When our friends Jim and Sue  (with their elderly dog Monty) visited us  recently we took them to some of our favourite places: Tennants of Leyburn and The Garden Rooms;  Duncans Tearoom, Richmond, and Lower Swaledale. The wind was cold but otherwise the weather was perfect for some of the Dales views that we treated them to.

We do feel very fortunate to live in such a beautiful area where even the drive to the shops can be savoured – whether we go to Hawes or to Leyburn. I must admit that I do enjoy shopping in Leyburn. There’s a good mix of family run shops, medium sized supermarkets,  bakeries,  butchers, gift shops,  plus a variety of excellent places to eat or socialise.

As it was a Friday it was market day in Leyburn but this time we did not stop but headed for The Garden Rooms  as our friends had not seen how Tennants has developed  into a world-class centre. The multi-million pound extension which was completed in December 2014 made it it the largest auction house in Europe. It is a grand building which the Tennant family uses to promote and enhance the culture and tradition of the Yorkshire Dales. Jim and Sue were very impressed by the beautiful entrance to The Garden Rooms. As it was an auction day we decided to have a look at what was on offer before going to the cafe for coffee.

Jim, Sue and I  first browsed among the toys which conjured so many childhood memories for us oldies. Then we realised we had lost David in a world of his own for he was fascinated by a model of the famous 19th century racing clipper Lightning.

As we wandered off to admire the ceramics, jewellery, evening dresses and even fur coats David was obviously still thinking about it. In the cafe it was fascinating to watch the monitor as it displayed the rapid sale of items – 100 in an hour. That model boat wasn‘t due to be under the hammer until lunchtime and we wanted to move on. We were just leaving when David decided he would go and place a commission bid on Lightning.

Once Monty had had a chance to stretch his legs we set off back through Leyburn to Moor Road and along Whipperdale Bank. This took us past Metcalfe Farms, now famous following the TV series about its heavy haulage business.

After the crossroads Whipperdale Bank (otherwise known as Cote de Grinton during the Grand Depart of the Tour de France in 2014) is a road which commands attention not just because of  the awkward camber and the undulations but also for the moorland scenery. When Sue asked for a place to stop so that Monty could get out we immediately suggested waiting until we passed the imposing Grinton Lodge which was built in the 19th century as a shooting lodge and has been a youth hostel since 1948. Soon afterwards we came to the junction with the road to Redmire just before Grinton where there is an ideal viewing spot with space to park several cars. Jim and Sue were duly impressed by the view across Swaledale.

Reeth warranted a longer visit but we just drove round the village green and headed for the road to Richmond as it was almost lunchtime and we wanted to eat at Duncans  Tearoom. This has become one of our favourite places to eat not least because they have the most delicious gluten, dairy and potato starch free chocolate and walnut cake. Jim and David ordered eggs benedict (David’s with smoked salmon), while Sue enjoyed a leek and potato pie and I had one of their dairy free soups.

We were thoroughly enjoying our lunch when David made a telephone call and found out he was now the very delighted owner of Lightning.

It was soon time to find somewhere for Monty to have a brief stroll so we went to Hudswell and along the moor road which leads to Downholme.  That road (Hudswell Lane) provides some of the best views in the area and there is a good interpretation board at the small car park (above). From there we could see Hutton’s Monument which marks the grave of Matthew Hutton who died in 1814 when he was 35-years-old.  He had chosen that site because as a boy he had sat there enchanted by the beauty of that “mountainous country”.

We could understand his enchantment as we gazed on a vista which was not only very beautiful but also had so much to tell about the history of the northern Yorkshire Dales. To the west we looked across How Hill to Marrick. How Hill is the site of a large Iron Age defended settlement  (univallate  hillfort) which would have provided a commanding position overlooking the access to upper Swaledale as well as the route south to the Vale of York.

The Romans mined for lead in the moors above Swaledale and Arkengarthdale but they did not leave such a lasting legacy as the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings did for today many of their place names remain. The name of the river – the Swale – has Anglo-Saxon origins meaning whirling, swirling and swallowing. An apt name for one of the fastest flowing rivers in the country with its reputation for ‘swallowing’ incautious bathers.  Marrick and Marske are Viking place names.

In the 11th and 12th centuries it was the turn of the Normans to stamp their mark on the area with large  hunting forests for the noblemen and the foundation of religious  houses. Some Benedictine nuns chose a site near Marrick in the 12th century for its beauty and solitude and Cistercian nuns founded Ellerton Abbey nearby. That solitude was often rudely shattered between the 13th and 16th century when the nunneries were attacked by Border Rievers (robbers). In 1342 Ellerton Abbey was almost destroyed by Rievers. Bands of robbers continued to attack farms and villages in Northumberland, North Yorkshire and Cumbria until the border with Scotland became settled following the coronation of James I in 1603.

The  nunneries had gone by then. The dissolution of the monasteries during the reign of Henry VIII led to the closure of  Ellerton Abbey in 1536 four years before the nuns at Marrick Priory were evicted. The Priory chapel was the village church until 1948  and it was then used as a hen house.In the 1970s it was converted into an outdoor education and residential centre.  Ellerton Abbey was transformed into a Regency villa in the 1830s so that it could be used as a shooting lodge. For over 200 years the heather moors have been managed to provide grouse shooting for the wealthy and providing employment for many local people.

It is said that Swaledale has 75 per cent of the world’s remaining heather moorland – a habitat which is rarer than tropical rainforest. We could see smoke rising from the controlled burning of the heather and the patchwork pattern which that produces as well as the butts where shooters wait for the grouse to be driven overhead between August 12 and December 10 each year. The new growth provides the green, juicy shoots that the grouse love to feed on. It is argued that the management of the heather moors which includes predator control has led to the retention of so many curlews, lapwings, redshanks and some other ground nesting birds. It is always a delight in the spring to hear the curlews and lapwings calling as they return to nest among the heather.

Human management has stamped its mark on the Dales. The view so many people associate with Swaledale with its picturesque stone barns and small green fields enclosed by dry stone walls was created by the families who have farmed there for many centuries.

It was not just the heather moorland and the green swathe that surrounds the Swale which caught our attention but also the signs that this was once a heavily industrialised area. On Marrick and Marske Moors there are disused quarries and lead mines with the remains of smelt mills and soil heaps. When it was no longer commercially viable to mine for  lead in the area there was a mass exodus in the 19th centuries which is why there are so many in Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada today who are descended from Dales folk.

Sadly today Swaledale is an example of a new exodus as so many houses have become holiday lets or second homes. This has led to the villages becoming denuded of young families – the life blood of any community –  as they can’t afford the high prices that those coming from the cities and suburbs can pay. I can’t help thinking that the National Park’s drive to bring in more tourists might well backfire as more local young people are driven out.

In Downholme, the next village we passed through, has become a prime location because it has changed so little since the 1930s when the MoD began buying all the houses there. The MoD didn’t start selling the houses on the open market until the late 20th century. The Bolton Arms pub was the last to be sold – in 2013. Downholme is now a conservation area to protect the local vernacular style of the majority of the buildings which were built in the mid 19th century.

We travelled on hoping to reach The Garden Rooms in time to collect Lightning. The A6108 took us past the very distinctive Walburn Hall which dates back to the 15th century when it was fortified against the attacks of Border Rievers.  On the land around this working farm there are many humps and bumps – all that remains of a village which thrived there in Norman times.

At Tennants we parked among many others who were collecting their newly acquired wares. David soon appeared proudly carrying Lightning.  The next problem was getting it safely into the car as it was  55 inches long  (140cm), 18 inches (46cm) wide and 35 inches (90cm) from the stand to the top of the main mast (above). Monty usually filled most of the boot. Thankfully he accepted being gently pushed to one side and a passenger seats was laid flat. Sue and I squeezed into the remaining passenger space and tried to keep the boat from rocking as Jim drove carefully back to Aysgarth.

Once Lightning was safely tucked away in the conservatory we could relax around a warm fire and enjoy some excellent cheese from the Wensleydale Creamery for light supper.

Epilogue

David and I returned to The Garden Rooms a few days later and had lunch in the cafe. I was delighted to find that there was no cow’s milk in the battered cod and even more so when the catering staff substituted baby root vegetables for chips. David was equally delighted with his beetroot and feta tart.

We certainly didn’t try to have a meal there on Saturday December 9 when the cafe was full to overflowing during the superb Christmas Fair. It is now attracting coach loads of visitors as well as many local people enjoying a day out. That was not surprising because there was a great variety of wares for sale with some stallholders having travelled miles to participate. My friend Rita Cloughton hadn’t  had so far to travel with her delightful  home-made crafts and was doing very brisk business.

For me the biggest surprise was finding mouth-watering Christmas puddings that I could eat thanks to Burtree Puddings. It is often very frustrating having so many severe food intolerances – but what a pleasure it is when I find something so good that I can eat.

Below: David’s new hobby is restoring Lightning.

Memorials at Aysgarth church reveal many connections with India, including the “Heroine of Cawnpore” – Ann Fraser who, before her marriage, was Ann Fawcet Wray. Also remembered among the Wray Memorials in the Lady Chapel of that church (see below) is her uncle, Lieutenant Thomas Fawcet Wray, who was killed during the storming of Badajoz in Spain in 1812, 17 years before she was born.

In the nave there is another memorial to Lt Wray of the 7th Fusiliers erected in his memory by his fellow officers of the Loyal Dales Volunteers. On that it states that he died, aged 25, on April 2 1812. But other sources, including another tablet in the Lady Chapel, give his date of death as April 6 – the day that 4,800 allied soldiers were killed storming Badajoz. This has been described as one of the bloodiest battles during the Napoleonic Wars.

The Earl of Wellington had reached Badajoz on March 16, 1812, and had 27,000 allied soldiers – British and Portuguese – under his command. They laid siege to Badajoz where 5,000 French soldiers were garrisoned. The walls were bombarded, tunnels were dug and extensive siege earthworks built until the Allies managed to breach the walls in two places. One more breach in the walls was created and, on the night of April 6, Wellington gave the order to make a surprise attack but a French sentry raised the alarm. French soldiers rushed to defend the city and Wellington’s force was almost routed.

In the morning, when the British soldiers who had taken the city looked back at the piles of their comrades bodies, they went on the rampage, looting, getting drunk, raping and killing. They even killed any of their officers who tried to stop them. It took three days to bring them under control and in that time 4,000 Spanish civilians had been massacred. It was said that the British soldiers “resembled a pack of hell hounds.”¹

Lt Wray’s youngest brother, Octavius (i.e.the eighth son) would have been about 19-years-old, by then and may have started his medical training. By mid-1831 he was in India as a surgeon with the Bengal European Regiment and his daughter, Ann, was eighteen-months old. He died of a fever in Agra in 1836 leaving five children, the youngest, Thomas Charge Wray, being just two-years-old².

Ann married Lt George William Fraser in November 1850 and seven years later they became caught up in what was then called the Indian Mutiny³. To escape being killed in Delhi she had hired a small coach and travelled from Delhi to Cawnpore (Kanpur). Captain Mowbray Thomson, one of the four survivors of the massacres at Cawnpore reported⁴:

“Two or three days after the arrival of the tidings from Delhi of the massacre which had been perpetrated in the old city of the Moguls, Mrs Fraser, the wife of an officer in the 27th Native Infantry, reached our cantonments, having travelled dak from the scene of bloodshed and revolt. The native driver who had taken up in in the precincts of the city brought her faithfully to the end of her hazardous journey of 266 miles. The exposure which she had undergone was evident from a bullet that had pierced the carriage.

“Her flight from Delhi was but the beginning of the sorrows of this unfortunate lady, though she deserves rather to be commemorated for her virtues than her sufferings. During the horrors of the siege she won the admiration of all our party by her indefatigable attentions to the wounded. Neither danger nor fatigue seemed to have power to suspend her ministry of mercy.

“Even on the fatal morning of embarkation, although she had escaped to the boats with scarcely any clothing upon her, in the thickets of the deadly volleys poured upon us from the banks, she appeared alike indifferent to danger to her own scanty covering; while with perfect equanimity and imperturbed (sic) fortitude she was entirely occupied in the attempt to sooth and relieve the agonized sufferers around her, whose wounds scarcely made their condition worse than her own. Such rare heroism deserves a far higher tribute than this simple record.”

The Indian soldiers (sepoys) at Cawnpore rebelled on June 4 and the British commanding officer, Major General Sir Hugh Wheeler, moved the British soldiers and the women and children to  a hospital and the thatched building adjacent to it around which an earthen entrenchment had been built. He had expected that the sepoys would go to Delhi to join the mutiny there but instead the local “ruler”, Nana Sahib,  persuaded them, using money from a treasury that the British had left in his care, to attack the British, Europeans and Anglo-English in Cawnpore.  Until then Nana Sahib had been very friendly to Wheeler and his officers.

