Engel's England

by Matthew Engel

  Still, much of the county, however we define it, has thrived over the past forty years. Leeds, in particular, has acquired a new pre-eminence. It may well be the most pleasant place to shop in the country, though I don’t find much else pleasant about it. After the fall of Soviet Russia, Leeds became the global centre of excellence for fat-headed jobsworths. But I know smart London girls who have spurned Oxbridge because they think they will have more fun in Leeds. Enthusiasts rave, not only about Leeds and Harvey Nichols, but about the whole of Yorkshire’s restaurants and galleries and concerts and all-round sophistication. All of which is true. But what they mean is that the place has been southernised. It has become a cheap (literally) version of the South-East, all part of homogenised England. Same shops, same architecture, same tastes.

  Rugby league might stand as a symbol. Baffled by all oval-ball games, I once called it ‘formation mugging’ in print and a Yorkie colleague stopped speaking to me for years. Enthusiasts say it is a much better, faster game these days. But it is now nourished by marketing men and TV executives, not by its northern working-class roots. It is played in summer, and teams have names like Leeds Rhinos and Wakefield Wildcats. It values incomers like Catalans Dragons (sic) and London Broncos – who play in a Super League which is impervious to normal promotion and relegation – more than it values stalwart old teams like Featherstone Rovers. And even their ground has been renamed: goodbye, Post Office Road; hello, Bigfellas Stadium.

  Because of the size of the place, there was little enough that ever actually united Yorkshire. Cricket was foremost. Yorkshire were county champions as often as not; they set the standard for all their rivals and they maintained the rule that the team comprised players all born inside the borders of historic Yorkshire. This led to the stories of women being rushed up the A1 as their contractions grew more frequent, with their husbands desperate to get across the frontier just in case the event brought forth a man-child.

  The Yorkshire-born rule remained until 1992, long after the county’s official existence had ceased and the team, partly because of the birthplace rule, had descended into vile-tempered mediocrity. This came to a head in 1983 when the club, as Cleggy said, got rid of Geoff Boycott, a cricketer of great ability, even greater determination, complete indifference to anyone else’s feelings and a matchless ability to divide public opinion. A revolution ensued, with Boycott supporters – as obsessive as their hero – using the democratic procedures of a members’ club to kick out the committee and get him reinstated. It mirrored the simultaneous goings-on nationally in the Labour Party in which the far left was trying to wrest control from the centrists. But the convulsions in Yorkshire County Cricket Club generated more passion.

  Both insurgencies achieved short-term victories: the Yorkshire committee fell and Boycott was reinstated; Michael Foot became leader of the Labour Party. Both had similar long-term results. The cricket club’s members lost their rights to do anything except pay up, turn up and shut up, and control passed to a classic Yorkshire businessman who ran it as he pleased. The team continued to be mediocre and membership withered, especially from the further edges of the county. The fixtures in Hull, Sheffield, Middlesbrough, Bradford and Harrogate were all abolished and nearly all the matches concentrated at Headingley in Leeds, a ground that would remain unpleasant if it were rebuilt by Frank Lloyd Wright. Yorkshire’s tenure became funded, under a bizarre arrangement, by a local university (not the good one). Its fixture list has to be married up with that of the Rhinos next door. And at big matches the crowd got increasingly nasty-drunk and the stewards increasingly nasty-officious.

  If not cricket, what now unites the county? Traditional Yorkshire had its own logic, even if it was not obvious. Professor Clive Upton, the expert on dialect at the University of Leeds, explained to me that the Humber–Ribble line has a vital linguistic significance, dividing northern English speech from Midland speech. The North and East Ridings were north of the line and the West Riding south of it: ‘There was never any such thing as a typical Yorkshire speaker,’ he explained. Paul Jackson broke it down even further, explaining that the word ‘right’ would be ‘rait’ in the West Riding, ‘reet’ in the East Riding and ‘raat’ in the North Riding. Dr Barrie Rhodes of the Yorkshire Dialect Society offered ‘about’: ‘abaht’ in the West, ‘abut’ in the East and ‘aboot’ in the North.

