Former Dalesman editor David Joy's book covers 70 years of rural life

A decline in upland agriculture between the wars led to the family becoming city dwellers and the farmhouse near Hebden in Upper Wharfedale normally stood empty. Visits in the 1950s were confined to summer, but occasionally we braved severe winters. Roaring log fires and spluttering paraffin stoves would begin to draw cold out of the walls just as it was time to leave. Those were the days of stone-flagged floors, no central heating, untamed draughts and rising damp (in reality running wet).

Swaledale, looking up the valley near Gunnerside. (Remco Rog)

The whole place was a time-warp with earwigs, beetles and spiders scurrying around such archaic features as a giant mangle, a butter churn, oatcake rack and sturdy ceiling hooks from which hams once dangled. A ladder led up to the loft. Hay forks and rakes, a peat barrow, spades and part of a grandfather clock were among the cobwebs of a painfully low beam.

Night darkness seemed all-enveloping. There was no electricity. The odd sheep would bleat and a distant owl hoot but that was all.

Once dawn broke I’d go off on my own. There were few strangers in the Dales and, providing you knew how to shut a gate, no one bothered about trespass. A beck tumbled off the moorland through pastures and into a miniature ravine. Here were trees and ferns, mossy-covered boulders and, in season, hazelnuts. This shady glade, a local garden of Eden, was Paradise Wood. Here I spent many an hour.

The summer highlight was making hay in meadows rich with red clover. It never crossed my mind that the hours of hand raking were the last rites of an era in its death throes. Within a few years tractors and mains electricity transformed virtually everything. Yet this sudden change only increased a deep-rooted enthusiasm for the Dales - and a determination to live in the old farmhouse. It wasn’t going to be easy. Leaving school led to a job as reporter on the Yorkshire Post but there was soon a wish to escape daily journalism. A letter was sent to The Dalesman, then based at Clapham, near Settle. In 1965 I joined this most Yorkshire of publishing companies and remained for 28 years. The highlight of my 23-mile journey to work was going over the tops from Airton to Settle when it was rare to meet another car. It was often necessary to slow down for foxes or a farmer in search of missing ewes. Dropping down off the tops there might be a plume of grey smoke briefly visible in the valley - a steam train pounding northwards on the Settle-Carlisle, by then a backwater carrying little traffic.

David Joy has written over 50 books

The Dalesman editorial office was shared with WR (Bill) Mitchell and we came up with the idea of a paperback on the history of the line. It sold over 40,000 copies and led me to pen other railway studies and develop a Dalesman book list of 500 titles.

My new role as editor of The Dalesman followed Bill Mitchell’s retirement. Five rewarding years followed, but so did a feeling that it was time to move on. Acquiring a railway publishing business in Cornwall was part of a continuing obsession with steam. In the Dales there was the old adage that those from away must first spend a winter, a summer then a second winter before any chance of acceptance. The same applied in Cornwall. The only difference was that visitors are ‘emmets’ whereas in the Dales ‘offcumdens’ seemed slightly more offensive.

It was perhaps as well that past generations of Joy farmers married into families of Cornish tin miners who came north to exploit lead. I was soon at home in this richly diverse county but ties proved too strong and decided to remain in the Dales and launch Great Northern Books. Fellow railway historians will know its name from one of the most successful pre-grouping companies conveying passengers from King’s Cross to York, Leeds and Bradford.

Tan Hill sheep show, normally held in May, next to England’s highest inn (Hilary Fenten)

I was delighted when asked to write what has evolved into A Passion for the Dales. It had to avoid being an academic treatise, pure autobiography or a campaigning book, but share the discovery of the Dales and its way of life over the last 70 years. The result is a text that’s selective, with emphasis on such personal enthusiasms as lead miners and railways, in a continuous narrative with illustrations by photographers who have superbly captured the unique appeal of this land and its people.

The first part of the book covers the Dales landscape in its wonderful variety. A second part focuses on its people from earliest times to the motoring age, followed by a look at other changes. Finally, details of the many places worth one if not more visits.

This is not the easiest book I have written, and it’s safe to say there is nothing else on the Dales quite like it. I hope it will fascinate both dalesfolk and the many visitors to this glorious countryside.

* A Passion for the Dales, Great Northern Books, £19.99.