The siege of the hospital barracks began on June 6. Somehow the small contingent of about 300 British soldiers held out until June 23 but by then there there was little shelter left to protect the women and children from the blazing heat of an Indian summer. Water was in very short supply as those at the well were under constant attack even during the night.  During the siege there was only sufficient food for one very small meal a day and with just three days of rations left Wheeler, for the sake of the women and children, agreed to the treaty offered by Nana Sahib. One mother wrote: “It is not hard to die oneself but to see a dear child suffer and perish – that is the hard, the bitter trial.”

Nana Sahib said he would give them safe passage down the River Ganges to Allahabad on June 27. Thomson described the scene early that morning: “Never, surely, was there such an emaciated, ghostly party of human beings as we. Sixteen elephants and between seventy and eighty palanquins composed the van of the mournful procession, and more than two hundred sufferers had thus to be conveyed down to the river. We loaded and unloaded our burdens ourselves; and the most cautious handling caused much agony to our disabled ones. The women and children were put on the elephants, and into bullock carts. When we reached the place of embarkation, all of us, men and women, as well as the bearers of the wounded and children, had to wade knee-deep through the water, to get into the boats, as not a single plank was provided to serve as a gangway.”

The boats were over-crowded, stuck in the mud, and the thatched roofs laced with hot charcoal. As soon as everyone was on board they were fired upon from the opposite bank. Many were killed by Nana Sahib’s men as they jumped from the boats and tried to get back to the shore.

Those who made it to shore were separated. The men were lined up and shot and the women and children taken back into Cawnpore and later housed in what became known as the Bibigarh. The women were scantily clad for they had given up most of the material from their dresses and petticoats to dress wounds.  Over 200 women and children were crammed into the Bibigarh where the conditions were very bad and it was reported that 25 died in one week from dysentery and cholera.

And then, on July 15, the order was given to massacre those who remained. The sepoys refused to carry out that order and so butchers were sent in to do the job. Thomson, who had managed to escape on June 27, stated: “Mrs Fraser is reported to have died from fever before the terrific butchery that immediately preceded General Havelock’s recapture of Cawnpore.”

Mowbray stated that lynch law prevailed after the British retook Cawnpore and found the well full of bodies. Any sepoys who were captured were hanged for rebelling and also for not stopping the massacre at the Bibigarh. Many Indian civilians were also killed for not doing anything to save the British women and children.

One of the memorials to the Wray family at Aysgarth church states that Mrs Fraser’s  husband also died during the mutiny. But there is a report that he survived, rose to the rank of General, married two more times, and had nine children⁵.

Source and Notes:

1. Information about the Siege of Badajoz mainly from Wikipedia. Lt Fawcet is listed on Glosters Tripod.com as being killed during the storming of Badajoz on April 6.

2. Information about the Wrays from

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~akrb61/people/charge/d5.htm.  Thomas Charge Wray became a Colonel in the 2nd Bn. Royal Irish Regiment. He died in Murree, India, on July 22, 1888, aged 54. He had served in New Zealand in 1866 and in Egypt in 1884 (http://glosters.tripod.com/offzdiedw.htm)

3. Also known as India’s First War of Independence, the Sepoy Rebellion, the Revolt of 1857 and the Uprising of 1857.

4. Mowbray Thomson, The Story of Cawnpore, R Bentley, London, 1859, https://archive.org/details/storycawnpore00thomgoog. His account about Mrs Fraser is on pages 26-28.  Picture of the scene at Sati Chaura Ghat on June 27 1857 is from Thomson’s book.

5. Glosters Tripod.com lists Lt Fraser as being missing in action on June 8, 1857. The alternative story is detailed on

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~akrb61/people/wray/d11.htm#i2652

WRAY MEMORIALS IN THE LADY CHAPEL AT ST ANDREW’S, AYSGARTH

Several members of the Wray family served in India as can be seen from the memorials. That on which Ann Fraser is listed as the “Heroine of Cawnpore” is under the East window (below) in the Lady Chapel and is hidden behind the altar table. The window illustrates the life of Jacob.

Brass plate under East window: To the memory of George Wray of Thoralby Town Head in this parish Esquire who died 14 October 1806 aged 50 an Ann his wife who died 17 March 1795 aged 28 also of their eight sons and the wives and children who died before 1871 of such of their sons as were married namely 1. George Wray of Cleasby in this county Captain Bengal European Regiment born 1785 died 1838, Isabella his widow died 1848 and their third son Christopher Wright WRAY H.M. 87th Royal Irish Fusiliers Surgeon born 1825 killed by an avalanche in the valley of Wardhum in Cashmere 1853 unmarried. 2. Thomas WRAY born 1785 died in infancy. 3. Thomas Fawcet WRAY Lieut. H.M. 7th Fusiliers born 1786 killed at the storming of Badaios 1812 unmarried. 4. Jonathan WRAY born 1787 died 1801 unmarried. 5. John WRAY born 1788 died 1810 unmarried. 6. James Taylor WRAY of Cliff Lodge near Leyburn in this county Esquire born 1790 died 1845 and Sarah his first wife died 1827 also Julia his widow died 1860. 7. Septimus WRAY of Brixton in the county of Surrey M.D.M.R.C.P. Lond. Born 1792 died 1869 his first wife Frances died 1846 and their daughter Fanny Julia born 1831 died 1852 unmarried. 8 Octavius WRAY Surgeon Bengal European Regiment born 1793 died at Agra in the East Indies, 1836, Sarah his widow died 1870 and their eldest daughter Anne Fawcet “The Heroine of Cawnpore” wife of George William Fraser 27th Bengal Native Infantry died at Cawnpore in the East Indies 1857.

Other Wray memorials:

Brass plate: Here lies the body of George WRAY of Thoralby who departed this life January the 14th in the 78th year of his age and the year of our Lord 1785 also of Jane his wife who departed this life April 16th in the 80th year of her age and in the year of our Lord 1788.

Brass plate: In memory of Jonathan Wray of Easthome who died on the 17th January 1780 also of Mary his wife who died on the 28 November 1803. Tablet: In memory of George Wray Esq of Townhead House Thoralby who died October 14 1806 aged 49, Anne his wife who died March 17 1795 aged 27 also of their sons Thomas Fawcet who died an infant December 13 1785, Thomas Fawcet killed in action in Spain April 6 1812 aged 25, Jonathan who died April 26 1801 aged 13, John who died February 18 1812 aged 23. This monument was erected by George, James, Septimus and Octavius surviving sons of George and Ann Wray.

Tablet: In memory of Jonathan Wray late of Eastholme Gent. Who died 1 august 1811 aged 51 years. Also in memory of Agnes widow of the above who died January 21 1843 aged 82 years and of their only child William Robinson Wray of Eastholme who died May 2nd 1861 aged 70 years.

Brass plate: To the Glory of God and in memory of Melesina wife of George Octavius WRAY formerly solicitor and Magistrate of Police in Calcutta in which city she died on the 23rd day of July AD 1860. This brass is also in loving memory of the George Octavius Wray LL.D. formerly of Calcutta afterwards of Hestholme in this parish and of the Inner Temple, London. Barrister-at-Law. In 1872 he took Holy Orders and was Vicar of Brockenhurst in Hampshire for 8 years. He died at Surbiton in Surrey on the 18th March 1893 and his remains are buried outside this window.

Brass plate: In memory of Alfred WRAY the beloved son of the Reverend George Octavius WRAY LL.D. and Caroline Elizabeth his wife formerly all of Hestholme in this parish. He was born at Cambridge 18 August 1867. He died at Bedford 15 August 1885. ‘My grace is sufficient for me for my strength is made perfect in weakness.’

Brass plate: In loving memory of my husband George Crofton WRAY eldest son of the late Rev. Geo. Octavius WRAY LL.D. and of Melassina WRAY who died October 5th 1914 aged 54 also of our darling only child Sisselle Vivien wife of Col. G.Stanley BRIGHTEN D.S.O. who died February 19 1918 aged 22 ‘Jesus Mercy’

The Lady Chapel was furnished by members of the Wray and Winn families.

At a private meeting on February 7 the Hambleton, Richmondshire and Whitby Clinical Commissioning  Group decided to downgrade the maternity and paediatric services at the Friarage Hospital, Northallerton.

The Group decided that instead of having a 24-hour consultant-led service at the Friarage children will only be treated at that hospital from 10am to 10pm seven days a week. Children who are very sick will be referred to the nearest major hospital for specialist inpatient care.

An extraordinary meeting of North Yorkshire County Council’s scrutiny of health committee will be held on March 14 to discuss whether the Group had properly examined alternative options. These are outlined below.

14.12.2013:

Proposals to downgrade the maternity service at the Friarage Hospital, Northallerton  by the Hambleton, Richmondshire and Whitby Clinical Commissioning Group (HRWCCG) could lead to the complete loss of that facility, according to a report¹ prepared for Richmondshire District Council. The report goes on to show how, for £200,000 each year, it would be possible to retain the present excellent maternity and paediatric services at the Friarage Hospital.

The alternative model for the maternity and paediatric services put forward by Richmondshire District Council (RDC)  led by Coun John Blackie, has received the support of local MP, William Hague, who stated:

“It is a much more attractive option than the proposed downgrade of maternity and paediatric services at the Friarage Hospital and it deserves the most careful scrutiny by the CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group) with a view to making it work.

“I applaud the work that has been done to create an alternative proposal and it if is not adopted I and many other local people will want to know in great detail why it cannot be made to work.”

The RDC report, which includes that alternative model for the future provision of children’s and maternity services at the Friarage, has been compiled by Richmondshire district councillors John Blackie and John Robinson, and by the district council’s scrutiny support officer, Penny Hillary.

Coun Blackie, who is leader of Richmondshire District Council (RDC), visited six hospitals² similar in size to the Friarage, and occasionally was accompanied by Coun Robinson and Mrs Hillary. The HRWCCG has put forward two options for the future of the maternity and paediatric services at the Friarage which, it argued, would ensure the sustainability of these. Both options were for a midwife-led unit for women with low risk births and to provide community midwifery and outpatient services locally.

At its meeting on November 20 the RDC decided that neither of the two options put forward by the HRWCCG would meet the healthcare needs or the local communities of Richmondshire and, therefore, rejected them. It stated that patient choice had not been taken into account, and that the proposals were not in the interests of the local community nor in the interest of local health services.

At present the Friarage has a consultant-led maternity unit, which the RDC report pointed out, provides a first class service, an excellent safety record and enjoys the full confidence of the communities it serves. The report adds that the options put forward by the HRWCCG would have a significantly detrimental impact on the services provided to the women, children and families within Richmondshire and Hambleton in the future.

And the removal of consultants from the unit would not only mean the loss of the gynaecology service at the Northallerton hospital but increase the danger of losing the midwife-led unit as well.

According to this report the number of births at Hartlepool Hospital fell from 1,680 to 300 a year after it changed to a midwife-led unit in 2006. The Royal College of Midwives has warned that midwife-led units with fewer than 300 births a year are unlikely to be financially viable.

So the RDC report states:“The experience at Hartlepool casts a shadow over the long term future of any freestanding midwife-led unit  established at the Friarage, as it had a higher number of births when consultants were present than the Friarage has now, and the retention rate for a midwife-led unit birth is only 300.

“Nearly 1,300 (a year) choose the Friarage where they can currently have the option of a high tech or low tech birth. They do not have to make a choice about safety because the safety record is excellent and they know a consultant is on hand if needed.

“It is important to note that midwives need to maintain their skills too and too little activity at a midwife led unit would soon lead to a deterioration of skill base, a problem with staff retention and more importantly the safety risk to mothers and babies.”

The RDC report explains: “In order to achieve sustainability there is no dispute that the situation does have to change because people are retiring or have retired and they need to be replaced. In addition the service should have had investment in it before now but the Trust has relied on the goodwill of the present consultants to carry the service up to this point.

“It is considered that the situation in paediatrics (at the Friarage) has been exacerbated by chronic understaffing and underfunding for several years by the South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust.”

When the Friarage was merged with that Trust in 2003 local residents were assured that being part of a larger Trust would enable a greater range of services to be maintained at the Northallerton hospital, and that the Trust was committed to retaining healthcare services there which would benefit the local communities.

Instead the Trust expects to invest in the services at the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough so as  to provide sufficient capacity for an increase in patients, both from the new housing developments in Teesside and from the Dales when the units at the Friarage are downgraded.

At the consultation meeting in Hawes to discuss the two options put forward by the HRWCCG Fran Toller, the head of maternity services at the South Tees Trust, stated that the patient experience of mothers-to-be whilst in confinement at the James Cook University hospital was just “adequate”.

The RDC report states: “A solution to address the capacity problems experienced by the James Cook University Hospital would be to promote giving birth at the Friarage. The slightly similar smaller faculty with an excellent safety record and an ethos of a family circle approach to care would be the ideal place to have a memorable and unpressured birth experience. .. This will increase the number of live births at the Friarage, maintain/improve the skills of the clinical staff, and will balance sustainability at both hospitals.”

The option preferred by the HRWCCG would also mean there would be no consultants available for the paediatric unit. Instead there would be just a short stay paediatric assessment unit at the Friarage. This would be open five days a week from 10am to 10pm with the last child being seen no later than 8pm.

