. Thank you very much]
Interview with Derek Bailey at the Holme Village Workshop October 2010 (Tegwen
Roberts, Interviewer)
[If you can say your name that would be really helpful]
Yes. My name is Derek Bailey. During the war everything in the plane which was
reusable was, what would be called now, recycled &, err, after the, it would be the RAF
Regiment who used to turn up & take everything, e.g. the engine & what have you, if it
could be salvaged from the wreck.
But the bits & pieces that were left lying around these kids used to get sent up to pick up
anything that was useful to the engineers & model makers.
Now this is made out of crashed parts on an aircraft except for that & that which I think is
a hardwood of some kind.
[Looks like it]
Looks like a hardwood but what kind of timber that is I don’t know but it’s extremely hard.
But we used to get the Perspex from the windscreen, all the broken bits, & take them out
down & give them to the people who were interested in them. The brass & that & that bit
& that part & this nut would be made out of aircraft re-salvaged parts from up there.
Everybody who was engineering used to do things like that, you know. So recycling is
not new it’s been going on an awful long time.
[That’s fantastic]
That’s the best I can tell you about it. Which wreck it came from, these bits, I don’t know.
It may have been from several wrecks. The American ones were particular, of particular
interest because as far as I know the Americans invented Perspex which is made out of
oil.
We, in the war, the first time we experienced anything that was plastic we could see
through; it was amazing. I don’t know whether that is Perspex, coloured Perspex or not,
but you can see how it’s made. The engineers’ cut a thread all the way down there &
then he’s made a nut, tightened that down & then assembled bits & pieces to make it
9

fancy, & he’s made another nut out of some brass that he got from somewhere & that’s
the recycling job finished.
[Lovely. Thank you].
10

[General discussion.]
First Track.
This is the log bridge.
No it’s not.
No it’s not.
Peak Park Rangers Interview by Tegwen Roberts.
13 th May 2011 at the Ranger Briefing Centre at Fieldhead, Edale.
No. It’s the bridge in Water-cum-Jolly Dale down by the Mill
Oh yes.
We were working on there, mmm, but that is my son with you there.
Yes that’s right it is.
And he’s now forty. So it’s over thirty years ago possibly.
Which makes Dave a hundred and five.
Yeah, yeah. When I said the bridge, Water-cum-Jolly
Water-cum-Jolly, yeah, yeah. I think we were putting ramps for disabled users onto the bridge
at either end so that people could use wheelchairs in Water-cum-Jolly Dale.
Ah that’s right yes. Ah right, oh now I can remember, yeah, yeah.
Cos we didn’t do much path building in those days – in the early days.
Not initially, we didn’t do any did we Bill
Not at all really, no.
I know.
1

I remember being shocked greatly by Ken Drabble who was the head warden when I was at
Longdendale. I think soon after Ken had left and I’d moved in, so that would be 1970.
Yes.
And he asked me to build a stile. [Laughing.]
[General Laughing.]
Well I had no idea how to build a stile. I didn’t think that we did that. We didn’t get our hands
dirty.
[General Laughing.]
All we used was our eyes and we used to drive around in flashy Land Rovers.
Yeah.
But, yeah, I was asked to build a stile at the bottom of Black Clough by the houses there. And
well we managed it eventually. But up until then we didn’t do any physical work did we
No.
It was all patrol.
I just remember one occasion and you might have been there Ian, on Stanage where we’d
had problems with the trails bikes going all over the moor. [Laughing] Decided that there was
a huge boulder at the trig point end and somebody had the bright idea of moving this boulder
and putting it across the path. [Laughing] And we had a turfer to pull this thing and about a
dozen of us and oh it took ages and ages and ages to move these things about a foot. And
we’d just finished moving it and a trails bike came up and just went round the other side.
[General Laughing.]
And what a complete waste of time that was.
Oh yeah!
And that’s about the first time I got involved in doing anything about footpaths.
2

Because in the early days it was all about patrol wasn’t it
Yes it was.
It was all about patrol and all about visiting, you know, landowners, farmers, gamekeepers,
waterboard and keeping them on side and finding out what their problems [inaudible].
I mean I know in the very, very early days all we did was enforcement byelaws.
Yeah.
And even the advice to visitors was a minimal side of it. You know, if you saw somebody in
obviously very, very bad equipment – and that’s something that has changed over the years –
I mean you don’t get people now, as a rule, in bad equipment as we did in those days.
No, no.
But, you know, it was all about enforcement of byelaws. And I remember we were finickety
about the byelaws. And I remember up down a valley at one of the farms some lad on a
motorbike riding up this path, you know, and you know, collaring him and sort of saying it was
illegal, reading the riot act to him and so on. Turned out to be the farmer’s son, you know. And
he told me where to go in no uncertain terms. And, yeah, you’re right. And then, as you say
Ian, we started to take on, you know, there’d be a stile that was perhaps dangerous
somewhere and you knew the farmer was never going to do it. It was going to be bottom of
his priorities always. So we thought ‘Well the best thing is just go in and repair it’ And then it
went on to putting new stiles. And I think it’s interesting how stiles and things have changed
because at one time every stile was different. You had ancient squeezer stiles from the
eighteenth century or before even, you had step over stiles, you had ladder stiles. They went
thought a phase where the RA didn’t like ladder stiles so we had to take all the ladder stiles
out and start putting throughs in the walls which meant rebuilding the walls. And then, of
course, more recently we’ve gone over to putting small gates in instead of stiles to make them
more accessible to the less able.
For ourselves. [Laughing.]
Shh, shh, shh.
3

[Inaudible] rangers. [Laughing].
That’s the real reason!
[General Laughing.]
But, you know, and things have changed. And we get stuff in kit form now and so on. So
things have come a long way from those early days.
Yes, you’re absolutely right.
But when you were mentioning about, you know, reinforcing the byelaws, I always remember
pulling people out of Jim Thornley’s field and getting them round. And I was showing them on
the map “Now you don’t go over there” and, you know, some of them thought I was being
funny. I said “No I’m not being funny” I said “I’m just telling you, you know, what’s what”. But
some of them it never sunk in did it No, never sunk in. Yeah.
I remember one incident and it was in Dovestones and I must have obviously been there at
the time and it was thick mist and I heard these shots and I thought “Goodness me”. Anyway,
I eventually found this chap with a shotgun. He didn’t have permission. So I took the det …
Cos remember when there was great long forms we had to fill in It was more like a witness
form wasn’t it And you put your name and address and all the rest of it.
Yeah.
Yes.
On it. And I forget now our solicitors’ name at that time. But he decided he was going to
prosecute this. So I was called as a witness and I think we went to Stalybridge Court. I mean
this again is in the seventies cos I left in ’77. And I was frightened to death. I thought ‘What
am I …’ Cos I hadn’t got a copy of my statement in effect. ‘What am I going to say’
[Laughing].
Yeah.
Cos I didn’t know about the procedures and we’d never received any training to do that.
4

No, no.
No.
Anyway, when I got there our solicitor came out and he said “Oh, he’s going to plead guilty” I
thought ‘Thank God for that!’ [Laughing].
Thanks for that, yeah.
Relief
Yes.
But that was the other thing, you know, if we had to go over to Whaley Bridge to court, you
know, there’s no question of it being a bit nearer or at Sheffield or somewhere like that. So
really it was a case of having a day off work.
Yeah.
To go and attend court.
Well there was also the time when we were told that we had to use a caution.
Yes, that’s right.
Yeah.
Yes.
And if you used a caution you also had to have, write down, there and then, what had
happened, into a notebook which you then had to take to the court with you.
We had to get them to sign it.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, that just sort of frittered away didn’t it [Laughing].
It did yeah.
5

Nobody took any notice of it because I mean let’s be fair, I mean how many times in total has
a park ever taken anybody to court over byelaws And the answer is very, very few times
because the byelaws are intended to be something to at least tell people “This is good
behaviour”. It was like putting the country code into legal jargon.
(Like a guideline)
Exactly. And so it was never intended to drag people to court and hang, draw and quarter
them for rolling a stone. But it was there, you could use it. And nine times out of ten it worked
and we never had to go to court did we
Yeah. Well I went on the, it was the one occasion that I went.
I was the same. I think twice I went.
But the farming community expected us to prosecute.
Oh yeah, oh we were supposed to.
And sometimes it was difficult to explain to them why we’d taken the stance of a warning letter
or whatever it was.
Yeah.
Rather than go to court.
They wanted them lynching from the nearest tree.
Oh yeah.
They did yeah.
There and then. And they would have done if rangers hadn’t been there.
[General laughing.]
(Did you have to fill out a big form every time you caught someone with a firearm You were
saying.)
6

Well every time there was a contravention of the byelaw we were supposed to fill out these
great long –they were pink forms weren’t they
Yeah. Incident report form.
Incident report form, yeah. And it had details like your name and address and your patrol
area, your age, grid reference of incident. And then you filled … it was rather like a statement,
who said what, in verbatim terms. And then you had to record their details. Any damage.
Anybody hospitalised. Any animals injured. Any infrastructure, you know holes in walls and
this sort of thing. Fires was another one. And so, you know, we had to do all that. And I did
but only one – cos we used to have to put a recommendation on the bottom as well, as what
you felt was appropriate in this case.
(Other action to be taken)
Yeah, yeah, but …
Warning letters was the standard thing.
Warning letters was, yeah.
They’d get an official letter from the National Park saying
Yeah, which was good.
Saying “You have contravened the byelaws” and so on so it was very official and it was like,
you know, “If you do this again then we will take you to court” And, again, they were useful.
Yeah. Oh I thought they were particularly more useful than perhaps prosecuting really.
Yeah they were.
Yeah.
I think as well that the more serious of the byelaws tended also to be civil law. And if they
were serious, like people carrying a gun where they shouldn’t have been doing, it was more a
case for the police to deal with. So we would radio down and bring the police in and they
7

would deal with it. So it was only those that were not so serious that we were dealing with
really.
(Right.)
Yeah. Poaching was something else as well again, wasn’t it
Yeah, well again that was a police matter. So we were intermediaries in bringing the police in.
Nicking peat from the Snake Summit and [Holme Moss] was another issue and it went –
these things go in phases don’t they
And stone walls.
Every time I sort of drove over the Snake Summit there was somebody there with a boot open
and they were on the moor with a plastic bag and a spade.
Yes.
So all we did was have a chat and say, you know
Yeah, that’s it, yeah.
It’ll kill your plants when you get home. [Laughing].
It will yeah. And it’s also theft. [Laughing.]
That’s it yes.
Part of the Theft Act.
(And weren’t you saying last time Cliff about Christmas tree thefts as well)
Mmm. I mean at that time of year at Langsett near the Flouch
Oh yes.
We had regular Christmas tree patrols up and down cos people used to come out and usually
just saw ‘em off but very often dug ‘em up as well if they’d got time, you know.
8

(And, sorry, I probably should have said before we started who we all are, and just for the
tape really. So it’s the 22 nd of October 2010. This is an oral history recording for the Moor
Memories project at the Moorland Centre in Edale. I’m Tegwen Roberts. If you could just say
your name sort of round the table and then it’s all recorded)
I’m Bill Darley.
David Milner
Gordon Miller
Leila Seroughi
Cliff Laycock
Ian Hurst
Second Track.
(Thank you. OK, so have you brought other pictures to show us here)
Well I’ve brought this which probably one or two people have seen before.
[Laughing.] I think I’ve seen it in the Buxton Museum.
This is, it was published in 1970 by the National Park, about the National Park, and it’s largely
photographs. But I mean you think now of rangers always in uniform. Well that’s how we were
initially.
(Wow.)
We were not in uniform. You wore what you felt was appropriate. Usually a Norwegian
sweater like Dave’s got on now. And I’ve got another picture of me wearing a Norwegian
sweater there. And…
Climbing pants.
9

And climbing breeches.
Yeah, that was it yes.
You see we were called warden service then as well, yeah.
Yeah.
Then we used to wear.
That’s Ken Drabble by the way. You’ve heard of Ken Drabble
(Oh right, yes I have, yeah.)
Who was…
The second full time ranger, warden.
No third.
Third, after George, yeah.
It wasn’t deemed necessary was it
Tom Tomlinson, George Garlick, then Ken Drabble.
(Right.)
It wasn’t deemed necessary to have a uniform, just an arm band.
That’s right yeah, we just had armbands in those days. But I mean the full time staff had
vehicles obviously to get around.
Do you remember the yellow armbands. They looked like foreign [inaudible].
The yellow and black ones
I think the original ones were green.
Green and red.
10

Green with red writing on. And afterwards it went to a yellow and it’s hideous. It looks like
you’ve got an infectious disease. [Laughing].
I think the reason for that was the green ones tended just to get lost against a green jacket.
And they used to slip down didn’t they
Yeah they did.
You know, particularly if you’d got waterproofs on they would finish up down here. But the
yellow and black armbands were notorious really because it was at the time when traffic
wardens were being appointed.
Mmm.
Yeah. [Laughing].
Appointed, and they were yellow and black and of course these were yellow and black with
the word ‘Warden’ on it.
([Laughing].)
You call them traffic wardens. [Laughing].
I don’t know how long we wore them before.
Not very long.
But we moved to badges didn’t we after that
Yeah. I think we moved to badges with Eric Bardell.
’74 then when Eric came in I think wasn’t it
Yeah, yeah.
’74 or thereabouts, yeah.
And we also, no, the first metal badge we had had “Warden” on.
11

Mmm.
And then it became “Ranger” and Eric Bardell changed it to rangers. So perhaps the first
badges came just before Eric Bardell. Perhaps Johnnie Lees, under Johnnie Lees.
Yeah. And the logo was Peverill Castle.
Yes that’s right.
Not the sort of anonymous polo mint that we have today.
Polo mint, yeah, that’s right.
Well that was the park’s first one and that was from a national competition for an emblem for
the national park. And they chose Peverill Castle because it was the centre of the royal forest
which was a bit like a park. So that’s why that was chosen. And I’ve always thought it was a
great shame we went to there.
Yeah I agree with you, yeah.
Boundary Millstones.
Well it was a hunting …
Millstones round our neck.
[General Laughing].
And when it was hunting, everything was all round it, whether it was forest or heath land it
were all hunting ground for Dukes of Normandy.
(Right, so…)
William Peverill, you know.
(Yeah, yeah.)
So I think he owned all this didn’t he All this, all round here.
12

Yeah he was the first conservator wasn’t he in this area
Yeah he was yes.
Yeah and in fact the first rangers in the world were not American, they were actually rangers
in the Norman forest, royal hunting forests. And ranger comes from the French ‘ranger’ which
means keeping order or in line.
(Right.)
And they had rangers there for a royal forest peak who actually kept the peasants out rather
than inviting them in.
([Looking at the photograph] Oh, that looks familiar.)
Yes it is, without the water. [Laughing].
(Oh really, is that here)
Yeah before the water.
That was the one that was opened in 1966 and that was the one that was demolished to
make way for that monstrosity we have outside. Just turn the tape off. [Laughing]
([Laughing] Wow.)
Well I’ve got one somewhere and I just can’t put my hands on it at the moment. You know the
original one which had a lean to on the side
Yes, aye, with a wooden lean to, I’ve got a picture of that.
Oh you’ve got one
Yeah.
I just couldn’t find mine.
That’s when the Garlicks were here.
13

Oh yes, I know, yes.
Yeah.
Much better. [Laughing].
Well it’s in keeping it is in the sort of vernacular style isn’t it.
In keeping int it
It was opened by Lord Stranger who was the Head of the National Parks Commission.
(So if Edale was the first kind of centre for the ranger service, when did the service kind of
spread out to cover other areas Or did it always cover other areas)
It went with the spread in access land because as the park – the first bit of access land the
park negotiated when the National Park set up was the south side of Kinder. It was basically
Grindsbrook, the southern edges. So logically having the ranger service here to start with was
right. Then as it spread to the whole of Kinder.
We went over to Hayfield.
We went over to have a briefing centre in Hayfield to cover that side. And then as it expanded
onto Bleaklow, Glossop came in and so on. And as it expanded so the need for briefing
centres went with it. So it was all to do with access land.
(Right, so it all kind of spread out from the centre)
Yeah. As the negotiations and
Stanage was one of the…
Stanage, yeah, that’s when I was first appointed full time ranger, on Stanage. And it wasn’t
owned by the park then, it was access land.
(Right.)
And then the park bought it and then the eastern edges as well.
14

(That’s kind of Langsett and that area)
No, further south from Stanage like Froggat, Curber, Baslow, Birchen, those edges yeah.
You see on Langsett, I know I was asked, Harry Brunt asked me to go up there. I’m just trying
to think who owns …
Sir Thomas Pilkington.
No it was the electrical company. The very, very big electrical company that went …
Ferranti’s
Ferranti’s. Basil Ferranti owned that land.
Yeah and also [inaudible].
And I was asked by the board to go up there I think eight weekends, on no account get out of
the car, and just drive up and down Woodhead and see how many people were going on the
moors and what type of people they were. [Laughing].
[General laughing.]
And course they turned out to be mainly Barnsley miners.
Yeah
Who were out with the Jack Russells and everything else, you know.
Yeah, oh.
So we did the count, you know. And they had to decide, because the owners had approached
the board and the board were deciding whether to take it on or not. So anyway they did take it
on. So that’s how that one started.
(Right, wow.)
We went park-wide under Eric Bardell didn’t we
15

Yes, yes, we did.
In the 1980s 1980s we went … ’86, something like that.
I mean we’d sort of moving out of the dark peak hadn’t we into like places like Hartington and
Miller's Dale and Goyt Valley.
Well the trails were being established weren’t they
Yeah.
And they needed to appoint rangers down there.
And once we moved, the ethic moved away from the pure access land to other places, then I
think the concept became ‘Well we should be doing the whole park’ And in fact, more than
that, farmers were saying “Why do you have rangers or wardens there and we don’t have ‘em
here”
That’s right yeah.
And so rangers then started to look and monitor the footpath system throughout the park.
There was a better sort of profile. And, yes, Eric made it cohesively more a park-wide service
didn’t he
Mmm.
(And is that when you started doing like footpath repair and path building and …)
We had this thing called routes for people which was in the White Peak and it was designed
first of all to get heavy traffic off the roads, the narrow roads, but tying in with that new
improved footpath systems, circular routes, and all this sort of thing. And the park employed
some people to do that. And they started doing footpath work, walling, and in fact people like
Peter Slack was a waller. So he was engaged for that purpose. He became – he was a waller
who became a ranger.
(Right, right.)
16

You know, because the job necessitated that change. And I think that’s when we started to
take on much more of a footpath responsibility. Which, to be honest, was the county’s, it was
their role really, but I think they sort of left it to us to get on with it. And we used to take money
from them for the work we did.
They had a bigger responsibility, the landowner had the legal responsibility
Yes that’s right
To, you know, improve the infrastructure. But we did a lot of that work. And I think you’ve
absolutely right, that’s when it took off. It wasn’t just work in terms of infrastructure, it was also
signage and way marking.
That’s right yes.
We did an awful lot of way marking on routes.
Yeah, yeah, we did.
Yellow arrows.
Yeah.
Blue arrows.
Yeah, yellow arrow and all …
I can remember going out in the White Peak, you know, with a brush.
Yeah the paint pot.
Paint brush, paint pot, going … but we also started up with the Tissington Train didn’t we
And the High Peak Trail when we started.
When we bought the Tissington Trail it wasn’t called the Tissington Trail then, course it was
the Buxton/Ashbourne railway line. Served all the dairy farms. And I remember we bought it
and Don Aldridge, who we mentioned earlier on, had this idea of calling it a trail, Tissington
Trail. I remember Ken Drabble and I, we walked the eleven and a half miles from one end to
17

the other taking stones out of the track, big stones, you know. [Laughing] Because they were
going to just, you know, leave it. Well of course it wouldn’t grass over because once people
started using it and walking, biking and after that the trails were bought and they left the
cinders on, you know. And we were taking all these stones. It was a back breaking job. We
were down like this. I’ll never forget that. [Laughing] This idealist concept of a nice green trail
just never ever happened. Unfortunately we have too many people.
It was a bad idea wasn’t it
It was.
To grass it up, yeah. [Laughing].
Third Track.
(So did you do, obviously different paths have different kind of surfaces and was that a
fashionable thing You know, did you start off doing one way and then moved on to slabs say
or...)
The trails were somewhat different to the others because I think with the trails that was a new
concept. Apart from the Wirral Way on the Wirral, which was an old railway track, I think the
Tissington Trail was the first one in a National Park anyway and it was a time post Beeching
when these railway lines were there and I think the idea was to use these as links, linking to
paths where you could use them and people would cycle off the road, horse ride off the road.
So that was a somewhat different idea to the general footpath network. And so there was
some experimentation with that. And, as I say, eventually went on to the sort of cinder, much
more durable surfaces.
[Phone ringing.]
(I’ll just pause while that rings. OK.)
There was one path, wasn’t there, that we actually had responsibility for and that was the
Pennine Way.
18

Mmm.
And I remember...
Legal responsibility.
Legal responsibility. And I remember countless hours, months, years, spent on putting various
surfaces on the Pennine Way open up the Snake Summit particularly.
Yeah.
Brushwood and palings.
We used paling, we used birch brush, we used sheep fleeces.
Terram.
We used Terram. Well that was interesting because the Terram, what was the thing we put on
top of it as well
Well there was like the white stuff and then a black webbing stuff on with plastic …
Well, yeah, there was the black webbing stuff that went on top of the Terram but it all came as
one didn’t it
Yeah.
And ICI developed this and they called that the Pathfinders, the product was called the
Pathfinders. So we actually used that on the Pennine Way at the Snake Summit. I don’t think
we generated any publicity from doing so but that was the idea. But when Molly was here.
Molly Porter, you remember Molly Porter who was a Pennine Way Project Officer
Yeah.
She tried these great polystyrene blocks.
Yeah.
Remember these bloody great white polystyrene blocks.
19

[Laughing.]
And they just came up and blew away didn’t they
Oh yes. [Laughing].
But they also sank didn’t they, you know, in the peat.
Peat, yes.
And then she would then cover them over. That was the idea but then they’d appear at the
surface.
(What, floating)
Yeah, yeah. [Laughing] But I mean it was in the days of infancy and we were, if you like, the
leaders I think in sort of the footpath, that type of footpath management. Cos nobody else had
done it before.
But I remember in the meadows, I mean I remember saying once that one time all the
experiments in the meadows would join up and we’d actually have a path through the
meadows. Because we had so many different experimental strips.
Yeah.
You know, trying different techniques. And finally we found the one that was to last and that
was putting stone flags. Because I think we never dreamt in the old days if you put a stone
flag on top of peat we used to think ‘Oh it’s going to sink’ but of course they sit nicely on top.
They spread the load and they work perfectly. But it took a long, long time to get … and yet
we should have learned from the Romans and the packhorse drovers because they’d been
doing paths like that for years.
And the National Trust, they was doing that when …
Well no, they were doing the same time as us really.
Yeah.
20

Did you get all the National Park sort of seeing that you’d tried out all these different ways and
asking you for …
Well within the National Parks in those days, the upland national parks particularly, there were
lots of techniques that were suited for those particular parks but some became relevant
elsewhere. And for example in the Lake District they had a guy there who was working on the
footpaths much in the way that we have stone steps here. And then there was also three or
four guys set up as a company in Scotland and went round actually doing paths. They were
paid to do sections of path – Pathcraft they were called. I remember in the Lake District a lot
of people chose their way of doing stone rising paths were adopted in Snowdonia, they were
adopted here. So there was a lot of shared expertise I think, wasn’t there Round that
particular time.
(So after you’d done the flags sort of on Kinder did you – cos obviously it goes across to
Black Hill now doesn’t it and …)
We didn’t do the flags on Kinder, the National Trust did the flags on Kinder.
Yeah, the National Trust did that.
It’s all their land you see.
Yeah, they’re actually another body I should have mentioned because in fact they were
pioneering paths the same time as we were and sharing. And when it was on their land we’d
say “Right you do that” where it’s off there we would do it and, yeah.
(And what about the bit across to Black Hill, cos obviously that’s kind of …)
The Black Hill is United Utilities and Yorkshire … I’ll tell you a funny story about Black Hill. It
might not be funny but anyway I’ll tell you. It was a jubilee celebration. Do you remember, was
it the Rotary Clubs who were setting up these bonfires right across the country
Oh yeah.
Yes.
Beacons, yeah.
21

Beacons, yeah.
Yeah, that was in the 1970s as well from memory.
It was.
Cos I was actually at Crowden and there was a …
It was the Queen’s jubilee or something
It might have been. It certainly wasn’t the Golden Jubilee was it But you’ve put me off me
train now Gordon. I was just going to say that somebody wanted to put this bonfire at Black
Hill you see and they’d started to build this bonfire and United Utilities, which was Manchester
Waterworks in those days, objected. They said “It’s on our land” and they didn’t want it on
their land. And Yorkshire Water who were adjoining said “No, no, it’s on our land, don’t worry
about it”. We’re only talking, you know, yards here. And I was asked to go and use me map
and compass skills and calculate. [Laughing].
Oh yeah. [Laughing].
And I think we decided it was just on Yorkshire Water land so this bonfire could then continue
and take place. But that’s the funny story, if you find it funny.
(Yeah [Laughing].)
The irony would have been if they’d
If they’d burned the moor. [Laughing].
If they’d started to burn the moor on the North West Water side. [Laughing].
So it wasn’t by the trig point
No, just beyond the trig, yeah.
I mean Black Hill’s a revelation now isn’t it I mean Black Hill in the time when Ian lived in
Longdendale and when I was assistant up there was just a horrendous quagmire.
Dreadful.
22

Well I was on there for ten years and I don’t think I ever actually reached the summit.
It was awful.
I don’t think I ever made it.
I got there occasionally.
In snow in the winter you can walk on the ice [inaudible] you know.
Yeah but I never managed it.
Definitely success stories, no question.
But if you go now …
Like Bill, I never, no, never went to the trig point.
Greened over.
Well it is greened over but the trig point is up here and the foundations for the trig point are
down here and so the amount of peat that’s been lost is enormous.
The same happened on Mam Tor. I mean Mam Tor, the trig point there was two feet at the
summit had gone over. Which is why they did the capping of Mam Tor because it’s an
archaeological site and all this archaeology was being
Eroded, yeah.
(Eroded, so …)
Well talking about archaeology and the Pennine, we were talking about the Pennine Way and
all the experiments we did there, I remember, I’m always finding Neolithic flints and that in
Grindsbrook and the Meadows and I’d got this theory that there might have been
Romano/British settlement. And I remember one day going up and saying to the lads who
were shovelling this soil out to put the path in and I said “Do you mind sieving here” and they
said “Well that’s going to be laborious” I said “Well just do a bit of it” you know. And they
made this thing, we called it the Irishman’s Hang Glider, it was like a bit mesh frame, they just
23

shovelled all the soil in it and they shook it and we found three bits of Romano/British pottery
on the Meadows. And, you know, the thing is if you go up these paths that haven’t been
paved they’re being worn down gradually year by year and they’re exposing new levels of
archaeology and it’s fascinating. But that was an offshoot from just doing footpath work and
it’s interesting.
Fourth Track.
(Yeah, so …)
Well do you want to look at my photographs
(Yes.)
That’s why I brought ‘em really.
([Laughing].)
That’s what we used – I was a volunteer then – that’s how we used to dress, sort of with
Belstaff anoraks.
(Is that you with the massive pipe)
It is me, yeah.
We all had pipes in those days.
Yeah, all had pipes, yeah.
[Laughing.]
Yeah.
It was almost part of the uniform having a pipe.
When I was talking about that’s how we were dressed, that’s how we were dressed.
24

(Wow.)
Wearing the sort of Norwegian type sweaters and breeches.
Yeah.
There was no uniform in the early days at all.
That’s it yeah.
That’s you on the mountain rescue isn’t it
That’s when I lived at Crowden. That’s on the Land Rover again. I just brought that so you
could see how thin I was in those days.
([Laughing].)
Yeah we all had blooming [inaudible] the whatsaname pipes, what were they called
Peterson.
Peterson pipes. [Laughing].
Yeah.
Peterson Pipe Club.
Yeah, that were Trevor Wright.
I think he started it didn’t he
Yeah he started, yeah.
I ought to have brought that peak.
(It’s bad for you apparently [Laughing].)
Yeah, so they say, yeah, yeah.
(So is that the range rover, Land Rover with the sign across the top)
25

Yeah, yeah.
(Is that the old style, cos obviously they’re signed differently some of them now, [inaudible].)
They don’t have the headboards now. But we had the headboards for fourteen, fifteen years.
For a long, long time yeah. And when you got your Land Rover you had to make your own
headboard up and …
Yeah.
(Oh did you)
If you see a vehicle coming to you along the road that’s much more visible than what they’ve
got at the moment. Cos you’d just see that sign.
And then the next big thing was having blue lights. And we had to have permission from the
police to have blue lights because we’re emergency vehicles. But it’s nothing to do with the
police, it was the fact that we could carry injured people and stuff like, weren’t it
Has it got a blue light on now
This hasn’t got a blue light on but, yeah.
It was Walter Stansfield who was the Chief Constable wasn’t it who gave us permission.
Yeah, gave permission to have blue lights, yeah.
Talk about the headboard for the Land Rovers, Jim Bewey [] used to be down at Hartington
same time as me and he had I think it was an Allegro car and he had a headboard made
exactly like a Land Rover and it fitted over the front of the bonnet.
Really
So when he parked up in Dovedale it said “National Park Ranger”. Amazing really.
And everything was highly polished including his boots. He was one of these types that, he’s
still like that, you know, if you meet him he’s like that still. [Laughing] Everything.
26

Yeah.
Well in those days, I think we’ve said before, we used to have a big horse down there called
Muttley and Jim decided he was going to ride Muttley. So being Jim he went to the police
academy in Manchester and learned to ride and he came out with all the gear on. Oh yes.
Everything had to be just right didn’t it
[Laughing] Yeah, [inaudible].
Jack Elsmore used to ride it as well.
Who
Jim eh …
Tony Hood used to.
Yeah, Tony Hood, yeah, no, Jack Elsmore he said [inaudible].
We had a vice chair of the park called Ivan Morton who was very influential in having the trails
and also as a whole very influential on the park and he had the idea of having a horse on the
trails.
(So what was the horse for)
It was basically so the …
Good question. [Laughing].
It is a good question but the idea was he would patrol up and down the trail and would be able
to relate to other horse riders and cyclists at their level, you know. And that was the idea. So it
was – because you couldn’t, well you could take a Land Rover on the trail but it wouldn’t look
very good whereas a horse was much more … yeah.
Well I think that was one of the main reasons Andrew Haddon got the job because
Yeah cos he knew horses.
Because he was into horses, but, oh it was a pain. If you went down
27

He never rode it.
Down to the signal box where we used to brief your heart sank if somebody said “We’re going
to get Muttley out”
Yeah. [Laughing].
You’d got to catch him first. [Laughing].
There was a field just below wasn’t it with about four ponies. Used to be about an hour and a
half later. [Laughing] You were still chasing round this field. He was wise wasn’t he Muttley.
Had his own idea.
Not sure, was it Terry Tallus or Peter Lawrence was the first one
Peter Lawrence.
Peter, and then Terry and then Andrew, yeah.
(So was there one person sort of designated to ride him or was it just whoever was on duty)
Well there was a full time ranger for the Tissington Trail who lived at Moneystones where the
signal box is at Hartington Station and it was, he had a Land Rover but he also had a horse
as well to do his duties. Only on the trails basically, the horse, but of course he also had other
responsibilities round about.
(But other people rode the horse if they were on duty or if they were …)
Well, Peter Lawrence, in fact when he got the horse he was quite keen and he would ride it
quite a lot. But it’s alright having that but if the next ranger comes along’s not so keen on
horses they tend to get a bit fat and so they get the staff, the part time staff, round to get a few
pounds off his girth, you know.
I remember Tony Hood getting on it once. Went down the trail and there’s a tunnel just below
thingabob and Muttley, being very wise, he pushed…
The edge.
28

Right to the edge and he wiped Tony Hood off.
[Laughing.]
Tony had to, [Laughing], he came staggering back.
I can remember on one occasion I was asked to go down and ride the horse and I mean I’ve
not riding experience or expertise at all. And it was a very damp misty day but it was fantastic
cos it’s central heating. You’re sat on a horse, you get the heat from the horse.
Oh yes, yeah, you would yeah.
So off we trotted down and we came back. Not a problem at all.
Was he difficult to control because he …
No, I don’t remember having any difficulty.
He was self willed.
Horses, you’ve got to show who’s boss and the problem was a lot of people who rode the
horse were not boss.
No, well I suppose I was one like that Gordon and obviously the horse knew what he wanted
to do so he just did it. [Laughing].
Just go with the flow. [Laughing].
Just go with the flow yeah.
That was Muttley though wasn’t it
Am I right in thinking, I seem to recall Richard Gregory saying at some point or other that
when he came into the job he was asked could he ride a horse and I don’t think he could but I
don’t think he said he couldn’t.
[Laughing.]
29

Yeah because I’m not sure whether Richard was the last person because Richard started
here working for me as a seasonal ranger then went up as a ranger in Scotland then came
back to Hartington.
It would be then.
So it would be when he came back to Hartington. But that’s about the time they were thinking
I think of getting rid, offloading.
(So was it just the one horse)
Yes, yeah.
[Laughing] Yeah, one was enough.
That was enough, yeah, exactly. [Laughing].
Actually Richard started with me in Crowden.
Did he
Mmm.
Before he came here
He was at university and he did six week, we had six week seasonal rangers in those days,
remember.
That’s right, yeah. He was with you then then he came here.
Yeah, yeah. A long time ago.
(So was there, did the horse have a blue flashing light or anything [Laughing])
[Laughing].
(You know, anything to say it was a ranger’s horse or)
No, no, only the ranger uniform, the ranger uniform ranger’s had, yeah.
30

(Ranger sitting on him, yeah.)
But when Andrew Haddon was down there he wasn’t interested in Muttley he was more
interested … he had a hunter didn’t he
Yeah, his own horse.
Yeah and Muttley didn’t get ridden very often.
He didn’t get looked after really did he
No, he did not, no.
No he didn’t.
He wanted, you know, his feet were, the shoes, it started curling up.
Yeah [inaudible].
He should have gone, I mean he should have gone to blacksmiths when they had it.
Yeah. He went to a local riding school didn’t he, eventually
Yes he did.
And he saw his days out there.
Yeah he did yeah.
(What sort of horse was he)
He was
He was a big black thing, I can’t tell you [Laughing].
Was he a Welsh
He’d got a leg at each corner. [Laughing].
A leg at each corner, yeah. [Laughing].
31

I’ve no idea.
Was he a hunter No.
(Right, he’s quite a big horse)
Yeah, a big horse.
Oh he was quite big yes.
Yeah I think he was more like a …
But I think, you know, originally he was
[Laughing] I can just imagine Tony going along there and falling off.
[Laughing].
How did it acquire the name
Muttley
I don’t know.
Wasn’t it a character in one of these cartoon series
Muttley yes.
But it was a dog.
(Yeah, Muttley was a dog.)
Muttley and Dastardly, yeah.
I was just wondering if it was related to that.
Oh I don’t know.
Because we do have mountain rangers in the Epping Forest but I think that was the only
horse ever in the national park that ever a national park ranger had.
32

(Right. And what year did that start)
Phew. What year
What year
(Ish.)
At Tissington, yeah, the seventies, yeah.
Early to mid seventies.
Yeah.
(And then when did he finish)
What did we have him for About eight years or so
I would think, I would think, either, yes, late seventies or early eighties.
Yeah, he died of old age didn’t he
Well no, he went to a local riding school Dave. So how long he survived there I know not.
Have you got a photo of the horse in there
I haven’t got a photograph.
There’s a photograph somewhere of either Terry or Peter.
It’s Peter Lawrence.
Lawrence sat on it.
Yes Peter Lawrence.
Yeah there is a photograph, yeah.
I don’t know whether - Have you looked at our slide bank. I don’t know whether it’s still in situ
at Bakewell Cos they have an awful habit at Bakewell of throwing stuff away.
33

(Right.)
But there’s a slide bank there which has got rangers going back for donkey’s years in it. And
Peter Lawrence, the photograph of Peter Lawrence is in there.
Is in there, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Jack Elsmore, he might have got a photograph.
(Oh yeah, yeah.)
Yeah, I haven’t got one, no.
I don’t know whether I said this last time but Jim Bowey and I were both involved with the
[inaudible] Society in Manchester and we used to have a walk every year and the Tissington
Trail was just opened. Ideal you see. So we organised a walk down the Tissington Trail
starting at Hartington and thinking of going south. And the thing had only been open about a
fortnight and everybody was anxious to keep the farmers on side and keep things nice and
quiet. And we set off walking down there together with our piper [Laughing] to keep us in good
spirits. And apparently the effect of bagpipes on the cattle in the field was such that they’d
tear across, stampede across just to see what’s going on.
[Laughing].
I mean they weren’t frightened, just very curious at this noise, you know. And all these
farmers were going made and ringing up Alden House and very quickly somebody was
despatched in a Land Rover to stop us.
[Laughing].
So we finished the walk in silence.
(Oh dear.)
I remember when I covered Stanage once up on the top of the rocks and hearing this piper on
the road below walking up and down on the road playing his pipes.
34

Not me this time.
Which sounded very nice, you know, out in the open. And I met up with him down at Hook’s
Car and I were chatting to him and I said, you know “What did you come out here for” he
said “Me missus and the neighbours won’t let me play at home”
[Laughing].
So he used to come out to Stanage and walk up and down the road playing like that.
[Laughing].
But when I was on a train, course one of the byelaws was about offensive and noisy
instruments wasn’t it
It was yes.
And I think it was Tom actually who’d said that on one occasion somebody had complained to
him at being told off by a warden for playing their transistor radio loudly. And they’d pointed
up there and said “What about that guy up there who’s playing bagpipes” [Laughing] “Ah well
it was in the right place” Tom would say. [Laughing].
[Laughing.]
Fifth Track.
(So we’ve talked about the horse. A lot of rangers seem to have dogs nowadays, has that
always been the case, you know, were there always …)
Well there were one or two full time rangers that did have dogs.
George was about the first to have …
George was Sport, wasn’t it
Yeah, it was Sport yes.
A black Labrador. Brian had one as well, an Alsatian didn’t he Brian
35

Yeah he did.
Yeah.
And Andrew Haddon was another with Labradors I think
Yeah.
Yes.
And they used to take them with them and it was seen, again, rather like the horse, as a
contact, discussion point with other dog walkers, if you understand So but then there was an
edict wasn’t there
An incident, there was an incident.
That stopped all that and I can’t remember what it was. You can remember.
There was an incident where somebody’s dog had got involved with stock. Something like
that. And the word went out from Alden House to all the lands, you know, that voluntary
rangers, apart from people on a full time estate who had a rescue dog, voluntary rangers,
people like that, we’re not to take their dogs under any circumstances. If you wanted to take
your dog on the moor on a Saturday then you don’t sign on, you know. Absolutely forbidden.
And that stayed in place for a long time.
(Right, cos …)
Bill, before that I had a dog and I went to Fairholmes and I took the dog with me on – Bigley,
my dog, yeah – I took him with me on the walk, you know, with a lead and, yeah, that was it.
It’s stuck that hasn’t it now You still can’t take your dog
I’m not sure.
I think so cos I’m sure I remember somebody who was a ranger here at Edale and she gave
up didn’t she because she couldn’t bring her dog.
Yes I know, oh …
36

I think it’s fair to say that dogs over the years have been the most persistent problem that
rangers have had to deal with.
Mmm, other people’s dogs.
You know, you can call the bloke’s wife anything under the sun but call his dog anything, you
know, and you really … But, yeah, I think dogs, continuously, it’s a problem with farmers who
have dogs chasing the sheep of course on the moors, things like that. Don’t you think so Ian
It’s probably one of the most, biggest …
I think certainly one of the, yeah, one of the most complained about activities is dog walkers.
And often, you know, you went to speak to dog walkers and the reply was “Oh my dog won’t
chase sheep”.
No, no.
So that was a common reply wasn’t it I mean we’ve all experienced that I suspect.
Yeah. And you get them to put ‘em on a lead and then as soon as you’re out of sight it’s off
the lead.
Still now, still now.
They’ll take ‘em off, yeah.
But I’ll tell you a story about, I was once involved with John Noakes on one of his television
programmes walking the Pennine Way.
Yeah, I was involved with the same one.
And Ian was as well. [Laughing] And we’d gone up onto Bleaklow with Noakes and Shep and
gone out to Glossop Low Cabin and parked up and then we’d walked out on the moor. And
John Noakes and I had these little lapel mikes on and we were across one side of Torside
and the idea is we were filmed walking down into the bottom and up the other side and
meeting Mike Ingham, one of the park’s people, to look at this flagged footpath. And we were
actually standing on the opposite side of this valley and the producer’s over on this side, you
know. I was chatting to him about his former life, you know, how he’d started as an actor and
37

all this sort of thing, and all of a sudden through our little ear pieces the director says “Alright,
get a move on you two, stop prattling” you see “Start” you know. So we started walking down
the slope. And then all of a sudden it came in our ears. “Alright, alright, where’s Shep”
[Laughing] And we both looked round and there was no Shep anywhere. Well immediately
went through my mind then was I could see the papers, you know, ‘Celebrity dog shot by irate
farmer and chasing his sheep’ you know.
[Laughing].
And we went into mode, you know, search mode then, and we had to search all over. I think it
was about half an hour later we found Shep under a rock fast asleep. And he was just not
used to walking. Well not distances. And he was just absolutely shattered. The poor dog, they
had to get him out and get him to walk down the hill with us. [Laughing] But, yeah, that was a
worry, a big, big worry. [Laughing].
Johnnie Lees once asked me to co-operate in a warden training course down in Dovedale if I
remember rightly, and take dogs with me. And I had a couple of dogs, a big Airedale and a
what they call it [inaudible]. And went down to Dovedale and these rangers who were suitable
disguised came along together with, they called them cadets in those days I think.
Yeah.
But they were certainly police cadets and one of these police cadets was a woman and quite
tall, impressive sort of a looking woman. And I was supposed to do something with my dogs
to attract attention you see. So I threw sticks in the stream and the dogs went and got them.
And I’d got a pile of old brushwood and tins and things in Thor’s Cave ready to make a fire,
you know. And they were duly instructed to tell me off. And I took this [inaudible] Anyway, this
woman said “And what are these dogs doing in the stream” and I said “Well they’re not doing
any harm, I’m just throwing …” They said “Not chasing any sheep” this, that and the other.
And I was duly instructed to put them back on the leads and this, that and the other. And this
police cadet turned round “And I notice” she said “that on the collar of your dog you’ve not got
your name and address as required by law” [Laughing] Oh, collapse!”
([Laughing] Oops! Right, shall I just pause the tape then and I’ll put the kettle back on)
38

[Tape paused.]
Sixth Track.
So in those days it was one and sixpence fare from Edale to Sheffield on the train, ten pence
from Castleton to Sheffield on the bus.
So you walked over. [Laughing].
So we used to walk right over the top. In the pitch dark. [Laughing].
Yes.
Just to catch a bus about eight o clock at night. True, true,
Yeah.
And you didn’t think anything of it, you know.
Well I used to cheat, Bill, because when I missed the last train, steam train, from here to
Stockport when I was a kid coming out here, used to walk back through the tunnel to Chinley.
Cos that used to save climbing up over Rushop and down to Chapel.
Yeah.
And used to have to, if you heard a train coming you had to run along and dash into all these
little alcoves there are, you know. And then you’d be coughing and spluttering with all the
smoke, you know. And when we got to the other end there was a signal box and we used to
have to get to all sort of things to get the signal box man to go from upstairs downstairs and
we’d scuttle past the signal box. [Laughing].
Yeah [Laughing].
But it was much easier than walking up over the top.
Yeah.
39

But by goodness you’d get hung drawn and quartered now.
Ooh, yeah. Cos you needed a torch didn’t you really
Oh yeah, we had torches.
So was that in the 1940s Very, very few cars around in say Edale, very few.
(So when the ranger service started with its Land Rovers, was that quite unusual to have sort
of Land Rovers driving around, was it)
Well the farmers had them.
Well Tom Tomlinson was the first warden in the country and I know he told me that when he
got the job they offered him a motor bike.
(Oh you said last time, yeah.)
And in fact when we were talking about headboards I got visions of Tom on a motor bike with
a headboard clipping people as he went past. [Laughing].
[Laughing.]
But, yeah, and he just said to ‘em, “Look, how can I do a job in winter and carry stretchers
and tools and all this sort of thing” And they agreed to give him a Land Rover. And after that
Land Rovers because synonymous with the job. So when rangers were appointed here, the
Lake District, Snowdonia, it was a Land Rover because it was an all weather vehicle.
Yeah, it was always a Land Rover Defender.
It was functional, you know. But we had a series one to start with.
Ah yeah, series one we had. But before that I think there were only farmers who had them.
The general public wouldn’t bother.
(Right.)
Nobody had a four by four unless you were involved in agriculture or something like that.
40

No, no.
(Yeah, unless you needed one I suppose.)
Towing, if you had a caravan or something like that.
And of course the Land Rover came about simply because there was plenty of aluminium
about left over from making aircraft
(Oh after the war)
But there was a shortage of steel so they started producing an aluminium bodied vehicle
which …
Still is.
Plus a four wheel drive and that was it.
(I didn’t know that, wow.)
Yeah, couldn’t get hold of the steel you see because all the steel was obviously, wasn’t it
Cliff
Mmm.
Required for other purposes.
Did it come from the Jeep, was it the Jeep
Not really no.
I don’t think so, I didn’t think so anyway.
No, cos that was all weather, all terrain.
Different design really.
Yeah, design, yeah.
Yeah, cos the Jeep was early, it went right through the war.
41

Yes it did, yes.
Willy’s Jeep, yeah.
Whereas the Land Rover started 1950
Late forties, yeah.
Late forties.
Had one with one headlamp in the middle.
Yeah, that’s right, yeah.
And a steering wheel in the middle. The very first Land Rover had a steering wheel in the
middle.
(Really)
So, you know, for agricultural purposes [Laughing].
(Like a tractor I suppose)
I suppose so, yeah.
(And so did all rangers have to drive, you know, did you have to be able to drive when you
started)
Well yes but actually one full time ranger had actually [Laughing] got a job before he passed
his test – and failed it.
Was that you
No it wasn’t, I’m not going to say who it was.
No, it’s a chap that’s in here.
[Laughing].
42

Yeah, and he was very lucky actually cos a. he shouldn’t have got the job because he didn’t
have a licence but they obviously bent the rules a bit and then to go and fail the first time.
[Laughing] Was a bit embarrassing. But…
Well he used to ride on his pushbike didn’t he from New Mills to Crowden
Well yes he did, yeah, yeah. But yes basically it was a prerequisite, yeah, yeah. And in fact
later on we were actually all sent on courses at Land Rover at Solihull. Do you remember
Ian
I do remember.
And at Solihull they’d got this course, they called it the jungle. But it’s basically got tests so
people could come from South America or Africa and they could drive through similar and
with steep hills. And we went on this course, you had to pass this course, you know, yeah.
It was an interesting course cos I’d never driven in basically a canal before.
[Laughing].
And there were obstacles in the bottom on this thing, which you couldn’t see cos it was full of
water.
No, it was like through jungle.
Yeah, which were huge boughs of trees and stones and things. And so you’d hit this thing and
then you’d need to negotiate over the … But the most frightening thing was going up this
bloody concrete
Ramp, very, very steep ramp.
Which was like that [demonstrating]. So all you were doing, it’s rather like being in an aircraft,
pilot, and all you could see was the sky and then suddenly you get to the top and then you
come over like this and then you just took your feet off everything, didn’t you
43

Yeah, and you had to put it in the right gear and then just go down, slowly down, yeah. It’s …
they still run the courses there at Solihull. But, yeah, I don’t know who put us on those
courses, was it Johnnie Lees Probably was.
It could have been John cos he was training officer in those days.
I going to say well if you’re going along a slope like that sideways …
If you go across the slope [inaudible].
But it also sort of had teeth in it so you were going b, b, b, b, b, across like that.
Yeah, oh.
Well I was took with Tom Tomlinson in that series one half way up Grindslow Knoll [] and
exactly like that, we were at an angle
On the sled road, were you on the sled road
No we were in the field.
Yeah, coming up to the sled road.
You know, we were just toppling over, didn’t know whether to get out one at a time or stop it.
[Laughing].
([Laughing] Lean that way.)
We were just on the balance.
I think I said last time, I was on Arnfield with Ken and Ken was driving and we were driving up
to the cabin, the shooting cabin on Arnfield Moor, and we’d got there and we were coming
back and then he decided he wanted to turn round and he reversed it onto the peat hagg and
the peat hagg collapsed and the Land Rover went so slowly. And I think there were three of
us in the front but certainly Ken was driving and I remember I landed on top of him. And onto
his side.
Went over.
44

There was nothing we could do about it, it went right the way over onto its side. So we went –
do you remember Bob Dwyer, who had Tintwistle Garage
Yeah.
We had to walk down there, bring Bob up with his big vehicle with a hook on it.
And pull it back over.
We righted it and there wasn’t a problem other than it had lost some oil. We just put oil in it
and off we were again.
Yeah.
But he wrote it off that vehicle didn’t he Some months later in Glossop.
Yeah he did.
Did Ken, he went sliding down the pavement. I think a car had hit him coming the other way
and just turned him over. And he was going down the pavement on his side.
Wrote it off, yeah.
Against those terraced houses. Good job nobody came out.
[Laughing].
Oh yes.
Yeah, those were the days.
Yeah, we’ve had one or two escapades.
And I suppose really most of the, well part timers and volunteers, most of them had to make
their way out here by train.
Whatever, yes.
Or bus. Not many of them had cars.
45

Yeah, when I first started …
No. Particularly in the early days I think, I mean, I remember Edale Station and I think Bill you
might have mentioned it in an earlier recording
It was packed wasn’t it
It was just packed on both sides.
Yeah.
Absolutely packed.
Well when we used to come out …
And they were long trains, they had to be to take all those walkers.
It was packed wasn’t it.
We used to come out from Sheffield didn’t we on the train
Yeah we did and it was packed, yeah.
And people would take the bulbs out as we went through Totley Tunnel in these carriages.
Yeah.
And you could get the train to Hayfield as well from Manchester side and the same thing
there. There’d be three/four hundred people, all walking up Kinder Road onto Kinder at the
same time in a morning as the train offloaded. It was … I mean since the car became popular
you never see those numbers now, never see them, but every Sunday, Saturday and Sunday.
Must have been quite frightening for visitors to Sheffield Station for instance because the train
used to come in on the far side and there was a wooden bridge over and suddenly round the
corner would be about a thousand people all with hob nailed boots.
Yeah. [Laughing].
46

And big rucksacks, all running like that. And if anybody had, you know, a stranger had just
appeared at the other side they would have … And everybody ran like made to catch the
buses because then they were catching buses to all over Sheffield and Rotherham and all
over the place. Cos I always remember that. And that bridge used to vibrate, bump, bump,
bump. And it was …
(Must have made an almighty noise, so many hob nailed boots)
Yeah, course everybody had big commando style rucksacks didn’t they
Big Burgen things.
Ex army, all ex army.
Ex army gear. [Laughing].
I used to wonder …
I remember one time in the sixties we were a bit short of voluntary rangers on weekends, you
know, it was really difficult to get the number we needed, especially as the areas were getting
bigger. And I was involved with the Peak Warden Association at the time which is a social
organisation attached to it. Supported by the planning board, they liked us, you know, to get
the knowledge backwards and forwards in both directions. But not really officially in any way,
autonomous. And we’d suggested that perhaps the board could make some contribution
towards train fares or petrol money or whatever, you know. And I think the board at one time
were a little bit sympathetic and they talked to people like Heardman and Gilliat [ph] who were
still around at the time and the answer came back absolutely strictly from these old hoary
guys who were then, like we are now, and said “No, absolutely not. If you’re a volunteer
you’re a volunteer, you don’t get a penny” you know.
No.
And they lost a lot of, they lost a lot of support that way. I think a lot of youngsters would have
come out from Sheffield and Manchester if they could have just got a bit of help with the fare.
A bit of help, yeah, yeah.
47

Seventh Track.
Well it’s interesting talking about the Peak Warden’s Association because I was Chair of that
for a while and I remember talked about Jock Foster [ph] who was the second National Park
Officer. First National Park Officer, well he wasn’t called that, yeah he was called National
Park Officer, in this park, was, only lived, It was six months after he was appointed he died.
(Oh dear.)
Who was he, a fellow
Yeah, the first one. And Jock Foster was then appointed and he was a Scot, a dour Scot, and
I remember they had this Peak Warden’s Association and there was also another
organisation over in Hayfield called the Kinder Warden’s Association which ultimately we
actually got together. But within the association one or two stroppy buggers, you know, who
wanted to do their bit, sort of, you know, rights of volunteer rangers, you know, and use it as a
… And I remember having a meeting downstairs here at Fieldhead with Jock Foster and he
said to me, he said, “You’re not a trade union are you” So we said “No”, so he said, “Well not
that I mind that, not that I mind that” you know. And we started talking about, you know, this
business about how we would get rangers out and he said “Well, we’ll see what we can do”.
And we had a good relationship, very good relationship. And we used to have an annual
dinner every year in Hathersage and sometimes Jock Foster’d come along or Harry Brunt,
you know, the hierarchy, and we had mutual respect and it worked out quite well. I mean Ian’ll
have some recollections of those years as well.
Well the most thing uppermost in mind I think is Ollerbrook because we had a room, didn’t
we, at Ollerbrook at the end of the farm there with, remember the outside stone steps
Yes I do.
Where we would hang our tents after a weekend and be able to dry out.
That’s it.
48

And I used to go every weekend there and if the weather was so bad we used to stay inside
didn’t we And Mrs Bacon and Mr Daly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But you got water running down the walls inside as well as outside.
[Laughing.]
But there was a fantastic, I think, comradeship, wasn’t there
Yes there was.
Amongst everybody that took part in it. We were all in it together as it were. I remember
digging – you remember when it snowed one occasion
We dug Mr Jack’s drive out.
We dug his drive.
We couldn’t get out, none of us could get home on the Sunday night.
No.
So we stayed over there and Mr Jack, who had the farm over there at the time, he had this
long drive down to the road and he couldn’t get his milk to the road to go on the train and we
dug it out. And it was that sort of snow where you could dig, you could cut a foot cube, you
know.
Blocks. [Laughing].
Yes.
And there were all these cubes all the way down and it took us all day to do it. But again, it
was good because it was a farmer seeing wardens in a good light. But Ian’s quite right, I think
it’s one thing that the Peak Warden’s Association and [inaudible] did was they were a
cohesive group who wanted to come out every weekend not just to warden but because there
49

was a social side to it. And that social side kept them going because there was a period I
think probably in the early sixties when the numbers of volunteers from rambling clubs – cos
that’s how the warden service started – it was basically Sheffield Ramblers, Manchester
Ramblers, Clarion and all these people – would provide volunteers and they were the warden
service. And the numbers started to do down and down and down and the park got really
concerned about whether they were going to fulfil their obligations. And they appointed people
like Bill as part time rangers but only a few. They were still dependent on volunteers. And at
Peak Warden’s Association because we had this group that were coming out every weekend
for the social camping at Ollerbrook and so on, kept them going and we actually fulfilled
probably ninety per cent of the voluntary warden posts were from the PWA.
(Right.)
And it’s something really sadly that’s gone because I think now it would be a way in which you
keep people on board for longer.
Yeah. I think the major problem is it’s such a very diverse, much larger organisation than it
was in those days.
Yeah, yeah.
We were only based, if you like, in Edale and Hayfield.
Hayfield, yeah.
Without the access agreements.
Yeah.
But now it’s park-wide and there are many more part time and volunteer rangers than there
were in those days. So I don’t think you could replicate the, you know.
Probably not the same but I think there’s that need for some social interaction because, you
know, rangers who work here every weekend will not see rangers from Hartington or from
Langsett.
Oh no.
50

Very often, except for once a year Sean holds this big thing at Lose Hall. But, you know, the
idea of that was to bring people together so they can mingle and talk. And some of that’s
gone sadly and perhaps there is, you know.
(So what sort of social things did you do)
Drink.
Drink and smoke curly pipes.
[Laughing.]
No, we actually what we did do, we used to have an annual trip to another national park.
(Right.)
And we were always greeted in the national park as wardens from the Peak District and we
got the red carpet treatment and everything. And that was good because people began to see
what was going on in other parks and voluntary wardens in other parks. We used to have an
annual dinner in Hathersage.
Yeah, was it the Ordinance Arms
Yes.
The Ordinance Arms. And then it became the Hathersage Inn after that.
Yeah, there was the Christmas trip to Dale Garth up in the Lakes.
Yes, great, yes, no, yeah,
(Was that an annual thing)
It was, I don’t know whether it’s still, it’s not now.
And there was a newsletter and an annual meeting and all this sort of thing, yeah.
Yeah, that’s it, yeah.
51

Sorry Dave.
I can remember, cos I used to work on the railway. I used to, if it was on Saturday and I used
to come down and they were playing football, I used to blow on with the whistle and … yeah.
Yeah, we used to play football for Edale didn’t we, occasionally in the village. Fill the gaps.
And Albert Day where we stayed at Ollerbrook had a two acre field with one cow in it called
Daisy who used to play football with us. You know, we’d play along and the cow’d come over
and tackle you and put the ball in the net. [Laughing].
We used to get, you know, I mean the Nag’s Head was the favourite
Yes it was.
Drinking hole, wasn’t it
Yeah, yeah, it was. It was within staggering distance of Ollerbrook.
Yeah and we stopped at the wall on the way back.
That’s it, yes, that green wall.
That green wall. [Laughing] Yeah. But I do remember quite clearly that we, one Christmas, we
were on Peak Tarn, you know the tarns on the top there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Frozen solid.
Yeah.
You remember we went skating there
Yeah we did, yeah.
Yeah, I don’t know whether that …
52

Fred Heardman used to skate there a lot years ago.
Yeah.
I mean with being the first national park and the first warden service I guess we got into the
idea of thinking that this is the way it should be and everywhere’s the same.
Yes.
And I remember going to a trip into Snowdonia and it was quite other. You know, their
approach to wardening was quite different.
Yeah, it was different completely.
In fact they looked upon us with our armbands as a paramilitary organisation. They said that,
you know, they had people come and visit the Peak Park and been told off by rangers or …
Yes. They were all ex colonels or officers in the Wrens weren’t they, retired, you know, retired
admirals. [Laughing].
People used to say of the Lake District wardens that all they did was empty the baskets in the
car parks of litter, you know.
Yeah. They were eye openers.
Well it’s funny you should say that Bill because we met a ranger in the Lake District and they
had a system where they just went to a centre and signed in and then went out and there
were no briefing or debriefing.
No.
No, just …
Course they didn’t have access lands did they
No, no.
They had a different …
53

Yeah a different …
Their role was more or less the role we have now wasn’t it
Mmm, just advice wasn’t it and support.
Yeah, advisory.
Yeah.
It was on [inaudible].
Because I mean we had to have a warden service because of the Act of Parliament and then
because we had a warden service, voluntary warden service, that seemed to work well, lots of
other parks then started to adopt not the same model but the idea of having volunteers. All of
the parks.
(Yeah, if they thought it was a good idea.)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And the social aspect continued with the Edale Mountain Rescue team.
Yeah it did.
I went through Castleton yesterday and passing the Cheshire Cheese and I suddenly thought
‘We were all there at a meeting, a social occasion, when J F Kennedy was shot.
(Right!)
And I can remember everybody talking
’62, was it, ‘63 Yes.
“Have you heard” because everybody came in “Have you heard, have you heard, have you
heard”
Show you another picture here…
54

That was a means of also inviting people like, I remember, Pridgent[] from North Lees
inviting people like, you know, the farmers, to come and join in with the rescue team. And it
was a great way of breaking down barriers wasn’t it
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, continuing from the volunteer wardens up to the rescue team the same thing
applied.
Yeah.
A lot of social events.
But with the rescue team unless you … it just depended what sort of work you we was doing.
I mean if you couldn’t get time off from work you was absolutely snookered, you know, as far
as that …
Yeah, yeah, oh yeah well, it was difficult, it was difficult.
I couldn’t do it because I were on the railway and…
It was difficult.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t sort of say “Well I’m going …” cos I didn’t know where I was.
No.
I could be anywhere. Oh thank you.
Eighth Track.
In those days you had to be a qualified warden to join that team.
(The mountain rescue)
Yeah that one there. And it was led by George Garlick, yeah, who was the head warden here.
55

Those are some of those slides that I made.
(Oh brilliant, thank you.)
And that was the first stretcher oar [ph] in the Peak District. In the sixties, obviously in the
sixties.
Downfall.
The Kinder Downfall. People like Don Aldridge, Roy Briggs was there. I was there. Were you
there
Mmm.
You were there Bill.
Yeah.
Were you there Cliff, I don’t remember But Frank was there.
(Frank)
What’s his surname Your mate.
Frank Aire []
Frank Aire, who became a ranger in Nottinghamshire.
With his lamp. [Laughing].
And lots of others. Brian Jones was there. Lots of other people. My brother in law was there
as well. Thank you. Ian Sockey [] was another I think. But that was the first one, but that
evolved into the Edale Mountain Rescue Team.
(Cos there isn’t just the Edale Mountain Rescue now is there, there’s)
No, there were seven teams in the Peak District.
(Right, was Edale the first one)
56

No. Glossop was the first one which was in 1959.
That’s Downfall.
And they established themselves…it was a scout group basically. And they established
themselves based in Glossop in 1959. The catalyst really was the Four Inns and we talked
about that before.
It was, yeah.
(Yeah, yeah.)
And that’s when the other six teams were formed, or were amalgamated and came together
in the 1970s.
(Right. So do you still have to be a ranger to be part of the Edale Mountain Recue)
No, no.
(No, it’s much wider now.)
Yeah.
Yeah. It was set up by the National Park, it was run by the National Park until, what year was
it actually
Again it was in Eric’s era.
It was, wasn’t it, that’s right.
Where he separated out the fact that you didn’t have to be a ranger – he agreed with Edale
team, you didn’t have to be a ranger to be a member of the Edale team. So middle eighties
probably.
And then basically when it got to the time of Sean, Sean said basically “Rangers don’t have a
role in mountain rescue we’ve got a semi-professional organisation in the Peak District now,
leave it to them” And we then became detached from it. And I mean you’re detached in that
sense but of course rangers often are the first people on the scene anyway.
57

(Yeah.)
So they need to have the knowledge of it and they get that training. But when it comes to
actual evacuation then they bring teams in.
Are there any currently serving rangers in the Edale Team
I think there is.
Is Tony Hutch still in it
I’m not sure.
Tony’s in the team.
He is still in
He was leader at one time.
Yes he was, yeah.
He was Chairman at one time and he’s an incident controller just as I am now. But he’s still a
member of the team. He’s still active. Just trying to think of…
Not so many.
No, no.
No, there aren’t so many now.
There was somebody called Neil Hater [] who worked from here.
He used to be but he’s not part time any more.
But he’s not a ranger, no he’s not, he just does the mountain rescue. Yeah.
Yeah, but Neil is still in the team. Yeah, yeah.
And to be honest, I mean, they’re called the Edale Team but they’re actually based at Hope.
58

(Oh right.)
Yeah, cement works.
But historically they’ve kept the name and I think rightly so because it has a long history, long
history.
When they weren’t making films for the television. There was this series about these Peak
doctors wasn’t there and Hood was in charge of a rescue team which had gone up…
Oh, Peak Practice.
Onto Curber Edge to see somebody who’d had some kind of diabetic coma or something like
that, a heart attack, and it was going to take the team two hours to get him down to the road
through Curber Edge. [Laughing] Oh my God.
[Laughing.]
He talked to them very seriously.
Tony had a lot to do with designing the stunt work on that Peak Practice.
He was yeah.
Yes he did.
He was employed by them to assist them, yeah, yeah. But you’ve got to bear in mind Cliff
that, you know, there is a bit of separation between fact and fiction.
Artistic licence do you mean Yes, yes. [Laughing].
These programmes do run for a long time. [Laughing].
Tell you another one whilst we’re talking about mountain rescue I just thought you might be
interested in that.
Oh yeah Henry House [].
Oh yes.
59

I was involved with that.
Yeah I know you were. Henry the dog was...
I can tell you the story of that.
Well I’ll let you tell it then, but that’s the cartoon that, that was the National Park Magazine.
They were very good.
Yeah they were good, yeah.
Yes it was, yeah.
And Mick would always produce a cartoon wouldn’t he And that was the one on that
particular occasion. This is what, dated 1986/87.
Really
Is there nothing like that now
There is …
Sort of throwaway magazines
No, not like that, no.
There’s an eZine now.
There’s an eZine, yeah.
It was a good magazine.
No, the story about that, I’d forgotten all about that, was one day I got a call here that a
woman had come down to Hayfield, no sorry, she’d come down here into the visitors’ centre
to say that her dog had collapsed at the Downfall and she couldn’t get it up or moved or
anything and could we help And this was in winter and it was horrendous conditions as I
recall. And I mean I remember we had to go round to Hayfield. I went round with some
rangers and I asked two of the rangers on top by radio, I said “Can you try and locate this
dog” and this woman’s son was with the dog. And eventually they came back and they said
60

“Yeah, we’ve located the dog” So I said “Well, could you carry it off” And there was this long
pause and they said “No, I’m afraid not, it’s a big Old English Sheepdog and it weighs a ton”
So I thought ‘Hell, what do we do’ So the only thing I could think of was to call rescue team
in. So I called Kinder Rescue Team in, went round there by Land Rover and we went up and
it really was some of the worst conditions I’ve ever known at Hayfield. I mean the rocks were
covered in verglas which is like ice. So it was leg breaking conditions. And I remember we got
up to this dog, poor thing was lying there, and subsequently it turned out it had a heart attack.
But we got it onto the stretcher and I was used to strapping people into a stretcher. Now how
do you strap a dog on a stretcher
Yeah. [Laughing].
So in the end the only way we could think of doing it was to strap it like this with its paws to
the front, tail to the back, like crouching. And we strapped it on with some padding and started
carrying this thing down. Well I kept looking at this dog and it had got this real doleful look on
its face, you know, and I’m thinking ‘Alright, we’ll get you down’ And it’s called Henry, the dog.
And that was one of the most hazardous and longest evacuations I’ve ever known.
(Right.)
But we got the dog down and got it to a vet and it lived. But my goodness that was an odd
one.
([Laughing].)
Really odd one.
I thought you were going to say when you got to the bottom it got off the stretcher and walked
away. [Laughing].
No, no, it was recovering, but it was still very poorly. But, and it would not have survived had it
not been carried down. But it was certainly a challenge.
(Have there been any more sort of strange rescues or bizarre callouts that you can think of)
Well I remember one of the very earliest I came upon in the Pennine Way we always used to
have lots of people missing on the Pennine Way, things like that. And one of the oddest I had
61

was a guy who – we got called to this guy who’d fallen at Blagdon doing the Pennine Way.
Well Balgdon’s not even on the Pennine Way so he’d actually gone wrong in the first half mile
of the walk. And he’d got to the top of Blagdon and he’d taken everything but the kitchen sink,
literally. I mean he had a pack that was like up here, weighed a ton, and he’d got to this rock
and he’d leant over to have a look down and the weight of his rucksack had taken him straight
over the top. And he had at least four broken bones. He had a broken rib, he had a broken
leg.
Oh no.
He’d broken his wrist. I mean he was in a mess, a real mess. And we got over and he was
conscious, he was alright, had a lot of pain, gave him some morphine. And I’d got some parttime
rangers with me and I said “OK” we got him on the stretcher and I turned to them and I
said “Can somebody carry the rucksack back” but it took two of them to carry it back. No one
person could lift this rucksack you know.
[Laughing.]
And so he’d gone wrong in the first half mile and then that was the end of his Pennine Way.
But I felt sorry for the guy, he’d been planning it for about three years apparently. [Laughing].
(Oh dear.)
And he’d read every book and taken every little bit of advice in the book. Yeah, that was the
Pennine Way. But we used to have all sorts of people missing on the Pennine Way.
Yeah, they were very much of a muchness in the sense that when I lived at Crowden I was
always getting phone calls from Crowden Youth Hostel on a Saturday night saying “Blah,
blah, blah hasn’t turned up”.
Yeah.
And so then we used to go through the process of doing checks with the police and with
ourselves to some extent, running round the roads. But I do remember one or two incidents
that stick in my mind. The first one was the Four Inns.
(Yeah.)
62

In 19 … I don’t know whether I recounted this the last time But we as a warden service
group were drafted in under George to search the Alport and we actually located one of the
bodies in the river. Cos the river had iced over and there was snow on top of that. And we
recovered him. But one of the rescuers, Ray Davis, who was with the Glossop Team then,
had a very severe fall. But it wasn’t a fall. One of his colleagues fell and this was on the lip of
Alport, and bearing in mind it was all covered in snow, and Alport there is quite steep in
places. And Ray saw this happening so he actually dived across and grabbed onto this chap
and unfortunately he injured himself in the process. So he had to be moved. But one of the
things – did I tell you about an incident at Crowden with a number of children the last time
(Don’t think so.)
Well this was again a scout group. And scouts had a fairly bad name in those days for people
getting lost and getting involved in incidents. And appalling weather, absolutely appalling
weather. And they were out and they didn’t return at night and we were asked to search,
which we did. Didn’t locate. And in daylight a helicopter arrived but I’m not sure whether it was
a whirlwind or what was the later version The Wessex
Wessex, yeah.
And because I was the local guy I was the one that was drafted in to fly in it, you see, to give
a bit of local knowledge. Anyway, the dogs, Mike Hammond, so 19 Well Mike was appointed
two years before me so it would be in the seventies. And the dog found them. Mike’s dog
found them actually in the elbow of Great Crowden Brook underneath Laddow. And it’s quite
narrow, very steep side, and they helicopter pilot decided that he would fly in to recover the –
bearing in mind there’s nine of these kids – fly in to recover these children. And they were ok
generally but they were cold and very wet, dispirited and fed up. And we went in and he flew
in like that and he landed on his two front wheels, hovered on the two back wheels. I jumped
out, we threw four kids in I think, from memory. He then flew down, came back, reversed and
did the same in reverse. Landed on his two wheels, hovered on the two front wheels, we
threw the other children in. And off he went. Now that is magnificent flying.
(Yeah.)
Yeah, incredible flying.
63

Yes it is.
And I’ve seen ‘em in the amphitheatre at the Downfall, you know, with Sea Kings and the tail
rotor isn’t far away from the rock. Fantastic professionals they are.
They are.
Oh yeah.
And very safe. I mean they know what they’re doing but they’re really on the edge.
Well we used to go for training, if you remember, to Leconfield.
Yeah we did.
I remember on one …
Were you in that one that crashed
No I wasn’t in the one that crashed, I was in one …
I was. The rotors jammed and just dropped.
Did they
Yeah. Fortunately we were only about twenty feet up but it was bad for our backs.
The one that I was in. I don’t know whether it was on the same occasion. We, I mean what we
were normally doing was sort of flying around and dropping people on the winch and picking
people up on the winch. It was that sort of experience. But you only flew around once or
twice. But we were flying around four or five times. So we said to the winch man “What’s
happened” and he said “Oh we think we might have a problem with the clutch so we’re just
testing it” [Laughing] The clutch that controls the rotors. So that was an interesting situation.
I’m sure there are more, but …
(So when did the helicopters come in Did you do much work with …)
Well in the early days we never had them but …
64

Well the helicopters, the first one that’s recorded in my book was the Four Inns.
Which is on sale price over there.
([Laughing].)
Was the Four Inns, is the Four Inns. It was a Whirlwind at the Sisters on the Four Inns. So
1964.
(So was it RAF)
Yeah.
RAF, yeah. I mean the RAF Mountain Rescue was established specifically to save pilots of
RAF aircraft but of course they’re not being used all the time and they’re allowed to do civilian
duties when they’re not doing Air Force duties. And now they tend to use them as actually
training flights. They’re logged as training flights. So if they come out to the Peak District or
onto the Lake District to do a rescue then it goes down as a training flight. And it works very
well. But if you go to the Alps you’d pay three, four thousand pounds for a helicopter rescue,
minimum.
Ninth Track.
(So talking of vehicles again, tell me about the fire, I can’t remember what they’re called)
What the Centaurs
(Yeah, when did they arrive)
Oh it’s a recent thing isn’t it
(Oh is it)
It is relatively recent. But I mean initially we had what we call the Argocat which was, was it
six or eight wheeled
Eight I think, eight yes.
65

They’re a pound per square inch air in the tyres.
Very soft tyres.
So it didn’t damage the vegetation as you drove along.
(Right.)
And it was steered by …
Like a tank.
Yeah, like a tank with like handlebars, you pulled the right hand and it locked.
(Oh, so it just …)
Yeah, that’s right. But sometimes these chains used to break didn’t they And we used to
stick all sorts of things in to get these chains back together. Six inch nails, all sorts of stuff.
But they were very useful to carry …
And they floated as well.
They did float yeah but you had to put the bung in to ensure that they did.
[Laughing.]
But they were very useful to carry punts and other heavy equipment which previously we had
to manhandle. In fact we took ‘em up on stretchers sometimes.
Yeah. And you could manhandle these vehicles couldn’t you
You could.
The Argocats, they were so light, two or three people could bump them round, you know.
But we used to get ‘em stuck in grough didn’t we
Yeah.
66

At the wrong angle, you know, we’d attempt to cross a gruff at the wrong angle and they’d get
wedged in the grough.
[Laughing.]
I know about it. I’m helping on that, taking stone up towards, on Pennine Way from there and
he went into a grough and phew, he had a right job to get it out, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
Cos each wheel rotates naturally, don’t it It drives itself, all three, those six wheels, or eight
wheels they’re all independent.
Yeah.
Yeah, but …
I’m not quite sure they were independent, they were all driven off the one chain weren’t they
They were down the one side.
Were they all one chain
Yeah, they weren’t independent, no.
No, alright, yeah.
Yeah, so if you pulled the bar it locked ‘em all.
Yeah I see, yeah.
And then the others carried on and you turned round.
Ah that’s it, yeah, that’s right, yeah.
But the Centaur was a development of that and of course the benefit of that … I mean we did
have a cab of sorts on the Argocat which was a canvas and Perspex thing so you could see
through it. It had lights as well. But the Centaur was a much bigger machine, much more
powerful, but essentially I think the same in terms of, you know, the principles. But it could
carry a lot more weight and of course now they’ve got pumps on them which are permanently
67

fixed with hoses and they’re extremely useful in fires. They can be taken off and used for
other purposes as well.
(So were the Argocats the things that you used to take all of the stone up onto the paths and
the stuff you did)
Well we did use it for … I remember we did use for carrying stone, we carried gritstone, grit
didn’t we
Early days, yeah, but then helicopters were used for taking – all the flags you see on Kinder
are almost certainly taken up in ton loads by helicopter and dumped at intervals along the
path. But in the early days, yes the Argocat was the thing that we used.
(Well like the ones at Black Hill, would they have been)
They were flown in.
They were flown in, yeah.
(They were flown in Yes cos I can’t imagine you driving anything through what used to be
Black Hill.)
Well you can come up, actually you can in fact drive from the television station.
(Holme Moss)
Yeah, up Holme Moss onto Black Hill.
Yeah.
Passing the Swordfish en route and up to the trig point. So you can do that. But I remember
Gordon was working in Golden Clough on one occasion and actually he broke the machine
which was the Argocat and we all went to recover it a day or two later.
Golden Clough - it’s in the Meadows
What did I say
Golden Clough. [both speaking at once].
68

Oh beg your pardon, it was in the Meadows, by the diamond plantation, stuck in the wall.
Yeah, we’d been taking stone up and down. [Laughing] Health and Safety come in on these
issues now. We were taking stone up and down.
I’ll let you recriminate yourself.
And we decided it was not safe to drive it down, which was a wise move, but we decided we
would lower it with the turfer winch and to cut a long story short when I released the Argocat it
wasn’t attached to the turfer [Laughing] which was not entirely my fault, but anyway.
Yes it was.
[Laughing].
But it hurtled down the field this thing, totally out of control. Fortunately there were no walkers
on our Pennine Way below because it bounced over the Pennine Way and straight through
this wall. [Laughing]
Yeah, demolished the wall.
Everybody looking in horror. [Laughing] Yeah.
And I had the job of ringing Ken.
[Laughing.]
What did you do, just throw yourself off
No I actually tried to stop it and it actually broke my finger. The rope - I’d tried to stop it, which
was an instinctive thing, which was a waste of time, no way was I going to stop it once it …
because it was quite heavy wasn’t it really when you’re on a steep slope.
Yeah, yeah, it was interesting to see you run alongside it.
[Laughing.]
69

Yeah, well, I was trying to deflect it, you know, trying to … because it wasn’t that heavy that
you couldn’t just … and I was trying to run alongside so I could get it [Laughing] That was a
waste of time. Damage had been done by then. Its destiny had been decided!
When did they change over from those to the Centaurs anyway
Oh that’s more recent years, in the last five or six years I would think.
Right.
I think it’s earlier than that actually
Is it
Yeah, well I’ve been retired, what, since 2007 and it’s probably four or five years prior to that.
Yeah, oh you’re probably …
That we had the Centaurs.
It was after I finished.
Yeah. But Derbyshire Fire Service have also …
(They didn’t want to just demolish them obviously, they were waiting till you’d gone so you
didn’t run into any walls. [Laughing].)
Well that’s right, they waited till I’d gone then. “But you can order them now he’s gone!”
[Laughing.]
Oh dear.
Yeah, an interesting exercise.
(OK …)
But they’re very good pieces of kit where they happen to call for them.
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Yeah, I mean it’s interesting, you know, going back to fires. I mean you go back to the very
early days when we used to fight fires, it was, we were amateurs, you know. And we did what
we could. I mean we used to ditch trenches to stop back burn, so we learnt over the years
how to gradually deal with fire. But the big, big change came when we started to get portable
reservoirs on the moors and use helicopters and pump out of these reservoirs. Then it
became logistically it was a much bigger thing but it was much more effective wasn’t it And
so like all the things with the ranger service, we always started off as amateurs. We were all
given jobs which we were never really fitted to do but you learnt, you learnt on the job, you
learnt the hard way and then became more sophisticated. And now a lot of what’s done by
rangers in all of the national parks is much more professional than it was.
Wasn’t it your idea Ian for these reservoirs on the moor
Well when I came back from secondment [inaudible] I think was running the group which we
then developed into the FOG group but we also had a separate group that was …
Fires Operational Group.
Well no, that’s the Fog Group.
Yeah.
But we also had a separate group that looked at humidity and, you know,
Ah that’s right.
The reports in terms of whether vegetation would burn and whether we would recommend
closure of the moors and, you know, the withdrawal of access agreements. And what was that
group called, I’ve forgotten now
Oh.
Fires Advisory Panel, the Fires Advisory Panel, that’s right. And it sort of moved on from there
and then we brought the two groups together. And the fire services then joined as well and,
as Gordon rightly says, it’s much more professional now than it ever has been in the past.
Much more kit is available, more money is being allocated to it because they see the damage
that fire, you know, can do if it’s not dealt with properly and quickly then it’s an absolute
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disaster. I mean I remember fighting fires on Bleaklow and Kinder, and Glossop was virtually
closed down because it was covered in smoke.
Yeah, oh it was … some of the fires were horrendous.
And warnings were going out on, you know, radio and TV, “Shut your windows” and things
like this.
Yes.
But that is quite rare these days because they hit so quickly.
And also I mean like there’s a full time ranger, Sheila, out today training fireman in navigation,
so there’s a two way thing now. In the past fireman were never – like police – were never ever
equipped to go on Kinder and Bleaklow. And we used to go and lecture – do you remember
the police, Nottinghamshire Police, training place at Alport Castles
Yes at Alport Castles, yeah.
And they used to bring these cadets out and we used to go, every course they had there a full
time ranger would go and talk about the moors and safety and all this sort of thing. So that
that sort of liaison with the police, with the fires service, has been pretty crucial to improving
things. And it’s still going on obviously.
(Brilliant, ok, well I think I’ll stop the recording now. So thank you all very much.)
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George Townsend: Interviewed by Ann Price of Hope Historical Society.
24 th October 2010.
(This second interview is taking place at the home of George Townsend between Mr
Townsend and Ann Price of Hope Historical Society. I thank you George. Would you like to
tell me to start with your name, where you were born and when)
George Townsend, I was born at Rose Cottage, Ashopton on 15 th October 1929.
(And would you like to tell me a little bit about what it was like to live in Ashopton then)
I had two brothers and one sister. We walked to Derwent School, 1¾ miles there. There were
no school dinners there, we took sandwiches. If you wanted a drink there was a trough in the
school yard with clear running water. Ashopton was very quiet during the week and hardly
anyone had a car.
It was fairly busy on Sundays in the summer with bicycles, a few ‘molly-morgans’, two
wheels at the front and one chain driven wheel at the back, and a few motorbikes.
There were two shops at Ashopton, a Post Office, Ashopton Inn, two petrol pumps and
a joiners shop. There was a Methodist chapel; the stained glass window is now in Hope
Sunday School. Joe Marshall worked there making carts, this was at joiners shop, making
coffins etc…mending cars, making coffins etc.
Er, there were no tractors, all horsepower. I remember a steam lorry one day bringing
beer to Ashopton Inn. There was a bus service to Sheffield.
The butcher came once a week, he was called Percy Law. Hancocks & Bamford
brought orders, groceries etc. round every week.
There weren’t many telephones, no electricity, there was a phone box. We had a
wireless set, which not many people had.
My father was born at King’s Haigh, they then moved to Twitchill Farm, Hope, and then
they moved to [Elmin Pits] on’t top from Crookstone. Then father and his brothers and sisters
walked to school down Hope Brinks. My father married Doris Mable Ramsden in 1926. He
had worked on farms round ‘bout there. Then he worked for Derbyshire County Council, I
suppose the money was better than farm wages.
I were staying with my uncle and Nan at Two Thorne Fields Farm during the early part
of the war, when they heard farm wages were going up to £3 per week, so my uncle said we
shall have to manage on our own. One day I think I were about 8 years old, Bernard Davidson
from Hagg Farm came and asked me if I would help his hired hand to drive a cow up the road
from Ashopton; he gave me sixpence.
He said ‘You’ll go all the way with him won’t you’ Well we kept going up the road,
Snake Road, we were getting further away from home, I had never been up there before. So I
said ‘can you manage now’ He said ‘Yes’, so I was glad to be going back home. There was
very little traffic on the roads in those days.
My father and mother used to make teas for people on Sundays. One man used to
come every Sunday, wet or fine, he had two eggs, two boiled eggs.
We had our milk from Tom Bridge at Jack End Farm. When he moved we got it from
Elliotts at Crookhill Farm.
We moved to Thornhill on March 25 th 1939 to a small holding, it was very cold. I
walked with my uncle Henry Townsend with the horses and dray. He farmed at High Field
Head, Aston. We then walked to Bamford School. We had work to do before we went to
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school feeding the hens, pigs etc. There was no mains water at Thornhill, so we had the
drinking water to carry before we went to school and when we came home. I used to carry
water for people round about and I drew a little bit of money for that after I came home from
school.
When I was 13 my uncle had to go into hospital with cancer on his tongue. I went to
stay with my aunt, who was my father’s sister, to help her to milk the few cows they had. They
didn’t sell milk, and someone to be in the house with her at night. They had no telephone, no
electricity.
I went to Bamford School from there. I was allowed to ride on the bus, which came
down the Snake, Snake Road, run by Bernard Ibbotson. I left school at 14, I worked two days
at home, two days on a poultry farm at Thornhill and two days at Aston Hall for the Daltons,
my wages were 3 and 6 per day. I then went full time at the poultry farm for two or three
years, then went to work at Aston Hall in 1947. My father had worked there for Joe’s father,
my grandfather worked for his grandfather and my great grandfather had worked for them as
well, so there was four generations. My younger brother worked at Aston Hall for about 40
years. In 1951 I went to work for Mr Tom Neil at Barber Booth, Edale, I was very happy there
working with the sheep among other things, dairying etc.
I married Cynthia Mary Carrington in 1956. In September 1957 our son Peter George
was born, he now has a son, he’s 21. We lived in a rented cottage at Barber Booth, Edale. I
think it was £3 per week. We had no bathroom, no fridge, no telly for a start.
I then worked for farm supplies at Edale sowing stakes, putting sheds on farms, very
interesting work. I then went lorry driving for three years. In 1964 we moved to Hardenclough
Farm in Edale, farming for Mr Simmons.
In 1966 we adopted a little girl, Penelope Rose, she now has a daughter who is 19 and
a son aged 13.
In 1968 we moved to Quarters Farm, Bradwell, farming for Mr Isaac Middleton.
In 1971 we were buying cottage in Hope, I went to work at the quarry at cement works,
it was very boring after I’d been used to working on the land.
In 1974 I went to work for Peter Eyre at Brough near Bradwell, property repairing
mostly on farms.
In 1979 we took over Mr J W Carrington’s farm at Barber Booth, Edale and in 1979 we
went working for the National Trust, I was on a self employed basis. I worked with my brotherin-law
at Edale on the farm but he dropped out after a while and we found it on our own. We
bred Swaledale sheep, always trying to buy decent rams that we could afford. We also had
Masham lambs, bred Masham lambs, cross between a blue-faced Leicester ram and a
Swaledale ewe. The wether lambs were fattened and sold for meat or store lambs which were
sold at Hope Market which is now closed, it has been built on. It was a very friendly market,
we knew most people there. You could catch up on the news all round the area. You knew
most people there.
We ran one other sheep on the big moor with Peak Park as we were short of space at
Edale. I retired from the National Trust in 1964 at 65 years old, but I carried on stone walling
etc.
In 2000, my wife passed away with leukemia. I was taken ill with heart trouble, so I sold
the sheep as I was not fit to look after them properly.
(That was very interesting indeed George, thank you for telling me about that.)
I know it wasn’t all about...
2

