Monday 7 May 2012

Life in Pannal village

Bit about me. I am a local historian and have published two books on Pannal and have written the Centenary History of Pannal Golf Club. I qualified as a journalist, secretary to Bob Kelly Chairman of Celtic Football Club and also stockbroking and worked for the MOD married Bas and we have had four children. Lived at Kirkby Overblow then Pannal in the early 1960s.  Enough of my credentials lets blog about what is happening in Pannal. Sandy Bank Quarry and fields behind St Roberts Church. The fields have been rented (owned by HBC) to a farmer who is now in the process of putting a wire fence between the quarry and the fields. There has always been a right of way, as long as I remember, from the end of the quarry through the fields one way to Stone Rings and another to Almsford Bank.  I can remember the children who attended Pannal Primary School from the Stone Rings area crossing the fields to school and home again. Have not seen that happen for many years. We are hoping Harrogate Borough Council do know this and have told the farmer there must be a stile to enable walkers to access the quarry and fields. The Police Training College on Yew Tree Lane, which used to be Southern College, is to be developed as housing. I have asked that the schoolmasters house built 1840 and the Memorial Library ( opened in the 1920s by The Earl and Countess of Harewood as a memorial  to those pupils who had lost their lives in the war) be retained.  Hopefully this will be done. If you have any queries or would like to make your views known contact HBC before May 24th.  Pannal after two lovely days cloudy and quiet. School starts tomorrow with the accompaniment of cars dropping children off and unless you are one of these parents Main Street is not the place to be either in the morning or at school leaving time. Says one who lived in this house before the school was built. To be continued