How it was – by the villagers who saw it happen

Before the Second World War there was a very clear class division in society and Ina Hogarth on arriving to take up her post as house maid at Langcliffe Hall found herself caught uncomfortably between them. " On Sundays we used to try and get out early for church. We used to talk to the boys in the village. The girls weren’t very friendly and used to shout, "Skivvies!" In church there was a whole row of servants at the back. The gentry were at the front. The old housekeeper used to sit at the end of the pew and she had a stick or umbrella and if we were late she used to dig you with the stick. The older servants were worse than the family! The cook was old and grumpy and grunted. I wasn’t allowed to have sugar in my tea. They just ruled you ! Later, when I got to know them better , they became my friends".

Social life in the village centred round Church and Chapel. "The Chapel had a bigger pull than the Church. There were picnics and concerts and Miss Burroughs used to ask permission to run a cable from the Hall’s electricity supply to run the Magic Lantern in the Sunday School. We went a lot to Church events and Mrs Bannister had a concert party so we had entertainments at the Institute. We were allowed to go because Mrs Nicky the housekeeper went. We could never stay until the end. We had to go when Mrs Nicky went !"

Bob Monk remembers "Swifties of Ingleton" performing at the Institute and Rita Ellerington was very envious of the precocious juvenile star. "It was quite common during these years, (the thirties), for groups of strolling players, mostly family groups, to hire a hall for a week or so and give as many performances as they could get an audience for, before moving to the next village. Each concert party consisted of about six adults and a few children . The school attendance officer used to keep an eye on these children and make sure they were slotted into the village school. This particular group contained a precocious young miss by the name of Thelma. She had rosy cheeks, glossy black hair, short, short dresses like Shirley Temple’s, which showed her frilly knickers and – wait for it – patent black ankle strap shoes. She was a ‘show off’ and spent each play time doing cartwheels and splits in the playground, with an admiring audience, mostly boys, standing round, whilst we girls vainly tried to compete. On Saturday afternoon there was a queue waiting at least half an hour before the doors opened. We paid our twopences and scuttled in to get on the front row. The curtains rose shakily for the opening chorus, with the whole group on stage wearing pierrot costumes. Thelma’s patent leather shoes flashed in the footlights and we all tapped our feet as they sang, "Hello, hello, here we are again". When Thelma’s solo arrived, the sigh of envy went up from all the girls on the front row must have greatly gratified her, great little trouper that she was. She was wearing an even shorter skirt of blue velvet with swansdown round the hem and sleeves, floppy blue bows on her red tap shoes and a blue top hat on her glossy head. She tapped and sang, "I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy", and I hated her more than ever! The Finale was splendid. The whole troupe were posed in Edwardian dress round the piano. They remained absolutely still for half a minute and I had plenty of time to examine Thelma’s white, broderie anglais dress and white stockings, as she sat on her father’s knee, holding a doll dressed in identical clothes. The picture came to life and they regaled us with Edwardian ballads, ending with "When Mother played the organ…and Daddy sang a hymn." "All together now, piped Thelma and we all joined in with lumps in our throats. I was thankful it was Saturday and I wouldn’t have to sit next to Thelma at school on Monday. Blue velvet and swansdown,as well as patent leather, was more than I could stand".

On Fridays, at the Hall, Miss Perfect held "At homes" and entertained her friends who arrived by pony and trap.

Miss Perfect "lived for the Church " and ran a Sunday School. She also used the servants hall as a classroom for her "Girls’ Friendly Society". The girls were taught knitting and sewing and Miss Perfect ran an early form of Credit Union. The girls contributed small amounts but could borrow from the fund for immediate needs, for example, stockings.

Most men in the village were employed as farm servants, quarrymen or mill hands. The work was hard and wages modest but housing was cheap and there was a tremendous sense of community. "Langcliffe was a working class community. Most people worked at the quarry or the mill. Every cottage had a working family. At the end house, we had a magistrate. Every night on the Green there was a football match and this chap decided we were making too much noise so he got the police to come and move us off. As the police moved the youngsters off, all the old age pensioners moved on and started playing football".( Extract from Bill Mitchell’s recording).

"Fifty years ago the school was full. There was a sign out for ninety eight bottles of milk. There are not as many children now. A lot of village life has gone. All the children used to play at night on the Green and parents would join in the games of rounders" (Extract from Bill Mitchell’s recording).

"We played football every night on the Green – there was no grass on it. It was run bare. It was a chore breaking off for your tea". (Bob Monk).

"The children had great freedom to roam. They played in the fields and woods. Mrs Dawson gave them permission to pick up wood from the ground. This was interpreted rather loosely and a few failing branches were helped on their way. Parents expected children to bring wood home. Every older person remembers the ‘monkey bars’. " These were situated at the end of St. John’s row, underneath the wall surrounding the churchyard. They consist of concrete posts with a metal tube threaded through holes in the posts, surrounding a piece of land which was used for storing dustbins, by people living on the row. This was where, until recent times, village children used to play – swinging and somersaulting over the bars. One bar in particular was used the most as it was very shiny and was slightly curved and can still be seen to this day. The call could be heard ‘Mum, I’m just going to play on the monkey bars". Snow brought the children and adults out together. The big sledges were brought out from the Hall and great runs were established on Stubbin’s fields. Irene Bowker remembers how, "We used to sledge down the Malham Road. On a really frosty night you could go right down through the village on your sledge. The road looked like a sheet of glass". Not unreasonably, Mr Morrison of Tarn House put a stop to this since the road surface was too dangerous for his horse and carriage. Improvisation in making toys was sometimes necessary. Derek Soames made a whip out of a leather lace from his Dad’s clogs. "I started just outside the Institute, and I got this top going, through the village and out onto the main road. When I got to Bowerley, my lace had worn a way. My Dad shouted Who’s had one of my laces!" There weren’t many manufactured toys but "I never heard a kid say they were fed up".