(What would you say were the biggest changes in time that you’ve been farming)
Well, everything going mechanica,l you see, during the war tractors came in because farmers
had to grow as much food as they could hadn’t they. So that was a big difference you see.
And I used to work horses a bit when I was young. I worked for Harold Wilson a little bit at
Aston ploughing for him and such like, and that was interesting, you know.
Erm, whether I could tell you some more about Ashopton I don’t know.
(Right.)
There were no water toilets at Ashopton and all the waste was either burnt on the fire or put
down the tip, there were no bin collections.
(Different from today.)
Yes, very different.
3

Brian Gill: Interviewed by Tegwen Roberts.
26 th October 2010.
[Brian Gill was born in Sheffield and lived at Nether Edge. He starts by describing the local
radio station – Radio Sheffield, which was close to his first home. It existed before the BBC
was established. It was a private undertaking – a one man band. His parents listened to it.]
We moved from Nether Edge, I started school just at the age of 5 and I can recollect most
clearly that when we moved to Norton Lees, I set off for school in the morning to
Abbeydale School and my older brother, who was 4 years older than me, obviously used
to look after me and take me and I had permission that particular Friday, when infant class
finished at half past three that I was allowed to go and sit in his classroom until 4 o’clock
so long as I behaved myself, until he’d finished and then from there we walked to our new
home. So I left one home in the morning for the school and then walked right through, up
through the hills, through Meersbrook Park, up to Norton Lees to our new home in the
afternoon. Not many people can say they set off from school from one house and got back
to another. No carting about with Chelsea tractors or people with cars. Not many people
had cars in those days, or telephones for that matter. Different world altogether really. And
we lived at Norton Lees right until I got married. And then when I got married, I only moved
4 or 5 doors away to a house just round the corner from my parents. So really I spent most
of my early years up at Norton Lees. And that’s where we were in the Sheffield Blitzes of
course, which was a very traumatic evening, the Thursday night Blitz that went on all night
long and I’ve never been so frightened in my life and we didn’t have an air raid shelter, we
were sitting under the kitchen table, praying. Anyway, we were lucky. The door blew in and
one or two other things happened, but touch luck we were unscathed, not like some of our
friends I’m afraid. We had one family who we were very friendly with and they got a direct
hit on their Anderson shelter and that was the end of them and it was very, very traumatic.
But those days are long past, hopefully never to return.
(How many of you were there under the kitchen table)
Four of us. My mother, father, my older brother and myself. And dad had built up a wall of
wooden boxes filled with sand, which were packed against the outside wall under the
kitchen window…it was a good, strong oak table. Actually that’s still the top of it there.
Anyway, we survived, but it was very, very frightening. Bombs rattling down and,
incendiary bombs rattling down…and then we did get an Anderson shelter about six
months after and we never actually went in it in anger…we never really had another proper
air raid after the two Blitzes. So now what do you want to know about
(You were telling me about 1947.)
Oh, the 1947 snows. Now, yes well I’d be 17ish Yes 17. From my younger days, we were
always very keen on the outdoor world. Having an older brother was a very big advantage
because we used to ramble over Totley Moss. It was a ha’penny tram ride in those days
from Woodseats round to Beauchief post office corner. We used to walk up Totley Brook
1

Road up onto Totley Moor, past the shooting range and watching them practice shooting
and over the top and end up in Longshaw which had only recently been bought by
Sheffield City Council and we spent many many happy hours on there and it was quite a
walk, but very interesting. And that’s how, really, I got to know that part of Derbyshire. Got
to know it quite well in actual fact, which did stand me in good stead in later years.
Anyway, when I got older we used to go to the Lake District for holidays and then
later on, we did quite a few Alpine trips as well, but that was much later.
But 1947 was quite remarkable. We had had some very, very cold winters during
the war - 1939 winter and 1940’s winters were bitterly cold. Not a lot of snow, but
everything froze up, so we did quite a bit of ice skating in Graves Park and this sort of
thing. But when the snows came in 1947, it was quite remarkable. It didn’t start snowing
until the end of January from what I recollect and January was very, very cold; froze
everything up.
And what happened was really that we’d got the anticyclone over Scandinavia and
the continent. It was covering this country and then we got the wet weather coming in from
the Atlantic, the depression, pushing its way over and where the two met, we got this
colossal, colossal snowfall, which pushed right across the country and then back again.
The very first night’s snow, we must have had well over 12 inches of snow in that one
night. Remarkable. Caused chaos! Most of the bus services in the outlying districts of
Sheffield, which were quite a few, they could only go so far. We were really saved by the
tram cars because they could still battle through and they were mainly in the valley
bottoms and that kept everybody able to go to work. I mean, the thousands of people who
worked down in the east end of Sheffield, they all went by tram. It saved the day for us
really. And then of course, the anticyclone then fought back, pushed the snow back.
Everything froze up solid again and the snow got that hard that you could walk on the top
of it. So it made walking not too difficult; you had to pick your way carefully and avoid the
new snow and the lighter parts and then you didn’t go through. But this happened several
times during that month and during the month of February, we must have had, I would
think, well over 30 inches of snow, in increments of about 12 or 15 inches at a time. Then
of course we would get this break. And of course all the houses were absolutely covered in
icicles because what happened was in those days there was not much in the way of
insulation in people’s roofs and the warmth from the house would warm the roof up and
the warmth would melt the snow just above the tiles, then the water would run down into
the gutters and promptly freeze up again. And it wasn’t long before the gutters became just
solid blocks of ice and then any water that came down couldn’t get away; it just froze over
the edges of the gutter, down the front of the house. And the amount of gutter damage
was tremendous. There were gutters hanging off houses…and some of the icicles, I’ve
never seen anything like it, 6 and 7 feet long some of them. And quite a lot of them were
spiral because as it dripped down the icicle…
[Break in recording.]
(You were telling me before about when you went for a walk and got stuck…was it ’47
when you got stuck going for a walk in the snow)
2

When we tried to walk home, yes.
(So, where were you Where’d you get to)
Well, 1947 of course the snow went on for a long time, but of course…when the
anticyclone was pushed away, it was all sunny and crisp so it was very inviting to go out.
And a friend and I decided to have a night out at Rowland Cote Youth Hostel in Edale,
which had only just been converted into a youth hostel actually and we decided we
would…see what it was like in Derbyshire, because the snow and that was fantastic.
So we managed to catch the 2 o’clock train on a Saturday dinner time. In those days, of
course, we worked Saturday mornings, before a 5 day week came. And we caught the
train at Heeley I think at about 5 past 2; got off at Hope. Of course, when we got off at
Hope, the main road was reasonably well cleared; in other words it was cleared that you
could walk along it and a few cars did come along, but of course there was much traffic in
those days. So we walked into the village and then turned right up Edale Road to walk up
to Rowland Cote, and we got on to the Edale Road about as far as Carr House, where the
road had still been cut out, but it was like a slot. You were walking in a channel that was
about 4 feet deep with snow on either side, plus the fact that the snow had been thrown
up. And when we got to the Carr House turning, it stopped. They hadn’t got any further, so
we had to clamber up onto the snow and we found that we were sinking in because the
snow had filled the road in completely and of course the top foot or so of the snow was
quite soft. So we found it was easier to get on top of the wall and walk into the field and
walk up the field parallel with the road because the soft snow had been blown off and the
snow further out was crisp enough and hard enough for us to walk on without too much
trouble. So then we eventually got up to Ladybooth hamlet, where the track goes up to the
youth hostel and then we struggled up the track to the youth hostel. But these were just
tracks that had been made by a few pedestrians and the farmers carrying hay and this sort
of thing up to the youth hostel. By this time, it was getting towards late afternoon,
beginning to get dark and it was just starting to snow, very, very fine powdery snow. That
didn’t concern us unduly, and we had a night there. We had a comfortable night, a supper
and a breakfast and packed lunch for the next day, but it had snowed hard all night and
the weather had clamped in and the clouds were right down; you couldn’t see the tops of
the hills at all. There was no chance of doing any hill walking in any case because the
conditions were that poor, so we decided to do a circuit on the road and get back to
Castleton. And we teamed up with two lads from…I think it was Doncaster they came
from. And the four of us then carried on walking down onto the main road, which of course
had not been cleared, we were still walking in snow which was 4 feet thick, and we were
walking on the top of it.
And we got to Mill Cottages and there the local people had been clearing the snow,
so we got down onto the tarmac as it were and it was reasonable walking from there along
to the bottom of the Grindsbrook hamlet. We didn’t go up to Edale, but we carried on to
Barber Booth and…it was still…they’d cleared that road pretty well over the weeks, but it
was an on-going thing of course…every time it snowed and the wind blew, they’d got it to
do again where the drifts came across the road.
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We then tackled the Mam Nick Road. Of course going over the Mam Nick Road
there was no sign of any clearance at all whatsoever. We were just walking on the snow,
and of course it was snowing quite hard. So we got up over the top of Mam Nick and then
cut down the other side down to the main road. And in those days, there was a café, down
by the main road, not far from where the National Trust car park is now, but there’s no sign
of it now…the few foundations and that have gone. But it never did open much in winter in
any case and it wasn’t open then.
And then we got onto the main road which of course, no clearance, the Rushup
Road was just snow drift after snow drift and we made our way down the zigzag
road…that’s known as the ‘Shivering Mountain’ as it were…and walked into Castleton, but
of course in the daylight it wasn’t much of a problem, you could see where you were going
more or less. The wind and the snow was not too much of a problem. It wasn’t the gale
force winds that we experienced later. So we got into Castleton and we had a cup of tea
and a sandwich at the café there and walked round to where the bus turns round because
there was a bus service that the fed the railway. It was a local bus proprietor who had a
little single decker charabanc and he used to have a feeder system; he used to meet every
train that came in and then he used to take people from Castleton and take them to the
station at the right time for the train, like a feeder service between Castleton and also
Bradwell.
So we got to his bus and he said, “Well, there’s no trains,” and I said, “Oh dear”. He
said, “I can take you as far as Hope station,” which he did. At least that cut two miles out. I
said, “Well, we’ll have to walk up won’t we” Far easier said than done as it turned out.
And he dropped us off at the station, at the Station Road there, and we carried on walking
along the main road, which had been fairly well cleared, not difficult walking, but of course
it was still snowing, very fine snow and we walked down into Hathersage and then up the
Surprise Road and we got as far as the pub there, the Millstone, just on the corner
there…and that’s where the snow clearance finished. So from the Millstone it was just a
single track…sort of footprint…following people’s footprints up where the road was and of
course with it been snowing and getting quite windy, a lot of the tracks got obliterated, but
we were still reasonably confident that we were doing the right thing. We didn’t give much
thought to it. We sort of didn’t think there was an option.
But when we got up to the Surprise corner and we got through the corner where the
rocks are where you turn the bend at the Surprise View we met the full force of the blizzard
and it was not so much the snow, it was the wind, and the wind was blowing the loose
snow off the surface of the snow and of course you got covered from head to foot every
time there was a real puff of wind. And you couldn’t look into it; you had to just keep your
head right down. There was no way you could see where you were going. And of course it
was getting dark.
We also found that when we got there we were walking on the tops of several cars
that had been snowed in completely, probably for weeks and the snow was right over the
top of the cars and some of the cars just had a little bit of the roof peeking out. Then
further up we came up to a lorry and this lorry was completely snowed in. And the front of
the lorry…about half a dozen milk churns on the top deck of the lorry, just behind the
cab…they were the only things sticking out of the snow. And the caps of these milk churns
were stuck up about 3 inches from the top of the churn where the milk had frozen solid,
4

urst the container and pushed the lids off. Most spectacular really, but we were very
concerned now because the wind had got up and although it wasn’t snowing too hard, it
was this business of the blowing of the snow, it were difficult.
So we carried on, but by jove it was a struggle…lined abreast…we didn’t really
know where we were going. Occasionally, when it eased off a bit, we could see the lights
of Longshaw Lodge in the far right distance as it were so we knew roughly where we were,
but we couldn’t really guarantee that we’d walked on the road all the way down there, and
it took us a long, long time. It must have taken us an hour or more just to get down to
Toad’s Mouth, by which time we were frozen. Hands and feet were frozen; faces were
frozen. And we really were getting…seriously in trouble.
So from the Toad’s Mouth we walked up the road which of course we were on top
of the snow all the time and thought, “Well we’ll have to make it to the Fox House and
throw ourselves at his mercy to let us stay there for the night”.
Anyway, we got further up and I tripped and fell over. And I wondered what I’d
tripped on and I looked down in the ground and it was just the top of a triangle, about 6
inches of triangle that was sticking out of the snow and that was the road sign which was
the road sign that indicated that it was a junction. So, you could tell how deep the snow
was. And then a few yards further on, we all fell about 4 feet into a channel and that
channel was where the road had been cleared in earlier days and weeks when they
opened the road up to get it down to Grindleford.
So, again we were in lumber…anyway, we got round to the Fox House Inn and we
were absolutely all in. We went into the Fox House Inn, burst the door open and all fell into
the porch there and the landlord absolutely did his nut. He said, “What do you think I can
do with you lot I can’t put you up.” I said, “All we want to do is to sleep on your floor in the
lounge for the night,” I said, “We just cannot go any further”. Just then his telephone rang
and it was Sheffield Telegraph and Star ringing him up to see how he was getting on with
being snowed in, and he made some comments and he was waiting for a new generator
because his generator had conked out and they were going to send him one up. In actual
fact it was on the bulldozer; we met it further on the following day. He said, “You wouldn’t
believe it, but I’ve got four comics here who’ve just come in from the storm absolutely
exhausted and I don’t know what we’re going to do with them, but obviously they’ll have to
stop here for the night”.
And that was it, so because his telephone was working, well he said, “I’ll ring up
Longshaw Lodge, just round the corner, he said because if the telephone works and I can
get through, they will probably take you”. So anyway he rang and he got through and
explained the position and they said, “Yes, send them round here; we can cope with
them”. Because the CHA had been closed for at least a fortnight, couldn’t take any visitors
because visitors couldn’t get there. The in-house staff of course couldn’t get out in any
case, so they had to stay there, so there was a team there that were looking for people to
look after, so we were four waifs from the storm who they looked after. But it really was
quite remarkable. And I remember when we got there I just could not untie my bootlaces.
My hands were frozen solid, absolutely and my feet were frozen and my face was. And I
rather think that if we’d gone on any further we wouldn’t have made it because we found
the following day when we came over that some of the snow drifts were 25 feet high,
absolutely remarkable, up on the top. Anyway, they looked after us very, very well. They
5

took my boots off and…oh, and the hot aches…when my hands thawed out, I can still
remember it to this day, absolute agony. But they looked after us very well, very
comfortable and really it saved the day.
And of course the following morning, beautiful, sunny day, cold, the wind had
dropped and it was absolute fairyland. But the damage, even at Longshaw Lodge was
tremendous because part of the wall was split with the ice had got in and burst part of the
brickwork and gutters were down. We did a bit of clearing up for them. And we picked up
all their post and took it with us and then we set off about dinner time I think it would be,
had a light lunch…to walk back over the main road and that really was an eye-opener
because these snow drifts, they were like ridges going straight across the road. You had a
job to get over them and go round them, but of course in the daylight, with no wind, you
could see where you’re going, it wasn’t the problem that we’d encountered the previous
night, which was absolutely horrific. You can understand people getting lost in blizzards,
you really can.
We were very fortunate to get away with it. And we eventually got down into
Sheffield. As we dropped down, we got as far as the Clarion hut, which is where the
Sheephill Road comes in. We met a bulldozer and a mobile crane. And the bulldozer was
busy digging out the road and of course these bulldozers were loaned out from the
opencast collieries because the opencast collieries couldn’t work because of the snow and
the road authority were making use of them because of course in those days there were
no 4-wheel drive tractors. The farmers who did have tractors were only small ones which
were rear wheel drive and no brakes on the front usually. And they weren’t all that much
good for shifting snow really, not compared with the large 4 wheel drive monsters that
we’ve got now that churn everything up. So we put their post in the postbox at the top of
Whirlowdale Road and said goodbye to our two Doncaster companions who carried along
the Ecclesall Road to the tram terminus to get into Sheffield and we go down Whirlowdale
Road and got home, but it was quite an experience. Something I’ve never forgotten and
I’ve no doubt many many other people will have similar sorts of tales. In hindsight of
course, we should have turned round at…when we saw how bad it was at the Surprise; we
should never have tried to tackle it. We should have turned round and gone down to the
Millstone and tried to stay there for the night. Anyway, we still live to tell the tale, but I think
it’s the nearest I’ve ever come to being completely exhausted and certainly almost into the
frostbite era because the wind chill factor was absolutely horrendous. It was a very, very
uncomfortable 2 to 3 hours really from the Surprise to get to the Fox House.
Luckily, I was very familiar with the area, so I had at least got that advantage so I
knew, or at least I thought I knew where I was most of the time. So that really is the story.
(That’s amazing.)
That was certainly an epic.
(Did it put you off walking)
No, no, no, never put me off walking. I’ve always been a very, very keen walker, right until
recent years. In fact, the most frustrating thing now it that I can’t walk. I’m limited to just a
6

few hundred yards and even walking from the house up to the greenhouse, I’ve got to stop
and take my breath probably a couple of times to do 50 yards. Anyway, at least I’ve done it
and I can look back on memories. You know, as you get older, your memories get much
keener on your early life, it’s quite surprisingly really. I can’t always remember somebody’s
name that I’ve met 2 hours before, but I can usually remember things that happened 60,
70 years ago. I’m very very lucky to be alive as I am now…much to the benefit...
[Break in recording.]
(When did you come to this area You said you lived in Sheffield for most of your early
life…when did you move into the Peak District)
We moved here when Daphne retired from school teaching and Margaret, daughter
Margaret had got a pony and Daphne had got a pony which we kept in the valley. In fact
that’s how we got to know a lot of a lot of people in the Hope Valley was through the pony
club…Hope Valley Pony Club…and having horses at livery out here. And we were looking
round with an eye on retiring, we knew it was coming up, the steelworks were contracting
considerably, so we knew it wasn’t going to be long before I either got kicked out and
either made redundant or early retirement.
(What did you do for a job)
I was in the steelworks. I worked all my life in the steelworks from being a 15 year old
apprentice, a machine tool maintenance fitter. And then I went into the tyre shop as a
marker out and gauge maker. I was then promoted into the stamp shop as a junior
foreman to supervise the drop forging shop and various other things and also the cold
extrusion plant at one time and ended up, the last 13 years, I was company quality
engineer, so I had to face the music when anything went wrong. I was used to getting
kicked a bit!
(Which steelworks was that)
This was English Steel Corporation.
(Where were they)
They were Vickers…in Brightside. The River Don works.
(That’s a huge works isn’t it)
Oh yes, tremendous. I think we employed about 7,000 people when I joined them…Quite
an industry, it was a life on its own. And of course my family were very much involved. Not
my dad. My dad was at CT Skillman & Company; he ended up was secretary there,
cashier and secretary. I’d got uncles who were melting shop managers at Campbell Lairds
who were part of English Steel. English Steel was formed, I think, in 1928 with the
7

amalgamation of Vickers Ltd and Campbell Lairds. I had another uncle who was an
electrician who was killed in a works accident while I was working there…that would be
about 1944/45. He either fell off the crane track or got knocked off the crane track as a
maintenance electrician.
(At what age did you start work)
Fifteen.
(Did you work 6 days a week at that point)
5 and a half days; 47 hour week it was then.
(So finish on Saturday lunchtime)
Hmm. And of course when I got to be 18, I was on shifts, which meant you worked one
week on days and one week on nights. So I got a long weekend really from the Saturday
dinnertime at the end of the day shift, I wasn’t due back into the factory until 9, 10 o’clock
on the Monday night, but of course you still had a get a few hours’ sleep, otherwise you
just couldn’t cope.
(Did you spend most of your weekends walking in the Peak District)
If we got the opportunity, we were also very keen cyclists, I used to cycle on all these
roads in the summer as well. We used to do more walking in winter. And of course, my
early days, it was an introduction, having a brother 4 years older, it was a bit advantage
because where possible, I used to tag along with him and his friends. And one of his
friends had also got a younger brother who was my age, so we made quite a party up. And
the local vicar…my brother was in the choir. I wasn’t in the choir, I couldn’t sing two notes
to save my life, but we joined the Scouts, but it wasn’t actually our own Scouts; it was the
old Norton Scouts we joined and of course we had campsites out in the Peak District. But
the original vicar from Norton Lees, that was Canon Rawlings, he had a good working
arrangement with the people at Grimbercar Farm. Now, Grimbercar Farm was the last
farm going up the Snake that was flooded. And he had a hut there.
(When the Derwent was…)
No, when the Ladybower was built. I think the farm was knocked down, at a guess, round
about 1944 or 1943 even. We used to go out there. So my earliest recollections was going
youth hostelling with them, with the choir boys…both the vicar and the curate had cars
which was very unusual in those days, so they could always take about 8 or 9 boys. There
was no seat belts in those days. Used to cram’em in. And one of the hostels we went to
was Ravenstor, which was a converted country house. In fact it’s the first place that I ever
encountered electric hobs and electric ovens. Penny in the slot, if you were lucky, you
8

could just about cook your breakfast. The other one was Lee House in Grindleford…that
was a youth hostel…before the war and during the war.
That was my introduction to youth hostelling. Until we were old enough to leave
school and we used to have at least one week’s youth hostelling holiday in the Lake
District. And I got to know the Lake District very well. I had some very, very enjoyable
walks. And then, of course, later on we blossomed out from there when the Ramblers’
Association started up and we went on a couple of Ramblers’ Association holidays. One
was in the French Alps, with the French climbing school there at St Soulindavres. We had
a fortnight there which was very, very interesting. And then the year after that I had a
fortnight in Austria, with the Austrian Alpine Club, again with the Ramblers’ Association.
And that’s where I met my dear wife. So really I’ve a lot to thank my rambling for.
(Absolutely! Were you always a member of a club)
Yes, we were in the Scouts; I didn’t go on to Rovers. I joined the Scouts…it would be I
think round about 1941. After the blitz anyway, because we used to get roped in to help
out at things like ‘Wings for Victory’ week and all this sort of thing and various fundraising
activities where we provided the muscle power, with the trek cart, carting stuff about and
this sort of thing. In fact on one occasion, there was a demonstration with a fireman
rescuing somebody from…with a high-rise ladder, rescuing people from a building and I
was one of the dummies who was strapped to the…I wasn’t too happy about it actually,
but once they got you strapped in, you couldn’t do anything about it. And then they swing
you right round and drop you down to the ground…That was at…Jordanthorpe Hall…I
think that was a ‘Wings for Victory’ thing and they gave a demonstration. When it was all
over, all the produce that was left over, we…we put it in the handled street cart…I think
they had handles at both ends…about four of us use to trundle this thing…two
wheels…and we trundled it up the main road to the…what was the maternity home,
because during the war, Jessops Hospital in Sheffield opened up Norton Hall as an
emergency hospital and they transferred a lot of things out there and we took all this food
up to the cookhouse at the hospital.
[Break in the recording.]
(Talking of dummies…you said you were the rescue dummy and earlier on you were
telling me about Fred Herdman. Could you tell me the story about Fred Herdman and
exercises up on the moors)
Well, really this is very second and third hand information. I had no personal involvement,
so if I’ve got some of the information incorrect, you’ll have to live with it.
But Fred Herdman, quite a character. He owned the Nag’s Head and the Church
Hotel as it was called in those days. And he was about the first National Park Ranger. And
they did mountain rescue exercises training people…One of their methods, and this was a
story that he gave on the Sheffield Radio in an interview some years ago not long before
he died. He was saying that they used to plant somebody in a strategic position and call
them the injured person and then they would send a party out to go and look for them. On
9

this particular occasion, they found this chappie and brought him down and unfortunately
they had a mishap on the bridge down crossing the River Noe behind the Nag’s Head.
This chap got shot off the stretcher and he went through the gap at the bottom of the
railings of the very primitive bridge and ended up in the river below and he was quite
seriously injured. So that put a stop to that; they had to use dummies after that. And then
they used a tailor’s dummy; I don’t know where they got it from, but they planted this in
several places, but on this occasion that he was recounting, he said they put this dummy
near the top of Grindsbrook, not all that far from the edge where most people walked along
the path along the edge of Kinder and planted it and he sent the team of rescuers out and
they spread out like a fan, and were walking along looking for this body. They knew
roughly where they’d been told to look…and there was a party of ramblers coming the
other way and it was going to be a toss-up who found the body first. Unfortunately, it was
the party of ramblers, who found this very, very realistic injured person which was the
dummy with blood on its face and all the rest of it. And one of the dear ladies fainted,
collapsed and fainted, gave her such a fright. So they had to cart her…down Grindsbrook
on the stretcher. They got a real casualty which was self-inflicted! But the way dear old
Fred told this story was absolutely hilarious. I never met Fred; he sounds quite a character.
(Had he died before you moved to the area)
Yes…Well, no, probably not…I don’t quite know. And I don’t know where he lived at the
end either after he moved out from…Milly will tell you. Milly was his second wife.
(Has Edale changed…has this valley changed since you’ve been living here)
Oh tremendous…I mean…every building that can be converted has now been converted
or is in the process of being converted either into a swish dwelling or a holiday home or all
the rest of it. Most of these farms that have converted the barns, they can’t sell the barn
off separate; the barn’s got to stay with the farmstead, but of course it puts the whole value
of the property up…they either call them granny flats or holiday homes. But then of course
there are quite severe restrictions. I think these holiday homes, you can only let them for
no more than a fortnight at a time. I think there’s quite a few cases where they turn a blind
eye to it. But it’s certainly revolutionised…I mean just in Hope you’ve got the mill, that was
a working mill when I was a kid, down at the side of the River Noe, down by the bridge
there. That was eventually converted into a house. And the barn just above there, where
you turn down the lane to go to the mill, that was just a barn and that was converted by
Brian Morley, poor chap, who was killed at Hope Show many, many years ago. He used to
be a local milkman and he was a stonemason. He converted that…and that just recently
changed hands.
(This was a farmstead when you…)
This was a smallholding where I am now was built in 1929 by Mr Badger. People were
looking for the opportunity to get out in the country even in those days. Farms in those
days could sell off a little bit of land; there wasn’t too much restriction about it. This piece
10

of land…on the old tithe map, we are Far Vicar’s part and Middle Vicar’s part on the old
maps. And all the deeds appertain just to the land, not to any property that’s on it. And Mr
Badger built it in 1929. After the 14-18 war, quite a lot of semi-prefabricated bungalows
were built up and down the valley. And a lot of them were then stone clad and you get a
shock when you go in them…some of the rooms are still fairly pokey and some of the
passageways inside, you can’t get a wheelchair through. We looked at one place, which is
a very nice place down in Thornhill, and it looked very nice from the outside, but the old
part, you couldn’t get a wheelchair round the corners.
(Since you’ve been here has the moorland changed)
Not a lot, no. Funnily enough we used to have more trouble with people, so called
trespassing, climbing over the blinking wall at the top of the field to get down before it was
right to roam. Since we’ve been right to roam, we’ve hardly had any trouble at all. There
again, the bracken is very, very thick. They used to spray the bracken up to about 20 years
ago. But of course it got that expensive.
(Who’s they)
It was the actual land owners used to do it. I forget how much an acre it used to cost. It
was done as a helicopter job…Now of course it’s taken over everywhere, the bracken, I
have a job to keep it down. I spray over the top of the wall to stop it coming over the top of
our boundary wall…a six foot wide clearance of bracken which is grass which people walk
along, very handy for people to walk along. The roots used to come underneath the stone
wall…When we moved in here, this top field had got a lot of bracken in and we had to
spray it with Asulux was the recognised thing for…bracken and it certainly does get shut of
it.
11

[Could you tell me your name]
Interviews at Hayfield Day Care Centre
1. Interview with Arthur Huddleston
Arthur Huddleston
[Do you live in the village]
No, I live in New Mills but I used to live in the village from 1931. We moved to New Mills
about 40 odd years ago.
I was brought up in Hayfield, I don’t know what year we got married – about 1956 - &
we moved here about 1960 into New Mills. We still attend the church here at Hayfield. I
was church warden for twelve years but I still work here at the church you know.
[Do you have much to do with the local moors]
Only so much that during our school days, of course, we used always to be going over
Kinder & then, of course, every year there was always a period when there were
bracken cutting. That was to make it easier for the grouse shooters, you know, in
August, when the grouse shooting starts.
So that was kind of one thing, bracken, & of course during the time when they were
shooting the grouse they wanted beaters - either from Kinder or Park Hall, you know,
that 's where I think the main shoots used to come from.
[Did you go beating then]
Yes, that’s what they used to do, yes, used to do a bit of beating.
[So what did that involve]
Well you had sticks & you used to go around & hit the ground with a stick & that made
the birds fly up you see, the grouse, & then, of course, this gave the opportunity for the
people who were shooting, you know, gave them something to believe in, but you don’t
know those birds do you , when you’re young.
1

[Did you get paid]
Yes, they did get paid, yes it was quite attractive. I can’t remember now just what it was,
but it was quite something. Then I’d always worked for a farmer during my school days.
I used to go to school with this farmer’s son & the farmer was blind, a man called David
Earson, & he lost the sight of his eyes at Birchvale Print works where he worked & what
had happened was he was in the engineer’s department during lunch time & some of
the young ones were fooling around, throwing rags around & he walked through the
door & this rag had caustic in it & it hit him in the eyes & burnt his eyes out.
He went to Henshaws Blind Institution at Trafford Park, at the top, well near Stretford
there, & then he became a farmer & it was marvelous how he could, you know, kind of
milk the cows & deliver milk & he knew about all the coins because you could tell off the
edge of the coins…
[How big they were]
Well that & the serrations on them. He could also play the piano, oh yes, he was
marvelous at that.
So we did that for, well, me brothers and I we’d all worked for them from the time that
they came into Smithfall Farm as it was then, but it’s no longer a farm now. But the son
still lives in the village, Charlie; he’ll be eighty next month, on the 5 th November. I was
eighty last year but that’s when it was…
[So you said about the bracken cutting]
Yes that’s what we did, yes.
[Were you involved in doing that]
Yes, we did some of that bracken cutting.
[How did you cut it]
2

Well you had like a scythe, a sickle, I think they called them sickles, & that’s what we
used.
[Did you do anything with the bracken]
They just stacked it up; bring it over & stack it up. I don’t know what they did after that,
whether they burnt it or not I don’t know.
[2 nd person] - May I interrupt, because Harold there, Harold Hodson from the farm, told
me as a boy he & his father used to go out with the horse & fastened on the back was a
square roller & they used to take it out when the fronds were very young & the roller
would break the fronds so….
But when the bracken was grown they would go out & scythe it – they used it for
bedding for cows for over-wintering. So they were very glad of that.
AH I can quite believe that. Must have been used for something.
[Where was the farm you worked at]
If you’re going up Chapel Road towards Chapel, just on your left hand side, going out of
the village. As I say, it isn’t a farm, it’s called Smithfall Farm, that’s where David Earson
was, the blind farmer.
[Is that on the edge of the moorland]
No, no it’s where they would go. You’d only be about three hundred yards out of the
village, that’s all. With building you cannot, …it wasn’t that far away. Other farmers used
to, when they came down, most of the farmers delivered by milk float, a horse, & Mr.
Porritt, who lived further up, he used to carry this big can for ‘em, you know, a ten gallon
can & he used to dump it just opposite where the Cooperative is, or was, at the top of
the town there, & he used to deliver it out from there.
But we used to deliver milk before we went to school in the morning. We had two
rounds. He bought a bike for his son did Mr. Earson, from Dowles, & one week his son
had the bike & then the second week I would have the bike, & the one who had the bike
3

would go over what we called Glaston[] Terrace towards New Mills & the other one
would carry down what we called Blindman's Lane onto Valley Road & deliver Valley
Road & then to, what’s it called Where the dud bomb was dropped – Watery Eye - &
then come back in the village & then take the can up to school.
Then at dinner time we’d come back to just behind here, the building just behind here,
the building just at the end here – Fox Hall.
Fox Hall at that time was a farm itself. The man who owned it, he used to do a lot of
trading with cattle & produce & stuff like that, a man called Peter Cooper. So we used to
meet Charlie’s father there & finished the milk & then go back to school again. And then
after school time we’d go back to the farm & do whatever was going to be done,
whether it was winter or summer. You’re either muck spreading or lime spreading or hay
making or whatever.
I remember doing that till I was, I don’t know, must have been about twelve or thirteen I
think. Then I went to college for a couple of years & so I weren’t able to do it then, you
know.
[2 nd person ] - There are a lot of tales about ‘Blind Billy’ (David Earson) aren’t there
He reckoned he could tell a white hen’s egg from a brown hens’ egg. The other thing he
used to say was what his father told him. If you’re selling a cow or a calf, always get the
buyer to stand lower down the hill, because it always looks better higher up.
[Do you remember the winter of ’47]
I do indeed, yes. It was very, very, it was the worst winter we’d had. I started work in ’45
& we’d had some bad winters before then, cos we used to have lots of snow then &
drifting & things of that nature. We just couldn’t get to work at all because of all the drifts
& that, all the roads were blocked. The road up to Chapel-en-le-Frith was blocked for
three months. It took till the end of March before they cut a road through.
[Have the moors changed at all in the time you’ve known them]
I’ve, I’ve, I suppose now, the thing that I remember going over Kinder was, it was kind of
an annual ritual to walk to Edale on Good Friday. The last time we went we were part of
the Youth Club in hayfield & New Mills & we went over with a party of about twenty of us
& we all walked over & took a haversack with your food in.
4

Went into Edale then we walked up Castleton & then we went down the Speedwell
Cavern & then we walked back over Rushup Edge that night.
[That’s a long way]
It was along way but that’s what we did & we’ve got photographs of that.
[Did you go walking regularly]
It was a regular thing on a Sunday to go walking when the youth leader was here. He
died about five years ago but he was the first youth leader that we had that was part of
the county & this was his first place, Hayfield in New Mills.
[ …]
So we did that until I got deferred from going in the Army for conscription until I was
twenty one.
[…]
I thought you mentioned … on about the planes that came down on Kinder.
[Did you ever see any]
Well we did because during the war my father was in the Home Guard & me brothers
were untill they got called up, & it was above the George Hotel where they got Home
Guards kept & me brother & I, my youngest brother & I, were in the Scouts.
And they used the Scouts as runners between various places & the thing I do remember
is one particular night I was on duty, was the Home Guard in Hayfield had gone to New
mills to have some, either parade or something, & there was just a caretaker there & the
phone rang & it was from Upper House a man who was there.
And they rang up to say they wanted some assistance because a plane had just come
down & I said well it’s difficult because they’re in New Mills.
So we contacted them & they came & it turned out it was, I can’t remember the plane,
what it was , but the crew were all Canadians, six of them & they laid them out here in
these garages, here at the Royal Hotel, that’s where they kept them, & they brought
them down the next day.
5

[None survived]
No. There was quite a lot of planes came down on Kinder & we used to go looking for
them. We used to get bits, pieces of Perspex & things like that. Things that we could
make something of. So that’s kind of what happened. The other thing I remember, of
course it wasn’t to do with Kinder, was at the time when we got bombed.
[Were you here during the bombing]
I was here & I was in New Mills actually, from the local school here, & we were playing
in a cricket match on New Mills cricket ground when they came over. They machinegunned
us when we were on the ground, machine-gunned us. And we saw the bombs
dropping as it went over New Mills church & it dropped at Low Leighton on a semidetached
house & a tin chapel. And it killed the caretaker of the chapel & it killed a girl
who was playing the piano in this house ‘cos it demolished the house as well.
Course when it got to Hayfield it dropped just up here on Waterey Hey & of course it
demolished three cottages & in the bottom one was an evacuee from Salford who was
there with her grandma. The grandma survived but the girl, who was in school with us,
she got killed & the middle one a couple that owned them had moved out to live with
one of their daughters for a short while. But one of the daughters was collecting the
rents & in the top house a family called Gibsons; three of the lads were all in the forces,
but two of the girls & the father & mother were at home. And all of them were killed &
the rent collector she was killed. They found her leaning over the table marking her rent
book. And that’s what happened to them that night.
[That’s awful!]
Yes it was awful.
I’ve always been involved here, me father worked for a local coal merchant & he always
worked with horses & he used to go cutting grass for farmers so we used to go with him
on that. And as we grew up we played football for Hayfield St Matthews’s football team
& I was involved with the church.
[You were saying there was a local Home Guard. Was there a moorland Home Guard]
6

There was an ARP (Air Raid Precautions) & then there was a Women’s Voluntary
Service. The ARP they did the fire service, the hoses, & that was behind the George
Hotel & on that yard there where the Mountain Rescue is now, & that’s where they were
then. And on that area where the bypass comes down there was an ammunition dump
there, a big curved building, & that’s where the Home Guard kept all their ammunition &
the rifles & bullets & things.
[Was there any braziers here to try to draw the bombers away from Manchester as
there was on the moors near Sheffield]
No, the thing was, being where we are here, all the bombing in Manchester you could
see what was happening because it’s not that far away is it, you know, we’re a little bit
elevated to them.
And the other thing that I remember is when I was working for the farmer taking milk out
& it was Christmas time when Manchester had it’s Blitz, just before Christmas, I was up
what they called Highgate Road & I remember this, it was a taxi, a Manchester taxi, with
a trailer behind it with bits of furniture & they’d been bombed out of Manchester &
fortunately they’d had some relatives or someone they knew & they lived at Stones
Edge & that’s what I remember of the Blitz, of people coming out of the blitz. And some
of them still stayed, others didn’t they moved on. … Course we had evacuee of course
as well from various places…
2. Interview with David Blyth
[Could you say your name please]
Dave Blyth of Kinder Mountain Rescue Team.
[You must know the moorlands fairly well. How long have you been in the Kinder
Rescue Team]
I’ve been involved for well over twenty years, but actually, I only joined about probably 7
or 8 years ago because I didn’t want the commitment before then.
7

[Have you got a moorland story you can tell us]
Oh yeah. It sort of combines a little bit of the rescue team with a bit of humour. It’s about
an event we had in 2004. It was the 40 th anniversary of the Peak District Mountain
Rescue organisation & each team was tasked to man the Trig Points in their area, all at
the same time, throughout the Peak District & we’ve got two Trig Points up on Kinder so
we were tasked to man those. About a week before three of us decided the Trig Points
needed to look a bit better, so I had some spare white paint at home, friends had some
white overalls, so three of us went up there & painted the two Trig Pints.
So we were manned in our paper white overalls when we were on the Kinder Low Trig
Point. It was quite funny because that being on the Pennine Way, or what is now
regarded as the Pennine Way, loads of people wandered past & we were there painting
the Trig Points & there were two instances that really stood out.
An American came past, just over on holiday, & he asked what we were doing & Chris,
one of the chaps with me, he said well we’re painting Trig Points, this is our job, we’re
heading North following the Pennine Way, painting these Trig Points on the way. And
he sort of said “Gee, fantastic!”, like that. That was amazing really.
And then a few other people wandered past & had a bit of a chat. The other one that
really sticks in my memory is this Dutch chap, he wandered up & he looked at us & he
said “What are you doing” and we said “Oh were painting the trig points” and he just
said “English” & he just walked off! And that was it really.
But the event went very successfully & everybody took part, everybody was spot on with
the exact time & there were actually pictures beamed down to a central base from each
of the Trig Points where everybody was involved. But the real shame was that because
the Kinder Low Trig Point is very popular & it’s on top of a rock & everybody who comes
along scrambles on it, within a few days it was covered in thick bits of peat & boot
marks & that. So it’s very short & simple & that’s it.
[Have the moors changed at all in the time you’ve been there]
Well I think there’s certainly a lot more people out now & also a lot of paths have been
renovated – national trust have put flagstones in. In my opinion, not always for the
better. Some areas we’ve a real quagmire & so flagstones have really helped those, but
other places there seem to be flags put in where they didn’t need to be put in.
8

The top of Jacobs Ladder for instance. It’s a perfectly good path and yet now there’s a
row of flags that cut the corner & yet the path itself is solid. Now Ok, it’s probably
because people cut the corner anyway & possibly caused a bit of erosion there but I
think that effort & money could have been put into something else rather than that.
Having said that, that’s my own personal opinion even though I’m a member of a team
nothing of what I’ve said today is anything to do with the team – it’s just my own
personal opinion.
[How often do you go out as a team]
We go out about three –we have three training events each month. That’s one first aid,
which is obviously very important and then an exercise, & then another training event &
a team meeting. So that’s basically a weekly event before we have any call-outs & then
as far as call-outs go this year has been very busy because of the bad winter.
We spent the whole of January helping the emergency services. We had one of our
vehicles based for quite a while down at Stockport ambulance station & they were doing
things that normally paramedics would do.
Somebody had phoned up from Holme saying they were ill except they couldn’t get to
them, so we would go & get them, throw them in to the back of our Land Rover & drive
off to hospital & then sit there & quite often when we were on the way to hospital or
back there would be another call-out.
We had, for instance, a sledging accident in Bramall Park & because it was sheet ice on
the slopes I never thought I‘d see the day when we had a load of Mountain Rescue
people with crampons on in Bramall park. Every team's got stories like that.
So it’s been pretty busy this year, but then we can go for months when nothing happens
but we’re all permanent volunteers, we’re on call every minute of every day including
Christmas day & we pay for everything ourselves, we don’t get any funding, it’s just
through fund raising - we buy all our own gear.
It’s very hidden as far as the average person’s concerned. They can see the air
ambulance helicopters & they think Mountain Rescue is that. They forget sometimes,
perhaps say, if an air ambulance is taking someone off a hill, we might have spent a few
hours carrying that person or carrying them to the air ambulance in pretty bad
conditions, so I’m not, certainly not, belittling what the air ambulance does, but behind
9

the scenes it’s something that we, you know, we’re not looking for loads of thanks &
glory, but it would be nice if the average person understood that, what we do.
3. Interview with John Gill
[Before we start could you say your name please]
My name is John Gill, I live in Chinley, halway between Hayfield and Chinley, on a farm.
We moved into the farm maybe twenty eight years ago.
And things haven’t changed that much in twenty eight years, but some things maybe
have changed. We had a severe winter, this last winter, which everyone thought was
the worst in living memory, but it wasn’t. Even in twenty eight years I’ve known two or
three winters, at least, have been as bad as that.
I remember our first winter here, the farmer next door, came out one day & the snow
had drifted up to the wall, it was feet deep, you could hardly see the top of the wall, in
fact in places you couldn’t see the top of the wall, & he was walking up & down on top of
the wall & he had a long rod, a long pole & he was feeling down with this probe & he
had a sheep dog with him, the sheep dog was sniffing & they were trying to find sheep
which had been buried in the snow.
And these sheep they migrate to the wall when it gets bad weather & they stand there
for shelter but of course the snow also drifts there. So the sheep have been totally
buried & he could feel with his probe whether it went down to the ground or where there
was three feet or so where it didn’t reach the ground & he thought that was where the
sheep would be.
The dog would then confirm that by barking & then he’d get a spade dig down & have to
lift the sheep out & I started to help him to do this. It was hard work & I was amazed that
a sheep could live under the snow for two or three or even more days, I don’t know for
how long, possibly even a week, because as long as they have got a bit of grass they
can actually burrow down through he snow & they can eat the bit of grass that’s there &
survive quite a long time under conditions like that.
10

Which surprised me at the time, & that must happen on the moorlands everywhere I
suppose.
[Were they hill sheep Quite hardy]
Yes they are hardy, yes. So that’s one of my memories living not on the moorland but
close to the moorland.
A story my mother told me which I thought was quite humorous. She moved to the
village about a year or two after we moved on to our farm & she decided, she joined the
local church, & she decided she’d join the rambling group & there had to be a rambling
group associated with the church.
A lot of church members would go out once a week all across the moors, all round
Kinder Scout. There was one old man who was in his eighties, early eighties, whose
name I do know but perhaps I better hadn’t say what his name was, who insisted on
coming with them & was well past walking & they had to help him round & he slowed
them down & he was always slipping & falling & they were worried to death he was
going to do himself an injury.
So they had long deliberations about this & they said “Look Mr. X, we think that you’d
best not come with us any more , we think you’re past, your walking days are over,
you’re past going out with us” And he was really upset & he said “I’m not, I’m perfectly
capable.”
And I think it took two or three attempts to stop him coming with them.
So on the final attempt, when he finally stopped walking with them, they set off on their
standard walk & they were right on the moors & they saw a group of walkers ahead of
them, well they might have been climbers, leaning over & seemed to be helping a man
who was lying on the ground.
So they went over to see what it was & it was this Mr. X who had decided, because he
couldn’t go with them, he’d go the other way round & meet them half way round. And he
had fallen, as they’d expected he would & he’d been lying there & these other climbers
came across him & were trying to revive him.
11

He was fine, but was just such a stubborn man. A lot of these walkers are stubborn like
that, they just don’t realise when they are past what they should be doing. I thought that
was a quite humorous story to tell.
[As you’ve lived on the edge of the moors have you seen any changes in the wildlife,
vegetation etc.]
Well the one thing which upset us quite a lot, we used to live at Little Hayfield before we
moved on to the farm, & our house, our garden, backed on to what was called
Middlemoor & Middlemoor was a privately owned grouse shooting moor & had
wonderful rhododendrons growing there & we used to go walking in the spring & it was
wonderful, really pretty.
Anyway, like a lot of privately owned estates, it couldn’t make money, so it was sold &
the National Trust bought it, and within year the National Trust had pulled up all the
rhododendrons because they are actually frowned upon because they are not native &
they take over areas. But we were so sorry to see the end of these because they were
beautiful & now there’s not one rhododendron to be seen as I know of on Middlemoor.
So that is a change I suppose it’s for the better as it lets other things grow, but it’s for
the worst as far as we’re concerned.
[Do you go walking up on the moors particularly]
Yes, yes. It’s probably more popular now, I’ve got a dog, well my daughter’s got a dog, I
look after him & take the dog for a walk every day, about a one hour walk every day & I
notice a lot more people I come across than I used to come across.
There’s a lot of Duke of Edinburgh students or youths take their Duke of Edinburgh
silver or gold award; regularly see those towards the summer.
I’ll tell you another story. I was out walking with the dog & I saw several groups, all D of
E students, all coming from different directions, or going the same way but at different
times, & I realised what they were. One was carrying a flag at the front & the others
were carrying maps & so on & a group came towards me & a lad about seventeen, at
the front, came over to me , with his map, & said “Excuse me, I wonder if you could tell
me where we are”
12

So the girls behind were absolutely horrified he was asking where he was ‘cos he was
obviously lost. I don’t know if they were lost, but they didn’t want to admit it, but they
were horrified that he’d asked a local person where they were.
So I said “Oh well, yes, if you carry on another mile in that direction you’ll have left
Wales & you’ll be back in England” & his face dropped.
The girls behind him were giggling away. And he didn’t get the joke for quite a while &
he was really worried. A bit mean that, but yeah.
[You were saying about the heavy winters you remember. Were you here in ’81 when
there was a very late winter]
Yes. Now then we weren’t on the farm in ’81, but we lived in Hayfield at the time & I
remember driving to work one day & the snow was piled either side of the car, just one
car’s width & the snow was just higher than the roof of the car on either side. I
remember the other day that we used to have milk deliveries in the old days & the milk
had been delivered on our doorstep & it had frozen & the cream was a good two and a
half inches higher than the top of the bottle with a little top on it.
[That’s brilliant, thank you very much]
13

Terry Howard: Interviewed by Tegwen Roberts.
26 th November 2010 at Redmires.
[The interview was conducted outdoors and the sound quality is variable.]
(Tell me about your early fascination with the moors.)
As a child in the woodcraft folk, we were always fed stories of Kinder Scout and how
notorious it were for claiming people’s lives, people getting lost on the top of Kinder and it
became a place of fascination and you got to a point where you’d think…you know, “I
wouldn’t mind going to have a look at that,” you know. It’s the ultimate challenge; it’s the
place to go to and as a child, as a youth, it’s something that, well, even today, kids need
that challenge and that opportunity and we had that opportunity at that age. I think at the
time, I were probably only 12 year old and we were hostelling at Edale Youth Hostel and
our Woodcraft leader said, “Right, tomorrow you’re going up on Kinder Scout”. Of course,
we were nervous, full of trepidation and everything cos of all these stories. And I
remember walking up Grindsbrook and all Kinder just in front of us, all the tors sort of
overhanging, you know, it looked really awe-inspiring and, to us as kids, threatening. But
we walked up Grindsbrook. We eventually got right to the top of Grindsbrook, but instead
of continuing straight up onto the top, we took a right turn to what our group leader said
was the ‘golden staircase’, its actual name, I don’t think it’s that, but he called it the golden
staircase, and it were a stream or a river coming down, tumbling over waterfalls and we
had to climb up this stream bed and it were a fantastic adventure, climbing around
waterfalls, getting a little bit wet and just gradually making our way on to the top. When we
eventually reached the top of Kinder, it were flat. You could see for miles. It were a
fantastic feeling of achievement and to see everything around you; it were a clear day,
thank goodness. So all these stories about people getting lost, it didn’t make any sense to
us just then, you know we’d conquered it, we’d conquered Kinder Scout, so as a youth
that were something special, we’d achieved something. To me, that were first milepost in
my involvement in t’moorlands.
(And, how did you go on from there)
Following on from that, I were still a member of Woodcraft Folk and Woodcraft Folk were
good in sense that every weekend we were either walking or we were hostelling or we
were camping. I never had a day at home on a Sunday, literally for years, never had a
Sunday lunch because we were out on t’moorlands, or out in countryside somewhere
walking. There were one year, I were think I were 15 at the time and we were hostelling at
Ewden Valley in one of the old huts which have long since gone and again, the following
day our leader said, “Right, you’re old enough to lead a group over moors”. And he gave
me a group of teenagers, bear in mind I were only 15. He gave me a group of teenagers
and he gave us a route to walk up onto the Duke of Norfolk’s Road, you know the scene of
the 1932 Abbeybrook trespass, where it started from, to follow the Duke’s road…right over
to Cartledge. And the idea was to meet the main group again with the leader at 1 o’clock at
Foulstone Delf. Well, this were my first time I’d ever been in charge of a group of other
1

teenagers and I were only 15. Fortunately, me dad, who was an ex-army person…we used
to spend nights map reading on carpet in from of fire, using compass, so I’d got to know
how to use a compass pretty good at a young age. Anyway, you know what youths are
like, bit of fun, messing, jostling, you know mucking about. Anyway, we got right up onto
top of Cartledge and I thought ”This is a bloody long way round here, you know where do
we go from here and there were all moor laid out in front of us all Bradfield Moor; I thought
bloody hell where do we go from here. I’ve never been anywhere like this before.”
I know Kinder, well Kinder’s different, it’s flat and on a clear day you can tend to
see, but here it were rolling moorland, seem’t to go on and on forever. Anyway we stopped
and I thought “Right, I think I’ll have to take a bearing”. It were a general bearing where I
thought we, towards Foulstone Delf. Now hopefully we wouldn’t miss it because Foulstone
Delf is a long bridleway, so you know, if you’re using your map you set your compass
towards anywhere on that bridleway, you know. Anyway, I set me compass and we walked
on this compass bearing hopefully to take us to Foulstone Delf. Well, sure enough, after an
hour or two of walking over moorland, up and down, through bogs, getting thoroughly tired,
we eventually arrived at Foulstone Delf and we joined the main party. They were getting
quite worried because it were turned 2 o’clock and I think they might have been on point of
trying to get somebody to come and look for us. But, you know, that were my first real
experience of group leading and, yeah you could say we’d conquered Bradfield Moors.
It were also pertinent at the time; that were a no go area, it were a private moorland and
we’d been trespassing unknowingly on Bradfield Moors. Again, we continued in that
tradition of the Abbey Brook trespass that our predecessors in’t Woodcraft Folk in 1932
had been on; so just continuing that tradition; it were a fantastic experience. One of those
things you do not forget, your first leadership test.
(Did you enjoy it)
Oh yeah, definitely. It’s one of those things that, you know…like I’m referring back to it now
and you don’t forget it, it’s there forever and it sticks in your memory. And you learn from
things like that; you learn heck of a lot. I mean I certainly learnt not to take moorlands for
granted; they do offer challenges, they can be friendly; they can also have moods and they
can be terrible places. Goin’ over Bradfield Moor, which I’ve done in past when there’s a
blizzard blowing and you can’t see your hand in front of you…oh, you know.
(What do you do then)
You’ve gotta be careful; you’ve got to know what you’re doing. You’ve got to know exactly
were you are. And this is where I learnt from that experience. You don’t just go a hope for
best; you’ve got to know where you are basically at each stage. I know that GHB Ward
used to say, “You’ve never been anywhere unless you’ve been lost”. Well, that might be so
but the point is, you don’t want to get lost on a moorland in bad weather. I’ve been on top
of Kinder Scout and I’ve wandered around with no map, with no compass, I’ve just enjoyed
wandering from place to place on a clear day, so then you know you’re not gonna get lost;
you’re able to identify points. But even some people now still get lost on Kinder on a clear
day. It’s a place where it can disorientate you quite easily, so again you need to know how
2

to use your map and how to use a compass without a doubt. It’s no good relying on socalled
satnavs, and owt like that. What happens when your battery runs out There’s no
substitute for the ability to use a map and to use a compass.
(So tell me about the Woodcraft Folk in the Abbey Brook Trespass; you said that they
were involved. So it wasn’t just the Clarion)
In fact the Clarion did not take place, did not join the Abbey Brook Trespass. The Abbey
Brook Trespass really was to demonstrate against the imprisonment of the 5 people who
were involved in Kinder Trespass.
(Was it the same year)
It was the same year. The Kinder Trespass was in April; the Abbey Brook trespass took
place in September and it was an organised trespass. They followed a route suggested by
GHB Ward, which was the Duke of Norfolk’s road, which he’d researched and he was
convinced it was public bridleway. But the landowners would not acknowledge that and it
were a no go area. So it were a perfect place to have a trespass. Now a meeting were
held in Victoria Hall, Sheffield and it were mainly the political walking groups that got
involved as well as the Woodcraft Folk which were a co-operative youth organisation. So
the groups that took part were like the Halcyon Ramblers, the Communist Party, the
Independent Labour Party as well as the Woodcraft Folk and other rambling clubs, but not
the Clarion. Now that might have been an embarrassment to GHB Ward, who were a
founder of the Clarion, but we know what GHB Ward’s politics was, he was certainly left
wing, but he wasn’t a Communist by any means. He supported any left wing cause. I
understand he was one of the founding members of the Independent Labour Party in
Sheffield. So politics and rambling in Sheffield has always gone hand in hand. Anyway, on
this trespass all the Woodcrafters and other ramblers were walking across Duke’s Road
and they had a fantastic time. There’s no keepers; they saw one at the beginning, who
must have been a lookout. Anyway, they wandered on Duke’s Road and they got right
over to Cartledge, Cartledge Stone. Now they got to a place called Peter’s Rock. Now you
can’t identify that name because it doesn’t exist in that area. I think it just happens that the
local ramblers called Cartledge Stones Peter’s Rock. But it were there where they saw,
coming up that big brook a mob of keepers and police who stopped the ramblers…you
know, “Where yer goin; what yer doin”…this, that and t’other “You better turn round and
go back”. And there were a bit of pushing and a bit of shoving from the keepers and the
ramblers just weren’t having it. Some of ramblers actually did fight back and a scuffle
ensued. Now the keepers had pick axe handles and they started laying into the walkers.
Police again jumped in and said “Right, only hit the ramblers on the arms and legs. That
were a quote from one of em. Anyway, they decided to calm things down a bit, so the
ramblers just sat down, took their time over their lunch. Now police and keepers all
continuing to get agitated, “Come on, shift it”. Then the ramblers decided to have a
conference, in middle of the moor and there they decided that best thing to do really is to
go back the way we’ve come, but they took their time goin back, goin very very slowly.
However, there were several walkers who actually shot off and continued but the main
3

party went back, taking their time and as one of em said, they were singing Bolshie songs
and outdoor songs, you know Woodcraft songs. Obviously they were political songs, but
again that were the time they were living in. Police kept, you know “Hurry up, come
on”…Cos, police were getting tired, they’d walked up from Abbey Brook which is a climb,
so they were knackered. Anyway, they got off the moor and they continued back into
Sheffield.
What’s interesting about it though, there were no arrests like there were on’t Kinder
Trespass because the landowners and the police didn’t want another Kinder Trespass
again. They didn’t want that; it were bad publicity for landowners and they didn’t want it. So
they kept it fairly quiet. Yet in many ways, the Abbey Brook Trespass were far more
ferocious than the Kinder Trespass was; when you’ve got keepers with pickaxe handles
laying into walkers and there were something like 200 walkers that were involved. So it
were no small affair, but it’d always been kept quiet. Its not as well known, certainly not
outside the rambling fraternity. Whereas the Kinder Trespass is iconic the Abbey Brook
Trespass deserves to be no less iconic. Its also worth noting there were many other
trespasses…trespassing on Stanage Edge…you wouldn’t think about that, you wouldn’t
believe it, and yet in the 1930s to go onto Stanage was a trespass and you could be
turned off.
You know, a lot of what we take from granted nowadays, people have had to fight
for in the past. In fact that struggle didn’t really end until the CROW Act of 2000.
(So, you were saying that the 50 th Anniversary of the Kinder Trespass, was that in the
1980s)
1982, yes. That were a special time for me really. I’ve always been interested in
moorlands. Again, as a kid I remember finding a piece of flint and wondering what it was. I
asked me Woodcraft leader, “What’s this piece of flint”, cos its not natural for the area.
“Oh, it must be stone age”. Well, how fascinating! From then on I started looking and when
I went on the moors I got into this habit of looking for stuff, not just flints but odd named
stones, using your map and finding an odd place name…what does that place name
mean…I wonder what’s there For example, on Bradfield Moor there’s New Cross, or
base of New Cross. Well, what’s that What’s there So, through me youth and into
adulthood I started looking into it further. Trespassing all over moors, looking for different
things. When 1982 came up I got an opportunity to join a mass trespass, having been
brought up with the stories of the Kinder Trespass by the Woodcraft Folk and the Abbey
Brook Trespass. So I got involved in 1982 and to this day I’m still involved in the Sheffield
Campaign for Access to Moorland that grew out of that ’82 reunion. I’ve been the
Secretary of it for the last 20-odd years. But over that period of time personally I’ve
continued exploring every little bit of moorland, in South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire
and I’m still finding things. I’ve found burial mounds, there’s Bronze Age settlement sites,
there’s all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff still yet to be re-discovered. It’s just a
fascination I’ve got.
I think what’s important as well, you’re not just looking at things as though you’re a
trainspotter or whatever, you’re looking into the history of people on the moorlands and
you’re relating it to us now. So when you think about our association with the moors, goin’
4

ack to Stone Age times which we can now rediscover, goin right through to the
Enclosures when we lost most of the rights to wander over the land, goin through to the
trespasses and right through to the year 2000 when we eventually got that right to wander
at will over our moorland…you know, it’s absolutely fascinating.
(Have the moorlands changed at all in the time you’ve been exploring them and walking
over them)
Erm, not really.
(Are there any different plants, animals…There’s obviously been a lot, you know in some
areas like Kinder and Black Hill the peats obviously eroded.)
Unfortunately a lot of people don’t notice what’s happening on Kinder and Bleaklow and
Black Hill. Yes there has been degradation over a number of years, but by being
associated with it you can see it. If you go to Black Hill, you’ll see the trig point stood way
above ground level. It makes you realise what’s happening. So yes, I’ve gradually seen
that…I’ve certainly seen that and other changes. Like on Big Moor and Totley Moor, the
number of red deer that’s come into area, which is absolutely spectacular. Other changes
which come and go are the birds of prey that are still suffering from being shot or poisoned
which is tragic. I also know one landowner who’s actually destroyed many many acres of
good moorland by turning it into pasture and putting paper waste on it. We’ve lost lots of
little pieces of moorlands like that. I know they might not be big, but they were moorlands
and, you know you’ve lost major habitats. Fortunately, that appears to have come to a
halt…let’s hope it does, but as regards other changes, not really. Certainly with the coming
of the Right to Roam and all like that were landowners said ‘There’ll be people all over the
place and problems’…it hasn’t happened…it just has not happened. The moors now are
no different from what they were 20, 30, 40 years ago. Obviously, moorland erosion has
got to be addressed…some important decisions need to be made if we want moorlands for
the future.
5

Margaret Bailey: Interviewed by Tegwen Roberts.
In Hayfield.
(This is an oral history recording for the Moor Memories project. The date’s 5 th November
2010 and the interviewer is Tegwen Roberts and we’re in Hayfield. So just before we start
could you say your name and when you were born)
This is Margaret Bailey. I was born on the 5 th May 1924. There is a saying “life begins at
40”, mine did. I joined the Ranger Service and returned to visiting the glorious moorland,
escaping my husband and two young sons to return happy and rejuvenated.
From being very young on a Sunday my father would take us for long walks on
Baildon & Ilkley Moors near to where we lived. This, I’m sure, is how I came to love bleak,
windswept, large tracts of heather clad moors, swaying silver cotton grass and deep, often
stinking, bogs.
When free access to the previously strictly private moorland was introduced the
Warden Service was instigated to ensure the bye-laws were not breached. These all are
common sense – no rolling stones, no polluting water, no lighting fires, no camping, no
public meetings etc. I read about the Warden Service, took the training course on byelaws,
map and compass work, approached the visitors [] First Aid course.
Searching through old papers I came across this article written by me in 1980 -
(Peter Nook is a small woodland on slopes of Kinder Scout) - entitled “In the Silence of
Peter Nook”. : “A clean gentle fragrance of pine surrounds the old larch trees. The rare hot
sun bathes the drooping arm-like branches holding light green fingers of new growth. The
scales of the young cones are soft and lightly coated resembling the petals of an
unopened flower. Red –tipped complete with red nectar guidelines for the bees. Things of
pure beauty on a soft bed of pine needles in the deep, green shade, made by the trees’
falling arms lies a bony ewe with a dark-coated phantom lamb thankfully escaping the
tormenting flies and the heat. The wood is quiet and still. Hardly a bird chirps. Suddenly a
grasshopper was loudly in the grass beside me announced its time to move on and leave
the wood to its own secret life.” I thought that was a quite delightful word picture; much
more evocative probably than I would be able to write 30 years later.
Once, patrolling alone, I parked on Chunal layby and walked up the track towards
the top of Williams Clough passing the remains of a Second World War Liberator plane
resting in a gully. Retracing my steps at the end of a tiring, busy day through mist and
extending darkness, I saw what looked like a masked, hooded figure on the edge of the
gully above the wreck. Half of me wanted to investigate, the other half said no. However,
1

trembling and shaky, I slowly approached the figure only to realise it was nothing more
sinister than the arched back of the pilot’s seat that someone had dragged out on to the
edge of the gully during the day.
Another time I was fortunate enough to see the Brocken Spectre at Kinder Downfall. This
is usually seen on higher moorland like the Alps; I’d heard no reports of it being seen on
Kinder previously. It happens when sun throws one’s shadow onto an inversion of cloud.
Suddenly on the misty clouds a figure with an aura of pale coloured light encompassing it’s
head was visible across the Downfall, but, there was no other person around. Could it be
my own shadow Feeling rather stupid I lifted an arm and waved; sure enough the other
figure did the same.
There is a triangular shaped stone on the Clough of Rocks area with strange
carving on it. The code consists of the side of a rectangle combined with dots. After much
study I translated it as: “She maybe small, but she’s the best green stone”
Below the inscription is a carving of a dog. So did someone lose his dog in that
temple of boulders, did it go under the stones and became trapped Was it a tombstone,
who knows
On the western edge is the “Charged Rock”. This is a large, flat slab jutting out over
the valley below. The Aetherius Society go and worship there in daylight; but when the
moon is full at night and they chant and sing in strange ways. They once said to me “We
shall be saved, but you who do not believe will perish.”
I was then patrolling alone on the Northern Edge when I looked down into a small
gully and saw what looked to be the fins of a bomb. I called a patrol ranger on my radio to
come and look. He was sure it was a bomb. The next day I had arranged to meet the Army
Disposal Unit from York there. They would park on Chunal layby whilst I elected to walk up
Williams Clough to meet them. They were hours late, tired, not used to the hills, no food,
no drink. So the four of us shared my coffee and sandwiches. Then they made a little
bomb about the size of a pear with Semtex, wired it up and we all had to stand well away.
There was an explosion and the whole moor seemed to go up. I cried by myself and
looked at the crater. My next visit at weekend was to try and put the desecrated moor to
rights. The bomb was dropped in the war by a German plane who jettisoned his bombs on
Hayfield. It was stated he thought the filter plant was Ringway airport but I don’t know.
I once was on a shooting party duty, that is, turning visitors back who shouldn’t be
there. Anyway the “No Access Today” signs were out at the Black Clough cabin in
Longdendale. It was very boring, no one came. The guns, that is the shooters, wouldn’t be
2

ack for lunch for hours. I had set the table, which is part of the job and just sat there.
Suddenly I thought this cabin looks so bleak and bare, so I decorated with ferns and rowan
berries growing nearby. The first man in said “Oh god, it looks like a bloody harvest
festival”. I thought I can’t do anything about it. Then the boss arrived, looked around and
said “Thank you so much my dear. Please accept a brace of grouse”. I didn’t tell him we
were vegetarian!
Botany fascinates me. The moorland flora is sparse so each species is precious.
On a high moorland grow a few patches of cloudberry, Rubus chamaemorus, with a
bramble-like flower of five isolated petals. On Bleaklow I found a tiny patch, each flower
with about twenty petals. I couldn’t believe my eyes, this exquisite thing amongst the bits
of heather and growing in peat. Later Dr Ken Taylor, from London, who was writing a
paper on the cloudberry, came up to see it, stating it would be named the ‘Bailey’ species
after me. I asked for it to be called ‘Warden’ instead; he agreed. So look in your new flora
books.
A bright, cocky, young Warden trainee once asked me to climb up the side of the
Downfall with him. Climbing is forbidden when on paid duty. Worriedly I agreed and finally
scrambled up the steep shaley side onto terra firma. My knees were knocking but at least I
did it. The lads’ delight in showing a photograph of me taken from below as I abseiled
down some crag - all that was visible was a large bottom – not at all flattering.
There is a standard walk from Marsden to Edale, twenty miles I think, which five of
the girl Wardens did. I remember climbing up Wildboarclough where the rocks are a
beautiful pale pink and descending into Edale as the sun set, tired but happy.
That reminds me of the moon. Once the Rescue Team did a night exercise on the
night of a full moon, followed by a bivouac. I had no sleeping bag and took the plastic bag
which had covered our new mattress. One bloke said “Is that all you have to sleep in,
Maggie Would you care to share my bag I won’t do owt”. I longed to say yes and keep
warm but pride wouldn’t allow it. I lay awake all night on the Nardus grass in my plastic
bag watching the movement of the beautiful silver full moon. The next morning the team
leader took pity on me and instead of making a rope stretcher with frozen rope he asked
me to go down to Edale and heat the soup for the lads. I reckon I was tough in those days.
I was told on one exercise Gordon Miller was strapped in the stretcher and carried
down to Edale where the lads stood the stretcher upright, Gordon still in it, against the wall
of the Nag’s Head pub and went in for a drink.
3

Near the Dog Stone on Clough Rocks were the remains of the old smithy where the
horses were shed who pulled the millstones around and maybe tools were sharpened. The
industry making these stones suddenly ceased when it was found cheaper to import them
from France. Many imperfect or unfinished ones are lying around there now, still partially
hidden in vegetation or obvious with grass or ferns sprawling from the central hole.
In winter the brown hare, who lives on the moor, turns white to camouflage him in
the snow. Should it not snow he is truly visible against the dark peat. Near the top of
Williams Clough I always saw a white hare who bounded away from me uphill, his long
hind legs making huge strides. Wanting to see him better I devised a plan. I would sit at
the top and wait for somebody to frighten him up. As I prepared to sit there and wait I
pulled off my rucksack which, unfortunately, bounced down the hill causing the hare to run
away yet again - laughing, I thought.
Once, the team was called out to search at dawn for the Deputy Town Clerk of
Derby, who had asked permission to leave his vehicle by some cottages on Valley Road
(Hayfield) on the Saturday evening, whilst he went for a walk on Kinder. He did not return
that evening so the Rescue teams woke up the next morning…just as we were setting off
for Kinder, after searching a steep hill covered with soaking wet rhododendron bushes,
housing many feral cats, he appeared, dry and happy-looking. He had met with some
Scouts who were camping overnight on Kinder and decided to stay with them. He was
horrified at the chaos he had caused and was driven away to Glossop Police Station by
the Police to make a full report. He leant out of the window saying “Oh I’m sorry, I’m so
sorry.”
At the end of each day the person in charge of the day’s patrols, that was me, had
to write a report compiled from what had happened to all the patrols - where they had gone
etc. The lads told me and then left me to finish the paperwork with a bloke who was giving
me a lift home. I picked up my things, put the keys safely in the outside lock of the door of
the filter plant where we brewed tea and wrote reports. The last Ranger but we two went
out, closed the door, turned the key locking the two of us in! I knew there was a Waterman
in the huge area of tanks below us so I banged S.O.S on the heating pipes. Later he said
he’d heard it but he ignored it as he didn’t know what it was.
Eventually I said to Brian “We can’t stay here until the Rangers come in the
morning, we’ll have to break the door with our ice axes”. Thank God we had those to reach
the key. This we did. Our boss was at first very cross with us as we’d damaged Water
Board property but then his wrath turned on the erring Ranger.
4

In 1995 I was awarded an MBE for exemplary services to the Peak National Park. I
felt my honour should have been shared between so many more of us and that I’d enjoyed
my work so much I didn’t deserve such recognition.
(Thank you…would you mind if I asked you a few questions Could you tell me, when did
you join the Ranger service What year was it)
I was forty and was born in 1924, so it was 1964.
(Were there any women Rangers before that)
No, I was one of the first and they had to have a special meeting. Our leader, Tom
Tomlinson, was a Quaker and he wasn’t sure ladies should be there at all and certainly not
going out with one man, so originally it had to be two ladies, but he soon changed. It had
to.
(Did your duties change over time…you know the job that you did)
Well, no in actual fact we still patrolled the moorland but from being an ordinary Ranger I
became in charge, therefore I could go where I wanted. I always chose patrols on that
area but usually quite tough ones. Some of them, I’d walk and sit around a lot; but I liked to
be pushed.
(Were you always based in Edale or were you based in different places)
No, never in Edale – there was a centre in Hayfield I first went to. Then one was opened at
Crowden in Longdendale and we had a full-time Ranger living there, Peter McGowern. It
was a long drive from here particularly in bad weather. Then we were moved to a Scout
hut in Glossop, which was better.
(Were you always based in Hayfield then or did you move to different places)
No, Hayfield and Glossop and eventually as I got older I didn’t like to go to Chapel and I
found going to Chapel on a Sunday after being on the moor all day was a bit much, so I
5

ceased to go to Glossop and came to Hayfield for one night a week. Hayfield is a little
gem. Kinder Scout is a miniature Switzerland, I think.
I think I read it all, but did I mention the SAS
(The SAS I don’t think so…there was the bomb disposal, which was a lovely story)
[Break in narrative while sorting papers]
Walking along the reservoir’s side path, going out on patrol one day in December, I saw
smoke coming from Peter Nook. One of the by-laws states no fires, so I went round and
five young men were there frying sausages which, although I’m a vegetarian, smelt
delicious. Two of the men had big scarves on their faces and they all had crew cuts and
looked a bit stern. So I explained to them about access land by-laws and asked them to
put it out when they had finished.
That was a big concession so they could eat their sausages. They were noncommittal.
I wandered around and went back. Still the fire blazed. I kicked it out with my
boots. They were furious and ran in a circle round me lunging but not touching; rather
scary. Then they said they would re-light it and not move until dusk. They said they holed
up all day and they walked at night. So I radioed Edale for help. No one came. I was told to
contact the Countryside Rangers. Too late, they came about three o’clock; they couldn’t
come before.
Keith, in charge, whispered to me “I’m sure they’re SAS, look at their big radio set”.
In the wood the light was fading and they began to pack up. As they left, one, who had a
kind face hung back, smiled at me and said – “I’m sorry”.
After my report went in Bakewell contacted me and said they were SAS and the
War Office had agreed they should not exercise on access land again. Should I see any
again I should leave them alone as they could be dangerous.
This bit I remembered after: when the wind is in the west and blowing strongly, the
water pouring over Kinder Downfall can be blown back like a great plume of smoke and
reports have stated that at times it can even be seen in Stockport ten miles away. And to
walk up the river one found it impossible to walk on the sandy edge, one had to go right in
the peat or one would be soaking wet from this blow-back; a wonderful sight.
(Yeah, I bet it was. So did you get much trouble from people)
6

No, no, very little - the odd group of lads throwing stones or rolling small boulders. I found
if I explained there could be people down there hidden under an overhang, or there could
be birds or hares, yes. No people were very cooperative. If one approached them correctly
usually they’d say “Sorry, I didn’t think.”
(So, you think it was an education thing)
Mmm, yes.
(What made you decide to become a Ranger)
Because, I mentioned my father taking us for walks, I just loved being on the moorland and
I thought it would be a good excuse to get away every fortnight from the family. To have a
commitment you see, normally I might have gone occasionally but I have this first
commitment, just to go fortnightly.
(So did you start off as a volunteer)
Yes, tried it, yes I went as a volunteer to see what it was like and realised immediately I
wanted to do that.
(So what was Tom Tomlinson like I hear a lot about him.)
He was charming, he was a ‘wean bitter’, puritanical. He was tall, he had the hugest stride
I have ever seen, he strode effortlessly over the moors. He had blue eyes that twinkled,
yes.
(Sounds very distinctive.)
Yes, he was wonderful.
(And who came after Tom Tomlinson as the Head Ranger)
George Garlick.
7

(Yes, that’s another name I’ve heard a lot about.)
Yes, he was nice too. He lived in Edale. Yes he was good. He had to give it up he had a
bad back problem, really bad disc problems. He came once and he was in so much pain
he never should have been out.
(Were you involved in mountain rescue and that kind of thing)
Yes. Not initially…oh, wait a minute. Can’t think which I did first. Well my husband and I
read in the town that a local doctor and probation officer were going to form a rescue team
and if anyone was interested would they go to a meeting. So we went and we were both
interested and at first we went alternately on the call-outs and things and gradually
Thomas bowed out and lost interest. He was willing to stay at home. So I went on those.
There were some very funny ones. There was one I wasn’t on, maybe Gordon told
you. They were called to stretcher off…I think it was a St. Bernard dog which had
collapsed! Did he tell you
(Yes, they did tell me.)
I wasn’t there, it must have been hilarious!
(Quite unusual, definitely!)
You’d get maybe the odd person who’d been drunk and shouldn’t have gone up there and
who’d fallen. You’d get people who were lost and you’d go out looking for them. I
remember once being at Kinder Downfall when it was snow covered and you’d be amazed
how different everywhere feels. The landmarks are camouflaged and snowed in and I
remember standing at the Downfall and it became misty and I thought ‘I hate this, I’m
getting off’ and two men came and they said “Where are you going”, and I said “I think I’m
going off”, and they said “We are”. So we decided to go together and he said “Can’t you
navigate” and I said “I teach navigation.”
Anyway the three of us agreed as we descended we did not know where we were
until we got below snowline and we were on the correct route. But all the paths were
obliterated; we did get down.
8

(So you were involved in the training then for the Ranger Service were you)
Yes. We then had Mike Hammond and his wife Avril, yes. I helped them with training
courses; we’d take four or five people out. I remember going into Longdendale and
explaining the by-laws to them…about all dogs on leads, and we went up Laddow Rocks
and there were three dogs there, so we tied them with bits of string, brought them off, took
them to Glossop Police Station and it transpired they were the gamekeeper’s dogs that
had escaped!
(Oh dear! So you were saying about looking after the huts for the shoots, for the guns; I
didn’t know that the Rangers were involved in that aspect of it.)
Yes, we called them ‘shooting patrols’. I think that was voluntary duty, you didn’t have to
do it and you weren’t paid. There were shooting patrols here on the estate at the bottom,
by the reservoir…keeping people off.
(To tell people that the moors were shut. So did you take the food up)
No the gamekeeper took that up in Land Rovers. Then just because, I don’t know if the
boys set the camp up, I did because it passed time. There were proper place settings and
they had tremendous meals.
(So this brace of grouse you were given what did you do with it)
I can’t remember…gave them away I suppose. Somebody else offered me a brace of
pheasants, did I read that
(I didn’t realise there was any pheasant shooting around here.)
No, it isn’t around here. I met on Park Hall shoot, that’s just up here, the nearest one. I met
a couple called Lord and Lady Mather and they said “We’ve watched you and we’re
impressed with you, would you like to come to Whirley Hall, Macclesfield and go on our
shoot” And they also invited a gamekeeper from somewhere in Longdendale. So we went
separately in our separate cars, but he said if you meet me I will drive there and you can
follow me and you’ll be alright. So I did that. We had a very hectic and tiring day going
9

through bramble bushes and beating these pheasants. I couldn’t do it now…it’s my
back…oh dear! And I got very scratched by brambles and had blood all over my face.
And, afterwards, I was given a brace of pheasant because Sir William said his
keeper was pleased with me. Gordon Wood, from Longdendale, didn’t get any and he was
cross. So instead of waiting for me he drove off. I didn’t know the way home. And I set off
madly trying to follow him and he went faster and faster, so in the end I lost him and I kept
driving round these unlit, narrow country roads, on and on. I hadn’t a clue where I am.
Anyway, I ended up at a pub called the Wizard of Oz somewhere in Cheshire, and I
thought ‘well, there are people here so I’ll go in and ask how do I get to Burnage Rail from
here’. So I went in and they all stared and I didn’t know till after I had blood all over my
face and I asked how to get home. And when I finally got home I was so tired from the
shoot and so stressed I did something very unlike me, I just cried.
(Oh dear! Did you have a lot to do with gamekeepers on the different moors)
Yes, I always tried to do what they wanted on the shoots.
(What about the farmers You worked with the farmers)
Yes, they went on the shoots, all local people. Yes, they did. On the whole, around here,
they didn’t approve of the Rangers. More than one said to me you’re the only one who did
any work, so there you are! That was a bit embarrassing, but I cared, it wasn’t work to me,
it was pleasure. It was going for a walk on the moor.
(Were you ever involved in snow rescues, either of people or sheep)
Yes, the Four Inns. Austin Arbuth and Tom Howt [names unclear] were the first rescue
team. On the Snake summit there was a howling gale, snowing like mad and ice underfoot
and I can still visualize all the men, their eyebrows and hair was thick, absolutely iced up
and we were standing there and a police car came, I think we were on the Snake summit
which is high I suppose. A police car came past and just caught me on the thigh.
Fortunately I didn’t fall, but that was how bad it was when those four boys died there didn’t
they. One was found frozen in the stream with his arm up. And that was the beginning of
true mountain rescue and much more training and more teams and they suddenly became
hi-tech with wonderful stretchers and radios and things.
10

