Craven through the years

EASTER saw visitors out in numbers to Skipton and the Dales. In Grassington the streets were "invaded" by the motor car. Fortunately the sewage works had been completed and the streets had been returned to their normal condition in time for the influx. On Good Friday 900 arrived by train. On Saturday there was almost the same number but on Easter Monday 1,945 visitors arrived at the train station.

Skipton United won the Craven Football League and they were presented with their trophy by Captain Roundell of Gledstone Hall in a Champions v The Rest match held at the Ings Lane ground. A crowd of between 600 and 700 saw the match, a good number of them ladies.

Skipton Council was to extend its water supply to Carleton, which was good news for the ratepayers of both communities. For Skiptonians, they would see a commercial return on their investment in the new supply from Embsay Reservoir while Carleton could rejoice in the supply of water in both quality and quantity, two features which had long been absent.

50 Years Ago

A REPORT showed that Barnoldswick Urban Council set aside 275 houses for workers from Rolls Royce. The company was granted permission to rent them to people who worked outside the industry because it was experiencing difficulty in attracting skilled staff and 25 of the houses, on which it guaranteed the rent, were lying empty.

Two new wards at Raikeswood Hospital in Skipton, once the workhouse and now some very expensive houses and flats, were featured in the paper. They housed acute medical cases.

A report on the cotton industry reported that 90 mills in the UK had closed in the last 12 months and called on the Government to limit cheap imports from China and India or the British cotton industry would cease to exist.

Keith Burrows from Embsay wrote home to his family describing his work as a geophysicist carrying out an aerial survey on Antarctica.

Bob Appleyard, the Yorkshire and England cricketer, showed a film of England's tour to Australia at Earby's Albion Hall to a packed audience. He did not shirk controversy either, saying the selectors and press were biased in favour of southern cricketers and that a batsman had to score six centuries in the north to be considered in the same light as one who scored one century at Lords.

25 Years Ago

A FIRM started only 12 years previously in Kirkby Malham by a one man executive who had been made redundant won the Queen's Award for Export Achievement. International Textile Company of Victoria Mill was started by Peter Robinson when he lost his job as chairman of Carrington and Dewhurst furniture division. Against all advice he moved a desk, chair and telephone into a barn at his home in the village and started up selling screen prints for curtains and covers.

The owner of the Tempest Arms at Elslack, Peter Parfitt, applied for planning permission to build a 36 bedroom hotel in the car park of the property.

Investigations by Grassington Parish Council about bringing gas to the village were discounted as uneconomic. A letter from the gas board said the possibility had been investigated thoroughly but the potential revenue could not possibly justify the expense of laying a pipeline to connect the village to the mains.

Settle was not taking the introduction of car parking charges to the town lying down. It organised a raffle and held a dance to fund the fight against Craven District Council's proposed charges.

Michael Winstone, a 17-year-old from Clapham, spent Easter lying on a bed of nails to raise money for Clapham Village Hall. He was the son of Rev Peter Winstone, who had carried out the same feat eight years previously.

Residents of the Burnside estate in Skipton were informed by the Post Office that it was to take no action despite a 300 signature petition to re-open a post office on the estate to replace the one which had closed 10 years previously.

10 Years Ago

A MYSTERIOUS campaign to damage tourism in Clapham stepped up when a new road sign on the bypass was vandalised and attacked with bolt cutters. Traders said signs had disappeared or been painted over by someone who did not want tourists in the village.

Settle parishioners were no longer called to church by a tape recording of bells. For the first time in 70 years real bells at Holy Ascension were ringing out. Repair work was carried out for free by Haywood Mills Associates, a Nottingham firm which had read about the plight of the eight redundant bells at the church and the parts were paid for by Ron Dove of York, author of the book "A Bell Ringer's Guide to the Church Bells of Britain".

A plan to build houses on the former Grassington Hospital site was thrown out by the national park. English Nature backed the plan, saying it would tidy up an eyesore and bring positive management to a site of special scientific interest but some members of the authority felt it was an over-development in the open countryside.