September 2008

Your letters

Happy memories of Langdale End

The ‘Moon landing’ article in the June Dalesman, by Ray Worthy, brought back many memories of the time I spent as a trainee at Langdale End. I had just completed twelve years in the RAF where I was a pilot in India and Pakistan when my job involved flying VIPs. The contrast was considerable. We were not left entirely to our own devices when it came to entertainment.

We did have a football pitch, and there were many impromtu and quite bloody games played thereon. Hobnailed boots with steel toecaps can wreak havoc when no one wears shinpads. We occasionally played more formal games, with a referee, against local teams.

I think the rabbit catcher, Cannonball Cross, was a member of one such team. His nickname did not refer to his power of shot but to his method of play which was to go straight ahead, regardless of what, or who was in his path.

In the village of Langdale End there was a farm, a post office, the village hall and a pub. As I remember it, there were frequent whist drives and occasional lectures in the village hall and there may have been dancing.

The pub, which was licensed for only six days a week, was the Moorcock. It was run by the Misses Martindale. The beer was revolting.

Ada, the elder of the ladies, always, as befitting an unmarried lady, called it ‘the Moorbird’. Maud, the other lady, worked in the forests and could hold her own with any man when it came to the hard physical work that this entailed in those pre-mechanised days.

The variety of residents at the camp and the variety of accents led to one rather amusing conversation in the lunch hut at the Broxa nursery between Bill, a local with a very broad accent, and Harry, a Geordie who had an accent which even I, a Northumbrian, had difficulty in following.

Both men were very interested in horse racing and had been discussing the chances of a horse named Sea Smoke which was being ridden that day by the jockey Charlie Smirke.

The conversation went something like this...
Bill: “Whe’s ridin’ that ‘oss, Arry?”
Harry: “Si Smaake.”
Bill: “Aye, whe’s ridin’ it”?
Harry: “Ah telt ye. Si Smaake”
Bill: “That’s ’oss; whe’s t’ bl--dy jockey?”
Harry: “That’s bl--dy jockey ye daft b----r.”
Unfortunately, I cannot remember whether the horse won or not.

I visited Langdale Forest fairly recently and admired some of the magnificent trees, while telling my great-grandaughter that I remember them when I carried a hundred of them in a small bag while planting on Jerry Noddle.

L Mackenzie, York

Tricky take-off tale confirmed

I can confirm that an aircraft did come in a big field near Austwick during the war (Letters, July). I could take you and show you the actual field. I was in the Home Guard at the time, and we had to go and turn the aircraft round when it did a practice run across the field to see if it would be possible to take off from there. Eventually it did take off successfully and I think flew back to Prestwick.

J E Handby, Settle

The story of the tricky take-off is true because the field belonged to my father

Mr J Sanderson of Gayclops Farm, Austwick. This happened about 1945-6 as I was still at Austwick School, aged ten. Lots of people came, including children from the school. We were allowed to look in the aircraft, which was a Lancaster, piloted by Leonard Cheshire.

Mrs S Carr, Gainsborough

Dog-walking etiquette

The letters on dog-walking etiquette in the July issue made me smile. I see these little coloured bags along a popular local dog-walking route and cannot understand why, when having collected up the dog poo, the walkers then leave the bag and its contents alongside the path or, as observed, throw it into trees and bushes.

David Croxon, Rochdale

Seldom have I seen anything so completely potty as notices requiring doggy bags to be used in fields full of cow pats — and I have seen several in Wharfedale. What planet do these bureaucrats live on?

D M Ladhams, Worcester

What’s in a name?

In the 900s, a family (an ‘ing’) of Viking farmers called Valk, moving eastwards from York, perhaps came across a splendid natural pond and decided that this was a perfect place to settle, to water and feed their cattle, and to establish their ‘tun’ (the present Norwegian word for ‘farmstead’). The settlement eventually became a village that, with its magnificent pond, is still there today. It is called Walk-ing-ton.