(Well, at least something came out of such a terrible event.)
Yes, but it was a pity it had to happen; such prime young men, university students.
(Were you ever involved in fire fighting)
No. Well, yes, only two or three times. Peat, awful hot peat burning your boots! You
couldn’t see the flames and you weren’t aware it was hot and suddenly felt it.
(Oh, because it was underneath your feet)
Yes, yes and smoke and the breathing masks. But it didn’t happen very often but it’s
exceedingly difficult to get a peat fire out. One of them burnt for weeks and weeks.
(Do you remember when that was)
No, sorry. I kept thinking of all the little animals – the grouse and the hares, the beetles
and the caterpillars. Awful.
(In the time that you were walking on the moors did the wildlife and the vegetation change
at all)
I don’t think so. No, I don’t think so.
(Cos, I work for Moors for the Future and a lot of their work is moorland restoration and
trying to encourage the heather to grow back.)
Well, feet have caused some erosion. Yes, I’m sure. Then the National Trust, who bought
Kinder, made paths and people tend to use those.
(Oh, the flagstones)
Yes, which channels people into one area, rather than causing erosion.
11

(Were you in the Ranger Service when the foot and mouth epidemic)
Yes, twice I think it was. No, once. That was dreadful. All you could do was sit at the
access points all day and keep people off. And I remember a man from Bakewell rang me
up and said would you go up Bowden Bridge, Kinder. That isn’t even the access point but
it’s a place where the road divides and there’s two routes to Kinder. Would you go there
and keep people off. So I went there and for the full time, first three days it poured and
high on the hill is a farm and they were looking down on me. And one of the sons came
down and said “Me dad’s sick of seeing you standing there in the rain. Can we bring a
horse box down for you to stand in”
(Ah, that’s lovely!)
And they did! So we had a Siamese cat. I only had a Honda 70 motorbike and I wanted to
bring pussy up, walk with her and carry her and she could stay with me all day. I could
bring sewing, though I never did any. Sure enough as soon as I started to do something I
would hear a car and leap out and stop them. But we did keep it off here.
(Did many people try and get on to the moors)
Only people who didn’t think. Nobody was trying to break rules and we had a whole lot of
other beautiful walks for them and most people were cooperative. It was a very, very
worrying time. There was a big sheep dip across the road. I can still see the scar on the
road where it was.
(Where was that exactly)
Up Kinder Road, going up.
(Was that just dug out of the road They just dug a temporary dip)
Yes. It was very smelly disinfectant. It was a big, big worry to the farmers wasn’t it
12

(It must have been. It must have been terrifying. Someone else was telling me that they
thought that had brought the Ranger Service and the farming community a bit closer
together.)
Probably it did. Yes.
(So, again something good came out of a bad situation.)
Yes, yes.
(Do you remember Fred Herdman)
I remember Fred – he instructed on a training course and he wore a pure Harris tweed
jacket and wonderful green tweed plus fours.
(Fantastic!)
He was the most lovely man and so knowledgeable.
(Is it true that he used to go skating or skiing up on Kinder)
Probably, I don’t know. They did have a ski lift in bad weather. Probably he did, but you
see with being this side, Hayfield, rather than Edale (he lived in Edale), you didn’t know too
much.
(You said that you were in the first wave of women who joined the Ranger Service…after
that do you think it was easier for other women to join Cos there’s a lot more women now
in the service.)
Oh yes. Well they realized they were efficient and I think they’re more aware of people’s
problems.
(Yes, more empathetic probably.)
Yes, better at, shall we say, approach to visitors.
13

(Were there any other issues with being the first women Did you do everything, did you
drive the Land Rovers and do everything that the men did)
Yes, the women did. I remember Hayfield the first day out and one lad said “I’m not going
out with her” and I nearly cried and one Ranger said, I think he was called Frank Roberts, I
think he’d been stuck in the snow the previous year when it was snowing; they said they
just felt he was frightened.
(Right. But you won him over in the end. Did you win him over in the end)
No I don’t think he wanted to know. He wasn’t that type, he just ignored me.
(What was the camaraderie like in the Ranger Service)
Oh it was excellent. Lots of laughs and jokes. It was good, it really was.
Gordon was lovely, really wonderful.
(Was that Gordon Miller)
Yes. I really liked Gordon. Ian was his cousin, before Ian came in full-time, was a Patrol
Ranger…he used a weird phrase…he used to tell me how keen Ian was to get in as a fulltimer,
yes, he did eventually.
(I think that’s the thing I’ve found with all the Rangers, they’re very passionate…I don’t
think you’d do that job if you weren’t.)
No. Somebody once said to me there was a kind of overhang we called the Cave at Kinder
Downfall. There was a big stone and on the side you could sit there looking out. And one
lad sat out and one day the weather was so hostile and he thought “What am I doing here
on a Sunday instead of at home having Sunday lunch!” But usually you didn’t think.
I remember rushing home and a woman who lives near here said “Don’t you mind
missing things” I think I missed a Saturday night concert or something. “Don’t you resent
it” and I said “No, I don’t, I actually love my job.” And I did. I felt sorry for them sat down
here all day!
14

(Well that’s lovely, thank you.)
15

Interview with Brenda Smith. Interviewed by Gordon Miller – 23 rd November 2010
(Track one)
(This is Gordon Miller, it’s Tuesday the 23 rd of November 2010 and I’m in Bolton near
Appleby in Cumbria to meet Brenda Smith. Brenda…)
Yes. (laughing)
(Could you tell me first of all when and where you were born)
In Baslow.
(In Baslow)
Yes.
(In what year)
Well I’m ninety six.
(So that’d be …)
Oh 19 …
(1915)
Fourteen, 1914.
(1914, the start of …)
November 3 rd 1914.
(The start of the first world war)
1

That’s right yes.
(My word.)
Yes.
(So in your childhood, was that mostly spent round Baslow)
Oh yes, until I got married.
(Right. And in any of that time did you ever go up to Edale)
No.
(You didn’t)
No.
(Back of beyond)
Yes (laughing)
([laughing] So tell me just a little bit before we talk about Edale, about your childhood and
round Baslow and things you can recall from that time)
Well I went to Baslow School when I was five and then I went to Lady Manor’s. And then I
was at Lady Manor’s for so many years and then I got married I think when I was about
twenty. And I left Baslow then and I married my first husband and I lived in Derby. And
then, of course, the war came and my first husband was a naval officer and he was away
for five years. So then I came back – I had Peter as a baby – and I came back and lived
back with mother and father in Baslow and then after the war we came to Edale.
(Ah right, what, to the Church Hotel or)
Yes, yes, yes.
2

(Right, so what year would that be)
Would it be ’45 or
(OK so it’s straight after the Second World War you were there)
Yes, yes, mmm.
(So tell me, what were your first recollections of Edale What were your first thoughts
when you came to Edale)
Oh I thought, well, being a village, I was used to village life. You know, I’d always lived in a
village. I was happy to come and, yes, I liked Edale. And the Church Hotel of course we
came to it and we weren’t really used to no electricity and no proper telephone, you know.
And, of course, the Church Hotel in those days it had become very basic, you know. After
Freddie had had it for five, you know, all the war years, and we had to buy sheets for the
beds and [laughing].
(So tell me, you had no electricity and a phone, so was it oil lamps you used)
No, we had a Lister engine in the garage.
(Ah so you had a generator)
Yes.
(Right.)
And it was full of batteries, big batteries, and the lights used – my husband he turned the
lights on, you know as soon as it started to get dark, and we had lights then till ten o’clock,
when the bar shut the lights went low. And that’s what we managed with for a long time.
(And a phone, you must have had one of the first phones in Edale)
3

Well I shared it with Freddie.
(Oh with the Nag’s Head)
Yes.
(Really! It was a party line)
Yes. I used to have to ring a little …
(Oh it was one of these wind ... )
Yes [laughing]
(To ring the bell, really)
Yes [laughing] Yes, it was all very basic wasn’t it Mmm.
(Yeah, and that must have been one of the first phones in the valley I would have
thought)
I should think so.
(I wouldn’t think many people would have them.)
And then Mr Salmon came a few years, I can’t remember how many, a couple of years,
three years, and he came from London and he said “Really you people should have some
help with your telephones” and he stayed at the Church Hotel for three days and went
round the area and after a time we all got a telephone.
(Yeah, oh right, and I think electricity came into the valley about 1958 didn’t it)
Did it
(To the rest of the …)
4

Yes.
(So it was some time after. So you were leading. What about heating in the hotel, was that
solid fuel heating from a boiler)
Yes, we had a big boiler in the kitchen and we had to – fires then, coal fires.
(Right.)
That's what we kept. They were made every morning.
(And you had guests in the hotel presumably did you How many could you take)
Guests
(Guests, yeah.)
Oh yes, we had ten bedrooms and I had nine bedrooms to let.
(I mean I can recall one or two of the people, like Derek, Derek Bettingcourt [ph].)
Oh yes. [laughing]
(He was a regular wasn’t he)
Yes [laughing] He was a nuisance.
[laughing]
Freddie got rid of him.
(What, from the Nag’s Head did he Banned him did he [laughing])
Well he got rid of him. Sent him down to us so we had him then for a long time.
5

(And, tell me, there must have been a lot Edale characters came into your pub. I mean a
pub’s a great place in a village for …)
Oh yes, yes.
(Tell me about some of them)
Well Jack – did you know Jack Timm
(I remember Jack Timm but I mean I didn’t know him, no.)
Yes, well, he was a sailor you know. Amy’s father, you know Amy
(Yes.)
She’s dead now isn’t she
(She is, yes, she was living down … In fact her niece, Margaret, now has the cottage down
near Gibraltar Bridge.)
Oh yes.
(And has done it up, yeah.)
Yes. Mmm. We had a lot of very interesting people always stay with us.
(Would Isaac Cooper be around then)
Oh yes, he was a regular.
(And there’d be, who else was there of the older people in the pub around that time Jack
Belfitt, was he around)
No, I didn’t know him. But there were a lot of Coopers. Edward, you know Edward
6

(Edward, yes, yeah. Well Edward worked down the railway for quite a spell didn’t he)
Oh a long time yes, he was a signalman.
(That’s right.)
Mmm. Yes, and his wife, oh yes. And all the Shirts.
(And you must have had the – were there shepherd’s meetings held there)
Yes, I was a shepherdess.
(Really)
Mmm. And they paid a shilling a year.
(Yes So was that an honorary position)
Yes.
(Right. As the hostess)
Yes [laughing]
(Right.)
And, now then, he lived up the Faverill’s [ph] house up there, what was he called
(The Yeoman’s, above there)
Yes, the farm, what’s he called
(There was Vic Noblett’s farm up at Hollins.)
7

Yes, well it was
(And then there was Frank Wilson.)
That’s Frank, yes.
(Yeah, Frank was at Hollins Farm.)
That’s right yes.
(It’s his son runs the farm now.)
Still there
(His son is yes.)
He’ll be getting old won’t he
(Well, no, his son’s not that old. I don’t know, probably in his)
Sixties would he
(Oh no, I don’t think so, no. Andrew, no, I should think Andrew’s probably more in his late
forties.)
Does he manage alright
(I think so, yeah I think so. His father went quite a long time ago, Frank did.)
Oh yes, Frank was …
(And his mother.)
Yes. I knew Frank.
8

(Yeah, Frank was quite a regular in the Church Hotel wasn’t he )
Oh yes, yes.
(I remember when I went in he was a regular. [laughing])
[laughing] Yes, Frank was a nice – I liked Frank, mmm.
(And did you ever get people sort of drinking in the Nag’s and then scuttling down the road
to drink in your place and vice versa)
Yes.
(If they thought they could drink a bit late. [laughing])
Oh it were a lot of after time then wasn’t there
(Yeah, there was, my recollection’s far more than there ever was since, yeah.)
Oh yes, mmm.
(And Arthur Lowe was special constable.)
That’s right.
(I recall him sitting in the kitchen having a drink of beer while we were sat in the front
drinking. [laughing])
Yes, and Charlie Lewis, do you remember him
(Yes, Charlie was a special constable as well from Hope.)
That’s right, they used to drink together.
(Well he went onto, he was a councillor down at Hope for a long time wasn’t he)
9

Right, yes, yes, mmm. Are you still listening
(Yes, yeah.)
Oh are you putting all this
(No, I’ll listen to it later.)
Oh I see.
(Now one family were the Greenstrees [ph] weren’t they They lived at Glan Noe)
That’s right.
(They were quite a big part of the community weren’t they and …)
Oh yes, he did a lot for Edale.
(Yeah. Was it a photography business he had in Sheffield or)
No they were chemists.
(Chemists, right.)
He had three chemist’s shops in Sheffield and I think he lent them the money to buy the
car park.
(Where they built the village hall)
Yes, yes, he’d a lot to do with that.
[End of track one]
[Track two]
10

(Do you remember any of the social occasions in Edale Any, the dances or Christmas
dos or)
Oh yes, we used to have a lot of those sort of things.
(Kinder players)
Mmm, yes, the Kinder players, yes. Mmm.
(And apart from the shepherd’s meet, did you have any other things that happened in the
Church Hotel, any events)
Not, I don’t …
(You probably had the wedding parties and things, when people got married and so on,
didn’t you)
Oh yes, yes, that’s right. I think I had, they used to come and sing once a week, the ladies.
I don’t know, they said could they, they’d nowhere to go so they came and sang once a
week. [laughing] About six to seven. And the piano was in there then.
(Oh really)
Yeah. [laughing] Course I had a lot of interesting people come to stay. Lord Hunt, you
know, and...
(You must tell me about those. So Lord Hunt came and stayed, that would have been after
the Everest, ascent of Everest was it)
Yes, yeah, he was Lord Hunt, mmm. He used to come quite a lot to the Church.
(Did he)
Oh yes.
11

(So he came just to visit Edale rather than on official business, it was just to visit was it)
No he came, he was a member of a club, he used to come walking. Oh he came as a
walker.
(Can you remember which club it was)
It wasn’t, what’s the one
(Is it Fell & Rock Club)
No. Was it the one that came from Manchester, what were they called Aren’t they still
there
(Oh, the Rucksack Club.)
Yes that’s right.
(Yeah.)
He was a member of that.
(Oh was he)
Yes.
(Yeah, oh that’s interesting, he came quite a few times did he)
Oh yes he came and stayed. Oh I knew him quite well.
(And who else did you have there of …)
Barbara Castle.
12

(Really)
Oh yes, they opened …
(Because she kept the Edale line open didn’t she, railway line, open)
Was it her that kept it open
(Yes, I think she said that they couldn’t close that, they had to close the Woodhead Line
because it served lots of very important communities and lots of tourists came out, yes.
[laughing])
[laughing]
(But did she come there on official business or was that)
No, she came, they opened the Pennine Way didn’t they
(That’s right, they did, so she came and stayed then did she)
Yes, she came and stayed quite a few times. And Lord, he was then Lord Dalton wasn’t
he Hugh Dalton wasn’t he
(That’s right.)
Yes, well, they were all, they were all part of the Labour Party weren’t they
(Yes that’s right.)
They weren’t Conservatives
(No, no.)
No. She was a nice person.
13

(Barbara Castle was)
Very.
(Yeah.)
Very nice, mmm. And her husband.
(Was her husband Den Ted)
Ted Castle.
(Ted Castle, that’s right yeah.)
Yes, yes, he was, oh we had a lot of the people up.
(Did you have Tom Stephenson did he stay)
Oh Tom Stephenson was a very old friend.
(Yeah, really)
Mmm.
(Cos I mean he was a man who sort of basically suggested the Pennine Way in the first
place.)
Well, it took him twenty five years and Hugh Dalton got it through Parliament, the Pennine
Way yes. Tom Stephenson came a lot, he was a very old friend of mine. And he even
came just before he died to see me when I lived at
(Near Alston)
At the farm, yes. Came all the way.
14

(Cos I don’t know where he lived but he came originally from Preston I think didn’t he, or
thereabouts, somewhere in Lancashire)
Yeah. He was against..., didn’t they put him in prison
(He was a conscientious objector, I think you’re right.)
Yes, that’s right, yes, yes. [laughing]
(Now, were you there when they made the film ‘Charlie Bubbles’)
Yes.
(Because a lot of the crew in that stayed at the Church Hotel then didn’t they)
Oh yes they did. Yes, Charlie Bubbles, yeah.
(So you had Albert Finney and Liza Minnelli.)
Yes.
(And they all stayed. Do you recall anything from that time, when they were making the
film)
Yes, mother made them the bread, you know, the fancy loaves. And Peter lent them the
dog. And they did quite a lot of filming up at the Lea, you know. Yes. Oh he was a nice
man. Is he still alive
(Albert Finney, yes, yes, he’s still very successful.)
Is he
(Yeah, and there was Billie Whitelaw I remember, Liza Minnelli. Forget who else was in it,
but, yeah, that was quite a notable film at the time, Charlie Bubbles.)
15

It was, wasn’t it, yeah. [laughing]
(Yes, it was an oddball film but, yeah.)
And you know, what was – they brought this van for them to cater – and they couldn’t get it
over that bridge, you know, to go up to the Lea.
(Oh right.)
So they all had to come back to the Church Hotel. [laughing] So it was quite good for me,
you know, business-wise, cos they all came down at lunch time for sandwiches and beer
and what have you, mmm. But they all went back to Manchester at night.
(Oh did they)
Mmm, they didn’t stay in Edale. They all went back and came back the next morning.
(Now.)
Mmm.
(So they must have been there quite a while were they Quite a few weeks)
I think it was six weeks they were at it.
(Was it)
Yes, mmm.
(And they filmed quite a lot at Crowden Lea didn’t they)
Yes they did.
(At Upper Booth and inside I think.)
16

Yes, in Miss Shirt’s.
(Yeah.)
Do you remember Miss Shirt Greta [laughing]
(I do yeah, Greta, Greta Shirt, yeah. I think was it her niece or whatever took it on
afterwards and I think they moved to Australia and they sold it, but they did say that used
to be one of the oldest houses in Edale, Crowden Lea.)
It was a lovely house wasn’t it
(Beautiful house, yeah.)
Yes, is it still nice
(It is, yeah, it is. They extended a bit out, the barn at the back they converted a bit, but,
yeah.)
Are they nice people that live there
(Yes, yeah, they’re in media I think, public relations and so on, working with film people
and so on. Musicians.)
Yes, very nice folk.
(Tell me, did you have any awkward customers in your time at the Church Hotel I mean
difficult people or people you had to ban or anything like that)
Only Bill Noblett.
(You had to ban Bill Noblett)
Yes. No, nobody else really.
17

(So how come you came to ban him)
Over these, being so rude to my guests.
(Oh he was rude to some guests, yeah.)
Yes.
(And how long was it you banned him for)
Twenty five years.
(Twenty five years. [laughing])
[laughing] I know I always remember Georgie Garlick brought him in one night, George,
brought him in one night and the bar was full and George walked up and he said “Can I
have two pints” And I said “You can have one pint but you can’t have one at the back of
you” “Oh” he says “It’s like that is it” and they both went off. George was very cross.
[laughing] But I wasn’t having him in. I couldn’t afford to have him in.
(No, no, and you’re obviously a woman of principle, and stuck to them didn’t you)
I did.
(Yeah.)
Yes, and I didn’t put up – you see being on my own there – I hadn’t got a man. I’d only got
Bob at night.
(Yeah, yeah.)
You see Bob didn’t have really any interest in the Church Hotel.
(No, he was too busy farming.)
18

Yes, and it was not easy for me. I mean I hadn’t got a man to back me up. And when I had
the odd walker, you know, these young boys from Stockport
(Yeah.)
And Manchester, that could be very difficult, you see. So I had to really … Well, the vicar
said, when I saw the vicar, he said I was a legend.
(Oh you were!)
Oh. [laughing]
(A woman who ruled with a rod of iron but you’d a soft centre. Yeah. [laughing])
[laughing] I didn’t, you know, it was only cos I had to to stick up for myself.
(Yeah, yes, well I think you did a great job of it.)
Well I tried.
(Yeah, now tell me, how did you come to meet Bob)
Well I knew Bob for nine years before I married him. He used to come as a local.
(And he was living with his parents at Dore Clough then was he)
Yeah, at Dalehead.
(At Dalehead rather, not Dore Clough, yeah Dalehead, yeah.)
Yes, mmm. Cos he was one of the lads of the village, you know.
(Yeah, yeah, and we talked earlier about his, he was very keen on football, he was very
much part of the Edale football club wasn’t he)
19

Yes, yes.
(Very much so.)
Yes, yes, and Jim Shirt and although, you know, they were all, well Jim Shirt was – Did
you know Jim fairly well
(Oh yes.)
He was funny wasn’t he Cos his mother didn’t like him having a drink. Did you know that
(I didn’t know that.)
[laughing] Oh yes. They were people evidently that didn’t believe in strong drink. Of course
I came from, my grandmother you see didn’t believe in strong, she termed it “strong drink”.
(Your grandmother)
My grandmother. And she used to come and stay with me and she’d go upstairs to bed
about ten o’ clock and then when it got to half past ten I could hear her shout “Brenda,
have you turned those people out yet You know they shouldn’t be in there. You know it’s
half past ten” [laughing] She was very much, she never ever drank.
(Really And there was her granddaughter running a pub. [laughing])
Yes. Never, no.
(Extraordinary.)
Isn’t it [laughing]
(Well let’s take a break there Brenda, thank you.)
[End of track two]
20

[Track three]
(Tell me Brenda, we were talking about Dalehead and Bob was brought up there was he
as a child)
Yes, yes, well no, they came to Edale when he was fourteen.
(Oh ok.)
They came from Pillhough.
(Down near Rowsley.)
You know where Pillhough is don’t you
(Yeah, next to Rowsley.)
That’s right. And they farmed there.
(But he’d, most of his life was spent there)
All in Edale, yes, he was.
(He must have loved that farm)
Oh he did, he loved Edale, yes.
(And you were telling me that it had been owned by, was it the Caldwell family)
That’s right yes.
(That have a mill at...)
Yes, Eddie.
21

(Eddie)
Eddie Caldwell, yes well he went to school with my father.
(Did he)
Eddie Caldwell, yes. Edale, they went to Lady Manor’s yes, mmm.
(And tell me, can you recall any of the times when, Bob’s stories of Bob at Dalehead,
anything, you know, winters or anything, any)
Well yes, we did, you see I was a bit put out with the Peak Park Board cos they wouldn't
let us build a house you know. Did you know that
(No I didn’t. You wanted to build in the village did you)
No we wanted to build a nice house at Dalehead.
(Ah ok. And they wouldn’t allow it)
No. Well [laughing]
(But it finished up being converted into an acorn camp for the National Trust now and
people stay there.)
Do they
(Yeah. Yes, young people.)
Well eventually I had an architect for two different houses and I paid for the architect and
then out of the blue somebody phoned from Bakewell and said “Oh, would you like to – we
think you could perhaps build a house” and it was a thousand feet up. And so I said to him
“Would you like to live up there” He says “No I wouldn’t, no” “No” I said “and neither do I”.
[laughing]
22

So you see it rather put me out because I’d loved to have lived up there. I wouldn’t have
left Edale I don’t think.
(So you didn’t fancy living in Dalehead itself, converting, you know, improving that)
Oh no, no, is it a hostel now
(It’s used by the National Trust for acorn camps. Young people go there and stay there
and work, do, you know, voluntary work for the National Trust yeah.)
Oh do they Yes.
(But, yeah, Edale site have had one or two meetings there where we had Victorian picnics.
It’s quite a cold place isn’t it)
Very. And you see the water used to run through the house.
(Did it [laughing])
Mmm, mmm. It was …
(So, yeah, so you didn’t fancy living there)
Oh no.
(But you still wanted to have a house somewhere up there)
Oh yes, I did, yes.
(Yeah, cos it’s got a great view down the valley hasn’t it)
Oh beautiful yes, yes.
23

(Ah no, a shame. And that’s basically why in the end of the day you had to leave Edale, it’s
because you...)
Yes, well and, you know, and Peter wanted us to come up here to help him. And he was
having, you know, he’d left his wife, he and his wife parted. This is his second wife he’s
had for thirty years, mmm. And he’s had two children with this one.
(So did you come up and live on the farm here with him or)
Well there were two farmhouses.
(Oh were there)
At Halton Lea Gate, and we lived in the smaller one, mmm. And we helped Peter for
twelve years.
(Now I know you’ve recently visited Edale.)
Yes.
(Was that the first time you’d been back for a long time)
Oh no, we’d been back, Bob and I have been down a few times.
(Have you)
Yes, mmm.
(And do you see many changes)
Not really. The same, you know, the Nag’s Head’s there and the church and …
(Just changed a bit inside.)
24

Yes, that’s right, but I mean the village is the same. And Tony Favour, you know him don’t
you
(Yes, yes, yeah.)
I’m very fond of Tony.
(Yeah, Tony’s been around a while now.)
And his wife, yes.
(Sue, yeah. Well he’s quite active for the National Park now.)
Yes.
(I think he’s Vice Chair for the National Park Authority.)
Is he
(Yes.)
Oh.
(And he’s also a local councillor.)
Yes.
(So he’s still active, still active.)
Yes, do you think he’s good then for
(Oh I think so. I mean he’s obviously got local knowledge but …)
And he’s a solicitor.
25

(Don’t necessarily agree with his politics but that’s a personal thing. [laughing])
[laughing] Well I mean I’ve always been a conservative. I suppose you are Labour Yes.
But I worked hard when I was, when I left and lived in Holly Cottage. Yeah, I enjoyed my
time with the Conservatives and then they didn’t get in after I left did they
(Holly Cottage I was forgetting that you’d lived there for a spell.)
Yes, I lived there for four years.
(Yes, that’s right.)
But, yes, I enjoyed that.
(Well politically of course High Peak’s drifted back and forth from Labour to Conservative
over the years.)
Yes.
(Did you remember Peter Jackson who lived at the Mill)
Yes, he was Labour wasn’t he
(Cos he was a Labour MP yes.)
That’s right.
(And Tony was Conservative MP in Stockport.)
Stockport.
(Yeah, and it’s always gone back and forth hasn’t it from …)
Well it used to be Conservative for a long time and then after I left it became Labour didn’t
it But it’s gone …
26

(So you must have been the driving force to keep …)
And now it’s Conservative back again isn’t it
(It is, yes, it is.)
Do you know the MP
(Don’t know him personally, no, no, but …)
Mmm. Have you always been Labour
(Yes, I think in the family, you know, and I mean I came from very much working class
family in Stockport.)
Oh we’re all working class aren’t we
(Yeah, well [laughing])
I can’t understand this working class...
(Well there isn’t so much classes these days are there)
No there isn’t is there
(Let’s just pause there.)
[End of track three]
[Track four]
(Brenda, you were talking about the Church Hotel and the building of it.)
Yes.
27

(In, was it early part of the century)
It would be early wouldn’t it
(Yeah.)
Yes.
(And you say it was built by the Champion family)
Yes it was. The Burdikins went into it first.
(Yes, because they were in the Church Inn weren’t they up the road.)
That’s right, well the Burdikins …
(And they moved with the licence did they)
They must have done yes, mmm.
(Ah ok.)
Are there any Burdikins left in …
(No, no, and the Church Inn’s now Church Cottage.)
Yes, yes.
(And what was the bar at the top of the stairs has gone now.)
Yes.
(So, and you were saying it was sort of master craftsmen who built it was it)
28

Oh yes, yes, it must have been, yes. It was beautifully built wasn’t it
(Yeah it was.)
Beautiful building isn’t it
(And you say the Champions – which Champion would it be then, was that Mrs Griffiths
Williams’ husband or)
Or her parents I should think.
(Her parents It would be, yes, wouldn’t it Yeah, so it was her parents.)
Yes it would be her parents wouldn’t; it
(And did they build it; they built it presumably when the railway came in to provide
accommodation for people on the railways)
Yes I should think so yes, mmm.
(Yeah, and you said something about you wondered why she said wondered why they’d
build it)
Yes.
(Do you think that was because she wasn’t sure whether they should have built a house of
alcohol)
Yes I think so, yes.
(Ah right, that’s interesting.)
Yes, yes.
29

(That’s interesting. So when you moved in there, obviously it was a few years old, but it
was just after the war so a time of frugality)
Yes.
(How did you get by, I mean how did – you presumably had certain rations did you)
Yes, yes.
(And then you’d have to buy stuff local Could you buy locally)
Well we got, I think we went to Bakewell and bought stuff in Bakewell, you know, foodwise,
yes.
(Did you)
Yes, mmm.
(And you were taking guests over that period weren’t you)
Oh yes we had to start straight away.
(Yeah.)
See we’d borrowed the money from his mother and father.
(Right.)
To buy the Church. We had, you know, we had to, it was like borrowed money you see.
We were poor.
(And you bought it off Fred)
Freddie, yes.
30

(Yeah, because he had the two for a period of time didn’t he)
That’s right yes.
(Yeah, so obviously you shared your business between the two)
Yes.
(You had a decent relationship with Fred at the end of the day)
Oh we got on very well with Freddie, he was very, yes. He said once to me, he once said
to me what I was surprised about, he says, “You know Brenda if I’d married you” he said
“You and I could have made such a difference here”
[laughing]
He thought.
(Well yes.)
He and I, you see, Tom, my husband, he wasn’t interested really in the Church Hotel.
(Wasn’t he)
Oh no, he was too busy gambling – he used to go racing three days a week.
(Really [laughing])
Oh yes. And, you know, I was left to do the work. And Freddie did say to me one day, he
said, “You know” I mean he, his wife, she was a very nice person.
(Yeah and was tragically lost wasn’t she)
Yes, very. But I mean she wasn’t interested in the business.
31

(Was she not)
Oh no, she was a nurse you know.
(Yeah that’s right, she was a midwife in fact wasn’t she)
Oh yes, very, very clever lady. Very nice lady. She was a lady.
(Yeah, people say that.)
Yes, very nice, very, very. It was a great – it was, the phone went, you know, and I had to
answer it, and it was to say that she’d had this dreadful accident. And I had to wind it up,
you know, it was – she should never have gone. She was at the Nag you see when they
said …
(She went to a late night call didn’t she in winter)
Yes, yes, and I mean to go up [inaud] and she went to somewhere near Stockport.
(Really)
And hit a, the weather was so bad and the snow was so bad she hit a wall and it killed her
straight off. But she wasn’t interested in the Church Hotel or the …
(No, it’s often the case that isn’t it)
Yes.
(So you obviously had custom from the whole valley, both of you)
Yes that’s right.
(So you’ve, people tended to go, did people tend to go to one or the other or to both)
That’s right yes.
32

(Yeah, because I mean I remember when we would hurtle down the road when it was
about twenty past ten if we thought there was a chance of getting a late drink with you.)
[laughing] Yeah.
(And I think vice versa, I think if people at the Church Hotel knew you were closing up
they’d scuttle up the road. So it was prolong the drink by the two pubs.)
[laughing] Oh we got on very well with Freddie, yeah.
(Yeah, now tell me, this was also a time before Kinder became open for walking and so
on.)
Yes.
(But I know you said that you still got a lot of ramblers coming out.)
Yes.
(Were they just coming out to Edale to walk the paths and over the ridge to Castleton and
things like that They obviously couldn’t go on Kinder couldn’t they unless they had a
permit)
No but they did go on Kinder didn’t they
(They did, there were quite a lot went on there.)
Oh yes,yes. Because there were people that – we had quite a lot of people that, you know,
got lost.
(Yes.)
Because – can you still get lost on Kinder
33

(Oh yes, yeah. I mean I think from my experience of the pass from the early fifties on
there’s a big, big difference now has been in the clothes that people wear and the boots
that people wear.)
Yes.
(I mean I recall sort of in the early fifties I was buying ex army rucksacks.)
Yes.
(Hobnail boots, or ex army boots.)
Mmm, yes.
(Now people have very expensive, highly sophisticated waterproof, wind [inaud])
Yes.
(So they tend not to get into as much difficulty. They’ve also got GPS things now.)
Yes, that’s right, yes.
(Sophisticated navigation aids. But no, there’s still people get injured of course and there’s
still a very strong mountain rescue presence.)
Yes.
(But there’s people have heart attacks, there’s people who break legs and so on.)
Yes, but I mean we had, I saw a girl, she walked up from Hayfield in high heeled shoes.
(Yes. [laughing])
I mean in those days they’d no idea had they
34

(Well talking about strange people, I know you did tell me about a guy, Japanese guy with
a donkey walking the Pennine Way.)
Yes.
(Tell me a little bit about that.)
Well George brought him back. I’m sure it was George.
(Right, really )
Yes.
(Cos he’d tried to go up Kinder had he with it)
Yes he’d gone up Kinder, yes.
(And did he have packs on the side of the donkey or)
He must have and he was gone for three days and then the donkey and the Japanese
came back to the church and they left the donkey and he went off on his own to walk the
Pennine Way.
(Really)
You ask George.
(So that would be what, in the sixties or)
I should think it must have been mmm.
(Yeah I remember there was a guy from I think the Daily Express had a horsey one who
was going to ride the Pennine Way.)
[laughing]
35

(And it happened it bolted one night while he was camping at Hayfield and that was the
end of his story.)
[laughing] I’m sure, has George never mentioned the donkey
(No he hadn’t but I will ask him, I’ll ask him about it.)
Yes, would he remember
(I don’t know, I’ll ask him. Maybe, he probably will.)
Does he remember things
(Oh I think he does, yeah, yeah. But, you know, there’s so many anecdotes aren’t there of
people)
I know yes. [laughing]
(I mean it’s just hard thinking them just now but you must have had some rum people in
the hotel. Now also you remember, you also said to me that you and your sister were the
last of the Sheldons from the village of Sheldon)
Mmm, yes.
(Alive.)
Yes.
(So has that been a long dynasty Must go back a long way)
Oh yes it does, years, yes, mmm.
(My word.)
36

Yes.
(So you never lived there)
No, no. My grandfather did.
(Yeah)
Yes, mmm. And of course Bob and I soon after we were married, I said to him “Come on,
we’ll go to Sheldon” so off we went. And there was just a small pub there you know and I
ordered a – Bob had a half a pint of beer – and I think, I don’t know what I had. It wouldn’t
be a gin, perhaps a small sherry or something. And all of a sudden a voice shouted to the
landlord it must have been “You’d better come John, the calf, it’s calving, the cow” But
what I couldn’t understand, he looked at me and he said “You’re a Sheldon aren’t you” So
I said “How do you know” “Oh” he said “I can tell” And there was an old man sitting over
there and he said “Well you won’t get any more drink tonight because” he says “They’ll be
too busy with the cow”. So that was the end, Bob and I sat and finished our drink and
came out.
(And that was the end of it)
Mmm, yes. But that was the pub in Sheldon. It isn’t, I don’t know whether it’s, I think it’s
gone now.
(Has it, ah)
It belonged to the Duke of Devonshire the whole village because my grandmother said,
“You see, Brenda, they didn’t do what” with her not being a drinker, she says, “You see
they didn’t do what was right. Instead of looking after the village and the farm and
whatever they were too busy with the bottle” Whisky. [laughing]
([laughing] Downfall of many a person eh)
Yeah [laughing] Yes.
37

(Did you, while you were at the Church Hotel, did you make any changes to it Any
physical changes.)
Not really no, did we
(So more or less when you left it was as you found it)
Yes, mmm, well we hadn’t got a lot of money you see.
(No. And what did you use those outbuildings for The long line of outbuildings.)
The staff slept in that.
(Oh did they)
Yes, mmm.
(And bottle stores and so on)
Mmm that’s right yes. No, we’d never a lot of money because you see we’d borrowed
money and we had to pay it.
(Pay it back, yes, obviously.)
We were paying it back.
(Yeah. Did you get a chance to take part in any of the village activities, you know, like the
Kinder Players or any of the ,,,)
No I was too busy.
(Yeah.)
Yes.
38

(Yeah, too much tied up.)
You couldn’t, it was a, you know, a full time job for me. Cos I did such a lot of the cooking.
(Oh did you)
Mmm.
(So how many staff would you have had in there)
Well I’d so much local and then I’d so many Irish.
(Oh really)
Mmm.
(And they’d come over a certain part of the year and then they’d go back home I
suppose)
Well some. You see Desmond, you know
(Des Howe)
Yes. He was married, Josephine was with me for – She came from Ireland, his wife.
(Oh did she)
His wife.
(Ah right.)
She was a waitress for four years, yes. Oh yes, a lot of them.
(Well actually it’s interesting cos we’ve come full circle because now a lot of the sort of bar
staff in like the Nag’s Head are from Slovakia and Poland and …)
39

Oh are they
(Yeah.)
Oh. [laughing]
(And what they do, they come over and they earn enough to go back and pay for their
education.)
Yes, yes.
(So it’s, yeah, it’s come full circle.)
Yes.
(That’s fascinating, yeah. So yeah, I mean the Church Hotel on the outside hasn’t really
changed at all has it)
No, no.
(No, It’s just inside that it’s changed a lot.)
Yes, yes.
(And the same applies to the Nag’s. )
Yes.
(I mean the Nag’s Head used to have that little bar in the little high bar.)
And of course they’ve got the barn haven’t they at the end of it now
(At the end of the Nag’s they have)
40

Yes.
(They’ve converted that yeah.)
Yes.
(So the whole of that building basically now is the pub.)
Yes, cos we went up, you know, on the day …
(Oh did you When you brought Bob’s ashes)
Yes, because we’d time to spare and I said to Peter and Ann I said “Well we’d better go
and have a drink in the Nag” and it was very busy.
(Did you recognise any of it)
No. Oh yes, but
(Little bits of it)
But I didn’t, there were nobody in that I knew.
(No, no.)
No. Do they get a lot of locals in
(Well until recently Friday night was often a locals’ night.)
Yes.
(But there’d be quite a few locals in there but not so much during the week.)
No. And do you get any in the Church
41

(And a few locals go in the Church, yeah.)
Yes.
(Yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn’t see, it’s not quite the same as it was, you know, I think when
you were in the Church Hotel when ...)
No.
(I mean during the week it was mainly locals wasn’t it)
Yes it was, yes.
(Now there seems to be visitation to Edale throughout the year, throughout the week. So
you’ve got people going for meals in the Church Hotel and in the Rambler.)
Yes, yes, yes.
(Or in the Church Hotel rather and the Nag’s Head, yeah.)
They do food in both do they
(They do yes, yeah. In fact these days I think that’s where most of the income comes from,
selling food.)
It will be, food, mmm.
(Rather than the alcohol.)
Beer, yes.
(Yeah. And now they have family rooms of course where the children can go in as well.)
Yes, yes.
42

(I’m just going to pause there for a moment Brenda.)
[End of track four]
43

Ken Harwood: Interviewed by Margaret Wowbwell,
21 st June 2010.
First Track
(This is a recording made by Ken Harwood talking about his time as a volunteer ranger.
It’s 21 st June. I wonderered if you could tell me when you began as a volunteer ranger)
Well my experience of the Derbyshire Peak District was before the Ranger service, even
before the National Park. I started walking upon Kinder in the late 1940’s. I used to travel
quite regularly, I lived in Stockport at the time and there were quite a number of us,
obviously all good walkers, quite strangers really, used to catch the 28 bus in Stockport to
go to Hayfield and then up on the moors and the bus was almost like a private charabanc.
People would be singing, everyone was in the hob nailed boots at the time and they
were all stamping. I don’t know what the driver used to think! He must’ve had had a right
headache by the time he got to the end of his journey.
But everybody was so friendly to each other. It was “Good morning, Goodnight”; I
used to meet people on the path as you were going up onto Kinder past Hayfield reservoir
and round. I never heard, myself, of any actual problems with the gamekeepers or
anything like that. All that sort of thing was virtually over, the struggle about access had
more or less finished.
(Was it ’36, the mass trespass)
‘30’s yes, before my time. I think it was earlier than that, early 1930s. The National Parks
were 1948, I think.
I used to visit Kinder quite a lot round Hayfield, didn’t bother with Bleaklow very
much, but then again it was like the public transport - we all relied on bus and trains, so it
was always Hayfield. Never even went to Edale to start off with, not until I heard then, in
about 1954, that I was told about the Ranger Service, who were acting as Wardens then,
not Rangers, with Tom Tomlinson; it was then that I started to go to Edale rather than
Hayfield.
Again, you used to meet a lot of the same people. Tom would gather all his
Rangers up, all his volunteers, in Cooper’s Café; a great abundance of teas and tea cups
and tha knows; the Peak Park paid for the tea in those days, morning and evening before
you set off.
He used to allocate the routes that he wanted you to cover over Kinder, cos there
was only Kinder that was access in the early days. And away we used to go, we used to
walk round. The sort of problems he used to stress was stone rolling and I’m afraid a lot of
the walls we were trying to protect have long since gone. You can’t beat them really, once
the walls have gone that’s it, they’re bundled down.
Campers, used to get quite a lot.
(Stone rolling, just youths Just messing about)
Oh yes, just youths, absolutely, just messing about. We were supposed to be protecting,
because, trying to keep agreements that were made with the landowners for public
access. There were certain criteria, and bye-laws were set up that we were supposed to
try and keep, and, to a great extent I think we did. I think most of the landowners and
farmers it was inevitable really, they had no choice but to accept it. The thing is that the
moors were closed occasionally for the shooting, for the grouse shooting, that’s a dozen
1

days out of the year, seemed a fair bargain to me if we’re going to have the freedom of the
hills and the moors and I still look at it that way.
They can close it for twelve days a year can’t they, but then again, we’re supposed
to patrol and try and keep people off the moors during the actual shooting parties were up
there.
That worked fairly well but, obviously, you could not close what was a public
footpath. If people kept to the path, as always was the case of course, going over parts of,
well the low edges of Kinder, there were no public footpaths over the top of Kinder, but
there were plenty all round the perimeter, you could always walk.
(Even when it was closed)
Even when it was closed, yes. Even when it was completely private land you could walk
the public footpaths – there was never any problem.
(Did you go singly or did you go in pairs)
Usually in pairs. I think one of the difficulties, there used to be lots of…the clubs used to
come out, as it were, Wardens or Rangers, and they liked to go together as a club and that
was very little…
(A club)
…as a club, the Ramblers Association, they’d come as a group and they’d want to stay as
a group where as really, for Tom, to get the number of coverage, it’d be better if you were
in twos or threes and you just split up; much better coverage, as you can imagine.
(What sort of cover would you expect to do in a day)
What, mileage wise
(Yes…)
We’d probably walk about ten, twelve miles or something like that maybe, it varied
considerably. In all weathers, didn’t make much difference to us. I’ve been up Kinder more
recently and one of the biggest changes I see is that to cross the top of the plateau you
used to be up and down in these groughs and over the peat haggs, you know, clumps of
heather; nearly all that’s gone. It’s just low shallow heaps of just bare peat now. All the big
groughs have disappeared.
(It’s eroded)
Eroded completely, yes. Now, whether that’s…
(Just in that time)
Well, since the 1950s, yes. Lots of things have been blamed for this. One is the
atmosphere, cos we’ve got…no matter which way the wind blows you’ve got pollution from
two big cities. Overgrazing I think has a lot to do with it because I notice now that the
National Trust, who are the owners of quite big patches of Kinder, have fenced it off to
keep sheep out and are actually trying to re-establish heather and cotton grass, and I
understand it’s been fairly successful. Well, the area’s a lot cleaner, we haven’t got the
2

industry and of course if it’s fenced off you’re not going to have the trampling of feet either.
So I don’t know whether they’ll come to any conclusion as to what was the main cause, but
as long as they can get it back it doesn’t really matter, does it
(Would the local people have the rights of grazing)
Yes, the local farmers had rights of grazing certainly, and in certain parts the local people
have the right to take peat as well, for the fires. To my knowledge I only know of one
person that was still digging peat on the Glossop Low side and as far as I know still
does…peat digging.
But, it’s rather strange, I went to move to Hayfield after a while and the local people
there, you know, top of Kinder could have been green cheese for all they’d know, they’d no
interest in it whatsoever. You talk about Kinder to them and they mean round the reservoir
and at the foot round the sports field to the top of Kinder Road. They don’t talk about
Kinder Scout up on the top; very few people. Might be more people do it now because the
village has a lot of incomers…as I was, of course! I was always an incomer, I wouldn’t be
part of that village until I’d turned my toes up in the church yard. I would not be accepted.
A lot has changed with village life, of course, now, hasn’t it The availability of private
transport has made a tremendous difference in that sort of thing.
(It’s made them into suburbs, almost.)
Commuter zones, aren’t they
(How did you begin)
It was my cousin that first; as I say I used to go walking quite regular and he would come
with me and he said have you heard of this Ranger, this Wardens service that’s coming I
thought, no I’ve not heard of it, tha knows.
I just went down to Edale and called in the Coopers Café where they used to meet
and just joined it just like that, and Tom Tomlinson, very, very lively outspoken, wonderful
person, he took us on.
We went round with him to start off with as they usually did. He showed us the
ropes sort of thing and passed on his attitude. Tom believe it or not was a Quaker. I don’t
know whether that makes a difference to the bits and pieces, but his attitude to the byelaws
and all this sort of thing was all secondary. He was the one that really started it.
It was an information service rather than a policing service and this made all the
difference. He was informing people what they could do, not what they couldn’t do, didn’t
emphasise that. Though that was always part of it, as it had to be of course, because
legally we had to enforce the bye-laws. But by doing it, by letting people know what they
can do, what there is to see and the joys of the countryside.
Yes, it was a wonderful experience and everything was so casual in the end. You
had an armband that you could wear that said ‘Warden’ on it, you know, Peak District
National Park Warden, which most people detested I think, really, before the days of
badges and you had, literally, a letter of authority which had to be signed each…actually
there should have been a fresh certificate every time but I think Tom had run out and he
used to scrub one date out and put the next date on, so every fortnight you got another
date and it was written all round the border of this piece of paper which said “Letter of
Authority”, and the bye-laws and what not written on the back and the bits & pieces, all
ever so casual.
So no radios or anything like that, so once you were out you were out, you were on
your own until you came back. I’m not quite sure whether Tom knew exactly how many
3

people he’d got going out of a morning. Whether he counted them all back at night, I’m not
too sure. I don’t recollect any signing in or signing off.
(He didn’t have a register)
I don’t remember it, no, I didn’t see it.
(Yes, very much more informal than today)
Oh, very…it started off much more informal; and they were great days, everybody that was
doing it loved it, they believed in what they were doing. I became a full-time Ranger,
eventually, from a part-time but working for the County Council and the money side was
beginning to creep in. First of all they just used to pay your expenses and that was to get
you coming every fortnight, we needed people regularly so it needed some sort of retainer.
(That was when you were a volunteer)
As a volunteer for the National Park, yes.
(And you got your cups of tea)
Yes, you got your cups of tea, many cups of tea. I did take up a part-time post with them,
as the actual access lands sort of increased from Kinder; Bleaklow was one that came in, I
was one of the first to start rangering or wardening over on Bleaklow and then of course
Crowden, moving further north you got more and more access areas and all the eastern
edges now are all part and parcel of it. I really don’t know what the figure is now in square
miles, I’m sure, but it’s a lot.
(I’ve seen a map, but I don’t know the precise figures.)
No, but once again things have changed. The Rangers or Wardens now don’t just restrict
themselves to the access areas or moors, it’s generally the countryside and footpaths and
so on. It’s really broadened out quite a lot.
(Oh, I see. When you became part-time was that when you were paid)
You got a retainer; I think it was 25 shillings for the day and your expenses. As I said, that
was to make sure you did report for duty every two weeks.
(What date would this be)
It was after I came out of the army so this would be ’59, say early 60s; early 1960s.
(And that was an arrangement from above, I suppose)
Yes, again I presume they’d got a much bigger area to try and cover with Bleaklow coming
in, that they wanted some form of continuity to start of with and assured of a regular
attendance. Just your volunteers was not acceptable any more. They still had volunteers
but they’d got a skeleton crew of part-timers. Not everybody was paid, in fact as a paid
warden you were very much in the minority, you got more volunteers. But you were split
up, they opened up several of what they called ‘Centres’. Edale being the main one, but
4

there was another one at Hayfield, one at Crowden, one at Glossop where the part-timers
used to come in and volunteers used to come in as well.
So you used to intermingle and your assistant part-timer would actually sort out the
patrols just like Tom used to do in the early days. We had a blackboard or, in most cases,
a piece of paper and we used to write down the patrols where we wanted people to go and
of course this then acted as your register too because knew who was doing it, each patrol,
which I never saw when I was at Edale. So yeah, we used to know who was out and
where they were going and through.
Again before the days of radio to start off with, and as I was one of the assistants, I
used to know where they were going and I used to work my route, usually on my own, I
used to intercept them, all over the place and I knew whether they were there or not. Not
that it was a matter of checking on them to see they were doing what they should do, but a
matter just to see that everything was alright.
(So was Tom Tomlinson still there)
Tom Tomlinson was still Head Ranger then at that time, yes, when Bleaklow opened up. I
can’t remember what date Tom actually retired. But he didn’t retire he left the actual
Ranger Service and became Educational Officer. He used to go round schools and that
sort of thing. Which it’s still one side of the job isn’t it you know. As full-time Rangers you
went round the schools, the clubs and the W.I.s, giving talks.
(That would be in the evenings, obviously)
Oh yes, in the evenings.
(Would you be paid for that)
No, no the evening work you were not paid for. I never particularly enjoyed the W.I.s. The
worst bit I had to do was, not to do with the Peak Park, it was when I was with the County
Council, I had to give a talk and what not at Rowsley. That was fine, the talk went alright
and interesting, but when I was asked to judge a flower display and there were all these
wild flowers and I’d just been saying “Don’t pick ‘em!”. Oh dear. It can be a bit awkward at
times, yes.
But that’s nothing to do with the early Peak District, though I don’t know, it’s an
offshoot of it I suppose. It all developed from that and I think a lot of the Ranger Service in
my day, a lot of the Peak Park part-time Rangers and volunteer Rangers finished up all
round the country because the countryside parks opened up and it’s surprising how many
Peak Park personnel actually took posts all round the country.
(Because it was the first one, wasn’t it)
Peak Park was the first National Park yes, that and then the Lake District.
(When did the County Council come in)
1971 I started with the County Council and this was the Countryside Act of ’68 I think it is
Don’t quote me on it bit I think it was ’68, ’69. You got your National Parks Act, but then the
Countryside Act came in at that time, which allowed other Local Authorities, well anybody
for that matter, didn’t have to be a Local Authority, to set up a Country Park and employ
Rangers or Wardens because they started off, there was a generous grant from the
5

Countryside Commission to start off with, but that slowly, over the years, got whittled
down. There’s no grant now at all.
(But it was still the Peak Park)
Not for me it wasn’t no. My operational area was Derbyshire, outside the Peak District
National Park, which virtually meant, as far as the public were concerned, there’s no
difference whatsoever.
(So the Act just broadened things really)
It broadened things considerably, yes. Good as well because there were some beautiful
areas that want protecting and publicizing, not just the National Parks. But I think too…one
of the ideas was to take the pressure of the public off the National Parks a bit, to try to take
them out. I don’t think that worked because it’s created its own pressure. Everything’s just
exploded, I don’t think it actually worked in that way, but that was one of the ideas – to
take the pressure off the Peak Park and that; and they’re still talking about that in places
aren’t they You must have heard the expression about a “honey-pot area” haven’t you
Where everybody is at Bakewell, for instance, at certain days.
(So on a typical day as a Warden you’d go to the café first and get your instructions.)
Yes, get our instructions…our briefing.
(What sort of time did you start)
Ten o’clock there. We’d certainly be out on the hill by half past, maybe a bit early, it used
to vary. It would depend on what time the train arrived in a lot of cases. Again, in the early
days we weren’t on cars, which became motorbikes eventually; no it depended on the time
of the train from Manchester.
(What time would you finish That would depend on the time of year, wouldn’t it)
Yes, yes. Eight, nine o’clock sometimes, maybe, again according to what your train times
would be, yes I would about eight o’clock, something like that, we’d be down and then
we’d be over to see Fred Herdman in the Nags Head who was the publican there until the
train came.
The Nags Head had the official information centre before Fieldhead, at Edale
opened up by the National Park. The information centre was in the actual back room at the
Nags Head and if we wanted to look at a large-scale map, 6 inch to the mile, that’s where
it was.
(There wouldn’t be any other equipment You said there weren’t radios.)
No, not to start with, no.
(Would you have a whistle)
Yes, you had whistles. I used to take a whistle, map and compass, First Aid kit; I used to
take a small First Aid kit.
(Just a basic thing)
6

Yes. Anything big used to be kept, again, at the Nags Head…before the days of the Peak
District Mountain Rescue organisation, the rescue equipment, the stretchers and
everything were at the Nags Head at Edale. That again grew. I think what started that was
the, can you remember the Three Inns walk by the Scouts when some got lost on
Bleaklow. Quite a tragedy and that kicked off the rescue organisation as we know it now
because we had policemen out on that just in their ordinary coats and helmets and
goodness knows out on the moors – most inappropriate really. What could they do, you
know. The Wardens were better off in equipment than they were.
(What did you wear)
Good stout boots, gaiters, climbing type breeches, waterproof trousers, anoraks, yes,
woolly hats, scarves…you name it. Not a lot different to what you’ve got now really, I don’t
think.
(No, I suppose not, no.)
Equipment started getting better, I think, through the army surplus, but you could get
anoraks and gas capes, this sort of thing. There were no big firms going like there are
now, with their anoraks and bells and all their fancy outdoor clothes. There was nothing
like that, no; it was nearly all ex-military stuff that you could purchase. Yes, that made a big
difference.
(So you’d walk just looking for anything)
Just keep your eyes peeled, looking round, yes. Even in the thick mist it was quite handy
to be walking through, cos you’d meet people and I think that’s the most important part of
the job, in some respects – “Are you alright Do you know where you’re going That’s the
way down”, you know. You had a useful purpose I think at any time.
(So why particularly did you like the moorland What was special about it)
Freedom I think. You were open, you weren’t confined to footpaths, good fresh air. I
haven’t mentioned it but I worked in a factory, five days a week, six days a week. Yes, to
get out was a good thing, yes, oh yes, a complete change.
(To be able to breathe)
It still is…I still like it.
(Were you interested in the wildlife)
Yes, the wildlife, flora and fauna, all very important.
(Did you teach yourself to know what was what)
I think basically yes, but there’s so many opportunities to go to evening classes and this
sort of thing that you can pick up a lot more information. You know, now there’s all sorts of
clubs that you can borrow go round and forage. Mainly they sort of specialize don’t they,
like the birds or the insects or the flora and everything else, yes you can pick a lot of
information up. So whether you say its self education or not, yes, I think it is really – you’ve
7

got to make that effort to go. You can do it all from a book, in fact most of the experts I
know usually have a book in their pocket as well.
(Did you have a favourite flower)
No, I can’t say that I had a favourite flower, no. Some of the bog plants were quite
interesting.
(Oh, like Are there sundews)
Sundews yes, particularly sundews, if you could find them. There’s quite a nice patch up
above Hayfield there.
(I was going to say there’d be certain areas where…things grew.)
Just in the bog, yes.
(So you’d know to look for certain things.)
(And the birds Did you have a favourite sound The birds.)
Yes, I used to like the Ring Ouzel and the Curlew. Bleaklow was very good for Ring
Ouzels. I could almost guarantee where to find them, going down Glossop Low.
(It sounds fine for the summer, what about the winter days)
I don’t know, just as enjoyable, maybe even more. Summers can be very warm you can be
a bit hot going through. My main walking, even before I was rangering, was mainly during
the winter rather than the summer. I’d pack up during the summer, do something else, go
biking or something. But walking on the hills used to be a winter occupation mainly, and if
there was snow all the better.
(Did you come across any accidents Anyone in trouble.)
Err, several sprained ankles and this sort of thing, yes. I became a member of the Edale
Mountain Rescue, yes, there were several calls.
(That was based at the centre)
Well there were mountain rescue people all over the place. One based in Buxton, one at
Oldham. Sheffield didn’t have one as such, but then again the Edale team was all covering
people from the Sheffield and Manchester areas. Several mountain rescue teams and they
all get called on by the Peak District Mountain Rescue organisation as it is now, but that is
controlled by the police. The police request it. It’s the Mountain Rescue Organisation that
then calls a team out to the nearest one. I’ve had several calls like that at one time. I was
fortunate in having employer’s that didn’t mind me dropping everything at the spur of
notice and just disappearing. That’s just the same now, you must see the reports in the
paper, the team being called out to pull somebody off the cliff or something or other, or
even a footpath anywhere - doesn’t have to be on the moorlands nowadays – get called
out on a tricky situation where you can’t get an ambulance in.
(When you joined the mountain rescue that would be later)
8

I should remember the date, I don’t know, I can’t remember what day it kicked it off with
the incident with the Scouts but there was the basis of a team at Edale long, long before
the actual organisation like that. Again, with Tom Tomlinson, we had a stretcher, a special
stretcher there, with skids on it that we used to use for practising round the Edale area. So
there was the basis of a team, a rescue organisation, setting up of, before the big purge,
before the Peak District National…
(Before it was official)
Before it came in properly, yes.
(Did you have to use the stretcher with skids You said you practiced…was there times
when you had to use…)
Yes we’ve had had to use it – ankles, broken leg, bits and pieces, yes, a Thomas stretcher
it was.
(Would that be people who weren’t properly dressed, equipped)
No, not necessarily. You can twist an ankle at any time can’t you Don’t forget the paths
were quite rough and it was quite common practice to follow the streams in a lot of cases,
you know, you’re coming down , “boulder-hopping” they used to call it, from one boulder to
the other, it’s quite fast. Strangely enough not many actual climbing incidents because the
climbers, generally speaking, know what they’re doing but if they do have an accident it’s
usually more serious.
(Did you have to go to one of those at all)
Not when I was a Ranger particularly, no, no. Obviously climbing and stretcher lowering
down the crags was a great ego boost sort of thing in practice but I never had to actually
do it. Not until I became Ranger of the National Park and we had one on Black Rocks, at
Crowden. We had to get a stretcher to him, he was stuck half way up, half way down. Got
his knee stuck in a crack. The crack was getting smaller as it went down, his knee was
well and truly trapped we couldn’t lift him up, we couldn’t push him down, we couldn’t get
hold of his leg to lift him up.
(What did you do)
We sent somebody down to the local chip shop for a load of chip fat, put it round his knee
and got him out. You could smell chips on those rocks for ages! Daft, in’t it But it’s true,
it’s true. And we were all sat in the Rising Sun at Middleton Wirksworth when we got that
call, after finishing duty. But again nothing to do with the Peak District National Park; I’m
sure they can relate stories just like that.
(How long were you a Ranger)
I think the service started off in May 1954 and I joined them in June as a volunteer. I
stayed with them as a volunteer even when I was in the army and became a part-timer in
the, must have been ’59, yeah ’57 – ’59 I was in the army, so early ‘60s I would have
joined them as a part-timer and it was just as Bleaklow was coming on line for it’s access
9

agreements and I stayed with the Peak District National Park then until 1971 when I
became full-time with the County Council.
(You still walk on the moors do you)
Yes whenever I can, yes. But since retirement time has got more precious somehow,
there’s a lot more things to do. But yes walking is still my hobby.
(I think you said ‘winter’, but what’s your best impression of the moors)
I think evenings. This came real, noticeably, when we’d got transport of our own we
weren’t pushed to get off, come down; to be up there when most other people had
disappeared and gone down for the train or wherever they were going – off for their tea or
the pub. To be up there as the light was fading – lovely. You could hear the birds,
everything was lovely and quiet, nice and fresh, take your time down. Real peace, real
peace. And the colours of course of the sunset over the hills and the moors – spectacular
anywhere but it seemed even more special when you were up on the top of Kinder looking
out over the Cheshire Plain. You could see right over Cheshire, you could just make out
the Dee and the estuary, and those estuaries beyond. Wales would just about show up a
little bit at times if it was clear enough.
(You had a little book with the rules)
I didn’t bring it with me but yes. One of the first little publications that showed all the byelaws
– but again this was just for Kinder. I don’t think we got guidance again after that, in
writing. You had to do your own. A lot of information was available. I can remember buying
my first, it was the first copy of the Peak District that came out, that was done specially by
the Ordnance Survey that was just showing the moorlands of Kinder and the Peak District.
It was brought out special for walkers and it was only one inch to the mile at that, that one.
But it was better than what we had been having, you know – Bartholomew’s’ Maps or
something like that that was half inch to the mile. That’s how I first started walking in the
Peak Park.
I remember drawing, I’ve still got it, where we drew out all the boundaries of all the
different landowner’s and a lot of it was, of course, was Water Board at the time, you
know, Manchester Corporation Water Board. Well, I suppose now it’s all North West
Water, but I bet the boundaries are all the same, all shaded up, all the different bits and
pieces. Talking about maps has brought me onto another one which, where you could
expect trouble. I think it was the Manchester Evening News, or the Guardian, sometimes
used to print walks. Talk about crude, there was hardly anything on it, any real details, just
this little dotted line going round that would say, you know, Glossop Low and tha knows
something else and Wainstones tha knows, this sort of thing. We used to get people
coming out walking just normally in shoes and this is all they’d got this piece of paper…if it
rained of course they’d lost that! We used to be warned about that sort of thing and be
ready for them, but I don’t actually remember anybody getting into trouble with it, but we
used to think “Oh dear, you know, if that’s all the information they’ve got, if the cloud came
down (as it quite often did when you’re on Kinder), what on earth are they going to do”
(Did you meet any of the landowners)
Yes, yes we knew quite a lot. Well, not the owners, the gamekeepers probably, the agents.
I don’t think I ever met one of the actual owners, no. But got to know quite a lot of
gamekeepers.
10

(Were they quite cooperative Did they mind the public)
I think they resented us really but not all, not all, no but they knew different times didn’t
they When they had absolute control of it and they’d lost it. Mind you they still had a job
to do, still got a job. But I don’t think you’ll find many grouse and what not up on Kinder any
more, don’t know, unless they come back with the fauna being replaced by the National
Trust. You still see the white hares up there though. Last time I went up, we put one up on
the top there, which quite surprised me and that was only last year, one of the white hares.
(They would have been more common)
Yes. Mind you, they tended not to show themselves you know, they didn’t flee when you’re
walking towards them until you were almost putting your foot on them and you’d be more
startled than what they were because suddenly they’d shoot up and be gone. If they’d
stayed put you would never have known. They’d give you quite a start.
(You didn’t go when it was the grouse shooting time)
Yes, I’ve had to do patrols when they, grouse shooting was taking place round the
perimeter and what not. Never had any trouble with anybody else. The dates are
published, they don’t close the whole moor off, it’s only a small piece of it so you’ve got
somewhere to say “No I’m sorry, but they’re shooting that section today, but all that side is
open”, you could redirect people to where they can go and get a good walk on the moors,
so…that again was part of the actual access agreements that they wouldn’t close it all off
at any one time. I think all that still stands to my knowledge. I think the access agreements
are a very good deal to be quite honest.
(Why, because you’ve got the freedom)
Well, you’ve got that freedom apart from just a few days a year when they might close a
small piece off.
(Were you all men, young lads)
No. No. There were young ladies present as well. Ladies, couples used to come out
together. There’d be more men than women I suppose, but there were a considerable
number of women. I never thought of it really that way before, whether it was a bit sexist;
no it isn’t.
(And the Nags Head, that played an important part)
Nags Head in the early days Yes it did, yes. Well Fred Herdman was one of the great
advocates of opening the moors up to the public and what not because he also knew all
the gamekeepers and he used to be up and around all the time, you couldn’t keep Fred
Heardman off the moors. And one of the arguments the landowners was that there’s
dangerous bogs on Kinder and I understand that he said well “Find me one and I’ll jump in
it”. So he went there and he went up to his ankles you know. So that was the end of that
argument. I understand that’s true; Fred Herdman he was a marvelous old gentleman, he
was the landlord of the Nags Head.
11

I seem to remember it was eleven pence a pint, beer, at the time. Eleven old
pence, yes; he didn’t have any pumps, or anything like that, he used to run down into the
cellar with an enamel jug and come up and fill your glasses on the bar.
(A real old fashioned pub)
It was at the time yes. It’s different now, quite different. What else can we say about it
They were wonderful times I know that.
(Yes, I can tell that from the way you’re talking.)
Well, you were with like-minded people, all friendly, all doing the same thing. It weren’t
always, you were together, if you know what I mean, yet you weren’t together, just a group
of like-minded individuals. Wonderful times.
(You said you went in pairs, did you always go with the same person)
No, we used to split off all over the place. Quite a lot of us formed a separate little group,
referred to ourselves as the “Pennine Rambling Club”…and there’d be about twenty or
thirty of us altogether and we would arrange trips elsewhere. We used to go to Snowdon,
Snowdonia, or the Lake District, this sort of thing. Occasionally we’d have a weekend off
from the Peak Park and go elsewhere as a group. We met in Edale and chat
but…everybody used to go in their pairs or individuals up on the moors.
(What would you say were the main changes you notice now in the actual moorland area)
I would say erosion. Many more footpaths than there used to be. There’s paths all over the
place. It’s come round again now but in many ways I suppose, there’s, as a stranger if you
didn’t know your actual hill, your topography, you would never need maps and compass
because there’s paths all over the place. Whereas before you could work yourself round
and get in the path and you could follow it, whereas now, they’re everywhere, so if you
didn’t know the lie of your land, you know, keep the valley on this side, you could be
anywhere. Yes it’s just criss-crossed with tracks and paths. It’s obviously taken a, it’s well
used, overused possibly, but how do you stop people going up there, you don’t, you can’t.
I wouldn’t want to, you know. It’s still nice, it’s still open-air, you’ve still got your views and
you can still get away. There are areas that you can get out of your way. As I say, I went
up last year, we went across an area that still resembled the peat haggs and bits and
pieces…I did my bit of extra erosion again when we put up the hare; across a bit that
people…obviously people don’t cross all that often. Just at the top of the area they know
as the Woolpacks going towards Crowden Thorpe, it’s still a bit of the old Kinder up on the
top there.
(Well thank you very much.)
Second Track
(…it wasn’t just hobnailed boots)
No, no, I never gave it a thought at the time, about the poor old bus drivers. I mentioned it
earlier about the stamping of the feet on the old 28 bus from Stockport up to Hayfield of a
12

morning. The decks had steel strips put down them and I’m sure the buses only came out
on a Sunday for the walkers and hikers cos you were either in big hobnail boots and a lot
of us had proper climbing boots on with tricoonies and clinkers around the side, quite big
nails; and of course you’d be stamping your feet as you were going up and down and
singing the Blue Danube, I think it was at the time. Your feet’d be going… Poor driver
must have been doing his nut downstairs! I don’t think he ever stopped at any of the stops
on the way cos the bus was full. You couldn’t get on at Marple if you wanted [laughter].
(You mean the steel was for reinforcing, the strips)
Yes, extra wear strips…
(Oh right.)
It was all part and parcel of your day out, you know.
(It would be quieter in the evening though People would be tired)
Oh, don’t you believe it. It depends how early they came off the hill and how long they’d
been in the pub, doesn’t it [Laughter]
(Oh right.)
No, believe it or not I don’t remember anyone being drunk or the worse for wear. The
main venue coming back if you were early was to get into Dales Café in Hayfield where
they used to open their cellar up. You used to be able to go down there and get your wet
things off, your peaty things, and put your dry things on out of your rucksack and go up
and get beans on toast and cheese on toast and what not until you caught your bus or
train whichever it was to come home, so that again, the smell of what the cellar was like is
indescribable, with wet, dirty socks coming off…[laughter]. Yes, a place of its own that is!
(So were they opening especially late then to catch people in the evening)
Oh yes, their main trade I think was hikers coming off the hill, yes. Oh the place was
absolutely bursting at the seams with walkers and that. Dales Café…
(They sound good days, yes.)
They were good days. I suppose that side has all now gone, the fact that you’ve got
personal transport. That was part of your comradeship, you know, all getting on the bus or
the train together; you’d all been doing the same sort of thing. Complete strangers in a
way, but not strangers, all part of a group who were walkers or hikers, whatever you like to
call yourselves.
(Yes, of course, when you finish and just get in your own car, you’re cocooned…)
That’s right, all that’s gone, hasn’t it
(Yes.)
13

Interview with Fred Goddard conducted by Christine Handley and Michael Parker in
Stocksbridge Library, Sheffield on 13 th June 2011.
[Recording was started during conversation. Therefore the transcript begins at the first
discernible question.]
MP: What was the name of the gamekeeper that you worked for
FG: Emsley [spelling] …Bert [] Emsley were gamekeeper in them days, yeah.
MP: How long had he been there then
FG: The gamekeepers before this period were the Ward family, quite a lot of Wards there;
[] Ward, Bernard Ward, were two of ‘em I remember distantly like. But he was one of their
son-in-laws, that’s how he got the job like.(00:30)
[inaud] but there was [always] a gamekeeper beside him like more or less. [inaud] when I
used to go on’t moors, working ‘t moors, burning, [] doing things like that. The other jobs
were beating in summer, grouse shooting time. But one o’me jobs and you mention water,
was checkin’t rain gauges (01:00) and we used to have to do that first of ‘t month .
CH: Oh right. MP: How many were they
FG: Oh there were five o’ them on’t moor. Er there were just, you know obviously [inaud]. I’ve
not done ‘em, its been thirty or forty years since I went up doin’ ‘em like. But when you ‘ant
[hadn’t] a gamekeeper or a new one come, I used to go up there and show ‘em where they
were like. We used to get ten shillings for that job on’t moor all day.
MP: And what time period are we talking about What year did you start
FG: I’m talking about ‘50s and ‘60s, yeah.
MP: How old were you then
FG: Sorry
MP: How old was you then, when you first started
FG: I were born in 1929, that’s when I was born; so if that’ll help ya … I’d be … well I went up
to Lee House I’d been married about three year (02.00) when I got Lee House. I got it through
.. through Broomhead like; it were a Broomhead cottage when I got Lee House, which is at
the bottom o’ Long Lane. I don’t know if you know where that is do you
MP: Er, yeah.
FG: Its been done up since I sold and pulled down an’ that. You know where Long Lane is
don’t you
1

MP: There’s a couple of Long Lanes in’t there There’s one in Oughtibridge, there’s one that’s
…
FG: No the [] Stocksbridge Long Lane [] Fever Hospital.
[MP and FG: can’t make out what being said]
FG: … Allen Croft they call that. MP: Allen Croft. CH: Allen Croft (02.30).
FG: That was a Fever Hospital that, when we were going to school an’ that …
CH: Em, em , em … What was that for TB and Scarlet Fever and such
FG: That’s right, Isolation Hospital. It was yeah …
CH: Isolation, yeah, em, em … Was it isolated at that time
FG: Was it
CH: [more loudly] Isolated …
FG: Oh yeah. Nobody were allowed to go in like. When’t patients went in, they couldn’t have
visitors you had to go in t’ field ... out of field through t’ windows. It were isolated yeah [03.05].
So …
CH: You said about helping with the burning and the beating …
FG: What’s that
CH: You said about helping with the burning and beating …
FG: Oh yeah, yeah ... As I say like when you were a gamekeeper short or one had just left o’
something, I’d probably fit in while they got a new one or something like that. Control foxes,
catching rabbits and things like that ... But the Corporation used to do these rain gauges
before then. Then it got pushed on t’ gamekeeper I don’t know why; whether after t’ War or
what.
CH: They did it as a job then .. [CH and FG talking over each other] ...
FG: First o’t month (04:00) and you’d to take a notebook up with your measuring glass … CH:
Right, right, em, em ..
FG: Put amount o’ water in these gauges an’ that were it. Corporation … they were fenced off
... half a dozen stakes an’ some barbed wire, like, it were like a wooden box wi’ open top..
MP: Do they still do it now then
2

FG: Oh no, no, they’ve vanished in that time .... They stopped doin’ it. I don’t know when. I
weren’t involved wi’ it then [04:30]. But I do believe they had them rain gauges on Midhope
Moors and Langsett an’ all moors that fed water in to Sheffield.
MP: Yeah, I should imagine so …
FG: I should imagine they had ‘em [had them] on [] moor.
MP: You can see old newspapers … FG: Yeah … MP … it will show you back t’ 1800s …
FG: Yeah … MP: … telling you amount of rain that fell at Redmires or … FG: Yeah [inaud due
to Mp and FG talking over each other].
FG: Ah well, they’re gamekeepers do ‘em just same as ... or Water Board’s employees
(05:00) but I tell your gamekeepers got job over there. First o’t month it were, yeah ....
MP: Did you manage it for shooting as well
FG: [Only time they didn’t shoot were during the war years, during ‘t war years nobody went
on’t moors, only’t Army. I’m saying nobody; shepherds used to go on gathering’t sheep so
many times a year for marking an’ dipping an’ shearing like that.
[Noise from Advice Centre burglar alarm being set suddenly impinges on proceedings]
FG: I’ve often heard people talk about moors like. There was a chap talking a few weeks ago
like, while I was out for a drink one night about what happened on’t moors in’t War an’ all
these decoys an’ all this on’t moors; all sorts on’t moors. But, you know, no people like us
never went on because Army wouldn’t (06:00) let you go on ‘em. I mean you were kept off an’
that were it. So what happened on’t moors nobody knew only them like. Firing ranges an’
decoy an’ all sorts – so they tell me; but I never saw anything like that, no.
MP: Were these just British soldiers or were they Canadians, Americans …
FG: Americans had it for a firing range at one time; but they were mostly British up until then
like.
MP: Which particular part o’ moors were that Can you remember
FG: Er, well it were, er, that part o’t moors, you know, goin’ oe’r to Agden and that side ... that
I were involved in up there. I spent a lot o’ my young life on’t Old Booth Farm, which, which
bordered on to’t moor; that were on one side o’ Mortimer Road an’ Old Booth was on’t other
side like, ....
CH: Is your family a farming family then [7:00]
FG: My family CH: Yes. FG: No, no ,no … no.
CH: Did you work in the steelworks
3

FG: Well the tenant at Old Booth Farm, er, Mr Colin Hague, he were a friend o’ me dad’s, and
er he’d a son my age an’ we were…. CH: Oh you were pals … FG: … best friends like; I’d
have holidays there an’ ... nights an’ things like that.
CH: So what did you used to do Did you used to help .. was it a dairy farm or a sheep farm
FG: Yeah they kept cows at the time, a dairy farm yeah, yeah; yep.
CH: Did you, er, round them up an’ do the milking then Was it hand milking or …
FG: It were hand milking in those days, yeah, it were yeah, it were, yeah. He used to deliver
milk to Middlewood, Sheffield. Middlewood area like … CH: yeah, yeah …
MP: How did they get there Was it horse drawn carts or …
FG: No, when I started goin’ they had a van [08:00]. They had taken it from there by horse
previously but I can’t remember that, me. They still had the horses when I went, but they
didn’t use ‘em for that job like. Well there were no tractors then so you had to have horses like
[laughter].
MP: Did they grow any cereal crops
FG: Er … yeah, they would grow a bit o’ cereal crops, yeah.
MP: What type Wheat or oats, or …
FG: Mostly oats I think. I can’t remember them growing barley in those days. Mostly oats,
yeah.
MP: Was that for human consumption as well as the horses
FG: It were’t mostly for’t stock like; yeah, yeah, em, yeah.
CH: Did they ever collect bracken or anything like that
FG: You what
CH: Did they ever collect bracken or anything at all Can you remember [09:00]
FG: No. No. No. I can’t remember ever doing anything like that, no, no, no. I suppose there
were no silage in them days; they just made hay like. That was all, you know and put it t’
cattle in winter, horses, sheep, what ever they had. He’d a few sheep an’ things like that.
CH: So it was mostly cattle farm, you know, dairy farm …
FG: Yes it was mostly cattle cows, yeah, yeah.
MP: Any involvement with sheep
4

FG: Not a lot, no. Not a lot to do with any, no. I used to watch em when they were gathering
on’t moors and bring ‘em off moors an’ that, you know. But I didn’t have anything to do with
‘em really, no.
MP: Were you ever involved in controlling bracken; like cutting it down for’t shooting season
or anything like that
FG: No, no. No, no, I never knew ‘em cut bracken [10:00]. They didn’t cut bracken while I was
there, no, no.
MP: Would it have been a problem Was there quite a lot of bracken around that particular
area that you worked
FG: There wasn’t as much as there is now [laughter] put it that way!
MP: It is spreading in’t it
FG: It is, yeah, yeah.
FG: You asked me about cereal crops, an’ I’ll tell your something to do wi’ … when the War
started, they got a team o’ people, well government controlled things, called the War
Agricultural Committee. And they brought mostly people who didn’t fight in’t War for some
reason, or Land Army girls, you know, and they brought tractors in t’ district; and they’d a
depot at Wigtwizzle, actually where my son lives now; they’d a depot there at Wigtwizzle. And
every farmer had to plough extra land up to make more ... for’t War effort. Obviously they
couldn’t get wheat from Canada and America in them days could they like [11:00] they had
to grow their own you see. Well Broomhead Farm, it wasn’t a big farm, even though they had,
you know, hundred acres o’ land it weren’t a very big farm really. But they came and they
ploughed that park up, ploughed a lot of Broomhead Park up, they ploughed that up. And
what they called new pieces across other side of Mortimer Road. That were moorland. They
burnt all that off, cut trees down and ploughed it; an’ that were a massive piece. And the first
year, when it were all ploughed, they grew corn, Broomhead. An’ they came from miles to
watch that field when it were cut; they’d never seen a field as big as that wi’ corn. An it were
cut old fashioned way. There were no combined harvesters, but were old fashioned way...
MP: With scythes
FG: Yeah, an’ it were, what ya call it binder, binder. An’ when it come to threshing [12:00].
Instead of having ordinary half day, Broomhead, or something like that, had three days
threshing; which were a lot. And er, they couldn’t get corn in’t barn, the straw wouldn’t go in’t
barn, so they’d to build stacks outside, then they’d a problem where to put corn. So they
knocked the window out of Broomhead Hall and stored it in there.
MP: I were gonna ask you what [inaud] I was going to get on to Broomhead Hall [laughter].
FG: I beat ya to it then. So that’s how Broomhead Hall started going derelict. they knocked
windows out.
MP So it hadn’t been used then
5

FG: No, no, it hadn’t been used since war’t started really; no, no. Captain Wilson moved into t’
cottages at side. So that’s how they solved the corn problem.
MP: [13:00] So was it fairly productive land then
FG: Aye it was. They grew potatoes, a lot of potatoes. Year after, I don’t know when it were, a
couple o’ [] but it were during’t war; they stored ‘em all in’t Hall as well. Potatoes like, em,
em. You know, it went from being a small arable farm to a massive farm; must have increased
their output by, I don’t know what, but …
MP: So how come they didn’t keep it up after the war
FG: I don’t why. ...They were up to a few year ago growing quite a lot of corn, but as I said, it
seems this last ten year it seems to have gone, they don’t grow any at all now. [14:00].
MP: When was it that your involvement with moors stopped really
FG: With what
MP: When was it that your gamekeeping duties with the moors stopped Any idea of the
year
FG: No I don’t know. It just petered out like. I just went on’t moors an’ er, just at beating,
actually they’d got some regular gamekeepers. They’d got two besides this chap I’m talking
about they’d got two gamekeepers then. And apart from ... lookin’ after that area, trappin’ in
that area, foxes an’ that, I er didn’t get on’t moors a lot only at t’ grouse season, I used to go
up beating; but I didn’t go on a regular basis, because there a few of ‘em there regular like.
CH: (15:00) Did you find any, erm, you know, difference in, say from when you first went on,
to when you’d, you know, finished
FG: A difference
CH: You know, difference in the grouse …
FG: Money went up, put it that way! [laughter] it went up from ten shilling a day to two pound
a day. And now its thirty five pound a day now. But I’m not involved now unfortunately
[laughter].
CH: That just for beatin’
FG: Yeah CH: Yeah FG: Yeah. That’s what me son gets but he goes on regular like, yeah
[laughter].
MP: I thought people volunteered for doin’ things like that!
FG: They’re not so short of volunteers now I can tell ya! [laughter].
6