  There are many relevant quirky habits and usages: the issue of whether ‘dinner’ happens at midday or in the evening has both a regional and a class dimension and extends far beyond Yorkshire. So does the endearment ‘luv’. The lingering taste for tripe and offal extends across the Pennines to Lancashire. There are other usages that seem to be peculiarly Yorkshire, but whether they encompass the whole of Yorkshire or not is mysterious. Martin Wainwright, for many years northern editor of the Guardian, says Yorkshire people will say: ‘Would you like it wrapping?’ rather than ‘wrapped’. And ‘What do they call her?’ instead of ‘What’s her name?’

  Then there is ‘I’ll wait while three’ instead of ‘until’. And inversion: ‘She’s a lovely woman is Penny.’ Or, as Jimmy Savile once said: ‘It’s wonderful, is death’.2 Barrie Rhodes thought the most typical Yorkshire characteristic was ‘ascribing an inanimate object with the capacity for desire’: ‘That window wants cleaning.’

  Yorkshiremen traditionally send a pint of ale back unless it has a foaming head. And chips are still cooked in beef fat, not vegetable oil. But a lot of southerners like a foaming pint and beef fat was used in the Black Country. There was a time when Yorkshire people took the otherwise defunct English version of the ‘tu’ form – thou to denote affection or superiority, thee for formality – as seriously as any French academician, leading to the once-famous injunction: ‘Don’t thee thar me, thee thars them that thars thee.’ This is now either defunct or confined to a few remaining old-timers in Barnsley working men’s clubs, if anywhere.

  I thought I might have made a breakthrough when I discovered Henderson’s Spicy Relish, which, unlike Worcestershire Sauce (and indeed Yorkshire chips), is suitable for vegetarians and vegans. But it turned out to be a taste largely confined to Sheffield. There was Mather’s Black Beer from Huddersfield (made without hops), but that hardly runs through the veins of the ridings. Is there anything left that is peculiarly and all-embracingly Yorkshire? Was there ever anything at all? Barrie Rhodes pointed out that the division into ridings meant that Yorkshire had not been united in an administrative sense since the kingdom of Jorvik collapsed in the tenth century. ‘Yorkshire is really more an idea than an entity,’ he said.

  And yet what an idea! The champions of Yorkshire are not wrong. It is a place of constant surprises and magical memories. And when I sat down to try to list a few – some garnered while researching this book, some from many years before – I found I couldn’t stop.

  Sitting in St George’s Hall, Bradford, listening to that most Yorkshire of brass bands, Hammond’s Saltaire (formerly Hammond’s Sauce Works), playing that most Yorkshire of pieces, Holst’s ‘Moorside Suite’.

  Going to Spurn Head, the strangest spit of land in the kingdom, where Yorkshire reaches out into the Humber and narrows to a few feet across; and the lifeboatmen, the only full-timers in the service, reverse traditional roles. Their station is so remote that they cannot leave while on call, and so their wives and kids scatter and the menfolk stay home all day, doing chores and cooking – unless and until their bells ring, and then they’re gone.

  Hull Fair, the largest in the kingdom by far, and the traditional end-of-season gathering for the showmen of England.

  Huddersfield Station, the St Pancras of the North, fit for a grander train service, with its statue of Harold Wilson, fit for a grander prime minister.

  Driving along Berry Brow near Huddersfield on a sunny autumn afternoon with the leaves hurtling towards the river.

  The maples turning yellow in Meersbrook Park, Sheffield.

  Watching county cricket at Bradford Park Avenue, the lost temple of Yo
rkshire sporting pride.

  More cricket at Scarborough, the one place where Yorkshire allowed the game to be treated as fun, mainly because everyone was playing in an alcoholic haze.

  Being met off the train by my friend Geoffrey Moorhouse, wearing, as I recall, an Aztec hat, at remote Dent Station on the Settle–Carlisle line, as the sun set on a frosty evening.

  Watching Keighley, again with Geoffrey, play hopeless rugby league at run-down Lawkhome Lane in the days before, lordy, lordy, it was renamed Cougar Park – which one would like to believe is a reference to predatory middle-aged women rather than exotic beasts.

  Geoffrey’s funeral, years later, on a December day in Hawes: the light declining, the mist on the fells, the smoke rising from the chimneys and the scrunch of leaves underfoot as we followed the wicker coffin to his carefully chosen plot.

  White wine in the Dean of York’s garden on a summer’s afternoon after Eucharist in the Minster.

  Striding out to the Cow and Calf on Ilkley Moor on a summer’s morning, possibly baht ’at.