The RDC report states: “Our visits to various small hospitals indicate that the busiest time for patients to arrive at their paediatric unit is between 6.00pm and 11.00pm at night. To set the time at 8.00pm for the last child to be examined cuts the service off from the greatest number of its potential users. Our visits also indicate that the numbers of patients arriving at the paediatric units throughout the day and evening at weekends is very little different to those on Monday-Friday.”

The HRWCCG has also stated that under both options there would no longer be a high risk obstetric service or a special care baby unit at the Friarage.

The RDC report gives the example of a child or baby in Thirsk requiring a journey of over 40 minutes to reach an open access paediatric unit as compared to 15 minutes now. The parents in that situation might even have to call for an ambulance, rather than taking their child to a hospital themselves.

But those in Upper Wensleydale face even longer journeys as the RDC report points out: “The distance from Hawes to the Friarage Hospital at 38 miles is already a long enough journey for a woman in labour. There have been a number of occasions when expectant mothers have given birth to their babies in lay-bys on route to the Friarage. The idea of them having to travel another 22 miles to James Cook is totally unacceptable to them.”

It adds that it is understood that the recommended safe transfer time from one hospital to another when a mother is experiencing difficulties giving birth is 30 minutes – and yet even with no road closures on the A19, the journey from the Friarage to Middlesbrough can take longer than that. In the past three years the A19 has been closed 18 times with some closures lasting several hours.  The RDC report states:

“It appears the local NHS is prepared to take these risks to patient safety on board to downgrade the service at the Friarage on the back of a case they claim to have been devised on grounds of patient safety.”

It points out that the Yorkshire Ambulance Service is frequently not reaching call-outs within eight minutes in rural areas of North Yorkshire and the lack of facilities at the Friarage could lead to more people calling for ambulances.

And it is not just expectant mums and parents with children who would be affected by these longer journeys. Those visiting them at the James Cook University Hospital will incur considerable extra expenditure in both fuel and car parking costs and time to reach and return from Middlesbrough if they are unable to use the proposed free bus service from Northallerton.

Army families living at Catterick Garrison would also be affected – even though the military GP practices which serve them did not appear to have been included in the discussions about downgrading the facilities at Northallerton.

As the RDC report points out, when the Duchess of Kent hospital at Catterick Garrison (which had a maternity wing) was closed down in the 1980s the Army families were told: “Do not worry – there will always be the Friarage for maternity.”

The report adds:“Research shows that the structure of the population amongst the MoD families in Catterick Garrison, the largest Army Garrison in Western Europe, is heavily weighted towards young families. The peace of mind of the soldiers who serve our Nation overseas… has been completely overlooked in the consultation.”

One of the key arguments for downgrading the Friarage Hospital is that it would cost £2.7million to upgrade to a consultant-delivered service. This was described in the RDC report as an unnecessary and extravagant upgrade aimed at bringing the units up to the standard of the Royal College Guidelines.

The Royal College Guidelines provide staffing recommendations which are not even met by the James Cook University Hospital.

The RDC report notes that the £2.7 million would be offset by the £2 million of lost patient income to the South Tees NHS Trust as many patients would chose to go to hospitals not administered by the Trust if services were downgraded at the Friarage. There would also be costs of about £500,000 to cover the free bus service from Northallerton to Middlesbrough and the additional ambulance service required.

Then there was the question of how much it would cost to increase the capacity at the James Cook University Hospital which has ranged from £1 million to £10 million. This, the RDC report states, gives credence to the statement from the South Tees NHS Hospital Trust that “taking into account both changes in cost and likely loss of income the Trust’s financial position will be adversely affected by all of the options considered.”

The children’s and maternity services at the Friarage have already been upgraded to 1st class status thanks to a multi-million investment into the facilities at that hospital several years ago. “Judged by the experience of the other small hospitals …. You could continue a very safe and sustainable 24/7 consultant-led service for £200,000 annually,” the RDC report states and adds:“The South Tees NHS Trust suggests that the main problems at the Friarage stems from recruiting staff who want to work at small hospitals, and also the clinicians not overseeing enough work to maintain their skills, particularly in paediatrics.

“However our evidence confirms that other small hospitals find ways to recruit staff, plan complaint rotas, maintain skills and carry out forward planning well in advance of staff retirements.”

It was noted that one of the features of the hospitals which were visited was the absolute buy-in by all the staff and the management so as to retain the best services for local communities. And the RDC report states:

“There needs to be a change in culture at the (Friarage) hospital particularly amongst the consultants and the management.”

It adds:“Our model is based on the South Tees Hospital NHS Trust undertaking genuine initiatives to promote and encourage additional patient footfall for the 24/7 consultant-led maternity services at the Friarage.”

The Trust would also have to encourage consultants to take part in a high level of rotation, which according to the RDC report, is something those permanently based at the James Cook University Hospital have had little appetite for.

The RDC report accepted that there were few training posts on the rotas of the small hospitals that were visited. But those hospitals got round that by using Speciality Doctors and also Clinical Research Fellows if close to universities.

The RDC Model put forward for the Friarage includes using Advanced Nursing Practitioners (otherwise known as Specialist Nurses) as part of a bespoke solution particularly as there is a lack of middle grades in the Friarage’s paediatric service. It could take up to three years to train a midwife or a paediatric nurse up to such a level. The South Tees Hospital NHS Trust would need to identify potential candidates from its own nursing staff and embark on a training programme immediately.

“Whilst the training programme is being established it may be necessary to employ a generalist consultant paediatrician to backfill, and we understand from our enquiries that there are a reasonable number of quality generalists available for recruitment at this time.”

The consultants recruited to serve at the Friarage would be required to live within 20 miles of the hospital and to take part in an on-call rota. None of the six hospitals visited had experienced any problem with recruiting consultants.

The RDC Model envisages that its proposed staffing structure would allow the vitally important 24/7 open access and acute open access services for children with complex health conditions, and the special care baby unit service to continue as they are now. It would also call for the South Tees Hospital NHS Trust to investigate the establishment of a Young Persons Unit like that at Yeovil District Hospital.

Endnotes

1.Response to Proposals within the Consultation Document on Options for the Future of Children’s and Maternity Services at The Friarage Hospital Northallerton and Our Model for the Future Provision of Children’s and Maternity Services, November 2013.

The full report, with the RDC Model and appendices can be viewed at www.richmondshire.gov.uk

2. Hospitals visited:

In October 2012 – North Devon Hospital, Barnstaple, Yeovil District Hospital, Dorset County Hospital

In October 2013 – Borders Hospital, Melrose, Dr Grays, Elgin, West Grampian, Dumfries and Galloway Hospital

And also Bassetlaw Hospital, Worksop

Hidden behind the prayer tree near the Lady Chapel in Aysgarth church is a small brass plaque commemorating the life of Lieut. Colonel Alban Wilson D.S.O. who died at West Burton in April 1928. He spent the majority of his military service as an officer with the 44th Gurkha (Rifle) Regiment (later 8th Gurkha Rifles) helping to secure the British empire’s northern borders on the India sub-continent, especially around Pasighat in Arunachal Pradesh and in Nagaland. That certainly doesn’t explain how he came to hold an extremely rare medal awarded by the German princely state of Waldeck and Pyrmont (below)

His full name was James Alban Wilson and he was born in Warrington. Lancashire, in February 1865. It is likely that he attended Uppingham School in the early 1880s¹ and in 1885 joined the 3rd Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders militia.

He gained his first commission with the Seaforth Highlanders (Ross-shire Buffs, the Duke of Albany’s) in 1887 and became a 2nd lieutenant in November 1887. Two years later he transferred to the 44th Gurkha (Rifle) Regiment of the Bengal Infantry of the Indian Army². From then until the 1st World War gained promotions and honours by taking part in punitive expeditions against unruly tribesmen in the North East and North West of India.

In 1895 he and the 44th Gurkhas were sent to Burma (Myanmar) to take part in counter-insurgency operations. The British had annexed Burma in 1886 after the 3rd Anglo-Burmese war but had not been able to stop the insurgency which followed. And so in 1895, working from an extensive system of small military police posts, small lightly equipped columns were sent out to chase insurgents and punish any villages which harboured them. Villages were burned and property confiscated and by 1895 these punitive expeditions had brought the country fully under British control³.

Wilson was involved in similar campaigns on the N West Frontier of India between 1901 and 1902 but the biggest one of all was that against the Abor (now known as the Adi people) in 1911 to 1912 in the North Eastern enclave the British had claimed which bordered on Tibet, China and Burma. By then the 44th Gurkhas had been renamed the 8th Gurkha Rifles.

The Abor expedition⁴  into what is now part of Arunachal Pradesh was described as a classic punitive expedition to subdue and settle tribesmen who, in their jungle and mountain retreats, were used to being independent. To the nearby Assamese they were savages who raided their farms on the plains beside the young River Brahmaputra. The Abors also attacked saw mills.

The British found it impossible to recruit cooks, sweepers or water carriers in Calcutta when it became known that the campaign would be in Abor Hills, and in Assam it proved just as impossible to recruit coolies. Instead the British turned to another tribe which had not yet fully accepted colonial rule – the Nagas. The Nagas, who were more dreaded that the Abors because of their head-hunting activities , offered to sort out the Abors themselves so long as they could take over the land.

The British had tried a few punitive expeditions before against the Abor but none as large as that led by Major General Hamilton Bower in 1911. This was in retribution for the murder of two British men – an Assistant Political Officer and a doctor – plus some of the coolies who had been travelling with them.

Angus Hamilton in his book about the expedition reported that the Gurkhas made up the bulk of the troops and added: “The Gurkha is the ‘handy-man’ of India, and Gurkha sepoys are deservedly most popular figures with the ‘man in the street’. Short and sturdy, they are as active as cats on the hills, and take to bush warfare instinctively.”

And Bower would comment later: “A better corps for jungle warfare it would be hard to find.”

That was fortunate as the Abors, much to the frustration of the British officers, relied mainly on guerrilla tactics rather than pitched battles. The British led columns faced raging torrents, avalanches, booby traps and arrows tipped with either the poisonous powdered root of the wild aconite or with blood.

Bower was very careful to protect his lines of communication and supply as the columns moved through the thick jungle and up into the hills. Heliographs were in constant use and the sappers laid telephone cables. Wilson (by then a Major) and a couple of companies of the 8th Gurkhas cleared the route for the main column to the first halting place beside the Kemi River en route to Pasighat. Hamilton commented: “A pleasant camp was laid out by the gallant Major’s merry men.”  (Below – Wilson in a camp during the Abor expedition. He is in the foreground with back to the camera.)

From there they could see the jungle and the snow-capped mountains. The Abors believed that their villages were inviolable because the forest was so impregnable with almost impassable undergrowth. On occasions it took an hour to move an army column just one mile and the biting insects and leeches proved to be as difficult and elusive enemies as the Abors.

The sappers and miners used elephants and even dynamite to clear the jungle. And as they moved up into the mountains they had to build bridges across rocky gorges and blast paths out of the precipitous slopes. In one place it took three days to clear two miles.

As it was so difficult to protect a single file of coolies in the forest they were very limited in what they could carry. Officers and civilians accompanying the expedition including a botanist, zoologist and an anthropologist cum geologist were allowed 60lb or even less later in the expedition. Some discarded their pillows for suits of “Burberry’s indispensable Gabardine” and others chose to include their Kodak cameras and films.

The officers personally carried: a Sam Browne belt; a sword, kukri or shotgun; field glasses, revolver and ammo; map, compass; emergency rations; first aid dressing and brandy flask; haversack; water bottle; regulation waterproof; rations for two days; whistle; knife and notebook.

Once they reached the area of the most inhospitable tribes the soldiers had to clear the way themselves as it was too dangerous to send the road making parties ahead even if they had guards. The Abors waited in their stockades perched high above the track ready to rain down arrows and rocks upon the column. In one such attack even Bower was injured.

The British expedition forced the Abors to retreat and there was an attempt to hold peace talks. One of the Abors leaders, however, was killed when en route to the talks. So Major Wilson with 300 Gurkhas was sent to avenge his death. But the Abors fled.

Peace talks did begin after a major village had been burnt and those who had murdered the political officer and the doctor were captured. Wilson was among those who was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) after that expedition.

Bower reported: “He (Wilson) commanded when Lt Col Murray was invalided and carried out his duties to my satisfaction. He has shown energy and enterprise throughout, and has commanded detached bodies on several occasions.”

In February 1913 Wilson led a successful punitive expedition into Nagaland to exact reparation for an attack on a Military Police station. In 12 days with a column which included 216 8th Gurkha Rifles and 250 Military Police, six villages which had been involved in the attack were burned and all the livestock and property destroyed. Over 130 Nagas were killed. It was predicted afterwards that the Nagas in those areas would not defy the Government again or attack any of its representatives⁵.