CH: Oh yeah, at thirty five pounds a day, be alright wouldn’t it
FG: [ Inaud]
MP: Who owned the land then that you used to work on
FG: [16:00] Broomhead, Broomhead. Broomhead estate owned most o’Ewden Valley.
MP: Which family were that The Wilsons
FG: It were Captain Henry Rimmington Wilson, when I were involved wi’ it like. An’ now its his
grandson Ben.
MP: So its still in’t family then
FG: Yeah.
MP: The Hall’s been demolished, there’s just a farm there
FG: Well, he’s just, what ya call it, three or four year ago he started altering’t farm buildings
and er, making one o’these heated, heated pile under soil heating or something; I don’t know
how he’s done it. I’ve not bin in to look at it, but it’s got these solar panels and all sorts now.
He’s trying to do it this modern way [17:00]. ... one o’ buildings, an’ he has moved into live in it
now like, yeah. He’s only a young chap, about thirty three year old or something. I’ve seen ‘im
to talk to a few times like.
CH: So how many days did they go shooting
FG: How many days did they shoot on the moors you mean Er, ... I’d say four or six days
on’t what we’d call big moor; then they used to do round about. They were only half days
them an’ that, so they’d spend about six days on’t big moor I believe, yeah.
CH: What’s the sort of bag that they’d get Do you know that
FG: Did what
CH: What sort of bag did they get How many did they …
MP: How many brace …
FG: It weren’t a lot in them days [18:00] but, er, they had the record for’t all the British Isles at
one time Broomhead, an’ that were in’t 1930s I think or something like that; me son’s got
record at home me son’s got papers that belong, that he’d have someone give him. An’ I
could get it off him if you wanted to know record like.
MP and CH: Yes, yes.
FG: He’s got ‘em; ah, yeah, erm, yeah…
7

CH: So was it a good moor, a good moor then
FG: It were a good moor yeah, yeah. It were the best in the country then when it got that
record bag. It tells you all’t guns an’ all about it, ... interesting. I only saw it not long since. I
knew he had it like.
CH: Well that would be interesting.
MP: He was quite a good shot himself though wasn’t he One of Wilsons.
FG: I think he were included in’t guns like, I’m not sure.
MP: One of the best in’t country at one bit. [17:00]
FG: Were he Ah, yes, possibly so …
MP: He’d got a good reputation.
FG: Possibly so, yeah, I wouldn’t know that one; emm.
CH: Can you remember when they started planting all the trees on the …
FG: Yes, aye very well. [laughter]. Er when they made a reservoir, they just planted between
the road and’t water itself and just planted, you know, that area. And then they started
purchasing all this land, round about, and, pullin’ farms down an’ everything and plantin’ ‘em.
That’d be in’t nineteen forty, nineteen fifty when they did all that.
CH: Right. So that would make a real impact on the moors, that would make it …
FG: Incidentally, for’t last four, five or six year, a lot of those trees have been pulled down and
sold for wood, and its been replanted [20:00] so that’s in my life time. It’d been there fifty
years old trees and felled and … They’re growin’ again, next lot [laughter].
FG: I’ll tell you what I have started doin’, I don’t know if you’ll be interested at all, you’ll think
I’m daft I don’t know,, but anyway. Me son got me on to it; he said you want write, to talk
about old farms in’t Ewden Valley and there were a lot ‘o farms in Ewden Valley, when I were,
well when I were going to school an’ ... like that. An’ ‘alf of ‘em have vanished completely.
Waterworks has planted trees on’t land, an’ farms has fallen down or took ‘em down an’
destroyed ‘em an’ all like that. I mean, I remember ‘em working an’ people living there, an’ I’ve
written them all down an’ everything.
MP: Was that a direct policy of the water company then [21:00]
FG: Yeah. Water company an’, yeah, water company. One or two were Broomhead
properties, two of ‘em were Broomhead properties, they didn’t re-let them for some reason; I
don’t know why like. But all’t rest were waterworks. They planted all the land and in a lot o’
cases destroyed’t places like. Wigtwizzle Hall an’ Wigtwizzle Farm, they all vanished like.
MP: You’ve got all the names of them then have you FG: Yeah, em, em.
8

MP: Could we have a copy of that for the record
FG: Yeah, I think so. I started doin’ it one winter like. I included, you know, Broomhead end of
‘t valley down t’ middle like, what I’ve been involved in mostly. There’s one farm, I’ve never
found’t proper name for it yet, I’d like to know that, I don’t know [22:00]. I were going to ask
you if you’ve got any old maps of Ewden Valley what you’ve got, or seen anything like that.
MP: there’s some in Local Studies that go back to about1906 I think ...
FG: Well, this one was tenanted then, what I’m talking about. Up Ewden Heights, that way. Its
just derelict now like but .. In me younger days I worked with an old man who went to school
from there. He went to Midhope school, from that farm. That’d be ooh I don’t know. We used
to call it West Spot, but I don’t know what its proper name is, I don’t know. I’ve never found
out its proper name. Have you seen it, ever seen it on a map called that No.
CH: But I mean we can have a look can’t we If you point us in the direction on the modern
map.
FG: Well I tell you what I was going to do, I was going to, have asked several people its
proper name. But I was going to ask Ben Wilson his self. I thought well its on his land and he
owned where it is so he ought to know its name, didn’t he He should have some old
documents. (CH: Yes, he might do.) So that’ll be my next project to see him. [laughter –
indistinct]
MP: That’s why we try to record it.
FG: That’s why I write them down, my son told me that, he said “you know all about these
farms and who lived there”. He said, “why don’t you write it down”I said, don’t know.
Anyhow, I did, I started like and I thought its more or less done and then you think about what
you haven’t put down and you want to add them to it.
CH: Add to it, yes. So, where did you go to school then
FG: Where did I, yes in Stocksbridge, I lived in Stocksbridge in Bracken Moor, me. It was a
Broomhead house, yes.
CH: So you used to come walking over down the tops then Through, down the lane to the
school
FG: I lived at Bracken just up here at the back of the clock tower. (CH: Oh right) Bracken
Moor, just there, yes. I went down to the church school and then the modern school there,
yes.
MP: Is that the one at the bottom of Nanny Hill
FG: Yes, I went to that Church school, yes, when I started school, yes.
9

MP: Is that where Nanny Hill got its name from because of the woman who used to keep the
school when it first started, do you know
FG: At Nanny Hill, I don’t know, I’ve no idea – it might be but I don’t know why.
MP: I think it was because she was called, Nanny somebody or other, that started the school.
FG: I’ve heard of Nanny goats but its nothing to do with that! [laughter]
MP: Well that’s the story I’ve heard anyway.
FG: Well you might be right. I’ve never heard anybody talk about it really – never thought
about it.
MP: Do you remember any problems with the weather up on the moors, big snowfalls or
anything
FG: I remember that snowfall in 1947, that big one like. I remember that one very well, yes. I
wasn’t involved, I was working, just started working like and well I didn’t get over there very
much like then like well you couldn’t get over there, they were snowed in. There was many a
week on that farm where you never went out like, you couldn’t get the milk out or nothing, I
know it was a tough time for them.
MP: And where did you used to work then, down in Fox’s.
FG: I were an electrician round there, yeah.
MP How did they go on then during 1947 Because apparently that couldn’t get coal for the
furnaces, they had to shut the furnaces down
FG: Well they may have done I don’t know. I was involved in the coil and strip end where they
made steel for razor blades, rolled it and all that, I weren’t involved in t’furnaces so I don’t
know. I couldn’t tell you that. Well I know people couldn’t get here from Barnsley and had to
stop for days they couldn’t get home. I remember that happening.
CH: Did you used to go and pick bilberries on the moor
FG: I did, yeah, I still do [laughter] yes, still got some in the freezer from last year [laughter]
CH: Do you all have your favourite bilberry picking place then Not trying to find out from you
but...
FG: Er, well I lived at the bottom of Long Lane, 40-some years like and always picked them in
that area there. Walked round with me dogs and everything, see where there was some nice
bilberries and go and pick them.
CH: Were you a mushroom picker as well
10

FG: Aye, I’ve picked mushrooms as well, when it were, when they were didn’t come up very
often but when they did I picked them like. Some years there weren’t any and I don’t know
why.
MP: Where did you get your knowledge of mushrooms from From books, or did somebody
teach you
FG: Knowledge of mushrooms
MP: Well you’ve got to know which ones to pick haven’t you
FG: Well they always told me if you pick a mushroom, and you can peel it, [it’s fit to eat].
[laughter]
MP: My mother used to tell me that. [laughter]
FG: I’ve never picked magic mushrooms, I know that. Never got into that job. [laughter] I used
to watch ‘em coming into the fields above Lee House, young lads bending down picking these
little tiny, little tiny things. They said they were magic mushrooms.
MP: [Inaud] ...You can get some mushrooms that are really poisonous and they look very
similar to edible (FG: yes, yes) and if you don’t know what you are doing you are in dire
schtuk you know.
FG: I’ve never had a book or anything like that, I’ve just seemed to know which they were like.
Well they grew in a certain area you know if you see them there like.
CH: Did you have any specific names for them You know, the mushrooms
FG: Any names No, don’t think so. Them little ‘uns are button mushrooms and them right big
ones are horse mushrooms, we used to call them horse mushrooms that’s all I can tell you. I
don’t know ‘owt else like.
MP: Did you ever go collecting rosehips as a child
FG: We used to collect them during t’war for the war effort, everybody used to collect them in
war like, be sent from school.
MP: Did you get quite a lot then
FG: Aye, yes if you knew where to go for them, we used to go over to Ewden there as we’d
like seen over there like. They used to give you time out from school to go and get them.
MP: Came across references to people at school at Green moor collecting them during 1940s
and things.
FG: Don’t know what they used them for.
MP: Vitamin C.
11

FG: Aye yes they would, that’s right (inaudible)
CH: did you used to go out and bring them back to school
FG: Yeh, pile them up, yes. I suppose t’authorities would then collect them from school like.
We didn’t get nothing for it we just used to go and collect them for war effort.
CH: did you used to go blackberrying at the same time
FG: Don’t know, do they come out at the same time We used to go blackberrying though,
make blackberry jelly and things like that, yeh. (inaudible)
CH: Did you used to keep pigs or chickens or anything like that in the war
FG: Did I ever keep (CH: or your family) Well yes ... kept chickens , always kept chickens in
fact I’ve still got some at my son’s at Wigtwizzle , still got some there now, yes … been
involved in poultry like but never had any pigs or animals anything like that or a goat.
CH : shall we have a look at the maps and you can point us a few things out. Its not a very old
map but does show you the area – Wigtwizzle, White Lea, West Spot.
FG: Yes, used to go there quite a lot , White House where you used to see there was … farm
and that’d be Broad Lea farm and Cyril … at Wigtwizzle but the place that I was looking for
was up here, Ewden Heights going up there. (CH: like Barnside Farm) yes, there was
Barnside Farm, Barnside Coit Farm is marked on the building but over here like there’s this
derelict barn. Derelict farm here like in that area, there’s a barn up there. They call it Batty’s
barn, just a derelict barn, not much left of it at all. That gate there, we called it West Spot (CH
– just up here) Yes, there’s remains of a building and house like, not much left now like.
People have gone and took stone away and things like that, you know, pinched slates off
many years ago now, but that’s why I want to know proper name. I’m not sure. (CH: we can
have a look on some of the old maps see if we can find anything there.) See, what I’ve done
me son’s got an old map of Ewden Valley, Broomhead end of Ewden Valley before ‘t reservoir
was built.
MP: Has it got Pog’s wood on, do you know
FG: I can’t remember, I think its called Horse Wood if I remember rightly.
MP: Pog’s Wood is just up the hill from Horse Wood - Horse wood is right at the side of the
reservoir.
FG: Oh, and Pog’s Wood is next one above it. Oh, there used to be houses there. Pog’s
houses at one time, you know there were two houses.
MP: I’ve found some old ruins in there and summat that looked like a doll’s house that’s been
built and there’s trees growing all round it.
12

FG: You’re talking about a pair of houses at Pog’s like, in fact my wife was born in Ewden
valley and she remembers people living there. Well, I know what families lived there. I found
that out but then they were pulled down after they left you know. Corporation pulled them
down and planted over the land.
MP: I’ve found an odd stone building, it looks fairly ancient, like a piece of wood that’s a beam
and its got wooden dowelling in it, not nails or screws or anything like that.
FG: In that Pog’s wood area.
MP: Yes, in Pog’s wood, right on the edge of the wood there’s like a field bordering on
towards, down to’t road, towards where reservoir is and I took some photos , not come out
very well.
FG: I can’t remember Pog’s Wood being mentioned on that old map of me son’s.
MP: But just before you get to it is like a dumbbell.
FG: Horse wood is in that area near the reservoir. (CH- Pogs Wood is up here) Yes, Pogs
Wood is above it like going up to the road above that.
MP: I know I found it on the old maps because pre reservoir there was only a little bit of wood
and nowadays ... but you’ve got this side here and that’s horse wood isn’t it (FG – yes,yes)
and carrying up here and that little green bit there, that’s old Pogs Wood. (FG – oh) but now
its a bit bigger its been planted out and in there there’s an old building that’s dilapidated and
I don’t think it looks like a farmhouse. I think it looks like summat that was used as storage,
summat like that.
FG: Can I just, is it a small building Or ...
MP: Well, there’s just one small building that looks like a doll’s house and that’s in one part of
the wood. And when you start walking through it you come across to’t boundary with these
fields round here and then there’s an old stone-built building with old wooden beams that’s
got dowelling in.
FG: Is it torn down, that building
MP: most of it is, yes. There only seems to be one little square entrance to it, doorway and all
rest seems to have been built up like some sort of storage thing. Well I can’t find it on any
maps or in Local Studies.
FG: Well, I tell you who’d know about that, its on his land. Edmund Wainwright at Kenyon
Farm. That farm just on left of road going up. Its in one of his fields further over I think but I
haven’t seen that for years.
MP: Well we only discovered it by accident because we were looking for an old tree that was
supposed to be there and seeing if it was surviving.
13

FG: That little building you talked about, that small building..
MP: That’s fairly OK on the outside all intact on the outside but no floors on inside.
FG: Still a roof on it
MP: Yes, like a doll’s house.
FG: Tell you what that’s there for, to store dynamite for reservoir. It’s called ‘Powder
magazine’ is that. Powder magazine, we’ve always called it that. That’s where you store
blasting stuff for ‘t quarry when they were building reservoir, blasting store out for reservoir.
MP: so is that where there’s that big scar comes from in, because if you go into Pogs wood
from... You’ve got the roadway there and then another roadway there and between them two
roadways there’s like a big canyon, big scar, trench that has been dug out, not a natural
feature ‘cos its got two straight sides on. Its about twenty or thirty foot deep. The only thing I
can think of that it was for was for getting stone and clay for when they were building dams
but as I’ve said I’ve looked on all the maps that are available in Local Studies and archives
and there’s not one sign of it whatsoever its just un-titled land. I just don’t understand how you
can have such a big feature like that, that’s not recorded on maps
FG: No, no I can’t just place it me, you know.
MP: Fairly overgrown now and if you’re not careful you can easily fall over the edge into it.
And its a great place for bilberries, you can get bilberries.
FG: And is it on private land
MP: No, public footpath, say’s here Pogs Wood public footpath and it takes you up to that
White Lea road. (FG – Oh yes, off there.)
CH: So is it somewhere round here Michael
MP: Yes, on that scale map. Its a lot bigger wood now because its been planted out, that road
and probably up this road.
FG: There’s an old quarry there, are you in that area where the old quarry is, there (MP:
can’t remember a quarry, no) Probably not come across that.
CH: It might be because if you came along this edge...
FG: It is on private land, the quarry because there’s a gate on the end. In fact the man’s just
put a new gate on, who owns it, in the last six months. It was an old wooden gate, broken
down you could walk in and out as you wanted but now he’s put a proper metal gate on, a
new one.
MP: Because upstairs (in Stocksbridge library) they’ve got an A-Z of this area and it hasn’t
even got this wood on. So its got the milepost on down this end but hasn’t got the trees ...
14

FG: Well I tell you what I’ve done, Michael, with me son’s map and I did that two years ago,
mind you he’d got the copy at his home, I didn’t keep it. Its got this valley here before
reservoir was ever thought of. Well as you come down from Bolsterstone and go over ‘t iron
bridge, you know, go left and from where you come down hill and it flattens out from bottom,
all that way round here, that road wasn’t there before reservoir was built. Obviously, your road
come down from Bolsterstone and crossed over here, crossed over here to Rushy Lane and
Harris Lane crossed over to there. Well, when reservoir was built they had to build a new road
right round and that’s how the iron bridge come to be. The original bridge were in bottom
there and was all stone.
MP: When level’s low, I don’t know about Broomhead but when Morehall is low you can see
what’s like a roadway going across.
FG: Yes, you can.
MP: Yes, to meet road going up the hill.
FG: There was a drawing[] mill down there by the side of the river and there was a pub as
well, couple of cottages in that area like, they’ve all been pulled down and vanished like.
MP: What did you call the pub
FG: Well they just called it Broomhead public house, that’s all they call it on’t map.
MP: It was a separate house was it, wasn’t part of a barn
FG: Don’t know, couldn’t tell you. I’ve no photographs.
MP: Because sometime, a lot of times they used to have these pubs that were just like an add
on to the farming business to catch passing trade.
FG|: Yes, I know about that. A pub at Wigtwizzle was called the Sportsmans Arms, I definitely
know that. But that went before my lifetime that.
MP: And did people from Stocksbridge area used to go out to the pub for a drink and a picnic
like
FG: Yes, should imagine so. But I tell you, I’ve put reservoir on this map what me son has, ...
put the reservoir on and put the old roads on where it used to be, like roads from many years
ago before they did away with them and there are what they called the new roads then.
MP: Well that road at bottom is called New Road.
FG: Yes, it is called New Road, it is a new road.
MP: terrible at remembering names but New Road always sticks, a very novel thing new road
– took a lot of imagination ... [laughter]
15

CH: So when you were talking about them ploughing up in the Second World War was it
almost that area then – Broomhead Hall
FG: All that part, and also they ploughed that big piece there across the road. What we called
New Pieces, where it was moorland when I went to school. They then came (CH: and
ploughed it) and cultivated it all, yes, its still grass now like.
MP: There’s like a wooded copse there isn’t there.
FG: Yes, a little tiny wood there, yes just at the back of there. There’s only a few trees and
that at the back of there, that’s the right place.
CH: Yes, its just that little bit sheltered down there.
FG: Yes, yes
MP: Did they plough round the stone circle then (FG: don’t know) There’s an old stone circle
there.
FG: Ah, yes there is but (MP : did they get as far as that or...)
FG: Its just off the track that, that goes up to t’cabin, t’ shooters cabin, just off right hand side
of track, stone circle.
MP: Did they plough as far up as that during war
FG: When (MP: during war)
FG: During t’war, you wasn’t allowed to go up there during t’war, couldn’t go nowhere there.
CH: Its just this area round here (Broomhead Hall on map) isn’t it
FG: Yes. When the war was on there was an aeroplane came down one afternoon and we
watched it flying low, me and my friend at Old Booth farm. We were after fetching the cows in,
when it happened. We saw it coming down and heard this noise, anyway it come down on
t’moors this aeroplane. Anyway it didn’t get on fire like it came down, crashed and er but we
couldn’t see off road but we knew he was up there somewhere. So we decided to go up on
Sunday afternoon and have a look at it. Because, as kids we used to get bits off these
crashed planes. If we could manage to get souvenirs off like and that was it when you took
them to school. We decided to go up on Sunday like and see what we could do and we went
up on Sunday me and him on Sunday afternoon. And there were a tent pitched not very far
away from it. Anyway there was nobody there like, we got to’t plane and just as we tried to
open the door and try and get inside, two men came out of tent. They were soldiers, like
guarding it or supposed to be, they were asleep in the tent I think or something anyway they
came out (CH: chased you off)
MP: British one or German one
FG: British plane, yes British one.
16

MP: I’ve heard stories about a German plane coming down on Broomhead Moors, more over
Wharncliffe Side area.
FG: There was a lot came down on moors during war, there’s a book published about them.
MP: Oh, there’s quite a few books.
FG: As I say you never went on moors to see them because you weren’t allowed on moors
anyway. People’s found ‘em since then, haven’t they over Barnside and that. ... Well I think I
was right about all them farm epistles. Like I was saying to my son, everybody else’ll think I’m
daft.
CH: We don’t think you are daft!
FG: I only showed it to him so, anyway, he thought it were very interesting him,like.
MP: If we could have a look at it and have a copy, we’d be very grateful... pass it on...
FG: Yes, what I’ll do, what I’ll do, I’ll go through it again as I’ve bits to add on, things I’ve
found out about since I wrote it. I’ll let you have it definitely, yes.
CH: Well if you give us your address, I can give you ours.
FG: Yes, yes, well me name’s Fred Goddard [says address]
CH: Now, would you like a cup of tea, now you’ve been talking
FG: Yes I was just looking at clock.
[pause in recording]
FG: Yes, that was Lea House there and on that junction ...
MP: Yes, that is a private house, now. I used to know one elderly chap some years ago, he
died back in the 1980s, he used to reckon that Long Lane was a Roman road. (FG: Oh, did
he) Don’t know where he got it from, used to swear blind that was a Roman road.
FG: No, never heard of that.
MP: Because there is a Long Lane just above Oughtibridge as well.
FG: Yes there is, there is , yes.
MP: And when people are talking about you automatically think about one only.
FG: goes to Worrall doesn’t it
17

MP: One thing always puzzles me about these A-Zs, they never have Wharncliffe Side in as
separate. Goes to Oughtibridge then it stops and then starts again.
FG: Oh does it
[conversation about biscuits with tea]
MP: Another old name Onesacre.
FG: Ah, yes that’s it.
MP: Goes down to Cockshutts, not all that long now. Before, you used to go up there.
FG: Yes, that’s er when you go up there ... that’s where garden centre.
MP: There’s a Coal Pit lane at Worrall.
MP: Coal pit one the other one...[]
FG: Aye it is yeah, aye yeah
CH: We got this picture [grouse shooting bag] from one of the Stocksbridge books
FG: Oh yeah
CH: It’d be before your time that wont it but uh...
FG: Incidentally Broomhead Moor has had one of the best years, the best years last year for
grouse that they’ve had for many many year...
CH: Yeah, Did you used to use horses when you were, when you were...
FG: Used to use
CH: Did you used to use horses
FG: No, No [51.28] a vehicle like yeah, no horses
CH: Did all the gamekeepers meet up you know like they have separate moors
FG: Yeah
CH: And did they used to meet up and
FG: Oh yeah they’d meet up, we used to meet up when we had, well we’d meet up for when
we had these fox drives and all that
CH: Right yeah
18

FG: Used to come to other moors with guns and that we’d beat through and fetch foxes out,
our keepers used to meet up …
CH: Did you help with burning as well
FG: Yeah, we always burnt our own moor, unless one got on fire and you couldn’t put it out...
[laughter]
MP: Can you remember any big fires on’t moors. Midhope and things like that. [52.37] What
year they were
FG: No I can’t remember especially like no, but I do remember it happening … when winds
got blowing and its set it off like the wrong way.
MP: has any such thing happened like that in the war years [52.59], where fires got started
because of ammunition they were using
FG: No I don’t know I can’t remember, I can remember it no, as I say I weren’t involved with
moors in war [] You see what you do when you’re burning moors, I mean I say like, they tend
to go up like and burn a strip of moor [53.20] y’know size of this room I don’t know a strip of
moor up then they burn the strip of moor off that way something like that then go up one day
that wind’s in right direction and light it there and it’ll not burn out of control [...] that’s how
they do it like in theory [laughter] but if wind changes when yer half way through like [53.45]
[laughter]
FG: [ 53.49]
MP: ....[] smoke follows you round done it, keeps blowing at you [53.56]
FG: There’s a method to burning moor, know what I mean, do it properly like you have to
CH: so what …
FG: it might be a week or more waiting for a proper wind to burn a certain area, you don’t just
go up with a box of matches and set fire to a bit o’moor and hope for best, you do it with a
system … might not look like it when you’re looking at it … but y’do
MP: So how often do you do that then, burn a particular place
FG: From Christmas up to end of March, your not allowed by law to burn after end of March
[54.32]
MP: How long do you leave it before you burn it again then, so its been burnt once how many
years is it for
FG: I don’t know I couldn’t tell you how long
MP: Is there a sort of cycle
19

FG: Aye cycle yeah, you get very what you call very ‘leggy’ like, it gets up here and it’s no
good to grouse or anybody else then, that last burn and then they want new stuff to come up
[54.58]. I don’t know I can’t remember how many years it’d be I couldn’t tell you that. But once
the moor gets out of hand it takes a long time to get it back into..., I think these chaps now
there’s three of em on’t moors... oh with amount of grouse they’ve shot this last year they
[wouldn’t] have got it into good condition...
CH: I suppose they find bracken a problem don’t they
FG: Aye yeah
CH: It’s a bother
FG: They had helicopter spraying it some years ago …
MP: Do you remember any structures like that then [reservoir defences picture]
FG: I do yeah very much yeah I do…
MP: That’s Langsett, that’s the only photograph we can find but apparently most of reservoirs
in Sheffield area, the larger ones like uh...
FG: I can show you everyone of them square concrete things what the pylons used to stand
on .... I don’t think they took em out those concrete things, they’ll still be there
MP: Well apparently in Eweden they used to be old smoke generators
FG: Smoke generators
MP: so that if enemy aircraft came over or you thought they were coming over to attack the
dams they’d generate all this smoke and make a smoke screen. Apparently they could flood
the valley within a matter of minutes y’ know, with enough smoke to stop low flying aircraft …
FG: Oh, we didn’t know why they [were] putting these up like or what they were for, I was at
school and we didn’t know why but uh when they bombed those in Germany you realised
why... all put it into picture then doesn’t it.
MP: Barrage ballons
FG: Aye, there were barrage balloons, they kept bringing them over and then take em back to
Sheffield...
MP: No its just that I came across some information the other day about Langsett Reservoir
we got that photo but then there’s a photograph of the concrete area where it says that’s
where they used to secure the barrage balloons so I were thinking well were the barrage
balloons there before they put this structure up
FG: I don’t know about that no, I can’t remember that
20

MP: Because if you’ve got that structure up there you’ve got to put the barrage balloons
FG: No, No …
MP: I have to admit I’ve never noticed it, ...[] [shows my] powers of observation doesn’t it.
FG: Do you walk a bit down there[]
MP: I used to yeah quite a lot I haven’t got a dog to discipline me now
FG: If you go down there and then keep going down towards iron bridge you come to that
private road that takes you down to Ewden don’t yer, well ignore that keep coming down and
half roughly half way between there and bottom of ‘t road where it flattens out its just over
wall
MP: is it, oh I’ll have to go look at that
FG: just here [looking at map]
MP: .... I think I might have seen it
FG: and further up banking behind it up that way there’s another big concrete thing up there
and thats where end of, end of this big row that’s where its terminated up there with a big
metal bolt...
MP: thats...[] the side road where they chopped all trees down
FG: Aye, up that banking thing banks still there like, you could find it.
MP: yeah I’ll have to go have a look ; Well one would think so yeah
FG: There’s a corresponding thing on’t other side, I don’t know where they are...[]
MP: I’ve never come across em
[59.51...]
MP: well you’d think so
FG: I’d imagine so yeah; FG: I can’t remember em taking it down, well I might not have been
here when they took em down I might have been away when they took it down but uh I
remember putting the up any road
MP: Any idea what year that was
FG: Er, no, no I could find that out though, yeah
MP: Oh yeah well if you could y’know
21

FG: I will find it out yeah
MP: There’s very sketchy information that’s available about it like its uh
FG: I know a chap from Stocksbridge who worked on it, he worked on that and he’s still living
after [1.00.42] a few a couple years older than me, but I do see him and he worked them as a
young man him, yeah so he’ll know when it was, possibly when he left school because I think
I was still going to school when they put them up here like, yeah.
MP: Well there used to be a place called [Stalker Drill] down Walkley where my aunt, well
think it were my great aunt garden used to back on to it and they used to have a barrage
balloon there
FG: Did they yeah
MP: Used to be an armaments manufacturing works there used to be a big concrete base
there where they used to secure it, weshifted that to make a football pitch. [laughter]...
M: [laughter] y’know somebody [] ... dug it up y’know....[] took us a few weeks but we
gradually got rid of it. [] probably vandalised local history there [] so built over it [1.01.55]
FG: Yeah, I’ll make me next task to see Ben Wilson see if he … see if he ... There’s a little
place, there’s a little place above.. when you looking up banking from ‘t iron bridge lookin up
that way there a little building up there you can see it, you can just see it up the road more or
less, see end of it... looking towards, opposite side to Broomhead side...
MP: Well Moor Lane
FG: Sorry
MP: Moor Lane did they call it
FG: Up towards rabbit warren, towards warren up there like, and that’s called Clough Farm []
I found that out from …[] and there’s like part of building stood up there and part of house
and you can just if you look inside like and all you can see is remains of fireplace in house,...
it’d been a small farm at one time.
MP: How long’s the warren, the rabbit warren been there do you know
FG: Oh all my life
MP: I was just trying to ascertain if it were a bit more ancient, like. Do y’know someone who’s
interested in ancient rabbit warrens [laughter]
FG: … last time that were used for anything , and that gamekeeper I were talking about, that
Emsley that I used to help a lot, he were a young gamekeeper used to , y’know take rabbits
down to that place and gut em and hang em up in there like, ‘cos he’d shoot hundreds of
rabbits like ...and that’s where he used to keep them until he fetched them away with horse
22

and cart... that’s what it were used for y’know after it was deserted like, somebody lived there
like.
MP: Well the only reason I got that out of Fox’s [steelworks] magazine is there’s a publication
by waterworks and it reckons that it’s a photograph of not this one [Strines photo] some other
above Strines reservoir which is supposed to have some wires cross it basically it’s on top of
a hill and it’s looking more like these thin types of things that look like wire.
FG: Oh I see yeah, yeah.
MP: Can ye see []
FG: Yeah, yeah yeah,
CH: communication masts []
MP: I think [1.05.16] were by the university for radio astronomy at one bit and things like that
but wondering if that particular [] has got confused with thing that used to be at Strines... a
catenary defence [2 nd world war for reservoirs]
FG: that big mast [ 1.05.30] there’s a big one just across [] [Westnab] that belongs to
police that, that’s for their, their radio and that []
MP: Can you remember when the defences were built
FG: I can’t verify that [] I were only a lad at school, never went to Bradfield in them days, had
no means of getting there I should imagine it ...
MP: oh they put them up at just practically all the reservoirs along Sheffield but there’s only
that one photograph just this other one at Strines that were taken after the war.
FG: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah
MP: I'm just trying to wonder why they put it on top of the hill [1.06.16] cus its not gonna stop
owt that... so I were thinking they got that photograph confused with that [] ...there’s very few
people that know about these defences...
FG: Like I said if I see Derek, I can definitely find out when they were put up cus he worked
on em [] I’ve heard him talk about it many a time, I knew he were there like.
MP: It’s just getting to that stage now where if you don’t find out soon, while you got the
chance...
FG: Yeah exactly
MP: ...Then your never gonna find out it’s going to be summat that’s lost in’t mists of time, you
know. It’d be a shame
23

FG: Well you see I mean in’t years gone by, well I’m an old man meself now, I mixed old men
in me younger days, I wish I’d took more notice then..., you do don’t you
CH: You do yeah, yeah
MP: Oh I’ve got a stack of old photographs and I don’t know who these people are (FG: No)
I'm sure they got summat to do with our family in past and they must a told me sometime in
past y’know. I just can’t remember it
FG: I mean I mixed with men who came here, waiting for t’ reservoir to start, they come up on,
...they heard they were going to start one [a reservoir] at Ewden so they came to Ewden, got
lodging here, then when it started they got a job here and then when it finished they went
somewhere else... then y’know that were the lifestyle see, you got to be a ... [], a lot of em
stopped here, didn’t go anywhere else after... some moved on some didn’t. I talked to all of
them...
MP: Pity you didn’t have portable tape recorders in them days innit
FG: Tis isn’t it, yeah aye it is yeah
CH: So where did they y’know where did they sort of come from
FG: Where did what
CH: Where did they come from then these old chaps that you used to see at y’know were
they from ...
FG: Well half of them were Irish men, half of em like, single men worked on that type of job
but some were family men and their sons worked at reservoir as well
CH: When you were a youngster, do you remember any of them, who used to sort of come
like, used to advertise for a day job or something, there be a few weeks work and then they
y’know then they’d move
FG: No, not in this area no, more or less happened on these big farms... no not here like. Well
there weren’t big farms here know what I mean, were only small usually a man and his son,
somebody helping him. No I don’t know.
I remember Ewden and all being poor people and they had their own shop there, a recreation
hut and all that. Dances there Saturday night and things like that. They had all them things;
they had a bit of a chapel there and a priest come over Sunday mornings, stop there and had
Mass there for’t Irishman, like. They had all them things like... I did one thing last year, two
years ago, went up to the last Ewden hut to be left there. A chap called Tom Adams lived in it;
in fact he passed away last year, Tom.
But the chap who bought the hut and the land, he had a prefabricated thing bought, like a
chalet type thing and Tom and his wife moved into it because he wanted this hut to pull down
and to build on land which he has done. But I took a photograph of the hut and it’s the last
one that’s up there. I’ve got a photograph of it – I thought it’s the only one left and I’ll take it
before they take it down. The week after it had vanished, they took it down! I went just in time.
24

MP: I though they tried to sell some of them at one bit. I saw something in the Star/Telegraph
a couple of years ago
FG: They have sold some of ‘em. They’ve built on it these last.
MP: They built them six inches too high didn’t they Against planning permission
FG: I went on there last week and they haven’t touched them since last October and they
haven’t got any higher. I think he keeps appealing against it, but what’s happening I don’t
know. That building site hasn’t moved for six months now so. He’s also got two more, the
same chap, since December, so I don’t know what’s going on. They might be too high up an
all – I don’t know. I think that’s one of his problems – short of money.
If you get permission to build them denied, that’s up to you what do, know what I mean
According to Peak Park he can’t build on it; can’t mess them people about, Peak Park people.
MP: Have you had any trouble with Peak Park imposing restrictions
FG: No I haven’t - we’ve had property altered windows and things like that.
MP: Were there any problems with trespassers on moor in those days
FG: I can’t remember any personally, no. There’s always paths...public footpaths; they’re all
over the place now. You can go wherever you want now.
The gamekeepers always wanted to know what you were doing wandering off the footpaths.
MP: Lot of these landlords kept people off – kept them for the grouse; and the mass trespass
on Kinder
FG: I’ve read about them in books that’s all. I mean in my lifetime in Ewden valley when I
were a teenager going around, ...if the Corporation man came around and caught you staring
over the fence – ‘What are you looking at What are you wanting Keep on going, don’t hang
about’
They didn’t like you looking over fence and by Golly if they caught you on other side of fence
they’d be a Court of Inquiry. We used to go like and catch rabbits and some fishing like, and
every now and again they’d catch you over other side of fence like, they’d take you to
Sheffield. Catch you again and you’d be in Sheffield - right carry on - and nowadays they
encourage people to walk round.
MP: If you have a fishing permit... you’re OK, but if you’re caught taking a short cut you’re in
trouble.
CH: I think it’s all about so you didn’t contaminate the water.
FG: Well, yes that was the reason; they don’t seem to bother now do they
Said it were drinking water that top reservoir, said it were drinking water, like, but...
CH: They put that many chemicals in it now don’t they
25

FG: Yes they do. I must admit I don’t like drinking this water and me one son he has spring
water. Incidentally, he’s been over there five or six years now and two years since he put a
filter in for the man next door. There’s only two cottages where he is like, first and second,
and they put a water filtration unit in to check water that came in. He said he wanted it treated,
this water off of up moors, and he swears it isn’t as nice to drink now as before he treated it;
nicer than what it is now. In fact he says he don’t like drinking it now. I don’t know what they
do with it but it is not as nice.
Talking about rewriting his previous written memories and adding further things he’s found out
since he wrote it. (repeats from earlier)
FG: As I say, I remember old farm which is only derelict now, back of Ewden below where
plantation is, further back up there. That’s stood up in a fashion, house has stood, and some
buildings and I remember people living there. I think Mr. Blewitt, had died I think in 1940’s, 50
I think. Then his family left, I know his wife and children.
There were never tenanted after it was left empty after that. I knew the people living there like,
that’s it.
MP: Was it owned by the Water Board
FG: No, that was owned by [inaud]. Obviously there’s no water to it, there’s no electric to it,
nowt like that; that’s probably why they didn’t let it. I don’t know why.
MP: I suppose at that time people were starting to want to have water and electric
FG: Maybe so, Like, yeah. I lived in the house for three years without electric. I were born in a
house at Blacka Moor with no electric, no gas, paraffin lamps, no electric - until I left school at
fourteen there were no electric there. Then I got married and left the house at twenty two and
went back into a house with no electric then! I were three years before they put poles up for
electric to the house.
MP: They put electric in Main Road at first didn’t they
FG: Oh did they Mind, I don’t know.
MP: Then they branched out
FG: I know where the Miners Arms pub, straight opposite football, there were a cottage and
it’s been pulled down for many years now and there’s a bungalow there now but, err, where
the Miners Arms pub is and them houses round about, I don’t know whether they had gas or
not, but no electric there; then they finally got electric in that area then, you know like, they
used paraffin, there were no gas at all. I were seventy years old when I came to live in that
bungalow where I am now and it were the first house I lived in , a house with gas, in my life –
never had it before. I tell you what – it’s better than chopping sticks up and lighting fire, a lot
better it is, a big improvement I tell you!
MP: That’s’ a bit dangerous – the Star used to be a broadsheet paper and used to get fire
going. Put it round front of fire and get a draught going and it’d catch fire!
Talking about the project and other places and people interviewed.
26

MP: Did this on moor and it was much the same there in the 1950’s – no gas, electric and
only relatively recently got modernized. They were also self-sufficient.
FG: All these farms you’re talking about had an orchard to them – pears, apples, plums and
damson trees – used to sell them weekly.
MP: Where was that
FG: Wigtwizzle. There’s only two cottages and that barn conversion there now, there used to
be more at one time.
MP: It’s a fairly smart place that barn conversion
FG: Yeah, yeah. Somewhere in that barn conversion that’s where pub were, somewhere in
there, I’ve never seen a postcard of it so I don’t know like.
MP: I’ve a photograph of it. ...Again that was a farmhouse really. It was a bit of a pub as a
sideline, because you’d got quite a lot ofdrovers going through and people from Stocksbridge
...Victorian times or just after.
FG: I didn’t know that, I can remember all them buildings built, I can remember farm tenanted
, I can remember buildings being there because Corporation bought everything and they had
like, they had it like a depot, they had a bit of a saw; saw things and used to make stakes and
things like that; kept timber and things like that.
MP: I think you can still see some of the buildings. There’s a building still standing there.
FG: Where’s that at
MP: Wigtwizzle. Go up Moor Lane onto Nottingham Road - just on the right there’s a building
set back. Used to be a sort of depot with logs piled outside. Could be the District Council or
Water Board owned
FG: Water Board.
MP: Can you remember Bolsterstone Church tower getting blown down in the 1970’s I’ve got
a photograph of them using a helicopter.
FG: I remember them taking pinnacles up, took them off with a helicopter. I didn’t know about
them blowing down.
MP: A gale in the 1970’s – ‘76 I think – I read it in that Jack Branston book.
FG: You mean to say it blew one of the pinnacles down
MP: It blew one or two of them down and they used the helicopter to drop, them down.
FG: I thought they were using the helicopter to make them safe or something like that.
27

MP: You get different stories from different people I suppose – just because it’s written in a
book doesn’t mean to say its right.
28

Holme Village workshop 2 - Interviews at the Sunday School, Holme Village (28/6/2011)
(Note: Transcript does not follow audio recording exactly. Some sections are paraphrased or
missing.)
General Discussion with Kenneth Denton (KD), Gordon Hallas (GH), Shirley Simmonds (SS),
Arthur Quarmby (AQ), Herbert Beardsall (HB) and IDR / CH etc.
Duration: approx. 1hr 15minutes.
KD: Bracken and bracken cutting mentioned by Ian as harvested in the past as its general
usage was for bedding in farms, it would be commonly used in cowsheds but there was one
usage that was different and probably the last usage of bracken that I recall probably from
1942/44, that vintage when I was a teenager, when the practice was for two or three of us to
use the coal merchant’s lorry, borrowed after his last deliveries of the day. When bracken was
cut by scythe loaded on, heaped on the lorry and tied down and the following morning was
delivered to Hepworth Iron Company which despite its name of course was a producer of clay
drainage pipes and their requirement was that because they had developed an export
business and for that – package purposes – they used the bracken to pack around the pipes
in the crates.
(CH – what time of the year would you be cutting) September / October I suppose.
HB: Used to cut it when it was dry [end of growing season as well as not damp] (AQ: not
very good for bedding was it) No, pretty useless, no absorption at all but if you kept putting
some down and kept it above the level ; I once cleaned some out of a shed in the Lake
District and it was a ……
AQ: but they didn’t have any straw so had to make do.
KD: I don’t recall bracken being cut for bedding just for the purpose I’ve described – only
usage I know of.
1

(CH: And you were saying about uses of sphagnum)
AQ: I think that was my tale. I went with my aunt who was a girl guide leader and helped her
to gather sphagnum at the start of the second world war up Dunholme way. It was used for
wound dressings. (CH: was that a regular thing or just a one-off) That was a one-off.
KD: I added to that but gave the wrong information. Suggested it was funeral directors but it
was florists who had their own patches and went gathering up sphagnum moss to make
wreaths instead of using oasis. (CH: I suppose before oasis it was the only thing to use – did
they have their own patches – paid rent).
....
Gen: No, as they were local people they knew where it grew and just went and collected it. In
those days there was plenty of it about (70 yrs ago) and they were friendly with the
gamekeepers [so caused no trouble].
AQ: Well I was in Norway recently and I said we had cloudberries as well [Cloudberry Rubus
chamaemorus (mountain mulberry)] – they were surprised – up on the moors here, not very
common fruit rather like a blackberry but orange looking / coloured.
HB: I’ve seen it more, never seen it with fruit on – seen it growing and wondered what it was
... not known / wondered what it was. (KD: where) As you come over Holme Edge, just
beyond Black Hill or drop down as if going towards ‘Isle of Skye’ – its towards Dovestones
too, there are a lot of cloudberries there. Didn’t know what it was but I looked it up and my
brother’s found it and eaten it. (Are they nice) Yes but not as good as blackberries though.
AQ: Our vegetation is very limited on the moors you see (IDR can make it (cloudberries) into
a liqueur) – better start collecting it, its commonly found in Norway.
(CH: Do you think the vegetation has changed since you were youngsters, has it always been
poor
2

KD: don’t think of it as particularly poor but natural but not this rich bog stuff you hear about
down south.
GH: But it’s a lot richer / greener than it used to be, Arthur, now they have re-seeded.
AQ: Been talking about peat for fuel and going on the moor but I walk regularly on the old
moor with lots of archaeological remains and where trees have been coppiced, now that’s
why they don’t still have peat rights because they’ve got some woodland left. Now whether
our woodland was all taken away and wiped out or whether there was never much of it about
I don’t know ... only a small area to start with [talking about pre-plantation era].
KD: The only wood we are finding there is in the peat at about four feet deep, five feet deep –
suggests in itself that there was little wood.
GH: There’s a bit outside the back door now [at the Sunday School], the old tree root which
was used to hold the door open at the recent elections.
Thought it was a bit of ‘riverstone’ – no, a tree root from off Holme Moss which came from
Ken’s garden. ( it was brought in an examined and according to IDR was actually a bit of
fossilised giant clubmoss – had scales on which as a child when IDR found it in his local area
he and his friends thought it was a bit of dinosaur because it had scales on – likely to have
been deposited and then washed out of the shale beds and onto Holme Moss at the end of
the last glaciation.)
(CH: to KD - you were talking about cutting the peat when you were a youngster – from the
postcard Whose story – KD was young man on postcard)
HB: I used to go on peat cutting expeditions probably from when I was five or six (early 1950s
to early 1960s). Used to go every year with my father and his friend. My father’s friend
adapted a special wheelbarrow, a very light wheelbarrow which he gave us, when we were
old enough, my brother and myself – gave us strict instructions to let go if it was going to tip
over because the handles would bend, they were flimsy made the wheelbarrow so light – a lot
easier to push up to where you had to. We used to go to the ‘Issues’ peat pits which were
approx. two miles outside the village over rough terrain. You follow the rough track and go up
3

onto the moors and end up where we basically no track at all. And the four of us would cut
peat up there, I mean they used to cut it before I was born. Cut it up there in the mid ‘60s
really but one of the reasons it became less popular was the fact that our peat pit was right up
against the Pennine Way and it ended that we were losing about 50% of what was cut to the
walkers. As they were going past they thought “mmmm peat look” we’ll have a piece. And so
we cut and then lose 50% as we left it drying because traditionally we used to go up at Easter
and cut if the weather was fit. If not, on a weekend near and then at Whitsuntide or Spring
Bank Holiday as it is now we’d go up, well probably go up on a weekend in between and turn
the peats as needed and then at Whitsuntide we’d go up and stack them and leave them in
the stack until the end of August and then we’d take the barrow up and trundle them down in
the wheelbarrow. But we used to have boards to lay them [the peat turves] out on to carry
them for drying - put three or four turves on, depending how strong the boards were. Boards
always stayed there under the heather drop over the pit; always stayed there and they were
there some years after we gave up. In fact within the last 20 years been there and they were
still there – saved us carting them out. (KD: Are the peat knives still there) No, in fact Arthur
Hadfield ( Herbert’s father’s friend) liked a spade although we’d a …, I think Charlie’s tried
cutting with a …… proper manufactured...
GH: There used to be one up there that Frank Hinchliffe used, always left it under the
heather.
HB: Yes, that’s were they left most of the stuff but because Arthur Hadfield had a spade he’d
bring it back with him and use it in the garden I suppose.
SS: So how long exactly was the drying process
KD/HB: Well traditionally cut at Easter and taken off at the end of August.
AQ: Yes, but this year I cut some and was ready a fortnight later because of the dry weather.
HB: You see, Arthur you are nearer the road [therefore can take away before fully dry and at
its lightest]
4

KD: I’m waiting for the next heatwave and might go and cut some (GH: you’ve missed it [the
heatwave]) – yes, mercifully its ended.
GH: Thought the photo IDR showed of the 2 young ladies holding the peat spades ….
(CH: So what’s the difference between a peat knife and a peat spade)
HB: Same thing I think.
KD: Well a knife is shaped so [see diagram in notes from interviews]
AQ: like that ‘V’ shaped with blades at 90 o angle – cutting at the base and the side.
HB: the one my father had was just wood – tapered to the point, was a straight shaft with a
broad – roughly ‘that’ (stretched hands out to about 9inches apart) width blade and the wood
tapered. It was copper sheathed with a wing up and copper sheathing over the pointed bit of
wood and the copper wing came up at right angles.
KD: Yes, I have exactly that – well I had until someone borrowed it, with my permission.
HB: Yes, I think Charlie has …
AQ: What about that shape [rounded end]
HB: No, that’s a hay knife.
KD: Can go into the shed now and fetch one of those out to show you Arthur.
(CH: So, what are hay knives)
KD: For cutting the hay, the block of hay when it had been in the barn. It was solid.
5

HB: This was before hay bales of course, they would compact as much as they can into the
hayloft and by mid-winter with folk walking about on top of it, it would get quite solid of course
and compacted so would have to cut it. Obviously if it’s compacted you could carry a lot more.
KD: And then when you were loading your hay you’d go up to the ‘packing-oyle’ and HB: pack
the hay in from there.
(CH: So that was on top of the barn like a skylight)
KD: Yes in the gable end often a little square or round opening. Can show you one just 20
yards away. (CH will have to take picture – and have)
(CH: So you were saying Ken, you still cut peat)
KD: from time to time, yes. ...
But not the main cutter (on graveship peat cuts) – new chap not sure if he cuts it and then
leaves it to dry or brings it down wet.
HB: Some bring it wet in sacks and then dry it at home on the walls outside.
AQ: main cutter now is that new chap – tried his hand at being a potter.
HB: we always brought it dry in sacks, less weight to carry.
KD: Proper way, I was guilty of malpractice bringing it down wet – carrying water as well as
peat - and drying it on the walls and shed roof.
AQ: we cut down to floor level and then get a flat drying area.
HB: Last I got was, from ‘Issues Clough’ to get a bit in a carrier bag for my mother to use to
say the hearth was still in use when Arthur had to do the list for the Council Smoke Control
area.
6

SS: Did she use it for cooking or for a fire (heat)
HB: No, more of a gesture really .... But Arthur Hadfield living on his own used to mix peat
with paraffin, crumble it and use it as firelighters when he got home from work used to say in
winter he used to have fire quickly. The ‘firelighters’ were about duck egg sized.
KD/GH: We don’t have town gas, so had dispensation to burn on an open fire – registered
with the Smoke Control Officer at Kirklees Council (some discussion about whether this is still
kept up to date and whether anyone would come to check).
AQ: came about (still allowed to burn peat) because of the parallel with the dispensation for
burning peat for domestic used in Ireland and the local councillor being Irish so knew about it.
KD: The biggest change in the local area is that there is no longer any gross pollution so
everything is greener. When Hepworth’s Iron Company was on the go you couldn’t persuade
anything to grow nearby because of the coal-fired kilns etc. when they stopped using coal
because went to natural gas etc trees sprouted on the edge of the site and there are a lot of
them now.
AQ: Similar in other areas, will get more lush growth.
KD: And lots of moss now, nuisance - grow moss like nobody’s business. In old days moss
wouldn’t grow – too much sulphur. Single most significant thing; may say about grazing
pressures but its lack of pollution. Peak District [NPA] helped with reseeding etc. for example
and its grass now around Black Hill. Was always a morass around the trig. point.
HB: First time went with father was some slight erosion on one side of the trig point but later it
got terrible complete morass – eroded all round with the concrete base of the trig. point
exposed all round. Could only get there in dry conditions because it was a morass.
(CH: people’s feet or animals)
7

People, since then with flags down much better.
KD: [related the two stories about getting lost on Black Hill – see written memories] – couldn’t
get lost now – follow the flags
: Many more paths – could still get lost if a blizzard but mostly OK.
HB: Here over to Holme Moss is a good path but the people on the 3 Inns / Peaks walk have
had some close do’s with people being taken with hypothermia etc.
Discussion about place names and Pike Low = Peak Low
(CH: when were reservoirs built)
General: Oh oh! Depends. Original ones built to power the textile mills ( before drinking water
– industrial revolution) There were 3 initially – Bilberry reservoir was one. More should have
been built. Peacock, Hinchliffe and Ings Dam – all usable for power.
Then in the 1930s Brownhill reservoir, Ridings Wood and Yateholme in 1938 [ see information
at end of interview supplied by GHB].
KD: Ramsden completed about the same time, it was built in very bad weather, maybe that is
why it is not straight. If you look from the front the right hand side is slumped after it had
settled a bit settled. Others not finished until after the war.
What happened with Bilberry – did it burst Yes, first built in 1800s and then rebuilt in 1930s.
AQ: It burst in 1852 and destroyed Holmfirth. The new one, didn’t quite burst but nearly did so
in 1944 when it was a danger because of the cloud burst over the hills. A chunk of
embankment was washed away but this time the reservoir held.
HB: Father and his friend Arthur Hadfield been peating that day and had to take shelter in
Stony Hill Barn – old fashioned type of barn – open at both ends so could drive horses
through. Sheltered from the rain; he said the rain came in at one end through the door and by
the time the rain finished it was coming in through the other door – the wind had blown it
round in the opposite direction. It was Whit Monday they’d set off before it got too bad.
8

KD: I went down to the swimming baths and by the time I got home I was almost swimming
again – the water was flooding as high as the wall outside [the Sunday school] in the lane.
They (the authorities) got a party of Italian prisoners of war to take out one of the weirs on the
river at Holmbridge to stop the threat of flooding and they removed the main weir at Holmfirth
as well.
General: discussion of whether the lack of the weir had affected the sewage system and a
proposal to re-instate the weir.
KD: Beagle hunting – following hounds on foot hunting hares – still goes on over Strines
moor. We used to have a pack here hunted over Black Hill and had a meeting at Xmas time
– there used to be lots of people following them. Over Strines way, someone told me about a
chap they saw a couple of years ago carrying a gallon paint can coming down the hillside. He
said he had been going to paint the trig. point but when he got there it had already been
painted!
GH: Yes, there is a scheme now ‘Adopt a Trig.point’.
HB: The scouts have adopted some –two – one is by Bramston and turn left – Pike Low and
the other above Snailsden House at the top of Harden Moor; there is a good view from that
one, although you can’t see it from the road when you get there you can see for miles to the
power station.
KD: Anyway, no-one had told this chappy that someone had adopted it.
(CH: Are there grouse shooting moors Who is owner)
Gen: Yes, we do have grouse shooting but they only have shooting rights as the moors are
owned by
HB: either by Yorkshire Water, Kielder or United Utilities.
Gen: what about the sporting rights – Doug and lad at Snailsden are the part-time keepers –
Is it some Italians – it was but not sure now – never get a straight story – they bring young
9

pheasants and partridges in on a Saddleworth Co. flatbed truck – seen that. Don’t think
anyone still has shooting rights in the woodland anymore.
Still gamekeepers Oh yes, is it still a part-timer then up over Snailsden Yes, who runs it, is
it Gordon No Dougie does .... and who looks after Bradshaw – Dougie comes across as well.
HB: It used to be brewery owned and ‘Bass’ replaced the front on the shooting lodge and I
asked them ‘why are you replacing it in timber’ and they said we have to do it to fit in with
how it was before and I said ‘You’re not painting it are you’ because it was oak and they said
we are going to have to because it was how it was before. They didn’t own it but had to
maintain it. It was about 15 years ago, painted it in black and white.
GH brought in the fossilised club moss root referred to earlier)
KD: Fossils – been in my garden now used as a doorstop at the Sunday School – extremely
heavy – (IDR: probably washed down from the slate due to glacial action) we used to find
them often on the tops, get lots of stigmaria as well in the peat.
GH: one that I’ve got has the central core.
Interlude while IDR took picture of club moss held by KD
(CH asked HB re: line of work)
HB: started off in agriculture, before agricultural college only worked on local farms – told to
go to bigger farms for more experience – went to Cheshire, then in Scotland, Selby at the
research station and Lake District. Then had back trouble so came back and got a job with
Yorkshire Water – that’s how I know so much about the moors.
Gen: IDR showed picture of people using sledges for transport – similar ones used here and
found in barn / shed in village.
GH: Regarding sledges, people in the village had a lean-to shed , listed property, and wanted
to replace, so came to an agreement to put a better shed up (dismantle and rebuilt) [ shed
was stone walled]. The old one was packed with all sorts of rubbish really - old agricultural
10

implements – hay knives etc. (where) Where Ruth and Gareth live, the Langfords place and
Mrs Roebuck’s before that. When they came to empty it to restore and rebuild it they came
across an old horse drawn barn pull (Hay sled) no, not hay sled a 2-wheeled cart with the
shafts propping the roof up. Then round the corner behind loads of wood and under there 2
sledges complete with 2 arms that they could slot into the side of the sleds.
(IDR: have they disappeared)
No, no don’t think so will have to go and check. Found one when …, how did it look Had
skids at the back and little short wheels at the front with slots at the side to put the poles in.
KD: know where there is the frame of one now and should have known about the barn pull as
it was as one of the several little farms I used to service in the 1940s with my little tractor –
you know leading down muck and hay etc. (IDR – have you got some pictures)
(CH: so were the sledges horse drawn or by tractor)
KD: Horse-drawn, yes, horses – there was a wooden frame and the horse stood in between.
HB: They were safe though for the steep hillside, better, safer than a cart. Although it looked
‘rustic’ and was perhaps looked on as being out of date they were very practical for the steep
hills.
(IDR: very much an upland thing – Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumbria; in Harrison’s Survey of
Sheffield (1637) they all had their sledges and not carts.)
KD: And you put staves up, poles surrounding the sled so that you could pile the hay or
whatever inside the sled.
(CH: were the farms just in the village or in the surrounding area)
KD: within half a mile of the village mostly; some farmsteads on the hill-top and others farther
afield have been compulsory purchased.
11

HB: My great grandfather and Gordon’s wife’s great grandfather (same person) they had a
farm right under Holme Moss near to where the transmitter is, had to walk more or less past
the farm on the track to the transmitter.
(CH: Were they sheep farmers)
GH/KD: No, were small farms, kept a few calves, that sort of thing. Families worked in the
mills during the day and then had a cow for their own use. Nowadays wouldn’t really call them
farms, and the family pig, they were about 15 acres.
HB: and oats, my mother can remember ‘stooking’ oats on Great Hey, must have been an
early memory as she moved out when she was 6. Also had a pig in most houses not just
farms likely to find cottages had a pig tucked away somewhere.
(CH: did they use oats for the horses)
HB: No, for their own use [human consumption]. Made into oatmeal, used in porridge,
thickening stews etc. But of course they started off as weavers, weaving cloth on the farm
before the mills. Yes, actually in the farm buildings, houses built specially.
KD: opposite the chapel [Sunday School] you can see a property with a loading door – now
bricked up – on the 2 nd floor up. It was a way of getting the looms in etc.
(CH: So they would work there and the living accommodation with the animals would be on
the ground floor)
Yes, but the animals were always in a separate building.
HB: And in my great grandfather’s case they built two houses. Had a barn, an old house and
then a new house.
GH: These farms had a cottage attached for an earlier family.
(IDR: you mentioned industrial peat cutting in the 1940s)
12

KD: yes, mentioned that earlier in the afternoon.
GH: This was when, just shortly after the war a chap from Leeds used his gratuity when
leaving the army to cut peat at the top of Holme Moss and set up a company called New
Fibre. And there was an old corrugated hut at the top of Holme Moss and he and another exarmy
chap started cutting peat up there. And according to the newspaper cutting they were
cutting between 80 and 100 tons per week which was being collected by wagons from
Manchester, Sheffield and other places for burning in the factories – producing energy – and
they had a vast acreage of this peat so it was said, up to 14’deep and well at the rate they
were cutting it would have lasted for about 150 years. Fortunately it didn’t last very long.
Well how did they use it in the factories Well they presumably would have put some coal in
the furnaces and then put the peat on top. Probably, not dry it out Arthur.
KD: They had a large Nissan hut – Gordon has a photograph – and you can see.
(IDR: have you a photo on computer – GH, Yes have already given a copy to the project,
have you seen it (CH: no, will follow up) – let me know if you can’t find it and I’ll get you a
copy).
It only worked a year or two that’s why I can’t remember it because it was when I was doing
my national service.
(CH: So literally only 2 or 3 years just after the war)
GH: wouldn’t say it was as long as that – couple of years round ‘47-’49. Didn’t strip a right lot,
probably can’t tell now where it was. There’s a picture and the news-cuttings about it.
(IDR: similar story over in Lancashire which NB-D told me about and I passed onto PAA for
his PhD work and he didn’t really believe us – thought it would have been much earlier but
your story sort of confirms it – used as a supplement for fuel because coal was so scarce).
We’ve lots of newspaper cuttings. Herbert’s father and uncle had large boxes of cuttings and
scrapbooks from newspapers – they collected all the instances where Holme village was
mentioned. Marion Coldwell also had a lot of cuttings.
13

KD: I was asked to look through Herbert’s family’s cuttings and produced a little book based
on them last year – you can have a copy if you like. Also supposedly have others in the
pipeline but will have to rain solid for three days before I can think of getting round to going
through it all.
HB: Yes, Steve’s dad [Fred Beardsall] also had a collection which Steve has found so that’s
another one to add to the list.
General discussion: re – previous oral history work and local history work.
HB: John Ingoldsby was mentioned – to KD – did he interview your mother-in-law or was it,
fairly sure she was interviewed either for radio or some famous Dales archivist or some such.
KD: Interviews were mentioned; Ingoldby’s interviewed Haigh Howard (Kenneth’s wife’s
grandfather who was a shepherd. (IDR, yes did one of West Yorks- probably feature in that).
And of course there was Uncle Arthur who did radio interviews and recorded his songs etc on
hunting [check if same Arthur mentioned by Mrs Armes who has a record of his – he was
linked to the Beagle hounds]
(IDR and there was Arthur Raistrick, sadly never met him but my old friend Oliver Gilbert met
him as a child; Arthur Raistrick’s father had a milk round and Arthur accompanied him which
sparked his interest in landscape etc.)
(CH: anyone remember anything about the forestry plantations round here)
HB: It was planted initially by the water companies – Batley corporation waterworks.
GH: Batley, they were the ones who closed down all the farms as they had a policy of no
human habitation on their collecting grounds.
HB: And then the Forestry Commission took over and they had a policy of planting further up
the moors and they took over in 19.., late ‘50s I would say when they employed two brothers
from the village, Eric and Jack Steel and their brother-in-law, what did they call him,
Laurence Brook – he married Eric and Jack’s sister.
14

KD: Well those just below Holmewood’s Farm, Mildred [KD’s wife] remembers them when she
was a child so they would be some of the earlier ones.
HB: Yes, Batley planted ones but they even moved a forestry commissioner in while they
were doing this – extending the plantations and he lived where my grandparents’ farm, across
from the white bungalow, across from Haigh Howard’s.
GH: Supposed to be now taking the timber down , will look much better without them.
HB: Yes, no doubt be replacing them with something else.
KD: cutting them this morning, heard the saw going.
HB: They cut those at, by Mount Farm and then sort of started cutting along the lane, Far Lea,
and then stopped.
GH: Yes, then done a lot there and then at the back, why have they not come further –
restricted the views. Now Mount Farm has regenerated.
(Don’t you like trees)
Yes, I do but not these sorts – ones which were cut down a couple of years ago have
reseeded themselves but- others trees have been planted too close together and look like a
black mass, horrible things, not thinned – unnatural.
HB: They say they are useless up there the ones they cut down at the back of the edge,
Great Hey next to that track that they used to come down when they had fell racing before
they moved – you know where they came straight down from the Moss – used to put a stile
over that fence and then they ran straight down and then followed Low Road and carried on
down the Forestry access track. And they were rum ones there [trees] as you wondered what
they would do with them as there were so many blown down.
AQ: What about the Crossley Plantation, who owned them – are there opportunities for
further forestry work – is it economic
15

HB: No, wouldn’t be part of the waterworks that one [wood] privately owned but don’t know
who by. Private owner been in Scotland and Wales, something to do with Hinchliffe Mill –
comes here regularly as his mother still lives here – Holmewood
Anyone remember the bomb which dropped there – because there was a bomb in Holm
Styes [but this is not] by Ramsden Clough.
Two conversations started
KD: Peat cutting, remember going up there ….. round Crossley plantation – Holmewood
HB: Crossley plantation, there’s a line of potential bomb craters from a stick of bombs. The
craters are in a line – a bomb was found in the bank nearby but I’m not sure whether these
were bombs.
(CH: Was there any protection for the reservoirs as there was around the Sheffield ones)
No, only at Blackfoot that was the only one that had any protection.
GH: too quiet round here and too small.
HB: and steep-sided valleys so very difficult wouldn’t be easy to get there.
(CH: some of the older plantations, way you describe them – could be much older plantations
with coppice stools and the ‘bomb’ craters could be pits for potash etc. – old woodland
industries)
AQ: Yes, there are some very old gnarled trees in there, didn’t understand coppice stools
when I first saw them. Moss Plantation, is that similar [to Crossley] not as well defined just a
bit of plantation as get on the road to the top of Holme Moss.
HB: done a lot or replanting by the A6024 near the transmitter – a triangular shape – could be
an old wood.
Interview discussion ends as several conversations break out and people notice the time.
16

Further Information from Herbert Beardsell
Reservoir construction dates in Holme Valley according to GM Binnie (‘Early Victorian Water
Engineers’)
Bilberry completed 1845
Holme Styes completed 1840
Boshaw Whams completed 1840
Digley completed 1954
Dates for completion of Ex-Batley Corporation Reservoirs according to ‘Enjoying Yorkshire’s
Water’ by Yorkshire Water Authority. But I (HB) suspect dates for Ramsden and Yateholme
should be swapped.
Riding Wood completed 1855
Yateholme completed 1874
Ramsden completed 1854
Brownhill completed 1935.
17

Interview with Maureen Armes (MA) and George Hill (GH) at Thurgoland: 8 th June 2011.
Interviewed by Christine Handley (CH). (some text added later after comments by
George Hill)
The joint interview concentrated on Langsett village, its surrounding areas and the people
who lived there. MA had shown CH some photographs and newspaper cuttings and talked
about the recordings made of the old hunting songs before GH arrived. MA born in early
1940s and GH in 1950s.
GH: Norah Mozley was the parish clerk and collected a set of photos from the old residents
which was put into a photo album. She walked everywhere and helped clear culverts and was
the parish molecatcher. One example of her walking everywhere was after Langsett PC had
given Penistone Town Council £50 towards the cinema at Penistone. Norah thought she
would go and see a film there to see what the money was being spent on. She lived at
Midhopestones but thought nothing of walking to Penistone and back to see the film.
MA: Norah saw when the walls were down or something needed doing and she got on and
did it. Helped the waterboard workers to locate culverts etc.
GH: Family farm is Pawhill Farm overlooking Langsett and the moors. Uncle Bernard and his
wife Brenda lived next door in one of the cottages attached to the farmhouse (not ‘real’ uncle
and aunt just called them that). As a child, every Sunday used to walk over to North America
farm with Brenda which was at the far side of the reservoir and take sandwiches. It was
already a ruin and had been used as target practice in WW2 – not sure how it got its name,
perhaps some connection with US army stationed there in 1940s Other properties were
flooded with the reservoir eg. Rushey Mead owned by the family and Joe Hill’s place.
MA: Last time I saw the gateposts on Joe Hill’s place was in 1973 when the reservoir was so
low it exposed them. Joe Hill’s house was where money was paid by farmers in the area
around Langsett to graze their animals and cross the Little Don (aka Porter Brook).
GH: Near Brookhouse Bridge there are 3 bomb craters where the Germans dropped bombs,
think they were getting rid of them rather than trying to blow up reservoir. The place is about 1
½ miles away from farm. The explosion was very loud and shook the land – shaking my
1

grandmother out of bed – she turned to my grandfather (also called George) and said ‘
Hellfire George, if that Hitler has blown our b** henhole up I’ll kill him’. The explosion was so
loud she thought it had happened in the farmyard. (George was told this later, happened
before he was born).
MA: I remember standing on Granny Higgin’s step and watching Lancaster bombers flying
down the valley and the searchlights.
GH: My father had tenancy of some of the land around Langsett from the waterboard; they
kept mostly cattle and a few sheep. The main road was so quiet even up to the late 1950s
that they could easily drive cattle down the road through Langsett without any trouble –
wouldn’t be able to attempt it now (too much traffic). ‘Big’ John / ‘Long’ John Burkinshaw
owned the café and when they (he and Aunt Brenda) had been to North America farm they
would call in on their way back home.
MA: Mrs Green at the Waggon and Horses (pub) was known for her ham and eggs for
travellers. When it was the shooting / grouse season she provided all the food for the cabins
when Tom Beevor was there [Tom was head gamekeeper] and old Sam Smith used to go up
there with the horse and cart to carve up the joints at lunchtime.
MA/GH: There were still navvies huts in the village, built for the people who came to build the
reservoir. Last families in there were the Brearleys and Sharps and ‘Old Joe’ and the
Minshalls. They were near the site of the new treatment works, 3 wooden huts/cottages with a
big expanse of grass in front of these.
GH: My father used to cut the grass once a year for hay and I can remember on a hot
summer’s day helping to pick the hay up and when we were finished Minshalls would have a
cup of tea ready for us.
MA: Just like one big family everyone got on, 11 or 12 houses in total. The gamekeepers and
the shoots on Sir Thomas Pilkington’s land was a big event all joined in. When I see the
Victorian kitchen programmes packing up the picnics for a day out, I think – well I used to do
that, it was just like that in Mrs Green’s kitchen packing up for the shoot lunches.
2

GH: Cyril Peaker (relative married to GH’s aunt) was the valley foreman [reservoir] and he
had a rowing boat and used to go out on the reservoir and break the ice in the winter. I
remember going into the reservoir park for a walk round. Auntie Edith once asked me to bring
some daffodils back but be careful to only take one from each clump – GH took one from
every clump and came back with an armful (about 50) rather than the dozen or so expected.
MA/GH: There was a beautiful pond in the park with carp and waterlilies. Uncle Cyril provided
tomatoes for all the village courtesy of the water treatment ‘greenhouse’ (filtration works).
Sweeping up of the lime residue [used in the water processing] resulted in the villagers being
given a bucket of lime each year with which to whitewash their cellars.
MA: Lots went off in the community at the church with Christmas parties etc. beautiful.
GH / MA: Schooldays – Brenda Shaw or Morrell as was went to Langsett School and told me
(GH) about the headmistress there, think she married Dick Hoyland he was a bit younger than
her, was a little bit strict, not vicious she would rap children on the knuckles with the side of
the ruler not the flat. Apparently she went down with the Lusitania but survived although burst
a lung , then came to Langsett and took up teaching. There was a board in the school with
names on. There was some poverty at the time with people struggling which meant that the
children couldn’t go on to higher education as there was no money. Brenda was one example,
her command of French and Shakespeare was very good, could recite reams, better French
than GH– she got the school certificate. They were taught then in the way that they could
remember not like now. Other schoolteachers were Miss Dobson, think her name was, a very
glamorous lady; and Mrs Ashton also did marvellous paintings on glass (MA has one of
paintings). MA went to Midhope School as Langsett had already closed by the time she was
old enough to go (closed by 1940). GH went to Millhouse school being on other side of
valley. Kathleen Thompson was one of the last to go to Langsett school. Don’t know why
school closed as the church kept open until 1969 for services, the school and church were
joined buildings. MA’s children (Derek and Helen) were baptised there; last child baptised
there was Mark Lyles.
3

MA: Life revolved around farming – the Waggon & Horses pub. & farm – all joined in with
haymaking and potato picking. Used to do haymaking off the reservoir banks and round by
the filter beds. They were steep banks used to be cut by scythe and a ‘push thing’ (like a type
of large lawnmower). Big John had one side of the ‘batters’ and Walkers the other one. Later
GH’s father had the crop.
GH: Lot of work with horses. I was told that the day before my father was born my
grandmother was leading the horses for my grandfather to do the ploughing. GH’s father also
used horses – helping with haymaking. One time he was asked to help at Crossley’s farm and
to bring the horse with him. He rode there on the horse whilst there he was working and
drinking cider or beer – on his way back home he fell off the horse (either tired or worse for
wear).
MA: George Higgins, all his was horses and only horses – poor old ‘carties’. Mrs Green had a
beautiful horse called Peter, dappled grey, kept all year just so he could pull a beautiful red
and blue cart up with the dinners for the shooting parties – gorgeous. Old Sam Smith used to
go up with them to carve up and David or John Green used to drive the cart up to the
Pilkington’s Moor. Sam would carve the joints at lunchtime cooked by Mrs Green at Waggon
& Horses – just like on Victorian kitchen the containers would all be packed with straw [to
keep the food hot].
What was the cocktail bar when the Jackson’s had the Waggon & Horses – not very
successful, not sort of thing associated with country style – used to be where we churned the
milk and used to be called the tea rooms. Ada Roberts had her wedding there and then of
course Rachel was living there.
We would take the milk down to the room when John Green had milked the cow, not get
through Health and Safety now, used to be all chairs around, and we used to separate the
cream.
GH: We used to have a cow, milk it and separate the cream with an old Alfalavelle cream
separator. Took some doing turning seemingly for hours because of weight of churn and
weight inside – cream came out so slow one side and milk out the other.
4

MA: There was a paper filter in the top and we’d scald them out and they’d get washed (the
equipment). If you were going too slow (churning) then a bell would ‘ping’ so you would know
you would have to turn handle quicker and they’d be shouting faster faster then they would
say you are going too fast so have to slow down.
GH: Farm butter people say is really nice but not to everyone’s taste – has a taste of its own –
sounds really special but was an acquired taste.
MA: grateful for it though.
GH: Me dad liked it; think he liked it because it took him back to his childhood. When I was
young our living room had sides of bacon and ham hanging there, had to be careful where
you sat as they would drip – would be papers on floor to catch the drips. I remember once,
because if you didn’t get the cure quite right you could get flies in – had to rub the bacon /
ham with salt and saltpetre – that we had a ham which got fly blown had maggots in and had
to be thrown out but father said – cut bad bits out and wash with vinegar then we can eat it .
And father claimed it was the nicest ham he had ever tasted.
MA: Mrs Green, when they used to kill their pigs would bring it over to my mother’s cellar (at
Langsett House) and Marsden’s the butchers (think it was) used to come over and salt it for
them.
GH: My grandfather had been a butcher so he did his own killing. I remember the day my
father died and I was talking to Auntie Winnie (father’s sister) and she said we never wanted
for anything whilst we lived in the country – war, we didn’t know about war or rationing had
enough eggs, cheese etc and petrol because Americans were stationed nearby – had bombs
and bombing range around top of reservoir, kept bombs up on top and they (Americans)
never went short of anything.
MA: I never went without chocolate when army lads came into the stables – used to go in and
we’d get bars of chocolate.
GH: they used to come down for meat and eggs and we’d swap them for cans of petrol.
5

GH: But on killing day (pigs) you should have notified govt. and get permission to kill the pig.
Sometimes on other slightly unauthorised days shall we say killing would co-incide with wash
day so no-one could see if they were looking from the top of the hill with all washing out and
activity in washhouse. People often used to use the washhouse to kill the pig in.
MA: Yes, Turners did. They used to put the pig in the washhouse and carry on washing.
GH: One time my grandfather ended up with a whole stash of petrol and got a bit ‘windy’
(nervous) because of amount and heard that inspectors were coming round checking up so
he buried it in one of the fields and forgot where he had put it – did look for it but couldn’t
remember.
MA: Mother had officer stationed with her – used the front room – so never short of anything.
There was an officer and his batman living there. They used the joiners shop which was
joined onto Langsett House as the cookhouse as it had a massive oven where they used to
do the cooking for the soldiers. They were bunking (sleeping) sleeping in the church. On one
occasion some of the soldiers had gone down to the Friendship Club drinking and left the
cook to do the potatoes. My mother said the cook said ‘I’ll be here all bxxx night and put all
the potatoes in the copper, peel muck and the lot to boil up. She didn’t know whether they ate
them but thought they were probably too drunk to notice when they got back.
GH: I was at the Waggon & Horses the other week, took my mother for a meal, and looked
round and thought its not as it used to be with all the villagers and locals in – place was
buzzing then – now seems to have lost that warmth and buzz. [Additional comments from
George after seeing transcript to be included – This doesn’t seem a good advert for the
Waggon & Horses because it still serves the best food for miles and has a good cellar; for
some locals it is still a regular calling spot but its eat and leave now and the people that are
missing are the ‘old’ regulars who wouldn’t have dreamed of eating out and for them it was
sitting with a pint and having a smoke, people seem to be more insular now. It’s a fantastically
busy place now and people have to wait for tables – but its as though they need to get back
home so they don’t miss anything on telly. They use the pub as a catering facility not a social
club which is a shame.]
6

MA: Yes, Friday night was dominoes night and all the locals came.
GH: When I went out / able to go in pubs I use to go to the Club Inn at Midhope – a real spit
and sawdust place.
MA: when it was Geddies’.
GH: Yes, and the barmaid she always wore black with a little bit of lace round her neck but
had arms like two sides of beef. She was a big girl but kept order. – but beer was renowned.
Cellar must have been good, kept beer absolutely perfect. People would go for a pint of handpulled
Tetleys, it was the finest – even if been going for months / years when had first one
would look at each other and say ‘that’s good that’ – you’d think why couldn’t others get it just
right. Despite the fact it was never updated, decorated or anything, it had an old Aspro
dispenser machine on the wall which was no longer used. It was like walking back into time
but on Friday night it would be absolutely packed.
MA: Same as in Waggon & Horses – all had their own domino teams at that time.
GH: But Club Inn seemed to become a bit of a Mecca, everybody seemed to go there
renowned, whereas Waggon & Horses was a bit smarter.
MA: Yes, was definitely smarter although did have what was called the ‘Dog hole’ a little room
where they played cards, where the bar is now, this was where all the gambling went on in
that room.
But Christmas Eve, everything stopped on the waterboard, stopped at dinnertime and all went
up to Mrs Green’s (W&H) and all got free sandwiches, then used to sit and sing all the local
carols (to local tunes) not many people remember them / sing them now.
GH: My Uncle Cyril, not just Uncle Cyril but a friend of his (went to live in Thurlstone, can’t
remember his name) tried to keep alive the old carols; tried to teach me when I was younger
but didn’t pick much up – didn’t see the importance at the time.
7

MA: We’ll have to get together with Michael (MA’s husband) with his guitar – he has all the
music, all the local ones with the words which were printed for the Waggon & Horses
singsong. Back Lane and all that, While Shepherds watched.
GH: Do you remember May Day celebrations (no where near as old as father)
MA: Yes in Langsett in field behind / above where Peak District car park is now, there were
also tennis courts there as well. We used to have the crowning of the May Queen (and
maypole dancing) and I think the maypole went to Midhope school but don’t know where it is
now as the school is now a house. Ada Roberts was one of the May Queens, I’ll have to ask
David if he has any photographs.
But Christmas parties in the church were right ones – we all got a prize (gift).
GH: I never came down Why not – don’t forget difference in ages probably stopped by time I
got to age when would come. Things had changed by then.
MA: Had some lovely parties, Mrs Elliott used to bake and my mother and Mrs Green and old
Jesse was always Father Christmas.
Life out there was like living in a dream. I once remember the vicar saying to me ‘you’ll find it
hard, you and Sylvia to live in the world’ was David Baxter actually, because it was like living
in a ‘convent’ community where no-one hurt anybody. My mother never locked the front door
for 40 years and when we moved to Thurgoland we couldn’t find the key.
GH: yes was amazing, I was back at the farm (had left home by then) and mother said could
you move the car into the barn (garage) and I went out and came back because the car was
locked and the keys were in the house – unusual and asked mother why – ‘have to now as no
longer trust people’ I left home at 30 and up to then never locked doors at all – could leave
doors open.
MA: when we came here (house at Thurgoland) and we moved with mother; my mother
couldn’t find the key to hand back to the waterboard as never locked house up didn’t know
where it was. Honestly we never locked the door.
8

GH: we locked the farmhouse door but it was so rickety and if you forgot which stone we’d left
the key under could open it anyway with a push.
MA: And we shared things like Old Ike Sanderson brought us turnips and we gave him
strawberries – everyone shared their vegetables.
GH: Who was it who kept the hens in my dad’s field (MA: was it Ike Sanderson) He said to
my dad that he had nowhere to keep his hens and ducks. Dad said put them in that field
there. He asked what the rent was and my dad said want nothing but tell you what – the cars
keep knocking my wall down, so can you keep an eye on wall and tell me the registration
number of the cars doing the damage that’s all I want. You wouldn’t ask for payment for
anything – would share.
MA: was like an Indian trading post, I mean old Austin Morris used to come over and get
rhubarb from our garden and bring me 2 dozen eggs and an old boiling hen for a £1 mind you
the hen would need 2 hours in the oven (before it was cooked) – it was lovely. And you never
went out an bought cream, used to go round to Mrs Green’s and when she was churning you
took your jug and just put jug under and when you were having a party. And Mrs Green, if she
was doing afternoon teas and wanted a cucumber she came round and we got her a couple
of cucumbers and a few strawberries out of the garden. No payment. And of course my dad
grew raspberries and she gathered these when she was doing fresh fruit salad. Then when
potato picking was done and we wanted a bag of potatoes we went round (to Mrs Green’s).
So when I came here (Thurgoland) and had to go to the shops to buy vegetables I didn’t know
what I was doing – what I wanted – didn’t know if I wanted a 1 lb of runner beans or what as
was just used to going out an picking them.
Once remember when Helen (MA’s daughter) was little, after dad had had stroke, it was
Christmas Day and I asked her to go and pick sprouts for lunch and she came back with four,
one each because her fingers were too cold. Always liked sprouts when the frost had been on
them I had to go and pick the rest.
And we used to have grouse off the moor, used to help with the shoots. Help Mrs Hammond
with the teas and Walter Salmon’s wife, I used to help her. And used to be drunk as lords
them that had been shooting – were very sensible at dinner time but at teatime … used to
have a laugh at them. Walter Salmon’s wife would get up every morning and make fresh
9

ead for the shoot. And I’d go with my children – Derek on his 3-wheeler and Helen in her
pram and help make the sandwiches. Walter was posh, didn’t go up with horse and cart he
had a shooting brake to take his things up to the cabin. I haven’t got a photo of Walt Salmon
(game-keeping) but he got the long-service award from the Duchess of Devonshire for gamekeeping.
Have a photo of Derek and Walt. Salmon with the Duchess of Devonshire, I know
what year it was – the year Helen was born, July 1966. Derek went with Walter Salmon and
my father to see him get the medal. I didn’t go because I was in bed having just had Helen.
So I know the exact date.
GH: Any of Walt. Salmon’s relatives still about
MA: Don’t know he only had one son John and no idea where he ended up. He moved away
a long time ago in his early years – maybe to Sheffield. And Mrs Salmon after Walt. retired
and left the moors ended up in Park Avenue, Penistone. And they’ve been dead quite a few
years now.
GH: And of course there was the Dog and Partridge and the little Robin Hood café (just below
the Dog and Partridge) – the owner was a bit of a character. It was a cousin of my father who
owned it, called Nolan.
MA: There was another one, a transport café
GH: Yes, but I’m thinking of the one just below the Dog and Partridge at Flouch which was a
transport café. And of course there was another one – Charlesworth’s – still there the family –
she was a sister of Uncle Bernard Shaw I keep mentioning – that was a fun place. I used to
go down and help out occasionally when Uncle Bernard used to take me to visit. The café
was a hut, a wooden hut, yes was one of the old navvy’s huts.
MA: There was that one and one across the road (hut).
GH: Mrs Morrell, Brenda Shaw’s mother, that was where she lived, she was born in the parish
– 83 now – and must be the oldest resident who has been born and lived all her life just in the
parish without moving.
10

