2012 Entertainment Diary for Reeth in Swaledale and Arkengarthdale.

June Hall, ‘Folk Knitting Traditions across Northern Europe’
Hand knitting spread across northern Europe from the sixteenth century. It was industrialised in the Dales and we will look at the wider context for a domestic craft which continues in the present, with particular reference to Lithuania and Norway.

Jane Hatcher, Local Historian, Wenham Study Centre, Richmondshire Museum, ‘Isabella - A Swaledale Foundling’. Based on documentary evidence from several sources, this sad story is a mixture of a lot of facts and a tiny bit of fiction – see if you can spot the difference!

Janet Bishop, Chairman of the Friends of Swaledale Museum, ‘Alexander Fothergill and the Richmond to Lancaster Turnpike Road’. Alexander Fothergill (1709 – 1788), surveyor, attorney, farmer and diarist, was a member of a fourth generation Quaker family who lived in Raydale, Wensleydale. When the act was passed for turnpiking the road from Richmond to Lancaster in 1751, Alexander was appointed surveyor, and much of the diary entries that exist are full of the details of his job, from the supervision of labour, to the fixing of the gates, the appointment of toll keepers, the collection of tolls, and endless trips on horseback to meetings. His diary is full of minute detail about people and places, family, farm and worries, pubs he ate at, the weather, and the problems he had with people who did not do their jobs properly. He was surveyor for twenty three years, and his diary shows not only an extremely busy man, but every detail of the how, why, where and when turnpike roads took shape.

Jeffrey Gardiner  ‘The Hartley Colliery Disaster’

Tony Nicolson, University of Teesside (retired)
‘In the Attic’. Tony moved into an old house in East Cleveland in November 1999 and discovered a horde of letters and photographs mouldering away in the attic. It was the start of a fascinating historical journey. Gradually, he pieced together a Victorian and Edwardian melodrama of moonlight dances on vicarage lawns, illicit love affairs, a mysterious ‘vile woman’ and a wandering husband .Soon, other stories began to emerge of people who once lived in the house: a woman with connections to St. Petersburg; a Guisborough playwright who worked with Lewis Carroll; the adventures of a naval lieutenant who fought the Barbary Coast pirates; a scandalous Whitby elopement, and the lost world of an eighteenth-century horse doctor . . . . These are some of the pleasures of house history that Tony will explore.

Gill Savage, University of York
‘Safe haven or battle ground? Is the Ministry of Defence protecting archaeology on its land or destroying it?’

Reeth Show is a traditional Dales Agricultural Show and has always been a great family day out in the beautiful Dale of Swaledale.

• As usual there will be a wide range of entertainments, shows, displays, stalls and refreshments.

• The Great Fremington Edge Fell Race will be taking place as usual, a fixture of the national fell race runs every year.

• There will be the popular horse classes, sheep show, poultry and rabbit show, walling competition open to all entrants on the day, vintage tractors and this year a new section for vintage cars, vintage bikes will also be on display from all eras.

• Local trades will be selling their Fresh Dales produce and products as well as traders from further afield with something for everyone to purchase!

• Children will have rides to try and stalls they can spend their pocket money on.

Helen Bainbridge, Curator of the Swaledale Museum, ‘Swaledale Scrapbooks: Cuttings, Characters and Connections’. From the number of ‘scrapbooks’ in the collection of the Swaledale Museum Archive, it seems that these wonderfully informative collections of newspaper cuttings, photographs and printed ephemera were a popular local pastime. Here for the first time we attempt an analysis of their content, drawing out particular events and characters, and celebrate these largely forgotten cornucopia of information. In the age of e-mail and digital information they appears to represent a lost ‘art’.

AGM and Dave Carlisle, ‘’Better Late than Never’, Arkengarthdale Mining Company 1870 – 1891’.

Professor Charlotte Roberts, Palaeopathology Course Director Department of Archaeology, Durham University
‘Death and disease: stories from our ancestors’ remains’
The study of human remains from archaeological sites is a popular ‘occupation’ in the UK and elsewhere in the world. The wealth of information their burial sites, and indeed their skeletal remains, can tell us about their past lives and deaths is wide ranging. This has been increased in recent years with the use of very sophisticated methods of analysis that can inform us about their diets, their health problems, and how much they moved around from their original birthplaces. This talk will provide a general overview about how and why the study of life, death and burial is important to understanding who we are today. It will take examples from both the UK and elsewhere, from prehistory to the post-medieval period, including some of results of the speaker’s research from burial in northern England.