  High tide at Flamborough Head with the waves dancing through the arches in the chalky cliffs.

  The faded glory of the Cutlers’ Hall in Sheffield.

  The secretive crypt at Ripon Cathedral, constructed a trifling 1,450 years ago, on the instructions of the great scholar and traveller St Wilfrid, complete with niche for the saintly relics he brought back from his journeys.

  Thirsk Races, under the Hambleton Hills.

  The wonderful war memorial at Sledmere in the East Riding, built in the style of an Eleanor Cross, so that the men who died as cattle – like Harry Addison, carpenter, Walter Barker, footman, David Scott, agriculturalist, and William Webster, saddler – are memorialised in the manner of medieval saints.

  Seeing a narrow boat on the Rochdale Canal outside Mytholmroyd, preceded by a phalanx of Canada geese, apparently guiding it forward like tugboats.

  A sudden scene just outside the unremarkable (except for its name) West Riding village of Ulleskelf: autumnal lime trees; the sun on a field of ripe maize; a storm approaching and the sky turning violet; and where the hell’s my camera?

  In that moment I understood why Turner was so enraptured by Yorkshire, and why David Hockney went back to paint in Bridlington instead of Los Angeles.

  Oh, and then there are those place names, few as strange or as obviously Danelaw as Ulleskelf, but rich with comedic possibilities: Wetwang, Fangfoss, Kirby Grindalythe, Sewerby, Penistone, Grimethorpe, Blubberhouses. And the ones that embody the rule expounded in The Sunshine Boys that places with a hard K are inherently funnier than those without: Heckmondwike, Giggleswick, Cleckheaton. And of course the Swaledale hamlet of Crackpot.

  I was tempted to add the faded advert on a brick wall in Lord Mayor’s Walk, York: ‘Nightly BILE BEANS Keep You HEALTHY BRIGHT EYED & SLIM’. I wanted to believe that people in York were still devoted to the laxative appeal of bile beans and perhaps were still dosing their children with Argotone Nose Drops and Radio Malt. It turns out this ad is regarded by local sophisticates as a much-cherished landmark, and it has already been repainted once.

  The day that Yorkshire was sliced and diced was 1 April 1974, a day that for the zealots of the Yorkshire Ridings Society will live in infamy. Hardly noticed, amid it all, was the loss of the small Pennine town of Barnoldswick (usually known as Barlick), which was translated to the Pendle district of Lancashire. It’s the sort of town I instinctively like: isolated but stable. Not unprosperous too – Rolls-Royce have built aero-engine parts here for decades, and Silent-night beds are just moving in. It also has a surprising number of shops, most of which will doubtless keel over as soon as Tesco comes to town.

  Gordon Prentice, who became MP for Pendle in 1992, told me that in the early years he got a regular stream of letters from Barlick complaining about being moved. They tapered off but Lancashire has still not dared put up a sign announcing its imperium. Its subordinate body, Pendle, had one hidden behind greenery just after the turn-off from the main road to Blackburn. In town, where council property is safer from attack, Pendle was far more brazen. It took over the post office, opposite the bus shelters, thus occupying not just the most prominent but also what may be the ugliest and worst-maintained building not merely in Barlick, but possibly in England. The council should issue an enforcement notice on itself.

  I resolved to stand near this monster and ask ten locals which county they (a) lived in and (b) wanted to be in. I was hoping, I suppose, for an outburst of fearsome Yorkshire irredentism. It didn’t happen. I got one rebuff (male). Otherwise, all ten dutifully told me they were in Lancashire, some in a where’s-this-leading kind of tone, as though, like the North Humberside grannies, they feared they might go to jail for the wrong answer. To the second question, four said Lancashire, three said Yorkshire and three didn’t care.

  One incomer told me he preferred Lancashire on political grounds: it was usually Labour-controlled, while the alternative, North Yorkshire, was invariably Tory. A teenage girl kindly switched off her iPod to talk to me, then looked disgusted: ‘Yorkshire? It’s just the elderly people who think that.’

  Barlick was always a bit divided: it was a cotton town, not a wool town; residents always found it a fraction quicker to go and do a big-shop in Lancashire not Yorkshire; and, even before 1974, the letters came through Colne, so the Post Office encouraged the use of Lancashire on envelopes. But the significant change came when the midwife stopped coming round town to deliver babies, and mothers were sent to maternity hospital. They could opt for Keighley, on the Yorkshire side, but the default position, if they were not bothered, was Burnley, the other way. So most locals under fifty were born in what is unarguably Lancashire.