MA: My mother and father were the last residents of Langsett House before it was sold and
altered. And Helen was born in Langsett House, she was the last baby to have been born
there in the village. Derek wasn’t, he was born in Jessops but we always used to say that
Helen was an original ‘Langsetter’ as she was born in Langsett House.
GH: Don’t know why Robin Hood Café fell by the wayside, maybe people were going down to
Charlesworth’s.
MA: All the lorry drivers, from Lincoln and all over called Mrs Charlesworth ‘Ma’, she was
known as ‘Ma’ from Lands End to John O’Groats everyone knew her as ‘Ma’. Mind you she
was widowed, reason she opened the café, her husband died young. And my mother went to
help her to start up, she started just doing teas and became very successful.
GH: But I remember the Dog and Partridge, my father went and helped clear the site when it
closed down because cousin Nolan Hill and another cousin [ Derek Hill ran it] (can’t
remember his name) asked if he could come and clear it.
MA: Was that one of the meeting points for the drivers who came to beat the grouse over the
moors (GH: No, don’t know.) They still do that now, beat for the grouse. Yes it was good
earnings, good pocket money.
GH: Yes, but this Uncle Bernard, he did it once, did a morning, but found it barbaric although
been brought up in country ways – he couldn’t stand it - driving them to their deaths, to their
slaughter. But then he couldn’t stand it if we were killing a pig, wouldn’t come out, keep the
door shut, didn’t like it. But then if I was faced with killing a pig now (MA: and I wouldn’t either)
because of the squeals of the pig, although they squeal anyway (MA: they squeal all the
time.) – you know what you are going to do to the pig; but as a child / young lad I was able to
use the humane killer to kill the pig but couldn’t do it now.
MA: Most I could do was to get a rabbit out of a snare, used to have to go and catch rabbits,
and could skin them and gut them but couldn’t do it now. (GH: think as a child you were able
to do things.) No, since I moved here life is different but when you lived in that village you do it
because it is tradition, so you kill your hen and pluck your hen and have it for Sunday dinner
but crikey couldn’t do it now.
11

GH: But whilst Uncle Bernard couldn’t see a pig being killed he’d go out with a couple of our
dogs – the sheepdog, my pet dog and Brenda’s sister’s dog Trixie and if while they were out
there were rabbits about he would set the dogs on the rabbits – not to have them to eat but
looking on it as pest control. Remember once Brenda hurt her leg trying to get a squirrel out
of a tree, to knock it out so the dogs could get it and savage it. But she realised long ago that
(20years ago) grey squirrels were a pest and a nuisance and a threat to red squirrels. Many
people only just realising about threat of greys.
(CH) – Did you used to get reds
MA: I’ve not seen them.
GH: I’ve not seen any for ages but certainly greys a problem.
MA: Used to be deer up Horden (Moor) and of course there was supposed to be a tribal chief
buried on Pike Low. (GH: I didn’t know that)
GH: On one of our walks across, very often if we organised it, walk across to Derbyshire,
used to think it was adventurous as a kid because Brenda would say we were out of
civilisation. Truly enough when we get beyond Cut Gate well Mickleden. Mickleden first, was
a spring there, always used to stop there first and have a drink of Mickleden water – spring
water.
MA: Used to think it was ‘health’ water, always used to get it if we had a cold. Old Fred Bridge
always used to go and fetch a bottle of Mickleden water if he had a cold.
GH: And then carry on over to Cut Gate by the time we got there you couldn’t see any form of
human habitation, completely beyond in vegetation, truly exciting to think we were in the
middle of nowhere. Then go to Rocking Stones, Bull Stones and Slippery Stones – go and
climb on them.
MA: And there is one part up there where you can have your foot in 3 counties. (GH:
apparently so.) Can’t remember exactly where it is but it will be Yorkshire, Derbyshire – would
it be Lancashire But know used to go up there. And I’d have a walk up there with old Fred
12

Bridge when collecting the rain gauges because he used to have to go and measure rainfall –
used to see how much rain had fallen (on moors).
He was a character was old Fred Bridge. But he was a character, he had two walking sticks
and he called them Joe and Sally.
GH: He also used to keep pigeons and had two sons (MA: James and David).
MA: Yes, when the sons got a motor car and they had grown up he used to have a black box
and he used to put half a crown in every week in case they got killed to pay for the funeral.
(GH: what a character, this is the stuff that you want isn’t it) And when they got a television,
he sat with his back to it all the time – didn’t like modern equipment, wouldn’t watch it. But he
wore knee britches and used to come to church in his polished wellingtons. He came to my
wedding in polished Wellingtons. He were a character were old Fred and he used to take his
bike to Parkgate to feed his pigeons; used to have some good winning pigeons, was in a
pigeon club at Bridge End, Stocksbridge. It’s a dental surgeon that lives at Parkgate now.
GH: Don’t know whether this comes within remit. There was talk of a chap at Holme village
and there is a joke there – don’t know if true or not but apparently been in town and seen
‘new-fangled’ gas fire bought one and took it home and realised that they hadn’t got gas on
(mains gas) at Holmebridge so put it in a cupboard and eventually gas did come so got it
installed, one Tuesday and everyone knew so the following Sunday at church he was asked
how he was getting on , absolutely brilliant , absolutely brilliant he said. I lit it on Tuesday and
it hasn’t gone out yet! So whether true or a joke don’t know but ….. [lots of laughter]
MA: Well you know we were the only ones in Langsett with a bath apart from the pub. So they
used to come , we’d a proper bath with taps running into it, so they (villagers) used to come
with a bucket of coal to heat the water up and have a bath.
GH: Well we’d neither a bath nor an indoor toilet. (MA: well we didn’t have an indoor toilet but
we had a bath). I used to be bathed initially in a little enamel bath – well I was a baby and I’ve
photos of that. And then we used to borrow from Bernard and Brenda who lived at the end (of
the row) a big galvanized bath. (MA: Friday night was bath night.) or Sunday night for me in
front of the fire. Don’t know why we did that as my grandmother who lived in the cottage
between us had a bathroom and a toilet, bath and toilet inside. For some reason I never got
13

athed there, think it was because it was cold – we only had one fire to heat each house. Now
have central heating of course.
MA: We had three fires but I can remember ice on the inside of the windows and icicles on
the landing ; but never got colds like we do now with this central heating lark.
Alice Turner used to come on a Friday night for her bath because she used to go dancing to
the Victory Club.
(CH) was water from a tap or a well
MA: We all had taps.
GH: We had taps but also had a well; Paw Hill – Paw is an old English name for a well and
where we lived we had two wells. One was ours and the other was across the lane – may
have been more which are now covered up. The well is still at the farm but covered in as my
father was petrified that the children would fall in and drown. With my sister’s children he put
even more rocks on top so they couldn’t lift the cover. I remember drawing water out of the
well when we were short of water to ‘feed’ the cattle, wouldn’t use it for ourselves (humans)
but OK for livestock. But didn’t have mains water at Paw Hill until very recently, relied on
spring water from up on Brockholes for all the houses on the lane. Some on there still do but
since my father died my mother has had mains water put on.
MA: Mrs Hill at Ivy Cottages at Langsett had a trough in the cellar for keeping water in. And of
course there is that beautiful well in the woods.
GH: Yes, although there is but sometimes I’ve been there recently when the weather has
been dry and found it dried up. (MA: never!) Yes, but think it might be in the alteration of the
roads.
MA: What! the one (well) going onto Brookhouse (GH: Yes.) Well I’ve never known that one to
dry up even when the reservoir was nearly empty always had a trickle of water, it’s a shame –
that’s with altering the roads and drainage (GH: I agree). There was a lovely little trough
carved out, the trough is still there, probably fenced off. (GH: will have to have a walk on
shortly and have a look.) I’ve not been on since the trees were planted round it.
14

GH: We used to play in the quarry.
MA: Oh yes, but even put trees there now, planted up – 3 or 4 years since I went and had
started planting trees. They used to come from Stocksbridge and all over to swim in the
quarry.
GH: Go and catch sticklebacks and tadpoles (MA: and newts) oh yes and newts. I was only 7
or 8 years old at the time and it looked like Loch Ness. (MA: And we used to climb up the
rocks on the other side.) Water [depth] used to vary but was crystal clear (MA: yes, never
dirty) if water was low there were stepping stones to get across and then when you got to the
other side you inched your way around.
MA: Had some happy hours there. Used to go on a Sunday afternoon and take your lunch
there. Nancy, Sarah etc all sitting on that rock watching us play making sure we didn’t get out
of hand. We had a good childhood, George. But we were content with simple things as well. I
mean a day hay-making with Mrs Green when she sent a basket of sandwiches up. Do you
remember those like billy cans with like cups on the top Full of drinks for us and that and we
would stack the corn sheaves, you know we were happy doing it.
GH: I mean it was. Brenda who lived in the end cottage had no bathroom, one cold water tap
and cooked on a fire and that was it. She refused to have .. (MA: electric) No, we had
electric and I’ll tell you for why in a moment. She refused to have a bathroom for a long time,
had an outdoor toilet. I said to someone I was envious of her and was asked why if not got hot
running water etc. and I said no I was envious of her being happy and the contentment
because no-one seems happy and content anymore.
MA: Will say this George, I think that village [Langsett] gave you contentment – can’t think of
anyone who wasn’t content.
GH: Now, you were saying about electricity. We had electricity and a telephone that was
before (MA: yes you were posh!) no we weren’t posh just fortunate. My grandfather was
canny. They wanted to come across [the farm] with some telegraph poles and electricity
15

poles. Grandfather said yes you can put poles across but that he wanted connecting at the
same time and he was. When I was at school ….
MA: When did electricity come to Langsett (GH: no idea) I know we didn’t have it when the
queen was crowned (1953) ; none in the village because we all went to Mrs Hoyland’s
because they had a generator and a television. And while the village mums were all getting
ready for the party to celebrate the coronation we were down at Mrs Hoyland’s watching the
coronation.
Life was simple ….
GH: Yes, but you had to work for it, it wasn’t easy and you had to make your way, had to
work.
MA: Yes, people always going on for example about beautiful log fires but don’t think you had
to work for it, walk nearly to Brookhouse to fetch logs, bring them back and saw them up in
the barn before you could set the log fire. My father used to say you get two warms from a log
fire; one, when you saw the logs and one when you burn it.
GH: We were fortunate in so far as Uncle Bernard as we called him was a collier over at
Bullhouse but the mine workings used to pass under, not under the house but drift away down
to Langsett. But there was an opening, a little door at the bottom of the field at the back of our
house (about two fields away) and he would often come home for lunch via / by the drift hole,
little door at the back of the mine. Its now covered up. There used to be an echoing and a
rush of air if you looked down there – it used to scare me.
MA: I bet that’s where they used to come with their buckets of coal. Andersons got coal from
Bullhouse pit.
GH: Yes, we used to get coal and Uncle Bernard would negotiate something for us from pit.
He used to get ‘home’ coal, would get so much miner’s coal allowance but we could get it a
bit cheaper because we went to the pit yard and fetched it.
16

MA: Our highlight of the day was when the big lorry came with the Christmas trees for every
house in the village because everyone worked for the waterboard. There was no waiting for
buses or have cars all walked to work. Used to come the week before Christmas; the big lorry
would come from the forestation with Christmas trees with works payslip number on ‘868’ -
one Christmas tree with a label on. Highlight of Christmas.
GH: When Uncle Cyril worked there, of course we used to get a tree also not sure if we
should but …
MA: probably got a spare one, because like us with two of us in the house working on the
waterboard we didn’t need two trees. Yes, and holly collecting, that was a big tradition –
mustn’t take it into the house before Christmas Eve. ((p) why not) Because it was bad luck
and when brought in shouldn’t take it out again until after 12 th night and had to burn it (before
take it out) Don’t bring it in now because I’ve nowhere to burn it. (GH: Yes, agree re: tradition)
I always used to walk to Fulshaw Cross to Mrs Fred Jackson’s at Christmas Eve with their
holly.
GH: Even more latterly, still collecting holly. Two or three years ago I was going to get holly
across the field and it was very wet, still waterboard land which my father rented. Had my
father’s wellington’s on, size 11 and I’m size 10. All boggy and got foot stuck, tried to pull it
out and foot came out of Wellington but fell forward, managed to save myself by grabbing
holly (got prickled) but when foot came down went into mud – it was a trampled area used by
the horses who were using the holly for shelter. Other foot then came out and went in mud
and finished up in socks in mud covered in muck. – didn’t put feet back in wellies as would be
dirty, feet frozen and getting prickled from fallen leaves. To make matters worse, Steven
Drury’s son, Brian Richard came down to drop something off for father. Just looked at me,
didn’t laugh, as if to say what the hell are you doing and asked is I wanted help or a lift back
on the tractor. Said no as have car will take socks and trousers off and ended up driving back
up to farm in underpants.
(CH) Did you get the holly
Yes, important for tradition, just had got to have holly (MA: with berries on.) and put some on
my grandmother’s grave and Aunty Edith and Uncle Cyril’s graves and Aunty Marjorie’s and
Aunty Irene’s graves. (MA: So important.) Yes, to remember these people, yes we do that.
17

Mentioning earlier about picking bilberries.
MA: Yes, used to do that on the path passed the quarry, used to be there all day picking
bilberries and making jam.
GH: My dad did get from somebody and I think it came from France a bilberry picker which
was like teeth. (MA: Yes, my dad made one.) My dad did say, somebody brought it back, but
easier to pick by hand off the bush than sort it all out afterwards. MA&GH: picks more leaves
than bilberries.
MA: My dad had heard of one (machine) so decided to make one and my mother was furious
it took her twice as long.
GH: But not only that, it’d take off bilberries that weren’t ripe so spoilt it for the next people
that came along. (MA: yes, they used to come in busloads) But that’s what happens with
technology, makes the job messier and it also wastes.
MA: When you used to take the dog with you bilberry picking the dog used to be eating more
bilberries than you were picking. She was a nuisance, our Spot, for eating bilberries. You
would be separating the bushes and she would be snaffling them. Of course there was Eva
Folkingham, she used to get up to 30 and 40 lb of bilberries per year.
GH: and my grandmother planted some watercress because we had a little river, stream,
barely a stream but running water nevertheless and she planted watercress once. We went
down a couple of years but never really did very well although we got some.
MA: They said you used to get watercress at Brookhouse – the stream at Brookhouse grew
lovely watercress.
GH: And mushrooms, well we had, well before we started putting loads of fertiliser on (MA:
kills everything off) and pesticides, I think when putting lots of horse muck on you get
mushrooms, have a field called the mushroom field. There were mushrooms galore and my
dad liked a good field mushroom. I remember when we didn’t have any he decided to grow
18

some inside in the dark – laborious, tedious to get the beds right. Had to get bed hot and
turned it religiously because if not it would burn – if it turned white you couldn’t use it.
(CH) How did you get crop
Manure built up own heat, turn for five or six days then put a fine layer of soil on top and then
get mushroom spores – buy it separately. But still better tasting if you had mushrooms from
the field.
(CH) what type of mushrooms from the field
They were only field mushrooms not blewits. We were never allowed to try anything more
exotic than that for fear of getting poisoned.
MA: Used to go blackberry picking as well on the reservoir edge. (GH: used to have
blackberries galore.) George’s Aunt Edith used to make lovely blackberry jam. Real good
juicy blackberries on that reservoir edge.
GH: I enjoy blackberries more than bilberries personally, like blackberry pie rather than
bilberry.
MA: Oh no, bilberry, could just eat a bilberry pie now. Get midge bitten when you were picking
them, terrible, bitten to death. Used to have some stuff to rub on if got bitten. Dad used to
smoke his pipe to keep the midges away. Of course were open filters on the filter beds by the
reservoir and good blackberries down there.
GH: And there used to be, when they used to dig out the ‘peat’ (MA: sand and put through the
sand washer) they used then to put the ‘peat’ in a press, squeeze it down and then sell the
‘peat’.
MA: was lovely sand; all the kids had a sand pit – send through the sand washer and pick
some sand up.
GH: I was at the opening of the new water treatment works as I was chairman of the parish
council at the time. They were proud of it (the new works) and rightly so but I was slightly
saddened, less labour intensive in one respect less personal.
19

MA: Like a family, about 10 of them worked there on that filter bed – was like a family, and the
water … (GH: yes, the water) arguable that water was nicer from the old filter than it is now. I
took the Sunday schoolchildren to see the new filter station as I was friendly with Steve the
head chemist there.
GH: But the water that comes off there before it gets chlorinated, yes chlorinated to take the
colour out – it’s bleached.
(CH) Is it brown at first
MA: Yes, has got the peat in it - peat stained. (GH: call it ‘Langsett Tea’) Yes, because it was
as brown as brown can be. And when the insects used to come, we called them ‘the lads’
insects (on the filter beds) and we used to go down with fishing nets. My mother used to make
me one from a stocking and we used to go down to where the water used to come in and
gather all the insects to take them home to feed to the pet goldfish – larvae. Don’t suppose
they do that now (get insects) will just go through. But to destroy that beautiful park and put
that horrible filter station there. Was beautiful that park, I wonder what they did with the fish
and the waterlilies (from the pond in the park) (GH: just be all pulled up and covered over
they didn’t care). Yes, just like the trees, pulled them all down, what have they done that for
GH: Well there is …, they are wanting to plant trees that are more appropriate, the ones they
have at the moment aren’t appropriate. (MA: been there for a few years, seemed OK) Yes,
but if they get trees that shed you’ll get all the leaves going into the water. I remember Norah
said, were a bit sceptical when they did some alterations to the overflow to do with global
warming and of course we were all like ‘what for’ but it was said that it had been built to deal
with rainfall or flooding which would happen every 100 years and in actual fact if was for every
200 years and we thought ‘humph’ you know where’ve they got this from but now it is
happening and Norah would have to be eating her words now, as she was most annoyed
about it. As that (the overflow) was built without mortar – those stones were cut and fitted
without using any mortar.
MA: Yes, even the reservoir bank has not got any mortar in it. Of course, there is a time
capsule behind that valve tower you know where it says ‘to the Glory of God – this is water for
Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster’. Of course when Navvies had finished before they put
that in they put in a newspaper, coin, bottle of guiness, all sorts went in.
20

GH: Interesting thing happened, don’t think my father realised just how interesting it was –
opposite the filter beds was the ‘rout’(e) where the railway used to be, used to take .. (MA: go
through the woods to Midhopestones) Yes and it would take materials from Stocksbridge,
stones from quarries to build reservoirs. (MA: need to look at the 1903/1904 Holmfirth
Almanac it gives all the story of the building of the reservoirs – we used to have a copy but
leant it to someone and never got it back – searched all over for another copy and never
found one yet) There was a rough piece of land there at the corner of the field, it had stones,
chunks of ash/ concrete, it was a midden – village dump for navvies and somebody,
respectable she was from Thurlstone / Penistone History Society said they had some money
to get Bradford or Huddersfield universities – it was one of the two - as they would be
interested, to look and excavate it. Asked my father if they could do so, he said yes and they
did. Unbelievable what they fetched out of the midden – old shoes, old bottles with a marble
in the top. (MA: yes I’ve got one of those and a bottle which says Langsett on it, its in my
kitchen.) Harry Smith’s family used to have a company in Stocksbridge which was bottling
pops etc. I’ve some Stocksbridge pop bottles. I wonder where all the stuff from the midden
has gone – yes, the university did it but the chap didn’t strike me as someone from a
university although introduced from a very good source.
You were talking about the winters. The winters were very bad, in terms of livestock, you
would winter the animals in and the lambs would be born inside. (MA: but very good in terms
of ….) Up on the moors there would be several thousand sheep left to their own devices and
would have to be dug out of the snow but we didn’t have any moorland lambs being on the
outskirts. You would see in summer them burn the heather off.
MA: Oh yes, burning, that was something else the locals used to get pocket money for, to go
burning, get so much a day. They had special fire shovels, long-handled ones for keeping it
down.
GH: Yes, there were several (farms on the moors), do you remember ‘Brookhouse’ I
remember it as a ruin with just a few stones.
MA: I remember there were more and a beautiful plum, pear and cherry trees that we used to
gather the fruits. (GH: used to say it was haunted) Wouldn’t be surprised because even now
21

we go down there and it is a weird feeling. Swinden Hall was haunted, they said you could
hear a dog scratching. And of course they pulled down Charlie Barnes’ place. They came to
live on Fulshaw Lane – none of them are left now. But they should never have pulled it down.
The National Trust should have bought the village. Getting pulled down, that was just for
polluting the water. That really was a time warp (Charlie’s place), they had everything, went to
toiled up a cartload of steps, was wonderful there. That’s just a pile of rubble now.
Exhausted our memories – has that been a help GH: my memories are mostly second hand.
Norah was a gem but wouldn’t be recorded. Latterly I use to help her with the minutes and
accounts for the parish council as her eyesight was failing – we always used to be a penny
out on the accounts – could never find that blasted penny! One day, she’d come over for a
bite of lunch and we had a cup of tea, sat down and just started talking – I was mesmerised
such a lot of memories. (MA: born here or was she) born in Bradfield or Barnsley Was a
Moseley when she got married because they changed their name from Moseley during the
war (WW2 and Oswald Moseley etc). She was born a Crapper, related to Thomas Crapper
who invented the toilet. (MA: She lived very primitive and never threw anything away did she
George) She kept everything. Unfortunately when she died her family threw everything
away. If we had that bagged up somewhere it would give you material to look through for the
next 20 years.
MA: Just like the chest we can’t find from the church; you might be able to trace it via the
Peak Park. This old chest was in the church and had records of everything you could imagine
– plans of the village from before the waterboard took over. I remember the chest going to the
Waggon & Horses when the church closed under the care of Mrs Green as it was the central
point. Don’t know where it has gone now, asked all the vicars around – can’t find, Reverend
Baxter has no records, he wasn’t there when it went. Joan Hunter was there at the Waggon &
Horses when it arrived but I never asked her. And James Bridge said he hadn’t seen it at the
farm after Mrs Green had left the Waggon & Horses ….
22

Interview with Frank Harvey by Christine Handley and Andrew Crofts,
June 17 th 2011.
I were farming first up Brightholmlee & at Rayner Farm.
(What did you farm)
Plough, I used to plough – turnips, potatoes, mangols, wheat, oats, all sorts.
(Did you have livestock)
Aye, we had eighteen dairy cows.
(It was all hand milking in those days)
Yes, aye. They were the days. Half past seven at night coming home, half six going up in
the morning.
(How many milkings)
Two, morning & night, preparing for them. You‘d mix turnips, grain & oats, all sorts, you
know you had to cut chaff, you know, straw.
(David says he remembers turnips where the maisonnettes are now-digging them up)
Aye, it were ours, it were ours. I worked there, for a start. at Bitham’s & then we went up
there, you see, & it were Stella May’s, you know Stella May, well it were her dad were
down here & her grandma & granddad lived at Rayner & when they died we went up there,
well when she (HE) died in ’48, 1948.
(When did you switch to forestry)
’57.
(Year before I was born [Andrew])
Then you’ll not have seen the fires we had in here.
(When I was at school somebody spoke of a thunderstorm & thunderbolt fell in there)
Aye it were. I can tell you where it were. Exactly where - across there, on the bank & it
chucked it down & when we got here it was still on fire.
(Above Plankgate)
Off of Plakgate, pony track, Stopthornes. There were no way for them to get up there (Fire
Brigade)
(What happened then)
Well we put it out, put it out.
(I remember seeing these fire beaters with a plastic flap on racks)
1

We used to make them. We used to put belt in. Wet days we used to make them &
sometimes we used to make them out of broom.
(What were the handles made from)
Wood. And it got a bit too hot , you see, & lads used to chuck beaters if fire! Cos it used to
get hot. Not so much here as what we did up Hebden Bridge, when we were up Hebden
Bridge that way.
(Who did you work for)
Forestry Commission
(What made you go into that)
Well my boss on farm, Howard Wainwright, he went to Sheffield Corporation & of course it
came as a shock to me, I didn’t know anything else & I said “Well I don’t know what I’m
going to do”.
Howard says ‘Don’t worry you’re here while you get a job’
I stayed there, they kept some bees for me. I was still here & me dad used to do all pick
edges.
(Edges)
Aye, you know, on picks, he were axe smith at mill.
(You mean picks & mattocks)
Mattocks & picks.
(Did he forge whole thing)
Yeah. And he says I’ll ask Arthur Bounds – he says ‘Tell him to come down & see me’ & I
were a month in getting job. Course it were easy work for me there after being on’t farm. I
mean we had a lot of trees to plant, over five hundred trees to plant & it took some doing.
(Was this part of the mass tree planting after the war)
Yes. ’51 – started down at Holmes farm.
(…)
(Was the planting all of one kind)
No it were all sorts, you know, they’re put in compartments, them, they’re not just
haphazard planting. If you look up from estate they’re all different colours. I used to know
compartments but they’ve altered them now cos they’ve sold a lot of land you see.
(There’s several evergreens. Corsican Pine)
Corsican Pine, Scotch Pine, Norway Spruce, Jap Larch, Sitka, Spruce.
2

(Did you have to go back & look after them)
We were there all the time, I were there thirty year. I grew with ‘em. And I can tell you
every tree now to this day. Well I could if I went, show you every tree cos Bernard Swift &
myself put them in & Harry Crookes, who was at Moorehall.
(What was a typical working year)
We’d start off planting, for a start, planting would be for three or four months, planting.
April & March.
(Was there trouble with the ground)
Rocks, a lot of rocks.
(Were they from a nursery)
Yes, Wykehams, at Wykehams, at Scarborough, & they were only that size you know.
Three by three, that’s what they called them, three by three.
(Summers you spent weeding)
Yes, if they got away, you know got growing & your bracken used to get taller than what I
am & they’d be five in a row, not in one row you know, opposite one another, but going up,
& if one went off course a bit it might just knock your neighbour’s head off & you could
smell it.
When old Franz arrived there he used to ‘Now then, who’s knocked me head off’
(Was he your boss)
Aye.
(What did you do with the bracken)
Just left in whinrows.
(Didn’t clear it)
Nah. When I were going to school , I went to high school here, top of bank here, & Willis
Buttley, up at Slack Fields, he used to go cutting it with scythe,. There were two of them,
they used to go bring a dray-load for bedding.
(How old were you then)
Oh I should say 11 or 12.
(I suppose by the time you did the forestry that was all ended)
Aye, there were none of that then. You weren’t even allowed to ride a push bike in there,
when I first started. Used to stop them all, his sister, on horse, didn’t I He used to be after
her for riding horse. Now they gallop all over place. Mind you Forestry‘s not same, it’s
money-making now.
3

(Did you do the fencing)
We did fencing, walling, everything that was necessary in wood.
(Did you have problems with rabbits or deer)
Yes. We had to put fence up on new ground, we’d to put a wood in bottom, a gate, so
rabbits couldn’t get in underneath. We used to have to put netting in six inches deep so’s
they couldn’t get in.
(Would rabbits eat all the trees)
Aye they would & deer used to eat them as well.
(So you had the fence six inches down & tall)
Yes so they couldn’t jump it.
(Did you have problems with people knocking it down)
No, not really because there was always somebody here. Cos I had Land Rover & I were
in day & night. I lived in there!
(There’s also a deer proof wall right on the top) (Was a deer farm there)
Aye, that’s buck sheds at the side.
(With a giant stile like step ladders)
We did that to stop them knocking wall down because they used to climb wall instead of
going over you know, proper way through gate there. Mind you when Tommy Goulding
were there at farm he used walk round every day all us with two dogs, always had a chat
for ten minutes.
(What did he farm)
Sheep, all sheep.
(Was there a lot of sheep farming)
Not a lot were there Andrew There are more knocking about today than what there used
to be.
(What did you do in autumn & winter)
It were maintenance, & I mean we weren’t only here you know. We used to go to Selby,
Bawtry, well we had a lot of wood at Bawtry, and down to the airport at left hand side.
(Finningley)
Yes. Ah, I used to travel about a bit, all in a day.
4

(To & back)
Ah. There were fourteen in here when I first started.
(In the team)
Yeah, fourteen.
(To cover that area Because of all the planting)
Yes, well they set ‘em on in them days. They didn’t last long; in them days you could go &
get a job the next day. Well Bernard Smith, that were with me, he didn’t go for his cards
from builders he worked for for a week. He worked with me for a week then he says, then
he says, I were working at Forestry House at that time, & he says ‘Do you think it would be
alright if I went for me cards’ And he’d never mentioned them!
(Which did you like the best)
Oh I liked farming, I liked playing with horses.
(They were ploughing horses I bet there’s some skill in that)
Yes, yes.
(Did you have good horses)
Yes, you’d no need to drive ‘em – talk to ‘em.
(Do you remember their names)
Duke & Bob. Duke! Bob!
(Albert told me he had one called Bonny.)
And a smaller one called Tommy & a smaller one than that.
(Were they Clydesdales these horses)
Yeah. Can you see it up on the wall
(Is that you then Where was that taken)
Ewden.
(Looking down at Bottom)
Yeah
(Is that before the trees or anything were there)
There were no trees there on farm. There were no trees there. Oh, I remember little trees
up side of Rait.
5

Do you know what we’re doing there We’re on a footpath. It were a law then, I don’t know
whether it is these days or not, nobody seems to take no notice of anybody these days,
but you’d to make footpath as it was.
You know, you couldn’t go & plough through it.
(A public footpath)
We’d go & see to it & he were digging it out. I were ploughing it up. That’s what he’s doing.
(That’s the public footpath & it stops people wandering about when you plough the fields)
Yeah. That’s my bit of ploughing see. 1950.
(That looks brilliant. With the two horses)
Yes. That’s Jack House, you know as you go down, round t’dam there, that’s where that is.
(Is that at top side of dam)
You know where Jack House is on roadside – that field opposite. That’s that one up there.
That photograph, I give a girl on bus other week – Elizabeth Boardman. We had an old
dog & I thought I’ll see Liz on bus sometime, blow me, she got on & I’d had it in me bag
long enough.
(It’s unusual to see the trees so low)
You can see Jack House in the corner there.
(And that’s you just starting ploughing)
Yes, in next field.
(I bet you couldn’t do it straighter in a tractor)
Well they can (Phone rings).
(Derek spoke to me about this one)
Aye, it’s only thirteen inches wide, you know that.
(How high)
Oh it’s thirteen or fourteen feet high. That night we finished that I lost me trowel on other
side. Course I had to scramble down & I hadn’t seen ‘em, but there were two nuns. Course
they didn’t expect me coming over wall & of course they run, one; lost her clog.
(They wanted you to build the wall but didn’t expect to see you on their side)
Oh no, no –strict.
(Isn’t building a wall difficult when you can’t get to both sides)
6

Well we had to go up & down, up & down with ladder, but there were trouble getting
scaffolding out in the morning, you know. They used to open doors , there were a nun at
either side, big barn doors they were, by the sides & then they’d let us go in , bring us stuff
out, then they’d be two more & another big door, the same there, & they’d be some when
we’d go to see the Mother Superior.
(Did you do that as part of Forestry Commission)
No. It were just part-time that.
(So you could turn your hand to a lot of trades)
Oh aye. That lad that’s just been, I’ve done him a lot of work.
(That man in the white coat looks like a judge at a show)
1963 that. We went to pedigree sale in Doncaster & of course I never bid, I always let me
dad bid & I used to just nudge him. He bought that sow & auctioneer said ‘My word Mr.
Harvey, you know a pig when you see one!’
And she had thirteen little ones that week, so I didn’t have to keep her long, but they were
only £5 a piece then; they’re 40 now.
(The sow or the piglets)
The piglets. She was 60 guineas that one.
(Can you remember the breed)
Large black.
(One of the rare breeds)
No, no - old breed that. I’ve got, it were pedigree that one, I’ve got books somewhere.
(So is that you in the picture in the white coat)
Yes.
(…)
That’s our house.
(The picture I’ve got hasn’t got as much climbing ivy)
Well me dad killed all that when we first went down because it were filled with the stuff, but
it were lovely down there. Can you see what date it is on that one
(It says 1908)
(Is that the farmhouse)
No, that was where we lived. I’ve only been, I’ve been here thirty years.
7

(When you first came to the valley this is where you all lived)
When we first came here, 1937, you know top of hill, top of Mytholms, where new house is
built, then the next house going that way – I were born there.
And then we left there & went to second house down where new houses were built as they
were too much money – rent. So Hubert Oliver, he were main man at paper mill, he says
to me dad ‘Do you want a place, a cottage’
He said ‘I wouldn’t mind one’
So he says ‘Go up to second house here, up Green Lane, where Nuttings were, he says
‘And you can have that’ & then he says ‘Oh Albert I think you’d better pop down to the
Corn Mill’
(So he changed his mind)
So he changed his mind. He says ‘Mrs. Nutting doesn’t like it up here, I don’t know what
she does like!’
(So what year was this when you moved into Corn Mill cottage)
I should be ten. We were down there 46 years.
(I’ve been told there wasn’t much left of the Corn Mill workings at that time)
No
(Just the odd cog wheel)
Aye that’s all.
(So the tall building wasn’t there)
They knocked that down in ’53.
(The Goyt ran underground in that area & sometimes you can still see parts of the yard, so
you knew it was still a mill on the Goyt)
Aye, on lane going down in between stone, it used to trickle down & it’d fill it up, then it’d
go again.
(There was another mill a bit further down)
Aye, a wheel.
(Whenever it’s a grinding wheel they say it’s a spindrow wheel, shepherd’s wheel, don’t
they)
I remember that building there at the bottom, well, not all of it but the foundations, cos I
told Albert about it & that’s’ when he started looking round.
(I found some old rental agreements for that. There were different size troughs in the
wheel for water)
8

(…)
Mice has been at that one.
(Lighter coloured pictures aren’t they)
Do you know anybody on there
(There was a bit of land – another cottage)
Aye there was about an acre of ground & I used to plough it with tractor.
(Did you keep hens)
Hens, oh I had a hundred hens at one time. Five bob a dozen my eggs & a chap used to
come from Mansfield & he wanted to take two or three dozen a week.
(That’s a long way to come)
They were good eggs, they were good eggs & they knew it. And his wife worked for Lord
Riverdale, she was his secretary.
(What sort of pigs would those be Frank)
Large White.
(Did you kill the pigs yourselves)
Just the one at Christmas; or two, it all depends on who wanted a bit of pork. Me dad you
know, he, they were on radio yesterday on about swill, going round fetching it in. Well not
many could remember it but I could’ve rung up & told ‘em as I had a pony & cart to fetch it.
Me dad bought me a pony & cart & I used to have all the lads all (Laughter)
(Where did you get it from)
All houses. They all used to save it - bread you know, & potato peelings, orange peel,
anything, & cook, boil it up then, on a Sunday afternoon & it were a smell on its own, it
were lovely, & you could buy potatoes then, you know, they didn’t look anything wrong with
them but they used to put a dye on them so you couldn’t use them.
(They were alright for animals)
Yeah. And during war, after war it were, with pony & cart, I used to do all pig clubs. Well
Council used to get this here swill & they used to boil it up & course when they used to
join, same as Hedley Crawshaw, they’d have a tub a month & I should have to take them a
tub & Pears, down at Holmes farm, the plumber – Bill Needham, all them.
Deepcar - used to go to Kinger miller & it were a pig club; you know, if you were in that you
used to get a bit of corn, bit o’ quality.
(Was that for everybody to keep their pigs)
Yes
9

(Did you use to show them)
No, no. Same as today, I should have been at Doncaster market, not as today as there in’t
a market at Doncaster any more.
(Penistone one was quiet)
Aye, on a Thursday.
(So you’d sell on pigs at market)
Yeah, though I didn’t go to market often with pigs, er, Badger at Handsworth, tenant at
farm there, he used to buy them off me cos he, you know, gave good prices & he’d come
& sit with you, you know, talks. Oh they think I’ve seen nowt!
(Can you remember when you killed the pigs Was your mum & all in that)
She were in house keeping boiler going, hot water, it had to be scalding hot & Jack Eaves,
at Bolsterstone, he used to come & kill, and Percy Turner, at Oughtibridge. You know,
once you’ve got it in the air, this here, do that, it’d all come off fine, & then, I’ve got one up
in shed, a cranbill.
(What’s that)
To put through the back leg to winch it up. There’s a bit of skin on back of pig’s leg & it’s
that solid it wouldn’t break, it’d hold, just shove it through.
(That’s how you’d hold it up)
Were to finish it off & hang it. Used to leave it a night to settle & then your killer, while
you’d scald it, would come again next day & slice it up & then – what do you call them
now Chambers, from Grenoside, council/office would inspect it.
Mind you every time he came he’d always want a bit of pork.
(Did you use to cure the ham)
We used to cure both hams &, I mean, during war you could sell them like Billy-oh.
Well me dad used to sell them to bosses at Sheffield Corporation & I’d walk up to Ewden
Valley with ‘em.
(…)
(This is a photograph of a field of oats that’s just been cut at top of Dithams)
Old Grayson with him
(Mr. Grayson. That’s a mechanical reaper isn’t it Not a reaper binder)
No it’s just a reaper. You could put different things on, blades, yeah.
(Did you used to use those)
10

We have used one you know, when we got into harvest at end, when it got easier going. I
used to like to see a field of corn up, used to look well once it had been cut.
(Looking at the height of the oats does it look to you as a good height)
Yes.
(You wouldn’t want it to get higher)
Probably a bit higher but there’s different breeds, that’s what it is. In them days you see,
you look at harness there, hardly any on is there
(Did you look after the horses as well)
Oh aye, grooming as well.
Now this field, I’m going to tell you a story. This field here, it belonged, Dithams Cottage
this top field here & er
(It’s the last ones before Hagg Wood isn’t it)
Aye right on corner. I went up with one horse to ‘arrow & I’d been with milk & I’d bought
some bacca & made a pipe & I were lit up & course reins round me wrist & old horse
pulled me down! And of course Gavin () he was there & he says ‘He rowed three rows up
all at once with his trousers over his face!’
(This ones’ old one -about 1908)
Yes, well that’s Billy Grayson there, old Billy Grayson, that one there.
(The one sitting in the power chair)
There’s only one left now, one of Grayson’s & he’s at Deepcar. He used to work for us he
were there when, well he left for me to go.
(Did you find the land fertile)
Oh aye, it were good soil up there & I mean where estates built that’s good soil there.
(It was just as good for root crops)
Aye, we used to grow ‘taters & that. You remember Stuart Linley don’t you Aye, well he
married – what’s her name – one of Brammells
(Harry Brammells family)
Aye, him & Stella Wainwright they used to pal together & Madge Wainwright, they used to
pal together & they always messing about in fields & we’d say ‘What you have for
breakfast Stuart’ ‘Pancakes’ It were all pancakes, it were all pancakes for tea-time,
dinner.
That is a good photograph that, an old one, it’s a good one.
(Talking of pancakes, they used to have oatcakes didn’t they)
11

Yes oatcakes & pancakes.
(Did somebody come round selling them)
Yes, pony & cart, they used to shout. I remember oxen ‘cross here. Oxen, oxoes, bring in
oxoes. There were two oxen.
(Pulling a cart)
Yes, aye, just shaft between them & they stooped here.
(You said this was William Grayson)
Yes old Billy Grayson, he were last man there.
(I’ve another photo & was told it’s him. He had a milk round & stood outside Sawpit Road
there.)
Yeah, outside old Mickey’s; old Harold Bush that one & his dad.
(This building that sticks out, is that the old smithy)
No that’s Blue Ball.
(No that’s in the distance, this one here)
Aye, it comes down side. I mean they widened Blue Ball a lot, I mean there’s a big drain
there
(I found an OS map 1903 that marked that as SMITHY, but in 1923 map it had completely
gone)
I remember them knocking them down to start Football Lane; when old Platty came from
Deepcar & knocked them all down & it used to come right down to road, right down to
main road.
(Jim McDonagh told me it was Sawpit Road - most call it Main Road)
Where that shed come down.
(At back of my..)
No at front, there were wheelwrights all sorts there at one time.
(Where you’re saying it’s the smithy)
Yes, that house were empty. Oh I can’t remember anybody living in that one but the
Highams () were in this one & then there were Freddy Hibberd, he lived in there, & then
there were Ashworths, brother lived up there. He got killed outside Mrs. Burley’s, aye, he’d
been to see her & he walked straight out in front of a bus.
12

(Recently)
Oh no, about 40 year now.
(And Mr. Wragg were in one)
Aye, in that one where Freddy Hibberd lived. There were Wingfields in first house for a
start, then Ashworths, then the Hibberds, well Highams & Hibberds in my time.
(…)
And that were empty, upstairs there, & that were shop behind there & old Mickey, you’ve
heard of Mickey haven’t you Micklethwaite, that was his house there.
(There’s two people looking out of that doorway, I can’t tell what writing says)
That were done away, it were a shop.
(What did he sell)
All goods you know, general.
(Hardware)
Yeah, bread & things like that. He’d come through one door, you know, then he’d
(Laughter). Wingfields in that end, Bradshaws at next, Shaws in next & they brought up six
girls, boy & girls, girls & boy should I say, & old Annie Shaw, she could sing, we used to
like to hear her Sunday Nights. I remember ‘em starting the houses other side, I mean I
were only a young ‘un then but I can remember it all.
(I remember Sawpit Road, everybody, the Wraggs, wanting to get out because of the
damp)
They would be them everybody were selling a bit up then, weren’t they
(This is Mr. Grayson clearing a field for a visit by underprivileged children)
That used to walk up here there or four hundred of them from Sheffield.
(Come up from the station)
Aye & they’d go there to Grayson’s for their meal & then down to Holmes Farm, up to
crags they all went.
And then they started bringing them in buses then. I’ve seen five or six buses, double
deckers, up Green Lane. Mind you, there were no other transport on road then.
Old Billy Grayson & Ellis Grayson there.
(Is it Ellis or Elias)
Ellis. He were barman at Bolsterstone. Lad that used to work for my old boss, his son were
from there.
13

(…)
Do you know what this is
(A National Identity card)
It was a brown one for a start & then a green one.
(Got a code number as well)
JFZ is it
(Then 203)
Never thought of that before. Said they could stop us anywhere in them days.
(Did you also have to have a photo)
No, no.
(That bridge didn’t stay long because of the low headroom)
It were took down just as war started.
(Work on the dam finished in the 30s didn’t it)
’29 it were finished. I can show you one, somewhere I’ve got ‘em, er, bill poster. Barrow
with ladders on, old farm sales, well they don’t do that today.
We used to play football there on a Sunday.
(It was like a dirt road wasn’t it)
Well where it were, if it rained we were under cover.
(It only looks like a box thing doesn’t it)
Well its iron, iron work that on top. That looks like Annie Shaw.
(Annie Shaw)
Been on about her – lived with Mickey.
(You said they must have taken bridge down in 30s at start of war)
They took it down so far & left about four feet – but that’s gone now.
(You can still see a bit of the end on the left hand side)
Well in that field, when old Crookey had it, used to grow mushrooms in far corner & they
were mushrooms.
14

(Bit hit & miss growing them isn’t it)
Ah, but he could grow ‘em.
(How)
He used to put them in down there & they were out of the way & they were there all the
time you see, save messing about.
(How do you seed mushrooms)
I don’t know, it’s a spore isn’t it
(Did he have a shed there)
No, no.
(Just in the field)
Yes, just in the corner.
‘Got to keep me own counsel’ – he were a rum chap, old Crookey.
I had to be on half past six bus in the morning up to there & then I used to come back with
girls on bus to school then. So I did a bit of a walk.
(Were you doing milking then)
No I weren’t doing milking then, just general farm work, helping out & then, Blow Me!
When I started in there he come & got a job with me.
(As a forester)
Aye, he didn’t last long.
(You probably saw a number coming & going)
Oh I’ve seen umpteen. There’s been thirty under me. I got going, I were younger then.
(Did you have Land Rover)
I had one on for a start & then when I bought this house I had to sell a few things & that
went. Course they come from York to see me ; they didn’t want me to sell Land Rover,
wanted to keep that, so they just said ‘We’ll see what we can do’ They did didn’t they
They got me a land Rover-long wheel base.
(Did you do any felling)
Yes, with axe. I made a six foot cross cut up in shed today & me axe, but me axe is broke
– what did they call the Phillip’s brother That went into Derbyshire
(Phillip)
No not Phillip.
15

(Phillip Ashton’s brother Sam)
Ah that’s it, well he lived with her legally for a bit & he borrowed me axe & of course when
he brought it back he’d wrapped this here wire round it & I’ve never got a shaft for it since.
(Wasn’t that a bit tricky with just an axe)
Oh no, no, no. Bernard Swift, that I’ve mentioned, he were my mate & he’d go up trees ,
you know, like this & take burrs off with axe & then set in with cross cut, get half way, & it
were hard work. Course I didn’t smoke but Bernard did, he’d say ‘Lets have a ciggy’ &, you
know, what we used to do Either two bob or half a crown, just pop it in nick so it didn’t
come back on us. Now a lot of people laugh at me for saying that but it’s true.
(So you could have a rest-you’d wedge it)
Tree wouldn’t come on us. They wouldn’t know what you were talking about today, would
they I have to go back now when I’m talking about old coinage.
(Did they take it out on a tractor)
You’d to pull it. Aye that were over at old monkey( ) East Field. Used to fell a lot on
there, big oak trees, ash trees.
(Where was that)
Going out towards Barnsley, towards Stainborough. And we’d planted all strains, me &
Bernard, we did all of that, planted all Stainborough Hill as you go down to the woods
there. All that’s our work there. They look at me & I say ‘I did that’
Well it’s true, I can’t get away from it.
(You were planting 500 a day)
We had a team here, you know. Oh they were rum lads some of them. There were one, &
he got to be a forester, when old steam trains were going up & down, you know, Dickinson
Bridge across here, he used to stand on here & if a train come up he’d have ‘em chuck
twenty five on, on load of coal.
(As it went past)
Aye. He’d get paid for them see! But I had nowt to do with it then, they halted when I
started.
(How did you carry the saplings when you started)
A porcelain bag.
(At the side of you)
Yeah. And we’d have three sticks, well nine sticks, or whatever you wanted, you know, &
we should get up to first one & choose which side it were on & just stride it out & stick it in
& then when you get to next one, stride out again. And if you look round & it weren’t, you
know, in your turn, walk back, then alter it again.
16

(Was it one stride, two strides)
Three & to measure you chucked you’re spade, not chucked it, but you know, laid it in front
of you & that were six foot.
(I suppose you just got into a rhythm)
Oh yes it were hard work because, you know, you went so far up & you looked back on
your stick & it would be a mile out.
(Then you’d have to go back down again)
Aye.
(I take my hat off to those who plough fields. I’ve photos showing draught horses & the
earlier ones are small – I suppose for turning around & then they get bigger, taller. Did you
prefer the smaller ones or taller)
Oh I liked a big horse, talk to ‘em, they knew you. The same as when you were fetching
them in – just shout ‘em & they’d come.
(Did you used to go out in the fields, grass fields)
In the day time, it’d be eleven o’clock at night when we’d be turning them out. Mind you,
they were lighter nights then & better days working into night.
(Was it usual to keep a draught horse for 5 years then, from a foal)
No, no we used to keep ‘em.
(For life I thought they were kept for the strongest years – about 5 years)
Well horses are a very strong animal
(…)
Crookes lived in that; Margaret Wood lived there.
(Who became Margaret Paget)
Yeah. I used to go cut her dad’s hair, Mrs. Suggett next door; I used to cut her hair if she
wanted it doing. And then there were Hudsons in here. It looks as if they’ve all been built at
a different time, doesn’t it
(Yes you can see brighter parts & that has castellated bits as if it’d been added on)
Aye, well they both are, they both are.
(And a lot of these lean-tos they would have been used for file cutting)
Yes, this one here, this one were. I can’t remember any sheds here.
(Mr. Ellison lived on here)
17

Aye & he lived on here & he were file cutting here, files & that.
(So it were Hudsons at back end, next one in)
Albert Paget lived there as well, all their family.
(Before he were courting Margaret)
Oh aye, a long time before then. You know Alan Hudson, he lived there.
(Are we talking about 1950s, 1960s)
Oh before then this.
(Suggetts)
Woods.
(Crookes in last one)
Mrs. Crookes used to live on estate here. Little woman she were with a beret on. Nice little
woman.
(This one then)
Suggetts – Les, Liam & Colin () Suggett- they were lads. I used to keep a pony top side
here in the field with me pony.
(You mean that field across from)
Where they’ve built on.
(They always used to call that the donkey field.}
Aye.
(It’s a very sloping field like a terrace)
(There weren’t anything around it)
(There were other farms higher up)
Slack Fields & then there were Delfs higher up.
(I’ve also got a picture off the old band)
Aye they used to play there at Christmas.
(A brass band)
(No with violins & a bass viol like Thomas Hardys’ stuff)
(They used to come round & sing all the old carols)
Yeah
18

(You’ve got some old photos then)
They’re the old compartments on there.
(Your Forestry compartments)
(This is a Forestry map)
Yes well it’s mine!
(So there’s one large one & about three small ones – like a strip & two triangular ones & a
big one there.)
Yeah, well it gives you one big compartment number see & they’re all in that area.
(Would you plant different types of tree in different compartments)
Oh yes.
(Did it depend on what arrived that day)
Oh no, we used to have 40 thousand come a day – not a day- a month. We used to have
to dig ‘em then, cover ‘em up with bracken.
(So your boss would say put some pine there, some larch there)
They’re still there aye. I were only looking at ‘em a week or two back & I planted them –
these big ‘uns, big trees. It used to be tidy in there then, we used to cut all the sides of
roads, rake it up, tidy it up -we’d nothing like that done there. I don’t think there’s anybody
here now, to tell you the truth.
(I remember that branch line came off here & went up to where reservoir building was.
This must be close to the level crossing)
Over Holme Bridge see Straight across there.
(The siding come off & went there)
Aye, up side then. They used to bring railway carriages up when they’d been to seaside &
leave them. Young Brookey he were always in them. Young Brookey – have you heard
from him lately
(Young Brookey)
David, Dave Brooke.
(I hear from him now & then)
(…)
Now then
19

(Oh yes that’s the village – oh no that’s the old water installation. All been turned into flats
now haven’t they)
Yes that’s right it is. I don’t know what they’re doing to tell you the truth.
(They integrated the stonework into the landscape then)
They had stonemasons then. You’ve not seen one of them before have you
(With the trees as low as this you can see a lot can’t you)
Aye. This was done during war you see. That were pylon & another one at Apple Bank
across there so’s they couldn’t bomb down.
(Anti-aircraft measures)
They were took down in ’53. I know I were ploughing when they blew them up.
(They blew them up)
Yes.
(This is dated 1939)
That’s another number, don’t take notice of what you see on there. That’s that one I’ve
shown you isn’t it That’s took from top of Fairystill ()
(Which dam is this)
Bottom dam. Bottom dam at Top dam as we used to call it. That’s Shot Row.
(It’s all planned out like a proper..)
Oh it’s a proper village, with streets & everything. Bus used to turn round here – double
decker. You know that big house going up to Bolsterstone After you’ve left go up,
climbing.
(Moorehall)
No not up Moorehall, up Rout, come back on yourself & then that’s it there. Old Boyd they
called him, he burnt to death one Sunday morning. He were an old man, you know, & he’d
got worn & he’d got heat on & it had set his chair afire.
That’s where bridge is.
(Steam crane there)
Yeah. They were all steam cranes in them days.
(Moving around on rails – they’re putting in the masonry)
And that’s a picture of Owen Hall. You could see top of grout then, it were neat then, but
it’s all grown up now. Now then, do you know where that is
20

(That’s old corner turret on dam wall side isn’t it)
Dripping Sniggers line.
()
Dripping Sniggers
(That’s what they called workers the workers that came up there wasn’t it)
No what it were, it were women used to go to Sheffield on a Friday & they’d catch bus
down here & they’d ride up on train, you see, & when it got near twelve o’clock workmen
used to know , they used to shout ‘Dripping Sniggers are here!’
(You can see line going right past the turret)
That’s where Rout is now, you see.
(Whereabouts is that)
Ewden Valley. You know as you go round after leaving what we call crossroads going up
Rout, you go round don’t you & there’s a bridge there, yeah –that’s where Rout is. And all
that framework just – he hasn’t passed it to you yet.
(That’s an earlier stage isn’t it)
That’s what they were making.
(A wooden former first & then put stonework on that)
(They were built to last then weren’t they)
Yes.
(These are all 1920s, 1930s so you can see all the stages. The earliest was 1913. How
did you get hold of these Frank)
Ah, I worked in Forestry, but a very young woman at Worrall let me have all these. I shan’t
want them now.
(Did she take these pictures)
No, her dad. Well not her dad, but they all had them at that time.
(I haven’t seen that one before, looking down from Main Road. That’s Sawpit Road, that
tree there. Do you call it Oakridge Farm)
Green Head. They’re old navies who worked on’t dam.
(They look like proper masons, they’ve got blocks round them. Blocks of stone they’re
cutting with hand saws.)
(So this railway line went right past it (The dam))
No it didn’t come up here, it only come to bottom. This is Top dam.
21

(They’ve got similar style of turret house)
Oh aye, same style. Look at that one. That’s crossroads, this is where crossroads are &
this is where all huts were built..
(So this is before the huts were built)
Do you know how I got that Winston Shaw he says ‘Go in room’ & he says ‘Take that
picture down off of wall’
Well it were all plaster of Paris & when I came to get hold of it, it just disintegrated & he
says ‘I’ll want you to see if I can get me one took off it. Get the sen one’
Just like old Winston! (Laughter)
(Have you seen how they make fences)
We used to do that.
(You used to do that)
Cliffe Wood – I haven’t told you a lot of bunkum!
(…)
(Are these the steps the water runs down)
Yes.
(From the top It looks like a grand staircase)
Can you see where that is
(That’s New Mill Bridge)
That’s it.
(And all the huts before it. The building right in the middle there, I found out it was next to a
small bridge - that was the bridge that was transported stone by stone up to Glenhill before
all this was flooded.)
(So that’s all underwater)
(Up to about there)
Well not too far – about top of woods.
(That was paid for by Joseph Dixon wasn’t it (Moving the bridge))
Yeah. That’s the gang from Ewden.
(Ones got a potato fork)
22

Little Ted Crookes, can you remember him He lived across here
(Got him here as well)
Aye, I mean they’d be dozens in them houses wouldn’t there Same as up here.
(What were they growing)
The forestry – they’d dig nurseries over here, you know, dig nurseries.
(Is that some of your crew then Frank)
No, no, that were Ewden Valley men. That one at bottom, that were Steward, he were
boss, Clarence. ‘Ummm, errrr’ he used to say ‘Ummm errrr, errr, errr’. Nice little lad there I
don’t know who he were.
(1933)
You know where that’s took don’t you
(Not this wall outside here)
No, ‘cross from old house at top of Dithams, stile there going down into allotments. Me
mother had just got up with rheumatic fever there.
(Just a bit further on you’ve got rookery haven’t you & that dropped down other side)
Into Wrotchet ()Pit.
(Well you know we were talking about people having been found in Goyt drowning
themselves Well it’s very steep there.)
If drivers were to look over that they wouldn’t go so fast.
(I found a newspaper article about a woman who fell off there in about 1899, called Mrs.
Barber. She reached for some fruit & fell into the Goyt. They held the inquiry at The Blue
Ball Inn & I remember people calling that drop Mother’s Death. People still calling it a
hundred years afterwards.)
Now I’m going to tell you another little story before we get onto next. You know when you
come to just where you’ve just been talking about Opposite there, if you look, there’s just
about size of that fireplace, a wall there, & that were done a long while before war & it
were old Platty.
He were builder & he built all them houses up front – all Bow Lane, him & Oller Earnshaw,
& he must have had a drop too much to drink one night & he overturned car, went up bank
& overturned & he had some men build a wall there & it’s still there to this day. You didn’t
know that see There’s a bit of history for you.
Frank Harvey Part 2
23

That’s the bridge that goes across.
(Did you get your trees from Wigtwizzle nursery)
That were Corporation’s.
(What trees were they raising)
Well, they were all sorts - all the trees they planted round dams. They wouldn’t have done
just this dam, they did them all you see.
(By Corporation you mean Water Works part of the Corporation)
Aye. I went for a wood show one Saturday afternoon, it’s two year sin about, & I’m looking
at this here turnery & he says ‘It’s not for sale sir’ I said ‘I don’t expect it be’ He says ‘I
don’t think you’ll know what sort of wood it is’ I says ‘You won’t What sort of wood it is’
He says ‘I don’t think you’ll have any like that at Wharncliffe’ Blow me! He worked with me
here!
And he’d altered that much I didn’t know him. Well he weren’t pleased that he’d seen me.
We had a couple of hours together in that tent.
(Well it’s a hell of a way to reintroduce himself)
That he were a surprise to me.
(Could you tell what wood it was)
Aye.
(You probably set him on did you)
Aye. That’s Len Wragg, Monica Wragg’s dad, ploughing round Top dam you know, coming
from Stone, right hand side. They’ve just felled that, well, not just, two or three years since.
They’ve just felled it all but it’s a mess, untidy.
(These rows are quite spaced out here)
Yeah, but they all us had best land, Corporation.
(These are quite professionally produced pictures)
Do you know where I got these I were at Hebden Bridge & Conservator came round & he
says ‘Oh Frank, I am retiring’ I thought he wanted a couple of quid in the box! He says ‘I
have some photographs here I think you ought to have them because nobody will know
anything about them’
I’ve spoke to him before about them you see & he give ‘em me. That’s how I got these.
(“Lining out Trees in the Nursery”)
24

Does it tell you who is on them
(Hackett, Crookes, Broomhead & Morley. They’ve got a plank & clips every so often)
And when they put it in what they’ve dug out – trench- put it in there, then they lift it up,
press the little clips & the trees drop in then. Automatic you could say.
(That’s “Nursery at top dam at Wigtwizzle”)
(They’ve got about thirty trees)
More than that
(Good way of doing a lot at a time)
(I can see they’ve got the fat gaiters on)
Yes. That’s Hackett, he lives at Jack House.
(Oh yeah, gamekeeper’s cottage you mean, that’s what we called it)
You know we had some wet days, weren’t all nice. It were alright when sun were out –
that’s when townies used to go, they only go for another jaunt somewhere.
(“Pilot Plots. Wellshaw”)
Wellshaw Cross.
Look at that photo.
(That’s a vista behind it)
That’s looking straight down valley at Top dam
(Says here “Ewden Crag in the Distance” There’s something in the distance sticking up)
That’d be Bottom dam – that’s Top dam.
(Oh yes this is Top dam & you’ve got Moore hall reservoir next one down)
Now him, you’ll not remember him – Billy Holmes, lived across from Chapel; up by ‘t
Chapel, next cottage to Chapel. They pulled them down & built them other houses.
(Yes they called them Blue Ball Cottages though they were next to the Chapel)
Mallinsons & Holmes lived there.
I used to know everybody in village, I don’t know nobody now. You don’t know your
neighbours.
(Billy Holmes – what’s he doing)
He’s lining out.
25

(He’s loading them into one of these things. That’s quite a fiddly job – each has to go into a
groove there)
(Would these be the ones that came from Scarborough)
Oh no. They grew these themselves; we’d a lot of nurseries us, all over.
(Did he (Billy Holmes) do this most of his life)
No he were a stonemason, him. He were one of Holme navvies. He built that bottom
tower.
(That were there from 1913)
(This is a later one)
That’s coming from Top dam up to bridge.
(There’s a lot of tension in those wires)
We started cheating a little bit in our later days. We put Land Rover on (Laughter)
(To tension it up that way) (My Land Rover hasn’t got a winch on)
No, ours didn’t, we used to put a big chain through & do it that way. I mean everybody was
in safety. I mean if it had come off it would have clipped somebody.
(These stakes are all cut not machined fence posts)
We used to say ‘Lorry load of stakes out of here’
Bradfield; no Bradford not Bradfield Council, used to have a lot of stakes out of us.
(You used to shape them)
I were chainsaw man, Bernard was my mate but he used to get in way some times – went
to pull ‘em before it were ready. It were dangerous then & he were all us a beggar for
putting his hands there, near blade.
I think that’s my trouble now - with chainsaw. You can see that chain up there, look, I’ve
had it silvered. I went to pick up some lads up one night at Silkstone & the one, I says
‘That one ought to come out’.
I says ’Lend us your saw’ just like that. I started his saw up & got on one knee & it were
rotten & it went straight through me leg here. I had seventeen stitches in it.
I never felt it, never felt it.
Anyway this lad he’d never, there were only him who could drive but he didn’t know way
from topside line, railway line, to bottom. Course – ‘Where’s he got to Where’s he got to’
He seemed to take ages – he hadn’t been with us long.
Anyway he took me to Barnes & Beckett & he were a foreign doctor, he were more
interested in forestry work than me! Anyway there were them disintegrated stitches & of
26

course I suffer with it now a bit. Mind you I give myself a rare knocking for that & I had a
broken back in 1970, so I’m marking time now.
(You used to work in the 1970s didn’t you)
Oh aye.
(And it’s a knockabout trade – it is dangerous isn’t it)
If you’d more time I could have shown you a lot more today but me nephew is coming
today. If you want you can come again sometime.
(We could do that with questions we have forgotten to ask you today if that’s OK.)
I even know man that’s on tractor.
(That’s quite a tractor because it’s got wheel hubs)
Wheel locks.
(Is that to stop it sinking further)
Yeah.
(Was it an old Fergy)
No it was a Fordson Major. (Eventually got there)
Up Dithams, during war when I had pony & cart, Land Girls were in there. Some lodged
with Beavers at farm.
(Edgar Beaver You’re joking.)
Some lodged with Greggs, in second house, you know, up this lane.
(You mean Bashells Lane There’s a big house at top)
Yes, but I mean on main road. There was Wraggs in first one & then Greggs. There were
three more at Wardle’s, Holmes lane.
Oh, I knew them all then
(So they would have been busy round here then)
Oh aye, I mean at Dithams, there were some tubers in there then. I mean, when I go up on
bus I think my god when t’old wood mill were there!
(That were at top end of dam wasn’t it)
No, Main Road, Dithams, up Ditham’s wood.
27

(There was a wood mill up there)
Aye there was a wood mill there. They made it & then they sawed it.
Me & me dad were coming down Dithams with pony & cart & we’d been to fetch hay
chopper – five hundredweight hay chopper it were.
(Sometimes it was a straw chopper)
Aye, it could do anything & of course we were singing ‘Horsey, horsey don’t you stop, just
let your feet go clippety-clop’ As soon as we said ‘don’t you stop’ the wheel iron came off &
the wheel went past horse’s head! Course we landed on fells then, you see, & I had to go
to Moorehall then & get Billy Smedley’s dray to fetch it.
(The Smedleys were at Dithams)
Aye years after.
(We always used to call it Granddad Smedley’s – there was Smedleys at either end of
village at one time. Weren’t there a Morton living there at one time at Dithams)
Aye Andrew, they lived there, or Ian should I say.
28

Interview with Arthur Quarmby 7 th June 2011 by Ian Rotherham and Christine
Handley
The interview included a trip to see the peat cutting area which is currently being used.
(Some text is a later addition)
I am the fourth generation of family elected to the office [Chief Constable of Graveship of
Holme].
Part of the Manor of Wakefield, the Manor of Wakefield, which is the biggest Manor in
England, owned by Edward the Confessor, Thomas Saville and his predecessors, also by
William the Conqueror, William Rufus, Richard the 1 st ., and it was divided into 12
administrative areas known as Graveships, I don’t know, from the German word Graf, of
which the graveship of Holme is one; each of these administrative areas comprise, seven
Townships in Holmfirth: Austonley, Upperthong, Holme, Cartworth, Wooldale, Fulstone
and Hepworth
I have maps of them all as they were sold off during the 1834 Act of Enclosure.
[Referring to maps]
What they all have in common is that the townships all have a chunk of moorland which
was their natural material resource – Upperthong with its farmland – not much was opened
up by the Enclosure Act – have a strip of land which linked onto a very large area of
moorland where they could cut their peat and generally run their animals.
[So that was their access route]
Not all of them had accesses, several of them had detached pieces of land, for example
Austonley here, and this strip of land ran out along that road but each chunk of moorland is
detached from it, where as in the case of Fulstone their moors ran towards here and
settled area here.
[All this was enclosed under the Acts of Enclosure]
Everything that has a number on it was sold off to pay for the bureaucratic operation:
much resented by the locals.
Holme , you see, has its piece of moorland - out here. There is the settled area of farming.
1

Our bits of peat are generally 6 or 7 feet deep and we don’t cut like the Irish, the Irish cut
turf from the top. We cut a complete vertical face right down to the gravel and in the
gravel, under the peat; you can find tree roots and flints. I have some here but my flint
collection is in the Tolson Memorial Museum at Ravensknowle [Park, Huddersfield].
This is a typical peat spade. When I went to Ireland in a hardware store I asked for a peat
spade and the assistant said what would that be And when I described it he said Ah! a
turf slein- right handed or left handed – right handed I said, so he produced one which I
said was left handed and he said no it isn’t so I bought one of each and gave them away
because they are useless whereas this is an original because the timber is very light – this
is our local one.
We usually use a barrow for wheeling out and there are just one or two transparencies
here that show taking out the peat to dry and cutting into the peat face – my father was
there.
You know one of my oldest memories is of bringing peat down from the moors with my
Grandfather who had borrowed a pony and cart.
[ And you met the Holmfirth Tiger]
The Holmfirth Tiger – this is what we met. Exactly what we met, a Sumatran tiger was
brought up in a terrace house through the Second World War and the children used to play
on its back and chased round with it. The school was quite there – they were some circus
people brought two back from South Africa and one died on the way. Our pony was
terrified when it saw the tiger. (See book Tiger on a String)
This is the total area of the graveship of Holme. When I had a meeting with the local
Parish Council they said: Oh your boundaries are just the same as ours round there. I said
I think you’ll find it’s the other way round!
Nearby is West Nab, here, that’s not very long over the border of the graveship and they
found a lot of rock-art. Nobody knows what to make of these. I think they are man-made,
but there is not anything recognizable like a cup/ring mark.
I have one of a shot of a stone from [an excavation] in Orkney and its just the same
strange shapes.
2

There is a strange corbel roofed structure leading up to the top of this hill and I jacked the
floor up with a car-jack when I was a boy thinking there might be treasure underneath. It
was only when an archaeologist later said it was not the floor but was the capstone that
had fallen in.
I gave my collection of these [photographs] to the West Yorkshire Archaeological Society
and the Tolson Memorial Museum. I’ve toured all the various rock formations for 20 years.
Here is a list of all the farmsteads that disappeared from the Digley Valley just by Holme
because of all the reservoirs built. – 8 were planned – not for drinking but for conservation
to keep up water power for the mills – only 3 were built- Holme Styes, Bilberry, caused the
flood, and Riding Wood. [The third reservoir was Boshaw Whams (Tolson Museum
Booklets) not Riding Wood]; but all these farmsteads were closed down because when the
Water Boards were formed they didn’t want any human occupation.
[ And do you think all these farmsteads would have been fuelled by peat]
I think pretty well everything was then because we didn’t have the trees round here as we
do now and I walk further down the valley with the dog through some woods which have
obviously been a real resource for Honley for example and they have been coppiced very,
very regularly and the bits of woods we have left are not and our woodland is spreading
very fast which is good and of course they are cutting a lot of it- the 1940’s and Cold War
fir trees – down. Well I think, clearly, before the mines were opened up then people here
depended entirely on peat round when they burned all the trees.
I don’t think there are so many empty, derelict farmhouses left now.
We got an exemption from the smoke coal order, again courtesy of Ireland – they gave an
exemption in Dublin which I was able to quote so the Irish people who represent us on the
Council here so we got the vote in our favour and I have to provide a list of people to the
Council every year to show them where peat will be burnt and we haven’t had any
prosecutions at all under the smoke control order.
[One of 10 or 12 graveships]
12 into which Manor of Wakefield is divided
[All others have lapsed]
3

I think their traditions have died off.
[Do they still have a Constable]
Not that I know of -I was properly elected and sworn in but it was just a relict of an ancient
manor of the time. David Michelmore, Horbury Hall – he swore me in on behalf of the
Manor. At that time it was known back in the Middle Ages it was an election for 1 year and
the Chief Constable then appointed a Constable for each of the 7 Townships; the Chief
Constable had to look after the whole lot of them the Chief Constable was anxious to get
rid of the job after one year as there was no pay; now it is for life unless you blot your
copy-book.
The other Graveships didn’t necessarily all have 7 Townships, we just happen to have 7,
they had more or less.
[Did Parishes come in after that Was it a duel system]
Good question. I mean we have been under Kirkburton for a long, long time but when
Kirkburton was divided I don’t know.
[Civil Parish system-graveships empowered that]
The Manor certainly goes back before the Norman Conquest but how far I am not sure.
[Who was the Chief Constable accountable to]
To the Manor, in Wakefield
[And the right to be appointed to Chief Constable was given by the Crown]
No, it has always been an elected office.
[Who gave power to the Manor to have elections] The Manor of Wakefield was given to
the Lacey family by William the Conqueror [Ilbert de Lacey] as part of the Harrying of the
North – far worse than the Irish savagery under Cromwell.
I have just discovered that my eldest ancestor was called Orm – Fitz Orm – in 1150 he
bought his place in heaven in the then normal manner in that he made a grant of land to
Fountains Abbey. He had 2 manors – he left a manor in Kirkheaton to his eldest son and
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the manor in Quarmby to the younger son. I thought he was Fitz Orm so I thought Fitz
Orm It sounds from the Norman but Orm doesn’t– so I have been making some enquiries
in Norway – it’s a Norwegian name – it means snake – the Normans were very keen on
leaving everything to the eldest son, everything, to concentrate the power and wealth. So I
am pretty sure he was of Scandinavian descent and how his father Orm lived through the
Harrying and came out very wealthy and left it to his son, called Fitz Orm, and put it all
together I don’t know.()
[Are the Graveships very old, as a mechanism of land management]
The present Lord of the manor is Lady Diana Miller, daughter of the Duke of Leeds and I’m
told that the title can pass down the female line and the last time I heard she is living in
Harare. [Lady Diana Miller is the daughter of Sackville Pelham, 5th Earl of Yarborough
who was the last Lord of the Manor of Wakefield, which was dissolved in 1925 (Yorkshire
Archaeological Society)]
[Are you still cutting peat]
Yes, I cut early last year and was cutting early this year and got it all off the moor very
quickly.
[You said you have an annual meeting Advertised in local paper for claiming rights to cut
peat]
No. I don’t think it ever did, I don’t remember that at all – no, anyone who lives in the
graveship has the right to cut peat.
[I thought you had to register the right every year]
It is advisable for them to let me have their name and address so I can clear them with
Council under the smoke control order – that’s the only formality there is with it and when
some new people decide they want to cut peat I go up there with them to show them
where other people are cutting peat and where it will be impolite to muscle in.
[Because each of the peat pits is marked, isn’t it]
Used to be – it is dying out is that fewer people of course, more people using electricity
and gas.
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[So when new people come in do you find that they are they interested in this]
Yes, because they seek me out, I don’t seek them out.
[How many people do you think now cut, would you guess]
I should think about 10 or a dozen.
[And some of those are long standing]
Some are, some are fairly recent.
[I understood that with the hike in energy prices – some in Scotland showing interest in
peat]
Not really yet. I’m sure the way prices are going its only logical.
[It’s for domestic use]
Yes
[How many cuts are active]
In different locations there are 5 peat grounds but really only one in active use. I haven’t
been up to Harden for a while and I must check on that and see what is happening there.
It’s a wet area and there have been 2 dry years so I think it should be more accessible – it
usually is. Harden is still in use – just. Access is very poor.
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David Wombwell interviewed by Margaret Wombwell.
9 th July 2011.
My name is Dave Wombwell. I live at Mill Town near Ashover in Derbyshire and the time
I’m wanting to talk about is the early 1950s when I lived in Manchester, in fact at Didsbury.
And we went to a chapel in Didsbury called Beaverbark Baptist Church and the young
people there used to quite regularly go into Derbyshire and walk. And most of them were
older than me; I’d be about twelve or so. And I would persuade them to let me accompany
them. And we would catch the train from Didsbury Station, quite often we’d go to Chinley,
sometimes to Hayfield, and we’d walk up over the tops and back down to Edale Station
and the ticket would enable us to come back to Didsbury from Edale Station.
Normally there’d perhaps be about ten or twelve of us and we would walk up from
Chinley over the top and probably drop down Jacob’s Ladder which I remember quite
vividly, back down to Edale Station.
The most vivid memory was getting blisters on my heels cos at that time I wouldn’t
have any boots, I’d just go in ordinary shoes. I think the older people would have proper
nailed boots at that time. And I can remember on one or two occasions having to be
carried the last bit by one of the fellows because I was in such pain from the blisters on my
heels.
The other thing I remember rather vividly was the mist. Cos very often we’d get near
the top of Kinder Scout only to find the top was enveloped in mist and we would find the
way. I didn’t know much about that side of it because I wasn’t organising the trips but I
don’t remember anybody ever using a compass but certainly people had the 1 inch OS
map and we would follow that. Anyway, we never got seriously lost and we always
seemed to arrive at our destination in time to catch the train back home.
Once or twice we would vary the route and find interesting things. On one occasion
I remember being very excited. I was quite interested in archaeology as a boy at that time
and I thought I’d found a stone axe on Kinder Scout. It was the right shape. It had a sharp
edge and the other end came to a longish point. It looked like pictures of stone axes I’d
seen in books certainly. So I put it in me pocket. I think I found it in a stream bed, and took
it home. I was so interested that I went to the museum in Manchester, attached to the
university, and took it with me and showed it to somebody there and they said “Oh well it
looks like a stone axe. We’ll ask one of the experts”. And so an expert was duly
summoned and he came and looked at it and turned it over and he said “Well it's the right
shape but it’s the wrong stone”. It was made of gritstone, I think, and of course it should
have been made of flint. So I was quite disappointed that they reckoned it wasn’t a stone
axe and it had just been shaped by the water in the stream. It was fairly smooth. And so
that was my first archaeological find, [laughing] demolished I’m afraid.
Another occasion – I was very interested to find what looked like small caves in the
peat. The streams running off the top. And this would be in the area which I think comes
between Edale Cross and Brown Knoll. It was that area I’m sure. And there were several
of these small tunnels in the peat with streams trickling through them which I was quite
interested to see. But of course I was always keen on caves and in fact later on took up
caving as my sport. But I’ve never seen them since, whether there are any now I don’t
know.
When we got to the station to come home it was invariably the thing to do to put the
youngest person in the group on the rack. So we’d get in the railway coach and me being
the smallest I’d be put up on the rack while the rest of the group crowded in to the seats,
probably with the girls sitting on the boys’ knees. And we would travel back home like that.
[Laughing.]
I was always very impressed with Derbyshire at that time. It seemed a wonderful
place and I vowed then that if I ever got the chance to live in Derbyshire I would take it. It
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seemed such a wonderful place compared to where we lived in Didsbury in Manchester,
although we were fairly near the country there. But Derbyshire was so different. And so
subsequently when I got the chance when I was about twenty five and got married we
moved to Derbyshire and we’ve lived here ever since.
The date today is the 9 th of July 2011 and I’ve enjoyed many parts of Derbyshire.
We tend nowadays, my wife and myself, perhaps to visit the Dales rather than Kinder
Scout, although we hope to do Kinder Scout again in the near future.
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Interview with Herbert Beardsell of Holmbridge (15/7/2011)
Herbert was one of the discussion group at Holme Village Sunday School on the 28 th June
2011. He was brought up in the village of Holme.
I’m Herbert Beardsell and used to be an employee of Yorkshire Water; starting off as a
general labourer then became a reservoir keeper. They changed the title to plant engineer,
very similar job but we covered a bigger area and they weren’t so strict [about keeping people
off the reservoirs / moors/ checking conditions].
When I became reservoir keeper they were very keen on checking the moor and rivers in
particular and that takes you onto the moors. And so…
(CH: which area did you cover)
I covered the Brownhill’s stream [set of reservoirs and collecting grounds etc] in particular but
when we became, when we went on standby they decided that they would have 24hr cover if
necessary – we twinned with Digley and Bilberry reservoirs and so that’s the main area where
I covered the moorland really, but we used to walk up all the rivers once a month. I think we
were scheduled to do and apart from I mentioned we had a lot of small rivers running down in
between Holme Moss and Ramsden Clough and our manager at the time decided to go up
Lightens Road which is a road running just below the edge from Holme Moss TV transmitter
station you can view then up and down the main bit of the stream and so that’s what we
ended up doing. I used to walk Ramsden Clough, Rake Dike right to the source and then
Lightens Road in between and similarly we used to walk up Issues Clough and I think it was
Holme Clough the one above Digley and view the river and moorland up there. Mainly I think
because we had bad landslips prior.
I’m trying to think, they had one before I started work with Yorkshire Water, almost
immediately more or less, early 1970s (73/74). Must have been quite a heavy rainstorm and it
fetched quite a lump of moor down into a system of weirs collecting water for the TV mast.
The TV station used to pump water from near Yateholme right up to the TV mast, for their
own use. At that time it was manned 24hrs a day because it was a radio and television station
when it was built and so they used quite a bit of water. Obviously it got like every other place
of employment, there were less and less workers. They decided, when I started as a reservoir
1

keeper, we used to read the meter at the TV station once per month but they decided it was
getting that they were using so little water it was costing more in reading the meter than in
water charge so they decided not to bother and they charged them a standard rate and
eventually [dog noises!!] they went on and think must have decided this system was costing
them too much and because it must pump for getting on for 700 feet so the cost was getting
that bad for them that they ended up putting their own bore-hole in.
And that’s another thing I used to walk on this Lightens Road walk, I used to follow the track
up there up to the Television station to check for any leaks – there weren’t any – it were pretty
good all the time, well I think it probably still is.
But to go back to this rainstorm in the early ‘70s: there was a system of three weirs picking up
the streams from under the television mast and spinning round all the way to Yateholme it
collected water for this pumping station and it was a good system actually as you could cut off
ones fairly easily. But then when this rainstorm occurred it inundated this one nearest the
station virtually cutting off their supply. And they hired a local builder who had some big plant
came in to clear out all this moorland and reinstate the system basically. As I say I didn’t work
on that but the lads I’d worked with had done and so they told me about it. The weirs you
know were obvious because they had to put a new weir and pipe work system round.
CH: Did it do a lot of damage then
It did, quite a lot of damage yes, took quite a bit of earth out and of course obviously, it was a
lot to move and ... In the early days we had monthly rain gauges which were well out. One
was at Red Cabin which is just up Little Twizzle Clough just near where that joins the moor
top and that was a monthly rain gauge as I said. There was another at the start of Lightens
Road just near the television mast, about quarter a mile down the hill. And then we’d another
one over more or less looking from here [out of front window at Laithe Avenue] just under the
television mast, that was quite near to the road about 200 yards away so that was reasonably
easy to do. Prior to my working there, they did have a monthly rain gauge out at a place
called Bleak Mires Rushes which was fairly close to the source of Ramsden Clough. Which is
going down into - Ramsden Clough joins up almost with the s... nearly at the edge
overlooking the road down into Haden Cut. So it was a fair walk for a chap who did that but as
I say that wasn’t in use, had been taken out before I started work there so I never visited that
one, Bleak Mires Rushes to read the rain gauge.
2