There was a Mothers’ Union , Women’s Institute, classes in dressmaking and rug making, a football team and a brass band. Sometimes, for charity there would be a comic cricket match with the women dressed as men, challenging the men dressed as women.

Mrs Hilton was the midwife and general medical adviser until the advent of a qualified district nurse. Mrs Hilton also "laid people out". She performed this service when Miss Perfect died. (Mrs Hilton’s family still provide the Christmas tree in the church)."Old Doctor Hyslop was called in for emergencies.

"I had an uncle who was what they called a ‘getter’. In other words, he went up and down the rockface boring holes and firing charges to bring the limestone to the bottom for the men to fill the skips. He was three parts up the face when a stone fell from above and split his head open. He was laid unconscious on this ledge. A chap climbed up to him and tied him on a ladder then lowered him down. It was old Doctor Hyslop who attended to him" (Bill Mitchell’s recording).

Ina Hogarth had come from the North East at the time of the miners’ strike and had received free meals at school. When she left school she had to leave her home to find employment. Comparing the living conditions of the two communities she says that, " People were better off in Langcliffe. They were better fed – there was more food around. People kept hens and pigs and there were always plenty of rabbits – we ate rabbits for ever! They had fruit trees and made jam. They had allotments and vegetables. My sister died of TB when she was thirty two; There was no TB in Langcliffe. I don’t think I would be here if I had stayed at home".

An important item in the diet was the pig. Most villagers kept a pig on their allotment. After Ina moved to Old Hall Cottage she ‘shared’ a pig with the gardener. Derek Soames recalls how the pig became bacon. The pigs were slaughtered in sequence and the offal shared out amongst the neighbours since it couldn’t be preserved.

"The pigs were kept on the allotments and everybody had a Sett boiler for boiling the swill up – everything went in; there were some rare smells! J C Hartley, the butcher, would kill the pig on Saturday and cut it up on Sunday. After the pig was cut up, James would come to the house and he would do the salting and and curing for you. The pantry was cleared out and scrubbed clean. The whole floor was covered in bacon. When you were curing the cheeks, it took seven days. The flitches and shoulders took a fortnight, and the hams, three weeks. For three weeks ,the whole pantry floor was occupied. Block salt was chopped and crushed with a rolling pin and then, salt –petre was pushed right along the bone, to the knuckle bone. You had to rub the salt in until you finger ends were sore. After three weeks it was hung up and it lasted through the winter. During the last war, if you had two pigs, one was supposed to go to the government. There were inspectors from the Ministry of Food who came to check you hadn’t got too much. We were clearing a house recently and, hidden in a cubby hole, in the attic, we found a ham – it was all dried up – it must have been from the war!

Margaret Robinson made sausages by "cleaning the intestines, scraping them and running water through them. They were then pushed onto a device which fitted on the mincing machine and they were filled with meat. There was a lot of meat on the spare ribs which were roasted or given to neighbouring farms. Brawn was made by boiling the pig’s head with a piece of beef until very tender and then chopping it up. Very tasty black puddings were made out of the blood. The pig’s feet were boiled and served with onion sauce. The liver heart and kidneys were all used immediately because there were no freezers then.

The Second World War brought big changes to the village. The hotels in Settle were commandeered. The Ashfield was taken over by the Air Force and the Falcon became known as ‘Penguin Lodge’. There was a shortage of venues for social events. Ina recalls that "there were a lot of good singers and musicians among the servicemen and they came up to the events at the Institute. A lot of girls got on with the airmen and marriages followed". "The lime works had closed and became an ammunition dump. Some men from the village were employed to guard it. There was much more employment in munitions". The mills and the quarries worked extra shifts. Nobody wanted to work in domestic service. The staff at the Hall dwindled. Ina was tied more than ever, supervising waves of casual workers. She now lived in Old Hall Cottage but was still summoned for service at any hour by Mrs Dawson who "rang a great bell out of the bathroom window."

The Hall opened its doors to provide more meeting areas for the whist drives, sewing circles and events for aiding the war efforts. Mrs Grenfell, mother of Joyce, was a friend of Mrs Dawson and head of the WVS. She had a wonderful collection of period costumes which she had acquired from her friends. The villagers wore these costumes in a fund –raising pageant. "After Dunkirk, the Red Cross sent us great laundry baskets full of cut out dressing gowns and we sewed them up. The village rallied and we got a good response. Mrs Nicky had left her old machine and we gradually acquired another one. We also knitted big fishermen’s jerseys."

Evacuees arrived in the village. Some had few clothes and the villagers again got together to pool resources and make clothes for them.

During these years the village , once wary of "offcumdens", had embraced and responded to the needs of hundreds of strangers. It still does. Please call in for tea at the Institute on Sunday afternoons in Summer.