Following that expedition Wilson was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and in June 1914 he was appointed a Commandant with the 8th Gurkha Rifles. His battalion was sent to Mesopotamia in March 1916 a month before the fall of Al-Kut (now in eastern Iraq). This was one of the most crushing defeats experienced by the British Army with 23,000 British and Indian lives being lost either in Al-Kut or in the attempt to break the siege by the Turkish Army. Those of the 2nd Battalion 8th Gurkhas were among the 8,000 troops taken into captivity during which about half died.

Major General Stanley Maude was much more careful about his supply lines when he took over command of the British Army in Mesopotamia and led a very successful campaign which included recovering control of Al-Kut and then capturing Baghdad in March 1917⁶.

Wilson was put in command of the 21^st Infantry Brigade in May 1916 and returned to command the newly formed 3rd Battalion 8^th Gurkha Rifles in July 1917.

After he retired in May 1918 he began writing. The most collectable of his books is his Trout Fishing in Kashmir which was published in 1920. He also wrote Sport and Service in Assam and Elsewhere, published in 1924.

By the time he died in April 1928 his daughter, Dolores, had divorced her first husband and in September 1927 married William Westenra which meant she became known as Baroness Rossmore of Monaghan. She died in 1981⁷.

There’s nothing in his service in India which explains how Wilson managed to acquire a collection of 300 Polynesian spears, bladed paddles, axes, clubs, daggers and blowpipes. Nor why they were donated, in the 1930s, to the Royal Canadian Military Institute in Toronto⁸.

Nor is there anything to explain how he came to be entitled to wear the Waldeck and Pyrmont order of merit 3^rd class. Only 111 of these medals were awarded between 1878 to 1897 by that small Princely State in Germany⁹.

Sources and  notes:

1.Census return of 1881 – from Ancestry.co

2. My sincerest thanks to Gavin Edgerley-Harris, curator of the Gurkha museum, for providing details of Lt Colonel James Alban Wilson’s military career including the medals he was awarded.

3.Wikipedia

4.Details and photograph from Angus Hamilton’s book In Abor Jungles published by Eveleigh Nash, London, 1912 (a year before Hamilton’s death). Hamilton joined the Abor expedition as the correspondent for the Central News Agency. There was also a Reuter’s correspondent. Now available on openlibrary.org (https://archive.org/stream/inaborjunglesbei00hami)

5.The 1913 Nagaland expedition (known as the Totok Punitive Expedition) –  details from the PhD thesis by Joseph Longkumer submitted to the Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth University in India, doctorate awarded in 2011. http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/2478/7/07_chapter%203.pdf

6.The First World War Mesopotamia Campaigns: Military Lessons on Iraqi Ground Warfare, by LCDR Youssef Aboul-Enein, MSC, USN, Strategic Insights, Volume IV Issue 6 (June 2005), published by the Centre for Contemporary Conflict at www.hsdl.org/?view&did=454685

7. www.thepeerage.com

8.http://www.rcmi.org/index.php?action=display&cat=15

9.On the Wikipedia sites providing information about the princely state of Waldeck and Pyrmont there is no guide to how an Indian Army Gurkha officer came to be awarded that medal. But it was interesting to see that the present hereditary prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont is Wittekind Adolf Heinrich Georg-Wilhelm. He was born in March 1936 and his godfathers were Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler. His father, Josias, had joined the Nazi party in 1929 and became a member of the SS in March 1930.

I edited Peter Leyland’s story about his family in Bainbridge from his talk to the Friends of the Dales Countryside Museum and the oral history recordings I made in 2008. This was first published in the Now Then magazine in 2009. This annual magazine is published by the Friends of the Dales Countryside Museum. Peter died in 2010. His widow is the artist Janet Rawlins.

My great great grandfather was called Alexander Tiplady, or Alec Tiplady, and he was born in Askrigg. He fought in the battle of Waterloo and, when he came back, he married an Askrigg girl called Mary Metcalfe and decided to open a shop in Bainbridge.

He started the general store with groceries and draperies and so on in 1816 and this was carried on by his son John Tiplady. John married Mary Ann Routh from Hawes and they had one daughter, Mary. (Below: John and Mary Ann Tiplady. Drawn by Janet Rawlins from a photo.)

They didn’t go to cash and carry in those days but had commercial travellers who came round touting their wares. A lot of them used to come on the train to Askrigg and they would walk on to Bainbridge carrying their bags and take orders from the shop. One of these commercial travellers, although I don’t think he ever called himself that, was John Leyland from a firm in Bradford. He married Mary and they carried on with the shop after my great grandfather died.

My father was born in 1890. My grandfather died in 1918 just before my mother (Isobel Chapman) and father were married. They were married in 1919 and I was born in 1920. My given name was John because the eldest son of the family for three to four generations had always been John. But my parents wanted to call me Peter and did so. So my nickname is Peter in this part of the world. In the outside world I was called John.

My parents lived (for many years) in the house by the shop on the north side of the road just before the bridge. It was called Tiplady House but in my young days I always remember it being called Tippledy House.

My grandfather started the Bainbridge Electric Supply company in partnership with John Cockburn, the owner of High Mill. They invited W H Burton and Son to create an electricity supply system in Bainbridge. So in 1912 the Bainbridge Electric Lighting Co was established and W H Burton installed a water turbine, manufactured by Gilbert Gilkes of Kendal, in the disused mill wheel house.

This turbine drove a generator producing 6 kw at 110DC. (Later converted to 240volts AC). The old mill leat had been taken from the River Bain by a channel cut in the limestone bed of the river. In 1912 it was taken under the wall of the mill garth to a header tank with a galvanised grid (still there) from which the water was carried in a 15 inch diameter ceramic pipe down past the present Unicorn House and into the mill wheel house.

Half way down the mill garth the pipe runs under an old millstone inscribed “JS 1798″. The original account book shows “Total Cost of Installation of Electric Light in Bainbridge Village being Value of Turbine, Battery, Generator, Cable and Works £415.14.2″. (John Leyland and John Cockburn contributed half each. The prices of electricity per unit were: 6d (2.3p) 1914-1919; 7d (3p) 1920; 8d (3.33p) 1920-23; and 9d (3.75p) 1924-48.

After she remarried and moved to York Isobel still came back to take the meter readings and keep the accounts, having W H Burton and Sons looking after the technical side. It was very astute of her in 1947 to anticipate the nationalisation of electricity by negotiating with Dick Cockburn, son of John Cockburn, to buy his continuing half share for the sum of £400. But it took her six years to reach an agreement for compensation with the newly established Electricity Authority. They finally settled at £1,415 which she found very satisfactory at the time.

I remember as a boy in the 1930s that in autumn the grid on the header tank tended to become blocked by leaves. When the village lights started to dim as a result of the reduced flow of water my brother, Peter, and I were then told to get the brushes and go and sweep the leaves off.

The Tiplady’s shop c 1920s

The other business my grandfather and father developed was as cheese factors.  The cheeses were produced on the farms individually by the farmers. My father used to say that the best cheese came from Coverdale. We used to go to farms in Coverdale, Swaledale and Ravenstonedale to buy cheeses. We were cheese wholesalers really.

I remember a lot of cheeses were mail ordered. They used to wrap them in brown paper and tie them up with strong string and post them. We had a little cart and would drag this to the other end of the village to the post office. I remember going along to Askrigg station with parcels of cheese to deliver to retailers, I suppose, around the country.

Just after the First World War we had an old Austin pickup. I can remember going on a camping holiday with this to Kilnsey. We piled everything into this Austin pickup and went down to Aysgarth and up Bishopdale and we stuck in the middle of Kidstones. So my father turned it round and we went up backwards because reverse gear was lower.

Later on we had a rather more sophisticated van – a huge Willis Overland. It was almost like a converted small bus. We also used to deliver goods (mostly groceries) to all the farms around and my father used to go out every week on a different route (eg Raydaleside including Countersett and Stalling Busk; Aysgarth, West Burton, Newbiggin and part of Bishopdale; and Hawes and Apersett). In those days the road to Raydaleside was really rough, the tracks were potholed, and in bad weather it was terrible. My father would (visit) mainly farmers and bring back the orders on Thursday.

On Friday they would make up the orders (packing them) into little wooden boxes and deliver them on Saturday. This was very good business but it was very hard work. They worked to 7 o’clock in the evening every day except half day on Wednesday and they didn’t work on Sundays.

In the shop there was no self service. You stood at the counter and gave your order. Even in those days Allens in Hawes was a much bigger enterprise than Leylands in Bainbridge. People also went to Leyburn as there was a bus service – the Northallerton Omnibus Service.

The market towns Hawes and Leyburn, were meccas then more than they are now. (When I was small) there were two grocers shops – ours and Alex Chapman’s at the top of the village. And there was a butcher’s. I can’t remember any other shops.

The farmers didn’t come out much then. So the delivery of heavy groceries like sugar was quite a service to them. My father would go into the kitchen of the farmhouse and sit with the farmer’s wife. She would have to give the grocery order for a month. The farmers had horse and little light traps and sometimes would bring their wives and other members of the family to town.

When my father died in 1942 my aunt Edith carried on with the shop with the help of an old stalwart employee Sam Peacock until she retired in… (She died in 2003 aged 104). She had been working in the shop all her life and particularly ran the drapery side. I remember her telling me that she went to Bradford to study millinery and, after she came back, she used to design and decorate hats for the ladies.

My family were the small entrepreneurs of the village with the cheese, the electricity, the grocery and the drapery. They were quite prosperous and my parents sent their two boys and two girls to the Quaker school at Ackworth.

The connection with the Quakers came through the Rouths of Hawes. Mary Ann Routh (my great great grandmother) had a sister, Rebecca, who was housekeeper at Ackworth School until 1910. She was a rather formidable lady and it was quite clear that she was very influential on my grandfather. My parents joined the Society of Friends in the 1920s.

I went to the elementary school in Bainbridge on the green at the top of the village. At the age of 10 my parents put me on the train at Askrigg station and I was told to change at Northallerton and York and find my way to Pontefract. It was a benign world for young travellers. I came back for holidays and at the age of 16 my father sent me off by train to London where I was articled to a firm of chartered accountants. I enjoyed my time in London – it was so exciting to live away and have this independent life at such an early age.

For the story of his work with the Friends’ Ambulance Unit in China during the 2nd World War see http://www.pipspatch.com/2008/08/08/memories-of-war-time-china/

The first to get close up and personal with the large poppies placed on the Peace and Remembrance Wall at Bainbridge Quaker Meeting House in Wensleydale  in March was a horse! The appearance of the 4ft diameter brightly coloured poppies (created at Gayle Mill)  spooked her and she had to be gently introduced to them.

The objective of the wall is to give people the opportunity to make their individual remembrances and expressions of their attitudes towards war and peace. They can post their own comments on the wall, as well as decorating it with ribbons or with poppies from the last Remembrance Day.

The Meeting House is open from 10.30am to 12.30pm each Wednesday with materials being available for posting messages on the wall. Some Friends will be there to answer questions and chat.

In the next few months displays will be developed illustrating the local involvement in the two World Wars. The first explains the Quaker views on peace and the work of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit (FAU).

The Bainbridge Quaker Meeting has its own special link with the FAU for during the 1st World War as John Leyland of Bainbridge was one of the 96 volunteers with the Unit to be awarded the Croix de Guerre for continuing to work when under fire along the Western Front. His son, Peter, served with the FAU in China in the 2nd World War. (See also A Bainbridge Family )

The poppies were created at Gayle Mill by David Pointon, a member of the Bainbridge Quaker Meeting. He was very grateful to those at the Mill who made that possible.

Below: David at work at Gayle Mill as seen through a 19th century water powered saw.  Ian Fraser (a Gayle Mill director) and Lynda Casserly assist David as he makes the first cut. And another director, Mike Thompson, used the 19th century saw to produce the poppy centres.

Below: Mounting the poppies on the railings outside Bainbridge Quaker Meeting House to start the Peace and Remembrance Wall.

And the first message to be placed on the Peace and Remembrance Wall:

This month I have returned to the Carperby Community First Responder (CFR) team after a 10-week break. Our team owes a big thank you to David Brampton who remained on call for days on end in February when others were not available. We would love some more to join us…. I wrote this article for the Upper Wensleydale Newsletter to explain why community first responders are so needed. Above: our first responder kit complete with defibrillator and oxygen.

I’ve been a community first responder for 13 years and I have never been so aware of the need for more volunteers especially in mid Wensleydale.

I’ve never had many “shouts” since joining the Carperby CFR team but when I have been sent by the ambulance service to a patient I have always been surprised at how useful someone like myself can be. The only training I’ve ever had has been with the Ambulance service. Since July 2006 that has been with the Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) which ensures we have the skills and knowledge to deliver emergency first aid and resuscitation until the arrival of a health care professional.

Sadly these days we often have to wait longer for an ambulance to arrive because slowly but surely the hospital facilities we require in our rural area have been moved further and further away from us. This means that the ambulance based at Bainbridge can be out on a shout for five hours or more if a patient needs to be taken to the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough. While it is unavailable, ambulances have to be sent from Richmond, Northallerton, Harrogate, Pately Bridge or even further away.