CH: I know it sounds obvious but what did you do – reading rain gauge.
A rain gauge is just basically to collect an accurate reading of rainfall. Its supposed to be set
up, moorland ones weren’t set up as good as the other ones, but they were supposed to be
set up with the gauge top is supposed to be a foot above, clear of the soil [dog noises, get off
the biscuits] and then there’s supposed to be an area around, can’t remember the diameter
now but would be something like 7 or 8 foot possibly 10 , don’t think so. And then you would
have earth mounded up to the foot and then a little lip round so that you would like have a
domed approach and then this drop and then you’d your gauge stood. I think it were
something to do with cutting down on wind turbulence etc. But they were even when I read
the gauges and we used to read weekly you got a difference between the one at Ramsden
which is near to Riding Wood and the one at Digley. The one at Digley was exposed to the
east wind and so if we had an east wind that always picked up more rain than the Brownhill
one if that was a westerly, which was surprising. Obviously I mean you knew you would get
fluctuations with the locality but it was definite [difference] possibly because there were some
trees fairly close to the Brownhill one sheltering it slightly from the east so that could have
been why. And then again the Met Office initially, then the Rivers Authority and then Defra I
think it is now. They go out to the rain gauges once a year and they may not go quite as
frequently now, but while I was working at Yorkshire Water up to 2006, every year they used
to come and check the gauge and they would put a compass on the gauge top and take a
bearing and photograph from every aspect to check on whether they thought anything needed
cutting or moving or trimming you know or even moving the gauge because they didn’t like
you know, but the Met Office were dead against any gauge being moved. While I was working
we had to move one at Blackmoorfoot because it was persistently stolen because they were
made of copper you see and luckily, I mean I don’t know whether they are made of that now
but the one at Blackmoorfoot used to go regularly and they ended up putting it in the
compound around the treatment works. As I say, they weren’t , the Met Office so I think it was
the Rivers Authority who it was at that time, the National Rivers Authority, and they weren’t
keen on it being moved but it was costing so much, obviously they had to supply the gauge
parts – they did decide to let us move it into the compound, I mean it was only 150 yards
different but obviously it was in a different aspect and they liked them to have gone on for so
long.
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But Brownhill had a great number of rain gauges and we had one amusing incident. A chap
we had who used to work at Dunford, the first time he went to a rain gauge at Snailsden it
must have been a misty day. He’d been, I think he’d been in good light with someone else but
this particular occasion he was alone and it was the first time he’d been alone and he took the
wrong route away from the rain gauge and he ended up at Ramsden cottages and he said he
came across someone from the gang from Brownhill here and he said, “Where the heck am
I” He said “I know I’ve come away on t’wrong side” but he’d no clue where he was and
reservoir keeper picked him up and ran him back round to Dunford. So, that’s the only case,
although there was an occasion up at Gorple just before again I started working for Yorkshire
Water that a chap going to the rain gauge in winter collapsed and died. And I think there was
some thought that he was depressed anyway so they wondered if it was not entirely an
accident but a bit more self-imposed so they were very careful after that. So in bad weather
we used to go in twos to the more outlying ones. So that basically is how I got to know the
moors as well as I do in this area because of going up to see the rain gauges and as I say the
monthly visit up the rivers because I used to walk Rakes Dike from Ings bridge up to, not quite
to the trig point obviously because it [the river] doesn’t run so far but Holme Moss top and
Issues Clough obviously that included was another walk virtually to the trig point.
CH: So were you inspecting for pollution
Yes, yes, if we came across dead sheep we used to ring the farmers up. I mean if you were
well out on the moors they weren’t very keen at shifting, and well you see then there weren’t
as many people, they were more or less closed, the moors, it was only local people really who
walked on the moors, there weren’t, the shooting syndicates weren’t keen on people walking
the moors at all so we didn’t get the same numbers as we get out on the moor that there are
now and so now they would probably get loads of calls about the sheep but there aren’t as
many sheep now left. I think there are still some on this section left of the Moss over Holme
Moss Road but there are none between there and ‘Isle of Skye’. And I think they have shifted
some, I was talking to one of the lads who still works for Yorkshire Water and I think the lad
who used to graze Wessenden I think they asked him to move his sheep off there, I think he
might still run the moor above the moor top between the A635 and the A62, but he’s not
supposed to run them down in the valley by the reservoirs, I believe.
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CH: Is that the landowners saying ....
Well Yorkshire Water are the landowners or the Environment Agency. I think they will own all
this side of the watershed, from more or less, not too sure about A62, but certainly A635 right
up to Woodhead Pass and they may own, not sure about Langsett Moor, own the east side of
the Pennines, there, but believe they could well do.
CH: Is that something, [no grazing], brought in recently
Yes, this moor regeneration that they have done between Holme Moss, A635, and between
A6024 and A635 hasn’t had sheep on for ten years or so, approaching ten years I think. I
mean there are the odd escapees but … they’ve spent an amazing amount of time and
money and it is working. It’s slow regeneration but it is regenerating. But it was that, I think it
was the worst eroded section that I’ve seen really, its considerably different if you went to, if
you walked from Holme Moss across to Woodhead Pass that side is much better grass cover
and vegetation cover than there is between Holme Moss and .. Holme Moss to Issues Clough
is the worst really. That’s section is very bad, after Issues Clough it gets better, whether its
over-grazing or fires I don’t know but it is noticeably worse and the work they are doing seems
to be working bringing it back. I’m pleased to say, apart from the fact it won’t be as pleasant to
walk, when its back like a moor it won’t be as easy walking as what it is now in its present
eroded state and grazed state. It will be a lot wetter, it will be more Wellingtons than boots!
CH: Did you notice changes then going back from when you were a youngster, young man.
Not so bad, apart from by the trig. point with the increased number of walkers. Black Hill trig.
point had got severely eroded from first time I went to it. But now with these flags seem pretty
stable and hope it stays that way. ‘Cos it does take them away, the flags are so much easier
to walk on but I mean having said that if you’ve done a few miles perhaps its easier walking
on the moors than the flags. But if you are fresh then flags are certainly a lot easier than the
moor.
CH: What else on the moors – other duties as a reservoir keeper
5

We, when I used to do just the Brownhill stretch because the gang had got severely reduced
– only 2 men left, based at Brownhill. When I joined there were about 6 of us I believe in the
maintenance gang and then it got reduced when I took over as reservoir keeper we were
down to about 2 based at Brownhill and so I did more of what the gang would have done, I
suppose perhaps they felt that as they had reduced work with the rain gauges etc. And they
didn’t need the reservoir keeper to be purely associated with reservoirs. I used to do, I mean
I’ve put about 3 walls up I think up Holme Banks which keeps repeatedly getting knocked
down by vehicles trying to force their way through or clipping into the wall in winter. And so, I
must have put 3 sections of that up in my time and various other walls deemed as necessary
for maintaining safety around the reservoirs.
I mean going back to when I was a child the reservoirs were walled so well it was a physical
effort to climb into the reservoir compound even as a young lad. Because they were very
good walls, I mean they must have been hard to put up when they built them because they
couldn’t get machines near. When we repaired them and were putting the toppings on [top
stone] we had 3 men doing it. The stones were so big, we’ve had 2 men lifting on and one
over the other side of the wall to station it, you know. And they were, well some of the stones
would be well above half hundredweight as it were. Big stones, capping stones or coping
stones they called them. So we used to do that.
Reservoir inspections, we used to walk the perimeter, I think that was weekly, a weekly task
just walking round the water’s edge as near as you can physically get so you can view it fairly
well to check for pollutants etc. and any other problems.
We used to have to grease various valves and … because this section, I think I might have
mentioned the other day [previous session at Holme Sunday School], the Brownhill string is
very well set up. When I first started you could bypass water round any reservoir or the whole
string if you thought the water; if there had been a serious accident, like a plane crash on the
moor and a lot of fuel into a stream you could have, if you had been there soon enough, you
could have run it round the whole system into the rivers. Now that got to be, if we ever had
any pollution incidents as we extended over to taking over reservoirs by the motorway
occasionally we got pollution incidents, we’d got to attend and the unfortunate thing was that
our managers never got out as fast as the rivers authority and the rivers authority idea was to
run the pollution into a reservoir where its contained. But obviously our managers were
always very slow, nobody wanted to make the decision – we can’t have it in a reservoir – but
we never in my time had a serious pollution incident. I think up North Yorkshire the worst they
6

had, a truck taking bracken herbicide which is fairly keen stuff, bracken being what it is. I think
it tipped over in a ford or on a bridge and it created quite a massive problem for north of
Blubberhouses. I think it involved them buying a pollution trailer for Blackmoorfoot so that if a
similar incident occurred we would have some booms etc to try and contain stuff. And that
was a problem we used to have to inspect that when we got to Blackmoorfoot.
We initially went when I started work we used to mow all the embankments, its now done by a
firm not sure how they are tied into Kielder or Yorkshire Water because the firm who used to
maintain the vehicles when I worked for them have now taken over the embankment mowing
on the reservoirs. Not sure whether there is a link, whether Yorkshire Water owns part of it but
the firm who does – when we go back far enough I think there used to be one of those jobmaking,
can’t remember title like a youth employment thing, when there was [in the 1980s]
yes, would be and they decided to do Ramsden car park just up here. I don’t know whether
you have been to it, but it was when I was a child, like an old quarry, had been used as a
quarry and it had been, folk had took stuff in it so it had got built up ‘til it was more or less
level with the road. [Small landfill site] And they had decided to tidy it up and get some of
these lads on to do it but they had us doing the walling and putting the stiles in round it when
it was first made. Don’t think we tarmacked it, I think it was left a crushed stone surface. And
we put picnic tables up, that was another duty we did. That seems to have been lost, employ
firms to do that. In fact the firm who does it comes from Darley Dale, is it I think, but they are
very good and they come and wipe the tables to keep wasps down and stuff like that. I was
very impressed one day when I saw this girl. I said, “I didn’t know you cleaned the tables” and
she said “yes, we’ve been asked to wipe the tables to keep the wasps down”! But we never
did any, I think we might have painted them once or twice but we did install some of the
original picnic tables, some were destroyed of course.
CH: That was like a bit of a change of attitude then
Yes, very much so. As we were children, the chap who was in charge at Brownhill, the
manager he’d be, don’t know whether he was ever called the manager but he was very keen.
If we went swimming in the stream above Ramsden, a nice stream, it had brown trout in, very
pleasant and it had quite a big pool where we used to come and swim and he used to be on
the lookout and if he spotted you even in sort of evening time, he’d come. I mean he was a
very hunting, shooting, fishing chap so he’d like to, he used to come out and turf you off. I
7

think I only swam about a couple of times there but my cousins used to go regular and there
is like a Nether Lane between Rake Dike and Ramsden reservoir, rough piece of land there
and there is a little wall, not quite as obvious in my youth and it runs down and my cousins
used to say they’d be shrinking down underneath this wall hoping he couldn’t spot them from
his house but invariably I think he did and would come storming up and send them off.
We used to be asked to remove swimmers wherever possible but it got too as I don’t know
why but Ramsden got very keen, they used to like swimming in Ramsden and this tombstoning.
And you know there’s one piece where they used to run off this piece of hill and it
would be something like a 15 to 20 foot drop into the reservoir and the reservoir sloped away
quite steeply below the water-line luckily and I think it got very popular at one period but it
seems to have fallen off where they used to do their drying off and sunbathing in between
swims got very badly flattened with no grass or trees on it. But I notice the trees are back so
either they’ve found a way of keeping them off or this set of teenagers aren’t as keen as being
there perhaps.
CH: different generations have different interests.
Yes, I mean Brownhill overflow was so attractive there was a spate of youths and some quite
into their 30s I think used to come and slide down it ‘cos the watercourse had gone very
slippery in the centre because I think it sort of drained a system which feeds a load of troughs
down the section below Holme. It then ran into this and not into the reservoir and so it ran all
the time.
CH: were they water troughs for livestock
Yes, for stock.
And it ran down all the time so it got this slippery surface and it was straight down and so of
course they could get an amazing speed up. In fact they put some concrete pillars in to
prevent it as they were frightened of somebody being injured but I wasn’t involved with putting
those in. Now whether it’ll be needed again with this new one they are putting in [overflow at
Brownhill – reservoir having work done to it in 2011] remains to be seen because its a similar
style – it doesn’t look to be – I don’t think they are stepping it which seems to be the only way
of preventing this sliding. Yes, we used to do that kind of thing.
8

We used to mow bracken at Riding Wood with scythes because it was the only way really of
felling it. It was a bit steep and the mower didn’t like it as it was a bit tougher than grass. So it
was easier to scythe it off and we did that in an effort to eradicate it but we were never
successful and I even tried liming it. I took, in the treatment works they had ‘lime’ in half
hundredweight sacks and what they spilled putting in and sweeping up from where they put
lime in the, like, mixers which made it into a solution and then pumped it into the filters. This
was in the old treatment works which had pressure filters in. And the sweepings up I used to
take up and spread on where the bracken was. Somebody had found a paper [academic]
where somebody had written about trying to eradicate bracken by sweetening it up with lime.
It was supposed to slow down its growth and it also increased the grass that grew prior to the
bracken coming through. It drew sheep on because it would sweeten the grass and the idea
was they would trample the fronds while they were eating the grass. It appeared, well it never
really worked – as you can see on the moor. There is still quite a lot of bracken up there. And
we never cut it on the moor although they did have sprayers on. They’ve done it by helicopter
I think both above Digley and over here. But they were never too keen. It shows up, this
herbicide they were using. It’s supposed to break up in contact with air and water over a
period of about forty eight hours but they did some samples. They wouldn’t let them spray
close to the streams, they were only allowed to do it in the middle of the bracken mass in
between the ridges. I think they picked it up, traces, like about a week later of it so I think that
was sort of slowed down. This modern system now is much better, they’ve got these sponge
distributors which is like a touch – don’t know whether you have ever seen them but they are
quite impressive really. There’s some like, they are, depending on the terrain and what they
are pulling them with they can put them in gangs I think. The widest I’ve seen is three and
they’re roughly six or seven foot wide I think and they’ve sponge rollers and the herbicide
feeds into the sponge all the time they are running and they just drop this sponge rollers down
onto whatever they are killing off, bracken or whatever and just drive across and instead of
being a spray its just touching what you want it to kill it off.
Tea break!
And Hinchliffe Mill seemed to be the biggest Co-operative Society. Why Hinchliffe Mill, I don’t
know as its only a small place but it was Hinchliffe mill co-op who had Holmfirth and all way
bright up to Holme. Can’t remember how far it went down the valley. I know New Mills and
9

Wooldale; but then Hinchliffe Mill Co-op had numerous outlets in Holmfirth you know, men’s
clothing, women’s clothing, butchers and everything else and when they had shut down
everything in Holmfirth was like a ghost town because there wern’t that many other shops
even in the town centre, you know. And as Jennifer says [Jennifer is Herbert’s wife. She used
to work at the Tourist Information Centre in Holmfirth.] ‘Summer Wine’ certainly improved it. I
mean its not perfect now, not everywhere’s thriving but its certainly a lot better than when the
Co-operative Society closed in the late 50s and early 60s.
CH: Do you still have a Co-op now
Yes, but there is still one for Wooldale and New Mill, oh no there’s three, they call it
Thongsbridge but its sort of tucked off the main road. Its a long time since I went in it to be
honest but its like near a council housing estate so I think it would be built for them. But like
there’s these three and I think they are more or less independent. I think they will use the
same buyers perhaps but you can’t use the little co-op card that you can in Holmfirth;
Wooldale Co-op Societies are three on their own.
[Break]
It was mainly walling. We did a little bit of fencing to like keep sheep from the reservoir side
and we’d put strands of fence up to keep them out and as I say mowing the sides.
CH: Did you have any trouble with deer or hares
Round here we’ve brown hares tend to stay in the cultivated area and on the top we’ve these
mountain hares which were brought in around 1900s so they think as another game to shoot.
Now deer, I’ve never seen a deer round here ‘til me cousin, that’s Gordon Hallas’s wife,
they’ve had one in their field; think must have been about seven years ago. I think there were
two appeared in their field. And then there has been a photograph in the Huddersfield
Examiner of three up at the top end of Holme. Somebody at Plane Farm cottages, took this
picture across – there is a field barn, the only one that looks like a field barn you know like the
ones they have in the Dales. There is one across from Lane, I mean there was some smaller
like single storey buildings about, but that one was the only one that looked like a barn and
10

hadn’t a house attached that I know of round here. And this photograph was taken in the
snow and not this last winter, I think it was the winter before and there were three crossing in
front of this barn and they looked really good. And according to the gamekeeper he sees
them occasionally but I [haven’t]. Jennifer saw one just down here, it I don’t know whether as
you walked on the flat before you start rising just at the end there is a house with a wooden,
double wooden gates. Mill House, where the old fire house was for Clarence Mill here at
Holmbridge; the sheds were either side of the road, still the new ones on the left but the really
old mill was to the right and backed on to the dam, and the built new houses there. And the
chap who lives at Mill House, think it is, but Jennifer was driving down Smithy Lane and there
was a deer in front and she sort of saw these cars slowing up and there was a deer in front of
them. It leapt over the wooden gates and that was in daylight, can’t remember the time of day,
4-ish, so she’s seen more than me.
But I’ve seen white hares fairly regular over the moors and you can tell them in summer as
well because they are a different colour to the brown hare and have different shorter ears. But
walking Ramsden Clough I could almost guarantee at one point there was a bit of a bend in
the stream as you are climbing up to the sort of moor top, just before you get to the moor top
as it flattens out a bit there was like a bit of a stone shelter almost. And nearly every time I
walked it this white hare was sat there, it must have been the same one. I think but you could
almost guarantee as you walked up that it would be sat in there just watching and it just used
to pop out when I got fairly close and just popped out and straight up the hill. And walking now
you can come across them fairly regularly. But as I say as regards seeing the deer I haven’t
at all but other people have. I mean when we first went to Scammonden most I saw there was
seven, just downstream of Scammonden dam. And so that’s the nearest I’ve seen them but
obviously they are getting back. I don’t know that they have ever done much damage to the
trees as much as they never, you know I’m trying to think where there is deer fencing round
here, oh! Coulthorne, round Coulthorne the forestry there had proper deer fences, you know
six foot to eight foot high jobs.
Whereas round here they never ever had, it was just to keep the sheep out. The Forestry
Commission when they had done this second lot of planting employed a retired waterman to
go through with his dog supposedly driving the sheep out. This dog, I don’t know he was
much of a sheepdog really but he did bark a lot and it was quite amusing if we were working
in the woods you knew where the sheep were going to go. They knew his route and they used
to just, its just the same when they are gathering the moor, the same thing happens. You get
11

the same sheep will always try to double back on the same way and they know where to go
and hide. You know if they’ve missed it one year being fetched in for dosing, clipping or
something they’ll keep going back and these sheep did just the same thing in the woods.
Although he were paid I don’t think he ever drove any sheep out, well he might have done
initially but then they got ‘til they were wise to him. I mean he were very good, he used to walk
through every week but it didn’t work.
And we used to clear out catch pits where in the stream as a result of erosion and also they
used to like when I first started they seemed to like cutting, keeping stream channels clean so
instead of letting them meander down the hill we had to go and cut them straight. Which was
a bit of a waste of time basically. I think they’ve decided that since because all we were doing
were making more debris come down and fill your reservoirs up. They had done surveys from
Huddersfield University on depths of peat, I think it was Riding Wood particularly and over
about 80 yards something like four feet of sediment had built up in the reservoir bottom and
the idea of these catch pits of course is that you are catching your peat etc. before it hits the
reservoir. And you had to clean it out. By digging your channels straight you are making it
worse so your catch pits needed cleaning more often. I think now they’ve gone back and with
this moor regeneration they are trying to keep the water up on the moor whereas initially the
water companies decided that it was easier to have it run down ‘cos where I said the section
from here to Woodhead Pass was in better condition there is one stream, not sure what its
called but it runs into Winscar now but it was linked to Dunford Hall reservoir before they built
Winscar reservoir and when I walked across once from here to Dunford, Jennifer picked me
up at Dunford and there was one up there and I don’t know whether they have straightened it
by manually at one point or its just cut itself but it, you’ve to pick your place where you cross,
its like these big peat banks running down both sides and you’ve to walk up or down and
when I went, when I came to it, it was like a canyon in peat basically and without getting really
filthy there was no way of getting across. I can’t remember, I think I walked upstream, you
could get round but you know I thought that’s not a very good sign its going to be taking peat
in all the time.
So we did used to grip streams as they called it, this straightening them out, but I think now its
got stopped. And this catch pits, I don’t think catch pits round here will have been cleared for
a long time. But that was another duty, it used to be a summer duty that. In fact some of them
had their own little cabins before we got as well with flasks and everything, the gang used to
12

camp out there in you know while they were cleaning it out. They’d have a fire going all the
time and kettle on so when they stopped for their break they could have a brew straight away.
But none of them survived. There were three, there was one at Boggery near Great Hey,
there was one at above Ramsden at Netherley and then there was another up Ramsden
Clough which was used in, now let me think – in the late ‘60s they must have had a problem
of water supply in Dunford, would it be late ‘60s It was before I were, yes I think it was in the
late ‘60s, and they pumped water from Ramsden Clough over to, are you aware of Snailsden
reservoir The one you can see from Holme Moss. – and they pumped it over. I wasn’t living
here, I was working away at the time before I came back to join Yorkshire Water. And my
uncle who lived in Holme then had a good view across and there kept being these spouts of
water. It took them ages to get it secure enough because obviously, if you think, I mean it
must be, again you must be talking 700 foot. They tried pumping from Yateholme initially but I
don’t think they ever got it above the treeline where Ramsden quarry is. I don’t think they ever
got it above there. So then they had a pump at Yateholme and if there wasn’t enough water in
Ramsden Clough to pump up they pumped water in, there’s a weir where this cabin was. I
think the cabin would pre-date this pumping though, yes I’m certain it did. It was there to clean
out the weirs. But they pumped into the weir by the cabin then they’d two big pumps set up
and from there pumping up over and eventually they’d get it, as you walk round you can still
come across, you can still see the line of it and you come across iron hoops that were over
and you can still see lumps of concrete that were there to hold these pipes at points where
they were flexing but eventually I think they got it over but now it must have been dreadfully
costly. I know the lads who’d been on enjoyed it because it was well worth it money-wise.
They were getting double time for working over the night. And it wasn’t a very onerous task
overnight because I think all they did was wake up in the middle of the night and fill the pumps
up and that was it.
CH: were they little stone-built cabins
Yes, drystone and they’d have a stone flag roof and the one, they lined this one at Ramsden
Clough because they were pumping through winter, they lined it with , they put, I don’t know
where they got the wood from but they lined it with wood inside so that was quite, would be
the cosiest of the lot. The other two were quite small, but that at, you’d be able to see,
probably eight inside fairly comfortably there. I’m saying fairly, you know, you were on wood
13

enches but you know [you’d have room to breathe] yes and there were only ever two there
at a time during the night and one man in the day perhaps and would just visit him regular.
But as I say, I weren’t involved in that and they never tried it again. And I think it was costly.
We have pumped from Holme Styes, now then what, they had a problem with Holme Styes,
the valve tower had moved they thought. It was certainly not vertical and I think it would have
been built vertical and obviously whether the dam had moved otherwise why would the valve
tower have gone out of true. And they had quite a few leaks into it and I think it was in one of
the attempts to cure the leaks they emptied it. And to maintain, it would be still have been
drinking water reservoir at the time I think, but they didn’t pump to maintain… They must have
taken it out of use, it was purely for Holmfirth really Holme Styes and by that time they had got
you know water, they could use water from other sources but they used it for compensation
and so we were pumping from Snailsden reservoir round the hill. It came passed the Peat pits
and we would have about half mile of pipes out but obviously we weren’t pumping the same
height, wouldn’t have been above 20 foot I don’t think as regards the change in height and
that then ran down by gravity in to Holme Styes to maintain the compensation which you’ll
know is a legal requirement on most dams.
When they build a dam they have this requirement to supply so much, which has changed
considerably. When I first started they used to have what they called a day and night flow for
the mills because as that time the mills were still taking quite a lot of water out. Then as we
got fewer and fewer abstractors from the rivers we went on to a steady flow the year round
and just before I finished they started, I think it would be the National Rivers Authority who
instigated having the old flows for improving fish spawning. I can’t remember now but I think
October was one of the times and we used to put, we still had a daily flow but it was
increased at certain times of the year to ease fish passage up the streams to improve fish
breeding I suppose. And obviously when all the mills were on the go they didn’t bother about
the fish. Having thought about it, what the river used to look like at Honley when we were
coming home from school [1950s/60s] you could tell what they had been dyeing by the
colours, the colour of the river. Well it would be in Sheffield as well [polluted – interviewer
from Sheffield]. But the colour of the river was, it used to look appalling when we used to have
to walk down from Honley High School and across the bridge like to get the bus up to Holme.
CH: I suppose that again is one of the things that has changed – attitudes towards pollution,
wildlife and the mills]
14

Yes, its quite amazing though the number of abstractors and how in the reservoirs twice a
year they do a scour test which again is a legal requirement to prove I think that the reservoir
can be drawn down in case of any weakness in the dam, they can draw the reservoir down so
you have to prove that your scour valves which are the lowest ones in the dam actually work.
And its done as I say twice a year for the scour valve. We used to run every valve once a year
and the scours twice. There again it does create problems if, I mean if, well we never had it
here [Brownhill] but if you do get a problem with a dam you can’t draw them down as fast as
the water will, if you open your scours they’ll run the dam down so fast you’ll create a problem
in the dam because these earth dams they hold so much water and if you drop it. I mean they
always recommend with an earth dam that you don’t drop them faster than six inches a day
because there is this risk that if you drop it too fast, say if you were dropping it two or three
metres a day, the water could build up in the dam and create a collapse of the dam into the
[CH: because of altering the pressure] because you’re not letting the water in the dam
actually drain out because if you imagine an earth dam they nearly always have a vertical clay
core. Scammonden’s a bit different, they put Scammonden in and they were concerned about
compression of the core by having a vertical clay core because it would take it under the
motorway so it slopes to the upstream face at Scammonden which I think is the only one I
know of, I’m sure there’ll be others in the world but it’s the only one I know of which hasn’t a
vertical clay core. All the other earth dams have a clay core apart from Winscar. I suppose
you would call that a clay er earth dam but its more rock fill with a bitumastic lining that one
which didn’t work. Hence the, have you ever been to Winscar Its lined with a fancy plastic
coat now and it has sensors behind it to pick up any water that is getting through. But initially
it was built with an asphalt face and that was the waterproof membrane whereas an earth
dam has water up to the clay core, Winscar would have no water only ground water you
know, rain water, percolating actually in the dam. This bitum [] face, this asphalt face was
supposed to waterproof it but it didn’t quite, it did it enough to, I don’t think its weakened it but
its not as good as they thought it was going to be. But as far as I’m aware its still sound with
this plastic. But its not as good as they thought it was going to be. They’ve already had to do
one patch where wind and waves have got it.
CH: I know you were saying before about going down the pipes – was that a monthly
inspection
15

I believe now its monthly, when I first started it used to be a weekly embankment walk and a
fortnightly shaft and tunnel inspection. Its now gone, when I left it was just a monthly shaft and
tunnel because of Health and Safety at Work its deemed a two man job because its a
confined space, sorry an enclosed space. Scammonden’s confined but most are enclosed
spaces.
CH: What’s the difference
There’s no through flow of air, no natural air. As an example, Brownhill, there’s a little valve
tower that sticks out on its little pier. You can go straight down there on the ladder and walk
out the tunnel and there’s nothing preventing airflow up the tunnel and through the dam.
Whereas at Scammonden its a bulk head door at the base because it shares the tunnel; the
tunnel is also the overflow tunnel so at Scammonden you can’t walk, you can’t inspect the
tunnel if the reservoir is overflowing, you can only do the shaft. But Scammonden being fifty
metres has a lift, its a luxury, none of the other Yorkshire Water dams have the luxury of a lift,
I don’t think! There’s just Scammonden that has a lift. So you can, when I was younger and
fitter, when I first did an inspection at Scammonden I used to go down in the lift and walk up
the ladders so I could view it at a steady pace you see. I wasn’t tempted to rush it but as I got
older I decided to do it the other way round. Easier to get the lift back. And strangely at
Scammonden because its concrete shaft, purely concrete, there’s no stone in it at all, when
the reservoir got very low in, I’m trying to think when they had the tankers coming, when it got
very low the cracks in the concrete widened because it was getting warmer as well it was
expanding and of course as the reservoir level came back up they tightened up again. So we
used to mark them as different dates as they lengthened and then in winter-time when it filled
back up again [they closed.]
And so like at Brownhill as well there are some connecting tunnels with the bypass system to
get it water round. There is a tunnel from Riding Wood, the base of Riding Wood dam, there’s
a tunnel goes through the top of Ramsden into Netherley Clough and then again at Ramsden
overflow there’s a tunnel takes you across to Rake Dike so you can bypass so, they are
inspected fairly frequently as well.
16

CH: Were you saying, was it since you retired or before you don’t have manual inspections
you have a little trolley robot type.
That’s on for pipes basically because Riding Wood and Yateholme there’s no access tunnel,
there’s a shaft but there’s no access tunnel and so I suppose basically they’re confined
spaces as well. I mean we used to initially when I first started we used to paint the pipes in
Brownhill with bitumastic paint, there was no lighting so we used hurricane lamps and in bad
weather we’d be up the tunnel with hurricane lamps and bitumastic paint and when I’d retired
wherever you went in a shaft or a tunnel or even deep manholes we used to have to take a
gas monitor. So what it would have been like, I mean there always seemed to be a decent
draft but it was quite strange that over a period of just 30 years we went from sat in a tunnel
painting in with paraffin lamps to having to go everywhere with a gas monitor around your
neck.
And some of the dams tend to have a vertical shaft to the tunnel base of the dam, usually with
the pipes in the tunnel. As I say, Riding Wood and Ramsden and Yateholme were built before
and there was no way of inspecting the pipes once, the pipes came from the bottom of the
shaft then through the dam and there was always this danger if there was any leakage of
course you were going to weaken your dam and have a problem. And that is why we crawled
through the pipes but it is done now, shortly after we’d that they ran the cameras through and
I think it will be checked now by camera henceforward.
CH: I suppose with the way things are now its just so easy and they can video it.
Yes, of course if there’s anything you can have a few people view it as well whereas crawling
through there was usually just a supervising engineer; writes a yellow report on the safety of
the dam and every ten years they have to be inspected by an independent body, and
obviously they read the supervising engineers’ notes and check for anything he’s concerned
about and also for anything else. They seemed to perhaps get even better, as, I don’t know
whether they weren’t as bothered in the olden days, the latest one I was involved in, I was
amazed at how he could ask pertinent questions whilst answering his telephone to his
daughter. This daughter was ringing him and he’d come up from London I think and his
daughter was wondering how she was getting back from school. So he was talking to her
17

meanwhile asking the supervising engineer fairly, what about such and such, you know and I
thought to myself, he’s considerably brighter than myself.
CH: I suppose in earlier times the people would probably know or had more of a feel for it
I think to some extent its still done that way, they have the advantage of, if they are concerned
over any dam, not all dams have ‘pesometers’ in them, but a lot of dams now have and they
are to test the internal pressure of the water in the dam just to check that there is no, if there
is a sudden increase in pressure in the water in the actual earth then it could cause concern
and they could look into it, if there was no seepage downstream they might draw down the
reservoir a bit to see where this water was coming from. And basically all that is, is a pipe,
they drill a pipe down and then lower a plastic pipe with a clay, a porous clay plug at the
bottom down to the depth they want it. I’m trying to think, the ones at Brownhill were quite a
few feet below the actual visible dam. I don’t know whether they will go lower than the actual
sort of cut off trench that was built originally but they go down, I think something like, I seem
to remember it can get down to something like 170 foot at Brownhill and the dam’s only what
would it be about 100 foot I suppose. So it goes a considerable way below the, I might be
wrong in that because its some time since I read it but ... and there in on the state of the dam,
it depends on how often they were read. Some were read twice a year, some were read
weekly. Brownhill, I think were read weekly. They did, they wrote a paper on Ramsden and I
think at one point they were reading those twice weekly and sending them. Yorkshire Water’s
own engineers were working in conjunction with the Building Research Establishment, as it
was then, I’m not sure what it is, no longer a government run company. And they wrote a
paper on Ramsden dam because they were a bit concerned about it because if it gets drawn
down quite a lot, it doesn’t, usually on earth dam, as you draw it down it sort of settles back
and then when it gets the weight on the face of the dam again of the water it pulls it back up
straight and Ramsden for some reason tends to go further downstream than it comes back.
So its not recovering, every time it gets drawn down it doesn’t recover to its original state and
so they wrote a paper on Ramsden and I was reading ‘pesometers’ there twice a week and
sending results down to Building Research Establishment so they could check everything up.
So they are a bit careful with Ramsden but there is Brownhill below it. And we’re above the
flood plain anyway [Herbert’s house]. Yes, that’s right and before we moved here we were
even higher at Cinderhill. We were well away from the flood plain there.
18

CH: so wherever you move next ...
Consider it probably but as I say somewhere on a bus route as we are getting to an age
where we might not be as easy to get a driving licence.
But going back to the moors, I’ve been at Black Hill one day, walked Issues Clough and I’d
got up near the trig. point and you know how they talk about dust devils in Australia where it
was like a minor whirlwind – I’ve seen it. I’ve only seen it I think that day lifting peat in little
whirlwinds, only you know the peat must have been really dry. It must have been a dry
summer and the peat was just going up in like little eight foot whorls, perhaps taller which of
course that will stop if we get grass cover.
CH: Wind’s getting up now.
Yes, bringing some rain supposedly, be filling the rain gauges again. I think quite a few have
gone automatic I don’t know whether they’ll still, I’m sure they will read some but quite a few
are automatic so that Defra gets the readings as well. Going back earlier years we also used
to have to row out. There was a chemist set on, I’m not sure just what the idea was but they
were sampling the water in the reservoirs at various levels. And this chemist came out, he’d
do, I don’t know perhaps a reservoir, the same reservoir twice a year and he’d cover most of
West Yorkshire’s reservoirs, bearing in mind his duty was sampling them all up in a morning
and then test his samples in the afternoon. And so we used to have to row him out when he
came, we had a little rowing boat, row him out and try and keep him over the point he wanted
to take his sample from.
CH: Treatment of it, you were saying about liming and filters. Is it very peaty water then
It is, yes, yes [CH: called it Langsett Tea] very brown water and to go back to Scammonden,
when I was there they took everything. Scammonden’s a poor catchment for the size of the
dam and so all the reservoirs, all the streams, sorry - between the A62 and, I’m trying to think
what the Rochdale road is out to Huddersfield, is it the A640 But all the streams between
have a little catch point in and its piped through to, piped down the Colne Valley ‘til Slaithwaite
Hole and then there’s a big tunnel from Slaithwaite Hole straight through to Scammonden and
19

the, trying to think of the name of the valley, above Slaithwaite, it crosses a valley there and
there is access point in that little valley. What do they call that [turns to his wife] There’s a
little reservoir at Slaithwaite and then the main goes from there to Longwood treatment works
so its picking water up. [consults map] Bradshaw Clough, it is. So you’ve a tunnel runs from
[looking at map] so tunnel runs from Slaithwaite straight across and comes out next to the
boat club at Scammonden. And this is picking up water, that’s carrying water which is picked
up from every stream which runs round there. Obviously March Haigh and Redbrook are
major suppliers. There used to be one ran down here called Back Clough – this little one here
called Back Clough, this little one here [pointing to map] but there was so much pollution
coming off the A62 that they stopped it. So you’ve a catch pit on there; you’ve a catch pit on
there; and that one and this one and then another big one round March Haigh and then it
picks up, there’s some more, one on Drop Clough then and they are all designed so that its
[water] is going by gravity all the way down to Scammondens.
CH: Where does Scammonden supply
Scammonden supplies, there again if it drops below a certain, I think its something like 10
metres and there’s not enough coming to supply the main through from Marsden then they
have a big pump house above Scammonden and they pump water back into the tunnel. And
then the tunnel, if you can think, Scammonden’s at one end, Colne Valley’s at the other and
there’s Bradshaw Clough in the middle and the tunnel slopes gradually not steeply, gradually
like that to Bradshaw Clough. So when there’s enough head on its pumping water er
delivering by gravity water from Scammonden and its drawn out from Longwood in the
middle. If they can’t get enough from that system then they can pump back from
Scammonden but it has to be pumped because as I said from the toe of the dam into the
tunnel. But I was talking to a lad recently and they are so concerned about the flow of water
from Marsden that when it gets, when they get a lot of rain they shut the supply off and so
Scammonden doesn’t get as filled up as it did when I worked there, so I think they are using
the pumps more.
And they did when I worked there, because as I said, Scammonden every winter would be
overflowing you could more or less guarantee and then as I say we used to pump back at
periods of low water but I think they are using the pumps even in sort of winter times they can
use pumps if water is so badly coloured you know.
20

At one point we did some sampling, we used to take pH not when I was at Brownhill we
hadn’t got the lab there but we had a lab at Blackmoorfoot for taking pH and turbidity, which
basically is its colour, and we’d check for ammonia which would be like you know any sewage
leaks or run off from farms, we’d check that. I’m trying to check what else. And they were all
monitored and presumably as a result of that was the cutting the water off from the Colne
Valley.
And we had one stormgate it was called at Yateholme which was automatically designed for
doing that. It used to divert the water from Yateholme if we got a storm. If there was a storm
surge and a lot of water came, it was like a hinged gate and would be held like at that angle.
CH: Like a flat valve
Yes, it was on offset hinges so the weight of the gate held it open and then we got a storm
surge it would close, we used to check that regularly so we could re-open it because
sometimes if wedged itself shut with silt behind so we’d shovel the silt away. I could never
really realise why, mind I suppose there were some silt traps before it got into Ramsden
automatically so that would possibly be why it wouldn’t go into Ramsden automatically, settle
out in silt traps.
CH: Did you have to clear the silt traps
Yes, the silt traps or catch pits, that’s a job, yes, that’s why as I say they had these huts out
by the moor sort of where the biggest catch pits were. But there was one built, I don’t know
when, its like a small dam up Ramsden Clough above where the shooting range is and that,
we had a go once with machines cleaning that out but we only got about six or eight foot out
of it. It was so immense and really there were nowhere to dump the stuff had we got it any
lower. I think its filled level again now but it lasted for a number of years before it got filled up.
Break for tea
General talk with Herbert and Jennifer and CH: regarding the wind turbine at the vineyard- as
it is dark and small it blends in with the surroundings – don’t mind these ones; CH: went past
with Arthur Quarmby as he took us to see the peat ground, we couldn’t believe it was there on
21

a northern slope. H&J: no grapes as yet, open visitor centre and lunch; J been on a tour with
the Tourist Information people ; got an award for their wines but not sure how as no grapes on
vine yet – must be using English grape juice to turn into wine there. [Dog noises – wanting
biscuits.]
We’ll run you to the bus in Holmfirth / Brockholes to Huddersfield – poor bus service – live in a
steep area – looking for a bungalow as before.
HB: Whilst we still drive its OK; we moved here in 1987 when I was working at Brownhills and
before that I cycled there. Then [they - YW] moved us first to Blackmoorfoot as Yorkshire
Water moved on and then to Longwood. When we worked at Longwood we’d gone off starting
at, it always used to be starting at 8am either here or at Blackmoorfoot but by the time we
moved to Longwood we didn’t go into Longwood we just went straight to wherever we were
working and as I say by that time, we sometimes used to …. At that time we were driving up
to Gawp Lee and above Hebden Bridge you see. So it wasn’t the place, you didn’t call
anywhere but straight to your place of work. Because it’s a fair drive from here up to Hebden
Bridge.
JB: One day per week I worked at a special school at New Mills and the headmaster was
from Hebden Bridge, it would take him the best part of an hour [to get there] on the main
roads.
HB: Quicker to go cross country sometimes we covered Halifax as well. And that was even
worse really because to get into Halifax at peak time, the road from Huddersfield to Halifax ,
not even particularly peak time when I did it – but it was nose to tail right from Huddersfield to
Halifax. There was no break and where you come to the motorway crossing the roundabouts
there, you were waiting for traffic coming on and off. So we used to go across…. I used to go
sort of Norland town, Sowerby Bridge to get into Halifax and avoid both centres.
CH: Did you have a landrover
Yes, I don’t know if you Google earth, Peter (next door neighbour) about three years after I
retired said they’ve still got your Yorkshire Water landrover on Google Earth. They’d a
22

tendency to drip oil so I never used to park it on the drive, I used to put it on the top. They
were essential really, they’ve still got 4 by 4s but landrovers took a bit of beating.
General discussion (HB, JB and CH) about snowy weather and gritting the road – took 2
years of writing to get a grit bin now got them at the top and bottom [live on road which runs
from a very steep hill]. General talk about project and previous involvement in Domesday
Project with Holmfirth High School [in 1986] where they filled them drystone walling round the
car park – don’t know if its now accessible again.
HB: My own granddad knew he hadn’t long down the farm but my mother was born there and
went to Holme School and used to walk from the farm at 4 years old across to Holme School
and I think there was some friend who used to go there too and then obviously they had to
move out.
CH: Is that when the reservoir was built then
Well, it would possibly when they started using Ramsden, I think because Ridings Wood. In
fact I think my granddad worked on Ridings Wood and Yateholme, perhaps not building them
but on maintenance gangs initially. I don’t know, well you won’t have been up round the side
of Brownhill but there is a house at the side of Ridings Wood reservoir and that was built for
employees and I think, well I’m saying a house, its one house now, it used to be four at least,
maybe six and that was for the employees working on the reservoirs and its possible that
some people who had been compulsory purchased lived in them because that is what
happened at Brownhill. It was used for, there were nine houses at Brownhill and some of the
people whose houses had been compulsory purchased lived in those and some were
employees so it were a mixture and it may have been so at Ramsden but I don’t know.
JB: Does your Charlie know
No, our Charlie hasn’t much memory at all of those early days.
JB: He’s got a brother.
23

HB: Eighteen months older than me. There was a cast iron boundary marker at the top of
Holme Moss before it was Derbyshire.
JB: He’s got it now though hasn’t he in Cheshire
HB: No Charlie hasn’t its at Gordon’s [Hallas]. He [Charlie] brought it back for Gordon as he
thought it should be in Holme. There was a boundary marker at the top of Holme Moss.
Cheshire one side and it was Holme and District Council on the other if I remember rightly.
And a snowplough one winter scythed it off and my brother took a liking for this and wrote to,
don’t think Cheshire but certainly Holmfirth who’d taken over from Holme District. And he
never got a reply so we went up and started carrying it down, realised how heavy it was and
we ended up like the Indians we got two dead branches out of Holme Plantation and tied it on
across these two and just dragged it down. And for years it stood just inside the gate at 16 the
Village, Holme. And when we sold the house when my mother died, my brother took it, as I
say it was him who’d done the main work getting it. He took it to Cheshire where he lives and
decided after a few years that it ought to be near its original point and brought it back and as I
say I think Gordon Hallas has it.
CH: I’ll have to ask Gordon if he can take a picture of it and we can…
He has a slide, yes he has a picture of it. Its on one of his slide shows ‘cos I’ve seen it on
that.
CH: That’s really interesting with the different counties – point between three counties.
Well it was just the two of them then of course because Derbyshire didn’t come into it.
Cheshire had this funny, the tale I had was that it was part of the old salt trail, that’s why
Cheshire had this long spur – it must have been up Salters Brook and then Derbyshire would
start at the other side of Longdendale and so this one [sign] had just Cheshire and Holme and
then in 1974 it was just Derbyshire.
CH: And of course this would be West Riding previous to ’74.
24

Yes, before Kirklees who had a different police force to us in fact that was the days when we
had a local bobby. Reputedly a bit of a bruiser and reputedly broke the navvies because they
had trouble with the navvies. And one of the old blokes who was on the gang at Brownhill
when I started, he just used to live up Holme it was. And Stanley had some good tales. It was
him who told us this tale about Norman Booth who was walking over and got lost [mentioned
earlier in the interview] and he also told this tale about the bobby who went up to the camp
once. There must have been some trouble in Holmebridge and he said he’d have a fight with
their champion like. Because of course there was the camp field next to the houses for people
and it was like rows of Nissan huts for all the navvies to sleep in and he went up to the site
and said ‘pick your champion’ and he took him on in the cricket field and floored him. And
Stanley said once there must have been two [navvies] who had been giving him [the bobby]
some trouble and he waited in the shed in the [Bridge] dam down here which was
commercially let in those days. Waited ‘til these two came off the bus, Stanley said, he [the
bobby] got both heads, cracked them together and they just dropped in a heap, he said, and
he just left them there and when they came too they had to walk up to the camp. He [the
bobby] was a character, he used to like a pint, he could be seen in most pubs – gathering
information of course!
25

Ian Davidson: Interviewed by Julia Shergold.
22 nd August 2011 in Sheffield.
(This is Moor Memories Oral History Project recording, it’s the 22 nd of August 2011 and
this is Julia Shergold interviewing and I’m in Sheffield. And could you tell me first of all your
name and your date of birth please)
My name’s Ian Davidson, and you can mind your own business!
(Everyone says that!)
I was born in 1950.
(Right, thanks. And Ian, I understand …)
Winter.
(Ah, appropriate. I understand you’ve had a long association with the moors and been
involved with lots of different activities in the Peak District moorlands)
Yeah.
(Can you tell me what some of them have been and what you’ve got up to on the moors)
Well, I’ve been walking, climbing, ice climbing, skiing, potholing, occasionally canoeing,
since I was about fourteen or fifteen years of age. So this is back in the mid 1960s. At that
time I was at school in Manchester, in North Manchester, and there was a small group of
us in the school who went walking and climbing together. We also did some volunteering
work at a youth club in Salford. At that time it was at Salford Docks. It was the rough end
of the rough end of the rough end. And it’s now a lot of yuppie accommodation but then
the kids at that time it was full of kids who were very, very poor. And we used to work in
the youth club there as volunteers and we’d sometimes take some of the people from
there out at weekends. And most weekends some of us, usually a core group, would be
out in Derbyshire either walking or climbing, depending on what we felt like.
Sometimes we’d have what I now think are absolutely epic weekends. We’d leave
Manchester on a Friday evening after school, pack rucksacks. By today’s standards these
were small rucksacks. You have to bear in mind that back in the 1960s high quality
sleeping bags didn’t exist, sleeping mats didn’t exist, climbing gear almost didn’t exist.
There were a few ropes, a few slings, a few bits of ironmongery but not much. So we’d
carry these what today are quite small rucksacks. We’d leave Manchester on a Friday
evening, get the bus out to Greenfield, near Oldham, and then we’d walk down the Chew
Valley to Laddow Rocks, above Crowden, where if it was summer we’d probably do one or
two climbs and then we’d kip in a cave at Laddow Rocks. Sleep in there, get up in the
morning, probably do one more climb and we’d walk down to the valley, walk up the other
side onto Bleaklow, walk over Bleaklow to the Snake Summit, walk over Kinder to Edale
and then we’d either drop down into Edale and hitch a lift up to Stanage or Froggatt or
Millstone, or we’d take a left and come down near Bamford and then walk over to Stanage.
If we were a bit quick we arrive at Stanage in time to do a couple of climbs that evening
and maybe blag a few pints down the pub, which we weren’t supposed to do. And then
we’d sleep in Robin Hood’s Cave or Little John’s Balcony on Stanage Edge, get up in the
morning, do a few climbs. If we’d had a few too many to drink the traditional thing we’d do
would be to start off by soloing a climb called Hangover, which is a VS climb. We usually
1

did it solo cos we … anyway, that’s what we did. And do a few climbs there. I mean
nowadays this seems absolutely … walking that kind of distance is something that I …
(Well, how many miles are we talking about, I was trying to add it up in my head, but that’s
a lot of miles)
It’s a lot of miles. Off the top of me head I think probably – it’s about eight miles over, well
down to Laddow that’s about six miles, Chew Valley I think six, seven miles. Down to the
road probably about another mile. Bleaklow eight miles or so. Cross Kinder three or four
miles. And then depending on what we’re doing, probably walk about another five or so
miles after that.
(It’s an epic weekend, really!)
It’s an epic weekend, yeah, and we didn’t really think very much of it, probably cos we
were stupid. But we didn’t.
(No. Were there many people doing that kind of thing You’re saying this is going back to
the sixties, were there lots of people out climbing and walking)
Well we would meet other groups walking when we were walking and we’d obviously meet
other groups on the rocks when we were climbing. And there were quite a lot of people
who we’d meet repeatedly on the same groups o’ crags. And some of them would get
there walking, some of them would get there by bus, some of them would actually have
their own cars, some of them would have motorbikes. But by and large most people got
round Derbyshire, or far as I can remember, most people got to where they were going
under their own steam without using their own – most of them didn’t have cars. You know,
there wasn’t the car parking problem at Stanage that there is now because they didn’t
have cars. And so they’d get there one way or the other. But it was very common to hitch
hike. I mean when we’ve been climbing on Stanage or Froggatt or wherever we were we’d
then hitch back home again. If we were lucky some of us would try and get a lift into
Castleton and then do a couple of climbs on the Winnats if it was still light and then get a
lift back through Chapel en le Frith back through Stockport and back to Manchester.
(And this is the weekend, and then back to work or whatever)
And back to school.
(Back to school. So how old were you at this point then when you were doing these kind of
weekends)
Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. The other thing that happened and much the same group of
people was that there was an outdoor centre in Hope which, I don’t know if it’s still there or
not, but it’s a place called Birchfield Lodge that was run by the Methodist Association of
Youth clubs or something. And we, some of us would then sometimes go there at
weekends or at school holidays as volunteers. And we’d teach kids sort of the rudiments of
walking, navigation, how to use a compass, how to use a map. And there’d be a bit o’
classroom teaching and a lot of teaching out on the hills. And we’d take them climbing and
sometimes we’d take them potholing and occasionally we’d take them canoeing. But the
really striking thing about it was that by and large the kids we were taking out there were
kids from the back end of Salford or the back end of Manchester.
(So they’d never been out on the moors before perhaps)
2

Never. For some of them getting off the minibus at Birchfield Lodge was absolutely
terrifying. They’d never seen that much sky. They’d never seen trees, like that anyway,
they’d never seen fields. You know, there are a few scrubby parks in Salford, but that’s
nothing compared with the kind of fields that they were looking at. And many of them had
never seen a cow. Because this was a dairy farm, it was a prize herd, the Birchfield herd.
They’d never seen a cow. And some of them were absolutely terrified, it would take ‘em a
day or a day and a half before, you know, they would get used to it.
(Difficult to envisage isn’t it, but, yeah)
It is but, you know, I suspect there are still areas of cities now where if you take the kids
out of those areas into Derbyshire they would be gobsmacked. I know they would be
gobsmacked, or they’d be frightened, I don’t know. But because, you know, I mean, they
probably wouldn’t react the same because they’d have seen the countryside on telly or on
movies.
(But not with their own eyes.)
But these kids didn’t have tellies. Tellies weren’t universally available in the 1960s.
Certainly in the poor areas of Manchester and Salford. And, you know, it was gobsmacking
for the poor kids.
(Interesting we’ve got this on our doorsteps and yet there’s still a lot of people in, around
the moors that don’t go there.)
Yeah, well one reason I came to Sheffield was because you can get out onto the hills, onto
the moors. I mean I can get to Bell Hagg, which is a low lying grit outcrop, in about fifteen
minutes from here, from where I live. When I was in Manchester it would take me two or
three hours to get out of the city to anything like anywhere I could go climbing.
(Yeah. So how have things changed over the years for climbing and, climbing in
particular)
Well I’ve got a lot older.
([Laughing] We all have.)
I’ve got a lot weaker. I’ve lost all me skills. [Laughing] And I’m scared.
(Does that happen to all climbers do you think or...)
I don’t know, I suspect it happens quite a lot. There’s a number of differences. There’s
obvious differences like climbing gear has changed. When I was a teenager sticky boots
were around, they existed.
(Climbing boots, as people have got now)
Yeah, but they were very, very expensive. And I saved, I mean I did a lot of jobs, I did
paper rounds, I worked on a travelling grocer’s of an evening. I had to save me pennies for
many, many months before I could afford my first pair of stickies. Nearly all the climbing I
did was in baseball boots and most of me mates like that were climbing in baseball boots,
gym shoes, or just walking boots. There was very little – the kind of protection we’ve got
nowadays – there was very little of it. The metal chock stones were around but we were
still using things like wheel nuts drilled out with the rope threaded through.
3

(This is to attach the ropes to the rocks with)
Yeah. We had a very, at school, we had a very obliging metalwork teacher who allowed
me and my mate Chris to make some of our own chocks out of aluminium.
(A practical use of your school time.)
Well, what we had to do, we had to buy the aluminium ourselves, or collect about fourteen
tons of milk bottle tops and melt them down to make the aluminium alloy. But, you know,
we made a few ourselves. I think I’ve still got one or two and I hate to say this but I think I
probably still use them some of the time.
(So it was real make do and mend and …)
It was very much make do and mend. So the kind of protection we’d got was very, very
rudimentary.
(Did that make it a dangerous pastime, do you think then, compared to now)
Well it was only dangerous if you fell off. But I suppose the overriding edict was ‘don’t fall’
because there was no guarantee you’d be safe, very little guarantee you’d be safe. And
that, I think, has something to do with the, you know, the massive increase in the
standards of high end rock climbing now. And the popularity of high end rock climbing.
(Mmm, there’s more people doing it.)
Have got a lot to do with the fact I think that it’s safer. And also that techniques have
improved. You know, I mean, the thought of training for climbing was, you just didn’t do it.
What you did was you either worked – a lot of climbers in those days – it wasn’t, it was a
university – it was very much divided actually between the university climbers and the
working class climbers. And there were a lot of – and the climbers who fell between the
two stools and didn’t do anything, they just climbed and sponged off everyone else – you
know, so quite a lot of people worked and then climbed, that’s how they kept fit and how
they got strong. Some of us did a few weights in the gym at school when we could get
away with it, but the thought of training for it just never happened. You know, so there’s
that kind of change and that change in standards. And the massive increase in popularity
in rock climbing is probably – I know a couple of years ago it was said to be the fastest
growing sport in the UK.
(Oh, I didn’t know that.)
And it is incredibly popular.
(Well, it’s said to be the home of it isn’t it really, the edges around Sheffield)
Oh the edges, yes in Sheffield. Certainly if you go to, if you go back when I were a lad,
Birchins Edge for instance, which was a crag we often used to take kids on as a first crag
to climb on, the first few moves of a lot of the climbs, particularly at the easy end, are now
incredibly hard and the reason they’re incredibly hard is cos the ground’s been eroded by
about a foot to two foot under the climbs.
(Just from people starting climbs there)
Just from people standing there.
4

(Wow.)
They’re actually starting, you know, the climb is now a foot or so longer than it used to be
at the bottom end. And all the holes at the bottom are polished, which they never were
when I was young.
(Ah right.)
And that’s just with the popularity. You know, so there’s those kind of changes that have
gone on. Changes in the rock itself, changes in the environment, changes in training,
changes in equipment, changes in the massively high standard at which people climb
nowadays. Indoor climbing walls have probably got something to do with that as well. So
there have been these huge changes. By and large when I was at school we either saved
up or nicked equipment. Sometimes we would hang around Ellis Brigham’s shop in
Manchester and...
(This is a climbing shop)
This is a climbing shop. Ellis Brigham’s is now a nationwide retail, outdoor retailer, but then
there was just Ellis Brigham’s shop in Manchester and Brian Stokes in Sheffield and they
were linked together.
(Oh yes, I’ve heard of Stokes, yeah.)
And we used to hang about and annoy the staff in there. But occasionally they’d lend us
stuff or even give us stuff to have a go with. And one epic story is that they’d lent us a bar
that clips onto a karabiner and the idea of this bar was that you could use it for abseiling.
(When you’re coming back down, yeah.)
Yeah, when you’re sliding down a rope, you put the rope through, you clip this bar on, put
the rope through it, and slide down it. Instead of – cos in the good old days your classic
method of abseiling was to wrap the rope round your body.
(Right.)
So you’d slide it through this, the friction slowed you down. And there was also this new
fangled idea that you could actually use it as a belay device for safeguarding someone
when you’re climbing.
(So that was a new idea, belay)
That was a new idea. Nowadays everybody uses them. But this was bang new then. So
they lent us this piece of kit to have a go with, see what we thought of it. And me and Chris
and Alan and Dave and a couple of other people went off to Stanage. We was very proud
of these karabiners they’d lent us and this bar they’d lent us. And we used it a few times
and thought it was great. So we thought ‘Right, what we’ll do is, we’ll get a photo of
someone abseiling off, which always looks dramatic, abseiling off with this thing and we’ll
get into Climber magazine or we’ll get into next Ellis Brigham catalogue if it’s a good photo.
So what we needed was a mug to do it – hands up the mug. So muggins here decides
he’ll be the one who does it. So we thought we’d abseil off a climb called Flying Buttress.
Flying Buttress is a big buttress of rock. It’s called Flying Buttress because the top of it is
about sixteen foot further out than the bottom is.
5

(So a bit of an overhang then)
A huge overhang. So we thought ‘Right, go over that, get a good photo, against the sky,
absolutely fantastic’. I was slightly worried that the device might fail. So being a clever
person I fastened a prusik loop onto the rope. Now a prusik loop is just a loop of rope with
a knot on it that you can slide up and down the rope but if you put weight on the prusik it
jams solid. So my thought was ‘I’ll put this prusik loop on, clip it onto me belt – bearing in
mind we didn’t have harnesses in those days, my belt was about twenty feet of hemp rope
wrapped round me waist and tied with a reef knot, wrapped several times round – and if
the device fails the prusik’ll jam up and I’ll be fine’. So we starts off, I jumps off, goes
backwards, jumps off, classic SAS abseiling, zipping down and suddenly it stops dead.
What I’d forgot was that when I came over the overhang I wouldn’t have me feet on the
rock, all my weight would be on the rope, on the prusik loop. And the prusik loop did
exactly what it was designed to do and it jammed solid. So I stopped dead.
(So you’re dangling)
No, well I dangled but as I dangled because I’d stopped suddenly the rope flipped and it
flipped round me arm, round me shoulder and round me neck.
(Oooh.)
And I was hanging there with the rope round me neck and my friends were busy taking
photos. And after a bit.
(Oh, they thought you were fine, they thought this was …)
They thought I was spinning round. After a bit they started shouting “Ian, Ian, you can go
now, we’ve got the pho … Ian, Ian, we’ve got …” Then they realised I was blue and purple
and pulled me up.
(Ooh.)
I actually, I thought I was going to die.
(Ooh, did you get the photo in anywhere)
No.
(Oh, all that effort.)
I think the films got lost actually [laughing].
(But the other thing I wanted to ask you about was ice climbing, cos I’ve not heard of a lot
of people ice climbing in the Peak District, but I understand you’ve done a bit of that as
well)
Yeah. There is a tale which someone else can probably tell much better than me. There’s
absolutely classic ice climbing on Kinder Downfall in winter when it freezes.
(On the waterfall, fine, yeah.)
On the waterfall. There’s a lot of very classic climbs there which I’ve done a few climbs
there. The drawback is that you need to have a prolonged freeze for that to freeze up and
6

the minute it happens you get fourteen thousand climbers from Sheffield, Manchester,
Derby, Nottingham, Liverpool, all descending on the Downfall and hammering it to bits
basically. So it lasts about three minutes. So if you’re not there in time it’s gone. There are
other areas around but I’m now exaggerating slightly. I mean the climbing of Downfall is
really good. There’s a few other places around Bleaklow and Kinder which do give quite
nice, not terribly difficult standard, but quite nice ice climbing in winter, but you do need a
prolonged freeze and preferably a good fall of snow that backs up. These are gullies that
freeze up.
(Right, so they’ve had water coming down them)
They’ve got water coming down that freezes, they get full of snow, freezes, and they give
quite nice ice climbs which can vary in standard from being quite easy to being pretty
tough. Depending really on how much ice is on them.
(I mean I imagine there’s not many places outside of the Highlands of Scotland where you
can ice climb)
There’s quite a few but not many people know about them, which is why I’m not going to
tell you where they are.
(Oh, that’s fine.)
But there’s about three or four on Bleaklow and there’s three or four that I can think of
straight off on Kinder. There is a, on Blackden Brook, which freezes up nicely at the top,
it’s not really an ice climb but you do need ice climbing gear in winter to get up to the top of
that if you go up the gully. But if you go up there on the left hand side there’s an area
which is a water run off of the top in the summer. In the winter that will sometimes freeze
up and when it does freeze up you’ve got a sheet of ice which is about sixty foot long,
which just gives ‘em a nice steady ice climb up. I’ve only found it climbable twice. Once I
started up it – it was thawing at the time but the ice was still there – I started up it, I don’t
know whether it was my weight or not but about half way up I realised that the ice sheet
was moving.
(Ooh.)
So that was sliding down the hill and I was going faster and faster and faster with me axes
and crampons trying to get up it before I hit the bottom. The other time I did it – actually,
thinking about, I’ve done it twice and both times it’s been a bit catastrophic. The other time
I’ve done it I was just reaching the top of this, about to just pull the top, and a Harrier jump
jet came across the plateau, right over the edge, very, he was so low I could see the pilot’s
face looking down.
(Wow, training flight presumably)
Training flight. I think it was a Harrier, it was some kind of RAF plane anyway. And that
didn’t half terrify me. It was very, very frightening. Cos I hadn’t heard it coming either. It
just suddenly came over.
(Yeah, just suddenly appeared.)
Just suddenly appeared.
7

(So there’s only presumably certain winters, certain days on certain cold winters, where
you can get out and do that)
Yeah and probably not many in the last decade because we’ve just not had enough long
enough winters that are cold enough for the ice to build up.
(Oh it’s interesting.)
OK, that do
(Yeah, that’s fantastic, thank you very much.)
8

Gwyn Fields: Interviewed by Julia Shergold.
27 th August 2011 in Sheffield.
(This is an oral history recording for the Moor Memories Project, it’s the 27 th of August
2011, the interviewer’s Julia Shergold and I’m in Sheffield. Can you just tell me your name
and what year you were born)
My name’s Gwyn Fields and I was born on the 23 rd of November 1955.
(Another winter birth then)
Yep.
(Right, Gwyn, I understand that you’ve skied on the moors in Peak District, can you tell us
a bit about that)
I have, I’ve done it a few times but clearly not very much recently cos there hasn’t been an
awful lot of snow. Well, when there has been an awful lot of snow I’ve not been able to go
out there. But I think a kind of classic experience was about ten years ago above the
Woodhead Pass. And I’d gone skiing with my partner and we’d taken our cross country
skis. Now we’d not been cross country skiing for very long and although we’d had some
experience at skiing in Scotland I think it would probably be safe to say we were quite
novice really. However, when you’re going to go skiing and you just see something that’s
very flat you think ‘Well, I’ll be fine’.
(Mmm, how hard can it be)
Absolutely, how hard can this be You know, it being flat was actually a bit of a problem
we thought at the time, given that, you know, you need a bit of momentum to get going on
cross country skis, especially when you’ve waxed the bottom and it’s attracting snow. So
you’ve got like a three foot layer of snow underneath your skis. A bit like, you know, wedge
skis. So we thought we were just going to play around a bit really and just see what
happened. What actually happened, well, my partner Ian actually managed very well but I
went trundling off and his advice was, you know, “Just keep going, keep going as fast as
you can and you’ll get rid of the snow and you’ll pick up some speed”. Which I actually did
because the land actually, the ground actually sloped away. You couldn’t see from looking
at it but clearly it did.
(Not expectantly, yes.)
Cos I was moving and I wasn’t doing anything, so it must have been the ground, it wasn’t
me. The disturbing bit was as I was moving I could feel my skis moving apart and they just
slipped very naturally into two grooves which were, you know, I kind of like to think it was a
short wheel based land rover.
(Oh right, ok.)
But I think that’s probably a bit too wide. There were two tracks and it could well have been
a trailer, I’m not quite sure what it was. All I know is that I’d got two skis running parallel,
quite a leg distance apart and they just kept going.
(So you’re doing the splits on the move through the snow)
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I was doing the split, absolutely. And I think it must have been something like, something,
you know, reminiscent of Wallace and Gromit, really, I think. As Ian’s chugging along
behind me and I’m disappearing [laughing]. You know, at a rate of knots in front of him.
(So, how did you stop)
I fell over. I did the, yeah; I did the flying buttock arrest and fell over sideways. Otherwise I
don’t know where I’d have ended up.
(Oh, that’s great. I mean do you see anybody else out on skis in the Peak District)
Actually we’ve seen people since then. Occasionally. Actually we did see somebody on
that day. It was a bit, mmm, depressing’s not quite the right word, but it was a bit
intimidating, inasmuch as we did see a free hill skier, a cross country skier, zipping along
dressed in lycra from head to toe.
(Oh wow.)
With a very, very stunning style really.
(But it’s not like you can get a lot of practise in in Britain really, kind of)
Well what we discovered from talking to this guy was that there was a cross country skiing
society group, club, can’t quite remember. We went to one meeting. So there must have
been quite a few people out and about in Derbyshire skiing at that time. But given, you
know, that Derbyshire, you know, that the moorland’s so big, and there are so few skiers,
it’s a bit unlikely that you’re going to see very many of them. But, yeah, we have seen
people skiing. And certainly, you know, we’ll have a go. We had a go last winter at...
(A lot of snow then, last…)
Yeah, we had another go. But, you know, it’s quite difficult with the heather and the …
(Mmm, so have you got to have a certain depth of snow)
It needs to be fairly deep, yeah, yeah.
(You don’t want to come across a big boulder or something.)
Yeah, it doesn’t usually cover the boulder, you just see it and you think ‘Go round it, go
round it’ and then you hit it really. It’s a bit like when you’re riding a bike and you think
‘Don’t hit that tree’. Similar kind of experience. But, yeah, there are places to ski in
Derbyshire and it is very, very enjoyable. Just don’t get your legs stuck in two tracks that
go on for ever.
(Oh that’s fantastic. Right. Well, I understand you’ve ice climbed)
Yes.
(And in fact, I find this hard to believe when I go and look at it, but ice climbed up the face
of Mam Tor.)
Mam Tor, yeah, I find it hard to believe as well when I look at it sometimes, you know, you
kind of look up from the bottom and think ‘That’s pretty steep, I can’t believe I did that’. But
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we did do that. We, I did that, you know, with my partner Ian and that was quite a few
years ago in the 1980s when we had a very, very severe winter. I can’t quite remember
which year it was. And we’d talked about, well we’d done a bit of ice climbing, and his
suggestion was ‘Why don’t we go and do Mam Tor’. And I’m either gullible, stupid, or I’m
not quite sure …
(Adventurous)
Adventurous, I could be adventurous; I like to think I’m adventurous. And, yeah, we got up
early one morning and arrived there round about seven o’ clock. We had a swift, we had a
break. Before we started I had a very quick lesson on how to stop myself with an ice axe if
there’d been an avalanche.
(Falling)
Yes.
(Right.)
If I was falling or if there’d been an avalanche. So I had a quick twenty minutes on a flat
slope and I remember going “Oh yes I think I know how to do that now”.
(So what do you do You’d just have to dig your ice axe in do you)
You, yes, you kind of hold it in a certain way and roll with it so it digs in. As I remember. As
I recall. I didn’t have to do it cos we didn’t fall off.
(Good.)
But, yeah, we set off, you know, pretty early in the morning, you know, just kind of light.
And, yeah, I think I probably am, maybe I am adventurous rather than gullible cos, or
maybe I am gullible cos I remember we stood at the bottom and I said, clipped on the
crampons, got the two ice axes, and I said “Shall I lead the first pitch then” and Ian said
“Yes, why don’t you”. So the pitch is the full length of the rope. So I did the first pitch.
(Right, and so you’re clipping the rope into the ice as you go are you)
Well, in theory, but there wasn’t that much point I don’t think cos a). I didn’t really know
what I was doing [laughing]. So I’m not sure I should have been up there.
(But it’s completely vertical is it, as well, or...)
It’s, yeah, well it was, yeah, with snow on it and the ice it really was almost. There was a
bit of an incline but it was almost vertical. And also it sometimes, you know, it will hold if
you put some protection in, but I just did the pitch really and just, and then, kind of Ian,
then I put in something called a ‘dead man’s plate’ which kind of you can knock into. And
that will go right in, you know, put it in an angle and that will hold the rope and then Ian
came up to that pitch. And I said “Ooh, shall I do it again then”
([Laughing] Got a taste for it then)
And led – I had, I had - and I led the second pitch. And then when I got to, when Ian came
up there’s kind of one pitch left, but at the top there’s quite a big overhang.
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(Of snow and, snow and ice)
There’s a huge overhang of snow, yeah. So, you know, you were underneath this ledge.
(Wow.)
So you couldn’t see straight above you. And so…
(You can see how when people walk on edges like that they sometimes fall through.)
Ah well you see that’s an interesting point because I did suggest to Ian that he might like to
do the third pitch cos I wasn’t quite sure how you’d go over it. And he didn’t go over it he
just smashed his way through it. He got up to it and smashed a hole through it and then
disappeared. Well, the top part of him disappeared and you could still see his legs. But I
could hear this muffled conversation going on. And what had happened is Ian had
appeared through the snow …
(Like a mole.)
Like a mole, I guess so, yeah, and somebody who was standing further out than where Ian
had appeared – so he was just on this ledge of snow had said “Oh, here mate, do you
know where the edge of the rock is” and Ian had said “At some point behind you, about
fifteen foot I think”. So he kind of moved his way, you know, back pretty rapidly. And then
we both kind of, I came up through the hole and there we were on the top of Mam Tor.
Feeling slightly over dressed really cos there we were with, you know, all kinds of dangly
bits, you know, all the bits, your helmets on, the, you know, the …
(Ice axe.)
The ice axes and, you know, the whole gear really. And there were people up there with,
well they hadn’t got shorts on but they might as well have, they’d got little windcheaters on
and jeans and trainers and, you know, their only, you know, the only way they’d kind of
prepared for what was pretty bitter weather, they’d got hats on, a woolly hat and a pair of
gloves. And we were just stood there completely, you know, tooled up really for this
fantastic ice climb. And really, I mean, at the time didn’t think that much of it. But I don’t
think the conditions have been there since then really, have they To do that kind of ice
climb on Mam Tor. Well we’ve certainly not seen it.
(But, yeah, it was quite an experience.)
Yeah and people, you know, if you go for a walk up there and you look over the top and
you go “Ooh yeah, Ian and I climbed that you know in the ice”, it’s always good.
(I’ll think of that now.)
People are usually quite impressed.
([Laughing] Thank you very much.)
4

Interview with Gerald Eastwood by Christine Handley, August 2011
When I started working for the authority, here like, about what 1958, something like that, I got
then to know the area around here better than I did before like you know with having to go out
on to the reservoirs and stuff like that. I couldn’t go on the reservoirs for the first month,
something like that, until I’d had a medical and same as Herbert would probably tell you the
same. I couldn’t get on to the reservoirs until I’d had the medical and that and when I passed
the medical and stuff. Then it was a case of OK you arrived in the filtration bottom just where
they are digging it up now – down here. That were it.
The gaffer, you know the boss, would say, right this week, or whatever, you were going to
empty the weirs that – you know Yateholme, Riding Wood, any of the weirs that needed to be
empty. We used to set off then and walk from here up to Ramsden or wherever you were, you
know, the weirs, wherever, taking the tools with us; well we had some of the tools up top end
like when we got up there. And we used to set off then and go empty the weirs, like you know,
eight o’clock in the morning, twelve o’clock lunchtime, half past twelve back at it again, you
know. Which, fair enough, it was nice to be out in the open air. That was it, it was kind of a
works day. Half past four or four o’clock when you coming round, we’d take off and walk back
down the hill. See you in the morning – that was it. Pop across home and, you know, that
were your day done.
Then of course it got then that I was put in charge of taking the rain gauges, the depths of
your reservoir, so that meant to say I was like working seven days a week, Saturday and
Sunday, you know. Well Met Office then wanted the rainfalls and reservoir depths and things
like that. Which, fair enough, we used to get ‘em about half past nine, quarter to ten, summat
like that by the time I’d be ringing them in. Then, every month, it used to come for the monthly
gauges. Which I’d then have to set off and do the daily and monthly gauges.
(So you had daily and monthly gauges)
Yes. I used to set off then after I’d rung the gauges in for the day and take up right up to the
top of Red Cabin.
(Where’s that) It’s straight across here (pointing out of the window overlooking Brownhill
reservoir). Top of the hill. Walk from there round to the top of Far Naze End and from Far
Naze End to Hey Springs which was further back on – that’s back of Yateholme course it is.
Lightens Road. Do them three as the monthly gauges and by the time I’d done them and got
back down here, to ring them in at the end of, well if it is beginning of the month on a Sunday
or something like that I used to ring them in on a Monday.
(So you had to do them on the first of every month)
Yes, first of every month, every month, yes. That’s rain, snow or blow.
It was a bit difficult. Well, it would be something like I should say six, I should say it’s damn
near six miles to walk it from here up the top and round and then come back down to Holme
here. Well I used to do it and (that was it) for the job. And I carried on like that for a while.
Well after doing the gauges I used to have to go and help the chappies who was on the
1

gangs, you know, empty the weirs and things, building the walls as well as doing painting and
weeding, stuff like that.
(Is that round the filtration)
No, round the reservoirs here. The water courses up the side of the race as you looked up the
side here, there’s a lot of trees in’t there growing up the side and there’s a channel at the side,
its bypass for the reservoirs as it’s called – water course like.
Used to have to go and take the weed out there, which might take us a fortnight starting at
this end and scraping it out – all that was done. As well as maybe putting fencing up, putting
up walls and stuff like that. Then when holiday came around you could have a week off or
fortnight to do whatever you wanted for your times – you were quite happy like you know.
(Were you living here then)
No, I’ve been living here what, let me think, just over 45 years, I’ve forgot when I moved in to
be honest. It’s something I never think about. You see I used to live, when I got married for
the first time, I was living in town, Huddersfield, place called Newsome. I lived up there for a
while, then we got a house down in Holmfirth, then, when I was living in Holmfirth the boss
said there’s a house come on empty on Wheat Close. Thought that’s grand I can get closer to
work, without having to catch the bus and rest of it or cycle. So I moved in here and that was
it.
(If you were doing all the rain gauges and you were living at Holmfirth it’s a bit of a trek.)
It was a bit of a trek – I must admit it. Yes. I was a younger chappy then. I could knock about
faster than I can now. So after that, I was walking round. I must admit it. There used to be
noticeboards up, like there still is, you know private, no public access and the rest of it.
When it used to be the Corporation, when I started work here, the gaffer used to say like, if
there’s anybody at the side of the reservoirs and they aren’t members of the fishing club, turn
them out, or anywhere on the ground if they aren’t – if (7m:24s) they have no paper to say
they should be there turn them out. So I thought yes. I was down there one day and spotted a
chappy and thought I can’t understand what he’s doing. He’d a box thing with him which
turned out to be a camera and a tripod. And of course being a little bit of a chappy who
wanted to know what he was up to like, I went down and said “excuse me do you know your
trespassing” “Ooh sorry” he say’s, “but I have permission”. So I thought now then, if he’s got
permission he should show me a paper or something like that. Well he did. He dug in his
pocket and brought out a paper, and I said I don’t know if my boss knows anything about that.
So we forgot about it. Well didn’t exactly, I told him he shouldn’t be there and the rest of it and
he says your quite alright I’m not doing no damage, I’m not shooting or fishing I’m
photographing birds. Then he says, “My name is Mr Lucas. So I told him like what I was – one
of the chappies who works for the reservoir and we chatted along a bit and we were walking
along and he stops and says here we are, puts up camera and chucks a blooming like a
sheet over the box and over his head and says “don’t say a word, just keep quiet and stand
still”. Well I’d got my gauges done by then, all of a sudden “there he goes” and I thought what
the heck’s he seen, I haven’t seen a damn thing. Then I noticed a little black – chumff – it
went straight into the waterfall on the blooming weir and I thought – it’s funny is that, I’ve
2

never seen ow’t like that before. And we waited a bit and all of a sudden it popped out again.
“Oh my”, he says, “oh marvellous”. But I thought I don’t what the heck he’s saying marvellous
about here. I’ll let you look next time I’m round young man. Then he says, do you know where
the twites are nesting” Twites, I said. I’ve never heard of them. There’s a few birds up on the
moor apiece where I go for the rain gauges and that. “Ah, would you mind showing me,” you
know, I thought well right, fair enough. But I must admit he got me interested in the birding
line then.
So off we went and one afternoon when he came up – I’d told him where he’d find me like,
you see. He came along, but this time he hadn’t got his big box camera thing and the rest of
it. He’d got a little ordinary black box camera, you know. And he set off, we trudged around on
the moor and he says, “Here we are, here we are”. And he’d got some binoculars, great big
massive thing, you know, and he let me have a look at ‘em and I thought wow. Looking at a
bird 50 or 60 yards away it came up – I thought wow, yeah, yeah. “Now,” he says, “we’ll watch
that one very carefully,” and he’s watching it, you know. “There it goes” He walks along, “now
be careful” - because they nest in colonies like a rookery does. There may be five, ten nests
around here some place and I thought By heck. He showed me the eggs in the nest and the
rest of it and I thought Wow, Oh, Yes, Aye!
Then he’s walking along like and then, “That’s a sparrow hawks nest there, that’s a pigeon’s
nest there.” So I thought how the heck does he know which is which He had me completely
lost as to how he could know the birds better than I.
I met up with him quite a number of times, you know, around and then later on I didn’t see him
and another chappy came up and he asked me where the peregrines nest was. So I said the
peregrines – that’s the er – oh I said yes. Ramsden Clough; as the locals know it, as Monkey
Nick. It’s the valley straight across, the valley up there. Aye, yes, I’ve an idea where it is you
know. Right he says, can we go and look Now it was all private property then. Water
authority has opened it up since it went from Mid Calder back to Corporation Mid Calder to
Yorkshire Water – (it’s all been) lot of it been opened up now so you can walk the moors and
things. Still doesn’t stop ‘em going into side of reservoir where there not supposed to be.
We went up, and stood in one of the old pieces back of like back rifle butts – old rifle range
1855 the date of it, just short of a mile in length. And I thought right and we watched and he’s
was quite happy with watching the rock face, like, where I showed him where it was. He did
tell me the date he was coming to ring the young birds and the only dashed problem was I
couldn’t make it to get to it see them like. But he did show me a photograph or two of ‘em
afterwards.
Like I say, it’s quite an interesting thing, walking the moors you see and all of a sudden you
see a bird fly up and wonder what that bird that is. And it turns out it may be a grouse or a
snipe, or something like that in the woods; woodcocks, something like that.
Like I say, it was the interesting thing. Then we’d walk in the dams like we used to. Member
of the club, fishing club like, he said that he was looking for a chappy to do the bank keeper,
bailiff whatever you like to call him. And said I will. It was just one of those things. So a bit
later on he invited me to one of the meetings and he said, like, you know, you come down
down we’ll introduce you to the members, president, secretary and all the rest of it – the
committee. Yeah. Right. Aye – well the meetings used to be down in Brockholes at the Rock
Inn. I got a membership there well a membership of the club for doing the reservoir watching,
stuff like that, free instead of them paying me and I thought that’s not bad and that got me into
3

the fishing lark here. Which it’s a great privilege sometimes to get out and see whether you
can pit your wits against the fish – whatever is coming up and all the rest of it. And that was it,
just carried on and away we went.
In them days I used to do a lot of walking – I don’t do as much as I used to maybe a couple of
miles. I’m setting off at two o’clock this afternoon and walking to Holme and then across back
over the thing here and back through to Holme, back down –it might be about five o’clock by
time I got back. Well, at one time, used to set off from here and walk over to Crowden, on the
Derbyshire side, up past the Laddow Rocks and back past the dam on the top (forgot what
they call it now) Chew – Chew Valley from there down into the bottom where they’ve built
Dovestones Reservoir now. Cross from there then come back by Isle of Skye top and back
down here.
I’d done that with a young American that was lodging up in Holme who’d come over for 12
months with another family and he’d been going on about going for a decent walk where he
could enjoy himself for the day and the rest of it sort of thing and we set off and did that walk.
I must admit it was a bit of a shattering job for him. He was a bit shattered by the time he’d
done it, but he was a coll lad. And upon reaching Holme, I just happened to say to him: “I
says I’ll see you later on about quarter past, half eight in the pub and we can have a couple of
pints and chat it over how far we’ve done”.
I was there for about half eight, something like that, sat in the pub drinking my pint and he
eventually came in about quarter to nine, something like that, quarter past, happen, and we
were talking about it. Now we saw Dereck Nobles who used to be the Park Ranger. We told
him where we’d been, you know, for the walk and that Dereck says, “By ‘eck he says you’ve
been, you’ve done it in t'day” I says “Yeah, we were come up for a couple of pints.”
“Wait a minute, Wait a minute” he said. Of course he’s studying it out; then he says that’s
something like 38 or 39 miles near enough. Well he says that’s walking from here, straight
over Holme Moss like on the road and all the rest of it and then coming back through there. I
says by ‘eck no wonder I’m feeling a little bit shattered like you know. I was with me second
wife and she came out of the kitchen and said: “Right, I’m off down now” I says OK, finished
my pint and said “See you later”. I came back down home, but, Oof, I didn’t need rocking to
get to sleep!
(I suppose with you being out on the moors all day and used to walking you probably didn’t
realise just how far it was)
That was it, I mean to say as a young lad I used to do cross-country running for the Youth
Club which were down here in Holme Bridge but that all went off like when the Youth Club
packed up and stuff. It just went. Me and me brother used to set off and do walks, like I’ve
said, over the top and back home over the other side of the valley then. Used to do a lot, well,
a bit of cycling as well. I still try to do a bit now and then but I prefer the comfort of nipping
outside, starting the car up and driving off with that, you know.
Well it’s something like that as I say Mr Lucas there, twiddled me round, got me into the
watching for the birds and stuff like that which, well, I still do it.
I’m a member of the RSPB and the rest of it. So, well I say the RSPB, I’m a member of that,
which is handy because 9 times out of 10 the young fellow on the block here sometimes says
“OK, I’m fed up. What we doing” “Oh, we’ll go to Old Moor”. That’s on our own and of course
4

we’ll we set off. The other day there, like, something like that. Missing me mate up the road in
the big house there, he was the first chappy to start me off on it with this Old Moor bird
watching stuff.
Well I’ve been to the Potteric Carr, that’s one of the bird watching places as well as the
Fairburn Ings – that’s the other one we’ve been to.
The Fairburn Ings and Potteric Carr. It’s a lot of walk before you can get to the viewing of the
birds, you know what I mean
It’s a case of we pop in at, you know, Old Moor there and it’s that closer to the birds and stuff,
you know, which is quite handy.
Let me see, he came yesterday the guy down the block here came. He said "I'm thinking of
going to Scarborough tomorrow” “Scarborough” “Oh aye” he says “I want to go and see that
Sea Life place” “Right, OK, if it’s a decent day we’ll go.” So when we set off from here it was
nice, we just got a little odd scattered shower while we were there. It wasn’t heavy but I’m a
feared to think coming back. I’m looking out the, looking through the car windscreen and that
– it was as black as owt. I says it’s raining heavy somewhere over there. We couldn’t
understand it, where it was. By the sound of it, it seemed to be somewhere over York, there
was right downpour, you know As we were coming back I must admit that, we came back
through Pickering, that way, I don’t know just which way we went, but it was hard rain, it was
a job to see through windscreen with the spray from back of vehicles. Like I said to him, don’t
they slow down when it’s like this I says none of them with headlights or owt like that, tearing
along the road you know. Well like he said he’s be a damn fool and I thought yeah. It’s like I
said there’s a lot of people nowadays that drive don’t seem to have the courtesy to, how you
come through and the rest of it, but it’s just one of them things.
Me I must admit it learned to drive when I was working, well lived, on the farm It was a case of
me two brothers and, you know, had to learn to drive the tractor or something like that for any
heavy lifting and stuff, it was one of them things. Well I managed to, started to drive the car, to
start with, my brother used to have; but the modern vehicle nowadays is quite a different thing
to drive. There’s none of this changing gear like we used to have to. Nip in and that, start the
engine and flick the lever back and basically it goes backwards or that way for forwards, you
know, and you’re off, automatic. Mind that was what the wife got – the automatic.
(Have you noticed with the birds any differences since you started on the numbers and types
and stuff)
Oh yes. At one time, well, I could have stood here out front – skylarks, things like that. They
just seemed to have drifted away, doesn’t seem to be, you don’t seem to hear them.
There used to be partridge up on t’moor just up road, well you can see it from here if you look
out the window. Could be a partridge up there, but they’ve gone.
It’s like you said about the woodcocks that used to be. They started putting pheasant down up
here. I don’t know whether it was a private shoot or something like that. They bred some of
the woodland off and of course in went pheasants and that.
He came over from Derbyshire, Glossop side somewhere, the fellow who had the pheasants.
I used to check on them, well check around, seeing there was nobody shooting or owt like
that. If there were I’d give him a ring and tell him to get out there as fast as he could, so that
was it.
It’s just all changed. I must admit we’ve got some of the pheasants still left and the black ones
and the ring-necked, we’ve still got some of them left but looking round now, well, there’s
5

wood pigeons and a few collared doves knocking about the village here, but the starlings, the
house sparrows and things like that, they’ve all drifted away. I don’t see the skylarks and that.
There’s the odd fieldfare knocking about like and stuff when it’s time of year. It’s just, I don’t
know, it’s funny.
We used to have redstarts, some nested up the other road there, at side of hedge like, but
they’ve seemed to have gone. It doesn’t seem to be, well, their type of territory at the moment
they seemed to have moved out.
I know we’ve had the osprey fishing and that. I’ve seen it once or twice coming through.
It’s just, certainly the birds, have just drifted away.
I’ve got the feeders out there, on the rose arch now. I’ve had a nuthatch and a great spotted
woodpecker, blue tits and all that. The proper, what you would call the garden birds. Well it
just seems to have gone. At one time I could have walked across the bank here to where they
built the new filtration plant. I’ve gone to one certain corner and found a lapwing and come
back this side and there’s been a snipe. So they’re only about one hundred yards apart; the
snipe over there, your lapwing here. It’s funny they seem to have dropped away somehow. I
know we’ve got the curlews and that knocking about I can’t understand where they have
gone.
(Have the moors changed)
No, it hasn’t really changed. It’s still the peat and the marshy areas and things like that. It’s
just that I don’t get up onto the moors as I used to do. I go now and then up onto the top of
Holme Moss; park the car up and maybe walk along to Red Cabin or the other one –Newby
Cabin, at the far side there, Wrigley’s, but it’s just that it doesn’t seem to attract me as much
as it used to. Well I put it down to old age.
(And the birds aren’t there either)
No the birds seemed to have disappeared somehow, I can’t just weigh it up. I know it’s been
about two or three years back I’ve been for a walk round and I spotted a bird fluttering about
at the side of the wall at the side of one of the reservoirs. I couldn’t understand which it was
and when I went to pick it up it turned out it was one of the peregrines. I thought how do I
catch this, like, it’s there on the floor. I didn’t know how far it could fly but it could move slightly
faster than me. I didn’t know how I’m going to catch this, but, as luck would have it, I
managed to get it into the corner of the wall. I had me thumb stick with me, so I went out with
one arm like this and me thumb stick turned the other way up and I managed to pin it by its
neck onto the floor, not squeezing it down, choking it or owt like that. I got it up and carried it
down home hung on that finger and me walking stick. Phew! I looked at me finger and it were
black and blue where it had talons round me. I couldn’t understand what was wrong with it,
so I went down to the veterinary’s place down at Lockwood, not Lockwood, down in town at
the bottom of the mews, where the marina is. Aspley.
I took it down to the vet, I told him what I’d found and how it was and the rest of it.
“Right, we’ll see to it.” Took my name and address and telephone number and I thought
great.
He popped up one day and what’s this chappy wanting “Oh,” he says “We are going to see if
it’ll fly. Where did you find it”
So I told him where I found it, he took it up, got it out of its cage and had it there. It flew, well,
it didn’t exactly fly, it fluttered and flumped and bang it went down again but we managed to
catch it again.
6

