WINTER TIME SNOW STORMS IN WHARFEDALE

Snow storm after snow storm; these alone were keeping the local council workers fully employed, always to be seen on Silsden road onwards towards the top of Grindles Hill, where all of us kids in the fifties were shuttled to our secondary modern school in the town situated in the ‘Aire Valley’ A daily venture in to foreign lands, ‘Silsden’ described by some of us from ‘Addingham.’

In the winter time when ice or snow lay treacherous upon the road, everyone aboard would move to the front of the bright red ‘West Yorkshire Double Decker’ so to lighten the load over the back wheels and hopefully not accomplish one’s journey giving us a day off from school.

Then there was the infamous Addingham Brow, which ran from where ‘Town Head Mill’ was situated at the top of the village to Chelker reservoir, again the council workers armed with gleaming spades, a result of cutting the snow block by block, were prominent in various stages of the mile and a half journey to the top.

These men in an array of attire, knitted Balaclava’s some full faced with holes only for the eyes and mouth, most in ‘Ex-Army Greatcoats’ and ‘Army issue Khaki trousers’, a legacy to where most of them spent the ‘Nineteen forties’ also Wellington Boots, some lined with cladding of old sacking and various daily newspapers, these being just some of the aids to enable one to keep one’s feet warm.

Every man ruddy and weather beaten, adding more lustrous sheen to his spade as he slowly progressed systematically through the horrendous snow drifts.

These scenes to become stark reality for me in the not too far distant future, when in the big snow of nineteen sixty three, cutting by hand in Arctic temperatures of up to fifteen degrees below zero, noticeable not only for the amount of snow, but also the length of the freeze being up to six weeks long in total, an environment where it was not uncommon to have one’s lunch sat on top of telegraph poles!

It was not unusual to have late snow storms like 1947, from mid-February through to late March.

One of these I remember when very young, observing the true heroes of these parts, my father being one of those, although working his 8 hour day job with the ‘Yorkshire Water Board’ His normal working day sometimes stretching to 12 hours and as long as 16 at haymaking time. Then not uncommon for him, when snow was falling to come home, after eight hours of working higher up in the dale, cycle home the twelve miles or more soaked to the skin, only to tell my mother, that some of Abraham Donaldson’s sheep were in various stages of lambing, and he was only home to change in to some dry clothes.

Ever since I can remember my father had two jobs, his principle one; and his secondary job with one of the local farmers, ‘AD’ my father called him, and one he work with for many years while I was growing up in the village.

The danger for the sheep being that they would seek shelter beneath the six foot stone walls from the driving snow, some of these would then be caught, especially if the wind changed direction.

My father would walk along the perimeter of each pasture, prodding the now deep forming snow drift with a long stout pole, experience telling him from the depth of the poles penetration where they were before digging them out.

Most he would find in a various state of being frozen solid, some in stages of already lambing, and some that had already delivered.

His main concern being for the living ewes, those managing to find enough warmth to stay alive including those with lambs that miraculously managed to stay alive also, sometimes he would be out all night long till all the sheep were accounted for, and they were times my mother and I would venture down stair on a morning, to find a lamb or two, in a box with a sacking lining, enjoying the warmth emitted from the hot embers glowing in the grate of the old ‘Airedale’ fireplace, towels hung on a line across the mantelpiece, evidence of him drying out the lambs.

No matter what nature threw at him, he would be back at his day job by eight ‘o’ clock the next morning. Believing as I do to this day, it took a special kind of man to dedicate his entire working life to this particular rural life style. No union restrictions here, only a commitment few non farmers could ever begin to understand!

© Harry J Horsman

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