As I found last year, for a patient living on their own the arrival of a first responder can be a great relief. A first responder can also take care of those little but oh so important jobs such as finding a neighbour to lock up the patient’s house and to make sure that their family knows what has happened. One of our team members has also sorted out care for pets while their owners were in hospital.

Last year I had a shout to assist a young couple parked in a layby somewhere between Aysgarth and Worton. They had started their journey in high spirits looking forward to a long walk up on the moors above Hawes. But then the man was struck down with severe chest pains.

I found them and gave oxygen therapy to the 25-years-old man until the ambulance arrived. He was then taken to hospital. But what about his partner? She didn’t know the area and was in no fit state to drive to Middlesbrough.

So I told her to follow me to my house. After an hour or so she felt able to travel to Middlesbrough safely. (Once there she learnt that he had pericarditis.)

On another occasion I was asked to attend even though the ambulance would arrive before me probably because the spouse of the patient needed help.

It is fulfilling serving our community in this way and I would encourage more to join us. Every little bit helps even if you can only be available a few days of each month.

The training course generally takes around 19 hours and may be held either in the evenings or at weekends. It includes how to use the automated external defibrillator and give cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and oxygen therapy, as well as an understanding of the various medical conditions one might encounter. We also have regular practical training sessions and six-monthly assessments with a very helpful and supportive Community Defibrillation Trainer.

The Easter Sunday service at St Andrew’s Church, Aysgarth has become a great family favourite and this year there was lots of fun for the children – and a special farewell to organist Richard Wilkinson.

He has been the organist for 20 years and many contributed to the farewell gift which was presented to him by John Foster (above – L to R, Rev Yeadon, Richard and John) .

John commented: “To be a church organist is a big commitment – much more than just playing on Sundays. Richard has brought to it an encyclopaedic knowledge of church and organ music. He has served us incredibly well.”

Members of Aysgarth Methodist chapel were at the service because Dr Wilkinson has been a local preacher in the Methodist circuit since 1987.

There were also many families because of the special Easter activities for children. They and the adults thoroughly enjoyed the Rev Penny Yeadon’s talk in which she used, with the help of some of the youngsters, Easter eggs to explain the Easter story and the importance of Christ’s resurrection. Then the children had gone into the Lady Chapel to paint hard-boiled eggs and create their own miniature gardens. Some members of the church had certainly put a lot of work into making it a fun service.

When it ended everyone accepted the Rev Yeadon’s invitation to sit and listen to Richard play the Chorale Improvisation for Organ No 65 by Siegfried Karg-Elert: Nun danket alle Gott (Now thank we all our God). He was warmly applauded – and then the children with their parents and grandparents went outside to enjoy rolling the eggs they had decorated.

Later Richard (who never accepted payment as an organist) said: “I would have very gladly paid the church for the privilege of playing at St Andrew’s because it’s a marvellous organ and they are super people there. I love playing at the services.

“It is a Victorian organ but it is, in fact, remarkably like the organs of the Bach day – astonishingly similar. So it is perfectly possible to play Bach satisfactorily on it.”

The organ was installed in 1880 by M Abbot of Leeds from a design by J M Bottomley of Middlesbrough.

Richard will be playing at a few more services at St Andrew’s before he and his wife, Ann, move to Warwickshire on June 1. Geoff Hirst is now the chief organist at St Andrew’s.

Below: Richard and Geoff chatting before the service

and a little boy concentrating on rolling an egg

“These small projects are so exciting and so memorable,” commented Andrea Burden of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s Sustainability Development Fund when she was in Thornton Rust to celebrate with villagers the upgrading of the car park in the Outgang.

That morning YDNPA’s Champion for Sustainable Development, Chris Clark, presented Aysgarth and District Parish Council with a cheque for £3,740 from the fund towards the cost of the refurbishment.  He said: “It is absolutely fantastic that communities like Thornton Rust have come together to improve this facility and the environment.”

He told them that since he moved to Oughtershaw in Langstrothdale in 2005 he has become a Buckden parish councillor. He is now a parish council representative on the National Park Authority.

In response Thornton Rust parish councillor David Pointon said: “I want to thank all those who have been so deeply involved in this and the YDNPA for its support.  I know most people in the village have contributed in one way or another – everybody has done their little bit which just shows that this village is the best one to live in in the Dales!”

Many villagers braved a cold wind to attend the presentation and to see the interpretation board which the YDNPA has created. They were joined by Eleanor Scarr and Owen Metcalfe who grew up in the village and provided a lot of information about how the sheep fold and sheep dip were used in the past. For more about that read their story in the November 2017 issue of Now Then which is on sale at the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes for just £2.

The interpretation board will be installed in about a week’s time said Mark Sheard, who led the team which carried out so much of the work on a voluntary basis.

For more about the Outgang project click here.

Below: Chris Clark (left) presenting the cheque to Cllr John Dinsdale (chairman of Aysgarth and District Parish Council)  and Cllr David Pointon.

Mark Sheard (left) and Martyn Donno with the interpretation board

Looking up the Outgang towards the car park and the moors beyond.

Three men on a bench: Chris Clark, Mark Sheard and Martyn Donno

The rich family life of Tom Knowles was celebrated at the St Peter and St Paul RC church in Leyburn – and it was for his family and as someone who cherished and loved to share the beauty of the Yorkshire Dales that he founded the Association of Rural Communities.

“Grandad taught us family is an important support centre.,” Sarah Jayne Mitchell said in her tribute to him, during which his other grandchildren and some of his great grandchildren joined her at the front of the church to say their own quiet farewell.

She told a packed church that Tom had been born in Durham in August 1933 and baptised Thomas Henry. His family moved to Darlington five years later and after he left school he went into farming in Wensleydale with the Iveson family at Wensley.

He met Margaret Lambert at a National Farmers’ Union dance in Leyburn in 1953 and they married two years later. Tom commented after she died four years ago: “We loved working in each other’s company and we were a great loving team.”

When they moved to Westholme near Aysgarth in 1958 it was just a small dairy farm. Not long afterwards they were asked by the then Vicar of Aysgarth, the Rev John Benson, if they would let boy scouts camp there two to three weeks a year.

Soon after this they started catering for the parents of boy scouts and many others for Tom and Margaret certainly understood how important it was to encourage people on more restricted incomes to visit the Dales. Some of those people later came to live in the area.

Local people also enjoyed the food at the camp site restaurant and the discos. “Many of us were lucky enough to share those days. We now have some great memories of the beautiful place at the end of the rainbow known as the ‘wreck’”, said Sarah. But Yorkshire Dales National Park planning officers tried to close the campsite and eventually created a situation whereby the site could become a luxury lodge park where campers and touring caravans were not welcome. (see below)

After Tom and Margaret took over a bed and breakfast business with a restaurant in 1988, Tom became an Aysgarth and District parish councillor. He was remembered at this year’s Aysgarth Township meeting as being a generous man who bought the village its first Christmas tree with lights.

His experience as a parish councillor made him well aware of the growing anger towards what was then the Yorkshire Dales National Park committee and he poured out his frustration in a letter to the D&S in 1995. Even he was surprised by the huge response to that letter.

He spent the last part of that year attending large angry meetings from Askrigg and Garsdale to Kettlewell and the Association of Rural Communities was born. As the association’s president he summed up very clearly in 1998 some of the major problems facing the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority.

“The Yorkshire Dales should be a prosperous area with young people able to have families in thriving villages and towns, and able to earn a living without having to leave their local communities. The most important issue facing the YDNPA is how they can improve the local economy which is necessary to keep the younger generations employed in the area. Instead they are being driven out as there are too many second homes and holiday homes,” he said.

He continued helping to monitor YDNPA planning meetings for the association after he and Margaret moved to Spennithorne in 1996. Retirement also gave him time to indulge in cooking and baking.

Sarah explained: “Grandad had many hobbies which included painting, gardening and baking. This made him well known in [local] show circles for winning many cups and prizes.”

Tom and Margaret had three children – Carolyn Bowe (who died in 2003), Jacquie Dinsdale and Tony Knowles, as well as 13 grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren with one more due on what would have been his birthday.

Father James Blenkinsopp officiated at the funeral mass and the bearers were Tom’s grandsons: Paul Knowles, Stephen Bowe, and Keith, Stuart, Ryan and Chris Dinsdale.

The collection of £470 will be shared between St Peter and St Paul RC church and Yorkshire Air Ambulance.

Tom began writing to the planning department in 2007 asking about the basis on which the holiday park at Westholme was being remodelled. The Association of Rural Communities assisted him and after several letters it found out that the planning department had given approval for the remodelling on condition that the site could no longer be used for pitching tents, touring caravans, trailer tents or mobile homes. This, it was stated, would be for the “benefit to the natural beauty of the landscape” partly because there would be no brightly coloured tents. The site has now become a multi-million pound eco lodge site.

Pianist Yasmin Rowe captivated her audience at St Andrew’s, Aysgarth, on April 21 with a memorable performance for the Wensleydale Concert Series which encompassed music by Bach, Bartok, Beethoven and Schumann.

She is well known for her eclectic performances and this was certainly true in the first half with the complete contrast between Bach’s Partita No 2 in C Minor to her commanding and dramatic rendition of Bartok’s Suite for Piano Op.14.

One of the most memorable performances of the evening, however, was the second movement of Beethoven’s Sonata No 7, Op. 10. She fluently used the full range of the keyboard to share the phases of melancholic depression offset by those fleeting moments of joyful, tingling highs.

She finished with an exuberant and thoroughly enjoyable performance of Schumann’s Humoreske Op. 20.

This was an excellent start to this year’s Wensleydale Concert Series (WCS). On May 12 Tanya Anisimova is presenting a solo cello recital at Aysgarth church which will include works by JS Bach, Marais, Kodaly and herself. Carol Haynes of the WCS has arranged Anisimova’s first visit to the UK.

Her itinerary includes leading a masterclass in Carperby village institute on Saturday May 12 and a cello workshop on Sunday May 13. Anyone who participates in the masterclass and workshop (costing £65) will receive a free ticket to the concert at Aysgarth church. Anisimova is also giving a solo recital at Ushaw College Chapel in Durham on Saturday May 19, followed on the Sunday by a Schumann Cello Concerto study day with the Cobweb Orchestra at Eldon Community Centre. For more details about her British tour see the Wensleydale Concert Series website.

The next three WCS concerts are all at Aysgarth church: the Treitler Quartet with pianist Nico de Villiers on Saturday June 16; a clarinet and piano recital by Peter Cigleris and Martin Cousin on Thursday July 12; and a recital for violin and piano by Martyn Jackson and Petr Limonov on Saturday August 11.

There are three more concerts in the series this year two of which being afternoon ones in Carperby village hall: The New World String Trio on Sunday September 9; and an afternoon of baroque instrumental and vocal music with the Eboracum Baroque on Sunday November 4.

Two favourites of the WCS series, pianist Daniel Grimwood and violinist Fenella Humphreys, return on Saturday September 29 for a chamber music concert at Aysgarth church. As part of a fundraising idea of the WCS (which is now a registered charity) they have agreed to participate in a concert with two amateurs – Michael Cave, a superbly talented flautist, and Carol Haynes (making her debut as a cellist in a chamber concert).

It is now possible to buy a season ticket for this year for £75 which is equivalent to a saving of two concerts on the advance booking price of £12.50 or three concerts at the door price of £15. See www.wensleydaleconcertseries.co.uk for more information.

A Festival of Remembrance will be held at St Andrew’s Church, Aysgarth, over the weekend of November 9 to 11 to celebrate the centenary of the signing of the Armistice which brought World War 1 to an end.

This is a community event and it is hoped many will become involved in various ways especially if they live in or have connections with Aysgarth parish (Aysgarth, Thornton Rust, Carperby, West Burton, Thoralby and Bishopdale).

Rishi Sunak MP will officially open the festival at the preview on the Friday evening. The flower festival and exhibition will then continue until 4pm on Sunday, followed by a quiet hour in the Lady Chapel. It is planned that the exhibition will show how the war affected the lives of local people: the men who fought and returned as well as those who were killed; the women who volunteered as nurses; and not forgetting those who stayed behind to run the farms and to keep the home fires burning.

Pip Land and Penny Ellis are preparing the exhibition. If you have anything that could be included such as mementos, photographs or stories of WWI do please leave a comment on this post and I will contact you. Precious or fragile items can be photographed rather than put on display.

Hawes Band, the Aysgarth Singers and the Songbirds (a children’s choir based at West Burton) are among those participating in the concert on the Saturday afternoon. This will commemorate WWI in words and music.

There will be Acts of Remembrance at war memorials in the surrounding villages around 9.30am on the Sunday followed, at 10.30am, with a gathering at the main gates to the church. The Service of Remembrance will begin at 10.45am preceded by the ringing of muffled bells.

A special altar installation will be created and it is hoped many will make the paper poppies (see above) for it using a simple kit provided by the church – contact me if you wish to help. The poppies can be dedicated to those who served or who were affected by that war or other conflicts and there will be a Book of Remembrance.

There will be a Commonwealth War Graves Commission sign at the church and a printed guide so that people can visit the WWI memorials in the graveyard.