He says “I can’t understand it because it hasn’t set to eat, its just kind of wombled round the
cage and that” I thought Ah. He says “I’ll take it back and see how it goes.” And that was it,
away gone.
Now about two or three, a week after, maybe a fortnight, I saw one of the nurses that was at
the thing down there and I said to her, I says, do you remember me and she says, “Oh yes,
Mr Eastwood. You brought a peregrine in didn’t you” “I did.” “Oh” she says, “I’m sorry it’s
dead” I said “Oh, that’s bad, what was wrong with it like”
“Well it’s funny because” she says “we were feeding it and that, put food and stuff for it but it
just didn’t eat and seemed to get weaker and just heeled over. So they did a post mortem on
it. They found out it was internal bleeding from something”
Whether it had dived for something like they do and hit, but that’s it, gone.
But I must admit they are a beautiful bird.
(You were lucky)
Yeah. Just felt like I’d got something with a blooming clamp around, you know, and keep
tightening it up. I kept thinking I wish it’d give up that one. I’ve even picked young owls up and
pheasant hen sometimes.
Well, me second wife we went for a walk up through the wood around here and I knew where
the owls nest was and as we were walking along I says look, eh, look he’s there (in wood)
little barn owl, little tawny owl thing down bottom of tree. He looked starving. We looked round
and there’s a mouse on the floor which the parents had dropped for him like, well, you know.
Well, I says, he can’t pull that to pieces, he’s too young. Well wife gets hold of it like this and
tears a leg off and galomp. Gee it had eaten that mouse in less than a couple of minutes and I
says goodness me he’s hungry.
I’ve been told, like, if I found an owl at the bottom of a tree to leave it there because at night it
would climb back up again. Great. The only person was the woman who lived just above
where the nest was, had seen the blooming owl running about and she’d rang the owl
sanctuary based at, where the hell’s that now (CH: Thurlstone) Aye, could be Thurlstone.
She’d rung him and he’d come up and picked the blooming young owl up and taken it with
him. It’s just annoying when summat like that happens. I know I picked one up when I was
young going to school. I was only eight, nine maybe, took it home and let it go in the barn.
Because it was big enough itself, it could virtually feed itself like. It used to sit on the beam
looking at me, enough to say “I can see you down there”.
I’d call for him and it got that good it would come and nearly sit on my shoulders. It was in the
barn for many years after we’d left the place but I haven’t seen an owl up there for last ten,
fifteen years. It’s seems you know, gone. It’s weird really, where the things have gone to.
(You were saying about the osprey – when did you see…)
Oooh, that’s 19-. There was a big splash came up in the paper about that. In fact, I was
driving the dumpers for the Works, here like, the Water Authority. I couldn’t get up the flipping
road for people parked with motor cars and things. What they call twitchers. “Have you seen
the osprey Where’s this Where’s that” “He’s over there sat in the tree, I can see him from
here” Goodness me! Maybe 1960, 70, summat. I can’t really tell the day.
(It’s not recent, like in the last few years)
7

No. No. No. You know it’s just gone. I don’t know if the peregrines are still in the Ramsden
Clough there. I haven’t seen them. The best birds I’ve seen knocking around up there, well
recently, maybe a month, month and a half since, were the buzzards. The first time I saw
them that were two years back. I was going with my mate and his wife and my wife. Oh no, it
would be over, sorry. Goodness me aye it will, it will be seven years since. I’d forgotten about
that, yeah. It would be about seven years ago. We went down to the bird fair at Grantham and
as we were going from here we went up over Cook’s Study which is the hill over the top here
and as we were going up I said to my mate like, who’s driving, I was sat in the back with my
wife and his wife and him was sat in the front, and I said to ‘em “Goodness me look at that!
Them looks like buzzards”
“What the ‘eck’s buzzards mate”, you know.
Well he slowed up with his car and there were four of ’em floating along, you know, not even
flapping their wings, just gliding along. We saw four of them.
When we’d been down to the bird fair there at Grantham, we got talking about bird watching
and stuff like that. Well, he goes now doing it and some with me and we just have the odd day
like up at Old Moor or somewhere like that and that’s it.
It’s something that I’m not actually, as you would call it, a crazy mad twitcher, but it’s just nice
to get out, take the binos out with me and see what’s knocking about. The chappy at the end
here, his son, he bought him one of them little camera things, they fix on trees. For catching
quick shots. He bought him one of them for his birthday and I said to him, like, “Well have you
got owt with it" That was to his father. “Oh, aye” he says he had it down there where the old
air-raid shelter used to be. He’s got a badger, just passing by, as well as two deer and I
thought two deer
And I thought, two deer. Ah. The most I’ve seen were five. They used to come up where all
this lot has been dug out here, straight across the front and up in the wood there. Five roe
deer. I couldn’t have believed it. The thing is to get out when you see them through the
window, like this, trying to take a photograph of them; the least crack of a twig they’ve gone.
I must admit I’ve seen red deer up there back of Yateholme flats. I mean when you look at a
red deer it’s some 4ft. 6 inches, 5 feet to the shoulder.
(Was the fishing in one of the reservoirs)
There was fish in all four of the reservoirs - Brown Hill, Ramsden and Riding Wood and then
they decided they were going to put them in the Yateholme dam.
Well they put them in Yateholmes dam the first time and I must admit the water must have
been that little bit stronger with the acidity with the water and there was quite a number came
up dead at the side.
I used to go round in the morning doing the rain gauges and reservoir depths. Any dead fish
we used to pick them off at the side of the dam, chuck them up, just leave them to rot away.
That was it.
As well as mowing the grass bankings, things like that, as we used to do, all that seems to
have gone beyond the book now apart from the contractors who move in. When they’re
mowing they leave all the grass on the bank and you try walking across it and you’re sliding
half way down the bank.
(What type of fish were they)
8

Trout - rainbows and browns. We even had some brook trout put in at two of the dams, but
the thing is, with the brook trout now you need a licence for them. I don’t know why unless it’s
because they’re not a native species of fish.
Everything changed around. What we get now is the brook trout, er, the brown trout and the
rainbows. Some of them comes from Scotland; some of them comes from Derbyshire.
(Do the fishing club stock it)
Yeah.
(How many people in the club)
There used to be 40, then they got another 10 in and that made it up to 50 which is, to my
knowledge, the 50 members now is actually a kind of, er, spoil it for the fishing as it used to
be.
(Why)
Well, thing is a lot of them just come, catch the fish, unhook it, drop it back in the water and it
seems to put certain ways of the fish if they get hooked too many times. They get kind of, like
you getting your fingers hit if every time you were doing something wrong, you’d be thinking
I’m not going to do that again.
They forget about it, just not seem to bother about the hook and things like that. If they, like I
do, I go sometimes I take my fly rods and tackle with me. I might change me fly about six
times and then all of a sudden I think to myself Oh well, silly fool me, I’ll stick one of these on
and go and stick one of me home-made flies on, fling it out on the water and as I’m drawing
back, bang, I’ve got a fish on then you know. But it’s just one of them things, there are days
when you can go and there’s absolutely nothing, you don’t get even a knock on your line as
we call it. It’s probably the way the weather is and things like that. It all seems to run in with,
kind of, how they’re feeling. Certain time of the day they’ll be rising and taking fly off the top
and things like that and you can think well what is taking it you can put the same type of fly
on, a small midge type thing, and throw it in yourself but he’ll rise but he won’t have taken
your fly. Oh, hey, how very particular they are.
The thing is then you get the people who come who are not members and stuff, which we call
the poachers, using bread, sweet corn, maggots and stuff like that, coarse fishing type gear.
They just simply get hold of a line which is strong enough to hold three or four fish, good sized
lead weight or something like that on the end, three or four hooks down the line and out it
goes into the dam and then they simply throw it back when they’ve got the fish up. It’s like I
said, they don’t seem to, well you ring for the police, they don’t come.
It’s one of those things, I don’t think the police is actually bothered unless it’s, well what can
you call it, armed robbery or violence, they don’t seemed to be bothered with owt like that.
Apart from if you’ve got a light out on your motor car and it’s easy cash type of thing.
It’s an interesting thing to set to sometimes when it’s winter nights or if I’ve got shorter flies at
that to set to, get me little table set up and me chair and me thing and start tacking on flies
that’ll keep me for a bit.
Well, my second wife’s father was talking one day when he came up. He was on like, you
know, how much does it cost you for the flies 10, 15, 20 pence something like that you know.
”Couldn’t you make your own” Well I says, thing is, I says, you’ve got to have a special
9

clamp thing what holds ‘em, you know, to hold your hook so as you can tie ‘em. Well with him
being an engineer “Ooh, leave it with me,” he says, “I’ll see about that”
Right fair enough, me and the wife set off one afternoon to do us shopping down to
Huddersfield, to have us shopping done with a son and went up to their place like and “Ah” he
says, “I have something for you.” Well I must admit it was only a block of wood with a piece of
metal stuck up and, er, like a thumbscrew at the back.
He says, “Er, would that do for tying flies” I says, “Maybe.” So then it’s a case I brought it
home and me fly gear’s all in here (among) me tackle you know, it was a case of I brought it
home and er put it up and ooh it held very nice. Well, as this was the first fly I’d tied, it was
hellishly rough but I tied two or three of these here flies like, use just the hooks I had for
coarse fishing which I used to do quite a bit of, and I used to do a bit of sea fishing like, I just
tied this, er, silly looking thing with just some of the wife’s silk which she used to do for her
sewing and stuff and a few feathers and just for the silliness I set off one afternoon and the
wife says well, she says, we’ll go for a walk Whin
Well we got the youngster in his push-chair and went round, fair enough, aye, and I’m sat
there at the side like rod up, and fits in like that, just drawing back and bang. Ooh what a thrill
that was. First fish on a home tied fly. Well I was over the moon with it actually.
The wife says, … “I’m gonna get something bigger than that” and I says I hope you do love.
I wasn’t expecting it but she was sat there, got the line and flicked it into the river and just let it
drift down. Oh yeah, she got one certainly bigger than me, must have been a pound and a
quarter near enough from t’river down there like.
I says goodness me, what you going to do with that I think we’ll take it home, have it for tea.
Oh, aye, I don’t eat fish myself like, but, well, I do eat fish but not the trout.
(Do you not like trout)
Well it’s a taste I’m not really fond of, I eat the one now and again, and it is now and again.
I usually catch ‘em and if there’s and if there’s any of the neighbours on the block here you
know, said “Have you been fishing or owt like that” then it’s a case of fair enough, if I’ve
three or four trout, maybe Dorothy takes two or three, or Mrs Little at the end there, maybe
takes one that’s how you go.
But as I say, I don’t really bother with ‘em really you know, it’s one of them things, but it’s just
something that erm…
When I got the first trout on the first home-made fly wow. I felt like King Kong – Whah! I
thought I’m away.
It was the same with the birding when I started with them. Old pair of bino's, like, and I
couldn’t really see much with ‘em. I eventually went and bought another pair which cost me
an arm and a leg. I went aways, like I said, to one of the country fairs at Chatsworth House,
looking around there, and of course I had seen a telescope being used and things like that,
and I was looking at the telescope and tripods with ‘em and of course I got one of the chaps
and he popped out and he could see I was interested in the ‘scope and the tripod like and
stuff, that were before I got my other pair of bino’s and stuff like that, and he says well what
do yer reckon sir.
Well its good I says, actually, I says it’s brilliant to what I have like, you know. I haven’t got
one, well I’ve a little one but, I says, it’s just about shattered. It is shattered now because the
grand-kids got a hold of it and dropped the damn thing – that were the trouble, well the lenses
got chipped and broken, like, you know.
10

So when I got the thing like, I said to him like, well ,yes I’ll think about it, so we carried on
around the country fair like and I kept walking past the stall and kind of looking at these
scopes and that and the wife says if you’re going to flipping buy it, go and buy the damned
thing. And I says I haven’t enough money.
Well I knew I’d get a bit of money in my pocket like. I was looking again and he popped out,
and “Right sir, shall we make you out a..” Oh, yes, yes. By the time I’d done I’d got a tripod
and scope for just over a hundred pounds and I thought, well you know, this is real er…
Oh, he says, we can deliver it for you if you want and I says no, no it’s alright.
Well I just got it chucked into a blooming box and the scope over me shoulder like, you know,
walked round for the rest of the afternoon, had us tea, walked off, got into the car and came
back home like. You know I thought smashing.
Well I must admit I’ve still got the old scope and the tripod here like, but I’ve a new scope as
well. It’s like I said, I’ve gone from the little scope I had to one now that’s something like
nearly one thousand pounds, you know. So I’m quite happy now like with what I’ve got; it’s
good actually.
I nip off as I say, to do the bird watching at the old dam at Ingbirchworth there or Blackmoor
foot here and if you can get there on the right days, you can when the light’s, you know, good
for you, you can pick your colouring out on the birds and stuff. The grebes and the rest of it
like, you know, you’re away.
I even found, well I’d only been working for the Water Authority for about two years maybe
and I walked up the side of the dam here, that’s before they put the river into where it is now, I
walked up the side of that dam there.
I’d seen something flash in front of my face there like and I couldn’t realise what it was. Like
old man Lucas had said “Be patient young man. Keep yourself out of sight and watch” You
know. So of course I did, got myself up, took to back of one of little bushes that were growing,
got me binoculars up and was looking and I thought well yeah. All of a sudden, woo!
Goodness me! What were that, you know
I tried following it. All of a sudden there’s a blooming splash. Ah hah. I swung my eyes round
to look just in time to see the old kingfisher come out sat on top of the thing. Lovely stickle,
well I say lovely, in it’s chops about this big, banging it, banging it, turned it round and gulp,
down it went and he sat there a bit, shook himself, did a bit of pruning and then all of a
sudden I thought Ah. He comes back up, instead of sitting on the branch and eating it itself, it
floated off and sat on the branch a bit further down the dam side.
I thought - Oh what’s sat there for and then all of a sudden there’s another one popped out
from blooming kingfishers’ nest just at the side.
I thought well I’ll go and stand at the foot of our stairs.
I must admit the last time I seen a kingfisher was about, er, two years back. That was down
Hinchcliffe Mill right alongside the river. It flew up and went off down river there, but, I must
admit you walk round now I can pick the dippers out where they are and things like that but
the kingfishers seem to be down below.
The thing is, you see, down below they’ve got coarse fishing dam down there, which is
Bottoms. Now I don’t know what size of fish they put in there, but they used to be a lot of
stickleback, stone loach, minnow, you know, down there.
You might in fact, I don’t know whether they do or not, even get the trout which comes from
the dams up here. Down there they might be spawning, breeding you know. I just don’t know.
Like I say I don’t travel the river like I used to.
It’s an interesting thing to go round and be able to find things that’s knocking about. I used to
go up round the Yateholme here and find the newts in t’one a places in the reservoirs. They
11

all seem to have gone now. Just seems to have; well I don’t know whether it’s the weather
that’s killed them off or they’ve just gone away like with whatever. I don’t know. It’s gone.
I know we get the herons sitting here at side of the dam picking stuff out of the water, the
cormorants and things like that. Well, you’ve got the mallard and the blooming Canada goose
and things like that around, but them’s only been introduced we’ll say what, 15, 20 years or
so.
(The Canada geese)
The Canada geese and the mallards and that, yeah, that’s coming up, yeah, they’re coming
out from down Holmfirth there.
Well if you look out from where the bus station is over there, follow the river there, if you’re
lucky enough you’ll spot the trout in the dike. About this long, they’re all from up there. It’s just
one of them things, I mean to say me son, he got interested in the fishing lark, but er, he
seems to have dropped off the fishing and that when he got older like, that’s it like.
(What intrigues me slightly that is there’s so much about keeping people off from round the
reservoirs and yet there were people fishing there.)
The thing was that I think all the members of the club used to be same as the chappies who
worked on the dam. I think they all had a kind of medical before they could go anywhere near.
For these, well, what ailments do you call it There was water borne diseases or something
which was, you know, you wasn’t allowed to swim in the water or you wasn’t allowed to wade
or anything like that.
So, I don’t know it’s funny really in a way. I couldn’t understand it. They used to have the
cattle and stuff running around the side of the dam or in the fields and stuff but nothing
alongside the water, you know what I mean Just all that was private area.
Which it is supposed to be now but you put notice boards up nowadays that says Private. No
Public access and the rest of it and you get these chappies coming along saying I’m going in
the dam, you know, and they’re in there and they’re away.
It’s just one of them things, it started, well, being going at it now for what, six year maybe
This off road driving you know in the Land Rover things like that, the four wheel drive jobs.
I mean some nights I’ve gone to bed, I don’t draw the curtains only in the evening light you
know when it’s weather like this, and I’ve been asleep. All of a sudden, what the heck, you
know, there’s lights, the bedroom being lit up and I thought what the heck and looking from
my bedroom straight across the valley here - there sat in their 4 x 4’s , big headlights on the
vehicle, you know, shot straight across, lit the blooming bedroom up and they’ve been tearing
about.
Well there’s an old quarry on the edge of the hill. You’ll see better when you, I’ll show it, point
it all out when you’re ready for going.
Like I say they’re running up and down through the quarry there, it may be half past one,
quarter to two in the morning and then they carry on from there round past Douglas Verdon’s
Gamekeepers Cottage at the end of Riding Wood, right away round to Holme.
Now where they go from there I don’t know but then they may be coming back later on at
night you know.
It’s like I say, places they’ve absolutely ruined it. Where it used to be nice and peaceful, for
the lasses with their horses. Well there’s a lass parked outside now, well there’s two actually.
There’s one got about three horses and there’s one got two horses with them and they used
12

to ride round peaceful and quietly you know, but then you got these silly fools with their 4 x
4’s, about half a dozen of ‘em (VAP) each other making as much noise as that damn thing
down there’s doing and they just Brooooom.
They frighten the horses to death, the lasses daren’t go around now, you know. Then you get
the fellows with the motorcycles and stuff, the quad bikes.
A young lad on the block here, Marcus, we’d been for a walk around, that was what, four,
that’ll be about four and a half years since now, we’re for a walk and we talked with these
chaps out here, well some of the chaps working for this lot out here.
Well they were working on the third dam up. I said to them like, “It sounds like you’ve got
some fools up here like, you know, with motorcycles and that.”
“Aw, I’m fed up “ he says “Tearing up and down, they been across here twice and gone back
with one of these quad bikes or whatever you call them, four wheel drive motorcycle thing and
ordinary motorbikes” “Oh, funny” I said “Well sounds like they’ve gone”
Well we walked up, fair enough, there’s a motorcar parked up, there’s a quad bike parked up,
there’s two or three motorcycles.
Before we’d got to ‘em, you know passed ‘em, the quad and these motorcycles tore off up the
hill. Well the speed they was going at was absolutely ridiculous. I mean Marcus there, I know
he couldn’t walk very fast and I wasn’t walking as fast as I normally do. We went walking
along and I says to Marcus, I says “Look out as it sounds like they’re coming”
Sure enough he come around the corner and the bloke on the quad, I was stood with my back
up against the wall like that. Well from there to my ankle were black and blue and the lad
back of me, Marcus, they’d broke his leg in two places.
Well the only thing they could do was, well I don’t know whether he was on drugs or what the
heck he was on but he Earrgh.
I said to them get an ambulance quick, get an ambulance quick. Well they disappeared and I
thought well they haven’t come out this way and they can’t get out the other because that
road’s blocked, supposedly blocked off with work down at second dam here, but by the sound
of it they’d thrown the gate wide open two of them with motorcycles tore through the quad and
car and all came straight through down here. Don’t know where they’d rung for the
ambulance, must have been quarter hour, half hour after, the well ambulance man came,
paramedic, he arrived then the ambulance came, but when I gave him the registration of the
quad and the rest of it the blooming police told me I wasn’t telling them truth.
Well I told them the size of the number plate on the back of it was only ‘bout so big, you know,
Ooh, no sir, no sir, it should be… I know I said it should only be so big.
I never heard a damn thing for that four, four and a half years ago. But like I said you can’t
walk round, the speed they were coming. He must have been coming along there doing 60
mph trying to you know go as fast as ever he could and it just chrooom.
He were thrown up against the wall here, the quad just bounced up two or three times and all
he did was jump, straighten it up, throw the bike out, the thing, straighten it up and tore away.
Well we don’t know where the heck he came from or owt, but it must have been illegal for
road.
Sometimes on a night, well on a week end, I look from here onto what we call Cook Study
Road, up Crossley’s plantation on top of Daisy Path. There’s a van comes and parks there;
it’s something like a, how big a size say, good sized transit van and out of it maybe come two
quads and about three motorcycles. No licence plates, no nothing and they’re racing across
round out to village of Holme Moss here and back again.
The police have been told about it and the rest of it but its just gone (Derisory noise) and
nobody’s bothered.
13

(Who owns this land Is it Water Board land)
Water Board land around the reservoirs, you know Water Board stuff, but the road’s public,
anybody can, you know, but like I say it’s just forgotten about.
(Remember you were talking about men who could remember the Holme Moss transmitter
being put up.)
Oh yes. Mind you I wasn’t living here then. I was living over the other side of the valley. Well
I’d heard that they was going to build a mast. Now I said like what sort of mast and the
answer I got was a television mast, 750 feet tall. I thought 750 feet Goodness gracious what,
I says, what size is that going to be
Ah well, we don’t really say how big it is but if you laid it down on the floor it’s 700 and some
feet.
I said Goodness me! Is it going to be laid on floor Oh no it’s going to be stuck straight up.
Well when it started I thought to myself, you could see little bits; all of a sudden heck, it got a
bit taller and you could see the wires come off it you know. It would go up a bit further and by
the time they’d done I must admit it looked fantastic, you know, with all the lights and that on
it.
Well it was standing there for eight, well forgot when they did swap it now.
They started putting the new one up more or less about the same height I think but there’s still
part of the old one left. But it’s just that I can’t tell you the day they started building it. I haven’t
a damned clue now. It was there you know, when they were building the rest but as I say, I’ve
just completely forgotten about it. It’s a mast and that’s about it. That’s all, you know, I know
about it. I must admit when I used to work for the Water Authority on occasions we used to be
able to go up and check what they called, well, their water meter because they used to get
water from the back of Yateholme dam which pumped up now as far as I understand they’ve
got a borehole up there, so. They’re pumping straight out from dam below.
(Did they have people working there all the time)
Oh yes. They used to work well used to be like a shift. You’d see bus going up maybe 7.30 in
the morning. Well I say a bus –a minibus type thing, go up over … They’d go up in the
morning and then maybe 10.30 – 11 o’clock maybe seeing them go back down the road,
they’d be another one going up.
They used to do I think, about 8 hour shifts or some thing like that all through, you know. But
it’s just one of them things.
I’ve only seen it this last, no not this week, last week that they were doing some maintenance
on it with the, on the outside of the cage You know outside of the mast taking on that little
stick thing. That were one of the places that I managed to get three quarters of the way up on
the little mast that stood at the site to look for a fire up on the moor. You know the peat fire.
Mind you, that took blooming twelve hours to put that thing out. Fire Brigade and the rest of it
were there like, but oh dear.
(Whereabouts was that then)
Just at the back of little Wrigley Cabin, up on the top here.
(You were working for the Water Board)
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Yeah, working for the Water Board then. I forgot who they got as gamekeeper up there then.
I’ve forgotten who gamekeeper were now, it might have been John France, I’m not right sure.
That’s a while back since that were on like you know, but we could see it were going like out,
the fire. Of course we’d been what you’d call Water Board cops up the tops and like you
know. We was up there and the digging out, cutting a trench through the peat about, what,
two feet six three feet and down to the stone work at the bottom.
(What, to stop the fire)
To stop the fire, aye, make like a fire break through it, well, just past where it was. It weren’t
half hot. I don’t know whether you’ve ever sat at the side of a peat fire or not, you know the
modern type fire, you know, but, it is warmer than the blooming stove thing here. Terrifically
hot stuff is peat. Nice smell and all the rest of it but, you know.
No it was up there that the keeper kept coming up and chucking a few bottles of beer here.
(It wasn’t the keeper that had set it)
No, no. I think it had been started by a broken bottle or summat they said, but you see that’s
something that a lot of these people can’t understand. Out on the moors, a cigarette end, I
must admit, can start a fire; broken bottles stuff like that; that’s through the heat, the sun
going through the bottom of the bottle, magnifying the heat, you know, like they do with a
magnifying glass. It’s some thing that a lot of people can’t understand how it starts. When I
think about it, I studied, well I haven’t studied, I’ve read in these survival books and things like
that how they used to do fires before matches and anything like that was invented.
I know I’ve seen Ray Mears on the telly there with his fire stick and his bow string thing. Of
course, folks say you can’t do it, it’s impossible for you to do it, but it isn’t, it can be, it is done.
In fact I’ve done it myself but that’s going back a long while like. Nowadays it’s only a little
piece of a, well, I had one somewhere…the modern thing for lighting a fire. You just strip it
down, that’s it, the thing is with that and something like thistledown like tinder, it’s away. You
can have afire in less than five minutes with that.
Bit of thistledown, bit of silver birch bark, few pine cones, dry ones, work your way up to logs,
maybe four or five inches thick or maybe the full size trunk of the tree here and you’ve got a
fire.
It’s things that, you know, which people “You can’t do things like that, it’s just not on.” But it is,
it’s there you know, away and you’ve cracked it.
People won’t in a way believe what you tell them. There was a chap one day who was talking
while I were out fishing and he said, like, what are you using for bait lad
Well I said a few worms. Oh, erm, I’ve got wasp grubs.
I says wasp grubs Oh aye and he roots in his thingy and comes out, fair enough, there’s a
thing there in his hand full of little blooming creepy crawlies like maggots and that you know.
Ah I’ve been down here he says and I’ve been fishing down here and I haven’t had no bait
nor nowt, he says, and I’ve still caught fish.
I thought this is going to be an interesting job how he’s going to explain how he caught fish
without bait.
Well I soon found out because he used to smoke a pipe; the old pipe’d come down, you
know. He gets his pipe out and charged it up, lights his match and I couldn’t above see him
for five minutes because of the smoke, it could kill you!
15

I just happened to say to him well you can’t catch fish, I says, wi’out bait. You throw your hook
in like you get nowt with that, look, threw it in and I hadn’t got nothing, not a blooming fish,
nowhere.
No, he says, look here. Gets hold of me bait like that and a piece of matchstick which he’d
split the end and put the hook through it like that and stuck it in, put it through and says now
then here we go out onto the water and about, what, five minutes after or six minutes after,
the line’s goes whooop. There we are, he says, got a fish.
Catching fish with matchsticks, I thought What on earth You know.
But nowadays when you weigh it up you can catch fish damn near with anything if they’re
feeding, but if they’re not feeding then you might as well forget it.
If you’d have looked straight out of the window where he’s coming with that big truck, you can
just see it; see where he’s just tipped all the muck there At the top. See the building at the
back The roof and thing – bred and born there. 1946, leaning out of the bedroom window;
two storey house and throwing snowballs at me brothers in bed – That’s got ya!
It’s like one of them daft things, people, well. Digley Mills an’ that there all in there.
Going back many years, they used to take us from the Field End School up what were called
Digley Bottom, taking the nature study things in … it wasn’t really nature studies, it was just
like a walk out for the afternoon.
Some of the old bus routes and things like that, er, run through. In fact I think the Isle of Skye
pub’s in there somewhere, I’ve just forgot which it is now.
(Is that why it was, is, called the Isle of Skye because it was named after the pub named the
Isle of Skye)
Oh no, I don’t know where a name like that came from.
Well it’s all the Isle o’ Skye there over into Greenfield, you know. It’s probably same as that
one at top of Standedge where the tunnel goes through, you know, Great Western and that
area; it’s just the name of it like.
(So it might have come from the people who worked on the railways or the dams or
something)
No. No idea where it came from. I haven’t a clue. I know, I think it is marked on the Ordnance
Survey map that it’s still Isle of Skye. Then you’ve got the Saddleworth Moor and you know.
(Did you still have horses when you had the farm)
Yes, Oh aye, we still had horses, yes.
(I was just looking at the pictures)
Yeah, I know the thing is I’ve no photographs of the, you know, when we were on the farm
like. I don’t even know whether or not I’ve got one of the… Oh aye there might be an old
cutting out of a newspaper or something which is dating back goodness knows how long.
16

I’m not sure if there isn’t a photograph of my Mum and Dad.
That’ll give you an idea of when they dug the Digley Dam as well, I think. It should tell you
somewhere there.
(Digley Mills and Bilberry Mills lost under the reservoir waters)
Oh aye. I used to play in the bottom there.
(CH: Now you fish around the edge of it, is that it)
No, there’s no fish in it, it’s only dams up here where fish is.
There used to be a little dam over there though side of the Digley, used to be called Ellis
Pond there, just below Hoobroom House and the Green Elders.
It was pure spring water that run into it. It was lovely clean water and the trout that used to be
in there, well, my brother told me when he used to go up that area doing it the trout were this
big.
(indicating approx. 15 feet)
They were brown ‘uns, not, you know, rainbows. They were the original, erm, how can I say,
wild trout of the area.
(That might be why they were so big)
That’s it. Nobody had fished it for many years.
(And it’s having to make their way up the little rivers and things like that I suppose would
toughen them up)
Well I think actually that the fish had been originally put into the dam, but I don’t think they
would be able to get out of the river and up the spill way where the dam used to be at the
back you know. I think they’d be put into the dam and that’d be it, and they’d be left, forgotten
about and gone and so couldn’t get back out.
Like I said, as a lad I used to go down the river here talking with some of the chappies that
used to be knocking about. And one chappy he’s picking fish out. Only about so big, out of the
river. He isn’t catching them with rod and line.
(What you call tickling them)
Tickling them. I seen him doing this like. How the heck you do that
Never mind young ‘un, you know.
Course like when he said summat like that it’s a case of well don’t ask too many questions;
we keep away like.
We’d seen him two or three times like, and I thought to meself one day, I thought, when he’s
not here, I’m gonna see if I can do that myself, you know.
17

He used to be there slopping about in the stream with Wellingtons on, you know.
Walk up to a big rock and you’d see him, you know, and all of a sudden he’d be out with a
little tub or a bucket with him and plop.
He might get what, five or six fish and put them in the bucket, and I used to think where the
heck’s he taking them to
Well I got curious because I could never find out where he’s taking them. So I said to one of
lads who lived in t’village – I says “Here I says, where’s the old geezer taking the fish”
Oh he says, he’s taking them up to Butterworth and Roberts’s’ dam in t’Yew Tree.
Oh. Ah. Oh you know. That were it. I mean to say you go now to the Yew Tree Dam, I know
you’re not supposed to be near it, but the blooming trout are this big, like salmon near
enough, six or seven pounders. And you think well…
I don’t know whether they fish it or not. They used to at one time, but whether they are doing it
now or not.
As I say, they are great big trout that’s in there. If there is nobody catching ‘em, they are going
to get to, oh, immense sizes. I mean when I think about it. I’m actually out now and pop it in
t’deep freeze here. There’s what, virtually, I’d say just about a pound that’s headed and tailed
and cleaned ready for straight in cooking, you know
When I think of the sizes of some of them fish that’s come out of there – wow! And the size of
those I’d caught in the dams ‘ere. I’m surprised at it when you get a fly rod, which is well, it’s
no thicker than the inside of your pen, that’s the tip end of it, light as a feather virtually. Well
there’s one standing in the corner over there, you know, you get a six seven pound trout on
the end of it
(It’ll bend)
It does bend, never mind owt else, it goes like mad!
There’s your rod, feel the weight of that. Don’t drop it, it’s very heavy!
You get like I said, something like a six, seven pound trout on there, you know.
Very steady away.
It’s quite an interesting sport. It’s relaxing. You go out tense as owt you know, Oh, what you
don’t know where to put yourself and then all of a sudden it, er, like I said, a tap on the line
and Oh, you’re gone, you’ve forgotten what you’re doing, you’ve forgotten the rest of it, you’re
in, you’re happy.
18

Interview with John Ownsworth at Penistone by Michael Parker 27 th July 2011
I first started being interested in the military locally in the very early 70’s when I used to go
around talking to the old local residents asking about their experiences & managed to put
together a lot of information.
Apparently after the Sheffield Blitz, December 1940, the military decided to build a range
at Upper Midhope & to do so, to make a tank range, they’d got to strengthen the roads.
So there were 13 lorries were going backwards & forwards from Sheffield to Upper
Midhope for 10 days constantly to carry rubble to build these roads. Then a Mr. Meakins,
of Hoylandswaine had a steamroller which he rolled the roads before they put concrete
down. Apparently somebody put a 75 mm shell in amongst the coal in the traction engine
& Mr. Meakins was stoking the fire up & he picked this 75mm shell up on his shovel.
Fortunately he saw it before he chucked it in the fire!
They did eventually finish all the building of these roads including the triangle which you
can still see on Low Moor using all this rubble. They finished it in early 1941.
Apparently the MoD had to take all the soldiers & equipment to ranges a long, long way
away, so they decided to build this range at Midhope so they wouldn’t have to travel so far
& waste time & money. Yes, there was even an anti-aircraft gunnery school at Upper
Midhope quite apart from the tank range. When they were building it my son-in-law’s father
Joe Taylor of Penistone was a member of a gang who built the moving targets. They dug
out to put the rails down to pull the target along. He remembered that quite well, but he
couldn’t put an exact date on it. He said they weren’t there long.
But when I first started going on Low Moor there were so many shells on the ground you
couldn’t avoid standing on them near the moving targets. Mainly 75mm semi-armour
piercing ones but occasionally I found high explosive ones which were painted red. There
were also a lot of 6 pounders, 37mm & sometimes 0.5’s & then lots of small arms fire like
0·300 American rounds, 303’s. I only found one or two 20mms but there must have been a
few more than that.
Then David Green, who’s now dead unfortunately, he’s a nice chap, or was a nice chap, &
he let me go on his part of the moor & he also told me where the camp was where some of
the permanent staff were billeted & he let me go on that piece of land with my metal
detector & I found all sorts of things in there. Like tops off pot belly stoves, cutlery & a
37mm round, a complete round.
Also at Langsett, at all the reservoirs on the west of Sheffield, were protected by 40mm
Bofors anti-aircraft guns. They all had at least two Bofors guns at the dam head to protect
against low flying German aircraft.
They also put booms of drums fastened together by chains across the reservoirs to stop
torpedoes being directed at the bank. I’ve got photographs of that as well.
A local chap who I didn’t know, but I knew his wife Mrs. Mosley, she’s dead now as well,
he took these photographs. He was an official in the Waterworks so I suppose he had an
excuse to take photographs.
I’ve got photographs of them letting off the smoke defence, which they put around all the
local reservoirs, & it looked just like fog. It was completely blotted out & I’ve got
photographs of that as well.
(Did they have any big pylons with cables)
They did, not all of the reservoirs but most of them. Practically all of them had this catenary
defence. A steel pylon built at either side of the reservoir with one long thick cable running
horizontally across from the top of one pylon across the reservoir to the other side, and
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then vertically hanging down from that, there were other cables, dozens of them, each with
a small concrete block on the end of it just above the water level, again to prevent low
flying aircraft. Also at Upper Midhope when they were using the tanks, training in the
tanks, they used concrete blocks as tank obstacles. And I’ve got one of those in the
garden.
The anti-aircraft gunnery school, there were 20mm anti-aircraft guns sited at the top end of
the triangle of roads on Low Moor. But then in 1943 they developed what they called the Z
battery – rockets to fire at aeroplanes. So then they had this Z battery rocket training
school at Upper Midhope as well.
I found part of a fuse from one of those on Low Moor. They used a Number 700 fuse on
those things, but also after the war they took all the remaining rockets & put them in a pile
& blew them all up just west of Midhope where they did that, but there’s still remnants of
those rockets still there.
Upper Midhope was bombed twice during the war. The first time a stick of bombs were
dropped in Midhope reservoir area, one dropping in the reservoir & the others,
presumably, dropping on the moor.
Then another time a stick of bombs was dropped in the North America area. One of them
didn’t go off & it dropped in the gully between Upper Midhope & North America. The Royal
Engineers dug it out & defused it & I’ve got photographs of that together with some of the
local residents. Gwenny Laughton for one & Alice Watts who lived there as well;
unfortunately they are both dead now.
One of them dropped a few yards west of North America farm & the crater’s still there.
Just below North America, amongst the trees, they had another moving target for soldiers
with rifles & machine guns. They had a rope going downhill from the top down towards the
reservoir. They had a rope fastened between trees & then they had a target on that which
they set off running down this rope & they fired at that.
(What type of tanks)
They were British tanks in the first instance. I’ve got a tank track pad that I found up there.
(What was the tank it was from)
I’ll go & find out. I found a tank track pad on Low Moor on Upper Midhope and I took it to
the Tank Museum in Dorset where they identified it as being off a Crusader tank. I also
found another big piece of bronze shaped in a crescent form which I also took down to
Dorset to the Tank Museum & they said that was off a heavy lifting crane which is
segmented on this thing & it states at what angle the jib has to be & how much weight it
can carry in that position.
(What was the number of tanks Were they separate units Were the tanks permanently
based & troops came to train on them)
No, there weren’t tanks there permanently, units came & went. Apparently the roads were
very busy with tanks. In fact just opposite our house, it’s still there now, it’s what were
called a tank ramp where new tanks were brought from Leeds from Barnbow, the tank
factory, on trains & some of these trains were so long that when they reversed it into the
siding where this tank ramp is they actually blocked the main line because the front end of
the train was in the main line area upnear in the station & then all these tanks used to
trundle off the train across all the other flat platform trucks right from the front to the back &
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trundled down the tank ramp and down the road & went either to Scout Dike, to the army
camp, or they went to Midhope.
In fact one of the tanks came down off the tank ramp, slewed right across the road &
knocked down me mother-in-law’s wall next door. They thought that was around 1941.
I knew about this train business because a friend of mine, John Davis, from Crowden, was
a railway guard at the time & he remembered bringing a long train of tanks to Penistone.
(Tanks are fairly wide, how did they get through the narrow lanes)
That’s what they did at Langsett & Midhope, even across the dam at Langsett they only
allowed one tank to run across it at a time because of all the vibration. They wouldn’t allow
any more than one to run at any one time.
The road right from the main road at Langsett right up to Upper Midhope – that was all
rebuilt & strengthened & you can still see the concrete now & they’ve even got concrete
sloped up the sides against the walls. I presume that was to tell the drivers that when they
started going up the slope at the sides that they were getting too close to the wall.
But if you look closely at the left hand side of the building going through Upper Midhope,
where the road is the narrowest, you’ll see some big gouges the wall which had been
caused by Churchill tanks going through. Again Gwenny Laughton showed me those.
There were all sorts of tanks – Valentines, Crusaders, Shermans, of course a bit later on,
& then Churchills. I suppose I would imagine at first they’d use mostly obsolete tanks for
training because they’d want all the most modern ones for the actual battle. But all the
standing points for the tanks when they were shooting at the moving targets, they are still
in situ at Upper Midhope; big concrete pads they were. I can think of three that are still
there.
There’s one just inside the plantation going towards The Flouch from Langsett.
When you reach the plantation, on the left hand side of the road there’s a concrete
standing pad probably a couple of hundred yards down inside that plantation.
Then there’s one at the top end of Upper Midhope amongst the trees where the farm was
originally & then there’s one at the bottom end of Low Moor on the right hand side.
Then the big concrete area at the bottom of the triangle of tank roads, that’s what they
called the tank workshops area where they did any maintenance on tanks. But, from what
I can find out, there weren’t ever any buildings built there. So any work they did on the
tanks it must have been done in the open air. So that would have been quite a job in the
winter.
(Were there any other buildings for staff anywhere)
Yes there were Nissan huts built behind David Green’s farm. But right at the top of Upper
Midhope when you go up the road that just ends in Upper Midhope, that little road, right at
the top of there on the right hand side, the army made a new road. Instead of using
Joseph’s Lane to get to the new camp there was another road there & then the camp was
between Joseph’s Lane & this new road.
From what I can make out there were about ten Nissan huts there. Then on the right hand
side of the road they built the NAAFI which is behind what was David Green’s farm. Then
there were one or two huts further down Joseph’s Lane inside the plantation at the top of
the bank from the reservoir.
(Any fires caused by the shooting)
3

Yes there was. Well, it’s obvious really. They were mostly semi-armour piercing tracer
rounds that they fired so if the tracer was still burning when it went into the moor that
would set off fires. But then of course any H E shells that exploded in the moors that would
set it going as well. So they had quite a lot of fires.
(Were there fire-fighting units based here)
There’s never been anything said like that to me that there were permanent staff for that
purpose, for fire fighting, but it seems difficult to believe that there weren’t, unless they just
relied on the squaddies to put them out. I know a lot of Home Guard people did the training
there because I know people who did it. The regular army did manoeuvres up there as
well. I found hundreds & hundreds of rounds of rifle cartridges & grenades & stuff like that.
(Were the tanks static or moving around)
I don’t think that they did shoot whilst moving because they built these purpose-built
standing points made of concrete for them to fire at the moving targets; but I do know that
they used to fire at the targets in the hull-down position. That’s like in a hole with only the
turret showing because I found places where they did that. You can still see the tracks on
the moor in some places because of that if it was a particularly wet part of the moor. They
made deep tracks & of course they are still there. In fact in one place I saw where there
were some tank tracks & I used my metal detector over it & I found hundreds and
hundreds of rounds of .300 American rifle cartridges & it appears they just dumped them in
this tank track, rut, & just covered them over. That must have been at the end of the war
perhaps when they no longer required the ammo.
(Have you any idea how many Americans were here)
I know there were hundreds up at Scout Dike.
(Was it called Scout Dike after the war because of US troops there)
No, it’s always been known as Scout Dike because my mother’s father had a farm,
Westhorpe farm, whose land goes up to the boundary of Scout Dike camp & my uncle,
who is only five years older than I am, or was, & of course he was mad keen on the
military being a young boy. He found lots of rifle cartridges which had been thrown over
into the field & he remembers quite a lot about the Americans being there.
Initially when they first came, in I think it would be 1942, I think it was late summer 1942
when they came, because my aunt, who lived at Westhorpe farm at the time, her husband
was walking back home from Penistone, & he’d been to the pub, & when he got to the
bottom of the by-pass he was walking along, & it was dark, & somebody shouted “Halt!
Who goes there” & he says (PHONE RINGS)
Yeah, local residents, old local residents, told me that there were many very long convoys
of troops & vehicles coming down from the Flouch towards Stocksbridge. I think, probably,
they’d be coming up from Liverpool because they’d be American troops & they’d be
landing at Liverpool, perhaps. But I don’t know why they’d be going down towards
Sheffield unless there were some other depots or camps, further down.
(It’s difficult to find out due to censorship even in post-war papers.)
4

Well I’ve done all that. I’ve gone through all the war-time papers in Sheffield City Library, &
anything military was all censored. They’d put down an aircraft crashed in the North East
of England, they didn’t put down it had crashed on the top of Kinder Scout or anything like
that. So it wasn’t really helpful except that in 1950 there was a Meteor jet crashed in Hagg
Side, that’s at the end of Derwent Valley, & me, together with about seven of my friends,
we combed this plantation & eventually found this crash site. It had been published mostly
in full because it was post-war.
Like I say, during the war it was censored shockingly so I didn’t really find much out from
that source. Most of my information has been gathered from local old people.
(Any barrage balloons at Langsett reservoir)
No I don’t think there was, or at least nobody said there were.
(I got some info from the internet that a concrete block at Langsett had been used to tether
a balloon.)
I don’t think so. No, I think that would be an anchor point for a guy rope for the steel
pylons. I’ve found where all the guy ropes were anchored at Langsett & I also found where
the pylon was stood. In fact where the pylon stood that’s amongst the trees in the
plantation at the northern side of the reservoirs. I found a pile of brass buckles & things, a
brass sorting & Blanco where presumably a squaddie had been sat down polishing his
brasses & then as soon as they said “oh the war’s over chaps,” he’d just drop it all &
scarper!
(What happened to the farms during this time)
Townhead Farm was commandeered by the army & all the buildings, & the house, that’s
where the squaddies lived. In fact part of the house was used as an office for the camp
commander. That’s at Townhead, but the Greens, let’ see, I think the Greens were
probably moved out as well because I think they lived at the pub, the Wagon & Horses.
(They used to call it Billy Greens’)
Yes. I think they all lived there. There were two brothers - David, & I’ve forgotten what they
called the other one, David lived at the farm in Upper Midhope later, but I think during the
war they all lived at the pub.
Just after the war, when the war was over, the camp commander had an ornament made
using two Bofors cartridges & had them mounted on a piece of wood & presented them to
Mrs. Green for they’re being so sociable & helpful for the American forces. Unfortunately
when I made the acquaintance of David Green he told me about this & he said “I bet you
would have liked this, wouldn’t you” & I said I would. He said “Well I had some wood
worm people who came, Rentokil people who came to do some work & I gave it to one of
those chaps”. So I was let down there.
(Any agricultural activity going on)
There was because Gwenny Laughton, their family, they had some cows in the field just
behind the farm. I’ve got a photograph of that.
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Gwenny Laughton, I made, well, both of us, we used to go and see her every week,
because she were a mine of information & she liked talking about old times & that’s where
I got most of my information from together with David Green & Alice Watts. I call her Alice
Watts and she’s well known as Alice Watts but she married someone called Milnes & her
proper name was Alice Milnes. During the war Alice lived at Midhope as well & then a bit
later on in the war they left Upper Midhope & went somewhere down Sheffield farming.
I’ve got photographs of Gwenny Laughton as a 20 year old with the cows & with the bomb
the REME dug up & defused.
(Was it pretty tight security around the moors)
To go around these areas you had to have a permit, & only people with legitimate reasons
for going there i.e. they lived there or they worked there were allowed to go.
The same being said about the site along Hunshelf Road from Green Moor to Hartcliff.
There were bombs parked all along the side of that road all the way up, & like I told you
before, about the bomb dump in the wood, Salter Hill plantation, at the top of Underbank,
which had ten Nissan huts in, full of small arms ammunition from small pistol ammunition
up to 20mm that were stored in them.
They’d got people on guard, soldiers were on guard, at the top of Underbank. Then down
the other side of the hill towards Oxspring, at the cross-roads, they had a chap on guard
there to stop people going up there.
Also at Cranberry crossroads, Sheephouse, all those places they had guards and they’d
got little huts there as well for if it was bad weather. They wouldn’t allow anyone to go up
there unless they’d got this permit.
(Were they local Home Guard or regular soldiers)
I don’t really know that. I’ve not been told who they were.
(How often did the exercises take place & what was the turnover of troops)
From what I can gather they would come for a week or maybe two weeks, but they came
from all over Yorkshire apparently. Right away from the Colne Valley to Upper Midhope.
(What units were there)
I know what all of them were. Gwenny Laughton she had autograph books & all the staff
who came & stayed at their house it was a condition of staying there, she used to say, that
they put their autograph in, the unit & where they came from, in these autograph books.
She gave me these autograph books so I do know all the units who did their training there.
(Including the Americans)
No, I think these were all British that were there as the permanent staff.
(I have inkling that it was the 9 th Armoured Division, which was a training division. If you
know the units you can check war diaries in the National Archives.)
From what I can gather they took their own equipment & in fact I don’t even know what
units were at Scout Dike. I’ve not been able to find out that. I’ve made a map of Scout Dike
camp, how it was at the time, from the situation as it was a few years ago. I would have
liked to find out what units were at Scout Dike, but, like I say, I’ve not been able to do.
6

I didn’t finish telling me tale about my uncle, my mother’s sister’s husband. He’d been
down to the pub at Penistone, he was living at West Thorpe Farm at Scout Dike, & coming
back it was dark & he got to the bottom of the bypass where he would be turning right &
walking up towards West Thorpe Farm when all of a sudden somebody shouts “Halt! Who
goes there” & me uncle Les, being a farmer says “It’s me you daft bugger! I’m walking
home” & he could only see a pair of eyes & some big teeth & then he’d got this rifle in his
hands & a bayonet on the end & he wouldn’t let him pass & he says I just live up there at
West Thorpe Farm & eventually they let him through.
That was the first time, the first day that the Americans had come to Scout Dike. The camp
was not yet built & so all the Americans had parked all their vehicles down this bypass
which is only a narrow road even now & so it was completely blocked with vehicles & that’s
where they stayed the first night. Presumably the next day when they had a nice sleep,
they’d go to the camp & they’d start building it perhaps & they’d get a permanent
residence. It’s only about a half a mile further where West Thorpe Farm is so uncle Les
wanted to walk up the bypass to get home. My aunty Mary told me that many years ago.
(Were there many black US troops)
Yes they were mostly blacks. When D-Day came on the 6 th June 1944, all the white
Americans went on the D-Day landings, but the blacks were left at Scout Dike to look after
all the various bomb dumps in the area. It must have been later on that the black
Americans went to France because I know for a fact that they drove the lorries which took
all the supplies.
(It was called The Red Ball Express)
That’s right – the Red Ball Express. They drove these lorries but I’ve heard several stories
about these Americans driving about with these six-wheeled lorries in the Penistone area
& having accidents.
For instance, one hit, when Cubley Vinegar Brewery was there, it was like a very sharp S
bend round one of the buildings & one of the lorries was careering down this road, down
Cubley, & it hit this building that stuck out.
Another time one went through Scout Bridge wall & ended up in the field beyond.
Another one went careering down the hill from where the old church is, at Millhouse, on
the rise going up at Millhouse, towards the Flouch, Bullhouse Chapel. Well it’s a long,
straight downhill road onto the railway bridge, down towards Millhouse and the bend at the
bottom & one of these black Americans went through the wall at the bottom of there as
well in a six wheeled truck.
(Any trouble between black/white troops I’ve heard of white American troops not wanting
black troops in the same pubs.)
That’s how it was in America; apparently that didn’t happen in England because the British
wouldn’t allow it. I don’t know of any fights, I do know they had fights – the American
versus the locals, but other than that I don’t know.
(Have you heard any tales about bright lights on these artillery ranges Refers information
from Imperial War Museum and website that mentions Midhope.)
I haven’t heard of that.
7

I’ve spoken to several top people at the Imperial War Museum & Tank Museum
(Bovington) & nobody had heard of Upper Midhope range & yet we know for a fact it was
there but apparently they must have been lost. (The documents)
(Reading out information, unsourced, suggesting firing ranges there pre-war.)
I don’t know think there was anything there until 1941.
Everybody I’ve spoken to, like Joe Taylor, for instance, they dug out for the moving targets
in early ’41. So I don’t know where that’s come from – that there targets there already. I do
know that part of that moor is called Range Moor but then I’ve got a very old map, 19 th
Century, & it’s called Range Moor then but there wouldn’t be tanks then because they
weren’t brought out till the 20 th Century.
(Internet source mentioned armoured vehicle place at Bradfield.)
No, there wasn’t an armoured vehicle place at Bradfield, but there was an artillery range at
Bradfield. The artillery pieces stood at Onesmoor at High Bradfield & fired onto Hobson
Moor because I found shells there on Hobson Moor.
(Referring to photographs)
That’s North America farm in 1936.
Well, the Americans demolished that firing their tank guns. Well I told you about the tank
standing point just inside the plantation on the road up to Flouch, on the left hand side.
The tanks used to stand there on that standing point & fire at North America across the
reservoir.
It was farmed until they built that dam and then the Water Works bought all this land &
they moved them out because they didn’t want any effluents going into the water.
That’s Midhope Reservoir House. That was, they had a big room there, Committee room,
& it was commandeered by the army & they lived there for the duration. But they also had
an underground bomb shelter at Midhope Reservoir House.
(Referring to an article in the Sheffield Star regarding the pylons (at Langsett) being placed
at the top of the hill)
Well it’s no use bombing from a big height because you won’t get the accuracy. So you
need to get down lower, so I suppose these wouldn’t allow them to get down low enough
to get accurate bombing.
Just to the west of Langsett reservoir, near the Flouch, is Swinden Plantation & there used
to be a little farm there & during the war the Germans dropped some incendiary bombs on
it. One of them dropped against their front door into the farmhouse. So the chap in the
farmhouse opened the door & got his sweeping brush & swept this incendiary bomb away
from the door or it would have set the door on fire.
Regarding dam-busters bombing practice, Gwenny Laughton told me that they put a target
on Langsett reservoir for the pilots of the bombers to aim at. They were dropping bags of
dye or something like that to aim at these targets on the dam & at that same time nobody
was allowed to go across the dam head, either vehicle or walking.
8

(Low-flying aircraft taking branch off an oak tree)
Yes. Walter Coldwell, at the farm on the right hand side, immediately before the bottom of
the Ewden Beck, going towards Ewden Beck from Stocksbridge, Deepcar, told me that a
bomber caught an oak tree, which is on the right hand side of the road going downhill into
Ewden Beck, & broke a branch off & it, which is still visible today, when on it’s bombing
run.
The Hunshelf Road, from Green Moor to Hartcliff, was practically a bomb dump, practically
all the way along & all the little by-roads which connected to Hunshelf Road were all
guarded by MoD personnel stopping people going to Hunshelf Road unless they had a
permit to go there i.e. got relatives there or they worked there or lived there. In some parts
of Hunshelf Road & the little by-roads leading to it the bombs were stacked to either side it
was like walking through a tunnel, the bombs being stacked six or seven feet high at either
side.
9

Interview with Nick Smith on 14 th September 2011. Moorland Centre in Edale by
Julia Shergold
(So if you could just tell me your name and your date of birth first of all)
Well, I’m Nick Smith, date of birth is 13 th May 1961
(And the reason we’re here talking to you is because of your involvement with the search and
rescue dog association, I have I got the name right)
That’s correct
(And that’s SARDA)
SARDA
(Right ok, so um could you tell me how you got involved with them)
Oooh, how long have we got for the interview, with all these things it’s never a straight story. I
originally, SARDA are a training organisation, they train mountain rescue personnel to work
with search dogs in the mountains. So my involvement with SARDA came about when I
decided I wanted to run a dog for search purposes through my mountain rescue team.
(So you were a mountain rescue…member)
Yeah, I’ve been in a mountain rescue team, Buxton mountain rescue team for about 10 years
now, and against all my better thoughts I was determined I wouldn’t end up with a dog. I’ve
worked with dogs most of my life, my family we’ve run sheep dogs, we’ve run gun dogs and
I’ve trained sheep dogs and gun dogs in the past. After my last dog died I said that was it I
wasn’t going to have another dog, it hurts too much when they go.
(People do say that don’t they)
Yeah I no longer work with sheep so I no longer need to have a dog for work but I became
involved through the team, the team encourage people to go out and do what’s called
dogsbodying, where you go out usually on a Sunday morning, we train in the Peak District
most Sunday mornings on the moors. And that involves various areas for the dogs at different
stages of training with people who are prepared to lie out there for up to 3 hours (JS gasps) in
a bivvy bag, hidden, you can’t hide from the dogs but it stops the handlers knowing where
they are. And they will lie out and the dogs will go out and find them as a training exercise.
Without the people who are prepared to lie on the moors as dogsbodies we can’t train the
dogs.
(Of course)
So my original thing was to go along and lie on the moors on a Sunday morning and from
there it became more of an involvement, I started going on the national courses. Once a
month there’s a course held around the country, so it could be in the Lake District, its
Northumberland fells all the way down to Dartmoor.
1

(So all different environments and areas you don’t know I suppose that’s the…)
Its basically all the regions, cos the dogs, it’s a national organisation although its kind of
regional now simply for ease of access to training, um everybody in the country crossreferences
standards, and once a month we meet up somewhere that is a mountain area that
has search dogs and we have a 3 day weekend and it helps keep those standards high. So I
became involved in the national courses; it was almost inevitable at that stage I suppose that I
was going to say I’ve got to have a dog. And Zach is my dog, is my first search dog.
(Great, well Zach is here in the interview with us as well, thanks for bringing him. So um, how
did you go about training him then, just through the kind of process you’ve been talking about,
the training exercises)
Yeah, they have erm, nationally they have a training structure and you go through a puppy
stage, stage 1, stage 2 and a stage 3 then you do a final assessment. So the puppy stage
really is getting your dog socialised, it’s getting obedience, it’s getting a down stay, it’s
bringing into the dog the obedience it will need on the hill. Because when you’re working with
a team, the dog, not necessarily when you’re searching but at the end of it when you’ve found
the person and the team come along to package them and take them off, you’ve got a lot of
involvement, a lot of team, a lot of busy, a helicopter may be involved so you’ve got to get the
dog absolutely bomb proof in all those situations so it’s happy (JS – you’ve got to concentrate
on the casualty at that point) that’s right so your dog has to, so at that stage we teach the dog
a 10 minute down stay, so it has to be happy just to lie down in one place whether you’re in
sight or not. Because obviously as you say you’re going to deal with the casualty the dog’s
got to be put down in a spot and you’ve got to know that the dog’s gonna to be happy staying
there, even if a helicopter comes in. So there’s a lot of familiarisation, a lot of obedience and
at the end of that you have a registration test. So around about 10 or 12 months of age for the
dog you’ll go through a registration test which is a test of the obedience and also a livestock
test. Before we can run the dogs for training on the moors off the lead, they’ve got to be
assessed to be stock proof to be shown that they will not in any circumstances chase
livestock and that’s usually done by one of the local farmers who does sheepdog trials.
(Right yeah yeah, because you can’t have them racing off, off the lead out of control like
anybody with their dogs.)
Absolutely not, we’re working with border collies mainly, there are other breeds but we’re
working with border collies in an area which is pretty intense with sheep, so it’s got to be that
the dog will stay on task and will work amongst sheep (JS- not be distracted) or cattle with not
being distracted or going off (JS – and other dogs presumably as well) other dogs, there are
other livestock, you’ve got horses obviously you meet up with people riding horses, it’s gonna
be a pretty bad day if the dog suddenly goes for a horse and a rider gets thrown, so you’ve
got to introduce them to all these things. Also rabbits you know, if you’re working in woodland
sometimes you get the woodland searches and its no good if they dog spends, he’s away you
think he’s searching and he’s actually chasing after rabbits, he’s got his head down a rabbit
hole. So there are all sorts of introductions to livestock and proving you know getting the dog
so he’s not interested.
(So has Zach passed with flying colours)
2

He passed his final assessment with flying colours, we took our final assessment, at the end
of stage 3 is the final assessment, it’s spread over 3 days in the Lake District in January. And
you do 2 areas, you’re set up with 2 areas each day, one in the morning and one in the
afternoon. Those areas can take up to 1 ½ hours to search and will have an unknown number
of people lying out in the areas.
(So you can’t give him any clues, it’s totally on his ability to find people.)
Absolutely, I mean that’s how it’s set up, the people who are assessing will put the bodies out
to test the dogs ability to find bodies on the wind, to find people. Um and to be honest it’s a lot
easier for the handler if you don’t know where they are, once you think you know where they
are you get drawn into areas where there may not actually be anybody. So you’ve got to keep
your mind totally open as to where somebody might be and just work the dog, concentrate on
working the dog across the wind.
(So is that how they do it then, it’s completely on sense of smell is it for the dog)
It’s air scenting, by that what we mean is that a person will produce a smell, regardless of how
much they’ve washed or otherwise, they will produce a smell that to a dog smells human.
Now we don’t discriminate er, trailing dogs will discriminate, you’ve all seen the films, you’ve
seen the films where they get the handkerchief or shirt and they give it to the blood hound (JS
– and he finds the, that person) and the bloodhound follows that person. That’s scent
discrimination, we don’t discriminate. In some of our situations we get a phone call, perhaps
10 o’clock on a Saturday evening, there might be a group that are lost on Kinder Scout or
Bleaklow, we don’t have anything to give the dog (JS – no, course) so we’ve just got to go out
and find people (JS - anyone who’s there) from scratch. And yeah, we’ll find anybody,
anybody who’s on the moor we’ll find them. Luckily the conditions we get called out in there
aren’t too many people left up there, most of them have bolted (JS – just the one you’re
looking for) for the valley. So if we do come across somebody we’re not looking for it only
takes a minute, less than a minute, to have a chat to say you know have you called mountain
rescue, are you lost And if they’re the person we’re looking great if not we carry on. So we
don’t discriminate on scent, they scent across the, so we work them very much like a gun dog
and work them across the wind. (JS – right, yes). Um, and they will pick up, depending on
conditions, wind strength and humidity, they can pick up from 500m away. And when they get
that scent they will work in to the source of the scent, find the person and at that point they’ll
then run back to the handler, indicate by barking, they will then go back to the casualty, come
back to the handler bark again, go back to the casualty (JS – ah, keep going…) and they
keep shuttling until the handler gets to the casualty at which point the dog gets his reward
which is his toy, it’s all toy based training, so he’ll search all day just to get a game with his
toy, it’s a little bit (chuckles) sometimes you get odd looks from the casualty who might be
lying there (JS- stopping to play with the dog) and I’ll say I’ll be with you in a second but
you’ve got to give the dog his reward, so it may be a very quick reach in the bag get the toy,
throw the toy for the dog but the dog has got to get that toy for finding (JS – that’s why he
does it), absolutely. And, so yeah, Zach uh, when Zach did his assessment, which was
January 2010 in the Lake District he was awarded the shield, we got the novice shield, which
isn’t given out every year, it had been last given out in January 2001 (JS- oh wow) so it had
been a long time since a dog had been awarded that. And that was for perfect areas, every
area was scored high enough to be scored perfect.
3

(So not every dog would naturally be good at this kind of thing, what makes a good…)
What makes a good dog First of all you’re looking for that nose, we’re working from air scent
so it’s gotta be a nose, and a nose that will work very well. Some dogs are better than others
with the nose. Blood hounds are an obvious one that people think of when they think of…
(I never knew if that was just a myth or…)
NS – No, they’ve got a very big nose, the bigger the nose then the more cells they’ve got
inside the nose that will pick up on the scent. So you’ve gotta get a nose that will pick up
scent, um then you want the rest of it to follow on from there. Behind that its got to be a dog
that’s trainable and the border collie is very intelligent and very trainable, and a dog that will
work in all weathers for long periods of time running across the terrain that we work in which
locally tends to be the high moors, Kinder Scout, Bleaklow, Black Hill.
(I was going to ask you actually about which areas you cover, so it’s the sort of high
moorlands of the Peak District mainly is it)
Our primary role with the mountain rescue team is to support the team in searching for people
lost in those areas, those high moors. Outside of that we are, in this day and age, we’re being
called in more for urban searches outside of the mountain rescue teams. The police..
(So for people that are lost or..)
Yeah, children, Alzheimer patients (JS – Oh of course) who wander off into rural, semi-urban
areas, parkland, and sometimes, particularly last winter, with the weather conditions where
we were getting -20 over night, these people have got to be found pretty quick. And the police
are calling on the dogs more and more.
(So it would be quicker to do that with a dog than with purely human searchers)
The dogs they say, this is an arbitrary sort of figure, one dog equals about 20 people (JS -
Wow) um, now as the conditions get worse you could say that the number of people the dog
equals goes up.
(And if visibility is bad, people are stuck aren’t they, but the dogs they…)
Absolutely, we’ve had a couple of searches on Kinder Scout where basically people wouldn’t
be able to search. You’re up there, its bad weather you’ve got either snow or rain coming
down you’ve got white-out conditions. And for people to search effectively people have got to
be close enough together to see the ground between them
(Yes otherwise you miss somebody)
Absolutely, they could be in the gap between the site and you know the ground terrain on
Kinder, Bleaklow, the moors, are very uneven (JS- disorientating), disorientating, (JS- grikes)
oh yeah, the cloughs (JS – cloughs) and the grips up there you’ve got a lot of places where if
somebody has stumbled and fallen particularly if they’re unconscious or if they’ve gone to
4

sleep, they’ve hunkered down and gone to shelter and they’re asleep, they’re not going to
hear people, but the dog will smell them and then come and indicate independently. So in
those conditions the dogs, you know it can still carry on searching when people can’t.
(Yes, yeah, that’s fascinating, so have you been involved in many rescues on the moors,
round about)
Um, we’ve been involved in, I think in the 18 months or so since we graded as a team we’ve
probably done about 25 searches on the moors.
(That’s a lot isn’t it)
It is a lot
(One every couple of weeks almost)
Yeah, we’ve had a couple of finds
(That’s good)
To be honest, the find is not the thing, it’s the fact that we’re clearing areas, uh there are
currently 9 search dog teams covering the Peak District with various mountain rescue teams
and as many dogs as the controller, the search controller, thinks he needs for the area will
come out. And it’s a bit like finding, if you imagine a chess board or maybe battleships you’ve
got a grid, and somebody puts a little mark in one of these grids and you’ve got to find it. So
the controller’s job is to put teams out so that he covers all those squares. If you’re lucky
enough to be given one of those squares in your search area you make a find. So the glory…
(But if you don’t they know its not there, so it’s just as useful)
It is yeah. They’ve cleared it effectively, and you give a report that says how effectively you
think you’ve cleared it and whether you think it’s sufficient to move on. Um, so the controller
can mark those squares off and move on to other bits. So the glory goes to the people who
find of course, that’s the reward, but it really is a whole team thing. You’ve got the mountain
rescue teams who’ll be searching on foot and you’ve got the dogs filling in the trickier areas in
between.
(Ah right, so what do you think is the hardest environment that you’ve had to work in)
I think the hardest search we did was on Kinder Scout last winter, we’d had a lot of snow and
it had thawed, semi-thawed and frozen, we got high winds, we got minus 20 wind up there it
was white out conditions. That’s hard going, to keep the dog motivated and keep him going all
night, it was a long search about 5 hour search. And we set off, we initially were given the
task of clearing Crowden, up to Crowden Towers.
(Right, so it’s a big steep valley area as well)
Yeah, so we worked up there, that wasn’t too bad but then we hit the top and got exposed to
the wind (chuckles) and the controller said can you move on, your next area is over to Kinder
5

Gates. So we cleared to Kinder Gates and then they managed to get a broken mobile phone
signal, and decided that the 2 people, a father and son, were over by Kinder Downfall.
(Right, they could tell just from their mobile signal)
They were able to give some rough idea of what the terrain was like, and they narrowed it
down to over that side, and myself and Zach along with a navigator, somebody along who
keeps an eye on where we are so I can focus on just working the dog. We ended up at Kinder
Downfall, just as another dog team found them at the top of Red Brook.
(Ah right, ok)
So that was a bonus, a dog team found, it was a result. They were both fairly cold and they
were happy to come off at that stage
(I can imagine how pleased they were to see that dog at that point)
Absolutely, I mean through no fault of their own they’d ended up, it had taken them a little bit
longer, in winter people are often surprised by the speed with which it gets dark, particularly if
it’s bad weather. And they’d just ended up in there in the dark, the batteries in the torch went
flat, they couldn’t find their way off. Once you’ve lost your reference point you’ve nothing to
work out where you are and so it’s very easy to wander and a lot of people we find are
actually trying to find their way off but they just can’t and they’re going round and round in
circles. And so yeah, it was a good result that night.
(Fantastic, so do the dogs cope quite well when, I mean I’m thinking of how boggy the
conditions can get sometimes and can they just trot across the top)
Ah yeah well he copes better than me, it’s me that usually ends up, up to my knees in a hole.
The dogs are very good at finding their way round, and of course they’re quite light and
they’ve got 4 legs, it’s a bit like 4 wheel drive for them up there. They tend to find the firmer
ground and they will run round the bogs, whereas we tend to just stumble into them.
(Ah fantastic, so um what are your plans for this winter then with Zach)
Well much of the same really, we’ve got our reassessment, once the dogs have been working
for a certain amount of time they get re-tested, just to make sure that they’re still on the ball.
And the handler and dog have to be shown to have developed as a team. Its not all down to
the dog, I always put a lot of emphasis on the fact that the dog does the bulk of the search
work, but the handler and the dog have to work together as a team to be efficient, and that’s
what they assess on the reassessment. So we’ve got that, we’re actually doing that in the
Brecon Beacons in November, and then after that I would expect to get quite a few calls at
various times of day and night with the dog.
(So you have a time when you’re kind of on call, and you get a phone call and be asked to
turn out)
Yeah, we work on a call out system which is 24/7
6

(Right, it could be any time at all)
Anytime at all, they work on pagers and now we’ve got mobile phone back ups so you’ll get a
text message, they’ll give details of the callout and if you can go, you go.
(Wow, well that’s fantastic. Is there anything else you want to add or tell us about or think
people should know really because I think it’s something that people don’t know a lot about
and unless they get lost and in need of your services perhaps don’t know what you’re up to.)
Absolutely, I mean I think the main point I’d like to make is that Mountain Rescue is a charity,
it’s totally funded by charitable donations. So we work with the mountain rescue team, we’re
not funded by the government, it is all voluntary so this work goes on in addition to regular
work. I’d like to thank the landowners because without the landowners and the farmers
cooperating and letting us have access to large amounts of moorland for training we just
wouldn’t be prepared for the environments we get thrown into when it’s a live case. So we’re
very fortunate in the Peak District that a lot of people support us very quietly in the
background and just let us get on with access to the moors for training. And then I’d like to
thank the dogsbodies because without this great bunch of people who are just so willing to
come out and lie on the moors in all weathers we wouldn’t be able to train the dogs.
(Ah that’s great, thanks very much Nick and Zach)
You’re welcome, thank you.
7

Ian Hurst – 15 th September 2011
Mountain Rescue Association Headquarters in Doveholes
Interviewed by Julia Shergold
[Could you tell us your name and your age please]
Yeah my name is Ian Hurst and I’m 68 years of age and I’m president of Buxton Mountain
Rescue Team.
[That’s great, well thank you for being interviewed. I wanted to ask you really Ian how you first
got involved with mountain rescue]
I first got involved through the then Warden Service, back in the late 50’s, early 60’s. I
volunteered and used to travel to Edale virtually every weekend and we’d camp at Ollerbrook.
George Garlick was the Head Warden then and he lived at Fieldhead and I suppose it’s
evolved mountain rescue, people were using the moorlands, Kinder Scout particularly, and
having accidents and we were, as a natural flow in a sense, got involved with that process,
equipment was provided and a little bit of training and we just got thrown in at the deep end.
It’s much different now but then it fulfilled that particular purpose.
[So it was the Wardens themselves, would just get a call out if somebody was in trouble, or
somebody would come round and get you together]
Yes. Very often many of these incidents did occur at weekends because that’s when the
majority of people had their recreational time and there weren’t so many cars around in those
days so people used to come out on the train, so the focal points were Edale and other areas
within the Hope Valley and also on the western side, Hayfield. I mean it had a train service in
those days and was very popular if people were coming from Manchester.
So those were the two focal points basically for incidents to occur if you like, and for Wardens
to be able to respond. But in essence they were known location incidents, if it was a search
incident which could go on for a number of days then the mechanisms were totally different in
those days to what they are now.
[So if you knew where someone was and they were in trouble you could just go and get them
and provide help and get them down. But if you were just looking for someone lost it’s a much
bigger problem]
Yeah, it was a much more difficult exercise and it still is today to some extent and it’s a matter
of correlating all the information you have to hand. But in those days of course I was just a
trooper I wasn’t involved in the management process of mountain rescue. I was just a guy
that you know was available to help, provide a bit of muscle and so on. But it was something I
felt satisfied me, and I felt that it was an important service that we were able to provide.
[So we’re talking early, late 60s here]
Well my, the first incident I can recall that I was involved in was in 1964 which was the Four
Inns incident
1

[Yes, where there were fatalities]
Yeah there were three fatalities; three Scouts died from hypothermia. And I was with the
Warden Service Team then it was called the Edale Team so it was the forerunner to the
current Edale team. And we found one of the bodies…
[Gosh…]
…in Alport, in the river itself, and all we could see, because the river surface had frozen over,
a little bit of snow had fallen on the ice, all we could see were the tips of his toes, boots and
his nose just sticking out of the ice. Anyway we recovered him. One had died prior to that
another one was found a few days later on the moorland itself near to the Snake Summit.
[So that was quite a significant incident that sort of led to more organisation of mountain
rescue]
You’re absolutely right, mountain rescue prior to that was very much ad hoc, there were a
couple of teams around, one in Glossop which was made up of Scouts and one in New Mills
which was made of Scouts and also lots of local people. But there wasn’t any sort of if you
like regional co-ordination. The teams did their own thing. And on that particular incident there
were a number of areas that were thought to have been searched but hadn’t been. So, if you
like the management process was I suppose somewhat lacking in terms of that particular
incident.
But that was one incident which pointed people towards the fact that we needed a more
established regular regional organisation together with the police that could function. Because
prior to that there was an incident when two children from Glossop were missing from home
and were found dead on near to the Snake Summit on Featherbed Moss, again that was
hypothermia and that was in the winter.
And prior to that another winter incident there was an avalanche in Chew Valley a place
called Wilderness Gully, Chew Valley is at Greenfield.
[I think people will be surprised that, you know, we get avalanches in this country at all really]
Oh yeah we do occasionally, and two men were killed in that so that was another major
incident. So there were three fatal incidents that brought about the formation of the regional
body, which we now know as the Peak District Mountain Rescue Organisation.
So that followed on late ‘64 and 1965 with meetings at White Hall in Buxton, involving all the
rescue teams that were involved in the Peak and there were well over 20 in those days plus
the police. And things were agreed, a body of people were established as controllers and their
function really was to manage large scale incidents involving more than one team. And that
body is still in being today, but is part of PDMRO, Peak District Mountain Rescue
Organisation, which provides now a conduit for information from the centre, that’s Mountain
Rescue England and Wales, which also has links into government. And each regional
organisation obviously has links into the teams within the region and we in the Peak District
have 7 teams now.
2

I just mention the Four Inns didn’t bring about the formation, lots of small groups called
themselves mountain rescue teams ranging from the military through to university groups,
Scout groups and there were 20 plus, but all that was meld down I suppose, if that’s the right
term, to what we have today, the 7 teams. And in my view the 7 teams are extremely
professional, they’re all unpaid volunteers top to bottom and stand alongside the professional
emergency services; so I mean the service provided today you couldn’t improve on, but I’m
sure that we would.
[So it’s been a sort of constant process of changing how you work together and how the
teams are organised]
Yes indeed, it’s evolved over time and sort of the management process has been such it’s
been very proactive, certainly in the early days, ensuring that team members receive the
appropriate amount of training, teams actually purchase the right sort of kit and equipment
and the communication systems were improved as well.
[I was going to ask you about all those things actually, I mean obviously you do have to train a
lot, and you go out on regular training exercises to practice scenarios]
Yeah, well I can speak about what we do in Buxton in detail and I suspect all the other teams
within the Peak District are similar. We train every Thursday night, we have August off which
is school holidays, I mean we’re still operational during that period, but we train every
Thursday night except for August and we have a weekend exercise, one weekend day, a
Saturday or a Sunday per month.
[That’s a lot]
So that’s a fair commitment really…our people are employed, they’ve got families and other
commitments, so becoming a mountain rescue team member these days is a high
commitment. But people still want to join us, and we in Buxton have got a waiting list of 20
plus who want to come on board.
[Right, oh that’s good]
Well its good in the regard that new people wanna join us, it’s not so good in the fact that
we’ve got to train ‘em and equip them, because that costs money of course and we have to
raise all that funding.
[Yep of course, so the training, do you go out onto the moors and you have a scenario, you
say ok, you know, someone’s missing, what do you do, is that how it works or…]
Yep, we do have search exercises on the moors. We also have known location incidents on
the moors where someone’s gone down with a medical problem or had an accident. So it
incorporates not just the fact that you have to manage the incident and locate the casualty but
also to manage the casualty once you’ve got there. In the sense of your medical needs, are
there other people in the party that may need some assistance or at least some protection
from the elements; do we need additional resources like helicopters. All teams these days
have their own doctors, but you may not have a doctor available when you get that particular
3

call, so you may need additional resources, air ambulance, RAF helicopters and, we’re not
managed by the police but we report to the police because they’re the body responsible in
England and Wales for land search and rescue.
And additionally they provide insurance cover for our members when operational and when
training and indeed when fundraising, so I mean that’s an improvement on what we’ve had
previously. So that’s important but the police can also provide us with additional information,
I’ll give you an example: if somebody rings in on a mobile phone and says ‘I’m lost’ - we do
have a number of people who are quite vulnerable and you know want to kill themselves but
will ring in, so it’s a cry for help type of thing. And the fact that they’ve rung in and used their
mobile phone, the police then, we can ask the police to try and…
[…to locate]
…to locate where that mobile phone is, and if they’ve got sufficient masts they can provide a
triangulation, which helps us enormously
[Yep, wouldn’t have been available in the past at all]
No, no and it actually costs the police money to do that so…
[Although I suppose you get more calls because the technology’s there for people to phone
more easily]
Yeah, we do get more calls, a lot of calls come through mobile phones now and there’s a
good side and a bad side. The good side I think is the fact that we can respond more quickly,
rather than in the old days they’d have to come down to a road or a farm or wherever and
then report the incident, and that would take time, now they can ring largely, because not all
of our moorlands are covered with a network
[No, Edale particularly]
Yeah, but also there is the downside where people think, ‘well if I get into trouble I’ll just call
999 and ask for mountain rescue and they’ll come sort me out’, so people that may not be
equipped both physically with their equipment and mentally to cope with situations are going
into areas that perhaps they shouldn’t or wouldn’t have done prior.
[Yeah, and think I’ll be fine I’ve got a mobile phone I can call someone, yeah. I mean just
suppose talking about the kinds of incidents it would be nice to get an idea of what the
majority of incidents are. Are they people who’ve tripped up and broken an ankle or people
that are lost or is it a variety]
Well, we boil it down to two types of incident, I’ve already mentioned the ‘search’ where
people have reported themselves missing or somebody has reported them as missing. And
the mobile phone can be extremely useful in that circumstance, if we can raise them, because
then the controller or the manager can speak to them and get some idea of where they’ve
been, what’s around them, so local knowledge is important from our perspective so we can
identify their location.
4