  David Stead, former chairman of the town council, is a Yorkie and proud of it. But he told me: ‘When we were shifted, most of Barlick just accepted it. Barlickers knew who Barlickers were. We were very insular, still are. Nobody passes through, we’re not on anyone’s route. We’re in Barlickshire, basically.’ There is still some fun to be had. The town’s water comes from Yorkshire but the sewage goes into Lancashire. So when the subject crops up, the Yorkies have a ready answer: ‘You get all our crap.’

  Some of Yorkshire has come back home: for instance, since Humberside was strangled, the flag of a revived East Riding Council flies over Bridlington’s shingle. But it’s all a complete dog’s breakfast. And Middlesbrough seems to have left Yorkshire behind completely: Clive Upton says there is even evidence that the accent has changed since the boundaries were moved, becoming more Geordie and less Yorkie.

  In 1960 Clancy Sigal, a young American writer based in London, wrote a book that created a mild stir at the time. It was called Weekend in Dinlock, about a visit – less fleeting than the title suggests – to a Yorkshire mining village. Sigal arrived, at the invitation of a pitman-cum-artist called Davie, and found himself among creatures so alien that the early pages seem less like sociology or even anthropology, and more like zoology.

  Sigal was an exotic in a white duffel coat, in a place he called ‘dingy, narrow, primitive’, wandering among people who might have been pygmies or gorillas or Martians, three hours from King’s Cross: fighting-drunk men, put-upon wives. Mutual sympathy developed and, finally, Sigal was allowed to go down the pit himself:

  metallic fracturing explosions of picks sunk into coal … shovels ramming into piles of loose coal … five teams of men moving wordlessly in damp semi-darkness … picks and shovels clanking and plunging … ten men in pit boots and leather belt and pit helmet and naked to the gods of the interior earth … the collier derives from the very nakedness of his coal-smeared flesh a unique self-respect, an unfleshly fraternity which is both elemental and deep-driven.

  The account is somewhat fictionalised. Dinlock was really Thurcroft, just outside Rotherham; Davie was really an aspirant writer called Len Doherty. But Sigal’s account had the resonance of truth. Thurcroft was an extraordinary, self-contained world. Now it is easy to rattle
through and mistake it for a Rotherham suburb enjoying a little brittle prosperity: the houses have generous gardens and look solid enough. But it’s a Potemkin village: lean on the place a little and there is nothing there.

  Doherty achieved some reputation as a novelist, joined the Sheffield Star and was named provincial journalist of the year. But he died young, and it took a full morning of cornering old people round the shops before I stopped getting blank looks and found Bill Williams, who could just remember both Len and Clancy. The pit closed in 1991. The nearby brickworks also closed, and the waters of forgetfulness closed over them both. There is a pitwheel at the entrance to the village, but it is not even Thurcroft’s pitwheel, it comes from nearby Dinnington. There is nothing else to mark the village’s past except in the Gordon Bennett Memorial Hall (named after a county councillor), where there is a handsome painting of a pit in winter which turns out to be the pub sign of the Thurcroft Hotel. That’s now demolished, awaiting, with an air of helplessness, a developer who wants to build houses in such a drab spot.

  ‘What do the men do now?’ I asked an old boy outside the hall.

  ‘Not a lot. Quite a lot are unemployed. Some of them do roofing. There’s nothing here.’

  And yet one essential truth of Sigal’s excursion survives: in England you can travel in no time to what might be distant galaxies. Less than an hour from Thurcroft is Holmfirth, a classic Pennine millstone grit town that has acquired celebrity as the setting of a TV sitcom. Holmfirth’s fame has proved remarkably persistent because the series, Last of the Summer Wine, ran on BBC TV from 1973 to 2010, surviving the death of nearly all the original cast – and the author’s inspiration.

  Formulaic though it became, it was a wonderful formula. The programme was always set in a perpetual late summer that never quite turned to autumn, which was precisely its theme: three old buffers – Just William’s Outlaws as pensioners – making light mischief against the background of a haunting harmonica solo. It was a glorification of age, blithe spirits and community, with a light peppering of Yorkshireness. It will exist on cable and satellite for ever.