At 7pm on the Sunday the un-muffled bells will be rung as part of the nationwide armistice celebration.

Apart from the preview there will be no charge to attend this Festival but donations will be welcome.

Leaving the Bainbridge, Askrigg and West Burton Federation of schools (BAWB) may be the only way of saving West Burton CofE School parents said on May 1.

They told Burton cum Walden annual parish meeting that the latest bussing option put forward by the governors of BAWB would lead to the closure of West Burton school.

In its newsletter on April 20 the BAWB Federation stated that “Option 3A” provided the best opportunities for all its pupils and would get the federation back on track financially. It asked parents to help successfully implement the changes which would, it said, benefit their children.

According to a letter sent to parents on April 19 by BAWB that option would involve bussing all the Key Stage 1 and Foundation Stage children (aged four to seven) from West Burton to Bainbridge for lessons each day. This would  leave only  17 children at West Burton school.

At the meeting in West Burton village hall parents said that after two years at Bainbridge school their children would want to remain with their friends and so not return to West Burton.

West Witton parish councillor Graham Bottley said: “If we don’t do anything the school will be closed. I don’t want to stand by and let that happen. If it is de-federated and then closes the school can say it had control of its own destiny. It needs a period of stability to allow the school to thrive.”

“We have been asking for years to have a West Burton school parent on the governing board of BAWB. Because we have no representation we don’t know what they are talking about. We only get the final decision.”

He said that in the past two years there had been various proposals for bussing children between the three schools which had created uncertainty and instability. Some parents had, therefore, chosen to send their children elsewhere and so the numbers at West Burton school  had decreased.

Like other West Witton parents he was against an option which would lead to the youngest children travelling by bus to West Burton and then on another to Bainbridge each day.

He mentioned the proposed new housing development at West Witton where over 60 per cent of the applicants for the affordable homes were young families. If there wasn’t a good school nearby they were likely to choose to live elsewhere and this would affect the dynamics of the village as the community needed a range of age groups, he said.

North Yorkshire County councillor John Blackie reported that at a recent meeting at the Aysgarth Falls Hotel  21 parents of children at West Burton school had unanimously agreed that if Option 3A was approved the school should become independent again.

Cllr Blackie added: “My own view is that if 3A is adopted there won’t be a West Burton school by September next year.”

Cllr Bottley said he believed an independent West Burton school would be viable and could be de-federated by September this year. “It is quite a short process,” he said. He explained that if the BAWB governors rejected a proposal for de-federation the parents could then apply to the Department of Education.

Fran Cartwright said the parents would not decide on what action to take until after the BAWB governors reach a decision on Option 3A on May 10. She  added: “If we do de-federate we will get control of our own budget.”  The consultation period on Option 3A ends on May 3.

Cllr Bottley said that according to their provisional budget an independent West Burton school would make a small loss for a few years. “At the moment the federation is seeing very big losses which the county council is supporting,” he added.

Juliet Madden, who leads collective worship at West Burton school each week, reminded the meeting that when West Burton school joined BAWB it had £70,000 in the bank but that had now all gone.

She praised the teaching staff at West Burton who had maintained an excellent atmosphere even when there were so many  uncertainties. “We have two excellent teachers who do not know if they will be teaching in September,” she said.

Burton cum Walden parish councillor Rowland Dent told the parents: “You have had the experience of being in the federation and clearly you don’t like it. The school has had a good report in the past and good finances so there’s no reason why it can’t return to that – rather than this fickle system where you are being treated like children.”

Parents said that they would like to see the  collaboration between Bainbridge, Askrigg and West Burton schools continue and believed  that the future of Bainbridge and Askrigg schools would not be undermined if West Burton school left the federation.

Above: West Burton school (on left) is an important and integral part of the community.

ARC News Service reports on the meeting of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s ( YDNPA) planning meeting on May 8 when the following were discussed: a proposed barn conversion at Hartlington Raikes; the extension to the Dales Bike Centre, Fremington; and a housing development at West Witton.

Hartlington Raikes – barn conversion

“I don’t want to see that again,” North Yorkshire County councillor Robert Heseltine told planning officers at the meeting.

He was referring to the second reason a planning officer had given for recommending refusal of an application by Matt Mason for a barn to be converted at Hartlington Raikes.

The officer had stated: “The applicant has not entered into a legal agreement that would restrict the use of the building to short term holiday lets and/or local occupancy use and as such, the proposal would not contribute positively to the economic/tourism benefits or to the housing mix of the National Park and would therefore be contrary to … policy.”

Both Cllr Heseltine and North Yorkshire County councillor John Blackie said they had never seen such a reason for refusal like that before. Richmondshire District councillor Yvonne Peacock pointed out that usually planning permission was granted first with a condition that a legal agreement was required.

The planning officer replied: “It’s simply a procedural matter. If it [the application] were to be refused today and it was appealed against, the inspector considering the appeal would see that there wasn’t a legal agreement entered into. When it goes to appeal the only thing that can be considered is what is on the reason for refusal, so the inspector wouldn’t be considering whether it would be a local occupancy at all. He would say the Authority hasn’t objected to a lack of a legal agreement, therefore, I don’t need to require one. That’s why it’s on the recommendation.”

Mr Mason was the first to compare his application with Tug Gill Lathe near Starbotton. In late March a planning inspector overturned the planning committee’s decision to refuse permission for Tug Gill Lathe to be converted into a local occupancy home. In the appeal decision summary the inspector disagreed that the converted barn would have a negative impact upon the landscape and also recognised that the Authority’s policy which allowed roadside barns to be converted required local occupancy or holiday  let legal agreements.

Mr Mason told the meeting that the planning officer had questioned the proximity of the barn at Hartlington Raikes  to a road. But this barn, he said, was closer to a road than that at Tug Gill. He explained:

“I submitted this application in  January 2017 to convert this roadside barn to a family home for my daughter. We would happily sign [a Section 106 agreement] and comply with all the regulations.” On his application he had written that the converted barn would be subject to either local occupancy or holiday let restrictions.

Julie Martin agreed with the planning officer that converting the barn at Hartlington Raikes would detract from the landscape character of the National Park and commented: “I was very concerned about the Tug Gill Lathe decision which, to me, didn’t seem to be the correct interpretation of our policy. In what circumstances can we actually refuse roadside barns?”

Cllr Peacock, however, stated: “It is a judgement as to whether we think that is a roadside barn or it isn’t. Tug Gill Lathe has now been passed so  I personally believe that our policies say that this is okay.”

The majority agreed with her and voted to approve the application. As this was against officer recommendation this decision will have to be ratified at the June meeting.

Cllr Heseltine said he hoped that before then there might be further discussion about the design of the conversion.

The planning officer had stated: “Generally, the conversion has been designed to limit the changes to the building.” He did, however, question the amount of glazing and roof lights. He also said that the removal of a wall between the main barn and an outshot would result in the loss of such heritage features as the feed holes.

West Witton

The number of children at West Burton primary school might not have halved in six years if the housing development at West Witton had gone ahead earlier Cllr Blackie told the meeting.

He pointed out that the site had been listed as being available for affordable housing at the Local Plan inquiry in 2004.

“We’ve taken 14 years to get from a landowner wanting to contribute to the need for affordable housing to actually getting a scheme on the ground. Is there any wonder that young people are voting with their feet to leave the National Park?” he asked.

He told the meeting that the Authority had jibbed and jibbed about how many houses were needed on the site but recently had become more supportive. He added:“Houses on that site in West Witton are within the catchment area for West Burton primary school. The school has gone down in six years from 44 children on the roll to 22. It may not have been in this position if that scheme had come forward quicker – rather than having to go through the bureaucratic log jam that it has.”

Richmondshire District Council councillor Yvonne Peacock said the Authority’s planning officers had worked with the developer and the district council to make sure that the right application was made.

A planning officer reported that there will be 17 houses of which six will remain “affordable” in perpetuity by always being sold at 70 per cent of their market value. Two others will be affordable rental properties retained by the developer, Swale Valley Construction, and managed in conjunction with Richmondshire District Council as long as the latter provides financial support.

“We do need affordable housing to rent but we do now know we need affordable housing to buy as well. A lot of work has gone into this – we have actually got a perfect site and the perfect application,” Cllr Peacock said.

Cllr Blackie explained that when the Authority had approved the application for a second housing development behind the Rose and Crown at Bainbridge it had set a precedent for discounted market properties for sale in perpetuity at 70 per cent.

“I think this is the way forward if you are going to be able to provide houses to purchase rather than to rent, although there is still a need for housing to rent as well,” he remarked.

Ian McPherson noted that some residents in West Witton had objected to the application but that West Witton Parish Council had supported it.

The parish council had accepted there was a proven need for affordable housing but was concerned that there was no provision for single person accommodation and about the potential for the future development of the field. It has asked if a matrix sign could be sited at the bend in the A684 at the western entrance to the village just before the entrance to the development.

Fremington  – Dales Bike Centre

The new management plan for the Dales Bike Centre must be enforced Cllr Blackie told the committee.

Like the rest of the committee he fully approved of the plans put forward by Stuart and Brenda Price to double the size of the Dales Bike Centre at Fremington in Swaledale. But the committee had heard that some residents were unhappy especially as the Bike Centre had not complied with the planning conditions included with the original permission ten years ago.

Paul Evans, on behalf of the residents in Low Fremington, told the committee that, contrary to the original planning conditions, the café was not only being used by cyclists but by other day trippers who arrived by car. He said that residents had not complained about breaches in planning conditions and any disturbances because they had tried to be good neighbours.

He continued: “This new proposal will result in a much large scale 24-hour a day operation which we are told we now have to police by the way of a telephone number – and the impact will increase dramatically.

“Very limited steps have been taken to relieve our concerns. The best we are offered is a six-foot wooden fence that may be better than the previous screening which was never delivered.

“This is a huge development dwarfing the village and creating a tourism hub in a residential location. It has been claimed this will have no impact on either the landscape or local amenity. However, we would say this view has been influenced and skewed by the potential economic gain.”

He asked if the car parking area at the Bike Centre could be moved away from nearby properties and a high stone wall in place of the wooden fence.

Mrs Price said: “We have made every effort to minimise the impact and considered how to manage the expanded business. We are deeply passionate about our community and take an active part in it. “We felt our home village of Fremington was an ideal location to tackle the emerging cycle tourism market. It’s been an amazing time. We have been part of a huge explosion in cycling and cycle tourism in the Yorkshire Dales.

“Our development will provide the vital infrastructure to support the Swale Trail and capitalise on the legacies of the Tour de Yorkshire whilst allowing us to be at the forefront of cycling in Yorkshire.”

Cllr Blackie said how grateful he was for such entrepreneurs who supported the local economy and local communities as well as providing so much pleasure and enjoyment for visiting cyclists.

Cllr Peacock agreed stating: “This application is spot on. We have got to try and encourage people and this is a good way to do it. They [Mr and Mrs Price] have done a wonderful job.”When members asked about the original planning conditions not being kept they were assured that the new management plan would be secured with a section 106 legal agreement.

Embasy

The committee confirmed its decision last month to refuse retrospective planning permission for a raised patio in a garden at Brackenley Lane, Embsay. The members agreed it was high enough to have a significantly harmful impact upon the privacy and residential amenity of a neighbour.

Pip Land attends the YDNPA meetings on a voluntary basis for the ARC News Service to ensure that reports are available to the public. No newspaper reporters attend these meetings and so the ARC News Service is the only independent source of information concerning those meetings. In doing so this service also provides an archive of more detailed reports than can be found in the minutes available from the YDNPA.  If you would like to support this service do join the Association of Rural Communities.

The determination of parents to take back control of their school at West Burton was very clear at Thoralby village hall on Monday May 14. They voted unanimously in favour of seeking de-federation from the Bainbridge, Askrigg and West Burton Federation of Schools (BAWB) because they believed that from September this would no longer provide the best form of education especially for the youngest children enrolled at West Burton school.

The parents of 21 of the 23 children at West Burton CofE school  confirmed that they preferred de-federation from bussing the four to seven-year-olds from West Burton to Bainbridge each school day for lessons. The latter option was approved by the governors of BAWB on May 10 with the intention that it would begin in September.

Speaking for the parents West Witton parish councillor Dr Graham Bottley said that they believed the only route to long term stability for all three schools was for that at West Burton to de-federate. North Yorkshire County councillor John Blackie, who chaired the meeting, described it as the beginning of the campaign to save West Burton school.

“The only way we will save West Burton school and continue the wonderful educational experience that it gives is for it to de-federate,” he said.

Burton cum Walden parish councillor Jane Ritchie described it as a local mini-Brexit. “You must get all the facts first before you jump – we owe that to our children,” she warned.

Cllr Bottley described how the instability about the future of the school had had a negative impact upon the children and their parents. “We want to let the governors of BAWB know that parents have had enough with the uncertainty of the past two years. We just want stability for the school,” he said.

Cllr Bottley said the bussing option would undermine the future sustainability of West Burton school. Parents did not want their young children bussed around the dales or siblings split between three schools, he explained. It was also likely that if children formed friendships at Bainbridge they would not want to return to West Burton.