[On the top of Kinder it quite often all looks quite similar]
Well it does, it’s 14 miles around the top of Kinder so it’s a big place. And we can get some
information in terms of what they’ve got with them, can they sustain themselves for a period of
time, are they injured, are they feeling anxious and desperate about their situation. So we’re
able to talk to them and grab all that information, capture that information and then deal with
the incident quite quickly.
The ‘known location’ incident is where we know where the casualty is and they’ve had an
accident or they’ve got a medical problem - heart attack for instance - and we do get a few of
those.
Usually, er…climbing incidents that we work with Edale together with on the Eastern edges,
you know, the moors as you come out of Sheffield, Stanage, Baslow, Burbage and those
sorts of edges, we work together during the working week 9 till 5 as a ‘snatch squad’. But
outside those times we operate independently usually, within our own operational areas, but
essentially what we do is the same. We know where the casualty is, we’ll go there, often an
air ambulance will be called by the ambulance service or by the police and they will attend as
well.
Ninety five percent of their attendance they can actually get to the casualty, there are
occasions when they can’t. And, I don’t know whether…Helicopter Heroes which is now back
on TV…last Monday was the first of a new series and we were involved in an incident in
Crowden Brook where a doctor had fallen and sustained massive injuries…
[Very steep]
…very steep, and they couldn’t get down to her. So, I mean we were there before they were
anyway but, what we were able to do was provide a chain in a sense of personnel linking with
their personnel and they’d provide us with at least 3 or 4 bottles of oxygen, so it saved it all
having to come up from the bottom which normally we would have to do.
But also of course you’ve got medical problems that you’re dealing with, and we now have all
our team members are trained first aiders, the basic qualification is First Aid at Work
qualification, which is a health and safety qualification. But a lot of our people now, more than
60% have what we call ‘casualty care’, which allows them to treat casualties in an invasive
way, and when I say invasive I mean by giving them oxygen, Entonox which is gas and air
which is an analgesic, we’re able to inject morphine or a morphine derivative as a pain
relief…intramuscularly…
[So for broken bones yeah, very]
…not into veins, because people do suffer from pain and if you’ve got them for a number of
hours, which you can have on occasions when there isn’t an aircraft available say, and you’re
having to carry them. And it can be quite uncomfortable so it’s important that we can stem the
pain relief because it will improve their circumstance as well. So, as well as having the local
knowledge, the technical knowledge of being a mountain rescue - how to deal with ropes,
radios - they have to have a fair amount of medical knowledge as well.
(17.11 minutes)
5

[So yeah it’s all round …]
But we have doctors in teams and we have paramedics in teams, professional health service
workers; but they’re not always available, so we depend on our casualty care people to be
able to provide that sort of support.
[I bet they’re pleased to see you with your pain relief…]
Well most people are…
[…if you’ve got a broken ankle…]
Yeah, I mean a broken ankle…I don’t know if you’ve had a broken ankle, but even a twisted
ankle is extremely painful. And this lady that we dealt with in Crowden Brook, I think she had
a number of vertebrae that were broken, ribs, I think her skull was fractured in two places. Er,
so I mean you’re dealing with, in some circumstances very serious injuries; life threatening
injuries. But on the other hand you might just be dealing with a dislocated shoulder as we did
a couple of Saturdays ago.
[Ahh…still painful but…]
Still very painful, but it’s not what we’d call it life threatening. But it’s still very painful. So
you’ve got that, if you like, that…
[You don’t know what you’re going to find really I suppose…]
We never know until we get there.
[Yeah…yeah. I was going to ask you and I know we’ve touched on it a little bit about kind of
equipment and erm, how that’s changed. I mean, I get the impression in the early days things
were quite rough and ready and, you know, and sort of make do with what ever you could
find, and that things have got increasingly more professional. Is that…how you see it]
That’s absolutely true and that’s reflected in the equipment that’s available now as to what we
used back in the early ‘50s and ‘60s. Er, there was a stretcher called the Thomas Stretcher
that was designed by a Doctor Eustace Thomas…er, way back in the 1930s believe it or not.
It followed an incident on Laddow, er where a member of, er…I’m trying to remember the
name of the club that this chap was a member of.
[Was this on Laddow Rocks]
This was on Laddow Rocks, yeah, and it’s before mountain rescue teams were
established...long before. Er, following that incident the Mountain Rescue Committee, or the
First Aid Committee as they called themselves in those days, wanted to establish a
stretcher…
[Uh huh]
6

…which would operate and function in those sorts of areas…er, so it needed to be robust and
designed appropriately. And this Doctor Eustace Thomas was an engineer who designed it
and built it. And that was the stretcher that we had in the late ‘50s and ‘60s…
[Ah, right from the ‘30s to the ‘60s]
And it was a full length stretcher, you couldn’t split it; and it very often had a canvas bed…it
needed two…
[Quite heavy for you to carry up to where you had to go]
It was very heavy, but the major problem with it, was wind, believe it or not. Because it had a
canvas bed, it was rather like carrying a sail…
[Yeah…laughing]
…and you’d be carrying this thing over your shoulder, er you know, one guy following the
other, er and suddenly a gust of wind would hit and you’d be yards away. So you need to be
mindful of that, er and be careful as to where you were. Then they decided to split that
stretcher into two, so each half could be carried by one individual on your back. Er, again it
still retained the canvas bed in certain circumstances, but then they went on to a wire bed,
which obviously reflected the problems in relation to the wind…
[Uh huh]
…and cleanliness was another issue as well. Er, ‘cause initially that stretcher had wooden
runners, ash…
[And you’re up in the mud and the peat, yeah…]
And if you were doing a lower over a crag, some times the runners would smash…as it went
over, over the fulcrum as it were, of the crag, because of the weight that was on the body on
it, pushed against the crag…it would break the runners. So then went on to aluminium
runners, which improved again enormously, you know the function of that particular stretcher.
And that stretcher was used operationally I would think, from memory, well into the ‘80s, the
1980s.
And then Peter Bell designed a stretcher which is called the Bell Stretcher, and a number of
marks have been made of that stretcher and that has virtually, well it has, it’s replaced the
Thomas Stretcher throughout; and that is our common stretcher here. But we also now use a
basket stretcher, which is produced by Ferno, which is titanium, built of titianium, so its very
light, but yet very strong. Erm, and we’ve just acquired that for one of our vehicles. So its not
been used in anger yet. But certainly the Bell Stretchers have been tried and tested for many
years now, since the 1980s, and they’re an extremely robust stretcher…
[Uh huh]
…which we need for our purposes, so it works very well. So that’s the stretcher element I
suppose really. The other part, I mean the personal equipment that people wear…
7

[The clothing must have changed out of all recognition]
Yeah, well again in my day, when we first started we used to wear ‘Flight Deck’…so these
were ex-Royal Navy, er, all sort of Navy Blue. Sometimes they had “Navy” written on the
back. Er, and we used to have to buy these from the Army & Navy Stores.
[Oh right…that’s what a lot of old ramblers say, it was all ex, ex-Army gear that everyone
used to wear on the moors]
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, and we had these things and, they would work, they were waterproof
and that was the main thing. But very often you didn’t have anything on the bottom half of
your body, so your legs and everything got wet.
[Yeah, you hear about people, yeah, walking around and all the Scouts going out in shorts on
to Kinder. And nowadays, you know, you wouldn’t go out anywhere without your Gortex
and waterproof trousers]
That’s absolutely right, and that reflects fairly what Mountain Rescue has done…
[Yeah]
Because mountain rescue teams now provide operational clothing either, you know, the outer
clothing, the outer core, waterproofs, top and bottom. Certainly we do in Buxton to all our
operational members, plus a wicking T-shirt, a fleece and some of ‘em have salopettes, not
just waterproof trousers but salopettes that come up to here, so they’re waterproof up to here
as it were…up to their chest. Er, so that again reflects on how things have improved.
The other equipment like ropes, the iron work we use on crags. Er, again our rope work, our
ropes have to be renewed regularly; and we relate to manufacturer’s recommendations on
that. We have to be careful how we store all this kit, because the sunlight can affect…you
know, the UV.
Radios, I remember years ago, even in the ‘70s the PDMRO I think had five Pye Bantam sets.
[I don’t know what that means…]
Well these were radio sets much bigger than your recorder…
[Oh yes]
…with a great wire aerial that used to stick out the top…
[Like you see troops on manoeuvres with them on their backs, those sort of things]
Yes, but these were quite ancient these things, and the National Park Authority took them
under their wing, so that they got some use and they were looked after in terms of servicing
and repair and so on but were always made available for rescue purposes. But I remember
when I lived at Crowden from 1970, er, using these things, and just above Crowden is Holme
Moss transmitter…
8

[Oh yeah]
Er, and the frequency was such, that we could pick up Radio 2 and Family Favourites, every
Sunday morning, no problem at all on these radios. The benefit obviously was that we could
communicate and that was important. ‘Cause prior to that if we sent a team out…
[How did you keep in touch with them]
Well you sent them out with information. Er, and if you wanted, you had to send a runner out,
or they had to send a runner back and if you wanted to recall them, very often you would have
to go to the nearest road head and set off a thunderflash - so if they heard a bang, they knew
to come back.
[I think there’s a generation growing up now that just would hardly believe that, because
everyone’s so constantly in touch…with mobile phones]
Absolutely. Yeah. So that’s how we ran it in those days. I do remember an incident when I
was at Crowden, and this was on the Four Inns and it was…teams used to stand by at
various locations. And I had Derby Team with me at Crowden; and information came down
that one of these Scouts was injured. Er, and er, we needed a response. So I sent Derby off
up through the old rifle range – you probably won’t know that. But it’s up into Great Crowden
Brook and towards Laddow. Er, and er, I needed to recall them and I forget the reason…it
was probably the fact that further information had come to light that’s changed location. So I
needed to get them back. Er, and when I was at Crowden, I was, me, just one individual, was
an RAF sub-unit.
[Oh gosh, that sounds grand!]
What that meant was the RAF provided me with a crash axe…
[Right…]
…and a Very pistol. Now…
[As in proper gun]
…As in a proper gun.
[Right]
And, er, I mean I had to have a licence for this thing. But I’d no training at all…
[Gosh]
…and I thought well I’ll use the Very pistol
[Oh, to set off a…]
9

…yes to send up a flare. Now I know now but I didn’t know then, that when you fire a Very
pistol, you fire it vertically.
[Ha, ha]
I fired it like that…
[To sort of slightly off the vertical]
…yeah, which meant that the flare came down still alight…
[Ahh!]
…which set the rifle range on fire.
[Right…yeah]
So that was the first job, I had to go put the fire out in the bracken and heather on the rifle
range. Er, but that was an interesting exercise; I never did it again.
[And this is a rifle range with potentially live ammunition lying around]
There could well have been live ammunition…
[Could have got a lot worse!]
…there. I never found out whether there was. I mean this rifle range had been in being since
the First World War.
[Oh right]
But I do remember a fire at Standedge, which was right on the northern boundary of the
National Park between Upper Mill and Marsden…
[Oh, right]
…and that was also a rifle range, a place called South Clough. An’ I think it’s still used today,
as well. And, er, we fire fighters were all removed from this site, because of the likelihood of
ordnance.
[Something goin bang!]
In fact there was ordnance there, er, that they’d located after the fire had gone through.
Because all the vegetation had gone…
[Ahh, so you could see what was there]
…so you could see it. So we were then removed from that particular location for our own
safety. But that’s a bye-your-bye. So yeah, radios. Now radios are now provided by the
10

Police…and the last, provision, was probably five, six, seven years ago and it was over a
hundred and eighty thousand pounds worth.
[Wow]
Provided by the Police to all seven teams in the Peak District. And we’re still using those
radios…and the police repair them as and when they need to be repaired. The teams are
augmenting that in purchasing additional sets, same type…er, and obviously the same
frequencies are on…or we put on, and which augment – because we want everyone of our
operational members to have a radio.
[Yeah]
And all teams do this. So I mean that’s not just peculiar to us in Buxton. And now the Police
provide us with Airwave sets, which function extremely well, but the benefit to us and to the
police, is that we can talk directly to ‘em…
[Uh, huh]
…to their controls; we can talk to a PC, to an individual PC as well. We can talk to the Air
Ambulance, because the Ambulance Service has now gone onto Airwave, directly, erm, and
to the Police helicopter directly.
[Right]
So that improves service as well.
[So the co-ordination as well. I suppose, I mean, you’re a Controller…]
I am, yes.
[So I suppose it makes the Controller’s job more complicated because you’re getting more
information potentially]
Absolutely, but there are obvious benefits there, in terms of you know improving the response
and going in the right direction as it were.
[Yes]
But, er, I remember an incident where we were actually speaking to the Police on the
helicopter. There was a couple missing…they reported themselves missing, and they were in
The Wool Packs, just above Crowden Brook…
[OK]
…on Kinder, southern edge. And it was a horrible night, mist, rain, awful. And the Police
helicopter decided that they would fly towards Kinder and see whether they could pick these
people up. So we were talking to them, and we were also talking on the mobile phone to the
“mis-pers”…
11

[To the…]
…missing persons…
[Ah, right. OK]
…and we asked them if they’d got a camera. And they said yes we’ve got a camera and I said
“is there a flash on your camera”…
[Ohh]
“Yes there’s a flash on our camera”…”Right, well there’s a helicopter coming in, towards your
location, start flashing your flash”.
[Would never have thought of that, but yeah, it’s a…]
And the helicopter picked this thing up, this flash; the mist cleared a little bit, he was able to
land on…had to throw one of his PCs out because there in’t room for lots of people in these
aircraft…
[Oh right, so one of the policemen who’d come in the helicopter had to walk back to take the
casualties]
Yeah, well he had to stay on Kinder until the helicopter went back. And bear in mind this was
wet, it was windy, there was mist around, it was night; so they actually threw the casualties in
and brought them here because we’ve got loads of room to land and things here. And then he
went back and collected his observer and off he went. But having direct comms allows that to
happen…
[Yeah, yeah]
…if we didn’t have it it wouldn’t be as professional and as good as it is. What other equipment
have we got Well medical equipment, we use defibrillators, we use analgesics, we use
oxygen, we use PulseOx Meters which measure oxygen in the blood, measures pulse rate,
heart rate, this sort of thing…as well as your bog standard triangular bandages and plasters.
So we’ve got that range of equipment, saline drips and everything else is carried on the
vehicle…
[So everything for emergency kind of help really, you know that a paramedic would do if they
found someone lying in the street presumably]
Absolutely…and you know our doctors…being what they are and paramedics as well can
actually go into the vein, whereas we can’t.
[Yeah]
So putting a drip in is difficult; we can’t do that, but they can.
12

[Well, I imagine on a dark windy night, it even more difficult]
Indeed. It could be extremely cold you know in the middle of winter, peoples finger ends are a
bit cold and so on.
[Yeah, mmm]
Yeah, so that…there are medical bags what we call 1-2-4, and er, they always go on an
incident and if a doctor’s attending, there’s a doctors bag as well which provides them with the
extra kit that we can’t use but they can.
[Yeah]
What else We’ve talked about communications; we’ve talked about the ironware, the
stretchers, the ropes; erm, the medical kit. Well, the vehicles themselves…we now have three
operational vehicles…a Land Rover and a Transit which is 4x4, so we’ve two 4x4 vehicles.
And a mobile control which we’re also using as an operational response vehicle…which is our
Mobile Three.
[OK]
And er, each driver has to be trained…
[Yeah]
…and until…
[‘cause you don’t want those getting stuck somewhere that you can’t get them out of]
We don’t. But bear in mind if they’re travelling at speed under you know blue lights and two
tones they need to know how to drive a vehicle in those conditions and those circumstances.
So we do get some Police training…in emergency driver training.
[Right]
But until they’ve had that training, they can drive a vehicle, but they must not drive on blue
lights and two tones.
[Right, yes]
Because you know accidents can occur. If we send a vehicle we need it to get there, not have
an accident en route and then we have to send another. So that’s important to us. So that
again is additional training.
Er, we’re also now becoming more involved in water rescue.
[Oh, right]
13

Not necessarily rescue from water, although we will do that if they’re close to the bank; but if
they’re out in the middle, then, we send for the Fire Service, because they have the water
rescue facility – they’ve got a boat for instance…
[Right]
…so have the Police. Erm, but we’re searching alongside a reservoir or a river…our people
need to be properly equipped with floatation devices and belays so you know if they do fall in,
we’ve got some control over where they are.
[You hear more and more don’t you…peoples’ dogs getting into trouble in a river and people
go after them…]
Well I’ll tell you about an incident involving a dog. This is only a few weeks ago on the Monsal
trail…
[Oh]
…now it’s been opened up.
[There’s normally a nice flat place to walk]
Well it is but we’ve been there twice within the last few weeks, and on one particular
occasion, there was a lady walking between the Litton and Cressbrook tunnels, whereas prior
to the tunnels being opened she wouldn’t have been able to do it.
[That’s just recently, yep]
So she was walking there, and I don’t know whether you’ve been yourself, but looking down
towards Water-cum-Jolly, the embankment and the railway line has been supported by a
huge stone wall, which is about that sort of angle…
[Like a sort of buttress, yeah]
Er, and a dog went on to this…
[Ahhh]
…so she then went down to rescue the dog…
[Yeah]
…and of course we got the call ‘woman and dog crag fast’ on this particular wall; and by the
time we’d got there, a chap who was walking along the trail had seen this and he was able to
climb down to her and bring her up. So we didn’t have to go down to her. But those things do
happen…
[Emm]
14

…and the last water incident which was a tragedy, it was a canoeist that was drowned, near
Gradbach Reservoir in the River Dane; the river was in spate, and when I say in spate, I
mean in spate, and you wouldn’t have wanted anybody to go in there, because this girl was
killed. Er, but if you’re looking down, searching, you know, you’re looking across the bank on
the other side, looking under tree roots and all the rest of it, where a body could become
entangled. Er, so you are very close to the river and some of these riverbanks overhang…
[Yeah]
…so you know, people can just disappear through, or the bank collapses and off you go into
the water. So we are training now members in that sort of rescue activity. But as we’ve always
done this in the past, but we haven’t had floatation devices and belayed them, we’ve just
walked alongside it.
[Yeah]
So, you know, and touch wood nobody’s come, you know, asunder. I can’t think of anything
else. What else can I…in terms of equipment Er…
[We’ve covered a lot]
Well the other equipment which is not ours is of course helicopters.
[Ahh]
Er, so all our personnel have to be trained in how to approach a helicopter, when to approach
a helicopter. So we go to Leconfield which is our nearest RAF S.A.R (Search and Rescue)
base near Beverley…and they come to us once a year. The Air Ambulance, that’s obviously
still a helicopter, still got things going around on the top…can be just as dangerous…so our
people are also trained in how to approach that. But usually that shuts down.
[Do you have to duck your head do you when you get near it]
Yeah. But you have to bear in mind the terrain, because, I mean, you know…
[Course, yeah, if it’s not landed on the flat…]
…if you get out of a helicopter…well if it’s landed on the flat you get out on one side you might
be going uphill…
[Ahh, yeah…]
Bear in mind that there’s this thing going around on top. So what we do is when you get out,
you sit there and wait for the helicopter to go and then move away.
[Yeah, it’s obvious when you say it, but, you know…]
It’s having that knowledge and that experience to pass on is important. So again that’s
another training commitment which is important and as regards our people it’s an obvious a
15

life saver cos I don’t want people to get their heads in a rotor, cos they won’t be with us for
very long!
[So you’re a multi-skilled team really all-in-all]
Yeah. Not just Buxton but all teams in the Peak District. It’s a multi-skilled operation.
[I was interested in asking you how the environment you work in has changed; how the
moorlands have changed in the last, sort of, 40-50 years almost and what changes you’ve
seen]
From my memory there’s always been public access, in terms of initially access agreements
with the National Park Authority and landowners, and now CROW…
[Yeah]
…so people can wander more or less where they like but the…on open moor that is. But the
moorland has changed, I think, in that moorlands are a better managed in the sense of
heather burning or heather cutting which is more popular these days. Erm, and the
management that gamekeepers put into grouse management, I think is much improved.
From a recreational perspective, the National Trust particularly, and the National Park as well,
have done a lot of work on slabbing various footpaths at places like Kinder and Bleaklow.
[Oh yeah, that used to be just bogs and now they’ve got big…slabs]
So you’ve got the yellow brick road that people can follow an’ I think that…
[Because people have got stuck in bogs haven’t they in the past…and had to be rescued]
Yeah, yeah, had people up to their waists in peat, yeah. But you’ve now got these slabbed
paths, the Pennine Way is a good example where you know people need to stay on the
slabbed line and don’t get lost. Certainly back in the ‘70s when I was at Crowden we were
turning out every weekend to people missing on the Pennine Way. That’s not so much of a
problem. People still do go missing on the Pennine Way, but in terms of the numbers of
incidents related to, you know, forty years ago…are much fewer.
[Yeah]
And I mentioned the vegetation, the gamekeeper’s role in that, but there’s also a farmer’s role
and the reduction I think of grazing stock has improved a lot and various landowners now are
tuned to the fact that…rather like what Moors for the Future are doing in terms of
revegetating; the National Trust I think are one of the leaders along with Moors for the Future
project, in revegetating large areas of bare peat…and…that obviously changes the landscape
in terms of its visual look…but not so that, you know it’s not a quick change, it evolves over
time. So, from our perspective that’s not a problem. One of my concerns is gully blocking.
[Right, yeah]
16

And the concern I have, is that a gully is blocked and its fills with…peaty water basically…
[And this is to stop the water running off places like Kinder and the high moors isn’t it]
It’s to try and maintain the sphagnum…and the…cos the peat’s mostly stopped growing, it’s
to get that going again. But also, I think it can provide a danger, to, to…users, who are
unaware. It looks like a peat bed and suddenly you’re in it and, you know, you could be in it
up to your hocks, or even your waist in water. And at certain times of the year that’s not good
a good thing.
[No, no that’s]
So I do have those concerns, and…
[Well hopefully, you know, its things that people could be talking to each other about]
I’m not aware it has presented any difficulties, so my concerns may not be valid. But sheep
can also get in these things and if they’ve got lots of wool on them then they may have
difficulty getting out.
[I mean, yeah, someone was telling me that, you know, Mountain Rescue will turn out to
rescue sheep that are stuck as well which is something I didn’t realise. It’s a service to the
farming community as well]
It is. We depend on farmers and landowners to allow us to train on their land. It’s a matter of
courtesy that we ask for permission and more often than not we obtain that permission. There
are various drawbacks, in terms of nesting season or ground nesting birds, we stay clear of
certain areas. When raptors are nesting on the Roaches and other areas we stay clear of the
crags there. And in grouse shooting we stay clear of certain moorlands because the shooters
don’t want us there. But more often than not they’re very supportive and will allow us to go
where and when we want - which is important from our perspective, because we need to train
in our operational area…and build up the skills to deal with the problems that are posed by
that. But yeah, we do, we do recover sheep…and dogs, from crags erm and our colleagues in
cave rescue will recover them from mines and things underground.
[Of course]
So yeah, we will provide that service. I mean we never charge for our services at all, but we
feel we’re giving the landowner or the farmer something back. So it’s important that we do
that.
[Well I think it’s good to get an interview with you to publicise the work that you do, because
its, you know, its something perhaps they don’t think about until they need you. But…]
You’re absolutely right. People don’t…and nor should they; I mean it’s like you don’t think
about the fire service until you’ve got a fire do you Or you’ve had an accident. Er, or an
ambulance service unless you’re ill, or you’re injured. But those services are there. Er, and
they are there and they are available 24/7. And certainly we’re available 24/7…365 days a
year.
17

[Well that’s fantastic. I don’t know if there’s anything we haven’t covered that you particularly
want to talk about…we’ve covered a lot]
Well you mentioned at the outset you wanted to cover what happened prior to a Mountain
Rescue Service being established back in the 1920s and ‘30s…
[Oh right, yeah…]
…people were coming out on to places like Kinder…
[So we’ve gone right back before you’re time now obviously but…]
A long time before my time! And people were using these moorlands…sometimes they had to
ask for permission and obtain permission to do that and on other occasions they didn’t and
were trespassing. And there were games of cat and mouse between gamekeepers and
walkers dodging one another. Because people were using these areas incidents were
occurring. And there was one particular incident, I think it was about 1925, where a chap from
Stockport was reported missing having had a day out on Kinder and he couldn’t be found.
Very often if an incident did occur, locally to a particular area, then the police, because there
were police in virtually every village in those days, that lived and worked in that village and
they would then call on the local farmers, the gamekeepers, the Water Board personnel, the
quarrymen, and they’d form a team to deal with it…
[The people who knew the area]
yeah…people who lived and worked in the area and they’d go and deal with the incident as
best they could. This happened during the War with lots of aircraft that came down in the
Peak District until the RAF unit at Harper Hill in Buxton was established.
But this particular incident, I think it was about 1925, this chap was missing. Was missing for
two weeks something like that…
[Oh gosh]
…and, I mean searches had been taking place, but they hadn’t located him. And it was the
Manchester Guardian who then decided that that they would pay the train fare of bone fide,
and it had to be bone fide, and this was mentioned in the paper, bone fide mountain rescuers,
travelling to Hayfield and Edale, from the stations in Manchester…to help search for this
particular individual. And he was eventually found. He’d fallen on Kinder Downfall and
sustained fatal injuries…but it was a fortnight or so later…
[Mmm, gosh]
… that he was located
[It’s incredible to think someone can go missing for that long and not be found]
18

Yeah, just bear in mind there wasn’t the service, obviously the equipment, the training that
there is today for people to actually go and provide that service. As I say, there were
searches, but…
[Or I suppose even the maps actually]
…co-ordination…there were maps of sorts, but not of the quality and accuracy that you’ve got
today. And of course you’ve got GPS and all sorts of things today, which does help us a lot.
[Yeah, it’s interesting you know to get a view of what it was like back at the very beginning
and you know, yeah]
Well I certainly don’t recall it! But you speaking to people and, you know researching that
book that you’ve a copy of, we were able to go through newspaper clips going back in time. In
fact in the book I record an incident back in 1911 a boy from Hayfield, this was a time when
they’d just about completed the works on Kinder Reservoir, and he was up at Kinder
Reservoir, and all the Water Board staff sort of pushed him away. But he didn’t go home and
he was reported missing and the local PCs in Hayfield organised this group and they found
him – his name was E Hoy Sandles and they found him at Kinder Downfall.
[Right]
He’d spent the night there…
[About a hundred years ago]
…he was perfectly OK; yeah, hundred years ago, that’s about right, yeah; and they gave him
an orange and he ate heartily it was reported.
[I think I’d want more than an orange after a night out there!]
[Well I think that’s great Ian]
Have you got all you need
[Yeah, unless you’ve got anything else to add]
I’m sure I can think of all sorts of things now we’ve finished.
[Thank you very much]
19

Linda Cawley interviewed by Julia Shergold – 5 th October 2011
(As part of the interview Linda sings several songs related to the moors and rambling –
lyrics are included in the text)
(Julia - This is an oral history recording for the Moor Memories Project, it’s the 15 th of
October 2011 and we’re in Sheffield. Could you tell me your name and the year you were
born please)
I’m Linda Cawley and I was born in 1953.
(Julia – that’s great. OK well thanks for coming and being interviewed)
You’re welcome.
(Julia – and bringing your guitar. So I understand that a lot of your involvement with the
moors around Sheffield has been via the Woodcraft Folk)
Yes it has. I joined the Woodcraft Folk when I was fourteen. We’d gone to Lockerbrook as
part of the school’s outward bound bit for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. Basil Rawson,
who was one of the leaders of the Woodcraft Folk, also did the outward bound bit for Duke
of Edinburgh’s Award for schools and he brought us to Lockerbrook and while we were at
Lockerbrook I met the Woodcraft Folk.
(Julia – so this is Lockerbrook up above …)
Lockerbrook Farm. It’s on Derwent, but
(Julia – oh, by the reservoir)
By the reservoir in Derbyshire, yeah. And at that time it was owned by I think the Duke of
Devonshire or somebody and the Woodcraft Folk bought it with help from Sheffield City
Council. So we spent a lot of time going up to Lockerbrook and a lot of time at Lockerbrook
learning about compass work, map work, map reading, learned about respecting the
mountains, because although they were beautiful they were also quite dangerous. So we
spent a lot of time walking on the moors and the hills up around Lockerbrook Farm, over to
Hope, Edale, Kinder Scout, Bleaklow. Every weekend we went out onto the moors – young
people.
(Julia – wow, so you were living in Sheffield)
Yes.
(Julia – and so you spent weekends with the Woodcraft out walking, exploring the moors
and ...)
Yeah.
(Julia – ok)
And we used to go out walking on a Sunday most weekends but some weekends we spent
the whole weekend, we’d go up on a Friday night, we’d catch a bus up to Ladybower and
then we’d walk from Ladybower up over Crookhill Barn and up to Lockerbrook – in dark
most o’ time, especially in winter – and then spend the whole weekend there and then on a
Saturday we’d get on and do a big walk, and it used to be a big walk as well. And then
we’d stay over and we’d have a good sing on Sunday night, we’d get up – on Saturday
night, sorry – get up on Sunday, have another little walk, and then we’d always make a
1

mad rush back down to Fairholmes to catch the bus because the last bus went at four o
clock. And we were always just about on the last push cos nobody wants to go home. And
on the bus home we used to sing. We’d get upstairs, we’d go upstairs, and we always
sang on the bus home. Wherever we went we sang and nobody thought it was, you know.
(Julia – so I’ve been hearing this a lot from people who’ve walked on the moors right back
to the 30s about being on the back of the bus singing. So there’s obviously a tradition
there that you’re part of.)
Mmm.
(Julia – so what kind of songs did you sing)
We sang everything. We sang political songs, we sang songs about the outdoors, we sang
humorous songs, everything you could think of. Not usually pop songs cos we all were a
bit folky and we liked the Woodcraft Folk songs. And there were lots of them and we
learned loads while we were in the Woodcraft.
(Julia – so how did you learn songs, was it just someone knew the words and everyone
else joined in or)
Well, yeah, a lot of the time from the adults who’d grown up through the Woodcraft Folk
taught us these songs when we went to camps and things. And then from each other. So
somebody’d know one song and somebody else’d know another. And I learned to play the
guitar when I was about eleven at school so I brought my guitar along to Woodcraft Folk
nights to our meetings in the week and then on the camps and at Lockerbrook. And then
people began to learn how to play the guitar themselves and we always had music nights.
So we learned from each other and from the adults. So there was a history. And we had
our songbooks, and I’ve got a few here.
(Julia – oh and I can see)
So, oh loads of ‘em, yeah.
(Julia – right, so you had to carry your guitar all the way up the hill and all the way back
down again [laughing])
Quite often, yes, we took it in turns to carry it, I would take it, just carry it on my own, but
yeah we did, we’d carry guitar, we’d sling it on our back and take the guitar up.
(Julia – would you like to give us a representative song of perhaps what you might have
sung on those journeys)
Well the obvious one that we used to sing was the Manchester Hikers’ Song; we learned
that quite early on. It’s a long song so I shan’t sing it all, just a couple of verses really, but it
was one of our favourite songs because most people knew it and it represented a bit of
political and social history about the moors, about trespass and all that. So we loved it,
especially the bit about the gamekeeper. Because when we started walking on the moors
and the hills it was a little bit more open access then but there were still parts of
Derbyshire moors that were closed off and we used to go on walks with the Ramblers
because the Ramblers did a lot of political work in terms of opening footpaths and making
farmers open the footpaths. Cos the farmers weren’t terribly keen on people tramping
through the land cos it devalued the land. So we’d go along and we’d go through singing
“The Manchester Hiker”, so I’ll give you a couple of verses.
(Julia – ok, take it away)
2

I'm a rambler; I'm a rambler from Manchester way
I get all my pleasures the hard moorland way
I may be a wage slave on Monday
But I am a free man on Sunday
I've slept upon Crowdon; I’ve hiked up on Snowdon
I've slept by the Wainstones as well
I've sunbathed on Kinder, been burned to a cinder
There’s many a tale I can tell
The rucksack has oft been my pillow
And the heather has oft been my bed
And sooner than part from the mountains
I think I would rather be dead
The day was just ending as I was descending
Through Grindsbrook just by Upper Tor
When a voice cried "Hey you" in the way keepers do
Was the worst face that ever I saw
The things that he said were unpleasant
At that I stood shaking my head
No man has the right to own mountains
Any more than the deep ocean bed
(Julia – yeah, fantastic!)
There’s a lot of verses in that song and we knew ‘em all, every verse.
(Julia – but very relevant to round here, all the place names are exactly the places you’re
talking about that were contested by those people in that way, so that’s great)
Yeah they were. And we spent a lot of time up there. We spent a lot of time on Kinder
peak bog jumping. I don’t know if you’ve ever come across peat bog jumping You know
the peat bogs are very high and soft and it was real heavy work getting down the peat
bogs and up the other side so we’d jump and we’d jump …
(Julia – from one sort of tuft to another)
No, into them, into them Julia.
(Julia – oh into them)
Yeah, we’d jump on the top into them and you’d slide down this soft, you’re covered in
mud and by the time you’d finished your boots were about a stone heavier because the
peat stuck to your boots. So we spent a lot of time up there, up on Kinder Scout, and we
loved it. And, you know, we were taught the history of the Kinder Trespass by Basil
Rawson and people like Bill Emmingham and Terry Howard and all those people so we
knew about what it meant to people in those days to have to fight to get up on those moors
that we took for granted. You know, and we were only, I’m going back to when I was only
14, 15, 16, but we were very interested because we loved the outdoors and so, you know,
we were interested to know that what we were doing on that particular day had to be
fought for and I mean physical fighting at points, at times, so.
(Julia – yeah, yeah, history to it)
The history, yeah.
3

(Julia – that’s great. I understand that you got lost on Kinder at one point)
Oh dear, yeah.
(Julia – do you want to tell us about that)
I will, indeed. As I said, when we used to go to Lockerbrook we learned, we did a lot of
work on compass work and map reading and Basil insisted that before any of us went out
we knew at least the basics because he said the weather can change. And it can, from
being a really nice sunny day to being foggy, snow, whatever, and when you’re in fog and
snow you can’t rely on looking round, you can’t rely on the land, you have to rely on what
you know about compass work and map reading. So there were two of us, myself and a
boy called Paul Whittaker who we called “C”. And I was fourteen, fourteen and a half and
he was probably about thirteen.
(Julia – so not that old really to be out)
No we were quite young. Well there were a whole gang of us, probably about twelve of us.
And we were going up to Kinder Downfall following the Kinder River. And it’s a fairly
straightforward walk if you know what you’re doing. And everybody did except the two of
us and we were learning how to use the compass. So we were following a compass point
and occasionally, just every now and again, it took us off the river around a little knoll and
back onto the river and we met up with our friends and then the compass point’d take us
off again round another little bit and we met back up on the river with our friends. And then
it took us off a bit and then we went back to the river and there were nobody there and we
didn’t know where they were. So they’d obviously clearly gone a different way. And we
hadn’t got a clue, we hadn’t got a clue where we were. And it was a bit misty, wasn’t too
bad, but we hadn’t got a clue. We didn’t know which way we were, whether we were going
north, south, east or west. Well we’d got the compass but we were only just learning it.
(Julia – lost your bearings, literally)
We’d lost our bearings. And then we sat down and we thought ‘well you know what We
do know Kinder Scout. It’s a plateau. So if we follow the bearing’ cos we could fairly well
see where we were going so we weren’t going to drop off anything, if we follow it and we
were careful and cautious we’re bound to come off on a road somewhere. So we did and
we’d come off on the Snake Road, bearing in mind that the Snake’s between Sheffield and
… and we still didn’t know where we were going. So we got off on the Snake Road and
there were some motor bikers there and we said “Excuse us, do you know, is this the road
to Sheffield” And they said “Yes love, yes it is”. So we turned round and we set off
walking towards Manchester. And they shouted “Oy, it’s that way”. So …
(Julia – [laughing] and how many hours had you been out by this time)
Oh a long time, long enough for our friends to get off Kinder Scout and call the mountain
rescue. And it was a good, good, few hours. We should have got back. But what they’d
done in the meantime was they’d sent … there was a couple of people had sent the party
back to Edale, but they got lost and ended up in Glossop.
(Julia – oh right, totally the wrong direction)
So they were miles away. So there were three lots of Woodcraft Folk people up on the hills
in completely different places. When we got home I’d got in the bath, my friend Paul went
off to his house, the police came and knocked on the door, said to me dad “We understand
your girl’s missing on Kinder Scout” and me dad said “First I’ve heard about it, she’s
4

upstairs in’t bath” Anyway, they realised we’d come home, we’d made our own way home,
and rang Mountain Rescue who were just getting togged up to come and look for us. But it
made the front page of the Star, little piece on the front page of the Star.
(Julia – wow, “walkers lost on …”
Yeah, kids lost on Kinder Scout, we were so embarrassed. And anyway, on the Thursday
night when we got to Woodcraft Folk meeting Basil was there ready waiting for us with a
big map of the Peak District and he wanted to know every detail. He wanted to know
where we’d gone up, why we’d gone wrong, why they’d left us on our own, why people had
split up. Basil’s two rules were this: you never split up and the pace of the pack is the pace
at the back. And I never forgot that really.
(Julia – right, you go with the slowest person)
You go with the slowest because if you lose anybody in fog that’s it, you’re done for.
Bearing in mind Basil was a mountain man and he was part and parcel of the search for
those young scouts that got lost years and years and years ago.
(Julia – oh, the Four Inns …)
Walk. And some of them died and Basil found one of the dead scouts not far I believe from
Lockerbrook. So he was extremely keen that it would never happen to a Woodcraft Folk
person. He didn’t want it to happen to the scouts either but he was keen. So he made us,
he put us through hell that night. We’d no time for singing, no time for anything, so
anyway, that’s my story of getting lost. And I treat the moors and the mountains with great
reverence, I can tell you, since then. So [laughing]
(Julia – oh fantastic. Well I think you’d better give us another song then)
OK well one of the songs that we – we were quite a political bunch really – we were, we
used to be in CND, we’d be, we were part of the, at that time, we were part of the anti
Vietnam war bit
(Julia – aha, we’re talking now 60s, late 60s)
We’re talking, well I was 14 when I joined Woodcraft, that’s ’67, so it was around that time.
(Julia – right, yeah)
And we were very political people and we had a good social conscience, which we still
have, and we learned a song called “The Banks are Made of Marble”, and when I thought
about this before I came it made me think how relevant it is today. So I’ll give you that, I’ll
give you this.
Oh I've wandered through this country,
From shore to silver shore;
And it really made me wonder
All the things I heard and saw.
Yes I’ve seen the weary farmer,
Ploughing up his soil and loam;
And I’ve heard the auction hammer
It was knocking down his home.
And the banks are made of marble,
5

With a guard on every door,
And the vaults are stacked with silver
That the farmer sweated for.
I’ve seen the weary miner
Brushing coal dust from his back,
I heard his children cryin,'
"Got no coal to heat the shack."
And the banks are made of marble,
With a guard on every door,
And the vaults are stacked with silver
That the miners sweated for.
(Julia – lovely, fantastic)
That was one of my favourites, one of my favourites actually. We’d sing it …
(Julia – yeah, no, that’s great)
Yeah.
(Julia – so, I’m just thinking now about, you know, what other things did you learn about
the moors from Woodcraft I mean I was wondering, you know, you were born and
brought up in Sheffield, so you sort of started to walk on the moors through being involved
with Woodcraft, and I just wondered, sort of, you know, what that kind of taught you about
the moors and did it change the way you’ve sort of thought about the countryside that sort
of surrounds the city)
It did really because I was brought up in Attercliffe and then Park Hill Flats, and you can’t
get any more industrial than that really, but in a way we were quite lucky because my dad
loved the countryside, he loved the moors, he loved the hills, and he was a fisherman. So
as kids we used to go out into places for him to fish, Bradfield for example, and he played
cricket out there as well. So I kind of got an early introduction to the moors. And my
grandparents loved the countryside. They had a little caravan which were an old
charabanc in a field near, somewhere near Bawtry which is now part of the A1, but it was
beautiful, it was really, and I loved it. From being very young I loved the open countryside.
But I think living in an industrial city like Sheffield was much more industrial then. It was
really important for kids to get out into the countryside and that’s what the Woodcraft Folk
did, it was introduce children and young people, it was a social education, it introduced
them to the great outdoors, to things that they probably never saw, they never got out of
Sheffield.
(Julia – yeah, other people have said this)
A healthy way of living, you know, get ‘em walking, get ‘em out there, get ‘em appreciating
other things. Wildlife, you know, you weren’t, you never saw some of the birds. Some
people never saw a fox – we see ‘em all the time now don’t we in the cities But as kids
we never – I mean I did see a fox once when, right on the banks where me dad was
fishing. But generally speaking kids in the cities never saw a foxes, they didn’t see birds
that you can see out there, never saw a rabbit, apart from up in’t market!
(Julia – yeah, well even cows and sheep and …)
6

Yeah, everything, anything, you know, and people were fascinated. And we loved it, we
loved, absolutely loved it. We went – and we never thought about how steep the hills were.
We’d carry a right big rucksack full of stuff. We’d walk for miles. We’d walk from – we’d
catch the train to Edale, go over the tops, all the way over to Lockerbrook. And that’s some
walk that, with our full packs for the weekend and the guitar. [laughing]
(Julia – wow, yeah)
So it did make me, I did appreciate going out and I loved it and I thought for a lot of kids
that never ever went out, because as we got older we did the same thing. I had a group on
Parsons Cross and I had a group at Stocksbridge, they were always out in the countryside
cos they lived out there. But the kids that we had on Parsons Cross never went out, never
went out, they never went camping. And when we took ‘em camping they just didn’t know
how to go on, they didn’t know how to just depend on their own selves. And you have to do
that when you’re out in the moors, don’t you In the mountains.
(Julia – yeah, yeah, and I suppose it’s …)
You have to rely on your own intuition sometimes and, you know, what’s the weather going
to do You know, you can’t turn the telly on and say it’s going to rain. So I did appreciate it
a lot really.
(Julia – that’s great. And have you carried on with that interest as you’ve got older then)
Oh God yeah, even more so I think because I’ve done a lot more mountain work,
mountaineering and – not climbing as such, but trekking and walking the mountains. And I
still go out. And I do some running. I’ve done some running with yourself.
(Julia – yeah a little bit!)
A lot right out in Derwent and up on the moors. Yeah I still do and while my legs’ll carry me
I still will. [laughing]
(Julia – [laughing] fantastic. OK. Have you got any more songs I feel like I’m keeping
asking you to sing all the time but it’s nice to have it)
Yeah, no, yeah, I’m just thinking of a little, there was one, I told you we used to sing some
humorous songs, there were one that I used to think was quite funny, I just can’t
remember. It went like this, I’ll not used my guitar, it went.
On her veranda she played her guitar,
Played her guitar, played her guitar
On her veranda she played her guitar,
Played her guitar.
He sat down beside her and – I’ve forgotten the words! [laughing]
(Julia – this happens a lot though I imagine, you need a bus full of people)
He told her he loved her,
And oh how she sighed,
Oh how she sighed,
Oh how she sighed,
He told her he loved her but oh how he lied,
Oh how he lied.
7

Oh, do you know Julia, I’ve quite forgotten it, there’s loads of it.
(Julia – Yes I’m sure there’s more)
There’s loads of it, there’s loads of it. But it ends up where, they’re sat on a tombstone in
this cemetery and the tombstone fell on him and he also died. She went to heaven and
flitted and flied. He went to t’other place and oh how he fried. So the moral of this story is
don’t tell a lie. And because we were getting into our feminist days we thought it were
fantastic. The girls used to sing it a lot louder than the boys. [laughing]
(Julia – oh right, ok, yeah)
Sorry I’ve forgotten it, but honestly it was one of our favourite songs.
(Julia – well this is why you need a whole bus full of people cos at least somebody there’s
going to remember the words to it)
But the other one we sang a lot of was “This Land is Your Land”
(Julia – oh right, Woody Guthrie)
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York island
And the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me
(Julia – hey, fantastic)
That’s a nice one.
(Julia – yeah, yeah, so I can see, you know, yeah, there’s the strong element of enjoying
the natural world and learning about the natural world sort of in all those songs. So were
there a lot of songs that sort of came from the early days of walking and rambling apart
from the – I think the Manchester Rambler was actually written a bit later wasn’t it)
It was later yeah. Trying to think
(Julia – putting you on the spot now. I know I was talking to Bill Emmingham earlier and
he, similar as you, he said “We just sang anything, all sorts of things, old sort of jazz songs
and ragtime and musical songs and there seems to be this real connection between
walking and singing. I suppose you’re out there in the, you know, up on the moors, nobody
can hear you, you can sing as loud as you want can’t you)
Oh we could sing as loud as we wanted, yeah. Except we used to sing like – oh well we
did, we all sang, we sang on the moors, we sang on the bus, we sang when we were
having our lunch, we were like the Von Trapp family singers sometimes. But one time we
were on the bus upstairs and every Sunday we sang. And there used to be a place at, I
think it was Hollow Meadows, it’s now a whole bunch of new flats, but it used to be a
hospital for people with mental health problems and learning disabilities.
(Julia – oh right yes, on the Loxley Valley)
Yeah, it’s on the right hand side, they’re now flats. But on a Sunday when we used to
come home on that four o clock bus a lot of people visiting their family there would get on
the bus and some people would come upstairs, some people’d sit downstairs. But one day
8

we were singing – and we used to sing every Sunday – so people that were regulars on
the bus knew that we were upstairs singing. And one day this bloke came up and said “Do
you know Wild Mountain Thyme” [laughing] and we did so we sang it for him.
(Julia – oh, so you were getting requests as well)
Yeah we got requests. And he stayed upstairs. It was nice. I mean people didn’t think it
was odd if we just got a guitar out at the bus stop while waiting for bus and started to sing.
People just didn’t think [inaud] you know.
(Julia – oh maybe we should start doing it again)
Yeah, that would be nice wouldn’t it
(Julia – you’ll have to start)
Probably get locked up.
(Julia - But you were telling me about a song as well that you used to be sung when you
were camping at Lockerbrook to be woken up in the morning)
“Out Into the World we Wander” Remember the first verse. We used to, I mean
Lockerbrook wasn’t as it is now because it was very rough and ready. It was an old barn,
an old farm, it wasn’t done up. So we’d sleep on the floor in our little thermorests andI
sleeping bags. And in the morning at about seven o clock Basil used to come round
playing his mouth organ.
(Julia – ooh, [laughing])
I know, a bit loud. But, and if we were camping in the field he’d come up and play the
mouth organ in the field, so you couldn’t get away from it.
(Julia – good way of waking people up)
To wake us up. And he played the same tune and I thought ‘God, do you know, it’s a nice
tune, we got used to it after the years’ So I said “What is that Basil” and he said it’s a
song that he’d learned, I think it’s from Austria, called “Out into the World we Wander” And
it goes something like this.
Out into the world we wander,
From lane to Alpine snow,
And the wind and the rain in the morning,
Plays around us as we go,
And the wind and the rain in the morning,
Plays around us as we go.
(Julia – ah, nice)
It’s about three verses and it is nice, it’s a lovely song.
(Julia – ah, so have you go any more that you think particularly appropriate to the moors or
walking and …)
The summer time is coming and the trees are sweetly blooming,
And the wild mountain thyme pulls around the blooming heather,
Will you go lassie go,
And we’ll all go together,
9

To pluck wild mountain thyme,
All around the blooming heather,
Will you go lassie go.
I will build my love a bower,
By yon pure and crystal fountain,
And on it I will pile,
All the flowers of the mountain,
Will you go lassie go.
(Julia – ah lovely, so that was the one requested by the man …)
That was the one that the bloke downstairs requested.
(Julia – on the bus)
It’s quite an unusual request because we used to sing some quite, not always loud and
raucous songs, but mainly loud and raucous songs. So for him to come up and request
this very nice soft beautiful song about the moors … And that song I think I learned from
some of my Scottish friends in Irvine who were Woodcraft Folk, and they loved singing.
You see we learned a lot of these songs from people in Irvine, the Irish people over in
Bangor, Woodcraft Folk people on camps. People come from Nottingham, there’s a bloke
called Joe Pett used to come from Nottingham with his guitar, and he was fantastic. He’d
bring his guitar up to Lockerbrook and we’d learn songs from him, you know.
(Julia – right, so there’s a real tradition there of people making music for themselves and
…)
Yeah, yeah, it’s lovely.
(Julia – that’s fantastic. Well I suppose I was just going to ask you really what you think
young people could be or should be learning about the moors today Seeing as you sort of
seem to have learned a lot through that)
Well I think times change a little bit. I mean you don’t see many younger people trudging
over peat bogs, but you do see …
(Julia – well you do with Duke of Edinburgh groups [laughing] yeah)
Oh a lot of them due with Duke, oh God yeah, we bumped into a lot when we were out at
… yeah you do actually. But that feels a little bit, that is slightly different in a way. I know
it’s good, but we used to go out through choice and I think a lot of them poor buggers have
to go out because schools tell ‘em to. [laughing] But, and you know, and you can see ‘em,
you can see that they’re not always enjoying it. But it’s an introduction to the outdoors. But
I think where a lot of young people appreciate the hills and the moors and mountains is the
climbers.
(Julia – oh yeah, yeah)
You know, there’s a lot of young people go out into the moors and they climb and you
know they’ve got a great, you know, like I said, a reverence for the hills, the mountains,
they have, but they have to have because that’s quite a risky business. But I’d like to think
that young people … with groups like Woodcraft Folk and the scouts and the guides and
other organisations that introduce people to the moors, it’s got to be good hasn’t it really
It’s got to be for the better. And I know we take kids out, so I take my grandkids out, you
know, and like anybody who’ll go out for a walk with me I’ll go. And, you know, go for a
10

un, I’ll go out for a run. I’ve had to slow down a little bit. But I’d like to see a little bit more.
I’d like to see schools perhaps – they do do don’t they They do do some outdoor
activities
(Julia – mmm. they do yeah)
You know, but we did it every weekend. It was part of our lives, you know, we knew that
when the weekend came we’d be out on the moors.
(Julia – you didn’t have X boxes, you were out)
Yeah [laughing] Well that’s possibly part of the problem isn’t it
(Julia – [laughing] But that’s fantastic. Well thanks for your songs.)
Ah, thank you.
(Julia – I don’t know if you’ve got any more you want to finish off with while you’re here)
Well do you know the Camp Fire Carol It’s nothing to do with the moors but it was to do
with our camps that we used to have and it’s a song that we used to sing at the end of the
night when the camp fire was going down and we’d all go off to bed and it’s called Leap
Higher… it’s called the Camp Fire Carol, and if I can remember it it goes something like:
Leap high oh golden flame,
The day is dead,
Give warmth and cheer oh flame,
The sun has fled,
Stoutly your gleam maintains,
Youth’s not abed,
Bring out your heart’s refrain,
Goodwill to all.
There is a bit more to it, but it’s lovely.
(Julia – that’s fantastic, well that’s great, that’s the first album and we’ll have to come back
for a second album of songs later!)
You’re welcome.
(Julia – thanks Linda, that’s great)
Thank you, thank you very much.
11

Riona Shergold interviewed by Julia Shergold
(Julia - This is an oral history recording for the Moor Memories Project, it’s the 16 th of
October 2011 and we’re in Sheffield. Could you tell me your name and what year you
were born)
I’m Riona Shergold and I was born in 1999.
(Julia – ok, that’s great. Well I suppose my first question is, as a young person what’s your
involvement been with the moorlands around Sheffield)
Well since I’ve lived in Sheffield practically all my life I’ve been walking around the moors,
camping on the moors, climbing on the moors, for quite a long time. Probably the first
involvement I ever had with the moors was I was about two in a papoose and my mum
took me up, or you took me up, Grindsbrook.
(Julia – I did. I don’t suppose you can remember that one very well)
No, but I did it once in the rain and I was moaning all the way.
(Julia – were you a bit older then)
About four or five.
(Julia – was it hard work)
Yeah [laughing].
(Julia – oh right. So, as you got a bit older, how else did you get involved with being out on
the moorlands
Well, like I’ve said, I’ve lived in Sheffield for most of my life and I’m also in the Woodcraft
Folk and we do quite a lot of walking and activities on the moors. And with Woodcraft I’ve
done climbing on the Roaches. I’ve climbed a v diff on the Roaches in the rain.
(Julia – wow. A lot of this stuff’s been in the rain hasn’t it)
Yeah [laughing] well that’s what Sheffield’s famous for isn’t it And I once, I went out and I
bivvied on the moors.
(Julia – do you want to explain to people what bivvying is cos not everyone might know)
Bivvying is basically camping on the moors without the tent. You’ve got a waterproof bag
inside which you put your sleeping bag and you put yourself in that and you just sleep
there out on the moors.
(Julia – wow, so that’s something that perhaps not everybody’s done. So was that on your
own, with a group)
I went with a group of people about my age.
(Julia – right, and what was that like, how did that feel to be out all night without even the
protection of a tent)
Well it was quite uncomfortable because you were just lying on quite – if you can imagine
it – hard grass. It was quite, loads of just clumps of grass gathered around a rock. So it
was really painful and, yeah, but it was really good.
1

(Julia – something a bit different, something a bit out of the ordinary then)
Yeah, but well something that wasn’t out of the ordinary… it rained!
(Julia – ah right, it rained again, [laughing]
Yeah.
(Julia – So did you get wet or did the sleeping bag and the bivvy bag keep you dry)
It kept me dry but I woke up at about midnight with rain on my face because I’d forgot to
close the bivvy bag.
(Julia – [laughing] oh right, ok. Now, I know when you were involved with the Wildlife Trust
you did something else a bit unusual out on the moorlands, do you want to tell us about
that)
Yes, I did cow lookering.
(Julia – ok, do you want to explain what cow lookering is)
Basically every month, is it every month Yeah.
(Julia – I think so yeah)
Yeah, we had to go out to Blackamoor and look for, not necessarily look after, but look for
the cows and check that they were all in order and check that the gates were all in order.
And there was about six Highland cattle out in the fields that we had to try and spot. And I
remember one time we did it it was in the snow and literally it was about knee deep snow
in parts and we couldn’t find the cows anywhere. And you rung the farmer and said there
were no cows and then he came up in his Land Rover saying they were just over the hill.
And we found one and he started coming towards me and I got a bit scared.
(Julia – I think he was hungry wasn’t he)
And it was like "phoo" [blowing noise] at me and just, yeah; but they were really beautiful
and it was really good.
(Julia – so you have to get really close up to them did you)
Yeah, we had to get quite close up to them.
(Julia – ah right, so what was the reason the cows were on the moors, do you know)
Well they keep, was it bugs I think Bugs out of the …
(Julia – or do they graze on the heather and )
Yeah they graze on the heather and it stops …
(Julia – does it stop it growing too much)
Yeah it stops it growing too much, yeah.
(Julia – oh right, oh well that’s fascinating. Anything else that you’ve done out on the
moors that you want to tell us about)
Well once, it was actually quite recently, I went and helped the SARDA, the Search and
Rescue Dogs Association.
2

(Julia – ok, yeah)
And we did dogs-bodying with two trainee dogs and a fully qualified dog.
(Julia – so what did you have to do Did you have to show the dogs what to do or)
No, no, the dogs had their handlers and we had to, all we had to do was go and find a
good hiding place in a certain area and wait for the dogs to find us.
(Julia – oh I see, so it was practise for the dogs)
Yes.
(Julia – ah right, and did they find you)
Yeah. Again it was wet, raining in parts of it.
(Julia – ok, I can see a pattern here. But what was that like then)
It was really good and you can’t imagine how reassuring that jangle of the bell is and that
‘woof’ of the dog is when you’ve been lying there for about ten minutes in the freezing cold.
(Julia – so you could imagine what it might be like to be lost on the moors)
Yeah.
(Julia – have you ever got lost)
No, not really.
(Julia – ok, well that’s good, that’s good. So what about the future then What do you think
you’ll keep doing in relation to the moors)
Well obviously I’ll keep walking on it and camping on it. But I just like living around it
mostly. So, yeah.
(Julia – that’s fantastic, thank you very much.)
3

Ken Drabble interviewed by Julia Shergold
(Julia – This is an oral history recording for the Moor Memories Project, it’s the 10 th of
November 2011. This is Julia Shergold interviewing and I wonder if you could tell me your
name and your date of birth please first of all)
It’s Ken Drabble and it’s 15 th of the sixth 1934.
(Julia – That’s fantastic, thank you. Well thanks for coming in Ken because I’ve heard that
you’ve got a very long involvement going way back to the beginnings of the Peak District
National Park, so I wonder perhaps if you can tell me a little bit about your early years and
how you got involved in working in this area)
Well I lived in New Mills; I was born in New Mills, which looking from my bedroom window
was Kinder Scout. And for National Service, which I had to do, I was in the Royal Marines.
When I got de-mobbed from the Marines I was asked if I would help the Mountain Rescue
at New Mills and saw Bill Thompson who was the probation officer there.
(Julia – so what year is this about)
Be about 1960.
(Julia – so very early days of Mountain Rescue)
Yeah, 1960, yeah. There were only three rescue teams at that time. There was the
Buxton, the Glossop and the New Mills team. So we used to practise on Kinder Scout and
all that and then we eventually saw an advert in the local paper for part-time wardens to
patrol Kinder Scout. So Bill Thompson and myself said “Well if we can get paid for walking
on Kinder Scout we’ll have a go”.
So we both applied and Bill and myself were two of the first six part-time wardens for the
National Park. And Tom Tomlinson was the head warden and eventually George Garlick
was the deputy head warden. After some years - the access at that time was just Kinder
Scout and parts of Bleaklow - the water company of Manchester Corporation didn’t want
walkers on there because of pollution to water courses, which would harm the water
supply to Manchester. But eventually access agreements were created and a new post
was created also in Longdendale.
(Julia – so a little bit further north than Kinder and Bleaklow yeah)
We’re further north yeah; we were actually at that time in Cheshire.
(Julia – oh right, they changed the border didn’t they at some point Yeah.)
Yeah. The Longdendale Valley, the north side of it from the Etherow was Cheshire up to
Holme Moss television mast to Salters Brook. Cos at Salters Brook you could stand in
three counties.
(Julia – oh people have told me this)
You could have Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Cheshire, yeah.
And I applied. Tom asked me if I would apply; I was really hoping to get a ten pound
assisted passage to Australia.
(Julia – oh right)
1

Because I was a joiner by trade. Anyway I applied and I got the job. So my life changed
from that time.
(Julia – it could have been very different, could have been the outback and instead it was
the moors)
So we moved up to live in Crowden and Longdendale, my wife and three children, and I
was there for six years. And then when George left here, where we are at the moment,
Fieldhead, I was moved from Longdendale to Edale to take his place.
(Julia – right, so that’s when you came to this actual building)
I came to live here and I was here for another five years. Then things started to change
and they did away with the head warden, they got a ranger, called it a Warden Service
Officer, who was Johnny Leas, George Cross, ex-RAF, and he was our boss. And I moved
to Bamford to a house there. I was there until 1974.
(Julia – so we’re talking a long time really, ten, fifteen years)
Just over ten years, yeah. Then at Bamford when ’74 came and local government
reorganisation came, they called them rangers instead of warden, and we had to find our
own homes.
(Julia – rather than having a tied house with the job)
Yeah, all rangers, all wardens, were in property owned by the National Park and then we
all had to find our own homes. Which was quite a thing. And at that time I was living on my
own. I’d had a problem with my marital thing and I was on my own and I moved to Chapelen-le-Frith,
which is the capital of the Peak.
(Julia – ah, other people might disagree but, yeah)
And I still live there and I didn’t want to go to Chapel because it was only renowned for the
major road that went through it, the A6, but having lived there now for a long time, thirty
odd years, I find it very convenient. You’ve got the train service, you’ve got a bus service,
you’re not far from Manchester Airport and so I live there.
(Julia – ok, so you’ve been right round the Peak District really)
I worked in the north of the park and then as the chief ranger, I eventually came as, I
worked the whole of the park from Ashbourne to Meltham, from Sheffield to Macclesfield.
(Julia – wow, that’s a big area. So how did the job change over those years There must
have been a lot of changes)
Well it started with the National Parks Access to Countryside of 1949 where the authority
could negotiate with the owners for the rights to walk, the rights to roam. Because that’s
what the ramblers had always wanted from the mass trespass.
(Julia – yeah, so just post war)
And therefore the National Park in the Peak negotiated a number of access agreements
both with the Chatsworth Estate, private landowners and eventually the water companies.
Having done that they had to provide a warden service which became a ranger service to
make sure that people behaved and didn’t misuse the countryside.
(Julia – So did you see an increase in the number of people coming out to walk)
2

No you didn’t, no, it didn’t increase or decrease. The only thing that has happened over the
years, this valley that we’re in at the moment, Edale, come Easter in the early days would
be one campsite from end to end.
(Julia – wow)
Every farmer took people at Easter and it was just a canvas village…hundreds.
(Julia – wow, and did that have an effect on the environment)
Well it did yes, both in noise and wear and tear and misbehaviour; you know, too much
alcohol from the Nag’s Head or the Church Hotel. And, yeah, it had its moments.
(Julia – so that’s not a modern problem then, that’s a … [laughing])
Oh no, nothing’s changed in that sense. The only thing is now people prefer to stay bed
and breakfast in bedrooms rather than on a campsite with a soggy mattress and what
have you.
(Julia – yeah, not as hardy overall then)
Well we’re changing, yeah, we’re getting soft.
(Julia – ah. So do you think the moorland environment’s changed much in that period of
time from sort of post war to now)
Well it has, in fact there’s been a great change on Kinder since a man was appointed
called David Wilson. And he was the head warden for the High Peak. And he started, and I
helped as much as I could, to regenerate both in seed, in plants and in fencing areas, and
in controlling a number of stock.
(Julia – right, so the stock grazing on the moors had had a bad effect)
Well yes, over the years from the second world war right the way through a lot of the areas
had been over grazed and in fact they were bled white.
(Julia – right, yeah, so you had the bare …)
Because you were taking the calcium, the mineral, out by sheep but you were putting
nothing back. And so by controlling the numbers of sheep you then started to get a
regeneration of the habitat.
(Julia – so this is hopefully something that’s ongoing today with reseeding)
Yeah, well another thing was paving of the footpaths as well.
(Julia – the Pennine Way and …)
The Pennine Way was just a quagmire, you were up to your knees in mulch. And then we
got factory stones from the old mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire and paved it and now
you’ve got a footpath that’s about a metre to two metres wide and the vegetation can grow.
(Julia – right, so were people getting kind of stuck in the bogs and … )
Oh yeah, well Wainwright said when he walked the Pennine Way it was a heap of dinosaur
droppings.
(Julia – [laughing] which is probably literally what it is, well …)
3

Well it was, but I think it’s better now. We tried all kinds of experiments there, even to
polystyrene.
(Julia – oh really)
We put polystyrene down because that’s what they were using in Sweden to put
motorways on and floating them.
(Julia – oh I see, and put stones on top of that)
We used chestnut paling. We used a number of ways but eventually the factory, the old
factory floors of Lancashire and Yorkshire was the answer.
(Julia – big old stone slabs, yeah. Oh I suppose a lot of them would have been quarried
out of the same sort of area in the first place)
Well it come back from where it, yeah, yeah. If they could tell stories they could tell a right
story.
(Julia – I bet, yeah, yeah. So going from, yeah, from where people work to helping people
escape the city)
But the biggest problem, not only over-grazing, was fire.
(Julia – ok, yeah, yeah)
And we used to go out wi’ enormous fires…Spring and Autumn.
(Julia – ah, so would they be naturally caused or just careless walkers or)
It would be lovely to say yes to that but I don’t think so no, a lot of us smoked in those
days, and cigarette ends just thrown down onto very dry tinder peat would start to
smoulder, get fanned by the wind and away goes the flame. The flame gets to the
vegetation, the vegetation bursts into light and you’ve then got a moorland fire. Once the
moorland fire is established it then starts the peat to smoulder and it not only burns on the
surface but it goes down into the ground and there’s only one thing that’ll put that out –
heavy rainwater.
(Julia – mmm. So what do you do Were you involved in trying to control moorland fires)
Oh too many times, too many times.
(Julia – and what did you do, did you just have to come up with …)
Well we used to dig trenches, we used to use beaters, we used to use backpack sprays.
Really it was hard work.
(Julia – I imagine it could be possibly quite dangerous as well)
Only if the wind got behind it and you were in downwind and the vegetation got going, yes.
I don’t know of anybody getting injured but it was feasible, yeah.
(Julia – oh right. So did you actually manage to put out fires)
Oh yes, we used to control them, but today I think they’ve got much better management.
We’ve now – when I was working, which is over seventeen years ago, we had argocats to
convey pumps and hoses
4

(Julia – you had, sorry)
An argocat
(Julia – what’s an argocat)
It’s a six or an eight wheel drive bog machine which will travel anywhere. It’s like a bathtub
with a lot of wheels. And you skid …
(Julia – like, I’m thinking of the, what do they use on farms now, little four wheel)
Oh no, not a quad.
(Julia – not a quad bike, no)
No, no, no, much more able than a quad bike, yeah.
(Julia – robust)
Yeah, it’d carry a lot more weight.
(Julia – ah, ok. Right)
Yeah but I think they’ve got it organised. Also we’ve started using helicopters with water
underneath them and dousing it, yeah, which they do everywhere in the world now.
(Julia – yeah, yeah, so do they do that kind of preventatively when the moor’s get wet)
Yeah, actually if you had a very good gamekeeper, and there were some exceptional men,
they always had fire breaks in the heather because burning patterns was habitat for the
grouse. And so if you had a swathe which was burned out that was a fire break should the
rest get on fire.
(Julia – oh I see so because they burned sections of the heather)
Yeah, so management of the moors is all in with it, yeah.
(Julia – right, oh yeah I can see how it links with, yeah, what they were doing)
In fact the big dykes that you see, Black Dyke and whatever, they’re not dykes for fire
really, they were for shooters to go from one set of butts to another set of butts.
(Julia – without being seen)
Without the birds seeing them
(Julia – oh right that’s interesting, so they were dug specifically for that reason)
Yeah.
(Julia – and I mean others were dug to drain water off the moors weren’t they by the water
companies)
Yeah, the person you really need, and I’m sad to say he’s no longer with us, is Fred
Heardman.
(Julia – yeah, I’ve heard a lot about him)
He was the man…’Bill the bog trotter’
5

(Julia – so he was called…the bog trotter)
Yeah, he used to own the Church Hotel and the Nag’s Head.
(Julia – yeah, so he would go up onto Kinder and …)
Oh he used to, yeah. But Fred was a gentleman in the sense that he always got
permission before access.
(Julia – right yes, I suppose you had to, yes)
He never trespassed. Where Ward from Sheffield who wrote a lot of books, from the
Clarion Ramblers,
(Julia – yeah, we’ve based some walks on his books on the subject)
He used to love testing the gamekeeper. And then you’ve got the song “The Manchester
Rambler” with Ewan MacColl.
(Julia – yeah, based on Kinder and, yeah, and coming up next year the fifty year
anniversary I think of the Kinder Trespass)
It is, of the mass trespass, yeah. Oh that was Benny Rothman and Nesbitt and Osborne.
(Julia – yeah, and that’s that one people remember obviously but there’s others as well)
Well yeah, well they’re going to put a memorial to Benny and people in Hayfield.
(Julia – ah right, yeah. So were you, in the early days as a warden, was part of your job to
kind of keep people off where they weren’t supposed to be or)
Well you didn’t keep them off but you guided them to where they could go. And the
majority of people, really the right to roam anywhere and everywhere, not many people
wanted that, they just wanted to go from Hayfield to the Snake…
(Julia – just for a walk, yeah)
…along Ashop Edge, Jacob’s Ladder, the Three Knolls, Kinder Downfall and the like. They
didn’t really want to go into the wild moorlands. Some did. But the Ramblers’ Association
really wanted the right to roam everywhere. Not very many of ‘em, but just a few who were
rather politically motivated.
(Julia – do you think since the, is it 2000 when that came into law, have things changed
much)
The right to roam
(Julia – yeah)
I don’t know, because you see you’ve got no, the authority have got no legal obligation
now to provide, I don’t think, a ranger service at all.
(Julia – ah right, ok)
Where when you had agreement with the owner you were guaranteeing that people on
their land would behave, wouldn’t camp, wouldn’t misuse it and so on. Today you’ve got
the right to roam. I dare say, mind you, I am seventeen years out of touch, you know.
6

(Julia – well, you know, it’s)
But I had the privilege of meeting and working with some marvellous people. In this
building that we’re sat in I remember Lord Sandford and his wife coming here when he
was writing the Sandford Report, which was the advance from the Dower Report.
(Julia – so what were those two reports)
Well the Dower Report was the National Parks and Access to Countryside Act.
(Julia – so just after the second world war)
In 1949 yeah. And then the Dower Report was to look at whether we could afford to go
further and develop it.
(Julia – right, right, so it was right at the very beginnings of the set up of National Parks)
Oh, just before…1974 was the Sandford Report.
(Julia – oh right, ok, so it was a bit later)
So the park was here. Mind you this park was very unique, it was the first one to be
created.
(Julia – yes, yeah)
And it had a joint board rather than…it had five authorities.
(Julia – of different areas, yeah)
Yeah, well you’ve got Staffordshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Sheffield and Yorkshire.
(Julia – Mmm, yeah)
And all of them met at Bakewell. Two thirds of them were councillors elected and one third
were nominated. So they were persons from the British Horse Society, the Ramblers’
Association, and on.
(Julia – yeah, so that’s quite an achievement to get that many different people together)
Where the other nine national parks were really sub-committees of county councils
(Julia – ah right, because they were specifically within one county, or more or less)
Well the Yorkshire Moors and the Yorkshire Dales joined together but the county councils
wanted to keep a firm hand on the planning.
(Julia – ah of course, yeah)
Really I shouldn’t say this but in 1949 the ministry in parliament that looked after the
countryside was the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. And their job was to
provide accommodation and properties for people to live in. So it was said it’s like putting
‘a otter to look after a trout stream’.
(Julia – oh right, was it ‘Dracula in charge of the blood bank’ or something, is the other
phrase [laughing])
Yeah.
7

(Julia – so potentially, you know, land could have got built over and countryside lost)
Well yes, you could have had ribbon development from Sheffield right the way through to
Chapel-en-le-Frith.
(Julia – yeah, so it’s National Parks that have kind of preserved the countryside as it is)
At the moment.
(Julia – at the moment, obviously everything’s always in change. It’s interesting to hear the
history of it and why things are the way they are now)
Aye, well then you see, when I first started the water companies were the Manchester
Corporation, the Ashton Stalybridge in Dukenfield, the Derwent Valley. Then they were
brought into being the North West, the Severn Trent, and so on. And now it’s…
(Julia – mmm, and they were big landowners in their own right)
…very much so.
(Julia – they flooded whole valleys and…)
Some of the private land that I used to look after, Harold Rowarth’s land at Bleaklow, that
was bought by North West Water solely because of looking after the water.
(Julia – right, so they wanted the sort of the control of the moorlands around the reservoirs
as well and…)
Yet it didn’t say you couldn’t spend a penny if you were on a train coming down the
Longdendale Valley because the main line, which is now the Longdendale Trail…
(Julia – oh yeah, yeah)
…used to have express trains running through it hour on hour when I lived up there. Now
people walk it.
(Julia – yeah, yeah, so that’s a big change, you know, when we think things have got more
industrialised, actually that’s gone from being …)
All you’ve done is put more traffic on the highways.
(Julia – yeah, yeah, well for the railways and onto roads I think, as well).
It’s got to get from Sheffield to Manchester or Barnsley to Manchester. So instead of being
on the railway as a goods train it’s in lorries on the highway.
(Julia – on the M62, yeah. Well there are people, aren’t there, talking about wanting to
reopen rail routes across, and …)
Well…yes, political.
(Julia – big job, oh I’m sure, very. I mean I’m, one of the things that interested me
particularly was the photo I saw of you which is very famous, of you carrying a sheep
through the snow.)
Of me carrying a sheep [laughing]
(Julia – now I know you’ve said “Oh I don’t remember doing it”)
8

I don’t, no
(Julia – but you must remember some very hard times on the moors round here and…)
Oh yes, well Ryder Howard who was a farmer, sheep farmer, at Pikenaze in Longdendale,
he said the last snow is the 17 th of April and it’s a ‘lambing shower’.
(Julia – oh ok, that’s what they call, yeah, so it coincides with lambing)
Yeah and you usually find that, we’re in November now, that by the end of November we’ll
have had some quite good snows. And then it’ll ease off right the way through till February
and March and you get heavy snows again.
(Julia – seems unfair on the sheep farmers)
And in 1947, which I do remember, I remember the Wanted Inn at Sparrowpit disappearing
under a drift.
(Julia – ah, completely)
Yeah. The snow was that deep everywhere but it was a marvellous year. I was in, well I
would have been eleven or twelve. Best sledging year we ever had. [laughing]
(Julia – I’m sure, yeah. So how did it affect people’s day to day lives then something, you
know, that deep)
Well you have to put up with it.
(Julia – yeah, no central heating)
We’d no central heating in those days. You used to see the frosts on top of the blankets.
(Julia – phew, unbelievable really, yeah)
And on the windows, all crazed with the frost. Double glazing was something we hadn’t
heard of.
(Julia – and I suppose food stocks as well)
Well, during the second world war in the countryside nearly everybody had an allotment so
you grew your own vegetables. And if you could you’d have a stock of stuff. And you may,
if you were lucky enough, to have a few hens. So we were dig for victory kind of thing.
(Julia – so people were more self sufficient at that point)
You had to be. And it’ll go back to that eventually. I keep telling my wife I’ll have to dig the
garden and plant some cabbages, but not at the moment.
(Julia – No. So that was ’47 and then in the sixties there was another harsh winter wasn’t
there as well)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We get them round here. Sometimes its not deep snow its hard frost.
And if you get a very hard frost you almost get a permafrost which goes down to freeze the
main water supplies.
(Julia – oh goodness. So the water kind of coming off the moors into the reservoirs
freezes)
9

Well from the reservoir to the supply. Cos the reservoir, it goes into the filtration and then
once it’s filtered and cleaned and purified it then goes into supply. And the mains have got
to be very deep but on some occasions – I can’t remember the year – but I remember
where I lived in New Mills, the main water supply froze.
(Julia – wow, so that’s everyone then, no water)
Yeah, well you’ve got bowsers that come and supply.
(Julia – yes, I suppose, yeah I’ve seen images, yeah, of people having to collect their
water in the streets and…)
Yeah, but I remember the milk coming in a horse and cart float and they used to ladle it out
and put it into your milk jug.
(Julia – oh well, yeah, yeah, and…)
You could you get your new model, you know, your horse, from your old one. You didn’t
have to go and …
(Julia – no, that’s true, you didn’t have to go and buy a new one from a factory, you could,
yeah)
No, you could get one horse from another horse.
(Julia – yes, that’s the thing with horses. What about summers on the moors as well, do
you think the weather patterns have changed and affected in that way)
I don’t, I don’t, no. You get good years and bad years. Easter used to be a very wet period
and August used to be a very wet period.
(Julia – it was last year, yeah)
When the shooting season starts I used to have to do shooting patrols and we always had
to have wet gear on.
(Julia – aha, yeah, for the middle of August, yeah)
So why they think August is nice I don’t know. And then they always blame this part of the
world for Manchester and its rain. They always used to have the test match in Manchester
around August and so it was always going to be the wet one.
(Julia – yeah, yeah, no, that’s right. I mean, yeah, people I think try and see these patterns
and sometimes it’s just that there’s always been severe weather)
Yeah, I don’t think they alter very much at all. Maybe we are getting global warming but I’m
rather suspicious that it’s an academic paper.
(Julia – right. I’m interested to hear about, I think you’ve mentioned some of the people
you’ve worked with like Fred Heardman and – and I’m interested as to why he got the
name of…
Bill the Bogtrotter.
(Julia – …Bill the Bogtrotter)
Well he used to do long distance walks from Marsden – Edale.
10

(Julia – and that must be …)
Oh it’s a long way.
(Julia – forty miles or more)
Oh yeah but it’s a competition route now. And then you’ve got the Four Inns competition,
which is another one, which is from the Isle of Skye road. That got its name…it was a pub,
it’s long gone. And it got its name because it was a Yorkshire way of saying, it had a slate
off the roof and so you’d got a hole in the sky – an’ isle in’t sky –
(Julia – Isle in’t sky, oh I see)
And they used to go from the Isle of Skye to the Snake Inn, from the Snake Inn to the
Nag’s Head and the Nag’s Head to the Cat and Fiddle.
(Julia – Cat and Fiddle is)
On the Cheshire/Derbyshire border
(Julia – so that’s huge number of miles)
Well the Scouts do that every year.
(Julia – yeah, and this was the one where there was the tragedy and people died, yeah)
1964…it was, three died.
(Julia – I know it was quite effective in kind of setting up Mountain Rescue)
Well it started the Mountain Rescue organisation which I was involved in… Jack Longland.
(Julia – were you involved in that rescue)
Yes I was, yeah.
(Julia – it must have been quite traumatic)
Yeah, we were called out at about eight o clock on the Saturday night and it was torrential
rain and then at about three o clock in the morning it turned to snow. And we came off the
hill at about one o clock. We went back up at nine and there was about eighteen inches of
snow.
(Julia – oh, what time of year was this)
March
(Julia – March, yeah, so, so very impossible for people that were lost in that overnight)
Well, yeah, the clothing that they had they all said was bad but really and truly it was as
good as most walkers walking. But with torrential rain the insulation’s gone. Then the snow
coming in. They’ve got a cat in hell’s chance.
(Julia – freezes, yeah, yeah)
But it took three days or four days to find the last one.
(Julia – oh gosh)
11

He was in the Alport.
(Julia – in Alport Valley)
Yeah.
(Julia – yeah. No, so, yeah, I can imagine that that’s something that …)
But Jack Longland, Rusty Westman from the Lake District, Kim Meldrum, Fred Heardman,
Bill Thompson from New Mills, he were the rescue team leader, started the Peak District
Mountain Rescue Organisation.
(Julia – yeah, which has gone on to save a lot of lives over the years I imagine)
Well, helped people…there but for God go I kind of thing.
(Julia – yeah, yeah, but yeah, I mean it’s something that people have come to know about
and rely on being there and …)
Oh yes, yes, well there were teams before that but what happened on that Four Inns
tragedy, there was the RAF Stafford, the New Mills team and the Glossop team, and we
were all called at the same time. We were given a brief by the Sergeant on duty at
Glossop. The brief that we were all given was the same so that we all came to the same
conclusion…so one area was searched three times.
(Julia – ah yes, so it’s the co-ordination)
We hadn’t got the management. So that was what the PDMRO was to start, to say that
team will do that area.
(Julia – Peak District Mountain Rescue)
And the next team will do that area.
(Julia – organisation, yeah, yeah. So you’d co-ordinate with other teams, yeah)
Yeah, and in those days we’d no such things as two-way radios.
(Julia – oh I was going to say, yeah. I mean now we take it for granted that people have
got mobile phones, radios and so on, but, yeah. Helicopters and everything but none of
that was even …)
Oh we had helicopters.
(Julia – ok)
Oh yeah, but they were very rare and the weather conditions on that Saturday/Sunday
weren’t suitable to fly them.
(Julia – no, they aren’t always, yeah)
So it was on your feet, up to your knees in snow. And, no, life goes on.
(Julia – mmm, and people have always done these big long walks across open country
and …)
Oh yeah, there’s some very long walks. Like you go back to Fred and many others, yeah.
There was a Colne - Rowsley, the Four Inns, there was many others too. And then you’ve
12

now got the Pennine Way, which is a long distance walk, which was started by Tom
Stephenson.
(Julia – did many people do that in your time then, the whole way from Edale to …)
Yeah they did, yeah, yeah. I knew Tom Stephenson, he was a reporter for the Daily
Herald, and he had a letter from two ladies from America who’d done the Appalachian
Trail.
(Julia – oh right, yeah)
And they said to him “What have you got in Britain that’s like the Appalachian Trail” and
that’s how he started working to create the Pennine Way.
(Julia – Ah, yeah)
And then you’ve got the Lyke Wake Walk.
(Julia – The Lyke Wake Walk, is that an easier version then)
That’s on the Yorkshire Moors. You’ve got the Three Peaks, Pen-y-ghent, Whernside
and…
(Julia – done them, yeah. And Coast to Coast and all that)
Coast to Coast, yeah. And now up in Scotland you’ve got a number of long distance walks
there that Molly Porter used to create.
(Julia – ah it’s interesting. So it’s interesting to know the history of sort of the rangers and
the wardens and how they were involved with those kind of things as well)
Well I think in the wardens in the first instance did come from the hill walking,
mountaineering, climbing background.
(Julia – mmm, well it was like you said, if you could get paid for walking on Kinder
[coughing] oh dear)
Exactly yeah. It’s alright, I’ve got a frog in my throat as well. But today I think a lot of the
rangers/wardens nationally are more ecologists and environmental motivated rather than
physical.
(Julia – ok, yeah, oh that’s interesting)
So they’re teaching and creating. Like Sean Prendergast who took over after I left the
Park. I think he sends an awful lot of his rangers – I think, I don’t know for certain – into the
cities to teach the countryside.
(Julia – yeah, to make those links. And I suppose it’s about the next generation growing up
knowing about the countryside and …)
Yeah, life goes on.
(Julia – yeah, oh well that’s fantastic. Got any other stories while you’re here that you want
to tell us)
I don’t, not really.
(Julia – it’s your chance to have your say)
13

You could go on for years couldn’t you I worked for thirty five years as a full time ranger.
I’ve been retired seventeen and I’m enjoying every moment of retirement.
(Julia – good for you. Oh well thank you for coming in and talking to us)
My pleasure.
(Julia – and we’ll make it part of the archive)
In the house where I used to live.
(Julia – yes, full circle, definitely)
With my family.
(Julia – ah, thanks very much Ken)
14