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A Camera in the Dales
A Photographic Record

by John C. Moore
Writers Club Press 2000
US price: $9.95              UK price: £6.84

The following is an extract from the first chapter:

The meadows were a blaze of buttercups when I had my first glimpse of the dales.  It was one of those narrow dales where the fields rise steeply from the road and where whitewashed farmhouses tuck snugly into the hillside.  For years I had lived within fifty miles of the dales, yet I had never seen this unique countryside.

          A few years later my wife and I bought a small business in a small dales town ... Hawes, at the head of Wensleydale.  Here we saw the dales in their many moods as we lived and worked among the dales folk for over twenty years.

Duerley beck runs through Hawes. It drops over a small waterfall right against a shop built out of the beck bottom.  This is where we lived when we first came to Hawes. Most of the time the fall sounded like a kettle boiling gently, but when there was a flood it roared; and when the rocks started rumbling over the solid limestone bottom it was more like thunder:

A little upstream from the waterfall the beck once turned a mill wheel.  The outside of the building is very much as it was but the inside has been converted into modern flats.  In summer, visitors often line the bridge a few yards downstream, watching the fish in the lucid pool below the fall.  On the other side of this bridge there used to be another mill; since no building or space is ever wasted in Hawes, this is now the Conservative club.  I found an old photo of this mill wheel taken more than seventy years ago: though the wheel has gone, very little has changed.

  Half a mile upstream from the waterfall is the tiny village of Gayle. Although so close to Hawes, it has always clung tenaciously to its own identity. It's a closely-knit community whose inhabitants regard Hawes just down the road as virtually another country.  I remember an old lady who moved to Hawes from Gayle; when I asked her if she had settled in her new home, she replied, "Oh no, the folk aren’t like the Gayle folk" -- as if Hawes were a hundred miles away:  There was a time when they had their own football team and billiards team; also, any; Hawes boy who was so bold as to come courting a Gayle girl was promptly chased out of the village!

The bridge is the focal point of the village. If the weather is reasonable there will always be two or three villagers chatting there. There’s the story of a stranger who once asked a man on the bridge if he could tell him where Richard Iveson lived.  Now there are an awful lot of Ivesons in Gayle -- known mostly by their nicknames, a not unreasonable state of affairs, really, with so many people of the same surname. Well, the Gayle man went through all the Ivesons in his mind and confessed that he couldn't place this particular one.  As the stranger turned to go, however, he exclaimed, “Wait a minute, that's me!”

Gayle Bridge is a great meeting place for the village

I like the people of Gayle. They're sturdy individualists but always friendly and hospitable.  One is an old friend of ours, always known as Annie Mary whom I photographed beside her old iron range which today is a collector's piece.  I was never in her house long before I was given a cup of tea and a piece of ‘Gayle bannock,’ the pastry so well liked by the folk there.  She worked for us at the market for many years until her husband was taken ill, when she devoted the rest of her life to looking after him.

Most artists’ impressions of Gayle are from this bridge, as one can see in nearly any exhibition of dales art.  I took photos there, all round Gayle too, but most of all I was attracted to the geese which I could never resist, either on their own or to make an attractive foreground to any picture. They are a feature of the village. Indeed, Gayle is famous for its geese. In the past many were kept there and no doubt were a welcome addition to the villagers’ income.

I've been told that in times past when so many of the villagers kept geese, there would be a hole in the pantry wall: when a goose came to sit she could have a nest under the stone pantry shelves, and could come and go as she pleased -- to eat and to drink -- through this purpose-built doorway. In season there would be a sizeable flock and they would be driven out to pasture and brought home in the evening, just like cattle.  At the time I took my photos I think only Annie Mary still kept geese so that these would be hers which stayed in the beck and round the village all day.

Before World War I, when the harvest was gathered in, geese were driven to Hawes and sold to the lower country down the dale.  A local historian told me that the buyer, having assembled his flock, would have them walk through tar and then sand so that they were shod for their journey; they would then be driven to the corn-growing farms, to be fattened on stubble and sold piecemeal until the whole flock had been disposed of.

Between Gayle and Hawes there is yet another mill -- but here the waterwheel was replaced at the turn of the century with a water turbine. The owners must have been go-ahead people, for they started to generate electricity for the immediate district -- a great innovation in such a community and at that time.  The electricity was used mostly for lighting and the plant was shut down every night at midnight, unless there was a dance or some special function that merited an extension of time.

Before the First World War Hawes had a gas supply, now long forgotten, the only trace being the odd glimpse of an old gas pipe. Unfortunately the gas was generated by carbide, for when all available carbide was required by the war effort, the company had to close down. Meanwhile the enterprising electric company had installed electricity into many of the houses and had even put lights on poles throughout the town -- so electricity took over and the gasworks never started again.

Incidentally, the old turbine is still in use, driving machinery for a small joinery business.  When in 1977 the owners overhauled the turbine it was found that only one part needed replacing. The makers of the turbine were found to be still in business in Kendal and they readily supplied and re-installed the part.  As far as I know the turbine is still doing its job as well as ever.

The following is John Moore's photograph (left) of the Oliver Cromwell on its last visit to the Dales. The close-up at the bottom was taken by Myra Moore:

 

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