He added that the instability had created a downward spiral with even less children attending West Burton school. He stated: “There won’t be a school at West Burton in two years.“If you’ve got a good stable school families will move into the area. If you’ve got stability at West Burton school it will grow. And if you’ve got stability at Bainbridge and Askrigg schools they will grow too.”

He believed all three schools would be stronger if that at West Burton de-federated.

Some of the parents spoke of their frustration that they were not represented on the BAWB board of governors and that, as the budgets for the three schools had been amalgamated, they had no say in how the money was allocated.

“A positive point for de-federation would be to be in control of our own budget and make decisions about what we can spend,” one parent said.

Cllr Blackie told them that they would have to make a compelling case for de-federation. They also needed to set up a shadow board of governors. The latter would then form a sub-committee which would negotiate with that of BAWB.

Over eight people have said they are willing to take on what he described as the onerous task of being a member of that shadow board.

The decision to de-federate or not would be made at a private meeting of the BAWB board of governors in July, Cllr Blackie said. He explained that if the BAWB governors agreed to de-federation the shadow board would work alongside it for several months. He thought de-federation could then be completed by January 2019.

He reported that he had been assured that if the BAWB governors agreed to de-federation that bussing the youngest children would not start in September.

Several councillors from Aysgarth and District and Burton cum Walden, agreed that the de-federation of West Burton school was a better option than bussing the youngest children.

Richmondshire District councillor Yvonne Peacock was very concerned about maintaining the quality of education at West Burton school and the possibility of it being closed. She stated: “My worry is the impact upon the community.”

Cllr Bottley commented: “Losing a school has an impact on the whole village. It has an impact on the shops because you have less families and more holiday homes. You might lose the pub – everything interacts.

The schools at Bainbridge and Askrigg will remain in the federation and many of the parents at the meeting at Thoralby village hall said they hoped that the cooperation that had been built up between those and that at West Burton would continue if the latter left.

Cllr Blackie agreed that de-federation didn’t need to be the end of collaboration and emphasised that as a county councillor he would work hard to ensure that all three schools remained open.

John Warren and his wife Judith on their 60th wedding anniversary

Architect John Cecil Turnbull Warren (86) was as happy using his remarkable skills and insights for the refurbishment of West Burton CofE School as he was restoring the Royal Crescent in Bath, advising on the conservation of the Al Gaylani Mosque in Iraq or as an UNESCO World Heritage inspector advising on the suitability of a site for the Terracotta Army in China.

John was a modest man who will be remembered for welcoming everybody to Quaker meetings at Countersett and Bainbridge, where he served as an Elder, Trustee and on the Council of the Wensleydale Friends. So it was no surprise that the Friends’ Meeting House in Bainbridge was packed for his memorial service.

He was born in Surrey, attended Collyers’Grammar School in Sussex, and won a scholarship from the National Coal Board to read Mining Engineering at what is now Newcastle University. After a year he changed to Architecture.

He divided his National Service between the RAF and working as a miner at the Rising Sun Colliery at Seaham Harbour.

“He never lost his love of the colliery experience and his admiration for the men who worked underground,” his daughter, Rebecca Brown said.

In later years he captured his experiences in an exceptional set of paintings of miners at work which were exhibited at Fairfield Mill near Sedbergh in 2012. As an artist using pen and ink, watercolour and oils his work was exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibitions on several occasions.

He married Judith Kershaw in 1957 and, after a period travelling in Turkey studying Ottoman architecture, he set up his own architectural practice (the Architectural and Planning Partnership) in Horsham, West Sussex. Over the years the practice won numerous awards, expanded to having offices from Brighton and London to Baghdad and Mumbai and, during the 1980s, employed about 120 people.

In the 1960s and 1970s, when most Local Authorities were destroying historic architecture, he was consistently involved in the conservation of historic buildings and took this expertise to the Middle East, where he both designed new buildings and conserved historic houses and mosques.

He made annual explorations of remote and inaccessible desert regions in the Middle East and India recording and researching ancient churches and mosque, some of which have now been destroyed or damaged beyond recovery.

Back in England he was also involved in preserving the vernacular buildings of Sussex and he became the founding architect of the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum at Singleton. He was fundamental to its development as one of the most important museums of vernacular architecture. One of the books he wrote was about such vernacular buildings.

This led to a close friendship with surrealist artist Edward James on whose land the museum was site. He helped James to transform his house at West Dean into a college of teaching and conservation of the fine arts which it remains today.

In the 1970s John was the joint founder of the Amberley Chalkpits Industrial History Museum in West Sussex (now the Amberley Museum and Heritage Centre). He was the chairman of the trustees in the 1980s and 1990s.

His architectural and conservation advisory roles throughout the 1980s to the 2000s included with UNESCO, English Heritage, the Built Fabric Advisory Committee for Chichester Cathedral and Nominator for the Aga Khan Awards. He was also a Fellow of the Centre for Conservation Studies at the University of York, lectured at several British universities and supervised and examined a number of PhD theses in the field of historic buildings.

When he retired to Wensleydale in the late 1990s he continued to work on architectural projects whilst also lecturing, writing and painting. He undertook several projects in Wensleydale including the internal modernisation of West Burton CofE School and advising on the conservation of Nappa Hall near Askrigg.

He was a Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and a Fellow of the Royal Town Planning Institute, of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Asiatic Society.

John leaves his wife, his two children, Philip and Rebecca and their spouses, and four grandsons, Christopher, Matthew, Francis and Alex.A Wensleydale Friend said: “John is missed by so many – in Wensleydale, in Britain and throughout the world.”

Below: The family think this was John’s selfie, in the days before mobile phones.

The Stewardship and Celebration Weekend in and around West Witton church (June 6-8) got off to a joyful and special start thanks to Cantabile – the young singers from the Wensleydale School (above).

St Bartholomew’s church was full for this thoroughly enjoyable “Concert for a Summer’s Evening” which began with a foot-tapping rendition of Rhythm of Life. This, and several other items that evening, revealed how well balanced this choir was. The harmonies were often enchanting.

But the most memorable song was Call your girlfriend which the choir leader, Kath Barker, had transposed for the choir, and to which Simon Chorley provided an entertaining accompaniment using a plastic pot. And there were memorable solos by Rachael Binks, Jessica Buck, Kate Chorley, Jo-Ann Lambert, Rayanne McGee and Anya Wagstaff.

The audience was delighted to be share in the end of term farewells to the choir members who were graduating from the school, and each received flowers. (Below – saying farewell with a hug and flowers)

Pimms and canapés were served afterwards and some wandered out into the bunting-bedecked churchyard to enjoy a beautiful summer’s evening. The collection that evening (£320) was shared equally between Cantabile (to cover the cost of new music and travelling expenses) and the school at the Bungokho Rural Development Centre in Uganda.

Not even heavy rain on Saturday could dampen the spirit of the weekend and many made their way to the village playing field where there was a plant and book sale with table top “Swop and Share”. All the stalls along with refreshments were hastily moved into the pavilion when the rain started – but the excellent array of plants and books and the welcome coffee and scones drew many from both the village and further afield. The funds raised went towards the cost of running St Bartholomew’s.

For this was a stewardship weekend aimed at raising awareness of the importance of the St Bartholomew’s within the community. After centuries of service it would be sad to lose it!

The community extends to Swinithwaite and on Saturday evening a merry group gathered at Berry’s farm shop for what was more like a charabanc ride up to Penhill. Adrian Thornton-Berry drove the tractor pulling a trailer load of people (including a granny armed with an ipad) while his mother, Caroline Gardner, drove the old Land Rover full of food and beverages.

After a day of torrential rain those who had signed up for the “Evening of Penhill” were amazed to find themselves bathed in glorious sunshine and with a clear blue sky overhead. It had turned into one of those champagne-like Dales’ evenings – perfect for a picnic up on the hills with Blaise Vyner and Adrian providing the commentary on the moorland birds and the history of the area.

“To stand in silence with only the sound of the birds; to experience the light of that June evening, as we gathered for a late picnic looking down on to Walden and Bishopdale and way into the distance was utterly stunning. We could only look and listen in wonder at such a truly awe-inspiring sight,” said Gillian Vyner.

She added that when they got back to Swinithwaite three hours later they all agreed it had been a privilege to have been part of that expedition and an absolute thrill. On their return Bridget Thornton-Berry served hot drinks in her kitchen.

The Songs of Praise service in St Bartholomew’s on Sunday morning provided both a joyful and thoughtful finale. It began with remembering those who died during the D-Day landings and many shared why they had chosen hymns. And it ended with a rousing rendition of Tell out my soul, the greatness of the Lord.

Gillian commented: “The singing was wonderful, led by Martin Hotton playing the organ. We also enjoyed Martin performing a couple of his own compositions on the piano.”

She told the congregation that stewardship meant giving time, talents and financial resources to maintaining the church’s service to the community – and she especially thanked all those who had helped to make the weekend so enjoyable.

She reminded them that it was Pentecost – when the church celebrated God making the life-changing gift of the Holy Spirit available to everyone whoever and wherever they were. And she thanked Jesus Christ for making that possible. Below – a floral display at St Bartholomew’s.

An album of photographs of the event, as originally posted in Pip’s Gallery, are available on CD. Anyone who wishes to have a good copy of any of the photographs (printed or by email) can purchase it from me. Contact me at pip.land@internet.com.

Anyone who has ever watched or read about Thomas the Tank Engine will know how engines can cause “confusion and delay”. Well, there was plenty of that on the road to Thornton Rust between June 25th and 28th. Even the Little White Bus service to Thornton Rust was suspended after the road from Aysgarth was suddenly closed. Part of the problem arose from the lack of communication between North Yorkshire County Council’s Street Works team and its Highways Richmondshire Area Office.

A resident, Gill Harrison, informed North Yorkshire County Council’s (NYCC) Highways Richmondshire Area Office on Tuesday June 26th that the road closure was causing mayhem. “Morrisons Utilities had dug a trench across the width of the road and placed an inappropriate and badly signposted diversion, “ she said.

She reported this had caused problems with the school bus service and for those trying to get to work, with the delivery of animal feed, and that a milk tanker was forced to reverse 500 yards back towards Aysgarth on Monday afternoon because there wasn’t a road closure sign at the junction with the A684.

Neither the villagers nor Aysgarth and District Parish Council received any warning that Morrisons Utilities, on behalf of Yorkshire Water, would dig a trench across the road just outside Aysgarth on Monday.

Several of us had difficulties getting to a meeting Thornton Rust that evening. We followed the diversion signs to Worton, navigated the confusing signage there to ascend Cubeck Hill but then there was a “road closed” sign before Thornton Rust. Most of us did keep going…

For the villagers, however, it was worse because there was no “road closed” sign at the east end heading towards Aysgarth. This meant that some had almost reached Aysgarth before they found the road was blocked.

“From what I have seen of the work, a couple of metal plates across the narrow trench would have provided access during non-working times,” Thornton Rust parish councillor David Pointon said.

He told NYCC Highways Richmondshire Area Office: “I must express my severe annoyance and disgust that such an unannounced and inconvenient road closure could be perpetrated. It seems inconceivable that a whole village and its supporters are forced into a ten-mile detour.”

When North Yorkshire County Councillor John Blackie reported the issue he was informed that Yorkshire Water did have a permit from the NYCC Street Works team to repair a burst water main with the work to be carried out from Monday June 25 to Wednesday June 27. The road was not re-opened until the afternoon of Thursday June 28.

Cllr Blackie was told that a notice about the road closure had been posted on the county council’s inter-active website. He commented: “The NYCC inter-active website does not replace the need for NYCC Area Highway Offices to inform the local County Councillor and the Parish Clerk in advance of a road closure, especially those implemented in an emergency situation, [as] communications with local communities remain very important so local people can make adjustments to their travelling plans. Nor does it replace the need for properly signed diversion routes.

“The NYCC Highways Richmondshire Area Office has not been informed by either Yorkshire Water or Morrisons of the road closure. However, the NYCC Street Works team has granted YW/Morrisons a Street Works Licence (this is a separate procedure from a Road Closure order) so I will be pursuing with persistence why they have not informed the Area Highways Office about it.”

He described the situation as a fiasco and feared similar situations could arise in the future.

Which happened sooner than he expected as he reported on July 1 – this time in Hawes.

I sat in the Religious Society of Friends’ Meeting House in the hamlet of Countersett (above) on Sunday June 24 enjoying the peacefulness of an hour’s quiet contemplation and prayer when I suddenly thought: “Wow, the next time I will be in here for a meeting will be on my wedding day!”

For David and I have decided, after 13 years together, that we will get married – and we had no doubt where we wanted the wedding to be. Yes, St Andrew’s at Aysgarth is a beautiful church and all those I know there would be able to attend if they wished. But David and I were in complete agreement that we wanted the simplicity of a ceremony which centres on the essence of a marriage between two people.