I mention this because M I L Roberts (June) suggests that Skipton is a strange hybrid name, a mixture of the Viking word for sheep (Skip) and the Angle word for town (ton). Another and, it seems to me, more likely explanation is that the ‘ton’ in Skipton simply comes from the Viking word for farm.

Roderic Walkington, Solihull

Pillarboxes by royal appointment

Regarding the appeal in ‘Can You Help’ in the July issue about letterboxes bearing the insignia of Edward VIII, this photograph shows a pillarbox with the ‘ER VIII’ cipher, which stands outside Mr Parmar’s shop on Cookridge Lane, Leeds. Plans for a new estate in Cookridge were produced at the beginning of 1927. Lot 1, for example, became the post office site (now Parmar’s). A booklet was produced, Cookridge, Village of Youth, to attract purchasers, but the nearest letterbox at that time was a long way away, down Tinshill Road in the direction of Horsforth.

By the time the pillarbox arrived in 1936, some 150 houses had been built, but there was a distinct slow-down in production, which ceased altogether just before the delcaration of the Second World War.

One of my sixteen booklets, An Early Twentieth-Century Housing Estate in a Yorkshire Parish, tells the full story of Cookridge Estate.

Don Cole, Cookridge, Leeds

I give below some details which I have of Edward VIII postboxes to be found in Yorkshire. This is taken from information I obtained several years ago when a friend had visited the Post Office archives in London. The sheet is dated August 1988, which I appreciate is twenty years ago, but I would have thought that any such boxes existing then would still be in place, rather than being removed or (heaven forbid) destroyed:

Bradford – Laisterdyke Post Office, Leeds Road
Bridlington – Queensgate; Cardigan Road
Catterick Camp – Hildyard Row
Guiseley – Moorway/Bradford Road
Leeds – Cookridge Village Post Office; Swinnow Post Office, Pudsey
Scarborough – Dean Road Post Office; Wheatcroft Post Office
Sheffield North – Wadsley Bridge Post Office, Penistone Road; Button Hill, Carterknowle Road; Somercotes Road

Joan Metcalfe, Penwortham, Preston

Boundary disputes Down Under

I have just read the letters in the June Dalesman about the 1974 boundary debacle. I was born in Pudsey, West Riding of Yorkshire. This historic borough, of which my father was mayor, was absorbed into Leeds in the interests (so they claimed) of greater efficency and ‘rationalisation’.

In 1974 the historic West Riding itself was destroyed, again by similar bureaucrats.

In 1984 we emigrated to Australia, and have lived since then in another historic town, Redcliffe, the site of the first settlement of immigrants to Queensland. As Australian history goes, this town is very old.

Now guess what has happened? The faceless men are at it again and we are no more, having been absorbed into a greater region with the unimaginative name of the Regional Council.

I still address my letters to my friends in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and they get there.

Leslie Ball, Redcliffe, Australia

Armed forces performing vital role

It was with sad amazement that I read the letter headed ‘RAF destroying Dales tranquility’ in June’s edition of Dalesman.

What I found particularly incredible was comments such as ‘our boys don’t need to practise’ and ‘the enemy is in the mindset’. Let me educate Ms Cowdery and other sadly misinformed readers.

As we sit down and comfortably read our edition of Dalesman, in relative tranquility, we have several thousand of our armed forces in active service in Afghanistan and Iraq. Absolutely central to their operations is the ability to call in low-level air strikes.

These necessary actions daily save tens of lives of British soldiers, and exactly how are our RAF pilots supposed to practise these missions to attain the incredibly high level of skills required?

I, for one, am very grateful for the work our armed forces do and if loud noise is the price to pay, then I’m happy to pay it. The enemy is very real and very evident, as anyone who was in London on 7th July 2005 will tell you.

Ben Castell, Huddersfield

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Dalesman, The Water Mill, Broughton Hall, Skipton, North Yorkshire BD23 3AG
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