West Tanfield’s Christmas Play

Each Christmas in West Tanfield, North Yorkshire, people come together to put on their own Christmas play. They prefer classic stories. They’ve done the Nativity, St Nicholas, and Babushka. Continue Reading →
Helen Johnson, Yorkshire Writer
Helen Johnson Freelance Writer
The joys and challenges of living in the countryside.
Each Christmas in West Tanfield, North Yorkshire, people come together to put on their own Christmas play. They prefer classic stories. They’ve done the Nativity, St Nicholas, and Babushka. Continue Reading →
Appleton Wiske Scarecrow festival is here again, running 1 and 2 July 2017 With games, crafts, plant stalls and plenty to eat and drink, as well as the scarecrows, there’s Continue Reading →
Celebrations! Appleton Wiske Post Office re-opened today. When our former Postmaster retired, I feared that we would lose our shop and Post Office. Indeed, the Post Office closed last Continue Reading →
Back-breaking manual work Once upon a time, potato picking was dirty, heavy, back-breaking manual work. Generations of rural families spent long cold days picking the vegetables by hand from the Continue Reading →
Appleton Wiske Scarecrow Festival is here again, on 2 and 3 July 2016. Each year, the festival gets bigger, with more to see and more to do. New this year Continue Reading →
Bob Gallon has worked on the Bell Estate in Thirsk for all his working life, and has witnessed sixty years of change in farming. Farming in the 1940s Bob Gallon Continue Reading →
For decades, if not centuries, Dales women have created simple organisations to provide them with opportunities to socialise: Women’s Institute, Mothers’ Union, Yorkshire Countrywomen, and so on. Men tended Continue Reading →
For Dalesman Magazine, November 2013, Helen Johnson met the Champion family, whose garage in Castleton has served motorists since cars first arrived in the North York Moors. Continue Reading →
November sees Remembrance Day. But some people spend all year Remembering, researching the details of the Fallen. One such person is John Knopp, of Snape, who has been trying Continue Reading →
Helen Johnson met Grace Thompson, Pat Duggan and Gillian Shepherd to talk about memories of Thompson’s shop of Osmotherley, for Dalesman Magazine. Continue Reading →