This England: the Pennines: A Writer’s Notebook
From the TV Times 1980 – four 30 minute films made with Granada meeting people on a summer trip through the Pennines. Film maker and writer Ray Gosling is on his travels again, this time through the Pennines where landscape and character seem to fit.
The people who live on England’s rooftop by Ray Gosling
The “star” of these short summery films is quite literally and physically the backbone of Britain. The English countryside, and the films’ object, is to give pleasure: to look at spectacular scenery, and now and then to drop in on some fine and interesting local people we met in the Pennine hills. Fine as in fine ale, interesting as in a life well played; the honest to goodness people for whom the North Country from Skipton in Yorkshire to the Scottish border is famous.
I wasn’t born in the country. I’m a townee, through and through. But I like to visit it, and I think we all do. Of course, being in a film crew, beavering our way through two months of driving round hairpin bends, we saw more than a normal tourist. We entered people’s lives. Independent people.
A lady in Northumberland, for instance, who’d turned an energetic hand to making 20th century four-poster beds. Not so much a cottage industry, she lived in a lonely castle.
There was another country landowner who lived in a minor stately home, and wasn’t a Duke or a Lord – but just a plain mister. He could trace his family back for 800 years: a family tree with roots direct to the Normans.
Not that we’ve delved into history – there’s no brass rubbing in the films. We spent time with people who were living modern lives, best they could. One man owned an old water mill. Still working, grinding corn the old fashioned way. There’s no socio-whatsit in the programmes. But sometimes I wonder.
We all read in the newspapers, government in, government out, that Britain’s in the doldrums. It has to be true. Yet every day we met strong, enterprising, inventive people making a success of themselves. And it’s no land of mild and honey. The air is fresh, but as Pinky the fisherman said: “so fresh sometimes, it would put hair on billiard balls.”
I visited the market at Hexham in Northumberland – a town where the young people are very snappy dressers, and Len Heppell – football coach in Sunderland - runs the disco. He gets three pages of praise in Bobby Moore’s autobiography. He has a “method” of body exercise, developed from the dance hall he’s run since Johnny Ray was “just a crying in the rain,” which is a long pedigree for rock ‘n’ roll.
But in the morning I was in the very pretty market, with such richness of vegetables on the stalls. I can remember, just, standing in short trousers with my mother, in a long queue for the first bananas after rationing. Now in Hexham market, there are Spanish peaches, Italian cherries, Mexican mangoes, French strawberries, Israeli grapes, Egyptian potatoes, Dutch cabbage. The only local produce I saw was a few fresh mushrooms, and some turnips. And Tyne Valley tomatoes.
One week, the weather really turned. On Alston Moor, in Cumbria, they’ve a word for it – “fair starvation”. It howled with hailstones. You felt, literally, you were on England’s rooftop; that Emily Bronte’s Heathcliffe in a coach and four would sweep our car into a gully. There’s an elemental force in the North. More rough days than smooth, even in a good summer.
We’ve a couple of murder stories in the films, and I met the lady who’s seen the ghost of a runaway slave: a black boy. In the 18th century, some kept slaves in the Dales. There’s no escape from reality. 200 bodies of 19th century navvies are buried at Chapel le Dale. They died building the Carlisle to Settle railway: the most spectacular main line on British Rail.
On the stormy day, after lunch in Allendale we drove via Spartylea and Dirt Pot over the derelict lead mining moors. We called on a couple in a stone cottage – who were nursing two computers. That’s their job. They are private enterprise computer programmers who deliberately decided to leave the cities and work in the wilds.
There are other newcomers: young city people come to the country to be craftsmen. A modern couple run a farm, to teach city school children country ways, believing the future for mankind is – their words: “to earth ourselves a little more.” They could be right.
I’m not sure I could live in the country, but I’ve learnt to respect those who do. The old have a saying – when they’re asked “How do you do?” they may reply – “Toiling on, toiling on.”
It was a vicar who told me that. Of course, it is chapel country. We went to Brigflatts, the old Quaker chapel. Nearby there’s a lump of rock north of Sedbergh, where George Fox from Leicester, founder of the Quakers, came in 1652 and spoke to a thousand people, for three hours. He so moved them in one sermon that within a few months there were thousands willing to go to prison (and they did). They would not pay their taxes. They wouldn’t take the oath. Hauled before a magistrate, they wouldn’t take their hats off. They would not say “Good day,” as it implied God had bad days.
