Yorkshire Dales

If we had to choose our favorite day from this trip, I think it would be a tough call between our tour of Suffolk villages and the drive through the Yorkshire Dales. I don't have the energy for a thousand words, so I'll make do with a few photos. And yes, it really is that green.

Haworth Churchyard

As previously noted, Haworth Church and the Bronte Parsonage are at the top of a long, very steep hill. The first view of the churchyard is striking in that the gravestones are thicker than any I have seen before.

And there were A LOT of them...

A little research explains why. As the bodies decomposed, everything ran down hill. The water system was at the bottom of the hill and by the time science had advanced far enough for them to figure it out countless residents of Haworth had died from the effects of tainted water.
     *40,000 people were buried in this churchyard
     *41.6% of children in Haworth died before the age of six
     *The average life expectancy was 24.

This gravestone is in memory of Simeon who died at 1 year, Susey who died at 4 years, Nancy who managed to live until 20, and Robert who passed at 10 weeks.

Life must have been very grim for the residents of Haworth.


Guest Blog....

My son-in-law has kindly offered to retell the following story. You will see from the photo how steep the hill up to the Haworth Church is. Thank goodness there is parking at the top of the hill!

While sitting in the lounge at Ascot House in Harrogate, just before retiring for the night, we met an elderly couple from Lancaster. They were very interested to chat with us, as they had been to America many times and loved to talk travel (those many times included 23 trips just to Disneyworld, guess they liked it). One of the most interesting tidbits we picked up from them was a story of Haworth during the Second World War. The lady of the couple was a young girl during the war, and was sent by her mother 'out to the country' to be safe from any possible bombings. She stayed with an aunt (who turned out to be really just a friend of her mother's) near Haworth, and said that she was constantly fascinated by the bus that drove to the top of the big hill there, as it carried not only people, but also any packages that people near the bottom needed to deliver to the top.  She recalled her first experience of this phenomenon, watching in amazement as a very elderly lady hailed the bus, and instead of boarding, handed the driver a covered plate of food, asking for it to be dropped to her husband, working at the top of the hill. For an entire summer she spent most of her time watching the bus go up and down the hill, in awe of the way it connected the community like no city bus ever would.

A Few Postcards

Not too long after my first trip to England, while still totally infatuated, I went to a large antique show.  Walking down one aisle I noticed boxes full of postcards and a tab labeled “Yorkshire” caught my eye.  I took the cards out of the section and discovered one of Staithes, a small coastal village which had been one of our more enjoyable overnight stops.  (Someday I’ll tell you the story about the Staithes horse breaking wind…maybe)  I looked up at the dealer and said “I spent a night there.”  She replied that she had spent several years just a few miles from there and we were off on what has become a fairly typical conversation for me…Where did you go? What was your favorite village, museum, inn, building, shop, garden, etc?



Staithes, Yorkshire



In a moment of inspiration, I thought it would be fun to collect an antique postcard from all the places in England where we had spent a night.  After all, we were only talking about maybe 20 cards and they seemed to be quite reasonably priced.  Thousands of postcards later…..

So let me tell you about deltiologists (postcard collectors).  Most of us come to the hobby as a result of working a family tree, working a stamp collection, or documenting a hometown, hobby, or favorite vacation.  It is hard for us in this time of cell phones and the WORLD WIDE web to imagine that postcards were the means of everyday communication for most of the English speaking world in the early 1900’s.  Some places in England had 6 mail deliveries a day and you could send an invitation to dinner that same night and get a response before it was time to put the potatoes on to boil.  As a result, there are millions of postcards out there to sort through and more surface in grandmother’s attic every day.  I am pleased to have the 1914 postcard that was sent from my great aunt to my grandfather (back on the farm with his three boys) telling him that he was finally the father of a newborn baby girl – my mother.

The advent of modestly priced cameras allowed anyone to take pictures of grandma on the front porch or dad’s prized mule team and have them printed direct onto real photo postcards….more millions of cards.  And then the blossoming wealth of Americans in the fifties and sixties meant world travel - all documented by postcards…millions of them.

Cards can be purchased from 10 cents for a typical chrome view from the fifties to thousands of dollars for beautifully printed, pristine cards by well known artists of the day or real photo cards from defunct far east nations.  There is truly something for every interest, bank account, or perversion.  Yeah, there are plenty of ‘those’ postcards too.  If you collect postcards, it is not long before you have thousands.  I make no apologies.