George Fox, the founder of the Religious Society of Friends  (Quakers), wrote in 1669: “For the right joining in marriage is the work of the Lord alone, and not the priests’ or magistrates; for it is God’s ordinance and not man’s; and therefore Friends cannot consent that they should join them together: for we marry none; it is the Lord’s work, and we are but witnesses.

At the beginning of our wedding an elder will tell all those for whom it is a new experience just what to expect. Then everyone will sit in silence for a little while  until David and I stand up and make our commitment to each other. We will then leave with the Registering Officer for Quakers in North East England , Richard Waldmeyer, and our two witnesses (David’s daughter Alex and my son Eddie) to sign the civil register. The meeting will continue after our return –  mainly in silence although anyone can speak if they feel led to. The elders will shake hands to signal the end of the meeting.  It should all be over within three quarters of an hour.

And then there’s the bit which I really like! Everyone at the meeting will have witnessed our commitment to each other and so will be asked to sign our Quaker Marriage Certificate. This comes in the form of a large, beautiful scroll and Janet Leyland Rawlins will have written in for us, in lovely calligraphy, our personal information. (Thank you Janet.) It will be a special reminder of all who were there.

It will, hopefully be a very relaxed event with no wedding hats, posh dresses (not even the bride) and no confetti. We’ve said that we don’t want any presents but donations can be made to the Yorkshire Air Ambulance.

Why Countersett Meeting House?

Some have asked why we wanted to go to Countersett when we could use Bainbridge Meeting House. In the past ten years, however, I have mainly attended Countersett Meeting House where meetings are held on the last Sunday of each month. I love the atmosphere there along with the opportunity to commune with God, usually in silence.

Countersett Meeting House for us also means remembering John Warren who died earlier this year. An arrangement of bronzed autumn leaves that he created is still on one of the window sills.  Liz Burrage, who acted as our Quaker supporter, asked us if we wanted any flowers in the meeting house. I told her I would be perfectly happy with John’s arrangement in the window. All we need now is some sunshine for I love watching the sunlight turn those leaves to gold.

There is no parking area beside the meeting house and the  Warren family continue to let those attending meetings to park in their driveway but space is very limited. So the majority of those attending our wedding will be bussed in from Bainbridge. We are very grateful to the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority for allowing people to park in the staff car park at Bainbridge, and we are booking the local Fosters Coaches to transport them to Countersett.

A Quaker wedding takes place during a specially –arranged meeting for worship and all who regularly attend local Religious Society of Friends meetings can attend. We are, however, asking them to let us know beforehand as we need to know how many coach seats are required and how many will be joining us for ‘afternoon tea’ afterwards. This will be at Sycamore Hall with the catering being done by the Corn Mill Teashop in Bainbridge.

So slowly we are sorting out the logistics but, at the beginning, we needed to make sure we could be married at Countersett Meeting House.

Preparing for a Quaker wedding

The first step was to meet with Richard Waldmeyer. The Marriage Act of 1753 explicitly exempted Quakers and Jews from the statutory regulation of all other marriages in England and Wales – and that has been reaffirmed by subsequent Marriage Acts in England. So, as the Quaker Registering Officer for our region, Richard explained what we had to do – starting with sponsors signing the necessary forms for me as, unlike David, I am not a member of the Religious Society of Friends.

A big thank you to Liz Burrage and to David Ladyman for being willing to sign the forms at very short notice for, after so long together, we were suddenly in a hurry.

Richard also explained that we needed to get certificates of marriage from a local Registry office as well as attend a Quaker Meeting for Clearness. So one morning we went to the Registry Office in Richmond to apply for those certificates which now take 28 days to process. The first problem was that the computer didn’t immediately recognise Countersett Meeting House. Thankfully the registrar resolved that problem and we managed to complete the paper work.

After that we definitely needed some sustenance so made our way to one of our favourite eating places: Duncans Teashop in Richmond. My food intolerances have multiplied and become more severe recently so it was wonderful to be so well looked after – and to have yet another slice of their utterly sumptuous walnut and coffee cake which contains no cow’s milk products or potato starch.  David, of course, treated himself to a slice of their wonderful treacle tart.

After a short rest we headed to Leyburn Meeting House for the Meeting for Clearness. I have to admit I was both intrigued and a bit nervous. I had read the guidance provided in Quaker Faith and Practice which stated: “A meeting for clearness can provide an opportunity for the couple and selected members of the meeting community to explore their intentions and hopes, the nature of the commitment that is being contemplated, and ways the meeting can support the marriage after its solemnisation. Consideration of a non-member’s acceptance of the Quaker understanding of marriage could also be explored. The small group of Friends and the couple will get to know one another at a deeper level. Prayerful consideration in a relaxed atmosphere is time well spent…”

So I entered the room with some trepidation. But there was nothing to worry about for the elder leading the meeting, Ian Hunter Smart, quickly put us at ease. It was a good example of a prayerful and loving Quaker meeting.  Within a day the meeting houses in Leyburn, Bainbridge and Countersett were informed that approval had been given for our wedding to take place at the latter.

An interesting history

Richard was at the Meeting for Clearness – and it was he that told us that the last wedding at Countersett was in June 1841! As one local Quaker said – ours will be a historic wedding at Countersett Meeting House.

So the next time I was on duty as a volunteer in the Research Room at the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes I had a look at the transcript made by Jack Handley of The Births Marriages and Burials, Records of the Society of Friends for Wensleydale and Swaledale which covers period from the 1680s to the 1770s. The first Quaker weddings in upper Wensleydale were held in the homes of members and that was certainly true of the first four at Countersett, three of which were in Richard Robinson’s house, Countersett Hall. Where that in 1709 was held is not clear as the date on the Meeting House is 1710.

Sir Christopher C Booth wrote in The Quakers of C ountersett and their legacy  that the Norsemen who colonised the upper dales before the Normans came were individualists and did not tip their hats to the gentry. Richard Robinson, he said,  was such an independent-minded dalesman who, by the 1650s, was searching for a spiritual experience beyond  that offered by the institutional church. When he heard about George Fox he went to Westmorland to meet him and was convinced.

Like other Quakers at that time he was prepared to face considerable abuse and persecution to be part of this revival of the Christian faith. Booth noted: ‘It was undoubtedly through the influence of Richard Robinson and his friends that so many became Quakers in upper Wensleydale. At the same time, Richard’s extensive travels in Yorkshire and throughout the land, sometimes taking him as far as London, helped to spread George Fox’s teaching far and wide.’ Robinson died in 1693 and Quaker Meetings continued to be held at Countersett Hall until the Meeting House was built.

When reading the diaries of George Fox I was particularly fascinated by his radical approach to gender equality and the impact that had on the development of female education. 

I was curious, of course, to find out more about the couple who were married at Countersett in 1841. They were Oswald Baynes, a farmer from Carperby of ‘full age’, and Agnes Webster, a ‘minor’ who was described as a housekeeper at Carr End near Countersett. The profession of her father was given as Linseed Manufacturer.

When I searched for them in the 1851 census I had a surprise for I found they were living at Poynton in Cheshire. That’s where my eldest brother, Les, lives with his wife, Beryl. His daughter and son-in-law also live in Poynton. We often joke about the similarity of that name to David’s surname.

In the 1851 Agnes was shown as being 29-years-old who had been born in Thirsk. She had two sons and two daughters – and the help of a 20-year-old female servant from Sedbergh. Oswald (32) was a farm steward at Tower Farm Yard. Ten years later he  described himself as the farm bailiff at The Towers.  By 1861 there were three more sons and the girls were at a Quaker boarding school in Winscombe, Somerset. Oswald continued to do well and by 1871 he had his own farm of 130 acres. His eldest son (also Oswald) went on to become an auctioneer in Chorlton on Medlock.

I couldn’t find Oswald Snr or Agnes in the 1881 census and decided I would have to put aside any further research as there was so much to do with our wedding date fast approaching.

North Yorkshire County Council issued the following statement today concerning the BAWB Federation of Schools and West Burton CofE School. And see below for the letter I sent to them on June 25 in which I pointed out that it had taken just two years for the Federation’s governing board to lose the confidence and respect of all the parents of children at West Burton CofE School.

Statement issued by North Yorkshire County Council on Friday, July 13:

The governing board of three Wensleydale primary schools has decided it cannot support the wishes of community members and parents at West Burton Church of England Primary School for the school to defederate.

Governors of Bainbridge and West Burton Church of England primary schools and Askrigg Voluntary Controlled primary school, which are federated as a single body, took a decision against West Burton’s defederation at a meeting last night.

This decision follows a period of due diligence when governors met with representatives of the West Burton community to explore their wishes to defederate.

The West Burton community started to push for defederation after the governing board decided in May to remodel the federation in order to address the challenges they face around lower pupil numbers and finances.

Governors believe that their agreed option – which followed two separate consultations and which involves nursery, reception and key stage 1 classes on the Bainbridge site with key stage 2 classes divided between Askrigg and West Burton – provided the best educational and financial advantages.

However, as many respondents from West Burton were unhappy with this decision, governors also agreed to explore the possibility of West Burton’s defederation.

“We worked very hard as a governing body to agree a sustainable solution which involves the least disruption and continues to offer a very high quality of education for the children of Wensleydale,” said Derek Walpole, the federation chair of governors. “It was a very tough decision for governors to make and was never going to please everybody.

“This subsequent decision against defederation has also been very tough. We recognise the concern of West Burton’s parents and have listened very hard to what they have had to say. But we believe it is better if schools work together and we must also consider the sustainability of all three schools and what is in the best educational and social interests of children.

“We respect the decision of the governing body” said County Councillor Patrick Mulligan, North Yorkshire’s Executive Member for Schools. “Governors have explored the possibility of West Burton defederating with diligence and thoroughness and have listened very carefully to what people have had to say. The county council will continue to work with the governing body in future to continue to tackle the challenges of sustainability.”

………………

On the website of the Bainbridge, Askrigg and West Burton Federation of Schools the headteacher, Charlotte Harper, states: “We work actively with our parents and community to ensure that we provide the best educational experience for our children. At Bainbridge and West Burton our Christian ethos underpins the life of the schools and is the basis of our excellent relationships with our parents, local communities and churches.”

I was so concerned that the Federation was not doing this that on June 25 I wrote the following letter to the co-headteachers and the governors:

I am a member of Aysgarth Parochial Church Council and, in the past few months, I have attended two meetings of parents of West Burton CofE School. The following are my personal opinions.

As I said to Heather Limbach (a BAWB foundation governor) some time ago, I do not think that bussing the youngest cohort of children from West Burton school to Bainbridge each day as proposed in Option 3A is in accordance with any aspect of educational good practice.

I have read the documents on the BAWB Schools website concerning Due Diligence. I await with interest the budget projections drawn up by some parents of children at West Burton School to see how these compare with that of Sally Dunn, head of finance at North Yorkshire County Council.

I also read James Kilner’s report of 5th June following his Due Diligence visit during the summer term of 2018. I have several concerns about that report and outline some of these below. Some of that report was very general and was not specific to the BAWB Federation of Schools including Improving outcomes and the Summary. It did seem to paint a glowing picture of the Federation and its leadership but didn’t provide any evidence to substantiate this. Surely an important Due Diligence report should be based upon evidence?

At the top of page three Mr Kilner stated that the Federation was well led and managed and added: “The strength of leadership is at all levels including a well-informed, professional and forward thinking governing body of the Federation.”

Yet, at the meetings I attended in West Burton I was saddened to see that the majority, if not all, of the parents of children at West Burton school expressed the opinion that, within two years of joining the BAWB Federation, they had lost any respect and trust they had had in its leadership.

Has the leadership been well-informed about this erosion of confidence? And if those parents are so disillusioned how does that impact upon the expected benefits to families and children at West Burton school? For, as Mr Kilner stated (page 6) – the benefits to families and the children’s outcomes should be maximised.

Mr Kilner visited the three schools before Option 3A has been introduced. On April 19th the executive Headteacher outlined Option 3A to parents, carers and stakeholders (published on the BAWB website).

The “cons” listed included: “Only 17 children on site at West Burton – isolating”; “Only 1 class at Askrigg – isolating”; and “cohorts of children never being taught together.”

I cannot see how that fits with Mr Kilner’s statement under the heading Effective practice (page 6) : “Schools with large Integrated learning that offers a balance of free flow and structure learning demonstrate the most effective practice…. “ Or under “Summary” – “Therefor (sic), securing children’s personal, social and emotional readiness to learn ….. can best be achieved when children are able to interact with a large number of their peers wherever possible.” (For which Mr Kilner offers no evidence.)

This surely does not fit with an option which increases the isolation of children. Nor will pupils grow in confidence and learn to cope with stress when their parents don’t feel that neither they nor their children are being well cared for by the Federation.

I, therefore, question how useful Mr Kilner’s report is concerning Due Diligence. Please could you enlighten me.

(As yet I have received no response.)

For James Kilner’s Due Diligence Report  5th June 2018 go to BAWB-Community Engagement 

And for details of Option 3A go to the same page on the BAWB website and read Community Engagement Archive

For the response from the West Burton community and parents see West Burton documents produced by John Blackie