They are a stubborn, implacable lot, Northerners. But the pictures are lovely. It’s a beautiful country – and just a touch more. If only I could define that touch.
The people who live on England’s rooftop by Ray Gosling
The “star” of these short summery films is quite literally and physically the backbone of Britain. The English countryside, and the films’ object, is to give pleasure: to look at spectacular scenery, and now and then to drop in on some fine and interesting local people we met in the Pennine hills. Fine as in fine ale, interesting as in a life well played; the honest to goodness people for whom the North Country from Skipton in Yorkshire to the Scottish border is famous.
I wasn’t born in the country. I’m a townee, through and through. But I like to visit it, and I think we all do. Of course, being in a film crew, beavering our way through two months of driving round hairpin bends, we saw more than a normal tourist. We entered people’s lives. Independent people.
A lady in Northumberland, for instance, who’d turned an energetic hand to making 20th century four-poster beds. Not so much a cottage industry, she lived in a lonely castle.
There was another country landowner who lived in a minor stately home, and wasn’t a Duke or a Lord – but just a plain mister. He could trace his family back for 800 years: a family tree with roots direct to the Normans.
Not that we’ve delved into history – there’s no brass rubbing in the films. We spent time with people who were living modern lives, best they could. One man owned an old water mill. Still working, grinding corn the old fashioned way. There’s no socio-whatsit in the programmes. But sometimes I wonder.
We all read in the newspapers, government in, government out, that Britain’s in the doldrums. It has to be true. Yet every day we met strong, enterprising, inventive people making a success of themselves. And it’s no land of mild and honey. The air is fresh, but as Pinky the fisherman said: “so fresh sometimes, it would put hair on billiard balls.”
I visited the market at Hexham in Northumberland – a town where the young people are very snappy dressers, and Len Heppell – football coach in Sunderland - runs the disco. He gets three pages of praise in Bobby Moore’s autobiography. He has a “method” of body exercise, developed from the dance hall he’s run since Johnny Ray was “just a crying in the rain,” which is a long pedigree for rock ‘n’ roll.
But in the morning I was in the very pretty market, with such richness of vegetables on the stalls. I can remember, just, standing in short trousers with my mother, in a long queue for the first bananas after rationing. Now in Hexham market, there are Spanish peaches, Italian cherries, Mexican mangoes, French strawberries, Israeli grapes, Egyptian potatoes, Dutch cabbage. The only local produce I saw was a few fresh mushrooms, and some turnips. And Tyne Valley tomatoes.
One week, the weather really turned. On Alston Moor, in Cumbria, they’ve a word for it – “fair starvation”. It howled with hailstones. You felt, literally, you were on England’s rooftop; that Emily Bronte’s Heathcliffe in a coach and four would sweep our car into a gully. There’s an elemental force in the North. More rough days than smooth, even in a good summer.
We’ve a couple of murder stories in the films, and I met the lady who’s seen the ghost of a runaway slave: a black boy. In the 18th century, some kept slaves in the Dales. There’s no escape from reality. 200 bodies of 19th century navvies are buried at Chapel le Dale. They died building the Carlisle to Settle railway: the most spectacular main line on British Rail.
On the stormy day, after lunch in Allendale we drove via Spartylea and Dirt Pot over the derelict lead mining moors. We called on a couple in a stone cottage – who were nursing two computers. That’s their job. They are private enterprise computer programmers who deliberately decided to leave the cities and work in the wilds.
There are other newcomers: young city people come to the country to be craftsmen. A modern couple run a farm, to teach city school children country ways, believing the future for mankind is – their words: “to earth ourselves a little more.” They could be right.
I’m not sure I could live in the country, but I’ve learnt to respect those who do. The old have a saying – when they’re asked “How do you do?” they may reply – “Toiling on, toiling on.”
It was a vicar who told me that. Of course, it is chapel country. We went to Brigflatts, the old Quaker chapel. Nearby there’s a lump of rock north of Sedbergh, where George Fox from Leicester, founder of the Quakers, came in 1652 and spoke to a thousand people, for three hours. He so moved them in one sermon that within a few months there were thousands willing to go to prison (and they did). They would not pay their taxes. They wouldn’t take the oath. Hauled before a magistrate, they wouldn’t take their hats off. They would not say “Good day,” as it implied God had bad days.
They are a stubborn, implacable lot, Northerners. But the pictures are lovely. It’s a beautiful country – and just a touch more. If only I could define that touch.